Kevin Barrett / Gordon Duff

"Chris Hedges wrote that he had been in several war zones, but he had never seen soldiers luring children within range of their guns, then gut-shooting them for sport, until he saw Israeli soldiers doing it in the Occupied Territories."

ISRAEL CLAIMS “NO PTSD IN IDF, JEWS IMMUNE TO MENTAL ILLNESS”: STUDY COMPARES “RESETTLING PALESTINIANS” WITH WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

Gordon is skeptical of the Zionist claim that their troops, unlike American soldiers, don't suffer from PTSD. If this is true, Gordon says, maybe it's because American soldiers are fighting and dying for a Zionist-orchestrated series of lies, and are treated like "broken toys" when they come home; while Israeli soldiers are committing genocide for their own national benefit, and are relatively well-treated by their US-taxpayer-funded regime.

But there is a simpler explanation: In claiming that its soldiers are immune to PTSD, Israel is implicitly confessing that its troops are psychopaths.

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Chris Floyd

(Updated and revised.)

"I am shocked -- shocked! -- to find gambling is going on in here" ~ Captain Renault at the gaming tables in Casablanca.

The much ballyhooed dump of intelligence and diplomatic files concerning the Afghan War has been trumpeted as some kind of shocking expose, "painting a different picture" than the official version of events -- revelations that are sure to rock the Anglo-American political establishments to their foundations.

The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel were given 92,000 reports by Wikileaks, including thousands of pages of raw "human intelligence" (i.e., uncorroborated claims and gossip from interested parties and anonymous sources pushing a multitude of agendas), and diplomatic notes passed between the promulgators of the occupation in Washington and their factotums "in country" -- reports which you might imagine also purvey a multitude of agendas ... not least the supreme agenda of all officials involved in a dubious enterprise: ass-covering.

Yet these reports are being treated as if they are the "grim truth" behind the shining picture of official propaganda. But what do these stories in the NYT and Guardian actually "reveal"? Let's see:

● That the occupation forces kill lots of civilians at checkpoints and botched raids, then lie about it afterward.
● That these killings make Afghans angry and fuel the insurgency.
● That elements of Pakistani intelligence are involved with some elements of the many resistance groups known collectively (and incorrectly) in the West as the Taliban.
● That the Americans are using more and more robot drones to kill people.
● That the Americans are running death squads in Afghanistan aimed at Taliban leaders.
● That Afghan officials are corrupt, and that Afghan police and military forces are woefully inadequate.

Is there anything in these breathless new recitations that we did not already know? For example, the NYT offers a few short vignettes from the leaked documents concerning botched raids and errant missiles that slaughter civilians. But in almost every case, these have already been extensively reported -- in the Times itself and other mainstream venues -- in much greater detail, with quotes and evidence from the victims and local eyewitnesses, and not just the self-interested, ass-covering perspective of official occupation reports. And the "revelation" that occupation forces are killing "an amazing number of people" who have "never proven to be a threat" at checkpoints was confirmed months ago by no less than Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the erstwhile commander of the whole shebang.

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Stephen Lendman

The combination of millions of gallons of oil and dispersants has made large areas of the Gulf toxic and dangerous, marine toxicologist Ricki Ott saying if she lived there with children she'd leave - based on her firsthand experience after the 1989 Prince William Sound, Alaska Exxon Valdez disaster and subsequent research, documented in her books titled, "Sound Truth and Corporate Myth$: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill" and "Not One Drop - Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill."

Ongoing today, the legacy includes criminal negligence, bankruptcies, destroyed lives and livelihoods, domestic violence, severe anxiety, trauma, PTSD, drug and alcohol abuse, serious illnesses, suicides, massive loss of plant and wildlife, and vast ecological destruction from the 30 million or more gallons spilled, the State of Alaska's conservative estimate, not Exxon's 11 million figure, its lowball claim to hide the disaster's magnitude and minimize its liability.

The Gulf catastrophe is infinitely greater, estimates up to three or more Exxon Valdez incidents (using Exxon's figure) a week until capped. Yet some experts think another seabed hole (a few miles from the Macondo well) is emitting 100,000 or more barrels daily, greatly compounding the growing disaster, added to more by numerous small leaks, five or more alone in BP's Macondo well - the "well from hell," according to some.

Geologist Chris Landau is one, telling Petroleum World that "BP has drilled into a deep-core oil volcano that cannot be stopped, regardless of the horizontal drills the company claims will stop the oil plume in August."

Ocean Energy Institute Founder Matthew Simmons is another, telling Bloomberg we've killed the Gulf of Mexico - its $2.2 trillion economy by depleting oxygen, decimating aquatic life and poisoning the food chain. We've also created a public health crisis, problems showing up first in cleanup workers experiencing dizziness, fainting, nausea, nosebleeds, vomiting, coughing, headaches, stomach upset, and difficulty breathing, compounded by heat, fatigue, hydrocarbon smell, and combined toxicity of oil and dispersants.

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Chris Floyd

Years ago, I wrote about the use of chemical weapons in the American assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004. I was attacked at the time for my "wild accusations" by many people, across the political spectrum, even by stalwart dissidents, who felt that such "exaggerations" undermined the "effectiveness" of the anti-war movement, preventing it from being taken "seriously" by the "serious" players in the power structure. Later, of course, American military officials -- and serving soldiers -- admitted using white phosphorus and other chemical weapons in the assault.

Over the years, small-scale medical studies have pointed to the horrific effects of these USA-WMD attacks. Now, a new comprehensive medical study has shown that the "dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia" in Fallujah since 2004 have "exceeded those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945," The Independent reports.

The Independent story follows up on an initial video report by top BBC journalist John Simpson last week -- a story that was almost universally ignored, not only in the fawning corporate press but also across the "dissident" blogosphere (except by a very few, such as Winter Patriot). Both stories make clear that the chief victims of the American WMD are, overwhelming, children:

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

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Stephen Lendman

Hopefully its folly will prevent it. Otherwise, expect severe repercussions, including a considerable counterattack and disruption of regional oil supplies, further impacting a troubled global economy. So why consider it, given the December 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) saying:

"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; (perhaps it never had one); we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons..." True or not, dozens of nations may consider one, for defense, not offense in a hostile world, America and Israel the main aggressors, threatening humanity with their weapons of mass destruction.

The NIE also said:

"We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop (them).

Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop (them) than we have been judging since 2005."

Expect a new NIE update later this summer, hopefully with similar conclusions, then Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair saying so to Congress before his dismissal, perhaps why he was sacked, a "mistake" his successor, General James Clapper, won't make, but what's coming isn't certain, given influential forces on both sides in America, the same ones arguing them for years. Yet beyond saber-rattling rhetoric and sanctions, the administration's position is unclear.

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William A. Cook

A confluence of news stories emerged this past week that, if related, shed an unusual light on the deteriorating crisis in the mid-east, most especially on Palestine and Iran. On June 27th, Ha’aretz made this observation about discussions at the G-8 meeting in Ontario: “World leaders ‘believe absolutely’ that Israel may decide to take military action against Iran to prevent the latter from acquiring nuclear weapons,” citing a statement made by Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi. Indeed, he went on to say that “Israel will probably act preemptively.” So engaged were the representatives of the G-8 that they issued a statement “calling on Iran to ‘respect the rule of law’ and to ‘hold a transparent dialogue’ over its nuclear ambitions.” Their statement went on to say that Iran should show a ‘commitment to international law’.

On July 7th, Newsmax, in an article titled “Lieberman: US Prepared to Strike Iran to Stop Nuclear Weapons” states: “The United States may be forced to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities if diplomatic efforts and economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic fail, Sen. Joseph Lieberman said Wednesday after a meeting with Israeli officials in Jerusalem.”

On July 11th, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh told Press TV that “over a 100 countries in the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency have condemned Israel for not cooperating with the IAEA. The Zionist regime has refused to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty and it is believed that the regime has about 200 nuclear warheads capable of being mounted on long-range missiles and a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.”. How are these stories related?

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Ernest A. Canning

The radical-right agenda, hidden from so many of the uninformed, working class useful idiots (aka post-2008 "Tea Party" followers) was aptly described by Chalmers Johnson on the cover of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine as "a conspiracy to privatize war and disaster and grab public property for the rich few...[as part of] our headlong flight back to feudalism..."

In Meg Whitman, Wall Street, 'Billionaire Sociopaths' and the Media 'Substance Deficit', we cited a Pew Research Center study on how the campaign by America's political elites to ravage the middle class has, for "wide layers of the population," destroyed "faith in the US government to secure their most basic social needs." As we observed at the time:

What has become painfully obvious is that many within these "wide layers of the population" simply do not realize that the source of the middle class demise lies not in government per se but in the carefully thought out, decades-long effort of the hard-right to "starve the beast" by massive tax cuts for those who already have too much in order to, in the words of Grover Norquist, reduce government to the point it could be "drown in a bathtub" and in order to privatize the commons so that the privileged few can be enriched beyond the wildest imagination of ordinary citizens.

An American Political Science Association study, cited by Bill Moyers in Moyers on America (2004) referred to a

political elite who have...inequality as its mission and has organized 'a fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory cannons, and the intellectual and cultural framework that have shaped public responsibility from social harms arising from the excesses of private powers.'"

Into this mix comes "Tea Party in Sonora": Ken Silverstein of Harper’s Says Arizona is Laboratory for Radical GOP Policies, a powerful, must-see segment of Democracy Now (video below) which exposes the bleak future, indeed the madness, in store for all of us if we permit the radical right to assert the same control at the national level that they have already secured in Arizona.

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Stephen Lendman

Palestinian and Jewish land in 1946 (left) and in 2000

The new plan updates older ones, going back to the first, what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe documented in his 2006 book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," on David Ben-Gurion's Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew), his final master plan following Plans A, B and C, what Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe, commemorated annually to never forget.

By bombarding and besieging villages and population centers, destroying communities, and expelling or killing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, it planned an exclusive Jewish state, excluding Arabs by any means, including mass-murder, dispossession, and persecution, ongoing to this day, what Palestinians heroically resist.

It took six months to complete, expelling or slaughtering about 800,000 people, and destroying 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and other cities. It was barbarous ethnic cleansing, Palestinians shown no mercy, including women and children, yet it was just the beginning, much more yet to come, including new ethnic cleaning plans.

Old and New Master Plans

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) is an Israeli policy research organization, its president Dore Gold, a notorious right-wing extremist, hostile to democratic principles and Palestinian rights.

It's recent report is titled "Demography, Geopolitics, and the Future of Israel's Capital: Jerusalem's Proposed Master Plan," explaining that on October 7, 2008, the District Planning and Construction Commission for the Jerusalem region proposed one, approved by Mayor Nir Barkat, then revised "to create and preserve a stable Jewish majority in the unified capital," assure the city always stays unified, and follows Ben-Gurion's idea:

to "bring Jews to eastern Jerusalem at any cost. We must settle tens of thousands of Jews in a brief time. Jews will agree to settle in eastern Jerusalem even in shacks. We cannot await the construction of orderly neighborhoods. The essential thing is that Jews will be there."

In large numbers they're displacing Palestinians, destroying their homes, seizing their land, and fulfilling Ben-Gurion's dream to make Israel exclusively Jewish, Jerusalem its capital.

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Christopher King

Iraq war whistleblower was probably assassinated

Christopher King calls on Britain’s coalition government to release the postmortem report – so far kept secret – on the death of Iraq war whistleblower and UN weapons inspector David Kelly, who allegedly committed suicide but is suspected of having been murdered by US or Israeli agents.

Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve, respectively Britain’s new secretary of state for justice and attorney-general, have had time to settle into their chairs and start looking for things that need repairing after the disastrous Blair-Brown government.

One of the first things to settle is the death of the UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Dr David Kelly, who was hounded by the Blair government for correctly saying that its propaganda in selling the Iraq war was “sexed up”. He was then found dead near his home, having allegedly committed suicide. The circumstances are suspicious and his postmortem report is secret.

At the present time I and a lot of other people are disposed to believe that he was assassinated, probably by the Americans or Israelis. If there’s no coverup, why did the Blair-Brown government seal the details of his death for 70 years? I wrote about this two months ago and there have been many calls for openness since Dr Kelly’s death. Suspicion of an assassination coverup is not going away. In January this year, Lord Hutton claimed that the postmortem report on Dr Kelly was available but no independent person has seen it yet. Doctors who have asked for it have been refused.

It’s worth reading the piece in the Independent by Tom Mangold who says that anyone who believes that Dr Kelly was murdered must also believe in the tooth fairy. This gentleman claims some sort of acquaintanceship with Dr Kelly, although not friendship, despite the Independent’s sub-title to this story. Mai Pederson, a lady who was a friend, believes that he was murdered. Until about a year ago I believed the suicide story. That is no longer possible however, either for me or Mr Mangold.

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Chris Floyd

"This is the system -- the creed, the extremist faith -- that all "serious" players in all the "major" power faction on both sides of the Atlantic adhere to. Their god of greed demands human sacrifices: and so the poor must die. And to keep the system going, more and more people must be made poor: first those in the "outer darkness" of faraway lands, then finally those in the sacred "Homelands" themselves. We have been watching the latter process play out slowly in the past few decades -- but it is accelerating now at dizzying speed."

News from Blighty: the disparity in death rates between the well-off and the poor in the UK is now greater than at any time since 1921. The London Review of Books points to a new study by the British Medical Journal that shows that by 2007, "for every 100 people under the age of 65 dying in the best-off areas, 199 were dying in the poorest tenth of areas."

The Journal study said that the data suggest "it was only prolonged and enthusiastic state intervention" that kept the disparity from being greater. On the other hand, the elite-coddling market jihadism of the Clintonian-Obamaish "New Labour" government (or as the BMJ more politely puts it, "the prolonged state disengagement in promoting equality in outcome") helped stretch the yawning gap even further.

In other words, the few spare pence that the war criminals of the Labour government threw at the poor kept them from dying quite as fast as they would have done otherwise under the system of voracious corporate rapine that Labour entrenched and expanded after inheriting it from the Thatcherite Tories in 1997.

Now, even those few pence are being stripped away -- gleefully -- by what many say is the most extremist government Britain has ever seen, outstripping even Margaret Thatcher in the scope of its draconian cuts and the fervor of its market fundamentalism.

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Tim Coles

Yemen as a case study

Tim Coles takes us through 11 steps necessary to create a “terrorist state”. Using Yemen as a case study, he argues that these steps precisely match US and British policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran as well as Yemen to grow “very poisonous seeds”, some which have ripened while others are ripening.

So, you want to create your own terrorist state, do you? Follow these simple instructions and you will be able to grow “very poisonous seeds. These seeds are growing now. Some have ripened and others are ripening,” as Eqbal Ahmad explained.1

In 2002, the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy(NSS) made it clear that America, with Britain’s help, intends to increase terrorism by chasing terrorists around the world instead of capturing them, or, better still, addressing their grievances – this is the real world, after all, which is dominated by financial interests, so there’s no time for rational solutions here.2 The NSS reads: “The United States and countries cooperating with us must not allow the terrorists to develop new home bases. Together, we will seek to deny them sanctuary at every turn.”3

The policy of giving terrorists no “haven”, rather than working to end terrorism, gives the US and Britain the excuse to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars”4 by chasing terrorists around the globe and, more worryingly, to actually cause terrorism.5 When terrorism occurs, Britain and America then have the perfect excuse to invade, isolate, impose sanctions on and/or corrupt the given country, as we see in Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere. Under Obama, this horrendous pretext to achieve “full spectrum dominance” was expanded.6 So, here is how to create your own terrorist State, using Yemen as an example. This will come in handy as a pretext to invade or impose sanctions on the country of your choosing later on as a continuation of your plans for “full spectrum dominance”.

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"Confucian"

Confucius has been regarded as the central philosophical figure of Chinese thought. An attempt was made to destroy his work during the so-called Cultural Revolution of Maoism. But a similar attempt had already been made during the reign of the Emperor Chin Shih Huang-ti around 215 BC. That attempt failed, as the thoughts of Confucius became the official religion of the Han Dynasty and continued throughout other dynasties until the revolution of 1912.

A central concept in Confucius' Analects is that of the gentleman. For Confucius, a gentleman is someone whose words do not outstrip his deeds. For precisely that reason, this article is written anonymously, to ensure that the author's words do not outstrip his deeds. We may just regard them as thoughts to consider, without any person claiming to possess the quality about to be praised. That must eventually be determined in the battlefield of life by the assessment of fair observers.

The quality is Manliness.

There is perhaps no quality more hated by the Integrated Control System referred to variously as the Illuminati, International Bankers, or whatever other label seems most appropriate. It is clearly the target of their most concerted attacks, linked with what they call a Patriarchal Power structure, machismo, sexism, etc.

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Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood views the UK Conservative-led coalition government’s decision to make it harder to prosecute Israeli war criminals under universal jurisdiction.

Israelis wanted for war crimes can sleep easier thanks to their friends and admirers in the British Establishment.

Yes, our brand-new coalition government intends providing a safe haven for the vilest of criminals.

When Israel’s ex-foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and other architects of the terror campaign against Palestinian civilians, recently cancelled trips to the UK for fear of being arrested under universal jurisdiction laws on charges of war crimes, it sparked a diplomatic row. Britain's then foreign secretary-in-waiting, William Hague, an avid Friend of Israel since boyhood, said: "We cannot have a position where Israeli politicians feel they cannot visit this country. The situation is unsatisfactory [and] indefensible. It is absolutely my intention to act speedily."

He found it “completely unacceptable” that someone like Livni felt she could not visit the UK. He didn’t explain how welcoming Livni with open arms was possible “without weakening our commitment to hold accountable those guilty of war crimes”.

Gordon Brown, the then prime minister, expressed his regret over the incident, saying that Livni was “most welcome in Britain any time” – even though she was no longer a government minister in Israel.

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Christopher Bollyn

The Obama-Hitler-Lenin billboard of the North Iowa Tea Party was
papered over one day after it was posted. Did it get too close to the
truth?

"If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning." ~ U.S. President Andrew Jackson, 1829

A controversial billboard comparing the "change" of U.S. President Barack Obama with Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin raised a few eyebrows before it was papered over one day after it appeared in Mason City, Iowa. The billboard suggests that Obama is a radical socialist leader similar to Hitler and Lenin. This is, in fact, a true comparison, which is probably why it was papered over so quickly. Obama, Hitler, and Lenin were all initially financed by Rothschild money. If we look at the historical record, we can clearly see that all three leaders were originally puppets of the House of Rothschild.

LENIN

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creating of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistic Jews. It is certainly the very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders...
- Winston Churchill, "Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People", Illustrated Sunday Herald, London, February 8, 1920

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John J. Mearsheimer

The attack on the Gaza relief flotilla jeopardizes Israel itself

Israel’s botched raid against the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla on May 31 is the latest sign that Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing. The attack also highlights the extent to which Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States. This situation is likely to get worse over time, which will cause major problems for Americans who have a deep attachment to the Jewish state.

The bungled assault on the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the flotilla, shows once again that Israel is addicted to using military force yet unable to do so effectively. One would think that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would improve over time from all the practice. Instead, it has become the gang that cannot shoot straight.

The IDF last scored a clear-cut victory in the Six Day War in 1967; the record since then is a litany of unsuccessful campaigns. The War of Attrition (1969-70) was at best a draw, and Israel fell victim to one of the great surprise attacks in military history in the October War of 1973. In 1982, the IDF invaded Lebanon and ended up in a protracted and bloody fight with Hezbollah. Eighteen years later, Israel conceded defeat and pulled out of the Lebanese quagmire. Israel tried to quell the First Intifada by force in the late 1980s, with Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin telling his troops to break the bones of the Palestinian demonstrators. But that strategy failed and Israel was forced to join the Oslo Peace Process instead, which was another failed endeavor.

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