Stephen Lendman

David R. Griffin is Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Emeritus, Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA where he's still co-director of the Center for Process Studies. He's authored and/or edited three dozen books, mainly in his field, but notably and heroically on 9/11 truth, Osama bin Laden, and his newest titled, "Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory." More on it below.

Cass Sunstein is a well-known University of Chicago and Harvard Law School Professor before being appointed Obama's Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, in charge of "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs," among other duties.

Distinguished Law Professor, activist, and international law and human rights expert Francis Boyle said this about both law schools and the University of Chicago's political science department, steeped in neo-con Straussianism:

"Do not send your children to the University of Chicago where they will grow up to become warmongers like (Paul) Wolfowitz and (John) Ashcroft. The University of Chicago is an intellectual and moral cesspool," referring to its political science department and law school.

Its extremist economics department is much the same, indoctrinating students with predatory capitalist ideology. Boyle's "Harvard's Gitmo Kangaroo Law School: The School for Torturers" article advised:

"Do not send your children or students to Harvard Law School where they will grow up to become racist war criminals! Harvard Law School is a Neo-Con cesspool." "Harvard is to Law School as Torture is to Law." [Commenting on Sunstein when he was mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee, Boyle, calling him a] "Neo-Con," [said he'd be a] "lethal" choice.

Professor Emeritus James Fetzer, Founder, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, took sharp issue with Sunstein's attempt to discredit its proponents, saying his

"Conspiracy Theories" [report (discussed below) is a] "corrosive approach" [and a] "massive blunder" [...] "obviously false!" [In fact,] "No one can know which theories are true or false without investigating them." That a Harvard Law professor would suggest it "is simply stunning," yet unsurprising given the source.

Sunstein is a notorious neo-con, abhorrent of First Amendment and other democratic freedoms, believing the rule of law is best served by subverting it.

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Stephen Lendman

Who do they serve anyway? It's clear from the sham peace talks and a new development. The Mahmoud Abbas-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) wants Israel absolved of accountability for Cast Lead crimes of war and against humanity. No matter that conclusive evidence exposed them, the result of the IDF's 23-day day rampage, killing over 1,400, injuring over 5,000, many severely, and practically leveling wide areas of Gaza, affecting mostly civilian and non-military related targets.

Besides other investigations, two UN Human Rights Council (HRC) ones unequivocally condemned Israel's lawlessness, each demanding accountability.

On September 21, the HRC's independent fact finding Committee issued a stinging indictment, among other conclusions, saying:

"It was clear to the Committee that the IDF had not distinguished between civilians and civilian objects and military targets. Both the loss of life and the damage to property were disproportionate to the harm suffered by Israel or any threatened harm."

Israel clearly violated Fourth Geneva and other international laws. Responsible officials must be held accountable.

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Rick Rozoff
StopNATO

On September 25 three missiles fired from a U.S. Predator drone killed four people near the capital of North Waziristan in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, marking at least the 16th such attack in the country so far this month.

This September has seen the largest amount of American unmanned aerial vehicle – drone – attacks in Pakistan and the most deaths resulting from them of any month in the nine-year war waged by the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in Afghanistan and, though insufficiently acknowledged, increasingly in Pakistan.

By way of comparison, in the deadliest month preceding this one, January of 2010, there were 11 missile strikes directed by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Activities unit inside Pakistan. Last September there were six.

In 2009 there were 53 drone attacks. This year so far there have been nearly 75. The estimated death toll from strikes for last year was 709. In less than nine months this year there have been close to 650. If the annual, and surely if September’s monthly, rate continues, 2010 will be the deadliest year to date just as this month is already the deadliest month.

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Raymond Deane
The Electronic Intifada

Eyes in Gaza is a detailed and harrowing account by the Norwegian doctors Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse of their experiences in al-Shifa Hospital during Israel's deadly assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009. For a time, they were not just the only western doctors in Gaza, but the only western witnesses to what they repeatedly call Israel's "massacre" of some 1,400 Palestinian men, women and children. Hence the book's title, bearing witness to their status as witnesses.

At noon on New Year's Eve 2008, four days after the start of Israel's onslaught, Gilbert and Fosse entered Gaza from Egypt. On the morning of 10 January 2010, with Israel's campaign still having a week to run, they returned to Egypt and were replaced by another Norwegian medical team. During the intervening period they assisted their Palestinian colleagues -- whose "historic heroism" (112) they praise unstintingly -- in performing an average of twenty operations daily on the civilian victims of Israel's orgy of shooting and bombing. In the absence of western media they also acted as reporters ("white voices" -- 121-122), giving ten to fifteen interviews daily.

These doctors make no claim to neutrality; they are political activists, committed to advocating Palestinian rights and to condemning western complicity with Israel's crimes. "We are doctors, but we do not want to be only doctors," Gilbert asserts proudly (306).

Not surprisingly, it is this aspect of their activities in Gaza that proved most controversial, causing FOX News to describe Gilbert, shamefully, as "[t]he Hamas propaganda doctor" (123), simply because he described the horrors he witnessed rather than keeping quiet about them. Mordantly, Gilbert asks whether there "[s]hould not then be a limit to the number of times that members of the international press who were not let into Gaza allow themselves to be bussed by Israeli press officers to places just north of the border in Israel where Palestinian rockets had landed, on the whole resulting in holes in the ground?" (130).

In their foreword (jointly written, whereas otherwise they contribute separate chapters on a roughly 50/50 basis) they spell out their refusal to hide behind the "smokescreen" of conventional language that is "laid down over power relationships and political realities." Thus the West Bank and Gaza are "Palestine" or "occupied Palestine," "settlements" are "colonies" and "settlers" are "occupiers," the "Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)" are "the Israeli military forces," "terrorists" (invariably Palestinian, of course, in western discourse) are "combatants," and so forth (16-17).

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Kourosh Ziabari

The 2010 Pakistan flood was one of the most unpleasant and painful incidents of the year which attracted widespread international attention due to its extensiveness and destructive impacts. The floods started in July following heavy monsoon rains and overflow of the Indus River in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan regions of Pakistan. It is estimated that more than two thousand people lost their lives and over a million homes were destroyed since the flooding began. According to the United Nations estimates, over 21 million people have been injured or displaced as a result of the devastative flood.

Pakistani journalist and former Air Force employee Shahid R. Siddiqi joined me in an interview to discuss the aftermaths of the unprecedented flood which encompassed the whole Pakistan in a matter of days and caused serious damages to the country's agriculture, industry, energy sector, infrastructures and even politics. Mr. Siddiqi answered my questions about the government's management of the flood and the distribution of humanitarian aid sent by different countries to the flood-hit regions. He explained that how the unanticipated disaster paralyzed Pakistan in an astonishing way and surprised the unprepared government which failed to manage the crisis appropriately. In this interview, I also seized the opportunity to ask Mr. Siddiqi some questions about the prospect of Iran – Pakistan relations and Pakistan's stance on Iran's nuclear program.

Shahid R. Siddiqi has been a broadcaster with the Radio Pakistan and the Islamabad bureau chief of the "Pakistan and Gulf Economist". His articles and political commentaries appear in the Pakistani newspapers such as Dawn, The Nation and Pakistan Herald. He is also the founder of Asian American Republican Club. Siddiqi is a frequent contributor to Foreign Policy Journal, Middle East Times and Axis of Logic.

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Rick Rozoff
StopNATO

On October 7 the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization military allies will begin the tenth year of their war in Afghanistan, over 3,000 miles from NATO Headquarters in Brussels.

The following month midterm elections will be held in the U.S. and NATO will hold a two-day summit in Portugal. The American administration is eager to achieve, or appear to have achieved, a foreign policy triumph in an effort to retain Democratic Party control of Congress and NATO something to show for the longest and largest military mission in its 61 years of existence.

President Barack Obama has tripled the amount of American combat troops in Afghanistan to 100,000 and along with forces from other NATO member states and partner nations there are now over 150,000 foreign troops in the nation, the most ever stationed in the war-wracked country. 120,000 of those soldiers are now under the command of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the most ever serving in a North Atlantic Alliance-led military operation. NATO deployed 60,000 troops to Bosnia in 1995 and 50,000 to Kosovo four years later, in both instances after bombing campaigns and in post-conflict situations.

The 120,000 NATO forces currently in theater – from 50 nations already with more pegged to provide troops – are at the center of the world’s longest-lasting and increasingly deadly hot war. NATO’s first ground war, its first combat operations in Asia.

Last year was the most lethal for the U.S and NATO in what is now a nine-year conflict and this year has already proven even more costly in terms of combat deaths. And there are three more months to go.

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Christopher Bollyn
Christopher Bollyn's Blog

I have deployed my men for a mission to kill, and we've had great
success with it...I don't reflect much about taking peoples' lives,
company chief Kristian Simonsen in Meymaneh, near the border
with Turkmenistan, told VG (newspaper).

Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty. ~ Madame de Stael

Norwegians and Scandinavians are shocked and appalled to read that Norwegian soldiers actually enjoy killing Afghan resistance fighters, who are fighting the foreign occupation of their country. The Norwegian magazine Alfa coming out this week carries an article with interviews with Norwegian snipers who brag about killing Afghans from more than 2,500 meters. The Norwegian report mirrors a grisly ABC News report of U.S. troops "Killing for Sport" innocent Afghan civilians and cutting off parts of their bodies. These reports reveal the false morality of the criminal war in Afghanistan.

Our Mission Is "To Kill"

To kill Afghans, the soldiers say, is better than having sex.

"To fight and kill is worth three months without sex. Maybe it sounds idiotic but it is better than sex," [one Norwegian sniper said.] "When you are on the field it is you or the enemy. And when you see the 'red mist' (blood spurt from sniper victim)...it is indescribable. It's why we are here." "Sometimes we get lucky," [one of the snipers told Alfa.] "I hit a Taliban in the neck from 2,770 meters on February 2. That was really great."

Alfa magazine appears to be of that peculiar genre of magazines for men that mixes sex with war and violence. Although the issue of Alfa has not yet hit the newstands the story has already caused an uproar in Norway, a land that suffered a brutal occupation under the Nazi regime during the Second World War. This presents the fundamental ethical problem that I posed to the Norwegian government several years ago when it became clear to the public that Norwegian soldiers were not promoting democracy or building schools in Afghanistan - they were simply killing people.

The Norwegian mission that Simonsen commands is called the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) but what are they really constructing? What is the real purpose for the 500 Norwegian soldiers who are on a mission to kill Afghans in the province of Afghanistan that borders Turkmenistan? Could it be that greedy Norwegian oil oligarchs (read Statoil) are invested in the criminal scheme to occupy Afghanistan in order to build the TAPI gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India - for Israel's Mossad gangsters?

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Stephen Lendman

"israel" using white phosphorous to build peace in Palestine

In his book "Against Empire," Michael Parenti defines imperialism as

"the process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests of one nation expropriate for their own enrichment the land, labor, raw materials, and markets of another people."

In a September 21 article, titled "What Do Empires Do?" he says "Imperialism is what (they) do." They don't just pursue "power for power's sake. There are (significant) interests at stake, fortunes to be made many times over," including land, mineral wealth, cheap labor, and easily exploited markets. They're there, so take them, the strong dominating the weak. Besides seizing and controlling Syrian and Lebanese land, it's how Israel rules Palestine, no regional country a match for its military might with no shyness about using it.

The Latest Peace Process Round

On and off again for 35 years, it's a charade going nowhere, a cul-de-sac ending "road map." Strategically rebranded and reemerged periodically, it's neither a process or way to peace, and according to a September 3 Time magazine article, Israelis care more about other things. Titled, 'Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace," it's a controversial notion given how close they live to a war zone. In spite of it, however, their lives go on, perhaps not wishing to hunker down or take to the barricades.

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Greg Evensen
NewsWithViews.com

The countdown clock and the last chance for “The Founder’s Legacy” of patriotic Americans willing to lay it all on the line for a new Republic, has hit 0:00. Rebellion is no longer an option, a late night “what if” discussion around a bottle of good wine and snacks. It is now the mandated response of oath keeping citizens and Constitutional defending men and women who have heard Paul Revere in 2010. That “watchman,” who made the most famous call to prepare for rebellion in the history of the world, has come again, through all of us who have been riding across our land for several years and warned of the arrival of this most critical moment. It did not materialize lightly or without a desperate realization that it was on the way, and when it did appear at the horizon, life has not and will not ever be the same. Whether you accept this assessment or not, you will be involved in its reality, prepared or not, on board with the need to reclaim this country for freedom’s sake or not, courageous enough to muster with the band of the free and brave or not, you WILL still be counted among those who stood and fought with your countrymen, or posterity will judge you as cowards unworthy to live free.

If you need a “Manifesto” to justify your opposition to “traitors” in communistic, statist Washington D.C., and a supremely evil Presidential cabal headed by Obama, then here is one.

Health Care is now “law of the land” and an affront to the Constitution in every word. That law alone is worthy of open rebellion. The REAL ID Act and its “Nazi like” classifications of who you are and what you will be allowed to do is just the beginning. ANY of the federal agencies that are obvious rights breakers (FBI, IRS, BATFE, CIA, NSA, DHS, FEMA, USDA, FDA, CDC, etc.) and thousands of bureaucrats who owe their souls to a democracy of devils, head the list of particulars that define our corrupted rulers.

Control through the police state is the hallmark of tyranny throughout history. America in 2010 is no different.

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

"The Obama administration has come to rely heavily on this cowardly form of warfare. Since coming to office in January 2009, it has quadrupled the number of strikes that were carried out during the last year of the Bush administration. According to Pakistani authorities, 708 people were killed in 51 drone strikes in 2009, and another 600 or more have died in the 75 such strikes carried out so far this year. This adds up to more than 1,300 slaughtered since Obama entered the White House. The overwhelming majority of the victims—referred to vaguely by officials and the media as “suspected militants”—are civilians, including women and children. These attacks constitute war crimes. They are designed as extrajudicial killings, banned by international law, and are directed against clearly non-military targets, including the homes of supposed “suspects,” which is likewise a violation of the Geneva Conventions."

Amid signs of increasing desperation in the nine-year US war in Afghanistan, Washington has simultaneously launched a major offensive against the country’s second-largest city, Kandahar, and stepped up its attacks in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), escalating the bloodshed on both sides of the border.

Tens of thousands of US troops have been massed in southern Kandahar province, a stronghold of the Taliban, for an offensive aimed at crushing armed resistance in the area and imposing control by the occupation forces and the puppet government of President Hamid Karzai.

“Operation Dragon Strike,” as the offensive has been dubbed by Washington, has already driven thousands from their homes and destroyed farmers’ crops, as the US military levels wide swathes of land to remove improvised explosive devices.

A spokesman for the occupation, Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz, said Monday that the ground operation was proceeding with air support, increasing the threat of mass civilian casualties. He predicted “hard fighting” in the days and weeks ahead. The US troops, he said, “are destroying Taliban positions so they will have nowhere to hide. Once this is done, insurgents will be forced to leave the area or fight and be killed.”

In practice, this means uprooting whole communities, since the armed opposition groups are an indigenous force with substantial support in the area.

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Stephen Lendman

On September 26, Venezuelans again voted, the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign (VSC - vicuk.org) saying to elect members to the 165-seat National Assembly. It happens every five years, and it's the 16th national election or referendum since Chavez's 1998 victory, taking office as President for first time on February 2, 1999.

Bolivarianism is always at stake, represented by his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). They were pitted against the opposition's Table for Democratic Unity (MUD), an alliance hoping to deny Chavez a two-thirds super-majority. It was PSUV's goal, campaign head Aristobulo Isrutiz saying pre-election:

"We're not working for a majority, but for hegemony in the assembly. It would be a convincing victory to surpass 110 lawmakers."

Post-election, he said,

"We put forth two-thirds as a goal and it was not possible to achieve it. But we are the majority,"

though short of a three-fifths one needed to enact Enabling Laws giving Chavez temporary decree powers that are limited, not unrestrained. How it works can be accessed through THIS link.

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Stuart Littlewood
Redress

If it wasn’t for the “war on terror” America and Israel wouldn’t be enjoying such military fun and games and reaping such fat rewards. Whole new industries are flourishing thanks to the considerable effort they’ve devoted to sowing the seeds of terror.

The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), for example, is an American-Israeli corporation “created to help organizations succeed and prosper in a world threatened by terrorism”.

Its partners include The Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute – “your gateway to business in Israel”. Their global intelligence division even maintains a presence in London where, they claim, “our intelligence-gathering and analysis, research, training and consulting services reduce your vulnerability to global and regional forms of terrorist threats and mass-casualty events”. It’s just a coincidence, of course, that Britain’s most important security bodies – the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee – are all headed by senior Israel flag-wavers with access to highly classified material.

ITRR recently staged a Mass Casualty and Terrorism Workshop in Jerusalem attended by students from Philadelphia University. Topics included mass casualty management, security and counter-terrorism, forensic medicine as it relates to terrorism and visits to suicide bomber sites. “These site visits include actual video footage of the events… One student was amazed with the resiliency of the Israeli people and how quickly they are able to return a site ‘back to normal’.”

Just across the border in Gaza is the mother of all mass-casualty sites far more serious than anything Israel has had to cope with, although it caused it. A visit there would have opened students’ eyes to how the Palestinians are never given the chance to return to ‘normal’ after Israel’s endless terror onslaughts, robbed as they are of medical essentials and reconstruction materials. I bet ITRR’s workshop didn’t cover that.

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Matthew Nasuti
Kabul Press

"A gunman fired a few cents worth of AK-47 rounds at the U.S. Marines and in response the Marines probably fired $10,000.00 in mortar rounds that all missed their target, yet killed an innocent. This incident could sum up the entire Afghan war and helps explain why American efforts have largely failed."

On July 28, 2010, reckless mortar fire by U.S. Marines ended the life of a 14 year old Afghan girl named Gul Makay. Her name مکئ ګل is that of the heroine in the famous Pashtun folk tale of Musa Khan. The Marine unit, according to Time Magazine’s Adam Ferguson, was the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. The location was the “liberated” Afghan district town of Marjah in Helmond Province. The Marines had been fired upon by a lone gunman 250 meters away in what appears to be a semi-residential area. In response, the Marines radioed for indirect fire support. A nearby outpost thereafter fired an unknown number of mortar rounds into the area. The suppression fire apparently chased away the gunman but killed Gul Makay.

Similarly, on March 24, 2010, the Taliban attacked an American outpost in Ali Sher District, Khost Province. In response, the Americans fired mortars, one of which hit a home in Chargoti village, killing a teenage couple and injuring a man, his wife and two of his children. [reported by the Afghan women’s network - RAWA]. The Wiki-leaks documents reveal other incidents of civilians being killed by errant U.S. mortars, the total number of such deaths being unknown. In each incident, there is no press release by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). There is never any apparent official investigation and no apparent discipline or courts-martial of the military members involved. The pattern just continues to replicate in another part of Afghanistan.

The culprit is the “mortar.” The mortar is by definition an indiscriminate weapon. It began its life as simply a tube from which a shell or rocket is launched. As depicted in the top photo for this article, some mortars in use in Afghanistan today are just as crude and inaccurate as those used 60 years ago during the Second World War.

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Maidhc Ó Cathail
Redress

Maidhc Ó Cathail argues that it is vital for the American public to understand that unconditional support for Israel is doing incalculable damage to the US national interest and that, to steer US policy back so that it serves the American people, it is crucial to break the Israel lobby’s stranglehold over policy-making and the media.

If Israel’s stranglehold over US foreign policy is to be broken, Americans will need to be informed about the harm that Washington’s unconditional support for the Jewish state is doing to American interests, say leading analysts of US-Israeli relations.

According to John J. Mearsheimer, co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,

“The only plausible way to weaken the lobby’s influence on US foreign policy is for prominent policymakers and opinion-makers to speak openly about the damage the special relationship is doing to the American national interest.”

“Plenty of people in the United States, especially inside the Beltway, know that Israel is an albatross around America’s neck,” says Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. “But they are afraid to stand up and say that for fear that the lobby will attack them and damage their careers.” “Hopefully, some of them will develop a backbone,” [he adds.]

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Barry Ritholtz
The Big Picture

Every generation or so, a major secular shift takes place that shakes up the existing paradigm. It happens in industry, finance, literature, sports, manufacturing, technology, entertainment, travel, communication, etc.

I would like to discuss the paradigm shift that is occurring in politics.

For a long time, American politics has been defined by a Left/Right dynamic. It was Liberals versus Conservatives on a variety of issues. Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Tax Cuts vs. More Spending, Pro-War vs Peaceniks, Environmental Protections vs. Economic Growth, Pro-Union vs. Union-Free, Gay Marriage vs. Family Values, School Choice vs. Public Schools, Regulation vs. Free Markets.

The new dynamic, however, has moved past the old Left Right paradigm. We now live in an era defined by increasing Corporate influence and authority over the individual. These two “interest groups” – I can barely suppress snorting derisively over that phrase – have been on a headlong collision course for decades, which came to a head with the financial collapse and bailouts. Where there is massive concentrations of wealth and influence, there will be abuse of power. The Individual has been supplanted in the political process nearly entirely by corporate money, legislative influence, campaign contributions, even free speech rights.

This may not be a brilliant insight, but it is surely an overlooked one. It is now an Individual vs. Corporate debate – and the Humans are losing.

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Les Visible
Smoking Mirrors

It doesn’t get much better when you can find out that the Queen of England wanted to tap the money set aside for the poor to heat her palaces and dwellings. It’s certain to make a heart feel glad that her Royal Shitstress need not be concerned about the temperature in any of those, oh so many rooms that might happen to be empty at the time. It’s a possibility that any of a number of her lingering and occasionally visiting ghosts of departed ancestors might get the notion to move through some of those rooms and we wouldn’t want them inconvenienced if there were a chance that temperature might have an adverse affect on these wraiths.

One of the first things that came to mind while writing this was an immediate concern that the coffin of the gin-soaked dead Queen Mother might be lying in an unheated coffin. I hope they took care of that from the gitgo, while making sure that conditions were all that much worse in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and all those other lovely haciendas where those who did 9/11 have chosen to imprison and torture all those people they paid warlords a bounty to snatch off of the battlefields of the wars they engineered as a result of the 9/11 attacks that they orchestrated so that they might extract information from these hapless insurgents who didn’t know nothing about nothing in a sort of sardonic, travesty of a Kafkaesque burlesque of a “You must confess, sign ze papers or I shoot ze dog and sell your daughter to Israel to have sex with a camel on Hebrew National reality TV”.

They can have a soundtrack done by Madonna and kill Palestinian’s in their hovels that get to watch it happen to them. Am I lacking compassion? Am I not attentive enough? I apologize for being clumsy and useless in serving you tea, while you enjoy yourselves. Did you break a nail! Ah… let me attend to thar right away. Let’s put hunger, disease and common human need aside for a moment because; not only did you break a nail but it was your favorite one; my apologies for not having done something sooner. I hope you will let me make it up to you.

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Stephen Lendman

Dr. Aafia at graduation and after having been tortured by the US.

"Stereotypically called culturally inferior, dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy, religiously fanatical, and violent, [Muslims] have been prejudicially called Islamofascists, "terrorists," or a homeland fifth column. Their fate became summary judgment - no due process, judicial fairness, or innocent unless proved guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt by an impartial jury of their peers. Aafia is their poster child, an innocent woman brutalized and condemned to spend the rest of her life in maximum security confinement, meant for America's "worst of the worst" criminals."

On September 23, the FBI headlined, "Aafia Siddiqui Sentenced in Manhattan Federal Court to 86 Years for Attempting to Murder US Nationals in Afghanistan and Six Additional Crimes." More on its press release below.

No matter that she's completely innocent, and has been a US political prisoner since her March 30, 2003 abduction, incarceration, torture, prosecution, and conviction on bogus charges. Her case is one of America's most egregious examples of horrific abuse and injustice, climaxed by her virtual life sentence for an alleged crime she never committed.

Yet she was convicted for these claimed felonies:

(1) one count of trying to kill US nationals outside the US;
(2) one count of trying to kill US officers and employees;
(3) one count of armed assault of US officers and employees;
(4) one count of using and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence; and
(5) three counts of assault of US officers and employees.

Earlier articles about her can be accessed through the following links here, here, here and here.

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Les Visible
Reflections in a Petri Dish

I apologize for linking to the mainstream media so much recently but since that is the mouthpiece of the beast who is taking a shit on our dinner table, it’s somewhat unavoidable. Yesterday they were saying that settlers were bracing for the end of the building freeze but today they are saying that Israel is bracing for the end of the building freeze. Here we have the backwards opposite of the truth because… what this means is that these invaders, who are not settlers, are perched and ready, with bulldozers and all the materials they won’t let into whatever is left of Palestine; like stock car racers at the Daytona 500, or some kind of Oklahoma Land Rush, champing at the bit to destroy what’s already there and then build what isn’t.

Why is this particular piece of business, among all the other conditions that might be important, always coming up, like it’s the only thing anyone should pay attention to? It is because the Nazi’s own the media. You may not have heard but the Nazi’s actually won World War 2, just like the British actually won the American Revolution. Your pants are on backwards but you don’t know it and the usual psychopathic, take no prisoners, fountain pen killers are making life a wasteland; while they feed on your flesh and your being as you support them in their purposes.

Israel is maintained as the world’s most important concern, while everything else gets lost in transition and translation or turned into baggage that you carry for them. You’re in the suitcase and you are the monkey and they think it’s pretty funny because the punch line is a punch and guess who screams first?

Are they agents of some other order? Are they the front line for the backdoor where the orders get issued, while you stand there at attention saying, “Thank you Sir! Can I have another?"

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Linda S. Heard
Online Journal

Imagine that you could fraudulently obtain a German travel document to be used by assassins, utilising the name and personal details of a still-living individual to do so, and even if you were caught, arrested and extradited to Germany for trial, you would be allowed to return to your home country.

It’s possible if you happen to be an Israeli. Given that Germany is known for its strict adherence to rules and laws, this really is mind-boggling.

I’m referring to the alleged Mossad agent Uri Brodsky, who is believed to have illegally obtained a German passport that was used to enter Dubai by one of Israel’s gang of assassins behind the murder of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al Mabhouh. Brodsky was arrested in Warsaw Airport in June; not for spying or conspiracy to murder but for the lesser crime of illegally procuring a passport.

On August 12, he was extradited from Poland to Germany where a German judge happily released him on bail and told him there was no bar to his return to Israel provided he returns in the event he is sentenced to prison. However, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Israel is likely to have done a deal with the German authorities whereby Brodsky will probably get away with a fine. There’s a word that springs to mind: conspiracy.

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Stephen Lendman

American Legacy: The New American legacy
Depleted Uranium 2004 Iraq.

[In Iraq today,] "killing of innocent people has become part of daily life." America is committing genocide against the entire population. It persists daily unreported, yet called "a success." ~ Dirk Adriaensens, The BRussells Tribunal

America's hidden history is ugly and disturbing. No nation ever matched it. To Iraq alone, over the past two decades, it includes ongoing genocide, destruction, terror, occupation, and contamination - a horrendous combination of crimes, unmentioned in Western discourse.

Environmental Engineering Professor Souad N. Al-Azzawi documents them, including in his report titled, "Crime of the Century: Iraq's Occupation and DU Contamination," a detailed account of US culpability.

America's strategic aims, he explains, include:

● controlling most of the world's oil and other natural resources;
● remaining permanently in the Middle East, "the intersection zone of the three continents where 80% of the world('s) population" lives; and
● if the above two objectives are achieved, America will control the world's economy, or enough of it to matter.

Spread over a large enough area, depleted uranium (DU) is a weapon of mass destruction, because it's radioactive and chemically toxic. If ingested or inhaled through food, air, water or other means, it enters the human body, remaining for decades. An earlier article reported the dangers, accessed through THIS link.

It explained that continued DU use has the potential to end planetary life, yet few understand the risk, or that weaponized DU is used regularly in missiles, bombs, shells and bullets wherever America wages war - first during the 1991 Gulf War.

Its danger comes from radiation residue after use. On impact, DU munitions penetrate deeply and aerosolize into a fine spray, polluting surrounding air, water and soil. It's microscopic, sub-miscroscopic, and permanent. Spread over vast areas as radioactive atmospheric dust, its contamination causes virtually all known illnesses and diseases from severe headaches, muscle pain and general fatigue, to major birth defects, infections, depression, cardiovascular disease, and many types of cancers. It also causes permanent disability and death.

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Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

"An American Police State was inevitable once Americans let "their" government get away with 9/11."

Americans: Too Gullible, Too Uneducated, Too Jingoistic to Remain a Free People - We Are Officially a Police State

On September 24, Jason Ditz reported on Antiwar.com that

"the FBI is confirming that this morning they began a number of raids against the homes of antiwar activists in Illinois, Minneapolis, Michigan, and North Carolina, claiming that they are ‘seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism.’"

Now we know what Homeland Security (sic) secretary Janet Napolitano meant when she said on September 10:

"The old view that ‘if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won’t have to fight them here’ is just that — the old view." [The new view, Napolitano said, is] "to counter violent extremism right here at home."

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Les Visible
Smoking Mirrors

Yes… they are revving their engines. A plane from Canada was diverted to Sweden, which coincidentally just had some changes in policy not favorable to The Self Chosen Official Olympic Games Victims and it was on its way to Pakistan. This happened because a woman called on a payphone to say that there was a man on board who ‘might’ be carrying explosives. I guess this means that anyone can, at any time, call the police and say someone is on a plane with explosives and get the plane brought down and have a large news flash in the main stream fecalatorium press. (insert- now it says they let him go) Details are unimportant. Reality is unimportant. Perception is important and off we go.

We should have a pool with a prize to predict the next Israeli false flag because it really can’t be that far off now. I’m going to pick this very Monday. If I’m right I suppose everyone is going to want to know how I knew and… if I’m wrong, I get to pick again. Somebody is going to win something. You can have your choice of Atlanta or Seattle. Wait a minute. You can pick whichever you like. The odds are it won’t be in Mozambique.

You can be sure they have all kinds of side bets going, accompanied by hysterical laughter at how stupid everyone else is. It will be just like all those put options on 9/11 that got traced to Israel and immediately diverted (just like this plane) to another subject.

It’s bad enough that they do these things but they also think it’s funny. It occurs to me that some of us know more about what’s going on than they do. Some of us know it’s not funny what they do. Some of us know that they are going to get their butts kicked soon but they don’t. They actually think they are going to come out on top.

It makes you wonder. If they are in control of so much and so confident, why do they pause and hesitate? If it is at the point where they can laugh in public and do outrageous things for their own amusement, why should they be concerned about opposition? These are the kinds of thing that occupy my mind on occasion.

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Chris Hedges

Time is running out for Israel. And the Israeli government knows it. The Jewish Diaspora, especially the young, has a waning emotional and ideological investment in Israel. The demographic boom means that Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories will soon outnumber Jews. And Israel's increasing status as a pariah nation means that informal and eventually formal state sanctions against the country are probably inevitable.

Desperate Israeli politicians, watching opposition to their apartheid state mount, have proposed a perverted form of what they term "the one-state solution." It is the latest tool to thwart a Palestinian state and allow Israel to retain its huge settlement complexes and land seizures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The idea of a single state was backed by Moshe Arens, a former defense minister and foreign minister from the Likud Party, in a column he wrote last month in the newspaper Haaretz asking "Is There Another Option?" Arens has been joined by several other Israeli politicians including Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin.

The Israeli vision, however, does not include a state with equal rights for Jewish and Palestinians citizens. The call for a single state appears to include pushing Gaza into the unwilling arms of Egypt and incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Israel. Palestinians within Israeli-controlled territory, however, will remain burdened with crippling travel, work and security restrictions already in place. Palestinians in the occupied territories, for example, cannot reclaim lost property or acquire Israeli citizenship, yet watch as Jews born outside of Israel and with no prior tie to the country become Israeli citizens and receive government-subsidized housing. Palestinians in the West Bank live in a series of roughly eight squalid, ringed ghettos and are governed by military courts. Jews living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, like all full Israeli citizens, are subject to Israeli civilian law and constitutional protection. Palestinians cannot serve in the armed forces or the security services, while Jewish settlers are issued automatic weapons and protected by the Israel Defense Force.

If Israel sheds Gaza, which has 1.5 million Palestinians, the Jewish state will be left with 5.8 million Jews and 3.8 million Arabs. And, at least in the near future, Jews will remain the majority. This seems to be the main attraction of the plan.

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Stephen Lendman

Two earlier articles addressed corporate friendly legislation masquerading as pro-consumer. In fact, they'll destroy safe food, empower agribusiness and drug giants, and harm small farmers and consumers. Access them through the following links here and here.

This article is a brief follow-up on where things now stand, as the Senate tries to circumvent growing public opposition.

On July 29, 2009, the House passed HR 2749: Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009

"To amend the (1938 as amended) Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to improve the safety of food in the global market, and for other purposes."

On March 3, 2009, S. 510: FDA Food Safety Modernization Act was introduced, the Senate's version of the House bill. It stalled after being assailed as anti-consumer and small farmer as well as failing to help food safety. In fact, like the House bill, it's cover for greater industry consolidation, destructive to consumer welfare.

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Gordon Duff
Veterans Today

Terror Conference In Tehran Will Fall Short Of The Mark

When President Ahmadinejad announced, before the United Nations that most people in the world believe that the U.S. government was involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks, he told the truth. In America, groups have been popping up for years, not “fringe” types, but military and professional organizations, architects, engineers, pilots, intelligence officers.

There is a vast underground that is never reported, never spoken of in the news and continually threatened. The FBI and Homeland Security have infiltrated these groups, illegal surveillance has been on a massive scale and, as the groups have grown and their reach has touched millions of Americans, the government, in the usual whispers, is talking about mass arrests, “unplugging” the internet, all those things the militia movements of the 90′s said would happen.

Outside the United States, not in the Middle East, but Canada, Europe, Latin America and the Far East, finding people who accept the Bush and Obama administration’s “party line” about “box cutters and hijackers” is difficult. No one wants to risk the public scorn of seeming like an imbecile.

However, back here in the “good ole’ USA,” even comedian Jon Stewart, normally an outspoken critic of government insanity, has agreed to lead a march on Washinton to quell “rumors” about 9/11, rumors of wrongdoing by people he despises.

What is the difference? Why do those outside the United States see things do differently? The answer is freedom of press, the first of the hasty additions to the constitution, a guarantee provided for in the 1st Amendment. There had been assaults on freedom of the press before, particularly during wartime but never anything on the scale seen after 9/11. Across the board, not just the news but even movies and television shows, fiction, censored, propaganda, peddling ignorance, fear and screaming “conspiracy theory” at anyone trying to get word out.

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Les Visible
Reflections in a Petri Dish

Control the perception of the past and you can guide the direction of the future in the mind of humanity as it tries to escape it or…. runs back to embrace it however you choose. This is the key power that the Chosen People faction uses. It was the most important part of getting into Iraq and, of course, Israel and accounts for the eradication of Palestinian names from all the towns they swallowed, along with their control of so called ‘holy places’. It’s not about spirituality. It’s not even about religion. It’s about controlling perception in order to maintain possession.

This is why they tried to engineer their holocaust in the First World War, which didn’t work and went back into it again in the Second World War and why they were contributing sponsors of both in the first place. When you control how things look, based on a manufactured presentation of what happened, you have an argument for government policies to follow into the future for your own benefit. Then you can come up with things like a kosher tax on products; if you own the companies in the first place you get yourself a double dip. This is just one more way that such a small part of the population manages to enrich itself to such a degree. It’s like throwing a punch at someone and then crying out in pain as you deliver it.

It’s important to keep this in mind. This is how religions get perverted; how laws get established and how easier access to routes of commerce can be obtained is to give the impression that something unfair happened to you and it could happen to everyone else too; except that you did it in the first place …and you make up such a tiny part of the population. The best way to get far more than your share of the rights, when you have no majority claim based on presence is to make it look like somebody is always picking on you anyway.

Bad shit happens in the world and it happens to much larger groups of people so… civilizations must have rules along which to operate for both moral and functional reasons. This doesn’t just apply to a small group of mercenary carpet baggers, it applies to any union of psychopaths who want to go into any kind of business.

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Felicity Arbuthnot
Uruknet

A US Military graves detail with a bulldozer buries in a mass grave,
the bodies of dead Iraqi soldiers killed along the Mile of Death, on the
road between Kuwait City and Basra, north of Kuwait City. Many of
the Iraqi soldiers were killed along this stretch of highway on the 25th
and 26th of February 1991.

"Wrong from the start." ~ Ezra Pound, 1885-1972.

When the horrors of the sadistic, near necrophile behaviour of U.S., personnel at Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, first showed the tip-of-the-iceberg-lie of "liberation": cruelty, depravity and bestiality on a scale which apparently dwarfed all that Saddam Hussein's regime had been accused of, President George W. Bush said: " This does not represent the America I know."

He should have. It was under the watch of his father, George Bush, Snr., that in 1991, thousands of Iraqi conscripts were buried alive in southern Iraq, by US army tanks and bulldozers. "What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches, with peoples arms and things sticking out of them", said Colonel Anthony Moreno who participated.(1)

Sixteen years earlier, in 1975, Bush Snr., with Henry Kissinger and Vernon Walters, set up "Plan Condor", under which CIA-enlisted exiles, orchestrated : ".. the torture and assassination of leftist leaders (under which) Latin American military rulers, also 'disappeared' thousands of their opponents." (2)

This followed in the bloody footsteps of the CIA 1966 Phoenix Project, designed to "cleanse" South Viet Nam of Communists (Viet Cong.) "Specially designed torture chambers were constructed in all forty four provinces. Rape of women suspects, electric shock, water torture, and hanging from ceilings were standard methods during interrogations." (3) Further: "The U.S.'s Phoenix Program killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese.

Vietnamese prisoners were thrown into 'tiger cages' - built by Texas military conractor RMK-BRJ, the forerunner of Halliburton subsidiary KBR .. and routinely tortured." (See 2.) Halliburton has, of course, hit financial bonanzas in Iraq and Afghanistan, along the occasional slightly bumpy legal path.

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Krister, in Sweden
henrymakow.com

[At the 1:56 minute mark, this video turns into an obnoxious philo-semitic tribute (in Danish) to the supposed superiority of Jews over the Gentiles. -These racist theories of the aristocrat Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi are shocking and repugnant. (Google translation of the accompanying text at the end of this article)]

Recently we had a rather spectacular statement from a Jewish woman-activist, who some ten years ago, with grants from the Swedish government, founded a Jewish 'study-institute' with the name "Paideia", that seems to be involved in subversive activities. The woman, American Jew Barbara Lerner can be heard saying in an interview:

"Europe has not yet learned how to be multicultural. And I think we [Jews] are going to be part of the throes of that transformation, which must take place. Europe is not going to be the monolithic societies [sic] that they once were in the last century. Jews are going to be at the center of that. It's a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multi-cultural mode, and Jews will be resented because of our leading role. But without that leading role, and without that transformation, Europe will not survive."

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Stephen Lendman

On September 22, Reuters headlined the news, saying: "UN Experts Condemn Israel Attack on Gaza Flotilla"

It explained that the UN Human Rights Council's (HRC)

"panel of international experts" concluded what was obvious on day one - that Israel's international water attack "was unlawful and resulted in violations of human rights and international humanitarian law...."

A one paragraph AP report said the same thing. America's leading paper, The New York Times (always pro-Israeli), published the above two accounts, not its own, ducking its responsibility to do in detail.

In contrast, Israeli papers covered it prominently, including Haaretz headlining, "UN Human Rights Council: Israel flotilla raid broke international law," saying:

"The UN Human Rights Council's fact-finding mission concluded that Israel's naval blockade of the Palestinian territory was unlawful because of the humanitarian crisis there, and described the military raid on the flotilla as brutal and disproportionate."

Israel's response was unsurprising, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ygal Palmor saying:

"Israel is a democratic and law abiding country that carefully observes international law and, when need be, knows how to investigate itself."

True on the last point, but it never does nor will it. False on the others. As honest observers know, Israel is a lawless, undemocratic, pariah state believing in Jewish exclusivity above all other religions. As a result, its 1,548,000 Israeli Arabs (as of spring 2010) have no rights. In addition, the four million + in Gaza and the West Bank (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics mid-2010 figures) have been persecuted under military occupation for over 43 years, living in constant terror.

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Stop AIPAC
Stop AIPAC

Challenging AIPAC. For a New Foreign Policy.

AIPAC, or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, describes itself as the most important organization affecting the U.S. relationship with Israel. With a budget of $65 million, and membership now standing at over 100,000, it is no wonder that congressional staffers consider it one of the most powerful and effective lobbies on Capitol Hill.

Once a year, AIPAC holds its annual conference in Washington DC. This May it was attended by over 5,000 participants. Its annual policy conference is one of Washington’s largest gatherings of lawmakers, topped only by the President’s State of the Union address. Guests this year included two-thirds of the House, half the Senate, and Vice President Richard Cheney.

Only rarely is a critical word uttered among politicians regarding AIPAC and its associates that support unjust and aggressive (and disastrous) U.S. policies toward the peoples of the Middle East. We aim to change that.

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Stephen Lendman

"At issue is 9/11 truth, the subsequent bogus "war on terror" based on a lie, America's war on Islam that followed against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Muslim Americans, victimized for political advantage. Her case should incite everyone's moral outrage. It also reveals America's true face, its rogue agenda, targeting Muslims for their faith and ethnicity, making us all equally vulnerable."

On September 23 in federal court, US District Court Judge Richard Berman sentenced political prisoner Aafia Siddiqui to 86 years in prison. Outrage most accurately expresses this gross miscarriage of justice, compounding what she's already endured following her March 30, 2003 abduction, imprisonment, torture, prosecution, and conviction on bogus charges.

Earlier articles explained her case in detail, accessed through the following links, here, here and here.

In modern times, she's one of American depravity's most aggrieved victims, now given a virtual life sentence for a crime she didn't and couldn't have committed, explained in the above articles.

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Dirk Adriaensens
The BRussells Tribunal

Part I: “Success”, a devastating balance sheet

In the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion, the triumphalist verdict of the mainstream media was that the war had been won; Iraq was assured of a benevolent, democratic future. The Times's writer William Rees-Mogg hymned the victory: "April 9 2003 was Liberty Day for Iraq. (…) It was achieved by "the engine of global liberation", the United States. "After 24 years of oppression, three wars and three weeks of relentless bombing, Baghdad has emerged from an age of darkness. Yesterday was an historic day of liberation."[1]

"The problem with this war for, I think, many Americans is that the premise on which we justified going to war proved not to be valid, that is Saddam having weapons of mass destruction," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters while visiting Iraq.

"So when you start from that standpoint, then figuring out in retrospect how you deal with the war — even if the outcome is a good one from the standpoint of the United States — it will always be clouded by how it began." [2]

So here Robert Gates acknowledges that this war was illegal according to international law, because there was no “casus belli”. But in the same sentence he says that the outcome has been good for the United States. What does he mean exactly? How can all the killing and destruction be a good outcome for the USA? And what about responsibilities? If you know that Iraq is still paying reparations for the invasion in Kuwait in 1990, how about the payment of reparations by the USA for the destruction it inflicted upon Iraq?

"We fought together, we laughed together, and sometimes cried together. We stood side by side and shed blood together," Gen. Ray Odierno told Iraqi military leaders and hundreds of American soldiers and officers during the ceremony that officially closed combat operations."It was for the shared ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice."[3] Yes, they laughed together, like in the infamous, by Wikileaks released video of the “Collateral Murder” helicopter gunship attack on Baghdad civilians in July 2007, that killed more than a dozen Iraqis, two of them journalists of Reuters. And blood they surely have shed together! A lot of blood of over a million mothers, fathers, children and elderly Iraqi people. All that for “shared ideals of freedom, liberty and justice”, Mr. Odierno? Well, most Iraqis don’t share that view. For them, the country has slided into the age of darkness.

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Stephen Lendman

With peace talks underway in Washington; Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt; Jerusalem; then New York, Israel, almost daily, commits crimes of war and against humanity. Some of the latest include:

● air strikes against Gaza, killing two Palestinian civilians in another one;
● peaceful protesters attacked in Gaza and the West Bank;
● live rounds and shells fired against farmers and workers in the Strip's border areas, killing an old man, his grandchild, another boy, and 30 sheep;
● over 100 live rounds fired at an Erez Crossing peaceful demonstration near Beit Hanoun;
● its medieval siege maintained, suffocating 1.5 million people and preventing 40,000 students from attending UN schools;
● violations against Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons escalated; most are political prisoners;
● 16 new Jordan Valley demolition orders for Palestinian barns and greenhouses issued plus others to bulldoze their homes;
● 87 incursions into West Bank communities and three in Gaza in the first half of September, arresting 43 civilians, including nine children; and
● unabated illegal settlement construction.

Israeli does what it pleases, defiling the rule of law, including letting its security forces kill with impunity, a new B'Tselem report confirming it. Titled "Void of Responsibility: Israeli Military Policy not to investigate Killings of Palestinians by Soldiers," it provides plenty of evidence.

Protests throughout the Territories occur regularly, in Bil'in village every Friday against the Separation Wall. April 17 was typical. Soldiers attacked demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets, at times live fire, and extended-range gas canisters. Used against Bassem Abu Rahmeh, it killed him from massive internal injuries, a case of cold-blooded murder.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

A meeting between Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Israeli deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon ended abruptly yesterday. The dispute followed the Israeli deputy foreign minister’s demand that the meeting’s summary should refer to the notion of ‘two states for two peoples,’ rather than just ‘two states.’

"I wanted that at the very least it will note two states for two peoples. I demanded to know what they meant. One Palestinian state and one bi-national state, or another Palestinian state?" the deputy minister told Ynet. "I made it clear that we were out of the picture if the summary didn’t say two states for two peoples."

The Palestinian PM could not accept such a demand for very many reasons: Israel is located on historic Palestine. It came to life through robbery and ethnic cleansing. It is maintained by theft. At least a fifth of Israel’s population are Palestinians. And if this is not enough, not a single living Palestinian negotiator is ever going to let the refugee issue go, and for a good reason. The right of return is still the crux of the Palestinian cause.

Interestingly enough, within the context of the two states solution, a Palestinian state would be geographically defined: it would be a state of its citizens, and it would also be a civilised amalgam of different ethnicities and religions. Israel, on the other hand, would be a racially orientated setting: it would be the Jewish State, where Jews come first. I wonder why anyone in the international community would support such a solution or such a state. However, I wasn’t surprised to read in Ynet that Tony Blair, who participated in the earlier part of the meeting yesterday, “supported the Israeli stance”. I guess that after dragging us all into a religious war with no end, Blair has developed an affinity with Judeo-centric arguments and the Zionist way of thinking. After all, let’s not forget, it was Zionist Lord Levy and the Labour Friends of Israel who funded his party at the time it launched the war in Iraq.

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Vladimir Volkov & Andrea Peters
WSWS

Dmitry Medvedev & Vladimir Putin

At the World Political Forum in Iaroslavl, Russia on September 10, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev outlined his views on the meaning of democracy. When taken together with his other declarations about “modernizing” the country, his latest statement underscores the right-wing and anti-democratic character of his policies, which are profoundly hostile to the working class. Medvedev’s definition of democracy is entirely in keeping with the overall rightward shift in official European politics.

Insisting that that the political system that presently exists in Russia is democratic and well suited to the country, and that nothing “needs to be radically changed,” the Russian president outlined “five signs of democracy.”

These included “the legal incarnation of humanistic values and ideals,” “the ability of the state to guarantee and support a high rate of technological development, which secures a worthy standard of living for its citizens,” “the ability of the state to defend its citizens from the dangers of criminal associations,” “a high level of culture, education, means of communication and exchange of information,” and, finally, the conviction on the part of citizens “that they are living in a democratic state.”

Declaring “representative democracy” to be unacceptable for Russia, Medvedev excluded freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to vote, freedom of the press, the separation of church and state and the other rights associated with bourgeois democracy from his five principles.

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

The “poverty summit” that concluded at the United Nations Wednesday served to expose capitalism’s responsibility for the poverty and hunger confronting billions of people across the planet. Despite vows by the UN and the major powers over the past decade to ameliorate these conditions, the desperation and misery of the world’s most oppressed layers have only deepened as a result of imperialist predations and the shocks arising from the global financial crisis.

The meeting saw numerous heads of state parade before the UN General Assembly in New York City to platonically proclaim their commitment to the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were adopted by a similar summit exactly ten years ago.

In the more frank statements. there were admissions that ten years into the supposed pursuit of these goals, the achievement of proposed benchmarks in relation to extreme poverty, hunger, child and maternal health and other areas by the 2015 deadline is already out of the question.

The goals represented a commitment to eradicate what amounted to the worst symptoms of the poverty and oppression to which the profit system has relegated much of the world’s population. Even if they had been achieved, billions of people would still be left in hunger and misery.

In adopting the MDGs, the UN approved a “Millennium Declaration” which proclaimed that “the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world’s people.”

The intervening decade has made a mockery of this statement, which from the start was aimed at providing window-dressing for world finance capital’s exploitation of the most oppressed countries.

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PeoplesGeography
The People's Voice

Cited in a recent Ha’aretz piece about the decline of the israeli left, the late academic Yeshayahu Leibowitz is described as remarking that he is not sure whether Israel’s policies since 1967 are evil stupidity or stupidly evil. In another, verbatim citation, Leibowitz is quoted as having said, more resolutely, in 1990: “Everything Israel has done, and I emphasize everything, in the past 23 years is either evil stupidity or stupidly evil.“

Along with a number of other academics such as Ilan Pappe and Neve Gordon, journalists such as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, and other critics of conscience such as David Grossman, it is good to see instances of intellectuals fulfilling their proper role of speaking up. In Liebowitz’s case, he is not as well known outside Israel. In 1969 he reportedly began describing the “inevitable Nazification” of Israeli society. Further, by the time of the (first major, 1982) Lebanon War, he became known for using the term Judeo-Nazi to describe the Israeli army. He also called for soldiers to refuse to serve in the IOF.

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Kirk Honeycutt
The Hollywood Reporter

Bottom Line: A searing doc shows the appalling impact war has on the innocent. [Trailer HERE.]

TORONTO -- Vibeke Løkkeberg's "Tears of Gaza" raises the question: Can any filmmaker do a film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without antagonizing someone? Løkkeberg's film deals with the 2008-09 bombing of Gaza by the Israeli military. Her strategy is to focus on the horrific impact this has on civilians -- mostly women and children; in other words, how war affects the innocent. Løkkeberg, a Norwegian actress, author and filmmaker, has scrubbed away all context, political or otherwise. This could be any war descended on an urban population.

Soldiers expect death and destruction; they've trained for it. Civilians don't know how to react to dead children and bombed homes. "Where can I get forgiveness from?" moans a man who has lost a child.

"Gaza" is gut-wrenching to watch -- perhaps the ultimate anti-war film -- but will the word "Gaza" in the title stop people? Films, whether docs or features, don't generally talk about war from this perspective. Now we have a film that does, but Middle Eastern politics might contaminate it. The Arab world might embrace the film, especially coming from a Westerner, and Israel and its supporters might shun it. So a compelling film about war will not be as widely seen as it should.

The film opens in November in Norway and could get playdates elsewhere in Europe, but in North America, it undoubtedly will play only festivals. The response at those festivals will be interesting to watch.

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Stephen Lendman

Kaplan University is one of the military friendly schools.
(Photo courtesy of the Department of Defense)

Like the old "Let's Fall in Love" lyrics: Bankers do it. Insurers do it. Even (privatized) universities with poor students do it. They steal and get away with it, a Danny Weil August 18 Daily Censored article titled, "Whistleblower Exposes How Kaplan University Cheats Low-Income Minority students and the Washington Post (parent company) Benefits." More on it below.

Kaplan calls itself

"an institution of higher learning dedicated to providing innovative undergraduate, graduate, and continuing professional education. Our programs foster student learning with opportunities to launch, enhance, or change careers in today's diverse global society. The University is committed to general education, a student-centered service and approach, and applied scholarship in a practical (online or campus) environment."

It's part of Kaplan Higher Education Corp., part of Kaplan, Inc., a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company, producing over half of its revenue and profits - its real commitment, not students.

The web site RipoffReport.com lists first named only victims of "scams, consumer complaints, and frauds."

Elma from Washington reported her experience after attending Kaplan's Legal Studies program. In December 2008, she said:

"I have to concur with" other complaints. "Kaplan's professionalism only extends as far as their sales training goes. They are not (academically) minded, but purely monetarily motivated - hence the magic number of $12,000," a notification saying "you are $12,000 in the arrears on your tuition, therefore we will be blocking you from classes."

The Veterans Administration (VA) paid Elma's tuition. They intervened. Kaplan retracted its statement, then told the VA she was blocked for not filling out a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid).

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Gordon Duff
Veterans Today

"Pollard had only one purpose, not to spy for Israel but to enable the Soviet Union to launch a successful nuclear “first strike” on America. Pollard didn’t act alone but had a series of handlers in Tel Aviv and Moscow."

Israel is demanding the immediate release of Jonathan Pollard. Pollard, sentenced to life in prison for spying against the United States is a hero in Israel. Jonathan Pollard, an American of Jewish ancestry and Zionist extremist publicly stated that he tried to destroy America to help maintain the “racial purity of Israel.” Pollard may have been spying for Israel but all the information he stole, a truckload of America’s most vital secrets, all went to the Soviet Union.

Why did Israel send this information to Russia, the names of all American intelligence assets behind the Iron Curtain, the exact locations of all NATO nuclear weapons facilities, missile silos and detail on how to defeat America’s defenses from nuclear attack?

This is Israel’s deal this time. If America releases Pollard, Israel agrees to suspend its 62 year ethnic cleansing program against Palestinian Muslims and Christians, for a short time at least.

The American public has never been told the truth about Pollard. Current figures of deaths directly attributed to Pollard’s spying are at between 110 and 120 American CIA agents and up to 1600 top American intelligence assets that were foreign nationals. Minimally, Pollard should have faced 110 murder counts for American victims alone. He should have been tried and executed many years ago except for intercession by the government of Israel. Since Pollards sentencing in 1987, they have continually demanded his release.

Pollard wasn’t a spy, he was a terrorist.

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Henry Makow
Henry Makow's Blog

"The best way to control the opposition is to lead it." ~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"The plan, I think, is the old one of world dominion in a new form. The money-power and revolutionary power have been set up and given sham but symbolic shapes ('Capitalism' or 'Communism') and sharply defined citadels ('America' or 'Russia'). Such is the spectacle publicly staged for the masses. But what if similar men, with a common aim, secretly rule in both camps and propose to achieve their ambition through the clash between those masses? I believe any diligent student of our times will discover that this is the case." ~ Douglas Reed

The Sept 20 issue of The New Yorker contains a profile of David and Charles Koch, "The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama."

According to the article by Jane Mayer, the Koch's bankroll a plethora of Libertarian and "right-wing" lobbies, think tanks and foundations, which in turn fund and direct the "grass roots" Tea Party movement.

"The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs," she writes. "By giving money to "educate," fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement."

Mayer neglects to mention that the Koch's are Jews or crypto Jews; instead she tries to give them a "goy gloss."

Patriarch Fred Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society, was a "real John Wayne type." He was the son of a "Dutch" printer who emphasized "rugged pursuits.' He took his four sons "big game hunting in Africa" and made them do "farm labor at the family ranch."

Surprising then to learn that Fred and his sons are on lists of Jewish billionaires, and "free-enterprise-Fred" made his fortune building refineries for the genocidal Communist dictator Josef Stalin in the 1930's.

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Marjorie Cohn
Global Research

[Wikileaks: Collateral Murder (VIDEO). This video shows men gathering on a Baghdad street on July 12, 2007, shortly before they were fired upon. View related photos wikileaks.org]

"The charges against Bradley Manning end with the language, “such conduct being prejudicial to good order and discipline in the armed forces and being of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.” "

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused of leaking military secrets to the public. This week, his supporters are holding rallies in 21 cities, seeking Manning’s release from military custody. Manning is in the brig for allegedly disclosing a classified video depicting U.S. troops shooting civilians from an Apache helicopter in Iraq in July 2007. The video, available at www.collateralmurder.com, was published by WikiLeaks on April 5, 2010. Manning faces 52 years in prison. No charges have been filed against the soldiers in the video.

In October 1969, the most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, smuggled out of his office and made public a 7,000 page top secret study of decision making during the Vietnam War. It became known as the Pentagon Papers. Dan risked his future, knowing that he would likely spend life in prison for his exposé.

The release of the Pentagon Papers ultimately helped end not only the Nixon presidency, but also the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 Americans and three million Indochinese were killed. Dan’s courageous act was essential to holding accountable our leaders who had betrayed American values by starting and perpetuating an illegal and deadly war. Manning’s alleged crimes follow in this tradition.

The 2007 video, called “Collateral Murder,” has been viewed by millions of people on the Internet. On it, U.S. military Apache helicopter soldiers from Bravo Company 2nd Battalion 16th Infantry Regiment can be seen killing 12 civilians and wounding two children in Iraq. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency.

The video shows U.S. forces watching as a van pulled up to evacuate the wounded. They again opened fire from the helicopter, killing more people. During the radio chatter between the helicopter crew members and their supervisors, one crew member gloated after the first shooting, saying, “Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.”

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M. Shahid Alam
Middle East Monitor

"My God! Is this the end? Is this the goal for which our fathers have striven and for whose sake all generations have suffered? Is this the dream of a return to Zion which our people have dreamt for centuries: that we now come to Zion to stain its soil with innocent blood?" ~ Ahad Ha'am, 1921

This study has employed a dialectical framework for analyzing the destabilizing logic of Zionism. We have examined this logic as it has unfolded through time, driven by the vision of an exclusionary colonialism, drawing into its circuit – aligned with it and against it – nations, peoples, forces, and civilizations whose actions and interactions impinge on the trajectory of Zionism, and, in turn, who are changed by this trajectory.

It would be a bit simplistic to examine the field of interactions among the different actors in this historic drama on the essentialist assumption that these actors and their interests are unchanging. Instead, we need to explore the complex ways in which the Zionists have worked – and, often have succeeded – to alter the behavior of the other political actors in this drama: and, how, in turn, the Zionists respond to these changes. Most importantly, we need to explore all the ways in which the Zionists have succeeded in mobilizing the resources of the United States and other Western powers to serve their specific objectives.

Consider a list of the political actors who have had more than a passing connection to the Zionist project and, who, at one time or another, have affected or have been affected by this project. First, there are the different Zionist factions, the Jewish diaspora and, later, the state of Israel. These entities are overlapping, with the degrees of overlap between any two of them changing over time. The second set of actors consists of Western powers – especially, the United States, Britain, and France – the Christian Zionists especially in the United States, the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe. Finally, there are actors who are the direct and indirect victims of the Zionist project, those who have paid the costs of Zionist success. They form four concentric circles around Israel, including the Palestinians, the Arabs, the Middle East, and the Islamicate. These three sets of actors make up the dramatis personae in the unfolding tragedy of the Zionist project.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo by Danny Wilcox Frazier

The newly released US Census report on "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009" way understates a growing problem as do most other government data. Unemployment for one, the Labor Department's headlined (U-3) 9.6% masks the true 22% based on 1980 calculations.

With America in economic crisis, the new Census report portends much worse ahead under a president and Congress doing little to address it, the Brookings Institution Isabel Sawhill expecting the problem to "get much worse long before it gets better." More on the new data below. First, some other confirmations of economic trouble.

The Federal Reserve's September-released Flow of Funds report shows household Q 2 2010 net worth plunged $1.5 trillion because of a $0.9 trillion drop in corporate equities and a $0.7 reduction in pension fund holdings. Overall, total household financial assets declined by $1.7 trillion to $43.7 trillion, a trend expected to continue for some time.

On September 15, RealtyTrac reported another disturbing one, saying:

"The number of homes taken back by lenders hit a new record high last month:" 95,364 foreclosures, about 2% higher than the previous May 2010 peak. According to its CEO, James J. Saccacio:

"The trend lines of decreasing default notices and increasing bank repossessions converged in August, with virtually the same number (of both) - a clear indication that the clogged foreclosure pipeline is being carefully managed on both ends by lenders and servicers." However, they can't mask a housing depression, the worst since the 1930s, showing no signs of ebbing. In Q 1, 2010, one of every seven mortgages was either delinquent or in foreclosure, now likely even more.

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Washington's Blog
Washington's Blog

As I noted last year:

Our savings is ... dramatically lower than Japan's when that country entered into its Lost Decade. So the Japanese were much better prepared than we are.

(I also noted that we're in worse shape than America was going into the Great Depression ... but that's another story).

Now, BIS - the central banks' central bank - agrees that Americans are in worse shape than the Japanese.

Specifically, a new BIS paper written by Shinobu Nakagawa (Director, Head of Investment and Market Research, International Department, Bank of Japan) and Yosuke Yasui (International Department, Bank of Japan) concludes that Japan was better able to weather the Lost Decade than the U.S. is able to weather our current economic woes, given three differences between the two cultures:

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Deanna Spingola
Edited by Ken Freeland

David Rockefeller said, “All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.” Rahm Emanuel said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” In the Project for a New American Century document Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century we find the following: “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” [1]

False Flag (choreographed catastrophes) operations have been used for generations for various motives: the seizure of additional land and/or natural/mineral resources (domestic or foreign), the acquisition of cheap labor, economic destabilization, the military depopulation of indigenous populations, the destruction of religious or political ideologies, the establishment of political tyranny or a coup d’état (as experienced after 9/11 with the establishment of the PATRIOT Act and the Department of Homeland Security), to assist an allegedly threatened ally or to protect U.S. citizens living in a foreign country. The foundational factor in the majority of all false flag operations is the imposition of greater restrictions on worldwide residential populations in order to implement internationalism or globalism, formerly known as the utopian New World Order under the direction of an elite hierarchy. False flag catastrophes include terrorist attacks, assassinations of political leaders, “natural” disasters, industrial “accidents,” armed assaults against citizens (Waco, Ruby Ridge, Kent State), economic assaults in the form of economic crashes like 1929 or more recently the banker bailouts, both massive redistribution scams. The prevailing feature in all of these circumstances, whether manmade or “natural,” is the transference of culpability followed by the government’s predictable exploitation of any and all circumstances.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Israel’s new map 2010. "O Lord; help Israel to restore all of its territory."
Curiously, this coveted territory also seems to include Iran. -Hard to tell
whether this map represents the wet dream of just one Zionist lunatic or
all of them. Considering their warmongering against Iran, it would seem
that this lunacy is common in Israel. Maybe it's a Mossad psyops. (Ed.)

Recognizing Israel as uniquely Jewish is one of the key demands made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the latest talks with the Palestinians. However, Foreign Minister Lieberman took it one step further. He demands all Israelis swear an oath of loyalty to the Jewish state. Liebermann’s campaign slogan is "no loyalty, no citizenship."

"We can't continue to ignore issues like that of Hanin Zuabi, who identifies completely with the other side," [said Lieberman on Sunday.]

He was referring to an Israeli Arab member of Knesset who was stripped of her parliamentary privileges after sailing aboard the heroic Mavi Marmara, and being witness to the Israeli massacre in high seas.

So here we are : Israel is basically a Western liberal ‘multi cultural’ society where all different ethnicities and minorities are demanded to swear loyalty to the ultimate form of chauvinist Jewish tribal practice.

Issues to do with loyalty are of the essence within Jewish political discourse. It was the doubt regarding Dreyfus’ loyalty that transformed Herzl into a Zionist. It was loyalty to the Jews that made Jonathan Pollard betray the USA. It was Mordechai Vanunu’s ethical and universal commitment that pushed him away from Jewish loyalty. As we know, he still pays a heavy price for that commitment. As it seems, ‘loyalty to the Jews’ is a crucial demand within the Zionist discourse.

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Stephen Lendman

(Photo Credit: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)

On September 17, New York Times writers Jackie Calmes and Sewell Chan headlined, "Obama Picks Warren to Set Up Consumer Bureau," saying:

Obama appointed Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren "to oversee" the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (BCFP) "until a director is named later. The appointment (will let her) get the agency up and running without having to go through a contentious (Senate) confirmation battle," one she might lose because of Republican and industry opposition.

She'll be an assistant to the president, a "czar" for some, a designation held by numerous other White House advisors. She'll also be a Treasury Secretary advisor, reporting jointly to Obama and Tim Geithner.

Who Is Elizabeth Warren? A bio on the elizabethwarren.com web site includes the following: At age 16, she was an Oklahoma state champion debater. Her education includes a BS from the University of Houston (1970) and a JD from Rutgers Law School (1976) where she was Editor to the Rutgers Law Review.

She taught law at Rutgers, the University of Michigan, the University of Houston Law Center, the University of Texas School of Law, and University of Pennsylvania's School of Law before joining Harvard Law School in 1992, where she's now Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law.

She's also a member of the FDIC's Committee on Economic Inclusion, the Executive Council of the National Bankruptcy Conference, as well as former Vice-President of the American Law Institute, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Chief Adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission.

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

[PHOTO: BBC News, Sep. 18, 2010: The indelible ink on voters' fingers was intended to stop people voting more than once. But outside a polling station in the west of the city, a voter was one of many able to wash the ink from his finger. "They are not checking people's fingers properly. I could wash it off with water - it's very poor quality. Why are they cheating the nation with this fraud?" he said.]

Saturday’s parliamentary election in Afghanistan was a predictable debacle, characterized by widespread fraud and violence, and largely boycotted by the Afghan population. Officials of the US-dominated government of President Hamid Karzai said 3.6 million people cast ballots, far below the 6 million ballots claimed for last year’s presidential election, which was rigged to ensure Karzai’s reelection.

The 3.6 million ballots represents barely 31 percent of the 11.4 million registered voters, but the Karzai government tried to boost that figure to 40 percent, arguing that the 2.2 million people registered in areas where voting could not be conducted because of security concerns should be excluded from the total of registered voters.

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Stephen Lendman

[PHOTO: A Palestinian boy drinks water from a public tap in the Gaza Strip. Human-rights group Amnesty International says Israeli restrictions prevent Palestinians from receiving enough water in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. (Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)]

Throughout 43 years of occupation, Israel has waged war on Palestinians' human rights and civil liberties, a new UN report providing more evidence that keeps mounting exponentially, adding clarity about an out-of-control rogue state operating lawlessly.

On August 10, Haaretz writer Akiva Eldar cited it in an article headlined, "UN report: IDF barring Gazans' access to farms, fishing zones," saying:

"Over the last 10 years, the (IDF has) increasingly restricted Palestinian access to farmland on the Gazan side of the Israeli-Gaza border as well as (offshore waters) along the Gaza beach, a United Nations report (just) revealed."

Prepared jointly by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the World Food Program (WFP), it's titled "Between the Fence and a Hard Place," explaining Israel's draconian/illegal restrictions on the pretext of "preventing attacks by Palestinian armed factions." In fact, only Israel poses a regional threat. A global one as well, what Palestinians and Israel's neighbors have known for decades.

Despite the Green Line, Oslo Accords, the so-called 2005 "disengagement," ongoing siege, the continued theft of West Bank and East Jerusalem land and more, Israel imposes punitive restrictions on Gazans, including under the 1994 Jericho Agreement. It established a 1,000 meter-wide "security perimeter" in the Territory, Palestinian police enforcing "special security measures" to prevent entry into Israel without permission.

A separate provision allowed a 20 nautical mile area off Gaza's coast for fishing, recreation, and other economic activities. Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), in theory, share joint enforcement authority, but, in fact, Israel has sole control.

Since September 2000, the start of the second Intifada, Israel took over more repressively than ever. Palestinians have been denied all rights in their own territory under vague and restrictive rules, including use of their own land and waters. As a result, Gazans have been irreparably harmed.

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