Stephen Lendman

On June 28, New York Times writer Liz Alderman headlined, "France's Lagarde Named New Head of IMF," saying:

She'll assume "one of the most powerful positions in global finance as a worsening crisis in Greece threatens the euro currency union and rattles financial markets worldwide."

Washington's choice all along, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner endorsed her over Mexico's central bank governor Agustin Carsten, her only competitor after IMF board of directors excluded Israeli central bank governor Stanley Fischer. Allegedly because of age, he, in fact, lacked support outside Israel, and US officials stuck with traditional IMF policy of a European in charge.

An American always heads the World Bank, yet Washington dominates all international lending agencies, assuring it anoints officials heading them, public discourse notwithstanding.

On June 28, a brief IMF statement announced Lagarde's appointment, saying:

The executive board of the International Monetary Fund today selected Christine Lagarde to serve as IMF managing director and madame chairman of the executive board for a five-year term starting July 2011." China, Russia and Brazil also supported her besides America and most European nations.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne called it "good news for the global economy and for Britain." French President Nicolas Sarkozy said about his departing finance minister, it's a "victory for France." Indeed so, as French banks are heavily exposed to Greek (and other troubled nations') debt Lagarde is mandated to protect.

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Adnan Al-Daini

Iraq slowly disappears down the plughole while Iraqi politicians argue about who should sit on which chair, squabbling like children under the shadow of the US imperial occupation. Fourteen months after the last Iraqi election in March-2010, the ministries of defence and interior are being run by the Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. What a superman he is! Not only is he the Prime Minister, but he can also run these two most difficult of ministries. But wait a minute, examine the achievement of governments since the occupation in 2003, and you discover there are none. The realisation then dawns that these ministers actually do practically nothing in any capacity. It is a mathematical fact that no matter how many zeros you add together you still end up with zero.

The psychological barriers that afflict the rulers and the ruled in a country under occupation are particularly severe in Iraq. They have somehow sucked the initiative from its rulers and have destroyed the pride the people had in their country. People are demoralised and bewildered by the man-made catastrophe that has severely degraded their lives.

It is a measure of the abject failure of successive governments following the illegal war on Iraq in 2003, that a great number of people look back with fondness and nostalgia at an Iraq prior to that war, run by a brutal dictator and suffering under a US-British sponsored blockade that caused the deaths of up to half a million Iraqi children. The incompetence and corruption of governments that have run Iraq since the invasion is breathtaking.

The democracy that supposedly exists in Iraq is no more than a grab of its resources, the spoils of war, to be shared by voracious American and western corporations, arms manufacturers, private security firms and the corrupt elite of the sects and ethnicities that make up the mosaic of Iraqi society.

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Paul Craig Roberts

There is nothing left of the American character. Only a people who have lost their soul could tolerate the evil that emanates from Washington.

Western institutions have become caricatures of hypocrisy: The International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank are violating their charters in order to bail out French, German, and Dutch private banks. The IMF is only empowered to make balance of payments loans, but is lending to the Greek government for prohibited budgetary reasons in order that the Greek government can pay the banks. The ECB is prohibited from bailing out member country governments, but is doing so anyway in order that the banks can be paid. The German parliament approved the bailout, which violates provisions of the European Treaty and Germany’s own Basic Law. The case is in the German Constitutional Court, a fact unreported in the US media.

US president George W. Bush appointed an immigrant, who is not impressed with the US Constitution and the separation of powers, to the Justice (sic) Department in order to get a ruling that the president has "unitary powers" that elevate him above statutory US law, treaties, and international law. According to this immigrant’s legal decisions, the "unitary executive" can violate with impunity the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which prevents spying on Americans without warrants obtained from the FISA Court. The immigrant also ruled that Bush could violate with impunity the statutory US laws against torture as well as the Geneva Conventions. In other words, the fictional "unitary powers" make the president into a Caesar.

Constitutional protections, such as habeas corpus, which prohibit government from holding people indefinitely without presenting charges and evidence to a court, and which prohibit government from denying detained people due process of law and access to an attorney, were thrown out the window by the US Department of Justice (sic), and the federal courts went along with most of it.

As did Congress, "the people’s representatives". Congress even enacted the Military Tribunals Commissions Act of 2006, signed by the White House Brownshirt on October 17.

This act allows anyone alleged to be an "unlawful enemy combatant" to be sentenced to death on the basis of secret and hearsay evidence not presented in the kangaroo military court placed out of reach of US federal courts. The crazed nazis in Congress who supported this total destruction of Anglo-American law masqueraded as "patriots in the war against terrorism."

The act designates anyone accused by the US, without evidence being presented, as being part of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or "associated forces" to be an "unlawful enemy combatant," which strips the person of the protection of law. Not even George Orwell could have conceived of such a formulation.

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Vincent Di Stefano
Integral Reflections

Thomas Berry wanted to shift the focus of religion towards
care of the Earth.

Industrial civilisation has changed everything. At the dawn of the petrochemical age in 1750, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were estimated to be 280 parts per million (ppm). In 1960, they were around 360 ppm. Last month (May 2011) levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were over 394 ppm.

The oceans of the earth are presently becoming more acidic at ten times the rate that preceded the last mass extinction event at the end of the Cenozoic era tens of millions of years ago.

And while Arctic sea ice cover has been steadily declining in recent years, NASA scientists have confirmed that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at a rapidly accelerating rate.

There are many who have read the warning signs. Half a century ago, Rachel Carson alerted us to the damaging consequences of industrial methods of agriculture on ecosystems everywhere. Soon after, Fritz Schumacher urged us to rethink economics in view of the rapacious influence of corporate globalisation. And both Rosalie Bertell and Helen Caldicott have long warned of the silent, slow and spectrous death emanating from the nuclear industry.

The UN Climate Conferences at Copenhagen in 2009 and Mexico City in 2010 were effectively neutered by the influence of mining and energy companies acting through Western governments, notably the US and Canada. Closer to home, both Liberal and Labour parties are desperately outreaching each other in promised tax cuts while arguing about how best to lower carbon emissions by a sad 5% by 2020.

Meanwhile, 250 million tons of coal - over 10 tons for every man, woman and child living in this country - and 10,000 tons of yellow cake - uranium oxide - continue to be shipped out of Australia each year as part of a non-negotiable assault on the earth, felicitously described as a "mining boom", that has replaced the sheep's back on which the Australian economy was once carried.

Those who have understood the magnitude of the environmental situation that presently confronts us are faced with a two-fold task. The first is to clearly identify the nature of those forces that have brought us to where we are. The second is to envision the changes needed - both in our thinking and in our actions - that might reverse the dangerous situation within which we find ourselves, or at the least, prepare future generations for living on the earth in a very different manner.

One of the most articulate and visionary allies in this task is the late Thomas Berry, theologian, mystic and cultural historian. Berry combines prophetic clarity with a penetrative erudition grounded in the intellectual and spiritual traditions of both West and East.

His vision was slowly formed through many decades of studying the wisdom traditions and through observing the effects of industrial civilisation on the earth's ecosystems during the twentieth century. Thomas Berry offers a truly heroic vision to counter the pathologies of distraction and trivialisation borne of the post-modern enthralment with transience and distaste for grand narratives.[1][2]

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Stephen Lendman

On June 27, a Freedom Flotilla press release headlined, "GAZA, WE ARE COMING. Despite pressure and threats of violence, flotilla will sail."

On June 27, A US Boat to Gaza Audacity of Hope press conference reiterated a determination to sail despite threats, pressure and other measures used to stop it.

Participants on board all 10 ships haven't come this far to turn back or let imperial viciousness deter them, especially when their mission is vital and just.

In response to spurious claims that passengers may have chemicals to attack Israeli commandos, perhaps the same ones responsible for the May 2010 Mavi Marmara massacre, Flotilla participants signed a declaration of nonviolence. Spokesman Dror Feiler told Army Radio that if Israel has other information, it should inform Flotilla organizers.

He responded to IDF spokesperson Major Avital Leibovich, citing intelligence reports that dangerous chemicals may be used as weapons, and that extremist passengers were heard threatening "to spill the blood" of Israeli soldiers.

According to an unnamed defense official, "The picture emerging here is that some of the flotilla participants clearly intend a violent clash," when, in fact, he knows this is a bald faced lie, an Israeli specialty, regurgitated by major media flacks, while suppressing Israel's intention either to block or confiscate vessels it interdicts and all passenger possessions as it did against Flotilla I.

According to Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, Israel may establish a special naval court to do it, Barak saying:

"There's no doubt that impounding vessels is a deterrent measure that could prevent the need to use force against future (flotilla) violations."

Destroying them works better, what Dror Feiler disclosed, saying a scuba diver examining one of the boats discovered its propeller shaft cut off. It was deliberate sabotage that can be fixed but may take time.

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Uploaded by ourjourneytosmile June 26, 2011

'From river to the sea, everyone should be free.'
~ Nabeel Raee, teacher of Jenin Freedom Theatre, traveling on the West Bank hills

We in Afghanistan sense
your loneliness.
It is hard to be born human,
and not be regarded as one.
It is hard to be a mother
who can't cook enough for meals
and laugh enough with her children.
It is hard to be a youth,
and not feel young at all.
It's hard to lose
the human capacity for happiness.
We share your anger too.

But let's not be angry for too long. Hasn't war taught us that love is needed to guide anger, the same way we've seen mothers shaking with grief but standing with grace? Don't be angry with your family and loved ones because they had snapped at you after the usual hard day. We should forgive, and try to stay as human as life allows.

Please stay together, and [do] not submit to human laws which pull humans apart. We can't expect people in the rest of the world to worry about us in Gaza or Afghanistan. It hurts more than we're willing to utter, but we'll find sufficient strength to accept that people are normally too busy to wonder if we're really such "terrible" human beings [like the Israeli government says].

It's irritating that politicians are universally well-dressed while making our world so socially distant and emotionally intolerable. We know that peace, equality and freedom will come when the politicians step aside and let the people converse. But they aren't going to step aside unless we persuade them with our dignity, like many people across the world are doing now.

In adversity, we share with you the occasional burden of being 'no-bodies', But surely, we must cling on to some meaning, cling on to the hope that God doesn't intend for us to be discarded ( like trash ), that there are such qualities as compassion, that human company exists.

To the people of Gaza and Israel, we are reaching out to you, as President Obama and world leaders keep extending their violence on their own people, and on us whom they don't see. They believe in force.

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Stephen Lendman

Nations that live by the sword, die by it. America is no exception, nor any other.

Noted trends analyst Gerald Celente said it, and it's true. In fact, America's business is war, more war, multiple wars, permanent wars, pillaging one nation after another for wealth, power, and dominance, while homeland needs go begging.

America never was and isn't now the "land of the free and home of the brave." In fact, it's become a "Let 'em eat cake" society.

Whether or not Marie Antoinette actually said it, France's 1789-99 revolution was very real, delivering guillotine justice, not promised "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité," a status now destroying what's left of American freedom, heading for the trash bin of history if not already there.

Earlier articles discussed Washington's wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen, as well as numerous proxy ones in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and at home against Muslims, Latino immigrants, and working households.

Combined, they represent a shocking contempt for rule of law justice, democratic values and humanity, notions now mere artifacts long ago abandoned to advance America's imperium.

As previous articles explained, out-of-control imperialism is heading America for tyranny and ruin. In her 1951 book, "The Origins of Totalitarianism," Hannah Arendt said it is

"never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within."

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Kathy Kelly
Antiwar

Stay Human: Convoy headed for Gaza (Vittorio Arrigoni)

Last week, newly arrived in Athens as part of the U.S. Boat to Gaza project, our team of activists gathered for nonviolence training. We are here to sail to Gaza, in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade, in our ship, The Audacity of Hope. Our team and nine other ships’ crews from countries around the world want Israel to end its lethal blockade of Gaza by letting our crews through to shore to meet with Gazans. The U.S. ship will bring over 3,000 letters of support to a population suffering its fifth continuous decade of de facto occupation, now in the form of a military blockade controlling Gaza’s sea and sky, punctuated by frequent deadly military incursions, that has starved Gaza’s economy and people to the exact level of cruelty considered acceptable to the domestic population of our own United States, Israel’s staunchest ally.

The international flotilla last year was brutally attacked and the Turkish ship fired on from the air, with a cherry-picked video clip of the resulting panic presented to the world to justify nine deaths, one of a United States citizen, most of them execution-style killings. So it’s essential, albeit a bit bizarre, to plan for how we will respond to military assaults. Israeli news reports say that their naval commandos are preparing to use attack dogs and snipers to board the boats. In the past, they have used water cannons, Taser guns, stink bombs, sound bombs, stun guns, tear gas, and pepper spray against flotilla passengers. I’ve tried to make a mental list of plausible responses: remove glasses, don life jacket, affix clip line (which might prevent sliding off the deck), carry a half onion to offset effect of tear gas, remember to breathe.

Israel Defense Forces are reportedly training for a fierce assault intended to “secure” each boat in the Freedom Flotilla 2. As passengers specifically on the U.S. boat, we may be spared the most violent responses, although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has not ruled out such violent responses and has preemptively certified that any response we may “provoke” (in sailing from international waters to a coastline that is not part of Israel) is an expression of Israel’s “right to defend themselves.” Israel says it is prepared for a number of scenarios, ranging “from no violence” (which it knows full well to expect) to “extreme violence.” We are preparing ourselves not to panic and to practice disciplined nonviolence whatever scenario Israel decides to enact.

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Morten Lodberg
Dagbladet Arbejderen

Der er trangt og mørkt i de smalle gyder i Shatila-flygtningelejren
i Beirut. (Foto: Morten Lodberg)

På en rejse gennem Libanons flygtningelejre der er hjem for den største procentdel af Palæstinensiske flygtninge udenfor deres hjemland, stødte jeg på mange unge, der stod og hang I gaderne.

Skønt stort set alle yngre palæstinensere har gået i en folkeskole og gymnasiet, er de fleste af dem arbejdsløse eller tjener kun lige til dagen og vejen gennem sort arbejde eller gennem tilskud fra udenlandske slægtninge. 

Alle smiler og er venlige, men under overfladen fornemmer man en fortvivlelse, der simpelthen bunder i magtesløshed.. Smilene blegner og skuldrene synker. når samtalen falder på deres situation og fremtid, samtalen skifter næsten altid spor eller bliver høfligt afsluttet.

I et kaffehus i det centrale Beirut mødte jeg dog en ung fyr, som jeg kort havde snakket med på mit besøg i en af lejrene. Han indvilligede modvilligt i at fortælle om sin og sin families problemer som tredjegenerationsflygtninge i Libanon.

Som et fængsel

Natten er faldet på, og jeg sidder sammen med Raed og hans venner på et fladt tag med udsigt til alle sider, taget er svagt oplyst af flakkende neonlamper, der dingler i den svage brise fra havet, som ligger gemt bag beton og osen fra tusinder af udstødninger fra trafikken.

Udsigten består af halvfærdige betonbygninger med små lys af neon eller brændende stearinlys hist og her i de sorte silhuetter, der står klart aftegnede mod den lyse nattehimmels stjernekort.

Omgivelserne virker på engang beroligende med deres ubevægelige ro, men for dem, som er født her og har boet her hele deres liv, virker det som et fængsel, der dog er hjem og alt de kender til.

Shatila-flygtningelejren, der er berygtet for de massakrer, som kristne falangister udløste mod den civile befolkning med hjælp fra israelske styrker i 1982, er hjem for en stor gruppe af unge palæstinensere.

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Paul Craig Roberts

When my book (with Lawrence Stratton), The Tyranny of Good Intentions, was published, progressives and the left wing refused to believe that the rich suffer frame-ups from prosecutorial abuse. Their response was that law is controlled by the rich and functions in their service. Only the poor and minorities suffer at the hands of the law.

The political left knew that Michael Milken was guilty, because the rich "junk bond king" financed takeovers of corporations that threw workers out of jobs. Leftists accepted the Justice (sic) Department’s fanciful claim that the Exxon Valdez oil spill was a criminal act, not an accident for which civil damages were the remedy. Leona Helmsley was guilty, because she was a rich bitch. So was Martha Stewart. The left wing was firm: all rich white people in prison are guilty, and the only reason they are in prison is that they are so obviously guilty that the system couldn’t let them off. In other words, they were so audacious in their crimes that the crimes couldn’t be covered up.

The same mentality now dominates discussions of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

Strauss-Kahn, who was at the time of his highly-publicized arrest the head of the International Monetary Fund and the expected winner of the next French presidential election, was arrested on sexual abuse and attempted rape charges on the word of an immigrant hotel maid in New York.

Whereas the police are required to respond to charges by questioning the accused, they are not supposed to make a public spectacle of him in order to create the impression that he is guilty before he is even charged. Yet DSK was arrested aboard an airliner as it was about to depart for France and portrayed by the police as a fleeing criminal. Photos were released of him in handcuffs and stripped of his business attire.

The judge refused bail to one of the West’s most high profile persons on the basis of the prosecutor’s statement that DSK would flee the country and hide out abroad. All of this quickly was passed to reporters, who obliged the prosecutors and police by portraying DSK as obviously guilty, as he was apprehended fleeing from the country.

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

It is indisputable that similar indictments could be leveled against [the US,] US-backed regimes and allies in the region. That no such indictments or arrest orders have been issued only underscores that the International Criminal Court is a pliant tool of the US and the other major imperialist powers in pursuit of “regime change.”

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi Monday as NATO’s bombardment of Libya continued into its 100th day.

In addition, the ICC handed down arrest warrants for the Libyan leader’s son Seif al-Islam Gaddafi and the Libyan regime’s intelligence chief, Abjullah al-Sanoussi.

The orders were issued in response to a 74-page indictment handed to the court in May by ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who based the charges of crimes against humanity largely on testimony of the so-called rebels aligned with NATO and claims made by Western security agencies.

While maintaining the pretense that Gaddafi and the other two charged are innocent until proven guilty, the ICC presiding judge Sanji Monageng of Botswana said on Monday that there existed “reasonable grounds to believe” that Gaddafi and his son are “criminally responsible as indirect perpetrators” of the killing and repression of civilians. She maintained that similar grounds existed to believe that Sanoussi bore responsibility for directing alleged crimes, in particular in the suppression of anti-government resistance in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi last February.

The arrest order alleges that “following the events in Tunisia and Egypt which led to the departure of their respective presidents in the early months of 2011, a State policy was designed at the highest level of the Libyan State machinery and aimed at deterring and quelling, by any means, including by the use of lethal force, the demonstrations of civilians against Gaddafi's regime which started in February 2011.”

Concretely, it charges that, “within a period of less than two weeks in February 2011, the Security Forces killed and injured as well as arrested and imprisoned hundreds of civilians.”

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Stephen Lendman

Sting operations not only entrap bogus terrorist suspects, but
worse, they wreck vital community trust.

Instead of pursuing criminals, Homeland Security, the FBI and Justice Department prosecutors embrace racist radicalization notions to entrap innocent victims despite no plot or crime except ones they invent.

By now, the familiar storyline sounds more like a film plot than criminal indictment, especially when Muslims are involved, and the most recent case repeats the same scenario used last December.

Then it involved Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, accused of plotting to attack an armed forces recruiting center. An undercover FBI agent lawlessly entrapped him, supplying an inert bomb, then stopping him after he allegedly tried to detonate it by remote control. A previous article discussed him, accessed through this link.

In fact, like dozens of others, he was maliciously ensnared by an FBI orchestrated sting operation, entrapping him to declare another war on terror victory. Innocence or guilt doesn't matter, just the illusion that America is now safer when, in fact, each conviction assures greater insecurity, leaving many to wonder who's next.

Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif (aka Joseph Anthony Davis) and Walli Mujahidh (aka Frederick Dominque) are the latest victims, a June 23 Justice Department press release headlining, "Two Men Charged in Plot to Attack Seattle Military Processing Center - Defendants Sought Firearms and Grenades to Attack Complex where Enlistees Report," saying:

Arrested on June 22, both men were "charged by criminal complaint with terrorism and firearms related charges....Unbeknownst to the defendants, the weapons were rendered inoperable and posed no risk to the public. (They) initially planned an attack on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, but later changed targets. (They) intended to carry out their attack with both grenades and machine guns."

Other bogus plots involved surface-to-air and stinger missiles, automatic weapons, bombs and other explosive devices, as well as other heavy firepower beyond the ability of ordinary people to obtain even with help. Yet indictments suggest it's simple for anyone to get them over the counter or by other means.

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Adnan Al-Daini

Leaving: “hordes” of bankers are reported to be quitting state-
owned banks because of curbs on bonuses.

Vince Cable, the British Business Secretary, is trying to shame executives of major companies in Britain to moderate their pay and bonuses. The British Guardian is reporting (23-June-2011) on a speech he made to an audience of leading city investors in which he said: “It is actually outrageous that last year median earning for FTSE 100 chief executives rose 32%, whereas the share index rose only 7% - and average employee pay rose by less than 2%, barely half the rate of inflation”. Cable added “Average pay for the bosses of the top 100 companies has leaped to 120 times that received by an average UK employee from 45 times in 1998”.

These figures are enough to enrage anyone with an ounce of humanity in their soul. So what does he proposes to do about this nasty form of capitalism? His answer: new rules to compel companies to make public the pay packets of top bankers and top executives as a multiple of an average UK employee wage. Get real Mr. Cable. They will not be shamed or deterred by exposing the obscenity of their wealth.

The dictionary defines empathy as “the capacity for imaginatively sharing in another’s feelings or ideas”. The “moneymen” have zero empathy with those struggling simply to survive the extreme hardship ordinary people are experiencing. Lest we forget, these “moneymen” are the ones who had the effrontery to demand huge bonuses to add to their massive salaries, after their institutions were rescued to the tune of billions of dollars by the taxpayer following the financial meltdown caused by their greed, incompetence, and casino-type banking.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel keeps exerting pressure to block humanitarian efforts to deliver vital to life and other essential aid to besieged Gazans.

Endorsing Israeli lawlessness, the State Department issued a June 22 "Travel Warning - Israel, the West Bank and Gaza," saying in part:

"The Department of State warns US citizens of the risks of traveling to Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and about threats to themselves and to US interests in those locations," adding "avoid all travel to the Gaza Strip."

Access the full statement through this link.

On June 23, Secretary of State Clinton added:

"We do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza. And we think that it's not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves."

Defend against whom she didn't explain or that Gazan waters belong to Palestine, not Israel. Moreover, delivering humanitarian aid is essential until Gaza's blockade is ended, a crime against humanity Washington funds and supports.

This week, "Freedom Flotilla II - Stay Human" sails to Gaza. Neither Israel nor Clinton will stop it, but they're trying by blocking its departure or planned interdiction surprises if it comes.

The US Boat to Gaza (The Audacity of Hope) is one of 10 participating ships, now blocked by Greek officials, saying the vessel is unseaworthy, a spurious claim with no validity.

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David Galland
The Casey Report

The following interview with Dr. Vieira was conducted in early June of 2011 for the subscribers of The Casey Report – but after careful consideration, we decided that the content is so important; it needs to be shared with a wider audience. Feel free to pass it along.

Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).

For more than thirty years, he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme Court of the United States, he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their employment.

He has written numerous monographs and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the county. His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective.

He is also the co-author (under a nom de plume) of the political novel CRA$HMAKER: A Federal Affaire (2000), a not-so-fictional story of an engineered crash of the Federal Reserve System, and the political upheaval it causes.

His latest books are: How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary, Constitutional "Homeland Security," and The Nation in Arms.

We first met Dr. Vieira at our Casey Research Boca Raton Summit and were sufficiently impressed to want to hear more, and to share more, of his work with readers of The Casey Report.

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Nahida Izzat, Exiled Palestinian

Why are the zionists and their NWO allies fervently waging war against Muslims and Islam?

Why are they spending so much time, money and energy to disfigure this belief system and to dehumanize its followers? Why do they loath the Qur’an and spread abhorrent lies about it?

Is it simply because the Muslim world has some rich resources which they deem theirs and they are hell bent to control and exploit?

Or is it because the Muslims constitute a large section of humanity (almost ¼) which they want to reduce and cut down in their mad genocidal plans for the future?

Though the above reasons contain some truth and carry some weight in them, but that they are not the only reasons.

The “elitists” ambition is to deface and vandalize the ideology contained within Islam, because they know that this system could potentially threaten their objectives and jeopardize their plans of total control of world economy, politics and power.

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Alex Andreou
naked capitalism

A closed Commercial Bank branch in Greece. The
graffiti reads, "Your time has come."

I have never been more desperate to explain and more hopeful for your understanding of any single fact than this: The protests in Greece concern all of you directly.

What is going on in Athens at the moment is resistance against an invasion; an invasion as brutal as that against Poland in 1939. The invading army wears suits instead of uniforms and holds laptops instead of guns, but make no mistake – the attack on our sovereignty is as violent and thorough. Private wealth interests are dictating policy to a sovereign nation, which is expressly and directly against its national interest. Ignore it at your peril. Say to yourselves, if you wish, that perhaps it will stop there. That perhaps the bailiffs will not go after the Portugal and Ireland next. And then Spain and the UK. But it is already beginning to happen. This is why you cannot afford to ignore these events.

The powers that be have suggested that there is plenty to sell. Josef Schlarmann, a senior member of Angela Merkel’s party, recently made the helpful suggestionthat we should sell some of our islands to private buyers in order to pay the interest on these loans, which have been forced on us to stabilise financial institutions and a failed currency experiment. (Of course, it is not a coincidence that recent studies have shown immense reserves of natural gas under the Aegean sea).

China has waded in, because it holds vast currency reserves and more than a third are in Euros. Sites of historical interest like the Acropolis could be made private. If we do not as we are told, the explicit threat is that foreign and more responsible politicians will do it by force. Let’s make the Parthenon and the ancient Agora a Disney park, where badly paid locals dress like Plato or Socrates and play out the fantasies of the rich.

It is vital to understand that I do not wish to excuse my compatriots of all blame. We did plenty wrong. I left Greece in 1991 and did not return until 2006. For the first few months I looked around and saw an entirely different country to the one I had left behind. Every billboard, every bus shelter, every magazine page advertised low interest loans. It was a free money give-away. Do you have a loan that you cannot manage? Come and get an even bigger loan from us and we will give you a free lap-dance as a bonus. And the names underwriting those advertisements were not unfamiliar: HSBC, Citibank, Credit Agricole, Eurobank, etc. Regretfully, it must be admitted that we took this bait “hook, line and sinker”.

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Stephen Lendman

On June 24, Haaretz writers Barak Ravid and Revital Hoval headlined, "Netanyahu: Israel to toughen conditions for Palestinian prisoners," saying:

On June 23, Netanyahu announced plans "to toughen the conditions of Palestinian security prisoners," meaning all of them wanting Palestine to be free, yet few committed crimes warranting imprisonment.

During his Jerusalem Israeli Presidential Conference, he said:

We will give them all that they deserve according to international law, but nothing beyond that," despite systematically brutalizing detainees ruthlessly.

More on that below. He added that:

"We will stop, among other things, the absurd practice in which terrorists who murdered innocent people enroll in academic studies. There will be no more 'doctors of terror' - the celebration is over."

Netanyahu spoke after the International Red Cross' request for proof that IDF soldier Gilat Shalit is alive went unanswered. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters:

The Red Cross should not get involved in Israeli security games aimed at reaching Shalit. It should take a stand that results in ending the suffering of (thousands) of Palestinian prisoners" held under brutalizing conditions.

At the same time, Shalit's father, Noam, criticized Red Cross officials for not doing more, saying:

"We demand that the Red Cross' approach be more active and decisive. I would like to believe that they would give us a sign of life from Gilad. We are conducting ongoing dialogue with the Red Cross but it has not been much help. I did not hear them condemn Hamas on its crime against Gilad. The Red Cross has been a complete failure in this affair."

Shalit's been held captive since June 25, 2006 after Hamas responded to repeated IDF attacks, including a widely reported beach shelling, killing eight Palestinians and injuring 32 others, 13 children among them. Israel denied responsibility, falsely blaming a Hamas mine despite forensic evidence proving otherwise.

In retaliation, Hamas struck an Israeli military post near Kerem Shalom crossing, southeast of Rafah, killing two soldiers, injuring several others and capturing Shalit. He's been held ever since because Israel refuses to negotiate responsibly to free him, preferring to use his captivity to vilify Hamas, what his father doesn't understand or won't admit.

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Stephen Lendman

Economist Michael Hudson calls it "Replacing Economic Democracy with Financial Oligarchy" in a June 5 article by that title, saying:

After being debt entrapped, or perhaps acquiescing to entrapment, the Papandreou government needs bailout help to pay bankers that entrapped them. Doing so, however, requires "initiat(ing) a class war by raising its taxes (harming working households most), lowering its standard of living - and even private-sector pensions - and sell off public land, tourist sites, islands, ports, water and sewer facilities" - in fact, all the country's crown jewels, lock, stock and barrel, strip-mining it of everything of worth at fire sale prices.

Why? Because the US-dominated IMF, EU and European Central Bank (ECB), the so-called "Troika," demand it as the price for bailout help that wouldn't be needed if Greece wasn't trapped in the euro straightjacket. Membership means foregoing the right to devalue its currency to make exports more competitive, maintain sovereignty over its money to monetize its debt freely, and be able to legislate fiscal policies to stimulate growth.

Instead they're entrapped by foreign banker diktats demanding tribute. They call it a "rescue." In May 2010, the Papandreou government agreed to earlier austerity in return for loans. Now they're at it again, demanding more or they'll collapse the entire economy, or so they say. And the same scheme is replicated in Ireland and Portugal. Moreover, it's heading for Spain, and potentially most of Europe and America as representative governments head closer to "financial oligarchy."

In other words, it amounts to financial coup d'état authority over sovereign governments unless popular anger prevents it, involving more than street protests or short-term strikes accomplishing nothing.

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Stephen Lendman

In America's Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson endorsed citizen action against destructive government policies. Flotilla participants are acting in the best tradition of his message, challenging Israeli repression for justice.

Suffocating besieged Gazans, Israel is committing slow-motion genocide. Global activists are determined to stop it and hold Israeli officials accountable for decades of crimes of war and against humanity - unspeakable atrocities financed by criminal co-conspirators in Washington.

In May 2010, Israeli commandos illegally interdicted six Freedom Flotilla ships in international waters, massacring nine activists aboard the Mavi Marmara mother ship.

Nonetheless, global activists are determined to break Gaza's siege, the first step to ending it altogether and freeing nearly 1.7 million people, isolated in the world's largest open-air prison.

They're coming, Freedom Flotilla II, heading to Gaza with vitally needed humanitarian aid. Planning more high seas barbarism and piracy, Israel will again interdict. In preparation, mobilized reserve combatants held drills, focusing on riot-control measures, including brute force and "surprises" if needed.

On June 19, Israeli Admiral Eliezer Marom said:

"The Navy has prevented and will continue to prevent the arrival of the 'hate flotilla' whose only goals are to clash with (Israeli) soldiers, create a media provocation, and delegitimize the State of Israel."

Besides interdiction, imprisonment awaits participants, Israeli authorities saying blockade violators will be arrested and jailed, treated harshly, then deported. All of it, of course, is lawless, including seizure of humanitarian supplies and personal belongings like Flotilla I was pillaged, the way pirates have done it for centuries.

Israel is a rogue terror state. Activists know the risks. They're coming anyway and will keep coming, no matter what Israel plans.

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Stephen Lendman

Nothing reveals Washington's imperial agenda better than its global empire of bases. Sixty-six years post-WW II, America maintains dozens in Germany, Japan, Italy, and South Korea alone.

In total, known Pentagon bases way exceed 1,000, as well as perhaps hundreds of other shared and secret ones in about 150 countries on every continent despite no enemies anywhere justifying them.

In his 2006 book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic," Chalmers Johnson discussed the known numbers at the time by size and branch of service. He also highlighted the fallout, including oppressive noise, pollution, environmental destruction, expropriation of valuable public and private land, and drunken, disorderly, abusive soldiers committing rape, murder, and other crimes, often unpunished under provisions of US-imposed Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs).

Currently, Pentagon bases infest Middle East/North African/Central Asian countries. In fact, at least 88 dot Iraq alone, including:

■ permanent, city-sized Main Operating Bases (MOBs); for example, Balad Air Base in northern Iraq covers 16 square miles plus another 12-mile security perimeter; these are large and permanent, have extensive infrastructure, command and control headquarters, accommodations for families in combat-free areas, hospitals, schools, recreational facilities, and nearly everything found in US cities; similar MOBs include Camp Adder in southern Iraq, Al-Asad Air Base in the west, and Victory Base Complex, compromising nine bases, including Camp Victory around Baghdad's International Airport;
■ Forward Operating Sites (FOSs), also major but smaller than MOBs; and
■ Cooperative Security Locations (CLSs) - smaller facilities to preposition weapons, munitions, and modest troop numbers.

These type bases span Afghanistan, besides ongoing expansion and construction of major facilities for permanent occupation.

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John Pilger
New Statesman

In Britain as in America, the object of training professionals in everything from banking to the media is to produce a class of “managers” who instinctively muffle dissent — even if no one tells them to do so.

One of the most original and provocative books of the past decade is Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt (Rowman & Littlefield). "A critical look at salaried professionals," says the cover, "and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives." Its theme is postmodern America but also applies to Britain, where the corporate state has bred a new class of Americanised manager to run the private and public sectors: the banks, the main parties, corporations, the BBC.

Professionals are said to be meritorious and non-ideological. Yet, in spite of their education, writes Schmidt, they think less independently than non-professionals. They use corporate jargon - "model", "performance", "targets", "strategic oversight". In Disciplined Minds, Schmidt argues that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge but "ideological discipline". Those in higher education and the media do "political work" but in a way that is not seen as political. Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen. "Taking sides" is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the "built-in ideology of the status quo".

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Philip Giraldi
Antiwar

Americans have to make a hard decision on what kind of country they want to have.

The issue of Israel is of critical importance to the antiwar movement, as frequenters of this website are surely aware. This is because Israel and its lobby in the United States have succeeded in so intertwining their interests with those of the United States that whenever Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sneezes four hundred congressmen say “Gesundheit!” What Israel does has consequences for every American citizen, and not only because Tel Aviv is the largest recipient of US economic and military assistance. It is indisputable that Israel and its friends in the White House and Defense Department played a major role in creating the lies and generating the momentum in the drive to war against Iraq in 2002, a conflict that continues to claim American casualties and which has left Iraq in ruins. Now the push is on to “do something” about Iran. There have been a number of bills in Congress that stop just short of declaring war on the Mullahs and there are signs that the Israeli government might be planning a military action before the end of the summer. Does anyone doubt that the United States would immediately be drawn into such a conflict, with disastrous consequences in terms of a terrorist response and energy prices that would skyrocket? It would be a particular misfortune in that there is no actual evidence of the alleged casus belli that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, the US is not threatened by anything Tehran does or could possibly do, and John Citizen has absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by Washington going to war.

There were two stories last week that illustrate just how bad the situation has become in the wake of the virtual capitulation by President Barack Obama during Netanyahu’s triumphal May visit to Washington, the first time in recorded history that a small nation with less than eight million citizens has subjugated a much larger country with a population of more than 310 million.

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Stephen Lendman

On November 6, 1971, a remorseful John Kerry told Washington, DC's WRC-TV that

"I gave back, I can't remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals,"

protesting against America's Vietnam War involvement.

On April 22, 1971, Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), saying in part:

He came to discuss an investigation involving "over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans," who admitted committing Southeast Asian war crimes, explaining:

"stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, bl(ew) up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages (like) Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravages of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

Calling it a "Winter Soldier Investigation," he said "there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America." Linking America's involvement "to the preservation of freedom....is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy...."

"We saw firsthand how money from American taxes was used for a corrupt dictatorial regime....We rationalized destroying villages....to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very cooly a My Lai," and many others like it. "We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals." [...] "We have come here....because we believe this body can be responsive to the will of the people (saying) we should be out of Vietnam now...."

Adding much more, he condemned America's illegal, immoral war, wanting no further part in it. That was then. This is now. Since 1985, Kerry represented Massachusetts in America's Senate, chairing the Foreign Relations Committee he testified before in 1971.

In fact, one of many congressional millionaires, he's the Senate's richest approaching $300 million in net worth as heir, through his wife, to the HJ Heinz fortune.

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B'Tselem
B'Tselem

Home demolition in Al Dakika, near Hebron (PCHR photo)

Civil Administration demolished more Palestinian homes this year than in all of last year. Last week alone, 33 residential structures were demolished in the Jordan Valley and southern Hebron hills.

In the past week, Civil Administration inspectors, accompanied by soldiers and Border Police officers, demolished 33 residential structures in the Palestinian communities Fasayil, al-Hadidiyeh, and Yarza, all in the Jordan Valley, and in Khirbet Bir al-'Id, in the southern Hebron hills. These were home to 238 persons, 129 of them minors. According to B'Tselem’s figures, since the beginning of 2011, the Civil Administration has demolished 103 residential structures in Area C, most of them tents, huts, and tin shacks, in which 706 persons lived (including 341 minors). [These figures include only residential structures that were demolished and not those used for livestock, storage, and baking].

This is a sharp increase in home demolitions in Area C. In 2010, by comparison, the Civil Administration demolished 86 residential structures. In 2009, the figure was 28. See full figures.

Israel continues to control all aspects of Palestinian life in Area C, including planning and building. Yet few Civil Administration outline plans have been made for Palestinian communities, and they do not enable any construction or development beyond what already exists, making it impossible for Palestinians to build legally in these areas.

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Meg Walsh
MIFTAH

I am standing on a bridge between two worlds—one in which the powerful are silent, and the other in which the powerless are screaming, yet ignored.

It feels like my surroundings are rapidly closing in on me. The metal bars in which I am enclosed are ugly and the ground is littered with trash. Desperate children are trying to sell me gum and candy. Candy is the last thing I want right now; I want to escape. Bodies are pressing up against me as people struggle to make it through the revolving gate that only lets a few through at a time. If I am not aggressive, I will never get through. A teenage boy is getting yelled at by a soldier for some unknown reason, and a father is denied although his wife and children are granted passage. An old man in the car lane is taking out his groceries one by one from his trunk as a young soldier stands inspecting, finger on the trigger. Cars are backed up and people are getting impatient. I am angry.

I must pass through the checkpoint every time I wish to enter Jerusalem from Ramallah, even though east Jerusalem is Palestinian territory. I have to answer the familiar questions such as "What were you doing in the West Bank?" or "Do you have any Palestinian friends?" I hate being forced to lie. Having Palestinian friends should not be looked at as criminal. And I hate that they almost – almost make me feel that I am truly doing something wrong. Most of all, I hate the way the Palestinians are treated, and although I am uncomfortable, chances are I will get through without much problem. Their reality is much different. Any random checkpoint encounter could mean harassment, detainment, or worse. It seems to mostly depend on the mood of the soldier.

I had underestimated the anger and anxiety that I would feel in these scenarios. Some people around me appear visibly upset while others just look bored. Because of the freedom that I have enjoyed my entire life, I refuse to accept this dehumanizing process. As I stand there, I vow to never adjust, to never become desensitized to this. For me, that would signal complicity in the face of the injustice that is occurring: a complete domination of one group of people over another—a betrayal of humanity. Threat levels are determined by the color of your ID card and the language that you speak. I will not thank the soldiers when they return my passport. I will not grant legitimacy to their role by acting like they are doing me a favor. I will not be forced to equate human rights with privilege.

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Ellen Brown
Web of Debt

Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit Two Zero Two
attached to Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek. (Photo by
Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Nuzzo.)

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. . . . We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”
~ Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953

In a Wall Street Journal editorial on June 8 bemoaning the failure of the Obama stimulus package, Martin Feldstein wrote:

Experience shows that the most cost-effective form of temporary fiscal stimulus is direct government spending. The most obvious way to achieve that in 2009 was to repair and replace the military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan that would otherwise have to be done in the future. But the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department.

You can’t make this stuff up. The most obvious way to stimulate the economy is to replace military equipment? And the Obama stimulus had nothing for the Defense Department? When veterans’ benefits and other past military costs are factored in, the military now devours half the U.S. budget. If military spending is such a cost-effective stimulus, why have the trillions poured into it in the last decade left the economy reeling?

The military is the nation’s largest and most firmly entrenched entitlement program, one that takes half of every tax dollar. Even if “national security” is considered our number one priority (a dubious choice when the real unemployment rate is over 16%), estimates are that the military budget could be cut in half or more and we would still have the most powerful military machine in the world. Our enemies (if any) are now “terrorists,” not countries; and what is needed to contain them (if anything) is local policing, not global warfare. Much of our military hardware is just good for “shock and awe,” not needed for any “real and present danger.”

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Stephen Lendman

Two recent studies documented it, both discussed below. In May 2011, Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies (NECLMS) headlined, "The 'Jobless and Wageless' Recovery from the Great Recession of 2007 - 2009: The Magnitude and Sources of Economic Growth Through 2011 (Q I) and Their Impacts on Workers, Profits, and Stock Values."

From 2007 - 2009, private sector wages and salaries declined sharply, while unemployment, underemployment, and their median and mean durations skyrocketed.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER: the official US business cycle arbiter), the recession ended in June 2009. Public opinion polls sharply disagree. Two by ABC in May and June 2010 found 88 - 90% of respondents rating the economy "not so good" or "poor." They should know. They feel it.

A May 2010 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed 76% of respondents saying America's recession continued, 62% believing it wouldn't end for one or more years. Hardly a testimony to "recovery."

In November 2010, a Heldrich Center for Workforce Development study found 89% of respondents saying the economy wouldn't recover for another year or longer, and 56% said three years, if ever. Moreover, almost 90% believed healthy employment levels would take many years to achieve or perhaps never.

In March 2011, an AP/Viacom poll of 18 - 24 year olds found 75% calling the economy "approximately poor, somewhat poor, or very poor." Only 9% said it was "very good or somewhat good."

Despite NBER's declaration, US households disagree with good reason because they're unemployed, underemployed, underpaid, living through hard times, and see little assistance from Washington or state capitals helping them when it's most needed.

For them, the Great Recession, in fact, is a Great Depression, perhaps America's greatest given dire levels of growing misery for millions.

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Stephen Lendman

On June 14, London Independent writer Robert Fisk headlined, "I saw these brave doctors trying to save lives - these charges are a pack of lies," saying:

The Khalifa monarchy "started an utterly fraudulent trial of 48 surgeons, doctors, paramedics and nurses, accusing them of trying to topple the tin-pot monarchy of this Sunni minority emirate."

One of many Bahrain articles addressed this topic, accessed through this link.

Fisk said he witnessed medical heroism firsthand, "drenched in their patients' blood, desperately trying to staunch the bullet wounds of pro-democracy demonstrators, shot in cold blood" by state security force thugs, a Khalifa monarchy specialty.

"The idea that (these doctors) are guilty of (state crimes) is not just preposterous. It is insane, a total perversion, (the) total opposite (of) truth....(Bahrain is) a Saudi palatinate, a confederated province of Saudi Arabia, a pocket-sized weasel state from which all journalists should in future use the dateline: Manama, Occupied Bahrain."

On June 15, Independent writer Richard Hall headlined, "Bahrain 'to sue over Independent reporting,' " saying:

The Khalifa monarchy "commissioned a UK-based law firm to file a case against The Independent for its reporting on the crackdowns on (internal) protests...."

Mainly directed against Fisk's article, it also claims that:

"using columns, features and news to publish misinformation in repeated attacks on our people and rulers amounts to libel and will be treated as such in accordance with the law."

The monarchy, of course, spurns international law and its own constitution, reigning daily terror since mid-February on pro-democracy supporters. In fact, every imaginable barbarity is being inflicted, including Obama administration supported cold-blooded murder, mass arrests, detentions, torture, and bogusly charging medical providers helping victims with baseless crimes.

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Joseph Kishore & Barry Grey
WSWS

Mother and daughter raped & murdered by Obama's ‘rebels’
in Misurata

Obama [has] proclaimed the right to launch military action against any country whenever US “interests and values” are at stake.

As the American military expands its campaign against civilian population centers, killing at least 19 people in a single incident on Monday, Senators John Kerry (Democrat of Massachusetts) and John McCain (Republican of Arizona) have introduced legislation that would retroactively authorize the Obama administration’s war.

More than 90 days into the war, the administration is now in open violation of the War Powers Act, which requires congressional authorization for military action within 60 days, and, failing that, the withdrawal of US forces within the next 30 days. Obama has flouted even this minimal requirement for oversight of executive war-making.

Amidst suggestions from some members of House of Representatives, primarily Republicans, that they might move to cut off funding for the war, Kerry and McCain are spearheading a drive to obtain a vote by the Democratic-controlled Senate sanctioning the military aggression. A vote is expected some time this week or next. According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Kerry-McCain resolution has broad support from Democrats as well as many Republicans.

The resolution provides a legal fig leaf for the bombing of Libya to continue for up to one year. Of particular significance is its language, which asserts the broadest possible basis for US military operations.

It expressly authorizes the use of the US armed forces “in support of United States national security policy interests” in Libya. The aim is to set a precedent for expanding the basis for US military interventions even beyond the preemptive war doctrine laid down by the administration of George W. Bush.

That doctrine repudiated the post-World War II framework of international law, which incorporated the principles affirmed in the Nuremburg trials of Nazi leaders, outlawing war as an instrument of policy and permitting it only when required for self-defense.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which formed the basis for the Nuremberg trials, expressly prohibits war as “an instrument of national policy” (and therefore also “national security policy interests”) except in matters of self-defense. This pact remains a binding treaty under international law, and therefore is incorporated in US law as well.

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Medea Benjamin

“I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

These words will guide me and other passengers aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, a fleet of nine boats scheduled to set sail for Gaza on June 25 from various Mediterranean ports. While the Israelis try to label us provocateurs, terrorists and Hamas supporters, we are simply nonviolent advocates following the teachings of Dr. King. We refuse to sit at the docks of history and watch the people of Gaza suffer.

The U.S. boat, which will carry 50 Americans, is called The Audacity of Hope. It is named after Obama’s bestselling political autobiography in which he lauds our collective audacity of striving to become a better nation. But I prefer to think of our boat as part of Dr. King’s legacy. He, too, talked about audacity, about his audacious faith in the future. “I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isness’ of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him,” Dr. King said.

Our intrepid group has its moral compass aimed at the way things ought to be. Our cargo is not humanitarian aid, as some of the other ships are carrying, but thousands of letters from the U.S. people, letters of compassion, solidarity and hope written to people living in the Gaza Strip. We travel with what Dr. King called “unarmed truth and unconditional love.”

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Khalid Amayreh

The King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah Bin Abdel
Aziz (L) and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

Ethnic cleansing in its various manifestations constitutes a crime against humanity.

In the final analysis, more attention ought to be given to what Israel is doing, not just what Israeli leaders are saying.

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Jordan's King Abdullah II voiced alarm and frustration over Israel's determination to throttle every promise for a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian Israeli conflict.

"I am not convinced that they (Israel) are interested in a two-state solution... They are not interested in peace with the Arabs, because unless they do the two-state solution, that can't happen."

The king lamented the futility of the peace process, saying he is the most pessimistic he has ever been in 11 years.

"2011 will be, I think, a very bad year for peace. Invariably when there's a status quo, usually what shakes everybody up is some sort of military confrontation, at which point we all come running and screaming to pick up the pieces. Nobody wins in a war."

When asked about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's latest visit to Washington, King Abdullah said,

"Netanyahu basically came to say, 'it is my way or the highway.'"

King Abdullah doesn't mince words and he can't be accused of harbouring extremist attitudes toward Israel and the peace process.

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Stephen Lendman

On March 18, Chicago Tribune writers Matthew Walberg and Dan Hinkel headlined, "Northwestern at odds with star professor," saying:

"Cook County prosecutors sparked a media firestorm nearly two years ago when they subpoenaed notes, recordings, and even grades of (his) students (because of their work proving) Anthony McKinney had wrongly been convicted of a 1978 murder."

The battle sparked a feud between Northwestern and Protess, whose Medill Innocence Project uncovered numerous wrongful murder convictions, culminating when former Illinois Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on capital punishment in 2000 after 13 prisoners were found innocent and released.

On January 11, 2003, two days before leaving office, he then cleared death row, commuting sentences for 163 men and four women to life imprisonment. He also declared a moratorium on future executions, now banned after Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation last March, saying it's impossible "to create a perfect, mistake-free death penalty system."

Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism's Protess, also Medill Innocence Project Director, was

"a superstar (investigative) professor, leading teams of students (to uncover 13) wrongful death penalty convictions....One was just hours from execution."

Medill Dean John Lavine, however, suspended him by email, with no further comment about his future. In fact, he was effectively fired, Lavine privately suggesting he wouldn't be welcomed back.

It was a textbook case of academic lynching, affecting a distinguished professor deserving high honors, not denigration and banishment.

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Ralph Nader
Nader.org

Congress has appropriated no money for this war, already costing nearly a billion dollars, nor has the lawless Obama asked for it because he knows there will be strong bi-partisan resistance.

The meticulous Harvard Law Review editors should be rolling over in their footnotes. The recidivist violations of constitutional and statutory requirements by their celebrated predecessor at that journal - Barack Obama has reached Orwellian dimensions in the war against Libya.

You see, the widespread daily bombing of Libya, the strict naval blockade of Muammar Gadhafi-controlled Libya, the destruction of Gadhafi's family compound and tent encampment in the desert--killing his son and three grandchildren--and the deployment of special forces inside Libya is not a "War." It is in the Obama White House's evasive nomenclature just a "time-limited, scope-limited military action" Can you find that phrase in the Constitution?

If Obama used the word "War," he would have a more difficult time explaining to Congress and the American people (three out of four oppose this war) why he did not (1) seek a declaration of war under Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, or (2) seek Congressional authorization for appropriated funds to further the war with our NATO co-warriors, or (3) comply with the deadlines of the War Powers Resolution. He threw all three lawful restraints on his Presidential unilateralism overboard.

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Stephen Lendman

Early morning June 18, lung cancer claimed 62 year old UK anti-war activist Haw after a long battle, a man London Independent contributor Mark Wallinger called "the conscience of the nation grown quiescent."

[VIDEO] His family left a message, saying: "He left us in his sleep and in no pain, after a long, hard fight," ending three months of treatment in Germany. His long vigil, in fact, contributed to his poor heath. It also led to a divorce and largely separated him from his seven children.

After others stopped protesting America's Afghan and Iraq wars, Brian was steadfast against his own government's complicity. In fact, from June 2001, months before 9/11, he camped out in London's Parliament Square against the UN's appalling economic sanctions. They got former UN representative for Iraq's Oil and Food program Denis Halliday to resign for being asked to commit the equivalent of genocide, killing 5,000 children monthly.

Haw, in fact, documented horrific Gulf War depleted uranium birth defects, repeated lies and evasions of US and UK leaders, and imperial lawlessness waging unconscionable wars. Resolutely he remained tenacious against injustice, championing peace and love.

On his own, his decade-long presence pressured his government relentlessly. In return, authorities hounded, arrested, and assaulted him. In 2002, the Westminster City Council petitioned Britain's High Court for an injunction to remove him, claiming he blocked the pavement. The Court, however, declined, ruling his presence wasn't unreasonable.

In 2003, the House of Commons Procedure Committee recommended a law change, prohibiting unlicensed protests on security grounds. He never left.

In 2005, after Tony Blair called him a nuisance to get rid of, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) passed, legislation enacted against him, making it illegal to protest within a one km radius of Parliament without police permission.

Nonetheless, he successfully argued that his vigil predated parliamentary terrorism, winning the right to continue protesting against Britain's lawless participation in Washington's imperial wars.

Preaching "Love....peace....justice....for all," he camped out night and day every day, in good and bad weather, in spite of everything authorities tried to harass, deter, and banish him.

Using a megaphone, banners, placards, homemade signs, peace flags, photos, and slogans, his message resonated in Westminster and worldwide, a testimony to his heroic spirit, dogged presence against war, and refusal to quit until illness forced him.

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Ray McGovern
Antiwar

Stuffing my backpack before setting out to board The Audacity of Hope, the U.S. boat to Gaza, I got a familiar-sounding call from yet another puzzled friend, who said as gently as the words allow, “You know you can get killed, don’t you?”

I recognize this caution as an expression of genuine concern from friends. From some others—who don’t much care about Gaza’s plight and/or who do not wish us well—the words are phrased somewhat differently: “Aren’t you just asking for it?”

That was the obligatory question/accusation at the end of a recent interview of me that was taped for a BBC-TV special scheduled to air this coming week as we try to break—or at least draw attention to—Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza and the suffering it inflicts on the people there.

I also have been cautioned by a source with access to very senior staffers at the National Security Council that not only does the White House plan to do absolutely nothing to protect our boat from Israeli attack or illegal boarding, but that White House officials “would be happy if something happened to us.” They are, I am reliably told, “perfectly willing to have the cold corpses of activists shown on American TV.”

I mention this informal warning for the benefit of anyone who may have harbored hope that the U.S. government would do something to protect us American citizens from the kind of violence used by the Israelis against last year’s flotilla. It seems best to be up-front and realistic about what to expect.

Two millennia ago, “Civus Romanus Sum”[1] automatically won lawful treatment and free passage for Roman citizens in trouble. It was a matter of pride and a benefit of being part of a powerful empire. Today, the contrast could hardly be starker. It is sad fact that “Civus Americanus Sum” would engender ridicule, rather than respect, if invoked in an attempt to secure basic rights for those of us working for justice for the Palestinians.

Americans also face the reality that they are put in harm’s way by the view held by millions around the world—and especially in the Middle East—that the United States is partly responsible for the injustices and the humiliations that Palestinians face daily.

So I want to turn around the question/warning to me about safety and direct it to fellow citizens who will not be aboard The Audacity of Hope: “You know you can get killed, don’t you?”—if the U.S. government continues to enable Israel in keeping a million and a half Gazans in a densely populated open-air prison with few prospects for a normal life. It is a no-brainer. The longer that goes on the more likely it becomes that many more Americans will become the target of terrorists seeking to inflict some pain on the great power that stands behind Israel whatever it does.

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Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government’s word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.

While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.

A “conspiracy theory” no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy. Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government’s explanation and that of its media pimps.

For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.

In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.

When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”

In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.

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Stephen Lendman

Israelis Blocking Medical Care in Gaza: A Palestinian wo-
man waits at the Erez crossing. (Time/I. Zaydah/Reuters)

[Part I] On March 25, 2008, Time magazine writer Tim McGirk headlined "Israelis Blocking Medical Care in Gaza," saying:

"Since Gaza is denied (most everything under siege), many complicated surgeries are no longer done there." Those permitted abroad for them, like Bassam al-Wahedi, endure a gauntlet through Israel's "security maze."

Entering Egypt through Erez Crossing,

"(h)e fumbled along tunnels, steel doors that opened and slammed as he passed along, entered a strange cylinder that fired a whoosh of air at him before he finally reached a large hall with an Israeli soldier sitting inside a bulletproof glass booth."

He showed his permit for scheduled surgery that afternoon.

"(T)hree plainclothed Israelis with pistols and walkie-talkies led him past cages with growling dogs to a room where he was strip searched and interrogated by a man who identified himself as a Shin Bet captain."

He pressured al-Wahedi to spy for Israel, saying his permit would be cancelled if he refused.

"He wanted me to go back to Gaza and collaborate for two weeks," [al-Wahedi explained,] "and if they liked what I did, I could come to Israel and have my eye operation with the best doctor in Tel Aviv."

Angry and frustrated, he refused.

"Contacted by Time, Shin Bet denied approaching (him) to collaborate, (saying he was sent back) because of his involvement in 'activities dangerous to the state.' "

Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (PHR - I) believes everyone

"has the right to health in its widest possible sense, as defined by the principles of human rights, social justice and medical ethics."

As a occupying power, international law obligates Israel to provide and/or do nothing to obstruct it. PHR-I explained at the time that Shin Bet denied dozens of other patients vital care for refusing to collaborate. One with severe heart trouble, in fact, was told to "go back and die in Gaza." It's common practice, but Israel denies it.

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Stephen Lendman

America's imperial wars are for wealth, power, and unchallenged dominance, never for humanitarian concerns or liberation, notions Washington contemptuously spurns.

Yet rhetorical posturing claims otherwise. In April 1986, Ronald Reagan arrogantly said US air and naval forces

"launched a series of strikes against (Gaddafi's) headquarters, terrorist facilities, and military assets, (carefully) targeted to minimize casualties among the Libyan people with whom we have no quarrel. From initial reports, our forces have succeeded in their mission."

Wrong! The BBC reported "at least 100 people died after USA planes bombed targets in" Libya. In fact, over 100 were killed, mostly civilians, including Gaddafi's infant daughter when his personal compound was bombed, trying to kill him.

In addition, dozens were wounded, including two of Gaddafi's young sons. The French, Swiss, Romanian and Iranian embassies were damaged. So were Japanese and Austrian diplomatic residences. Dozens of residential buildings were also damaged or destroyed. Libya's Central Hospital reported up to 100 people needing treatment for serious injuries, including infants.

Planned months in advance, the mission was one of many Reagan war crimes. Moreover, it succeeded only in arousing mass anger according to an April 17, 1986 Los Angeles Times report, saying:

Washington's attack "sparked worldwide protests....that erupted into violence as demonstrators burned American flags and effigies of President Reagan in Pakistan and attacked US facilities in several capitals."

Today, Obama is attacking Libya, committing far greater war crimes than Reagan, yet arrogantly claimed last March that he:

"ordered our armed forces to help protect the Libyan people from the brutality of (Gaddafi with an operation of) limited scope and specific purpose," adding "it's in our national interest to act. And it's our responsibility."

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Adam Morrow & Khaled Moussa al-Omrani
InterPressService

Star of David tattoo on Libyan "rebel"

Developments in Libya have raised fears among Egyptian analysts and political figures of the possible break-up of the North African nation into two warring halves. To support the assertion, they point to longstanding Israeli designs - supported by the western powers - to balkanise the Arab states of the region.

"Libya could be split in two, with Gaddafi staying on in the west of the country and a revolutionary government loyal to the western powers in control of the east,"

Mohamed al-Sakhawi, leading member of Egypt's as-yet-unlicensed Arabic Unity Party, told IPS.

For three months, Libya has suffered internationally sanctioned air-strikes by the western NATO alliance, launched with the stated aim of supporting the ongoing popular uprising against the Gaddafi regime. Revolutionary forces based in Ben Ghazi now hold most of the country's eastern half, while forces loyal to Gaddafi continue to control the country's western half from the capital Tripoli.

Yet the fact that NATO - despite its overwhelming air superiority - has so far failed to dislodge the Gaddafi regime has led many local observers to question the western alliance's intentions.

"The western campaign against Libya wasn't undertaken to protect human rights or foster democracy," said al-Sakhawi. "It was launched with the aim of breaking Libya up politically so as to prevent the unification of three revolutionary Arab states - Egypt, Libya and Tunisia - which together might pose a threat to Israeli regional dominance."

Walid Hassan, international law professor at Alexandria's Pharos University, agreed for the most part, saying that NATO - with Israeli encouragement - "hopes to replace Gaddafi with rulers loyal to the west in advance of breaking the country into small statelets, as they are doing in Iraq.

"The primary objective is to weaken the Arab states of North Africa, which, if they ever united, would represent a potential threat to Israeli and western interests," Hassan told IPS. "Libya's significant oil wealth, of course, constitutes a secondary reason for the intervention."

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Professor Denis G. Rancourt

The university executives do not have the authority to subvert the University of Ottawa Act, 1965. Indeed, the executives have a duty and a responsibility to uphold the Act.

Canadian universities have institutional independence guaranteed by a Supreme Court of Canada ruling. This independence from governments and corporations was explicitly granted to universities in order to protect the academic freedoms of its professors and students.

At the University of Ottawa this established institutional independence is used to subvert lawsuits from mistreated students, and to shield the university from sanctions related to its own violations of its professors' academic freedoms. Such is the perversion of legalese in the service of unprincipled administrations.

In addition, observers have been concerned about the influence of private corporate donations; which are never made transparently and which go into the protected slush fund known as "University of Ottawa Foundation".

This becomes of direct concern when the private donations are overtly tied to specific research chairs, to new research themes, or to newly tailored academic programs.

This is why university senate (the highest institutional authority on all academic matters) recently questioned the university administration's unilateral campaign to create a two-for-one graduate degree in law (LL.M.) and exchange program with the University of Haifa, Israel. (See all posts on this matter HERE.)

In addition to being an obvious degree inflation scheme ("two distinct LL.M. degrees after only one year of studies") -- which is becoming too common as a marketing device at the university -- the Haifa deal came with a tied scholarship thanks to "generous support" from the Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman Foundation.

It was therefore the duty of senate to examine any conditions tied to the Schwartz-Reisman scholarship that might harm academic integrity and institutional independence in view of any risks to academic freedom.

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Stephen Lendman

A recent New York University School of Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) report[.pdf] is titled, "Targeted and Entrapped: Manufacturing the 'Homegrown Threat' in the United States."

Post-9/11, Muslims have been ruthlessly targeted. Paid informants have infested mosques and their communities to entrap them. As a result, over 200 were persecuted on bogus terrorism related charges. Despite "tout(ing) these cases as successes in the so-called war against terrorism....former (FBI) agents, local lawmakers," and many others "have begun questioning the legitimacy and efficacy" of entrapping innocent victims for political advantage.

CHRGJ discussed several high-profile cases, using well-paid informants often performing services in return for reduced charges or sentences they face, a powerful incentive to cooperate.

Nearly always, Washington invents plots foiled in the nick of time, entrapping innocent victims with no intent to commit crimes. America's media headline them. The public feels safer with no idea they've been scammed or that blameless citizens and residents are falsely charged.

In fact, calling Muslims "potential threats" or "homegrown terrorists" violates core constitutional freedoms. Nonetheless, it's now common law enforcement practice assuming that:

● Muslims are more likely to become terrorists;
● they're increasingly "radicalized" and compelled to commit violence in the name of Islam; and
● counterterrorism policies should identify and stop them before they act.

In fact, research contradicts these notions. Moreover, relying on them violates fundamental human rights long ago discarded for political and judicial expediency. As a result, Muslims most often face terrorism charges because "they hate us" or other spurious reasons.

Muslim men (and "Muslim looking people) are especially vulnerable. In addition, Muslim culture and religious practices are also cited as indicators of potential terrorism. As a result, they're maliciously targeted, surveilled, investigated, entrapped, charged, unjustly prosecuted, and convicted.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Over a week ago I emailed to the well- known blogger Philip Weiss, an interesting post written by Nahida (AKA The Exiled Palestinian).

In her article, Jewish Voice For Peace? Really?? , Nahida expresses some sharp criticism of Jewish anti-Zionist groups, forcefully arguing that “Anti-Zionist Jewish organisations are trying to silence Palestine's supporters, to frame the debate” and to “steer the course of the liberation” of her homeland.

Since Weiss runs the most popular Jewish progressive blog, offering an invaluable source of information regarding Israeli crimes, I thought he might be willing to address Nahida’s criticism, and to discuss it with his many progressive Jewish followers.

Weiss did not post Nahida’s article on his blog, but his discussion with me was brave and honest[1], and to a certain extent he affirmed Nahida’s criticism, admitting that it was indeed ‘Jewish self-interest’ that he himself was ‘concerned with’.

Weiss had the following to say on the matter:

“I believe all people act out of self-interest. And Jews who define themselves at some level as Jews -- like myself for instance -- are concerned with a Jewish self-interest. Which in my case is: an end to Zionism. A theory of political life based on altruism or concern for victims purely is doomed to fail.”

Openly and bluntly, Weiss confirmed what many of us have been saying for a very long time: it is not solely ‘altruism’ or concern for Palestinians victims that motivates some of the most prominent Jewish campaigners and organisations, but it is also, as Weiss freely admits, ‘Jewish self-interest.’

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Stephen Lendman

12-year-old Sami Abu Jazar is carried into an ambulance
after being shot by the Israeli army in Rafah, southern
Gaza. (Photo: AP)

Under siege, conditions are very uncertain with no assurance Israel or Egypt will accommodate vital needs, including life or death ones.

[Part II] Under siege, Israel continues to strangle Gaza. Poverty and unemployment are extremely high. Over 70% of the population requires humanitarian aid. Virtually everything is in short supply. Except for minimal amounts of some fruits, vegetables and flowers, exports are prohibited. Israel prevents access by sea and air. It's blockade is illegal but persists because Western powers and regional neighbors allow it.

Egypt's recent Rafah Crossing opening falls short of meeting Gaza's needs. On June 16, Gaza Gateway listed 10 reasons why:

1. Crossings to Egypt remain limited, several hundred daily while 10,000 wish to travel. Moreover, it's for designated people only, not goods. Those allowed enter through Kerem Shalom Crossing.
2. The situation on both sides of the border is uncertain and unstable, including whether or not the opening will continue and under what conditions.
3. Rafah doesn't enable travel or movement of goods to the West Bank. Moreover, Gaza ID holders can't enter through Jordan.
4. As explained above, most exports are prohibited.
5. Except for approved international organization projects, importing construction materials is prohibited.

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Khalid Amayreh
Palestinian Information Center

Dennis Ross: Netanyahu’s man in the White House

Palestinians at all levels have the right to ask: where are we heading? When will we extricate ourselves from American lies and Israeli deception? And above all, when will we ever learn from the thousands of pitfalls and blunders we have faced ever since we got involved in this scandalous peace process that only gave us more hateful Jewish colonies, more ethnic cleansing, more apartheid and more land theft?

So Dennis Ross is back in town in occupied Palestine. He is succeeding the failed U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell who proved himself too cowardly, too obsequious and too pliant especially in the face of Israeli arrogance and insolence.

Mitchell thought that by employing nice words and habitually invoking America's iron-clad commitment to Israel, whether it goes right or goes wrong and whether its continues to build illegal settlements on occupied land or not, Israel's would probably make some steps, even reluctant ones, on the road to peace.

However, the shocking insolence (and utter disrespect) he often received during his multiple visits to occupied Palestine at the hands of Israeli leaders and officials, seemed to have convinced the obviously gutless and spineless diplomat to quit it if only to retain his personal dignity and not be accused of anti-Semitism.

Mitchell told his equally helpless superior, President Obama, of his impressions. Obama listened and nodded his head, which could be a gesture of desperation and helpless indignation vis-à-vis the powerful Israeli lobby which controls the American government, congress and much of the media.

Nearly totally at loss as to what ought to be done to restrain Israeli rejectionism and intransigence, Obama decided once again to dispatch Dennis Ross, the once-tried and oft-proven venomous Zionist reptile to occupied Palestine, hoping that he will succeed in convincing the weak Palestinian leadership to succumb to the whims and vagaries of Jewish fascism especially those voiced ad nauseam by clearly psychopathic Jewish supremacists and megalomaniacs such as Benyamin Netanyahu and his cohorts both in Washington and Occupied Jerusalem.

In truth, the last thing in the world that Ross is capable of doing is working toward a true and just peace in Occupied Palestine. In recent statements, he was quoted as saying that in order for peace to prevail, the Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

For those who can't read behind the headlines, this is a clear allusion to another Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe.

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Kathy Kelly
Antiwar

In Late June 2011, I’m going to be a passenger on “The Audacity of Hope,” the USA boat in this summer’s international flotilla to break the illegal and deadly Israeli siege of Gaza. Organizers, supporters and passengers aim to nonviolently end the brutal collective punishment imposed on Gazan residents since 2006 when the Israeli government began a stringent air, naval and land blockade of the Gaza Strip explicitly to punish Gaza’s residents for choosing the Hamas government in a democratic election. Both the Hamas and the Israeli governments have indiscriminately killed civilians in repeated attacks, but the vast preponderance of these outrages over the length of the conflict have been inflicted by Israeli soldiers and settlers on unarmed Palestinians. I was witness to one such attack when last in Gaza two years ago, under heavy Israeli bombardment in a civilian neighborhood in Rafah.

In January 2009, I lived with a family in Rafah during the final days of the "Operation Cast Lead" bombing. We were a few streets down from an area where there was heavy bombing. Employing its ever-replenished stockpile of U.S. weapons, the Israeli government sought to destroy tunnels beneath the Egyptian border through which food, medicine, badly-needed building supplies, and possibly a few weapons as well were evading the internationally condemned blockade and entering Gaza.

Throughout that terrible assault, Israel pounded civilians in Gaza, turning villages, homes, refugee camps, schools, mosques and infrastructure into rubble. According to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem[.pdf], the attack killed 1,385 Palestinians, nearly a quarter of them minors, with an uncountable number more to succumb, in the months and years following, to malnutrition, disease, and suicidal despair, the consequences of forced impoverishment under a still continuing siege that salts Gaza’s dreadful wounds by preventing it from even starting to rebuild.

All I could feel at the time was that the people in the Gaza Strip were horribly trapped, almost paralyzed.

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John Glaser
Antiwar

Not only may laws limiting war become obsolete or disregarded, but America’s legal, geographical jurisdiction will extend to the entire globe.

[The CIA’s use of mercenaries to fight covert wars is an essential component of US foreign policy as old as the CIA itself. It effectively evades the Constitutional requirement that only allows Congress to declare war, as well as effectively concealing the vast majority of these “interventions” from public view. In fact the American pubic was largely unaware of these secret CIA wars prior to the Irangate scandal in1987. In this case, Reagan and the CIA defied Congress by continuing an illegal war against Nicaragua, which they funded by the secret illegal sale of weapons to Iran, an enemy nation. And, as was later learned, cocaine trafficking by the CIA-backed Contras. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89), the CIA funding and training of Mujahideen freedom fighters led by Saudi businessman Tim Osman (his CIA name – most Americans know him as Osama bin Laden) was also well-publicized. - The Faultlines]

The Obama administration responded to pressure this week regarding the legality of American military involvement in Libya by claiming that the War Powers Resolution does not apply. Citing a limited support role in the NATO intervention, the President decreed the Vietnam-era legislation which requires Congressional approval for any military engagement surpassing 60 days irrelevant in the current context.

The House of Representatives passed an amendment last Monday onto a military appropriations bill that would prohibit any funding of the war in Libya, which will have cost $1.1 billion by September. Additionally, a group of ten representatives have filed a formal lawsuit[.pdf] against President Obama and outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the grounds that the intervention in Libya is illegal and unconstitutional. Still, the administration refuses to ask permission from Congress and continues to maintain, as State Department legal advisor Harold Koh said, “We are acting lawfully.”

The administration’s defiance in this regard notes an expanded authority ascribed to the Executive Branch, unrestricted by traditional checks and balances in war-making powers. And the legal position they are taking – that supporting, planning, and conducting attacks from the air does not amount to the “hostilities” specified by the War Powers Resolution – is not very strong. Indeed, the law requires the President to seek Congressional approval “in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced: (1) into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances …”

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David Swanson
War Is A Crime

The arguments made to "legalize" war, torture, warrantless spying, and other crimes by John Yoo and Jay Bybee and their gang are looking rational, well-reasoned, and impeccably researched in comparison with Obama's latest "legalization" of the Libya War.

Here's the key section from Wednesday's report to Congress:

"Given the important U.S. interests served by U.S. military operations in Libya and the limited nature, scope and duration of the anticipated actions, the President had constitutional authority, as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive and pursuant to his foreign affairs powers, to direct such limited military operations abroad. The President is of the view that the current U.S. military operations in Libya are consistent with the War Powers Resolution and do not under that law require further congressional authorization, because U.S. military operations are distinct from the kind of 'hostilities' contemplated by the Resolution's 60 day termination provision. U.S. forces are playing a constrained and supporting role in a multinational coalition, whose operations are both legitimated by and limited to the terms of a United Nations Security Council Resolution that authorizes the use of force solely to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under attack or threat of attack and to enforce a no-fly zone and an arms embargo. U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors."

Whatever the president's "foreign affairs powers" may be, they do not, under the U.S. Constitution, include the power to launch "military operations" or "hostilities" or "wars." Nor has the distinction between "military operations" that involve what ordinary humans call warfare (blowing up buildings with missiles) and "hostilities" that qualify for regulation under the War Powers Resolution been previously established. This distinction is as crazy as any that have come out of U.S. government lawyers in the past.

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David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

I hope I never write another piece on Sarah Palin again.

The woman is a disease, and I choose my words carefully there. She is everything that is wrong with America, and indeed, that is the only reason I’m writing this at all. This essay is altogether far more a commentary on Governor Quit’s America than it is on the woman herself. Our national problem is Palinosis far more than it is Palin.

There have always been people like Sarah Palin, and presumably there always will be. The two real questions are why anyone cares about them and, most astonishingly, why anyone would seriously contemplate putting them in charge of a country of 300 million people.

Palin the person is back in the news again right now (and notice that she makes sure never to really be absent) for two reasons. First, because she’s launched this wild bus tour which reminds one of those nested Russian dolls where you open each one up and there’s another inside. This tour is a ‘family vacation’, inside of which is Palin’s public service mission of educating the rest of us about American history, inside of which is a faux flirtation with presidential politics, inside of which is a relentless, endless series of publicity stunts masquerading as a human being, inside of which is an utterly shameless money-grubbing cash cow, inside of which is a frightened little girl whose insecurities could make George W. Bush look like a paragon of self-confidence in comparison. At the end of the day, she has become essentially the Paris Hilton of politics. She is famous for being famous, and she’s masterful at that one thing and that one thing only.

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Stephen Lendman

Despite a deepening global depression, Washington, Wall Street and America's media remain largely in denial, for how much longer isn't certain as hard times get tougher for growing millions worldwide.

Tough enough, in fact, for angry demonstrators to strike and protest austerity measures across Europe in Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Georgia, and elsewhere, as well as others scattered across America against budget cuts, tax and tuition hikes, and layoffs when workers more than ever need jobs.

Trends expert Gerald Celente calls it "the greatest depression," warning months ago that when anger erupts, unrest will cause governments to "take draconian measures to prevent total economic collapse and panic." Nonetheless, he expects massive bank failures, bank runs, and a bank holiday, preventing easy access to deposits as dire conditions worsen.

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