May 30, 2012 The Iraq War Reader: A History of War Crimes and Genocide - The Unleashing of America’s New Global Militarism, by Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham | Global Research The adage that “it is the victors who write history” in matters relating particularly to war and conflict is something of a euphemism when applied to recent military campaigns conducted by America and its NATO allies. For what is disputable – no, let us say repugnant – about the official accounts of these events is not merely a difference in emphasis or nuance on the matter, which the adage may infer. It is rather that the victors’ version of history is a wholesale fabrication, an obscene travesty of actual events. It is not a case of victors writing history, more one of victors “violating history”... Read more... US Iran Policy Intended to Leave Open ‘Avenues for Regime Change,’ by John Glaser | Antiwar ...If Iran can ever quickly develop a nuclear deterrent through know-how and technological capability, this constrains Washington’s power to overthrow the regime and replace it with an obedient client (not a first in the case of Iran, of course). That is an unacceptable amount of power to afford an adversary. The threat to Israeli security and the notion that Iran would use nuclear weapons for anything other than to deter aggressive adversaries is quite simply a manufactured concern... Read more... Can Jewish Liberals Transcend the Wiesel Doctrine?: Countering the Israel Lobby’s Dominance, by Alan Nasser | Counterpunch ...In the end, whether Israel’s penchant for serial atrocities encounters an effective obstacle will hinge on two types of resistance, elicited not from the fictitious “international community”, but from the active opponents of Israel’s ongoing projects, and from the withdrawal of moral and financial support for the ongoing reproduction of Israel as an apartheid Zionist State... Read more... How Bill Kristol Purged the Arabists, by Patrick J. Buchanan | Antiwar ...Kristol’s point: Refuse to toe the neocon line on Israel, and you have no future in the Republican Party. Ben-Ami seemed equally exultant: “We’ve won the war; we won the war,” he told the audience. Ninety-nine percent of Congress now votes almost 100% pro-Israel. But Ben-Ami appeared nervous about how this unanimity in the Congress behind Israel had been achieved... Read more... Afghanistan: We Forgot History and We Repeated It, by Eric Margolis | Lew Rockwell Santayana’s famous dictum about those who forget history being condemned to relive it is nowhere better observed than in the mountains of Afghanistan. One of my favorite artists was the superb Victorian painter Lady Elizabeth Butler who captured in oil the military triumphs and tragedies of the British Empire. Her haunting painting, "The Retreat from Kabul (also known as "Remnants of an Army") shows the sole survivor of a British army of 16,500 during the first Anglo-Afghan War in 1842, Dr. William Brydon, struggling out of Afghanistan. All the rest of the British occupation force were killed by Afghan tribesmen after a futile attempt to garrison Kabul... Read more... Turkey seeks 18,000 years in prison for Israeli military commanders over flotilla deaths | The Times of Israel The attorney general of Turkey has filed charges against four senior Israeli military officers for the killing of nine people aboard the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which tried to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza in 2010. The move comes just days ahead of the second anniversary of the May 31, 2010, raid. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency says a court in Istanbul voted unanimously Monday to approve an indictment against Israel’s former chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, along with former Israeli Navy head Vice Admiral Eliezer Marom, former Israel Air Force intelligence chief Avishai Levy and former Military Intelligence head Amos Yadlin... Read more... This is what the GWOT is really all about: war crimes and hatred | The Vineyard of the Saker ...Wars of choice, wars of aggression, are fundamentally different from wars of liberation or defensive wars in that unlike the latter the former lack a moral or ethical basis. This is hugely important: when a man fights for this country, nation, family or religion he does not need to demonize or dehumanize the enemy, nor does he need to come up with some convoluted logic to justify to himself and others why he is fighting. This is why for centuries man have come back from wars without turning into dysfunctional brutes. But when is the last time the USA actually had to fight a war to defend itself against an enemy?.. This is what this grotesque "Global War on Terror" does to people... 4 Billion Reasons to Roll Up Our Sleeves, by Josh Ruebner | US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation ...more guns for Israel means less butter for us, bringing us that much closer to painful across-the-board budget cuts that will negatively impact tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Americans next year. More guns for Israel also make us more complicit in and responsible for Israel’s nearly 45-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, and for Israel’s human rights abuses against and apartheid policies toward Palestinians... Read more... Dad Does Not Want to Know: A Man on a Gaza Roof, by Mats Svensson | Palestine Chronicle Daniel has returned home. He had felt a lump in his stomach even before stepping on the plane in Mumbai. He felt sick when he saw all the young boys and girls checking everyone’s identity at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. Mom, dad, his older sister and younger brother greet him at the airport. Everyone is equally excited. Daniel had been gone for a whole year. He would have loved to stay a bit longer. But the money ran out and he did not want to ask his dad for more.. ”Tell us how it was, we want to know everything.” Daniel suddenly sees black, he panics. It was as if he had nothing to say, could not formulate the words... Read more... May 29, 2012 Israel AG against prosecuting authors of book justifying killing of non-Jews | Haaretz Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein is tending toward not prosecuting the author or endorsers of the controversial book "Torat Hamelech," Haaretz has learned. The book, written in 2009 by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, was endorsed by two other rabbis, Yitzhak Ginzburg and Dov Lior. The authors describe it as a discussion of Jewish law on the conditions under which it is permissible to kill a non-Jew in times of war and peace... [This is consistent with the universal historical pattern that the established church provides a religious rationale for state violence. In the case of Israel, this means justifying genocide, a tradition sanctified in the “holy” book – just do a word search for ‘smite’ and ‘smiting’.] Read more...Mysh: Israeli Visual Artist’s Meditation on Jewish Suffering, Psychic Trauma and Israeli Racism | Tikun Olam I was just looking through my Facebook Newsfeed and discovered the Israeli graphic artist, Mysh. The first work of his I saw was this breathtaking cartoon, A Problem of Self-Image, which speaks so profoundly to elements of the Israeli psyche and explains how historical trauma has led to political dysfunction... Read more... The United Jewish Kingdom, by Gilad Atzmon | deLiberation ...there is a reason to believe that the British Government is under the control of a foreign power. Following the pressure of the CFI, the Tory government recently amended the British Universal Jurisdiction law just to allow Israel war criminals to visit the Kingdom. I guess that some students must be clever enough to notice that acts taken by British politicians who shamelessly attempt to appease their pro Israeli paymasters at the expense of British values and ethical considerations actually expose Jews in this country to some potential animosity. How would the exam board mark such reasonable and critical young and innocent thinking?.. Read more... Gilad Atzmon: Lobby, Tribalism and Jewish Identity | YouTube The Ever-Shrinking Burden of Proof, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar Taking the “scary Iran story” angle to a new low, a new report today reveals that Iran could theoretically make 5 nuclear bombs if it took all of its civilian uranium and dedicated it exclusively to weapons production... [Analyzing Zionist logic could be the basis for a great Ph.D thesis on paranoid tribal sociopathology.] Read more...Warsaw Ghetto, Israel Ghetto | Roy Tov ...This struggle is the source of the “heroism” in the name of the Israeli remembrance day. Can you imagine growing up in a place where all your teachers keep saying that your grandparents—or those of the kid sitting next to you—were made into soap? Do you understand what such a kid sees whenever he uses a soap bar? Can you understand what happens when he discovers later in life that no human genes were ever found in those soap bars? Can you understand what he feels after finding that everything was an evil emotional manipulation performed by a control-freak regime interested in keeping its citizens frightened forever?.. [The current Judenrat, primarily composed of rich Zionist Jews, controls not only Israel, but the Western democracies as well. Incredible irony: the Third Reich has reproduced itself in the form of a Jewish Nazi state.] Read more...Syria After the Massacre, by Patrick Cockburn | Counterpunch ...Both the government and the armed opposition have become stronger in the past six months and neither side sees much reason to compromise. It feels like the beginning of a long war... Read more... Battlelines Being Drawn for Next Phase: a Plus for Palestinians? by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch ...Haniyeh knows that the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Hamas evolved, is highly sophisticated politically and while it tries to avoid attracting condemnation, or worse, from Washington and Tel Aviv, the MB intentions regarding Camp David, giveaway gas and other deals with Israel, and even diplomatic relations with the occupiers of Palestine are clear. A majority of Egyptians believe all will eventually be discarded as will the singly remaining 19th century colonial enterprise itself... Read more... Tel Aviv ‘Race Riots’ Reveal Much About Israel, by Ran HaCohen | Antiwar The “race riots” in Tel Aviv last week — a mass demonstration that turned into a pogrom against about 60,000 asylum seekers, an overwhelming majority of them from Eritrea, the rest mostly from Sudan (Darfur and South Sudan) and a few other African countries — gives a revealing glimpse into Israeli realities under the current fascist government... Read more... Another missed opportunity with Iran? | Stephen M. Walt ...Right now, the United States and Israel are actively engaged in a variety of covert actions directed against Iran, and the United States still have military forces and bases all around that country. Top U.S. officials, Senators and Congressmen have openly called for "regime change" in Iran. And then we wonder why, oh why, Iran might be wary of us, and why some Iranians might think that having an effective deterrent to counter our vast military superiority might be a good idea... Read more... US Charity Secretly Funds Israeli Nukes, by Grant Smith | Antiwar ...Isidor Rabi worked on the Manhattan Project providing key leadership developing America’s first atomic bombs alongside Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos. When dispatched by a nervous JFK to visit Dimona in 1961, Rabi stated unequivocally he had found "no evidence of weapons related activity." The 2009 book Nuclear Express authors Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman skeptically noted "Rabi was already a member of the board of governors (and presumably on the payroll) of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, the incubator of most nuclear weapons work in Israel." Rabi’s misleading testimony took some heat off Israel as it raced to finalize the Dimona reactor and build an arsenal... Read more... Imperialism and Disinformation, by Kim Petersen | Dissident Voice If the establishment manufactures disinformation (i.e., it lies), then what validity does the establishment have in its agenda? Also what moral pretext could the agenda have given that disinformation is argued to be a crime against humanity and a crime against peace?.. When the establishment disinforms about weapons-of-mass-destruction in Iraq and kills a few million people based on this lie, what claim to credibility does the establishment have thereafter? This is but one lie in a historical series of lies in which distant peoples have been slaughtered and their lands taken over... Read more... BBC mistakenly uses image of Iraq in Syrian massacre story, by Craig Silverman | Poynter A 2003 photo taken in Iraq was mistakenly used by the BBC website to illustrate a report about the recent massacre in Houla, Syria. The Daily Telegraph reports that the image of a child jumping over body bags was removed from the story after the BBC realized its error. The photographer who took the shot is incredulous that the BBC could have confused his photo with recent events. “I went home at 3am and I opened the BBC page, which had a front page story about what happened in Syria, and I almost felt off from my chair,”.. Questioning State Doctrine on Memorial Day, by John Glaser | Antiwar Apparently yesterday’s MSNBC show Up with Chris Hayes is getting a lot of attention. And by attention I mean vitriol. His crime? questioning the martial civic religion and the morality of mindless soldier worship on Memorial Day. I can’t decide whether or not I’m surprised. Here is the first segment of that “controversial” show... A Memorial Day for War's Fallen, Perhaps Someday for War Itself,? by Andrew Revkin | NYT ...There’s a long line of argument pointing to an eventual end to war, in part due to the increased connectedness and interdependence of human societies for whom it was once easier to identify someone else on the planet as the “other” — and thus a threat... [That is the most succinct reason for wiping Israel, the source of most current wars, off the map.] Read more...May 28, 2012 How to Forget on Memorial Day, by Tom Engelhardt | Antiwar ...On this Memorial Day, there will undoubtedly be much cant in the form of tributes to "our heroes" and then, Tuesday morning, when the mangled cars have been towed away, the barbeque grills cleaned, and the "heroes" set aside, the forgetting will continue. If the Obama administration has its way and American special operations forces, trainers, and advisors in reduced but still significant numbers remain in Afghanistan until perhaps 2024, we have more than another decade of forgetting ahead of us in a tragedy that will, by then, be beyond all comprehension... Read more... Why I Threw Back My 'Global War on Terror' Medal | Common Dreams ...I am not afraid anymore. I do not believe in the 'global war on terror'. I will not be made a coward by my government to hurt other people because I have been hurt. Instead, I will stand up as a United States citizen and disobey unlawful orders to perpetuate war. Ben Franklin once inferred that those 'who sacrifice liberty for security, deserve neither.' I agree. The United States has not "won" a war since War World II - instead, its imperial interests and rush to war have only bred international scorn. We go to war zones and the weapons often aimed at us are the ones we sold our "enemies" in the last war... In a first, U.S. declares 5 million Palestinians to be refugees | Daily Star ...Steve Rosen, a longtime official with AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group, argued that calling 5 million Palestinians refugees, including some 2 million who are citizens of Jordan, means recognizing their right to return, even though Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama have said that a two-state solution would mean most refugees would not return to Israel proper, Foreign Policy reported. "How many generations does it go?" asked Rosen. "I'm Jewish, and as a grandchild of several refugees, could I make a claim on all these countries? Where does it end? Someday all life on Earth will be a Palestinian refugee.".. 250,000+ Defy Anti-Protest Law in Quebec | The Vineyard of the Saker Power of Culture: PalFest Breaks the Siege of Gaza, by Ayah Bashir | Palestine Chronicle Amid the focus on the economic hardships caused by Israel's ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip, it has been easy for many to overlook the fact that the territory's 1.6 million people have been kept under a cultural siege as well. This is ironic because much international debate has emphasized the rights and wrongs of cultural boycott of Israel in the context of the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. For years, the Palestine Festival of Literature — PalFest — has been trying to break this siege... Read more... Syrian government denies involvement in Houla massacre | RT ...Political analyst Ibrahim Alloush told RT that the way the attack was done and its timing “make it obvious” that Damascus is not responsible. “It would not make sense for the Syrian army to commit these massacres and withdraw, and then just let the rebels come and take photos and make documentaries about them,” he explained. Alloush believes the crimes were committed “by the armed gangs supported from abroad, from the GCC countries and from the NATO specifically through Turkey.”.. Read more... May 27, 2012 NATO - "1984" Revisited: When "War is Peace" by Ross Ruthenberg | Global Research Considering the current state of world peace and NATO's Responsibility to Protect (R2P) policy and to maintain a proper sense of balance, George Orwell's book "1984" should be reviewed periodically. In the spirit of the NATO Summit in Chicago, I present a few quotes from that textbook-for-tomorrow: "If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened-that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death." .. "Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”.. Israeli companies win UN bids to reconstruct Gaza, angering Palestinians | The Times of Israel ...Osama Kahil, deputy head of the Palestinian Contractors Union, told the daily that a number of Israeli companies have contacted contractors in Gaza offering them half of the bids’ revenue to execute the projects. “It is unreasonable for the Israeli occupation to be rewarded for its destruction of Gaza’s economy,” Kahil told Al-Quds Al-Arabi. “It waged a relentless war on our livelihood, and now our markets are being opened to its companies.”.. Fear, Inc., by Matthew Harwood | FFF Since the attacks of September 11, a new, powerful class of people has swarmed into the nation’s capital and its surrounding suburbs. Armed with top-secret security clearances, they are government counterterrorism and intelligence workers and contractors who believe they are critical to keeping the country safe from jihadi terrorists. But their belief is suspect: the absence of another spectacular attack only magnifies the zeal of their belief in their own necessity. The rise of this homeland security and intelligence class, operating in secret, signals a distressing threat to American democracy from those ostensibly sworn, or hired, to protect it... US Hard Line in Failed Iran Talks Driven by Israel, by Gareth Porter | Antiwar Negotiations between Iran and the United States and other members of the P5+1 group in Baghdad ended in fundamental disagreement Thursday over the position of the P5+1 offering no relief from sanctions against Iran. The two sides agreed to meet again in Moscow Jun. 18 and 19, but only after Iran had threatened not to schedule another meeting, because the P5+1 had originally failed to respond properly to its five-point plan. The prospects for agreement are not likely to improve before that meeting, however, mainly because of an inflexible U.S. diplomatic posture that reflects President Barack Obama’s need to bow to the demands of Israel and the U.S. Congress on Iran policy... Israel’s ‘Right’ to Exist, by Genevieve Cora Fraser | Aletho News ...It is a serious violation of international law to acquire territory by force. Indeed, the case against the Nazis during the Nuremburg Trials asserted that the rationale behind their acquisitions was to acquire territories already inhabited by so-called “racial Germans” and those it needed as additional living space for “racial Germans” — all at the expense of other countries. This indictment echoes the Zionist/Israel defense of its claim to historic Palestine by “racial Jews” and its subsequent actions which include hundreds, if not thousands, of crimes against humanity, such as their nonstop deadly raids into Gaza and the West Bank, hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks, the illegal construction of the racist, Apartheid Wall and the current ethnic cleansing of Arab-Israeli citizens within the Negev. The basic fact is Israel was created in violation of international law and remains so... Flynt Leverett: Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton | Antiwar Radio Flynt Leverett, former Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council, discusses the latest negotiations on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program at the just-concluded P5+1 Baghdad summit; why the US will never agree to lift sanctions on Iran, no matter the concessions; how the US negotiating position makes Obama look like an idiot; Richard Nixon’s observation that the same political price is paid for going half way as all the way – so you might as well go to China; why the Obama administration still won’t (consistently) acknowledge Iran’s rational leadership and sovereign (and NPT) right to enrich uranium; and how bad-faith negotiating by the US ruined the “reciprocity framework” established in the previous Istanbul talks... War Medals of Dishonor thrown out | RT RT speaks to US veterans who feel betrayed by the system that pushed them into fighting America’s false-pretense wars, as the former soldiers throw out their medals which they deem symbols of lies. Dubbed true patriots, they followed the order to fight their country’s battles. Scott Olsen survived two tours of Iraq, only to be critically injured upon returning home by police clashing with Occupy Oakland protesters... Musical interlude: La voix de l'émotion | YouTube Montserrat Figueras – RIP Israeli Supreme Court Rubber Stamps Shin Bet Impunity | Tikun Olam ...The paper is especially important in light of the hunger strikes of 1,600 Palestinian prisoners who were protesting precisely the types of arbitrary administrative detentions Krebs discusses in her paper. The protesting prisoners complained about the arbitrary nature of their detention and the fact that often the evidence against them was secret both to them and their lawyers. In essence, they neither knew who was their accuser, what they were accused of, nor what evidence was offered. Six-month sentences could be renewed without offering any new evidence and renewed virtually forever. A number of prisoners were held for years under similar terms... [Kafka and Orwell are dancing a pas de deux while Dostoevsky applauds.] The price of victory is our damned nation | Greg Felton All culture is essentially exclusionary; beliefs and practices distinguish one people from another precisely because they are different. The two systems of government defined above, for example, look as dissimilar as any two dissimilar things could possibly be. One depicts a society of self-governing free citizens; the other depicts its polar opposite. For much of the last 100 years, these two systems of government were in a state of war (hot or cold), and out of this bi-polar world came the Western, democratic conceit that ours is the best of all possible worlds: free elections vs. rigged elections; rule of law vs. police state; civil society vs. coerced conformity; peace vs. war... [Great pun in the title, in case you missed it] Drug-Financed Salafi Jihadism: The Afghan Drug Trade, A Threat to Russia and U.S.-Russian Relations, by Prof. Peter Dale Scott | Global Research ...Washington serves the interest of western oil companies, not just because of their corrupt influence over the administration, but because the survival of the current U.S. petro-economy depends on western domination of the global oil trade. A passage in Drugs, Oil, and War describes this policy, and how it has contributed to recent American interventions, and also the impoverishment of the Third World since 1980. In essence, the U.S. handled the quadrupling of oil prices in the 1970s by arranging, by means of secret agreements with the Saudis, for the recycling of petrodollars back into the U.S. economy... May 26, 2012 U.S. to differentiate between 'personally displaced' Palestinians and their descendants, by Allison Deger | Mondoweiss Today the U.S. government approved a resolution to differentiate between Palestinians "personally displaced" in 1948 and their millions of descendants. The count will be conducted by the State Department and will only include refugees who receive United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) services... [This is the sort of news that makes me daydream about nuking Congress, not to mention Israel, a source of unmitigated evil] Read more...Israel’s Nukes, Once Defensive, Now Guarantee Conflict | Tikun Olam ...over time Israel’s nuclear weapons have taken on a completely different strategic rationale. Now, they enable Israel to adopt its intransigent, rejectionist approach to its neighbors and the Israeli-Arab conflict. In fact, I believe that many of Israel’s most rash and disastrous military adventures including the first Lebanon war (1982), the 2006 Lebanon War, and Operation Cast Lead could only likely have been undertaken by a government which knew it could back up its aggressive war-making with the threat of nukes. This seems an extension of Jabotinsky’s Iron Fist doctrine which argues that Israel must meet its enemies with overwhelming force and destroy their will to resist... Read more... BS in Baghdad, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar Just as the "world powers" – as they’re eerily referred to in news accounts – were rejecting Tehran’s proposal to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent in exchange for lifting the draconian sanctions against Iran, an American cargo ship sent out a distress call near the Strait of Hormuz: pirates were attacking them. Iranian naval vessels in the area responded immediately, chasing off the pirates – but giving them credit for doing so is apparently beyond the ken of the Western media. Iranian media reports on the incident are being disputed by the Israel lobby’s "Committee for Accuracy in Media" (CAMERA), which disdained the very idea that those Ey-vil Never Again? | Moon over Alabama Some 1,000 protesters rallied in Berlin's Neukölln neighborhood on Wednesday and called for the ousting of Jewish migrants from Germany. Demonstrators attacked Jewish passersby while others lit garbage cans on fire and smashed car windows. Another group of demonstrators stopped a shuttle taxi and searched for Jewish migrants among the passengers, while banging on the windows. The crowd cried "The people want the Jews deported" and "Infiltrators get out of our home." National Socialist Member of the Reichstag Hans Weigel participated in the protest and said that "the Jews were a cancer in our body.".. Welcome to Racist Israel | Gilad Atzmon At a demonstration in south Tel Aviv demanding the immediately expulsion of all non-Jewish African asylum-seekers, a lone Israeli woman who does not agree with the rest of the crowd is shouted down with ferocity and told that she deserves to be raped... They Love Themselves Loving Themselves, by Gilad Atzmon | deLiberation In this this debate two rabid Zionist enthusiasts (Jeremy Ben Ami and Alan Dershowitz) who openly support the existence of the ‘Jews only State’, pretend to disagree on some minor issues. Interestingly enough, neither Ben Ami nor Dershowitz happen to be concerned with ethical or moral issues. They are largely interested in the image of Israel and its impact on American Jews... He is not a Terrorist | YouTube a clip from Kurban, an Indian movie Criminal Charges Placed against IDF General Ashkenazi | Roy Tov On May 31, 2010, nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed by IDF soldiers in a confrontation with Shayetet 13 naval commandos that boarded the Mavi Marmara on international waters. The ship was bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. Israel established the Turkel Committee to conduct an investigation; expectedly, its biased report determined that Israel’s takeover of the flotilla had been legal in terms of international law, but criticized the IDF’s preparation in advance of the arrival of flotilla as well as the operation itself... Read more... Russia: Forces Unable to Destabilize Syria Turn to Lebanon | Naharnet Forces which have failed to implement their plans to destabilize Syria have turned to Lebanon, Russian’s foreign ministry said on Monday. "Moscow is seriously concerned by growing internal tensions in Lebanon. It appears that the forces that have failed to realize their plans to destabilize Syria have turned to neighboring Lebanon," the ministry said on its website.... Read more... A bird’s eye view of Zionism’s and Israel’s strategic aim | Redress Information & Analysis Uri Avnery argues that the longstanding strategic aim of Zionism and Israel – a Jews-only state in all of the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and the prevention of an Arab Palestinian state – is a pipe dream and that Israelis had better formulate a new national aim based on peace and coexistence... [This is a counterveiling pipedream. Zionism cannot be defeated partially, only totally, because it’s inherently an all or nothing ideology.] Read more...The media’s limitations and manipulations | Redress Information & Analysis Ziad El-Hady looks at how government, elite and corporate interests shape media reports of international and domestic events, trivializing and sensationalizing news, corrupting our understanding of the world and reinforcing prejudice and bigotry... Read more... Israeli peace movement to launch online university | The State Organizers of an online Mideast peace movement say they are launching the Internet's first university for Israelis and Arabs across the Middle East. Former Israeli peace negotiator Uri Savir, founder of the "Yala Young Leaders" movement, says the group's "Online Academy" will offer students courses in government, social networks, communications and skill development. Savir said on Thursday that the new academy, set to go live in September, "can revolutionize relations between young people of the Middle East.".. [How much you wanna bet that this is yet another covert hasbara scheme – this one aimed at impressionable muslims – I may be wrong but I’ll give you great odds.] Read more...May 25, 2012 Classified Woman Unplugged in a New Session with Alex Jones | Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs Post In this startling new memoir, Sibel Edmonds—the most classified woman in U.S. history—takes us on a surreal journey that begins with the secretive FBI and down the dark halls of a feckless Congress to a stonewalling judiciary and finally, to the national security whistleblowers movement she spearheaded. Having lived under Middle East dictatorships, Edmonds knows firsthand what can happen when government is allowed to operate in secret. Hers is a sobering perspective that combines painful experience with a rallying cry for the public's right to know and to hold the lawbreakers accountable. With U.S. citizens increasingly stripped of their rights in a calibrated media blackout, Edmonds' story is a wake-up call for all Americans who, willingly or unwillingly, traded liberty for illusive security in the wake of 9/11... Watch video (Sibel lets it rip)...U.S. Neo-Conservatives Assail Possible Compromise on Iran Talks | IPS As at least two days of talks on the future of Iran's nuclear programme got underway in Baghdad Wednesday, neo-conservatives and other hawks escalated their campaign against any compromise agreement, particularly one that would permit Tehran to continue enriching uranium on its territory... Read more... Syria: Time For Assad To Prepare To Attack | Moon of Alabama Despite the deployment of UN ceasefire monitors in Syria the rebels seem to intensify their fighting by regularly attacking government checkpoints and logistics. Each day they kill some 15 to 20 government security personal and thereby undermine the Annan plan.It is obviously that the rebels have used the ceasefire to rearm with the quite open help of the U.S, the Gulf countries and Turkey. Of special concern is the visible proliferation of anti-armor weapons. Their main logistic line of communication seems to run through Tripoli, Lebanon where the Saudi financed Hariri Salafists have their base. The rather few genuine Syrian rebels also get active help from international AlQaeda like terrorist groups... Read more... Congress 'Un-Declares' War with Iran, by Kate Gould | FCNL All 535 members of Congress are now on the record declaring that they have not authorized the use of military force against Iran in the latest round of legislation passed in the House and the Senate. This unanimous 'un-declaration' of war by Congress is a crucial victory, with particular significance given its passage on the eve of the U.S.-Iran talks in Baghdad... Read more... War With Iran Has Already Begun, by Nathan Fuller | Antiwar ...The language used bodes terribly for the United States’ already disastrous and destructive foreign policy. The House affirms not merely that Iran will not be allowed to manufacture nuclear weapons, but that it will not be permitted the capability to manufacture them. Never mind that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta observed that Iran is not actually pursuing these weapons; given the extreme and persistent threats from the nuclear-armed Israel and United States, coupled with the U.S. forces surrounding Iran, we would have no right to prevent them if they were... Read more... Terrorizing Through Lawfare, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar ...The judgment against Damascus is perhaps no coincidence as Syria is currently on everyone’s enemy list, but the principle involved, that supporters of militant groups can be held legally responsible for the consequences of that support, is referred to as “lawfare.” The preeminent promoter of the use of lawfare is the Israeli group Shurat HaDin, which on its website describes how its various courtroom victories have made it the “bane of anti-Israel groups throughout the world.”.. Read more... The Rabbinic Foundation of Netanyahu's Messianic Lunacy Further Revealed | Maurice Pinay Prime Minster of Counterfeit Israel Benjamin Netanyahu recently visited the Mercaz Harav, the yeshiva of the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook. The yeshiva gifted Netanyahu with a correspondence between his grandfather, Rabbi Nathan Mileikowsky and Rabbi Kook. Rabbi Kook taught 'Jews' to, "begin to shake off the dust of exile by our own efforts, through natural, historical processes ... that we have a sacred duty to try to do so by whatever means are at our disposal," and that it is "the End [redemption] that is forcing us," a delusion that Netanyahu so clearly labors under... Read more... Jeff Blankfort interviews Prof. Fayezmanesh on USA, Israel, Iran | Takes on the World Prof. Fayezmanesh explores Israeli and US roots behind Iranian sanctions: US desire for total regional hegemony, Israel to annex the West Bank; the success of AIPAC in overcoming US corporate opposition to sanctions; of desire of Western oil companies to do business with Iran; of elevated gas prices US taxpayers have had to pay for Israeli-inspired US wars; of mistaken notion by Iranian ‘Greens’ that the US can help bring them democracy; of US shooting down of Iranian airliner while siding with Iraq in Iraq-Iran war... Listen to podcast... FBI quietly forms secretive Net-surveillance unit | CNET CNET has learned that the FBI has formed a Domestic Communications Assistance Center, which is tasked with developing new electronic surveillance technologies, including intercepting Internet, wireless, and VoIP communications... Read more... Status Update, by Jonathan Schanzer | Foreign Policy Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) is trying to get a handle on the real number of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East - a move that could result in a change of status for millions of Palestinians. His proposed language for the 2013 foreign appropriations bill would require the U.S. government to confirm just how many Palestinians currently served by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) - the body tasked with providing assistance, protection, and advocacy for Palestinian refugees - are actually refugees. The bill, slated for markup on May 22, would challenge the status of the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Palestinian refugees... [And what about the Jewish "refugees" returning to Palestine after thousands of years?] Read more...May 24, 2012 Israel: Self-made Global Pariah, by Vacy Vlazna | Palestine Chronicle Every time Israel bans Palestinians from leaving Israel's West Bank-Gaza Prison, and every time a well-meaning foreigner is refused entry to give humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, Israel is consolidating its reputation as a global pariah, now, according to the BBC poll, on par with North Korea for having the highest negative influence on the global stage. Like Pavlov's dog, Israel rabidly salivates and attacks in response to any association with human rights and human decency. All compassionate attempts by the flotillas to bring aid to alleviate the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza were confronted with Israeli violence, piracy, looting, and imprisonment peaking in the shocking Mavi Marmara massacre... Read more... Democracy Now Reports on IVAW Protest at NATO | YouTube We broadcast from Chicago, site of the largest NATO summit in the organization's six-decade history. On Sunday, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as members of Afghans for Peace, led a peace march of thousands of people. Iraq Veterans Against the War held a ceremony where nearly 50 veterans discarded their war medals by hurling them down the street in the direction of the NATO summit. We hear the soldiers' voices as they return their medals one by one from the stage. "I'm here to return my Global War on Terror Service Medal in solidarity with the people of Iraq and the people of Afghanistan," said Jason Hurd, a former combat medic who spent 10 years in the U.S. Army... War With Iran Has Already Begun, by Nathan Fuller | Counterpunch On Friday, 93% of the U.S. House of Representatives affirmed a resolution escalating America’s already aggressive position on Iran, from “crippling” sanctions to a zero-tolerance policy on nuclear weapons.. he resolution passed the House 401-11, with a few representatives absent and a few abstaining. This means it had massive bipartisan support – for those of you who only consider Republicans to be warmongers: 166 of 190 Democrats voted in support, including some of its ostensibly most progressive members, such as Barney Frank and Rush Holt... [Perhaps somebody will do the world a favor and nuke Congress. Something has to be done to wake people up.] Read more...Interventionism and the Elites, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar ...The great gulf between the American public and the elites when it comes to foreign policy is a constant source of irritation for the latter. The mandarins of the foreign policy establishment have long bemoaned the “isolationism” of the American people. It’s the natural inclination of a free people to leave others alone, and the Founders exemplified this sentiment when they decried the impulse to “go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” America “is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all,” declared John Quincy Adams in his famous 1821 Fourth of July speech... Read more... NATO Talks a Sham: War in Afghanistan Is Not Ending, by Rep. Dennis Kucinich | Huffington Post The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is not a benevolent organization. NATO is not about the North Atlantic and it's not about our collective defense. NATO is a cost-sharing organization that finances aggressive military action. By hiding behind the claim that the organization provides for 'common defense,' NATO allows us to wage wars of choice under the guise of international peacekeeping. The most recent example was the unconstitutional war in Libya where NATO, operating under a United Nations mandate to protect civilians, instead backed one side in a civil war and pursued a policy of regime change... [How many decent people with integrity and a genuine commitment to the people and the Constitution, like Kucinich, are there in Congress, 2, 3? And he’s just been gerrymandered out of office. Revolution anyone?] Read more...Why Israeli Settlers Shot an Unarmed Palestinian, by Robert Wright | The Atlantic ..The essential mission of Israeli soldiers stationed in the West Bank is to protect settlers against Palestinians. The job of protecting Palestinians against settlers falls to a separate Israeli police force that, as it happens, is massively understaffed. This imbalance--ample troops who are de facto allies of the settlers, dinky police force that could in theory help Palestinians but never seems to be around--is a recipe for the harassment of Palestinians and worse. This helps explain why settlers have repeatedly, with their impunity all but guaranteed, burned or cut down the olive trees of Palestinian farmers.... Obama reneges on secrecy pledge, by Glenn Garvin | Miami Herald There were no cameras around to record whether President Obama was winking when, on his first full day in office, he signed an executive order and two presidential memorandums declaring that “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.” But surely he must have been. No White House in my lifetime — not even that of the infamously secretive Richard Nixon — has been more of an attack dog when it comes to preserving governmental secrecy... Read more... Redefining the 'Arab Spring': Is Chaos Overtaking Revolution? by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle The age of revolutionary romance is over. Various Arab countries are now facing hard truths. Millions of Arabs merely want to live with a semblance of dignity, free from tyranny and continuous anxiety over the future. This unromantic reality also includes outside ‘players’, whose presence is of no positive value to genuine revolutionary movements, whether in Egypt, Syria, or anywhere else. Shortly after longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in the Tunisian revolution in January 2011, some of us warned that the initial euphoria could eventually give way to unhelpful simplification... Read more... State of New Babylon | Roy Tov ...Sealed in the fifth century AD, the process of its [the Babylonian Talmud] compilation is seen as the Jewish Golden Age. Haredim would like to return not to the Biblical Kingdom of Israel, but to the Talmudic Diaspora of Babylon. The Talmud is a blasphemous and criminal text by all accounts. Technically it is a compilation of excuses allowing the commitment of crimes; non-Jews are considered by it as non-humans, thus every conceivable crime against them is allowed. This was the trick allowing Jews to avoid the difficult commandments of God given in the Bible. To make sure that they won’t be forced to follow their own holy texts, additional measures were taken, and the Bible was clumsily modified... Turkey indicts Israeli commanders over Mavi Marmara raid | Maan News Agency A Turkish prosecutor has prepared an indictment seeking life sentences for four former Israeli military commanders over their alleged involvement in the 2010 killing of nine Turks on a Gaza-bound aid ship, Turkish newspaper Sabah reported on Wednesday... [I wonder if Israel’s response will be Talmudic – to whit, Turks are gentiles and therefore non-humans – ergo, no crime was committed.] Read more...Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal, by Yousef Munayyer | NYT I’m a Palestinian who was born in the Israeli town of Lod, and thus I am an Israeli citizen. My wife is not; she is a Palestinian from Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Despite our towns being just 30 miles apart, we met almost 6,000 miles away in Massachusetts, where we attended neighboring colleges... [A tame article perhaps, but significant because it was an Op-Ed in the NYT – perhaps the Times they are a changin’ and sanity and humanity are reasserting themselves? OK, I'm exaggerating.] Read more...May 23, 2012 Eagle: An End to Blind US Jewish Support for Neo-Nazi Zionist Israeli Government? | Public Intelligence Blog Israel is not the only albatross around the neck of the USA, there are others, but Israel (its government, not its people) is the one that has most often committed atrocities and sabotaged the USA with espionage, corruption, and inducing US Jews to commit treason–we refer especially to all those holding Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information clearances who are either publicly or in some cases silently dual-citizens. What has been done to the Palestinian peoples has been a long-running crime against humanity... Military Orchestrates Egypt’s Presidential Elections, by Carl Finamore | Counterpunch The military was the lone Hosni Mubarak-era institution to survive the revolution that toppled the country’s longest-reigning dictator last year. It remains the real power to this day and is skillfully orchestrating the May 23-24 presidential elections to paint a democratic veneer glossing over that simple truth. The plan seems to be working. The elaborate and deceitful military production casting the elections as the best hope to turn Egypt around is only part of the reason... Read more... Staying power – the key to victory in the war over your rights | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson considers two victories for human rights, one by Palestinian hunger strikers in Israel and the other by opponents of detention without trial in the USA. He argues that, although these are two battles won, the war to protect civil and human rights will need staying power and may last decades or even generations... Read more... Islamophobia: A New Form of Colonialism, by Ismail Salami | Palestine Chronicle ...A delusional man who was overwhelmed with the idea of a messianic mission, George Bush wittingly or unwittingly dragged the world to the margins where a clash of civilizations was imminent. The legacy of hatred which was started by George Bush was later continued in the form of classes and organized trainings. In line with this Islamophobic policy funded by Washington and the powerful Zionist groups in the country, the US military has long been involved in fomenting anger and hatred against the Muslims by teaching its future leaders that a “total war” against the Muslims would be necessary to protect America... Read more... The End in Afghanistan is Totally Predictable, by Dave Lindorff | Counterpunch John Kerry, back before he was a pompous windsurfing Senate apologist for American empire, back when he wore his hair long and was part of a movement of returned US military veterans speaking out against the continuation of the Vietnam War, famously asked the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a hearing, “How do you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake?”.. Read more... War Inc. Shifts Homeward, by Kelley B. Vlahos | Antiwar It’s been said many times that the war is a self-sustaining industry that requires a constant threat overseas to keep the machine thriving at home. Looking at the millions if not billions of dollars spent on securing “national special security events” against its own citizens, it’s clear that protesters have become the threat that has allowed, in part, the warfare state to flourish on American soil... Read more... US war veterans tossing medals back at Nato was a heroic act, by Bernard Harcourt | The Guardian ...what was truly remarkable today was the American servicewomen and men tossing their medals back at Nato. In a mixture of sadness, shame, anger, and pride, of trauma, sorrow, and pain, some looking back at their time in Iraq and Afghanistan, some healing from PTSD, others chanting Occupy slogans, these men and women showed a type of courage that the Nato leaders should have been forced to watch. Tragically, our leaders were busy posing for photo ops... Read more... BBC Polling: How the World Sees Israel, by Jamal Kanj | Palestine Chronicle In response to questions rating which country '… is having a mainly positive or mainly negative influence in the world?' Israel was tie with N Korea for third place with highest negative influence on the global stage.. Ever since commissioning the poll in 2005, Israel has solidly ranked high on the list of nations with negative influence. Israel’s perceived unfavorable influence in the world has increased from 47 to 50% in 2012... Read more... May 22, 2012 On "Israel's Right to Exist" by Sheldon Richman | deLiberation ...To proclaim Israel’s right exist is to proclaim that a political entity founded by a group of individuals on an ideology of ethno-racial chauvinism has a moral right to land it obtained through brutal ethnical cleansing. The Zionist movement had (and has) as its premise that Palestine is “Jewish land” and that the non-Jews are unfit for it. Thus it had (has) to be “redeemed.” The outcome was what the Palestinians call the nakba, or catastrophe. The political entity known as Israel thus occupies land stolen from the Palestinian people... Read more... Are Americans Catching On, Waking Up, Unplugging? by Paul Craig Roberts | Foreign Policy Journal ...the US Constitution has simply been discarded on the basis of fear. First, the fear of the Great Depression, and secondly, the fear of Muslim Terrorism. The United States of America is the Constitution. If the Constitution no longer exists as an enforceable document taken seriously by political elites, the United States no longer exists. Some other entity has taken its place. Think about that. Describe to yourself the characteristics of this new entity. This will be easier for older people than for the young, who have been born into the new tyranny. For the young, tyranny is all they know... Read more... The Iran war path has resumed: With Another ‘Colin Powell Moment’? by Finian Cunningham | Global Research ...All of the supposed “solid sources” claimed by Powell (and Blair and George W Bush) were later shown to be fabrications or spurious. Powell for one lied through his teeth. But based on his performance, the US and Britain launched a nine-year war of aggression on Iraq that claimed over one million lives and bequeathed that country with a heinous legacy of ongoing internecine violence, poverty, destruction and widespread cancer-causing depleted-uranium contamination. Incredibly, far from being shamed over committing war crimes and being complicit in war crimes, Western governments and media continue to repeat the same cynical charade of weapons of mass destruction on Iran... Read more... Chicago Under Siege | Stephen Lendman NATO arrives everywhere violently. Chicago was no exception. During summit activities, city cops are enforcers. They specialize in serving wealth, power, and imperial interests. Their guerrilla warfare history is notorious. They're reliable state terror partners. Their tactics include no-holds barred surveillance, vigilantism, and brutality. They're infamous for physical confrontation, flagrant abuse, and criminal assaults. From 2002 - 2004 alone, over 10,000 complaints were lodged. Many involve violence, brutality, even torture and murder. Only 18 disciplinary actions followed... Read more... Middle East Studies Group Blasts New York Times | Inside Higher Ed The Middle East Studies Association on Thursday released a letter it sent to The New York Times, criticizing the newspaper for refusing to run a letter to the editor by 151 faculty members objecting to an ad that the newspaper did run. The ad - by the David Horowitz Freedom Center - identified 14 "professors of hate" who the center said advocate a boycott of Israel. The ad called for these professors to be "publicly shamed" and urged alumni and students to contact the presidents of the professors' universities. The opening of the ad noted that boycotts of Jewish stores were an early tactic of the Nazis. In response to the ad, 151 professors wrote a letter to the editor of the Times, arguing that the ad unfairly linked their criticism of Israel to the Nazis, distorting their views... [The irony, of course, is that Horowitz is the spitting image of Goebbels, right down to his toenails, just as the Zionists are in many ways indistinguishable from the Nazis.] Read more...Mediterranean Energy Wars: Israel seeks to deploy 20,000 commandos in Greek Cyprus | StratRisks Israel wants its energy projects in Greek Cyprus to be run by Israelis and is seeking to deploy as many as 20,000 commandos for their protection, Anatolia news agency reported today. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuand his Greek Cypriot counterpart, Demetris Christofias, met on Feb. 16 to discuss the two countries’ joint ventures. Details of the talks between the two leaders were kept secret.... Read more... A Film Review: Hafez Aladdeen is an Israeli Patriot | Gilad Atzmon ..Similar to Cohen’s previous work, The Dictator is, once again, a glimpse into Cohen’s own tribal morbidity. After all, the person and the spirit behind this embarrassing comedy is a proud self-loving character who never misses an opportunity to express his intimate affinity to his people, their unique comic talent and their beloved Jewish state. But let’s face it, Cohen isn’t alone, after all, he has created The Dictator together with a Hollywood studio. So, it’s reasonable to say that what we see here is just one more Hollywood-orchestrated effort to vilify the Arab, the Muslim and the Orient... Read more... Anti-Shia plans finalized by NWO elites? | The Vineyard of the Saker The leaders of the New World Order are clearly engaged in major and intense consultations of how to deal with the "Shia problem".. Iran is far bigger and far more powerful than Syria, but the objectives of a strike on Iran will be far more limited. Indeed, I don't believe that anybody seriously has any more hopes for regime change in Iran, so the next best fallback option is to cripple Iran economically and humiliate it politically by doing to it what Israel did to Lebanon in 2006 and to Gaza in 2008. Kill a maximum number of people while crippling the infrastructure... Read more... Gaza's Ark: Building Hope, by Greta Berlin | Freegaza The Canadian Boat to Gaza, in cooperation, with international initiatives in the US, Australia and other countries, is launching a new initiative to challenge the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza, the only Mediterranean port closed to shipping. This new initiative: Gaza’s Ark, will build a boat in Gaza, using existing resources. A crew of internationals and Palestinians will sail it out of Gaza carrying Palestinian products to fulfill trade deals with international buyers... Read more... Hunting Down Ashkenazi | Roy Tov In May 2012, Ehud Barak’s hunting down of former IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi reached a new climax after Israel’s Minister of Defense sent a letter to the Attorney General accusing the general of ten different criminal offenses, including giving, allowing and taking bribes in connection with senior IDF appointments, breach of trust, fraud, and conspiring to obstruct government operations. Barak claims that the crimes were committed by “a group of senior officers, led by Ashkenazi.”.. [As in similar criminal organizations, like the drug cartels, uneasy lies the head whereon sits the crown. The terrorist state of Israel habitually eats its own.] Read more...Nazism, Zionism, and the Arab World, by Annette Herskovits | Dissident Voice The intricate, sprawling architecture of deception that shapes understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict in America is probably unique in history. For over six decades, the U.S. Congress, successive presidents, media, public opinion, all have supported a story which portrays Israel as wholly good and innocent, while painting those resisting its violence and injustice as anti-Semites, Nazis, and terrorists. The myth that Israel is the victim of unprovoked attacks by uncivilized Arabs persists, even in the face of Israel’s brutality and violations of international law in its 44-year long occupation... Read more... When the Respectable Become Extremists The Extremists Become Respectable: Colombia and the Mainstream Media | James Petras ...The first decade of the 21st century has witnessed the West’s embrace of extremism in all of its manifestation both in domestic and foreign policy. Extremism is a common practice by self-styled conservatives, liberals and social-democrats. In the past, conservative implies preserving the status quo and at most tinkering with change at the margins. Today’s ‘conservatives’ demand the wholesale dismantling of entire social welfare systems, the elimination of traditional legal restraints on labor and environmental abuses... Read more... Jews have a wrong to right in Israel, by George Smith | The Columbia Daily Tribune ...The Nakba and its aftermath are a shameful chapter in Jewish history. For Jews of good conscience everywhere, repudiating and resisting the injustice perpetrated in their name is an urgent mitzvah. This doesn't mean Israeli Jews must be expelled from their homeland, for that would be to pile a new injustice on the old one. But it does mean the Jews of Israel must at long last grant the Palestinians they've ruled for so long the same rights as they themselves enjoy, even if it means an end to the ethnically exclusivist Jewish state... Read more... May 21, 2012 The one-state reality vs. the two-state idea, by Noam Sheizaf | +972 In the wake of a unity deal between the Likud and Kadima, which resulted in one of Israel’s largest coalitions in history, some claimed that there is a chance to revive the peace process, and ultimately, arrive at a two state solution. Others have said that it’s too late for a plan based on separating Palestinians and Israelis. But this is a false dichotomy. For Israelis and Palestinians, the single state is a fact of life. The Israeli government controls the airspace, all the borders, the public land, the resources, and even the electromagnetic frequencies between the sea and the Jordan River... The Politics of Language and the Language of Political Regression, by James Petras | Dissident Voice Capitalism and its defenders maintain dominance through the ‘material resources’ at their command, especially the state apparatus, and their productive, financial and commercial enterprises, as well as through the manipulation of popular consciousness via ideologues, journalists, academics and publicists who fabricate the arguments and the language to frame the issues of the day. Today, material conditions for the vast majority of working people have sharply deteriorated as the capitalist class shifts the entire burden of the crisis and the recovery of their profits onto the backs of wage and salaried classes... Read more... Peace-making without Mediators, by Nicola Nasser | Palestine Chronicle ...all mediators have failed and it is the time to acknowledge their failure and to make room for other options, like sending back the file of the Palestinian – Israeli conflict to the United Nations, which was responsible for creating the conflict in the first place when the UN General Assembly adopted the non-binding resolution No. 181 for partitioning Palestine in 1947, which triggered a series of Arab – Israeli wars, thus undermining its own main mission as the organization created for the sole purpose of maintaining world peace. Since 1947, the “two-state solution” has been on the agenda. Sixty five years on, none is closer to that end. The U.S. and EU conduct over those years has been in effect to reinforce the “one state solution”, i.e. Israel... [There are two other variants of the One State Solution, the South African and Algerian models. I keep leaning further and further towards the last. It's beginning to acquire a sense of inevitability. No big deal, just another in the age-old pattern of the expulsion of the Jews in reaction to their atrocious behavior. This could lead to mass assimilation and the end of the problem, insh'allah.] Read more...Is Jeffrey Feltman Iran’s Best Friend in Lebanon? by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch ...Priding himself on being an adherent of realpolitik, Feltman is observing Israel being rejected by Arabs, Muslims and increasingly by the grounding swelling movement by people of good will including his own countrymen. He reportedly told one interviewer recently that he sees his role as “trying to staunch the coming tsunami of global rejection and delegitimization of Israel, and it’s not going to be easy.” Meanwhile, Iran’s Vice-President Rahimi’s program included a meeting with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and a visit to the, “Iran” Gardens hugely popular with many Lebanese families... Read more... How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists' - and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook, by Rick Perlstein | Rolling Stone ...the arrest was part of a pattern of entrapment by federal law enforcement since September 11, 2001, not of terrorist suspects, but of young men federal agents have had to talk into embracing violence in the first place. One of the Cleveland arrestees, Connor Stevens, complained to his sister of feeling "very pressured" by the guy who turned out to be an informant and was recorded in 2011 rejecting property destruction: "We're in it for the long haul and those kind of tactics just don't cut it," he said. "And it's actually harder to be non-violent than it is to do stuff like that.".. Read more... Madeleine Albright Commemoration and Iraq Genocide Memorial Day, by Felicity Arbuthnot | Dissident Voice In this sixteenth anniversary year of Madeleine Albright stating her endorsement of half a million child sacrifices at the alter of the UN Embargo on Iraq as a “price worth it”, this silent holocaust is to be commemorated annually. In New Haven, CT., on 12th May, marking the day of Albright’s infamous broadcast a banner was unfurled and a minute’s silence held as the Middle East Crisis Committee, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CT), the Tree of Life Education Fund and We Refuse to be Enemies, inaugurated the first Iraq Genocide Memorial Day... Read more... Three Suspected NATO Protesters Charged as Terrorists | Antiwar ...Michael Deutsch, the lawyer for the three detainees, says that they were all non-violent protesters and that of the people “arrested” that night (most of whom were released without charges) two were actually undercover police there to “egg on” the protesters to move from non-violent to violent action. “We believe it is a set-up, an entrapment to the highest degree … to discredit the protesters who have come here to non-violently protest,” Deutsch added. The prosecutors insisted that all three were “anarchists” and “domestic terrorists.”.. Read more... S. Africa to ban labeling Ahava as 'made in Israel' | Jerusalem Post Ahava cosmetic products from the Dead Sea and other products produced over the Green Line will no longer be allowed to be labeled "Made in Israel" when sold in South Africa, the country's trade and industry minister Dr. Rob Davies announced in an official notice. Israel reacted furiously to the South African announcement, which the Foreign Ministry said was the first of its kind in the world. Ministry spokesman Paul Hirschson said the ministry will call in the South African ambassador to protest the move... Al Nakba | YouTube Excellent documentary... Jeff Blankfort to AZZ Gabriel Ash | Gilad Atzmon A few days ago we came across a vile email exchange between three so-called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionists and Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, leading Palestinian intellectual and peace activist. Regretfully, the three Jewish ethnic campaigners used an abusive and patronizing language that left some of us bewildered and hurt. But Dr Qumsiyeh didn’t shy away, compassionately he answered the AZZ (Anti Zionist Zionists) putting into play every possible rule of reason. But his words were in vein. The infamous Tony Greenstein foolishly circulated the exchange and made his level of abusive language once again public knowledge... [The exchange reveals the stark difference between the humanists and the AZZ, perhaps the most vile of all the tribal Zealots, as they willfully deceive otherwise well intentioned people, including many diaspora Palestinians. They employ the language of the Left to rationalize and justify the continued existence of the fascist Jewish state.] Read more...US Charity Secretly Funds Israeli Nukes, by Grant Smith | Antiwar ...The American Israel Public Affairs Committee is diligently setting out legislative tripwires for mandatory US military attacks if Iran fails to abandon its program. Yet the brazen activities of the Weizmann Institute of Science now publicly documented by the FBI reveal violations of the core principle of the NPT. On April 24, 2012 the FBI released 159 pages detailing a secret 1992 counterespionage investigation into the Weizmann Institute of Science of Rehovot, Israel... Read more... May 20, 2012 Nakba Action, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance For the global community, there is nothing more consequential than the catastrophic failure after World War II to learn the correct lessons. Instead, the world continued with the business of war as usual (and war is business). One of the most destabilizing forces in the world was created and sustained for 100 years before the USA took on nurturing it after WWII. I am of course speaking of Zionism. This is the idea that came from Napoleon in 1799, took official sanction by the British in 1845, picked up by the British and French Jewish rich individuals (deHirsch, Montefiore, Rothschild etc), took the name of Zionism in 1890 (by Birnbaum), and then these wealthy Zionist Jews established the "Jewish Colonization Association" in 1891... Read more... The sun will rise again: The beauty of Palestine | YouTube A strategy of liberation requires emancipation, by Nahida Izzat | Another World Is Possible After almost one century of Zionist terrorism in Palestine, the world is gradually waking up to this racist and destructive ideology. Contributing to the heroic Palestinian Resistance, this growing awareness will incidentally precipitate the abolition of the Zionist ideology and its hideous manifestation, just like slavery or Nazism were abolished. The Palestinian Resistance and its allies represent an exemplary model of diversity and cooperation across borders, race, age, economic circumstances, religion or nationality. In essence, the Palestinian Resistance is a model of inclusion, the radical contrary of the exclusivist Zionist ideology. Contrary to the gory Zionist project, our true and sincere aspirations are long lasting Peace, Justice and Freedom... Read more... A World Without Capitalists Is Necessary, by Frank Scott | Legalienate ..What kind of system is this? This kind: If people are murdered in wars, that is good for the weapons business. If illness and disease run rampant that is good for the medical business. If natural disaster ravages communities and kills people, that is good for the construction industry and the burial business. Such are the realities of the cold blooded economics by which the people of the world have been organized for hundreds of years. A profit for one always means a loss for many. The idea of keeping people healthy, safe, secure and alive is reduced to the private force of doing so only if they are able to create profits for those selling health, safety, security and life itself to the highest bidder in the market. If we can’t afford to buy those things and charity does not exist for us, we can just drop dead... Read more... Facebook IPO Fails Mossad | Roy Tov ...Mark Zuckerberg was in an excellent position to become a formal “sayan” of the Mossad. Former Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky, in his book By Way of Deception, described the issue of worldwide Jewish-Israeli espionage extensively. The Mossad uses “sayanim,” (“helpers” in Hebrew) or local Jews living in foreign countries as its organizational base. Did Zuckerberg become one? Let’s see. He entered Harvard, and shortly after violated its computers, stealing an important database. He belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity. Then, Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally making them believe he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com (later called ConnectU); in such a way, Mark Zuckerberg stole the technology that allowed him to build Facebook... Read more... Knesset Lobby on Yesha Sovereignty to Meet | Arutz Sheva ...we are not viewed as the owners of this land, but rather, a 'foreign occupier, a dangerous invader, who dispossesses the Arabs,'" the group wrote. "Forty-five years late," they continued, noting the years past since Israel liberated Judea and Samaria in the 1967 Six Day War. "The time has come to rectify the situation and to extend Israeli sovereignty to the expanses of our land." "The national camp, which constitutes the majority of the Israeli public, never wanted or supported the 'two-state solution," the statement continued. "The alternative of the extension of Israeli law to Judea and Samaria offers a practical, just, and correct solution.".. IDF nabs 474 deserters, draft dodgers in 6 days | Ynet ..The IDF's Manpower Directorate dubbed the operation a success. Of the 474, 218 deserters and 62 draft dodgers were arrested, and the rest turned themselves in. The number of deserters has been reduced by 14.5% and now stands at 2,410. The number of draft dodgers stands at 1,739.. "The operation was made possible due to a reform in prisons as dozens of spots were cleared," a senior Military Police official said. He explained the many prisoners were released several days early to make room for the new detainees... Read more... ‘Heart-drain’ diary: The option of leaving Israel, by Yuval Ben-Ami | +972 ...Extremism, police brutality and dreams of faraway lands are common the world over, but not everywhere is there an occupation and not everywhere is democracy crumbling. Not every nation state was born as a dream which turned into a nightmare. Though not everyone sees this, this place is a nightmare, where countless individuals are imprisoned without trial, where children are abducted by armed soldiers in the dead of night, where enormous concrete walls engulf villages and towns to maintain fear and humiliation, where multitudes bow to propaganda as if taken over by body snatchers, repeat racist slogans and blindly support violence... Read more... A Mideast alternative to Israel: A response to Yuval Ben-Ami, by Haggai Matar | +972 ..Though I know the feeling he talks about and sympathize with it deeply – my choice, time and time again, is to stay right here, at home. I can even justify it. Of course, I totally agree with Yuval. It’s a very rough country that we live in, a country of occupation and racism, a country of militarism, chauvinism and brutal capitalism, a country of fundamentalism and violence, where intimidating winds of fascism are blowing in the air. It’s a country where I spent two years in prison, and where so many others like me get shot at, arrested and beaten for who we are and what we believe in... [Not all Israelis are Nazis. There are indeed decent human beings living in Israel, perhaps as many as 5% of the Jewish population would qualify.] Read more...May 19, 2012 Excuse Me, But Israel Has No Right To Exist, by Sharmine Narwani | Al Akhbar English The phrase “right to exist” entered my consciousness in the 1990s just as the concept of the two-state solution became part of our collective lexicon. In any debate at university, when a Zionist was out of arguments, those three magic words were invoked to shut down the conversation with an outraged, “are you saying Israel doesn’t have the right to exist??” Of course you couldn’t challenge Israel’s right to exist – that was like saying you were negating a fundamental Jewish right to have…rights, with all manner of Holocaust guilt thrown in for effect... [Excellent piece – spot on] Read more...House Bill Shifting Red Line for War on Iran Passes Overwhelmingly, by John Glaser | Antiwar A bill in the House of Representatives has just been passed which inches the United States dangerously close to war with Iran just days ahead of a second round of diplomatic talks with Iran about its nuclear program. The vote, passed 401-11, effectively calls for a military attack on Iran when it obtains a “nuclear weapons capability” – an undefined term that, by some interpretations, could already apply to Iran, not to mention Brazil, Japan, the Netherlands, and any other country with a civilian nuclear program... Read more... Israeli Leadership Hardens Stance, Plans Iran Attack, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar “I think they have made the decision to attack, it is going to happen.” That was the word from an unnamed top Israeli official, familiar with the ongoing conversation, in comments to Reuters. The debate within Israel over the attack, which reached a fevered pace just weeks ago, has come to a virtual halt, and the new coalition government has stopped talking about the upcoming war in public, apparently satisfied that they have won the argument... Read more... USS Liberty: A National Disgrace! | John Gidusko "Attack one American and you attack all Americans" was once proclaimed by President Clinton. More recently, an Assistant Secretary for State proclaimed that the U. S. government always protects its citizens. President Johnson, during the Tonkin Gulf fiasco, stated, "To any armed attack upon our forces, we shall reply.".. These are damned lies and meaningless words. These words were not true in 1967 (when Israel deliberately attacked the USS LIBERTY, killing 34 and wounding 174) and unfortunately, and in spite of these beautiful words, they are not even true today.. On that June day in 1967, the weather was beautiful... Clear and sunny, visibility unlimited... the LIBERTY, an elaborate state-of-the art intelligence gathering platform, was in international waters off the Gaza strip and was flying the Stars and Stripes. Israeli reconnaissance planes flew overhead for hours. Pilots and ship's crew waved to each other. Then, inexplicably, unmarked Israeli aircraft began attacking the ship... Read more... Postcolonial Theory, Whiteness & Palestine, by Gilad Atzmon | deLiberation Postcolonial, feminist and gay studies share many similarities to the extent that some academics regard these fields as theoretically and ideologically complementary. These fields of study are primarily concerned with politics, the structure of hegemony, the oppressed and the mechanism that brings about injustice. It is only natural then, that these realms of thought, primarily concerned with prejudice and injustice, would become key instruments in our understanding of Zionism and Israeli oppression... Read more... Islamic Jihad Takes the Lead in Gaza | Roy Tov ...the Islamic Jihad in Gaza is gaining power, after Hamas found itself—quite inexplicably—helping Israel in the Land Day events and the preventing the fire of rockets towards Israel by the Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees. Palestinians are voting. The PLO failed bringing peace and prosperity? Fine, let’s try Hamas. Did Hamas fail? Maybe the Islamic Jihad will be better... Read more... How Can a Movement be Apolitical?: The New Protest, by Uri Avnery | Counterpunch Rabin Square in Tel Aviv has seen many demonstrations, but none quite like last Saturday’s. It has nothing to do with the event which gave the square its name: the huge rally for peace at the end of which Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. It was different in every respect. It was a joyous occasion. Dozens of NGOs, many of them small, some of them slightly larger, each with a different agenda, came together in an effort to restart last year’s social protest. But it was not a continuation of last year’s Israeli Spring by any means... High Noon for the Imperium: American Empire and the Future, by Paul Atwood | Counterpunch The Great Recession is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and, like the aftermath of Katrina, or the BP calamity, or the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, is a man-made disaster. Many signs point to worse tidings. Many of us who live in this the most advanced capitalist country are indoctrinated at an early age to believe our system is by far the most efficient and best ever created, especially if we are affluent and live well. We tend to believe it obeyed the laws of evolution toward ever higher form, more or less as we imagine the human species itself. We go to lengths to ignore the fact that our system began as the brainchild of a minority that imposed its will by brute force against others who had good reason to oppose it... Read more... Applying the Six-Day War to Iran, by Ray McGovern | Antiwar With the 45th anniversary of the Six-Day War of June 1967 coming early next month, pro-Israel pundits like syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer are again promoting Israel’s faux narrative on the reasons behind Israel’s decision to attack its neighbors. The Krauthammers of our domesticated, corporate media seem bent on waging pre-emptive war against an accurate historical rendering of the actual objectives behind that Israeli offensive that overwhelmed Arab armies and seized large swaths of Arab territory, land that hard-line Zionists refer to as "Greater Israel,".. Read more... May 18, 2012 House Passes Stealth Legislation, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar Go to Google and type in “H.R. 4133.” You will discover that, apart from a handful of blogs and alternative news sites, not a single mainstream medium has reported the story of a congressional bill that might well have major impact on the conduct of United States foreign policy... [I have a suggestion for the current Congress in line with their obvious predilections. Let’s make the study of Hebrew mandatory in K-12 and institute a tax on the goyim as reparations for all the suffering the poor, innocent Jews have had to endure for centuries. The funds thus raised would be transferred to Israel, of course, on the condition that it be used solely for future massacres.] The US military option for Iran is 'ready,' American ambassador to Israel says | The Times of Israel The United States has completed its planning for a military strike on Iran, the US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said in remarks at a closed conference in Tel Aviv that were broadcast on Israel TV on Wednesday night. “It would be preferable to resolve this diplomatically, and through the use of pressure, than to use military force,” Shapiro said in comments that were recorded Tuesday and were broadcast Wednesday. “But that does not mean that option isn’t available. Not just available, it’s ready. The necessary planning has been done to ensure that it’s ready.”.. [Perhaps they’ll wait until just before Passover next year. Then the blood will be fresh and ready to use at the Seder. Just kidding, of course.] If there were global justice, Nato would be in the dock, by Seumas Milne | The Guardian Libya was supposed to be different. The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan had been learned, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy insisted last year. This would be a real humanitarian intervention. Unlike Iraq, there would be no boots on the ground. Unlike in Afghanistan, Nato air power would be used to support a fight for freedom and prevent a massacre. Unlike the Kosovo campaign, there would be no indiscriminate cluster bombs: only precision weapons would be used. This would be a war to save civilian lives... US/Israeli Special Relationship | Stephen Lendman ...A special relationship began. Thereafter it's grown financially, politically, militarily, diplomatically, and counter-productively. Israel clearly benefits. America loses more than it gains. Serious reassessment is long overdue. On many issues mattering most, the Israeli tail wags the US dog, whether or not Washington's interests are served. Both countries threaten world peace. United they endanger humanity... [Amen to that] An Inhuman Destiny: The Horrible Things That Empire Offers Us, by Fidel Castro | Counterpunch A piece of news released by AP, the most important US news agency, dated today in Monterrey, Mexico, explains it with irrefutable clarity. This is not the first, and certainly it won’t be the last, about a reality that puts paid to the mountain of lies with which the United States intends to justify the inhuman destiny it reserves for the peoples of our America... America as a shining drone upon a hill, by Tom Engelhardt | Asia Times Online Here's the essence of it: you can trust America's creme de la creme, the most elevated, responsible people, no matter what weapons, what powers, you put in their hands. No need to constantly look over their shoulders. Placed in the hands of evildoers, those weapons and powers could create a living nightmare; controlled by the best of people, they lead to measured, thoughtful, precise decisions in which bad things are (with rare and understandable exceptions) done only to truly terrible types. In the process, you simply couldn't be better protected... [Unfortunately, if you don’t belong to the country club and live in a gated community, you are outside the circle of protection. On the contrary, you are the enemy.] The Case of the Missing Terrorists, by Paul Craig Roberts | Foreign Policy Journal If there were any real terrorists, Jose Rodriguez would be dead. Who is Jose Rodriguez? He is the criminal who ran the CIA torture program. Most of his victims were not terrorists or even insurgents. Most were hapless individuals kidnapped by warlords and sold to the Americans as “terrorists” for the bounty paid... [I hereby nominate Rodriguez as the next commander of the Zetas. He’d be a shoo-in.] Did Six Million Really Die? by Pandora Pushkin (Satire) | Darkmoon “Is the Holocaust a suitable subject for satire?” I asked myself seriously, before deciding to accept this new article from satirical spoof writer Pandora Pushkin. In view of the fact that Christianity appears to be fair game for blaspheming Jews — “Christ sucks” (pornographer Al Goldstein) and “I hope the Jews DID kill Christ! I’d fucking do it again in a second!“ (comedienne Sarah Silverman) — I saw no reason why Holocaustianity, the new world religion, should be exempt from criticism or satirical treatment. Provided it’s done with good taste, of course... [I’d like to put in a plug for the term “the Holycause.” It’s more euphonious.] Israel as Popular as North Korea According to BBC Poll | deLiberation Israel is one of the countries with most negative global influence. Haaretz reported yesterday that, “Israel, Iran, Pakistan and North Korea were ranked most negatively by 24,000 people surveyed in an annual BBC poll.” It would appear that in spite of the extensive Hasbara campaign and the Jewish lobby buying every morally lax living politician, people of the world increasingly see Israel for what it is... Desperate Times Demand Revolutionary Measures, by Peter Phillips | Project Censored Runaway capitalism is moving unrelentingly towards sociopolitical-environmental collapse—cheered on by a two-headed single party machine known as US Congress. Activists, who see the coming disasters as catastrophic, are seeking revolutionary change through non-cooperation, and occupy disruptions. Yet, many are the still delusional hopefuls desperately fumbling with traditional responses; including “Kum ba yah” marches, and the futile support for progressive left-leaning candidates seeking positions of influence inside the Washington beltway... Meet Canada’s Ruling Oligarchy: Parasites-a-Plenty! | Andrew Gavin Marshall As hundreds of thousands of students in the province of Québec continue to strike into their 13th week against tuition increases, as the provincial government continues to employ legal repression and state violence against the youth, as Canadian families are over $100,000 in debt, as a looming housing crisis begins to rear its ugly head, as youth unemployment increases, student debt explodes, jobs vanish, poverty deepens, and oppression increases, it’s time to meet those responsible, those who are doing better than ever, those who are making record profits, sitting comfortably in their estates which are larger than the entire island of Manhattan, who travel by helicopter and private jet, who co-mingle with the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Spanish royalty, presidents and prime ministers at home and abroad: meet Canada’s ruling oligarchy... The Hava NaGila Monster and the Music of the Fears | Smoking Mirrors ...Zio-Tribe, Satanic interests have been in control of world banking for some centuries. This means they print the money and this means they have all the money in the world to purchase all the publishing, media, entertainment and what not Goebbels tools, to misshape world opinion in favor of their agendas. As the primary, black widow spider (Madame De Rothschild) of the primary Satanesque, Danse Macabre said, “When my sons want a war they have a war” (or something like that). They brought about the Bolshevik Revolution, which killed tens of millions of Russians. This also includes the Ukrainian holocaust. They instigated and financed World War 2. They arm-twisted the powers of the world's financial center to grant them a land with people for a people who stole the land so that they would have a sovereign nation from which to semi-legally propagate their crimes... Mark Twain Identified the Bankster Vampires | Henry Makow Ever since Joseph's rule in Egypt, nations have regularly evicted Jewish money lenders in order to survive, Mark Twain wrote in 1898. 114 years later, Greece faces expulsion from the EU for failure to repay "odious debt" created out of thin air . Perhaps it's again time for the central bankers and their minions to be expelled instead... [High time, I would say. They’re asking for it – why not give it to them. But where would they go in this now totally interconnected world? Outer space is an option – they could afford it. Dear asteroid, I would like to introduce you to...] Farewell Israel? | RT CrossTalk/YouTube Norman Finkelstein's new book on the American Jewish community has been both widely praised and criticized by influential writers. So is the American-Jewish romance with Israel coming to an end? Are the American Jews known for their liberal views distancing themselves from Israel? Or is it simply an overstatement?.. Thoughts After Interviewing Gilad Atzmon, by Pat Carmeli | deLiberation ...Having been raised in a middle-class working family in Israel on the values of respect for others – values he felt his country shared – the shock of a new understanding was palpable. Gilad relayed seeing the inhumane treatment of injured Lebanese and Syrians by some Israeli soldiers. Once, he saw small concrete cubes out in the burning mid-day sun. He questioned the Israeli guard saying “How could you keep dogs in this weather?” When the guard answered that these were for Palestinian POWs to be kept in solitary confinement, he eventually had to ask himself, “What kind of people are we?”.. Read more... Top 10 Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About the Nakba | The Jerusalem Fund Nakba is the Arabic word for catastrophe. It is used to describe the Palestinian loss of land and property during the depopulation of Palestine from 1947-1949 and does not refer simply to the declaration of a state of Israel... Read more... May 17, 2012 Final Call to attend The International Movement for One Democratic State in Israel/Palestine Conference , Munich, June 30/July 1 This is the final call to attend and register for the Munich Conference... US Leads War Drill in Jordan – Israel Not Invited | Arutz Sheva The United States is leading what it described as the "largest military exercises in the Middle East in 10 years" in Jordan on Tuesday. Eager Lion 2012 “is the largest exercise held in the region in the past ten years,” Major General Ken Tovo, head of the US Special Operations Forces, told reporters in Amman... [This seems to be the shape of the coalition being assembled to invade Syria and later strike at Iran. Israel is ostensibly left out as its presence would not allow Arab states to participate. Israel will strike from the side. It is interesting that Pakistan will also be involved as a NATO ally. There are rumours that Pakistan might be offered a bigger role in Afghanistan and possibly a piece of Iran's Baluchistan province in exchange for its participation in a NATO campaign. It could also get support in pressing its claim for "settling the Kashmir dispute" to its advantage. ~ Tony Ryan] Gilad Atzmon: The Palestinian Cause and the Discourse of Solidarity (2007) | YouTube Author and saxophonist Gilad Atzmon gave his first U.S. talk on April 13, 2007 at the University of Denver. He spoke about the Palestinian cause and the discourse of solidarity... Is Israel flirting with Iranian terrorists? by Trita Parsi | The Daily Beast Israel’s image as a victim of terror is taken for granted by most Americans. Thus, the NBC report from February 9 of this year was all the more stunning. Obama administration officials leaked to NBC that Israel had teamed up with a violent, cultish, US-terror listed Iranian organization called the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to assassinate Iranian scientists. Citing US government sources, NBC reported that Israel financed, trained and armed the MEK to carry out the deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists. That Israel had a role in the assassination of the scientists took few by surprise. That it collaborated with a fundamentally anti-Israeli, Marxist-Islamist terror organization to pull off the attacks was perhaps a bit more surprising... The Zionist scenario – now and in the future | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson assesses the chances of a Zionist victory – possession of all Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and ethnically cleansing the land of Palestinians. He argues that, with Palestinian resistance worn out by Israeli brutality, repression and sanctions, hope for the Palestinians rests increasingly with civil society action, especially the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement... Hillary’s Terrorists, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar On May 21, 1975, Col. Paul Shaffer, a military attaché to the US mission in Iran, kissed his wife and two children goodbye, and entered a waiting car with his colleague, Lt. Col. Jack Turner, whose wife was getting their three children ready for school. It was the last time the families of these two US servicemen would see them alive. As the Iranian driver pulled into a side street to avoid traffic a car blocked their passage and another car rammed them from behind. Three gunmen appeared and fired at the two Americans pointblank, killing them instantly: the three escaped in a third car, leaving a leaflet on the blood-drenched seat. The leaflet denounced “US imperialism” and bore the imprint of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK)... Einstein’s Prescience, by William T. Hathaway | Dissident Voice Albert Einstein wrote in 1939, “There could be no greater calamity than a permanent discord between us and the Arab people. Despite the great wrong that has been done us, we must strive for a just and lasting compromise with the Arab people…. Let us recall that in former times no people lived in greater friendship with us than the ancestors of these Arabs.” Einstein was opposed from the start to the setting up of a Jewish state and to mass emigration into Palestine. He was also one of the signatories to an Open Letter to the New York Times in 1948 denouncing the terrorist activities of Menachem Begin and the massacre carried out in the Arab village of Deir Yassin... Israel’s efforts to erase the memory of the Palestinian catastrophe, the Nakba | Redress Information & Analysis Neve Gordon argues that Israel's tireless efforts to conceal the truth of the Nakba – the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 – will ultimately prove futile and that, even today, most Israeli youths know what the Nakba is, even if their views of the conflict with the Palestinians remain lopsided... May 16, 2012 Nakba: the Palestinians’ never ending catastrophe | Redress Information & Analysis Alan Hart argues that Zionism’s mission is the complete liquidation of the Palestinian presence in historical Palestine and that, “unless the major powers led by America summon up the will to call and hold Zionism’s monster child to account for its crimes, there will be a final ethnic cleansing of Palestine at some point in a foreseeable future”.. Read more... Nakba anniversary message, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance On this 64th anniversary of the Nakba we mourn the ethnic cleansing that began in 1948 and that continues today with silent transfer, home demolitions, land confiscation and more. But we also celebrate an amazing resilience and success of the Palestinian endogenous people against incredible odds:.. Read more... Palestinian Prisoners Score Heroic Victory | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee ...Emphasizing imprisonment as a critical component of Israel’s system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid practiced against the Palestinian people, Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations have called for intensifying the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to target corporations profiting directly from the Israeli prison system. In particular, we call for action to be taken to hold to account G4S, the world’s largest international security corporation, which helps to maintain and profit from Israel’s prison system, for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law... Read more... The real Iran Many people have posted pictures of Iran to "dispel the myth" that Iran is a backwards country with people who need to be "liberated". They then proceed to perpetuate that myth with pictures of goats and barns and other B.S. I won't do that here. The fact of the matter is that a majority of Iranians live at least as well as Americans. Iran is a first world country which aside from mandating women wear a head scarf (and men not walk around half naked), actually allows people to live their lives as they wish with far less interference than in America... [The commentary is a little over the top, but the photos do make the point. We, all of us, have to stop the criminally insane Zionists from destroying this lovely country and its innocent people. If it takes another American revolution, so be it. All options are on the table.] Read more, view photos...Fighting Erupts in Lebanon: US, Israeli, and Saudi-funded terrorists destabilizing Syria now under fire | Activist Post According to a 2007 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, "The Redirection," the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had been assembling a region-wide army of extremist-mercenaries to battle Hezbollah in Lebanon, destabilize and overthrow Syria, and create a united front against Iran. The forces recruited for this effort would come from the ranks of the CIA-created "Arab foreign legion," Al Qaeda itself - extremist groups fresh back from fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, including listed terror organizations like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)... Read more... Indictment issued in Iran against Reuters over Ninja report | PressTV An indictment has been issued in Iran against Reuters for a February report by the London-based news agency that described Iranian female martial artists as assassins. Press TV has learned that a prosecutor's office in Tehran looking into the Reuters case has now referred the indictment to a public and revolutionary court in the Iranian capital city. In a February 16 report, Reuters claimed that “thousands of female ninjas train as Iran's assassins.”.. Israel is 64, thanks to Western life support, by Adrian Salbuchi | RT Israel turns 64 on May 14th. But it only seems to have made it to today thanks to unconditional life support from the US, UK, EU and powerful global Zionist lobbies. “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four…?” memorable words sung by Paul McCartney and John Lennon in the late sixties. If Israel’s founders had asked Western Powers that question back in 1948, the answer – then and now – would be a powerful and resounding “YES!”.. Read more... The BBC and “The Jews” | Via Meadia ...People who think “the Jews” run the media and control the news lose the ability to grasp what is happening around them. And people who think “the Jews” control America’s Middle Eastern policy lose the ability to understand, much less to influence, American policy in this vital part of the world. Emancipation from anti-Semitism is thus one of the necessary steps that many individuals and cultures have to take before they are able to act effectively and participate meaningfully in contemporary life... [I guess "The American Interest” is actually “The Israeli Interest”. The ZioNazi disinformation campaign never sleeps. Emancipation from Zionist control and the reflexive charge of “antisemitism” whenever someone says anything the least bit critical about Israel, Zionism or Jewishness would be real emancipation. The world might even regain a little sanity.] Read more...MeK and That Dastardly T-Word, by John Glaser | Antiwar In the news section, Jason Ditz tells us that the State Department is preparing to remove the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK) from their official list of terrorist organizations. This, after years of praise and advocacy from elite members in American politics, from Ed Randell to John Bolton to Howard Dean and Rudy Giuliani. These types of people collected payments from the MeK for their advocacy to get the group removed from the State Department’s list, which amounts to “material support” for terrorist groups, a felony... Read more... Rabbi accused of bribery appointed Head of Jerusalem Rabbinical Court | Roy Tov In May 2012, Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar appointed Rabbi Yisrael Yifrah to head the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court, a court that is just one level below the Great Rabbinical Court. Shortly before that, Rabbi Yifrah had his name removed from a list of candidates to the latter court because he was accused of bribery, extortion, and refusing to compel abusive husbands to grant their wives a divorce. His new post is substantial. In Israel, all civil events from birth to death pass through religious courts and authorities. The laws regulating this were inherited by Israel from the Ottoman Empire... Read more... They Dare Not Speak Its Name: Rothschild Zionism | David Icke I have written and spoken extensively about the agenda behind the unfolding global financial crisis and here I will expose the coordinating force, or at least the prime one, behind that agenda and so much else, including 9/11. Most conspiracy researchers either don’t realise the fundamental significance of this network or are too frightened to say so if they do. Sod that. It is widely known as Zionism or, as I call it, more accurately, I suggest … Rothschild Zionism. I add the ‘Rothschild’ to constantly emphasise the true creators of Zionism and its controllers to this day... [Only the Shadow knows...] Read more...May 15, 2012 The Parchin Deception, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar The latest wrinkle in the War Party’s propaganda campaign aimed at Iran is a drawing – yes, you read that correctly – of an alleged nuclear weapons development project at the Parchin military facility. An Associated Press “exclusive” describes this new “evidence” of Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions:.. Read more... Terrorist group puts out propaganda report claiming Iran secretly advancing nuclear weapons program | Activist Post The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) – the political arm of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO) often known as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), a terrorist organization trained by the United States and the Israeli Mossad to carry out assassinations and other covert operations in Iran – has put out another propaganda report dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. In their latest report, which a top U.S. nuclear expert already said should be treated with great skepticism according to Haaretz, claims that there are 60 scientists and engineers currently playing a role in the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program... Read more... Israeli Air Force Seeks to Replace Human Pilot Judgment with “Ethical Algorithm” | Tikun Olam Among the worst of Israeli journalism there’s a sort of gung-ho, testosterone-infused reporting style about military and security stories that makes my blood curdle. It’s super-credulous about virtually anything and everything offered by security sources... Read more... IAEA refuses Iran cooperation pact, by Gareth Porter | Asia Times Online Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano has signaled that there will be no agreement with Iran in meetings in Vienna on Monday and Tuesday on the terms for Iranian cooperation in clarifying the issue of alleged nuclear weapons work. Amano indicated in an interview with The Daily Beast on Friday that he intended to hold up an agreement on Iranian cooperation in responding to allegations of military involvement in its nuclear program until the IAEA was allowed to visit to Parchin, the military complex about 30 kilometers southeast of Tehran... Read more... Tony Blair & George Bush convicted War Criminals, by Lauren Booth | deLiberation Billed as a ‘court of conscience,’ the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal proved to be a gathering of sharp, knowledgeable and equally kind hearted, talents from the legal and human rights world. Over four days, a packed court room in KL, heard testimony from a series witnesses. Men and women from Iraq and the UK who had endured Viet Cong style torture – all supposedly in the name of America’s ‘security.’ The accounts of pulped limbs, sexual degradation, Medieval shackling and psychopathic torments inflicted by the powerful on the innocent and the weak, on more than one occasion, drew gasps of shock, from the court... Read more... Abbotabad Raid: Obama’s publicity stunt says Pak Official | Low Intensity Conflict ...I challenge any court, be it in the US, to pass a verdict verifying claims made by officials at the American military-intelligence establishment. They have no tangible, forensic evidence at all that can prove OBL was killed in Abbottabad. He never came to Pakistan in the second millennium, that's news for you. The world's media, including ours, has its corporate interests to protect. Plus, what is announced on Western media giants is taken to be the Divine Truth... Read more... Witness: The Great Book Robbery | Al Jazeera/YouTube Was the appropriation of Palestinian books and manuscripts in 1948 a case of cultural theft or preservation?.. Lee Whitnum Calls Opponent a 'Whore' Over Israel Stance During TV Debate | YouTube Telling the truth is not a winning strategy in American politics – but it’s refreshing Gilad Atzmon: Appartheid, désionisation, cause palestinienne | YouTube Gilad Atzmon interviewed by Eugene Puryear in March 2012.. “To stop being Chosen is to become human.”.. DNA links prove Jews are a ‘race,' says genetics expert | Haaretz Conjuring fear of Nazism and anti-Semitism, Jews recoil from the thought that Judaism might be a race, but medical geneticist Harry Ostrer insists the 'biological basis of Jewishness' cannot be ignored... [This is great news! When humanity finally throws off the ZioNazi dictatorship, we could do DNA tests on people and send those with strong Jewish racial genetic markers to specially prepared quarantine camps where they could impress one another with how terribly smart they are and whine about how they're always victimized. Of course I would have to go there, but maybe I could get an exemption for having failed to become rich, powerful and psychotic. We’ll call it the Jewish Loser exemption.] Read more...Israel’s huge reward, by Nina Burleigh | Salon ...As progressives total up the ways Obama dashed their hopes for the elusive change we can believe in, there is one big, broken change-promise that no one mentions these days. Three years ago this month, Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and told him that the West Bank settlements had to cease. “The settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward,” said Barack Obama, at his first presidential meeting with the Israeli leader... Read more... This Weekend's Extravaganza of Crapoganda on Iran's Nuclear Program, by Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America ...another comment made by Ashton on Friday is cause for considerable concern. She told reporters in Brussels, "My ambition is that we come away with the beginning of the end of the nuclear weapons programme in Iran. I hope we’ll see the beginnings of success.” Such a statement is certainly alarming. Despite the hysterical cries of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing acolytes here in the U.S., both Western and Israeli intelligence, along with the IAEA, have consistently confirmed that Iran has no nuclear weapons program... Read more... AIPAC Resolution Demanding War With Iran On House Floor Tomorrow | MJ Rosenberg On Tuesday, the House of Representatives is slated to vote on a resolution designed to tie the president’s hands on Iran policy. The resolution, which is coming up under an expedited House procedure, was the centerpiece of AIPAC’s recent conference. In fact, 13,000 AIPAC delegates were dispatched to Capitol Hill, on the last day of the conference, with instructions to tell the senators and representatives whom they met that supporting this resolution was #1 on AIPAC’s election year agenda... Read more... Nakba Day and Israel’s Ministry of Thought Control | Roy Tov ...The extent of mind-control the Israeli administration attempts on the population it rules is astonishing. Prime Minister Golda Meir claimed Palestinians do not exist, and expected the people to answer: “amen!” Things didn’t improve much since her departure; for many years possessing a Palestinian flag—even if hidden in a dark drawer—was a punishable crime in the state claiming to be “the only democracy in the Middle East.” The Zionist leaders’ deepest fear is that their people will realize they have been deceived by them; they fear that the people will realize that the Zionist dream is nothing but a hollow, meaningless dream built atop solid Palestinian structures. After all, most of the Israeli towns had been built by Palestinian workers... Read more... Idiocy as WMD, by Linh Dinh | Dissident Voice Borges writes, “dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.” As a preeminent mind, Borges rightly considers the mind to be a man’s greatest asset, for without mind, a man is nothing. The more oppressive a political system, then, the greater its assault on its subjects’ minds, for it’s not enough for any dictator, king or totalitarian system to oppress and exploit, but it must, and I mean must, make its people idiotic as well. Every wrongful bullet is preceded and accompanied, then followed up by a series of idiotic lies, but we’re so used to such a moronic diet by now, our trepanned intelligentsia don’t even squirm in their tenured chairs... Read more... Jews tried to kill President Truman | Window Into Palestine The date is December 3, 1972, and it’s right there in a headline of the Tri-City Herald, the newspaper that serves Pasco-Kennewick-Richland in the state of Washington: “Jews sent President Truman letter bombs, book tells.” The newspaper picked up the article, we see, from the Associated Press (AP). Not only does the article carry the authority of the AP, but the book in question bears the authority of none other than President Harry Truman’s own daughter, Margaret. It is her biography of her father, entitled simply Harry S. Truman, and at the time the article was written, the book had just been published... [Actually, one of their favorite pastimes is assassinating American Presidents, or at least trying to. Psychotics are like that.] Read more... May 14, 2012 Perceptions of Persia: The Persistent & Pervasive Orientalism of the West's Iran Policy | Wide Asleep in America Explicit Orientalism has long been a hallmark of the West's condescending and patronizing attitude towards Iran. In their second volume of "Major Problems in American Foreign Relations," published in 2010, Dennis Merrill and Thomas Paterson explain that Western cultural representations of the Third World are so steeped in "'orientalist' tones - exotic yet primitive, weak, female, childlike, racially inferior, and in need of supervision" that "Cold War era policymakers were themselves socially conditioned and often viewed others through the Orientalist lens" and "tended to perceive fiery Third World nationalists...as emotionally unstable, politically immature, and threatening to U.S. interests.".. Read more... Myth and the Russian Pogroms (Part 3): The Jewish Role, by Andrew Joyce | The Occidental Observer We continue our series of essays examining the Russian Pogroms with this essay on the part played by Jews in provoking the disturbances. As stated in Part Two, one of the key problems with existing historiography on the pogroms (and ‘anti-Semitism’ generally) is that these narratives invariably argue that the plight of the Jews was the result of nothing more than irrational hatred. Jews adopt a meek and passive role in this narrative, having committed no wrong-doing other than being Jews. There is no sense of Jewish agency, and one is left with the impression that Jews historically have lacked the capacity to act in the world... Read more... An Operetta in Five Acts: The Netanyahu-Mofaz Pact, by Uri Avnery | Counterpunch The master magician has drawn another rabbit from his top hat. A real and very lively rabbit. He has confounded everybody, including the leaders of all parties, the top political pundits and his own cabinet ministers. He has also shown that in politics, everything can change – literally – overnight. At 2 a.m. the Knesset was busy putting the finishing touches to a law to dissolve itself – condemning half of its members to political oblivion. At 3 a.m. there was a huge new government coalition. No elections, thank you very much... Read more... The Right’s False Prophet, by Kenneth B. McIntyre | The American Conservative ...Strauss’s argument about esotericism is both historically and philosophically incoherent and useless in any methodological sense. It calls to mind something that Umberto Eco called cogito interruptus:.. Read more... USA to Announce Additional Funding to Israeli Missiles | Roy Tov Sweating heavily despite the air conditioning, Israel Minister of Defense Ehud Barak walked back and forth in his spacious office on the Marganit Building’s fifth floor. The luxury of the needle-shaped, Dutch-built, Defense Ministry’s tower that had become one of Tel Aviv’s landmarks seemed to be teasing him: “Soon you’ll be selling falafel on the beach.” That was how the silent “woosh” of the cool air sounded to Barak. President Obama had thwarted an Israeli attack on Iran, and Prime Minister Netanyahu had announced early elections. Barak had no room in this new reality... Read more... Clueless Arab and Palestinian leaders and pundits: "¡Que se vayan todos!" | The Vineyard of the Saker ...I don't feel that it is right to simply indulge in reckless Assad-bashing like many Arab and, sadly, Palestinian, pundits do. The very same folks whose irresponsible "down with Gaddafi!" plunged Libya in violence, chaos and poverty are now clearly hell-bent on repeating that same "performance" with Syria. The weirdest thing about these people is that they are self-proclaimed secularists, and yet they are in bed with the worse religious fanatics of the planet (Wahabi Islamists and Orthodox Jews)... Read more... Fables of Wealth: Capitalists and Other Psychopaths, by William Deresewicz | NYT There is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they are, what their social role may be, whether they are good or bad. Well, consider the following. A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law. The only thing that puzzles me about these claims is that anyone would find them surprising... Read more... Musical Interlude: Charles Lloyd | YouTube May 13, 2012 Stephen Walt: Iraq, Iran and the Israel Lobby | P U L S E Harvard Professor Stephen Walt giving his recent Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture, titled Deja Vu All Over Again?: Iraq, Iran and the Israel Lobby... Iran accused of being behind 9/11 attacks, by Julie Lévesque | Global Research The U.S. court judgment issued in December 2011 (Havlish v. Iran) which blames the Iran government for the 9/11 attacks is part of the propaganda ploy, which consists in demonizing the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is part and parcel of America's ongoing war against Iran since the overthrow of its U.S.-backed monarchy in 1979. Like many similar lawsuits in America, this legal procedure's ultimate goal is to draw off important sums of money from the Iranian government leading to the possible confiscation of assets, thereby further strangling the country’s economy, already targeted by U.S. sanctions, while simultaneously reinforcing Iran’s image of a “state sponsor of terrorism”.. Syrian Rebels Admit Terrorist Bombing Campaign - Then Deny Actual Bombings, by Tony Cartalucci | Global Research Perhaps in an attempt to soften coming revelations that Syria's opposition will be increasingly armed and backed by the West for a final military push to divide and destroy a sovereign Syria, Reuters released a report titled, "Outgunned Syria Rebels Make Shift to Bombs." The report admits that the Syrian rebels, depicted so-far as hapless pro-democracy protesters, are now turning to bombing tactics.. "we are starting to get smarter about tactics and use bombs because people are just too poor and we don't have enough rifles.".. The “U.S.” House of Representatives Again Promotes Israel Over America, by Bob Johnson | Veterans Today In yet another sickening display of gutless obedience to the Israel lobby and the Jewish dominated media, the “U.S.” House of Representatives has passed legislation which promotes Israel’s interests over the interests of America and Americans by passing the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012. This treasonous bill was sponsored by Zionist and Israel-firster Eric Cantor and Goy Boy Steny Hoyer. Only two Congressmen voted against it, Ron Paul and John Dingell!.. Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945, by Donald Neff | Washington Post ...That same year, 1897, the first Zionist Federation was established in the United States. It attracted few followers, either from the established Jewish community in America or among the hundreds of thousands of new Jewish immigrants flocking to east coast cities to escape East European anti-Semitism and pogroms. The settled and prosperous upper class Jews of German origin believed in social assimilation. Their social position and wealth proved to them that the American melting pot worked. The last thing they wanted was to embrace an ideology that advocated establishment of a foreign country specifically for Jews, thereby bringing into question their loyalty to the land that had brought them a comfortable and secure life... [The American Zionists are indeed traitors, and fools, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.] Brookings: A Reliable Imperial Tool | Stephen Lendman Brookings calls itself a Washington-based NGO "conducting high-quality, independent research" to advance three goals: democracy, economic and social welfare for all, and a "more safe, prosperous and cooperative international system." In fact, it's a corporate financed imperial tool. It serves wealth and power. It deplores democracy, social welfare, and equal opportunity. It supports Washington's longstanding Syria and Iran regime change agenda. Doing so ignores rule of law principles... Iraq Destruction: Jewish at the root, by Jonathan Azaziah | Opinion Maker March 20th, 2012 marked 9 years since Iraq was invaded and systematically annihilated by the terrorist armies of the United States of America (chief aggressor), and the United Kingdom (secondary aggressor), along with further “support” from the terrorist forces of their “coalition of the willing.” The murder of the Iraqi nation was not executed in the interests of the “US Empire” or “Western imperialism” as it is customarily described by petrified “activists” who are apprehensive to the point of convulsion to criticize Zionism as an international force that is upheld by Jewish financial and political power. Iraq was destroyed for the protection of the Zionist entity... Chris Hedges: Totalitarian Systems Always Begin by Rewriting the Law | Truthout ...Franz Kafka understood the totalitarian misuse of law, the ability by the state to make law serve injustice and yet be held up as the impartial arbiter of good and evil. In his stories "The Trial" and "The Castle" Kafka presents pathetic supplicants before the law who are passed from one doorkeeper, administrator or clerk to the next in an endless and futile quest for justice. In the parable "Before the Law" the supplicant dies before even being permitted to enter the halls of justice. In Kafka's dystopian vision, the law is the mechanism by which injustice and tyranny are perpetuated... Israeli persecution forces Christians to emigrate, by Khalid Amayreh | Occupied Palestine Israeli ambassador to the United State Michael Oren recently tried to bully CBS to kill a story exposing Israeli persecution, harassment and mistreatment of Palestinian Christians, forcing many of them to emigrate. Oren, a Jewish supremacist, reportedly described the ’60 Minutes’ broadcast of 12+ minute story on Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian Christians as “a strategic threat” to Israel. He didn’t explain how a short documentary would be a threat to a nuclear power that is armed to the teeth and which also happens to tightly control the government and Congress of the only superpower on the planet... Top Ten False Flag Terror Targets, by Captain Eric H. May | Veterans Today False Flags are a standard stratagem, particularly in democracies, in which it’s necessary to create consensus before waging war. In 1898 the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor propelled the American people into the Spanish-American War, much as 9/11 propelled us into invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq a century later... Son of Holocaust survivors loves Iran | Uprooted Palestinians Elias Davidsson is a computer engineer, piano teacher, writer and peace activist. He was born in Palestine in 1941 to German Jewish parents.. Elias Davidsson regards himself anti-Zionist and rejects the existence of a Jewish state as incompatible with human rights norms. He is co-founder of the Association Iceland-Palestine and is a supporter of a democratic State in the whole of historic Palestine for Muslims, Christians and Jews. Elias Davidsson doesn’t believe in the official 9/11 story. He says no plane was hijacked and Muslims were not involved – it was an inside job... Questioning US-Israel relations - with Steven Walt | Al Jazeera/YouTube How are US-Israel relations affecting foreign policy in the Middle East?.. May 12, 2012 A Call to Arms for Class War: From the Top Down, by Steven Higgs | Counterpunch Lewis F. Powell’s 1971 memorandum to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — “Attack on American Free Enterprise System” — may or may not have been the first shot fired in the nation’s late-20th-century right-wing revolution. But from the document’s title to its ominous conclusion — “Business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late” — it was a literal call to the political arms that have subsequently driven the nation’s devolution from democracy to oligarchy... Woody Guthrie & Emmylou Harris: "Hobo's Lullaby " | YouTube It’s Woody’s 100th anniversary. RIP, brother... U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use 'Hiroshima' Tactics for 'Total War' on Islam, by Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman | Wired ...For the better part of the last decade, a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts has been working its way through the U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that America’s real terrorist enemy wasn’t al-Qaida — but the Islamic faith itself. In his course, Dooley brought in these anti-Muslim demagogues as guest lecturers. And he took their argument to its final, ugly conclusion. “We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam.. It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”.. Mother’s Day, 2012, and We’re Still at War, by Murray Polner | Lew Rockwell Few Americans know that Mother’s Day was initially suggested by two peace-minded mothers, Julia Ward Howe, a 19th century anti-slavery activist and suffragette, and Anna Reeves Jarvis, mother of eleven, who influenced Howe and had asked her fellow Appalachian townspeople, badly polarized by the Civil War, to remain neutral and help nurse the wounded troops of both sides. While neither lived to see an official Mother’s Day, it was eventually designated as a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, a president whose armies invaded Mexico, brought the U.S. into World War I and whose administration carried out brutal punishments against opponents of the World War I and the draft, such as Eugene V. Debs... Myth and the Russian Pogroms (Part 2): Inventing Atrocities, by Andrew Joyce | The Occidental Observer Having grounded ourselves in the history of Russia’s Jewish Question, it is now time for us to turn our attention to the anti-Jewish riots of the 1880s. The following essay will first provide the reader with the standard narrative of these events advanced by Jewish contemporaries and the majority of Jewish historians — a narrative which has overwhelmingly prevailed in the public consciousness. The latter half of the essay will be devoted to dissecting one aspect of the Jewish narrative, and explaining how events really transpired... Sibel Edmonds: US government needs to keep the fear factor alive | RT/YouTube The Obama administration has the worst track record when it comes to prosecuting whistleblowers. Obama once claimed he'd work hard to have a transparent government, but many have faced retaliation for revealing controversial government information. Sibel Edmonds, who is a whistleblower, waited 340 days for FBI clearance of her memoir but finally released it on her own. Edmonds, founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, joins us... When Only the Mega-Rich Count: Does the West Have a Future? by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant. This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners... Celebrating our “Warrior President” by Glenn Greenwald | Salon ...After years of being mocked by the Right as Terrorist-coddling weaklings, Obama — strutting around touting his own strength — lets them feel strong and powerful in exactly the way that Bush and Cheney’s swaggering let conservatives prance around as tough-guy, play-acting warriors. Rather than ignore this aggression, Democratic think tanks point with beaming pride to the corpses piled up by the Democratic Commander-in-Chief to argue that he’s been such a resounding foreign policy “success,” while Democratic pundits celebrate and defend the political value of his majestic kills... “Juden Raus!” says Israel | Roy Tov The Israeli administration has an uncontrollable weakness for George Orwell’s 1984; the best example is the 1982 Lebanon War which was named by the government “the War for the Peace of the Galilee.” The Hebrew possessive contraction brought together the two words which sounded exactly like “War-Peace,” creating a perfect Orwellian oxymoron. These instances abound; the topic of today’s article sends us to a place which its name contradicts its nature. Beit El is a settlement just north of Jerusalem, in the problematic Mateh Binyamin Regional Council; its name means “House of God”.. [The temple in which I was bar-mitzvahed was called Temple Emeth (truth) - same Orwellian deal.] May 11, 2012 Prisoners Uphold Palestinian Cause, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle A critical shift in the Palestine-Israeli conflict is now underway. The shift promises an endgame for the Israeli plot in Palestine, and a possible collective response from the Palestinian people. Every Palestinian uprising in the past — from as far back as the late 1920s to the second Intifada in 2000 — has been sparked by a single event, which was a critical accumulation of numerous prior events that forced Palestinians to act en masse. Such a moment is now approaching. Current developments in Palestine include the complete bankruptcy of the Palestinian leadership, futile unity talks between major Palestinian factions, Israeli attempts to finalise its long-orchestrated colonial designs in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, and a failure of the international community to impose any real pressure on Israel... Read more... A portrait of a former Zionist, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss A year ago at the counter-AIPAC conference in Washington I met a New Yorker I’ll call Bill. Quiet and darkhaired and serious at 35, Bill told me he had grown up enchanted with Israel but had begun questioning his devotion in his late teens. The Israeli response to the Second intifada was the final straw. After that he’d stayed away. Then last fall Bill visited Jordan and saw the lights of Israel and Palestine across the Dead Sea and felt a strong desire to go back, but he said he couldn’t justify it without a larger purpose. I said, What if you came with me and I wrote about our trip?.. Read more... The Israel Lobby Never Sleeps, by Philip Giraldi | The Passionate Attachment There has been no media reporting on H.R.4133 — United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012 introduced into the House of Representatives of the 112th Congress on March 5th “To express the sense of Congress regarding the United States-Israel strategic relationship, to direct the President to submit to Congress reports on United States actions to enhance this relationship and to assist in the defense of Israel, and for other purposes.” The sponsors include Eric Cantor, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Howard Berman (all of whom are Jewish) and also Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who is Norwegian but might as well be Jewish given his frequently expressed love for Israel. The bill provides Israel with a blank check drawn on the US taxpayer to maintain its “qualitative military superiority”.. Read more... STW office raided by Israeli military | Stop the Wall At 1.30am this morning ten armoured jeeps of the Israeli occupation forces and intelligence surrounded and raided the offices of Stop the Wall in Ramallah. Israeli military stole 2 laptops, 3 hard drives and 10 memory cards containing files and photos as well as archive material relating to the work that the organisation does in opposition to Israel's apartheid wall and the attack on Palestinian human rights that the wall and the settlement represent. This is a renewed attack upon Palestinian civil society and their struggle... Read more... Solidarity and Realpolitik: My Response to Jeff Halper, by Susan Abulhawa | Palestine Chronicle Some years ago, I was on a panel with three men, Jeff Halper among them, at a Sabeel conference in Pennsylvania. Each panelist was asked to give their vision for a solution to the 'Palestine/Israel conflict'. Because I was sitting at the end of the table, I was the last to speak. I listened to each one of my fellow participants lay out different versions of a two-state solution, each more depressing than the other, each with irrelevant nuances (all previously articulated by Israel, by the way) on how to make the refugee problem just go away... [Jeff is a cuddly, avuncular fellow, impossible to dislike – he could be the poster boy for the AZZ crowd (Anti-Zionist Zionists).] Read more...A Tipping Point for Israel, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar A tipping point is where physical momentum, inclined in one direction, reverses its course, stabilizes, and then begins to move the opposite way. Those of us who have been arguing for a sane United States foreign policy in the Middle East have well understood that the odds on shifting the prevailing narrative have been heavily against us thanks to the overwhelming resources possessed by a powerful domestic lobby. Ten years ago in America, it was impossible to place even a letter in a mainstream newspaper or magazine that was in any way critical of Israel... Netanyahu Nukes Obama | Roy Tov On April 22, 2012, The Washington Post published an Op-Ed named "Nuclear weapon reductions must be part of strategic analysis," by Henry A. Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. Henry A. Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and national security adviser from 1969 to 1975. Brent Scowcroft was national security adviser from 1975 to 1977 and 1989 to 1993. The article analyzed the USA nuclear weapons strategy from a viewpoint that matches President Obama’s position: “Regardless of one’s vision of the ultimate future of nuclear weapons, the overarching goal of contemporary U.S. nuclear policy must be to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used.”.. Read more... War on Iran: America's Next Catastrophe in the Middle East? by Emanuel Stoakes | Truthout The ninth anniversary of the launch of one of the 21st century's bloodiest, most controversial wars passed a few weeks ago on March 19 with scant acknowledgement in the media; the struggling world economy and an election-year political circus largely dominated mainstream op-eds and editorial agendas. Was it simply inexpedient for major networks to divert resources from what they apparently consider more serious concerns to pause for meaningful reflection on the legacy of America's appalling war in Iraq?.. Read more... Starving the Syrians for Human Rights, by John V. Walsh | Dissident Voice The wing of the U.S. human rights movement which targets foreign countries can wind up as a cruel business, aiding the ruthless and violent actions of the U.S. Empire, wittingly or not. For the U.S. all too often uses human rights as a cover for taking action against countries that defy the Empire’s control. Some weeks back, I decided to look into one such group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an organization I had long refrained from joining out of skepticism. But perhaps, I thought, PHR had sidestepped the dangers inherent in this work. So I joined to find out... Read more... Dignity | Popular Resistance "We did not go into the battle because we love to be hungry or in pain, but for our dignity and the dignity of our nation," Thaer Halahlef, 33 from Hebron, 73 days on Hunger strike. Dignity is such a word that makes us shudder. We Palestinians want our leaders and political leaders around the world to show a fraction of the dignity shown by Thaer and his comrades. Dignity. Self respect. Honor. Independence that begins with freeing our minds from mental occupation. Dignity is what we 11.2 million Palestinians seek on the eve of the Nakba... Read more... What kind of society do Americans want? | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson argues that Americans face a clear choice: to live in a cohesive and civilized society that cares and supports all its members, or to live in a society governed by selfishness and the philosophy of survival of the fittest... Read more... Bad for America, Bad for Israel, Bad for the World by Rep. Ron Paul | Antiwar I rise in opposition to H.R. 4133, the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, which unfortunately is another piece of one-sided and counterproductive foreign policy legislation. This bill’s real intent seems to be more saber-rattling against Iran and Syria, and it undermines U.S. diplomatic efforts by making clear that the U.S. is not an honest broker seeking peace for the Middle East. The bill calls for the United States to significantly increase our provision of sophisticated weaponry to Israel, and states that it is to be U.S. policy to “help Israel preserve its qualitative military edge” in the region... [Gotta give the guy some credit, even though he’s pro Israel and advocates an atavistic 18th Century form of right wing anarchism – he’s one of only a handful of relatively sane, incorruptible members of Congress – indeed, he may be the only one.] Read more...May 10, 2012 1,600 Palestinians on hunger strike and the world doesn’t even bat an eyelid, by David Rose | Daily Mail ..'My detention has so far been renewed seven times and they still haven't charged me with anything,' it said. 'I can't take any more. I am going on hunger strike because the situation has become unbearable.' Today, assuming he survived last night, will mark the 68th day of his protest, a period in which Hahlaleh, 33, has consumed nothing but water and a little salt. It's worth noting that only two out of the ten Irish Republican hunger-strikers who died in the Maze prison in 1981 lasted longer without food than Hahlaleh and Diab... Candidate who wants Olmert's job once 'sought deaths of 70 Palestinians a day,' by Donald Macintyre | The Independent A leading candidate to be Israel's next premier called for a death toll of 70 Palestinians a day when he was head of the military during the second intifada, according to a best-selling book by two Israeli journalists. The account of a briefing given in May 2001 to senior West Bank army commanders reinforces the image of hawkishness enjoyed by Shaul Mofaz... [Solid terrorist credentials have always been a sine qua non for anyone aspiring to become the Prime Minister of Israhell] Will Sadat’s Camp David and the Zionist Embassy be Next? by Franklin Lamb | Counterpunch The Egyptian people are demanding the return of their sovereignty. According to recent opinion surveys they believe it was partially ceded to Israel by the two post-Nasser dictators, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, at the behest of American administrations, from Nixon to Obama. The removal of three humiliating shackles for Egyptians, the gas give-away scheme, the 1979 Camp David Accords and the US forced recognition of Israel, constitute a strategic national security objective for most of Egypt’s 82 million citizens... A vital (and unlearned) lesson from Julius Caesar, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon ...In 63 B.C., Julius Caesar delivered a speech to the Roman Senate in which he conveyed a crucial point, one highly relevant to many of our current controversies. A conspiracy of prominent Roman citizens, led by the patrician Catiline, had been caught attempting to foment a massive civil war in order to overthrow the Roman government. Their crimes were widely reviled — it was pure treason — and, due to multiple confessions, their guilt beyond dispute... Russian Opposition Caught Filing into US Embassy in Moscow, by Tony Cartalucci | Global Research ...Approached by journalists inquiring as to why they had all come to greet the US Ambassador, their responses ranged from silence to dismissive gibes. Later, the group of opposition leaders emerged responding only with "Вы сурковская пропаганда," or "you’re Surkov’s propaganda," meaning the journalists represented government efforts to undermine their work and legitimacy. It is a common response given by Russia's opposition members when media attempts to question them about their increasingly overt ties to Wall Street and London... Terrorist Plots, Helped Along by the F.B.I. by David Shipler | NYT The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts. But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists... [Even the NYT occasionally publishes the truth. Hey, nobody’s perfect.] Daring to Criticize Israel | Stephen Lendman ...Israel is criticized for a reason. Persecution, racism, occupation, and apartheid are unjustifiable. So are crimes of war and against humanity. Compromising academic and speech freedoms puts all other rights at risk. Without them, classrooms are more indoctrination than education. Professors understanding that deserve praise, not rebukes or ostracism. Freedom in America and other Western societies hang by a thread. Protecting it in classrooms may be step one to having a chance to save it... Netanyahu Crowns Himself King of Israel, by Jonathan Cook | Common Dreams ...Rather than facing the electorate in September, Netanyahu and his hardline rightwing government are expected to comfortably see out the remaining 18 months of his term of office. Not only that, but he will now have the backing of more than three-quarters of the 120-seat Israeli parliament, leading one commentator to crown him the “King of Israel”. The announcement may have taken Israelis by surprise but it fully accorded with the logic of an increasingly dysfunctional Israeli political culture... Washington's war of words against Iran, by Jasmin Ramsey | The Guardian The United States claims that sanctions against Iran are designed to convince it to change its behavior on a range of issues, but even the language used to describe them tells a different story. Sanctions are central to the Obama administration's "dual-track" strategy – explained as a combination of pressure and engagement intended to increase US leverage at the negotiating table. As Iranians struggle with increasingly "crippling" measures, advocates are justifying the resulting pain as the alternative to war... Norman Finkelstein - Political scientist - BBC HARDtalk | Gilad Atzmon According to Norman Finkelstein, American Jews fall out of love with Israel? In this BBC Hardtalk exchange he argues that they are now so unhappy with what Israel is doing that they want to distance them from the country. But is Finkelstein telling the truth here? I think that he is dead wrong! Diaspora Jews are actually more attached to their tribal identity than ever... Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal 2012 - Day 1, by Lauren Booth | deLiberation When authority entrusted to further truth and justice betrays that trust, two options remain: one is to throw up your hands in despair and resignation; the other is to reclaim that power and to hold authority accountable. This is the statement of intent from the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalize War on the first day of its proceedings against former US President George Bush and 11 members of his regime. Over the next five days, the Tribunal will hear from victims of US torture in both Iraq and Guantanamo Bay... Revisiting the 19th-Century Russian Pogroms, Part 1: Russia’s Jewish Question, by Andrew Joyce | The Occidental Observer The anti-Jewish riots, or “pogroms” of late 19th-century Russia represent one of the most decisive periods in modern Jewish, if not world, history. Most obviously, the riots had demographic implications for western countries – around 80% of today’s western Diaspora Jews are descendants of those Jews who left Russia and its environs during the period 1880–1910. But perhaps the most lasting legacy of the period was the enhancement of Jewish “national self-awareness,” and the accelerated development of “modern, international Jewish politics.”.. Shaul Mofaz Walks to Canossa | Roy Tov ...Netanyahu and Mofaz struck a deal that brought Kadima into the coalition, with Shaul Mofaz becoming Deputy Prime Minister. This created a National Unity Government (an informal term referring to a government comprising the main parties) of 94 MK’s, meaning that over 78% of the Knesset supports the new government. Even if Netanyahu’s party were to leave the coalition, the government would have a majority; such a government is almost unbeatable. Netanyahu will spend the rest of his reign repeating words attributed to King Louis XIV of France: “L'État, c'est moi” ( “I am the state” in French)... May 9, 2012 On the History of the U.S. Economy in Decline, by Noam Chomsky | Counterpunch The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There’s never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations it has established can be sustained through a long, dark period ahead — because victory won’t come quickly — it could prove a significant moment in American history... NATO: The New Holy Alliance, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar ...Under President Monroe, America was a bulwark against the Holy Alliance of its day, the focus of Europe’s fearful monarchs as the peasants began to rise. Today, America stands at the head of a new Holy Alliance, as our modern-day Metternichs convene in Chicago amid rumors of a peasant protest that have the authorities terrified. The entire affair is to be walled off, with troops in the streets and snipers on rooftops: the city will be in lockdown for days... How Terry Jones can get away with it, by Kourosh Ziabari | Intifada Palestine Burning the holy books which are interconnected with the hearts and souls of millions of people around the world is one of the most heinous and dreadful actions which one can think of. After decades of bloodshed and bigotry in the two World Wars, Civil War in the United States and Crusades against Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries, burning the holy books can be interpreted as a new form of barbarity and ignorance in the modern era and an unforgivable crime which can be justified by no standards whatsoever... The Emperor Has No Clothes: Palestinians And The End Of The Peace Process | Crisis Group Middle East Report Does anybody still believe in the Middle East Peace Process? Nineteen years after Oslo and thirteen years after a final settlement was supposed to be reached, prospects for a two-state solution are as dim as ever. The international community mechanically goes through the motions, with as little energy as conviction. The parties most directly concerned, the Israeli and Palestinian people, appear long ago to have lost hope... Israel's back-room deal strengthens an authoritarian trend, by Jonathan Cook | The National ...Israelis barely had time to absorb the news that they were heading into a summer election when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday pulled the rug from underneath the charade. Rancourous early electioneering had provided cover for a secret agreement between Mr Netanyahu and the main opposition party, Kadima, to form a new, expanded coalition government... Hedges vs. the Black Bloc, Round Two, by Mark Taylor-Canfield | Counterpunch A recent article by Chris Hedges is once again causing heated arguments among activists in the Occupy Wall Street movement. “Black Bloc: The Cancer in Occupy,” was published in his syndicated Truthdig.com column back in February, but folks are now talking about it again at political organizing meetings and on social networking websites. After Black Bloc Anarchists broke windows, vandalized cars and assaulted members of the press during May Day protests in Seattle and Oakland, the issue has taken on a new urgency among occupy groups around the country... Netanyahu’s Barbarossa | Roy Tov ...The plans for early elections didn’t last for good reasons. Netanyahu was leading the polls with an unbeatable gap, getting almost half the vote. Labor leader Shelly Yacimovich was second with around 15%; she had no chance of winning. Third was Shaul Mofaz, the leader of the Knesset’s largest party, Ariel Sharon’s Kadima, with a miserable 6%. Mr. Mofaz political calculation was simple. He would have emerged from the elections as a loser with a substantially smaller party; his party would have sent him to sell falafel in Siberia... United Methodist Church's shameful failure to divest from injustice, by Susan Abulhawa | The Electronic Intifada This week, amidst the incredible ongoing mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, some of them on the brink of starvation, the United Methodist Church failed to pass a resolution to divest from three major beneficiaries of the most incendiary human rights abuses and colonial crimes of our time. Among the heartbreaking collection of ignorant statements, delegates had the audacity to claim that divestment was divisive and counterproductive to peace... May 8, 2012 Israel's Moral Peril | The Chronicle of Higher Education ..a trickle of dissent with respect to Israel has turned into a running stream. Books, articles, and Web sites critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, its acquiescence in the messianic designs of its settlers, its foreign-policy decisions on Gaza, Iran, and much more, and the increasing influence of the ultra-Orthodox over the character of its domestic life have begun to appear in significant numbers in America. Some, but not all, of these efforts, moreover, come from writers unused to being in the critical camp. The question is rapidly becoming not whether one should find fault with Israel, but how... [While the tribal Jews busily dig their own grave in Palestine, the whole world suffers from their criminality.] Read more...Benzion Netanyahu’s Role in Crafting the “Strategic Asset” Myth, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Israel and its partisans have stressed the Jewish state’s role as a strategic asset to the United States in the Middle East. A recent Haaretz article, however, provides further evidence that this claim is little more than a self-serving myth. In the article titled “David Ben-Gurion’s diary invites a rethink of Benzion Netanyahu’s extreme Zionist image,” Israeli historian and journalist Tom Segev reveals that the current Israeli Prime Minister’s late father offered his propaganda services to Ben-Gurion’s government on at least two occasions... Read more, watch video...House to Vote on U.S.-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation | US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation ..From record-breaking levels of military aid, to funding for joint anti-missile projects, to joint military exercises, the scope and depth of the U.S.-Israel military relationship has been unprecedented during the Obama Administration. This resolution would make the relationship even more intimate by urging the United States to provide Israel with refueling tankers that could be used to attack Iran, unspecified “specialized munitions,” greater access to U.S. forward-deployed weapons stockpiles and weapons from the U.S. war against Iraq, greater Israeli participation in NATO and much more... [Soon, perhaps, Hebrew will be a required language in the public schools, and proficiency mandatory for elected office. Charismatics speaking in tongues would also qualify.] Read more...Lessons From Ancient Rome for the Pax Americanum: From Republic to Empire, by Paul Atwood | Counterpunch ..As a fourth grader I became fascinated by Roman history, a subject about which I still read widely. Since I attended a Catholic school the subject was taught in such a way as to portray Rome as the great arbiter of justice in the ancient world, its Pax Romanum an antique counterpart to the role the U.S. was presumed to be playing in the post-World War II era. Rome’s adoption of Christianity in the early Fourth Century CE cemented the parallel, since that event was presented as evidence that Rome also assumed moral authority over the ancient West...Read more... Terror in Tel Aviv | Roy Tov ...On April 27, 2012, five Molotov Cocktails were thrown in Shapira Neighborhood, a poor area in Tel Aviv’s south. One of them hit a kindergarten, where children were sleeping; the others hit private homes. In one case, the terrorists opened the window of a house—where people were sleeping—and threw an ignited bottle inside. God’s unsleeping angels made sure nobody was hurt. The event was barely mentioned in the Hebrew media and was completely ignored by the international one.. I almost forgot to mention that the victims were black people; the attackers were Jews... Omar Barghouti on "White People" | deLiberation For some peculiar reason Omar Barghouti, BDS’s leading activist makes some biologically determinist remarks. He for instance declares that he won’t take a lecture from a “white person”. But Barghouti doesn’t stop there, he clearly makes a connection between ‘skin colour’, political stand and violence. It seems as if Barghouti is also aware of himself making a racist statement when he suggests that “the white race is the most violent in history of mankind.”.. Zionist history: a short quiz | Redress Information & Analysis Neve Gordon highlights the slide in Israeli political thought over the past 20 years with a quiz the answers to which "expose just how far right Israeli politics, as well as the public discourse informing it, have shifted"... Read more... Foreign Policy Theater of the Absurd, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar A Russian general has threatened military action if the US and its NATO allies go ahead and build a “missile shield” in Eastern Europe: “A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens,” say Russian chief of staff Nikolai Makarov. That the “shield” is of dubious effectiveness, and is mainly a cash cow for US defense companies, are not factors the Russkies are willing to take into consideration: their main beef seems to be the implied insult of Washington claiming the shield isn’t designed to protect against future aggression emanating from Moscow, but against an alleged Iranian missile threat to Europe. Hey, they seem to be saying: what about us? Aren’t we a threat, too?.. Read more... Sparta is heading to the polls, by Gideon Levy | Haaretz The show must go on: Sparta in Israel. And in Sparta, do as the Spartans do: Security is king and the army is God. Mandatory army service, which results mainly from the IDF's function as an occupation force, is not a necessary evil but a moral value... Read more... May 7, 2012 Jews flee from Israel? | YouTube Israel was created as the promised land to provide a home for all the Jews of the world. But tens of thousands have fled the the country over the past few years and more are lining up to leave... A New Shoah | Roy Tov On May 6, 2012, the Op-Ed article of Yedihot Aharonot—the largest Hebrew newspaper—was written by Giulio Meotti. Not often an Italian journalist is invited to write for a Hebrew newspaper; however, Mr. Meotti has accumulated a lot of merit in the eyes of the Zionist establishment. In 2010, he published a book named “A New Shoah,” a book that centers on the stories of Israeli victims of terror. Every day in Israel, memorials are held for people killed simply because they were Jews, is Meotti's main claim. I beg my regular readers some patience, I have not turned Zionist; a hard-hitting truth will be gained by walking through a few paragraphs of Zionist interpretations of current events... The Dirty Truth About Israel | YouTube The real truth they won’t teach you at school... The open society and its enemies | Silvia Cattori Silvia Cattori’s interview with novelist Jacob Cohen discussing his book The Sayanim Spring prompted a staggering reaction by the national board of the Union juive française pour la paix (UJFP) which denounces Jacob Cohen’s comments "for displaying a guilty indulgence towards Atzmon" and declares it “has decided to suspend him from the UJFP until the next general assembly, where his case will be examined and a statutory decision will be taken as to whether or not to exclude him”. Gilad Atzmon, who has also been inculpated by the UJFP, responds to its declaration, the import of which takes us back to the time of the Inquisition... Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire | AGA Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in unprecedented detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. Presenting these previously inaccessible documents along with expert context and analysis, Taner Akçam's most authoritative work to date goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing... Read more... May 6, 2012 Iranians and Israelis against war, sanctions, occupation and state oppression | Iranian-Israeli Circle We, Iranians and Israelis living in Berlin, protest together against the current politics of Germany, Israel and Iran, all aiming at escalation and military conflict in the Middle East. We oppose the armament of Israel by the German government, the sanctions imposed on Iran by the West, and the politics of war threats and deliberate escalation perpetrated by both the Israeli and Iranian regimes... [English translation follows the German] The Man With Messianic Tendencies, by Uri Avnery | Counterpunch ...The politicians are invariably accused of cowardice in face of the enemy, failure to defend national honor, and such. Not in Israel. In our country we are now seeing a kind of verbal uprising against the elected politicians by a group of current and former army generals, foreign intelligence and internal security chiefs. All of them condemn the government’s threat to start a war against Iran, and some of them condemn the government’s failure to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace... Read more... From Tehran to Tel Aviv in 7 Minutes | Roy Tov ...It is difficult to comprehend how someone who achieved the rank of major general, was Chief of Staff of the Israeli Air Force and led AMAN, the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, keeps making obviously false statements in front of a respectable, supposedly well-educated public and is applauded for that. Amos Yadlin also said: “If they can’t be contained when they don’t have a nuclear weapon, how can they be contained when they do?” In its style, this sentence was typical of Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels was second only to Hitler as a public speaker of the Nazi Party. Hitler was hoarse and passionate; Goebbels was cool, sarcastic and humorous. He was a master of insinuation, as Amos Yadlin obviously is... Read more... Time for a change! by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israeli jails are on hunger strike and some are near death. The population of strikers includes 200 child prisoners, 27 Palestinian legislative council members, and 456 prisoners from Gaza who have not been allowed family visits since 2007. Meanwhile, colonization continued a relentless pace. Ramzy Baroud and Jeff Halper argue that Israel is “fixing” the outcome and is an “end-game” scenario to take over most of the West Bank and leave us in small cantons. Yet, judging from my research into the carefully planned Zionist project, such plans are not end games but mileposts... Read more... Sullying the Holocaust, by Mairead Maguire | Counterpunch ...the call for BDS is neither anti-Semitic in intent or effect, but reflects the recognition that after 20 years of failed negotiations and almost 44 years of military occupation and illegal colonization, there is no means by which Palestinians can achieve their basic human rights and freedoms except through the activism of international civil society. The obligation to act is itself embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights prescription that “every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, secure their universal and effective recognition and observance.”.. Read more... The President’s Private War, by Andrew P. Napolitano | Antiwar ...Attorney General Eric Holder made a similar unconstitutional argument a few months ago when he stated in defense of the president’s using drones to kill Americans in Yemen that the AUMF, plus the careful consideration that the White House gives to the dimensions of each killing and the culpability of each person killed, somehow satisfied the Constitution’s requirements for due process. What monstrous nonsense all this is. These killings 10,000 miles from here hardly constitute self-defense and are not in pursuit of a declaration of war... Read more... Time for a military coup in Israel? by Alan Hart | Salem News ...Doing nothing will mean, among other things, letting Zionism's colonization and slow but sure ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem continue. Netanyahu knows that to do that he will need to be in the strongest possible political position at home to tell a second-term Obama to go to hell if he dares to use (or even thinks about using) the leverage he has to oblige Israel to be serious about peace with the Palestinians. And that, I think, is the key to understanding the real reason why Netanyahu is going for early elections... Read more... May 5, 2012 Why Obama is Not Ending the War in Afghanistan, by Gareth Porter | Counterpunch The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration’s “Enduring Strategic Partnership” agreement with Afghanistan and the Memorandums of Understanding accompanying it emphasise transition to Afghan responsibility and an end to U.S. war. But the only substantive agreement reached between the U.S. and Afghanistan – well hidden in the agreements – has been to allow powerful U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) to continue to carry out the unilateral night raids on private homes that are universally hated in the Pashtun zones of Afghanistan... Read more... UN Mute Over NATO's Syrian Death Squads, by Tony Cartalucci | Global Research ..Since March 2011, reports of arsonists and gunmen amongst Syria's opposition have been included in reports regarding the unrest in Syria, albeit buried under sensational headlines of the Syrian government's "brutality." More recently, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has conceded that indeed the Syrian opposition "Free Syrian Army" is conducting widespread, systematic abuses including the kidnapping, torture, and murder of both security forces and civilians. The HRW report titled, "Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses," is broken into three parts; kidnapping, torture, and executions... Romney wants to Fight Whole Muslim World, not Concentrate on Bin Laden, by Juan Cole | Informed Comment ...Romney is a scary conspiracy theorist when it comes to the Muslim world, and his discourse in this regard is eerily similar to that of European far-right figures such as Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer... Read more... International bankers and WWII, by Mujahid Kamran | The Nation ...WWI had added incredible sums to the coffers of the international bankers, who began setting up privately controlled central banks on the pattern of the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve. Rothschild had once said: “Give me control over a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Taking over the central banks of nations has been one of the most crucial elements in the strategy of international bankers over the past two centuries to bring about a New World Order... Read more... Israel Prepares Next Political Murder | Roy Tov On May 4, 2012, Hagai Amir, brother and accomplice of prime Israel’s Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, was released from prison after being held for 16 and half years in solitary confinement. Yuval Diskin—a former head of the Shin Beth—said days before that, on April 28, in a public event, that he believed another political assassination, like that of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by a Jewish extremist, could occur in the future. “Today there are extremist Jews, not just in the territories but also inside the Green Line, dozens of them who, in a situation in which settlements are evacuated… would be willing to take up arms against their Jewish brothers.” There is no soft way of saying this: the Shin Beth—Diskin’s former fiefdom—was responsible for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin... Read more... Brewing a conflict with China: Provoking a Long-term Cold War, by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts | Global Research What this is all about is provoking a long-term Cold War conflict with China that will keep profits and power flowing into Washington’s military-security complex. Large profits flow to armaments companies. A portion of the profits reflow into campaign contributions to “the people’s representatives” in DC and to presidential candidates who openly sell out their country to private interests. Washington is going to construct new naval bases in the Philippines and on the environmentally protected Jeju Island belonging to South Korea. Washington will waste tax revenues, or print more money, in order to build the unnecessary fleets to occupy these bases... Read more... Shalom, Amigos! | Revolt of the Plebs The rising Hispanic population in the United States may come as good news to some Latinos, but others recognize that the Zionists who helped facilitate this epic demographic shift are also exploiting it to employ a “divide and conquer” strategy that may ultimately undermine their efforts of achieving self-determination... Read more... A putsch against war: Israel’s hawks in open revolt against war on Iran | Redress Information & Analysis Uri Avnery looks at how a number of leading hardliners in Israel’s military and security establishments have spoken out against the Israeli government’s plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations and called into question the fitness for office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak... Read more... May 4, 2012 Israel and the walls that surround it | Inside Story ...The country's newest frontier wall follows the construction or planned-construction of four others. These could eventually see Israel completely enclosed by steel, concrete and barbed wire. The most famous and controversial of these is the 748km 'separation wall' encircling the West Bank. Israel says it is a necessary security measure that has deterred attacks from the Palestinian territories. But given that it runs inside the Green Line, which marks out Israeli and Palestinian territory, many see it simply as annexation of Palestinian land... [Eventually the ghetto will be hermetically sealed, with guns all along the parapets. So much for “a light unto the nations.”] Read more...The fraud of “humanitarian wars” by Glenn Greenwald | Salon All wars, even the most unjustifiably aggressive, are wrapped in the same pretty rhetorical packaging... The Roots of Christian Zionism: How Scofield Sowed Seeds of Apostasy | YouTube Ever wonder why so many Christians support America's many wars, especially in the Middle East? A new Christianity has emerged from the Twentieth Century called Christian Zionism or what could be called, "Angry Evangelicalism," or "Dispensationalism on Steroids." What motivates a nationally known, evangelical preacher like John Hagee to call for a preemptive strike against Iran when it is contrary to what Jesus taught and commanded his followers to do? This "Roots of Zionism" presentation may be the first of its kind with a factual explanation of how Christianity's latest apostate epidemic was launched with the publishing of C. I. Scofield's reference Bible in 1909, and the influence of the notes in it... The Why of Terrorism, by Ray McGovern | Counterpunch ...Are we starting to get the picture of what the United States is up against in the Muslim world? Does Helen Thomas deserve an adult answer to her question about motive? Has President Obama been able to assimilate all this? Or is the U.S. political/media establishment incapable of confronting this reality and/or taking meaningful action to alleviate the underlying causes of the violence?.. [Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that the US gummint consists of the dumbest and most immoral people on this planet.] Read more...US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, by William Blum | Killing Hope If you flip over the rock of American foreign policy of the past century, this is what crawls out…invasions … bombings … overthrowing governments … occupations … suppressing movements for social change … assassinating political leaders …perverting elections … manipulating labor unions … manufacturing "news" … economic and political sanctions ... death squads …torture … biological warfare … depleted uranium …drug trafficking … mercenaries …It's not a pretty picture. It is enough to give imperialism a bad name... Read more... A Decade of War – for What? by Patrick J. Buchanan | Antiwar "My fellow Americans, we have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war," said Barack Obama from Bagram Air Base. "Here in the predawn darkness, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon. The Iraq War is over. The number of troops in harm’s way has been cut in half, and more will be coming home. … The time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end." Interesting comment, that last... Read more... Colin Powell Says Iraq ‘Blot’ Teaches Need for Skepticism | Bloomberg Colin Powell says his erroneous address to the United Nations about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction provides a lesson to business leaders on the importance of staying skeptical and following their intuition. “Yes, a blot, a failure will always be attached to me and my UN presentation,” the former U.S. secretary of state writes in a new book of leadership parables that draws frequently on his Iraq war experience. “I am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem. My instincts failed me.”.. Read more... A Palestinian hunger strike against the bloated Israeli regime, by Amira Hass | Haaretz ...The Israel Prison Service does not have to make much of an effort to conceal this mass action from Israeli eyes. The great majority of Israelis label all incarcerated Palestinians as conscienceless murderers or common terrorists, at the least. They have little interest in acts of personal or collective courage on the part of Palestinian detainees that serve as reminders that they are human beings... Read more... This is happening in America? by Nat Hentoff | Southern Standard ...Where are the Sons of Liberty, the Committees of Correspondence and the insistently courageous city councils now, when they are crucially needed to bring back the Bill of Rights that protect every American against government tyranny worse than King George III's? Where are the citizens demanding that these doorways to liberty be opened? None of the current polls listing the most demanding issues in the 2012 elections have any mention of enabling us to be free citizens again... Read more... Israel gets 4th nuke-capable German submarine | The Associated Press ...The sale of the submarines sparked criticism from German Nobel-winning author Guenter Grass, who in a recent poem blasted Israel's alleged nuclear program. Alluding to the sale, Grass said the submarines were capable of firing "all-destroying" nuclear missiles into Iran. Since Germany and Israel established diplomatic ties in 1965, Germany has become perhaps Israel's strongest ally in Europe... Norton Mezvinsky: Gilad Atzmon and The Wandering Who? | Gilad Atzmon The following article is probably the first valid academic and intellectual criticism of The Wandering Who. Rather than the usual repetitive, banal and futile attempts to silence me, it actually offers a deep and comprehensive reading of my thought followed by an educated criticism of my ideological, philosophical and political stand. Professor Norton Mezvinsky is one of the world’s leading authorities on Jewish history and Israeli politics... Alan Dershowitz is seeing the writing on the wall | The Vineyard of the Saker [Oh dear, I think he’s going to wet the bed again.] May 3, 2012 Obama Information Czar Confronted Over “Ban Conspiracy Theories,” by Steve Watson | Infowars During a rare public appearance, the Obama Administration’s Information Czar Cass Sunstein told a crowd gathered at the NYU Law School in NYC yesterday that he has little recollection of writing a 2008 paper that called for a ban on conspiracy theorizing... Read more... Nazi Support of Zionism | True Torah Jews Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the founder of modern Zionism, recognized that anti-Semitism would further his cause, the creation of a separate state for Jews. To solve the Jewish Question, he maintained "we must, above all, make it an international political issue." Herzl wrote that Zionism offered the world a welcome "final solution of the Jewish question." In his "Diaries", page 19, Herzl stated "Anti-Semites will become our surest friends, anti-Semitic countries our allies." Zionism was supported by the German SS and Gestapo. Hitler himself personally supported Zionism... Read more... The Destruction of our World and the lies of Milton Friedman, by Kamran Mofid | GCGI It is time for business leaders to move away from Milton Friedman's target of short term shareholder gain towards long term sustainability, says Paul Polman, the chief executive of Unilever. “Paul Polman, the chief executive of consumer goods giant Unilever, is in a league of his own when it comes to being the leader a multinational company challenging the corporate status quo. In a wide-ranging interview with Guardian Sustainable Business to coincide with the first annual update of the company's ambitious 10-year Sustainable Living Plan, Polman calls on business leaders, politicians and NGOs to embrace systems thinking, and to recognise they cannot deal with the world's environmental and social challenges in isolation.”.. Read more... Paul Eisen in conversation with Gilad Atzmon | Gilad Atzmon When I met Paul Eisen back in 2001, he was the most respected Palestinian solidarity activist in Britain. At the time Eisen was the UK director of Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR) – an organization which memorialises the seminal massacre of the Palestinian villagers of Deir Yassin. Eisen transformed the solidarity discourse. He managed to locate the Palestinian plight in general and DYR, in particular, at the very centre of the public discourse. He also managed to gain the support of the Palestinian and Arab communities - something most other Palestinian solidarity organisations have singularly failed to achieve... Illegal Settlements Bonanza: Israel Plots an Endgame, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle Israel's colonization policies are entering an alarming new phase, comparable in historic magnitude to the original plans to colonize Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the war of 1967... Read more... American Radical: Norman Finkelstein | Information Clearing House American Radical is the probing, definitive documentary about Jewish-American political scientist Norman Finkelstein. A devoted son of holocaust survivors, an ardent critic of Israel and US Middle East policy, Finkelstein has been steadfast at the centre of many intractable controversies, including his denial of tenure at DePaul University. "You don't know who Norman Finkelstein is. He's poison, he's a disgusting self-hating Jew." Leon Wieseltier, literary editor, The New Republic. Called a lunatic and self-hating Jew by some and an inspirational street-fighting revolutionary by others, Finkelstein is a deeply polarising figure.. The documentary was recently voted fifth best political documentary of all time by www.screenjunkies.com... #Flagwoman protester raises Palestinian flag on Israeli military vehicle outside Ofer prison | Mondoweiss Earlier today, we posted an inspiring photo of a protester climbing on top of an Israeli military vehicle as she protested outside Ofer prison in solidarity with the ongoing prisoner hunger strike. The photo has gone viral under the hashtag #Flagwoman and the protester has been identified as Rana Hamadeh. Above is video of the protest and the aftermath when Israeli military tried to arrest her. Activists protected her from the military and were pepper sprayed at point blank range... IDF closes probe into Israeli air strike that killed 21 members of Gaza family, by Amira Hass | Haaretz ..A letter was received by the human rights group B'Tselem from Major Dorit Tuval, Deputy Military Advocate for Operational Matters. Tuval said that the case has been closed after the investigation has found that the attack on the civilians, "who did not take part in the fighting," and their killing were not done knowingly and directly, or out of haste and negligence "in a manner that would indicate criminal responsibility.".. Read more... Gilad Atzmon, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Sharing the Land of Canaan About nine years ago, I entertained the notion of writing a book on “group identities” so that I can understand these concepts that cause a lot of the ills of society. Both WWI and WWII emanated from interpretations of nationalism (a group identity) and the conflict in Palestine mostly emanates from another group identity called Zionism. The horrors of the Crusaders came from the group identity of Christendom. There is an issue now with the notions of (Political) “Islamism" ala Osama Bin Laden. I am still exploring and reading on this issue from different authors and thus was intrigued to read the book by Gilad Atzmon that addresses this concept within Jewish communities... Read more... This week in Palestine This Week in Palestine is in my humble opinion the best magazine in Palestine. Every issue has a theme. This month it is the Nakba but it is with a positive spin, celebrating our resilience and success as a people despite the persistent efforts at ethnic cleansing over the past 64 years. Take time to browse the articles available on the internet ~ Mazin Qumsiyeh.. Pioneer of global peace studies hints at link between Norway massacre and Mossad | Haaretz Johan Galtung, Norwegian sociologist nicknamed the “father of peace studies,” made anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli remarks while lecturing at the University of Oslo, in an article published afterward in the Norwegian press and in an interview with Haaretz that followed. Among other statements, Galtung claimed that a possible connection exists between the terrorist responsible for the massacre of children in Norway last summer, and the Mossad. “The Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the sake of Israel,” wrote Galtung in an article published in Norway... [Hope Springs eternal – and the goat-footed balloon man whistles far and wee – is that thin ice one hears cracking?..] Read more...Nuclear Theft: Threat from Germany or Donation to Israel for Use Against Iran, Others? by Gordon Duff | Veterans Today A nuclear weapon that wasn’t supposed to exist, a single 500 kiloton hydrogen bomb, one of four being tracked, was seen being loaded at the German port of Bemerhaven, Germany. The groups assisting in what we were informed was a counter-terrorism surveillance operation were the American NSA, British MI 6, the Office of Naval Intelligence and the British Royal Navy. The “device” was loaded onto a Germany built “Dolphin” submarine and left the harbour doing 7.5 knots. The submarine disappeared while being tracked by every sophisticated device NATO seems to be able to own or borrow... Read more... Israeli Hawkademia in Australian Universities, by Vacy Vlazna | Palestine Chronicle The Israeli 'defense' industry is embedded in Israeli universities and in universities around the world including Australia. It plunders overseas intellectual property for Israel’s military research-and-development (R&D) programs while strategic bi-lateral research and exchange missions deliberately whitewash or ‘normalize’ the Zionist military occupation of Palestine and her people. In Israel, Zionism and the military are undifferentiated. The IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces), the world’s fourth most powerful (nuclear) army, since the inception of the state of Israel, is duty bound to secure the fanatical Zionist goal of Eretz Yisrael or Greater Israel, which incorporates the whole of historic Palestine and beyond (from the Nile to the Euphrates)... Read more... May 2, 2012 Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes | Ponerology Political Ponerology is a study of the founders and supporters of oppressive political regimes. Lobaczewski’s approach analyzes the common factors that lead to the propagation of man’s inhumanity to man. Morality and humanism cannot long withstand the predations of this evil. Knowledge of its nature – and its insidious effect on both individuals and groups - is the only antidote... The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade: Make Us Believe that Evil Comes from Others, by Silvia Cattori | Signs of the Times ..Political Ponerology presents the subject in a radically different way from other texts about psychopathy, suggesting that the influence of psychopaths and other deviants isn't just one of many influences working on society, but, under the appropriate circumstances, can be the primary influence that shapes the way we live, what we think, and how we judge what is going on around us. When you understand the true nature of that influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless - they literally have no conscience... Read more... Enemies Within the Gate – Police Corruption – Infiltration & Subversion – Trade Not Aid | Ken O'Keefe ...Private control of the money supply is ultimate Earthly power, and it is that kind of power the bankster families have wielded for centuries, with devastating affects. All we need to know about the corruption and endless war humanity has been locked within can be understood by understanding this simple, fraudulent system. The ‘Money Masters’ are behind almost every war you can cite, usually investing in all sides. Their scam inherently encourages and manipulates never-ending wars, while providing the added benefit of dividing the people. It is in this context that we find the most vile, bloodthirsty and sociopathic rising to the highest levels of power, below the Money Masters of course, while people of honour and integrity are punished, imprisoned, framed and often murdered... Inside Story: Is Netanyahu misleading Israelis over Iran? | Al Jazeera/YouTube Is there a rift between the Prime Minster and the security establishment, and how might it affect his chances of re-election? Inside Story discusses with guests: Naftali Bennett, Daniel Ben Simon and Rami Khouri... Myth of Israel’s Insecurity | Ira Chernus “The Myth of Israel’s Insecurity” is an essay that traces the history of the underlying premises of Zionism. It shows how those premises have kept Jews locked in conflict, and therefore insecure, since the beginning of the Zionist movement... Read more... Left Forum 2012: Islamophobia | YouTube Islamophobia, the NDAA, and the Attack on Civil Liberties... CRIF, the French AIPAC: Featuring the French essayist Alain Soral | The Green Star The CRIF Dinner is a political meeting organized by the Jewish community in France, and gathering french political elites and members of the government... [Let there be no doubt – tribal Jewish control of the Western democracies is nearly total.] Dershowitz is correct | Gilad Atzmon Dershowitz is correct - CNN and The New York Times are not the problem. As Dershowitz says, “we (the Jews, I guess) can handle that.” The real problem, according to Dershowitz is Gilad Atzmon. Unlike the CNN and The NY Times, that can be easily pressured by the lobby, I am indeed fascinated by truth seeking, peace and justice... [A slight quibble – CNN and the NYT aren’t “pressured by the lobby;” they are part of the Lobby – check out their ownership.] Why Israel needs to keep the Palestinians under its heel, by Paul Woodward | War in Context “Caroline B. Glick, Post senior contributing editor, drew cheers from the crowd when she called for permanent Israeli control of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], saying it was better to keep the Palestinians inside Israel rather than allow them to establish a “terror state.”" Have no doubt: neither Glick nor those cheering her believe that keeping Palestinians permanently inside Israel should lead to them acquiring equal rights as Israeli citizens. What she is advocating is quite simply the institutionalization of Jewish fascism in a Jewish apartheid state... Read more... Israel About to Declare Early Elections in Late 2012 | Roy Tov Predicting future news is a risky business; yet, this time I am walking on thick ice: Israel will announce in the next weeks early elections to the Knesset. Israel being a parliamentary regime, means that a new government will probably run the country by the end of this year. The announcement is not official yet, but Reuven Rivlin said yesterday during the inauguration of the Knesset’s summer 2012 sitting: “It seems this is the Knesset’s last session, since the entire country—coalition and opposition—agree that early elections are good, so that the next Knesset will be able to take harsh decisions for the life of our people,” he said. Almost formalizing this informal statement, Netanyahu added that the issue of early elections “would be clarified soon.”.. Read more... The Ghost of Osama bin Laden, by Ralph Nader | Counterpunch The Ghost of Osama bin Laden swirled into the Oval Office where Barack Obama was spending the evening going over a pile of requested sign-offs for drone missions. Osama’s Ghost: “Mind if we have a conversation one year after you dispatched my body to the ocean sharks?” With curiosity reigning supreme, President Obama replied, “Ok, so long as you remain hovering and do not alight to defile this solemn room.”.. Read more... Egypt Presidential Frontrunner: Israel Treaty ‘Dead and Buried,’ by Jason Ditz | Antiwar After a decade as Egypt’s Foreign Minister and a decade as the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa is not only the front-runner to be Egypt’s first post-revolution president, but with the junta banning top religious candidates he is virtually the presumptive victor already... Read more... May 1, 2012 Israel propagandist David Horowitz and the art of slander | Redress Information & Analysis Lawrence Davidson examines the use of slander by US conservative writer David Horowitz to damn the boycott Israel campaign. He argues that Horowitz “displays the prejudice of a fanatic and tries to pass it off as reason” but that he “may well have overstepped and made himself the subject of critical attention rather than those he rails against”.. Read more... Jews respond to Horowitz's slander | International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network Recently the David Horowitz Freedom Foundation published a dangerous and slanderous ad in the New York Times. The ad invokes the Nazi holocaust in order to attack supporters of BDS including several professors. Jews of conscience and others who share a similar commitment to justice must speak out in defense of justice for Palestinians and against such defilement and misuse of the holocaust. David Horowitz and his money have been involved in attempts to undermine the Palestinian struggle and promote hatred against Muslims and Arabs throughout the country.... Read more... Israel Wages WAR on YOUR MIND | YouTube Propaganda and deception are Israel's lifeline. Israel manipulates the western news in order to control your thoughts and poison your mind. This is an excerpt from the excellent documentary: PEACE, PROPAGANDA & THE PROMISED LAND... Can critique of Iran strike by security figures change Israeli public opinion? by Dahlia Scheindlin | +972 A review of public surveys on the Iran issue shows that even prior to the damning critique on Friday by Yuval Diskin, former head of the Internal Security Agency, the public already diverged sharply from the leadership’s policy: Survey after survey, as I wrote in March, showed that only a minority – somewhere between 19 percent and 31 percent – favors a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran. The majority.. is against a unilateral attack... [Millions of Americans are bound to be disappointed if Israel or the US doesn’t attack Iran. After all, they sit on their fat asses in front of the TV hour after hour, drinking Budweiser and eating pizza, hoping for their daily excitement fix from Fox News, especially if them terrorist mooslims are the victims. This must be quite a letdown, for them and for Rupert Murdoch.] Read more...Nuclear Famine: A Billion People At Risk | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War A 2007 report by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and its US affiliate, Physicians for Social Responsibility, suggested that up to one billion people might starve if a limited nuclear war led to even a 10% decline in their food consumption. This report is an initial attempt to quantify the impact of a limited nuclear war on agricultural production and the subsequent effects on global food prices and food supply, and on human nutrition... Talking With Chomsky, by Laura Flanders | Counterpunch ...The US and Europe are committing suicide in different ways. In Europe it’s austerity in the midst of recession and that’s guaranteed to be a disaster. There’s some resistance to that now. In the US, it’s essentially off-shoring production and financialization and getting rid of superfluous population through incarceration... Read more... You Are All Suspects Now: What Are You Going to Do About It? by John Pilger | Antiwar You are all potential terrorists. It matters not that you live in Britain, the United States, Australia, or the Middle East. Citizenship is effectively abolished. Turn on your computer and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Operations Center may monitor whether you are typing not merely “al-Qaeda,” but “exercise,” “drill,” “wave,” “initiative,” and “organization,” all proscribed words. The British government’s announcement that it intends to spy on every email and phone call is old hat. The satellite vacuum cleaner known as Echelon has been doing this for years. What has changed is that a state of permanent war has been launched by the United States and a police state is consuming Western democracy... Read more... Celebrating our “Warrior President,” by Glenn Greenwald | Salon Peter Bergen, the Director of National Security Studies at the Democratic-Party-supportive New America Foundation, has a long Op-Ed in The New York Times today glorifying President Obama as a valiant and steadfast “warrior President”; it begins this way: “The president who won the Nobel Peace Prize less than nine months after his inauguration has turned out to be one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades.”.. Read more... Press For Truth Presents Into The Fire | YouTube World leaders and activists from around the world gathered for the G20 Summit. With over 19,000 police officers and security personnel on hand, the results lead to over 1100 arrests, martial law in downtown Toronto, and the most massive violation of civil liberties in Canadian history... Madeleine Albright Gets Humanitarian Award, by Felicity Arbuthnot | Palestine Chronicle As the anniversary of probably one of the most infamous responses in broadcasting history approaches, the woman who uttered it is shortly to be awarded “the highest honour” that America bestows upon civilians: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Madeleine Albright, Iraq’s “Grim Reaper”, of course confirmed on “Sixty Minutes” (12th May 1996) that the deaths of half a million children as a result of the absolute, all-embracing deprivations of the UN embargo were: “A hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.”.. Benzion Netanyahu Dies at 102 | NYT ...In the 1940s, as the executive director of the New Zionist Organization in the United States, he met with influential policymakers like General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dean Acheson. He also wrote hard-hitting full-page advertisements that appeared in The New York Times and other newspapers. The goal of his group, which was part of the movement known as revisionist Zionism, was to prevent dividing Palestine between Jews and Arabs to create the new Israel. The group wanted a single, bigger state that would have included present-day Jordan... Sue Israel for Genocide, by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar | All Roads Lead to Jerusalem The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) would like to propose to the Malaysian Parliament that it adopt a motion urging the Malaysian government to commence discussions with other like-minded governments on the possibility of instituting joint legal proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague for violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The vast majority of the governments and peoples of the world would agree that Israel has committed the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people... Read more... American Methodists must be fearless about divestment from Israel | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood calls on US Methodists to be courageous and ignore pressure from Christian Zionists by supporting divestment from companies that profiteer from the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine, arguing that British Methodists had "blazed a trail through this minefield" nearly two years ago and voted to boycott products from the illegal Zionist colonies... Read more... |
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