The stakes couldn't be higher for the $60 billion global diamond industry, and Israel's burgeoning diamond industry in particular, as the dynamic forces of economics, human rights, and politics careen towards a major showdown in Washington. The fallout is likely to blow the lid on a cozy cartel that has kept the scandal of cut and polished blood diamonds hidden from public scrutiny...
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...In this documentary, you will meet an entirely different Ernst Zündel - not the "hate-spewing" firebrand a poisonous mainstream media has painted him to be, but the sensitive, creative artist who spent one-tenth of his life incarcerated for his outspoken political convictions on behalf of his demonized people - and still retained his extraordinary spirit of defiance."..

  Here is the new billboard.. It is viewed from US-50 westbound, just before it meets with I-80, southwest of Sacramento, which is a section of the main highway belt of the city, receiving major traffic.. As you can see, the billboard was designed to appeal to persons not particularly informed about the issue, and not even necessarily sympathetic to Palestine. This is deliberate: there is no point trying to win people who already sympathize with us...
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  This recent CSIS report is a stern warning that America needs to draw down the Empire, lest bankruptcy collapse do us in first. It focuses on five trends that necessitate American decline and roll back: “disappearing finances; rising alternative power centers; declining US military predominance; lack of efficacy of key non-military instruments of power; and reduced domestic patience for global adventures.”..
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  Former State Department mainstay and current top official in the AIPAC-linked Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Dennis Ross is loudly defended President Barack Obama’s dedication to Israel, dismissing “disinformation” that has led critics to conclude Obama is less than a total shill for the Israel Lobby...
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Argo: Hollywood demonizes Iran again, by Kaveh L Afrasiabi | Asia Times Online

  In his narrative on "soft power," Harvard professor Joseph Nye has enlightened us about the powerful American movie industry as a source of American "ideological attraction" that complements the Western superpowers' "hard power." This means that instead of pure entertainment or mere artistic creations, Hollywood movies function as propaganda supplements, often by providing a binary image of "good Americans" versus the "hostile others" on US's enemy list. With Iran topping that list for the past 33 years, it is hardly surprising that Hollywood has dutifully dished out a growing number of movies that recycle the enemy image of Iran...
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  Stuart Littlewood challenges British ministers, through his parliamentary representative, to explain the riddles and contradictions of UK policy towards Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other...
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  Lawrence Davidson views Israel’s litany of savage behaviour, from the ethnic cleansing that started in earnest in 1948 and is ongoing to the starvation war waged on Gaza and numerous acts of wanton, petty cruelty...

  Everybody in Israel knows this story. When Levy Eshkol was Prime Minister, his assistants rushed up to him in panic: “Levy, there is a drought!” “In Texas?” Eshkol asked anxiously. “No, in Israel!” they said. “Then it doesn’t matter,” Eshkol assured them. “We can always get all the wheat we need from the Americans.” That was some 50 years ago. Since than, nothing much has changed. The elections in the US in 11 days are more important to us than our own elections in three months...

  Just as we were learning about ‘anti’ Zionist Mondoweiss’ decision to revise its comment policy to exclude discussion of the true nature of the Jewish State, the openly pro Zionist Haaretz paper published a news item about the Israeli poet, singer songwriter Zeev Tene...

  Stuart Littlewood gives an insight into the mind of an Israeli stooge, Andrew Percy, a rude and brainwashed Israeli stooge who is also Conservative Member of Parliament...

  Has there ever been a more crazed, cruel, anti-people, corporate-indentured, militaristic and monetized Republican Party in its 154-year history? An about-to-be-released list of some of the actual brutish votes by the House Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Eric Cantor, will soon be available to you from the House Democratic Caucus. Lest you think this is just partisan propaganda, these are real, recorded votes in the House of Representatives...

...In the government's response to the lawsuit, you see the incredibly Alice-in-Wonderland-like nature of logic on the far side of the slide to totalitarian institution-building in America. Just as the government classified the techniques its agents had used to torture Gitmo inmates – and then threatened lawyers for prisoners with prosecution if they brought up the torture on the grounds they would be revealing classified information – so are Obama's lawyers asserting that the litigants have no status to be plaintiffs since they were monitored in secret – essentially, they can't prove that they were monitored!..

  The Washington Post has just laid out, in horrifying, soul-slaughtering detail, the Obama Administration's ongoing effort to expand, entrench and "codify" the practice of murder and terrorism by the United States government. The avowed, deliberate intent of these sinister machinations is to embed the use of death squads and drone terror attacks into the policy apparatus of future administrations, so that the killing of human beings outside all pretense of legal process will go on, year after year after year, even when the Nobel Peace Laureate has left office...

  Jamal Kanj views the extent of Israel’s stranglehold on American policymakers as highlighted by US threats to the European Union not to support the Palestinian bid for UN observer status and by President Barack Obama’s cancellation of a meeting with world leaders at the UN because the Israeli prime minister was absent...

  A friend, with good sources in the Israeli government, claims that the head of Israel’s Mossad has made several trips to deal with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia—one of the results: an agreement that the Saudis would bankroll the series of assassinations of several of Iran’s top nuclear experts that have occurred over the past couple of years. The amount involved, my friend claims, was $1 billion dollars. A sum, he says, the Saudis considered cheap for the damage done to Iran’s nuclear program...

  If you often wonder why ‘free market capitalism’ feels like it is failing despite universal assurances from economists and political pundits that it is working as intended, your intuition is correct. Free market capitalism has become a thing of the past. In truth free market capitalism has been replaced by something that is truly anti-free market and anti-capitalistic. The diversion operates in plain sight...

  It is perhaps human nature to seek to blame someone else for one’s own personal failings. But what is possibly only a misdemeanor in personal interactions becomes rather more serious when entire nations and races are systematically and comprehensively blamed for the failures of other nations to comprehend simple truths. I am, of course, referring to the disastrous foreign policy that we Americans have endured for the past 11 years, which is coming home to roost now in places such as Libya and Syria...

  America’s natural condition once was peace. Although war sometimes was believed to be necessary, it nevertheless was seen as exceptional. Other than continuous but irregular combat with Native Americans, the United States was rarely at war as the nation expanded. Today, Americans are constantly in battle. And not just in one war...

  Is there a more contemptible poseur and windbag than Elie Wiesel? I suppose there may be. But not, surely, a poseur and windbag who receives (and takes as his due) such grotesque deference on moral questions...

...Today, it is the United States under presidents of both parties that have embraced the Trotskyite delusion. The bipartisan policy of the United States has become Permanent Revolution until Total and Perfect Democracy is finally achieved. This can only end the way it ended for Maximilien Robespierre in the French Revolution and for Trotsky in the Bolshevik one. It is fitting and significant that the so many of the older generation of American neo-conservatives started life as communist enthusiasts in the 1930s and 40s like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz...

  In a presentation packed with startling facts and provocative observations, Weber takes aim at the conventional view of World War II as a conflict between Good and Evil...

  This is a feature length Documentary that is part of a bigger whole. It features many of the foremost people speaking out in favour of equality for Palestinians and recognition of Israeli apartheid...

  Nureddin Sabir argues that although the Arab Spring has unleashed negative forces and left much chaos, blood and pain in its wake, there is no alternative if Arabs are to realize their aspirations for democracy, accountability, civil society and the rule of law...

  God help them if Obama and Romney ever had to participate in a real debate about a real issue at the Oxford Union. They would be massacred. The “debates” revealed that not only the candidates but also the entire country is completely tuned out to every real problem and dangerous development. For example, you would never know that US citizens can now be imprisoned and executed without due process. All that is required to terminate the liberty and life of an American citizen by his own government is an unaccountable decision somewhere in the executive branch...

  “When Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize satire died”, satirist Tom Lehrer memorably commented. The Former US Secretary of State was awarded his Nobel for “negotiating the Vietnam Peace Accords.” In fact he had been involved in oversight of the secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia (both neutral countries.) In nine years more than two hundred and sixty million bombs were dropped. He had also supported the murderous regimes in Chile and Argentina, where the “disappeared” are seared in to the national psyche...

  Six and a half years go, shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian national elections and took charge of Gaza, a senior Israeli official described Israel’s planned response. “The idea,” he said, “is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” Although Dov Weisglass was adviser to Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of the day, few observers treated his comment as more than hyperbole, a supposedly droll characterisation of the blockade Israel was about to impose on the tiny enclave. Last week, however, the evidence finally emerged to prove that this did indeed become Israeli policy...

...There are many people of good will and good faith working at the grassroots level of Amnesty International and AIUSA who genuinely believe that they are doing meaningful and effective work to protect human rights around the world. But at the top of these two organizations you will find a self-perpetuating clique of co-opted Elites who deliberately shape and direct the work of AI and AIUSA so as to either affirmatively support, or else not seriously undercut, the imperial, colonial, and genocidal policies of the United States, Britain, and Israel...

  Criticising Israel’s mistakes is acceptable. But questioning whether Israel is a Jewish state with a racist apartheid system that renders non-Jews second rate citizens – that is not acceptable. It makes little difference whether the criticism is based on facts. Few people who cannot claim Jewish descent would dare to criticize publicly. They are afraid of being accused of “anti-semitism”...

  The announcement has come that Roman Catholic Bishop Richard N. Williamson of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) has been expelled from this priestly fraternity by his fellow Bishop, Bernard Fellay. Bishop Williamson has publicly stated that he does not believe anyone was gassed to death in the alleged "gas chambers" of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Vatican suspended all of his episcopal functions until such time as he would recant his doubts. In spite of enormous ecclesiastical pressure, worldwide media calumny, loss of his post as rector of the SSPX seminary in Argentina, and expulsion from Argentina, the bishop refused to recant...

  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is asked by MSNBC anchor Brian Williams to clarify his statements about the Holocaust...

  This piece by Robert McKey discusses President Ahmedinejad's oft-quoted stated (alleged) desire to "wipe Israel off the map". Below it is a video with smooth performances on the subject, both by al-Jazeera's Taymoor Nabilli and Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor...

...While Obama and Romney were making their final preparations for their final debate, Carter was in Israel.. Carter dared to say, in Israel, that there could be no doubt that Prime Minister Netanyahu was not interested in a two-state solution. And he described the situation as “worse now than it’s ever been for the Palestinians” because of the expanding settlements and lack of prospects for change. He described himself as “grieved, disgusted and angry,” because the two-state solution “is in its death throes.” That, he added, was “a tragic new development that the world is kind of ignoring.”..

  In the summer of 1972, when I was 15, I persuaded my parents to let me ride my bike down to the local George McGovern headquarters every morning to work on his campaign. McGovern, who died early Sunday morning in South Dakota at the age of 90, embodied the core values I had been taught to cherish...

  At least one person in my town seems to have figured out that these elections are a total joke...

  Imposing sanctions on Iraq was one of the most heinous of crimes committed in the 20th century. Yet it has received little attention in the Anglo-American world. Despite the calamitous destruction resulting from the sanctions, no serious attempts by legal professionals, academics or philosophers have been undertaken to address the full scope of the immorality and illegality of such a criminal and unprecedented mass punishment...Genocide in Iraq offers a comprehensive coverage of Iraq’s politics, its building, its destruction through aggression and sanctions, and an analysis of the legality of these sanctions from the point of view of international laws and human rights laws...

...the nightmarish human rights situation confronting Libya notwithstanding, NATO’s mission in Libya has been accomplished in full. A nationalist government which controlled Libya’s oil, to a large extent for the benefit of the Libyan people, has been toppled. That chaos now reigns, along with crimes against the population, is of no consequence to the West so long as it continues to have unfettered control of Libya’s oil – the grand prize all along...

...the government does not subscribe to unrestricted market economics and has thereby avoided the neoliberal excesses of its neighbours. There are many municipally-owned cafés, especially in the parks, where prices are quite affordable, even in the luxurious old imperial palaces, where no entrance fees are charged. They do not serve alcohol, and attract families with children. Downtown, the rents are kept low to allow bookshops to survive and flourish. The global squeeze is as apparent in Turkey as everywhere else, but here poor people receive tangible subsidies in kind, while the salaried classes are given generous loans to tide them over...

...Repeating Israeli propaganda almost verbatim — including the long-debunked mistranslation of Ahmadinejad supposedly calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map” — Obama again touted “the strongest military and intelligence cooperation between our two countries in history” as he committed this country to war under the murkiest of circumstances.. Both candidates know the American people are sick unto death of war and endless intervention around the world, and both were smart to keep their warlike tendencies under wraps on this occasion. Yet there were moments when the mask came off, and both stood revealed for who and what they are — and it wasn’t pretty...

  The story goes that when Galileo faced his inquisitors, they showed him the instruments of torture. Now whatever else he may have been, Galileo was also a physician, so he knew what metal does to flesh, hence he recanted. Not so Germar Rudolf. It’s also said that, in his recantation, Galileo crawled across the floor to his accusers. Not so Germar Rudolf...

  Most of the Jewish public in Israel supports the establishment of an apartheid regime in Israel if it formally annexes the West Bank. A majority also explicitly favors discrimination against the state's Arab citizens, a survey shows. The survey, conducted by Dialog on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, exposes anti-Arab, ultra-nationalist views espoused by a majority of Israeli Jews...

  George McGovern, who died yesterday, was prescient about America. When he ran for president 40 years ago, he well-understood what the federal government of the United States had become, among other national dysfunctions. It’s a shame he wasn’t given an opportunity to, as president, change things...

  Responding in longer form to erroneous reports of his death, Mark Twain was quoted saying, "Reports of my death death were greatly exaggerated." The same holds for Fidel Castro. Earlier reports pronounced him dead or dying. Each one was false. Given their source, they were little more than wishful thinking. Dark forces wanted Castro eliminated for decades. Even in semi-retirement they want him gone...

...McGovern was a decorated combat veteran, a college professor, a three term senator, and a humanitarian who worked for years to alleviate global hunger, among other things. As he lay dying in hospice, his country remains as beholden to the military industrial complex as ever, years after the decisive defeat of its only credible geopolitical foe. When the obituaries are published, they'll note McGovern's electoral loss. It's far less likely that they'll note the two ruinous wars America would've been spared had its leaders and voters taken McGovern's advice...

...There is no ‘magical alignment’ in Syria any more than there was in Libya. The country has been savaged at the behest of those who want to bring down its government for reasons that have nothing to do with the aspirations of the Syrian people. This is the exercise of brutal power politics, irresponsible, bereft of law or morality...

  Obstacles created by Israel to restrict the access of Palestinian youths to education forces them to leave with no right of return. Press TV has interviewed Mr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, professor at Bethlehem University, about forced education restrictions in Palestine by the occupation...

  A sustained battle by the Israeli right to stifle academic freedom at the country’s universities is close to claiming its first major scalp. In an unprecedented move last month, officials from Israel’s Council for Higher Education (CHE) — a government-appointed body overseeing universities and colleges — recommended the effective closure of the politics department of Ben Gurion University, based in the Negev/Naqab city of Beersheva.. The threatened closure comes in the wake of a series of repressive measures sanctioned by the hardline right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu to intimidate or silence domestic criticism...

Palestine Solidarity Membership Application (satire) | Gilad Atzmon

  Thank you for your interest in joining the Palestine Solidarity Movement (not affiliated with Palestinian liberation movements). In order to assure that you are suitable for the movement, please answer the following questions for consideration by the Screening Committee...

  Although a lot of research has been devoted by distinguished institutions (e.g., ADL) to defining anti-semitism and providing detailed classifications of its forms of manifestation, the field has grown so much that it is hard now to encompass it in one discipline...

  Using images of violence as an advertising gimmick is despicable; that is why despite the topics usually featured in this website, I seldom use such pictures. However, in this case it was unavoidable. Especially since international readers have no easy way of finding out if the disturbing picture is real. Last year it was circulated in Israel as an ad for Subaru cars. The Palestinian Authority Government Media Center requested from Japan Auto (Subaru’s agency in Israel) to “take all necessary steps to stop the circulation of this despicable and disgraceful ad and condemn it.” Japan Auto denied its involvement in the affair...

  “No one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten”. That is what is engraved in gold on the granite stone, right behind the statue of the Motherland, spreading her arms in grief...

  Like many of my generation, it is with a certain regret that I read about George McGovern’s failing health. His campaign for the Presidency was, with the possible exception of Jesse Jackson’s 1984 run, the last radical run for the White House by any member of either mainstream political party. The result of changes in the way Democrats chose their candidate; George McGovern’s ascent to the Democratic Party nomination in 1972 represented the best of the United States...

...Anyone who thinks that resolving the Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would bring peace to the region would be well-advised to peel away the veneer of democratic façade, one that covers an Israeli plan with only one goal in mind: completing the campaign of ethnically cleansing Palestinians that started with the creation of the State of Israel...

...The expulsions, the exclusions and the cleansings that are inherent within Zionism, Israeli and Jewish politics, are now alive and kicking within the Palestinian solidarity movement itself. On a daily basis we are notified about more and more people who ‘must be’ expelled from the ‘movement’:..

...Americans insist that their leaders demonstrate their prowess as debaters as a condition for being elected. It somehow reminds one of the single combats of antiquity, when each side chose a champion and the two tried to kill each other, in place of mutual mass slaughter. David and Goliath spring to mind. It's certainly more humane...

  US elections are manifestly linked to the Middle East, at least rhetorically. In practical terms, however, US foreign policies in the region are compelled by the Middle East’s own dynamics and the US’s own political climate and economic woes, or ambitions. There is little historic evidence that US foreign policy in the Arab world has been guided, at least in any decipherable way, by moral compulsion...

...the Palestinians who constituted 92% of the population and owned 94% of Palestinian cultivated lands in 1920 were one of the first people in the world fighting colonialism. They were demanding their freedom and self-determination at the same time when Gandhi, the leader of India’s National Congress, was leading the non-violent struggle for the subcontinent’s freedom...

...Mr. Bernanke bragged, if memory serves me, of creating a model that predicted economic growth really well as long as he left the Great Depression out of it. While I’m not sure how that reads to those not damaged by an education in ‘economics,’ it is roughly analogous to writing a review of the play at which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated without mentioning the assassination...

...While all of this is depicted by the Western media as a recent revelation made only after the death of Ambassador Stevens, journalists around the world had documented and warned of the dangers of arming "pro-democracy protesters" who were clearly militant extremists, actively carrying out terrorism for at least three decades in the Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) region...

  Ever since the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Obama officials, including the President himself, have been vowing that the perpetrators will be "brought to justice". That, of course, is typical American-speak for: "without any evidence presented or due process afforded, we will execute suspects by bombing them from the air, along with anyone who may have the misfortune of being in close proximity to them."..

...Here’s a bit of consolation: in the face of Pamela Geller’s latest hate-stunt, the forces of decency and justice have performed with vigor, condemning racism and denouncing incitement with speed and fervor. If societies were judged primarily by their response to extremists, our own might be deemed relatively OK...

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  Stuart Littlewood shows how Israel’s international propaganda effort is well-organized and systematic, and includes courses and training manuals for propagandists, noting that, by contrast, its Arab adversaries are “lazy, shiftless, unresponsive and a closed shop”..

...After a legal battle the Israeli government had to release a paper which it had used to calculate the nutrition need of the people in Gaza for the purpose to restrict imports into Gaza to a certain level.. Here is the point that AP is missing. The Israelis calculated the minimum needs of the Gazans and then deliberately delivered less than what was needed...

  Millions of lives are at risk in Iran because western economic sanctions are hitting the importing of medicines and hospital equipment, the country's top medical charity has warned...

  The expanding police state tops the annual list of stories under-reported by the mainstream media...

  If you think you know what Raphael Lemkin, the originator of the term genocide, thought about genocide, think again. A dissertation-in-progress on Lemkin and the history of the United Nations Genocide Convention by Douglas Irvin-Erickson, a doctoral student in global affairs at Rutgers University-Newark, is likely to change how we think and talk about genocide...

  The UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been accused of employing "an aggressive public relations strategy" for over 30 years in an attempt to "manage the public and ministerial perception" of depleted uranium weapons. The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium (CADU) argues in a recent report, Managing Acceptability, that despite the MoD's awareness in the early 1970s of the "intrinsic public unacceptability" of depleted uranium weapons, and a lack of research into their potential impact on health and the environment, their perceived military effectiveness led to consistent attempts "to manage the public and political debate& a process which continues to this day"..

  "Come on! How can you speak of Israeli Apartheid? We are not in the 1990s!" This is what most Israelis will exclaim after seeing the title of this article. Yet, there are two groups of facts that prove them wrong. The first may look outdated, but it is extraordinarily serious...

  A ship carrying pro-Palestinian activists seeking to breach Israel's naval blockade on Gaza has been seized shortly after being approached by Israeli vessels. "The Estelle is now under attack - I have just had a message from them by phone," Victoria Strand, a Stockholm-based spokeswoman for the Ship to Gaza Sweden campaign told the AFP news agency on Saturday. According to Dror Feiler, another spokesperson, the SV Estelle, whose passengers included five parliamentarians from Europe and a former Canadian politician, was boarded at around 08:15 GMT...

  We spoke about BDS and its crucial role but also about the corrosive impact of liberal Zionist support...

  US elections are manifestly linked to the Middle East, at least rhetorically. In practical terms, however, US foreign policies in the region are compelled by the Middle East’s own dynamics and the US’s own political climate and economic woes, or ambitions. There is little historic evidence that US foreign policy in the Arab world has been guided, at least in any decipherable way, by moral compulsion...

  Graham Peebles argues that a negotiated exit of the Assad regime, backed by civil disobedience, offers the best hope for ending the conflict in Syria and putting Syria’s destiny in the hands of Syrians...

  During rare breaks from stories about who will become the next President of he US Empire, we news watchers stare at Greek and Spanish citizens engaged in massive protests against government austerity programs while the commentator babbles about “fears” of these countries dropping out of the sacred Euro zone as a result of failing economies and reluctance of Europe’s Central Bank to make loans to bail out the “slackers..

...The cause of all of the problems is the offshoring of Americans’ jobs. When jobs are moved offshore, consumers’ careers and incomes, and the GDP and payroll and income tax base associated with those jobs, go with them. When the goods and services produced for American markets by offshored labor are brought into the US to be sold, the trade deficit rises, and downward pressure is put on the dollar, pushing up domestic inflation...

  We are regularly told by interventionists — whether they be U.S. government employees or neoconservative government wannabes — that the United States can readily determine who is friendly and who is not in remote civil wars in the developing world. The first basic rule in any war — whether it be a conventional or counterinsurgency war — is to know who is on your team and who is not. To the uninitiated, this might seem like an easy task...

  In the midst of deepening austerity, David Cameron is desperate to play the national card. Any one will do. He's worked the Queen's jubilee and the Olympics for all they're worth. Now the prime minister wants a "truly national commemoration" of the first world war in the runup to 2014 that will "capture our national spirit … like the diamond jubilee"..

  Blowback is defined as “an unforeseen and unwanted effect, result, or set of repercussions,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Are some modern military techniques first employed by the United States coming back to haunt us? It would not be the first time...

  Last Friday, some 40 Israeli Jews and Arabs gathered in Lydda, a small mixed Arab-Israeli city less than 10 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, for “a study tour” featuring “Zionist testimonies from 1948.” It was part of the project Towards a Common Archive, sponsored by Zochrot (Hebrew for remembering), an Israeli organization that hopes to bring “awareness and recognition of the Nakba” to Jewish Israelis so that they can take “responsibility for this tragedy.”..

  Looking at all the nonsense filling the news recently (Presidential debates in the USA, the dying EU with a Nobel prize, etc.) I get a feeling that we are living through a proverbial "calm before the storm" and that is a good opportunity to make a quick survey of the situation of the main actors of the coming crisis...

  What better way to defeat an enemy than to cause a situation which has its ranks divided, and seeing its energy unleashed by one faction upon another, followed by tit-for-tat retributions, in an unending cycle of mutual destruction?..

...Obama “faithfully, and indeed vigorously, carries out both the neoliberal and militaristic policies he inherited. The difference is that, while Reagan and Bush were, more or less, truthful to their constituents, President Obama is not: while catering to the powerful.. he pretends to be an agent of ‘change’ and a source of ‘hope’ for the masses.” No wonder that Romney – nihilist, neoliberal, militarist, predator for big business – now leads in the polls. Perhaps Americans currently undecided see little difference between the two moneyed whores for empire at the podium, and would rather opt for the one who offers himself as honestly purchased...

...Seldom does anyone have the guts to explain why. There is virtually no adult discussion in our mass media about the underlying causes of terrorism. We are generally asked to take it on faith that many Muslims are hardwired at birth or through appeals to their Islamic faith to “hate America.”..

  Israel doesn't celebrate Halloween, a mainly American horror show. Yet, days before Halloween 2012 a body parts horror affair exploded in Tel Aviv...

  Pat Lang, the former head honcho of U.S. Defense Intelligence in the Middle East, commented at his blog that an attack of Turkey on Syria could lead to a "Guns of August" like process. The book "The Guns of August" describes the political and military maneuvering that eventual led to the, then rather unintended, start of the first world war. Is Lang's comparison exaggerated? I don't think so. There is a lot of brush in the area and a small flame could easily become a big fire...

  Last week I saw a riveting new Israeli film about moral corruption in the government. The Gatekeepers features lengthy interviews with six former heads of the security service, Shin Bet, who repudiate the security policy they carried out. The men say that Palestinians committed acts of terror due to political causes Israeli leaders refuse to address, that the Israeli methods of attacking the symptoms are themselves a form of terrorism, and Israel should be talking to Hamas...

...In 1962, war was avoided by Khrushchev’s willingness to accept Kennedy’s hegemonic demands. But we can hardly count on such sanity forever. It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided. There is more reason than ever to attend to the warning of Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, almost 60 years ago, that we must face a choice that is “stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”..

...after a century of talk of “fair treatment for all”, the Palestinians find themselves in desperate need of a Defense League of their own to stop the defamation of Palestinians by Foxman's friends, to secure even a small crumb of justice and fair treatment, and to get their lands and homes and natural resources, stolen by Jewish terrorists and Israeli uniformed thugs, restored to them...

  Every four years, the deck chairs of the political Titanic that is the American empire get rearranged in the choreographed spectacle of another presidential “election”. The 2012 charade is particularly disgusting; the lies more blatant and shrill, as the world continues to burn. It is critical to focus on the cold, ugly reality facing the world with either prospective White House occupant...

...The pro-Palestinian movement known as BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) has a Janus face. It includes a large number (the majority) of people animated by selfless, noble intentions, who are courageous and sincere believers that peaceful resistance methods are the only way to push Israel back/oppose its policies/make it “change its spots.” Some of them (members of ISM who also support BDS) have lost their lives for it and many of them place their lives at risk for this. For organizations/churches/companies/unions to divest themselves of Israel-related interests is in fact a moral imperative, irrespective of whether their action does make a dent in Israeli interests or not....

  ..“My problem is not with Judaism, nor with any other culture or belief, unlike how the festival’s management hinted. My problem is about accepting the Israeli authority’s inhumane politics and tendency for atrocities and human rights violation by taking lives and building the famous “Israeli West Bank barrier”, which does not get along with my idea about breaking all walls and barriers between all human beings all over the planet, starting by politically-constructed barriers. Therefore, as that the festival’s vision does not agree with my own vision as a human first and as an artist second, I announce, as a Syrian Arab singer, my wish of not participating in the festival’s concerts for this year, yet hoping to meet you all soon in our homeland, until we truly find peace.”..

...the initial uprising was a benign protest against the monolithic and ideological Baathist regime of which, after almost 50 years, people had tired. The protest was helped by some of the very advantages that the regime had delivered, such as equality of religion and a high standard of education, particularly for women. However, the protest had hardly begun before it was hijacked by Islamist mercenaries and turned into violent jihad. This is only beginning to emerge now as people query the number of foreign fighters among the insurgents.. only about one in 50 is actually Syrian...

...It should be obvious by now that there is a pro-war lobby in the Turkish capital, one that is itching for a major confrontation with Syria and one that also has considerable influence over the government decision making process. This lobby is determined to drag Turkey into an adventurous conflict with Syria, one that is certain to escalate into region-wide hostilities with traditional backers of the Bashar al-Assad regime facing off with Turkey...

...That Iran is some major national security issue for the US is a concoction of the bipartisan DC class that always needs a scary foreign enemy. The claim is frequently debunked in multiple venues. But because both political parties embrace this highly ideological claim, Raddatz does, too. Indeed, one of the most strictly enforced taboos in establishment journalism is the prohibition on aggressively challenging those views that are shared by the two parties. Doing that makes one fringe, unserious and radical: the opposite of solemn objectivity...

...High rates of miscarriage, toxic levels of lead and mercury contamination and spiralling numbers of birth defects ranging from congenital heart defects to brain dysfunctions and malformed limbs have been recorded. Even more disturbingly, they appear to be occurring at an increasing rate in children born in Fallujah, about 40 miles west of Baghdad. There is "compelling evidence" to link the increased numbers of defects and miscarriages to military assaults...

  It was inevitable. Constantly under pressure from the Jewish center-right (Reform rabbis, for instance), J Street has thrown in the towel. Read its document of surrender. In response to the letter from Christian denominations urging that aid to Israel be compliant with U.S. policy and law, J Street has joined Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation league and the half-million dollar a year hacks that run the other Jewish organizations to blast the Christians...

...Clearly, the West's "humanitarian concerns" are a poorly dressed pretext for the absolute destruction of Syria through the intentional prolonging of violence and its ravaging effects for as long as possible. Clearly those implicated in this conspiracy demonstrably being carried out by the US, UK, France, NATO and its Persian Gulf allies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, should play no further role in attempting to resolve violence in Syria they admit to starting and seeking to indefinitely perpetuate...

...For most Americans, the history of Iranian-U.S. relations began on November 4, 1979, the day revolutionary students seized control of the American Embassy in Tehran. According to the American narrative, one November morning – out of the blue – some crazy Iranian fanatics seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held dozens of innocent Americans hostage for 444 days because they were mean and hated Americans for no reason. Here’s some of what’s missing:..

...In the Michigan town of Ann Arbor, and especially every shabbas morning outside the Beth Israel Temple, Henry and his chums really put the Zionists' feet to the fire. I think they are the greatest, probably the only effective Jewish activists in the world. This is their latest bulletin...

  Miko Peled, the General's Son...

  ‘My Iranian Paradise’ is the story of a woman and her relationship with the country she grew up in but was forced to leave. Katia Forbert Petersen, one of the directors of this documentary was raised in Iran. Her father, a Danish engineer and her mother a Polish survivor of Stalin's Gulag camps met and married in Iran after the war. In ‘My Iranian Paradise’ we witness a crucial time in the history of Iran from the last days of the Second World War up until the onset of the Islamic Revolution through the narrative of a western expatriate family...

  Stuart Littlewood looks at how some US church leaders have begun to adopt a principled stance against the Israeli occupation, thereby raising the ire of Israel’s American stooges just as principled UK Methodists found themselves in the crosshairs of Israeli stooges such as Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks...

...Why Romney? Because his transparency as a Neanderthal may, just may, bring people into the streets, while under Obama passivity and false consciousness appear almost irreversible...

...the present government coalition is composed of forces that will most likely continue to command a majority in the foreseeable future. They are the Likud, all the Orthodox and other religious parties, the settlers and various assorted fascists. With the enormous birthrate of the Orthodox Jews, this majority will inevitably grow...

...How will a Romney or Obama win be summed up? The answer will be in terms of which candidate is best for Israel’s interest; which is best for Wall Street’s interest, which is best for agribusiness; which is most likely to attack Iran; which is most likely to subject economic and war protesters to indefinite detention as domestic extremists. The only people who will benefit from the election of either Romney or Obama are those associated with the private oligarchies that rule America...

...Accepting fraud and waste as part of doing business during America’s global war on terror has bred a climate in which no accountability and stretching the rules have become the norm. Military officers in both Afghanistan and Iraq became accustomed to having large quantities of cash on hand to hand out as needed. And when something goes wrong, the military’s response also reveals that a separate standard of justice for senior officers has become the status quo in the U.S. armed forces...

  Read below the open letter of Gilad Atzmon to Ali Abunimah who just launched an obviously "Palestinians Only" statement against racism and bigotry. I received this letter from Gilad Atzmon who is actually on the road and not able to publish it himself. I am wondering now, whether my Palestinian German kids could sign this "petition"? What are the criteria by which is decided who is "Palestinian"?..

...The wise Norwegians justify their choice by pointing out that the European Union has promoted European integration. But if one looks at the facts, it is clear that NATO has integrated even more countries than the EU, and continues to do so, well beyond the provincial limits of Western Europe. The EU has integrated Europe by economic means, which even the Nobel committee admits are collapsing. NATO, on the other hand, has used bombs and missiles...

  It was and is a matter of high principle for the neoconservatives that the US unconditionally support Israel in its struggle against the Arab world. Disputing the neocons’ claim to the mantle of Wilsonianism, Michael Lind described this odd nexus of radical universalism and ethno-nationalism as “Trotsky’s theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism,” adding: “Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.”..

  Stuart Littlewood views what seems to be a lone principled voice among Western churchmen, Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan, whose campaign for justice for the people of Gaza has earned him the wrath of Israel’s stooges in the Anglican Church...

  In the Middle Eastern corrida, the moment of truth is approaching fast. Assad’s Syria is running around the arena like a wounded bull, fraught and worn down by a year of cruel strife. Banderillas of mujaheeds stick out of his broken hide. The public, the Europeans, the Americans, the Gulf rulers call: Kill him! And the Turkish matador steps forward, pulling out his sword. His cannons rain death on Syrian slopes; fire and lead storm consumes the hills. Erdogan is preparing to deal last blow to his exhausted neighbour. “Don’t do it, Erdogan! Desist!” – cry thousands of Turks demonstrating against the bloody war...

...That war danger is ever more serious. Turkey is a full member of NATO whose charter explicitly states, an attack against one NATO state is an attack against all. The fact that nuclear-armed Russia and China both have made defense of the Syrian Bashar al-Assad regime a strategic priority puts the specter of a World War closer than most of us would like to imagine...

  In August 2012, a civil case against the Israeli military filed by the Corrie family concluded with the presiding judge not only absolving the State of Israel of any liability, but also blaming Rachel for her own death. This is unacceptable. Take action below by signing this petition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging the U.S. government to conduct thorough, credible, and transparent investigations into the death of Rachel Corrie and into each case involving the death or serious injury of an American citizen by the Israeli military since 2001. Help us and the Center for Constitutional Rights reach our goal of delivering 10,000 signatures to the State Department next month...

...Iran, therefore, faces a war economy and the resulting inflationary pressure. Yet, for the most part, many Iranian officials at the highest level of power refuse to admit this. Some continue to boast about the ineffectiveness of the sanctions. Others, particularly Iranian military officials, add to the fear, uncertainty and speculative bubbles by repeatedly talking about an impending military attack on Iran by Israel, US, or both, and how Iran can withstand such an attack and even retaliate. Such utterances actually play into the hands of Israel and its US-EU allies...

...The core of today’s Democratic party consists of the states of New England and the Great Lakes/Midatlantic region that were the heart of the Union effort during the Civil War. The core of today’s Republican party consists of the states that seceded from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America.. Notwithstanding slavery, segregation and today’s covert racism, the Southern system has always been based on economics, not race...

  Whatever is awful about the US political process is magnified in the election season, and increases each day until it's mercifully over...

  This weekend, anti-war protests are taking place all over the world. I do believe that the position of the vast majority of the world’s people is one that is utterly tired of a hungry war machine ignited by gangster bankers concomitantly devouring the money resources of the world’s people...

  Lawrence Davidson analyses Mitt Romney’s history of compulsive lying and argues that, sadly for Americans and the rest of the world, the US Republican Presidential candidate’s habitual lying, which could be a case of pseudologia fantastica, will not necessarily be an election handicap...

  As a sociologist, Professor James Petras analyzes the electorates of Hugo Chavez and Henrique Capriles. Written before the election, this article anticipated an easy victory for the incumbent president, which has in the meantime come to pass. Petras also identifies the Achilles heel of the Bolivarian leader: his difficulty to find and train middle managers capable of ensuring the implementation of successfully proven policies that remain immensely popular...

  Jamal Kanj explains that lopsided US media coverage of the Arab and Muslim worlds is rooted not just in cultural biases and political motives, but in the fact that media reporters and editors themselves are sometimes part of the Israeli military establishment...

...Although known to historians and religious experts, the centuries-old political and economic influence of a group known in Turkish as the “Dönmeh” is only beginning to cross the lips of Turks, Arabs, and Israelis who have been reluctant to discuss the presence in Turkey and elsewhere of a sect of Turks descended from a group of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th and 17th centuries...

  With the quadrennial presidential election extravaganza reaching its peak, it’s useful to ask how the political campaigns are dealing with the most crucial issues we face. The simple answer is: badly, or not at all. If so, some important questions arise: why, and what can we do about it? There are two issues of overwhelming significance, because the fate of the species is at stake: environmental disaster, and nuclear war...

Elections in January; War in … | Roi Tov

  On October 9, 2012, a rather terse Netanyahu announced early elections to the Knesset on January 2013. Can we trust him this time? After all, in May he announced early elections for September. The previous instance ended dramatically. Tzipi Livni was replaced as leader of Kadima—the largest party in the Knesset—by Shaul Mofaz—a former IDF Chief—and Kadima joined Netanyahu’s coalition. Leading one of the ever largest coalitions in the history of the Knesset, there was no reason for Netanyahu to pursue early elections and they were canceled. Shortly after, Kadima left the coalition due to fears of war with Iran, and the situation became ripe for a new declaration of Netanyahu...

  On Friday of last week I posted an article about a synagogue the state of Israel has built onsite at its Dimona nuclear plant. The synagogue in fact is to hold its opening ceremony this week. Not long after my article appeared on Leftwing-Christian.net, one of our readers, Ariadna Theokopoulos, posted a comment to the effect that “there is a strong streak of thanatophilia in Jewish culture.”..

  Hugo Chávez was re-elected president of Venezuela on Sunday, by a margin of 11 percentage points. For most people who have heard or read about Chávez in the international media, this might be puzzling. Almost all of the news we hear about Venezuela is bad: Chávez is cantankerous and picks fights with the United States and sides with “enemies” such as Iran; he is a “dictator” or “strongman” who has squandered the nation’s oil wealth; the economy is plagued by shortages and is usually on the brink of collapse...

...Hardly a day goes by without some supposedly sensational revelation or claim about Iran’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction.” It seems like only yesterday, however, that we were seeing exactly the same headlines, and the same articles, only this time it is Iran instead of Iraq that stands accused. Back in 2002, it was a series of pieces bylined by a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller — whose name has become virtually synonymous with deception. Ms. Miller was being fed her information by Chalabi’s group, via her close connections to the administration, and in particular to a group of political operatives deemed the neoconservatives...

...the more dominant the U.S. military becomes in its ability to destroy and the more its forces are spread across the globe, the more the defeats and semi-defeats pile up, the more the missteps and mistakes grow, the more the strains show, the more the suicides rise, the more the nation’s treasure disappears down a black hole -- and in response to all of this, the more moves the Pentagon makes...

  Can anyone still make a good argument in favour of NATO? Even ardent interventionists, chomping at the bit to assert Western military dominance over the globe, must be beginning to doubt the worth of this perennially panicking mob of confused military powers...

  On a clear autumn morning in lower Manhattan the 4th Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine began amid a surprisingly calm atmosphere, despite lengthy lines weaving across the square in front of Cooper Union’s Great Hall. The timing of this session is critical, as international attention has been focused on Iran’s nuclear program for months. If nothing else, this Tribunal serves as a reminder to an American audience of the harsh realities of the Palestinian condition...

...wouldn't it be safer and cheaper to "simply put (the nuclear deterrent) away in a cupboard and keep it as a contingency in case there were ever to be a deterioration in the global security picture"? In terms of orthodox strategic thinking, that is heresy. But the man who made that heretical suggestion was Sir Nick Harvey, until last month the defense minister in charge of the British government's nuclear capability review...

...The damage caused by the NRA and its advocacy for loose gun regulations is not limited to the United States. Over 70% of the guns used in crimes in Mexico, including a majority of drug-related killings, come from the United States, in large part because it is so easy to buy them in the United States. Guns produced in the United States are used to commit large numbers of crimes around the world. Even in Japan, where about one-third of all guns there are of U.S. origin. Perhaps the most infamous case of the international influence of the NRA has been its role in blocking the creation of a global Arms Trade Treaty...

...Frequent and rising Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians almost always go unpunished. Indeed, often, Israeli soldiers stand by and watch as Israeli settlers go on the rampage. The situation is so bad that a boy like Yousef Ikhlayl, 17, can be killed and there is no investigation or accountability. So when an Israeli settler got sentenced to prison for torturing and abusing a Palestinian child, it was quite an event...

  “For at the very delivery of their money, they immediately ask it back, taking it up at the same moment they lay it down; and they let out that again to interest which they take for the use of what they have before lent.” Plutarch

He was describing the money lenders of his day, which was about 100 A.D. Some scams have been going on even longer than we might imagine. Slowly but surely we seem to be catching on, but we really need to pick up the pace...

  Most worries about Washington’s proclivity for dubious military adventures focus on the imperial presidency. There is certainly good reason to fear an unfettered executive in foreign affairs. But there are instances in which Congress has been the more warlike branch, and we are currently witnessing two examples...

...I saw their faces and they were raging and their body language spoke of determination and they acted with defiance when throwing stones at the checkpoint which is the symbol of occupation. The teenagers were no longer afraid of being hunted down in the middle of the night and didn't cover their faces. In what other manner can a person who doesn't hold his own future in his hands be frightened off, a person whose rights had been trampled on and who had his freedom taken away?..

...When it comes to international law, to moral compromise, to sheer hypocrisy, the Western powers take the biscuit. La Clinton raves on about Syrian depravity when Syrian shells slaughter a Turkish woman and her four children – which they did – but gives succour to the gunmen who torture and kill and suicide-bomb the regime's supporters inside Syria...

  Venezuela looks to have effectively outmaneuvered Western designs to overthrow national sovereignty, but many challenges lay ahead. Venezuela has provided the world with a successful model to counter the subversive methods of Wall Street and London in their bid to overthrow yet another nation-state to be rolled into their global collective. However, many have noted that President Hugo Chavez is a flawed leader, with flawed policies – many of which run contra to concepts of personal freedom and liberty...

...It is impossible to portray war. Narratives, even anti-war narratives, make the irrational rational. They make the incomprehensible comprehensible. They make the illogical logical. They make the despicable beautiful. All words and images, all discussions, all films, all evocations of war, good or bad, are an obscenity. There is nothing to say. There are only the scars and wounds. These we carry within us. These we cannot articulate. The horror. The horror...

  The system has not been able to respond in a rational way, the way the Roosevelt administration responded rationally through the New Deal. And because of that, we're in deep, deep trouble. So I think all of our hope now has to be invested in acts of civil disobedience...

...It is possible to trace back Syria’s tragedy and all of its gory details. One is also compelled to assign the blame: The brutality of the regime has been particularly revolting and indefensible. But one would be naive to ignore as extraneous the rush to destroy Syria by regional governments that are as democratic as the apartheid regime of South Africa was fair and nondiscriminatory. What started as an uprising, conspicuously evolved into an armed rebellion and consequently morphed into civil war. If those who are feeding the violence are not somehow extricated from Syria’s political equation, the path ahead for Syria is even grimmer than the last 18 months. And yes, there is still room for greater calamity...

  The Syria war drags on. Continuing it has become too expensive and too dangerous for its neighbors. Russia, which aims to re-establish itself in the Middle East, is trying to show the United States that it is in their best interest to allow Moscow to resolve the conflict. The military situation in Syria is turning against those in Washington and Brussels who hoped to change the regime there by force. Two successive attempts to take Damascus have failed and it has become clear that that objective cannot be achieved...

...What can we make of Christian ‘leaders’ like the Very Reverend J. Mark Goodman, dean and rector of the Cathedral Church of St. John in Albuquerque, New Mexico? Do they simply have no feeling for, no sense of obligation to, their fellow Christians in Palestine who suffer under Israeli occupation?..

  The propaganda spewed by Netanyahu and company echoes the same false warnings that the neocon blusterers spread in attempts to justify attacking and occupying Iraq. We will know that the ludicrous deceit has reached its peak when, as happened with Iraq, the Israel lobby begins to call for Iran to prove that they don’t have what they say they don’t have...

...It is perfectly clear to the average Iranian who is to blame for her recent misery. In the past few months, as more and more of the sanctions have started biting, the ire of the Iranian people has increasingly shifted away from the regime's long-term incompetence, repression, and corruption and toward the United States and the West. Although the sanctions technically exempt food and medicine, sanctions on the financial system prevent Iranians from being able to purchase these items from abroad. Many critical medicines and humanitarian goods simply cannot be purchased by hospitals and other entities within Iran, leading to deadly shortages...

...The iron wall strategy has served as the core of Zionist/Israeli policies toward the Arab world ever since Jabotinsky’s article was published. In the article, Jabotinsky did not elaborate on the military strategies that the Zionists should adopt to create the iron wall. His own history, however, as well as that of the Zionist movement in the prestate era and of Israel since 1948, reveal that attacks on Arab civilians resisting Jewish expansion in Palestine are a central component of the strategy...

  In a few weeks’ time, Americans will face the grim prospect of choosing a new government, either headed by the same president or by a new one. Why a grim prospect? Because the choice is between an aggressive war criminal and a draft dodging, chickenhawk warmonger, both of them puppets of organized Jewry. No matter who you vote for, you end up with dystopia...

...There is certainly no inherent reason why “American nationalists” (as Finkelstein styles Cheney and Rumsfeld) qua “American nationalists” would identify with Israeli interests and pursue wars in the Middle East against the Islamic states. If global power were the American nationalist goal, one could easily argue that supporting the Islamic world would best serve its advancement. For by pursuing such an alternative policy, the United States would have the support of the major oil-producing region of the world...

  Over the last year, there has been a torrent of articles on neoconservatism raising (usually implicitly) some difficult issues: Are neoconservatives different from other conservatives? Is neoconservatism a Jewish movement? Is it “anti-Semitic” to say so? The thesis presented here is that neoconservatism is indeed a Jewish intellectual and political movement...

  Yesterday before more than 400 people jammed into a hall at the New School in New York, Adam Shatz, Norman Finkelstein, and Anna Baltzer had a fascinating discussion of the American Jewish relationship with Israel. "Romance," as Shatz put it...

  Since Wednesday night’s presidential debate was about domestic policy, I have little to say about it except to note Romney’s insistence that there must be no cuts in the military budget. None, nada, zero, zilch – this in spite of the fact that we spend more on the military than most of the rest of the world combined. Despite his chameleon-like disposition, this is the one stance apparently not subject to the Etch-a-Sketch Effect: the neocons lurking behind him are no doubt making sure of that...

...although Obama backed away from the already discredited program of extraordinary rendition and secret CIA torture prisons introduced by Bush, he has largely replaced it with a policy that involves a secret “kill list” and drone attacks in numerous locations — including the assassination of U.S. citizens — that has, understandably, attracted widespread criticism. He has also retained military commissions at Guantánamo and the USA PATRIOT Act at home; and by failing to close Guantánamo, he has normalized the concept of indefinite detention...

  Despite the sharp charges and counter-charges about foreign policy there are no important differences on such matters between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney. The back and forth between the candidates on international issues is largely about appearance not substance. The Washington Post noted on Sept. 26 that the two candidates “made clear this week that they share an overriding belief – American political and economic values should triumph in the world.” Add to that uplifting phrase the implicit words “by any means necessary,” and you have the essence of Washington’s international endeavors...

  Contrary to reports, there is no hyperinflation in Iran right now at all. In fact, the Western sanctions imposed on Iran's oil trade are failing miserably to meet their objectives. And a regime collapse – or even, coming short of that, another popular uprising reminiscent of June 2009 – seems further away from Iran than ever...

  The American Israel public affairs committee (AIPAC) has seen headier days according to US congressional staffers forced to work regularly with the pro-Zionist agent of Israel. The grip of fear and the lock on Congress that the Israel first organization has long touted in its service to Israel may be weakening against a backdrop of American Jews rejecting the increasing rants of Prime Minister Netanyahu that are driving many Jews to distance themselves from him, from AIPAC, from other Arab-phobic US Zionist organizations, and from Israel...

...This is a prime example of how the first and probably most authentic and truthful report is turned and twisted by the spin doctors to come to the desired result. In these times of Orwellian double speak we have to give credit to the ZDF that they did not stick with “The Syrians did it” but at least ended with a question mark - in the late evening they leave it open who was responsible...

...during the interim since Peace Prize Obama was handed the torch in 2008, no one in the Executive Branch–not Obama or Hillary Clinton, and no one on Capitol Hill–dares mention these NIE conclusions. It is as if they do not exist. Only the disinformation from misguided and suborned office-holders matters. At the end of the day, only that counts, not reality. In essence, Peace Prize Obama and the Democrats have continued, under different packaging, the same Neoconized foreign policy of Dick Cheney and the Republicans. The question you might ask yourself is, why?..

  Many who have now seen creepy event video clips featuring Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) Research Director Patrick Clawson listing "crisis initiation" pretexts such as the Gulf of Tonkin phantom torpedo attacks, or false blame for the sinking of the USS Maine, felt it was a subtle call for false flag attacks that would drag a reluctant United States into war with Iran. The full video of the think tank’s event is well worth watching...

  RT's Paula Slier interviews former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg on Israel's future...

  It’s estimated that, for defense and national security, the U.S. spends about one trillion dollars a year—which amounts to more than 80% of this year’s expected deficit. Mitt Romney is promising to spend even more—an additional 2.1 trillion dollars over the next ten years. President Obama has called for some cuts, but is loath to challenge the premises that underlie those enormous expenses. Why the caution?..

  What constitutes a “good” Jew in contemporary American culture? What is the relationship between Zionism and Jewish identity? How do anti-Zionist Jews navigate or oppose the exploitation of their faith in Zionist discourse? And how can responses to these questions advance the cause for justice in Israel and Palestine?..

...Someone who openly adopts a state founded on a policy of ethnic cleansing as a personal “badge of pride” does not, of course, qualify as an unbiased commentator on the Middle East. Consider Friedman’s celebrated treatment of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which he professes to initially take “seriously as a blot on Israel and the Jewish people,” and which causes him to “boil … with anger—anger which I worked out by reporting with all the skill I could muster on exactly what happened in those camps.”..

  Recent discoveries show that the Eastern Mediterranean area has huge energy fields which together with water resources could provide the impetus for new conflicts/wars. The initial estimates is that the area in the sea facing Palestine (present day Israel and the Gaza Strip), Lebanon, and Syria holds 1.7 billion barrels of oil, 5 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, and an astounding 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. Already Israel uses nearly 10 times more of our water per capita than we the native Palestinians use...

  A close, critical look at the campaign against "Holocaust denial," including the bizarre laws in some countries that punish dissidents as "thought criminals." Mark Webber, the IHR director reviews the outrageous treatment of Ernst Zundel, Germar Rudolf, and many others who have been imprisoned, fined and forced into exile for non-conformist views on this politicized chapter of history...

...At the beginning of October 2012, a threshold was crossed and a hyena became a monster. Over half the Jews want to pray in the Temple Mount; several Jewish organizations announced in parallel that everything is ready. This includes a fast deployable altar and the garments of the “HaCohen HaGadol” ("The High Priest”). Israel just got one step closer to the Third Temple; the world got one step closer to World War III...

  A US or Israeli attack on Iran would “prove catastrophic” and “make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable,” former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in a speech Wednesday night. Neither the United States nor Israel is capable of wiping out Iran’s nuclear capability, Gates said, and “such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert.”..
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  The rest of the world can stop worrying about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's supposed threat to bomb Iran. Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations General Assembly last week appears to mark the end of his long campaign to convince the world that he might launch a unilateral strike on Iran’s nuclear programme. The reason for Netanyahu's retreat is the demonstration of unexpectedly strong pushback against Netanyahu’s antics by President Barack Obama. And that could be the best news on the Iran nuclear issue in many years...
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  The New York Times reports that the Pentagon and the CIA are preparing plans to target suspects in the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and two colleagues in Libya with assassination by drone. The process is a classic example of how interventionism spirals out of control...
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  After over a year of harboring foreign terrorists and supporting their operations near and across the Turkish-Syrian border, NATO-member Turkey has claimed it has retaliated with military force against "targets" inside Syria for an alleged attack on Turkish territory that it has blamed on the Syrian government.. Turkey's immediate, unwarranted act of military aggression, along with knee-jerk condemnations from the US bear all the hallmarks of an orchestrated event - or at the very least an attempt to opportunistically seize upon an isolated incident to disingenuously advance the West's collective geopolitical agenda...
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  From Syria...

  I envisioned This Land Is Mine as the last scene of my potential-possible-maybe- feature film, Seder-Masochism, but it’s the first (and so far only) scene I’ve animated. As the Bible says, ”So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”..

  Norman Finkelstein talks to Frank Barat about American Jews and their wavering support for Israel...

  My first reaction to Binyamin Netanyahu’s exhibition of comics at the UN General Assembly was shame. Shame that the supreme elected representative of my country would stoop to such a primitive rhetorical device, bordering on the childish. (One Israeli commentator suggested putting him on a rug with a lot of paper and Indian ink, and letting him play to his heart’s content.)...
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  The British civil rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith and international cricketer turned politician Imran Khan will begin a peace march on 7 October into Pakistan's Waziristan region. Their aim is to highlight the plight of innocent people killed or injured by US drones. Smith took the precautionary measure of writing to President Obama and his CIA director, David Petraeus, informing them about the march. In the letter, he requested that the president ensure the names of him and the other marchers would not be on the weekly kill list the president reviews, along with security officials, in the White House situation room...
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..The unfairness of it is so much like the South. It’s so much like the South of 50 years ago, really, and actually more brutal, because in Palestine so many more people are wounded, shot, shot, killed, imprisoned. You know, there are thousands of Palestinians in prison virtually for no reason.. in Israel and the Occupied Territories, there’s this gigantic wall, which is, I think, the most offensive symbol of the apartheid. It not only segregates the Palestinians from the Israelis, but they also, at the same time, have stolen so much Palestinian land. I mean, they’ve essentially stolen what was all of Palestine. And it’s just horrible to see the treatment of the people...
Read transcript, watch video...

...Here we have a US official coming face to face with the reality that the US-led economic warfare on Iran is cruelly strangling the population of sustenance, and she tries to claim its the ayatollahs’ fault, not ours. She tells the Iranian people they must suffer for what the regime’s policies are (this is the same regime that Washington continuously decries as undemocratic). And what is it exactly that Tehran has done to bring on these sanctions?..
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  Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Akbar Salehi discusses Iran's nuclear program, sanctions, and the country's relationship with the United States...

  As the U.S. contemplates whether to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, intelligence community leaders should be asking themselves a question: What if we're wrong? That question wasn't asked — or at least wasn't answered — in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, with devastating consequences...
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...A half century of US assaults on Mideast countries, the establishment of American military bases in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, and US support for dictatorships and for Israel's genocide against the Palestinians have relieved them of such fanciful thoughts. So why is the United States looking to forcefully intervene once again? A tale told many times — world domination, oil, Israel, ideology, etc. Assad of Syria, like Gaddafi of Libya, has shown little promise as a reliable client state so vital to the American Empire...

[See also Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country!]

...He further states that the U.S. has been a wuss when it comes to its policy against Iran. Besides sanctions, we need to get down and dirty. Why couldn’t an Iranian submarine simply disappear (Remember the Maine)? And if it did, we’d expect Iran to want to take a few good shots at us in retaliation. Wouldn’t this serve as a terrific pretext for beating the crap out of the nasty mullahs and getting us into the war we really want?..

..Years ago, two states were possible. No longer. Israel controls over half the West Bank and much of East Jerusalem. More is added daily. When completed, the apartheid wall will control over 10% of Palestine. Isolated ghettoized bantustans on worthless scrubland won't work. Under those conditions, sovereign viability is impossible. The Palestinian Authority (PA) claims otherwise. Its report titled "Moving Beyond the Status Quo: Safeguarding the Two-State Solution" endorses it...
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...a new faux-pas. The same Iranian state-owned Press TV published an attack on Julian Assange with a bombastic claim: “Exclusive: Assange-Mossad ties unveiled”. A brief check shows an identical piece appeared on The Veterans Today site. Both pieces are identical, both “exclusive” and both written by the same person, a Gordon Duff, wearing two hats, that of “the chief editor of VT” and that of a “columnist of Press TV”. Oy, it would be better to stick to the Onion...
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  Four decades of neoliberal policies have given way to an economic Darwinism that promotes a politics of cruelty. And its much vaunted ideology is taking over the United States.[1] As a theater of cruelty and mode of public pedagogy, economic Darwinism undermines all forms of solidarity capable of challenging market-driven values and social relations. At the same time, economic Darwinism promotes the virtues of an unbridled individualism that is almost pathological in its disdain for community, social responsibility, public values and the public good...
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  The focus is on people-centered development – as opposed to system – centered economic growth. And on globalization, a challenging process involving all states and regions, nations and civilizations, humans and nature – as opposed to a globalized market with only three free flows, of capital, goods and services, not labor; increasing the global economic gap. And this in the context of rampant poverty, widening domestic inequalities, economic crises due to the disconnect between real and finance economies and greedy speculation, rising unemployment and popular unrest...
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...Why is the government of Israel suddenly seeking to reopen an issue that has been closed for the better part of a century? And why has it consistently refused to pursue such claims in the past, despite decades of lobbying by a group calling itself the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries? I believe there are two answers to this question, the first pragmatic and the second ideological...
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  Stuart Littlewood views the weasel words, hypocrisy and moral cowardice of the scandal-ridden Albuquerque Episcopalians who have withdrawn permission for a Palestinian Christian group to hold its conference at their cathedral...
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  This briefing analyses the growing significance of the foreign and home-grown jihadists in Syria. There may be over 1,000 foreign fighters in Syria now as the war becomes more violent and may continue for some time. Even if the regime falls soon, the jihadist element will have influence in a post-Assad era. If, however, the regime endures, the longer it goes on the more likely the jihadist element will gain in influence. Against all expectations, the al-Qaida idea could increase in significance. This could have disastrous consequences beyond Syria and makes the need to seek a negotiated solution a top foreign policy priority...

...Engaging Iran, with which we have had this powerfully emotional and ultimately dysfunctional relationship going back decades, is one of the most critical foreign policy issues of our times. And yet our understanding of its culture and politics — its people — is no deeper than a teaspoon...

  Advocates of airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have long held that the attacks would delay an atom bomb for years and perhaps even buy Israel enough time to topple the Iranian government. In public statements, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, has said that an attack would leave Iran’s nuclear program reeling, if not destroyed. The blow, he declared recently, would set back the Iranian effort “for a long time.” Quite the opposite, say a surprising number of scholars and military and arms-control experts...

"Before our very eyes": U.N. Monologues, by Thierry Meyssan | Voltaire Net

  Every year, for one week the world’s heads of state gather in New York to participate in the opening session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The reunion has, however, lost its functionally constructive dimension and has become instead a televised spectacle whose significant moments are watched by an audience surpassed in size only by the Olympics or the World Cup...

  “There has never been a just one, never an honorable one – on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful – as usual – will shout for the war. The pulpit will – warily and cautiously – object – at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, ‘It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.’ Then the handful will shout louder..”

...For all those who cheer any pain inflicted on Iran, ask yourself who’s being hurt? Is it the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, the generals, ayatollahs, etc.? Or is it the workers, the children, the poor? Who will suffer first and most under these conditions? Look at what we did to Iraq. Sanctions there didn’t harm Saddam or his Baathist nomenklatura. It starved the babies, the sick, the underclass. They absorbed this blow and died in the hundreds of thousands. There is little doubt that Obama, Netanyahu and western nations will have the cries of starving babies as a part of their political legacy. These sanctions will likely not bring Iran to heel and not achieve their stated aim. But they will kill real people...

  "What exactly could 'being Jewish' mean in the 1920's to an intelligent Anglo-Viennese boy who suffered no anti-Semitism and was so remote from the practices and beliefs of traditional Judaism that, until after puberty, he was unaware even of being circumcised? Perhaps only this: that sometime around the age of ten I acquired a simple principle from my mother on a now forgotten occasion when I must have reported, or perhaps even repeated, some negative observations of an uncle's behaviour as 'typically Jewish'. She told me very firmly: 'You must never do anything, or seem to do anything that might suggest that you are ashamed of being a Jew.' I have tried to observe it ever since, although the strain of doing so is sometimes intolerable...”

Assad Rebounds | Roi Tov

  During the first days of October 2012, several events accumulated into what looks as a Syrian government rebound; one year and seven months after an Arab Spring spinoff-war begun, neither the rebels nor their Western masters have made any significant conquest. On the contrary, the Syrian government has become confident enough to make astonishing statements, which follow gains on the ground against the rebels...

  Graham Peebles argues that, rather than enhance personal security, gun ownership creates physiological and psychological fear and is responsible for at least 12,000 murders annually in the USA. He calls for a ban on gun sales and for all non-sporting weapons to be removed from circulation...

US waives sanctions on states using child soldiers for security interests | PressTV

..."When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that's slavery," Obama claimed during his address. "It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we've long rejected such cruelty." Many among the American human rights community are upset that despite such forceful oratory against the use of child soldiers, the US president has waived for the third consecutive years all penalties against states that are major abusers of the human rights violation...

...Palestinian officials accused the US of exerting "tremendous pressure" on European governments to oppose their bid for upgraded "non-member state" status at the UNGA. Announced by president Mahmoud Abbas last week, the move is a significant diminution of Palestinian ambitions after its application for full statehood failed last year when it was blocked by the US in the security council...

  One hundred years ago the American republic was overthrown and captured by financial elites and money power during the Taft and Wilson administrations, the first Republican and the second Democrat. Both the Federal Reserve and federal income tax were born and you know the rest of the story consisting of two world wars, the Great Depression and stock market crash, the rise of communism and fascism and the Cold War. Since that time directed current events, history and financial markets have ruled at the expense of free markets and free people...

...Few US foreign policy disasters can be compared to that of the Middle East. Similar to its Southeast Asia inheritance from the French, the US ‘inherited’ the Middle East from fading British and French empires. Unlike European imperial powers, US early contacts with the region were marred with violence, whether through its support of local dictatorships, financing and arming Israel at the expense of Palestinians and other Arab nations, or finally by getting involved – some say, entangled – in lethal wars. The problem of ‘great’ empires is that their ability to maneuver is oftentimes restricted by their sheer size and the habitual nature of their conduct...

  Alan Hart considers recent high-profile calls for a review of the US Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that gave unlimited freedom to special interest groups representing corporations and lobbyists, to provide unlimited campaign funding to third-parties that don’t have to disclose their donors...

  America betrayed them and all Native Peoples. Throughout US history and earlier, genocide was policy. Historian Ward Churchill explained four centuries of systematic slaughter. It went on from 1492 - 1892. It continues today against Native culture...

...The purpose of this essay is to suggest that the motives for the withholding may have had to do with the much larger neocon objective being imposed on American foreign policy at this same time: the consolidation of U.S. global hegemony by the establishment of U.S. forward-based bases around the oil fields of Central Asia. In short, the withholding of evidence should be seen as part of the larger ominous pattern of the time, including the malperformance of the U.S. government (USG) in response to the 9/11 attacks, and the murderous anthrax letters which helped secure the passage of the Patriot Act...

  Russia’s decision to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Moscow, starting October 1st, was immediately followed by Washington’s “pledge to maneuver around the Kremlin,” according to a New York Times report. Indeed, State Department Press Secretary Victoria Nuland assured: “We will continue to be vigilant in supporting democracy, human rights, civil society in Russia. We’ll just do it another way.” Other US officials named possible avenues for such maneuvering: The National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and others...

  Top administrators at the University of California are considering what action to take against speech and activities alleged to be anti-Semitic. As part of their discussions, the university may endorse a seven-year-old document, which — despite not having an official status — is often called the European Union’s “working definition” of anti-Semitism. Although the administrators have indicated that their motive is to protect Jewish students, a careful examination of the definition indicates that the real agenda may be to stifle Palestine solidarity activism and criticism of Israel in the classroom...

...when viewed in the context of the precautionary principle applied to foreign policy, Iran is merely the target du jour in a perpetual preventative war. Thus, the precautionary principle is really a marketing device for exploiting fear and uncertainty about the future by putting a legal veneer on warmongering bullshit, which bring us back to the question of who is the better bullshitter in the real world? Powell or Netanyahu? The proof is in the results: that is, who succeeds more in paving the road to an unjustified preventative war?..

...Romney is not the only presidential contender displaying folly and presumption. Obama (along with his secretary of State, Hillary Clinton) apparently has no trouble believing that he too can control events in the Arab and Muslim world. There’s no other way to explain the unwise things he’s done. The irony is that the current turmoil in the Middle East is the result of decades of U.S. government (and before that, British) attempts to manage that part of the world — attempts that continue to this present moment...

  According to U.S. officials, Israel is training and supporting Iranian terrorists who are trying to topple the Iranian government. Those Israeli-funded terrorists have faked documents to falsely indicate that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. Israel has admitted to previous use of false flag attacks to justify war against Middle Eastern nations...

  A recently coined expression likely to be gaining currency among analysts and commentators in the alternative media, “jew peak,” and meant to signify that jewish power (jp) has crested in the US, is a speculation based primarily on Obama’s refusal to set a “red line” in the timetable of attacking Iran. Today’s “event” at the UN, where the Israeli delegation did its usual walkout when Ahmadinejad was speaking but the US delegation did not follow suit as usual will also be read as further symbolism of Jewdammerung...

...success as a whore is about the only kind of success that can occur in Washington or in the media these days. Those who refuse to prostitute themselves arouse pity and denunciation, not admiration. A couple of years ago an acquaintance from a university in the northeast called me to say he had recently had lunch with some of my former associates in Washington. When he inquired about me, he said the response was, “Poor Craig, if he hadn’t turned critic, he would be worth tens of millions of dollars like us.”..

  Peter Dale Scott shows that liaison arrangements among the intelligence agencies of allied countries gave rise to parallel services and shadow operations. This former Canadian diplomat thereby reveals the method that allowed the September 11 plotters to employ means appertaining to the U.S. state apparatus without the knowledge of other insiders...

  The 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement on Friday demanded Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without precondition and further delay. The demand was made during the United Nations High Level Meeting on Countering Nuclear Terrorism in New York. The demand was read out by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on behalf of the NAM bloc...

  A group of Syrian rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) defected and joined pro-government forces on Wednesday. The troops’ commander announced that “the road is open,” and called on to other rebels to abandon their uprising. Eleven rebel troops – three officers, two warrant officers and six civilians – defected from the FSA and now support President Bashar al-Assad, AFP reported...

  What will happen if Iran is seen not to kow-tow to Israeli pressure over nuclear activities? Kamahl Santamaria speaks to guests: Dr Raanan Gissin, Sadegh Zibakalam & Trita Parsi...

U.N. summit: What the U.S. media fails to report about Iran, by Gregory Patin | Madison Independent Examiner

..Netanyahu’s speech received full media coverage on several networks in the U.S. that included photos of his cartoon-quality bomb drawing prop, while Ahmadinejad’s was cut short on CNN before the section where he said that countries and religions should have no problems with each other. That is just the tip of the iceberg regarding what the U.S. corporate-owned media fails to report about Ahmadinejad, Iran, and its nuclear program. The deception has been going on for years...

...giving in to the Zionists’ demands and setting a red line for Iran’s nuclear energy program is considered so dangerous by Obama that even such a very important issue as the forthcoming presidential polls in the United States cannot change his position. Why this is so? Why Obama shows so much resistance against this request? There are a few important reasons which should be taken into account...

Jordan’s Doublethink | Roi Tov

...Jordan is similar to Syria. The latter has over 70% of Sunnis, but is controlled by the Alawite minority; this is one of the aspects of the violent conflict going on there. Jordan is run by the Bedouin minority; the ongoing actions of the country against Palestinians are an attempt to keep things this way; they are parallel to the Israeli behavior towards Palestinians. Jewish Israel and Bedouin Jordan face what their leaders perceive as a similar threat. Thus they consider each other as natural allies and behave like that. King Abdullah II speaks against Israel, but acts differently, sending a new ambassador to Tel Aviv...

  On Sept. 25, Professor-turned President Barack Obama lectured the Muslim World and world leaders during his annual address before the United Nations. The beautifully crafted speech of the Nobel peace laureate would have been believed – and better received—had it simply been genuine. The president’s appeal for rejecting violence, spreading peace among nations, while emphasizing the vital use of diplomacy in international relations, as well as his call for respecting the rule of law, due process, and cultural understanding were remarkable. But unfortunately, they were simply not credible...

...It transpires that in February 1973, eight months before the war, Anwar Sadat sent his trusted aide, Hafez Ismail, to the almighty US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. He offered the immediate start of peace negotiations with Israel. There was one condition and one date: all of Sinai, up to the international border, had to be returned to Egypt without any Israeli settlements, and the agreement had to be achieved by September, at the latest...

...Romney is not the only presidential contender displaying folly and presumption. Obama (along with his secretary of State, Hillary Clinton) apparently has no trouble believing that he too can control events in the Arab and Muslim world. There’s no other way to explain the unwise things he’s done. The irony is that the current turmoil in the Middle East is the result of decades of U.S. government (and before that, British) attempts to manage that part of the world — attempts that continue to this present moment...

  Clowns befuddle a crowd. They appear a pretense of the normal but caricatured to evoke laughter, surprise, at times derision, but always in context where they absorb self-deprecation, become the butt of jokes, become the audiences’ self, a make believe self, receiving the jibes, jests and buffoonery never allowed when alone. Thus do they become vessels of deep seated self- ridicule, inhibited expression, personal inadequacy, a self-conscious parody of the normal...
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..."Iran is the centre of terrorism, fundamentalism and subversion and is.. more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a nuclear bomb".. Bibi speaking on Thursday? Nope. The ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, in 1996. And – I'm indebted here to the indispensable Roger Cohen – Peres himself said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999! That's 13 years ago. And Ehud Barak – now Bibi's Defence Minister – said in 1996 that Iran would have a nuke by 2004. That's eight years ago. Maybe cartoons are all that's left...

  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has called on the United States to move from words to actions, and put an end to its persecution of WikiLeaks, its people and its sources...