Stephen Lendman

"Justifiably, Israel ranked 144, besting only Pakistan, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq in descending order, Iraq ranking last, but Afghanistan is just as bad or worse."

"GPI rankings conspicuously omit two factors:

lor="#43395D">● outside influence causing internal conflicts, instability, and/or disruptions; and
● responsible provocateur countries.

As a result, although America ranks low at 85 (above the 94 average) behind Rwanda, Indonesia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Egypt, it deserves a bottom position for imperial wars. In addition, numerous countries score low because of American and/or Israeli direct or indirect meddling. They might be relatively peaceful without it."

Launched in May 2007, the Global Peace Index (GPI) ranks nations according to peacefulness. Its 2010 report includes 149 countries, graded on the basis of "ongoing domestic and international conflict, safety and security in society and militarisation...."

An earlier article discussed GPI's 2008 survey, accessed through THIS link.

This year's index includes 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators, "which combine internal and external factors ranging from a nation's level of military expenditure to its relations with neighboring countries and the level of respect for human rights."

According to GPI's founder, Australian entrepreneur Steve Killelea, indicators were chosen by an international panel of academics, business people, philanthropists, and peace organization members.

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Gerald Celente
The Trends Journal

The “American Century” – an age of opportunity characterized by the entrepreneur – [has] passed into history. America [has] been corporatized, homogenized, dumbed down and chained.

What had happened to that rebellious Yankee spirit and the American mind? Could it have been the food that overstuffed and immobilized them?

The Pop-Tarts® and Egg McMuffins® washed down with Coke® for breakfast? The Baconator® Triple, The Whoppers®, The Big Macs®, the $5 Foot-Long Subs, the bucket-of-chicken and 32oz. Big Gulp®? Too many trips to the All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet or The Never Ending Pasta Bowl®? Or was it the Slurpees, tubs of ice cream, or boxes of donuts grabbed at the convenience store?

Could it have been the factory-farmed, battery-raised, hormone implanted, antibiotic-laced, pesticide sprayed, genetically modified beef, fish, chicken, eggs, dairy, vegetables, grains that were used in the highly processed, synthetic, ultra pasteurized, artificially sweetened, colored and flavored “product” passed off as food?

What drove a nation with a relatively well-off and well-educated population to inflict such suicidal behavior upon itself? It was easy to point to the poor for buying cheap and eating stupid. But what excused the smartest of the smart and the richest of the rich from buying cheap and eating stupid?

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

"He went on national television to conciliate big business and embrace the concerns of the Tea Party right wing, declaring them politically legitimate. He was low-key, conciliatory and, above all, prostrate before corporate America, whose servant he is."

US President Barack Obama was interviewed for nearly half an hour on the CBS News program “60 Minutes,” broadcast Sunday night. The discussion with correspondent Steve Kroft was conducted on Thursday, November 4, and was the only extended public interview with Obama since the rout of the Democrats in last Tuesday’s congressional election.

These circumstances make the content of the discussion that much more remarkable. Obama has given no accounting of the debacle for the Democrats. He has not explained how his administration managed to restore the political standing of an ultra-right Republican Party that was totally discredited only two years ago. Nor has he warned his former supporters of the dangers to jobs, living standards and democratic rights from a newly empowered right-wing majority in the House of Representatives.

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Matthew Nasuti
Kabul Press

The West simply cannot afford to continue to fight the Taliban.

The military-industrial complex is a voracious beast that demands its daily fix at the trough of the American taxpayers.

It costs $50 thousand to kill each NATO soldier while it costs $50 million to kill each Taliban soldier. It is therefore 1,000 times cheaper to kill a NATO soldier; a fact that does not seem to bother the Pentagon, NATO’s leadership or European defense ministers.

Kabul Press, on September 30, 2010, published an article by this author detailing the best estimate of Taliban killed per year (2,000) divided by a portion of the direct costs that the Pentagon is spending each year in Afghanistan ($100 billion). The resulting statistic suggests that it costs $50 million to kill each Taliban soldier. This number is very conservative. If all NATO and American costs (direct and indirect) were included, the analysis would reveal that it actually costs about $150 million.

The present article examines spending from the Taliban side in order to comparatively determine what it costs to kill each NATO soldier. The Brookings Institution is the consulting firm with the best political access to the Obama Administration and the U.S. State Department. In September 2009, it published a report on Taliban annual revenue, based in part on data gathered by the Congressional Research Service. Brookings estimated Taliban annual income at between $140 and $200 million. The Taliban have already inflicted over 600 deaths on NATO soldiers and more than twice that number of fatalities on Afghan army and police personnel. By the end of the year, total Coalition deaths are expected to reach 3,000. The math is unfortunately easy. Assuming Taliban revenue of $150 million divided by 3,000 = $50,000 to kill a NATO, American or Afghan soldier.

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Khalid Amayreh

The Israeli government is exerting tremendous pressure on the UK to amend British laws allowing for the arrest and prosecution of suspected war criminal.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague reportedly was being 'ambushed' by Israeli officials during his recent visit to the de facto Apartheid state. Hague's Israeli hosts cancelled a high-level security briefing with him in response to a British threat to arrest an Israeli official for suspected war crimes.

Pro-Palestinian and civic-minded Britons have presented virtually irrefutable evidence showing that numerous Israeli political and military leaders committed acts that can be defined as war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.

Israeli human rights organizations, such as B'tselem, have also collected testimonies detailing deliberate acts of murder by members of the Israeli Defence Forces who argued that they were acting on orders and instructions from their superiors.

The principle of universal jurisdiction is one of the few remaining outlets for establishing justice for weak victims who have very few or no practical means to bring their victimizers to justice.

According to Amnesty International, the principle of universal jurisdiction should be a requirement for all states that are signatories to the UN Convention against Torture and the Inter-American Convention.

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Saman Mohammadi
The Excavator

"Obviously, the current order of things cannot last. A reckoning is awaiting the world."

In September of this year, a retired Turkish general named Sabri Yirmibeshoglu admitted on Turkish television that the Turkish government carried out false-flag attacks on the island of Cyprus in the 1960s in order to instill feelings of hatred and revenge in Turkish Cypriots against the Cyprus government. The false-flag operations successfully destabilized the island, and helped Turkey's military objectives.

Yirmibeshoglu's admission was significant, as he was the former Secretary-General of the National Security Council (MGK), and the chief of Turkey's Special Warfare Department. For more details read Elias Hazou's report, which was filed on September 24, 2010 for the Cyprus Mail:

Created in 1953 as part of the Turkish secret service, the Special Warfare Department is believed by commentators in Turkey to be the executive branch of the so-called ‘deep state.’

“In order to increase the resistance of the people, you carry out sabotage against certain values, in order to create the impression that it is the enemy who did it. In Cyprus, we had torched a mosque,” Yirmibeshoglu said in an interview while describing methods used in unconventional warfare. (Turkey carried out false-flag attacks in Cyprus in 1960s, says Turkish General, Elias Hazou, Cyrpus Mail; Sept. 24, 2010).

Yirmibeshoglu was named by Ahmet Özal as one of the suspects involved in the assassination attempt of his father, Turgut Özal, in 1988. Özal later died in in 1993 due to a heart attack, but his family asserts that he was killed as a result of a poison injection by the same individuals within the Turkish deep-state who failed to kill him in 1988. Özal served as Turkey's Prime Minister from 1983 to 1989, and as President from 1989 to 1993.

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