Stephen Lendman

Please, God, let them love me like they used to...

Except for bankers, war profiteers, other corporate favorites, and America's super-rich, it's hard imagining why anyone supports a president backing policies harming so many at home and abroad.

The good news perhaps is that growing numbers are awakening, the latest June 7 - 9 Zogby International poll showing recent lows in Obama's popularity:

● 56% disapprove of his job as president; 43% approve;
● 39% say he deserves reelection; 52% want change;
● congressional approval also dropped to 17%, a testimony to mass public disdain; and
● given America's direction, waging multiple imperial wars at the expense of vital homeland needs, expect an angrier public reaction ahead as pain levels rise.

Human need always trumps other concerns, especially when vast national resources aren't used to relieve it, many millions left on their own sink or swim when they most need help. War profiteering and other corporate priorities come first.

However, Main Street America is mired in depression. High unemployment and underemployment are unaddressed. For millions, depravation is extreme. Double digit inflation is rising. One in six Americans face hunger, yet Obama and lawmakers demand austerity when stimulus is needed.

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered his speech on the future of the
alliance in Brussels on Friday. Former NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer is seated next to Mr. Gates. (Reuters)

Speaking with the arrogance of a feudal lord calling his vassals to order, Gates noted the danger of a “two-tiered alliance,” in which some countries pulled their weight in combat, but most did not.

The speech delivered by outgoing US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to a NATO conference in Brussels Friday amounted to a political ultimatum from American imperialism to its weaker rivals and co-belligerents in Europe. These countries must dramatically increase the money and manpower they devote to US-led military operations or the United States will go its own way and NATO will face a “dim, if not dismal, future.”

Gates delivered the speech less than a month after President Obama spelled out his new military doctrine in his speech on the Middle East, sweeping aside past limitations on the use of military force and declaring that any country could be the target of US attack, depending only on whether US interests, as defined by the White House, were at stake. The perspective was one of indefinite warfare to establish neocolonial regimes in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond.

Now the secretary of defense was telling the European powers that they had to reorganize their own societies to provide the resources required for an enormous expansion of militarism. Otherwise, they face losing out on the booty—the oil that is to be plundered from Libya, and, more generally, access to raw materials and strategic territory.

While praising the NATO countries for contributing troops to the counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, Gates declared that the Afghan war “has exposed significant shortcomings in NATO—in military capabilities, and in political will.” NATO has had difficulty providing sufficient resources—not just troops, but also “crucial support assets such as helicopters, transport aircraft, maintenance, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and much more.”

He pointedly warned against NATO countries reducing their deployments in Afghanistan, saying “we cannot afford to have some troop-contributing nations to pull out their forces on their own timeline…”

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Stephen Lendman

At risk is more war, perhaps a general one involving Russia, China, and other major powers globally engaged in the unthinkable, a possible nuclear confrontation endangering humanity.

[Part I] Previous articles discussed America's permanent war agenda, culture of violence, imperial lawlessness, daily atrocities, blood-drenched history, glorification of killing in the name of peace, and support for the world's worst despots, as well as contempt for democratic values, rule of law principles, and human and civil rights abroad and at home.

Obama continues the odious tradition, governing repressively while waging global imperial wars, brazenly claiming humanitarian intentions he doesn't give a damn about, never did, and won't tolerate.

Americans foot the bill and pay the price. Global millions suffer. Earlier articles addressed America's wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as proxy ones in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and at home against Muslims, Latino immigrants, and working households.

Part I of this article discussed Obama's Libya terror bombing, support for the despotic Bahraini monarchy, and alliance with Israel's slow motion genocide against millions of Palestinian civilians - brutalizing, killing, and immiserating them for decades, spurning peace and independence for occupation, repression and violence.

Washington provides financial aid, weapons, munitions, and political support, Obama more generously than any of his predecessors, showing his contempt for Palestinian liberation, moral values, and rule of law justice.

This article considers prospects for more war, notably in the Middle East against Yemen, Syria, and perhaps Iran, possibly escalating into general war that could, in fact, spin out of control with nuclear weapons introduced openly for the first time since WW II.

At stake literally is humanity and/or a fit world to live in - militarized, repressed, terrorized, and impoverished except for the privileged few running it their way, a prospect too dire to imagine but possible unless committed grassroots pressure stops it.

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Patrick Mac Manus

Formand for Horserød-Stutthof Foreningen, Anton Nielsen. Han og
talsmanden for Den Faglige Klub, Viggo Toften-Jørgen er begge til-
talt for at støtte terror.

Onsdag den 15. juni og torsdag den 16. juni klokken 9.30 i retssal 15 bliver Horserød-Stutthof Foreningen sat på anklagebænken i Københavns Byret.

I den tilpassede presse under den danske besættelse bliver modstanden betegnet som ’terrorisme’, de henrettede betegnet som ’terrorister’.

Dette skete stadig blot få dage inden Denmarks befrielse.

Som nærmest ironisk gentagelse af historien indledes nu en retssag mod Horserød-Stutthof Foreningen, mod efterkommerne af besættelsens konflikt.

Der er rejst tiltale for overtrædelse af straffelovens § 114 b, nr. 1 og 2. Efter disse bestemmelser er det strafbart at indsamle og yde økonomisk støtte til grupper, der ”begår eller har til hensigt at begå terrorhandlinger.”

Kriminalisering

Civilsamfundet mister i stigende grad sin beskyttelse mod statsmagten. Tilvæksten i hemmelige procedurer i retsplejeloven afspejler de nye vilkår. Retssikkerheden og ytringsfriheden er truet af svævende og elastiske bestemmelser, der baner vej for en høj grad af statslig vilkårlighed.

Sociale og politiske løsningsmodeller trænges i baggrunden af en sikkerhedspolitisk strategi med kriminalisering, øget strafudmåling, udvidede politimæssige beføjelser og indskrænkninger i borgeres retsbeskyttelse.

Der er tidligere sket domfældelse i to retssager vedrørende økonomisk støtte til modstands- eller befrielsesbevægelser. I retssagen mod ’Fighters & Lovers’ stadfæster Højesteret den 25. marts 2009 Østre Landsrets domfældelse for forsøg på indsamling af økonomisk støtte til modstandsbevægelser i Colombia og Palæstina.

Et år senere sker domfældelsen af en talsperson for Foreningen Oprør for medvirken til forsøg på at yde økonomisk støtte til FARC i Colombia og den palæstinensiske befrielsesbevægelse PFLP. Sagen bliver afgjort med betinget fængselsstraf af Københavns Byret den 15. marts 2010.

Demokratiske vilkår og menneskerettigheder er ikke opstået ved et skrivebord. Historien igennem århundreder og på alle kontinenter er blevet drevet frem af folkelig modstand og forandring. Al forandring er skabt gennem konflikt, fra slavernes tid til i dag. Oftest har retssystemerne søgt at forhindre og fordømme en sådan historisk proces.

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Nahida Izzat, Exiled Palestinian

Who Wags Whom?
That is the Question!

"In a redemptive state the Jewish People will reassume their more natural role as the head, leading the world to a new age"

"The natural inclination of the Jewish People is to elevate themselves to the level of mind and leadership, which naturally uplifts the entire world"

"Israel is associated with the three upper sefirot of the intellect. Though the head must always be connected to, and at times, draw inspiration and guidance from the emotions, its main task and responsibility is to lead"

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Stephen Lendman

On June 9, Haaretz writer Barak Ravid headlined, "Palestinian leadership divided over plan to seek UN recognition," saying:

Senior Palestinian Authority (PA) officials are "sharply divided over the unilateral move to seek" UN General Assembly recognition in September. Abbas wants it. Others don't "because they believe (it) could do more harm than good to their cause," hurting Israel perhaps but not helping themselves.

Those opposed include Prime Minister Salam Fayyad (a former World Bank/IMF official closely tied to Israeli/Washington/Western interests), former Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, and former Palestinian UN envoy Nasser al-Qudwa.

Ravid said al-Qudwa's "opposition is particularly significant because he is considered the most experienced Palestinian official (in) dealing with the United Nations." He's also a possible presidential candidate.

At issue is strong Israeli/Washington opposition in contrast to most other countries. Last March, in fact, Israel told UN Security Council members and other prominent EU countries it will act unilaterally if the General Assembly grants de jure membership in September inside 1967 borders, 22% of historic Palestine.

At the same time, Rafael Barak, Director General of Israel's Foreign Ministry, cabled over 30 Israeli embassies, telling them to lodge high-level diplomatic protests against Palestinian efforts for recognition, claiming (without justification that) doing so violates Oslo and may cause internal violence.

Foreign Ministry sources also said no response decision was taken on if de jure membership is granted. Some sources suggest it will refuse recognition and more, including annexing West Bank settlements, all East Jerusalem, closed military zones, restricted tourist locations, and Israeli commercial developments, leaving isolated urban areas and worthless scrub land for Palestine.

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William T. Hathaway

From the Book RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War by William T. Hathaway. Published by Trine Day 2010.

Better to go down resisting. Better yet to change it while we still can.

"That must be them." Petra took one hand off the steering wheel and pointed to a group of soldiers about two hundred meters away, standing along our road next to a high chainlink fence topped with barbed wire.

Traffic was light, but Petra said, "I don't want any other cars around." She pulled off the road and stopped. "Get everything ready."

I crawled into the back of the car and opened the rear hatch to give access to the interior and to raise the license plate out of sight. We wore caps and sunglasses to be less recognizable.

When the road was empty, she started driving again. We approached the soldiers, who were walking in the grass, stopping often to pick things off the ground and put them in sacks they were dragging.

"There's Rick." Petra slowed and drove along the shoulder. A man turned his head at the sound of our car crunching gravel, dropped his bag, and ran towards us with a slight limp. While the guards shouted for him to stop, I thrust my arm out, grabbed Rick's hand, and pulled. He lunged forward and dived into the open hatch, banging his leg on the edge. A guard was swearing and groping at the holster on his belt. Rick scrambled in, knocking off his glasses, and Petra floored the gas. Our spinning tires hurled gravel behind us then squealed over the pavement. The car slid halfway across the road before Petra brought it under control, and we sped away.

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Stephen Lendman

[Part II] Wikipedia says US presidential doctrines state "key goals, attitudes, or stances for United States foreign affairs." Except for James Monroe in 1823 asserting a declaration of regional dominance, later ones reflected Cold War and imperial politics since Harry Truman.

On March 29, eight New York Times contributors asked "Is There an Obama Doctrine," preceded by an introduction saying his previous day America's role in Libya speech asserted unilateral authority to intervene abroad "when our interests and values are at stake," an illegal position under international and constitutional law, unmentioned in the debate.

On April 13, Times writer Peter Baker headlined, "Obama Puts His Own Mark on Foreign Policy Issues," saying:

"If there is an Obama doctrine emerging, it is one much more realpolitik than his predecessor's, focused on relations with traditional great powers and relegating issues like human rights and democracy to second-tier concerns."

In fact, no US president in recent memory gave a damn about either or anything humanitarian.

Unmentioned was Obama's belligerent lawlessness, waging four imperial wars and numerous proxy ones, spending record amounts on militarism while homeland needs go begging. In fact, former White House chief of staff (now Chicago mayor) Rahm Emanuel calls it being "cold-blooded about the self-interests of your nation," no matter the death, destruction, and misery toll taken to achieve them.

They, not major media boilerplate, define his doctrine, an out-of-control agenda for American dominance, using missiles, bombs, ground troops, and assassination squads to indiscriminately slaughter civilians, including women, children, and elderly, virtually anyone in raging wars he opposed as a candidate.

In addition, he endorses torture and extraordinary renditions as official US policies, as well as backing the world's worst despots, ones not fit to be in polite or any other company.

Notably they include the odious Saudi monarchy and Bahrain's Al Khalifa one, committing daily atrocities against nonviolent protesters, doctors and nurses treating them when injured, and anyone potentially threatening their despotic chokehold on people wanting to be free.

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Anonymous

Se lo advertimos, ¿creían que engañarían a todo el mundo, todo el tiempo? Parece que no han entendido nada. Sus continuos esfuerzos por acallar la libertad de expresión y la creciente ola de indignación contra su sistema corrupto resultan completamente inútiles.

Cuanto más complacientes se vuelven hacia la plutocracia y sus absurdas exigencias, más expuestos quedan ante la opinión pública. Cuanto más pague el pueblo por la avaricia criminal de una pequeña elite intocable, más obvia se revelará su incapacidad para liderar el cambio que se les exige. Cuanta más fuerzas usen contra personas pacíficas y desarmadas, más deslegitiman su propia autoridad. Por cada desinformación corporativa que ustedes o sus socios capitalistas emiten o publican, crecen cientos de canales ciudadanos para asegurar que la verdad sea escuchada.

El pueblo ha evolucionado. Ahora somos una red distribuida que combina sus conexiones sociales con la tecnología, compartiendo información como una conciencia global. Sus intentos por dividirnos y alienarnos ya no serán efectivos nunca más. Al contrario, comienzan a revelar su estrategia de desgaste a la vista de todos.

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Stephen Lendman

For months, courageous Bahrainis protested peacefully against the Al Khalifa monarchy's repressive brutality, corruption, and discrimination, as well as unemployment, poverty, and other unaddressed social justice issues.

The response has been ruthless state terrorism against anyone challenging regime control, no matter how lawless, barbaric, and unresponsive to basic human rights and needs.

Since the mid-February uprising began, America's media largely ignored it, especially extreme repression Washington supports. Complicit in helping a key ally, Bahrain is home to the Navy's Fifth Fleet, strategically located in the heart of the Persian Gulf.

On June 6, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) highlighted the mistreatment of doctors and nurses, explaining their arrests, detentions, torture and upcoming military trials for doing their job.

Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) President Stephen Soldz spoke publicly saying:

"We cannot be silent. Many of our members are health providers. The government of Bahrain arrested nearly 50 doctors and other health providers, many of whom have been tortured. Their 'crime' is refusing to let injured protesters die and informing the world press about the abuses they witnessed."

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Tariq Ali
London Review of Books

● Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 by Rodric Braithwaite
Profile, 417 pp, £25.00, March 2011, ISBN 978 1 84668 054 0

#9679; A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan by Artemy Kalinovsky
Harvard, 304 pp, £20.95, May 2011, ISBN 978 0 674 05866 8

Rodric Braithwaite, British ambassador to Moscow between 1988 and 1992, was in Russia when Soviet troops crossed the Oxus into Afghanistan in 1979. His fascinating account of the Soviet intervention is based almost entirely on Russian sources: interviews with participants, information from veterans’ websites and from archives, although those of the GRU and the KGB remain mostly sealed. Each page reads like a warning to Afghanistan’s current occupiers. Braithwaite wrote two devastating articles in the Financial Times opposing the Iraq War and the atmosphere of fear created by New Labour propaganda but Afgantsy is written in a very different register. The Soviet intervention is seen as a tragedy for both the Russians and the Afghans.

The principal aim of Soviet foreign policy in the region had always been to preserve Afghanistan as a neutral state. Lenin was too orthodox a Marxist to believe that tribesmen and shepherds could make the leap forward to socialism: ‘Herdsmen can’t be transformed into a proletarian mass.’ His successors were not at all pleased when, in 1973, Muhammad Daud toppled his cousin King Zahir Shah in a palace coup and proclaimed a republic. Moscow had enjoyed warm relations with the king, a genial old buffer who presided over the tribal confederation that constituted the Afghan state. The Soviet leaders were even less pleased when in April 1978 a group of communist army officers staged a coup and called it a revolution. A few months earlier, two rival communist factions, Parcham (Flag) and Khalq (People), whose members were mostly university graduates and urban intellectuals, along with a few dozen officers and their clansmen in the armed services, had with great reluctance reunited as the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Parcham followed an orthodox pro-Soviet line; Khalq was more independent of the Soviet Union and less in thrall to classic Marxist notions about the prerequisites for a transition to communism. Noor Mohammed Taraki, a Khalqi, was appointed general secretary, with Babrak Karmal of Parcham as his deputy. Hafizullah Amin, another leading Khalqi, was elected to the Politburo, but only after a struggle. Parcham claimed he was a CIA agent, recruited during his time as a student at Columbia.

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Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research

[USS Liberty, dry docked in Malta after being torpedoed by an Israeli Motor Torpedo Boat on the 8th. of June 1967, whilst in international waters off the Gaza strip. 25 died from this attack.]

Surviving Sailors Break Their Silence 40 Years After Israeli Attack on US Navy Ship

Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts in June 2008 and is based entirely on documented sources and on interviews with the survivors. Today marks 44 years since this heinous war crime was not only committed but has been covered up ― by all succeeding administrations and mainstream media. It is a "must read" for those concerned about an attack on America; the needless slaughter of American citizens.

June 8, 1967 — the fourth day of the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan — was a beautiful day in the Mediterranean. The USS Liberty was in international waters off the coast of Egypt. Israeli aircraft had flown over the USS Liberty in the morning and had reported that the ship was American. The crew, in close proximity to the war zone, was reassured by the presence of Israeli aircraft. But at 2:00 p.m. sailors sunbathing on the deck saw fighter jets coming at them in attack formation. Red flashes from the wings of the fighters were followed by explosions, blood and death. A beautiful afternoon suddenly became a nightmare. Who was attacking the USS Liberty and why? The attack on the Liberty was an attack on America.

The Liberty was an intelligence ship. Its purpose was to monitor Soviet and Arab communications in order to warn both Israel and Washington should the Soviets enter the war on behalf of its Arab allies. The Liberty was armed only with four machineguns to repel boarders. Its request for a destroyer escort had been denied.

The assault on the Liberty is well documented. With no warning, the Liberty was attacked by successive waves of unmarked jets using cannon, rockets and napalm. The attacking jets jammed all of the US communications frequencies, an indication they knew the Liberty was an American ship.

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

A Norwegian F-16 fighter jet ready for another bombing raid over
Libya. (Photo: Forsvaret/Lars Magne Hovtun)

The relentless bombardment of Tripoli over the past 48 hours represents a new stage in one of the most naked acts of imperialist aggression since the wars of conquest launched by Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s.

Warplanes struck the Libyan capital 62 times between Tuesday and early Wednesday morning. The daylight air strikes underscored that Libya, its air force and air defense system devastated by earlier attacks, remains virtually defenseless in the face of the US-NATO blitzkrieg.

At least 31 people were killed and dozens wounded. The bombings have demolished civilian government buildings, while damaging homes, hospitals and schools. Their intended collateral effect is to terrorize Tripoli’s population of 1.7 million.

The sharp escalation in the bombing campaign comes just days after the deployment of British and French attack helicopters, widely seen as the prelude to a direct ground invasion.

Meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, a summit of NATO foreign ministers agreed to continue the 10-week-old bombing campaign “as long as necessary,” while US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, pushed for other NATO member states, including Germany, Poland, Turkey and Spain, to join in the bombing of the oppressed African nation.

In an earlier period, such air attacks were described as “terror bombings.” They were carried out by Hitler’s Luftwaffe against defenseless populations—in Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, in Warsaw in 1939, in Rotterdam in 1940 and in Belgrade in 1941—with the aim of annihilating the targeted country’s armed forces, destroying its state and breaking the morale of all those opposed to foreign occupation.

In North Africa, similar campaigns of aggression and terror were waged by Mussolini’s fascist regime against Ethiopia and—then, as now—Libya.

There is little to distinguish these earlier acts of aggression—for which leaders of the Third Reich were prosecuted at Nuremberg—from the present US-NATO war. In both their aims and methods, they are largely similar.

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Stephen Lendman

The real victims of the global financial crisis are the poorest of
the poor. Photo: AFP

In the 1960s, economist Arthur Okum began calculated America's Misery Index by adding the unemployment and inflation rates for a sense of public pain or lack of it in good times.

In May, it hit a record high exceeding 25, surpassing the earlier June 1980 21.98 top, based on how both measures were then calculated, not today's methodology, manipulated to hide painful truths.

At issue is:

● over 22% unemployment, including discouraged workers and the so-called "birth-death model" estimate of net non-reported jobs from new businesses minus losses from ones no longer operating; during hard times, painful truths are hidden by creating non-existent jobs out of whole cloth instead of subtracting them to reflect fewer, not additional new businesses;
● double digit inflation, including soaring food, energy, healthcare, college tuition, and other costs omitted or understated in core figures;
● rising poverty, more than one in seven affected according to way understated Census Bureau figures, using threshold measures developed 40 years earlier;
● record numbers on food stamps;
● record measures of food insecurity - Feeding America.org reporting one in six American facing hunger;
● predicted record 2011 numbers of home foreclosures, estimated at 1.2 million after one million lost last year;
● record homelessness numbers up to 3.5 million on any given night, needing refuge wherever they can find it or face life on city streets; and
● other measures of worsening conditions during a Main Street depression, affecting Europe, Japan and elsewhere like America.

Economic recovery? Explain how to millions unemployed or underemployed, foreclosed homeowners, bankrupt business owners, impoverished legions, and many others food insecure at a time US and European leaders enforce austerity when massive social stimulus is needed.

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Stephen Lendman

It's a smoke screen to introduce new censorship provisions that violate First Amendment freedoms, without which all others are at risk.

During his presidential campaign, Obama pledged to "(s)upport the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."

In fact, he failed to deliver on every major promise made, including the last frontier of press freedom, protected from censorship and corporate control.

Post-9/11, both he and Bush expanded intrusive government surveillance, including Internet monitoring of personal communications. On April 1, 2009 the Senate introduced two bills, endangering a free and open Internet - S. 773: Cybersecurity Act of 2009 and S. 778 to establish a White House cybersecurity czar.

Both measures included provisions to give federal authorities unprecedented Internet control by:

● federalizing critical infrastructure, shifting power away from providers and users to Washington; and
● letting the president shut down Internet traffic for alleged "national security" reasons or during a claimed "emergency."

Neither measure passed. Had they, personal privacy and security would have been compromised through one provision alone - by giving the Commerce Secretary access to all relevant data relating to critical infrastructure networks without restriction.

In other words, privacy and judicial review protections guaranteed under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Privacy Protection Act, and financial privacy regulations no longer would apply.

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