...When morality rests upon the Loyalty foundation, says Haidt, right is anything that builds and defends the tribe; wrong is anything that undermines it. Thus violence against members of the other tribe is moral, and betrayal of one’s own tribe is the worst crime of all. That sounds terrible to people whose morality rests upon Care and Fairness—and the reason why, for example, conservatives vilify whistleblower Edward Snowden while many liberals hail him as a hero. But Haidt argues the Loyalty foundation has deep evolutionary roots and cannot be wished away by liberals. Humans have always had to band together to survive and thrive, and bonding with some seems to naturally involve excluding others...

 

...it is becoming common to say that America, like Turkey before it, now has what Marc Ambinder and John Tirman have called a deep state behind the public one. And this parallel government is guided in surveillance matters by its own Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, which according to the New York Times, “has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court.” Thanks largely to Edward Snowden, it is now clear that the FISA Court has permitted this deep state to expand surveillance beyond the tiny number of known and suspected Islamic terrorists, to any incipient protest movement that might challenge the policies of the American war machine...

 

  Why, after 65 years, is the Palestinian homeland still under foreign military occupation and total blockade when international law and the United Nations say it shouldn’t be? And why have the Palestinians been pressured – yet again – to submit to ‘direct negotiations’, lamb versus voracious wolf, to haggle and plead for their freedom? The answer appears to lie in the deliberate hash made of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967...

 

  There was a time during the 30-month covert dirty war on Syria when the Western governments and mainstream media would make a clamor over reported massacres. Now, despicably, these governments and media just ignore such atrocities. Why? Because it is increasingly clear that the groups committing these crimes against thousands of Syrian civilians are the foreign-backed mercenaries, whom the Western media and their governments have tried to lionize as “rebels” fighting for “democratic freedom”..

 

...This opportunistic Israeli effort reminds us of art’s value as a weapon. The Lebanese singer and Arab Idol judge, Ragheb Alama, described Assaf as the “rocket” from Gaza, and the Israeli analysts are probably still trying to assess the implications of this success. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah was similarly focused not on Assaf’s ballads, but on what political value it could reap out of him. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ officials and family also got in on the act, turning up in the audience on several occasions...

 

  Newly published recollections by the former French ambassador to Iran suggest that Iran was not running a covert nuclear weapons programme that it then decided to halt in late 2003, as concluded by U.S. intelligence in 2007. Ambassador Francois Nicoullaud recounted conversations with high-ranking Iranian officials indicating that Tehran’s then nuclear policy chief – and now president-elect – Hassan Rouhani did not know what research projects relating to nuclear weapons had been carried out over the years...

 

  In the last day of July 2013, Israel issued an unprecedented warning towards the "Syrian Free Army," the mercenaries attempting to topple the Syrian government. Considering that Israel facilitated the supplies of weapons to them, this looks odd. Yet, Syria is not Libya. Mercenaries can't juggernaut there. The Israeli reaction came after a heated press conference that took place on July 16. The conference was offered by General Salim Idris, Commander of the Free Syrian Army as a result of the UK abandoning plans to arm the Syrian opposition...

 

  Ethnic cleansing advocate Alan Dershowitz is campaigning today for the release of arch spy Jonathan Pollard. In a commentary published on the repulsive Jewish media outlet The Algemeiner, Dershowitz argues “the time has come…for the United States to do the right thing with regard to Jonathan Pollard.” Dershowitz’ argument is amusing as usual.  “Pollard poses no continuing danger to America, since he has not had access to our secrets for nearly 30 years.”..

 

  With peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials beginning again, many analysts have given their reasons for being either cautiously hopeful or sceptical. Yet what is incredible is that, twenty years on from the Oslo Accords, many people still have not asked more fundamental questions about the paradigm of the official peace process itself. Of all the various reasons to doubt whether this resumption of talks will produce an agreement, a crucial one is that Israel's maximal position - the most on offer within the political mainstream - is untenable from the point of view of the Palestinian people's struggle for liberation and return...

 

  Are we witnessing a regional civil war in the Middle East? Can it be identified as a Sunni-Shia conflict? What will replace the old neocolonial order in the region? And, are oil-rich countries playing a positive role in this turmoil? CrossTalking with Grant Smith and Charles Wolf...

 

  For hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals the ADL’s embrace has been too close for comfort and “unconscionable” would be a term more befitting the organization’s activities. What is definitely in order is a reminder that this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the exposure of a nation-wide spying operation run by the ADL that went back at least five decades. In January, 1993, San Francisco newspapers reported that the city’s police department had raided the ADL’s Northern California office and discovered it was keeping files on more than 600 largely liberal civic organizations and over 10,000 individuals...

 

  Go  ahead, be a fool, tell yourself that you are still part of that once proud American “middle-class,” then dare look in the mirror and see yourself as nothing but a zombie. Or, rather, the new identifiable species in the US: the Amerizombie, a reanimated economic corpse, undead but politically clueless to the new global realities. Still managing to put food on the table, living on borrowed money and tiredly keeping both your mind and your mouth shut as you face America’s sad sack economic reality?  Well, if so… you are doing it at your peril; living your economic agony in denial, begging for that last pain-killing shot of economic morphine before you expire...

 

  Sometimes I hear from readers who complain that I lay too much blame on AIPAC for our one-sided and failed Middle East policies. What can I say? I worked at AIPAC for almost six years (1973-1975, 1982-1986) so I know how it operates. Additionally, because I left AIPAC on good terms, I maintained friendships with its staff (no more!) and they filled me in on how the lobby was increasing its power over Congress. Of course, I saw that myself during 15 years as a House and Senate staffer. AIPAC runs the Middle East policy show on Capitol Hill...

 

  Let’s recap the situation regarding criminal conduct within the U.S. national-security state, just to see how the national-security state has succeeded in corrupting the morals and values of our nation...

 

  Leaders of Israel’s Palestinian minority have accused the Israeli authorities of intensifying efforts to push Christian and Muslim communities into conflict, as part of a long-running divide-and-rule strategy towards the country’s Palestinian citizens. The allegations have been prompted by a series of initiatives to pressure Christian school-leavers into the army, breaking the community’s blanket rejection of the Israeli army draft for the past 65 years. Leaders from the Palestinian community, Christian and Muslim, who have spoken against this new enlistment effort have been called in for investigation by Israel’s secret police. In an Orwellian inversion, they have been accused of “incitement to violence.”..

 

  Poetry. Words, voice and video by Anis Hamadeh...