Stephen Lendman

On November 6, Americans vote for president, Congress, and regional candidates. On matters concerning Israel, virtually every officeholder and aspirant expresses wholehearted support.

One-sided bipartisan platform language endorses it. Rock solid commitment defines it. Obama and Romney practically fall over each other affirming it. Doing so lets Israel to get away with crimes of war, against humanity, and genocide with impunity. It's no exaggeration.

Longstanding US policy permits it. Palestinians were thrown under the bus decades ago. Israel considers them lesser beings. So does America. Policies in both countries show it.

Human suffering is out of sight and mind. In late August, a UN report said Gaza won't be "livable" by 2020 without urgent help. At issue is improving water supply and safety, power, healthcare, education, other essential services, and rebuilding what war and regular Israeli attacks destroy.

UN humanitarian coordinator Maxwell Gaylard said conditions already are too severe to bear. Gaza's been suffocating under Israel's blockade for over five years.

It's democratically elected government is unrecognized. At the behest of Israel, Washington declared it a terrorist organization. Isolation renders Gaza's economy nonviable.

Peace and security don't exist because Israel prevents it. Land, sea and air attacks happen regularly. No one knows from day to day who'll live, die, or become permanently disabled.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Friday’s payroll jobs report says that 96,000 new jobs were created in August and that the unemployment rate (U.3) fell from 8.3% to 8.1%. As 96,000 new jobs are not enough to keep up with population growth, the decline in the U.3 unemployment rate was caused by 368,000 discouraged job seekers giving up on finding employment and dropping out of the work force as measured by U.3.

Discouraged workers are not included in the U.3 measure of unemployment, which makes the measure useless. The only purpose of U.3 is to keep bad news out of the news. the U.3 unemployment rate only measures those who have not been discouraged by the inability to find a job and are still actively seeking employment.

The government produces another unemployment measure, U.6, which includes people who have been discouraged by the inability to find a job and have been out of the work force for less than a year. This measure of unemployment is 14.7%, a number that would get attention if reported.

When the long-term (more than one year) discouraged workers are included, the US unemployment rate is about 22%. In other words, the real US rate of unemployment is almost three times higher than the reported–headline rate–of 8.1%.

What is the purpose of reporting an unemployment rate that is about one-third the real unemployment rate? The only answer is deception through Happy News.

Let’s have a look at those 96,000 jobs. What kind of high-tech, high-income super jobs is “the world’s only superpower, the indispensable nation, the world’s greatest economy and capitalist heaven” creating?

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Philip Giraldi

Normally Washington bureaucracies shut down in August, but this year the intelligence community was working flat out to develop information on two crises in the Middle East. One official describes a deep sense of foreboding, recalling NSC Counter Terrorism Security Group chairman Richard Clarke’s description of walking around the West Wing in August 2001 with his “hair on fire.”

Syria is on the frontburner as a shooting war in which the U.S. is already clandestinely involved. The attempt to come up with a consensus National Intelligence Estimate on the crisis has been put on hold, both because the situation is too volatile and because new intelligence paints an increasingly dark picture of the insurgency. A number of atrocities against civilians previously attributed to the Assad government are now known to be the work of the rebels, who are becoming less reticent about their plans to eliminate all regime supporters, which would include most Alawites as well as many in the Christian community. U.S. intelligence has also come to the conclusion that rebel militias are heavily infiltrated and frequently commanded by jihadis linked to al-Qaeda. Attempts by CIA officers to discuss the issue with the rebels’ political representatives in Lebanon and Turkey have been blown off or deferred, suggesting that the movement’s leadership might be fully complicit. There is also increasing concern about a domino effect spreading unrest to Lebanon. Even the Turks are backing away from more direct involvement, worried that major refugee and Kurdish-based terrorism problems are developing.

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