Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."

The ever-changing, ever-growing bin Laden story becomes ever more preposterous. The cowardly bin Laden is now the vain bin Laden, the terror mastermind who has nothing to do but to sit and watch videos of himself.

Washington released a video of an alleged bin Laden indulging in self-admiration, but there is no sound. Why? Was the video made without sound? Did Washington delete the audio? The video seems to show the alleged bin Laden speaking to someone in the room. Is the voice not bin Laden’s? Is the alleged bin Laden referring to the image on the screen in the third person, as not himself? Why would bin Laden have a video made of himself watching videos of himself? Why is a video of bin Laden watching bin Laden a headline story? Is it meant to substitute for the absence of a corpse?

As one reader put it, “The government is playing with us, experimenting to see if there is any tall tale we won’t believe.”

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Stephen Lendman

The mission crew on the ship — The Spirit of Rachel Corrie (officially
known as FINCH)

On May 16, at 6:54AM Gaza time (3:54AM GMT), in international waters, an Israeli naval vessel attacked the Malaysian owned Spirit of Rachel Corrie ship (officially the MV Finch), carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. More details below.

Lawless Monday followed Nakba Day's bloody Sunday, Israeli security forces assaulting unprecedented numbers of nonviolent demonstrators in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and along the Lebanese/Syrian borders.

Egypt was complicit, blocking activists from reaching Rafah. So was Jordan, forcefully preventing Palestinian supporters from approaching the King Hussein Jordan River Crossing Point.

Nonetheless, the day was potentially historic. Activists hope it will inspire greater global support for Palestinian liberation and justice, what only hindsight will show.

Up to two dozen were killed, scores injured, and many arrested, soldiers and police firing high-velocity tear gas canisters at point blank range, rubber bullets, live ammunition, and tank shell warning shots, a shocking display of violence given scant coverage in America's media.

Now this, Israelis attacking Rachel Corrie's spirit after an Israeli bulldozer operator killed her in Gaza on March 16, 2003. Trying to stop a Rafah refugee camp home's demolition, witnesses said she climbed atop the giant Caterpillar tractor, spoke to the driver, climbed down, knelt 10 - 20 meters in front in clear view, blocking its path with her body. With activists screaming for it to stop, the soldier-operator crushed her to death deliberately, running her over twice to be sure.

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Patrick O’Connor
WSWS

The chief prosecutor with the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, yesterday demanded that arrest warrants be issued for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif Al Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanussi, on crimes against humanity charges.

Three ICC judges will now examine a 74-page dossier detailing the alleged crimes before making a decision on the requested warrants. These moves come after the UN Security Council issued a request in late February for a criminal investigation. Britain and France, backed by the US, instigated this as part of their drive for regime-change in Libya, aimed at installing a client regime in the strategically significant and oil-rich state.

The rank hypocrisy of the imperialist powers levelling accusations of crimes against humanity is transparent. The leaderships in Washington, London and Paris have no legal, political or moral authority to be issuing such charges against anyone. They are collectively guilty of war crimes being inflicted daily on the Libyan population.

Just hours after Moreno-Ocampo submitted his dossier to the ICC, NATO air strikes again hit Gaddafi’s residential compound in central Tripoli in yet another attempt to assassinate the Libyan strongman. The unlawful US-European efforts to liquidate senior regime members come as the bombing campaign is intensifying, with a wide range of civilian infrastructure now being targeted.

Many civilians and hundreds of Libyan troops have been killed. NATO now makes little pretence of limiting its intervention to protecting civilians from repression by the Gaddafi regime—the ostensible remit of the intervention as laid out in United Nations Resolution 1973. Western Special Forces and intelligence operatives are active on the ground, coordinating NATO air strikes and the moves of the so-called “rebel” fighters.

The neo-colonial war is but one theatre of the US military’s operations internationally. The Obama administration has intensified the war in Afghanistan, extended the conflict into Pakistan’s border regions, and carried out extra-legal targeted assassinations in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and other countries.

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Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

A resident tries to look into the compound where [alleged] al
Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was reported to have been
killed in Abbottabad. (Reuters/Faisal Mahmood)

"I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. . . . Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks the common American people have been killed." ~ Osama bin Laden

I have heard one dozen times today (May 13) from media that the US killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. I heard it three times from National Public Radio, twice from the BBC, and from every TV and radio station I encountered, even those stations that play the rock and roll music of the 1950s and 1960s. The killing of bin Laden has now entered the legends of our time and, no doubt, the history books.

The US government that told us that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction" and "al Qaeda connections" and that Iran has nuclear missiles that require the US to ring Russia with anti-ballistic missile systems, finally told us the truth for once. Obama found Osama and had him murdered, apparently unarmed in his underwear, defended not by al Qaeda, "the best trained, most dangerous vicious killers on the planet," but by two unarmed women.

As I offered previously, if you believe this, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can let you have for a cheap price.

The government has created another reality for us proles: We won again - us white hats got the black hat, just like in the western movie. Fantasy is better than fact, and us good guys are on a roll. It makes everybody happy, even those who have lost their jobs, their houses, their pensions.

So, who’s the next black hat? The military/security complex cannot do without a bad guy, or the budget could be cut and billions of dollars in profits would go missing. Without someone for Americans to hate, the show can’t go on.

Homeland Security says the next black hat will be "domestic extremists." The CIA says it will be the next al Qaeda leader, bin Laden’s replacement, who will terrorize us white hats for killing bin Laden. The neocon brownshirts say it is Pakistan, who hid bin Laden from us, thus protecting him from justice being done. Hillary says it is China, and as the US economy continues its collapse, more and more fingers will point at China.

Airport Security will pat down more babies, feel more genitals, and radiate more air travelers.

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