Khalid Amayreh

When Israeli President Shimon President was pressed by some human rights organizations to stop the practice of "administrative detention" of Palestinian intellectuals, he claimed that "Palestinians who don't hurl fire bombs and who don't shoot have nothing to fear." Peres were lying through his teeth as usual because nearly all victims of administrative detention have not indulged in any illegal activity.

Administrative detention is very much like taking hostages. One is snatched from his home and family by the Israeli occupation army (and now by the Palestinian Authority-PA- forces) and kept behind bars for months or years without charge or trial). I remember one of these seemingly perpetual detainees, Mustafa Shawar of Hebron telling me that he begged the Israeli military judge to inform him why he was being kept in jail.

"I told him I need to know the violation I committed so that I won't do it again after I am released from here. But the Judge wouldn't tell me because of unspecified security reasons."

The truth of the matter is that there are no real violations and no security reasons barring the so-called judge from revealing the reasons for a given Palestinian's arrest and incarceration.

The real reason is the sadistic Israeli urge to torment and harm Palestinians. Israelis do feel good watching Palestinians suffer, just as the Nazis felt good watching Jews suffer and die throughout Europe during and prior to the Second World War.

Israelis often like to brag about having a country of "law and order" But the question that begs itself is what sort of law and order does Israel have and according to which it acts and behaves?

Even the Third Reich, from its beginning to end, was in a certain sense based on law and order.

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Stephen Lendman

[Photo: War criminal Ehud Barak & his satrap, Salam Fayyad, shaking hands before meeting at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Incidentally, the original King David Hotel was bombed by Jewish terrorists in 1946. 91 people were killed and 46 were injured. (Mustafa Abu Dayeh, Pool/Palestinian Prime Minister's Office)]

"As prime minister, Fayyad's future depends on satisfying two masters, Israel and Washington, their divide and conquer agenda, solidifying occupation, continuing settlement expansions, entirely Judaizing Jerusalem, dominating the West Bank's economy, and containing all opposition factions."

His resumé includes a University of Texas economics Ph.D., a teaching position at Jordan's Yarmouk University, and economic research at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. From 1987 - 1995, he also served as a World Bank and IMF official, and until 2001, was IMF's man in Palestine, serving as Yasser Arafat's finance minister.

In Palestine's 2006 legislative elections, his Third Way party got 2.4% of the votes, a clear renunciation. Yet after Fatah's coup d'etat co-opted the PLO, PA and West Bank, President Mahmoud Abbas illegitimately appointed him prime minister.

The New York Times calls him "a political independent who gained the confidence of the West and is largely respected in Israel." In fact, he's a political opportunist, Israel's man in Palestine. Also Washington's. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Nathan J. Brown calls him "indispensable to US diplomacy....confusing a useful individual with sound policy." He's mainly improved security, providing enforcer services for Israel against his own people.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

"Must an evil state create gas chambers and concentration camps before it is regarded as truly evil? How about raining down white phosphorus on civilian neighbourhoods? Or dropping 1-ton bombs on civilian homes to exterminate entire families as a deterrent? Or dropping two to three million cluster bomblets which will kill and maim as many children as possible?"

Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, have been complaining about the increasing "de-legitimization" of the Zionist state across the world. Netanyahu, who is a skilled media operator, said that Israel "needs to de-legitimize the de-legitimizers".

However, a fleeting glance at recent Israeli actions shows that Israel is a nefarious, lawless and murderous entity whose representatives commit murder and terrorism knowingly and deliberately against innocent people. In doing so, it is they who "de-legitimize" the state of Israel.

Murder, even when "mistaken", is Israel's modus operandi when dealing with its real or imaginary foes, whoever and wherever they happen to be. Some of the murder victims are apolitical figures, innocent people whose killing has no possible justification other than the "need" to make the other party suffer psychologically.

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Mohsen Salih
The Palestine Telegraph

A Disputed land: The fame of Palestine comes from the over 80 years dispute between its local Arab population and the immigrant Zionist Jews who strove and later managed to establish their own political entity, the “State of Israel”, expelling and depriving the local population. Zionism in brief is a political ideology that believes in the establishment of a “national” home for the Jewish people in Palestine, it works to realize its aim through all possible means, with violence on top of the agenda.

It validates its belief and actions with certain religious arguments derived mainly from Judaism and historical arguments that are based mainly on the Old Testament. However, this neither implies that all Jews are Zionists nor that all Zionists are Jews. There are some non-Zionist and even anti-Zionist Jews and there are many non-Jewish Zionists, most of whom are Protestant Christians. On the path to achieve their goals, the Zionists fought six wars, killing and displacing Palestinians inside or even outside Palestine, who escaped to safety in Lebanon, (For more information see the sections on Zionism and Arab-“Israeli” wars). However, the Zionist view does not consider those killed and displaced as victims; on the contrary, it maintains that its actions are legal and ethical, defending the “undisputable” right of the Jews in their homeland. Let us, now examine this so called undisputable right…

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Arthur Silber
Once Upon a Time...

In the aftermath of the horror in Arizona, all major public voices are united in their absolute, vehement condemnation of violence. Almost all minor voices, including every blogger known and unknown, join in the chorus. It seems that everyone, from the most famous and powerful personages to lowly bloggers offering their thoughts to a world which cares nothing whatsoever about what they say, profoundly opposes violence. If all such people -- which would appear to include all people -- were genuinely sincere in their proclamations (and they may well be sincere, in the manner that people are sincere in their announcement of deeply-held beliefs reflecting the intellectual and moral rigor of sayings blazoned on greeting cards or found in fortune cookies), and, of much greater significance, if they matched their actions to any measurable extent to what they insist is a profound opposition to violence, we would certainly inhabit a paradise on Earth.

You may have observed that we do not. In making this statement, I assume you have not been asleep or unconscious for the entirety of your lifetime. You need have been awake and observant for only a few brief moments to appreciate the charnel house that humanity has made of this planet for most of its presence on this cloud of dust.

As is true with regard to every subject of importance, and as is always true when a subject becomes the focus of our "national discourse," almost everyone who repeatedly and passionately denounces violence is, as my title has it, a goddamned liar. On this occasion, the lies are all-encompassing, and they extend over the entirety of the political spectrum, from craven conservatives to peabrained progressives.

It is only proper to begin with the Liar-in-Chief, the chief executive of the Death State -- who is, he reminds us, a public servant and therefore must be "good and important," as he instructed us last evening. Take a moment to appreciate the hideousness of that moment, for it captures the House of Horror quality of this sickening business.

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Ellen Brown
The Web of Debt

"Wall Street Kleptocracy Game" (Credit)

The Federal Reserve was set up by bankers for bankers, and it has served them well. Out of the blue, it came up with $12.3 trillion in nearly interest-free credit to bail the banks out of a credit crunch they created. That same credit crisis has plunged state and local governments into insolvency, but the Fed has now delivered its ultimatum: there will be no “quantitative easing” for municipal governments.

On January 7, according to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed had ruled out a central bank bailout of state and local governments. "We have no expectation or intention to get involved in state and local finance," he said in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee. The states "should not expect loans from the Fed."

So much for the proposal of President Barack Obama, reported in Reuters a year ago, to have the Fed buy municipal bonds to cut the heavy borrowing costs of cash-strapped cities and states.

The credit woes of state and municipal governments are a direct result of Wall Street’s malfeasance. Their borrowing costs first shot up in 2008, when the “monoline” bond insurers lost their own credit ratings after gambling in derivatives. The Fed’s low-interest facilities could have been used to restore local government credit, just as it was used to restore the credit of the banks. But Chairman Bernanke has now vetoed that plan. -Why?

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