Khalid Amayreh

Abu Mazen (left) kissing his lord & master.

As nearly always, the Palestinian Authority (PA) behavior is visibly pathetic. Unfortunately, there is no other way to relate to this behavior.

According to recent reports, Israel sought to obtain a loan a $1 b. from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on behalf of the PA. However, the global body turns down the Israeli request, arguing that it doesn't want to set a precedent of a state taking loans for non-state body.

Predictably, embarrassed PA officials refused to confirm reports to this effect, insisting they had no knowledge of the matter. The Palestinian economy minister Jawas Naji was quoted by the pro-authority news agency Maan as saying that he only heard about it from the media. Similarly, the PA finance minister Nabil Qissis refused to return phone calls enquiring about the issue.

It is really hard to believe PA denials in this regard. In the final analysis, we can only invoke the Arab proverb: "If they knew, it would be a calamity, and if they didn't, it would be even a greater calamity." This is because in case they knew, which is the most likely scenario, and still wouldn't let the Palestinian masses know what was going on, they would be breaching their trust and hiding vital information from the people. And in case they didn't, it means they failed to honestly shoulder their responsibility by allowing "anonymous operatives" to call the shots.

More »

Paul Craig Roberts

Information has been leaked about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is being negotiated in secret by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Six hundred corporate “advisors” are in on the know, but not Congress or the media. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate trade subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the TPP, has not been permitted to see the text or to know the content.

The TPP has been called a “one-percenter” power tool. The agreement essentially abolishes the accountability of foreign corporations to governments of countries with which they trade. Indeed, the agreement makes governments accountable to corporations for costs imposed by regulations, including health, safety and environmental regulations. The agreement gives corporations the right to make governments pay them for the cost of complying with the regulations of government. One wonders how long environmental, labor, and financial regulation can survive when the costs of compliance are imposed on the taxpayers of countries and not on the economic activity that results in spillover effects such as pollution.

Many will interpret the TPP as another big step toward the establishment of global government in the New World Order. However, what the TPP actually does is to remove corporations or the spillover effects of their activities from the reach of government. As the TPP does not transfer to corporations the power to govern countries, it is difficult to see how it leads to global government. The real result is global privilege of the corporate class as a class immune to government regulation.

One of the provisions allows corporations to avoid the courts and laws of countries by creating a private tribunal that corporations can use to sue governments for the costs of complying with regulation. Essentially, the laws of countries that apply to corporations are supplanted by decisions of a private tribunal of corporate lawyers.

More »

Wayne Madsen

President Fernando Lugo in a pensive moment (Baltimore Sun)

The scenario on June 22 in Asuncion, Paraguay was like a case of déjà vu. President Fernando Lugo, a leftist president, was deposed by an impeachment and removal from office engineered by his political opponents in the Paraguayan legislature. In June 2009, another leftist Latin American leader, Manuel Zelaya, was removed by the U.S.-trained and supervised Honduran military at gunpoint under the claimed authority of the Honduran Supreme Court acting on orders from the Honduran Congress. In both cases the United States acquiesced to the new political realities brought about by constitutional «soft»coups and it quickly recognized the accession to power in Paraguay by Lugo’s opponent, Vice President Federico Franco just as it had the Honduran junta led by Roberto Micheletti.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, who is married to arch-neoconservative and Israel supporter Robert Kagan, one of the chief architects of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, refused to call the Paraguayan Congress’s rapid impeachment and the Senate’s conviction and removal of Lugo a coup. The right-wing governments of Canada, Spain, and Germany quickly recognized the Franco government even as Latin American nations moved to isolate it diplomatically and economically.

The Obama administration has put a «civilian» imprimatur on America’s coups in Latin America, opting to involve governmental branches, such as legislatures and courts, to carry out its covert operations in the Western Hemisphere. Just as drone attacks and targeted assassinations have become a hallmark of the Obama doctrine, for Latin America the internally-launched «autogolpe,» or self coup by government insiders, is preferable to ordering tanks on to the streets, dissolving parliament and the Supreme Court, and turning over power to a military junta of generals and colonels.

Latin American nations now recognize the core of the Obama doctrine for putting one of its loyalists in power and ousting a leader not favorable to Washington’s policies – if the legislative and judicial branches of a government can be used to «constitutionally» eject an executive from power, the United States will recognize the change as constitutional and in keeping with the «democratic process.»

Honduras, and, now, Paraguay serve as stark examples of the Obama doctrine in practice.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir, both war criminals & terrorists

Shamir reflected the worst of what Joel Kovel calls "imperialist expansion and militarism (with) signs of the fascist malignancy." In his book "Overcoming Zionism," he called Israel "a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses."

Terrorists like Shamir ran it. They still do. They defend indefensible Zionism. It's corrosive, destructive, racist, extremist, undemocratic and hateful. It claims Jewish supremacy, specialness and uniqueness as God's "chosen people." It espouses violence, not peaceful coexistence. It chooses confrontation over diplomacy. It believes in strength through militarism, intimidation, and naked aggression. It spurns fundamental ethical and moral principles. It's a cancer that's consuming its host and humanity. Shamir represented its dark side.

On June 30, he died at age 96. Hillary Clinton said he "work(ed) for Israel's independence....strengthened (its) security, and advanced the partnership between the United States and Israel." Shimon Peres hailed him as "a brave warrior....a great patriot and lover of Israel who served his country with integrity." Netanyahu said he "fought for the freedom of the Jewish people in its land." He "belonged to the generation of giants who founded the State of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people." They didn't explain how. They omitted his criminal legacy. More on that below.

More »

Ellen Brown

When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13, he was wearing cufflinks bearing the presidential seal. “Was Dimon trying to send any particular message by wearing the presidential cufflinks?” asked CNBC editor John Carney. “Was he . . . subtly hinting that he’s really the guy in charge?”

The groveling of the Senators was so obvious that Jon Stewart did a spoof news clip on it, featured in a Huffington Post piece titled “Jon Stewart Blasts Senate’s Coddling Of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon,” and Matt Taibbi wrote an op-ed called “Senators Grovel, Embarrass Themselves at Dimon Hearing.” He said the whole thing was painful to watch.

“What is going on with this panel of senators?” asked Stewart. “They’re sucking up to Jamie Dimon like they’re on JPMorgan’s payroll.” The explanation in a news clip that followed was that JPMorgan Chase is the biggest campaign donor to many of the members of the Banking Committee.

That is one obvious answer, but financial analysts Jim Willie and Rob Kirby think it may be something far larger, deeper, and more ominous. They contend that the $3 billion-plus losses in London hedging transactions that were the subject of the hearing can be traced, not to European sovereign debt (as alleged), but to the record-low interest rates maintained on U.S. government bonds.

The national debt is growing at $1.5 trillion per year. Ultra-low interest rates MUST be maintained to prevent the debt from overwhelming the government budget. Near-zero rates also need to be maintained because even a moderate rise would cause multi-trillion dollar derivative losses for the banks, and would remove the banks’ chief income stream, the arbitrage afforded by borrowing at 0% and investing at higher rates.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Zionism is fundamentally racist, extremist, undemocratic, and militant. It espouses Jewish supremacy, exceptionalism, and uniqueness as God's "chosen people." It institutionalized occupation, oppression, violence and dispossession. It justifies structural inequalities. It rules by force, not coexistence. It chooses confrontation over diplomacy and rule of law provisions. It denies Arabs equal rights as Jews. No ideology this destructive can endure.

According to Hamoked, the Center for the Defence of the Individual, Israel revoked residency rights for about 240,000 Gaza and West Bank Palestinians from 1967 to 1994. About 15,000 were aged 90 or older. Another 14,000 East Jerusalemites were included through 2011. HaMoked's Freedom of Information petition provided information not previously available.

Revocations were executed two ways. Palestinians remaining abroad for extended periods or excluded from Israeli 1981 through 1988 census data were affected. Residents under either criteria were assigned a "ceased residency status." No hearings or reviews were held. Official notices weren't given. Diktat authority violated international law. Protected persons were expelled from their homeland. Family separations and other hardships followed.

More »

Philip Giraldi

Is it possible that Americans are finally waking up to the dangers resulting from Washington’s involvement in Israel’s foreign policy?

In the New York Times on June 24th there was an astonishing feature opinion piece by Professor Misha Glenny writing from London about “A Weapon We Can’t Control.” The editorial slammed the “decision by the United States and Israel to develop and then deploy the Stuxnet computer worm against an Iranian nuclear facility,” describing the development as a “significant and dangerous turning point in the gradual militarization of the internet.” Glenny warned that to use such a devastating weapon in peacetime will “very likely lead to the spread of similar and still more powerful offensive cyberweaponry across the Internet,” also noting that “virus developers generally lose control of their inventions, which will inevitably seek out and attack the networks of innocent parties.”

Glenny also mentioned the second generation Flame virus, developed jointly by Israel and the US, and which has now spread to computers throughout the Middle East.

On the same day in the same issue of the Times, Jimmy Carter chimed in with an op-ed, “A Cruel and Unusual Record,” which asserted that “Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended.” Carter did not mention Israel or name President Obama, but the decade long transition of the United States into a nation that believes itself to be above the law, following the Israeli example, would have been all too clear for the reader.

More »

Kevin Barrett

There is no worse place to be a dissident than in the USA.

In many countries, people who cross the line in opposing the government risk incarceration, torture, or murder.

Until recently, it was hard for American dissidents to cross that line. If they wanted to get arrested for saying something subversive, mere ideas weren't enough; they would have to actually threaten to physically harm the President or another high official.

But the post-9/11 USA is no longer a beacon of human rights. As former President Jimmy Carter recently wrote in the New York Times, “The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.” In his article, Carter points out that top US officials are now openly targeting US citizens for political assassination, “disappearance,” unlimited surveillance, and other forms of gross human rights abuse.

Since we now know that a secret National Security committee is ordering the murder of American citizens, and since we know the CIA has the power to easily simulate deaths from illness and accident, we might as well assume that every time a dissident dies unexpectedly, he or she has been murdered by the US government.

Consider the chilling words of Obama's information czar Cass Sunstein, who openly advocates that the US government should “disable the purveyors of conspiracy theories.” Sunstein's article “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures” argues that “conspiracy theories” (by which he means the 9/11 truth movement) are so dangerous that the government should “cognitively infiltrate” 9/11 truth groups, “disable” those who spread these ideas, and possibly even make the ideas illegal.

More »