Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 04:43:12 UT From: "Special Guests" <gerald at riverview.net> To: dhenwood at panix.com
ISRAEL'S FUNDING OF HAMAS COMES HOME TO ROOST
Hamas has won the Palestinian elections. Now what?
Afshin Rattansi, former producer of Al Jazeera's "Top Secret" television program, is available for Talk Show interviews to explain the history of blowback when it comes to Hamas.
In your eye-opening interview, seasoned veteran journalist Rattansi tells of readily available documents and former Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials admitting that Israel actually directly funded Hamas as a counterbalance to the PLO in the 1970s!
This Israeli blowback is similar to the US blowback from the CIA funding of bin Laden to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.
Mr. Rattansi discusses corruption that has beset the PA and catalyzed support for Hamas.
Rattansi's new book, "The Dream of the Decade", a novel about international media disinformation on terrorism, is available for purchase on Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com
ABOUT AFSHIN RATTANSI...
Afshin Rattansi was born in Cambridge i n England and after analyzing geopolitical and environmental risk for Lloyd's of London worked for flagship BBC programs around the world, culminating in his work for the program at the center of the David Kelly affair when one of the world's top WMD scientists committed suicide in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
He launched the world's first 24-hour, developing nation, English-language satellite television news network, based in the Middle East. He was its editor between 1999 and 2001. In 2002, he won a Sony award for his outstanding contribution to international media and journalism He went on to work at the investigative strand, "Top Secret" at Al Jazeera which first identified the perpetrators of 9/11. His novel, The Dream of the Decade, charts the chaos that takes place in international TV stations and their inability to offer their audiences a balanced view of news from around the world.
He has covered the major news stories of the past decade and a half for Channel 4, the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera including apartheid South Africa under reporting restrictions, the fall of the Berlin Wall, BCCI, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the collapse of Barings, the UN Millennium Conference in New York, UK-supported Saddam, the Thatcher resignation, WTO-Seattle, Al-Aqsa Intifada, Monsanto, US-Mujahideen support in Afghanistan, the Ethiopia-Eritrea war, The Colombia drugs 'war', OPEC under Hugo Chavez, Rwandan genocide, Kashmir and the Line of Control, the election of Vicente Fox in Mexico, Sukarnoputri's election in Indonesia, the South-East Asian crash, the Bush campaign, attacks of Al Qaeda, and the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
RATTANSI ON HAMAS:
Tel Aviv gave help to Hamas to dilute support for a strongly secular PLO in the 1970s (Confirmed by former State Department and CIA staff).
Israel even reportedly paid money to build mosques. In mitigation, they also wished to infiltrate avowe dly militant groups. However, Hamas is said to have found so-called collaborators and shot them. There are also some who say that Israel, as it financially aided Hamas, could in effect torpedo any peace treaties that were enforced on them by the U.S. and the international community.
The PLO were strongly supported by the USSR and some in the U.S. were happy with support for organizations that took away followers of secular movements cf the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
RATTANSI ON AL JAZEERA:
The mad antics of a station under siege from the Arab World and the West
ABOUT THE BOOK-
Al Jazeera - The novel? Publishers of Amis, Rushdie, McEwan, Murakami, Saramago, Ackroyd, Tremain and Theroux praise former Al Jazeera journalist, Afshin Rattansi, for new collection of novels published in one volume under the title "The Dream of the Decade", published by Booksurge, ISBN 1-4196-1686-2
For the first time, a journalist from Al Jazeera h as published a work of fiction - though the Arabic TV station's detractors might have it another way. The Dream of the Decade - a quartet of novels - is out in one volume published by U.S. publisher, Booksurge. It's a big tome that charts the lives of Londoners when the gaps between rich and poor are inexorably rising, even as the lives of the rich are becoming fabulously wealthy.
With a release date of February 1, 2006, the book treats the fear and loathing of terrorism only in one novel, head on, in an account of Londoners trapped in a bar during a bombscare. Though there is no mention of Al Qaeda, it is the background of the author that makes one think that the fear is post 9/11.
The book itself is praised by Dan Franklin, publisher of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan who says that Rattansi "captures the atmosphere of the late 1980s." Christopher MacLehose, the publisher of Richard Ford, Haruki Murakami, Georges Perec and José Saramago, said that he could still feel the force of "The Dream of the Decade."
It's no wonder as the ambitions of the novels are large. The first and title novel charts the downfall of a stereotypical working-class-made-good-under-Thatcher yuppie as he begins to learn what British society lost as it gained. The third is about Londoners' - and even Los Angeles-residents' - perplexing relationship with property. The final novel, entitled, "Good Morning, Britain" examines the travails of an ingénue at a big television station, learning and prospering as he produces news for the populace. It should be noted that Rattansi produced for the BBC's Today programme which was caught up in the Weapons of Mass Destruction fiasco when Andrew Gilligan reported that the British government has "sexed up" a dossier to persuade the UK parliament to vote for the Iraq War.
Rattansi worked on Al Jazeera's flagship programme, "Top Secret" and given the Arabic language station's ability to source mate rial where no media outlet has contacts, one can only imagine what assignments the author must have undertaken. He won a Sony Award for his outstanding contribution to media in 2002, shortly after setting up an international 24 hour news station in the Middle East. The quartet begins with a reflection by one of the female characters in the book, the love of the first novel's protagonist, as she holidays in the Maldives ahead of the Asian Tsunami. It is when you imagine the scope of such a book, its themes, its politics and its emotional range allied to the quality of writing which impressed so many of Britain's arbiters of literary prowess, that you begin to understand what an event publication of "The Dream of the Decade - The London Novels" really is.
SELECTED QUOTES:
"I can still feel the force of it, as a passing gale" --Christopher MacLehose, Collins Harvill.
"I admired it, particularly the pace and atmosphere." --Christopher Sinclair-Steven son, Sinclair Stevenson Ltd.
"He captures the atmosphere of the late 80s." --Dan Franklin, Martin Secker and Warburg.
"Interesting and involving." --Laura Longrigg, William Heinemann Ltd.
Author bio:
Afshin Rattansi has been represented by both A. P. Watt and Curtis Brown Literary Agencies. He was born in Cambridge, England in 1968 and has lived in Princeton, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Caracas, Dubai and Havana as well as London. After the hurricanes of the nineteen-eighties, he worked on environmental and geopolitical risk for Lloyd's of London. He has written on literature, politics, fashion, business and current affairs for The Guardian, New Statesman and Society, Plays and Players, The Oldie, Gulf News and many other publications.
Most of his life has been spent in journalism: producing programmes for Channel 4 and BBC News and BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme in the UK. More recently, he has worked on award-winning investigative programmes for the Arabic language station, Al Jazeera.
He also helped launch the world's first 24-hour, developing nation, English-language satellite television news network, based in the Middle East. He was its editor between 1999 and 2001. In 2002, he won a Sony award for his outstanding con tribution to international media and journalism.
Website: <http://www.afshinrattansi.com>