Stephen Lendman

After Obama's May 18 speech called for establishing a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, world headlines suggested a rift with Netanyahu, misinterpreting what he meant. More on that below.

On May 17, in fact, New York Times writers Mark Landler and Helene Cooper headlined, "As Uprisings Transform Mideast, Obama Aims to Reshape the Peace Debate," saying [that] ahead of his speech, White House press secretary Jay Carney said he'd offer "some specific new ideas about US policy toward the region."

Unidentified officials also suggested he might endorse a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. Doing so, however, would represent "less of a policy shift than a signal" that Washington wants Israel to make concessions to restart peace talks - a gesture, whether or not substantive with teeth.

On May 17, after meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah, Obama said:

"Despite the many changes, or perhaps because of the many changes that are taking place in the region, it's more vital than ever that both Israelis and Palestinians find a way to get back to the table and begin negotiating a process whereby they can create two states that are living side by side in peace and security."

Moreover, his May 22 AIPAC speech affirmed his unwavering support for a "strong and secure Israel."

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Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

Bin Laden Raid: Operation Was Not Successful - Eye Witness Claims

In a sensational and explosive TV report, the Pakistani News Agency has provided a live interview with an eye witness to the US attack on the alleged compound of Osama bin Laden. The eye witness, Mohammad Bashir, describes the event as it unfolded. Of the three helicopters, "there was only one that landed the men and came back to pick them up, but as he [the helicopter] was picking them up, it blew away and caught fire." The witness says that there were no survivors, just dead bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere. "We saw the helicopter burning, we saw the dead bodies, then everything was removed and now there is nothing."

I always wondered how a helicopter could crash, as the White House reported, without at least producing injuries. Yet, in the original White House story, the SEALs not only survived a 40-minute firefight with al Qaeda, "the most highly trained, most dangerous, most vicious killers on the planet," without a scratch, but also survived a helicopter crash without a scratch.

The Pakistani news report is available on you tube. The Internet site, Veterans Today, posted a translation along with a video of the interview. Information Clearing House made it available on May 17.

If the interview is not a hoax and the translation is correct, we now know the answer to the unasked question: Why was there no White House ceremony with President Obama pinning medals all over the heroic SEALs who tracked down and executed Public Enemy Number One?

The notion that Obama had to keep the SEALs’ identity secret in order to protect the SEALs from al Qaeda detracts from the heroic tough guy image of the SEALs, and it strains credulity that Obama’s political handlers would not have milked the occasion for all it is worth.

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Stephen Lendman

On February 9, London Guardian writer Chris McGreal headlined, "Egypt's army 'involved in detentions and torture,' " saying:

Military forces "secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass (anti-Mubarak) protests began, (and) at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian."

Moreover, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other human rights organizations cited years of army involvement in disappearances and torture. Former detainees confirmed "extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation." Electric shocks, Taser guns, threatened rapes, beatings, disappearances, and killings left families grieving for loved ones.

Under Mubarak, Egypt's military wasn't neutral. It's no different now, cracking down hard to keep power and deny change, policies Washington endorses, funds and practices at home and abroad.

On February 17, even New York Times writer Liam Stack headlined, "Among Egypt's Missing, Tales of Torture and Prison," saying:

Trademark Mubarak practices continue under military rule, "human rights groups say(ing) the military's continuing role in such abuses raises new questions about its ability to midwife Egyptian democracy."

"We joined the protests to liberate the country and end the problems of the regime," said a man identified as Rabie. "After 18 days, the regime is gone but the same injustices remain." Indeed so without letup.

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

“The Israel policy is to take more and more land day after day and at the end of the day, we’ll say that it is impossible, we already have the land and we cannot create the [Palestinian] state.” - Tzipi Livni (2007)

Wrapping up a week largely devoted to US policy towards the Middle East, President Barack Obama spoke Sunday before the right-wing Zionist lobby, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), recommitting Washington to the unconditional defense of Israel.

Obama’s appearance before AIPAC came just three days after he delivered his so-called “Arab Spring” speech and two days after his White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Taken together, these three events have only served to confirm that, in the face of the historic popular upheavals that have toppled two decades-old dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt and brought masses into the streets throughout much of the Arab world, Washington remains committed to a counterrevolutionary policy in the region anchored in its strategic alliance with Israel.

Media coverage of Obama’s speech and Netanyahu’s contemptuous reaction to it were both centered on one phrase uttered by the US president: “We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps…”

Netanyahu publicly rebuffed Obama, declaring at the White House that any return to such “lines” would leave Israel “indefensible.” The administration’s Republican opponents accused Obama of “throwing Israeli under the bus,” or stabbing it in the back.

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William Whitlow
WSWS

NASA has just announced that Einstein’s theory of gravity, also known as the General Theory of Relativity, has been verified in two ways by its Gravity Probe-B (GP-B) with astonishing accuracy [1]. The experiment was begun in 2004 when a satellite containing four specially developed gyroscopes was put into orbit around the earth, passing over the North and South poles.

GP-B measures two predictions of Einstein’s theory known as the geodetic effect and the frame dragging effect. The geodetic effect is the amount that space and time is “warped” by the gravitational mass of the Earth, well known in non-technical explanations of the theory. The frame dragging effect is less well known, though it was predicted by the Austrian physicists Josef Lens and Hans Thirring in 1918 only two years after Einstein first published his General Theory. This effect results in local space and time being pulled by the rotation of the Earth.

The frame dragging effect is analogous to the way in which a rotating electric charge produces magnetism and is sometimes referred to as the “gravitomagnetic effect” and is even regarded as producing a new force of nature, the gravimagnetic force.

As the leading scientist of the GP-B team, Francis Everitt of Stanford University, graphically explained, “Imagine the Earth as if it were immersed in honey. As the planet rotates, the honey around it would swirl, and it’s the same with space and time.”

The gyroscopes in GP-B are attached to a telescope that is pointed at a distant star, so that if space and time were unaffected by the Earth they would remain spinning in the same direction. Instead Einstein’s theory predicts they tilt by a very tiny amount because of the Earth’s gravity. The measurement of this tilt in GP-B is compared with the theoretical predictions of Einstein’s theory.

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