Jan 31, 2012 Anti-Semitism and Israel contradictions, by Ramzy Baroud | PressTV  Anti-Zionist Jews set Israel flag ablaze ...there should be no room for any racist discourse - Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, or any other - in the Palestine solidarity movement, which aims at achieving long-denied justice and rights for the Palestinian people. A racist discourse is predicated on racial supremacy, which is exactly what Palestinians are resisting in Israel and the occupied territories. But the “Jewish and democratic state” of Israel is riddled with so many contradictions, the kind that no straightforward narrative can possibly capture... Read more... The Truth Behind the Coming "Regime Change" in Syria, by Shamus Cooke | Global Research The United States appears to be using a strategy in Syria that it has perfected over the years, having succeeded most recently in Libya: arming small paramilitary groups loyal to U.S. interests that claim to speak for the local population; these militants then attack the targeted government the U.S. would like to see overthrown — including terrorist bombings — and when the attacked government defends itself, the U.S. cries "genocide" or "mass murder,” while calling for foreign military intervention... Read more... US can no longer call the shots in the ME | PressTV Press TV has interviewed Sarah Flounders, Director of International Action Center from New York about the extent of support the US provides the brutal dictatorship of Bahrain; why we don't see condemnation from the Arab League and that Western media and governments continue to hide the issue from their own populations... Read transcript, watch video... Anti-Zionism in the 21st Century, by Tariq Shadid | Palestine Chronicle  The struggle of the Palestinians is a struggle against Zionism The essence of the Palestinian struggle is the battle against Zionism. It is a battle against its racism, against its murderous war crimes, against its insatiable territorial hunger, against its disdain for non-Jewish human rights, and against its devoted attempts to destroy Palestinian national identity. As voices of normalization are on the rise, and social media is invaded by paid pro-Zionist bloggers, there is an increased need for anti-Zionists to draw attention to the crimes committed by 'Israel', and to speak up against the ongoing media silence and the apologist activities of those misleadingly portraying themselves as 'peace doves'...[The struggle against Zionism is everyone's struggle. It is the age old battle between good and evil. We are all Palestinians, at least 99% of us.] Read more...War for Total Control, by Adrian Salbuchi | Global Research ...Like a sharp two-edged sword, the internet and the very rapidly evolving technologies surrounding it, are poised to either usher in a new era of intellectual, cultural and spiritual enlightenment, material well-being and true cooperation amongst nations bent on resolving common global problems; or we may be about to fall into a black abyss of absolute totalitarian control; intellectual, physical and spiritual violence; and mass slavery on an unprecedented scale. How to resolve this dilemma?... Read more... Obama Selects Bush As Running Mate, by Michael K. Smith | Legalienate Return of “The Decider” Stuns Washington; GOP Presidential Debates Thrown Into Chaos; Bush Pick Hailed as "Pragmatic Master Stroke"; Outraged Biden Joins Tea Party, Threatens To Sue; Obama Lauds Bush Vow To “Follow the Cheney Tradition” as VP... Read more... The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History | Palestine Chronicle  Most comprehensive and penetrating analysis available Masalha argues that to write more truthfully about the Nakba is not just to practice a professional historiography but an ethical imperative. The struggles of ordinary refugees to recover and publicly assert the truth about the Nakba is a vital way of protecting their rights and keeping the hope for peace with justice alive. This book is essential for understanding the place of the Palestine Nakba at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the vital role of memory in narratives of truth and reconciliation...Read more... Putting Israel First: The War Party's Achilles' heel, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar The campaign to lure the US into attacking Iran has one big problem to overcome before the War Party can taste success: the rather obvious fact that such a war would benefit Israel, and not the United States. This is why Israel’s partisans in the US constitute the spearhead of the pro-war agitation... Read more... Highly Informed Westerners And Iranians Know The Way Out Of The Nuclear Impasse But The Obama Administration Won't Take It | The Race for Iran It is possible that there will another round of nuclear discussions between the P5+1 and Iran in the near future. Given the extent to which Israel, the US, and America’s European partners are ratcheting up tensions over the nuclear issue, one hopes that additional talks would help the parties find a peaceful and productive way forward. But that is unlikely unless the Western powers are prepared to accept the reality that Iran is enriching uranium, that it will continue enriching uranium, and that it has every right to do so under international law... Read more... The Syrian Death Numbers Are All Made Up | Moon of Alabama  Headlines the Pakistani paper The Nation: Syrian forces killed 7,384 children. The headline is very wrong... Read more... When people are kept under continuous stress, after a while they become psychotic | Niqnaq ...the total consensus among Israeli Jews, regardless of religious, ethnic or political differences, that the “guiding principle” for the country and for Judaism itself is “to remember the Holocaust.” 98% of the respondents consider it either fairly important or very important to remember the Holocaust, attributing to it even more weight than to living in Israel, the Sabbath, the Passover seder and the feeling of belonging to the Jewish people. The Holocaust is the primary way Israel defines itself... [A very sick and dangerous society; exhibiting symptoms of paranoia, bi-polar disease, psychosis, sociopathy and delusion, all wrapped up in a package bearing the Star of David on top and armed with 100-200 nuclear weapons.] Read more...China faces tough call in Iran showdown | Global Times ...the general direction is clear. The US and Europe are determined to unseat the current Iranian regime. An oil embargo, aimed at choking Iran's economic lifeline, has been adopted. Overall oil embargoes will start in six months whether Iran stops oil exports to the EU or not. It's the gamble that will decide the political fate of this major Middle East oil producer with a population of 60 million. Equally at stake is the future global geopolitical landscape. China will be deeply involved in the process, of which it should be under no illusion... Read more... Jan 30, 2012 Washington's War on Syria | Stephen Lendman ...League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby blamed Assad for "resort(ing) to escalating the military option in complete violation of (his) commitments." In fact, he's contesting a Western-generated insurgency. League despots support it. They also condoned NATO's Libya war, including massacres too great to ignore... Read more... Campus Watch: "We fight for Israel at Campuses" | Rehmat's World ...This is not the first occasion of organized pro-Israel lobbies and groups targeting faculty and students for their advocacy for Palestine. From battles over tenure faced by extraordinarily qualified Palestinian professors to unjust firings or demotions of faculty who have spoken in support of Palestine, efforts to intimidate professors are increasing... [Hitler didn't die; he just converted to Zionism, an easy segue. If you can't fight 'em, join 'em.] Read more...Democratic elections in the Middle East: why the Islamists win | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson considers the historical, cultural and political reasons behind the triumph of Islamist parties in democratic elections in Tunisia and Egypt, and the ignorance, the stereotyping and the shallow, inaccurate analyses of the phenomenon displayed by US media and politicians... Read more... Turkey to broadcast pro-Holocaust film | PressTV Turkish public television (TRT) is set to air a Holocaust documentary said to be the first broadcast of its kind by a Muslim country's national media... [The Shoah must go on (or the Holocaust Industry will have to change it's business plan. Hey, I got an idea - kosher slaughterhouses with dancing pigs; so Hollywood).] Read more... Stay Human - The Reading Movie | Restiamo Umani [See also Vittorio and a lecture, by Mazin Qumsiyeh] Watch video...US, Wall Street causing economic crisis: Interview with Rodney Shakespeare | PressTV A prominent economist says that Wall Street and the United States are deeply involved in causing the problems which plague the global economic crisis... Watch video... Goldman Sachs cooked Greece books | PressTV Press TV has interviewed Max Keiser, economic expert from Paris in a discussion that explains how Greece got into the financial mess that it's in and talks about the lack of enforcement of banking regulation and accountability of bankers and why that is... Read transcript, watch video... Jan 29, 2012 Water for all: The case for a one-state solution, by Ramzi El Houry | Al Jazeera English  Many settlements in the West Bank are strategically ...strategic and practical considerations such as the issue of water also make the 1967 borders "indefensible". It is on this basis - the basis that Israel cannot accept a sovereign Palestinian state rightfully in control of its water resources - that I argue the need for a paradigm shift in mainstream Palestinian discourse from a two-state solution to a one-state solution...placed over key water resources Read more, watch video... Washington Wages War of Sanctions against Iran, by Ismail Salami | Intifada Palestine Washington’s double-edged sword of policies towards the Islamic Republic is not only exhausting the patience of the Iranian nation but it is provoking the ire of international conscience as well. Goaded by Washington, EU foreign ministers decided on January 23 to impose a ban on oil imports from Iran under the fickle excuse that the country is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program... Read more... The 'Arab spring' and the west: seven lessons from history, by Seumas Milne | The Guardian Drawing on the British Pathé archive, Seumas Milne picks out the recurrent themes of imperial efforts to control the Middle East... Read more, watch videos... Israeli DM: World Must Move Against Iran Before Military Strike 'Too Late,' by Jason Ditz | Antiwar ...increasingly, the long-standing Israeli threats to attack Iran are being taken as a distinct and imminent possibility. Sanctions and announcements related to impending embargoes by the international community seem aimed more at placating Israel and convincing them to hold off on the attack. Unsurprisingly, the Israeli government is eagerly playing on this fear... Read more... Growing Elite Opposition to Military Option Against Iran, by Jim Lobe | IPS  The amphibious assault ship USS Bataan transits the Strait of Hormuz ..."We're doing this terrible thing all over again," wrote Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, the think tank that publishes Foreign Affairs, in the Daily Beast, in an appeal for Senate hearings on the implications of war with Iran. "As before, we're letting a bunch of ignorant, sloppy-thinking politicians and politicized foreign-policy experts draw 'red line' ultimatums. As before, we're letting them quick-march us off to war," warned Gelb, a repentant Iraq-war hawk... Read more... Worldwide Conquest: The U.S. Prepares for "Global Unmanned Warfare", by Boris Volkhonsky | Global Research First of all, a network of special operation bases and the use of drones signify that the U.S. would be able to attack any adversary anywhere, not bothering too much about whether they are attacking a sovereign state or not. Sources say that the U.S. plans to use such bases in Australia and in the Philippines, which reflects a new emphasis Washington is laying on confronting China along its eastern borders... Read more... Diary: Lament for the Revolution, by Karma Nabulsi | LRB Nowadays, when Palestinian activists in their twenties and thirties meet up with veterans of the Palestinian struggle, they show an unexpected thoughtfulness towards the older, revolutionary generation, to which I belong. This is nothing like the courtesy extended as a matter of course to older people in our part of the world: it is more intimate and more poignant... Read more... Russia and China in the Balance of the Middle East: Syria and other countries, by Imad Fawzi Shueibi | Voltaire Network  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world has been searching for a new geopolitical balance. All the various models have failed, starting with the unipolar world order of the New American Century. What emerges is not the result of an ideology, but a tectonic shift in the global balance of power, observes geopolitician Imad Fawzi Shueib. The double Russian and Chinese veto related to the Syrian crisis marks the dawn of this new world configuration... Read more... Does Humanity Deserve to Exist? | Ivan the Terrible ...greed seems to be our main motivator. My cats will eat only enough to satisfy their hunger but, as anyone who has gone to a buffet will tell you, people tend to gorge themselves far beyond satisfying their immediate hunger. Is it a biological response, eat now for tomorrow we starve? Or is it greed, the inability to do what is right for all of us as opposed to what is right for only myself?.. Read more... Rabbi: "Jews can pray in mosques" | Rehmat's World ...Not all Jewish rabbis are Islam-hating Zionazis. For example, Rabbi Haim Ovadia of Kahal Joseph Congregation in Los Angeles, California, in 2008 claimed to be a Jew of Islam... Read more... Remembering Howard Zinn, by Noam Chomsky | Al Jazeera English  Howard Zinn dedicated his life to decency, democracy and civil disobedience ..Howard's remarkable life and work are summarised best in his own words. His primary concern, he explained, was "the countless small actions of unknown people" that lie at the roots of "those great moments" that enter the historical record - a record that will be profoundly misleading, and seriously disempowering, if it is torn from these roots as it passes through the filters of doctrine and dogma. His life was always closely intertwined with his writings and innumerable talks and interviews...Read more... Profile of a Rogue State | Stephen Lendman ...Who can imagine the indifference of world leaders, supporting a ruthless, racist occupier, disdainful of human and civil rights? Who understands enduring daily assaults, police state justice, and fear of being bombed, shot, or otherwise harmed? How do you comfort young children to hold up in the face of what adults can't tolerate?.. Read more... Yitzhak Obama: Wag the President | Roy Tov Twice during the last week, I got emails from loyal American readers asking from me to react to the January 13, 2012, main column of the Atlanta Jewish Times. At first I was reluctant; after all it has been assessed almost everywhere. “Think! There must be something you can add, maybe from the Talmud,” one of my readers insisted and eventually convinced me. Yitzhak Obama is the result... Read more... Student Protests Rile Chile, by William Moss Wilson | NYT  ...Though far from a familiar face in the United States, the 23-year-old Ms. Vallejo has gained rock-star status among the global activist class. Since June she has led regular street marches of up to 200,000 people through Santiago’s broad avenues — the largest demonstrations since the waning days of the Pinochet regime in the late 1980s... [Wow!] Read more... The Iranian oil embargo blowback, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online If the sorry parade of European poodles - or what analyst Chris Floyd delightfully dubbed Europuppies - had any understanding of Persian culture, they would have known that blowback for their declaration of economic war in the form of an Iranian oil embargo would be nothing short of heavy metal... Read more... Unrepentant: Justice for Palestine, by Johnny Barber | Uruknet ...Our largely ignorant Congressional representatives are quite willing to assume that any information from Israeli sources is infallible to the exclusion of other factual findings, such as evidence that Israeli soldiers summarily executed participants on the Mavi Marmara. Israel maims and kills Americans such as Emily Henochowicz, Brian Avery, and Rachel Corrie with impunity. There is no house resolution pending that condemns the maiming or killing of American citizens by Israeli forces... Read more... Jan 28, 2012 Lebanon's Maid of Darkness Facing US Hates Crimes Investigation, by Franklin Lamb | Al Manar  ...Brigitte attracted attention from this observer, who previously had not heard of her, when she posted her July 2006 ‘Thank You Israel!’ letter expressing “heartfelt gratitude” for Israel’s attack on Lebanon. According to a former colleague of hers, this was drafted at Virginia Beach while working on her suntan in a period during which much of her birth country was being destroyed... Read more... Israeli Finance Minister Pushes Naval, Aerial Blockade of Iran, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar In an interview today with Bloomberg Businessweek, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz rejected the European Union’s ban on importation of Iranian crude oil, insisting it doesn’t go nearly far enough... Read more... How to start a war with Iran, by Paul Woodward | War in Context In May 1967, Israel was itching to launch a preemptive attack on Egypt. The director of Mossad at that time, Meir Amit, had a meeting with John Hadden, the CIA chief in Tel Aviv. Hadden warned Amit that if Israel attacked Egypt, the United States would send in troops to defend Egypt. Hadden advised his counterpart that if Israel wanted the U.S. on its side, it would need a suitable pretext. “Help us by giving us a good reason to come in on your side. Get them to fire at something, a ship, for example,” Hadden told Amit... Read more... Preparing For The Next Conquest: What does Libya tell us about Intervention in Syria and Iran? by Richard Lightbown | Global Research ...Prior to the bombing, Libya had the best health care and the best education in Africa, free of charge. Essential food staples were heavily subsidised, while fuel was plentiful and cheap. Having bombed to kingdom come schools, hospitals, electricity and water supplies, oil installations, men, women, children, black Africans and Arabs, the planes and warships have departed. Reports of the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs suggest that they will have left some areas dangerously polluted as well as poverty stricken... Read more... Israel: End of a Dream | Roy Tov  Basilica of the Annunciation | Nazareth In January 2012, interesting data was published. The Jewish real estate market is suffering a severe recession, while the Palestinian market is flourishing. The term “severe recession” doesn’t correctly reflect the size of the calamity for the Zionist Dream. Some of the data hints the game is over for Mr. Theodor Hertzl... Read more... We've been here before - and it suits Israel that we never forget 'Nuclear Iran,' by Robert Fisk | The Independent ...when Ayatollah Khomeini, Scourge of the West, Apostle of Shia Revolution, etc, took over Iran in 1979, he ordered the entire nuclear project to be closed down because it was "the work of the Devil". Only when Saddam invaded Iran – with our Western encouragement – and started using poison gas against the Iranians (chemical components arriving from the West, of course) was Khomeini persuaded to reopen it... Read more... Here Comes Alan Dershowitz: Uproar Over Upcoming BDS Conference at Penn, by Vijay Prashad | Counterpunch ...It is a victory for the BDS campaign that it has been able to ruffle so many feathers so quickly. No longer is it being discounted. The defenders of Israel right or wrong believe that no opportunity to censure those who criticize Israel must be left unseized. Every article must be challenged, every speaker must be condemned: any criticism of Israel must be suffocated. BDS is now taken very seriously because the movement has had an impact on our intellectual and political life... Read more... The Greatest Threat, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar ...the Threat is coming not from without but from within. No, not in the presence of those Mooslims, in spite of the Israel Lobby‘s best efforts: no, not from the long-gone Commie Conspiracy or the “militias” that were the favored bogeyman of the Clinton era. Instead, the Threat springs from something deeper, a force connected to the way our society works and has been working since the inauguration of the modern era: it is the looming threat of national bankruptcy... Read more... The writing has always been on the wall, by Sam Bahour | Bitterlemons ...One of Israel's founding ministers of education and culture, Professor Ben-Zion Dinur, said it most sharply, according to the book "History of the Haganah": "In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force." With this theme as its explicit backdrop, it is no wonder that newly-established Israel had little chance of being a normal state among the community of nations... Read more... Psychology of Tyranny for a Philosophy of Despotism | Solitary Purdah  ...America has fallen into a deep and extensive delusional state of mind since 911. The Tyrannical trait that Mr. Roland lists expanded and intensified in the last decade. The pathetic justification used and repeated to sell despotism is that the "War on Terror" requires a suspension of constitutional protections. Such obscene rhetoric should be abhorrent to any rational and moral citizen. Yet, the absence of objective inquiry only leads to the inevitability of despotic tyranny... Read more... United States Congress: A Graveyard for Democracy and Justice, by Ralph Nader | Common Dreams ...Will someone call a psychiatrist? This is a Congress that is beyond dysfunctional. It is an obstacle to progress in America, a graveyard for both democracy and justice. No wonder a new Washington Post-ABC news poll found an all time high of 84 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing... Read more... We Have The Finest Government That Israel Can Buy: Adelson, Gingrich, and the Selling of America, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar Read more... Read more...  Palestine solidarity activism on US campuses continues to grow despite attacks by Israel lobby groups A mathematics professor at the California State University at Northridge is the target of an attack campaign by various pro-Israel lobby groups and individuals because he maintains a website that supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and for his outspoken criticism of Israeli policies. Recently, Dr. David Klein has come under fire for organizing in opposition to the 23-campus-wide California State University (CSU) system’s resumption of a study abroad program in Israel, which was discontinued in 2002... Read more... Read more... Read more... Read more... Jan 27, 2012 Global March to Jerusalem  ...The Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements have shown the power of direct nonviolent action. Following their lead, and in the tradition of Ghandi's March to the Sea and ML King's March to Selma for Civil Rights, we are rapidly organizing to participate in the Global March to Jerusalem. The march is committed to nonviolence with tens of thousands of people marching from border countries, from the Occupied Territories, from Gaza and from within Israel... Read more, watch video... CIA Agent Exposes How Al-Qaeda Doesn't Exist | RT on YouTube Americans are in the crosshairs of terrorists worldwide purely due to Washington's policy in the Muslim world, not because there is an Islamic enemy whose only aim is to kill Americans for their freedoms and lifestyle, insists a former CIA officer. Historian Michael Scheuer, an author of "Through our enemies' eyes", who worked for the agency for over 20 years till 2004 and at one time was the chief of the CIA's 'Bin Laden unit', says America's greatest enemy - radical Islam - never existed... Read more, watch video... Elin Fflur & Al Lewis: Hafan | YouTube TV performance of 'Hafan' from the show 'Noson yng nghwmni'... [As my Celtic friend and fellow One-Stater explains, "Welsh 'Hafan' means "safe haven", also used figuratively for 'home' ... the home ye come from as well as the one the human soul is seeking and longing for, i.e. the place of fulfillment of life. May the spirit of Hafan be the homestead of all mankind of good will to build a better world." Needless to add, this is in spirit the opposite of the mytho-historical "return" of the Chosen Ones to the Holy Land, but accurately expresses the sentiments of most of the Palestinians and their supporters, to whom all beings are considered sacred.] Watch video...On Its First Anniversary, Egyptian Revolution Continues, by Dr. Ashraf Ezzat | Intifada Palestine  ...we are where we are, so the next question is whether the Tahrir square revolution will actually fulfill its promise of “dignity, freedom and social justice” or whether it will simply usher in an era of extremist Islamist regimes or new forms of military authoritarianism... Read more... Will Israel Attack Iran? by Ronen Bergman | NYT ...[Barak] now faces, along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 12 other members of Israel’s inner security cabinet, the most important decision of his life — whether to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran. We met in the late afternoon, and our conversation — the first of several over the next week — lasted for two and a half hours, long past nightfall. “This is not about some abstract concept,” Barak said as he gazed out at the lights of Tel Aviv, “but a genuine concern. The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map.” [A well-researched piece with some first-hand knowledge. Despite the conclusion, I still think that the odds are against an Israeli attack on Iran, but Allah knows better. Read more...~ Israel Shamir. Most of the world wants Israel wiped off the map - I certainly do. Are the Israelis going to try to kill us all? Well, yes, if they feel cornered. Just google the 'Sampson Option." ~ the Editor.] Obama threatens Iran to woo Israel: Interview with Mark Glenn | PressTV US President Barack Obama's anti-Iran threats are only aimed at securing his reelection by obeying the Israelis who put him in power in the first place... Read transcript, watch video... How Do You Escape a Color Revolution? Replace Emotional Reaction With Intellectual Sobriety | Color Revolutions and Geopolitics  Oh, you pretty things! ...The defining characteristics of typical foreign-funded opposition protesters are their youth, their inexperience, their lack of discernment, their relatively high level of education, their personal ambition, their access to media and technology, and their strong inclinations to rebel against the status quo...Read more... Gingrich's Alinsky remark angers Jewish groups | Rehmat's World ...According to a nationally prominent Zionist spokesperson, former Congressman, Federal Judge, White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton and early backer of Obama, Abner Mikvner, “Barack Obama is the first Jewish President”. Mikvner’s affirmation reflects both Obama’s one-sided and longstanding commitment to the State of Israel and loyalty to the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) in the United States, as well as the long-term and successful effort of a network of financially and politically powerful Jewish Zionists to ‘embed’ Obama in their ‘Israel First’ political apparatus... Read more... Drowning In Hypocrisy: War Abroad, Austerity at Home, by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts | Global Research ...Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo. Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?.. Read more... Israel SUCKS (The Gas Right Out Of Your Tank), by Keith Johnson | Revolt of the Plebs  ...The oil market is largely driven by headlines, and soars every time the West shakes their fist at one of Israel’s enemies. That not only drives up the price you pay at the pump for a gallon of gasoline, but also affects the cost of every product and service that travels by way of land, air or sea... Read more... The Armenian Genocide | Stephen Lendman ...Turkey's Armenian genocide was one of history's great crimes. America exceeded it manyfold, especially through permanent imperial wars taking many millions of lives and causing incalculable human misery... Read more... EU bans oil import from Iran: India pays in Gold instead of Dollars - China considers doing the same | RT on YouTube ...The latest round of sanctions prohibits any new oil contracts, while allowing for existing deals to run until July. But Tehran is apparently finding ways to keep business pumping. Reports say Iran will keep supplying one of its biggest customers - India - but will get payment in gold instead of dollars.".. Watch video... What Kind of Christianity Is This? by Gary G. Kohls | Consortium News  Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount ...Though this history has long since been forgotten or ignored, the earliest followers of Jesus rejected violence, tried to return good for evil, fed the hungry, did acts of mercy and unconditional love and tried to make friends out of their enemies (by caring for them, feeding them, praying for them and certainly refusing to kill them or pay for somebody else to kill them). It was a hugely successful ethical stance to take...Read more... The Roots of Christian Zionism: How Scofield Sowed Seeds of Apostasy | Vimeo Ever wonder why so many Christians support America’s many wars, especially in the Middle East? A new Christianity has emerged from the Twentieth Century called Christian Zionism or what could be called, "Angry Evangelicalism," or "Dispensationalism on Steroids." What motivates a nationally known, evangelical preacher like John Hagee to call for a preemptive strike against Iran when it is contrary to what Jesus taught and commanded his followers to do? Watch video... Can foreign gangsters bulldoze your family home without warning and get away with it? | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood highlights one of the most disgraceful and criminal aspects of the Israeli occupation, house demolitions, and stresses that “America and the rest of the West should understand clearly why Caterpillar has become the hated symbol of dispossession, ethnic cleansing and oppression, and has been the target of disinvestment campaigns”.. Read more... Jan 26, 2012 Israel steps up campaign of arresting Palestinian parliamentarians, by Dr. Hanan Chehata | Middle East Monitor  Israel has finally done what it has waited almost a year and a half to do; in a raid contravening international law it arrested two members of the Palestinian Parliament who had been seeking refuge in the International Red Cross compound in East Jerusalem. We all knew it was only a matter of time before Israeli forces made their move. Israel has no regard for democracy, so why would it matter that those it arrested are democratically-elected members of the Palestinian parliament? Israel cares little for international law and even less for international public opinion. Arresting them was to be expected after the occupation authorities had served illegal deportation notices on the two men. Is there any other country in the world which seeks to "deport" people from their own city?.. [Well, one country springs to mind - Nazi Germany. It would be a stretch to say that Israel is a carbon copy, but not that much of a stretch. See this essay.] Read more...Oil embargo on Iran a conundrum for Europe, by Emanuele Scimia | Asia Times Online The approved oil sanctions against Iran signal an unusual assertiveness of the European Union. For Europe, however, it will not be an easy ride to find alternatives sources to the Iranian crude, while the embargo's impact on the Islamic Republic could be softened by demand from Asia-Pacific countries. The Strait of Hormuz is narrowing day by day: unless Washington and Tehran reach a sort of strategic accommodation... Read more... The deal the West could strike with Iran, by Peter Jenkins | The Telegraph ..On Sunday, Britain, America and France sent warships through the Strait of Hormuz. Recent months have seen a big rise in the twin risks of military action and grave damage to the world economy. This is the consequence of what I believe to be a great diplomatic over-bid: the West’s demand that Iran surrender its capacity to enrich uranium... Read more... Obama Assassination Said to be Legal Under Israeli Law, by Gordon Duff | Veterans Today  Can Israel legally kill a president? Point one, of course, Israeli law allows it. Obama is a non-Jew and any non-Jew can be killed at any time according to Israeli law, even one living outside Israel if it is believed that he may some day cause harm to a Jew. This is the legal basis for attacks on children in Gaza, that their deaths likely prevent them from growing up and harming Jews. It is in the Torah and it is law. Also, America has traditionally respected such laws. In fact, President Obama may well have, through pro-Israeli statements, authorized his own execution... Read more... Iran is not an existential threat, by Bruce Riedel | Bitterlemons The danger of war is growing again over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Iran is rattling its sabers, the Republican presidential candidates and others are rattling theirs. But even if Iran gets the bomb, Israel will have overwhelming military superiority over Iran, a fact that should not be lost in all the heated rhetoric... Read more... Obama to Get 12 Hours Notice before Hit on Iran | Arutz Sheva Israeli officials told visiting USS Chief Joint of Staffs Martin Dempsey that it would give President Barack Obama no more than 12 hours notice if and when it attacks Iran, The London Times reported Sunday. The Netanyahu government also will not coordinate with the United States an attack on the Islamic Republic, according to the report, the latest in a number of supposed scenarios concerning cooperation or lack of it between Jerusalem and Washington... Read more... Syrian Snapshot: A View From the Capital, by Sharmine Narwani | Al Akhbar English  People pray next to the coffins of people killed in explosion in the Maidan district ...This Syrian conflict has layers and layers that we have not yet peeled within the pages of our sanctified newspapers and online repartees. I have seen very little verifiable professional reportage from the main areas of conflict. Most of the “storyline” is taking place in capital cities where competing governments appear determined to decide Syria’s future. The Syrian people are just cannon fodder. I am not sure their lives are even considered, as long as their bodies, alive or dead, lying on streets or taking part in rallies/protests, provide these storylines a way to feed into their vying narratives...Read more... Davos 2012: From Capitalism to Fascism, by Robert Wenzel | War Is Crime ..The elitist power grab is going right at the heart of capitalism. Of course, they have always been for central control, with them in control, but now they are calling out capitalism, directly, as an inferior product... Read more... The Vexing 'Jewish Question': A Nineteenth-Century Scholar's View, by Goldwin Smith | Institute for Historical Review Although today it is considered tactless if not hateful to speak openly of a "Jewish question," the often thorny matter of relations between Jews and non-Jews in society is a real issue that has bedeviled countless governments and scholars for centuries. In the following essay, a prominent British scholar tackles this issue with a forthrightness, perceptiveness and courage that is all too rare among academics in our own day... Read more... Iran military spending compared to other middle eastern countries | Iran Coverage  Jewish Imperial News | Gilad Atzmon ...I’m not one bit surprised by the surge of Jewish power. I wrote a book about it. But, being intimately familiar with Jewish history, I know exactly where it will lead. Jewish political arrogance has always proved to be, above all, devastatingly dangerous for Jews... [Aye, there's the rub indeed. And Jews are supposedly smart. Applying Einstein's definition of insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," one might conclude that tribal Jews are either incredibly stupid or just plain nuts - take your choice.] Read more...John Stewart: West Bank Story | Gilad Atzmon [Stewart's soft Zionist humor reflects the Liberal's habit of treating both sides equally, never mind that one is overwhelmingly powerful and armed to the teeth, and the other is essentially helpless.] Watch video...Activists resisting Palestinian home demolitions face 'IDF Price Tag' attack, by Jeff Halper | +972  Salim Shawamreh stands on the ruins of his demolished home It has become commonplace among violent West Bank settlers to randomly attack Palestinian mosques, homes, olive orchards and individuals in order to send a message to other Israelis. They are called “Price Tag” attacks, after the “signature” the settlers leave scrawled on the walls of the burnt-out buildings. In the dark of night this past Monday, January 23, the IDF carried out its own Price Tag assault on ICAHD, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions...Read more... Israeli Assassinations and American Presidents, by Alison Weir | Antiwar ...Adler’s expectation that Israel’s inner circles have explored such a course of action, and would be willing to undertake it, may be entirely accurate. The fact is that Israel has killed and plotted to assassinate people throughout the world; a number have been Americans. One alleged plot was chillingly similar to Adler’s suggestion. There is evidence that in 1991 an Israeli undercover team planned to assassinate a U.S. president. The intended victim was George Herbert Walker Bush... Read more... Stop the Pro-Israel Lobby, by Stuart Littlewood | Palestine Chronicle ...for years we've been suckered into joining the United States in fighting Israel's wars of aggression. Given our huge debts it beggars belief that we're gearing up for another one... this time against Iran... and pushing the oil markets to the edge of panic. Haven’t we had our fill of warmongering idiocy?.. Read more... Testimonies from the Heart of Darkness, by Tamar Fleishman | Palestine Chronicle  Another child detained 'This place is the carbuncle on the ass of the occupation,' said Dalit Baum as the gates of Ofer prison closed behind us. The Palestinian residents of the West Bank, who had been living under occupation for over forty years and are deprived of their basic rights, are brought to justice in military courts. This entire legal system- investigators, prosecutors and judges- is comprised of men and women, in uniform, who are subordinated to and serve, not the principles of justice and law, but the mechanism of the occupation... Read more... The Great Book Robbery, by Karina Goulordava | Mondoweiss June 1948, Israeli soldiers advance in an affluent Arab neighborhood, now almost deserted, in western Jerusalem. The soldiers are followed by several librarians from the national library. Sporadic gunfire is heard. The men cling against the walls as they arrive in a street with big wealthy houses, their occupants left in haste. Breaking into house after house, the librarians “collect” entire libraries into boxes which are loaded onto trucks. Similar scenes repeat themselves throughout the Arab neighborhoods of western Jerusalem and later on in Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth and other places. In total, 70,000 Palestinian books were “collected” in this manner... Read more, watch video... Silence Of The Lambs: Seumas Milne, George Monbiot & 'Media Analysis' In The Guardian Wonderland | Media Lens One of the original aims of Media Lens, when we began in 2001, was to engage in honest, open and rational debate with journalists working for major news organisations. It wasn’t about ‘bashing’ them or trying to make them look bad. We wanted to examine media assumptions, challenge journalists’ arguments and find out more about the unwritten rules of ‘responsible’ reporting... Read more... Jan 25, 2012 U.S. And NATO Are On The March Worldwide: Part III, by Madison Ruppert | Stop NATO  Geopolitical developments continue at a pace that likely makes most peoples’ heads spin, and for good reason. With the situation in Syria, the push for war with Iran and the global growth of NATO control, it appears we are in truly volatile and historic times... Read more... Clay Shirky: Why SOPA is a bad idea | TED What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto - a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume... Watch video... Europe at war with Iran, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online No one ever lost money betting on the foolishness of European Union (EU) politicos. And if you are an oil trader, rejoice - all the way to the bank; as expected, EU foreign ministers - meekly following the Barack Obama administration - have given a green light for a full Iranian oil embargo... [The good news is that the dollar's position as the world's reserve currency may well be on its way out. That would bring the Empire and its vast Ponzi scheme to a screeching halt and we can all sing Hallelujah!] Read more...Obama panders to Jewish donors | War in Context President Obama’s reelection campaign unveiled a video featuring testimonials from Israeli leaders a day after he raised $500,000 from Jewish donors. The video, e-blasted Friday to Jewish supporters by David Axelrod, a top campaign official, intersperses speeches by Obama to Jewish audiences and at the United Nations with testimonials culled from news broadcasts... Read more, watch video... Saturday February 4: Day of Mass Action to Stop a U.S. War on Iran | World Can't Wait  Who is the aggressor in the Middle East? Visible street protests and other events and outreach will happen in many places. Stay tuned for announcements, and write here to endorse the Call for Mass Action, or get more info. You can use this page to find or organize a protest in your area... Read more... As'ad Abukhalil (Angry Arab): The Case Against Israel | YouTube As'ad Abukhalil on 'The Case Against Israel' at Oxford University (20 Jan 2012). The Angry Arab talks about his disbelief in the Zionist state... Watch video... A softer touch on the Nakba, by Akiva Eldar | Haaretz ...A survey by Tel Aviv University researchers in 2008 established that just under half of Israel's Jewish citizens are willing to abandon the narrative that "the Palestinians fled." The survey found that those who use the critical approach tend to view the Palestinians more positively. They also tend to be more supportive of peace agreements and vote for center-left parties. So it's no surprise that the political right wants to erase the Nakba from the collective memory... [One step forward, a thousand to go] Read more... Stop Britain's pro-Israel lobby | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood calls on British readers to demand that the UK government’s proposed statutory register of lobbyists cover in-house lobbyists, such as the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel lobby groups which comprise Members of Parliament, and not just lobby firms... Read more... The Puzzling Matter of the Israeli Liberals, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle  Regardless of who may rule Israel, little change ever occurs in the country's foreign policy. Winning parties remain obsessed with demographics and retaining absolute military dominance. They also remain unfailingly focused on their quest to initiate racist laws against non-Jewish residents of the state, and continue to hone the art of speaking of peace, while actually maintaining a permanent state of war... Read more... The Brainwashing of the Jews, by Dr. Elias Akleh | Intifada Palestine There are increasing indications, although slim but hopeful, that more Israeli Jews are awakening to the satanic realities of the Zionist Greater Israel Project in the heart of the Arab World. The Jews in general and Israeli Jews in particular, had been subjected for thousands of years to an extremist religiously fundamentalist brainwashing sinister scheme. Its goal is to implant in the Jewish collective psyche the satanic ideology of God’s chosen people in God’s promised land, and that it is their “mitzvah”, their religious duty, to terrorize and murder ALL GOYIM, and to steal all their wealth and their land for the ultimate purpose of creating a Jewish only world with Jerusalem as the center of the world... Read more... Brown-nosing Black man | The Vineyard of the Saker ...Time has proven, beyond any doubt, that Obama was not only a 'house negro', but an abject 'Tom' who would subserviently obey any order from his Wall Street masters and happily betray the interests of the 99%, Black, White, Asian or other. Another term which comes to my mind is 'prostitute'. And the only good thing which came out of his election was the proof that a majority of White Americans would vote for a Black man if they were promised "change you can believe in". Hopefully, this has also proved to a majority of Black Americans that prostitutes come in all colors, Black included, and that race really says nothing about a person... Read more, watch videos... The Jirga Medal of Honor, by Ralph Nader ...U.S. and NATO soldiers and contractors greatly outnumber the Taliban, whose sandals and weapons are from the past century. Still, with the most sophisticated arsenals ever deployed, why are U.S. generals saying that less than 30,000 Taliban fighters, for almost a decade, have fought the U.S. led forces to a draw?.. Read more... Jan 24, 2012 The "anti-Semitism" smear campaign against CAP and Media Matters rolls on, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon  Josh Block Last month, my Salon colleague Justin Elliott revealed that AIPAC’s former spokesman, Josh Block, had been encouraging neoconservative journalists and pundits on a private email list to attack as “anti-Semites” various Middle East commentators employed by two of the most influential Democratic-Party-aligned organizations: the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Media Matters (MM). Block distributed a dossier containing posts by these CAP and MM writers about Israel and Iran that he claimed evince anti-Semitism, and then issued these marching orders...Read more... Thoughts on Palestinian conference, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance ...Everyone talks about creating an alternative political faction to the existing ones, dismantling the Palestinian Authority and returning to the liberation struggle, and/or changing the self-destructive direction of two-states to the winning strategy of one-state advocacy. People are finally ready for these. The question remains: who will do it?.. Read more... Lies and Truths, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Sharing the Land of Canaan ...This year will mark 64 years since the founding of the state of Israel on the ruins of 540 Palestinian villages and towns. As 7 million of the 11 million Palestinians in the world remain refugees or displaced people denied basic human rights it is more important to debunk myths and lies. I updated this list to now include 64 lies/myths (one for each year)... Read more... America's Last Chance, by Paul Craig Roberts | Global Research America has one last chance, and it is a very slim one. Americans can elect Ron Paul President, or they can descend into tyranny. Why is Ron Paul America’s last chance? Because he is the only candidate who is not owned lock, stock, and barrel by the military-security complex, Wall Street, and the Israel Lobby... [True enough] Read more... A Snare and a Delusion: Ron Paul's Anti-Imperialism, by Andrew Levine | Counterpunch ...Supporting Ron Paul can therefore seem as good a way as any to express contempt for Barack Obama and his liberal supporters. Since they offer up fresh grounds for contempt on an almost daily basis, the temptation is palpable to discount Paul’s antiquarian economic philosophy, his hostility towards the labor movement, and his attraction to social policies of the kind that Ebenezer Scrooge endorsed before three ghosts and the Cratchit family set him straight... [Well, maybe that's true too. But if one is actually going to vote, I suppose a protest vote is better than none at all. As for me, it's Alfred E. Neuman all the way.] Read more... America's Great Divide Between Rich and Poor | Stephen Lendman ...In the world's richest ever country, poverty is highest among industrialized nations. Homelessness and hunger levels are unprecedented. Over 20% of US families haven't enough money to buy food and need help. Over half of US children need food stamps to eat. Tens of millions have no health insurance. Those with it pay double the cost in other developed nations. Policies enacted under Obama assure tougher times ahead... [When will America's so-called "Christians" come to understand that, yes, we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers. And forget about the tribal Jews - they are only concerned about the tribe, which is doing quite well, at least for the time being, thank you very much.] Read more...Gingrich's Major Backer Arch-Zionist Sheldon Adelson, by Stephen Sniegoski | My Catbird Seat  Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas casino and hotel magnate Gingrich’s faltering presidential campaign was completely resuscitated by a 5 million donation from Las Vegas casino king and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson. (According to Wikipedia, Adelson is currently the 8th wealthiest American and 16th wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $23.3 billion.).. Read more... OWS plans massive protests for Spring | PressTV US Occupy protesters are preparing for a showdown with authorities as they are set to stage nationwide rallies in front of more than 120 federal courthouses... Read transcript, watch video... Cell 36: Palestinian children locked in solitary confinement in Israel | The Guardian Cell 36 in Al Jalame prison, northern Israel, is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. Mohammad Shabrawi from Tulkarm, in the West Bank, was arrested last January, aged 16, and Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when arrested, talk about their experiences... Watch video... War Architects Have Written a New Script - This Time with Azerbaijan in the Lead Actor Role | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post ...You’d think all the debunked allegations and failed attempts would give the imperial hawks a bit of a pause to come up with a better concoction. At least go away for a while and rethink their strategy; no? Obviously not. Desperation can do amazingly stupid things to greed-driven, wild-eyed and blood-thirsty bullies in pursuit of expanded turf. They just came out with a new concocted scenario and allegations. This time their lead actor happens to be Azerbaijan... Read more... The Eurasian "Triple Alliance": The Strategic Importance of Iran for Russia and China, by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | Global Research China, the Russian Federation, and Iran are widely considered to be allies and partners. Together the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China, and the Islamic Republic of Iran form a strategic barrier directed against U.S. expansionism. The three countries form a "triple alliance," which constitutes the core of a Eurasian coalition directed against U.S. encroachment into Eurasia and its quest for global hegemony... Read more... Putting Israel first, by Paul Woodward | War in Context For a while now an argument has been rumbling along about the expression “Israel-firster” — a term that some people regard as bordering on anti-Semitic. Prime culprit — in the eyes of those making the charge — is M.J. Rosenberg at Media Matters. James Kirchik at The New Republic says use of the term “largely amounts to name-calling.” What he and others who find the term offensive have no intention of doing is actually addressing the question of whether any/many/most of Israel’s most outspoken defenders in the U.S. place their allegiance to Israel ahead of their loyalty to the United States. In other words, whether they do indeed put Israel first... Read more... Obama's Iran choice, by MJ Rosenberg | Al Jazeera English ..I had thought that the reason all the Republican candidates (with the exception of Ron Paul) are such noisy warmongers is because that is their natural proclivity - and because it pleases donors (such as Sheldon Adelson, Newt Gingrich's big campaign funder) who base their political choices on Binyamin Netanyahu's desires. But Times reporter Mark Landler suggests that one of the results of this year's conveniently timed Iran crisis is to present President Barack Obama with a choice of two options, either of which the GOP could successfully exploit to defeat him in the election... Read more... Hillary Mann Leverett On U.S. And Iranian Strategies In The Middle East | The Race for Iran  Hillary appeared on Konflikt, Swedish Radio’s in-depth foreign affairs program, to talk about her experience as an American diplomat negotiating with Iranian counterparts over Afghanistan and how that experience informs her current views about U.S. and Iranian strategies in the Middle East today. You can listen to the interview, which is in English after a very brief introduction in Swedish... Listen to podcast... 10 percent of Israeli academics labeled 'anti-Zionist' by campus watchdogs | Haaretz Survey comes up with the names of more than 1,000 Israelis, 800 of whom are academics but also including authors, journalists, public intellectuals, and past and present cabinet ministers... [They are heretics! To the stake with them!] Read more...How Iran Could Whip the United States and Israel Without Firing a Single Shot, by Mark R. Crovelli | Lew Rockwell ...the Iranian government can and will try to avoid a brutal and bloody war with two of the most heavily armed countries in the history of the world. Duh. They will try to avoid this outcome not because they particularly care about the wellbeing of their citizens, (of course they don’t, they’re politicians after all), but because they are acutely aware that wars with the United States eventually result in "regime change.".. Read more... The use of web-based disinformation by the 'west', by Helena Cobban | Just World News ...We liberals need to be very careful indeed that we do not have our admirable sentiments of human solidarity abused by today's architects of 'western' colonial invasion, control, and domination. The situation that Syria's people are living through today is extremely difficult. There are no easy answers. Both the regime and the opposition have demonstrated their resilience, and neither looks as though it is about to "win" the current contest any time soon... Read more... Three Reconciliations, by Zbigniew Brzezinski | The American Interest If we wish to reflect on the common challenge inherent in the ongoing transformation of global politics, we would be wise to start by recognizing what I believe to be the three fundamental facts of the present era. First, global peace is threatened not by utopian fanaticism, as was the case during the 20th century, but by the turbulent complexity inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening. Second, comprehensive social progress is more enduringly attained by democratic participation than by authoritarian mobilization... [Sounds both astute and reasonable, but the sticky question is - who winds up running the show, and what are their motivations and interests? That's the fly in the ointment of the New World Order.] Read more... Israel's Trauma Psychology and the Attack on Gaza | Avigail Abarbanel ...Israel has been itching for a ‘good war’ for a while now. The botched attack on Lebanon in 2006 was a psychological disappointment that did not fulfil its purpose, and only led to a deepening chasm between the political and military arms in Israel. An Israeli friend told me in disgust the other day, that there is an atmosphere of ‘national orgasm’ in Israel about the prospect of attacking Iran. While people are being bombed in Gaza, all Israelis can talk about is the coming attack on Iran. But there is a link between the two... Read more... Creating American Terrorists, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar .... To do so [to oppose a powerful interest group, the Israel Lobby] these days is to invite a charge of terrorism support with the option of being arrested by the Pentagon and locked up somewhere at the pleasure of the president of the United States. How low have we sunk, Mr. Obama? You portray yourself as a man of honor and a defender of constitutionalism, but you have opened the gates to lawlessness and authoritarian rule. And even if you are as benign as you depict yourself, you have provided the legal tools for those who might follow you — the Gingriches, the Perrys, the Bachmanns, and the Santorums — to possibly do much, much worse... [Is it time to declare war on those who are in the process of destroying the United States of America? Never mind that those people are the Republican and Democratic parties, the government and the sycophants, hypocrites, opportunists and traitors who support them. We The People demand justice, freedom and equality, and if we have to water the tree of liberty with our blood to reassert the primacy of these principles, then so be it. ~ Who said that? Why, it was yours truly.] Read more... Chris Hedges Sues Obama Admin Over Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Approved in NDAA | Democracy Now on YouTube ..Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has filed suit against President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes controversial provisions authorizing the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world, without charge or trial. Sections of the bill are written so broadly that critics say they could encompass journalists who report on terror-related issues, such as Hedges, for supporting enemy forces... Watch video... Israeli warmongers itching to attack Gaza despite Hamas peace overtures | Redress Information & Analysis Uri Avnery argues that, in his desperation to make a mark by starting a war but unable to attack Iran for fear of the apocalyptic consequences, Israel’s new chief of staff, General Benny Gantz, is itching to attack Gaza instead, even without a pretext... Read more... Ecology and the Pathology of Capitalism, by Charles Sullivan | Information Clearing House Contrary to everything we have been taught, there is no actual United States of America. The U.S. is an occupied territory that could more accurately be described as the Corporate States of America. If the geopolitical states are united, the people are not. We are a nation divided by ideology and by social and economic class. The U.S. is not a democracy and it never was. The systems of power do not allow the voice of working people to be heard or their collective will to be acted upon... Read more... The ongoing war against truth | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson views the battle between truth-tellers and those who would suppress the truth, as reflected in the US-inspired prosecution of Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon for allegedly “abusing judicial powers” – a charge apparently prompted by his call for Spain to bring charges against six Bush Jr administration officials for clearing the way for the use of torture during the Iraq war... Read more... The Limits of Debate on War With Iran, by John Glaser | Antiwar As prominent voices in the U.S. pontificate about a looming nuclear bomb in Iran, as fleets of U.S. navy warships demonstrate provocative militarism in the Persian Gulf, and as Israel uses its committed constituency in America to push for a preemptive military strike, war with Iran seems ever closer. But even someone as deeply concerned as I am about attacking Iran (on false pretenses no less), can recognize that there is significant aversion within official circles to doing such a thing. The problem is, these “antiwar-with-Iran” voices are still squarely in the threaten, provoke, sanction, and covertly attack Iran camp... Read more... Coming soon: MA in Shoah studies | Ynet The unique program will be launched on October 2012. It will be the first time an Israeli academic institution introduces such a program, which aims to deal with the alarming drop in the number of young students specializing in the Holocaust in Israel and that fact that senior researchers are slowly retiring... [Maybe they've finally milked it for all it's worth. Just how many thousands of people can make a living at guilt-tripping the rest of the world?] Read more...Jan 23, 2012 EU diplomats propose BDS against Israeli colonialism, by Joe Catron | Mondoweiss  The Israeli settlement of Har Homa overlooking Bethlehem A report sent to the European Union on Monday by its member countries’ top diplomats in Jerusalem and Ramallah proposed state-level boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel’s illegal colonial infrastructure in the occupied West Bank. These recommendations, unprecedented among Western nations, herald a breakthrough for the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement...Read more... Shit Students CAN'T Say (About Israel) | YouTube The crazy sh*t you CAN'T say on campus about Israel because of intimidation, censorship and legal threats... Watch video... Edward Said: The Myth of the "Clash of Civilizations" | YouTube In 1993 Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington wrote an essay titled "The Clash of Civilizations?" and later he expanded it into a book with the same title, but without the question mark. Edward Said, late Columbia professor rips Huntington's thesis to shreds... Watch video... Waging liberation in and outside Israel's prison walls, by Ameer Makhoul | The Electronic Intifada  Liberating Palestinian political prisoners should mean liberating them now The success of internationalization can be gauged by the extent to which the issue or question concerned becomes a global concern. It means creating a situation on the ground which makes it impossible for the international system to continue shirking responsibility, or colluding with a dominant or powerful party in usurping the rights of a weaker victim. International mechanisms can then be brought into play to support the restoration of the victim’s rights and enforce compliance on the violator...Read more... Adalah's battle will get harder, by Virginia Tilley | Unpetrified Opinion In the battle against racist Israeli laws, there is no substitute for the website of Adalah: Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. So it's with huge respect and deep admiration for this extraordinary centre that I refer anyone to its work. Yet also, the following caveat: while supporting Adalah and others to fight this law is courageous, principled and necessary, we should be careful not to slip into a major error, which is to believe Israel's democracy has just gone off on some alarming side track, and can be got back on track by a little steering -- defeating this or that offensive law or practice. This error is related to a deeper one: the mistaken idea that racism in Israel is getting worse... [Virginia has never lost sight of the main point - doing harm to others for one's own gain is never acceptable.] Read more...Iran War: US Eyes Mideast Gendarme Role, by Dr. Ismail Salami | Intifada Palestine ..Amidst an escalating crisis following an exchange of threats between Washington and Tehran, US Army Gen. Martin Dempsey has visited Israel to discuss what is claimed to be an effort to stop a possible Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites. This is at least what Western media has been reporting with the manifest purpose of depicting the US government as Mr. Nice Guy who wishes to stop an Israeli attack without having any intention of its own to participate in another military expedition in the Middle East. Is this a sudden political volte face?.. Read more... Into an Unsettled New Year, by Mya Guarnieri | IPS  ZioNazi thugs in Hebron An elderly Palestinian woman spent last week on hunger strike to protest violent attacks by Israeli settlers. Hana Abu Heikel went on the hunger strike on behalf of her family after settlers burned the family car during the previous weekend. Since Israeli settlers moved into the houses surrounding the Abu Heikel family home in Hebron in 1984, the Abu Heikels have seen eight cars burned. Six vehicles were also smashed by settlers...Read more... The problem with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is not sharia, by Sara Khorshid | The Guardian Secularism is not my cause and sharia is not my fear but I am one of those Egyptians who are critical of the Muslim Brotherhood movement – one who made a point of not voting for the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party in the recent elections. My cause is Egypt, the revolution, and seeing my country become a true democracy. My fear is the prolongation of military rule, of transformation to a system that gives the military special status above civil institutions, or one that grants the army and its budget immunity against parliamentary accountability... [We sincerely wish you luck, but you've got a hard row to hoe. The Egyptian military has all the force and resources of the USraeli Empire behind it.] Read more...Israel is pushing the world toward WW III | Rehmat's World Both professor Richard Falk (Princeton University) and professor Gary G. Sick (Columbia University) have blamed the Zionist regime for pushing the US and other western powers to start WW III in the Muslim world. Israel wants this new war as a ploy to divert the world’s attention from its own Zionazi policies on a daily basis. Both Falk and Sick are on the National Advisory Committee of Middle East Policy Council... Read more... The 'invented people' stand little chance, by Robert Fisk | The Independent  Thank goodness we don't have to hear Newt Gingrich for a while. His statement that the Palestinians were an "invented people" marked about the lowest point in the Republican-Christian Right-Likudist/Israel relationship. So deep has this pact now become that you can deny the existence of an entire people if you want to become US president. It's time, surely, to take a look at this extraordinary movement, to remind ourselves – since US "statesmen" cannot – just what its implications really are... [The Newt appears to be alive and well, for the time being, and the world's greatest liars are still in control.] Read more... Getting Rid of 'Anti-Israel' Presidents | Consortium News Some staunch supporters of Israel believe that its interests are so compelling that they trump American self-governance, with one extremist suggesting the murder of President Obama. Others, however, appear to have joined in an earlier subversion of U.S. democracy, Robert Parry reports... [As long as these genocidal maniacs have total impunity, granted by the US, they can do and say whatever they like.] Read more...We are all hippies now, by PF Louis | Natural News The term hippy is often used contemptuously. Some ex-hippies have a sense of failure with that counter culture movement's inability to change the world. The occupy movements taking place now are reviving memories of that 1960s anti-establishment counter culture activity. Hopefully, awareness of this counter culture's consciousness will not quickly fade... [I was one of those hippies. We gave it all we had - humor, creativity, open curiosity and a yearning for truth. But the counter-revolution beat us down, and people became afraid. That same fear, in the form of excessive caution and political correctness threatens the nascent renewal of resistance to a culture of greed and death. May they rise above that fear and negativity and once again manifest the brilliance and compassion that lies within us all. Let's celebrate being alive and human again! - It's about time.] Read more...Jan 22, 2012 'So What Hope is There?': The Blockbusters, by Uri Avnery | Palestine Chronicle  'Go! (Arabic), Egypt is here!' Tel Aviv, August 6 ...When the Jews from Muslim countries started to arrive en masse in Israel, they were steeped in Arab culture. But here they were received by a society that held everything Arab in total contempt. Their Arab culture was “primitive”, while real culture was European. Furthermore, they were identified with the murderous Muslims. So the immigrants were required to shed their own culture and traditions, their accent, their memories, their music. In order to show how thoroughly Israeli they had become, they also had to hate Arabs...Read more... A setback to Zionists' regime change in Syria | Rehmat's World ...Some senior AL officials believe the organization will keep the mission in place because the time is not right for “escalation” and the international community is not yet ready for a ‘Libyan-type’ military intervention in Syria. However, the Qatari Emir, who funded West’s proxy war in Libya – has called last week for the dispatch of Arab troops to the country. His warmongering rant was slammed by two AL members, Iraq and Lebanon... Read more... Obama Pushes Hard to Protect Big Banks from Fraud Prosecutions .. But We Can Stop Him | Washington's Blog As we’ve noted for years, the entire strategy of Washington towards the economy is to cover up the fraud which caused the financial crisis … even though prosecuting fraud and re-establishing the rule of law is the only way to get out of this depression. One major front in Washington’s cover-up effort has been to settle fraud cases with the big banks for pennies on the dollar. This is a backdoor bailout for the banks, encourages them to commit more fraud, and fails to plug the basic holes in the economy which are preventing a recovery... Read more... Have Israel's "inner circles" discussed assassinating President Obama? | Redress Information & Analysis Alan Hart says that brainwashing by American Zionists, and the anti-Obama hate campaign conducted by Israel’s stooges in the Republican Party, are creating an environment where the prospect of assassinating the US president to make way for a more pro-Israel president is no longer unthinkable... [They assassinated Rabin, quite possibly Jack and Bobby Kennedy, not to mention the folks at the Twin Towers, so why not their poodle Obama?] Read more...Is This Why They Won't Prosecute? Top Justice Officials Represented Big Banks | Washington's Blog Obama’s Department of Justice isn’t prosecuting any big fish. Indeed, the Obama administration is prosecuting fewer financial crimes than Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton. This is true even though the big banks – such as Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo – committed some fraud, but their entire business model is fraudulent... Read more... The Global Elite Are Hiding 18 Trillion Dollars In Offshore Banks | The Economic Collapse  In recent days, the fact that Mitt Romney has millions of dollars parked down in the Cayman Islands has made headlines all over the world. But when it comes to offshore banking, what Mitt Romney is doing is small potatoes... Read more... Britain bans Press TV | PressTV ...This is the first time in British history that an international news channel has been taken off the air, raising huge questions over freedom of speech in a country which claims to adhere to liberal, democratic values. Nevertheless, PTV will continue to broadcast to British viewers via foreign satellite platforms and through the internet. The channel says that Ofcom's decision will be an ultimately futile attempt to hide the truth... Read more, watch video... Occupy Wall Street at a Crossroads, by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh | Global Research ...An obvious reason for the fading of support for Occupy demonstrations is the carefully calculated use of excessive power and presence of the police force, designed to frighten or discourage ambivalent spectators who may contemplate joining the protestors. Another equally obvious factor is the corporate media that, in collusion with politicians, tend to drive a wedge between the protestors and their potential allies among the wider working population... [As I see it the only remedy would be the formation of a third party uniting nearly all of the opposition to the Republicrats and their corporate/Zionist owners. I have dubbed it "the Alliance Party." It's quite workable, but would require an agreement to disagree about secondary issues. I would kick it off by organizing a meeting with Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Pat Buchanan, Cynthia McKinney and half a dozen others. This is doable, but someone would have to take the first step.] Read more... Undermining Global Democracy: Seven Truths Inconvenient to U.S. Foreign Policy, by Daniel Kovalik | Counterpunch As George Orwell so eloquently stated, “Truth is the first casualty of war.” Indeed, lying is absolutely necessary to the ability of countries such as the U.S. aiming to wage unprovoked war upon other countries – the worst form of human rights crime as recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal which noted that it is “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”... Read more... Francis Clark-Lowes' Appeal Speech to PSC, by Gilad Atzmon | deLiberation Francis Clark-Lowes, an academic, former Chair of the National PSC and former chairman of the Brighton branch for Palestinian Solidarity, appealed today to the PSC AGM against his recent expulsion from the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign... [One has to hand it to the Zionists; they appear to have taken control of the PSC. How twisted can it get?] Read more...Obama's Secret Letter to Tehran: Is the War against Iran On Hold? by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | Global Research  In the letter, the White House spelled out the position of the United States, while Iranian officials said it was a sign of things as they really are: the U.S. cannot afford to wage a war against Iran. Within the letter written by President Barak Hussein Obama was a U.S. request for the start of negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end Iranian-U.S. hostilities... Read more... The US-GCC fatal attraction, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online There's no way to understand the larger-than-life United States-Iran psychodrama, the Western push for regime change in both Syria and Iran, and the trials and tribulations of the Arab Spring(s) - now mired in perpetual winter - without a close look at the fatal attraction between Washington and the Gulf Cooperation Council, the club of six wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates)... Read more... Wisse Kokht Kugl mit Khazershmaltz! by Joachim Martillo | Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel ...Even though Wisse's scholarship leaves much to be desired, her works do often contain useful material. She is such a classic example of ethnic Ashkenazi extremism, fanaticism, and bigotry that she almost merits a professorship at Harvard so that she can be studied and remain in the public eye as a flagrant example of the dark side of Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazi culture... Read more... Atlanta Jewish Newspaper Advocates Mossad Assassinating Obama If Iran Gets Nukes | Tikun Olam Andrew Adler, now that’s a name that should live in Jewish infamy. He’s the publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times who actually published a column in his paper saying that one of three options Israel should consider on the day the Prime Minister hears that Iran has a nuclear weapon is for Mossad agents in the U.S. to assassinate Barack Obama... [One wonders if Adler got prior approval from the Sanhedrin before running his piece. Well, I guess not - see this] Read more...Zbig: Israelis "bought influence" and outmaneuvered Obama, by Jordan Michael Smith | Salon The president "should have stuck to his guns" on Mideast peace, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, former NSC advisor... [Poodles rarely bark] Read more... The Idiot's Guide to Fighting Dictatorship in Syria While Opposing Military Intervention, by Bassam Haddad | Jadaliyya  ...Syria is being used by various powers—including the United States, Saudi Arabia, and their chorus—as an occasion to accomplish their respective or collective objectives in the region. And their aims are reactionary ones, to be sure, in terms of the interests of most people in the region as the past decades behind us attest and as current uprisings against the “fruits” of such objectives make clear, even to some skeptics. This does not mean, however, that we should withdraw our opposition and halt the struggle against dictatorship in Syria. It only serves to remind us how not to do it... Read more... Whose hands are behind those dramatic YouTube pictures? by Patrick Cockburn | The Independent ...The BBC and other television stations happily run nightly pictures of mayhem from Syria, grandly disclaiming responsibility for their authenticity. These disclaimers are intoned so often that they now have as much impact on viewers as warnings that a news report may contain flash photography. People understandably believe that if the BBC and other channels were not convinced of the truth of YouTube pictures they would not be using them as their main source of information on Syria... Read more... A musical interlude: Colli Iaith - Elin Fflur | YouTube Losing language and losing dignity, Losing muse and losing bardism, Losing the golden crown of society And in its place a shallow debased language... [The fruits of Capitalism/Globalism look good when you buy them, but they are mostly rotten when you get them home.] Read lyrics, watch video... Key Reasons against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran | Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran The current US stand-off against Iran, like the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was instigated by the neoconservatives of the Bush Administration based on their doctrine of “maintaining US pre-eminence, thwarting rival powers and shaping the global security system according to US interests” [1]. In the case of Saddam’s regime, its fictitious Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and its alleged links to Al-Qaida were used in the US propaganda war to first impose UN sanctions and eventually invade Iraq for a regime change... Read more... Jan 21, 2012 The Divergent Faces of Israel, by Dr. Lawrence Davidson | Intifada Palestine  Last month Amira Hass, one of Israel’s best, bravest and most disliked journalists wrote a short piece in Haaretz entitled “When ‘fascist’ is not a rude word.” Here she tells us that “in fascist regimes the state is above all” and then notes that the sort of fascist style bills pouring out of Israel’s Knesset would “make Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter [the leaders of the far right party of France] look like amateurs.”.. Read more... The Return of the Smear Bund, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar The tale of the DC Five – the five Beltway bloggers at two prominent Democratic Washington think tanks who have been smacked down (and one fired) for being insufficiently pro-Israel – is hardly a shock to those who know their history... [Any American who actively supports Israel is an enemy of the US, not to mention mankind. If they work for the government, they are traitors. It's that simple.] Read more...Israel's humane society, by Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera English Last week, Israel's High Court voted to uphold a law denying Israeli citizenship or residency not only to Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs, but also to spouses of similarly distasteful nationality (Lebanese, Iraqi, etc). I read the news of the court verdict on the Haaretz website, where it was offset by another breaking headline of a more compassionate nature: "Serbian vulture set free after treatment at Israeli veterinary hospital"... Read more... The Middle East Didn't Really Get Any Freer in 2011, by Max Fisher | The Atlantic  Anti-government protesters pray next to tanks during Friday prayers at Tahrir Square in Cairo The societies of the Middle East and North Africa are not much freer than they were one year ago, according to the new annual report by Freedom House on global trends in freedom. The 2012 Freedom in the World report, out today, finds that political rights and civil liberties in the region were pulled back almost as much as they were advanced. It seems that, although the popular democracy movements of the Arab Spring ejected three dictators and altered the region, perhaps forever, Middle Eastern autocrats and monarchs are fighting back, nearly to a draw... Read more... GOP Officially Endorses One-State Solution, by Mitchell Plitnick | LobeLog Last week in New Orleans, the Republican National Committee officially adopted a resolution supporting a one-state solution in Israel-Palestine. This news came to me via a very trusted source, but both I and my source were puzzled by the fact that we could find nothing in the media confirming this. I called the RNC, but they would neither confirm nor deny. So, I contacted Cindy Costa, the RNC’s National Committeewoman from South Carolina who was listed as the sponsor of the resolution. Here’s our e-mail exchange:.. [Dog works in mysterious ways] Read more...The world war on democracy | John Pilger Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence. She was the embodiment of people's resistance to the war on democracy. I first glimpsed her in a 1950s Colonial Office film about the Chagos islanders, a tiny creole nation living midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean... Read more... Israel Plans Major Gaza War, by Stephen Lendman | Veterans Today  Israel already threatens war on Iran. It’s also involved with Washington, Turkey, Jordan, and other rogue Arab states behind Syria’s externally generated insurgency. Gaza’s also threatened... Read more... Paid to be Ignored: The CIA's Cassandras, by Gabriel Kolko | Counterpunch ...The CIA’S fundamental problem is that despite the obeisance of the American culture and the positivist tradition that exists in American life since the founding of the nation, the reality is quite different. The CIA pretends to be objective, and undoubtedly some within it are or want to be, but for a variety of reasons, strategists ignore advice they do want to hear from the CIA. The CIA analytic section is, on the whole, ineffective. There is too much information available and decision-makers use only what reinforces their preconceived conclusions and their desires, in the case of Presidents, for reelection... Read more... Blood on Whose Hands: Bradley Manning, Washington and Civilian Deaths, by Chase Madar | Counterpunch Who in their right mind wants to talk about, think about, or read a short essay about… civilian war casualties? What a bummer, this topic, especially since our Afghan, Iraq, and other ongoing wars were advertised as uplifting acts of philanthropy: wars to spread security, freedom, democracy, human rights, gender equality, the rule of law, etc... Read more... The Jewish Monopoly on Opium | Watching China  David Sassoon - China's own original "Merchant of Death" ...how England first gained control of Hong Kong. The truth lies buried in the family line of David Sassoon, "The Rothschilds of The Far East," and their monopoly over the opium trade. Britain won Hong Kong by launching the opium Wars to give the Sassoons exclusive rights to drug an entire nation...Read more... Israeli's demographic-cultural barriers to peace, by Uri Avnery | Redress Information & Analysis Uri Avnery considers the relationship between Israel’s demographic-cultural blocs and its domestic politics, especially attitudes towards peace and the Arabs. He argues that before peace can take root, the barriers between the blocs, especially the deeply ingrained racism of the Oriental and Russian Jews, must be broken... Read more... Jan 20, 2012 The Wondering Jesse | Gilad Atzmon  This week, Jesse Lieberfeld, an 11th grade American Jewish teenager, won the Dietrich College’s 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr. Writing Awards for composing a beautiful piece about his own moral awakening and journey away from Judaism... Read more... Gaza tunnel smuggling OK, says confused Britain, by Stuart Littlewood | Intifada Palestine The British government gets hot under the collar at the very thought of Gaza smuggling anything in. So much so, that as Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza was coming to an end in January 2009 our then prime minister Gordon Brown promised to send naval units to stop the Hamas government “smuggling” arms which the Gazans desperately needed to defend themselves and their tiny coastal strip from their state-of-the-art weapons-freakin’ oppressors... Read more... NATO vs. Syria, by Philip Giraldi | The American Conservative Americans should be concerned about what is happening in Syria, if only because it threatens to become another undeclared war like Libya but much, much worse. Calls for regime change have come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who several weeks ago predicted a civil war. That is indeed likely if the largely secular and nationalist regime of Bashar al-Assad falls, pitting Sunni against Shia against Alawite. Indigenous Christians will be caught in the meat grinder. Ironically, many of the Christians in Damascus are Iraqis who experienced the last round of liberation in their own country and had to flee for their lives... Read more... US waging war on Iran with oil ban | PressTV "What the United States is actually doing, is waging a war on Iran. This is as Ron Paul, the US presidential candidate has said, an act of war to impose oil sanctions and sanctions on Iran's Central Bank,” Professor Seyyed Mohamed Marandi said in an interview with Press TV on Wednesday... Read transcript, watch video... The Salala Massacre: NATO's Naked Aggression Against Pakistan, by Martin Iqbal and Jonathan Azaziah | Mask of Zion  The Zionist entity, Hindutvadi India and the 'Israeli'-controlled US ...The brazen and bloody assault on the Pakistani army can only be understood in light of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the CIA’s ongoing war to destabilise the country. The TTP is a militant-terrorist group fostered by the CIA and India’s RAW, being used as a proxy force against the Pakistani nation as part of a ‘fourth generation war’...want to see Pakistan completely and totally eviscerated Read more... Israel: Iran still mulling whether to build nuclear bomb, by Amos Harel | Haaretz ..The Israeli view is that while Iran continues to improve its nuclear capabilities, it has not yet decided whether to translate these capabilities into a nuclear weapon - or, more specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a missile. Nor is it clear when Iran might make such a decision... Read more... Regime Change, Inc. Denies Its Own Existence, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Foreign Policy Journal Almost three years ago, Richard Perle, also known as “Prince of Darkness,” brazenly attempted to deny his own existence as a leading pro-Israel architect of the Iraq war, when he stated, “There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy.” Now, the “nonviolent” manifestation of that regime change agenda appears to be following suit... Read more... Bastin Interview | 21st Century Science Tech Clinton Bastin, a nuclear scientist, chemical engineer, and former Department of Energy official, was interviewed on the recent IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program... Read more (.pdf)... Terence McKenna: Culture is not your friend | YouTube Culture is not your friend, it's an impediment to understanding what's going on. That's why to my mind the word cult and the word culture have a direct relationship to each other. Culture is a cult and if you feel revulsion at the thought of somebody offering to the great carrot, just notice that your own culture is an extremely repressive cult that leads to all kinds of humiliation and degradation, and automatic and unquestioned and unthinking behaviour... Watch video... Alan Dershowitz, amoral and impotent dwarf | Nicholas Urie  ...The ethical implications of such a clumsy attack are obvious but must still be noted. Dershowitz behaves similarly to a whining toddler, unconstrained by facts, reason, or the broader consequences of his untruths in his quest for Mr. Atzmon’s silence. Dershowitz seems to be a man who has no ethical qualm smearing the innocent in an effort to suppress Gilad Atzmon’s voice in any way possible. Dershowitz’s attack should be seen as little more than a temper-tantrum thrown by an amoral and impotent intellectual dwarf... Read more... Cold War relic lingers on, by Igor Panarin | RT ...The Jackson-Vanik amendment to the US Trade Act of 1974 was adopted by Congress in the same year as a means of applying economic pressure against “non-market economies” for restricting freedom of emigration and other human rights. It effectively created trade barriers, banning certain Soviet-made products such as steel from the US market. Although this was not explicitly spelled out in the bill, the amendment was essentially meant to punish the Soviet Union for barring sections of its Jewish population from emigrating to Israel and other countries... Read more... The final illusion has disappeared, by Jamal Zahalka | Middle East Monitor ...Although the Court approved the demolition of Palestinian homes and the confiscation of land; has acquiesced in the face of acts of murder, deportation, administrative detention, settlements, the construction of the wall and the blockade of Gaza; and goes along with the Judaisation of Jerusalem, its limited criticism of the government and the Knesset is disliked by the right-wing. Far-right politicians have lobbied feverishly to reduce the power of the court and change the composition of its judges. Their success is noted by the appointment of new judges who are described as conservative to replace liberals who retire; this is the strongest indicator of the power shift within Israeli politics towards right-wing extremism... [As usual, Israel mirrors the US, and vice-versa.] Read more... Waiting for False Prophets: The Puzzling Matter of the Israeli Liberals, by Ramzy Baroud | Middle East Online ...As genuine as he is, Avnery is once again presenting the false hope of a savior emerging to save Israel from itself. Avnery envisions Israel being rescued from its ‘neo fascists’ and returned to the over-romanticized scenario of old, when early Zionists supposedly dreamed of an Israel governed by universal ethics, true democracy, peace and social equality... [Quite so. As I boringly repeat again and again, Israel is inherently unjust and illegitimate, and it is only a matter of time before this abortion is tossed into the trashcan of history.The question is how much more destruction and suffering it brings to the world in the meantime.] Read more... Time For The (Intellectually Indefensible) Case To Attack Iran? | The Race for Iran  Law professor and former Justice Department official John Yoo with Our colleague Eric Brill has produced a detailed analysis of John Yoo’s recent article, “An Unavoidable Challenge—Now is the Time to Make the Case for Military Action Against Iran,” which we are pleased to publish below. Last month, we noted and discussed Yoo’s piece, which purported to develop a legal case for a U.S.-initiated war against Iran, but which struck us as largely an argument that the United States should and could disregard international law...former Vice President Cheney's legal advisor, David Addington [One might recall that Yoo wrote the DofJ brief justifying torture used by the Bush administration. One wonders if he's a mole from No. Korea, or just a rabid ferret.] Read more... Zion's Big Lie | The "Six Million" Myth Blog As documented in the book The First Holocaust, the Zionists have continuously and hysterically attempted to claim that six million Jews were dead, dying or in grave danger in Europe and Russia since the late 1800's. Any time there was turmoil in Europe, albeit turmoil often instigated by Jews in the first place, prominent Zionist figures and Jewish-controlled media organizations world wide continuously whipped up a frenzy with phony sob stories to get people to feel sorry for Europe's Jews and donate money to Jewish charities... [It has become a religion in its own right, which I have dubbed the "Holycause."] Read more...Torture, widespread in Israeli jails: An interview with Audrey Bomse | PressTV ...the number of detainees also increased in 2011 due to ongoing Israeli arrests of Palestinians (approximately 9 a day). Israel is still keeping dozens of detainees in solitary confinement, still attacking the detainees and violating their rights, and is still depriving Gaza Strip detainees from their right to visitations with their families... Read transcript, watch video... Now Is the Time to #OccupyAIPAC | End the Occupation Now we're ready to Occupy AIPAC. We'll be joining with member group Code Pink and more than 100 other endorsing organizations for five days of film screenings, teach-ins, performing arts, direct actions, trainings and grassroots advocacy during AIPAC's annual policy conference. Join us from March 2-6 in Washington, D.C... Read more... Jan 19, 2012 A Roadmap for Brave UN Reforms, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle  The UN must be reformed to live up to its own ideals ...Politics, military ambitions and the utilisation of the UN as a stage to serve the policies of so-called first world nations is at the heart of the UN ailment. For more than 65 years, powerful forces — the US and European countries, the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation — organised several attempts to undermine the UN’s ability to end conflicts, eradicate poverty, and further equality in the world...[It would take a radical restructuring, which is only possible through the downfall of the Empire] Read more... The Afghan Dust is Settling, by Eric Walberg | Palestine Chronicle Scarcely a word is heard about foreign affairs amid US election talk, despite the many fires around the world that the US military is either stoking or trying to douse -- depending on your point of view. Other than Republican contender Ron Paul -- not a serious candidate for the mainstream -- no one questions the plans for war on Iran, Israel’s continued expansion in the Occupied Territories, or US plans to end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars... Read more... Israel's immigration plan for 'ethnically pure' bunker state, by Jonathan Cook | The National The wheel is turning full circle. Last week the Israeli parliament updated a 59-year-old law originally intended to prevent hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from returning to the land from which they had been expelled as Israel was established... Read more... Rebirth of Old Persian Song "Navai, Navai" Performed by Darya Davdar | YouTube ..Rumi however was a mystic poet, and lots of words in its poems are symbolical, including "nay". Nay in rumi poems refers to human being. Because the sound of nay could be rather mournful, its music in mysticism means the laments of a lover that has been separated from its true love... Read more, watch video... On Apartheid, One State and Arab Spring: Interview with Richard Falk, by Yousef M. Aljamal | Palestine Chronicle  I salute the steadfastness of the Palestinian people ..my interest in the Palestinian struggle is rooted in my professional identity as an international law teacher and writer, and my personal identification with the victims of the strong and abused. My friendships with Edward Said and Eqbal Ahmad also pushed my professional support for the Palestinian struggle for justice in the direction of activism. And finally, my way of thinking about being a Jew led me to affirm the call for justice by Old Testament prophets...Read more... Police State International: The globalization of Control | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post With the National Defense Authorization Act, the Enemy Expatriation Act, and other startling measures by the US government to crack down on their own population making headlines around the world at the moment, the idea of an American police state is becoming an all too familiar tale. Less examined, however, are the international aspects of this encroaching police state, a high-tech 21st century control grid which adheres to no national boundaries and whose influence is increasingly being felt in countries throughout the so-called “free world.”.. Read more, watch video... Sinking the Petrodollar in the Persian Gulf, by Pepe Escobar and Tom Engelhardt | Antiwar These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the U.S. and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered. Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus:.. Read more... Netanyahu I, Queen of Iran | Roy Tov  Burial Tomb Queen Esther and Mordecai | Hamadan, Iran ...According to the Book of Esther, Haman, royal vizier to King Ahasuerus, planned to kill the Jews. Following an intricate string of events, his plans were thwarted by Mordecai and Queen Esther. Afterwards, the Jews killed not only their would-be executioners, but also their wives, children and relatives. Altogether, 800 were killed in Susa - the capital city - alone, and 75,000 in the rest of the empire. The following day was declared feast, the genocidal Purim we still can be seen celebrated today. There is no way of justifying these killings. This is not self defense, but violence in the name of violence; brutal vengeance for something that did not happen. One of my readers told me once that it is as if Germany celebrated the Holocaust...Read more... Ecology and the Pathology of Capitalism, by Charles Sullivan | Dissident Voice ...We are literally sacrificing the Earth’s life support systems and mortgaging the future, while attempting to satiate the greed of a few grotesquely wealthy individuals. Through lifelong indoctrination, Americans are persuaded that self-interested greed is in their best interest. The rich and powerful have decreed that corporate profits “the Holy Grail of American capitalism” are more precious than life itself. The remorseless people in power are without conscience. History confirms that sociopaths do not hesitate to take what they want from their unsuspecting victims by any and all means... http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/01/ecology-and-the-pathology-of-capitalism/ BDS Handbook: Targeting Israeli Apartheid Read book (.pdf)... Department of Defense's Operational Access: We Own the World, by John Glaser | Antiwar ..the paper makes suggestions on how to overcome situations in which operational access – “the ability to project military force into an operational area with sufficient freedom of action to accomplish the mission” – is hindered. The concept is not new: the U.S. has considered the entire planet as their own jurisdiction since at least WWII. Full spectrum dominance, or global hegemony, is the goal, and is righteous because We Own the World... Read more... Mitt Romney's Ties to Israeli Military Intelligence | Christopher Bollyn  Orit Gadiesh, former "War Room" assistant to Ezer Weizman and Moshe Dayan ...To understand why the candidates advocate such belligerent positions in spite of the growing anti-war sentiment among American voters, it is essential to understand that they are being paid and supported to do so by their Zionist (i.e. pro-Israel) backers...Truth Tiptoeing through Antisemitism Minefield, by Vacy Vlazna | Palestine Chronicle That an Australian Senate Complaints Committee will be holding a hearing in February on a complaint about the broadcaster SBS promoting antisemitism for its screening of Kosminsky's The Promise is testimony to the egregious influence of the Zionist lobby in Australia. The Promise dramatises the political upheaval in Palestine in the final period of the British Mandate and the Palestinian Nakba through the perspective of a British soldier and also the contemporary ongoing violence of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine through the perspective of his grand-daughter... Read more... Think Before Acting on Iran, by Leslie H. Gelb | The Daily Beast We’re doing this terrible thing all over again. As before, we’re letting a bunch of ignorant, sloppy-thinking politicians and politicized foreign-policy experts draw “red line” ultimatums. As before, we’re letting them quick-march us off to war. This time their target is Iran... Read more... Romney and Obama Share Same Bankster Campaign Contributors, by Kurt Nimmo | Prison Planet  Romney’s Bain Capital owns the “conservative” propaganda machine, Clear Channel Like Obama, Mitt Romney is a wind-up doll for Wall Street and the bankers. There is virtually no difference between them despite all the fetid air from the GOP propaganda machine...Read more... Israeli Army Says Nuclear Iran Would Hinder Military Aggression in Gaza, Lebanon, by John Glaser | Antiwar ...the vast majority of academic literature on the subject agrees that Iran, if it chose to attain a nuclear weapon, would do so to acquire a deterrent in the threat environment they face with constant U.S. and Israeli aggression. At this point, it seems likely that the Israeli leadership is aggressive towards Iran not because they fear being “wiped off the map,” but rather because they fear they will lose their sway in the region and the fear they use to act militarily against their neighbors... Read more... Did the U.S. Create a Civil War in Iraq? by Ashley Smith | Dissident Voice ...“Everything that the American troops have done in Iraq - all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering - all of it has led to this moment of success,” Obama said. “We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” Such claims are a lie... [I have long wondered if Obama, one of the slickest and most outrageous liars I have ever known, was a student of Alan Dershowitz at Harvard Law. Does anyone know?] Read more...Map of Holy Land: 1709 | YouTube "Setting aside the question as to whether or not "God" exists, to quote Hanan Ashrawi: "God is not a real estate agent." Also, those that believe that God promised Canaan/Palestine to Jews exclusively and they have the "right" to expel its native inhabitants must also believe that God is a racist and a fascist." ~ A comment on this clip from an episode of "West Wing." Watch video... Israel's 'national suicide,' by Mark LeVine | Al Jazeera English  Israel's Separation Wall and hundreds of checkpoints prevent travel between the occupied Palestinian ...the threat of a Palestinian "demographic bomb", as Prime Minister Netanyahu has called it, is little more than a contrivance to justify the further exclusion of Palestinians from full citizenship rights within Israel. But accurate or not, the average Jewish Israeli is likely not spending much time parsing the logic or statistical foundations of the High Court's decision - because they understand the deeper meaning of the argument underlying the decision's title: to extend full human rights to Palestinians will lead inevitably to the "national" - that is, political - suicide of Israel as a Jewish state...territories and the state of Israel for most Palestinians and Israelis Read more... Charlottesville, Va., City Council Passes Resolution Opposing War on Iran | War Is A Crime The City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, home of Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and the University of Virginia, passed on Tuesday evening, January 17, 2012, a resolution believed to be a first in the country, opposing the launching of a war on Iran, as well as calling for an end to current ground and drone wars engaged in by the United States and urging Congress and the President of the United States to significantly reduce military spending... Read more... Fighting a Forbidden Battle: How I Stopped Covering Up for a Hidden Wrong, by Jesse Lieberfeld | P U L S E I once belonged to a wonderful religion. I belonged to a religion that allows those of us who believe in it to feel that we are the greatest people in the world—and feel sorry for ourselves at the same time. Once, I thought that I truly belonged in this world of security, self-pity, self-proclaimed intelligence, and perfect moral aesthetic. I thought myself to be somewhat privileged early on. It was soon revealed to me, however, that my fellow believers and I were not part of anything so flattering... ["Out of the mouths of children.." Jesse Lieberfeld is 11 years old.] Read more...Jan 18, 2012 Who are the victims of civil liberties assaults and Endless War? by Glenn Greenwald | Salon  Opponent of war and advocate of civil liberties In The Washington Post yesterday, Law Professor Jonathan Turley has an Op-Ed in which he identifies ten major, ongoing assaults on core civil liberties in the U.S. Many of these abuses were accelerated during the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, but all have been vigorously continued and/or expanded by President Obama. Turley points out that these powers have long been deemed (by the U.S.) as the hallmark of tyranny, and argues that their seizure by the U.S. Government has seriously called into question America’s status as a free nation...Read more... Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered, by Mehdi Hasan | The Guardian ...instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee. "On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly." On the day of Roshan's death, Israel's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, announced on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear"... Read more... Don't Do It, Bibi, by Roger Cohen | NYT A U.S. ambassador in Europe was recently asked by an Israeli ambassador what could be done to improve the lousy relations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama. He replied: “Every once in a while, say thank you.”.. [Every little bit of common sense helps] Read more... Israeli Military Prepares for Massive Gaza Invasion 'Within Months', by Jason Ditz | Antiwar The Jerusalem Post reports today that Israel’s military has ordered its Southern Command to prepare for a “large scale” invasion of the Gaza Strip, likely to begin within the next few months... Read more... Commander to soldiers: Never fire at Jews | Israel News (Ynet)  Golani base in Hebron. 'We don't want a civil war' ...On Thursday, a day after the security forces and Civil Administration evacuated the Mitzpe Avihai outpost, Golani soldiers were briefed by their company commander. "We're in for a rocky Saturday, so stay alert," he told the troops. "In any case, no matter what happens, let the world burn down for all I care, nobody opens fire at Jews! We don't want a civil war."..Read more... What's behind Europe's tough stance on Iran,? by Robert Marquand | Christian Science Monitor European powers have agreed in principle to embargo Iranian oil, the lifeblood of Iran's economy, adding to tough sanctions already in place. Europe may give an impression of favoring diplomacy over sanctions on Iran, compared with American and Israeli approaches, but it has been early and consistent in pushing both. France in particular spearheaded robust action on Iran’s nuclear program, becoming one of the leaders of European Union sanctions in mid-2010 to ban investment and business activities with Iran, notably in the energy sector... Read more... Kill and Kill Again: Collateral Savages, by Linh Dinh | Counterpunch ...If they get in the way of civilization’s quest for petroleum, lumber, tin, zinc, copper, whatever, they must be killed wholesale, or one by one, as was accomplished by Chris Kyle, currently touring bookstores to promote his American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History. Kyle killed 255 “savages,” his term, and can stand before God with a clear conscience, he told Bill O’Reily, because he was saving American lives. FOX being FOX, the question of why Kyle was in Iraq in the first place was not probed... Read more... L'affaire Williamson: The Catholic Church and Holocaust Denial eBook by E. Michael Jones | Amazon Kindle Store  ...Holocaust denial is another word for Jewish control of discourse, in particular historical discourse about World War II. A historian who publishes something a powerful Jew, which is to say a Jew with powerful backers, dislikes, will be punished. If he lives by writing books, as David Irving did, the Deborah Lipstadt brigade will get him blacklisted in the publishing industry. If he is a professor, the big Jews will try to get him fired, as Deborah Lipstadt did in the case of Professor David O’Connell... Read more... "The West" in the Eyes of the Iranian Intellectuals of the Interwar Years (1919-1939) by Mehrzad Boroujerdi | Project Muse ...While it was easy to be impressed with Western scientific advances, democratic systems of government, military discipline, academic prowess, and provisions of social services, there was also a lot that Iranians found distasteful about the West. A series of events taking place in Europe shocked and disillusioned cultivated Iranians of the interwar period... Read more (.pdf)... My Plan To Solve Middle East Crisis | Gilad Atzmon The 'Artist Taxi Driver' has come out with the perfect solution for the Middle East conflict... Watch video... Israel is under Cyber Attack | Gilad Atzmon The ‘Arab hackers’ attack on Israel escalated today. The Israeli Stock Exchange’s and El Al’s sites collapsed on Monday. The hackers say that it is within their capability to crash every Israeli server. “If Israel apologises to the people of the Gaza genocide, we may reduce the attacks," said Saudi Hacker OxOmar to Ynet in an interview via email. "I want to harm Israel in any way possible. Hitting Israel in the pocket is certainly where it hurts... Read more... Fidel Castro: 'Iran is beacon of hope for the world nations' | Rehmat's World  The Cuban revolutionary leader described the management of global monetary system by capitalist powers as a “fraud against other world nations” and argued that imperialism is nearing its collapse. “The world is heading toward justice-seeking doctrines and nations should join efforts to tackle global issues particular nuclear disarmament of the hegemonic powers,”.. Read more... Iran, Israel and the US: Blind Man's Bluff in the Middle East, by Barry Landow | Counterpunch In a perilous spiral of assassinations, threats and counter-threats, the leaders of Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran keep ratcheting the tension. What is most alarming about the situation, is that the principle players and their advisors are engaged in an incredibly dangerous three-way game of blind mans bluff... Read more... Top Contributors to Mitt Romney | Open Secrets This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2012 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates... Read more... Israelis Who Speak for Justice, by Lawrence Davidson | Consortium News ...Last month Amira Hass, one of Israel’s best, bravest and most disliked journalists wrote a short piece in Haaretz entitled “When ‘fascist’ is not a rude word,” in which she tells us that “in fascist regimes the state is above all” and notes that the sort of fascist-style bills pouring out of Israel’s Knesset would “make Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter [the leaders of the far-right party of France] look like amateurs.”.. Read more... Jan 17, 2012 "International Zionism Is Strangling The World": Interview With Jonathan Azaziah by Kourosh Ziabari | Mask of Zion  The United States and the Zionist entity: world's greatest terrorists Jonathan took part in an enlightening, explosive interview with me and expressed his viewpoints regarding the renewed war threats of Israel against Iran, Tehran’s nuclear program, the new allegations of the White House against Iran, the true nature of Israel as a state and what he feels is the greatest threat facing our world today...[Very strong stuff, straight up, but the hasbaratchiks would have a hard time disputing most of what he says.] Read more...Under a False Flag, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar Will Israel succeed in dragging us into war with Iran? If not, it won’t be for lack of trying. Their influential lobby in the US has been agitating for a US strike since the last year of the Bush presidency, when they almost succeeded in pulling it off: fortunately for us, Bush demurred, perhaps because he didn’t want his legacy to be two unwinnable and disastrous wars instead of just one... Read more... Preventing a Nuclear Iran, Peacefully, by Shibley Telhami and Steven Kull | NYT ...Despite all the talk of an “existential threat,” less than half of Israelis support a strike on Iran. According to our November poll, carried out in cooperation with the Dahaf Institute in Israel, only 43 percent of Israeli Jews support a military strike on Iran — even though 90 percent of them think that Iran will eventually acquire nuclear weapons. Most important, when asked whether it would be better for both Israel and Iran to have the bomb, or for neither to have it, 65 percent of Israeli Jews said neither. And a remarkable 64 percent favored the idea of a nuclear-free zone, even when it was explained that this would mean Israel giving up its nuclear weapons... [Even though the Zionists (both the Jewish and Christian varieties) are clearly criminally insane, perhaps the majority of Israelis are not. But as we saw in Germany in the 1930's, very bad things happen if the majority doesn't assert itself against power-mad conspirators.] Read more...Herding Americans to War with Iran, by Robert Parry | Consortium News For many Americans the progression toward war with Iran has the feel of cattle being herded from the stockyard into the slaughterhouse, pressed steadily forward with no turning back, until some guy shoots a bolt into your head. Any suggestion of give-and-take negotiations with Iran is mocked, while alarmist propaganda, a ratcheting up of sanctions, and provocative actions – like Wednesday’s assassination of yet another Iranian scientist – push Americans closer to what seems like an inevitable bloodletting... Read more... Martin Luther King: Praised in Words, Defamed in Deeds, by Tony Cartalucci | Activist Post  ...It is safe to say that America has not mended its ways, and has only traveled further down the dark path King warned us of back in 1967. The man "leading" us, or at least the front-man for the corporate-financier interests that drive America's destiny, may honor King with carefully contrived words and well-orchestrated ceremony, but in deeds and actions Obama and the corporate-financier elite that hold his leash, defame and dishonor King in every way imaginable... Read more... The False Flag Story and Provocations, by Jim Lobe | Antiwar ...Meanwhile, a remarkably and unusually candid discussion (for a mainstream medium) of Israel’s strategy of provocation took place yesterday with an interview by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews of former CIA officer Robert Baer.. Baer makes clear his view that these assassinations, about which I hope to write more later, have little to do with setting back Iran’s nuclear program in any meaningful way, but are rather designed to provoke an armed response that would increase the likelihood of a U.S. or U.S./Israeli attack... Read more... Why hasn't NGO Monitor's US fundraiser filed legally required public disclosures with Internal Revenue Service,? by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada NGO Monitor, the far-right Israeli group that fashions itself as a transparency watchdog, suffers from a mysterious lack of transparency itself. The legally-mandated public disclosures required of US nonprofits are nowhere to be found for NGO Monitor’s US-based fundraising arm known as REPORT. Indeed, The Electronic Intifada has obtained an Internal Revenue Service document that shows REPORT was warned of the consequences of failing to file its public disclosures... Read more... Haaretz Publishes Fraudulent Ad Supporting Settler Price Tag Attacks with Forged Peace Activist Names, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam There is a brewing media scandal in Israel that has received scant attention. Let’s try to change that. Earlier this week, a fictitious settler group published an ad in Haaretz supporting price tag attacks. One point they made in their support was the claim that price tag attacks are civil disobedience in the same sense that Ilana Hammerman’s group, We Do Not Obey, is. She is the activist who began a protest movement by driving Palestinian mothers and children from the West Bank into Israel in order to take them to the beach, amusement parks, zoos, etc... Read more... Israel liberals awaiting false prophets, by Ramzy Baroud | PressTV  Regardless of who may rule Israel, little change ever occurs in its foreign policy with winning parties remaining obsessed with demographics and retaining absolute military dominance. These parties also remain unfailingly focused on their quest to initiate racist laws against non-Jewish residents of the state, and continue to hone the art of speaking of peace, while actually maintaining a permanent state of war... Read more... Jewish Agency boosts presence abroad to fight delegitimization | Israel News (Ynet) The wave of anti-Israeli criticism sweeping across many countries, including in North America, has prompted the Jewish Agency to significantly increase the number of Shlichim (emissaries) abroad. These emissaries, who engage in advocacy for the State of Israel, have been a central part of the Jewish Agency's vision during the past two and a half years. "Several years ago I visited abroad and spoke to young Jews," Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky recalled. "I heard them say things like: 'For me, a young Jewish liberal, it would have been better if Israel didn’t exist.' That's when I understood that what they're missing is pride in Israel.".. [Proud of the malignant tumor that is likely to kill you? Maybe they're a little smarter than that.] Read more...Beating the Drums of War: Provoking Iran into "Firing the First Shot"? by Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research ..Very few people in America are aware or informed regarding the devastation and massive loss of life which would occur in the case of a US-Israeli sponsored attack on Iran. The media is involved in a deliberate process of camouflage and distortion. War preparations under a "Global Strike" Concept, centralized and coordinated by US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) are not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities. The "Globalization of War" involving the hegemonic deployment of a formidable US-NATO military force in all major regions of the World is inconsequential in the eyes of the Western media... Read more... US power fully infiltrated by Israel: Interview with Jeff Gates | PressTV ..I think both of our parties have been pretty thoroughly corrupted by the dominant lobby in Washington, which is the Israeli lobby. Both parties have been thoroughly infiltrated along with our intelligence services. I strongly disagree with speakers who want to blame this on the US government. It is not our government doing this; it is a government within our government... [Ditto the UK, ditto Canada, ditto Australia...] Read more...Is AIPAC Persuading Americans to Break the Law,? by Clive Hambidge | The Palestine Chronicle  It is time for the American public to hold AIPAC accountable ...is the American Israeli lobby group AIPAC, “habitually” encouraging past and present American Administrations to break, also habitually, international laws? Thus costing dearly on an hourly, daily, and decade long basis the lives of countless Palestinians, encouraging also unnatural acts in Iran and deadly acts in Palestine, paid for by American Tax Dollars and lobbied for by AIPAC. If yes, then here is the opportunity for AIPAC and the Political Organizing Committees (PACs) these “detonators of democracy” (Ralph Nader) to become “sensitized,” to obligations under public, constitutional and international norms... Read more... Mossad saves Israeli tourists from Hizbullah in Thailand | Uprooted Palestinians ...First the good news. Seven Israeli Jews were saved from the doomed Italian cruise ship near coast of Tuscany. Three people were killed while there is no word on the fate of 100 American passengers. According to Israel Hasbara Committee on the internet – the cruise ship was torpedoed by the Iranian Navy. Now the bad news. Mossad had informed their friends in Thai intelligence that three Hizbullah members will arrive in Bangkok to pull a terrorist act against Israeli Jews... Read more... Gaza tunnel smuggling OK, says confused Britain | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood highlights how the British government dissembles and prevaricates in order to shield Israel from pressure and allow it to continue subjecting the 1.5 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip to unbearable hardships... Read more... From de Bouilon to Ben Gurion, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance ...The truth of what has happened and what is happening cannot be hidden by the gate-keepers in official media whether in Europe or occupied Palestine! Any serious student of history knows that crusader leaders including de Bouilon would best be described as a war criminal and that the same can be said for Herbert Samuel and David Ben Gurion. The ghosts of these folks still cause great pain to so many people. They were not national or historic leaders except in a negative sense. The people they claimed to represent did not on the long-run do better because of their actions... Read more... Jan 16, 2012 Zionists Are a Fifth Column in America, by Richard Evans | Henry Makow  ..The bill Obama signed into law on December 31st called the Indefinite Detention Bill, now called the National Defense Act of 2012, which suspends habeas corpus protection of US civilian citizens in their own country at the behest of that bastard child of false flag 911 - Homeland Security - was authored and presented by Michigan Senator Carl Levin. Senator Levin holds dual citizenship as an Israeli. "What's wrong with that? Israel is our Ally", most Americans would say. I used to believe that. But the history of US/Israeli relations relative to Israeli relations with other nations tells another story... Read more... Clash of Civilization, Iran Part II, by Jamal Kanj | Intifada Palestine ...Devoid of conflict, Israel implodes internally; without hate, Zionism losses its justification; and playing eternal victim to continue blackmailing the West. Absence of this holy trinity, Israel ceases to exist... Read more... Paul Becomes Only Option for Anti-War Vote, by William A. Cook | Pacific Free Press A curious glance at the current crop of presidential candidates makes it clear that Ron Paul stands alone when it comes to the issue of US engagement in foreign wars. He stands with George Washington against foreign entanglements while the rest of the candidates stand with Teddy Roosevelt and the attempted creation of America’s first empire one hundred and twelve years ago. Mark Twain responded to that effort by creating the Anti-imperialist society... Read more... US constantly violates war law; arrest Obama before 'false flag' war on Iran, by Carl Herman | Nonpartisan Examiner US government “leadership” violates all Americans by constantly violating war law won by our families through two world wars. The US was the primary author of current war law, bound by treaty and Constitutional Law under Article 6 as the US’ supreme law. War law states a nation can use their military on other nations only if that nation’s government attacks... Read more... US Department of Education throws out Zionist group's "civil rights" complaint against Barnard College, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada  ...It is crucial to understand that the complaint against Barnard College is not an isolated incident, but rather part of a carefully laid out strategy masterminded by Kenneth Marcus to use US civil rights laws to allege that speech critical of Israel violates the civil rights of Jewish students by making them feel uncomfortable, unsafe or harassed... [Continually crying wolf may yet bring down the wrath of said canine. It has happened so many times.] Read more...Why the Military Industrial Complex Supports Oppressive Regimes | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post RT interviews Sibel... Watch video... Iran Hawk Watch, by Jasmin Ramsey | Lobe Log In response to a worrying trend in U.S. politics, Lobe Log publishes Iran Hawk Watch every Friday. Our posts highlight and examine militaristic commentary about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits... Read more... Iran has pay back in mind, by Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Asia Times Online ...This does not bode well for an international organization committed to the maintenance of global peace and security, especially since such violence begets more violence, in light of popular fury in Iran and the growing calls for Iran to retaliate - some have even called for targeting US and Israeli scientists who regularly attend international conferences... Read more... Why Latin America calls on philosophers, by Santiago Zabala | Al Jazeera English  Progressive intellectuals and many others have been endorsing Chavez, Morales, and other democratically ...Regardless of how effective the conference's statement is on the governors that read it, what is interesting for us - European academics - is the institutional significance that is given to philosophy in the region. Is there a philosophy conference or forum in the United States or EU where vice-presidents take time to inaugurate a similar event?..elected presidents for their social programmes and economic independence from the IMF Read more... 10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free, by Jonathan Turley | The Washington Post ...Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since 9/11, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state... Read more... Bahrain king running out of tricks, by Mike Jennings | Press TV The latest victim of the Bahraini regime's brutal attempt at clinging on power, died under torture only days after the Consultative Council - the upper house of parliament - endorsed a so-called “national reconciliation document” as part of a process proposed by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa... Read more... Criminalizing Dissent in America | Stephen Lendman ...With no hearing or notice, the Patriot Act's Section 806 lets authorities confiscate or freeze foreign and domestic assets of any individual, entity, or organization accused of engaging in, planning, supporting, concealing, or perpetrating acts called domestic or international terrorism against America. Even nonviolent protests are affected... Read more... Israel: South Sudan's Big Brother, by Nabeelah | KABOB fest  A Sudanese refugee stands behind an Israeli flag at a park near the Israeli Parliament building in Jerusalem ...The deep and long-term nature of the relationship between South Sudanese groups and Israel makes current talk of a ‘new’ alliance between the two, noting their lack of any shared borders and the distance of more than 3000 kilometers between their capital cities, seem a little misleading. Prompted by the visit of Salva Kiir, President of South Sudan, to Jerusalem in late December, recent headlines give little indication of a friendship stretching back over five decades, which culminated in Israel’s prompt recognition of the new state of South Sudan when it gained its independence from Sudan in July 2011...[One thing's for sure - whenever the Israelis have a finger in the pie, a lot of innocent people are going to die.] Read more...2-minute video of Iran's people: Arrest US War Criminals planning their murders | Washington's Blog Documentation to prove the “emperor has no clothes” obvious facts: US constantly violates war law; arrest Obama before ‘false flag’ war on Iran... Watch video... EU Report on Israel: Saving the Two State Solution? | Al Akhbar English Already-strained relations between Israel and Europe hit an all-time low this week after a leaked internal European report on the so-called peace process criticised Israel in unprecedented terms. The document, which warned that the chances of a two-state solution were rapidly fading, appeared to reflect mounting exasperation among the 27 European [So the Europeans want to save the baby after it's been aborted? Are they playing games? Yup- gotta keep Uncle Sam happy.] Read more...When is a terrorist not a terrorist - and war with Iran or not? | Redress Information & Analysis Alan Hart views the USA’s traditional tolerance of Israeli terrorist activities – and abuse of the alliance with the US – and wonders whether this tolerance will extend to providing cover for an Israeli attack on Iran, even if this is not endorsed by Washington... Read more... Jan 15, 2012 Nuclear Assassinations Just the Tip of the Iceberg, by Dr. Ismail Salami | Intifada Palestine  Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan “I saw a motorcycle. They were wearing ski masks — black ski masks. They were two people. I saw the motorcycle speed by. I saw them. It seemed as if they had something in their hands,” this is how a female witness described the scene of the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan...Read more... Libya and the New Warmongering, by David Gibbs | Stop NATO The NATO intervention in Libya is likely to produce a more militarized and insecure world, and this will be its most enduring legacy. The military “success” in Libya has increased the possibility of new wars. There is a widespread perception that NATO has achieved an easy victory against Gaddafi, and the resulting sense of hubris augments the risk of future military actions against Iran, Syria, and other possible targets... Read more... Israeli "Democracy" Descends Lower into Hell, by Jerry Haber |The Magnes Zionist Yesterday, the State of Israel became the first western state whose High Court ruled that some citizens have fewer fundamental rights than other citizens based on their ethnicity. Actually, it had done so before, but yesterday it rejected the most sustained challenge to the “Citizenship Law,” which bars the non-Israeli spouses of Israeli Palestinians from becoming citizens... Read more... Astonishing Israeli Attack on Iran | Roy Tov  Iranian Missiles | Israeli Defense Ministry Acknowledged Defeat ...These lies (or partial lies, we probably will never know) are aimed not only for internal consumption by the Western electorate, but also towards Iran. Some of them are a clear attempt to create fear among Iranian leaders in a desperate attempt to deter them from continuing the development of their society. This is odd. Why would the West care about a proven peaceful society? Is that for the compulsive need by Western, 1984-oriented societies in having an enemy?.. Read more... 'US drone arsenal has increased 40 times' | PressTV According to a new estimate, the number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the U.S. arsenal has increased 40 times, says Rick Rozoff, manager of Stop NATO International. Rozoff told Press TV's U.S. Desk on Thursday, “There was a recent estimate that the arsenal of U.S. drones has increased 40/fold, that is 40 times what it was as recently as a decade ago.” According to Popular Science, unmanned aircraft now make up 31 percent of the military's air power, a "40/fold increase in the drone army" from 2005. According to a new congressional report, the U.S. military now has 7,494 drones... [I can remember a would-be Empire that had a "clone army," sort of the same thing. The drones in DC who run things think they can dominate the world with lethal machines operated by juveniles with joy sticks. I kinda doubt it.] Watch video... Why Iran Assassinations Are Backfiring, Aiding Nuclear Program, by Omid Memarian | The Daily Beast ...“I think the assassination of an Iranian citizen is a blatant act of terrorism perpetuated by experts in targeted assassinations, and it has to be categorically denounced,” Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University told The Daily Beast. “These scientists are national treasures. This is an egregious act of violation of many different rights, to infiltrate into a sovereign state and to assassinate its citizens.” “The United Nations has to intervene. Any civilized country has to intervene. And the [Israelis] claim to be the only democracy in the region?! That’s insane!,” he added... [It's not just the Republicans - killing just about anybody appears to be Hillary's favorite wet dream. Well, she married Bill, but taking it out on arbitrary "enemies" is dubious revenge. She, along with many others inside the Beltway, should be committed to a hospital for the criminally insane.] Read more...War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Fighting Back is 'Aggression', by Kevin Carson | Antiwar The US Department of Defense recently promulgated a new "defense" guidance document: "Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense." I use scare quotes because it just doesn’t seem quite right to use "defense" to describe a document that — like its predecessors — envisions something like an American Thousand-Year Reich... Read more... World Civilian Coalition Gathers for Global March to Jerusalem | Al Manar  Read more... Mossad agents posing as CIA 'apparently didn't give a damn what we thought,' by Paul Woodward | War in Context Mark Perry’s explosive report on Israel intelligence agents posing as CIA agents, recruiting terrorists to strike Iran, is headline news — at least in Israel. In the United States the mainstream media has so far remained mute. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, though yet again it reflects the sickeningly servile relationship between the U.S. establishment and Israel’s supporters... Read more... True Israelites of Papua New Guinea reciting the SHEMA, in Hebrew | YouTube [Well, finally we know who the real Jews are, after 150 years of AshkeNazi deception. May I offer you a slice of seared Palestinian with capers and coriander sauce? Try it; it's delicious. And don't worry about the white phosphorous or the depleted uranium - the Weizman Institute assures us that there are just traces of these additives and it won't be at all harmful to your health. Anyway, it's been certified Kosher so it must be OK.] Watch video...Iran target of 'false flag' strategy,? by James Fetzer and Joshua Blakeney | PressTV  The ship with an orange hue is the USS Vincennes afloat in Puget Sound. In recent years “false-flag” terrorism has been utilized multiple times by US and Israeli political actors to provide pretexts for otherwise unjustifiable, anti-Islamic military excursions. The plan is to justify an all-out assault on Iran based upon a new fabricated “Pearl Harbor”. Israel is the primary motivator behind the attempts to destabilize Iran. US traditional foreign policy was one of attempting to foster stability in the Middle East for oil markets. The Zionist impulse, conversely, is to destabilize all potential regional hegemons and carve the Middle East up into ethno-religious statelets... It will reportedly be used in a "False Flag" attack against Iran Read more... The marines urination video doesn't show the real war crime, by Ross Caputi | The Guardian The video of US marines urinating on Afghan corpses does not shock me. Though their behavior is disgusting and unacceptable, I find the public's reaction to this video far more troubling. People are not outraged that there are dead Afghans; they are outraged at the manner in which the dead are treated. This is indicative of our culture's tolerance for war and war crimes – as long as they are done in a gentlemanly fashion... Read more, watch video... America, a Land Made for the 1 Percent, by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship | Consortium News Over the past three decades, right-wing policies have diverted the wealth of America into fewer and fewer hands, and a right-wing Supreme Court has let money dominate U.S. politics like never before, challenging Woody Guthrie’s idea that “this land was made for you and me,”.. Read more... Why the New York Times is So Hawkish: The "Liberal" Media and American Foreign Policy, by Gregory Harms | Counterpunch A recent article by Robert Naiman examines the New York Times’ current coverage of Iran’s nuclear program. In it he exposes a disappointing but unsurprising mishandling of the facts. References to the paper’s shameful prewar reportage on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s regime are appropriate. But if the Times is indeed liberal, why the repeated adoption and promotion of misleading, hawkish assumptions?.. [It's so politically correct not to mention that the NYT has been a Jewish-owned (Liberal) Zionist rag for many decades. That's why it's casually referred to as the 'Jew York Times'.] Read more...Israeli drone 'mega deals' export the occupation world-wide, by Allison Deger | Mondoweiss  Israel Aerospace Industries' ghost drone Earlier this month, two Israeli weapons producers signed "mega deals" with "unnamed" countries, exporting a crucial piece of the occupation - drones. The companies, Elbit Systems Ltd., known as the IDF “workhorse,” and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), both sold drones, with the latter also unloading missiles and intelligence systems...Read more... Reinventing the Gipper: The Real Reagan Economy, by Michael Walker | Counterpunch ...The staggering debts accrued by Reagan’s administration were due in large part to an explosion in military spending, which shot up by a whopping forty percent between 1980 and 1984. By the time he left office the man who, in Bachmann’s words, had made “no compromises” on spending had somehow succeeded in adding well over a trillion dollars to the national debt, and had turned the United States from the world’s largest creditor to its largest debtor. Not once did Reagan come close to balancing the budget... Read more... 20 points, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance [A whole bunch of truth in 20 short items - a must read.] Read more...Beating the Drums of War: Provoking Iran into Firing the First Shot, by Michel Chossudovsky | Dissident Voice While the possibility of a war with Iran is acknowledged in US news reports, its regional and global implications are barely analyzed. Very few people in America are aware or informed regarding the devastation and massive loss of life which would occur in the case of a US-Israeli sponsored attack on Iran. The media is involved in a deliberate process of camouflage and distortion... Read more... Jan 14, 2012 False Flag, by Mark Perry | Foreign Policy WINEP official says U.S. strategy is aimed at provoking 'Pearl Harbor' that justifies war with Iran, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran... Read more... Earlier today, we did a post on neocons inciting war with Iran that featured quotes from Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, formerly a branch of the Israel lobby group AIPAC. Well Clawson had better put a sock in it, and quick, because now he’s given away the neocons’ game plan... Read more... Obama's Mission Accomplished Moment? by Tom Engelhardt | Antiwar Here’s the ad for this moment in Washington (as I imagine it): Militarized superpower adrift and anxious in alien world. Needs advice. Will pay. Pls respond qkly. PO Box 1776-2012, Washington, DC... Read more... Ex-Israeli Intelligence Officer: "Pearl Harbor" Style Attack Will Be Pretext For War On Iran, Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet Former Israeli intelligence officer Avi Perry writes that a “surprise” Pearl Harbor-style Iranian attack on an American warship in the Persian Gulf will provide the pretext for the US to launch all-out warfare against Iran... Read more... AIPAC's "War With Iran" Bill Passes House Committee, by MJ Rosenberg | Huffington Post Wasting no time after its success in getting the administration to oppose Palestinian statehood at the United Nations, and still celebrating the UNESCO funding cut-off, AIPAC has returned to its #1 priority: pushing for war with Iran... Read more... Iran's central bank targeted by U.S. over nuclear concerns, by AFP | National Post  The latest round of American sanctions are aimed at shutting down Iran’s central bank, a senior U.S. official said Thursday, spelling out that intention directly for the first time... [There are, or were rather, about half a dozen countries with banking systems that are independent of the Imperial financial system. They have all been slated for regime change. Libya was the first to be destroyed. Iran is next on the list.] Read more...An interview with Norman Finkelstein: Israel 'has lost a lot of ground' by Paul Weinberg | Rabble Controversial Jewish American scholar Norman Finkelstein does not feel like a pariah anymore. Visiting Canada again this week on a tour of campuses to deliver lectures and answer questions about the seemingly intractable situation in the Middle East, he reports receiving more invitations to speak than ever these days. "It is much more difficult in public life to defend Israel than to criticize it," Finkelstein explains in a telephone interview with rabble.ca. "I've gotten more invitations from more mainstream places.".. [It is galling that people as insightful and fundamentally compassionate as Finkelstein, Chomsky, Hedges et al can still pretend that the two-state solution remains viable. But it does support the idea that "the wish is father to the thought." As Martin Luther put it, "reason is a whore."] Read more...Palestinian Lesson In Ethics .. To Israeli Border Police | YouTube This video taken outside Jericho as Israeli Soldiers Banned Palestinians to drive their cars in the west banks with National flags attached atop of the cars... Watch video... War on Iran: It's Not A Matter of "If," by Alexander Cockburn | Counterpunch The world’s press is choc-a-bloc with “if” questions about Iran and war. Will Israel attack? Is Obama, coerced by domestic politics in an election year, being dragged into war by the Israel lobby? Will he launch the bombers? Is the strategy to force Iran into a corner, methodically demolishing its economy by embargoes and sanctions so that in the end a desperate Iran strikes back. As with sanctions and covert military onslaughts on Iraq in the run up to 2003, the first point to underline is that the US is waging war on Iran. But well aware of the US public’s aversion to yet another war in the Middle East, the onslaught is an undeclared one. The analogy here is the run up to Pearl Harbor... Read more... Three Books to Stimulate Thought | Paul Craig Roberts January 11 was the tenth anniversary of amerika’s Guantanamo torture prison. National Public Radio commemorated the anniversary by airing critics and defenders of Washington’s violation of US statutory law, the Geneva Conventions, and the US Constitution. Listening to the former government officials justify their crimes, I realized that I was listening to those who had set the table and served the agenda that transformed the US into a criminal police state. Here was confirmation of Professor Dennis Loo’s theory of democracy in which an elite decides the agenda and the subservient media prepares the electorate’s receptivity... Read more... Israel FM seeks dissolving Arab parties | PressTV  Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party has proposed a bill that would dissolve Arab parties in the Knesset (parliament) if passed into law... [Lieberman is not a new phenomenon. He would have been quite at home in the Irgun or the Stern Gang. The mask continues to come off and the true nature of ZioNazism is becoming clear to those who were hypnotized for so many years by the propaganda.] Read more... Ron Paul: War with Iran has already been decided by the Financial Elite | YouTube Using the same legislative and propaganda playbook that led to the Iraq War, the U.S. Government has just officially declared War on Iran... Watch video... The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato's Allegory in Clay | YouTube [Plato identified the ignorance, but misunderstood its source, and came up with his cockamamy notion of "ideal forms." As the buddhists say, there are two veils obscuring things as they really are: mistaken ideas about the nature of reality and conflicted emotions. We still have a long way to go before waking up. This website is a very modest attempt at chronicling the ideas and behavior derived from those mistaken perceptions and destructive emotions, as they occur, that threaten to do us in before we get the chance.] Watch video...Neocon Israel Mouthpiece Writes Syrian Opposition Intervention Paper | Moon of Alabama Bashar al-Asad is right. There are international conspiracies to take him down. This is for example obvious when the expatriate Syrian National Council uses a policy paper arguing for military intervention in Syria that was written by a neocon and Israel supporter and paid for by the U.S. State Department. To further the military intervention the paper is defended by doing away with the local protesters in Syria who oppose any intervention... Read more... Former Intelligence Analysts Urging Obama to Stop Rush to Iran War, by Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray | Intifada Palestine A torrent of war propaganda against Iran is flooding the American political scene as U.S. neocons and Israeli hardliners see an opening for another war in the Middle East... Read more... Jan 13, 2012 Think Again: Intelligence, by Paul R. Pillar | Foreign Policy  I served in the CIA for 28 years and I can tell you: America's screw-ups come from bad leaders, not lousy spies... [Knowledge without wisdom is a surefire recipe for disaster.] Read more... Can Iran Defeat the US in a Major War? by Victor Burbaki | Strategic Culture Foundation US President Dwight Eisenhower used to say that his country would achieve peace even if it takes a war. Naturally, what he had in mind was the kind of peace acceptable to Washington. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, German writer Thomas Mann dropped a wise remark that "War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace". French author Romain Rolland held more or less the same when he explained that only bankrupt countries unleash wars as the means of last resort and that a war is always the last trump in the hands of a desperate gambler, a disgusting speculation pulled off by crooks and fraudsters... Read more... Israeli economist fired after attacking 'Ashkenazi establishment' | Haaretz The chief economist of the Excellence Nessuah brokerage firm was unceremoniously ousted on Wednesday after launching a blistering attack on "the Ashkenazi establishment" that included calling Bank Leumi "the whites' bank.".. [Gilad Atzmon may well have been right when he predicted that the Jewish State would eventually implode due to its internal contradictions. And the sooner the better, I might add.] The Zionization of American Politics and How it could be Terminated, by Alan Hart | Intifada Palestine ..There's much more to democracy than voting every few years for the lesser of two or three evils or in America's case naked political whores (with the exception of Ron Paul among the would-be Republican presidents)... [Read this - it lays out who some of the major players are.] Where Does Our National Policy Come From? Think-Tanks Explained, by Tony Cartalucci | Activist Post  [A nice companion piece to Alan Hart's article on the lobbies - for the most part the think tanks write the legislation and the lobbyists act as the middle men.] Sanctions are about regime change, not about nukes, by Volkhonsky Boris | Voice of Russia On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported with a reference to an anonymous senior U.S. intelligence official, that the real goal of sanctions against Iran was to "create hate and discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways." The peculiar thing is that an earlier version stated that the "intelligence official had described regime collapse as a goal of U.S. and other sanctions against Iran." Later, the paper had to disavow this statement and present a corrected version... Read more... War Is A Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler, 1935 | Ratical [I just added this to my "Online Books" page] Read more...President al-Assad: "We are Victorious against Conspiracy" | Intifada Palestine  ..The participants chanted slogans reflecting the civilized image of the Syrian people whose awareness and solidarity with their leadership enabled them to face all the pressures and misleading campaigns which aim at undermining Syria's security and stability and dissuading it from its pan-Arab approach through which it works on preserving the rights and interests of the Arab nation... Iran: the Neocons Are At It Again, by Ralph Nader | Counterpunch The same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul's inimitable words, "lie their way into invading Iraq" in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight the war in Vietnam... Read more... Age of Psychopathy, by Michael Eigen | Psychoanalysis/Psychotherapy ...We are in the midst of an Age of Psychopathy, with the present years being one of its high points. Loosely speaking, a psychopath is someone with a deficient conscience. Someone for whom guilt is a dirty word or irrelevant, except as a tool to manipulate others. Guilt about hurting others does not seem to be enough to stop the psychopath from trying to get his way. Guiltless exploitation and exercise of power wreaks more and more havoc the higher up the dominance scale one goes... Read more... Healing Wounds: Seeking Closure for the 1915 Armenian Massacre | Richard Falk ...It is true that genocide or Holocaust denial can be hurtful to those who are survivors or descendants of survivors, and identify with the victims of such severe wrongdoing, and its attendant suffering, but whether the sensitivities of these communities should ever be protected by the criminal law seems doubtful, conflicting with freedom of expression and censuring inquiries into historical events that are unpopular and controversial, but occasionally illuminating enough to challenge conventional wisdom... Read more... Letter From Tajrish: Christmas is No Time for an Iranian Revolution, by Hooman Majd | Foreign Affairs  Holiday shopping in Tehran It was Christmastime in Tehran, and forecasters were predicting another early snow. On a cold day last December at the bazaar in Tajrish, the wealthy historic neighborhood in northern Tehran, shoppers avoided the exposed alleyway stalls and instead headed for the warmth of the nearby mini-malls, which were as overheated as any in the United States. Inside one, kids gathered around the window of a Christmas shop to gaze at the ornaments and plastic Santas inside...Read more... The World of Mercenary Companies and Private Military Contractors, by Stephen Lendman | Global Research Wherever they're deployed, they're menacing and feared for good reason. Known historically by various names, they include mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, dogs of war, and Condottieri for wealthy city state leaders and the Papacy in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance Italy. Ancient Greeks and Romans used them. So did Alexander the Great, feudal lords, Napoleon and George Washington against the British... Read more... Fraudulent Nazi Quotations, by Mark Weber | Institute for Historical Review Fraudulent quotations attributed to Hitler and other Third Reich leaders have been widely circulated for years. Such quotes are often used by polemicists -- of both the left and the right -- to discredit their ideological adversaries by showing that Nazis held similar views. This tactic works because people have been educated to believe that anything Hitler and other Nazi leaders thought or said was malevolent, wrong-headed or evil, and that no reasonable or ethical person could hold similar views... Read more... Trivializing the Holocaust charge, by Nima Shirazi | Mondoweiss  Orthodox children wearing outfits intended to invoke the Holocaust Shortly after reading the "Trivializing the anti-Semitism charge" post on Mondoweiss today, I came across this new Daily Beast article about the Israeli habit of trivializing the Holocaust. The article stems from the recent ultra-Orthodox rallies in Jerusalem which mimicked and exploited iconic Holocaust imagery to protest "an effort by secular Israelis to roll back gender segregation on some bus lines and in certain neighborhoods-a dispute that has surged in recent weeks."..Read more... Obamney vs. US, USrael vs. Iran, Eugenicists vs. Everyone | New World Next Week on YouTube Watch video... The Gitmos Next Door, by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway | Counterpunch ...the prisoners at Guantánamo have been deprived of their liberty without any semblance of due process. Over the last decade, 779 prisoners have been held at Gitmo; 171 remain. Only six have ever been convicted of a crime. When it comes to depriving people of their human and civil rights, Guantánamo stands as an unprecedented extreme. But it is far from the only place where these things happen. Today, in our cities and towns, in every state in America, there are places where individuals are incarcerated without trial, and where they suffer deprivation and abuse. They are our local jails... War Plan Iran: The US Finally Admits Its Criminal Bankruptcy, by Finian Cunningham | Global Research  Read more... Rep. Ron Paul greets anti-Israel Rabbi, Ouch! | Rehmat's World ...the big news is - Rep. Ron Paul, angered the Zionist Lobby by greeting anti-Israel Rabbi Yishrol Dovid Weiss, who told him that "Judaism is a religion and it should never be transformed into nationalism". To which Ron said that the suggestion was "good advice".. Read more... Compassion Cannot Be Forced, by Joel F. Wade | The Daily Bell The great moral argument of the left is that the government policies they advocate create a fairer and more compassionate world. Everything they advocate flows from the overt assumption that if you want a fair and compassionate society, their policies of forced fairness and compassion are for you; and, conversely, if you don't support their policies, then you by that fact itself cannot want a fair and compassionate society... [As I pointed out in Us vs. Them: On the Meaning of Fascism, Political Correctness is a form of left-wing fascism, just as pernicious as the right-wing variety.] Read more... Anti-piracy laws will smash internet, US constitution, by Iain Thomson | The Register ..In an essay published in the Stanford Law Review professors Mark Lemley, David Levine and David Post warned that the overarching reach of the legislation would cause people to seek alternatives to the existing DNS system, manufacture massive technical problems in the implementation of DNSSEC and trample over rights of free expression by allowing the total suppression of published opinion based on allegations without proof, or even a hearing... Read more... YouTube reinstates video after thousands protest censorship of unconstitutional US torture tactics, by Ethan A. Huff | Natural News  Protest from thousands of people up in arms over Google-owned YouTube's recent pulling and censoring a video clip from the upcoming film The Last War Crime, a film about war crimes and the unconstitutional and highly-disturbing torture tactics being used by the US government in the so-called "war on terror," has led to the video being reinstated. YouTube had banned the clip, which features a scene about the torture tactic known as "waterboarding," on the phony grounds that it violates the site's terms of service... Read more... Rep. Charlie Dent, Israel and HR 3166 | Mantiq al-Tayr ...the name of the bill he is sponsoring is called "The Enemy Expatriation Act." The "Enemy" is our Constitution and, uh, and, hmmm, forgot for a second due to all the Zionist Bullshit we've been eating in that Israeli hummus here at Mantiq al-Tayr, give me a sec. Oh yes, how could I forget. The "Enemy" is also you... [That should earn Dent a Country Club membership, 100K in campaign contributions and a listing by AIPAC as a "Congressional Friend of Israel." What it should get him is a trip to the guillotine.] Read more, watch video...Emerging Totalitarianism, by Adrian Krieg | The Daily Bell Being over 70 years old and having lived through WWII in Europe and lived in Mexico, I have an excellent understanding of what dictatorships are and how they function. The fact that America is rapidly heading into a despotic state is obvious to anyone of my age. Furthermore, every branch of our government is involved. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the charge of 'assistance to terrorism' does not necessitate an overt act; all that is required is providing assistance and/or encouragement to the act... Why doesn't the European Union pull the plug on Israeli trade? | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood argues that given Israel's reliance on exports to Europe and its contempt for the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which calls for "respect for human rights and democratic principles", the EU should impose sanctions on the Jewish apartheid state but won't because of the power of the Zionist lobby, the obedience of Israel's stooges and the cowardice of the political élite... Read more... Armageddon's Trigger | Roy Tov  Azrieli Center | On Tel Aviv's Eastern Edge ...if Netanyahu does not undermine representative government, representative government would undermine him and the entire Israeli oligarchy. The only way he can undermine it is by creating such a dire situation that people would accept every abuse and violation of their rights. In other words, Netanyahu needs a war...Iran and the Terrorism game, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon In the few venues which yesterday denounced as "Terrorism" the ongoing assassinations of Iranian scientists, there was intense backlash against the invocation of that term. That always happens whenever "Terrorism" is applied to acts likely undertaken by Israel, the U.S. or its allies - rather than its traditional use: violence by Muslims against the U.S. and its allies - because accusing Israel and/or the U.S. of Terrorism remains one of the greatest political taboos... Why Washington Wants ‘Finito’ with Putin, by F. William Engdahl | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post Washington clearly wants ‘finito’ with Russia’s Putin as in basta! Or as they said in Egypt last spring, Kefaya–enough! Hillary Clinton and friends have apparently decided Russia’s prospective next president, Vladimir Putin, is a major obstacle to their plans. Few however understand why. Russia today, in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to a world dominated by one sole superpower... Jan 12, 2012 The Media consensus on Israel is collapsing, by Jordan Michael Smith | My Catbird Seat  Roger Cohen, left, of New York Times; Paul Pillar former CIA bigwig ...With Hamas and Fatah meeting this week in Cairo, reconciliation between the rival Palestinian political parties is likely only a matter of time. Official U.S. policy holds that Hamas is only a terrorist entity, and any agreement between the two factions jeopardizes continued U.S. aid. There is reason to believe, however, that more flexible, productive positions will be expressed in the U.S. media...[You can trust these people about as far as you can throw 'em, but maybe it's a trend.] Read more...Tareq Aziz: Life Hanging in the Balance, by Felicity Arbuthnot | Dissident Voice ...Prior to the invasion, this canny politician and diplomat opined that: “What the United States wanted, was not ‘regime change’ in Iraq, but rather ‘region change.’“ Recent years prove him chillingly correct. He summed up the Bush Administration’s reason for war against Iraq tersely as “Oil and Israel.”.. [Doing what the USraeli Empire does best - killing people. Ain't we proud?] Read more...In Search of Palestine: Edward Said's Return Home (BBC) | Intifada Palestine World hypocrisy is summarised so eloquently at about 26 minutes into this documentary. As we know empires have collapsed before because of this hypocrisy... Watch video... AIPAC Tries to Bamboozle DC Appeals Court, by Grant Smith | Antiwar On Feb. 14, 2012, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee will deliver oral arguments to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. At issue is whether AIPAC defamed its former top official Steven J. Rosen by telling the New York Times he was terminated because his behavior “did not comport with standards that AIPAC expects of its employees.” Fortunately for AIPAC, it is extremely difficult for public figures to win defamation suits in America. Unfortunately for AIPAC, it has now filed so many false and easily debunked claims in appeals court that a sensible presiding judge may allow Rosen’s $20 million in claims against AIPAC and its board of directors to move on to a jury trial... Read more... Reinventing the Middle East Lexicon, by Eric Walberg | Palestine Chronicle  Gingrich determined that Palestinians are 'invented people.' 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (1871)...[What a cute reptile he is. But be careful - if it bites you you'll die within 15 minutes. That's what neurotoxins do.] Read more...Goal of Iran Sanctions is to Stoke Public Discontent, US Official Says, by John Glaser | Antiwar The intelligence community and the administration acknowledge that Iran has no weapons program, but continue aggression anyway... Read more... Jewish terrorism gaining steam, by Yaakov Katz | Jerusalem Post The attack against the mosque in the Galilee on Sunday is a clear escalation – and if proven to have been carried out by right-wing extremists – it will be just the latest sign that Jewish terrorism is gaining steam. The target chosen raises serious questions about the motivations of the alleged perpetrators. While attacks on mosques in the West Bank have sadly become something of the norm in recent years, an attack on a mosque in an Israeli town is quite rare, particularly in a Beduin village like Tuba Zanghariya, whose residents serve in the IDF... Read more... Freedom: An Endangered Species in America, by Stephen Lendman | Global Research ...Political discourse is now "driven in part by a wholly contrived 'debate' over whether" fabricated terror threats require "military" or "law enforcement" responses. Advocates for the former call it muscular and the latter anemic and irresponsible. In fact, post-9/11 policy hyped bogus terrorist threats and degraded rule of law protections for everyone. Unjustifiably claiming war powers, Bush II usurped unchecked authority, ignored constitutional prohibitions, and subverted rule of law standards and justice... [And who's responsible? The American people are. Freedom demands responsibility - the excuse that we have been bamboozled by the corporate/Zionist brainwashing machine may be true, but ignorance is no excuse.] Read more...Waging War against Iran is a Criminal Act, in Violation of International Law, by Prof. Francis A. Boyle | Global Research  After the terrorist assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June of 1914, Serbia made an offer to Austria to submit the entire dispute to “the International Tribunal of The Hague”—i.e.,to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Austria did not accept the offer, the First World War broke out, and about 10 Million Human Beings were needlessly slaughtered. The death toll from World War III will be incalculable. Humanity must not allow our history to repeat itself! Otherwise, that could be the end of our Humanity... Read more... America on Israel's Altar, by Paul Balles | Intifada Palestine The Boston Globe called U.S. presidential candidate Ron Paul a “Republican maverick”. The label has been attached to Paul primarily because he differs from the other Republican presidential candidates on foreign policy. Said The Globe after the presidential debate In Des Moines, Iowa on December 10th: “While most of the Republican candidates are open to military action against Iran, Paul advocates diplomacy. While several of the candidates oppose cutting the defense budget, Paul wants to slash it... Read more... Fallujah: Where the War Persists, by John Glaser | Antiwar ...As is known to anyone who pays attention, incidents of birth defects and cancer are off the charts in Fallujah and the doctors and scientists who’ve studied it point to the use of deadly weapons chemicals like depleted uranium and white phosphorous as the cause. The health problems faced by newborns and children in Fallujah include congenital heart disease, bone abnormalities like thanatophoric dysplasia, and physical deformities like “cleft palates, elongated heads, a baby born with one eye in the centre of its face, overgrown limbs, short limbs, and malformed ears, noses and spines.” Just how common are these defects?... Read more... Hebrew and English | Gilad Atzmon ...While the English Ynet, operates as a Hasbara outlet, spreading Israeli propaganda for the Goyim and English speaking Jews, the Hebrew version, is there to boost the Israeli moral. And as it happens, Israelis love to see their ‘enemies’ being, terrorized, slaughtered and murdered... [Handsome is as handsome does. Eventually even the most dim-witted will realize that Zionism and its embodiment, Israel, are unadulterated evil threatening all living things.] Read more...The Venn of Ron Paul and Other Mysteries of Libertarianism Explained, by Josh Harkinson | Mother Jones  [Ideologies are slimy things that must be studied but not kept in the house. They are dangerous to children and other living things.] Read more...Reckless talk of war with Iran makes confrontation a probability, by Trita Parsi | The Independent The temperature between the West and Iran has increased dramatically. Escalation by both sides coupled with a reckless discourse that has normalised the idea of war have created an environment where military confrontation is a rising probability. The next escalatory step pondered by Europe – in the midst of its own economic crisis – is a total embargo on Iranian oil. An idea that a few months ago was considered a non-starter now has an air of inevitability... Read more... Israel Plans More Walls | Stephen Lendman Instead of peace, reconciliation, equity and justice, Israel plans settlement expansions and more Walls... Read more... A Role Playing Exercise: 'Let's Attack Iran' | Video Rebel's Blog ...In the fall of l972 a small group of students were told to role play a game called lifeboat in which students are taught to sacrifice the less important people. The students in this case were able to figure out a way to save the life of everyone which taught the lesson that we are all in this together. The professor was enraged because they did not follow instructions. The students rebelled and refused to participate any further in this exercise... Read more... Neocon Israel Mouthpiece Writes Syrian Opposition Intervention Paper | Moon of Alabama ...Assad says that there are "international conspiracies" driving the violence to overthrow the Syrian government by force. He is right. The neocons and zionist are out to take him down by military forces against the will of the Syrian people including that of the protesters... Read more... Jan 11, 2012 29 Lives, Deaths and Standing Ovations that Threaten World Peace, by Tim King | Salem News  Baruch Goldstein In a violent world where a genocide can claim as many as six million human lives in a single 'program', it seems unimaginable that the deaths of 29 people could, in modern times, hugely impact the future of all human beings. That's right, the world's safety and World War Three itself, hinges on the reaction to the deaths of 29 innocent people. Is your child's future worth the honor of 29 people?.. Read more... Iran in the crosshairs again? | The Vineyard of the Saker ...Don't be deceived and mislead by all the rational arguments against a strike on Iran. Remember that these are the folks who brought you two of the most embarrassing military defeats in modern history (Lebanon in 2006 and Georgia in 2008), which have lost the war in Iraq, are loosing the war in Afghanistan and which are now elated by their apparent 'victory' against Libya. They are evil enough to do 9/11 and stupid enough to deploy anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe!.. Read more... Victimizing Iran, by Dr. Lawrence Davidson | Intifada Palestine ...Today, we are presented with a stark example of U.S. democracy’s systemic flaws. Again, these bring together the influence of small but powerful and wealthy subgroups with the tendency of national leaders to define interests in personal ways... Read more... Iran: Economic sanctions the diplomacy of cowards? by Stuart Littlewood | Intifada Palestine Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague is taking a long time to answer the sort of questions he must have mulled over before starting this country along another warmongering road to hell... Read more... Hillary Mann Leverett Debates Iran on CNN's GPS with Fareed Zakaria | The Race for Iran ...After Stephens argues that engaging Tehran is pointless, because the Iranian government demonstrated its manifest disinterest in improving relations with Washington by rejecting President Obama’s unprecedentedly generous offer of engagement, Hillary recites in detail how this assessment is fundamentally at odds with the historical record... Read more, watch video... The Zionization of American politics and how it could be terminated | Redress Information & Analysis Alan Hart maps out a way for the de-Zionization of US politics: making politicians accountable to those who elect them and not the big money special interest lobbies through new legislation requiring that all elections be funded from taxation, with the revenue ring-fenced so that it could be used only for elections... Read more... The dehumanizing nature of accusations of anti-semitism, by Richard Forer | Canadian Charger Perhaps the most dominating and confusing accusation emanating from one side of the Israel-Palestine debate is that virtually anyone who criticizes Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people hates Israel and is, ipso facto, an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew... A must read... The Turbulent 2011 at a Glance, by Kourosh Ziabari | Intifada Palestine 2011 was a turbulent year for the world. With chained revolutions in the Arab world, mounting financial crisis in Europe and the unprecedented wave of protests and mass demonstrations in the U.S. against the corporate system of the government which has long swallowed the rights of the defenseless majority of the people voraciously, one can call 2011 the year of global unrest and tumult... Read more... Israel to honor Gandhi to grab more land | Rehmat's World  The Israeli Hebrew daily Ma’ariv recently reported that Jerusalem Councilman Meir Margalit, has proposed that municipality should set up a statue of Mahatama Gandhi and a mediation center in an area between Jabal Al-Mukaber and the Jewish neighborhood of Armon HaNetsiv “to illustrate how to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict through peaceful means, as Gandhi would have wished.”.. [It reminds me of the Wiesenthal Center's project to build a "Museum of Tolerance" on top of a Palestinian Muslim cemetery. A competition for most outrageous chutzpah.] Read more...Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars? by John Tirman | The Washington Post ...There’s little evidence that the American public gives much thought to the people who live in the nations where our military interventions take place. Think about the memorials on the Mall honoring American sacrifices in Korea and Vietnam. These are powerful, sacred spots, but neither mentions the people of those countries who perished in the conflicts. The major wars the United States has fought since the surrender of Japan in 1945 — in Korea, Indochina, Iraq and Afghanistan — have produced colossal carnage. For most of them, we do not have an accurate sense of how many people died, but a conservative estimate is at least 6 million civilians and soldiers... [Interesting number, that. Unlike the totally fictitious and arbitrary number repeated endlessly by the Holocaust Industry, it's use here is probably close to accurate.] Read more...Chris Hedges - "Brace Yourself!: The American Empire Is Over & The Descent Is Going To Be Horrifying!" | YouTube Watch this video (a brilliant presentation of modern American history, albeit omitting any reference to the elephant straddling the dining table).. US steps up military threat on China: Interview with James Fetzer | PressTV Press TV interviews James Fetzer, philosopher and founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth in Madison about the new defense strategy and military positioning of the US to confront China in the pacific region and possible reasons behind it... Read more, watch video... Israel Plans More Walls | Stephen Lendman ...Combined with settlements, military zones, parks, commercial developments, other closed areas, and open spaces, nearly half the West Bank will be annexed. Perhaps more eventually as land theft continues unabated... Read more... A Hundred Years of War against Germany, by Steffen Werner | VHO ...From 1905 onward, the Foreign Office begins systematically to construct a front with Russia and France against Germany. This development is proven on the basis of the public documents from the German side after the lost war. Crowe, but not only he, worked systematically against Germany through numerous papers, but above all through his memorandum of January 1, 1907, in which he claimed that Germany was striving for world rule and wanted to secretly attack England... Read more... A war on Iran? Let's do it! | Jane Stillwater Let's put our money where our mouth is, stop constantly blathering on about how desperately we want to launch a war on Iran - and just do it. I'm bored with life anyway - and there's really not much else going on between now and when the next season of "Survivor" starts up... Read more... The Zionization of American politics and how it could be terminated | Alan Hart The first headline I thought of for this article was The Zionization of American democracy and how it could be terminated, but then I said to myself: “Don’t be silly, Alan, there’s no democracy in the ‘Land of the Free.’”.. Read more... Ron Paul Tells CNN's Bash Voters Should be "Furious" with Establishment Media, by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars Following the media orchestrated circus earlier today in New Hampshire, Ron Paul terminated an interview with CNN correspondent Dana Bash after she said a voter was “turned off” by his decision to leave the diner in Manchester. Before terminating the interview, Paul said the chaotic situation at a New Hampshire eatery was created by the media. “It says something about the media,” Paul responded. “Because you, the media, did that,” he said, pointing at Bash... [The corporate elite, the Zionists, and their obedient mainstream media are terrified of Ron Paul. I guarantee that he will be assassinated if his support ever exceeds 30% and other dirty tricks don't work.] Read more, watch video...The Delusions of 'Liberal' Zionism, by Roger Sheety | Palestine Chronicle  Palestinians are blamed for demanding to be treated as full equals The most recent diatribe by Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua published by Haaretz represents the latest nail in the ideological coffin of so-called liberal Zionism. Writing out of his comfortable home in Haifa, a city that was ethnically cleansed of most of its original Palestinian residents by the end of 1948 through multiple terror campaigns and massacres, Yehoshua spends an entire article at once fuming over what he calls Palestinian “passivity” in the face of daily Israeli brutality in the Occupied Palestinian Territories...Read more... U.S. pushing world to the brink of world war, by Lisa Karpova | English Pravda While local U.S. police use excessive force and violence against OWS protesters, the U.S. government continues to attempt to spread "freedom and democracy" of this exact same kind around the world. Reports come in daily about beatings, clubbings, tasering, a female having her bicycle thrown at her and disabled veterans being abused... Read more... Alert: Iran Crisis Headed for World War III, by Kurt Nimmo | Prison Planet War in the Middle East now appears imminent as the United States, Britain, the European Union, and Israel put the finishing touches on an embargo on Iran – a de facto declaration of war – and warships steam toward the Persian Gulf... Read more... Egyptian Cleric Yousuf Al-Badri Calls upon Sunnis and Shiites to Unite | YouTube [If they don't unite they will remain impotent in the face of the overwhelming neo-colonialist pressure from the USraeli Empire. This video is a production of the Mossad funded organization MEMRI, and the intent of these sub-titled (and frequently deliberately mistranslated) clips is to frighten the brainwashed and gullible into thinking that "the enemy" is evil and for no good reason is "out to kill us." To the extent that they do indeed have that objective it is a legitimate attempt to defend themselves against an onslaught that has been going on for hundreds of years. If they do unite, it will restore a healthy balance of power and all of humanity and the planet itself will have a much better shot at survival.] Watch video... Iraq: A Country in Shambles, by Dahr Jamail | Global Research As a daily drumbeat of violence continues to reverberate across Iraq, people here continue to struggle to find some sense of normality, a task made increasingly difficult due to ongoing violence and the lack of both water and electricity. During the build-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration promised the war would bring Iraqis a better life, and vast improvements in their infrastructure, which had been severely debilitated by nearly 13 years of strangling economic sanctions... Read more... America on Israel's altar | Redress Information & Analysis Paul J. Balles argues that while US Republican presidential candidates, except for Ron Paul, bend over backward to support anything and everything that Israel has done, does or proposes, the current primary contests may reveal a growing public tiring of blind support for Israel... Read more... Israel's Nightmare: Jew against Jew, by Lillian Rosengarten | Palestine Chronicle ...From my view, nationalism in any form is dangerous. It means exceptionalism, an attitude of moral superiority, a hot bed for racism that is heightened by propaganda. Israelis in general do not know Palestinians. They are taught from an early age that all Palestinians are terrorists, that they hate Jews and want to drive them into the sea. This form of Islamophobia has spread through Europe and the US... Read more... A Year of Foreboding, by Deepak Tripathi | Palestine Chronicle ...The situation in Syria is very dangerous. Unlike Libya, Syrian state institutions are more robust. The regime’s friends are not many, but Russia and China are taking a much tougher line with the West. Iran, its ruling allies in Iraq, and Lebanese and Palestinian groups have huge stakes in Syria. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, supported by the West, are determined to see the end of the current Syrian regime... Read more... Jan 10, 2012 Ignorance Is Bliss, by Dave Cohen | Decline of the Empire  Massive American troop build-up in Israel: War with Iran on the horizon? | RT on YouTube ...the US has sent thousands of US troops to Israel. The two countries are doing a joint exercise called "Austere Challenge 12." The exercise is meant to develop defense systems and collaboration between American and Israeli forces... Watch video... "Wiped Off The Map": The Rumor of the Century, by Arash Norouzi | Global Research ...The AP deliberately alters an IRNA quote to sound more threatening. The Israeli media not only repeats the fake quote but also steals the original authors' words. The unsuspecting public reads this, forms an opinion and supports unnecessary wars of aggression, presented as self defense, based on the misinformation... [Watch this video that shows how this deliberate disinformation was immediately propagated far and wide. As a non-tribal Jew, my standard response to the idea of wiping Israel off the map has always been "please, somebody, just give me the eraser."] Read more, watch video... Iran/Iraq 'Defectors' and Disinformation, by Robert Parry | Consortium News Official Washington has a soft spot for “defectors” from hostile nations, especially if their tales of perfidy about their ex-homelands fit with favored policy. That was the case with Iraq before the 2003 invasion and now with Iran, but these “defectors” often tell lies... Read more... Washington Recalibrating Iran War Plan, by Dr. Ismail Salami | Intifada Palestine  Washington is widely blamed for bloodbath in Iraq and Syria From the recent massacres happening in Iraq and Syria, one can gather that Washington has adamantly trodden on a path which is to be seen as a way to redefine the war in Iraq, an effective stratagem to bring the regime of Assad to its doom and recalibrate a comprehensive plan to topple the Islamic government of Iran...Bahrain: Crushing Pro-Democracy Protests. American and British Police Chiefs Step Up State Repression, by Finian Cunningham | Global Research ...only weeks into their jobs, the Western commanders appear to have been given a remit that goes well beyond public relations, namely, to sharpen the repression against the pro-democracy movement. Human rights activists and several political sources say that state forces have dramatically stepped up violence towards protesters and targeting of the Shia community generally. The diminutive island state of less than 600,000 nationals is comprised mainly of Shia muslims (70 per cent) who are ruled over by a Sunni elite installed by Britain when the kingdom gained nominal independence in 1971... Read more... Syria: NATO Genocide Approaches, by Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer Blatant lies told by alleged "human rights activists" led to ignominious NATO-sanctioned brutality and ultimately brought BP, Shell, Total-sponsored Petroleum Institute representative, Abdurrahim el-Keib, into power in Libya. Now, these same corporate-financier interests, through their same networks of propaganda, duplicity and deception, are laying the ground work for a repeat performance in Syria... Read more... Norman Finkelstein: There was no war in Gaza, it was a massacre | YouTube What happened in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead was not a war but a massacre, a massacre of a defenceless, imprisoned and besieged civilian population. The IOF air assault (in the first of 3 weeks) dropped bombs around the clock hitting homes, hospitals, ambulances, UN & Red Cross outposts & compounds, schools, universities & government buildings, with the borders closed & nowhere in Gaza to seek refuge, "it was like shooting fish in a barrel".. Watch video... The Geo-Politics of the Strait of Hormuz: Could the U.S. Navy be defeated by Iran in the Persian Gulf? by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | Global Research  After years of U.S. threats, Iran is taking steps which suggest that is both willing and capable of closing the Strait of Hormuz. On December 24, 2011 Iran started its Velayat-90 naval drills in and around the Strait of Hormuz and extending from the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman (Oman Sea) to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. .. Rescued Iranian Fishermen: How Comes The Times Is Involved? | Moon of Alabama So a carrier group from the U.S. Navy rescues some Iranian fishermen who were captured by Somali pirates .. And just by chance the New York Times' very best war reporter, former marine captain C.J Chivers and his photographer side kick Tyler Hicks, are somehow on board of one of the Navy ships. Their story has the fantastic dateline "ABOARD THE FISHING VESSEL AL MULAHI, in the Gulf of Oman".. Read more... Depleted Uranium | YouTube This is the original Depleted Uranium flash animation created by Eric Blumrich from www.bushflash.com.. Watch video... Why the NDAA Now? by Marti and Luke Hiken | Dissident Voice Barack Obama just signed into law one of the most repressive and right-wing pieces of legislation ever passed in the history of the country: the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It allows the military, a.k.a. the Pentagon, to determine who is a “terrorist” and to detain that person in prison, indefinitely, without trial, under its jurisdiction. It makes no difference whether the person is a U.S. citizen or a foreign “enemy combatant... Michael Hastings on war journalists, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon  ...Hastings’ exposé on the war is what has received the bulk of the attention in book reviews — both positive and negative (The Wall Street Journal amusingly compared him — as though it were a grave insult — to Vietnam War reporters David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan for the crime of reporting the negative aspects of a war and the government deceit behind it). But his discussions of national security journalists and how the Pentagon uses them are at least equally valuable... Read more... Obama's Pentagon Strategy: A Leaner, More Efficient Empire, by Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis | Dissident Voice ...rather than renouncing empire and endless war, Obama’s stated strategy for the military going forward just reaffirms the U.S. commitment to both. Rather than renouncing the last decade of war, it states that the bloody and disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan – gently termed “extended operations” – were pursued “to bring stability to those countries.” And Leon Panetta assured the American public that even with the changes, the U.S. would still be able to fight two major wars at the same time—and win. And Obama assured America’s military contractors and coffin makers that their lifeline – U.S. taxpayers’ money – would still be funneled their way in obscene bucket loads... Read more... Iran, Russia Replace Dollar with National Currencies in Trade Exchanges | Fars News Agency President Ahmadinejad told an annual meeting of senior central bank officials that Iran's central bank would respond with "force" to the new US sanctions intended to pressure Tehran to abandon its nuclear program. He said the bank was strong enough to defeat "enemy plans"... [This may seem like a minor tidbit of news, but it could well turn out to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. USraeli hegemony depends on maintaining the status of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. If there is a significant shift away from the dollar, all sorts of dominoes could begin to fall.] Read more... The USA's flawed political system and the push for war with Iran | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson finds the drivers for the push for war on Iran inside the USA’s structurally flawed political system, in which the warmongering neocons and faceless Israeli agents in the guise of lobbyists have primacy, and in amoral, cash-hungry politicians and a corrupt media... Jan 9, 2012 Just Another Israeli War on the Way | Gilad Atzmon  ..Britain's newest warship is heading to the Gulf for its first mission at a time of tensions over Iran's threat to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a key transport route for oil. The Royal Navy's Type 45 destroyer HMS Daring, which has a "stealth" design to help avoid detection by radar, is to join other British ships in the region, the Ministry of Defence confirmed Saturday... AIPAC: The Voice of America (Part 2): The Treasonous Dollar Drain, by Anthony Lawson | Intifada Palestine ...While I was checking the final edit of this video, the Israelis gave the world yet another stark reminder that they are not fit to control a collection of bumper cars, let alone a land they have stolen from others, much less an arsenal of over 200 nuclear weapons. Clearly, Israel does not want peace with the Palestinians or anyone else in their region, yet the membership of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, support, aid and abet these criminals in their disregard for the lives of others... Read more, watch video... Shocking Clip: Israeli Checkpoint Cruelty | Intifada Palestine “Animals. Animals. Like the Discovery Channel. All of Ramallah is a jungle. There are monkeys, dogs, gorillas. The problem is that the animals are locked they can’t come out. We’re humans. They’re animals. They aren’t humans we are.” - Israeli border police... Watch video... National park land-grabs from two East Jerusalem neighborhoods, by Allison Deger | Mondoweiss Last week, Israel opened a new checkpoint, ramped up plans to cut the West Bank in half, and stripped up to 70,000 Palestinians of their Jerusalem IDs. This week, Israel is taking another step in purging East Jerusalem of its Palestinians-- with a national park... [I guess purging is an acceptable synonym for ethnic cleansing or genocide] Read more... Behind the Deepening Crisis with Iran: The Real Story Versus the Cover Story, by Mark H Gaffney | My Catbird Seat Recently, President Obama imposed new sanctions on Iran which according to reports have been very effective, causing a sudden major devaluation of Iran’s currency. The Iranians correctly understand that they are under attack, and have threatened to respond by closing the strait of Hormuz, through which a large percentage of oil from the Mideast flows to the global economy. If the crisis deepens and Iran makes good on its threat to close Hormuz, there is little doubt that the US will intervene to reopen the strait... Read more... US war history in 2 minutes: arrest US War Criminals to stop war on Iran, by Carl Herman | National Nonpartisan Examiner ...US military and/or law enforcement must arrest the current War Criminals to end this history of murder. If not, it will repeat by mass-murdering Iranians, and more ignorant/gullible US soldiers. The basis of law provides US military and all with Oaths to defend the US Constitution to refuse unlawful orders and act to arrest those who issue them... Read more... Muslim Brotherhood Strongest Contender in Libya's Coming Elections, by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch ...the Muslim Brotherhood is odds-on favorite to win the June elections, in the view of many observers here in Libya. The reason the MB is in such a relatively strong position is that is has the support of Qatar, assistance from the well-established MB organizations in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, and Turkey. The flights arriving in Tripoli from Egypt are always full and some of the passengers are MB operatives... Read more... War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields, by Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research  The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves. This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline... Read more... Gitmo: Ten Years Too Many, by Peter Weiss | Counterpunch “Today, it is not merely justice itself, but the idea of justice that is under attack.” The words are those of Arundhati Roy, the Indian author and activist, but they could also be those of anyone trying to draw up a balance sheet of the first decade of Gitmo, as the US’ concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay has come to be known... Read more... A Torrent of Disinformation: The NeoCon Propaganda Machine Pushing "Regime Change" in Syria, by Aisling Byrne | Counterpunch “War with Iran is already here,” wrote a leading Israeli commentator recently, describing “the combination of covert warfare and international pressure” being applied to Iran. Although not mentioned, the “strategic prize” of the first stage of this war on Iran is Syria; the first campaign in a much wider sectarian power-bid. “Other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself,” Saudi King Abdullah was reported to have said last summer, “nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.”.. Read more... The Whims of an Empire Gone Mad, by Linh Dinh | Counterpunch Meat, water, sock or political, it’s not easy being a puppet. Even before the first word tumbles from your mouth, people crack up, and your face alone can bring down the house. Take this passage from Hamid Karzai, from a 2004 address to a joint session of the American Congress... Read more... Al Qaeda Scares Me But I Have A Plan To Save Us | Video Rebel's Blog Al Qaeda has 100 fighters in Afghanistan who have evaded 500,000 NATO, Afghan and mercenary soldiers for ten years. They were an invincible foe before. But now Al Qaeda has taken over Libya and its 144 tons of gold. They are even now training new recruits to learn Spanish and invade America over its unguarded border with Mexico... Read more... Donald Trump on Iran, Libya, Iraq | Gilad Atzmon At least he is honest.. We kill them because we want their oil, not because we want to liberate anyone or to introduce democracy... Watch video... Fallujah Babies: Birth Defects Blamed on US Weapons, by Dahr Jamail | Truthout  While the US military has formally withdrawn from Iraq, doctors and residents of Fallujah are blaming weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorous used during two devastating US attacks on Fallujah in 2004 for what are being described as "catastrophic" levels of birth defects and abnormalities... Read more... THE SYSTEM (full length trailer) | Gilad Atzmon I don’t know any of the participants in this trailer - they all seem to me pretty ordinary people. Yet, it is clear that each of them possesses more wisdom than our entire political system. I guess that the meaning of it is simple. The revolution is here... Watch video... Disturbing images from Iran you rarely see | YouTube [This is the Before - I shudder at the thought of the After] Watch video...War With Iran By George Galloway | YouTube George Galloway tells it like it is! He hits a delusions typical brain washed guy with some facts... Watch video... Clandestine Service History: Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran | payk This paper, entitled Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, was written in March 1954 by Dr. Donald N. Wilber who had played an active role in the operation. The study was written because it seemed desirable to have a record of a major operation prepared while documents were readily at hand and while the memories of the personnel involved in the activity were still fresh... Read more... Israeli Apartheid Poster Contest | It Is Apartheid Itisapartheid.org and the Lajee Center, are sponsoring a competition for artists and graphic designers who are invited to submit posters on the theme of Israeli Apartheid... Read more... Iran economic sanctions: the diplomacy of cowards? | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood reminds UK Foreign Secretary William Hague about the questions he has so far failed to answer regarding his inexplicable hostility to Iran, noting that this failure may simply be due to the probability that Hague and his government colleagues are acting on behalf of Israel, not Britain... Jan 8, 2012 9/11 and Israel: Alan Sabrosky's Candid Interview, by Debbie Menon | Intifada Palestine  ..I believe once we have cracked the wall built around 9-11, the entire edifice of lies will crumble. As soon as the question becomes legitimate to Americans they will not wait for the answers, they will move. They will probably do a lot of damage, much of it in the wrong places, but they will move, and they will take the wind out of Zionism or send it running for cover. Anyone watching the following interviews and the BBC documentary couldn’t fail to put 2 and 2 together... Military Rabbinate Plans Third Temple: Is the IDF promoting a terrorist attack on the Dome of the Rock? | Roy Tov ...Hanukkah is the Jewish imperial festival. It is tightly related with nationalism, this became obvious in the shocking details of its celebration this year at Berlin’s Brandenburg’s Gate. The pamphlet issued this Hanukkah by the IDF described the Jewish revolt against Hellenistic rule. It included a section named “The Festival of Jewish Heroism,” which included an article and a quiz on the Jewish struggle against Hellenistic rule. In a picture accompanying it, the Dome of the Rock mosque had been edited out... Read more... Obama's Counterproductive New Iran Sanctions, by Suzanne Maloney | Foreign Affairs ...The Obama administration’s new sanctions signal the demise of the paradigm that had guided U.S. Iran policymaking since the 1979 revolution: the combination of pressure and persuasion. Moreover, the decision to outlaw contact with Iran’s central bank puts the United States’ tactics and its long-standing objective — a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions — fundamentally at odds. Indeed, the United States cannot hope to bargain with a country whose economy it is trying to disrupt and destroy... Read more... Forgetting Iraq, Republicans Thirst For War Against Iran, by John Tirman | Huffington Post Of the many oddities of the Republican challengers to President Obama, the most serious is their vow to go to war with Iran. This is now such a common staple of GOP rhetoric in the campaign trail that it's scarcely newsworthy when yet another White House aspirant thumps the war drums... Read more... Santorum warns of "Eurabia," issues call to "evangelize and eradicate" Muslims, by Max Blumenthal | Al Akhbar English  For the past two weeks, the entire mainstream American media homed in on newsletters published by Republican Rep. Ron Paul, an anti-imperialist, conservative libertarian who finished third in last night's Iowa caucuses. Mostly ghostwritten by libertarian activist Llewelyn "Lew" Rockwell and a committee of far-right cranks, the newsletters contained indisputably racist diatribes, including ominous warnings about the "coming race war." At no point did Paul denounce the authors of the extreme manifestoes nor did he take responsibility for the content... [The battle between the ZioNazis and the rest of the world is coming to a head. 2012 will most likely host the showdown. Will America survive? Will the world survive? Yes, but I think so only if Israel ceases to exist.] Read more... The late Edward Said on BBC Hardtalk in 2002, by Sonja Karkar | Australians for Palestine Edward Said does not miss a beat as Tim Sebastian from BBC Hardtalk grills him unrelentingly on Palestinian “violence”, Palestinian “recalcitrance”, Palestinian “incompetence”, the superciliousness of the interviewer all too apparent as he tries to denigrate every answer Edward Said gives, often without even letting him finish. Everything that Edward Said said then is doubly more potent now almost 10 years on, and what is more, blatantly obvious to even the most obtuse observer... Read more, watch video... Newt's Shop of Horrors, by Timothy Egan | NYT There must be a Greek tragedy, a Shakespeare play or a “Daily Show” parody to explain the exquisite irony of Newt Gingrich being destroyed by the very forces he unleashed — a smack-down that sets up 2012 as the year the moneyed elite learn to use the limitless power granted them by the Supreme Court... Read more... The Deployment of Thousands of US Troops to Israel: The Integration of US-Israeli Command Structures, by Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research There is a symbiotic relationship between War and the Economic Crisis. The planning of the Iran war is being carried out at the crossroads of a worldwide economic depression, which is conducive to widening social inequalities, mass unemployment and the impoverishment of large sectors of the world population. Crushing social movements on the domestic front --including all forms of resistance to America's military agenda and its neoliberal economic policies-- is an integral part of the United States' hegemonic role Worldwide... [The US War College might as well make Hebrew a required language. But then it would be too obvious who's calling the shots.] Read more... Israeli warmongers itching to attack Gaza despite Hamas peace overtures | Redress Information & Analysis Uri Avnery argues that, in his desperation to make a mark by starting a war but unable to attack Iran for fear of the apocalyptic consequences, Israel’s new chief of staff, General Benny Gantz, is itching to attack Gaza instead, even without a pretext... Read more... Avoiding Another "Long War": Intelligence Officials Reveal "Dubious" IAEA Report on Iran's Alleged Nuclear Weapons Program, by VIPS | Global Research  Exaggerated coverage of a dubious report by the International Atomic Energy Agency about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program has spurred a rush toward a new war in the Middle East, but ex-U.S. intelligence officials urge President Obama to resist the pressures and examine the facts... Read more... Phil Donahue: Ron Paul Only Anti-war Candidate, by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars Liberal TV personality Phil Donahue went on Piers Morgan’s CNN television show to defend Ron Paul’s foreign policy. Donahue said the only candidate opposing the march to war against Iran is Ron Paul. Newt Gingrich, Donahue noted, has characterized Paul’s opposition as dangerous... Read more, watch video... Tour d'horizon: Iranian optic on Mideast, by Seyed Mohammad Marandi | PressTV ...The Western (or Western-affiliated) Middle East “experts”, who were previously so adamant that these revolutions were secular in nature, now wonder how to read unfolding events. Some are putting on a brave face, expressing hope that, after a few years, Islamic parties will fail and people will vote for Western-oriented liberal parties-as if people in the region do not remember who backed and continues to back Arab dictatorships. They do not seem to recognize that the social and economic crisis currently taking place throughout Europe and the United States has already raised serious questions about the nature and future of liberal capitalism, especially in the Middle East and other non-Western parts of the world... Read more... Have the Super-Rich Seceded from the United States? by Mike Lofgren | Counterpunch ...The real joke is on the rest of us. After the biggest financial meltdown in 80 years – a meltdown caused by the type of rogue financial manipulation that Romney embodies – and a consequent long, steep drop in the American standard of living, who is the putative front-runner for one of the only two parties allowed to be competitive in American politics? None other than Mitt Romney, the man who says corporations are people... The US-Iran economic war, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online ..A key amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act signed by United States President Barack Obama on the last day of 2011 - when no one was paying attention - imposes sanctions on any countries or companies that buy Iranian oil and pay for it through Iran's central bank. Starting this summer, anybody who does it is prevented from doing business with the US. This amendment - for all practical purposes a declaration of economic war - was brought to you by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), on direct orders of the Israeli government... Jan 7, 2012 The Upcoming Attack on Iran: Will They or Won't They? Obama Seeks to Distance U.S. from Israeli Attack, by Gareth Porter | Inter Press Service  President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are engaged in intense maneuvering over Netanyahu's aim of entangling the United States in an Israeli war against Iran. Netanyahu is exploiting the extraordinary influence his right-wing Likud Party exercises over the Republican Party and the U.S. Congress on matters related to Israel in order to maximise the likelihood that the United States would participate in an attack on Iran. Obama, meanwhile, appears to be hoping that he can avoid being caught up in a regional war started by Israel if he distances the United States from any Israeli attack... Read more... Hard-line U.S. Policy Tips Iran Toward Belligerence, by Vali Nasr | Bloomberg The latest warning by Iran, that a U.S. aircraft carrier that recently transited through the Strait of Hormuz should not do so again, is a sign to the West that should be well-observed. It tells us the regime in Tehran is ready for a fight. Tensions between Iran and the U.S. are so high, a conflagration could be tripped off without either country intending it... Is World Nuclear War Inevitable?: How U.S. and Israeli Aggression are leading us to World Nuclear War | Carol Moore The United States wants to remain the only superpower with the power to unilaterally control any resources it needs and the government of any country that stands in its way of doing so. Obviously now the foremost target of the United States - and its only dependable partner in imperial overreach, Israel - is the Middle East and Iran. Both the U.S. and Israel want to control Arab and Muslim resources and make big profits for their military and other well-connected contractors. Both want to maintain a U.S.-Israel monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East... [The world is like a ship that that has been flipped over in a violent storm. It will right itself, and when it does there will be no more Israel. The only question is how many millions will be sacrificed by the lunatic Zionists and their corporate partners beforehand.]  USS Kitty Hawk -- a 1,000 feet supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board The US military is preparing a massive military campaign against Iran, sending thousands of American troops, warships and weaponry to Israel. An unnamed source said the military deployment of US anti-missile ships and accompanying support personnel will occur in January and later this spring, Global Research reported. Commander of the US Third Air Force based in Germany Lt.-Gen Frank Gorenc said it is not just an "exercise," but a "deployment,".. Read more... Why Attacking Iran Will Not Work in 2012: Failure could Result in a US-Israel Military and Economic Tailspin, by Patrick Henningsen | Global Research All signs coming out of Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv are pointing towards a pre-emptive military strike against Iran in 2012. But a number of key indicators are also pointing towards an unsuccessful, unlikely operation, whose failure could result in a military and economic tailspin from which the United States and Israel are unlikely to recover... Déjà Vu All Over Again, by Ron Forthofer | Dissident Voice The phrase in the title is from Yogi Berra, that great American sage, captures all too well the latest campaign against Iran. We are seeing a repeat of the ploy used against Iraq and its nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Our leaders lied repeatedly and the subservient corporate media were complicit in building support for the U.S. attack on Iraq... Saudi Arabia: Racist society, terrorism exporter, nuclear weapons capable, by John Stanton | English Pravda Iran, Iraq and North Korea may have been labeled "the axis of evil" by President George W. Bush but it is Saudi Arabia that is the center of the Satanic universe here on Earth. President Obama and the hounds from hell in the US Congress and various thinks tanks who seek to send Americans to fight and die in Iran should be targeting their wrath and the US Instruments of National Power at the House of Saud... Anwar and Haneen: two beautiful girls murdered by Israel, by Sarah Ali | The Electronic Intifada  What could possibly explain the Israeli army’s targeting of children in the Gaza Strip? ...I cannot imagine how a soldier looked right from his plane at that little girl and decided to end her life. I cannot imagine the kind of hatred that soldier had towards Palestinians that made him believe that murdering a child was okay. I cannot imagine the denial that soldier lived in that made him think what he did was “self-defense.” I cannot imagine how this very same soldier can now eat, drink, sleep and simply go on with his life. And I cannot understand how stupid Israel has to be to think that I will not fight back and seek justice for my little friends...Vittorio Arrigoni, a winner | YouTube In the beautiful scenery of Gaza's cemetery, where soldiers of WWI are buried, Vik explains how he would want to be commemorated if he would die (in a hundred years or so). It's true words, from a true winner. Your dreams will live on, we are guarding over them. Ma'salama, my friend... [One of the few genuine heroes of our time. Viva Vittorio!] Watch video...Delegitimizing discrimination: struggle of Palestinians in Israel focus of new book, by Rod Such | The Electronic Intifada ...With a foreword by Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), the book provides current and well-documented information on the systematic discrimination facing Palestinian citizens of Israel, the increasingly repressive measures being taken against both Palestinian and Jewish dissenters in Israel, and the ongoing Judaization within Israel, particularly in Galilee and the Negev (Naqab) desert, that is intended to further segregate and isolate Palestinians from Israeli Jews... Read more... Depleted Uranium & Anthrax Vaccines | Beyond Treason/YouTube ..Department of Defense documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act expose the horrific underworld of the disposable army mentality and the government funded experimentation upon US citizens conducted without their knowledge or consent. Is the United States knowingly using a dangerous battlefield weapon banned by the United Nations because of its long-term effects on the local inhabitants and the environment? Explore the illegal worldwide sale and use of one of the deadliest weapons ever invented... [The US and its alter ego Israel are the most vicious and dangerous force the world has ever known. They must somehow be stopped - all options are on the table.] Watch film (90 minutes)...Jan 6, 2012 2012 Campaign: The United States of Israel? by Nour Rida | Intifada Palestine  ...The failing health care plan, the ballooning nation’s debts reaching past $15 trillion, the expansion of US military activity worldwide-including the drones buzzing over several countries and aiming for haphazard targets under the pretext of counter-terrorism, the ongoing financial support for “Israel’s” Iron Dome and War system at the time some Americans still live in tents upon loss of their homes during the Global financial crisis back in 2009, and the list of O’bummer achievements is endless... Read more... The American-Iranian Cold War in the Middle East and the Threat of A Broader War, by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | Global Research A cold war has been ongoing between Tehran and Washington. U.S. spies, drones, assassinations, and accusations against Tehran have all been a part of this package. Washington and its minions have been using every means possible, including international organizations, like the United Nations, as a battleground against Tehran in this cold war. The destabilization campaign being waged against Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon are also a critical front in this cold war… Read more... A Funny Thing Happened on the Road to (Regime Change in) Damascus, by Daniel McAdams | Lew Rockwell The New York Times reported that the Arab League monitors were urged to speed to Homs before the destruction of that city was complete. But somebody did not get the memo. Upon arrival and inspection of Homs, the Arab League monitors reported seeing “nothing frightening” in the city of Homs — supposedly the focal point in the uprising against the Assad government. They were “reassured” by what they saw. Surely the thousands of tanks, the death moat, the random mortaring of the city by government forces, the near total destruction, would have been visible to the observers... Read more... Civilians = Bugs | Iran Affairs The more I read and blog about US and international affairs, the more it seems like I'm chronicling someone's descent into madness. So guess what the US military calls civilian casualties that result from their attacks? "Collateral Damages" was the old term. Give up? Answer: "Bugsplat".. [There is only one country in the world that desperately needs regime change - it's called the United States of America. It will take a revolution. Is there really any other option?] Read more...Film footage from Palestine back in 1896, by Jalal Abukhater | The Electronic Intifada ...On this occasion I’d like to share with you this, video footage taken in Palestine back in the year 1896. We see Palestinians; we see Jews, Christians, and Muslims living in peace. We see a Jewish man praying at the Western Wall without having to show IDs to any authority, unlike what we see in Jerusalem today. We see neighbors, friends, families, and a society just like that in Cairo or Damascus, as the commentator says. If we look today, we don’t see much of the same thing. Not so much freedom of religion, not so much freedom of life... Read more, watch video... Why attacking Iran is still a bad idea | Stephen M. Walt  Matthew Kroenig has written a provocative article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, advocating a preventive war against Iran's nuclear facilities. I criticized his arguments in a previous post, and Kroenig offered this defense in response. Here is my rejoinder... Read more... Palestine before 1948 | YouTube The video contains pictures of different Palestinian cities during the 1920's and 1930's, before the creation of the state of israel by the zionists in 1948... [Once uipon a time there was a beautiful country called Palestine, where people of all faiths lived in harmony. Then a toxic, black cloud descended from the North.] Watch video...A mistaken case for Syrian regime change, by Aisling Byrne | Asia Times Online ...a key official in terms of operationalizing this policy, Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing that the US would "relentlessly pursue our two-track strategy of supporting the opposition and diplomatically and financially strangling the [Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved". What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime "more compatible" with US interests in the region... Read more... The New Big Show: Iran and Historical Forgetting, by John Grant | Counterpunch Ever since George W. Bush lost the popular vote by 500,000 souls and was selected President by a right-leaning Supreme Court, the United States has seemed to me devoted to a twisted fate of slow-motion Armageddon. What seems to guarantee this is one of our most characteristic American traits: We don’t learn from the past... Read more... Seyed Hossein Mousavian: The West is pushing Iran in the wrong direction, by Ali Vaez | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former close adviser to many key Iranian political figures, including moderate president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and reformist president Mohammad Khatami, says the IAEA has "broken the rules" by publicly releasing a report on Iran's nuclear program that should have been kept confidential. In fact, Mousavian says, the report represents a step backward in efforts to deal with Iran's nuclear program. To resolve concerns about the program, he says, the West needs to engage with Iran on two negotiating tracks:.. Read more... Urging Obama to Stop Rush to Iran War, by Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray | Consortium News  President Obama needs to put an abrupt halt to the game of Persian Roulette about to spin out of control in the Persian Gulf. If we were still on active duty at the CIA, this is what we would tell him:.. Read more... Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies: Never forget, by William Blum | Anti-Empire Report ...Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of "The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another." The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly,.. Read more... I am sick of..., by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance The end of the world is Dec 21, 2012 according to the Mayan Calendar being the year 5125. I do not know about that but I do know that the window of opportunity to end the world of privilege and chosenness is quickly closing and we must have enough people involved in speaking truth to power and finally removing this power from the elites. The alternative is deterioration into a real end of world scenario where humans are on each other’s throats fighting over remnant natural resources depleted and destroyed by greed... [The US government and media are dominated by Zionists, both Jewish and Christian. They need to be removed. This can only be accomplished through a revolution.] Read more....Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War | Corbett Report on YouTube As the US and Iranian governments escalate tensions in the already volatile Straits of Hormuz, and China and Russia begin openly questioning Washington's interference in their internal politics, the world remains on a knife-edge of military tension. Far from being a dispassionate observer of these developments, however, the media has in fact been central to increasing those tensions and preparing the public to expect a military confrontation... A must watch video... Pathetic Hasbara Video | Gilad Atzmon In a usual deceitful manner the clip introduces itself saying: "The State of Israel and the Jewish people are united in baring the human responsibility to live ethical and moral lives." If the Jewish State was indeed 'ethical and responsible', Gaza wouldn't be the biggest open air prison in the history of humanity. The Jewish state is in engaged in a slow genocide. It is a merciless ethnic cleanser. It has no room amongst nations... [Here's my solution to the problem. Make it mandatory for all Zionists, be they Jewish, Christian or the numerous amoral secular opportunists, to emigrate to Israel. Then provide massive financial assistance for them to build an enormous wall over and around the place. Then remove the drawbidge. After ten years, send in an international investigation team to determine whether or not anyone was still alive. I doubt there would be. Problem solved.] Watch video - if you can stomach it...Israel is a Golem | Roy Tov  State of Israel as a Golem | A Brainless Servant of Evil War means killings. Invariably, these demand a justification process, an ethics system sanctioning the unacceptable violence. This is when war is translated into slow talks conducted at dark classrooms while they await their next brutal attack on innocents. The IDF calls these events “Siah Lohamim” (“Warrior Talks” in Hebrew). On February 13, 2009, IDF soldiers graduating the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon made statements regarding their participation in Operation Cast Lead...Read more... Financial interests behind Islamophobia, with Max Blumenthal | RT on YouTube America has become crazed with Islamophobia, many politicians have come out and used Islam as a scapegoat. All of this hate has produced an outburst of arson attacks on mosques, campaigns to stop their construction, and the branding of the Muslim-American community, overwhelmingly moderate, as a hotbed of potential terrorist recruits... Watch video... Answer Some Questions Before You Bomb Iran, by John Glaser | Antiwar ...in no way do I entirely endorse Micah Zenko’s latest post at the Council of Foreign Relations blog, but he does put forth a healthy dose of skepticism about the Iranian nuclear issue and the clambering for war since the IAEA’s latest hyperbolic report. Zenko points out the misleading official lines about Iran being one or two years away from the bomb and how those same warnings have been going on for decades... Read more... Money Power Runs America, by Stephen Lendman Wall Street does it by controlling money, credit and debt, as well as manipulating markets for private enrichment. House and Senate millionaires do it their way for greater wealth, privilege, power and status... ["The money power preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed." ~ Abraham Lincoln] Read more...Leo Tolstoy: The Law of Love and the Law of Violence | Stop NATO  “Leave us alone. If you, emperors, generals, judges, bishops, professors and other learned men, if you have need of armies, navies, universities, corps de ballet, ecclesiastic courts, conservatories of music, prisons, gallows, guillotines, prepare them all yourselves; tax yourselves, judge your selves, imprison and execute each other, exterminate yourselves, get yourselves killed in war; but leave us alone, for we have no need of all these things and we do not wish to participate in acts that are futile as far as we are concerned, and above all, so wicked.”.. Read more... Treason by Members of the United States Congress: A Video by Anthony Lawson | YouTube It must have been realised that the letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, signed by nearly 300 members of the U.S. Congress, affirming their commitment to Israel, would be widely publicised and fall into the hands of that illegal Apartheid State, so the writing and signing of that letter should be considered an act of treason... Watch video... Skewed Coverage by Democracy Now, by John V. Walsh | Dissident Voice Dear Ms. Goodman, I have a bone to pick about your coverage of Ron Paul and the five racist comments that appeared in his newsletter a generation ago... Read more... It May Be Difficult for China and Russia to Stop a US-Israeli Strike on Iran, by Feng Shanzhi | Nanfang Daily/Watching America ...why have American and Israeli officials claimed that Iran will have nuclear weapons within one year? It’s very possible that Western countries are looking for a pretext for attacking Iran. We know that America is always making groundless accusations and loves to seize a few phony justifications to interfere in others’ internal affairs. At the moment, America’s intention in making a military attack on Iran is extremely obvious: to remove the threat posed by Iran to Israel and to U.S. Middle Eastern hegemony. But they need to name the reason they are sending in the troops, so they use Iran's manufacturing nuclear weapons as an excuse... Read more... Israeli students to get $2,000 to spread state propaganda on Facebook, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada The National Union of Israeli Students (NUIS) has become a full-time partner in the Israeli government’s efforts to spread its propaganda online and on college campuses around the world. NUIS has launched a program to pay Israeli university students $2,000 to spread pro-Israel propaganda online for 5 hours per week from the “comfort of home.”.. Read more... Jan 5, 2012 The Outlook for the New Year: Tyranny in the Forecast, by Paul Craig Roberts | Foreign Policy Journal  ...The outlook for liberty is dismal. Those writers who are critical of Washington’s illegal wars and overthrow of the US Constitution could find themselves in indefinite detainment, because criticism of Washington’s policies can be alleged to be aiding Washington’s enemies, which might include charities that provide aid to bombed Palestinian children and flotillas that attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza... Read more... 47th Anniversary of the Palestinian Revolution: From Landless Revolution to Circumscribed Authority, by Jamal Kanj | Intifada Palestine January 1, 1965 was the official start of the contemporary Palestinian revolution. On a Friday night December 31, 1964, a small group of fighters attacked an Israeli military target, leaving behind the first martyr on the long march towards recognizing the usurped rights of Palestinian refugees... Read more... Imperialism and the "Anti-Imperialism of the Fools" | James Petras One of the great paradoxes of history are the claims of imperialist politicians to be engaged in a great humanitarian crusade, a historic “civilizing mission” designed to liberate nations and peoples, while practicing the most barbaric conquests, destructive wars and large scale bloodletting of conquered people in historical memory... Read more... The Threat of War Against Iran and Syria is Real, by Shamus Cooke | Global Research  For those who think that the United States wouldn't possibly instigate another war in the Middle East, think again. Empowered by his "success" in the bombing of Libya and consequent assassination of Muammar Qaddafi, Obama is now seeking to use the exact same strategy against Syria, while using alarming military threats against Iran. In both cases the U.S. is creating the conditions for war in a region that is already boiling over from decades of U.S. backed dictators combined with past U.S. military aggression... Read more... Britain: Sleepwalking into Fascism, by William Bowles | Global Research ...In trying to get my head around the situation today, I keep returning to my parents' generation in the 1930s where they found themselves in a predicament similar to ours. Capitalism had crashed (again) and the world was faced either with a capitalism without any pretense to democracy, that is to say fascism, or socialism. A 'third way' was not even considered. Third Way? Is there one? I seriously doubt it given our understanding of the nature of economics, even if we fail to act on or recognize that such knowledge exists... Read more... OWS End Corporate Personhood, Get Money Out Working Group / Campaign, by David DeGraw | OWS News As most of you already know, I’ve been having discussions with OWS organizers around the country about many different projects and what people’s ultimate goals are. It’s been incredibly overwhelming and it’s impossible to keep up with everything anymore. As you all know, this movement is a relentless 24/7 battle and it is incredibly hard to get people to work together and agree on much. We’re all drowning in an inspiring and beautiful tsunami of anarchy... Read more... While America shuts down fire houses, cuts infant nutrition, US subsidizes Israel army sushi courses, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada  Sushi in Tel Aviv ...It’s shocking for two reasons – one is the xenophobia that is rising to astonishing heights in Israel: not even the cooks of foreign cuisine can be foreign (I’ll come back to this) – but because of what it says about how Israel is using US military aid at a time of drastic cuts and austerity for American citizens...Read more... Trump, O'Reilly Regurgitate Lie That Paul Couldn't Beat Obama, by Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet In an effort to dismiss the legitimacy of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, both Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly regurgitated the claim that Paul could not beat Obama in a head to head run off, when in fact numerous polls have proven he stands the best chance of beating Obama out of all the Republican candidates... [One has to respect somebody who has those kinds of enemies] Read more, watch video... Natural News declares 2012 the year of consciousness, by Mike Adams | NN ... it is the lack of consciousness that's behind every corporate crime, government conspiracy, political corruption, Big Pharma scheme and environmental crime that takes place on our planet. Those who lack consciousness engage in "you versus me" crimes of selfishness - stealing, exploiting, destroying, deceiving - yet such behaviors come from a place of ignorance about consciousness and the universe around us... [You got that right, Mike.] Read more...The Jew World Order Is Upon Us, Beware! | Zion Crime Factory  The treacherous terror of Zion permeates the globe The rule of the Talmudic Jew in modern times is nearly one of an absolute monarch of a country. The Jews, through their complete domination of world finance and banking — through their malignant monopoly of the mass media of America, Britain, France, Canada and other Western powers — through their influential and vast network of subversive “lobby groups” — through their dominion over the courts and law profession in general — not to mention their pernicious presence inside the highest levels of government of the most powerful countries — have thus taken full control of the entire planet...[If the reader feels the programmed impulse to label this piece hateful "antisemitism," I can only suggest that he or she actually read the text. Although a little hyperbolic, this is a concise compilation of material that I have seen elsewhere, mostly from sources that have my respect. Without an open, curious mind one's mind belongs to others.] Read more...The NDAA's historic assault on American liberty, by Jonathan Turley | PressTV President Barack Obama rang in the New Year by signing the NDAA law with its provision allowing him to indefinitely detain citizens. It was a symbolic moment, to say the least. With Americans distracted with drinking and celebrating, Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country... and citizens partied in unwitting bliss into the New Year... [The destruction of the America that the world so long admired and respected is well underway, and the fingerprints of the Zionists are all over the crime scene.] Read more... Are We Witnessing the Final Disintegration of Iraq? by Patrick Cockburn | Counterpunch ...The future of Iraq may well be decided in the capitals of its neighbors over the next year. The US remains important in Baghdad, despite the departure of its troops. The more divided Iraqis are, the more the influence of outside powers increases. Unfortunately, the Arab Spring has destabilized the whole Middle East, with Iran fearing it will lose its most important ally, Syria, while the Sunni-Shia struggle is becoming more intense in countries such as Bahrain... Read more... Much to Forgive: The Story of Bibi Sadia, by Kathy Kelly and the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers | Palestine Chronicle  Baba and grandson Bibi Sadia and her husband Baba share a humble home with their son, his wife and their two little children. An Afghan human rights advocate suggested that we listen to Bibi's stories and learn more about how a Pashto family has tried to survive successive tragedies in Kabul...Read more... Israel and the Rise of Islamic Movements, by Uri Avnery | Palestine Chronicle If Islamist movements come to power all over the region, they should express their debt of gratitude to their bete noire, Israel. Without the active or passive help of successive Israeli governments, they may not have been able to realize their dreams. That is true in Gaza, in Beirut, in Cairo and even in Tehran... Read more... Jan 4, 2012 Cain Kills Abel: the First Class War, by Rev. Howard Bess | Consortium News  Artist's rendering of Cain's murder of Abel Republicans are fond of throwing the charge “class warfare” at anyone who seeks to reverse the rapid division of modern society into haves and have-nots. But the ancient story of Cain and Abel is a cautionary tale about the violence that class stratification inevitably brings...Read more... Santorum Calls for Air Strikes on Iran, Bachmann Proposes War Blockade, by Kurt Nimmo | Prison Planet On Sunday, 48 hours out from the Iowa caucus, Mitt Romeny and Rick Santorum told potential voters that Iran is a danger to the United States. Santorum declared that if elected he will bomb Iran, while Romney said that Iran’s reported development of nuclear rod technology is a threat. He said “it’s also a device which can be transformed into nuclear weaponry.”.. [Filled with utter disgust, words fail me.] Read more...Obama's America: Tyranny and Permanent War, by Stephen Lendman | Global Research December 31, 2011 will be remembered as a day of infamy... Read more... Media Lies and the Onset of War | The Corbett Report on YouTube As the US and Iranian governments escalate tensions in the already volatile Straits of Hormuz, and China and Russia begin openly questioning Washington's interference in their internal politics, the world remains on a knife-edge of military tension. Far from being a dispassionate observer of these developments, however, the media has in fact been central to increasing those tensions and preparing the public to expect a military confrontation... Read more, watch video... April 2012: Battle of Migron | Roy Tov  Typical West Bank Settlement Most battles begin without previous announce. Either that or the warning is of just hours. Seldom battles are announced with days of anticipation. Yet, at the beginning of January 2012 we know that on April 2012 the Battle of Migron will take place. It will be a battle between Jewish factions, as the ones we saw in 2011 in Berkeley, though with no doubt much more violent. Its epicenter would be occupied Palestinian lands north of Jerusalem...Read more... Rep. Kucinich: 'US must back off threatening Iran' | Rehmat's World In June the Zionist Lobby had slammed eight-term Congressman Dennis Kucinich for visiting Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus and praising him. Now, the Zionist dogs are once again chasing him for calling on the Obama administration to distant itself from the Israel-Firster neocons who dragged the US into war with Iraq in 2003 on cooked-up lies, costing “the lives of thousands of American troops and perhaps over one million Iraqis, that will have a long term cost of $5 trillion and that has further damaged America’s position in the world..".. Read more... US arms sales threaten ME region | PressTV The US selling weapons to the Mid-East threatens the future of the region as it means the US has to find the wars for the weapons to be used in, an analyst tells Press TV... [Hopefully they'll actually try to fire these weapons and blow themselves up. Insh'Allah.] Read more...Bahrain intensifies violent crackdown | PressTV Saudi-backed Bahraini forces have intensified the violent crackdown on Bahraini demonstrators in response to a growing number of popular protest rallies. Press TV talks with Bahraini activist Asma Darwish from the Bahraini capital of Mananma, who shares her first-hand experience of the brutal crackdowns... Watch video... R.I.P. Bill of Rights 1789 - 2011, by Mike Adams | Natural News One of the most extraordinary documents in human history -- the Bill of Rights -- has come to an end under President Barack Obama. Derived from sacred principles of natural law, the Bill of Rights has come to a sudden and catastrophic end with the President's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a law that grants the U.S. military the "legal" right to conduct secret kidnappings of U.S. citizens, followed by indefinite detention, interrogation, torture and even murder... Read more... Unknown Knowns: Avoiding the Truth, by Geoffrey Wheatcroft | NYT  Secretary of State Colin L. Powell argued before the United Nations Security Council Could there be a single phrase that explains the woes of our time, this dismal age of political miscalculations and deceptions, of reckless and disastrous wars, of financial boom and bust and downright criminality?..in 2003 for disarming Iraq, holding the kind of vial that could contain anthrax [An intelligent, incisive piece that goes to the heart of things? In the NYT? What is this world coming to?] Read more...Cables Hold Clues to U.S.: Iran Mysteries, by Robert Parry | Consortium News As the West’s confrontation with Iran grows more dangerous – and major U.S. news outlets blame Iran – it may be worth recalling the documents that revealed how the U.S. and its allies showed bad faith in talks with Iran about its nuclear program... [Now that we know that American foreign policy is predicated on "the Long War," i.e., permanent war, there must be a designated Devil du Jour. As our foreign policy is effectively in the hands of the Zionists, it is not surprising that the "enemy" is going to be a muslim country, Iran being the poster child of supposed threats to Israel.] Read more...Muslim Haters Tie Iran to 9/11 | Consortium News Another element of the “go-to-war-with-Iran hysteria” is a “default judgment” by a U.S. court linking Iran to 9/11. However, Iran had no legal representation in the case, allowing dubious and bogus allegations to go unchallenged, as Gareth Porter noted in this article for Truthout... Read more... Marginalizing Ron Paul, by Robert Scheer | Truthdig It is official now. The Ron Paul campaign, despite surging in the Iowa polls, is not worthy of serious consideration, according to a New York Times editorial; “Ron Paul long ago disqualified himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard, cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”.. [Perhaps it's just as well if he doesn't go much further - the various forces that own and run the country, aka "the Establishment" (the Zionists, the banksters, the mega-corporations, the "defense" industry, etc.) would be outbidding each other to have him whacked.] Read more...Jan 3, 2012 Escobar: Syrian rag-tag bands & tanks to face investigation | RT on YouTube Free Syria Army includes foreign mercenaries armed & backed by very Arab League supposedly investigating Syrian violence... Watch video... Palestinians must get their act together in 2012, by Khalid Amayreh | Palestine Information Center ...Israel, which is becoming a fully-fledged fascist state, had probably planned to embark on unthinkable measures against the Palestinians, possibly including genocidal massacres, induced emigration and ethnic cleansing. However, thanks to the Arab Spring, especially the Egyptian revolution, Israel is very likely to think twice before pursuing its lebensraum policy against its neighbors... Read more... The PLO and the continuing project to win Palestinian national liberation, by Helena Cobban | Middle East Monitor The reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas that has been under discussion since last April now seems to be moving to a new level, with the leaders of these two big Palestinian factions agreeing to hold national elections in May 2012. Though many western commentators have focused on the prospects this reconciliation might have for the Palestinian Authority (PA), more important are the effects on the broader, much more established Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO)... Read more... Obama's New Year Resolution: More Middle East War | Stephen Lendman Syria and Iran are targeted. Regime change is planned. At issue is replacing them with client ones, controlling the region's strategic resources, and depriving key rivals China and Russia from access. Pressure keeps building relentlessly. For months, Syria's been ravaged by externally generated violence... Read more... US storms OWS encampments: Interview with Connie Everett | PressTV ...People are frightened. Early on in the movement, you know, people came and brought their children. They practiced democracy and we exerted our constitutional right and as the police have become more aggressive in some cases actually behaving very much like storm troopers and very military fashion of attacking the encampments and the protests... Read transcript, watch video... Appalling Bahraini Prison Conditions and Treatment | Stephen Lendman Since early 2011, Washington, Western governments, and major media scoundrels largely ignored outrageous Al Khalifa monarchy abuses. They include crackdowns on nonviolent protesters, mass arrests, torture, intimidation, and cold-blooded murder... Read more... Israeli war drums ignore Hamas move for change, by Gideon Levy | Haaretz ...Instead of encouraging moderation, whether genuine or imaginary, whether strategic or tactical, Israel is rushing to nip it in the bud. And why should Hamas become more moderate if the Israeli response is to threaten Gaza? And why should the Palestinian Authority show flexibility if the response is rejectionism?.. Read more... Jan 2, 2012 An "Historic Partnership" With The Devil, by Dr. Lawrence Davidson | Intifada Palestine  Read more... Can We Hide From the Insane Master? | Gerry Spence's Blog It’s time we lay naked the myth, expose it like ripping the shirt off a fat man’s belly. We are not a democracy. Americans are not free. Our politicians do not represent us. We have not been taught or told the truth. None. We are the new slaves... Read more... Hidden Agenda Behind "War on Terror": The Conquest of Oil, Gas, Water and Vital Resources | Global Research As competition for oil, water and other resources intensify, global power relationships are shifting, providing backdrops for a string of conflicts from Iraq to Libya. Brazilian-born journalist Pepe Escobar, one of the most perceptive analysts of these trends, was interviewed by German Lars Schall... Read more... War on Venezuela: Washington's False Accusations Against The Chavez Government, by Eva Golinger | Postcards from the Revolution Ever since the US-supported coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela failed in April 2002, Washington has been pursuing a variety of strategies to remove the overwhelmingly popular South American head of state from power. Multimillion-dollar funding to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela through US government agencies, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has increased exponentially over the past ten years, as has direct political support through advisors, strategists and consultants... Read more... Is the "War on Drugs" as phony as the "War on Terror"? | James Fetzer  ...The exposure of these false statistics threatens to undermine the “War on Drugs”, which undoubtedly would have the effect of encouraging the legalization of drugs, reduce if not evaporate the vast profits accrued through the sale of illegal drugs, and thereby diminish if not completely destroy the wealth and power of the major drug cartels, including of the CIA, widely regarded as the largest drug dealing organization the world has ever known... Read more... Obama's Global Murder, Inc., by Joe Kishore | Global Research The Obama administration has erected a vast apparatus of global assassination involving unmanned aerial drones operated by the CIA and the military. This network of “targeted killing” machines is run in secrecy, behind the backs of the American people and with virtually no congressional oversight. The US drone program is the subject of an exposé published in the Washington Post on Wednesday, headlined “Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus of drone killing.”... Read more... Is Hamas really a mean-minded Christmas Scrooge? | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood argues that a report in the UK’s Guardian newspaper that the Hamas authorities in Gaza had “cancelled Christmas” contradicts Hamas’s public declarations and past behaviour towards Palestinian Christians but, if true, then “it’s a sure-fire way to lose friends and alienate people”... [Dollars to doughnuts it's just the usual Israeli dirty tricks] Read more... Confronting intimidation, working for justice in Palestine, by Ilan Pappe | The Electronic Intifada  Demonstration in commemoration of the killing of Mustafa Tamimi If we had a wish list for 2012 as Palestinians and friends of Palestine, one of the top items ought to be our hope that we can translate the dramatic shift in recent years in world public opinion into political action against Israeli policies on the ground. We know why this has not yet materialized: the political, intellectual and cultural elites of the West cower whenever they even contemplate acting according to their own consciences as well as the wishes of their societies...Read more... 2011-2012, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance I have lived in the US for 29 years and am currently visiting this large and still prosperous but perilously indebted country ($16 trillion in debt). I landed at New York’s JF Kennedy airport named after perhaps the only president who could have put a stop to the decline of the US into an Israeli occupied territory engaged in endless wars that bankrupted the economy. Since then I was, like the 320 million residents of this country, bombarded with media advertising and popular culture that promotes Zionism and tries to numb the people about what is really going on... Read more... War's Mayhem and Murder is Somehow Less Hard to Bear than the Humane Termination of an Injured Animal, by Dave Lindorff | This Can't Be Happening The officer rested his arm holding the stock of the assault rifle on the top of a log pile, and aimed directly between the target’s eyes. She was looking directly at him, unblinking, from 30 feet away, and exhibited no fear. “I hate doing this,” he muttered, before finally pulling the trigger. A sharp “bang!” rang out, her head jerked up and then her whole body sagged to the ground, followed by some muscle jerks, and it was over... [Americans aren't monsters, they just serve a monstrous Empire.] Read more...Israel's impunity challenged by torture victim in Jerusalem, by Jillian Kestler-D'Amours | The Electronic Intifada  Palestinians are often interrogated, abused or tortured after being arrested by Israeli forces in the West Bank In a case that has highlighted Israel’s abuse of Palestinian detainees, an Israeli military court recently acquitted a Palestinian man after it became clear that Israeli interrogators used physical and psychological abuse as a way to coerce a confession from him...[That an Israeli military court acquitted him might be even more significant. What was that about?] Read more... Newt's New York visit for funds was about Israel, by Alex Kane | Mondoweiss Newt Gingrich's jaunt to New York early this month was well-covered in the media, but one crucial aspect went unexplored: the Israel lobby angle. But good reporting from The Jewish Week's Adam Dickter makes clear that Gingrich came to New York looking for right-wing Jewish campaign donors who are hardline supporters of Israel... Read more... Government of the Rich, by the Rich and for the Rich, by Patrick Martin | Global Research ...Sixty-seven senators are millionaires and the median wealth of the body’s 100 members is $2.63 million. While the Senate has long been known as a millionaires’ club, the transformation of the House is a relatively recent phenomenon. The median net worth of members of the House of Representatives, excluding home equity, has more than doubled over the last 25 years, from $280,000 in 1984 to $725,000 in 2009 in inflation-adjusted dollars. During that same period, the median net worth of an American family fell from $20,600 to $20,500... Read more... The Civilized Barbarian | Tokyo Spring  ..A civilized barbarian, that’s what the West reminds us of. For some, this piece may just be about double standards but it’s not. What the West is doing and saying and telling others to do is beyond the all-too-quickly used term: double standards. Well beyond. There is no standard in Western criminal capitalist foreign policy. It’s really what G. Bush, the senior criminal, said once: “What we say goes.”.. Read more... Who Said Israel Has A Right To Exist? | YouTube Israel & Palestine - The So-Called Right To Exist. Zionist Christians should read Revelation 2:9 & 3:9... A must watch video... The March to War: Iran and the Strategic Encirclement of Syria and Lebanon, by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | Global Research The encirclement of Syria and Lebanon has long been in the works. Since 2001, Washington and NATO have started the process of cordoning off Lebanon and Syria. The permanent NATO presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Syrian Accountability Act are part of this initiative. It appears that this roadmap is based on a 1996 Israeli document aimed at controlling Syria. The document’s name is A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm... Read more... Of War and Social Security: Ron Paul and the Killing Machine, by Mike Whitney | Counterpunch Ron Paul is the only antiwar candidate who has a (microscopic) chance of winning in 2012. He’s also the only candidate who will make an effort to restore the Bill of Rights and reverse Congress’s decision to allow the president to “indefinitely” imprison American citizens without due process. For these reasons alone, Paul should garner the support of leftists, liberals, and progressives. But he won’t, because liberals are convinced that Paul will try to dismantle the social programs upon which the elderly, the infirm, and the vulnerable depend... Read more... New Year's Eve "Through the Prism of September 11,? by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars  Times Square and a surrounding 200 block area will resemble a prison this evening. Revelers who plan to attend the celebration of the New Year will be subjected to a “magnetometry check” and have their bags searched. There will be “weapons response teams,” horse-mounted police officers, undercover cops, bomb-sniffing dogs and police patrol boats. The Joint Terrorist Task force will be on hand... [Heil Hitler! and the American Way] Read more...Israeli soldiers told to 'cleanse' Gaza | C4 News on YouTube Israeli soldiers tell Channel 4 News they were ordered to "cleanse" Palestinian neighbourhoods, as filmmaker Nurit Kedar says "the atmosphere was that nobody should talk about this war"... Watch video... Dead in the Water: The Attack on the USS Liberty | BBC on YouTube A clear documented evidence that Israel was involved in killings of US Navy but no actions from US government. America has been fooling its people as well as the whole world but still they cannot see. It is affecting you, your friends, your family and everyone you know. Sooner or later its your turn. Do something now or get ready for the punishment... Watch video... Operation Free Palestine - #OpFreePalestine | Gilad Atzmon Anonymous, TeaMp0isoN and many other hacktivists from around the world have united, we may not be able to stop the Zionist regime, but the least we can do is raise awareness and educate people by defacing Zionist websites, Operation Free Palestine is about educating the blind and terrorising the terrorist, the tables have turned, the time has come... Watch video... The Bombing of Damascus: Terror, Lies, Human Rights and Mass Media "Conspiracy Theories," by Gearóid Ó Colmáin | Global Research  On Friday 23rd December two terrorist attacks hit the Syrian capital of Damascus. The attacks struck the State Security Directorate and another security branch in the Syrian capital. Russia, China and other countries were quick to condemn the attacks which murdered 44 people and injured 166. In spite of its claims to be concerned about the “protection” of civilians and the state of “human rights” in Syria, the Western press was more concerned with demonizing the Syrian government than the condemnation of the barbarians who carried out the savage terrorist attacks in Damascus... Read more... 2012 Threatens to be a Very Violent Year: The Sunni-Shia Wars, by Patrick Cockburn | Counterpunch In three of the Arab countries east of Egypt – Syria, Bahrain and Yemen – protesters have challenged their governments over the past year but failed to overthrow them. The reasons for those failures are very different though they have important points in common. In each of these states protesters were frustrated because a significant part of the population had a lot to lose if the ruling elite were reformed or overthrown... Read more... Ron Paul's Anti-Progressive Agenda | Stephen Lendman Compared to a rogue's gallery of Republican aspirants, supporters claim Paul looks good by comparison. Look again and think carefully about America in his hands... [I agree that we need to take a hard look at Ron Paul now that it looks like he's getting a little traction. On the one hand, he's the only Republican contender who is not a buffoon, a hypocrite, a whore and a traitor. On the other hand, he is a doctrinaire proponent of the most insidious kind of individualism - me first and everybody else can just go the hell. It's a version of Jeffersonian democracy that might even have seemed extreme in the 18th Century: Myself as a substitute for the Deity, the protection of private property as My first commandment, and the Second Amendment is next. On the other hand, you gotta admire and respect the guy. He's the only one of the whole bunch with any integrity.] Read more...Tyranny Is a Bipartisan Disease | Washington's Blog ...George W. Bush cracked down on constitutional liberties such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and due process. Obama has done the same and has cracked down even harder. Both Bush and Obama are waging brutal, unnecessary and insanely expensive wars throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Indeed, these wars were planned before either Bush or Obama. Both Democratic and Republican leaders are servants to the military-industrial complex, and they both accept the wholly-debunked myth that war is good for the economy... Read more... Jan 1, 2012 Occupation economy: taking from the very land they stand on, by Paul Mutter | Mondoweiss  I couldn't help but think of the boycott campaign against Ahava cosmetics produced with materials mined in the occupation when Avraham Burg wrote this week in Haaretz "let the right-wing MKs, the Katzes and the Elkins, travel around the world and show the beauty of their faces without the deceptive layer of makeup we [on the left] provided.".. Read more... Jewish Setback in Berkeley | Roy Tov ..Despite an apparent calm, the American Jewish community is at war. It had declared war on everybody and every organization daring to criticize Israel, no matter how justified this criticism is. Cite the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which was written by a Jew and defines Israel as a terror organization in article 1690 and others, and you are automatically defined as an anti-Semite, despite the report having been overwhelmingly approved by the UN General Assembly... Read more... Obama worse than Bush on rights record: Interview with Paul Wolf | PressTV Russia has strongly criticized the US for violating human rights, Guantanamo Bay and death of innocent death row inmates, calling the situation “a far cry from the ideals that the US proclaims”.. Read transcript, watch video... Israel v. Palestine in 2012 | Stephen Lendman Palestinians have endured decades of ruthless occupation. World leaders decline support. They're left largely on their own despite growing millions globally supporting them... Read more... How Many Lies Has Rabbi Rotter Told? | Tikun Olam  Living by rules he devises and which only he understands Rabbi Yeshayahu Rotter founded Rotter.net, one of Israel’s most popular gossip and news sites (Alexa ranks it 72nd of all Israeli sites). He is a Haredi Jew who teaches 12th grade at a Haifa yeshiva which belongs to the Bnai Akiva branch of Orthodox Judaism. Surprisingly, considering the extremism of his politics, Bnai Akiva is considered one of the more moderate sects in the Orthodox movement...Read more... How Israel helped Islamist movements to flourish across the Middle East | Redress Information & Analysis Uri Avnery charts Israel’s role in the growth of Islamist movements in the Middle East – Hamas in Palestine, Hizbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Shi’i theocracy in Iran... Read more... Saudi Arabian State Terror | Stephen Lendman ..Saudi's absolute monarchal rule is despotic, lawless and brutal. It's a police state practicing state terrorism internally and regionally. It's also Washington's main Middle East ally after Israel... Read more... 'Israel, dysfunctional, Spartan state': Interview with Mark Glenn | PressTV A prominent political analyst says “Israel is a dysfunctional, Spartan military state that cannot hold itself together unless it finds itself at war with someone.”.. Read transcript, watch video... 2012: World On the Brink, by Kurt Nimmo | Prison Planet As we prepare to enter 2012, a number of crucial issues confront us:.. Read more... Riding Israel: A tragicomedy, by Marwan Bishara | Al Jazeera English  Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, and other current Republican candidates are riding Israel like Tom Cruise rides various BMW models in his "Mission Impossible" franchise. Like action films, presidential elections are brilliantly staged and terribly expensive with many gimmicks and little substance. Except that one sells cars and gadgets, while the other sells security and special interest. To be a fictional action hero is one thing; to lead the word’s superpower requires a few doses of reality and credibility... Read more... A Vote for Obama Now is More Evil Than It Was in 2008: Lesser Evilism, 2012, by Michael Kaufman | Counterpunch ..I find myself becoming nostalgic for the time of the last Bush administration. I remember it as a time when people still expressed opposition to a regime that had contempt for them... Read more... Scott Horton interviews Flynt Leverett | Antiwar Radio Flynt Leverett, former Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council, discusses Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, as a response to sanctions that may eventually cut off Iran’s oil exports; why the US and Israel don’t really have a problem with Iranian nuclear weapons, just Iran’s refusal to submit to US regional hegemony; Israel’s “red line” on Iran’s uranium enrichment at Qom; why US foreign policy planners don’t learn from prior mistakes (because superpowers don’t have to); and why waging war with borrowed money is a sure sign of a declining empire... Listen to podcast... Gaza Vu: Israel warns of major attack | RT on YouTube ..RT talks to Gideon Levy, columnist with one of Israel's biggest newspapers, suggesting his country will face difficulties if it decides to wage another bloody war on Gaza... Watch video... A close look at Artists 4 Israel | Vandalog  ...On November 17th, the Defend The Future Tour came to Haverford College, spray cans in hand, in what now seems to me to have been an attempt to manipulate students into having a greater hate and fear of the Arab world and a greater love for Israel. This would have been fine, except for the manipulation. I go to Haverford College, so I experienced the DTF Tour myself... Read more... Crackpot Anti-Islam Activists, "Serial Fabricators" and the Tale of Iran and 9/11, by Gareth Porter | Truthout Behind a mysterious December 22 Associated Press story about "finding of fact" by a District judge in Manhattan Friday that Iran assisted al Qaeda in the planning of the 9/11 attacks is a tapestry of recycled fabrications and distortions of fact from a bizarre cast of characters... Read more... Keeping Iran From Saying Yes, by Paul R. Pillar | The National Interest Imagine that you are a senior adviser to the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and have decided that sanctions and other pressures on Iran have accomplished exactly what they ostensibly are designed to do.. : to change minds among policy makers in Tehran about Iran's nuclear activities. You, the adviser, have concluded that the pressures are sufficiently damaging to Iranian interests that Iran ought to make whatever policy changes are needed to get the pressure to stop. What, exactly, do you advise your boss to do?.. Read more... Anti-Palestinian group StandWithUs attempts to smear me but ends up with egg on its face, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada Alex Kane, staff reporter at Mondoweiss, has said he was in direct contact with Alyssa Lappen, the FrontPage Magazine contributor who quoted me allegedly making comments about “The Jews.” Lappen denied she was even present at the 2005 conference... Read more... Campaign launched against French purchase of Israeli drones as senators demand deal be abandoned, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada  French boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigners have called on their government to abandon a €318 million deal to buy Heron TP drones from Israel Aircraft Industries. Meanwhile, senior members of France’s Senate have called publicly for the country to abandon the purchase on grounds that the Israeli drones are unsuited to the needs of the armed forces... Read more... Another exceptionally grotesque hasbara video | Niqnaq The video was released by the Hasbara Fellowships, a program of Aish HaTorah International, an extremist Zionist group that works to colonize eastern occupied Jerusalem and likens Jews to an “endangered species” of animal. The Hasbara Fellowships, according to the Aish HaTorah website, is a propaganda program developed at the behest of the Israeli foreign ministry... [What's really grotesque is that the Zionists actually believe their own propaganda.] Watch video... Once again, war is prime time and journalism's role is taboo | John Pilger On 22 May 2007, the Guardian's front page announced: "Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq." The writer, Simon Tisdall, claimed that Iran had secret plans to defeat American troops in Iraq, which included "forging ties with al-Qaida elements". The coming "showdown" was an Iranian plot to influence a vote in the US Congress. Based entirely on briefings by anonymous US officials, Tisdall's "exclusive" rippled with lurid tales of Iran's "murder cells" and "daily acts of war against US and British forces"... Read more... Orthodox Judaism treats women like filthy little things, by Yossi Sarid | Haaretz If a man and a woman are drowning in a river, first they'll save the man, 'who is obligated to perform more commandments,' whereas a woman's 'wisdom is only in the spindle.' In fact, 'words of Torah should be burned rather than being given to women.'.. [The slight distinction between ultra-Orthodox Judaism and Wahhabi/Salafi Islam gets more and more blurred. It's very similar to the analogy made between Israel and Nazi Germany. Aside from the obvious superficial differences, they are exactly the same animal.] Read more... |
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