The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has published the list of senators who so far have agreed to co-sponsor the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, aka the Wag the Dog Act of 2014.. the initial list, which was introduced by its principal engineers, Sens. Kirk and Menendez, Dec 19, included 26 co-sponsors equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.. Since then, 20 other senators — all Republicans, unsurprisingly — have added their names, for a grand total of 47 — still short of a majority, let alone one that could survive an Obama veto that the White House has already committed the president to cast if the bill is passed in its present form...

 

...The main vehicle for debate about Iran once Congress reconvenes is a bill introduced by Senators Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, and Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, that would threaten still more sanctions on Iran and purchasers of its oil, would impose unrealistic conditions to be met to avoid actually imposing the sanctions, and would explicitly give a green light to Israel to launch a war against Iran and to drag the United States into that war.. passage of this legislation would be very damaging to the process of negotiating a final agreement with Iran to keep its nuclear program peaceful...

 

  House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R – VA) expressed annoyance that his attempt at a resolution to derail Iran diplomacy failed last year, and announced today his intention to introduce a new resolution as soon as possible with roughly the same contents...

Read more... 

 

  This essay will provide a discussion and analysis of international legal questions relating to the dispute between Iran and Western states with regard to Iran’s nuclear program. In particular, it will consider the competing interpretations between the parties of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreements. It then will consider what this legal analysis means for the future of the international nuclear nonproliferation regime...

 

  A bribery and corruption scandal has plunged Turkey into crisis, seriously undermining Prime Minister Recep Erdogan’s authority. Mr. Erdogan now faces serious challenges from both secularists suspicious of his Islamist agenda and his erstwhile ally turned rival, the cleric Fethullah Gulen, who leads a powerful Islamic movement from his perch in Pennsylvania. Sluggish economic growth and setbacks in foreign policy have only spurred the critics...

 

...Any question of honor – honoring fallen heroes – if the word honor is to have any meaning at all, must refer to the question of goodness. Most good, least good, or plainly at the extremes, simply, good and evil. Does it matter which side started a war?  This is not a tough question. What American wouldn’t be able to answer yes, almost reflexively, if the US was not one of the sides? Patriotism can do that to you. It can make you misplace the blame. That’s the Dependent Mind. The ultimate cynicism of the motivational state consists in forcing its soldiers into a position where their lives are at jeopardy and declaring them brave [ in advance ]...

 

  By virtue of Israel's substantial control of the Gaza Strip, international law requires Israel to facilitate normal life in the Strip, including by allowing access forcivilians and civilian goods. Alongside this obligation, Israel has the authority to decide by which routes both people  and goods enter and leave Gaza and to establish reasonable and proportionatesecurity measures to prevent the transfer of weapons and other military activity. Accordingly, Gisha's position is that Israel must lift the sweeping restrictions that remain and allow entrance of construction materials, saleofgoods to the West Bank and Israel and travel of people between Gaza and the West Bank, subject to individual security inspections...

 

  A major confrontation has broken out between the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Syria’s other rebel militias. It is being led by two newly organized coalitions, called Jaysh al Mujahidiin and the Front of Syrian Revolutionaries. But many other militias have also declared war on ISIS, insisting that it must abandon its attempt to establish a state and that its fighters must either integrate into Syria’s other militias or quite the country altogether. Fighting between Free Syria Army militias and ISIS has been widespread in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib...

 

...while the ASA may be starting with Israel, the powers-that-be in the world have gone after any number of human-rights violating countries – yet still haven’t gotten to Israel and its 46-year military dictatorship over the Palestinians. If you look at the serious, painful punishments the world metes out to oppressor nations, Israel is not being singled out, it’s being let off the hook. Would Israel’s defenders like to see the world treat this country like it treats Iran – by “bringing it to its knees” with “crippling sanctions,” not to mention the clamor from some quarters to bomb its nuclear facilities?..

 

  In Israel, soccer is played along racist lines. There are Jewish and Muslim teams; mixed teams are an oddity. Among Israeli soccer teams, Beitar groups are infamous for their fanaticism.. In 2013, ultra-nationalist team Betar Jerusalem tried to hire a Muslim Palestinian player. The protests were wild and racist. The sign in the picture reads "Beitar Pure Forever!" They weren't demanding that the food served be "kosher;" they want a purely Jewish team. "Pure" here was said in the Nazi-Aryan sense. Pure as Hitler, pure as Goebbels, pure as Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor; snow white pure...

 

  Look at solidarity hero Greta Berlin modelling this new genius Truth Shirt. "If you haven't been called an Anti-Semite, you are not working hard enough for justice in Palestine." (A line Greta herself coined a while back)...

 

...In each instance—following King’s assassination, and Obama and Mandela’s election—the social gains made by the majestic courage of millions were balanced by a backdoor betrayal of their economic interests. Like a populace infected with a vicious disease, each society soon suffered the hallmark symptoms of neoliberalism...

 

  The “unitary executive” crowd that came to the fore under George W. Bush argue basically that because the government does something it is therefore ipso facto legal. It is not a new concept though one heard only intermittently in the United States where constitutional checks and balances were long the Gospel prior to 9/11. Ironically, the juridical theory justifying an all-powerful executive was first described by Carl Schmitt, the German jurist who defended the legitimacy of the Nazi usurpation of the Weimar constitution, later referred to as the “Fuhrer principle”..

 

...When the keynote speaker at Jamestown’s annual conference, a four-star Marine Corps general, analyzes America’s way of war from a realist perspective, his criticisms are well worth knowing. His views must be widespread in the military, although not in Washington’s civilian establishment...

 

...the French Minister of Internal Affairs is considering making the gesture illegal (he claims that it is a "reverse Nazi salute sodomizing the victims of the Shoah" I kid you not) along with the shows of French humorist Dieudonne who did not invent the quenelle, but who made it popular as a sign of defiance against the French plutocratic elites.  Well, now, the French are putting the quenelle into music, with absolutely fantastic results. This time, Dieudo took the music of a famous French song.. (from the French resistance to the Nazi occupation during WWII) and added his own lyrics:..

 

  This week opened with big headlines, informing us that if negotiations with the Palestinians collapse, the  Europeans will lay the blame on the State of Israel - specifically, on the Netanyahu Government’s insistence upon announcing  spectacular settlement construction projects. Such assigning of blame by the  EU might have far-reaching consequences to the Israeli economy. The logical response of a rational Israeli government should have been an intense diplomatic effort in the capitals of Europe , in order to gain support for the Israeli point of view...

 

  An operation is under way to drive hardline fighters out of Iraq's Anbar province, with an aerial assault by government forces hitting east of Fallujah, and clashes between the Iraqi army and al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) near Ramadi leaving many dead...

  2013 was not a happy year in the chronicles of human history, yet there were a few moves in the directions of peace and justice. What follows are some notes that respond to the mingling of light and shadows that are flickering on the global stage, with a spotlight placed on the main war zone of the 21st century—the Middle East...

 

  Now that American and European saber rattling has quieted down, Iran’s (aspirational) nuclear weapon no longer seems quite the “existential threat” it used to be.  For this, we have Russian and Iranian diplomacy to thank. Of course, Israeli saber rattling continues unabated.  Existential threats keep Israel’s Jewish citizens more or less united and its international supporters on board.  The Iranian bomb is especially useful because, being spectral, it is safe as well as effective...

 

  Another week, another terrorist bombing.  It's beginning to look a lot like that here in Lebanon these days. Another apparent suicide bomber detonated a car rigged with explosives in the southern suburbs yesterday killing at least five people and injuring at least 77. The health ministry released a statement just a short while ago reporting that  an additional 67 people were treated in hospitals for wounds and released, while 10 people remained hospitalized with more severe injuries. Many who thought their team and its local and international supporters were invincible appear to be rethinking recent events...

 

  The soundness of George Washington’s advice continues to be borne out today. America’s “habitual fondness” and established alliance with Saudi Arabia persists despite the blowback that U.S. support for Arab tyrannies elicits in the form of anti-American terrorism and despite Riyadh’s veritable opposition to key U.S. foreign policy initiatives, like a diplomatic opening with Iran.. Our alliance with Israel also causes Washington to subordinate its own interests for another, also generates anti-American terrorism.. As with the U.S.-Saudi alliance, the alliance with Israel has colored America’s perception of who the great enemy bogeymen in the Middle East are..

 

...Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that “whatever time is left, there’s not a lot of time,” to stop Iran. This has been going on for years now. Take a look at the headlines and clips below for a taste of what the mainstream media, various think tanks and lobbyists, and government officials have been dishing out for a decade. You’re forgiven for thinking you’re seeing the same thing repeated again and again, because you are...

 

  The events in Volgograd are part of a much larger body of events and a multi-faceted struggle that has been going on for decades as part of a cold war after the Cold War—the post-Cold War cold war, if you please—that was a result of two predominately Eurocentric world wars. When George Orwell wrote his book 1984 and talked about a perpetual war between the fictional entities of Oceania and Eurasia, he may have had a general idea about the current events that are going on in mind or he may have just been thinking of the struggle between the Soviet Union and, surrounded by two great oceans, the United States of America. So what does Volgograd have to do with the dizzying notion presented?..

 

  In the past, I’ve featured the skeptical reporting of Reuven Pedatzur and research of Prof. Ted Postol about the efficacy of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense.. the anti-missile succeeded in hitting less than 10% of its targets during the last major Gaza offensive, instead of the 85% success rate offered by the IDF.  Postol published his findings in collaboration with two other Israeli rocket engineers. Now, Yossi Melman offers an even more widely critical appraisal of Israel’s entire missile defense strategy from another Israeli aeronautical engineer, Dr. Nathan Farber, who taught at the Technion and is a former chief scientist in the Israeli defense industry...

 

  A former Israeli army chief of staff, a man of limited intelligence, was told that a certain individual was an atheist. “Yes,” he asked, “but a Jewish atheist or a Christian atheist?” Lenin, in his Swiss exile, once inquired about the party affiliation of a newly elected member of the Duma. “Oh, he is just a fool!,” his assistant asserted. Lenin answered impatiently: “A fool in favour of whom?” I am tempted to pose a similar question about people touted to be neutral in our conflict: “Neutral in favour of whom?”..

 

  In a uniquely dishonest piece, The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland paid a tribute today to Israel’s veteran PM Ariel Sharon. According to Freedland, Sharon, “as one of Israel's founders… had the credibility to give up occupied territory – and even to face the demons of 1948”. Freedland speculates also that “Sharon's final mission might well have been peace.” This is indeed a big statement, but how does Freedland support his creative historical account?..

 

  The State of Israel uses the Law of Return in order to define Jews. It adopted an unsatisfactory definition compared to the one used by Ultra-Orthodox Jews. The latter recognize as a Jew only someone born to a Jewish mother or that converted according to the Halakha, the Jewish religious law..

 

...In a recent private interview with the US Army’s former top “Israel watcher,” I was told that Israel has always been a major espionage target for the United States, long considered a threat despite continual pronouncements to the contrary. “There are hundreds of instances of Israeli spying on the US, most recently their part in the flood of advanced space and missile technologies that have shown up in China.  This has been going on for years and is slowly bankrupting America, every costly advance in defense technology stolen by Israel and sold to China.” However, the story goes deeper, much deeper with twists and turns...

 

  Ten days ago some 200 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea marched to Jerusalem to protest against their mistreatment by the Israeli government. They had left a new ‘open’ detention facility in the Negev desert, where they are obliged to spend the night and attend three roll calls during the day. They walked for about six hours to the nearest city, Beer-Sheva, my hometown. After spending the night at the bus station, they marched on to Nachshon, a kibbutz that had agreed to put them up for the night. The following day, they continued to the Knesset by bus...

 

  Israel willfully, systematically, maliciously and lawlessly abuses detained Palestinian children. They're treated like adult prisoners. Mercy isn't Israel's long suit. Nor are peace, equity, justice or respect for fundamental human and civil rights. Israel spurns them repeatedly. It's standard practice. It remains unaccountable for grave crimes against humanity...

 

...Of the Vietnam War, Richard Barnet wrote that the Pentagon Papers revealed that “the bureaucratic model had completely displaced reality: the hard and stubborn facts, which so many intelligence analysts were paid so much to collect, were ignored.” So, the folly behind the war in Iraq, facts denied for myths, has a long history. The hubris and stupidity continued immediately after Johnson, Nixon and the Vietnam War...

 

...the three Abrahamic faiths, as represented by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States (S.I.A.), are unified, not as peace bearers but as war mongers against the Christian and Muslim Palestinians in the Holy Land as well as spreading death and devastation across the Arab and Muslim world who dare resist their hegemony. The Christian U.S. and the “Muslim” Saudi Arabia are supporting Israel in its ethnic cleansing of Christianity and Islam from the Holy Land.  This is occurring while the entire Christian and Muslim world are intimidated into silence. It really is a small Jewish [world?] after all...

...Their programme of ethnic cleansing and land theft continues to this day and has even accelerated during so-called negotiations, making crystal clear Israel’s contempt for peace. Israel’s purpose, it is surely clear by now, is to establish as many ‘facts on the ground’ as possible under the cloak of a bogus peace process, engineered by the AIPAC string pullers of the US administration, in the hope of making their illegitimate territorial gains irreversible. To achieve this they resort to every foul murder, every mean theft and every barefaced lie; and they they get away with it thanks to the international community’s dereliction of its solemn duty to bring Israel to account...

 

  Money, as Karl Marx lamented, plays the largest part in determining the course of history. Once speculators are able to concentrate wealth into their hands they have, throughout history, emasculated government, turned the press into lap dogs and courtiers, corrupted the courts and hollowed out public institutions, including universities, to justify their looting and greed. Today’s speculators have created grotesque financial mechanisms, from usurious interest rates on loans to legalized accounting fraud, to plunge the masses into crippling forms of debt peonage. They steal staggering sums of public funds...

 

...As we enter 2014, war between great powers seems almost inconceivable. But if we start at the other end of the telescope by imagining that a Great War with some similarities to World War I actually happened, what could future historians find in current conditions that permitted events to ride mankind to another catastrophe?..

 

..So what is TED exactly? Perhaps it's the proposition that if we talk about world-changing ideas enough, then the world will change. But this is not true, and that's the second problem. TED of course stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and I'll talk a bit about all three. I think TED actually stands for: middlebrow megachurch infotainment...

 

...A 2009 survey done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 69 percent of the Council on Foreign Relations’ members believed the world was more dangerous than—or at least as dangerous as—it was during the Cold War. In short, the elite consensus is that Egypt and Syria are not the only countries Washington has to worry about, although they are among the most pressing problems at the moment.. In other words, it must pursue a policy of global domination if it hopes to make the world safe for America. This perspective is influential, widespread—and wrong...

 

  The agreement for the two seas Canal connecting the Red and Dead Sea was summed up best by Israeli water minister Silvan Shalam who jubilantly described it following the December 9 signing ceremony at the World Bank headquarters as “a historic agreement that realises … the dream of the founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl. The canal was another strategic triumph for Israel’s conniving diplomacy even after the project was reduced to about one-tenth of its original size due to serious economic and environmental concerns raised by the World Bank...

 

  Truth is trivial. A German blond Barbie doll can shout "IDF uniform is a Shame" for generations without any effect. "She is an anti-Semite," she would be summarized in Zion. However, when IDF Major General Barbivai says that, Zion's foundations shake, rumble and tremble. On June 2011, Orna Barbivai became the first woman to be awarded the rank of major general. Since then, she is Head of the Manpower Directorate. Her military career was dedicated to manpower issues and reads like a military attempt to define "boredom."..

 

...MI5's most urgent threat lay not in its diminished resources, nor from its new Soviet enemy. Recently declassified intelligence records reveal that at the end of the war the main priority for MI5 was the threat of terrorism emanating from the Middle East, specifically from the two main Zionist terrorist groups operating in the Mandate of Palestine, which had been placed under British control in 1921. They were called the Irgun Zevai Leumi ("National Military Organization," or the Irgun for short) and the Lehi (an acronym in Hebrew for "Freedom Fighters of Israel"), which the British also termed the "Stern Gang," after its founding leader, Avraham Stern...

 

  Here’s something you won’t find on American televisions. BBC actors portraying members of the Israeli Embassy’s fictional ”Embassy Expansion Team” traveled to Kensington, where the Embassy is located, and made the announcement to unsuspecting shop owners that parts of their property belongs to the Embassy now. Hilarity ensues...

 

  It was yet another slap in the face of the United States, Israel's main patron without whom its existence, never mind its ability to maintain an ever intensifying occupation without fear of mentionable consequence, would be very much in question. In direct response to US Secretary of State John Kerry's attempt to establish a set of "security arrangements" that would, some day (Kerry apparently is suggesting after another decade), allow some level of Palestinian control over the security of the West Bank .. the Ministerial Legislative Committee voted to annex the Jordan Valley permanently to Israel...

 

  In January, congressional Democrats and Republicans who are united in their skepticism of – if not outright opposition to – the interim Iran nuclear deal will attempt to pass a new round of economic sanctions against the Iranian people. This move would very likely scuttle the current six-month agreement, end negotiations toward a comprehensive settlement, and put us back on the path to war...

 

...it looks like the nuclear negotiations could spark an economic upswing in Iran. Although none of the sanctions have been lifted, droves of Western business people are already flocking to Tehran. Iran has the world's fourth-largest known oil reserves, and the second-largest gas reserves. Business deals worth billions of euros can be made here...

 

..The day when Imam Khomeini wrote a letter to Gorbachev saying that one day Marxism will be found only in museums, some just sneered! It did not take more than two or three years until the prediction came true. It was not more than a year after Imam’s demise when everything changed; how can it be impossible? The arrogant power of the US will also vanish, it will also collapse, this hellish power is not also everlasting, and Israel is not perpetual either...

 

  "As you know, Iran is just a week away from a nuclear weapon. 'They have been for the past 20 years...,' say people who would like to bomb Iran." - Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, November 12, 2013.. Over the past few months, new estimates and predictions have poured in. Below are some of them...

 

  The year 2014 begins while the Arab World continues to plummet into further conflicts, instability and terror. Desperate for reprieve and filled with a sense of nostalgia, my mind escapes to 40 years ago, to the year 1974, just before the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war, when my father took us on a road trip across the Arab world. Back then we lived in Dammam in Saudi Arabia and the trip was our first family vacation since we were exiled out of Palestine...

 

  Over the past few years, there has been a general breakdown in how reality is perceived. In fact, the term “reality” itself is under assault, everything from issues of controlled news, false flag terrorism, challenges to basic physical laws and even issues of “disclosure,” the tantalizing idea that a complex interstellar world exists. A very real part of what has happened is a calculated attack on traditions and institutions through psychological warfare, a subset of “game theory warfare,” itself a subset of “chaos theory.”..

 

  A few days ago I received a personalized letter from your Presidential Center which included a solicitation card for donations that actually provided words for my reply. They included “I’m honored to help tell the story of the Bush Presidency” and “I’m thrilled that the Bush Institute is advancing timeless principles and practical solutions to the challenges facing our world.”.. Did you mean the “timeless principles” that drove you and Mr. Cheney to invade the country of Iraq which, contrary to your fabrications, deceptions and cover-ups, never threatened the United States? Nor could Iraq threaten its far more powerful neighbors, even if the Iraqi regime wanted to do so...

 

...The independent intelligence community knew they were dealing with a coup when Bush (43) tried to duck even having a 9-11 investigation. The lame excuse given at the time was that it would undermine national security by distracting critically needed resources to defend against the expected onslaught of new major terror acts. We know now that not only were no terror attacks really forthcoming, but no infrastructure had been set up by the so-called terrorist volcanoes that were seething underneath their Afghanistan mountain command centers...

 

  People in the West, from laypersons to academics, journalists and politicians, tend not to associate Islamists with slick public relations or credit them with the ability to fool ostensibly sophisticated Westerners. Yet, this is precisely what has happened. On television and radio, in newspapers and online, a distinction is often made between “extremist” and “moderate” Islamists, between the jihadists of Al-Qaeda and the “moderates” of the Muslim Brotherhood. In contrast to Al-Qaeda, a noun that is often preceded by the adjective “terrorist”, the Brotherhood is frequently described as “moderate” or even “democratic”. It is a false distinction...

 

  This past week the confrontation between Egypt’s ruling regime and the country’s Muslim Brotherhood intensified. In an act that should make anyone familiar with this ongoing struggle sit up and shake their head, the “military-backed government” in Cairo declared Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood a “terrorist organization.” In case anyone is inclined to get the sides mixed up, it is the Muslim Brotherhood that is defending democracy in this confrontation, and the media’s use of the euphemism “military-backed government” is to be understood as whitewash for military dictatorship...

  Should the world attempt to kill the Jews one by one, or round them up and kill all of them at one go? Am I serious? Even as recently as a year ago I would have reacted with shock and revulsion to such a proposition, but now, although I’m Jewish (I trust there would be exceptions), I’m not so sure. The problem is not "the Jews," as they are as human as anyone else – it’s the culture, going way, way back. But how would it be possible to change a dominant culture, even if defeated by a greater military force? Mass re-education? Not if they have thoroughly internalized the memes, something that happens by the age of eight – simply too difficult. Has anyone got an answer, other than what a few of us are already doing, trying to disseminate the factual, empirical, moral, ethical and spiritual truth as best we can? Email me your response, if you have one.. [The Editor]

 

  The Move to Muzzle Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala - French mainstream media and politicians are starting off the New Year with a shared resolution for 2014: permanently muzzle a Franco-African comedian who is getting to be too popular among young people...

 

  For the tenth time since Netanyahu's new government was formed in March, a US Secretary of State is landing in Canaan more determined than ever to reach an agreement between Israel and Palestine. On the same day, January 2, 2014, Israel evicted Canaan 10, a Palestinian settlement, and leaked a secret document prepared by the Palestinian Authority. After people close to Netanyahu had called Kerry Enemy of the Jews, this is another reminder to Kerry that Israel doesn't welcome him...

 

  Here are two pieces: one by and one about 'Rabbi' Michael Lerner. The 'Rabbi' is in quotes because there was always a bit of discussion as to whether Michael Lerner was a properly ordained rabbi, whatever that may mean...

 

  The Talmud is Judaism's holiest book (actually a collection of books). Its authority takes precedence over the Old Testament in Judaism. Evidence of this may be found in the Talmud itself, Erubin 21b (Soncino edition): "My son, be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah (Old Testament)."..

 

  Gay Jews have 'higher souls' than gentiles, says deputy minister - This is not the opinion of one wacky rabbi. This is the teaching of Orthodox Judaism spoken by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's cabinet appointee, Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, also an elected Israeli Congress (Knesset) representative...

 

  Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu today had the audacity to express doubt about the Palestinians’ desire for peace.. The facts, however, tell a different story – a story of Israeli deception, negotiating in bad faith and contempt for the Palestinians , Israel’s own chief financier, the United States, and international law...

 

  Mark Glenn wrote this at the end of 2008 and published in Jan 2009. It could have been written just yesterday. A truly powerful, timeless piece...

 

  With rampant, US- and Israeli-led terror hysteria, one would have thought that societal safety would surely be paramount. Societal safety is crucially dependent on rational risk management that successively involves (a) accurate information, (b) science-based analysis involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses. and (c) informed systemic change to minimize risk. However this is grossly perverted in the US-beholden Western democracies in which Big Money buys people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality and political power and there is perverted risk management successively involving...

 

  In any context other than the Israeli one, the idea of college students testing the limits of "permissible discussion" would be ridiculous. Imagine college students "testing the limits" of debate on abortion, gun control, the death penalty or any other issue. It's inconceivable, at least nowadays. In the United States today, students can freely discuss anything... except Israel. How crazy is that? That is as likely to change in 2014 as it is likely Members of Congress will criticize the occupation, and for the same reason. College presidents, like other politicians, will not offend fat cat donors. It's that simple...

 

 

  2013 was, for many reasons, an important year for the Islamic Republic of Iran, for U.S.-Iranian relations, and for the Middle East more generally.  Looking back, one thing which strikes us as especially important is that, during 2013, the failures of U.S. grand strategy in the Middle East (and the gradual implosion of America’s position in the region) became evident even to some who were too analytically obtuse or ideologically reluctant to notice it earlier...

 

  Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a piece entitled “Israel’s Christians Awakening,” by Adi Schwartz, arguing that Palestinian Christians in Israel are undergoing a change, separating their identity from the Palestinian minority and enlisting in the Israeli army as a sign of close cooperation with the Israeli Jewish society.. As part of this community, I can tell you that Palestinian Christians in Israel are aware of their belonging to the Palestinian people in every aspect of their lives. They live and function within a state that is defined for others, since it is by definition a Jewish state, and policymakers are wholly focused on serving those others...

 

  At a time when organized Jewish interests worldwide are in perpetual screech mode over the fact there isn’t quite enough war, lawlessness, and human suffering, it’s a bad sign—bad sign indeed–when these same interests gather to sing the praises of a new Pope, said to represent the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. Did we say ‘singing the praises’ of a new Pope? Our apologies then for short-changing the reader. It—the reaction on the part of organized Jewish interests to the election of one Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio–has been nothing less than a quiet riot of sorts, or at least mildly Purimesque...

 

...I did not write Goliath with concern for Israel’s anguished “soul,” or with any abiding belief in the absolute necessity of a Jewish state; that I did not advance the fantastical notion that the Israel that exists behind the 1949 Armistice Lines is a vibrant democracy. And I refused to pay lip service to the idea that the Palestinians were partially at fault for their own dispossession — that “both sides” were responsible for the crisis. This is what you are expected to do if you wish to cater to Jewish-American opinion from a liberal perspective...

 

  2013 was a year in which the so-called peace process charade was allowed to continue, leading Palestinians on yet another futile journey of broken promises. Meanwhile, the Israeli colonial project in the West Bank and East Jerusalem carried on unabated. But it was not entirely a year of doom and gloom either, for the global boycott campaign (BDS) has taken off like never before, surpassing the capricious Palestinian leadership and its confined political platforms...

 

...We need a new U.N. resolution requiring Israel to unconditionally establish equal rights, fair laws and fair courts for every human being under its jurisdiction, whether civil or military, without exception; the courts must be able to set legal precedents and should be subject to peer review by judges appointed by the U.N...

 

...In America punishment falls more heavily on the innocent, the young, and the poor than it does on the banksters who are living on the Federal Reserve’s subsidy known as Quantitative Easing and who have escaped criminal liability for the fraudulent financial instruments that they sold to the world.  Single mothers, depressed by the lack of commitment of the fathers of their children, are locked away for using drugs to block out their depression. Their children are seized by a Gestapo institution, Child Protective Services, and end up in foster care where many are abused...

 

  There’s no question what the big foreign policy issue for the Obama administration is going to be in 2014: Iran. How the US navigates the small space between war and peace in the volatile Middle East is going to determine the fate of our overextended and nearly bankrupt empire, and Tehran – the epicenter of yet another ginned up "crisis" – is ground zero. This drama has been playing out over the course of the past decade, starting with the Bush administration’s weird relations with the mullahs – a relationship that was openly hostile and covertly something else altogether...

 

..Conflicts without end continue. Waging them threaten humanity. War profiteers never had it better. Washington bears most responsibility. One nation after another is ravaged, destroyed and plundered. It's the American way. Advancing its imperium matters most. So does benefitting the nation's privileged class. War criminals and crooks run things. The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan. They're waging war on humanity. They're ravaging the world for unchallenged dominance. Millions of lost lives don't matter. It's a small price to pay, they claim. So is unspeakable human misery...

 

  Over the centuries, rage and hostility against Jews has repeatedly erupted in terrible violence. Again and again, Jews have been driven out of countries where they’d been living. Why does anti-Semitism exist? And why has furious hostility toward Jews broken out, again and again, in the most varied nations, eras and cultures? Closely related to this is the broader issue of relations between Jews and non-Jews – a subject that many writers and scholars have called “the Jewish question.”..

 

  The National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship” taking place at the National Press Club in Washington on March 7, 2014 is both unprecedented and overdue!..

 

  Celebrating this Christmas the majority of Christians are not aware that there is a 2013-years-old brutal Judaic war against Christmas, and against all that it represents. Christianity is a total contradiction to Judaism and to the Jewish way of life.  Judaism, in its present form, is a racist, elitist, supremacist, chauvinist, discriminative, vengeful, intolerant, militarily genocidal, colonialist, enslaving, criminal, hate ideology, while Christianity is a religion of love, peace, equality, forgiveness, and compassion. Christianity is the nullification of Judaism...

 

...Can you imagine growing up in a place where all your teachers keep saying that your grandparents—or those of the kid sitting next to you—were made into soap? Do you understand what such a kid sees whenever he uses a soap bar? Can you understand what happens when he discovers later in life that no human genes were ever found in those soap bars? Can you understand what he feels after finding that everything was an evil emotional manipulation performed by a control-freak regime interested in keeping its citizens frightened forever?..

 

  Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon declared, on Tuesday, that former British International Development Secretary Clare Short and three other European legislators would be arrested if they try to come to Israel, due to their involvement in a European-Palestinian organization calling for an end to the Israeli siege on Gaza...

 

  Israel’s Defense Minister, Bogie Yaalon is ticked off (in Hebrew it’s called b’rogez).  And when an IDF ex-chief of staff is ticked, look out.  It’s those damn delegitimizers again!  Making trouble for Israel. Bogie’s got their number.  He’s going to fight fire with fire.  If those Europeans want to slap labels on our West Bank products and punish us for our settlements by preventing us from participating in prestigious projects like Horizon 2020–well then, we’ll show ‘em!..

 

...Putin is a social conservative and a fierce patriot who, like many Americans, opposes regime change in the name of democracy.  The American people, after failed interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, agree with him- both Putin and Americans, unlike The NY Times, vehemently opposed a US intervention in Syria.  It seems Putin has more in common with the opinions of Americans than does The NY Times, which begs the question, why is The NY Times so hell bent on demonizing the President of the Russian Federation when he's supported by more than 60% of the Russian people?..

 

  The Geneva “interim” agreement reached in November between Iran and the so-called P5+1.. freezes Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for modest sanctions relief, with the goal of enabling further talks to comprehensively resolve one of the world's thorniest challenges. Yet despite the landmark accord, more than two dozen Senators introduced legislation on December 19 to impose new oil and financial sanctions on Iran. The Senate could vote on the measure soon after it returns from recess in January. Powerful lobby organizations are mobilized in support of the bill, and it could certainly pass...

 

  A new report on a recent Israeli intelligence assessment indicates that Israel’s military intelligence service disagrees with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s public statements on the current leadership in Iran. Since the election of Hassan Rohani as president in Iran this past June, Netanyahu has repeatedly said that there’s no real difference between Rohani and his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and that Rohani’s conciliatory approach to the international community is just a trick by the Iranian regime...

 

  Iranian officials have confirmed that a mutual understanding on the implementation of the interim P5+1 deal has been reached, and that the implementation of the pact will begin between 1/20 and 1/30. Western officials didn’t dispute this, but tried to portray it in a much less positive light, saying there were still some minor points that needed to be addressed. They didn’t clarify what those were, however, nor did they suggest they would keep the deal from going into effect...

 

  Two days ago we observed the latest disclosure in the seemingly endless Snowden treasure trove of leaked NSA files, when Spiegel released the broad details of the NSA's Access Network Technology (ANT) catalog explaining how virtually every hardware architecture in the world has been hacked by the US superspies.. Today, we step back from Apple and release the full ANT catalog showcasing the blueprints of how the NSA managed to insert a backdoor into virtually every piece of hardware known under the sun...

 

...do the neoconservatives deserve to be prosecuted and, if convicted, spending years in jail for sending the American taxpayers a six-trillion-dollar bill and for slaughtering both innocent Muslims and civilians and Americans and for creating perpetual wars?.. Bush, Obama, and the neoconservatives who spearheaded the perpetual wars in the Middle East are responsible for at least 132,000 civilians deaths and that does not include murder, sodomy, rape, and torture. That also does not include 360,000 American veterans who probably have brain injuries due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

  In a little noted initiative the General Assembly on November 26, 2013 voted to proclaim 2014 the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People was requested to organize relevant activities in cooperation with governments, the UN system, intergovernmental organizations, and significantly, civil society. The vote was 110-7, with 56 abstentions, which is more or less reflective of the sentiments now present in international society... 

 

  Summing up the main political events which have taken place in 2013 it could be said that Russia expanded its agenda to the global level trying to stabilize the situation and get off the ground what has been stymied for many years. The Arab world has said the Russia’s regional clout is growing while the US reputation is falling down. Americans don’t argue. A recent Pew Research Center conducted in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations showed that full 70% of Americans believe the United States is less respected than in the past. The public also disapproves of Obama’s handling of Syria, Iran, China and Afghanistan by wide margins...

 

  To expose the absurd and unrealistic nature of the “one-state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians”, and to extract one of the main perils it encapsulates, I would mention here mainly three facts. These facts have the double merit of being crystal clear, and also of being based on fundamental pillars of civilization, i.e. time-tested. I would suggest that they become fundamental guidelines for any further proposition:..

 

...A US State Department official and former US Ambassador to NATO was reported to have attempted to bully the Ukrainian government into signing the EU agreement which would have dragged Ukraine into the economic crisis plaguing Western European countries, and transformed Ukraine into a puppet state, completing NATO’s military encirclement of Russia...

 

  Lebanon was jolted into a fresh political crisis on Friday after a car bomb in central Beirut assassinated Mohammad Shatah, a prominent political ally and adviser to former Prime Ministers Saad Hariri and Fouad Siniora. Such attacks have been a sad part of Lebanese political culture since the 1970s. The target, timing and location of the attack perhaps shed light on the perpetrators and purpose of the criminal deed, which killed at least four others and wounded over 70 people...

 

  On Jan. 22, 2014, the long-promised Geneva II conference will begin, with close to 30 countries sending delegations in a last-ditch bid to end the violence in Syria. The talks, which will include both the Assad regime and parts of the opposition, hope to win support for a mutual ceasefire and to forge a political settlement to nearly three years of civil war. Nevertheless, optimism is in short order. Below are critical questions the Geneva II conference will need to answer and address if peace is to prove possible...

 

  The United States teamed up with Saudi Arabia in the 1990s to conceive Takfirism, says former CIA officer Robert Baer in his 2003 book, Sleeping with the Devil. Baer traces the Saudi government’s finance of Takfiri terrorism in Chechnya.. He said the center of the global economy is a “kingdom built on thievery, one that nurtures terrorism, destroys any possibility of a middle class based on property rights, and promotes slavery and prostitution.”..

 

  Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I'd start with: "How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?" And: "How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?"..

 

  All is not well in the land of US spooks despite them having access to all the data on citizens that they can eat. William Binney, creator of some of the computer code used by the National Security Agency to snoop on Internet traffic around the world, has warned that the agency knows too much. According to the Wall Street Journal, the NSA can't understand the data it has because it has too much to do anything useful with it...

 

...While September 12, 2013 will not mark a decisive military victory, we will consider it the end of the Summer in which American Exceptionalism lost its hold on the minds of many good willed people on the planet, many Catholics in general, and American Catholics in particular. And in this battle, Vladimir Putin led the charge. Putin´s editorial also marked the return of Russia as an important leader of the free world. In order to explain how this is so, let us briefly summarize the last forty years of Russian history...

 

  Every schoolboy used to know that at the height of the empire, almost a quarter of the atlas was coloured pink, showing the extent of British rule. But that oft recited fact dramatically understates the remarkable global reach achieved by this country. A new study has found that at various times the British have invaded almost 90 per cent of the countries around the globe...

 

...Across Europe, globalism and transnationalism, as represented by the eurozone and EU, seem in retreat, as nationalism is resurgent.. Let France be France! Let Britain be Britain! Let Scotland be Scotland! These are the cries coming from the hearts of Europeans rejecting mass immigration and the cacophonous madness of multiculturalism. All men may be equal in rights. But most prefer their own faith, country, culture, civilization, and kind. They cherish and wish to maintain their own unique and separate identities. They do not want to disappear into some great amalgam of the New World Order. Whether globalism or nationalism prevails, the big battle is coming...

 

On the last day of 2013, Israel released 26 Palestinian prisoners jailed before the Oslo Accords, after the High Court of Justice rejected a petition to halt the move. The semi-official claims on Israeli media that the USA will release Jonathan Pollard at the same opportunity turned out being false. Hebrew newspaper Haaretz had reported on December 28 that following the release of the third group of Palestinian prisoners, Prime Minister Netanyahu will announce Israel's plans for new housing tenders in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It added that both the USA and the EU had warned Netanyahu against such a move...

 

 

  The two seas canal agreement, connecting the Red and Dead sea, was summed up best by Silvan Shalom, Israel’s minister for development of the Negev and the Galilee, who jubilantly described it, following the 9 December signing ceremony at the World Bank headquarters, as “a historic agreement that realizes… the dream of [founder of modern Zionism Theodore] Herzl”..

 

...Earlier this month, Judge Richard Leon ruled in favour of freedom.  And there it is; the crack that separates federal judges. It also shows up in broad ideological terms. It separates conservatives from libertarians, liberals from liberals, and socialists and anarchists from so called communists. It is a crack that runs through philosophy, religion, and history. It probably runs through most individuals...

 

  Following the resignation of 44 Iraqi MPs over violence in Anbar province, leading Iraqi politician Tarek al-Hashimi said that it was about time that Iraqi Sunnis "unite and have a common vision". With the publication of the official list of political blocs running for Iraq's parliamentary election due in April 2014, that "vision" was about to become real as Sunni political forces discuss ways to outline a common electoral strategy. Dozens of Sunni-dominated political groups have already registered for the poll which many believe would determine which direction Iraq will take- staying united or breaking up...

 

  As it became known from the Romanian Foreign Ministry employees dialogue in a social network, currently the U.S. and the Romanian government are negotiating the deployment about 3 thousand representatives of the terrorist organization "Mojahedin-e Khalq"(MEK) on the territory of Romania. It is assumed that in the case of the Romanian leadership consent members of the group will be compactly settled near the city of Craiova...