Danny Schechter

I keep thinking of that clear April night 100 years ago when the unsinkable RMS Titanic steamed towards New York. It was actually on its way to dock just a few blocks from where I live at what are now the Chelsea Piers. There was a sense of optimism abroad as a new record for a speedy transatlantic passage was about to be set.

There was music, dancing and fine wine. That is, until they saw that iceberg high in the water. The Captain and his mates were aware that 80 percent of it was underwater and out of sight. They didn’t react in time.

Everyone knows the story—most recently recreated in 3D—but the lesson is really not just about that great ship that went down, or even the company that bypassed safety regulations, or even the hubris of the owners whose greed sent so many passengers to that legendary “watery grave.”

It was also about not seeing the dangers in front of us.

That’s the real story of this moment in our political lives, as the 2012 elections begin in earnest, and we ignore, to our detriment, that vast iceberg of money, stacked in the billions, that threatens to sink what’s left of our democracy,

It is hard to wrap your head around the scale and immediacy of this danger.

And it’s not just about the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court. It’s about the way Democrats think and Republicans act. It’s about the growing way money has been allowed to dominate politics in a game both parties play.

It is an outgrowth of our vast economic inequality and the policies that promoted it. Its about State laws limiting the franchise in the name of fighting voter fraud with so-called Voter ID laws, and ordinary Americans becoming so tired of electoral lies and the arrogance of power that they don’t vote.

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Wayne Madsen

The American Emperor, after his outer and inner threads have been pulled, will be nothing more than a naked representative of stark imperialism, colonialism, fascism, and militarism and will be justly buried in a pauper’s grave.

The United States, which sought to capitalize politically, militarily, and financially from the break-up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Sudan, and Czechoslovakia and now seeks to reap the benefits from the similar potential fracturing of the Russian Federation, China, Libya, and Iraq, may receive a taste of its own medicine.

Across the United States, there are increasing calls for secession from a federal government that is not providing for the common welfare of the people. Republicans, joined by a number of corporatist Democrats, are echoing the austerity push in Europe to sell-off public assets to vulture capitalists at rock bottom prices. Calls by corporatist politicians to privatize the U.S. Postal Service, AMTRAK, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and even public schools will have the effect of divorcing most Americans from any regular contact with their federal government. Such a development will nurture current movements that call for secession from the United States and seed nascent emergent movements.

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Khalid Amayreh

The mass hunger strike being observed by thousands of our political and resistance prisoners in Israeli dungeons and concentration camps represents the last and ultimate form of Jihad or resistance against a nefarious, sadistic enemy that excels like nobody else in the arts of torture and oppression.

Our imprisoned martyrs had to go to Zionist jails so that we live a dignified life as much as possible, a life free of haphazard Israeli aggression on our lives, dignity, and very survival.

Many of them fought or tried to fight an enemy that had learned from, emulated and surpassed its Nazi mentors, by trying to demonize and dehumanize our people, especially those great heroes, by calling them terrorists when the deformed, evil entity represents the essence of terror and all that is evil.

Our heroes, who can legitimately be called imprisoned martyrs, struggled in order to keep up our national just cause alive. And indeed they have, rather successfully.

Many of these heroes represent the crème de la crème of the Palestinian society. They are doctors, engineers, imams, lawmakers and other professionals who were arrested without charge or trial for the purpose of having their individual and collective will to life broken.

Israel simply wanted to humiliate and subjugate the spirit of defiance and resistance among Palestinians by ganging up on those helpless prisoners, these lions in the cages.

It is therefore our utmost duty to identify and show solidarity with them in the most effective manner in order to demonstrate to them that their struggle and self-abnegation is not in vain.

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Stephen Lendman

Palestinians throughout the Territories face daily state terror. Prisoners in Israel's gulag are worst off. Prison harshness just increased. More on that below.

An estimated 2,500 Palestinian detainees are participating in open-ended hunger strikes for justice. More join them daily. Freed prisoners got involved. On May 4, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh refused food for the 67th day.

A Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I) visited them on April 30. He said Bilal risks imminent death. Thaer needs immediate civilian hospitalization for treatment prison hospitals don't provide.

PHR-I said:

"(B)oth detainees suffer from acute muscle weakness in their limbs, which prevents them from standing. They both are in need of full assistance in daily activities such as showering, though such help is not provided in the IPS clinic."

"They both suffer from an acute decrease in muscle tone and are bedridden, which puts them under dual threat: muscle atrophy and Thromobophilia, which can lead to a fatal blood clot."

The Addameer Prisoner Support Group said "Bilal's life-threatening condition includes sharp weight loss, concern for peripheral nerve damage, extremely low pulse (39 beats per minute) and blood pressure, severe dehydration, and possible internal bleeding."

Thaer's condition is also grave. Besides considerable weight loss and upper back pain, other symptoms "indicate inflammation of the pleura (membrane around the lungs) or even a blood clot, which can be lethal without proper medical attention."

Despite their dire condition, they've been treated harshly. In violation of medical ethics, a prison service doctor is involved. Jamil Al-Khatib, providing both men legal counsel, was denied permission to see them. He was told to submit a "special request" to Israel Prison Service (IPS) legal advisors.

Israel obstructs, delays and spurns international law to deny Palestinians justice.

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