Stephen Lendman

Bipartisan complicity's involved in hyping cyber threats. At issue is promoting draconian cybersecurity legislation. Obama supports congressional effects. Internet freedom's at stake. So are other civil liberties.

On March 8, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conducted a mock New York cyber attack. At issue was gaining support for pending Senate legislation.

White House spokesperson Caitlin Hayden called the stunt a way to give "senators....an appreciation for new legislative authorities that would help the U.S. government prevent and more quickly respond to cyber attacks."

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said:

"The fact that we could be subject to a catastrophic attack under the right circumstances and we now know some of the things that would help us to protect against such an attack, that’s why it’s important now for the Congress to take this up."

Destroying a free and open Internet and other civil liberties is no way to do it. Power grab politics are in play. Major media scoundrels are silent.

The past decade witnessed a systematic war on freedom. It last vestiges are being attacked. Unless stopped, tyranny will gain full control. It practically has it now.

Bipartisan complicity's on board to seize it. So is Obama. Bad as things are now, the worst is yet to come.

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Lhamo Tso

Dhondup Wangchen

Dhondup Wangchen risked everything – his family, his livelihood, his life – to help the Tibetan people speak of their suffering to the world. Now he is in prison, suffering from medical neglect and other abuses. Come together to demand his freedom.

Dear [Reader],

My name is Lhamo Tso and I'm writing today to ask for your help securing the release of my husband, Dhondup Wangchen.

In 2008 Dhondup made a film called "Leaving Fear Behind," capturing the voices of fellow Tibetans on the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China was awarded the prestigious Games with the hope that human rights in Tibet and elsewhere in China would improve.

Instead, China's repression in Tibet has only worsened.

Attempts by Tibetans to secure their human rights are routinely crushed. Dhondup has been punished severely. He was tortured and held without charge for nearly a year, then sentenced in a secret trial to six years imprisonment for "inciting separatism."

My husband has committed no crime.

Dhondup suffers from Hepatitis B and was denied medical treatment. My sister in-law takes food and clothes to the prison every month, but it is extremely difficult to obtain reliable information about Dhondup's condition.

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Gilad Atzmon

Outrage in Germany, Nobel Laureate Günter Grass has, once again told the truth about Israel being the greatest threat to world peace.

Günter Grass, Germany’s most famous living author and the 1999 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, sparked outrage in Germany on Wednesday with the publication of a poem, “What must be said,” in which he sharply criticizes Israel’s offensive approach towards Iran.

Once again, it is the artist rather than the politician, who tells the truth as it is. Once again it is the Artist rather than the academic who speaks out.

"Why did I wait until now at this advanced age and with the last bit of ink to say: The nuclear power Israel is endangering a world peace that is already fragile?”wrote Grass.

In the poem, published by Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and other European dailies on Wednesday, Grass also calls for

[an] "unhindered and permanent monitoring of Israel’s nuclear potential and Iran’s nuclear facility through an international entity that the government of both countries would approve.”

Israel and some German Jewish prominent voices were quick to react. The Israeli Embassy in Berlin issued a statement offering its own version of ‘What must be said.’

"What must be said is that it is a European tradition to accuse the Jews before the Passover festival of ritual murder,” the statements reads.

Pretty outrageous, don’t you think? In the open Israel together with its supportive Jewish lobbies (AIPAC, AJC) are pushing for a new global conflict. Yet, shamelessly the embassy defies criticism tossing in the air the old blood libel. The appropriate timely question here is why Israel and AIPAC are pushing for a world war and a potential nuclear conflict just before Passover? Can they just wait for another Yom Kippur (atonement day)?

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Philip Giraldi

Santorum: Sharia is "evil" and "incompatible with
American jurisprudence and our Constitution."

It seems that the Republican presidential aspirants’ fervor to confront Islam has receded a bit with the decline and fall of Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, but one can likely still count on Rick Santorum to come up with some bon mots on the threat posed by Shariah law. Those who fear that hands will soon be lopped off shoplifters caught in Cleveland appear to be making much ado about nothing, but there is a much broader and more insidious agenda that is really playing out behind the scenes. Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum are all smart enough to know that Islamic law is hardly poised to dominate the U.S. legal system, but they are using it as the wedge issue to deny the patriotism of Muslims in general and fuel the demands to exercise a military option against Iran.

Promoting fear of Shariah law is essentially a red herring. There are more than 50 predominantly Muslim countries in the world, and, while most have elements of Shariah in their civil and family law, only two have it as their criminal codes. They are Saudi Arabia and Iran, one a close ally of the United States and the West and the other currently playing the cameo role of a threat to the entire world, to borrow a phrase from the eminent Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel. The countries that do not have Shariah as their criminal codes have modeled their laws on European and American models, some borrowing from Roman law and others from British common law.

Depicting Islam as manifestly medieval, backward, and cruel is not new, as it has been going on in one form or another since the Israelis and Palestinians first locked horns. Recognizing that the propaganda that is being ground out in the mainstream media derives from that conflict, it is easy to understand why Muslims are persistently portrayed in negative terms. And it should be equally unsurprising to learn that those who are denigrating Muslims and Islam are almost invariably among the most uncritical supporters of Likudist Israel and all its works.

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