Gilad Atzmon

In the last two weeks we have learned that one of central London’s abandoned houses has been reclaimed and transformed into a “radical” centre for “discussion, action, and education around the issue of Palestine.” The Palestine Place promised to become a “squatted hub of activity from the 2nd-17th June running everything from film screenings, lectures, workshops and trainings to cultural, musical and culinary events”. But it didn’t take more than a week for the ‘radical’ place to become yet another crypto-Zionist gathering engaged primarily in gatekeeping and even expulsion of some distinguished activists and thinkers.

I have learned yesterday that Ken O’Keefe, one of our most prominent solidarity activists, a man who spent many months of his life in Gaza, a man who is married to a Palestinian woman and is father to two Palestinian kids, a man who posses a Palestinian passport and a key to Gaza, given to him personally by Ismail Haniya – two days ago this man was rudely expelled from Palestine Place. Clearly a Palestinian Passport and a ‘key to Gaza’ were not sufficient for London’s Palestine Place’s radical committee.

As soon as Ken told me about his expulsion I spoke with two Palestinian grassroots activists, both of whom had participated in missions alongside Ken. They both repeated the same shocking line:

Palestine Place, forget about them, it is taken over by the PSC and the BDS gang.

The news about PSC and the ‘BDS gang’ being dominated by AZZ are now widely accepted amongst most commentators on Palestine but still, I was intrigued to know what happened there in this ‘radical’ Palestine Place that led to these ‘pro’ Palestinian squatters to behave like Israelis and evict KenO’Keefe.

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Paul Craig Roberts

When neoconservatives, politicians, and high ranking military officers speak of a 30-year war against terrorism, there is no discussion about its affordability or whether the one significant attack (September 11, 2001) that is attributed, perhaps incorrectly, to Muslim terrorists justifies an open-ended war against a dozen countries. There is no discussion of the burden on future generations of the massive increase in the public debt in order to finance today’s wars.

Affordability and intergenerational burdens are topics reserved for the discussion of Social Security. Conservatives and libertarians constantly assert that Social Security is unaffordable and decry the intergenerational basis for Social Security retirement.

Recently economist Walter Williams again made the argument that Social Security is not a retirement program, because the income earner’s payroll tax payments do not go into an account for the person paying the taxes, but instead are used to pay benefits for older people who have reached retirement age. Williams characterizes Social Security retirees as thieves who outvote those still in the work force and have the ear of Congress.

This is an ideological argument that overlooks that Social Security is a pact between generations. The working generations provide retirement incomes for the elderly and in turn are provided retirement incomes by succeeding generations. Terminating Social Security for the elderly also terminates it for those who follow. In other words, it is incorrect to describe Social Security as the elderly using the political system to steal from the young.

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Philip Giraldi

Last Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky endorsed Mitt Romney for president of the United States and followed up a day later by saying he would be “honored” to be Romney’s choice for vice president. Paul pledged his support after having a discussion with Romney in which the latter outlined some of his positions that were of particular concern. According to Paul, Romney supported “reforming the Federal Reserve, limiting regulations, and opposing the Stop Online Privacy Act,” adding that “there is a lot of kinship between us on those issues.”

Regarding Mitt’s foreign policy views, Rand Paul told Sean Hannity that “[we] had a very good and I think honest discussion about a lot of these things; and I came away from it feeling he would be a very responsible commander in chief, I don’t think he’ll be reckless, I don’t think he’ll be rash, and I think that he realizes and believes as I do that war is a last resort and something we don’t rush willy-nilly into, and I came away feeling that he’ll have [a] mature attitude and beliefs toward foreign policy.”

Basically, Rand Paul came away with nothing in exchange for providing Mitt Romney with some modicum of acceptability and respectability vis-à-vis the millions of Paulistas and tea partyers who support him and his father. Mitt does not want to audit the Fed but would indeed limit government regulation as it relates to himself and his predatory capitalist friends. He might or might not oppose SOPA, but freedom of the Internet is not a core issue for him and might, in fact, be something he opposes for copyright protection, i.e., corporate money, reasons. And Rand is dead wrong about Mitt the commander in chief. It is generally accepted that Mitt’s foreign policy will be a repeat of George W. Bush’s, except maybe even worse. In exchange for a pocketful of mumbles for Rand, Mitt Romney has successfully marginalized Ron Paul supporters, who are now under orders not to try to disrupt the Republican Convention in Tampa in August.

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