Stephen Lendman

ICONS Syria and Iran feel emboldened; their leaders (left and center)
appeared with Hezbollah’s on a poster for sale in Damascus last June.
(Photo: Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times)

As America's leading broadsheet, what it reports matters, especially on war and peace. Instead of accuracy, full disclosure, and supporting right over wrong, The Times consistently cheerleads US wars and prospective ones. Enemies are vilified. Rule of law principles don't matter, nor do decades of crimes of war and against humanity, as well as millions of lost lives in the last decade alone.

In June 1950, The Times called Truman's war on North Korea the right decision, even though Pyongyang responded defensively to repeated South Korean cross-border incursions.

IF Stone's "Hidden History of the Korean War" explained what scoundrel journalism suppressed, including NYT feature stories. Stone called it international aggression. So did Monthly Review co-founders Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy, saying:

"....we have come to the conclusion that (South Korean president) Syngman Rhee deliberately provoked the North Koreans in the hope that they would retaliate by crossing the parallel in force. The northerners fell neatly into the trap."

Truman instigated what happened and took full advantage. Stone explained, saying:

"we said we were going to Korea to go back to the status quo before the war but when the American armies reached the 38th parallel they didn't stop, they kept going, so there must be something else. We must have another agenda here and what might that agenda be?"

He learned it reflected America's imperial ambitions. Vietnam followed. He opposed both wars. So did others.

More »

James Tracy

With few exceptions the news that will shape public discourse is subject to a de facto censorial process of powerful government and corporate elites beyond accountability to the public.

It is here that Sigmund Freud’s notion of repression is especially helpful for assessing the decrepit state of media and public discourse in the United States. In Freud’s view, one’s collective life experiences are registered in the subconscious, with those particularly disturbing or socially impermissible experiences being involuntarily suppressed, only later to emerge as neuroses. Whereas suppression is conscious and voluntary, repression takes place apart from individual volition.

With opinion polls indicating at least half of the public distrusting the official account of September 11th, the foremost basis for the “war on terror”, no public event has been more repressed in public consciousness via the mass media than 9/11. The enduring usefulness of Freud’s theory is suggested in repeated manifestations of the repressed episode to haunt the public mind for which a surrogate reality has been crafted.

Peter Dale Scott describes occasions such as the assassination of President John Kennedy and September 11th as “deep events” because of their historical complexity and linkages with the many facets of “deep government”—the country’s military and intelligence communities and their undertakings. The failure to adequately explain and acknowledge deep events and pursue their appropriate preventative remedies leads to continued deceptions where unpleasant experiences are contained and a new “reality” is imposed on the public mind. Together with the notion of repression, the term is also applicable for considering how instances of such historical import are dealt with in mass psychological terms, or, more specifically, by ostensibly independent alternative news media capable of recollecting the real.

More »

Alex Lantier

Massacre: Seven people, including three children, were gunned
down at a Jewish school in Toulouse. (Photo: Reuters)

Now, as the media pin the blame on Merah, the leading parties have returned to stoking up anti-Muslim racism and promoting attacks on democratic rights under the rubric of anti-terrorist safety measures.

Yesterday evening, an armed standoff continued in Toulouse between Mohamed Merah, the alleged gunman in a spate of shootings in southern France, and elite police units. Officials claim he is responsible for the deaths of seven people in three attacks since March 11—three paratroopers in two shootings in Toulouse and nearby Montauban, and four civilians in an attack Monday on the Jewish Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse.

A RAID (Search, Assistance, Intervention and Deterrence) unit attacked Merah in his apartment shortly after 3AM yesterday. He fired back, reportedly wounding two officers. After a standoff during the day, police again assaulted the apartment around midnight, blasting away a door and blowing a hole in a wall.

Authorities assert that Merah, aged 23, has Al Qaeda sympathies. They insist that he carried out the killings alone. Based on the wildly contradictory reports circulating in the media, however, it is unclear whether any of these statements are true.

Merah bears little physical resemblance to eye-witness descriptions of the perpetrator in the Montauban shooting. Witnesses said the gunman was “corpulent.” They also said they saw a tattoo and scar on his left cheek when the visor of his motorcycle helmet flipped open. However, pictures of Merah released to the media show a slender man with no facial hair or markings.

Nor are reports of Merah’s links to Al Qaeda any more convincing. They rely on conflicting accounts and an alleged confession in a call placed from a public telephone booth to the night editor of France24 television, Ebba Kalondo. French officials claimed to be “98 percent” sure that the caller was Merah. Kalondo’s story was widely reported as fact by French media and TV outlets.

More »

Peter Symonds

Israeli soldiers watch as a missile is launched from the Iron
Dome defense system. A US war simulation of a possible
scenario where Israel launched pre-emptive strikes against
Iran's nuclear facilities would likely draw America into the
conflict and cost hundreds of lives, a report said on 3/20/12.

Details of a recent Pentagon war game, leaked yesterday in the New York Times, underscore the advanced character and recklessness of the Obama administration’s preparations for war against Iran. Nominally premised on an attack by Israel on Iran, the conclusion from the exercise was that “the strike would lead to a wider regional war which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead.”

The two-week war game was carried out by US Central Command to test communication and coordination between its headquarters in Tampa, Florida and US forces in the Persian Gulf.

“When the exercise had concluded earlier this month, according to the [American] officials, [US Central Command head] General Mattis told aides that an Israeli first-strike would likely have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there,” the Times stated.

The article ominously noted that a similar “Internal Look” exercise had been used in December 2002, by Central Command head General Tommy Franks, “to test the readiness of his units for the coming invasion of Iraq.” Just three months later, in March 2003, US President George Bush unleashed the illegal US-led war of aggression that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and devastated much of the country.

Likewise, the latest “Internal Look” exercise is far from being purely hypothetical. It took place amid a spate of top-level political and military discussions between the US and Israel over Iran. Both countries have repeatedly threatened military action. Last week President Obama issued another warning to Tehran that “the window for solving this issue diplomatically is shrinking.”

More »

Stephen Lendman

Twin car bomb attacks on security posts in Syria's second city of
Aleppo [last week] killed at least 28 people and wounded another
235, state television reported, citing the health ministry.

Last weekend's anti-Assad Damascus and Aleppo terrorist violence reflects Washington's violent pursuit of regime change. Peaceful resolution efforts are subverted. Obama's waging undeclared war.

On March 19, Iran's Russian ambassador, Mahmoud Reza Sajjadi, explained US-style democracy, saying:

"There were the first signs that American democracy had come to Damascus (and Aleppo). We saw American puppets’ attempt to establish democracy in Syria by exploding (bombs) in Damascus (and Aleppo)."

Dozens died. Many others were injured. Calling Washington's regional allies "reactionary Arab regimes," he said getting in bed with the devil has a price. Their Western support will backfire when their regimes are targeted.

On Monday morning, heavy Damascus fighting erupted. Witnesses said explosions and machine gun fire were heard in the al-Mezzeh district. It's home for several government security installations. Russia Today reported one resident saying:

"There is fighting near Hamada supermarket and the sound of explosions there and elsewhere in the neighborhood. Security police have blocked several side streets and the street lighting has been cut off."

Free Syrian Army leader Col. Riad al-Asaad refused comment, saying

"(t)his is a sensitive military matter that we cannot comment about."

Days of stepped-up violence reveals Washington's real intentions. Assad's right calling insurgents "terrorists." Syria's Foreign Ministry said Western and regional states are supplying heavy weapons and munitions. It's no secret Saudi Arabia is providing them. So are Qatar and Israel, among others.

More »

Vijay Prashad

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

Ten days into the uprising in Benghazi, Libya, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council established the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya. The purpose of the Commission was to

“investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in Libya.”

The broad agenda was to establish the facts of the violations and crimes and to take such actions as to hold the identified perpetrators accountable. On June 15, the Commission presented its first report to the Council. This report was provisional, since the conflict was still ongoing and access to the country was minimal. The June report was no more conclusive than the work of the human rights non-governmental organizations (such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch). In some instances, the work of investigators for these NGOs (such as Donatella Rovera of Amnesty) was of higher quality than that of the Commission.

Due to the uncompleted war and then the unsettled security state in the country in its aftermath, the Commission did not return to the field till October 2011, and did not begin any real investigation before December 2011. On March 2, 2012, the Commission finally produced a two hundred-page document that was presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Little fanfare greeted this report’s publication, and the HRC’s deliberation on it was equally restrained.

Nonetheless, the report is fairly revelatory, making two important points:

■ first, that all sides on the ground committed war crimes with no mention at all of a potential genocide conducted by the Qaddafi forces;
■ second, that there remains a distinct lack of clarity regarding potential NATO war crimes.

Not enough can be made of these two points. They strongly infer that the rush to a NATO “humanitarian intervention” might have been made on exaggerated evidence, and that NATO’s own military intervention might have been less than “humanitarian” in its effects.

It is precisely because of a lack of accountability by NATO that there is hesitancy in the United Nations Security Council for a strong resolution on Syria.

“Because of the Libyan experience,” the Indian Ambassador to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri told me in February, “other members of the Security Council, such as China and Russia, will not hesitate in exercising a veto if a resolution – and this is a big if – contains actions under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which permits the use of force and punitive and coercive measures.”

More »

Amnesty International

NATO has so far failed to investigate the killing of scores of civilians in Libya in airstrikes carried out by its forces, Amnesty International said today in a new briefing paper released a year after the first strike sorties took place.

Libya: The forgotten victims of NATO Strikes says that scores of Libyan civilians who were not involved in the fighting were killed and many more injured, most in their homes, as a result of NATO airstrikes. Amnesty International said that NATO has not conducted necessary investigations or even tried to establish contact with survivors and relatives of those killed.

The organization said that adequate investigations must be carried out and full reparation provided to victims and their families.

"It is deeply disappointing that more than four months since the end of the military campaign, victims and relatives of those killed by NATO airstrikes remain in the dark about what happened and who was responsible" said Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International.

"NATO officials repeatedly stressed their commitment to protecting civilians. They cannot now brush aside the deaths of scores of civilians with some vague statement of regret without properly investigating these deadly incidents.”

NATO appears to have made significant efforts to minimize the risk of causing civilian casualties, including by using precision guided munitions, and in some cases by issuing prior warnings to inhabitants of the areas targeted. But this does not absolve NATO from adequately investigating the strikes which killed and injured scores of civilians and from providing reparation to the victims and their families.

Investigations must look into whether civilian casualties resulted from violations of international law and if so those responsible must be brought to justice.

More »

Stephen Lendman

An Afghan policeman stands guard inside Kandahar jail on April
27, 2011. (Photo: CNN / Caption: RAWA.org)

Post-9/11, torture became official US policy. Bush officials mandated it. Obama continues it in US overseas prisons and foreign ones, including in Afghanistan.

Even the Army Times noticed. On March 18, it headlined "US sent detainees to banned prisons," saying:

A report by two human rights groups revealed the practice continues "despite an announced moratorium on such moves." More on their report below.

The New York Times also covered the story in an article headlined, "Groups Report on the Continued Transfer of Detainees to Afghan Prisons," saying:

Following months of investigations, evidence shows American agencies "abett(ed) torture," besides committing it at US run prisons like Bagram, Guantanamo, and numerous black sites. It's one of many American dirty secrets.

While "not groundbreaking," the new report increases the body of evidence "uncovered last year by the United Nations, and highlights the continuing challenge of trying to end the abuse."

Documented cases examined captured US detainees transferred to Afghan facilities known to commit torture. transfers continued after doing so was supposed to stop.

More »

Khalid Amayreh

French President Nicolas Sarkozy (L) has reportedly described
hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "liar"
during a chat with US president Barack Obama. "I cannot stand
him. He's a liar," Sarkozy was overheard by reporters while
speaking with Obama at the Group of 20 Summit in southern
France, The Financial Times reported. [Nov. 2011] (On Islam)

In his reaction to the tragic shooting incident outside a Jewish school in France Monday, Israeli Prime Minister invoked "Palestinian terror."

"I haven't heard any condemnation from the UN, but one of its bodies, the human rights council, invited representatives of Hamas who condemned the US for killing Osama bin Laden and kills Jewish men, women and children. This is who UNHRC invites today. I have one thing to say to the UNHRC: What do you have to do with human rights? You should be ashamed of yourself."

Netanyahu is elaborate about the death of a few Jews in occupied Palestine, for which nefarious Zionism is solely responsible (responsible because Zionism brought these Jews into Palestine from their original homelands in Eastern Europe elsewhere to live on a land that belongs to another people), but quite dismissive or completely silent about the pornographic killings of non-Jews at the hands of the "holy tribe" or "Master race."

In fact, as the pathological liar was speaking about the regrettable incident in France, his dirty hands were being stained with the innocent blood of Palestinian children.

Netanyahu and other Israeli political and military leaders got accustomed to giving Israeli Jews a "present" on major Jewish holidays in the form of killing Arab civilians, particularly children, in cold blood.

This happened last week in Gaza when Israel's war machine wreaked havoc on Palestinian homes throughout the coastal enclave, killing farmers, workers, school children and women.

The Palestinians are mostly helpless and defenseless people, and ganging up on them using state-of-the-art of the American technology of death is analogical to the Third Reich embarking on the extermination of Jews during WWII.

It is also an expression of ultimate cowardice to attack people, especially innocent people, who don't have the means to defend themselves and protect their children.

More »

Roger Sheety

From the December 2008 massacre in Palestine (Gaza). The
murderous siege still is in place and many people are dying.

The recent killing of 25 Palestinians in Gaza and the wounding of at least 80 more within four days—March 9-12—requires some context as the majority of western mainstream media outlets are either unwilling or unable to provide any.

More often than not these mainstream media reports in some form or another refer to the Palestinian dead as “militants.” The term militant is defined simply as “vigorously active and aggressive, especially in support of a cause” and “engaged in warfare; fighting.” Synonyms listed include “belligerent, combative, and contentious. See: fanatic.” Already then, Palestinians, even as they are killed in large numbers by the most sophisticated weapons money can buy, are marked as the aggressors. Further, as implied within the definition, they are fanatics, irrational and bent on destruction—the victim in this case being poor, nuclear-armed and US-protected Israel.

Virtually none of the major western media outlets ever ask questions such as: who exactly are these “militants”? Why are there so many of them in such a small place as Gaza? Why, if they are such an existential threat to poor Israel, are they always being killed in such substantial numbers? And why do the dead always include scores of women, children, the elderly and the sick? These, apparently, are taboo questions in the free western media and therefore beyond the realm of permitted discussion.

Here, however, is some background to help answer these supposedly unspeakable questions.

More »

Bill Van Auken

Since the naming last Friday of the soldier charged with massacring 16 Afghan civilians, the media has sought to make this horrific crime comprehensible by delving into the history and personal problems of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, while studiously ignoring the criminal nature of the war itself.

Bales, who is being held at the US military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is charged by the military with walking away from his outpost in the Panjawi district in southern Kandahar Province in the predawn hours of March 11 and breaking into homes in two nearby villages, shooting, stabbing and killing the Afghans, nine of them children. In one house, he is said to have piled up his victims’ bodies and set them on fire.

He is now universally described as a “rogue” soldier. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, have all issued formal statements assuring the world that Bales’ actions do not reflect the values and attitudes of the US military. According to this official story, the only question to be answered is: what made him “snap”?

The factual basis of this story has been called into question by the Afghan villagers, the country’s US puppet president, Hamid Karzai, and an investigative commission formed by the lower house of the Afghan parliament, all of whom have charged that the killing spree was the work not of a lone gunman, but of as many as 15 to 20 US troops. The parliamentary panel presented its findings over the weekend, which included the charge that two of the women slain in the massacre had been sexually assaulted.

Even if the US military’s version of these bloody events is proven true, and Bales did act single-handedly, the fact that the overwhelming opinion among Afghans is that a number of US troops were involved in the bloodbath is telling. Clearly, they do not see this as the act of a madman or a “rogue,” but rather as an all too routine episode in a decade-old war and occupation that has taken the lives of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller now writes Times op-eds on alternate Mondays, as well as articles for The New York Times Magazine.

Too bad his columns get failing grades. Scoundrel journalism is featured. Truth and full disclosure are excluded. His March 18 article is typical.

Headlined, "Falling In and Out of War," it began well. He admitted he's been wrong on war and wants "to avoid repeating the mistake." To his credit, he also said "it's immeasurably more true for those in a position to actually start a war."

He stopped short of explaining the vital role media scoundrels play, especially The Times as America's most influential broadsheet. It's major front page stories get global attention. As executive editor, and earlier as managing editor, he decided what got featured.

Many promoted war and support for wealth and power. Populism was excluded. So was and remains telling readers what they most need to know. Suppressing it is standard Times policy.

In his latest article, Keller wrote:

"What are the right questions the president should ask — and we as his employers should ask — when deciding whether going to war is (a) justified and (b) worth it?"

He asked five "plus two caveats, and some thoughts about how all this applies to" America's wars and prospective ones. Too bad he omitted what most need saying. More on that below.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Already embroiled in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and numerous proxy wars in Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, central Africa, and elsewhere, evidence suggests Obama's preparing for more.

Washington-generated Syrian violence rages out of control. Efforts for nonviolent resolution are systematically subverted. Saturday's Damascus terrorist attacks and a Sunday Aleppo one reveal America's true intentions.

At least 27 Damascus lives were lost. Around 140 others were wounded, many seriously. Two deaths and about 30 injuries occurred in Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub and largest city.

On Saturday, cars packed with explosives detonated outside Syria's air security intelligence center and police headquarters. Heavy damage was caused besides the human toll.

The attacks came two, then three days after millions around the country rallied supportively for Assad on the uprising's one-year anniversary. It showed Washington won't tolerate peaceful resolution. Regime change is planned by any means, including war. Expect it.

Outrageously, major media scoundrels spuriously accused Assad of targeting his own facilities. Al Jazeera quoted opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) member Bassma Kodmani saying:

"I don't think any of the opposition forces or the Free Syrian Army has the capacity to do such an operation to target these buildings because they are fortresses. They are very well guarded. There is no way anyone can penetrate them without having strong support and complicity from inside the security apparatus."

Al Jazeera shamelessly lost all credibility. Run by Qatar's pro-western regime, propaganda replaced truth and full disclosure. It's legitimacy no longer exists. It's no different from BBC and other Western media scoundrels.

More »

Adnan Al-Daini

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher takes the
applause during the Conservative Party Conference in
Brighton, 10th October 1980. (Getty Images)

People have woken up to the unfairness and destructiveness of uncontrolled market forces.

Why is it so difficult for politicians to change their minds? Why is a U-turn considered such a no- no for them?  Margaret Thatcher who embraced and rejoiced in the title “the iron lady”  famously remarked in 1980: “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning”; proud in her inflexibility.

I prefer our politicians to have the humility of John Maynard Keynes who said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”  Why is stubbornness and dogma so admired in a politician?  It is not a trait conducive to the common good. 

The infuriating thing is that opinion-formers, all political parties, those on the left and right of politics, view a U-turn by a politician negatively.  Changing your mind as a result of persuasive argument or a change in the evidence or circumstances is a good thing; politicians who do that should be praised, not pilloried. 

Elevating dogma above reason is not admirable in a politician or anyone else.

More »

Khalid Amayreh

Celebrating South Sudan's independence: Sudanese
refugees at a party in Tel Aviv. (Sara Miller/Haaretz)

Zionist-Jewish leaders everywhere are quite versed in the art of hypocrisy and dishonesty. Their moral inconsistency cries out to the seventh heaven.

This week, Jewish leaders in Washington , D.C. , demonstrated outside the Sudanese embassy, protesting the al-Bashir regime's excesses against rebel areas in southern Kurdufan.

The protestors accused the Sudanese government of provoking a humanitarian crisis and blocking humanitarian aid from reaching people in need.

One rabbi, wore a T-shirt saying : "Stop genocide in Darfur."

There is nothing wrong in holding protests against government repression and human rights violation anywhere in the world.

However, when championing the cause of human rights is motivated by short-sighted political expedience, highly-selective, moral confusion and moral impurity blur the picture.

I am not suggesting or demanding that at a single demonstration one would have to protest all human rights violations on earth, although this would be a good thing to do.

However, when human rights breaches and even more scandalous policies in places such as Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are deliberately ignored, a serious question-mark is drawn over the real motives behind such demonstrations.

More »