Mar 31, 2012 Land Day: The Global March to Jerusalem Global March to Jerusalem Today | My Catbird Seat  At least one person is reported killed as Israeli police use tear gas and water cannons against Palestinian protesters, marking Land Day also dubbed "Global March to Jerusalem."..As Indian solidarity activist and GMJ architect Feroze Mithiborwala says, "…the objective this year is to see a million people peacefully march from Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Palestine to Jerusalem to raise the Global consciousness and political consciousness of the world.".. The Global March to Jerusalem, a brave and admirable attempt to awaken the world’s conscience, by Ghada Karmi | Mondoweiss On March 30th a ground-breaking event will take place. I had not expected it would ever happen when I first heard about it. While teaching at the Summer University of Palestine last July in Beirut, I met a group of Indian Muslims taking the course. They told me they were organising a people’s march to Jerusalem to bring to the world’s attention to Israel’s assault on the city’s history and culture, and its impending loss as a centre for Islam and Christianity. They explained how they and their friends would set out from India, drawing in others to join them as they passed through the various countries on their way overland to Israel’s borders... Read more... Land Day, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance ...The march was a success even before it started. The thousands who tried to arrive to us here in Palestine got an education THROUGH the process of preparing to come to nearby borders and they each told many others where they are going and why. This ripple effect that started months before today's events is critical. Here are a few other positives before, during and after this event today:.. Read more... Elsa Rassbach Interviews Haneen Zoabi: Land Day vs. the 'Jewish State' | Mondoweiss  During the 63 years since 1948, Israel has confiscated 85% of our land and turned it over to the exclusive use of the Jews. It has developed and built 1000 towns, cities and villages, all of them only for the Jews. And ZERO for the Palestinians. We live now on 2% of our land. We don't even have permission to build our own houses on our own land and thus have no rights to use our land that hasn’t been confiscated!.. Read more... Israel Defense Ministry plan earmarks 10 percent of West Bank for settlement expansion, by Akiva Eldar | Haaretz For years Israel’s Civil Administration has been covertly locating and mapping available land in the West Bank and naming the parcels after existing Jewish settlements, presumably with an eye toward expanding these communities. The Civil Administration, part of the Defense Ministry, released its maps only in response to a request from anti-settlement activist Dror Etkes under the Freedom of Information Law... Read more... An Interview with Omar Barghouti: On BDS and PACBI | YouTube Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political and cultural analyst whose opinion columns have appeared in several publications. He is also a human rights activist involved in civil struggle to end oppression and conflict in Palestine. Barghouti is a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, PACBI... UNAC: A Real Anti-War Movement in the Belly of the Beast, by Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report  The United States finally has an anti-war movement that can’t be bamboozled by President Obama’s “humanitarian” mass murder. The United National Anti-War Coalition has broken decisively with those who would give a pass to Washington to wage illegal wars against Syria and Iran – as Obama did in Libya. “Our task as Americans is to dismantle from within the monstrous apparatus of imperial aggression. Period.” No exceptions... Read more... Israel Encircles Iran, by Philip Giraldi | The American Conservative Israel is tightening the noose around Iran. The Israeli government has signed a secret agreement with the government of Azerbaijan to lease two former Soviet military airfields located close to the Iranian border. One of the facilities is being used as an intelligence collection site, with advanced Sigint capabilities and preparations underway for drone operations. The other base is being designated a search-and-rescue facility. It will eventually have helicopters that will presumably be dispatched to aid downed Israeli fliers if there is a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The base will also have limited refueling and recovery capabilities for planes too damaged to make the long flight back to Israel over Iraqi or Saudi airspace... Read more... Obama takes Bush’s secrecy games one step further, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon The ACLU is suing the Obama administration under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), seeking to force disclosure of the guidelines used by Obama officials to select which human beings.. will have their lives ended by the CIA’s drone attacks (“In particular,” the group explains, the FOIA request “seeks to find out when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and how the United States ensures compliance with international laws relating to extrajudicial killing”). The Obama administration has not only refused to provide any of that information, but worse, the CIA is insisting to federal courts that it cannot even confirm or deny the existence of a drone program at all without seriously damaging national security... Read more... Disavowing Disavowal: In Defense of Gilad Atzmon | David Rovics  ...Being a songwriter who writes songs about the Palestinian struggle, among other subjects, many of my shows around the world are organized by Palestine solidarity activists of one kind or another. Before the tour began I was getting occasional emails from people asking me whether I wanted to add my name to a group denunciation of jazz musician, blogger and author Gilad Atzmon. Denounce him for what, I asked. For being an anti-Semite, they replied. I'd then ask them to send me what he wrote that they found offensive, which they would then do. I'd then read every word, and each time, I'd fail to find the anti-Semitic bit.. Then, ten days into my tour, the USPCA published a "Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon.".. Read more... MEK 'Only Way To Stop Iran': Giuliani, by Daniel Tovrov | International Business Times Undeterred by a federal investigation into the activities of some of his peers, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has shown unwavering support for an Iranian dissident group called the People's Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq or MEK. Giuliani -- along with former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy -- spoke at a conference in Paris on Monday, where he suggested that the United States should use the People's Mujahedin to militarily attack Iran's nuclear program... [Would the AG or DA willing to charge Giuliani et al with the crime of actively supporting terrorist organizations please step forward. The USA, headquarters of hypocrisy] Read more...100 Iranian Missiles Will Penetrate Defenses, Hitting Israeli Targets After First-Strike | Tikun Olam Neve Gordon reported in Al Jazeera English that Israel assassinated the leader of the Gaza PRC a few weeks ago in order to deliberately provoke a Gaza missile barrage. Bibi wanted to test the Iron Dome missile system in the expectation that its success would further reassure Israelis and his doubting cabinet members, who must vote to approve war, that Israel will remain protected from rockets in the event Iran is attacked.. The missile expert, Uzi Rubin, says that Iran has improved its accuracy to within “meters” of the target. That means virtually all of Israel’s major infrastructure including power generation, air and seaports, political command and control facilities (the Knesset), and military bases (and the Kirya) would be hit... Read more... Artist of the Month: Hisham Zreiq | This Week In Palestine  Zreiq’s art is his perspective on life, pains, disappointments, happiness, and his philosophical look at life. He uses extensive symbolism and metaphors in both his visual art and films. One example is the cross that symbolises punishment and sacrifice, as Jesus was punished and sacrificed his life. His art is somehow surrealist, and looks like it was extracted from a dream-like world. The intensity of emotions cannot be ignored... Read more... Sealing Freedom’s Tomb: New Israeli Embassy in Cairo is Announced | Roy Tov “Bukra il-mishmish” is an Egyptian peasants’ proverb that literally means “tomorrow the apricot,” meaning that today they will not enjoy this luxurious fruit, but maybe tomorrow they will. It is a touching reminder of their poverty and a lifestyle that did not change much since the days of the pharaohs; maybe that is one of the reasons why Hosni Mubarak was nicknamed “The Last Pharaoh.” In the last week of March 2012, an Israeli diplomatic delegation met with Egyptian officials to decide the location of Israel’s new embassy. One year after the revolution that ousted the Last Pharaoh, Egyptians still cannot enjoy apricots, while the military junta ruling the country is effectively returning the situation in the country to pre-revolutionary days... Read more... Debtocracy (English Sub-titles) | YouTube For the first time in Greece a documentary produced by the audience. "Debtocracy" seeks the causes of the debt crisis and proposes solutions, hidden by the government and the dominant media... Mar 30, 2012 The Crisis of Zionism: Netanyahu’s Machine, by Scott McConnell | The American Conservative  ..Beinart describes the emotions the video set off in him: “As soon I began watching … I wished I had never turned it on. For most of my life, my reaction to accounts of Palestinian suffering has been rationalization, a search for reasons why the accounts are exaggerated or the suffering self-inflicted. … But in recent years, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I had been lowering my defenses, and Khaled’s cries left me staring in mute horror at my computer screen.” It is a powerful passage in a book filled with them, one that encapsulates and personalizes the inequity of the occupation, the apartheid-like legal distinctions between Jewish settlers and Palestinians, and the grotesque disparity between two people’s access to natural resources and civil and political rights... Read more... Excerpt from Rethinking Zionism, by Peter Beinart | Salon I remember walking back with my grandmother one night from synagogue, past the loquat trees of Sea Point, South Africa, the most beautiful Jewish ghetto in the world. I was a kid, and boasting about the United States, the country to which her daughter — my mother — had immigrated. She grew annoyed. “Don’t get too attached,” she announced. “The Jews are like rats. We leave the sinking ship. One day, please God, we’ll all join Isaac in Israel.” Isaac was her brother. They had parted ways four decades earlier, as the ancient Jewish community of Alexandria, Egypt, broke under the strain of economic depression, Arab nationalism, and world war... Read more... MEK and its material supporters in Washington, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon Jeremiah Goulka worked as a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department, and then went to work as an analyst with the RAND Corporation, where he was sent to Iraq to analyze, among other things, the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), publishing an oft-cited study on the group. MEK has been in the news of late because a high-powered bipartisan cast of former Washington officials have established close ties with the group and have been vocally advocating on its behalf, often in exchange for large payments, despite MEK’s having been formally designated by the U.S. Government as a Terrorist organization. That close association on the part of numerous Washington officials with a Terrorist organization has led to a formal federal investigation of those officials... Read more... BRICS refuses to side with US in showdown with Iran | The Economic Times India and China have defiantly declared their intention to continue trading with Iran, rebuffing US attempts to force them and other countries to cut economic ties with Tehran over its nuclear programme. As both countries raised a banner of revolt at the US-led efforts to economically strangle Iran, they received support from Russia, South Africa and Brazil, in what could resonate around the world as a flexing of muscles by the BRICS powers, the new grouping of emerging powers whose leaders are holding their fourth summit meeting in Delhi this week... Read more... Israel’s Secret Staging Ground, by Mark Perry | Foreign Policy  In 2009, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Baku, Donald Lu, sent a cable to the State Department's headquarters in Foggy Bottom titled "Azerbaijan's discreet symbiosis with Israel." The memo, later released by WikiLeaks, quotes Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev as describing his country's relationship with the Jewish state as an iceberg: "nine-tenths of it is below the surface." Why does it matter? Because Azerbaijan is strategically located on Iran's northern border and, according to several high-level sources I've spoken with inside the U.S. government, Obama administration officials now believe that the "submerged" aspect of the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance -- the security cooperation between the two countries -- is heightening the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran... Read more... The New Mandela, by Uri Avnery | The Vineyard of the Saker ...When the Oslo process died with the assassinations of Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Marwan and his organization became targets. Successive Israeli leaders.. decided to put an end to the two-state agenda. In the brutal “Defensive Shield operation.. the Palestinian Authority was attacked, its services destroyed and many of its activists arrested. Marwan Barghouti was put on trial. It was alleged that, as the leader of Tanzim, he was responsible for several “terrorist” attacks in Israel. His trial was a mockery, resembling a Roman gladiatorial arena more than a judicial process. The hall was packed with howling rightists, presenting themselves as “victims of terrorism”... Read more... Good Night, America, and Good-Bye, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar It is interesting to note just how well this imperialism thing has worked for the American people. At the end of last year the U.S. was kicked out of Iraq after spending some trillions of dollars and producing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Americans. Al-Qaeda, which was not present in Iraq when the U.S. arrived, has lately been responsible for bomb attacks that have killed hundreds of Iraqis, mostly civilians. As a result of the ham-handed American intervention, Iraq’s closest friend now is not the U.S. It is Iran... Read more... One or two states? The status quo is Israel’s rational choice, by Noam Sheizaf | +972 ...It’s enough to come on a week’s visit to Israel to understand the appeal of the status quo. Despite occasional outbreaks of violence in the south and north, Israelis enjoy stability, prosperity and a general sense of security. According to the theory of “convincing Israelis to abandon the West Bank,” this was supposed to be the right moment for concessions, but the exact opposite is true: When things are going so well, it would be totally irrational to move in any other direction, either by annexing the West Bank or by leaving it... [It’s like a pressure cooker with the flame turned up – given enough time it will explode.] Read more...New College Major In 'Drone Studies' Has Graduates Pulling In Up To $200K A Year | Business Insider  The fact that the U.S. is training more pilots to fly drones than it is to fly fighters and bombers is nothing new, but the stress those drone operators are under is only growing, and the need for civilian contractors to ease their burden is great. Erik German at The Daily reports some American colleges are responding to that demand and offering what could be America's newest, and possibly best paying, major... [Yeah, and I bet you could use like 14 year olds to like do this; they would just love it and could go for hours and hours and not like get tired, y’know, and you don’t have to like pay them much either.] Read more...About IAEA access to Iran's centrifuge facilities | Iran Affairs Is it merely coincidence that the information that the IAEA has been demanding about the location of Iran's centrifuge workshops is exactly the missing information necessary to make bombing Iran easier? Bloomberg reports that a Congressional Research Service report on Iran's nuclear program by Kenneth Katzman states that the lack of knowledge about the location centrifuge manufacturing workshops in Iran makes the prospects of any bombing run on Iran more complicated, since Iran can then easily reconstitute its centrifuge manufacturing if the workshops escape bombings. Isn't it funny then that the IAEA has been pressing Iran to gain access to the location of these workshops...EVEN THOUGH these workshops fall OUTSIDE of the IAEA's inspection authority, and there is no real reason for the IAEA to want to inspect them anyway?.. Read more... The Obama Regime’s Priority: Defend the Empire with Whatever Personnel is Available at his Disposal, by James Petras | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post The March 11 Massacre of the 17 Afghan citizens, including at least nine children and four women, raises many fundamental issues about the nature of a colonial war, the practices of a colonial army engaged in a prolonged (eleven-year) occupation and the character of an imperial state as it commits war crimes and increasingly relies on arbitrary dictatorial measures to secure public compliance and suppress dissent... Read more... US Army Organ Donor Registry: The Pentagon's Recycling Program, by Reed Perry | Activist Post I'd like to expand your understanding of how sick, how anti-human, and how deranged American war is with some of my discoveries regarding Army organ transplantation, widespread brain damage, and the tormented victims of war that no longer truly live, but suffer in medical suspension just above death... USA Today reports that over 360,000 veterans of the Iraq/Afghan Wars have traumatic brain injuries... Read more... USA Thwarts Israeli Attack on Iran | Roy Tov  Israeli Media Map of Proposed Attack In two carefully coordinated events, the USA put an end to Israel’s plan to attack Iran. On March 28, 2012, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak publicly praised himself and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: “The decision [to cancel the attack] was the result of contacts between the [Israeli] Defense Ministry and the Pentagon.” At that moment, the poker game between the USA, Israel and Iran came to an abrupt end. There was no winner, but one loser: Israel... Read more... Read the FBI Memo: Agents Can 'Suspend the Law', by Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman | Wired The FBI once taught its agents that they can “bend or suspend the law” as they wiretap suspects. But the bureau says it didn’t really mean it, and has now removed the document from its counterterrorism training curriculum, calling it an “imprecise” instruction. Which is a good thing, national security attorneys say, because the FBI’s contention that it can twist the law in pursuit of suspected terrorists is just wrong... IDF colonel-rabbi implies: Rape is permitted in war, by Yossi Gurvitz | +972 Answering a question from a concerned reader regarding the Torah’s position on rape during war, Colonel Eyal Qarim of the Military Rabbinate wrote nine years ago – out of uniform – that ‘prohibitions against immorality’ are removed during war. Is it permitted for a Jewish soldier to rape a gentile woman during wartime? This question – based on the biblical mitzvah of Eshet Yefat Toar (“a comely woman”) – was referred to nine years ago by Rabbi Eyal Qarim. The questioning party seemed anxious and worried, and wanted to know whether the iron-age mitzvah (religious deed) is applicable to IDF soldiers today... [Apparently Orthodox rabbis are frequent customers of the upwards of 200 brothels in Tel Aviv. Does one of them go around certifying them kosher?] Read more...One state – one vote: Rethinking an Israeli Spring, by Bradley Burston | Haaretz ...When Begin addressed the cabinet in 1967, he outlined the concept of a "bi-ethnic" state, allowing both Jews and Arabs to develop as culturally distinctive peoples, and ruled by the majority, rather than a bi-national state with power shared equally, regardless of the numerical majority or minority. In contrast with a bi-national state, "We have never ruled out a bi-ethnic state, and the difference is crucial," Begin said. "Zionism, as I have known it, has never viewed the state as mono-ethnic.".. Read more... Mar 29, 2012 Land Day’s Earthquake | Roy Tov  March 30 commemorates the Land Day, when—in 1976— a general strike and marches were organized in Palestinian towns from the Galilee to the Negev in response to Israel’s announcement that it would expropriate Palestinian land for “security and settlement purposes.” The 1976 protests are recognized as the starting point of the organized Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and abuse, and are commemorated annually; often these protests turn violent. This Friday, the 2012 protests may become especially so, after former Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, who is jailed in Israel, published a special message calling on the Palestinians to launch a widespread resistance against Israel... Read more... Interview with Gilad Atzmon by Prof. Norton Mezvinsky | WRMEA Israeli-born Gilad Atzmon, one of Europe’s finest jazz musicians, was in Washington, DC for the first time at the end of a multi-city North American grassroots tour to discuss his recently published and highly controversial book, The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics. On March 14, Atzmon was interviewed by Prof. Norton Mezvinsky, Connecticut State University Professor of History Emeritus, at Washington’s Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church. The previous day a letter signed by 23 Palestinian activists called for “the disavowal of the racism and anti-Semitism of Gilad Atzmon.”.. Is IAEA Greasing Skids to Iran War? | Middle East Online The US press corps has embraced the integrity of the International Atomic Energy Agency as central to the case for bombing Iran. But WikiLeaks documents revealed how the IAEA’s new leader is a pawn of the West, and Gareth Porter explains at Inter Press Service how the IAEA has escalated the confrontation with Iran.. Read more... The Contemptible Netanyahu and Friends, by Richard Lightbown | Palestine Chronicle ...What is genuinely reprehensible and wrong about this whole sordid, calculated attack by Israel’s top flight of political leaders is the obscene and inhumane exploitation of the assassination of three French children as a tool to unjustifiably stir up hatred and disdain. The contemptible Benjamin Netanyahu and his collaborators have once again shown that Jewish suffering is merely another instrument of exploitation and manipulation which they, exclusively, can use against any person that dares, however mildly, to criticize their illegal apartheid policies for creating a greater Israel. In order to achieve that end nothing is disallowed, no lie is too great, and no deed is too foul to contemplate or to implement... Read more... Jewish Survival Greatest Miracle in History | Gilad Atzmon The following is taken from Arutz 7, the Israeli right wing news outlet. It is a glimpse into Jewish ideological supremacy and exceptionalism. It also proves a clear continuum between Jewish right wing nationalist and expansionist philosophy and some Rabbinical teaching... Read more... Bibi: First We’ll Take Tehran, Then We’ll Take Istanbul | Tikun Olam  Yesterday, brought ominous news regarding yet another aggressive Israeli projection of its military power in the Mideast. Since 1967, with but a few exceptions (Osirak being one), Israel has mainly satisfied itself by retaining dominance over its frontline neighbors and not attempting to meddle in affairs of more far-flung states. But with Bibi Netanyahu’s new policy of projecting Israeli power far outside Israel’s immediate sphere and threatening Iran with attack, we have an Israel ready and willing to step far outside its former comfort zone... Read more... Ahmadinejad: "The Age of Humanity has begun" | YouTube This is a collection of the alleged 'bomb-hungry maniac' from the middle east speaking on the nuclear bomb on various occations. Don't believe the hype. Don't just believe this video either. Do your research!.. Computing Intifada: When Will Palestinians Revolt? by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle ...Former Israeli president Moshe Katsav said of his enemies: “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies? Not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy”. This might be a transition from Golda Meir’s wholesale denial of the existence of the Palestinian, or of other Zionist leaders depicting Palestinians as animals, beasts and cockroaches... Read more... Bill Hicks: It's Just A Ride | YouTube The World is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real, because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round, and it has thrills and chills and is very brightly colored, and it's very loud. And it's fun, for a while... Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar That President Barack Obama, ostensibly a Democrat of the liberal variety, was touting the views of a neoconservative foreign policy maven whose work has been published in The Weekly Standard, should come as a surprise to exactly no one. The overarching bipartisan consensus in Washington in favor of global intervention ensures that foreign policy disputes are limited to “debates” over means rather than ends. In short, it isn’t a question of whether we ought to have an empire, but of how to best to maintain and expand it... Read more... Mar 28, 2012 A call for peace and justice in the Holy Land, by Bishop Pat Power | Australians for Palestine  Hardly a day passes without me being appalled by the plight of the Palestinian people and the apparent indifference of much of the Western world to the injustices suffered by these beleaguered people. I have to admit that before visits to the Holy Land in 1973 and 1988, my sympathies were with Israel whom I saw as a fledgling nation surrounded by hostile Arab neighbours. The scales fell from my eyes on those visits where I saw a heavy military presence in Jerusalem and other towns, armoured vehicles rumbling up and down the streets, threatening war planes flying overhead and on one occasion just escaping from a tear-gas assault in a busy alleyway in Jerusalem... Read more... Boycotting Israel: Mustafa Barghouti vs. Rabbi Arthur Waskow on BDS Movement, Palestinian Solidarity | Democracy Now The Park Slope Food Coop, one of the oldest and largest in the country, is set to vote Tuesday on whether to hold a referendum on boycotting goods from Israel to protest the Israeli government’s policies toward Palestinians. We host a debate on the international advocacy effort called the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, or BDS for short, which is inspired by the international boycott movement against apartheid South Africa. "We believe this campaign is for the sake of both Palestinians and the Israelis, because it would help us liberate ourselves from the last segregation and occupation system in the world... Us War On Iran: "The Worst Mistake In American History", by Fidel Castro | Global Research ...To prevent the development of research in neighbouring Arab countries, they attacked and destroyed reactors in Iraq and Syria. They have also declared their objective of attacking and destroying the production centres for nuclear fuel in Iran. International politics have been revolving around that crucial topic in that complex and dangerous part of the world, where most of the fuel that moves the world economy is produced and supplied. The selective elimination of Iran’s most eminent scientists by Israel and their NATO allies has become a practice that motivates hatred and feelings of revenge... Read more... Slicing Syria | Roy Tov  Today, March 27, 2012, the Syrian government announced that it accepts the six-point peace plan proposed by the United Nations and Arab League envoy, Kofi Annan (former UN Secretary General). The plan calls for a UN-supervised ceasefire. However, the opposition rejected the initiative, saying it would allow the government to continue its repression. The opposition, led by the Syrian National Council, has thus indirectly declared a war till the end.. as in Libya, the council is nothing but a front for NATO’s colonial forces. The fact that the council sits in Istanbul, Turkey, was never elected by the Syrian people, and had been recognized by the USA as “sole legitimate interlocutor,” strengthens this assessment... Read more... Israel’s occupation: who is most “out of touch with reality”? | Redress Information & Analysis Alan Hart argues that while the UN Human Rights Council may well be a hypocritical body because it chooses to ignore numerous human rights abuses in Africa and Asia, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s attack on it for its decision to investigate the impact of Israeli colonies on the Palestinians is not just hypocritical, but absurd and smacks of paranoia... Read more... Why the Wars Will Not End: How the New American Empire Really Works, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive. The empires succeeded, because the value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance. The reason Rome did not extend its empire east into Germany was not the military prowess of Germanic tribes but Rome’s calculation that the cost of conquest exceeded the value of extractable resources. The Roman empire failed, because Romans exhausted manpower and resources in civil wars fighting amongst themselves for power... Read more... Occupy Wall Street Revisited: Who is Occupying Whom? by Thomas H. Naylor | Counterpunch From the very outset I was an enthusiastic supporter of Occupy Wall Street. To me it represented the reawakening of the political left after four decades of uninterrupted slumber. Maybe the radicalization of America had finally begun. Americans might soon opt for jobs, health insurance, social security, better education, and a cleaner environment rather than drones, Navy Seals, and Delta Force death squads.. The fundamental premise underlying OWS is that the U.S. Government is still fixable. But what if that is not true?.. Read more... War on Iran? It is too soon to reminisce about Iraq, let alone have a repeat, by Marina Hyde | The Guardian  Iraq worked out well, you may recall.. But then what does it matter with people’s goldfish-like memories? The thing about a supertanker is that at least you can turn it round. It takes a while, by all accounts, but you have to think any such vessel has the turning circle of a London taxi compared with the US war machine, which – like its erstwhile willing passenger Tony Blair – appears to relish its lack of a reverse gear. Are we moving inexorably towards a strike on Iran? There is "a smell of fresh chum in the waters" again, as the rip-roaring journalist Matt Taibbi put it recently. This week, not a decade after the Iraq invasion, several former officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency accused its head of mishandling the Iranian crisis... Wall Street Confidence Trick: How "Interest Rate Swaps" Are Bankrupting Local Governments, by Ellen Brown | Global Research The “toxic culture of greed” on Wall Street was highlighted again last week, when Greg Smith went public with his resignation from Goldman Sachs in a scathing oped published in the New York Times. In other recent eyebrow-raisers, LIBOR rates—the benchmark interest rates involved in interest rate swaps—were shown to be manipulated by the banks that would have to pay up; and the objectivity of the ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association) was called into question, when a 50% haircut for creditors was not declared a “default” requiring counterparties to pay on credit default swaps on Greek sovereign debt... Read more... Bahrain Medics Show Trial: This Is Not Syria, Therefore No Western Outcry, by Finian Cunningham | Global Research Bahrain’s disgraceful show trial of medical staff is set to continue, with news this week that 20 doctors and nurses are to be retried in a civilian court on trumped-up charges of subversion against the US-backed regime. The medics were already sentenced by a military tribunal (a military tribunal!) to up to 15 years in prison after months of being held in illegal detention, denied legal counsel and subjected to torture. Moving their case to a civilian court is presumably meant to signal a concession by the regime. But what it illustrates is that the Al Khalifa royal rulers of Bahrain are unreconstructed despots who are implacably set against accepting any kind of democratic reform... Read more... Mar 27, 2012 After the Arab Spring in Palestine: Contesting the neoliberal narrative of Palestinian national liberation, by Raja Khalidi | Australians for Palestine  Over the past year, as Arab peoples in surrounding countries erupted in protest against dictators, security regimes, and failed social and economic policies, the Palestinian people living in their occupied homeland have remained quiescent. Neither have mass protests targeted the Palestinian “regime’s” policies or negotiating performance, nor has resistance to Israeli occupation escalated or taken more effective forms... Read more... Welcome to Palestine Campaign April 15th-21st 2012 | Palestine Justice Network Palestinian civil society organizations and peace and human rights defenders and activists call on the international community to join us on April 15th -21st for peace building in Palestine and to challenge the Israeli siege of the occupied territories. Over 1500 people of conscience from over 15 countries are scheduled to arrive for this year’s WTP campaign... Read more... Yukiya Amano: Minion of the Empire, by Muhammad Sahimi | Antiwar ...Amano has demonstrated that he is nothing but a minion of the United States whose reports on Iran have contributed significantly to hysteria about Iran and its nuclear program, which has remained completely peaceful. Most importantly, Amano is no longer viewed as a puppet of the West by only antiwar activists such as this author, but also by a broad spectrum of experts... Read more... Overstated Iranian 'threat' puts U.S. on path to war, by Jean Athey and Alex Welsch | Baltimore Sun A neocon joke, at the beginning of the Iraq war, was: "Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran." It wasn't funny then, and it isn't funny now. Unfortunately, those "real men" who want to wage war on Iran are making so much noise that they may prevail — and hardly anyone is pushing back. Take Maryland's U.S. senators. Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin are co-sponsors of SR 380, also known as the Lieberman-Graham bill. This resolution moves the goal posts by stating that Iran must be denied the "capability" for nuclear weapons, as opposed to the weapons themselves. "Nuclear capability" is a very vague term, and it is being employed as a way to justify a preemptive war in the absence of any real threat... Read more... Can Halachah ever be wrong? by Dennis Prager | Jewish Journal ...Halachah bans men from listening to a woman’s voice because it deems it sexually stimulating (literally, a form of nakedness). Last week, in Israel, the Chief Rabbi of the Israel Air Force, Lt. Col. Moshe Ravad, tendered his resignation from a program that integrates ultra-Orthodox soldiers into the Israeli army. The rabbi’s announcement was in response to the army’s decision not to excuse religious soldiers from military events in which women sing (they were excused from entertainment events). About a week prior to that, Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh, said that if the army insists that all soldiers attend official events with women singing, “You have to leave those events even if there’s a firing squad outside, and you’ll be shot to death.” Better for a halachic Jew to die than to hear a male-female chorus sing “Hatikvah”?.. [Bringing you the latest news from the funny farm, and today, a special from lockdown wing #1 (#2 is on the other side and contains the Salafists/Wahhabis. They get the same meals).] Read more...Israel cuts contact with UN rights council, to protest settlements probe, by Barak David | Haaretz  Israel decided Monday to sever all contact with the United Nations human rights council and with its chief commissioner Navi Pillay, after the international body decided to establish an international investigative committee on the West Bank settlements. The Foreign Ministry ordered Israel's ambassador to Geneva to cut off contact immediately, instructing him to ignore phone calls from the commissioner, a senior Israeli official said. Israel will also bar a fact-finding team dispatched by the council from entering Israel and the West Bank to investigate settlement construction... Read more... Israel Hits Back at UN, Palestine and Germany | Roy Tov A few days ago, Israel and Germany signed an agreement for the supply of a sixth Dolphin submarine to Israel. Last November, Germany had conditioned the agreement on Israel’s unfreezing monies of the Palestinian Authority. While the ink on the new agreement is still drying, Israel announced yesterday, March 25, a planned re-freezing of the Palestinian budget. The offensive move was strengthened by a decision to ban the Human Rights Council of the UN. “Ignore all phone calls from Rights Council Commissioner,” said Israel’s Foreign Affairs Minister to the Israeli envoy in Geneva... Read more... Rare peek at nightly raids of West Bank village (Nabi Saleh) | YouTube This is footage of Israeli soldiers raiding a home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on the night of March 20th, 2012. This video captures a raid on the home of imprisoned Palestinian nonviolent leader Bassem Tamimi. His wife, children, and likely his mother, can be seen in the video reacting in horror to the ransacking of their home, albeit it rather common across the West Bank and in Nabi Saleh itself... Groups Urge Arab Summit to Address right of Return | Palestine Chronicle Organizations supporting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are calling on the Arab League to include refugee rights in the agenda of Thursday's Arab League summit. The petition to Secretary-General of the Arab League Nabil al-Arabi and other heads of state warns "the area will not have peace and quiet unless the Palestinian refugees’ right of return is implemented." It is signed by 111 non-governmental organizations supporting Palestinians in Lebanon... Read more... Iran warns U.S.: Stop dictating world policy | Haaretz Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday the United States could no longer dictate policy to the rest of the world and warned of growing instability in the West's relations with Pakistan. Ahmadinejad, speaking at a regional conference on Afghanistan, called for the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops from the country and proposed that NATO use part of its military budget to help revive the Afghan economy... Read more... Ayn Rand’s Nightmare is Today’s Wall Street, by Pam Martens | Counterpunch The high priestess of corporate deregulation and free markets, Ayn Rand, wrote a novella in the 1930s. It was published in the U.S. in 1946 under the title, Anthem, by a corporate front group, a precursor to today’s astroturf groups. Anthem is currently being pumped into high schools across the U.S. and Canada with financial inducements to both teachers and students by a corporate funded nonprofit that has the financial support of some of the largest hedge funds in the U.S... Read more... 100 Years of the ANC: Palestinians Resisting Israeli Apartheid, by Ahmed Kathrada | Palestine Chronicle  Our call is one to non-violence and reconciliation As a South African who has lived and suffered under Apartheid and spent nearly thirty years of my adult life in its jails for resisting it, I can and do humbly claim to know something about the meaning of Apartheid. You do not get to journey as far and as long as I have with the African National Congress (ANC) and leaders such as Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela and not recognize Apartheid when you see and experience it... Read more... Syria Was Not Libya After All: Bid to Overthrow Assad Fails, by Patrick Cockburn | Counterpunch The year-long effort to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and his government has failed. Two or three months ago, it seemed to come close to succeeding, as insurgents took over enclaves in cities such as Homs and Deir el-Zour. There was talk of no-fly zones and foreign military intervention. Severe economic sanctions were slapped on Syria’s already faltering economy. Every day brought news of fresh pressure on Assad and the momentum seemed to build inexorably for a change of rule in Damascus... Read more... Refreshing common sense on war making, by Rami Khouri | Daily Star I am impressed by the continuing trend toward common sense and rationality among a growing number of public figures in the U.S. who look at Syria and Iran and remember the lessons and legacy of the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In spite of the warriors among the Republican presidential candidates who are roaring for war, more frequently these days we are hearing words of caution and restraint from Americans who actually take the time to study realities in the Middle East and ask some hard questions... Read more... Israeli soldiers reportedly already active in Iran, by Madison Ruppert | Activist Post According to anonymous Western intelligence sources, Israeli is utilizing a permanent military base in Iraqi Kurdistan as a launching point for cross-border missions into Iran. While this is not all that surprising given that U.S. officials have already confirmed that the Israeli Mossad is running assassination operations and funding terrorists in Iran, the timing of this release is quite interesting and motivation behind making this information public is also quite mysterious... Read more... Confined Cruelty: Israeli Treatment of Palestinian Minors, by Graham Peebles | Palestine Chronicle ..In the eleven years since 2000, Israeli forces have killed “1,471” (1) children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the bulk of which are aged between 13 and 17 years old. The children of Gaza have been and continue to be at greater risk, with almost a thousand murdered in the last twelve years, on the streets of their city, on their way to and from school, whilst playing with friends, shopping for their family or simply relaxing in their homes. Most are shot randomly, indiscriminately, or killed as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks. Around 50 were taken prematurely from their families by unexploded ordnance... Read more... Mar 26, 2012 Who is normal? The case for "universal standards of civilized normality" | Redress Information & Analysis  Lawrence Davidson argues for the adoption of universal standards of civilized normality based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On that basis, he says one would find Israeli society chronically abnormal... [To say the least, which is why I re-used an image posted a few days ago. I kind of see Israel as an updated version of Sodom and Gomorrah. I implore my Israeli friends to get the hell out, and whatever you do, don’t look back!] Read more...http://www.redress.cc/palestine/ldavidson20120326 Atzmon vs. Abunimah | YouTube In the above clip Gilad Atzmon deconstructs Ali Abunimah's attitude towards history and culture. Atzmon Argues that if Israel defines itself as The Jewish State and its tanks are decorated with Jewish symbols we must ask ourselves who are the Jews? What is Judaism and what is Jewishness? Atzmon attempts to identify the impact of Jewish culture on Israeli and Jewish politics. Atzmon believes that such an attitude is necessary in order to bring peace to the region and beyond... [I have to totally agree with Atzmon that Ali’s remark may mark an historical low when it comes to ignorance or stupidity purveyed by a public intellectual. Most likely it's a desperate and foolish attempt to discredit an enemy of his paymasters.] Watch video...Swindler's Mist: A Critical Review of Steven Spielberg's Film, "Schindler's List" | Revisionist History Hollywood illusionist Steven Spielberg's mendacious anti-German libel, "Schindler's List," is based upon a novel, that is to say, a work of fiction, titled in its first edition, "Schindler's Ark," by the Australian writer Thomas Keneally (the book's name was later altered to coincide with the title of the movie). Keneally's work is riddled with errors. For example, in chapter 33 he states that when the Russians arrived at Lublin/Majdanek, they uncovered the secret of the extermination centers by discovering: "furnaces containing human bones and over 500 drums of Zyklon B. News of this was published throughout the world, and Himmler...was willing to convey promises to the Allies that the gassings of Jews would stop." As a matter of fact, all large German concentration camps had cremation facilities, all of which burned human bones. All German concentration camps used Zyklon B as a life-saving disinfestation agent for killing body lice, the carrier of typhus... Read more... An Attack on Iran Would Be Illegal: What Does the Media Say? | News Unspun The 'option' of a military attack on Iran by Israel, the UK and the US has been increasingly discussed in the UK media since 2011. Government threats of military action have come in various forms, with Israel warning of potential air strikes against Iran in the next few months, and Obama and Cameron stating that 'no options are off the table'. This is combined with what could at best be described as ambiguous reporting on Iran's nuclear programme, at times baselessly claiming that Iran has nuclear weapons, and, at others, relying on repetition of snippets like 'the US and its allies believe Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons - a charge Iran denies.'.. Russia rules Pipelineistan, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online  Nabucco - the alleged gas Holy Grail from the Caspian Sea to Europe, 4,000 kilometers from Turkey to Austria - is the perennial Pipelineistan soap opera. Part of the gas to supply Nabucco may come from Azerbaijan. Another part might - a very problematic "might" - come from Turkmenistan. But every self-respecting energy analyst knows Nabucco could only possibly work if it was supplied by natural gas from Iran. That will happen over Washington's collective dead body... Read more... Evidence Homeland Security Coordinated Occupy Crackdown, by Dave Lindorff | Counterpunch ..“It’s all a game of hide-the-ball” says Verhayden Hilliard, who adds that the National Lawyers Guild is challenging the effort by insisting on getting the records from all levels, including the Fusion centers. Even so, she says that the documents obtained so far show the extraordinary attention that federal intelligence and police agencies from the Secret Service to the FBI to the Federal Protective Service and others devoted to the Occupy movement from its inception... [Well, it’s just the Gestapo doing its job. I mean, what do people think America is, a democracy? Hey, crack some heads, it’ll do ‘em good.] Read more...Jeffrey Feltman Pledges This Time He Will Defeat Hezbollah": The Ambassador of Vitriol, by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch One fellow who works at the Beirut US Embassy tells the story of how, each year around the time of the vernal equinox, since 2005 when Jeffrey Feltman became the American Ambassador (given Jeff’s domination of US Middle East Policy, he is still essentially US Ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf, and much of the region although other names appear from time to time on the local US Embassy doorplates) the now multi-hatted US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs would perform a sort of ritual... Read more... UC Berkeley and Its Lawful Business, by Amanda Armstrong and Michael Shane Boyle | Counterpunch We are graduate students and teachers at UC Berkeley. Like thousands of other people here at Berkeley, we have participated in rallies and demonstrations and marches against the privatization of the University of California. In early March of this year, however, we each received letters from the Alameda County District Attorney informing us that criminal complaints had been filed against us. No details of the complaints were listed, only the date we were to appear at Wiley Manuel Courthouse... [Such a contrast to similar protests at UC Berkeley in the 60’s. Then the administration cracked down and the public outcry was thunderous. The establishment has become much more sophisticated in its tactics since then, and the sheeple are deafening in their silence.] Read more...Mar 25, 2012 GAO Audit In One Graphic: Banks Buying Politicians | Public Intelligence Blog  America’s Obsession With Israel and Iran, by Brian Cloughley | Counterpunch The United States is obsessed with Iran and Israel. It’s not just the Administration in Washington that enjoys this weird fixation, because many Americans, including all Republican presidential candidates, agree with Israel that Iran is an enemy and must be dealt with in a drastic military fashion. Pending that final solution, the tactics are to try to strangle the country by imposing vicious sanctions and to threaten to cripple the economies of other nations that attempt to maintain commercial links with Tehran... Read more... Who Is Gilad Atzmon… and, Who Are We? | The Smirking Chimp ...In many ways, Atzmon’s book is a cri de couer addressed to Jews, specifically, but to humanity, generally, to grow up! To reach beyond tribalism and the politics of fear and vengeance. His style is dialectical, positing thesis and antithesis, arguing with himself and anticipating his readers’ (or opponents’) arguments to arrive at a plausible synthesis. The book is also a House of Mirrors—distorted and non-so—and Atzmon is our guide as he meditates on the various reflected aspects of himself and others while searching for the true notes and the high notes... Read more... Exporting Democracy Via Cruise Missiles: On to the Next War! by Saul Landau | Counterpunch Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) want war with Iran and refuse to learn lessons from the futile wars this country has perpetrated since US troops landed in Korea in 1950. They begin with “facts not in evidence,” as lawyers say. “The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is a threat to the entire world, including particularly the U.S., and its destabilizing consequences are not containable.” Huh?.. Read more... ‘This Is Not Who We Are’ – Oh Yeah? by Gene Marx | Antiwar As if the winds of war weren’t already approaching gale force in the wrong direction for the US and its NATO counterparts in Afghanistan, contrary to Administration talking points designed to polish this turd of an Occupation, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales went on a village-to-village, house-to-house killing spree. With whatever thought process he had at his disposal after three combat tours in Iraq, he permanently liberated by summary execution 16 Afghan villagers from the Taliban. To make matters worse for embattled US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Bales admitted it... Read more... Rising Ottoman | Roy Tov  Suleiman the Magnificent Last Wednesday, the Israeli National Security Council published the summer 2012 seasonal travel warnings. Among others, it recommended Israeli citizens to avoid visiting Tunisia (Jerba Island is the site of a religious festival), Egypt (especially the Sinai Peninsula), and Turkey. The three were popular destinations for Israelis seeking for summer shelters; the resorts of the latter could host up to a million Israelis in a good season. This is one more step in the ongoing deterioration of the Israel-Turkey relations—once close allies—which has led to a rearrangement of regional alliances. On Friday, March 23, Turkish media emphasized declarations made by Kurd leaders regarding Turkish involvement in Syria... Read more... Barbara Lee Pushes to End U.S.-Iran Silent Treatment, by Jamal Abdi | Huffington Post Here is one of those policies that makes you scratch your head and wonder how its taken this long for things to get this bad between the U.S. and Iran: American and Iranian diplomats are actually BANNED from making ANY contact with one another without prior authorization. That's right – while the entire foreign policy establishment in Washington is running around in circles trying to figure out the magic solution to crack the U.S.-Iran riddle - Is it sanctions? Is it more war threats? Is it strikes? Dare we enter negotiations? - the two governments aren't even talking to each other at the most basic levels... Seven Days From a Gaza Diary: Operation Cast Lead | YouTube A performance for three voices adapted by Edward Mast from the diary of Khulood Ghanem, Gaza, 2008-9, at the conference "The United States, Israel and Palestine: What Does Justice Require of US?" held February 19, 2010 at St. Marks Cathedral Seattle, WA.. Neturei Karta International endorsing the Global March to Jerusalem | YouTube Is War on Israel Possible, We Hadn’t Thought So But.. by Gordon Duff | Veterans Today To American Jews, the sound of this has to be strange. 78% support Obama but only 5% of Jewish donations go to him and his supporters. The big money, Koch Brothers, Wall Street and the AIPAC spies and their supporters go to the Republicans, lifelong enemies of the Jewish people, in fact, the source of the huge upsurge of antisemitism in America... Mar 24, 2012 Ali Abunimah and Gilad Atzmon at the OK Corral, by the Editor  The recent open letter Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon, apparently written by Ali Abunimah, has come as a shock to many people, including yours truly. Not only have the Zionists colonized Palestine and subjected them to a permanent campaign of genocide, but as anyone who has been paying attention knows, they have colonized the Western democracies, turning them into obedient puppets. Now it appears that they have also colonized the Palestine Solidarity movement... Read more... Nuclear watchdog chief accused of pro-western bias over Iran, by Julian Borger | The Guardian The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear watchdog at the heart of the growing Iranian crisis, has been accused by several former senior officials of pro-western bias, over-reliance on unverified intelligence and of sidelining sceptics. Yukiya Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat, took command of the IAEA in July 2009. Since then, the west's confrontation with Iran over its nuclear programme has deepened and threats of military action by Israel and the US have become more frequent... U.S. intelligence sees global water conflict risks rising | AlertNet "Beyond 10 years we did see the risk increasing," a senior U.S. intelligence official told reporters. "It depends upon what individual states do and what actions are taken right now to work water management issues between states." The official declined to discuss the risks for specific countries, but in the past water disputes have contributed to tensions between rivals including nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinians, and Syria and Iraq... [The Israelis have not only been stealing the Palestinians’ water supplies, particularly from the West Bank aquifer, but have been systematically destroying the Palestinian water infrastructure.] Nowrouz: an Iranian gift for global peace, by Kourosh Ziabari | Intifada Palestine  Nowrouz is the ceremony of peace, brotherhood and faith Nowrouz is a set of festivities which mark the commencement of new solar year. Every year, on the exact moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator and the astronomical vernal equinox starts, Iranians gather together and celebrate Nowrouz, literally meaning the “New Day.” Aside from the details of how it is observed, Nowrouz is actually a strong and unbreakable chain that connects several countries with diverse cultures, languages and religions in different parts of the world which all once constituted the civilization of Greater Persia... Is it an Israeli False Flag Again? | Gilad Atzmon ..According to the report, Merah's passport had Israeli stamps in it. The purpose of his visit is unknown. Israeli analysts suspect he was either trying to visit the Palestinian territories or preparing for a terror attack. However, I won’t rule out the possibility that Merah was actually trained by Israeli forces. Marah may have conducted a false flag operation. By way of deception is, after all, the Mossad’s motto... West and Arab Clients Losing Geopolitical Battle in Syria, by K.Gajendra Singh | Tarafits ...The present day Western emperors, Obama of USA and Sarcozy of France have stoked the conflict in Syria after their 'successes in destroying Libya to augment their electoral chances in forthcoming presidential elections at home. Reportedly 7000 Syrians including a few thousand members of security forces have been killed in Syria so far .It has been estimated that before the NATO invasion of Libya , five thousand Libyans had lost lives .After the Nato bombing and the regime change in Tripoli , some estimates put the number of dead , including brutal lynching of Col Kaddafi , between sixty to one hundred thousands have been killed... Israel has 101 different types of permits governing Palestinian movement, by Chaim Levinson | Haaretz Israel's Civil Administration issues 101 different types of permits to govern the movement of Palestinians, whether within the West Bank, between the West Bank and Israel or beyond the borders of the state, according to an agency document of which Haaretz obtained a copy. The most common permits are those allowing Palestinians to work in Israel, or in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Over the decades, however, the permit regimen has grown into a vast, triple-digit bureaucracy... The ‘Pressure Cooker’ tactics: A Glimpse Into Israeli Psychosis | Gilad Atzmon  The Israeli Ynet published a few hours ago an interview with retired Israeli police commissioner, Major General Assaf Hefetz. Hefez is highly critical of the French police’s recent operation in Toulouse. According to the Israeli Major General, the French waited for too long (32 hours). He contends that the French police should have been more assertive and far more aggressive. I hope that you have a hard stomach to read how Israel would handle a similar situation... Turning Point on the Syrian Front: Dealmaking in Search of a Face-Saving Exit, by Sharmine Narwani | Monthly Review In recent weeks, there has been a notable shuffle in the positions of key external players in the Syrian crisis. Momentum has quite suddenly shifted from an all-out onslaught against the Assad government to a quiet investigation of exit strategies. The clashes between government forces and opposition militias in Baba Amr were a clear tipping point for these players - much hinged on the outcome of that battle. Today, the retreat of armed groups from the Homs neighborhood means one thing: the strategy of militarizing the conflict from within is no longer a plausible option on which to hang this geopolitical battle... Six Million Ships: Setting up a World Wide Web of Terror | Roy Tov ..I described how Israel’s fleet of six diesel submarines armed with nuclear weapons gives Israel a second strike opportunity. Using it, Israel is able to strike with nuclear weapons from submarines at hidden locations at sea, even if its nuclear weapons stored on land are harmed in an enemy strike. “Where exactly are the boats now?” one of the readers asked me. “Where exactly can they strike?” was the question nobody asked. These two questions relate to the core issue of this article: six submarines are enough for setting up a World Wide Web of Nuclear Terror. Welcome to Cold War 2.0... Israel Warns of the Consequences of Jerusalem Global March | Global March To Jerusalem  Israel issued a warning to the nearby Arab states if they allowed the global march to take place next Friday 30th March. Israel also stated that if anyone neared their borders, they would be accused of trespassing. It claimed that the march is organized by “anti-Israeli parties” and said that this march won’t be allowed to reach Israel’s borders... Former AG Mukasey on Terrorist Organization MEK Payroll, by Coleen Rowley | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post Dear Department of Justice and Department of Treasury Officials: We might have just helped you bag another material supporter of terrorism this week! And you’ll never believe who the culprit is! We were even able to tape record some of his own damning admissions! (That’s the reason for my calls last week to your duty attorneys and media offices.) As you know, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has an ongoing investigation into several high profile former political figures, trying to discover their financial transactions with the terrorists in the Mujaheddin e Khalq aka “MEK”.. Faith Under Occupation: Silently Displaced in the West Bank | EAPPI Publications Palestinian Christians are one of the most misrepresented and poorly understood groups in the Middle East. In this EAPPI study, they tell their own story of life under an occupation that discriminates against all Palestinians, regardless of their faith. Israel's settlement project in the West Bank is one of the main obstacles to a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet the human impact of the settlements is often ignored. This 100-page report examines the effects of the settlements on Palestinian communities: land confiscation, violence by settlers, restrictions on movement and access and a discriminatory system of water distribution... Israeli military shoots 14-year-old protester in face with rubber bullet | Mondoweiss  Izz Tamimi in Nabi Saleh, Friday March 23, 2012 Today during the weekly Friday demonstrations in Nabi Saleh, family members of political prisoner Bassam Tamimi were wounded with rubber bullets by the Israeli military. 14-year-old Izz al-Abdul Hazfith Tamimi was shot in the face and Usama Bilal Tamimi was shot in the leg. Today’s protest against the wall was also in dedication to Bassam Tamimi, who was arrested one year ago, and hunger striker Hana Shalabi. [Business as usual in the terrorist State of Israel] The Folly of Soldier Worship, by John Glaser | Antiwar State doctrine holds that soldiers are intrinsically honorable. It is a conviction held by most of the public that those who wear a military uniform are to receive automatic society-wide praise for their service, irrespective of who they are or what they’ve done. If one dissents from the blind nationalist approval for America’s wars, it is fine to criticize the politicians, but soldiers generally can’t be at fault... The “Exceptional Character” of the U.S. Armed Forces, by Jack A. Smith | Dissident Voice ...The U.S. government has never apologized or assumed any responsibility for the wretched conditions it has imposed upon the people — and be assured that the reported instances of war crimes, atrocities, and abuses attributed to the Pentagon’s foreign legion are but a small portion of the horrors that take place repeatedly but are never observed, or photographed or written about.It is worth remarking upon the fact that when President Obama had to apologize a second time in March for the reprehensible conduct of the “best-trained, best-led” military in history he made sure in his statement to declare that the mass murder “does not represent the exceptional character of our military.”.. Israel’s economy will pay heavy price for Iron Dome, by Jamie Levin | Haaretz ...before Israelis become complacent in a newfound sense of safety that missile defense promises to provide, they should consider that each Iron Dome system costs $50,000,000 and each Tamir interceptor it employs has a price tag of no less than $62,000. In contrast, each of the Qassam rockets that the Iron Dome is meant to intercept cost no more than $1,000. It is believed that there are tens of thousands of Qassam rockets in Gaza alone and the capacity to produce more. It is the cost differential between the Iron Dome and the rockets that it is intended to defend against that creates the perfect conditions for an economic war of attrition, in which Israel is forced to choose between bankruptcy and security... [..it is clear that technology fixes have significant limitations. In this case, a nation gone mad, preferring occupation to security and stability — both physical and economic — not to mention justice which, clearly, is not a policy consideration. ~ Editor, Israeli Occupation Archive] Mar 23, 2012 Segregation, discrimination and forced displacement, by Ben White | The Independent Hunger Is a 'Weapon of Mass Destruction' says Jean Ziegler, by Siv O'Neall | OpEd News This is Israel in 2012 according to a top UN body. Using unprecedented strong language, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) criticised Israeli policies in terms of “apartheid”, as part of their published observations following a regular review. Affirming the kind of analysis that Israel’s advocates try to dismiss as lies or rhetorical excess, the Committee slammed Israel for violating the right to equality in numerous policy areas... Read more... Israel’s Nuclear Triggers, by Grant Smith | Antiwar FBI files detailing Israel’s stealth acquisition of U.S. nuclear triggers were declassified and released on Dec. 28, 2011. The FBI’s secret Portland and Los Angeles inter-office communications were originally scheduled for release in the year 2036. Their availability today reveals how Israel’s elite spy networks acquire U.S. nuclear technologies while evading criminal and diplomatic consequences... Read more... A Dissident Meditation on Jewish Identity: A Review of Gilad Atzmon’s “The Wandering Who?” by Kevin MacDonald | The Occidental Observer ...Atzmon notes “emancipated Jews insist on celebrating the fruits of enlightenment; they celebrate their right to determine who they are. On the other hand, Jewish politics is tribal, it is intolerant of Jewish dissidence or any form of self-determination that may oppose what it regards as Jewish political or tribal interests”. The only “ethical” principle is what’s good for the Jews: “both Judaism and ‘Jewish ideology’ are devoid of universal ethics.”.. [The subtitle of the Occidental Observer website is “White Identity, Interests and Culture.” This tribal self-identification encompasses about one billion people. That this grouping is denigrated and denied any relevance by the Jewish tribal group-speak, ostensibly representing a mere twenty million people, and that this view is generally accepted by Western European societies, is one of the wonders of our time. As is obvious to anyone who visits my site, I have no use whatever for identity politics of any kind, unless its rhetoric puts our common human identity first and foremost, as in the cases of Gandhi, ML King and Mandela – and Atzmon. Decent people tend to root for the underdog, so I applaud Kevin McDonald et al for standing up to the Zionist juggernaut with reasoned and articulate analysis.] Read more...The Songwriters Speak: Rich Siegel "In Palestine" Part 2 | YouTube  Why Netanyahu must think the killing of Jewish children in France is a good thing, by Paul Woodward | War in Context On September 11, 2001, after 3,000 people had been killed, Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks would be “very good,” having the effect of strengthening the bond between America and Israel. Seven years later the then-leader of Likud held to the same conclusion as U.S. forces struggled to contain the civil war in Iraq. “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv quoted Netanyahu as saying in April, 2008. He added, these events “swung American public opinion in our favor.”.. Read more... French Terror Attack: All the Hallmarks of an Intelligence Psy-op and False Flag, by Kurt Nimmo | Global Research Mohammed Merah, the suspect in the killing of seven people outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, fits the pattern of an al-Qaeda intelligence asset. According to the BBC, he was on the radar of French authorities because of visits he made to Afghanistan and the "militant stronghold" of Waziristan in Pakistan. More specifically, Merah was handled by France's DCRI intelligence service "for years," according to Claude Gueant, the interior minister. Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin, was arrested on December 19, 2007, and was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in the southern province of Kandahar in Afghanistan... [for background, see also The Jews of Iraq, by Naeim Giladi] Read more, watch video......The gamblers follow no rules whatsoever, except profit, and humanitarian considerations have no place in this casino. What Jean Ziegler is doing in such an expert and passionate way in his latest book is denouncing the monstrosities of the world we live in, using his typical forceful style, with his trademark of genuine human empathy. He is explaining how we got to be where we are and what has to be done to remedy the gross negligence of human rights. We can no more sit lethargically in our comfortable homes, watching the blatant propaganda that is fed to us through the Main-Stream Media... Read more... Contempt for International Law: A Survey of New York Times and Washington Post Editorials on Iran, by Kevin Young | NYTimes eXaminer One crucial measure of press coverage of global affairs is the extent to which media outlets consider the international legal framework embodied in agreements like the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. This article tests the attention to international law in recent editorials about Iran in two of the United States’ leading liberal newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post. Although the papers’ editors routinely accuse the Iranian government of “contempt for international law”, their own record reveals a systematic disdain for the international legal principles and treaty obligations of which the US and Israeli governments are in violation... Read more... ‘Bovver-boy’ Hague loves putting the boot into Iran, by Stuart Littlewood | Intifada Palestine  Read more... A.B. Yehoshua: Americans, unlike Israelis, are only partial Jews, by Revital Blumenfeld | Haaretz "They are partial Jews while I am a complete Jew," Yehoshua said, referring to American Jewry. "In no way are we the same thing - we are total and they are partial; we are Israeli and also Jewish. In recent years, my friends and I have needed to defend Israel against the matter of the state, as if it is merely an issue of citizenship, while Israel is the authentic, deep concept of the Jewish people ... in no siddur is there a mention of the word 'Jew' but only 'Israeli'. The name of our country and the territory is Land of Israel - and it is about this deep matter that we must defend against a Jewish offensive.".. [Old Nazis never die, they just reappear with different tribal identities.] Read more...Israeli universities becoming Hasbara mills, by Yossi Gurvitz | +972 Two Israeli universities, Haifa University and Tel Aviv University, now offer programs in Hasbara. The Haifa course is meant for Israeli students, the Tel Aviv one for foreign students. Both are supported by Israeli ministries: the Haifa one by the Ministry of Propaganda and Diaspora (Ministry of Hasbara, in Hebrew) and the Tel Aviv program by the Foreign Ministry... [Along with American universities with programs called “Jewish Studies,” “Middle Eastern Studies” and similar names, endowed by American Zionists to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. They mass-produce thousands of hasbaratchiks.] Read more...From Indochina to Afghanistan, Why America’s Crimes Continue, John Glaser | Antiwar  A mapping of the terrorism in Cambodia Something like 600,000 civilians were killed in America’s 11-year secret bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. From 1964 – 1975, the U.S. rained giant explosives from the sky, destroying the country and leading to the terrible Khmer Rouge, an authoritarian regime responsible for the deaths of well over a million people.. there will be total legal and moral immunity granted to the people in Washington who have crafted and perpetuated the bloody war policies in Afghanistan. Like Henry Kissinger, who drew up plans for the terrorist bombing in Cambodia, these people will live long lives of fame and fortune and esteem without fear of being held accountable for killing innumerable innocents...Read more... Six Million Submarines | Roy Tov Yesterday, March 21, 2012, Israel and Germany signed at Israel’s embassy in Berlin an agreement for the supply of the sixth Dolphin class submarine to Israel. The agreement was achieved after a delay caused by Germany conditioning the deal on concessions to the Palestinian Authority. On December 4, 2011, it was disclosed a German submarine had hit Netanyahu’s office; Welt am Sonntag claimed Germany had told Israel in November 2011 that it could not go ahead with the sixth submarine purchase unless Israel transferred the frozen budget to its legal owner, the Palestinian Authority. An upset Netanyahu surrendered on November 27 and opened the way to the last leg of the negotiations process, which ended yesterday... [It’s unusual in business when a subsidiary imposes conditions on corporate headquarters, but this is international politics, and Germany has a wee bit of wiggle room vis-à-vis Israel.] Read more...A Major AFRICOM & US State Department Campaign to Undermine Chinese Influence in Central Africa, by William Engdahl | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post ...The bizarre thing about “Kony2012” is that Joseph Kony either fled Uganda or was killed fleeing more than six years ago. It is claimed he fled to the wilds of Congo or Central Africa, hence he makes a perfect echo of the elusive Osama bin Laden, justifying US military action across the rich terrain of central Africa from Uganda to the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Uganda and beyond. Like Joseph Kony, Osama bin Laden was reliably reported to have died in Afghanistan years before his staged murder by Navy Seals a year ago... Read more... Mar 22, 2012  The pro-Palestinian convoy’s visit to Iran is historic | Islamic Republic of Iran's Presidency Website President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the occupation of Palestine is a historical problem and the existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to freedom, justice and all independent nations. “Europe and the US spend tens of billions of their wealth on the Zionists every year to help a criminal regime…continue its unlawful occupation [of Palestinian lands],” President Ahmadinejad added. He strongly slammed the Western states for their lack of tolerance towards questioning the existence of Zionist regime. “Despite all apparent liberal claims of the Western states, nobody is ever allowed to raise a question or conduct research on how the Zionist regime was established... Read more... Rabbi Links Ahmadinejad, Sick Rabbis and Prayer | Arutz Sheva Renowned rabbi Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman spoke this Saturday night regarding recent developments in Israel, where many great rabbis have fallen ill. Among those known to be seriously ill are Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Rabbi Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, and Rabbi Yaakov Yosef. Rabbi Shteinman linked the spate of illnesses among Jewish leaders to foreign affairs – specifically, to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s nuclear program... Iran nuclear claims test good faith, by Gareth Porter | Asia Times Online The first detailed account of negotiations between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran last month belies earlier statements by unnamed Western officials portraying Iran as refusing to cooperate with the IAEA in allaying concerns about alleged nuclear weaponization work... Read more... Toulouse Shooter was on Radar, by Jim W. Dean | Veterans Today News is now reporting the shooting suspect in custody. But already being revealed is that he had been ‘known’ to security services. So we are looking at a huge failure of French security. Expect to see some fancy dancing soon... Read more... "Liberal Zionism": A Contradiction in Terms, by Yousef Munayyer | The Daily Beast  Peter Beinart’s New York Times op-ed, “To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements,” is an example of the increased volume voices described as ‘Liberal Zionists’ have garnered in the discourse on Israel/Palestine. But liberal Zionism is a contradiction is terms Peter's piece exemplifies the "Liberal Zionist" narrative; "Liberal Zionists" cling to three central illusions to avoid confronting the reality that they are walking contradictions. First, “Liberal Zionists” construct an artificial dichotomy between the state and the settlements; they pretend that the Israeli State and its settlements are somehow separate or separable. Beinart typifies this when he suggests renaming the West Bank ‘undemocratic Israel’ to distinguish from 1948 Israel... Read more... Toulouse Shooter was on Radar, by Jim W. Dean | Veterans Today News is now reporting the shooting suspect in custody. But already being revealed is that he had been ‘known’ to security services. So we are looking at a huge failure of French security. Expect to see some fancy dancing soon... Read more... A Year Later, HRW Admits Syrian Rebels Guilty of Atrocities | Land Destroyer Human Right Watch (HRW), just as it did in Libya, waited until the very last possible moment to admit what the alternative media had been reporting for over a year - that Syria's rebels are craven, torturing, kidnapping, murdering terrorists committing widespread and systematic atrocities not only against security forces, but against anyone suspected of supporting the Syrian government as well as randomly targeted civilians... Read more... Money vs. Facts: The Mujahedin-e Khalq Is a Terrorist Organization, by Reza Marashi | HuffingtonPost  For nearly two decades and four presidential administrations, yearly reviews of the MEK’s terrorist designation have reconfirmed its rightful place on this dubious list of 50 unsavory groups — most recently in January of this year. Despite this, a massive lobbying push to delist the MEK has been raging inside the beltway for the past year, producing two troubling results. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told U.S. lawmakers that a decision on the MEK’s terrorist designation is pending in part to see if the group peacefully relocates to a new, less contentious location in Iraq... Read more... Insider trading 9/11: the facts laid bare, by Lars Schall | Asia Times Online Is there any truth in the allegations that informed circles made substantial profits in the financial markets in connection to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States? Arguably, the best place to start is by examining put options, which occurred around Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to an abnormal extent... Read more... Baroness Ashton and Jewish Sensitivities, by Gilad Atzmon | deLiberation ..The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy was criticised yesterday for comparing the killing of three children and a rabbi in a shooting attack in France to the situation in Gaza. Seemingly some prominent Jewish and Israeli leaders couldn’t agree less. For them Jewish suffering exceeds all other suffering and Palestinian’s in particular. The London Jewish Chronicle quoted some of the outraged critics. “Even when read in context, Ashton’s words are beyond unacceptable,” said Oliver Worth, the British chairman of the World Union of Jewish Students. He said they were “truly outrageous and revolting” and called for her to resign because she had “lost all credibility”. And yet, Mr Worth fails to explain why is it “outrageous and revolting” to equate Jewish suffering with Palestinian one... Read more... Costly 'Freedom' in Afghanistan: On Morbid Wars and Logic, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle  The war was presented as a 'good war' ..When the US-led bombing campaign of Afghanistan commenced in October 2001, many commentators cheered. In a strikingly unequal war — with the world most advanced nations attacking the world’s poorest — the US wanted to teach Al-Qaeda terrorists a lesson. The latter quickly disbanded and poured through neighboring borders across the region (the violent network is now being sighted in several Arab countries). Meanwhile, the Afghan people shouldered the brunt of the war. Tens of thousands have since perished in a vengeful war they had no part in creating... Thirsting for Justice: Stop the demolition of Rain Collecting Cisterns in Area C of the West Bank Petition | GoPetition From 2010 to 2011 there was an over 50% increase in cistern demolitions in Area C of the West Bank. International and local NGO’s have underlined this as concerted political strategy to target essential livelihood structures and force the displacement of Palestinians. From 2009 to 2011, nearly four hundred Palestinians were internally displaced as a direct result of the destruction of water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure... Read more... Constructing Consensus: The 'Victims-And-Aggressor Meme' | Media Lens Journalists are supposed to tell the truth without fear or favour. In reality, as even the editor of the Independent acknowledges, MPs and reporters are ‘a giant club’. Together, politics and media combine to provide an astonishingly consistent form of reality management controlling public perception of conflicts in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Alastair Crooke, founder and director of Conflicts Forum, notes how the public is force-fed a ‘simplistic victims-and-aggressor meme, which demands only the toppling of the aggressor’... Read more... A Planned Escalation: Israel Prepares for War, by Neve Gordon | Palestine Chronicle  Iron Dome: 'authentic Israeli brilliance ...Haaretz's editor-in-chief Aluf Benn wrote, "what looks like a preparation for war, acts like a preparation for war, and quacks like a preparation for war, is a preparation for war, and not just a 'bluff' or a diversion tactic".. Read more... StratforLeaks: Google Ideas Director Involved in ‘Regime Change’ by Yazan al-Saadi | Al Akhbar English ..“GOOGLE is getting WH [White House] and State Dept. support and air cover. In reality, they are doing things the CIA cannot do. But, I agree with you. He’s going to get himself kidnapped or killed. Might be the best thing to happen to expose GOOGLE’s covert role in foaming up-risings, to be blunt. The US Gov’t can then disavow knowledge and GOOGLE is left holding the shit bag.”.. Read more... Interview with Iran's foreign minister (Engl) | Danish TV Kony 2012's invisible Christian fanaticism, by Mamoon Alabbasi | Redress Information & Analysis Mamoon Alabbasi questions why mention of the self-proclaimed Christianity of Ugandan-based Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Liberation Army was omitted from the “Kony 2012” video, which seeks to make Kony better known so that he could be brought to justice for his crimes... Read more... Mar 21, 2012 The Accusation Of “Anti-Semitism” II: Linguistic Iconoclasm, “Chosen-ness” And The Affirmation of Zionist Arrogance, by Jonathan Azaziah | Mask of Zion  ...A reconstruction of “Jewish identity” or even the total abolition of it, reintegrating Jews into humanity without their superiority and ending the age-long divide between Jews, who views themselves as “chosen” and Gentiles, who Jews view as “goyim,” or cattle, would be catastrophic for international Zionism and the Jewish supremacist agenda... [Jonathan's an in your face kind of guy - no pussyfooting around in his neck of the woods.] Read more...Obama’s Delusions of Sanctity, by Deepak Tripathi | Counterpunch ...Obama may appear reluctant to attack Iran or Syria. But that clandestine warfare by major powers and their proxies continues is hardly in doubt. The Obama administration’s aggressive, interventionist instinct is on open display. And to draw parallels between himself and great souls such as Gandhi and Mandela is a grotesque parody of their historic struggles... Read more... Launching the U.S. Terror War: the CIA, 9/11, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, by Prof. Peter Dale Scott | Global Research ...Iraq had been a target for Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz since at least 1998, when the two men co-signed a PNAC letter to President Clinton, calling for “the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.” But Iraq was not the only target in the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz agenda, which since at least 1992 had been nothing less than global U.S. dominance, or what former U.S. Colonel Andrew Bacevich called “permanent American global hegemony.” It was a high priority for the neocons. Even before Bush had been elected by the Supreme Court in December 2000, Cheney was at work securing key posts for the 1998 letter’s cosigners (including Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Richard Perle, along with other PNAC personnel... Read more... Saudi Arabia Is Arming Syrian "Opposition" As Twin Car Bombs Kill 27 In Damascus, by Finian Cunningham | Global Research ...in spite of the mounting evidence of foreign subversion and terrorism in Syria, the Western mainstream media continue to depict the country as a cause for “humanitarian intervention” by NATO forces in what would be a reprise of their involvement in Libya. The latter was purported to be based on a “responsibility to protect” civilians lives. But it has since been shown to be a squalid neocolonial affair of “responsibility to protect” oil interests. With such war criminals and Arab dictators lining up again in Syria, we can be sure that the agenda has nothing to do with protecting civilians... Read more... Goldman Sachs: Making Money by Stealing It | Stephen Lendman Money power in private hands and democracy can't co-exist. Wall Street crooks transformed America into an unprecedented money making racket. Goldman symbolizes master of the universe manipulative fraud. It's been involved in nearly all financial scandals since the 19th century... Read more... The unfortunate division over Gilad Atzmon | Alison Weir  While people are suffering in Israeli prisons and being killed in Gaza, it is sad to see time and energy expended in a campaign against Israeli author and saxophonist Gilad Atzmon. I respect and like people on both sides of this controversy and am troubled over this distracting and destructive (but, I hope, temporary) split. I, of course, come down on the side of open discussion, even when the subject matter is difficult or troubling – in fact, that's probably when it's most needed. I believe in such old fashioned but critical concepts as the free marketplace of ideas, and I oppose censorship and would-be "thought police" telling others what they may or may not do, even when those attempting to do this have created valuable work that I admire... Read more... Britain’s “bother-boy” Hague loves putting the boot into Iran | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood argues that British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s determination to condemn the Iranian people to economic hardship, his keenness to escalate tension with Iran, and his eagerness to do Israel’s bidding by creating an environment conducive to aggression against Iran, mean that he has become the UK’s biggest liability... Read more... Financial Crisis, Round Two: Wall Streets Reloads With Toxic Bonds, by Mike Whitney | Counterpunch In the last few months, the nation’s biggest banks and investment firms have resumed the same perilous activities that crashed the financial system and plunged the economy into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. According to a number of recent reports, there’s been a steady uptick in the type of risky bond deals that preceded the repo market bank run in 2008 leading to the default of 106-year old financial giant Lehman Brothers... Read more... Demolishing Due Process, by Rep. Ron Paul | Antiwar ..In what history likely will record as a turning point, Holder bluntly explained that this administration believes it has the authority to use lethal force against Americans if the president determines them to be a threat to the nation. He tells us that this is not a violation of the due process requirements of our Constitution because the president himself embodies “due process” as he unilaterally determines who is to be targeted... Read more... Mar 20, 2012 “Disavowal” of Gilad Atzmon? The Truth be damned! by William A. Cook | Veterans Today  Strange that the US Palestinian Community Network, in an article titled “Granting No Quarter: a Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Anti-Semitism of Gilad Atzmon,” by Ali Abunimah, would seek to silence the voice of a man who, as the quote that opens this article attests, publically proclaims, to all the world in his new book The Wandering Who, that he stands for “justice, human dignity, equality and social and economic rights,” the very principles that the US PCN proclaims in that very article: “…we stand with all and any movements that call for justice, human dignity, equality, and social, economic, cultural and political rights.” Perhaps Mr. Abunimah failed to read Mr. Atzmon’s book... Read more... Israel’s Willing Executioners: AIPAC Invades Washington, by James Petras and Robin Eastman Abaya | My Catbird Seat Decline results when a nation is betrayed by craven leaders, who crawl and humiliate themselves before a minority of thuggish mediocrities pledged to a foreign state without scruples or moral integrity... Read more... Armageddon’s Alliance: Heretic Christian Zionist defines Netanyahu as “King David” | Roy Tov On March 18, 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed John Hagee and a large group of American Christians United for Israel (CUFI) in Jerusalem. Among the heresies said there, Netanyahu was compared to Moses, King David, and the Messiah. Both sides showed matchless faithfulness to each other, while candidly ignoring God. Two days before that, leading Hebrew writer A.B. Yehoshua said in a formal forum that “American Jews are only partial Jews while Israeli Jews are total Jews.” Israel’s odd new alliances seem to be a prelude for an Armageddon-styled war in the nearby future... Read more... Under the threat of war, Iranians affirm their support for the Islamic republic | The Race for Iran  Iranians vote in Tehran, March 2, 2012 ..major Western media outlets brought an agenda-driven and intellectually sloppy approach to their coverage of the Islamic Republic’s 2009 presidential election. From their coverage of the Islamic Republic’s recent parliamentary elections, it would seem that there has not been much of a learning curve... Read more... Rothschilds & Rockefellers: Trillionaires Of The World | IndyBay ..Letter written from London by the Rothschilds to their New York agents introducing their banking method into America: "The few who can understand the system will be either so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while, on the other hand, that great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that Capital derives from the system, will bear its burden without complaint and, perhaps, without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.".. ["Money is the god of our times, and Rothschild is his prophet." - Heinrich Heine. They can’t be dealt with directly – they are too well defended by the Zionist Power Configuration. So first we have to deposit Israel into the trashcan of history, which will weaken their fifth columns in the Western countries, leaving them open to attack. Then at last we can go after the banking dynasties and their rotten system. It’s a long road but I see little other choice of strategies.] Read more...US, Israel Intel Officials Agree: Iran Has No Nuclear Weapons Program, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar You wouldn’t know it by the repeated claims to the contrary by President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but top US and Israeli intelligence officials overwhelmingly agree that not only is there no evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program, but strong evidence that the old program they had was indeed abandoned... Read more... Murder Is Not an Anomaly in War, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig  The war in Afghanistan—where the enemy is elusive and rarely seen, where the cultural and linguistic disconnect makes every trip outside the wire a visit to hostile territory, where it is clear that you are losing despite the vast industrial killing machine at your disposal—feeds the culture of atrocity. The fear and stress, the anger and hatred, reduce all Afghans to the enemy, and this includes women, children and the elderly. Civilians and combatants merge into one detested nameless, faceless mass. The psychological leap to murder is short. And murder happens every day in Afghanistan... Read more... Cynthia McKinney Interviews Gilad Atzmon about Israel, Zionism, and Jewish Identity Politics | YouTube Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney interviewed Jazz saxophonist and author Gilad Atzmon about his book "The Wandering Who? A Study in Jewish Identity Politics".. Goldman Sachs’ Trader Finds a New Occupy Tactic, by Pam Martens | Counterpunch ...A young man throws both caution and his career to the wind in a virtual scream for the leadership of this country to wake up to what’s still transpiring on Wall Street and a journalist for the newspaper covering Wall Street can only relate the selfless act to dollar signs. The Wall Street culture of greed is metastasizing into the larger society at a gut churning pace. The assumption by Newmark is that there is no one earning $500,000 who might love his country, its future, the next generation’s future more than his love of money... Read more... Mar 19, 2012 The Bloody Road to Damascus: The Triple Alliance’s War on a Sovereign State, by James Petras | Voltaire Network  From this inside look into the destabilization process of Syria, Professor James Petras, adduces that ’there is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Assad is a violent power grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition.’.. Read more... Obama's Iran Policy Commits Him to War, by Sheldon Richman | Future of Freedom Foundation Despite the alleged difference between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran, both embrace a position that logically commits them to war. If war is to be avoided, as Obama says he wishes, he will have to abandon his current stance. The difference between Obama and Netanyahu is more apparent than real... Read more... President Obama signs Executive Order allowing for control over all US resources, by Kenneth Schortgen Jr | National Finance Examiner On March 16th, President Obama signed a new Executive Order which expands upon a prior order issued in 1950 for Disaster Preparedness, and gives the office of the President complete control over all the resources in the United States in times of war or emergency... [Given our current policy of the “long war,” we arein a permanent state of war or emergency. Ergo, we live under an Imperial Presidency, one short step from dictatorship, albeit with a veneer of “democracy.” How much longer until a Caesar dispenses with “the Senate” entirely? Perhaps when we get our first Jewish President.] Read more...NPR and NYT on Americans v. Afghans, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon  Afghan boys sit on the ground near the scene where Afghans were killed The New York Times yesterday conveyed important and exciting evidence of American progress in Afghanistan which I believe we can and should all find inspiring; it concerns the reasons the protests in Afghanistan over the slaughter of 16 villagers by a U.S. soldier were not as intense as feared:.. Read more... Terror, Trauma and the Endless Afghan War, by Amy Goodman | Truthdig We may never know what drove a U.S. Army staff sergeant to head out into the Afghan night and allegedly murder at least 16 civilians in their homes, among them nine children and three women. The massacre near Belambai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, has shocked the world and intensified the calls for an end to the longest war in U.S. history. The attack has been called tragic, which it surely is. But when Afghans attack U.S. forces, they are called “terrorists.” That is, perhaps, the inconsistency at the core of U.S. policy, that democracy can be delivered through the barrel of a gun, that terrorism can be fought by terrorizing a nation... Read more... Qurei calls for reconsidering one-state solution | Jerusalem Post Former Palestinian Authority prime minister Ahmed Qurei, who was one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, on Saturday called on Palestinians to consider a one-state solution with Israel instead of a two-state solution. Voicing frustration and disappointment with the peace process, Qurei, who played a major role in secret and public negotiations with Israel over the past two decades, said that the “one-state solution, despite the endless problems it embraces, is one of the solutions that we should be contemplating through an internal dialogue.”.. Read more... David Remnick’s Lament for Israel, by Dr. Lawrence Davidson | Intifada Palestine  David Ramnick ...An accurate and open-minded look at Israel’s history, as can be had from the works of Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris, among others, shows beyond a doubt that, from the beginning, Israeli political leaders, be they of the right or the left, secular or religious, all had the same goal of purging the country of non-Jews. If differences existed relevant to this goal, they were tactical and not strategic. And this, by the way, is why all the talk heard across the American political spectrum of how Israel is “just like us” is again, historically incorrect. While the democratic majority in the U.S. has chosen to interpret its laws and political philosophy in an inclusive manner, Israel’s Jewish majority has chosen to pursue the opposite goal–an exclusive, ethnocentric, and ultimately racist state... Read more... Teaching Palestine to Americans: Book Review by Jim Miles | Palestine Chronicle ...I was quite amazed at this work, and found it an excellent read on its own right as well as a wonderful source and resource book on Palestine and questions related to Palestine. It is a user friendly composite of history, humanitarian philosophy, personal perspectives, book, video, and cultural materials all that can be combined to present information about the situation in Palestine. It is a text that can be useful well beyond the classroom, for anyone looking for materials and arguments to support the cause of the Palestinians. It is in essence for all of us, as we are all teachers as long as we speak truth to power - we are all teachers... Read more... How Many Violations of US Arms Laws are Too Many? by Franklin Lamb | Intifada Palestine On March 6, 2012, the US Congressional Research Service released a report to the US Congress concerning Restrictions on the use of American weapons by recipient countries. For those who have followed the subject there was not a whole lot new in the CRS study, yet it is instructive in identifying Israel once again as far and away the most egregious violator of virtually every provision of every US law which purports to regulate how American weapons are used... Read more... How Mossad Justified Its Murder of an Innocent Iranian Electrical Engineer, by Gareth Porter | Truthout  Ali Larijani On July 23, 2011, a 35-year-old Iranian electrical engineering student named Darioush Rezaeinejad was gunned down as he and his wife, who was also wounded in the attack, waited for their child in front of a kindergarten in Tehran. Israel has never denied that it was behind that assassination, and two senior US officials have confirmed to NBC news that the accusation by Ali Larijani - a senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei - that Israel's Mossad had used the Mujahideen E. Khalq (MEK) to carry out the killing of Iranian scientists was essentially accurate... Read more... People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say | Yahoo! News The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies... [Ah, the fly in the ointment – and people are so easy to fool by the real marketing professionals] Read more...Syria Censorship at AOL-Huffington Post? by Sharmine Narwani | Al Akhbar English ...the turmoil in the Middle East this past year has morphed into a battleground for much larger interests – economic, political, financial – and the players see this as an existential fight; the final showdown, so to speak. The battle for narratives is the frontline of this war, and it is a dirty one. Where once we thought fabrications of WMDs in Iraq and yellowcake uranium in Niger would never, ever pass through our vigilant scrutiny again – today, those stories barely compare to the barrage of unverified propaganda that filters through both social and mainstream media sites every, single day... Read more... Gilad Atzmon discussing the latest attacks.. | The Ugly Truth  ..against his work by ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists as being ‘racist’ and SURPRISE, SURPRISE–’anti-semitic’.. Don't Shun Gilad Atzmon, by Michael Rabb | CU-Divest ...imperialist support for Zionism is not the problem. Of course the Jews had help in the process of bringing the Jewish state of Israel into being. My reading of the history of the twentieth century shows that it was pretty complicated. But the ultimate cause of the “problem” in Palestine is the Zionist Jewish project to establish a Jewish homeland (Jewish state) in Palestine for Jews, of the Jews by the Jews. If Jews had not decided to rob Palestinians of their land and dignity as human beings there would be no problem. The Jews as immigrants could decide to live side by side as equals with their indigenous neighbors. But by insisting on a Jewish supremacist state the Jews have become (were and are) the problem... Read more... The Limerick “pogrom”: Creating Jewish victimhood, by Andrew Joyce | The Occidental Observer ...Tensions reached boiling point in late January 1904, when Father Creagh urged his parishioners to cease making payments to Jewish traders. Unable to make a living without these payments, and reluctant to take on other means of employment, the Jewish Chronicle reported that Limerick’s Jews were “waiting, terrified in their homes, almost starving.” Reference was made to the fact that these Jews had not long “escaped the Cossacks.” There was little reference to the Jewish financial abuse of the local Irish, that the Irish too were starving, or that they had often sat terrified in their homes, awaiting the court notice which would enforce the payment of crippling levels of interest... Read more... Kairos Palestine: Israeli Ambassador Manipulates Christian Reality | AIC  Kairos Palestine, a group of Palestinian Christians who co-authored the document A Moment of Truth, denounces Michael Oren’s recent op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal (9 March 2012). In this inaccurate and manipulative text, Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the US, blames the plight of Palestinian Christians on oppression at the hands of Palestinian Muslims - rather than at the hands of the illegal Israeli occupation itself, as is our reality... Read more... Western Psikhushka Killed Demjanjuk | Roy Tov Yesterday, March 17, 2012, John Demjanjuk died in a retirement home in southern Germany. On May 12, 2011, he had been found guilty by a German court in Munich of helping to murder around twenty-eight thousand Jews at Sobibor in World War II. The court sentenced him to five years in jail but then decided to release him, pending an appeal, due to his advanced age. Looking at the facts of the case, it is difficult not to conclude that this was a case of political torture aimed at advancing Israel’s political agenda... Read more... The Other Side of the Talmud Debate: Michael Hoffman Refutes a Defense of the Talmud | YouTube Christian scholar Michael Hoffman's reply to Dr. Asaf Yedidya's lecture at Oxford University, "Nazi Attacks on the Talmud: Anti-Semitic Readings of Jewish Texts.".. In his reply, Hoffman points out the use of misdirection and censored texts in the Oxford lecture and the numerous errors and omissions employed to demonize Talmud critics and whitewash the Babylonian Talmud. Hoffman documents Talmudic racism and permission for homicide by quoting from the Gemara itself, as well as rabbinic authorities... Read more, watch video... In Memory of Rachel Corrie 2012 | YouTube Rachel Corrie was an American peace activist, who was killed by Israeli military on March 16th, 2003 in Gaza. She was so moved by the Palestinians struggle to protect their homes and children from the Israeli Military machine that surrounds them, she made the ultimate sacrifice. This video and poem pays tribute to her compassion... Mar 18, 2012 A Family Affair: The PC "anti-zionists" v. Gilad Atzmon and Ken O’Keefe  Abunimah Boycotting and Censoring Gilad Atzmon? by Debbie Menon | My Catbird Seat Who or what could have prompted Ali-Abuminah to write such a counter-productive diatribe against the beneficial works of Atzmon?.. Disavow with no mercy? Not in my name! by Nahida | Poetry for Palestine Finally, it appears that years of work, persuasion, temptation, pressure and coercion have yielded its fruits, with the publishing (made it into hyper Zionist hate-site Harry’s Place) of the joined statement by Mr Ali Abunimah and a few others, in which they brazenly called upon Palestinians and their supporters to disavow Gilad Atzmon because of his alleged “anti-semitism”.. Read more... Faint Heartedness, Political Correctness, and Peculiar Timing: The Attacks on Gilad Atzmon, by Richard Edmondson | Left-wing Christian A group of prominent Palestinians who recently launched an attack on Gilad Atzmon seem to have made their required obeisance to Jewish sensibilities. Bravo for them. I must confess something, however: what good this will do for Palestine, or how it will ultimately help end the occupation, is totally beyond me. On the other hand, it does seem like an awfully nice gift for Israel, coming especially on the heels of the latest murderous rampage against Gaza. In this most recent paroxysm of Israeli violence, some 25 people died, including children. Why publish an attack against Atzmon at this particular time? Could it not have waited?.. [No coincidence – there was a simultaneous attack on Ken O’Keefe. I think they might be panicking - they're losing control of the discourse, which is their iron rice bowl.] Read more...More on the Atzmon Controversy | PM Press The Abunimah & Co's declaration also sparked a big debate within the One Democratic State (ODS) movement. It seems as if prominent Palestinians and intellectuals grasp that the declaration is inherently undemocratic, based on empty accusations and divisive. Noel Ignatiev published some of the comments. ~ GA Read more... Engaging Gilad Atzmon | WRMEA ..On March 14, Atzmon was interviewed by Prof. Norton Mezvinsky, Connecticut State University Professor of History Emeritus, at Washington’s Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church. During the question-and-answer period following Professor Mezvinsky’s interview, noted Palestinian journalist Fouzi El-Asmar stood up to state his opposition to a letter circulated the previous day by Palestinian activists calling for “the disavowal of the racism and antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon.”.. The campaign to silence Gilad Atzmon | War in Context ...Statements of disavowal and denunciation, the picketing of Atzmon’s lectures, and a campaign to persuade others not to provide Atzmon with a platform — if this is not an effort at censorship, what would be involved in actually trying to silence Atzmon? In reality, this is clumsy neo-McCarthyism. It deserves no more respect than the pronouncements of Zionists like Dershowitz who as much as he might profess a belief in the value of free speech will do whatever he can to silence those he opposes... Thought Police within the so-called ‘Palestine Solidarity Movement’ | Ken O'Keefe  The holier than thou thought police within the so-called ‘Palestinian Solidarity Movement’ have said the following in response to a recent speech I gave at Middlesex University in London; ‘In line with these principles, we wish to openly state that Ken O’Keefe is not welcome to speak on our campus. We urge Middlesex University Free Palestine Society to distance themselves from his comments, and condemn them as anti-semitic... Read more... Israeli Apartheid Week: Ken O'Keefe Lecture at Middlesex University | YouTube Here is my lecture last week at Middlesex University. The one with our friendly Zionists. Watch the video to see what they reckon I should be jailed for; 'incitement' they call it. I would have to agree that telling the truth is the most revolutionary activity of our time and the UK police have already arrested me once on bogus pretenses so we shall see. Either way so be it, in life, death or in prison I will not be silent, we will not be silent, no matter what they do to me, there will be justice... Seemingly off-topic, but not really... Ask why people are antisemitic, says leading Catholic writer | The Jewish Chronicle Piers Paul Read, the writer of a new book about the 1894 Dreyfus Affair, was criticised this week after saying that the French soldier's treatment could be linked to Jews being a "very powerful influence in finance, in business", and that Jews should ask why people were antisemitic. English literature Professor Jacqueline Rose, author of Proust among the Nations: From Dreyfus to the Middle East, said she was left "uncomfortable" after Catholic writer Read, whose latest book is The Dreyfus Affair, veered into an "antisemitic ways of talking".. [The tribal faithful often complain about being made to 'feel uncomfortable.' Poor wee, helpless babes, always being victimized in a cruel, cruel antisemitic world.. “If this hostility, even aversion, had only been shown towards the Jews at one period and in one country, it would be easy to unravel the limited causes of this anger, but this race has been on the contrary an object of hatred to all the peoples among whom it has established itself. It must be therefore, since the enemies of the Jews belonged to the most diverse races, since they lived in countries very distant from each other, since they were ruled by very different laws, governed by opposite principles, since they had neither the same morals, nor the same customs, since they were animated by unlike dispositions which did not permit them to judge of anything in the same way, it must be therefore that the general cause of anti-Semitism has always resided in Israel itself and not in those who have fought against Israel.” ~ Statement regarding the expulsions of Jews, by noted Jewish author Bernard Lazare in “L’antisémitisme, son histoire et ses causes,”published in 1894] Read more...Gilad Atzmon and Rabbi Michael Lerner on KPFA Flashpoints with Dennis Bernstein | YouTube Author and Jazz saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and Rabbi Michael Lerner discuss Israel, Zionism, and Jewish identity politics... It is not only about Palestine, by Israel Shamir | Veracity Voice ...The moment one integrates modern Jewish behavior with the pre-modern Jewish behavior, the moment one notices continuity of pre-Zionist and Zionist Jewish politics, the moment one leaves the safe ground of condemning occupation, – one crosses into totally forbidden “antisemite” territory. Martillo dared and ventured there, and came up with strong and startling conclusions: the real issue is not Palestine. Unless they are neutralized, Israel lobbying groups, Israel advocates, Zionists, Neoconservatives, and Friedmanites will steal America and effectively abolish the Constitution in all but name to create a society of servitude for all Americans except for those belonging to the hyper-wealthy transnational Zionist political elite... [Agreed, but first things first – we need to deep six the Jewish State. This will turn the spotlight back on what Petras calls the ZPG (Zionist Power Configuration). The glue that keeps them all singing the party line in unison will dissolve, and they'll have lost the criminal state that now provides them with a refuge from justice.] Read more...Mar 17, 2012 Syria: Regime Reclaiming the Initiative, by Elie Chalhoub | Al Akhbar English  Sources close to the regime insist that the situation “is better than before.” They add: “This is Damascus and this is Syria. We are not saying that things couldn’t be better. But it is not on the verge of collapse as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya claim. The situation is improving by the day. Even Saudi media admitted defeat: ‘Assad Wins the First Round!’” – a reference to the the title of a recent column in the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat by its former editor Abd al-Rahman al-Rashed... Read more... Israel Shamir: To disavow or debate Abunimah, by Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today Israel Shamir, like Gilad Atzmon, is a brilliant pro-Palestinian ex-Israeli-Jew whose thoughts on Jewish identity politics and Zionism have elicited the ire of the gatekeepers. His lack of appreciation for Gilad Atzmon’s The Wandering Who? is curious; maybe it’s because Shamir has worked the same territory himself and grown tired of it. Aside from that, his latest politically-incorrect tirade is right on the mark... [I too have been curious about Shamir’s critique of Atzmon’s book, although some of his remarks have puzzled me before. Perhaps it’s for a different reason than Barrett suggests; it could be because Shamir has thoroughly expunged his Jewish identity from his conscious awareness, whereas Atzmon, ironically enough, is very Jewish in many ways in spite of his strident rejection of being Jewish. All one has to do is listen to his music; it couldn’t be more Jewish. Both of these gentlemen are thoroughly detested by the tribal faithful and their shabbas goyim, which is to their credit, and I highly recommend reading both of them.] Read more... A Call for the Disavowal of Splittism, by Kim Petersen | Dissident Voice ...the signatories resort to the gutter of Zionist tactics and hurl the abused canard of racism and anti-Semitism against Atzmon. Yet Atzmon’s entire thesis is predicated upon the fact that everyone belongs to the group called Homo sapiens. He is opposed to fractionalization into groups that ignores the basic humanity of all and the rights that all humans must share equally. He opposes group/tribal supremacism and calls for the dignity of all humans to be respected.. The signatories may well be characterized as having sprung a “vicious attack” on Atzmon. Describing Atzmon as being obsessed with “Jewishness” is like criticizing a Canadian patriot with being obsessed with “Canadianness”.. Read more... War, Pipelineistan-style, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online United States Secretary of State Hillary "We came, we saw, he died" Clinton's message to Pakistan was stark; try to go ahead with the IP (Iran-Pakistan) gas pipeline, and we're going to take you out financially. Islamabad, its economy in tatters, living in power-cut land, and desperate for energy, tried to argue. Pakistan's top official in the Petroleum and Natural Resources Ministry, Muhammad Ejaz Chaudhry, stressed that the 2,775-km, $1.5 billion IP was absolutely crucial for Pakistan's energy security. That fell on deaf ears. Clinton evoked "particularly damaging" sanctions - tied to Washington's push to isolate Iran by all means available and the no-holds-barred campaign to force particularly India, China and Turkey to cut off their imports of Iranian oil and gas... [Hillary "more macho pig than thou" Clinton is how I'd characterize her] Read more...Barack Obama is a one-term president: Yvonne Ridley, by Kourosh Ziabari | Intifada Palestine  You would certainly know Yvonne Ridley or at least heard of her name if you have been a regular follower of Press TV, especially in Britain, albeit before the state-run media regulator Ofcom took the news network off the Sky platform, depriving millions of Britons of the opportunity to watch a TV channel which has always tried to shed a light on the obscured, concealed aspects of the events and tell the truth about what’s happening around the world. Ridley is a renowned British journalist, war correspondent and TV host. She made the headlines on September 28, 2001 when she was arrested by the Taliban... Read more... Netanyahu is preparing Israeli public opinion for a war on Iran, by Aluf Benn | Haaretz In response to Netanyahu's AIPAC speech, Haaretz's editor-in-chief says that what looks like a preparation for war, acts like a preparation for war, and quacks like a preparation for war, is a preparation for war... Read more... Opposing War in France, by Jean Bricmont | Counterpunch Nowhere in NATOland is public opposition to “humanitarian wars” more muted than in France. Only a few prominent voices were raised against last year’s assault on Libya. Today, the few who attempt to arouse opposition to Western military intervention in Syria are the targets of a strangely obscure and yet effective campaign of slander designed to stigmatize and silence them. The campaign operates like this. A rather small number of obscure journalists writing on obscure websites calling themselves “anarchist” and “anti-fascist” specialize in denouncing individuals who oppose war or criticize the European Union as fascists and anti-Semites... Read more... Did Israel provoke Gaza escalation to test Iron Dome? by Paul Woodward | War in Context Four days ago I suggested that the reason Israel assassinated the Popular Resistance Committee leader Zuhair Qaisi in Gaza may have had less to do with foiling an attack and much more to do with testing Iron Dome. Yousef at The Jerusalem Fund agrees, saying that a successful test of the missile defense system could go a long way to assuage the Israeli public’s fears about retaliation from Iran following an Israeli attack... Read more... Amnesty International's Ultimatum to Russia, by Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer  As Libya splinters into infighting factions, with racist genocidal death squads scouring "undesirables" across the nation, entire regions of the country peeling off as semi-autonomous terror-emirates and with a BP, Shell, and Total-funded Petroleum Institute chairman installed as "Prime Minister," one can clearly see the tens of thousands of deaths brought about by the UN sanctioned US-lead NATO campaign against the North African nation was an absolute failure. That is, if preserving innocent life was indeed its goal. However, if the goal was to fracture the nation into ineffectual, infighting micro-states, while installing a proxy government in Tripoli to green-light contracts with Western corporations to plunder the nation's national wealth, it was a resounding success... Read more... NATO Proxies behind Syria Massacre: Interview with Professor Michel Chossudovsky | Global Research There’s ample evidence from official statements from the Arab League observer mission, from the Israeli media, that there are terrorist organizations involved in killing civilians and this, in a very cynical mode, provides the justification for the so-called international community to blame Bashar al-Assad when in fact these civilian casualties were ordered by foreign forces... Swift, a Banking Network, Agrees to Expel Iranian Banks | NYT A global communication network vital to the banking industry announced on Thursday that it was expelling as many as 30 Iranian financial institutions — including the Central Bank — crippling their ability to conduct international business and further isolating the country from the world economy... [The Western Globalist conglomerate is pulling out all the stops to impose its will on the rest of the world.] Read more...Azerbaijan: The High Cost of Protection, by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich | The Vineyard of the Saker A 2009 U.S. embassy political dispatch compared Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to a mafia crime boss. An apt comparison given that Aliyev and the Azeri political elite have been living under the protection of the Capo Crimini – Israel. The protection does not come cheap; and the manufacture of the recent lie - the arrest of 22 Azerbaijani citizen allegedly “trained in Iran” to carry out terrorist acts against the U.S. and Israel, is the latest protection payment. Capo Crimini’s protection is noteworthy. Aliyev, a corrupt dictator who came to power through election fraud in 2003, managed to make his rounds in Washington in 2006, including a private meeting with President Bush, thanks to the full weight of the Israeli lobby in Washington... Read more... http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.mx/2012/03/azerbaijan-high-cost-of-protection.html Current crisis as a test for a multi polar world, by Alexey Pilko | Voice of Russia  The crisis in Syria and the way it unfolded shows that the model of international relations that developed after the collapse of the bipolar system has changed in the last ten years. The idea of the unipolarity is still on the table, but it is becoming more and more blurred. The relations between governments, nation states are becoming more complicated and multi-polar. To prove the statement above, it is enough to recall the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999... Read more... Creating a Warrior State: The Enigma of Israel, by Gabriel Kolko | Counterpunch Zionism was supposed to make Jewish existence “normal;” very different than in a Diaspora peopled by goyim, but there is nothing ”normal” in the life and culture of Israel today—which has not lived in peace with its neighbors, much less let the Palestinians have elementary human rights in the lands in which they have lived for thousands of years. If war is the criteria of “normal” existence, then Zionism has become a failed nightmare. It was, when first conceptualized, not supposed to be this way... Read more... Revisionism: Against Hollywoodism | Robert Faurisson The term Hollywoodism refers to the transformation, often mendacious, of reality by the spirit and practices of a whole sphere of American cinema. At first, I shall discuss the evil in general done by Hollywoodism. Secondly, I shall describe the wrongs of Hollywoodism in the shaping of the imposture of “the Holocaust”, that is in building the myth of genocide, gas chambers and six million Jews killed by the Germans during the Second World War. Finally, in a third and last part I shall speak of Revisionism as the antidote par excellence to Hollywoodism and its incessant, aggressive publicity for the religion of “the Holocaust”... Read more... Liberal Zionism on the March, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam Those of you of a certain age will remember seeing old movie newsreels like the March of Time, in which narrators would intone solemnly: “The Allies are on the march!” That’s what today’s news from the world of liberal Zionism reminds me. Later this month, J Street will hold its annual conference (“Making History”) at which it will feature the latest corrupt, irrelevant former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. He will presumably regale the audience with tales of his almost Syrian peace treaty which he destroyed by going to war against Gaza, and his almost treaty with the PA which he messed up by promising almost nothing and getting almost everything from his Palestinian interlocutors. Maybe he’ll also ply them with tales of his pay-for-play real estate deals like Holyland and those empty Slimfast boxes from his pal, S. Daniel Abraham, filled with cash... Read more... Syria: Testimonies from Homs Reveal Identity of Terrorists and Mercenaries involved in Atrocities, by H. Sabbagh | Global Research  The people of al-Nazhin, Karm al-Zaytoun, Ashira and Karm al-Loz neighborhoods of Homs related the horrors of the crimes and massacres committed by armed terrorist groups which wreaked havoc in the city. A local from al-Nazhin said that the armed groups would open fire from every direction at people, and made holes in walls to move from one house to another, attacking the houses' actual owners, adding that the terrorists belonged to several nationalities. He said that these groups ran amok in the neighborhood and vandalized everything, and that they didn't spare even schools and mosques... Read more... UN Panel Adopts Sidelined Report That Praised Qaddafi Rights Record | Fox News A United Nations panel has adopted a report praising Qaddafi-era Libya for its human rights record, a year after the report was sidelined amid international objection. The report initially came before the U.N. Human Rights Council in the middle of the uprising against the Muammar Qaddafi regime. At the time, the U.N. had just voted to suspend Libya from the rights council -- under pressure to maintain a consistent message toward Libya, the council later postponed consideration of the report. But the Human Rights Council on Wednesday returned to the document - and approved it... Best Second Amendment Video Goes Viral | YouTube [I hesitated before passing along this link. After all, I'm a buddhist and am thoroughly opposed to the use of violence in nearly all circumstances. I also don't read the 2nd Amendment as a blanket permission for the private ownership of firearms. On the other hand, there are exceptions to the rule, when the greater benefit trumps the avoidance of harm. We appear to be approaching that situation in the US, in which case an armed populace just might come in handy.] How and why the bankers are strangling Iran, by Heydrich | Wake Up From Your Slumber Let’s clarify a number of things about Iran. The take-away points will be listed here at the beginning. Afterward we will discuss how they are actually occurring. [1] Neither Israel nor the West care about Iran’s nuclear program. This is a merely window dressing; an excuse to squeeze Iran. If Iran totally abandoned its nuclear program, then the West would change its anti-Iran propaganda from “world threat” to R2P (responsibility-to-protect).. [2] The West does all this because Iran has oil, plus a state-owned central bank. Worse, Iran is willing to sell oil directly to its customers, rather than sell it through a foreign commodities market via private foreign banks... Read more... Kurdistan Revival: Israel Splits Iraq | Roy Tov  Areas of Majority Kurdish Settlement “No one will be able to blackmail us,” the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu answered the inflammatory plan proposed by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in which Israel should support the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) against Turkey. Until now, this was one of the most dramatic events in the war of words between former allies Israel and Turkey, surpassed only by the clear declarations of Turkey and Lebanon that the new gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean are casus belli if Israel will exploit them. It would be easy to dismiss Lieberman’s words as a weather balloon aimed at checking out Turkey’s reaction, or an attempt to divert Turkey’s attention from the Mediterranean front to its Kurdistan’s backyard. However,.. Read more... After bin Laden's death, a different kind of hunt | Miami Herald ..The Pentagon said it could not find any death certificate, autopsy report or results of DNA identification tests for bin Laden, or any pre-raid materials discussing how the government planned to dispose of bin Laden's body if he were killed. It said it searched files at the Pentagon, U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., and the Navy command in San Diego that controls the USS Carl Vinson, the aircraft carrier used in the mission. The Defense Department told the AP in late February it could not find any emails about the bin Laden mission or his "Geronimo" code name that were sent or received in the year before the raid by William McRaven, the three-star admiral at the Joint Special Operations Command who organized and oversaw the mission. It also could not find any emails from other senior officers who would have been involved in the mission's planning... Netanyahu versus Obama: what next? | Redress Information & Analysis Alan Hart assesses Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s options as he tries to sabotage the prospect of a second term for Barack Obama by dragging the US into a war with Iran, and argues that the real danger is that Netanyahu’s anti-Iran rhetoric – “a combination of wretchedness and megalomania” – may create an unstoppable momentum for war... Read more... Mar 16, 2012 Permission to examine "Jewishness," by Rich Siegel | deLiberation  ...What is behind the almost super-human capacity for Zionist belligerence? for Zionist disingenuousness? Why is it that the world governments look the other way and pretend it isn’t going on? And how is it possible that America is fighting wars for Israel? How is it possible that for all of my life I’ve been listening to my people whine over the holocaust while failing to admit that any crimes were committed in Palestine? How deep is a cult that was able to hide from me, one of its children, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine for most of my life?.. Read more... Perceptions of the Syrian Uprising from Shatila Camp, by Franklin Lamb | Intifada Palestine ..Located in South Beirut, Shatila was one of the first Palestinian refugee camps set up during the 1948 Nakba. When the Lebanon-Palestine border was closed on May 15th 1948, a gentleman named Abed Bisher (“Abou Kamal”) from the north-western Galilee village of Majd al-Kroom, found himself trapped inside Lebanon as hundreds of his countrymen were streaming in seeking short term sanctuary. Mr. Bisher, was in fact a mujahidine leader whose mission in Lebanon was to purchase arms for the Mufti of Jerusalem to be deployed in the scattered villages in the Galilee, then still under heavy assault from Zionist forces... Read more... Lobbying for War, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar There has been considerable discussion of the meaning, or lack thereof, of the apparent difference of opinion between the United States and Israel over both the desirability and the possible timing of going to war with Iran. Those Americans who still revere the Constitution and the advice of the Founding Fathers should rightly be appalled that a war is even being considered on behalf of a small client state with which the United States has no treaty obliging such intervention. War with Iran would undoubtedly follow the usual pattern, being authorized by the White House without the constitutionally mandated declaration of war by Congress and likely developing out of an evolving situation in which Israel is being given a free pass to initiate the conflict... Read more... U.S. asked Russia to warn Iran of 'last chance' to avoid military strike | Haaretz ..According to the Russian newspaper, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in New York on Monday to tell Tehran that it has one last chance to solve the conflict peacefully by making progress in the talks with the P5+1 group - United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany. Otherwise, an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities will occur within months, the diplomats said... [Carrying water for her employer (no, not Obama, or, heaven forbid, the American sheeple] Read more...Afghanistan: Towards The Exit Without Negotiations | Moon of Alabama At the same time and after several deadly recent incidents in Afghanistan the sentiment in the political establishment in the U.S. as well as in the UK has turned decidedly towards an exit from Afghanistan. Within Afghanistan the foreign troops are more and more seen as a burden and today Karzai called for a retreat of all foreign troops from all villages on outposts back into the main bases. He also calls for a faster handover of all security tasks to native Afghan forces. The war on Afghanistan now seems to come to a faster than expected end. The Taliban have drawn the right conclusion, they will outlast their enemy, and announced that they will no longer negotiate with the U.S.. Read more... How False Human Rights Claims Create War | Moon of Alabama The Humanitarian War is a film by Julien Teil which shows the absurdity of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine that is now in fashion to launch colonial wars. I recommend to watch at least the first two parts. In the first episode we can see the leader of Amnesty International France asserting that Gaddhafi paid black mercenaries to fight the rebels attacking his state. This was of course before Gaddhafi was overthrown. After that happened, the same person was on TV trolling concern about the plight of black Libyans being chased, imprisoned and killed by the rebels based solely on "rumors" of them being mercenaries. So who, one might ask, planted those rumors if not the head of Amnesty International France?.. Read more... Atzmon-Palestinian Infighting Reveals Underbelly of Gutless Duplicity, by Gordon Duff | Veterans Today ...a geopolitical realist should know the power and influence the Jewish people have attained and how the changes in that sector, their gullibility, their move to the right, their abandonment of humanistic values, has negatively impacted the world. Atzmon’s explanation of this is “spot on” the value of which Abunimah seems to miss. This is excusable, of course, disagreement is a part of dialog. However, Abunimah may well not be the “honest player” he seems... Read more... Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs, by Greg Smith | NYT  Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it... [One of the senior officers on board the most successful pirate ship on the high seas deserts for ethical reasons. Is this for real or is it some kind of joke? There has to be one hell of a back story.] Read more...Maariv Reports Cabinet Favors Iran Attack, U.S. Delivers Iran ‘Final’ Ultimatum | Tikun Olam Just when you thought it was safe to come out from your air raid shelter after Bibi returned from his U.S. foray to stoke up war fever, Maariv raises the temperature to a boiling point. Ben Caspit reports that the cabinet now has, for the first time, a majority (eight votes for, six votes against) favoring the measure. This means that theoretically Bibi can begin an attack at any time. Of course, it could mean something different: it could mean the cabinet has approved a strike at any point in future with Bibi determining the timing. So it doesn’t necessarily mean the F-16s will fly tonight or tomorrow. But it could... Read more... War Criminal Obama again threatens unlawful war with Iran: who will arrest him? by Carl Herman | Examiner President Obama criminally threatened to murder Iranians today with fellow War Criminal British PM Cameron. The language in their press conference included multiple lies and insults. Let’s consider the history of the US with Iran before we consider what Obama said: The US waged unlawful war on Iran for 35 consecutive years with the overthrow of their democracy in 1953, and then supporting Iraq’s War of Aggression from 1980-1988 that war-murdered ~ one million Iranians. US corporate media lies in omission of this history, they then lie in omission that US war threats are both criminal and ignore that all inspections find Iran’s treaty-guaranteed programs for nuclear energy and medical isotopes fully accountable. They lie in commission that Iran’s president threatened Israel when the crystal-clear content and context is stating Israel is wiping the Palestinians off the map... Read more... The Western Deception Over Regime Change Unravels: NATO Prepares for All Out War, by Finian Cunningham | Global Research The Western governments' and mainstream media’s narrative of a one-sided humanitarian crisis in Syria is rapidly unwinding to reveal a self-serving deception to justify a re-run of Libya-style NATO conquest. In reality, it is the Western powers and their Israeli and Arab henchmen who are fueling a humanitarian crisis and creating the conditions for all-out war. All of which, it should be said, constitutes criminality comparable to Nazi Germany’s wars of aggression... Read more... Realism or Hypocrisy?: Western Diplomacy and Freedom of Expression | YouTube An Interview with Amb. Craig Murray, Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan... US editor’s lament for Israel overlooks Zionism’s inherent racism | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson argues that Israel’s anti-democratic and racist traits are not recent phenomena, located mainly among the settlers on the West Bank, but “flow from structural problems that were built into the Zionist experiment that ultimately resulted in the Israeli state. They were built in by the Zionist ideology itself.”.. Read more... Christ at Checkpoint, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance Israel has been paranoid about people finding out the truth of what it is doing. In an example of this, 55 Harvard students were expelled from Al-Walaja earlier this week. On several occasions when we took delegations to visit Al-Walaja we were harassed. This included the times when I took a group of Israeli Jews, evangelical Christians, and even diplomatic staff to Al-Walaja. Some who were sympathetic to Israel did change their views and started to see this as the apartheid system it is.. We must maintain our hope and our energy and move towards justice, freedom and equality and that redemption called for so brilliantly by young South African Mbuyiseni Ndlozi speaking on Palestine... Read more... The myth of Israel's favorable treatment of Palestinian Christians, by Fida Jiryis | Mondoweiss Amb. Michael Oren's article, 'Israel and the Plight of Mideast Christians,' presents Israel as a tolerant, dove-like, and peaceful democracy. This is belied by the facts. I am one of those Palestinian Christians living inside Israel to whom Oren refers. At no time in my life have I ever felt the 'respect and appreciation' by the Jewish state, which Oren so glowingly references. Israel's Christian minority is marginalized in much the same manner as its Muslim one or, at best, quietly tolerated. We suffer the same discrimination when we try to find a job, when we go to hospitals, when we apply for bank loans, and when we get on the bus - in the same way as Palestinian Muslims... Israel's Latest Ritual Slaughter, by Stephen Lendman | Information Clearing House Four days of Israeli terror bombing left at least 25 Palestinians dead and dozens injured, some seriously. Human rights groups expressed outrage. So did Arab League states, Iran, Turkey, and Malaysia. Israel's UN envoy Ron Prosor wants the Security Council to condemn Palestinian victims. Like Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, his audacity gives chutzpah new meaning... [Hey, you anti-semite, what’s the problem? We’re just following tradition. And it’s not like they’re human or anything, neh? They're goyim, lower than animals, so the hell with 'em.] Read more...Mar 15, 2012 Reflections After the Harvard One State Conference, by Jeff Warner | Mondoweiss  Palestinians in line for a Qalandiya checkpoint during Ramadan, 2011 I attended the One State Conference at Harvard University on March 3-4, 2012, and was encouraged to continue working to bring peace and prosperity to all the people who live between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. Nevertheless, I left the conference unsettled by several issues... [Sounds like the conference was rather tame and pedantic, as most of the others have been. Too many academics, not enough activists, and nothing comes of it. Gilad Atzmon should be invited to one of these; he’d surely stir things up and energize people.] Read more...Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon | USPCN For many years now, Gilad Atzmon, a musician born in Israel and currently living in the United Kingdom, has taken on the self-appointed task of defining for the Palestinian movement the nature of our struggle, and the philosophy underpinning it. He has done so through his various blogs and Internet outlets, in speeches, and in articles. He is currently on tour in the United States promoting his most recent book, entitled, ‘The Wandering Who.’ With this letter, we call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions... [Are we sure that Abe Foxman didn’t write the text? Political correctness triumphs over honesty and integrity. It’s also called cutting off your nose to spite your face.] Read more...I'm So Glad We've Got Gilad, by Francis Clark-Lowes | deLiberation The attack on Gilad Atzmon by the UK Palestine Community Network, relayed on Ali Abunimah’s blog, is a depressing reminder that an influential section of Palestinian opinion has accepted the narrative about Israel-Palestine preferred by most (supposed) pro-Palestinian Jews. That is, of course their right. There is an argument for saying that Zionism is a settler colonial movement enabled by Western imperialism, and that therefore any discussion of the part played by Jews in influencing Western policies is at best irrelevant and at worst racist. According to this view, what needs to be attacked is imperialism, not Jewish ideology and power. Gilad, takes a different view, as do I... Read more... A Response to Ali Abunimah & Co., by Gilad Atzmon | deLiberation  United in their loathing of one man and his book Ali Abunimah & Co tend to present themselves as advocates of “One Democratic State in Palestine.” This leaves me puzzled: what kind of democracy do they have in mind, exactly? For by calling for my “disavowal,” they prove beyond a doubt that they cannot tolerate even some elementary cultural criticism—criticism that is endorsed and praised by some of the most respected thinkers within our movement and beyond. In fact, I am pretty delighted with the outraged reactions to my thoughts. I guess it enables us to map the discourse and its boundaries—and means that those boundaries are now official. Not only has my latest book, The Wandering Who?, rocked the boat, but it also has managed to unite Alan Dershowitz and Abe Foxman with Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal. That is pretty encouraging: it means that peace may prevail after all... [I am ashamed on behalf of Abunimah and the others who signed that thing. What they are displaying, above all, is a lack of moral courage. No, you don’t need to have the “good” Jews on your side, the ones who insist on political correctness (after all, they invented it). In fact, you are far better off without them. This is advice from another “bad” Jew, who nevertheless has great affection and respect for Ali and some others who signed that shameful open letter. I can only hope they have second thoughts and realize how they are being used. As Nureddin Sabir puts it "Gilad Atzmon debunks a statement signed by Ali Abunimah and others in which they misrepresent his critique of Jewish identity politics, and he vows to continue his fight for the truth. By publishing this, we reiterate our support for Mr Atzmon and hope that the signatories of the statement will turn their focus to the real enemies of the Palestinian people."] Read more...Little US Popular Support for Israeli Attack on Iran, by Jim Lobe | Antiwar Amid persistent speculation over a possible Israeli military attack against Iranian nuclear facilities in the wake of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, a detailed new public opinion survey released Tuesday suggests that such a move would enjoy little support in the United States. According to the survey by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), only one in four U.S. respondents favors an Israeli strike, while nearly seven in 10 (69%), including a strong majority of Republicans (59%), said they prefer continuing negotiations with Tehran... Read more... Max Blumenthal Demolishes Talking-Points About Israel's 'Liberal Democracy' | AlterNet ...when you hear people like Tzipi Livni - who is for now the head of the Kadima Party but soon to be ousted, and actually came out of the Likud Party and was aide to Arial Sharon - when you hear liberal Zionists, people on the Zionist left, warning that Israel is turning into a fascist state what they’re talking is the occupation laws creeping back over the green line, and that these right-wing elements are actually starting to crack down on the democratic rights that have been afforded to the Jewish master class inside Israel. So Jews who are left-wingers, who are dissidents and speak out against state policy are actually beginning to feel a slight scintilla of the kind of oppression that Palestinians have felt since the foundation of the state of Israel... Read more... New York Times Wages War on Palestine, by Stephen Lendman | The People's Voice  Like all US major media scoundrels, longstanding New York Times policy features one-sided pro-Israeli reports, commentaries, and opinions. Its coverage of Israel's latest Gaza aggression is one of many examples... [When the Jew York Times sides with the Palestinians we could take it as the beginning of the End Times, or maybe the end of the Bad Times.] Read more...Zionist “Price Tag” mirrors Hitler’s Youth | Redress Information & Analysis Jamal Kanj sees similarities between Israel’s Price Tag organization and Hitler’s Youth, and calls on the world to take note before it is too late. “Price Tag membership is currently around 3,000, proportionally larger than Hitler’s Youth, who numbered less than 5,000 in 1925. Ignored by world powers, Hitler’s Youth … swelled to 25,000 by 1930, propelling the Nazi party to power.”.. Read more... Hollywood in Homs and Idlib? by Sharmine Narwani | Al Akhbar English ...even behind the scenes, sources strained to provide informed analyses, and it was fairly evident that a lot of guesswork was being employed. By December, it occurred to me that a big part of the problem was the external-based opposition and their disproportionately loud voices. If you were actually in the business of digging for “verified” information on Syria last year, you would have also quickly copped on to the fact that this wing of the Syrian opposition lies – and lies big. This discovery coincided with a new report by US intelligence analyst Stratfor that claimed: “most of the opposition's more serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply untrue, thereby revealing more about the opposition's weaknesses than the level of instability inside the Syrian regime.”.. Read more... Palestine children traumatised by Israeli jail, by Jihan Abdalla | AlertNet  Wounded Palestinian children are seen in a hospital in the northern Gaza Strip Of the hundreds of Palestinian children locked in Israeli jails each year, the vast majority suffer nightmares, bed-wetting and anxiety after their release, Save the Children said in a report published on Monday. The charity said that since 2000, the Israeli army had detained more than 8,000 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank and prosecuted children as young as 12 in military courts, most of them suspected of rock-throwing. Ninety-eight percent of detained children reported being subjected to violence... [I suppose we should feel thankful they don’t feel free to just shoot them, much as they would like to. Bad for the image, y’know.] Read more...The War is Over, the War is Lost, Bring Them Home, by Clancy Sigal | Counterpunch This latest GI mental explosion by the staff sergeant was preceded by increasing acts of American troop indiscipline – Marines pissing on Afghan bodies, the Koran-burning fiasco, units loudly cheering indiscriminate Hellfire drone attacks on a village, etc. – that an increasingly demoralized junior and midgrade officer corps has neither the ability nor will to stop. The troops are protesting “by any other means” their entrapment in a no-win landscape where Washington politicians and career-crazy senior officers keep a war going beyond the limit of sanity... Read more... Palestinian Christians attacked for challenging Christian Zionism, by Emily Lawrence | The Electronic Intifada “The Israeli officials and military leaders summoned me and Dr. Bishara [Awad, founder of Bethlehem Bible College] to interview about the conference,” said Isaac. “They tried to intimidate us and protested the logo and the name of the conference. We said, ‘you don’t like the wall and checkpoint? Remove them, then we’ll change the name of the conference.’”.. Read more... What happened to Palestine’s steam railways? by Stuart Littlewood | Intifada Palestine  In Palestine, as a consequence of the UN’s daft Partition plan, key bridges and other rail infrastructure were destroyed in the 1948 war. Had the Palestinians been left in peace their steam railways would no doubt have played a major role in building the nation’s economy and bringing prosperity. By now they’d probably have a number of steam preservation lines in their coastal resorts and population centres like Jerusalem and Ramallah to excite the children, charm their parents and celebrate the romance of the steam age. What a different world it could have been... Read more... New book deconstructs myth that the Zionist left wants peace, by Jimmy Johnson | The Electronic Intifada Often called Labor Zionism or left Zionism, liberal Zionism is a concept applying to the Labor and Meretz parties, the Histradrut trade union, the Peace Now and Gush Shalom organizations, and the intellectual and activist communities comprising their bases. Honig-Parnass’s track record as a long-standing anti-occupation activist within Israel leaves her ideally placed to deconstruct the liberal Zionist ideology... Read more... A Farewell to a Purity of Arms, by Richard Lightbown | Palestine Chronicle In response to the recent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip Hillary Clinton repeated the political mantra “Israel has the right to self-defense”. The statement is absolutely true of course, but that right does not allow Israel to commit offensive strikes on its neighbours or to get its retaliation in first. Nor does it permit attacks on civilian areas, and under no circumstances does it legitimize the use of experimental weapons in civilian areas... Read more... Mar 14, 2012 Silent Palestinian Warriors, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle  On March 8, Palestinian women rallied in Gaza and Ramallah to mark International Women's Day. Activities were held in various cities, villages and refugee camps. Women in Palestine are united by a shared struggle, untold hardship, and also a legendary ability to withstand, survive and flourish under the harshest of circumstances. Even those women who are unable to articulate a discourse that can be validated by western academic standards in fact represent an unparalleled model of women's empowerment. The human spirit can thrive in times of hardship, and Palestinian women have led the way of popular resistance to injustice. This is hardly a sentimental or poetic assertion, but a historic fact that goes back many decades... Read more... Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan on Iran’s threat, by Paul Woodward | War in Context Before this interview aired, the snippets that were being used to promote it focused on two points: that Dagan was attempting to slow down Netanyahu’s rush to war and that he recognizes the Iranians as rational actors. It turns out he has a much more mixed message. Dagan’s is like Gingrich’s “anti-war” message: there’s not much point bombing nuclear facilities when the real goal should be regime change... When Bibi Pointed the Gun: Your Money or Your (Political) Life, by James Abourezk | Counterpunch Bibi Netanyahu’s experience with the United States government—all Israeli governments—has been one of continuous shakedowns over the years. Actually, Bibi didn’t start the habit of milking the American treasury. That started a few decades ago when in the 1970s, Israel’s Prime Minister, Menachem Begin and Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat finally signed a truce after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war in which Israel captured the Sinai desert. It was returned by Israel to Egypt after the United States, represented by Henry Kissinger, promised to dump a lot of weapons from America onto Israel’s Army... Read more... The Accusation Of “Anti-Semitism” (Part I): Zionism, “Jewish Israelis” And Revisionism | Mask of Zion  In the wake of my two-part deconstruction of “mask of Zion” wearer Uri Avnery and the grave intellectual and ideological problems within the International Palestine Solidarity Movement, I was accused of “anti-Semitism” by a well-known voice within the blogosphere who rushed to Avnery’s defense. While this person’s reply to my vastly-documented work did not warrant such a response, I diligently composed this series to demolish and banish any similar accusations that are sure to arise in the future. In this first part, we delve into the true nature and wider historical context of Zionism, what it means to be a “Jewish Israeli” and the always-controversial realm of Holocaust® revisionism... [In my essay, Zionism and Nazism: Is there a difference that makes a difference? I do compare the two, the point being that in terms of political phenomena they are essentially the same. As to whether Zionism is worse than Nazism, I leave the reader to ponder the question. Mr. Azaziah is quite helpful in that regard.] Read more...No Jobs for Americans: The Land of the Mega-Rich, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch ...The US has nothing to export to reduce its massive trade deficit, which has, sooner or later, disastrous implications for the US dollar. Middle class income jobs are declining, with polarization at the two extremes. US economic policy continues to focus on the mega-rich at the expense of 99% of the population. US interest rates are kept at, or near to, zero in order to maximize mega-bank earnings, while depriving tens of millions of retired Americans of interest income on their lifetime savings, forcing them to spend their capital in order to live... Read more... Afghanistan: Mainstream Media Awakes | Craig Murray This morning Sam Kiley, Sky News’ security correspondent, stated bluntly that the large bulk of Afghan heroin and opium production is controlled by members of the Karzai government. That is a simple truth, and I have been publishing it repeatedly on this blog for the last six years, but it runs absolutely contrary to what has been an extraordinary and monolithic mainstream media narrative. The insistence for ten years by an almost unanimous mainstream media that it is the Taliban who contol the drugs trade has been perhaps the most remarkable example of a massive organised lie in modern media history. The question of how a false narrative like that becomes an accepted mainstream “truth” is a key element in control of the state by a rapacious elite using the brainwashing capabilities of modern mass communication... Read more... Why Hate Gilad Atzmon (Pt. 2): “He’s WRONG!” (Or Is He?), by Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today  Last Thursday’s essay “Why Hate Gilad Atzmon?” has been bouncing around the internet. (The title currently gets 780,000 Google hits). In that piece I suggested that the anti-Atzmon brigade is defending sacred boundaries against Atzmon’s fearless questioning. The two taboo questions are: Is the whole notion of a Jewish state in Palestine (i.e., Zionism) legitimate and/or feasible? (The obvious answer, of course, is NO.) Second question: To what extent has Jewish identity politics contributed to the disaster of Zionism? (The obvious answer, of course, is “to a considerable extent.”) “Don’t even go there!” they scream. Atzmon goes there. So they lynch him. The truth hurts... Read more... How Israel Stacks the Legal Deck, by George Bisharat | Counterpunch Palestinian baker and activist Khader Adnan captured headlines recently for a 66-day hunger strike that led him to the brink of death. His ordeal began in the dead of night on Dec. 17, 2011, when Israeli soldiers broke down the door of his West Bank home. Adnan was arrested before his terrified wife and daughters, and was reportedly abused verbally and physically upon detention and later in interrogation. Adnan was never tried but instead faced administrative detention... Read more... War as the President's Private Preserve, by Tom Engelhardt | TomDispatch When I was young, the Philadelphia Bulletin ran cartoon ads that usually featured a man in trouble -- dangling by his fingers, say, from an outdoor clock. There would always be people all around him, but far too engrossed in the daily paper to notice. The tagline was: “In Philadelphia, nearly everybody reads the Bulletin.” Those ads came to mind recently when President Obama commented forcefully on war, American-style, in ways that were remarkably radical. Although he was trying to ward off a threatened Israeli preemptive air strike against Iran, his comments should have shocked Americans -- but just about nobody noticed... Read more... Kishkashta Rules: Obama, Bamba and the Logo Wars | Roy Tov  Summer Olympics 2012 Israel Logo A recurrent topic in this website is the unbearable resemblance of the Israeli society to George Orwell’s 1984. No matter how horrific the events surrounding them are, Israelis spend most of their time in a fantasy world where cartoon characters—sometimes disguised as not very shrewd politicians—distract them from their wretched reality. The reason for this digression in the website activity is that on March 12, 2012, Israel chose its logo for the London 2012 Summer Olympics. This followed a feral battle that lasted for months. For those expecting more serious topics from me, I beg to read until the end... Read more... Human rights lawyers: British civilians are ‘parties to murders’ carried out by US drones, by Madison Ruppert | Activist Post Civilians at the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are at risk of being prosecuted for war crimes due to legal action been taken over the alleged participation of British intelligence in the American Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) “targeted killing” program. Tomorrow human rights lawyers are set to issue proceedings which say that employees at Britain’s intelligence agency who work with the United States in directing drone strikes in Pakistan could be “secondary parties to murder,” according to the Guardian. The lawyers allege that any UK guidance which allows the passing of information to the CIA for use in the drone attacks is unlawful... Read more... Iran's legal right to attack Israel, by Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Asia Times Online ...under Article 51 of the UN Charter, Iran has the right to strike Israel because Israel has already engaged in overt hostile acts including the assassination of Iran's nuclear scientists, sabotage, and life-threatening cyber-warfare, not to mention Israeli political and military leaders' open declarations of intent to attack Iran in the immediate future. Second, these illegal acts combined with the declarations of intent constitute an imminent national security threat to Iran, defined under customary international law in terms of "outward hostile acts" of one state against another... Read more... The "Existential Threat" to Israel Is Israel, by John Tirman | Huffington Post The nearly complete mastery of U.S. politics that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again displayed in Washington last week belies a dark reality for the Jewish State. That is the startling prospect that it has sown the seeds of its own destruction, one which will come to its ghastly fruition in a matter of a few years. That stark judgment is not mine alone. Many of us who have marveled at Israeli's achievements in building a thriving state and society have hoped it would secure this remarkable feat by coming to terms with the people whose land it once was, and to do so on fair and sustainable terms. It is increasingly clear this will never happen with Israel's cooperation, however. Three developments in the past week are emblematic of the coming disaster... [Disaster for the Jewish State perhaps, and well deserved, but hopefully not for anyone else] Read more...“Mowing the lawn”: On Israel’s latest massacre in Gaza and the lies behind it, by Ali Abunimah | Intifada Palestine  By Sunday evening in Gaza, a weekend of relentless Israeli bombing has left 18 people dead and dozens wounded. Israeli propaganda insists that the attacks are about preventing “terrorism” and stopping “rockets.” But in fact, Israel provoked this violence and according to some Israeli commentators its goals are to escalate pressure for war with Iran and to drag Hamas away from diplomacy and back into violence... The Global Intelligence Files: military intervention in Syria, post withdrawal status of forces | Wikileaks On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods... Read more... 'Price Tag' Transforming Israel, by Jamal Kanj | Palestine Chronicle 'Death to Christians' and 'death to Arabs' was scrawled in Hebrew last week on an old monastery and properties of Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem. On February 20th a Baptist church was defiled with graffiti insulting Jesus' mother. Earlier in the same month, an 11th century Greek Orthodox Monastery was desecrated. The work carried the hallmark signature of 'Price Tag.' Price Tag is a pugnacious Jewish organization established in 2008. Its members come mostly from illegal “Jewish only” settlements in occupied Palestine. The organization targets Muslim and Christian sites in the West Bank and Native Palestinians inside Israel... Read more... "Realism or Hypocrisy? Western Diplomacy and Freedom of Expression": A Lecture by H.E. Amb. Craig Murray | YouTube The usual suspects, one would presume. But our friend AS informs us that you can still download the video: Firefox -> add-on 'DownloadHelper + speed-up add-on 'DownThemAll Mar 13, 2012 The Tribal Nexus: Zionists And “Anti-Zionists” Unite To Ensure The Survival Of “Israel” | Mask of Zion .jpg) Another version of "Greater Israel" envisioned by the ZioNazi High Command ...Is something not vastly askew when persons such as this, some of whom are amongst the highest-ranking movers and shakers in the global Jewish-Zionist lobbying network, are working side by side with “friends of Palestine” to establish a certified definition for “pro-Israel” and at the very core of this effort is the solidification of the foreign Jewish invader-presence in Palestine which the sorely-missed revolutionary giant Malcolm X once rightfully observed “has no intelligent or legal basis in history?” Indeed it is. This is the very embodiment of the Jewish tribal nexus; Jews of different political persuasions, including those perceivably “hostile” to the Zionist entity, working in unison for the furtherance of Jewish interests at the expense of non-Jews... [Azaziah’s style is always incendiary and hyperbolic, but he consistently makes good points. Here he’s exposing the tendency of a group of tribal Jews, usually with a Marxist background, to infiltrate pro-Palestinian groups. They are following an age-old pattern of first asking themselves if it’s “good for the Jews.” If they are satisfied that this is so, they will enlist in all sorts of progressive causes, thoroughly muddying the waters. If I were a member of such a group, I would work hard to root them out if I truly desired peace and justice for the Palestinians. They are currently very easy to identify - they all loudly denigrate Gilad Atzmon, who keeps exposing them to the light (which they hate and fear).] Read more...America, Israel and Iran After Netanyahu's Visit: Separating Rhetoric From Reality | New America On Wednesday, New America’s Middle East Task Force hosted a post-mortem on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week amidst the ongoing speculation about Israeli military moves on Iran. Speaking on the panel, Task Force co-director Daniel Levy underscored the degree to which analyses assuming an Israeli strike are likely misplaced. For a combination of reasons, including the court of public opinion in Israel and also Netanyahu’s own demonstrated history as Prime Minister of not undertaking risky military adventures, there is good reason to think that Israel, at this stage, would not engage with Iran militarily without the support of the United States... “We Control America,” by Jamal Kanj | Intifada Palestine In meeting with settlers in the “Jewish only” colony of Ofra in 2001, Benjamin Netanyahu was caught on camera explaining how he sabotaged the Oslo peace accords and bragging that “America is something that can be moved easily.” In 2003, Prime Minister Sharon was quoted as telling the Israeli president: “we control America.” Sharon and Netanyahu’s ominous declarations were proven over again this week at the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) meeting. On Monday night, unlike Obama’s, Netanyahu’s speech was attended by “more than two thirds of the Congress.” The AIPAC convention is the largest coveted “donors’” gathering for US politicians... Read more... Gilad Atzmon preview: Madison Wisconsin 10Mar2012 | YouTube 2 min preview of Gilad Atzmon talk in Madison Wisconsin. - more later of his 1plus hour talk and discussion. Question: what do you think of the Holocaust revisionists?.. Watch video... You Can’t Get There From Here: The Need for “Collapse with Agency” in Palestine, by Jeff Halper | ICAHD-USA  Even as I write this, the bulldozers have been busy throughout that one indivisible country known by the bifurcated term Israel/Palestine. Palestinian homes, community centers, livestock pens, and other “structures” (as the Israel authorities dispassionately call them) have been demolished in the Old City, Silwan, and various parts of “Area C” in the West Bank, as well among the Bedouin – Israeli citizens – in the Negev/Naqab. This is merely mopping up, herding the last of the Arabs into their prison cells where, forever, they will cease to be heard or heard from, a non-issue in Israel and, eventually, in the wider world distracted by bigger, more pressing matters... Read more... 10 Myths About Iran - And Why They're Dead Wrong, by Jasmin Ramsey | AlterNet As media reports continue to imply that a military confrontation with Iran is closer than ever, rhetoric demonizing the Iranian government is rampant, particularly among Israeli leaders and most Republican presidential candidates—so much so that former Israeli Mossad director Efraim Halevy recently complained that Mitt Romney is “making the [Iran] situation worse” with his statements. So it should come as no surprise that according to a 2012 Gallup poll, Iran is Americans' “least favored nation” and has consistently ranked unfavorably since 1989... Read more... Will Abbas Dismantle the Palestinian Authority? | Roy Tov On March 12, 2012, Palestinian and Hebrew media report that by the end of this week Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is about to deliver a letter to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing the dismantlement of the Palestinian Authority. The US and Jordan urged Abbas not to deliver the letter. This happened one day after Lieutenant General Benny Ganz—IDF’s Chief of staff—said “Hamas is the sovereign in Gaza” during the investment ceremony of Central Command’s new commandant... Read more... Holocaust, Hate Speech & Were the Germans so Stupid? (Anthony Lawson) | YouTube A repeat, just in case you haven’t seen this important video... Israel and Iran: For such a time as this | The Economist  Binyamin Netanyahu’s comparison of the threat of a nuclear Iran to the Nazi Holocaust makes some Israelis cringe. "The year was 1944," the Israeli prime minister told thousands of American-Jewish activists at the annual policy conference of AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobby, in Washington on March 5th. In 1944, American Jews implored the Roosevelt administration to bomb Auschwitz. "Such an operation would be of such doubtful efficacy," said Mr Netanyahu quoting the American state department's response; "such an effort might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.".. Read more... Who Are the ‘Terrorists’?: The pattern of American atrocities in wartime, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar ...What is it about American troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan? From Abu Ghraib to the Mahmudiyah killings to the Hamdania murder of a crippled old man to the horrors of the Haditha massacre, it’s been one atrocity after another. More recently it was the “rogue” team of killers that murdered Afghan civilians in the Maywand district for sport. Then it was US troops urinating on corpses, followed shortly afterward by the Koran-burning incident, the second such example of American contempt for the people they are supposed to be “liberating.” Now we have this, which – we’re told – is the result of a US soldier having a “breakdown.”.. Read more... "Holder needs to issue FARA surrender to Israel," by Grant Smith | IRMEP The 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act is supposed to deter the most egregious foreign meddling in America. It does so through transparency. FARA doesn’t prohibit any foreign government from launching US public relations campaigns or lobbying initiatives. It only insists that the agents of the foreign principal behind such endeavors publicly reveal the control relationships, campaigns, and funding flows. Brilliant. Perhaps no foreign government has violated the letter and spirit of FARA more than Israel and its US agents. They’ve had steady help from the US Department of Justice... Read more... Is Israel on Cusp of Grand Strategic Set-Back as Universities Mobilize, by Chuck Spinney | Public Intelligence Blog ..Grand-strategic interaction Israeli style is not based on mutual respect or enlightened self interest but on crude compulsion, via a cynical manipulation of guilt for an event that ended almost 70 years ago and an equally cynical manipulation of its allies’ domestic politics. Israel’s predilection to crude compulsion has reached unprecedented levels in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s appearances before Congress and his bullying contempt for an American President. Israel’s addiction to grand-strategic compulsion has created a clear vulnerability that leads to the suspicion that sooner or later the people on the receiving end of the Israel’s grand-strategic cynicism will become disgusted and fed up with Israel’s nasty behaviour... Read more... 'I refuse to join an army that has, since it was established, been engaged in dominating another nation': Annie Robbins interviews Israeli refuser Noam Gur | Mondoweiss  When I was about 15 years old I started understanding what was really happening in Palestine and Israel, after years of being told scary stories and lies by the educational system, the family, and Israeli society in general. At that stage, I believed that something like “enlightened occupation” could actually exist - in other words, that I’d go to the army and serve anywhere I’m sent, but that I’d do that with pity, compassion and “a smile”, that I wouldn’t hurt anyone without cause, and I’d refuse to obey illegal orders, etc. That stage passed pretty quickly, when I understood there was not really any such thing as an enlightened occupation... Read more... The Mossad Has Long Given Marching Orders to AIPAC, by Grant Smith | Antiwar ...Recently declassified FBI files reveal how Israeli government officials first orchestrated public relations and policies through the U.S. lobby. Counter-espionage investigations of proto-AIPAC’s first coordinating meetings with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the head of Mossad provide a timely and useful framework for understanding how AIPAC continues to localize and market Israeli government policies in America. Although AIPAC claims it rose “from a small pro-Israel public affairs boutique in the 1950s,” its true origin can be traced to Oct. 16, 1948. This is the date AIPAC’s founder Isaiah L. Kenen and four others established the Israel Office of Information under Israel’s U.N. mission... Read more... Al Jazeera journalists quit channel citing bias on Syria coverage | YouTube Qatar's aggressive stance towards Assad has led to a string of resignations at the country's al-Jazeera TV news channel. Those who left describe bias at the station which they say has become a tool to target the Syrian regime... Israel TV celebrity, wife of vice PM demands bombing, "suffering" of Gaza civilians, by Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada Israeli talk show personality and socialite wife of Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom has called for escalated bombing of Gaza and for the “passive residents” to be made to “suffer.”.. Since Friday, Israeli bombing has killed more than 20 people in Gaza and injured dozens more, following an Israeli extrajudicial execution on Friday that set off retaliatory rocket fire by Palestinian armed groups. No Israelis have been killed... [Perhaps some enterprising soul will meet her at a cocktail party and offer her a white phosphorus daiquiri. Just daydreaming.] Read more...Mar 12, 2012 Palestine – The Third Option | Rehmat's World  This is the full embodiment of the Zionist project The other day, I came across two interesting articles. One written by an American Jew and the other by an Israeli-born Jew. Roger Tucker, an American and founder of One Democratic State, had featured this blog once and Israeli-born Brit Gilad Atzmon who has been quoted several times on this blog. Both writers dismiss the western ‘option’ of the two-state solution – in order to make the modern Jews-only (demographically) colonial experiment, everlasting. These two Jew writers are not blinded by their Jewishness, like columnist Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post or Daniel Pipes, who claim that the world is against Israel and Jews to please Muslims... [I don’t disagree with Atzmon. Over the years I have been slowly shifting, at least emotionally, from favoring the “South African” to the “Algerian” solution. But it is important to keep pointing out the benefits to Jews, both the Israelis and in the diaspora, of following in the footsteps of the Nationalist Afrikaners who realized that peacefully relinquishing power to a new, inclusive democracy was preferable to going down with the ship. A sane and peaceful outcome is always possible, albeit unlikely.] Rabbi Yisrael Weiss: Zionism has created 'rivers of blood' | Al Jazeera English Netanyahu’s controversial reading of history, even his fight to preserve the state of Israel, are questioned by many of Judaism’s own religious authorities." This is against the will of the Almighty and this is not what it means to be a Jew," says Jewish religious scholar Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a spokesman for "Jews against Zionism", who believes that Israel as a state is not legitimate. He says that Zionism has created "rivers of blood" and he opposes the occupation of Palestine... U.S.-Turkish Air Exercise Part Of Bigger Plan For War On Syria | Moon of Alabama Before the war on Libya, France and Britain planned a military exercise against an assumed north African country. That maneuver turned into the war on Libya. Currently the U.S. air force is training with the Turkish air force how to defeat other countries' air defenses. Syria has a capable air defense and there is intensifying planning for a war against it. We can conclude that the current maneuver is part of a bigger plan, like the British and French one was, and that it will probably turn into a war on Syria... Read more... Arabs: Israel and America are our main concern, NOT Iran, by Sami Zaatari | Intifada Palestine  The Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) has recently published their preliminary report on a major survey they conducted on Arab opinion, over the course of their project they covered 12 Arab countries, and interviewed over 16,000 Arabs on a wide range of subjects to try and gauge the Arab opinion... Read more... Fears of Non-Existent Weapons Program in Iran Persist, by John Glaser | Antiwar Even as U.S. and Israeli intelligence has concluded with high confidence that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons and has demonstrated no intention to do so, fears continue to linger about Tehran’s enrichment program, lending credence to foolhardy calls for war... Read more... McClatchy On Israel's Nuclear Iran Scare Campaign | Moon of Alabama McClatchy has a great three part series by Sheera Frenkel on Israel and its nuclear Iran scare campaign. There are at least three major points to take away from it: The systematic campaign to incite war on Iran started, more or less secretly, immediately after Iraq was defeated in the first Gulf war; When in 2006 the U.S. was on the verge of defeat in Iraq the anti-Iran campaign was turned into a public one; Israel's plans are political, not military. Israel will not attack Iran but wants the U.S. to do the job... Read more...Syria Uprising: Mossad, Blackwater And CIA ‘Led Operations In Homs’ | The Ugly Truth  According to Al-Manar, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group and political party, a coordination office with agents from the three branches of intelligence is in operation in nearby Qatar. Salim Harba, a Syrian expert in strategic affairs, told Al-Manar the office was established: “Under American-Gulf sponsorship. The office includes American, French, and Gulf – specifically from Qatar and Saudi Arabia – intelligence agents, as well as CIA, Mossad, and Blackwater agents and members of the Syrian Transitional Council.”.. Read more... David Grossman on Israeli Attack Against Iran: ‘It Would Destroy Chance of Peace for Generations’ | Tikun Olam David Grossman, Israel’s leading novelist and moral conscience, expresses the conviction that Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak want a war against Iran: He said he had “a very bad feeling” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were going to order an attack, even against America’s wishes. “There is a dynamic to all these warlike declarations,” he said... Read more... BRICS: The Basis of a Multipolar World, by Tiberio Graziani | Strategic Culture Foundation ...In 2001 Jim O'Neal, leading analyst of Goldman Sachs investment bank, came out with the thesis that global economic integration is to form a new potential union including Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). The assessment was based on macroeconomic data of some rapidly developing economies, especially taking into account demography, GDP growth and availability of strategic natural resources. He made a conclusion that most likely these countries will dominate in the XXI century. Indeed, the tendency to strengthen their global geopolitical status was evident in the first dozen of years of the century... Read more... BDS on Trial in Paris: A Masquerade | Alternative Information Center  A masquerade, lies and hypocrisy were once again on show last Thursday (8 March) in the Court of Appeal of Paris, where Olivia Zémor appeared for posting on the website www.europalestine.com a video of a boycott action by a dozen organisations which took place on 4 July 2009 in a Carrefour supermarket in Evry... Read more... Netanyahu's conspiracy to drag the U.S. to war, by Sefi Rachlevsky | Haaretz ...Sometime between early June and mid-August, just before the Republican nominating convention, will be the ideal moment to drag the United States into war, the planners believe. Faced with this gamble, even former National Security Advisor Uzi Arad - the man who once gave Haaretz the most extremist interview ever on the nuclear issue, in which he spoke of the sexual pleasure derived from war games involving tens of millions of casualties - is now showing himself to be a comparative moderate. Even Arad insists on coordination with the United States, and thus found himself to the left of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the question of whether to attack... Read more... Thais Hit by Gaza’s Fire | Roy Tov ...Iron Dome has the potential to create huge profits for its investors. Not only due to the batteries to be sold, but also for the expensive ammunition, training courses, equipment maintenance, and a plethora of added services which probably would be priced as add-ons. Israel’s Ministry of Defense justifies the development of the system to the Israeli public on the ongoing rocket and missile attacks and this obviously works fine, since the Hebrew media gladly cooperates. However, it must also keep the final customer interested . In order to achieve that it must show good interception statistics... Read more... "The Mother of All Bombs": a “great weapon” to use on Iran, says US air force chief | Global Research  A top US Air Force general has described the biggest conventional warhead – the 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb – as “great” for a military strike on Iran. Such glib comment about a massive killing device comes in the same week that US President Barack Obama appeared to caution against “loose talk” about war in the Persian Gulf. “The massive ordnance penetrator [MOP] is a great weapon,” said Lieutenant General Herbert Carlisle, the US Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, who added that the bomb would likely be used in any attack on Iran ordered by Washington. The MOP, also referred to as "The Mother of All Bombs," is designed to drill through 200 feet of reinforced concrete before detonating its massive warhead... Read more... Israeli hysteria over Iran and the forgotten Palestinians | P U L S E Rula Jebreal and my friend Daniel Levy wipe the floor with neocons Elliot Abrams and Bret Stephens. Daniel is particularly good at keeping the discussion focused on the question of Palestine. He notes that the hysteria over Iran is being used by Netanyahu to distract attention from the expanding settlements and the dwindling prospects for peace. He also rebuts forcefully the neocon talking points about the alleged support among Gulf Arabs for a war with Iran. Kudos to Fareed Zakaria for hosting a balanced panel, a rarity on mainstream US television, and for beginning the show with a strong statement opposing war with Iran. This, without doubt, is part of the Mearsheimer & Walt effect... Read more... Gaza Activists Prepare for Israeli Apartheid Week, by Rana B. Baker and Joe Catron | Palestine Chronicle After two successful Israeli Apartheid Weeks (IAWs) in 2010 and 2011, the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI), together with the One Democratic State Group (ODSG) and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), are gearing up for Gaza’s third IAW. PSCABI is a group of young Gaza students and recent graduates who are highly committed to the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. They founded the organization early in 2009, shortly after Operation Cast Lead, on their belief that Gaza should encourage and further inspire international solidarity groups around the world... Read more... Mar 11, 2012 Canada's Zionist lobby exposed in new book, by Andrew Stevens | The Electronic Intifada  In the summer of 2009, an academic conference co-sponsored by York University and Queen’s University proceeded without incident at the Glendon College Campus in Toronto, Ontario. Leading up to the event, however, York officials anticipated demonstrations and campaigns aimed at halting graduate contributions to the university... Read more... Hawks on Iran, by Jasmin Ramsey | LobeLog In response to a worrying trend in U.S. politics, Lobe Log publishes “Hawks on Iran” every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits... Read more... Iran: Israel’s Concocted World Threat | Tikun Olam ... Israel’s movable dates for Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon take on the character of the predictions of Nostradamus or those of Christian millennials who announce the date of the Second Coming. Another aspect of the millennialist world view that Israel’s shreying about Iran shares is a profound, almost religious faith in the certainty, not only of the prediction, but that the cause for which these predictions are offered is something close to sacred... Read more... 2012 or 1984? | Xymphora A large part of the brilliance and importance and power of Atzmon is that he is a true radical shit disturber who forces the powerful to put their cards on the table, cards that they would normally keep hidden. Note how lousy this (Atzmon slagged) is, almost entirely guilt by association with other people who the Jews have determined are bad. It is an intellectual embarrassment (explained by the fact they had to do it in a hurry, as if they hadn't been making up arguments against Atzmon for years). Everybody who signed it - and the list is very useful in any chaff-separating exercise - should be ashamed of themselves, if only for the complete lack of intellectual rigor. The argument that Atzmon's guilt by association somehow contaminates the Palestinian position is simply preposterous... Read more... Liberal Whores, by Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report  Call a Georgetown law student a slut, and the liberal universe goes into supernova. Destroy Somalia and Libya, or obliterate due process of law, and the same people just yawn. Attorney General Eric Holder “asserts that the president can in fact decide to kill anyone he wants, as long as he claims that person is a terrorist.” Liberals love the guy... Read more... Sanctions, The Islamic Republic Of Iran’s Legitimacy, And America’s Middle East Policy | The Race for Iran Flynt recently made a short video for Penn State’s School of International Affairs, where he holds a faculty appointment, about a range of Iran-related issues.. He discusses the impact of sanctions and other sorts of coercive pressure on Iran, arguing that “we are not going to be able to sanction them, browbeat them, or even bomb them into surrender. We need to be able to come to terms with them.” Doing that starts with “accepting the Iranian revolution, and accepting the political order that came out of it, the Islamic Republic, as an enduring and legitimate political entity, with legitimate national interests.” He explains why this is the only workable basis for “strategically grounded rapprochement” between Washington and Tehran, and elaborates on the nature of the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy... Why Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” is Terrifying Daniel Pipes, by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch ...Pipes’ basis for panic appears straight out of Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart” where Poe’s character committed a savage crime and then was haunted because the evidence of this crime could not be hidden. The victim’s heart kept beating louder and louder and would not stop informing the world of the crime. Try as he might, the evil perpetrator could not get the heart to stop proving the crime and it drove the criminal more deeply into suicidal insanity. In some aspects, Poe’s tell-tale heart appears a microcosm of the 19th Century Zionist colonial crimes which continue to this day in Palestine... Read more... NGOs: Missionaries of Empire, by Devon Douglas-Bowers | Foreign Policy Journal Non-governmental organizations are an increasingly important part of the 21st century international landscape performing a variety of humanitarian tasks pertaining inter alia to issues of poverty, the environment and civil liberties. However, there is a dark side to NGOs. They have been and are currently being used as tools of foreign policy, specifically with the United States. Instead of using purely military force, the US has now moved to using NGOs as tools in its foreign policy implementation, specifically the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and Amnesty International... Read more... Legal Experts Destroy Obama’s Assassination Policy | Alexander Higgins  Attorney General Eric Holder announced at Northwestern University law school that the U.S. can assassinate U.S. citizens without any without disclosure of why they are even alleged to be baddies and without any review of any nature whatsoever by any judge, Congress or the American people... Read more... Terra Moronica: Americans believe Iran has nuclear weapons | CNN ..Friday's release of the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey comes just hours after Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the Islamic republic isn't seeking and doesn't believe in pursuing nuclear weapons. Khamenei was responding to a draft United Nations report that said that Iran may be working to develop a nuclear weapon... [If they wanted to, the Zionists could probably persuade a majority of Americans that the moon is made out of Israeli cottage cheese. This does not bode well for life on this planet.] Read more...IRS Asked to Probe Links Between AIPAC, Weizmann and Secret Israeli Nuclear Weapons | PRNewswire Internal Revenue Commissioner Douglas Shulman is being asked today to examine the tax-exempt status of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science. According to a U.S. Department of Defense study performed by the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has actively engaged in nuclear weapons research. The 1987 IDA study documents Weizmann scientists developed a cutting-edge high energy physics and hydrodynamics program "needed for nuclear bomb design." Weizmann also worked on advanced methods for enriching uranium to weapons-grade through the use of lasers. The U.S. worried that Weizmann's supercomputers, if networked with other American-purchased supercomputers, would be used to reduce the size of warheads enough to fit on Israel's long range missiles... Reciprocity, Lawfare, and Self-Defense: Targeted Killing | Richard Falk There is an emergent Israeli/American controversy on the lawfulness of targeted killing. Although the policy has not yet attained the status of being a national debate, there are signs that it may be about to happen, especially in light of the Attorney General, Eric Holder’s Northwestern Law School speech on March 5, 2012 outlining the Obama’s administration’s controversial approach to targeted killing in some detail. Lisa Hajjar convincingly narrates how the “legalization” of targeted killing has evolved over the course of the last twenty years... Read more... Growing Jewish anti-Christian attacks in Israel | YouTube  It is becoming a common occurrence in Israel to hear about Jews burning churches, spitting on Christian clerics, burning Christian Bibles and intimidating and harassing other Jews who believe in Jesus. Unfortunately this is almost unheard of from the Western media. If it was not for the internet this would be unknown to millions of people around the world. Here I am presenting one example of the rampant discrimination and xenophobia against Christians that exists in the "Jewish state".. How to End Mass Atrocities, by Alex de Waal | NYT Once an abstract obligation, stopping genocide has become a political project. Building on the humanitarian interventionism of the 1990s, a vast anti-genocide movement, largely U.S.-based, is stirring students and movie stars alike. Its figureheads are Gareth Evans, a former Australian foreign minister and the architect of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, and Samantha Power, the author of “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” who is now at the National Security Council. It enjoins “us” — that is, the United States and the United Nations — to lead the response to mass atrocities... [Wouldn’t it be just ducky if (in an alternative universe I suppose) the rest of the world were to go after the major perpetrators of mass atrocities, the USraeli Empire.] Read more...The Bloody Road to Damascus: The Triple Alliance’s War on a Sovereign State, by James Petras | Dissident Voice There is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Assad of Syria is a violent, power grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition. The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and Gulf State and in the mass media, about the ‘killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting injustice’ is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizure of neighborhoods, villages and towns by armed bands, brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs... Read more... Scary Sicarii: Israeli Extrajudicial Executions | Roy Tov State terrorism is a term that has been used to refer to terrorist acts committed by governmental agents or forces. This involves the use of state resources—like its military—to directly perform acts of terrorism. Professor of Political Science Michael Stohl cites Germany’s bombing of London and the US atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. He argues that “the use of terror tactics is common in international relations and the state has been and remains a more likely employer of terrorism within the international system than insurgents." The concept is also used to describe political repressions by governments against their own civilian population with the purpose of inciting fear. For example, taking and executing civilian hostages and extrajudicial killings are commonly considered terrorism, for example during the Communist Red Terror. The Israeli extrajudicial killings are clearly within this category... Read more... Economic Warfare & Strangling Sanctions: Punishing Iran for its “Defiance” of the United States, by Andrew Gavin Marshall | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post  The economic sanctions imposed upon Iran are having the desired effect of punishing the population through hunger and economic strangulation, making life miserable for the many. As tensions increase between the “international community” (the West) and Iran, talk of war is in the air. For years, sanctions have been imposed upon Iran in an attempt to devastate its dependence upon the oil industry for 80% of its revenues. The West seeks ‘regime change,’ and we hear a never-ending proliferation of proclamations from Western leaders about respecting democratic rights and freedom for Iranians, in lambasting the Iranian government for its human rights record, portraying it as a state sponsor of terrorism, and, of course, that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons with a stated goal of wanting to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’.. Read more... Iran and the Bomb | P U L S E An interesting documentary about the history of Iran’s nuclear program. There are some smart and forthright observations by historian Avner Cohen about the real motives that animate Israel’s belligerence toward Iran. Parts of the documentary are somewhat uncritical and treat the highly compromised IAEA as if it were an independent body. In his book Target Iran, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter revealed that IAEA has shared classified information from its inspections inside Iran with the Israelis, who in turn have used it for developing their list of potential bombing targets... A U.S. Senator Remembers: Palling About With Terrorists, by James Abourezk | Counterpunch I shudder when Sarah Palin comes on the television accusing President Obama of palling around with terrorists, mostly I fear that she may, someday, catch up with me to disclose to the public my history of palling around with terrorists. To pre-empt Sarah, I will tell all now... Read more... Israel-US Relations: Blockhead and the Judge? by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich | The Vineyard of the Saker America’s relations with Israel has always been explained by politicians on both sides as ‘friendship’. Today, more than any other time in the course of their ‘friendship’, this relationship brings to mind the story of “Blockhead and the Judge”. According to English folklore, Blockhead complained to the Judge of being annoyed with flies. The Judge granted Blockhead permission to strike them wherever he saw them. Observing a big fly on the judge's nose, Blockhead delivered a powerful blow with his fist, smashing the fly – and the Judge’s nose... Read more... Mar 10, 2012 Miko Peled's 'The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine', by Helena Cobban | Mondoweiss  Miko Peled is a Jewish Israeli, born in 1961 into the heart of the Zionist establishment in Jerusalem... who has traveled a long, long way since then. Three years ago, Miko started work on a memoir of the transformative journey he has taken in the course of his life; and this week, we received the first advance copies of his amazing, intimate, and thought-provoking memoir.. To me, Miko's book has many of the same qualities as My Traitor's Heart -- the gripping memoir by Rian Malan of his journey from being a boy who grew up in the bosom of the Afrikaner elite in South Africa to being someone who took risks to work alongside "Black" South Africans in their struggle for full equality in their country... Read more... GLOBAL MARCH TO JERUSALEM | YouTube ‘Israel to US: I’m off to Iran… You’d better come…!’, by Adrian Salbuchi | RT It seems Israel’s leadership considers that its strategic, military, diplomatic and political ‘window of opportunity’ to make war against Iran is fast closing. Israeli and US leaders seem united in their strategic goal of destroying Iran – as they were in destroying Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan – but they’re also at loggerheads as to which tactical road to tread. The US prefers more economic and diplomatic pressure, coupled with continued covert operations inside Syria until the Assad government collapses and then Iran can be dealt with. Israel favors unilateral all-out military attack against Iran now... Read more... Rim Banna: A Time To Cry | YouTube A lament over Jerusalem... Watch music video... America gone stupid over Iran | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson argues that, as with the war on Iraq in 2003, the USA is drifting towards aggression against Iran propelled not by evidence that Iran is working on a nuclear weapons programme, but by the lies and obsessions of a foreign state, Israel, and its American stooges... Read more... Redefining Our Relationship to A People's Struggle, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle  Hana Shalabi is every Palestinian woman Hana’s story is troublingly typical. She has spent 25 months under what Israel calls ‘administrative detention,” a bizarre legal system that allows Israel to hold Palestinian political activists indefinitely and without charge or trial. She was released in October 2011 as part of the prisoner exchange deal, only to be kidnapped by soldiers in the most degrading fashion a few months later. Hana, like Khader Adnan who had recently ended the longest hunger strike ever staged by a Palestinian prisoner, decided that enough was enough: life without freedom and dignity is a life not worth living. Hundreds of Palestinians, including Hana’s aging father, joined her hunger strike and quest for freedom... Read more... War on Iran: Surrendering to the Lobby? by Ludwig Watzal | Palestine Chronicle Having perceived the hype around the yearly gathering of the Israel Lobby organized by 'The American Israel Public Affairs Committee' (AIPAC) in Washington, D. C., and having listened to President Obama's speech to the AIPAC audience, I was flabbergasted by the twists and turns taken by the leader of the sole “hyper power” to please the well organized bunch of lobbyists who advocate a war of aggression against Iran. Despite knowing better, Obama kowtowed before this propaganda event. Instead of confronting Netanyahu and the Israel Lobbyists head-on with the political consequences of a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran, he gave a lesson in political opportunism and begged for his job... Read more... Palestinian women march in Gaza, West Bank | Maan News Agency Hundreds of women marched in Gaza and the West Bank on Thursday marking International Women's Day with a call for national unity and the release of Hana Shalabi. Women marched from the Square of the Unknown Soldier in Gaza City to the UN headquarters before heading to tents set up in solidarity with Shalabi, who has been on hunger strike in an Israeli prison for 22 days. Carrying Palestinian flags and photos of Shalabi, the women demanded the 29-year-old's freedom and called for an end to the split between Hamas and Fatah. In the West Bank, women rallied at a demonstration in Qalandiya, near Ramallah. Soldiers broke up the rally which was also marking women's day and in solidarity with Shalabi... Read more... Vittorio Arrigoni, a winner | YouTube In the beautiful scenery of Gaza's cemetery, where soldiers of WWI are buried, Vik explains how he would want to be commemorated if he would die (in a hundred years or so). It's true words, from a true winner. You're dreams will live on, we are guarding over them... Watch video... Syria: Game Over for Western Propaganda, by Tony Cartalucci | Prison Planet Why should the West intervene in Syria when it turns out “activists” giving daily body counts, the sole source of “evidence” for the UN’s ever climbing grand total, are caught not only lying, but staging entire interviews complete with fake gunfire directed “off stage?” Why should the US, UK, EU, or the West’s stable of Arab proxy-regimes be allowed to arm Syrian rebels admittedly carrying out their own horrific atrocities? Clearly Syria’s opposition have turned out, just as they have in Libya, to be craven, murderous, and ultimately deceitful extremists – making any further contact with them by the West a direct violation of their own national and international laws... Read more, watch video... The Era of the Creepy-State is Here | Zenpundit  George Orwell was more right than he knew Congress passed a law – by unanimous consent in the Senate and by a suspension of rules in the House – to permit the Federal government to arbitrarily arrest and imprison for up to ten years members of the serf class (formerly known as “American citizens”) whose presence annoys or offends specally designated members of the elite and foreign dignitaries. A list that will no doubt expand greatly in future legislation to include very “special” private citizens... Read more... Imperial Rage for War, by Stephen Lendman | Global Research America ravages the world one country at a time or in multiples. Post-9/11 alone, millions died. Vast destruction was caused. Human misery caused is incalculable. Now Syria and Iran are targeted. Disagreement only is on timing, not intent. Neocon Senator John McCain wants Syria bombed. In spring 2007, on a "Straight Talk" campaign tour stop, he responded to a question singing: "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran," then lied, saying: "Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. That alone should concern us but now they are trying for nuclear capabilities. I totally support the President (Bush) when he says we will not allow Iran to destroy Israel." In 2008, presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton threatened war on Iran, saying:.. Read more... Iraq: Twenty One Years of Crimes Against Humanity, by Felicity Arbuthnot | Global Research With current US-led plans to remodel (read annihilate) the remaining Middle East, the 1991 twenty eight country attack on Iraq’s just 27 million people, where, arguably it all started, has largely dropped from Western consciousness, though certainly not that of Iraqis. As the first wave of missiles erased thirty years of a progress, which had made Iraq a largely modern, prosperous nation - and Cruise missiles rained down from US war ships in the Indian Ocean – on 16th January 1991, President George H.W. Bush told America: “We have no argument with the people of Iraq. Indeed, for the innocents caught in this conflict, we pray for their safety … But even as planes of the multinational forces attack Iraq, I prefer to think of peace, not war.” March, marks the twenty first anniversary of the end of the forty two day, apocalyptic pulverization, in which over eighty million pounds of explosives were dropped. The: “whole country became collateral damage.”.. Read more... After the Russian Elections: No Apocalypse Yet, by Israel Shamir | Counterpunch The anticipated apocalypse did not come to pass. The presidential election in Russia ran its course, Putin was duly elected, and to the great astonishment of the opposition, multimillion crowds demanding the blood of the tyrant did not materialize. Only some 15,000 protesters gathered in central Moscow and dispersed peacefully within two hours. Only a remaining hundred hardcore activists were resolved “to stay until Putin goes” in the frozen city fountain. They were removed by police, charged and released. What a flop!.. Read more... Debunking Anti-Iran Propaganda: The Myth of the "New Holocaust," by Benjamin Schett | Global Research  In a pattern of propaganda now well-established in the mainstream media, fear-mongering against Iran is reaching an all-time peak. A case in point includes ongoing accusations that Iran is in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, despite statements to the contrary from U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta as well as a number of American intelligence officials. In addition, claims that Iran is involved in terrorist activities were released by the Obama administration, fabricating an Iranian conspiracy with the goal to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Most recently, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Iran of having planned terrorist attacks in India, Georgia and Thailand... Read more... Burning of the Book and the Great Game, by Aijaz Zaka Syed | Arab News Are the Americans really that dumb? I mean after spending 11 years in the world’s most dangerous battlefield and dealing with the fiercely proud and famously hot-blooded Afghans you have to be stark, raving mad to be doing what the Americans were found doing last week... Read more... Indian Convoy Starts March towards Jerusalem | Fars News Agency Shri Ram Vilas Paswan congratulated the delegates for their commitment for the cause of Palestine, as it embodied the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, Ram Manohar Lohia and Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar. He stated that this movement would serve to create awareness about the cause of Palestine in India and across the world. The freedom of Palestine he said was interwoven into our very freedom struggle. Shri Paswan finally said that his party would now lead a convoy of Indians to Jerusalem. He also promised to raise the issue in parliament & take up the matter with the government of India... Read more... US Attorney General Eric Holder confirms government has right to murder U.S. citizens anywhere, anytime, without legal review, by J. D. Heyes | Natural News ...the Obama administration - the same one that has rightfully been under increased pressure to explain it's legal position regarding the targeted killing of American citizens, regardless of what they are allegedly planning to do, without affording them a trial. Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's (American Civil Liberties Union) National Security Project, said Holder's comments are flat-out dangerous, and though it was supposedly an attempt by the administration to be more transparent, the speech "is ultimately a defense of the government's chillingly broad claimed authority to conduct targeted killings of civilians, including American citizens.".. Read more... Austrian MP disputes charge of flawed Russia vote | Reuters "I feel like I was not at the same election as the OSCE," said Stefan Schennach, a Social Democrat member of Austria's upper house of parliament and a member of the PACE monitoring committee. "I have to say sorry, it seems to be a politically motivated action. The OSCE probably wrote the report released after the election before the election," he told Reuters. Asked why he thought this, he said: "The OSCE is no boys' choir. It is also political.".. Read more... Dershowitz: from Israel Firster to MEK Firster for the Right Price | Tikun Olam  MEK's $140,000 full-page NY Times ad Alan Dershowitz and his 1% hedge fund manager friends at the Emergency Committee of Israel recently declared war on the Center for American Progress and Media Matters because M.J. Rosenberg has called some of Israel’s American Jewish supporters, “Israel Firsters.” Phil Weiss already pointed out the egregious historical error they’ve made in presuming the term was coined by anti-Semites seeking to highlight Jews’ less than robust commitment to their native country. In fact, the term was first used by Prof. Abram Sachar in a debate with David Ben Gurion, whose views were that Jews around the world owed their primary allegiance to Israel, rather than their home countries... Read more... Netanyahu-Obama Talks Aftermath: Alert in Tel Aviv | Roy Tov “We’ve waited for diplomacy to work. We’ve waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer,” said Netanyahu. There was more than that in Bibi’s disturbing speech. He mentioned the Holocaust as a basis for his government’s policy, essentially comparing Iran to Nazi Germany. “The Jewish state will not allow those seeking our destruction to possess the means to achieve that goal,” he said in a frightening unconditional statement. This was an undated war declaration. Four days after this obnoxious text was uttered, the IDF announced an improved alert system for its Home Front Command and Meir Dagan, former Mossad Director, rushed to extinguish the wild fire lit by Netanyahu... Do Iran's Objections to the IAEA Report Deserve Consideration? by V. Noah Gimbel | Common Dreams Much of the U.S. media, with instigation from hawkish voices in Israel, France, the U.K. and the U.S., has been whipped into an anti-Iran frenzy over the last week surrounding the release of a much-ballyhooed report from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The report, which expresses the Director General’s “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program,” has been dismissed by Iranian leaders as politically biased in favor of the U.S. administration, and lacking in any direct evidence of a weapons program... [It amazes me how cool the Iranians remain in the face of the outrageous belligerence of the USraeli Empire.] Read more...Extremly Rare Palestinian Song | YouTube Atzmon @ Muhammad and Friends TV Show | Gilad Atzmon I was very glad to be invited again to Munir Muhammad's TV Show. We spoke about Iran, America, Freedom, Palestine, Israel, peace & war, The Book of Esther and The Wandering Who... Mar 9, 2012 Responsibility to Protect or justifying the Right to Project Power? by William Bowles | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post  Frankly, it’s not easy defending the Ba’ath regime in Syria, after all not so long ago the Communist Party in Syria and other left groups were suppressed by the ruling Ba’ath Party, its members thrown in jail and even killed. But I make no apology for defending the Assad regime’s right to independence and to resist foreign subversion and an attempted takeover by the Empire under the guise of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’. The doctrine of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, is a stroke of PR genius that originated as the brainchild of a British colonial settler descendent in Australia, Gareth Evans, and a former Labour Party minister... Read more... Washington's Favorite Terrorists: Mujahedin-e Khalq | YouTube MEK is on the verge of getting off the U.S. list of terrorist organizations as a result of a multi-million dollar media & lobbying blitz... [Washington loves a murderous, lunatic cult – at least one that they find useful. What else is new.] Read more...To avoid war with Iran, Obama must change his tone and strike a deal, by Hooshang Amirahmadi and Shahir Shahidsaless | Christian Science Monitor As world powers move toward new talks with Iran, the US must abandon its delusion that the dual track approach – offering simultaneous carrots and sticks – will work with Tehran. It must instead adopt a more pragmatic approach that is sensitive to both the Iranian cultural sentiments and political realities. In particular, the US must appreciate the fact that in Iran, right or wrong, national pride is more important than national interest... Read more... The New Mediterranean Oil and Gas Bonanza, by F. William Engdahl | Global Research  The discovery in late 2010 of the huge natural gas bonanza off Israel’s Mediterranean shores triggered other neighboring countries to look more closely at their own waters. The results revealed that the entire eastern Mediterranean is swimming in huge untapped oil and gas reserves. That discovery is having enormous political, geopolitical as well as economic consequences. It well may have potential military consequences too. Preliminary exploration has confirmed similarly impressive reserves of gas and oil in the waters off Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and potentially, Syria... Read more... Israelis critical of Netanyahu Iran-Holocaust comparison, by Daniel Estrin | Christian Science Monitor Yehuda Bauer, a Holocaust scholar at Israel's national Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, said Netanyahu's Auschwitz analogy in Washington this week was "sheer nonsense." While acknowledging the dangers of a nuclear Iran, Bauer said, "to bring up Auschwitz is a cheap way of gaining public attention." The uproar caused some discomfort even among Netanyahu's supporters... Read more... US and NATO troops train on the Syrian border | RT/YouTube There have been reports of hundreds of American and NATO troops training militants on the Syrian border to overthrow Al-assad's regime. According to a former FBI official this has been going on since May 2011. Why are we not hearing about this on American mainstream media? Sibel Edmonds, president of the National Security Whistle Blowers Coalition, exposes what is going on around Syria... [More background here] Watch video...Kevin Barrett: Why Hate Gilad Atzmon? | Gilad Atzmon  Gilad Atzmon is one of the sweetest, funniest, most charming and likable people I’ve ever met. He’s also one of the world’s best saxophone players. Gilad’s music is not only gorgeous, but uncommonly accessible for music in its class. His writing, which includes two novels, a nonfiction book, and countless essays, is grounded in the highest humanistic ideals, invigorating laughter, and an irrepressible joie de vivre. In short, Gilad is outrageously easy to like. So why is he hated so much?.. Read more... Israel's never-ending Holocaust, by Merav Michaeli | Haaretz The Holocaust is the primary way Israel defines itself. And that definition is narrow and ailing in the extreme, because the Holocaust is remembered only in a very specific way, as are its lessons. It has long been used to justify the existence and the necessity of the state, and has been mentioned in the same breath as proof that the state is under a never-ending existential threat. The Holocaust is the sole prism through which our leadership, followed by society at large, examines every situation. This prism distorts reality and leads inexorably to a forgone conclusion... Read more... benjamin netanyahu 28 years old | YouTube In a remarkable video from 1978, 28 year old MIT grad Benjamin Netanyahu debates whether there should be a Palestinian state created on the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu argues that such a state would have but one goal: to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. He reviews the history from 1948 to 1967, when Gaza was controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan and there were no calls to end the occupation, or for national sovereignty for the Palestinians... Global March to Jersalem | Fars News Agency  ..Our aim is to end the Zionist policies of Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Judaization, which all harm the people, land and sanctity of Jerusalem. Judaization has involved the unrestricted expansion and funding of illegal Israeli settlements, the continued dispossession and demolition of Palestinian property, and the construction of a Separation Wall surrounding the city, all of which have changed the demographics of the holy city from a Palestinian to a Jewish majority. Global participation in the march will confirm to the world that these policies and practices of the racist state of Israel against Jerusalem and its people are a crime not only against Palestinians but against all humanity... Read more... Interview with Lizzie Phelan on imperialism, white supremacy, Libya and Syria | Lizzie Phelan During the hard months of the Libyan war, you were accused by principal western media to be not objective in your reporting and even to be a kind of supporter of Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya. A similar treatment was suffered by other independent journalists like Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya or Thierry Meissan. What did you see exactly in that theatre of conflict and, in your opinion, why do main western media accuse every journalist who tries to report another version of the facts, different from the dominant one in the West?.. Read more... Why Putin is driving Washington nuts, by Pepe Escobar | Asia Times Online Forget the past (Saddam, Osama, Gaddafi) and the present (Assad, Ahmadinejad). A bet can be made over a bottle of Petrus 1989 (the problem is waiting the next six years to collect); for the foreseeable future, Washington's top bogeyman - and also for its rogue North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners and assorted media shills - will be none other than back-to-the-future Russian President Vladimir Putin... Read more... 1981—2012: From Dolphinarium to Joseph’s Tomb | Roy Tov  Joseph’s Tomb, Nablus, 1910 ..Several instances of shootings in the area of the tomb were reported along the years. In order to avoid similar events, the IDF imposed various limitations on the daily amount of Jewish pilgrims allowed to visit the site, with occasional total bans on the visits. As of now, the site is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, but at least one Israeli minister is calling for changes. In late November 2011, Interior Minister Eli Yishai (from the Sephardic-Haredi party Shas) visited the tomb together with 1,500 Jewish worshippers, and said “the tomb belongs to us and we must resume full control.”.. [Well, of course it belongs to you. Didn't Dog give you dominion over all of his creation, including the sub-human goyim?] Read more...US 2012: What role does AIPAC play in US elections? | Al Jazeera English ...what role do pro-Israel lobby groups, and AIPAC in particular, play in the US election and why are they courted by those competing to be the next US president? How do Barack Obama's dealings with Israel compare with those of his predecessors, including Republicans? To discuss these issues presenter Anand Naidoo is joined by John Mearsheimer, the co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy; Larry Greenfield from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; and Hillary Mann Leverett, a former White House and US state department official... Netanyahu, Iran and Purim, by Cyrus Safdari | Iran Affairs Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has reportedly given Obama a book about the biblical Story of Esther. Short version: Esther was a Jewish girl living in ancient (Achaemenid) Persia who married the King and used her influence with him, at the behest of her uncle Mordechai who was also a court official, to expose a plot by the "evil vizir" (yes the standard Orientalist stereotype) Haman to massacre the Jews, so the Jews used Esther's influence to obtain the royal OK to carry out a "pre-emptive" massacre of people across the empire, going far beyond Haman's many sons... [Plus ca change, plus la meme chose] Read more...An album by international artists to benefit the GLOBAL MARCH TO JERUSALEM – NORTH AMERICA | Gilad Atzmon  The GMJ-NA is an independent and autonomous coalition of North American Groups planning to join the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ), a groundbreaking new initiative that is organizing peaceful mass demonstrations on Land Day, 30th March 2012, in Palestine and the four neighboring countries: Egypt, Lebanon Jordan and Syria. Large non-violent solidarity protests will also be held in major cities around the world. “Jerusalem for Us All” includes a diverse mix of hip hop, jazz, rock, folk, and a variety of classical cultural traditions:.. Read more... Singular Legal Regime Necessitates One-State Solution, by Noura Erakat | Jadaliyya ...I thought it useful to share the legal dimensions that demonstrate Israel’s discriminatory system both within its putative borders and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) as a singular Apartheid regime. The unitary nature of this legal system at once triggers proper legal remedies in international law and underscores the pragmatic thrust of the one-state solution... Read more... A Mad, Mad, Mad World: Imperial Death Mongers, by Joe Giambrone | Counterpunch So much for Pax Americana. We’ve had endless war as long as memory serves and now the big one: Iran and possibly World War 3. With Vladimir Putin’s decisive victory in Russia, the west had best heed Putin’s dire warnings concerning further escalation of the imperial aggression on Russia’s southern borders. The Russians are not happy with the way US policy is unfolding, and it appears the roll-up in Iraq was simply to help prepare the US military for an assault on its neighbor Iran... Read more... The Ayatollah Is Right About One Thing: Nuclear Weapons Are Sinful, by Robert Scheer | Truthdig  Given my own deep prejudice toward religious zealotry, it has not been difficult for me to accept the conventional American view that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme theocratic ruler of Iran, is a dangerous madman never to be trusted with a nuclear weapon. How then to explain his recent seemingly logical and humane religious proclamations on the immorality of nuclear weapons?.. Read more... The Absurdity of US/Israeli Relations, by Thomas H. Naylor | Counterpunch “We are you, and you are us,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrogantly proclaimed to President Barack Obama in the White House recently. How is it possible that Israel, a tiny country with only eight million people, can have so much influence over the foreign policy of the most powerful empire of all-time? Yet Israel played a major role in shaping the war on terror against Islam, the war with Afghanistan, two wars with Iraq, and the annihilation of Libya by NATO. And now Israel is aggressively doing everything within its power to provoke a war between the United States and Iran – a war which could quite easily precipitate World War III... Read more... Why America should stay out of Syria, by Daniel Larison | The Week ...long gone are the pretensions that intervening in Syria would have anything to do with protecting the civilian population. Now it is justified purely in terms of rolling back Iranian influence and repaying Assad for allowing militants to enter Iraq during the U.S. occupation... Read more... Mar 8, 2012  Netanyahu Calls the Shots, by Philip Giraldi | The American Conservative There are several things missing from the march to war that we are seeing playing out at AIPAC this week. First is the complete absence of any casus belli. Media and political rhetoric aside, Iran has threatened neither Israel nor the United States and the intelligence agencies of both countries agree that Tehran has not made the decision to construct a nuclear weapon (if it indeed has the ability and resources to do so). Second is the “security threat” to the United States coming from Iran, cited by President Obama. What exactly is it and how does Iran, a backward country with an ailing economy and a military unable to project its power beyond its own borders threaten the US? How can it possibly endanger the United States to such an extent that a war which can have catastrophic economic and political consequences might be justified?.. Read more... U.S. Military Aid to Israel: Policy Implications & Options, by Josh Ruebner | US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation Obama Plays Dangerous Game, Offers Israel Bunker Busters Needed for Iran Attack | Tikun Olam Barack Obama is playing a very dangerous game regarding Iran. He speaks to Israeli leaders like Bibi Netanyahu and his pro-Israel supporters in Aipac like an Iran hawk, placating them with suitably hawkish rhetoric. While the very next day, he tells a White House press conference those who lobby for war that “this is not a game.” He added, in a deliberate rebuff both to the Republican right and Netanyahu himself, that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon and isn’t likely to get one for some time... Read more... Doing Biden’s Bidding, by Laura Carlsen | CIP Americas Vice President Joe Biden landed in Mexico City last night and he’s left little doubt about his mission—to lock in the regional drug war. His visit comes at a time of mounting calls to end prohibitionist laws and the drug war model. His message is that the administration that presides over the nation with the largest illegal drug market in the world and actively funds a global war to enforce ineffective prohibition policies will not consider any form of legalization. But it supports“dialogue.”.. Read more... MKO helps Israeli agents in covert war with Iran: Ex-member | PressTV  Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) is termed as a terrorist organization under the US law A former top commander of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) says the organization has close ties with Israeli operatives, helping them in their covert operations against Iran. In a telephone interview with Israel’s Maariv radio on March 5, Massoud Khodabandeh noted that it was no surprise to hear about the role of the MKO terrorists in assassinating Iran's nuclear scientists... Read more... Stratfor leaks: NATO commandos in illegal special ops in Syria | RT Undercover NATO troops are already in Syria despite denials from their parent governments, according to a leaked brief from a highly-placed analyst. The information comes from a hacked email from leading private US intelligence agency Stratfor, whose correspondence has been released by Wikileaks since February 27. The email appears to be written from the address of Reva Bhalla, the company’s director of analysis, for internal use, and details a confidential Pentagon meeting in December. The consultation is alleged to have been attended by senior analysts from the US Air Force, and representatives from its chief allies, France and the United Kingdom... The Iran Non-Debate, by Peter Hart | FAIR Blog Glenn Greenwald wrote recently of the extraordinarily limited media debate on Iran, which seems to consist of U.S. and Israeli officials making threats--attack now or attack later--alongside clinical discussions of the difficulties of bombing Iran. There is plenty missing--actual Iranians talking about what war would mean in human terms, legal experts discussing how preventive war (or even the threat of one) violates international law, and so on... [Re the editorial in the NYT, it might be helpful to remind people that the paper has been a Zionist mouthpiece for many decades. “The New York Times is owned by The New York Times Company, which also publishes 18 other newspapers including the International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe. The company's chairman is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., whose family has controlled the paper since 1896.” (Wikipedia). Enough said.] Read more...U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center Leader’s Handbook on Unconventional Warfare | Public Intelligence The following manual was originally published on the Army’s own website approximately two years ago. It has since been removed. The handbook provides an excellent overview of the U.S. Government’s history of funding and facilitating violent insurgencies around the world by waging “unconventional warfare.” The handbook should be read alongside the U.S. Army’s Special Forces Unconventional Warfare Manual... Read more... China: Rise, Fall and Re-Emergence as a Global Power, by Prof. James Petras | Global Research The study of world power has been blighted by Eurocentric historians who have distorted and ignored the dominant role China played in the world economy between 1100 and 1800. John Hobson’s brilliant historical survey of the world economy during this period provides an abundance of empirical data making the case for China ’s economic and technological superiority over Western civilization for the better part of a millennium prior to its conquest and decline in the 19th century. China ’s re-emergence as a world economic power raises important questions about what we can learn from its previous rise and fall and about the external and internal threats confronting this emerging economic superpower for the immediate future... Read more... Obama, Netanyahu & Esther | deLiberation  Gilad Atzmon Chavez gives Obama the manual on Jewish Identity Politics The Biblical Book of Esther that was given to President Obama by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday was far from being a cryptic message. The Book of Esther is a genocidal recipe. It is there to educate Jews how to infiltrate into foreign administrations... Read more... The Dirty Truth About Israel | YouTube An excellent short history of the Jewish State... Declassified FBI Files: Mossad Chief Set AIPAC Founder's First Public Relations Priorities | PRNewswire/Bradenton Herald Today Declassified FBI files reveal details of the founder of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) early coordination with the head of Mossad and the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs. The 198-page file, released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, is now on the Internet... Mossad, CIA and Blackwater operate in Syria | RT A security operation in Homs reveals Mossad, CIA and Blackwater are involved in the military violence in this part of Syria, as over 700 Arab and Western gunmen and Israeli, American and European-made weapons were detained in Baba Amr district. Syrian security forces got yet further proof of Western powers’ military involvement in Syria’s internal conflict, reports Al-Manar, a news agency, affiliated with Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group and political party... Read more... Israel, Iran and America: Auschwitz complex | The Economist ...Israel has even less control over its own destiny than Portugal or Britain do. The main reason is that, unlike those countries, Israel refuses to give up its empire. Israel is unable to sustain its imperial ambitions in the West Bank, or even to articulate them coherently. Having allowed its founding ideology to carry it relentlessly and unthinkingly into what Gershom Gorenburg calls an "Accidental Empire" of radical religious-nationalist settlements that openly defy its own courts, Israel is politically incapable of extricating itself. The partisan battles engendered by its occupation of Palestinian territory render it less and less able to pull itself free. It is immobilised, pinned down, in a conflict that is gradually killing it... [We can only hope that Israel’s inevitable demise will come soon and not be at the expense of millions of innocent people.] Read more...The superficial, and the profound | Xymphora  Kaukab Al Dayah, slaughtered by Zionism ...The genius of modern Zionism, and the reason it has been so hard to eradicate, is that it finds ways to hide in those areas of group behavior that are impossible to criticize in modern liberal discourse. It is impermissible to even hint that someone might be conspiring to act as part of a group for group supremacist ends. It is the Jews, relying on Nazi treatment of the Jews as the exemplar, who have made this kind of criticism improper. Since such criticism is impossible - and is generally called 'anti-Semitism' - we are helpless when faced with an extremely powerful and rich group (and by the way, I think such criticism is proper when used on behalf of a powerless group, which the Jews clearly are not), bent on violent group supremacist ends. Stop them? We can't even talk about them! I find it hilarious that you can't discuss this stuff even during AIPAC Dominance Week... [Well said. I have long been frustrated by a number of “anti-zionists” and One State advocates who are caught in this cognitive trap. And I watched how, starting in the 70’s, post-modernism and political correctness were nurtured by Jewish academics, following the siren song of “If it’s good for the Jews...” They would, no doubt in all innocence, consistently prostitute their intellectual integrity in this way.] Read more...The India-Iran tunnel, by Vijay Prashad | Asia Times Online On March 4, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad received the Indian Minister for New and Renewable Energies, Farooq Abdullah. The public agenda for their conversation was straightforward. Ahmadinejad pointed out that Iran raises "no restriction in expanding comprehensive ties including trade, joint investment, scientific, cultural and tourism with India". Abdullah concurred, saying, "The Indian government seeks an expansion of cooperation in all fields." The tenor of the meeting suggests a buoyancy in relations between India and Iran... Read more... Ritual Defamation: A Contemporary Academic Example, by Daniel McGowan | Inconvenient History The term ritual defamation was coined by Laird Wilcox to describe the destruction of the reputation of a person by unfair, wrongful, or malicious speech or publication. The defamation is in retaliation for opinions expressed by the victim, with the intention of silencing that person’s influence, and making an example of him so as to discourage similar "insensitivity" to subjects currently ruled as taboo. It is aggressive, organized and skillfully applied, often by a representative of a special interest group, such as, ironically, the Anti-Defamation League... Read more... The Palestinians as an "Invented People" by Rich Siegel | Inconvenient History The name “Palestine” has been around for a long time. “Peleset”, transliterated from Egyptian hieroglyphics as “P-l-s-t”, is found in numerous Egyptian documents referring to a neighboring people or land starting from around 1150 BC. The “Philistine” States existed concurrently with the ancient Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, making up the coastal plain below Jaffa and south to Gaza. In the 5th Century BC Herodutus wrote of a “district of Syria, called Palestine”. About a century later, Aristotle described the Dead Sea in Meteorology and located it in Palestine... Read more... Nuclear Duck: Bibi Netanyahu, Daffy Duck & Duck Sauce | Gilad Atzmon With AIPAC dominating American foreign policy and pushing for a global war, only divine intervention can save us now... Read more... Vietnamizing Israel | Roy Tov  Executing Vietcong Prisoner Nguyen Van Lem Most history books claim the Cold War ended. There are two false statements in their odd claim. First, the Cold War was far from being cold; The Vietnam War was part of this long conflict. During the latter, humanity witnessed some of the worst war crimes ever. Then, it is a clearly unfinished war. In general terms, the Cold War (1945–1991) was a continuing state of tension between the Western world, led by the United States, and the Communist world, led by the USSR. The USSR was dismantled, but the USA is still running amok around the world, vandalizing any profitable target... Flying into Tel Aviv? Then it’s “Welcome to Palestine!” | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood explains why people of conscience, principle and respect for justice and the truth will always see Palestine as Palestine and will not forget that what is known as “Israel” is an extraneous implant build on the blood and ruins of a nation... Read more... Barack Obama prostrates himself before America’s Israel lobby | Redress Information & Analysis Jamal Kanj argues that Binyamin Netanyahu’s and Ariel Sharon’s ominous assertions that Israel controls the US were demonstrated once again this week by Barack Obama’s humiliating pledges of loyalty to Israel in a speech to America’s leading pro-Israel lobby and in a magazine interview... Read more... ‘Syria Danny’ Caught Staging CNN War Propaganda Stunt, by Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars Astounding footage has emerged of ‘Syria Danny’ – the dubious “activist” who appears on mainstream news every week begging for a US or Israeli military invasion – in which he apparently coordinates gunfire and explosions to be staged during his interview with CNN... The free people of world marching towards you | YouTube Official song of global march to Jerusalem... World VIPs unite for GMJ | Global March To Jerusalem  ...the entire world is now witnessing a threat to the sovereignty, sanctity and inviolability of Jerusalem. The plan is not only to destroy the Muslim and Christian presence, but also to change and dismantle the social structure of Jerusalem, obliterating its indigenous Arab identity and changing the character of the city. The people of the world have therefore taken it upon themselves to prevent this abomination, by mobilizing themselves in every part of the world and representing all religious, humanitarian, and cultural backgrounds in a global march to Jerusalem (GMJ) aimed at guarding the City of Peace from becoming a wasteland of intolerance... Read more... Apartheid is a crime, not an analogy, by Joe Catron | Maan News Agency As Israeli Apartheid Week unfolds around the world, apologists for Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people scramble to defend their chosen regime's system of racism, ethnic cleansing, and occupation, against the charge of apartheid.. After visiting Palestine in 2006, Willie Madisha, former president of South Africa’s Congress of South African Trade Unions, commented: "The horrendous dehumanization of Black South Africans during the erstwhile Apartheid years is a Sunday picnic, compared with what I saw and what I know is happening to the Palestinian people." Following his own 2004 visit, South African activist Arun Gandhi agreed: "When I come here and see the situation here, I find that what is happening here is ten times worse than what I had experienced in South Africa. This is Apartheid.".. Read more... Media Mayhem Creates National Disaster, by Stewart Ogilby | Veterans Today Clever criminals have gained control of America’s media. Political propaganda and deliberately misleading messages are constantly being fed to the public. Television has become the primary instrument for promoting aggressive wars that result in the murders and sufferings of millions of men, women, and children throughout the world. This horror is now glibly referred to on TV as “collateral damage”. Attractive well-dressed actors and announcers are paid to read from monitors and to say what TV bosses demand. These “media whores” are accessories to murder by promoting warmongers, criminals who pay others to murder that they may monopolize the world’s wealth. Their bosses are not creators. They are humanity’s parasites... Read more... Typhus and the Jews, by Friedrich Paul Berg | Nazi Gassings In my article about the German delousing chambers in the Spring 1985 issue of the Journal for Historical Review, I included a brief discussion of the large, well-designed gas chambers which were used to fumigate entire railroad trains, one or more railroad cars at a time, with Zyklon-B. Those chambers would have been ideal for the mass- extermination of people if the Germans had ever intended to commit mass-extermination of Jews or anyone else... [The Holycause is a religion that mixes fact and fantasy in equal proportions, which it then preaches as an infallible dogma. Laws against any rational, historiological, scientific investigation of these claims, as are in effect in a dozen European countries, are necessary to prevent the exposure of the fraud.] Read more...Politics of Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, by Javid Husain | The Nation Washington views Iran as a major obstacle, indeed a threat, to the realisation of its strategic objectives in the Middle East, especially the Persian Gulf region. The control over the oil and gas resources of the Persian Gulf region is a major US strategic objective, the other being the security of Israel as an ally and an outpost of the West in the region. Obviously, the US wants pliant states in the Persian Gulf region for safeguarding its interests. The attitude of defiance exhibited by Iran towards the US, since the advent of the Islamic Revolution, set in motion a process that has resulted in the prevailing enmity between the two countries... Read more... Mar 7, 2012 How Tony Judt broke with exclusivist ideology, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss  ...Zionism, for example, they treated as a moment and movement in Jewish thought and gave it its full historical due. It was also Tony’s own first disappointed political love, and he returns over and again to the ways in which his total—deeply ideological—commitment to the Zionist cause as a young man (after he joined a kibbutz and volunteered as a translator for the Six-Day War) and his subsequent disenchantment had allowed him “to identify the same fanaticism and myopic, exclusivist tunnel vision in others.” That phase of his life gave him a kind of historical empathy for the often disastrous ideological certainties of the twentieth century that he then set out to describe and analyze... [Be sure to read Tony’s seminal piece “Israel: The Alternative," which gave me a sense of confirmation and certainty soon after I started my first One State website.] Read more...One state for Palestinians and Israelis, by Ahmed Moor | The Washington Post For decades the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has eluded well-intentioned peacemakers. Diplomats have talked, shaken hands, snapped photos — and returned home from summits with strikingly little to show for their efforts. Meanwhile, the occupation of Palestinian territories grew more restrictive. Israel’s settlements developed into towns and small cities as Palestinians were penned into smaller and smaller spaces. While diplomats shuffled from Madrid to Oslo to Wye River, from Camp David to Taba to Annapolis and resort towns in between, the illegal settlements expanded. And the window for two states closed... Read more... Syria and “Conspiracy Theories”: It is a Conspiracy, by Felicity Arbuthnot | Global Research ...“The term ‘New Middle East’, was introduced to the world in June 2006, in Tel Aviv, by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East’,“ he wrote. Sanity dictated that this would be a U.S. fantasy rampage too far and vast – until realization hit that the author of the map of this New World, planned in the New World’s “New World Order”, was Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, who, in one of the most terrifying articles ever published, wrote in 1997:.. Read more... NGOs: The Missionaries of Empire, by Devon DB | Global Research Non-governmental organizations are an increasingly important part of the 21st century international lanscape performing a variety of humanitarian tasks pertaining inter alia to issues of poverty, the environment and civil libertites.However, there is a dark side to NGOs. They have been and are currently being used as tools of foreign policy, specifically with the United States. Instead of using purely military force, the US has now moved to using NGOs as tools in its foreign policy implementation, specifically the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and Amnesty International... [The most vivid account of NGO's in their foreign fiefdoms was written by the great travel writer, Paul Theroux, in his Dark Star Safari - a must read.] Read more...Harvard's 'one-state' conference spurs 'National Review Online' call to transfer Palestinians out of Jewish state, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss  Alan Dershowitz ...One of the fascinations of my latest trip to Israel/Palestine was seeing how Palestinians have given up on the two-state solution because Israel has destroyed the possibility and the U.N. has pocket-vetoed Palestinian statehood, and people who are sick of occupation are desperately looking around for other ideas (including, inevitably, armed resistance)... Read more... Weaponizing the Body Politic: How to Fund an American Police State, by Stephan Salisbury | TomDispatch At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of “shock and awe” had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, California. American police forces had been “militarized,” many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere. There should have been no surprise. Those flash grenades exploding in Oakland and the sound cannons on New York’s streets simply opened small windows onto a national policing landscape long in the process of militarization - a bleak domestic no man’s land marked by tanks and drones, robot bomb detectors, grenade launchers, tazers, and most of all, interlinked video surveillance cameras and information databases growing quietly on unobtrusive server farms everywhere... Read more... The incredible hijacking of the word Freedom, by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey | English Pravda ...There are certain soundbites that bite deep into the collective conscience of humanity, words and catch-phrases which light up hearts in the darkest depths of despair and the word Freedom, carefully nurtured and shaped into our collective conscience by a biased and brainwashing media, is one of them. Freedom is a word which is today much used in the corridors of London and Washington, as they gear up for war with Iran and try desperately to explore all the avenues they can to launch a savage and murderous attack against the people of Syria, now that their terrorists have failed to make their mark... Read more... Israeli Banks Profiteering from Occupation | Stephen Lendman Israeli banks profiteer several ways discussed below, but make no mistake. Like in the West, they're predators, especially in Occupied Palestine, permitted to steal and exploit because what say have occupied people. As a result, banks (construction companies, and other commercial enterprises) breach international law as participants in illegal projects, a lucrative profit center they freely exploit... Read more... India Strikes Israel Military Industries | Roy Tov  ...An image of Ariel Sharon scattering petals at Mahatma Gandhi’s tomb—irony’s epitome—is not attractive enough for a public that grew up on violent video games. Today, March 6, 2012, Ehud Barak—Israel’s Defense Minister—got bad news. India’s Defense Ministry barred Israel Military Industries from bidding on defense contracts for 10 years. This follows the collapse of the Israel-Turkey alliance. The ongoing failure of the Iron Dome missile shield system may result in the damaging of the Israel-Singapore alliance. Is Israel losing its Asian allies?.. [Now, this is news! Any bets on how the mainstream (aka Zionist) media will cover this, if at all? I'll lay 10:1 it makes the headlines in the Israeli press, but nada in the US.] Read more...Bombing Osirak, Burying UN Resolution 487: An Exchange With The BBC’s Jonathan Marcus | Media Lens On June 7, 1981, eight Israeli aircraft bombed the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor ten miles southeast of Baghdad. Ten Iraqis and one French civilian were killed... In response to the attack, UN Security Council Resolution 487 was passed 15-0, on June 19, 1981, with no-one opposing and no-one abstaining - not even the United States. It is worth quoting the Resolution at some length:.. [Hats off to Media Lens for being so faithful to their self-imposed mission: exposing the biased and perverted journalism of the MSM, particularly the BBC. May they continue to be a “threat” to the powers that be.] Read more...Bibi’s Declaration of War (on Iran), by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam After reading Bibi Netanyahu’s profoundly delusional and mendacious AIPAC speech from earlier today, I’m left with two impressions: the most important one is that Israel will attack Iran. His remarks read like a declaration of war... Read more... U.S. support for attacking Iran would be illegal, by Bruce Ackerman | LA Times Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington has provoked a broad debate over the military and political wisdom of an attack on Iran. But so far, there has been little attention to the legal issues involved, which are crucial. American support for a preemptive strike would be a violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution... [At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst ~ Aristotle] Read more...Palestine matters, by Stuart Rees | Australians for Palestine  Remind you of anything? ...After recently spending two weeks on the West Bank, in Gaza and in Israel, how do I summarise the killings, discrimination, demolition of homes and imprisonment of a whole people? How can stories be told without them being stifled by charges of anti-Semitism, by arguments that other international crises merit more attention, or by claims that I’m not being fair to countries such as the USA and Australia which give humanitarian aid to Palestine, but remain complicit in the destruction of Palestinian lives, lands and identity?... Read more... Purim 2012: Kill the “Anti-Semites”, by Michael Hoffman | On the Contrary On Purim 1994 Brooklyn-born Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 40 Palestinians while they prayed in Hebron. On Purim 2003 the U.S. invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq, officially to eliminate illicit weapons of mass destruction but in reality to neutralize a possible Iraqi threat to the Israeli government.. In the run-up to Purim 2012, which begins on Wednesday evening March 7, Senator John McCain has called for a deficit-ridden America to undertake a multi-million dollar bombing of Syria, while Senator Joseph Lieberman, speaking at the Israeli lobby’s AIPAC conference, demanded a U.S. attack on Iran if the government of that Persian nation will not stop its non-existent nuclear weapons program. The German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel observed that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history... Read more... Jim Fetzer: "The Problem Is Not Iran, the Problem Is Israel" | Revolutionary Politics Obama, AIPAC And The Rest of US, by Gilad Atzmon | deLiberation Yesterday at the AIPAC annual conference, the American president had to go out of his way to appease his Jewish crowd. He used every trick in the book, he even peppered his talk with some Yiddish sporadic words and he did it all just to justify his decision not to launch a World War as yet. One should ask, how come a lobby of a small state that practices the most appalling racist expansionist politics and practices has managed to gain so much political power in the USA... Read more... John Robles interviews Rick Rozoff: Time for Russia and the world to draw a line with U.S. and NATO | Stop NATO ...If NATO continues to aggressively assert itself as a self-proclaimed international security provider, to use the euphemism it’s fond of using, which is to say a military alliance willing and able to intervene in the internal affairs of other nations with military means at its discretion, then Russia is going to have to draw a line and the world is going to have to draw a line... [To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. ~ Publius Cornelius Tacitus, De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae, XXX] Read more...The Anti-Atzmon Defamation League (ADL), by Dr. June Terpstra | Bellaciao  Recently, a group calling themselves progressives sponsored an open letter in The Monthly Review (MR) opposing sponsorship of events featuring author-musician Gilad Atzmon... This OpEd is written to assist them and readers generally, in recognizing moral imperialism and the cognitive dysfunction by decoding the behaviors displayed in their listserves, newsgroups and “Open Letter”. Instead of defamation this “league” could go out and do some concrete work amongst those who perpetrate Israeli oppression instead of collaborating with the oppressors by obstructing the efforts of Gilad Atzmon to address the real needs of the oppressed Arabs being killed, tortured and imprisoned by the Israeli entity and its imperialist allies... Read more... Making Israel the issue, by Cyrus Safdari | Iran Affairs ...the more people learn about Israel's role in pushing for a war on Iran, as well as the damage that uncritical US-backing of Israel has done to US national interests, the more isolated the lobby becomes, and the greater the popular backlash becomes, unless the lobby does something to contain this. They, and Netanyahu, have tried very hard to portray Iran as a danger to the US itself, rather than to Israel, and thus try to reframe their conflict with Iran as a US conflict with Iran. But as more Americans learn about Israel, the less likely they are to see Iran as the US's problem... Read more... The 1988 'Holocaust' Testimony Of Joseph Burg, by Ingrid Rimland | Rense ...In his books, Burg dealt with the subject of the alleged Nazi extermination camps. Burg had spoken to hundreds of people who had been in Auschwitz and had visited the camp in the fall of 1945. Burg had wanted to see the crematoria, the hospitals, and in particular, a large new bakery. He also wanted to find the gas chambers although at that time gassings were not yet in fashion. He did not find any gas chambers. Burg formed the opinion that there were no "extermination" camps at all, that gas chambers had never existed and that there had been no plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe... [I totally agree, but here we have it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.] Read more...AIPAC Works for the 1 Percent, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig  The battle for justice in the Middle East is our battle. It is part of the vast, global battle against the 1 percent. It is about living rather than dying. It is about communicating rather than killing. It is about love rather than hate. It is part of the great battle against the corporate forces of death that reign over us—the fossil fuel industry, the weapons manufacturers, the security and surveillance state, the speculators on Wall Street, the oligarchic elites who assault our poor, our working men and women, our children, one in four of whom depend on food stamps to eat, the elites who are destroying our ecosystem with its trees, its air and its water and throwing into doubt our survival as a species... Read more... US to Attempt Overthrow of Putin Government, by Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer ...The intended purpose of the US State Department is to maintain communications and formal relations with foreign countries - not project American hegemony around the globe. Meddling and subverting a sovereign nation is an act of war, and the potential conflict America's ruling elite threaten to trigger will be one paid for by the American people, not the corporate-fascists on Wall Street, or their proxies in Washington... Read more... Obama’s Deal With Netanyahu: Iran Must Surrender Its Civilian Nuclear Program, But Military Action Needs To Wait | The Race for Iran Hillary was interviewed by Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio today.. to discuss Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington and the various public statements, by Netanyahu and President Obama associated with the visit. The Obama Administration congratulated itself over not letting Netanyahu tie it to a specific red line for Iranian nuclear development, short of building an actual weapon, which Obama would “enforce” with American military power. But Hillary points out that Obama has let Netanyahu push him into a more dangerous position–namely, that unless the Iranians surrender their current nuclear program (which they won’t), Obama may now be on the hook to use American military power against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear infrastructure. All after November 2012, of course... Never mind Johnny Rotten, real punks boycott Israel, by Alexander Billet | The Electronic Intifada ...Like it or not, the former Rotten is considered a granddaddy of punk rock. It’s not far fetched to imagine someone reading his words and thinking his flagrant racism, his willful defense of an apartheid state, are somehow the punk norm. It’s for this reason that Punks Against Apartheid exists... Read more... Mar 6, 2012 Honoring Evil: Boulevard named after Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi| Roy Tov  Gabi Ashkenazi and Bodyguard General Terror can’t walk alone The banality of evil: evil acts are often perpetrated by “mild-mannered individuals who believe that business is business.” The banality of evil: mild acts aimed at commemorating true evil. Inaugurating a street named after the general that allowed the assassination of grannies, mothers and children by cowardly snipers hidden in the distance. The banality of evil: in-office manipulation for the promotion of an accomplice in the crimes. General Ashkenazi, not even by Israeli standards are you an honorable man. Yet, you are being oddly honored. Few get a street named after them while still breathing. By doing so, the Israeli society has a message for the world. It is proclaiming that it shares your values, and as such it has rightfully acquired the UN ruling as a “terror inflicting society.”.. Read more... Israel, Democracy and the Arabs, by Stuart Reigeluth and Julian Memetaj | The Palestine Chronicle The prolongation of the Arab-Israeli conflict is all about the illegal occupation, expropriation, colonization, and annexation of Arab territory by Israel. And beneath the armor of the Israeli military machine is the systematic exclusion of the Other — the Arabs. Jewish Israelis are xenophobic towards Arabs not so much because they fear them as an existential military threat, as Likud and Labour are prone to repeat, but rather because of the intrinsic demographic threat they present to the national identity of a Jewish State... Read more... Jewish activist disrupts AIPAC breakout session, by Roee Ruttenberg | +972 Liza Behrendt, a 22-year old Jewish-American activist, accused the American pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC and its supporting organizations of stifling debate on Israel and particularly on settlements... Obama’s Red Line, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar “We’ve got Israel’s back” – that is the message President Obama sent out ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the US for a crucial summit at the White House, and he did it in an interview granted to one of the leading pro-Israel voices in the media, Jeffrey Goldberg, former Israeli prison guard and IDF soldier, now a columnist for The Atlantic. In that interview, Obama basically telegraphed his capitulation to the Israelis, who are demanding the establishment of “red lines” Iran may not cross without provoking an attack:.. Read more... An Israeli attack against Iran would backfire — just like Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq, by Colin H. Kahl | The Washington Post ...By demonstrating Iraq’s vulnerability, the attack on Osirak actually increased Hussein’s determination to develop a nuclear deterrent and provided Iraq’s scientists an opportunity to better organize the program. The Iraqi leader devoted significantly more resources toward pursuing nuclear weapons after the Israeli assault. As Reiter notes, “the Iraqi nuclear program increased from a program of 400 scientists and $400 million to one of 7,000 scientists and $10 billion.” Iraq’s nuclear efforts also went underground. Hussein allowed the IAEA to verify Osirak’s destruction, but then he shifted from a plutonium strategy to a more dispersed and ambitious uranium-enrichment strategy... Read more... Ignore the intelligence reports, let’s make war on Iran, by Stuart Littlewood | The Palestine Chronicle  Obama sure does cut a sad figure these days The international community, including the US and the EU, says it is committed to a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the Middle East. The only impediment, of course, is Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, which menace the whole region and perhaps beyond. Some experts believe that Israel has around 400 nuclear warheads and, naturally, various means of delivering them. Iran has none. Iran’s nuclear facilities are open to IAEA inspection; Israel’s are not... Read more... Why Bombing Iran Would Mean Invading Iran, by Robert Wright | The Atlantic ...Even if air strikes don't draw us into an instant conflagration, they could drag us into a long-term conflict with Iran that winds up with American boots on the ground. In fact, when you think about the military and political logic of the situation, the invasion and occupation of Iran is the most likely long-term outcome of bombing regardless of what happens in the short term... Read more... Israelis rejoice at the death of Palestinian children in bus accident | Redress Information & Analysis Paul J. Balles considers the mentality of Israelis who openly rejoiced at the death of nine Palestinian kindergarten children and one adult in a bus accident in February... [The evil that characterizes Israel is a palpable threat to all living things. In the interest of mere self-preservation it is imperative for humanity to terminate the criminal state of Israel.] Read more...Putin Did Win: The Fraud Allegations Make No Sense | Moon of Alabama The western media is again alleging election fraud by the leading party in Russia. It also did so in December after the elections for the Russian Duma, the parliament. But those allegations made no sense at all:.. Read more... How Avaaz Is Sponsoring Fake War Propaganda From Syria | Moon of Alabama There are fake video reports coming out of Syria and we have good reason to believe that these are at least sponsored by the U.S. Avaaz foundation... Read more... Is the Angry Arab an Anti-Racist Racist? | deLiberation  In the last few days, to our great surprise, we became aware that Angry Abu Khalil is constantly engaged in racially driven theories and his terminology is openly racist. Khalil refers to and interprets people according to the colours of their skin. He is clearly obsessed with White Men and White Europeans . The Angry Abu Khalil web site is saturated with racist remarks and biologically determinist statements... Read more... BBC loses its “impartiality” yet again over the west-Iran standoff, by Abbas Khani | Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran | Campaign Iran Is the BBC really aligned with warmongers? Will it continue to play the same role it played in months leading to the invasion of Iraq? Many of the BBC’s reports and programmes containing a reference to Iran alarmingly support this assumption. While the BBC claims impartiality since the end of World War II, it is trotting a very delicate line of deliberate bias in many different and usually complex ways. This bias becomes more visible in matters of international affairs compared to domestic politics. Many believe that the difference between the BBC and other corporate media is that the BBC’s manipulation of the public’s mind is more sophisticated in that it is more subtle and implicit and therefore more effective... Read more... Musical Interlude: Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son | YouTube According to Einstein, doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results is a description of insanity... Musical Interlude: Corrigan Fest - Celtic furor against war | YouTube It's just a matter of time before U.S. tires of Israel, by Gideon Levy | Haaretz ..A new chapter is being written in the history of nations. Never before has a small country dictated to a superpower; never before has the chirp of the cricket sounded like a roar; never has the elephant resembled the ant - and vice versa. No Roman province dared tell Julius Caesar what to do, no tribe ever dreamed of forcing Genghis Khan to act in accordance with its own tribal interests. Only Israel does this. On Monday, when Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House, it will be hard to tell which one is the real leader of the world... Read more... Mar 5, 2012 Iran in the Crosshairs of a Ruthless Gang of Serial Killers  Obama, Netanyahu Focus on Iran, Ignore Peace Process, by John Glaser | Antiwar ...In diplomatic overtures only a year ago, the prime issue at hand between the two leaders was the Israeli Palestinian issue, but the Iran issue has completely crowded out any focus on it this year. Many see this as inappropriate, given that many people suffer as a result of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, whereas the Iran issue is largely manufactured... Read more... The incomplete media debate on Iran, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon On January 25, the New York Times Sunday Magazine published a lengthy article by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman that conveyed the views of multiple Israeli officials about Iran in order to conclude that an Israeli attack is likely. That the entire article was filled with quotes from Israelis meant the piece served as a justification for such an attack while masquerading as a news story about whether the attack would happen. Indeed, the very first paragraph contained this bit of manipulative melodrama: “‘This is not about some abstract concept,’ [Israeli Defense Minister Ehud] Barak said as he gazed out at the lights of Tel Aviv, ‘but a genuine concern. The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map’.” Note that we are told that Barak uttered this article-shaping blatant falsehood “as he gazed out at the lights of Tel Aviv.” So solemn, contemplative and profound... Read more... Congressional Pro-Israel Supporters Tell Obama: To ‘Avoid War’ Be Prepared to Wage It, by Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam Bibi Netanyahu is a corrupt, anti-democratic, ultra-nationalist Israeli leader. But one thing he is indisputably good at is political manipulation both of his own population and world opinion. In the run up to his coronation in Washington where he arrives shortly, he has superbly laid groundwork that has put Barack Obama in a vise. Last week, he invited five powerful U.S. senators (only the Republicans who met him are now talking publicly, which suits Bibi perfectly) to have lunch in Jerusalem. Now those senators are calling Obama a wimp and a girl if he won’t stand up to the Ayatollahs and lay down red lines that specify when we will go to war against Iran... Read more... Is Obama Preparing To Commit The United States To An Eventual War Against The Islamic Republic Of Iran? | The Race for Iran The next 72 hours are critical for President Barack Obama to make his case to America’s pro-Israel constituencies and Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he will continue to follow their lead in dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran. AIPAC’s annual policy conference opens tomorrow in Washington, DC, with an estimated 13,000 participants ready to get fired up and then fan out across Capitol Hill in a vivid display of the Israel lobby’s presumptive political clout. Both Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Israel’s President, Shimon Peres, will address the conference. Obama will, too, in what will almost certainly be his most important statement to pro-Israel constituencies before America’s November 2012 presidential election... [Will Obama suddenly turn into a man of principle or will evil prevail? Frankly, I’m not optimistic.] Read more...Hurting, Hanging, Suffocating & Starving: The Inhumanity of Iran Threat Rhetoric, by Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America  "You can't kill and talk at the same time." In 2006, after Palestinians democratically elected Hamas to the shock and chagrin of both Israel and the United States (who had insisted on the elections in the first place), a devastating economic siege was imposed on the 1.5 million residents of Gaza by Israel as punishment for the crime of Palestinian self-determination. As Dov Weisglass, adviser to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said with a chuckle, "It's like an appointment with a dietitian. The Palestinians in Gaza will get a lot thinner, but won't die."..And now, apparently, Israeli officials are hoping the West will duplicate this hilarity by similarly depriving Iranians of their own means to survive... Read more... The Netanyahu-Obama Talks | Roy Tov ...If either the USA or Israel were peaceful nations, they would try to talk out the differences with Iran. Yet, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be absent. Despite that, he and his nation enjoy the strongest position. There is no question about Iran having all the legitimacy needed to defend itself against external aggression. The UN Charter prohibits signatory countries from engaging in war, except as a means of defending themselves against aggression, or unless the UN as a body has given prior approval to the operation. There is no doubt Iran would attack no other nation. It never did. Even the CIA agrees Iran forces are arranged in a defensive fashion. The UN won’t sanction an attack against Iran; at least China, and probably also Russia, would veto such an outrageous Zio-American proposal... Read more... "2 x 64": A great DOUBLE slap in the dirty and hateful face of the West | The Vineyard of the Saker ...For the West, the two "64%" votes of this weekend are, I would argue, an absolute disaster. Clearly, neither Iran nor Russia are likely to succumb to any CIA sponsored "color revolution". For all their very real faults and defects, the regimes in Russia and Iran are rock solid and stable simply because they are truly *popular* regimes, supported by an absolute majority of the people. That does not mean that Iran and Russia do not have very real problems - they both do - or that the current governments are ideal - far from it. What that does show though, is that these very real problems will be tackled by the people of Russia and Iran and not by foreign interests. Finally, these results crush any hopes the US Empire might have had to somehow neutralize Russia and Iran by miring them in internal discord. That is simply not going to happen... Read more... Homes Destroyed, Lives Shattered: Criminal Demolitions in the OPT's, by Graham Peebles | The Palestine Chronicle  Full and complete domination of Palestinians is the aim The total number or recorded house demolitions since the occupation began in 1967, is estimated to be “24,813.” With Palestinians perversely being forced to either demolish their own home or face a charge for the IDF to do it, some homeowners undertake the task themselves, “it [the family] is liable for the costs of the house demolition which can run up to tens of thousands of dollars. To avoid these costs, Palestinians subject to administrative house demolitions may “opt” to undertake the demolition of their own home -it is not known how many Palestinians choose this route.” These ‘homemade’ demolitions will not be included in the figure quoted, making the actual total much higher... [Justice can be served only by turning over all Israeli property, public and private, to the new Palestinian State and then deporting all Jewish Israelis, at least those not born there.Those who apply to stay would pay a fine of at least 90% of their net worth as reparations and their applications for redress or citizenship would be adjudicated based on their previous actions. Those who become stateless at the end of the process would be placed in UNWRA refugee camps.] Read more...Testimonies from the Heart of Darkness (Part II), by Tamar Fleishman | The Palestine Chronicle What does a military judge know about childhood in Qalandiya refugee camp, about growing up in the shadow of the wall, by the checkpoint that in its very essence is an entity of violence, in a habitat of poverty and wretchedness that for a while now has been serving as a hunting range for soldiers who with no hesitations follow the order/commander that says: "make them feel hounded…" and perform what is known in their jargon as a "violent patrol".. Read more... Free Hanaa Shalabi, End Administrative Detention, by Mahmoud El-Yousseph | The Palestine Chronicle  This is a dignified family with deep conviction Hanaa Shalabi is on hunger strike. She is a Palestinian female political prisoner from the village of Burgin near Jenin. She was kidnapped from her home on February 16, 2012 by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the middle of the night. Hanna’s family was ordered outside the house, she was blindfolded and handcuffed. All cell phones and computers in the house were confiscated and a photograph of her brother hanging on the wall, who was killed by IOF in 2005, was torn up and stepped upon by one of the soldiers. Hanaa was also beaten and sexually harassed by the IOF. Her attorney stated, "she is demanding the end of administrative detention and that the soldiers who beat her up and undressed her to carry out a body search be put on trial.".. Read more... Liberal Democrats Dump Rights Champion Jenny Tonge, by Stuart Littlewood | The Palestine Chronicle She said America would one day get sick of funding what she called America's aircraft carrier in the Middle East. "One day, the American people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough." Israel's admirers were soon queuing up to spit their venom. The Board of Deputies of British Jews condemned Tonge's remarks as "sinister and abhorrent". Chief executive Jon Benjamin said: "There is no place for someone like Jenny Tonge in mainstream political parties in this country." The chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, said: "I am appalled at Baroness Tonge's remarks. They are dangerous, inflammatory and unacceptable”... [Is there anyone left with at least half a brain who doesn’t grasp that the ZioNazis have near total control of the political process in the Western Democracies(sic)?] Read more...Gilad Atzmon: American Grass Roots Tour, by Jim W. Dean | Veterans Today  Exile ... BBC Jazz Album of the Year - 2003 The Hebrew Klan does not like Rebel Jews who refuse to wear the robes and hats and participate in their midnight rides to put the fear in folks via their own brand of lynching. They tried to intimidate his publisher, then the book’s distributor, and then of course get his music gigs cancelled. But all this was to no avail. Like the Klu Klux Klan who held sway in parts of the States for a while, the public is catching onto and rejecting the Whoish Lobby brutal tactics... Read more... Who Was Behind the Delhi Bombing? by Gareth Porter | Antiwar ...a review of the evidence uncovered thus far makes the link to Iran begin to look very dubious. Instead, it points to the distinct possibility that the Israelis planned a carefully limited bomb attack that was not intended to cause serious injury to Israeli diplomatic personnel, but that would advance the larger Israeli narrative on the need to punish Iran... [One gets to the point – I have, anyway – of suspecting that the Israelis are behind every act of terror in the world that has a political dimension. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if well more than 50% are indeed “Made in Israel.”] Read more...Transforming Finkelstein BDS attack into opportunity, by David Letwin | The Electronic Intifada  Right of return is a central demand of the Palestinian liberation movement There have been a number of thoughtful and incisive rebuttals to the recent video interview in which Norman Finkelstein absurdly calls the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against apartheid Israel a “cult,” and admonishes Palestinians to limit their struggle to the “two-state solution”. However, Finkelstein’s attack on the BDS movement is not, as some of his critics have suggested, merely an indication of personal demoralization, faulty legal analysis, or political shortsightedness. Rather, it reflects a stubborn attempt to rationalize his rejection of Palestinian demands — especially full equality and refugee rights — that challenge the legitimacy of a “Jewish state.”.. Read more... The Atzmon Defamation League (ADL) | deLiberation At the bottom of the page you will find the current and most updated list of individuals who believe that the Palestinian solidarity movement should operate as a Stalinist synagogue. The Atzmon Defamation League is a list of a few Tribal Marxists and one angry Arab collaborator who added their names to an open declaration. They all agree that Atzmon should be silenced... [Atzmon, armed only with simple truths, humor and a saxophone, takes on the whole humongous apparatus defending Israel, including the fake anti-zionists. I salute Gilad Atzmon, a humanist, universalist, spiritual hero of our time.] Read more...Mar 4, 2012 UK student movement takes huge step forward during Israeli Apartheid Week | The Electronic Intifada  Student solidarity groups from more than twenty UK universities held Israeli Apartheid Week events last week, raising awareness of the apartheid analysis and building boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on campus. Coming towards the end of an academic year that has seen students’ unions across the country and the National Union of Students move to support BDS initiatives and many successful BDS campaigns, the week has been hailed as having taken the UK student movement for Palestine to new heights. The week kicked off on the Monday with a national day of action, with campuses across the country organising mock checkpoints, street theatre and supermarket actions... Zionism's Bad Conscience, by Joel Kovel | New Readings Let me begin with some blunt questions, the harshness of which matches the situation in Israel/ Palestine. How have the Jews, immemorially associated with suffering and high moral purpose, become identified with a nation-state loathed around the world for its oppressiveness toward a subjugated indigenous people? Why have a substantial majority of Jews chosen to flaunt world opinion in order to rally about a state that essentially has turned its occupied lands into a huge concentration camp and driven its occupied peoples to such gruesome expedients as suicide bombing?.. Read more... Liberals Prepare to Cry “We was robbed”: Putin in Strong Position for Sunday’s Vote, by Israel Shamir | Counterpunch Moscow is shining in the bright spring sun; the golden domes of its churches are a-glitter, surrounded by pure white snow; endless boutiques display the latest Paris fashions; restaurants are plentiful and expensive; numerous theaters are full, at a hundred dollars a seat for a Chekhov play. High oil prices have brought prosperity and crisis is forgotten. There’s a lot of budget money for all sorts of projects, from modern art to kindergartens to universities. Even those old sufferers, the armed forces, have got a big hike in pay... Read more... Saudia Arabia Intensifies its Crackdown on Protesters, by Yusuf Fernandez | Al Manar Saudi Arabia´s Interior Ministry has defended the regime’s ruthless repression of anti-government protests on Monday and threatened to use an “iron fist” against protesters. “It is the state's right to confront those that confront it first... and the Saudi Arabian security forces will confront such situations ... with determination and force and with an iron first,” the ministry said in a statement on Monday... [And where is the intrepid Hillary Clinton, always ready to mount a “humanitarian intervention” in such cases? Why isn't she threatening that "all options are on the table?" Ah, I forgot, the Saudis - the most totalitarian, Islamic fundamentalist and intolerant of all the Arab states - are staunch allies of “the good guys,” aka the USraeli Empire.] Read more...Threatening Iran: Our Gang of War Criminals, by Dave Lindorff | Counterpunch If a bunch of street toughs decided to gang up and beat the crap out of some guy in the neighborhood because they feared he might be planning to buy a gun to protect his family, I think we’d all agree that the police would be right to bust that crew and charge them with conspiracy to commit the crime of assault and battery. If they went forward with their plan and actually did attack the guy, injuring or killing him in the process, we’d also all agree they should all be charged with assault and battery, attempted murder, or even first-degree murder if he died. In international relations and international law, the same applies... Read more... Homs in the hell of armed groups | Silvia Cattori  Homs, now, is nothing but a sinister battlefield where government soldiers face armed groups which, according to independent witnesses about the true nature of the rebellion, are blindly firing cannon shots to sow terror and death, then pretending that only government forces are bombarding the city. The Western media continue, for its part, to adduce as evidence the statements of local committees which spread propaganda of the armed "opponents", in coordination with the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a London-based body created and funded by the rebellion-allied forces... [There remains a handful of real journalists, none of them employed by the mainstream media of course, who continue to tell it like it is.] Read more...Send AIPAC a message | Jewish Voice for Peace On March 3-6, thousands of AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) supporters will gather in DC for their annual policy conference billed as “three of the most important days affecting Israel’s future.” President Obama, Newt Gingrich, Prime Minister Netanyahu and most members of Congress will be there, thinking they are talking to America’s Jews. But you and I have a chance, right now, to let them know that's not true... Read more... Where Now, WikiLeaks? | Jaraparilla WikiLeaks has reached a fork in the road. On one side, supporters are encouraged by the global Occupy Wall Street protests, which were largely inspired by the Arab Spring protests, which in turn were at least partly inspired by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks revelations have also helped force changes to government policies, including Obama's decision to withdraw US troops from Iraq. Courage is contagious, especially when there are tangible results on display... Read more... When insanity rules the world, by Prem Shankar Jha | The Hindu In June 1914, Serbian ultra-nationalists calling themselves the Black Hand managed to kill Archduke Ferdinand, the heir apparent to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, in Sarajevo and ignited the First World War. None of the Great Powers wanted that war. None expected it to last more than four weeks. It lasted four years and took 19.5 million lives. Today, three apparently coordinated attacks on Israeli diplomats in Georgia, India and Thailand, for which Tel Aviv is strenuously blaming Iran, could become the spark for a similar conflagration in the Middle East... Read more... Palestinian Political Prisoners, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance It snowed in Palestine and the heavy rain washed away many things but not human sins. I thought of the huge amount of water running by friends of mine in Al-Auja near Jericho who are prevented from capturing that water while colonial illegal settlers get all the water with all the infrastructure they want. I watched Israeli children play in the snow in a park built on the ruins of a destroyed Palestinian village. I thought of the shivering political prisoners in unheated cells hundreds of whom are in administrative detention who do not know when they will be out in any park. Some sacrificed decades for the internationally recognized struggle to end colonialism and occupation... Read more... The United Nations: A Prostitute For Israel | Kawther Salam  Whenever I listen to the political statements and positions of the international community on the Palestinian issue and the end of over 45 years of the zionist military occupation, the more I saw the leaders of the world perform the “Hajj” to Israel instead of the camps of the Church of the Nativity where prophet Jesus (peace upon him) and now behind the walls of Israel’s apartheid, the more I read between the lines of the speeches of the dictatorial regime of the “Palestinian Authority”, the more and with increasing clarity I see that everyone in any capacity whatsoever has turned into a prostitute who serves zionist Israel without modesty or shame,.. Read more... Why Can’t Americans Have Democracy? | Paul Craig Roberts The consequence of the US invasion was not democracy and women’s rights in Iraq, much less the destruction of weapons of mass destruction which did not exist as the weapons inspectors had made perfectly clear beforehand. The consequence was to transfer political power from Sunnis to Shi’ites. The Shi’ite version of Islam is the Iranian version. Thus, Washington’s invasion transferred power in Iraq from a secular government to Shi’ites allied with Iran. Now Washington intends to repeat its folly in Syria... Read more... ‘Global finance: The Shylock model’ by Adrian Salbuchi | RT A Greek brainstorming session would sound something like this: Default! Downgrade! Bond Swap! ECB Bailout! Austerity Measures! IMF Recipes! Riots! Euro Collapse! Pay up!! Can anybody make any sense out of this?? Let’s try… Because it’s a question of joining the dots… correctly! First and foremost, Sovereign Debt “Crises” explode, then collapse only to “resurrect” bigger and fatter according to a Model: let’s call it “The Shylock Model” after William Shakespeare’s despicable Usurer in “The Merchant of Venice”: Shylock loaned money to Antonio, a Venetian Merchant, demanding he sign a bond pledging a pound of his flesh as collateral… Read more... Daily Israeli State Terror | Stephen Lendman Major media scoundrels suppress reports about daily Israeli state terror. Most Americans, and many others, can't imagine what Palestinians endure. Every imaginable depravity's included. Torture and murder are state policy. So are forced dispossessions, violence as a weapon of choice, collective punishment, apartheid worse than South Africa's, isolation, home demolitions, land theft, mass arrests, economic strangulation, and much more. Rule of law principles are systematically spurned. Rogue state policies ignore them. Even Jews face risks... Read more... US congressional nominee: Holocaust ‘blackest lie’ in history | PressTV  American Republican congressional hopeful Arthur Jones Arthur Jones, who hopes to challenge Democrat Dan Lipinski in Illinois' 3rd Congressional District, noted that the claim of killing millions of Jews and other people by Nazis during the World War II “is nothing more than an international extortion racket by the Jews,” Huffington Post reported. “It’s the blackest lie in history. Millions of dollars are being made by Jews telling this tale of woe and misfortune in books, movies, plays and TV,” he said... [It will be interesting to see how he fares under the predictable onslaught; could be a test of the invincibility of the dark forces currently in control of the US] Read more...Purim 2012 Red Alert: Fun For Netanyahu Might Not Be Good For You | Video Rebel's Blog As you probably know, the original Purim commemorates the killing of 75,000 Persians. Mordecai, as the story goes, replaced Haman as Prime Minister to Xerxes and ordered the mass murder of those who opposed Jewish rule. The actual slaughter of the innocents occurred on the 13th of Adar but the joyous celebration of the death of their political opponents took place on the 14th as the first Purim. It should be noted that the names of the Hebrew heroes Esther and Mordecai were taken from the pagan gods Astarte and Marduk so we are talking mythology. But then again we are talking about people who up until now have had the power to make you die for their fantasies... Read more... Mossad And The JFK Assassination | John-F-Kennedy.net ...Ben-Gurion was convinced that Israel needed nuclear weapons to insure its survival, while Kennedy was dead-set against it. This inability to reach an agreement caused obvious problems. One of them revolved around Kennedy's decision that he would make America his top priority in regard to foreign policy, and not Israel! Kennedy planned to honor the 1950 Tripartite Declaration which said that the United States would retaliate against any nation in the Middle East that attacked any other country. Ben-Gurion, on the other hand, wanted the Kennedy Administration to sell them offensive weapons... Read more... Tel Aviv On The Potomac, by Keith Johnson | Revolt of the Plebs ...A government that claims to be concerned about ensuring its people’s safety cannot do so while turning a blind eye to Israel’s atrocities and providing her with unconditional support. So why does this unholy alliance persist? In terms of foreign policy, the United States and Israel have a relationship similar to a character from the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Israel is the diminutive “Master” who is harnessed to the shoulders of its enormously strong, but dim-witted bodyguard known as “Blaster,” or (for purposes of this analogy) the United States government. Together they form “Master Blaster”, an uneasy power-truce that ultimately benefits the brains over the brawn... [A more familiar analogy is that of George and Lennie, the protagonists of Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men."] Read more...Netanyahu Wags the Dog | Roy Tov  Benjamin Netanyahu On March 5, 2012, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet US President Barack Obama in the White House. The name of the game will be “attack on Iran’s nuclear installations,” with each participant wanting the other one to be the aggressor. Israel’s options are limited; the only chance Israel has to win such a war is by utterly destroying the decision making bodies of the Iranian regime. The Islamic Consultative Assembly, the Guardian Council, the Presidency, the Supreme Leader institution, the military headquarters; all must be gone so that no one would be able to block Hormuz or order the bombing of Tel Aviv following the initial Israeli strike. These relatively few and concentrated targets would become the target not of Israel’s Air Force planes, but of Jericho missiles... Read more... The Protocols And You: Zionism Unchained, by Donald Cassidy | Rense America is uneasy; something is very wrong. We are trapped in a terrible war of aggression but news of it is censored in our Zionist media cocoon. The horrors of war, mass murder is secret, invisible. Zionist media soothes US with "normalcy" and distracts US with sham controversies, "theatre", sports spectacles, and the doings of celebrities. Apathy prevails, "What can I do about it?".. [Ah, yes, the good old "Protocols." Somehow, after all this time, the Masters of Discourse have been unable to totally suppress them.] Read more...CU Boulder: Gilad Atzmon Questions Students Defaming Him | YouTube Gilad Atzmon confronts students who were distributing literature defaming him in front of his talk at the University of Colorado in Boulder on March 1st, 2012... Joel Kovel: Zionism Reconsidered, Part 1 | YouTube Mar 2-3, 2012 One State Conference: March 3 & 4 | Harvard Kennedy School of Government  The purpose of this conference is to bring students from across Harvard University together to enrich academic discussions about possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The aim is to explore the merits of a one-state solution, a framework in which Israelis and Palestinians can share a liberal democratic state... [It will be interesting to see how well the humans at the conference stand up to the Zionist zombies who, most likely, will be out in force.] Read more...JVP-Boston supports One State Conference being held at Harvard | Jewish Voice for Peace Jewish Voice for Peace Deputy Director Cecilie Surasky said, "Abe Foxman and the ADL's condemnation of the One State Solution conference held at Harvard's Kennedy School as somehow anti-Israel is astonishing. Experts on all sides have long noted that Israel's policy of ongoing settlement expansion is the primary threat to a possible two-state solution. Further, we're pretty sure, unlike Abe Foxman, that Harvard students can be trusted to look at the facts and make up their own minds... Read more... Lebanon Beats Syria | Roy Tov There is no doubt that Western countries are interfering in Syria’s inner politics in a fashion similar to the one implemented in Libya last year. The ongoing violent protests started in January 2011 and led, on March 29 that year, to the resignation of the Syrian government by request of President Bashar al-Assad. Beyond that, it is very difficult to find reliable facts regarding the protests and the government answers to them. As in Libya, there are reliable proofs that much of what is being reported by Western media is rigged... Read more... Russia and the changing world, by Vladimir Putin | Voltaire Network  ...It is often said that human rights override state sovereignty. No doubt about this – crimes against humanity must be punished by the International Court. However, when state sovereignty is too easily violated in the name of this provision, when human rights are protected from the outside and on a selective basis, and when the same rights of a population are trampled underfoot in the process of such "protection," including the most basic and sacred right – the right to one’s life – these actions cannot be considered a noble mission but rather outright demagogy... Read more... Investigate Betrayal of the Nobel Peace Prize, by Coleen Rowley | Antiwar ...these institutions must be made aware that their efforts are increasingly undermined, and deeply perverted by their growing departure from the original criteria set forth in Alfred Nobel’s will for selecting the recipient of the Peace Prize. Such continual disregard of the original intent of the “Peace” Prize actually serves to enable the waging of war, fulfilling Orwell’s prediction about how propaganda works in making people believe that “war is peace”. Obviously the majority of officials and people involved with the various Nobel Organizations and Nobel Peace Forum sponsors are not intending to do this, to help the cause of war and militarism. They simply have not conducted the self examination necessary to realize how seriously off-track the Peace Prize has gone... Read more... Rabbi Michael Lerner vs. Gilad Atzmon | YouTube The following is an interesting debate between Rabbi Michael Lerner and myself hosted by Dennis Bernstein on KPFA Flashpoint. We agreed on some crucial issues to do with empathy but we also differ on some fundamental matters to do with Jewish history, Jewish suffering, Israel, Palestine etc'. ~ GA Wikileaks and Anonymous Join Forces to Reveal How Dumb Our Intelligence Is, by Joshua Kopstein | Motherboard  Duh? The most recent bombshell of confidential documents dropped by infamous watchdog organization Wikileaks is already looking to have an enormous impact on our understanding of government security practices. Specifically, intimate details on the long-suspected fact that the U.S. has been paying a whole lot of money to have private corporations spy on citizens, activists and other groups and individuals on their ever-expanding, McCarthy-style shitlist. But perhaps more importantly, the docs demonstrate something very interesting about the nature of U.S. government intelligence: They haven’t really got much of it... [When I was in the Army I was part of what a few of us casually referred to as Military Ignorance. The accuracy of this designation became obvious to most during the Vietnam War. Things have become even more surreal since then.] Read more...Craven Liberal Democrats dump human rights champion Jenny Tonge | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood argues that the sacking of Jenny Tonge – one of Britain’s most committed campaigners for human rights – from the Liberal Democrats’ parliamentary party after criticizing Israel highlights the hypocrisy of the UK’s Liberal Democrats, the cowardice of their leader Nick Clegg and the extent to which the Israel lobby has penetrated British political life... Read more... Will Bibi Break Obama? by Patrick J. Buchanan | Antiwar ...Netanyahu is coming to Washington, the Journal writers add, to demand that Obama spell out the "red lines" Iran will not be allowed to cross without triggering a U.S. attack. What Netanyahu wants is a U.S. ultimatum to Iran. White House sources say that when Obama meets Netanyahu Tuesday, he will reject the prime minister’s demands. But the pressure to shorten the timetable for war is intense and growing... Read more... Ayatollah Khamenei On The Islamic Republic And The “Big Sin” Of Nuclear Weapons | The Race for Iran  As Israeli-Western hysteria over Iran’s nuclear program continues rising, mainstream media outlets routinely dispense the observation—either on their own or in the form of quotations from U.S. officials—that Tehran’s intentions about the program are murky and it is difficult to discern who is really making decisions about it. As a counterpoint to this, we were struck by a speech that the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei delivered earlier this month to a gathering of Iranian nuclear scientists... Read more... Blumenthal: Netanyahu seeks regime change in US and Iran, by Annie Robbins | Mondoweiss A must-see 12 minute wrap up on the state of affairs in this seasons Republican primary, the Adelson/Netanyahu/Gingrich connection, the push to war with Iran, and the dangers of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism. Real News host Paul Jay asks Blumenthal to 'unravel all this' and unravel he does. Max is not known for mincing words and he doesn't disappoint. He opens warning: 'It's a dangerous American election that could accelerate the ongoing drive to war'... Iran: Next In Line For Western ‘Intervention’? What would it take for journalists to seriously challenge government propaganda? A war with over one million dead, four million refugees, a country’s infrastructure shattered, and the increased threat of retail ‘terror’ in response to the West’s wholesale ‘terror’? How horrifying do even very recent experiences have to be, how great the war crimes, before media professionals begin to exhibit scepticism towards Western governments’ hyping of yet another ‘threat’. Why is warmongering the default mode for the corporate media?.. Read more... Friends (Enemies) of Syria Conference, by Dr. Elias Akleh | Intifada Palestine  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had nothing to offer except false predictions that el-Assad’s regime is getting closer to collapse ..Frustration and helplessness were highly apparent in the speeches and decisions of the major players in this conference. The frustration was due to the failure of Libyanizing Syria, the failure of all political pressures on Syria during the last eleven months, and the failure of Syrian armed militias to gain any popularity within the country and to affect any division within Syrian governmental institutions. The highest frustration came due to their failure of manipulating the United Nation and the Security Council against Syria due to the Russian and Chinese vetoes against any UN resolution attempting to legitimize any foreign military intervention in Syria... Read more... Scott Horton Interviews Philip Giraldi | Antiwar Radio Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses the unusual NY Times headline acknowledging that Iran is not making nuclear weapons; the possible reasons why the Times ran James Risen’s piece instead of the usual scaremongering from David Sanger; next week’s AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington; the questionable wisdom of pushing regime change in Syria; and the politicians, think tanks and policy papers bankrolled by pro-Israel billionaire Sheldon Adelson... Netanyahu’s War, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar ...With the Israeli propaganda campaign reaching significantly higher decibel levels of late, Bibi is upping the ante with fresh demands, declaring through intermediaries that the new joint US-Israeli policy has to define several "red lines" Iran must not cross. The Israelis define that fateful boundary as Tehran developing a nuclear "capability" rather than actually building a nuclear arsenal. It’s a crucial distinction that underscores the logical disconnect at the heart of the Israeli case for war. After all, any one of a number of human beings has, for example, the capability to commit murder: however, this does not make a convincing case for preemptive execution... Read more... Mar 1, 2012 Syria isn't the 'new Bosnia', despite the narcissistic hopes of the Western commentariat, by Brendan O'Neill | Telegraph  A block of flats burns after a bombing attack in Sarajevo on 26 August 1992 Oh no, this is not good, this is not good at all: more and more Western observers are starting to describe Syria as "the new Bosnia". Which can mean only one thing. The liberal commentariat is on the hunt for a new mission, for another messy civil war that it can squeeze into a simplistic moral framework, for a new foreign field that it can transform into a soapbox from which to declare its unwavering commitment to the combat of "evil". Yes, the crusading chattering classes are determined to fill the Bosnia-shaped hole in their lives, and by God they will do everything they can to make Syria fit... Read more... The Jewish Question and Racial Oppression today | Red Scribblings One reason why the years-long controversy over Gilad Atzmon has generated such rancour, and why conflicts related to it such as the recent purge of ‘anti-semites’ from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign have been so bitter, is because they threaten to re-open the Jewish question. There was a time when the Jewish question was a matter of considerable debate and public controversy among those seeking greater democracy and social and economic equality. Witness Marx’s celebrated essay The Jewish Question, among many others... [When I was young, many decades ago, it was referred to as "the Jewish problem," and then it disappeared from the public sphere. The Masters of Discourse, through a remarkable expenditure of effort and money, were able to suppress it for a while, but here it is again, which is not surprising - it's been around for thousands of years. It is now a greater problem than ever before, threatening all efforts of humanity to finally grow up.] Read more...Syria: Clinton Admits US On Same Side As Al Qaeda To Destabilise Assad Government, by Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham | Global Research The admission at the weekend by Hillary Clinton corroborates the finding that armed groups are attacking civilians and these groups are terroristic, according to US own definitions, and that the situation in Syria is not one of unilateral state violence against its population but rather is one of a shadowy armed insurrection. Clinton’s admission retrospectively justifies the stance taken by Russia and China, both of which vetoed the proposed UN Security Council Resolution on 4 February, precisely because that proposal was predicated on a spurious notion that the violence in Syria was solely the responsibility of the Al Assad government... Read more... Inverted Totalitarianism and the Corporate State, by Sartre Batr | Veterans Today  Stricken with a terminal disease, the decline of traditional society is unavoidable. For decades, the political institutions that fostered a Republic based upon individual liberty and responsibility fade into fond memory. Defenders of all that made America a shining example of human freedom are attacked and ridiculed for holding onto a moral and ethical system that is based upon the dignity of every individual... Read more... Anti-Assad Propaganda Assault Heats Up With Claims of WMDs, by Madison Ruppert | The Intel Hub ...this is exactly like Iraq. In fact, the parallels are so numerous it is almost laughable to try to separate them. In both cases the American government is putting forth unsubstantiated claims of WMDs and then saying we have to do something about it before it’s too late... [US foreign and economic policy are based on permanent war so we already pretty much know how this will play out.] Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine | YouTube A brief and crucial history of the United States... [includes a great collection of images] Bankers are like pedophiles they won't stop till they are locked up | YouTube Another delightfully outrageous piece from The Taxi Driver... Teachers: How Are You Teaching US War Crimes, Destruction of US Constitution? by Carl Herman | Global Research  ...Department of Defense Chief Counsel Jeh Johnson spoke to Yale’s law school and repeated the claim of government authority to dictate any American as a “terrorist” or “terrorist supporter” and be assassinated. This is in Orwellian contradiction to 5th Amendment rights that government cannot deprive you of your life without the above explicit due process. Importantly, Mr. Johnson, the War Department’s top “legal” voice, had more to say: government-dictated assassinations cannot be legally challenged through US courts. President Obama instructed Justice Department lawyers to defend unlimited warrantless searches in Orwellian violation of the 4th Amendment... Read more... US mobilizes armed gangs in Syria: Interview with Stephen Lendman | PressTV ...A defected military officer, who refused to be named, told reporters in the western Syrian city of Al-Qusayr on Tuesday that armed groups receive “French and American assistance.” His comments came days after some of the Western and Arab countries said that they would support Syria’s anti-government groups by arming them and supplying them with financial support... Syrian Rebels Captured With Israeli Weapons | YouTube UK Politician Resigns After Saying Israel 'Will Not Go On Forever' | Business Insider  "It will not go on for ever, it will not go on for ever. Israel will lose support and then they will reap what they have sown." These words, spoken by a member of the UK's House of Lords, have sparked a huge amount of controversy in the UK... [Yet another thoroughly decent human being with the courage to speak the simple truth runs into the Zionist buzzsaw. But what she says can’t be stopped by their schemes. It is indeed inevitable - what goes around, comes around.] Read more...‘It's a sin’: Iran calls on treaty to ban nuclear weapons | RT ...“The production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi in a speech to the UN-hosted Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Tuesday. He said Iran does not see any glory, pride or power in nuclear weapons, but, “quite the opposite.” Salehi suggested a limited number of options for states worried about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program... Apartheid conference goes ahead in Paris despite university ban, by David Cronin | The Electronic Intifada The University of Paris 8 is traditionally one of the more left-wing third-level institutions in France. Alas, its current president Pascal Binczak is seeking to negate this legacy. Under pressure from the pro-Israel lobby, he recently banned a conference titled “Is Israel an apartheid state?” When students and academics organising the event defied him and vowed to proceed with the event on the university’s premises, he ordered the campus closed for two days this week, citing a risk to public safety... Read more... Jew-hate going mainstream | Ynetnews “The Holocaust is a gigantic imposture, the greatest lie of modern times.” This is how Robert Faurisson, known as “the dean of deniers,” refers to the Shoah in an article published by Rinascita, a national daily newspaper financed by Italy’s government. Isn’t Holocaust’s denial going mainstream if even an Italian publication sees no problem in running an article about “disinfectants such as Zyklon B”? Holocaust perversion is like the flower of evil, the sign of a rising anti-Semitism. In Italy, a jarring 44% of citizens are “prejudiced or hostile towards Jews,.. [The pendulum was eventually bound to swing back someday. How much longer can an utterly psychotic cult like the Holycause maintain its sway over millions of people who are gradually becoming aware?] Read more... |
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