Aug 31, 2012 The Western Onslaught on International Law, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch ..Liberal institutions, such as the media, universities, federal courts, and human rights organizations, which have traditionally functioned as checks on the blind obedience to authority, have in our day gone over to power’s side. The subversion of these institutions has transformed them from checks on power into servants of power. The result is the transformation of culture from the rule of law to unaccountable authority resting on power maintained by propaganda... Read more... Backer of NY ads exposing Palestinian land-loss says response has been 'astounding' and news 'coverage is pouring in,' by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss Last night I talked to Henry Clifford, the 83-year-old Connecticut man who paid for the smashing ads on New York commuter train platforms that describe the dispossession of Palestinian lands over the last century. "I've been plowing this field for many years and I am absolutely astounded by the response I've received, and the news coverage," the former financier said. "We've been begging for coverage for years. Now it's pouring in.".. Rachel Corrie, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance It is hard to believe that we lost Rachel Corrie in March 2003. Our pain makes it feel like only yesterday especially when this week a consistently biased lying Israeli judge justified his unjust verdict exonerating her killers by vilifying the International Solidarity Movement. As a Palestinian who happens to also hold a US passport and most importantly as a human being, I found the silence of the Obama administration on the murder of a US citizen particularly revealing... Historic Tehran NAM Summit, by Stephen Lendman | Veterans Today After the UN, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is the most important world body. Hopefully its 16th summit will infuse it with new life. As host, Iran has a historic opportunity. At the same time, it can enhance its own prestige and enlist support against hostile Washington/Israeli designs... [One wonders if NAM, given the Empire’s declining influence, could eventually replace the UN as “the most important world body.” The trigger event would be the termination of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The showdown would probably begin with a large group of NAM members terminating their membership in the UN.] Israel, Rachel Corrie and the "Demographic Threat": When Will Palestinians Become Human? by Amer Zahr | Counterpunch We Palestinians have been struggling for a long time. I am not speaking of the struggle to be recognized as an independent state, or the struggle to be recognized in the United Nations, or even the struggle to be recognized in international courts. I am speaking, rather, of the struggle to be recognized as human beings... Read more... 9/11: Confessions of a former CIA Asset, by Susan Lindauer (with Jim Fetzer) | Veterans Today It was my great pleasure to invite Susan Lindauer, a former CIA asset, who had extraordinary experiences conducting back channel talks with Saddam Hussein about resuming UN weapons inspections during negotiations prior to the invasion of Iraq, to speak at The Vancouver Hearings. She had served as a conduit in communications between the US and Saddam, who had been cooperating with the United States and even offered to purchase 1,000,000 new cars from Detroit per year for the next ten years or, if that were not enough, for the next twenty, if the US would not attack his country... Israeli expansionism versus imaginary Palestinian “diplomatic terrorism” | Redress Information & Analysis Jamal Kanj argues that Israeli expansionism and Western connivance with and complacency towards Israel’s land grabbing – not the Palestinian quest for state recognition at the UN – are the real obstacles to peace in the Middle East... Rachel Corrie and the Kosher Legal Stamp | Gilad Atzmon Judge Oded Gershon’s ruling earlier this week that the state of Israel is not to blame for the death of Rachel Corrie, came as no surprise. In fact it reaffirms everything we know about the Jewish state - its politics, legal system and spirit. Israel is surely a most peculiar state - it is impervious to ethical thinking and humanist thought... Christian Zionism and Evangelical Christian Zionists, by Norton Mezvinsky | The OtherSite ...Within the past thirty-five years Christian Zionist leaders with a large number of followers behind them have developed one of the most powerful and influential lobbies in the United States. This lobby has exerted, and still does exert, at least as much political influence in Washington and throughout the United States as does the much emphasized Israel lobby, which is comprised of Jews. The Christian Zionist lobby, far more than the Israel lobby, is antagonistic to Muslims and Islam as being enemies of Israel, the Jews and Christians... What does "Dialogue" do for Peace Among Israelis and Palestinians? by Richard Forer | Peace X Peace ...The dialogue groups that I have encountered – and there may be some I am unaware of that do not conform to my experience – presume a symmetrical relationship between the Palestinian and Israeli sides. They begin by establishing parameters that favor psychological comfort over historical truth with simplistic presumptions such as, for example, that both sides have been traumatized, that both have committed acts of violence, and that the two sides are, in essence, equally responsible for the failure to arrive at a peaceful resolution to the problem... Would It Really be Any Different?: Imagine No Republicans, by Andrew Levine | Counterpunch Biologists sometimes do thought experiments in which they reflect on the consequences of imaginary catastrophic events wiping out particular populations. For a day or two, one could hope that a natural experiment of a similar type would soon transpire: that Hurricane Isaac would do in the Grand Old Party of wingnuts, whackjobs, semi-retired war criminals, neocon war mongers, and some of the most noxious capitalists on earth... Read more... Arab Spring through Indian eyes, by M K Bhadrakumar | Russia & India Report A new theme is finding its way to the Indian discourses on energy security, as is bound to happen, drifting in from the West. Simply put, the United States is ending its dependence on oil imports from the Middle East and the geopolitics of the Middle East could never be the same again. The facts that could go into buttressing the thesis are rather meager and yet a fairly good case can be made out of them... Farming Palestine for Freedom, by Samer Abdelnour, Alaa Tartir, Rami Zurayk | The OtherSite ...Palestine’s poverty is a politically engineered human catastrophe in which economic growth and freedom are contradictory endeavors. How is it possible to consider diverting land and resources to produce flowers and strawberries for European markets while 88% of Gazans receive food aid and 75% are malnourished? When Palestinians can grow their own food on their own land and are able to fish their sea, displacing Israeli produce from the market, they will be food secure... Aug 30, 2012 Evidence in Delhi Embassy Bombing Suggests Journalist Was Framed, by Gareth Porter | Inter Press Service In "The Delhi Car Bombing: How the Police Built a False Case", a three-part series beginning today, award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter dissects the Delhi police accusation against an Indian journalist and four Iranians of involvement in the Feb. 13 bombing of an Israeli embassy car... NATO Terrorists Target Syria & Algeria, by Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer Western policy makers admit that NATO's operations in Libya have played the primary role in emboldening Al Qaeda's AQIM faction (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). The Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution's Bruce Riedel in his article, "The New Al Qaeda Menace," admits that AQIM is now heavily armed thanks to NATO's intervention in Libya, and that AQIM's base in Mali, North Africa, serves as a staging ground for terrorist activities across the region... [Hat tip to latest Western “humanitarian” intervention - way to go, guys] Iran brings new direction to NAM, by Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Asia Times Online ...the movement has taken a healthy turn toward self-renewal by elevating Iran as its next leader, which in turn gives Tehran a good deal of latitude in shaping NAM's next moves, for example at the United Nations, where NAM's eyes are focused on a meaningful UN reform, such as the expansion of the Security Council and enhancing the role of General Assembly... Israel Rails Against IAEA Vote on Nuclear Arsenal, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar Next month’s IAEA meeting in Vienna is going to have the same fight that has so often been present at other such meetings, as Israeli officials are expressing outrage at the idea that a vote might be held at the meeting to criticize Israel for its nuclear weapon arsenal. The vote, which is backed by several of Israel’s neighbors, calls on the nation to declare its nuclear activists and join the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Israel has ruled out ever doing... Obama's America: Waiting for Blowback, by Nicolas J.S. Davies | Huffington Post The United States has suffered three widely acknowledged military disasters since the end of the Second World War: in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. The American public responded to each crisis by electing new leaders with a mandate to end the wars and avoid new ones. But in each case, our new leaders failed to make the genuine recommitment to peace and diplomacy that was called for. Instead, they allayed the fears of the public by moving American war-making farther into the shadows, deploying the CIA and special operations forces in covert operations and proxy wars, sowing seeds of violence and injustice that would fester for decades and often erupt into conflict many years later... Rachel Corrie verdict exposes Israeli military mindset, by Chris McGreal | The Guardian Reporters covering Israel are routinely confronted with the question: why not call Hamas a terrorist organisation? It's a fair point. How else to describe blowing up families on buses but terrorism? But the difficulty lies in what then to call the Israeli army when it, too, at particular times and places, has used indiscriminate killing and terror as a means of breaking Palestinian civilians. One of those places was Rafah, in the southern tip of the Gaza strip, where Rachel Corrie was crushed by a military bulldozer nine years ago as she tried to stop the Israeli army going about its routine destruction of Palestinian homes... Martin Indyk: Israel “cried wolf,” by Marsha B. Cohen | LobeLog Having pulled all the stops to avert an Israeli attack against Iran last spring that never happened, has the Obama administration given all that it has to Israel’s hawkish leaders only to learn that it has been played? If so, how might this affect the US response to Israeli warnings that it will attack Iran before the 2012 presidential election... [At least Clinton’s favorite Israel Firster isn’t part of the current administration, but it hardly matters - these traitors dominate the foreign policy establishment in both parties.] Orwell's 1984 Solution to Criminalize War: “If There was Hope, it must Lie in the Proles,” by Prof. James F. Tracy | Global Research In George Orwell’s 1984 the Outer Party comprised a mere thirteen percent of the population and was subject to the ideological filters in play at the Ministry of Truth and the broader bureaucratic structure. A specific language and way of thinking were closely adhered to. Given their political import, Outer Party members were the most heavily indoctrinated and controlled inhabitants of Oceania. The majority Proles who constituted the remainder of the population was of little consequence so long as their political awareness remained underdeveloped... Obama and the "March of Folly," with Jeff Faux | Real News on YouTube Obama understands what needs to be done but like the Republicans, he responds to the needs of big money... Will MI6 Fix Intelligence on Iran? by Annie Machon | Huffington Post Recent remarks by the head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, leave us wondering if the Secret Intelligence Service is preparing to 'fix' intelligence on Iran, as his immediate predecessor, Sir John Scarlett, did on Iraq. Scarlett's pre-Iraq war role in creating 'dodgy dossiers' hyping the threat of non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" is well known. As for Sawers, the red warning light for politicisation blinked brightly on 4 July, as he told British senior civil servants that Iran is "two years away" from becoming a "nuclear weapons state." How did Sawers come up with "two years?".. Aug 29, 2012 America’s Descent Into Poverty, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, environmentally, and morally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born... Shas Spiritual Leader Calls on Jews to Pray for Annihilation of Iran | Information Clearing House During his weekly sermon, the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party said his followers should pray for the annihilation of the enemies of the Jewish people during Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year), with an emphasis on Iran and Hezbollah. “When we say ‘may our enemies be struck down’ on Rosh Hashana, it shall be directed at Iran, the evil ones who threaten Israel. God shall strike them down and kill them,” said Yosef... [The looniest inmates of the funny farm do appear to be running things – not only in Israel.] Zionist Media Domination: The Jewish Suicide Bomber That You Never Ever Heard Of, by Martin Iqbal | deLiberation In 1983 American police foiled a significant terror attack that most Americans to this day are utterly oblivious to. On October 18, 1983, a suicide bomber strapped with explosives was caught in the spectators’ gallery of the US House of Representatives, attempting to blow up the US Capitol. The reason most Americans know nothing of this plot, is that the terrorist was a Jewish Israeli named ‘Israel Rabinowits’. The astounding ignorance of Americans is owing to the supreme control that Zionist Jews wield over the American press... France tells Syrian opposition to form govt, pledges to recognize it | RT ...”It’s most important to remember that France is the former colonizer of Syria, the colonizer along with the British in the Middle East. It is very odd and ironic, in fact completely hypocritical to have the French government saying to the Syrian opposition ‘you form a government and we will recognize you.’ I mean that’s just a script from the good old days when the colonial powers operated through proxies in Syria, Egypt, wherever the colonialism was, and that was most parts of the world. What we are seeing now is an escalation of foreign intervention”.. The Illegal War on Libya, edited by Cynthia McKinney | Salem-News Blowing the Lid off the 'Humanitarian Intervention' Fraud.. In 2011, former Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party candidate for President, Cynthia McKinney, took a delegation of observers to Libya to monitor NATO’s purported humanitarian intervention. They were in Libya during the 2011 NATO bombardment of Libyan cities, and were among the few independent voices to report on the tragedy... US Preparing for a Post-Israel Middle East? by Franklin Lamb | Foreign Policy Journal ...So what is all the fuss about? It’s a paper entitled “Preparing For A Post Israel Middle East”, an 82-page analysis that concludes that the American national interest in fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist Israel. The authors conclude that Israel is currently the greatest threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent normal US relations with Arab and Muslim countries and, to a growing degree, the wider international community. The study was commissioned by the US Intelligence Community... Judith Butler responds to attack: 'I affirm a Judaism that is not associated with state violence' | Mondoweiss Yesterday the Jerusalem Post published an attack on the awarding of a major international prize to Judith Butler, the philosopher and Berkeley professor of comparative literature, because Butler favors boycotting Israel. Butler wrote this response and, unhopeful that the Post would publish it, sent it to us... Remembering Rachel and Israeli Injustice, by Eileen Fleming | deLiberation On Tuesday, the Haifa District Court rejected accusations that Israel was at fault over the death of American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an army bulldozer during a 2003 pro-Palestinian demonstration in Gaza... Witness to Rachel Corrie's Death Responds to Israeli Court Ruling Absolving Soldier | NYT ...Photographs published by The Electronic Intifada on March 16, 2003, the day she died, showed that Ms. Corrie confronted the heavily armored bulldozer wearing a bright orange vest and holding a bullhorn. The same Web site also published sworn affidavits recorded within days of the deadly incident by three other international activists who were present when Ms. Corrie was killed. One of those witnesses, a Briton named Tom Dale, sent the following statement to The Lede on Tuesday from Cairo, where he now works as a journalist:.. Non-Aligned News Network to challenge Western dominance over international news | Iran Affairs With the start of the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Iran, a new source of news has sprouted up on the internet: the Non-Aligned News Network. I wish them well because Fox and CNN etc. have dominated the world's news too long.. and it is about time that the rest of the world has a say in what's news. The more sources of information, the more likely you'll get a semblance of balance and accuracy.. People may not know this but many years ago, from the 1960s to the 80s, there was an international debate over the fact that a few countries, mostly in the West and especially in the US, were the sole source of news and other information for the rest of the world... Pussy Riot and Amnesty International: The Decline of Political Protest, by Diana Johnstone | Counterpunch ...In the case of U.S.-backed “color revolutions”, human rights organizations such as AI and Human Rights Watch are enlisted not to defend specific political prisoners, but rather to denounce general abuses which may or may not be seriously documented. The United States has increasingly managed to take control of AI for its own foreign policy campaigns.. In its new phase, AI, like Human Rights Watch and other Western “humanitarian” organizations, has ceased to make any distinction between genuine repression of dissident thinkers and the sort of repression that is triggered by deliberate provocation, that is, by actions whose sole purpose is precisely to provoke repression, in order to accuse a targeted regime of being repressive... On Translating Securityspeak Into English, by Kevin Carson | Antiwar One might wonder, reading the American “national security” community’s pronouncements, if they refer to the same world we live in. Things make a little more sense when you realize that the Security State has its own language: Securityspeak. Like Newspeak, the ideologically refashioned successor to English in Orwell’s 1984, Securityspeak is designed to obscure meaning and conceal truth, rather than convey them... Aug 28, 2012 Can Sparta be Stopped? | Miko Peled ...Clearly Israel is the Sparta of today where war is just a game. Seventy five million Iranians who have done no harm must suffer sanctions and live in fear of an impending attack. Israel is known to be a nuclear power and it has a history of aggressive, one would argue irrational and violent behavior. The question is who has the power to stop Sparta, and the answer, sadly, is: No one... Water for all: The case for a one-state solution, by Ramzi El Houry | Al Jazeera English ...However, much more strategic and practical considerations such as the issue of water also make the 1967 borders "indefensible". It is on this basis - the basis that Israel cannot accept a sovereign Palestinian state rightfully in control of its water resources - that I argue the need for a paradigm shift in mainstream Palestinian discourse from a two-state solution to a one-state solution... How AIPAC corrals American journalists into the pro-Israel camp, by Paul Woodward | War in Context Journalists don’t quite maintain a code of silence when it comes to covering professional misconduct in their own business, but there’s clearly a general reluctance within the press to scrutinize itself. No one wants to look treacherous or close doors to their own career advancement. So, the following report from The Forward is unusual in shining a spotlight on willingness of American journalists to take guidance from the Israel lobby... Rohrabacher’s Plan to Partition Iran, by Touraj Daryaee | Counterpunch From time to time it is important that one provide a teach-in to nonacademics and educate those who promote wrong and harmful ideas. As a history professor I would like to teach a history lesson to Mr. Dana Rohrabacher, the honorable Congressional Representative of California’s 46th District in Orange County where I live and work... Domestic terrorism American style | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson analyses the roots of domestic American terrorism, racism and bigotry, arguing that what is needed now is “consistent educational and legal pressure against racist behaviour both in terms of individual and institutional behaviour”, or else the US will become as racist and bigoted as Israel... Israel bars 100 international activists from crossing into West Bank, by Amira Hass | Haaretz Israel prevented some 100 pro-Palestinian activists from entering the West Bank on Tuesday evening from Jordan at the Allenby Bridge crossing. The demonstrators, from France, Belgium and other European countries, bore an official invitation from the governor of Bethlehem, a senior Fatah official named Abdel-Fattah Hamaiel. The activists were carrying gifts including writing implements for the children of Bethlehem in honor of the beginning of the school year on Monday... The Meaning of the United States-Israel Enhanced Cooperation Act: US Encourages Israel’s War Aims, by Sheldon Richman | Counterpunch While Israel—cheered on by its American boosters led by AIPAC and Mitt Romney—beats the drums ever louder for a war of aggression against Iran, President Obama in late July signed the United States-Israel Enhanced Cooperation Act. This was hardly a signal that Obama would like to defuse the explosive situation building in the Middle East... Israeli settlers lured by subsidies, by Mya Guarnieri | Al Jazeera English It is the stereotypical image of an Israeli settlement: a man with sidecurls and skullcap, and an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. A mob uproots olive trees and harasses Palestinian farmers. A mosque is set ablaze in a so-called "price tag attack", retaliation for a slight - real or perceived. But surveys have found that many, if not most, of those who moved to East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are not driven by ideology, religion or politics. They have been lured by government subsidies that significantly lower their cost of living... ALBA, UNASUR and even OAS - all reaffirm the primacy of international law | The Vineyard of the Saker ...What is happening to the Empire is, ironically, a process I would call of "Israelization": a dynamic in which it is rather obvious that the world's elites dare not speak against it, but the rest of the planet hates and despises it. We can think of "Israelization" as the inevitable backlash resulting from a systematic disregard for international law combined with an equally systematic use of violence or threat thereof (which is, of course, a form of violence in itself). Of course, the imperial rulers are far too ignorant of history, too full of hubris and racist arrogance and, frankly, too stupid to realize how dangerous this process is for them... The Best-Laid Plans, by Tom Engelhardt | Antiwar ...the longest conflict in American history has suddenly burst onto the front pages of our newspapers and to the top of the TV news. And there’s just one reason for that: despite the copious plans of the planet’s last superpower, the poor, backward, illiterate, hapless, corrupt Afghans — whose security forces, despite unending American financial support and mentoring, have never effectively “stood up” — made it happen. They have been sending a stark message, written in blood, to Washington’s planners... Neoliberalism's Culture of Cruelty: Authoritarian Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism, by Henry Giroux | Counterpunch ...Neoliberalism, or what might be called casino capitalism, has become the new normal. Unabashed in its claim to financial power, self-regulation, and its survival of the fittest value system, neoliberalism not only undercuts the formative culture necessary for producing critical citizens and the public spheres that nourish them, it also facilitates the conditions for producing a bloated defense budget, the prison-industrial complex, environmental degradation, and the emergence of “finance as a criminalized, rogue industry.”.. Lynching “Demographic Threats,” by Yousef Munayyer | The Daily Beast Last week I wrote about the racism involved in Zionism’s constant planning of demographic engineering in Israel and how common such a racist principle is in the mainstream discourse. Three hours after the piece was posted, a lynch mob in Jerusalem ganged up on three Palestinian Arabs and beat Jamal Julani within an inch of his life. Police said it was a miracle he didn’t die. This is nothing more than the inevitable trajectory of a colonialist ideology, like Zionism, imposing itself on a non-Zionist native population... Film highlights the temptations and perils of blind obedience to authority, by Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian ...People who resist the natural human tendency to follow, venerate and obey prevailing authority typically have a much different view about how oppressive a society is than those who submit to those impulses. The most valuable experiences for determining how free a society is are the experiences of society's most threatening dissidents, not its content and compliant citizens. It was those who marched against Mubarak who were detained, beaten, tortured and killed, not those who acquiesced to or supported the regime. That is the universal pattern of authoritarian oppression... Aug 27, 2012 The Syrian Gambit | Roi Tov ..the Syrian government seems to be regaining control of Aleppo, the country’s main trade center. On the other hand, the rebels conducted successful attacks at the heart of Damascus, the country’s capital, which was supposed to be safe under the protection of the Republican Guard, Syria’s Army elite unit. At a certain point one side may decide to withdraw before sustaining heavy damages; or, one side may give a lucky strike and decapitate its opponent. A solution in which the regime is exchanged peacefully is unlikely... Exposing Israeli teens to IDF child abuse, by Oded Shalom | Ynet ...According to Breaking Silence Executive Director Dana Golan, the report was born out of the notion that Israeli society is very sensitive to injustices towards children. "We are a society that nurtures the family structure, child birth and child rearing," she says. "We have collected testimonies from more than 800 soldiers who served in the territories over the past decade. Each featured stories about the treatment of children, and each such story is a kick in the gut.".. [An appeal to human decency gets no traction in Israhell; it’s like swimming upstream in a deluge.] Israeli Child Killers: Documentary Proof | Michael Hoffman ...the Israeli soldiers, who taunted the Palestinian boys over loudspeakers outside the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, goading them to come out and throw rocks, did so under the gaze of Chris Hedges, a reporter for the New York Times. "Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered -death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights...in Sarajevo - but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport," Hedges wrote... How Franklin Roosevelt Lied America Into War, by William Henry Chamberlin | IHR ...No convinced believer in American nonintervention in wars outside this hemisphere could have given the American people more specific promises than Roosevelt gave during he campaign of 1940. And it is hard to see how any President, given the constitutional limitations of the office, could have done more to precipitate the United States into war with Germany and Japan than Roosevelt accomplished during the 15 months between the destroyer-for-bases deal and the attack on Pearl Harbor... Obama’s Geopolitical China ‘Pivot’: The Pentagon Targets China, by F. William Engdahl | Global Research ...China today.. is becoming the Pentagon new “enemy image,” now replacing the earlier “enemy image” of Islam used after September 2001 by the Bush-Cheney Administration to justify the Pentagon’s global power pursuit, or that of Soviet Communism during the Cold War. The new US military posture against China has nothing to do with any aggressive threat from the side of China. The Pentagon has decided to escalate its aggressive military posture to China merely because China has become a strong vibrant independent pole in world economics and geopolitics. Only vassal states need apply to Washington’s globalized world... Globalists and Neocons: Two potent forces opposing the Assad government in Syria, by Kevin MacDonald | The Occidental Observer ...there are two groups of non-Syrians who are promoting regime change: globalists and neocons—two powerful forces indeed. One can certainly understand that there would be disaffected Syrians—there are dissidents in every regime, and especially so in a society riven with religious and ethnic divisions with a government dominated by an ethnic and religious minority, the Alawites. But the ever greater success of the insurgency seems unlikely without powerful allies in the West... 'Syria's rebel army? They're a gang of foreigners' by Robert Fisk | Belfast Telegraph .."One of our prisoners told me: 'I didn't realise Palestine was as beautiful as this.' He thought he was in Palestine to fight the Israelis!" Do I believe this? Certainly, the fighters who bashed their way into the lovely old streets west of the great citadel were, from all accounts, a ragtag bunch... Troubling Israeli Religious Fundamentalism | Stephen Lendman Islamic fundamentalism is vilified in the West. Extremist Jews are largely ignored. In Israel they're dangerous. They influence government policy. They seek control of Israel's rabbinical system. Last January, Haaretz reported that ultra-Orthodox Shas party members used "improper methods bordering on the criminal (to get) its people appointed to key offices." Israeli Haredim are ultra-Orthodox extremists.. Israel Shahak.. explained its pervasive, destructive influence on Israeli politics, the military and society... The British Siege of the Ecuadorian Embassy: London is Following What the US has Already Done, by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | Strategic Culture Foundation When Iranian student activists occupied the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979.., the US and Britain condemned the Iranian provisional government of Prime Minister Bazargan even though it was not responsible. The US, UK, and their allies ranted and raved about the sanctity of foreign diplomatic missions, calling the activists “terrorists” and “anarchists.” Today, however, they endorse the storming of embassies and consulates themselves. It is also important to note that Anglo-American disregard for diplomatic sanctity is conducted at the official level while the taking of the US Embassy in Tehran was not an official act executed or sanctioned by the Iranian government... Tehran NAM Summit: The Failure of Anti-Iranian Plots, by Kourosh Ziabari | deLiberation ...the summit will ostensibly foil the plots to isolate Iran and make it a secluded, unpopular country. And most importantly, by virtue of the NAM summit, leaders will be visiting Iran who mostly shunned Iran over the past years as a result of the rigorous anti-Iranian propaganda of the mainstream, corporate media... U.S. Foreign Arms Sales Are Most of Global Market | NYT Weapons sales by the United States tripled in 2011 to a record high, driven by major arms sales to Persian Gulf allies concerned about Iran’s regional ambitions, according to a new study for Congress.. increasing tensions with Iran drove a set of Persian Gulf nations — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman — to purchase American weapons at record levels... [The “threat” from Iran, which hasn’t even threatened the use of force against any country for over 200 years? How could these people be so insanely paranoid? Maybe it's just insider trading, business as usual.] Read more...Aug 26, 2012 Iran Still on the Front Burner A Democracy Ahead of Its Time, by Tara Bahrampour | Truthdig ...Iranians today continue to mourn the 1953 downfall of Mohammad Mossadegh, the melodramatic, pajama-clad prime minister who is widely considered the most visionary and broad-minded leader in Iran’s modern history. Little wonder that pictures of this balding, droopy-eyed old nobleman are held aloft whenever Iranians rise up to demand greater freedoms and fair elections. To them, Mossadegh is still the personification of these ideals. If not for the CIA-backed coup that removed him in 1953, many Iranians believe, he could have saved them from decades of dictatorship and demagoguery... Iranian Rhetoric and the History of the Cancer Analogy, by Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America The rhetoric used in recent speeches by top Iranian officials has garnered much attention in the mainstream media. In addition to the outrage expressed over the statement that the Israeli governmental system and guiding Zionist ideology is an "insult to humanity," comments that the "Zionist regime" is a "cancerous tumor" have also met fierce condemnation.. like Ahmadinejad's "insult to humanity" line, the cancer analogy is neither new nor original. While Iranian officials have been employing it since 2000, it has long been wielded for the express purpose of condemning a political system or ideology one vehemently opposes... The Human Cost of War on Iran, by Elizabeth Murray | Consortium News As Israel threatens to bomb Iran, U.S. pundits are again pontificating about the necessity of war and opining about military tactics. Left out of their frame is the certainty of mass human suffering, a reality forgotten since the days of the Vietnam War... In Israel, Opposition to Attacking Iran Gains Upper Hand, by Mitchell Plitnick | Antiwar The ambitions of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran, as harboured by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, have been defeated by internal opposition, a growing number of observers have come to believe in the wake of dramatic opposing statements by prominent Israeli leaders, including President Shimon Peres. The picture emerging is one of the prime and defence ministers’ isolation in advocating for unilateral Israeli action... America's Long-standing Campaign to Destabilize Russia, by Eric Draitser | Global Research ...The seemingly endless attempts to subvert the Putin government are cynically designed operations whose overarching goal is geopolitical in nature. To the US and its allies, partners, and clients, Putin represents a block that is difficult, if not impossible, to maneuver around. As demonstrated clearly in Syria, President Putin is able to successfully lead an opposition to the United States: an empire attempting to impose its hegemonic designs on the region... Rape of Dulcinea | Israel Shamir ...The Jews are not even mentioned in the Jewish Bible. Get that thick book off of your shelf and check it. None of the great and legendary men you named, from King David to the prophets, were called ‘the Jews’. This ethnonym appears for the first and only time in the Bible in the Persian story of the very late Book of Esther. The self-identification of the Jews with the tribes of Israel and with the heroes of the Bible is as valid as the story of Rome being founded by the Trojan prince Aeneas... On the US and Israel: My Correspondence with Jodi Rudoren | Jerome Slater In the last few days I have had an interesting email exchange with Jodi Rudoren of the New York Times, concerning in the first instance her August 17th profile of Dani Dayan, but more generally the larger issues concerning the responsibilities of serious journalism. Rudoren is a clear improvement over Ethan Bronner as the Times' chief Israeli correspondent, and she comes across as a serious and well-intentioned journalist--and one willing to engage with a blunt critic--but also one who has a long way to go in her understanding not only of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also of what serious journalism must include... Imperialism by Philanthropy, by Jeremy Beer | The American Conservative ...The critics of the new philanthropy—or what was at first called, in the latter half of the 19th century, “scientific charity”—get very small speaking parts. But Zunz dutifully reports their warnings that the new foundations would only result in America’s insanely wealthy gaining even more social power. Zunz implies that their concerns were overblown, outdated, misplaced—and goes on to show that in fact they were right on the money... Behind Morsi’s Momentous Decision: Egyptian Military Checkmated, by Esam Al-Amin | Counterpunch ...what everyone failed to see was that during this period Morsi was studying the power relationships within SCAF and the other security agencies. He was able during this brief period to identify those military and security leaders whose loyalty were to Tantawi and his chief-of-staff Gen. Sami Anan. In short, he was waiting for the right moment to make his move with minimal confrontation. Luckily for him that opportunity came soon enough... Revisiting Iraq, by Kelley Vlahos | The American Conservative ...it seems everything the U.S was supposed to accomplish in its carefully orchestrated 2003 invasion has been turned on its head. Al Qaeda is back, terrorizing the population. Meanwhile, al-Maliki’s government has done nothing to dispel the notion that besides the Shia majority inside Iraq, Iran has been the only beneficiary of our painful — and tremendously expensive — intervention there (“Obama can’t admit the truth–that Iran won the Iraq War,”.. Aug 25, 2012 But how could the Holocaust not be true? | Paul Eisen How could such a delusion and deception have taken place? How could all those survivors be so wrong in their testimonies? How could all those perpetrators be so wrong in their confessions? How could all those documents, unspecific as they are, have been falsified? Arthur Butz called his groundbreaking revisionist study “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century”, but a hoax of this size and nature just defies belief. Conspiracy theories rarely convince, nor do those who propagate them, so surely the sheer absurdity of the revisionists’ claim tells us all we need to know. So, if revisionism is to have any credibility at all, it must demonstrate how, if false, the Holocaust narrative, as we know it, came to be... [This is probably the best piece on the Holycause that I have ever read.] Call Israel’s Bluff, by Ivan Eland | Antiwar The Israeli government, like other special interests prowling in Washington, is playing the American election to get what it wants. Ultimately, the Israelis want a promise that the United States will attack Iran over its nuclear program. The Israelis recently have made threats to attack Iran. Their allies in the United States were spreading the word that Israel might do so before the U.S. election, because Barack Obama, desperate for the votes and money of American Jews in a tight election, would then be forced to support the Israeli action... The pursuit of Julian Assange is an assault on freedom and a mockery of journalism, by John Pilger | New Statesman The British government’s threat to invade the Ecuadorean embassy in London and seize Julian Assange is of historic significance. David Cameron, the former PR man to a television industry huckster and arms salesman to sheikdoms, is well placed to dishonour international conventions that have protected Britons in places of upheaval. Just as Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq led directly to the acts of terrorism in London on 7 July 2005, so Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague have compromised the safety of British representatives across the world... How Did the US President Become the Assassin-in-Chief? by Tom Engelhardt | The Nation Assassination has always been a tool of the American state, but before the "War on Terror" it was not something our leaders bragged about. As TomDispatch.com's Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse explain in their new book, Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050, President Obama has gone beyond his predecessors, even beyond George W. Bush, and consolidated his power to the point of becoming the Assassin-in-Chief. Whether the American people are in favor of this type of warfare has never been asked, leaving the decision of who lives and who dies squarely with the president... Ayn Rand, the preacher of selfishness inspiring Paul Ryan | Redress Information & Analysis Uri Avnery views the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the inspiration behind US Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. A Jewish White Russian preacher of extreme selfishness, Rand, who has become the darling of Tea Party fanatics, was also an unabashed racist who believed that the Arab-Israeli conflict was one of civilized men fighting savages... No, Iran Didn’t Just Ban Women From Universities, by Alex Shams | Ajam Media Collective I awoke yesterday morning to a barrage of excited, fearful, and shocked emails and messages demanding to understand why Iran had suddenly decided to ban women from entering university. Given that Iranian women comprise over 60% of students in upper education in Iran and that women’s rights to education is deeply embedded in both the ideology and the practice of the Islamic Republic, the idea that women could be “banned” from universities struck me as quite preposterous... Whatever Happened to Iraqi Oil? by Greg Muttitt and Tom Engelhardt | TomDispatch ...far more than Iraqi oil was in the administration’s crosshairs, though that country, with its then-crippled energy sector, was considered a giant oil reservoir just waiting for Big Oil to set it free. To conquer and garrison — “liberate” — Iraq would put the U.S. in a position of ultimate domination in the oil heartlands of the planet, or so thought the top officials of the Bush administration, a number of whom had been in or associated with the energy business before scaling the heights of Washington... The Children Are Still Dying: Violence is Not News, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle Somewhere in my home I have a set of photo albums I rarely go near. I fear the flood of cruel memories that might be evoked from looking at the countless photos I took during a trip to Iraq. Many of the pictures are of children who developed rare forms of cancer as a result of exposure to Depleted Uranium (DU), which was used in the US-led war against Iraq over two decades ago... A very telling masterpiece of hypocrisy: from Pussy Riot to George Soros | The Vineyard of the Saker ...We are dealing with the huge "humanitarian" and "democratic" constellation created by Soros.. Soros and his fellow oligarchs (Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, etc.) are not happy with Putin's Russia ("the Russian autocracy threatens the world") and, frankly, I fully understand him. If I was a Jewish oligarch I would probably hate Putin: from the way Putin dealt with the Chechen Wahabis and their Jewish oligarchic sponsors, to the way Russia told the US Empire "niet!" on a UN authorized attack on Syria (three times!), Putin and Medvedev had done a great deal to really infuriate the Soros-types. Hence the current anti-Russian crusade in the Western media... “Israel will win due to Technological Advantage!” | Roi Tov ...systematic analyses of the military reality faced by Israel show that unless it uses political means—for example, peace treaties—the country is indefensible. Both Iran and Israel agree that around 200,000 missiles are aimed at the latter. Most of these are dirt-cheap dumb-missiles that can be barely intercepted an only at a great cost. A complete list of targets is beyond the scope of this article (would you read a 100,000 words piece?), but it is useful to mention that Israel owns vast industrial areas next to major residential areas... How Conservatism Lost Its Mind, by Daniel McCarthy | The American Conservative ...The wings of the GOP coalition over the last half-century have not primarily been separated by “issues” social or economic; they were separated by class markers and style. The ideological differences were secondary to those. But now there’s a politically and economically successful, if brain dead, fusion of the classes. The rich sound like the poor, and the poor angrily demand policies that favor the rich... Aug 24, 2012 Why Does Wall Street Always Win? by Simon Johnson | NYT ...The system is rotten, to be sure, but this president came to office promising change — and that is exactly what we did not get on most crucial dimensions related to the financial sector. The failure depicted on this front is political and ultimately about money — and all the power that Wall Street can buy, one way or another... Read more... From OIC to NAM: Iran's peace offensive, by Eric Walberg | OpEd News The discrepancy between Western media on the Middle East and the reality is astounding. Egypt's Mubarak is a good guy and reliable ally until, presto, he is a bad guy, corrupt, a tyrant, yesterday's goods. This extreme myopia in the interests of empire is the case across the board. So it should come as no surprise, that 'Axis of Evil' Iran, supposedly just itching to build atomic bombs and terrorize one and all, has good relations - getting better all the time - not only with its neighbours Afghanistan (reconstruction aid plus a new rail link from Herat to the Persian Gulf) and Pakistan (the gas Peace Pipeline), but its not-so-friendly rivals Saudi Arabia and now Egypt... Read more... Timeline: How the UC administration censors students and faculty who stand up for human rights, by Rahim Kurwa | Mondoweiss The University of California recently commissioned a report on the campus climate that accuses students and faculty who are critical of Israel of contributing to a negative environment for Jewish students. Under the false assumption that criticism of Israeli state policies constitutes hate speech against Jewish students, the report recommends wide forms of censorship to limit criticism of Israel. These include banning speakers from campus to enforcing “balance” at political events to prohibiting “hate speech” that is allegedly anti-Semitic under a controversial definition of that word... Read more... IDF is the World’s Largest Terrorist Organization: Interview with Joe Cortina | The Ugly Truth Captain Joe Cortina is a former airborne special operations officer and U.S. Army Training Center commander. He subsequently embarked on missions as intelligence investigator and anti-terrorist advisor and traveled to different countries in the Middle East and Central America. His visit to Israel was an opportunity for him to realize the anti-American atmosphere governing the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the feeling of resentment and antipathy the Israeli citizens have toward the United States despite the all-out military, financial and political support and backing which Washington offers to Tel Aviv... Read more... By way of deception Israel trying to drag US into war on Iran | Redress Information & Analysis Jamal Kanj argues that “leaked” Israeli information on plans to attack Iran are intended to drag the USA into a new Middle East quagmire through committing aggression against Iran on the eve of the American presidential election... Read more... The 2012 Politics of Fantasy, by Ben Schreiner | Counterpunch With both tickets now set, the democratic farce that is the U.S. presidential election lumbers into its final act. And for a campaign already rife with all the petty trivialities and celebrity intrigues more suiting of a reality TV show, it is no surprise that both political parties intend on using their upcoming political conventions to furnish choreographed spectacles designed for little more than prime time viewing...Read more... Liberals Need to Start Holding Obama Responsible for His Policies, by Conor Friedersdorf | The Atlantic ...What I most want Auster and liberals who think like him to explain is why they think Obama "can't be different ... under the circumstances," and their unsupported assertion that if he moved farther to the left he "would never have a chance of winning." I can see why that would be comforting to a liberal who "desperately" wants a guy as illiberal as Obama to be reelected. But the facts suggest none of it is true... Read more... A Culture of Hatred in Israel, by Paul Pillar | The National Interest ...As with violent crimes elsewhere that involve hatred against particular ethnic, racial or religious groups—and for those eager to highlight commonalities between Israeli and American society, this unfortunately has to count as one of them, given the history of hate crimes in the United States—the specific manifestations of such hatred are varied. They range from full-blown terrorism to less violent actions. The unofficial resort by Israelis to force and violence against Palestinians has in recent years been most associated with West Bank settlers. As the assault in West Jerusalem demonstrated, however, the problem is not limited to settlers or to the occupied territories... Read more... Hope and Despair for Lebanon’s Palestinians, by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch ...the hope of Palestinian refugees to achieve the basic civil right to work and to own a home is not extinguished in the camps this holiday season by the impotence of Lebanon’s big talk but do nothing Parliament. One reason for hope comes from the voices of people like Miss Hiba Hajj, a Palestinian princess living in Ein el Helwe camp. This observer visited with her recently after sneaking into Ein el Helwe camp thru that smelly claustrophobic 30 inch, heavily trafficked sewer conduit at the eastern edge of the camp. The US Embassy here made crawling through the sewer line sort of obligatory for Americans wanting to visit Ein el Helwe camp... Read more... Did Someone Say ‘War’? by William Pfaff | Truthdig ...Candidates Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Barack Obama and Joseph Biden all proclaim that, given the right circumstances (unless Israeli President Shimon Peres’s opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu, or obstruction by opposition leader Shaul Mofaz, saves them), all are willing to be blackmailed by Netanyahu into doing it all over again against Iran. For exactly the same reason the U.S invaded Iraq—credulous, or expedient, acceptance of lies about non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Nationalistically, individually, politically or commercially self-interested lies are the second reason truth is scarce in politicians’ discourse... Read more... Aug 23, 2012 Pussy Riot: Secret History, by Israel Shamir | Paul Eisen Universally admired, Pussy Riot (or PR for short) have been promoted as superstars. But what are they? A rock or punk group they are not. A British journalist marvelled: they produce no music, no song, no painting, nada, rien, nothing. How can they be described as “artists”? This was a severe test for their supporters, but they passed it with flying honours: that famous lover-of-art, the US State Department, paid for their first ever single being produced by The Guardian out of some images and sounds... Netanyahu's dangerous decision-making on Iran, by John Bell | Al Jazeera English ...The sad reality is that the populations of Israel, Iran, and possibly Lebanon and some Gulf countries, as well as oil prices and therefore economies globally, are all being held hostage to the minds of a few men in Jerusalem. These individuals hold the fate of millions in their hands: their solitary decision, based on a personal understanding of history and politics, will affect the course of a region, and potentially unleash a useless hell... Read more... It’s Too Late for Assad’s Resignation | Roi Tov The complex situation in Syria includes two main struggles. The most obvious one is between the Syrian Army and the West-backed Free Syrian Army. In parallel, there is a violent conflict between the Alawite minority-closely related to Shia Islam-and Sunni Arabs. The Alawite comprise roughly 12% of the population and hold the power; the Assad dynasty is Alawite. The Sunni are 74% of the population and are attempting to use the ongoing mayhem in order to gain power. The ethnic conflict is conducted by paramilitary organizations trying to evict each other from their respective territories. The most visible result of this conflict is the gathering of Syrian refugees in Turkey, and the incessant reports of massacres... Read more... The Missing Option to Defuse Iran "Threat": Israeli Warmongering, by Nicola Nasser | Counterpunch To keep “all options on the table” in the U.S. – Israel plans to change the incumbent Syrian and Iranian regimes and neutralize what both countries perceive as an imminent “threat” is a formula missing the only feasible option to defuse their perceived threat peacefully, which is obviously much cheaper in money and human souls... Years of NYPD Spying on Muslims Produced No Leads, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar ..A newly unsealed deposition related to the federal civil rights case it spawned, however, paints the program in a particularly damning light, with Assistant Chief Thomas Galati admitting that the entire Demographics Program, which was in place for six solid years spying on virtually every Muslim in metro New York, has not found a single lead to anything... Don't lose sight of why the US is out to get Julian Assange, by Seumas Milne | The Guardian Considering he made his name with the biggest leak of secret government documents in history, you might imagine there would be at least some residual concern for Julian Assange among those trading in the freedom of information business. But the virulence of British media hostility towards the WikiLeaks founder is now unrelenting... The Security State: An Ever Bigger and Dumber Dinosaur, by Kevin Carson | Center for a Stateless Society Stratfor internal documents posted on Wikileaks reveal that Abraxas corporation — a security state contractor with close ties to the spooks at the US National Security Agency — has developed a software system networking countless public surveillance cameras with a facial recognition database. Meanwhile, the NSA is building a gargantuan data-crunching facility — the Utah Data Center — that it expects to become operational in 2013: “Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails... Ayn Rand Syndrome, by Hilary Matfess | Counterpunch My father gave me a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged when I was 13 and was regularly expounding leftist doctrines at the dinner table. My father, no conservative himself, gave me the book to force me to engage with the conservative mindset. He knew Rand’s grandiose speeches about the rights of the individual and idealization of the “best and brightest” would appeal to me... Aug 22, 2012 The Meaning of Assange’s Asylum, by Silvia Arana | Counterpunch ...there arises a unique situation in which a Latin American country now stands as a defender of the human rights of an individual against the will of two European countries, Britain and Sweden, who refuse to give assurances that Assange will not be extradited to the United States. What irony that a small nation which until recently was considered a mere “banana republic” today openly protects a major world icon of freedom of expression from persecution by United States and its allies... War fever as seen from Iran, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online ...it's time for something completely different - and totally absent from Western corporate media; sound Iranian minds rationally analyzing what's really going on behind the drums of war - regarding Iran, Turkey, the Arab world and across Eurasia... Read more... Russia's prevailing ideological consensus: sovereignism and anti-capitalism | The Vineyard of the Saker ...The current Western "Free Sex and Blasphemy" crusade against Russia, far from intimidating or embarrassing anybody, is actually perceived as a sign of the extreme weakness and even degeneracy of the West. Even the apparent US determination to deploy an anti-missile system against Russia is primarily perceived as a huge waste of money, an act of ideological stupidity which can be rather easily countered, not as some kind of fear-inspiring threat... Read more... US Eyes Iran Proxy War through Israel, by Ismail Salami | Palestine Chronicle The Israeli narrative of launching an attack on Iran's nuclear plants has been so overpoweringly hyped up and taken for granted by Israeli media that one achieves certitude that such an attack will happen and that Iran will sit idly in the manner of a befuddled, thunderstruck and petrified nation... Read more... Israel and Iran’s Nuclear Program, by Mohammed Ayoob | Counterpunch ...it is clear that the politics surrounding Iran’s nuclear enrichment program – totally civilian according to Tehran, ambiguous according to the IAEA, and military according to Israel and the United States – is getting “curiouser and curiouser” to the extent that it has almost begun to resemble Alice’s experience in Wonderland. This is the case for a number of reasons... Read more... The New World Disorder, by Patrick J. Buchanan | Antiwar ...The bipolar world of the Cold War is history. The new world order, however, is not the One World dreamed of by Wilsonian idealists. It is a Balkanizing world where race, tribe, culture, and creed matter most and democracy is seen not as an end in itself but as a means to an end — the accretion of power by one’s own kind to achieve one’s own dreams... The War in the Shadows, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig ...There are now many thousands of clandestine operatives, nearly all of them armed and equipped with a license to kidnap, torture and kill, working overseas or domestically with little or no oversight and virtually no transparency. We have created a state within a state. A staggering 40 percent of the defense budget is secret, as is the budget of every intelligence agency. I tasted enough of this subterranean world to fear it. When you empower these kinds of people you snuff out the rule of law... Read more... US drone strikes target rescuers in Pakistan – and the west stays silent, by Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government... Read more... Israel's secret Iran meeting between security officials and Rabbi who wants to 'annihilate' Arabs, by Joe Catron | Mondoweiss Senior Israeli officials including National Security Advisor Ya'akov Amidror and Interior Minister Eli Yishai held what the Algemeiner calls a "secret meeting" with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, on Friday. Yosef, in his state-funded role as head of Shas's Council of Torah Sages, is the governing coalition party's spiritual leader, while Yishai is its political chief... Eight BIG PROBLEMS with the “case” against Assange, by Naomi Wolf | News From Underground Now that Andrew Kreig, of the Justice Integrity Project, has confirmed Karl Rove’s role as an advisor to the Swedish government in its prosecution of Julian Assange on sexual misconduct charges, it is important that we note the many glaring aberrations in the handling of Assange’s case by the authorities in Sweden... Read more... Aug 21, 2012 There Is Unity in Oppression; There Must Be Unity in Response, by Julian Assange | Antiwar ...As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies. We must use this moment to articulate the choice that is before the government of the United States of America. Will it return to and reaffirm the values, the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world, in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark?.. Bi-Nationalism: The Logic of Reality, by Sherri Muzher | Palestine Chronicle ...Palestinians aren’t leaving and Israelis aren’t leaving. They share the same land and the same natural resources. Their economies are linked. Israeli settlements have made physical separation impossible. The only solution is a democratic bi-national state where Palestinians and Israelis live as equals and are forced to make it work... Pussy Riot, The Unfortunate Dupes of American Hegemony, by Paul Craig Roberts | Global Research ...The disparity between human rights in the west and in the east is astonishing. When a Chinese trouble-maker sought protection from Washington, the Chinese “authoritarian” government allowed the person to leave for America. But when Julian Assange, who, unlike the presstitute western media, actually provides truthful information for the western peoples, was granted political asylum by Ecuador, Great (sic) Britain, bowing to the country’s amerikan master, refused the obligatory free passage from the UK... Bibi’s Game: Nuclear Blackmail? by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar The Israelis are going all out to lure, threaten, and scare the US into attacking Iran: the world hasn’t seen such a frenzy of staged hysterics since my three-year-old niece threatened to hold her breath until her parents agreed to buy her all six Barbie Fashionistas. Complain, complain, complain: kvetch, kvetch, kvetch: that’s been Bibi Netanyahu’s shtick ever since this President took office. However, the hysterics reached a crescendo of unprecedented shrillness last week... Iran and sanctions: When will it ever end? | The Economist ..Iran again gives the impression of a country at war even if, for the moment, the guns are silent. Prices of basic food, clothes and electronic goods have soared as a result of international sanctions and a plummeting currency; the rial has more than halved in value over the past year. Nobody believes the official figure of 24% for the annual rate of inflation. Civil servants have been reduced to moonlighting in menial jobs to make up for their shrinking buying power... Saudi uprising trumps sectarian card, by Zayd Alisa | Asia Times Online ...Even more revealing, however, has been the dramatic surge in the regime's savagery, which has reached an unsurpassed level, especially with the arrest and alleged torture of Shi'ite religious leader Nimr Al Nimr. The US should be deeply concerned about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Saudi Arabia, not only because its implacable support for the Saudi regime has made a mockery of its pretention of defending democracy and human rights, but, more menacingly, Saudi Arabia was the country where the vast majority (15 out of 19) of the 9/11 suicide bombers came from, never mind, the mastermind, Osama Bin Laden... Silencing Dissent in America, by Stephen Lendman | Activist Post Freedom in America is endangered. Bipartisan complicity plans destroying it altogether. America is on a fast track toward tyranny and ruin. Police state laws threaten everyone. Increasingly, dissent is marginalized. It's not tolerated. Resistance is called dangerous to National Security. Federal authorities target activists. So do militarized local police... The UN Chief’s Statement Against Iran Is Rank Hypocrisy | Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran ...as all observers of the Iranian political scene know, the remarks in question are nothing new. They are merely routine statements which have become part of an annual tradition in speeches marking Al Quds day at the end of Ramadan and have long been a part of the political discourse in Iran. They have never expressed more than a hoped for wish for a change in the current regime in Israel, as the Apartheid South Africa changed, and have never carried any implicit or explicit threats of attack. Dozens of UN and UN Security Council resolutions have also criticised Israel for its illegal and often inhumane treatment of Palestinians... Palestinian Hunger Strikes: Why Still Invisible? by Richard Falk | The OtherSite When it is realized that Mahatma Gandhi shook the British Empire with a series of hunger strikes, none lasting more than 21 days, it is shameful that Palestinian hunger strikers ever since last December continue to exhibit their extreme courage by refusing food for periods ranging between 40 and over 90 days, and yet these exploits are unreported by the media and generally ignored by relevant international institutions. The latest Palestinians who have aroused emergency concerns among Palestinians, because their hunger strikes have brought them to death’s door, are Hassan Safadi and Samer Al-Barq... Assange Exposes Western Hypocrisy | Roi Tov ...they may try to arrest Mr. Assange after revoking the embassy's diplomatic status according to a local law known as Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987. Ecuador may dispute this at the International Court of Justice since this law contradicts the “rule of inviolability” defined in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Meanwhile, a strange standoff is taking place in London. A Western Democracy is openly violating human rights defended by what until a few years ago would have been openly called a “Third World Country.”.. Peaceful Action Urged on Iran Crisis | Consortium News With the Non-Aligned Movement meeting this week in Tehran, Veterans For Peace is urging the organization of 120 nations not formally allied with any major power bloc to take steps to deter the Israeli-American threats of war against Iran over its nuclear enrichment program... America on the road to Ryan and ruin | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson argues that a win for Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan in the upcoming US presidential election would most likely destroy what is left of the USA’s social safety nets, devastate the middle class, greatly increase the ranks of the poor and unemployed, do away with union rights and reserve prosperity for the upper class alone... [Perhaps it would be better to get it over with quickly, have the revolution – a peaceful one if possible – and then become again what we once were - at least for a little while - ‘a light unto the nations.” RIP Thomas Jefferson] Putin´s Geopolitical Chess Game with Washington in Syria and Eurasia, by F. William Engdahl | The OtherSite Since reassuming his post as Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin has lost no minute in addressing the most urgent geopolitical threats to Russia internationally. Not surprisingly, at the center of his agenda is the explosive situation in the Middle East, above all Syria. Here Putin is engaging every imaginable means of preventing a further deterioration of the situation into what easily could become another “world war by miscalculation.” His activities in recent weeks involve active personal diplomacy with Syria’s government as well as the so-called opposition “Syrian National Council.” It involves intense diplomacy with Erdogan’s Turkey regime... Inequality and the 'Forgotten Palestinians,' by Patrick O. Strickland | Palestine Chronicle ...Miller's portrait of Israel as a struggling democratic state perpetually warding off external threats falls perfectly in tune with corporate media trends. In this campaign, the NYT has acted as conductor to the chorus, pumping out daily publications that seek to normalize the idea of a preemptive military strike against Iran's nuclear program, constructing a widespread image of the Gaza Strip as a nest of 1.5 million terrorists foaming at the mouth, and framing the quest for representative government embodied in the Arab uprisings of the last year and a half as an existential threat to the Jewish character of the state... Aug 20, 2012 Netanyahu’s empty gun: War with Iran less and less likely | +972 Magazine There is an absolute consensus in the Israeli security establishment that striking the Iranian nuclear facilities now, without the support or the approval of the United States, is complete madness. Despite a massive campaign on this issue, the public is still split – with a slight majority for those opposing the war – and so is the political system... One state, two states or even three states? | The Cafe on YouTube Palestinians have lived under Israeli occupation for more than 60 years. Their homes and land have been stolen and their status reduced to that of refugees in their own country. But instead of uniting against a common enemy, Palestinians are divided... Is Washington Deaf As Well as Criminal? | Paul Craig Roberts The morons who rule the american sheeple are not only dumb and blind, they are deaf as well. The ears of the american “superpower” only work when the Israeli prime minister, the crazed Netanyahu, speaks. Then Washington hears everything and rushes to comply. Israel is a tiny insignificant state, created by the careless British and the stupid americans. It has no power except what its american protector provides. Yet, despite Israel’s insignificance, it rules Washington... Morsi gives solution to Syrian crisis, by M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline I wrote yesterday for Asia Times that in Muslim politics such as the event of the summit meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference that was held in Jeddah last week over the Syrian crisis, it is invariably the case that the sub-texts turn out to be more important than the narrative. The narrative in the present case is well-known; it is well-propagated by the Western (especially American) media and it inevitably trickles down to Indian discourses, namely, that the OIC summit in Jeddah was going to be all about the Saudi-Iranian ‘cold war’... America’s Vassal Acts Decisively and Illegally | Craig Murray I returned to the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from within the FCO that the UK government has indeed decided – after immense pressure from the Obama administration – to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange. This will be, beyond any argument, a blatant breach of the Vienna Convention of 1961, to which the UK is one of the original parties and which encodes the centuries – arguably millennia – of practice which have enabled diplomatic relations to function. The Vienna Convention is the most subscribed single international treaty in the world. The provisions of the Vienna Convention on the status of diplomatic premises are expressed in deliberately absolute terms... [If this is so, it’s on orders from the “Friends of Israel,” even though Assange has treated the Zionist entity, so far, with kid gloves. Maybe it’s because he has threatened to release Israel-related material. Just a guess.] One step forward in Mecca, one back, by Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Asia Times Online Two steps forward, one step back. This is how this week's Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Mecca could be characterized in terms of Iran-Saudi relations. Although the summit widened the gap between Iran and Saudi Arabia on the issue of Syria, which was suspended from the OIC despite loud protests by Iran (and Algeria), it was instrumental in bringing Tehran and Riyadh closer together, thanks in part to the positive chemistry between King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who were seated next to each other and discussed various issues at length... Some Notes on Ahmadinejad's "Insult to Humanity" Comment, by Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America As tends to happen whenever Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers a speech, especially one in commemoration of Al-Quds Day that explicitly rejects the ideology of Zionism and condemns the Israeli government for its inherently discriminatory, exclusivist, and ethnocentric policies and actions, all hell broke lose after the Iranian President addressed a large crowd at Tehran University on Friday. "The existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to all humanity," Ahmadinejad said, adding that "confronting the existence of the fabricated Zionist regime is in fact protecting the rights and dignity of all human beings.".. [Ahmadinejad, thoroughly demonized in the West, which is politically dominated by the Zionists and their sycophants, consistently speaks truth to power.] US Activist Lamis Deek: DoD Finances Films That Vilify Arabs | YouTube Palestinian-American Lawyer Lamis Deek Accuses US Department of Defense of Financing Films Vilifying Arab and Muslim Communities... Man versus Cat, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance ...I dreamt of living to go welcome at the Lod Airport a winning Palestine Olympics team that includes Jews, Christians, and Muslims. I know that this future of one democratic state is coming. The example of South Africa is worth looking into. Much struggle remains to be done in South Africa to achieve equality especially in economic issues. But we are long past the days when leaders of Apartheid South Africa met and collaborated in developing nuclear weapons and modes of repression with Jewish state leaders... Israel’s War Plan: the Complete Destruction of Iran’s Civilian Infrastructure, by Kurt Nimmo | Prison Planet ...why are Israel and the United States so keen to attack Iran? For the same reason the United States attacked Iraq twice – not to take out the threat of Saddam Hussein and his nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction – threats grotesquely manufactured by a gaggle of neocons – but to completely destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure and turn the country into a shattered third world backwater not capable of challenging Israeli hegemony or opposing the designs of the United States in the region... Saudi Shame on the Islamic World: "The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation with United States Imperialism," by Finian Cunningham | Global Research ...Far from promoting solidarity and peace, the OIC has shown itself to be a political instrument serving the geopolitical interests of Washington and its allies in the destruction of Syria and their designs for entrenching hegemonic control over the Middle East. That control is all about exploiting the resources of the region to enrich Western corporations and banks, paying off elite rulers and impoverishing the mass of people. Of course the Syrian people want reform and more democracy. But they won’t achieve that so long as Saudi Arabia and the other Western proxies remain on their thrones of deception colluding with the foreign enemies of the people... How Israeli school textbooks teach kids to hate: book review by Asa Winstanley | The Electronic Intifada ...Peled-Elhanan’s book is the definitive account of just how Israeli schoolchildren are brainwashed by the state and society into hatred and contempt of Palestinians and Arabs, immediately before the time they are due to enter the army as young conscripts... Palestinians “going for gold” are hampered by leaders who are born losers | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood views the failure of the Palestinian “embassy” in the UK to ensure full advantage is taken of the Palestinian Olympic team's presence in London and to impress upon the world the team members' achievements and the difficulties they face at home under the Israeli occupation... Aug 19, 2012 Meet Barack Obama, by Rob Urie | Counterpunch Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick, Paul Ryan, as with himself, is an uninformed opportunist who was born into wealth and privilege and whose proposed policies aim to perpetuate that privilege at the expense of the rest of the population with whom he nominally shares a national identity. Barack Obama is a cynical opportunist who serves the interests of wealth and privilege and whose policies more effectively promote those interests than Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan could ever hope to... Read more... IDF: Home Front Command not ready for war with Iran | Roi Tov ...On August 17, 2012, Israeli Channel Seven published that what it called “people from the left wing” (this channel practically belongs to extremist West Bank settlers) sent an open letter to the IAF reserve pilots chosen to strike Iran, urging them to refuse the order.. Subsequently, Channel Seven expanded on the issue of the war with Iran in an interview with Brigadier General (reserve) Amatzia Hen, who after saying that the abovementioned “people from the left wing” aim to destroy democracy, dropped a bombshell in the already badly battered Israel. His message was simple: the IDF Home Front Command is not prepared for such a war; Israel will be badly hit... Read more... Why the world can't tolerate a preemptive Israeli attack on Iran, by L. Michael Hager | Christian Science Monitor Under the UN Charter, neither Israel nor the US would have a legal right to preemptively launch a military attack on Iran. Do we want a world in which leaders are free to launch military attacks on other countries simply on an assumption of hostile intent and military capacity?.. Read more... Inventing the Chinese Threat, by John Glaser | Antiwar ...What has China ever done to us? What villainous offense have they committed to our well-being or our interests? It can’t possibly be the case that China is our “default adversary” just because the Soviet Union is gone, can it? Well, yes it can... Read more... The new totalitarianism of surveillance technology, by Naomi Wolf | The Guardian ...If you think that 24/7 tracking of citizens by biometric recognition systems is paranoid fantasy, just read the industry newsletters.. the "targets" here are me and you: everyone, all of the time. In the name of "national security", the capacity is being built to identify, track and document any citizen constantly and continuously... [It’s no coincidence that George Orwell’s name is invoked more and more; he just had the timing a little wrong.] Read more...American States to meet over Assange | Sky News The Organisation of American States (OAS) has called a meeting of foreign ministers for August 24 to discuss the stand-off sparked when Ecuador granted asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Twenty-three countries voted on Friday for the resolution proposed by Ecuador to convene the meeting at its Washington headquarters to discuss Quito's stand-off with Britain over Assange. The US, Canada and Trinidad and Tobago voted no... [Cool – the Imperial states America and Canada isolated in their own hemisphere] Read more...Pussy Riot vs Julian Assange - to each his own hero and villain | The Vineyard of the Saker Two high profile freedom of speech cases are unfolding these days, the one of the Pussy Riot sentencing in Moscow and the granting by Ecuador of political asylum to Julian Assange. I would argue that both cases are in many ways if not similar, then at least comparable to each other. After all, in both cases we have college drop-outs breaking the laws of major power and in both cases the offenders have become something of a symbol of resistance to the power of the state and the right to free speech. There are also some very important differences between these two cases, crucial ones, I would argue, which would also make it reasonable to view these cases as not similar, but rather polar opposites... Read more... Russian "Punkers" Get 2 Years Jail for US State Department Stunt, by Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer When the US is overtly backing the terrorist invasion of Syria, seeing to the death, displacement, and disruption of millions of lives abroad, while hosting a mass murdering fugitive dictator at home, what then is it to back an act of hooliganism in a Russian church targeting a geopolitical rival?.. Read more... Aleksandr Dugin: Pussy Riot's Global Blackmail | YouTube The information war, unleashed by Pussy Riot's desecration of the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow (2012), targets the Byzantine model of government—an alliance of the spiritual and temporal power, which existed in Russia for centuries. Philosopher Aleksandr Dugin examines the purpose of this war, its participants, instruments and targets... Watch video... Imperial Affront: Ecuador Will Face US Wrath for Asylum Decision, by Chris Floyd | Empire Burlesque ...As we all know, some of America's top political figures have openly called for Assange to be put to death for the crime of -- well, what was his crime, exactly, in American eyes? His crime is this: he published information leaked to him by a whistleblower -- exactly as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, Fox News, etc., etc., do on a regular basis. Some American leaders and media blowhards have demanded he be executed for "treason," although, as an Australian citizen, he cannot commit treason against the United States... [He’s embarrassing us, kill him! At least that seems to be the logic] Read more...Seven simple rules to ensure politicians represent their people, not foreign states | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood argues that basic rules of conduct for public officials, such as Britain’s “Seven Principles of Public Life”, should guard against politicians acting on behalf of foreign interests, whether Mitt Romney in the US or David Cameron and William Hague in the UK. But sadly, he laments, even in Britain the Seven Principles are not enforced... Read more... Saudi Time Bomb?: Interview with Ali Al-Ahmed | PBS ...The Salafis do not say they are a sect. They say they are a movement, a religious renewal movement. But it is, in practically, a sect, because it differs from everybody else, from Sunni Muslims and from Shi'a Muslims. And they have different ideas about life, about God, about religion, about relationship between men and among each other, which is totally different, probably, from the general Islam.. The religious curriculum in Saudi Arabia teaches you that people are basically two sides: Salafis, who are the winners, the chosen ones, who will go to heaven, and the rest. The rest are Muslims and Christians and Jews and others... [It’s not too much of a stretch to say that the Salafis (Wahhabis) are the Talmudists (Pharisees) of Islam - equally satanic, to use that Hebraic metaphor.] Read more...The Left Eats Itself, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam During the entire Iran war plan story that’s played out over the past week, I anticipated the fierce reaction of the pro-Israel right. After all, it’s what they do. But harder to credit is the response of many on the left, some of whom I consider friends and allies and others who’ve tried to discredit my work for some time.. But some good friends too have bought into the narrative, which does disturb me... [The title is apt] Read more...Aug 18, 2012 Why Israel will not attack Iran | Redress Information & Analysis Uri Avnery explains why he believes Israel will not attack Iran, highlighting in particular Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s own words as well as the risks to the world economy and the perception of blackmailing the US president on the eve of elections – both of which could backfire badly on Israelis and Jews in general... [If anyone understands Israeli politics it’s Uri Avnery.] Russia in the Middle East, by Eric Walberg | Counterpunch Ironically, on many fronts, Iran now holds the key to readjusting the political playing field and establishing rules that can lead away from the deadly game being played by the US, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, with broader implications for broader nuclear disarmament, EU-US relations, but above all, for the continued role of the dollar as the world reserve currency. This encourages Russia to maintain its alliance with Iran over vague (and empty) promises of US-Russian world hegemony as envisioned by the now-discredited Medvedev Atlantists in Moscow... Iran "cutting off" internet access? Don't believe it | Iran Affairs There are many accepted "facts" (conventional wisdom) about Iran that have started out as a case of bad reporting, were further embellished with constant repetition, and have since become "truths" just because everyone assumes they are in fact true. The most recent example is of course the claim that Iran is planning on cutting access to the internet this month. Note that none of the hyped reports even bother to mention Iran's denial of the claims: apparently Iran merely plans on creating a parallel domestic network for the government and universities and which will presumably be more secure... Richard Silverstein Has Been Had - Again | Moon of Alabama Back in November we discussed an implausible story about an allegedly lost drone and explosions in south Lebanon some secret Israeli "impeccable source" had fed to Richard Silverstein who published it at his blog Tikun Olam.. On August 15 Richard published another rather implausible story under the headline Bibi’s Secret War Plan:.. Richard Silverstein is a fool: Shame on the media for taking him seriously | War in Context There’s a form of laziness, opportunism, and cynicism that is far too common among mainstream journalists: the willingness to report on stories that news reporters themselves believe to be false. Why would a journalist from the BBC or the New York Times or some other publication that purports to have a high regard for its own credibility treat as newsworthy something that even their own readers will quickly conclude deserves no attention?.. [Silverstein may have been bamboozled, but that’s no excuse for the argumentum ad hominem. His heart is certainly in the right place and he’s no tool of the USraeli Empire. We are few and the enemy vastly outnumbers, outguns and outspends us. Personal attacks on one another are counter-productive and, if I may say so, foolish.] Read more...The sham “terrorism expert” industry, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon ...as usual for D.C. cliques, ostensible differences in political views are totally inconsequential when placed next to their common group identity and career interest: namely, sustaining the myth of the Grave Threat of Islamic Terror in order to justify their fear-based careers, the relevance of their circle, and their alleged “expertise.” Like all adolescent, insular cliques, they defend one another reflexively whenever a fellow member is attacked, closing ranks with astonishing speed and loyalty; they take substantive criticisms very personally as attacks on their “friends,” because a criticism of the genre and any member in good standing of this fiefdom is a threat to their collective interests... [There’s a lot of money in catering to the ZioNazis, and prostitutes don't really care who they service, no matter how vile.] Read more...Imperial Reconstruction and Its Discontents, by Peter Van Buren | Tom Dispatch ...Some images remain like scars on my memory. One of the last things I saw in Iraq, where I spent a year with the Department of State helping squander some of the $44 billion American taxpayers put up to “reconstruct” that country, were horses living semi-wild among the muck and garbage of Baghdad. Those horses had once raced for Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein and seven years after their “liberation” by the American invasion of 2003, they were still wandering that unraveling, unreconstructed urban landscape looking, like many other Iraqis, for food... Ayatollah Khamenei: Destroying Israel - Responsibility of All Muslims | IMRA ..Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei underlined the importance of this year's International Quds Day rallies, and reiterated that liberation of the Palestinian territories from the hands of the usurper Zionist regime is the responsibility of all Muslims... [Not just Muslims; it’s the responsibility of all decent, aware people] After Latest NDAA Challenge Hearing, Thoughts on the Criminalization of Dissent, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig I was on the 15th floor of the Southern U.S. District Court in New York in the courtroom of Judge Katherine Forrest last Tuesday. It was the final hearing in the lawsuit I brought in January against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. I filed the suit, along with lawyers Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran, over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We were late joined by six co-plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg... UNSCR 1929: The Slayer of Commercial Contracts? by Dan Joyner | Arms Control Law I’ve seen a couple of news stories lately about a lawsuit brought by Iran against Russia, for alleged breach by Russia of a contract to supply S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Iran. More precisely, this would I assume be a claim for breach initiated by Iran under the contract, which apparently provides for arbitration of disputes at the ICC Court of Arbitration in Geneva... Netanyahu versus Obama and Iran | Redress Information & Analysis Alan Hart argues that, for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a second term in the White House for Barack Obama is a far more serious concern than the illusory Iranian “nuclear threat” and that, if it appears that Obama is poised to win the upcoming presidential election, Netanyahu may order an attack on Iran and get the US embroiled in war... Aug 17, 2012 The Global 1%: Exposing the Transnational Ruling Class, by Peter Phillips and Kimberly Soeiro | Project Censored This study asks Who are the the world’s 1 percent power elite? And to what extent do they operate in unison for their own private gains over benefits for the 99 percent?.. Finally, we analyze how global networks of centralized power—the elite 1 percent, their companies, and various governments in their service—plan, manipulate, and enforce policies that benefit their continued concentration of wealth and power. We demonstrate how the US/NATO military-industrial-media empire operates in service to the transnational corporate class for the protection of international capital in the world... What is Zionism? by Lasse Wilhelmson | deLiberation ...“Race”, people, nation and the chosen all merge in Zionism to create a national socialism, colonial style, synonymous with “lebensraum” and “blut und boden”. Later on, German national socialism was created with the same ideological components and with similar practical effects on society. Nazism is the Germans’ national socialism and Zionism is the Jews’.. How Much Will America’s Animus Against Iran Distort U.S. Policy Toward Syria? | The Race for Iran Across most of the American political spectrum, policy elites are urging that the United States double down on the Obama administration’s failing Syria policy. America’s reliably pro-intervention senatorial trio (Lindsay Graham, Joseph Lieberman, and John McCain) recently argued that the “risks of inaction in Syria,” now outweigh the downsides of American military involvement. Last week, the Washington Post prominently featured a piece by Ken Pollack, asserting that negotiated settlements “rarely succeed in ending a civil war” like that in Syria—even though that it precisely what ended the civil war in Lebanon, right next door to Syria... Who is Bibi preempting – Obama or Iran? by Trita Parsi | The Daily Beast The Benjamin Netanyahu government in Israel appears to be directly involving itself in the US presidential campaign. But even in this context, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon explosive call for an international declaration that diplomacy with Iran has failed is bold. In fact, it’s astonishing. Declaring diplomacy dead bring the entire American Dual Track policy (the idea that a mix of sanctions and talks will bring about a change in Iran’s nuclear calculus) to collapse. By extension, declaring diplomacy dead also implies that the sanctions track has failed (a case Israel makes separately), leaving military action as the only remaining option... The Pentagon Pathology, by Gabriel Kolko | Counterpunch ...Right before September 11, 2001, China was slated to be the main problem facing the U.S., but after the attacks China became far less important than “terrorism,” a nebulous category that displace “Communism” from being the main American enemy. This move produced some confusion in the ranks. The Pentagon needs an enemy to justify its vast spending, and “terrorism” sufficed until the past few years, when the U.S. military declared it had won victories in Iraq and Afghanistan—which it, of course, did not—and began pulling out... Lebanese clan abducts Syrians, Turkish national | Al Akhbar English A clan in Lebanon has abducted a Turkish businessman and several Syrians it says are rebel fighters in retaliation for the kidnapping of one of their relatives by the rebel Free Syrian Army in Damascus. More than 20 Syrians have been kidnapped by the Mokdad clan, said Maher al-Mokdad, a relative of Hassan al-Mokdad, the man he said was captured in Damascus two days ago by the Free Syrian Army, which is fighting President Bashar al-Assad's rule. In remarks to Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA), he said "the snowball would grow", warning "Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey and their citizens".. National Intelligence Leaks and the Hasbarafia, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam My source has permitted me to publish the entire original Hebrew document, which you read here. The English translation is in yesterday’s post: When one publishes an important leaked Israeli government document as I have done, one has to expect a counter-attack from the hasbarafia. And it has come. I’m going to share a few words on the background of the document and address some of the scurrilous charges raised about this matter... 9/11 ten years on: there are no excuses for buying the myth, by Martin Iqbal | deLiberation ...Keeping true to the decade-long history of scaremongering based on the mythical ‘war on terror’ narrative, the al Qaeda ghost has been recruited again, as has the fantasy of the bin Laden raid of May 01. We are told that the ‘threat’ emanates from Pakistan (as predictable as the clumsiest of scripts), and is as a result of the killing of long-dead Osama bin Laden – an event so obviously staged it makes one question the mental health of any person subscribing to the myth... The Logic of Israel’s War Talk, by Gareth Porter | Counterpunch Two recent interviews apparently given by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak provide evidence that the new wave of reports in the Israeli press about a possible Israeli attack on Iran is a means by which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Barak hope to leverage a U.S. shift toward Israel’s red lines on Iran’s nuclear programme... The Push to ignite a Turkish civil war through a Syrian quagmire, by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | Voltaire Network Through its much-touted ‘zero problems with neighbors’ doctrine, the Turkish government had set out with a realistic chance of being everyone’s friend. It has now made itself everyone’s enemy, including its own, by embracing policies that have put it on a collision course with disaster. By being duped into burning its bridges with Syria Ankara has laid the foundations for the destabilization of the Turkish republic at the hands of the very same powers with which she is currently colluding... Will the IDF Attack Iran Following an Order from Netanyahu? | Roi Tov ...most ongoing wars have never been formally declared. A well-known example is the German invasion of Belgium during WWI, which violated the abovementioned convention since it states that hostilities must not commence without explicit warning. This is relevant here because what Netanyahu did in his speech was to deliver such a war warning, though justifying it on unproven claims. He had put Iran in a position to legitimately claim that Israel declared war on it and thus enabled it to take defensive measures. Self-defense from an external attack is a type of war allowed by the UN Charter. In other words, we already have a formal war. Netanyahu may decide on its first battle... "See Them Burn! Hear Them Scream!": The Most Sickening TV Show in History, by John Eskow | Counterpunch Surely we have reached some hideous moral low—if only a temporary one—when a TV “reality” show like NBC’s “Stars Earn Stripes” can reduce the blood-soaked, brain-spattered canvas of war to a feel-good athletic competition between washed-up actors, ex-jocks, and Todd Palin... Aug 16, 2012 Israeli-US Script: Divide Syria, Divide the Rest, by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | Global Research What is happening in Syria is a sign of things to come for the region. Regime change is not the sole goal of the US and its allies in Syria. Dividing the Syrian Arab Republic is the end goal of Washington in Syria. Britain’s Maplecroft, which specializes in consulting on strategic risk, has said that we are witnessing the balkanization of the Syrian state: “Kurds in the north, Druze in the southern hills, Alawites in the coastal northwestern mountainous region and the Sunni majority elsewhere.”.. Democracies Don't Start Wars, But Fake Democracies Sure Do! by Dave Lindorff | This Can't Be Happening ...the reason we have seen the US starting so many wars is that the US is and has not for a very long time been anything approaching a democracy. Democracy in the US is a purely formalistic thing. People get to vote once every two and four years to chose from a narrow list of pre-selected candidates approved by the real rulers of the country, who are the wealthy owners of the large business interests, many of which prosper when there’s a war on, and many more of which are happy to have periodic wars, or the threat of wars, to keep people in line and willing to tolerate the kind of abuse that is typically heaped on the average working person... A Very, Very Dangerous Moment | Antiwar How Washington’s Determination to Dominate Iran Corrodes U.S. Standing in the Middle East: Lessons from Bahrain | The Race for Iran As the United States pushes for regime change in Syria and American allies flock to suspend Syria from the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, it is illuminating to examine the strategic bankruptcy of U.S. policy toward Bahrain. For the deep flaws in Washington’s approach to Bahrain grow out of the same considerations that warp its policy toward Syria. And at the root of all these dangerously deficient policies is a dogged determination to contain and undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran... More from CRS | Secrecy News Recent products of the Congressional Research Service that CRS has not been authorized to release to the public include the following... The Groundwater Footprint: The Privatization of the World's Water Resources | Global Research ...The securitization of water is a conflict of control over society and the right to life. It is a non-negotiable aspect of life on Earth. The false flag threat of water pollution (which is being committed by the global Elite through multi-national corporations) is a cover story for the march toward complete control over all basic necessities required to live. Pursuit of water security means whoever has the water, chooses who lives – and who dies... New Guardian team member openly incited Israel to murder Alice Walker and others, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada In a sad sign of its deterioration, The Guardian has hired a new contributor who openly called on the Israeli army to kill Americans sailing to Gaza, including Pulitzer prize-winning author Alice Walker and Kindertransport refugee Hedy Epstein... Independent Kosovo: Pathological Criminal Case, by Anna Filimonova | Strategic Culture Foundation The Western power centers use the ‘Republic of Kosovo’ as a testing ground for working out the ways to create a quasi-state that could be defined as an ‘abnormal criminal case of global scope’. The goal is reshaping South East Europe. The states below the ‘first echelon’ are subject to the formula ‘back to slavery and barbarity’. This is a model of authoritative outside governance entailing devastation of natural environment, extraction of resources and creation of disastrous economy and ‘stillborn’ state structures along with extreme pauperization of population. .. The Olympic Scandal You Never Heard About, by Michael Robeson | Countercurrents A satirical take on the hypocrisy of political correctness at the Olympic Games... Bibi’s Secret War Plan, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam ...This is Bibi’s sales pitch for war. Its purpose is to be used in meetings with members of the Shminiya , the eight-member security cabinet which currently finds a 4-3 majority opposed to an Iran strike. Bibi uses this sales pitch to persuade the recalcitrant ministers of the cool, clean, refreshing taste of war. My source informs me that it has also been shared in confidence with selected journalists who are in the trusted inner media circle.. This is Shock and Awe, Israel-style... The Israeli Crisis, by George Friedman | Stratfor ...Perhaps the deepest aspect of the crisis is that Israel has no internal consensus on whether it is in fact a crisis, or if so, what the crisis is about. The Israeli government speaks of an existential threat from Iranian nuclear weapons. I would argue that the existential threat is broader and deeper, part of it very new, and part of it embedded in the founding of Israel... [Even from this "strategic intelligence" brothel (see Our Man in Havana, Stratfor-Style ) some thoughtful analysis] Aug 15, 2012 The Freedom 7 Are Beating Obama in Court, by Kelley B. Vlahos | Antiwar While Congress was dickering over doomed amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the “Freedom 7″ have been quietly gaining the upper hand over the federal government. In fact, their successes so far have been so underreported by the mainstream media that it is hardly known that this small but determined group of plaintiffs has managed to secure a temporary injunction against the controversial NDAA measure that allows for the indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens without trial in so-called terrorism cases... NBC’s war for fun and profit, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon A new military-themed reality show from NBC, entitled “Stars Earn Stripes,” debuts tonight. The show “enthusiastically melds warfare and fame,” as a Washington Post review today put it. It features eight celebrities (using the loosest definition of that term) — such as husband-of-Sarah Todd Palin, former Superman Dean Cain, and former boy band member Nick Lachey — paired up with “military and law enforcement veterans, including a Green Beret, a SWAT officer, two Marine sergeants, a retired member of the Delta Force and two Navy SEALs”, whom NBC hails as the “Bad Ass Operatives.”.. In the end, all Israel and her Western allies want to do is to break Iran, by Robert Fisk | The Independent ...New sanctions have been levelled against a Syrian oil firm. Sanctions were taken against Lebanese Hezbollah two days ago. Madame Clinton is raging against Assad but doing nothing. Leon Panetta, the cliché-laden US Defence Secretary, said the battle for Aleppo was "the nail in the coffin" of the Assad regime. But right now the armed revolutionaries are retreating. In the end, it's all about Iran, the target of Qatar's and Saudi Arabia's and America's and Israel's suspicion and hatred. Break Iran – via Syria... Syria: how the West is sanctioning sectarianism, by Brendan O’Neill | Spiked For a textbook example of how Western meddling in other states’ affairs makes bad situations worse, look no further than Syria. In a country that was already being rocked by violent clashes, Western grandstanding has had the effect of upping the ante and intensifying the violence. In the name of scoring some cheap PR points and giving vent to their ‘moral impulse’, a motley crew of immature foreign-policy wonks and narcissistic commentators have backed, with both words and weapons, Syria’s rebels... What the quasi-unanimous adoption of UNGA resolution on "The Situation in Syria" really means for the free world | The Vineyard of the Saker ...I was reminded of the prophetic words of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II who in his diary wrote the following words:" I am surrounded by cowardice, treason and lies". I always thought that this was an excellent summary of the 20th century, but it appears that the 21st century begins on exactly the same basis. There is no way to put a positive spin on this: there are currently only 3 poles of resistance to the US Empire on this planet: two big powers (Russia and China), acting independently, but clearly in coordination with each other, then a much weakened "Shia alliance" lead by Iran (which Iraq just betrayed), and the Latin American alliance of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia. That's it... UN-Backed Rogue States Plan Syria’s Slaughter, by Felicity Arbuthnot | Palestine Chronicle ...To read the whole document is to enter a world populated with people for whom reality has apparently long vanished. So much for fighting terrorism and the protection of the sovereign State. On 3rd August the Times of India and others confirmed an open secret: “President Obama has signed a secret order authorizing US support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Assad's government ... Obama's order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence ‘finding’, permits CIA and other US agencies provide support that could help the rebels oust President Assad.”.. The Next Election: High Stake Outcomes Based on Non-issues, by Paul Craig Roberts | Information Clearing House ...The real issues can nowhere be found in the campaigns or in the media. There is no mention of the Bush/Obama destruction of the US Constitution and its legal protections of citizens from arbitrary government power. Due process no longer exists for anyone who the executive branch suspects of being connected in any way to Washington’s chosen enemies. US citizens can be thrown into dungeons for life on suspicion alone without any evidence ever being presented to a court, and they can be executed any place on earth, along with whoever happens to be with them at the time, on suspicion alone... The Obama Administration "Brainwashes" the Public on Afghanistan, by Sheldon Richman | FFF ...Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis’s 84-page unclassified paper begins with this hard-hitting note about the military’s systematic lying: Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable. This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political solution to the war in Afghanistan... Disinformation: How It Works, by Brandon Smith | Information Clearing House ...The mainstream media, once tasked with the job of investigating government corruption and keeping elitists in line, has now become nothing more than a public relations firm for corrupt officials and their Globalist handlers. The days of the legitimate “investigative reporter” are long gone (if they ever existed at all), and journalism itself has deteriorated into a rancid pool of so called “TV Editorialists” who treat their own baseless opinions as supported fact... Securing Sinai: Egypt Retakes Sovereignty | Roi Tov ...on August 8, Egypt attacked Global Jihad forces near Gaza and a new reality was disclosed. Subsequently, on August 14, the legal advisor of the Egyptian president, Mohammed Gadallah, told to the Egyptian al-Masry al-Youm that Egypt is considering amending the Camp David Accords between his country and Israel in order to regain full sovereignty over Sinai.. Egypt’s latest actions show that the agreement has already been amended de facto. Mohammed Morsi did what the armed forces candidates couldn’t; he ordered the army to conduct air strikes in Sinai for the first time since 1973... Aug 14, 2012 Iran: The vampires may get their feast yet What are you going to do about it? Israel’s ‘Bomb Iran’ Timetable, by Ray McGovern | Antiwar More Washington insiders are coming to the conclusion that Israel’s leaders are planning to attack Iran before the U.S. election in November in the expectation that American forces will be drawn in. There is widespread recognition that, without U.S. military involvement, an Israeli attack would be highly risky and, at best, only marginally successful. At this point, to dissuade Israeli leaders from mounting such an attack might require a public statement by President Barack Obama warning Israel not to count on U.S. forces — not even for the “cleanup.” Though Obama has done pretty much everything short of making such a public statement, he clearly wants to avoid a confrontation with Israel in the weeks before the election... Maariv Quotes U.S. Sources “Close to President” Saying We Will Join in Israeli Attack | Tikun Olam The drums of war have been sounding especially loudly of late in Israel. As Stephen Walt wrote in Foreign Policy, the media have been playing a dutiful role in regurgitating the talking points of Israel’s war party, chief among them Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu. That’s almost to be expected. But what’s neither expected nor acceptable is amplifying the most delusional of the pro-war talking points, as Maariv did today in its lead story... Iran hysteria watch, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss The warmongering is getting crazier and crazier. Thanks to Ilene Cohen, a few of the recent stories on the drumbeat to war. And remember, Obama can't say a word against this craziness, because of his political need not to alienate the Jewish community... The United States and Its Comrade-in-Arms, Al Qaeda: Tales of an Empire Gone Mad, by William Blum | Counterpunch Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s… Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s… Libya 2011… Syria 2012… In military conflicts in each of these countries the United States and al Qaeda.. have been on the same side. What does this tell us about the United States’ “War On Terrorism”? Regime change has been the American goal on each occasion: overthrowing communists, Serbians, Slobodan Milosevic, Moammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad … all heretics or infidels, all non-believers in the empire, all inconvenient to the empire. Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, has the United States invested so much blood and treasure against the PLO, Iraq, and Libya, and now Syria, all mideast secular governments?.. Restiamo umani, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance ...Over 60,000 Palestinian civilians were killed by the Israeli army over the past six decades and yet, the Zionists want us to forget all of that and focus instead on 11 Israelis who served in that army and were killed in a botched attempt to rescue them in Munich 40 years ago. But the world is not stupid and injustice cannot be hidden and more and more people are heeding the call to Stay Human (Restiamo umani as our late friend Vittorio Arrigoni used to implore us)... Taking It Out on the Kids (Again): US Sanctions on Iran are Hurting the Young and the Sick, by Dave Lindorff | This Can't Be Happening Secretary of State Madeleine Albright should be a happy camper: Another campaign of sanctions and embargoes by the US is about to start killing children, this time in Iran.. No one should be surprised by this ruthless victimization of children and the sick by Washington in the name of realpolitik... Jewish At The Root: Iraq’s Destruction, Hell Weapons, Hatred, Networking And The Interconnectedness Of It All | Mask of Zion The decimation of Iraq was a Jewish endeavor at the root. It was designed by about 30 neoconservatives, nearly all of them Jewish, every one of them a worshiper of Zionism.. neoconservatism itself is an ideology invented by Jewish “Israel”-first fanatics and the chief, primal reason as to why they developed this hawkish line of thinking was “Holocaust® consciousness.”.. [In the Comments, Jonathan writes that “the only Jews who are truly standing with us in the fight to overthrow and permanently bury the Jewish New World Order are those who are no longer Jews; they have left the religion, they have left the culture, they have left the "tribe."” I think that this is largely, but with numerous exceptions – it certainly describes me – I was fully exposed to the virus, but it didn’t take. Things are never black and white like that.] Read more...Operation Gladio: Interview With Daniele Ganser | YouTube Europe’s so-called stay behind organisations have committed numerous acts of terrorism against the civilian populations of their home countries – and outside parliamentary control. In a succession of “false flag” terrorist operations, the perpetrators always manage to somehow evade the police. These are strategies of tension that work from the premise that, with the aid of terrorist acts, the population will come to seek protection from the incumbent government. An example is provided by the activities of the secret armed organisation in Italy, called Gladio, headed by the military secret service and trained and supported by the CIA... [Also watch video Operation Gladio and false flag terror campaigns] American Stingers’ First Casualty is Diplomacy: A Murderous Optimism About Syria, by Deepak Triphati | Counterpunch The disclosure of President Barack Obama’s decision to provide secret American aid to Syria’s rebel forces is a game changer. The presidential order, known as an “intelligence finding” in the world of espionage, authorizes the CIA to support armed groups fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s government. But it threatens far more than the regime in Damascus... Cut-and-Paste Intel: Our Man in Havana, Stratfor-Style, by Israel Shamir | Counterpunch I thought they were just con-men, Alexander Cockburn said to me about the intelligence website Stratfor when the Wikileaks published a huge cache of their emails. The late lamented CounterPunch co-editor’s opinion of state intelligence agencies was not high, but of private intelligence services like Stratfor it was lower than a barmaid’s décolleté. He thought that these guys had a brisk trade in newspaper cuttings, selling other journalists’ work as their own at a premium. Alex was not alone... Why Israel is 'singled out,' by Joel Doerfler | Mondoweiss ...To say that Israel is being “singled out” is to say that it is being unfairly vilified for doing the same sorts of, presumably “bad,” things that other states are doing; it’s to grant, in other words, that Israel is doing something “wrong.” But the implied acknowledgment of Israeli misdeeds by those making this argument is a discursive feint; Israeli transgressions, if specified at all, are glossed over as nothing but garden-variety misdemeanors. Indeed, it’s not that Israel is being “singled out” that’s driving those deploying this discourse to apoplexy. It’s that Israel is being accused of pursuing criminal policies at all. Israel, they believe, is a victim, not a perpetrator... The Financial Crisis and the UN-Bid: Forcing New Political Realities, by Maath Musleh | Beyond Compromise ...All fingers for the current economic woes point to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. PA President Mahmoud Abbas appointed Fayyad as the head of the emergency government in the West Bank on 17 June 2007. He remains until this day an interim Prime Minister, becoming the longest serving emergency PM. Fayyad also served as the Finance Minister from 2002 to 2005 and then again from 2007 to 2012. For the past 10 years, Fayyad was the mastermind behind converting the Palestinian economy into a neo-liberal capitalist economy. Fayyad initially received the praises of donors for setting up a transparent financial system, but his policies have proven disastrous for the Palestinian people... Aug 13, 2012 The Yinon Thesis Vindicated: Neocons, Israel, and the Fragmentation of Syria, by Stephen Sniegoski | My Catbird Seat This is a piece on how the Oded Yinon plan is succeeding with the fragmentation of Syria and the intensification of Sunni-Shiite violence throughout the Middle East. This internecine conflict and state fragmentation only weakens those who oppose Israel, which perfectly fits the scheme articulated by Yinon... Read more... Ehud Barak: Most Dangerous Man in Middle East, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam I know that’s awfully strong language, but I can back it up. Haaretz has been filled, over the past week or so, with a torrent of leaks accompanied by screaming headlines about the Iran menace. Some of the articles are attributed directly to Israel’s defense minister and some are anonymous. From the tenor and claims, they all derive from the same source: Ehud Barak. Lately, Barak has trumpeted an alleged update of the National Intelligence Estimate that shows that Iran is in the final stages of developing a nuclear warhead... Read more... Israel Pediatric Association calls to end blood-sucking ritual during circumcision | Haaretz Brit milah, the ancient Jewish ritual of circumcision, has been making headlines worldwide recently: A German court declared it illegal, prompting the German government to promise legislation permitting it again; some Swiss hospitals announced they would no longer perform it; and legislation to restrict it was proposed in Denmark. Now, even Israel is entering the fray... American police now “Israeli-DHS trained,” precursor to dictatorship, by Gordon Duff | PressTV Slowly, every police department in the United States, at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security, is being trained by Israeli groups. As part of this training, there is an increased move to use of military uniforms, armored vehicles, heavy weapons, illegal surveillance, lying to the people, press and courts and systematic interference in the electoral system. They are becoming “Israeli.”.. Read more... US Deploying Surveillance Drones Near China, by John Glaser | Antiwar ...New war strategies called “Air-Sea Battle” reveal Washington’s broader goals in the region and illustrate how a war with China – which the US apparently yearns for – would play out. “Stealthy American bombers and submarines would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems located deep inside the country,” reports theWashington Post. ”The initial ‘blinding campaign’ would be followed by a larger air and naval assault.” The Obama administration has been ramping up the pressure on China with an increasingly antagonistic foreign policy... [This reminds me of American policy towards Japan in the 30’s that led directly to Pearl Harbor. We wouldn’t win this one, though.] Read more...Syria and the Invisible Hand of Foreign Intervention, by Eric Margolis | The National Interest The Polish Zionist ideologue Vladimir Jabotinsky, the father of Israel’s right wing, observed nearly a century ago that much of the Arab world was a fragile mosaic. A few sharp blows, he wrote, would cause it to shatter, leaving Israel the region’s dominant power. Jabotinsky may have been right... Read more... Intervention is now driving Syria's descent into darkness, by Seumas Milne | The Guardian ....The US, which backed its first Syrian coup in 1949, has long funded opposition .groups. But earlier this year Obama gave a secret order authorising covert (as well as overt financial and diplomatic) support to the armed opposition. That includes CIA paramilitaries on the ground, "command and control" and communications assistance, and the funneling of Gulf arms supplies to favoured Syrian groups across the Turkish border. After Russia and China blocked its last attempt to win UN backing for forced regime change last month, the US administration let it be known it would now step up support for the rebels and co-ordinate "transition" plans for Syria with Israel and Turkey... Read more... IsraHell on Earth | YouTube This powerful documentary exposes the hell that the Palestinians have been going through since their land was stolen in 1948. From that day on, the world has been hijacked by a cabal of zionists/occultists, and the support given to them by governments has alienated much of the world. IsraHell on Earth looks at the origins of the abomination that is IsraHell and exposes its apartheid crimes... The West and the glorification of terrorism, by Thierry Meyssan | Voltaire Network ...the Council remained silent. The Western members refused to apply to the attack in Syria one of the most basic principles of international relations: the condemnation of terrorism. Even worse, in their respective declarations, German, British, American and French leaders instead condemned the victims, holding them responsible for the violence they had been the targets of, and reaffirming support for the forces that perpetrated the attack. Immediately, the Western media set about defiling the memory of the victims as if their deaths were still insufficient to quench their thirst for Syrian blood... Read more... Hillary Clinton on the Syria No-Fly Zone, by Barb Weir | deLiberation U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu indicated in a meeting with reporters Saturday that they were exploring the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over Syria. I managed to reach Secretary Clinton by phone shortly afterward... Read more... Mitt Romney: the know-nothing candidate | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson traces the roots of US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to the American Party of the 19th century whose hallmarks were ignorance, prejudice and fear of – and aggressiveness towards – what is not local... Read more... Neocons vs. the 'Arab Spring': Back on the Warpath, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle The neoconservatives are back with a vengeance. While popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and other Arab countries had briefly rendered them irrelevant in the region, Western intervention in Libya signaled a new opportunity. Now Syria promises to usher a full return of neoconservatives into the Middle East fray... Read more... Aug 12, 2012 The Secret Tie That Binds the US and Israel, by Ira Chernus | HNN ...A myth of insecurity, with the sense of vulnerability and victimization that it breeds, is the most fundamental tie that binds the two nations. Both peoples learned long ago to base their national identity and sense of patriotism on fighting off enemies who are, they believe, bent on destroying their nations. Both are deeply committed to and shaped by these myths... Unconscionable Media Warmongering | Stephen Lendman Washington needs media support to wage wars and plan new ones. Broadcast and print scoundrels oblige. Paid liars infest Western media. Managed news misinformation creates enemies. Fear is stoked. War is cheer-led, glorified, and sanitized to suppress truths too grim to report. Reasons for war aren't explained. Fake ones are invented. Public opinion is manipulated to support what should be condemned. Wars beget more of them. America wages permanent ones. It's longstanding official policy. Where it ends, who knows... U.S. officials: Al-Qaeda building well-organized network in Syria | National Post Al-Qaeda has advanced beyond isolated pockets of activity in Syria and now is building a network of well-organized cells, according to U.S. intelligence officials, who fear the terrorists could be on the verge of establishing an Iraq-like foothold that would be hard to defeat if rebels eventually oust President Bashar al-Assad... Sanctions on Iran: 'ordinary people are the target,' by Saeed Kamali Dehghan | The Guardian ..."Sanctions are affecting the entire country, but it is the people that bear the brunt and have the least ability to protect themselves from this pressure," said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council and the author of the book A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama's Diplomacy with Iran. "What is most concerning is that it is now increasingly clear that the people are the target,".. Historic Hypocrisy: UN-Backed Rogue States Plan Syria’s Slaughter, by Felicity Arbuthnot | Dissident Voice ...On August 7th, Secretary of State Hillary (“We came, we saw, he died”) Clinton, hurtling pointlessly round the world like the proverbial headless chicken, threatening, lecturing, ranting, talked of the urgency of planning for a “post-Assad Syria.” Today William Hague announced he is committing “an additional” five million pounds to the terrorists. Which begs the question how much was the British government providing already? Another open secret has also come out: Turkey is training terrorists to go to Syria. Turkey, of course, a NATO Member, but desperate to get into the pretty well doomed European Union with its near certainly dying currency, appears to be prepared to do anything to curry favour... Be afraid, be very afraid "The sword at our throat," by Annie Robbins | Mondoweiss The Israeli press went on steroids over the weekend pushing an attack on Iran, and it's getting mass coverage. The push began with Ynet's report that Israeli P.M. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak advocate an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities this fall, before the U.S. elections in November. And what about the fact that "not the [Israeli] army command, not the security forces, not even the president - supports an Israeli strike now"? Defense Minister Barak was unmoved. According to Ynet "Barak therefore made it clear that everyone against an attack is free to resign.".. Grace Halsell: De-bunker of Christian Zionist Doctrine, by Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle ...Grace Halsell was a formidable campaigner for truth and justice and died on 16 August 2000 after a remarkable career as a journalist and author of 13 books.. In 1981 she published 'Journey to Jerusalem', which took a close look at Israeli torture, Israel’s illegal settlements and the oppressed lives Palestinians were forced to lead under occupation. For her pains she was viciously attacked by the usual suspects and dropped by mainstream publishers. Zionists sabotaged her lectures. MacMillan sacked the executive who commissioned the book. Another MacMillan executive told her he'd been ordered to take the manuscript to the Israeli Embassy and let them read it... Persian Gulf gets US missile shield | Russia & India Report ...the US retains the full engineering blueprint of the missile defence system. In the estimation of the New York Times, this is because unlike the European allies, the Gulf Arab allies lack team spirit and resist “multilateral security initiatives.” Equally, what emerges is that the primacy on “bilateralism” suits the US as well. The deals are secretly struck through face-to-face negotiations and, evidently, they are highly lucrative. The Pentagon has generated massive business for the US arms manufacturers within the ambit of the missile defence programme in the GCC region. At least $21.9 billion worth arms deals on this account alone have materialized for the US companies in the most recent years... US-Israel Nuclear Front’s Accountability Drives Fall Apart, by Grant Smith | Antiwar ...NUMEC was a severely undercapitalized nuclear fuel processing plant that launched operations in an old steel mill in the heart of Apollo, PA in the late 1950s. In the early 1960s NUMEC opened a plutonium facility and toxic waste dump in nearby Parks Township and later operated a secretive US government-owned Boron-10 facility in Niagara, NY. NUMEC’s primary customer was the U.S. government. Founder Zalman Shapiro leveraged his close ties to Admiral Hyman Rickover, the head of the U.S. Navy nuclear propulsion program, to win lucrative Cold War fuel contracts for nuclear-powered surface ships and submarines... Essay on German Plans to Acquire Combat Drones, by Dirk Kurbjuweit | Der Spiegel A suicide bomber needs to be 100 percent willing to sacrifice his life. With a drone pilot, on the other hand, the risk of pilot death drops to zero percent. The West's war on Islamist terror is currently being waged between these two conflicting priorities. Nothing is more indicative of the asymmetry of the war, and nothing is as symbolic of the cultures that are waging it. It's a war between those who are willing to sacrifice everything and those who are unwilling to give up anything - a war of sacrifice versus convenience, bodies versus technology and risk versus safety... Russia’s Bahrain Stance at UNSC Unprecedented Movement | Al Manar ..“The internationalization of the Bahraini revolution will be a blow to the Al-Khalifa and Al-Saud policies as they attempt to destroy the Bahraini revolution with shear state terrorism. The American and British military and security support of the despotic rulers of Bahrain is causing unease on the international scene especially after the recent flare up of the Syrian situation,”.. Incarcerated inside Israel: Palestinians Tortured, Isolated, by Graham Peebles | Palestine Chronicle ...Since the six-day war in 1967 an estimated 750,000 Palestinians have been incarcerated in Israeli prisons, including 23,000 women and 25,000 children. This constitutes, Richard Falk states “approximately 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population in the occupied territory or 40 per cent of the Palestinian male population there.” Staggering figures of those personally imprisoned, whist a whole nation is held captive intimidated by an illegal occupying power upon their homeland... Aug 11, 2012 Iran Conference Setting the Stage for Dialogue in Syria, by Elie Chalhoub | Al Akhbar English Iran’s position on Syria is unchanged: the crisis can only have a Syrian solution, based on dialogue between the warring parties. It aims to persuade as many countries as possible to support that option, and establish an alternative to the coalition of states complicit in the bloodletting in Syria. Iran is looking ahead to the aftermath of what it expects to be the Syrian regime’s “victory” in Aleppo. Once that is achieved, Tehran believes, the powers backing the rival sides in Syria will have no alternative but to negotiate... Read more... Iran's new summit diplomacy, by Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Asia Times Online August is a crucial month in Iran's diplomatic calendar for 2012. If it plays its cards right, Tehran could see big dividends for its counter-sanction and regional strategies. The venue for Tehran's efforts will be summits in Iran and Saudi Arabia - the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Mecca on August 14 and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Tehran on August 29-30 - which will bring dozens of world leaders to the Persian Gulf region... Read more... Iran Deserves “Respect” for its Efforts to Foster a Political Settlement in Syria | The Race for Iran This week, Iran hosted an international conference on the conflict in Syria. The conference is more important than most Western media coverage conveyed. The conflict in Syria is not just a civil war; it has become a highly militarized proxy war, involving major regional and international powers (including the United States). In such a situation, establishing a political process involving not only the full range of relevant internal actors but also all relevant regional and international players is critical to forestalling strategic and humanitarian catastrophe... Read more... Stepping up to aid Syria, by Ali Akbar Salehi | The Washington Post ...Syrian society is a beautiful mosaic of ethnicities, faiths and cultures, and it will be smashed to pieces should President Bashar al-Assad abruptly fall. The idea that, in that event, there would be an orderly transition of power is an illusion. Although Annan’s efforts to end the crisis have been terminated, his six-point plan for political change is alive and well. Why should seeds of discord continue to be planted when the situation can be resolved rationally, through wisdom and providence? Those backing violence in Syria fail to see that whatever they seek through their actions won’t materialize... Read more... Participants in Tehran Conference on Syria Issue Final Statement | Fars News Agency Delegates of 30 world countries and international bodies participating in the International Conference on Syria in the Iranian capital issued a final statement at the end of their meeting Thursday evening... Read more... Israeli Activists Urge IDF Pilots to Refuse Orders to Attack Iran, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam Israeli peace activists have created an online petition which calls for IAF pilots to refuse to participate in war against Iran. Though the pilot corps is among the most élite of the entire army, there is a long tradition of resistance within the IDF to serving the Palestinian and Lebanese Occupations.. Though Iranians undoubtedly know that there are those who oppose an Israeli war against them, it never hurts to remind them–and the world, that there is dissent within Israel about this course... Read more... The lies of Hiroshima are the lies of today | John Pilger ..In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. It was the first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world,".. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated... Read more... Mitt Romney’s Sturmabteilung, by Wayne Madsen | Strategic Culture Foundation Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has assembled as the core of his national security and foreign policy advisory team some of the most right-wing and militaristic members of the Bush-Cheney administration. In many ways, the hawkish Romney advisers represent a virtual Sturmabteiling (SS), or Nazi-like “Storm detachment” of the Republican Party, a vanguard that ensures neo-conservative doctrinal discipline throughout Republican ranks... Read more... New York Declares War on Iran, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar While speaking truth to power is not the sort of thing one expects the executive of a leading bank to indulge in, we’ll take it where we can find it. Here‘s the Group Director of the Standard Chartered Bank responding to the charges, leveled by New York State bank regulator Ben Lawsky, that SCB was involved in financial dealings with Iran to the tune of $250 billion: "You f—king Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with the Iranians?".. Read more... Brave New War, by John Glaser | The American Conservative ...Polls show that Americans largely approve of the president’s use of drones. “When we possess such weaponry, it turns out there is nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it,” Engelhardt observes. But these technologies will not be exclusively American for long. As many as 40 countries are now developing versions of their own pilotless planes. “And when the first Iranian or Russian or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of ‘terrorists,’ we won’t like it one bit,”.. Read more... Drugs An Instrument of Global Policy, by Dmitri Sedov | Strategic Culture Foundation ...the CIA, a top spender in the realm of the US foreign policy, was, for the majority of Americans in the early post-war era, an agency like any other, while in reality it was already rising as a key player. Facing the task of pulling off massive operations worldwide, the CIA asked the White House for a license to tap into alternative funding sources, the drug business being the most rewarding of those within sight. The criminal nature of the business, however, dictated the rules of the game accordingly... Read more... After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine. edited by Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor | Amazon After Zionism brings together some of the world’s leading thinkers on the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a one-state solution. Time is running out for the two-state solution because of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land. Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working together to forge a different future. Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably. This daring and timely collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, John Mearsheimer, Ilan Pappe, Sara Roy, and Jonathan Cook.. Read more... France Fortifies Israeli Settlements | Roi Tov ...The United Nations Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and most countries (Israel being the obvious exception) agree that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the West Bank. Thus, the occupier—Israel—cannot settle there, and all its settlements and outposts are illegal. Yet, Israel is bringing foreigners to settle in the West Bank. A heavily English-accented Hebrew characterizes the voices heard in most of the West Bank settlements, but here and there one can find expat colonies from France and other places. Most settlers discover the sad truth only after they reach their prison... Read more... Ahmadinejad: "Jesus WILL return" | YouTube Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivers a startling message to the people of Britain in an "Alternative" Christmas message. The words he uses largly are more significant than those of the established Church! I say Amen to Ahmadinejad, now he must show he can back his words by action. (When did you ever hear Western leaders talk with this conviction)... Watch video... Protocols of the Elders of Las Vegas, by Marsha B. Cohen | Lobe Log ...The Protocols of the Elder of Las Vegas.. is a 21st century work in progress, and it is no hoax. It’s about a casino magnate with an estimated net worth of just under $25 billion (the seventh richest man in the United States) who decides to devote a small portion of his vast wealth to a neoconservative agenda determined to thwart negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinians; prevent the reelection of an incumbent U.S. president; engineer the destruction of political liberalism; and reshape the political environments of the U.S. and Israel by funding the election of politicians who serve his own corporate and ideological interests... Read more... Can the U.S. or Israel Lawfully Attack Iran’s Nuclear Facilities? by Dan Joyner | Arms Control Law ...the only legal grounds available to the U.S. or Israel to justify this international use of force would be Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which recognizes the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense. And this is only if one accepts, as I and most international lawyers do, that there is still a limited right of anticipatory self-defense that is included in the customary law foundations of Article 51. However, this right of anticipatory self-defense is extremely limited, and can only be used when there is a necessity of self defense that is “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation …” [There seems little point in discussing the legal questions, as the Empire considers itself immune from such trivialities. Israel, furthermore, always justifies its actions as due to “existential” threats, which trump any other considerations. The irony is that the natural reaction is for many to reasonably question Israel's self-proclaimed "right to exist."] Read more...Aug 10, 2012 The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei on the Continuing Fight for Independence | The Race for Iran Western elites persist in seeking affirmation that the Iranian economy is collapsing under the weight of sanctions and that Iranians are ready to turn against the Islamic Republic if only the United States would get out the right PR message see here and here. However, real insight into the sources of the Islamic Republic’s endurance and the views of its highest decision-maker can be accessed more reliably simply by reading and taking seriously a recent address by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei to a group of government officials... Sanctions Will Kill Tens of Thousands of Iranians, by Muhammad Sahimi | Antiwar When she was running for president in 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton threatened to “obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel. Her opponent, Barack Obama, responded that Clinton’s threat was “too much like Bush.” Four years later Iran has not attacked Israel (and will not do so, unless attacked by Israel first), but President Obama is actually carrying out the threat that his current secretary of state made in 2008, waging an undeclared war on Iran and Iranians... Iran eyes role as post-Arab Spring 'anchor,' by Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Asia Times Online Dr Abbas Maleki, former deputy foreign minister of Iran and currently senior Wilhelm Fellow on Energy Policy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was an important voice in Iran's foreign policy decision making process for many years. In an interview with Asia Times Online, Maleki sheds light on how Iran conceptualizes foreign policy, while challenging negative Western perceptions of Iran's behavior. He emphasizes Iran's role in regional crisis-management, particularly in Syria, and explains why the upcoming summit of leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, to be held this month in Tehran, is so important for Iran... Bomb Iran fever, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online Where's the great Christopher Walken when we need him? "I've got a fever! And the only prescription is.. Bomb Iran!" That's the story, at least in Israel. Fever pitch will rule at least for the next six months. This past weekend, the Israel Hayom newspaper - financed by casino mogul and Mitt Romney groupie Sheldon Adelson - dedicated a whole supplement to the fever. Lead articles had titles such as "Bomb or Bombing: Poker with the Cards Close to the Vest.".. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by Ralph Raico | Lew Rockwell ...the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost. The ridiculously inflated figure of a half-million for the potential death toll – nearly twice the total of U.S. dead in all theaters in the Second World War – is now routinely repeated in high-school and college textbooks and bandied about by ignorant commentators. Unsurprisingly, the prize for sheer fatuousness on this score goes to President George H.W. Bush, who claimed in 1991 that dropping the bomb "spared millions of American lives." Still, Truman's multiple deceptions and self-deceptions are understandable, considering the horror he unleashed... African ambassadors feel unsafe in Israel | Middle East Monitor Ambassadors of African countries in Israel have expressed their concern over racial discrimination against African employees and migrants in Israel. According to Israeli media sources, Ghana's ambassador complained to Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon that his wife is picked on when she goes shopping. "If that is what happens to an ambassador's wife, what are the rest of the Africans employed here supposed to do or say?" asked Henry Hanson-Hall. "Even I am afraid of being arrested or picked on.".. [Welcome to the new Dixie! The South shall rise again!] Orwellian Ramifications Begin to Unfold in Syria, by Ismail Salami | Dissident Voice There is a horrible speculation that the insurgents in Syria may have seized hold of chemical weapons. Apart from the catastrophically unthinkable havoc the rebels can wreak in Syria and in the region with the WMDs, the rhetorical question which remains is how these weapons of mass destruction have fallen into the hands of the insurgents who are chiefly composed of Wahhabi al-Qaeda mercenaries of different nationalities including Afghans, Iraqis, Turkish, Yemenis, Jordanians, Pakistanis, and Saudis. The situation in Syria is assuming Orwellian ramifications and the possibility to clearly understand or dissect the situation in the country is not an easy task... Full-Scale War in Syria | Stephen Lendman Former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov calls it "full-scale civil war." It's full-scale but not civil. Syria's been invaded. Civil war implies two internal warring sides. That's very much not the case. Primakov said: "Mercenaries and volunteers from other states are fighting (Assad) jointly with" violent internal forces. Most Syria opponents are nonviolent. They want peaceful conflict resolution. Washington has other ideas... Adelson’s Billions in Service of U.S. War Against Iran, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam A Haaretz reporter has just published a fascinating theory in which Bibi Netanyahu, with the connivance of Sheldon Adelson, is provoking not just war with Iran, but a U.S. war with Iran. Sefi Rachlevsky writes that Netanyahu believes that if he attacks Iran a few weeks before the election that Obama will have two choices: either he will join in the attack, in which case both Bibi and Adelson will have gained their supreme objective, the dismantling of the Iranian menace. If Obama refuses and leaves Israel in the lurch, so Rachlevsky’s theory goes, the incumbent president will lose the election to Mitt Romney, who will then be able to finish the job once he assumes the presidency... Could The War On Syria Create Regime Change in Ankara? | Moon of Alabama The fight over Aleppo is waging on with advantages on the Syrian government side. The Syrian army launched its ground offense in Aleppo and killed the leader of the insurgency there. The insurgents are in tactical retreat from their Aleppo stronghold of Salaheddin. It will take some time to mop them up. When politics failed to give Washington what it wanted it decided to increase the violence in Syria by promoting Al Qaeda to fill the void the Annan mission left... Bogus allegations of "anti-Semitism" create real climate of fear for Arab, Muslim students in US, by Nora Barrows-Friedman | The Electronic Intifada An attempt to portray Palestine solidarity campaigning on campus as “anti-Semitism” has failed.. Lacking evidence that would support their complaints, a group of Zionist students had to abandon a federal lawsuit and reach a settlement accord in late June. But this will almost certainly not be the last case of its type. Across California, and elsewhere in the United States, well-financed lobby groups working closely with the Israeli government continue to file various lawsuits against universities, alleging civil rights violations against Jewish students. The real intention, however, is to chill Palestine solidarity activism and censor open discussions about Israeli policy in classrooms... Syrian crisis: NATO nods to Turkey, constrains others | Voice of Russia Voice of Russia contributor Rick Rozoff [Stop NATO] gives his insights on the apparent turnaround of events, NATO's current status and plans, Kofi Annan's departure, the recent UN vote on Syria, a 12 country regime-change-hit-list and much more... American (jihadi) Idol, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online Jihadis of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your stage fright. After Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan, the West has fallen in love with you all over again - big time. As if any extra proof was needed, here it is - straight from the mouth of the US establishment, as personified by the Council of Foreign Relations... Mitt Romney: pioneering new frontier in US electoral prostitution | Redress Information & Analysis Jamal Kanj argues that US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's stint at prostitution in Israel "broke a long held American taboo against seeking foreign money in US elections" and that "fundraising in foreign capitals could become the new frontier in US presidential campaign financing".. Aug 9, 2012 Sanctions: Diplomacy’s Weapon of Mass Murder, by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich | Antiwar ...America, a morally bankrupt nation and the self-appointed global morality police, obeying the wishes of the pro-Israel lobby groups, has for years now pointed its deadly weapon of mass murder at Iran — sanctions disguised as diplomacy. The misinformed and misguided global community indulges itself in the false belief that war has been avoided, without thought to suffering and death... Read more... USA holds its breath as Saudi Arabia’s uprising surmounts the regime’s impregnable shield, by Zayd Alisa | Information Clearing House ...What is incontestable is the pivotal role played by the radical and regressive Wahhabi Salafi religious establishment in giving religious legitimacy to the Saudi regime, which in turn provides it with the vital funding to propagate and export its violent ideology. According to the Wahhabi ideology it is strictly forbidden to oppose the ruler. The fatwas issued by the religious establishment were utilised by the Interior ministry headed by Nayef, which declared, on February 2011, that these protests were the new terrorism and would be crushed, just like Al-Qaida... Read more... Bain Capital started with help of offshore investors | Los Angeles Times ..Mitt Romney's firm raised more than a third of its first investment fund from wealthy foreigners — who mostly used companies in Panama, then known for tax advantages and banking secrecy.. David Lyons said that wealthy Europeans like his father often invested through offshore shell corporations. "It allowed some confidentiality," he said. "It allowed a lot of things.".. [A win for Romney would mean a victory for the globalists/corporatists/Zionists. Then again, so would a second term for Obama.] Read more...Obama, Romney Are Reckless on Iran, by Sheldon Richman | FFF ...In the past, games of diplomatic chicken have ended in wars no one wanted, and it could happen again. Obama, Romney, and Netanyahu should realize how reckless their course is, though of course they bear no personal risk. Iran justifiably feels besieged. Economic sanctions against the country, which were recently intensified by Obama and Congress, constitute warfare under international law. Moreover, the U.S. and Israeli governments are conducting covert operations against Iran. In other words, the United States and Israel are already at war with the Iranian people.. It’s bizarre that every time the Iranian government says it is prepared to defend itself from attack, it is accused of threatening others. Who’s threatening whom?.. Read more... Israel and Egypt Attack Sinai Insurrection | Roi Tov ...Reality is changing fast in the Middle East. There are credible signs that Israel may begin an indirect war with Iran. If Netanyahu is badly pressed, then he may decide to attack directly. A war between Israel and Syria is also probable. In either case, when that day comes, Bedouins may use their skills as pathfinders and trackers, and their control of the routes connecting the Negev Desert and the Sinai Peninsula, to cross-over and create a new Bedouin State with their brothers on the Egyptian side. There would be nobody capable of stopping the event... Read more... The Stakes Are High: Greetings From the New Economy, by Abby Scher | Counterpunch “Are you ready for a new economy? Are you ready for a new politics?” The challenge at the podium came from Gus Speth, the courtly co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, now a professor at Vermont Law School, who is on the board of the newly created New Economics Institute (NEI). The occasion was the founding conference of NEI, held at Bard College, and Speth was making a call for “an economy whose very purpose is not to grow profit…but sustain people and the planet.” NEI is the remade E.F. Schumacher Society, the group based in Massachusetts’ Berkshire mountains that promoted the wisdom of the author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered for over 30 years... Read more... Perfecting The Method of "Color Revolutions," by Thierry Meyssan | Information Clearing House ...we know that adults behave like children when they are in the throes of collective emotion. They become susceptible, even if for just a critical fleeting moment, to the suggestions of a leader-of-men who for them embodies a father figure.. Sharp got close to Colonel Reuven Gal, then chief psychologist of the Israeli Army (he later became deputy national security adviser to Ariel Sharo and now runs operations designed to manipulate young Israeli non-Jews).. Gal reached the conclusion that it was also possible to exploit the "Oedipus complex" in adolescents and steer a crowd of young people to oppose a head of state, as a symbolic father figure... Read more... Tehran reaches out to Egypt’s Morsi, by Melkulangara K. Bhadrakumar | Voltaire Network Far from shying away in the face of the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in North Africa, Iran has continued to reach out, in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, in the name of Islam. Knowing that relations between the Brothers and Saudi Arabia have not always been on an even keel, Tehran has multiplied its initiatives to prevent the new North African governments from joining the Saudi Fitna game of fueling conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. Egypt is the centerpiece of this diplomacy... Read more... Aug 8, 2012 No nice wars, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance An attack on an Egyptian army post in northern Sinai left 15 soldiers dead. The attack was denounced by all Palestinian resistance forces including mainstream ones (Fatah, PFLP, DFLP, popular resistance committees, Hamas) and even marginal Jihadi forces (Islamic Jihad).. to most Palestinians, it was clear from its pattern and timing that this was another Israeli false flag operation stretching back to the Lavon affair in the 1950s when Israeli agents planted bombs in Egypt against Western interests to sabotage relations between those countries and Egypt. An attempt to incite Egyptians against others (Palestinians or Iranians) must be exposed and thwarted especially when there is an ongoing existential struggle... The Agents of Financial Calamity: The New Transnational Elite, by Robert Hunziker | Counterpunch ...The door for 21st century fascism has more than opened. It has been blown off the hinges starting with the U.S. Patriot Act, which act violates the U.S. Constitution and which act was rammed down the throats of the U.S. Congress, whose members did not even read the document, by the Bush Administration, implying that any members who voted against the hurried bill would be blamed for any further attacks at a time when the nation was braced for a second attack. Another example of impending fascism occurred when President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act... [In Us vs. Them: On the Meaning of Fascism I defined it as the aggressive assertion of the rights and privileges of one identity group over all others, regardless of whether that identity was vested in nationalism, ethnicity, religion, ideology, economic class or whatever. The example I elaborated on was Zionism, the principal manifestation of this political phenomenon for the last 60+ years. It can be argued that this development has been superseded by and rolled into the “new transnational elite.”] Good Old Israel? by Georgina Reeves | Palestine Chronicle ...The Dalet plan was devised during February 1948 by the Haganah - the Jewish paramilitary organisation succeeded by the Israeli Defence Forces upon Israel's establishment. The plan was simple: the systematic expulsion of the Arab communities. The expulsions were conducted by the Palmach (elite Haganah fighters), the Irgun and the Stern (Lehi) gang. Villages and towns were attacked, depopulated and destroyed. The men who designed and fought the war of 1948 were the same men who designed and created Israel after that war. Prejudice, racism and discrimination characterise the Israel they built and the Israel that exists today. The truth is there never was a "good old Israel".. Let's Have the Whole Truth: Arafat Reconsidered, by Jeffrey Blankfort | Counterpunch There has been a spate of recent articles concerning Israel’s involvement in the death of the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. I suggest that this is less important than analyzing the role actually played by Arafat in the Palestinian struggle for liberation while he was alive and how it set the stage for the desperate situation in which Palestinians find themselves today... The Natural Map of the Middle East, by Patrick J. Buchanan | Antiwar ...The fall of the Alawites in Damascus would end the dream of a Shia crescent — Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Hezbollah — leave Hezbollah isolated, and conceivably lead to a renewal of Lebanon’s sectarian and civil war. The losers in all this? Certainly Iran, which seems fated to lose its only Arab ally, Syria, and its land link to Hezbollah. That would make Israel a winner. But Israel’s situation appears more perilous than it was a decade ago... [A “ Natural Map of the Middle East” would see the Jewish Crusaders scurrying off elsewhere and the return of Palestine to its rightful owners.] Moving Toward War in Syria, by Rep. Ron Paul | Antiwar Last week, the House passed yet another bill placing sanctions on Iran and Syria, bringing us closer to another war in the Middle East. We are told that ever harsher sanctions finally will force the targeted nations to bend to our will. Yet the ineffectiveness of previous sanctions teaches us nothing; in truth sanctions lead to war more than they prevent. Until last year, Libyan sanctions were touted as a great success story. The regime would change its behavior. Yet NATO bombed the country anyway... Mitt Romney: conduct unbecoming of a presidential candidate | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood explores the propaganda of US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's "special adviser" on foreign policy, Dan Senor, an apprentice of the Israel lobby AIPAC and organizer of Romney's recent trip to Israel during which he indulged in a spectacular display of racism and ignorance about the Palestinian people... The Phantom Menace: Stoking the Syrian Inferno, by Ben Schreiner | Counterpunch The bloody U.S.-led proxy war in Syria, laying unimaginable waste to its cities and people, escalates daily. For Washington, “all options” are now clearly in play in the quest for “regime change” in Damascus. Capitalizing on the resignation of joint Arab League-United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan on Thursday, Washington and its imperial cheerleaders in the U.S. mainstream media immediately began to lay the ground for a greater degree of foreign military intervention into the Syrian crisis... Jewish secularism: the defining framework of contemporary Israel| Redress Information & Analysis In a critique of an analysis by former Israeli parliament speaker Avraham Burg of how the Israeli-US relationship has evolved, Gilad Atzmon argues that Jewish secularism, not Judaism, should be credited with Israel's most salient characteristics: racism, narcissism and exploitation... Pandering for the Jewish Vote in the US: A Tradition and a Culture! by Hasan Afif El-Hasan | Palestine Chronicle ...Mr. Romney does not seem to know the Palestinians are under occupation and Israel has control over all major resources in the occupied lands. Land confiscation, structural constraints, arbitrary restrictions imposed on the population and daily military attacks by the Israeli military has a detrimental impact on Palestinian economic development. Let me brief Governor Mitt Romney on the situation in the occupied lands:.. [I don’t understand why so many otherwise well-informed people think it’s about Jewish votes, which have always gone overwhelmingly to the Democrats. It’s about the money and power held by a small minority of Jews, Zionist fanatics.] Grain markets soar on worldwide crop downgrades, by Naomi Spencer | WSWS Downgraded harvest outlooks in the US, Russia and Australia sent grain markets soaring upward Monday. As US crops wither under the most severe drought and heat wave in more than half a century, droughts in Canada and the Black Sea growing region, a below average Indian monsoon, and a massive downgrade of the Australian wheat harvest threaten a global food crisis... Aug 7, 2012 The Bloodlust of Walter Russell Mead, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar ...What is happening in Syria is the planned extermination of a nation, rather than a people. While it’s true US support for the rebels is a dagger aimed at the heart of Syria’s Christian and Alawite minorities, the effective elimination of these groups isn’t the goal of our regime-changers: their purpose is to atomize the Syrian state and produce a region in chaos. To divide, smash up, and remake the Muslim world — that’s the long-range goal. In the short term, however, they’ll settle for a blow struck at their principal enemy in the region. The rebels are but a lure, which this administration is hoping will reel in a really big catch: the Iranians... MEK to join terrorists in Aleppo | Habilian “A number of U.S. and Turkish officers accompanied by several commanders of Kurdish Peshmerga forces had a meeting with some high ranking members of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization in Erbil, Iraq,” well-informed Iraqi security sources told the Arabic language Top News TV channel. The sources added that the meeting decreed that Peshmerga forces transfer a number of MKO elements from Iraq to Turkey and then to the northern parts of Syria in order for these anti-Iran terrorists to join the so-called Free Syrian Army... The Ascendancy of a Criminal Financial Elite, by Prof. James Petras | Global Research ...While the Security and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department and the Senate Banking Committee all make a public pretense of investigating high financial crimes, their real function is to protect these institutions from any efforts to transform their structure, operations and role in the US economy. The fines, which were recently levied, are high by previous standards but still only amount to, at most, a couple of weeks’ profits. The lack of ‘judicial will’, the breakdown of the entire regulatory system and the flaunting of financial power is manifested in the ‘golden parachutes’ routinely awarded to criminal CEOs following their exposure and ‘resignation’... US, Israel: two mad dogs threatening humanity, by Stephen Lendman | PressTV Israel is very much involved in Washington's war on Syria. At issue is destroying another independent state, murdering thousands, planning more wars, and threatening the entire region and beyond... Criminal banking cartel dominates US, British governments, by Webster Tarpley | PressTV A series of enormous financial scandals over the past few months provides new proof of the existence of an international banking cartel in the form of an ongoing criminal enterprise devoted to market manipulation, money laundering and embezzlement, and enjoying the collusion of the US and British governments at the highest level... Read more... The West and the Glorification of Terrorism, by Thierry Meyssan | Global Research ...No one doubts that terrorism in Syria is being sponsored by NATO and the GCC but until now it was being carried out behind a veil of hypocrisy. Unable to bombard and raze the country because of the Russian and Chinese double veto, the Western powers and their Arab partners decided to bleed the country while setting it up for an attack by mercenaries.. The masks are now off. The Western powers have acknowledged their links with terrorists... [People forget. The first Middle Eastern terrorists, the ones who set the standards, were the Zionist Jews in Palestine. Now their direct descendants comprise the leadership of the world's most dangerous terrorist state.] Syria’s Chief Gopher Defects | Roi Tov ...The defecting Prime Minister could have easily left Syria before he was promoted in June. He didn’t. Yet, he left only after he was promoted. Then, he proclaimed loyalty to the “blessed revolution.” This looks as the most profitable action to be taken by a gopher who reached the peak of his power. If he stayed, he would have been forced to work against his operators and in favor of the struggling regime. By defecting, he left Basher al-Assad in an embarrassing situation... [He means ‘mole,’ not ‘gopher,’ of course] Massacres in Aleppo by Western-armed "Free Syrian Army," by Tony Cartalucci | Global Research The Western media is covering - or more accurately, "spinning" - an unfolding sectarian genocide in Syria's largest city Aleppo. In the alleys of seized streets, FSA terrorists are detaining, torturing, and killing anyone suspected of supporting the government. Such suspicions coincidentally run along sectarian divisions. By using the label "Shabiha" for all of FSA's victims, the Western press has given a carte blanche to genocidal sectarian extremists and by doing so, has become complicit in war crimes themselves... Zio-Wahhabis plotting against southern Russia, by Wayne Madsen | PressTV ...The future plans of NATO differ from those of the Nazis in only one respect. There is no Asian power like Japan, which the globalist NATO alliance must share with which the spoils of its victory. However, the NATO-Israel-Wahhabist alliance has failed to learn from history. Nazi Germany was defeated when it overreached its military potential and an economically-wracked Europe and North America, along with corrupt allied regimes in Jerusalem (al-Quds), Riyadh, and Doha, will suffer the same fate... Zionism Unmasked: The Dark Face Of Jewish Nationalism, by Alan Sabrosky | Veterans Today ...whereas extremism in other nationalist movements is an aberration, extremism in Jewish nationalism is the norm, pitting Zionist Jews (secular or observant) against the goyim (everyone else), who are either possible predator or certain prey, if not both sequentially. This does not mean that all Jews or all Israelis feel and act this way, by any means. But it does mean that Israel today is what it cannot avoid being, and what it would be under any electable government... List of International Law Violations by the State of Israel | It Is Apartheid The state of Israel has violated many international laws, including United Nations Resolutions and the Laws of War and Occupation as stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention. Below is a summary of some of those violations. Much of the fact sheet was taken from the Israeli Law Resource Center (ILRC)... US university chiefs' shameful embrace of Israel, by Terri Ginsberg | The Electronic Intifada ...The current epidemic of US academic freedom violations against anti-Zionist and pro-BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) professors is directly connected to such conditions, as is the growing influence of youth-oriented and campus-based hasbara groups like Birthright, Israel on Campus Coalition and Campus Watch, whose mandates are, at least in part, to train pro-Zionist students to spy on their professors... Israeli lawmaker tears up "abominable" New Testament, throws it in trash, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada A member of the Israeli parliament has torn up a copy of the New Testament and thrown it in the trash. An edition of the Bible had been distributed to all members of the Knesset by Victor Kalish, the head of a Christian publishing society... 'End of capitalism': Bolivia to expel Coca-Cola in wake of 2012 Mayan 'apocalypse' | RT In a symbolic rejection of US capitalism, Bolivia announced it will expel the Coca-Cola Company from the country at the end of the Mayan calendar. This will mark the end of capitalism and usher in a new era of equality, the Bolivian govt says. “December 21 of 2012 will be the end of egoism and division. December 21 should be the end of Coca-Cola,” Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca decreed, with bombast worthy of a viral marketing campaign. The coming ‘end’ of the Mayan lunar calendar on December 21 of this year has sparked widespread doomsaying of an impending apocalypse. But Choquehuanca argued differently, claiming it will be the end of days for capitalism, not the planet... [I wonder if they made a deal with Pepsi] Aug 6, 2012 It’s my birthday, so the music comes first NGO Monitor coins anti-Semitic slur: ‘Jew-washing,’ by Jeremiah Haber | +972 It’s perfectly kosher for a rightwing Jewish organization like NGO Monitor to disagree vigorously with a leftwing organization like Jewish Voice for Peace. But in a recent op-ed in the New York Jewish Week, Yiktzak Santis and Gerald Steinberg use the trademark tools of their organization –lies, half-truths, and insinuations – to smear an organization they don’t like. Still, something that is worth noting is their invention of a new anti-Semitic slur: “Jew-washing.”.. [Ethnic cleansing?] Boycotts May Be Necessary to Achieve Israeli Democracy: If Israel Refuses Two-States It Should Expect One | Tikun Olam The NY Times has published a powerful broadside by Avrum Burg on behalf of Israeli democracy. Burg, a former member of what might be called the country’s ruling élite, has turned into an advocate for a nation that separates religion and state, and in which democracy is the prevailing norm and value. In other words, not today’s Israel which, he says, is well on its way to becoming a theocracy little different from others in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.):. Burg’s other important point was to make crystal clear that for Israel to refuse the two state solution as it has done until now guarantees a one state solution will be the ultimate result:.. [The inevitable is, well, inevitable.] Aug 5, 2012 The Emirates Crackdown, by Vijay Prashad | Counterpunch ...Things are so bad in Bahrain that the UN Human Rights Council passed a declaration calling on King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to implement the recommendations of his own appointed Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry. Unsurprisingly, the United States, the United Kingdom and seven European Union states (including Sweden) sat silently and did not endorse the declaration.. There is silence from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said, in February 2011, that the US would “support citizens working to make their governments more open, transparent and accountable.” The asterix to that statement said the following: “citizens of the Gulf need not apply.”.. [The hypocrisy is breathtaking] World might lose patience with Israel within 10 years, says U.K. Ambassador | Haaretz ..."Support for Israel is starting to erode and that's not about these people on the fringe who are shouting loudly and calling for boycotts and all the rest of it. The interesting category are those members of parliament in the middle, and in that group I see a shift.. The problem is not hasbara. The center ground, the majority, the British public may not be expert but they are not stupid and they see a stream of announcement about new building in settlements, they read stories about what's going on in the West Bank, they read about restrictions in Gaza. The substance of what's going wrong is really what's driving this,".. Israel’s Fading Democracy, by Avraham Burg | NYT When an American presidential candidate visits Israel and his key message is to encourage us to pursue a misguided war with Iran, declaring it “a solemn duty and a moral imperative” for America to stand with our warmongering prime minister, we know that something profound and basic has changed in the relationship between Israel and the United States... [The utopian version of Israel evoked by Mr. Burg was never anything but wishful thinking based on self-deception; the project was inherently fascistic, colonialist and criminal in its very conception.] The Olympics as Wonderful Kitsch:The Greatest Show on Earth, by Uri Avnery | Counterpunch ...Climate change, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the global economy, world-wide communications – all make global cooperation both necessary and possible. I am fairly sure that by the end of the 21st century, some sort of global government, based on global democracy, will be in place. The Olympic Games are a good example for such a reality. All the nations are represented, all have equal rights, and, most importantly – all abide by the same rules... Syria/Iran The Way the Wind Blows in Syria (and Beyond), by Jeff Klein | Counterpunch ...All this stokes competition for world food supplies and further strains prices. As these climate trends continue, competition for water resources will also intensify. Water issues have already been the trigger for military conflicts between Israel and its neighbors over rights to the Litani River in Lebanon and the headwaters of the Jordan River in Syria. And one reason for Israel’s refusal to give up occupied Palestinian territory has to do with maintaining control of important subterranean aquifers located under the hills of the West Bank... Tightening the Noose on Iran, by Philip Giraldi | The American Conservative Over the past two weeks there has been something like a competition between Republicans and Democrats to see who can do more for Israel by hyping Iran as a threat. Mitt Romney fired the first shot while speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, accusing the president of “undermining” Israel and citing the Islamic Republic as the world’s greatest threat. Barack Obama fired back with a public signing of the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, coupled with a leaked report that his national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, had briefed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the details of U.S. plans to attack Iran... Lebanonize & Conquer: 'CIA, Mossad on Syria front line': Interview with Pepe Escobar | RT on YouTube US President Barack Obama has signed a secret order allowing the CIA and other American agencies to support rebels seeking to overthrow the Assad regime, a US government source told Reuters... [Read also ‘Obama does Syriana’] The Power of War Propaganda on Iran, and How It Works, by John Glaser | Antiwar A new poll finds 80% of Americans think Iran has a nuclear weapons program and that it is a threat to the US and its NATO allies. The poll, commissioned by The Israel Project, asked likely voters and found “72% of Democrats, 81% of independents and 89% of Republicans were convinced the Iranians were building nuclear weapons.” This is a monumental success of war propaganda... [I suppose the bright side is that 20% or so aren't conned by the unceasing, surround-sound lies and clamor for war.] US and Its Allies Setting Stage for Syria Invasion, by Ismail Salami | Dissident Voice The sudden resignation of UN peace envoy Kofi Annan from the peace efforts circle in Syria which evidently materialized under duress from the US government has caused extreme joy in Washington officials who now see this as a sign that the international community is prone to accept that Syrian President Bashar Assad had to go and that the peace efforts would eventually reach a cul-de-sac. Likewise, the move has caused frustration in those who had pinned their hopes on the possible fruition of these efforts and those who had been resistant to see Syria as another potential Iraq for US military expeditions... General Assembly Vote On Syria: World Gone Unipolar – And Mad, by Rick Rozoff | Stop NATO On August 3 the United Nations General Assembly voted on a resolution written by Saudi Arabia condemning both the government of Syria for the preponderance if not all the violence in the country and Russia and China for not conceding to Western and Persian Gulf monarchies’ demands for “regime change” in Damascus. In an irrefutable demonstration of how the U.S. and its allies have come to dominate world affairs in the post-Cold War era, the vote was 133 in favor, 12 opposed and 31 abstaining.,, Bibi: IDF Generals Only Worried About Covering Their Asses on Iran, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam There’s trouble in the Promised Land when Israel’s prime minister complains (in English) that his generals are pussies afraid to attack Iran for fear of the finger of blame pointing at them when the commission of inquiry seeks to assign blame for failures. In fact, I just learned a new Hebrew colloquialism I hadn’t encountered: kas-tach (“covering the tuchus” or “ass”). As I’ve written here numerous times in the past few weeks, all is not well in Israel’s political and military echelons... Syrian Activists Face Moral Toll Over Brutal Revolt Against Assad, by Mike Giglio | The Daily Beast ...As’ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, who runs the popular Angry Arab blog, says the revolution has been fully co-opted—with the armed element, led by the main umbrella fighting front, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), working to pull the civilian elements to its side. “The Free Syrian Army took over and hijacked the uprising. Most activists stayed home and washed their hands of what was going on, and some still supported the FSA even if they did not join,” he says. “There is no civilian movement left: it was killed by the regime and the FSA.”.. Aug 4, 2012 Palestinian history on a billboard versus Israeli fanaticism on the ground | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson pits the facts of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinian people and theft of Palestinian land, as displayed recently in a New York billboard – against the arguments of the Zionist apologists for colonization and ethnic cleansing. He argues that only the worldwide boycott, sanctions and divestment campaign has a realistic chance of changing Israeli attitudes and behaviour... Did the US cause Fallujah's birth defects? | Al Jazeera English New research is underway on the alarming increase in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. In November 2004, the US led an assault on Fallujah - a stronghold of opposition against the US occupation, west of Baghdad. Intense bombardment left many of its buildings destroyed and displaced much of the 300,000-strong population. Eventually, the US was forced to admit that amongst its arsenal was white phosphorus - a substance the Pentagon described as a 'chemical weapon' when it was used by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds. In addition, eyewitnesses claimed the US military used "unusual weapons". Subsequent investigations have focused on the possible use of depleted uranium... What Does Moshe Silman Have to Do with the Occupation? by Asma Agbarieh-Zahalka | Palestine Chronicle ...If the PA collapses, Israel will have to resume direct rule, once again assuming responsibility for financing the Occupation out of its own budget, all while struggling with a third Intifada, which many believe is inevitable - it's only a matter of time and a suitable spark. Just as Silman revealed the economic failure, a Palestinian uprising will expose the failure of the political system... Syria and Iran Towards A "Soft Invasion"? The Launching of a "Humanitarian War" against Syria, by Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research The Obama administration, in liaison with London, Paris, Tel Aviv and NATO headquarters in Brussels, is mulling over various military "intervention options" directed against Syria, including the conduct of both naval and air operations in support of "opposition" rebel forces on the ground. The US and its impervious British ally are on a "humanitarian war footing". Allied forces including intelligence operatives and special forces have reinforced their presence on the ground in support of the opposition's "Free Syrian Army" (FSA). The British Ministry of Defense is reported to be "drawing up contingency plans in case the UK decides to deploy troops to the volatile region".. Illegitimate Sanctions on Iran | Stephen Lendman Washington bears full responsibility for imposing illegitimate sanctions on Iran. Other countries are pressured to agree. Doing so harms their own interests. Heavy-handed US bullying largely gets its way. Rule of law principles and norms are violated. At issue is advancing Washington's imperium. America's 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act lets presidents claim unusual and/or extraordinary foreign threats, declare a national emergency, and regulate commerce accordingly... Iraq: Britain’s War Against Truth, by Felicity Arbuthnot | Dissident Voice In the last several days, the shreds of Britain’s threadbare claim to democracy have been ripped away. The refusal by the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government to disclose documents integral to the decision to join the US in invading, occupying, destroying and dismantling the entire civil authority and infrastructure of the very State of Iraq, follows their Labour predecessors, the invasion’s co-architects. The Iraq Inquiry findings under Sir John Chilcot’s Chairmanship will now be delayed for over another year... Russia Is Saving the World in Syria | Watching America ...Is it worth it for Russia and the countries that are not ready to blindly support any initiatives of the American president’s administration to step on the same rakes twice, thrice, even four times? The most recent example is Libya. On March 17, 2011, Moscow, by refusing in the U.N. Security Council to veto Resolution 1973 on implementing a no-fly zone above Libyan territory, was in fact trying to prevent the international community from getting itself in another deadlock and international relations crisis. Even then, Russian diplomats were suggesting that the Libyans should choose a common road by themselves, and the Security Council must simply help them sit down at the negotiating table... Syria’s Mutating Conflict | International Crisis Group ...Of all the ongoing changes, perhaps the most significant and least appreciated is what, over time, has become of the regime. The one that existed at the outset of the conflict almost certainly could not have survived the spectacular killing of top officials in the heart of its traditional stronghold; street combat in Damascus, Aleppo and a string of other towns; the loss of important border crossings with Turkey and Iraq; all amid near-total economic devastation and diplomatic opprobrium. That, a year and a half later, its new incarnation not only withstood those blows but vigorously counterpunched sends a message worthy of reflection... Syria's rebels have a new villain: the United States, by Scott Peterson | CS Monitor For those challenging the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the list of villains has always included the regime's closest allies: Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. But as the death toll rises and Syria marks 17 months and counting of revolt, many in the embattled city of Aleppo say they have added another, perhaps surprising, villain: the United States... Dismembering the Arab World, by Makram Khoury-Machool | Dissident Voice The behaviour of the NATO-aligned, anti-Syrian bloc is now blatant enough for us to better understand what is happening in Syria. On the one hand, we find political operators such the ad-hoc group ‘Friends of Syria’, and on the other, two Arab personalities, both ministers of two Gulf sheikhdoms. The first group includes NATO-led heads of states, with a barely disguised Israeli master-plan conceived by the likes of Bernard-Henri Lévy. Rather than being the friends of Syria, these personalities are arguably working to secure their own financial interests in, around, and via Syria. The two Arab politicians are the two foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar... Ousting Bashar al-Assad | Roi Tov ...For a long time, Israel and Syria had peaceful relations. Formally at war, they respected their borders, fastidiously keeping an enforced quiet along them. This situation changed after the beginning of the Arab Spring in early 2011. Since then, Western regimes and their allies have been openly attempting to achieve regime change in Damascus. On November 20, 2011, Russia blamed the West for creating and seeking provocations in Syria. Moreover, evidence has emerged for the US-backing for regime change in Syria. In mid-April 2011, WikiLeaks revealed that the US had funded $6 million to a London-based opposition group Movement for Justice and Development.. Many other testimonies exist, including a violent Israeli provocation... Ehud Barak Admits Iran Has Defensive Posture, No Weapons Program, by John Glaser | Antiwar The most important and most frequently ignored distinction in the debate about Iran and its nuclear program is that Iran’s current postures are defensive in nature, not offensive. Right-wing pundits constantly harangue about Iran’s supposed intentions to annihilate Israel, wipe Israel off the map, and so on – and this, they claim, is why it’s so important to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. This assumes Iran would want a nuclear weapon for offensive purposes, which is incorrect.. NIAC, Coalition Urge Congress Not to Block Food and Medicine to Iran, by National Iranian American Council | Payvand NIAC joined the Friends Committee on National Legislation and nine other national organizations to urge the U.S. Congress to reject proposed sanctions legislation that would cut off humanitarian items to Iran, such as food, medicine, and family remittances. The coalition letter reiterated opposition to indiscriminate sanctions against Iran and emphasized that cutting off humanitarian trade of food and medicine with Iran would lead to a humanitarian disaster... Flynt Leverett on Al Jazeera: Syria as a Proxy Arena for the Obama Administration’s Campaign Against the Islamic Republic of Iran | The Race for Iran ...Flynt argues that possibilities for achieving a political resolution to what has become a civil war in Syria have been undermined not by Russia, China, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s intransigence, but, first and foremost, by the United States. Washington has been supporting Syrian oppositionists for years; from the outbreak of unrest in Syria in 2011, the Obama Administration has focused not on what might actually benefit Syrians but on the prospect of regime change in Damascus as a way of weakening Iran... Aug 3, 2012 Is US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney just a pretty face, then? | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood reviews the the erratic progress of a stumblebum, US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, from gaffes in London and Warsaw to a spectacular display of racism and ignorance during a visit to Israel where he paid homage to America’s Zionist kingmakers... Flipping The Script: The Western Media's Syria Propaganda Is Falling Apart, by Saman Mohammadi | Information Clearing House ..."This is the next domino to fall in the Arab Spring, the rebels must be supported and Assad has to step down," so went the propaganda. And yadda yadda. The media's insane lies were repeated for months. Major media channels were engaged in non-stop propaganda warfare to destroy the independent Syrian state and reduce Syrians to slavery. But then something remarkable and unexpected happened. Some Western journalists began telling the truth about the origins of the conflict, the true motives behind the West's anti-Syria propaganda, and the nature of the unpopular Syrian opposition. The spell was broken... NATO’s Secret Kurdish War: Turkey Prepares Iraq-Style Attacks Inside Syria, by Rick Rozoff | Stop NATO ..It is patently obvious that Turkey is on the verge of repeating its Iraq policy in Syria. Unlike Iraq, though, air strikes and incursions by troops and armored vehicles in Syria will meet with a different response than they have in Iraq. That is, they will meet with a response. As did the Turkish F-4 fighter jet that flew over Syrian territory and was shot down in June, leading to Turkey seeking NATO assistance under Article 4 provisions. The first Turkish warplane that drops a bomb or fires a missile on Syrian territory will provoke a reaction far more severe than the violation of Syrian airspace in June... Shame on All of Us, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar ..The United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, which originated in Berman’s office, was reportedly drafted in part by AIPAC. The bill signed by Obama basically provides Israel with a blank check drawn on the U.S. taxpayer to maintain its “qualitative military edge” over all of its neighbors combined. It requires the White House to prepare an annual report on how that superiority is being maintained... A Persian Gulf ‘Hot Line’ Proposed by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity | Consortium News With tensions again rising in the Persian Gulf, an accident or provocation around the narrow Strait of Hormuz could precipitate a war. In this memo for President Obama, 11 former U.S. intelligence officials urge a U.S.-Iranian system for communications — a “hot line” — in case of crisis... The Call: November 28 - December 1 2012 | World Social Forum Free Palestine Occupied Palestine is part of every free heartbeat in this world and her cause continues to inspire solidarity across the globe. The World Social Forum Free Palestine is an expression of the human instinct to unite for justice and freedom and an echo of the World Social Forum’s opposition to neo-liberal hegemony, colonialism, and racism through struggles for social, political and economic alternatives to promote justice, equality, and the sovereignty of peoples. The WSF Free Palestine will be a global encounter of broad-based popular and civil society mobilizations from around the world... Iranian dissidents don’t want war, by Ramin Jahanbegloo and R.N. Khatami | The Progressive Mitt Romney’s heated rhetoric on Iran is not helpful. While in Israel, he vowed to use “any and all measures” to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear capability. But an attack on Iran, by Israel or the United States, could have catastrophic consequences for all sides involved. President Obama’s rhetoric has alternated between calm and belligerent.. there is one more risk that hasn’t received the attention it deserves: the serious risk of undermining the democracy movement in Iran. Human rights activists and civil society actors in Iran have suffered long to bring about democratic change through nonviolent means... AIPAC pushes bill that will establish virtual state of war with Iran | Council for the National Interest This message was sent to all members of Congress from AIPAC this morning. The bill it describes establishes a virtual state of war with Iran, even though Iran has no nuclear weapons program... Panetta Calls Netanyahu, Barak “Piggish, Ungrateful” for Lack of Appreciation of U.S. Efforts Against Iran, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam There are those Israelis and other serious Middle East observers who don’t believe Israel will attack Iran. They’re far too optimistic in my view. It foolish to talk in such definitive terms as Larry Derfner does in the 972 Magazine post linked above. Leon Panetta , Tom Donilon and members of the Joint Chiefs don’t flock to Tel Aviv for its sunny beaches. They come because they’re damn scared Israel will take matters into its own hands and they want to do everything possible to avoid such a potential catastrophe... Is Iran “The Most Destabilizing Nation in the World” or an Essential Partner for Building Stability in the Middle East? | The Race for Iran ...Standing reality on its head—at least in the eyes of most Middle Easterners—presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney declared during his recent visit to Israel that the Islamic Republic is “the most destabilizing nation in the world.” In fact, reputable surveys conducted by international and regional polling groups show that, by orders of magnitude, largely Sunni Arab populations see Israel and the United States as much bigger threats to their security and interests than Iran... Aleppo’s Christians arm against Islamists | Global Post ...Abu George sees the regime’s control over Aleppo as slipping, directly threatening his community. “The armed fighters took over the Midan police station, very close to the Christian quarters. There are no police there now, so how can we live? We see on TV armed young men with beards shouting, ‘God is great!’ and calling for jihad. We have the right to defend ourselves.” The exact number of Christians in Aleppo, a city of three million people, is not known but estimates vary between 100,000 and 250,000... Responsibility to Protect (R2P): Concept and Implementation, Opportunity and Misuse, by Hans-Christian von Sponeck | Dissident Voice ...The gap between the rhetoric of nations on one side and the actual use of power politics on the other has always been wide. Accordingly, the consequences for human security have been disastrous. The crises in recent decades in the Middle East, Central and South Asia and in Europe clearly show that protecting the civilian population, despite assertions to the contrary, has always been of secondary consideration. The domestic and external interests of individual UN member states or military alliances invariably were more important. Responsibility to protect, as proposed at the UN Summit in 2005, ultimately turned into ‘irresponsibility to protect’.. US politicians prostitute their country for Israel lobby support | Redress Information & Analysis Jamal Kanj argues that, in their eagerness for Israel lobby election campaign funds and Jewish votes, US politicians have put Israeli interests ahead of those of the American people, displaying rare unity in doling out more US taxpayer money for Israel at a time of economic recession, possibly violating the US constitution and in effect surrendering America's UN veto power to Israel... Hezbollah’s Arms and the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, by Franklin Lamb | Al Manar From this observer’s experience in Lebanon there is only one cosmic like event that is nearly as predictable from Ramlet al Baida beach in Beirut, near Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, than the sun coming up like thunder out of Syria across the eastern Bekaa Valley every morning. And that might be the regularity of the on cue from Washington, Riyadh, Doha, and Tel Aviv cacophonous chorus that very frequently these days wafts throughout this country and region: “Hezbollah must give up their weapons!”.. Neoconservative War Criminals in Our Midst, by Paul Craig Roberts | Palestine Chronicle The State Department has an office that hunts German war criminals. Bureaucracies being what they are, the office will exist into the next century when any surviving German prison guards will be 200 years old. From time to time the State Department claims to have found a lowly German soldier who was assigned as a prison camp guard. The ancient personage, who had lived in the US for the past 50 or 60 years without doing harm to anyone, is then merciless persecuted, usually on the basis of hearsay.. What the State Department needs is an office that rounds up American war criminals... Aug 2, 2012 Noam Chomsky: Reflections on a Lifetime of Engagement with Zionism, the Palestine Question, and American Empire | Information Clearing House ...I don’t know of any other sensible way that has been proposed to move towards a binational, or one-state, solution other than accepting the world as it is and then taking the next step, which has been pretty clear for thirty years. There’s an overwhelming international consensus behind the two-state settlement essentially along the internationally recognized borders. I think it’s a rotten solution but I think it’s a stage towards a better solution, and I don’t know of any other approach... UN reduced to tool for attacks on Syria: Interview with Webster Tarpley | YouTube An analyst says UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon should be impeached for his move in 'turning the world body into an instrument malleable in the hands of the Western military alliance (NATO) against independent countries... Israel’s Message to Panetta: US Can’t Stop an Attack on Iran, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s high profile visit to Israel won’t include going over any specific attack plans, officials insist, but it will center around Israel’s far-right government making clear that the US can’t even theoretically stop them from attacking Iran whenever they decide to... Obama or Romney: Who Loves Israel More? by MJ Rosenberg | Huffington Post ...the two parties do not have differing views on Israel. Both candidates and both parties support the Netanyahu government's positions on Iran, the Palestinians, Hamas and pretty much everything else. Sure, Mitt Romney went overboard in Jerusalem by saying that on critical matters like Iran we should defer to the wishes of Israel (rather than decide these issues exclusively based on U.S. interests) but that is what successive administrations have been doing for years. It is certainly what the Obama administration has done. Obama just doesn't proclaim it while in Israel's capital... Ten Questions on Bulgaria Bus Attack, by Kaveh L. Afrasiabi | IRD The attack on a bus outside the airport at Burgas, Bulgaria on Wednesday, July 18th is still under investigation and so far there are few clues regarding the perpetrator(s). The Bulgarian government has published the photo of the bomber’s blown-up face, describing him as “blue-eyed Caucasian.” While we await the final result of the on-going investigation, the sum of the available information raises several troubling questions that cast doubt on the official story – that a “bus load of Israeli passengers” was exploded by a bomb. Rather, the information suggests that the targeted bus was empty and only the passengers in the bus next to it were injured... Israeli Battle Between Political-Military Echelons Plays Out Amid Censorship of IDF Chief | Tikun-Olam The Battle of the Titans continues between the Israeli political and military echelons over attacking Iran. I broke a gag here a few days ago that had been imposed by order of Defense Minister Barak against critical statements by IDF chief Benny Gantz regarding a potential Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The chief of staff said the Israeli home front was not prepared to bear the brunt of an Iranian counter attack and that the military couldn’t land a convincing blow that would block the Iranian nuclear program... Washington's Aleppo Strategy Failed | Stephen Lendman Since WW II, America lost every war it waged. Its only success was destroying nations and murdering millions. Imagine that legacy for current and future historians to address. Imagine how few will do it accurately and honorably. Imagine a nation glorifying wars in the name of peace. Historians Charles Beard and Gore Vidal called them "perpetual war(s) for perpetual peace.".. The quanats of Iran, by H. E. Wulff | Scientific American A traveler flying over Iran can see plainly that the country has an arid climate. The Iranian plateau is largely desert. Most of Iran (excepting areas in the northwestern provinces and along the southern shores of the Caspian Sea) receives only six to 10 inches of rainfall a year. Other regions of the world with so little rainfall (for example the dry heart of Australia) are barren of attempts at agriculture. Yet Iran is a farming country that not only grows its own food but also manages to produce crops for export, such as cotton, dried fruits, oilseeds and so on. It has achieved this remarkable accomplishment by developing an ingenious system for tapping underground water... Choosing Hegemony: Turkey, NATO and the Path to War, by Eric Draitser | Stop Imperialism As the destabilization of Syria has evolved over the course of the last year and a half, what has become apparent to political observers is the seeming incongruity of Turkey’s role in the region. While Ankara has attempted in recent years to establish itself as a force for political and economic change and progress, it has also assumed the role of a NATO attack dog, becoming a crucial weapon in the arsenal of the Western imperialists... Wrath of Israel: London 2012 Olympic Games create controversy in Israel | Roi Tov ...The Munich Massacre took place during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, which was then part of West Germany. On September 5, eleven members of the Israeli Olympic Team—athletes and coaches—were taken hostage and killed during Operation Ikrit and Biram, performed by a group named “Black September.” A German police officer was also killed. Five of the eight members of Black September were killed during a failed rescue attempt; the three surviving ones were captured but later released by West Germany following the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner by their organization. Israel’s answer was violent. Its highest level of operation is known as “Operation Wrath of God,”.. NATO's business strategy: No need to attack, just buy them up | RT On August 1, the first NATO military facility in Russia is launching its operations. The site, designed to assist NATO's withdrawal from Afghanistan, is the latest component in the alliance's strategy of tightening its grip on Central Asia. While the first military supplies to Afghanistan began traversing Russia in 2009, opening the “Transatlantic” alliance’s first military facility in the middle of the Eurasian continent, on the Volga river, is a tremendous achievement for NATO – and an even bigger defeat for Russia. The Ulyanovsk facility represents a new stage for the US in building a military, political, social, and economic fabric of support inside Russia... Gore Vidal, RIP | P U L S E ..Here is an archive of Gore Vidal’s writings and media appearances, some of them rare, that PULSE has published over the years. Also, don’t miss this blistering 1986 response to the Norman Podhoretz in which Vidal is identifying predilections, particularly the neoconservatives' passionate attachment to Israel, that 17 years later would lead the US to disaster in Iraq... AIPAC Must Register As Foreign Agent! | The Petition Site ..With a budget of $65 million, and membership now standing at over 100,000, it is no wonder that congressional staffers consider it one of the most powerful and effective lobbies on Capitol Hill. This 100,000-strong group has been described as an agent of the Israeli government, and those accusations were substantiated in 2005 when a pentagon analyst plead guilty to passing military secrets to two AIPAC employees en route to Israel. After some political wrangling, all charges were dropped against the two Jewish AIPAC employees in 2009, even though the analyst agreed to testify against the AIPAC employees, and the government had overwhelming evidence to prosecute... Analysis of Financial Terrorism in America, by David DeGraw | Amped Status Despite increasing personal financial hardship, most Americans remain unaware of the economic world war currently unfolding. An all-pervasive corporate and government propaganda campaign has effectively obscured this blatant reality. After extensive analysis, it is evident that World War III is a war between the richest one-tenth of one percent of the global population and 99.9 percent of humanity. Or, as I have called it, The Economic Elite Vs. The People. This war has been a one-sided attack thus far... Aug 1, 2012 The Destruction of Syria, by Patrick Seale | Agence Global ..Syria and its Iranian ally are once again under imminent threat. The United States and Israel make no secret of their goal to bring down both the Damascus and Tehran regimes. No doubt some Israeli strategists believe that it would be greatly to their country’s advantage if Syria were dismembered and permanently weakened by the creation of a small Alawi state around the port-city of Latakia in the north-west, in much the same way as Iraq was dismembered and permanently weakened by the creation of the Kurdish Regional Government in the north of the country, with its capital at Irbil... People of the Book, by Oren Kessler | Foreign Policy ...Mormon leaders espoused Zionist sympathies decades before the Jewish national movement was born. In 1841, Joseph Smith sent his "personal apostle" Orson Hyde to Jerusalem, where on the Mount of Olives he beseeched God to "restore the kingdom unto Israel - raise up Jerusalem as its capital, and continue her people a distinct nation and government." Today, Jerusalem's very own Orson Hyde Park sits on the spot of that prophecy, just a few steps from BYU's Jerusalem Center... Black Dossier: HSBC & Terrorist Finance | Antifascist Calling ..HSBC, the London-based British multinational banking and financial services giant operates in 85 countries with 7,200 offices worldwide with assets totaling more than $2.6 trillion. They're also caught-up in serial scandals: the Libor interest rate-fixing scam, serious charges of drug money laundering as well as suspicions that bank officers "palled around" with terrorist financiers. Founded in 1865 when the British Crown seized Hong Kong as a colony in the aftermath of the First Opium War, British merchants (today we'd call them drug lords) needed a bank to handle the brisk trade in the illicit substance and launched the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company Limited... Pentagon Chief Rallies Arab, Israeli Allies Against Syria, Iran, by Rick Rozoff | Stop NATO U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has begun a five-day, four-nation tour of North Africa and the Middle East to consolidate military ties with traditional allies against the backdrop of mounting Western pressure aimed at the governments of Syria and Iran. His first two stops are to Tunisia and Egypt, long-standing American military client states and members of NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue partnership program. The next two are to Israel and Jordan, also Mediterranean Dialogue members, the first the main and the second one of the largest recipients of American military aid... EU Gives WikiLeaks Propaganda About Chemical Weapons in Syria, by Susanne Posel | Occupy Corporatism Members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are not just tied to al-Qaeda, the CIA-funded fake Islamic terrorist group, they ARE al-Qaeda. In a video of members of the FSA, these men are brandishing AK-47s provided to them by the CIA and have al-Qaeda flags flying in the background. Al-Qaeda has been used by the US government in insurgent recruitment and in destabilizing Middle Eastern governments. The new recruits, being trained by the CIA in Turkey, then being allocated to the FSA and being used to destroy the Syrian government are directly tied to al-Qaeda. In the mainstream media, al-Qaeda is still touted as a separate terrorist organization with no ties to the US government... The Mouse That Roared, by Philip Giraldi | The American Conservative Iran is again front-page news, on this occasion for threatening the United States Navy. A lengthy featured article in the Washington Post describes how Iran has obtained new sophisticated anti-ship missiles and has added fast attack boats and submarines. It has also adopted new tactics involving swarming attacks that would put US vessels in a 360-degree battle environment, testing the ability of the conventional warships to maintain effective defense in all directions simultaneously... David Swanson: Man of Peace, by Kelley B. Vlahos | Antiwar ...Kucinich lost and Swanson went to work for a branch of the AFL-CIO before falling in full time with the peace movement, where he happily resides today. In the intervening years, there was another presidential election, several major antiwar protests and the Occupy movement. He fell into that after planning the “October 11” rallies, which were scheduled a year before Occupy sprang to life, but ended up coinciding with Occupy’s arrival to D.C. last fall. Swanson became a regular at Freedom Plaza until the encampment was dismantled and the final vestiges swept away, last month... A record number of American teens volunteer to enlist in the IDF | IMRA ..This summer, a record 350 Jewish American teens made the brave decision to leave behind their families and homes in the Unites States, move to Israel completely on their own and volunteer to enlist to the IDF. The majority of these highly motivated, Zionistic teens wish to draft to combat and infantry units, a select group will even join the most classified, elite commando units in the IDF... [For resume purposes, this is a ticket to join the American political elite.] Portrait of a Drone Killer: ‘I Have a Duty, and I Execute My Duty,’ by William Grigg | Lew Rockwell One wonders if drone pilot Col. D. Scott Brenton listens to Louis Armstrong in the suburban Air National Guard Base in Syracuse from which he murders people 7,000 miles away. “I see mothers with children, I see fathers with children, I see fathers with mothers, I see kids playing soccer,” Brenton tells the New York Times. Drone operators see their intended targets “wake up in the morning, do their work, go to sleep at night,” explains Dave, another high-tech murderer who killed from an office cockpit at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base and who now trains new recruits to the cyber-killer corps at New Mexico’s Holloman Air Force Base... Aldous Huxley interview by Mike Wallace (1958) | YouTube A rare 1958 interview from the author of "Brave New World".. Iran Diplomacy Runs Into Sanctions-Happy US Congress, by Jasmin Ramsey | Antiwar Congress’s rush to pass new sanctions against Iran ahead of the August recess comes amid an intensified drive to pin the Iranian government to deadly acts of international terrorism and amplified moves by U.S. politicians to demonstrate their support for Mideast ally Israel ahead of the November presidential election. The push to implement more punitive measures against an increasingly demonized Iran could undermine efforts to resolve the longstanding impasse over Iran’s nuclear program peacefully... [The last thing the ZioNazis want is a peaceful resolution, and what they dowant they usually get.] Welcome to Nazareth, by Jonathan Cook | AMEU Until a few years ago, the only road northwards from central Israel to Nazareth rose from the fertile fields of the Jezreel Valley to wend its way steeply up the craggy face of a hill in the Lower Galilee range, following what must have once been a goat-herders’ path. The crawl upwards—often behind a tourist coach or a truck—provided plenty of time to admire a dramatic outcrop of rock known as Mount Precipice, the spot where, according to Christian tradition, the townsfolk of ancient Nazareth tried to hurl a young Jesus to his death after he proclaimed himself the son of God... EU tells Israel: “Do your worst without fear of sanction by us” | Redress Information & Analysis Alan Hart contrasts the European Union’s brave words chastizing Israel about its land theft and ethnic cleansing of the occupied Palestinian territories with its deeds rewarding Israeli crimes, and he attributes this contradiction to Western politicians’ fear of offending Zionism and thereby guaranteeing a career-destroying false charge of anti-Semitism... Israeli rhetoric lays the groundwork for an attack on Iran, by Ray McGovern | Baltimore Sun Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's strong pro-Israel statements over the weekend, including his endorsement of Jerusalem as Israel's capital (a reversal of long-standing U.S. policy), increases the pressure on President Barack Obama to prove that he is an equally strong backer of Israel. The key question is whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will interpret the presidential campaign rhetoric as an open invitation to provoke hostilities with Iran, in the expectation that President Obama will feel forced to jump in with both feet in support of our "ally" Israel... War is a Force that Gives us Meaning, with Chris Hedges | YouTube Veteran New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges has covered conflicts in Bosnia, El Salvador and Israel. Tune in for this thought-provoking lecture based on his best selling book that argues life is lived most intensely in times of war, often with tragic consequences... |
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