Rick Rozoff
Stop NATO

On November 19 and 20 the leaders of 28 North American and European nations, all the major Western military powers and their vassals, will gather in the capital of Portugal for this year’s summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Until recently held every other year, NATO summits are now annual events, with the last held in France and Germany in 2009 and the preceding one in Romania in 2008.

Prior to last year’s summit in Strasbourg and Kehl, the first held in two nations, four in a row had occurred in Eastern Europe: The Czech Republic in 2002, Turkey in 2004, Latvia in 2006 and Romania in 2008. None of those host countries, of course, are anywhere near the North Atlantic Ocean. Neither are any of the 12 nations incorporated into the Western military bloc in the past 11 years.

This year’s summit will endorse the Alliance’s first Strategic Concept for the 21st century, a draft of which was crafted by a so-called group of experts led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and presented in a report entitled NATO 2020: Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement.

Despite NATO referring to itself as a “military alliance of democratic states in Europe and North America” and claiming that all its members’ opinions carry equal weight – as though Luxembourg and Iceland could block or override the U.S., the world’s sole military superpower as its current head of state proudly christened it last December – next month’s summit will be a rubber stamp affair.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

I have spent the last ten years elaborating on Jewish national ideology and tribal politics. During my journey of grasping what Zionism and Israel stand for, I came to realize that it is actually the Jewish left -- and Jewish Marxists in particular -- that provide us with an adequate glimpse into contemporary Jewish identity, tribal supremacy, marginal politics and tribalism.

‘Jewish left’ is basically an oxymoron. It is a contradiction in terms, because ‘Jewishness’ is a tribal ideology, whilst ‘the left’ are traditionally understood as aspiring to universalism.

On the face of it, the ‘Jewish left’ is, at least categorically, no different from Israel or Zionism: after all, it is an attempt to form yet another ‘Jews only political club’. And as far as the Palestinian solidarity movement is concerned, its role is subject to a growing debate -- For on the one hand, one can see the political benefit of pointing at a very few ‘good Jews’, and emphasizing that there are Jews who ‘oppose Zionism as Jews’. Yet on the other hand, however, accepting the legitimacy of such a racially orientated political affair, is in itself, an acceptance of yet another form, or manifestation of Zionism, for Zionism claims that Jews are primarily Jewish, and had better operate politically as Jews[1].

To a certain extent then, it is clear that Jewish anti Zionism, is, in itself, still just another form of Zionism.

‘Jewish dissidence’ has two main roles: First, it attempts to depict and bolster a positive image of Jews in general [2]. Second, it is there to silence and obscure any attempts on the part of the outsider to grasp the meaning of Jewish identity and Jewish politics within the machinations of the Jewish state. It is also there to stop elements in this movement from elaborating on the crucial role of Jewish lobbying.

The Jewish Left is there then, to mute any possible criticism of Jewish politics within the wider Left movements. It is there to stop the Goyim from looking into Jewish affairs.

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Stephen Lendman

The story is disturbingly familiar. FBI agents arrest a suspect on terrorism related charges, nearly always a Muslim, photographed full bearded to look menacing. Media reports highlight it, headlining government charges to incite fear. Announced arrests are strategically timed, this one days before mid-term elections. The message - Obama keeps America safe, vote Democrat.

Though too early to conclude guilt or innocence, what's so far known is worrisome, involving an FBI sting to entrap. Based on numerous previous cases, without exception, innocent men and occasionally women have been targeted, evidence later showing no plot and no crime. Yet suspects are arrested, charged, tried, and convicted by manipulated/intimidated juries, right-wing judges sentencing them to long prison terms.

Since America declared war on Islam post-9/11, Muslims have been the target of choice. As a result, hundreds have been wrongfully incarcerated, guilty only of practicing Islam in America at the wrong time. So far, Ahmed's case has all the earmarks of another man, victimized for political advantage.

On October 27, a Department of Justice press release headlined, "Virginia Man Arrested for Plotting Attacks on DC-Area Metro Stations with People He Believed to Be al Qaeda Members," saying:

"Today's case underscores the need for continued vigilance against terrorist threats and demonstrates how the government can neutralize such threats before they come to fruition."

How reassuring! -The DOJ accused Ahmed "of plotting with individuals he believed were terrorists to bomb our transit system, but a coordinated law enforcement and intelligence effort was able to thwart his plans....Today's arrest highlights the terrorism threat that exists in Northern Virginia and our ability to find those seeking to harm US citizens and neutralize them before they can act."

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Len Hart
The Existentialist Cowboy

In the U.S. if you are not rich you are screwed. To top it off, the filthy rich (just one percent own more than the rest of us combined) want to turn over your social security to the big banks. Americans have not confronted the fact that 'privatizing Social Security' equals giving your money to big banksters, the same big banksters who engineered the last depression. Again -the GOP scheme to privatize Social Security is either a heist or a gift, depending upon whether your are for it or against it.

With this gift/booty, the big banksters will invest and/or speculate with your monies offshore and international money markets. Not a single job will be created. Not one! Rather --the effect will be the loss of U.S. jobs just as there has been a loss of U.S. jobs under every GOP President since World War II.

I am hard pressed to name a single instance in history when a GOP tax cut or big business tax cut benefiting only the upper classes has EVER created a single job. In fact, every GOP tax cut or other largesse has resulted declines of both GDP and jobs. To be perfectly clear that is not just a slow down in growth; it is a real decline in job creation itself. That any American believes the GOP line dumped on them by consolidated corporate media is proof that the American education system is a dismal and utter failure --especially with respect to economics.

Texas is the fascist 'lab' experiment which confirms me. At the same time, Texas is nightmare vision of the future that awaits us all. Big corporations have robotized many jobs; the labor movement has been finished since Ronald Reagan waged war against labor and won. As jobs became increasingly technical and/or high tech, education became even more important. The GOP doesn't care about that. In fact, under GOP 'rule', Texas ranks dead last nationwide in high school graduations. As a result crime --especially murder and armed robbery --has increased.

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Stephen Lendman

Founded in 1976 by Carl Jensen, Mickey Huff now heads PC, working cooperatively with former director Peter Phillips' Media Freedom Foundation (MFF) and other investigative research and media related organizations. Together they counter major media real news and information censorship and suppression - what PC and MFF call "managed news" along with infotainment and miscellaneous "junk food news."

As a result, a "truth emergency" exists at a time, more than ever, real information is needed because media giants:

● support privilege over populism;
● endorse imperial wars and sham elections;
● suppress corporate lawlessness;
● ignore growing poverty, hunger, homelessness, despair, and
● an unprecedented wealth gap;
● 9/11 truth;
● a private banking cartel controlling the nation's money and stealing it at public expense;
● democracy for the select few alone; and
● much more of what matters most to working Americans.

PC and MFF provide antidotes. Besides annual PC editions, both offer daily web site daily updates, accessed through the following links: Project Censored + Media Freedom Intl.

The latest Censored 2011 covers the top 2009-10 stories and more in PC's richest ever volume, a collector's item like previous ones. Besides the top 25, it includes Junk Food News and News Abuse, Signs of Health, and FAIR's 10th anniversary of Fear and Favor in the News Room.

In addition, a new Truth Emergency section addresses State Crimes Against Democracy plus analysis of corporate media misinformation - the kind promoting imperial wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, expanded to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Occupied Palestine, as well as covert actions in dozens of countries, and atrocities wherever America encroaches.

PC and MFF are there and expanding with over 30 college and university affiliates, because growing numbers of people everywhere know corporate and state-controlled news suppress what informed citizens need to know. Instead they're fed sanitized junk and treated like mushrooms - well-watered, in the dark, and distracted by "everything to sell and nothing to tell."

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Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

Decadent governments often spawn a decadent citizenry. A 22-year-old Nebraska resident was arrested yesterday for waterboarding his girlfriend as she was tied to a couch, because he wanted to know if she was cheating on him with another man; I wonder where he learned that? There are less dramatic though no less nauseating examples of this dynamic. In The Chicago Tribune today, there is an Op-Ed from Jonah Goldberg -- the supreme, living embodiment of a cowardly war cheerleader -- headlined: "Why is Assange still alive?" It begins this way:

I'd like to ask a simple question: Why isn't Julian Assange dead? . . . WikiLeaks is easily among the most significant and well-publicized breaches of American national security since the Rosenbergs gave the Soviets the bomb. . . .

So again, I ask: Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago? -It's a serious question.

He ultimately concludes that "it wouldn't do any good to kill him, given the nature of the Web" -- whatever that means -- and reluctantly acknowledges: "That's fine. And it's the law. I don't expect the U.S. government to kill Assange, but I do expect them to try to stop him." What he wants the Government to do to "stop" Assange is left unsaid -- tough-guy neocons love to beat their chest and demand action without having the courage to specify what they mean -- but his question ("Why isn't Julian Assange dead?") was published in multiple newspapers around the country today.

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The American Dream
The American Dream

Most people tend to think of environmentalists as warm, cuddly hippies that just want all of us to love one another and to do what is right for the environment. And in fact, there are a few people out there who are actually like that. However, the people at the very heart of the green agenda are a quite different breed. The truth is that there are a growing number of environmental activists (including some very, very famous people) who are publicly advocating the end of our freedoms, the establishment of a Big Brother style world government and the systematic eradication of at least 90% of humanity all for the good of the environment. Unfortunately, this is not a joke and it is not an exaggeration. As you will see below, these people are very, very serious. To these eco-fascists, climate change is the number one threat to the earth, and in order to eliminate that threat "democracy must be put on hold", an authoritarian world government must be established and we need to start getting rid of as many humans as possible.

Posted below is a new video about the importance of fighting "climate change" that was recently released by a prominent global warming activist organization known as 10:10 Global. This short video depicts children and adults being savagely blown to pieces for not reducing their carbon footprints. The organization has since pulled the video and has issued an apology, but the fact that anyone would actually put out such a video is absolutely chilling. In fact, there are many advocates of the green agenda who wish that they could actually press a button and do this kind of thing to "climate change deniers"....

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Kev Boyle
No One To Vote For

The very-traditional-Christian, Talmud scholar and sometimes-genius, Michael Hoffman, argues in his book "Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare" that we are currently in the age of 'the Revelation of the Method'

Having studied masonic and Pharisaical Jewish occultism, he says that in this current time the Group Mind has been alchemically processed sufficiently for the "cryptocracy" to "make manifest all that is hidden."

This 'alchemy' is, he claims, the final stage in the occult trajectory that has been working ceaselessly for total global control for many centuries.

We are being allowed to see and understand what is being done to us because, such is the hypnotised state of the masses, that even though many of us can see the truth there is nothing we can do about it.

Thus, rather than these revelations (about 9/11, 7/7, the money system and the like) liberating us, they deepen our humiliation and sense of helplessness.

As he says, it is a terrible thing to have someone rape your wife. How much worse if the rapist tells you what he's going to do first and then comes round and rapes her anyway.

Well, so far things do look pretty bad. There are plenty of people who know the truth about the great crimes that have been perpetrated against the common man in order to enslave him but, as yet, only small signs of any effective fight-back against the globalist powers-that-be.

In the end, however, this bold and, from their point of view, (one can understand) necessary strategy is obviously highly dangerous and will, in the end be undone.

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Jonathan Cook
Israeli Occupation Archive

Protest met with rubber bullets: Israeli police shoot ‘hated’ Arab legislator in back

Israeli police injured two Arab legislators on Wedensay in violent clashes provoked by Jewish rightwing extremists staging a march through the northern Arab town of Umm al-Fahm.

Haneen Zoubi, a parliament member who has become a national hate figure in Israel and received hundreds of death threats since her participation in an aid flotilla to Gaza in the summer, was among those hurt.

Ms Zoubi reported being hit in the back and neck by rubber bullets as she fled the area when police opened fire. In an interview, she said she believed she had been specifically targeted by police snipers after they identified her.

Police denied her claims, saying they had used only tear gas and stun grenades.

Some 1,500 police were reported to have faced off with hundreds of Arab and Jewish demonstrators in the town.

Shimon Koren, the northern police commander, admitted special paramilitary forces had been used against the Arab counter-demonstration, as well as an undercover unit more usually deployed at Palestinian protests in the West Bank.

An officer disguised as an Arab demonstrator, from the so-called “mistarvim unit”, was among the injured, apparently after police fired a stun grenade at him by mistake.

Ms Zoubi harshly criticised the police violence.

“The police proved that they are a far more dangerous threat to me and other Arab citizens than the fascist group that came to Umm al-Fahm,” [she said.]

The march was organised by far-right settlers allied to Kach, a movement that demands the expulsion of Palestinians from both Israel and the occupied territories. The movement was formally outlawed in 1994, but has continued to flourish openly among some settler groups. The organisers said they were demanding the banning of the Islamic Movement, which has its headquarters in Umm al-Fahm.

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

With only a few days remaining in the 2010 election campaign, one thing is certain: the Obama administration and the Democratic Party are preparing a further lurch to the right.

Four years after a massive turnout at the polls to repudiate the Republican-controlled Congress and give the Democrats the majority, and two years after the election of Barack Obama to the White House by a margin of 7 million votes, the administration’s right-wing policies have shattered the popular illusions raised by Obama’s vague appeals to “hope” and “change.”

Millions are coming to see the Democrats as a second party of big business, committed to the defense of corporate interests both at home and abroad. But within the framework of the American two-party system they are given no way of expressing their frustration and anger except by staying home on election day or casting a vote for the even more right-wing party of big business, the Republicans.

Given the orchestrated and manipulated character of the election, with more than $4 billion expended, largely by the wealthy and corporate interests, and a corporate-controlled media that suppresses any consideration of political alternatives to the two official parties, the outcome of the November 2 vote must necessarily have a contradictory character.

Under the impact of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the American population is moving broadly to the left, as suggested in poll after poll. But the official interpretation of the vote, reiterated in a thousand commentaries by media pundits and echoed by politicians of both parties, is just the opposite: the American voter will deliver a rebuke to the supposed liberal excesses of the Democratic Party, demanding fiscal austerity, more tax breaks for the rich and further deregulation of banks and corporations.

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Stephen Lendman

Post-9/11, Mirza is one of legions of war on terror victims - framed, charged, indicted, tried and convicted on bogus terrorism related charges.

On October 22, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas headlined, "Pakistani Student Sentenced to prison for conspiring to support the Taliban and unlawful possession of firearms," saying:

[Adnan Mirza was] "convicted in May 2010 (on nine counts) following a jury trial....Senior US District Judge Ewing Werlein (imposed) the maximum applicable prison term for each" one, complying with prosecutors' request for terrorism enhancements, used when they claim a crime aimed to influence or coerce government policy. Mirza was also fined $1,000 for each count, $9,000 in total.

"An FBI (sting) resulted in (alleged) proof that Mirza and others intended to send funds to the Taliban and had engaged in weekend/training and practice sessions with firearms to prepare for 'jihad' on six different occasions beginning in May 2006 at a location on the north side of Houston."

On May 27, New York Times writer Daniel Cadis headlined, "Texas: Student Convicted of Aiding Taliban," giving Mirza one paragraph with no explanation on the FBI's sting, using two paid informants to entrap, its common way snare victims - innocent, yet bogusly convicted and imprisoned.

On the same date, MyHarlingen News.com headlined, "Jury Convicts Adnan Mirza of Conspiring to Support the Taliban and Unlawful Possession of Firearms," saying he's a Pakistani citizen, here on student visa to attend college in 2005 and 2006 when arrested and charged.

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Charles Ferguson
Salon.com

The director of "Inside Job" writes about Obama's depressingly rational decision to give in to Wall Street

When I first decided to make a documentary about the financial crisis, in late 2008, my biggest question was how to handle Barack Obama. Alas, the answer rapidly became all too clear, as my film "Inside Job" shows in painful detail.

When Barack Obama was elected, he had an unprecedented opportunity to shape American history by bringing the country's new financial oligarchy under control. Elected on a platform of change and renewal by a nation in crisis and with strong majorities in both houses of Congress, his election celebrated throughout the world, Obama could have done great things. Instead, he gave us more of the same. America will be paying for his decision for a very long time.

The first troubling sign was his personnel appointments: Larry Summers, the man behind nearly every disastrous policy that created the crisis, fresh from making $20 million from hedge funds and investment banks while at Harvard, to become the director of the National Economic Council; Tim Geithner, plucked from the New York Federal Reserve Bank and put in charge at Treasury; as Geithner's chief of staff, Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist; to succeed Geithner at the New York Fed, William C. Dudley, who was chief economist of Goldman Sachs during the housing bubble years; Michael Froman, straight from Citigroup Alternative Investments, which lost billions while its executives became rich, to coordinate economic policy for the National Security Council; Jacob Lew, who was the CFO of Citigroup Alternative Investments, as deputy secretary of state (and now, Obama's nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget); Gary Gensler, a former Goldman executive who helped ban the regulation of over-the-counter derivatives, to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives; Mary Shapiro, former head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency, the investment banking industry’s self-policing body, to run the Securities and Exchange Commission; reappointing Ben Bernanke. And on and on.

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Andrew Gavin Marshall
Global Research

The following is a sample from an forthcoming book by Andrew Gavin Marshall on 'Global Government', Global Research Publishers, Montreal. For more by this author on the issue of the economic crisis and global governance, see the recently-released book by Global Research "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century," Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, (Editors), in which the author contributed three chapters on the history of central banking, the rise of a global currency and global central bank, and the political economy of global government.

Problem, Reaction, Solution: “Crisis is an Opportunity”

In May of 2010, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF, stated that, “crisis is an opportunity,” and called for “a new global currency issued by a global central bank, with robust governance and institutional features,” and that the “global central bank could also serve as a lender of last resort.” However, he stated, “I fear we are still very far from that level of global collaboration.”[1] Well, perhaps not so far as it might seem.

The notion of global governance has taken an evolutionary path to the present day, with the principle global political and economic actors and institutions incrementally constructing the apparatus of a global government. In the modern world, global governance is an inter-lapping, intersecting, and intertwined web of international organizations, think tanks, multinational corporations, nations, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, military alliances, intelligence agencies, banks and interest groups. Globalization – a term which was popularized in the late 1980s to refer to the global spread of multinational corporations – has laid the principle ideological and institutional foundations for this process. Global social, economic and political integration do not occur at an equal pace; rather, economic integration and governance on a global level has and will continue to be ahead of the other sectors of human social interaction, in both the pace and degree of integration. In short, global economic governance will set the pace for social and political global governance to follow.

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K Gajendra Singh
uruknet

"It would be a good idea." ~ Mahatma Gandhi, when asked about his views on western culture.

"Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world." ~ Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"As usual, the Arabs knew. They knew all about the mass torture, the promiscuous shooting of civilians, the outrageous use of air power against family homes, the vicious American and British mercenaries, the cemeteries of the innocent dead. All of Iraq knew. Because they were the victims." ~ Robert Fisk

Hosting by WikiLeaks on its website some 391,832 US military messages documenting actions and reports on Iraq over the period 2004-2009,can be divided in five heads:

■ Reliance on private contractors aka mercenaries
■ the so-called "surge" of 30,000 additional US troops
■ the deaths of Iraqi civilians - killed mostly by other Iraqis, but also by the US
■ a litany of prisoner abuse by Iraqis - which US officials ignored - even more lurid than the infamous photographs of torture from Abu Ghraib prison in 2004
■ and the so called "aggressive" intervention of Iran's military providing "weapons, training and sanctuary" to Shia combatants.

Robert Fisk highlights the main points as follows:

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Stephen Lendman

Ferdinand Lundberg's "Cracks in the Constitution" deconstructed what framers, in fact, created, men he equated with a Wall Street crowd, given their economic status and prominence as bankers, merchants, lawyers, politicians, judges, and overall wheeler-dealers. In 1787, they convened for their own interests, not the general welfare as most people believe.

As a result, they produced no "masterpiece of political architecture (falling far short of) one great apotheosis (bathed) in quasi-religious light," as Lundberg masterfully explained. His book, if not the Constitution, is an epic work, must reading about America's most important document, the Bill of Rights added belatedly in the first 10 Amendments, again not for reasons commonly believed.

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