M.J. Rosenberg
Political Correction

It looks like Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will get away with his refusal to extend the settlements freeze. Actually, it wasn't much of a freeze in the first place (it had the consistency of ice cream after the freezer door has been left open overnight). But it was better than nothing and maintaining it was the one thing the Palestinians demanded as a condition to keep negotiating.

Palestinians rightfully believe that they can not negotiate with Israel about who is going to keep the occupied West Bank while Israel is building permanent structures all over the very land being discussed.

The usual suspects (the lobby and its cutouts on Capitol Hill) don't think settlements are such a big deal.

They should go to Hebron, a major city on the occupied West Bank — one that right-wingers say Israel will hold on to no matter what. It won't change their calculations on the Middle East, but at least they will know what they are defending in the name of political expediency.

I have visited Hebron a half-dozen times, most recently as part of an official U.S. government delegation. Much of what follows comes from a report I wrote then. (Note: the situation has only deteriorated.)

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Paul Craig Roberts
Antiwar Forum

■ Does anyone remember the "cakewalk war" that would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues?

■ Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion?

Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq.

■ Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan?

■ Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the US government knew did not exist?

■ Are Americans aware that the same neoconservatives who made these fantastic mistakes, or told these fabulous lies, are still in control of the government in Washington?

■ The "war on terror" is now in its tenth year. What is it really all about?

The bottom line answer is that the "war on terror" is about creating real terrorists. The US government desperately needs real terrorists in order to justify its expansion of its wars against Muslim countries and to keep the American people sufficiently fearful that they continue to accept the police state that provides "security from terrorists," but not from the government that has discarded civil liberties.

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John Pilger
JohnPilger.com

The rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordinary drama filled with pathos and heroism. It is also a media windfall for the Chilean government, whose every beneficence is recorded by a forest of cameras. One cannot fail to be impressed. However, like all great media events, it is a façade.

The accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile and the inevitable consequence of a ruthless economic system that has barely changed since the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Copper is Chile’s gold, and the frequency of mining disasters keeps pace with prices and profits. There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year in Chile’s privatised mines. The San Jose mine, where the men work, became so unsafe in 2007 it had to be closed – but not for long. On 30 July last, a labour department report warned again of “serious safety deficiencies ”, but the minister took no action. Six days later, the men were entombed.

For all the media circus at the rescue site, contemporary Chile is a country of the unspoken. At the Villa Grimaldi, in the suburbs of the capital Santiago, a sign says: “The forgotten past is full of memory.” This was the torture centre where hundreds of people were murdered and disappeared for opposing the fascism that General Augusto Pinochet and his business allies brought to Chile. Its ghostly presence is overseen by the beauty of the Andes, and the man who unlocks the gate used to live nearby and remembers the screams.

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Stephen Lendman

Earlier articles explained his ordeal, a man Bush administration prosecutors hounded, persecuted, and imprisoned on bogus charges. Articles on him can be accessed through the following links here, here and here.

Though free on bail, Al-Arian remains politically imprisoned like many hundreds of others behind bars. Because of his faith, ethnicity, prominence and political activism, he was accused of supporting "terrorism" and other outrageous charges.

In fact, he's a Palestinian refugee, a distinguished professor, scholar, community leader, and civil activist, a man deserving honor, not incarceration doing hard time until released after five and half years of brutal treatment, including solitary confinement in rat and roach-infested cells.

He was denied religious services, got no watch or clock, and was kept in windowless cells with artificial lights kept on round the clock. Whenever outside his cell, he was also shackled hands behind back and ankles. In protest, he staged hunger strikes, long enough to endanger is life.

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Terrence McNally
AlterNet

Germans have six weeks of federally mandated vacation, free university tuition, and nursing care. Why the US pales in comparison.

While the bad news of the Euro crisis makes headlines in the US, we hear next to nothing about a quiet revolution in Europe. The European Union, 27 member nations with a half billion people, has become the largest, wealthiest trading bloc in the world, producing nearly a third of the world's economy -- nearly as large as the US and China combined. Europe has more Fortune 500 companies than either the US, China or Japan.

European nations spend far less than the United States for universal healthcare rated by the World Health Organization as the best in the world, even as U.S. health care is ranked 37th. Europe leads in confronting global climate change with renewable energy technologies, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the process. Europe is twice as energy efficient as the US and their ecological "footprint" (the amount of the earth's capacity that a population consumes) is about half that of the United States for the same standard of living.

Unemployment in the US is widespread and becoming chronic, but when Americans have jobs, we work much longer hours than our peers in Europe. Before the recession, Americans were working 1,804 hours per year versus 1,436 hours for Germans -- the equivalent of nine extra 40-hour weeks per year.

In his new book, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?, Thomas Geoghegan makes a strong case that European social democracies -- particularly Germany -- have some lessons and models that might make life a lot more livable. Germans have six weeks of federally mandated vacation, free university tuition, and nursing care. But you've heard the arguments for years about how those wussy Europeans can't compete in a global economy. You've heard that so many times, you might believe it. But like so many things, the media repeats endlessly, it's just not true.

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Stephen Lendman

Two web sites, among others, provide information on their case, accessed through the following links:

The CubansFive.org + FreeTheFive.org

In September 1998, Miami FBI agents arrested Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, and René González on spurious charges, including conspiracy to commit espionage. For days, however, no formal notification was given until a complicit media campaign smeared them falsely and maliciously.

At a June 2, 2010 Washington National Press Club press conference, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five's coordinator, Gloria La Riva, announced new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) obtained evidence revealing names of 14 journalists who "were receiving covertly (paid) monies from the US government."

Included was Pablo Alfonso who received $58,600 for 16 articles published in (the south Florida Spanish language) El Nuevo Herald newspaper. La Riva explained that "During the pre-trial period, there were hundreds of articles on the Cuban Five and not one was favorable." Journalists were bribed to write them.

According to the National Lawyers Guild Heidi Boghosian, "This shows that the US Government was an accomplice to manipulating the jury by bribing journalists that violated the principles of impartiality and accuracy."

She also affirmed that the Five's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial was violated, federal authorities corrupting the process to convict them.

On September 9, 2006, New York Times writer Abby Goodnough headlined, "US Paid 10 Journalists for Anti-Castro Reports," saying:

"The Bush administration's Office of Cuba Broadcasting paid (them) to provide commentary on Radio and TV Marti, which transmit" anti-Castro propaganda to Cuba. Journalists named included Pablo Alfonso getting almost $175,000 since 2001 and Armstrong Williams (a notorious right wing liar) receiving $240,000 to write on various issues, including privatizing public education.

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Kourosh Ziabari

Philip Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

Now, he chairs the Council for the National Interest as the Executive Director. CNI is a nonprofit organization that advocates for the transformation of United States' Middle East policy.

As a CIA officer, Giraldi served in different countries including Turkey, Italy, Germany and Spain. He is now a Francis Walsingham Fellow at The American Conservative Defense Alliance. He has appeared on several radio and TV programs including Good Morning America, MSNBC, NPR, Fox News, BBC, Al-Jazeera and 60 Minutes.

Giraldi works with the American Conservative magazine as a contributing editor and writes a regular column for the Antiwar website. He is an outspoken critic of the hawkish policies of the United States and has publicly decried Washington's unconditional support for the state of Israel.

Philip Giraldi joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss the latest developments of the Middle East, the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the possibility of a peaceful compromise between Iran and the United States and the impact of Israeli lobby on the long-term policies of the White House.

Kourosh Ziabari: Why is the Israeli lobby so powerful, influential and authoritative? Almost all of the major media conglomerates in the United States own to well-off Jews who are committed to maintaining the interests of the state of Israel in the U.S. Some experts say that Israel is the representative of the United States in the Middle East region, but some others suggest that it's Israel which determines the future of political developments in the United States. What's your take on that?

Philip Giraldi: The Israel Lobby is so powerful because it deliberately set out to establish control over key elements in the United States. It has demonstrated a number of times that politicians who are perceived as being unfriendly to Israel will face serious problems in being reelected because the Lobby mobilizes to provide money and media support to opponents. This means that congress is afraid to oppose anything that Israel and its Lobby wants. The same holds true for the presidency. Every presidential candidate must be seen as friendly to Israel or he will be attacked in the media and denied millions of dollars in political contributions, making it a safer option to support Israel. Finally, pro-Israeli interests control much of the media and, more important, dominate the opinion and editorial pages, making the only narrative that most Americans hear about the Middle East highly favorable to Israel and highly critical of all Israel's enemies. As a result, Israel is able to control U.S. foreign policy as it relates to the Middle East and also much of the Muslim world.

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Nick Egnatz
Online Journal

Prisoner undergoing torture, US soldiers using nightsticks. Taken
directly from US CID photos investigating Abu Ghraib prison tor-
ture, physical abuse and sexual abuse. (salon.com / The We!)

After voting in every national election since I came of age serving in Vietnam, I have come to the studied conclusion that continuing to participate in U.S. federal elections serves no purpose other than to convey my consent to a system which is both anti-democratic and criminal.

Anti-democratic because rather than a system of one person/one vote, we have a system of multi-millions of dollars required to run for the House or the Senate. The two corporate political parties enjoy monopoly status and refuse to allow democratic reforms. Independent and third parties have almost no chance in winning a single election of consequence. While voting for an independent or third party candidate might assuage one’s conscience, in reality it is a vote giving one’s consent to a grossly unfair system.

Personally, it took the illegal Bush wars to wake me from an American culture-induced coma and onto a path of study and activism in the pursuit of peace and social justice for all the people of the earth. Indeed for the earth itself.

But the criminality didn’t start with Bush Jr. invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Both done without permission from the U.N. Security Council as required by the U.N. Charter and the U.S. Constitution and thus illegal. As an American I was steeped in the American World View--that America was the kindest, gentlest nation on earth, that America was a representative democracy and that our policies at home and abroad, while occasionally misguided, were certainly done for the benefit of mankind. Then came Bush’s wars. Like many others when I first started protesting them I felt that they were some sort of aberration and a simple course correction would get us back on track.

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Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine

[L-R:] Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), Ahmad Qadhaf Al-Dam.
Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi in the middle.

The bleak mood in Ramallah that preceded the Sirte Arab Summit in Libya became even more sombre as Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas discovered that the Arab leaders whose help he was seeking were themselves helpless and could do next to nothing in terms of helping the Palestinians at this crucial juncture in their struggle.

Having engaged in some acrimonious exchanges with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Sirte, and with the Arab League failing miserably to take a decisive stand with regard to Israel's determination to steal additional Palestinian land, and in broad daylight, the Palestinian leader appeared in despair. A reliable source in Ramallah spoke of "a certain propensity" on the part of the PA leader "to go it alone".

"The president thinks that many Arab leaders are quite detached from the Palestinian reality and are trying to settle old accounts with the Palestinian leadership more than they are interested in helping the Palestinian cause." The source, who requested anonymity, described the Sirte meeting as "another monumental failure because everyone wants to use the Palestinians as cannon fodder." "The Arabs want us to confront Israel and the United States alone, but when we ask them why they don't do the same, they shut up and tell us that they have their own interests to protect and care about."

The Sirte meeting gave the Obama administration 30 days to get Israel to adhere to the basics of the peace process, including pressuring Israel to renew the freeze on Jewish settlement activities. However, it is widely thought that this one-month hiatus is aimed more at unburdening the Obama administration of the task of confronting Israel during the upcoming election season rather than seeing any concrete results from any renewed American efforts at reactivating an exhausted and unpromising peace process.

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Les Visible
Smoking Mirrors

♫ Row, row, row your boat, gently down the streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeam, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream ♫

I haven’t been in the US since 2003 and that was on the island of Maui, HI. I haven’t been on the mainland US since 1996. I don’t have a sense of the place. I know it’s not like the parts of Europe that I live in where I seldom even see a police car and where the police are uniformly (heh heh) polite. The places that I am weren’t even much affected by World War 2. They weren’t and aren’t strategic for any reason, except for growing food.

My objectivity narrows and widens, depending on my state of mind and degree of awake/aware. At times, when I look at the world around me, through the vari-colored lenses of the media; Zionist owned, Zionist influenced, Zionist threatened and Zionist-free, I get the impression that the whole world is on a dreamboat that is sailing for the rocks, while the Invisible Siren Chorus sings from a promontory. The lighthouse is actually a holographic projection machine that presents the impression that white sand beaches and naked volleyball games await. It’s apparent that BP had been in the night before, with dump trucks filled with sand.

We approach that November whirlpool by the day. Pundits and prophets from the various realms of industry and random mountaintops have all indicated that November is bringing that critical straw for the camel’s back. Chiropractors in three piece suits are standing by; not because they care one way or the other about the camel but because someone has to stand around and speculate and look busy, while the people responsible for the state of things sneak out of town.

The primary, flesh-based enemy of humanity is the bankers and chief among them is the central banks. There are various other consortiums like the IMF which are dedicated to world wide economic slavery of anyone and everyone but themselves. They are joined by those who operate and feed upon the fantasy football game at Wall Street; wherever Wall Street may be in whatever urban location it feeds in. The politicians are a secondary concern. They serve the will of the bankers. The bankers serve the King of Hell through the proxy of their own self interest. The bankers create the wars for profit. They create them any time and anywhere that profit can be realized and they fund both sides of the conflict in order to own the economy on either side at the war’s end.

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Stephen Lendman

An earlier article discussed the Mossawa Center calling the current Knesset the most racist in history, accessed through THIS link.

It reviewed 2008 and 2009 legislation violating Israeli Arab rights, Mossawa saying "almost every day" they're victimized by racist actions, and as a result, they face disruptive social, economic and cultural futures.

The upcoming winter Knesset session promises worse, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel's Debby Gild-Hayo (ACRI) reviewing what's expected in a report titled, "Harming Democracy in the Heart of Democracy." Ahead of the upcoming session, it addressed expected anti-democratic legislation, including:

● free expression political protest rights;
● equality before the law;
● verbal and physical abuse of minority MKs;
● efforts to delegitimize and infringe on legitimate human rights and social change organizations; and
● attempts to weaken academic freedom.

In sum, it represents extremist efforts to weaken Israeli democracy, or what passes for its current system, by destroying civil liberties, silencing minority views, and characterizing groups holding them as state enemies. In fact, "We are witnessing a reality of increasing tyranny against social, political, and national minorities, which harms their" rights and everyone's. Perhaps more disturbing is that surveys of the past two years show public support, mainly among Israeli youths.

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Khalid Amayreh

Slaughter in Nablus

"In the final analysis Nazism is Nazism and it doesn’t matter if it has a German or Jewish face."

A few days ago, Dov Lior, the Rabbi of the Jewish colony of Kiryat Arba, called for the annihilation of the people of the city of Nablus. Speaking to fellow settler leaders, Lior addressed one settler leader, telling him “I am sure you can become the mayor of Shchem (Hebrew name of Nabslus) I am sure you will be able to do the job in one month, even one day.”

Like most other national-religious rabbis, Lior believes that the Bible condones the mass murder of non-Jewish men, women and children who refuse to submit to the “master race.” In 1994, the same rabbi enthusiastically endorsed the massacre of innocent Palestinian worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in downtown Hebron at the hands of an American Jewish Terrorist named Baruch Goldstein, who had immigrated to Israel from the United States. Lior eulogized Goldstein, who was subsequently killed by survivors, calling him a “great hero and saint.”

Predictably, Lior has no difficulty “proving” that non-Jews living in Palestine should be given three choices: physical extermination, enslavement as water carriers and wood hewers in the service of the master race, or violent expulsion. He can always go straight to the books of Deuteronomy or Kings or Joshua and select some of the bloodiest verses urging slaughter. He would dutifully avoid other verses that urge fair treatment of “aliens” living in the land!!

Unfortunately, Lior is not rare species. The vast majority of Zionist rabbis in Israel seem to have more to do with the doctrine of Adolph Hitler than with the Ten Commandments.

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Stuart Littlewood
Redress

Mr Hague, is it not your responsibility to keep seaways open? - Dignity, Mavi Marmara and now Irene.

Stuart Littlewood reminds British Foreign Secretary William Hague of recent acts of piracy by the Israeli navy against unarmed aid ships, including the sadistic assault on the Jewish boat, the Irene, and asks him what the UK government and its partners are doing to keep the seaways open and guarantee free movement, as required by numerous treaties, charters and the law?

The unbroken thread of Conservative Party support for Israel that has run for nearly a century from the Balfour Declaration to the present day will continue. Although it will no doubt often be tested in the years ahead, it will remain constant, unbroken and undiminished by the passage of time. No prize for guessing which leading politician uttered these words. It was your goodself, Mr Foreign Secretary, back in 2008.

Now for a reality check. I want to share with you, Mr Foreign Secretary, this powerful and moving interview with Lillian Rosengarten by Philip Weiss.

Seventy-five-year-old Lillian, an American, was on board Irene, the Jewish boat to Gaza, when the vessel was assaulted by “dehumanized” Israelis. Lillian and the other passengers were abducted. She was later deported and told never to come back.

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Mark Glenn

Like “Bruiser”, the bully who has been challenged to a fight after school but who turns out to be a no-show upon realizing he’s about to be turned into hamburger, one of the most powerful Zionist organizations in the world–the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith–has completely expunged all references to Israel’s deliberate attack on the USS LIBERTY from its internationally-read website. The ADL–contacted for this piece, gave no reasons for their decision.

Lest some think this decision on the part of the Mossad-affiliated ADL is minor in its scope, it should be noted that the website section dealing with Israel’s attack on the USS LIBERTY (leaving 34 American servicemen dead and almost 200 seriously wounded) was not just a simple 1-page belly-dance of Zionist disinformation. In the interests of intellectually-tranquilizing otherwise-interested persons wanting to know more about the infamous event that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., the ADL had compiled years’ worth of citations and notations and with regular relevant updates as they occurred. Extensive in its disinformation and done in the interests of painting the deliberate act of war against America as a case of “mistaken identity” the section dealing with the LIBERTY was possibly as much as a half-dozen pages in length and brazen in its deception. The person(s) responsible for providing new information for the page’s updates noted what was written by so-and-so LIBERTY survivor in what article on what day, as well as regular updates concerning what Phil Tourney–clearly the most outspoken of all the LIBERTY survivors–would say on the various radio programs where he appeared as either host or guest.

Assuming that the removal of the entire LIBERTY section was not the result of a spilled cup of coffee on a computer keyboard but rather a conscious decision on the part of ADL’s strategists and planners, all those who note this development must scratch their heads in curiosity over why such actions would be taken.

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Stephen Lendman

[Click on image to enlarge.] A personal note. I grew up in Boston from the mid-1930s - mid-1950s through college. Then after military service and summer courses at BU, out-of-town grad school followed in the fall.

It was a different time, good and bad. Eisenhower was still president. Unemployment was low. Anyone wanting work found it. Most years the economy grew during a post-WW II expansion. Inflation was low. The average new car cost $1,500, a typical home under $10,000. College was affordable. Harvard's 1952 full year tuition was $600. Four years later it was $1,000 - for a full, two-semester year. During the period, anyone could attend evenings at $5 a course and get a Harvard degree for about $175, the way my mother did it, graduating with me in the same class, the first ever mother and son to do it.

America was unchallenged economically, its manufacturing base offering high paying/good benefits jobs. Union representation was high. The South and US northern cities were segregated. They still are, all 1960s civil rights gains lost plus most good jobs and benefits. Alaska and Hawaii additions grew America to 50 states.

The Korean War left an unsettled armistice. Cold War politics settled in. Developing "mutually assured destruction (MAD)" and accommodation prevented WW III. Censure ruined Joe McCarthy, and by May 1957 he was dead at age 48. The CIA's first coup deposed Iran's Mohammad Mosaddegh. A generation of terror followed. A year later, another toppled Guatemala's Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, fueling decades of genocide against its indigenous peoples.

Throughout the decade, few followed Vietnam events, its defeat of France, America's growing involvement, what became three decades of war. Palestinian Territories weren't occupied, and during the period Israel was young, growing, but mostly out of the news and public mind. With today's one-sided Western support, times indeed have changed, for the worse, not better, including in academia.

For example, noted professors like Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel and Canada's Denis Rancourt, among others, lost jobs for supporting Palestine, universities tolerating no Israeli opposition no matter how justified. Moreover, Zionized Yale, among other activities and curricula studies, has an Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) at a time evidence shows it at a historic low.

Nonetheless, it holds regular seminars and conferences, including last August for three days on campus, featuring pro-Israeli zealots, omitting Palestinian supporters, and letting hatemongers rail on topics like radical Islam, genocidal antisemitism, the Iranian threat, and much more throughout a 72 hour hatefest.

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