Stephen Lendman

Throughout its history, Israel had belligerent, racist prime ministers, none worse than Netanyahu. He talks peace but mocks and spurns it.

His extremism heads Israel toward the brink. His worst ever government enrages global millions. Eventually, Israel may end up isolated and universally vilified as a pariah state.

Already, it's a regional menace. Lawlessly occupied for 44 years, Palestinians know it best. Gaza remains suffocating under siege. Militantly, Netanyahu wants harsher conditions.

On October 30, Haaretz headlined, "Netanyahu to Gaza militants: Israel's policy is kill or be killed," saying:

Netanyahu threatened attacks against "every attempt to fire against Israel and anyone who fires anyway."

He told ministers at a special cabinet session that Israel's defense policy stresses two principles: "Kill or be killed," and "He who harms you should bear the blood on his head."

So-called "militants" are freedom fighters. Hamas and other resistance groups respond only in self-defense. International law affirms it.

In December 2008, Israel waged preemptive war on Gaza. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other groups observed months of unilateral ceasefire, despite repeated Israeli violations. On November 4, it ended after the IDF invaded without cause, killing six Hamas members, allegedly to close tunnels.

Hamas wanted peace. Israel spurned it. Cast Lead followed, destroying and killing everything but the will to resist. To this day, Gazans suffer horrifically, including from repeated Israeli air, land and sea attacks.

Gaza is one of history's terror bombing victims. Netanyahu inverts truth, blaming Palestinians for Israeli crimes.

"I suggest Hamas, Jihad, and other organizations not test our determination to actualize the two principles I have described here," he said.

"We will harm every attempt to fire against Israel and anyone who fires anyway. We are not tempestuous, and we do not want things to deteriorate, but we will defend Israel's citizens determinedly, aggressively and effectively."

Netanyahu is a lawless bully, a rogue leader unfit to rule, a menace to Palestinians and Israelis alike, enduring destructive, imperial authority.

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Khalid Amayreh

It seems that the tight Jewish stranglehold on the American government is not only preventing the Obama administration from pursuing a fair, rational and honest approach to the enduring Palestinian crisis, but is also inhibiting the formulation in Washington of an accurate and objective understanding of basic facts in and about the Middle East.

An example of this willful and unnecessary ignorance was a statement made recently by the US Ambassador for Middle East Peace David Hale. According to Hale,

[the Arab Spring could] "sweep Hamas from power." "The Palestinians are no more immune to currents of change and demand for democratization, reform and freedom than any other people in the region," [he was quoted as saying.] "I think you will see those same forces affect Hamas because clearly their leadership is not characterized by any of those words."

Hale's words exude a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding of the facts and realities in the region.

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Adnan Al-Daini

The greed, excess and selfishness that brought liberal democracy and capitalism to the edge of the abyss have been demonstrated once again by the latest research from Income Data Services (IDS).  It shows that the pay of directors of the UK’s top businesses (FTSE 100) rose by 49% over the past year, bringing their average pay package to about £2.7 million. This is at a time when average pay nationally for private sector workers rose by 2.6%, a cut in real wages when inflation is running at 5.2%.  The march of income inequality is gathering pace, with total disregard to the effect such injustice and unfairness have on society. 

There is ample evidence to demonstrate that this is not related to the performance of these companies, but based on complicated formulae, with pay panels comprising like-minded people that recommend rises regardless of how the company performs.  In any case, the performance of a company surely does not depend entirely on the performance of a few people at the top, but on the entire workforce.  If the company is successful, rewarding the bosses only is insulting to everybody else who has contributed to that success. It is divisive and unjust.

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Stephen Lendman

Like occupied people everywhere, Palestinians understand oppression better than experts. Ask them. They'll explain.

In Gaza, it means living under siege and Israeli air, land and sea attacks. West Bank communities face day and night incursions.

In the week ending October 27, 58 were conducted, nearly 10 a day. Israel arrests Palestinians while releasing others. Every Palestinian wonders when their loved ones may be taken in middle of the night raids, including children young as ten.

International law doesn't restrain Israeli persecution. Peaceful protesters taste tear gas, rubber bullets, stun grenades, beatings and other abusive tactics to disperse them.

On October 27, Israel bombed three Khan Younis locations in southern Gaza. No deaths or injuries were reported. Central Gaza's Deir al-Balah was also struck, again with no casualties.

Israel claims provocations each time. Gazans mostly respond in self-defense as international law allows. Israel calls it terrorism. It intercepted two Gazan fishermen, opened fire, detained them and impounded their boats.

Attacks against other fishermen escalated. Boats were confiscated. Fishermen were detained. Tools and equipment were damaged or destroyed.

Gazans are prevented from fishing in their own waters. Violent assaults can come any time. On October 27, Israeli warplanes destroyed a container used for fishing equipment and tools. Nets and a water tank were burnt.

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Paul Craig Roberts

I have come to the conclusion that Big Brother’s subjects in George Orwell’s 1984 are better informed than Americans.

Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don’t realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State. Few understand that hard economic times are here to stay.

On October 27, 2011, the US government announced some routine economic statistics, and the president of the European Council announced a new approach to the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The result of these funny numbers and mere words sent the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its largest monthly rally since 1974, erasing its 2011 yearly loss. The euro rose, putting the European currency again 40% above its initial parity with the US dollar when the euro was introduced.

On National Public Radio a half-wit analyst declared, emphatically, that the latest US government statistics proved that the recovery was in place and that there was no danger whatsoever of a double-dip recession. And half-brain economists predicted a better tomorrow.

Europe is happy because the European private banks, the creditors of the European governments, have agreed to eat 50% of Greece’s sovereign debt and to be recapitalized by public money handed to them by the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund. The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, thinks that Greece’s debt is the only sovereign debt to be written down and that the debt of Italy, Spain, and Portugal will somehow be bailed out through other means, including a Chinese contribution to the EFSF rescue fund. Obviously, if all EU sovereign debt has to be cut by 50% as well, the rescue fund would not be up to the job.

For our corrupt financial markets, any news that can be spun as good news can send stocks up. But what are the facts?

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Desiree Smith

The Patriot Act is not about terrorism. It is about control of
United States citizens. - It's about dictatorship & tyranny.

“The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either”.

These are some of the wisest words ever spoken in history. For without freedom people are subject to slavery. Naturally the first thing that came to mind when I read up on this subject was the President George W. Bush’s Patriot Act first signed in 2001. Supposedly this act was signed so the government would have a better ability to detect terrorists in America after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the twin towers.

There has been a lot of controversy about the lack of proper oversight over certain provisions that seem to infringe upon the civil liberties of Americans. One of these provisions is section 215 in the USAPA, which allows the government access to records and other items under the foreign intelligence surveillance act. The House of Representatives had passed this act with no judicial oversight on the provision that allows the government to search library records.

Because of 9/11 our whole country was in a state of fear and in my opinion, as well as the opinions of many other Americans, the representatives for the Patriot act used this catastrophe as a scare tactic in the mainstream media. They made the impression that our country was in a delicate condition needing protection from anyone that possibly posed a threat to the government and our nation. This tactic was obviously used to try to convince the House and the American people that the Patriot Act was the only solution to finding possible terrorist threats that might endanger our country.

In the meantime they were completely dismissing the fact that this act infringes upon several of the rights granted to the American people by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. The people of the United States of America were given these rights by our founding fathers, who fought and died in a war to ensure that the freedoms that they had risked their lives for would remain intact.

Americans should not have to give up their privacy and liberties that were granted to them over 200 years ago so the government can keep us safe from our own citizens who may be considered terrorists or involved with a terrorist group. The terrorist profile was designed by the Secretary of State, who was given this power by the makers of the Patriot Act, and has a ridiculous list of what attributes makes a domestic terrorist or terrorist group.

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Stephen Lendman

Isn't it high political Washington acted responsibly? One day perhaps if America's corrupted duopoly is replaced by officials representing popular, not imperial and corporate, interests. It can't happen a moment too soon.

ADL's audacity gives chutzpah new meaning. Whether it's latest scheme works isn't known. However, early indications express displeasure. More on that below.

Along with the American Jewish Committee (AJC), ADL's web site calls for a "National Pledge for Unity on Israel," saying:

America supported Israel since its 1948 founding. Its friendship transcends politics. It's never been just a party platform plank. It's "a core American policy that serves our nation's most fundamental national interests." For the past six decades, American presidents and congressional leaders "championed the shared values and outlook that bind the two nations." "This broad bipartisan backing has been vital to America's interests and to Israel's security throughout decades of war and a constant struggle for survival."

Fact check

For decades, Washington's been Israel's paymaster/partner. Together they waged aggressive wars and state terror against nonbelligerent countries, organizations and individuals.

Both are unrivaled global menaces. They're scourges on humanity. Annually, Washington grants Israel billions of taxpayer dollars, low or no-interest loans (some never repaid), the latest weapons and technologies, and other benefits afforded no other nation.

Israel, in fact, gets more US aid than all other countries combined. In return, they partner in crimes of war and against humanity. Neither respects democratic values, human and civil rights, or rule of law principles. Both are unprincipled rogue states.

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Bill Van Auken

Occupy Oakland protesters carry Scott Olsen away after
he was hit in the head on Tuesday night. Photo: Kimihiro
Hoshino/AFP/Getty

Tuesday’s near-fatal attack by Oakland, California police on a young veteran during an anti-Wall Street protest is part of a wave of repression that has provoked nationwide anger over the growing assault on democratic rights.

Demonstrators poured into the streets of Oakland, New York City and other US cities to denounce the vicious attack on Scott Olsen, 24, who survived two tours of duty in Iraq, only to be cut down by the police.

Olsen was felled by a supposedly non-lethal police projectile, fired directly at his head. The attack came in the midst of what amounted to a police riot staged in response to a Tuesday night protest over the police eviction and mass arrest of Occupy Oakland demonstrators at their encampment in the city’s Frank Ogawa Plaza. When other demonstrators went to his aid, they too were attacked with tear gas.

Olsen was admitted to Oakland’s Highland Hospital in critical condition, suffering a fractured skull and reportedly in a coma, breathing only with the aid of a respirator. On Thursday, his condition was upgraded to fair. His roommate, Keith Shannon, told the World Socialist Web Site that Scott had been taken off the respirator but was still under sedation. His parents, who flew in from Wisconsin, were with him.

Shannon, who was in Iraq with Olsen, reported that Olsen had been working at a San Francisco software company during the day and joining the anti-Wall Street protests at night, sleeping in the encampments in San Francisco and Oakland, California.

“He’d leave work, head there, sleep there and go to work the next day,” Shannon told the WSWS. “Scott was participating in Occupy San Francisco because he doesn’t agree with how none of the banks and corporations were held accountable for their role in the economic downturn. Instead, the politicians work hand-in-hand with them to provide more laws that benefit the rich rather than helping the thousands upon thousands of people who have lost their jobs and their health insurance and really need it.”

Shannon said that Scott’s attitude toward the Occupy Wall Street movement developed in line with his views on the war in Iraq. Having joined the Marines in 2006, he turned against the war after his deployments twice to the country. “He just felt that we shouldn’t be there,” he said. “He thought it wasn’t good for the Iraqi people and it wasn’t good for the American people. The only ones it was good for were the businessmen.

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Wayne Madsen

Ibn Saud ruled until his death in 1953.
He was followed by Saud bin Abdul-
Aziz, his eldest son (1953-64).

What will surprise those who may already be surprised about the Dönmeh connection to Turkey, is the Dönmeh connection to the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia.

[PART I] - An Iraqi Mukhabarat (General Military Intelligence Directorate) Top Secret report, “The Emergence of Wahhabism and its Historical Roots,” dated September 2002 and released on March 13, 2008, by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in translated English form, points to the Dönmeh roots of the founder of the Saudi Wahhabi sect of Islam, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. Much of the information is gleaned from the memoirs of a “Mr. Humfer,” (as spelled in the DIA report, “Mr. Hempher” as spelled the historical record) a British spy who used the name “Mohammad,” claimed to be an Azeri who spoke Turkish, Persian, and Arabic and who made contact with Wahhab in the mid-18th century with a view of creating a sect of Islam that would eventually bring about an Arab revolt against the Ottomans and pave the way for the introduction of a Jewish state in Palestine. Humfer’s memoirs are recounted by the Ottoman writer and admiral Ayyub Sabri Pasha in his 1888 work, “The Beginning and Spreading of Wahhabism.”

In his book, The Dönmeh Jews, D. Mustafa Turan writes that Wahhab’s grandfather, Tjen Sulayman, was actually Tjen Shulman, a member of the Jewish community of Basra, Iraq. The Iraqi intelligence report also states that in his book, The Dönmeh Jews and the Origin of the Saudi Wahhabis, Rifat Salim Kabar reveals that Shulman eventually settled in the Hejaz, in the village of al-Ayniyah what is now Saudi Arabia, where his grandson founded the Wahhabi sect of Islam. The Iraqi intelligence report states that Shulman had been banished from Damascus, Cairo, and Mecca for his “quackery.” In the village, Shulman sired Abdul Wahhab. Abdel Wahhab’s son, Muhammad, founded modern Wahhabism.

The Iraqi report also makes some astounding claims about the Saud family. It cites Abdul Wahhab Ibrahim al-Shammari’s book, The Wahhabi Movement: The Truth and Roots, which states that King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, the first Kingdom of Saudi Arabia monarch, was descended from Mordechai bin Ibrahim bin Moishe, a Jewish merchant also from Basra. In Nejd, Moishe joined the Aniza tribe and changed his name to Markhan bin Ibrahim bin Musa. Eventually, Mordechai married off his son, Jack Dan, who became Al-Qarn, to a woman from the Anzah tribe of the Nejd. From this union, the future Saud family was born.

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Stephen Lendman

Today's nightmare may be expanded beyond remediation, at least in our lifetimes unless public rage stops it. Corrupt politicians won't do it.

Hydraulic fracking involves using pressurized fluids to fracture rock layers to release oil, gas, coal seam gas, or other substances.

Earthworks says the process provides easier access to deposits and lets oil or gas "travel more easily from the rock pores," where it's trapped, "to the production well." Fractures are created by pumping mixtures of water, proppants (sand or ceramic beads) and chemicals into rock or coal formations. Acidizing involves pumping acid (usually hydrochloric acid) into the formation. It dissolves rock so pores open for easier flows. Fracking and acidizing are often done together.

Studies show from 20 - 40% of fracking fluids remain underground. Fracking fluids contain hazardous toxic chemicals, known to cause cancer and other diseases. They include diesel fuel, containing benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene and other chemicals. They also include polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, methanol, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, glycol ethers, hydrochloric acid, and sodium hydroxide.

Small amounts of benzene alone can contaminate millions of gallons of groundwater used for human consumption. According to the EPA, 10 of 11 US coalbed methane (CBM) basins are located at least partially in areas of underground sources of drinking water (USDW).

EPA also determined that nine or more harmful to human health fracking chemicals are used in normal operations. "These chemicals may be injected (in) concentrations anywhere from 4 to almost 13,000 times" above acceptable amounts. According to hydrodynamics expert John Bredehoeft:

"At greatest risk of contamination are the coalbed aquifers currently used as sources of drinking water." "(C)ontamination associated with hydrofracturing (can) threaten the usefulness of aquifers for future use."

At issue also is obtaining information on specific fracking chemicals used. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), oil and gas companies won't release what they call "proprietary information."

Current regulations exempt oil and gas drilling from major environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, and Clean Water Act.

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Stephen Lendman

Sirte all but flattened. Thousands killed. - What's so humanitarian
about that? Wasn't the UN Resolution 1973 (2011) about "the
protection of civilians" and the Security Council's "strong commit-
ment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and
national unity of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya"? Did the UN do
anything whatever to stop the vicious US-NATO attack on Libya?

His faults aside, Libyans supported Gaddafi overwhelmingly. They still do. His spirit drives their revolutionary struggle for freedom. They won't quit until it's achieved.

Obama's March 28, 2011 address at the National Defense University was true to form. It reeked of duplicity, hypocrisy, and ball-faced lies, saying:

"For generations, the United States of America has played a unique role as an anchor of global security and as an advocate for human freedom." "....(W)e are reluctant to use force to solve the world's many challenges." "But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act. That's what happened in Libya...." For decades, Libya was "ruled by a tyrant....He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized people around the world - including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents."

Substitute Washington for Libya and he got it right. America is a rogue terror state, a menacing plague on humanity.

Democratic values, human and civil rights, and rule of law principles are non-starters.

Only corporate and imperial interests matter, not equity, justice, peace on earth, and government of, by and for the people while respecting the sovereign rights of other nations.

NATO's war on Libya was planned many months in advance like all wars. Why is most important, or put another way - cui bono?

Official accounts and media scoundrels never explain. Dozens of previous articles discussed relevant issues and answers, including one summarizing what's most important. More on that below.

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Wayne Madsen

Kemal Pasha (Atatürk = Father of Turks) was a crypto-
Jewish Dönmeh / Sabbatian. Dönmeh / Sabbatians
destroyed the Ottoman Empire (as they did with the Ger-
man Reich and the Russian Empire) from the inside, to
create Israel on Palestinian territory. [Like many men who
had a great influence on world history, Kemal Atatürk
was an instrument of the so-called "hidden hand." - Ed.]

“Sabbateanism is the matrix of every significant movement to have emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth entury, from Hasidism, to Reform Judaism, to the earliest Masonic circles and revolutionary idealism. The Sabbatean "believers" felt that they were champions of a new world which was to be established by overthrowing the values of all positive religions.” ~ Gershom Scholem

[PART II] There is a historical “eight hundred pound gorilla” lurking in the background of almost every serious military and diplomatic incident involving Israel, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Greece, Armenia, the Kurds, the Assyrians, and some other players in the Middle East and southeastern Europe. It is a factor that is generally only whispered about at diplomatic receptions, news conferences, and think tank sessions due to the explosiveness and controversial nature of the subject. And it is the secretiveness attached to the subject that has been the reason for so much misunderstanding about the current breakdown in relations between Israel and Turkey, a growing warming of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and increasing enmity between Saudi Arabia and Iran…

Although known to historians and religious experts, the centuries-old political and economic influence of a group known in Turkish as the “Dönmeh” is only beginning to cross the lips of Turks, Arabs, and Israelis who have been reluctant to discuss the presence in Turkey and elsewhere of a sect of Turks descended from a group of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th and 17th centuries. These Jewish refugees from Spain were welcomed to settle in the Ottoman Empire and over the years they converted to a mystical sect of Islam that eventually mixed Jewish Kabbala and Islamic Sufi semi-mystical beliefs into a sect that eventually championed secularism in post-Ottoman Turkey. It is interesting that “Dönmeh” not only refers to the Jewish “untrustworthy converts” to Islam in Turkey but it is also a derogatory Turkish word for a transvestite, or someone who is claiming to be someone they are not.

The Donmeh sect of Judaism was founded in the 17th century by Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi, a Kabbalist who believed he was the Messiah but was forced to convert to Islam by Sultan Mehmet IV, the Ottoman ruler. Many of the rabbi’s followers, known as Sabbateans, but also “crypto-Jews,” publicly proclaimed their Islamic faith but secretly practiced their hybrid form of Judaism, which was unrecognized by mainstream Jewish rabbinical authorities. Because it was against their beliefs to marry outside their sect, the Dönmeh created a rather secretive sub-societal clan.

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Charles E. Carlson

Pastor John Hagee at the 'Night to Honor Israel'

Zionists from three or more religious groups converged at John Hagee's Night To Honor Israel in Arvada Colorado, Sunday October 16, 2011. We say "from" because, when one becomes a Zionist, he leaves behind whatever God-driven faith he may have had before. At Faith Bible Chapel, Colorado, we met many "Christian" and "Jewish" Zionists; one man claimed to be a Muslim for Israel and against Palestine. We even met a few Christ followers, whom we tried to convince did not belong there.

This Vigil for Peace With Justice was by far our most broadly supported vigil in over eight years at over 70 American churches. We are grateful for the co-sponsorship of other pro-peace and pro-Palestinian organizations, as well as the continuing support of our friends from past vigils.

This was our second outing at Faith Bible Chapel, a true mega-church in Arvada, Colorado.[1] As always the vigil was quiet and safe, but highly exciting in its conflicts. The churches usually employ private, off-duty police officers, who they can count on to protect Zionist's interests. We make sure there is a city police presence for our protection. We protested for 2 1/2 hours at the open house that preceded the nighttime pep rally for Israel, conducted by John Hagee and a Rabbi from South Africa. We left at dark.

"Angry Evangelicals," as WHTT’s Tom Compton has dubbed churchgoers who become Zionists, were never more hostile. Hostile, we think, because Project Strait Gate correctly labels them a cult. It challenges the scriptural core of their belief system, which has been corrupted by their leaders. We tell them when we have a chance, they are every bit as much a cult as the Jonestown cult, many of whose misled members died in 1978.

The many self-identified Jews in attendance were even more vociferous in their outrage. Perhaps they recognize that we are exposing the unchristian nature of their warmaking for Israel. Where at our previous Hagee vigils, they ignored us, or treated us with confident contempt, this time a number stopped on the way in or out of the Hagee open house to argue, proclaiming how uninformed we were.

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Gilad Atzmon

Examining Alan Dershowitz's and Abe Foxman's arguments against The Wandering Who?

Earlier this week I learned from the Jerusalem Post how desperate notorious Zionists Alan Dershowitz and ADL’s Abe Foxman are to stop my new book ‘The The Wandering Who?’. It seems that Foxman, Dershowitz and their allies amongst the Jewish ‘anti’-Zionists (aka ‘anti-Zionist Zionists’ or AZZ) are in a state of total hysteria. So far, the book has been endorsed by some of the most distinguished academics, writers and humanists in contemporary discourse. It has been praised on every dissident outlet around the world.

But it’s also obvious to every person who reads me that there is not a drop of racism, bigotry or anti Semitism in any of my writing. In my entire writing career I have never criticized Jews as people, ethnicity or race. Nor do I criticise Judaism. What I do is to scrutinize Jewish ideology and culture and I argue that if Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish State’ and drops bombs on civilians from airplanes decorated with Jewish symbols, then surely it is our moral duty to question what this ‘Jewishness’ is all about.

In fact my biggest contribution to the discourse is my attempt to offer a critical argument against Jewish identity politics that is both ethically grounded and based on universal thought.

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Stephen Lendman

'Juan Gómez' is an encampment built by Haitians who
crossed into the Dominican Republic in Search of work.

Except briefly after their successful 1804 revolution and under Aristide, Haitians suffered over 500 years of persecution and human misery.

It's ongoing today under America's imperial boot, UN paramilitary occupation, and stealth Duvalierist Michel ("Sweet Micky") Martelly's illegitimate April 2011 election.

With longstanding ties to Haitian elites, militarists, reactionary Duvalierists, and his thuggish Tonton Macoute assassins, Haitians are stuck with him for five years.

He serves Washington and predatory neoliberal interests, not them. As a result, expect hard times getting harder ahead.

On October 17, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) Research Associate Courtney Franz headlined, "Leta Restavek: The Suppression of Democracy in Haiti," saying:

UN Blue Helmet MINUSTAH occupiers "suppressed both electoral democracy and free speech in Haiti by organizing fraudulent elections and shutting down peaceful protests, which helped to exclude Haiti's poor majority from participating in the electoral process."

Moreover, Washington's iron fist got Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas and 14 other parties banned to install its favorites. The entire electoral process was unfair, unconstitutional, undemocratic and laughable under standards stretched to look legitimate.

Even despots hold more respectable elections to rubber-stamp their unchallenged rule. Haiti's didn't pass the smell test.

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Stephen Lendman

NATO's sole new millennium accomplishment consists of endless unwinnable wars. Coalition partners eventually tire and pull out.

America may end up isolated against raging street anger to end imperial wars and address vital neglected homeland needs. It's already happening.

The battle for Iraq continues. Afghanistan's war was lost years ago. Libya's also though political Washington, coalition partners, media scoundrels, and NATO won't admit it.

At its October 24 press briefing, NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu said:

"....(W)e all have seen the celebrations in Benghazi and across Libya as the National Transitional Council declared the full liberation of Libya. A momentous day for Libyans and for the whole region."

Fact check

Fighting rages in Benghazi, Bani Walid, Sirte, Tripoli and other cities across Libya. Jamahiriya loyalists control most territory though portions shift back and forth. Terror bombings continue daily.

Tribal leaders swear revenge for Gaddafi's assassination. Lungescu's rhetoric belies the spirit of millions of Libyans to resist until free. Alleged celebrations were staged. Official accounts of conditions are surreal, bearing no relation to reality.

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Tony Cartalucci

Think-tank designs for Iran leave only Israeli attack & coaxed provocation for total war on table.

October 22, 2011 - For ten months the Obama administration has presided over the "Arab Spring," a geopolitical gambit years in the making, and executed simultaneously in multiple nations throughout the Middle East and North Africa in the beginning of 2011. The regional conflagration was stoked by a steady stream of first, denial, even feigned surprise, with covert support for US-backed opposition groups, then more overt support, and finally NATO airstrikes, weapons, training, and special operations forces lent to the rebellion in Libya and weapons and support sent to Syria's militants. These collective efforts stretching from Tunisia and leading up to Iran's doorstep serve a singular agenda -that is, to contain and ultimately overturn the reemergence of Russia as well as containing the rise of China.

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Stephen Lendman

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (Sword of Islam) Gaddafi embodies the
hopes of a new future for Libya and the Middle East.

October 20 events didn't liberate Libya. It's the beginning, not end, of protracted struggle perhaps for years.

Muammar Gaddafi was bigger than life. His spirit inspires Libyans and others wanting freedom - not terror bombing, occupation, colonization, pillaging, exploitation, and misery.

NATO's war on Libya is one of history's great crimes. Democratic values and truth never had a chance. Responsibility to protect duplicity terrorized and massacred civilians like crazed assassins.

Terror bombing continues daily. So do unspeakable rebel rat atrocities and ravaging Libya's landscape.

NATO is a rogue killing machine. Coalition partners are complicit in mass murder. Obama, Clinton and those around them are war criminals multiple times over.

Gratuitous slaughter, mass destruction, barbarism, lawlessness, and pillaging define their agenda. Libya was raped for profit and regional dominance. No one anywhere should tolerate imperial lawlessness on a scale beyond measure.

Jamahiriya freedom fighters won't quit until their mother of all struggles is won. With or without Gaddafi, they'll go on or die trying. Libya belongs to them, not NATO. Exorcising NATO's killing machine is job one.

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David Rieff

Libyans may be celebrating the killing of Muammar al-Qaddafi, but you'd better believe that Western governments are breathing a sigh of relief themselves.

Whether the NATO countries -- who had only a few years ago welcomed Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi back into the international fold in exchange for his renouncing his chemical and nuclear weapons programs and allowing U.S. and British experts to come and help dismantle them -- played any role in what certainly appeared in first reports from the scene to have been the summary execution of the Libyan dictator will probably never be known. What the video evidence does prove is that the Libyan revolutionary forces did not find him already dead or killed by a NATO airstrike; nor does the initial claim that he was killed in "crossfire" between insurgent forces and diehard regime loyalists stand up to even the most minimal scrutiny.

NATO does acknowledge that its planes bombarded the convoy in which Qaddafi was fleeing the city of Sirte shortly before it was intercepted on the ground by the insurgents, but it has denied it even knew he was there. If that is true, and the French, British, and Americans did not try to make their own luck, then they certainly were very lucky indeed.

Qaddafi was, quite simply, a man who knew too much. Taken alive, he would have almost certainly have been handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had indicted him -- along with his son, Saif al-Islam, and brother-in-law and military intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi (whereabouts unknown) -- for crimes against humanity in late June. Imagine the stir he would have made in The Hague. There, along with any number of fantasies and false accusations, he would almost certainly have revealed the extent of his intimate relations with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the details of his government's collaboration with Western intelligence services in counterterrorism, with the European Union in limiting migration from Libyan shores, and in the granting of major contracts to big Western oil and construction firms.

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Stephen Lendman

Global Depression grips world economies. Destructive polices fueled today's crisis. Conditions are fast coming to a head.

Throwing good money after bad delays decision day at the price of far greater trouble on arrival. D-Day will shake world economies. It may, in fact, be months away, perhaps in 2012.

No one knows for sure, but things that can't go on forever won't, and when they end, watch out. Ordinary people will be hurt most, much more than already.

Perhaps Greece is the canary in the coal mine. The country's bankrupt. Only its obituary isn't written. Its citizens are being impoverished. Anger rages in Athens. Revolutionary sentiment may explode any time, sending shock waves across Europe.

Trends analyst Gerald Celente says when people lose everything and have nothing else to lose, they lose it.

Greek citizens are close to losing it. Others in troubled countries aren't far behind, including in America where growing thousands rage against a system destroying their livelihoods and futures.

Fixing it demands direct action. Focusing on core issues is key, and knowing bottom-up change only is possible, never the other way. Entrenched corporate and political interests don't yield.

Sustained pressure is crucial. Today's struggle is the mother of them all. Change won't come easily or quickly. Minimally it will take years to remake what's too corrupted and broken to fix.

Ripping it down and starting over is essential. American and Eurozone workers are on their own to do it. They're in for the fight of their lives. Odds are greatly stacked against them, but the stakes are too important to back down.

Money power in private hands must change. People must get back what's rightfully theirs. America's Constitution mandates it. Enforcing it is crucial. Doing so makes everything else possible. Without it, expect failure.

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Stephen Lendman

No one is safe under occupation. Middle-of-the-night arrests and detention threaten everyone. Children especially are affected. Many never recover from their ordeal. Pay less attention to what Israel says and focus on what it does daily. Palestinians call it brutalizing state terror.

In mid-October, Netanyahu's cabinet agreed to free 1,027 Palestinian political prisoners in two waves (including 27 women and nearly 300 children) in return for Hamas releasing Gilad Shalit after over five years in captivity.

Wave one is completed, freeing 477 Palestinians. In two months, phase two will release another 550. According to terms, 203 will be deported, 40 exiled overseas, and 163 expelled to Gaza.

Currently, Israel still holds over 5,000 detainees. As a result of torture, medical neglect, or assassinations, over 200 died martyrs in captivity. Another 302 are called "veteran detainees," serving 17 years or longer.

Another 136 serving 20 years or more are called "Deans of Detainees." "Generals of Patience" is a term applied to prisoners incarcerated over 25 years. As of October, they number 41.

On October 18, Ma'an News reported Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouq saying Israel agreed to lift Gaza's siege in return for releasing Shalit.

He "told Palestine TV that Israel had used Shalit as a pretext to blockade Gaza but there (were) 'unofficial agreements' to end it during talks with a German mediator."

According to Abu Marzouq, "This was confirmed in the last negotiations."

For years it's been known that security wasn't why Israel imposed it, despite disingenuous public statements. Israel blockaded Gaza in mid-2006, then hardened its siege a year later.

Despite assurances of ending it now, Israel may renege by reinterpreting terms. Many times it says one thing and does another. Its promises are hollow and disingenuous.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Last March I reviewed Matt Taibbi’s important book Griftopia, an entertaining account of the through-going financial fraud that gave us the financial crisis. Taibbi shows that the US “superpower” can match any third world backwater in the magnitude of greed and fraud that is endemic in business and government. I would not be surprised if Taibbi’s book motivated the more aware participants of Occupy Wall Street.

Taibbi’s Griftopia was published last year. This year Henry Holt publishers have provided us with Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner’s Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.

Morgenson and Rosner tell the story again, but with less drama and provocation. Possibly, it might be more acceptable to those gullible Americans who wrap themselves in the flag and refuse to believe that their country could ever knowingly do anything that is wrong.

I am not suggesting that Morgenson and Rosner pull their punches. To the contrary, the authors deliver enough knockouts to be contenders with Taibbi as world champions in exposing the reckless fraud that the US financial sector and its regulators now epitomize.

The financial crisis, which is very much still with us, did not result from accident or miscalculation; neither did it result because of a flaw in Alan Greenspan’s theory, as he told Congress when a feeble effort was made to hold him accountable. It was the intentional result of people motivated by short-term profits who wanted to get theirs and get out.

As Reckless Endangerment shows, fraud characterized every stage of the process from the fraudulent borrower incomes and credit scores that mortgage issuers gave to unqualified buyers, through the securitization of the mortgages and their triple-A investment grade ratings by the rating agencies (Standard & Poor’s especially, but also Moody’s and Fitch) to the investment banks that sold what the banks knew was junk to investors around the world as investment grade securities. Indeed, Goldman Sachs was simultaneously betting against the mortgage derivatives that it was selling to clients.

Investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs, which once considered it a matter of honor to represent the interests of customers, took advantage of the trust that had been built up in the past to commit fraud against customers in order to advance the banks’ short-term profits and the out-sized multi-million dollar managerial bonuses that these fraudulent profits produced.

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Stephen Lendman

Palestinians want and deserve long denied full UN de jure membership and official statehood recognition, including all rights granted other members.

On September 23, Abbas formally petitioned the Security Council. Normally it reviews applications for a maximum 35 days. Whether or not America vetos Palestine's bid is irrelevant. It solely recommends. Only the General Assembly admits new members.

Abbas can petition it through the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution 377 for an up or down two-thirds member vote to override potential Security Council rejection or inaction.

More than enough GA support assures what could have been gotten days ago regardless of Security Council members do or don't do.

On September 26, informal discussions began. No quick decision is expected. Washington plans obstruction, delay, and subversion, hoping to scuttle the idea entirely.

On October 21, new Council members were elected by secret ballot. In January, Pakistan, Morocco, Togo and Guatemala will replace Brazil, Lebanon, Nigeria, Gabon, Bosnia. After a second round vote, either Azerbaijan or Slovenia will join them.

Palestinian officials claim support from nine Council members, enough to force Washington to veto. If resolution isn't achieved before January, slippage is certain as Pakistan, Morocco and Guatemala most likely will back America.

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Gilad Atzmon

An editorial in the London Jewish Chronicle in 1896 anti-
cipates little hope for the scheme to create a Jewish State.

As always, the London Jewish Chronicle (JC) is providing us with an accurate insight into Jewish influence within the media and beyond. The JC is desperate to stop my book, The Wandering Who? -- and it is also foolish enough to disclose its tactics, openly revealing to us the pressure which some elements within the Jewish community are willing to mount on Britain’s leading newspapers and other outlets.

This weekend The JC seems to be particularly frustrated, explaining to their concerned readers that “Britain's largest book distribution database company has said it cannot withdraw The Wandering Who unless the title is found to have breached race hate legislation”

And yet, it seems that no one in the Jewish Chronicle has read the book, or any of my writing -- otherwise it is hard to explain why the JC keep labeling me as an ‘anti-Semite’ or a ‘racist’. Had the JC actually bothered to read my writing or taken the time to follow my speeches and debates, they would have realised that there is no trace of ‘racism’ or ‘anti-Semitism’ in my work: yes, I am critical of Jewish politics; yes I am an opponent of Jewish political power, and yes, I follow my duties as a humanist to expose Jewish identity politics for what it really is. This fact alone may explain why my book is supported by respected humanists and some of the most distinguished academics, all of whom are held in high regard in their fields and beyond.

The JC complains that “in the book Atzmon discusses his belief that ‘the Holocaust religion was well-established’ before the Nazis carried out aspects of the Shoah including the Final Solution and Kristallnacht.”

The JC is absolutely correct here. That is exactly what I am discussing. And yet, the question is, what is wrong with doing so? Is it racist or anti-Semitic? And indeed, I also insist that trauma is inherent to Jewish Culture.

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Bill Van Auken

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton solemnly announced Sunday that Washington “strongly supports” an independent investigation into the barbaric murder of Libya’s deposed head of state Muammar Gaddafi. - What exactly is it that Ms. Clinton wants investigated that she doesn’t already know?

Gaddafi was captured Thursday while fleeing his hometown of Sirte. Over the previous month Sirte had been under continuous NATO bombardment and a brutal siege by the so-called “rebels” that destroyed the city and claimed untold numbers of civilian dead and wounded.

His convoy, detected by US spy planes, was attacked first by an American Predator drone aircraft, operated by remote control from an airbase in Nevada. An American AWAC surveillance aircraft then called in French fighter jets, which dropped two 500-pound bombs on the vehicles in which Colonel Gaddafi and his entourage were fleeing.

The air strikes left dozens dead and the Libyan leader wounded. He was then hunted down by the NATO-backed “rebels,” who were operating together with “advisors” from the SAS British special forces.

Gaddafi’s final moments have been recorded in a number of jumpy videos filmed on his attackers’ cell phones. They show a wounded Gaddafi shouting and feebly resisting a mob of frenzied militiamen who are taunting and attacking him, while screaming “Allahu Akbar”—“God is greatest.” He is dragged, kicked and beaten bloody with guns and fists before being thrown onto the hood of a vehicle. Footage shows a gun placed to his head and then his body on the pavement, blood pouring from the back of his skull.

As one member of the NATO-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) based in Benghazi has succinctly stated, “They beat him very harshly, and then they killed him.”

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Ellen Brown

Among the demands of the Wall Street protesters is student debt forgiveness—a debt “jubilee.” Occupy Philly has a “Student Loan Jubilee Working Group,” and other groups are studying the issue. Commentators say debt forgiveness is impossible. Who would foot the bill? But there is one deep pocket that could pull it off—the Federal Reserve. In its first quantitative easing program (QE1), the Fed removed $1.3 trillion in toxic assets from the books of Wall Street banks. For QE4, it could remove $1 trillion in toxic debt from the backs of millions of students.

The economy would only be the better for it, as was shown by the G.I. Bill, which provided virtually-free higher education for returning veterans, along with low-interest loans for housing and business. The G.I. Bill had a sevenfold return. It was one of the best investments Congress ever made.

There are arguments against a complete student debt write-off, including that it would reward private universities that are already charging too much, and it would unfairly exclude other forms of debt from relief. But the point here is that it could be done, and it (or some similar form of consumer “jubilee”) would represent a significant stimulus to the economy.

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Stephen Lendman

Class war raged for decades. Business and America's super-rich always win. In his 1925 short story titled "Rich Boy," F. Scott Fitzgerald said:

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early...They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we.."

"Even when they enter deep into our world....they still think that that they are better than we are. They are different."

In his article, titled "The Truth About 'Class War' in America," economist Richard Wolff said:

"The last 50 years have indeed seen continuous class warfare in and over federal economic policies."

Corporate giants and America's super-rich waged war against working Americans and won. Notably since the 1970s, "(b)usiness and its allies shifted most of its federal tax burden onto individuals."

Since WW II, tax rates on super-rich Americans fell from 91% to 35% today. Obama's deficit cutters want it lowered to 24% along with eliminating some deductions with loopholes to compensate and save others. Moreover, they want the top corporate tax rate slashed from 35% to 26%.

Many corporate giants, in fact, pay minimal or no taxes. Some, like General Electric, get generous rebates in highly profitable years. They game the system, benefitting form tax laws they write. American workers lose out from greater than ever burdens on them.

Obama schemers also want deeper Medicare cuts, higher Medicaid co-pays, and Social Security's retirement age raised to 69 with lower cost-of-living increases. Privately they want Wall Street to control it to suck out maximum profits, then shut it down entirely. In addition, they want home mortgage interest and tax-free employer provided health insurance capped or ended. They represent business and super-rich elites. America's middle class is targeted for extinction.

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Pepe Escobar

Beware of strangers bearing gifts. Post-modern Amazon and United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally landed in Tripoli - on a military jet - to lavish praise on the dodgy Transitional National Council (TNC), those opportunists/defectors/Islamists formerly known as "North Atlantic Treaty Organization rebels".

Clinton was greeted on Tuesday "on the soil of free Libya" (her words) by what the New York Times quaintly described as an "irregular militia" (translation: a heavily armed gang that is already raising hell against other heavily armed gangs), before meeting TNC chairman Mustafa Abdel-NATO (formerly known as Jalil).

The bulk of the US gifts - US$40 million - on top of the $135 million already disbursed since February (most of it military "aid") is for a missile scramble conducted by "contractors" (ie mercenaries) trying to track the tsunami of mobile anti-aircraft rockets that by now are already conveniently ensconced in secret Islamist warehouses.

Clinton told students at the University of Tripoli, "We are on your side." She could not possibly connect the dots and note that the shabab (young people) who started demonstrating against Muammar Gaddafi in February have absolutely nothing to do with the TNC's opportunists/defectors/Islamists who hijacked the protests. But she did have time to unveil another US foreign policy "secret" - that the US wants Gaddafi "dead or alive", George W Bush-style (or as the beneficiary of targeted assassination, Barack Obama-style).

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Pepe Escobar

They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway - an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein's "hole" - he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) "rebels". And then duly executed.

Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a Libyan doctor who accompanied Gaddafi's body in an ambulance and examined it, said he died from two bullets, one to the chest, one to the head.

The TNC - which has peddled lies, lies and more lies for months - swears he died in "crossfire". It may have been a mob. It may have been Mohammad al-Bibi, a 20-year-old sporting a New York Yankees baseball cap who posed to the whole world brandishing Gaddafi's golden pistol; his ticket perhaps to collect the hefty $20 million dangled as the bounty for Gaddafi "dead or alive".

It gets curioser and curioser when one remembers that this is exactly what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her lightning visit to Tripoli, had announced less than 48 hours before; Gaddafi should be "captured or killed". The Fairy Queenie satisfied Clinton's wishes, who learned about it by watching the screen of a BlackBerry - and reacting with the semantic earthquake "Wow!"

To the winners, the spoils. They all did it; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Pentagon and the TNC. From the minute a United Nations resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya became a green card to regime change, plan A was always to capture and kill him. Targeted assassination; that's Barack Obama administration official policy. There was no plan B.

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Bill Van Auken

The savage killing Thursday of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi served to underscore the criminal character of the war that has been prosecuted by the US and NATO over the past eight months. From the beginning, the entire operation has been directed at the re-colonization of North Africa and pursued on behalf of US, British, French, Italian and Dutch oil interests.

The assassination follows NATO’s more than month-long siege of Sirte, the Libyan coastal city that was Gaddafi’s hometown and a center of his support. The assault on this city of 100,000 left virtually every building smashed, with untold numbers of civilians dead, wounded and stricken by disease, as they were deprived of food, water, medical care and other basic necessities.

Gaddafi was apparently traveling in a convoy of vehicles attempting to break out of the siege after the last bastion of resistance had fallen to the NATO-backed “rebels”. NATO warplanes attacked the convoy at 8:30 a.m. Thursday morning, leaving a number of vehicles in flames and preventing it from moving forward. Then the armed anti-Gaddafi militias moved in for the kill.

The death of Gaddafi appears to have been part of a larger massacre that has reportedly claimed the lives of a number of his top aides, loyalist fighters and his two sons, Mo’tassim and Saif al-Islam.

While details of the killings remain somewhat clouded, photographs and cell phone videos released by the NATO-backed “rebels” clearly show a wounded Gaddafi struggling with his captors and shouting as he is dragged onto the back of a vehicle. His stripped and lifeless body is then shown, drenched in blood. It seems clear that having first been wounded, perhaps in the NATO air strikes, the former Libyan ruler was captured alive and then summarily executed. One photograph shows him with a bullet hole in the head.

Gaddafi’s body was then taken west to the city of Misrata, where it was reportedly dragged through the streets before being deposited in a mosque.

The fate of the body is politically significant in that it was seized by a Misrata militia faction that is operating under its own command and has no loyalty to the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC), which Washington and NATO have anointed as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Libyan people.

Thus this grisly event, which President Barack Obama hailed in the White House Rose Garden Thursday as the advent of “a new and democratic Libya,” in reality only exposes the regional and tribal fault lines that are setting the stage for a protracted period of civil war.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Will the US collapse in economic chaos before it rules the world?

If Washington’s plans succeed, Libya will become another American puppet state. Most of the cities, towns, and infrastructure have been destroyed by air strikes by the air forces of the US and Washington’s NATO puppets. US and European firms will now get juicy contracts, financed by US taxpayers, to rebuild Libya. The new real estate will be carefully allocated to lubricate a new ruling class picked by Washington. This will put Libya firmly under Washington’s thumb.

With Libya conquered, AFRICOM will start on the other African countries where China has energy and mineral investments. Obama has already sent US troops to Central Africa under the guise of defeating the Lord’s Resistance Army, a small insurgency against the ruling dictator-for-life. The Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, welcomed the prospect of yet another war by declaring that sending US troops into Central Africa “furthers US national security interests and foreign policy.” Republican Senator James Inhofe added a gallon of moral verbiage about saving “Ugandan children,” a concern the senator did not have for Libya’s children or Palestine’s, Iraq’s, Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s.

Washington has revived the Great Power Game and is vying with China. Whereas China brings Africa investment and gifts of infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases. Sooner or later Washington’s aggressiveness toward China and Russia is going to explode in our faces.

Where is the money going to come from to finance Washington’s African Empire? Not from Libya’s oil. Big chunks of that have been promised to the French and British for providing cover for Washington’s latest war of naked aggression. Not from tax revenues from a collapsing US economy where unemployment, if measured correctly, is 23 percent.

With Washington’s annual budget deficit as huge as it is, the money can only come from the printing press.

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Stephen Lendman

On December 31, 1993, (New Year's eve) Skinner's live-in girlfriend Twila and her two adult sons were stabbed to death in Pampa, TX. On March 18, 1995, he was convicted and sentenced to death.

On November 9, he'll be executed, despite convincing evidence he's innocent. Justice will be denied. As America's death penalty capital, Texas rarely grants it.

Since presidential aspirant Rick Perry took office in December 2000, 234 executions occurred, more than under any other modern governor. At the same time, he refuses to admit erroneously putting anyone innocent to death, despite over 130 exonerated inmates nationwide since 1973.

In fact, 12 were in Texas, besides known and unknown others unjustly facing execution. Unless Skinner's spared at the 11th hour, he'll be number 13.

Capital punishment is barbaric and cruel. Amnesty International (AI) call it "the ultimate denial of human rights. It is premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state. This cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is done in the name of justice."

There's nothing just about state-sponsored murder, especially against wrongfully convicted victims. In America, they're mostly poor Blacks and Latinos, denied due process and judicial fairness. The system is rigged to convict known innocent defendants.

Georgia's September 21 cold-blooded murder of Troy Anthony Davis symbolizes a longstanding rogue practice.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia abolished it. Federal law should have stopped it long ago, ending a system with no regard for human life.

It disproportionately affects society's least advantaged unjustly. On November 9, Henry W. (Hank) Skinner will be its next victim without 11th hour help to save him.

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William Bowles

Who will break up Shell or Goldman Sachs? Who will smash the military-industrial-media complex?

Four years ago in a Ministry of Defence Review, the Whitehall Mandarins, more astutely than any so-called Lefty, determined the following:

“The Middle Class Proletariat — The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.” — ‘UK Ministry of Defence report, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036’ (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007

Yeah, I know, I’m always using this quote (I first used it four years ago) but it illustrates the great intellectual divide between the political class and the citizens they rule, including our Left, now made so apparent by what the pundits are now calling the ‘Occupy The World’ (OTW) movement. It seems that only our very own ruling class foresaw OTW.

Dig a little deeper into OTW and we find that with a few exceptions, there are no challenges to capitalism, mostly it’s a ‘clean up your act’ kinda thing. Throw a few billionaires in jail, add some regulation and things will eventually turn out just fine. Dream on…

But we’ve been here before. This is what attempts at ‘reforming’ capitalism in the past have looked like. We lived under such a system from 1945 until the late 1970s, before the Empire reasserted itself, proving once again, that concepts like ‘democracy’ under capitalism, are at best, mere conveniences and so vague a concept that it can be made to resemble almost anything.

And once the so-called Good Life that capitalism allegedly had offered us started to wear thin and capitalism once more plunged us into war and poverty, so too the ‘Good Life’ had to be dumped. Belt-tightening time again.

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Ismail Salami

What seemed at first to be a simplistic effort by the US to corner Iran into political isolation has begun to branch out into ramifications of Kafkaesque proportions.

Despite its evidently make-believe facade, the cooked-up story of the Saudi envoy assassination plot does not seem to be something which can be easily banished from the minds of the American powers that be.

The heat over Iran in the US government is growing rapidly. Some Republican congressmen have expressed their interest in waging an all-out war against Iran, a threat they keep refreshing every time they have an excuse. They have clearly stated that Washington should not dismiss the idea of resorting to military force against Iran, an idea which is being strengthened in Congress.

“I don't think you should take it off the table,” Michigan Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has said.

It is quite natural that he was vehemently supported by the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator John McCain, who have always maintained an antagonistic approach towards Iran.

Hawkish Gingrich said on CNN, “Our goal should be the replacement of the Iranian dictatorship, and we have done nothing of consequence to systematically undermine the regime.”

The US government keeps preaching at others and talking of dismantling this or that regime which they term as 'dictatorial' or 'sponsor of terrorism'. Now that the lot has fallen to the US government itself, they are at a loss and appear despondently desperate. The implosive voice that is eroding the American system from within cannot be easily smothered or contained.

Therefore, the US has to find a way to divert international attention from what is going on in the country and zoom in on Iran. This can be one simple reason but it is very plausible. However, a bigger scenario is at work in collaboration with the Mossad and other intelligence services.

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Stephen Lendman

Terror weapons have been used, including depleted uranium (DU), thermobaric fuel-air bombs and white phosphorous able to burn flesh to the bone.

Obama is an unindicted war criminal. So is Clinton. More on her staged photo-op theater below.

On October 18, NATO deputy spokesperson Carmen Romero said:

"We are very close to (ending the Libya operation), but there are still threats to the civilian population and as long as these threats persist we will continue the campaign."

Fact check

Libya's only threat is NATO's presence with its army of paid mercenaries. The country was mostly calm and peaceful until terror bombing began on March 19. It's been ongoing daily for seven months.

Widespread areas have been ravaged. Tens of thousands have been killed, many more injured and displaced.

About 100,000 residents once called Sirte home. Under intense daily bombardment and shelling, it's in ruins. Remaining inhabitants are now homeless refugees.

Imagine turning Libya's showpiece of urban development into a ghost town. Nonetheless, loyalists defend it courageously, besting air and ground attacks. They control most of the city.

Nonetheless, NATO military spokesman Col. Roland Lavoie claimed

"(m)ost of Sirte in now under (TNC) control and fighting is limited to a very small area where a few remaining Gaddafi fighters are vainly trying to hold their positions."

He lied about Sirte and Bani Walid, claiming

"significant (rebel) advances....As of this morning, it appears that Gaddafi fighters are unable to sustain significant offensive capability."

False. They control most of Sirte, Bani Walid, Tripoli, Benghazi and most other cities and towns across Libya. NATO's desperation is palpable. Without victories, they're manufactured out of whole cloth.

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Rodrigue Tremblay

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd U.S. President.

Presently, one has the net impression that today's governments, both in Europe and in the United States, have their fingers plugging the holes in the financial dike, but fear that that the entire dam could collapse in the not too distant future with dire economic consequences.

Let's see if we can make sense of it all.

Let's say to begin that most financial crises are the direct result of unsustainable debt levels relative to income that need to be wrung out of the economic system. It has happened in the past (notably in 1873, in 1907 and in 1931, for example), and numerous times in developing countries, and it will undoubtedly happen again in the future. The process is more often than not always the same: some large banks, corporations, consumers or governments take on too much risky debt that becomes unsustainable when economic conditions change, thus launching the entire economy into a devastating process of debt deflation. Sometimes, it may take decades to overcome such a debt deflation and it usually creates an environment of economic stagnation when aggregate demand collapses.

What makes the current financial crisis so troublesome is not only that debt levels are historically high for some countries, but also because the usual instruments and procedures to reduce the debt burden, while doing the least damage to the real economy, have been rendered inoperative, due to a large extent, to the poisonous so-called financial “innovations” that have taken place since 1999 in the general climate of wholesale financial deregulation. As a consequence, financial debt in many countries creates a sort of financial black hole that siphons off money income and prevents it from being re-circulated back into the economy. This creates a serious deficiency of demand (when consumers spend less, when corporations postpone investments and when governments adopt austerity programs) that translates into low output growth, economic stagnation and high unemployment.

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Stephen Lendman

Candidate Obama promised peace. As president, he double downed Bush and then some, waging multiple direct and proxy wars.

The business of America is war. Washington has a permanent war policy. Republicans and Democrats perpetuate it.

Obama's latest mission adds another to dozens of similar ones ongoing globally. On October 14, New York Times writers Thom Shanker and Rick Gladstone headlined, "Armed US Advisors to Help Fight African Renegade Group," saying:

Obama ordered "100 armed military advisers to central Africa to help regional forces combat the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity."

Independent journalist, war correspondent, African expert, and human rights investigator Keith Harmon Snow challenges major media distortions and lies.

He calls the LRA "a Ugandan guerrilla force....wag(ing) a low-intensity war against" Uganda's Museveni regime since 1987. Ugandan factions back LRA resistance. It's also "clandestinely supported by unnamed factions in Congo, Europe and Washington."

Some believe it's "a tool of the Museveni government used to manipulate public opinion, create chaos across the region, gain international sympathy from foreign donors, (and serve as a) perfect ruse to facilitate permanent foreign military intervention."

In 2001, the State Department named it a terrorist organization. Since 2008, it's been called a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.

US intervention also targets China's growing African influence to feed its insatiable resource needs, especially oil and gas. WikiLeaks disclosed a February 17, 2010 US cable, saying:

"China's economic ties to Uganda continue to accelerate on all fronts making it one of the country's top foreign investors."

It's also true in other African countries, including resource rich Congo.

"Greater Chinese investment and assistance in Uganda has generated some resentment due to local perceptions that Chinese investments favor their own businesses."

China, in fact, prefers partnership arrangements benefitting both sides in contrast to Washington's one-way deals.

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Stephen Lendman

"How many times was Khamis (Gaddafi) killed?" Still believed to be alive, he's now a legend. "Killed by NATO five times, and resurrected," he symbolizes loyalist resistance.

Whenever major media Libya reports appear, truth is distorted, manipulated and falsified. For seven months, despite daily terror bombing and ground attacks, courageous loyalists bested the ferocity of NATO and its rebel army.

As a result, they control most of Tripoli, Benghazi and other cities across the country. Fighting, however, still rages. Loyalists are holding their own. They're determined to liberate Libya, live free and rebuild.

NATO ravaged widespread areas, willfully targeting civilians and sites unrelated to military necessity. They include hospitals, schools, residential neighborhoods, and at times anything that moves.

Loyalist victories are called NATO ones. On October 17, bogus reports again said Bani Walid fell. New York Times writer Rick Gladstone headlined, "Pro-Qaddafi Enclave in Desert Is Said to Fall After a Battle," saying:

"Libyan forces (read cutthroat mercenaries) fighting the vestiges of (Gaddadi's) toppled government said Monday that (they) were in control of Bani Walid," south of Tripoli.

Claiming it and Sirte are "the last holdouts of pro-Qaddafi resistance," completely ignores reality as loyalists control most of Libya.

Despite years of more credible reporting, Al Jazeera now functions mainly as Qatar's propaganda arm. On October 18, it headlined, "Libyan fighters claim capture of Bani Walid," saying,

"NTC military commanders....said they captured about 95 per cent of" the city."

Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley is a notorious liar, saying:

"We are very much in the center of Bani Walid. (Rebels) came through here just over an hour ago and they are saying this is an almost complete liberation of the town." "The gunfire of celebration is ringing out and they are going completely crazy here because they know this (will) send a very clear message to those pro-Gaddafi elements who are still holding out in Sirte. Basically, there is nowhere left to go."

At least Times reporter Gladstone explained that other claimed TNC victories "proved overly optimistic." In fact, they were willfully falsified. Media scoundrels, including The Times and Al Jazeera, reported them like gospel.

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Colorado AIM / Republic of Lakotah

“Now we put our minds together to see what kind of world we can create for the seventh generation yet to come." ~ John Mohawk (1944-2006), Seneca Nation

As indigenous peoples, we welcome the awakening of those who are relatively new to our homeland. We are thankful, and rejoice, for the emergence of a movement that is mindful of its place in the environment, that seeks economic and social justice, that strives for an end to oppression in all its forms, that demands an adequate standard of food, employment, shelter and health care for all, and that calls for envisioning a new, respectful and honorable society. We have been waiting for 519 years for such a movement, ever since that fateful day in October, 1492 when a different worldview arrived – one of greed, hierarchy, destruction and genocide.

In observing the “Occupy Together” expansion, we are reminded that the territories of our indigenous nations have been “under occupation” for decades, if not centuries. We remind the occupants of this encampment in Denver that they are on the territories of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute peoples. In the U.S., indigenous nations were the first targets of corporate/government oppression. The landmark case of Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), which institutionalized the “doctrine of discovery” in U.S. law, and which justified the theft of 2 billion acres of indigenous territory, established a framework of corrupt political/legal/corporate collusion that continues throughout indigenous America, to the present.

If this movement is serious about confronting the foundational assumptions of the current U.S. system, then it must begin by addressing the original crimes of the U.S. colonizing system against indigenous nations. Without addressing justice for indigenous peoples, there can never be a genuine movement for justice and equality in the United States. Toward that end, we challenge Occupy Denver to take the lead, and to be the first “Occupy” city to integrate into its philosophy, a set of values that respects the rights of indigenous peoples, and that recognizes the importance of employing indigenous visions and models in restoring environmental, social, cultural, economic and political health to our homeland.

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Jacob G. Hornberger

President Obama’s reaction to the alleged Iranian assassination plot reflects, once again, the dictatorial powers that the president of the United States now wields in foreign affairs.

As many commentators are noting, the whole scheme appears to be as bogus as a 3-dollar bill, but that isn’t really the point. The point is that we now live in a country in which the ruler wields the omnipotent power to send the entire nation into war for whatever reason he wants, bogus or not.

That’s not the way things were supposed to be. The Framers didn’t devise a system where the president had that omnipotent power. When they called the federal government into existence with the Constitution, they delegated the power to declare war to Congress and the power to wage war to the president.

Thus, under the Constitution Obama is required to come to Congress with a request to declare war on Iran (or even to impose sanctions on the country). Presumably Congress would say, “Show us the evidence on which you’re relying for your request for us to declare war on Iran.”

At that point, it would be “put up or shut up” time for Obama and his FBI, Justice Department, CIA, and Pentagon. They would have to submit their evidence to rigorous scrutiny from Congress, just as they’re going to have to do in a criminal trial of the alleged assassination plotter, Manssor Arbabsiar. (That’s assuming, of course, that they don’t send Arbabsiar down the “enemy combatant” route by removing him from the jurisdiction of America’s constitutional judicial system and delivering him into the clutches of the U.S. military.)

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Stephen Lendman

At an October 11 press briefing, NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu claimed Operation Unified Protector (NATO's aggression on Libya)

"has been a great success. We're pretty close to the end, but we're not there yet." "We did the right thing. We saved countless lives. We did it the right way, fast, with flexibility, involving Partners from the start, and we did it for the right reasons; to fully implement the mandate of the United Nations Security Council." "Now we will make sure the end of the operation will come when the time is right. We will not leave the job half done." "Our mission, as you know, is to prevent attacks and threats against civilians, so we will terminate the mission once we assess that there is no longer a systematic and significant threat...."

NATO military spokesperson Col. Roland Lavoie followed Lungescu with similar comments, claiming "we have witnessed a significant evolution of the situation in Libya." He added that "NATO is exercising air power only when necessary and always with caution, discernment and precision."

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Charles E. Carlson

Israel's Pending Attack on Iran to Spur War Based Economy, Wikileak Exposes Mexico Farce

I have listened to many commentaries and interviews by reasonable writers who just do not buy the conspiracy story from Eric Holder and the White House. I agree with most, from Iran's point of view, a plot to murder the Saudi Arabian envoy to Washington makes no sense. Some compare the scheme to a "B" movie.

But even a “B” movie develops a plausible reason why the killer did it. If Iran would not benefit from this scheme, who would? Is there a motive for a U.S. secret service, say the FBI, to hatch this plot and blame Iran? It is easy to see this could have been done, but I have yet to hear others hit one the plausible argument why the US leadership might invent this illogical scheme. The U.S.'s motive is so simple it is easy to overlook, and it is almost too horrible to contemplate so the obvious is ignored.

We American have been living in a war-based economy for decades and those who steer our leaders know they need a newer and bigger war to keep it going. About 100 years ago, Calvin Coolidge said "the business of America is business." Today his statement must be modified to "The business of America is ‘Warbusiness’.” We are officially coining this new noun for the special kind of business that began with World War I, when for the first time, the cost of war was no longer an obstacle. Why, because the world warmakers had just installed the Federal Reserve System over the US dollar.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down. Warbusiness can only sell one to us gullible consumers for so long, and these two of America's longest running wars. And you Warmakers know the US economy can not be stimulated fast enough by finance infrastructure, like roads and bridges. However, money can be deployed in a hurry to destroy things, which is why war works best to stimulate a crumbing economy. Ask yourself, which can be done quicker, break a clock or build one?

The logical reason for the lie is the economic need for another war, larger and more draining. This is the simple theory of war spending, and it is the simple and untold reason why Ben Bernanke's bosses, the state of Israel, and our behind the curtain political leaders want war with Iran right now. It is a big enough goal for them to take great risk, and they are.

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Allison McCracken

We are part of the growing Occupy movement sweeping the country, and we are becoming much stronger than the sum of our parts.

"Assault? Who- or what- did I assault??" I asked the police officer incredulously as I sat in his office at the police station, handcuffed to the wall. "Well, looks like it was Leon Panetta himself," the officer responded as he flipped through a pile of paperwork.

Me? A 22-year-old mild-mannered peace activist, assaulted the Secretary of Defense? I had simply tried to tell him how I felt about the wars. On the morning of October 13th about 25 activists who are occupying Washington DC, as part of the nationwide occupations, went on a field trip to Congress. We wanted to attend the House Armed Services Committee hearing where Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, and Martin Dempsy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were testifying about “lessons learned by the Department of Defense over the preceding decade” and “how those lessons might be applied in the future in light of anticipated reductions in defense spending.” After all, these hearings are open to the public. And shouldn’t we have a say in where our money is being spent?

As a peace activist with the group CODEPINK for the past 10 months, I have done my fair share of sending letters and emails and delivering petitions to our government representatives, asking them to stop pouring trillions of our taxpayer dollars into the endless cycle of death, destruction and reconstruction halfway across the world. There are so many critical things that we could spend that money on here in America, such as education, healthcare, helping the homeless, the elderly, the disabled, the veterans.

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Stephen Lendman

Nothing less than liberation is tolerable after 63 years of persecution and denial.

Since Hamas captured Gilad Shalit on June 25, 2006, there have been on and off talks to negotiate his release. Hamas took him captive, responding to repeated Israeli attacks, including a widely reported beach shelling. It killed eight Palestinians, injuring 32 others, including 13 children. Israel denied responsibility, falsely blaming a Hamas mine despite forensic evidence proving otherwise.

In retaliation, Hamas struck an Israeli military post near Kerem Shalom crossing, southeast of Rafah. Two Israeli soldiers were killed. Several others were injured, and Shalit was captured. He's been held ever since because Israel refused to negotiate responsibly to free him. It preferred using his captivity to vilify Hamas until now.

On October 12, Haaretz headlined, "Israel cabinet approves Gilad Shalit prisoner swap,” saying, "Voting early Wednesday morning, Netanyahu's cabinet agreed to free over 1,000 Palestinian political prisoners in two waves in return for Hamas releasing him after over five years in captivity."

According to newly released figures, Palestinian Central Bureau Statistics said over 750,000 Palestinians were arrested and detained since June 1967, including those affected several times. They include about 12,000 women and "tens of thousands of children." Throughout Occupied Palestine and Israel, prisons, detention camps and interrogation centers were established to incarcerate, torture, abuse and humiliate them.

Currently, Israel holds about 6,000 detainees, including 35 women and 285 children. Others as young as 10 (and occasionally younger) remain until adulthood, losing out entirely on their formative childhood years.

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Tony Cartalucci

Unelected corporate-funded policy makers constitute the greatest threat to US national security.

October 16, 2011 - While US politicians grapple over the credibility of using the US DEA's bomb plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador as a pretext to escalate tensions with Iran, America's unelected, corporate-funded policy makers have already announced their long, foregone conclusion. The DEA's entrapment case is decidedly to be used as a pretext for war with Iran.

The Foreign Policy Institute (FPI), just one such unelected, corporate-funded think tank, has released two statements calling on President Obama to use force against Iran. FPI director William Kristol states:

"It’s long since been time for the United States to speak to this regime in the language it understands—force. And now we have an engraved invitation to do so. The plot to kill the Saudi ambassador was a lemon. Statesmanship involves turning lemons into lemonade. So we can stop talking. Instead, we can follow the rat lines in Iraq and Afghanistan back to their sources, and destroy them. We can strike at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and weaken them. And we can hit the regime’s nuclear weapons program, and set it back."

Likewise, FPI's executive director Jamie Fly claims, in tandem with Kristol's unqualified, corporate-funded opinion, "It is time to take military action against the Iranian government elements that support terrorism and its nuclear program. More diplomacy is not an adequate response."

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Gilad Atzmon

Liam Fox resigned over links to close friend and 'adviser'
Adam Werritty. (Photo: PA)

[T]he tide has changed. The duplicity of our elected politicians and their ties with the Jewish lobby is now being closely scrutinized. The time has come for all of us in this country to put as much distance as we can between ourselves and Jerusalem.

A rather stinky Israeli espionage mole has just been exposed in Britain. Yesterday, Liam Fox the Defence Secretary resigned following revelations about his dubious relationship with Adam Werritty. Some 17 years younger than Fox, Werrity has been involved with Fox both in business and in the conservative Atlanticist think-tank ‘The Atlantic Bridge’. While Fox was Defence Minister, Werrity visited Fox at the Ministry on many occasions, accompanied Fox on numerous official trips, attended some of his meetings with foreign dignitaries and used official-looking business cards which announced him as an 'adviser' to Fox – and all despite having no official government post whatsoever. However, it has now also been revealed that Fox and Werritty were heavily financed by the Israeli lobby and ‘beyond’.

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Adnan Al-Daini

In my student days our thermodynamics lecturer gave us a little talk regarding examinations.  He started with the usual advice about reading the question carefully, not to panic if we could not initially answer the question, and to move on to another... etc.  Finally, he said- do not do what one student did who wrote to the examiner: “I am sorry I cannot answer this question but I can answer the following one”.  He then proceeded to write his own question, and to answer it perfectly.  The above story sums up the actions of politicians thus far as they respond to the economic crisis engulfing capitalism worldwide.  The politicians are unwilling, unable, or both, to tackle the causes of the problem which are the lack of demand as a result of unemployment, cuts in real wages and soaring energy prices, with profits rising by 700% since June 2011. Instead, they continue to pump more and more billions into the banks, with the gap between the poor and the super-rich that lies at the core of the problem forever widening.

Jeffrey Sachs, the well-known American economist, interviewed on BBC radio 4 Today programme (October15, 2011) about his book “The Price of Civilisation”, made some very telling remarks:

“International capital at the top is mobile, and is running circles around our government: this is the essence of globalisation”.

Of course, this clearly implies that democracy itself is being subverted and corrupted.  The ordinary citizen is no longer able to effect change through the ballot box.  Is it any wonder that people are taking to the streets in the U.S and Europe, in actions that mirror the Arab spring to demand that they should be heard?

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Gilad Atzmon

[RE: Jewish anti Zionists:] The tragic truth is that we are dealing with a bunch of compulsive liars.

I tend to agree with Shlomo Sand that Jews invented themselves as a nation over a century ago. But it was interesting to find out this week that Naomi Wimborne Idrissi and her three Jewish Anti Zionist comrades AKA AZZ (anti Zionist Zionists) were desperate to invent Gilad Atzmon.

For me, the Jewish anti Zionists, exhibit the most amusing ideological pathology of all Jewish collectives. On Monday morning, the Palestine Telegraph called Wimborne Idrissi and her mini clan not to picket my book launch. Wimborne Idrissi, was, seemingly, deaf to the Palestinian call. In the evening she appeared along side another three of her comrades at the resource centre, London. They were not alone. There were another three allies who identified themselves initially as ISM but later had to admit that they were actually representing themselves and themselves only.

I actually went out of the conference centre to meet my adversaries. I wanted to invite them in to take part in the discussion. I thought to myself that if they have a valid criticism, they may well want it to be heard in public. I thought that more than anyone else, they should join the gathering and understand once and for all what my writing is all about and why more and more people regard the AZZ as the enemy within.

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Stephen Lendman

The Saudi ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubeir speaks
during Middle East peace conference in Maryland in
2007 (AFP/Getty Images)

After Washington bogusly accused Iran of an implausible terror plot on US soil, America's media brazenly regurgitated official lies. It's nothing new. It's what they do instead of providing real news, information and analysis. Long ago they stopped trying, especially on television. It's little more than a worthless sinkhole no one should waste time on watching.

They don't inform. They lie, distract, entertain, and provide a platform for corporate America to sell people junk they don't need. Or as media critic George Gerbner once said, "they have everything to sell and nothing to tell."

In his book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman said "Americans are the most entertained and least informed people in the world." As a result, they know little or nothing about what they most need to know.

No wonder they believe official lies, especially about alleged homegrown or foreign instigated terror plots. Iran's a favorite, beaten up on at well chosen strategic moments.

What better time than now. Main Street's in Depression. Public anger's raging across America because millions lost work and can't find jobs.

Millions more lost homes. Washington's doing nothing to help, and working households have to bite the bullet so bankers get paid, and Obama's free to wage multiple imperial wars with others planned and ready when fake reasons convince people about new nonexistent threats.

Strategically timed, new enemies are invented or old ones resurrected to incite fear, distract, and divert people from what matters most - fast disappearing social justice when it's most needed.

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Jeremy Kessler

Occupy Wall Street volunteer clean-up, October 13,
2011. (Stephanie Keith, flickr)

To the Men and Women of the New York City Police Department:

Last night, we learned that because of the complaints of Brookfield Properties, the company that owns Zuccotti Park, Mayor Bloomberg has ordered the Occupy Wall Street protesters to remove themselves and their supplies from the Park at 7 AM tomorrow. If the protesters don’t leave, Bloomberg likely will order you and your colleagues to forcibly remove and arrest the men and women who have come there to protest the policies, politicians, and financial leaders responsible for the continuing economic crisis. As concerned citizens, we ask you not to follow this order.

Bloomberg and Brookfield Properties claim that the protesters must be removed in order to clean the Park. Anytime thousands of people assemble in a small space, it is not easy to keep things neat. The Occupy Wall Street protesters, however, have shown their desire to maintain a safe and sanitary environment. They have organized sanitation and medical teams to remove trash, clean blankets and sleeping bags, and treat the sick and injured. They also have committed themselves to a sober, nonviolent, and respectful public assembly. As in any crowd, there are some who make the lives of police personnel harder than they ought to be. But as the police assigned to the Park over the last month can attest, the vast majority of protesters are peaceful, passionate, and good-humored. They have come to the park not to wreck property or insult hardworking citizens. They have come to the park because they believe in a fair shake, and know they haven’t gotten it.

Mayor Bloomberg and Brookfield Properties claim that the Occupy Wall Street protest will be able to continue—only without food, medicine, or shelter—after the Park is clean. This is not true. The purpose of the Occupy Wall Street protest is to secure a public space at the center of the American financial system in which ordinary Americans can speak and be heard. When 20,000 protesters marched on Wall Street in May, nobody listened. The reason why Occupy Wall Street has attracted so much attention and gained the support of workers and unions across the nation is because it has held its ground. Unlike the national politicians who caved to the financial elites when they demanded special treatment and the local politicians who caved to a billionaire mayor when he wanted another term, the Occupy Wall Street protesters have not caved. But without food, medicine, and shelter, the protesters will not be able to continue their peaceful assembly.

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