Stephen Lendman

"What is needed is a complete lifting of the blockade. Goods and people must be free to enter and leave. Gaza especially needs construction material(s), which must be allowed to come in without restrictions." ~ Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri

On June 17, Haaretz writer Barak Ravid and Reuters headlined, "Israel to ease Gaza land blockade," saying:

"Israel's security cabinet voted Thursday to ease its land blockade of the Gaza Strip, following its deadly raid on a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for the (mischaracterized) Hamas-ruled territory," in fact, its legitimate government.

An official statement said:

"The Security Cabinet conducted an extensive discussion over the last two days regarding adjustments in Israel's Gaza policy.

It was agreed to:

● Liberalize the system by which civilian goods enter Gaza.
● Expand the inflow of materials for civilian projects that are under international supervision.
● Continue existing security procedures to prevent the inflow of weapons and war materiel.
● the Cabinet will decide in the coming days on additional steps to implement this policy.
● Israel expects the international community to work toward the immediate release of Gilad Shalit," the captured Israeli soldier on June 25, 2006 near the Kerem Shalom crossing, southeast of Rafah - one soldier compared to thousands of Palestinian civilians, held illegally in Israeli prisons under horrific conditions, including torture and other forms of abuse.

According to Raed Fattouh, Palestinian supplies coordinator for the Territory, the approved list will include all food items, toys, stationery, kitchen utensils, mattresses and towels, excluding most of what Gaza needs, including construction materials to rebuild.

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Chris Floyd

James Bovard at Antiwar.com points out one of the more egregiously sick-making of the many atrocious "arguments" employed by Barack Obama in his successful effort to block the efforts of Maher Arar to seek justice for his unjust rendition and proxy torture in the Great War of Global Terror.

Obama bade his legal henchmen -- his own personal John Yoos, as it were -- to tell the Supreme Court that it should kill the Canadian citizen's case seeking compensation for his unlawful arrest by U.S. officials, who then rendered him not unto Caesar but to the untender mercies of Syria's torture cells. The Robed Ones agreed, dismissing, without comment, Arar's appeal of a lower court ruling that quashed his case -- a decision that Scott Horton rightly likened last year to the Dred Scott case, which upheld the legality of slavery, even in states which prohibited it.

The Arar ruling upholds the "legality" of a new, universal form of slavery, i.e., the United States government can deprive anyone in the world of their freedom, and dispose of their bodies as it sees fit: torture, "indefinite detention," or even "targeted assassination." The fact that it is a man of partly African descent who is now outstripping the Southern slavers in this extension of servitude to the entire world is one of those poisonously bitter ironies with which history abounds.

But grim and depraved as Obama's position is, it is not without its comic elements. As Bovard notes, one of the "arguments" offered by the Obama/Yoo administration was that the case should be dismissed because it might call into question “the motives and sincerity of the United States officials who concluded that petitioner could be removed to Syria.” We kid, as they say, you not.

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Les Visible
Smoking Mirrors

In times of darkness, The Prince of Darkness is in full sway. Some don’t believe in such forces but I would then ask if they believed in the force of materialism, which they can see in front of their eyes or if they have difficulty seeing that the majority of world leaders are whores for position and money at the expense of their duties or whether they can see that a certain shitty little country is committing murder and evils beyond those of their alleged oppressor years ago and that these obvious vile crimes are justified and celebrated by the most powerful leaders in the west in a way that confounds the mind in consideration of right and wrong as we think we know it. Well? Does this not all suggest the same behavior we might expect if a real Prince of Darkness were rampant and risen above the world in which we live? So what difference does it make? It’s the same, either way… in some fashion or manner …this force does exist.

The Apocalypse moves inexorably forward. Hayward before the senate reveals what the reality controls deny but cannot conceal. It will get more and more powerful as it comes more and more direct and impacting.

One thing the people of America must do at this November election, despite what is certain to happen beforehand. That is to not vote for any Jewish/Israeli lawmaker no matter what. All of them must be thrown out of office. Also, any and every lawmaker who is in support of Israel in any way must be refused office on that basis period. They are traitors in the most indefensible sense. Every single individual who supports the Crime Syndicate known as Israel should be exposed for it as if it were a heinous crime, which it is. Support of Israel must be seen and understood as a capital felony against humanity.

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Michel Chossudovsky

The War on Afghanistan is a Profit driven "Resource War".

The 2001 bombing and invasion of Afghanistan has been presented to World public opinion as a "Just War", a war directed against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, a war to eliminate "Islamic terrorism" and instate Western style democracy.

The economic dimensions of the "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT) are rarely mentioned. The post 9/11 "counter-terrorism campaign" has served to obfuscate the real objectives of the US-NATO war.

The war on Afghanistan is part of a profit driven agenda: a war of economic conquest and plunder, "a resource war".

While Afghanistan is acknowledged as a strategic hub in Central Asia, bordering on the former Soviet Union, China and Iran, at the crossroads of pipeline routes and major oil and gas reserves, its huge mineral wealth as well as its untapped natural gas reserves have remained, until June 2010, totally unknown to the American public.

According to a joint report by the Pentagon, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and USAID, Afghanistan is now said to possess "previously unknown" and untapped mineral reserves, estimated authoritatively to be of the order of one trillion dollars (New York Times, U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan - NYTimes.com, June 14, 2010, See also BBC, 14 June 2010).

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

Zionist supremacists from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles are ganging up on two elderly targets these days. The first is the 84-year-old Fidel Castro, a man who apparently made up his mind about Zionism more than six decades ago. And the second is 89-year-old veteran American journalist Helen Thomas.

Castro's crime was a few passing remarks he uttered recently, saying that the Swastika has become Israel's real flag.

"It would seem that the Fuehrer's (Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's) Swastika is today Israel's banner." The ex-Cuban leader added that "the hatred felt by the state of Israel against the Palestinians is such that they wouldn't hesitate to send the one and a half million men, women and children of that country to the crematoria where millions of Jews of all ages were exterminated by the Nazis."

As to Thomas's, she has been vilified and demonized for saying that all Ashkenazi Jews who had immigrated to Palestine from their native East European states, such a Poland, should go back to their native homelands.

Castro and Thomas didn't cry blaspheme. Their remarks, though courageous, are factually true.

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