Alex Lantier
WSWS

Internment camp in Pithiviers, France. -There were internment camps and con-
centration camps in France before, during and after World War II. (Wikipedia)

"Now the plan to build an Islamic community center two blocks from the World Trade Center buildings destroyed in the 9/11 attacks has become the occasion for a fascistic campaign against Muslims."

There is a stench of fascism arising from the anti-immigrant, law-and-order measures being implemented by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Policies and methods which people had hoped were forever left behind in the 1930s and 1940s are being revived by the European bourgeoisie in an attempt to deal with the consequences of the global economic crisis.

There is no clearer example than the mass deportations of Roma, a population once targeted for extermination by the Nazis. They and their collaborators killed between 250,000 and 500,000 Roma. The French collaborationist Vichy authorities raided Roma communities and held their inhabitants in concentration camps such as Jargeau, near Orléans.

While European governments do not yet encourage anti-Semitism, in part due to popular awareness of the Holocaust, they encourage and exploit anti-Roma hatred.

Other measures proposed by Sarkozy also borrow directly from the legal arsenal of fascism. Having moved to ban the burqa, the government aims to strip French citizenship from naturalized citizens who clash with the police. It is also threatening parents of juvenile delinquents with jail time if their children violate restrictions placed upon them by the justice system.

The last time France revoked citizens’ nationality for non-capital crimes was under the Vichy regime, which took away 7,000 Jews’ citizenship. Holding families criminally responsible for actions of their members, the Nazis’ Sippenhaft policy, has been condemned as barbaric since the collapse of the Third Reich.

While Roma and burqa-wearing women are first in the government’s line of fire, its ultimate target is opposition to austerity and war by the entire working class.

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Stephen Lendman

On June 17, Israel's Cabinet issued a six point plan, agreeing to ease access for civilian goods entering Gaza without loosening inflexible security measures to restrict them. So what's changed? Not much. Increased truck traffic has been modest at best. The consumer ban was partially lifted, permitting previously prohibited items like ketchup, chocolate and children's toys.

Yet, banned products still include vitally needed industrial and construction items, unrelated to security concerns Israel claims, bogusly calling them "dual use." As a result, the promised ease is unfulfilled. Strangling Gaza economically continues. Raw materials, spare parts, essential equipment, and numerous other non-military related goods are denied. In addition, no policy change eased people movement into and out of Gaza, those inside effectively imprisoned, exports still banned, and humanitarian flotillas threatened with forcible interdiction, in some cases their cargos and personal possessions stolen to prevent essential goods and cash donations from being delivered.

In an August 22 Common Dreams article, Ann Wright headlined," "Israeli Soldiers Sell Gaza Flotilla Passengers' Computers and Steal Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars in Cash," saying:

"An Israeli newspaper has revealed that four to six computers (among the hundreds seized from Mavi Marmara passengers were) sold by an Israeli First Lieutenant to three junior military personnel. On August 18, a second officer was arrested in connection with the theft."

Labor Party MK Eitan Kabel called the revelation "embarrassing, humiliating and infuriating," but there's more.

"Israeli commandos also took cash and credit cards from passengers," an estimated $1,000 or more from each, or at least $750,000, donations intended for Gazans. Four passengers alone had $68,000 stolen, money needy Gazans didn't get.

Other items were also taken, including cell phones, cameras, and electronic equipment, supposedly kept safe but not returned when passengers were released. No one so far has been held accountable for [this theft] nor for the cold-blooded murder of up to 15 passengers by [the] three commissions investigating them.

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Philip Giraldi
The American Conservative

Israeli intelligence steps up its activity in the U.S. — and gets away with it.

Israeli government claims that it does not spy on the United States are intended for the media and popular consumption. The reality is that Israel’s intelligence agencies target the United States intensively, particularly in pursuit of military and dual-use civilian technology. Among nations considered to be friendly to Washington, Israel leads all others in its active espionage directed against American companies and the Defense Department. It also dominates two commercial sectors that enable it to extend its reach inside America’s domestic infrastructure: airline and telecommunications security. Israel is believed to have the ability to monitor nearly all phone records originating in the United States, while numerous Israeli air-travel security companies are known to act as the local Mossad stations.

As tensions with Iran increase, sources in the counterintelligence community report that Israeli agents have become more aggressive in targeting Muslims living in the United States as well as in operating against critics. There have been a number of cases reported to the FBI about Mossad officers who have approached leaders in Arab-American communities and have falsely represented themselves as “U.S. intelligence.” Because few Muslims would assist an Israeli, this is done to increase the likelihood that the target will cooperate. It’s referred to as a “false flag” operation.

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Stephen Lendman

With 20 million or more people affected, about 12% of the population, the equivalent of 37 million Americans, Pakistan's devastating floods are truly of biblical proportions, described by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as worse than anything he'd ever seen, saying:

"Thousands of towns and villages have simply been washed away. Roads, buildings, bridges, crops - millions of livelihoods have been lost. People are marooned on tiny islands with the floodwaters all around them (without food, sanitation, medical help, or shelter). They are drinking dirty water. They are living in the mud and ruins of their lives. Many have lost family and friends. Many more are afraid their children and loved ones will not survive in these condition."

One fifth or more of Pakistan is under water, the US equivalent of Texas, California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Florida, and Oregon combined, what's unimaginable in America and would never be tolerated without massive emergency aid.

Yet the Pakistani-based News reports that:

"Hundreds of thousands of people including children, women and aged men have been trapped on the rooftops of their houses as floodwaters with 5-feet depth has blanketed entire districts."

They won't survive without help. Deadly disease outbreaks are feared. Already, reports of cholera are surfacing, suggesting perhaps a much wider scale problem than verified.

Unknown numbers have perished, perhaps thousands, likely tens or hundreds of thousands before it's over. Yet aid so far donated has been pathetic, America providing token relief only, hardly enough to matter, Washington's usual response to great need, even emergencies, the way Haitian earthquake victims were treated, still on their own and out of luck eight months after their disaster.

Pakistan's government and world leaders have been disturbingly indifferent to the problem, doing far too little when massive amounts of emergency aid are urgently needed quickly.

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Stephen Lendman

In this picture, U.S. soldiers stand guard after a road side bomb blast
in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, in Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/
Hadi Mizban)

In an August 2 speech to disabled veterans, Obama touted his planned withdrawal, saying:

"As a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end....Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy....for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility. And I made it clear that by August 31, 2010, America's combat mission in Iraq would end. And that is exactly what we are doing - as promised, on schedule."

At two or more recent fundraisers, he repeated the "pledge:"

"We are keeping the promise I made when I began my campaign for the presidency: by the end of this month, we will have removed 100,000 troops from Iraq, and our combat mission will be over."

Unmentioned was combat readiness remaining, paramilitary army additions replacing those leaving, shifting Iraq forces to Afghanistan, increasing hostilities against Pakistan, committing daily war crimes throughout the region, planning more conflicts ahead, continuing America's permanent war agenda, glorifying them in the name of peace, destroying generations of US youths by a never-ending cycle of imperial wars, not liberating ones.

No matter. US cable channels hailed the Iraq pullout like VJ day, none more cloyingly one-sided than MSNBC, devoting an entire evening for "embedded" coverage - "in bed with" for Studs Terkel (1912 - 2008), to report propaganda, not truths, regular media fare, round the clock on cable TV, MSNBC reporter Richard Engel exiting with troops in a specially equipped "Bloom-mobile" (named for NBC's late correspondent David Bloom), host Rachael Maddow in Baghdad, and Keith Olbermann anchoring coverage in New York, a trio doing what they do best - deceiving, not informing viewers, defending imperial wars, not condemning them.

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Danny Schechter
Alternet

People wait in line to enter a job fair in New York City. The demand for
jobless benefits in Ohio has nearly exhausted the state's unemployment
funds. (Associated Press)

We know we live in hard times that are on the verge of getting harder, with 500,000 new claims for unemployment last week, a recent record.

The stock market may be over for now as fear and panic drives small investors out. Big corporations hoard stashes of cash rather then hire workers. The D word (depression) is back in play.

Foreclosures are up, and the administration’s programs to stop them are down, well below their stated goals, only helping a sixth of those promised assistance.

And here’s a statistic for you: 300,000. That’s the number of foreclosure filings every month for the past 17 months. This year, 1.9 million homes will be lost, down from 2 million last year. Is that progress? In July alone, 92,858 homes were repossessed.

At the same time, the number of canceled mortgage modifications exceeded the number of successful ones. According to Ml-implode.com, last month, “the number of trial modification cancellations surged to 616,839, greatly outnumbering the 421,804 active permanent modifications."

And don’t think this problem only affects those homeowners about to go homeless. According to the New York Times, Michael Feder, the chief executive of the real estate data firm Radar Logic, says we are all at risk.

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Larry Chin
Online Journal

"Insanity" by Wladyslaw Podkowinski

Exemplified by the furor over the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” in New York, and rumors of a new Al-Qaeda “mastermind,” 9/11 “war on terrorism” propaganda has been ramped up to deafening levels by various political factions.

Nearly a decade since Bush/Cheney’s 9/11 false flag deception, a fearful, self-destructive American mass public remains fully brainwashed by “war on terrorism” deception -- ignorant of history, and militantly oblivious to facts.

“Ground Zero mosque”: the art of missing the point

The ludicrous uproar over plans to build a Muslim community center in New York, the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” has dominated mainstream corporate news headlines. Political players from all sides, including President Barack Obama have joined the fray, attempting to prove themselves the superior “anti-terrorist,” or the better “commemorator of 9/11, when 3,000 people were killed by Muslim terrorists.” The right wing is going berserk, gleefully.

Heated arguments have exploded around religion, tolerance, democracy, etc. --everything except the only fact that matters: 9/11 was a false flag operation, courtesy of the Bush-Cheney administration, carried out by an elite consensus, in order to justify the “war on terrorism,” and everything that came with it. Mass murder. Unending resource conquest. A police state within US borders. Open criminality.

The perpetual threat posed by a fabricated outside enemy, and a militarized, fearful populace, remain the centerpieces of elite policy, and they have been consistently maintained by both Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations. The demonization of Muslims continues to facilitate pillage.

While violent hatred continues to be directed at Muslims (and all “foreigners”), the criminals who truly massacred 3,000 people in the World Trade Center continue to enjoy power, wealth, and high positions of world “leadership” and remain in control of virtually every aspect of society. Those who perpetuated the cover-up (including the Obama administration) still “run the world,” to mass public enthusiasm.

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Israel Shamir

WikiLeaks Афганистаны дайны тухай маш нууц материалуудыг
ил гаргав, by AagiiNxS [A tentative translation from Mongolian:
A spokesman for the Afghan military reported that a suspected
car bomb belonging to insurgents was neutralized.]

After the tremendous coup of Wikileaks, this semi-clandestine site and organisation, which had recently brought to public knowledge so many government crimes through so many hundreds of thousands of documents (with even more of the way), has predictably come under attack. Not only from Pentagon hacks, but also from various bodies we would expect to back them rather than knife them in the back.

Reporters Without Borders accused Wikileaks of being irresponsible, for having published the names of US agents in Afghanistan. This accusation reveals the true nature of these Reporters. They do not care about freedom of the press, they care about protecting American interests and American spies. Whoever is old enough to remember the revelations of Philip Agee will recognise the pattern: All of a sudden these guys, who normally do not mind murdering others, recognise their own mortality and vulnerability. This is very good. Spies and agents should be outed: it will cause them to behave responsibly.

So much for the pro-establishment line. What a pity that some of our friends in the blogosphere joined in the chorus of detractors. Theirs are familiar and respected names of the free web: F. William Engdahl, Gordon Duff, Zahir Ebrahim. Psychologically, one understands them. Could it be that all of a sudden we got such a windfall? Is it not a bit like those emails from Nigeria offering us millions for the simple information about our bank account? A diffident man is likely to get cold feet when a beautiful girl smiles back and proposes having a drink in a pub. The Wikileaks-deniers created an elaborate conspiracy theory: these hundreds of thousands of real documents were fabricated by the CIA and offered to an innocent public.

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Stephen Lendman

Colombia, America's closest South American ally, is a corrupted narco-state, a repressive death squad faux democracy, threatening regional neighbors, and reigning terror against trade unionists, human rights workers, campesinos, pro-democracy organizations, independent journalists, and legitimate resistance groups like the FARC-EP. Established in 1964, James Petras calls it the "longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world," persisting valiantly for decades.

Thanks to Plan Colombia and other support, the state is heavily militarized, more than ever now serving as Washington's land-based aircraft carrier against regional targets, including neighboring Venezuela.

The Pentagon got expanded access, former President Alvaro Uribe agreeing to US forces on seven more military bases (three airfields, two naval installations, and two army facilities), as well as unrestricted use of the entire country as-needed for internal and external belligerency, including out-of-control violence and human rights abuses, the region's most extreme to keep two-thirds of Colombians impoverished, millions displaced, corruption endemic, wealth concentration growing, and corporate predators freed to exploit and plunder.

Also to facilitate record amounts of Colombian cocaine from government-controlled areas reaching US and world markets, new President Juan Manuel Santos embracing the "Uribe Doctrine," now his. It's extremist, hard right, corrupt, brutal, corporate-friendly, and militarized in lockstep with Washington.

As Uribe's Defense Minister, James Petras explained that Santos was an assassin, deploying military forces and paramilitary death squads

"to kill and terrorize entire population centers, (murdering) over 20,000 people....falsely labeled 'guerrillas.' "

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Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery's Column

BEFORE THE victory of feminism, there was a popular Israeli song in which the boy asks the girl: “When you say No, what do you mean?”

This question has already been answered. Now I am more and more tempted to ask: “When you say Zionism, what do you mean?”

That is also my answer when asked whether I am a Zionist.

When you say Zionist, what do you mean?

LATELY, ASSOCIATIONS for the defense of Zionism have been springing up like mushrooms after rain. Poisonous mushrooms.

All kinds of American Jewish multi-millionaires – many of them Casino kings, brothel moguls, money launderers and tax evaders - are financing “patriotic” Israeli groups in Israel, to fight the holy war for “Zionism”.

The assault takes place along all the fronts. Jewish organizations aim at cleansing the universities of post-Zionists. They threaten to induce other donors to withhold their donations, they terrorize presidents and rectors and frighten professors and students.

Americans may be reminded of the sinister era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who blighted the life of thousands of intellectuals and artists, pushing many of them into exile or suicide. Europeans might be reminded of the days when “Aryan” professors informed on their treasonous colleagues, and students in brown shirts threw their Jewish colleagues out of the windows.

This is only one sector of the broad offensive. One group has proudly announced that it is teaching hundreds of professional Zionists how to cleanse Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, of post-Zionist items and plant Zionist ones in their stead.

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Christopher King
Redress

British Attorney-General Dominic Grieve’s response to widespread calls for Dr David Kelly’s postmortem files to be released continues to indicate that the government is hiding something of importance, argues Christopher King.

Dr Kelly allegedly committed suicide when identified as the high-profile within-government dissenter from the Blair government’s lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction immediately prior to the Iraq war. His postmortem files are secret.

Although, when in opposition, Mr Grieve undertook to review the Kelly records, now that he is in government he declines to do so. He insists that Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, should make any decision to release them. He is quoted as saying,

● It’s right to say that hunches, theories are not enough – there has to be evidence. And if the evidence is available and people feel that they have the evidence, then if they send it to me it will be considered

="#3D2B1F">● I have no reason to think ... and not a shred of evidence to suggest that there has been a cover up. I know that some people have put some theories forward but if you’re going to put a theory forward like that you need some evidence and as matters stand at the moment I haven’t seen.

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Margaret Kimberley

Wealthy Americans whose paramount issue is unlimited support for Israel create huge distortions in U.S. politics, bending presidents to their will. Barack Obama’s career has long been nurtured by one such billionaire hyper-Zionist, who hopes to instigate an attack on Iran.

“Barack Obama has established a strong record as a true friend of Israel, a stalwart defender of Israel’s security, and an effective advocate of strengthening the steadfast U.S.-Israel relationship, publicly stating that Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state should never be challenged.” – Lester Crown

Lester Crown is a Chicagoan with a net worth of four billion dollars. He owns a large stake in and is a former president and board chairman of defense contractor General Dynamics. He also has held large holdings in Hilton Hotels, Maytag (now Whirlpool), and the Chicago Bulls and New York Yankees.

Crown was an early supporter of Barack Obama’s candidacy first for the U.S. Senate, and then for president. He is one of the first and one of his most prodigious fundraisers. As the Obama presidential campaign website says, the candidate “… systematically built a sophisticated, and in many ways quite conventional, money machine.” The Crowns were an integral part of that machinery. One of Lester Crown’s children, James Crown, personally bundled $500,000 in campaign contributions for Obama and served as chairman of the Illinois fund raising effort. Lester Crown and his wife Renee hosted a fundraiser for Obama in 2007 at their home. The event invitation made it clear; their support for Obama was due to his support of Israel, its “right to exist“ and his willingness to strike militarily against Iran.

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Stephen Lendman

On August 21, Haaretz writer Natasha Mozgovaya headlined, "Israel, Palestinians accept US invitation to direct peace talks," saying:

They'll "restart direct talks on Sept. 2 in a modest step toward forging a peace deal within 12 months to create a Palestinian state and peacefully end one of the world's most intractable conflicts."

Another grand illusion is assured, fudged to look real. Henry Kissinger coined the phrase "constructive ambiguity," meaning to give negotiations an appearance of progress. For others, it's putting lipstick on a pig or how Edward Said described the Oslo Accords and Declaration of Principles, saying:

"the fashion-show vulgarities of the White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the suspension of most of his people's rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton's performance, like a 20th century Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of reconciliation and obeisance, (and) the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation."

It was unilateral surrender, a Palestinian Versailles, affirming Israel's colonial agenda, giving the Palestinians nothing but the right to be Israel's enforcer. All major issues were deferred, including an independent Palestinian state, the right of return, the future of settlements, borders, water rights, and status of Jerusalem as sovereign Palestinian territory and future home of its capital.

Seventeen years later, they're still unresolved and won't be this time, another grand illusion planned, the same outcome assured - betrayal by unilateral surrender, or as much of it as Abbas dare give.

An earlier article titled, "Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception," reviewed earlier efforts since the mid-1970s, quoting Netanyahu once calling the peace process "a waste of time," negotiating solely for Israeli dominance, the article accessed through THIS link.

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Sheldon Richman¨
The Future of Freedom Foundation

If you want to know what tyranny is like, look around.

The national government — specifically the executive branch — can do pretty much what it wants. It could bomb Iran tomorrow without a declaration of war from Congress. It can — and does — conduct secret wars and covert operations against countries that have done nothing to us. Of course, they are secret only to the ignorant taxpayers who must finance them and perhaps suffer when the provoked retaliation occurs. It can have men behind PlayStation consoles in Nevada fire Hellfire missiles from aerial drones on people in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.

This tyrannical government can send any foreigner picked up anywhere in the world to third countries known for torturing prisoners. It can hold people accused of nothing indefinitely in prisons in Cuba and Afghanistan and torture them into making false confessions. It can conduct a war crimes trial in a military kangaroo court for a man, Omar Khadr, held captive for eight years after he was picked up at the age of 15 during a U.S. assault on villagers near Kabul. His torture-induced “confessions” will be admissible. All this is in violation of commitments under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict not to treat children in war as though they were adults. It can assassinate even American citizens abroad without a scent of due process.

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Paul Craig Roberts
VDARE.com

The United States is running out of time to get its budget and trade deficits under control. Despite the urgency of the situation, 2010 has been wasted in hype about a non-existent recovery. As recently as August 2 Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner penned a New York Times Column, Welcome to the Recovery.

As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear on many occasions, an appearance of recovery was created by over-counting employment and undercounting inflation. Warnings by Williams, Gerald Celente, and myself have gone unheeded, but our warnings recently had echoes from Boston University professor Laurence Kotlikoff and from David Stockman, who excoriated the Republican Party for becoming big-spending Democrats.

It is encouraging to see a bit of realization that, this time, Washington cannot spend the economy out of recession. The deficits are already too large for the dollar to survive as reserve currency, and deficit spending cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been moved offshore.

However, the solutions offered by those who are beginning to recognize that there is a problem are discouraging. Kotlikoff thinks the solution is massive Social Security and Medicare cuts or massive tax increases or hyperinflation to destroy the massive debts.

Perhaps economists lack imagination, or perhaps they don’t want to be cut off from Wall Street and corporate subsidies, but Social Security and Medicare are insufficient at their present levels, especially considering the erosion of private pensions by the dot com, derivative and real estate bubbles. Cuts in Social Security and Medicare, for which people have paid 15% of their earnings all their life, would result in starvation and deaths from curable diseases.

Tax increases make even less sense. It is widely acknowledged that the majority of households cannot survive on one job. Both husband and wife work and often one of the partners has two jobs in order to make ends meet. Raising taxes makes it harder to make ends meet—thus more foreclosures, more food stamps, more homelessness. What kind of economist or humane person thinks this is a solution?

Ah, but we will tax the rich. The usual idiocy. The rich have enough money. They will simply stop earning. Let’s get real. Here is what the government is likely to do.

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