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:

nd 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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