February 28, 2010 Excerpt from Norman Finkelstein’s new book: “This time we went too far" | Australians for Palestine Read more... The World's Nastiest Genocide Scholar | LobeLog On Monday, the Electronic Intifada (EI) website published a report on a speech that right-wing Middle East scholar Martin Kramer gave at Israel’s Herzliya security conference earlier this month. In the speech, Kramer called for a cut-off of United Nations Relief and Works Agency humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees, and endorsed Israel’s ongoing siege of the territory, on the grounds that these measures would help curb the allegedly excessive Palestinian birth rate...The EI report argues that Kramer’s statement “appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide,”.. Read more... Ahmadinejad once again fails to call for the annihilation of Israel, despite what you heard on CNN | Juan Cole ...Ahmadinejad never mentioned Israel as a country at all, and spoke only about what he called the 'Zionist regime.' He favors an admittedly odd form of the 'one state solution' in which Palestinians and at least some Jews would all vote for the same government... Read more... Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery, by Stephen Lendman | Dissident Voice "...Transnational corporations (TNCs) now roam the world to find the cheapest and most vulnerable workers.” They’re mostly young women in poor countries like China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Haiti, and many others working up to 14 or more hours a day for sub-poverty wages under horrific conditions..." Read more... Mystical Form of Islam Suits Sufis in Pakistan | NYT A camp near the festival. Pakistani Sufis have been challenged Thousands of Muslim worshipers paid tribute to the patron saint of this eastern Pakistani city this month by dancing, drumming and smoking pot. It is not an image one ordinarily associates with Pakistan, a country whose tormented western border region dominates the news. But it is an important part of how Islam is practiced here, a tradition that goes back a thousand years to Islam’s roots in South Asia...by the stricter form of Islam adopted by militants and hard-liners Read more... The USA and Israel: Nuclear Armed Terrorist States, by Damian Lataan | Four Winds While the US and Israel have been busily accusing others of `terrorism' for years, the reality that very few seem able to see is that the only people with their boots on dirt that doesn't belong to them are the US and Israel. The people that the US and Israel call `terrorists' are actually only people that are defending their lands and culture against occupation and denigration... Read more... Yet Another Congressman Questions 9/11 | Global Research Congressman Jason Chafetz just said that we need to be vigilant and continue to investigate 9/11. A nutjob, right? Maybe. But he joins quite a few other Congressmen:.. Read more... People Are Talking About BDS, by Emily Schaeffer | The Only Democracy? People are talking about Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). People should be talking about BDS. If you’re not talking about BDS in the context of Israel\Palestine, you should be thinking about it. And here is why... Read more... The Butcher of Gaza is coming to NYC He Belongs in Prison, Not the Waldorf Gabi AshkeNazi, Chief of Staff We will be there too!..Protest! Tuesday, March 9th - 6 pm Outside the Waldorf-Astoria HotelIDF General will be there Contact The Great American Bank Robbery, interview with Stiglitz by Zach Carter | AlterNet How did the big banks nearly take down the entire economy and still continue to profit? Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains... Read more... I envy the people who hate Israel, by Bradley Burston | Haaretz At times like these, I envy the people who passionately, frankly, with all their hearts, despise Israel. Hate Israel enough, and the Jewish state's failings and blunders, its self-satisfied blindness and its resultant self-destructive policies, cause not pain, but delight... Read more... Mitchell wanted to quit over U.S. bias for Israel, by Jack Khoury | Haaretz Getting Away With Murder, by Aijaz Zaka Syed | Intifada PalestinePrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. envoy George Mitchell An Arab political source said Friday that special U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell has requested to resign due to his frustration with the way the Obama administration has been handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a Nazareth-based daily...Read more... Paul Craig Roberts on US crumbling economic power | YouTube Charles Munger, Warren Buffet's business partner, said that the U.S. economy will never bounce back because of the national debt and poor planning. Paul Craig Roberts has been saying "it's over" for a while... Read more... Israeli Apartheid Week in Gaza The One Democratic State Group, PSCABI and BDS Campaign in Gaza are pleased to announce the launch of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) in Gaza for the first time, March 1-10, 2010, along with more than 40 cities around the world. Since it was first launched in 2005, IAW has grown to become one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar. It includes lectures, film screenings, round- table discussion and workshops in response to the call of Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Read announcement... The father of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh holds his son's picture Here’s a story of two countries from the Middle East. One is an ancient civilization with a rich history that goes back five thousand years. It’s a functioning democracy with free elections held at regular intervals. It’s a huge country of 70 million people. It has remained within its borders and hasn’t attacked any country in the last 100 years. It is pursuing a nuclear power programme, which it insists is for
peaceful purposes. Second country also claims to be a democracy...Read more... We don't need US, says Latin America Latin American and Caribbean nations have agreed to create a new regional alliance, without the United States and Canada, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said... Read more... Listen to the Heroes of Israel, by John Pilger | Information Clearing House I phoned Rami Elhanan the other day. We had not spoken for six years and much has happened in Israel and Palestine. Rami is an Israeli graphic designer who lives with his family in Jerusalem. His father survived Auschwitz. His grandparents and six aunts and uncles perished in the Holocaust. Whenever I am asked about heroes, I say Rami and his wife Nurit without hesitation... Read more... An encounter with Israeli "police", by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Human Rights Newsletter ...On the way back, a private car with yellow license plates (Israeli) cut in front of me and I had to hit my brakes hard not to hit him. He drove later in front of me for bout a kilometer, stopped in front of me in the middle of the road and then two heavily armed Israeli "police" walked out of the car... Read more... February 26, 2010 Neocons Say U.S. Embassy with Medieval Moat Will Prevent Attacks by “Londonistan” Terrorists, by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars  The proposed billion dollar U.S. embassy with its medieval moat Jim Geraghty, writing for the neocon house organ on the internet, the National Review Online, supports the plan to build a medieval U.S. embassy complete with a moat in London. “In many countries, if you work in a U.S. embassy, someday someone is going to try to blow up your workplace,” writes Geraghty. “If you asked me to list the 20 most likely terror targets in the next decade, our embassy in London would probably make the list; embassies and consulates in dangerous parts of the world and in cities with Islamist/al-Qaeda presence would dominate those top 20.”..[A laugh a day keeps the doctor away.] Read more...Rep. Ron Paul on the CIA's Assassination Policy | YouTube ...He addressed a wide range of issues, including civil liberties, civil disobedience, the CIA's assassination policy, torture, rendition, secret prisons, enemy combatants, the ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus, Barack Obama's White House and the 2nd and 10th Amendments. Rep. Paul also expressed his growing fears, post-9/11, for our fast-fading Republic itself... Watch... Response to Nakba Law, by Eitan Bronstein | Palestine Think Tank  Nakba survivors and their descendents commemorate The Nakba law is coming up again for consideration in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, in a more moderate version than before but with the same motivation: to frighten everyone who wishes to commemorate the human and political tragedy that occurred in 1948, in which the Zionists expelled most of the Palestinian inhabitants of the country and the state of Israel destroyed most of the localities in which they lived...their destroyed villages with Zochrot Read more... The Licensed Terror of Israel, by Hassan Al-Haifi | Yemen Times In the space of nearly one hundred years, the Zionist Machine has been an almost unceasing master of terrorism, in both its covert, disguised and open official and unofficial versions. In fact the very nature of the emergence of the State of Israel is almost unimaginable, unthinkable and almost impossible had not this unique form of Mob rule not been the accorded the liberty to unleash its various instruments of death, destruction and gross manifestation of "military occupation", the resources for which it has easy access to and almost provided gratis by the changing reigning powers that dominate world events... Read more... Harvard must take stand against racism | Palestine Telegraph  Read more... Explosive News, by Jennifer Harper | Washington Times A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center... Read more... As a Jew, I was taught it was ethically imperative to speak up, Judith Butler | Haaretz  My rabbi told me, 'you are not well behaved.' Philosopher, professor and author Judith Butler arrived in Israel this month, en route to the West Bank, where she was to give a seminar at Bir Zeit University, visit the theater in Jenin, and meet privately with friends and students. A leading light in her field, Butler chose not to visit any academic institutions in Israel itself. In the conversation below, conducted in New York several months ago, Butler talks about gender, the dehumanization of Gazans, and how Jewish values drove her to criticize the actions of the State of Israel...Read more... Weekly Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory 24 February 2010 | Relief Web [A small sample of Israeli crimes this past week, a quiet one - pretty much the same as usual] Read more...Wandering jazz player, by Theo Panayides (interview with Gilad Atzmon) | Cyprus Mail  ...Again, though, music reflects something larger - because fear is also what drives the cause of Zionism, the obvious fear that comes from being surrounded by enemies as well as a deeper fear borne of centuries of oppression: it’s a painful fact, says Gilad, that “You can’t understand the history of Jewish suffering without looking at Israeli barbarism”. Maybe fear is also what fuels the denial (as he sees it) of the obvious, that “every piece of land in Israel is actually Palestine” – the fear he himself has tried to banish from his own life. You have to be fearless, he insists... Read more... Take me off list of Nobel peace prize nominees, by Mordechai Vanunu | Haaretz Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has again asked to be removed from a list of Nobel Peace Prize nominees, the head of the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Institute said Wednesday... Read more... NYT, Ethan Bronner and Conflicts of Interest, by Jonathan Cook | Palestine Chronicle  The son of Ethan Bronner, NYT's Jerusalem bureau chief, is serving in the Israeli army ...He calls Bronner’s situation “the rule, not the exception”, adding: “I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.” He added that it is very common to hear Western reporters boasting to one another about their “Zionist” credentials, their service in the Israeli army or the loyal service of their children. “Comments like that are very common at Foreign Press Association gatherings [in Israel] among the senior, agenda-setting, elite journalists.”...Read more... Israel and Its Neighbors: Leveling the Playing Field, by Michael Neumann | Counterpunch In the last few years, both Zionism and the occupation have been criticized, if not to death, as fully as possible. America's pro-Israel loudmouths should deceive no one: most of the world has taken the criticisms to heart. Even Israel's supposed undying allies know the occupation has to end; so do a majority of Israelis...The Arab world, likely with the cooperation of other nations, could then pursue a collective program of nuclear development and research, with the declared and explicit purpose of securing military as well as civilian nuclear capacity... Read more... February 25, 2010 A Sign of Empire Pathology, by Finian Cunningham | Global Research  Here is a shocking statistic that you won't hear in most western news media: over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are official figures from the US Department of Defence, yet somehow they have not been deemed newsworthy to report. Last year alone, more than 330 serving members of the US armed forces committed suicide - more than the 320 killed in Afghanistan and the 150 who fell in Iraq. Since 2001, when Washington launched its so-called war on terror, there has been a dramatic year-on-year increase in US military suicides, particularly in the army, which has borne the brunt of fighting abroad. Last year saw the highest total number since such records began in 1980. Prior to 2001, the suicide rate in the US military was lower than that for the general US population; now, it is nearly double the national average... Read more... A Brief Introduction to Holocaust Revisionism, by Arthur Butz | Institute for Historical Review I see three principal reasons for the widespread but erroneous belief in the legend of millions of Jews killed by the Germans during World War II: U.S. and British troops found horrible piles of corpses in the West German camps they captured in 1945 (e.g. Dachau and Belsen); there are no longer large communities of Jews in Poland; and historians generally support the legend... Read more... Kairos Palestine statement: Injustice in Beit Sahour | Global Ministries As described by town residents, Ha'aretz, Ma'an News, and other sources in recent days, Israeli soldiers and bulldozers arrived on February 10 at a family recreation park in Beit Sahour – a town slightly east of Bethlehem in the West Bank, and the site of the former army base Osh Grab, which was abandoned by the IDF in 2006 – and declared it a closed military zone. KAIROS Palestine condemns this action and calls upon churches worldwide to advocate for the Christians and all residents of Beit Sahour and intervene in the damage, present and projected, wrought upon their home. Since 1967, Beit Sahour, one of the last Christian majority towns in the West Bank, has repeatedly lost land to the Jerusalem municipality and to the nearby settlement of Har Homa... Read more... Douglas Reed - The Controversy of Zion | Knud Eriksen  Douglas Reed Knud Eriksen has the full text of Douglas Reed's valuable contribution to understanding Zionism on his website for reading or downloading. He writes, "Commencing in 1951, as Britain's foremost World War II correspondent, he spent more than three years writing "The Controversy of Zion"...the manuscript was never submitted...Would he have loved the internet! Now, half a century later, it exists, and must assist in the dissemination of his powerful truth...Just as much as the Zionist censors of the internet hate this breach in their worldwide brainwashing and control of the media. In Europe during the years immediately before and after World War II, the name of Douglas Reed was on everyone's lips. His books were being sold by the tens of thousands. He was known with intimate familiarity throughout the English-speaking world by a vast army of fans. And then he was banished. Was it this book? Take a look at these chapters and judge for yourself...Read more... Arthur Koestler’s suicide NOT a Mossad operation, by Arthur Topham | The Radical Press Recently, in a number of emails coming across my desk screen, I have read statements accompanying articles on Arthur Koestler’s 1976 book, The Thirteenth Tribe, claiming that Koestler was murdered (or “suicided”) by the Israeli Mossad for having revealed the information contained in his provocative and unsettling book on the origins of the Kazar Jews, better known as the Ashkenazim. This assertion, on the part of whomever started spreading the rumour is, according to the information contained in the Introduction to Koestler’s final autobiography, Stranger on the Square..clearly erroneous... [Well, I guess we'll have to strike that one off of a very long list.] Read more... Hamas to EU: Put Israel on terrorism list | JTA Hamas asked the European Union to include Israel on a list of countries that support terrorism. "We urge the EU to include the Zionist entity on the list of countries that support terrorism, as it represents a threat to international peace," Hamas said in a statement released Monday. Hamas has accused Israel of being responsible for last month's assassination of a Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in a Dubai hotel. The United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization... [It does appear to be a glaring omission, doesn't it. Particularly since the Zionists in Palestine invented Middle East terrorism about 80 years ago and continue to commit acts of terror on a daily basis, not only against the Palestinians, but a wide variety of targets on their "enemies list."] Read more...The Unstated Script of the Wiesel Open Letter to President Obama, by William A. Cook | Intifada Palestine  Obama and the Weasel [Repeated, in case anyone missed this. Note the bill of particulars at the end. Also note that the Weasel has been outed by at least two Holocaust survivors as an outright fraud.] Read more...American Jews seriously rethinking their relationship with Israel, by Allan Brownfeld | Media Monitors Network The evidence that American Jews are seriously rethinking their relationship with Israel is growing, as is weariness with what some critics have referred to as “McCarthyism” within the organized American Jewish community, which seeks to stifle any dissent... Read more... Ali Abunimah: From Gaza to Freedom: Future Scenarios for Palestine/Israel | Blip TV ...Abunimah travels often to the Middle East and is a full-time researcher in social policy at the University of Chicago. His first book, One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, was published in 2007 and makes a compelling case for a one-state solution based on legal equality for Israelis and Palestinians... [During this talk Abunimah makes the obvious point that "terrorism" is a "racial, not a descriptive term."] Watch...Hebron's living hell, by Alice Rothchild | Uruknet  Israeli soldiers detain Palestinian youths in the old city of Hebron On 12 January, we drove to the southern West Bank city of Hebron. This city is drowning in a complex, traumatic and violent history that has given birth to the outrageous situation we see today...Read more... Bethlehem: General strike over heritage sites | Ma'an News The committee of Palestinian factions in Bethlehem declared a general strike on Tuesday in Bethlehem governorate in protest of Israel’s claim on sites in Bethlehem and Hebron as "heritage sites." ... Read more... Harvard Fellow calls for genocidal measure to curb Palestinian births | Electronic Intifada A fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Martin Kramer, has called for "the West" to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide... Read more... Afghan civilians flee Marjah amid US-led assault | Press TV  An Afghan police officer frisks a civilian fleeing Marjah as battle Humanitarian organizations say residents in the Afghan city of Marjah are fleeing in droves despite the danger of improvised bombs. Humanitarian workers said on Wednesday that residents of the Marjah were wandering about heavily-mined roads in search of food and other supplies, AFP reported...rages between the Taliban and the US-led forces there Read more... Marjah: 'This is not Fallujah', by Eric Walberg | Media Monitors Network "...Marjah is really just a microcosm for what the US is doing at this very moment around the globe -- waging a veritable war on the world, in Iraq, Pakistan, expanding into Yemen, Somalia, Iran, supplementing bombs and soldiers with militarised sea lanes, forward military and missile bases on every continent, encircling "enemies" Russia and China."... Read more... Group aims to provide voice for Jews who oppose Zionism", by Rebecca Tumposky | The Register-Guard Jews need to oppose Zionism to truly hold up our varied traditions of social justice. As a new and growing organization, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network seeks to challenge the violence and injustice of Israeli apartheid, and to challenge the notion that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. A 2007 survey reported by The Jerusalem Post found that about half of Jewish-Americans younger than age 35 feel little or no identification with Israel or with the Zionist goal of a Jewish state... Read more... February 24, 2010 America's First Suicide Bomber, by Paul Craig Roberts | OpEdNews  Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the 79% of Americans who have given up on "their" government...Indications are that Joseph Stack was sane. Like Palestinians faced with Israeli jet fighters, helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles and poison gas, Stack realized that he was powerless. A suicide attack was the only weapon left to him... Read more... Samantha Bell, Joe Stack's Daughter, Calls Father A 'Hero' But Denounces Plane Crash | Huffington Post  Daughter takes to the airwaves to call him the ‘hero’ ...Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen."...Read more, watch video... Nothing Sacred: Israeli Environmental Terrorism in the Holy Land, by Tammy Obeidallah | Intifada Palestine Israelis have duped much of the Jewish and Christian religious communities into accepting their claim to Palestine is based on a belief that the land is holy - that their spiritual and emotional connection to this land reaches across millennia. Yet through the willful decimation of natural resources along with its native inhabitants, the Zionist establishment has proven that in the Holy Land, nothing is sacred... Read more... Israeli Unaccountability and Denial: Suppressing the Practice of Torture, by Stephen Lendman | Dissident Voice The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel “believes that torture and ill-treatment of any kind and under all circumstances is incompatible with the moral values of democracy and the rule of law.” Yet it’s systematically practiced by the Israeli Police, General Security Service, Israeli Prison Service, and Israeli Defense Forces... Read more... Les Leopold: Wall Street is running a casino (YouTube) | RussiaToday Watch... Never Again - For Anyone | International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network "My great lesson from Auschwitz is: whoever wants to dehumanize any other must first be dehumanized himself. The oppressors are no longer really human, whatever uniform they wear." - Hajo Meyer  Watch... Two “Iraq war” movies compete for awards, by Mamoon Alabbasi | Redress Information & Analysis ...The link to Iraq in "Avatar" is apparent to many from the outset of the film, but it is further entrenched with the use of terms like "shock and awe" and "fighting terror". However, the plot thickens. The blue humanoids in "Avatar" appear more humane than their human invaders, who came from earth to steal the resources of their planet. In "The Hurt Locker", where we follow an adventurous US bomb squad in Iraq, the Iraqis in the movie appear to serve just as a background that shows how heroic the film's stars are. Almost faceless and voiceless, they are – as in the world of politics -- robbed of their humanity... Read more... The Big Story: UK politics and the Israel lobby, by Nureddin Sabir | Redress Information & Analysis ...In this episode of “The Big Story”, she revisits the issue of the Israel lobby’s influence on British politics and the media. She asks if Channel 4 TV’s “Dispatches”...on the power of the Israel lobby has encouraged other broadcasters and public figures to question whether it is right that the interests of a foreign state – Israel – should be so predominant in Britain’s main political parties... Read more, watch... Must We Loathe David Irving?, by Michael K. Smith | legalienate This year marks the tenth anniversary of the David Irving - Deborah Lipstadt libel trial. Irving sued Lipstadt and Penguin Books for having called him a "Holocaust Denier" as part of what he claimed was a campaign to ruin his reputation. In his opening statement to the court, he complained that the label Holocaust Denier was a "verbal yellow star," designed to destroy him for being an enemy of what Norman Finkelstein has termed "The Holocaust Industry."... Read more... [I prefer the term "Holycause." and Ms. Lipstadt is the "High Priestess"] Interview with Robert Faurisson  At the Nuremberg trial (1945-1946), a court made up of the victors of the recent war accused a vanquished Germany of the following: 1) of having ordered and planned the physical extermination of the Jews of Europe. 2) of having, to that purpose, designed, built and used weapons of mass destruction called, particularly, gas chambers. 3) of having, essentially with those weapons but by other means as well, caused the death of six million Jews...(but) no evidence capable of withstanding serious examination has ever been produced... Read more... Impending Explosion: U.S. Intensifies Threats To Russia And Iran, by Rick Rozoff | OpEdNews Washington and its NATO allies launched two of the three major wars in the world over the past eleven years in March - against Yugoslavia in 1999 and against Iraq in 2003. The war drums are being pounded anew and the world may be headed for a catastrophe far worse than those in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq... Read more... The Flailing Falsehoods of America's War Criminals, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon I didn't think it was possible, but former Bush officials -- desperately fighting what they know will be their legacy as war criminals -- have become even more dishonest propagandists out of office than they were in office... Read more... Israel grants visas to witnesses in suit over Rachel Corrie death, by Akiva Eldar | Haaretz  Rachel's skull and rib cage were totally crushed by the US made Under pressure from the United States, Israel is to grant visas to four activists from the International Solidarity Movement so they can testify in suit brought against the government by the family of Rachel Corrie, an activist killed by an IDF bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in March 2003. Corrie, a U.S. citizen, was 24 when she was struck and killed by a bulldozer as she and others tried to stop Israel razing homes in Rafah by using their bodies as human shields...and Israeli manned bulldozer (a US taxpayer's gift to Israel) Read more... Boycott FedEx, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig ...Our destitute working class is beginning to grasp that Barack Obama and other elected officials in Washington, who speak in a cloying feel-your-pain language, are liars. They are not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. Treasury or jobs from being exported. The gap between our stark reality and the happy illusions peddled by smarmy television news personalities and fatuous academic and financial experts, as well as oily bureaucrats and politicians, is becoming too wide to ignore... Read more... New Grist for Hype on Iran, by Ray McGovern | Antiwar Here we go again. A report issued Thursday by the new director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano, has injected new adrenaline into those arguing that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. The usual suspects are hyping – and distorting – thin-gruel language in the report to “prove” that Iran is hard at work on a nuclear weapon... Read more... Israel works to change international law, by Jeff Halper | Palestine Telegraph  Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon The Israeli attack on Gaza..was not merely a military assault on a primarily civilian population, impoverished and the victim of occupation and besiegement these past 42 years. It was also part of an ongoing assault on international humanitarian law by a highly coordinated team of Israeli lawyers, military officers, PR people and politicians, led by (no less) a philosopher of ethics. It is an effort coordinated as well with other governments whose political and military leaders are looking for ways to pursue "asymmetrical warfare" against peoples resisting domination and the plundering of their resources and labor without the encumbrances of human rights and current international law. It is a campaign that is making progress and had better be taken seriously by us all...Read more... Thoughts on an Interview with General Stanley McChrystal, by Fred Reed | Lew Rockwell Oh lord. Oh lord. I can’t stand it. Somebody get me a drink. Recently I saw an interview with General McChrystal, head butcher of the Pentagon’s Democracy Implantation Force in Afghanistan. The General was explaining our ongoing victory. Yes, victory. We were making progress. It was only a matter of time. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel. He didn’t explain what were doing in a tunnel in the first place. I guess he forgot... Read more... Liquidating the Empire, by Patrick J. Buchanan | Antiwar ...Liquidation of this empire should have begun with the end of the Cold War. Now it is being forced upon us by the deficit-debt crisis. Like GM, we can’t kick this can up the road any more, because we have come to the end of the road. Republicans will fight new taxes. Democrats will fight to save social programs. Which leaves the American empire as the logical lead cow for the butcher’s knife... Read more... February 23, 2010 Why Americans love the Dalai Lama | CNN  "...I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness, and greed..." - His Holiness the Dalai Lama [No matter how bad things may seem, wisdom and compassion are inextinguishable and everywhere apparent; they are our birthright - the Editor] Read more... Standing up to the bullies, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis The Israel lobby – the real bullies in British politics Against the background of allegations that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is a bully, Stuart Littlewood reminds us that bullying is endemic in politics, as shown by the UK Liberal Democratic Party leaders’ bullying of Jenny Tonge for speaking the truth, and the continual bullying of UK politicians by the Israel lobby...Read more... An Open Word About Anti-Semitism, by Andrew Winkler | Rebel News In the olden days, an anti-Semite was someone who hated Jews; these days it’s someone the Jews hate Accusing an opponent of anti-Semitism is probably the most powerful political weapon that exists in Western society. Its destructiveness equals – if not surpasses - the label of paedophilia. The whole topic has developed over time to such a powerful taboo, that there is hardly an open discussion of anti-Semitism, without the participants scrambling to uncritically condemn it as utterly evil. Anybody suspected – or worse - publicly accused of anti-Semitic views or activities, becomes automatically – without trial and conviction – a societal leper. He can kiss his job and career good-bye, and will loose, more often than not, most of his friends and family, in many cases even his freedom...Read more... Israel’s new ‘attack on freedom of speech’, by Jonathan Cook | Israeli Occupation Archive  The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say. In a sign of the growing backlash against the human-rights community, the cabinet backed a bill last week that, if passed, will jail senior officials from the country’s peace-related organisations should they fail to meet tough new registration conditions... Read more... Stealing Success Tel Aviv Style, by Philip Giraldi | Antiwar A curious op-ed "The Tel Aviv Cluster" by the reliably neoconnish David Brooks appeared in the New York Times on January 12th. Brooks enthused over the prowess of Israel’s high tech businesses, attributing their success in large part to Jewish exceptionalism and genius, which must have provided the ultimate feel good moment for Brooks, who is himself Jewish... Read more... American Genocides: Is Haiti Next?, by Stephen Lendman | Baltimore Chronicle Distinguished historian, scholar and activist Gabriel Kolko studied "the nature and purpose of American power since the 1870s," calling it "violent, racist, repressive at home and abroad and culturally mendacious." It's been the same since inception... Read more... Israel’s new attack on freedom of speech, by Jonathan Cook | The National  Zionazis protest against the New Israel Fund’s The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that has followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say...alleged role in the Goldstone war crimes report Read more... CrossTalk: Norman Finkelstein vs. Israel (video) | Russia Today [Against relentless pressure he hangs in there - a true warrior] Watch... Ron Paul!, by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which has been going on for many years, is a bellwether of where the action is on the right side of the political spectrum – and the news from the latest gathering has both the traditional Buckley-style right and the Obama-ite liberal-left in shock... [What makes Paul different from all the others? He can't be bought.] Read more... How does Israel get away with it? | America Hijacked  General (ret) James David (who is mentioned on the cover of the third edition of former Republican Congressman Paul Findley’s book ‘They Dare to Speak Out’ (about the power/influence of the pro-Israel lobby on the US political system and media) wrote the following intro: "How can the Israelis trump up that many lies and get away with it. One word—Holocaust..." Read more... Obama's Pentagon Rebrands Iraq War, Rolls Out PR Offensive in Afghanistan, by Liliana Segura | AlterNet The new PR campaign has all the qualities of a George Orwell novel. Perhaps 'Operation Imperial Sunset' is a more appropriate name... Read more... Torture under Obama, by Nat Hentoff | Cato Institute Some of the increasing number of critics, from the left and the right, of President Barack Obama's abuses of civil liberties and human rights make an exception by praising his executive order in the first month of his term banning torture as a form of interrogation on matters of national security. There is credible reason, however, to dispute the credibility of that presidential pledge... Read more... Mossad's Murderous Reach: The Larger Political Issues, by James Petras | Rebel News  James Petras ...Israel's policy of overseas assassination raises profound issues that threaten the basis of the modern state: sovereignty, rule of law and national and personal security...Read more... The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration | James Petras The strategy of the Jewish state is the complete Zionization of Palestine, the takeover of land, water, offshore gas (estimated to be worth $4 billion dollars) and other economic resources and the total dispossession of the Palestinian people. Tel Aviv’s tactics have included daily military assaults, giant walls ghettoizing entire Palestinian towns, military outposts and controls undermining commerce and production to force bankruptcy, poverty, severe deprivation and population flight. The second priority of the Israeli colonial state is to bolster the Jewish state’s political and military supremacy in the Middle East, using preposterous arguments of ‘survival’ and ‘existential threats’... Read more... Israel Annexes West Bank Mosques | Palestine Chronicle The Israeli occupation authorities have decided to place two historic mosques in the occupied West Bank to a list of alleged Jewish heritage sites, drawing immediate rebuke from Palestinians and Israelis alike. "This announcement is an act of aggression against the cultural and religious rights of the Palestinian people," Hamdan Taha, director of the Palestinian Tourism Ministry's Antiquities Department... Read more... February 22, 2010 To Believe or not to Believe | Gilad Atzmon Daily Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan doesn’t believe the British Foreign Office  Foreign Secretary David Miliband “The Foreign Office denied claims that it had been tipped off about the use of British passports before the hit, insisting: “We only received details of the British passports a few hours before the press conference held by the police in Dubai.” But the Irish foreign ministry has confirmed that it knew Irish passports had been used by the hit squad as early as February 4 – and it would seem surprising if Britain did not know at least that soon too... Read more... Israeli troops attack a Sunday mass and moral responsibility, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Human Rights Newsletter Some 100 people gathered at Ush Ghrab in Beit Sahour to pray for peace and protest the planned military presence there. As we were gathering in peaceful contemplation and prayer, Israeli army jeeps quickly rolled in between us and one officer barked orders in Hebrew. We explained to them in Arabic and English that we do not understand Hebrew (later we realized they also knew Arabic and English) but they immediately started throwing concussion grenades and tear gas at the elderly, women, children, the priest doing the prayer, other town people and internationals (Christians and Muslims)... Read more... Cut the "ambiguity", ambassador, or pack your bags, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information and Analysis Stuart Littlewood challenges UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband – and the rest of the British Establishment – to explain to the British public his government's support for Israeli crimes and criminals... Read more... Max Blumenthal's Video: Rapture Ready, the Christians United for Israel convention | Palestine Think Tank  Max Blumenthal is just fantastic, as usual. His approach, halfway between deadpan and ironic, always allows the persons interviewed to feel free to express themselves, and the platform he offers them provides us with an image that we have to see and try to understand..Christian Zionists are a very strange reality... Read more, watch... The truth about the Mossad, by Ian Black | The Guardian The recent, outlandish assassination in Dubai may prove the most damaging yet in the Mossad's history of high-profile, bungled operations. How did it squander its reputation for ruthless brilliance?... Read more... Fresh-faced, I fell into the honey trap laid by Israel's Mata Hari, by Jon Swain | Times Online At the threshold of my career as a young journalist in Paris I was once the unwitting victim of a classic Mossad honey trap. Little did I know that Patricia Roxborough, the girl who pursued me and made sure she was the object of my desire, was a trained assassin of the feared Israeli intelligence service. We met, by chance, through friends in 1969. I was an impressionable 21-year-old learning the ropes of being a foreign correspondent in the French capital. Roxborough said she was a Canadian freelance news photographer... Read more... Hariri: Israel seeks war with Lebanon, Syria, Iran | Press TV  Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has warned of Israeli attempts to start a military confrontation with Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Hariri, who was in Italy to meet with Pope Benedict XVI, urged Rome to pressure Israel to take part in peace negotiations. "Israel can't claim to be interested in the peace process without doing anything tangible in this regard," Hariri said...The Lebanese prime minister, who was taking part in an interview with Italian channel RAI News 24 on Friday, added that while "Arabs want peace," Israel only seeks war with "Lebanon, Syria and Iran."..Read more... Bomb Iran Drumbeat Picks Up Pace, by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars It looks like years of incessant propaganda about Iran seem to have paid off. According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans consider Iran to. be the “least liked” nation on the planet. “Canada retained its top position in Gallup’s annual country ratings, with 90% of Americans viewing it favorably, unchanged from 2009. Iran continues to rank last, with 10% this year,” Gallup reports. Even the reclusive totalitarian state of North Korea fared better than Iran.. Read more... Watch Mohammad Bakri's Jenin Jenin | Gilad Atzmon Jenin Jenin depicts the true story of Israeli colossal barbarism. There is no doubt left, the Jewish State is the ultimate enemy of humanity and humanism. It also presents the Palestinian ordeal facing the Zionist evil. Clearly, surviving the Israeli occupation is nothing but heroism... Read more, watch... Helmand elders want US-led forces out | Press TV  Tribal elders in the southern Afghan province of Helmand want an end to the US-led anti-Taliban offensive there, citing Western troops' disregard for civilian lives as a reason. In a gathering in the center of Helmand, the elders expressed concerns about the way the operations have been handled so far... Read more... Top Russian General: An American Attack on Iran would lead to US Collapse, by Juan Cole It appears that, the International Atomic Energy Agency is at least allowing for the possibility that documents allegedly found on a laptop some years ago --but discounted by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency as of dubious provenance and incompatible with other intelligence gathered in Iran -- point to a nuclear weapons program that no one has been able to locate. Some close observers have concluded that the laptop documents are forgeries... Read more... More Than Peanut Butter, by Andrew Bacevich | World Affairs Here is the way that U.S. military officers describe their purpose in Year Nine of the Long War: “Our goal is to take care of the people, not kill the Taliban.” The speaker is Captain Ryan Sparks, commander of the Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, currently engaged in operations that aim to deliver good governance to the people of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. Yet this sort of thinking finds application well beyond war zones. The same edition of The Washington Post that quoted Captain Sparks included a column in which Michael Gerson paid tribute to America’s “tenderhearted legions.”... Read more... The Chalabi Factor in Iraq, by Robert Dreyfuss | The Nation  Ahmed Chalabi The passel of neoconservatives who pushed for war in Iraq in 2003 believed fervently that the war would change the face of the Middle East. How right they were! The Middle East is changed forever, only not in the way the neocons had hoped. Rather than usher in an era of greater US influence in the region, the destruction of the government in Iraq in 2003 has allowed Iran to expand its political, economic, and military influence westward into the vacuum left by the elimination of Saddam Hussein. Belatedly - slowly, slowly - a few neocons here and there are starting to recognize that the vaunted democracy in Iraq is in grave danger of looking like the not-so-democratic "Islamic democracy" next door in Iran...Read more... The Mount Vernon Statement and Ed Meese | The New American All of the Washington/New York conservative establishment convened several days before the annual CPAC conference and came up with the “Mount Vernon Statement” of principles to which they subscribe. The Mount Vernon Statement is — with one glaring and incongruous exception — a worthy statement of adherence to constitutional principles... Read more... Allied bid for Obama to remove US European nuclear stockpile | AFP European NATO allies are to urge President Barack Obama to remove all remaining US nuclear weapons from European soil, as domestic pressure grows to rid its soil of outdated Cold War-era aerial bombs... Read more... February 21, 2010 Ronnie Kasrils Speech at Israeli Apartheid Week 2009 | Global BDS  Former SA Minister for Intelligence Services, member of the National Executive Committee of the African National Congress At the onset of international “Israel Apartheid Week” in solidarity with the embattled Palestinian people, I want to start by quoting a South African who emphatically stated as far back as 1963 that “Israel is an apartheid state.” Those were not the words of Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu or Joe Slovo, but were uttered by none other than the architect of apartheid itself, racist Prime Minister, Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd. He was irked by the criticism of apartheid policy and Harold Macmillan’s “Winds of Change” speech , in contrast to the West’s unconditional support for Zionist Israel... Read more... 'Independent' Kosovo Turns 2: The State That's Still A Lie, by Nebojsa Malic | Antiwar Two years have passed since the Albanian provisional government in the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo declared independence, and was quickly recognized by the Empire and its clients. The powers that have invoked the specter of Munich 1938 to justify their aggressive interventions in the Balkans had engaged in a little Munich of their own... Read more... Terrorism: the most meaningless and manipulated word, by Glenn Greenwald | Salon ...Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity. It has really come to mean: "a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies."... Read more... Goldman Sach's Great Trick: The Savvy Mr. Blankfein, by Dean Baker | Counterpunch Last week, when President Obama was asked about the $9 million dollar bonus for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, he described Mr. Blankfein as a savvy businessman, adding that Americans don’t begrudge people being rewarded for success. While Obama later qualified his comment about Mr. Blankfein and his fellow bank executives, it’s worth examining more closely some of the ways in which Blankfein and the Goldman gang were “savvy.”... Read more... Israeli Environmental Terrorism, by Tammy Obeidallah | The Ugly Truth ...The land once known as Palestine began suffering detrimental and irrevocable changes in the early 1950s when Israel’s fledgling government drained the wetlands surrounding Lake Huleh, north of the Sea of Galilee, for a housing project. Once the lake was dry, the Palestinian Painted Frog that inhabited the wetlands became extinct. The last reported sighting of the small amphibian was in 1955. Today, many other species are facing extinction due to Israel’s gross disregard for the environment... Read more... Best & Brightest: From Vietnam to Palestine, George Ball got it right, by Jordan Smith | American Conservative  Read more... Wall Street Targets the Elderly: Looting Social Security, by Paul Craig Roberts | Counterpunch Hank Paulson, the Gold Sacks bankster/US Treasury Secretary, who deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with multi-trillions of dollars of new US debt, is still not in jail. He is writing in the New York Times urging that the mess he caused be fixed by taking away from working Americans the Social Security and Medicare for which they have paid in earmarked taxes all their working lives... Read more... A world of psychopaths, by Paul J. Balles | Redress Information & Analysis Paul J. Balles considers the psychopathic phenomenon of the "superiority complex" as an explanation of dysfunctional behaviour among individuals and states, such as Israel and the US... Read more... Dutch government falls over Afghanistan | Redress Information & Analysis Christopher King expresses the hope that the fall of the Dutch government over participation in the US-led aggression in Afghanistan could be the start of a trend that will see Europe regain its independence from the USA... Read more... Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museum Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered, by Hans von Sponeck | Brussells Tribunal  Hans von Sponeck ...The contours of the human tragedy resulting from the illegal attack of Iraq in March 2003 and the subsequent occupation are becoming more and more visible. Much has still to be discovered and for the wrongdoing a court of justice has yet to be found. In the meantime, the coffers of evidence are filling up...Read more... Rumors Heat Up in Europe that Goldman Sachs and John Paulson Are Waging Attacks on Greece, by Kevin Connor | Alternet The rumors of a possible partnership by John Paulson and Goldman Sachs in the speculative attacks on Greece, which I first reported on last week, are now heating up in Europe to the point where one French journalist has multiple sources corroborating them. No one can point to hard evidence, just yet, because these are opaque, unregulated markets. But the news is quickly rising above the status of rumor... Read more... Mossad Agents with Fake Pass in Malta, by Kawther Salam | Uruknet The assassination of Mohammed Mabhouh in Dubai was not the first International crime which Mossad death squads committed by using the fake or stolen European passports. There is a long record full of assassinations which were carried out by the Israeli death squads in Europe and in many other countries. The latest crime, the assassination of Mohammad Al-Mabhouh in Dubai and the full details which the police of Dubai exposed, raises once again the question about the relationship between the European countries and Israel, especially those countries in which the Mossad has carried out crimes in the past... Read more... Mossad murdered 530 Iraqi scientists: The Plight of Iraqi Academics | Al Jazeera Numerous reports for many months have stated that with collaboration from American occupation forces, Israel's espionage apparatus, Mossad, slaughtered at least 530 Iraqi scientists and academic professors... Read more... How Israel's Lobby Challenges Rule of Law in America | Information Clearing House Video Interview By Press TV Iranian satellite television channel PressTV broadcast a 25 minute interview with IRmep director Grant F. Smith about the Israel lobby's history of challenges to rule of law and governance in the United States. "Autograph" with Susan Modaress reviews key findings from the book "Spy Trade".. Watch... February 20, 2010 The Tide Has Changed | Gilad Atzmon  London is ‘angry’ over the use of stolen identities by the Dubai assassins and points its finger at the Jewish state and its notorious Mossad espionage agency. The Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, was summoned yesterday by the foreign minister to “share information”... Read more... UN: No peace without solution for Palestinian refugees | AFP Finding a solution to the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East is key to peace in the region, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said in an interview on Thursday. "UNRWA has no political role, but it does have the moral role of reminding all parties involved and all governments with a say in the peace process that there will be no peace without a fair solution for refugees in line with UN resolutions," the agency's Commissionner General Filippo Grandi told AFP... [Of all the principal reasons why the One State solution is the only possible solution, this one's the clincher] Read more... Battle for Marjah: The US Has Already Lost, by Dave Lindorff | CommonDreams The fighting is still underway in the town of Marjah, in what is being described as the first battle in Obama's War in Afghanistan, or alternatively as the biggest battle of the US War in Afghanistan. But already, the US has lost that battle. It lost it from day one, when troops fired missiles in to a Marjah house, killing 12 civilian occupants--half of them children. And it lost it further when another three more civilians were blown away by US-led forces. Finally, it lost the battle as much of the town has been simply destroyed by the fighting... Read more... US congressman slams Israeli deputy foreign minister| Press TV  Rep. William Delahunt A visiting US congressman has lashed out at the Israeli deputy foreign minister, saying he was snubbed by the Foreign Ministry and demanding an official clarification. Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, is heading a congressional delegation to the region...[The tail wagging the dumbest dog on the block] Read more... Pentagon Budget as Ponzi Scheme: The Defense Elephant in America's Living Room, by Saul Landau and Nelson Valdes | Counterpunch ...the most fraudulent corrupt scheme ever foisted on humankind is the Pentagon budget. Since 2001, under the guise of defending the country – which the Defense Department has never done – the DOD has scammed from US taxpayers $5.1 trillion. Since its inception, it has never passed an audit and thus not accounted for the money that pours into its coffers... Read more... The Iranian Greens and the West: A Dangerous Liaison, by Sasan Fayazmanesh | Counterpunch In the 1979 Revolution in Iran the liberal forces made a fatal mistake: they adopted the old dictum of the enemy of my enemy is my friend and allied themselves with just about every force that opposed the tyrannical rule of the shah. The result was helping to replace one form of despotism for another: monarchy for theocracy. A similar mistake seems to be made today. Many liberal elements are once again allying themselves with anyone who opposes the current regime in Iran, including the same “Western” countries that nourished the despotic rule of the shah in the first place... Read more... Campus claws: beating Israel lobbyists through debate, by Paul J. Balles | Redress Information & Analysis  Paul J. Balles cautions pro-Palestinian activists against simply shouting down speakers who represent their enemy, arguing that, to win hearts and minds, they should instead “learn to express themselves well enough to challenge their adversaries” and they should prepare for and encourage debates... Read more... Casting a Global Shadow: Bases of Empire, by Joan Roelofs | Counterpunch Despite United States economic weakness, although not unrelated to it, our military casts a heavy shadow everywhere on earth, far beyond the major and minor wars it is now conducting. The geographical and functional scope of the US military is cosmic. Formal alliances are an important element, but even such bloated, increasingly un-Atlantic and shockingly un-pacific institutions as NATO are only the tip of the iceberg... Read more... The Decline of the Israeli Right and the Increasing Desperation of the 'Anti-Semitism' Charge | Juan Cole The great divide between liberal Jewish Americans and the Israeli Right has lurked as an issue since the Likud Party first challenged Labor dominance in the late 1970s. It is now coming to a boiling point, even as Israel's reputation in the world is sinking. As rightwing policies more visibly fail, the Likudniks are flailing around making fools of themselves by smearing critics of those policies as racists... Read more... Finkelstein Banned in Berlin: A Democracy that isn’t a Democracy, by Anis Hamadeh | American Muslim  Dr. Norman Finkelstein wrote several books in the field Israel/Palestine/Holocaust and is one of the most sagacious analysts of our time. Similar to Professor Ilan Pappe, he formulates sharp criticism in respect to past and presence of the State of Israel, and both use very rational argumentations and are reliable researchers. Especially since the mass murders in Jenin and in Gaza, these two men and many other Jews (also in Germany) speak out, because they do not want to be taken in for violent purposes by a state that arrogates to speak and act in the name of all Jews... [Plus ca change, plus la meme chose - the Germans have reflexively replaced the Nazis with the ZioNazis in their loyalties] Read more... Popular Resistance Report, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | HumanRights Newsletter Today there were demonstrations and confrontations in a number of locations in the occupied West Bank with three enduring particularly vicious Israeli attacks: Ni’lin, Bil’in, Al-Ma'sara. It is impossible to be in many places at one time so I chose to go to Al-Ma'sara for their weekly demonstration. There, the demonstrators decided to go on the main street and as soon as we got there, the occupation army attacked the peaceful demonstrators. There were no warnings but immediate volley of concussion grenades and tear gas canisters... Read more... Latest Israeli FUBAR shows Mossad as incompetent as IDF | Vineyard of the Saker Next to the myth about the "invincible Tsahal" (or IDF), the myth of the almighty and all-knowing Mossad is one of the favorite canards of the corporate media. Well, since Israel did not win a single war since 1973 and since up to about 40'000 Israeli soldiers, sailors and airmen were comprehensively, and embarrassingly, defeated by about 1'000 Hezbollah 2nd tier infantry soldiers (the best one had been kept north of the Litani river) the first myth is now dead. Thanks to the recent killing of a Hamas official in Dubai, the second myth about the "formidable" Mossad is now taking a nose-dive to join the first one in the proverbial garbage heaps of history... Read more... February 19, 2010 The Real Reason for Sanctions Against Iran: America's Quest for Global Miliitary Dominance, by Eric Sommer | Global Research  Read more... ‘Israel is delegitimizing itself’, by Ali Abunimah | Mondoweiss Ali Abunimah responds to the Israeli thinktank’s program of responding to the growing delegitimization of Israel Underlying the Reut Institute’s analysis is a complete inability to disentangle cause and effect. It seems to assume that the dramatic erosion in Israel’s international standing since its wars on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009 is a result of the prowess of the "delegitimization network" to which it imputes wholly nefarious, devious and unwholesome goals — effectively the "destruction of Israel."..Read more... Mossad's licence to kill, by Gordon Thomas | The Telegraph The killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh bears the hallmarks of the ruthless Israeli intelligence service. One of the leading chroniclers of the agency gives a unique insight into its methods  Mossad assassins escape after killing one of the terrorists involved in the massacre ...In the past year, al-Mabhouh had moved to the top of Mossad's list of targets, each of which must be legally approved under guidelines laid down over half a century ago by Meir Amit, the most innovative and ruthless director-general of the service. Born in Tiberius, King Herod's favourite city, Amit had established the rules for assassination...at the 1972 Olympics in a scene from Steven Spielberg's film 'Munich' Read more... Israeli soldiers fire rubber bullets at journalists in East Jerusalem, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss We aim to track reports that Israeli society is toughening, it is exhibiting growing intolerance of dissent, debate, and sunlight. Here is a report at a UN site about an incident last week in which Israeli soldiers fired upon journalists who were covering raids in the Shu’fat refugee camp in East Jerusalem. The camp is walled in... Read more... Israel's new strategy: "sabotage" and "attack" the global justice movement, by Ali Abunimah | Electronic Intifada  Reut Institute presentation calls on Israel to "attack catalysts" An extraordinary series of articles, reports and presentations by Israel's influential Reut Institute has identified the global movement for justice, equality and peace as an "existential threat" to Israel and called on the Israeli government to direct substantial resources to "attack" and possibly engage in criminal "sabotage" of this movement in what Reut believes are its various international "hubs" in London, Madrid, Toronto, the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond...-- global peace and justice activists Read more.. Pimping Weapons to the World, by Frida Berrigan | TomDispatch On the relatively rare occasions when the media turns its attention to U.S. weapons sales abroad and shines its not-so-bright spotlight on the latest set of facts and figures, it invariably speaks of “the global arms trade.” Let’s consider that label for a moment, word by word:.. Read more... As Israeli soldiers we hang our heads in shame over last year's attack on Gaza's civilian population | The Guardian  Civilians flee during last year's war on Gaza The Israeli media marked the one-year anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, the war on Gaza, almost as a celebration. The operation is recognised almost unanimously in Israel as a military triumph, a combat victory over one of Israel's deadliest enemies: Hamas. As combat soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), we have serious doubts about this conclusion, primarily because hardly any combat against Hamas took place during the operation...Read more... Grounds for Hope and Despair, by Paul Craig Roberts | ICH My February 16 column, “A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs,” received confirmation from high places on the very day it appeared. Popular Indiana Democratic U.S. Senator Evan Bayh announced that he was quitting the Senate. Yahoo News gave this account: “In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system "dysfunctional," riddled with "brain-dead partisanship" and permanent campaigning. Flatly denying any possibility that he'd seek the presidency or any other higher office, Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a "shock" to Congress by voting incumbents out in mass and replacing them with people interested in reforming the process and governing for the good of the people, rather than deep-pocketed special-interest groups.” In short, Senator Bayh got tired of being a whore for the corporate lobbyists who rule the U.S... Read more... Iran won't let arrogant powers ruin world | Press TV  The Leader of Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei The Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, says the Iranian nation will stand up to arrogant powers who are dominating the world. Addressing a group of visitors from the northwestern city of Tabriz on Wednesday, the Leader said, "Iran will not allow a few countries to ruin the future of the world."...Read more... Israel Gets More Comfortable with Status Quo, by Tony Karon | Time ...it's important to remember that it was not some epiphany about the immorality of apartheid that changed his mind. By 1989, with the Cold War essentially over, Pretoria had gotten the message that it could no longer count on U.S. support to head off sanctions and other international pressure in the name of anticommunist solidarity. Financial sanctions were beginning to bite and the price of maintaining the status quo was beginning to appear prohibitive... Read more... A Zundel update: An example of how mainstream media bias in favor of the Holocaust Lobby gets fabricated in the news | Reportes Note Book My husband is the best-known Prisoner of Conscience in Europe. He is highly respected worldwide for having procured forensic and historically documented evidence through several headline-making trials involving expert witness testimony that the traditional Holocaust claims of premeditated, industrial-type genocide simply do not check out. Nothing but nothing checks out!.. Read more... The Unstated Script of the Wiesel Open Letter to President Obama, by William Cook | Intifada Palestine President Obama and swindler Elie Wiesel Apparently Elie Wiesel has taken it upon himself to direct the governments of the world in his quest for domination of the mid-east, especially the “cruel and oppressive, irresponsible and senseless, the shameless” regime that dictates the affairs of the Iranian State...Let’s draw up the bill of particulars that is hidden from the world, the subtext, the unsaid prayer no one in this American government wants revealed and certainly no one in Israel wants displayed publically. What is the true nature of this state of Israel that commands the allegiance of the American people and is now seeking to enlist the governments of the world against its perceived “existential” enemy, Iran?...[The text of Mark Twain's War Prayer that Cook refers to] Read more... The Jews of Iraq, by Naesim Giladi | Palestine Remembered I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called "cruel Zionism." I write about it because I was part of it... Read more... Zionism and Nazism: Is there a difference that makes a difference?, by the Editor Part II of 'Us vs. Them: On the Meaning of Fascism'  The coin that the Nazis struck after the successful journey and stay for 6 months, in 1933, of baron von Mildenstein, who became head of the Jewish Desk of the SS’s Security Service (SD) in 1935, as a guest of the kibbutzim and Histadrut This disarmingly simple formula, Zionism equals Nazism, is analogous to the famous assertions of Galileo and Copernicus - demonstrable but so heretical in their contemporary context as to unleash a deafening chorus of outrage from defenders of the conventional wisdom... Read more... Mossad assassination squad used British passports, by Hugh Tomlinson | Times Online Six suspects in the assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai entered the country using British passports, it emerged yesterday. Police in the Gulf state announced that they were hunting for 11 suspects, including a woman, for the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas commander, who was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20... Read more, watch video of suspects... The War on Consumers and Labor Heats Up: Wall Street Moves in for the Kill, by Michael Hudson | Counterpunch Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times yesterday, February 16 outlining how to put the U.S. economy on rations. Not in those words, of course. Just the opposite: If the government hadn’t bailed out Wall Street’s bad loans, he claims, “unemployment could have exceeded the 25 per cent level of the Great Depression.” Without wealth at the top, there would be nothing to trickle down. The reality, of course, is that bailing out casino capitalist speculators on the winning side of A.I.G.’s debt swaps and CDO derivatives didn’t save a single job... Read more... The Long Arm of Israel better be amputated, by Gilad Atzmon  We have learned in the last few days that the Dubai assassins were Mossad agents who stole identities of six UK citizens and faked at least five other European passports. Dubai Police yesterday presented footage of some of the 11 ‘Europeans’ suspected of killing Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh... Read more... Jews aren't smarter (I lift my curse, and yours), by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss ...I’d lost my community. It was about the time that this blog got axed at the New York Observer, so I was no longer working for a Jewish friend I’d worked with since college who I love. And meantime, my Jewish editor at a big publishing house who I also love was not interested in a Jewish book I was writing, saying I didn’t understand Jewish history. And many many other statusy Jewish friends I’d had since college were sailing off over my horizon. For the simple reason that I was beginning to criticize the Israel lobby every day as a threat to the American interest and Jewish life, and my Jewish community didn’t like that... Read more... Israel’s Attack on Iran - A 15 Minute War To Save A Dying Theocratic Ethno-State?, by Mark Glenn | The Ugly Truth As we approach that “great day of reckoning” viz-a-viz (what appears to be) the impending and unavoidable attack on Iran by the Jewish state, it is important to keep in mind the motto of Israel’s Mossad that “By way of deception thou shalt make wars”... Read more... [Humor department] Israel Begins Campaign to Improve Nation's Image | NYT  The Israeli government, deeply worried about the country’s declining international image, began a campaign on Wednesday to turn every Israeli — and ultimately every Jew — into a traveling public relations agent... Read more... Alarm bells ring as demands for US Treasuries nosedive Alarm bells ring in the US over the reluctance of foreigners in buying Treasury securities after a report showed a declining demand for long-term assets in December. The Treasury Department says China and Japan have decreased their holdings in the treasury fund... Read more... Israel’s re-branding exercise in Haiti backfires as past catches up, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis Stuart Littlewood argues that Israel’s medical showcase in Haiti will do nothing to change the fact that it is “among the worst brand names on the planet", unless Tel Aviv ends its "bullying rhetoric and atrocious deeds" against the Palestinians and convinces the world that it has abandoned the practise of organ stealing... Read more... The Richest 1% Have Captured America's Wealth - What's It Going to Take to Get It Back?, by David DeGraw | AlterNet The U.S. already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis -- and it's gotten even worse  As a record amount of U.S. citizens are struggling to get by, many of the largest corporations are experiencing record-breaking profits, and CEOs are receiving record-breaking bonuses. How could this be happening, how did we get to this point?... Read more... 1,000 Architects and Engineers Call for Grand Jury into 9/11! | Vineyard of the Saker 1,000 Signatures from “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth)” to be Submitted Today to Congress—Petition Cites New Scientific Evidence of Explosive Demolition at WTC. This GLOBAL MEDIA EVENT will be simultaneously hosted in over 23 cities worldwide... Read more... Israeli Apartheid Week (video) | Gilad Atzmon Watch... Hitler's Jewish Nazis, by Veronica Clark | RePorters NoteBook Contrary to the common misperceptions that Hitler's Nazi-Sozi Germany treated Jews like human trash, in reality, the Jews were treated quite well. Not only were they paid for their labor and services while interned at Auschwitz concentration camp, but more importantly, they were allowed to join the armed services, and work, like any other German citizen during the war years... Read more... The Great Bi-Partisan Deception, by Shamus Cooke | Global Research  Read more... A Code for Ethnic Cleansing in Afghanistan?: Operation Moshtarak, by Yvonne Ridley | Counterpunch As I write this, two NATO rockets have just slaughtered around a dozen innocent Afghan civilians during the latest military assault in the war torn country. Ordinary Afghan men, women and children are paying the blood price for a war launched by politicians from the West. Soldiers, including American and British, who signed up to escape the poverty in their respective recession-hit countries are also giving the ultimate sacrifice... Read more... Inverted Totalitarianism: Fighting Corporate Rape of USA, by Chris Hedges | Information Clearing House American journalist and Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges told Russia Today the United States has developed a new form of corporate totalitarianism... Watch... Nobel Laureates Push for Harsher Sanctions on Iran: Elie Wiesel's Ignoble Recruits, by John V. Walsh | Counterpunch  The Weasel Is there nothing that is safe from debasement by the propaganda machine of the U.S. and Israel? A full-page ad in the Sunday NYT of February 7 provides the answer. Sponsored by Elie Wiesel’s modestly named “The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity,” and signed by 44 Nobel Laureates, 35 of them in the physical sciences, it urges brutal and lethal actions against Iran...The world's most successful con artist keeps on keeping on Read more... Hiring Death Squads Is Coming Back to Haunt U.S. Companies | | AlterNet Dole Foods and Chiquita may be on the verge of facing justice for 'pacifying' their work force, suppressing labor unions and terrorizing peasant squatters in Colombia... Read more... Rule by Oligarchs: A Country of Serfs, by Paul Craig Roberts | Democratic Underground The media has headlined good economic news: fourth quarter GDP growth of 5.7 percent ("the recession is over"), Jan. retail sales up, productivity up in 4th quarter, the dollar is gaining strength. Is any of it true? What does it mean?... Read more... A New Jewish Goal | Gilad Atzmon  Read more... Bin Laden: Dead and Loving It by Jeff Huber | Antiwar The tallest Arab ever wanted dead or alive by a president of the United States is still at large. Either that or he’s dead. Again. We’ve been hearing from intelligence sources and the media that bin Laden is dead for a long time. How dead can one evildoer get?.. Read more... The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement, by Elizabeth Woodworth | Global Research A Survey of Attitude Change in 2009-2010  In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired analytic programs investigating the official account. Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a "conspiracy theory" ignoring science and common sense... Read more... The Assault on Marjah, by Patrick Cockburn | Counterpunch ...The assault on Marjah, in an operation called ‘Moshtarak’ or ‘Togethor’, has been heavily publicised by US commanders in recent weeks in order to avoid a fight for the town and also to garner support in the US for President Obama’s strategy of increasing US troop levels in Afghanistan to nearly100,000 men. Some 15,000 troops, American, Afghan, British and Canadian, are involved in the operation in and around Marjah... Read more... USA officially declared insane, by Kevin Barrett | Rebel News  Read more... Iran's Ahmadinejad Strikes Again, by Eric Margolis | Lew Rockwell To fete the 31st anniversary of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gleefully announced his nation will enrich uranium to 20%. The bombastic Ahmadinejad seems to delight in provoking howls of outrage from the West. They were not long in coming..In fact, the latest Iranian-American brouhaha was pretty much a tempest in a nuclear teapot... Read more... February 15, 2010 Sacked Tonge slams Israel's 'attitude' in Palestine  Baroness Jenny Tonge during an interview with Press TV Baroness Jenny Tonge, who was sacked from the British House of Lords over the weekend for alleged 'anti-Israeli comments,' has criticized “the Israeli attitude towards the Palestinians.” The Liberal Democrat health spokeswoman, an outspoken critic of Israel's inhumane conduct against the Palestinians, was promptly removed from her post on Saturday for comments she made to the Jewish Chronicle about Israel's role in human organ trafficking from the quake-stricken Haiti...Read more... British politician Jenny Tonge sacrificed (again) to appease Zionists | Redress Stuart Littlewood considers the hypocrisy of Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party whose leadership, for the second time running, showed contempt for their own loftily-worded principles by sacking one of the party’s few principled politicians in order to appease the Zionist lobby... Read more... The new McCarthyism sweeping Israel, by Donald Macintyre | The Independent To disagree with the state is to 'delegitimise' the state: that is the increasingly strident response of the country's political and military establishment to those who dare to criticise its conduct  Zionazis dressed as Arabs demonstrate outside the house of Naomi Chazan It's hard, sitting on the other side of the office table from which Naomi Chazan is picking at her modest hummus and salad snack lunch, to believe that the amiable 63-year-old university professor with a self-deprecating sense of humour has suddenly become the most discussed, not to say demonised, woman in Israel...Read more... Arieli is a man with a plan. The trouble is, it's a map of Israel, by Robert Fisk | The Independent How do you make sense of this place, with its weird Areas A, B and C? Tel Aviv is a pleasant city, a relief after the clergy-led madness of Jerusalem, a place of laid-back street cafés and real shops and decent restaurants, although I am reminded of a rival British newspaper that once considered basing its correspondent in Tel Aviv in order to report Israel as a normal country...Read more... Israel is accused of waging covert war across the Middle East, by Sheera Frenkel | Times Online  Pictures of a burnt bus on the outskirts of Damascus Israel is waging a covert assassination campaign across the Middle East in an effort to stop its key enemies co-ordinating their activities...led to suspicion that it was hit by an explosion Read more... The Revolution Has Just Begun, by Ali Jawad | AIM In its coverage of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the language of the West is indelibly coloured with imperial hubris and Euro-centric prejudice. Ever since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in February of 1979 under the leadership of the late Imam Khomeini, Iran has transformed into an object of hate and contempt within the elitist political classes of Western capitals; overriding sentiments that were quite naturally transferred on to the media scene... Read more... The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America | Amped Status “The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.” — Michael Lind  ...The harsh truth is that 99% of the US population no longer has political representation. The US economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us... Read more... The Monopolization of America, by Russell Mokhiber | CommonDreams You walk into your local convenience store and head to the cold walk-in beer room in the back. The choice is overwhelming. Budweiser, Michelob, Bud Light, Busch Light, Stella Artois, Grolsch, Kirin,Tsingtao, Corona, Negra Modelo, Rolling Rock, Widmer, Miller and Coors. In fact, all of these beers are controlled by two companies... Read more... Dresden: A Real Holocaust & Act of Terrorism | Rense  Fifty-nine years ago, on the evening of February 13, 1945, an orgy of genocide and barbarism began against a defenseless German city, one of the greatest cultural centers of northern Europe. Within less than 14 hours, not only was it reduced to flaming ruins, but an estimated one-third of its inhabitants--possibly as many as half a million--had perished in what was the worst massacre of all time. As Americans continue to bemoan the loss of fewer than 3,000 at Larry Silverstein's World Trade Center and the Pentagon as they themselves prepare to slaughter many times that number in an act of unprovoked aggression in Iraq, few know--less care--about the campaign of cold-blooded TERRORISM conducted against German civilians during World War II, culminating in the extermination of well over 300,000... Read more... What Do Empires Do?, by Michael Parenti | CommonDreams When I wrote my book Against Empire in 1995, as might be expected, some of my U.S. compatriots thought it was wrong of me to call the United States an empire. It was widely believed that U.S. rulers did not pursue empire; they intervened abroad only out of self-defense or for humanitarian rescue operations or to overthrow tyranny, fight terrorism, and propagate democracy... Read more... Russia commits to deliver S-300 system to Iran | Press TV  The Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile defense system The Kremlin's powerful Security Council says Moscow sees no reason to delay the sale of its S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Tehran. "There is the signed contract that we must fulfill, but supplies have not started yet. This deal is not restricted by any international sanctions, because these are merely defensive weapons,"..Read more... Zionism unmasked, by Jeff Gates | Redress Jeff Gates analyses Zionism as “a strategy for targeting thought and emotion as a means to influence behaviour” and “a mental state that manifests as a dispersed form of internalized nationalism—a diaspora—that binds to an extremist enclave those who may never set foot there”. He argues that Zionism "relies for its success on deception and self-deceit"... Read more... Aafia Siddiqui supporters hold anti-US rally in Lahore | Press TV  Thousands of protesters have marched through the streets of Lahore to protest against the conviction of Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui in the United States. Demonstrators chanted anti-US slogans and set an effigy of US President Barack Obama on fire during the rally on Sunday... Read more... World may not be warming, say scientists | Times Online The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution... [Another glitch on the road to the New World Order] Read more... Begin's grandson: 'murderous blood flows in Israeli arteries' | Palestine Telegraph  Avindav Begin "Murderous blood flows in Israeli arteries," says the grandson of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Avindav Begin, who is also the son of the current Likud Knesset member Benny Begin, refuses to stand during the Israeli national anthem "Hatikva" and participates in protests against the Apartheid Wall. He does not see himself as a Jew or a Zionist and believes that his grandfather did not make real peace with Egypt. He also is not worried about being the target of rotten eggs after his inflammatory interview with Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot...Read more... Obama Declares He Will Rule by Authoritarian Decree, by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars The Obama administration has announced it will now rule by fascist decree and ignore Congress and the American people... Read more... Perspectives on Zionism, by Paul Balles | Intifada Palestine  When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle. –Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the IDF, NYT, 14 April 1983 Read more... February 14, 2010 (Here are today's Valentines) Palestinian protesters pose as Na'vi from 'Avatar' | Haaretz  Palestinians dressed up as Navi tribe from the film Avatar during weekly protest against the wall Palestinian protesters have added a colorful twist to demonstrations against Israel's separation barrier, painting themselves blue and posing as characters from the hit film Avatar. The demonstrators also donned long hair and loincloths Friday for the weekly protest against the barrier near the village of Bilin. The demonstrators compared their struggle with the Na'vi race portrayed in Avatar, who find themselves having to defend their people and homeland against foreign invaders...Article... Watch... Obama, the war president, by Helen Thomas | Times-Union President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It's called war. The President has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Where's the change we can believe in?... Read more... Why Do Terrorists Keeping Picking on the United States?: That Which Can Not be Spoken, by William Blum | Counterpunch ...American officials rarely even make the attempt to explain why. And American journalists rarely press them to explain why; certainly not like Helen Thomas does. And just what is it that has such difficulty crossing the lips of these officials? It is the idea that anti-American terrorists become anti-American terrorists to retaliate for what the United States has done to countries or people close to them or what Israel has done to them with unequivocal American support... Read more... Jewish student mag publishes one-state argument, signaling generational battle ahead, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss I keep saying that there’s about to be a Jewish intifada, that young empowered American Jews are going to throw off the idea of a Jewish state just because it is not meaningful to them. I deal in straws in the wind, and I saw it at J Street when young people spoke openly of Jewish privilege in America (a verboten meme in the older generations; because anti-Semites say that) and I saw it in Palestine last month, on a hillside in annexed Jerusalem, where an oldster leftish American-Israeli Jew confronted young Josh Levey and Michael Kaplan and said that Ethnic states are cool, and the two guys just smiled at her – these two students from a Jewish high school who are volunteering in a refugee camp and actually believe in democracy... Read more... Sex, lies and videotape, by Uri Avnery | Redress Information & Analysis Uri Avnery argues that a recent Palestinian sex and corruption scandal appears to have been plotted by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, executed by a Palestinian collaborator and the Israeli secret service, and marketed by Israeli TV to “prove” that Israel “has no partner for peace”... Read more... Zionism Unmasked: Chutzpah, thy name is Zionism, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Palestine Think Tank  Chutzpah, a Yiddish word meaning "shameless audacity," has been famously defined as "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan." Considering Israel's increasingly outrageous behaviour, perhaps it's time for a new definition. The one that springs to mind is "that quality enshrined in a state, which having induced its 'allies' into a disastrous invasion of Iraq, then urges them to attack Iran."... Read more... One-state awakening, by Peter Hirschberg | Haaretz While his own personal history certainly makes for textbook Zionist reading, something has happened to Daniel Gavron, as reflected in the heretical conclusion of his most recent book. The time has come to dissolve the Jewish state and to establish a single Israeli-Palestinian one... [A significant story - don't skip this one] Read more... A Stink Bomb, by Uri Avnery | Gush Shalom This week the Netanyahu government let off a stink bomb under the chair of Mahmoud Abbas. For months now, Abbas has angered the Prime Minister. He has refused to start “peace negotiations” while the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are continually expanding... Read more... Making an Immortal Body of Truth | Richard C. Cook ...Instead of attempting to devise a rational program to ameliorate the economic and ecological damage that has been perpetrated through financial control of the means of production based on a system of expropriation and usury, the ruling class and its minions in the military-intelligence complex imagine that they can create safe havens for themselves while ignoring the welfare of the masses upon whom they depend for their fabulous levels of income and wealth. Not to mention the forces of nature whose resources they think they own... [From a genuinely spiritual perspective...] Read more... Israel Gets Away with Murder...Again, by Tammy Obeidallah | Electronic Intifada  However, not all Israeli assassinations are clandestine operations Amid the glamour of the world’s tallest building, gold bars, man-made islands, casinos and fashion, a man lay dead in his hotel room. Preliminary reports would say he had been suffocated with a pillow; further investigation would determine that he was injected with poison...Read more... Forbidden Dreams | documentary by the One Democratic State Group - Gaza Forbidden Dreams is a documentary about some martyred Palestinian children: Mohammed, Safaa, Ahmed, Omar - those children who lost their lives in the death chambers of the IOF in Gaza; their stories told by their friends and families. It consists of testimonies of bereaved families from Northern Gaza; a story of children whose dreams had been cut short... Watch... A Pitiless, Punitive Giant: Dumb Power in the Af-Pak War, by Fran Shor | Counterpunch It is clear that the U.S. military operations in the Af-Pak war have been increasing in number and lethal significance during the month of February. Now, in its pursuit of a demonstrable victory over the Taliban, an offensive is being mounted in the heart of Helmand province. As reported by Patrick Cockburn, the battle for Marjah will be another in a long line of punitive campaigns that will not spare civilian lives. While paying lip-service to “winning the hearts and minds” of the Afghan population, the U.S. military seems bent on exacting as much death and destruction as possible... Read more... United we stand, by Meron Benvenisti | Haaretz Do Israelis and Palestinians belong to one divided society, or to two separate societies in a situation of forced proximity as a result of a temporary occupation? This is a crucial question. The answer depends on the historical-political-ethnic evaluation of the pre-1967 period, and on one's perception of the entire Jewish-Palestinian encounter since the beginning of the Zionist enterprise. It has profound ramifications for understanding the present situation in Israel/Palestine... Read more... Obama waging economic warfare on several fronts, including Japan, by Wayne Madsen | Online Journal The Obama administration has expanded its economic warfare against other countries, first reported on January 18 by WMR in the case of an authorized financial campaign against Venezuela. The Obama administration, according to WMR’s Asian sources, is waging an economic warfare campaign, coupled with industrial sabotage, against Japan through a pre-planned operation directed against the Japanese automobile manufacturer, Toyota... Read more... February 13, 2010 Dreyfus, The Protocols and Goldstone | Gilad Atzmon  For those who still cannot make their minds up about Jewish nationalism and the Zionist violent abuse of Western academic culture (tolerance, academic freedom, pluralism etc) Rabbi Shmully Hecht of Yale’s University Jewish society, gives an exemplary opportunity to see it all... Read more... A Tale of Two Regimes: Political Repression in Iran and Israel, by Don Emmerich | Uruknet ...Although these two regimes treat their dissidents similarly, the American media gives far more attention to the situation in Iran. As illustrated above, both the New York Times and Washington Post have recently reported on Israel’s repressive actions, but such stories have been extremely rare. Consequently, I doubt that more than one or two percent of Americans have any idea what’s happening in the West Bank... Read more... Canada's Effort to Criminalize Criticism of Isreal | Uruknet ...Israel’s siege of Gaza has made it a "closed zone" – no access, no exit, cut off from the world. By attempting to shut down criticism of Israel’s practices, Canadian supporters of the government of Israel are creating another "closed zone" in Canada – in which criticism, open debate, and freedom of expression will not be allowed... Read more... The Terror-Industrial Complex, by Chris Hedges | Truthdig  Mohammad Ahmed, son of Aafia Siddiqui, takes part in a The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security comes not from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe...demonstration arranged by Human Rights Network Read more... Immigration and Race, or The Poverty of Racialist Thought | Israel Shamir A couple of Ukrainians are examining some graffiti: Kick a kike and save Russia! One Ukrainian says to the other “Great idea! But who wants to save Russia?” This joke popped into my mind while reading the white nationalist calls: Stop immigration and save the White Race. The means are laudable, but the stated end is irrelevant, at best... Read more... Think tank: Israel faces global delegitimization campaign | Haaretz  Jordanian protesters burning an Israeli flag at an anti-Israel protest in Amman last year Israel is facing a global campaign of delegitimization, according to a report by the Reut Institute, made available to the cabinet on Thursday. The Tel Aviv-based security and socioeconomic think tank called on ministers to treat the matter as a strategic threat. The report cites anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, protests when Israeli athletes compete abroad, moves in Europe to boycott Israeli products, and threats of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders visiting London...[We must be doing something right; at least the Masters of Discourse are paying attention] Read more... Hamas: Next war with Israel will be regional conflict | Haaretz Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal warned on Friday that should another war erupt with Israel, the majority of battles would not be contained to the Gaza Strip as they were during the conflict last winter. Meshal told the London-based Al-Hayyat that Hamas was not interested in seeing another war, but would embark on steadfast defense of the Palestinian people should one begin... Read more... Indicting the Supreme Court, by Prof John Kozy | Global Research  Grumbling over the Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United continue to rumble like distant thunder. Will the decision go down in history as one more in the Court's long line of egregious opinions? Likely! Will it have much effect on the American political landscape? Likely not! Simply ask yourself, how much worse can it get?... Read more... Is US a Police State?: Video Interview with Paul Craig Roberts | Information Clearing House The US now has a list of Americans that the country can now murder abroad if they are fraternizing with terror groups. Paul Craig Roberts says that all of this points to a sign that the United States has become a police state... Watch... Zionism Unmasked: A fairy tale that's become a terrifying nightmare, by Alan Hart | Palestine Think Tank  Read more... Indoctrination versus tree planting, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Human Rights Newsletter We have been extremely busy here. The presence of soldiers in Beit Sahour gave us ample time to talk to them on Thursday and on Friday; we spent the morning planting trees in threatened private lands. We were proud of young and old, internationals and Palestinians, working together, some 150 people in all. Even a bus of elderly from the elderly home in Beit Sahour showed up to help. My 77 year old mother was among them... February 12, 2010 Ex-UN inspector: Iran truth overcomes US mendacity | Press TV  Scott Ritter says there won't be any military strike against Iran at this present time Former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter says the truth about Iran's nuclear program is prevailing over the hype the western media is creating against the country. The former UN official took aim at the existing western media hype against the Iranian nuclear program and some personalities who are very good at marring the image of Iran, including David Albright, whose “commentary and analysis is more colored by the opinions of his US and Israeli contacts and connections than it is by his first hand experience.”...Read more... The Zionist Story (A must see video) | Australians for Palestine The following 8-part video by a group of [Israeli] filmmakers known as “Berek Joselewicz” gives a riveting overview of Zionist history and the catastrophe wrought on the majority Palestinian population in their own homeland for more than 60 years to the present day. The whole calculated Zionist enterprise leaves one gasping at the audacity of its founders to deliberately rid Palestine of its population and perpetually ensnare the Western world in its savage undertaking, demanding nothing less than total commitment to, and veneration for, the state of Israel. Includes commentary from courageous Israelis like Prof Ilan Pappe and Prof Jeff Halper who constantly challenge the Zionist lies and myths that have so successfully hijacked world media... Watch... More Pain for Devastated Haiti: Under the Pretense of Disaster Relief, U.S. Running a Military Occupation, by Arun Gupta | AlterNet The rapid mobilization of U.S troops in Haiti was not primarily done for humanitarian reasons; we're likely to see a neoliberal economic plan imposed, at gunpoint if necessary... Read more... Israel rejects UN demands over Gaza war report | Press TV  Israel has rejected United Nations demands of an independent probe into its last year war on the Gaza Strip which claimed the lives of more than 1,400 Palestinians. A senior official in the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Friday that the report Israel gave UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the investigations it is conducting into Operation Cast Lead earlier this month is sufficient... Read more... Let Freedom Reign: The Words of Nelson Mandela | Interlink Books On February 11, 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from Robben Island after 27 long, hard years of imprisonment. Four years later he became president following the first fully representational democratic election in South Africa. He is a universally revered bastion of freedom, unity and sacrifice, whose life story and reputation often obscure the man behind the icon. This book reveals the nature of that man through his own words... Read more... Rep. Mike Pence: Israel Should Dictate U.S. Policy | Information Clearing House Pence is literally saying, Israeli officials should tell us what they want us to do, and we'll support it. That's an insane premise, and if you replace "Israel" with any other country, no U.S. politician would accept it. I'm pretty pessimistic about Obama's Middle East policies -- but it's worth remembering that Obama has to work within the confines of the U.S. political system, and there's broad bipartisan consensus for Pence's views on Israel... [and he's just one of about 500 traitors sitting in Congress - representing who? Not the American people, that's for sure] Watch...Incident at Wellesley College: Jewish Attack on Black Academics, by Tony Martin | Blacks and Jews  In January 1993, I was minding my own business and teaching my Wellesley College survey course on African American History when a funny thing happened. The long arm of Jewish intolerance reached into my classroom. Unknown to me, three student officers of the Jewish Hillel organization (campus B'nai B'rith stablemates of the Anti-Defamation League), sat in on my class and remained for a single period only. Their purpose was to monitor my presentation. As one of them explained in a campus meeting later, Jewish students had noticed The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews among my offerings in the school bookstore. The book documents the considerable Jewish involvement in the transatlantic African slave trade, the dissemination of which knowledge they, as Jews, considered an "anti-Semitic" and most "hateful" act... Read more... Al Qaeda Attacks on U.S. Soil: Brought to you by the military industrial complex | Alternet ...Currently our strategy includes covert operations including propaganda campaigns, assassinations, and election tampering – and I am not just talking about in the U.S., we do this overseas as well. When that fails we can resort to the indiscriminate bombings against sovereign nations that pose no security threat to us. It matters not, for the time being, that this is the very textbook definition for a war crime; we just like to call it the Bush Doctrine... Read more... World isn't buying Israel's explanations anymore, by Aluf Benn | Haaretz ...In a speech at a conference not long ago, an Israeli diplomat serving in a European capital touted Israel's hoary PR line, distinguishing between "the only democracy in the Middle East" and its autocratic Arab neighbors. "We share common values," the Israeli told the Europeans. To his surprise, a member of the audience stood up and replied to him: "What common values? We have nothing in common with you."... Read more... Who Wants to Bomb Iran?, by David Kenner | Foreign Policy  They're back! The "Bomb Iran" crowd is making a big return to the political center stage after months of puzzlement over what to do about developments in the Islamic Republic. Hawks such as Daniel Pipes and John Bolton are arguing that Iran is dead-set on its pursuit of a nuclear arsenal -- and point to developments such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement this weekend that Iran would enrich its uranium stocks to 20 percent to argue that diplomatic avenues have reached a dead end. The would-be bombers fear that the mullahs will leverage their nuclear capability to expand Persian influence through the Arab world and beyond -- and argue that the United States must do anything in its power, including the use of force, to stop them... Read more... Cartographic Violence: A Eurocentric Problem, by M. Shahid Alam In no other major civilization do self-regard, self-congratulation and denigration of the ‘Other’ run as deep, nor have these tendencies infected as many aspects of their thinking, laws, and policy, as they have in Western Europe and its overseas extensions. These tendencies reached their apogee during the nineteenth century, retreated briefly after World War II, but have been staging a come back since the end of the Cold War... Read more... Zionism Unmasked, by Jeff Gates | Criminal State While Zionism is clearly a nationalist ideology, that narrow framing does the term an injustice as it is so much more. Zionism is more accurately described as a strategy for targeting thought and emotion as a means to influence behavior. Naïve Jews were its first victims when induced to identify with an enclave in the Middle East that President Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, was induced to recognize as a “state.”... Read more... If America Only Knew… the things they will never learn on FOX or CNN | Intifada Palestine  If Americans had the information provided below I think they would stop supporting Israel and they would no longer consider Israel to be an ally. America may no longer use their veto power in the United Nations to protect Israel... Read more... Losing patience with squabbling "two-rump" Palestine, by Stuart Littlewood | Redress Information & Analysis ...It is obvious that Fatah must face down threats from the US, forge unity with Hamas and agree clear objectives based on what has already been set out in UN resolutions and international law. Both camps need to behave impeccably, hold new elections instead of overstaying their term, and cooperate if they are to earn respect inside and outside Palestine. They need to become squeaky-clean and media-friendly. Everyone needs to sing off the same hymn-sheet. Every day they delay, more damage is done to the cause... Read more... Army Used to Deport Activists against the Wall, by Jonathan Cook | Palestine Chronicle  Israel knows that the non-violence struggle is spreading The Israeli courts ordered the release this week of two foreign women arrested by the army in the West Bank in what human-rights lawyers warn has become a wide-ranging clampdown by Israel on non-violent protest from international, Israeli and Palestinian activists.The arrest of the two women during a nighttime raid on the Palestinian city of Ramallah has highlighted a new tactic by Israeli officials: using immigration police to try to deport foreign supporters of the Palestinian cause... Read more... February 11, 2010 Descent Into Barbarism: The US and NATO Wage War on the World, by Finian Cunningham | Global Research  Read more... Israel and the US preparing for Iran Part 1 - The Military Perspective | Palestine Telegraph This year saw an Israeli-US joint exercise "Juniper Cobra 10" take place off the coast of Israel which involved the IDF and the US Navy 6th Fleet. The purpose of the exercise was to participate in countering simulated attacks by ballistic, medium-range and short-range missiles and rockets by Iran on Israel. As part of this build up the US Military has more than doubled its stockpile of weapons in Israel which it states "Israel can use." One would assume that just like the preparation in the build up to the Lebanon Crisis in 2006 and pre Cast Lead in 2008 that this is a very clear indication that both the US and Israel are preparing for a strike on the nuclear facilities in Iran... Read more... UK’s Jewish Chronicle editor says extra-judicial murder is kosher, by Salaheddin Ahmad | Redress Information & Analysis Doubts have begun to resurface regarding the commitment of the Jewish Chronicle, Britain’s top Zionist newspaper and Israeli mouthpiece, to basic universal principles of human rights and civilized behaviour, after its editor, Stephen Pollard, publicly condoned extra-judicial murder. In response to an email in which a reader of the Jewish Chronicle asked whether the newspaper considered "extra-judicial murder by Israel or any other state as acceptable in any way", Mr Pollard simply replied "yes"... Read more... Knesset 'legalizing' occupation of Palestinian land | Press TV  ..."This is not a law for returning the lands, but rather a law to legitimize usurping the Palestinian lands. What kind of democracy could be that allows occupation of Arab territories on the pretext that the lands are only Arab?" Arab Knesset member Dr. Jamal Zahalqa said before Israel's legislature... Read more... “Anti-Semitic” – the label that stops criticism, by Paul J. Balles | Redress Information & Analysis Paul J. Balles views the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, passed by the US Congress in 2004, which defines any criticism of Israel or the Israel lobby in the US as “anti-Semitism” and is in fact an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution... Read more... US Government Death Lists for USA Citizens | MWC This extrajudicial execution of human beings constitutes a grave violation of international human rights law and, under certain circumstances, can also constitute a war crime under the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949. In addition, the extrajudicial execution of U.S. citizens by the United States government also violates the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution mandating that no person "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The U.S. Government has now established a "death list" for U.S. citizens abroad akin to those established by Latin American dictatorships during their so-called "dirty wars."... Read more... Ahmadinejad: No military solution to global issues | Press TV  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says regional and global issues cannot be resolved through military action. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is of the opinion that the solution to the current regional and global issues is not a military one and that the only way out is to return to humanity, justice, morality, culture and deliberation,” President Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday at a gathering of foreign diplomats in Tehran... Read more... Moral Indignation, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Human Rights Newsletter ...The quick response by many activists to the phone calls got me to think about why there are so many people willing to drop everything and work for justice while other people (e.g. soldiers) blindly obey orders manifestly illegal per International law or simply stay silent (silence is complicity)? There were many white South Africans who joined the ANC and other indigenous liberation movements while others stayed silent or participated in the crimes! There were many Israelis who abandoned Zionism and joined the local struggle. Others go about their daily lives oblivious to what is happenning behind the fences of segregation (Geder HaHafrada in Hebrew). But why would one employee of Yad Vashem obey orders and simply tell all visitors of the perpetual victimhood and that Zionism is the answer while another gets fired for simply pointing out to a few visitors that just down the hill is the ethnically cleansed village of Deir Yassin where the future leaders of Israel committed a massacre of indescribable brutality in 1948... Read more... Every occupation fuels an insurgency - Dennis Kucinich on Russia TV | Dandelion Salad The war in Afghanistan, jobs and health care. All big issues in America. And one man with strong opinions on all of them is U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Watch... The Myth of the Good War: America in World War II, by Jacques R. Pauwels | Global Research  In the night of February 13-14, 1945, the ancient and beautiful capitalof Saxony, Dresden, was attacked three times, twice by the RAF and onceby the USAAF, the United States Army Air Force, in an operationinvolving well over 1,000 bombers. The consequences were catastrophic,as the historical city centre was incinerated and between 25,000 and40,000 people lost their lives. Dresden was not an importantindustrial or military centre and therefore not a target worthy of theconsiderable and unusual common American and British effort involved inthe raid. The city was not attacked as retribution for earlier Germanbombing raids on cities such as Rotterdam and Coventry, either. Inrevenge for the destruction of these cities, bombed ruthlessly by theLuftwaffe in 1940, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and countless other Germantowns big and small had already paid dearly in 1942, 1943, and 1944.Furthermore, by the beginning of 1945, the Allied commanders knewperfectly well that even the most ferocious bombing raid would notsucceed in “terrorizing [the Germans] into submission,” so that itis not realistic to ascribe this motive to the planners of theoperation. The bombing of Dresden, then, seems to have been a senselessslaughter, and looms as an even more terrible undertaking than theatomic obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is at leastsupposed to have led to the capitulation of Japan... Read more... Goldstone co-author: Hamas fired 'something like two' rockets before Gaza war | Haaretz A co-author of the Goldstone Gaza report, which accuses both Hamas and Israel of war crimes, claims the Gaza militant group fired only two rockets at Israel prior to last year's winter conflict, according to a new report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The center, headed by Dore Gold, former Israel Ambassador to the UN, revealed the report at a press conference on Wednesday. The report refers to recent remarks made by Desmond Travers, a retired Irish army colonel, who was one of four members of the fact-finding mission to Gaza and Israel... Read more... Senate Passes AIPAC's Iran Sanctions Bill in Five Minutes, by MJ Rosenberg | Huffington Post Anyone who has followed the Senate's handling of health care reform can't help but be impressed (or depressed) by the glacial pace at which things move in that place. In fact, it appears that Senate sloth contributed mightily to the failure of reform (by comparison, the House is a model of streamlined efficiency). But the Senate can and does move with dispatch when it wants to (or is unable to resist the pressure to move). Sometimes a president can get the Senate to move as quickly as he wants. FDR and LBJ were famous for that. More often than Presidents, powerful interest groups can light a fire under the self-proclaimed "world's most deliberative body."... Read more... The Useless Logic of Round Numbers: War is Criminal Any Day, by Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle  A massacre is a massacre, and a war of choice is a crime, any day, any time The media's habit of revisiting certain issues at set intervals can be strange and even illogical at times. For example, many news outlets commented on President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, as well as on the anniversary of his election win, and then again one year after his inauguration day. With every new round number, more commentators joined in and discussions heated up between proponents and detractors of his government’s performance... Read more... Russia, Turkey and the Great Game: Changing teams, by Eric Wahlberg Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s visit to Turkish last month shows that Turkey and Russia are rapidly developing close economic and political ties, notes Eric Walberg. For all intents and purposes, Turkey has given up on the European Union, recognising it as a bastion of Islamophobia and captive to US diktat. As Switzerland bans minarets and France moves to outlaw the niqab, the popular Islamist government in Istanbul moves in the opposite direction -- supporting the freedom to wear headscarfs, boldly criticising Israel and building bridges with Syria. This is nothing less than a fundamental realignment of Turkish politics towards Turkey’s natural allies -- the Arabs ... and the Russians... Read more... Emotional Spin For A Change, by Gilad Atzmon  Watch emotional spin doctor Alastair Campbell* break down in a TV interview on the Iraq war’s 'dodgy dossier'. Is it genuine or just another shameless spin? “The arch media manipulator, says the Daily Mail, “appeared for a few seconds almost to lose it altogether when he was pressed over Tony Blair's evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war”. Apparently Campbell was so upset because Tony Blair is actually a “ totally honourable man”. Clearly Campbell is not upset by the FACT that his own dodgy dossier led to an illegal war and a genocide. Read more... US undermining Palestinian reconciliation efforts | alJazeera Magazine Hamas Political Bureau chief Khaled Meshaal says the US administration is making every effort to frustrate endeavors to reconcile rival Palestinian groups. At a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Monday, Meshaal reaffirmed Hamas' willingness to strike a Palestinian reconciliation deal with the rival Fatah faction if Hamas' conditions on the Egyptian reconciliation proposal are taken into account... Read more... Israel to seek another 1b euros in Holocaust reparations from Germany | Haaretz Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz will demand between 450 million to 1 billion euros in reparations from Germany on behalf of Jews forced into slave labor during the Holocaust, it emerged on Sunday. Minister Steinitz will reportedly present German government with the demand on behalf of 30,000 Israeli survivors of forced labor in wartime ghettos, during a joint session scheduled to take place in early 2010 in Berlin... [The extortion racket that seems to be endless. If this works out like the reparations for the holocaust survivors, the 'survivors of forced labor in wartime ghettos' won't see a sheckel of it.] Read more... Watch The New American Century Online Free Documentary This film is astonishing, it goes in detail through the untold history of The Project for the New American Century with tons of archival footage and connects it right into the present. Read more, watch...This film exposes how every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud with video of insiders themselves admitting it. This film shows how the first film theaters in the US were used over a hundred years ago to broadcast propaganda to rile the American people into the Spanish-American War. This film shows the white papers of the oil company Unocal which called for the creation of a pipeline through Afghanistan and how their exact needs were fulfilled through the US invasion of Afghanistan... February 10, 2010 Blair, Bush, Israel and Iraq, by Stephen Walt | Foreign Policy  Probably the most controversial claim in my work with John Mearsheimer on the Israel lobby is our argument that it played a key role in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Even some readers who were generally sympathetic to our overall position found that claim hard to accept, and some left-wing critics accused us of letting Bush and Cheney off the hook or of ignoring the importance of other interests, especially oil. Of course, Israel's defenders in the lobby took issue even more strenuously, usually by mischaracterizing our arguments and ignoring most (if not all) of the evidence we presented. So I hope readers will forgive me if I indulge today in a bit of self-promotion, or more precisely, self-defense... Read more... Obama Surge Driving Thousands From Their Homes, by Chris Floyd | Annals of Liberation Barack Obama's Bush-like "surge" in Afghanistan has not even reached its full strength yet, but it is already driving tens of thousands of Afghan civilians from their homes, as they flee an upcoming massive attack in Helmand province. The attack -- which the Americans have been trumpeting far in advance -- is designed, we're told, to "protect" the people of the key town of Marjah from the twin scourges of Taliban nogoodniks and drug traffickers. Yet the primary effect of the much-publicized preparations has been to send the residents of the town running for their lives to escape becoming part of the "collateral damage" that always attends these protective, humanitarian endeavors... Read more... Zionists can threaten but can not intimidate me, Salim Nazzal | Palestine Think Tank  At the beginning I got “strange” e-mails which hinted towards assassination and the like. The Zionist character in these e-mails was obvious. I simply paid no attention. I know Zionists fear the voice of the victims. My voice is the voice of my people who were murdered and uprooted from their home country. My voice is the voice of my nation surrounded by cemented walls and 620 checks points. My family is an old Galilean family who fled to Lebanon after my village was severally attacked and bombed twice by Zionist planes. Several persons of my family were killed, and in Lebanon, I was born and brought up as a refugee without home, without rights, without a future, but with the hope that justice will prevail one day. The intimidation e-mails never stopped. And each time I changed my e-mail they continued to try to intimidate me in the new e-mail and sent viruses almost all the time my computer is on... Read more... Christian Arabs remain the best situated to combat the demonization of Islam, by Raid Khoury | Palestine Think Tank  "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves…" Matthew 7:15 According to Christian tradition the above quote is attributed to Jesus of Nazareth by Matthew as part of the famous Sermon on the Mount, a compilation of Jesus' sayings epitomizing his moral teachings. Speaking in the setting of his time, Jesus was understood to be discussing false prophets, but a more general and timeless understanding of this warning is vigilance against deception and false messages of all types...Read more... Americans Heckle Israeli Envoy Over Gaza - Islam Online  Shouting “killer and murderer”, hundreds of American students heckled Israeli ambassador Michael Oren during a speech at the University of California over the Gaza War, reported The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, February 9. “Michael Oren! Propagating murder is not an expression of free speech!” a young student yelled at the Israeli diplomat, to heavy ovation from attendees. Lecturing about Israeli-American relations, the envoy was repeatedly interrupted by the students... Read more... The height of Israeli intransigence: Jerusalem Mayor to Raze 200 Palestinian Homes, by Jonathan Cook | The National  Nir Barkat wants more than 200 Palestinian homes demolished Jerusalem's mayor threatened last week to demolish 200 homes in Palestinian neighbourhoods of the city in an act even he conceded would probably bring long-simmering tensions over housing in East Jerusalem to a boil. His uncompromising stance is the latest stage in a protracted legal battle over a single building towering above the jumble of modest homes of Silwan, a deprived and overcrowded Palestinian community lying just outside the Old City walls, in the shadow of the silver-topped al Aqsa mosque...Read more... No Conflict of Interest ...With the Conventional Wisdom: The New York Times, Israel and Ethan Bronner, by Robert Jensen | Counterpunch The New York Times’ public editor wrestled this week with conflict-of-interest charges sparked by the revelation that Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner’s son had joined the Israeli army. The executive editor of the paper responded with a defense of the paper’s decision to keep Bronner in that position. Although it had the appearance of a spirited exchange, the “debate” was a tired old diversion that keeps us from facing more important questions, not just about the Israel/Palestine conflict but about U.S. journalists’ coverage of the world... Read more... It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is A Police State, by Paul Craig Roberts | OpEdNews  Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration's "war on terror," which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties... Read more... Zionists Determine Good and Evil, by Henry Makow | savethemales  Professor Evil: Defense Attorney for Genocide Alan Dershowitz recently called Richard Goldstone "an evil man" for censuring Israel's Dec. 2008 Gaza War in his UN Report. If God is synonymous with absolute truth and justice, Dershowitz exposes Zionism as a war on God. Zionists turn good and evil on their head, and define "good" as whatever benefits them. This is the New World Order folks; "Good" is "what's Good for the Jews."... Read more... Media Disinformation in America, by William Blum | Global Research  Progressive activists and writers continually bemoan the fact that the news they generate and the opinions they express are consistently ignored by the mainstream media, and thus kept from the masses of the American people. This disregard of progressive thought is tantamount to a definition of the mainstream media. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy; it's a matter of who owns the mainstream media and the type of journalists they hire — men and women who would like to keep their jobs; so it's more insidious than a conspiracy, it's what's built into the system, it's how the system works. The disregard of the progressive world is of course not total; at times some of that world makes too good copy to ignore, and, on rare occasions, progressive ideas, when they threaten to become very popular, have to be countered... Read more... February 8-9, 2010 Israeli commander: 'We rewrote the rules of war for Gaza', by Donald Macintyre | The Independent  A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year's Gaza war...The officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as "means and intentions" – whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter... Read more... Beware the Iron Wall, the Coming War: Will Israel Target Gaza or Lebanon First?, by Ramzy Baroud | Counterpunch ...Deciphering the available clues regarding the nature of Israel’s immediate military objectives is not always easy, but it is possible. One indicator that could serve as a foundation for any serious prediction of Israel’s actions is Israel’s historical tendency to seek a perpetual state of war. Peace, real peace, has never been a long-term policy... Read more... Christmas Day Crotch Bomber Tied to Israel, FBI, by Jeff Gates | Intifada Palestine  Umar Abdulmutallab & Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki The Christmas Day “terrorist” is the latest in a series of staged incidents meant to make The Clash of Civilizations appear plausible and “the war on terrorism” rational. The storyline does not hold together. Not even a little bit. As usual, the source of this media-fueled fear campaign traces directly to Tel Aviv—with a supporting role by the FBI...THE "PATSY" AND THE "ASSET Read more... The apartheid will end when Israelis have to face its cost, by Tony Karon | The National  The former US president Jimmy Carter set off a firestorm in 2006 when he said that Israel would have to choose between maintaining an apartheid occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians. That Mr Carter brokered Israel’s most important peace treaty with an Arab country was immaterial; he was branded an enemy of Israel, an anti-Semite and even a Holocaust-denier... Read more... On Why Zionism Dehumanizes Its Enemies | Lawrence of Cyberia  ...The reason for crying foul when Zionists carry out the very same actions that they condemn as beyond the pale in others is that Zionists select and publicize these specific actions by their opponents in order to portray those opponents as "people not like us". Israel needs to portray the Palestinian people under its rule as people not like us, because it does not wish to be held accountable for treating them in ways that defy accepted standards of international law or even simple human decency. And the way to get away with treating subject peoples in a manner that defies normal human conventions is to demonize them as not quite human like us. The problem then lies not in "our" failure to observe common human decency, but in "their" failure to be properly human... Read more... What Israel gets away with | Australians for Palestine  The following questions elicit the same answer in each instance. No other country in the world conducts itself at home and in world affairs with such impunity as Israel. This raises the question, why does Israel get away with it time and time again while other countries are condemned and punished? It is time that we demand answers from are leaders and insist that Israel be held accountable for its breaches... Read more... The Bankruptcy of the United States is Now Certain, by Porter Stansberry | Silver Bear Cafe  It's one of those numbers that's so unbelievable you have to actually think about it for a while...Within the next 12 months, the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt. And that's not counting any additional deficit spending, which is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion. Put the two numbers together. Then ask yourself, how in the world can the Treasury borrow $3.5 trillion in only one year? That's an amount equal to nearly 30% of our entire GDP. And we're the world's biggest economy. Where will the money come from?... Read more... Anthony Lawson - More About Israeli Barbarism | Gilad Atzmon Anthony Lawson did it again, a brilliant expose of Israeli brutality: the numbers, the intensity, the images and the carnage that Israel has left behind... Must watch… U.S Vows To Bury Goldstone Report At UN, by Saed Bannoura | IMEMC  Gaza war Israeli sources reported Saturday that the United States vowed to Israeli leaders to bury the report of Judge Richard Goldstone on Israel’s war in Gaza last year...Read more... The ‘Times’ now owes it to its readers to assign an Arab-American reporter to Jerusalem, by Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss The New York Times has published an exchange between its public editor Clark Hoyt, who says that Ethan Bronner should be taken off the Jerusalem beat (the outcome I thought would ensue when Bronner’s son entered the Israeli army and the fit hit the shan), and Bill Keller, the executive editor, who digs in his heels on Bronner’s behalf and protests too much. Keller makes the following statement:.. Read more... Could Rahm Emanuel Help Barak Unseat Netanyahu?, By Ira Glunts | Palestine Chronicle  Ehud Barak wants to be Prime Minister again Is it possible that Rahm Emanuel will lead a team of high octane Democratic party pro-Israel political operatives to run the campaign for the former Prime Minister and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak in the next Israeli election? This scenario may not be as far-fetched as many may assume...Read more... Human Rights Abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestine, by Stephen Lendman | Dissident Voice Founded in 1972, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is its leading human and civil rights organization through activities involving litigation, legal advocacy, education, and public outreach. Each year it publishes an annual report covering flagrant violations, positive trends, if any, and “significant human rights-related processes” affecting Israelis and Palestinians... Read more... The Myths of Liberal Zionism – Book Review by Dr. Ludwig Watzal | Palestine Chronicle  Reading this book was a real treat Read more... Britain, You Better Wake Up | Gilad Atzmon  The more I read about the Chilcot inquiry the more disturbed I am. The fallacy imbued in the heart of British ‘democracy’ is staggering. While some commentators are concerned with questions to do with the legality of the war, the most crucial issue here is actually the disappearance of ethical judgment from our public and political life. Rather than being concerned with morality and ethics British politicians are concerned with legalism. In other words, if someone would manage to prove that the war was ‘legal’ then the murdering of a million and a half Iraqis would be well justified. Let’s all face it, our politicians are corrupted to the bone... Read more... February 7, 2010 Please, Mr. President, Stop Talking Nonsense | Alan Hart  At a town hall meeting in Tampa, Florida on 28 January, President Obama explained what in his view had to happen if there is to be a two-state solution which would see Israel and the Palestinians living side by side in peace and security. He said, “Both sides are going to have to make concessions“. My own view is that Israel’s still on-going colonization of the occupied West Bank has destroyed the prospect of a two-state solution on any basis the Palestinians could accept. But for the sake of discussion I’ll pretend that is not necessarily so... Read more... The Source of the Economic Crisis: A Chicago State of Mind, by Maidhc Ó Cathail | Media Monitors ...Perhaps not coincidentally, the intellectual roots of neoconservatism can also be traced to Chicago, where University of Chicago Professor Albert Wohlstetter’s cadre of students included Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Wohlstetter himself had been a protégé of another University of Chicago Professor, Leo Strauss, considered to be the “intellectual godfather” of the neocons, who significantly advocated a “philosophy of deception.”... Read more... The truth about U.S. justice, by Yvonne Ridley | Tehran Times  Many of us are still in a state of shock over the guilty verdict returned on Dr Aafia Siddiqui. The response from the people of Pakistan was predictable and overwhelming and I salute their spontaneous actions. From Peshawar to Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and beyond they marched in their thousands demanding the return of Aafia. Even some of the US media expressed discomfort over the verdict returned by the jurors …there was a general feeling that something was not right... Read more... Gaza and the Diaspora Jew's Responsibility | Lasse Wilhelmson In the ghettos of Warsaw during the Second World War, the Jews defended themselves against an imperious executioner, as the Palestinians have recently in Gaza. Neither Germany nor Israel had the remotest legal or moral right to even touch the inhabitants, and the planned massacres were part of the policy of genocide. The ghetto inhabitants, on the other hand, had every right to defend themselves. I’m just sorry they didn’t have more and better weapons with which to defend their human dignity – then as now... [A must read for all Jews, especially Zionists (at least the ones who have a conscience and are still relatively sane)] Read more...US military vows indefinite stay in Haiti | Press TV  The US military vowed on Saturday to stay in Haiti as long as needed Amid allegations that the US is using Haiti's earthquake to occupy the country, Washington says its military forces would stay in the Caribbean nation as long as needed...Read more... Big Oil Behind Haiti quake?, by Victor Thorn | American Free Press Did American petroleum companies murder hundreds of thousands of Haitians while extracting oil from their shores? In an exclusive Jan. 28 interview, social commentator and human rights attorney Ezili Danto believes “hydraulic fracturing” caused by drillers searching for oil may have caused the Jan. 12 earthquake... Read more... Legendary Populist Historian Eustace Mullins Dies, by Pat Shannan | American Free Press  Eustace Mullins, the legendary author of hundreds of books and pamphlets demolishing the lies of the war-making mainstream media, died Tuesday, Feb. 2, in a small Texas town at the home of his caretaker, Jesse Lee. Considered by many to be the greatest political historian of the 20th century, Mullins’s meticulous research uncovered far more political secrets of government shenanigans than anyone else dared to touch... Read more... The slippery slope, by Mazin Qumsiyeh | Human Rights Newsletter As the descent into the slippery slope of racism continues unabated in this land of apartheid, the angle and degree of the slide seem to surprise many. The Israeli parliament (Knesset) has a "Constitution, Law and Justice Committee" terms that only sound similar to what exists in a Western democracy. But the "Jewish state" is "special" where a committee with this name drafts laws to discourage inter-religious marriages, to deny Jerusalemites residency rights, to declare it legal to take land for Jewish development from those natives who happen to be non-Jews, and to flaunt many other basic rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights... Read more... Power cut to about 50% of Gazans as fuel runs out | Press TV  Children play near Gaza's only power plant One of the two generators of Gaza's only power plant has been shut down due to a shortage of fuel, cutting power to around 50 percent of the residents of the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Energy Authority announced on Saturday that the remaining amount of fuel is enough to operate the other generator until Sunday morning...Read more... Last Rites for the USA, by Cindy Sheehan | Information Clearing House A U.S. Supreme Court case decision from 1886, The County of Santa Clara v. the Southern Pacific Railroad (SPRR), is the reason today that the U.S. is a corporate empire. Many people mistakenly believe that corporations were given the same rights (not just privileges) as persons in this Supreme Court decision, but nothing could be farther from the truth - the reason my nation is such a dysfunctional system now is not because of a Supreme Court decision, nor a law passed by Congress, nor by a referendum of the people: it's because of a single statement, one sentence, spoken by a Supreme Court Chief Justice before the hearing even began... [For some excellent background and an eye-opening treat, see the film "The Corporation"] Read more...Israeli warships on way to Persian Gulf | Press TV  As Israel keeps threatening the regional countries with war, Egyptian maritime sources say the Israeli navy has deployed two missile ships to the Persian Gulf. Citing the sources, Yediot Ahronot reported Saturday that two Israeli missile ships passed through the Suez Canal en rout to the Red Sea on Thursday morning. The sources said the ships are expected to reach the Persian Gulf within the next four days... Read more... Markets Fail When Humans Are Unregulated, by Paul Craig Roberts | Takimag Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan answered that he had placed his trust in a flawed theory when he was called before Congress to explain why he, Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, prevented Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation, a government regulatory agency, from doing her job of regulating over-the-counter derivatives. The efficient markets theory is that unregulated markets are efficient and rational. According to this theory in which Greenspan placed his trust, unregulated markets produce the best possible result. Any regulatory interference worsens the outcome... Read more... Operation Anchory | Rebel News  The news of Sept 30 2009 that Tony Blair was a top contender for E.U president has angered many in Britain, this after his "dodgy dossier" and tricky manipulations to bring us into an illegal Iraq war, and the nonsense of him being Middle east ambassador. The Daily Telegraph of Nov 25th 2008 had a large article which highlighted the story which up until then had only been rumoured in secret circles, but confirmed statements by spy Jonathan pollard who claimed Israel intercepted all U S and British communications, and were behind pushing the Bush-Blair alliance into the wars on Iraq... Read more... Time for an American Intifada?, by Jeff Gates | Criminal State During the 1960 Christmas season, Americans flocked to the theaters to see Exodus, a 3-1/2 hour epic film featuring handsome freedom fighters and a riveting romance amidst the heroic triumph of Jewish Destiny over Arab Evil Doers. Set against a Yuletide backdrop of Biblical prophecy, moviegoers marveled as exiled Jews returned to their fabled promised land, a staple of popular culture to which Americans are first exposed as children in “Sunday school.”...An Oscar should have been awarded to Israel and its supporters for portraying this extremist enclave as a legitimate nation-state when, in reality, its founding traces to an alluring storyline. Forty-five years after the release of Exodus, American naiveté was again targeted by Jewish storytellers to induce the U.S. to war in the Middle East—only this time for real... Read more... Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included, by Katie Drummond | Wired  [only fools are immortal] Read more...Private Armies: War as business - Vox (video) As the Iraqi government threatens to expel all foreign mercenaries following the Blackwater shootout, the role of private military contractors is once again in the spotlight. There's no denying that the rise of the private military contractor is transforming the way we wage war. They earn four times more than regular soldiers, act with impunity and in Iraq outnumber all non-US soldiers combined. Private Armies follows the training and deployment of these men. From skidding around a racing track, practicing escaping from kidnappers, to dodging bullets in Baghdad, its an eye-opening look at life as a private soldier... Watch... February 6, 2010 International Criminal Court complaint filed against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice and Gonzales | Intifada Palestine  Mass Murderers A leading US professor of law has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court prosecutor against former US President George W. Bush and a number of his senior lieutenants alleging crimes against humanity for their policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” and requesting that the ICC prosecutor obtain international arrest warrants against Mr Bush and his co-accused... Read more... The Zionist Story (video) | Australians for Palestine The following 8-part video gives a riveting overview of Zionist history and the catastrophe wrought on the majority Palestinian population in their own homeland for more than 60 years to the present day. The whole calculated Zionist enterprise leaves one gasping at the audacity of its founders to deliberately rid Palestine of its population and perpetually ensnare the Western world in its savage undertaking, demanding nothing less than total commitment to, and veneration for, the state of Israel. Includes commentary from courageous Israelis like Prof Ilan Pappe and Prof Jeff Halper who constantly challenge the Zionist lies and myths that have so successfully hijacked world media. .. Read more... "Gaza is the only gulag in the Western hemisphere; maintained by democracies; closed-off from food, water, air," says Colonel Desmond Travers |MEMO  One year after the horrendous Israeli military assault on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, in which over 1400 men, women and children were viciously and brutally slaughtered by invading Israeli troops, MEMO sat down with Colonel Desmond Travers, one of the four co-authors of the Goldstone Report and the only military expert on the team, and discussed his views on Israel, Hamas and the incredibly mixed reception of his groundbreaking and now iconic report... Read more... Dr. Norman Finkelstein at the University of Waterloo | YouTube Clip is from American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein [A no nonsense Prof. Finkelstein confronts the Holycause head on]Watch... Putting the Independence of the British Judiciary to the Test  In December last year, Westminster Magistrates' Court issued an arrest warrant for Israel's former Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, under Britain's universal jurisdiction laws. It was granted in the wake of evidence found by the United Nations fact-finding mission on the conflict in Gaza which concluded that both Israeli forces and Palestinians had committed acts that amount to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. The mission also concluded that Israeli military planners followed a doctrine aimed deliberately at causing massive damage, destruction and suffering to civilian populations and in addition, that grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) gave rise to individual criminal responsibility... Read more... Pepe Lobo, Imperialism and the Resistance: Consolidating the Coup in Honduras, by Todd Gordon and Jeffrey Webber | Counterpunch A country of sharp inequality and class polarization, Honduras recently returned to the frontlines in the battle for Latin America’s soul. The terrain of struggle has shifted on multiple occasions over the last seven months, following the military coup against the democratically-elected President, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya. The battle entered its latest phase last week with the ascension to power of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo. Lobo was inaugurated on January 27, following his victory in the fraudulent November 29 election last year. Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans greeted the inauguration with a spirited march through the capital, Tegucigalpa, against the coup and his presidency... Read more... When Israel joins NATO, by Galal Nassar | Al-Ahram Weekly  If Israel succeeds in joining NATO, its regional belligerency would be backed by the collective strength of the entire alliance. Before that happens, will the Arabs react... Read more... Interview by Adri Nieuwhof: "We need a new, united strategy as one people" | Electronic Intifada The Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), based in Nazareth, is one of the first human rights organizations in Israel. HRA was founded during the first Palestinian intifada by lawyers and community activists to monitor human rights violations. HRA is a member of Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community Based Associations, and is involved in human rights education, research and international advocacy...Adri Nieuwhof recently interviewed Mohammad Zeidan, the general director of HRA... Read more... The presence of the Palestinian in the Israeli painter's eye, by Robert Fisk | The Independent  The Palestinians celebrate their lost land with poetry and art, but always it is a place of lost oranges and olive trees and snug village houses, a mixture of Mahmoud Darwish and old David Roberts prints which show Arab men leaning on ancient wells beside classical ruins, proving that Palestine was not, as the popular Zionist narrative would have us believe, a land without people. So – on the principle that I always try to consume one art gallery in every town in the world in which I set foot – I tiptoed into the Tel Aviv Museum of Art off Shaul Hamelech Boulevard this week to take a look at how the Jews of Palestine saw their would-be homeland before the 1947-48 Arab exodus... Read more... Bases, Missiles, Wars: U.S. Consolidates Global Military Network | Global Research  Over the past decade the United States has steadily (though to much of the world imperceptibly) extended its military reach to most all parts of the world. From subordinating almost all of Europe to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization through the latter's expansion into Eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union, to arbitrarily setting up a regional command that takes in the African continent (and all but one of its 53 nations). From invading and establishing military bases in the Middle East and Central and South Asia to operating a satellite surveillance base in Australia and taking charge of seven military installations in South America. In the vacuum left in much of the world by the demise of the Cold War and the former bipolar world, the U.S. rushed in to insert its military in various parts of the world that had been off limits to it before. And this while Washington cannot even credibly pretend that it is threatened by any other nation on earth... Read more... Smoking Guns and Bulls-eyes: Israel rewrote the rules of War for Gaza, by Eileen Fleming | The People's Voice  On February 3, 2010, The Independent reported that a high-ranking officer who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, admitted that Israel’s army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives and “that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as ‘means and intentions’– whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter.” A junior officer described the new policy as one of "literally zero risk to the soldiers.” Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard commented that the senior commander's acknowledgment was "a smoking gun.”... Read more... February 5, 2010 Haniyeh to Israel: Recognize us first | Press TV  Democratically-elected Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh says Israel must recognize the rights of the Palestinian people before asking for recognition. "They have to recognize us first, the right of the Palestinian people, we are the victims. Hamas supports the establishment of a Palestinian state with the 1967 borders," Haniyeh said on Wednesday... Read more... Gazans Denied Justice as Rights Take a Beating, by Mel Frykberg | IPS Gazans hoping for a modicum of justice following Israel’s indiscriminate military assault on the coastal territory during December 2008 and January 2009 - which left 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, dead - could be waiting in vain. The Israeli government has taken the offensive in the propaganda battle and attacked United Nations-appointed Justice Richard Goldstone’s report into war crimes committed during the war. The report alleges that Israel was responsible for the lion’s share of human rights abuses... Read more... The Assault on the Tower of Babel , by John Kaminski | Rebel News "Of the sayings of the wise men, there was not one, probably, more wise than that of the celebrated Know Thyself, and probably there was not one to which so little regard has been paid. It is to the want of attention to this principle that I attribute most of the absurdities with which the wise and learned, perhaps in all ages, may be reproached. Man has forgotten or been ignorant that his faculties are limited. He has failed to mark the line of demarcation, beyond which his knowledge could not extend. Instead of applying his mind to objects cognizable by his senses, he has attempted subjects above the reach of the human mind, and has lost and bewildered himself in the mazes of metaphysics. He has not known or has not attended to what has been so clearly proved by Locke, that no idea can be received except through the medium of sense. He has endeavoured to form ideas without attending to this principle, and, as might be expected, he has run into the greatest absurdities, the necessary consequence of such imprudence. " - Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis..." Read more... Italy FM scolds IRIB for Berlusconi-Israel report | Press TV  Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the Israeli parliament The Italian foreign minister has slammed an Iranian radio broadcast that criticized Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's support for Israel's Gaza offensive last year. The report on the radio featured an interview with former Italian Senator Fernando Rossi who said Berlusconi and Franco Frattini, the foreign minister, have proven that they are completely subservient to Israel...Read more... Change Means Having a Strategic Vision: The Arab Community ... the International Community, by Bouthaina Shaaban | Counterpunch Every time an Arab country faces a crisis of any kind, Western powers take immediate steps to hold a conference which ends up with ready made solutions, with the necessary funding for these solutions. Such conferences are usually held in Paris or London, although experience has shown that solutions which approach crises from a geographical, historical or even political distance can never be effective. Experience has also shown that the ‘figures’ granted generously for handling such crises remain, like most Western promises, mere figures on papers, and sometimes they better remain so rather than being sent in the form of what they used to call “support to minorities” which means in the end stoking sectarian strife between families and neighbors who are incited to regress to an identity much inferior to the Arab Islamic identity which they have and to narrow cantons which can only be useful to those who covet their land and resources... Read more... Intel Boss Blair: Government Plans to Kill US Citizens, by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars  Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testifies on Capitol Hill Patsies take heed. The U.S. government will kill you. That’s what the Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told a House intelligence committee yesterday. The Department of Defense will “follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed” in the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens who make the mistake of joining organizations created by the CIA and the Mossad. The CIA created al-Qaeda from scratch in Afghanistan. Hamas was created by Mossad in order to undermine the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Both countries have long and sordid histories of creating terrorist organizations for political purposes...Read more... NYT's Israel Editor's Sticky Situation: Ethan Bronner's Conflict With Impartiality, by Alison Weir | Counterpunch Ethan Bronner is the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief. As such, he is the editor responsible for all the news coming out of Israel-Palestine. It is his job to decide what gets reported and what doesn’t; what goes in a story and what gets cut. To a considerable degree, he determines what readers of arguably the nation’s most influential newspaper learn about Israel and its adversaries, and, especially, what they don’t. His son just joined the Israeli army... Read more... When the Gun Turns, by Shafiq Morton | Palestine Chronicle  Hebron settlers If you're a budding student of surrealism, I would recommend Israel. It will prove to be your greatest project. I can assure you that Israel's bizarre political landscape will provide you with material beyond your wildest dreams. Described by the Oxford dictionary as an “expression of the sub-conscious mind through imagery”, surrealism communicates its meaning through absurd, irrational and capricious nonsense. It is a metaphor in which nothing is what it seems. And if we weren’t addressing one of the modern era’s most vexing conflicts, we would all be laughing by now. For the issue of Erez Israel, the “greater” Israel, is a serious one...Read more... Bush to The Hague | Redress Information & Analysis A leading US professor of law has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court prosecutor against former US President George W. Bush and a number of his senior lieutenants alleging crimes against humanity for their policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” and requesting that the ICC prosecutor obtain international arrest warrants against Mr Bush and his co-accused... Read more... Lobbying for hypocrisy | Russia Today (YouTube) More than 45 former lobbyists work in senior positions in the Obama administration, including three Cabinet secretaries and the CIA director. Yet in his State of the Union address, Obama claimed, "We've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.".. Read more, watch... US using anti-Iran disinfo to sell missile shield | Press TV  US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley The US has begun stepping up its anti-Iran propaganda to justify its decision to deploy a missile shield in Europe. Washington's latest disinformation campaign about the alleged threat from Iran's advanced missile technology is being implemented to demonize Iran, even though the Islamic Republic has never threatened its neighbors and Iran's military technology is clearly only being developed to ensure the country can defend itself against any potential enemies...Read more... Was Aafia Siddiqui wrongfully accused? | Russia Today (YouTube) Activists and protestors are demanding justice from Aafia Siddiqui, they claim she was wrongfully accused and the victim of a grave injustice. Activists say Dr. Siddiqui was kidnapped and forcibly taken two years ago in 2008. Prosecutors were unable to produce any evidence that would find her guilty, there were no fingerprints on the m-4 rifle or on the bullet cases... Read more... Will Obama Play the War Card?, by Patrick Buchanan | The American Conservative Republicans already counting the seats they will pick up this fall should keep in mind Obama has a big card yet to play. Should the president declare he has gone the last mile for a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear program and impose the “crippling” sanctions he promised in 2008, America would be on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight to war. And should war come, that would be the end of GOP dreams of adding three-dozen seats in the House and half a dozen in the Senate. Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S. clash with Iran, with him at the president’s side, could assure his re-election. Last week, Reid whistled through the Senate, by voice vote, a bill to put us on that escalator... Read more... February 4, 2010 Siddiqui convicted in US, blames Israel | Press TV  Aafia Siddiqui is a neuroscientist trained at MIT Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui has been found guilty of trying to kill US military personnel and FBI agents in Afghanistan two years ago. The Pakistani national was found guilty on all seven counts listed in the complaint against her by a jury in a US Federal Court on Wednesday. Siddiqui has vehemently denied all charges against her during the trial, calling them 'ridiculous' and insisting that she was framed, jailed and tortured by US agents in Pakistan and Afghanistan...[Stomach wrenching American State Terrorism, courtesy of our Zionist friends] Read more... Haniyeh to Israel: Recognize us first | Press TV Democratically-elected Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh says Israel must recognize the rights of the Palestinian people before asking for recognition... Read more... We were the target of 455 Israeli attacks in 2009 | Progressive Mind The Palestinian red crescent society (PRCS) announced on Tuesday that its medical teams were the targets of 455 Israeli attacks in 2009 including shooting and physical assaults. A PRCS report said that the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) fired 15 times at its ambulance vehicles in the West Bank and Gaza Strip killing one of the volunteers in Gaza and wounding ten others in addition to damaging 22 ambulance vehicles. It added that the IOF troops obstructed its teams on 440 occasions while carrying casualties and patients to hospitals and clinics... Read more... Russia guarantees delivery of S-300 system to Iran | Press TV  Russia's S-300 missile defense system Iran's ambassador to Russia says Moscow has guaranteed that it will deliver the S-300 missile defense system to Iran. "Iran is ready to receive this system and our Russian colleagues have assured us that they will meet their obligations,"..Read more... Erekat calls for alternative to two-state solution | alJazeera Magazine Chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat says Palestinians should consider other alternatives to the two-state solution, if the peace process with Israel does not move forward. Palestinians should develop credible alternatives to the two-state solution, such as a one-state solution or a bi-national state and dissolve the Palestinian Authority, according to Erekat. Erekat also called for a "campaign of non-violent resistance, such as prohibition of Palestinians working in settlements and boycott of Israeli products.".. Read more... The Conscience Of Honest Israelis, by Rev. Ted Pike | National Prayer Network If anti-Semitism is “strong criticism of Israel,” as the Anti-Defamation League and the government of Israel now insist, then some of the world’s most outspoken anti-Semites exist where one would least expect them—in Israel. Increasingly, Jewish writers for Israel’s largest dailies, the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz, vilify Israel’s inhuman treatment of Palestinians. They use language which would arouse a chorus of outrage as “anti-Semitic” in any American church, university or legislative body. Christian evangelicals, it’s time to listen... Read more... Big Banks Are Feeding Like Parasites on the Govt.'s Money, by Dean Baker | AlterNet Big bank CEOs like to trumpet free-market ideology, but they depend on the government for survival in good times and bad... My Father was a Freedom Fighter | a book review by Gilad Atzmon  Ramzy Baroud’s “My Father Was A Freedom Fighter” is more than a book, it is actually a masterpiece. In an overwhelmingly evoking personal style Baroud manages to bring to light the history of the Palestinian people and their battle with Israel and Zionism. Through the story of the Baroud’s family the book outlines every event in the history of the conflict and reflects on the way it transformed the Palestinian reality... Read more... This Time We Went Too Far | YouTube "Better than any other book, This Time We Went Too Far shows how the massive destruction visited on Gaza was not an accidental byproduct of the Israeli invasion but its barely concealed objective.".. Watch... The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy, by Noam Chomsky | In These Times Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline. On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections—a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international. The decision heralds even further corporate takeover of the U.S. political system... Read more... The Pentagon runs amok, by Dan Simpson | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Obama is letting the generals and contractors roll over him It is not possible to believe that it is coincidence that just as the Pentagon is being called upon to justify its immunity from the across-the-board budget freeze that President Barack Obama is declaring for the federal government, at least three provocative U.S. arms sales have been announced -- to Taiwan, Poland and four Persian Gulf states. The announcements were clearly scheduled to provoke, respectively, China, Russia and Iran...Read more... Israeli report claims $2bn stolen from Palestinians, by Jonathan Cook | The National  Nearly 50,000 Palestinians from the West Bank are working in Israel Over the past four decades Israel has defrauded Palestinians working inside Israel of more than US$2 billion (Dh7.4bn) by deducting from their salaries contributions for welfare benefits to which they were never entitled, Israeli economists revealed this week. A new report, “State Robbery”, says the “theft” continued even after the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 and part of the money was supposed to be transferred to a special fund on behalf of the workers...and continue to have deductions taken from their pay Read more... Sheila Bair exposes Bernanke's "Skimming Operation", by Mike Whitney | Information Clearing House The reappointment of Fed chairman Ben Bernanke means that the opportunity for change has passed and the reform movement is dead. It means that and that derivatives trading, off-balance sheet operations, securitization, dark pools and high frequency trading will go on much as they have before. It means that the public will continue to be gouged so that a handful of Wall Street sharpies can rake in obscene profits using complex "financial innovations" and over-leveraged debt instruments. It means that the entire system will continue to be put at risk to protect the interests of investment banks and hedge funds. It means that the subsidies, the preferential treatment, and the bailouts will continue to fuel populist rage and exacerbate deepening divisions in society. It means that the status quo has been preserved and that it's "business as usual"... Read more... "Gaza is the only gulag in the Western hemisphere; maintained by democracies; closed-off from food, water, air" says Colonel Desmond Travers, co-author of the Goldstone report, in an exclusive MEMO interview One year after the horrendous Israeli military assault on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, in which over 1400 men, women and children were viciously and brutally slaughtered by invading Israeli troops, MEMO sat down with Colonel Desmond Travers, one of the four co-authors of the Goldstone Report and the only military expert on the team, and discussed his views on Israel, Hamas and the incredibly mixed reception of his groundbreaking and now iconic report... Read more... Blair: Gaza's great betrayer | The Guardian  Tony Blair in June 2009 speaking at a press conference in Gaza calling for a quick reconstruction It's more than a year since Israel launched its immoral attack on Gaza and Palestinians are still living on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. So what has Tony Blair done to further peace in the region? Virtually nothing, argues the historian Avi Shlaim...Read more... Netanyahu 'faces arrest' in Hamas hotel murder if Mossad link proved | The National The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be at the top of Dubai’s wanted list if the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad is proven to be behind the killing of a senior Hamas official, the Dubai Police chief said yesterday. Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim told The National that “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to kill [Mahmoud] al Mabhouh in Dubai. We will issue an arrest warrant against him.”.. Link The Crisis Is Not Over, by Paul Craig Roberts | Information Clearing House Readers ask if the financial crisis is over, if the recovery is for real and, if not, what are Americans’ prospects. The short answer is that the financial crisis is not over, the recovery is not real, and the U.S. faces a far worse crisis than the financial one. Here is the situation as I understand it:.. Read more... February 1-3, 2010 NEW YORK TIMES reporter CHRIS HEDGES writes from GAZA : "I had seen children shot in other conflicts I have covered ...but I had never watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport." (quoted on page 223 of "BEYOND CHUTZPAH - On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History", by Norman G.Finkelstein) We're Sailing Again: Join Us!, by Free Gaza Team | Palestine Think Tank  This spring, the Free Gaza Movement is sending at least six boats to Gaza to break Israel's illegal blockade on 1.5 million Palestinians. This blockade constitutes an act of collective punishment, a crime prohibited under international humanitarian law. Gaza's man-made and internationally perpetuated crisis is set to deepen as Egypt builds an Iron wall 30 meters deep on the southern Rafah border, closing off the final route for Palestinians to get basic supplies. The urgency of breaking the blockade grows by the day, as Palestinians living in this prison are denied their most basic rights... Read more... The enemy is at home | Brasscheck TV An American veteran of the Iraq war tells it like it is A must Watch...Book review: Avi Shlaim's "Israel and Palestine", by Max Ajl | Electronic Intifada  When prolific writers compile a decade or more of their writing in a single collection, changes in style, political outlook, or interpretive tendencies are readily apparent. Consistency in all these respects is visible too. So it's interesting to read Avi Shlaim's latest book -- Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations, a collection of articles published over two decades on Israeli historiography -- because he is aware of the changes and continuities in his thinking... Read more... How to inflame the Jews of Newton, Massachusetts | Jerusalem Post Angry residents of a heavily Jewish Boston suburb are demanding an apology or else the resignation of two city officials, after they sponsored a resolution inviting a Guantanamo inmate to move to the town upon his anticipated release. The resolution was unanimously approved by a subcommittee of the Board of Aldermen before sparking a public outcry once community members learned of the proposal. It ended up being dismissed by the full board at a meeting last Tuesday, but many residents are still furious that the issue got as far as it did... [In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a Jew from Newton, Massachusetts (more like a suburb of Tel Aviv) - the Editor] Read more... "Contested histories", "contested narratives": What kind of nonsense is this? Again it's a war of words and concepts!, by Khalil Nakhleh | Palestine Think Tank  Numerous books and articles have been written, guided by the main thesis that the reason for the prolonged and intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine, and which is constantly at an impasse, is that there are two "contested" histories (of Jews and Arabs in Palestine!), and two "contested" narratives. And one is directed to read and internalize that "contested", in this sense, means that both narratives are equally valid and with equal legitimacy, and that all alternative reading and interpretation of it, and all attempts to question it are "subjective", "very personal", "emotive", "irrational", "not credible", "unreliable", and "removed from history". This is, in my view, total and utter nonsense... Read more... A Review of Shahid Alam's "Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism", by Kathleen Christison | Counterpunch The essential point of M. Shahid Alam’s book..comes clear upon opening the book to the inscription in the frontispiece. From the Persian poet and philosopher Rumi, the quote reads, “You have the light, but you have no humanity. Seek humanity, for that is the goal.”... Read more... Agents of Imperial Terror: Aggression and the Goldstone Report, by Jennifer Loewenstein | Palestine Chronicle  Cast Lead was an act of sheer aggression against of the Gaza Strip ...Some 65 years after the end of the Nuremburg Tribunal, the definitions and caveats of global justice remain the same; but they are no more universally applied today than they are remembered or summoned to spare various regions of the world the devastation and suffering they are now experiencing. Indeed, at times such as during Israel's Operation Cast Lead exactly one year ago, one could argue that they were consciously suppressed...Read more... What remains must be the truth: 9/11 revisited, by Paul J. Balles | Redress Information & Analysis Paul J. Balles argues that, revisiting the question of who benefited from 9/11, "it becomes perfectly clear that Israel alone had reason to plot and execute” it. But he says that Israel couldn't possibly have executed such a plan without help from the US authorities and that a process of elimination "leaves only the Zionist neo-conservative civilian leaders of the Pentagon” as Israel’s accomplices... Read more... U.S. ties Israeli billionaire with Chinese intelligence | Haaretz  Israeli businessman Lev Leviev ...The third businessman mentioned in the American report is Lev Leviev, who was Gaydamak's partner and who according to the report continues to have a strong standing in Angola, where he has mines, diamond polishing plants and a diamond trade company...Read more... I am the Resistance | YouTube Whenever there is injustice, there are people fighting it with every possible means. We have seen it so many times before: the oppressed rise up, the oppressor dehumanizes them calling them such names as "terrorists", "saboteurs", "death loving" extremists... It is only normal that the oppressor will always lie to justify his actions and its crimes... Read more, watch video... Turkey PM: Israel should mull future without us as ally | Haaretz  Turkey PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan Read more... Arab politicians face tide of “persecution” in Israel, by Jonathan Cook | Antiwar Laws set to criminalize dissent Leaders of the Arab minority in Israel have warned that they are facing an unprecedented campaign of persecution, backed by the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, designed to stop their political activities...Read more... Abbas: Israel setting tone for one-state solution | Haaretz  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday that Israel's continued activity in the West Bank was leading to a "one-state solution," telling The Guardian in an exclusive interview that he was prepared to relaunch peace negotiations in exchange for a full three-month settlement freeze...[Intelligent blackmail, but will fall on deaf ears. When the new state emerges, both the quisling Abbas and the terrorist leadership of Israel will be in the dock.] Read more... Israel's history of state-sponsored assassination, by James Hider | Times Online Israel’s spy agency Mossad and the country's special forces have carried out a number of assassinations of Palestinian militants in the past and have also been blamed for killings which the Jewish state has never publicly taken responsibility for. In addition, the army and air force have carried out so-called ‘targeted killings’ of numerous Palestinian leaders accused of masterminding attacks inside Israel... Read more... U.S.-Israeli Complicity in Terror Plot, FBI, Media Cover-Up Flight 253 Assistance | Mathaba News  This article is essential reading for every air traveler, as well as all airline and security personnel High-level help in yet another terror plot has emerged, along with U.S. F.B.I. and D.O.J. cover-up of the facts and outright involvement. History is rife with examples of intelligence agencies setting up terror plots - sometimes with unintended victims and consequences - and the Delta 253 terror plot is the latest such plot to have gone wrong...Read more... Barack Obama in the Crosshairs: Is the military threatening to kill Obama over US war policy?, by John Hankey | LA County Examiner The parallels between the administrations of Barack Obama and John Kennedy are stunning... Read more... Israel admits dropping phosphorus bombs on Gaza  In an official report to the United Nations, Israel acknowledged that its military had "endangered human life" through the use of phosphorus munitions against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In Israel's response to the Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza, the regime admitted that its military forces fired white phosphorus bombs at a heavily populated area on January 15, 2009 in Gaza... Read more... Secret CIA-Mossad meeting, preparation for new war? A secret meeting between the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Leon Panetta and Israeli officials has reportedly centered on Iran's nuclear program... Read more... |
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