Adnan Al-Daini

There's a slogan that has become the emblem of the revolution in the entire Arab world: “The people want the fall of the regime” - “Alshaab youreed isqat elnidham”. 

The standard response of every dictator in the Arab world is: Who, me? Then they blame everything and everybody except themselves.  What arrogance!  In fact, to any objective observer of the Middle East, the question is not why the revolution is happening, but why it has taken so long!  The reality of politics in the Arab world was succinctly summed up by a Syrian pro-democracy demonstrator with: “We the people are only allowed to open our mouths when we go to the dentist”.

Arab despots see the legitimate demands of their people for justice, human rights and freedom as a challenge to their manliness. It has inhibited them from responding intelligently and flexibly.  Arab society with a culture that generally excludes women from politics, and admires a “fearless” leader, who is ruthless and unable to tolerate dissent, is a poor one with ruinous consequences for its people.

Stubbornness and domination have become characteristics to be admired in the male with varying degrees in the entire Arab world.  Girls are encouraged to defer to their brothers, and taught to hide their intelligence and good sense in discussions with their male counterparts.  Males are burdened from an early age to assume the mantle of family leadership, and encouraged to see themselves as protector of the extended family against all external threats.  This macho tradition is transferred to the politics of an Arab world that largely excludes women, and has produced an unhealthy imbalance between the sexes that has been to the detriment of everyone in society.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

As many as 5000 Christian Zionists gathered this week at the Convention Center in Washington, D.C. for the annual conference of the organization CUFI, Christians United For Israel.

The annual event is considered a key occasion when Christian supporters of Israel reassert their nearly hysterical embrace of the Zionist apartheid regime, including the policies of ethnic cleansing of non-Jews (Muslims and Christians), lebensraum, and even its genocidal designs.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu addressed the evangelical conference, telling the huge audience that "when you support Israel, you don’t have to choose between your interests and your values, you get both.."

Netanyahu, like most other Israeli leaders, is a pathological liar who lies as often as he breathes oxygen. He knows deep in his heart that what Israel has been doing and the way it has been behaving ever since its birth 63 years ago represents the ultimate contradiction to true Christian values, the values that Jesus preached and because of which he incurred the wrath of the Jewish establishment of his time.

One of the most enthusiastic Zionist Christian supporters of Israel is Glen Beck, a tomfool par excellence, who would do anything in order to obtain a kosher certificate of good conduct from the very same people who would view Beck himself a slave, and his mother, daughter and sister as Shiksas or whores.

The news commentator, who visited Israel a few days ago in order demonstrate his Zionist credentials, sounded very much as if he was a Kahana disciple.

Meir Kahana is the Judeo-Nazi rabbi and former Knesset member who urged Israel to carry out a genocidal ethnic cleansing of its non-Jewish population and subjects in order to create a goyem-free Talmudic theocracy.

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Stephen Lendman

Beggar in Jerusalem. No longer allowed at Kotel (Western Wall /
Wailing Wall.) (Photo: Shlomi Cohen)

Notably since the early 1980s, neoliberalism began replacing New Deal/Great Society values to the detriment of millions harmed. It means markets know best so let them, liberating enterprise to move capital, goods and services freely, benefitting the few at the expense of the many.

Britain's Thatcher and America's Reagan were pivotal figures, endorsing elitism, class power, and private enterprise unconstrained by rules, regulations or taxes, producing inequality and social injustice.

It plagues Israel like the West, notably since the mid-1980s when power shifted from various government agencies to the Finance Ministry and central bank (the Bank of Israel), similar to American financialization that empowered Wall Street, the Fed, and US FIRE sector overall (finance, insurance, and real estate).

A race to the bottom followed, especially since the 1990s by mass privatizations, welfare and social benefit cuts, and, like America, shifting wealth to the rich. Predictable results produced social injustice and inequality, harming Jews as well as Arab citizens.

Various studies show it, including annual Latet ones, its latest saying 1.77 million Israelis are poor. About 850,000 children live in poverty. As a result, 75% of those affected miss meals, a 21% increase from 2009. Moreover, 83% of poor children lack proper dental care, most getting none. Some beg for money. Others steal to eat.

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Peter Smith

Lord Monckton addressed a rowdy crowd at the anti-
carbon tax rally in Sydney. (AAP: Lema Samandar)

Saw Lord Monckton in Sydney this month. It was fittingly cold. I remember my first Sydney winter many years’ ago. It was colder than I expected. Memories play tricks but my impression is that this winter is as cold as it was then. However, I am not putting this forward as evidence for the absence of global warming. Sceptics and warmists are at one in acknowledging that the earth has warmed since the end of the little ice age and, I think, most agree with the proximate extent of the warming; even if sceptics are suspicious of data fiddling and many badly-placed land temperature gauges.

Everyone also agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that more of it will warm the planet. Thus far there is agreement. It is therefore annoying (to put it mildly) at this juncture to have people (scientist and non-scientists) say that some ice is melting or that seas levels are rising as though this were additional information to bolster the case of warming. It simply isn’t. Warming is warming and it will have an effect on ice and sea level. For those whose reason has been impaired by mumbo-jumbo climate science, put some cubes of ice in a sieve over a pan of water and warm the pan. Measuring the temperature inside the pan is all that is needed to establish that the pan is warming. You can then observe that the ice cubes have melted and the water level has risen but this gives no added information on the fact of the warming.

If everyone agrees basically with what has happened (though of course not why it has happened from the late 1970’s until about 2000) then disagreement of substance must surely be restricted to what will happen in the future. Back to Lord Monckton. Let us first of all dispense with his credentials. Is he a lord? This seemed to fascinate Adam Spencer on ABC radio. Well no one disputes that he has a hereditary peerage. Does that, as he claims, entitle him to describe himself as a non-sitting member of the House of Lords? I have no idea. His explanation seems okay to me but he may be indulging in a little pedantic vanity. Is this as bad as an imaginary dodging of bullets on an airport tarmac, for example? Would Mr Spencer have quizzed Hillary Clinton about this at the start of an interview on foreign affairs? Spencer also thought it was relevant to get Monckton to concede that he was neither a climate scientist nor an economist. To what point? Surely everyone knows that neither Monckton nor Al Gore, nor anyone on the multi-party climate change committee is a scientist or economist.

Monckton’s credentials are that he has looked thoroughly into the science and drawn conclusions. He has done what we all should do, to some extent at least, rather than to simply fall into line like sheep. His views stand or fall on their merits and have to be challenged on their merits.

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Stephen Lendman

Pretending to restart Israeli/Palestinian peace talks, Quartet representatives met in Washington on July 11. Attending were Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and former UK Prime Minister/reinvented war criminal/current Middle East envoy Tony Blair.

Ahead of talks, Clinton and Ashton expressed determination to overcome previously unresolved issues.

On July 12, an unidentified senior US official called the meeting an "excellent and serious discussion on the next steps. (Representatives) expressed support for (Obama's) May Middle East speech and called to start preparatory phases of talks without any preconditions."

However, "(t)here are still gaps, and they need to be closed before the Quartet can go forward with public statements."

In fact, chasms define still unresolved issues. More on that below.

On July 12, Haaretz writer Barak Ravid headlined, "Israel and Palestinian sources to Haaretz: US peace efforts have failed," saying "Intensive US strong-arming failed. America "was unable to find a formula that (all) parties could accept." Manipulative Washington demands were unacceptable. Netanyahu blamed Palestinians for the impasse.

Last January's Palestine Papers revealed that Obama rejected unacceptable Bush era two state solution "Road Map" terms, effectively accepting settlements as Israeli territory. Or did he?

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