Alex Lantier

NATO coalition forces have killed eight women and girls in
an airstrike. The airstrike came shortly before dawn. (RAWA)

In the latest atrocity carried out by US-led occupation forces in Afghanistan, an air strike killed nine young women shortly before dawn Sunday morning in Laghman province’s Alingar district, near the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The women, aged 18 to 25, were reportedly gathering firewood in a mountainous area NATO forces claimed was being used by insurgents as a base for attacks on Kabul. Laghman provincial officials said that seven more women and girls had also been wounded in the attack, including some as young as 10 years old.

Mourning villagers carried the dead women to the provincial capital, Mihtarlam, in protest. They showed the corpses wrapped in blankets to journalists and lay them down outside the Laghman governor’s residence, demanding an investigation of the massacre and the trial of those responsible.

Commenting on the attack, Alingar District Governor Alif Shah said: “We strongly condemn it—killing innocent women is not justifiable at all. The operation was not coordinated with the Afghan authorities.”

After initially denying reports of civilian casualties and claiming that the strike had destroyed a group of 45 insurgents, the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) released a statement declaring that “ISAF takes full responsibility for this tragedy.” It extended its “regrets and sympathies” to “civilians who died or were injured” in the ISAF attack.

ISAF spokesman US Air Force Captain Dan Einert said that ISAF is investigating the attack. The US-backed regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that it would launch its own investigation.

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Eric Peters

Clovers are ok with the American Police State because to them, it’s not a police state. They see no imposition – much less tyranny. They see “democracy,” lawful order. The flag – and (to them) freedom. The mindset is nicely articulated by the well-worn Clover cliche: “If you just obey the law you won’t have any problems.”

It’s circular reasoning, obviously – with the circles becoming ever tighter as they spiral down toward the drain into outright and abject slavery. Which even then, Clover will not see as slavery. He will still be free to act, he thinks – provided of course that he acts within the boundaries laid down for him. In the same way a slave was free to pick cotton; or the medieval serf free to farm his small plot… so long as he gave his Lord the specified portion of his crop.

Clover does not grasp that each time he submits, he has surrendered a piece of his life. And much worse, the lives of others, too.

Eventually, there will be nothing left to surrender.

But this ugly inevitability does not trouble Clover. He agrees to allow others to direct and control his life, to make his decisions for him. And because he has accepted this “direction,” so also must others. If they do not, if they object in any way, then they deserve what comes to them. It will please Clover to see them punished.

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Glenn Greenwald

Westerners love to decry censorship aimed at them by Muslims while ignoring the extreme censorship they impose on them

Nothing tests one's intellectual honesty and ability to apply principles consistently more than free speech controversies. It is exceedingly easy to invoke free speech values in defense of political views you like. It is exceedingly difficult to invoke them in defense of views you loathe. But the true test for determining the authenticity of one's belief in free speech is whether one does the latter, not the former.

The anti-US protests sweeping the Muslim world have presented a perfect challenge to test the free speech convictions of both the American right and the Democratic party version of the left. Neither is faring particularly well.

Let's begin with the Democrats. On Thursday, the Obama White House called executives at Google, the parent company of YouTube, and "requested" that the company review whether the disgusting anti-Muslim film that has sparked such unrest should be removed on the ground that it violates YouTube's terms of service.

In response, free speech groups such as the ACLU and EFF expressed serious concerns about the White House's actions. While acknowledging that there was nothing legally compulsory about the White House's request (indeed, Google announced the next day they would leave the video up), the civil liberties groups nonetheless noted – correctly – that "it does make us nervous when the government throws its weight behind any requests for censorship", and that "by calling YouTube from the White House, they were sending a message no matter how much they say we don't want them to take it down; when the White House calls and asks you to review it, it sends a message and has a certain chilling effect".

Right-wing commenters loudly decried the White House's actions on free speech grounds. Some of their rhetoric was overblown (the sentiment behind the request was understandable, and they did nothing to compel its removal). But, for reasons made clear by the ACLU and EFF, these conservative objections were largely correct.

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Stephen Lendman

Sparring between the two leaders has reached a point of no return

Much has been made about an Obama/Netanyahu rift. At times, it's hard separating rhetoric from reality. Nonetheless, neither leader, it appears, particularly likes the other. Disagreement between them is palpable. It's over Iranian red lines and deadlines.

Former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said he doesn't believe in "red line policies." He responded to Netanyahu saying:

"The world tells Israel 'wait, there's still time.' And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?' Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel."

"Now if Iran knows that there is no red line. If Iran knows that there is no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it's doing. It's continuing, without any interference, towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there, nuclear bombs."

A previous article called Netanyahu the mouth that roars for good reason. He repeatedly puts both feet in his mouth and risks swallowing them.

He's arrogant, offensive, duplicitous, thuggish, and dangerous. He's an embarrassment to legitimate governance. It's hard imagining why any Israelis put up with him. If ever a bum deserved to be thrown out it's Netanyahu.

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Chris Floyd

As protests against the Mohammed-bashing film now spread to Yemen -- where the Peace Laureate is drone-bombing the hell out of the populace on a regular basis -- Simon Tisdall has more on the bitter blowback of the Laureate's much-lauded regime change in Libya. First, Tisdall notes that despite the effusion of shock and horror emanating from Washington over the attack on its diplomats, the American government had in fact anticipated the possibility of such an incident:

The assassination in Benghazi of the American ambassador to Libya is an appalling act – and one foreseen by his employers. On 27 August, the state department warned US citizens against all but essential travel to Libya, painting a picture of a country beset by increasing instability and fraught with danger.

"The incidence of violent crime, especially carjacking and robbery, has become a serious problem… Political violence, including car bombings in Tripoli and assassinations of military officers and alleged former regime officials in Benghazi, has increased. Inter-militia conflict can erupt at any time or any place in the country," the state department said.

This is in marked contrast to the vague and gauzy notion of a plucky young democracy that was the general image of the new Libya advanced by our political and media classes. As always, those on the inside -- such as the late ambassador -- were given the real picture, while the rabble are palmed off with soundbites and fairy tales.

Any number of other Libyan armed groups might have had a hand in the killings. But in truth, responsibility may also be traced back, directly or indirectly, to those in London, Paris, Brussels and Washington who launched last year's Nato intervention in Libya with insouciant disregard for the consequences. It was clear then, or should have been, that toppling Muammar Gaddafi was the easy bit. Preventing an Iraq-style implosion, or some form of Afghan anarchy, would be much harder.

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Stephen Lendman

Post-9/11, Washington declared war on Islam. Islamophobia facilitates war on terror policy. Muslims became public enemy number one. Imperial wars followed. Endless direct and proxy ones continue. Others are planned.

Dehumanizing Islam violates core US beliefs about religious freedom and respecting all faiths equally. America only respects money power and imperial dominance.

It targets anyone challenging its quest for global hegemony. Millions of corpses attest to its resolve. They're strewn across North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and other parts of the world without end. Their numbers increase daily.

The business of America is war, imperial dominance, and corporate empowerment. Ravaging one country after another follows. Fear is created and manipulated to facilitate what should be condemned. Where it ends who knows. Perhaps a mushroom-shaped cloud future awaits.

Muslims know America's dark side best. It victimizes them daily. Millions died since Gulf War mass killings ignited nearly 22 years of genocidal slaughter.

They've been mercilessly targeted for praying to the wrong God. They're used for political advantage. They're pretexts for permanent wars. They're ongoing with no end in sight.

Media scoundrels misreport or ignore them. Attacks on US Cairo and Benghazi diplomatic missions made headlines and ignited rage. Capitol Hill flags were ordered lowered to half mast. US Libyan ambassador Chris Stevens and three members of his staff were killed. Millions of dead Muslims go unnoticed.

Stevens previously was Obama's representative to America's puppet Libyan National Transition Council. It helped Washington and NATO partners ravage the country mercilessly.

They're responsible for killing tens of thousands of civilians, causing widespread destruction, leaving countless numbers homeless, displaced, and impoverished, as well as ending cherished social programs Gaddafi instituted.

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Bill Van Auken

What was promoted to the public as a crusade for human rights and to save the lives of Libyan civilians was in reality a war of imperialist plunder whose main objectives were to establish hegemonic control over the North African country’s oil wealth at the expense particularly of Russia and China.

In his sardonic 1955 novel “The Quiet American,” Graham Greene offered a devastating portrait of Alden Pyle, a young American covert agent in Vietnam, exuding idealist notions of democracy and Americanism while trying to cobble together a “third force” to stem the tide of the Vietnamese revolution. Unleashing mayhem upon the country’s population in the process, he ultimately becomes the victim of his own political intrigues.

“I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused,” Graham Greene’s narrator says of Pyle.

The description seems apt as the eulogies pour in for J. Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, who was slain together with three other Americans in an armed assault on the American consulate in Benghazi Tuesday.

No one should take joy in the violent death of a 52-year-old man. But for all the tributes to his “idealism” and—in the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—his commitment to “advancing America’s values and interests,” it is impossible to understand the demise of Stevens without recognizing that this was an individual with blood on his hands who, like the fictional Pyle, fell victim to the very forces he helped unleash.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The promised land: "War on the Poor" (Alex Lasher)

The promised land is a promised land for the one percent

Today the Western peoples are experiencing the destruction of their well being that is comparable to what the one percent in Rome imposed on Roman citizens and conquered peoples. Here is how John Williams (shadowstats.com, 9-12-12) phrases the wipeout of Americans’ hopes:

“Consumers simply cannot make ends meet. Inflation-adjusted, or real, median household income declined for the fourth-straight year, plunging to its lowest level since 1995. Deflated by the CPI-U, the 2011 reading actually stood below levels seen in the late-1960s and early-1970s.”

“At the same time, despite the ongoing nature of the economic and systemic-solvency crises, and the effects of the 2008 financial panic, income dispersion—the movement of income away from the middle towards both high- and low-level extremes—has hit a record high, instead of moderating, as might be expected during periods of financial distress. Extremes in income dispersion usually foreshadow financial-market and economic calamities. With the current circumstance at a record extreme, and well above levels estimated to have prevailed before the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression, increasingly difficult times are likely for the next several years.”

This chart shows where the median household income of the US Superpower, the “indispensable people,” stands at the culmination of 2011. Americans are as well off as they were in 1967-68. Most americans cannot pay for fighting multi-trillion dollar wars for 11 years, bailout trillions of dollars in uncovered casino bets by Wall Street, have their middle class jobs sent abroad by corporations, and still expect to have higher personal incomes.

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Philip Giraldi

Eric Posner gives intellectual cover to the unitary executive

My college alumni magazine is featuring an article entitled “Octopotus” on the kind of reasoning in some jurisprudential circles that has supported the “unitary executive.” The article is about the University of Chicago Law School’s Professor Eric Posner, whose most recent book is The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic, co-authored with Harvard’s Adrian Vermeule. Posner and Vermeule would appear to agree that when George W. Bush declared the US Constitution to be just a piece of paper he was being candid and also acting in the best interests of the American people. Posner unambiguously sees the non-constitutional accumulation of presidential power as a good thing, enabling rapid response to crises, and describes the Madisonian separation of powers in government as a “historical relic.”

The article, written by one Jason Kelly of the magazine staff, is a strange amalgam of political correctness combined with a puff piece on Posner’s Straussian views, which I suspect most U of C alumni would find repugnant if they bother to read the article. Kelly cites “undocumented immigrants” at one point and refers to Posner’s support of executive power as a “common view” in legal circles. He accepts Posner’s lead in defining those who criticize the unitary executive as engaging in “irrational fear” that Posner labels “tyrannophobia,” which colors the discussion that follows. Kelly might equally have referred to critics of Posner as constitutionalists, which would result in a different perception.

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Philip Giraldi

Comrade Napoleon: Jerusalem platform omission a 'mistake' - No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all [human beings are chosen]. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? ~ G. Orwell, Animal Farm

I really did not want to write about Israel again this week, but the outrageous manipulation of the Democratic Party platform, moves in California to make any criticism of Israel a hate crime, and news that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had dressed down the U.S. ambassador in the presence of a congressman before insisting that the United States has no moral right to judge Israel has made it unavoidable to go “once more into the breach, dear friends.”

There is a fundamental issue at stake here. That is, does the United States have a national interest in its dealings with the countries in the Middle East that is fundamentally distinct from the Israeli interests? It is a question for dummies, as the answer is clearly yes. Well, if the answer is yes, why are leading politicians and talking heads insisting that the answer is no? Why are so many prominent Americans prepared to ignore the U.S. national interest in support of a foreign nation that has been the source of numerous armed conflicts, that has spied relentlessly on the U.S., and that is a serious drain on the U.S. Treasury? One might add that Americans have become terrorist targets as a consequence while the sharp decline in the favorable views of the United States around the world is largely attributable to the ties to rogue state Israel, even if the Bushes and Obamas have no doubt done their bit through the policy of unrestricted preemptive warfare that has evolved over the past 11 years.

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Stephen Lendman

Bad as things are now, expect much worse ahead.

As expected, the Court caved. On September 12, headlines reported it. The Financial Times said "German politicians declared the road clear for the creation of the eurozone's (500 billion euro) rescue fund after the country's constitutional court rejected a petition to block it." At issue is: Does it matter? More on that below.

Two Eurozone rescue schemes exist. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is running out of funds. Germany's High Court approved the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Originally it was scheduled to take effect July 1. Germany's parliament was still debating it. Constitutional Court approval is required. It could have linked passage to constitutional law change. Doing so would have required Germany's first post-war national referendum. It stopped short and approved what lacks legitimacy, and in the end won't work.

On the one hand, countries are running out of resources. On the other, the ECB has few bullets left. Everything it tried so far failed. Constitutional approval changes nothing. With it came conditions. The Financial Times said those imposed appear less onerous than feared. The Court ruled Germany's maximum 190 billion euro liability can't be increased without its ESM representative approving it. According to Court President Andreas Vosskuhle:

"(No) provision of this treaty may be interpreted in a way that establishes higher payment obligations for the Federal Republic of Germany without the agreement of the German representative."

It also insures Bundestag involvement. Under German law accompanying ESM approval, the parliament must approve its representative's positions. It's unclear if full parliamentary or budget committee voting is required.

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Wayne Madsen

The Central Intelligence Agency cobbled together the forerunner of the present Muslim jihadist terrorist network in the late 1970s to battle Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Throughout the next three decades, the CIA continued to maintain links with the jihadist groups, using them as allies for certain operations and attacking them when America’s «commitment» to the «war on terrorism» required an propaganda boost in the world’s media.

An example of the CIA ‘s flip-flopping between using its mujaheddin and jihadist allies and then declaring them «terrorists» and putting a price on their heads is the recent declaration by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Haqqani network based in North Waziristan, Pakistan is a «foreign terrorist organization».

The Haqqani network, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, was cobbled together by the CIA and the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the 1980s.

The Haqqani network is the latest former CIA ally to be branded a terrorist group. The Haqqanis are the latest in a long line of so-called terrorist groups that were organized and funded by the CIA only later to be thrown to the side of the road and branded «terrorists». Others include «Al Qaeda», led by CIA Afghan war veteran Osama bin Laden and Hezb-I Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatayar. With the designation of the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization, after the demise of Bin Laden and the designation of Hekmatayar as a terrorist, the CIA has run the table on its old mujaheddin allies. Only those «Al Qaeda» operatives who have allied themselves with the CIA in the Western-backed insurgencies in Libya and Syria.

Bin Laden and «Al Qaeda» were the convenient scapegoats for the CIA and its Mossad allies to provide a «logical» perpetrator for the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the 11th anniversary of which is now being observed across America. Hekmatayar’s falling out with the CIA appears to be over his attempt to cut into the opium smuggling in Afghanistan run by intelligence cut-outs for the CIA, as well as the family opium harvesting and smuggling business of the family of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

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John Glaser

The Obama administration has superseded both domestic and international law in its targeted killing program in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. A legal memo from the Congressional Research Service has concluded that “none of the established legal frameworks is a perfect fit for the Administration’s lethal targeting operations because the current US practice of lethal targeting involves features that are improvised, inconsistent or otherwise questionable,” according to Secrecy News.

While the laws of war have traditionally been relegated to certain geographic areas of declared conflict, the Obama administration has expanded Congress’s authorization of the use of force, initially granted for Afghanistan, to apply to a borderless conflict that is defined however the President wants. The administration has also extended the authorization for the use of force against those who carried out the attacks of September 11th to apply to anyone the President says is a member of al-Qaeda, anywhere in the world, without any checks or balances or legal process to prove such membership. The administration has also extended this reasoning to US citizens, who have undeniable rights to due process under the Constitution, and while they seem to have written a legal memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, they have refused to release it.

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Stephen Lendman

Thousands have taken to the streets of Ramallah to
call on PM Fayyad to resign. (Photo: Haaretz)

Haaretz contributor Amira Hass is right saying so. Current headlines highlight thousands of West Bank protesters. Palestinians took to the streets against unaffordable rising prices. In some areas, things got violent. Demonstrators smashed windows, tried to storm a municipality building, and clashed with police.

On Sunday, trucks and taxis blocked the Bethlehem to Hebron road. In Ramallah, tires were set ablaze. Streets were blocked. University and other school classes were cancelled. Duheishe refugee camp residents marched on Abbas' headquarters. Beit Jala protest leaders urged nonviolence but joined others expressing outrage. Balata refugee youths blocked Al-Quds Street. They forced traffic onto bypass roads. Traffic was also blocked in Jenin. Taxi union director Abu al-Wafa said strike action shut down 700 cabs and 120 buses. At issue is unaffordable fuel prices. Public transportation across the West Bank is paralyzed. Thousands of drivers walked out. Tulkaren and Jericho residents also staged protests. Hundreds turned out. One protest sign read:

"We're tired of hearing about reform….a council after another….a minister after another….and corruption that hasn't gone away."

General strike calls resonate. Unelected Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is a longtime Israeli collaborator. He's neoliberal, corporatist, and hardline. Rage targets him. He claims budget shortfall constraints. Palestinians want him out. One youth spoke for others, saying:

"We'll do anything, throw rocks, to get rid of the Fayyad government. They call it sabotage, but we'll do whatever we need to get rid of him."

He agreed to resign to cool things down. Fellow longtime Israeli collaborator Abbas defended him. He's doing his job, he said.

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Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Nima Shirazi is a political commentator from New York City. His analysis of United States foreign policy and Middle East issues, particularly with reference to current events in Israel, Palestine, and Iran, is published on his website, WideAsleepInAmerica.com.

His articles and commentaries are published on a variety of online and print publications including Foreign Policy Journal, Palestine Chronicle, Mondoweiss, Media with Conscience, Monthly Review, Dissident Voice, Salem-News, Middle East Online, Indymedia, The Palestine Telegraph and Axis of Logic.

Shirazi is widely acclaimed for his precise and accurate analysis of the Middle East events and the U.S. foreign policy.

The world-renowned author and political scientist Norman Finkelstein has praised Nima Shirazi's work, saying that he is "a very smart fellow and remarkably well informed. It's worth taking the time to read what he writes."

Jeremy R. Hammond, political journalist and the editor of Foreign Policy Journal has said about him: "Nima Shirazi is a brilliant analyst whose writing gets right to the heart of the issue without any messing around. Reading articles in not only the mainstream media, but also on alternative and independent websites and blogs, is generally a frustrating experience, for the broad adherence of most (actually, almost all) commentators to a limited manufactured framework."

What follows is the complete text of my interview with Nima Shirazi with whom I discussed on a variety of issues including Israeli-American relations, Iran's nuclear program, the death of Osama Bin Laden and the Western media propaganda against Iran.

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