Stephen Lendman

It's time for all America to erupt.

The business of America is war on humanity.

The business of Wall Street is grand theft.

The power of money in private hands defines a morally corrupted nation.

The business of corporate America is exploiting nations, markets and people globally for profit.

In America, a criminal government/business conspiracy permits kleptocracy and gangsterism for personal gain.

Concentrated wealth and power more than ever are disproportionate.

Elections are rigged to keep it that way.

America's democracy is the best money can buy.

Major media scoundrels promote it.

In plain sight in Washington, bipartisan crooks wage war on personal freedoms, democratic values, and general welfare to grab all they can for themselves and corporate partners.

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Stephen Lendman

The illegal and the unelected: Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad will do anything to remain in power and please their Zionist puppeteers.

Five days ahead of Abbas petitioning the UN for Palestinian statehood and full UN membership, it's important to know who's friend or foe.

Abbas and Fayyad never did represent Palestinians and don't now.

Both lack legitimacy. Israel rigged Abbas' January 2005 presidential victory. Moreover, his term expired in January 2009. Nonetheless, he's still in office because Israel and Washington want him there. More on him below.

Fayyad is equally disreputable. In the 2006 legislative elections, his Third Way party won two of 132 seats. Yet he's prime minister illegitimately with no popular mandate.

What Palestinians do or don't get in New York depend on two men representing Israel and Washington.

Smart money wagers they'll accept less than Palestinians deserve, if anything. Bet on it! Spread the word. On September 23, when Abbas petitions the UN, sellout and betrayal will result at a time statehood and full UN membership are within easy grasp if proper procedures are followed. They won't be, assuring defeat!

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William T. Hathaway

A short review of Gilad Atzmon's new book, The Wandering Who?

Gilad Atzmon, Another World Is Possible contributing writer, has just published a study of Jewish identity politics. The Wandering Who? chronicles his journey away from his Jewish identity, and by extension away from all exclusive identities, into an inclusive humanness. It's a painful journey, a brutally honest self exploration of these internalized tribal impulses. He emerges from the struggle deracinated but emancipated, freed of a destructive load of cultural baggage.

As the poet Allen Ginsberg said, "If you want to be a prophet, you have to tell your secrets." By being brave enough to expose himself in writing, Atzmon has become a prophet, and his prophecy, as I see it, is a completion of the Mosaic journey, but this time as a mass exodus from Jewishness and all other ethnic bondings that split humanity. After 40 centuries of wandering in the desert of chosenness and separation, Jews and Gentiles alike can finally enter the full humanness of one world family, a secular promised land free of divisive group identities.

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David Swanson

"Our current unpopular but unending wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Somalia, and our smaller military operations in over 100 other countries are part of what President Eisenhower warned of 50 years ago in speaking of the military industrial complex. No nation has tried anything like this before, and it's not clear we can survive it."

USA 12 August 2011. Two blocks from my house in a nondescript little building on the edge of our residential neighborhood is an office with a small sign reading "DVBIC of Charlottesville" which turns out to mean "Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center."

Now, I'm in favor of caring for people with brain injuries. Heck, I wish we had universal comprehensive health coverage like other countries do. But it disturbs me how difficult it is in this country to get any distance away from the military. It's almost certainly closer to you than your relatives' homes.

What author Nick Turse calls the military industrial technological entertainment academic media corporate matrix is even closer than that. I am typing this on an Apple computer, and Apple is a major Pentagon contractor. But then, so is IBM. And so are most of the parent companies of most of the retail chains around the country. Starbucks is a major military supplier, with a store even in Guantanamo. Not only are traditional weapons manufacturers' offices now found alongside car dealers and burger joints in suburban strip malls, but the car dealers and burger joints are owned by companies taking in huge amounts of Pentagon spending. A $4,311 contract back in 2006 went straight to Charlottesville's Pig Daddy's BBQ.

Almost no neighborhoods lack members of the military and military supporters, Marine Corps flags and Army bumper stickers. If you wanted to get away from it, where would you go? (Please don't shout "Leave the country!" The U.S. military has troops in the majority of the nations on earth.) When one family tried to get away from jet noise in Virginia Beach by moving to a rural farm, the military quickly opened a new base right next to them. There is no escape.

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Ray McGovern

When soldiers die, the politicians who sent them to their deaths typically use euphemisms and circumlocutions — like “lost,” “fallen,” or “ultimate sacrifice.” On one level, the avoidance of blunt language can be seen as a sign of respect, but on another, it is just one more evasion of responsibility for the snuffing out of young lives.

There has been unusually wide (and for the most part supportive) reaction to my article of Aug. 9 (“They Died in Vain; Deal With It“) on the killing of 30 American troops when their helicopter was shot down over Afghanistan [during one night recently]. One website posting the article clocked 181 comments; scanning through them, I found many substantive, helpful ones.

Let me share one telling comment, which seemed to me particularly — if sadly — apt:

“Two lemmings are chatting while standing in the line to the cliff. One says to the other, ‘Of course we have to go over the edge. Anything else would dishonor all the lemmings that have gone before us.’”

And so it goes, thought I, with our lemming in chief (LIC) Barack Obama … and those who lemmingly follow him.

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