Stephen Lendman

An Israeli youth flashes a V-sign as Israelis protest against
rising housing prices and social inequalities on July 30, 2011
in Tel Aviv, Israel. (Uriel Sinai/AFP/Getty Images)

Well, almost. Virtually nothing shows up on US television. Some gets print coverage, but not enough to explain a major story accurately and fully. More on that below.

For weeks, tens of thousands of Israelis have been protesting high prices, especially unaffordable housing, creating an intolerable burden for growing numbers being priced out of a place to live.

A previous article explained, accessed through this link.

Interviewed on Democracy Now, Israeli journalist Dimi Reider

called "(w)hat's happening in Israel....nothing short of revolutionary....in terms of how people relate to each other, engage with politics," and with a vital issue like affordable housing.

Today's problems stem from 1990s policies favoring settlements, as well as subsidies to entice Israelis and other Jews to fill them. Moreover, doing so and controlling Occupied Palestine costs over $700 million annually, at the expense of neglecting construction and other needs in Israel.

The above linked article explained a groundswell demand for social justice, unprecedented in Israel, enough perhaps to topple Netanyahu's government if he doesn't adequately address it.

Daily on streets in 11 Israeli cities, nonviolent visceral anger echoes calls for social justice, as well as thousands holding signs saying, "Game over - Bibi go home."

It's not a left or right issue. Polls show 87% of Israeli support the protests. They cut across Israeli society, including secular and religious groups, Jews and Arabs, men and women, youths and elderly, newly marrieds, veterans, Bedouins, gays and straights, activists and couch potatoes, and Israel's growing numbers of homeless.

At issue is hardline Israeli neoliberalism, a cancer affecting Arab Israelis and millions of Jews. In a rare display of unity, they're together against Netanyahu's hard-wired ideological extremism, believing (like most Israeli politicians) that free market fundamentalism works best.

When in doubt privatize because markets know best so let them. The fruits of that position erupted in Israel, Middle East Arab countries for political and social justice, European ones like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy, as well as occasionally in Britain, France and elsewhere on the continent.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The New Yorker has published a story planted on Nicholas Schmidle by unidentified sources who claim to be familiar with the operation that allegedly murdered Osama bin Laden.

[Getting Bin Laden - What happened that night in Abbottabad, August 8, 2011]

There is no useful information in the story. Its purpose seems simply to explain away or cover up holes in the original story, principally why did the Seals murder an unarmed, unresisting Osama bin Laden whose capture would have resulted in a goldmine of terrorist information and whose show trial would have rescued the government’s crumbling 9/11 story?

The gullible Schmidle tells us:

"‘There was never any question of detaining or capturing him--it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,’ the special-operations officer told me."

In other words, the SEALs murdered bin Laden, because the US government did not want detainees, not because trigger-happy stupid SEALs destroyed a font of terrorist information.

Why did the SEALS dump bin Laden’s body in the ocean instead of producing the evidence to a skeptical world? No real explanation, just that SEALS had done the same thing to other victims. Schmidle writes:

"All along, the SEALs had planed to dump bin Laden’s corpse into the sea--a blunt way of ending the bin Laden myth."

But before they did so, the US checked with an unidentified Saudi intelligence operative, who allegedly replied,

"Your plan sounds like a good one."

I mean, really.

After all of Sy Hersh’s New Yorker revelations of US government lies and plots, one can understand the pressure that might have been applied to the New Yorker to publish this fairy tale. But what is extraordinary is that there was a real story that Schmidle and the New Yorker could have investigated.

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Stephen Lendman

[Rebel fighters take cover as they are bombarded by forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi near Ras Lanuf, while a natural gas facility burns in the distance. Photo: John Moore/Getty Images]

On August 1, Ramadan began. Nonetheless, fighting continues. The good news is Libyans are winning. The bad news is NATO knows it but keeps bombing, averaging 52 daily strike sorties in the past week alone.

On August 2, London Telegraph writer Damien McElroy headlined, "Libya: Gaddafi regime rallies after rebel turmoil," saying:

Gaddafi's son Saif "used a meeting with Libyans displaced by fighting to declare the regime had blunted the five month bombing campaign," saying:

should think that after all the sacrifices we have made, and the martyrdom of our sons, brothers and friends, we will stop fighting. Forget it," whether NATO stays or leaves.

On August 2, London Guardian writer Simon Jenkins headlined, "Nightly Britain bombs Tripoli. Bar death, what do we achieve?" saying:

"Britain's half-war against Libya is careering onward from reckless gesture to full-scale fiasco....(E)very sensibly pessimistic forecast has turned out true and every jingoistic boast false."

"There remains no sign that the terror bombing of civilian areas is contributing to military victory any more effectively than when Bomber Harris (infamous for fire-bombing Dresden in 1945 and other sites) advocated it."

"Now each night (British and other) pilot(s) fl(y) over Tripoli and drops bombs on it, achieving nothing but death and destruction. (Yet Libya represents) no threat to Britain or its people. (Daily bombings are) a mistake. But who will say so? (Moreover), Parliament fiddles while Libya burns."

In a UK establishment newspaper, Jenkins' article is scathing, unlike American major media journalists cheerleading Obama's wars, falsifying reports on them, ignoring daily crimes, suppressing bad news, and keeping their readers, viewers and listeners misinformed.

Including about how Washington completely misjudged Libyans' commitment to resist, fight back, and support Gaddafi. After months of failure, daily bombings now suggest more futility than stay-the-course commitment, let alone acknowledgment of major crimes of war and against humanity. The very notion is suppressed from official statements and media reports, concealing ugly truths on the ground.

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Saman Mohammadi

"I have no intention for the next weeks and months to be talking about this committee." - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi when asked by reporters at a press conference about the new Super Congress. (Gregory Korte, USA Today, August 3, 2011).

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. . . Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." - Chicago Mayor/Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. (Gerald F. Seib, The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2008).

"We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it." - Tennessee Williams

Nothing makes sense in Washington if you assume that the leading political figures in both parties care about the interests, freedoms and security of the American people. The political, media, and financial elite are pursuing an anti-democratic, anti-Constitution, and anti-American agenda.

This agenda includes the gutting of Social Security and Medicare, an endless war for empire, the economic, security and political unification of Mexico, America and Canada, and top-down control of the economy and society by a technocratic class that answers to criminal bankers and criminal corporations.

The creation of the Super Congress is another step in a process that began long ago, and won't end until the structures that underpin the American constitutional republic are destroyed once and for all.

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