Dec 31, 2012 An order on which a black flag flies, by Adam Keller | MCW ...Altogether, during the forty-five years of the Israeli occupation over the Palestinians, there were thousands of refusers and objectors – conscripts and reservists, young people at the start of their adult life and family men in their forties, and in the past decade also quite a lot of women. Many of them spent time behind bars, at Military Prison 4 and Military Prison 6 and Women's Prison 400. The latest is Nathan Blanc of Haifa, who had so far three times gotten the order to join the occupation army and three times refused and was three times sent to prison where he is incarcerated at this moment... [There are indeed a few Israeli heroes among the much more numerous cowards and sociopaths] “Wiping Countries Off the Map”: Who’s Failing the “Failed States,” by Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research Washington is in the “business of destroying” a very long list of countries. Who is “Wiping Countries off the Map”? Iran or the United States? During a period which is euphemistically called the “post-war era” –extending from 1945 to the present–, the US has directly or indirectly attacked more than 40 countries. While the tenets of US foreign policy are predicated on the “spread of democracy”, US interventionism –through military means and covert operations– has resulted in the outright destabilization and partition of sovereign nations. Destroying countries is part of a US Imperial project, a process of global domination... Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy, by Naomi Wolf | The Guardian It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves... Rinaldo Francesca interviews Gilad Atzmon (Part 6) | Gilad Atzmon In this interview we elaborated on the troubling ideological and spiritual continuum between hardcore Zionism, Jewish Socialists and the Left. We spoke about Mazpen, Moshe Machover, Richard Seymour, Leo Strauss, the Neocons, David Aaronvitch and the racist Harry's Place. We also looked into Fascism, Zionism, we spoke about Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Heidegger and PRE-Traumatic Stress Disorder... Pity Our Nation, by Jafar Ramini | Paul Eisen ...our lamented leaders proclaim Pyrrhic victories and make false pronouncements of unity in confronting our common enemy. Other Arab leaders have made Gaza their Mecca in the last few weeks. They came bearing gifts and empty promises. Yet we are as divided and fragmented as ever. Which leaves me wondering; where is the Arab nation and where is the Muslim Ummah that I grew up believing in and waiting for? Another sad irony is the unnecessary and unwarranted destruction of Iraq, Libya and now Syria. Why is all this so very sad? It is because our imported enemies are aided and abetted by our so-called Muslim Ummah and the Arab nation... The Jewish people's ultimate treasure hunt, by Ofer Aderet | Haaretz ...Earlier this month, he published his findings in an article, "The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses," in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford University Press. One of the scholars who reviewed the article before its publication described it as more profound than all the previous studies on the ancestry of the Jewish people... [Just another reminder that Zionism is an ethnic Khazarian exercise in cultural morbidity – for the time being, the Zombies are winning, but the endgame approaches and the Humans will ultimately be victorious.] World War II Negative Stereotype has to be Stopped, by Dr. Ingrid Rimland | Veterans Today Herewith I announce that I have set myself the worthy goal of shedding light on who we really are and what we really say. I’ll try to do this weekly. Who’s “we”, you ask? We, whom our numerous detractors like to call all kinds of nasty names – among them, “Holocaust Deniers.” It’s got to stop – and it won’t stop by our salutary efforts of heaping facts on top of facts and reason upon reason. For thirty-plus years, that’s what Revisionists have done... Dec 30, 2012 Oliver Stone Tears Apart Obama's Empire | YouTube Abby Martin sits down with Academy Award Winning Director, Oliver Stone, and Historian Peter Kuznick, to talk about US foreign policy and the Obama administration's disregard for the rule of law... Ahead of Our Time: 'New' Revelations About Wiesenthal and Lincoln, by Mark Weber | Institute for Historical Review ..Twenty one years ago, we published a carefully researched article, "Simon Wiesenthal: Bogus 'Nazi Hunter'" that presented compelling evidence proving that this much-praised man had lied about his past and his alleged achievements. "Wiesenthal's reputation is undeserved," we wrote. "The man whom the Washington Post calls the 'Holocaust's Avenging Angel' has a well-documented record of reckless disregard for truth. He has lied about his own wartime experiences. He has misrepresented his postwar 'Nazi-hunting' achievements, and has spread vile falsehoods about alleged German atrocities. He is certainly no moral authority.".. Liberals Back to Giving Obama a Pass, by John R. MacArthur | Harper's Magazine If I were to describe a president who escalated a cruelly pointless war, raised more than twice as much campaign money from large individual donors as from small ones (including more than $27 million from lawyers and lobbyists), engaged in widespread violations of civil liberties and the Constitution, and whose most vaunted legislative achievements were to protect banks and pave the way for transfers of large amounts of money from the public treasury to private insurance companies, you would probably assume I was talking about a right-wing Republican... How Jewish is Hollywood? by Joel Stein | LA Times A poll finds more Americans disagree with the statement that 'Jews control Hollywood.' But here's one Jew who doesn't. I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22% of Americans now believe "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," down from nearly 50% in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood... [A classic: Pride goeth before a fall] Syria faces Humanitarian Catastrophe, by Bill Van Auken | Global Research The United Nations reported Tuesday that its relief operations have been compelled to cut food rations provided to 1.5 million Syrians because of dwindling resources and rising demand. “The humanitarian community in Syria is struggling,” said UN relief official John Ging. “People are losing hope because they just see more violence on the horizon, they just see deterioration.” “It’s becoming more and more difficult just to do the very basic things to help people to survive,” said Ging, who is director of operations at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Conditions have grown increasingly desperate as the Syrian winter sets in... The National Security State’s Embrace of Dictatorships, by Jacob G. Hornberger | The Future of Freedom Foundation The New York Times published an article on December 25 that exposes a harsh reality about U.S. foreign policy to mainstream Americans. The article, entitled “Bahrain, a Brutal Ally,” focuses on one of the principal dark sides of U.S. foreign policy: the U.S. national-security state’s ardent support of brutal dictatorships, this one being Bahrain. Why is the U.S. government supporting the brutal dictatorship in Bahrain while opposing, say, the brutal dictatorship in Syria? The answer is very simple... GOP and Feinstein join to fulfill Obama's demand for renewed warrantless eavesdropping, by Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian ...Six months before, when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster "any bill" that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that - the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 - and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself... The Larger Question of Chuck Hagel, by Ray McGovern | Antiwar The Israel Lobby is hell bent on sabotaging President Barack Obama’s tentative plan to appoint former Sen. Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. And – with Obama now dithering about this selection – the Lobby and its neocon allies sense another impending victory. Perhaps The New Yorker’s Connie Bruck described Hagel’s predicament best in assessing why the Israel Lobby is so determined to destroy the Nebraska Republican though he is “a committed supporter of Israel.”.. [A herd of cowards, whores and traitors is going to suddenly stand tall and take a principled stand? Not too bloody likely.] UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi: Only two ways for Syria - political process or hell | The Vineyard of the Saker ...Assad agrees that the future of Syria should be decided upon in elections, and Assad agrees to negotiate without any pre-conditions. The opposition reject both the ballot and any negotiations. I would say that by now only drooling idiots or fundamentally dishonest people could seriously lay the blame for the carnage taking place on Assad... Romain Rolland: The collective insanity, the terrible spirit of war | Stop NATO Following on a sequence of apparently insignificant events, relations between France and Germany suddenly became strained: and, in a few days, the usual neighborly attitude of banal courtesy passed into the provocative mood which precedes war. There was nothing surprising in this, except to those who were living under the illusion that the world is governed by reason... US-NATO-Israeli Agenda: Syria to be Subdivided into “Three Weaker States” | Global Research Bashar Al Assad’s war is with Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. The issue is not about Bashar it is about the destruction of Syria and its transformation into three states It is about Syria being owned by the Muslim Brotherhood and its Security Apparatus being destroyed and replaced by that of the Muslim Brotherhood. There’s a deal being struck between Israel, Turkey and the EU to transform Syria into three states.. So there won’t be any state that will have armed forces capable of confronting Israel... Dec 29, 2012 Nakba Revisited: Tragedy of Syria’s Palestinians and Centrality of Right of Return, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle ...As long as Israel continues to flout international law, millions of Palestinian refugees will remain captive in regional struggles that use them as political fodder or see them as a demographic problem, or even worse, a threat. And with the US ensuring that no meaningful action is ever taken to alleviate the suffering of the refugees, thousands will continue to find themselves at some border, queuing for food and pleading their cases to anyone willing to listen. Syria is now the latest episode of that long drawn tragedy... Obama Administration Seeks to Strengthen Rupert Murdoch, by Matt Stoller | Naked Capitalism Earlier this year, Obama Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed relaxing media ownership rules to allow Rupert Murdoch to buy the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. It’s not something you’ll see discussed much, because Republicans like the fact that Murdoch is going to get more power, while Democrats don’t want to admit that Obama is helping the person framed as their arch-nemesis. This is part of a larger pattern – media consolidation is one of the many structural problems that Obama promised to deal with... The Study of Evil | Political Ponerology ..With very few exceptions down the ages, discussions in moral philosophy - the study of right conduct - have failed to systematically investigate the origin, nature, and course of evil in a manner free from supernatural imaginings. Evil was often considered something to be endured rather than something that could be understood and eliminated by rational measures. And - as Lobaczewski demonstrates - the origin of evil actually lies outside the boundaries of the conventional worldview within which the earlier moral inquiries and literary explorations were conducted. Evil requires a truly modern and scientific approach to lay bare its secrets... [Israel is the current poster child] Beware the Anti-Anti-War Left: Why Humanitarian Interventionism is a Dead End, by Jean Bricmont | Voltaire Net Unable to find a new ideological identity after the demise of its big Soviet brother, the European left has engulfed itself in societal issues at home and humanitarian interventionism abroad. In an inconsistent stance, it calls for the protection of peoples by U.S. imperialism. But how can it wish to protect anyone when it has given up its own freedom?.. A “humanitarian intervention” in Syria – 150 years ago, by Pascal Herren | Voltaire Net A humanitarian intervention in Syria? Humanitarian grounds had already been used in 1860 ... precisely by France as a pretext to intervene militarily in Syria, then an Ottoman province. In this article, Geneva University scholar Pascal Herren lays bare the true intentions of France under Napoleon III, which were every bit as disreputable as those pursued under Sarkozy or Hollande... Brutal Bahraini State Terror | Stephen Lendman For over a year, Saudi and Al-Khalifa monarchy security forces terrorized nonviolent protesters. Thousands braved tear gas, beatings, rubber bullets, live fire, arrests, torture and disappearances. Washington's very much involved. Bahrain's the home of America's Fifth Fleet. Millions of dollars in aid's provided. So are weapons, including armored vehicles, bunker buster missiles, wire-guided ones, and more... Knesset member appeals Israel election ban | MCW News A Palestinian-Israeli politician is appealing a court ruling barring her from running in Israel's general elections next month. Last week, Knesset member Haneen Zoabi was disqualified for "undermining" Israel because she was on board the Mavi Marmara ship in May 2010 as part of an international flotilla challenging Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip. The Turkish ship was boarded by Israeli special forces as it approached waters off Gaza. In the violence that followed, nine activists were shot dead by the commando's. Israel's Supreme Court now has four days to decide whether to revoke Zoabi's election ban... Washington’s Blog: Facebook Censors Prominent Political Critics | Naked Capitalism We’ve previously documented that the largest social media websites censor government criticism. For example, Facebook pays low-wage foreign workers to delete certain content based upon a censorship list. For instance, Facebook deletes accounts created by any Palestinian resistance groups. Today, Facebook deactivated the Facebook accounts of some of the leading American political critics... A Person Called Nobody, by Uri Avnery | Counterpunch Suddenly, I realized that a new star had appeared on the political firmament of Israel. Until yesterday I did not even know of its existence. A respected public opinion poll posed a Nixonesque question: From which politician would you buy a used car? The answer was stunning: not a single politician reached the mark of even 10%. Except one who would be trusted by a massive 34% of potential voters: a certain Nobody. This was not the only question to which the voters showed a marked preference for this mysterious candidate... For Whom the Syrian Bell Tolls, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times ...In this Syrian tragedy, there is no Hemingway young hero, no Robert Jordan in the International Brigades fighting alongside Republican guerrillas against the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. In the Syrian civil war, the international brigades are mostly of the mercenary, Salafi-jihadi, beheading and car-bombing type. And the (few) young Americans in place are basically high-tech pawns in a game played by the rapacious NATOGCC club (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its Arab puppets of the Gulf Cooperation Council)... Dec 28, 2012 Zion Elders Block Lieberman | Roi Tov ...The scene seems taken from a John Le Carré book. The Israeli Ambassador to Belarus wanted to give valuable information to his Minister of Foreign Affairs. Aware of the surveillance, they couldn't trust any place in Israel. Instead, they opted for a private meeting in a dark hotel room in Minsk. Both of them having been born in Communist states, they didn't trust even that remote location and kept talking nonsense... An off-the-record New Year conversation with President Obama | Alan Hart Q: Mr. President, I’d like to begin this conversation with a quote from a recent article by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times. He wrote: “The only thing standing between Israel and national suicide any more is America and its willingness to tell Israel the truth.” If you were free to speak your mind to Israel, I mean Israel’s Jews, what would be your message?.. [He lays it out succinctly and accurately. So, my friends, how do we get there? Hint: leaving it in the hands of the Palestinians is not an option - they have all they can do just to stay alive.] Obama Will Cave in to Israel and Drop Chuck Hagel’s Nomination, By Mohamed Khodr | Sabbah Report ...The Israeli Lobby’s smear campaign and opposition to Senator Chuck Hagel’s nomination, unfairly attacking him as an “Anti-Semite”, arises from their perception that Senator Hagel is not a sufficiently compliant advocate for Israel’s interests such as their demand that America again pays and dies for another war in the Middle East, this time against Iran. Who would believe that a reelected American President who’s prohibited from running again would even face such a choice: America’s interests or Israel’s?.. The Bipartisan Assault on the Middle East: Imperial Lockstep, by Jason Hirthler | Counterpunch Imperial adventures are nothing new in the Middle East. Neither is their glorification, as Peter O’Toole’s pained Lawrence of Arabia eternally reminds us. But for a decade or so now, things have been heating up, as if to coincide with climate change and fears of declining petroleum reserves. Fuelled by 9/11 and inspired by material avarice, the West has been proudly shouldering its “White Man’s Burden” across the Middle East and has now dipped into the Maghreb. Under the rippling flag of “democracy promotion,” the West has attempted to install prefabricated democracies in regional populations already steeped in decades of interventions—mostly at the hands of noble Anglo-Saxon tribes... A Flat Earth New Year, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar There is plenty of evidence that the earth is actually flat. I have personally driven on route 66 out west and noted that the road is perfectly flat and runs in a straight line. Those pictures you see of the globelike earth allegedly taken from the moon are fake, as was the fraudulent moon landing in 1969, which was actually filmed in Arizona. The round earth fraud was fabricated many centuries ago by Muslim extremists named Galileo and Copernicus, both of whom became Catholics to conceal their nefarious activities... A word of advice about the Middle East – we’ve reached the ‘tipping point’ with cliches, by Robert Fisk | The Independent Remember the days when we thought Egypt’s path to democracy was a done deal? Western-trained Mohamed Morsi had invited the people to come and meet him in Hosni Mubarak’s former presidential palace, the old military toffs in the “Supreme Council of the Armed Forces” had been pensioned off and the International Monetary Fund was waiting to bestow some of those cruel deprivations upon Egypt that would ready it for our financial benevolence. How happy the Middle East optimists were by mid-2012... 'If occupation continues, there will be intifada' | Jerusalem Post ..In an interview from his prison cell, convicted Fatah terrorist Marwan Barghouti told Channel 10 that if he was Palestinian Authority president, he wouldn't be able to promise that there would not be a third intifada, as PA President Mahmoud Abbas has done. Channel 10 aired the interview - jointly conducted with Haaretz - on Wednesday night, marking the first Israeli interview of its kind after the ten years of prison time that the revered Palestinian figure has served. He warned that if the occupation continued, there will be a third intifada, but it will be a popular non-violent uprising... Extreme Makeover?: The Withering of Arab Jerusalem | International Crisis Group For many Arab East Jerusalemites, the battle for their city is all but lost. Settlements have hemmed in their neighbourhoods, which have become slums in the midst of an expanding Jewish presence; trade with the West Bank has been choked off by the Separation Barrier and checkpoints; organised political life has been virtually eradicated by the clampdown on Palestinian institutions; their social and economic deprivation is rendered the more obvious by proximity to better-off Jewish neighbours... Racist reporting gets free hand in Israeli press, by Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel | +972 Magazine It is not altogether true that free expression is under threat in Israel. Sure, one may have been led into believing so, what with the passing in 2011 of the “Nakba Law,” penalizing commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba, and the “Anti-Boycott Law,” restricting anyone calling for a boycott of Israeli institutions, including in the occupied Palestinian territories. Yet, for decades, the Hebrew media has essentially been given free rein to incite to racism and violence against Palestinians, with seemingly little self-reflection and even less accountability... Dec 27, 2012 The Fifth Column Expands: Israel recruits citizen advocates in Europe, by Harriet Sherwood | The Guardian Israel has instructed its embassies in 10 European countries, including the UK, each to recruit 1,000 members of the public to act as advocates for its policies in a new public relations offensive. A cable from the foreign affairs ministry was sent to embassies last week, with instructions from Avigdor Lieberman, the controversial and extreme right-wing foreign minister, to adopt a range of measures aimed at improving Israel's standing in Europe... [There are already many thousands of them in the West, both paid and unpaid fanatics - Goebbels would have been sick with envy]] Forbidden to celebrate: Israel's war on Christmas continues despite Netanyahu's claim of tolerance, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada ...The ban on Christmas at Safad college is no isolated incident. For several years, Shimon Gapso, the notoriously racist mayor of the Israeli settlement of “Upper Nazareth” in the Galilee, has banned Christmas trees, calling them a provocation. “Nazareth Illit [Upper Nazareth] is a Jewish city and it will not happen – not this year and not next year, so long as I am a mayor,” Gapso said. According to journalist Jonathan Cook in Nazareth, such bans continue and are widespread this year with Israel’s state-financed rabbis warning hotels and restaurants that they will lose their kosher certifications if they put up trees or other Christmas decorations or hold Christmas events... Former Negotiator: Sanctions Unable to Pressure Iran More Than War Time | Fars News Agency A former Iranian nuclear negotiator dismissed the impacts of economic pressures on Iran, underlining that none of the current sanctions could surpass what Iran endured during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, which in effect was a global assault on the young Islamic Republic.. he stressed that the recent 'Islamic Awakening,' labeled by the West as the 'Arab Spring,' has strengthened his view on the US collapse in the region and beyond. He concludes that the latest developments in the region indicate ''the failure of United States dominance...” United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) Statement on Syria | IA Center The ominous signs of impending war with Syria escalate. NATO is massing troops and military equipment on Syria's borders, and preparing to install missiles aimed at Syria. U.S. warships are stationed off Syria’s coast. ‘Special operation’ units are readied. The U.S. government has been supplying arms and logistical support to a few selected Syrian paramilitary groups favored by the U.S. as “replacements” for Assad. The media bombards us with arguments that support foreign intervention, supposedly for “humanitarian reasons”. Like WMD’s in Iraq, alarms are sounded, with no credible evidence, that Assad may unleash chemical weapons, thus establishing a pretext for invasion... Jan 23, 2013, Israel: Year Zero | Roi Tov On December 26, 2012, Israel's largest newspaper—Yedioth Aharonot—followed the usual script while reporting a secret event. It cannot be considered a secret after being published, but at least it remains unacknowledged by the Israeli government. The technique is simple, the item is leaked to someone abroad; in this case Al Quds Al Arabi, a respected newspaper owned by Palestinians exiled in London. Then, the Israeli newspaper can freely quote the item. Today, the scoop was that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Amman, Jordan, with King Abdullah II during Christmas. The main topic dealt with was an Israeli attack on Syria... Jewish Projection For Christmas | Gilad Atzmon ...'Progressiveness' is a tribal inclination and should be realised as a secular replacement for 'chosen-ness'. Being 'progressive' implies that someone else must be ‘reactionary’. Jewish 'progressiveness' should be grasped, therefore’ as a 'kosher secular supremacy'. It stands in total opposition to the idea of equality, human brotherhood and universalism... On the US killing of children and others, by Lawrence Davidson | Redress Information & Analysis ...Gun culture was an integral part of the frontier culture and, for many Americans, is still symbolic of their personal liberty. But in the end the gun is only a device through which to wield power and it is power that Americans aspire to above all. It is their “manifest destiny”. Too many, Americans see themselves as exceptional: blessed by God, expert practitioners of free enterprise and the people who really know what freedom and rights are all about. And, in the process of using power to demonstrate this exceptional status, both as individuals and as a nation, they consistently make a bloody mess... Human Rights Get Short Shrift in Israel | Stephen Lendman The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) assesses human rights in Israel annually. It's 2012 report is "bleak." It's true in virtually every category assessed. Netanyahu and dominant Knesset hardliners spurn human and civil rights. They do so for Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and most Jews. Neoliberal harshness is policy. So are hardline belligerence and institutionalized racism. Poverty, homelessness, and hunger harm growing numbers in society... Israel to build 942 more settler homes | MCW News Israel has advanced the process of building 942 more settler homes in East Jerusalem under a new fast-track plan to tighten its grip on the territory, which the Palestinians seek to have as the capital of Palestine. A government planning committee on Monday moved the project to the advanced stage of asking contractors to submit bids to build them, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday... [Israel thumbs its nose at the world as the provocative and illegal theft continues, in plain sight] A Militaristic Culture, by Laura Finley | Counterpunch ...the U.S. is a violent, militaristic culture that, in virtually every institution, demonstrates violence as a means of solving problems. The US is a society organized for war. We spend almost 50 percent of federal tax monies every year on the military—not just to pay soldiers and veterans, but to engage in conflict, for research and development of weapons and equipment, and more. When this amount of funding is spent on the military, it clearly cannot be used to build infrastructure, to enhance the quality of our public schools, to provide social services, to assist the poor, hungry and mentally ill, etc... Newtown, Afghanistan, by Robert Dreyfuss | The Nation Twenty children killed in Newtown, Connecticut, and a huge outpouring in response: wall-to-wall media coverage, an avalanche of flowers and stuffed animals, a river of ink in editorials, nationwide flags at half mast, memorial funds and much, much more. Tens, hundreds, thousands of children killed in Afghanistan. Response: almost nothing. Are Afghan children any less precious? Or does it make a difference that the killers were wearing American uniforms, piloting US helicopters and fighters, and operating drones?.. FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring | Partnership for Civil Justice Fund ...This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,.. These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America... Read more... Dec 26, 2012 The Spirit of Christmas and the End to All Wars: The Christmas Truce of 1914 | Global Research The Christmas Truce of 1914 was an initiative of the soldiers on both sides; it was a mark of human solidarity and fraternity against the political and military architects of World War I. The Spirit of Christmas in December 1914 prevailed:.. [See also Joyeux Noel Trailer] Beit Laham, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance ...This important child of Bethlehem is recognized by Christians, Muslims, and most of humanity (including atheists and agnostics) as a great teacher and a saviour. He taught all humanity that it is important to tell the truth and stand with the weak and oppressed of this world. He taught by example. Palestinian Christians believe he became the first martyr for non-violent resistance to foreign occupation of Palestine. He said "let the children come to me" and implored us to believe in goodness in the same way that children do and then to ACT on our belief. Whether we are Christian or not, this is the message coming forth from Bethlehem this season and all the time... Stuff Jerusalem, by Michael Dickinson | Counterpunch ...“Treat other people as you would like to be treated,” was his simple message. Is that advice too difficult to put into practice? The alternative of the message is practiced by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people, and the cruel treatment they suffer is similar to that practiced by Christians against the Jews during their long exile. In many ways Zionists are identical to Nazis... Suliman: 'Al Jazeera plays the piper, but Qatar calls the tune' | Deutsche Welle ...You notice with these cases that it involves governments who have fallen out of favor with Qatar's rulers. Libya, Syria and Yemen, for example. Other countries like Jordan and Bahrain are experiencing similar phenomena - rebellion and protest against their ruling classes. But there's far less reporting on them. You'll notice how that corresponds to the state of Qatar's foreign policy. This is a very serious issue, because we at Al Jazeera were always proud to say: We're financed by Qatar, but the state never interferes with our reporting. Now we suddenly find ourselves in a situation in which our reporting is precisely aligned with Qatari foreign policy... The Origins of the First and Second World Wars: Humanity's Twin Swords of Damocles, by Francis Boyle | MCW ...over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific” would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic Obama administration are threatening to set off World War III... Anonymous Hacks DEBKA.com | Cryptome DEBKA.com is an Israeli-Based News Agency, which has relations with the Israeli Intelligence Agency (MOSSAD) and Military sources, “Tongue of MOSSAD”. DEBKA first started around 2000 in purpose of polluting media with Zionist-Oriented news and rumors.. We have managed to hack their systems and acquire highly sensitive information, including employees and authors personal information, labs details and of course their subscribers. For now, we only release portion of what we have got which includes subscribers emails and passwords (Most of them are retired MOSSAD agents!!!). At the end we have a message for them:.. [Right on cyberwarriors – the world is depending on you] The Spirit of Christmas: George W. Bush and Tony Blair banned from the Birthplace of Jesus Christ, by Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research War criminals George W. Bush and Tony Blair were banned for life in April 2003 from the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, widely believed to be the birth-place of Jesus Christ. The ban was announced at the height of the illegal US-allied bombing and invasion of Iraq.. This ban should now be extended to a number of other Western leaders including President Barack Obama, who in the course of their mandate have waged illegal and criminal wars on the people of Libya and Syria... Dec 25, 2012 Happy Christmas, O prisoners of the Little Town of Bethlehem | Intifada Palestine While carving the turkey for your family and merrily quaffing mulled wine ‘midst happy laughter, remember that the romantic Little Town of Bethlehem at the centre of our childhood Christmases is now “an immense prison” in the words of Michel Sabbah, former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, and entirely surrounded by Israel’s ugly 8-metre separation wall bristling with machine-gun towers. The good citizens of Bethlehem are cut off from their capital Jerusalem, only six miles away, the rest of the West Bank and the whole world... [Season's Greetings!] Myths about the Jewish State: Interview with Miko Peled | YouTube Abby Martin talks to Peace Activist and Author of 'The General's Son', Miko Peled, about the main misconceptions about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and about the proposed idea of irradiating a 'Jewish State' all together... The Crucifixion of Chuck Hagel, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar This Christmas is a bleak one for those who hold out hope that there might be peace on earth — or just a more peaceful earth. In the Middle East, wars and rumors of war roil an already volatile region. A proxy war in Syria shows every sign of metastasizing into a larger, regional conflict, with the protagonists — Syria’s Ba’athist regime and the US-supported jihadists of the rebel army — digging in for a long fight. After the conclusion of the Israeli attack on Gaza, which was turned into a shooting gallery by the IDF, the region is smoldering with a murderous hatred... Gilad Atzmon on the End of Israeli militarism, on Afshin Rattansi's TV Christmas Special | YouTube The Burial of Bethlehem, by William A. Cook | Sabbah Report ...How inhuman to cement families behind such forms of fear, grotesque images of human failure where fear of fellow necessitates walling out all who are different, where security exists when one is isolated from his brother, a sister from her sister, when isolation breeds indifference, forgetfulness, an abiding hate of the unknown that blossoms inside the heart like some infectious disease and makes peace impossible... The terror lurking in a Christmas tree | Jonathan Cook Israel’s large Palestinian minority is often spoken of in terms of the threat it poses to the Jewish majority. Palestinian citizens’ reproductive rate constitutes a “demographic timebomb”, while their main political programme – Israel’s reform into “a state of all its citizens” – is proof for most Israeli Jews that their compatriots are really a “fifth column”. But who would imagine that Israeli Jews could be so intimidated by the innocuous Christmas tree?.. False Flags & America's 'National Interest' | YouTube Max Igan & Ken O'Keefe in Gaza with a humorous and serious look at false flag history making and the illusion of 'American interests'. Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies helps us illustrate our points. Zionism, anti-Semitism and colonialism, by Joseph Massad | MCW Ever since the inception of the Zionist movement, Zionist thinkers presented their national colonial project as a response to anti-Semitism. Whereas Zionists saw anti-Semitism as a symptom, if not a diagnosis, of the Jewish Question, they offered Zionism as the final cure that would eradicate anti-Semitism in Europe once and for all... Odd Man Out | Stephen Lendman It's America's accustomed role. It's longstanding. It lets Israel get away with murder and much more. Washington's support permits Israel to commit repeated crimes of war, against humanity, slow-motion genocide, and countless other human and civil rights abuses too grave to ignore. America stands defiant. Israel's worst crimes are generously funded and backed. Security Council resolutions condemning Israel are blocked. American Jews and Jewish America | Paul Eisen ...Does Israel really serve America’s interests and is their relationship wholly based on the sharing of these interests? Consider how much in terms of goodwill from other nations America loses by its support for Israel, and consider the power and influence of the “Jewish”, “Zionist” or “pro-Israel” lobby, as when many an otherwise responsible lawmaker, faced with the prospect of an intervention in their re-election campaign from the Jewish lobby, seems happy to put his or her re-election prospects way in front of what is good for America... The Real Obstacles to Successful Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran Lie in Washington, Not Tehran | The Race for Iran ...the Israelis know that the only kind of deal you could really get out of this process that would have any meaning for both sides would be a deal that actually recognized Iran’s right to enrich—again, under safeguards, not building a nuclear weapon, but they do have a right to enrich…That’s what the Israelis are out to stop. They do not want the United States, other Western powers, to accept this basic fact of international law and international life—that the Iranians have this right, and they are not going to be bullied into giving it up... Dec 24, 2012 America’s Hype over WMD: Five Invasion Plots, Three Continents, Identical Lies, by Felicity Arbuthnot | Global Research As the sabre rattling against Syria gets ever louder, the allegations ever wilder and double standards, stirring, plotting and terrorist financing (sorry: “aiding the legitimate opposition”) neon lit, it is instructive to look at the justifications presented by US Administrations for a few other murderous incursions in recent history... Previously unseen letter from Clement Barker recounting World War One Christmas Day truce of 1914 is revealed | Capitalbay Information Portal A previously-unseen letter which describes the legendary football match of the Christmas Day truce during the First World War has been discovered. The letter was sent by staff sergeant Clement Barker four days after Christmas 1914, when the British and German troops famously emerged from their trenches in peace. Sgt Barker, from Ipswich, Suffolk, describes how the truce began after a German messenger walked across no man's land on Christmas Eve to broker the temporary cease-fire... Netanyahu Kills the Sabbath | Roi Tov ...The issue is deadly serious. Towards the end of 1976 Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's coalition with the religious parties faced a motion of no confidence brought by the Haredi party Agudat Israel. The reason for the motion was four F-15 jets sent by the US to the IDF during the Sabbath. Instead of facing the shame of losing the vote, Rabin dissolved his government and called for early elections in May 1977. Menachem Begin won the elections, and the Likud era begun. Should Netanyahu be worried?.. Cut Military Waste, Not Charitable Deductions, by Jon Basil Utley | The American Conservative ...The military establishment’s waste is so extraordinary that anyone in Washington who defends it either plans for America to start more wars (e.g., neoconservatives) or is on the take in some way—perhaps subsidized by a think tank getting money from military contractors... Straight From the Horse's Mouth | Gilad Atzmon In the following letter, ‘Israeli Advocate’, an Israeli propaganda operator, outlines the ‘reasons’ Chuck Hagel's nomination to the position of Secretary of Defense is ‘bad for the United States and Israel.’ This text provides us with a valuable insight into Jewish American, Zionist and Israeli interference with American politics and political culture. This leaflet was written by people who seek Zionist control of America. Let me tell you, an ‘antisemite’ couldn't do a better job. The time is ripe for America to liberate itself of its Jewish lobby... Roadmap to Apartheid | YouTube There are many lessons to draw from the South African experience of Apartheid relevant to conflicts all over the world. Roadmap to Apartheid explores in detail the apartheid comparison as it is used in the enduring Israel-Palestine conflict. As much an historical document of the rise and fall of apartheid, the film shows us why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them... Watch Human Rights Watch: A Tribute to Prof Richard Falk | Gilad Atzmon ...Prof’ Falk provides us with a glimpse into the possibility of true Jewish emancipation - the capacity to break out of the mental, intellectual and non-ethical ghetto. Moreover, this latest tale of HRW’s Herem (Kosher expulsion) of one of the greatest humanists of our generation is actually an educational event. For many years, many of us saw Zionism and Israel as the mother and father of contemporary evil, but now, many of us have come to realise that Jewish progressive politics is every bit as sinister but, unlike Zionism that is only tainted with deception, the Jewish progressive discourse is inherently dishonest - it speaks universal but it thinks tribal... Imperial Warrior Kerry at State | Stephen Lendman Hillary Clinton will leave State. She'll further her 2016 presidential ambitions. She wants to succeed Obama. She hopes to become America's first woman president. If successful, she'll likely exceed his worst policies. He did what supporters thought impossible. He outdid George Bush. Imagine what's ahead in term two... [She totally creeps me out and he has definitively gone over to the Dark Side – what a pair! – look out, world] Dec 23, 2012 Jordan: Arab Spring Key Battle | Roi Tov ...In recent months, Netanyahu's government has announced in a variety of ways that it will unofficially annex the West Bank, and that until year 2040, there would be 14 million Jews between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.. Netanyahu is serious about this; the ideology of his party was concisely defined by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1929; "Two Banks has the Jordan – This is ours and, that is as well," he wrote in a poem.. To achieve his declared goal, Netanyahu must remove the Palestinians from the West Bank.. Israel hopes that the Arab Spring will change the Jordanian rule into a Palestinian one, thus easing the transfer... The Not-So-Strange Case of Oskar Groning | Paul Eisen ...The Holocaust narrative has lots of ‘perpetrators’ who have nearly fallen over themselves to plead guilty with graphic statements and lurid confessions - all supporting the gas-chamber narrative. The trouble is, that the forensic, topographical, documentary, chemical, photographic etc. evidence, all contradict the narrative. So what gives? Why would these perpetrators incriminate themselves?.. [These squirrely testimonies are all the evidence of gas chambers that there is, and it’s far from convincing] The disproportionate value of Israeli life, by Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera English Following the conclusion of Operation "Pillar of Defence", Israel's latest bout of terror in Gaza, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Ha'aretz: “Since the first Qassam rocket fell on Israel in April 2001, 59 Israelis have been killed - and 4,717 Palestinians. The numbers don't lie, as they say in less lethal fields, and this proportion is horrifying. It ought to disturb every Israeli.” Indeed, as any observer of regional casualty counts will be quite aware, Israel's history has constituted one steady reaffirmation of the inferior value of Arab life... Palestinians Live in the Hour Before Dawn: The UN Stumbles on Israeli Settlements, by Vijay Prashad | Counterpunch On December 19, the US was saved from having to whip out its veto to defend Israel. The UN Security Council (UNSC) debated the issue of settlement building by Israel on the occupied Palestinian Territories. The bloc of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) hoped for a vote that would condemn Israeli action, with the NAM statement calling for Israel “to put a stop to settlement construction and to provocative announcements about building the settlements.” “Settlement activities and illegal actions by extremist Israeli settlers,” the NAM bloc underscored, “are also causing extensive physical, economic and social devastation throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”.. Are the US and Israel Heading for a Showdown? by Ira Chernus and Tom Engelhardt | Tom Dispatch Here’s the question no one is asking as 2012 ends, especially given the effusive public support the Obama administration offered Israel in its recent conflict with Hamas in Gaza: Will 2013 be a year of confrontation between Washington and Jerusalem? It’s on no one’s agenda for the New Year. But it could happen anyway... Stand Up to the Intimidators, by Paul Pillar | The National Interest The effort to slander Chuck Hagel and to torpedo his potential nomination to be secretary of defense has reached such intensity that there is now much more at stake in this nomination than just who will be running the Pentagon over the next four years... Syrian Rebels Set Up ‘Religious Police’ Around Aleppo, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar Saudi Arabia’s harsh Police of Vice and Virtue seem to be setting up shop in northern Syria, with locals reporting that rebel forces have establish Saudi-style religious police around the outskirts of Aleppo, and at least one high-ranking member of the Saudi version was seen in a video taking part... The Torture Chronicle, by Philip Giraldi | The American Conservative If there is one word missing from the United States government’s post-9/11 lexicon it is “accountability.” While perfectly legal though illicit sexual encounters apparently continue to rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, leading to resignations, no one has been punished for malfeasance, torture, secret prisons, or extraordinary renditions. Indeed, the Obama administration stated in 2009 that it would not punish CIA torturers because it prefers to “look forward and not back,”.. Scandal Alert: Congress Is Quietly Abandoning the 5th Amendment, by Conor Friedersdorf | The Atlantic ..It may seem like imprisoning an American citizen without charges or trial transgresses against the United States Constitution and basic norms of Western justice dating back to the Magna Carta. It may seem like reiterating the right to due process contained in the 5th Amendment would be uncontroversial. It may seem like a United States senator would be widely ridiculed for suggesting that American citizens can be imprisoned indefinitely without chargers or trial, and that if numerous U.S. senators took that position, the press would treat the issue with at least as much urgency as "the fiscal cliff" or the possibility of a new assault weapons bill or likely nominees for Cabinet posts... Magician’s Diversion: Bleeding Syria to Death, by Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle According to various definitions, politicide can be used to describe the destruction of a government or a specific socio-political group, such as the Palestinians, when it overlaps with genocide. It can be extended to a state, a system and a country. Saddam Hussein attempted politicide by trying to wipe Kuwait off the map. In the 1930s the fascists committed politicide by destroying the Spanish government... Dec 22, 2012 Prof. Ilan Pappe: 'Perfidious Albion? The British Legacy in Palestine' | YouTube Rebel Controlled Yarmouk Empties Pending Government Counter-Attack, by Franklin Lamb | Palestine Chronicle ...Nearly 70% (UNWRA puts the figure at 90%) of the 180,000 Yarmouk camp residents in the 2.1 square-kilometer camp area have, as of this morning fled. This figure was provided by, Anwar Raja, politburo member of the ‘General Command” with whom I had a three hour meeting during the night of 12/18/2012 inside the north edge of Yarmouk. Any camp resident with a MTN or Syriatel mobile phone got a text message, from the Syrian military to leave the camp for their own safety... Read more... The Nonexistent 'Jewish Lobby' Declares War on Chuck Hagel, by M.J. Rosenberg | MCW News The American Jewish Committee was the latest Jewish organization to enlist in the battle to prevent President Barack Obama from naming former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. The onslaught is unprecedented. Never before has virtually the entire organized Jewish community combined to stop a presidential cabinet appointment because it deems the potential nominee insufficiently devoted to Israel. Of course, below the cabinet level, the lobby has been manning the barricades against critics of any Israeli government policies for decades... Read more... Roger Waters UN Address - Nov 29, 2012 | YouTube Roger Waters, speaking on behalf of the Russell Tribunal, delivers a very nicely put speech in front of delegates on International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People... Why This Fight, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar There has been a lot of pushback against the neoconservatives‘ preemptive smear campaign against Chuck Hagel, much of it illuminating, but none as clear-headed as that by Paul Pillar in The National Interest, who starts out his piece this way: "The effort to slander Chuck Hagel and to torpedo his potential nomination to be secretary of defense has reached such intensity that there is now much more at stake in this nomination than just who will be running the Pentagon over the next four years.".. Read more... Why the current Iran nuclear talks are doomed | Iran Affairs ..There are reports of renewed talks between Iran and the P5+1 over Iran's nuclear program. I'm sort of getting bored by restating this over and over for the last few years: These talks will not go anywhere, for the very simple reason that Iran's nuclear program is not, and never was, the real issue. The "Iranian nuclear threat" is just a pretext, cooked up by the US as a pretext and justification for a policy of imposing regime-change in Iran, just as "WMDs in Iraq" was a pretext. And the LAST THING the US wants is for this issue to be resolved peacefully... Read more... Palestinian leadership still asleep at the wheel? by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis ...Now that access to the proper UN legal machinery is available for Palestinians, it is ridiculous to claim that EU and other sanctions are “the only way” to halt Israel’s illegal settlement campaign and salvage the two-state solution. Did 138 nations vote to upgrade Palestine’s UN status for nothing? Only a few days ago Agent Cameron renewed his loyal pledge: “We said we’d resist calls for boycotts on Israel and yes – we are going to keep on working with Israel, doing business with Israel, trading with Israel.” And earlier this month Agent Hague was saying that European trade sanctions against Israel were not an option... Read more... Arab-Israeli politician Haneen Zoabi disqualified from re-election, by Harriet Sherwood | The Guardian An Israeli-Arab politician who took part in an attempt to breach the blockade of Gaza has been disqualified from standing in next month's general election after being accused of undermining the state of Israel... Read more... Jerusalem Post’s Self-Censorship Protects Leading Religious Leader, Cleanses Israeli Racism | Tikun Olam ..A Jerusalem Post report from 2010 featured some especially noxious remarks by Shas founder, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, likening non-Jews to donkeys whose job was to serve Jews in the days of the messiah. This Nana-Channel 10 report features video of the former chief rabbi’s original statements. Here are a few passages translated:.. Read more... Murdoch, Petraeus and the US Media Matrix, by Jonathan Cook | Common Dreams Carl Bernstein, of All the President’s Men fame, has a revealing commentary in the Guardian today, though revealing not entirely in a way he appears to understand. Bernstein highlights a story first disclosed earlier this month in the Washington Post by his former journalistic partner Bob Woodward that media mogul Rupert Murdoch tried to “buy the US presidency”.. Read more... Jesus Was a Palestinian, by Gideon Polya | MCW News On Christmas Day 2012 the World will again celebrate the birth of Jesus but it needs to loudly and publicly proclaim the truth that Jesus was a Palestinian. Goodhearted and honest Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Jews, Animists, Agnostics and Atheists would all agree that Jesus was a wonderful humanitarian, and an outstanding moral philosopher. All of us, from Atheists to Zoroastrians, recognize Jesus as the most renowned Indigenous Palestinian... Read more... Obama’s Hagel test: Is the bell about to toll for US Zionist lobby? by Alan Hart | Redress Information & Analysis By all accounts President Obama wants to nominate Chuck Hagel, the former two-term Republican senator from Nebraska, to replace Leon Panetta at the Pentagon as secretary of defence, but a coalition led by the Zionist lobby is mounting a smear campaign against Hagel. Why? It hopes to persuade Obama that he would be foolish to nominate Hagel because he is unlikely to be confirmed by a Senate in which many members are content to do Zionism’s bidding in order to protect their own backs... Read more... Canada-Syria: White Dominions, Brown Colonies, by Eric Walberg | Dissident Voice France and Britain have begun to circle Syria like vultures (my apologies to vultures, who politely wait for their prey to die). They plan to save Syria from chemical bombs – a surreal replay of Suez 1956, where France and Britain cooked up a pretext to invade Egypt with the US posing as the more restrained gang member, not to mention Iraq 2003, when they reversed their roles. Meanwhile, Canada sings on demand for its US-Israeli sponsors... Julian Assange: "my work will not be cowed" | YouTube In a speech to supporters from the balcony of the Ecuadorean embassy where he fled to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex charges, Julian Assange defends Wikileaks, saying it will make more revelations next year... HRW: Israeli attacks on media in Gaza 'unlawful' | MCW ...During the eight day conflict, the Israeli army targeted media personnel and offices of al Aqsa TV, al Quds Educational Radio, Quds TV, and Alwan Radio. The four attacks on journalists and media facilities by Israel in Gaza "was unlawful as it violated the laws of war by targeting civilians and civilian objects that were making no apparent contribution to Palestinian military operations," the rights organisation said in a statement on Thursday... Israel’s new Herods and Palestine’s Christians | Redress Information & Analysis ...the descendants of the Messiah in Palestine are marking another year of abominable Israeli occupation. Indulged with indifference towards the collective sorrow cloaking the hearts of native Christians in the Holy Land, the West turns another leaf, rejoicing the birth of the prince of peace. However, in present-day Palestine, Jesus is no longer a prince and peace remains a phantom... Do They Really Believe The People Are This Dumb? | Moon of Alabama David Ignatius, unofficial spokesperson for the CIA, has a new "scoop": ‘A defector’s account of Syrian chemical weapons on the move.’ If you believe Ignatius' story, please contact me for further information about our large bridge sale. Christmas behind the wall, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Human Rights Newsletter We remembered the 20 children killed in Connecticut (where I last lived in the USA). We remembered them and we also remembered the 33 children killed last month by US funded Israeli war machine and the hundreds of Pakistani and Afghani children killed this year by US drone attacks. We also remembered the tens of thousands of children killed this year by hunger and disease that could have been avoided if we had our priorities correct... Ottawa orders Canadian scientific journals not to publish Iranian articles | PressTV The Canadian government has reportedly ordered the scientific journals of the country not to publish articles authored by Iranian researchers and scientists, Press TV has learnt. Iranian academics, who had primarily received an acceptance from the journals, have received new messages that notified them of the journals' decision not to publish their work due to recent policies adopted by the Canadian government... Intervention in Syria risks blowback and regional war, by Seumas Milne | The Guardian The signs are unmistakable. Once again, the west is preparing to escalate military intervention in the Arab and Muslim world. This time the target is Syria. Since the US presidential election, the warnings have multiplied. First, in a breathtaking reprise of the falsehood that paved the way for the invasion of Iraq, US and British leaders claimed the Syrian regime might be about to use chemical weapons against rebel forces, and threatened dire consequences. Then the US authorised the stationing of Patriot missile batteries along the Turkish-Syrian border... Fanapt Hoax Hides Real Connection Between Shooters and SSRI Drugs, by Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars The fact that Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza was about to committed into psychiatric care before his rampage almost certainly indicates he was on one of the raft of anti-psychotic pharmaceuticals linked to aggression and suicide, but reports that Fanapt was the drug are likely inaccurate.. Given the fact that virtually every mass shooter in recent history has been on some form of SSRI drug, expect the corporate press, much of which is funded by Big Pharma advertising, to want to keep the fact quiet... [See also Medicated America] 'US-led NATO arming death squads in Syria': Webster Tarpley | YouTube United States- and NATO-backed Syrian militants create a deadly threat to all foreign nationals in the country, a prominent expert tells Press TV. Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011, with the Syrian government saying the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of militants are from foreign countries... Israel Gives Christmas Gift of Hatred | Roi Tov ...On December 19, 2012, the construction of the stretch of Highway 60 splitting the Palestinian village of Beit Safafa, near Jerusalem, was begun; an odd Christmas gift to a town with a substantial Christian population.. From early next year, the village denizens will find their way to the local grocery shop cut by a mighty, uncrossable highway. Merry Christmas Tel Aviv!.. Syria: The descent into Holy War, by Patrick Cockburn | The Independent It is one of the most horrifying videos of the war in Syria. It shows two men being beheaded by Syrian rebels, one of them by a child. He hacks with a machete at the neck of a middle-aged man who has been forced to lie in the street with his head on a concrete block. At the end of the film, a soldier, apparently from the Free Syrian Army, holds up the severed heads by their hair in triumph. The film is being widely watched on YouTube by Syrians, reinforcing their fears that Syria is imitating Iraq's descent into murderous warfare in the years after the US invasion in 2003... A Disgusting Hatchet Job: Kristol's lame attack on Chuck Hagel, by Stephen M. Walt | Counterpunch I suppose I could be flattered that William Kristol is trying to use my endorsement to derail Senator Chuck Hagel’s candidacy to be the next secretary of defense. But in fact I’m disgusted, because Kristol’s predictable hatchet job depends on the false charge that my co-author John Mearsheimer and I are “Israel-haters.” It is, to be blunt, a shameful lie. It is also a revealing glimpse into how Kristol thinks and operates. Here’s Kristol’s problem: Hagel is a decorated Vietnam veteran who was wounded twice in the service of his country. Instead of helping cause wars from the sidelines like Bill does, Hagel fought with bravery on the battlefield... Is Russia throwing in the towel for Assad? | The Vineyard of the Saker ...both Russia and China fully realize that they, even more than the other BRICS countries, have time on their side and that each passing year makes them stronger. The USA, in contrast, is globally overextended, burdened by a debt it will never pay, hated world wide, and the only thing which still keeps it going is the fact that the rest of the planet is too afraid of the US military to openly refuse to use the US dollar as a currency reserve and to pay for its energy. The US is also socially dysfunctional, culturally sterile, militarily over-extended, economically de-industrialized, and politically "neo-feudal" (1% rule over 99% of serfs)... Fact Sheet: Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land | IMEU With the Christmas season upon us, the IMEU offers the following fact sheet on Palestinian and other Christians in the Holy Land... Dec 20, 2012 Einstein’s Prescience: Excerpts from ‘Radical Peace,’ by William T. Hathaway | Palestine Chronicle Albert Einstein wrote in 1939, “There could be no greater calamity than a permanent discord between us and the Arab people. Despite the great wrong that has been done us, we must strive for a just and lasting compromise with the Arab people…. Let us recall that in former times no people lived in greater friendship with us than the ancestors of these Arabs.” Einstein was opposed from the start to the setting up of a Jewish state and to mass emigration into Palestine... Autumn in Crimea, by Israel Shamir | Dissident Voice I love this country in the off-season. The tiresome tourists are all gone. The North is already covered in snow, but here in Crimea, autumn still lingers in all its late beauty. The forests are full of colour; not just green, but all hues from mellow yellow to a violent violet. Vineyards display more shades of red and purple and yellow than Microsoft could ever imagine. Playful rivulets run down the steep slopes, from the flat and barren highlands to the deep and placid sea, spawning pretty waterfalls on their way. The roads that cross these hills at such impossible angles are now empty, and the Crimean palaces I visit share the unique history of this land with me alone... God Damn You, America, and Your White, Privileged Grief, by Arthur Silber | The OtherSite I debated whether to use what some will find a deeply offensive title, or to employ a safer, anodyne one. The debate did not last long, and it was finally settled, for me at least, when I read this: “President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Newtown, Conn., the close-knit town rocked by tragedy, after a gunman stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday and shot 20 children at least twice each with a high-powered rifle...” The Illusion Of Democracy: Liberal Journalism, Wikileaks And Climate Deceptions, by David Cromwell | Media Lens In an era of permanent war, economic meltdown and climate ‘weirding’, we need all the champions of truth and justice that we can find. But where are they? What happened to trade unions, the green movement, human rights groups, campaigning newspapers, peace activists, strong-minded academics, progressive voices? We are awash in state and corporate propaganda, with the ‘liberal’ media a key cog in the apparatus... Another Indication That Richard Engel's Kidnapping Story Stinks | Moon of Alabama ...There is now new evidence that this was indeed a fake event and that, whatever Richard Engel may believe, he and the people with him (which included one ever unnamed "British engineer" who is more likely some special operations guy) were not in the hands of Shabiha but in the hand of well known experienced video fakers... Johan Galtung: What is SOCIOCIDE?: Russell Tribunal on Palestine | The OtherSite Russia sends warships to Syria to prepare for evacuation, by John Hall | The Independent The move is the first sign that Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is worried that rebel advances now threaten the capital Damascus. Moscow’s actions come just a day after rebels seized the Yarmouk Palestinian camp two miles from the city centre. The camp is considered to be a possible springboard for a thrust into Damascus. Although the anti-Assad opposition has waged a 21-month-old uprising, its most significant military and diplomatic gains have come in last few weeks... Pro-Israeli lobby worried about Hagel's nomination as Secretary of Defense | Iran Affairs It is sort of fun watching the nervousness of the pro-Israeli lobby over the potential nomination of Chuck Hagel as Obama's Secretary of Defense. There is speculation that he may not be willing to do "what is necessary to stop Iran" as Jonathan Tobin puts it over at Commentary. And in addition to scouring Hagel's past speeches and writings for any indication of independent thinking, we're already witnessing the smears of anti-Semitism too... [Considering the heavily Zionist composition of Obama’s administration, Hagel doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.] Controlled chaos theory - practical application, by Nikita Sorokin | Voice of Russia As early as on the 10th of December the US announced its agreement to support the establishment of a Kurdish army in Syria. This means first of all providing Syrian Kurds with military assistance for setting up armed units. Financial aid is probably also included. In this connection, the leader of the Kurdish National Council Sherkoh Abbas announced that the main aim of that army would be the defence of Syrian Kurdistan’s territory against any armed invasion on any part, either Bashar al-Assad’s troops, units of the Free Syrian Army or militants of Islamist groups... HRW expels UN envoy Richard Falk | Rehmat's World Dr. Richard Anderson Falk (born 1930) was fired as director of the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on December 17, 2012 without proper notification. It was the result of a letter sent to Kenneth Roth (Jewish), executive director HRW by Hillel C. Neuer, executive director UN Watch, an Israeli advocacy group based in Geneva... [Yassa massa, whatever you say, massa] A New Round of War and Barbarism: Obama’s War on Syria and its Implications, by Shamus Cooke | Counterpunch The Obama administration has already declared war on Syria, even if it isn’t “official” yet. Consider the facts, all of them acts of war: The U.S. now recognizes a group of Syrian exiles to be the official government of Syria; the U.S. is providing direct support for rebels attacking the government; the U.S. has coordinated with NATO to place advanced missile systems — and 400 U.S. troops — on Syria’s border with Turkey; Obama has drawn a “red line” that, if Syria crosses, would result in U.S. direct military intervention. If any other country made similar moves toward the U.S., there would be no question that war had been declared... Sandy Hook and Netanyahu’s Victimization Philosophy, by Matt Moir | Palestine Chronicle ...Prime Minister Netanyahu identifies Israel with the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School, and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza with the gunman. According to Netanyahu’s worldview, any violent interaction between Israelis and Palestinians will, without fail, be an example of evil Palestinian terrorists preying upon Israeli innocence. To wit, even after the formidable Israeli army pounded Gaza City last month, Netanyahu, displaying a stunning nerve, declared that Israel would not be bullied by the Palestinians... Stark Christmas message from the Holy Land, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis ...These days, for me, Christmas has become a time to remember some of the extraordinary people I’ve met in the Holy Land. And none is more extraordinary than the veteran Catholic priest in Gaza, Father Manuel Musallam, who hosted a visit by a small group I was with in 2007. The Gaza Strip had been under tight blockade for 18 months following Hamas’s 2006 election victory and the mood was strained to say the least... Crossing the Dead Sea, by Chengzhi Zhang | Center for Palestine Studies (Columbia Univ.) “The Palestinian issue is the source of global conflict; it is the cancer of our Earth's pathology. Our support for the Palestinian refugees must be the bottom line of global justice.”.. Dec 17-19, 2012 Egypt’s New Pharaoh, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig ...Liberal democrats, intellectuals, the middle class, secularists and religious minorities including Coptic Christians were always seen by President Mohamed Morsi and his Freedom and Justice Party—Egypt’s de facto political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood—as “useful idiots.” These forces were essential to building a broad movement to topple the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. They permitted Western journalists to paint the opposition in their own image. But now they are a hindrance to single-party rule and are being crushed... Understanding Hamas after Khaled Meshaal's Gaza speech, by Richard Falk | Al Jazeera English In the aftermath of Khaled Meshaal's emotional visit to Gaza in celebration of Hamas' 25th anniversary, commentary in Israel and the West has focused on his remarks at a rally as "defiant" and confirming "the true face" of Hamas. Emphasis was particularly placed on his dramatic pledge to recover the whole of historic Palestine, from the Mediterranean to Jordan, "inch by inch", no matter how long such a process might take. Meshaal also challenged the legitimacy of the Zionist project, and justified Palestinian resistance in whatever form it might assume, although disavowing the intention to attack civilians as such... “The fate of human dignity is in our hands” | James M. Wall ...The Israel Lobby.. will most certainly come into play in the appointment of a new Secretary of Defense if the President appoints and asks for approval of the former two-term Republican Senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel. President Obama would like a Republican in his cabinet and Hagel is an experienced political leader who has been close to the president since both men served together in the Senate. Judging, however, from the immediate response from the pro-Israel media, Hagel is not in good standing with the Israel Lobby... Israel's Lieberman Resigns | Stephen Lendman Lieberman and Netanyahu represent the worst of extremist governance. They're hardcore racists. They're ideologically anti-democratic. They believe Israel has a divine right to persecute, torture, commit naked aggression, and dominate the region unchallenged. Their extremism might make some despots blush. They menace Israeli society, the region and beyond. They should be in prison, not high office... Holocaust not Hope | Gilad Atzmon This week, a new Jewish ‘progressive’ text has been published which you simply must read and circulate around - not because it’s any good, quite the opposite, it is, as usual, just a window into a tribal psychosis and a glimpse into morbid, Jewish, progressive nonsense. The reason you should read and spread ‘Rewriting History, Holocaust Revisionism’ is because it is a delightful journey into Jewish political despair. They are losing the battle and they know it... [On reflection, it appears that tribal Jews have a curious emotional deficit – they have no sense of shame - they are able to rationalize away all their atrocities and other crimes as “self-defense” – after all, they are by (their own) definition the eternal innocent victims.] Johan Galtung on Goldman Sachs and the Protocols | YouTube Johan Galtung confirms that many people out there believe that Goldman Sachs actions are not that different from the reality described in the Protocols of The Elders of Zion. Protocols also refers to Jewish control of the press. According to Galtung we see a lack of debate on that matter... [See wikipedia page on Galtung] Syria: Insurgents On The Run | Moon of Alabama The recent second attempt of foreign terrorists and Syrian insurgents to advance on Damascus failed catastrophically just like the first one in July did. The defeat last summer was followed by big insurgency losses as the Syrian army launched a counterattack in Rif Dimash. It seems likely that the recent second battle around Damascus is now being followed up on with a similar campaign. Some "western" media now start to acknowledge this:.. Crazy Country: Who has shot and who has there fallen | Adam Keller Who has shot and who has there fallen? Nathan Alterman, who wrote these words, left the question open and unanswered. He wrote it in 1934, as a young man making his first steps as a poet. Most of us were not yet born then, and the very old among us were children. The State of Israel was not yet created, and the Israel Defense Forces not yet been established, but the war in which we are involved today was already going on... 'Human price' in the capitalist equation, by Adrian Salbuchi | RT ...under US/UK/Israeli “Corporate democracy”, “all men are equal” but – as George Orwell aptly observed in “Animal Farm” – “some men are much more equal than others..” So try asking C&A, Wal-Mart, Sears how much a Bangladeshi rural young woman working 12-hour-a-day-7-days-a-week shifts to meet those huge garment orders is worth. The obvious reply will be: 45 bucks a month, take it or leave it! Why, that’s about 1% of what she’d be “worth” if she were working in New York, Chicago or London!.. imagine what the “Rate of Exchange” would be between One Israeli Citizen and One Palestinian “Non-Member, Observer Non-State” Living Entity? Oh dear, my calculator just went dead…! [One Jew is worth a thousand corpses, neh?] The tide is finally turning against the Zionists, by Martin Webster | Paul Eisen ...the Palestinians have taken every blow that has been meted out to them and have survived to fight back, again and again. They have earned at first the grudging and then the open admiration of an increasing world-wide circle of people who recognise that they too are victims of the Jewish-American Behemoth and that a victory for the Palestinians will be an inspiration for us all. For all their spite, for all their vindictive cruelty, for all their corruption and intimidation of ‘our’ political leaders and public servants, Zionist-Jewry is on a slippery slope. The more they thrash around, kick out and scream, the faster they slide... Rick Steves' Lectures: Iran | YouTube Kevin MacDonald Discusses Jewish Influence On Western Culture (1 of 6) | YouTube CSULB Professor Kevin MacDonald discusses the devastating impact Jewish intellectual movements have had on White Western societies. Interview by scholar Mark Green... Shocking Decline in Ethiopian Israeli Birthrate, by Renee Ghert-Zand | Jewish Daily Forward The birthrate among Ethiopians in Israel decreased by a dramatic 50% in the last decade, and Israeli journalist Gal Gabai wanted to know why. She investigated the issue for “Vacuum,” her documentary series on Israeli Educational Television, and she discovered some things that left her very uncomfortable — and will surely leave others equally so.. In her attempt to find out what the story was behind the shocking statistic, Gabai interviewed Ethiopian women immigrants and learned from them that they were given Depo-Provera (a contraceptive injection containing the hormone progestin administered once every three months) against their will... [Shocking? To whom? Well, maybe to the naïve readers of the Forward] O Little Town of Bethlehem | YouTube The story of the birth of Jesus told by the people of Bethlehem. Made by St Paul's Church, Auckland, New Zealand... Obama's Presidential Tears | Roi Tov ...Instead of properly explaining its violent behavior (it can't) the USA Government just ignores international law, mimicking its Israeli allies. The fact is that every person on this planet has the right to demand that his rights be honored and that no country, not even Empire, has the right to violate even the smallest one. American citizenship is an irrelevant variable in this matter even if an honorable professor decides to ignore the world beyond America. President Obama had the same right to order the assassination of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki as Adam Lanza had to perform the Newtown Massacre. Let me be excruciatingly explicit: neither one had the right... The End Of The Jewish State Is Here | Gilad Atzmon ..The year is 2052, and the state of Israel has been defunct for forty years, the majority of its citizens having become refugees overseas. In order to provide Israel with a decent burial, an Institute for the Documentation of Zion is established, and among its archives is the autobiography of one Gunther W?nker. A Guide to the Perplexed is the story of Gunther's life... This is Not a Revolt, This is a War: 25th Anniversary of the First Palestinian Intifada, by Makram Khoury-Machool | The OtherSite Dr Makram Khoury-Machool was the journalist to announce the outbreak of the Intifada in Haaretz’s supplement, back in December 1987. He was shot in the face and his report became a media event. This article was translated into English 25 years ago by the late Israel Shahak... Culture of Human Rights | YouTube America’s Wars: The Gifts That Keep on Giving, by Ivan Eland | Antiwar The U.S. government recently designated the Syrian opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra Front a foreign terrorist organization. The move was designed to built Western support against the Syrian government by alleviating fears that money and weapons donated to the opposition would flow to a militant group. The designation means that Americans cannot have financial ties to the Nusra Front and is meant to be a precedent for other nations considering imposing similar sanctions on the group. What the ambassador forgot to mention was that U.S. Middle East policy has played a big role in the group’s rise and potency... Dec 16, 2012 The Chosenites: Stop Everything and Watch This Horrid Expose | Gilad Atzmon ...The following video is a hard-hitting attempt to expose the link between Israeli barbarism and Jewish cultural and religious teaching. As we all know our Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists (JVP, IJAN, Mondoweiss etc’) insist that Zionism should be regarded as an anomaly within the wide context of Jewish culture and religion. They are clearly spinning - Israel is the Jewish State, it kills and slaughter in the name of the Jews, its airplanes and tanks are decorated with Jewish symbols, its crimes are, unfortunately, consistent with some bloodthirsty Old Testament and Talmudic verses... Unsettling realities of Israeli settlements, by Jamal Kanj | Redress Information & Analysis ...Since 1967 Israeli governments from across the political spectrum have shared the same expansionist vision of changing the demography of the occupied territories in favour of the Jews. Israel’s settlement policies are part of a well-thought-out Zionist strategy intended to undermine the peace process. In fact, the current prime minister was caught on video in 2001 bragging that he had “stopped the Oslo accords“. His main government partner, the Moldovan Avigdor Lieberman, wants to complete the ethnic cleansing of historical Palestine by replacing native villages with illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank... Germany’s Holocaust Responsibility is Forever, Says German Foreign Minister | SHOAH ...Commemorating such atrocities should serve as a reminder that “German responsibility for the crimes against humanity of the Shoah (Holocaust) has no expiration date. The story does not end with a generation”. Germany’s debt to Nazi atrocities means “we will not tolerate anti-Semitism in our country”, he insisted, adding that his country’s acknowledgement of its chequered past makes its partnership with Israel all the more sacred, as it seeks to work “together to make a peaceful, secure and prosperous future”.. [Abject surrender to the greatest extortion scheme in history] Auschwitz: Why The Gas Chambers Are A Myth | YouTube A Detailed Analysis into the Gas Chamber Myth at Auschwitz... [Dario Gabbai is one my favorite “eyewitnesses.” Would you buy anything from this guy?] Russia changes tack on Syria, by M K Bhadrakumar | Asia Times Online Russia is throwing in the towel on Syria after an almost two-year long blaze of Cold War-era rhetoric. It dug in tenaciously at the United Nations Security Council holding its veto card to block a Western intervention in Syria but has been outmaneuvered on the ground and is being presented with a fait accompli that the regime it supported in Damascus is fast becoming a thing of the past... 1492 and all that | Paul Eisen When I was a child, I had a favourite book. It was called "A Pictorial History of the Jewish People" and I used to read it a lot. One of the best bits was this picture which shows the Jewish Elders humbly pleading with Ferdinand and Isabella to spare the Jews and, I'm sure, offering them a big, fat bribe. But, just as the King and Queen are about to relent (and pocket the bribe), in storms Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada waving a cross. "What!" he shouts, "You would, like Judas himself, sell Our Lord for thirty pieces of silver?".. Syrian Students Condemn American Led Sanctions Currently Inflating Food Prices, by Franklin Lamb | Eurasia Review ...According to students I very much enjoy meeting with from Universities and Colleges here, their President, Bashar Assad, still has the support of a majority of the population. Many, as does the Assad government, accept, in principal, the April 2012 Geneva Proposals. That initiative, proposes a transitional government resulting from dialogue leading up the 2014 election which would be open to all candidates. They favor letting the Syrian people choose at the ballot box the next president whoever that may be. It is evident here in Damascus that the main worry of the population is the manifold effects of the generally viewed illegal and immoral US led sanctions... Inside Britain's Israel Lobby | Dispatches on YouTube ...Dispatches investigates one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain, which is working in support of the interests of the State of Israel. Despite wielding great influence among the highest realms of British politics and media, little is known about the individuals and groups which collectively are known as the pro-Israel lobby. Political commentator Peter Oborne sets out to establish who they are, how they are funded, how they work and what influence they have, from the key groups to the wealthy individuals who help bankroll the lobbying... America’s Power Game: Iranian People Victims of US Economic Sanctions, by Kourosh Ziabari | Global Research ...it seems that the ordinary Iranian citizens are the only victims of this power game and charade of double standards. The U.S. government which shamefully protects Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal and sides with Israel every time that the international community decides to demand Israel to legalize its nuclear activities, such as in the case of the recent UN General Assembly resolution, has pulled out all the stops to prevent Iran from nuclear technology, while even the intelligence agencies inside the United States have admitted that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons or intending to do so... Dec 15, 2012: Third Intifada Begins | Roi Tov ..."This is the beginning of a third Palestinian Intifada, which is erupting from the heart of Hebron and will spread to all of Palestine." This will be achieved through the newly established "National Union Battalions." Let me translate this into simple terms. Following the acceptance of Palestine as an Observer State by the UN, the main Palestinian factions have united and declared Palestine's Independence War on Israel. Is this credible? Will Palestine declare independence on May 14, 2013?.. The Sea and the River, by Uri Avnery | MCW “Palestine, from the Jordan to the Sea, belongs to us!” declared Khaled Meshal last week at the huge victory rally in Gaza. “Eretz Israel, from the sea to the Jordan, belongs to us!” declare right-wing Israelis on every occasion. The two statements seem to be the same, with only the name of the country changed. But if you read them again carefully, there is a slight difference. The direction... Why they call him “Agent” Cameron, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, has again shown why he should stand down from British politics. In a speech to Conservative Friends of Israel at a lunch the other day he said – and not for the first time – things that are deeply disturbing to people who expect him to put British interests first. He again compromised himself and this country with ridiculous pledges of support for a foreign military power whose behaviour is beyond the pale and an affront to human decency... [People like Cameron were once hanged as traitors - maybe it's time to revive the practice.] Dec 15, 2012 Journalists Punched by Israeli Officers After Fatal Shooting at West Bank Checkpoint, by Robert Mackey | NYT Two Palestinian journalists working for Reuters were punched, hit with rifle butts and forced to strip by Israeli soldiers on Wednesday as they tried to reach the scene of a fatal shooting at a West Bank checkpoint, the news agency reports. The soldiers then confiscated the crew’s camera and gas masks before letting off a tear-gas canister which forced one of the men to seek medical treatment... [My guess is that Mackey’s days at the NYT are about over – reporting the truth about Israel is stark verboten] US-Backed Syrian Opposition Demands Support for Al Qaeda | Land Destroyer As part of the US' charade in declaring support and recognition of the so-called "Syrian" opposition, it added one of the more extreme groups that make up the militant front operating inside Syria to a list of sanctioned terrorist organizations. The idea was to have a scapegoat to pin atrocities on while the West armed, funded, and provided military support for the rest of the extremist groups ravaging Syria. The ploy quickly fell apart however, when the US' own handpicked opposition leader, Moaz al-Khatib spoke out in protest... Road Map Drawn Up by Syrian Traitors to Serve Imperialists, Gulf Monarchies, by Noureddine Merdaci | Truthout It will perhaps take months, if not years, before we will be able to reconstruct the process by which Syria found itself trapped in this civil war. Obviously, Damascus had not measured the danger, not only for the regime in power, but even for Syria itself, now in danger of disappearing as a nation-state. However, the veil begins to lift on the circumstances of the "conclave" held in Doha in early November, which saw a heterogeneous "opposition" - divided, without a program and without perspective - provide itself with a leader, Moez Ahmed al-Khatib, and a "coalition.".. IDF Open-Fire Regulations Backfire | Roi Tov ...What happens when the first order contradicts the second? What can a soldier do when his friend is in immediate danger, but he cannot shoot without hitting an innocent passerby? This is the classical dilemma and the source of hundreds of assassinations. In December 2012, two small IDF forces got a powerful lesson in humility. They understood that the entire situation was wrong, and just walked away. I did that ten years ago, and can assure these brave men only one thing: they have become enemies of the state. Channel 7 has already blamed them for "harming deterrence.".. [Those who run away at least maintain their humanity – what can be said of those who shoot children with stones?] The Jonathan Pollard Spy Case: The CIA's 1987 Damage Assessment Declassified | GWU National Security Archive ...no arrest was more stunning than that of Jonathan J. Pollard, a thirty-one year old analyst for the Navy's Anti-Terrorist Alert Center (ATAC). Pollard was detained on November 21, after a futile attempt to gain access to the Washington, D.C. embassy of Israel – to one of whose intelligence services, the Scientific Liaison Bureau (LAKAM), he had been delivering a vast assortment of documents. News of Pollard's arrest was not the first time that the issue of Israeli intelligence activities directed against U.S. targets had been in the press. That subject had been the subject of press coverage several years earlier after the CIA's study of the organization and operations of Israel's intelligence and security services had become public... Iranian Bomb Graph Appears Adapted from One on Internet, by Gareth Porter | Antiwar ..The graph, published in a Nov. 27 Associated Press story but immediately found to have a mathematical error of four orders of magnitude, closely resembles a graph accompanying a scholarly article modeling a nuclear explosion. It provides a plausible explanation for the origins of the graph leaked to AP, according to two nuclear physicists following the issue closely... Susan Rice: Israel's 'Gladiator' at the UN | Wide Asleep in America ...the majority of Rice's time at the United Nations is spent defending Israeli colonial expansionism and institutional apartheid; shielding Israel from scrutiny over its commission of war crimes, collective punishment, aggressive militarism, and contempt for international law, including the murder of an American citizen; and working tirelessly to repeatedly oppose basic human rights, self-determination, legal sovereignty and any semblance of justice for Palestinians, even in its most symbolic forms... The dirty dozen: Israel's racist ringleaders, by David Sheen | The Electronic Intifada ...Approximately 60,000 people from sub-Saharan African countries have migrated to Israel in recent years, fleeing persecution and requesting asylum. Instead of providing them with aid or permitting them to support themselves, the Israeli government refuses to grant them any rights, forces them into abject poverty, and seeks to deport the lot of them... The cowardice at the heart of our relationship with Israel, by Peter Oborne | The Telegraph It is impossible to understand the modern Conservative Party without a grasp of the scale and profundity of its links to the state of Israel. The connection dates back at least as far the historic meeting between the great Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and the Conservative prime minister A J Balfour in 1905, during which Weizmann convinced Balfour of the case for a Jewish national state... An Open Letter to a Supporter of the Syrian Opposition, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment It is remarkable that Syrian American Council (SAC) board member Hussam Ayloush appears to be unaware of, if not indifferent to, the trojan efforts of Israel lobbyist David Pollock to promote the Syrian opposition.. Like the AIPAC spin-off that employs Pollock to promote the Syrian opposition in Washington, Pechter Middle East Polls, LLC is clearly a creation of the Israel lobby. President and CEO Adam M. Pechter is a former deputy publisher of the Middle East Quarterly, the Islamophobic pro-Israel “journal” produced by Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum. Such are the freedom-loving forces that the Syrian opposition is prepared to collaborate with... America’s “War Party” and the Myth of Iranian “Irrationality” | The Race for Iran ...people like to talk about the Islamic Republic as run by these ‘mad mullahs,’ or even if the president is a layman, it’s this ‘crazy,’ ‘millenarian’ Ahmadinejad who just is waiting to get his hands on a nuke so he can turn the whole 70-plus million people in Iran into history’s first ‘suicide nation.’ And there is just absolutely no historical or even rhetorical support for that line of argument. This is a country that, since its revolution, has basically been much, much more concerned about defending itself, defending the Iranian people, consolidating and maintaining its own independence in the face of hostile regional powers and hostile outside powers including, most notably, the United States... Israeli Settlement Expansion: The Silence Of The Lambs, by MJ Rosenberg | Tikkun Daily It has long been clear that the label “pro-Israel” is almost always misapplied. When the lobby or its friends in the media call a politician “pro-Israel” they mean that he supports everything Israel does, without question, no matter what he may think privately. (In fact, AIPAC tells officials who are upset by any Israeli action to not “go public” but rather to tell the ambassador who, of course, will simply ignore the critique.) Those who dare to issue public criticism are almost surely going to be punished... Hamas holds rare West Bank rally | MCW Thousands of Palestinians have attended a rare Hamas rally in the city of Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank celebrating the 25th anniversary of the group's founding and its recent "victory" over Israel in Gaza. The rally is the first time that the West Bank's ruling Palestinian Authority (PA), which is dominated by Hamas rival Fatah, has allowed such a gathering since 2007. It comes as the two movements take tentative steps towards restarting a reconciliation process... Dec 14, 2012 Understanding Hamas at 25: Beyond the Tired Language, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle “In a moment of high theatre he dropped to his knees, placed his lips on the ground and kissed the land he has commanded by proxy”. This is how Robert Tait of the British Telegraph worded the moment Khaled Meshaal arrived in Gaza on Dec 07. Tait’s report on what many in Gaza and elsewhere consider a watershed event in the history of the Islamic movement, was mostly consistent with mainstream reporting on any event concerning the impoverished and besieged Strip: often biased, selective and devoid of real understanding or empathy... Read more... From the City of Destruction to the Promised Land, by William Cook | My Catbird Seat Dare we believe that the people of the world through their representatives at the United Nations have openly expressed not only their desire to confirm the rights of the Palestinians but their will to enforce those rights through the international justice system? Ninety-five percent of the people of the world have declared that the impunity granted to the state of Israel by the United States and hence to itself as a complicit criminal in war crimes and crimes against humanity must be recognized and of necessity dealt with before the world can reach their respective promised lands where respect and dignity for all proclaims the rights of all... Read more... Was World War Two just as pointless and self-defeating as Iraq, asks Peter Hitchens | Paul Eisen It makes me feel like a traitor to write this. The Second World War was my religion for most of my life. Brave, alone, bombed, defiant, we, the British, had won it on our own against the most evil and powerful enemy imaginable. Born six years after it was over, I felt almost as if I had lived through it, as my parents most emphatically had, with some bravery and much hardship in both cases. With my toy soldiers, tanks and field-guns, I defeated the Nazis daily on my bedroom floor... Read more... Israeli army raids West Bank NGO offices | Al Jazeera English Israeli soldiers have raided the offices of three civil society organisations in the heart of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Entering before dawn on Tuesday, troops wrenched open the doors of the Women's Union, the Palestinian NGO Network and Addameer, an advocate for Palestinians in Israeli jails. The raids were the first of their kind in a Palestinian city since the West Bank government won an initiative at the United Nations General Assembly on November 29 which recognised a de facto Palestinian state. "This comes in the context of the UN's decision,".. Read more... Leila Khaled: Palestinians united behind resistance | Maan News Agency The Palestinian people are united behind the resistance, which is legitimate as long as Israel occupies Palestinian land, national icon Leila Khaled said Monday. “Your people in the diaspora kiss the ground you walk on because it’s the land of Palestine,” Khaled told crowds during a visit to the northern Gaza home of Naem al-Kafarneh, who was killed by Israeli forces. “In your last battle, you registered epic resistance and determination,” said Khaled, a politburo member and former fighter of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. “We heard pride … the voice of resistance and determination.”.. Read more... Gilad Atzmon: Lobbies, Jewish Tribalism, War on Iran | YouTube Jews in America, by Joseph Sobran | Paul Eisen Jews in America are often spoken of as a "minority." So they are, in more than a numerical sense, as I will explain. But despite their small numbers they are also a powerful faction, though the term "faction" is rarely applied to them. In Federalist Number 10, James Madison gave a famous and useful definition of the word: "By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.".. Read more... NATO aims for a Nobel war prize, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online ...The EU's foreign policy may also be a joke, as in 27 headless chickens shooting at random - and at each other - on everything from Palestine to the admission of Turkey. But one thing the EU really well does is to produce, market and sell weapons to everyone involved in the business of war. Asia Times Online has independently confirmed with two EU-based diplomats that the EU - via its US-dominated military arm, NATO - is getting ready for yet another war, in Syria... Read more... Watch Out For the Cliff: Which One? by Frank Scott | Dissident Voice As America develops newer deadly weapons to threaten more nations with its inspired movement for humanitarian democracy through rape and murder, our economy is supposedly headed for what an ad campaign has branded “the financial cliff”. We need to either raise private taxes on a tiny minority of the 1% super rich or cut public spending on the overwhelming 99% majority. Only in a nation run by people who regularly visit a proctologist to have their heads examined could this be seen as a crippling dilemma involving tough choices and necessarily shared suffering. But that’s how it’s being played by our consciousness commissars and their servants in mind management... Read more... North Korea's Satellite and Israel | Roi Tov ...North Korea is a useful pawn in the Chinese chess game. Its role is similar to the one played by Israel in the American chess game. Israel is useful to the USA in the testing of weapons; once a system is defined as "tested in the battlefield," its price increases. Israel also indirectly secures America's access to the valuable oil fields in the Middle East. Moreover, it allows the USA to perform indirect attacks on its enemies. One of the triggers of the current violence in Syria, was the unprovoked assassination of Syrian civilians by the IDF. Of course, these interests were shared by both sides... Read more... Israel, Iran vie for control of Red Sea | Energy Daily The Red Sea, a key shipping route, is becoming an arena of confrontation between Israel and Iran, with Sudan and Eritrea key targets by both sides in a strategic contest that's likely to intensify in the months ahead... Read more... Dec 13, 2012 Syria ...The Iraqi government has opened its borders to fleeing Syrians. The ironies of disruption and social division are too terrible to bear for families who have lost so much of their sense of place. The West, which is otherwise vocal about this or that outrage, is sparing with its financial support for the agency. The financially weak Lebanese government has gone the extra mile with very little international support.. The small (voluntary) tranches from the US government, for example, add up to the low millions (the most current contribution is $9.6 million). Meanwhile, the USS Eisenhower, whose annual cost of operation is $200 million, has appeared off the coast of Syria – it has other motives than humanitarian assistance... [See also Part 2] Israel is conducting a covert cross-border operation directed against Syria in liaison with NATO and the Pentagon. After looking for a “smoking gun” in Iran earlier this year, Israeli special forces are now “tracking” Syria’s “stocks of chemical and biological weapons”, according to The Sunday Times... [See also Why the Obama Administration Charges the Syrian government May Be Preparing to Use Chemical Weapons…and the “Benghazi Effect”. The same old tricks, and the MSM dutifully serves up the propaganda] ...Like with the false WMD scare over Iraq and recent false chemical weapon mixing claims in Syria the British government is joined at the hip with the U.S government.. This is just more nonsense from those who want to get NATO to fight a regime-change war against Syria. Some 70 bribed and pressed nations, the "enemies of Syria", are currently meeting in Marrakesh and the U.S. wants them to recognize the sectarian Muslim Brotherhood exiles it has organized as a Syrian opposition and to pay up for the continuation of the terror operation against the Syrian people. Also today the German parliament discusses the stationing of Patriot missiles in Turkey. The final vote will be Friday. What better way to influence that than claiming that Syria shot off some missiles... Russian policy toward the Syria crisis may be more about Grozny than Tartus. Much has been made by critics and analysts in the West of Russian obstruction in the United Nations Security Council in light of Syria's dire humanitarian crisis, for which there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel... ...as the US announced its recognition of a detached, pro-Western, unrepresentative exile group as the legitimate leader of the Syrian people, the great bulk of the actual Syrian opposition – both armed and civilian – threw their support behind a notorious jihadist group with ties to the same fighters that battled US troops in Iraq... 12/12/12 | Mazin's Human Rights Newsletter ...I believe it is necessary for all of us to work on all fronts against oppression, whether of fellow human beings or of the environment. I think the issues are related: the same multi-millionaires and billionaires (most of them happen to be Zionist) work to keep people fighting each other, push them towards servitude, poverty, and ignorance while getting rich themselves. Religion is used to keep people from real progress. For many decades, they declared war on environmental rights, human rights, rights to natural resources, rights to clean air, rights to sustainable environment etc. Those who champion rights of common people are by definition enemies of those elites and may pay a heavy price for our resistance... Top US Officials Guilty of War Crimes, by Sherwood Ross | MCW More than 30 top U.S. officials, including presidents G.W. Bush and Obama, are guilty of war crimes or crimes against peace and humanity “legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany,” the distinguished American international law authority Francis Boyle charges. U.S. officials involved in an “ongoing criminal conspiracy” in the Middle East and Africa who either participated in the commission of the crimes under their jurisdiction or failed to take action against them included both presidents since 2001 and their vice-presidents, the secretaries of State and Defense, the directors of the CIA and National Intelligence and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, etc... [Quite so, and they are traitors as well for serving Israel's interests instead of and frequently against those of America, but does anybody give a damn?] Is There a Soul for Israel to Lose? by Issa Khalaf | Palestine Chronicle Is it real or fantasy, the Jewish American liberal Zionist insistence that, after 1967, with the occupation, Israel lost its liberal democratic, human rights, pluralist soul? Many Western liberal Zionists and their Israeli counterparts hold steadfastly to this view, perhaps fearing the psychological shattering that reality—a grimy, violent, racist state of Israel—would impose. Israel cannot live its “liberal democratic ideals” because they are not inherent in its Zionist foundation and institutions. Quite the contrary—and the evidence unearthed and gone over by so many scholars, is abundant... Hamas, Khaled Mashaal and Prospects for a Sustainable Israel/Palestine Peace, by Richard Falk | MCW In the aftermath of Khaled Mashaal’s emotional visit to Gaza in celebration of Hamas’ 25th anniversary, commentary in Israel and the West has focused on his remarks at a rally as ‘defiant’ and disclosing ‘the true face’ of Hamas. Emphasis was particularly placed on his dramatic pledge to recover the whole of historic Palestine, from the Mediterranean to Jordan, “inch by inch,” no matter how long such a process might take. Mashaal also challenged the legitimacy of the Zionist project, and justified Palestinian resistance in whatever form it might assume, although disavowing the intention to attack civilians as such... U.S. to sell Israel munitions to renew stock after Operation Pillar of Defense | Haaretz The United States will sell Israel munitions worth $647 million, in order to renew the inventory of the Israel Defense Forces following the massive bombings in Gaza during Operation Pillar of Defense... [May they all explode after delivery to the IDF – in’shallah] Zionism – more than traditional colonialism and apartheid, by Lasse Wilhelmson | deLiberation ...Israel is a military superpower with nuclear weapons and took active part in the US and England’s war against Iraq. Without any provocation, Israel recently bombed targets in Syria and armed its fleet with nuclear weapons. Previously they attacked Egypt and Lebanon amongst others. How could this evolve? What is the ideology behind this very special project of colonialism, the only one that has survived two turns of a century? What sort of ideology is Zionism?.. [My answer? An arrogant and ruthless blend of ethnic, religious and nationalist fascism, a highly toxic, pathological brew.] Gaza 2012: Palestine’s Long Walk to Freedom, by Haidar Eid | Palestine Chronicle The long walk to South Africa’s freedom is marked by two immense tragic events.. Without Sharpeville and Soweto.. South Africa would still be ruled by a minority of fanatic, white settlers claiming to be fulfilling the Word of (their) God! Palestine’s long walk to freedom has gone through similar harrowing defining events, beginning with the 1948 Nakba, to the latest 8-day onslaught on Gaza. In order to understand Gaza 2012, one ought to trace its origin back to 1948. Two thirds of the Palestinians of Gaza are refugees who were kicked out of their cities, towns and villages in 1948. Dec 12, 2012 Under the Jackboot of the Empire, by Francis Boyle | MCW Historically this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people to near genocidal conditions... Dulce et Decorum: And May You Get the Chance | Fred On Everything I am a soldier. I am dirt. With Joshua I put the cities of Canaan to the sword while women screamed and tried to protect their babies. I spent long days in Nanjing butchering and butchering civilians because I enjoyed it. For I am a soldier. I am dirt. I fire-bombed Hamburg till the wind-fanned flames left nowhere to hide and the people burned screaming and their fat puddled in the streets. I am a soldier. I am dirt... Just a cartoonist with a moral duty to speak, by Michael Leunig | The Age ...Over the years it has been implied that I am "a second degree anti-Semite", "a new-world anti-Semite" and a "latent anti-Semite" as well as a simple old-fashioned common or garden anti-Semite. I now learn to my amazement that to make comparisons between Israeli policy and any Nazi behaviour is in itself an anti-Semitic act. So much for free speech. I say all nations that throw their military weight around, occupying neighbouring lands and treating the residents with callous and humiliating disregard are already sliding towards the dark possibilities in human nature... From Jeff Blankfort To Gilad Atzmon and Philip Weiss | Gilad Atzmon It has long been accepted that Zionism and Israel, because they can so easily cause antisemitism, are ‘not good for the Jews’. But now, as I predicted, it has become evident that it is actually the so-called ‘progressive’ Jews who constitute the real danger to Jews. That Judeo-centric spin, inherent in the Jewish ‘left’, together with its relentlessly duplicitous inclinations have left us all with a very negative image of all forms of Jewish identity politics... [Write on, bro!] Egypt: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, by Richard Falk | MCW I have had the opportunity to be in Cairo three times for brief visits in the last 20 months, the first a few weeks after the departure of Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, the second in February of 2012 when the revolutionary process was treading water, and this third one over the course of the previous ten days. What is striking is how drastically the prevailing mood and expectations have changed from visit to visit, how fears, hopes, and perceptions have altered over time, and why they are likely to continue to do so... The Impact of Sanctions on Iranian Society and Artists, by Mehrnaz Shahabi | Fair Observer For 33 years now, since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran has been the target of US economic sanctions, which have increased in scope and severity over time. The impact of sanctions on populations is not always quantifiable and can be contradictory. Despite their negative impact in isolating and hindering Iran’s economic progress, and the tragic loss of life due to the boycott of spare parts for the aging Iranian airline, in so far as necessity is the mother of invention, sanctions in many instances have acted as an impetus for technological progress; and the experience of success and survival through adversity has infused a collective sense of empowerment and self-confidence... Denuclearization and Sanctions on Israel, by Debbie Menon | Veterans News Now The United Nations General Assembly is pressing Israel to reveal its nuclear arsenal. Israel has lashed out against the overwhelming approval of the resolution, which calls for international inspectors to be allowed to examine its atomic program. Its foreign minister said the vote was meaningless. Israel also rejected a UN-backed conference on a nuke-free Middle East. Israel denies it has nuclear weapons – but refuses to provide proof that it doesn’t. Russia TV broadcast a program on Israel’s recent refusal to open its arsenal to UN nuclear weapons inspectors... May 14, 2013 | Roi Tov ...Samson and the Sicarii in Masada preferred suicide than surrender. The State of Israel had been preparing itself for such an option even before it was formally established. Benjamin Netanyahu's actions in recent days prove that this is true. The worthless opposition of Israel to the acceptance of Palestine as an Observer State at the UN was foolish; the event couldn't be stopped.. In the aftermath, Netanyahu decided to punish Palestine, by building on E1, and stopping the transfer of taxes to Palestine. Arab countries pledged to cover the missing income, giving Palestine economic independence. In both cases, Netanyahu chose the Samson-Masada suicide path. A modern Zealot, Netanyahu is forcing Israel to suicide... [Cool. It would save the rest of the world a lot of trouble.] The Hayward Thesis | Paul Eisen This is the first of seven sections of "The Fate of Jews in German Hands - 1933-45", the MA thesis written by the then young New Zealand history student, Joel Hayward. When it first came out it caused a lot of fuss and a huge amount of trouble to the rather innocent young Hayward. The pressure must have been terrible and Hayward recanted but, like all such recantations, I believe it was done out of fear and exhaustion rather than conviction... Watch IDF fleeing soldiers | Gilad Atzmon As we are watching Israel facing its final and terminal phase, the images of Israeli military cowardice are becoming more and more common... [They sure ran like hell in Lebanon, although they were vastly superior in numbers and weaponry.] Death by Stupidity, by William Blum | Anti-Empire Report ...The three greatest problems facing the beleaguered, fragile inhabitants of this lonely planet are climate change, economic crisis, and the violence of war. It is my sad duty to report that the United States of America is the main culprit in each case. Is that not remarkable?.. Ten Really Fascinating People of 2012, by Rosemarie Jackowski | MCW ...The lists that have been announced so far are a sad commentary on our culture and values. There are some who really do deserve recognition. They have earned respect because of their accomplishments. Actually there are many who would qualify for the list. Here are ten with very fascinating stories to be told. They should be nominated... Dec 11, 2012 Will Palestinians ever “seize their destiny,” by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis Some commentators have been saying that Israel’s latest land-grab has effectively killed off the two-state solution (if such a thing was ever truly feasible). And this has led to questions like, what should the Palestinians do next? Palestinians must have been asking themselves the same thing for the last 64 years. They themselves are well acquainted with their rights and the crimes committed against them. They know what they must defend to the last. They also know – and if they don’t they must figure it out quickly – what to do next in order to secure those rights... ...Massive public pressure is needed to end the system of immunity and impunity enjoyed by Israeli political and military leaders and by their US government sponsors. Without accountability for violations of international law, the law will become mere recommendation and the violations will be repeated. More families like those of Jamal and Ahmed Dalu and Wallid Al Nasassra will be torn apart. More lives will be ruined and more children traumatized and killed... The message could hardly be clearer: According to U.S. intelligence, Syrian government could very well be preparing to use chemical weapons to put down the long and bloody rebellion against ruler Bashar al-Assad. That was the signal from the TV networks and other major media. Should anyone believe they're right?.. The full text of the interview with Khalid Mashal: Our priority is to be free | Al-Qassam Brigades After escaping an assassination attempt in 1997 and being banned from Jordan in 1999, Khaled Mashal, Hamas leader, made his home in Damascus, where Manuela Paraipan interviewed him last week on Hamas’ approach to the current peace negotiations, his view of Hamas’ strengths, its ongoing commitment to resistance, and the importance of principle in politics... Scoop! Bibi’s letter to Khaled Meshal | Alan Hart Hey readers, I’ve got a scoop. It’s the text of a letter – don’t ask me how I got it – from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to Hamas leader Meshal. It was hand delivered in Gaza by one of Israel’s many Palestinian collaborators who lives there. Like most if not all others of his kind, the poor man didn’t volunteer to spy for Israel. He was “recruited” after being told that his wife would be raped if he didn’t provide information for Israel... [Short term, Netanyahu gets propaganda value and leverage; long term, Meshal is the future.] WWII: Orderly and Humane? by Peter Hitchens | Mail Online ...It is now possible to have more-or-less grown-up attitudes towards the First World War, whose last remaining justification – that it was ‘The War to End All Wars’ - crumbled into dust and spiders’ webs in September 1939. But the 1939-45 conflict is still wreathed in delusions, delusions often employed to try to justify modern wars which are alleged to have comparably ‘good’ aims. The belief in its goodness is in fact ludicrous... If World Peace is an Idealistic Dream, I Would Happily Die a Dreamer, Interview by Kourosh Ziabari | Iran Review It was reported on November 23 that the Helsinki conference on the nuclear-free Middle East has been called off after the United States announced that it will not take part in the conference. Some political commentators believe that the U.S. distanced itself from the summit after Iran said that it would participate, and it was quite clear that Iran will raise the issue of Israel’s undeclared, uninspected nuclear arsenal of about 200 – 400 atomic warheads. Israel’s nuclear program is America’s redline and it’s like a nightmare for Washington to see that Tel Aviv’s nuclear stockpiles are open to the scrutiny and inspection of the UN atomic watchdog... ‘He’s Killing His Own People!’ by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar It’s a familiar refrain to those of us who’ve been paying attention the past decade or so: it’s what our leaders in both parties said about Saddam Hussein by way of justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and it’s what they’re saying now about Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who is the regime-changers’ latest target... Palestine's Next Step | Roi Tov ...the day after the acceptance of Palestine as an observer state by the UN, I predicted.. that this time Palestine will circumvent the fiscal blockade imposed by Netanyahu. I dared to publish that, not because of having received a new supercomputer capable of analyzing the event, but because of the sheer stupidity of Netanyahu's decision... X Y Z vs Gaza | YouTube Between the Hammer and the Anvil, by Anna Haq | Counterpunch ...When you ask, what do the people of Syria want, the answer repeatedly is this, “We want an end to this barbaric fight.” And then, “of course we want democracy and freedom but not like this. We are double betrayed. Once by a revolution that failed to define its terms and isolate itself from any intrusion and the second time by a government that failed to protect its people,”.. Lasse Wilhelmson and Freedom in Sweden | Gilad Atzmon For some time, Swedish Palestinian female TV presenter Gina Dirawi has been chased by Sweden’s Zionist protagonists within the media . Dirawi has been outspoken about Israeli crimes and Palestinian rights. But recently when she referred to Lasse Wilhelmsons book ‘Is The World Upside down?’, all hell broke loose. Wilhelmson is critical of the Jewish state, Zionism and Jewish power... Dec 10, 2012 Israel’s Fourth President, Ephraim Katzir, Founded IDF Biological Weapons Program, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam I recently wrote a post which recounted two episodes in Israeli history in which the IDF resorted to biological warfare against its Arab enemies. In one case, Moshe Dayan brought home tubes containing typhus to be used in poisoning the water supply of the Jordanian Legion (which instead infected the Israeli leader’s son, Assi with the disease); and another, in which Palmach infiltrators attempted to poison Gaza’s water supply, but were caught and executed... Unknown Snipers and Western backed “Regime Change,” by Gearóid Ó Colmáin| Global Research The Russian investigative journalist Nikolay Starikov has written a book which discusses the role of unknown snipers in the destabilization of countries targeted for regime change by the United States and its allies. The following article attempts to elucidate some historical examples of this technique with a view to providing a background within which to understand the current cover war on the people of Syria by death squads in the service of Western intelligence... Not The Wisest Phil Around | Gilad Atzmon God bless Philip Weiss, the progressive Jewish blogger brave enough to admit in public those things other Jewish ethnic activists prefer to shove under the carpet. A year ago, Weiss was brave enough to confess to me that it is ‘Jewish self interests’ that stands at the core of his pro Palestinian activism... UK’s Observer adds “kill Jews” to Hamas leader Khaled Meshal’s Gaza speech when he did not say it, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada In its report on Hamas leader Khaled Meshal’s speech in Gaza on Saturday, The Observer, the Sunday sister paper of The Guardian, quoted Meshal saying the following words: “We don’t kill Jews because they are Jews. We kill the Zionists because they are conquerors and we will continue to kill anyone who takes our land and our holy places … We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone.” This however is a blatant mistranslation. What Meshal actually said is:.. Site 911: Are the Israelis Rubbing it in Our Faces? by Richard Edmondson | deLiberation Recently the Washington Post published a story about a project in Israel at a place called “Site 911”, a five-story underground facility that is being built with help from the US Army Corps of Engineers... State of Palestine signs in Jerusalem call Jews to leave | Roi Tov ...It is becoming so embarrassing that I don’t know what to do. Should I list here the articles in this website dealing with Israeli insults and improper manners? Or should I reproduce only their main points?.. Read more... Khaled Meshaal in Gaza | Gilad Atzmon If the Israelis expected the Hamas to become a Palestinian Judenrat, Hamas' leader Khaled Meshaal made it clear today that this is not going to happen anytime soon. Meshaal told tens of thousands of people marking Hamas' 25th anniversary that his party will not recognise Israel. In a fiery speech during his first ever visit to Gaza, he said Palestinians would not cede any part of their land. Israel’s recent defeat in Gaza made it very clear that Hamas and Islamic resistance is the appropriate answer to Israeli barbarism... American Nuclear Hypocrisy, by Elias Akleh | MCW Hypocrisy is the most prominent characteristic of the successive American administrations. The observer could easily detect this hypocrisy when it comes to administration’s policies towards the Middle Eastern countries generally and towards the Palestinians specifically. One of the administration’s latest hypocritical acts was the cancellation of the Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone conference that was scheduled mid this month in Helsinki, Finland... Read more... From the City of Destruction to the Promised Land, by William A Cook | My Catbird Seat ...Ninety-five percent of the people of the world have declared that the impunity granted to the state of Israel by the United States and hence to itself as a complicit criminal in war crimes and crimes against humanity must be recognized and of necessity dealt with before the world can reach their respective promised lands where respect and dignity for all proclaims the rights of all... William T. Hathaway: Radical Peace | MCW US President Barack Hussein Obama promised his fellow Americans peace. His humanitarian rhetoric impressed everybody around the globe. That is why he received the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing after one year in office.. The “savior” turned out to be a warrior. The rhetoric was beefed up. The aggressive but clumsy rhetoric of the George W. Bush administration was replaced by smart newspeak. The war did not stop but has been continuing more intelligently till today and will go on indefinitely because the greed of the US Empire for hegemony is unquenchable... What the American Media Won't Tell You About Israel, by Noam Chomsky | Alternet An old man in Gaza held a placard that read: “You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.” The old man’s message provides the proper context for the latest episode in the savage punishment of Gaza. The crimes trace back to 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from their homes in terror or were expelled to Gaza by conquering Israeli forces, who continued to truck Palestinians over the border for years after the official cease-fire... NATO Intervention in Syria Imminent | Stephen Lendman ...The alleged Syrian chemical weapons threat replicates bogus allegations about Saddam's nonexistent WMDs. It's similar to falsified claims about Gaddafi, the Taliban, and numerous other invented US enemies. Big Lies launch wars. In "The Art of War," Sun Tzu said "All war is based on deception." It's true now like in ancient times. Instant global communications, super-weapons, and scoundrel media complicity make today's threat especially ominous. Washington's rage for war threatens humanity... Former Powell adviser ‘skeptical’ of ‘politicized’ US intelligence on Syria | RT Syria will never use chemical weapons against its own people, Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army Colonel who was Chief of Staff to Colin Powell told RT. Instead, the reality is that US is “preparing the ground to intervene in Syria.” An act which would lead to a conflict “that would take at least a decade to settle – and there aren't going to be too many victors at the end of that decade, just losers,” Wilkerson says, as Washington's ultimate aim is to overthrow the Iranian leadership. Simultaneously, some members of Congress are talking about "impeachment" of the US president for not consulting Congress before involving the country in conflicts... Dec 9, 2012 One of Israel's great leftist warriors wants peace with Hamas and Gaza - but does the Knesset? by Robert Fisk | The Independent Old Uri Avnery is 89 but he’s still a fighter. In fact, the famed writer is still one of the great old leftist warriors of Israel, still demanding peace with the Palestinians, peace with Hamas and a Palestinian state on the old ’67 borders – give or take a few square miles. He still believes Israel could have peace tomorrow or next week. If Netanyahu wanted it. “The misfortune of being an incorrigible optimist,” is how he describes his predicament. Or perhaps an illusionist?.. More Voices Urge Obama to Rein In Netanyahu, by Jim Lobe | Inter Press Service “Construction in E-1 would make it almost impossible to provide a future Palestinian state the contiguity it needs to be viable and cut it off from East Jerusalem,” warned Debra DeLee, president of Americans for Peace Now (APN), a Jewish peace group. “Without a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israel is doomed to become a bi-national state, which means an end to the Zionist vision of an Israel that is both Jewish and democratic,” she added in an appeal to Obama to “personally intervene with …Netanyahu and demand that his government reverse its decision.” [An oxymoron does not refer to an observable phenomenon – it is a logical contradiction in terms] The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine, by Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir | Stanford University Press ...Though many Israelis, on both political right and left, agree that the occupation constitutes a problem for Israeli democracy, few ultimately admit that Israel is no democracy or question the very structure of the Israeli regime itself. Too frequently ignored are the lasting effects of the deceptive denial of the events of 1948 and 1967, and the ways in which the resulting occupation has reinforced the sweeping militarization and recent racialization of Israeli society... Cold Revenge, by Uri Avnery | MCW “Revenge is a dish that is best served cold,” is a saying attributed to Stalin. I don’t know if he really said that. All the possible witnesses were executed long ago. Anyhow, a taste for delayed revenge is not an Israeli trait. Israelis are more impulsive. More immediate. They don’t plan. They improvise... Syria Has No Monopoly on Chemical Weapons, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam Recent news reports claim that western powers, including Israel, may be preparing to intervene in the Syrian civil war. The justification would be that the Assad regime is either preparing sarin gas (according to some reports) for use against rebel forces or communities or engaging in suspicious behavior that might indicate preparations to use its chemical weapons (according to others)... Bashar al-Assad, Syria, and the truth about chemical weapons, by Robert Fisk | The Independent Bashar’s father Hafez al-Assad was brutal but never used chemical arms. And do you know which was the first army to use gas in the Middle East?.. Syria: Iraq 2.0, another false-flag invasion, rated XXX, by John Robles | Voice of Russia The US and NATO are set to invade Syria, something many of us have been warning about for a while now. It has been obvious that they have been looking for a pretext and that pretext has already been injected into the public debate. That pretext: chemical weapons, revealed by Fox News and the Director of the CIA, the same two sources that brought us all of the Iraq invasion lies... Oligarchs Fight Live - an Entertainment | Shamireaders Who said the filthy rich are good for nothing? Their antics are very entertaining! The Nouveau Riche have always been notorious headline-providers, and the newest crop of Russian oligarchs make the robber barons of previous generations look timid and colorless. As money ages, it becomes anaemic; divided and subdivided by careful lawyers into a maze of corporate entities. New money is still good fun; they pull their stunts right in public, and they don’t pull their punches. These hometown heroes fill the vacuum left by the maharajas and sheiks in a way that our drab bureaucrats never could... Hamas' Meshaal vows to 'continue resistance' | MCW "Palestine is our land and nation from the sea to the river, from north to south, and we cannot cede an inch or any part of it," he said. "We fight Zionists, not Jews. We fight whoever occupied our land, regardless of religion ... Statehood will be the fruit of resistance, not negotiations," Meshaal said to cheering fans... [Hamas is currently the only viable and legitimate resistance force among the Palestinians. And they have every right to employ whatever means they choose to defend the people against a ruthless militarily superior adversary, not to mention the traitors in Ramallah.] Settlers Acid-Test Netanyahu | Roi Tov ..."Ein lo Elohim!" means "he has no God!" This is said towards someone who stops at nothing, he has no fear of God and will commit any atrocity. If God means nothing to such a person, much less would state laws, which are mere commandments of men. In the Israeli reality, this often depicts civil servants and settlers.. To a great extent, these few savages [Jewish settlers] force their behavior on the Israeli government. Netanyahu knows he cannot escape their verdict. On 12/8, 2012, they issued a warning against the Israeli government on settler Channel 7. An acid-test was decreed on Netanyahu. Paraphrasing them, let me say that "Settlers have no God!".. The Jurist’s and Ambassador's Dilemma, by Adam Keller | MCW Such an event does not occur every day at the halls of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. A year and a half ago, the right-wing majority in the Knesset passed the "Boycott Law" which claims to be a law against boycotting Israel, but in fact defines boycotting of the settlements as a “boycott of Israel.”.. [Keller, Avnery et al, the small remnant of decent human beings left among the Israelis, still deceive themselves into thinking that the State of Israel can somehow be ‘reformed.’ Such self-deception has an expiration date, and it’s coming soon.] Dec 8, 2012 Jonathan Cook on liberal Zionism, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss Last month I met author Jonathan Cook in Nazareth and pushed my latest theory: that when forced to choose, many liberal Zionists will choose liberalism over the ideology of religious nationalism. Cook is not so optimistic. Labor Zionism has always struggled to maintain the "illusion of a Jewish and a democratic state," he says, lately by adopting security rhetoric to rationalize second-class citizenship for Palestinians inside Israel. Labor Zionists favored expulsion of Palestinians historically, and today the policy of Judaization of the territory that is being effected inside Area C of the occupied territories is going on in Israel too... [See also Jonathan’s articles One State or Two? Neither: The Issue is Zionism and There’s Nothing Idealistic About the One-State Solution] E1: Trashing Evil | Roi Tov ...A few days ago, the Lord of Judæa decided to construct 3,000 new buildings in a zone known as E1, located between Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim. This was done as a belligerent answer to the recognition of Palestine as an observer state by the UN on November 29, 2012. The Zionist idea behind the move is to bisect the West Bank, an attempt to transform Palestine into a non-viable state. As often happens with politruks, Benjamin Netanyahu took the decision without having visited the site.. Next to the infamous wall enclosing Palestinian areas, Israel had placed a substantial waste dump... CrossTalk: Ready, Steady, Decline! | YouTube Are the days of Western supremacy coming to an end? Has the financial crisis undermined the West's power and influence? Are the Western societies equipped to overcome the challenges to democratic institutions? How sustainable and strong is the West's position? Eventually, will it be toppled? CrossTalking with Pepe Escobar and Alexander Lambsdorff... French activists campaign against Jewish Defense League | PressTV Pointing to numerous acts of violence committed by the JDL, the activists censured the French government’s tolerance of the Jewish group and reaffirmed their determination to continue their campaign to ban the JDL... Iran and the “Mad Mullah Myth”: Leveretts’ Forthcoming Book Excerpted in Harper’s | The Race for Iran ...One of the main themes in Going to Tehran is that America’s Iran debate is fundamentally distorted by a series of myths—namely, that the Islamic Republic is irrational, illegitimate, and can easily be isolated in its regional environment and, ultimately, undermined by the United States. The Harper’s excerpt lays out some of the main points in our critique of the irrationality myth... Mr. President, Tear Down This Wall: Washington’s Iranian Future, by Pepe Escobar | TomDispatch In Election 2012’s theatre-of-the-absurd “foreign policy” debate, Iran came up no less than 47 times. Despite all the fear, loathing, threats, and lies in that billionaire’s circus of a campaign season, Americans were nonetheless offered virtually nothing substantial about Iran, although its (non-existent) WMDs were relentlessly hawked as the top U.S. national security issue... Sanctions make nuclear accord 'unlikely' by Jim Lobe | Asia Times Online Iran is unlikely to agree to curb its nuclear program unless the US and its Western allies are prepared to ease tough economic sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic over the past decade, according to a major new report signed by more than three dozen former top US foreign-policy makers, military officers, and independent experts... Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War, by Leuren Moret By most accounts, the U.S. has embarked on another "humanitarian" war, and its fifth one, using depleted uranium. In this compelling 2004 study, geoscientist and radiation expert Leuren Moret paints a bold picture of the pervasive and devastating effects of this "silent killer that will not go away". However, beyond its much-touted military advantages, Moret suggests that depleted uranium serves as a deadly instrument for furthering Washington’s unavowed geo-strategic agenda, as in Libya today... 'Pro-Israel' Establishment Silences Courageous Rabbis, by MJ Rosenberg | MCW I am not going to recapitulate the sad story of what happened at Congregation Bnai Jeshurun in Manhattan this week except to say that progressive Jews (and others) thought a new day had dawned when its rabbis hailed the General Assembly vote on Palestine. But then, within two days, the rabbis at Bnai Jeshurun were forced to clarify following a firestorm of abuse, ginned up by the usual suspects.. No one has to tell those working for organizations (or synagogues) dependent on donations from the Jewish community what they can and cannot say... Read more... Netanyahu's Israel, by Stephen Lendman | OpEd News He's made Israel more unfit to live in than any of his predecessors. Palestinians have no rights whatever. Israeli Arabs have few. Most Jews are losing theirs incrementally. Neoliberal harshness plans destroying Israel's safety net entirely. Budget cuts target housing, healthcare, education, employment and welfare. Labor rights are eroding. So is public education. Disabled Israelis find it harder than ever to find jobs. Regressive taxes benefit business and wealthy elites. Others least able to afford it face growing burdens... [If the Israeli underclass and the Palestinians made common cause – well, OK, not likely to happen, just saying...] Egypt opposition reject Morsi dialogue offer | MCW Thousands of Egyptians have marched towards the presidential palace in Cairo for another day of demonstrations against the government, while thousands of his backers gathered for a funeral of two men killed in recent clashes. The fresh protests on Friday come as the country's main opposition groups rejected President Mohamed Morsi's call for a national political dialogue to resolve the political crisis... Visit to Gaza: UN Press Release, by Richard Falk | Occupied Palestine There is a widespread feeling among Palestinians that Israel is above the law, and that Israel is likely to continue to have the benefits of impunity even when it flagrantly violates international humanitarian law. Experience has shown that Israel fails to meet its international obligation to promptly and impartially investigate its own actions. Experience has also shown that Israel is not likely to carry out its obligations under the cease fire agreement; indeed during our visit we heard Israeli warplanes flying directly overhead and received reports of Israeli military incursions into the Gaza Strip... Inequality and Poverty American-Style, by Graham Peebles | Counterpunch ...In a society that champions material success and individual achievement above all else, when all time and energy is given over to addressing the fundamental requirements of living, life becomes arduous and demoralizing. Tedium by design orchestrated by the ‘Masters of Mankind’ as Adam Smith famously called the rich and powerful, who like nothing more than an exhausted, depressed populace, purged of the necessary energy to revolt, to protest, to demand justice and equality... French Colonisers Have Not Accepted The Loss Of Their Colony, by Elena Gromova History stutters: the new leader of the Syrian National Coalition, knighted by the West, is none other than the grand-son of one of the chief collaborators of the French occupation of Syria in the 20s. Formerly, the French colonial power resorted to religious leaders to teach submission to the people under its domination; today it relies on clerics to overthrow the secular regime of the Syrian Arab Republic... [I wasn’t aware of the details, but the historical role that France is playing has been obvious enough.] Dec 7, 2012 Doctors and Medics Operate Under Fire and Siege in Gaza, by Joshua Brollier | Counterpunch Dr. Majdi Na’eim worked for eight consecutive days at Al-Shifa Hospital throughout Israel’s “Pillar of Cloud” operation in the Gaza strip. With hundreds of wounded pouring into the emergency room, there was no time for him and many of his colleagues to even leave the hospital. On the final and one of the most brutal days of the assault, Israel targeted Ni’ma tower in Gaza City. Dr. Na’eim was in the emergency room aiding physicians when he learned that one of the arriving casualties was his two year old son, Abdel Rahman Na’eim. Imagine a father’s horror and instant grief... Santa is a Dissident, by Rosemarie Jackowski | MCW Many years ago Virginia, an eight-year-old girl in New York City, wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper. She asked if there was really a Santa Claus. Those were simpler times. In today's complex world, children might write and ask if Santa approves of protesters. Letters from children today could be answered like this... How I Became a Holocaust Denier | Paul Eisen My family were ordinary folk – ‘twice-a-year Jews’ we used to call them. But like most of us second and third generation, upwardly mobile, North London Jews, our Jewishness filled our lives. And, at that time, that meant Zionism and the Holocaust. For me, my family and our friends, a post-Holocaust Israel meant quite simply ‘never again’.. [Please read this if you still believe that ‘holocaust denial’ as a term of opprobrium is accurate. I also highly recommend Eisen's piece But how could the Holocaust not be true?.] This is becoming boooooring | The Vineyard of the Saker Syrian WMD now. Nevermind that the only case of use of chemical weapons "against his own people" was by Saddam under the high patronage of, what else, the USA. Nevermind that it is also nonsense. Nevermind that it would make no sense. The US "patriotic crowd" seems to be buying this one too... [A picture is worth...] How Petraeus Quietly Stoked the Fires of Sectarian War Without Getting Burned, by Gareth Porter | Truthout ..Petraeus represents a new type of military commander, whose primary strength lay neither in strategy nor in command of combat, but in the strategic manipulation of information to maintain domestic political support for counterinsurgency wars of choice, while at the time enhancing his own reputation. The series shows how Petraeus was engaged from the beginning of the Iraq war in creating a myth about himself as a commander with unique ability to defeat insurgents, that he had failed in his first two commands in Iraq and that he did not believe that war was winnable... Doomsday for Iran? US Tests EMP Bomb | Israel National News Boeing has successful tested an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) missile that turns “science fiction into science fact” and could be the doomsday weapon against Iran, but media have largely ignored the development... [Given that nowadays technological advances have a way of getting quickly replicated by the adversary, this might just as easily spell the end of Israel, in’shallah.] NATO agrees to augment Turkey’s air-defence capabilities | Allied Command Operations NATO ministers of foreign affairs agreed to augment Turkey’s air defence capabilities by deploying Patriot missiles at a meeting in Brussels on 4 December. The situation along NATO’s south-eastern border and the repeated violations of Turkey’s territory raise grave concern, NATO foreign ministers said in a statement. Ministers declared their determination to deter threats to, and defend, Turkey... [Poor hapless Turkey, under threat from the evil Syrian Empire. It’s beginning to look like déjà vu all over again.] Nuclear Israel: The secret that is not | YouTube The United Nations General Assembly is pressing Israel to reveal its nuclear arsenal. Israel has lashed out against the overwhelming approval of the resolution, which calls for international inspectors to be allowed to examine its atomic programme. Its foreign minister said the vote was meaningless. The country also rejected a UN-backed conference on a nuke-free Middle East. Israel denies it has nuclear weapons - but refuses to provide proof that it doesn't... Iran Shows Captured Drone; USA Claims "No Evidence" | Roi Tov On December 5, 2012, Venezuelan teleSUR news network showed footage from the Iranian television; at its center was a captured US ScanEagle drone. The feat had been performed by Iran's Revolutionary Guards; some of them where happily chatting next to the contraption. Last December, Israel's Military Intelligence (AMAN) reported that Iran hit an American satellite; shortly after, Iran captured an RQ-170 Sentinel drone, which belongs to the top echelon of American drones. This was acknowledged by the USA, to the extent that President Obama unsuccessfully asked for it to be returned... What you don't see in media about Gaza | MCW Israel is a hazardous ally for the US. It is no friend. How many of our American citizens saw this raw footage on our TVs? This omission is why we are so ignorant of what our government does in our name. The chaos, explosive fear on the old women and the children tear at the heart. And amidst the ravaging turmoil the men pull hoses and climb ladders in the vain attempt to salvage a home... Washington Humbug: Iran, Israel and International Law, by Brian Cloughley | Counterpunch The trite old phrase ‘What’s Sauce for the Goose is also Sauce for the Gander’ means quite simply that if a person does something that is approved by society, then another person should not be criticized or penalized for doing exactly the same thing. That seems fair enough. But it doesn’t apply in international affairs, in which sauce-allocation is the privilege of the powerful... Syria: a rather unexpected and optimistic scenario? | The Vineyard of the Saker Thierry Meyssan is a complicated source to rate. On one hand, he is a very well informed person and he has to be credited with being one of the first people to raise doubts about the 9/11 events. But I also recall Meyssan sometimes mistaking his hopes for facts, and some of his analyses are superficial. Anyway, he is in Syria now (he is very pro-regime), and he recently reported a version of events there which I find interesting and I would like to pass it on to you... Dec 6, 2012 If Not Two States, Then One, by Saree Makdisi | NYT In moving forward with long-threatened plans to develop E1, Israel will be breaking the back of the West Bank and isolating the capital of the prospective Palestinian state from its hinterland. In so doing, it will be terminating once and for all the very prospect of that state — and with it, by definition, any lingering possibility of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.. by terminating the prospect of a two-state solution, Netanyahu will also be sealing the fate of an exclusively Jewish state. As cannier Israeli politicians (Ehud Olmert among them) have long warned, maintaining the existence of Israel as a Jewish state fundamentally requires perpetuating at least the idea of a Palestinian state... [A couple of years ago I asked Mr. Makdisi (via an intermediary) if he would consider assuming the leadership of at least the diaspora wing of the One State Movement. He humbly demurred, stating that he was merely an academic and uninterested in taking an active political role. Which convinced me that he was indeed the man we’ve been waiting for. Not coincidentally, he is Edward Said’s nephew.] No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense, by Noura Erakat | MCW On the fourth day of Israel's most recent onslaught against Gaza's Palestinian population, President Barack Obama declared, “No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” In an echo of Israeli officials, he sought to frame Israel's aerial missile strikes against the 360-square kilometer Strip as the just use of armed force against a foreign country. Israel's ability to frame its assault against territory it occupies as a right of self-defense turns international law on its head... Rule by Ruthless Force: Justice, Peace and the Israeli State, by William A. Cook | Counterpunch ...The vote to recognize the rights of the people of Palestine, by electing it to the forum of nation states, proclaims to all that they are equal to all assembled and can use the powers vested in the UN to bring their oppressors and occupiers before the International Courts of Justice and to seek redress for the rights denied them under its charters. No longer can they be shackled to the demands of either the United States or Israel. Now they can address the UN as victims of an aggressive nation that has defied more than 160 of its Resolutions since 1948 by imposing with force conditions inimical to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which it is a signatory... Arab Youth Conference for Liberation and Dignity | Palestinian Youth Movement The Palestinian Youth Movement is happy to announce the first Arab Youth Conference for Liberation and Dignity, this December 27 – December 30, 2012. The conference will take place in Tunis and it aims to gather participants around the struggle for Arab liberation and the liberation of Palestine. The conference will include up to 100 young strugglers and activists from around the Arab world that aim to build a common vision that can be translated to action... Israel/Palestine: “It’s Complicated!”…Or Is It? by John Spritzler | New Democracy World ...When one’s respected leaders say one thing and one’s heart says the opposite, the natural and genuine subjective reaction is to believe that the issue is “complicated.” This doesn’t, however, mean it really is. The conflict in Israel is no more “complicated” than was apartheid or slavery... Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts | Stop NATO Why Humanitarian Interventionism is a Dead End: Beware the Anti-Anti-War Left, by Jean Bricmont | Counterpunch Ever since the 1990s, and especially since the Kosovo war in 1999, anyone who opposes armed interventions by Western powers and NATO has to confront what may be called an anti-anti-war left (including its far left segment). In Europe, and notably in France, this anti-anti-war left is made up of the mainstream of social democracy, the Green parties and most of the radical left. The anti-anti-war left does not come out openly in favor of Western military interventions and even criticizes them at times (but usually only for their tactics or alleged motivations – the West is supporting a just cause, but clumsily and for oil or for geo-strategic reasons)... Israel is Corruptus in Extremis | Roi Tov ...Israel ranked 39 on the list of most corrupt countries with a score of 60, slightly behind Qatar, Cyprus and Botswana. It doesn't sound too good. However, the list includes 176 countries, thus Israel was placed close to its top end. Most analysts will remark that Israel ranked better than most of its immediate neighbours, and will praise the Zionist attempt to improve native practices. This is exactly what the Hebrew media is doing... Ten Reasons Iran Doesn't Want the Bomb, by Seyed Hossein Mousavian | The National Interest ...Almost a decade has passed and the unrelenting Western pressures applied on Iran have not achieved the objectives they set. Instead, they have resulted in Iran having an expanded and more sophisticated nuclear program. It is time for the West to acknowledge these realities. The question that remains is whether Iran ultimately aims to get a nuclear weapon. If Iran isn’t after the bomb, then the Western accusations and concerns would be reduced enough to allow a diplomatic solution. The following reasons aim to strengthen the case for why Iran is not after a nuclear bomb:.. The Persian Cats Takes Down Another Drone | Moon of Alabama ...The U.S. (and Israel) are routinely violating other countries airspace. This might one day come back to haunt them. The technological development of drones is no longer a hurdle and soon other countries will also have many of them. Hizbullah flying a drone above Israels Dimona reactor is just a sign of things to come. We also must again emphasize that despite five years of continued illegal drone espionage over Iran the U.S. has found not one bit of evidence of any existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. One wonders if future officials will resent their forerunner's dumb idea of creating a customary law of air violations for the senseless quest for proof of an Iranian program that does not exist... A short quiz on the US, Israel, and 'rogue nation' status, by Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian The phrase "rogue nation" is one of the terms that get tossed around often in political discourse without much effort devoted to its actual meaning. Let's try to apply this term to a series of events just from the last week, beginning with this one:.. Read more... The Jewish 'Philosopher' | Gilad Atzmon Why should the Arabs pay for crimes committed by Europeans, the Jewish 'philosopher' Bernard-Henri Lévy provides the answer: 'the Arabs are Nazis'. Not exactly Plato or Kant... [The proper term for people like Lévy is 'Sophist,' someone who engages in mere self-serving rhetoric, the diametrical opposite of a philosopher (lover of wisdom).] Israeli apostate blamed for UK anti-Semitism | Gilad Atzmon The following Hasbara piece crowns my book and myself as the ultimate exponents of “a relatively new form of antisemitism injected into the anti-Zionist discourse”. The piece admits a Jewish political dedication to book burning and the author behind this piece is somehow desperate to silence me and my work. The Hasbara writer is also convinced that it is up to Jews to decide what Brits should read and who should be featured in their media outlets... [Read Gilad's book; you'll be glad you did.] Read more...No consequences for Israel’s hateful conduct? by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis ...Israel’s comical propaganda chief Mark Regev defended Israel’s latest criminal activity, saying that “from our perspective, Israel is responding in a very measured way to a series of Palestinian provocations”.. However, Hague is coming under increasing pressure in Parliament as MPs queue up to ask difficult questions. For example, Sir Gerald Kaufman (who is proudly Jewish) asked point-blank:.. Israel isolated, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance The developments in the last few days have been interesting to say the least. Israeli papers are finally publishing stories showing that Israel’s assassination of the Hamas leader Jabari that began the latest attack was intentional and political. Jabari was actually considering a draft ceasefire agreement reached between a Hamas representative and an Israeli with the knowledge of Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak and the Israeli hierarchy. Perhaps that is why Barak announced he was quitting political life... Palestine: Oppression Will not Work | YouTube Anyone who knows a little bit of history realizes that when there is situation where a people has refused to surrender and abandon its rights, oppressing it will not work. The only ones who may live in denial of this fact are the oppressor and those who support it. Their wishful thinking thus leads them to trying different types of violence and criminality, coupled with mass lies and distortion campaign... Effective annexation: Israel now stamping passports of West Bank visitors “Judea and Samaria only,” by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada Because the Palestinian Authority has no real control or sovereignty, anyone who wishes to go to the occupied West Bank can only do so with Israeli permission. This includes foreign visitors and thousands of Palestinians with third country passports who live or visit there. Even though many foreign nationals live and work in the West Bank, there is no such thing as a work permit that allows them to work for Palestinian institutions or companies based in the occupied West Bank, or simply to live there securely... The Osama bin Laden Myth | Paul Craig Roberts The interview below with Osama bin Laden was conducted by the Karachi, Pakistan, daily newspaper, Ummat and published on September 28, 2001, 17 days after the alleged, but unsubstantiated, al Qaeda attack of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center twin towers and Pentagon. The interview was sensational. The alleged “mastermind” of 9/11 said that he and al Qaeda had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack... The German Joan of Arc | Paul Eisen .. A lawyer by trade, Sylvia Stoltz defended Ernst Zundel at his trial in 2005. Never an easy thing to do, Ms Stoltz's efforts were further hampered by the ingenious, and peculiarly modern German, device of making the offering of a proper defence itself a crime. Thus, if an attorney argues the truth of a Holocaust denier's words, they themselves become guilty of denying the Holocaust... UN tells Israel to let in nuclear inspectors | The Guardian The UN general assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Israel to open its nuclear programme for inspection. The resolution, approved by a vote of 174 to six with six abstentions, calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) "without further delay" and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Those voting against were Israel, the US, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau... Following E1 decision, Israel is more isolated than ever but not likely to change course, by Noam Sheizaf | +972 Magazine ...The Palestinian problem is a human and civil rights problem disguised as a diplomatic issue. An adequate approach to the occupation would focus on the problem at hand and not the desired solution, which at the moment seems more like a fantasy. The problem is the military control over the lives of millions which has lasted for over half a century, and the absence of political and human rights that comes along with said rule... Racist Israelis speaking against OBAMA | YouTube This video was shot in Jerusalem on June 3, 2009. It was produced by Mondoweiss.net and posted on youtube. In less than approx. 3 days from it's original post date, it was taken down. I am reposting because this video shows the racism of Israelis... Exodus 2013 | Roi Tov ...All Jewish-Zionist parties preach democracy. The actual situation is of a highly dense territory populated by an almost equal number of Jews and Palestinians. Unifying it in a single, democratic country, leads to a binational country. Jews will have no preference there. In other words, either the Zionist parties are presenting contradictory policies or are hiding from the people evacuation plans for the Palestinian population. A new Palestinian exodus... [I remember saying to my father about 25 years ago that the Palestinians are the new Jews, scattered in a far-flung diaspora, yearning for return to their homeland. He responded with a look of total incomprehension.] The demographic success of Israel's settlement project, by Neve Gordon and Yinon Cohen | Al Jazeera The United Nations General Assembly recognised Palestine as a "nonmember state". But it may very well be that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has already missed the boat. With the help of graphic designer, Michal Vexler, we have created an infogram to illustrate and explain how demographic changes within the West Bank obstruct the possibility of the two-state solution. The numbers suggest that Abbas' bid to the United Nations was too little, too late... Khalidi, Karon and Bronner (!) deliver a post mortem for the two-state solution, by Adam Horowitz | Mondoweiss Really insightful episode of Al Jazeera English's "Empire" following the UN vote and the attack on Gaza. Host Marwan Bishara and guests Rashid Khalidi, Tony Karon and Ethan Bronner serve up yet another post mortem on the two-state solution. Peter Beinart is the lone hold out... Israel rejects outcry over settlement plan | MCW A defiant Israel has rejected a wave of American and European condemnations over plans to build thousands of new homes in east Jerusalem and West Bank settlements, vowing to press forward with the construction in the face of widespread international opposition... The first video of the Captured American ScanEagle Drone | YouTube Iran's IRGC has captured a US ScanEagle drone again over the Persian Gulf waters upon its intrusion into the Iranian airspace... Short Cuts, by Eyal Weizman | London Review of Books In the course of the eight-day aerial bombardment of Gaza by Israel – using drones, F-16s and Apache helicopters – more than 1350 buildings were hit. They included military depots, which are considered legitimate targets under international humanitarian law. But the police stations, TV stations, a local healthcare centre, ministries, road tunnels and a bridge that were also targeted are legally protected as civilian infrastructure. To justify their destruction, Israel argued that ‘they belong to a terrorist entity.’ This is an argument that would render all public buildings and physical infrastructure in the Strip legitimate targets: it is not accepted by international lawyers outside Israel... The Human Cost of Iran Sanctions: Have Americans Really Learned Anything from the Iraq War? | The Race for Iran ...Americans have hardly paid attention to the 12 years preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, during which the United States led another multinational coalition in imposing sanctions on Iraq that led to the deaths of more than a million Iraqis, half of them children.. Depending on whose estimates of civilian casualties from U.S. military action in Iraq one believes (the U.S. Department of Defense admits to just over 100,000), those sanctions may well have killed many more innocent Iraqis than the U.S. military did... Dec 4, 2012 Dividing Line: Segregation in Israel's public bus lines | YouTube For months now, a campaign has been waged far from the public eye to bar Palestinians employed in Israel from using public transportation. The Israeli passengers, settlers, along with Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman, are putting pressure on the authorities to prevent the joint use of buses by Palestinians and Israelis. Thus far the directive was to allow the workers to ride the buses, but some drivers refuse to take them. The solution that seems to be taking shape now is segregation and the creation of special bus lines for the Palestinian laborers... Iraqi Children Genocide, by Francis Boyle | MCW During the summer of 1991 I was contacted on behalf of several Mothers in Iraq whose children were dying at astounding rates because of the genocidal economic sanctions that had been imposed upon them by the Security Council in August of 1990 at the behest of the Bush Senior administration. They requested that I do something in order to save these innocent children from perishing in agony in front of their mothers’ very own eyes... Susan Rice's Imperial Credentials | Stephen Lendman She's favored to replace Hillary Clinton next year as secretary of state. Obama calls her "extraordinary." She matches the current incumbent's bullying, bluster and arrogance. Both deplore peace, nonviolence, and social justice. They're pro-war, contemptuous of rule of law principles, and brazenly anti-democratic. They represent wrong over right. They're war criminals multiple times over. They're indifferent to human suffering. They disgrace America and humanity... US Building $100-Million Underground Bunker at Secret Israeli Missile Base, by Richard Silverstein | Antiwar ...Though the code name for the project, 911, may be coincidental, the sense of looming Armageddon is palpable. It should also be noted that all three of Israel’s most formidable enemies, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran, have substantial underground military complexes. Gilad Shalit may have been kept in such bunkers during his captivity, and Hamas’s senior leadership retreats to such complexes during Israeli attacks like the one we saw last month... “Legal Imperialism” and International Law, by James Petras | Dissident Voice By now we are familiar with imperial states using their military power to attack, destroy and occupy independent countries. Boatloads of important studies have documented how imperial countries have seized and pillaged the resources of mineral-rich and agriculturally productive countries, in consort with multi-national corporations. Financial critics have provided abundant data on the ways in which imperial creditors have extracted onerous rents, royalties and debt payments from indebted countries and their taxpayers, workers, employees and productive sectors. What has not been examined fully is the over-arching legal architecture which informs, justifies and facilitates imperial wars, pillage and debt collection... If Iran got the bomb, would it even matter? | Stephen M. Walt ...The main effect of the nuclear revolution has been to induce greater caution in the behavior of both those who possessed the bomb and anyone who had to deal with a nuclear-armed adversary. Proliferation has not transformed weak states into influential global actors, has not given nuclear-armed states the ability to blackmail their neighbors or force them to kowtow, and it has not triggered far-reaching regional arms races. In short, fears that an Iranian bomb would transform regional or global politics have been greatly exaggerated; one might even say that they are just a lot of hooey... Mahmoud Abbas' real "accomplishment" was not the UN vote on Palestine, by Ali Abunimah | Al Jazeera ...The Abbas PA's record of collaboration with Israel, against the interests of the Palestinian people is long, shameful and well documented. It includes plotting secretly with Israel, the US and the former Mubarak regime in Egypt to overthrow the elected Hamas-led Palestinian Authority after 2006, colluding with Israel to bury the Goldstone report into Israel's war crimes in Gaza in 2008-2009, begging Israel not to release Palestinian prisoners so as not to give credit to Hamas, and more recently Abbas' public renunciation of the Palestinian right of return... Thanks for the Warnings, Israel, by Johnny Barber | Antiwar ...On Wednesday we accompanied farmers to the buffer zone in Johr el Deek. It was amazing! We walked right up to the razor wire barrier! We watched as two Israeli jeeps approached the fence. I was smiling as they got out of their jeeps, but my smile was erased as they lifted their weapons and fired toward us. Of course, they didn’t shoot us; the ceasefire was in effect for an entire week! I was confused, though, as they lobbed tear gas canisters at us and continued firing over our heads as we retreated. Perhaps the soldiers were as confused as I was about the details of the agreement. After all, unfettered access to the land is a little vague. Perhaps the farmers misunderstood. The fishermen faced a similar dilemma... A Straight Look at the Jewish Lobby, by Mark Weber | Institute for Historical Review ...“The whole world,“ said United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, “is demanding that Israel withdraw [from occupied Palestinian territories]. I don’t think the whole world... can be wrong.” Only in the United States do politicians and the media still fervently support Israel and defend its policies. For many years the US has provided Israel with crucial military, diplomatic and financial backing, including more than $3 billion each year in aid. Why is the US such a staunch bastion of support for Israel?.. Michel Chossudovsky's Presentation to the 9/11 Revisited conference in Malaysia | YouTube Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, presents to the "9/11 Revisted: Seeking the Truth" conference in Kuala Lumpur on November 19, 2012... Researcher Günter Deckert sentenced to German prison, by Michael Hoffman | On the Contrary In the World War II revisionist history movement in Germany, Günter Deckert is among the most hard-working and humble of its martyrs. I say "martyr" because any resident of Germany who persists in actively and publicly doubting the existence of execution gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau -- the holy relic of the West's most sacred religion (Holocaustianity) -- will be fined and likely imprisoned. Günter Deckert has been to prison before in Germany for this reason and he is about to be imprisoned again. His "crime"? Translating from Italian into German historian Carlo Mattogno's treatise, "Auschwitz: The First Gassing".. Dec 3, 2012 Israelis on the path to Nazism? by Alan Hart | Redress Information & Analysis Some and perhaps many will regard my headline question as offensive but I make no apology for asking it; and I take comfort from the fact that my decision to pose it is fully supported by one of my very dear Jewish friends, Nazi holocaust survivor Dr Hajo Meyer. Before I ran my proposed headline past him, I was well aware that he believes, and has said in public, that Zionism is seeking to dehumanize the Palestinians in the same way the Nazis sought to dehumanize him in the Auschwitz concentration camp... [They've been on that path from the git-go; see my essay Zionism and Nazism: Is there a difference that makes a difference?] Read more...Received Wisdom? How the Ideology of Netanyahu’s Late Father Influenced the Son, by Karl Vick | SHOAH The effort to glean insights into the mind of Benjamin Netanyahu by examining the views of his extraordinary father reached a new level with word that Benzion Netanyahu had died, at age 102, in his Jerusalem home early Monday. A historian of Jews in medieval Spain, the elder Netanyahu spent most of his academic career in the United States—supposedly because his political views were out of fashion among the leftist Israeli intelligentsia of the 1950s and ’60s... Read more... Why Americans Don't Understand Palestine, by Scott McConnell | The National Interest If a man from Mars descended to observe Israel’s attack on the Gaza strip, he would have seen one group of humans trapped in a densely populated area, largely defenseless while a modern air force destroyed their buildings at will. He might have learned that the people in Gaza had been essentially enclosed for several years in a sort of ghetto, deprived by the Israeli navy of access to the fish in their sea, generally unable to travel or to trade with the outside world, barred by Israeli forces from much of their arable land, all the while surveyed continuously from the sky by a foe which could assassinate their leaders at will and often did... Read more... Israel and Palestine go to War | Roi Tov Following Israel Minister of Foreign Affairs' declaration "Palestinian Authority doesn't exist," the relationship between the State of Palestine and Israel is deteriorating rapidly. In addition to new weapons tests and the decision to build 3,000 houses in the West Bank, which were already reported in this website, Israel announced the freezing of Palestinian tax revenues, a clumsy attempt to strangle to death Israel's new neighbor state. Back in Palestine from his historical achievement at the UN Headquarters, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is preparing for the worst. At this moment, the chances of renewing the negotiations between the two states are slim... Read more... Gilad on Press TV: US isolated by vote against Palestinian bid at UN | Gilad Atzmon In spite of American relentless efforts to pressure other nations to oppose the Palestinian bid, they failed completely. America is actually paying a heavy price for Jewish lobby intervening with its politics and I think it’s a wake-up call for America... Watch video... Israel halts Palestinian tax transfer | MCW ..."I have no intention of transferring the taxes due to the Palestinian Authority this month. They will be used to pay the PA debts to the Israeli electricity company and other bodies," Steinitz said. The move is the second act of reprisal by Israel. On Friday, it announced it would press ahead with plans to build thousands of settler homes... The game is up for Israel’s pimps and hirelings, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis ...Why should Palestinians have to negotiate over Israel’s unlawful acts and haggle for their property in rigged talks when there’s proper recourse to the law? Israel’s pimps and hirelings are now exposed. No wonder the Zionist regime and its spin-masters are in such a flap... Read more... Widening of the Islamic-Secular Divide: Showdown in Egypt, by Esam Al-Amin | Counterpunch Ever since the fall of former dictator Hosni Mubarak on that fateful day in February 2011, Egyptian society and its political factions have been sharply divided. On one side is the Islamic parties led by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) but also includes the more conservative Salafi groups as well as other smaller moderate ones such as Al-Wasat Party. On the other is a myriad of secular groups that includes many liberal, leftist, as well as youth revolutionary groups such as the April 6 movement... Read more... A Different War in Gaza, by Ramzy Baroud | Counterpunch ...what was thought of as another hunting season of Gaza’s civilians and fighters alike didn’t turn out as desired. ‘Operation Pillar of Cloud’ was meant as to present Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak with ample opportunities so that they may wave their fingers in threatening gestures and score as many political points as they could before international pressure mount. Instead, it ended up being a political debacle of historic proportions... Read more... Blanking Bradley Manning: NYT and AP Launch Operation Amnesia, by Chris Floyd | Empire Burlesque On Thursday, Bradley Manning, one of the foremost prisoners of conscience in the world today, testified in open court -- the first time his voice has been heard since he was arrested, confined and subjected to psychological torture by the U.S. government. An event of some newsworthiness, you might think.. Surely such a moment of high courtroom drama would draw heavy media coverage, if only for its sensationalistic aspects. But if you relied on the nation's pre-eminent journal of news reportage, the New York Times, you could have easily missed notice of the event altogether, much less learned any details of what transpired in the courtroom... Read more... CIA’s Benghazi Role, by Philip Giraldi | The American Conservative The various accounts of the Sept. 11 Benghazi incident in which four Americans died demonstrate that there is a profound misunderstanding of what the Central Intelligence Agency does and how it interacts with the State Department overseas... Read more... Hizb Allah’s Role in the Syrian Uprising, by Chris Zambelis | The Vineyard of the Saker This article evaluates the growing number of reports of Hizb Allah’s involvement in Syria and the geopolitical stakes involved for the group amid the ongoing turmoil. It also addresses Hizb Allah’s likely preparations for a post-Ba`athist Syria should the regime fall... Read more... Dec 2, 2012 "One Democratic State in all of Palestine" | YouTube Lamis Deek of Al-Awda-NY talks about a vision for one state comprising all of Israel/Palestine. It was part of a meeting in Brooklyn at the historic Church of Our Lord June 17, 2010 to hear survivors of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla... [The clear voice of knowledge, morality and wisdom. See also Who Said Israel Has a Right to Exist?] Palestine: Now What? by Nahida Nizzat | Uprooted Palestinians We've just witnessed the warm embrace given to Palestine by the entire decent world, excluding of courses those who chose the side of evil, throwing themselves in an obscene disgrace, slaves at the feet of the "chosen". Such memorable event might not change much on the ground, however, one cannot dismiss its huge significance, that event is a signal indicating shifting of power worldwide... Sue Israel for Genocide before the International Court of Justice, by Francis A. Boyle | Global Research I would like to propose publicly here in Gaza, Palestine–where the Intifadah began ten years ago at this time–that the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine and its President institute legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague (the so-called World Court) for violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. I am sure we can all agree that Israel has indeed perpetrated the international crime of genocide against the Palestinian People. The purpose of this lawsuit would be to demonstrate that undeniable fact to the entire world... Western state terrorism loses crucial battle in Gaza, by Finian Cunningham | Veterans News Now The biblical reference is rather apt since the Zionist regime launched its onslaught – Pillar of Cloud – on the people of Gaza with presumptuous divine right only to find that their God was not on their side. While the casualties and toll of human suffering are as usual disproportionately inflicted on the Palestinian men, women and children, nevertheless the victors in this latest battle are the people of Gaza and the many people around the world who stood with them... Sanctions on Iran, by Brian Cloughley | The News The US Arms Control Association noted in August that “The United Nations Security Council has adopted six resolutions as part of international efforts to address Iran’s nuclear programme.” And as a result of being considered guilty of failing to abide by some of these resolutions, Iran has been subjected to a large range of vicious sanctions that are in the process of destroying a generation of children... How destruction of Gaza was planned over six decades ago, by Eamon McCann | Belfast Telegraph ...It all happened back then exactly as Planned. It’s happened since, again and again and again and again. It is happening in Gaza today. The problem does not have to do with “ancient hatreds”, with the belligerence of this side or that or both, or with something wicked in Judaism or Islam or both. The problem is the state of Israel... Al-Qaeda in the Sahel, by Jeremy Keenan | Al Jazeera In November 2009, Richard Barrett of the UN's al-Qaeda-Taliban monitoring team said that while attacks by al-Qaeda and its operatives were decreasing in many parts of the world, the situation was worsening in North Africa. He was referring specifically to the Sahel region of southern Algeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania. While the UN statement fits the catastrophic image being portrayed of the Sahara-Sahel region by the US, European and other Western interests, the truth is not only very different, but even more serious in that both the launch of the Saharan-Sahelian front in the 'global war on terror' (GWOT) and the subsequent establishment of al-Qaeda in the region have been fabricated... No Victory for Palestine: Abbas’ Farewell Speech at the UN, by As'ad AbuKhalil | Al Akhbar With contrived drama and a fake sense of anticipation, Mahmoud Abbas rode on the wave of Palestinian popular nationalist fervor in the wake of the Israeli assault on Gaza, and came to the UN as he had long promised to submit – and obtain – a non-member status for the State of Palestine. The Palestinian people will now have a status comparable to the Vatican. As Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, once said: the struggle of the Palestinian people over a century entitles them to much more than a state... The genocidal yearnings of Israelis, by Lawrence Davidson | Redress Information & Analysis By the middle of the 19th century the multi-ethnic empire was on its way out as the dominant political paradigm in Europe. Replacing it was the nation-state, a political form which allowed the concentration of ethnic groups within their own political borders. This in turn formed cultural and “racial” incubators for us (superior) vs. them (inferior) nationalism that would underpin most of the West’s future wars. Many of these nation states were also imperial powers expanding across the globe and, of course, their state-based chauvinistic outlook went with them... AP's dangerous Iran hoax demands an accounting and explanation, by Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian ...Although it was intuitively obvious that the graph trumpeted by AP as scary and incriminating of Iran's nuclear program was actually a farce, there is now new, overwhelming, very compelling scientific evidence that is the case. Whether as victim or recklessly culpable participant, AP helped perpetrate a dangerous hoax, and owes an explanation and accounting for what took place, including identifying the "officials from a country critical of Iran's atomic program" who made false claims about what this is... Lieberman: "Palestinian Authority doesn't exist" | Roi Tov ...I apologize to Ms. Rice for my ignorance; if she can spare a minute, I would like her to explain since when her mighty country stopped recognizing democratic majorities. In sharp contrast to what most humanity considers decent and civilized, the USA threatens and extorts on this issue... [Actually, the US has never recognized democratic majorities when it was ‘inconvenient’ to do so. See The True Aims Of Us Foreign Policy, A Profound Hatred Of Democracy] Israel's War for Gaza's Gas , by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed | Le Monde Diplomatique Over the last decade, Israel has experienced a growing energy crisis. Between 2000 and 2010, Israel’s power consumption has risen by 3.5 per cent annually. With over 40 per cent of Israel’s electricity dependent on natural gas, the country has struggled to keep up with rising demand as a stable source of gas is in short supply. As of April, electricity prices rose by 9 per cent, as the state-owned Israeli Electricity Company (IEC) warned that “Israelis may soon face blackouts during this summer’s heat” - which is exactly what happened... Palestine UN Vote Postmortems, by Stephen Lendman | Indybay Pillar of Cloud echoes are still audible. Cast Lead crimes aren't forgotten. Nor is Gaza's siege, occupation harshness, expanding settlements, and horrific daily persecution. Palestine remains locked down and isolated. UN voting changed nothing. Partial or full membership grants no immunity. Israel takes full advantage. That's how rogue states operate. Palestinian suffering continues. Another article cited Haaretz saying Israel suffered a humiliating UN defeat. Perhaps so, but does it matter? The fullness of time will tell... Dec 1, 2012 The Vote in the General Assembly In the song Mack the Knife there’s a line about a body on the sidewalk “oozing” life. Last night there was a body, a living one, oozing self-righteousness. It was not on the sidewalk. It was at the speaker’s podium in the General Assembly. It was that of His Excellency Mr. Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, presenting lies as truth before the vote which overwhelmingly recognized Palestine as a non-member observer state... ...The way forward is already set out by international law and numerous UN resolutions, which are still waiting to be implemented. Therein lies justice. Direct negotiations require Palestinians to make “compromises” and give away what little is left of their lands and resources to a greedy, merciless “peace partner” that has abused and humiliated them for 64 years. What justice can possibly come out of that?.. ...The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as it does on any issue involving Palestine and Israel issued Talking Points for members of Congress and other Zionist organizations to be used when communicating with constituents and giving media interviews. AIPAC keeps close track of how many interviews each member gives and how closely they tow the Zionist line so as to help determine how much cash the particular member will receive for re-election as well as other perks... The U.S. vote against raising the status of Palestine at the United Nations was a deeply cynical move. It was cynical because there is not a chance that President Obama believes that he did the right thing. It is also cynical because, in the name of friendship for Israel, Obama led Israel off the cliff... On 29 November 1947, the UN general assembly voted to partition Palestine between native Palestinians and overwhelmingly European Jewish colonists. The partition plan granted the colonists (one-third of the population) 57% of the land, and granted the native inhabitants (two-thirds of the population) 43%. On 30 November, the colonists embarked on the military conquest of Palestine, expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians... ..“We will continue to oppose firmly any and all unilateral actions in international bodies or treaties that circumvent or prejudge the very outcomes that can only be negotiated, including Palestinian statehood. And, we will continue to stand up to every effort that seeks to delegitimize Israel or undermine its security...” [And this is our putative next Secretary of State!] The Israeli government has approved the construction of 3,000 new homes in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, less than 24 hours after the UN voted for Palestine to be upgraded to a non-member observer state, according to Israeli media reports... [Israel’s version of One State: an ethnically cleansed Eretz Yisrael] Miko Peled sets the record straight on Palestine's dispossession, by Susan Abulhawa | The Electronic Intifada My review of The General’s Son, by Miko Peled, cannot be separated from what I’ve come to know about the author. After all, this book is about Peled’s own life, and his journey to a new understanding of the conflict that has defined so many of our lives. It is a narrative of the author’s transformation from an ardent Zionist, born into a revered military Israeli family, to a human rights activist and advocate of a single binational state... Thanks to … Mad Netanyahu??? by Elias Akleh | MCW ...The long history of Israeli genocidal crimes against Palestinians generally, and against Gaza specifically, had long tested the international popular humanitarian sentiments. More and more nongovernmental organizations from all over the world, including in the US and UK who support Israel unconditionally, are rising up against Israeli crimes calling for boycott and divestment from Israel and support for Palestinians... AP, George Jahn, and the Fake Diagram for Iran’s Bomb, by Muhammad Sahimi | Antiwar The War Party and Israel just do not give up on trying to provoke a war with Iran. Now that Benjamin Netanyahu is done killing the Palestinians in Gaza, including dozens of children, Mossad has apparently fed the public with yet another piece of fake "evidence," supposedly obtained through hacking of Iran’s computers, through its usual conduit for such nonsense, George Jahn of the Associated Press... McCain, Lévy Openly Conspire Against World Peace | Land Destroyer A recent event held by the Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy Initiative, featured a "conversation" with Senator John McCain and self-proclaimed "philosopher" Bernard-Henri Lévy. Both men played a pivotal role in arranging and promoting the arming, funding, and diplomatic recognition of terrorists in Libya who have now overrun much of the country, committed wide scale atrocities, and have left a US Ambassador dead and a US consulate burnt to the ground. Despite this, they now openly seek to repeat their "success" in Syria... The Mossad and the Iranian Graph That Never Was, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam ...all this makes you wonder whether anything Mossad does is real. Far too much of their activity is based on smoke and mirrors. Though that’s always been the case with spy craft, other spy agencies have acted with far more finesse than Mossad. You get the impression that these people are spooks of very little brain, who prefer muscle or brute force to subtlety or nuance... [See also this] Pre-emptive Strike against Iran: Prelude to an Avoidable Disaster? by René Rieger and Markus Schiller | Middle East Policy Council ...a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear installations would very likely miss its objective and entail significant risks and major negative consequences. Third, due to the fact that Iran is several years away from developing operational nuclear weapons, a pre-emptive attack would not only provoke the above-mentioned repercussions; it would also be completely unnecessary. In conclusion, the paper suggests an alternative approach to the Western community's policy of political pressure, threats and sanctions in its dealings with Iran. History shows that, despite historically burdened relations, contradictory interests and ideological antagonism, conflict de-escalation is not only possible, but urgently necessary... Another faulty, pseudo-academic antisemitism initiative | Antony Lerman It was inevitable. Another Gaza offensive by Israel begins, ostensibly to stop Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel, and within a couple of days accusations of antisemitism were flying around. Two particularly caught my attention... Israel Discloses: Rabin Approved Saddam Hussein's Assassination | Roi Tov ...The hysteria in the Israeli newspapers regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction began much before the war or similar publications in the American media. After the Israeli public was convinced that these weapons existed, the second stage of the campaign began. Analysts working for the main Israeli newspapers claimed that Israel should adopt the same tactic used by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir during the Mother of All Battles, namely the First Gulf War. It should let the US destroy the perceived enemy... A Hard Man and Hard People: A View from Livadia Palace, by Israel Shamir and AD Hemming | Counterpunch ...after four hard years of terrible war, when the allies had just defeated Hitler, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill prepared a surprise attack on his erstwhile ally Russia in coalition with Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht troops. The unexpected assault on Russians was scheduled to begin near Dresden on the first day of July, 1945. Churchill intended to use, besides 47 British and American divisions, ten crack German divisions he did not disband so that he could send them back to the Eastern front to fight the Russkies... |
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