Stephen Lendman

The Germans came, the police, and
they started banging houses: "Raus,
raus, raus, Juden raus..."

Located at the European University Institute (EUI), the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies (RSCAS) conducts "inter-disciplinary and comparative research (on) major issues facing the process of integration and European society."

Prepared by Asem Khalil, its new report is titled, "Impact of Israeli Military Order No. 1650 on Palestinians' Rights to Legally Reside in Their Own Country," accessed through THIS link.

Taking effect in April 2010, it defined all West Bank residents as "infiltrators" (including native born ones), requiring they get IDF-issued permits.

Order No. 1650 (Prevention of Infiltration) and Order No. 1949 (Security Provisions) were issued in October 2009 as amendments to a 1969 Order No. 329 (Order regarding Prevention of Infiltration), declaring "infiltrator" state enemies from Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon would be imprisoned and/or deported.

Potentially, all West Bank and East Jerusalemites risk dispossession and expulsion, part of Israel's longstanding policy to seize all parts of Palestine it wishes, removing indigenous Arabs from their homeland illegally, controlling those remaining under an oppressive apartheid system critics call worse than South Africa's with good reason.

It's a sophisticated form of social, economic, political and racial discrimination, strangulation, and genocide, incorporating the worst elements of colonialism and apartheid as well as repressive dispossession, displacement, and state terrorism to separate Palestinians from their land and heritage, deny them their civil and human rights, and gradually remove or eliminate them altogether.

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Bill Van Auken

Right-wing loonies & mob hysteria against a proposed Islamic cultural
center in lower Manhattan. They want to keep the 9/11 wound open in
order to use it as a platform for authoritarian aggression. They are bigots,
xenophobes and outright racists. Thermite was found at ground zero...

[With his speech and speedy backtracking,] “Obama managed to collect all the political damage for taking an unpopular stand without gaining credit for political courage.” ~ Michael Gerson

With the US mid-term elections less than three months away, the issue that has become the focus of this campaign season is a telling indicator of the intensely reactionary character of official politics in America and of both big business parties.

Employing unbridled hypocrisy and cynicism, right-wing forces centered in the Republican Party, but aided and abetted by leading Democrats, have attempted to whip up mob hysteria against a proposed Islamic cultural center that has been approved by local authorities for construction in lower Manhattan.

The center, the Cordoba House, is to include a swimming pool, a gym, an arts center and a memorial to the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. While its supporters have stressed its inter-faith character, it has been almost universally dubbed as the “Ground Zero mosque.”

Semi-fascist elements have denounced the proposed center—to be built two and a half blocks from where New York City’s World Trade Center once stood—as a desecration of the “sacred ground” where over 2,700 people were killed on 9/11. Former House Speaker and probable Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has compared the backers of the project to Nazis protesting outside the Holocaust museum.

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Arthur Silber

I've come across one item that merits a followup to my recent discussion of the entirely false controversy about the "Ground Zero mosque," and of the bigotry that is the source of opposition to the "mosque."

One of the themes constantly repeated by many opponents to the construction of Cordoba House is that they recognize the right for the project to be built, and their objection is only to the project's planned location. This is the formulation offered by John Boehner, for example: "The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn't necessarily make it the right thing to do. That is the essence of tolerance, peace and understanding."

I discussed the illegitimacy of the reasons for objecting to the particular site in the earlier post, and let's leave that aside for this discussion. Here, I'm focused only on the fact that opponents almost always say that they have no problem with the project being built anywhere else -- they just don't want it at or near Ground Zero. This is the obvious implication of Boehner's statement, and many other opponents have said the same. Many opponents also note that there are many mosques (some of them actual mosques!) elsewhere in New York City, perhaps as many as 100.

If they're comfortable with mosques anywhere else in New York City, just not at or very near Ground Zero, they should be completely comfortable with mosques outside the city altogether, correct? They certainly should be comfortable with mosques scattered around the United States, sometimes thousands of miles from Ground Zero.

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Marco Torres

"Well-funded and highly-organized disinformation operations are in full-swing throughout the internet. From forums to comment boards and even professional websites that have only one purpose: Defame, distract, and destroy the truth."

From pollution to politics, the era of deception and duplicity has reached new heights and hijacked almost every form of media in the world. In the last frontiers for truth such as the internet, disinformation operations are in full swing to discredit and destroy any semblance of authentic and factual information available to the public.

How many more lies will people around the world accept as truth? Some say a global awakening is taking place, but at what cost? Will it take the destruction of most of the earth and its resources before people are enlightened?

The escalating media and political reports are so far fetched, cunning, and so beyond reality, it's as if each is trying to top the other with one sinister plot after the next. To demonstrate the outright lies by national governments and the media, let's take three examples from the last year alone, including the H1N1 scandal, airport body scanners and the BP oil disaster.

The H1N1 Scandal

Last year, the H1N1 scandal reached its pinnacle in the fall of 2009 when the world united on the internet with a consensus and practical understanding of the World Health Organization's orchestratration to deceive the masses. From radio, internet, television, newspapers, magazines, outdoor posters, signage and promotions, you could not escape the flu hype campaigns so diligently pursued by all the malicious agendas at play who only wanted one thing - to promote a dangerous H1N1 vaccine. After hundreds of reports exposed the criminal activity by all levels of government, we left the same people in power to do it all over again.

According to preliminary reports, another round of pandemic vaccine campaigns are scheduled for the 2010/2011 season and they're already underway. However, there appears to be a recombination that has changed the H1N1 lab created virus into a more lethal form and it is not a hoax, but it may be yet another CDC lab experiment.

The CDC has recently issued a Health Advisory in connection with two summer outbreaks of H3N2 in Iowa. Other reports from Russia and India indicate that a real epidemic may be upon us if the virus steadily recombines and acquires new genetics. Even though a new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs, reassortment of H1N1-H5N1 has been a legitimate concern for years. The WHO first suggested the reassortment of H1N1-H5N1 in 2004.

If this is really the case, how will the public react after all the lies from health agencies who have sworn to protect us? Will they hype another vaccine and if so, will the public even respond?

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Javaid Iqbal Bhat

Sonmarg - Kashmir -This shot was taken in Kashmir, specifically at Son-
marg. They call it heaven on Earth! Across Latitudes (flickr)

Another week has passed. The holy month of Ramdhan has also entered. Except waking up before dawn for taking ‘sehri’ meals, and then opening the fast after some seventeen hours, the week was same as the foregoing seven days. The same angst came after the similar questions. The brains have turned into question popping boxes. What, where and how many constitute the trinity wedded eternally to which are our neurons. An answer to ‘where’ can be any place on the map of Kashmir.Kupwara, Kangan, Mattan ,Pattan you name the place it is very much possible that human life has been terminated in one of them. The answer to ‘how many’ brings emotionally-purged statistics. As if there were no hopes, dreams and feelings behind those dry figures. Much like the answer from a shepherd, fresh from a mountain meadow, who is asked how many have disappeared from the flock. His heavy hearted answer has much to do with the details of compensation than with the life gone extinct. We are a flock of fear-frozen sheep in this Himalayan meadow; hung against some mountain is a press-on, press-off button controlling the movement and direction of people. Every week a few wayward, misbehaving lambs are done to death. No one keeps a count of the injured or the permanently disabled. Like a lame ram they just cannot help their cases; either they have to fall by the wayside or drag their way up into the flock. The dust of the flock clouds their pain. That is expected. Where dead do not have the luxury of being mourned, the lame and the injured have to learn to carry on by themselves.

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