Stephen Lendman

Voting for any Republican or Democrat - for president, Congress, state or local office - is wasting it, defiling your own welfare. Unless duopoly power ends, Americans won't be free, safe or equitably treated.

Consider the unpalatable 2012 options, a choice between:

• a so far unopposed lawless/crime boss/militarist/pro-war/anti-populist president; and
• a rogue's gallery of Republican aspirants, looking more like a police lineup than legitimate candidates for any office, let alone the nation's highest.

The one exception, Ron Paul, is ignored by America's media and for the following reasons:

(1) He advocates abolishing the Federal Reserve, owned and run by Wall Street. In fact, several times in Congress, he introduced the Federal Reserve Abolition Act. With no co-sponsors, no further action followed.

Yet, restoring sound money and a healthy economy requires Fed abolition, returning money creation power to the US Treasury as the Constitution mandates (Article I, Section 8).

(2) He also wants squandering America's resources on imperial wars ended, using the nation's wealth instead for productive economic growth.

(3) In addition, he opposes police state laws like the USA Patriot Act, though not for all the right reasons. Key for him is loss of personal privacy.

(4) While advocating free trade, he's against NAFTA, DR-CAFTA, and other one-sided FTAs, serving special interests, not everyone equitably.

(5) He calls the war on drugs "costly and ineffective, while creating terrible violent crime." True enough, but it's much worse, largely responsible for creating the world's largest gulag, mostly filled with nonviolent inmates, deserving reprimands and perhaps fines at most, not prison time.

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Gilad Atzmon

The Fairy tale: Settling in "The Promised Land". Aliyah.
The reality: Click on image to find out. Warning: it might
upset you to do so. More reality here, here, here and here.

"I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them." ~ Baruch Spinoza

Daniel Cohen (fictitious name) is deeply admired by many. He is a humanist, an anti Zionist and he is also a man of great integrity. A week ago, Daniel decided to challenge my views, and launched a courageous debate. Being a gracious man he might have hoped to open my eyes to some ‘categorical mistakes’ he believed I was making. For my part, I was very open to his criticism and engaged in the dialogue.

Daniel was not happy with the way the exchange has evolved. Though he circulated his comments and my interventions to his close Jewish friends, he made it clear that he wanted to stop the exchange at a certain stage. Daniel was very angry with me. He also made it clear that he did not want me to publish the exchange of views. As I always do in such cases, I suggested that together, we should edit the debate, but he refused. Respecting Daniel’s request for anonymity, I have now re-edited the text myself, concealing Daniel’s real name, removing all sections and biographical references that could reveal Daniel’s identity. Occasionally, I have re-phrased Daniel’s comments for purpose of continuity and clarity, but I have faithfully retained his meaning.[*]

Unlike Daniel, I believe that issues to do with Jewish history and Jewish ideology must be discussed openly and without fear.

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Medea Benjamin & Charles Davis

Since coming to Washington, Barack Obama has won a Nobel Prize for Peace, but he hasn't been much of a peacemaker. Instead, he has doubled down on his predecessor's wars while launching blatantly illegal ones of his own. But, as his supporters would be quick to point out, at least he's standing by his pledge to bring the troops home from Iraq. - Right?

That's certainly what America's latest war president has been saying. Speaking to supporters this month, he was unequivocal.

“If somebody asks about the war [in Iraq] . . . you have a pretty simple answer, which is all our folks are going to be out of there by the end of the year.”

Obama's statement was a welcome reaffirmation of what he promised on the campaign trail:

"If we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do,” he thundered in the fall of 2007. “I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank."

But don’t count on cashing that check. The Washington Post brings the unsurprising news that Iraqi leaders have agreed to begin talks with the U.S. on allowing the foreign military occupation of their country to continue beyond this year – re-branded, naturally, as a mission of “training” and “support.” The move comes after an increasingly public campaign by top White House and military officials to pressure Iraqi leaders into tearing up the Status of Forces Agreement they signed with the Bush administration, which mandates the removal of all foreign troops by the end of 2011.

As with any relationship, saying goodbye is always the hardest part for an empire. The U.S. political establishment has long desired a foothold in the Middle East from which it could exert influence over the trade of the region's natural resources. Remember, Iraq has lots of oil, as those who launched the invasion of the country in 2003 were all too aware. They aren't too keen on giving that up.

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Bill Van Auken

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Profes-
sor of History at the University of Michigan. (IC)

More people have already died in the US-NATO war against Libya than were ever killed by Gaddafi’s repression, and the threat of a far greater massacre is looming. Whatever Cole says now, he has blood on his hands.

Last week, Professor Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor of Middle Eastern history, posted a comment on his Informed Comment blog slandering the World Socialist Web Site with the lie that we support efforts by the Gaddafi regime to reconquer the east of Libya and would welcome a massacre of Libyan civilians.

On August 10, the World Socialist Web Site issued “An open letter to Professor Juan Cole: A reply to a slander,” answering Cole’s lies and demanding that he post a “full and public retraction” on Informed Comment.

On August 11, we received the following emailed reply from Cole:

“Hi. I hope you will stop supporting the murderous Qaddafi regime and attacking people who want the people of Benghazi to be safe from him.
cheers,
Juan”

This is the kind of response one would expect from someone who is drunk. In Cole’s case, however, this would be an unduly charitable interpretation.

The reality is that he is incapable of articulating any coherent defense of his position. Cole’s one-sentence reply merely reiterates his original slander without adding a word of substantiation.

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