Stephen Lendman

When all else fails, offer money, or in this case weapons for peace (a clear oxymoron) via for a three month settlement construction moratorium in name only. In fact, new building is unimpeded, Obama's offer a facade to hide reality on the ground. More on the deal below.

Last December, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the moratorium, saying he hoped it would launch meaningful peace talks. They're entirely fraudulent ones, a grand illusion even Netanyahu once called "a waste of time."

Two earlier articles on them can be accessed through the following links, here & here.

Another covers Netanyahu's sham moratorium (never called a freeze).

Decades of Israeli/Palestinian/US relations prove nothing from Washington or Tel Aviv can be trusted, their word never their bond.

On November 13, PeaceNow.org said since late October, the end Netanyahu's moratorium,

"settlers (began) build(ing) 1,629 housing units, and even (dug) foundations for 1,116 of them. (Work began) in 63 settlements, 46 of them east of the Separation (Wall) and 17 on (its) western side."

Moreover, throughout 2009, "according to the Israeli CBS (Central Bureau of Statistics) data," work began on 1,888 units. It continued virtually unabated during the moratorium, and goes on steadily every day.

In addition, whatever Washington/Tel Aviv deal is stuck, East Jerusalem is off the table, a November 13 AFP report saying "Israel plans to (sell) 3,000 new Jewish homes in Jerusalem next year, including in Arab areas," according to a municipality official.

On November 9, Netanyahu's office, in fact, said:

"Jerusalem isn't a settlement - Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Israel has never put any sort of limits on construction in Jerusalem, where some 800,000 people reside, and didn't do so during the 10-month settlement 'freeze' in the West Bank either....Israel does not see any connection between the peace process and the building and planning policy in Jerusalem, which hasn't changed for 40 years. Every Israeli government in the past 40 years has built in all parts of the city."

East Jerusalem is also the Palestinian capital, a right no PA leader will relinquish. Moreover, honest observers see no connection between the "peace process" and peace. Negotiations have been still born from inception, a charade assuring no peace because neither Washington nor Israel will tolerate it. It's one of many unspoken dirty secrets, explaining why conflict and repressive occupation have raged unabated for decades.

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Stephen Lendman

In early November, thousands of Haitians rallied for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return and presidential hopeful Jean-Henry Ceant in the November 28 elections, one rigged by banning 14 political parties, including Fanmi Lavalas, by far the most popular.

Ceant founded Aimer Haiti (Love Haiti), "a movement uniting and integrating human-centered (principles) and committed to the pursuit of the ideals of unity, solidarity and fraternity to build a new Haiti on the basis of shared responsibility, social justice, peace and economic progress for all."

He's also a notaire (notary), businessman, community leader and philanthropist, the only candidate most Haitians support, whether or not he'll deliver on promises if elected. Aristide did, Preval for a while, then sold out the public that backed him. Given Washington's iron fist and no shyness using it, populist governments everywhere are at risk, especially in deeply impoverished countries like Haiti.

For now, a raging cholera epidemic takes top concern, officially causing over 1,000 deaths and around 15,000 hospitalizations. However, these figures way understate the true crisis, one or more estimates believing the true count is several-fold. On November 14, Operational Biosurveillance said it confirmed statistics of up to 400% undercounting.

"There is no question of under-reporting." At one-fourth the true crisis, "we now have nearly 60k cases shedding pathogen into the environment. We believe the true statistic to be closer to more than 100k based on the degree of under-reporting. It is extremely difficult to estimate the true scale of this epidemic now. (It's) grossly uncontrolled, uncontained, (and) has exceeded public health capacity to investigate and assess every site reported and every sample received."

Disturbingly, the entire country is affected, including the densely crowded capital, Port-au-Prince, with up to 1.5 million in makeshift accommodations on city streets and wherever they found space, living in the open under dismal sanitation conditions.

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Stephen Lendman

Warren Buffett once said:

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." (Obama's deficit-cutting agenda the latest battle).

On May 4, Hugo Radice, Life Fellow of the University of Leeds School of Politics and International Studies, headlined an article, "Cutting Public Debt: Economic Science or Class War?" asking:

"Is cutting the public debt really an objective economic necessity, or is it actually a deeply political stance, reflecting the interests of the business and financial elites?"

Analyzing historical public policies, he explained the shift from earlier Keynesianism to "the unchallenged hegemony of free-market neoliberalism since the early 1990s." In fact, over the past three decades, it was notable, beginning under Britain's Margaret Thatcher and America's Ronald Reagan, establishing practices that succeeding administrations hardened. As a result, Britain's New Labour governs like Conservatives while American Democrats mimic Republicans, especially on imperial and pocket book issues.

Radice calls it class warfare, pitting private wealth against public good, "a new common-sense" based on property rights, individualism, and notion that free markets work best so let them, including the right to demand massive public spending cuts, ones Radice says "are not, repeat not, economically necessary."

Nonetheless, for over 30 years, they've been ongoing. Since the mid-1970s, real wages haven't kept pace with inflation. Benefits have steadily eroded. High-paying jobs disappeared. Improved technology forced wage earners to work harder for less. More than ever, "free" markets work only for those who control them.

As a result, the class struggle between haves and have-nots escalated. A handful of powerful winners emerged. Wealth disparity extremes became unprecedented. Exploitation increased and successive crises, busts following speculative booms. Easy credit fueled them by excess lending and spending as well as high public and private debt levels. To heal, officials now call for "shared sacrifice," their sharing, our sacrifice.

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Albert Jay Nock
Lew Rockwell

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
By Frank Chodorov, New York City, May 28th, 1946

When OUR ENEMY, THE STATE appeared in 1935, its literary merit rather than its philosophic content attracted attention to it. The times were not ripe for an acceptance of its predictions, still less for the argument on which these predictions were based. Faith in traditional frontier individualism had not yet been shaken by the course of events. Against this faith the argument that the same economic forces which in all times and in all nations drive toward the ascendancy of political power at the expense of social power were in operation here made little headway. That is, the feeling that “it cannot happen here” was too difficult a hurdle for the book to overcome. By the time the first edition had run out, the development of public affairs gave the argument of the book ample testimony. In less than a decade it was evident to many Americans that their country is not immune from the philosophy which had captured European thinking. The times were proving Mr. Nock’s thesis, and by irresistable word-of-mouth advertising a demand for the book began to manifest itself just when it was no longer available. And the plates had been put to war purposes.

In 1943 he had a second edition in mind. I talked with him several times about it, urging him to elaborate on the economic ideas, since these, it seemed to me, were inadequately developed for the reader with a limited knowledge of political economy. He agreed that this ought to be done, but in a separate book, or in a second part of his book, and suggested that I try my hand at it. Nothing came of the matter because of the war. He died on August 19, 1945.

This volume is an exact duplication of the first edition. He intended to make some slight changes, principally, as he told me, in the substitution of current illustrations for those which might carry less weight with the younger reader. As for the sequel stressing economics, this will have to be done. At any rate, OUR ENEMY, THE STATE needs no support.

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