Stephen Lendman

In this game, the house always wins. Bipartisan complicity stacked the deck against millions of working households, needing to know that political Washington is scamming them.

The end result is the banana republicanization of America. American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter: 1862 - 1910) coined the term (his fictional Republic of Anchuria) in his book, "Cabbages and Kings."

It refers to a country (often politically unstable and/or repressive) where a small percent of the population has a disproportionate share or wealth and power, where ordinary people are exploited, often persecuted, and where profits are privatized while working households bear the burden of debt.

It's also a kleptocracy run by criminals, complicit with corporate thieves who bribe them to get their way. It's corrupt, rotten to the core gangsterism, run for personal gain, both sides profiting at the public's expense.

It's in plain sight in Washington, the heart of darkness, where bipartisan crooks are destroying personal freedoms, democratic values, and general welfare to grab everything for themselves and their corporate partners.

Previous articles discussed it, accessed through the following links here, here and here.

Read them and weep, or better still, react by refusing any longer to put up with bipartisan corruption, stealing us blind for the Big Monied interests that own them. Obama was made president to play ball, a Democrat engineering what no Republican would dare, at the same time duplicitously claiming populist credentials.

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Gilad Atzmon

"It (immigration) was a politically motivated attempt by ministers to transform the fundamental make-up and identity of this country (Britain). It was done to destroy the right of the British people to live in a society defined by a common history, religion, law, language and traditions." - (Melanie Phillips, as quoted by mass murderer, Anders Breivik, in his manifesto)

Melanie Philips, a rabid Zionist and the author of “Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within” is not happy to be singled out by Andres Breivik in his 1500 pages manuscript. Are they suggesting that “my writing provoked the mass murder of some 93 Norwegians?” she wonders righteously on her blog. I guess that Phillips knows the answer, as much as she knows how to play with words. But I will use this opportunity to reiterate it for her, and for the rest of us -- there certainly is a clear and strong resemblance between Breivik’s views and Philips’ writing. The most obvious and immediate comparison is that both oppose Islamic immigration and multiculturalism of course, but it goes much further in that both identify the enemy within the ‘left political circuit’.

Breivik cites Philips’ take on Labour's immigration policy: "It was done to destroy for ever what it means to be culturally British and to put another 'multicultural' identity in its place."

I should clearly state here that I do not think that Philips provoked Breivik’s murderous inclination. I also believe that Phillips is fully entitled to express her thoughts and ideas. Yet, it is surely reasonable to suspect that Phillips , amongst others, might have contributed to inspiring Breivik, ideologically and spiritually.

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Stephen Lendman

Among them is waging war on truth, Western managed news calling lawless imperial wars liberating ones. No wonder John Pilger says journalism is the first casualty of war, adding:

"Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent censorship (and deception) that goes unrecognised in the United States, Britain and other democracies; censorship by omission, whose power is such that, in war, it can mean the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries...."

In their book, "Guardians of Power," David Edwards and David Cromwell explained why today's media are in crisis and a free and open society at risk. It's because press prostitutes substitute fiction for fact. News is carefully filtered, dissent marginalized, and supporting wealth and power substitutes for full and accurate reporting.

It's a cancer, corrupting everything from corporate-run print and broadcast sources, as well as operations like BBC and what passes for America's hopelessly compromised public radio and TV. They put out daily managed and junk food news plus infotainment, treating consumers like mushrooms - well-watered and in the dark.

During wars, in fact, they cheerlead them, reporting agitprop and misinformation no respectable journalist would touch.

On the Progressive Radio News Hour, Middle East/Central Asia analyst Mahdi Nazemroaya, in Tripoli, said some journalists also perform fifth column duties, collecting intelligence and locating targets to supply NATO bombing coordinates, notably civilian targets called military ones.

In a July 28 email, he said tell listeners that "NATO is trying to negotiate with the government in Tripoli." More on that below. He added that they're also

"planning a new stage of the war against the Libyan people through (predatory) NGOs and fake humanitarian missions."

A likely UN Blue Helmet occupying force also, paramilitaries masquerading as peacekeepers Gaddafi controlled areas won't tolerate.

NATO, in fact, calls civilian targets legitimate ones, including one or more hospitals, a clinic, factories, warehouses, agricultural sites, schools, a university, one or more mosques, non-military related infrastructure, a food storage facility, and others.

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Justin Raimondo

Following the money trail

What do we really know about Anders Behring Breivik, the Norway mass murderer who killed in the name of his anti-Muslim ideology, nearly a week after his horrific rampage? We know what he did, and why he did it: he left behind not only a 1,500 page manifesto, in which he pours out his hatred of Muslims, but also a day-by-day diary that details his elaborate preparations, in which he claims his crime was nine years in the making.

That’s an awfully long time for a "lone wolf" to keep his plans to himself, yet the head of Norway’s intelligence agency was quick to state Breivik acted alone – this is spite of Breivik’s own contention, in his online "book," that two other cells of his "Knights Templar Europe" exist. Furthermore, according to Breivik, the Knights were founded at a London meeting in 2002, at which his British "mentor" and representatives from across the continent were in attendance.

What we don’t know, however, is how he did it. Oh, he gives us a detailed account of his obsessive preparations, including how much protein he added to his weightlifting regimen. We know he set up a front company, Breivik Geofarm, supposedly devoted to the growing of tubers, which is how he managed to get the fertilizer that was a key component of his car bomb. What we don’t know, however, is where money came from.

Breivik hadn’t had much income recently, as detailed here – yet he seemed to have some assets. The exact source of these assets is unknown. According to him, he "earned his first million kroner as an entrepreneur at the age of 24." Yet a number of news accounts flatly contradict this, notably the Sydney Morning Herald, which reports:

"Government records suggest that despite his management qualifications, his early attempts at business were a failure until he established Breivik Geofarm in eastern Norway for the cultivation of ‘’vegetables, melons and tubers.’ The business would have given Breivik access to nitrogen-based fertilizer – one of the main ingredients of a fertilizer bomb."

Yet "Breivik Geofarm" was, according to Breivik, just a "front" company, a legal shell meant to shield his activities from prying eyes. We don’t know that he ever grew a single tuber.

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Julio Godoy

"The attacks in Oslo and Utøya “surely [are] not the last acts of terror in the name of the armed fight against Islam”.

Common to the informal North Atlantic neo-fascist coalition is the hatred of Islam, the radical opposition to immigration and to multicultural society, the belief in white racial supremacy and in Christian fundamentalism, the unconditional support of Israel, sympathies for the U.S. ‘Tea Party’ movement, and contempt for democratic institutions.

Sympathetic to these neo-fascist groups are extreme right wing parties functioning in practically all European countries, from the Norwegian Progress Party, the Sweden Democrats, the True Fins, and the Danish People’s Party, to the French Front National (FN), and the Italian Lega Nord. The perpetrator of the massacre on Jul. 22 was a long-standing member of the Norwegian Progress Party.

Further evidence of the pervasiveness of extremist right wing views is the fact that 14 of the 27 countries represented in the European Parliament have at least one MP who defends xenophobic views and calls for stern anti-immigration policies.

While some of the parties – such as the FN in France, the Freedom Party in Austria, and the Lega Nord in Italy – have a relative long history, most of them were founded in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in reaction to the growing multiethnic character of European communities and to immigration, especially of Muslims.

Leaders of all these parties and groups, including the Norwegian Progress Party, are trying to disassociate themselves from the mass murders in Oslo and on Utøya Island.

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Stephen Lendman

Co-founded (with Meir Marglit) and directed by Jeff Halper, the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) "is a non-violent, direct-action organization established in 1998 to resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories."

ICAHD also helps rebuild homes. In addition, it resists "land expropriation, settlement expansions, by-pass road construction, policies of 'closure' and 'separation,' " as well as destruction of agricultural land and crops. It also works for peace, equity, and ending Israel's illegal occupation.

Access its web site through this link.

It estimates over 24,800 West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza houses demolished since 1967 (4,247 during Cast Lead, according to the UN).

It classifies demolition types as:

● punishment for actions associated with the structures (about 8.5%);
● administrative for lacking building permits (about 26%);
● land-clearing/military demolitions for any reason, including achieving IDF goals or accompanying extrajudicial assassinations (about 65.5%); and
● other undefined reasons.

In fact, Israel's demolition and displacement policies are serious international law breaches for any reason. Nonetheless, they continue as official state policy to steal Palestinian land for Israelis, an issue Western media ignore, as well as other Israeli crimes of war and against humanity.

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Robert Morgan

[Photo: Humanitarian intervention being prepared for delivery in Libya... ]

US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks expose some of the real reasons and diplomatic tensions behind NATO’s ongoing bombardment of Libya. Far from initiating a “humanitarian” intervention to protect civilians against Muammar Gaddafi’s government, Washington backed the NATO intervention for one reason only—the installation of a regime that better serves the strategic interests of the US, as well as the operations of the giant oil and gas companies.

The cables date back to 2007, some three years after the Bush administration had lifted sanctions and formally re-established relations with the Gaddafi regime in a bid to secure access to Libya’s highly prized resources. Until the outbreak of revolutionary uprisings across the Middle East this year, Gaddafi was welcomed with open arms in Washington and internationally.

As the cables show, as recently as August 2009, US Senator John McCain led a high-profile bipartisan congressional delegation to meet with Gaddafi. McCain characterised the “overall pace of the bilateral relationship as excellent”. Senator Joe Lieberman said “we never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi,” before calling Libya an “important ally in the war on terrorism.”

It comes as no surprise that the cables refer to Libya’s “hydrocarbon producing potential” and the “high expectations” among international oil companies. Significantly, the Gaddafi regime held out to Washington the prospect of even greater riches. According to a September 2009 cable, then acting head of Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC), Ali Sugheir, told the US embassy that major “sedimentary basins with oil and gas resources had been discovered in Libya,” with seismic data indicating “much more remained to be discovered across the country.”

The scramble by dozens of international oil and gas companies to cash in on the lifting of sanctions, however, soon produced two major problems for the US government. Firstly, in the words of a November 2007 cable, “Libyan resource nationalism”—policies designed to increase the Libyan government’s “control over and share of revenue from hydrocarbon resources.” The cable ominously concludes that the US should demonstrate “the clear downsides” to the Libyan regime of such an approach.

Gaddafi’s policy forced oil and gas corporations to renegotiate their contracts under the latest iteration of Libya’s Exploration and Productions Sharing Agreement (EPSA IV). Between 2007 and 2008, major companies such as ExxonMobil, Petro-Canada, Repsol (Spain), Total (France), ENI (Italy), and Occidental (US) were compelled to sign new deals with the NOC—on significantly less favourable terms than they had previously enjoyed—and were collectively made to pay $5.4 billion in upfront “bonus” payments.

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Ellen Brown

Why aren’t banks lending to local businesses? The Fed’s decision to pay interest on $1.6 trillion in “excess” reserves is a chief suspect.

Where did all the jobs go? Small and medium-sized businesses are the major source of new job creation, and they are not hiring. Startup businesses, which contribute a fifth of the nation’s new jobs, often can’t even get off the ground. Why?

In a June 30 article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Smaller Businesses Seeking Loans Still Come Up Empty,” Emily Maltby reported that business owners rank access to capital as the most important issue facing them today; and only 17% of smaller businesses said they were able to land needed bank financing. Businesses have to pay for workers and materials before they can get paid for the products they produce, and for that they need bank credit; but they are reporting that their credit lines are being cut. They are being pushed instead into credit card accounts that average 16 percent interest, more than double the rate of the average business loan. It is one of many changes in banking trends that have been very lucrative for Wall Street banks but are killing local businesses.

Why banks aren’t lending is a matter of debate, but the Fed’s decision to pay interest on bank reserves is high on the list of suspects.

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Justin Raimondo

Anders Behring Breivik and the Axis of Hate

Suggestions that the “counter-jihadist” ideology spread by such websites as Frontpagemag.com, run by neocon David Horowitz, and the affiliated “Jihad Watch,” inspired – and provoked – the Norway killer Anders Behring Breivik have been met with cries of outrage by the neoconservative Right. This is hardly surprising: confronted with the sight of someone who put their hateful and inherently violent ideology into practice, what else are they supposed to do? There is, however, a superficially reasonable case to be made against drawing any larger lesson from the Norwegian tragedy. As Gene Healy, a vice president of the Cato Institute, put it:

“In general, invoking the ideological meanderings of psychopaths is a stalking horse for narrowing permissible dissent. Former New York Times columnist Frank Rich provided a classic in the genre with his February 2010 piece ‘The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged,’ in which he railed against the dangerous climate of anti-government rhetoric and warned that a ‘tax protester’ who flew a plane into an Internal Revenue Service building in February may be a dark harbinger of Tea Party terrorism to come. (No such luck, Frank.)

“But blaming Sarah Palin for Jared Loughner, or Al Gore for the Unabomber makes about as much sense as blaming Martin Scorsese and Jodie Foster for inciting John Hinckley. There’s little to be learned from the acts of ‘the obsessed and deranged.’ But these incidents ought to teach us not to use tragedy to score partisan points.”

All of which is true – up to a point. This is generally true, but in the case of Breivik, however, what Healy misses is the specific content of the ideas expounded in the killer’s online manifesto [.pdf], and the video which summarizes his stance. For what Breivik and the counter-jihadists are saying is that Islam is at war with the West – and that a “culture of appeasement” prevalent on our side of the barricades is delivering us to the Enemy. If you go through the material published by Robert Spencer, who is quoted in some 64 instances by Breivik, one central idea leaps out at you: we are at war with the one billion Muslims on the planet Earth. Not that we should be at war, or will be at war – the battle, in Spencer’s view, has already commenced, not on account of anything we in the West have done, but because Islamic doctrine is inherently violent and expansionist. Likewise, Pamela Geller, his collaborator in “Stop the Islamization of America” – and its European affiliate, which Breivik supported – denies the very existence of moderates in the Muslim camp.

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Stephen Lendman

South Korean farmers shout slogans during a rally against
the U.S.-South Korea FTA, Free Trade Agreement in Seoul.

Corporate predators seek cheap labor worldwide in countries like China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Haiti, Jordan, and many others. Employed in global sweatshops, they work up to 90 or more hours a week for sub-poverty wages under horrific conditions, enduring harassment, beatings, sexual abuse and rape.

According to the group Sweatshop Watch:

"A sweatshop is a workplace that violates the law and where workers are subject to:

● extreme exploitation, including the absence of a living wage or long hours;
● poor working conditions, such as health and safety hazards;
● arbitrary discipline, such as verbal or physical abuse, or
● fear and intimidation when they speak out, organize, or attempt to form a union."

It's mainly a women's rights issue as 90% of the workforce is female, between the ages of 15 - 25.

The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights (IGLHR) "investigates and exposes human and labor rights abuses committed by (transnational) corporations producing goods in the developing world."

Two June reports discussed hellish conditions in Jordanian garment factories, where workers are ruthlessly exploited and abused. According to IGLHR's Charles Kernaghan, they're:

"stripped of their passports, forced to work (up to) grueling 99 and a half hour work weeks (minimally 78 hours), while being shortchanged of their rightful wages, housed in overcrowded, primitive dorms infested with bedbugs (with no heat or hot water), and subjected to verbal and physical abuse."

In addition, "the food is awful." It's always the same, low quality, and never enough. For breakfast, it's two pieces of stale bread, lentil soup and tea. Lunch is rice and "old chicken." For dinner, women prefer preparing their own meals in their dorm, using an electric hotplate.

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Wayne Madsen

Israel’s most secret and tried-and-true weapon is the “false flag” terrorist attack.

State-sponsored terrorism is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as the “systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective [and] is employed by governments -- or more often by factions within governments -- against that government's citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups.”

On July 22, a bomb, said to be an Oklahoma City-type explosive device, crafted with fertilizer and diesel fuel, blew up in downtown Oslo, Norway, in the heart of the government district. Shortly thereafter, a man dressed in a Norwegian police uniform opened fire on a Labor Party youth camp on the island of Utøya in Tyri fjord. Access to the island was by boat only. Over 100 people were killed in the twin terror attacks.

Almost immediately, the world’s corporate media began pushing the story that those who were responsible for the blast and mass shooting were associated with “Al Qaeda” and other radical Islamist groups. CNN’s Washington, DC chief anchor Wolf Blitzer, a former spokesman for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobby and a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, began his late afternoon program by pointing to “Al Qaeda” and radical Islamists as the chief culprits for the terrorist attacks in Norway.

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Tore Sinding Bekkedal

If a single man can display so much hatred –
think only of how much love we all can display together. ~ Stine Renate Håheim

I wrote a Norwegian post explaining my experience at Utøya. I had taken this blog for dead, and had entirely forgotten that it was syndicated on Planet Debian. I don’t want to let Google Translate make this disaster any worse than it is – the translation of “bullets” into “balls” being particularly bad – so the international attention the massacre has garnered in consideration, I am writing an English translation of my experiences. I feel somehow duty-bound to make people aware of what happened, but I don’t want to get into anything else but a sober description of the events and some very brief reflections. There are many details I have chosen to omit.

Others have written their experiences of the events at Utøya. I wanted to write mine down as well, and “get it out there”. Partly, I want to write this down because I’m unsure if I will remember all the details at a later point in time, although I think I’d prefer it if I couldn’t. I’m also writing this because people are asking about my experiences and it’s much better to have an URL to give them, lest I have to keep going through the same spiel over and over again.

Our former Prime Minister and current labour movement demigod Gro Harlem Brundtland had recently left the island. I had been the cameraman for a video interview of her talking about Utøya, and I was in the media group room encoding the video into a file suitable for YouTube, when someone else in the room startled and said that Twitter was full of messages about a loud explosion in Oslo. As the newspapers brought us information about the extent of the damages, a consensus arose that an informational meeting was in order. As soon as the current round of talks finished, we were gathered into the main hall.

The meeting was duly held, and after the statement was made that a TV feed would be made available, I took it upon myself as the local alpha geek to make it happen. Of course, the situation caused both the wireless network and the GPRS networks to become totally unusable. As I was waiting for someone to set up a password, I took the opportunity to face the consequences of having eaten two bits of a microwavable dish called “Hold-It” – the local equivalent of a Hot Pocket – and went to the bathroom.

As I was in there, I first heard agitated shouting, then screams, then gunshots coming from just outside the bathromm. More than anything else, it sounded like a toy gun. I was convinced that someone was making a joke in incredibly bad taste and I stormed out of the booth with the intent of halting it. As I tore the door open, I saw two of my comrades hiding in a recessed corner. Their facial expressions left absolutely no doubt that this was no toy. They signalled for me to get back in the booth. I closed the door, did a mental double-take in utter, complete confusion, and opened it again. They were still signalling. Had they not stood there, I would have run straight into the gunman; they saved my life. I looked out into the hallway, and I made eye contact with a young boy lying in a pool of blood. He was motioning for me to help him. I heard more gunshots from inside the building and retreated back inside.

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Gilad Atzmon

For the sake of peace and our general safety, law makers in Europe and America had better quickly put into place the necessary measures to restrain the activity of these Zionist warmongers in our midst.

Thanks to respected anti-Zionist Jeff Blankfort (who provided me with a crucial link) I have now learned that, just one day before last Friday’s Massacre in Norway, former Trotsky-ite turned neo-con David Horowitz carried an article by Joseph Klein in his Front Page magazine, entitled "The Quislings of Norway," which might as well have provided mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik with all the motivation he needed to commit his crime.

You are advised to read the article in full here

Here are some of the ‘pearls’ produced by the pro-war Jewish rightwing magazine, just a few hours before Behring Breivik picked up his guns and launched into his lethal journey:

“The infamous Norwegian Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany as it conquered his own country, must be applauding in his grave...In the latest example of Norwegian collaboration with the enemies of the Jews, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre declared during a press conference this week, alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, that “Norway believes it is perfectly legitimate for the Palestinian president to turn to the United Nations” to seek recognition of an independent Palestinian state.”

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Stephen Lendman

Increasingly, it looks like Mossad's fingerprints are all over [the attacks], perhaps cooperatively with CIA and/or MI6.

On July 24, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen suggested a Mossad link, saying "ample evidence" of its involvement exists.

Anders Breivik, the alleged bomber/gunman, calls himself a Christian conservative interested in hunting, body building and freemasonry. He's also expressed strong pro-Israeli views, hostile to Palestinians and Muslims.

Government business records name him the Breivik Geofarm director. Norway's media call it a farming sole proprietorship, cultivating vegetables, melons, roots and tubers.

The Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang quoted a friend saying he became a wing-wing extremist in his late 20s. He's now age 32. The paper also said he participated in online forums expressing strong nationalistic, anti-multicultural views.

On July 24, the UK Daily Mail said:

"According to witness accounts from Norwegian media, people have described shooting incidents in two different areas on the island, one with a handgun and the other with a 'sniper rifle.' However, there is uncertainty whether the guns belonged to one gunman or there was a second involved."

In the confusion, no one was sure, but the possibility is real, given the implausibility that one person killed over 90 people singlehanded. Perhaps there were multiple undetected gunmen. Police said they don't exclude the possibility.

Madsen connected Breivik to Pam Geller and Richard Pipes,

"ciphers for Israeli intelligence and propaganda elements....provid(ing) a clear link between Breivik and Mossad, which is under orders to stage false flag attacks to garner support for Israel against Palestine, Cyprus and Norway being the two most recent examples of Mossad-staged attacks."

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John Hanrahan

Part of a Nieman Watchdog series, 'Reporting the Endgame'

The national news media almost totally ignore homefront protests of the Afghanistan war, killer drones, torture, and more, regardless of their newsworthiness. By its lack of coverage, isn’t the press thus helping perpetuate an endless war?

Antiwar activists repeatedly stage dramatic acts of civil disobedience in the United States but are almost entirely ignored by mainstream print and broadcast news organizations. During the Vietnam era, press coverage of the fighting and opposition to it at home helped turn public opinion against the war. This time around lack of homefront coverage may be helping keep military involvement continue on and on.

In the past two years, protests of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, killer drones, torture, nuclear weapons and other war-related issues have been carried out at nuclear weapons silos and production facilities, military bases, unmanned drone facilities, major defense contractors’ headquarters and offices, the Nevada Nuclear Test site, nuclear weapons design laboratories, military recruiting centers, the U.S. Capitol, the White House, federal buildings in various states, the U.S. Strategic Air Command, and numerous other war-oriented sites across the country.

The protests don’t begin to approach the level of those during the Vietnam war or in the early years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars – but that’s not a reason to ignore them. The fact is, protest is much more widespread than citizens might gauge from coverage in newspapers and television, which seldom report antiwar actions regardless of how significant or newsworthy they may be. As we briefly observed in a previous article:

By ignoring antiwar protests almost totally, editors are treating opposition to the ongoing war in Afghanistan much as they handled the run-up to the war in Iraq: They are missing an important story and contributing to the perception that there is no visible opposition to the U.S. wars and ever-growing military budgets, even as polls show overwhelming support for early U.S. military withdrawal.

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Stephen Lendman

(Schuyler Ebbets © The People's Voice)

The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan, united against working household interests. In fact, lawmakers yield on virtually everything big money wants, notably when banks and other corporate favorites are affected.

Last December, Obama capitulated to Republicans, rigging a deal for up to $1 trillion dollars in handouts, mostly to corporate giants and America's wealthy with working households almost entirely left out.

They still are, enduring a protracted Main Street depression, stiff-armed by Obama-led bipartisan crooks. In fact, he's more crime boss than president - stealing from the many for the few. More on his dirty scheme below.

As a result, America and other "(e)conomies are being turned into rentier ('tollbooths') to pay debts that ('real' ones) can't sustain," according to Michael Hudson. "It's a losing game," but goes on, criminally defrauding millions of people to assure creditors are paid, sucking massive amounts of wealth to their coffers, unreported by major media scoundrels, suppressing what people most need to know.

In fact, new audit figures show that Bernanke's Fed gave Wall Street and European banksters at least $16.1 trillion (called emergency loans) from December 1, 2007 - July 21, 2010, besides unknown amounts earlier and in the past year.

Moreover, it's well known that trillions of dollars are stolen, handed to corporate interests and never returned, as well as gotten in other illegal ways. As a result, taxpayers get stuck with the bill, the nation with unsustainable mounting debt, heading it eventually for ruin.

About $13 trillion in Fed bailouts went to US financial institutions, the rest to their counterparts in Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Belgium, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis.

In addition, asset swaps (good ones for toxic corporate junk) were arranged with banks in Britain, Switzerland, Canada, South Korea, Norway, Mexico, and Singapore.

Moreover, the Wall Street controlled Fed mostly outsourced its lending operations to the same institutions responsible for engineering the financial crisis, letting them profit hugely at the public's expense.

Though unsustainable, the dirty game goes on, a take the money and run scam, leaving hollowed out economies and impoverished millions on their own sink or swim.

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Gilad Atzmon

I learned last night from an Israeli online journal, that two days before the Utøya Island massacre, AUF’s (Labour Party's youth movement) leader Eskil Pedersen gave an interview to the Dagbladet, Norway's second largest tabloid newspaper, in which he unveiled what he thinks of Israel.

In the course of the interview, Pedersen stated that he “believes the time has come for more drastic measures against Israel, and (that he) wants the Foreign Minister to impose an economic boycott against the country.”

Pedersen went on to say, “The peace process goes nowhere, and though the whole world expect Israel to comply, they do not. We in Labour Youth will have a unilateral economic embargo of Israel from the Norwegian side.”

The AUF Labour Party Youth Movement have been devoted promoters of the Israel Boycott campaign, the newspaper Dagbladet reporting that

“The AUF has long been a supporter of an international boycott of Israel, but the decision at the last congress, demands that Norway imposes a unilateral economic embargo on the country and it must be stricter than before.” “I acknowledge that this is a drastic measure”, [stated Pedersen,] “but I think it gives a clear indication that we are tired of Israel's behaviour, quite simply”.

Yesterday we also learned that mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik was openly enthusiastic about Israel. According to a variety of internet outlets, Behring Breivik was a regular poster on several Norwegian internet sites, notably the blog Document.no, which is run by Hans Rustad, a former left-wing journalist. Hans Rustad is Jewish, extremely pro-Zionist, and warns against ‘Islam-isation’, violence, and other social problems he assumes to be connected with Muslim immigration.

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Stephen Lendman

What to make of them is at issue. Many questions are unanswered. Are they similar to previous European and US post-9/11 attacks? Was a single individual responsible or were others unnamed or not known involved? Was it homegrown and/or outside inspired, despite what's been reported?

And why Norway, an unlikely target despite its NATO membership, token participation in Afghanistan, and Libya operations it scaled back and will end entirely by August 1.

Last May, in fact, Defense Minister Grete Faremo told Norway's Parliament that despite taking part in NATO air attacks (dropping 289 bombs), "There is no military solution to the situation in Libya. It must be solved politically." She added that Norway would scale back operations after its three-month commitment ended on June 24, ahead of ending them entirely weeks later.

At the same time, Norway supports Palestinian independence, de jure UN membership, and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store heads an international aid committee for Palestine. Moreover, its parliament earlier passed initiatives critical of Israel, and Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen (from 2005 - 2009, now Education Minister) proposed boycotting Israeli products in 2006 though Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg disapproved.

However, in August 2010, Norway declined to purchase Israeli military products because of tensions between Israel and Palestine as well as its neighbors.

It's not known, but Friday's attack may relate to Norway's support for Palestinian sovereignty. Perhaps it was planned and initiated to influence its policy on granting full Palestinian UN membership in September, and may also be part of Washington's Global War on Terror.

Moreover, the notion of a lone bomber/gunman is very suspect, especially one able to kill 91 people, an unprecedented nearly impossible feat singlehanded. Were there others involved?

These and other questions demand answers, as well as specific bombing details, including whether what happened demanded expertise beyond the capability of untrained people.

Who gains and loses from every terror incident must also be asked, certainly not suspects charged, convicted and imprisoned. Geopolitical interests are central. This time Western and Israeli ones are key.

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Adnan Al-Daini

Two days ago (22-July-2011) Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent reporting on the terrorist outrage in Norway, speculated that the horrific attack might be "Islamist" inspired with the "al-Qaida" word mentioned. Further speculation then followed as to the likely reasons.

Norway's 400 troops in Afghanistan were advanced as a possible cause why al-Qaida might be responsible. Yesterday morning (23-July-2011) the BBC is reporting a diametrically opposite scenario describing the arrest of a blue-eyed Norwegian as belonging to an extreme rightwing militant group who hate Muslims and multi-culturalism in Norway. Meanwhile, the Sun's headline the same morning (23-July-2011) screams "NORWAY'S 9/11", and above the headline in red capitals 'AL-QAEDA' MASSACRE. It seems Murdoch's Sun has already made up its mind. Terrorism linked to extremism of any hue is deadly, and reporting it responsibly is paramount. Churchill's remark, in another context, of "careless talk costs lives" comes to mind. Extremist groups of any kind are driven by hate. Sensational, inaccurate reporting stokes up this hatred to the point where innocents may suffer, simply because they belong to a certain ethnic or religious group. The humanity of the individual becomes irrelevant, and the hater may only see ethnicity or religion as a justification for violence or even murder.

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Craig Murray

I watched the disgraceful Islamophobic rantings on the BBC and Sky News last night in mounting disbelief. Security correspondent and security expert vied with each other to tell us that the dreadful attacks in Norway were the work of al-Qaida. One extraordinary American, introduced as from a Centre for Combating Extremism, explained that these Norwegian jihadists had international links and plans to attack London and the New York subway. Norway was a target, we were repeatedly told, because of its NATO membership.

There was at least six solid hours of this poisonous bullshit. I did not pick up on one single person who said that this probably was not Islamic terrorism – despite the glaringly obvious fact that the atrocity had a Norwegian domestic political agenda, being an attack on the Prime Minister’s office, and on a youth camp of the governing party. The internet was buzzing for hours with the news that the attacker on Utoya Island was blonde, without the broadcast media mentioning it. The American security expert I mention above had that base covered – he had obviously seen those reports, but did not mention them. However he said that jihadist groups had probably recruited European looking operatives to carry out the attacks, because they were aware that security services “consciously or unconsciously operated racial profiling.”

This morning Al Jazeera and Russia Today were carrying the news that the attacker was Anders Breivik – and even a picture of him – while the BBC and Sky still were not, and while they had stopped the blatant Islamophobic ranting, had still not admitted it was not an Islamic militant attack.

I would love to believe that this incident would cause the media to reassess the value of the numerous “security experts” whose companies, institutes, funding, profile and standards of living have been spectacularly boosted by the “War on Terror”. But I doubt it.

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