Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

Martyrs of the Freedom Flotilla.

It is crystal clear that Israel, the arrogant, fanatical and belligerent Jewish state is trying hard to undermine Turkey. Israel feels that its hegemony in the Middle East is being challenged by Turkish efforts to reassert the country's national interests by enhancing relations with Islamic neighbors and also by courageously opposing Israeli ethnic cleansing and other manifestly criminal policies against the Palestinians.

In recent days and weeks, Israel has been quite furious about the recent referendum in Turkey which granted the government additional powers to assert real democracy and prevent the recurrence of military coups.

The Turkish republic had witnessed three military coups against democratically-elected governments the last of which took place nearly 30 years ago, when the military introduced draconian constitutional amendments making the anti-Islam military establishment effectively above the people's will.

In the mid 1990s, the Turkish military forced the popular Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to resign amid suspicions that the conservative premier was trying to re-Islamize Turkey .

The Israeli media has been quite vociferous about "losing Turkey" as if that country of 75 million people were supposed to be a banana republic subservient to Israel. Moreover, Israeli commentators, affiliated with fanatical Zionist circles, have urged the Israeli government to envisage ways and means to "overcome" the "growing Turkish threat"!!!

Israel, a predator state based on religio-ethnic racism, wouldn't settle for having normal, dignified relations with Turkey, e.g. relations based on parity and mutual respect. Israel always seeks dominance. Needless to say, the rationale for this psychotic way of thinking originates in the so-called "chosen people's complex."

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Stephen Lendman

At issue is saving Troy Anthony Davis. On September 21, he'll die by lethal injection, despite clear evidence he's innocent.

On September 20, Georgia's Board of Pardons denied him clemency. Because Georgia's governor can't stay executions, Davis lost his last hope, barring an unexpected 11th hour reprieve.

Georgia State University Law Professor Anne Emanuel reviewed his case. She found no justification for capital punishment. At this stage, however, she said:

"I don't see any avenues to the Supreme Court," no matter how grave the injustice.

In fact, there's nothing just about state-sponsored murder, especially against falsely accused victims.

In America, they're mostly poor Blacks or Latinos denied due process and judicial fairness by a corrupted prosecutorial system rigged to convict even known innocent defendants like Troy Anthony Davis.

Author Michelle Alexander calls America's mass incarceration "The New Jim Crow." Murdering innocent Black victims highlights it.

Colorblind America never existed. Certainly not in Georgia, a state once infamous for chain gangs.

The 1932 film, "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang," was based on Robert Elliott Burns' autobiography titled, "I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang."

Their brutality helped turn public opinion against a system that included keeping prisoners in rolling cages to hold them close to work sites. Inmates were also flogged on roadsides, bound head to toe in chains.

New prison repression replaced old Georgia practices. State-sponsored murder existed earlier and today, notably against poor Blacks. Innocence is of no consequence. Only guilt by accusation matters.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: Ban Ki-moon (L), Foreign Minister of South Korea, shakes hands with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (R) after a meeting in the General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York. (October 5, 2006)

The UN Charter's Preamble states:

"WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

● to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
● to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
● to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
● to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom...."

The body affirms international support for tolerance, peace and security, and resolve to promote universal economic and social advancement.

However, since its 1945 founding, it's failed on all counts, even though some of its agencies (like UNICEF, WFP, UNHCR and UNESCO) at times provide aid in areas of health, education, food assistance, refugees, social development and more.

It's never enough though, timely, or with resolve to support troubled people adequately in times of need.

Moreover, global wars raged every year post-WW II to the present. The UN's been unable or disinterested in stopping them. One of its fatal flaws is structure, hamstrung by its dominant member, America. It can and does veto measures other member states support, notably when contrary to its imperial interests.

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Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Photo: Abdul Ilah Khatib, UN special envoy for Libya (L) and UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Khatib reported to the UN Security Council that a solution 'lies with the Libyan people themselves.' Mr. Ban apparently disagreed...

The United Nations Organization is no more or less than an umbrella for humanitarian intervention after disasters and catastrophes, a forum for discussion of issues pertaining to cultural heritage and a useful tool to channel developmental approaches. As a law-making body, the Libya Question has shown that the Organization has lost all legitimacy.

The people of the world community are not stupid. Those who still believe the biased and controlled media (certainly very few after the Libya Question) may be duped but these days, despite draconian measures and sinister and criminal acts of cyber terrorism, hacking, blocking access to independent media resources and threats, people have the means at their disposal to get themselves informed.

This is not a cause, it is a victory for those of us who have fought for an independent media over the last decade. Like all victories, it must be protected and its legacy cherished and the second we allow freedom of expression to slip, we have lost the battle and reactionary forces will sweep things back to where they used to be. There, is, however, another cause and that is an international justice system whereby the rules of international law apply and are enforced with the same set of weights and measures on all, and this means NATO as well as African countries or Serbia. This means respect for the law, it means respecting the terms of international agreements and conventions and it means accountability for all when such terms are violated.

On September 15, 2011, this is not the case. For those in the world community who accept that laws are made to be broken and accept that the law of the jungle should be applied, where the strongest bullies the rest by force, then do not bother reading on, just scroll down to the note at the end. Others who want a civilised world where criminals are held accountable, please read on.

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Gilad Atzmon

Those who monitor the Hebrew press and understand the Jewish State may be slightly puzzled to find out that while in the Hebrew press there is only just a little and insignificant attention to the current Palestinian leaders' drive for statehood, the Israeli English media outlets are saturated with news about the prospect of a pro-Palestinian resolution in the UN next week.

If you want to understand this clear discrepancy between the Jewish Hebrew press and English outlets, then here it is--we are dealing here with a clear split within the Jewish collective psyche.

I guess that some may be surprised to learn that Israel and most Israelis actually want the Palestinian initiative to go ahead and to succeed. They want a Palestinian State because this is the only solution that would save the ‘Jews only State’ from a demographic meltdown.

Recent polls in Israel prove that the majority of Israelis are very excited about the ‘Two State Solution’. Not only are the Israelis not threatened by the idea of a Palestinian State, they actually love it, for it would settle their reality within a framework of international law. Also, you may want to bear in mind that Kadima party, that won the last two elections in Israel, has been and still is, devoted to ‘disengagement’, a clear separation between the ‘Jews’ and the Palestinians by means of Israeli unilateral withdraw. In other words, a Palestinian statehood achieves the exact same goal; it removes Israelis from any responsibility to territories it once occupied and destroyed. It is obvious that some elements in Israel oppose the Palestinian UN initiative: I guess that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is not too happy about it. West Bank settlers may also be very angry but for some reason, even they are relatively quiet these days.

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Khalid Amayreh

With Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recognising, though fairly belatedly, that the Middle East is undergoing a real political earthquake of historic proportions, Israel is showing signs of confusion in face of what the Israeli media is calling "the new strategic situation in the region".

Israel had hoped the "Arab Spring" would be a passing cloud that would leave the basic regional geopolitical order more or less unscathed. However, with the latest crises between Tel Aviv on one side and both Cairo and Ankara on the other, the former is beginning, though slowly and reluctantly, to realise that the arrogance of power is largely inexpedient, unduly provocative and detrimental to Israel's standing and interests.

The storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo at the weekend and outbreak of a serious "mini-crisis" of relations with the largest Arab country was an ominous development that Israel didn't want to foresee due to a prevailing psyche that discounts even looming dangers and treats adversaries with contempt, including their grievances.

Reacting to the embassy incident in Cairo, however, Netanyahu described the incident as "serious and dangerous". Bemoaning the "severe injury to the fabric of peace" between the two countries, Netanyahu said Israel would undertake the utmost efforts to maintain peace with Egypt.

Nonetheless, the Israeli premier failed to make any connection between the criminal treatment Israel has been meting out to Palestinians and rising anti-Israeli sentiment across the Arab and Muslim world. "We must maintain security and advance our interests," he said.

Israeli leaders, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, have perhaps recognised that Israel, at least for the time being, has to keep a low profile in the hope that this "murky phase would pass with minimum losses for Israel". It is a change, at least in discourse, from last week when Lieberman threatened Turkey with doom and gloom, including arming and training PKK rebels. The sabre rattling drew strong reactions from Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu.

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William A. Cook

Israeli Jews watching with glee as Gaza burns...

Gilad Atzmon’s insight into the organism created by the Zionist movement in his book, The Wandering Who?, is explosive; it tears the veil off of Israel’s apparent civility, its apparent friendship with the United States, and its expressed solicitude for western powers—Britain, Canada, Australia, France and Germany—exposing behind the veil, the assassin ready to slay any and all that interfere with its tribally focused ends.

In February of this year, Atzmon characterized Islam and Judaism as tribally oriented belief systems rooted not in “enlightened individualism,” but rather in “…the survival of the extended family.” These belief systems have nothing to do with personal liberties or personal rights; they have to do with securing the realm of their respective “ways of life.” But unlike tribalism in Islam, tribalism in Judaism “can never live in peace with humanism and universalism”. “Both religions stand as systems that provide thorough answers in terms of spiritual, civil, cultural and day to day matters.” In this regard, “…both Islam and Judaism are more than just religions: they convey an entire ‘way of life,’ and stand as a thorough attempt to answer crucial questions regarding being in the world…”

The Wandering Who? is a personal journey of a man born in Jerusalem, raised in the Jewish ‘way of life,’ infused with the myths of the founding of the Jewish state; “Supremacy was brewed into our soul, we gazed at the world through racist, chauvinistic binoculars. And we felt no shame about it either”. Inducted into the Israeli military during the 1980s he served in Lebanon, and, in his late teens, experienced an epiphany caused in good measure by careful listening to voices beyond the wall that encircled him in the ghetto that is the Israeli state. This epiphany forced a distinction in identity versus identifying, between self-reliance and obedient servant to an ideology, a distinction that recognized Jews as people, Judaism as a religion, and Jewishness, an ideology that determines identity politics and a resulting political discourse.

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Stephen Lendman

"(T)he (UN) General Assembly shall meet every year in regular session commencing on the Tuesday of the third week in September, counting from the first week that contains at least one working day."

The 66th session began Tuesday, September 13. Access its agenda through this link.

On Friday, September 23, Abbas and Netanyahu will address the body. Obama plans to do it Wednesday, September 21.

According to Middle East expert Jon Alterman:

"The president's actions have gotten him anger on all sides, and accolades on none," with good reason. "I don't know an easy way to get out of this problem."

Put another way: He made his bed. Now he has to sleep in it!

So does The New York Times. Its longstanding editorial policy notoriously turns a blind eye to the most egregious injustices - notably on Israeli/Palestinian issues.

As a result, it virulently opposes Palestinian statehood and full UN membership, no matter how just, right and timely.

Supporting the right thing, in fact, was never The Times' long suit.

It's September 11 editorial is one of many examples. Headlined, "Palestinian Statehood," it calls a UN vote for it "ruinous," adding:

"If a UN vote takes place, Washington and its partners will have to limit the damage...."

On September 18, Times writer Neil MacFarquhar headlined, "Palestinians Turn to UN, Where Partition Began," referring to the 1947 partition plan. More on it below.

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Alex Lantier

From an earlier NATO massacre

NATO bombed cities across Libya over the weekend as fighting continued in Sirte and Bani Walid between troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi and the NATO-backed forces of the National Transition Council (NTC).

There are mounting reports of casualties due to the NATO bombing. NATO spokesmen said yesterday that on Saturday NATO forces bombed 11 targets in Sirte, 11 in the nearby Al-Jufra oasis, and 3 in the city of Sabha, far to the south.

Moussa Ibrahim, an official of the Gaddafi regime, released a statement yesterday saying that 354 people had been killed and 700 injured when a NATO air strike in Sirte hit the city’s main hotel and a nearby apartment block. He said an additional 89 people were still missing.

“In the past 17 days,” he added, “more than 2,000 residents of the city of Sirte were killed in NATO air strikes.”

NATO spokesman Colonel Roland Lavoie summarily dismissed reports of Libyan civilian casualties, saying, “Most often, they are revealed to be unfounded or inconclusive.”

The NATO war’s enormous cost in blood is not even disputed by NTC forces. According to NTC estimates released on September 8, the war in Libya has left 30,000 dead and 50,000 wounded. It has been widely reported that NATO’s massive use of air power against Libyan cities, which necessarily entails civilian casualties, has enabled the NTC to defeat loyalist forces despite NTC units’ lack of discipline and military training.

NATO operations against Bani Walid apparently aim to cut off pro-Gaddafi areas in southern Libya from Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace, which divides NTC-held areas around Benghazi in northeast Libya and Tripoli to the northwest. Tripoli fell to NTC forces last month, after electricity and water to the city were cut off and pro-NTC tribes from the Nafusa Mountains attacked the city.

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Sherwood Ross

As America's empire spreads abroad, it becomes ever more the police state at home. The methods used for the suppression of foreigners by military force and violence are eventually mirrored in the "homeland."

In an article last September titled "It Is Official: the US Is A Police State," author Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Treasury Secretary during the Reagan years, wrote,

"'Violent extremism' is one of those undefined police state terms that will mean whatever the government wants it to mean. In this morning's FBI foray into the homes of American citizens of conscience it means antiwar activists, whose activities are equated with 'the material support of terrorism'..."

The FBI raids at home are reminiscent of U.S. military raids overseas. In Iraq, for instance, labor union offices were raided and rifled and labor leaders imprisoned by the Occupation forces. Their "crime" was to oppose sweetheart contract deals with private oil firms.

The vast U.S. prison system, which houses 2.4 million Americans, may be compared with the Gulag the U.S. has built abroad. America today is the World's Jailer. As Allan Uthman reported on AlterNet, in 2006 the Bush regime began building "detention centers" to warehouse inmates for unspecified "new programs" when the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root nearly $400 million. What we do abroad, we do at home.

Adopting police state tactics on Americans the U.S. Empire first used on subjects abroad has a long history. When Filipinos rebelled against U.S. rule after their country was "liberated" from Spain, captured resistance fighters were subjected to water torture. Twenty years later, imprisoned American pacifists who opposed the Wilson administration's entry into World War One were hung by their hands, and had running hoses shoved in their faces.

In an editorial in July, The Nation magazine denounces America's use of "secret armies, covert operations...offshore torture centers, out-of-control armed corporations, runaway military spending, wars by fleets of robots, wars by assassination---and all the other features of the imperial presidency..."

The magazine has long sought to end these practices. It's still a great idea but now it's a tad late. The Reactionary Elite that runs America is powerful. Congress rubber-stamps President Obama's five wars of aggression abroad and enacts laws at home that scorch individual liberty. The result is the emergent police state.

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Medea Benjamin & Allison McCracken

During August recess this year, 81 members of Congress went on a junket to Israel funded by the Israel lobby group AIPAC (well, funded by the American Israel Education Fund, but they are really one and the same) to "learn first-hand about one of our closest friends and allies.” While the representatives insist they got a balanced view, their itinerary belies that claim: 95% of their time was spent hearing the Israeli government point of view, with only one token meeting with Palestinian reps.

CODEPINK has filed a complaint with the Congressional Ethics Committee stating that these trips—and the upcoming ones scheduled for December--violate the Congressional prohibition on traveling with a lobby group. We feel these Potemkin voyages are part of AIPAC’s grand plan to control and monopolize Congress, which is not just unethical, but dangerous. Their bias reinforces a disastrous U.S. policy of unconditional support for Israel that obstructs peace and runs counter to our national interests.

At a recent Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, entitled "Promoting Peace? Reexamining US Aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA)", we got a glimpse of what happens when Congress views the Middle East through AIPAC-colored glasses. Here are a few of examples of their tunnel vision:

● Asking the wrong questions: Congress is intent on looking into the $600 million a year U.S. taxpayers give to the Palestinian Authority, especially at a time, as a few members brought up, of economic hardship in the United States. But they would not dare hold a hearing about the more important issue: the $3 billion a year we are giving to the Israeli government--which is five times what we give the Palestinian Authority. The question they should be asking, but won’t, is: How can American taxpayers afford to give “military aid” to the wealthy government of Israel, especially when that government uses our funds to drop white phosphorous on civilians in Gaza, kill international humanitarians on boats trying to break the Gaza siege, bulldoze Palestinian homes and orchards, and imprison peaceful protesters?” CODEPINK was in the hearing with signs saying “No More $$ to Israel”, but we were not even allowed to quietly hold them.

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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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