Stephen Lendman

The status applies to all Wall Street giants, none, however, the equal of Goldman, the Grand Master. Like the fabled comic book Superman hero, it's:

-- faster than its competitors, thanks to its proprietary software ability to front run markets (illegal, but no matter);
-- more powerful than the government it controls; and
-- able to leap past competitors, given its special status.

Founded in 1869, GS calls itself "a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of services worldwide."

Since going public in 1999, the same year Glass-Steagall ended letting banks, insurers and securities companies combine, GS became a giant hedge fund trading against the advice given clients with the full faith and blessing of Washington - the same thing other Street giants did and profited handsomely.

In his April 17 article headlined, "Goldman Sachs Vampire Squid Gets Handcuffed," L. Randall Wray noted SEC laxity for years, "managing to sleep through every bubble and bust in recent memory," and saying Goldman acts above the law "since it took over Washington during the Clinton years." Their criminal behavior is nothing new. It's their established business model, the reason it's been immersed in nearly all financial scandals since the 19th century.

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Christopher King

Christopher King considers the evidence which indicate that murder of civilians and state-sponsored terrorism are tools of US policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and argues that unless Britain leaves Afghanistan immediately, it will not recover morally or economically and will not be on the path to control its destiny.

You have probably seen the Wikileaks collateral murder video of an American helicopter gunship crew killing 12 Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists, the details of which had been concealed by the Pentagon. It’s something that everyone should see, particularly those British politicians who voted for the Iraq war and are now, before an election, attempting to persuade us that they are fit to govern our country.

Gordon Brown in particular is trading our soldiers’ lives for the sort of multi-million dollar payoff that Tony Blair got by backing America’s adventures in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like most of our Members of Parliament, he also voted to invade Iraq and enthusiastically supported Barack Obama in Afghanistan. What our politicians call “re-engaging” with the public, something they only attempt at election time, is futile because we know them to be self-serving liars without morality. Incompetent too, but what else would one expect? Enough of them for the moment.

We should note that the occasional cross-border US drone attack into Pakistan has gradually escalated to regular attacks, and a respectable-sized local war, US ground involvement and a CIA presence in Pakistan. Surely the Pakistanis have wondered what the US plans are for their country and nuclear stockpile?

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Stephen Lendman

In June 2009, Defence for Children International (DCI)/Palestine Section published a report titled, "Palestine Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalized ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities."

DCI/Palestine "is a national section of the international non-government child rights organisation and movement (dedicated) to promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian children," according to international law principles.

Each year, about 700 West Bank children, under 18, are arrested, detained, interrogated, and prosecuted in Israeli military courts, in total about 6,500 since 2000. DCI lawyers represent 30 - 40% of them. The report focuses on their torture and abuse in custody.

Since the 1967 occupation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinian men, women, and children passed through Israel's judicial system, over 150,000 tried in military courts from 1990 - 2006, the remainder handled through plea bargains for lighter sentences. On average, over 9,000 Palestinians a year are affected, including 700 children treated the same as adults.

For nearly 43 years, Israeli military justice operated "almost completely devoid of international scrutiny," giving authorities license to violate human rights and humanitarian law with impunity. As a result, due process and judicial fairness don't apply under a system denying them.

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Ronald Aronson

Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus

The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It

Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus first met in June 1943, at the opening of Sartre's play The Flies. When Sartre was standing in the lobby, according to Simone de Beauvoir, "a dark-skinned young man came up and introduced himself: it was Albert Camus." His novel The Stranger, published a year earlier, was a literary sensation, and his philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus had appeared six months previously. The young man from Algiers was marooned in France by the war. While convalescing from an exacerbation of his chronic tuberculosis in Le Panelier, near Chambon, Camus had been cut off from his wife by the Allied conquest of French North Africa and the resulting German invasion of unoccupied France in November 1942. He wanted to meet the increasingly well-known novelist and philosopher—and now playwright—whose fiction he had reviewed years earlier and who had just published a long article on Camus's own books. It was a brief encounter. "I'm Camus," he said. Sartre immediately "found him a most likeable personality."

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