Paul Craig Roberts
SOTT.net

Ten years of rule by the Bush and Obama regimes have seen the collapse of the rule of law in the United States. Is the American media covering this ominous and extraordinary story? No the American media is preoccupied with the rule of law in Burma (Myanmar).

The military regime that rules Burma just released from house arrest the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The American media used the occasion of her release to get on Burma's case for the absence of the rule of law. I'm all for the brave lady, but if truth be known, "freedom and democracy" America needs her far worse than does Burma.

I'm not an expert on Burma, but the way I see it the objection to a military government is that the government is not accountable to law. Instead, such a regime behaves as it sees fit and issues edicts that advance its agenda. Burma's government can be criticized for not having a rule of law, but it cannot be criticized for ignoring its own laws. We might not like what the Burmese government does, but, precisely speaking, it is not behaving illegally.

In contrast, the United States government claims to be a government of laws, not of men, but when the executive branch violates the laws that constrain it, those responsible are not held accountable for their criminal actions. As accountability is the essence of the rule of law, the absence of accountability means the absence of the rule of law.

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"Fauna"
chinaSMACK

Guangxi 6-year-old AIDS orphan lives alone, eats rice and vegetables without oil or salt yet still eats with relish

In your childhood, what were you doing? Begging daddy to buy a toy, being pressed by mommy to learn a foreign language, taking the pocket change that grandma secretly gave you, sharing the bubblegum you just bought with your friends… When you couldn’t get what you wanted, did you sigh like a little adult: “It sucks being a child!” However, A-Long wouldn’t. By himself, he washes his laundry and makes his meals. Alone, he feeds the chickens and raises the dog. Alone, he studies and learns to read. Alone, he goes to sleep. A-Long never feels it sucks being himself, even though he is only 6-years-old this year.

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Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

The TSA groping an elderly Catholic nun...

TSA is a far greater threat to Americans than are terrorists

It doesn’t take a bureaucrat long to create an empire. John Pistole, the FBI agent who took over the Transportation Security Administration on July 1 told USA Today 16 days later that protecting trains and subways from terrorist attacks will be as high a priority for him as air travel.

It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowed subway platforms or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance for a 15 minute subway ride, but once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. Buses will be next, although it is even more difficult to imagine open air bus stops turned into security zones with screeners and gropers inspecting passengers before they board.

Will taxi passengers be next? In those Muslim lands whose citizens the US government has been slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for retaliating against the Americans are car and truck bombs. How long before Pistole announces that the TSA Gestapo is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and interstates to check cars for bombs?

That 15 minute trip to the grocery store then becomes an all day affair. Indeed, it has already begun.

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Stephen Lendman

A personal note.

It's no way to begin a Sunday or any day. An email explained. My first thought was: damn, we lost another good one when we urgently need him and many others, given the state of today's America - out-of-control militarism, imperial arrogance, and homeland repression at a time of economic crisis for millions. Johnson knew the threat, challenging it brilliantly in his important writings and outspokenness. Now he's gone. ~ SL

A former cold warrior, Chal, as friends called him, turned activist critic of US foreign policy, an imperial agenda doomed to fail. When the Cold War ended, he saw no further logic to US global bases, continued heightened militarism, and occupation of Japan, South Korea, Germany and elsewhere.

Peace breaking out was glorious. "Give Peace A Chance," wrote John Lennon, his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame song predated it by a decade.

In a March 2006 Tom Engelhardt interview, Johnson said:

"I was a cold warrior. There's no doubt about that. I believed the Soviet Union was a genuine menace. I still think so....As I saw it, the only justification for our monster military apparatus, its size, the amounts spent on it, the growth of the Military-Industrial Complex....was the existence of the Soviet Union and its determination to match us."

After it imploded, he thought:

"What an incredible vindication for the United States. Now it's over, and the time has come for a real victory dividend, a genuine peace dividend. The question was: Would the US behave as it had in the past when big wars came to an end?" Instead, we "began to seek an alternative enemy. Our leaders simply could not contemplate dismantling the apparatus of the Cold War. That was, I thought, shocking....I was flabbergasted and felt the need to understand what had happened."

Maintaining heightened militarism

"suggest(ed) that the Cold War was, in fact, a cover for something else; that something else being an American empire intentionally created during World War II as the successor to the British Empire. The Cold War was not the clean-cut conflict between totalitarian and democratic values that we had claimed it to be."

Most ominous about US imperialism is that

"militarism is so central to ours....not (for) national defense....but as a way of life, as a way of getting rich or getting comfortable. (Yet it's) bankrupting the country...This is not free enterprise. (It's) state socialism," heading us for ruin. "And the precedents for this should really terrify us."

Johnson ended the interview quoting Pogo's observation, saying: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

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Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery's Column

“A DISASTER!” the courtiers of the King of Hanover cried, “Seven renowned professors at Göttingen University have published a declaration of protest against you!”

That was 173 years ago. The king had suspended the liberal constitution enacted by his predecessor.

“So what,” the king replied, “Tarts, dancers and professors I can always buy.”

This story was told me by Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who was himself a professor of half a dozen vastly different disciplines, from bio-chemistry to the philosophy of science. He held many of his colleagues in profound contempt.

He told me this story when we were talking about one professor in particular: Shlomo Avineri, who had just agreed to serve as Director General of the Foreign Office under Minister Yigal Alon. Alon was the author of the “Alon Plan”, which provided for the annexation of wide stretches of occupied territory.

This week, Avineri published an article under the headline “Fascism? You make me laugh!”

What made him laugh? The ridiculous (for him) argument that there exist fascist tendencies in Israel. He reminded us that fascism means the Gestapo, concentration camps and genocide. How could we forget.

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Ismail Patel
Patrick Mac Manus

"An open-air prison camp where people die from treatable illnesses and suffer malnutrition while living besides openly running sewage – this is Gaza’s reality, and it is man-made by Israel."

The siege on Gaza enters its fourth year this year. The consequences have been catastrophic, but the images of this catastrophe are for the most part kept away from the world and its media.

With Israel controlling all borders, the only lifelines available to Gazans have been a maze of underground tunnels along the border with Egypt. This forced black-market has claimed lives and is being continually challenged by Israeli bombings and Egyptian reinforcement of the border with an underground steel wall.

For the needs of Gaza’s 1.5 million people to be met, there needs to be 1,300 containers of merchandise and foods passing across the Karni Crossing every day. The supplies that do manage to pass fail to meet even 20 pert cents of the populations’ needs. The result has been 80 per cent poverty, dependency on aid for even their daily meals and hundreds of deaths from lack of medical equipment and supplies.

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The Economic Collapse Blog

Full Spectrum Dominance: 8 Examples Of How The Government Is Attempting To Take Total Control Of Our Food, Our Health, Our Money And Even Our Dignity

Over the past several decades, no matter which political party has been in power the government has continued to become a larger part of our lives. These days many people are speaking of the "nanny state" that we have created, but the reality is far worse than that. The truth is that the government has become a gluttonous, out of control behemoth that is gobbling up everything in sight and that is attempting to exert full spectrum dominance over our lives. Today, the government seems to have an insatiable hunger to watch us, track us and control us. Now they even want to feel our private parts before we get on an airplane. No matter what politicians we send to Washington D.C., it just seems to get worse and worse. Anyone who still believes that we live in "the land of the free" is completely and totally delusional.

It isn't just in one particular area that all of this government intrusion into our lives is so offensive. What we are witnessing is the government slowly digging its fingers even deeper into our lives in a thousand different ways. Sadly, most Americans see the government as the one who is supposed to take care of them from the cradle to the grave, as the one who is supposed to fix all of the problems in society and as the one who is their ultimate authority.

This is in direct contradiction to the concept of a "limited government" that our Founding Fathers tried so desperately to enshrine in our founding documents. The American people need a big-time wake up call. The following are 8 examples of how the U.S. government is attempting to take even more control over our lives....

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Peter Schwarz
WSWS

On November 20 in Lisbon, NATO adopted a new strategic concept. It is the seventh in the 61-year history of the military alliance and the first since 1999.

The summit was preceded by months of preparation and discussion. A group of experts chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issued recommendations for the new strategy in May.

After a long tug of war, the strategic concept has now been adopted and was presented to the public in Lisbon. Those attending the summit celebrated it as a historic breakthrough. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “This summit will go down in history. The strategic approach is clear, and it shows we are all working on the same footing.”

In reality, the eleven-page document barely manages to paper over the fault lines that have opened up between the 28 members of the largest military alliance in the world. It is a verbal compromise between divergent interests. The different factions were able to agree on many formulations only at the last minute.

Where the summit was unanimous was that the military should in the future play a far more important role in political and social life. In addition to collective defence with conventional and nuclear weapons, the new strategy sanctions international interventions of various kinds, such as those NATO has already conducted in the former Yugoslavia and is presently carrying out in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere in the world.

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Stephen Lendman

The suburban Chicago-based Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine (CJPIP) "is a diverse, community-based group dedicated to organizing activities and educational events that advance the cause of peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis."

It supports:

● "equal rights and access to resources (equitably) based on" social, economic, environmental, and political justice principles;
● peace and equal justice;
● an end to Israel's illegal occupation and continuing land theft;
● "an end to US policies that sustain the occupation;
● international support for an equitable and just negotiation process;"
● granting Palestinian refugees their right of return, guaranteed under international law; and
● ending all forms of individual, organizational, and state-sponsored terror.

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Paul Larudee

When unknown elements in Israel leaked the name, rank, identification number and other information about two hundred Israeli military personnel who reportedly participated in the 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza, the effect was sudden and profound, according to sources in Israel.

Although the first site on which it appeared was taken down by the host, it has continued to circulate via email, and has appeared on at least one other site, 200 Israeli War Criminals. The Israeli military and other Israeli agencies are reportedly doing all they can to shut down every site on which it appears, and to prevent it from "going viral." At least one popular blog that links to the site has received a record number of death threats.

What is so special about the list? As several critics have pointed out, it doesn't even state the crimes that the listed individuals are alleged to have committed.

The root of the problem, according to the sources in Israel, is a poorly kept secret - namely, that it is hard to serve in the Israeli military without committing war crimes, because such crimes are a matter of policy. What Israeli soldier has not ordered a Palestinian civilian to open the door to a building that might house armed militants or be booby-trapped? Who has not denied access to ambulances or otherwise prevented a Palestinian from getting to medical care, education, or employment?

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James Cogan
WSWS

[An Afghan homeless boy sleeps in a waste disposal site near Kabul, under American Occupation. What happend to his father and mother, brothers and sisters, what happened to his home? It makes my heart cry tears of blood and you? Where is much touted Western Civilisation, drawing cartoons of Mohammed, burning Qurans and bombing poor, innocent, unarmed people around the world because they can’t fight back? Western civilisation is a nice idea; though quite unachieved in practice. ~ Lal Qila]

The NATO summit held in Lisbon from November 19 to 20 endorsed the Obama’s administration’s demand that troops from the US and allied countries occupy Afghanistan indefinitely. The summit declaration stated that any changes in troop numbers would be “conditions-based, not calendar-driven”.

While the end of 2014 was put forward as the date when the US and NATO hope that Afghan government troops and police will be able to carry out all frontline combat against the anti-occupation insurgency, NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: “We will stay after transition in a supporting role… NATO is in this for the long-term. If the Taliban or anyone else aims to wait us out, they can forget it.”

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Stephen Lendman

Three previous articles on the crisis can be accessed through the following links here, here & here.

More will follow as events dictate.

In America, especially on TV, Haiti's epidemic gets scant, if any, coverage. In contrast, daily independent news reports are alarming. Yet, despite raging cholera across Haiti, aid is woefully inadequate. A November 19 Doctors With Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres - MSF) press release headlined, "Cholera in Haiti: MSF Calling on All Actors to Step Up Response," saying:

"While cholera spreads, slow deployment of relief is (a) major concern. Critical shortfalls in the deployment of well-established measures to contain cholera epidemics are undermining efforts to stem the ongoing cholera outbreak in Haiti."

Head of Haiti mission, Stefano Zannini,

"call(ed) on all groups and agencies present in Haiti to step up the size and speed of their efforts to ensure an effective response to the needs of people at risk of cholera infection." "There is no time left for meetings and debate - the time for action is now." The epidemic has spread to at least eight of Haiti's 10 provinces.

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Rick Rozoff
Stop NATO

"The US [has] ‘no exit strategy’ for Afghanistan, and instead a ‘transition strategy’ [will] be unveiled in the Portuguese capital” ~ Richard Holbrooke

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization unveils its first 21st century strategic doctrine in Lisbon this week, its first ground war and war outside Europe is in its tenth year with no end in sight.

The invasion of and subsequent nine years of combat operations in Afghanistan are logical – inevitable – results of the military alliance’s last Strategic Concept adopted at its fiftieth anniversary summit in Washington, D.C. in 1999. At the time NATO was waging its first full-scale war, the 78-day Operation Allied Force bombing assault against Yugoslavia, and had absorbed the first of what are now twelve members in Eastern Europe: The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

Launching an unprovoked war of aggression and operating outside the territory of NATO member states – and outside international law without a United Nations mandate – inaugurated the U.S.-controlled military alliance as a global warfighting organization. The war in Afghanistan beginning in the first year of the new century and millennium represented the further implementation of the 1999 Strategic Concept, itself the first since 1991, the year of the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union.

As NATO described the last Strategic Concept: “At the Washington Summit meeting in April 1999, the NATO Allies approved a strategy to equip the Alliance for the security challenges and opportunities of the 21st century and to guide its future political and military development.” [1]

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James Cogan
WSWS

Armoured personnel carriers of the German ISAF Quick Reaction Force
regional command north (QRF) are driven during a drill in the Marmal
mountains near the German ISAF headquarters in Masar-i-Sharif, north
of Kabul, July 1, 2008. (Credit: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch)

"The governments of every country represented at the Lisbon summit, whether in North America, Europe or the Pacific, are presiding over social devastation on behalf of the same capitalist oligarchy in whose interests the war is being waged. At the same time, they are using claims of “terrorist threats” to strip away democratic rights and prepare the framework for police-states."

The NATO summit that began yesterday in Lisbon, Portugal has one primary objective in regards to the US-led war in Afghanistan: to shelve all talk of President Barack Obama’s July 2011 deadline for beginning the withdrawal of troops.

In recent weeks, the Obama administration has banished the word “withdrawal” from its statements on Afghanistan. July 2011 has become simply the beginning of a “transition.”

The end of 2014 is now being invoked by the US and its allies as the key date in the war. By that time, the Army and National Police of the puppet Afghan regime of President Hamid Karzai will purportedly be sufficiently large and trained to undertake the main combat operations against the Taliban and other anti-occupation insurgent organisations.

US special envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters this week in Pakistan:

“From Lisbon on, we will be on a transition strategy with a target date of the end of 2014 for Afghanistan to take over responsibility for leading the security.” American forces would still remain after that date, however. “We have a transition strategy. We do not have an exit strategy,” Holbrooke stressed.

The New York Times, having been briefed by administration officials, on November 14 summed up Obama’s perspective:

“By the end of 2014, American and NATO combat forces could be withdrawn if conditions warrant, although tens of thousands very likely will remain for training, mentoring and other assistance, just as 50,000 American troops are still in Iraq.”

In other words, Washington plans an indefinite presence of US occupation forces in Afghanistan. Even if “conditions warrant” that foreign troops are not required for direct combat by 2014—a prospect dismissed by virtually all analysts—the Pentagon will assert that an enduring presence is required to provide “training, mentoring and assistance.”

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Stephen Lendman

Jerusalem is the epicenter of a decades long struggle. For Jews, it's politically important as their capital, a national and religious center, as well as symbolic of Judaism's revival and prominence. For Christians, it's where Jesus lived and died, and for Muslims, it's their third holiest site (the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque) after Mecca's Sacred Mosque and the Mosque of the Prophet in Madina.

In June 1967, Israel occupied the city. On July 30, 1980, the Knesset introduced the Jerusalem Law, officially annexing it as Israel's unified capital. However, on March 1, 1980, UN Security Council Resolution 465 declared that:

"all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant (Fourth Geneva) violation....and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East."

On July 4, 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICC) ruled that

"Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development (and) have been established in breach of international law."

However, nothing thereafter changed. Settlements expanded exponentially, including on stolen East Jerusalem land. Israel plans to Judaize it by replacing Arabs with Jews, law or no law, because unenforced ones are meaningless.

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