Jun 30, 2013 Earth’s alpha predator: Zionist Mafia, by Rand Clifford | Veterans News Actions trump lies. Evidence does not lie.. so how has the American public been so brainwashed by lies, in light of so much evidence? Are Zionists that intelligent, or is the American public that unintelligent—and how did even that obvious question become a “third-rail issue”? Totally uncool, our tradition of being outsmarted by Zionists even to the point of “Rothschilding” our descendants’ future. Is it possible for the American public to think their way out of Zionist enslavement . . . or is Gaza a preview of our future?.. Israel and the War Party Have Panicked over Rowhani’s Election as Iran’s President, by Muhammad Sahimi | Antiwar On the eve of Iran’s presidential elections of 17 June 2005, George W. Bush declared that the elections did not have any legitimacy, because "Iran’s president has no power." But, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected, refused to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment program, and began criticizing Israel and casting doubts on Holocaust, suddenly he became the most powerful man in Iran who supposedly had his finger on the trigger for Iran’s non-existent nuclear arsenal. Suddenly, it was 1938 again and Ahmadinejad the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler... Help fab journo Gareth Porter write his timely book on how Israel and the US "constructed" the Iran nuclear crisis, by Helena Cobban | Kickstarter For several years now, Israel and U.S. officials and many portions of the western MSM have maintained a steady drumbeat of allegations and accusations that the government of Iran has been pursuing a secret, "military" adjunct to its (quite legal, and regularly inspected) civilian nuclear program. Currently, numerous western officials and commentators are warning that there will be a deadline in late spring or so of 2013, beyond which this alleged military nuclear program will be unstoppable... A Glimmer of Hope in Iran, by Joschka Fischer | Project Syndicate No one could have reckoned with Hassan Rowhani’s victory in Iran’s presidential election. Even Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was probably more than a little surprised by Rowhani’s first-round victory, following a campaign that began with eight candidates. As a result, the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, as well as the civil war in Syria, may well take on a new dynamic. But that is how it is in the Middle East: you never know what lies around the corner... Football and Palestine | Gilad Atzmon ...we would visit Palestine to make a film and help tell the world what football means for ordinary Palestinians living on the other side of the wall Israel built to encircle and occupy their land. The film was made on the eve of Israel hosting Euro 2013. Filmed, cut and edited in the space of 48 hours this is politically-committed reportage at its rapid and rough best... The crime of indifference – in Israel and the US, by Lawrence Davidson | Redress Information & Analysis ...Wiesel has identified himself with Zionism and by doing so has inevitably been caught up in contradictions and dilemmas that challenge his reputation as a moral icon. For instance, in May 2010 he made a public appeal to President Obama not to put any pressure on the Israeli government over the issue of Jerusalem even as the Israelis evicted Palestinian residents. In doing so he revealed his own indifference to the real nature of Israeli objectives and behaviour. As a result a hundred Israeli intellectuals and activists wrote him a public reply expressing “frustration” and “outrage” at his attitude and actions... [‘The Weasel’ as some kind of moral arbiter has to be some kind of sick joke.] Read more...Zionism and torn papers, by Adam Keller | Crazy Country A heated debate, polarized positions, a tense vote - and at the height of suspense, a speaker mounts the podium, angrily and demonstratively tearing up the text of the resolution which had just been approved. This is what happened a few days ago at the Knesset, during the First Reading of the bill known as "The Negev Bedouins Settlement Act”. But when did we see something of the kind before?.. History of the Theft of Palestine and the Jewish Invention of Modern Terrorism, by Mohamed Khodr | Veterans Today ...“The earliest known organization that exhibited aspects of a modern terrorist organization was the Zealots of Judea. Known to the Romans as SICARII,, or dagger-men , they carried on an underground campaign of assassination of Roman occupation forces, as well as any Jews they felt had collaborated with the Romans”. In the 20th Century it was the Jewish terrorist groups the Irgun, led by future Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Menachem Begin, and the Stern Gang led by Yitzhak Shamir, another future Israeli Prime Minister that introduced terrorism in Palestine, the Middle East, and Europe... Diary Of An MKO Rent-A-Crowd Demonstrator, by Alina Alymkulova | RFERL Kyrgyz student Alina Alymkulova recounts how she was recruited to travel from Prague to Paris to attend a rally for the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), an Iranian opposition movement in exile.. as Alymkulova's diary makes clear, some of the tens of thousands of supporters who attended the June 22 rally in Paris might have been motivated by more than their wish for a free Iran... Archbishop of Canterbury’s false start in Holy Land, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis ...His press officer was very defensive and said, in effect, that details of the trip were up on the website and there was nothing to add. In such a short visit there had not been enough time to go to Gaza. He would not be drawn on whether the archbishop had been denied permission by the Israelis. Nor would he comment about the promise to serve all the people of the region “without exception” while apparently making a very important exception of the Christian communities in Gaza and Bethlehem, surely the most oppressed of all... [Exam question: Since when has Christianity been a wholly owned subsidiary of tribal Jewry?] Jun 29, 2013 Support MWC NEWS!!! | Gilad Atzmon We have only 35 days to do this. Last night we lunched our fundraising campaign. It will not happen without your help. Please visit our crowd founding page at:.. If you happen to bump into John Kerry at Ben Gurion Airport, you may wonder whether he is coming or going. He may well be wondering himself... ...Today, there exist an assortment of deeply worrisome encounters between political extremes brought on by a range of conditioning circumstances. As a first approximation I would mention three disturbing instances, each distinctive, yet each afflicted by destructive polarized politics: Egypt, Turkey, and the United States... ...Desperate for foreign investment, countries throughout Africa are at the mercy of their new colonial masters – national and international agrochemical corporations, fighting for land, water and control of the world’s food supplies. Driven overwhelmingly by self-interest and profit, the current crop of ‘investors’ differ little from their colonial ancestors. The means may have changed, but the aim – to rape and pillage, no matter the sincere sounding rhetoric, remains more or less the same. Fatou Bom Bensouda, the Gambian-born deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), was never Washington’s first choice to succeed the inveterately self-promoting elitist ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. And it is doubtful that key Obama administration officials have changed their minds this week given Ms. Bensouda’s impassioned invitation on 6/27/13 to Palestine, urging its accession to the Rome Statute and the ICC, the former signed and ratified, as of this month, by 122 states with 31 additional countries, including Russia, having signed with ratification pending in their legislatures. During the Snowden controversy, the American people have been treated to a harsh dose of reality as to the true nature of the U.S. welfare-warfare state. The crisis has caused the U.S. welfare-warfare state to drop its mantle of “good and benevolent” and to bare its iron fangs for all the world to see. Threats, blackmail, bribery, and extortion. It hasn’t been pretty. Consider, for example, U.S. foreign aid. From the time they are six years old, Americans are inculcated with the notion that the U.S. government is a good and benevolent government, one that caringly and compassionately shares the wealth of American taxpayers with the people of the world... One of the highest ranking military officers in the US is under investigation for allegedly leaking top secret information about a cyber attack on Iran's nuclear programme, according to reports. NBC news channel reported on Thursday that retired General James Cartwright, a former second-highest-ranking officer, was under investigation for leaking information on a covert computer virus, called Stuxnet... Western War of Terror Comes Out of the Closet, by Jim W. Dean | Veterans Today Western publics sit like deer in the headlights, unable to move despite the illegal night hunter about to shoot them through the head. But it also could be said we are shooting ourselves in the head. I use that dramatic analogy because that seems to be exactly what is happening to us. A new generation of terror is being created right before our very eyes using our own tax dollars to do so, and the effort led by those sworn to protect us…people we elected... Egypt On The Brink | Moon of Alabama Egypt is blowing up again and this time it is serious.. The economy is nearing a total breakdown with acute electricity and petroleum shortages. The general security situation is bad. Income from tourism has not come back. Making the head of a former terrorist group, which in the 1990s had blown up tourists, the governor of the tourism heavy governate Luxor didn't help. Nor did a foreign policy that has been all over the field and seemed to change weekly to follow the opinion of that country that was most willing to lend the next billion Egypt urgently needed... Obama’s NUMEC Nuclear Diversion Cover-Up, by Grant Smith | Antiwar ..U.S. taxpayers will pay up to half a billion to clean up the former Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation toxic dump, even as plaintiffs sue NUMEC’s successors for hundreds of millions in wrongful death and health-related lawsuits. Meanwhile, the highest declassification panel in the United States may finally decide to release files confirming what top CIA officials have long claimed – that NUMEC’s sole original purpose was as a smuggling front that illegally diverted U.S. government-owned weapons-grade uranium into the Israeli nuclear weapons program in the 1960s... The House That Broke The Camel's Back | Roi Tov ...The owner of the house said that he had worked for years to get the permit, having even addressed directly the bureau of the President. This claim was confirmed by newspaper Haaretz. The pictures reproduced above show how deep the protest is. These Palestinians live within the Green Line and are full citizens of the State of Israel. Yet, they are waving the flag of the State of Palestine. Protesters have announced that on July 8, there would be a general strike in all Palestinian towns within the Green Line. "We don't understand," Zionist readers are saying, "we even built them a highway!" failing to understand that as long as they say "them," they have no legitimacy... Wesley Clark, the NSA and Internet Censorship, by Jim Fetzer | Veterans Today We knew that it was coming. When a pressure-cooker bomb is described as “a weapon of mass destruction”, can anyone doubt that the government has gone on a binge with false information to manipulate the public? And the use of high-tech surveillance techniques appears to be in its infancy, where the national security state is going to protect its interests... Britain’s unbearable shame: David Cameron’s “Torah” government, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis Ten years ago Tam Dalyell, the “Father of the House” (i.e. the most senior member of the House of Commons in the British Parliament), sparked a huge row by accusing the then prime minister, Tony Blair, of “being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers”. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Dalyell named Lord Levy (Blair’s personal envoy on the Middle East), Peter Mandelson (whose father was Jewish) and Jack Straw, the foreign secretary (who has Jewish ancestry), as three of the leading figures who had influenced Blair’s policies on the Middle East... Some Thoughts On The Snowden Fallout | Moon of Alabama ...Even if Snowden did not talk with the Chinese and Russian secret services the NSA will have to assume that he did and that they now have access to all the material Snowden acquired including, possibly, secret U.S. communication codes.. For the next years at least the NSA is fucked. It will have to revise all its systems and network components. This as it can no longer trust its system administrators. It will have to go to a "four eyes rule" for sysadmins so any access and change can only be made by two persons working together. This will kill productivity.. A four eye rule will also require many new system administrators - by definition a rare commodity... Speed, Power and the Physics of Finance Capitalism, by Michael A Peters | Truthout ...Financialization characterizes the politics of late neoliberal capitalism allowing it to extract value from the commons: to raid Social Security and Medicare, to privatize education and infrastructure, to monetize medicine and medical insurance, to massively mortgage student debt, to confiscate depositors' funds, to asset-strip state enterprises. These are all forms of enclosure that permit a tiny but powerful minority to plunder the commonwealth in the same way that this global elite plundered the personal wealth of the majority via the housing bubble and the huge drop in household wealth for all but the very very few... Jun 28, 2013 Smearing Alice Walker, by Jeffrey Blankfort | CounterPunch In the comments section of a recent online article in the right wing New York Jewish publication, Algemeiner, not to be confused with the Frankfurter Allgemeine but conceivably with Der Sturmer, there was an argument over whether or not the “Mossad should deal with” Alice Walker as punishment for the critical comments directed towards Israel and American Jewish supporters of Israel in her latest book, “The Cushion in the Road” which, we can assume, none of those commenting had read... [By all accounts, they never do read the offending piece of writing - they just know that somebody branded it as 'antisemitic.' I suppose they’re afraid of contracting the dreaded 'antisemitism' disease through direct exposure. And I don’t suppose that it occurs to them that they are exhibiting the symptoms of a different mental illness, characterized by projection, ignorance, denial, self-deception, narcissism, hatred and paranoia.] Syrian Orthodox Bishop beheaded by Syrian Rebels | Intifada Palestine The two are brutally executed – beheaded with a small combat knife. Echoing previous beheading recorded by insurgents, the head is held up to the cheers of onlookers and then placed on the body. This month has seen an escalation in sectarian atrocities committed by insurgents, who have been publicly armed and supported by America, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other actors. Indeed, the atrocities are coinciding with further arms transfers – with new advanced weaponry witnessed in the hands of militants in the past number of weeks... The ‘Making You Safe’ Lie, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar Given the fact that the Internet and phone intercepts made by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) are in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution, there is only one nevertheless completely irrelevant argument for the government to make in their defense: that they have made Americans safer. But is that true?.. Why peace in Palestine-Israel is unattainable, by Jamal Kanj | Redress Information & Analysis ...Affirming its real intention and to pre-empt Kerry’s renewed efforts – in what is becoming traditional embarrassment for visiting US officials – the Israeli government issued earlier this month plans to build more than 1,000 new Jews-only homes in two West Bank colonies. Instead of addressing Israel’s inflexibility, the US is appeasing it with an economic package worth 4 billion US dollars of private American and European investment... [There will be no peace in the Middle East (or in most of the world, for that matter) as long as the Jewish State of Israel continues to exist. This may not bother the power elite - they profit from war - but it should concern the vast majority of ordinary people who do the paying and the dying.] Did Rouhani dupe Europe? by Peter Jenkins | Asia Times Online In defense of his 2003-05 record, Iran's president-elect Hassan Rouhani writes, "While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the facility in Isfahan. In fact, by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Isfahan." Some claim this as evidence that Rouhani duped and tricked his European counterparts in the negotiations that took place in Tehran in October 2003. That interpretation is wrong. I will explain why... Can Rouhani solve 'the Iran nuclear issue'? by Hamid Dabashi | Al Jazeera "A nuclear weaponised Iran destabilises the region, prompts a regional arms race, and wastes the scarce resources in the region." Who do you think might have written this sentence? Chances are very few people around the world would know, or would now believe that the person who wrote this sentence is none other than the current president-elect of the Islamic Republic, Mr. Hassan Rouhani. The next question is even more intriguing. When would you guess Mr. Rouhani wrote this sentence?.. Syria: The Army Secures The Lebanese Border | Moon of Alabama This is interesting news from The Independent which I have not yet seen mentioned in U.S. media. ‘Once a rebel stronghold, the town of Tal Kalakh on the Syrian side of the border with Lebanon changed sides at the week-end and is now controlled by the Syrian army.’ After the Syrian Arab Army cleaned Al Qusayr of insurgents, the area at the eastern border of Lebanon was closed for insurgency logistics. Control of Tal Kalakh now closes the way through the northern Lebanese border and secures the M1 road from the port city of Tartus to Homs... Rabbi Gluckstein? | Paul Eisen What has Marxism and Psychoanalysis in common? Well, they're both revolutionary ideologies that had a profound - some say beneficial, some say detrimental - influence on western society.. what they also have in common is that these movements were founded and run, totally or near-totally, by Jews - and Godless Jews at that. And there are more - the Frankfurt School, Multi-Culturalism and Neo-Conservatism to name but a few... If U.S. Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would They Look Any Different? by Jeff Cohen | CounterPunch The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets – especially TV news – that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led the Iraq invasion have come to resemble state-controlled media outlets in their near-total identification with the government as it pursues the now 30-year-old whistleblower. While an independent journalism system would be dissecting the impacts of NSA surveillance on privacy rights, and separating fact from fiction, U.S. news networks have obsessed on questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused? How can he be brought to justice?.. Western War of Terror Comes Out of the Closet, by Jim W. Dean | Veterans Today ..Let’s review the current Syrian mess and how some very evil people, maybe an evil empire really, saw a way to exploit the situation to launch a new generation of terror not only in the Mid East but the Caucus region and Europe and North Africa. The devastation that this will bring upon those areas is so certain I can only conclude that it is actually the purpose of the whole effort. The motivation seems a bit hazy as there is no real understandable beneficial motive for the people of these countries…like a real security threat. A war for commercial interests is the only feasible reason... West, Zionists Mortally Threatened by Truth, by Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today ...We have less and less freedom of speech every year here in the West, and there has developed a robust alternative media on the Internet, which tells the truth about many of the most contentious and controversial issues, including the loss of freedom, including the really hardline, sort of red line issues that you are just not allowed to talk about – such as the coup d’état on September 11, 2001 and the domination of power here in the US by hardline pro-Israeli Zionists. These are things that nobody is allowed to talk about in polite company in the West or they will lose their careers, they will be targeted one way or another and in a few cases people even get killed... Big Brother, not Snowden and Greenwald, Is the Story, by Sheldon Richman | The Future of Freedom Foundation ..MSNBC’s self-identification as a progressive network is hard to square with its unrelenting assaults on Snowden and Greenwald, and its de-emphasis of NSA surveillance. Andrea Mitchell, who functions as the network’s chief diplomatic stenographer, wondered why the NSA was hiring contractors when it could be recruiting people with the “right value system” from the military. (She’s forgotten that whistleblower Bradley Manning is in the military.) Chris Matthews of Hardball says that any foreign government that won’t turn Snowden over to the U.S. government is “no buddy of ours.”.. The Truth Shall Keep Us Free, by Judge Andrew Napolitano | Antiwar Which is more dangerous to personal liberty in a free society: a renegade who tells an inconvenient truth about government law-breaking, or government officials who lie about what the renegade revealed? That’s the core issue in the great public debate this summer, as Americans come to the realization that their government has concocted a system of laws violative of the natural law, profoundly repugnant to the Constitution and shrouded in secrecy... Archbishop of Canterbury says Israel “centre of the world” | Redress Information & Analysis With monotonous regularity, hardly a month passes without an Israeli flag waver is appointed to a position of power or influence in Britain, or a Zionist stooge already in authority feels impelled to affirm his allegiance to Israel. Earlier in the week we reported the appointment of Ian Livingston, an “outspoken supporter of Israel”, as trade and investment minister. In February we drew attention to James Purnell, a rabid pro-apartheid wall Zionist who believes that all critics of Israel are anti-Semites. He had been put in charge of strategy at Britain’s state broadcaster, the BBC... [Yes, and there’s a black hole at the center of the galaxy.] Jun 27, 2013 Is Syria the last straw? by Richard John Stapleton | MCW News Why can't we keep our noses out of other countries' business? We could be headed to hell in a handbasket in Syria. How much would this Don Quixote military misadventure cost? The US does not have an inexhaustible supply of money; and it has a huge federal debt and budget problem already, and millions of suffering, frustrated, needy citizens within its own borders. First it was Kuwait. Then Afghanistan. Then Iraq. Now Syria? Come on. Even dreaming about another war in the Middle East is insane... [I has gradually dawned on me, as well as many others, that ever since George Bush was first elected (and perhaps even before that) America (not to mention the UK and Canada), has been run by psychopaths. It is equally clear that at the core of this political madhouse are a bunch of ruthless, fanatical Zionists. Conspiracy theory? Hardly – just an observation based on common sense and what is obvious.] “Diamonds for Peanuts” and the Double Standard, by Marsha B. Cohen | LobeLog ..One of the most overlooked and under-discussed aspects of the Iranian nuclear program, at least from an Iranian point of view, is the double standard that’s applied to it: while Israel has an estimated 100-200 nuclear weapons that it has concealed for decades, Iran is treated like the nuclear threat — and Iran doesn’t possess a single nuclear weapon. Adding insult to injury, Israel is usually the first, loudest and shrillest voice condemning Iran and demanding “crippling sanctions” while deflecting attention away from its own record... Smearing Rowhani with AMIA, by Cyrus Safdari | Iran Affairs ..the point of the smear campaign is to try to pre-emptively discredit any newly-elected Iranian president so as it make it harder for any potential US-Iran breakthrough to occur under the new president. After all, Khatami's election and his outreach to the US caught the pro-Israeli lobby and Iran hawks off-guard, and they had to scurry to get the meme out in the media that Iranian presidents are just powerless nobodies who should be ignored. That changed, of course, once Ahmadinejad came around, and his every utterance was presented as proof of the coming Iranian-inspired Apocalypse... Brzezinski on the Syria Crisis | The National Interest ...in the long run, a hostile region like that cannot be policed, even by a nuclear-armed Israel. It will simply do to Israel what some of the wars have done to us on a smaller scale. Attrite it, tire it, fatigue it, demoralize it, cause emigration of the best and the first, and then some sort of cataclysm at the end which cannot be predicted at this stage because we don’t know who will have what by when. And after all, Iran is next door. It might have some nuclear capability. Suppose the Israelis knock it off. What about Pakistan and others? The notion that one can control a region from a very strong and motivated country, but of only six million people, is simply a wild dream... Sorry, NSA, Terrorists Don't Use Verizon. Or Skype. Or Gmail, by Brian Merchant | Motherboard ...Even though the still-growing surveillance state that sprung up in the wake of 9/11 was enacted almost entirely to "fight terrorism," reports show that the modes of communication that agencies like the NSA are targeting are scarcely used by terrorists at all.. Terrorists simply aren't dumb enough to discuss their secret plans over Skype or to email each other confidential information on Gmail. So, essentially, the NSA is deeply compromising our privacy so that it can do an extremely shitty job of looking for terrorists. Nice... Knesset: Jews Allowed to Puncture Tyres, Palestinians Not | Roi Tov ...Netanyahu approved actions of Price Tag within the Green Line since the IDF has no jurisdiction within Israel. Price Tag became a "non-authorized organization" allowed to terrorize within Israel, but forbidden in the West Bank. Similar actions committed by Palestinians would be brutally dealt with by the Shin Beth secret police, whether they took place within the Green Line or in the West Bank. Drones would assassinate, missiles would be launched in all directions. Secret new weapons would be deployed, and a thousand new informants would be recruited if a Palestinian child would dare to spray just half a graffiti... The Gatekeeper of Freiburg University, by Gabi Weber | The OtherSite Six weeks ago, the University of Freiburg was defeated by Cafe Palestine when five judges at the Administrative Court of Freiburg rejected the university’s arguments for denying Cafe Palestine a venue for one of its speakers. Surely it is now time to delve a little more deeply into this unprecedented case which deserves close attention. At the centre of it all we find one Dr. Heinrich Schwendemann, Freiburg University historian and a founder of one of many German Holocaust memorial sites Shoa.de.. Will They Assassinate Snowden? by Jacob G. Hornberger | The Future of Freedom Foundation ...It finally seems to have seeped into the consciousness of the American people that their Cold War national-security state is fully capable of assassinating anyone, including a former employee of the national-security state, so long as “national security” is at stake. Never mind, of course, that the term “national security,”.. has no objective meaning and that it’s not even found in the Constitution. After all, what does the “security” of a nation mean? It means nothing. It is an empty, nebulous term that accomplishes nothing more than giving the military, the CIA, and the NSA a justification for existing... The Globalization of NATO, By Ludwig Watzal | MCW News The books “The Globalization of NATO” and “Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya” deal with the expansion of a military alliance that was supposed to be solely defensive in character and confined to Europe. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc countries, Nato turned global and embarked on an expansionist and aggressive worldwide strategy in order to redraw the political map of the world. Taking the last 20 years into account, one can call the Nato alliance the greatest threat to world peace... The Suicide of Daniel Somers | Veterans Today ...My mind is a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give.. During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity. Though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply can not come back from. I take some pride in that, actually, as to move on in life after being part of such a thing would be the mark of a sociopath in my mind. These things go far beyond what most are even aware of... U.S. State Department Debunks Iranian Latin American Terrorism Links, by Stephen Lendman | Mathaba False anti-Iranian accusations persist. They're longstanding. Claims about alleged nuclear bomb development don't wash. Nor do well publicized terror attack charges. The Islamic Republic's maliciously vilified. False accusations follow earlier ones. A disturbing pattern repeats. Iran's sovereignty is challenged. Its independence is threatened. Washington wants pro-Western stooges everywhere. It wants rival states eliminated. It wants unchallenged global dominance. Everything's fair game to achieve it. Duplicitous misinformation proliferates... Syria: The faces behind terror, by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich | PressTV In her extraordinarily bold and direct speech addressed to the Irish Parliament, Clare Daly (TD, Dublin North) called Obama a “war criminal” and “hypocrite of the century”. While Daly was quite right in censuring Obama for his criminal policies, including aiding terrorists in Syria, it is worthwhile noting that Obama is merely a willing instrument; the faces and factors behind his handlers and the policies merit greater scrutiny and exposure... Dutch rabbi calls a spade a spade | Redress Information & Analysis ...Rabbi Antebi had a pretty good idea who was to blame. Referring to the kicks in the stomach he received from his assailant, he said: “I’m not surprised he did what he did, it’s human behaviour. The one to blame is the Zionist state, which is doing a lot of bad things to people.” That’s one neat kick in the teeth of Katrina Lantos Swett and other Israel flag wavers bleating “anti-Semitism” day and night as a rearguard defence of the criminal state of Israel... Syria in-depth analysis: Where the anti-Assad coalition went wrong, by Sonia Mansour Robaey | RT ...The take over of Aleppo by rebels amounted to a national tragedy and was a turning point in the war. The fate of ‘Syria’s beating heart’, burned, pillaged and reduced to rubble, shocked Syrians from all sects, and they understood. The silent majority started to feel threatened by the revolution, increasingly expecting the government and the army to protect them. Syria’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah on the side of the resistance (by which I mean resistance to imperialist proxy politics breeding war and divisions across the Middle East) and Russia, diligently playing its comeback as a power on the regional scene – did not waver... A Concise Answer to Ido Aharoni’s Query ‘Why Boycott Israel?’ by Lawrence Davidson | Intifada Palestine The fact that Zionist influence spreads far beyond Israel’s area of dominion and now influences many of the policy making institutions of western governments, and particularly that of the United States, makes it imperative that Israel’s oppressive behavior be singled out as a high priority case for boycott. In other words, unlike other oppressive and brutal governments, the Israelis and their supporters directly influence (one might say corrupt) the policy makers of many Western nations and this often makes their governments (most specifically the U.S.) accomplices in Israel’s abusive policies. This being so, prioritizing Israel for boycott is not hypocrisy but rather a necessity... Jun 26, 2013 Israel: Only Nation that Systematically Arrests, Abuses, Tortures, Rapes, Kills Children, by Mohamed Khodr | Veterans Today In Israel killing Palestinians, especially Palestinian children, is not only a Talmudic Rabbinical driven duty but it also serves as a sport to relieve boredom and enhance career opportunities. The 3.4 Million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem are simply daily fodder for target practice, testing of new chemical and biological weapons, and as a menace that must be driven out or exterminated from Israel’s property. These human beings simply live as slave labor for Jews or targets for sniper practice... [Meanwhile, the Sheeple of the West see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Not knowing any better, dazed by the propaganda, they just let the Zionists run the show.] Stamping Impunity on Israel’s War Crimes, by Vacy Vlazna | Palestine Chronicle Israel and Australia’s joint projects normalizing Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity has sunk deeper in the degenerate mire of hasbara (propaganda & lies); “So projects that constitute normalization are not about freedom, justice or liberation, but about numbing our minds to the horror of the occupation, so we accept it as normal, as permanent, as an unchangeable fixed reality”!.. The Palestinians’ Last Option: A Struggle for Equal Rights, by Ghada Karmi | Palestine Chronicle Once upon a time, Palestine was the Arab world’s unifying cause. Justice for the Palestinians was considered a basic pre-requisite for regional stability and peace, and it was an idea that had global resonance. Today, the picture is different and the Palestinian cause has been falling off the political agenda ever since the onset of the Arab Spring, the Syrian conflict, and Israel’s success in placing Iran’s nuclear program at the center stage... 40,000 Bedouin People Displaced = Human Rights Disaster | Jewish Voice for Peace The Israeli Knesset just approved the first reading of the Prawer Plan. If adopted, that would trigger the forced relocation of 40,000 Bedouin people (Israeli citizenship notwithstanding), and the destruction of dozens of villages. We need to let Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren know we are horrified a transfer plan based on nothing more than ethnic identity is even under consideration... [As if they cared what anyone else thinks, as long as they've got the Americans in their pocket] Israel Approves Prawer Law Expelling Bedouins | Roi Tov On June 24, 2013, the Knesset broadcast an unusual speech that reached its peak with unprecedented violence toward a printed piece of paper. Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi, Palestinian from Taibeh, poured a glass of water over the Prawer Law and ripped it just before it was barely approved... Obama’s Berlin Speech Applies to the Border: Tear Down The Wall! | CIP Americas Watching Obama’s June 19 speech in Berlin, it was impossible not to think of the abysmal gap between the high principals of compassion and freedom he espoused at the site of that former wall and the death-dealing attitude of the U.S. government at the wall constructed between the United States and its neighbor to the south. That same week Senators Corker and Hoeven presented a “border security” amendment to the immigration reform bill that would require 20,000 more border agents and 700 miles more fence along the Mexican border, and cost taxpayers some $3.2 billion for war-zone equipment like what is used by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan... Dieudonné - Palestine (english subtitles) | YouTube 21st Century Wire TV: A Conversation with Gilad Atzmon | Gilad Atzmon Host Patrick Henningsen and Gilad Atzmon, discussing the lethal power of the Israeli lobby in Europe and the US, the destructive power of Jewish secular politics and a deeper look into Jewish identity politics as detailed in Atzmon's new book, 'The Wandering Who?'.. Four More Conferences Divest from Companies Serving Israel | United Methodist Insight Four United Methodist annual (regional) conferences have voted this month to divest or have their funds divested from companies involved with Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land.Approving divestment at their 2013 sessions were New England, Minnesota, Pacific Northwest and Upper New York annual conferences. They joined five other conferences – West Ohio, New York, Northern Illinois, California Nevada and California Pacific – that have already taken similar action, bringing the total to nine regional bodies representing thousands of churches... Richard Falk: Speaking Truth to Power, by Stephen Lendman | War Is A Crime Falk is Princeton University Professor Emeritus. For 40 years, he taught international law and relations. In 2008, he was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. He's outspoken about longstanding Israeli human rights abuses. They're too horrendous to ignore. On June 6, he addressed them... Down the Slippery Slope in Syria, by Ivan Eland | Antiwar At the G-8 Summit in Northern Ireland, Russia faced pressure from the other seven attending nations to push Bashar al-Assad, its Syrian ally, to negotiate his abdication with the West. Since Assad and his Syrian government forces, well supplied by Russia with weaponry, are now winning the Syrian civil war, that outcome is extremely unlikely – and maybe even undesirable... Freedom versus The National-Security State, by Jacob G. Hornberger | The Future of Freedom Foundation U.S. officials are poking fun at the fact that Edward Snowden, whose commitment to a free society motivated him to disclose the NSA’s massive secret surveillance scheme over the American people (and the people of the world), has fled to China and Russia, two countries that are near the top of the list of violators of civil liberties and privacy. I find that very amusing. When U.S. officials point their finger at China and Russia, they conveniently ignore the fact that there are three fingers pointing back at them... Iran and the white man's burden, by Holly Dagres | Al Jazeera Nothing is more frustrating than one of your own calling for war on people from your ancestral homeland. If there is one thing I learned about Iran's presidential election, it is the existence of the White Man's Burden amongst some in the Iranian Diaspora community: Iranian-Americans thousands of miles away from Iran, dictating their Western education and values to "backwards", "deprived" and "mullah-loving" people in the Islamic Republic of Iran... UK’s Jack Straw says Israel has nuclear weapons, steals Palestinian land | Redress Information & Analysis A tradition has developed in the West whereby politicians speak common sense and the truth, but only when they are no longer in power. Witness, for example, the former US president, Jimmy Carter. Now Jack Straw, who was Britain’s foreign secretary at the time of the Anglo-American aggression against Iraq, has stepped forward to keep the tradition alive... Are Al-Qaeda’s Lebanese Affiliates Opening a Lebanese Front in the Syrian War? by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | Global Research Hezbollah’s intervention into the Syrian conflict has given a boost to the Syrian government against the anti-government forces trying to overrun Syria. This has turned the attention of the US and its allies onto Lebanon as a new arena of battle. Rockets are also being launched by anti-government forces from Syria, and even from inside Lebanon, against Hezbollah’s political strongholds and against Shia Muslim villages. The goal is to ignite the flames of sedition between Shiites and Sunnis inside Lebanon... Israel hasbara would-be killers caught red handed | Redress Information & Analysis Israel’s hasbara activists are getting desperate, it would seem. The Israeli news website Ynet reports that authorities in the US city of New York have indicted two pro-Israel activists for assembling a portable X-ray weapon that they intended to use to secretly sicken or kill opponents of Israel... Massive 9/11 Billboard Coming to Times Square This September! | Veterans Today The Remember Building 7 campaign is pleased to announce that we have contributed the remaining $50,000 of the funds raised during the 10th anniversary toward a larger joint effort with Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth called “ReThink911 .” ReThink911 will include outdoor and transit advertising in 11 major cities around the world this September 2013, coupled with grassroots actions in dozens of cities worldwide. In furtherance of Remember Building 7’s mission, ReThink911 will be spearheaded by a massive 50-foot billboard in the heart of Times Square asking passers by if they know a third tower fell on 9/11... Jun 25, 2013 US rulers fear American people, by Finian Cunningham | PressTV What the disclosures of former CIA contractor Edward Snowden show perhaps above all else is just how petrified the leaders of the United States have become - of ordinary citizens both in the US and around the world. When we say “leaders” we mean the ruling elite - the top one percent of the financial-corporate-military-industrial complex and its bought- and paid-for politicians. The international manhunt by the US authorities for Snowden, which has accelerated with his flight to Moscow to evade extradition from Hong Kong, is indicative of the desperation in Washington’s elitist establishment to quash him and what he is revealing about their despotic rule... Presidential Rule by Deception: Obama, the Master Con-man, by James Petras | Dissident Voice In an electoral system, run by and for a corporate oligarchy, deception and demagoguery are essential elements – entertaining the people while working for the wealthy. Every US President has engaged, in one fashion or another, in ‘play acting’ to secure popular approval, neutralize hostility and distract voters from the reactionary substance of their foreign and domestic policies. Every substantive policy is accompanied by a ‘down home’ folksy message to win public approval... How the ANC's Faustian pact sold out South Africa's poorest, by Ronnie Kasrils | The Guardian ..South Africa's liberation struggle reached a high point but not its zenith when we overcame apartheid rule. Back then, our hopes were high for our country given its modern industrial economy, strategic mineral resources (not only gold and diamonds), and a working class and organised trade union movement with a rich tradition of struggle. But that optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system. From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC's soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we "sold our people down the river".. AIG-Collapse Player Appointed Bank of Israel Governor | Roi Tov On June 24, 2013, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that Jacob Frenkel had been appointed to be the next Governor of the Bank of Israel. "He is the best of the bests, the most excellent among the excellent," said Netanyahu. Carried away by the frivolity of his own poetry, Netanyahu forgot to mention Frenkel's involvement in the collapse of USA's insurance giant AIG... Terror v. Surveillance? Keeping Americans Safe in Two Simple Steps, by Robert Jensen | Common Dreams In the frenzy over Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information about government data-mining surveillance, public officials and pundits have tried to lock us into a narrowly defined and diversionary discussion that ignores the most important question we face about terrorism... Obama Prepares to Wage Offensive, First-strike Strategic Nuclear Warfare, by Francis A. Boyle | Global Research ..we know now for sure that all the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems that Obama is currently in the process of deploying in Europe, Asia, and the United States, on land, at sea and perhaps in Outer Space are designed to provide the United States with a strategic, offensive, first strike nuclear war fighting capability against Russia and China and Iran and North Korea and Syria for starters... How Can We Trust Perjurers? by Jacob G. Hornberger | The Future of Freedom Foundation President Obama says that we just need to trust him and national-security state officials with the power to secretly monitor our telephone calls and emails. He says that while it’s true that they’ve been secretly keeping data about our telephone calls, he assures us that no one is recording our telephone calls or indiscriminately reading our emails. But how do we know that he’s telling the truth about any matter relating to “national security,” given that it’s considered okay to lie about secret matters relating to “national security”?.. The Todashev Killing and the House of Cards, by David Martin | Veterans News ...These examples only begin to scratch the surface of FBI outrages when high level politics is involved, and from the mainstream media attention it has received alone, we know that the Boston Marathon bombing is the highest level politics. It is part and parcel of the phony Global War on Terror for which we are to adopt the role of international military aggressors while sacrificing our historic liberties at home. The chance that our national secret police would actually conduct an honest justice-seeking investigation in a matter such as that is precisely nil... The case for one democratic state | YouTube ..The Alternative Information Center (AIC) discussed the idea of a one state solution with Yoav Bar a long time activist for this idea. According to Bar, "the idea of one state requires dealing with the entirety of the Palestinian question", while the concept of two states neglects the questions of Palestinian refugees and the Palestinians living as second class citizens in Israel... Iraq Vet Kills Himself After Being Ordered to Commit “War Crimes” by Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet Iraq war veteran Daniel Somers committed suicide following an arduous battle with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that was caused by his role in committing “crimes against humanity,” according to the soldier’s suicide note. Somers was assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad which saw him involved in more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, in addition to his role in conducting interrogations. Somers’ suicide note is a powerful indictment of the invasion of Iraq and how it ruined the lives of both countless millions of Iraqis as well as innumerable US troops sent in to do the dirty work of the military-industrial complex... Enemies of Syria Plan Escalated Aggression | Stephen Lendman So-called "Friends of Syria" are their worst enemies. They're a rogue's gallery of scoundrels. They're complicit with Washington's imperium. They violate core international law principles. They're no friends of peace, stability and freedom. Umbrella group members America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, and Qatar met in Doha. They agreed on "secret" escalating measures. They hope to tip the military balance. They're desperate to counter Assad's impressive victories. He's routing insurgents convincingly... Jun 24, 2013 Four questions and answers | Paul Eisen I recently received a request to answer four questions on the situation in Israel/Palestine. Here are the questions and my answers... [This includes an intelligent critique of the One State Solution. The OSS is inevitable, eventually, but when the time comes my unsolicited advice to the Palestinians would be to beware of allowing any Jewish power base to remain. Conditions such as full assets confiscation, non-participation in finance, government, education etc. must be established so that more than 95% of Jews would leave. Even 5%, given the power and wealth that even smaller concentrations in the West have accrued, might be too many.] Iran and The United States: It Takes Two To Tango - Let The Dance Begin, by Dr. Kam Zarrabi | Veterans News ..a preemptive military attack on Iran by the United States or Israel has never seriously been in the books, despite the bellicose statements that all options, including military ones, remain on the table. My reason for steadfastly holding on to this opinion has been that taking such action would lead to many undesired and unintended consequences for all parties concerned, some quite predictably catastrophic, which would not be to anyone’s advantage. Neither the United States, nor Israel, and certainly not the region as a whole, would benefit in anyway if such threats went beyond politically motivated rhetoric... Western Last Bastion Quivers | Roi Tov In a Goebbelian reality, where regimes claiming to be democracies do nothing but misinform, cheat, and spy on their citizens, it is difficult to deduce what is really happening in their latest war. Especially, when the Western last bastion in this event is quivering badly. Aleppo is falling. The international coalition attacking Syria has panicked.. A legitimate regime answered an attack of well-equipped mercenaries that was sporadically helped by the air forces of Israel and Turkey. A legitimate regime is holding strong for over two years. In the last months, the wheel is turning against the aggressors... Political-Structural Sadomasochism to Ensure Global Hegemony: Militarizing Capitalism, by Norman Pollack | CounterPunch ...The US is now notorious in international circles for regime change. Bad enough, but it gets worse: The US, internally, perhaps as the necessary or ratifying condition which makes broad-gauged intervention, including regime change, possible (and the implicit goal of foreign policy), has taken the qualitative jump into the culture-molding process of the social management of personality... Assaf named goodwill UN ambassador | Maan News Agency Mohammad Assaf, the first Palestinian to win the popular Arab Idol TV singing contest, will also become the UN's first Palestinian goodwill ambassador.. "A man with a golden voice is going to take the Palestinians' voice to the universe. At long last, a fantastic story out of Gaza that will touch the hearts of the world.. It is is a wonderful day for Palestine and for the UN." Thousands of Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza celebrated in the streets late Saturday after the judges announced this year's winner. They also launched fireworks... The real meaning of the West's diplomatic defeat at the G8 summit in Lough Erne | The Vineyard of the Saker ...The images of NATO unleashing a full-scale bombing campaign against Libya under the pretext of "protecting civilians" and the images of Gaddafi lynched by a mob of thugs who jammed a knife in his anus while screaming that "God is great" also infuriated the Russian political leadership and public opinion. This anger combined with the shameful realization that Russia did carry a large portion of the guilt for what happened in Libya (through its monumentally stupid abstention at the UNSC), explains why there was a total consensus in Russia not to have the same thing happen in Syria... Gaza and the Zapatistas – Imagine! by Julie Webb-Pullman | Palestine Chronicle Autonomy. Justice. Land. Liberty. Imagine if Gaza said Ya! Basta! And declared itself the first autonomous Palestinian community! Imagine if the Gaza authorities reviewed and transformed their relationship with members of global civil society, as the Zapatistas did in 2003. Imagine the impact of this on the terms and organization of international assistance!.. “Outspoken Israel supporter” gets UK minister post | Redress Information & Analysis Imagine if British Prime Minister David Cameron had appointed a Muslim to a ministerial post and then went on to joke that there are so many Muslims in his ruling Conservative Party that it might as well be called “the Party of Muhammad”. One doesn’t need to live in the UK to predict with confidence that there would be public outrage, with the media leading the charge. Yet this is precisely what has happened, except that no Muslims are involved and there’s not a murmur from the British media... [The Tribe’s control of the media, the economy and the politicians in the Western Empire is obvious – but, not surprisingly, goes largely unnoticed. Gotta hand it to ‘em - it’s working. But karma is waiting in the wings, and karma is inexorable.] Putin’s Wise Counsellor, by Israel Shamir ...It is a norm that Western ideas are being spread in the East, not vice versa. Russia, the heir to Byzantium, is an “East”, among other great “Easts” of Dar ul-Islam, China, India; of them, Russia is the nearest to the West, and still very different. This is probably the main reason why Dugin, this important contemporary Russian thinker makes his belated entrance into Western awareness only now. Alexander Dugin, a youngish, stylish, slim, neat, hip and bearded don at the Moscow U, is a cult figure at his homeland; people throng to his lectures; his plentiful books cover a vast spectrum of subjects from pop culture to metaphysics, from philosophy to theology, from international affairs to domestic politics... The Free Syrian Army Northern Front Commander threatens to use chemical weapons and wants Sharia in Future Syria | Intifada Palestine The “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) Northern Front Commander, Abdel Baset Tawileh, appeared on Qatar’s state-run al-Jazeera channel and stated that he wants future Syria to be based on Islamic Law (Sharia) and that the international community has only 1 month to supply the FSA and the other “rebel” brigades with advanced weapons so they can get rid of the secular government headed by Bashar al-Assad... UN: Israeli Forces Abuse Palestinian Children | Palestine Chronicle A UN human rights group has accused Israel of abuses against Palestinian children that include torture, solitary confinement and threats of death and sexual assault in prisons. In the report released on Thursday, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said it expressed its “deepest concern about the reported practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested, prosecuted and detained by the military and the police”. The committee said soldiers arrested Palestinian youth regularly during night-time raids, tying the children’s’ hands painfully and blindfolding them, and often transferring them to detention centers without informing their parents... WikiLeaks: Snowden going to Ecuador to seek asylum | Yahoo! News Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States for revealing highly classified surveillance programs, is going to Ecuador to seek asylum, the South American country's foreign minister and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said Sunday... Roundup Ready religion: The Vatican and GMOs, by Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera A 2009 WikiLeaks cable from the US embassy in the Holy See reports that “Vatican officials remain largely supportive of genetically modified crops as a vehicle for protecting the environment while feeding the hungry, but - at least for now - are unwilling to challenge bishops who disagree”.. As for the claim that GMOs are a proper antidote to the problem of global hunger, it's worth reviewing renowned environmental activist Vandana Shiva's observation that “one billion people are without food because industrial monocultures robbed them of their livelihoods in agriculture and their food entitlements”.. Jun 23, 2013 The Obama Era: When Hope Became Despair, by J. Speer-Williams | Veterans News ...even if Mr. Obama tried to preserve the institutions that made America just, affluent, and free, the Controllers’ corporate media would excoriate him until even black Americans would begin calling for his impeachment. To have a president who forwards the best interests of America, we need a much better informed body politic – an impossibility while the global elite control the mainstream (lamestream) media with their outlandish (but somehow convincing to most people) propaganda... [It's good to see Jack back in action - we need all the help we can get] One Step Removed From Full-Blown Fascism: Things Fall Apart, by Rob Urie | CounterPunch The conspicuously nonsensical efforts by President Barack Obama and NSA spy chief Alexander to assure Americans massive corporate-government spy operations had prevented terrorist attacks were supported by only a few easily disproved lies. More broadly, the history of recent decades has government spy agencies hiring ‘private’ companies to carry out the activities they are legally prohibited from carrying out. This makes government assertions regarding spying on citizens a game of three-card monte—the testimony of government officials is calculated to be irrelevant to actual activities... The Rational Market Myth | Paul Craig Roberts One of the myths of economics is that markets are rational. Theories are based on this assumption, and the belief that markets are rational fuels the argument against regulation. The market response to the Federal Reserve’s June 19 statement that it will taper off its bond purchases if its forecast comes true is unequivocal proof that markets are irrational... Corporatizing National Security: What It Means | Ralph Nader Privacy is a sacred word to many Americans, as demonstrated by the recent uproar over the brazen invasion of it by the Patriot Act-enabled National Security Agency (NSA). The information about dragnet data-collecting of telephone and internet records leaked by Edward Snowden has opened the door to another pressing conversation—one about privatization, or corporatization of this governmental function... Melanie Phillips performing a Zio-Centric Tantrum on BBC Question Time | Gilad Atzmon Melanie Phillips performs her interventionist spiel - she lies, she spins, she follows the Hasbara's text book and call for action against Iran. But the British audience doesn't buy it. Melanie wasn't too happy as you can see. I guess that our Sayanim better beware, the Brits are not as stupid as they want them to be... Iceland-Bound Jet for Edward Snowden 'Could Take Off Tomorrow' | US News and World Report An Icelandic businessman is offering to transport Edward Snowden to the island nation aboard a chartered jet if Iceland's government grants asylum to the man who exposed the National Security Agency's massive harvesting of Internet and phone records. "Everything is ready on our side and the plane could take off tomorrow,'' DataCell executive Olafur Sigurvinsson told Iceland's Channel 2 television station... Battleground Syria: Foreigners Flock to Fight in Sectarian War | Antiwar As the ongoing Syrian Civil War continues to get bloodier and more religious in tone, foreign fighters, who have been a real part of the conflict for a long time, are flocking to the nation in droves for a war that is less and less about Syria, and more about the age-old Sunni-Shi’ite schism. The rebellion has relied on foreign jihadists to do heavy lifting almost from the start, when al-Qaeda openly endorsed them, and with the Egyptian government giving its own imprimatur, Egyptian Salafists are now planning to head to Syria to join the war... [Right out of the USraeli playbook] Dispatch From Damascus: War Fatigue Grips Syria, by Patrick Cockburn | CounterPunch The boom of outgoing artillery fire no longer makes people in Damascus glance up from their work or interrupt their conversation even for a moment. After a year of fighting, it is a background noise so familiar that nobody refers to the thunderous sounds even though they show that the battle for the capital is not quite over. The artillery fire was in support of a government push to regain ground around the Shia shrine of Sayyida Zeinab to the south of Damascus... Trust us: A brief history of government spying, by Glenn Jacobs | The Daily Caller In 1975, the Church Committee revealed the extent to which the federal government’s intelligence apparatuses were aimed not at foreign enemies, but at Americans. While President Obama has repeatedly told us that we should trust the government, history teaches us that the current scandal involving the National Security Agency is not an isolated incident. Big Brother has been with us for a long time... Fighting Al Qaeda by Supporting Al Qaeda in Syria: The Obama Administration is a “State Sponsor of Terrorism,” by Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research A major transition in US counter-terrorism doctrine is unfolding. While Barack Obama, following in the footsteps of George W. Bush, remains firmly committed to waging a “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), his administration is now openly supporting selected rebel units in Syria which are part of the Al Qaeda network. Known and documented, Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA, which has covertly supported the “Islamic Terror Network” since the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war. While Al Qaeda is a US sponsored “intelligence asset”, a “New Normal” has been established... Chronicle of a Slow State Assassination: Rabbi Meshulam Died | Roi Tov ...In 1994, Rabbi Meshulam took advantage of a neighbours dispute to bring out the Yemenite Children Affair by distributing pamphlets on the issue. The document described kidnappings of Jewish Yemenite children, stating that 4,500 children had been taken from their parents by the Israeli authorities and given to rich Ashkenazi Jews inside Israel and abroad during the late 1940s and early 1950s while the Yemenite immigrants were falsely told that their babies died from illness or malnutrition. He compared the actions of the Israeli criminal medical establishment with the Nazi Regime, especially with the infamous Dr. Mengele. That was enough for his being defined as an Enemy of the State... Liberty or death! American Revolution 2.0 begins in New Hampshire, by Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today ...If New Hampshire becomes a haven of liberty, these folks believe, it will not only be a really fun place, but it might even spearhead American Revolution 2.0. and help save America, and the world, from the forces of tyranny. In ten years, the Free State Project has convinced more than a thousand liberty-lovers to move to New Hampshire. Their goal is 20,000 – which they calculate would be enough to radically change how business and government are conducted statewide. While they haven’t liberated the whole state yet, I can testify that the Free Staters have set up a wildly successful week-long Temporary Autonomous Zone here in the White Mountains of Northern New Hampshire... [Well, something’s cooking and it smells pretty good. If it takes a bunch of fun loving, gun toting whackos to get the ball rolling, so be it. They remind me of those pesky colonials back in the 1770's. Who else is crazy enough to mount a frontal attack on the Matrix? Dog works in mysterious ways.] Comic Jon Stewart wows Egypt satirical show | Al Jazeera US comedian Jon Stewart has taken the guest's seat on Egypt's top satirical TV show, modeled after his own programme "The Daily Show". Stewart was brought to the set on Friday wearing a black hood and introduced by host Bassem Youssef as a captured foreign spy. Sporting a scruffy beard, Stewart spoke briefly in Arabic as the studio audience gave him a raucous welcome. "Please sit down, I am a simple man who does not like to be fussed over," he said in Arabic to laughter... Hezbollah’s Palestinian problem - and vice versa, by Franklin Lamb | Intifada Palestine ...one cannot disagree with the Palestinian community in both Syria and Lebanon who repeatedly assert that they want to stay neutral in the Syrian crisis, which appears unlikely to end anytime soon. Palestinian refugees, who have manifold problems in Palestine as well as Syria and Lebanon, want to stay sidelined from internecine conflicts and focus on trying to survive and staying focused on confronting their only enemies, those being the ones who stole and are still living on their land and villages... Jun 22, 2013 We Are All Witnesses Now: PRISM and the Rise of a New Fascism, by John Pilger | CounterPunch ...Speaking about the National Security Agency (NSA), Senator Church said: “I know the capacity that there is to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law . . . so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” On 11 June, following the revelations in the Guardian by the NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Ellsberg wrote that the US had now fallen into “that abyss”. Snowden’s revelation that Washington has used Google, Facebook, Apple and other giants of consumer technology to spy on almost everyone is further evidence of a modern form of fascism... Maids for Sale: Child Exploitation Bonanza, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle ...Some Arab countries have become a breeding ground for a form of modern slavery that capitalizes on existing miseries found elsewhere in order to feed the insatiable consumerism that permeates most societies. It is particularly disheartening considering that Islamic doctrines emphasized labor rights many centuries ago, leaving no room whatsoever for alternative interpretations to religious texts that people are created equal, deserving of respect, freedom and dignity.. Rich Arab countries are but a mere manifestation of a relentless global phenomenon that requires more than unbinding international conventions but a major shift in cultural attitude... Clare Daly, Irish Politician, Slams Obama As 'War Criminal' In Parliament | Intifada Palestine Irish politician Clare Daly slammed President Barack Obama as a “war criminal” and “hypocrite of the century” in a blistering speech before Parliament Wednesday, following the conclusion of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland. Daly, an independent member of Parliament (ID) representing Dublin North, chastised Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Enda Kenny for embracing Obama, telling the Taoiseach he had “turned a blind eye” to the U.S. policy toward Syria and the use of targeted drone strikes. “Is this person going for the hypocrite of the century award.. Because we have to call things by their right names, and the reality is that by any serious examination, this man is a war criminal.”.. Security Wars: Inside the Military's Big, Messy Fight With Palantir, the Company They Pay to Spy on You Online, by Stephen Benavides | Truthout In a House Armed Services Committee hearing at the end of April, California Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, a former Marine, leveled serious charges against high-level Army officers. He accused them of blocking the use of Palantir technology, the company the military has hired to watch the US public's every online move for signs of potential terrorist activity. But the House had concerns of its own: In a letter dated August 1, 2012, the House Committee asked why the $2.3 billion had been spent on research and development of the DCGS-A, a global surveillance and intelligence super platform, that despite the mind-boggling sum, failed to work as planned... Israel’s Chief Rabbi Metzger Arrested | Gilad Atzmon Israeli National Fraud Squad raided the home and offices of Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yonah Metzger yesterday and questioned him under caution for ten hours, as part of a bribery, fraud, money-laundering and breach-of-trust case. Metzger was later released. The chief Rabbi is now under house arrest. Chief Rabbi Metzger is forbidden to enter his offices, leave the country or make contact with any of the other suspects in the case. Metzger and three other Jewish orthodox men are suspected of being involved in the pilfering of hundreds of thousands of shekels from a number of charities... Clueless in Gaza: Shalit Splits Canada | Roi Tov "Helmut" is a nickname given to IDF soldiers who are considered clumsy. The soldier who always places the rubber band holding his trousers on the shoe, instead of on the leg just above the shoe.The reasons for his being captured were clear. He was unaware of the orders given to him. He was unaware of the territory he was crossing, including the disturbing fact that a backup force was next to the spot where he was captured. He did nothing to save the lives of the other two crew members in his tank. Hanan Barak and Pavel Slutzker died in the event. Then he gave away his weapon without fighting. "Helmut" is a kind way of referring to him... How Israeli apartheid is coming unstuck, by Jonathan Cook | Mondoweiss One incident of racism, though small in relation to the decades of massive, institutionalised discrimination exercised by Israel against its Palestinian Arab citizens, has triggered an uncharacteristic bout of Israeli soul-searching. Superland, a large amusement park near Tel Aviv, refused to accept a booking from an Arab school on its preferred date in late May. When a staff member called back impersonating a Jew, Superland approved the booking immediately. As the story went viral on social media, the park’s managers hurriedly offered an excuse: they provided separate days for Jewish and Arab children to keep them apart and prevent friction... Washington Funds Secret Israeli Ballistic Missile Base | Stephen Lendman ...Israel wants first-strike capability. Russian-supplied S-300 missile systems render conventional warplanes useless. They can be intercepted far from targets and destroyed. Washington and Israel are longstanding partners. Both prioritize state-of-the-art WMDs and intercontinental delivery systems capability. Doing so threatens humanity... Peres and Netanyahu Celebrate: When the Gods Laugh, by Uri Avnery | CounterPunch If the life of Shimon Peres was a play, it would be difficult to classify. A tragedy? A comedy? A tragicomedy? For sixty years it looked as if he was under a curse of the Gods, much like the curse of Sisyphus, who was condemned to roll an immense boulder up a hill, and every time he approached his goal the rock would roll down again to the bottom... The False Flag "War on Terror," by Timothy V. Gatto | The People's Voice ...The entire argument that we must balance our liberty against our security is a pernicious falsehood based on lies and propaganda. The constant propaganda about threats to national security is what every regime throughout history has used to keep the support of the people. External threats from the enemy are a scare tactic that was used by the Romans and continues to this day. The German Reich used the threat posed by Poland as an excuse to start World War II. The Germans used a "false flag" event to invade that nation. Things haven't changed since then... Edward Snowden and America’s Moral Complacency, by Dreux Richard | CounterPunch ...My father jokes that the only difference between abuses of power in Democratic and Republican administrations is the quality of the prose contained in the accompanying legal memos. Neither can I profess much shock at the notion that this has occurred during a Democratic presidency. Such indignation strikes me as symptomatic of a kind of NPR liberalism, wherein possessing a liberal frame of mind excuses us from making any gestures beyond the purely interpretive: when shit happens, make a documentary... The Terror Con, by Robert Scheer | Truthdig ...No nation in history has ever possessed such an imbalance of military superiority and the ability to ward off foreign threats without sacrificing its core values. Never has this country been as vulnerable to foreign attacks as when the founders approved our Constitution with its Fourth Amendment and other protections of individual sovereignty against an intrusive government. They did so out of the conviction that individual freedom makes us stronger rather than weaker as a nation. In short, they trusted in the essential wisdom of the people as opposed to the pundits who deride it... Dubya's wisdom applied to the latest fairy tale coming out of the "FSA" | The Vineyard of the Saker Remember how first it was absolutely totally undeniably clearly proven beyond any possible doubt that these evil Syrians had murdered Rafik Hariri and then, as soon as the Syrians left Lebanon, we were told that it was absolutely totally undeniably clearly proven beyond any possible doubt again that it was actually Hezbollah? Folks - they are it again. After telling us that Assad has used chemical weapons against the opposition they came up with this one:.. Jun 21, 2013 Failed ‘Hasbara’ insults just bounce off Alice, by Stuart Littlewood | My Catbird Seat Hasbara has become a dirty word, thanks to it’s dirty practitioners and the dirty job they are trained to do. It's a Hebrew word for Israel's sophisticated public relations machinery that's set up to cynically justify the Jewish entity's crimes and to create for Israel a 'brand image' completely at odds with the ugly truth. Fiction and distortion are among hasbara’s standard propaganda tools for spinning fairy tales and propagating disinformation. And it is very effective… up to a point. The reason why it ultimately fails is that it has very poor material to work with. You cannot behave like psychopaths and disguise it forever... [People, we don’t have all that much time. A ruthless organized crime racket that terrorizes millions of innocent people, and does so with seeming impunity, the criminal State of Israel must be put down like a mad dog – pronto, before it becomes “too big to fail.” Many would say that point has already been reached, but what goes up must eventually come down.] Cameron insults our intelligence over Syria… and gets a slap from Putin, by Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation They say a picture paints a thousand words. The photograph of British Prime Minister David Cameron and Russian President Vladimir Putin in London recently certainly does. When the two leaders gave a press conference at the weekend in Downing Street ahead to the G8 summit, Cameron had the excruciating look of a desperate man. Putin, by contrast, appeared in control. The latter spoke in measured tones and with discernible contempt in his voice... FNA Report: Turkey Delivered Chem Weapons to Syrian Rebels | Veterans Today Russian President Vladimir Putin said chemical laboratories in Iraq are producing chemical weapons for the terrorists in Syria, confirming a detailed report by the FNA last month which said former Ba’ath regime officials are involved in the production and procurement of such weapons to the Syrian terrorists... Putin Alone at G8 | Stephen Lendman On June 17, G8 leaders began two days of talks in Northern Ireland. Seven nations want escalated war on Syria. Putin's alone. He's an outlier for peaceful conflict resolution. Obama's hands are blood drenched. He bears full responsibility for ravaging Syria. It's been ongoing since early 2011. It was planned many years earlier. On Monday, Obama lied saying:.. Iraq Moves Troops To Syrian Border | Al Monitor Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces, decided on the night of June 16, to move nearly 8,000 Iraqi troops toward the Iraqi-Syrian and Iraqi-Jordanian borders. This comes a few days before local elections are to be held in the cities of Mosul and Anbar.. The official, who is a senior officer supervising the security situation in the Sunni provinces, said, “The objective in moving the troops to the border is to secure Iraqi areas adjacent to the border and to prevent fighters from sneaking into [Iraq].”.. President al-Assad gives interview to the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper| SANA ...It has become extremely clear that there has been a shift in the societies of our region away from moderation, especially religious moderation. The question is: can we restore these societies to their natural order? Can our diverse societies still coexist together as one natural whole? On this point allow me to clarify certain terms. The words tolerance and coexistence are often used to define our societies. However, the more precise and appropriate definition, of how our societies used to be – and how they should be, is harmonious... A Bird’s Eye View of Contrived Terror, by Moti Nissani | Veterans Today Hassan al Sabbah, a brilliant Iranian polymath and tactician, was the founder of the Order of the Assassins. This Shia Order flourished for about 200 years, mostly in Iran and Syria, starting in the late 11th century. The Order delivered tangible assassination threats (e.g., placing a dagger on a target’s bed) to rulers contemplating pogroms and persecutions of Shia Muslims. If the threats were ignored, the target was killed. Al Sabbah’s strategy of asymmetrical warfare was astoundingly effective, minimizing bloodshed and bringing to heel such figures as the Sultan Salah A’din... Stephen Hawking vs the last bigoted democracy, by Jamal Kanj | Redress Information & Analysis ...Amnesty International accused Israel of attacking the UN compound “intentionally”. In a just world, the Israeli president would be arraigned at the International Criminal Court for crimes committed under his leadership. Instead, he is hallowed by hypocritical world leaders at a conference validating his hidebound vision of humanity. His event might have gone unnoticed but for a towering international scientist, who refused to attend the conference. Stephen Hawking, the world’s foremost physicist, took an audacious step when he turned down the Israeli invitation... Israel and the NSA Scandal, by Kevin MacDonald | The Occidental Observer ...The situation with the NSA is yet another example of what it means to have a Jewish elite in the U.S.: Jewish spies who deliver vital computer programs to Israel are not indicted. And despite a long history of aggressive spying against the U.S., the NSA hires Israeli firms to do its data collection, with nary a word heard in Congress or the media about the obvious problems that presents... 'A Political Ploy'? The Guardian Editors Swallow US Claims On Syrian WMD | Media Lens ...Despite the indisputable fraudulence of US-UK claims regarding Iraqi WMD, an equally staggering litany of lies on Libya, and despite the existence of gaps and doubts so reminiscent of Iraq 2002-2003, the Guardian is willing to quietly endorse the latest claims on Syria – 'Assad' clearly has used chemical weapons and that use should be added to the charge sheet against him. Once again, when it really matters, the Guardian editors are on-message, on-side and boosting war propaganda... Spy on Us All So We Won't Lose Our Freedom: The Stunning Illogic of the New York Times, by Dave Lindorff | CounterPunch So New York Times columnist Tom Friedman and former Times executive editor Bill Keller are both saying that the massive NSA spying program on all Americans’ communications is a needed thing because if they don’t do it, then maybe there could be another major terrorist strike on the US, and democracy would be erased in the US. What’s wrong with this argument? Precisely that it is news organizations like the New York Times that make that kind of twisted calculus work... How Washington Should Engage Iran's New President, by Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett | Huffington Post ...the Islamic Republic is a legitimate order for most Iranians living in Iran. Its animating idea - the ongoing project of integrating Islamist governance and participatory politics - appeals not just in Iran, but to Muslim societies across the Middle East. Despite decades of military, clandestine, and international economic pressure, it has achieved more progressive developmental outcomes - e.g., in alleviating poverty, delivering health care, expanding educational access, and (yes) improving opportunities for women -- than the Shah's regime ever did, and has done better in these areas than its neighbors (including U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey)... Obama Chooses Intensified but Strategically Useless Violence over Serious Diplomacy in Syria | Going to Tehran ..The long-term plan—you’ve been hearing it increasingly from neoconservative voices, from pro-Israel voices here in Washington—is to keep a quagmire in Syria. Do not allow Assad to win, under any circumstance, because an Assad victory is an Iranian victory, a Chinese victory, a Russian victory—and a real defeat for the United States. So I think this is about keeping the parties fighting each other in Syria, so they’re not challenging U.S. dominance in the region”.. Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky: Review by Allen C. Brownfeld | The OtherSite ...Rabbi Kook’s entire teaching, which is followed devoutly by, among others, those who have led the settler movement on the occupied West Bank, is based upon the Lurianic Cabbala, the school of Jewish mysticism that dominated Judaism from the late 16th to the early 19th century. “One of the basic tenets of the Lurianic Cabbala,” the authors write, “is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body. According to the Lurianic Cabbala, the world was created solely for the sake of Jews; the existence of non-Jews was subsidiary... Syria and the Effort to Normalize War: The Naked Imperialism of Humanitarian Intervention, by Ajamu Baraka | CounterPunch ...the recent decision by the Obama Administration to “up the ante” in Syria with more direct military involvement only confirmed my original thesis that humanitarian intervention has nothing to do with humanitarian concern, and instead is a propaganda tool that affords “the U.S. State the perfect ideological cover and internal rationalization to continue as the global “gendarme” of the capitalist order.” Look at the stage-managed drama leading up to the announcement on U.S. policy toward Syria that took place last week in Washington... Brief History of Saudi Wahhabism and Conspiracies, Haytham A. K. Radwan | Intifada Palestine The rise of extremism in the form of the Wahhabi movement during the twentieth century could not have taken place without the huge investments made by the Al-Saud family in conjunction with the Americans in the name of democracy, freedom and human rights to destroy Arab nationalism, socialism, secularism, and of course Islam... Jun 20, 2013 The New Thought Police: The Israel Lobby and Traumatic Memory, by Lawrence Swaim | CounterPunch ...the fact that irrational and immoral beliefs and behavior have a great following doesn’t make those beliefs and behaviors right. The traumas of the 20th century have driven millions of intelligent, capable people into active psychological pathologies, which they experience as ideological realities. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not about politics, nor religion, nor even geo-politics. It is about pathology; and ultimately it is about systemic evil... Hasidic Jews Attack Christians in Uman | Roi Tov A pristine lake amidst gentle hills. A town frozen in time sits next to them. Their denizens can seldom decide at which beauty look first. They are there since the beginning of time; nobody knows when Uman was established. They enjoy the tranquility of people not engaged in tricking and exploiting others... The West still doesn't get what the Turkish uprisings are about, by Gokhan Terzioglu | The Guardian This conflict is between proponents of fiercely neoliberal policies that promise high returns for capital and the great majority of the population for whom growth and development have only meant dispossession and loss of public spaces. To put it another way, this is a conflict between the supporters of Prime Minister Erdogan's single-handed management of the political, economic and social life of the country a la Louis XIV, and those who have been victims of his rule, as in the case of over 700 students and more than 50 journalists behind bars at the moment who have been charged under vague terrorism laws... No to the torture of Palestinian children! | Stop Torture Every day the Israeli Occupation Forces arrest Palestinian children in their homes, mostly in the middle of the night and take them away handcuffed and blindfolded to interrogation centres where they are subjected to physical and psychological tortures: bound hand and foot in uncomfortable positions, deprived of sleep, at times hit, threatened with sexual assault and reprisals against their families. They are generally asked to admit that they have thrown stones at tanks or bulldozers demolishing their houses, to denounce other children, to become ‘informers’ and to sign documents written in Hebrew, a language which they do not understand... The True Powers Behind Multiculturalism, Globalization And World War, by Richard Wilcox | The Rebel ...the “extraction of money from the pockets of customers instead of satisfactorily meeting the needs for commodities, now became the main purpose of trade.” Madison Avenue’s advertising industry preying on the basest needs and greed of consumers; Rothschild Central Banking model and Wall Street’s creation of a Ponzi financial system based on valueless money including multi-trillion dollar hedge funds; Las Vegas gambling casinos to promote greed and decadence; are all overwhelmingly run by Jewish moguls and their ideologues and minions... Taksim Square Belongs to Armenians | Free Iraq According to the Armenian Lebanese daily “Aztag”, some Turkish protesters in Taksim Square demanded the dedication, in the square, of a monument to the memory of the victims of the Genocide of Armenians. It is worth mentioning that the legal owner of the square and the surrounding area is the Armenian Church of Turkey. In 1930 the Armenian Cemetery, which was at Pangalti district attached to the square, was destroyed by the order of the city. The marble tombstones and monuments were sold by the city and the land was used to build, in addition to the Inonu Gezi Park, hotels such as the Hilton, Intercontinental, and Divan... Medical chief at Costa Rica state hospital arrested as part of organ trafficking investigation | Inside Costa Rica A chief doctor at a Costa Rican government-ran hospital was arrested yesterday on suspicion of being part of an international organ trafficking network which specializes in selling kidneys to patients in Israel, according to the Attorney General’s Office.. “The patients who required the transplants were in Israeli territory, and some of the (trafficking) victims [had their kidney removed] here and others were transported to Israel. We have information that at least one person died after being operated on in Israel”.. The prosecutor explained that the organization has branches in Israel and Eastern Europe, though did not elaborate, citing the ongoing investigation... Walker Tells the Truth, the ADL Avoids It, by William A. Cook | Palestine Chronicle Alice Walker’s new book, The Cushion in the Road, spends over 80 pages on the Israeli state and its treatment of Palestinians. Apparently the ADL took umbrage at her free expression of ideas about the Zionist ideology that has managed to imprison the Palestinians in their own land while stealing most of it. This they call Anti-Semitism. Freedom of speech is only for those who do not criticize Israel or for Zionists and their supporters who criticize anyone that criticizes Israel. What they do not tolerate is the possibility that Israel may be brought to court to determine if it does commit crimes against humanity... Obama in Syria: Old Fashioned Imperialism | MJ Rosenberg President Obama’s decision to provide military aid to the Syrian opposition is incredible. The United States is barely out of Iraq. It’s still bogged down in Afghanistan. Obama insists on keeping the Iran war option “on the table.” Yet suddenly we are taking sides in a civil war in Syria. How many Middle Eastern wars can one superpower handle? The most amazing thing is that the president has the audacity to even propose involvement in Syria to the American people. (Not that he is asking, just telling).. Global refugee numbers at 19-year high | MCW News Annual figures released by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) on Wednesday showed that 1.1 million fled across international borders in 2012, while a further 6.5 million were displaced within their own homelands. The number of people who have been forcibly displaced by war and other crises worldwide has risen to its highest level for almost two decades, hitting 45.2 million, according to the UN's refugee agency. Annual figures released by UNHCR on Wednesday showed that 1.1 million fled across international borders in 2012, while a further 6.5 million were displaced within their own homelands... [Mazeltov, Uncle Shmuel, you’ve set another record!] Putin, The Middle East’s “New Sheriff,” by Xavier Lerma | Veterans Today Not so fast Mr. Hope and Change. Haven’t you heard? There’s a new Sheriff in town in the Middle East. President Putin reminded Barry that he’s in charge. He already reminded Netanyahu recently after Israel fired into Damascus in early May. Afterward, Bibi sang a different tune. Putin’s talent as a Judo expert is always useful in these situations. When Obama was continually arming Syrian rebels; declaring no fly zones and moving his Marines into Jordan Putin took quick action... War by Another Name in Syria, by Franklin Lamb | CounterPunch The Group of Eight leaders.. having called for an international conference on the ongoing crisis in Syria to be held “as soon as possible” could not agree on much else that might end the civil war anytime soon there. The White House now is reportedly in private agreement with Russia and Iran that the Assad government will remain in power until next year’s election. Consequently, an 18 month old US-led Plan B has been dusted off by the Obama administration according to Washington Congressional and Beirut diplomatic sources... Edward Snowden vs. the Sovietization of America, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar What could be more fun? An articulate and very smart young man our Washington mandarins deride as a "twenty-something high school dropout" has the US national security establishment, the Washington punditocracy, and the President himself in a panicky lather. Government officials are howling with outrage, and calling for Edward Snowden’s head. The pundits are livid: how dare this "narcissist" who didn’t go to an Ivy League college presume to sit in judgment of his betters! Whatever their disagreements, politicians and talking heads of the left and the right agree: Snowden is a "traitor"!.. Domestic dissent can change US foreign policy for the better, by Mark Weisbrot | The Guardian Several years ago, I had lunch with a US government official who told me about a trip that I had taken, that almost nobody knew about. I didn't have to ask him where he got the information. For as long as I can remember, our government has been spying on dissidents, especially those who oppose crimes committed in the name of "national security".. Shimon Peres’s birthday freak show | Redress Information & Analysis Israeli President Shimon Peres’s 90th birthday bash has turned into a real freak show. The theme of the party, held on 18 June, might as well have been warmongering and death merchandizing. As we previously reported, among the 3,000 guests were, as you might expect, former British Prime Minister and war crimes suspect Tony Blair. But that’s not all... Jun 19, 2013 Zionism and Anti-Semitism: A Strange Alliance Through History, by Allan C. Brownfeld | IHR ...Anti-Semitism has been redefined to mean anything that opposes the policies and interests of Israel. The beginning of this redefinition may be said to date, in part, from the 1974 publication of the book The New Anti-Semitism by Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, leaders of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. The nature of the "new" anti-Semitism, according to Forster and Epstein, is not necessarily hostility toward Jews as Jews, or toward Judaism, but, instead a critical attitude toward Israel and its policies... “We Destroyed Arab Villages To Create Our State”, Retired General Said, by Saed Bannoura | IMEMC A retired Israeli military general told the Israeli Army Radio on his 100 birthday that the Israeli army destroyed and depopulated hundreds of Arab villages in order to establish the state of Israel in 1948, and added that “he feels good about it. - I can sleep with a clear mind”, Yitzhak Pondak told the Israeli Army Radio [Galei Tzahal] last week, “otherwise the number of Arabs in Israel would have been a million more than their number now”.. [Rhetorical question: why aren’t the Nazi hunters going after such people?] Intelligence chief says chaos in Arab world favours Israel | MEM The chief of Israel's military intelligence, General Aviv Kochav, has said that the chaos in the Arab world favours Israel and is something that he believes should continue. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference for Intelligence Studies, Gen. Kochav pointed out that the changes around Israel have fundamental implications for its security... [So 100 million “lesser beings” must suffer for the sake of the "security" of the Chosen Ones. How talmudic.] ‘Keeping the Population in a State of Constant Uncertainty,’ by Tamar Fleishman | Palestine Chronicle People were taken inside the inspection zone in groups of three. Just before me in line was an elder man who placed the few metal objects he carried in his pockets on a plastic tray that was taken away by the conveyer belt inside the metal detector. He presented his ID and passage permit to the soldiers through the bullet proof window.. The permit passed over to the other side, and as the soldiers took it into their hands it was confiscated. The man froze with a terrified look on his face. “Why?” I asked. “Because”, replied the soldier. “That’s not an answer”, I insisted. “It’s classified” replied the soldier. I insisted. He explained that these orders came from above... Looking for a New Devil: Israeli Leaders & Supporters Scramble After Iran Election, by Nima Shirazi | Dissident Voice Hassan Rouhani’s unexpected victory in this weekend’s Iranian election has sent Israeli hasbara into a tailspin. The desire for an Iranian bogeyman is so intense in the warmongering mainstream of Israeli and neocon discourse that any attempt to mask their pre-election desires and post-election frustration has been futile. Their entire game plan has been on display — every Iranian leader is a New Hitler and every New Hitler must be stopped. The whole point is to stave off any possible reconciliation or even minor deflation of tensions between Iran and the West, namely the US, so as to maintain permanent Israeli hegemony over the region and American largesse and diplomatic cover... Mark Fitzpatrick on the Influence of Western Sanctions on the Iranian Election | Arms Control Law As the news of the Iranian election’s results came in on Saturday, Mark Fitzpatrick of IISS sent out a Tweet saying: “My conclusion: Iranians are fed up with Sanctions and with the leaders who couldn’t stop them.” This was my first exposure to an argument that has since been making the rounds on the web, championed by nonproliferation types with close ties to Washington DC, like Fitzpatrick. The basic idea of this argument is that the election of Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, in Iran is confirmation of the effectiveness of Western economic sanctions in influencing Iran’s nuclear policy. I find this argument particularly analytically odious for several reasons... US surveillance flap shines light on Web ‘anonymizers’ | Daily Times News of a massive surveillance effort led by the secretive National Security Agency has sent Web users scrambling to find new ways to avoid tracking. It might have seemed paranoid not long ago when netizens used tools to hide their tracks, “shred” data or send self-destructing messages. Web anonymizers, encryption programs and similar tools have been available for years, but have been often associated with hackers, criminals and other “dark” elements on the Internet... Leveretts and Marandi: “Rouhani Won the Iranian Election. Get Over it.” | Going to Tehran ...Rouhani’s victory demonstrates that the election was a real contest, and that the perceived quality of candidates’ campaigns mattered greatly in many Iranians’ decisions for whom to vote. In the end, most Iranians seemed to believe – and acted as if they believed – that they had a meaningful choice to make. Besides the presidential ballot, Iranians voted for more than 200,000 local and municipal council seats – with more than 800,000 candidates standing for those seats – a “detail” never mentioned by those constantly deriding the Islamic Republic’s “dictatorship”.. President of international war crimes tribunal may have worked to shield Israelis from prosecution, by Alison Weir | CNI The New York Times reports that an Israeli diplomat turned U.S. citizen – and now president of the war crimes tribunal at the Hague – has been pressuring the court to acquit officials accused of war crimes.. Some analysts feel that Meron's motivation may be to protect Israeli political and military leaders from prosecutions that could place them in legal jeopardy.. John Whitbeck comments that both Israel and the United States are "world leaders in the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace," and that their officials "would prefer to see the bar for criminal convictions raised to a level which offers them continued impunity." Obama’s Syria Policy Looks a Lot Like Bush’s Iraq Policy | Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his “red line” and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government. Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important than 99,900 killed by other means, the fact is his above explanation is full of holes... Washington is Insane, by Paul Craig Roberts | Veterans Today In the 21st century the two hundred year-old propaganda that the American people control their government has been completely shattered. Both the Bush and Obama regimes have made it unmistakenly clear that the American people don’t even influence, much less control, the government. As far as Washington is concerned, the people are nothing but chaff in the wind... “Doomsday Weapons To Syria”: Putin, by Gordon Duff | Veterans Today ...With the Russian Navy back in the Mediterranean and the Israelis threatening to attack air defense weapons in transit, this gave the Russians no choice but to deploy all of their top line weapons systems to protect their defensive deployment. Unsaid has been that any pre-emptive attack on the Russians would be dealt with in a full response so that the attacking party could then explain to it's citizen once again why Syria was worth the devastation... "Racism or Assimilation" | Roi Tov On June 18, 2013, the Israeli Police published its report on Price Tag terror attacks. This happened after on June 2, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and State Prosecutor's Office failed to reach an agreement on the definition of the organization as a terrorist one. The Prosecutor claimed that settler attacks against Palestinians and Leftists represent an idea, not a centralized group and thus they cannot be defined as terrorists... Report from Syria and Appeal by Mairead Maguire | The Peace People ...Many people have fled into camps in surrounding countries like Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon.. Although the host countries are doing their best to cope they are overwhelmed by refugee numbers. (UNHCR’s official figure of refugees is one million). Through our meetings we have been informed that Turkey invites Syrian refugees into the country and forbid them to go back home. It is documented that Syrian refugees in Turkey and Jordan are mistreated. Some young Syrian refugee girls are sold for forced marriage in Jordan. From OHCHR reports we know that more than 4 million Syrians are displaced inside their own country, living in great need... As Obama Makes "False" Surveillance Claims, Snowden Risks Life to Spark NSA Debate, by Glenn Greenwald | Democracy Now! Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the NSA surveillance story earlier this month, joins us one day after both President Obama and whistleblower Edward Snowden gave extensive interviews on the surveillance programs Snowden exposed and Obama is now forced to defend. Speaking to PBS, Obama distinguished his surveillance efforts from those of the Bush administration and reaffirmed his insistence that no Americans’ phone calls or emails are being directly monitored without court orders. Greenwald calls Obama’s statements "outright false”.. Palestinian Authority tries to snuff out anti-occupation groups | Redress Information & Analysis We’ve all become used to reports of scandals hitting the Palestinian Authority (PA), so much so that it is fair to say we have are somewhat desensitized to them.. the cement factory owned by the prime minister of the time, Ahmad Qurei, supplying concrete slabs for Israel’s apartheid wall. Then came the Palestine Papers – leaked PA documents published by Al-Jazeera website in 2011 – which revealed a wealth of shameful behaviour by PA officials bordering on high treason.. the rampant corruption which has seen PA officials pocket foreign aid while Palestinians in the occupied territories scavenge for food and children in Gaza suffer permanent deformities brought about by malnutrition... Jun 18, 2013 The Making of a Global Security State, by Tom Engelhardt | Antiwar As happens with so much news these days, the Edward Snowden revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) spying and just how far we’ve come in the building of a surveillance state have swept over us 24/7 – waves of leaks, videos, charges, claims, counterclaims, skullduggery, and government threats. When a flood sweeps you away, it’s always hard to find a little dry land to survey the extent and nature of the damage. Here’s my attempt to look beyond the daily drumbeat of this developing story (which, it is promised, will go on for weeks, if not months) and identify five urges essential to understanding the world Edward Snowden has helped us glimpse... The Syrian Target, by Patrick Cockburn | CounterPunch ...The message of these three wars is that if the US and its Western allies do intervene in Syria it is they who will be the main players while the rebels will have only bit-parts or be there to give a Syrian gloss to foreign intervention. There are already signs of this happening. Brigadier Salim Idris, the chief of staff of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), appears to spend more of his time giving interviews to foreign journalists than commanding his troops. Not that these are numerous since even his own aides admit privately that he can give orders to a maximum of 10 per cent of the insurgent brigades in Syria... Edward Snowden's worst fear has not been realised – thankfully, by Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian In my first substantive discussion with Edward Snowden, which took place via encrypted online chat, he told me he had only one fear. It was that the disclosures he was making, momentous though they were, would fail to trigger a worldwide debate because the public had already been taught to accept that they have no right to privacy in the digital age. Snowden, at least in that regard, can rest easy. The fallout from the Guardian's first week of revelations is intense and growing. If "whistleblowing" is defined as exposing secret government actions so as to inform the public about what they should know, to prompt debate, and to enable reform, then Snowden's actions are the classic case... The Latest Pack of Lies?: The Chemical Weapons Pretext for War on Syria, by Ben Schreiner | CounterPunch In the wake of having its illegal domestic surveillance dragnet exposed, laying bare (yet again) the utter duplicity and criminality of the U.S. ruling class, Washington is once again digging deep to conjure up a pretext for yet another war of aggression in the Middle East. Using the tired menace of weapons of mass destruction, the White House Thursday claimed with “high confidence” that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons, specifically the nerve agent sarin, against rebel fighters... Privacy Isn't All We're Losing, by Peggy Noonan | WSJ ...The price too is a knowledge, based on human experience and held by all but fools and children, that the gleanings of the surveillance state will eventually be used by the mischievous, the malicious and the ignorant in ways the creators of the system did not intend. For all we know that's already happened. But of course we don't know: It's secret. Only the intelligence officials know, and they say everything's A-OK. The end of human confidence in a zone of individual privacy from the government, plus the very real presence of a system that can harm, harass or invade the everyday liberties of Americans. This is a recipe for democratic disaster... [If even Peggy Noonan says these things, in the WSJ no less, Big Brother might have cause for getting a little nervous] Building America’s secret surveillance state, by James Bamford | Reuters ...While the Obama administration and Senate intelligence committee members defend the spying as crucial in its fight against terrorism, this is only the latest chapter in nearly a century of pressure on telecommunications companies to secretly cooperate with NSA and its predecessors. But as stunning technology advances allow more and more personal information to pass across those links, the dangers of the United States turning into a secret surveillance state increase exponentially... Perspectives On The Surveillance Scandal, by Lawrence Davidson | Brave New World It is 1971 and the United States is mired in a losing war in Vietnam. Thousands of young American soldiers are coming back to the U.S. in coffins or physically and psychologically maimed. Scenes of war can be witnessed nightly on the evening news. In the midst of this mayhem the American military analyst Daniel Ellsberg gives the New York Times a copy of a classified analysis of the war entitled, “United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967” aka the “Pentagon Papers.” The Nixon administration then sought to prevent the publication of this report through a court injunction. Ultimately the Supreme Court overturned the injunction in a 6-3 ruling that favored the public’s right to know... The NSA Scandal and Syrian Intervention, by Jacob G. Hornberger | The Future of Freedom Foundation President Obama says that the reason he has finally decided to intervene in Syria by providing weaponry to Syrian rebels is because the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons in the conflict. Never mind that Obama has provided no evidence for his claim. Hey, if George W. Bush could get away with a bogus WMD claim for invading Iraq, why can’t Obama do the same with an intervention in Syria? There’s another possible reason for why Obama has suddenly decided to intervene in Syria. It’s found in the following quote by James Madison:.. Exposing the Real Ralph Nader, by Rosemarie Jackowski | MCW News ...Nader is motivated by conscience. The list of Conscientious Objectors to USA policies is growing - Greenwald, Assange, Manning, Hammond, Snowden, and many others. Nader was one of the original COs. We owe him a lot. He might never go down in history as President. Instead he will always have an even higher status... that of Super Statesman. He is honest. He is moral. He is incorruptible. He cannot be bought. That is more than we can say about those we vote for and elect... Cold Nights in an Indifferent World: An Insight Into Palestinian Resilience in Gaza, by Sarah Marusek | CounterPunch In the eyes of many Westerners, Gaza is a dangerous and war torn place. Even activists, including myself, often imagine Gaza primarily as a place of suffering, and one that has unfairly come to eclipse the affliction of all of Palestine. But while Israel’s wars of aggression against the people of Gaza, as well as its brutal siege, have cost many lives and inflicted countless casualties, Gaza today is a remarkably calm, protected and beautiful place where everyday lives go on, despite the continued suffering of its people. Indeed, Gaza is a place where the heart and soul flourish even if the body is ailing; where people and community are so alive and resilient that it rekindles one’s hope in humanity... Israeli squatter chief speaks the truth | Redress Information & Analysis Over the next few days we can expect an endless stream of hot air in response to Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett’s declaration that the idea of a two state-solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a pipe dream. In remarks to a conference of Jewish squatters and land thieves in Jerusalem, relayed by Israeli public radio, Bennett, who heads the hardline supremacist Jewish Home party, said: “The idea that a Palestinian state will be founded within the Land of Israel [i.e. the West Bank and the Palestinian territory occupied and ethnically cleansed in 1948] has reached a dead-end..”.. The Practice of Pre-Emption, by Paul Balles | Gulf Daily News ...The Pre-Emption Act of 1841 gave squatters the right to buy 160 acres at $1.25 per acre before the land was auctioned. The Homestead Act of 1862 made pre-emption an accepted part of US land policy.. Fast forward to Israel and the connection should be clear. American homesteaders took land that should have remained in the hands of the indigenous tribes of American Indians.. The idea and practice of pre-emption have become a social disease, including pre-emptive defence, pre-emptive assassinations, pre-emptive security, pre-emptive judgements, pre-emptive laws and pre-emptive wars. Pre-emptive killing is a daily event in occupied Palestine... Humor Dep't: Zionist Christian Pat Robertson Wins Churchill Award, by Bob Johnson | Veterans Today Zionist Christian, televangelist and faith healer Marion “Pat” Robertson has won the first ever Winston Churchill Life Time Achievement Award from fellow Zionist Christian Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition last Friday. Reed is a protege of Robertson’s and was the leader of Robertson’s political organization the Christian Coalition... [Winnie would’ve been so proud] The New Sicarii | Alternative Insight ...The Sicarii played a principal role in provoking the Roman onslaught against the Jewish population in Jerusalem and in the eventual destruction of the city. Their identifying characteristics: victimhood, no compromises, use of daggers to resolve issues, generating hate, and creating victims. Two questions still require responses: Why did the Sicarii pursue a suicide effort and why did the first century Jews tolerate their presence? History tells us that populations never learn from history and proceed to commit the same mistakes. The Jews have followed this principal; Sicarii have been prevalent throughout Jewish history and have often brought tragedy to Jewish populations... [The freelance hit men employed by the Mexican drug cartels and based in Juarez are known as the Sicarii. An appropriate designation.] Thus did I redeem the land.. | Paul Eisen ...the pieces below are about the very real and not-so-nice side of JNF activity - stealing land from Palestinians to give to Jews. It's posted by Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP) - a group who, though inevitably sometimes exhibiting all the least likeable aspects of Jewish collective behaviour, also are capable of great compassion and generosity. They're certainly better than the Jewish 'anti-Zionists' (usually Marxist) who, to my mind, are a cold, heartless and ultimately murderous bunch... Sapping Assad’s strength: Israel stirs the pot in Syria, by Jonathan Cook | The View from Nazareth ...Is Israel sending out contradictory signals to sow confusion, or is it simply confused itself? The answer can be deduced in the unappealing outcomes for Israel whoever emerges triumphant. Israel stands to lose strategically if either Assad or the opposition wins decisively... The Most Contaminated Land in the Middle East | Gilad Atzmon ...Haifa District Court judge rules that there is no causal link between Kishon River’s pollution and the illness of more than 70 Israeli Navy seal divers, despite expert claims that 'exposure to one molecule' could lead to illness. For more than 25 years, the Israeli elite Navy seals used to dive and train in the Kishon River in the Haifa Bay, apparently, the most polluted river in Israel... Killing Your Own Veterans | Roi Tov Israel's favorite way of hiding hyraxes is placing them under a thick heap of kosher food. Most of the research produced by its academic institutions is innocent; less innocent parts are split into tiny bits and hidden under the always growing heap of kosher scientific papers. The same happens in the IDF. Most of its units are involved in regular military activities. A few are involved in nasty things. Most of these nasty things are hidden among noisily generated innocent activities. Sometimes, this white noise fires back... Jun 17, 2013 Ethics and Politics | Richard Falk ...I have learned and relearned how difficult it is to reconcile my interest in constructive dialogue on highly contested subject-matters with sustaining a tone of civility. Especially with respect to the Palestine/Israel struggle I have periodically failed, angering especially those who feel that their support of Israel is either inappropriately rejected or ignored. This anger is turned in the direction of personal insults directed either at me or at writers of comments, which induces those at the receiving end to reply in kind, and the result is a loss of civility, which alienates many other readers who tire of such futile and mean-spirited arguments... [We Jews are a curious lot. At one end of the spectrum are the Zionists, close to cornering the market on unalloyed evil and currently masters of all they survey – and then there are great souls like Richard Falk.] Chemical weapons experts still skeptical about U.S. claim that Syria used sarin, by Matthew Schofield | McClatchy ...while the use of such a weapon is always possible, they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny. “It’s not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just that we can’t prove a sarin attack, it’s that we’re not seeing what we would expect to see from a sarin attack.”.. The Forbidden Truth: The U.S. is Channeling Chemical Weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria, Obama is a Liar and a Terrorist, by Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research ...In a bitter irony, the evidence amply confirms that the chemical weapons are being used not by Syrian government forces but by the US supported Al Qaeda rebels. In a twisted logic whereby realities are turned upside down, the Syrian government is being accused of the atrocities committed by the US sponsored Al Qaeda affiliated rebels. The Western media is feeding disinformation into the news chain, casually refuting its own news reports. Confirmed by various sources including CNN, the Western military alliance has not only made chemical weapons available to the Al Nusrah Front, it has also sent in military contractors and special forces to train the rebels:.. What the NSA Revelations Tell Us about America’s Police State, by Tom Burghardt | Dissident Voice Ongoing revelations by The Guardian and The Washington Post of massive, illegal secret state surveillance of the American people along with advanced plans for waging offensive cyberwarfare on a global scale, including inside the US, underscores what Antifascist Calling has reported throughout the five years of our existence: that democracy and democratic institutions in the United States are dead letters... Former French FM: War against Syria Planned 2 Years before Arab Spring, by Gearóid Ó Colmáin | Dissident Voice In an interview with the French TV station LCP, former French minister for Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas said: I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria.This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me... U.S. House passes bill to ensure Israel can 'remove existential threats' | Haaretz The U.S. House of Representatives passed a defense authorization bill that would make it U.S. policy to take “all necessary steps” to ensure Israel is able to “remove existential threats,” among them nuclear facilities in Iran. “It is the policy of the United States to take all necessary steps to ensure that Israel possesses and maintains an independent capability to remove existential threats to its security and defend its vital national interests,” said the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act passed Friday... [Not that long ago treason was a hanging offense - nowadays, except for a handful of courageous lone wolves, it's mandatory (along with the skullcap on ceremonial occasions) for anyone involved in American national politics.] From the you-have-to-be-kidding-me dept: NSA's Talking Points Defending NSA Surveillance | Techdirt The government has been passing around some "talking points" to politicians and the press trying to spin the NSA surveillance story. We've got the talking points about scooping up business records (i.e., all data on all phone calls) and on the internet program known as PRISM. Both are embedded below. Let's dig in on a few of the points, starting with the business records/FISA issue:.. What's between the JNF and pro-Israel graffiti in Hebron? by Jonathan Cook | Haaretz ..There's an astounding little story hidden away in the Haaretz magazine. According to Haaretz, tax-deductible donations made to the the JNF in the US are used to pay a US group called Artists 4 Israel who go around Israel spray-painting rightwing graffiti.. the JNF is paying these "artists" not only to incite for the destruction of the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem so a Third Temple can be built but doing so among a group of religious fanatics in Hebron, who are precisely the kind of people who might undertake such an action... Israeli Professor: Assad Won, Global Media Cannot Be Trusted | YouTube Jewish Culture, The Jewish Lobby and more.. | Gilad Atzmon When Israel Is Mighty | YouTube Part of an extended interview with writer Yossi Gurvitz, transcribed & translated from Hebrew to English by Dena Shunra... Flashback: U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraqs Water System, by Thomas J. Nagy | Project Censored During the Gulf War the United States deliberately bombed Iraq’s water system. After the war, the U.S. pushed sanctions to prevent importation of necessary supplies for water purification. These actions resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians many of whom were young children. Documents have been obtained from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which prove that the Pentagon was fully aware of the mortal impacts on civilians in Iraq and was actually monitoring the degradation of Iraq’s water supply. The destruction of civilian infrastructures necessary for health and welfare is a direct violation of the Geneva Convention... The Coup of Coups: Putting the Shah of Shahs on the Peacock Throne, by Ron Jacobs | CounterPunch If there is one nation whose political situation has been omnipresent and important to the history of the past seventy-five years, it would be Iran. Much to the dismay of those imperial powers that have tried to subdue and manipulate them, Iran’s people have refused to go along. Islamic revolutionaries or leftist revolutionaries, military men and civilians, it doesn’t matter. The imposition of foreign restrictions and regimes have consistently failed to withstand the desire of the Iranians to be free of foreign domination... National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy by Hassan Rouhani | Wikipedia National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy is the memoir of Hassan Rouhani, the first secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council who was also in charge of Iran’s nuclear case under President Mohammad Khatami as tensions began to escalate over Iran's nuclear program. About two years after this book was first published in 2011, its author was elected as President of Iran on 15 June 2013. In this book, he has focused on Iran’s nuclear program and challenges created by the Western countries, especially the United States and three European countries of France, Germany and UK, during 678 days.. when he and his team were handling Iran’s nuclear case... In conversation with Hassan Rouhani | Maktoob ...Iran has an exclusively peaceful nuclear program, which under international law is lawful and indisputable. A politically motivated campaign of misinformation has persistently attempted to cast doubts on the exclusively peaceful nature of this program. This campaign is being fueled and directed first and foremost by Israel, in order to divert international attention not only from its own clandestine and dangerous nuclear weapons program, but also from its destabilizing and inhuman policies and practices in Palestine and the Middle East. Regrettably, the Security Council has discredited itself by allowing the United States to impose this counter-productive Israeli agenda... What if Netanyahu Won the Elections in Iran? | Roi Tov Iran's elections results awarded an easy victory to Hassan Rouhani, who got over 50% of the vote in the first round. He defined the event as a "victory of moderation over extremism." Even Israel acknowledged that he was the most moderate among the candidates. Moreover, he had been the Chief Negotiator in the unending nuclear talks between Iran and the international community. That's not a post awarded to an extremist. Israel's top echelon delivered astonishing reactions, which cannot be understood without a few comments on Jewish and Israeli culture because neither Prime Minister Netanyahu nor Minister of Defense Ya'alon delivered rational comments... A Very Strange Reality, by Archie Kennedy | MCW News ...If we have the capacity to consider reality outside the view of the militarized West and we look at the alarm raised when NATO members issue reports that are far more likely to be false than true (that Assad has used poison gas on civilians), we might then consider the horror and terror that is caused by the dropping on bombs on populated areas... Your ever vigilant friends at the NSA, by Will Durst | MCW News Please accept our most egregiously sincere apologies for the difficulties and inconveniences the secret monitoring of your phone records and email and GPS units and foreign travel and bank accounts and yes, even your snail mail has evidently caused. We here at the NSA strive for the perfection of our services, which depend on the chronic obliviousness of you, our valued customers. Unfortunately, due to one disgruntled deadbeat (who escaped to China to avoid government persecution- which is like joining the Army because you’re tired of people telling you what to do) you now know of our continuing efforts to keep you safe... Jun 16, 2013 Still Snowden ...Why has such a massive police-state apparatus and universal spying become so central to the ruling regime? Why has the entire executive, legislative and judicial leadership come out in public for such a blatant repudiation of all constitutional guarantees? Why do elected leaders defend universal political espionage against the citizenry? What kind of politics requires a police state?.. With all of the fear mongering the subject has received in recent decades, Americans have in fact had remarkably little to fear directly from ‘terrorism.’ While actual attacks have been spectacular—they were designed to garner attention, they are both rare and far less dangerous than opportunistic politicians and the dim bureaucrats of the ‘security’ state care to communicate. As comedian Stephen Colbert (correctly) pointed out, including the attacks of September 11, 2001 and more recently in Boston, more Americans have died from furniture falling on them than from terrorist attacks... ...Director of National Intelligence James Clapper blatantly lied to Congress about the activity of the NSA, and there seems to be no ramifications. Yet the Washington establishment wants to put Snowden in jail and throw away the key for telling the truth. We are told to blindly respect an institution that persecutes whistleblowers for leaks of overclassified government information while watching the Obama administration’s leaking of secret government information to aggrandize the president during his reelection campaign. So, please tell us more about how we should have more respect for our institutions... ...There are many, many reasons to be concerned about the rise of the surveillance state, even if you have nothing to hide. Or rather, even if you think you have nothing to hide. For those confronted by such simplistic arguments, here are a three counterarguments that perhaps might get these people thinking about what they’re actually giving up... ...In the first week of October 2001, President Bush had signed an extraordinary order authorizing blanket dragnet electronic surveillance: Stellar Wind was a highly secret program that, without warrant or any approval from the Fisa court, gave the NSA access to all phone records from the major telephone companies, including US-to-US calls. It correlates precisely with the Verizon order revealed by Snowden; and based on what we know, you have to assume that there are standing orders for the other major telephone companies... Edward Snowden revealed himself this week as the whistleblower responsible for perhaps the most significant release of secret government documents in U.S. history. The former CIA staffer and analyst for the private intelligence consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton spoke to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Barton Gellman in Hong Kong, providing convincing evidence that the U.S. government, primarily the National Security Agency, is conducting massive, unconstitutional surveillance globally, and perhaps most controversially, on almost all, if not all, U.S. citizens... General Keith Alexander is NSA director. He's US Cyber Command head. He's in charge of lawlessly spying. He directs illegal hacking. He does both globally. He's a serial lawbreaker. He violates fundamental constitutional law. He testified before Congress. More on that below... US sarin claims a cruel hoax, by Jim W. Dean | PressTV ...Western 'democracies' have hooked up with Persian Gulf state-funded terrorists to destroy Syria whose only international conflict has been in supporting the Palestinian freedom movement from persecution by the Israelis. When it comes to blood on its hands for cruel oppression, the US's corrupt and heartless backing of all Israeli crimes against the Palestinians makes Assad look like a choir boy. This cannot be washed off as it it is written in blood and carved into too many headstones now... Awake and Take Back Your Republic!: Gangsta Government, by William O’Connor } CounterPunch ...In America, money doesn’t talk, but screams to a comatose public, a criminal government and a corrupt media. You don’t have to listen hard to hear it.. Years after the largest heist in history, no one has done shit to the Wall Street shysters who robbed us in plain sight. No investment banker has gone to jail. No new regulations put in place. Nothing’s changed. Indeed, the nation watched stunned as our Congress apologized to the well-heeled felons on national T.V. Government’s not the noose around the thieves’ neck but the stool beneath their feet. Yet, the narcoleptics who pass for voters say nothing... "The German soldiers had the reputation of being "korrekt" | Paul Eisen Up till now it was the Anglo-Americans who were the good guys. Now, we're really not so sure and this book only adds to our growing unease. The post opens with an eye-witness testimony (From which the title of the post is taken) by Professor Robert Faurisson, now in his late eighties but then a teenager in occupied France. “I remember how afraid French women were of the GIs in Orléans, in September 1944. I was 15...” Intervention Temptation, by Doug Bandow | The American Spectator ...the push to intervene suggests that working in Washington leads to policy madness. Despite the end of the Cold War, the U.S. armed services have spent much of the last quarter century engaged in combat. At the very moment Washington should be pursuing a policy of peace, policymakers are considering joining a civil war in which America’s security is not involved, other nations have much more at stake, many of the “good” guys in fact are bad, and there would be no easy exit. The starting point for U.S. foreign policy should be peace... Ron Paul and M K Bhadrakumar both believe that this is Obama's "Monica moment" | The Vineyard of the Saker According to Ron Paul and M K Bhadrakumar all this nonsense about chemical weapons in Syria has nothing to do with Syria, but it is simply about the creation of a distraction away from Obama's internal problems (Ron Paul here; M K Bhadrakumar here). Unsuprisingly, Russia has categorically rejected the chemical weapons claim, the arming of the rebels or the possible imposition of an illegal no-fly zone:.. Palestine Game-changers, by Vacy Vlazna | Palestine Chronicle Swaggering precariously on his defunct divine right of peace-broker at the American Jewish Committee annual love-fest for Israel, US Secretary of State Kerry, regurgitated with braggart aplomb the tiresome ultimatum on the Palestinian/Israel peace process, “If we do not succeed now, we may never get another chance.” Seems Kerry is the last to know that the US’s stint as ‘honest broker’ is beyond passé as is his ultimatum. We know that there are many game-changers that can set in motion a genuine peace process with just outcomes for Palestinians and Israelis... The Forbidden Truth: The U.S. is Channeling Chemical Weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria, Obama is a Liar and a Terrorist, by Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research ...The chemical weapons accusations are fabricated.. the evidence amply confirms that the chemical weapons are being used not by Syrian government forces but by the US supported Al Qaeda rebels. In a twisted logic whereby realities are turned upside down, the Syrian government is being accused of the atrocities committed by the US sponsored Al Qaeda affiliated rebels. The Western media is feeding disinformation into the news chain, casually refuting its own news reports. Confirmed by various sources including CNN, the Western military alliance has not only made chemical weapons available to the Al Nusrah Front, it has also sent in military contractors and special forces to train the rebels:.. The Israeli Lab and the Palestinian Guinea Pigs | Gilad Atzmon "The Lab" is a new groundbreaking Israeli documentary film that redefines our entire understanding of the Jewish State, its aims, its identity and its global destructive role. I honestly believe that this film is the deepest and most important commentary on Israel. In ‘The Lab’, Director Yotam Feldman exposes the Israeli military industry and its operation, he interviews some major protagonists within Israel’s ‘security’ trade. He elaborates on the role of the industry within the Israeli society and economy - in the last few years Israeli security exports reached an unprecedented level of $7 billion a year. A full 20% of Israeli exports are military or military related... Vengeful Zio-schemers sharpen their knives: UN justice champion Richard Falk targeted (again), by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis The US ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, has branded Richard Falk as “unfit to serve in his role as a UN Special Rapporteur.” It seems that in his role monitoring the occupied Palestinian territories he’s in the habit of expressing views that don’t coincide with the twisted dogma of the pro-Israel lobby and its handmaidens, like Donahoe and Susan Rice, the outgoing US ambassador to the UN and National Security adviser-designate This attack is merely the latest in a long line of attempts to smear, vilify and dump Falk... The Jewification of the World Is Now in Session, by Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today ...In a speech delivered at the B’nai B’rith in 1902, Solomon Ehrmann, a Viennese Jewish dermatologist, envisioned a future in which “All of mankind will have been jewified and joined in union with the B’nai B’rith.” When that happens, “not only the B’nai B’rith but all of Judaism will have fulfilled its task.” According to Albert S. Lindemann of the University of California, for Ehrmann, “Jewification equaled enlightenment.” As a corollary, if mankind is not “Jewified,” mankind is therefore in darkness... [As a (born Jewish) Buddhist, I understand enlightenment to mean waking up. Apparently there is a Jewish definition, which would appear to mean falling asleep and having a horrifying nightmare in which the Jews slaughter all their enemies (aka the goyim) and then dance around the scene singing Hava Nagilah. It must be in the bible somewhere, what with all the smiting, looting, enslaving and then the begetting.] Jun 15, 2013 Syria vs. the Empire Why Obama is Declaring War on Syria, by Franklin Lamb | CounterPunch ...What happens between now and the end of summer is likely to be catastrophic for the Syrian public and perhaps Lebanon. The “chemical weapons-red line” is not taken seriously on Capitol Hill for the reason that the same “inclusive evidence” of months ago is the same that is suddenly being cited to justify what may become essentially an all-out war against the Syrian government and anyone who gets in the way... The Syria Chemical Weapons Saga: The Staging of a US-NATO Sponsored Humanitarian Disaster? by Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research ...the Pentagon not only provided chemical weapons to Al Nusra, an affiliated Al Qaeda terrorist organization, but also provided training to the rebels in the use of these weapons. While Washington points its finger at president Bashar al Assad, a United Nations independent commission of inquiry has confirmed that the rebels rather than the government have chemical weapons in their possession and are using sarin nerve against the civilian population: U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin... What We DO Know About Chemical Weapons In Syria | Moon of Alabama ...Carla Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general and prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), is a member of the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria. On May 6 she declared that according to investigations she had seen insurgents in Syria had used the nerve gas Sarin: Testimony from victims of the conflict in Syria suggests rebels have used the nerve agent, sarin, a leading member of a UN commission of inquiry has said... Syrian Terrorists Massacre Dozens of Civilians in Hatlah Village, by Gearóid Ó Colmáin | Dissident Voice The Western press was mute on the Syrian war.. as reports came of another massacre carried out by the so called “rebels”, who are, in fact, members of al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda affiliated groups. Among those massacred in the village of Hatlah.. were dozens of women and children. Reports of the massacre vary from 30 to 100. The Western press was mute on the Syrian war on June 12th as reports came of another massacre carried out by the so called “rebels”, who are, in fact, members of al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda affiliated groups. Among those massacred in the village of Hatlah in the region of Deir e Zohr were dozens of women and children. Reports of the massacre vary from 30 to 100... Man Behind Syrian ‘Chemical Weapons’ Claim Is Fiction Writer Who Ran Benghazi Cover-Up, Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars Ben Rhodes, the White House national security advisor behind the claim that President Bashar Al-Assad used chemical weapons in Syria, is a fiction writer with zero educational background in government, diplomacy or national security who also played a key role in covering up the truth behind the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.. Rhodes’ expertise revolves around manufacturing narratives. “He earned a master’s degree in fiction-writing from New York University just a few years ago,”.. US to Supply Syrian Rebels with Heavy Weapons | OpEd News It seems that our corrupt, lying leaders in Washington are at it again. Just moments ago, the Administration said that Syria "Has crossed the Red Line" by using chemical weapons against the opposition. That isn't what is driving this train. According to international sources, the opposition is swiftly folding against the Army of Bashir al-Assad and this is unacceptable to the U.S. and its proxy Israel... Cordons of the Mind: Constitutional Entropy in America, by Jeffrey St. Clair | CounterPunch ...The congressional warlords, odious figures like Lindsay Graham and Peter King, launched a frantic scramble to exploit the bombing by calling for expanded police and surveillance powers. Of course, this means fresh financial opportunities for the Homeland Security Complex, that ravening claque of consultants and contractors who are feasting at the trough of America’s last growth industry. Their loathsome lobbyists, many of them former Pentagon officials and CIA operatives, swirl like wraiths around the still smoldering ruins scenting out fresh opportunities to cash in. It is a morbid form of legalized looting... NSA Deception Operation?: Questions Surround Leaked PRISM Document’s Authenticity, by Steve Kinney | Global Research Intelligence services have been feeding false information to known enemy informants in their own ranks for a long time, and they are very good at it. Today, the potential whistleblower is one of the most dangerous informants an intelligence service can confront. Was Edward Snowden spotted before he decided to leak documents, and set up by the NSA? Substantial evidence supports the possibility that he was... Practice of Torture: US and Israeli Intelligence, by Ron Jacobs | CounterPunch ...There are literally thousands of accounts by Palestinian detainees describing the torture dealt to them while in Israeli custody. Indeed, as the B’Tselem/HoMoked report made clear: “It should be emphasized that, far from being used only in special circumstances, torture methods are used against a large number of Palestinian detainees. According to the last official estimate, some 23,000 Palestinians were interrogated by the GSS between 1987 and 1994. According to the experience of B’Tselem and other human rights organizations, it is very rare indeed that the GSS interrogates Palestinians without using at least some of the methods described below... ‘Made in Gaza’: Breaking the Siege, by Eric Walberg | Palestine Chronicle ...This time, it is not internationals trying to bring aid to Gaza, but internationals helping Palestinians export their products — breaking the siege, but in reverse. Gazans, with a modicum of international assistance, are at this moment converting the old fishing boat into a cargo vessel using Gaza’s meagre resources. Later this year, a crew of internationals and Palestinians will sail it out of Gaza — the only Mediterranean port closed to shipping — carrying Palestinian products destined for international buyers, in the process, breaking through the Israeli blockade... Tens of thousands Jews protesting the State of Israel in NYC | YouTube On June 9, 2013, tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews assembled on the streets of New York City to protest against the existence of the State of Israel... State of Denial: Occupation? What Occupation? by Uri Avnery | Palestine Chronicle ...“Power corrupts,” said the British statesman Lord Acton. “And absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The occupation is the most absolute power there is. It has corrupted everything good about us – it has corrupted the army that maintains the occupation, the soldiers who are forced to terrorize the civilian population every night, the government institutions that bypass the law in the dark, the courts that implement the occupation laws, and the entire country, which is violating international law every day. If we ask ourselves what has happened to our country, we simply have to open our eyes and look at the elephant... It’s Not Edward Snowden Who Betrayed Us, by Sheldon Richman | MCW News When you cut through the fog, the NSA controversy is about whether we should trust people with institutional power. Edward Snowden’s courageous exposure of massive secret surveillance separates those who say yes from those who say, “Hell no!”.. Sweden set to punish Israel’s Palestinian victims, by Nureddin Sabir | Redress Information & Analysis Few reasonably informed and fair-minded people would argue with the fact that the reason for the failure – no, the stillbirth – of the so-called “Middle East peace process” is Israel’s ongoing program of land theft and colonization of Palestinian territories, its Judaization of East Jerusalem and its refusal to negotiate over the right of return or compensation for the Palestinians who have been ethnically cleansed to make way for foreign Jewish squatters.. to turn this moribund process into a real roadmap to peace and justice, it is necessary to put unbearable pressure on Israel, a state which to this moment refuses to define its borders so as to leave the door open to further territorial expansion... Iran: Threat or Menace? Part 3: Why Iran-bashing is obligatory, by Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today If you want to publish an English-language article, book, or research paper about Iran, don’t even think about noticing any of the positive accomplishments of the 1979 Islamic revolution. If you do, you may never work in this town again. Even the good books in English about Iran – with very few exceptions – have a strong anti-Islamic-revolution bias. The most notable exception is Going to Tehran by Flynt and Hillary Leverett. The Leverett’s book corrects most of the major misconceptions about Iran in great detail and with convincing documentation... Jun 14, 2013 From Nightmares To Revelations: Zionism, New Hurdles to Peace, by William A. Cook | Intifada Palestine ...if the hatred imbedded in the soul of those in despair could be alleviated by removing the source of the hate, the occupying forces, and if the powerful that imposed their will on the masses could be convinced that the world needs to give justice a chance, then the people would see themselves as equals living, working, learning, growing, and praying together in their own way, recognizing the purpose of life through sharing in a meaningful way... Why Washington Fears Iran, by Sharmine Narwani | Al Akhbar ...The fact that Iran is not producing a nuclear bomb – nay, hasn’t even decided if it wants to – has not deterred the US government from slapping the Islamic Republic with the most punishing unilateral sanctions in history. While the Iranian economy struggles to adjust to periodic US sanctions “upgrades,” a significantly devalued currency and restrictions in global financial transactions have suddenly challenged even Iran’s famed adaptability to these kinds of externally-imposed pressures... [There is another reason – bullies always hate and fear those they have harmed, and the unprovoked damage inflicted on Iran for more than 50 years by Uncle Sam is staggering.] David Ray Griffin, Gilad Atzmon take the United Nations! by Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today When Israeli propagandist Sayan Hillel Neuer stood up on the floor of the United Nations and started waving around David Ray Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor and Gilad Atzmon’s The Wandering Who?, he probably didn’t realize that he was giving priceless PR to two of the most important books of our time.. what Neuer apparently doesn’t grasp is that the vast majority of people at the UN, especially the delegates from countries other than the US and Europe, absolutely loathe hysterical Zionist idiots such as himself. You can bet that after Neuer’s little stunt, many of those who witnessed it made a note to head for the bookstore or library to pick up a copy of Griffin’s and Atzmon’s books... Bibi Refuses to Sign Two-State Communique with Polish Leaders, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam It’s been a lousy week for the two-state solution. First, tourism minister, Uzi Landau, sniggered at the two-state solution and said the very idea was ridiculous and would never happen under this government. Then, a few days later, Danny Danon, the deputy defense minister and a far more senior official, said virtually the same thing. At that point, Bibi put a lid on his ministers and told them to shut up... False flags part 2: The ‘war on terror’ isn’t real, but the illusion is, by Craig McKee | Truth and Shadows ...The “war on terror,” which should never be allowed to go out alone without its quotes on, is essentially a mass delusion. In case this offends anyone I downgrade it here to an illusion. Because the trouble isn’t essentially within the brains of the herd members. The trouble is what the herd is being fed. Call it mad crowd disease. This “war” is integrated with other mutually supportive, artificially created forms of madness... Loving Hitler | Paul Eisen The person of Adolf Hitler looms large in the life of any Jewish child and he certainly did in mine. All my life, I hated and feared him but I was also fascinated by him and sometimes I loved him too. How could this be? Reading Russel Stolfi's revolutionary book "Hitler: Beyond Evil & Tyranny” I begin to see why... How Gaddafi`s Great Man-Made River Project became part of the Water Wars ...In the light of the current world developments, there is more to the NATO destruction of the Great Man-Made River Project than being an isolated war crime. The United Nations Environment Program 2007 describes a so-called "water for profit scheme", which actively promotes the privatization and monopolization for the world's water supplies by multinational corporations. Meanwhile the World Bank recently adopted a policy of water privatization and full-cost water pricing, with one of its former directors, Ismail Serageldin, stating: "The wars of the 21st century will be fought over water".. Iran’s Presidential Election and the Real Dynamics of Iranian Politics | Going to Tehran This year’s Iranian presidential election is likely to produce a strong political figure who will have a significant impact on the Islamic Republic’s foreign and domestic policies, helping to ensure Iran’s continued internal development and bolstering its regional importance. Yet every four years, a combustible mix of pro-Israel advocates, Iranian expatriates, Western Iran “experts,” and their fellow travelers in the media try to use Iranian presidential elections as a frame for persuading Westerners that the Islamic Republic is an illegitimate system so despised by its people as to be at imminent risk of overthrow... Glenn Greenwald Discusses NSA Leaker, Boundless Informant, Zuckerberg | YouTube Putin talks NSA, Syria, Iran, drones in RT interview | YouTube Palestine Solidarity Campaign Infiltrated by Zionists, by Laura Stuart | Gilad Atzmon Today as I was searching pro Israel /anti Muslim websites I discovered that Stand for Peace has been taken over by one Sam Westrop. Hasan Afzal the previous leader and owner of the British Muslims for Israel website has apparently stepped down from his role of hypocritically claiming to stand for freedom of speech whilst running campaigns to prevent Muslim clerics from speaking at venues up and down the U.K... IDF General Admits One Million Palestinians Expelled | Roi Tov ...Golda Meir said: "There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.".. Israel’s “worn-out whore” celebrates his 90th birthday | Redress Information & Analysis Israeli President Shimon Peres is set to hold the mother of all parties to celebrate his 90th birthday. According to the Israeli news website Ynet, the veteran Labour Party leader’s birthday bash, which is due on 18 June, will be the hottest ticket in town.. But what exactly has Pares – once described by Israeli peace campaigner and former Knesset member Uri Avnery as a “worn-out whore” – got to celebrate? Ten years ago, in an article written on the occasion of Peres’s 80th birthday, Avnery summed up the Israeli president’s achievements thus:.. EU-USA: Data Surveillence | Statewatch How the USA changed the Commission's draft proposal for the new Regulation on EU data protection before it was formally adopted in January 2012 so as not to stand in the way of FISA/PRISM surveillance of the EU: The Financial Times reported on 12 June 2013, that due to US pressure and high-level lobbying, the Commission's draft proposal for the new Regulation on data protection, sent out for inter-service consultation in December 2011, was amended by deleting Article 42... NSA Spying: Another NSA Veteran Agent Speaks Out, by Johnny Punish | Veterans Today American citizens hoping to change the way the NSA monitors their everyday activities have little hope of recourse, longtime agency veteran Bill Binney told RT. He said the way the Patriot Act is interpreted is the a big first step toward totalitarianism... Jeffrey Goldberg Confesses: The real “Terror Threat” is From Neocons Like Him, by Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today ...Goldberg proves to be as good at torturing logic and evidence as he was at torturing imprisoned Palestinian activists. By twisting, omitting, or lying about facts, and engaging in leaps of logic, he makes a non-argument whose empty core seethes with rabid Islamophobic bigotry. In the end, he makes a confession in Straussian doublespeak: His surface argument appears to support the idea that terrorism is a threat; but a close reading shows that he knows the “threat” is a hoax, perpetrated by people like himself in order to trick the US into fighting Israel’s enemies... Syria Militants Massacre Christian Village Population | Syria Report The massacre, carried out by Free Syrian Army militants reportedly targeted men, women and children in the Christian village of al-Duwayr/Douar close to the city of Homs and the border with Lebanon. The incident received little media attention, having occurred at the same time as thousands of Syrian troops converged on the insurgent-occupied town of al-Qusayr. According to sources, around 350 heavily armed militants entered the village, broke into homes and assembled residents in the main square of the village where they were executed. The final death toll is not known but photos show severe damage to property in the village... Jun 13, 2013 L’Affaire Snowden (cont’d) Journalism attracts whistleblowers. In fact, some reporters need whistleblowers in order to do their jobs. But there are plenty of people working in the media who don't have much use for whistleblowers--and they've been having a field day going after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden... [In typical David Brooks fashion the NSA leak story is not about the threat to our freedom, but about the personality of the leaker.. It is the typical Brooks PILPUL-claptrap that shifts the blame from a corrupt system to those who fight the system.. Rather than addressing the legal-moral questions of the PRISM program, Brooks – who is deeply admiring of the authoritarian state and its privileged elites – goes after Snowden in an aggressive manner. He does his armchair psychoanalysis and then spins out – as he always does – a grandiose and delusional social theory to explain it all replete with pompous pseudo-intellectual bloviating. ~ David Shasha] ...Government officials and their surrogates in the media keep telling us that these programs are legal — that is, enshrined in law — and are overseen by all three branches of government: Congress, the executive branch, and the FISA court. That may be true, but laws can be unconstitutional, and these statutes even violate the text of the founding document. All three branches agreeing with and overseeing an unconstitutional law is the worst possible situation, because this fact is used to legitimize to the American people excessive government power... Over a few short days, we have learned the Obama Administration and the NSA are engaged in worldwide surveillance on a scale unprecedented in human history. The president and other officials have dismissed the privacy concerns therein, insisting that the security benefits outweigh basic human dignity. Yet even if this had been the case, it is plain that PRISM and the rest of the surveillance schemes are such colossal failures that they are impossible to defend on any grounds... Obama was right: Americans are sick of the war on terror. We aren’t terrified anymore, and we’re no longer willing to sacrifice our freedoms. That’s why a left-right alliance is denouncing Obama’s spy program... As a Senate candidate in 2003, Barack Obama called the PATRIOT Act "shoddy and dangerous." Once safely in power, Obama started demonstrating his remarkable capacity for "growing in office" -- expanding federal powers while piously moralizing about their potential abuse. As a senator, he voted to reauthorize the surveillance law in 2006; and as president, signed another PATRIOT renewal from Europe via presidential autopen in 2011... ...their bloodlust stops just short of the execution chamber door. The military prosecutors of the case against Bradley Manning, assumedly with the support of the Obama administration, have brought the virulent charge of “aiding the enemy” against the Army private who leaked state secrets. Yet they claim to have magnanimously taken the death penalty off the table. All they want to do is lock Manning up and throw away the key because, so they claim, he did nothing short of personally lend a hand to archfiend Osama bin Laden... Abunimah and Atzmon at the UN | Gilad Atzmon I was amused and proud to see my latest book The Wandering Who held aloft by Israeli chief Sayan Hilllel Neuer at the UN’s Human Right Council. The book was presented as ‘exhibit B’ in a farcical self-appointed Talmudic kangaroo court against the great Professor Richard Falk who lent his name, amongst many other leading humanists and intellectuals, in support of my work... [That ZioNazis like Neuer,who have nothing but utter contempt for the idea of human rights, have the gall to associate themselves, let alone head up, organizations with names like “Human Rights Watch” takes the notion of chutzpah beyond the realm of surrealism – yet it is the essence of Hasbara. One’s character can be measured by who one’s enemies are, so Atzmon and Falk et al stand tall in the gallery of great human beings.] Approaching 60, Norman Finkelstein reflects, by Ira Glunts and Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss We Are Change Rotterdam posted this February 8 interview of Norman Finkelstein in Europe three months ago. We've kept meaning to post it because the longtime scholar of the Israel/Palestine conflict reflects so openly as he approaches his 60th birthday later this year... [He will be surprised, as will be so many people, when the one state solution begins to be accepted as the only way to go. But it has been obvious from the beginning that the long-term existence of a Jewish State in Palestine is unsustainable – the world will ultimately reject and eliminate a malignant political tumor just as any of us would attack and destroy a physical one in our own bodies.] Syria: The Insurgency's New Weapons | Moon of Alabama While there is much talk and hand wringing if or when or how the "west" should or will or not supply new weapons to the Syrian insurgency, some new types of weapons have already recently appeared on the battlefield. We can be sure that Washington, London and Paris are aware of this and that the current political talk about eventually delivering further arms is just pretending. Over the last weeks videos uploaded by the insurgents showed increasingly hits on Syrian government tanks with wire-guided anti-tank missiles. These weapons are new arrivals. The sole anti-tanks weapons so far have been unguided rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and M-60 recoilless rifles. This stuff is new... ADL Spies, by Jeffrey Blankfort | CounterPunch ...Over the last three days of April, the ADL celebrated its 100th anniversary in Washington DC in high style with Vice President Joe Biden the featured speaker at its Centennial Gala dinner on April 30 and Attorney General Eric Holder doing the obligatory genuflecting the day before... UN Palestine monitor Richard Falk rejects calls to step down | Al Akhbar An embattled UN rights expert who probes Israel's conduct towards Palestinians on Tuesday rejected calls to step down, saying his opponents were trying to silence his criticism of the Jewish state by labeling him anti-Semitic. "I don't intend to resign, and there doesn't seem to be any formal initiative that is seeking my dismissal," Richard Falk told reporters, a day after calling for an international investigation of Israel's treatment of Palestinian prisoners... Samantha Power Reversal: Another Lobby Win, by MJ Rosenberg | Huffington Post ...the reality of U.S. politics dictates that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be exempted from rules or theories one applies elsewhere. That is why some of the most aggressively anti-war, pro-human rights progressives in Congress, the media and the blogosphere simply go silent, at best, on the subject of the Israeli occupation or, at worst, openly support military actions like Israel's wars in Gaza. They know that the Israel lobby will make life very difficult for those who insist on applying the same moral yardstick to Israel as to other nations... [The comparison between these moral cowards and the Ellsbergs, Mannings and Snowdens, let alone those who stake their careers on telling the truth about Israel and Zionism, is telling] "Israel Won't Be Our Home" | Roi Tov ...Netanyahu, you hyrax-eater, you Messiah’s Donkey, beware. The State of Israel exists not because of your Zionist-Religious party. The State of Israel exists not because of the astonishing blaspheming capabilities of Zionist freaks like Mr. Zehavi. The State of Israel exists not because of your espionage capabilities. The State of Israel exists not because of your stealing of military technologies.. The State exists because those calling themselves the Jewish People accept and support it.. Bibi, if you lose Jewish support, not even the USA will save your violent, malevolent fiefdom of evil. As Zionists like to say: "and better one hour earlier.".. Who Were the Patriots and Traitors in Nazi Germany? by Jacob G. Hornberger | The Future of Freedom Foundation Ever since I was a kid, I have heard Americans ask, “How could the German people have allowed the Nazi regime to commit its evil acts?” Well, here’s the answer to that question: The German people had the same warped and distorted concept of patriotism that American statists have today... ["Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" ~ Albert Einstein] Mongolia, Canada, Israel & the United States, by Macdonald Stainsby | CounterPunch ...Why would Genie– upon whose board sit Rupert Murdoch, Howard Jonas, Dick Cheney, Michael Steinhardt, Lord Jacobs Rothschild and others– want to come to Mongolia? These open Zionists and militarists have made clear their goal is to make Israel an oil superpower– They even hired Israel “Relik” Shafir, a pilot who flew the sorties attacking the Osirak Nuclear Reactor in Iraq back in 1981– to be their CEO. He publicly likes to reference his time in the Israeli air force as having taught him the importance of energy self-sufficiency... UN Forces in the Golan Perpetuate Israeli Occupation, by Akiva Eldar | Al Monitor ...In December 1981, the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law, imposing Israeli law on the occupied Golan Heights and effectively annexing it. Israel acted rather elegantly in the way it ignored the fact that not a single nation in the world recognized this annexation and that the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for the annulment of the law and rejecting its international validity... Jun 12, 2013 The Snowden Case (cont'd) In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an "executive coup" against the US constitution. Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended... ...Bradley Manning, and to the same extent, Julian Assange, have risked everything – their freedom of movement the gravest of sacrifices – so that other people of conscience would feel compelled to do the same, creating a “culture of conscientious whistleblowing” that has turned an underground movement of support into an emergent mainstream community that now includes major media, elected officials and a phalanx of legal minds on both sides of the political aisle. In other words, thanks to Assange and Manning, the time is ripe for the much-awaited reckoning of the post-9/11 secrecy and surveillance state... It’s bad enough the federal government spies on us. Must it insult our intelligence too? The government’s response to Edward Snowden’s leaks about the National Security Agency’s secret monitoring of the Internet and collection of our telephone logs is a mass of contradictions. Officials have said the disclosures are (1) old news, (2) grossly inaccurate, and (3) a blow to national security. It’s hard to see how any two of these can be true, much less all three. Can’t they at least get their story straight? If they can’t do better than that, why should we have confidence in anything else that they do?.. ...if you’re the type who has an independent mindset, one that might come to recognize that the warfare state is one great big racket by which power-lusters use federal power to plunder and loot your wealth and income, and if you’re the type of person who might begin objecting to this racket and calling for a restoration of American freedom, then it’s entirely possible that the files that the government is keeping on your private life might come back to haunt you... There is no longer any doubt whatsoever that the US government is lawless, that it regards the US Constitution as a scrap of paper, that it does not believe Americans have any rights other than those that the government tolerates at any point in time, and that the government has no fear of being held accountable by the weak and castrated US Congress, the sycophantic federal courts, a controlled media, and an insouciant public. Binney and Snowden have described in precisely accurate detail the extreme danger from the government’s surveillance of the population. No one is exempt, not the Director of the CIA, US Army Generals, Senators and Representatives, not even the president himself... PCHR: Assault during boycott talk must be investigated | Maan News Agency ..."Nizar Khalil Banat, 34, from Hebron, was violently beaten by a number of persons after he left the Fourth National Conference to Boycott Israel, held in Bethlehem" on Saturday.. Banat told the rights group that he identified two of his attackers as accompanying the PA Minister of National Economy Jawad al-Naji, who spoke at the event. The incident occurred after Banat, during a question and answer session, accused the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas of coordinating with Israel. Naji quickly interrupted by saying "We do not want to hear howling," PCHR said, as other participants demanded that he apologize or leave the conference. The minister stormed out of the conference... Humanitarian Crisis in Syria: “The West should Pay War Reparations to Syria”, Interview with Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research ...what we should be raising at this stage is that it is well established that this war was waged by the United States, NATO and Israel with the support of the [Persian] Gulf states, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in particular and that under international law what is now required is war reparations. So I would say: let us put the “humanitarian dimension” aside and focus on the billions and billions of dollars of war reparations, which are due to the Syrian government as a result of the illegal support of these terrorist formations in Syria, which constitute essentially the ground forces – the foot soldiers of the Western military alliance... Biodiversity, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance What is the real status of the environment in Palestine and how does it compare to Jordan? I just returned from my latest field work in Jordan. I started doing field work in Jordan in 1974 and published my first paper on new records of bats from Jordan in 1979 (an undergraduate seminar research project). The population of Jordan has more than doubled since then. I started doing field work as a teenager in Palestine in 1971 and the population in the West Bank and Gaza (22% of Palestine) has increased three folds. 650,000 Israeli Jewish settlers now live in the occupied West Bank area in over 135 colonies and some 100 colony “outposts”.. Organ trafficking & Israel: A message from Alison Weir | Gilad Atzmon Many Israel-tilting individuals, both in the pro-Israel movement and in the pro-Palestine movement, complain about my 2 articles exposing Israeli organ-trafficking – ignoring the fact that this practice is so widespread! (Surprisingly, before my articles came out, even the Electronic Intifada scoffed at the subject.) Here's the latest news report on the topic:.. The Woolwich terror attack exposes Saudi and Israeli collusion, by Shabana Syed | Veterans Today ...Contrary to what western media would like to propagate Shias and Sunnis have co- existed and intermarried for centuries, they differ on a few things but the Koran and the basic fundamentals of Islam unites them. Until recently, many US top army brass have openly admitted that every effort was used to create sectarian divisions in Iraq through undercover CIA Mossad and Blackwater operations. However the issue is not that simple as it doesn’t explain why this sectarian divide is permeating into Muslim communities based in western countries like London. To understand these recent developments one has to examine them in the context of sectarian warfare strategy... The West to pay a high price for targeting the Syrian government, Security experts claim, by Franklin Lamb | Intifada Palestine ...Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, who was largely responsible for security cooperation to combat international terrorism between the Syrians and the West in the past decade, was subject to the sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe. In addition, the “Crisis Cell” operation, which participated in the assassination of agents who were undoubtedly related to the West, resulted in the death of a number of Syrian officers who were responsible for some key security cooperation between Syria and the West. The West is killing and sanctioning many of those who provide it with help... Breaking the Set: Imminent Fiscal Abyss, Whitewashing History, Gitmo Torture Report | YouTube ..Abby Martin talks to Ellen Brown, president of the public banking institute and author of 'Web of Debt', about the need for banking reform in the US and the dangers associated with adopting the Cyprus 'bail-in' model internationally. On the anniversary of the Mexican American War, Abby looks into the current immigration debate in the US, highlighting the fact that the entire south west of the United States was Mexico only 167 years ago. BTS wraps up the show with an interview with Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, about the most recent findings regarding force-feeding prisoners at Gitmo, and the need to close down the detention facility... Israeli Big Brother is Watching You! by Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today ...Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef declared that Obama is a “kind of king of our time.” As such, the president, continues the good rabbi, “can declare war on an enemy state” and “has the authority to pardon those sentenced to death.” Keep in mind that it was Yosef who declared in 2010 that the “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world—only to serve the People of Israel. In Israel, death has no dominion over them…With gentiles, it will be like any person—they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity…Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.”.. Jun 11, 2013 Edward Snowden: American Hero "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.".. ...Washington knows what's going on. Publicly it's ignored. Pre-9/11, the FBI uncovered a massive US-based Israeli spy ring. It remains active. It betrays America. Numerous Israeli citizens are involved. They have close ties to foreign military, criminal and intelligence sources. They reportedly breach US laws with impunity. Israel's featured prominently in annual FBI reports. It actively seeks proprietary/secret US information. It's mainly on military systems and advanced computer applications.. Washington's Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Israel "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.".. [Once a significant number of people begin to connect the dots, we might just have a chance] Slowly but surely the fear driven Orwellian noose closes in as constitutional civil liberties and freedoms in America, which were once taken for granted, are gradually restricted or ended and always for the same reason, National Security and the War on Terror ~ but the tide is changing and an inevitable and unpredictable mass resistance movement is already under way:.. Edward Snowden sounds like a thoughtful, patriotic young man, and I’m sure glad he blew the whistle on the NSA’s surveillance programs. But the more I learned about him this afternoon, the angrier I became. Wait, him? The NSA trusted its most sensitive documents to this guy? And now, after it has just proven itself so inept at handling its own information, the agency still wants us to believe that it can securely hold on to all of our data? Oy vey!.. In Washington, where the state of war and the surveillance state are one and the same, top officials have begun to call for Edward Snowden’s head. His moral action of whistleblowing - a clarion call for democracy - now awaits our responses. After nearly 12 years of the “war on terror,” the revelations of recent days are a tremendous challenge to the established order: nonstop warfare, intensifying secrecy and dominant power that equate safe governance with Orwellian surveillance. In the highest places, there is more than a wisp of panic in rarefied air. It’s not just the National Security Agency that stands exposed; it’s the repressive arrogance perched on the pyramid of power... In the national discussion over the national-security state’s massive surveillance scheme over the American people, it’s imperative that we keep in mind how the national-security state’s foreign policy of empire and interventionism play into how we have ended up with an Orwellian system of national surveillance at the hands of the federal government. How are statists justifying the NSA’s surveillance over the American people? Not surprisingly, they’re saying it’s all designed to “keep us safe.” The federal monitoring of everyone, they say, enables them to catch a small number of people who are planning terrorist attacks. Never mind, of course, that all that monitoring didn’t prevent the Boston bombing... ..“If anyone thinks that what’s going on right now with all of this surveillance of American citizens is to fight some sort of foreign enemy, they’re delusional. If people think that this ‘scandal’ can’t get any worse, it will, hour by hour, day by day. This has the ability to bring down our national leadership, the administration and other senior elected officials working in collusion with this administration, both Republican and Democrats. People within the NSA, the Department of Justice, and others, they know who they are, need to come forth with the documentation of ‘policy and practice’ in their possession, disclose what they know.. I have never seen anything like this, ever...” It used be to that the globalists were covert about their activities. Back in the day, the multi-nationals were unnamed, unknown and unheard of. They were like the mafia before the foolish and flashy John Gotti; quiet, friendly, unseen and not talked about. But like the Teflon Don, they decided to take it public and announce their Doctor Evil intentions. Unlike Gotti who died in prison a broken court jester, this global entity is no fool. It has been in the planning stages for over 100 years. What am I talking about? The new world order that now has gone public! That’s what I am talking about!.. The return to Iqrit, by Jonathan Cook | The View from Nazareth A dream long nurtured by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians made refugees during the establishment of the state of Israel has become a concrete reality at a small makeshift camp atop a windswept hill. A dozen young men have set up the camp at a site in the Upper Galilee from which their grandparents were expelled more than six decades ago. Today, all that remains of the village of Iqrit, close to Israel’s border with Lebanon, is a Catholic church on the hill’s brow. But in 1948, the village was home to 600 Christian Palestinians... "The Jewish State": What It Really Means | YouTube God spoke unto us saying, 'Go to the hill-country and all the places nigh thereunto... in the Arabah, the hill-country and in the Lowland... in the South and by the sea-shore, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates...Go in therefore and possess the land which the Lord swore unto your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, unto them and to their seed after them... The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism by Paul Craig Roberts | Amazon Former Wall Street Journal editor, and Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury Paul Craig Roberts book is a major challenge both to economic theory and to media explanations of the ongoing 21st century economic crisis. The one percent have pulled off an economic and political revolution. By offshoring manufacturing and professional service jobs, US corporations destroyed the growth of consumer income, the basis of the US economy, leaving the bulk of the population mired in debt. Deregulation was used to concentrate income and wealth in fewer hands and financial firms in corporations "too big to fail,” removing financial corporations from market discipline... The role of the Israel lobby in the growth of "Christian Zionism" | Alison Weir While some individuals, both Jewish and Christian, have talked about a Jewish "return" to Palestine throughout past centuries, today's version of Christian Zionism was largely invented in the 19th century; adherents of political Zionism, a movement to create a Jewish state, were a major factor in how and why it grew... Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Richard Falk | UN Human Rights Council In the present report, while noting the continuing non-cooperation of Israel, the Special Rapporteur addresses Israel‟s Operation “Pillar of Defense” and the general human rights situation in the Gaza Strip, as well as the expansion of Israeli settlements –and businesses that profit from Israeli settlements and the situation of Palestinians detained by Israel... Waze of Israel: Google Beats Facebook | Roi Tov ...Few people realize that Israel has conquered several internet and information-technology niche markets. This is true to the extent that most American citizens are unwillingly sharing their secrets with the State of Israel.. The Israeli activity is mockingly known as "Download Valley," or in a more serious term the "field of directing users." Other Israeli players are Perion, the manager of the IncrediMail, Smilebox and SweetIM brands, VisualBee, Montiera, Fried Cookie Software, WebPick, Linkury, Bundlore, iBario and KeyDownload. These are Israel's Weapons of Mass Distraction... Is the USA’s “unbreakable bond” with Israel close to breaking? | Redress Information & Analysis The Israelis are getting nervous. With 65 years of war crimes, violations of international law and general contempt for the international community under their belt, they are beginning to feel that they are close to burning their bridges with the only country that matters to them: the United States... [There’s always hope] Netanyahu Says it's Anti-Semitism to Accuse Israel of War Crimes or Violating Human Rights | The Real News ...The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave the opening speech, and in the speech he said that there are three vilifications. And he listed those three. He said the first one was that Israel is accused of committing war crimes. The second one: Israel is accused of not wanting peace. And the third one: Israel is guilty of violating the human rights of Palestinians. So these three accusations are not vilifications at all. In fact, they are well-documented and well-proven accusations based on international organizations, as well as on many Israeli organizations that say the very same thing. I think most Israelis would actually agree that the Israeli government is not really interested in peace... Syrian rebels open fire on convoy carrying Russian journalists | Strategic Culture Foundation A Russian TV crew came under fire in Syria when a mainly civilian convoy taking the journalists to the Golan Heights was shelled by Syrian rebels. The convoy shelled on Saturday was led by a Syrian army military vehicle, and consisted of several cars occupied by civilians, including one with Russian TV journalists. The shelling started when the cars were about 5 kilometers away from their destination – ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ – the only crossing between Syria and the Golan Heights, disputed territory claimed by both Syria and Israel... Jun 10, 2013 Little in this world is new but the means to do it; our actions and our behaviors are but regurgitations of our heritage. Our Western world gorges on its past and glorifies in it. Our children memorize and are mesmerized by the deeds of heroic figures the likes of Achilles and Oedipus, glorified by the great chronicler Homer, deeds done with power and deceit. Our children and our adults flock even now in 2004 to witness the fall of Troy with Brad Pitt extolling the virtues of Achilles and Sean Bean acting the sly Odysseus. Our hearts and our desires throb to theirs; we faint and flutter at their heroics as we witness the carnage of their exploits and the splendor of their victories... [When we consider what might have been, we may weep for the innocents slaughtered in the fulfillment of the Zionist dream that took America to war against Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Syria, and the ultimate goal of Israel, Iran, we will understand that our youth fought to save Israel’s soldiers from facing the death that awaited them on these battlefields while we watched the people of the world turn against the American values that gave us credibility throughout the world and lashed us to the mast of Zionist madness. ~ Debbie Menon, My Catbird Seat] Israel, Who Loves Ya Baby? by Gordon Duff | Veterans Today ...Is it the victimization mythology of “anti-Semitism” or simply that most people in the world believe that peace and justice can only be achieved if Israel is no longer a racist apartheid police state? Ask around, the BBC did. Toward that end, we wish to cite the Simon Wiesenthal Center, AIPAC, the ADL, Abe Foxman and the Southern Poverty Law Center for incessant war mongering, for their ties to organized crime, for racism and for their efforts to destroy the United States through supporting domestic terrorism, government spying and the outrageous police state that their efforts have helped create... Government Spying Aims to Silence Us, by John Spritzler | New Democracy World “In the end, this has nothing to do with preventing terrorism, but is a paranoid government's attempt to control a society destined to revolt against increasing inequality. The "bad guys" are ALL of us and that is why we all are being spied on. Every last legislator, and executive branch member who supports this terrorism on our right to privacy should be thrown out of office, if not ultimately prosecuted.”.. Bouthina Shaaban: Goals of Terrorist Groups Meet with Israel’s Ones | Intifada Palestine Presidential Political and Media Advisor, Bouthina Shaaban, affirmed that the goals of the armed terrorist gangs meet with the goals of the Israeli entity which manage and arrange to them some of the criminal acts committed by these gangs against the Syrian people. “The terrorist groups’ attack on a checkpoint in al-Qunaitera is part of the premeditated scheme against Syria by its first enemy which usurps part of its lands as well as the Arab rights; mainly, Israel, the beneficiary side of what is going on,”.. Kill Lists and Surveillance: Obama’s Crown Jewels, by Norman Pollack | CounterPunch ... his record has been skillfully falsified to cover up the very results these models were intended to achieve, and to which the customer base turns a blind eye: a consistent policy framework promotive of inequality, social deprivation, and massive wealth-accumulation to the stockholders. With scare-tactics abounding, such that wrecking the Constitution, reducing America’s “enemies” to blood spats or specks of dust.. all publicised and sold as essential to The Protection of the Homeland, one can look forward to the breaking of new sales records, equally shared, harbinging a new era, which is nicely put as: liberal humanitarian fascism... Total Protection Government, by David Bromwich | Huffington Post ...By what right are the addressed envelopes of the spoken communications of 280 million citizens plucked from the air by government and filed away? Supported by whose oath and what affirmation? There is a simple force to the words of the fourth amendment after all. It says: we do not live by secret laws, and we will not abide by general warrants. And to the comfort offered by senators Chambliss, Graham, and Feinstein, who ask us to sleep well and sleep long, there is a simple reply. In what country do they think they are living, and under what constitution?.. [Well, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, but it sure ain’t lookin’ good - Ah, shut up and eat your GMO crunchies.] Paul Wolfowitz’s Iran Connection, by Philip Giraldi | The American Conservative ...the Iraq War came about as a result in large part of manipulation of intelligence, which skewed the decision-making process. Ahmed Chalabi, the multi-millionaire confidence trickster who headed the Iraqi National Congress, fed fabricated information to his neoconservative allies in the Pentagon and White House. The so-called intelligence was repackaged in Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) and stove-piped up to the decision makers, thereby circumventing the normal checks and balances in place at the Central Intelligence Agency for the vetting of raw information... On 46th Anniversary, Survivors of Israeli Attack on USS Liberty Demand Congressional Inquiry, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar Saturday marks the 46th anniversary of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, a Naval spy ship in the Mediterranean Sea. The attack killed 34 American crew members and wounded 171 others. The incident came during the Six-Day War of 1967, during which Israeli occupied large chunks of territory from its Arab neighbors. The attack on the USS Liberty was America’s only involvement in the conflict... The compassionate case against foreign intervention, by Kerry-Anne Mendoza | New Internationalist There has always been a battle between an isolationist approach to intervention (if it doesn’t affect us, leave well alone) and a humanitarian case for intervention (injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere). However, a growing number oppose intervention precisely because they subscribe to the humanitarian view. These people have come to the reluctant and disheartening conclusion that we, in the West, are not the good guys. To send war ravaged nations our governments, corporations and armed forces as saviours, is like sending a second Big Bad Wolf into the forest after Red Riding Hood... We Call a Top NSA Whistleblower … And Get the REAL SCOOP on Spying | Washington's Blog We reported in 2008 that foreign companies have had key roles scooping up Americans’ communications for the NSA: At least two foreign companies play key roles in processing the information. Specifically, an Israeli company called Narus processes all of the information tapped by AT &T (AT & T taps, and gives to the NSA, copies of all phone calls it processes), and an Israeli company called Verint processes information tapped by Verizon (Verizon also taps, and gives to the NSA, all of its calls).. Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks, by Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill | The Guardian ...Obama's move to establish a potentially aggressive cyber warfare doctrine will heighten fears over the increasing militarization of the internet. The directive's publication comes as the president plans to confront his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in California on Friday over alleged Chinese attacks on western targets. Even before the publication of the directive, Beijing had hit back against US criticism, with a senior official claiming to have "mountains of data" on American cyber-attacks he claimed were every bit as serious as those China was accused of having carried out against the US... Netanyahu Again Rebuffs Peace with the Arab World: Israel’s Samson Complex, by Jonathan Cook | CounterPunch ...Unveiled by Saudi Arabia in 2002, the plan promises Israel normal relations with the whole of the Arab world in return for its acceptance of a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders, or 22 per cent of historic Palestine. The new Arab overture, like its antecedent, has raised barely a flicker of interest from Israel. Tzipi Livni, Washington’s sole ally in Netanyahu’s cabinet, predictably lost no time in praising the plan. But the prime minister himself has studiously avoided mentioning it, leaving his aides to dismiss the initiative as a “trick” designed to ensnare Israel in injurious peace talks... Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA, by James Bamford | Wired ...What is especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to that country’s intelligence service, a country with a long and aggressive history of spying on the U.S. In fact, according to Binney, the advanced analytical and data mining software the NSA had developed for both its worldwide and international eavesdropping operations was secretly passed to Israel by a mid-level employee, apparently with close connections to the country. The employee, a technical director in the Operations Directorate, “who was a very strong supporter of Israel,” said Binney, “gave, unbeknownst to us, he gave the software that we had, doing these fast rates, to the Israelis.”.. In Golan Heights, Druze villagers are preparing for war, by Sheera Frenkel | McClatchy ...“People come in and they buy meat, cans of tomatoes and chickpeas – you know, the basics. They are thinking ahead to what they can feed their families if the war between Syria and Israel lasts months instead of weeks,” he said, standing in the small shop he runs in the center of Majdal Shams. “We are being practical, but even in war you want to eat something you like.” In this crowded hillside village that straddles Israel’s border with Syria, everyone seems certain that war is on the way... The horror: Breaking the Silence releases disturbing women's testimonies of occupation, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss "Do you know what it means to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories?" With these words, Breaking the Silence has released stunning new testimonies from former soldiers, six Israeli women. Very upsetting. Raw brutalization and debasement. Who cannot weep when they hear these women's stories of degradation? This society has lost its soul, and these brave witnesses are open about the damage, so as to try and save Israel and Palestine-- the politics are irrelevant to this work... The Village Under The Forest | YouTube Unfolding as a personal meditation from the Jewish Diaspora, The Village Under The Forest explores the hidden remains of the destroyed Palestinian village of Lubya, which lies under a purposefully cultivated forest plantation called South Africa Forest. Using the forest and the village ruins as metaphors, the documentary explores themes related to the erasure and persistence of memory and dares to imagine a future in which dignity, acknowledgement and co-habitation become shared possibilities in Israel/Palestine... Jun 9, 2013 ...Whatever the "facts" of the Holocaust, it is experienced as a necessity, as part of a recurrent historic pattern. Reality must be made to conform to fantasy. Whatever did happen in the Holocaust must be made to conform to the group-fantasy of what ought to have happened. For the Jews, the term "Holocaust" does not simply denote a single catastrophic era in history, but is a grim metaphor for the meaning of Jewish history. The "Holocaust" lies at the heart of the Jewish experience of time itself. One is either anxiously awaiting persecution, experiencing persecution, recovering from it, or living in a period that is a temporary reprieve from it... [This brilliant essay provides a concise and coherent answer to one of the most important questions of our time – how did the Holycause become the default religion of the Jews, if not of Western civilization itself? It also suggests an answer to the question posed by Daniel Bernard, former French Ambassador to the United Kingdom, "All the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel. Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?"] Bilderberg Conference Begins | Stephen Lendman On June 5, the London Evening Standard headlined "No minutes, no press conferences - just the world's power brokers chewing the fat on the issues of the day. It's the Bilderberg conference - and it's coming to a suburb near you." On June 6, it convened. It continues through June 9. It's a rite of spring. A previous article said British political economist Will Hutton calls attendees the "high priests of globalization.".. The Assault on the Liberty | Paul Eisen Three items, all from the excellent IHR, to mark the anniversary of the assault on the USS Liberty. I was seventeen at the time and completely caught up in the drama and excitement (from my point of view) of the Six-Day War... Silent War: The Changing and Terrifying Nature of the New Cyber-Warfare by Michael Joseph Gross | Vanity Fair On the hidden battlefields of history’s first known cyber-war, the casualties are piling up. In the U.S., many banks have been hit, and the telecommunications industry seriously damaged, likely in retaliation for several major attacks on Iran. Washington and Tehran are ramping up their cyber-arsenals, built on a black-market digital arms bazaar, enmeshing such high-tech giants as Microsoft, Google, and Apple. With the help of highly placed government and private-sector sources, Michael Joseph Gross describes the outbreak of the conflict, its escalation, and its startling paradox: that America’s bid to stop nuclear proliferation may have unleashed a greater threat... Time to Hoist the Black Flag, by Bob Boldt | MCW News I recently had an exchange with yet another Obama Liberal. You know the type—the kind who cannot face the number and enormity of the criminal inroads the Obama Administration has made into nearly every aspect of our lives. I have had no fewer than a dozen such encounters. They begin with name calling and ridiculing my evidence. When I challenge them to produce evidence that exonerates their man they slink back into their safe, warm, blind darkness without another word... [It might help to clarify things if we began to use the term “Liberal” for those on the Left who parted ways with the Democrats either before or as a result of Obama’s reign. The same goes for the “Conservatives” – those on the Right who ceased identifying with the Republican party before or as a result of Bush’s regime. To make it even clearer, anyone who still considers themselves a 'Democrat' or a 'Republican' shall henceforth be lumped together as “American Zio-Imperialists,” (or neo-imperialists). Perhaps the sobriquet ‘Zimps’ will take hold. The rest of us might just as well sail under the Black Flag – sooner or later they’ll try to hang us anyway.] America’s Failed Syria Strategy: Flynt Leverett on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story | Going to Tehran ...U.S. support for the Syrian opposition was about two things. One was to use the opposition to bring down the Assad government, to (in their calculation) damage Iran’s regional position. Secondly, it was about coopting the Arab Awakening: to show that after the loss of pro-Western regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, a near-miss in Bahrain, that it wasn’t just authoritarian regimes that subordinated their foreign policies to the United States that were at risk from the Arab Awakening—that you could also bring down a regime that had a clear commitment to foreign policy independence. That project of using the opposition for those purposes has failed... Jerusalem Post compares labeling settlement products to Nazism, by Noam Sheizaf | +972 Magazine The paper’s correspondent in Berlin, known for his ties with radical right-wing groups, has done it again. In a couple of articles published last month, the widely-read Jerusalem Post compared the European Union’s decision to label Israeli settlement products to nothing less than Nazism. A year ago, the European Union passed a decision to label Israeli goods produced in the occupied territories, differentiating them from products of Israel proper. The Union is objecting to Israel’s settlement policy, but nevertheless has many trade agreements and joint projects with Israel. (The EU is Israel’s largest trade partner.).. Dirty Wars and Self-indulgence, by Douglas Valentine | Dissident Voice Let me begin with some background not covered in the film. Dirty War derives from La Salle Guerre, the term the French applied to their counter-terror campaign in Algeria, circa 1954-1961. Algeria wanted independence, and France resisted. Like subject people everywhere, the Algerians were badly outgunned and resorted to guerrilla tactics including “selective terrorism,” a hallmark of the Viet Minh, who fought the French until 1954, when America claimed Vietnam as its rightful property. Viet Minh tactics were derived largely from Mao’s precepts for fighting a People’s War... End your illusion: Israeli government will never implement a two-state solution, top official says, by Ira Glunts | Mondoweiss In an interview given to the Times of Israel on Wednesday (June 5) and reported the following day, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon said what most already know: The current Israeli government will never implement a two-state solution. There has never been any discussion within the government about the two-state solution:.. [The two state solution would be good for Israel. The one state solution would be even better. In either case they would dominate the Middle East without fear of any serious opposition. And thus do they seal their doom. Idiots] The American Betrayal of Reason, by Archie Kennedy | MCW News ...reason, arbitral of humanities excesses and foibles, is losing its authority. Reason, that indomitable enemy of tyrants and thieves is at odds with the most powerful forces ruling humanity. State and private power and control over citizens is antithetical to sovereignty of reason. There is a seminal battle underway that runs far deeper than wars between nations, religions, or political ideology. It is the fight is between the forces of domination and control vs. reason. Should reason win, fully human lives where each individual can reach his or her potential will return as a real possibility. Should the paradigm of power and control regain its throne, we are doomed to barbarism... [Too late for that, but the worm turns - even doom is temporary] John Lennon and the knock on the door at the wee hours, by Adam Keller | Before It's News Last Saturday night, thousands of people demonstrated in the streets of Tel Aviv. Two demonstrations had been scheduled for the same evening. One was held to mark the forty-sixth anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, forty-six years of an oppressive military regime imposed on millions of people, and the continuing robbery of their lands. The second demonstration was held to protest the increase in VAT which came into force that night, a regressive and manifestly unjust tax raise which imposes the burden of closing the huge budget deficit mainly on the poor and the weak and the have-nots... Read more... http://beforeitsnews.com/israel/2013/06/john-lennon-and-the-knock-on-the-door-at-the-wee-hours-2442504.html Syria Regime Change: Blowback on Steroids, by Jim W. Dean | Veterans Today ...The preemptive strike days of old are gone for Israel. If they are so stupid to try one we will get to see what the vaunted IDF can do when they are not attacking defenseless civilians.. the Israeli Lobby traitors will of course try to throw the American taxpayer and military under the bus. He notes below that Eric Cantor wants to send the Marines into Lebanon, to be the cannon fodder he sees them to be. We hold Eric and all those like him in total contempt, and consider them a bigger threat than the alleged Al-Qaeda. The Jewish Al-Qaeda we have here in American is our most dangerous threat, and our government has done absolutely nothing to defend our country from them. Some would call that treason... The writing on the wall for Palestinian collaborators | Redress Information & Analysis It has always been our position that the Palestinian struggle will get nowhere as long as the Palestinian people are led by donkeys (with due respect to the real donkeys, rather than their human imitators), corrupt collaborators and primitive Islamist retards. What the Palestinians need is an Intifada, or uprising, against the self-serving quislings of the Palestinian National Authority (PA) and the seventh-century, back-to-the future ideological bankrupts of Hamas. Admittedly, this is easier said then done, for the hardest thing to do when you are already under Israeli occupation is to turn against those who claim to be your would-be liberators. That said, there are already signs of hope... Review: The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam by Akbar Ahmed | Public Intelligence Blog I received and read this book today, and while I am troubled by the author’s buying into the Bin Laden story and the official 9/11 cover-up, this is a six-star book that easily provides one stellar concept that must be integrated into the fabric of every foreign policy — understanding the failures of the centers in each state with respect to the more traditional peripheries — and a deep broad articulation of why the US “war on terror” has actually been a thoughtless unnecessarily expensive and harmful war on tribes... Christian Zionism Refuted in English, Arabic, Spanish, Farsi and Korean | Stephen Sizer “This is a very fine and important book. All Christians who believe that Jesus favoured peacemakers, should read it and realise what terrible harm is being done in the name of Christianity. And all who are concerned about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict should read it to understand how Christian Zionism disables the US as fair minded mediator. European foreign policy thinkers should read it,because this distortion of US political space, puts a greater responsibility on European governments to stand up for justice and international law” ~ Clare Short, former British Secretary of State for International Development.. Jun 8, 2013 Syria in the Spotlight ...a picture emerges of nearly debilitating angst among those committed to propping up the apartheid state in the face of truly historic changes in this region that have only just begun to re-shape the region. The reactions from various elements of the pro-Israel lobby range from the Arabphobic Daniel Pipes’ fantasy essay in the Washington Times this week entitled “Happy Israel” to Netanyahu’s increased threats issued from Tel Aviv about what Israel might do if his three cartoon “red lines” are breached, to more pressure on the White House by Israel’s agents in Congress who are demanding that Obama act immediately to undo “the major damage done at Qusayr”.. ... It is far from being a secret that both British and French government are dominated by the Jewish Lobby. In Britain it is the ultra Zionist CFI (Conservative Friends of Israel) - apparently 80% of Britain’s conservative MPs are members of the pro Israeli Lobby. In France the situation is even more devastating, the entire political system is hijacked by the forceful CRIF. ut in case anyone fails to grasp why the Jewish Lobby is pushing for an immediate intervention, Debka, an Israeli news outlet provides the answer. Seemingly, the Syrian army is winning on all fronts. Israel’s military and geo-political calculations are proved to be wrong... There have been different versions regarding the status of the transfer of S-300 missile systems from Russia to Syria, and a CNN report that US intelligence officials have been tracking three Russian vessels in recent days that loaded equipment suspected as S-300 system components and made their way to Syria's Tartus port. Against the background of these events, a comprehensive investigation carried out in the past few days reveals that it represents a military route of Russian naval vessels departing from a Russian military base in the Black Sea... ...Shiites from all over the Muslim world stream into Syria to help Bashar Assad’s dictatorship to survive, while Sunnis from many countries hasten there to support the rebels. The implications of this go well beyond the bloody Syrian struggle. It is a historic revolution, region-wide and perhaps world-wide... Palestine in Israeli School Books: Nurit Peled-Elhanan | YouTube Alternate Focus interviews Nurit Peled-Elhanan, author of the forthcoming book Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education. Nurit Peled-Elhanan argues that the textbooks used in the school system are laced with a pro-Israel ideology, and that they play a part in priming Israeli children for military service... U.S. Built Replica of Iranian Underground Nuclear Facility, Destroyed It With New Bunker Buster | Tikun Olam Alex Fishman, Yediot’s security correspondent, reports that the Pentagon spent millions of dollars to build an exact replica of an Iranian underground nuclear facility in the U.S. I presume we’re talking about the Fordo complex. It then armed a B-2 bomber with a new type of bunker buster bomb, which was used to great success in entirely destroying the facility. The goal of the field exercise was to prove to U.S. allies (read, “Israel”) that our military had sufficient weaponry and delivery capability to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat if and when we decided that this was necessary... Outside Agitators, by Patrick J. Buchanan | Antiwar A Cairo court has convicted 43 men and women of using foreign funds to foment unrest inside Egypt in connection with the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Sixteen of those convicted were Americans. All but one, Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute, had already departed. Becker fled this week rather than serve two years in an Egyptian prison. And U.S. interventionists are in an uproar... R.H.S. Stolfi’s 'Hitler: Beyond Evil & Tyranny,' by Greg Johnson | Rise of The West Adolf Hitler was clearly the man of the 20th century, whose shadow grows taller as the sun of the West sinks ever lower. Sadly, though, there is no biography worthy of Hitler. If great men are those who leave their stamp on history, then Hitler was a great man. But great men present great problems for biographers. Great men are not necessarily good men, and even good men, when they hold political power, often find it necessary to kill innocent people. Evil men do not find this difficult, but good men do. Thus a good man, if he is to be a great man, must also be a hard man... Defending My Stephen Hawking Cartoon, by Eli Valley | Jewish Daily Forward I appreciate Hillel Halkin’s passionate response to a cartoon that supports the boycott of Israel, promotes anti-Semitism, and advocates a viewpoint that he insists must not be permitted in a Jewish newspaper. Unfortunately, that is not the cartoon I drew. My cartoon pilloried the absurdity and intellectual vacuity of hasbara, the public relations effort by Israel and its supporters to disseminate the Israeli point of view. It was a satire of chauvinistic Jewish discourse on the issue of Israel in light of the recent uproar against Stephen Hawking, and it made no comment either for or against what Halkin calls “the Israel boycott movement.”.. [One might think that by now even tribal Jews would be sick to death of tribal Jews] Et tu, Gul? Then fall, Erdogan, by M K Bhadrakumar | Asia Times Online ...One thing that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said before pushing ahead on Tuesday with a four-day tour of the Maghreb tour still hangs suspended in the air. Hardly anyone picked it up. He said Turkish intelligence is looking into possible links between the recent incidents in Istanbul, scene of violently suppressed protests, and foreign elements. Erdogan hinted that some leads are already available with the Turkish intelligence. "Our intelligence work is ongoing. It is not possible to reveal their names. But we will have meetings with their heads.".. Whose ‘Two State’ Solution? End game or Intermission? | Richard Falk From many sources there is a widespread effort to resume a peace process that has in the past led to failure, frustration, and anger, and often to renewed violence. The newly appointed American Secretary of State, John Kerry, is about to make his fifth trip to Israel since the beginning of 2013, insisting that the two sides try once more to seek peace, and warning if this doesn’t happen very soon, the prospects for an agreed upon solution will be postponed not for just a year or two, but for decades... Kennedy, the Lobby and the Bomb, by Laurent Guyénot | Voltaire Net In May 1963, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations opened an investigation into the covert activities of foreign agents on U.S. soil, focusing in particular on the American Zionist Council and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The investigation was prompted by a report from the Chairman of that standing Committee, Senator J. William Fulbright, written in March 1961 (declassified in 2010), stating: "In recent years there has been an increasing number of incidents involving attempts by foreign governments, or their agents, to influence the conduct of American foreign policy by techniques outside normal diplomatic channels.".. Secret blanket surveillance: It is not Terror if We do It | Roi Tov Imagine a world in which illogical statements would be automatically nullified and prosecuted. A government would legislate a law saying that an organization – call it corporation, company or municipality – enjoys in the eye of the law the status of a person and … swishhhhh, the Logical Police would appear like Rambo in Vietnam and take the president to jail. What would happen to the American Administration in such a world?.. Jun 7, 2013 America's Greatest Affliction?: The Presstitute Media, by Paul Craig Roberts | CounterPunch When Gerald Celente branded the American media “presstitutes,” he got it right. The US print and TV media (and NPR) whore for Washington and the corporations. Reporting the real news is their last concern. The presstitutes are a Ministry of Propaganda and Coverup. This is true of the entire Western media, a collection of bought-and-paid-for whores. It seems that every day I witness a dozen or more examples. Take May 31 for example.
.. War and Empire by Paul L. Atwood: Review by Ludwig Watzal | MCW News Former US President Ronald Reagan called in a speech to the “National Association of Evangelicals” in Orlando, Florida in 1983 the former Soviet Union an "evil empire“. Having read "War and Empire“ by Paul L. Atwood this characterization fits perfectly well to US-American foreign policy. What the author presents to the reader makes one shiver... Israel’s secret “Doomsday” Nuke base revealed by US, by Gordon Duff | Veterans Today According to intelligence sources in Pakistan, India is supplying Israel with missiles capable of carrying 10 MIRV (Multiple Independent-targetable Re-entry Vehicle) warheads each with a range of up to 11,000 miles. A single missile from this US financed complex could knock out all major population centers on America’s eastern seaboard. The thermonuclear warheads and guidance systems for these advanced weapons were made possible through espionage activities tied to AIPAC... The Protagonists of the “Global War on Terrorism” are the Terrorists, by Prof Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research ..at no time in the course of the last 30 years has the US ceased to support and finance Al Qaeda as a means to destabilizing sovereign countries. The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is led by the United States. It is not directed against Al Qaeda. Quite the opposite: The “Global War on Terrorism” uses Al Qaeda terrorist operatives as their foot soldiers. “Political Islam” and the imposition of an “Islamic State” (modeled on Qatar or Saudi Arabia) is an integral part of US foreign policy. America is the Terror State... Obama’s New Restricted War on Terror Is Unlikely to Be Lasting, by Ivan Eland | Antiwar Prior to the 2012 election, President Obama told aides that he wanted to institutionalize the ad hoc war on terror, thus shaping it for years to come whether he was re-elected or a successor took over, according to the New York Times. This desire led to the recent presidential speech at the National Defense University that pledged to cut back on the use of drone strikes, targeting only those terrorists who threaten the United States, and to remove the CIA from the targeted killing (read: assassination) business... Obama Wants Whistleblowers Silenced, by Stephen Lendman | Economic Crisis ...Candidate Obama promised transparency, accountability, and reform. President Obama targeted more whistleblowers than all his predecessors combined. He usurped diktat powers to do so. He prioritizes police state harshness... The USA’s irrational relationship with Israel, by Jamal Kanj | Redress Information & Analysis When signing up for the military, US soldiers swear to serve their country and defend the constitution with their life. They march in harm’s way to the end of the earth and sail the seas, following orders from their leaders. In return, they expect leaders to uphold the constitution and honour their sacrifices. However, this was not the case for the 34 American sailors who lost their lives and the 171 injured when their leaders surrendered them on an Israeli altar on 8 June 1967... Humanitarian Misfits: Susan Rice, Power and Empire, by Binoy Kampmark | CounterPunch ...Such is the language of brute force, one that is always premised with the hope that temporal and overwhelming power be “exercised wisely”. The unfortunate feature of that is that those with it tend to misbehave. The corollary of imperialism is mischief, and the Obama administration is far from averse from it. While Bush Jr. stormed his way through like a mentally challenged thug breaking the family china, Obama has given the same behaviour a smoother accent... Toward a Strategic Balance in the Middle East?: Russia Draws a “Red Line”, by Dr. Christof Lehmann | Global Research The recent commitment by Russia to honor a contract with Syria for the delivery of S-300 Surface to Air defense systems, considered to be one of the best, if not the best in the world, is followed up by a Syrian request for the delivery of MiG 29 M/M2 fighter jets. In 2012 NATO stationed Patriot Missile Defense Systems along the 900 km long Syrian – Turkish border; Saudi-Arabia and the USA signed a deal for a significant upgrade of Saudi-Arabia´s air force. Russia is drawing a red line in the Syrian sand. With the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a direct military intervention against Syria would be futile. The Middle East is being prepared for a stand-off... War Criminal: Pro Palestine Activists Interrupt Ehud Olmert | Intifada Palestine On June 4, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited Washington, D.C.’s Woodrow Wilson Center to offer a so-called “moderate” perspective on Middle East affairs and the Palestinian-Israeli impasse. A DC area coalition of Palestinian justice activists, led by George Mason University Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), were there to challenge Olmert and interrupt the Wilson Center’s complicity with the ongoing normalization of Israeli occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid... When Mordor came to Middle Earth | Deir Yassin Remembered Early on the morning of Friday April 9th 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a beautiful Arab village with cut stone houses located on the west side of Jerusalem. It was several weeks before.. the declaration of the State of Israel. The village lay outside the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish state. It had a peaceful reputation and was even said by a Jewish newspaper to have driven out some Arab militants. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and with the knowledge of the mainstream Jewish defence force, the Haganah, it was to be conquered and held... Everyday life in Palestine: After the flames, only determination remains in Burin and Madama | ISM On Monday 3rd June, around a dozen settlers from the illegal colony of Yizhar set fire to Palestinian’s fields in the villages of Burin and Madama, destroying at least 50 acres of arable land with olive trees. The settlers were joined by a jeep of border police when 40-50 Palestinians from the village of Burin came out to attempt to put out the fire, with some being stopped from doing so by the border police present. As people from the two villages south of Nablus were hoping for an uneventful workday, the settlers from Yizhar, renowned for being one of the worst for settler violence, set fire to fields in the Khallat al-Injas neighbourhood of Madama... [It’s a wonder that people who support Israel can continue to regard themselves as decent human beings. As long as "it's good for the Jews," others' suffering means nothing to them.] Jun 6, 2013 World Bank Insider Blows Whistle on Corruption, Federal Reserve, by Alex Newman | New American A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success... Ben-Ari: Israel Caused "Slaughter" in Africa for Money | Gilad Atzmon Right-wing Israeli politician Michael Ben-Ari accuses the Israeli government of causing the "slaughter" of African people, and of doing so because the state financially benefited from it. He then accuses other world super-powers of the same crimes, of selling weapons that are used to destroy the lives of millions of innocent African people... Read more, watch video... [For quite some years the biggest business in Israel was blood diamonds. It may still be.] Judaizing Jaffa | Roi Tov ..About 20 years ago, an exclusive project named "Andromeda Hill" was constructed in Jaffa.. The massive building in front of it is Andromeda Hill; an apartment costs around $2 million. The project changed the image of the area, which is mainly Palestinian and humble. The construction was accompanied by the renovation of the commercial areas of Old Jaffa and its connection with the Tel Aviv Promenade. Overnight, the area started to prosper while its denizens found themselves pushed out, unable to cope with the costs of living in their hometown... What our Presidents tell our Young People, by William Blum | Dissident Voice In this season of college graduations, let us pause to remember the stirring words of America’s beloved scholar, George W. Bush, speaking in Florida in 2007 at the commencement exercises of Miami Dade College: “In Havana and other Cuban cities, there are people just like you who are attending school, and dreaming of a better life. Unfortunately those dreams are stifled by a cruel dictatorship that denies all freedom in the name of a dark and discredited ideology.”.. Insulting the Turkish nation, by Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera Exactly three years after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the state of Israel of inhumane behaviour for the massacre of nine Turkish activists on board the Mavi Marmara aid ship en route to Gaza - an event that sparked pro-Palestinian protests in Istanbul's Taksim Square and other locations - Turkey has launched its own latest form of inhumanity against its own citizens... Bradley Manning's Legal Duty to Expose War Crimes, by Marjorie Cohn | Huffington Post The court-martial of Bradley Manning, the most significant whistleblower case since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, has begun. Although Manning pled guilty earlier this year to 10 offenses that will garner him 20 years in custody, military prosecutors insist on pursuing charges of aiding the enemy and violation of the Espionage Act, carrying life in prison. The Obama administration, which has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all prior presidencies combined, seeks to send a strong message to would-be whistleblowers to keep their mouths shut... [See also video, 'I am Bradley Manning'] Osama bin Laden's Ghost, by Tim King | Salem News How many Americans know Osama bin Laden denied being connected to the attacks on the United States, Sept. 11th 2001? Is it possible to imagine a terrorist going to that much effort, knowing full well that the one and only result would be an attack on an unprecedented scale against two Middle eastern countries... and failing to claim it? The man, bin Laden, didn't deny it once, he denied it over and over again but the United States media and press failed to divulge it in any meaningful way. George W. Bush told the public bin Laden claimed the act on the very same days that bin Laden issued statements saying he had nothing to do with it... The Curious Case of David Irving, by Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today Arguably the most notorious and controversial historian of our time is David Irving, who has been called “anti-Semite,” a “neo-Nazi,” a “racist,” and a “Holocaust denier.” Former news anchor and political commentator Keith Olberman nominated Irving as one of the “world’s worst” people in 2010.. noted British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, though questioning Irving’s motives, wrote that “no praise can be too high for his [Irving’s] indefatigable, scholarly industry.” Other historians such as Paul Addison, John Charmley, and Rainer Zitelmann, praised Irving’s work, although they do not like some of the positions he has taken... Why Arabs Need Iran, by Sharmine Narwani | Al Akhbar In 2011, when Arab revolts began to sweep the Middle East and North Africa, the view from Washington and its closest allies was one of concern. How would the removal of mostly pro-Western dictatorships affect the balance of power in the region? More importantly – how to prevent these events from boosting Iran’s influence? Two years on, the regional competition for influence is in full throttle. In its sights – among many other developments – are recent efforts by Iran and Egypt to upgrade their relationship... Meet the 'Friends of Jihad' by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online Western politicos love to shed swamps of crocodile tears about "the Syrian people" and congratulate themselves within the "Friends of Syria" framework for defending them from "tyranny". Well, the "Syrian people" have spoken. Roughly 70% support the government of Bashar al-Assad. Another 20% are neutral. And only 10% are aligned with the Western-supported "rebels", including those of the kidnapping, lung-eating, beheading jihadi kind. The data was provided mostly by independent relief organizations working in Syria... The Jewish hand behind Internet Google, Facebook, Wikipedia,Yahoo!, MySpace, eBay, by Lupo Cattivo | Gegen die Weltherrschaft In the following document we will give an insight into the Jewish penetration of the Internet and also show the level of cooperation between leading Jewish Internet entrepreneurs and the racist Jewish Apartheid state of Israel. The Jews contrary to the “liberal” views they officially say they profess – in their suppressive acts practically demonstrate that they always seek to dominate the information flow, they don’t tolerate any dissent.. The Arabs have learnt the hard way the falsehood of these Jewish statements, it is now time for the rest of the non-Jewish world to get this right, and to see that the freedom of information on the Net is seriously threatened... [Eretz Yisroel ueber alles, viel butter, kosher schmaletz] When Israel compensated Germans for land in Palestine, Rosemarie M. Esber | Intifada Palestine ...four communities in Palestine have received carefully evaluated and internationally arranged compensation for their losses. The four villages — Sarona, Wilhelma, Betlehem (not the famed Bethlehem) and Waldheim — belonged to a Christian German group called the Templers.. in April 1948, a Zionist attack killed at least two persons in Waldheim and resulted in many Templers fleeing. (This pattern of attack and killing to terrorize villagers and force them to leave was perpetrated on hundreds of Palestinian Arab villages by Zionist forces during the 1948 war.).. Israel escalates attacks on Jerusalem in May | Middle East Monitor Israeli attacks on Palestinian citizens and properties in occupied Jerusalem increased sharply in May, a local research and study centre has reported. Wadi Al-Hilwa Information Centre (WAIC) said that the Israeli occupation authorities detained 150 Palestinians, including three women, from Jerusalem during the month. Twenty of the detainees were children aged 15 to 18; another 20 were aged 7 to 15... Mexico Celebrates “Carnival of Corn” and Rejects Monsanto, by Alfredo Acedo | CIP Americas Monsanto is an exception to the rule. Usually even the worst things in life have some positive aspect, but the actions of this multinational producer of genetically modified organisms and toxic pesticides are so evil that it’s become an easy mark for global wrath toward capitalist corporations that are ruining the economy, biodiversity and people’s health. Worldwide demonstrations against the company took place following the “Monsanto Protection Act” passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in March and the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of patents on living organisms... You can’t be for a weak United States and a strong Israel, by Jennifer Rubin | WaPo ...If we don’t modernize our Navy, then we won’t be able to put carriers in the region to deter aggression. If we refuse to act in Syria, then Hezbollah surges in and threatens war on Israel’s northern border. If we race for the exits and fail to work out a status of forces agreement in Iraq, then we empower and encourage the genocidal Iranian regime... [What really gets to me is that people like her actually believe what they’re saying.] Jun 5, 2013 "CF->CYA": The magic formula of the Empire of Illusions | The Vineyard of the Saker Well, it sure looks like the United States of Amnesia have rapidly recovered from the use of a so-called "weapon of mass destruction" (a pressure cooker) in Boston and has turned to more important topics like Angelina Jolie's breasts. And yet, the official narrative is being challenged by so many facts that it is really worth at taking a short look at it. There was already the Hollywood-like one billion dollar per day lockdown of Boston which managed not to find a severely wounded and bleeding teenager which, as soon as the neighborhood he was in was declared "checked", was found by a private citizen... Why the West and the Sunni Monarchies Want to Fuel the War: Who Gains From Syrian Bloodbath? by Patrick Cockburn | CounterPunch The best hope for an end to the killing in Syria is for the United States and Russia to push both sides in the conflict to agree a ceasefire in which each holds the territory it currently controls. In a civil war of such savagery, diplomacy with any ambition to determine who holds power in future will founder because both sides believe they can still win... Read more... Palestinian plight hits UEFA spotlight, by Jonathan Cook | The View from Nazareth ...Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, a UK organiser, said the campaign for a sports boycott of Israel had helped to draw in anti-racism activists who had not previously had a connection to the Palestinian cause. “It has been a great vehicle for recruiting new people and helping them understand how entrenched the racism is in Israel’s treatment of Palestinians,” she said. The movement would now intensify its efforts to widen the boycott to other events... Read more... How a London court repudiated Zionist abuse of the anti-semitism charge, by Mike Marqusee | Jews sans frontieres Taunting and tainting opponents with the charge of anti-semitism is a long-standing Zionist ploy, familiar to everyone involved in the Israel-Palestine issue. As their support weakens in the face of evidence-based argument, Israel’s advocates have stepped up their use of the accusation as a means to close down debate, particularly on proposals for boycott, divestment and sanctions. A key component in their armoury is what’s been called “lawfare”: attempts to use the courts to stifle opponents... Read more... The Moral Imperative of Bradley Manning, by Ray McGovern | Antiwar Although we had to swelter in the Maryland sun on Saturday, I found the pre-trial rally at Ft. Meade to support Bradley Manning particularly spirit-filled. It seemed there was an unspoken but widely shared consciousness that Manning is as much Biblical prophet as Army private... Read more... The U.S. Base on Diego Garcia: An Overlooked Atrocity, by Sheldon Richman | The Future of Freedom Foundation The largest criminal organizations in the world are governments. The bigger they are, the more capable of perpetrating atrocities. Not only do they obtain great wealth through compulsion (taxation), they also have an ideological mystique that permits them uniquely to get away with murder, torture, and theft. The U.S. government is no exception... [Kind of a mini Israel] The Shameless Mr. Hague, by Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle William Hague’s statement that extremism in Syria would flourish unless the EU ended its arms embargo was grotesque. On the basis of the massive quantities of arms already delivered by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Libya, with the US and Britain covertly pitching in, extremism in Syria is doing quite well, so logically it is going to do even better if the armed groups are given more and probably heavier weapons. But, no, according to the logic of Mr. Hague, giving the ‘rebels’ more weapons is actually going to prevent extremism... Read more... US is Building a Secret Israeli Military Base, by Bob Johnson | Veterans Today ...It’s disgusting the US politicians sell out Americans and America to Israeli interests. We have homeless veterans on our streets, we have American children who don’t get enough to eat, our infrastructure is falling apart, yet, these political whores from both parties continue to undermine America and Americans by giving BILLIONS of American tax dollars to the Jewish state every year, year after year!.. Read more... Jun 4, 2013 Top Abbas Confidant: 'I give up… We failed,' by Max Blumenthal | Mondoweiss Months before Secretary of State John Kerry arrived at this year’s World Economic Forum in Amman, Jordan to meet with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a key Abbas confidant told me the US-led peace process had no future, and neither did the Palestinian Authority. “They pushed as PLO leaders, they pushed us as seculars to give up,” Nasser Laham, the 46-year-old editor-in-chief of Ma’an News Agency, said of the Israeli government. “I confess in front of you: I give up!”.. ["If the Palestinian Authority passes into irrelevance or collapses (as now seems likely) calls for a one-state solution to the conflict will come out of the shadows and enter the mainstream." ~ Alvaro de Soto, the just-retired UN coordinator for the Middle East, 6/13/07. Methinks I see some light at the end of the tunnel.] Refuge in the Sturm, by Michael Robeson | Paul Eisen There is saying among religious progressives is that Christianity should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” The new Pope, to his credit, is making some effort to preach against self-satisfaction, and while that appeals to the discontented, it remains to be seen whether his words can turn the stone hearts of at least some of the contented into a warm-heartedness for those less fortunate. One obstacle is that the contented psychologically and sociologically insulate themselves from personal contact with the less fortunate, so they become an easily ignorable abstraction... I think the point of these stories is to insinuate that Hezbollah is invading Syria | Niqnaq Sunni Cleric Issues Appeal for World’s Muslims to Help Syrian Rebels... [One of the saddest ironies of all is that Israel and the US have co-opted the Sunni establishment and many of their following into acting as their proxies in the War of Terror against the Islamic world. The overall strategy is divide and conquer and the Sunnis are playing right into it.] Churchill's great mistake: Hitler should have been allowed to expand eastward until meeting the more dangerous Russia, by Eric Margolis | The Smirking Chimp Much of the western world just honoured the millions of soldiers fallen in two world wars. But we also need to look beyond post-war myths and understand the tragic political mistakes that sent these soldiers to die in wars that might have been avoided. In his powerful new book, Hitler, Churchill and the Unnecessary War, veteran politician and author Pat Buchanan challenges many historic taboos by claiming that Winston Churchill plunged Britain and its empire, including Canada, into wars whose outcomes were disastrous for all concerned... Was World War Two just as pointless and self-defeating as Iraq, asks Peter Hitchens | Mail Online It makes me feel like a traitor to write this. The Second World War was my religion for most of my life. Brave, alone, bombed, defiant, we, the British, had won it on our own against the most evil and powerful enemy imaginable. Born six years after it was over, I felt almost as if I had lived through it, as my parents most emphatically had, with some bravery and much hardship in both cases... Talking Turkey | Craig Murray To simply say “protestors good, government bad” in Turkey is a symptom of the Blair delusion, that in civil conflicts there are guys with white hats and guys with black hats, and that the West’s role is to ride into town and kill the guys in the black hats. That is what “liberal intervention” means. The main aim of my second autobiographical book, “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo”, was to explain through the truth of the Sierra Leone experience how very, very wrong this is. In fact civil conflicts are usually horribly complex, anent a variety of very bad people all trying to gain or retain power, none of them from an altruistic desire to make the world a better place... Turkey Special: A 4-Point Guide to the Protests, by Scott Lucas | EA World View The immediate catalyst for this weekend's mass protests, fuelled by an attempted police crackdown in Istanbul's Taksim Square on Friday, was the Erdogan Government's plan to demolish Gezi Park, one of the last significant green areas in the city. Anger over the plan to build a shopping mall and condominium residences, housed in a replica Ottoman-era military barracks, was bolstered by the awarding of contracts to companies seen as tied to Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)... Top Terrorists Protected by NATO, Hizb ut-Tahrir as the Conveyor Belt for Terrorists & Much More! | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post ...Kyrgyzstan’s decision to cancel the Manas Transit Center deal with the United States is probably the most significant step in the ‘War on Drugs’. At the very least it will give Russia and other countries the opportunity to acquire a larger share of the global drug trade, which is currently run by NATO. The Manas air base plays a central role in NATO’s drug network because it is the key transit hub for Afghan heroin. Additionally the base is used by Washington to conduct covert meetings with top terrorists... Kerry’s new peace plan sets the Palestinians up to fail, by Jonathan Cook | The View from Nazareth Under heavy pressure from the US, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has paid grudging lip service over the past four years to the goal of Palestinian statehood. But his real agenda was always transparent: not statehood, but what he termed “economic peace”. Ordinary Palestinians, in Mr Netanyahu’s view, can be pacified with crumbs from the master’s table: fewer checkpoints, extra jobs and trading opportunities, and a gradual, if limited, improvement in living standards. All of this buys time for Israel to expand the settlements, cementing its hold over the West Bank and East Jerusalem... What Did You do for the State, Mr. Danon? | Roi Tov ...Yogurt is never used as a symbol of intellectual excellency; it lacks the necessary consistency. Neither it is used as a symbol of political integrity; it tends to flow through the logical holes created by politician's lies. If anything, it is the epitome of milky-kosher foods, the peak of soft irrelevance. Thus, it is surprising that two leading Israeli politicians proudly move around their giggling voters with names belonging to yogurt brands... U.S. Tourists Become Israeli Commandos For A Day, by Emily Harris | NPR After two hours of yelling, shooting and getting tough with a group of American businessmen one hot spring afternoon, Steve Gar turned to storytelling. Gar is an instructor at , a private counterterrorism training center in an Israeli settlement area south of Jerusalem that offers short shooting courses for tourists. Wrapping up the Americans' two-hour session, he called them all to gather around... [SS training in scenic Israel – what could be better? ] Barghouti: Arab Peace Plan Damages Palestinian Cause, by Adnan Abu Amer | Al Monitor ...The Israelis have once again elected a government that has no desire to put an end to the occupation and settlements, nor to achieve peace with the Palestinians. The Palestinian scene is worsening due to the split that took place years ago. We already put forth an initiative called the "National Reconciliation Document,” which was signed by all factions without exception, including Fatah and Hamas. Unfortunately, the signatories did not abide by the agreement... [It’s a pity that Barghouti still supports the two state solution. One would think that by now he would realize that is an exercise in futility, or worse – with a state of their own the Palestinians would face a future of servile peonage.] Jun 3, 2013 Engineering Empire: An Introduction to the Intellectuals and Institutions of American Imperialism, by Andrew Gavin Marshall | Dissident Voice Educating yourself about empire can be a challenging endeavor, especially since so much of the educational system is dedicated to avoiding the topic or justifying the actions of imperialism in the modern era. If one studies political science or economics, the subject might be discussed in a historical context, but rarely as a modern reality; media and government voices rarely speak on the subject, and even more rarely speak of it with direct and honest language. Instead, we exist in a society where institutions and individuals of power speak in coded language, using deceptive rhetoric with abstract meaning... What Is History? by Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today ...Deconstructionism and postmodernism face too many challenges to be true. If the real is as imagined as the imaginary, then nothing in the past, present, or future matters. It does not matter whether Bill Clinton was president of the United States, whether Stalin exterminated Russian peasants.. This ideology simply will not stand. Moreover, if words have no meaning, then Derrida’s words can be easily dismissed on that basis alone.. “How can Derrida tell us that a transcendental signified does not exist and that words only have the meaning a particular reader or cultural context gives them—since he used words to tell us this and expected us to understand them, no matter our culture?”.. [In a nutshell, postmodernism - which poses as "philosophy," arose as a tribal Jewish ideology to intellectually legitimize the existence of Israel. Hey, “if it’s good for the Jews...”] The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil,’ by Julian Assange | NYT “The New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas... Manning faces court martial, by Camille Elhassani | Al Jazeera On Monday, US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning faces a general court martial on 21 charges related to leaking US government information to Wikileaks. Manning has admitted to leaking the material, but his defence team will argue that he’s a whistleblower who exposed the moral failure of US foreign policy. Manning has opted to have US Army Colonel Judge Denise Lind decide his fate rather than a jury... New Israeli plan calls for more “intelligence” gathering to disrupt BDS movement, by Ben White | The Electronic Intifada ..Reproduced below is the “Action Plan” presented to delegates by the working group tasked with examining “delegitimization” and BDS. This is transcribed from slides shown to the conference, and the video can be viewed above. This document needs to be read, shared, and taken into account by activists when planning campaigns and strategies... Turkish Police find Chemical Weapons in the Possession of Al Nosra Terrorists Heading for Syria, by Gearóid Ó Colmáin | Dissident Voice According to a report in Turkey’s state media agency Zaman, agents from the Turkish General Directorate of Security (Emniyet Genel Müdürlüğü) seized 2 kg of sarin gas in the city of Adana in the early hours of yesterday morning. The chemical weapons were in the possession of Al Nosra terrorists believed to have been heading for Syria... Canadian church boycotts companies in Israeli settlements | Middle East Monitor Canada's largest Protestant church, the United Church of Canada, has decided to boycott three Israeli companies as part of its campaign against products manufactured in illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The "Unsettling Goods: Choose Peace in Palestine and Israel" campaign is set to start on Saturday and will last for a year. It calls for "education and for economic action by United Church members to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories.".. Asymmetric Political Warfare: How AIPAC Rules, by Jeff Klein | CounterPunch Last week the Senate passed Resolution 65, mandating a new round of sanctions against Iran and promising to support Israel if it should choose to launch a unilateral war. The bill contradicted explicit US policy in a number of areas: it imposed secondary penalties on US allies; it lowered the bar for military action to Israel’s preferred language of “nuclear capability” rather than acquisition of a nuclear weapon; and it interferes with the attempt to reach a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear impasse at a delicate time... Israeli Espionage in US Senate, by Jim W. Dean | Veterans Today ...Whether the fifteen bipartisan Senators are a rogue element group under the control of their Israeli Lobby puppet masters we will have to wait and see if the legislation proceeds to a full Senate vote.. The finance committee legislation and the Senate resolution are perfect examples of our out of control Israeli Lobby political espionage here. The loyal branch of the military and Intel services are just aghast at the openness with which Israeli agents get our Congress to do their bidding, literally on their hands and knees. It is a total abrogation of their oaths of office and many consider it plain treason... [Well, it is plain treason, which, under the influence of the potent Zionist venom, has characterized the US Government for decades] Read more...The CIA - Keepers of the Hit Lists: War Crimes as Policy, by Doug Valentine and Nicolas J. S. Davies | CounterPunch ...Including economic sanctions, and a 50 year history of sabotage and subversion, America and its Iraqi collaborators visited far more death and destruction on Iraq than Saddam Hussein and his regime. For the last few weeks, American pundits have been cataloguing the horrors. They tell how the Bush and Obama regimes, united in the unstated policy of war crimes, probably murdered more than a million Iraqis, displaced around five million, and imprisoned and tortured hundreds of thousands without trial... The Russian are coming… Hooray! by Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation Wouldn’t it be fun if we could somehow revive an average American citizen who had been frozen in a cryogenic capsule from, say, the 1950s? Then, on revival, we allow this presumably open-minded person to sample international news developments that have occurred over the intervening decades since the time he was put into deep-frozen sleep; and, more especially, recent international developments. We may hazard a guess that the salient impression that this time-traveler would perceive is the stark role-reversal in geopolitics between his native United States of America and that of his country’s supposed arch-enemy – Russia... Regarding the proposed al-Awda withdrawal of endorsement from BDS, by Paul Larudee | deLiberation Below is a message that I posted to the al-Awda USA listserve concerning a proposed al-Awda withdrawal of its endorsement from the statement currently appearing on the BDS website of the BNC, which is not the same statement that it originally signed. Since receiving wider distribution, my message has been misinterpreted and criticised for statements and assertions that were neither made nor intended. Furthermore, since my motives for making the statement have been questioned, as well, I will preface the message with some explanation... [BDS – an initiative of Palestinian civil society - has been surprisingly effective, so it should come as no surprise that there are those who wish to hijack it for their own self-serving purposes. Hopefully they will fail.] Jewish Supremacist Rabbi David Bar-Hayim Talks About The "Nature of Islam" | Gilad Atzmon You better listen to it and make up your own mind. This horrid ethnic cleansing Rabbi preaches to us about the 'West' and Western values... [Although Nazi Germany had sycophantic churchmen providing “religious” support for the regime, there was nothing like this sociopathic vitriol.] Netanyahu to decide on Price Tag as Jewish Terror Organization | Roi Tov On June 2, 2013, the Israeli Administration froze after sending an urgent messenger to Netanyhau, asking him to solve their troubles. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni favors the definition of the Jewish Organization Price Tag as a terror organization while the State Prosecutor's Office opposes. The latter claims that settler attacks against Palestinians and leftists represent an idea, not a centralized group, and thus they cannot be defined as terrorists. They froze up while standing in their favorite karate position, unable to agree on the obvious... Bill Clinton takes a cool half-million from Jewish National Fund for speech in Israel, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss The Jewish National Fund has paid former US president Bill Clinton $500,000 for a 45-minute speech at the Peres Academic Center in Rehovot on June 17 in honor of the Israeli president’s 90th birthday. Guests were last week sent invitations requiring them to stump up NIS 3,000 (just over $800) apiece to attend the gala dinner, and thus to help cover his fee, but that requirement has now been canceled... 'Western Persistence with Mid-East Bloodbath' by Archie Kennedy | MCW News The risk of the regional bloodbath.. throughout the Middle East turning into a global bloodbath is high and getting higher by the day. America's Middle East gambit has become considerably more dangerous since the Russians have defiantly announced that they will be sending S-300 anti-aircraft weapons to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The conflict is already spilling into and influencing the region. Germany and the United States warned Russia not to send the weapons systems.. Both the Israelis and the Americans consistently proclaim that they will raise the stakes when faced with disobedience and they threaten horrific responses if any third party lends support of any kind to the enemy du jour... 'Germany backs labels for goods from settlements' | Jerusalem Post ...In a letter dated May 13, Dr. Emily Haber, a state secretary in the German Foreign Ministry, appears to have conveyed a new and explicit position for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government. “The label ‘Made in Israel’ is, according to the opinion of the federal government, only allowed for products from within the borders of Israeli state territory before 1967,”.. Israeli diplomats and Foreign Ministry officials are reportedly concerned that any labeling of products manufactured in the settlements would be a first step toward an eventual European boycott of Israeli goods... [What? Treachery from within? The plot thickens.] Jun 2, 2013 Chalmers Johnson: Prophet For A Dying Empire, by Allen L Roland | Veterans Today Chalmers Johnson was a truth teller and prophet in a political environment where few would stand up to the interests and secrecy of the Pentagon and the intelligence community ~ and since his passing in November of 2010, many of his prophetic fears have been realized in the Obama administration. Johnson, author of Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis,The Last Days of the American Republic, talks in this video interview about the similarities in the decline of the Roman and Soviet empires and the signs that the U.S. empire is exhibiting the very same symptoms ~ over-extension, corruption and the inability to reform... [Amen, bro’] The respectable president and the never ending occupation, by Adam Keller | Crazy Country ...next week will mark 46 years of occupation. Precisely forty six years will have elapsed since the morning of June 5, 1967, when air raid alarms sounded all over the country and on the news the IDF Spokesperson was quoted as stating that forces on the ground and by air had set out to repel an attack by enemy forces against Israel (which was not exactly a precise factual description...). Since then, millions of Palestinians have been living under military occupation, which has been going on for about seventy percent of Israel's history and counting... Syrian rebels face Qusayr assault | MCW News Government forces together with fighters from the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah are continuing their assault on Qusayr amid growing concerns for thousands of civilians feared to be trapped inside the strategic Syrian city. Government troops on Saturday continued to bombard rebel-held areas of the city bordering Lebanon, activists said, as clashes raged between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and opposition fighters on several front lines... Syrian Rebels Massacre Christian Village, by James Heiser | New American While President Obama’s administration weighs overt military aid to Syrian rebels, the true character of the revolution underway in that country is becoming horrifically clear. Numerous press reports are providing details of a massacre perpetrated by the Free Syrian Army that annihilated the entire population of a Christian village... Israel’s peace no-hoper | Redress Information & Analysis Although no intelligent observer expected the new boy in Israeli politics, Ya’ir Lapid, whose Hebrew name translates to “shining torch”, to shine a light on the Middle East and usher in a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a few idiots, such as Time Magazine, which placed him among the world’s 100 most influential people, may have been fooled. So, six months after his party, Yesh Atid, came second to Binyamin Netanhayu’s Likud in the Israeli elections, what does Lapid, who is now Israel’s finance minister, stand in regard to peace?.. Fourth National BDS Conference: Bethlehem University June 8 | BDS In light of the latest spectacular growth of the BDS movement around the world in the academic, cultural and economic domains, this conference aims to enhance and expand Palestinian civil society’s active implementation of BDS as an effective and popular strategy of resistance that is deeply rooted in the heritage of Palestinian popular resistance and that is also inspired by the South African anti-apartheid struggle and the US civil rights movement... These 34 ‘commandments’ must be obeyed, says the London Declaration on Anti-Semitism, by Stuart Littlewood | Intifada Palestine ...Australian federal and state MPs have been indulging in an orgy of anti-anti-semitism by signing en masse the London Declaration on Combating Anti-Semitism. Over 100 have put their mark on it.. About 300 other lawmakers from some 60 countries have also signed, according to a spokesperson from the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism. 50 of these are Canadians, 18 are British, 6 are Israeli and 2 are American (what, only two?).. [Amazing how so many people miss the obvious – what goes around comes around. No one can repeal the law of karma - simple cause and effect.] Extreme capitalism of the Muslim Brothers, by Gilbert Achcar | Le Monde diplomatique ...The Muslim Brothers’ economic credo of free enterprise unhampered by state interference is more closely consonant with neoliberal doctrine than was the form of capitalism dominant under Mubarak. This holds in particular for the version of that credo articulated by Khairat al-Shatir, the Brotherhood’s very capitalist number two after the murshid (guide), and a representative of its most conservative wing, or by Hassan Malek, an extremely wealthy, eminent member of the Brotherhood, who, after making his debut in the business world in a partnership with Al-Shatir, today manages, with his son, a constellation of enterprises... Belgian student body votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel | Haaretz A Belgian student association voted in favor of an academic boycott of Israel. In a vote last month, the general council of the Federation of French-speaking Students in Belgium, or FEF, adopted a motion calling for “a freezing of relations with Israeli universities,” the Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported Wednesday. The motion was supported by 85 percent of voters... Thair Anis Arrested | Deir Yassin Remembered ...He was expecting to be arrested because he is a prominent activist in the resistance, in the Bab al Shams project & he was involved in organising events for Nakba Day this year. Thair was imprisoned as a youth & he knows what Israeli prisons are like for Palestinians but he has carried on with his work. He is a very brave young man... [The Israeli Gestapo isn’t going to let such a dangerous criminal walk the streets, are they] Israel and Greece Sign Strategic Agreement | Roi Tov Certain names are pronounced while lowering the voice so that the state-agent sitting at the nearest table won’t hear them. A good example in this category is Aviem Sella, even his website is half-hidden. Other times, the issue is so sensitive that the relevant names are not pronounced directly, instead a harmless code is adopted: "Shalom who? Oh, the husband of the wife of ..." On May 29, 2013, Silvan Shalom met the Greek Foreign Affairs Minister in Jerusalem. Shalom who?.. Gilad Atzmon on the Munir Muhammad Show | USTREAM Ending Perpetual War? Endorsing Drone Warfare? by Richard Falk | Foreign Policy Journal That President Obama chose on 23 May to unveil his second term cautionary approach to counter-terrorism at the National Defense University epitomized the ambiguity of the occasion. The choice of venue was itself a virtual guarantee that nothing would be said or done on that occasion that challenges in any fundamental way the global projection of American military power. Obama’s skillfully phrased speech was about refining technique in foreign policy, achieving greater efficiency in killing, interrogating the post-9/11 war mentality, and all the while extolling the self-mystifying glories of American exceptionalism... The Big One, by Stew Webb | Veterans Today At the center of today’s headlines, the point man on the ground for the government is United States Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. [who] obtained the AP and Fox News subpoenas and timed the leak of the AP surveillance to be the same day as the preplanned leak of IRS disclosures about Tea Party processing delays. The real story is bigger and USA Machen holds the career futures of both Attorney General Eric Holder and Chief Supreme Court Justice Roberts in his capable hands... Al Qaeda, the Private Army of America’s Neocon Right, by Gordon Duff | Veterans Today This week, Senator John McCain entered Syria illegally to meet with “rebels.” However, photos of those McCain met with proved an embarrassment. McCain met with top Al Qaeda lieutenants long on terror watch lists, long cited as high value targets of America’s drone war. McCain met with the enemy. Who better than McCain, known by veterans as the “Hanoi songbird.”.. Jun 1, 2013 The United States Of Whatever: Ecocide and the Soul of a Nation, by Phil Rockstroh | Consortium News The reality of and the outward toll inflicted by greenhouse gas engendered Climate Change is clearly evident (to all but the corrupt and devoutly ignorant) e.g. increasingly destructive and deadly tornadoes and hurricanes, destruction of marine life, severe droughts and rapacious wild fires --landscapes of death, scattered debris and shattered lives. But what are the psychical affects of chronic denial, noxious indifference and compulsive prevarication as related to a matter as all encompassing and crucial as our relationship with the climate of our planet?.. Dirty Wars: Terror Begets Terror - Jeremy Scahill Breaks the Set | RT/YouTube Abby Martin Breaks the Set with Jeremy Scahill on 'Dirty Wars'.. No More Tunnels Please: Gaza Held Hostage to Egypt’s Turmoil, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle An air of uncertainty is engulfing most matters related to Egypt. Since the Egyptian revolt started over two years ago, the country remains hostage to a barefaced power struggle with many destructive implications that have polarized society in unprecedented ways, perhaps in all of Egypt’s modern history. And while in Egypt itself nothing is sacred and no one is safe from the massive campaigns of defamation, demonization and sheer lies that each political camp is launching against the other, Palestinians find themselves in a most precarious position... Read more... Syria: The Deadbeat Opposition And A Russian Checkmate | Moon of Alabama The Syrian exile opposition is becoming irrelevant. It has been destroyed due to the rivalities between Saudi Arabia and Qatar and is now denounced by all other parts of the Syrian opposition. The U.S. has thereby lost one of its key political instruments to drive the Syrian government out. It now has no one to present as negotiating partner opposed to the Syrian government side in the planned Geneva II conference... Read more... The Geopolitics of Gas and the Syrian Crisis, by Dmitry Minin | Strategic Culture Foundation What has one of the most democratic countries of the Middle East, Syria, done to tick off some of its neighbors in the West, the fierce fighters for democracy? The irrationality and unscrupulousness of the approaches Western countries have taken to the Syrian crisis, when the same people who in Europe are considered terrorists are declared «freedom fighters» when it comes to Syria, becomes clearer in light of the economic dimension of the Syrian tragedy... Read more... 25 Years After the Assassination: Israel Lost | Roi Tov ...It was an unlikely topic to be featured. Not because it lacks importance, but because it happened 25 years ago. "Uvda"* chose to disclose new details on the assassination in its last program of the Spring 2013 Season. Even this was not good enough; new details on the event appear regularly. In November 2012, Israel Military Censor allowed the publication of an interview given by Nahum Lev, one of the commando assassins, in 2000, just before his death... Read more... Mubarak-era Cruelty Continues at Rafah Crossing, by Ayah Bashir | Palestine Chronicle ...Freedom of movement is a human right enshrined the Geneva conventions. The Egyptian government is violating that right. As we struggle to uphold our fundamental rights, we can take heart from the words of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: “No detention room will remain. Nor will the chains strangle.”.. Read more... Rebels in Syria Threaten Genocide Against the Shia, by Kevin Jon Heller | Opinio Juris Communities inhabited by Shiite Muslims and President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority will be “wiped off the map” if the strategic city of Al-Qusair in central Syria falls to government troops, rebel forces said. “We don’t want this to happen, but it will be a reality imposed on everyone,” Colonel Abdel-Hamid Zakaria, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army in Turkey, told Al-Arabiya television yesterday. “It’s going to be an open, sectarian, bloody war to the end.”.. [Gotta love them “Freedom Fighters” - going all the way for the USA] The Role of Turkey in the US-NATO-Israeli War on Syria, by Cem Ertür | Global Research ..When the U.S. and its allies launched the covert war on Syria in 2011, they were expecting that either Syria’s political establishment would collapse within a short duration or they would find a way to ignite an open war. As Syria’s leaders and people proved to be exceptionally resilient, increasingly more brutal means have been deployed to tear the country apart. Being at the forefront of this covert war in every respect, Turkey has been thoroughly complicit in monumental war crimes committed against the neighbouring people of Syria... Read more... Israel is fighting a regional war in Syria, by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya | RT The changing internal situation in Syria is putting a new set of plans into motion, which involve Israeli aggression against Syria. Not only have the US and its allies been trying to militarily buttress the retreating anti-government militias, but now they aim to create a new phase in the conflict where states start asserting leverage against Syria in place of the weakening anti-government forces.. external pressure is being applied to replace the declining internal pressure. The entry of Israeli troops and the Mossad security service into Syria with repeated Israeli air strikes via illegal use of Lebanese airspace, on the Syrian military research facility in the town of Jamraya clarifies Israel’s role in destabilizing Syria... Pipelineistan and the New Silk Road(s), by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online Ask Western elites - oh, those were the days, in the 17th century, when the rise of European sea powers led to the collapse of the caravan trade and the end of the Silk Road as Europe found a cheaper - and safer - way of trading between East and West. Now, centuries after Tang armies establishing nodes all over Central Asia as far as Khorasan in northeast Iran, the 21st century Silk Road(s) are back. The camels now wear iPads, with the Persian Gulf as a high-tech caravanserai... Ark Work Progress | Gaza's Ark On the 3rd commemoration of Israel's lawless and brutal attack on the Freedom Flotilla in 2010, Gaza's Ark and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition have not and will not give up efforts to challenge and end the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza. This is a photo of the fishing trawler, ad-Dahoul, that we recently purchased from Palestinian fishers. We have now started to transform it into Gaza's Ark – a cargo vessel to export Palestinian products from the port of Gaza, Palestine... Turks Catch al-Nusra with Two Kilos of Sarin gas, by Jim W. Dean | Veterans Today This comes as no surprise to anyone. The oldest trick in the book is to set red lines and then have your Intel operatives set up an operation to frame your selected target to trigger the desired intervention. The Israelis have been doing this since before their state was born. And America has a long history of it, including when Operation Gladio went bad and Cold War trained operatives in Italy co-opted those assets to use in terror attacks on their own people and them blame the communists... Read more... |
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