Dahr Jamail

Damage to USS Liberty, June 1967. (Photo:
U.S. Navy)

The Israeli military has attacked a flotilla of international peace activists, killing as many as 19 innocent civilians while they were carrying ten tons of aid to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. This is not the first time the Israeli military has attacked a nonthreatening entity in international waters.

On June 8, 1967, while sailing in international waters, the US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty was attacked by air and naval forces of the state of Israel. Of the Liberty’s crew of 294, more than half were killed or wounded. More than 40 years later, survivors are still seeking justice.

The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that the Liberty was an American ship, yet survivors have been forbidden to tell their story under oath to the American public.

Joe Meadors was on the Liberty during the attack.

“I watched some jets pass us then turn left after they passed our ship, then they started strafing [attacking repeatedly with bombs or machine-gun fire from low-flying aircraft] us,” Meadors told Truthout.

“The attack lasted 90 minutes, during which we got a message off to the 6th fleet asking for assistance, and we learned later, Joe Tully, commanding officer of the USS Saratoga, launched aircraft within minutes of the attack, but he told us later they were recalled before they reached the horizon. We found this out 20 years after the attack.”

Meadors said he and his group, the USS Liberty Veterans Association, believe that Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis, the Sixth Fleet carrier division commander at the time of the attack, was following orders from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who called off the Navy’s rescue mission for the USS Liberty.

Meadors, along with other survivors of the attack, have been engaged in what has evolved into a more than 40-year struggle to find justice.

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Stephen Lendman

Some call him Stanley the Fixer, Catherine Austin Fitts for one, a former high level government and Wall Street insider, now editor of Solari.com and running Solari, Inc., an ethical online investment firm specializing in preserving family wealth. Besides on her own firm and a wealth of information on important topics, her site provides extensive coverage of Sporkin, including unanswered questions about him.

On September 5, 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported that BP hired him as ombudsman "to hear worker complaints from Alaska and elsewhere in the US," a move to quiet criticism about company operations, given its history of safety and environmental violations, and long record as a serial scofflaw, making daily headlines for the past two months and sure for much longer, keeping Sporkin hyperactive on the job.

"I'll report them as I see them," he said when appointed. "My mandate is to do whatever is necessary to ascertain the facts about and identify solutions for problems that exist today as well as those likely to become issues in the future."

According to Kim Eisler in his Washingtonian.com July 16, 2007 article headlined, "Stanley Sporkin Does Things His Way:"

Sporkin "landed a very big client, BP America, and has been seen around town with (its then) president Bob Malone in tow....attempting to guide (him) through a maze of Capital Hill hearings and state inquests (concerning investigation(s about the company) over everything from Alaska pipeline failures to refinery fires and lost....worldwide CEO in a scandal."

Sporkin calls his job troubleshooting, "leading a team of investigators through the charges and countercharges," using his longtime fixer influence. While his compensation isn't known, "it's said to be substantial - more than (he) ever made during his years as a judge or at the CIA and SEC."

Who then is Sporkin, and what about his dark side? More on the latter below.

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Nat Hentoff

"Are you’all insane. No checks equal no food for me. Do you get it?" ~ Bruce Shore

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them." ~ Frederick Douglass

This is a story that should be a warning to Americans, regardless of political party, because it dramatically illustrates what pre-eminent civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate documents in his book, "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent" by means of the ever-increasing broad and vague federal laws that allow prosecutors to pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, even for the most seemingly innocuous behavior.

Consider what happened to an unemployed American, Bruce Shore, because of e-mails he sent to the Web site of U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky. As reported by Arthur Delaney on huffingtonpost.com, Shore, watching the Senate in inaction on C-Span, was angered when Bunning complained that, gosh, he has missed the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game because he had to be in Congress to debate an unemployment benefits bill. "I was livid, I was just livid," recalled the 51-year-old Shore. "I’m on unemployment, so it affects me."

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Kourosh Ziabari

Christopher Bollyn is an American journalist and researcher. He is widely known for his extensive researches on the September 11, 2001 attacks which reveal that Israel has been complicit in planning and carrying out the terrorist attacks that cost the lives of 2,976 victims and left more than 6,000 injured. The U.S. government under ex-President Bush introduced the paramilitary group Al-Qaida the main culprit of the attacks and adopted an aggressive policy towards the Muslim nations thereafter It also enacted the USA PATRIOT Act that would enable the U.S. government to search and investigate the telephone and email communications of the U.S. citizens under the pretext of discovering and mapping out the possible threats to the U.S. national security. Bollyn has written on the U.S. – Israel relations comprehensively and believes that a powerful corporate cartel of Zionists control and mastermind the large-scale U.S. foreign policy.

What follows is the full text of an in-depth interview with Christopher Bollyn in which we've discussed the post 9-11 "War on Terrorism" project devised by the Bush administration, the complicity of the state of Israel in the 9-11 attacks, the fate of Israeli regime in the wake of its growing isolation, the stance of United States administration towards Iran's nuclear dossier and the double standards it exercises with regards to the Israel's military nuclear program.

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Mark LeVine

Israel has been strangling the Palestinian economy since the occupation began.

The remarks were not made in anger or haste, as were the now infamous, flippant and ill-conceived comments that cost White House reporter Helen Thomas her job, if not her legacy. Instead, they were made quite deliberately, with an air of thoughtfulness, while leaning over a lectern, as if lecturing to a class.

Thomas was forced into retirement for declaring that Jews "should get the hell out of Palestine," but New York Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the most powerful politicians in the US, has avoided any criticism or even major press coverage for remarks he made only days later that supported the continued "economic strangulation" of Gaza; in part, because, he essentially argues, the inhabitants of the benighted Strip are not Jewish.

Schumer made his remarks during a brief talk to the Orthodox Union, a well-known politically conservative Jewish educational, outreach and social service organisation.

The talk covered several foreign policy issues, including Iran and Israel/Palestine. When the topic turned to the Israeli attack on the Gaza aid flotilla Schumer began by explaining that the "Palestinian people still don't believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution". But that is not all, he continued: "They don't believe in the Torah, in David."

Because of this, and because they chose to elect Hamas, Schumer went on to argue, Israel is right - and the US should support its desire - "to strangle them economically until they see that's not the way to go".

Indeed, whether deliberately or because he does not understand the nature of Israeli policies vis-a-vis Gaza, Schumer did not actually use the word "blockade;" instead describing Israeli actions as a "boycott".

Only when Palestinians see the light, "when there's some moderation and cooperation, can [they] have an economic advancement".

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Stephen Lendman

Updating Lynne Stewart's "Love Struggle"

Human rights attorney Stewart spent her career observing the American Bar Association's Model Rules, saying all lawyers must:

"devote professional time and resources and use civil influence to ensure equal access to our system of justice for all those who because of economic or social barriers cannot afford or secure adequate legal counsel."

Also to practice law ethically, morally and responsibly to assure everyone gets due process and judicial fairness, what the poor, underprivileged, society's unwanted rarely ever are afforded unless lucky enough to have an advocate like her. What failed her after being bogusly indicted, prosecuted, convicted, and jailed, awaiting final sentencing in July, perhaps later for reasons of health. More on that below.

Stewart's defense committee will send them to Judge Koeltl, at issue being not to lengthen her 28 month sentence, the Justice Department wanting 30 years, despite her innocence on all charges and lifetime of dedicated service, well known to prosecutors and the judiciary, besides her legion of supporters, this writer proudly among them.

On June 16, posted on lynnestewart.org, the web site maintained for her, husband Ralph Poynter noted the "the deep contradictions of the system," calling it "an obscenity and an affront to fundamental fairness," and a threat to all lawyers who defend unpopular clients too vigorously, ones prosecutors target to convict, even those clearly innocent.

"Lynne Stewart deserves justice....equal justice under law," said Poynter, what everyone deserves but too few get in America's unjust system, sparing criminal insiders, not easy poor, underprivileged targets, putting a lie to the rule of law and a government of, by and for the people, what it never was and isn't today under a bipartisan criminal class, headed by a president protecting privilege from beneficial social change.

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Flora Nicoletta

"We swear by Allah the Great... We swear by Allah the Great... We swear by Allah the Great / We commit ourselves to be faithful to our religion, to our home and to our holy places / We pledge to maintain our right to return to all our cities and villages, sparing no efforts to achieve this aim, and letting no one relinquish, renounce or negotiate it / We do pledge to Allah, our People and our Nation to do that through our life." Pledge of Return, the High Committee for the Commemoration of the 62nd Anniversary of the Nakba.

In Et-Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City there is a cemetery with a number of graves. Here are buried Arab fighters who fall during the 1948 Zionist conquest of historic Palestine, called by the Palestinian the Nakba. Following the 1967 war, when the Israeli forces also captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip they entirely covered all the graves with casts cement... and they remain so till the present day.

The word Nakba and the word Awda are the first two words of the Palestinian dictionary. Nakba and Return are Siamese words.

Nakba means catastrophe, disaster. Every 15 May the Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, that is the eradication from historic Palestine of most of its original inhabitants because "Palestine was given by God to the chosen people." But as said once Mustafa En-Natche, a former mayor of Hebron, nobody has never seen the receipt. Awda means return, return to their former houses, lands, shops, factories, mosques, churches, in brief to their normal lives which were shattered in 1948.

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Robert Creamer

[On several occasions here I have explained the economics of corporations externalizing costs to increase their profit at our expense. While we’re waiting for the next BP attempt to plug the well to fail, Robert Creamer has written an excellent article that illustrates what I have been saying and applies it to this GOP/corporate crime against nature and humanity. Politics Plus]

The frustration and anxiety of Americans about the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico grows by the day. Those whose livelihood is tied to the Gulf — or who live in the wetlands of Louisiana, and communities along the coast — are justifiable demanding the deployment of war-time levels of personnel and equipment to stop the dark, deadly oil that is invading from the sea.

In times of national crisis, Americans look to the President to lead — and to deliver. That’s why President Obama was absolutely correct to make it crystal clear that he is personally responsible to deal with the oil spill crisis — and has told his Administration to spare no effort to stop the leak, oversee the cleanup, and assure that BP completely compensates the massive number of victims.

Increasingly sharp criticism has been leveled at the President because BP has so far been unable to stop the leak. The problem, of course, is that most of the critics have few suggestions about what the Administration might do that it isn’t doing.

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Justin Raimondo

Who else but Joe Lieberman would introduce a bill to give the President the power to shut down the Internet with the flick of a switch? I’m afraid of the answer to that question, and you should be, too. However, it’s hardly surprising America’s premier authoritarian warmonger – author of a bill that would strip American citizenship from anyone even vaguely suspected of “terrorism” – would come up with a scheme like this.

If the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act” passes – and isn’t that a name that embraces practically every collectivist bromide extant? – the Department of Homeland Security would establish a “cyber-terrorism” sub-bureaucracy, the Office of Cyberspace Policy (OCP), and the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communication (NCCC), with the former lording it over the Internet – a Cyber-Czar – and the latter unleashed to spy on and otherwise guard the “cybersecurity” Senators Lieberman and his two co-sponsors aver is imminently threatened.

This bill is the culmination of years of yelping about the likelihood of a “cyber-9/11,” a devastating attack on the national infrastructure via the Internet. If such an event is so likely, then why hasn’t it happened already? Because the likelihood of it ever happening is nearly nil.

In short, this is a completely phony and for all intents and purposes nonexistent “threat” that has been invented by those most likely to profit – financially and politically – from this kind of hype: the “cybersecurity” industry, which has been thriving (mostly off of government contracts, naturally) since 9/11, and neoconservative authoritarians of a Liebermanesque frame of mind. In their 2003 opus, An End to Evil, neocons Richard Perle and David Frum argue that what’s needed is a “domestic intelligence agency” to spy on Americans, and the Internet plays a major role in their scenario: Perle and Frum advocate establishing an Orwellian government database and comprehensive electronic surveillance system that not only keeps constant track of the whereabouts of everyone in the country, but also stores a dossier, complete with their religious and political affiliations – surely a job for the OCP/NCCC. After all, if we’re going to track the “cyber-terrorists,” we have to know who and where they are. Lieberman’s Cyber-Czar, and his minions, would put flesh on the bones of this nightmare, and make the neocon dream of a police state an emerging reality.

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Richard Forer

Richard Forer, a former member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), exposes the deceitful and dishonest foundations on which support for Israel is built. In a detailed letter, he outlines a path which those interested in justice and genuine peace in the Middle East can take to reach a true understanding of the Palestine-Israel conflict.

In the spring of 2009, I was a member of a group that put up a billboard criticizing Israel’s lethal use of force during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. A year later, the group received a letter from a college student – referred to as “J” below – asking it to remove the billboard. The student said that he had researched the Gaza invasion and had concluded that both sides were equally responsible for its consequences. He felt that the billboard unfairly placed the blame for all of the destruction solely at the feet of Israel. I replied to the student with the following letter, some of which contains passages from my forthcoming book.

Hi J,

Thank you for your letter. First, I assume you are Jewish. Is that correct? Before I get into the specifics of your letter I want to talk about a few things you might find interesting. I do so because everyone involved in the Israel-Palestine issue has the potential to change the world from an arena of Us against Them into one of peace and respect. But that requires undeviating self-honesty, which leads to compassion, clarity and understanding. Most people do not take up the challenge of looking deeply within for fear of what they might find. They revert to the safety of their presumed identity and the beliefs and images that make up and reinforce their identity. Attachment to a limited or exclusive identity always carries with it the consciousness of Us against Them. The consciousness of Us against Them requires that there be unending conflict.

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Kurt Nimmo

Remember Hitler’s maxim that the bigger and the more outrageous the lie, the more likely the masses are to believe it? Following the results of a recent poll we once again get an object lesson demonstrating that Hitler knew what he was talking about.

“Majorities in many Western and some Muslim countries are willing to consider military action against Iran to prevent the Islamic republic from obtaining nuclear weapons, a global poll showed on Thursday,” reports the Sydney Morning Herald today. “The Pew Research Center’s poll conducted in 22 countries found majorities or pluralities in 16 countries endorsing the possibility of military intervention.”

Naturally Americans are more susceptible to neocon propaganda than other people around the world. In America, a sucker is born every minute, as P. T. Barnum said (actually it was “Paper Collar Joe” Bessimer who made the cynical comment).

“Americans are among the most supportive of a military option to deal with Iran with 66 per cent of those who oppose a nuclear-armed Iran saying they would consider the use of force, a figure second only to Nigeria’s 71 per cent.”

No explanation why Nigerians are more brain-dead than Americans who spend large periods of time sucking up fallacious and absurd propaganda disseminated by a corporate media that works hand-in-glove with transnational corporations and the military-industrial complex, or maybe that should be military-industrial-media complex.

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Stephen Lendman

The Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations is a Beirut, Lebanon-based organization engaged in "strategic and futuristic studies on the Arab and Muslim worlds, (emphasizing) the Palestinian issue. In early 2010, it published the second of its series, "Am I Not a Human," a report titled, "The Suffering of the Palestinian Woman under the Israeli Occupation, " discussed below.

In spite of their "exceptional suffering," Palestinian women display remarkable endurance qualities. Living under stress in poverty, their homes destroyed, lands razed or expropriated, children sick, husbands imprisoned, fathers killed, and more, they plant seeds of hope, fulfill their daily social role, and participate in political and every day resistance. Since the 1948 Nakba, they've been denied basic human rights, security, free expression and movement, a safe and healthy environment, and education. They became refugees in their own land and abroad, bearing burdens beyond the capacity most women can bear anywhere.

Under occupation, they struggle daily to endure, survive, and provide the best for their families and children - as spouses, mothers, caregivers, fighters, nurses, workers, and teachers.

Annually on March 8, International Women's Day commemorates their economic, political, cultural, scientific, and social achievements, but for Palestinian women, it's more - their struggle under Israeli occupation, their lost freedoms, and imposed hardships, testing them to the limit to cope. For Gazans bordering on Israel, one mother said she:

"sleeps with her eyes wide open, and lives with her heart broken, expecting grief to be renewed at any moment."

Another woman searches daily for a medicine her son Muhammad needs, hospitalized without it. Some mothers have only photos of lost loved ones, or others imprisoned out of reach.

In Gaza, the burden is greatest. Also, however, after Israel's 2003 law banning family unifications of Israeli citizens married to Palestinian spouses in Gaza or the West Bank. It legalized Israel's longstanding practice, forcing some women to live illegally as virtual house prisoners to avoid arrest or deportation without their husbands and children.

Other problems include poverty, unemployment, regular violence, home demolitions, and the dilemma of living day to day in uncertainty, a step away from enough essentials to survive. Too little of everything, including few medical centers, endangers their health, especially when pregnant or coping with serious illness.

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Pete Brook

A young man in the Stara Gazela camp. © Matt Lutton

Friend Matt Lutton has presented words and images in the latest Lens Culture (Issue #26). His story is about the destruction of a settlement in Belgrade and the subsequent relocation of the Roma inhabitants.

I know that Matt has been working on this story for a long time and it matters very much to him. In September of last year, Matt put together a small edit of the work with a caveat that he was still working through the project. Matt recommended this local Serbian article for background on the issue.

Matt’s words:

Gazela was an isolated community of over 200 Roma families living abjectly difficult lives under the Gazela road bridge in Belgrade, Serbia. They made their living from the recycling of metals and refuse, and the landscape around their homes was filled with toxic mounds of rotting waste. It was a ghetto split on the banks of one of the region’s most important rivers and on premium real estate eyed by the elites. This photo story begins with the community living under the bridge before its destruction and partial relocation on August 31, 2009.

The people living there, depending on their legal status, would either be given a new container to live in on the outskirts of the city, free transport back to their villages or if they had no papers, an unceremonious trip to the curb and likely a home in another improvised camp.

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Matthew Nasuti

The remains of an American soldier (The WE!)

[Part 2] Pentagon fudges the numbers to placate American public.

Since 2001, the Pentagon has sought to downplay overall U.S. military losses by artfully redefining what is a combat-related “casualty.” It has published and then changed the rules several times regarding the reporting of casualties. Currently the Pentagon uses DoD Instruction 1300.18 to arbitrarily separate out “wounded in action” from non-battle injuries. Wounded in action is narrowly defined to essentially be an injury directly caused by an adversary. So called “friendly fire” injuries and deaths would apparently not be counted. The emphasis is on acute injuries caused by enemy munitions which pierce or penetrate.

Under this scheme, chronic injuries and many acute internal injuries such as hearing impairment, back injuries, mild traumatic brain injuries, mental health problems and a host of diseases suffered by personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are usually not counted as being war-related regardless of how debilitating they are. They are either generally lumped into the category of “non-hostile wounded” or simply not counted at all.

Officially, the Pentagon admits that approximately 5,500 troops have been killed and only 38,000 wounded, amounting to 43,500 total casualties.

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Stephen Lendman

In July 2008, the Southern California ACLU released a "Report on Mental Health Issues at Los Angeles County" Jail by Dr. Terry Kupers, a practicing psychiatrist, an expert on long-term isolated prison confinement and correctional mental health issues. He's also written numerous articles on these topics, and been an expert witness on the mental health crisis behind bars, what he wrote about in his book "Prison Madness."

In May, he toured the LA County Jail system where most inmates aren't convicted and are awaiting trial - Men's Central Jail (MCJ), Twin Towers 1 & 2 (TT 1 & 2), and the Inmate Reception Center (IRC). He interviewed 18 prisoners in private, confidential settings; others in more casual, cell-front ones; and discussed issues with mental health and custody staff.

As in all prisons nationwide, many LA County inmates suffer "serious mental illness." Incarceration exacerbates it. They need treatment, but aren't getting it.

Besides prison confinement harm, state mental hospital deinstitutionalization took hold in the 1980s, part of Reagan Revolution policies that whatever government can do, business does better, so let it. As a result, large numbers of seriously ill patients were discharged, based on studies indicating community care was superior to state facilities. The consequences were predictable. The promise was never realized because of budget cuts, unaffordable housing, and other priorities.

In 1955, state and VA psychiatric hospitals had about 550,000 patients. In 2008, there were less than 60,000, but given constraints today on budget strapped states and communities, the numbers are likely lower and dropping.

Yet according to a study by the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, over a million individuals suffer from significant mental illness in jails and prisons. With 20,000 detainees, some call the LA County Jail system the largest psychiatric hospital in the country (the Men's Central Jail has 5,000), but, like elsewhere, treatment there's not forthcoming.

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