Stephen Lendman

On September 23 in New York, a State Department "Special Briefing" was held. An unnamed "Senior Administration Official" commented on the Quartet's Palestinian statehood proposal, saying:

"As the Palestinians develop(ed) their own ideas of what was necessary in terms of (petitioning the UN), we were intensively engaged with them in providing ideas for an alternative path."

That says it all! It reveals the Washington/Israeli/EU/Ban Ki-moon duplicitous strategy to subvert Palestinian statehood by a combination of diversion, delay and exclusion from debate on what Palestinians most want and deserve.

It includes unconditional sovereignty within 1967 borders (22% of historic Palestine), total control over their own lives, Israel's occupation and Gaza's siege ended, fixed borders, diaspora Palestinians' right of return, settlement construction ended, and East Jerusalem as their capital.

In other words, they want what all independent states enjoy, including fair and open elections to choose their own leaders democratically, free from outside influence.

They also need to know the collaborationist credentials of leaders representing them - namely, Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, conspiring against them while pretending otherwise.

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Stephen Lendman

On September 24, Russia's Vladimir Putin announced he'll run again for president in 2012 after serving eight years as Dmitry Medvedev's Prime Minister.

[Suddenly] America's media have better memories than elephants. In November 2007, they recall Putin on National Unity Day telling military cadets and youth groups that while:

"an overwhelming majority of people in the world," are friendly toward Russia, some "keep saying to this day that our nation should be split. Some believe that we are too lucky to possess so much natural wealth, which they say must be divided."

In a thinly veiled reference to America, he added,

"(t)hese people have lost their mind. (They) would like to build a unipolar world and rule over all mankind. Nothing of this kind has ever occurred in our planet's history, and I don't think it will ever happen."

On August 1, 2011 Reuters headlined, "Putin says US is "parasite" on global economy," saying:

Putin accused America "of living beyond its means 'like a parasite' on the global economy and said dollar dominance was a threat to the financial markets."

If America is in "systemic malfunction," he added, it affects everyone. Indeed so, and Putin is outspoken saying it.

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A Review by Paul Larudee of The Wandering Who? by Gilad Atzmon

The Wandering Who? is brutally honest in its presentation, and if the reader is equally honest in the reading, her thinking will evolve in unexpected ways.
 
In the late 1970s, The Origin of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, a book by Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes, gained minor celebrity for its original but controversial views concerning the evolution of the human brain/mind relationship. To this day, I don’t know how much of the thesis I accept, but it gave me a perspective that has now become a part of how I look at my fellow human beings on a daily basis.

Gilad Atzmon’s The Wandering Who? has had something of the same effect.  It is very original in its thinking, and even iconoclastic.  Even though there are very few readers who will agree entirely with everything Atzmon has to say, the effect is to question one’s assumptions and to recognize a new perspective. 

In fact, to say that Atzmon is an iconoclast is something of an understatement; as soon as one chapter forces you to build new assumptions, the next one compels you to tear them down again. True, he provides you with new building blocks of interpretation and understanding. However, I found myself unsure of the new structure. Doubtless, many readers will have to digest these ideas and test them before they feel confident about accepting or rejecting them.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Photo: Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, head of the Haqqani Network in Northwest Pakistan and Afghanistan, in 2001. (Getty Images). [Pakistan's] Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has said that Haqqani network was established by United States, adding that CIA also has relations with many terrorist groups. She said that the US should avoid testing temperament of Pakistan, adding that Pakistan has the right to use options if US would continue blaming Pakistan and the doors of dialogue would be closed due the controversial statements of US leaders. (AwamiWeb)

Have you ever before heard of the Haqqanis? I didn’t think so. Like Al Qaeda, about which no one had ever heard prior to 9/11, the “Haqqani Network” has popped up in time of need to justify America’s next war—Pakistan.

President Obama’s claim that he had Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden exterminated deflated the threat from that long-serving bogyman. A terror organization that left its leader, unarmed and undefended, a sitting duck for assassination no longer seemed formidable. Time for a new, more threatening, bogyman, the pursuit of which will keep the “war on terror” going.

Now America’s “worst enemy” is the Haqqanis. Moreover, unlike Al Qaeda, which was never tied to a country, the Haqqani Network, according to Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a “veritable arm” of the Pakistani government’s intelligence service, ISI. Washington claims that the ISI ordered its Haqqani Network to attack the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 13 along with the US military base in Wadak province.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Armed Services committee and one of the main Republican warmongers, declared that “all options are on the table” and gave the Pentagon his assurance that in Congress there was broad bipartisan support for a US military attack on Pakistan.

As Washington has been killing large numbers of Pakistani civilians with drones and has forced the Pakistani army to hunt for Al Qaeda throughout most of Pakistan, producing tens of thousands or more of dislocated Pakistanis in the process, Sen. Graham must have something larger in mind.

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