Stephen Lendman

Press TV broke the news headlining, "Ofcom revokes Press TV's UK license," saying:

In a questionable move and without offering a valid response to the Press TV CEO's letters, the British Office of Communications (Ofcom)" pulled the plug disgracefully.

After threatening it for months, it "removed the channel from the Sky platform."

Britain's decision came at its highest levels. Likely Prime Minister David Cameron was involved. Suppressing truth burnished Britain's credentials as a reliable axis of evil partner, together with America and Israel. Expect much worse ahead from all three.

Revoking Press TV's license was clear irresponsible censorship. Doing so suppressed truth. UK television viewers were deprived of real news, information, commentary and analysis.

Fortunately, they have options. They can still follow Press TV online, through below listed web sites, or by satellite.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

Benyamin Netanyahu, the notorious liar-prime minister of the apartheid Zionist regime, has been regurgitating his characteristic racist venom of late. He has been quoted as saying that the root-cause of the Palestinian question is "the persistent Palestinian refusal to accept a Jewish state."

Speaking at a synagogue in the Netherlands during a recent visit during which he reportedly discussed "mounting international hostility to Israel," Netanyahu argued that Israel was a "beleaguered democracy, confronting great threats and challenges.

"There are those who cast Israel as a pariah state every time we exercise the inherent right of self defense."

Well, for those people who are closely aware of the basic realities of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, Netanyahu's words are tantamount to fornicating with words and truth.

The fact that Netanyahu's mendacious words find their way to publication in the media doesn't alter this fact. A publicized big lie is still a big lie, even if and when uttered and repeated by famous people.

The truth of the matter is that Israel is a huge crime against humanity, a thoroughly deformed entity that is based on genocidal ethnic cleansing, brash racism, sheer brutality, oppression and mendacity. It is a psychotic country that views every conceivable crime and violation of international laws and norms as "legitimate self-defense."

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Alex Lantier

The deep popular opposition to imperialist occupation is finding reflection in a wide-ranging breakdown of relations between NATO and its Afghan proxy forces.

At least ten NATO soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in Afghanistan, when a transport helicopter carrying six US Marines crashed in Helmand province late Thursday, and an Afghan army soldier killed four French soldiers Friday at the Gwam training base in Kapisa province. Fifteen French soldiers were wounded in the attack, eight seriously.

US officials said the causes of the helicopter crash were under investigation, but they denied that enemy fire had shot down the aircraft, which they identified as a CH-53 Super Stallion transport helicopter. However, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told CNN: “A [CH-47] Chinook was shot down in Zubari Karez area, between Musa Qala and Zamin Dawar in southern Helmand province, and a number of foreigners traveling in it were killed.”

It was the deadliest US crash in Afghanistan since last August, when Taliban forces hit a US helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. Eight Afghan and 30 US troops aboard were killed, including 17 Navy Seal Special Forces.

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Wayne Madsen

There is a clear attempt by Western governments and their surrogates, especially Qatar, to dominate the spectrum of international network news outlets. It all began when Qatar-based Al Jazeera became the primary enemy of the Bush administration in its attempt to influence news reporting from war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq.

The United States was never really happy with Al Jazeera’s Arabic service, having militarily attacked the network’s office in Kabul in November 2001 and its Baghdad bureau in April 2003. A leaked 10 Downing Street memorandum from 2005 indicated that President George W. Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera’s broadcast center in Doha in 2004.

But when Al Jazeera English began broadcasting in 2006, what was a nuisance to U.S. propaganda efforts on military battlefields abroad became a problem for the United States at home. Although U.S. cable companies did their best to ban Al Jazeera English from cable television offerings, the network was being carried over a television broadcast channels in the Washington, DC area. Moreover, Al Jazeera English’s web site began attracting more and more Internet surfers. Al Jazeera’s independent reporting on the news – which was far and above that of any U.S. news network, including the one-time standard for international cable news broadcasting, CNN – was being referenced by more and more journalists and political leaders.

By the time the Barack Obama administration took over the reins of power in Washington, a new policy was adopted, one that would seek to co-opt news networks like Al Jazeera rather than attack them on the battlefield and censor them in the corporate news rooms of the United States.

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