Stephen Lendman

The so-called "Free Syrian Army". The lady on the right is CBS
correspondent Clarissa Ward. We would not be too surprised to
learn that she is working closely with the CIA as well.

For nearly a year, externally generated violence wracked Syria. Dirty Western hands planned and implemented it. Rogue regional despots were enlisted for support.

Replacing an independent regime with a pro-Western one and isolating Iran are planned. Russia and China thwarted two Security Council resolutions designed to facilitate intervention.

On February 16, a non-binding Arab League General Assembly resolution passed with similar language. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states backed it.

Pressure's building for escalated anti-Assad measures. Sooner or later expect intervention, perhaps war. At issue is isolating Iran, then targeting the Islamic Republic. Replicating 1953 in some form's coming, perhaps more war that may involve Russia and China defending their interests.

On February 24, a Friends of Syria coalition of the willing will meet in Tunisia. The State Department organized them outside the UN system. Hillary Clinton and key NATO counterparts will attend.

On February 13, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said "Moscow does not consider the US-backed 'Friends of Syria' legitimate."

It's similar to last year's orchestrated one against Gaddafi. France said it might supply weapons. In fact, heavy ones were provided since violence erupted last March. They're coming from Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon's opposition March 14 alliance, Gulf states and perhaps Washington, rogue NATO partners and Israel.

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Patrick Martin

Unverified atrocity reports by US-backed opposition groups are being used to pave the way for imperialist military intervention, on the model of Libya—where the allegedly impending “bloodbath” in Benghazi became the pretext for the US-NATO bombing.

The United States and other imperialist powers are pushing ahead with plans for military intervention and the overthrow of the Syrian government, convening a meeting Friday in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, of so-called “Friends of Syria.”

Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem, speaking Monday after a meeting of Mediterranean region foreign ministers in Rome, said his government had decided that “The Syrian National Council (SNC), the largest Syrian opposition group and other opposition groups will be represented at the Tunis meeting.”

The SNC is an amalgam of CIA hirelings, Islamic fundamentalists and disaffected former officials of the Assad regime in Syria, sponsored by Turkey and the United States in a maneuver similar to the creation of the National Transitional Council in Libya, which provided a pretext for the US-NATO war against that country.

An SNC spokesman said the group would go to Tunis to seek military aid to the Free Syrian Army (SFA), the armed wing of the “rebels.” The SFA was formed on Turkish territory but engages in attacks on government installations inside Syria—including the assassination Monday of a high-ranking judge and prosecutor.

The two countries that have the closest relations with Syria, Iran and Russia, are excluded from the meeting of the “Friends,” along with China, which joined with Russia to veto a UN Security Council resolution that would have opened the door to a Libyan-style military intervention in Syria.

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Stephen Lendman

Predatory bankers make serial killers look good by comparison. Their business model creates crises to facilitate grand theft, financial terrorism, and debt entrapment. They steal all material wealth and then some. They systematically rob investors and strip mine economies for self-enrichment. They demand they get paid first. They hold nations hostage to assure it. They turn crises into catastrophes. They leave mass impoverishment, high unemployment, neo-serfdom, and human wreckage in their wake. Their Federal Reserve/ECB/IMF/World Bank/political class lackeys do their bidding. They're more dangerous than standing armies. They wage war by other means. They cause "demographic shrinkage, shortened life spans, emigration and capital flight," explains Michael Hudson. They're a malignancy ravaging societies and humanity. Greece is the epicenter of what's metastasizing globally. The latest bailout deal highlights out-of-control pillage.

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Tighe Barry

Toxic gases thrown by riot police into
a house in Sitra, suffocating children.

As part of an observer delegation in Bahrain with the peace group Code Pink, I visited the village of Bani Jamrah with local Bahraini human rights activists.

In one of the many horrific cases we heard, a 17-year-old boy Hasan, his friend and his 8-year-old brother left their home to go to the grocery store. As they were entering the store they noticed some other youngsters running. Fearing the police would be following them, they decided to wait in the store. The 8 year old hid behind a refrigerator. The police entered the store with face masks on. They grabbed the older boys, pulling them out of the store and into the street.

Once outside the shop the police began to beat them with their sticks and hit them on the head, shouting obscenities and accusations. The police were accusing them of having been involved with throwing Molotov cocktails, asking over and over “Where are the Molotov cocktails?”

The four policemen, all masked and wearing regulation police uniforms, took turns beating the boys while one was instructed to keep watch to make sure no one was video taping. They seemed to be very concerned that there be no witnesses. Quickly, they forced the boys into the waiting police car. Inside the police vehicle was another youth about 18 who appeared to be “Muhabharat,” or plain-clothes police thugs associated with many dictatorships in the Middle East.

As the car sped off, the boys were told to keep their heads down “or we will kill you.” Soon they arrived at an open lot away from possible onlookers. As the two boys were being pulled from the car, the policeman who seemed to be in the charge shouted, “Make them lie down.” Once they were face down on the ground, the policemen took out their knives and stabbed both boys in the left buttock, leaving a gaping wound. The police thugs continued their “questioning”, using profanity to scare their victims. They threatened the boys that they would go to jail for 45 days for “investigation” and that they would never go back to school or get work.

When the thugs realized that they had no choice but to leave these victims, since they had no knowledge of the Molotovs, they searched them to see what they could steal. They took the boys’ mobile phones and asked them to hand over whatever money they had. When they discovered that the boys only had 500fils (about $1.50US), they kicked one of them in the raw wound, laughing as they left them bleeding.

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Medea Benjamin
 

John Timoney is the controversial former Miami police chief well known for orchestrating brutal crackdowns on protests in Miami and Philadelphia- instances with rampant police abuse, violence, and blatant disregard for freedom of expression. It should be of great concern that the Kingdom of Bahrain has brought Timoney and John Yates, former assistant commissioner of Britain’s Metropolitan Police, to “reform” Bahrain’s security forces.

Since assuming his new position, Timoney has claimed that Bahrain has been reforming it brutal police tactics in response to recommendations issued by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry. He says that there is less tear gas being used and that while tear gas might be “distasteful,” it’s not really harmful.
I have no idea what country Chief Timoney is talking about, because it’s certainly not the Bahrain I saw this past week, a week that marked the one-year anniversary since the February 14, 2011 uprising.

I was in Bahrain for five days before being deported for joining a peaceful women’s march. During my stay, I accompanied local human rights activists to the villages where protests were raging and police cracking down. Every day, I inhaled a potent dose of tear gas, and came close to being hit in the head with tear gas canisters. Every evening I saw the fireworks and smelled the noxious fumes as hundreds of tear gas canisters were lobbed into the village of Bani Jamrah, next door to where I was staying. The villagers would get on their roofs yelling “Down, Down Hamad” (referring to the King). In exchange, as a form of collective punishment, the whole village would be doused in tear gas. I went to bed coughing, eyes burning, wondering how in the world the Bahrainis can stand this.

Tear gas is supposed to be used to disperse violent gatherings that pose a threat to law and order. It is not supposed to be used on unarmed protesters who are simply exercising their freedoms of expression and assembly.

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Stephen Lendman

Adnan symbolizes Israeli ruthlessness. Whether he'll pull through after 66 days without food isn't sure. If not, will major media scoundrels notice or care?

Ma'an News said Adnan will stop hunger striking following a deal to release him on April 17, according to PA Prison Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe.

Adnan didn't confirm it, and so far his lawyer didn't comment. The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) has no information to report.

On February 21, Haaretz writer Jack Koury went further, saying:

"Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan announced Tuesday that he will be ending his 66-day hunger strike after Israel agreed to release him."

Late Tuesday, Qaraqe and PPS head Qaddura Faris will hold a news conference in Adnan's Jenin area village to discuss details.

On February 21, Reuters headlined, "Palestinian prisoner ending hunger strike after deal," saying:

Israel's Justice Ministry spokeswoman said:

"There is a deal. (Adnan) will stop his hunger strike. They will not extend his administrative detention and he will be free on April 17."

Israel's High Court cancelled its scheduling Tuesday mid-day hearing,

"avoiding a high-profile examination of the issue of detention without (charge) or trial."

It's high time that issue was addressed and ended. Administrative detention is only warranted under emergency conditions for the shortest possible time. Israel abusively uses it.

Hundreds are held lawlessly uncharged for indefinite periods. Due process and judicial fairness are denied. It's unconscionable that Israel's Supreme Court hasn't ruled the practice illegal. In fact, it's upheld it for decades on bogus national security grounds.

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Alex Lantier

American Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), like this IAF
Hermes 450, are flying surveillance sorties over Syria.

US military officials confirmed Saturday that US drones are flying over Syria, as fighting spreads inside the country and US officials discuss military or “humanitarian” intervention to topple Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

The drone flights, which flagrantly violate Syrian air space, include a “good number” of both military and US intelligence drones, according to US defense officials. These officials said the drones’ mission is to obtain “intercepts of Syrian government and military communications in an effort to ‘make the case for a widespread international response.’”

The Israeli daily Ha’aretz also reported Saturday that Syrian forces had captured 40 Turkish intelligence operatives working with the “opposition” inside Syria. It said the Turkish operatives confessed to working with the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to train the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), and claimed that Mossad operatives were working with Al Qaeda operatives in Jordan planning operations in Syria.

This echoes testimony Thursday before the US Senate Armed Services Committee by US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. He said that recent bombings in Damascus and Aleppo “had all the earmarks of an al Qaeda-like attack. So we believe that al Qaeda in Iraq is extending its reach into Syria.”

As in last year’s war in Libya, Washington is seizing on violence between the Assad regime and US-backed opposition forces—which are organizing protests and killings inside Syria—to justify military intervention.

Significantly, the US relied extensively on former Al Qaeda fighters of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) to topple Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and it appears a similar relationship is being established in Syria.

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Stephen Lendman

For over a century, The Times played America's lead role disseminating state/corporate propaganda duplicitously.

Its daily diet features managed, not real, news, information and analysis. Readers don't get what they pay for. They're cheated on what matters most.

What it reports, other major media scoundrels regurgitate. Readers and viewers are left misinformed and uninformed in the dark.

Wealth and power support defines its agenda, especially when America goes to war or plans to. In the lead, The Times cheerleads supportively.

Last year, it backed NATO's killing machine in Libya. It sanitized mass killing, destruction, and human misery. Now it's waging war on Syria and Iran. It vilifies regimes Washington opposes. It defends sabotage and targeted assassinations.

It blames both countries for defending their sovereign rights. It turns victims into villains. It ignores lawless Western intervention. It brazenly justifies the unjustifiable. It backs the worst of imperial lawlessness. It cheerleads war, the more the better. It denigrates leaders supporting diplomatic solutions.

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Anna Baltzer

Dear friends,

A Palestinian man named Khader Adnan is now on his 65th day of a hunger strike since December 18th, 2011. He could die at any moment--he is in "immediate danger of death." Yesterday, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association published this update . Here is one exerpt:

Israel's High Court of Justice has today scheduled a petitions hearing regarding the case of Khader Adnan to take place Thursday, 23 February 2012 at 11:30am. The petition was filed by Khader Adnan's lawyers on 15 February. The High Court of Justice was provided with a detailed medical report prepared on 14 February by an Israeli-accredited doctor on behalf of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel). Despite the elaborate medical report, which confirmed that Khader Adnan "is in immediate danger of death," and that "a fast in excess of 70 days does not permit survival," the Israeli High Court appointed the petition session for 23 February with no guarantees that a decision will be made on the same day. By then, Khader Adnan—if alive—will have reached the 69th day of his ongoing hunger strike.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The US government does not represent americans.

In 2010 the FBI invaded the homes of peace activists in several states and seized personal possessions in what the FBI–the lead orchestrator of fake “terrorist plots”–called an investigation of “activities concerning the material support of terrorism.”

Subpoenas were issued to compel antiwar protestors to testify before grand juries as prosecutors set about building their case that opposing Washington’s wars of aggression constitutes giving aid and comfort to terrorists. The purpose of the raids and grand jury subpoenas was to chill the anti-war movement into inaction.

Last week in one fell swoop the last two remaining critics of Washington/Tel Aviv imperialism were removed from the mainstream media. Judge Napolitano’s popular program, Freedom Watch, was cancelled by Fox TV, and Pat Buchanan was fired by MSNBC. Both pundits had wide followings and were appreciated for speaking frankly.

Many suspect that the Israel Lobby used its clout with TV advertisers to silence critics of the Israeli government’s efforts to lead Washington to war with Iran. Regardless, the point before us is that the voice of the mainstream media is now uniform. Americans hear one voice, one message, and the message is propaganda. Dissent is tolerated only on such issues as to whether employer-paid health benefits should pay for contraceptive devices. Constitutional rights have been replaced with rights to free condoms.

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John Pilger

It is this refusal to give up that rotten power fears, above all, knowing it is the seed beneath the snow.

Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence. She was the embodiment of people's resistance to the war on democracy. I first glimpsed her in a 1950s Colonial Office film about the Chagos islanders, a tiny creole nation living midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean. The camera panned across thriving villages, a church, a school, a hospital, set in a phenomenon of natural beauty and peace. Lisette remembers the producer saying to her and her teenage friends, "Keep smiling girls!"

Sitting in her kitchen in Mauritius many years later, she said, "I didn't have to be told to smile. I was a happy child, because my roots were deep in the islands, my paradise. My great-grandmother was born there; I made six children there. That's why they couldn't legally throw us out of our own homes; they had to terrify us into leaving or force us out. At first, they tried to starve us. The food ships stopped arriving [then] they spread rumours we would be bombed, then they turned on our dogs."

In the early 1960s, the Labour government of Harold Wilson secretly agreed to a demand from Washington that the Chagos archipelago, a British colony, be "swept" and "sanitised" of its 2,500 inhabitants so that a military base could be built on the principal island, Diego Garcia. "They knew we were inseparable from our pets," said Lizette, "When the American soldiers arrived to build the base, they backed their big trucks against the brick shed where we prepared the coconuts; hundreds of our dogs had been rounded up and imprisoned there. Then they gassed them through tubes from the trucks' exhausts. You could hear them crying."

Lisette and her family and hundreds of islanders were forced on to a rusting steamer bound for Mauritius, a distance of 2,500 miles. They were made to sleep in the hold on a cargo of fertiliser: bird shit. The weather was rough; everyone was ill; two women miscarried. Dumped on the docks at Port Louis, Lizette's youngest children, Jollice, and Regis, died within a week of each other. "They died of sadness," she said. "They had heard all the talk and seen the horror of what had happened to the dogs. They knew they were leaving their home forever. The doctor in Mauritius said he could not treat sadness."

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Khalid Amayreh

An Israeli police officer fires tear gas at Palestinian pro-
testers (not seen) during clashes in the East Jerusalem
neighborhood of Issawiya. (AP/Sebastian Scheiner)

The results of the Likud leadership elections and continuing provocation at the Haram Al-Sharif signal growing extremism in Israel, writes Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem.

Moshe Feiglin is not a typical Likudnik in the style of other past and present Likud leaders, such as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu.

Those who know him say he is an incarnation of Meir Kahana, the racist-minded American rabbi who in the early 1970s founded the Kach organisation calling for the expulsion of non-Jews from Israel-Palestine, as well as the application of draconian Talmudic laws to replace Israel's quasi-secular system.

A few years ago, Feiglin decided to join the ranks of Likud, calculating that only by taking over a central and powerful party from within could he hope to transform Israel from a semi-secular state into a Jewish theocracy ruled by Halacha or the so-called Talmudic religious law.

So far, he has achieved only limited success, with less than 25 per cent of Likud registered members voting for him in the recent party leadership elections, in which the overwhelming majority voted for incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

However, the fact that Feiglin has been able to secure one fourth of Likud behind him does not bode well for either Israel's democracy or the future of Likud itself.

Ideologically, Feiglin is at the extreme right of the Israeli political map, believing that Israel should annex the West Bank, reoccupy the Gaza Strip, deport all Palestinians and demolish Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem.

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Stephen Lendman

In November 2006, Washington Post writer Juliet Eilperin headlined, "World's Fish Supply Running Out, Researchers Warn," saying:

International ecologists and economists believe "the world will run out of seafood by 2048" if current fishing rates continue.

A journal Science study "conclude(d) that overfishing, pollution and other environmental factors are wiping out important species" globally. They're also impeding world oceans' ability to produce seafood, filter nutrients, and resist disease.

Marine biologist Boris Worm warned:

"We really see the end of the line now. It's within our lifetime. Our children will see a world without seafood if we don't change things."

Researchers studied fish populations, catch records, and ocean ecosystems for four years. By 2003, 29% of all species collapsed. It means they're at least "90% below their historic maximum catch levels."

In recent years, collapse rates accelerated. In 1980, 13.5% of 1,736 fish species collapsed. Today, 7,784 species are harvested.

According to Worm, "It's like hitting the gas pedal and holding it down at a constant level. The rate accelerates over time."

Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco said the study shows fish stocks are in trouble. "I think people don't get it," she said. "If there is a problem with the oceans, how come the case in my grocery store is so full? There is a disconnect."

National Environmental Trust vice president Gerald Leape said "This should be a wake-up call to our leaders, both internationally and domestically, that they need to protect our fish stocks. Otherwise they will go away."

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Gilad Atzmon

2nd part of two – In this part I explore the misleading role of Jewish politics (both Zionist and anti Zionist) within the 'anti racist' campaign. To read the 1st part click here.

Racism is a big word with some very bad connotations. Being accused of racism is one of the most hurtful and potentially damaging labels around. And yet, how many ‘racists’ really think in ‘biological determinist’ terms? How many ‘racists’ out there really think in terms of ‘genes,’ or even ‘skin colour’? I guess not that many.

While acknowledging that racism had a significant cultural, and politically lethal impact between the late 19th century and the middle of the last century, in today’s politics, the word ‘racism’ is often misused, mistakenly used, or in some cases, consciously used to mislead and even to silence.

Though discrimination against minority groups is unfortunately common and totally unacceptable, it is not necessarily always motivated by crude racism. Islamophobia, for instance, is commonly regarded as a contemporary manifestation of racism but I would challenge such an understanding. Islamophobia, I contend, is not driven by racism, but rather, it is actually a crude symptom of intolerance -- xenophobia manifested as hatred, bigotry and discrimination. My English Muslim convert friends are often subjected to abuse by Jewish campaigners (both Zionist and ‘anti’-Zionists) and the English Defence League -- but not because of their ‘genes’, ‘biology’ or the colour of their skin, but rather because they are ‘different’; because they challenge Western value system and because they oppose Israel and its lobbies. Clearly, they are perceived by some as a 'public enemy' but that reaction cannot always be understood solely as ‘racism’ per se.

Similarly, it is beyond doubt that it is not easy to be black in ‘multi cultural’ Britain. Being a jazz musician I see first hand how my black friends are often treated in this country and I see plenty of evidence of institutional anti-black bigotry. I read about black youngsters being stopped and searched by police between one to four times a day. This is unacceptable and clear evidence of discrimination.

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Stephen Lendman

Banner in Arabic, top, reads: "The prisoners were and
still are a symbol of steadfastness and tenderness, let
us stand by their side.". (M. Ballas/AP/SeattlePI)

■ Murdering Khader Adnan
■ Khader Adnan: Day 60 and Counting
■ Khader Adnan's Heroic Struggle for Justice
■ Khader Adnan: Israeli Prisoner of Conscience
■ Israeli Political Prisoner Khader Adnan Near Death
■ Israeli Hanging Judge Sentences Khader Adnan to Death

Day 62 and counting. Adnan's hunger strike continues. On February 15, Israel let his wife Randa see him for the second time.

She said "(h)is health has drastically deteriorated from the last time I saw him" a week ago. "I expect the worst. He insists on continuing with the hunger strike." He wants to live but will die for justice.

PLO official Saeb Erekat said Abbas pressed Russia, China, Britain, and EU authorities to help during meetings with acting EU representative to Palestine John Gatt-Rutter, UK Consul-General Vincent Fean, Russian representative Alexander Rudakov, and Chinese PA ambassador Yang Wei Guo.

He also contacted Washington, EU Secretary-General Thorbjørn Jagland, and France. Nothing so far materialized. Western leaders provide one-sided support for Israel. Expect nothing from them for Adnan.

He's held administratively without charge. He committed no crimes yet faces imminent death. He lost over a third of his weight. His life force is slowly ebbing. His muscles, heart, stomach, and immune system are dying.

His entire system could stop functioning any time. Israel wants him dead. So far, pleas on his behalf are ignored. The Palestinian Council of Human Rights Organizations (PCHRO) called for emergency action to save him. So did Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. It demanded his immediate release before it's too late.

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Gilad Atzmon

1st part of two – In this paper and the one to follow, I expose the misleading aspect that is, unfortunately, inherent to some 'anti' racist ideologies. I will elaborate on the role of anti racism in maintaing both Zionism and the Left discourse. To read the 2nd part click here.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” ― Anaïs Nin

It doesn’t take a genius to see that people who are identified as Zionist and Jews are, somehow, over represented in many blunders in today’s world affairs. The pro-war, Neocon think-tanks were overwhelmingly saturated with Zionist Jews, and the ‘moral interventionist’ advocates within the media are also largely Zionist Jews. The ‘brains’ behind the so-called Bush doctrine i.e. The ‘War Against Terror’, were Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby, and if that were not enough, at the heart of the financial turmoil we also find Jewish persons, and financial institutions that are clearly recognizable as Jewish – such as the Lehman Brother, Goldman Sachs, Alan Greenspan, Bernie Madoff, and many others.

Here one must ask an obvious question – why should any Jew anywhere in the world be concerned in any way with these facts? Why should any Jewish person be concerned with actions or ideas that he or she probably has nothing to do with? Why should my Jewish neighbour, also subject to the financial turmoil and with no connection whatsoever with Madoff, Wolfowitz, David Aaronovitch or Lord ‘cash point’ Levy, be at all concerned with current financial or imperial blunders for which he has no responsibility? Why should my Jewish musician friends who have no ties to Israel, AIPAC, CFI, CST, Nick Cohen or Alan Greenspan feel guilty for crimes or actions taken by others just because they also happen to be Jewish? Would a Frenchman or an Irishman in America feel threatened or potentially discriminated against because of revelations that a few of their expatriates had been involved in a major colossal scandal?

So, the question I raise here is a simple one: why should any Jew feel guilty for crimes that are committed by other people – people he or she does not know and is not affiliated with? And the answer is equally simple – Jewish individuals have no reason to assume responsibility for actions committed by other Jews. But the truth of the matter is, that many Jews are extremely concerned about the current blunders: some feel guilty, and many – potentially at least – feel threatened. I would say that such a reaction merits our attention.

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Stephen Lendman

"Bad Ideas Are Like Viruses:They Spread Quickly
to Make Matters Worse" - Joseph E. Stiglitz

Money power rules. Across Europe and America, governments follow banker diktats. They demand economies and people suffer to assure they're paid.

Money power in private hands and democracy can't co-exist. It buys what it wants at the expense of government of, by and for the people. It never was and isn't now.

Wall Street and major European banks usurped unprecedented money making power. With complicit politicians, they make it the old fashioned way. They steal it.

As a result, ordinary people are harmed. They've lost jobs, homes, savings, and futures to let privileged elites get richer and more powerful at their expense.

At issue is banking giants controlling money, credit and debt for private enrichment. Used lawlessly, they bribe politicians to pass business friendly laws and turn a blind eye to massive fraud, abuse, and grand theft.

Greece is the epicenter of Europe's crisis. It's being strip-mined of all material wealth. Its life force is being drained to pay bankers. Its citizens face destitution and neoserfdom with no rights. Democracy's just a figure of speech. In its birthplace, it no longer exists.

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Stephen Lendman

"Will [the bankers] sign our country's death warrant?"

Greece is banker occupied. Ordinary people have no say. Parliamentarians get orders and obey. Despite multiple painful austerity rounds, Troika power demands more - the IMF, EU and European Central Bank (ECB).

Money power dictates bankers get paid first. People needs are sacrificed for them. Bankers also want implementation guarantees for enacted policies and more coming. For starters, they demand cutting another 325 million euros.

European Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said more had to be done no matter the human harm and economic ruin. Ordinary Greeks face impoverishment and neoserfdom. Since 2007, Greece's economy shrunk almost 20% en route to total collapse.

Its real debt burden approaches $650 billion, around double the reported amount. The latest bailout deal's for about $170 billion. Current debt exceeds what Greece can repay. Increasing it elevates crisis conditions. Forced austerity assures harder than ever hard times.

Rising unemployment exceeds 20%. Youth unemployment approaches 50%. Only a third without work get unemployment benefits. They're being slashed another 20%. Plans are for laying off another 150,000 state workers by 2015.

Private sector wage cuts exceeded 20%, public sector ones around 50%. Poverty affects millions. GDP's collapsing. So are pensions, Greece's life force, and the ability of most people to survive.

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Adnan Al-Daini

The mantra of growth as a cure to the economic malaise that is engulfing Europe and the US is repeated ad nauseam by economists and political pundits.  My training is in engineering science, not economics, so let us not be encumbered by economic dogma or theory. Let us go back to first principles to examine some of the prevailing economic axioms.

If we insist that western economies must continue to grow year after year for poor people even to have the basics for life, and since we know that only little of the wealth created trickles down, then before too long we will end up devouring the whole planet.  Of course, well before we reach that point, we will have degraded our environment to the point where life becomes unsustainable for all of us, rich and poor, and certainly for future generations.

How can this growth be achieved anyway? If most of the wealth created finds its way to the top 10 % (UK figures: the top 1% own 21% of wealth, and the top 10% own 53%), where is the demand going to come from?  I hope no one is suggesting we fuel it by unsustainable debt and usury, which is what brought us to this crisis in the first place.  Those at the top already have more money than they know what to do with; there is a limit to how much an individual can consume. How many cars and gadgets does an individual need? 

Yet in America 47 million people live in poverty, 50 million with no health insurance, and 1.5 million children are homeless. In the UK, 13.5 million people live in poverty (22% of the population, 29% of all children), 65,000 households are classified as homeless. We have to substantially change wealth distribution in our societies for the economic system to be sustainable.

As rich western societies, don’t we have a moral duty to do something more imaginative than simply trying to create a bigger cake in the hope that the share for the poor will increase by a sliver more?  Wouldn’t it be fairer and more effective to divide the existing cake, which is big enough, more equitably? 

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Pepe Escobar

What was the parade of European poodles thinking - that Tehran would just roll over and absorb the European Union's oil embargo, scheduled to start on July 1?

No wonder Brussels was caught as a Gucci deer in the headlights when the news started to flow that Tehran would pre-empt the move and immediately slap its own embargo of crude oil exports to six European Union countries - deeply in crisis Club Med members Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain plus recession-hit France and the Netherlands.

It took virtually no time for Iran's Oil Ministry and then the Foreign Ministry to deny it; such a decision, technically, would have to be officially announced by the Supreme National Security Council, which also deals with the nuclear negotiations.

But only the deaf, dumb and blind wouldn't understand the message; blowback for the ridiculously counter-productive European sanctions/oil embargo package will only plunge vast swathes of Europe further into deep economic pain.

Iran supplies 500,000 barrels of oil a day to the EU. The mere threat of an Iranian embargo has already provoked an oil price spike.

Assuming Club Med countries would be able to get oil from other sources - and that's not a given; Saudi Arabia wants high oil prices with a vengeance - they would have to reconfigure their refineries to process it. Inevitably there would be shortages of gasoline; the average Italian, for instance, is already furious with the skyrocketing price of gas at the pump.

Perhaps those tens of thousands of useless Brussels bureaucrats carrying their multicolored files up and down should do something meaningful and send a letter to Washington officially congratulating the Americans for further impoverishing tens of millions of EU citizens.

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Bill Van Auken

The “tide of war is receding” is a phrase President Barack Obama has employed ad nauseam—once in his State of the Union address, twice in the course of remarks last month at the unveiling of the Pentagon's new military strategy document, once again during his speech at the United Nations, also in his announcement of troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a Veteran's Day address.

The constant repetition of this hackneyed metaphor is aimed at obscuring the obvious—that US militarism has escalated dramatically under the Democratic president and its tide threatens to engulf the entire planet.

Among the latest indications is a behind-the-scenes campaign by the chief of the US military's Special Operations Command (SOCOM) for greater autonomy in dispatching elite killer squads to every corner of the globe.

Adm. William McRaven, who heads SOCOM, is, according to the New York Times, seeking “more autonomy to position his forces and their war-fighting equipment where intelligence and global events indicate they are most needed.”

The admiral's proposal, the Times notes, “would also allow the Special Operations forces to expand their presence in regions where they have not operated in large numbers for the past decade, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”

McRaven argues that “[t]hickening the Special Operations deployments in these other regions would allow the United States to be ready to respond more rapidly to a broader range of threats.”

SOCOM includes as its key sub unit the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, which is made up of such outfits as the Navy Seals and the Army's Green Berets, which carry out armed missions abroad. It is one area of the US military that is being spared even the minimal cuts that are being imposed on the Pentagon budget.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Farzana, 8 months, is held by her grandmother in a crowded
refugee camp on February 10, 2009 in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Having lost part of her arm during a recent US attack in
Helmand, Farzana and her family now live at the refugee
camp, displaced by the violence in Afghanistan.

Is Obama a hypocrite or merely insouciant? Or is he an idiot?

According to news reports Obama’s White House meeting on Valentine’s day with China’s Vice President, Xi Jinping, provided an opportunity for Obama to raise “a sensitive human rights issue with the Chinese leader-in-waiting.” The brave and forthright Obama didn’t let etiquette or decorum get in his way. Afterwards, Obama declared that Washington would “continue to emphasize what we believe is the importance of realizing the aspirations and rights of all people.”

Think about that for a minute. Washington is now in the second decade of murdering Muslim men, women, and children in six countries. Washington is so concerned with human rights that it drops bombs on schools, hospitals, weddings and funerals, all in order to uphold the human rights of Muslim people. You see, bombing liberates Muslim women from having to wear the burka and from male domination. One hundred thousand, or one million, dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, a country with destroyed infrastructure, and entire cities, such as Fallujah, bombed and burnt with white phosphorus into cinders is the proper way to show concern for human rights. Ditto for Afghanistan. And Libya.

In Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia Washington’s drones bring human rights to the people.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

Adnan Moussa holds a picture of his son Khader Adnan,
a senior member of Islamic Jihad jailed in Israel and who
has been on hunger strike for nearly two months, during
a protest in the West Bank city of Jenin on 13 February,
2012 in solidarity with his action and to demand the re-
lease of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

■ Murdering Khader Adnan
■ Khader Adnan's Heroic Struggle for Justice
■ Khader Adnan: Israeli Prisoner of Conscience
■ Israeli Political Prisoner Khader Adnan Near Death
■ Israeli Hanging Judge Sentences Khader Adnan to Death

Israeli state terror matches the world's worst. With Washington and Britain, they're axis of evil partners. Torturing Adnan to death shows it. His martyrdom won't go unnoticed.

On February 15, Palestinian faction leaders began supportive hunger strikes. Gazans erected a sit-in tent near ICRC's Gaza City offices.

Islamic Jihad leaders Sheikh Nafth Azzam, Ahmad Al-Mudallal, Dawood Shihab and Khader Habit joined with others and civil society organization members.

Al-Mudallal said striking "support(s) the battle of dignity of Sheikh Khader Adnan. This is the least we can do (for) this legendary symbol."

Palestinian Authority civil affairs minister Hussein al-Sheikh said PA officials were trying to free him and hold Israel responsible for his well-being.

Palestinian prisoner affairs minister Issa Qaraqa called for demonstrations, protest marches, and solidarity fasts throughout the Territories.

Hundreds of Palestinians began supportive hunger strikes. Many rallied in Gaza and West Bank towns. Ofer Prison detainees joined them. Israeli security forces attacked protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets. Palestinian National Initiative head Mustafa Barghouti was wounded in his foot.

Adnan's a political prisoner, detained since mid-December but not charged. On his 60th day without food, a mass call for action urged support to help free him. He symbolizes Israeli brutality, injustice and lawlessness. He inspired others saying:

"For every gram you lose from your weight, we gain a thousand grams in our dignity."

Many support him globally and responded. He hasn't yet slipped into coma, but remains perilously close to death.

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Andy Worthington

Last month was the 10th anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo, and as this year progresses it is appropriate to remember that there will be other grim 10-year anniversaries to note.

This week, one of those 10-year anniversaries passed almost unnoticed. On February 7, 2002, as Andrew Cohen noted in the Atlantic, in the only article marking the anniversary,

President George W. Bush signed a brief memorandum titled “Humane Treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda Detainees” (PDF). The caption was a cruel irony, an Orwellian bit of business, because what the memo authorized and directed was the formal abandonment of America’s commitment to key provisions of the Geneva Convention. This was the day, a milestone on the road to Abu Ghraib: that marked our descent into torture — the day, many would still say, that we lost part of our soul.

That is no exaggeration. Depriving prisoners seized in wartime of the protections of the Geneva Conventions was a huge and unprecedented step, and thoroughly alarming. And yet, despite criticism from Secretary of State Colin Powell (PDF), the administration pushed forward remorselessly towards the creation of an America that practiced arbitrary detention and torture.

Powell had been included in the paper trail that led to Bush’s memorandum of February 7, 2002, and he was particularly upset by a memo on January 25, 2002 (PDF), signed by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, but written by Vice President Dick Cheney’s legal counsel, David Addington, which claimed that the “new paradigm” that the “war on terror” presented “renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”

In his memorandum, just two weeks later, Bush declared that “none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere through the world, because, among other reasons, al-Qaeda is not a High Contracting Party to Geneva.” He added, “I determine that the Taliban detainees are unlawful combatants and, therefore, do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of Geneva. I note that, because Geneva does not apply to our conflict with al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda detainees also do not qualify as prisoners of war.”

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Paul Craig Roberts

Perhaps future historians will conclude that democracy once served the interests of money in order to break free of the power of kings, aristocracy, and government predations, but as money established control over governments, democracy became a liability. Historians will speak of the transition from the divine right of kings to the divine right of money.

The United States government and its NATO puppets have been killing Muslim men, women and children for a decade in the name of bringing them democracy. But is the West itself a democracy?

Skeptics point out that President George W. Bush was put in office by the Supreme Court and that a number of other elections have been decided by electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail. Others note that elected officials represent the special interests that fund their campaigns and not the voters. The bailout of the banks arranged by Bush’s Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulson, and Washington’s failure to indict any banksters for the fraud that contributed to the financial crisis, are evidence in support of the view that the US government represents money and not the voters.

Recent events in Greece and Italy have created more skepticism of the West’s claim to be democratic. Two elected European prime ministers, George Papandreou of Greece and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, were forced to resign over the sovereign debt issue. Not even Berlusconi, a billionaire who continues to lead the largest Italian political party, could stand up to the pressure brought by private bankers and unelected European Union officials.

Papandreou lasted only 10 days after announcing on October 31, 2011, that he would let the Greek voters decide in a referendum whether or not to accept the austerity being imposed on the Greek people from the outside. Austerity is the price charged by the EU for lending the Greek government the money to pay to the banks. In other words, the question was austerity or default. However, the question was decided without the participation of the Greek people.

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Stephen Lendman

Indian policemen watch security and forensic officials
examine a car belonging to the Israel Embassy after an
explosion in New Delhi on Monday. (Mustafa Quraishi)

Last October, Iran was falsely charged with a fake terror plot that didn't pass the smell test. At best, it resembled a bad film script too implausible to believe.

Tehran was bogusly blamed for plotting to kill Saudi Arabia's US ambassador. According to spurious accusations, an Iranian/American used car salesman and Mexican drug cartel hired assassin were involved.

You can't make this stuff up, but major media scoundrels headlined it for days. They regurgitated a scheme too implausible to believe.

Official lies substituted for proof. They're repeated to incite fear and justify retaliatory measures with public support. They include belligerence if ordered.

Unasked always is cui bono. Clearly, Iran is only harmed by alleged terrorist attacks against America, NATO partners, Israel, or their allies. In contrast, Washington and Tel Aviv benefit greatly. As a result, new charges follow old ones.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

■ Murdering Khader Adnan
■ Khader Adnan's Heroic Struggle for Justice
■ Khader Adnan: Israeli Prisoner of Conscience
■ Israeli Political Prisoner Khader Adnan Near Death

On Monday, military Judge Moshe Tirosh rejected Adnan's appeal as expected. Israel wants him dead. In his 59th day without food, his life hangs by a thread.

Tirosh called his decision "balanced." He claimed secret evidence justified him. He also called him an Islamic Jihad party political leader. Doing so effectively designated him a terrorist unjustly.

He ignored legal arguments, including no evidence warranting detention.

At one demonstration, Israeli security forces viciously attacked protesters, injuring 23 and making arrests. It's standard official thuggishness against Palestinians expressing their views nonviolently.

Following Tirosh's decision, 600 Gilboa Prison detainees hunger struck in solidarity. Other West Bank demonstrations were held. Israeli forces confronted them violently. Islamic Jihad promises "painful revenge" if Adnan dies.

The Addameer prisoner support group calls administrative detention use arbitrary. It also affirmed everyone's free expression, assembly and association rights, regardless of political affiliation.

Tirosh downplayed accusations about Adnan's torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. He said they're inflated and magnified. He accused Adnan of exaggerating what happened. He called his life-threatening condition his own fault. His deteriorating health didn't influence his ruling. He got orders and followed them.

Tirosh showed appalling contempt for human life. He decision condemned Adnan to death.

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Patrick Martin

The budget for fiscal year 2013 proposed by the Obama White House Monday is a thoroughly cynical exercise. It calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in social spending cuts, further devastating public services and the living standards of working people.

This is combined with populist demagogy about taxing the rich, although the administration knows full well that no such measures will pass either the Republican-controlled House of Representatives or the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The budget incorporates $1 trillion over ten years in cuts to domestic social spending already agreed on with congressional Republicans in last year’s negotiations over raising the federal debt ceiling. To these cuts will be added a total of $638 billion in social spending cuts.

Relatively few details leaked out over the weekend, and a preview document issued by the White House Friday listed only the programs that would receive spending increases, not those being slashed, for which only vague generalities were available.

The largest cutback will be $360 billion over ten years from Medicare and Medicaid, mainly through reducing payments to health care providers, which will have the effect of further reducing the number of hospitals and doctors willing to treat patients on either government program. This cut is particularly pernicious because the Obama healthcare reform program calls for extending Medicaid to tens of millions of additional people in 2014, which will require more and not less funding to cover the cost.

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Chris Floyd

["Fascism dies tonight..."]

If you want to know what is happening in Greece -- and what the powers that be have in mind for your country as well -- see this remarkable story by Mike Whitney at Counterpunch.

What are seeing in Greece is not an" economic" program; it is -- most openly and brazenly -- a political program: a savagely destructive extremist ideology being imposed on ordinary people by force. In its all-pervasive brutality and tyrannical control of every aspect of life, it makes the "Shariah law" bogeyman of right-wing nightmares look like an anarchists' picnic.

And make no mistake: the extremist doctrine being forced on Greece is, in every particular, the ruling ideology of the United States, Great Britain, and all the "great democracies" of the West. The aim of the doctrine is the "final solution" of the "problem" of democracy: i.e., the fact that the rabble keep seeking a decent life for themselves and trying to order their own affairs instead of staying in harness to enrich an all-powerful elite.

There is black irony in the fact that these elites are literally strangling Western democracy in its cradle. But it is also apt; for as Whitney points out, one of the specific points of the new bailout "agreement" for Greece is, incredibly, "lifting constraints [i.e., safety regulations] on restricted product categories such as baby food." As Whitney puts it:

That’s right; according to the authors of this fuliginous memo, the only way Greece is going to be able to lift itself out of the doldrums is by poisoning its kids with banned baby food.

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Stephen Lendman

Greece's working class faces neoserfdom. They have a simple choice - leave or rebel.

On February 12, Greece's banker controlled parliament passed sweeping austerity measures on top of multiple previous rounds. New ones include:

• sacking 15,000 public workers in 2012 and 150,000 by 2015;
• slashing private sector wages by 20%;
• lowering monthly minimum wages from 750 to 600 euros;
• cutting fast disappearing monthly unemployment benefits from 460 to 360 euros; and
• reducing pensions many Greeks need to survive by 15%.

At issue is securing another 130 billion euro bailout. The more financial aid Greece gets, the greater its debt, the harder it is to repay, the more future aid's needed, and deeper the country's economic abyss heading for total collapse.

No matter. Troika power kleptocrats demanded deep cuts - the IMF, EU and European Central Bank (ECB). Money power dictates bankers get paid first. People needs are sacrificed to assure it.

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Adnan Al-Daini

Ruthless Arab dictators have terrified the people around them to the point of total sycophancy, where praise and subservience to the “dear” leader are the only words the despot hears; this renders them incapable of objectively and logically examining a problem. Their delusions of grandeur have fossilised their brains, making them incapable of shifting their political gear to match the changing environment.  Up until the start of the Arab spring, fear woven into the fabric of Arab societies through secret police, torture and violence, was the emotion that kept the masses docile and silent. No more. The revolutionary young of the Arab world have changed societies in the region. They have shown that their desire for dignity, human rights and freedom is stronger than the fear of torture and death that has imprisoned the masses for so long.

The Syrian people started their uprising peacefully, demanding reform of a tyrannical rule to allow people a voice in the way they are governed; they were not initially calling for Bashar al-Assad to go.  The regime’s security apparatus responded in March 2011 with the “torture of children painting anti-regime slogans on a wall in Deraa in the south”.  Patrick Cockburn, in the Independent on Sunday (12 February 2012), describes the sheer stupidity of the response thus:

"The state disastrously misjudged its moment and an atrocity, intended to intimidate would-be protesters into silence, instead provoked them to revolt. Hatred of a despotic regime and fury at repeated massacres still impels great numbers of Syrians to go into the streets to demonstrate despite the dangers.”

The reaction of the regime was similar to that of the other despot Muammar Gaddafi, although Bashar al-Assad was clever enough to have a different rhetoric from that of Gaddafi, but the actions and violence are the same.

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William Blum

With the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good conclusion (or halfway decent ... or better than nothing ... or let's get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis we haven't yet killed), the best and the brightest in our government and media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears that no one seems to remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not really about 9-11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has created by its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines.

President Obama declared in August 2009: "But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans." [1]

Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.

Never mind that the "plotting to attack America" in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn't the United States bombed those countries?

Indeed, what actually was needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does "an even larger safe haven" mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

The only "necessity" that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia — which reportedly contains the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world — and build oil and gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.

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Stephen Lendman

Big Brother Eye in the Sky: The spy drone manufacturers
are planning to market their product to all state and local
police departments across the United States. A drone may
fit in the trunk of a car and is controlled remotely by a
tablet computer.

Money power runs America. So do lobbies representing all corporate and other interests.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) represents dozens of influential companies.

They include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Bell Hellicopter Textron, Sikorsky Aircraft, Goodrich, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Booz Allen Hamilton, Hill & Knowlton, and many more promoting unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone technology.

Against targeted countries, it's America's newest sport. From distant command centers, operators kill by remote control. They use computer keyboards and multiple monitors. UAVs stand ready round-the-clock for missions.

Predator drones perform sanitized killing on the cheap compared to manned aircraft. Independent experts believe militants are hit about 2% of the time. All others are noncombatants, despite official disclaimers.

In 1995, Predator drones were used for the first time in Bosnia. In 2001, the Global Hawk drone was used in Afghanistan. Throughout the Afghan and Iraq wars, the Pentagon used various type drones for combat and spying missions.

In Libya, Obama authorized Predator drones. They operated throughout the war. They're also used in Yemen, Somalia, and wherever Washington designates targets to kill.

US citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi was assassinated this way. So can anyone anywhere on America's hit list, including perhaps domestically before long.

Washington plans escalated drone killing, as well domestic spying on Americans. Currently, around one in three US warplanes are drones. One day perhaps they'll all be unmanned.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

■ Murdering Khader Adnan
■ Khader Adnan: Israeli Prisoner of Conscience
■ Israeli Political Prisoner Khader Adnan Near Death

Saturday marked his 56th hunger striking day. "My dignity is more precious than food," he said. He's willing to die courageously defending it.

He's protesting his lawless detention and treatment by repressive Israeli prison authorities. They're committing willful, malicious slow-motion murder.

He's uncharged because he's innocent. Yet Israel illegally detains him under horrific conditions. Without food for eight weeks, his life hangs by a thread. He could die before this article's published.

On February 9, a special Military Court appeal on his behalf was held at Safad's Zif medical center where he's held shackled to his bed near death.

For the hearing, he was moved to a separate room still shackled except for his hands. Despite his condition and gross injustice, Judge Moshe Tirosh won't rule until next week. By then it may not matter, and that's the whole idea.

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Nick Beams

The economic breakdown of the 1930s saw the sweeping away of all forms of democratic government on the European continent and the imposition of military and fascist dictatorships. This process is now underway again.

The Greek parliament has voted to approve a far-reaching austerity package that will push the country deeper into recession and bring further social misery.

With the parliament ringed by an estimated 4,000 police as some 80,000 people protested outside, the vote was taken after a special 10-hour session on Sunday, which ended at midnight.

Amid clashes between riot police and youth, Greece’s unelected Prime Minister Lucas Papademos declared: “Vandalism, violence and destruction have no place in a democratic country and won’t be tolerated.”

In fact, these social evils are at the very heart of the austerity program—based on spending cuts of around €3.3 billion—now agreed to by the Greek parliament in return for a €130 billion bailout of the financial system. The extraordinary session had been convened after European finance ministers declared they were not satisfied with commitments given last week and sent Greek government representatives with an order to do more—an additional €325 million in cuts.

The parliamentary vote came after a sustained propaganda barrage warning there was no alternative but to accept the dictates of the “troika”—the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund. Papademos threatened economic breakdown and social chaos, saying a default on Greece’s loans would condemn the country to a “disastrous ordeal.”

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Stephen Lendman

On February 11, the London Independent headlined, "BBC to issue global apology for documentaries that broke rules," saying:

"....(P)rograms were made by third-party in pay of governments and firms."

In other words, they were propaganda, not legitimate news and information. More on the scandal below.

Throughout its history, BBC's been an imperial tool. It replicates the worst of America's major media, its NPR/PBS managed news operations, and Qatar controlled Al Jazeera on major world and national issues.

Reliability's not its mandate. Owned, operated and controlled by Britain, government officials appoint its management. Nothing fundamentally changed from the 1922 inception to today. Only technology's different, not BBC's state controlled message.

It's pro-government, pro-imperial, pro-war, pro-Israel, pro-corporate, and anti-populist. Deception triumphs over truth. Step over the line and get fired.

In 2003, correspondent Andrew Gilligan, Chairman Gavyn Davies, and Director-General Greg Dyke got the boot because Gilligan reported government officials "sexed up" WMD documents, knowing they were false.

In other words, fake information, in league with Washington, promoted war on Iraq. Exposing it got Gilligan and top management axed. New bosses replaced former ones. Seamlessly it was back to business as usual, producing propaganda instead of truth and full disclosure.

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Paul Craig Roberts

El Baradei: “I wasn’t invited to the dress rehearsal.”
IAF general (handing an invitation): “Come to the
premiere.” (Amos Biderman / Haaretz)

Washington has made tremendous preparations for a military assault on Iran. There is speculation that Washington has called off its two longest running wars–Iraq and Afghanistan–in order to deploy forces against Iran. Two of Washington’s fleets have been assigned to the Persian Gulf along with NATO warships. Missiles have been spread amongst Washington’s Oil Emirate and Middle Eastern puppet states. US troops have been deployed in Israel and Kuwait.

Washington has presented Israel a gift from the hard-pressed american taxpayers of an expensive missile defense system, money spent for Israel when millions of unassisted americans have lost their homes. As no one expects Iran to attack Israel, except in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Iran, the purpose of the missile defense system is to protect Israel from an Iranian response to Israeli aggression against Iran.

Juan Cole has posted on his blog a map showing 44 US military bases surrounding Iran.

In addition to the massive military preparations, there is the propaganda war against Iran that has been ongoing since 1979 when Washington’s puppet, the Shah of Iran, was overthrown by the Iranian revolution. Iran is surrounded, but Washington and Israeli propaganda portray Iran as a threatening aggressor nation. In fact, the aggressors are the Washington and Tel Aviv governments which constantly threaten Iran with military attack.

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Chris Marsden

This image taken from video shows a member of the "Free
Syrian Army" [a probable CIA/Mossad outfit] firing a gun
in Homs, Syria. (Associated Press/Hawaii Tribune Herald)

The Pentagon has drawn up plans for military intervention in Syria.

A military strike would be coordinated with Turkey, the Gulf States and the NATO powers, according to reports that acknowledge such plans officially for the first time. The plan is described as an “internal review” by Pentagon Central Command, to allow President Barack Obama to maintain the pretense that the White House is still seeking a diplomatic solution.

This is considered vital, as military intervention would most likely be conducted through various Middle East proxies, which the US and NATO could then back with airpower. Turkey and the Arab League states, led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, do not want to be seen for what they are: stooges of the US. Deniability for them therefore requires the US to conceal the full extent of its involvement.

In the February 6 Financial Times, Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former director of policy planning for the US State Department, argued for “A little time… for continued diplomatic efforts aimed at shifting the allegiances of the Sunni merchant class in Damascus and Aleppo.”

As with the war against Libya last year, military intervention would again be justified citing the “responsibility to protect” civilians. But its real aim is regime change to install a Sunni government beholden to Washington, allied with the Gulf States, and hostile to Iran.

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Stephen Lendman

What major media scoundrels call relief is, in fact, business as usual coverup and fraud. Ellen Brown's important writing explained.

Obama pushed hard to get state attorneys general to settle for a fraction of stolen wealth, but it's worse than that. More on the announced deal below.

At issue is securitized mortgage-backed securities fraud compounded by "robo-signing." it involves "employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed."

It wasn't occasional. It's systemic grand theft since the 1990s. As a result, settling with crooks lets Wall Street shysters "off the hook for crimes that would land the rest of us in jail - fraud, forgery, securities violations and tax evasion."

State Attorneys General Perpetuate Fraud and Coverup

Forty-nine of the 50 States AGs agreed to let five major banks off the hook - JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Ally Financial (formerly GMAC). Oklahoma opted out, not from altruism. AG Scott Pruitt wants no banker penalties. Stealing is OK with him.

In exchange for robo-signing fraud, illegal fees, failure to honor previous settlements, and other servicer abuses, rogue bankers settled for $25 billion. It amounts to pennies on the dollar at most.

Homeowners may sue on their own. States get a fixed amount for legal aid services. All securitization claims, tax and insurance fraud ones, and others may still be investigated and prosecuted by individual AGs and the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group (RMBS).

Set up by Obama's Financial Fraud Task Force, New York AG Eric Schneiderman is one of five co-chairs. Delaware, Missouri, Nevada and Arizona filed lawsuits. California AG Kamala Harris retained the right of state to sue under the state's False Claims Act. Massachusetts also has a foreclosure fraud suit pending.

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Ellen Brown

A foreclosure settlement between five major banks guilty of "robo-signing" and the attorneys general of the 50 states is pending for Monday, February 6th; but it is still not clear if all the AGs will sign. California was to get over half of the $25 billion in settlement money, and California AG Kamala Harris has withstood pressure to settle.

That is good. She and the other AGs should not sign until a thorough investigation has been conducted. The evidence to date suggests that "robo-signing" was not a mere technical default or sloppy business practice but was part and parcel of a much larger fraud, the fraud that brought down the whole economy in 2008. It is not just distressed homeowners but the entire economy that has paid the price, resulting in massive unemployment and a shrunken tax base, throwing state and local governments into insolvency and forcing austerity measures and cutbacks in government services across the nation.

The details of the robo-signing scam were spelled out in my last article, here. The robo-signing fraud and its implications are expanded on below.

Why All the Robo-signing?

Over half the homes in the country are now held in the name of an electronic database called MERS ―Mortgage Electronic Registration Services. MERS is a smokescreen behind which these mortgages were sold to trusts that sold them to investors. The mortgages were chopped into pieces and sold as "mortgage-backed securities" (MBS), which traded in a supposedly liquid market. That meant the investors could sell them in the money market at any time on a day's notice. Yale economist Gary Gorton gives this example:

Suppose the institutional investor is Fidelity, and Fidelity has $500 million in cash that will be used to buy securities, but not right now. Right now Fidelity wants a safe place to earn interest, but such that the money is available in case the opportunity for buying securities arises. Fidelity goes to Bear Stearns and "deposits" the $500 million overnight for interest. What makes this deposit safe? The safety comes from the collateral that Bear Stearns provides. Bear Stearns holds some asset-backed securities [with] a market value of $500 millions. These bonds are provided to Fidelity as collateral. Fidelity takes physical possession of these bonds. Since the transaction is overnight, Fidelity can get its money back the next morning, or it can agree to "roll" the trade. Fidelity earns, say, 3 percent.

That is where the robo-signing came in. Foreclosure defense attorneys armed with the tools of discovery have discovered that robo-signing ―involving falsified signatures assigning mortgages back to the trusts allegedly owning them― occurred not just occasionally or randomly but in virtually every case. Why? Because the mortgages had to be left free to be bought and sold on a daily basis in the money market by investors. The investors are not interested in making 30 year loans. They want something short-term with immediate rights of withdrawal like a deposit account.

Read more »

Stephen Lendman

■ Khader Adnan: Israeli Prisoner of Conscience
■ Israeli Political Prisoner Khader Adnan Near Death

Adnan's a political prisoner hunger striker against gross Israeli repression and injustice. Two previous articles discussed his case and grave health condition after 55 days without food.

Irish republican/British MP Bobby Sands lasted 66 before expiring at age 27. Global marches, strikes and riots followed his death.

In France, many towns and cities named streets after him. Iran renamed Winston Churchill Street Bobby Sands Street. New Jersey's legislature passed a resolution 34 - 29 honoring his "courage and commitment."

The night he died, the Grateful Dead held a Nassau Coliseum concert on his behalf. Guitarist Bob Weir dedicated his song "He's Gone" to him.

Instead of expressing remorse, Britain's Margaret Thatcher shamelessly vilified him. The Hindustan Times condemned her, calling it unprecedented "in a civilized country" to let a fellow MP die of starvation. The New York Times contemptuously said:

"Britain's prime minister Thatcher is right in refusing to yield political status to Bobby Sands [but by appearing] unfeeling and unresponsive [she gave Sands] the crown of martyrdom."

In Adnan's own words: "My dignity is more precious than food." He is willing to die courageously defending it. West Bank, Gaza, and other protesters joined Adnan's strike supportively. Global tweets circulate on his behalf. Expect much more if he dies.

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Stephen Lendman

ACTA's worse than SOPA and PIPA. Net Neutrality and free expression are threatened. In October 2007, negotiations began secretly.

At issue is establishing a new intellectual property enforcement treaty - the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). If adopted, fundamental freedoms will be lost. Privatized online censorship will rule. Internet actors will be copyright enforcers. Offenders will face harsh criminal sanctions.

Transparency's entirely absent. So is major media coverage explaining an issue demanding headlines.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says we've all got a "right to be furious about ACTA." Killing it's essential.

"If there's one thing....wrong with (how) government(s now function), ACTA is it," says EFF. Washington and other dominant countries drafted it. Others are pressured to comply per America's annual Special 301 process.

At issue is establishing new Internet rules, "bypass(ing) checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens."

Moreover, the agreement creates a czar-like global "ACTA Committee." Unelected bureaucrats will oversee supranational interpretation and implementation. Arbitrary top-down rule will be imposed. In the process, democratic freedoms will be lost.

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Philip Giraldi

In case anyone thinks the figure on the left resembles the former US president, G.W. Bush (if even ever so faintly) let two things be noted here: 1. The war drums against Iran did in fact start pounding way back in time (if anyone still remembers), during the benign reign of the beloved former president, and 2. The faithful & loyal standard-bearer for the American way of life & the holy Republican cause of war, death & democracy now is none other than the esteemd Mr. Barack H. Obama, the 44th President of the United States. - The transition was seamless, and hardly anyone noted any change at all. However, the subsequent four years under the Nobel Peace Prize recipient have indeed seen some change, to be fair, though wicked lips have suggested the change may have been for the worse. These people have been dealt with accordingly. All hail the President! God bless America Israel! - The Editor

When the British Army of Lord Cornwallis boarded its ships to depart from Yorktown after being defeated by the Continental Army and the French under the command of General George Washington, a regimental band supposedly played an old ballad called “The World Turned Upside Down.” The music was intended to convey that the established order had been inverted by the American victory, with the king of England’s writ soon to be replaced by a union of states that eventually evolved into a constitutional republic.

There has been considerable press coverage during the past week that makes one think of a world turned upside down. Washington is unnaturally consumed with the Iranian Problem. Talk shows resonate over the question of what to do about Tehran’s nuclear program. There is a whole smorgasbord of things that Iran might do that are forbidden, including even having the knowledge of how to build a bomb. The negative press and commentary are being spun into a casus belli, something called the Iranian Threat writ large. The message is clear: even though Iran has a minuscule defense budget, has never attacked anyone, and is essentially a Third World country, it is nevertheless a global menace that must be dealt with by military means if all else fails. Oh yes, and brave little Israel will do the job if President Obama doesn’t have what it takes.

The only problem with all of the above is that the United States intelligence community confirms that Iran does not have a nuclear device and has not made the political decision to build one. Even Israeli intelligence agrees.

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Russell Walker

Government mandated ethanol in gasoline is causing increases in the cost of gasoline, food and the cost of living. United States Government laws mandating ethanol in gasoline as an alleged energy saving and environmental protector not only are incorrect, they are counterproductive as they actually increase energy use and help destroy the environment.

Ethanol is an inferior fuel for gasoline. Ethanol is 35% by weight of non-combustible oxygen as oxygen will not burn in spite of common misconception. Ethanol is hydroscopic meaning it attracts water which attracts oxygen and helps cause rust in any ferrous parts, carburetors and fuel lines. Aluminum, brass and bronze are also somewhat incompatible with ethanol. Ethanol has other disadvantages. The approximately 35% less energy available from ethanol compared to gasoline means that all vehicles that use gasoline need to burn more fuel and create more exhaust gases. Shipping unusable oxygen in the form of ethanol is a waste of energy and counterproductive at best.

Ethanol in the US is made from corn. The corn used to produce ethanol could instead be used to feed cows, sheep, horses, chickens and humans. Ethanol use has forced the price of corn to record highs in 2011 of about $7.50 per bushel and continues to support this historically high price currently (2012) at about $6.50/ bushel.

The land used for growing corn cannot be used for growing cotton, row crops, wheat, raising cattle or for reforestation projects. Therefore there is an interrelationship between corn and these other land uses. Cattle, horses, sheep and humans compete with ethanol for corn. While humans eat sweet corn and animals eat field corn, the allocation of corn for ethanol affects all other food consumers.

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Stephen Lendman

Water crisis in Gaza. Photo: Sameh A. Habeeb

Under repressive occupation, Military Orders govern virtually all aspects of life. Freedom is entirely restricted. Police state authority runs Palestine.

Although Oslo called Palestine one territorial unit, Israel maintains total control of people and goods movement in and out of Gaza.

In June 1989, Israel began restricting free movement between Gaza and Israel through magnetic ID cards not given former prisoners.

In 1991, Palestinians had to apply for personal exit permits. They were required to enter or leave Palestine and how long they could stay in Israel. Over time, numbers issued decreased.

In 1993, closure was imposed for the first time after Palestinians allegedly killed several Israelis. In 1994, Israel began building a fence separating Gaza from Israel. Checkpoints control people traffic. Karni crossing controls goods in and out.

In late September 2000, after the second Intifada began, Israel almost entirely prohibited Gazans from entering Israel or traveling to West Bank locations. In 2001, a no-go buffer zone was established.

It prohibits Palestinians from entering areas up to two km inside Gaza and beyond three nautical miles in their own waters. They're recognized under international law up to 12 miles plus an additional 12 miles for partial control.

Moreover, an exclusive economic zone extends up to 200 miles. Nonetheless, Palestinians venturing beyond three km or inside two km on land risk being shot, including young children.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

Auster greeting Israeli President Shimon Peres
with Salman Rushdie and Caro Llewellyn in 2008.

Paul Auster, a prominent American Jewish writer, apparently couldn't overcome his tribal instincts recently when he sought to desperately justify his double standards of criticizing Turkey's record on human rights while keeping completely reticent about Israel's scandalous maltreatment of non-Jews, particularly its thoroughly-tormented and discriminated-against Palestinian subjects.

Instead of quietly admitting his moral duplicity, Auster resorted to evasiveness and prevarication, saying that all countries had their failings and no country is perfect.

Earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan called Auster an ignoramus for visiting the apartheid Israeli state but not Turkey .

"If he comes, so what? If he doesn't come so what? Will Turkey lose prestige?" Erdogan was quoted as saying.

In a statement released last week and published in the New York Times' Arts Beat blog, the Zionist author sought to defend his decision to boycott Turkey , saying that whatever the Turkish Prime Minister might think about Israel , the fact is that free speech exists there and no writers or journalists are in jail.

Well, in truth Israel has no true freedom of speech. And it is not true that journalists are not detained and imprisoned in the self-described Jewish state. In fact, journalists are detained and imprisoned in Israel for a host of reasons ranging from violating censorship laws to refusing to disclose their sources of information.

In addition, intellectuals, including Jewish intellectuals, are barred from entering Israel if they are critical of Israel's racist policies and notoriously criminal practices against the Palestinians. Israel, for example, has barred two American Jewish intellectuals, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein for criticizing Israeli policies and crimes.

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Stephen Lendman

Reporting it doesn't make it so. In fact, it's more illusion than fact, but that doesn't surprise half of US households impoverished or bordering on it, according to recent US Census data. Nor are independent analysts and economists fooled.

Last summer, economist Richard Wolff called

"so-called economic 'recovery' since mid-2009....chiefly hype, a veneer of good news (benefitting corporations and elitists) to disguise and minimize the awful underlying economic realities."

Since crisis conditions began in fall 2007, most people experienced pain without gain. For them, current conditions are worse, not better, with no policies proposed to help them. That's today's grim reality, especially across America and Europe.

In his most recent co-written February 2 article, titled "Manifesto for Economic Recovery and Ecological Sanity," Wolff said:

"Capitalism today abuses the people, environment, politics and culture in equal measures. It has fostered new extremes of wealth and poverty inside most countries, and such extremes always undermine or prevent democratic politics."

It's also "plunged the world into the second massive global economic crisis in the last 75 years." Yet in America and Europe, policies adopted assure harder than ever times ahead. Elections don't matter as no major parties offer better choices. Whatever their name, they're all involved in benefitting the few at the expense of the many.

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Stephen Lendman

Nasrallah, Assad and Ahmadinejad in Damascus

Slowed but not derailed by Russia and China vetoing its Security Council resolution, America's regime change/war plans remain on track.

In 1999, Washington circumvented the Security Council, UN Charter, and US Constitution to wage aggressive war against nonbelligerent Serbia/Kosovo.

According to former Nuremberg prosecutor Walter Rockler, it "constitute(d) the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent (nonexistent) 'Polish atrocities' against Germans."

"The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok."

In 1999, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter called America's aggression "barbaric (and despicable), another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile (to consolidate) American domination of Europe."

It replicated the same process against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, as well as indirectly against other MENA (Middle East/North African) countries. More aggression's planned against Syria and Iran, mostly likely in 2012.

Run-up tactics include sanctions, hardening existing ones, imposing new ones, isolation, and closing Washington’s Damascus embassy among other steps. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said:

"The United States has suspended operations of our embassy in Damascus as of Feb. 6. Ambassador (Robert) Ford and all American personnel have now departed the country (allegedly because) the regime failed to respond adequately" to US security concerns.

Hawkish UK Foreign Minister William Hague barely stopped short of declaring war, saying Assad must surrender power. "This is a doomed regime as well as a murdering regime. There is no way it can get its credibility back either internationally or with its own people."

Furious about the Russian/Chinese veto, he added: "There is no way to mince words about this. Such vetos are a betrayal of the Syrian people."

Like Washington and other rogue NATO partners, he also didn't "rule out" recognizing opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) legitimacy, much like Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) won backing against Gaddafi.

In fact, international law prohibits it, but no matter. It doesn't deter Washington/UK/French efforts to circumvent legal standards to advance their joint imperium.

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Gilad Atzmon

“Dershowitz is not only a remarkable liar and slanderer, but also an extreme opponent of elementary civil rights” ~ Noam Chomsky

The following is an analytical yet amusing glimpse into the deceitful and psychological nature of Zionist propaganda as manifested by arch Zionist Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz wrote last week,

“in a recent post, Atzmon said that he would be willing to play alongside David Duke. What a duet!”

This little insignificant anecdote brought a smile to my face because in my text I was actually positively considering joining a new healing musical adventure along together with Alan Dershowitz on tuba and David Duke on trumpet. Here are my words,

“I really do not understand why Alan Dershowitz believes himself to be morally superior to Duke. Dershowitz is a Zionist Jewish supremacist, he is a world leading advocate of a racist and expansionist ideology, namely Zionism. And yet, I wouldn’t say NO to an invitation for a musical gathering along together with Dershowitz on tuba and Duke playing the trumpet, just because I believe that music brings people together.”

The text is plainly clear. There is no room for misinterpretation. It was not a ‘duet’ which I was willing to join but actually a ‘trio’ that would include Alan Dershowitz alongside David Duke. Dershowitz lied again. Instead of just politely declining and admitting that he is ‘no good’ on tuba, he followed once again his falsehearted tactics-first he put words in my mouth and then interpreted the words he himself invented. “But that's exactly where Atzmon belongs,” wrote Dershowitz - “in the company of neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, homophobes, misogynists, sexists and other bigots.”

If Dershowitz was an intellectual, which he isn’t or an artist which he certainly isn’t, one could have argued that this kind of behaviour suggests that the elder Zionist may live in a cute phantasmic solipsistic universe. If Dershowitz wasn’t aware of his deceitful actions, he could have been classified as a psychopath. But I actually, tend to believe that there is a certain level of awareness behind Dershowitz actions. And the conclusion is, indeed, very concerning, we are dealing with an inherently dishonest person, a ‘remarkable liar’, as Noam Chomsky describes him along together many other intellectual and humanists who have reached the same conclusion.

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Peter Symonds

STEPOLOGY: In lockstep against Iran? There all kinds of 'steps', of course, so what's a poor guy supposed to think? Let's see now. We already knew about doorsteps, and yeah, footsteps too. Our music teacher taught us about whole steps, so we've got that one pinned down as well. And over the years, politicians obviously have made certain missteps of course (hard not to notice), getting them into all kinds of trouble, that's for sure. So we already knew about that. But wait, there's more. Now Obama's talkin' about lockstep, right? As far as we can tell, that would be some kind of marching step. That would include step forward and even half step march (too slow for Netanyahu). And then there's something called goose steps...the Nazis had a thing about that, didn't they? So that's all military stuff, you see. And it sounds like war, doesn't it? Sure does. Like a step backward. A big one. ~ The Editor.

The danger of a US/Israeli attack on Iran was made clear in comments by US President Barack Obama to NBC News on Sunday. Obama not only repeated the mantra that “all options are on the table,” but added that the US was working with Israel “in lockstep as we proceed to try to solve this, hopefully diplomatically.”

Publicly, the Obama administration insists that it is seeking a “diplomatic solution” by imposing crippling oil sanctions on Iran, designed to force it to the negotiating table on US terms. At the same time, however, the White House is coordinating closely with Israel as it prepares military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Washington Post reported last week that US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta believed there was a “strong likelihood” that Israel would strike Iran in April, May or June. While he did not confirm the statement, Panetta did not repudiate it.

Obama downplayed the likelihood of a pre-emptive Israeli attack on Iran, declaring: “I don’t think Israel has made a decision on what they need to do.” However, he also declared: “I’ve been very clear: we’re going to do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

Asked if Israel would consult Washington, Obama provided no direct answer, but emphasised that the US and Israel “have closer military and intelligence consultation… than we’ve ever had.” Significantly, the US president did not oppose what would be an act of war by Israel. Nor did he suggest that the US would use its considerable influence over Israel to veto such action.

While tactical differences might exist over the timing of an attack, Obama’s declaration that the US is “in lockstep” with Israel is a commitment to march together down the road to war against Iran.

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