Stephen Lendman

On August 9, Israel's self-appointed Turkel Commission, its planned whitewash, began hearings into the Freedom Flotilla massacre, a humanitarian mission delivering essential aid to besieged Gazans, Israeli officials blaming the victims, not themselves.

After the incident, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said organizers incited the attack. His deputy, Danny Ayalon, connected them to international terrorists, trying to smuggle in arms, bogusly claiming weapons were found on board the mother ship, the Mavi Marmara.

Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev accused the activists of "initiat(ing) the violence," insisting IDF commandos "were attacked with knives, clubs, and even live fire." Chief of Staff General Gabi Ashkenazi said soldiers were forced by violence to open fire.

He and other Israeli officials lied, clear evidence showing commandos attacked peaceful activists even before boarding, shooting others multiple times at point blank range, some in the head. Their well-planned mission was to interdict, attack, assassinate designated targets, seize the ship's cargo, take prisoners, brutalize them, then send them to an Israeli prison for interrogations.

Straightaway, damage control cover-up began, including appointment of the Turkel Commission, Israel's thinly veiled whitewash, hearings now underway - on day one, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the first witness, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishing his full testimony. Let the charade begin.

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Alan Sabrosky

Samson destroys the temple of Dagon. Gustave Doré

"Israel has had ongoing access for decades to US nuclear codes and systems, and may well be able to override safeguards here to obtain command and control (and therefore targeting and launch capabilities) over at least US land-based strategic nuclear systems."

As the US edges toward an unprovoked and utterly needless war with Iran, some remarks by an eminent and experienced observer of that part of the world caught my attention. First, he noted that Israel and the US realize that the next war will burn much of the Middle East and may well spell the end of Israel.

Now, Israel certainly believes that about the Middle East, and in fact hopes it happens, because that just makes its position stronger. But neither Israel nor the US — at least at a governmental level — accept the second part of the proposition, just the opposite, that in fact it will be the saving of Israel — because (as I’ve noted elsewhere) if the regional chaos is great enough, Israel will take the opportunity to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians (and probably Israeli Arabs as well) from “Greater Israel” by shoving them over its borders, into Jordan and the Sinai (and some into the Lebanon as well). That will leave it intact and Jewish, its neighbors overwhelmed by a few million destitute Palestinians — a 2nd and even worse Nakba — and everyone else in ruins or teetering on the edge. Netanyahu, Barak, Lieberman and their merry thugs won’t shed a tear or lose a second’s sleep over any of it, much less over the many Americans who will die in yet another of America’s Jewish Wars.

Second, he remarked that Every week Israel becomes weaker vis-à-vis the “resistance axis” and at what point does Israel decide to bring down the house and start again if it can survive with enough military power (backed by the US) to remake the region.

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Patrick Martin

Before/after the illegal US attack on the people of Afghanistan.

[TIME Magazine Stoops to New Low to Justify Afghanistan War: If we want to talk about mutilation, well, there’s a war going on in Afghanistan. People are getting shot, burned and blown to bits every single day. American soldiers are coming home without limbs, with parts of their brains missing, with their faces burned off, with colostomy bags, etc., and the Afghans – including civilians – are getting the same in much higher numbers, and usually without the benefit of modern medical care.]

The US media has launched a full-scale effort to suppress growing popular opposition to the war in Afghanistan, using one-sided propaganda about Taliban atrocities to conceal the murderous character of the American intervention. Beginning with the cover of Time magazine, showing a young woman mutilated by her Taliban husband, the media blitz now focuses on the killing of 10 medical aid workers Friday in the northeastern province of Badakhshan. Six of the ten were American citizens.

Both of these events are, without a doubt, terrible human tragedies. But they are being used in the most cynical fashion to browbeat the American people into accepting an indefinite continuation of the war in Afghanistan, under conditions where a clear majority of the population now regards the war with hostility and favors a rapid US pullout.

The July 29 issue of Time marked the official kickoff of the campaign, with the cover photo of the young woman whose nose and ears were hacked off for attempting to flee her husband, and an accompanying headline declaring this atrocity to be “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan.” The political message was unmistakable: those who advocate withdrawal of US forces are condemning Afghan women to butchery.

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Saman

Photo: Roma prepare a meal in the garden of an abandoned house on December 9, 2009 in Montreuil, on the outskirts of Paris, where some 20 Roma people have taken shelter after they were disloged from various places. They are now refurbishing the property. [Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images)]

President Nicholas Sarkozy of France has ordered the expulsion of illegal Roma and itinerant immigrants from his country as well as dismantling of their camps. Supporters of the order look upon the Roma as illegal settlers who sabotage public order and have criminal tendencies. Their camps are said to be sources of illicit trafficking, children exploited for begging, prostitution or delinquency. Opponents of this order criticize it as being xenophobic and populist and wrongfully labeling Roma as a public safety threat.

The President is planning on destroying 300 camps in France, most of which belong to the Roma. Unfortunately he is using an ethnic solution for a delinquency problem. But then France has a tendency of coming up with strict, intolerant policies that are quite hypocritical in their nature, such as their move to ban the veil.

On my last visit to France, I was intrigued by the presence of a group of people who resembled the gypsies of fairy tales. They stood out starkly in their colorful and unusual clothing, roaming the streets aimlessly with their children in tow and usually asking for money from tourists. I wondered, who are these people and where do they come from? They were definitely not originally from this region as their facial features and persona were exactly the opposite of what Frenchmen like to portray themselves as.

The Romani people are believed to have originated from central India, probably in the modern-day state of Rajasthan. Their westward migration is said to have occurred in waves between AD 500 to AD 1000, and migration continued towards Europe with the Roma spreading across the Balkans and Northern Europe by the 14th century. Many of them migrated from Persia through North Africa and they even managed to reach North America in colonial times.

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