Reham Alhelsi
My Palestine

A new year begins and the terror of the Zionist entity continues. With the first day of 2011, Jawaher Abu Rahmah, 36 years old, died in hospital after being asphyxiated by the poisonous tear gas fired by Israeli occupation soldiers at Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals who were protesting the Israeli wall and the theft of Palestinian land in Bil’in the day before. On Friday, 31.12.2010, it was reported by many news outlets around the world that a resident of Bili’n was in critical condition after inhaling the poisonous gas. The next morning, Jawaher died, murdered; she was gassed to death. As usual, the Israeli occupation forces and their agents, the anonymous and the not-so-anonymous ones who come in all names and titles such as “reporters” and “medical experts”, started their usual spin of lies and propaganda about Jawaher’s murder. They claim Palestinians are contradicting themselves, when in fact it is the Israeli occupation army, with its lies and fake claims, the one that is contradicting itself with each and every lie. They first claimed Jawaher had cancer and died of it, then claimed that she wasn’t at the protest so she couldn’t have died from the effect of the gas (she was standing 200 meters away from the protest), then they claimed that the tear gas kills no one. So what is it that the Israeli occupation army is trying to prove? That the poisonous gas they use against Palestinians is not lethal and thus not the cause of Jawaher’s or any Palestinian’s death?

As usual, main stream media outlets, which often lecture on objectivity and neutrality, readily take the word of an anonymous Israeli military source for credible while ignoring the tens of named Palestinian and other eyewitnesses.

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Stephen Lendman

With America's worst budget crisis per capita, Illinois reflects the crushing nationwide burden facing most states. As a result since 2008, they raised taxes, made big cuts in health care (including Medicaid), education and other social services. They also laid off thousands of state workers, cut pay and benefits for others, and plan more of the same going forward.

Collectively in FY 2011, state governments face about a $140 billion deficit, besides major shortfalls in large and small cities. In fact, according to Nick Johnson of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, this year "will actually be the most difficult budget year for states ever," and 2012 may be as or more challenging.

Moreover, unlike 2010, little or no federal aid is planned with Washington in discretionary spending austerity mode. It means states and working Americans will largely be on their own to cope.

On January 5, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's State of the State address suggests what's coming nationwide. Facing a projected $9 billion deficit, he outlined proposed draconian cuts in education, health care, and state payrolls, including pay and benefits, saying "New York spends too much money." So to curb it, he also wants a 20% reduction in state agencies, authorities and commissions, while pledging to keep New York "business friendly," meaning workers will feel pain, not fat cats.

Accordingly, he announced no tax increase for the wealthy and will let a so-called temporary "millionaire's tax" surcharge on $200,000 a year or more earners expire, depriving the state of $1 billion annually.

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Stephen Lendman

People walk past quake-damaged buildings in downtown Port-
au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday Jan 6, 2011. Almost one year has
passed since the Jan. 12, 2010 magnitude-7.0 quake that killed
more than 220,000 people and left millions homeless. (Ramon
Espinosa/ Associated Press).

On January 12, 2010 at 21:53 GMT, 4:53PM in Haiti, the earth massively shook. For affected Haitians, it never stopped. The combination of initial shock, devastating destruction, vast loss of life, injuries, suffering, and human misery disrupted millions of Haitians already overwhelmed by crushing hardships.

A year ago, people wandered the streets dazed, searching for loved ones. Lost power cut communications except by satellite phone. Haiti's quake vulnerability was well known but little reported, and no advance precautions were taken.

The inevitable finally happened, harming the majority poor population most. Earlier storms wiped out public housing and erased communities, letting developers build upscale condos and other high-profit projects on choice Port-au-Prince land. After the quake, the Red Cross estimated at least three million Haitians needed emergency aid - everything, including food, clean water, makeshift shelters, blankets, other provisions, medical care, sanitation, and funds for relief, rubble clearance, and rebuilding as soon as possible.

A year later, 95% of the rubble remains. Up to 1.5 million Haitians remain homeless. Most promised aid never came. Haitians were left stranded in squalid tent camps on their own. Twelve months later, the crisis festers, a monstrous crime of indifference, neglect, exploitation, and persecution by imperial Washington and world capitalism, valuing Haiti and its people solely as commodities.

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

In his remarks Wednesday night to a memorial service for the victims of last Saturday’s massacre in Tucson, Arizona, President Obama refused to offer any political explanation for the attempted assassination of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

On the contrary, his entire speech was an argument against such an analysis, as he declared the causes of the massacre to be unknowable. It was a statement of intellectual bankruptcy, carried out, as usual in modern American politics, amid nonstop invocations of religion.

Sitting in the audience, unacknowledged and unmentioned by Obama, was the sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik, who spoke out Saturday, attributing the attempted assassination of a prominent Democrat to the promotion of bigotry and political violence by the right-wing media and politicians.

Dupnik’s bluntness made him a target of the ultra-right, with the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh all denouncing his remarks. In his speech in Tucson, Obama effectively joined in this campaign, offering a full-fledged amnesty for the right.

Four or five decades ago, an occasion such as this in the United States would have seen a clear demarcation between the invocation by the preachers and the speeches by political leaders. Wednesday night’s affair, by contrast, was an awkward combination of campus pep rally and sermonizing.

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Alice Rothchild
Health and Human Rights Project

We were in the midst of a political tour of East Jerusalem with journalist and activist Abu Hassan, trying to comprehend the bizarre realities in the Sheikh Jarrar neighborhood. We stand in front of the house of the evicted al-Ghawi family who I met last year living in a tent outside their property. In 2009, 800 soldiers and police evicted 37 members of this family from their homes. We watch a man with a large black hat and long black coat rush, head tilted down, (is he feeling shame or fear?) into the apartment which is topped by a gigantic menorah. The Palestinian family still receives the water and electricity bills as they refuse to change the registration. What kind of insanity is this?

An elderly Palestinian woman has been evicted from her home where she lived for many decades with her family, extending the one story building to accommodate her children and grandchildren. During the recent eviction, Jewish settlers were moved into the front portion of her house, now draped with a large Israeli flag with Stars of David painted around the front window. This poor woman is now forced to live in the back portion of her house with her son and grandchildren. They are watching cartoons when we arrive and a deadly depression weights the air. Their case is in the Israeli courts where there is little chance they will be treated favorably. At any time this family, like others in the neighborhood, can be evicted forcibly by Israeli military and put out on the street with their meager possessions. An International Solidarity Tent stands in the garden, so it seems they have some international support but the tent is empty.

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Mike Adams

How will the new Food Safety Modernization Act actually impact small, local farmers who grow food for CSA's, local restaurants and grocers? To find out, I took a road trip to Texas and interviewed several small, local farmers to ask them, face to face, how the S.510 Food Safety Modernization Act would impact them.

I spoke to Farmer Brad from HomeSweetFarm.com and captured the conversation on video. You can watch it here.

Here's a quick excerpt from our conversation about S.510 and the small farm exemption in the Tester Amendment:


Farmer Brad: To me, that's so un-American to say hey, you're going to stay in this box, and you can never grow your business bigger than that. $500,000 [in revenue] is your cap.

Natural News: It's destroying farming jobs.

Farmer Brad: It has made us start to totally re-look at our business plans and how we're going to sell our food. We're no longer going to sell wholesale, no longer going to sell to chefs or restaurants, it's consumer direct only.

Natural News: So you're actually pulling back from some of your expansion plans?

Farmer Brad: We are. We have actually, this last year as we've been watching this happen, we've been putting plans on hold, and pulling back our business... so again, that's how this is going to affect the local food system.

Natural News: Right.

Farmer Brad: Because we don't want to get too successful.

Watch the complete interview here.

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The Economic Collapse Blog

The vast majority of Americans, including many of those who believe that they are "educated" about the Federal Reserve, do not really understand how the Federal Reserve really makes money for the international banking elite. Many of those opposed to the Federal Reserve will point to the record $80.9 billion in profits that the Federal Reserve made last year as evidence that they are robbing the American people blind. But then those defending the Federal Reserve will point out that the Fed returned $78.4 billion to the U.S. Treasury. As a result, the Fed only made a couple billion dollars last year. Pretty harmless, eh? Well, actually no.

You see, the money that the Federal Reserve directly makes is not the issue. Rather, the "magic" of the Federal Reserve system is that it took the power of money creation away from the U.S. government and gave it to the bankers. Now, the only way that the U.S. government can inject more money into the economy is by going into more debt. But when new government debt is created, the amount of money to pay the interest on that debt is not also created. In this way, it was intended by the international bankers that U.S. government debt would expand indefinitely and the U.S. money supply would also expand indefinitely. In the process, the international bankers would become insanely wealthy by lending money to the U.S. government.

Every single year, hundreds of billions of dollars in profits are made lending money to the U.S. government. But why in the world should the U.S. government be going into debt to anyone? Why can't the U.S. government just print more money whenever it wants?

Well, that is not the way our system works. The U.S. government has given the power of money creation over to a consortium of international private bankers. Not only is this unconstitutional, but it is also one of the greatest ripoffs in human history. In 1922, Henry Ford wrote the following....

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