Philip Giraldi

Illustration: Belshazzar (Biblical Hebrew בלשאצר), was a 6th century BC prince of Babylon, the last king of Babylon according to the Book of Daniel. In Daniel (Ch. 5 and 8), Belshazzar is the King of Babylon before the advent of the Medes and Persians. "The writing on the wall" is a portent of doom or misfortune. It originates from the Biblical book of Daniel chapter 5 in which the fingers of a supernatural hand write a mysterious message in the presence of Belshazzar, king of Babylon. It is revealed by Daniel that the writing foretells the demise of the Babylonian Empire and the story concludes with the Medes and the Persians killing the king and capturing Babylon: "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin": 'God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; your kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians.' (Wikipedia)

The most troubling prerogative of modern government is the ability of the sovereign or head of state to go to war. War means death, debt, and, if the decision is a bad one, the very end of civil society and the prevailing political order. Because war is potentially so terrible, a number of nations have curtailed the ability of the executive authority to make such a decision without first satisfying conditions imposed through constitutional and other political restraints. It is perhaps ironic that the world’s oldest republic, the United States, has ignored its own constitution to grant to the president the authority to enter into armed conflict through the simple expedient of not actually declaring war. America has been de facto at war continuously since 2001 and the recent National Defense Authorization Act has codified an unending conflict in which the whole world is a battlefield and everyone in it is a potential enemy combatant subject to no constitutional or legal protection.

Many critics of the perennially lopsided relationship that the United States enjoys with Israel have noted a disturbing shift in the relationship during the first three years of the Obama Administration. To be sure, Obama appears to genuinely dislike Israel’s arrogant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a sentiment that is fully reciprocated. But Obama is bound hand and foot into an engagement with Israel in which he lacks leverage over what might or might not take place. Even George W. Bush was able to say no to Israel when it was mooted that Tel Aviv might attack Iran, but Obama has painted himself into a corner where the United States has little influence over what might occur. Whether the Obama reticence is due to the control exercised by his Chicago billionaire patrons, the Crown and Pritzker families, both of which are strong supporters of the Middle East status quo, or whether it is just a more generalized fear about what might happen in the upcoming national elections, the result has been paralysis in Washington. Recent war games conducted by the Pentagon have confirmed that a new conflict with Iran started by Israel would quickly draw the United States in and would become regional in nature. The war would not produce a good result for anyone involved and would be particularly bad for the United States, which would again slide into deep recession as energy prices soar.

So Israel can start a war and the United States can do nothing to stop it and will become a major victim of whatever plays out. If that is true, why is the mainstream media ignoring the story?

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Stephen Lendman

Grass touched the right nerves. He deserves praise, not condemnation. Nonetheless, he's vilified for discussing Israel's open secret. It's nuclear armed and dangerous. Iran is also threatened. Millions of lives are at risk. Grass explained. Denunciation followed. In America and Israel, whistleblowers are criminalized. Moreover, distinguished figures like Grass are maligned and declared persona non grata.

On April 8, Haaretz headlined, "Interior Minister declares Günter Grass persona non grata in Israel," saying:

On Sunday, Eli Yishai barred Grass from entering Israel for expressing views freely in his poem, "What Must Be Said."

He's unwelcome in Israel. Citing his Nazi past (at age 17 near war's end with Germany in ruins), Yishai said:

"Grass' poems are an attempt to guide the fire of hate toward the State of Israel and the Israeli people, and to advance the ideas of which he was a public partner in the past, when he wore the uniform of the SS."

"If Günter wants to continue publicizing his distorted and false works, I suggest he do it in Iran, where he will find a supportive audience."

If he lands at Ben-Gurion International Airport, he added, "burly policemen" will escort him on the first Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, or even better, Munich, for once following der Führer's orders.

Yishai heads the extremist right-wing ultra-Orthodox Shas Party. It's part of Netanyahu's coalition government. He also wants Grass' Nobel award revoked.

Ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called his poem an expression of "egotism of so-called Western intellectuals, who are willing to sacrifice the Jewish people on the altar of crazy anti-Semites for a second time, just to sell a few more books or gain recognition."

Lieberman's extremist background is notorious. Journalist Robert Fisk once called him "the worst thing that could happen to the Middle East." Other critics are as harsh. He's called an embarrassment, a disgrace to Israel, a regional threat, an abomination, a racist of the worst kind, and much more.

The same goes for Netanyahu and close Knesset allies.

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Bill Van Auken

With Tuesday’s passing of the deadline under a UN peace plan for the withdrawal of army troops from Syria’s major population centers, Washington and its allies have escalated their threats of intervention in the Middle Eastern country.

Under the six-point plan drafted by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Syrian troops and heavy weapons, including tanks, were to have been removed from towns and villages by April 10 as the prelude to a ceasefire by both government forces and the Western-backed armed opposition forces 48 hours later.

Endorsed by the Security Council as well as the Arab League and accepted by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the Annan plan, as far as Washington, the Western European powers, Turkey and the reactionary Gulf oil sheikdoms are concerned, represented merely a ploy aimed at legitimizing imperialist intervention.

Reports in the major media have been filled with charges that the Assad government has “defied” the Annan plan and is continuing alleged atrocities against civilians, seemingly without provocation. Wildly inflated estimates of the number killed provided by opposition-controlled—and Saudi funded—outfits like the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights are reported as fact, while the deaths of Syrian soldiers and police are barely mentioned.

In a letter to the UN Security Council Tuesday, Annan said that he was “gravely concerned at the course of events” in Syria.

He said that “credible reports indicate that … the Syrian armed forces have conducted rolling military operations in population centers, characterized by troop movements into towns supported by artillery fire. While some troops and heavy weapons have been withdrawn from some localities, this appears to be often limited to a repositioning of heavy weapons that keeps cities within firing range.”

The ex-UN secretary general rejected out of hand an appeal made by the Syrian government on April 8 for the UN to secure written guarantees from the armed groups such as the Free Syrian Army that they would halt terrorist violence and from countries in the region that they would stop financing and arming these factions.

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Gilad Atzmon

Itamar Yaoz-Kest

Israel National News published today a poem by Itamar Yaoz-Kest, a Holocaust survivor. The poem is presented as “letter-poem in reply to German Günter Grass’ attack.” The poem is a clear reminder of horrific danger that is embedded within Jewish identity politics and contemporary Jewish nationalism. It is a glimpse into unique psychotic genocidal sense of retribution.

The “letter-poem” starts as follows:

Danger,
I want to be a danger,
I want to be a danger to the world,
so that after my destruction, not a single blade of grass will remain on the face of the Earth,
or a single blade of grass for Gunther Grass’s pipe,
upon the Earth where, since I was born, I pose a danger to the world.
Because it is my right!
It is my right to live or die while annihilating my annihilators, without riding again as a crying-boy in a transport train,
Into the world-vacuum, while placing my head in the lap of a mother who is disappearing into the fresh air of the Land of Wotan,
and the urine tin darts dark-yellow specks onto the walls of the cabin – like gunshots that spray
a yellowish-reddish liquid from besides the train guards, and among them – maybe – the soldier G.G., also, wearing a steel helmet.

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