Joharah Baker
MIFTAH

Everyone is glued to their television sets. The scenes from Egypt's Tahreer [Liberation] Square, from Alexandria and from Suez are mesmerizing, especially for us nostalgic Palestinians who know what it feels like to revolt against an oppressive regime.

At least we used to. The relative silence of the Palestinian street towards the historic events in the Arab world is perplexing, even to the most unfazed among us. While there is no doubt whatsoever that hearts and minds are in the right place, the question is why we are also not out on the streets in solidarity. The answer will vary, of course, depending on the respondent.

For young and zealous protesters in the West Bank eager to wear their hearts on their sleeves and show their solidarity with their Arab brethren, the finger of blame is squarely on the Palestinian Authority and its security forces. It is not as though our people have not felt the call of their fellow Arabs in Tunisia and Egypt and the pull of their cause against the oppressive regimes of their leaders. On the contrary, after the first week of protests in Tunisia, when it was clear the Arab world as we know it would be turned upside down, the Palestinians took to the streets. It was not long, however, before they were told to go home by the police and security forces who, no doubt, were acting on orders from above.

Now that Egyptians have regained hope that they too can be the catalyst for change in their own country, they have taken over the streets. Again, Palestinians felt the urge to join hands (metaphorically) with their Egyptian brethren and again, they were turned back at the door of the relevant ministries after requesting a permit to congregate. What will the Egyptians think of us?

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article discussed him in detail, accessed through this site.

Following former prime minister Ariel Sharon's dictum that, "This is our land, and we'll settle it and build on it in order to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state," Palestinians have been ruthlessly persecuted, imprisoned, or slaughtered in gross violation of international laws.

Ameer Makhoul is one of many thousands of victims, vilified for being Muslims in a Jewish state. An Israeli citizen, human rights activist, and head of the internationally recognized Ittijah NGO for Palestinian empowerment, he also chairs the Public Committee for the Defence of Political Prisoners within the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee in Israel. Besides championing human rights, he also supports the global BDS movement, what many believe is perhaps the most effective nonviolent tactic against Israeli lawlessness, and another reason for his targeting.

In May 2010, he was arrested on spurious charges of spying for Hezbollah, Israel's way to silence a respected Palestinian. At the time, attorney Hussein Abu Hasin said accusations were so vague and wide-ranging that emails, Internet chats or phone conversations with anyone about anything could be used as a pretext to prosecute for communicating with a "state enemy," whether or not true and regardless of the right to speak freely with anyone.

On May 6, his ordeal began when about 20 Israeli police and security forces arrested him at 3:10AM, ransacked his apartment, confiscated his computers, cell phones, various documents, maps, and other possessions. At the same time, his Haifa office was raided for other potentially "incriminating" evidence, a Shin Bet warrant saying only that "secret information" justified it for "security reasons," when, in fact, none whatsoever existed.

Makhoul was detained incommunicado at Petah Tikva for interrogation. Under an initial gag order, the Israeli media couldn't write or discuss anything about his case.

He endured 12 days of brutal interrogation, including torture and sleep deprivation. After three weeks, he was charged with espionage, helping an enemy (Hezbollah) in time of war, contact with a foreign agent, and other spurious charges, all of which he denied.

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Andrew J. Bacevich
Antiwar

Why Military Spending Remains Untouchable

In defense circles, "cutting" the Pentagon budget has once again become a topic of conversation. Americans should not confuse that talk with reality. Any cuts exacted will at most reduce the rate of growth. The essential facts remain: U.S. military outlays today equal that of every other nation on the planet combined, a situation without precedent in modern history.

The Pentagon presently spends more in constant dollars than it did at any time during the Cold War — this despite the absence of anything remotely approximating what national security experts like to call a "peer competitor." Evil Empire? It exists only in the fevered imaginations of those who quiver at the prospect of China adding a rust-bucket Russian aircraft carrier to its fleet or who take seriously the ravings of radical Islamists promising from deep inside their caves to unite the Umma in a new caliphate.

What are Americans getting for their money? Sadly, not much. Despite extraordinary expenditures (not to mention exertions and sacrifices by U.S. forces), the return on investment is, to be generous, unimpressive. The chief lesson to emerge from the battlefields of the post-9/11 era is this: the Pentagon possesses next to no ability to translate "military supremacy" into meaningful victory.

Washington knows how to start wars and how to prolong them, but is clueless when it comes to ending them. Iraq, the latest addition to the roster of America’s forgotten wars, stands as exhibit A. Each bomb that blows up in Baghdad or some other Iraqi city, splattering blood all over the streets, testifies to the manifest absurdity of judging "the surge" as the epic feat of arms celebrated by the Petraeus lobby.

The problems are strategic as well as operational. Old Cold War-era expectations that projecting U.S. power will enhance American clout and standing no longer apply, especially in the Islamic world. There, American military activities are instead fostering instability and inciting anti-Americanism. For Exhibit B, see the deepening morass that Washington refers to as AfPak or the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations.

Add to that the mountain of evidence showing that Pentagon, Inc. is a miserably managed enterprise: hide-bound, bloated, slow-moving, and prone to wasting resources on a prodigious scale — nowhere more so than in weapons procurement and the outsourcing of previously military functions to "contractors." When it comes to national security, effectiveness (what works) should rightly take precedence over efficiency (at what cost?) as the overriding measure of merit. Yet beyond a certain level, inefficiency undermines effectiveness, with the Pentagon stubbornly and habitually exceeding that level. By comparison, Detroit’s much-maligned Big Three offer models of well-run enterprises.

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Stephen Lendman

US imperial policy includes regime change, affecting foes as well as no longer useful friends. Past targets included former Philippines leader Ferdinand Marcos, Iran's Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, among others. According to some reports, Mubarak is next - aging, damaged and expendable.

George Friedman runs Stratfor, a private global intelligence service. On January 29, he issued a special Egypt report, saying:

"On January 29, Egypt's internal security forces (including Central Security Forces anti-riot paramilitaries) were glaringly absent" after confronting protesters forcefully for several days. Army personnel replaced them. Demonstrators welcomed them. [...] "There is more (going on) than meets the eye." While media reports focus on reform, democracy and human rights, "revolutions, including this one, are made up of many more actors than (Facebook and Twitter) liberal voices...." Some are, in fact, suspect, using social network sites for other than purported reasons. [...] Like Iran's 1979 revolution, "the ideology and composition of protesters can wind up having very little to do with the" behind the scenes political forces gaining power. Egypt's military may be preparing to seize it. Former air force chief/civil aviation minister Ahmed Shafiq is new prime minister, tasked with forming a new government, and intelligence head Omar Suleiman is Egypt's first ever vice president under Mubarak, effectively second in command. [...] Moreover, Defense Minister Field Marshall Mohammed Hussein Tantawi "returned to Cairo after a week of intense discussions with senior US officials." He heads the Republican Guard, responsible for defending major government and strategic institutions, the symbols of entrenched power. Also back is Lt. General Sami Annan. Both men with others "are likely managing the political process behind the scenes."

As a result, expect more political changes, military commanders apparently willing to give Mubarak time to leave gracefully, but not much as unrest won't subside until he's gone.

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Human Rights Watch
Patrick Mac Manus Blog

The Iranian government’s high rate of executions and targeting of rights defenders, particularly lawyers, in 2010 and early 2011 highlights a deepening of the human rights crisis that gripped the country following the disputed June 2009 presidential election, Human Rights Watch said in issuing its World Report 2011 Iran chapter. According to Iranian media reports, authorities have executed at least 73 prisoners – an average of almost three prisoners per day – since January 1, 2011.

The 649-page report, the organization’s 21st annual review of human rights practices around the globe, summarizes major human rights issues in more than 90 countries worldwide. In Iran, since November 2009 authorities have executed at least 13 people on the vague charge of moharebeh, or “enmity against God,” following flawed trials in revolutionary courts. The government also harassed, arrested, detained, and convicted several lawyers in 2010 for their work defending the rights of others. At the same time, scores of civil society activists have spoken out against the government crackdown despite facing harsh consequences.

“The noose has tightened, in some cases literally, around the necks of activists in Iran,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government’s crackdown has gone beyond silencing post-election demonstrators and is now a broad-based campaign to neutralize Iran’s vibrant civil society and consolidate power.”

The executions and mounting pressures against lawyers took place amid a broad crackdown following the election, and resulted in the killing of dozens of demonstrators by security forces and the detention of thousands of political opposition members and civil society activists. In early 2010 security forces announced that they had arrested more than 6,000 people in the months following the June 12, 2009 election. Those arrested included demonstrators, lawyers, rights defenders, journalists, students, and opposition leaders, some of whom remain in prison without charge. Iran’s revolutionary courts have issued harsh sentences, in some cases based on forced confessions, against dozens convicted of various national security-related crimes.

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Tom Eley
WSWS

"The cables demonstrate the courage of the Egyptian demonstrators in the face of the brutality of the Mubarak regime."

On Friday, WikiLeaks released dozens of diplomatic cables that together reveal the US has long been aware of the criminality of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and its savage abuses, including torture, random arrest, and extra-judicial killings. The documents also reveal that plans for the military-supervised transfer of power from Hosni Mubarak to his son, Gamal, were presented to Washington.

The document release, which coincided with mass demonstrations and clashes with police in Cairo, Suez, and other cities, will only serve to further discredit Mubarak, and is a major embarrassment to the Obama administration, whose leading representatives, including President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have continued to insist that the Mubarak regime is not a dictatorship, while hypocritically calling for “restraint.”

The documents, diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Cairo from 2009 and 2010, make clear that the Obama administration was well aware that the Mubarak regime held onto power by terrorizing the population. But Washington tacitly supported the dictatorship and its crimes because Egypt is considered the most important component to US strategy for a wide region encompassing the Middle East, the Maghreb, and the Horn of Africa.

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Stephen Lendman

Democratic Middle East birth pangs may have legs enough to spread regionally, including in Occupied Palestine.

Officially launched in Cairo in 1959, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) offers hope, driven by a commitment for Palestinian liberation. With more than 100 chapters and over 100,000 members, it's organized rallies, political debates, cultural programs, and other initiatives to spread truths about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Perhaps inspired by events across the region, on January 27, its press release headlined, "Palestinian students claim right to participate in shaping our destiny," saying:

"....(I)n order to reassert our inalienable rights, (we) claim our right to democratically participate in the shaping of our destiny. We begin a national initiative to campaign for direct elections to the Palestinian National Council (the PLO's legislative body) on the clear understanding that only a reformed national representative institution, that includes all Palestinians, those struggling in the homeland and those struggling in exile, can create a representative Palestinian platform, and restore the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."

If popular uprisings offer democratic hope in Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Yemen and Egypt, why not Palestine freed from occupation!

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Peter Symonds
WSWS

The US commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, this week characterised the US surge as a success, but other military figures and officials were far more pessimistic about the military situation and the popular opposition generated by the carnage and destruction of the US-led war.

In a letter to his subordinates on Tuesday, Petraeus offered an upbeat assessment of the US-led occupation. Foreign troops and Afghan government forces, he wrote, had “inflicted enormous losses” on mid-level insurgents over the past year and had taken away “some of their most important safe havens”.

Petraeus claimed that the Taliban was on the defensive. “Now, in fact, the insurgents are increasingly responding to our operations rather than vice versa, and there are numerous reports of unprecedented discord among the member of the Quetta Shura, the Taliban senior leadership body,” he wrote.

The letter was pitched at justifying the Obama administration’s build-up of troops in Afghanistan last year, which has taken a terrible human toll—both of Afghans and foreign troops alike. Despite its claims to be winning “hearts and minds,” the American military’s murderous offensives—particularly in the southern province of Kandahar—have only intensified the intense public hostility to the neo-colonial occupation.

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Stephen Lendman

Initially in Tunisia, popular revolt spread regionally across North Africa and the Middle East, erupting in Algeria, Jordan, Egypt and Yemen. On January 27, Al Jazeera reported revolutionary fervor in Egypt, saying:

"On Thursday, protesters hurled petrol bombs at a fire station in Suez, setting it ablaze. They tried but failed to (torch) a local Mubarak-controlled National Party office. Near Giza, on Cairo's outskirts, police attacked hundreds of protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets and batons. In Ismailia, the scene repeated, police using similar tactics to disperse crowds. Ahead of expected massive Friday protests, Cairo was uncharacteristically quiet."

On January 28, Al Jazeerah headlined, "Fresh protests erupt in Egypt," saying:

Following Friday prayers, "angry demonstrators demand(ed) an end to Hosni Mubarak's 30-year presidency....(d)etermined protesters," vowing to "carry on until their demands are met."

In Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura and Sharqiya, "protesters streamed out of mosques shortly after prayers," chanting anti-Mubarak slogans.

On Thursday night, former IAEA Director General and National Alliance for Change founder Mohamed ElBaradei returned home, saying he's ready to lead "transition" if asked. In a late 2010 Al Masry Al Youm interview, he expressed support for an opposition alliance saying:

"I hope in the next phase we will have a united opposition, the NAC, the Al-Wafd party, the (Muslim) Brotherhood, the Gabha (Democratic Front party) - we need everyone. And of course we need to link the young people with the labor unions and the elite with the young people."

On Friday, he reportedly was "prevented from moving freely by security forces." AP reported water cannons doused him, and supporters who tried shielding him were beaten.

So far, seven are reported dead. Well over 1,200 were arrested, yet protesters aren't deterred.

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Chris Marsden
WSWS

(...The EU Presidency will be your Nuremberg!)

Former British prime minister Tony Blair’s second appearance last week before the Chilcot inquiry into the lessons of the Iraq war again branded him as a war criminal.

Blair was asked to return to the inquiry due to discrepancies between his earlier testimony, the documentary record, and other testimony such as that of his attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, as to when the prime minister had committed Britain to war, and what advice he had received as to its legality.

Previously, Blair had insisted that Resolution 1441, passed unanimously by the United Nations Security Council in November 2002, authorised military action and that he had received advice to this effect from Goldsmith. In fact, when sponsoring the resolution, US and British officials had stressed that the resolution contained no “hidden triggers” or “automaticity” with regards to the use of force against Iraq, which must be discussed by the Security Council.

Resolution 1441 was made the supposed “legal” basis for the invasion only after it became clear that a second UN resolution could not be obtained. On March 7, 2003, Goldsmith sent a memo to Blair in which he concluded that “a reasonable case can be made that resolution 1441 is capable in principle of reviving the authorisation [of the use of force] in Resolution 678 without a further resolution”.

Goldsmith’s testimony before the inquiry, headed by Sir John Chilcot, focused upon the events leading him to reverse his original advice in a January 30, 2003, memo to Blair, which argued that Resolution 1441 did not sanction the use of force and a further resolution would be required. He stated that during the intervening period, Blair had made clear to President George W. Bush his support for an illegal war with the aim of regime change.

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John V. Walsh
Antiwar

An anti-Obama manifesto of sorts, in the form of a petition, was issued this week, signed by over 150 Left antiwar activists (1). As I read the first paragraph, eager to sign, my hopes were quickly dashed. It reads:

“We the undersigned share with nearly two-thirds of our fellow Americans the conviction that our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be ended and that overall military spending should be dramatically reduced. This has been our position for years and will continue to be, and we take it seriously.”

So far, so good, even admirable – although some of the signers backed Obama even as he promised more war in 2008. But perhaps disillusionment had finally taken hold. So what is to be done, according to the petitioners? That comes in the next sentence.

“We vow not to support President Barack Obama for renomination (emphasis, j.w.) for another term in office, and to actively seek to impede his war policies unless and until he reverses them.”

“Renomination”? Many of these very people were calling for George W. Bush’s impeachment for doing what Obama is doing now, although Obama is doing more of it, as the rest of the petition makes clear.

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Mark LeVine
Uprooted Palestinians

Professor Mark LeVine interviews journalist and blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy on the situation in Egypt. Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian journalist and blogger.

Mark LeVine: Why did it take a revolution in Tunisia to get Egyptians onto the streets in unprecedented numbers?

Hossam el-Hamalawy: In Egypt we say that Tunis was more or less a catalyst, not an instigator, because the objective conditions for an uprising existed in Egypt, and revolt has been in the air over the past few years. Indeed, we already managed to have 2 mini-intifadas or "mini Tunisias" in 2008. The first was the April 2008 uprising in Mahalla, followed by another one in Borollos, in the north of the country.

Revolutions don't happen out of the blue. It's not because of Tunisia yesterday that we have one in Egypt mechanically the next day. You can't isolate these protests from the last four years of labour strikes in Egypt, or from international events such as the al-Aqsa intifada and the US invasion of Iraq. The outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada was especially important because in the 1980s-90s, street activism had been effectively shut down by the government as part of the fight against Islamist insurgents. It only continued to exist inside university campuses or party headquarters. But when the 2000 intifada erupted and Al Jazeera started airing images of it, it inspired our youth to take to the streets, in the same way we've been inspired by Tunisia today.

Mark LeVine: How are the protests evolving?

Hossam el-Hamalawy: It's too early to say how they will go. It's a miracle how they continued past midnight yesterday in the face of fear and repression. But having said that, the situation has reached a level that everyone is fed up, seriously fed up. And even if security forces manage to put down protests today they will fail to put down the ones that happen next week, or next month or later this year. There is definitely a change in the level of courage of the people. The state was helped by the excuse of fighting terrorism in 1990s in order to fight all sorts of dissent in the country, which is a trick all governments use, including the US. But once formal opposition to a regime turns from guns to mass protests, it's very difficult to confront such dissent. You can plan to take out a group of terrorists fighting in the sugar cane fields, but what are you going to do with thousands of protesters on the streets? You can't kill them all. You can't even guarantee that troops will do it, will fire on the poor.

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Sherwood Ross
CounterCurrents

The corrosive, solitary confinement being inflicted upon PFC Bradley Manning in the Quantico, Va., brig is no exceptional torture devised exclusively for him. Across the length and breadth of the Great American Prison State, the world's largest, with its 2.4-million captives stuffed into 5,000 overcrowded lock-ups, some 25,000 other inmates are suffering a like fate of sadistic isolation in so-called supermax prisons, where they are being systematically reduced to veritable human vegetables.

To destroy Manning as a human being, the Pentagon for the past seven months has barred him from exercising in his cell, and to inhibit his sleep denies him a pillow and sheet and allows him only a scratchy blanket, according to Heather Brooke of “Common Dreams” (January 26th.) He is awakened each day at five a.m. and may not sleep until 8 p.m. The lights of his cell are always on and he is harassed every five minutes by guards who ask him if he is okay and to which he must respond verbally. Stalin's goons called this sort of endless torture the “conveyor belt.”

Not surprisingly, Manning is attracting global attention to the Pentagon's sadism. If anyone did not believe the Pentagon's ruthless treatment of Iraqi prisoners when the Abu Ghraib torture photos were released, they believe it now that it is torturing one of its own. In this assault upon the body and mind of a 23-year-old American soldier, all of the Pentagon's arrogance and clumsiness is revealed to the world. Perhaps not even the French military---when its frame-up on treason charges of Jewish Colonel Alfred Dreyfus was exposed---attracted to itself the global searchlights of opprobrium now bathing the walls of a Marine Corps brig at Quantico.

The kind of isolation torture Manning is enduring in recent years has spread itself quietly throughout U.S. correctional facilities like a deadly gangrene. According to one reliable report, by 2003 between five and eight percent of the prison populations of Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia were rotting in isolation. In some federal prisons the cells are referred to euphemistically as “Communications Management Units” and are, incidentally, “disproportionately inhabited by Muslim prisoners,” according to an American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) law suit challenging them. In another suit, the ACLU has accused the Texas Youth Commission of "throwing children (girls) into cold, bare solitary confinement cells...” and told the TYC bluntly its “reliance on solitary confinement has to stop."

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Stephen Lendman

"It's not (a) slam dunk for either side. Smart money [has] picked Emanuel who'll likely be Chicago's next mayor, the office he's long sought."

On February 22, Chicago's mayoral primary will be held. If no candidate gets over 50% of the vote, an April 5 runoff will be held, the winner's term running from May 16, 2011 - May 18, 2015. Democrats dominate city politics. The last Republican mayor ("Big Bill" Thompson) left office in 1931. The Great Depression ended their rule when Anton Cermak took over, built a strong constituency among African Americans, and consigned Republicans to small pockets on the city's far northwest side and suburban areas post-war.

Richard J. Daley and his son Richard M. (current incumbent leaving office after six terms) ran Chicago like Republicans for over 43 of the last 55 years. If elected, so will Emanuel as a previous article explained, accessed through this link.

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

Thirty miles from downtown Washington DC, the US military is engaged in the torture of an American citizen. Army Private Bradley Manning, jailed on suspicion of leaking classified documents to the whistleblower web site WikiLeaks, is being held at the Quantico Marine Corps base under conditions that approximate those at Guantanamo Bay.

Manning has been in solitary confinement for more than seven months. He is confined to his cell 23 hours a day, allowed out for one hour of solitary exercise—he is not allowed to exercise in his cell, and guards intervene if he attempts to do so. His pillow and bedding are removed during the day to prevent him from sleeping, and under the “prevention of injury” [POI] regime imposed on him throughout his imprisonment, jailers look in on him every five minutes and require him to make an affirmative response that he is “OK.”

The 23-year-old soldier is allowed only one book or magazine at a time, and may use his prescription glasses only when he is actually reading. The rest of the time he goes without them, and is “effectively blind,” he told visitors.

In some ways, the conditions in which Manning is held are worse than those in Guantanamo, or in a maximum security US prison, because solitary confinement is used largely as a disciplinary measure, or to protect those who may be at risk from other prisoners. There is no legal precedent for the indefinite solitary confinement of a prisoner who is awaiting trial, has not been convicted of any offense, and has no history of violence.

On Monday, Amnesty International issued a statement criticizing the “inhumane treatment” of Manning. Reports of the abusive conditions in which he is held have now begun to appear in the US corporate media. ABC correspondent Jake Tapper asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs Monday whether the conditions of Manning’s imprisonment were “appropriate.” Gibbs would only refer him to the authorities at Quantico.

NBC News reported the same day that US military officials were denying charges that Manning was being tortured or held in solitary confinement without due process—the first time that NBC or any other US television network has made reference to the controversy over Manning’s treatment in prison.

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Nahida Izzat
Exiled Palestinian

The Deadly Ideology: Who is up for the challenge?

The Talmudists, supremacist, murderers chabad Lubavitch: "casually" become famous, charitable, lovely and friendly. Watch the promoting of and raising funds for the chabad in the Main Stream Media!

So... how do you pronounce 'Chabad'?

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Philip Giraldi
Antiwar

It is not often that one sees an entire nation marching in lockstep to go over a cliff into an abyss, but that is essentially what the United States is doing at the moment. Not only have there been strong hints from the Obama Administration that the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan will go on into the dim future, but there is also no sign of any necessary course correction in other areas. Israel, backed by Washington, continues its reckless policies and may be cranking up for a new war against Lebanon and Syria with the ultimate objective of involving its American patron in fighting against Iran. Clearly President Obama is unwilling to take any risks by challenging existing policies. He is edging towards what he perceives as the political center and is preparing to ride the status quo to electoral victory in 2012.

Consider the central dynamic of what the United States is engaged in. Washington is committed to a series of asymmetrical wars that are literally taking place all over the world. This is what the Obamaites now refer to as "overseas contingency operations." One might well ask contingent on what, but the words themselves quite likely are not considered to be really meaningful and are rather designed to constitute a reassuring euphemism. One of these wars, in Afghanistan, is costing the US taxpayer $10 billion a month and is tying up more than 100,000 American soldiers. Casualties are rising, most of Afghanistan has become insecure in spite of the effort, corruption and drug cultivation are rampant, and there is no end in sight. To put the cost of the war in some kind of perspective, Afghanistan’s gross domestic product for 2009 was $22 billion, meaning that it is costing nearly six times more to "defend" each year than its total economic activity. Asymmetrical indeed. Colonial empires of the past would have at least figured out how to turn a buck from their imperial endeavors, highlighting the cluelessness of Washington. If there has ever been an example of a war that makes no sense, Afghanistan is it.

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Stephen Lendman

Like last year, Obama's address was empty rhetoric, signaling business as usual with a twist - more than ever embracing reactionary extremism, promising harder than ever hard times on Main Street.

Last year, an earlier article discussed his first State of the Union address, accessed through this link.

Poverty in rural Texas

Results again this time were predicable. Democrats loved it. Time magazine called the Republican response "frosty," saying "Stand-up comics call it a tough crowd."

Released prior to the address, Rep. Paul Ryan's response stressed "work(ing) with the President to restrain federal spending," saying "(o)ur debt is out of control. What was a fiscal challenge is now a fiscal crisis."

His message was clear - reward the rich, soak working Americans, and fund America's war machine generously, an agenda enjoying bipartisan support, very much so by Obama clearly signaled in rhetoric and policy.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's response following Obama was also predictable, saying:

"What government should not do is pile on more taxation, regulation, and litigation that kills jobs and hurts the middle class....Today the federal government is simply trying to do too much....The circumstances of our time demand that we....restore and proper, limited role of government at every level."

Like Ryan and Obama, he's pro-business, pro-elitist, pro-war and anti-populist, but so are most Democrats - together responsible for harder than ever hard times for working Americans they plan to worsen, not ease.

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Stephen Lendman

[Anti-riot police hold back workers chanting anti-government slogans during a sit-in in Cairo demanding that the government re-evaluate the national minimum wage system. Image Credit: AP]

An August 2009 Council on Foreign Relations Steven Cook report headlined, "Political Instability in Egypt," [PDF] saying:

Facing possible instability, (m)ost analysts believe that the current Egyptian regime will muddle through its myriad challenges and endure indefinitely (with) enough coercive power to ensure" it.

It's also "entering a period of political transition. President Hosni Mubarak is (81) and reportedly" ill. His (46 year old) son Gamal "is evidently being groomed to succeed him." However, the "process could prove difficult."

"Thus, while Egypt on the surface appears stable, the potential for growing political volatility and abrupt discontinuities (ahead) should not be summarily dismissed."

Cook suggested two possible scenarios:

● contested succession resulting in military intervention; or
● "an Islamist push for political power."

One indicator to watch for, he suggested, would be "the number of protestors in the streets....in response to a leadership transition," not public anger against high unemployment, extreme poverty, and Mubarack's dictatorship, inspired by mass protests ousting long-time Tunisian despot Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, what some observers thought impossible until it happened and began spreading across the region. More on that below.

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Barry Grey
WSWS

The photographer who took this picture was shot in
the leg with a rubber bullet in Mahalla on Sunday.

The United States is working intensively to suppress mass protests in both Tunisia and Egypt and prop up the local ruling elites that are entirely subordinate to American imperialism. It is using different tactics in the two countries, dictated in large part by their relative strategic importance to US ruling class interests in the Middle East.

In Tunisia, Washington backed its long-time asset Zine El Abidine Ben Ali until it concluded that his position could not be salvaged despite weeks of violent repression against anti-government demonstrators. Just days before Ben Ali was driven from the country, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States was “not taking sides” between the dictator and protesting workers and youth.

It has been widely reported that the US instructed the Tunisian military to refuse Ben Ali's orders to fire live rounds into mass demonstrations in Tunis and other cities, effectively pulling the rug out from under Ben Ali and making the military leader, Gen. Rachid Ammar, the political arbiter within the country.

The US undoubtedly engineered the formation of a so-called interim unity government following Ben Ali’s January 14 flight to Saudi Arabia. This government, dominated entirely by political henchmen of the ousted dictator, has since been the target of popular demonstrations demanding a government free of former members of the ruling party.

The Obama administration has sent its assistant secretary of state for the Near East, Jeffrey D. Feltman, to Tunis to “confer with the interim government.” With the promise of elections in six months, Washington is backing in all essentials the old regime minus Ben Ali, and calling this cynical fraud “democracy.”

It is portraying General Ammar as the “protector” of the “democratic revolution,” even as the interim government sanctions increased police repression against the protests, which are increasingly dominated by impoverished workers and youth from Tunis and the blighted central and southern parts of the country where the revolt began in December.

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Denis G. Rancourt
Activist Teacher Blog

“This is the kind of obviousness that a child can see—though the child may, later in life, become browbeaten into believing that the obvious problems are "non-problems", to be argued into nonexistence by careful reasoning and clever choices of definition.” ~ Roger Penrose

“... so obvious that it takes really impressive discipline to miss it ...” ~ Noam Chomsky

Here we have Israel as an internationally recognized thug, keeper of the largest open-air prison on earth, regularly practicing war crimes against civilians, targeting civilian infrastructure and continuously disregarding the Geneva Conventions – virtually unanimously denounced by the international community, by every human rights watch group on the globe, and by international civil society for the last many decades [1] – and how do Canadian politicians and parliamentarians respond?

Israel, the modern sate that shamelessly uses the Nazi holocaust to justify overtly racist domestic and foreign national policies, stock piles nuclear weapons, incites wars on its neighbours, overtly funds propaganda in foreign countries, routinely practices international pirating, kidnappings and murders, openly performs political assassinations [1]... and how do Canadian politicians and parliamentarians respond?

Israel has no significant economic exchanges with Canada and performs no significant geopolitical service of benefit to Canada; a Canada with virtually no economic ties with the Middle East and a Canada that is a net exporter of oil and gas.

Yet, apart from the independent-thinking Bloc Quebecois, it seems that half the time that English Canadian politicians open their mouths it’s to denounce a “new anti-Semitism” that social scientists and statisticians tell us is a media fabrication or to express Israel’s “right to defend itself” or to declare Canada’s “unwavering support for Israel.” Not to mention Israel’s “right to exist”! [2]

What about unwavering support for human rights and international law?

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Maureen Murphy
Antiwar

Maureen Murphy speaks at Dec., 23,
2010 press conference (Fight Back!)

I have been summoned to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago on Jan. 25. But I will not testify, even at the risk of being put in jail for contempt of court, because I believe that our most fundamental rights as citizens are at stake.

I am one of 23 antiwar, labor, and solidarity activists in Chicago and throughout the Midwest who are facing a grand jury as part of an investigation into “material support for foreign terrorist organizations.” No crime has been identified. No arrests have been made. And when it raided several prominent organizers’ homes and offices on Sept. 24, the FBI acknowledged that there is no immediate threat to the American public. So what is this investigation really about?

The activists who have been ensnared in this fishing net work with different groups to end the U.S. wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, to end U.S. military aid for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, and to end U.S. military aid to Colombia, which has a shocking record of repression and human rights abuses. All of us have publicly and peacefully dedicated our lives to social justice and advocating for more just and less deadly U.S. foreign policy.

I spent a year and a half working for a human rights organization in the occupied West Bank, where I witnessed how Israel established “facts on the ground” at the expense of international law and Palestinian rights. I saw the wall, settlements, and checkpoints and the ugly reality of life under Israeli occupation, which is bankrolled by the U.S. government on the taxpayer’s dime. Many of us who are facing the grand jury have traveled to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Colombia to learn about the human rights situation and the impact of U.S. foreign policy in those places so we may educate fellow Americans upon our return and work to build movements to end our government’s harmful intervention abroad.

Travel for such purposes should be protected by the First Amendment. But new legislation now allows the U.S. government to consider such travel as probable cause for invasive investigations that disrupt our movements and our lives.

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

The Palestine papers released this week by Al Jazeera provide documentary confirmation of what is becoming plain to millions of Palestinians: the nationalist project of building an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories has become transformed into a new means of their oppression.

These documents provide a graphic account of the “peace process”—a two-decade-long fraud perpetrated by Washington upon not only the Palestinians, but the entire world.

The US-brokered talks were initiated in 1988, when Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat agreed to recognize Israel, guarantee its security, and renounce the armed struggle with which the PLO had been long identified. The “process” was further institutionalized with the Oslo Accords of 1993, which set out the “two-state solution” to the Palestinian-Israeli question and laid the foundations for the Palestine Authority (PA). That year saw the infamous hand-shake with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, when Arafat protested that he was being ordered to perform a “striptease” on the White House lawn.

From the outset, US imperialism pursued these negotiations not out of some commitment to ameliorating the conditions confronting millions of Palestinians crushed under Israeli occupation or relegated to poverty and statelessness in the refugee camps of Lebanon and Jordan. Rather, the aim of successive administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, has been to facilitate US intervention in the Middle East and groom a section of the Palestinian leadership as an instrument for suppressing the struggles of the Palestinian masses.

As the newly released documents verify, Washington pursued its “peace process” strategy with utter ruthlessness and violence, backing every crime carried out by its Israeli ally and treating Palestinian negotiators with unconcealed contempt.

For their part, the Palestinian negotiators loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas were prepared to capitulate completely on all the issues that the Palestinian movement had once described as “red lines.” This included ceding virtually all of East Jerusalem to Zionist settlements, renouncing the right of return for all but a token 10,000 of the five million Palestinian refugees, and agreeing to support the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Israeli Arabs slated for removal in order to guarantee a “Jewish state.”

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Stephen Lendman

It's official, or nearly so, Haaretz, on January 25 headlining, "Hezbollah's PM pick wins majority backing as Hariri supporters hold 'day of wrath,' " saying:

Hezbollah-backed Najib Mikati, a Sunni billionaire, became new prime minister after getting 68 votes, a majority in Lebanon's 128-member parliament. Caretaker PM Saad Hariri got 60. As a result, Hezbollah "is now in position to control Lebanon's next government. The move has set off angry protests and drew warnings from the US that its support could be in jeopardy."

"Sunni blood is boiling," chanted protestors. Burning Mikati pictures, they said they won't serve in a coalition government, adding that anyone allying with Hezbollah is a traitor. After being appointed, he said:

"I extend my hand to everyone....This is a democratic process. I want to rescue my country....My actions (as PM) will speak for themselves."

"I affirmed to the president that cooperation will be complete between us to form a new government which the Lebanese want, a government to maintain the unity of their country and their sovereignty, achieve the solidarity of its people, protect the coexistence formula and respect the constitutional rules."

However, nothing in Lebanon is ever simple, especially with Washington and Israel often intervening politically, economically and/or violently.

Commenting briefly, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said Washington has "great concerns about a government within which Hezbollah plays a leading role," adding that relations and Washington-supplied aid will be affected.

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Stephen Lendman

Make no mistake. He didn't quit. He was pushed, the final straw perhaps being the January 18 FCC-approved Comcast-NBC Merger. Its chairman/CEO Brian Roberts co-chaired the 2000 Republican Convention host committee, and COO Stephen Burke/now NBC Universal CEO tilts heavily to Republicans. According to Public Citizen and Think Progress, he raised at least $200,000 for Bush's 2004 campaign, served on his Council on Science and Technology, and may wish to make MSNBC another Fox, despite pledging no "interference with NBC Universal's news operations."

Think Progress asked:

"Why would Comcast be interested in silencing progressive voices?" Because it opposes issues they support, including Net Neutrality, stiffer media regulation, and restraints on being able to buy telecommunications and media companies freely.

Despite having MSNBC's highest ratings, Olbermann's gone like (once top-rated) Phil Donahue ahead of Operation Iraqi Freedom. At the time, a leaked network February 25, 2003 memo to All Your TV.com, said he presented a

"difficult public face for NBC in a time of war....He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." It outlined a nightmare scenario of his show becoming "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity," promoting war, not diplomacy and peace.

For those on the far right, Olbermann, like Donahue, became too hot to handle, personality issues mattering less than staunchly right wing politics. Expect MSNBC to feature more of it, shifting more to the right like Fox and CNN, racing to the bottom to see who's more pro-business, pro-war, and anti-left of center ideologically. MSNBC's remaining prime time hosts take note.

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David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

Civility in politics is – pardon the anti-pun – all the rage nowadays.

Go figure. I guess assassinating members of the ruling class tends to have that kind of sobering effect.

So everyone’s talking nicey-nice, certain members of Congress will be sitting together during this week’s State of the Union despite their differing party affiliations, and most (but not quite) everybody has avoided calling each other Nazis for a week or two.

That’s cool. You know, I’m all for civility in politics. I’ve been disgusted and sometimes horrified at what has become of our national discourse these last decades. Shit like a multi-draft-deferral war-avoider, for example, running for the US Senate by branding a triple-amputee Vietnam vet as weak on national security, an’ all. Like that kind of incivility.

So yeah, can we and should we disagree more politely in American politics? How does whatshername put it? ‘You betcha.’

What I’m not down for, however, is civility that is actually a mask for capitulation.

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

Military documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union after a lengthy lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act provide important new evidence of American war crimes. The documents include autopsy reports and investigative reports on the deaths of 190 prisoners held by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The more than 2,600 pages of documents were turned over to the ACLU on January 14 and made public on the organization’s web site five days later.

An ACLU statement said that 25 to 30 cases were “unjustified homicides.” US military investigators themselves identified many of the deaths as homicides, although there were very few trials or convictions of the soldiers involved.

The ACLU issued a statement declaring: “So far, the documents released by the government raise more questions than they answer, but they do confirm one troubling fact: that no senior officials have been held to account for the widespread abuse of detainees. Without real accountability for these abuses, we risk inviting more abuse in the future.”

Some of the deaths are well known cases of atrocities committed by American soldiers, such as the killing of four prisoners who were shot and then thrown into a Baghdad canal in 2007. Others are previously unknown or not widely reported. The autopsy reports make for gruesome reading.

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Ellen Brown

Bills were introduced on January 18 in both the House and Senate of the Washington State Legislature that add Washington to the growing number of states now actively moving to create public banking facilities.

The bills, House Bill 1320 and Senate Bill 5238, propose creation of a Washington Investment Trust (WIT) to “promote agriculture, education, community development, economic development, housing, and industry” by using “the resources of the people of Washington State within the state.”

Currently, all the state’s funds are deposited with Bank of America. HB 1320 proposes that, in the future, “all state funds be deposited in the Washington Investment Trust and be guaranteed by the state and used to promote the common good and public benefit of all the people and their businesses within [the] state.”

The legislation is similar to that now being studied or proposed in states including Illinois, Virginia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Michigan, Oregon, California and others.

The effort in Washington state draws heavily on the success of the 92-year-old Bank of North Dakota (BND), currently the only state-wide publicly owned U.S. bank. The BND has helped North Dakota escape the looming budgetary disaster facing other states. In 2009, North Dakota sported the largest budget surplus it had ever had.

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Stephen Lendman

The Palestine Papers reveal the offer of concessions by
Palestinian peace negotiators on areas such as the Haram
al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem. Photo:
Awad Awad/AFP/Getty Images

"Achieving those objectives won't come easily or soon, but what's more important than seizing a rare opportunity for change. Tunisian winds are spreading regionally. Thousands are demonstrating in Tunis, other Tunisian cities, Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, and may erupt anywhere from Morocco to Egypt to Occupied Palestine.

Sustained grassroots anger brings change, and what better reasons than poverty, unemployment, repression, occupation, and suffocating conditions under siege. Maybe exposed PA treachery [has] created a rare chance seldom possible. Now's the time to seize it."

On January 23, Al Jazeera released breaking news on its extensive "Palestine Papers" coverage, introducing them, saying it

"obtained more than 1,600 internal documents from a decade of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations," writer Gregg Carlstrom explaining that:

"Over the last several months, Al Jazeera has been given unhindered access to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." They include "nearly 1,700 files, (and) thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of" peace process negotiations. Included (from 1999 - 2010) were "emails, maps, minutes of private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even power point presentations...."

Releasing them from January 23 - 26, they reveal information about:

● the PA's willingness to concede all East Jerusalem settlements except one;
● PA "creativ(ity)" about Islam's third holiest site, Haram al-Sharif (Nobel Sanctuary), what Jews call the Temple Mount;
● compromise on the right of return, suggesting abandonment beyond token amounts;
● numerous details of PA-Israeli "cooperation," suggesting complicity and unconditional surrender to Israeli demands; and
● private late 2009 PA-US negotiator exchanges when Goldstone Report discussions were ongoing at the UN.

Because of obvious sensitivity, Al Jazeera will keep source information confidential as well as how documents were obtained.

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Kourosh Ziabari

As the Western governments add fuel to the fire of Islamophobic sentiments in their societies with inflammatory and rabble-rousing actions and statements, the Western media mischievously try their best to portray a lopsided, biased and prejudiced image of Muslims in an attempt which should be interpreted as an incontestable crusade against more than 25% of the world population.

Although it is arguable that the 9/11 attacks played in the hands of the United States and its European cronies to spread an all-encompassing wave of Islamophobic sentiments in the world and introduce the Muslims as the number one threat to the global peace and security, one should bear in mind that Muslims have been conventionally considered as the villains of the fables of the Western governments for a long time already and despite their unquestionable and treasured services to the world, they never did receive a fair, justifiable and humane treatment by the superpowers, be it from the deceitful, fraudulent and warmongering Russia that massacred some 50,000 innocent Muslims in Chechnya, or from the arrogant, bullying United States that incarcerated scores of innocent Muslims in its illegal, underground detention centers in Guantanamo bay and Abu Ghraib following the 9/11 attacks.

The corporate mainstream media is the most effective spearhead of the Western governments in their crusade against the Muslims and the Islamic world. When it was needed to conceal the most conspicuous realities which would attest to the righteousness of the Muslims, the mainstream media did their best: Marwa El-Sherbini was flagrantly murdered in a courtroom in Germany, and the Western media outlets unanimously kept silent, turning a blind eye against one of the most heartrending instances of the violation of human rights before the eyes of a judge and his colleagues. When it was needed to sabotage a truer perception of the facts, Western media went into high gear: the Freedom Flotilla was brutally attacked by the commandos of Israel Defense Forces and 9 of its passengers were massacred viciously -but the media justified the massacre as an act of self defense. Nobody asked the Western media how it could justify the killing of defenseless civilians as an act of self defense when the civilians lacked even a single knife with which to defend themselves against the rifles of the Israeli commandos. When it was needed to suppress the stark realities Gaza, the mainstream media scored its best ever: 1,500 innocent people in Gaza were massacred in a few days (less than 3 weeks), and the Western media acted so indifferently, that one might have felt as if nothing had really taken place at all!

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Stephen Lendman

The 2006 Military Commissions Act authorized torture and sweeping unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate, and prosecute alleged suspects and collaborators (including US citizens), hold them (without evidence) indefinitely in military prisons, and deny them habeas and other constitutional protections.

Section 1031 of the FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act contained the 2009 Military Commissions Act (MCA), listing changes that include discarding the phrase "unlawful enemy combatant" for "unprivileged enemy belligerent." Language changed but not intent or lawlessness. Obama embraces the same Bush agenda, including keeping Guantanamo open after promising to close it, and allowing torture there and abroad.

MCA grants sweeping police state powers, including that "no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause for action whatsoever....relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission (including) challenges to the lawfulness of (its) procedures...."

MCA scraped habeas protection (dating back to the Magna Carta in 1215) for domestic and foreign state enemies, citizens and non-citizens alike, and says "Any person is punishable... who....aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures," and in so doing helps a foreign enemy, provide "material support" to alleged terrorist groups, engages in spying, or commits other offenses previously handled in civil courts. No evidence is needed. Those charged are guilty by accusation.

Other key provisions include:

● legalizing torture against anyone, letting the president decide what procedures can be used on his own authority;
● denying detainees international law protection, letting the executive interpret or ignore it;
● letting the president convene "military commissions" at his discretion to try anyone he designates an "unprivileged enemy belligerent," detaining them indefinitely in secret;
● denying speedy trials or any at all;
● letting torture coerced confessions be used as evidence in trial proceedings, despite US and international law prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment at all times, under all conditions, with no allowed exceptions; also, the US Supreme Court's February 1936 Brown v. Mississippi ruling stated:

"The rack and torture chamber may not substitute for the witness stand," and an earlier November 1926 Fisher v. State decision called coerced confessions "the chief iniquity, the crowning infamy (and) the curse of all countries" using them.

● letting hearsay and secret evidence be used; and
● denying due process, destroying human dignity, mocking the rule of law, and establishing the principle of kangaroo court justice for anyone the executive targets with or without evidence.

In other words, the rule of law is null and void. Whatever the president says goes. No one any longer is safe. America is a police state, making everyone potentially vulnerable.

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Chris McGreal
Uruknet

In this handout photo provided by the Palestinian
Press Office (PPO) Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed
Qorei shakes hands with US Secretary of State Condo-
leezza Rice at the Palestinian Authority headquarters
on July 23, 2005 in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

As Palestinian negotiators named in the secret accounts of negotiations with Israel angrily dismissed them as lies, fabrications and half truths, there was an equally hostile backlash over their offer to let the Jewish state keep its settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and other concessions.

The two leading Palestinian negotiators named in the documents, Saeb Erekat and Ahmed Qureia, reacted furiously to the leaks. Erekat called them a "bunch of lies". Qureia claimed that "many parts of the documents were fabricated, as part of the incitement against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian leadership".

But a former colleague of the two men on the negotiations team, Diana Buttu, called their secret proposal in 2008 to let Israel keep all but one of the Jewish settlements within Jerusalem shocking and "out of touch" with the wishes of the Palestinian people.

She called on Erekat to resign and said that the concessions effectively mean that Israel's strategy of continuing to expand Jewish settlements is delivering it a greater share of Jerusalem.

"It is highly, highly problematic because it rewards Israel for its settlement activity," she said.

"It highlights to me that we'll never be able to get anything from negotiations. You've got one party that's incredibly powerful and another party that's incredibly weak and my own experience is that we got nowhere during negotiations.

"I've no reason to believe it's any different now, 18 years after the peace process started. The Israelis are stronger than they were 18 years ago and the Palestinians are weaker. It is clear that there is a rising level of desperation [by Palestinian negotiators] and complete lack of any connection to the reality Palestinians face."

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Stephen Lendman

An Israeli naval vessel patrols beside one of six ships bound
for Gaza. Photograph: Reuters

Last May 31, Israeli commandos attacked and murdered nine or more activists, injuring dozens in international waters on board the Mavi Marmara mother ship, one of five bringing humanitarian aid to besieged Gazans. An earlier article explained, accessed through this link.

The UK-based Stop the War Coalition called the attack "Yet another act of Israeli barbarism." Global protests erupted. Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy cited Israel's "propaganda machine....reach(ing) new highs (in distributing) false information....embarrass(ing) itself by entering a futile public relations battle," filled with malicious fiction and deceit.

What happened was clear. IDF commandos planned and executed a premeditated attack against unarmed, nonviolent humanitarian activists, trying to break Israel's illegal blockade to deliver essential aid. Cold-blooded murder resulted. The entire world knows it except Israeli government and military officials, as well as its self-appointed Turkel Commission, established to whitewash, not reveal, facts.

Two earlier articles discussed it, accessed through the following links, here and here.

Commission members included:

● two voting members: former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel (its head) and Amos Horev, a retired major general; and
● two non-voting observers: (1) close Israeli ally David Trimble, a Northern Ireland unionist allied with death squads during "The Troubles;" and (2) retired Canadian general Ken Warkin, involved in the coverup of the Canadian Airborne Regiment Battle Group's early 1990s Somalia atrocities.

Like similar Israeli and Washington commissions, it was established for coverup and denial. As a result, it unanimously endorsed bald-faced lies, distortions, omissions, false conclusions, and exoneration of cold-blooded murder, as ordered by top Israeli government and military officials who'll get off as usual scot-free. The outcome was preordained as was Israel's Cast Lead whitewash.

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Stephen Lendman

Wall Street predicts blue skies. Economic recovery will continue. Stocks will deliver double-digit gains. On January 14, the Wall Street Journal's Economic Forecast Survey headlined, "Economists Optimistic on Growth," expecting in 2011:

● 3.3% GDP growth;
● unemployment declining to 8.8%;
● inflation contained at 1.9%;
● crude oil at around $90 a barrel;
● improved housing starts in a depressed market;
● on average, 180,000 monthly jobs created;
● no Fed interest rate hike until 2012 at the earliest;
● continued QE II buying of $600 - $900 billion in government bonds; and
● an overall upbeat sentiment for economic recovery and growth.

Others disagree, including long-time insider/market analyst Bob Chapman, calling current economic policy destabilizing enough to have profound future social costs. Sometime in 2011, he says conditions are "going to be nasty. The handwriting is on the wall," but no one's listening.

On January 20, the Financial Times headlined, "US States Face a Fiscal Crunch," saying:

"Undue budget tightening will jeopardize recovery whether applied at the federal level or lower down....The squeeze is not upon them; the federal stimulus is fading away, and the gimmicks are all used up. For state finances, the year of reckoning has arrived, and the timing could hardly be worse."

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Henry Porter
The Observer

A couple of weeks ago, the Canadian television presenter Richard Gizbert asked a panel at the Frontline Club in London what effect WikiLeaks' disclosure of American cables might have had during the run-up to the Iraq war. Would the kind of revelations we saw last year have made it impossible for Tony Blair and George Bush to invade Iraq on the basis of claims about weapons of mass destruction?

Obviously, publication would have made deceit and obfuscation vastly more difficult, because the more the public is made aware of what governments know and don't know, the more difficult it is for politicians to follow messianic crusades of their own. That is one of the crucial arguments in favour of publishing such material. Contrast the clear shafts of light that spread from publication of the cables with the interminable ramblings of John Chilcot's committee of pensionable British worthies and you find yourself regretting that the manoeuvrings of Blair and Bush were not exposed to similar scrutiny in 2002 and 2003. Is it any wonder that the internet generation largely supports the dumping of raw information by whistleblowers on the web when they see figures from the 20th-century British establishment like Chilcot forlornly apply to make public two letters from Blair to Bush, only to be refused on the grounds that prime ministers and presidents have a right to keep their correspondence private?

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Stephen Lendman

"Expect parliamentary consultations delayed so Washington and France can apply intense pressure, intimidation and coercion to force enough Jumblatt bloc member backing for Hariri, letting his March 14 coalition retain its majority."

Two recent articles discussed Lebanon's present turmoil in detail, accessed through the following links, here and here.

Conditions there remain fluid. Key was a Washington/French pressured UN-backed Special Tribunal's sealed January 17 indictment of those allegedly responsible for former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's February 14, 2005 killing, preceded by Hezbollah's January 12 pulling out of Lebanon's coalition government causing it to collapse. The above linked articles explain both events in detail, including who, in fact, likely killed Hariri, and implications going forward.

Two blocks comprised Lebanon's misnamed "national unity" government:

● the opposition March 8 alliance, including (Shia) Hezbollah, (Shia) Amals, and (secular, mainly Maronite Christian) Free Patriotic Movement and with 57 seats; and
● the majority March 14 Sunni/Phalangist Christian coalition (including independents, lead by now caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri) with 60.

Walid Jumblatt's secular, officially non-sectarian Druze Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) 11 seat bloc holds decisive balance of power in Lebanon's 128 seat parliament. On January 21, he chose sides, Al Jazeera headlining, "Lebanon's Jumblatt backs Hezbollah," saying:

His decision "could give (Hezbollah) and its allies a veto over who becomes the country's next prime minister," Jumblatt saying he wished only to preserve Lebanon's stability, adding:

"I am announcing the right political stand....by assuring the steadfastness of the (PSP) alongside Syria and the resistance (Hezbollah)."

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article addressed Lebanon's turmoil, accessed through this link.

It discussed Israel's history of terrorizing Lebanon through decades of belligerent interventions as early as 1954, as well as thousands of terrorist acts against a nonviolent state whose misfortune is being Israel's neighbor. It also discussed false accusations against Hezbollah, a legitimate part of Lebanon's government, not a terrorist organization as Israel and America claim.

Targeted Killings, An Israeli Speciality

Not covered was Israel's history of targeted assassinations, way predating its founding during the Mandatory Palestine period when Jewish terror groups targeted Jews, Brits and Arabs. Involved were paramilitary Hagana members, Irgun headed by future prime minister Menachem Begin, and Lehi (also called the Stern Gang) led by another future prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, rogue killers before entering politics.

In November 1944, Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne, Britain's Middle East minister of state, near his home in Cairo. In September 1948, it also killed UN mediator Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem, five months after Israel was established. Yitzhak Shamir personally approved of shooting him to death.

In July 1946, Irgun bombed the King David Hotel, massacring 92 Brits, Arabs and Jews, wounding 58 others, an operation future prime minister David Ben-Gurion approved as head of the Jewish Agency at the time.

Before and after May 1948, many thousands of targeted killings occurred or were attempted, most little remembered today except to relatives and their descendants. Little wonder Israel's history is so bloodstained, involving individual and mass killings.

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F. William Engdahl
Global Research

● President becomes UN Special Envoy to earthquake-stricken Haiti.
● A born-again neo-conservative US business wheeler-dealer preacher claims Haitians are condemned for making a literal ‘pact with the Devil.’
● Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Bolivian, French and Swiss rescue organizations accuse the US military of refusing landing rights to planes bearing necessary medicines and urgently needed potable water to the millions of Haitians stricken, injured and homeless.

Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world’s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East, possibly orders of magnitude greater than that of nearby Venezuela.

Haiti, and the larger island of Hispaniola of which it is a part, has the geological fate that it straddles one of the world’s most active geological zones, where the deepwater plates of three huge structures relentlessly rub against one another—the intersection of the North American, South American and Caribbean tectonic plates. Below the ocean and the waters of the Caribbean, these plates consist of an oceanic crust some 3 to 6 miles thick, floating atop an adjacent mantle. Haiti also lies at the edge of the region known as the Bermuda Triangle, a vast area in the Caribbean subject to bizarre and unexplained disturbances.

This vast mass of underwater plates are in constant motion, rubbing against each other along lines analogous to cracks in a broken porcelain vase that has been reglued. The earth’s tectonic plates typically move at a rate 50 to 100 mm annually in relation to one another, and are the origin of earthquakes and of volcanoes. The regions of convergence of such plates are also areas where vast volumes of oil and gas can be pushed upwards from the Earth’s mantle. The geophysics surrounding the convergence of the three plates that run more or less directly beneath Port-au-Prince make the region prone to earthquakes such as the one that struck Haiti with devastating ferocity on January 12.

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Jonathan Cook
The National

NAZARETH // It is called Spot & Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick. The aim: to kill. Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army. Spot & Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people - Palestinians in Gaza - who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.

The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza. The system is one of the latest "remote killing" devices developed by Israel's Rafael armaments company, the former weapons research division of the Israeli army and now a separate governmental firm.

According to Giora Katz, Rafael's vice president, remote-controlled military hardware such as Spot & Shoot is the face of the future. He expects that within a decade at least a third of the machines used by the Israeli army to control land, air and sea will be unmanned. The demand for such devices, the Israeli army admits, has been partly fuelled by a combination of declining recruitment levels and a population less ready to risk death in combat.

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Stephen Lendman

Three previous articles relate to this one, accessed through the following links, here, here and here.

On January 20, Al Jazeera headlined, "Baby Doc wants Haiti presidency," saying:

Despite his 15-year reign of terror and current corruption, embezzlement, money laundering, and perhaps assassination charges, he "retains ambitions of returning to the presidency," according to one of his lawyers, Reynold George saying:

"He is a political man. Every political man has political ambitions." Asked if he wishes to return to power, George replied, "That is right. Because under this new constitution, and let me tell you I am one of the persons who wrote that constitution, he has the right to do so (under) two mandates. Two!"

When asked about charges against Duvalier, George cited the statute of limitations expiring in 2006, saying:

"I am a lawyer, not a racketeer. I have to go by the law. And I have just told you what the law says about accusations. You have to make them in due time. After ten years? Shut up!"

He added that Duvalier

"has no intention of leaving Haiti. We want to answer all the requisitions of justice because we want to be cleared."

On January 20, Gervais Charles, another Duvalier lawyer, told Radio Canada that charges of crimes against humanity were invalid because "it is a principle that does not exist" in Haitian law. He also stressed that in 25 years of exile, no complaints were lodged against him.

Asked about Duvalier's arrest, Master Ronald Charles, Dean of the Bar of Jacmel, said doing so is illegal and arbitrary. Legal procedures weren't followed. "(G)overnment commissioner of Port-au-Prince, Master Augustus Aristides, after all the tests, had to issue a warrant before his arrest," adding that Haiti's 1987 Constitution doesn't recognize Duvalier's exile.

If so, it's also true for Aristide, but Charles stopped short of explaining. However, he said it's possible for Haitian authorities to issue proper complaints.

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Stephen Lendman

On February 29, 2004, US marines abducted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide at gunpoint, airlifting him forcibly to the Central Africa Republic. It was one of Haiti's darkest moments, losing its beloved leader, reelected President in 2000 with 92% of the vote. For over six years, he's been exiled in South Africa, wants to return, and on January 19, wrote an open letter, thanking his host country and their people for welcoming him hospitably, saying:

Since forcibly abducted, "the people of Haiti have never stopped calling for my return....Despite the enormous (post-quake) challenges that they face....their determination to make the return happen has increased."

"As far as I am concerned, I am ready....today, tomorrow, at any time. The purpose is very clear: To contribute to serving my Haitian sisters and brothers as a simple citizen in the field of education."

Returning is also vital "for medical reasons: It is strongly recommended that I not spend the coming winter in South Africa because in 6 years I have undergone 6 eye surgeries. The surgeons are excellent and very well skilled, but the unbearable pain experienced in the winter must be avoided in order to reduce any risk of further complications and blindness."

Aristide is ready to come any time, and hopes Haitian and South African officials let him. Of course, Washington controls all Haitian affairs. The Bush administration ousted him in 2004, militarily occupied the country with proxy Blue Helmet paramilitaries, banished him abroad, and thus far Obama won't let him back. One word from him changes everything. So far it's not forthcoming.

He's been treated maliciously, victimized by Washington's intolerance to democracy, abroad and at home. It's time public outrage demanded better, including in Haiti, the region's poorest, most oppressed nation, the rights of their people entirely denied, including having their beloved leader back home with them.

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Khalid Amayreh
Al-Ahram Weekly

In a dramatic though not entirely unexpected step, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the Israeli Labour Party, decided this week to leave the party, along with three others of his colleagues, effectively condemning the party to irrelevance.

The socialist-Zionist party that ruled Israel, especially during its formative years up until 1977, had been in a state of disarray for a long time, with several key party leaders accusing Barak of destroying the party by succumbing to the rightwing agenda of the current Israeli government.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu seemed quite pleased with the rupture, saying it ensured that his government would live for a long time to come.

Barak's decision to leave the Labour Party and set up his own faction leaves the embattled party with only eight seats in the Knesset. Three cabinet ministers affiliated with Labour quit their portfolios, saying they will devote themselves "to rebuilding the party and restoring its former glory".

Barak had been facing significant challenges from members demanding his ouster, citing "his absolute humiliating subservience" to the rightwing government. Hence Barak's departure can be viewed as a sort of pre-emptive action against his critics -- an action that critics say contains clear elements of conspiracy and vindictiveness.

His former colleagues in the party accused Barak of betraying the Labour movement, of self-centeredness, and spitefulness. "Barak brought tragedy to the Labour Party, sullied it and broke it apart," said Labour MK Shelly Yachimovich, lambasting Barak for the "corrupt and opportunist" way in which he chose to split from the party.

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David Halpin
Gloabal Resesarch

Introduction

The deliberate injury of the limbs of 23 boys by high velocity weapons has been logged and described by Defence for Children International – Palestine Branch (DCI-P) since March 2010. (1) Some of the facts have been published in national newspapers. These barbarous acts contravene international and national law but there are no judicial responses. The caring professions see the physical and mental pain of those who suffer and they should be in the vanguard in calling for this great cruelty to cease forthwith. Political leaders have failed to act. The Geneva Conventions Act 1957, which is of central importance in holding war criminals to account in the jurisdiction of the UK, is being emasculated.

Context

Most of the 1.5 million population of the Gaza strip is impoverished. Half are refugees from Mandate Palestine or their stock. About 50% of the male population is without work. It has been isolated and occupied for decades. A commercial port was being built in 2000 but that was bombed by Israel. The isolation and the hobbling of its commerce was increased by a siege which was started in March 2006 in response to the election of a majority of Hamas members to the legislature. It was further tightened in June 2007 after the Hamas government pre-empted a coup by the Fatah faction that was led in Gaza by Mohammad Dahlan.

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Stephen Lendman

During Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit, a US - China Joint Statement said:

"The United States stressed that the promotion of human rights and democracy is an important part of its foreign policy. China stressed that there should be no interference in any country's internal affairs."

Washington often chides other nations about their abuses and injustices at home and abroad. In fact, no other nation matches America's disdain for human and civil rights, yet as Washington Post writers John Pomfret and Scott Wilson said in their January 20 article headlined, "Obama hosts Hu Jintao on state visit, presses China on human rights:"

"President Obama used his summit Wednesday with Chinese President Hu Jintao to place human rights front and center in the US relationship with the world's preeminent ascending power."

New York Times writers Helene Cooper and Mark Landler stressed the same theme in their January 19 article headlined, "Obama Pushes Hu on Rights but Stresses Ties to China," stating:

Obama "prodded China to make progress on human rights,' quoting him saying they're a:

"source of tension between our two governments. (Americans) have some core views....about the universality of certain rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly....(T)he world is more just when the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld, including the universal rights of every human being," ones Washington flaunts globally while pointing fingers at others.

A previous article addressed China's documentation of US human rights abuses, accessed through this link.

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Vera Macht
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Vera Macht Reporting From Gaza

It took eight days. Eight days since the last innocent was killed. You watch people die here one after another, getting killed one by one, without consequences, without justice, without an outcry in the media. Innocent people who have never done anything wrong in their lives other than try to make a living from something amidst the stifling four year siege. Civilians. Palestinian civilians, whose life doesn’t seem to be worth more than an entry in the statistics. And you feel like your hands are tied. “So that’s what I can do: register it in my notebook. It is registered, and there is an empty line after Shaban’s name. That is for those who they kill tomorrow”, wrote the American writer Max Ajl after the farmer Shaban Karmout was killed. It took eight days, and the place was filled. Amjad ElZaaneen, was 17 years when he was killed today. Too young, too early, too meaningless, too many names in all of our laptops.

Amjad collected stones that morning, on the 01/18/2011, as on every morning, with his three cousins and his brother, the youngest of whom was eleven. Five boys, children, with a horse and a cart full of stones, about 300m from the border with Israel, and near to the village of Bait Hanoun. They had just loaded their cart full as they saw Israeli tanks and bulldozers coming to invade the land, why, who knows. A group of resistance fighters approached the area, including fighters from PFLP, the Communist Party, to fight them out again, to prevent them from again uprooting the land. A more symbolic act, the country was destroyed hundreds of times before, by tanks and bulldozers, one more time, what difference does it make. Amjad and the others ran for their lives, successfully, they arrived safely at home.

But the horse was still there, after all, and all the stones they had collected with difficulty, for which they had risked their lives to have some income that day, and for the next one maybe, who knows whether the situation then wouldn’t be even more dangerous. So they returned, as they thought the situation had calmed down, and the tanks and bulldozers had withdrawn from Gaza's land, after they had flattened it one more time, why, who knows. But when they arrived at their horse, and just wanted to take it back home, Israeli soldiers fired a shell at them, and Sharaf Raafat Shada, 19, was hit by a piece of shrapnel in the chest. Amjad, the oldest, tried to pull him away, to lay him on the cart to somehow take him to the hospital, but Sharaf was too heavy for him. So Amjad made the decision to try to reach Bait Hanoun in order to get help. He hadn’t gone far when a shell directly hit him into his belly, leaving a wound so large that he bled to death within minutes.

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Stephen Lendman

Don't bet on it, or at most expect prosecutorial pretense, theater, with Baby Doc Duvalier free to return to his luxury French villa, though perhaps later than planned. A previous article discussed his arrival and 15 dictatorial years of rule (plus his father's), accessed through this link.

On January 18, New York Times writer Ginger Thompson headlined, "Former Haitian Dictator to Face Charges," saying:

"Haitian prosecutors presented formal charges of corruption and embezzlement against the former dictator Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier on Tuesday, raising the level of uncertainty surrounding his abrupt emergence from exile this week."

Haiti's Chief Magistrate, Marycidas Auguste, announced charges of "government corruption, embezzlement of funds, money laundering, and assassination."

Calling the day's events a "political show," his lawyer, Gervais Charles, said only corruption and embezzlement were involved, adding that "Jean-Claude came into this country at the wrong time. That's what this is about, not the law."

A judge will decide if enough evidence warrants trial, he explained, adding that most charges stem from $4.6 million in Swiss accounts, a small fraction of what he stole, believed to be hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Haitian lawyer Salim Succar, involved in negotiations with Switzerland.

Statute of limitations also matter, having expired in 2006. Duvalier was never prosecuted despite past charges brought, including a 1988 US District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruling (in Jean-Juste v. Duvalier) that he was liable for $500 million in misappropriated public funds, taken for personal use.

His traveling companion, Veronique Roy, was asked if he was arrested. By phone inside court she said, "Absolutely not. We are very relaxed, drinking coffee and water."

Besides stealing millions as dictator, his Tonton Macoute (praetorian guard) killers abducted and murdered tens of thousands of Haitians, many tortured to death in prison.

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Kourosh Ziabari

Since its very inception in 1946, the United Nations Security Council demonstrated that it cannot be trusted as a podium of justice for the world countries, specially the oppressed and defenseless nations which eye the assistance and patronage of the powerful and economically influential nations for tackling their political predicaments and crises, and showed that it merely pursues the interests of its small bloc of five permanent members and undemocratically discriminates against a multitude of countries who don't have a say in the policies which directly affects them.

United Nations Security Council is said to be one of the principal organs within the operative system of the United Nations and is "allegedly" charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. The authorities possessed by UNSC are the establishment of peacekeeping missions, imposition of international sanctions and authorization of military actions whenever necessary.

UNSC has five permanent members: China, Russia, Britain, France and the United States. What's the reason? Why should the UNSC have permanent members which cannot be removed from power and must wield an unyielding and resolute authority to make decision over the international affairs? The answer is simple: these five countries are the victorious powers of the Second World War. Their victory in a war which took place and was concluded more than half a century ago minimally accounts for the eternality and endlessness of the power which they possess.

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Milo Nickels
Activist Post

Anti-government sentiment is not cause for fear, a sign of insanity, or a precursor of tragedy. Quite the contrary. Anti-government sentiment signifies attentiveness, understanding, and a love of liberty. If you truly value freedom, then you absolutely must distrust and despise government with every fiber of your being. Why? Government has no ability, whatsoever, to give freedom to anyone. Government can only take freedoms away. Our founding fathers fully understood this fundamental truth. They did not view government as a potential source of good, but as a necessary evil. Although they understood that limited government would be necessary to protect individual citizens from each other, they also understood that the Constitution would be necessary to protect all citizens from the government. Our founding fathers knew that if they did not restrain the government with the constitution, then nothing would stop it from taking all of our liberties away. This is simply the nature of the beast.

Many people mistakenly believe that the first Amendment grants us freedom of speech. This is dead wrong. The first amendment tells the government that they are not allowed to take that freedom away. Many people mistakenly believe that the second amendment exists only to protect hunters so that they can feed their families. They are dead wrong once again. Our founding fathers expected our government to overstep its bounds, and the second amendment was intended to be our insurance policy to rise against those encroachments. The second amendment is a direct extension of the Declaration of Independence where it states:

...to secure [our unalienable] rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

How do we abolish a government without arms? Our founding fathers were not liberal, government-loving, boot-lickers; they were revolutionaries. They completely and necessarily distrusted the government and hated tyranny. They expected that government would always try to steal freedom, and they expected people to rise up against the government whenever that happens. Indeed, our government was founded on the expectation that it couldn't be trusted.

Look at where we are now. Our government wants to pass laws where we can't speak out against it, wants to limit our second amendment rights, and they use the mainstream media to convince the masses that hating the government makes people crazy. If our founding fathers were alive today, they would be labeled as dangerous, extremist threats to our national security.

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Gareth Porter
Antiwar

"The Pentagon [has] embraced the idea of the “long war” ” a 20-year strategy envisioning the deployment of U.S. troops in dozens of countries, and the Army [has] adopted the idea of “the era of persistent warfare” as its rationale for more budgetary resources."

"The military leadership used its political clout to ensure that U.S. forces would continue to fight in Afghanistan indefinitely, even after the premises of its strategy were shown to have been false."

Fifty years after Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Jan. 17, 1961, speech on the “military-industrial complex,” that threat has morphed into a far more powerful and sinister force than Eisenhower could have imagined. It has become a “permanent war state,” with the power to keep the United States at war continuously for the indefinite future.

But despite their seeming invulnerability, the vested interests behind U.S. militarism have been seriously shaken twice in the past four decades by some combination of public revulsion against a major war, opposition to high military spending, serious concern about the budget deficit, and a change in perception of the external threat. Today, the permanent war state faces the first three of those dangers to its power simultaneously – and in a larger context of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

When Eisenhower warned in this farewell address of the “potential” for the “disastrous rise of misplaced power,” he was referring to the danger that militarist interests would gain control over the country’s national security policy. The only reason it didn’t happen on Ike’s watch is that he stood up to the military and its allies.

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Elisabeth Zimmermann
WSWS

The village of Mayen, near the city of Koblenz in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is governed by a Social Democratic Party (SPD) administration. A Roma family originating from Kosovo had lived in Mayen since 1999. Despite the serious illness of one of the members of the family, Mrs. Borka T., the whole family was deported under inhumane conditions in early December to Kosovo. Just a month later, Mrs. T. died of a brain hemorrhage.

In the early hours of December 7, police picked up Mrs. Borka T. with her husband and her 14-year-old son Avdil from their home in Mayen. They were given just 30 minutes to pack a few personal belongings. They were then taken by police to Dusseldorf Airport and together with other refugees deported to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

Mrs. Borka T. was examined at Düsseldorf Airport by a doctor whose job was to give the okay for her deportation. Mrs. T.’s own specialist doctors had diagnosed her as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and neuralgia. Due to these symptoms, she received regular medication and therapy with the support of the Caritas organisation. These facts were known but ignored by officials at the airport.

The ailing woman’s condition was also swept aside by the local administration in Mayen-Koblenz, which ordered the deportation of the family. The Trier Administrative Court then upheld the deportation, knowing full well that no possibilities of treatment for the woman existed in Kosovo.

The Mayen-Koblenz administration denied any responsibility on its part even after the death of Borka T. was announced earlier this year. A spokesman merely declared that the authority had relied on the judgement of the Trier Administrative Court, which had stated that there were options for her treatment in Kosovo. The spokesman refuted any correlation between a lack of drugs and the woman’s death as absurd, declaring with cynicism: “Intracranial bleeding is always a possibility”.

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