Stephen Lendman

Wherever they're deployed, they're menacing and feared for good reason. Known historically by various names, they include mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, dogs of war, and Condottieri for wealthy city state leaders and the Papacy in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance Italy.

Ancient Greeks and Romans used them. So did Alexander the Great, feudal lords, Napoleon and George Washington against the British.

Article 47 of the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions calls them anyone:

• specially recruited locally or abroad to fight in armed conflicts;
• directly participating in hostilities:
• doing so for greater private gain than conscripted or otherwise recruited combatants;
• acting unaffiliated to conflict parties and not a resident of territory where they're waged;
• not an armed forces member of either side; and
• not sent by a nation unrelated to hostilities as a member of its armed forces.

During the 1990s, America privatized military functions to let mercenaries serve in place of conventional forces. They're used tactically as combatants, for training, advice, personal security, technical expertise, intelligence gathering, weapons systems management, transportation, and other non-combatant functions.

In May 2011, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said as of March 2011, the Defense Department (DOD) "had more contractor personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq (155,000) than uniformed personnel (145,000)."

In 2010, an estimated 260,000 of all types were used globally, including by the State Department and USAID.

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Stephen Lendman

Khaled Mashal (Hamas), with Mahmoud Abbas, the so-
called President of the PNA (His tenure expired in 2009).

PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi wants EU help to end Israel's occupation. She said America's preoccupied with elections and grossly biased for Israel.

Calling the current situation "dangerous" she said Israel's "dragging the region into the abyss." As a result, urgent EU help is needed "to end the occupation."

EU nations know their obligations under international law, including Geneva's Common Article 1. Requiring all nations enforce them, it states:

"The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances."

Moreover, Lisbon Treaty (December 2009) principles require EU nations affirm fundamental freedoms, peace, democracy, human rights and dignity, justice, equality, the rule of law, security, tolerance, solidarity, mutual respect among peoples, the rights of the child, strict adherence to the UN Charter and international law, environmental protection, and sustainable development.

They also mandate preventing conflicts and combatting social exclusion and discrimination.

So far, EU nations, like America, provide one-sided support for Israel. Palestinians must rely on their own will as one people united for liberation in peace.

On January 8, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh addressed a cheering Tunisia crowd, saying Israel faces tough times ahead. Bullying costs it allies. Revolutionary dignity and pride have arrived.

"We promise that we will not cede a single part of Palestine. We will not cede Jerusalem. We will continue to fight and we will not lay down our arms."

"To Tunisia we say: It is us today who are going to build the new Middle East."

Hamas wages nonviolent struggle. It responds defensively after repeated Israeli attacks. Tunisia's ruling Islamist Ennahda party organized the rally. Around 5,000 attended. They walked over a cloth displaying Israel's Star of David and shouted anti-Israeli slogans. Across the region, justifiable anti-Israeli street sentiment is strong.

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Khalid Amayreh

This is not the first time I'm subjected to harassment and abuse at the hands of Palestinian Authority (PA) security operatives. On several occasions, I had been abused, imprisoned and humiliated by the security agencies. In one episode in 2009, I was made to sleep in a rancid cell after reporting that PA police were preventing and brutally suppressing demonstrations against Israel in protest against Israel 's 2008-09 genocidal Blitzkrieg against the Gaza Strip.

I thought the Arab Spring would convince the PA security apparatus to abandon or at least alleviate their police-state tactics against dissent and show more respect for human rights and civil liberties. However, it seems that that the PA, as far as its treatment of its people, remains largely unchanged. Old habits die hard, after all.

Most of the PA security operatives remain deeply hateful of anything relating to Hamas. In fact, one could argue with little exaggeration that most of the security agencies have come to consider Hamas enemy number-1 while Israel is viewed as a distant second enemy. This is due to the intensive indoctrination the security apparatus has been subjected to ever since the defeat and ousting of Fatah militia by Hamas in 2007.

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Ellen Brown

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow may have stopped the Pony Express, but the nation’s oldest and second largest employer is now under attack. Claiming the Postal Service is bankrupt, critics are pushing legislation that would defuse the postal crisis by breaking the backs of the postal workers’ unions and mandating widespread layoffs. But the “crisis” is an artificial one, created by Congress itself.

In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA), which forced the USPS to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees, many of whom hadn’t even been hired yet. Over a mere 10 year period, the USPS was required to prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years, something no other government or private corporation is required to do. As consumer advocate Ralph Nader observed, if PAEA had never been enacted, USPS would now be facing a $1.5 billion surplus.

The USPS is a profitable, self-funded venture that is not supported by the taxpayers. It is funded with postage stamps—one of the last vestiges of government-issued money. Stamps are fungible and can be traded at par; and they are backed, not by mere government “fiat,” but by labor. One stamp will buy the labor to transport your letter 3000 miles.

The USPS is one of the few businesses the government is allowed to operate in competition with private companies; it is the only U.S. agency that services all its citizens six days per week; and it is perhaps the last form of communication that protects privacy, since tampering with it is against federal law. In 1999, it employed nearly a million people; and today, it employs over 600,000. Where are those workers to go, when the post office is no more?

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Stephen Lendman

According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Arab citizens (below called Israeli Arabs) "are discriminated (against) in almost every aspect of their lives," including:

• employment;
• education;
• healthcare;
• housing;
• land;
• infrastructure;
• political representation;
• legislation;
• personal safety;
• socioeconomic status;
• family unification; and
• virtually all other aspects of their lives. According to ACRI:

"One of the most important principles in a democracy is to protect the minority against....tyranny. A democratic state is by nature pluralistic and respectful of diversity among its citizens, and enables each group within its population that so wishes to maintain all the components of its own identity, including its heritage, culture, and national identity."

In fact, Israel marginalizes non-Jews. They're unwanted, considered outliers, and fifth column threats. Basic rights are denied. Persecution and violence threaten them. State authorities are their enemy, not their protector.

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