Gilad Atzmon

Ariel Sharon, 2nd from the right, flanked by Netanyahu,
Olmert and Peres, psychopaths and murderers one and all.

Not many people doubt that Israel was behind Arafat’s death, especially now, when it became immanently clear that it was radioactive Polonium 210 that was responsible for the late leader’s lethal symptoms.

It has been already established that just a few countries could produce Polonium let alone deliver it to the besieged Arafat’s Headquarters in Ramallah. The Palestinian committee investigating the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004 confirmed today that Israel is actually the "only suspect” in this murder case.

Yet, one question puzzles me. What did Israeli leaders had in mind when they decided to poison the Palestinian leader with a radioactive substance that would leave forensic traces in Arafat’s remains for millenniums to come? What kind of a murderer consciously leaves fingerprints behind? After all, the decision to kill Arafat and in such a manner was taken by the Israel’s supreme decision makers. They must have closely examined the idea, the consequences and the means involved.

The more I look into it, I gather that the Israelis who took the decision to poison Arafat with radioactive polonium came to the conclusion that the Goyim must be stupid, and they had a good reason to come to such a conclusion.

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Stephen Lendman

Three days of Iran nuclear talks were fruitless. It didn't surprise. Multiple previous rounds failed. Will future ones fare better? Don't bet on it.

France was blamed this time. Washington bears most responsibility. So does Israel. Netanyahu called any deal a bad one. The Israeli Lobby exerts enormous pressure on Congress. America negotiates in bad faith. Longstanding anti-Iranian hostility persists. Regime change plans remain firm.

Iran's nuclear program is a red herring. The program is entirely legitimate. Western countries and Israel know it. Pretending otherwise doesn't wash. Nor does putting a brave face on failure. Agreement was only reached to meet again. November 20 is scheduled. Senior diplomats will attend. Foreign ministers won't participate.

Public comments belie what's at issue. Washington wants Iran kept isolated. It wants pressure maintained. It wants stiff sanctions continued. It wants Iran's economy to scream. It wants ordinary Iranians suffering most. It wants regime change. It wants pro-Western puppet governance replacing sovereign Iranian independence. It wants war if other methods fail to achieve its goals. It wants an Israeli rival eliminated. It wants unchallenged regional dominance. It wants control of Iranian oil, gas and other resources.

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Wayne Madsen

September 18, 2014 could either ensure that the United Kingdom remains a virtual U.S. intelligence «Trojan horse» inside the European Union or could herald a radical shakeup of America’s «Five Eyes» signals intelligence alliance. On a Thursday in September, Scottish citizens will go to the polls to vote «Yes» or «No» on a simple referendum question: «Should Scotland be an Independent Country?» The referendum was worked out in an agreement between Scotland’s Scottish Nationalist Party First Minister Alexander Salmond and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The United Kingdom intelligence and national security establishment, aided and abetted by the virtually indistinguishable three major British political parties, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and Labor, have all weighed in to urge Scots to vote «No» and remain a part of the United Kingdom.

Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May has issued another in a series of ultimatums to a Scotland that would consider breaking free of English rule: Scotland would find itself severed from the British intelligence agencies of MI6 (foreign intelligence), MI5 (domestic intelligence), and the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ). The latter is the British component of the «Five Eyes» alliance of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. May stated that Scotland would be at risk because the Five Eyes alliance would cut Scotland off from receiving critical intelligence, including counterterrorism information.

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Jonathan Carp

On Tuesday in Santa Rosa, California, two of that city’s “finest” cowered behind a car door and gunned down a thirteen-year-old boy carrying a toy rifle. This little boy, Andy Lopez Cruz, was walking down the street with a fake plastic rifle when the two “heroes” boldly got out of their police cruiser, hid behind the passenger side door, and called out to him. When Andy reacted like any human being would and turned to face them, our brave boys in blue shot a child carrying a toy, because they were scared.

Physical courage is hardly the highest virtue, nor one linked particularly closely with any other measure of moral worth. But physical courage is a virtue all the same, and one sadly lacking today in our cowardly police departments, who hide behind a comical array of war machines and gun down anyone of any age or species who inspires the slightest tremor of fear in their faint hearts. Family pets, the mentally disabled, the elderly — seemingly anything that can move can terrify our brave police officers, so overwhelming them with abject, presumably pants-wetting fear that they draw their weapons and open fire willy-nilly on whatever has their teeth chattering in terror.

In July in Hawthorne, California, a police officer was so overcome by fear at the sight of a little doggy less than a quarter his size that he had no choice but to fire five shots into the animal in front of its owner. Of course one can hardly blame the officer in question, as he only had three of his colleagues there with him and could not possibly have prevailed against the ferocious animal, which reached nearly to the officer’s waist when on its back legs.

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Bill Van Auken

"...because the CIA requires a certain speed, agility and
tactical responsiveness that differs from other agencies..."

The report Thursday of a CIA-AT&T operation exposes a whole new layer of state-corporate spying on the people of the United States and the world.

Details of the operation, first published by the New York Times, make clear that AT&T, the largest US telecommunications provider, is allowing the CIA to sift through its vast call database, not in response to any subpoena or court order, but rather as part of a voluntary contract under which the company is being paid more than $10 million a year by the intelligence agency.

In addition to its millions of customers, the company also handles connections between long distance carriers and local telephone networks all over the world, with tens of billions of minutes of voice calls per year passing through its facilities around the globe.

The CIA-AT&T operation duplicates some of the massive data-mining and domestic spying operations carried out by the National Security Agency, details of which have been exposed in recent months through documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The Times report cited a senior "intelligence official” who argued that this overlap was justified because the CIA requires “a certain speed, agility and tactical responsiveness that differs from other agencies. The need to act without delay is often best met when the CIA has developed its own capabilities to lawfully acquire necessary foreign intelligence information.”

Acting “without delay” in the CIA’s case increasingly involves launching drone missile attacks to assassinate perceived enemies of Washington, while killing significant numbers of innocent civilians.

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Stephen Lendman

Suha Arafat and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat attend
a conference in the Gaza Strip on April 5, 1995. (N. Judah)

On November 11, 2004, Arafat died in a Paris hospital. He was 75. He was hospitalized for an undiagnosed illness. It developed in April. It got worse. He deteriorated badly. He needed special care. On November 3, he slipped into a coma. Days later he died.

Previous articles discussed his death. It wasn't accidental. It wasn't natural. Credible evidence points to assassination. Israel wanted him eliminated. He became more liability than asset. His former aide, Hani al-Hassan, said he personally witnessed 13 attempts on his life.

Arafat said he survived 40 attempts. In 1985, he narrowly escaped an Israeli air attack on his Tunisian headquarters. It killed 73 people. He went jogging shortly before Israel struck. In December 2001, Israeli missiles struck his Ramallah compound. He was rushed to safety shortly before the attack. An Israeli military spokesman called the strike a warning. It sent a message. Arafat was marked for death.

At the time, he was a virtual prisoner inside his presidential compound (the Mukataa). Medical reports showed him in good health. Close associates said Ariel Sharon wanted him dead. As defense minister in 1982, he failed trying to kill him during Israel's siege of Beirut. He let Phalangist fascists do his dirty work. He called slaughtering Palestinians "ridding the world of international terrorism." Evidence suggests Sharon succeeded. He killed Arafat.

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Paul Craig Roberts

“No legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its power, position, and prestige.” ~ Dean Acheson , 1962, speaking to the American Society of International Law.

Dean Acheson declared 51 years ago that power, position, and prestige are the ingredients of national security and that national security trumps law. In the United States democracy takes a back seat to “national security,” a prerogative of the executive branch of government.

National security is where the executive branch hides its crimes against law, both domestic and international, its crimes against the Constitution, its crimes against innocent citizens both at home and abroad, and its secret agendas that it knows that the American public would never support.

“National security” is the cloak that the executive branch uses to make certain that the US government is unaccountable. Without accountable government there is no civil liberty and no democracy except for the sham voting that existed in the Soviet Union and now exists in the US.

There have been periods in US history, such as President Lincoln’s war to prevent secession, World War I, and World War II, when accountable government was impaired. These were short episodes of the Constitution’s violation, and the Constitution was reinstated in the aftermath of the wars. However, since the Clinton regime, the accountability of government has been declining for more than two decades, longer than the three wars combined.

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Stephen Lendman

Out-of-control spying reflects America's true face. At stake are fundamental rights too important to lose. They're gravely eroded already. They're headed toward disappearing altogether. They may not survive much longer.

Everybody spies on everyone else. America likely does it best of all. It spies on friends and foes alike. In "Animal Farm," Orwell said "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others." As the world's sole superpower, America is most of all.

Expect no policy change. A previous article discussed Senate legislation legitimizing lawless surveillance. Obama wants it and then some.

On November 2, The New York Times headlined "No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming NSA."

"Mr. Obama and top intelligence officials have defended the agency's role in preventing terrorist attacks. But as the documents make clear, the focus on counterterrorism is a misleadingly narrow sales pitch for an agency with an almost unlimited agenda. Its scale and aggressiveness are breathtaking." No amount spent is too much if "it adds to the agency's global phone book."

"The agency, using a combination of jawboning, stealth and legal force, has turned the nation's Internet and telecommunications companies into collection partners, installing filters in their facilities, serving them with court orders, building back doors into their software and acquiring keys to break their encryption."

NSA wants nothing escaping scrutiny. Privacy no longer exists. Rule of law principles don't matter. Anything goes is policy. Everything transmitted electronically is fair game for intrusion.

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Kevin Barrett

Is the New World Order crumbling before our eyes? Are people everywhere rising up against the all-seeing-eye of “total information awareness”?

The Snowden-triggered NSA spy scandals have thrown a monkey wrench into US-NATO plans for the world empire. Apparently, the world's seven billion people do not want their every email stolen and stored, every phone call wiretapped and recorded, every pore on every face under the permanent scrutiny of spy satellites ... and every world leader blackmailed and controlled.

Last Monday and Tuesday, November 4th and 5th, rallies were held around the world unmasking the global surveillance state. The “Million Mask March” brought together supporters of Anonymous, Wikileaks, Occupy, Oath Keepers, whistleblowers, and hacktivists in more than 430 locations around the world.

The day before, Monday, November 4th, all across Iran, people were rallying to commemorate the 1979 seizure of the US Embassy, otherwise known as “the Den of Espionage.”

The Iranians - who have been rallying against the “Den of Espionage” since 1979 - are ahead of their time. Today, 34 years after the US embassy seizure, the whole world is following in their footsteps and protesting against American spying.

Western corporate media, whose mission is keeping people ignorant and confused, are peddling lies and half-truths about these events. Big media tells us the students who seized the US embassy in Iran were scary-looking fanatics, as depicted in the film Argo. And big media will also portray the Million Mask March as a frightening, confusing phenomenon. - But what were these protests really all about?

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Mike Whitney / Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts thinks the Fed has backed itself into a corner. A rise in interest rates would strengthen the dollar, give the dollar new life as world reserve currency, and halt the movement into gold, but a rise in rates would collapse the bond and stock markets and reduce the value of derivatives on the banks’ balance sheets. I asked Dr. Roberts if the Fed would sacrifice the dollar in order to save the banks and what the effect would be on Washington’s power viv-a-vis the rest of the world. His answers to these questions suggest that Washington’s days of financial hegemony and world leadership are numbered.

Mike Whitney: Is the US dollar at risk of losing its position as reserve currency? How would this loss affect US leadership and other countries?

Paul Craig Roberts: In a way the dollar has already lost its reserve currency status, but this development has not yet been officially realized; nor has it hit the currency markets. Consider that the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have announced their intention to abandon the use of the US dollar for the settlement of trade imbalances between themselves, instead settling their accounts in their own currencies. (There is now a website, the BRICSPOST, that reports on the developing relations between the five large countries.) There are also reports that Australia and China and Japan and China are going to settle their trade accounts without recourse to the dollar.

Different explanations are given. The BRICS imply that they are tired of US financial hegemony and have concerns about the dollar’s stability in view of Washington’s excessive issuance of new debt and new money to finance it. China, Australia, and Japan have cited the avoidance of transaction fees associated with exchanging their currencies first into US dollars and then into the other currencies. They say it is a cost-saving step to reduce transaction costs. This may be diplomatic cover for discarding the US dollar.

The October 2013 US government partial shutdown and (exaggerated) debt default threat resulted in the unprecedented currency swap agreements between the Chinese central bank and the European central bank and between the Chinese central bank and the Bank of England. The reason given for these currency swaps was necessary precaution against dollar disruption. In other words, US instability was seen as a threat to the international payments system. The dollar’s role of reserve currency is not compatible with the view that precautions must be taken against the dollar’s possible failure or disruption. China’s call for “a de-Americanized world” is a clear sign of growing impatience with Washington’s irresponsibility.

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Neil Clark

The only surprising thing about the news that the US is sabotaging peace moves in Afghanistan and Pakistan is that anyone should find the news surprising.

As reported on RT, Pakistan has accused the US of sabotaging peace talks between the authorities in Islamabad and the Taliban following last Friday’s drone assassination of the Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud.

“The murder of Hakimullah is the murder of all efforts at peace," Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisa said. "Brick by brick, in the last seven weeks, we tried to evolve a process by which we could bring peace to Pakistan and what have you [the US] done?"

The killing of Hakimullah Mehsud comes less than a month after the US effectively wrecked the Afghan government’s efforts to engage with the Taliban by capturing Latif Mehsud, Hakimullah’s lieutenant. Latif Mehsud was the man that the Afghan government hoped would be a go-between for peace talks with the Taliban. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was reported to have been furious about the US operation. Karzai has also said that the drone strike against Hakimullah Mehsud “took place at an unsuitable time.”

The fact is that on several important occasions in the last 30 years or so, the US has wrecked peace efforts and used its power to provoke or prolong conflicts which could have been avoided or solved without further bloodshed.

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John Pilger

In its bid to continue lawlessly spying on almost everyone, Britain's "intelligence" and "security" establishment has launched an assault on the Guardian. Such is the rise of the totalitarian state that the secret police enter a newspaper to witness the smashing of computer hard-drives, as happened at the Guardian, and the government, via a poodle MP, can call for the paper's prosecution for treason. As if to prove its respectability, the Guardian has sought the endorsement of notables, including Nick Clegg, Harold Evans and other specialists in faint praise.

The most effective defender of the paper is not one of these. He has shaggy dark hair and a beard - or he did when I last saw him. For more than 20 years I have turned to his work as you would reach for coffee in the morning. He is outrageous, anarchic, brilliant, sometimes inexplicable and a bit mad (not really). For those who doubt the truth is subversive and often absurd, I point them towards two pages in the Guardian, where he resides.

Only Steve Bell exposes consistently, fearlessly, the bullshit of "public life". Indeed, his characters are often drowning in or water-skiing on the stuff. "Right, that's it," says the last governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, to Gordon Brown, then prime minister, and chancellor Alistair Darling, "heads down, tea break over!" They are up to their chins in a tank of turds.

Steve Bell is a cartoonist and a true journalist with few rivals. He is Hogarth and Swift with a touch of Peter Sellers and a sprinkling of Orwell. He is more of an English original than one of his prime targets, Margaret Thatcher, the former petit-bourgeois totem. Often using the wickedly all-seeing penguin star of his strip, "If..." he rumbled both Thatcher and her protege, Blair, early in their criminal ascendancy.

While his Guardian colleagues swooned over Blair as a mystic of the "Third Way", Steve Bell planted Thatcher's crazed eye on Blair's rictus mask. A print of that first appearance of the Thatcher/Blair eye, which he sent me, hangs in pride of place, though the gaze is disconcerting. Opening the Guardian news pages recently to find Blair boasting about his ability to absorb "the sense of pain" of others was like reading a Steve Bell cartoon.

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Chris Marsden

Recently released police documents on the August 18 arrest and questioning at London’s Heathrow airport of David Miranda, the domestic partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, are a serious warning on the advanced stage of the decay of democracy in Britain and internationally.

They show that Miranda was held on blatantly trumped up terrorism charges, aiming to block reporting on the NSA spying scandal. While British, US, and European intelligence agencies have developed the mass electronic spying apparatus of a police state—as Greenwald and whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed—the internal security forces have developed the legal and police apparatus of an authoritarian regime.

A document from the Metropolitan Police HQ at Scotland Yard, released as a result of a court action taken out by Miranda, states: “Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity which has the potential to act against the interests of UK national security... Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism.”

Such remarks could easily be made by officials of any police-state dictatorship. Under such a broad definition, virtually any genuine reporting on the conduct of the state—which could embarrass or expose criminal behavior by state officials, and is written with distrust towards them—can be pursued as terrorism.

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James Petras

“Pro-Israel Policy groups such as AIPAC work with unlimited funding to divert US policy in the region (Middle East)”
Jack Straw, Member of Parliament and former Foreign Secretary of the British Labor Party

“The United States should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran to spur the country to end its nuclear program”
Sheldon Adelson, biggest donor to the Republican Party and major fundraiser for pro-Israel political action committees, speech at Yeshiva University, New York City, October 22, 2013.

The question of war or peace with Iran rests with the policies adopted by the White House and the US Congress. The peace overtures by newly elected Iranian President Rohani have resonated favorably around the world, except with Israel and its Zionist acolytes in North America and Europe. The first negotiating session proceeded without recrimination and resulted in an optimistic assessment by both sides. Precisely because of the initial favorable response among the participants, the Israeli government escalated its propaganda war against Iran. Its agents in the US Congress, the mass media and in the Executive branch moved to undermine the peace process. What is at stake is Israel’s capacity to wage proxy wars using the US military and its NATO allies against any government challenging Israeli military supremacy in the Middle East, its violent annexation of Palestinian territory and its ability to attack any adversary with impunity. To understand what is at stake in the current peace negotiations one must envision the consequences of failure: Under Israeli pressure, the US announced that its ‘military option’ could be activated – resulting in missile strikes and a bombing campaign against 76 million Iranians in order to destroy their government and economy. Teheran could retaliate against such aggression by targeting US military bases in the region and Gulf oil installations resulting in a global crisis. This is what Israel wants. We will begin by examining the context of Israel’s military supremacy in the Middle East. We will then proceed to analyze Israel’s incredible power over the US political process and how it shapes the negotiation process today, with special emphasis on Zionist power in the US Congress.

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Israel Shamir / Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts: Note: The reports of missile destruction to which Shamir refers might be newspaper fantasy. Regardless, the main point of Shamir’s article seems to be correct. Obama did stand down. The opposition of Russia supported by China, the British Parliament, and the UN and the lack of enthusiasm for another war on the part of the American people, Congress, and NATO was too much for the Washington/Israeli warmongers to overcome. The tide has changed, and Washington can no longer do as it wills.

Israel Shamir, an Israeli writer whom I have long admired, saved me from having to write a column by writing it himself. My readers will recognize similarity of our thoughts.

Shamir, reporting from Moscow on the US/Russian confrontation over Syria, was well positioned to have good information. Shamir reports that according to diplomatic leaks, missiles launched against Syria, apparently by the US but perhaps by Israel, were, according to the Asia Times and Middle Eastern newspapers, either shot down by Russian ship-based sea-to-air defenses or rendered helpless by powerful Russian GPS jammers. This decisive response from a major nuclear power, together with the British Parliament’s loud NO and the same coming from the UN, the US public and Congress together with NATO’s lack of enthusiasm resulted in the Obama regime having second and better thoughts.

Americans are long accustomed to thinking that no one can stand up to America. This crazy idea has perverted the judgment of the government in Washington. If the fools in Washington don’t find a way to recover from their hubris and arrogance, the fools will bring us the end of the world.

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