Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society

Bradley Manning with sister Casey, 2006.

When I hear someone say that soldiers “defend our freedom,” my immediate response is to gag. I think the last time American soldiers actually fought for the freedom of Americans was probably the Revolutionary War — or maybe the War of 1812, if you want to be generous. Every war since then has been for nothing but to uphold a system of power, and to make the rich folks even richer.

But I can think of one exception. If there’s a soldier anywhere in the world who’s fought and suffered for my freedom, it’s Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning is frequently portrayed, among the knuckle-draggers on right-wing message boards, as some sort of spoiled brat or ingrate, acting on an adolescent whim. But that’s not quite what happened, according to Johann Hari (“The under-appreciated heroes of 2010,” The Independent, Dec. 24).

Manning, like many young soldiers, joined up in the naive belief that he was defending the freedom of his fellow Americans. When he got to Iraq, he found himself working under orders “to round up and hand over Iraqi civilians to America’s new Iraqi allies, who he could see were then torturing them with electrical drills and other implements.” The people he arrested, and handed over for torture, were guilty of such “crimes” as writing “scholarly critiques” of the U.S. occupation forces and its puppet government. When he expressed his moral reservations to his supervisor, Manning “was told to shut up and get back to herding up Iraqis.”

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

As if on cue, major media reports hailed "the Comeback Kid." In Obama's December 22 press conference, Reuters' Caren Bohan asked:

"You racked up a lot of wins in the last few weeks that a lot of people thought would be difficult to come by. Are you ready to call yourself the 'comeback kid?' "

CBS News anchor Katie Couric gushed about how "the president isn't calling himself the 'comeback kid,' but some other folks are."

From ABC News came Jake Tapper offering "congratulations," and George Stephanopoulos saying:

"The president takes a victory lap. How the Christmas season became what he called a 'season of progress.' Will it continue in the new year?"

New York Times writer Michael Shear added:

"But Mr. Obama rejected an opportunity to gloat about the success of the past several weeks by declaring himself the 'comeback kid,' telling a reporter that the results are 'not a victory for me. It's a victory for the American people."

A chorus of other media reports echoed the same sentiment, including USA Today citing a "political rebound," the Christian Science Monitor praising his notable legislative and other victories, and the Los Angeles Times hailing "image-altering successes."

Even hard-right Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer titled his December 17 article, "The new comeback kid," saying:

"Obama had a bad November," taking a midterm election "shellack(ing)....Now, with his stunning tax deal, (he's) back....His comeback is already a year ahead of Clinton's."

On December 21, Nation magazine writer Ari Berman headlined, "Is Obama Really the New Comeback Kid," saying:

"Obama's presidency didn't end after the midterm election and it hasn't been revived during the lame duck session of Congress....Let's hold off, please, from anointing Obama the comeback kid until we know what the full extent of that 'comeback' actually entails."

Nonetheless, Christmas came early for Obama, never mind two years delivering lumps of coal for American workers and promises for worse ahead, what media hype won't explain.

Read more »

Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

Anyone who doesn’t believe that the US is an incipient fascist state needs only to consult the latest assault on civil liberty by Fox News (sic). Instead of informing citizens, Fox News (sic) informs on citizens. Jason Ditz reports (antiwar.com, Dec. 28) that Fox News (sic) "no longer content to simply shill for a growing police state," turned in a grandmother to the Department of Homeland Security for making "anti-American comments."

The media have segued into the police attitude, which regards insistence on civil liberties and references to the Constitution as signs of extremism, especially when the Constitution is invoked in defense of dissent or privacy or placarded on a bumper sticker. President George W. Bush set the scene when he declared: "you are with us or against us."

Bush’s words demonstrate a frightening decline in our government’s respect for dissent since the presidency of John F. Kennedy. In a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961, President Kennedy said:

"No president should fear public scrutiny of his program, for from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition; and both are necessary. . . . Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian law makers once decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment."

The press is not protected, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers, in order that it can amuse and entertain, emphasize the trivial, or simply tell the public what it wants to hear. The press is protected so that it can find and report facts and, thus, inform, arouse "and sometimes even anger public opinion."

Read more »

Danny Schechter
disinformation

Helen Thomas meeting students from Maxwell
School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in
Washington D.C. (Photo: rachaelvoorhees)

Our Media Experienced A Few Highs and Many Lows in 2010; None As Disgraceful As The Vitriol Against Helen Thomas

In 1960, I co-founded a student magazine at Cornell University called Dialogue. I was a wannabe journalist, fixated on emulating the courageous media personalities of the times, from Edward R. Murrow to a distinctive figure I came to admire at presidential press conferences, a wire service reporter named Helen Thomas.

In recent years, my faith in the power of dialogue in politics has been severely tested—as, no doubt has hers—in an age where diatribes and calculated demonization chills debate and exchanges of opposing views.

Once you are labeled and stereotyped, especially if you are denounced as an anti-Semite, you are relegated to the fringes, pronounced a hater beyond redemption, even beyond explanation.

You have been assigned a scarlet letter as visible as the Star of David the Nazis made Jews wear.

My career path took me from covering civil rights activism in the streets to later working in the suites of network power. I went from the underground press to rock and roll radio to TV reporting and producing at CNN and ABC.

As a member in good standing of an activist generation, I saw myself more as an outsider in contrast to Helen’s distinctive credentials as an insider, as a White House bureau chief and later as the dean of the White House Correspondents Association.

Yet, beneath her establishment credentials and status, she was always an outsider too—one of nine children born to a family of Lebanese immigrants in Winchester Kentucky, who despite their Middle East origins, were Christians in the Greek Orthodox Church.

She became a pioneering woman, a modern day Helen of Troy, who broke the glass ceiling, infiltrating the clubby, mostly male, inside the beltway world of big egos and self-important media prima donnas, most supplicants to power, not challengers of it.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

On December 24, Mondoweiss co-editor Adam Horowitz wrote:

"Israeli military kills 20-year old Gazan for herding animals too close to buffer zone."

On December 23, Israeli forces shot and killed Salama Abu Harhish without warning while herding sheep and goats in Beit Lahya. Civilized nations don't murder nonviolent civilians in cold blood, this time leaving a widow and day-old unnamed baby.

What "democracy" thrives on violence, spurns peace, and wages preemptive wars like Cast Lead? Besides America, only Israel, a global menace like its Washington paymaster/partner, together with Britain the real axis of evil.

December 28 was Cast Lead's second anniversary, a three week continuing onslaught. Against Palestine, Israel's wars never end. The 2008-09 horror evoked memories of Franklin Roosevelt's December 8, 1941 moment, telling a joint session of Congress:

"Yesterday, December 7,1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that Nation, (and) look(ed) toward maintain(ing it) in the Pacific....I ask that the Congress declare that....a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire."

Historical analysis exposed America's real intent, its desire for war, its foreknowledge of the attack, its tracking of the Japanese fleet across the Pacific but not warning Pearl Harbor's commander to ensure surprise and public anger, and Roosevelt's imperial aims. Nonetheless, his powerful words expressed outrage about any nation attacking another preemptively, even if goaded to do it.

Read more »

Khalid Amayreh

The Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip two years ago, which lasted for three weeks, was pornographically criminal and graphically genocidal. Israel knowingly and deliberately targeted innocent civilians, including children, using state-of-the-art machines of death.

Entire families were simply exterminated at the pretext that a member was involved with the resistance. Homes, hospitals, mosques and other public buildings were obliterated. Even terrified and thoroughly terrorized people raising white banners were mercilessly riddled with bullets.

The sheer criminality of the Israeli army gave the impression that Israeli soldiers were probably trying to mimic Old Testament savagery by murdering men, women, and children, and by destroying and annihilating all that breathe!!

The genocidal onslaught on Gaza is sufficient to render Israel an illegitimate state. No state under the sun, Jewish or otherwise, should behave in such a nefarious manner and remain legitimate.

Don't mention the holocaust. In the final analysis, since when did Israel have the right to utilize one holocaust in order to commit another? Or use it as red herring to divert attention from its genocidal atrocities against its victims?

Read more »

David Walsh
WSWS

The Nation magazine in the US, with its publication of “The Case of Julian Assange” by columnist Katha Pollitt (posted December 22, 2010), has joined the right-wing campaign against WikiLeaks co-founder Assange, a campaign directed by the highest levels of the American state.

The sexual assault charges against Assange in Sweden are part of an orchestrated effort to divert public attention from the content of the WikiLeaks exposures—the duplicity, hypocrisy and criminality of American and world imperialism—and bury the important revelations in a pile of scandalous garbage. Pollitt has eagerly lent a hand to that effort.

Such a development was predictable, given the history of the journalist and the publication, but that does not make it any less reprehensible… or educational. The arguments employed by Pollitt shed further light on the politically rotten character of contemporary feminism and identity politics generally.

Pollitt has written for the Nation, one of the principal voices of American left liberalism, since 1980 and has had a column in the publication since 1995.

In her recent piece on Assange, Pollitt’s modus operandi is to remove the sex charges from their political context—the determined effort to destroy WikiLeaks and its founder—and assert that defenders of Assange are insensitive to rape and sexual violence against women. This is hardly a new, or persuasive, ploy.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

On December 24, Ecuador became the fifth Latin American country to recognize "the Palestine state as free and independent within its borders since 1967." An accompanying statement said:

"Sadly, the Middle East continues to face wars and violent events that have led to the death of many innocent people, a situation contrary to the humane and pacifist position established by the Ecuadorian Constitution. This recognition is meant to reinforce the valid and legitimate wish of the Palestin(ian) people to have their own free and independent state." Having it is "fundamental to achieve the peaceful co-existence of the nations in the region through dialogue and mediation."

On December 23, Uruguay said it planned to join Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia in granting recognition, though would formerly do so in January 2011.

Though largely symbolic, growing recognition flies in the face of a unanimous December 16 House resolution opposing unilaterally declared independence, urging Palestinians to:

"cease all efforts at circumventing the negotiating process, including efforts to gain recognition of a Palestinian state from other nations within the United Nations, and in other international forums prior to achievement of a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians....and calls upon foreign governments not to extend such recognition."

It also asked the White House to

"deny recognition to any unilaterally declared Palestinian state and veto any resolution by the United Nations Security Council to establish or recognize a Palestinian state outside of an agreement negotiated by the two parties."

EU nations said they'll act when "appropriate," meaning not until Washington and Israel approve.

Never mind that Israel and America don't negotiate. They demand, imposing their will unilaterally when denied, often by force. Both countries also deplore peace. They prevent it by provoked conflict, blamed on governments they oppose, even democratically elected ones.

Read more »

Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

'Police State' -a government that seeks to intimidate and sup-
press political opposition by means of police (flickr)

"Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors." ~ Lewis H. Lapham

The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the US government of US law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.

2011 is shaping up as the terminal year for American democracy. The Republican Party has degenerated into a party of Brownshirts, and voter frustrations with the worsening economic crisis and military occupations gone awry are likely to bring Republicans to power in 2012. With them would come their doctrines of executive primacy over Congress, the judiciary, law, and the Constitution and America’s rightful hegemony over the world.

If not already obvious, 2010 has made clear that the US government does not care a whit for the opinions of citizens. The TSA is unequivocal that it will reach no accommodation with Americans other than the violations of their persons that it imposes by its unaccountable power. As for public opposition to war, the Associated Press reported on December 16 that "Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the U.S. can’t let public opinion sway its commitment to Afghanistan." Gates stated bluntly what has been known for some time: the idea is passé that government in a democracy serves the will of the people. If this quaint notion is still found in civics books, it will soon be edited out.

Read more »

Vincent Di Stefano
CommonDreams.org

In early January 2009, two lone voices braved the Australian media to offer a differing view to that given by Government spokespersons regarding Operation Cast Lead, the 22-day assault of Israel on Gaza that began on December 27th 2008. The first was that of Greens Leader, Senator Bob Brown. He urged Julia Gillard to speak out against the "violent and disproportionate action by Israeli leaders." More pointed were the comments of Julia Irwin, Federal MP for the NSW seat of Fowler. In an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald at the time, she used metaphor to draw our attention to the travesty that was occurring in Gaza:

"It all reminds me of an old story from the days of the Roman Empire. The emperor Nero was upset that his prized lions were being distressed by Christians, who ran away from them in the Colloseum. Nero ordered that at the next circus, a Christian was to be buried up to his neck in the sand to make things easier for the lions. When the lions entered the ring, the biggest and the meanest saw the hapless condemned, swaggered over and stood astride the Christian’s head, roaring for approval from the crowd. At that moment, the Christian craned his neck and bit off the lion’s testicles. The crowd was shocked. "Fight fair! Fight fair!" they yelled."

Israel’s attack upon Gaza was met with a curious indifference by most of the so-called leaders of Western nations. As acting Prime Minister of Australia at the time, the ill-informed Julia Gillard refused to criticise, let alone condemn the actions of Israel. Supposedly speaking on behalf of the Australian people, she said: "Australia recognises the right of Israel to defend itself." That comment was made on the third of January 2009, by which time it was widely known that 430 Gazans had already been killed and 2,300 wounded in 750 individual strikes carried out by air and by sea over the previous five days.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

On April 20, an initial explosion, then a larger one ignited BP's Deepwater Horizon platform. For over a day it burned before sinking, killing 11 crew members, releasing thousands of barrels of oil daily, and causing the greatest ever environmental disaster - criminal malfeasance by any standard.

Years from now, its full impact will be known, but already hundreds of thousands of people are harmed, local economies gravely impacted, and large parts of the Gulf contaminated by toxic hydrocarbons and dispersants, making seafood absolutely unsafe to eat.

Obama, administration officials, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and BP executives lied, claiming most oil disappeared, 96% of Gulf waters were safe and reopened, and seafood was safe to eat. False, according to mounting evidence confirming:

● layers of oil residue contaminating several thousand square miles of seafloor;
● elevated hydrocarbon levels in Gulf residents' blood, suggesting an epidemic of future illnesses, including cancer and others as lethal;
● massive dispersants use prevented clean-up by skimming;
● no practical way now to clean up spilled oil; and
● dispersants bioaccumulate, making oil toxins more bioavailable to sealife, easier to absorb, and more harmful if ingested.

The effects will linger for decades, maybe generations, making critics wonder if willful intent was involved, given evidence, including:

● Washington and BP complicity in misreporting, coverup and denying the disaster's severity from start to capping to the most recent disturbing findings;
● virtual confirmation of the greatest ever environmental crime, contaminating large portions of the Gulf; destroying basic food chain elements that are building blocks for fisheries, birds, sea turtles and mammal populations; polluting coastal shorelines; and causing a massive public health problem with no federal aid to inform and mitigate;
● irreparable harm to the lives and livelihoods of potentially millions of Gulf residents; and
● BP's history of violations, exposing the industry's worst safety, maintenance, and environmental record, yet nearly always able to escape with small fines, penalties and settlements; no prosecutions; no pressure to operate responsibly; and no curtailment of government-let contracts, so no reason not to continue business as usual.

Yet after BP declared the Macondo well dead last September, the event died with it, disappearing from major media reports that were complicit with BP and Obama officials by misreporting it from the start.

No wonder critics ask: was Macondo's blowout accidental or willful? Was deliberate sabotage involved? Were the Obama administration and BP complicit in the greatest ever environmental crime with enormous global consequences? If so, why?

Read more »

Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque

Tonight, in the tenth year of the 21st century, the government of the United States is torturing a young man -- one of its own soldiers -- whom it has incarcerated but not indicted. He has been held in solitary confinement for months on end, subjected to techniques of sleep deprivation taken from the Soviet gulag, denied almost all human contact except from interrogators, constantly harassed by guards to whom he must answer every few minutes -- all in an attempt to break his mind, destroy his will, degrade his humanity and force him to "confess" to a broader "conspiracy" against state power.

His name is Bradley Manning. He is 23 years old. The "crime" he is accused of committing is releasing video evidence of an American atrocity committed years ago in Iraq: the murder of Iraqi civilians by helicopter gunships. Under the American system of jurisprudence, of course, he is considered innocent until proven guilty of this heinous 'crime' of truth-telling. He has not been tried or convicted of this charge, or any other crime.

Yet tonight, in the tenth year of the 21st century, in the United States of America, under the leadership of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama, 23-year-old Bradley Manning is being subjected to same tortures routinely inflicted on other unindicted, untried captives of the militarist state.

Journalist Andy Worthington, who has been one of the most thorough and assiduous chroniclers of the modern American gulag, has noted the parallels between the treatment imposed on Manning and that doled out to earlier prisoners of the bizarre, lawless limbo concocted by the American war machine for those who threaten -- or are perceived to threaten -- its ever-expanding, ever-more corrupt operations around the world. Worthington states that the conditions of Manning's imprisonment

bear a marked and chilling resemblance to the conditions in which a handful of US citizens and residents were held as “enemy combatants” under the Bush administration. The key elements here are the elements of profound isolation and suffering ... not just the solitary confinement, with no other human being for company, but also the refusal to allow Manning to have a pillow, sheets, or any access to the outside world through the reporting of current affairs.

Read more »

Mohammed Rabah Suliman
Mondoweiss

For the first time in twenty-two days the Earth woke up without a start. Even though the sky was spotted with a few randomly dispersed clouds, it was was bereft of the disturbing tones of the overhead drones which had now disappeared. The earth had woken peacefully, peacefully enough not to bear with the frighteningly gigantic burden of a new bomb to be dropped onto her surface bestowing on her some savagely massive shake. Peacefully enough not to endure the deafeningly immense sound of another bomb tearing down through its stratums. The earth had woken peacefully enough not to feign warm-heartedness as she embraces a new lifeless body laid into her deepness, and peacefully enough not to feel the insufferable pain of watching herself fight a losing battle against a huge bulldozer mercilessly extirpating a new sapling that had just issued from her sand. The earth had woken peacefully, and peace obviously had known its way through the countless bullets, rockets, mortars and bombs which had been horrifyingly raining on this part of the earth, and, it seemed, it had finally been able to guide itself through the jet-black darkness of the multiple graves. Peace, as far as one could tell, had flown out from the bottomless earth up to the very heights of the sky where the soaring birds could finally replace the awful scene of mighty jets and warplanes.

It, however, seemed to have been only yesterday. Life hasn’t yet acquired any sense of itself being a life to be joyously lived, cherished, appreciated… It is rather a life to be passed through disinterestedly, the winner of which is that who is plagued with the least amount of harm, stress, anger and humiliation. The presence of a war in my life has always been a needed source of underlying power and a paradoxically eye-opening experience to persist with my life and persevere its sardonically ruthless occurrences. Recalling its particularities has always made me think how playful and emotionlessly indifferent to mortifying injustice I was. Indeed, I was domesticated to accept it without even being conscious of the demeaning world I lived in, or even noticing the mere fact that I was subjected to a terribly base injustice. That was how I used to be before, and even during, the war that took place.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

[Part I] Part II concludes an assessment of Obama's year two.

"After nearly two years in office, Obama's been shameful, destructive, and criminal, sacrificing popular interests when most needed, pursuing an agenda heading America for tyranny and ruin unless stopped."

Lessons from the Gulf

The aftermath of last April's Deepwater Horizon disaster left Big Oil again triumphant, thanks to the Obama administration's close industry ties, conspiring with BP in the greatest ever environmental crime. At the time, Public Citizen's Tyson Slocum said BP has "the worst safety and environmental record of any oil company operating in America."

It's been cited numerous times for willful negligence, shoddy maintenance, environmental crimes, neglecting worker safety rules, manipulating energy markets, and making a mockery of good industry practice in a business devoid of standards and ethics.

It'll be years before the full extent of damage is known. However, it's already clear that BP turned much of America's Gulf into a toxic wasteland. Independent scientists confirmed the disaster, citing fouled waters, beaches, marshes and wildlife, the extent and level of toxicity extremely hazardous to human, fauna, and flora life and sustainability.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) warned that hydrocarbon/dispersants contamination "direct(ly) threat(ens) human health from inhalation or dermal contact." Millions have been exposed. A future public health disaster looms. An epidemic of diseases are expected, some potentially lethal like cancer.

Administration-BP complicity caused it, followed by coverup and denial, when independent research showed most oil remains. It still does. Moreover, Corexit dispersants increased toxicity manyfold. As a result, seafood is contaminated and unsafe. Vast areas of the Gulf and shorelines are hazardous to human health. The seabed is covered with an oily fluid. Oil and gas leaks continue unabated. Dispersants spraying continues. The Gulf's Loop Current has been disrupted, weakening the Gulf Stream. Global waters and weather patterns have been affected, perhaps catastrophically.

The long-term human, wildlife, and environmental harm potential is vast and serious. The disaster effects are increasing, not diminishing. A chain reaction of unpredictable phenomena may cause droughts, floods, crop failures, and global food shortages. Already many illnesses have occurred. Massive fish kills continue, and life along Gulf coastal areas may be threatened for decades.

The administration's response: On August 14, Obama gave the all-clear, saying oil no longer is flowing, and "as a result of the cleanup effort, beaches all along the Gulf Coast are clean and safe and open for business."

He lied as he always does willfully and repeatedly on all administration policies - foreign and domestic, war and peace, human health, welfare and safety, and everything of public concern, defrauding and betraying Americans, what he does best.

Read more »

Alex Lantier
WSWS

With a brief Christmas Day editorial, “Banks and WikiLeaks,” the New York Times editorial page finally broke its silence on the official campaign targeting WikiLeaks, the news site that has published leaked US diplomatic cables. The Times did so, however, only to give its backhanded support for the campaign, led by the Obama administration, against WikiLeaks.

The Times has maintained a complete silence in the face of the threats of prosecution against the website, which have escalated in the wake of the leak of hundreds of thousands of State Department documents. It has said nothing about the calls for Julian Assange—the organization’s founder—to be arrested, declared an enemy combatant and even assassinated.

Its first editorial on the persecution of WikiLeaks came at the bottom of the editorial page on Saturday. This obscure position itself highlights the newspaper’s tacit support for the campaign against WikiLeaks.

Acknowledging that WikiLeaks “has not been convicted of a crime,” the Times writes that “the financial industry is trying to shut it down.” It cites the decision by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Bank of America to refuse to process transactions and donations involving WikiLeaks.

The editorial makes clear, however, that the Times has no principled objections to this attack on democratic rights and freedom of the press—which essentially amounts to a threat by US banks to strangle any news organization that falls afoul of Washington. Indeed, the New York Times apparently believes the banks should have such powers.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

[Part II]

"Bottom line: the worst of bad practices will continue, besides teams of lawyers devising ways around whatever regulations emerge. The public again [will be] scammed."

Last December, a two-part article discussed Obama's year one betrayal and failure, accessed through the following links here and here.

In year two, the pattern continued, revealing domestic and foreign policies that:

● outdid George Bush by exceeding his harshness, lawlessness, belligerency, and public trust betrayal;
● maintained a 30 year agenda of shifting public wealth to the rich, as well as supporting capital, not public welfare, including targeting middle class households for destruction;
● looted the nation's wealth, wrecked the economy, and consigned growing millions to impoverishment without jobs, homes, savings, social services, or futures;
● let hunger, homelessness, poverty, and those uninsured grow to unacceptable levels;
● backed Wall Street's financial coup d'etat by greater Fed empowerment, as well as institutionalizing speculation, "too-big-to fail," super-wealth, and big money power;
● plans new global monetary measures to control the world's money;
● continued America's permanent war agenda by expanding imperial adventurism, increasing covert and overt aggression on new fronts with out-of-control military spending, exceeding the rest of the world combined at a time America has no enemies;

Read more »

Lawrence Davidson
Redress

Benjamin Disraeli once labelled Britain’s government "an organized hypocrisy". That was in circa 1845. Things have not changed much and by now hypocrisy might well be seen as a common sin of democratic government. This is because in democracies straightforward honesty about behaviour that runs counter to the idealized national image is usually bad politics.

Among today’s democracies none proves this point more than the United States. The United States, like Great Britain in the 19th century, simultaneously acts like an imperial power and cultivates a national image as the world’s prime purveyor of good government, stability and progress. However, history has taught us that a nation cannot be both of these things at once. So the folks in Washington have created for themselves an environment wherein principle and consistency are impossible. Take, for instance, the following:

1. A stolen election in the Ivory Coast has resulted in active disapproval on the part of the US government. After all, this is not good government. President Obama slapped sanctions on the fellows who stole the vote and urged the United Nations to send more troops (some 9,000 are already in the country) to set things right. On the other hand, the November parliamentary elections in Egypt (presently a US ally) were an outright farce. The opposition was banned, jailed and otherwise intimidated. Not at all good government. And Washington’s response? Nothing. If you claim to be the prime purveyor of democracy in the world, are you not supposed to be consistent?

Read more »

Ghali Hassan
Axis of Logic

Mention fascism and most peoples’ minds turn to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Japanese Fascism, Papadopoulos’ Greece and South Africa’s Apartheid regime. However, most people are blissfully unaware of a rising form of fascism, more virulent than all past fascist regimes combined. Its aim is to subjugate the entire planet and its resources to U.S. corporate interests.

It is true that German Fascism was evil; but it is also true that its evilness has been exploited, even exaggerated, by one powerful Zionist entity and its supporters to justify the persecution and dispossession of the Palestinian people. German Fascism has diversified and mutated into super fascism supported by regimes claiming to be “liberal democracies”.

The word Fascism originated from the Latin ‘Fasces’, means a bundle of sticks tied together to represent the ruling élite. At the heart of fascist ideology are corporatism, militarism, nationalism, racism and total control of citizens. Fascism is “a political system or regime with a tendency toward or actual exercise of Fascism” [Webster’s Dictionary]. Unfortunately, many opportunists and apologists for Israel-U.S. crimes use the word fascism as a name-calling, carelessly throwing it around to demonise others in order to mislead the public.

In his 2003 essay Fascism Anyone?, the British writer Laurence W. Britt identifies fourteen characteristics of fascism common to past fascist regimes. Are they common and shared by regimes today? The purpose of this essay is to seriously inform people of the growing danger of fascism today, using the fourteen characteristics as a matchup.

Read more »

Kurdistan Commentary

Jalal Barzanji, Kurdish poet and journalist, will soon release The Man in the Blue Pyjamas: Prison Memoir in the Form of a Novel, his memoirs about the time he spent imprisoned under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The first draft of the book, completed in 2007, was written in Kurdish. After many rounds of revisions and translations, the novel will be available in April 2011 from University of Alberta Press.

‘It is a narrative about a part of my life which I (held) for years in my heart and memory,’ says the author.

The part of his life Barzanji speaks of is from 1986-1989, during which time he endured imprisonment and torture under Saddam Hussein’s regime because of his literary and journalistic achievements—writing that openly explores themes of peace, democracy, and freedom. For those three years, Barzanji wrote only on scrap paper, smuggled in to his cell in Iraq.

As an outspoken critic of the censorship under former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Barzanji had been fully expecting to be either imprisoned or executed. ‘The regime was against freedom, and I was asking for freedom. I wasn’t a follower of the ideology and mentality of the regime. My pain was double – I was a modern writer and I was Kurdish…I was living in fear because I knew I was doing something dangerous, talking about peace, democracy, freedom,’ he said.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

Since taking office, Obama achieved the impossible - compiling a worse record than his fiercest critics feared, worse than George Bush across the board on domestic and foreign policies. He:

● looted the nation's wealth for Wall Street;
● wrecked the economy;
● consigned millions to poverty, unemployment, and bleak futures;
● expanded unbridled militarism and imperial wars;
● spied more aggressively than ever on Americans;
● destroyed decades of hard won labor rights;
● targeted Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for erosion and elimination;
● further institutionalized public wealth transfers to super-rich elites who already have too much;
● commodified public education;
● subverted Net Neutrality;
● targeted whistleblowers, dissenters, Muslims, and environmental and animal rights activists as terrorists;
● militarized Haiti, engineered fraudulent elections, and provided no desperately needed aid;
● gave drug, insurance and hospital chain giants greater control over healthcare, rationing it and making a dysfunctional system worse;
● made America more than ever a police state, including by targeting immigrants, holding thousands in hundreds of unlisted, unmarked detention facilities in nearly every state before secret courts deport them, at times stranding them far from home countries.

On October 6, the Los Angeles Times headlined, "US deported record number of illegal immigrants," saying:

"For the second year in a row, the government deported more illegal immigrants during the last fiscal year than ever before, according to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) figures."

Read more »

Angola 3 News interviews Dahr Jamail

Bradley Manning, suspected source of Wikileaks

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail spent nine months reporting directly from Iraq, following the US invasion in 2003. His stories have been published by Antiwar.com, Inter Press Service, Truthout, Al-Jazeera, The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Independent, and many others. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, has appeared on Al-Jazeera, the BBC and NPR, and numerous other stations around the globe.

Jamail is the author of two recent books: Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From An Unembedded Journalist (2008) and The Will To Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse To Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (2009). He also contributed Chapter 6, "Killing the Intellectual Class," for the book Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered (2010). Learn more at dahrjamailiraq.com

Angola 3 News: On April 4, 2010, WikiLeaks.org released a classified 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter in Iraq, firing on civilians and killing 11, including Reuters’ photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, 40 year old Saeed Chmagh. No charges have been filed against the US soldiers involved.

In sharp contrast, a 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning has been accused of leaking the classified video. Arrested in May and facing up to 52 years in prison for a range of charges, Manning is now being held under what lawyer/journalist Glenn Greenwald has termed "inhumane conditions."

Manning’s support website declares that "exposing war crimes is not a crime." Indeed, the Nuremberg Laws, established after the horrors of WWII, declare that soldiers have a legal obligation to resist criminal wars. Let’s please take a closer look at this issue of US war crimes. What do you think are the strongest arguments that have been made for why US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are criminal?

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

The Working Poor Families Project (WPFP) "is a national initiative focused on state workforce development policies involving: (1) education and skills training for adults; (2) economic development; and (3) income and work supports."

Its newest publication is titled, "Great Recession Hit Hard at America's Working Poor: Nearly 1 in 3 Working Families in United States are Low-Income." It explains distressing data on the state of America's poor and low income families, their condition getting worse, not better.

Citing new US Census data, it said nearly one-third of US families struggle to meet basic needs. Between 2007 and 2009, the percent of low-income families (earning less than 200% of the official threshold) rose from 28 - 30%. Their plight "challenges a fundamental assumption that in America, work pays." Clearly, not enough.

Though mostly invisible to policymakers, they comprise the economy's backbone working cash registers, cleaning homes and businesses, preparing restaurant and hotel food, caring for children and the elderly, as well as numerous other low-paid, poor benefits service jobs, increasingly temporary or part-time.

Read more »

Reham Alhelsi
My Palestine

My Palestinian sister, my Palestinian brother;
I write this letter today and I see your face in front of me, the face of Palestine. I see your smile; that of a poppy being kissed by the sun. I hear your whisper; that of an olive trees being hugged by the wind. I address this letter to you, for I know your name and you know mine: Palestinian.

2010 was declared the year of the Palestinian prisoners/detainees. Throughout the year, some local newspapers here in occupied Palestine published daily reports about you, your detention, your heroism, published interviews with your families, your loved ones telling of your detention, of the painful visits, of the Israeli oppression and harassment, and telling of how much you are loved, how much you are missed. A photo accompanied every report; a smiling young man with wavy dark hair that is probably grey now with the years and the suffering behind bars, a beautiful young woman whose once bright eyes probably have turned pale today with pain and sadness, a laughing father sitting amongst his children, wife, parents and siblings before being kidnapped from their midst by Israeli occupation soldiers, a happy mother surrounded by her children before she was separated from them by Israeli jailors, a little boy standing proudly near his new bicycle that is now stacked somewhere full of dust waiting for its owner to come home. Every morning I rush to check the page with your stories in one of the local newspapers. I pass my fingers over your pictures as I read how much you love Msakhan, how you tried to return the little bird to its nest and fell off the olive tree, how you impressed everyone with your dakbeh during your brother’s wedding, how you love writing poetry, how you dreamt of a free Palestine. And then I would wish I was able to free you, bring you back to your loved ones, bring you back to your poetry, to your dabkeh group, to your olive tree, and I would wish I could hug you, each and every one of you, and remove some of your pain away and tell you that you are never forgotten, that your pain is not yours alone, it is ours, all of us, because we are all one: we are Palestinians.

Read more »

Joseph Kishore
WSWS

As the 111th congressional session came to a close, the Obama administration and the US media have stepped up the propaganda offensive over the past two days to justify an even further shift to the right by the political establishment next year.

The “narrative” being constructed takes the following form:

The two years of the Democratic-controlled Senate and House of Representatives, along with the Obama administration, carried out historical social reforms on a scale not seen in decades. For some unexplained reason, these measures led to a defeat for the Democrats in the 2010 elections. Since the elections, and supposedly in response to popular pressure, Obama has shifted into a more “bipartisan” spirit, which has already produced fantastic results in the “lame-duck” session since the election.

This eruption of self-congratulation was led by Obama himself at an afternoon press conference on Wednesday. The lame-duck session, the president declared, was “the most productive post-election period we have had in decades, and…it comes on the heels of the most productive two years that we have had in generations.”

The overriding theme of the conference was Obama’s pledge to work with Republicans more closely in the coming year. As a Time magazine article noted (under the headline, “Obama’s Lame-Duck Comeback: Hello, Bipartisanship”), “In his 34-minute press conference on Wednesday [Obama] used the words ‘common ground’ three times, the word ‘bipartisan’ twice, the phrase ‘other side of the aisle’ twice, ‘came together’ three times and ‘across party lines’ twice.”

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

"In fact, most Muslims get no justice. They're illegally entrapped and imprisoned for crimes they never planned or committed. Yet America's media affirms guilt by accusation."

A full account of her case from March 2003 through December 2008 can be accessed through this link.

Numerous follow-up articles discussed subsequent events to the present. All are posted chronologically on sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Wrongfully persecuted, she was sentenced to 86 years in prison on September 23, 2010, a gross miscarriage of justice since her March 30, 2003 abduction, imprisonment, torture and witch-hunt prosecution, providing no evidence whatever to convict.

Supporters want her freed. The web site freeaafia.org posts updates on her case and status. It has petitions to sign on her behalf as well as actions to take, including writing her as follows:

Aafia Siddiqui
# 90279-054
FMC Carswell
Federal Medical Center
PO Box 27137
Fort Worth, TX 76127

It also asks those able to contribute to her legal defense and investigation into the disappearance of her son, Suleman, missing for nearly eight years.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

In America's Declaration of Independence, Jefferson declared:

"all men (are) created equal....with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (code for property). That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends. it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government," serving them "to effect their safety and happiness."

Long established governments shouldn't "be changed for light and transient causes....But when a long train of abuses and usurpations (establishes) absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government," replacing it with one serving everyone equitably.

In addition, Jefferson said "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." Women's rights advocate Susan B. Anthony also said "I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that 'Resistance to tyranny it obedience to God.' "

Read more »

David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

In the spirit of the season, let us tell the tale of the Political Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.

The Political Ghost of Christmas Present showed up in Washington this week to pass an 800 billion dollar tax cut package, a very large chunk of which goes to a very small minority of very rich Americans. That’s a real bummer, given that the distribution of wealth in this country is now so skewed that we make banana republics of the 19th century look good by comparison. I don’t know where that leaves us. Maybe a banana slug republic?

Oh well, at least that’s the total extent of the damage. I mean, it’s not like we’re in tough financial shape or anything, where such a move would represent the very height of fiscal irresponsibility. It’s not like we have to borrow the money to pay for these tax gifts to the wealthy – making them, in reality, tax burden transfers to the less wealthy, and to our children and grandchildren – or anything like that. It’s not like the histrionics of the Democrats in Congress, mounting a faux, five-minute insurrection against the deal and against their own president, don’t emphatically demonstrate once and for all that voters in America have a choice, every time they enter the ballot box, between the Party of Shameless Corporate Hack Assholes That Tries To Pretend It Isn’t, on the one hand, and the Party of Shameless Corporate Hack Assholes That Tries A Little Harder To Pretend It Isn’t, on the other.

And it’s not like there will be any real-world consequences to this latest chapter in the sordid fiscal history of the last thirty years, or anything. A month from now we’ll see the president in his State of the Union address once again linking arms with the (out) Republicans, telling us that we must cut Medicare and Social Security and infrastructure and government payrolls, so that we can afford these yet more gigantic tax cuts for the wealthy, disastrous and murderous wars across the Middle East, and a military budget the size of the rest of the planet, combined. Now we see the “starve the beast” long-haul strategy of the oligarchs about to reach its full fruition. The debt was always intentional. It was the only way to pry out of the cold, stiff fingers of Americans the programs they favor so much they are referred to as the third rail of American politics.

Read more »

Philip Giraldi
Antiwar

Members of Congress are beholden to a powerful pro-
Israel lobby.

Most Americans have a negative perception of Congress. It is not hard to figure out why when one learns that most congressmen spend much of their time raising money so they can be reelected. I for one am not bothered by that aspect of the legislative experience because I believe that if they are out pursuing money they are keeping out of trouble, except when they are simultaneously raising the cash illegally and concealing large packages of it in their freezers.

When Congress actually sits down and does something, hold on to your hat and wallet. Last week the House passed "unanimously" what might be described as a stealth resolution in that the document was only made public a day before being voted on, allowing no time for genuine debate or review by legislators and voters. When it was finally tabled, it received a voice vote, in which those present say aye or nay, with the speaker declaring whether the resolution passes or not. Unlike a "record" vote, there is no easy way to determine who voted which way or, indeed, who was present when the vote was taken. It is the ultimate democracy in action cop out, enabling congressmen to behave completely irresponsibly.

The resolution in question was – surprise, surprise – on the Middle East, another expression of the will of Congress and the American people that Israel should be able to do anything it wants and the Palestinians should be grateful that they have not been completely exterminated. House Resolution 1765 "Supporting a negotiated solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and condemning unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state, and for other purposes." The resolution was drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and sponsored by Congressman Howard Berman, currently Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. There were 53 co-sponsors.

Read more »

Robert Bows

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
~ William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, 1920

One of the techniques of successful propaganda is to repeat a statement over and over again until people believe it to be true, as any encounter with the media and the pulpit amply demonstrates. So, to transform the world into a sustainable and progressive place, we must deconstruct the underlying lies promulgated by the mouthpieces of plutocratic propaganda, by which they justify the current state of affairs.

Given the increasing gap between rich and poor, the sharp spike in religious fundamentalism, and the impunity with which corporate-controlled states seize resources to which they have no legitimate claim, one of our first priorities must be to disable the use of religious dogma to justify greed and war.

Since surveys indicate that three-quarters of Americans consider themselves to be Christians, let’s begin there.[1]

It has become a tenet of faith for many Christians that they can simultaneously practice their religion and conduct economic affairs in their own self interest. Indeed, ever since the Protestant Reformation arose from the pressures of the Industrial Revolution, the pulpits of Christianity have been used to turn wealth (economic success) into an indication of favor from God.

Let’s go back to the source of Christianity and see if such thinking holds up.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

In place since 1978, it lets authorities detain and/or deport foreign nationals and other non-citizens suspected of human rights violations, alleged threats to national security, or claimed affiliation with organized crime, using (usually bogus) secret evidence withheld from defense counsel.

Since 1991, 27 residents have been affected. In February 2007, Canada's Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Charkaoui v. Canada. However, eight months later in October, the Canadian House of Commons passed Bill C-3 (a so-called anti-terror measure), amending the 2001 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act by introducing a special advocate into the certificate process on the pretext of protecting subjects during secret proceedings.

That and other provisions are troubling, including indefinite detentions, with or without charges, draconian house arrest with continuous monitoring and surveillance, and deportations to despotic states unjustly. Doing so assures torture, imprisonment or death. It's why subjects fled to Canada, believing they'd be safe.

The special advocate provision is reprehensible, providing legal cover for a fundamentally unjust process designed to stigmatize, vilify, convict, imprison, or deport mostly innocent victims to oblivion, pretending national and public security were protected.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

Hyped support reveals gross hypocrisy about a deeply flawed process and outrageous price for it. More on that below. Yet a September 14 New York Times editorial headlined, "Ratify the New Start Treaty," saying;

"Failure to ratify this treaty would be hugely costly for American credibility and security....The Senate needs to ratify New Start now."

In fact, endorsing ratification undermines the Times' credibility. More why below.

A more recent Washington Post November 19 editorial headlined, "The New START pact should be passed, not politicized," saying:

"....the treaty ought to be approved. But no calamity will befall the United States if the Senate does not act this year....In reality, Mr. Obama's urgency (has) less to do with national security than with the upcoming shift in Senate seats" next year.

The Los Angeles Times said ratifying Start could be

"a defining moment for Obama. Failure might be regarded abroad as confirmation that the administration is too weak to put its stamp on world affairs."

Most major media reports endorse ratification. None explain key facts about a deeply flawed treaty or what's ahead when implemented. An earlier article on Obama's Nuclear Posture Review explained why, accessed through this link.

Calling it old wine in new bottles, it explained that nuclear disarmament or serious reductions aren't envisioned or planned. New and upgraded weapons will replace outdated ones. Dangerous testing will continue, and billions of dollars will be committed to proliferate a first-strike capability with overwhelming destructive power, including from space. Obama's Nuclear Posture Review was more about war making than prevention.

Read more »

Patrick Martin
WSWS

"People affiliated with our organisation have already been assassinated."

"There is not the slightest acknowledgement throughout the interview that the US government in particular, and all governments worldwide, routinely engage in illegal and underhanded activity, or that WikiLeaks is performing a public service by exposing the conflict between what governments say officially, and what they say and do privately."

In a lengthy interview with BBC News, broadcast Tuesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange answered many of the smears directed by the media against him as part of a campaign to discredit the organization as it releases of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables.

It was Assange’s first face-to-face broadcast interview since his release from jail December 17, after spending nine days in London’s Wandsworth prison on an extradition arrest warrant from Sweden. The presenter of the BBC’s “Today” program, John Humphrys, focused the interview almost entirely on the trumped-up claims of sexual assault that are the basis of the Swedish warrant, although no actual charges have been filed against Assange.

The entire tenor of the interview is that of a prosecutor interrogating a prisoner, not one journalist engaging in a discussion with another. The BBC man might as well have been wearing a badge.

Read more »

Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House

What explains the gullibility of Americans, a gullibility that has mired the US in disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and which promises war with Iran, North Korea and a variety of other targets if neoconservatives continue to have their way?

Part of the explanation is that millions of conservatives are thrilled at the opportunity to display their patriotism and to show their support for their country. Bush’s rhetoric is perfectly designed to appeal to this desire. "You are with us or against us" elicits a blind and unquestioning response from people determined to wear their patriotism on their sleeves. "You are with us or against us" vaccinates Americans against factual reality and guarantees public acceptance of administration propaganda.

Another part of the explanation is that emotional appeals have grown the stronger as the ability of educated people to differentiate fact from rhetoric declines. The Bush administration blamed 9/11 on foreign intelligence failures; yet, the administration has convinced about half of the public that mass surveillance of American citizens is the solution!

Many Americans have turned a blind eye to the administration’s illegal and unconstitutional spying on the grounds that, as they themselves are doing nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear. If this is the case, why did our Founding Fathers bother to write the Constitution? If the executive branch can be trusted not to abuse power, why did Congress pass legislation establishing a panel of federal judges (ignored by the Bush administration) to oversee surveillance? If President Bush can decide that he can ignore statutory law, how does he differ from a dictator? If Bush can determine law, what is the role of Congress and the courts? If "national security" is a justification for elevating the power of the executive, where is his incentive to find peaceful solutions?

Emotional appeals to fear and to patriotism have led close to half of the population to accept unaccountable government in the name of "the war on terrorism." What a contradiction it is that so many Americans have been convinced that safety lies in their sacrifice of their civil liberties and accountable government.

Read more »

Joseph Kishore
WSWS

Julian Assange must be vigorously defended. The World Socialist Web Site calls on all working people—and all those seeking to oppose imperialism and the attack on democratic rights—to mobilize their collective strength to demand an immediate end to the persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks.

Over the past several months, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been the target of a state-orchestrated campaign based on trumped-up allegations of sexual misconduct. He was named in an international arrest warrant, detained in a London prison, initially denied bail and held in isolation for nine days. Assange’s lawyers are fighting extradition to Sweden while he remains under virtual house arrest.

The extradition of Assange to Sweden could be followed by his extradition to the US. There are reports of discussions between the American and Swedish governments, and a grand jury has purportedly been convened in Virginia to charge Assange with violations of the US Espionage Act. Government officials and politicians have branded Assange a “terrorist.” Some have called for his assassination.

The vendetta against Assange is a political provocation that has all the characteristics of a dirty tricks operation.

The exploitation of charges of sexual and personal misconduct as a cover for a political attack is a well-known modus operandi. Those who might be sufficiently gullible to take the charges in Sweden at face value should recall previous cases: the FBI’s taping of bedrooms and hotel rooms used by Martin Luther King, Jr. to obtain evidence of extramarital affairs; Nixon’s break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s therapist in search of personal information damaging to the leaker of the Pentagon Papers; more recently, the use of the Monica Lewinsky scandal by the Republican Party and its media backers in the rightwing conspiracy to drive President Bill Clinton from office.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

Washington is a world class menace, waging imperial wars for global dominance called peace, stability and democracy.

In the run-up to the 1950 Korean War, Truman used South Korea to goad Pyongyang into a conflict it didn't want. Nor does it now, but events may spiral out of control unless cooler heads prevail.

Last March, the latest confrontation began when North Korea was falsely blamed for sinking a South Korean ship. At the time, evidence suggested a false flag, manufactured to blame Pyongyang.

Then on November 23, US media reports said North Korea incited the gravest incident since the July 1953 armistice. Analysts called it a deliberate provocation, even though South Korean forces fired first, goaded by the Obama administration for what Pyongyang, with good reason, called a rehearsal for invasion.

Decades of sanctions crippled its economy. Ten years under Bush/Obama were intimidating. South Korea's right-wing Lee Myung-bak Grand National Party replaced Uri Party's Roh Moo-hyun's Sunshine Policy, initiating hostile, provocative relations.

Lee rescinded his cooperative economic agreements, cancelled emergency communications between both sides to avoid possible conflict, stopped family reunions, ended the North's Mt. Kumgang tourist operations, and closed the North-South railroad benefitting both sides, keeping only a Kaesong, North Korea industrial park operating.

He also violated a 2004 agreement to halt propaganda campaigns, sending 400,000 disinformation leaflets north on balloons. Annual South Korean/US military exercises heighten tensions, especially with extra Washington/Seoul saber rattling. Pyongyang warned about current ones, calling them "reckless military provocations (in) our maritime territory." Promising another response, Reuters, on December 20, said:

"North Korea stepped back from confrontation over 'reckless' military drills by the South on Monday and reportedly issued a new offer on nuclear inspections, drawing a cautious response from Seoul and Washington," preferring confrontation to diplomacy.

Read more »

Ralph Lopez
t r u t h o u t

(Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

One peculiar outcome of the new clampdown on whistleblowers is the spectacle of Americans cheering on the destruction of their own rights, as in the case of avowed tough guys commenting in blogs that people like Bradley Manning "did the crime and now does the time," deserve no sympathy and merit the clear torture he is now undergoing. The tough consistently miss the point that while Manning has been accused of leaking classified military and State Department files to WikiLeaks, he has been convicted of nothing. The treatment he is undergoing has become the new norm in the case of high-profile cases purportedly involving national security.

The peerless Glenn Greenwald in this case gets it wrong when he says Manning's treatment is "possibly" torture. Isolation is torture and has been proven to be so. Hardened prisoners have said they would take almost any other punishment for misbehavior over isolation and its effects on the mind and the spirit. According to Greenwald, Manning has been kept in his cell without any human contact whatsoever for 23 out of 24 hours every day for six months, is prohibited from exercising in his cell, takes his meals alone and is being administered what he is told are anti-depressants by the prison doctor to keep his mind from snapping from the effects of the constant, steady quiet, the artificial light which makes it impossible to distinguish night from day and the aloneness with one's own thoughts. Hard as it may be to understand without experiencing it, interaction with other humans, even other accused, is a vital part of the touchstones with reality which frame our psyche. In testimony introduced at the trial of another prisoner accused of material assistance to terrorists, Fahad Hashmi,who was held in isolation for two years, doctors concluded that:

"after 60 days' solitary detention people's mental state begins to break down and gradually develops into psychosis as the mind disintegrates."

Prolonged isolation produces fear, anxiety and stress as lack of human contact denies the victim the opportunity to affirm the validity of what they are thinking. Victims hear voices and begin to question who they are.

Read more »

Rachel Stephens
Redress

Rachel Stephens argues that people should “celebrate the continuing tradition of Christ, who railed against the law makers of his time in an attempt to bring love, hope and justice”, by supporting and following the example of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in vowing “to spread the truth and to work against the tendency in governments towards evil”.

Some years go I decided to stop subjecting myself to the propaganda I received from daily news programmes. My knowledge of politics was poor, but the internet enabled me to educate myself and I was especially keen to learn about British involvement in the Middle East.

I have a Christian background, but I knew very little about Israel and Palestine. In my youth, working on a kibbutz seemed a laudable aim, although I’m relieved now that I didn’t ever get around to it. Like the majority in the West, I did not know that the country now called “Israel” had recently been Palestine.

The Old Testament did not mean a great deal to me. There was lot about Jews smiting their enemies, but it was the story of Samson and Delilah that brought home to me that the ethnic groups mentioned were comprised of real people living in Canaan at that time. The story of Samson slaughtering his wife’s Philistine kinsmen at their wedding feast is shocking, yet the Old Testament contains much more graphic material than this, despite the fact that there has been plenty of editing of the Bible, both Old Testament and New. Committees have chosen which bits to leave out and added parts where necessary to ensure readers receive the authorized version. Thousands of people who found themselves unable to accept the authorized version of the Bible promoted by their government at any particular time in history were tortured, burned alive (being buried alive was reserved for women only) or met other hideous deaths. Nevertheless, there is still plenty one can learn from the Old Testament and this article attempts to draw parallels between Biblical and modern times.

Read more »

Khalid Amayreh

Furniture is seen in the living room of a house that was damaged
during Israel's war on Lebanon, the summer of 2006.

Saad al Hariri's recent visit to Iran is undoubtedly a welcomed development. It served the interests of Lebanon, Iran and all other forces that stand against Israel's nefarious designs in the region.

We all know the diabolical nature of Israeli goals in Lebanon. These can be summarized into the following:

First, Israel is interested in keeping Lebanon in a constant state of civil or sectarian strife in order to weaken the country and show the western world that Israel is the Christians' friend in this predominantly Muslim region. Thank goodness, most of the Lebanese Christians have come a long way since they believed Zionist lies and propaganda about Israeli friendship.

In the mid 1970s, successive Israeli governments, especially under the Likud and other fascist-minded parties, privately entertained the idea of creating a Christian mini-state in Lebanon , which would be another Israel in the part of the Arab world.

Some misguided Lebanese leaders more or less fell in love with the satanic idea and showed a propensity to open the gates of Lebanon to the Israeli invaders, the coveters of Lebanon's waters and fertile land.

Some of these perfidious leaders eventually came to regret their solicitations with Israel; others, unfortunately, remained un-repentant, probably awaiting another opportunity to reactivate their treachery and un-patriotism.

Of course, collaboration with Israel transcended sectarian lines, as sick minds and hearts appear in every community regardless of race and religion.

The recent discovery of a vast network of Israeli spies in Lebanon was an additional proof showing that Israel's criminal goals in Lebanon have remained unchanged. Which more than justifies Lebanon's firm approach to "peace with Israel."

Read more »

Floyd Rudmin
Lew Rockwell

Why Does the NSA Engage in Mass Surveillance of Americans When It's Statistically Impossible for Such Spying to Detect Terrorists?

The Bush administration and the National Security Agency (NSA) have been secretly monitoring the email messages and phone calls of all Americans. They are doing this, they say, for our own good. To find terrorists. Many people have criticized NSA's domestic spying as unlawful invasion of privacy, as search without search warrant, as abuse of power, as misuse of the NSA's resources, as unConstitutional, as something the communists would do, something very unAmerican.

In addition, however, mass surveillance of an entire population cannot find terrorists. It is a probabilistic impossibility. It cannot work.

What is the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA's mass surveillance identifies them as terrorists? If the probability is zero (p=0.00), then they certainly are not terrorists, and NSA was wasting resources and damaging the lives of innocent citizens. If the probability is one (p=1.00), then they definitely are terrorists, and NSA has saved the day. If the probability is fifty-fifty (p=0.50), that is the same as guessing the flip of a coin. The conditional probability that people are terrorists given that the NSA surveillance system says they are, that had better be very near to one (p=1.00) and very far from zero (p=0.00).

Read more »

Darrell Castle
Constitution Party of Tennessee

[Wikileaks: Collateral Murder (VIDEO). This video shows men gathering on a Baghdad street on July 12, 2007, shortly before they were fired upon. View related photos wikileaks.org]

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, is, according to various politicians, the most dangerous and evil man alive.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that WikiLeaks’ release of a quarter million e-mails and diplomatic cables was an “attack upon the international community.”

Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said that the person who leaked the information to Wikileaks is guilty of treason and should be executed.

Sarah Palin stated on her Facebook page,

“He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaida and Taliban leaders?”

Tom Flanagan, senior advisor to the Canadian prime minister, said that he should be assassinated, and that Obama should put out a contract on him “with maybe a drone or something.”

It’s not enough that Assange has an international criminal warrant out for him through Interpol; he should be hunted down and assassinated like al-Qaida and Taliban leaders.

My analysis of what Julian Assange did leads me to a different conclusion.

Read more »

Ray McGovern
Antiwar

“Show me your company, and I’ll tell you who you are,” my grandmother would often say with a light Irish lilt but a heavy emphasis, an admonition about taking care in choosing what company you keep.

On Thursday, I could sense her smiling down through the snow as I stood pinned to the White House fence with Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, Margaret Flowers, Medea Benjamin, Coleen Rowley, Mike Ferner, Jodie Evans, and over 125 others risking arrest in an attempt to highlight the horrors of war.

The witness was sponsored by Veterans for Peace, a group comprised of many former soldiers who have “been there, done that” regarding war, distinguishing them from President Barack Obama who, like his predecessor, hasn’t a clue what war is really about.

(Sorry, Mr. President, donning a bomber jacket and making empty promises to the troops in the middle of an Afghan night does not qualify.)

The simple but significant gift of presence was being offered outside the White House. As I hung on the fence, I recalled what I knew of the results of war.

Read more »

Karen Kwiatkowski
Lew Rockwell

At the culminating point of the movie A Few Good Men, Colonel Jessup, played magnificently by Jack Nicholson, angrily tells the truth and shockingly incriminates himself. The interrogating lawyer LT Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise), in his moment of victory, refuses to gloat. Instead, he abruptly ends his interrogation and demands that rule of law prevail, saying, "The defendant has rights!"

The famous courtroom scenes from this movie are well-known and oft-quoted by many Americans. A Few Good Men is formulaic, but it is the formula we particularly love – proud patriots who believe in right and wrong, in black and white, in law over lawlessness, Davids who fight a powerful Goliath. Against all odds, eventually our heroes win when the powerful and vindicating truth is revealed for all to see.

In another time, this would be the story of Bradley Manning.

"A Few Good Men" dramatically exposes the deformation and distortion of right and wrong that is the very demand of state utilitarianism, which is to say, an action is right if is promotes the state’s happiness, and an action is wrong if it tends to make the state unhappy. Colonel Jessup called for the harsh physical punishment of a "substandard Marine" and thus Corporal Santiago was killed by his comrades. The state, represented by Jessup, explains, "…Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives…."

Charged but not convicted of any crime, American airman Brad Manning is being held largely incommunicado at Guantánamo, without bedding or permission to exercise in his cell. He is purposely deprived of human contact. His current treatment – based on unproven charges – is far harsher than the treatment and sentences of four famous and convicted US federal-level spies.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

Among all developed nations, Israel, America and Britain are the most unequal, a trend getting worse, not better.

An earlier article explained neoliberalism's impact on Israeli Jews, beginning in the 1980s. In 1985, the Knesset amended the Bank of Israel Law, prohibiting it from printing money to finance industrialization, full employment, and immigrant absorption.

It was part of a neoliberal takeover, embracing a massive power shift from various government agencies to the Finance Ministry and central bank (the Bank of Israel), similar to American financialization that empowered Wall Street, the Federal Reserve it controls, and US FIRE sector overall (finance, insurance, and real estate).

In 1985, Israeli policy included:

● efforts to reduce budget deficits to near balance; and
● dampen inflationary pressures by cutting wages, prices, credit, the currency's value, public benefits, pensions, and union power to establish a secondary, exploitable, temporary worker market.

The same year, the Arrangements Law established an emergency Economic Stabilization Plan. It sidestepped the normal legislative process, became a permanent budget adjunct, and kept Knesset members from debating its destructive effects on democratic values and social justice.

As a result, a race to the bottom followed, especially since the 1990s, as evidenced by mass privatizations, cutting welfare and social benefits, and, like in America, shifting wealth to the rich. The results were predictable. Israel not only flaunts democracy, it's a land of extreme and growing inequality.

Read more »

Barry Grey
WSWS

Secret cables published in recent days by WikiLeaks reveal the efforts of the United States to thwart the exposure by the Council of Europe and the International Criminal Court (ICC) of human rights violations by the US and its allies. The cables, among the more than 250,000 State Department documents leaked to the web site, reflect the hostility and contempt of both the Bush and Obama administrations for democratic rights and international law.

A series of cables dispatched in September and October of 2009 give vent to the disdain of Washington for the Council of Europe, which monitors human rights in 47 European nations. The Council in Strasbourg oversees the European Court of Human Rights.

In the likely event that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces extradition to the United States, the European Court of Human Rights will become his last court of appeal in opposing such action.

The cables from 2009, drafted by Vincent Carver, the consul general at the US embassy in Strasbourg, express US vitriol over the Council’s earlier exposures and condemnations of Washington’s policy of rendition—in which alleged terrorists are abducted and transported to a third country, where they face interrogation and torture without any legal protections—and the complicity of European governments in the US practice. The Council has also exposed and denounced secret CIA “black site” prisons in Europe and elsewhere.

Read more »

Mahboob A. Khawaja

When the European forces invaded and colonized the vast Islamic world, there were no television and sounds and voices of reason to call them as “terrorists.” The colonization scheme of things was not outcome of the Western democratic values but ferocity of violence and killings of millions and millions of human lives for the Empires in the making. The European crusaders crossed the channels and unknown time zones to subjugate the much divided Muslims as part of their nationalism perception and values that Muslims were inferior to the European race and could be used as raw material to erect the new Empires. In an information age, knowledge–driven global culture of reason, ignorance is no longer a requisite to learn from the living history. History speaks of the Al-Andalusia Arab civilization as the longest advanced civilization lasting for eight centuries in Europe. Now, the Europeans identify themselves as civilized people but the effective date for the claim remains a mystery.

The previous Empires knew their geography and limits, but the newly articulated American Empire in its infancy, is challenging to the limits of the Laws of God and appears obsessed with “fear” of being replaced by the new emerging economically productive nations of Asia such as China, Japan and India and others. President George W. Bush invoked the “War on Terrorism” as a dictum of power, not reason and wisdom, to camouflage the prospective future with acts of barbarity and to dispel the notion of accountability in global affairs. Historically, people and nations pursuing this path of behavior have ended up in self-delusional and self-destruction.

Read more »

John Chan
WSWS

In a calculated and reckless provocation directed in the first instance against North Korea, the Obama administration has encouraged South Korea to hold live-fire drills in the vicinity of Yeonpyeong Island. The highly sensitive island was the site of artillery exchanges on November 23 between South and North Korea.

South Korea has ignored North Korea’s threat of retaliation and calls by China and Russia for calm and restraint. The live fire exercise not only has the potential to provoke a military confrontation between the two Koreas, but carries the danger of a broader conflict involving the major powers.

US is backing the South Korean exercise not just as a means for exerting pressure on North Korea, but also on China. In recent months, the Obama administration has waged an aggressive campaign throughout the region aimed at undercutting China’s growing influence. Washington has repeatedly blamed China for not doing enough to “rein in” North Korea and rebuffed every effort by Beijing to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea has announced that the artillery drill will proceed today. The announcement came within hours of the breakdown of an emergency session of the UN Security Council called by Russia, with China’s support. According to a Reuters report, Russia circulated a draft statement to Security Council members that called for “maximum restraint” and urged UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to send an envoy to Seoul and Pyongyang to prevent the crisis spiralling out of control.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

Lynn Stewart and Ralph Poynter: Stalwart Cohorts
in the People's Struggle

"She's a heroic role model deserving support at her time of need, facing nine more years unless granted redress at a very tough time when prosecutors demand cruel and unusual punishment, not mitigation. Silence, timidity, and inaction are no options against it."

Seven previous articles discussed her case and status, explaining the gross injustice against a heroic human rights lawyer who devoted her career to defending society's poor, unwanted, and unfairly persecuted - defendants deprived of due process without an advocate like her.

She knew the risks, yet took them courageously, until prosecutorial injustice convicted and imprisoned her for doing her job - defending an unpopular client too vigorously.

Interned on November 19, 2009 at MCC-NY, she remained there until transferred. Her family and attorneys requested FCI Danbury, CT close to home, a facility for low security female prisoners with a satellite camp for minimum security ones. No matter. She was denied the logical choice for a more punitive one.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

Disappearing citizenship...

Numerous previous articles exposed it, highlighting policies affording rights solely to Jews, including a January 2010 Israeli Democracy or Hypocrisy one accessed through this link.

It cited a same titled October 2007 Haaretz editorial, calling for "debate about Israel's control over the lives of Palestinians deprived of civil rights," saying its democracy is flawed for denying Arab Israelis equality with Jews.

In his December 10 op-ed titled titled, "The farce of a secular and democratic Jewish state," Haaretz writer Gideon Levy was equally critical, saying:

"The debate over the conversion bill is deceptive." The IDF bill aims to prevent municipal marriage clerks from refusing to register marriages of people converted during military service. An estimated 2,500 occur annually, mostly among former Soviet Union immigrants. Orthodox parties, like Shas, want the Sephardic chief rabbi to have sole conversion authority. Secular ones want bill's language left unchanged.

Levy believes the debate masks greater issues, fundamental ones

"that define our society and state." Whether military or civilian rabbis decide who is Jewish is a distraction. "Ten times more significant is....whether (we're) living in the only country on earth where clerics determine the right to citizenship. No less important (is the illusion that Israel) is a secular and democratic state."

Imagine debates over whether to rent apartments to Arabs. What about equal rights, democratic freedoms, civil liberties and justice. Choosing who's superior, who's inferior, who gets rights and who doesn't exposes Israel's real agenda, a theocratic-run Jewish state under religious law, deciding who belongs and who doesn't, enforced by hardline officials and MKs.

"It's time to admit that this approach can only be called racist," based on "the blood flowing through (one's) veins....determin(ing) your status....Sixty-two years after (Israel's) establishment, (it's time to) change this reality." It's time for "normalcy, for joining the enlightened world, (and changing) distorted reality." Otherwise, it's ludicrous calling Israel "a liberal and modern state" when growing despotism better defines it. Non-Jews have experienced it for decades, under a repressive occupation, and Israeli Arabs treated like second class citizens.

Read more »

Naomi Spencer
WSWS

Army Private Bradley Manning, accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has been held in solitary confinement by the military for more than seven months.

Manning, who has not been convicted of a crime, has been imprisoned since May at the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. Prior to that the 22-year-old intelligence specialist was held in a military prison in Kuwait, where he was also kept in solitary confinement.

Solitary confinement is widely acknowledged to be a form of torture. Severe isolation leads to psychological trauma, despair and mental illness. While routinely employed in the US prison system, the treatment is banned as a cruel and unusual punishment in many countries.

By all indications, the Obama administration and the military are subjecting Manning to this treatment in the hope that, after being incapacitated and made pliant, he will accept a plea deal in exchange for implicating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange so that the US can prosecute the latter on conspiracy charges.

On Friday, the British Independent reported that the US Justice Department has offered Manning a plea bargain, which would involve him being transferred to civilian custody, in return for him naming Assange as an active collaborator in obtaining the leaked files.

Manning was detained after WikiLeaks released the “Collateral Murder” video last April. The video contains footage shot by a US attack helicopter of a massacre of civilians and journalists carried out in Baghdad in 2007. The Army private is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents and other material that show the massive scale of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, expose corruption and lies, and document war crimes.

Read more »

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

Oh! spies are of no use nowadays. Their profession is over. The newspapers do their work instead. ~ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, Act III

"He will not be going back to that cell once occupied by Oscar Wilde."

Eventually he didn't. But little did Mark Stephens, one of Julian Assange's lawyers, know that it would still take over three twisting-and-turning hours for his client to finally exit the Royal Courts of Justice in central London a free man.

It's as if WikiLeaks founder Assange, emerging from the silence of the shadows to the proverbially frantic media scrum, already knew that the real war starts now - and has nothing to do with jealous groupies, broken condoms and "sex by surprise".

This was the key passage of Assange's brief statement, read immediately after he was able to breathe the air of London again. He said, "During my time in solitary confinement in the bottom of a Victorian prison, I had time to reflect on the conditions of those people around the world also in solitary confinement, also on remand, in conditions that are more difficult than those faced by me. Those people also need your attention and support."

As in: pay excruciatingly close attention to what the US government is doing to Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old army private accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of cables to WikiLeaks. Manning has been held in solitary confinement at the US Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia, for five months now. He has not been convicted of any crime. In a devastating Salon article, Glenn Greenwald has stressed that Manning is "under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture".

So that was Assange's terse way of saying to the world: Big Brother is watching you. And what they're doing to Manning they want to do to me, to you, and metaphorically to anyone who believes in freedom of information.

Read more »