Stefan Steinberg

In an interview with the British Guardian newspaper published Friday, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde, vented her class hatred for the workers of Greece, denouncing them as tax scofflaws and ruling out any respite from the austerity measures that have devastated the country.

In the interview, Lagarde was questioned about the social catastrophe resulting from five years of economic crisis and austerity measures dictated by the IMF and the European Union. She was asked, in particular, to respond to the plight of pregnant women who “won’t have access to a midwife when they give birth,” patients who “won’t get life-saving drugs,” and the elderly who “will die alone for lack of care.”

Contemptuously dismissing the suffering and death caused by the policies she is helping to impose, Lagarde replied: “I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day… I have them in my mind all the time, because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.”

The crocodile tears of Lagarde, formerly the finance minister under French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for the impoverished children of Africa carry little weight given the quasi-genocidal record of French imperialism in Africa and the neo-colonial interventions in the Ivory Coast, Libya and other parts of the continent carried out by the Sarkozy regime.

The IMF head continued: “As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about … all these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.”

Asked whether she thought more about non-payment of taxes than “all those now struggling to survive without jobs or public services,” Lagarde replied, “I think of them equally. And I think they should also help themselves collectively … by all paying their tax.”

The Guardian article continued: “It sounds as if she’s essentially saying to the Greeks and others in Europe, you’ve had a nice time and now it’s payback time. ‘That’s right.’ She nods calmly.”

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Stephen Lendman

Kristallnacht in Palestine

Imagine daily life under these conditions:

● Occupation harshness enforces institutionalized terror. Fear is constant. Collective punishment is policy.

="#3D2B1F">● Peaceful public demonstrations are assaulted. Free expression and movement are prohibited. Population centers are isolated. Borders are closed.

● Normal daily life is denied. Economic strangulation and institutionalized racism are imposed. So are curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, separation walls, electric fences, and other barriers.

● Neighborhood incursions, land, sea and air attacks, bulldozed homes, land theft, ethnic cleansing, slow-motion genocide, targeted killings, mass arrests, torture, and gulag imprisonment reflect daily life for praying to the wrong God.

● Fundamental civil and human rights are denied. Crimes of war and against humanity repeat without redress. Wanting to live free in sovereign Palestine is called terrorism.

● Punitive taxes are imposed. Few services are provided. Vital ones are lacking or inadequate. Palestinian lawmakers are imprisoned for belonging to the wrong party.

● Fishermen are attacked at sea. So are farmers working their land. Trying at the wrong time risks arrest, injury or death. Crops and orchards are destroyed. Settlers commit regular attacks. Courts provide no help.

● Gaza is suffocating under siege. Scoundrel media policy enforces coverup and denial, blame the victim, and portray Israel as the region's only free democratic state. Reality reflects police state harshness. It persists without end.

● Even Jews challenging injustice are targeted. Rogues tolerate no opposition. Israeli ones have few equals.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel enforces rogue state harshness. Rule of law principles are spurned. Even Jewish rights are marginalized. Palestinians have none. Occupation ruthlessness terrorizes them.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad serve illegitimately. Israel manipulated the process to elect Abbas and keep him in charge. Despite virtually no popular support, Fayyad was appointed. Enforcing Israeli authority is policy. Abbas is a longtime collaborator. Duplicity defines his agenda. Israel and Washington know he's reliable. They support him to serve their interests.

Abbas took credit as Oslo's architect. Israel controlled the process. Sellout defined it. Israel got what it wanted. Palestinians were shut out. Abbas sold out. He agreed to unilateral surrender. So did Arafat.

War criminal S. Peres (R) says that traitor M.Abbas (L) is the
best Palestinian leader with whom his country can negotiate
"peace" ["peace" being the silence of the vanquished].

In April, Al-Ahram contributor Hasan Afif El-Hasan headlined "Twenty lost years," saying:

Post-Oslo, nothing changed. Israel's military protects settlers and terrorizes Palestinians. PA security forces violate the rights of their own people "in accordance with guidelines and direct orders established by Israel."

"The path the PA chose since Oslo has not led to Palestinian independence and it has weakened the Palestinian national movement."

"The PA does not govern its own territory, and became for all intents and purposes the administrator of an Israeli protectorate while Israel carries on with ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, colonising the West Bank and enforcing the criminal blockade on Gaza."

Abbas and Fayyad replicate US-controlled puppet authority in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. PA security forces prevent and/or contain peaceful demonstrations.

During Cast Lead, anti-Israeli protests were prohibited. Abbas tried to prevent war crime investigations. He won't permit another Intifada. He targets Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine supporters.

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