Eva Bartlett

The daily suffering and humiliation of Palestinian civilians at the hands of the Zionists is captured by Eva Bartlett, an International Solidarity Movement activist, who has spent much time in Occupied Palestine.

Since May 2007, I have lived in different parts of Occupied Palestine witnessing the crimes of the Zionist entity and sharing in the daily tragedies, injustices and realities of the Palestinians. In 2007, I volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement for eight months in the Occupied West Bank during which time I was detained at a protest against a Jewish-only highway, arrested at a roadblock removal action, and was finally deported and banned from Occupied Palestine.

During those months, I was witness to the ugliest aspects of life under Zionist rule: attacks by illegal armed Jewish colonists and by Zionist soldiers on Palestinian children, women, and the elderly; humiliating military checkpoints, some with zoo-like turnstiles all of which serve to delay or completely prevent the Palestinians’ movement; and raids and weeks-long lockdowns on Palestinian towns and cities, in which the Zionist army ransacked homes and usually abducted one or more member of the family, including children. There are currently 195 Palestinian children in Zionist prisons.

In Susiya, a hamlet in the South Hebron Hills, I witnessed land being stolen and quickly annexed by the illegal Jewish colonists. As we were documenting this annexation, a colonist gleefully admitted that the land was Palestinian but that the grape vines they’d planted on the land were worth 60,000 shekels (roughly $17,500) and were intended for wine production. “It doesn’t matter. See, the grapes we grow will be wine. And I will drink the wine. It doesn’t matter at all that you speak.”

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Roger Tucker

The quenelle is first inserted into the cavity...

The current flap over the gesture called a “quenelle” is revealing in a number of ways. It’s instructive to look first at a couple of Wikipedia entries.

“The word quenelle is derived from the German Knödel (noodle or dumpling)” (which we know from Yiddish cuisine as a knadel)."

"French political activist and comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala is credited with creating and popularizing the gesture, which he first used in 2005 in his sketch entitled 1905 about French secularism and has been used since in a wide variety of contexts.. The first time Dieudonné used the gesture in a political context was for his 2009 European election campaign poster for the "anti-Zionist party", he stated that his intention was "to put a quenelle into Zionism's butt"..."

“The name quenelle comes from an elongated fish meatballs dish, which is said to look like a suppository. Hence, the phrase 'mettre une quenelle' ('to give someone the quenelle'), with a gesture simulating fisting practice, is similar to the English 'up yours'. The arm outstretched refers to the length of the arm going up one's bottom."

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Walter Starck

The so-called settled science of predicting future temperatures is rooted in absurd generalisations, unrepresentative sampling, trick graphs and statistical sleights of hand. The louder they shout, the more apparent their bogus discipline's flaws follies.

The average temperature for the Earth, or any region or even any specific place is very difficult to determine with any accuracy. At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. Weather stations are relatively few and located very irregularly. Well maintained stations with good records going back a century or more can be counted on one’s fingers. Even then only maximum and minimum temperatures or ones at a few particular times of day are usually available. Maintenance, siting, and surrounding land use also all have influences on the temperatures recorded.

The purported 0.7°C of average global warming over the past century is highly uncertain. It is in fact less than the margin of error in our ability to determine the average temperature anywhere, much less globally. What portion of any such warming might be due to due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions is even less certain. There are, however, numerous phenomena which are affected by temperature and which can provide good evidence of relative warming or cooling and, in some cases, even actual temperatures. These include growth rings in trees, corals and stalactites, borehole temperature profiles and the isotopic and biologic signatures in core samples from sediments or glaciers. In addition, historical accounts of crops grown, harvest times, freezes, sea ice, river levels, glacial advances or retreats and other such records provide clear indication of warming and cooling.

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Stephen Lendman

Obama's entire address reflected empty rhetoric. It's an annual duplicitous exercise. He represented hope and change. He delivered business as usual.

Obama's State of the Union address reflected beginning-to-end empty rhetoric. More on his comments below.

Throughout five years in office, he's been consistent. Duplicity defines his agenda. He says one thing. He does another. In his first State of the Union address, he promised "to get our economy growing again, save as many jobs as possible, and help Americans who'd become unemployed." He called jobs creation his "number one focus." He promised tax relief for ordinary Americans. He promised help for "8 million Americans paying for college." Graduates are more indebted than ever. Outstanding debt tops $1 trillion. It's second only to mortgage debt. For millions of young Americans, it represents many years of debt bondage. For too many, it reflects lifetime debt.

Obama's been more a jobs destroyer than creator. Phantom numbers conceal today's reality. Official ones are statistical illusions. Real unemployment exceeds 23%. Longterm unemployment is at record levels. Over 100 million working-age Americans have no jobs. It's 10 million more than when Obama took office.

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Bill Van Auken

Photo: The assembled congressmen—responsible for wars of aggression that inflicted a similar fate on thousands of Americans, while killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis—gave a lengthy standing ovation to one of the victims of their criminal policies. This spectacle was a fitting conclusion to a nauseating political ritual. (Comment by J. Kishore)

President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech was a cynical propaganda piece, filled with fraudulent claims and promises that no one, least of all his audience at the US Capitol, believes in the slightest.

The annual address has long since become an ossified ritual, a kind of national pep rally into which social and political reality seldom intrudes.

With Obama’s speech Tuesday night one had more than ever the sense of the president as chief representative of the financial aristocracy that rules America, speaking to a house filled with millionaire congress members and bought-and-paid-for representatives of big business.

It has more and more come to resemble a political echo chamber, in which the ruling establishment celebrates and talks to itself in utter indifference to the needs and concerns of the country’s working people, the overwhelming majority of the population.

In the run-up to the speech, the media had worked to build up expectations with wild predictions that Obama would use it to launch war on social inequality or, as the Washington Post put it, a “sustained assault on Republicans over a populist economic agenda.”

The day after, the old adage, “the mountain labored and brought forth a mouse” came to mind.

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Joseph Kishore

Yes, we know, we know. - This is Obama’s 2013
State of the Union Address. But we still haven't
seen any change...It's the same old, same old.

US President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday was, perhaps even more than his previous addresses, a cynical and reactionary charade. Empty rhetoric was combined with a complete disconnect from the reality confronting millions of people and an assertion of executive power.

The thrust of the speech was a mixture of pro-business nostrums, militarist jingoism and a jumble of penny-ante proposals. The media’s attempt to promote the speech as a major address on inequality was a deliberate falsification aimed at drumming up interest among a generally indifferent and hostile population.

Instead it was a threadbare attempt to cover over the reality of the past year, a year in which the mask fell off a society riven by historically unprecedented levels of social inequality and mass poverty, overseen by a vast police-state spying apparatus, on the verge of another global war of incalculable consequences and presided over by the most right-wing administration in US history.

Obama himself spoke before the members of the US House of Representatives and the Senate, the majority of them millionaires, as a representative of the financial aristocracy and the military-intelligence apparatus.

He began by painting the US as a country undergoing a booming economic recovery, with “the lowest unemployment rate in over five years,” a “rebounding housing market” and a growing manufacturing sector.

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John W. Whitehead

“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” ― George Orwell, Animal Farm

What was striking about this year’s State of the Union address was not the sheer arrogance of the president’s remarks, the staged nature of the proceedings and interactions, or the predictable posturing of the rebuttals, but the extent to which the members of the various branches of government—President Obama, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the assorted government agencies—are just one big, brawling, noisy, semi-incestuous clan.

Watching these bureaucrats, both elected and appointed, interact in the unguarded moments before the event, with their hugging and kissing and nudging and joking and hobnobbing and general high spirits, I was reminded anew that these people—Republicans and Democrats alike—are united in a common goal, and it is not to protect and defend the Constitution. No, as Orwell recognized in Animal Farm, their common goal is to maintain the status quo, a goal that is helped along by an unquestioning, easily mollified, corporate media. In this way, the carefully crafted spectacle that is the State of the Union address is just that: an exaggerated farce of political theater intended to dazzle, distract and divide us, all the while the police state marches steadily forward.

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Stephen Lendman

US-Backed Terorist Shows off Decapitated Head of
Soldier. It makes gruesome viewing. (Fars News)

So-called Syrian National Coalition (SNC) officials are US stooges. They have no legitimacy whatever. They're self-serving. They represent Western interests. They're mindless of fundamental Syrian rights.

It showed in Geneva II talks. It didn't take long. On Saturday they began face-to-face. On Monday they deadlocked. America bears full responsibility. SNC stooge delegates take orders from Washington. They act accordingly.

On January 28, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) headlined "Coalition delegation of so-called 'opposition' rejects statement by Syrian official delegation which rejects arming terrorist organizations in Syria."

America has been arming extremist hired gun killers throughout three years of conflict. Congress secretly authorized supplying more weapons. It's unclear precisely when. It's believed to be in a classified FY 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provision. In December, Obama signed it into law. Doing so shows he wants war. He opposes peace. He demands regime change. He wants Syrians unable to decide their own future. He wants sole right to do it. Hegemons operate this way.

SANA said SNC delegates aren't serious.

They reject "any suggestion for supporting the articles of the Geneva conference." Doing so "thwarts efforts (for) success." They rejected Geneva I's measure to end armed conflict. They oppose peaceful Syrian guidelines and principles. They include a Syrian-led transition. It's for everyone in the country. It "include(s) members of the present government and the opposition." Syrians alone must "determine the future of their country." Outside interference is excluded. Syria's delegation "knows full well that the US armed and still arms terrorists in Syria..."

Doing so shows Washington's real intentions. Peaceful conflict resolution is verboten. It's been this way throughout three years of fighting. It's no different now.

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Henry Makow

"Some may call it Communism, but I call it what it is: Judaism."
~ Rabbi Stephen Weiss

"Anti-Communism is Antisemitism." ~ Jewish Voice, July - August 1941

Recently we learned that the NSA is monitoring our words and movements. Security is just a pretext since most terrorism is state-sponsored. - Where does this drive to spy on and dominate others originate?

Israel Shahak's book, Jewish History, Jewish Religion (1986) provides the answer. From the second century until roughly the eighteenth, Jews were under the heel of their rabbis and wealthy leaders. They were a "closed society... one of the most totalitarian societies in the whole history of mankind." (14-15) This is the template behind the NWO, only now everyone is being enslaved.

Since the late Roman Empire, Judaism was enforced by physical coercion. Rabbinical Courts ordered fines, flogging, imprisonment and even death for Jews breaking any of the hundreds of laws governing every aspect of daily life. "Jewish women who cohabited with Gentiles had their noses cut off by rabbis...In religious disputes, those thought to be heretics had their tongues cut out."

The rabbis and rich Jews were in alliance with the Gentile aristocracy who enforced this tyranny and shared in the spoils. They were arrayed against poor Jews and peasants alike. The rich Jews always flourished in oppressive feudal regimes because, as bureaucrats, bailiffs and tax farmers, they "mediated the oppression" of the peasants.

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Gilad Atzmon

François Hollande en Israël...où il a obtenu de Bibi Netanyahou une
étreinte plus intime et dominatrice que celle de la "Première dame"...
Alors, on peut se demander: qui est le vrai président de la France?

A mass protest in Paris on Sunday against French President François Hollande turned into an anti-Jewish demonstration and ended in clashes between police and protesters.

Seemingly, Jewish organisations around the world are scared by the recent developments in France. Once again, they clearly failed to appreciate the growing mass fatigue of Shoah indoctrination and belligerent lobby politics. However, I would contend that instead of whining about the “rise of anti-Semitism”, Jews better, once and for all, learn to ask why? Why the Jews again? Why are they hated? What is it in Jewish politics that evokes so much resentment? Why does it happen time after time?

It wasn’t easy for me to admit in my latest book that Jewish suffering is actually embedded in Jewish culture. In other words, Jews are actually destined to bring disasters on themselves. Jewish politics and culture, unfortunately, is obnoxious, abusive, as well as racist, and supremacist to the bone. Jewish culture is set to infuriate the Goyim just because Jews are defined by negation – that chilling sensation of being hated.

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Philip Giraldi

Even though there were few good reasons to vote for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, the Republicans provided plenty of better reasons not to vote for their candidates, allowing Obama to benefit from the political vacuum. I was particularly concerned in both election cycles regarding the in-your-face religiosity of several of the GOP candidates. I assessed Sarah Palin as being basically a Christian Zionist, though admittedly a particularly ignorant version thereof who hardly understood what she was promoting, while Romney’s Mormonism with its affinities to evangelical Christianity and strong ties to Israel was equally disturbing.

I care little for what one chooses to believe but when the beliefs are such that they will likely be translated into policy that impacts on all the rest of us it is difficult to pretend that a candidate’s religion doesn’t matter. Be that as it may, the United States has recently benefited from having heads of state that either are believers in a casual way or engaging in a form of piety that is essentially phony, as Bill Clinton did when he paraded around Bible in hand pretending penitence after having had a White House intern perform oral sex on him.

The Canadians have not been so lucky, however. Canada, multicultural to a fault and home to more than a million Muslims, ironically has possibly the world’s most pro-Israeli government, its Prime Minister Stephen Harper having described Israel as a light that "…burns bright, upheld by the universal principles of all civilized nations – freedom, democracy justice." He has also said "I will defend Israel whatever the cost" to Canada, an interesting proposition for those who might have believed that his duty was to protect his own country and advance its interests. Harper also supports the currently active Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism’s seeking to define the "new anti-Semitism," which will include any criticism of the State of Israel, and hopes to introduce legislation that will make it a hate crime and prosecutable. Critics have noted that it might soon be possible for Canadians to criticize their own government but not that of Israel.

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Bill Van Auken

The former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden appeared Sunday night in his first extended television interview. Citing published statements by unnamed US intelligence and military operatives calling for his assassination, he warned that he faces “significant threats” to his life and that US “government officials want to kill me.”

The interview, broadcast by the German television network ARD, was largely blacked out by the US media. The New York Times carried not a word of what Snowden said, while the cable and broadcast news programs treated the interview with near total silence.

The American media’s reaction stood in stark contrast to that of both broadcast and print media in Germany, where the interview conducted with Snowden in Russia was treated as a major political event.

The interview itself was preceded by a segment dedicated to Snowden on Germany’s most popular news talk show, with commentary delivered before a sizable live television audience. Those who spoke out in Snowden’s defense received enthusiastic applause, while the defenders of Washington’s spying operations, including a right-wing German journalist and a former US ambassador to Germany, were treated coolly or with outright derision.

Polls conducted in Germany have shown six out of ten surveyed expressing admiration for Snowden, with only 14 percent regarding him as a criminal. The public is evenly divided over whether he should be granted asylum in Germany. Anger over NSA spying on German telephone and Internet communications—including Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal cell phone—is widespread.

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Henry Makow

This essay was written in September 2002.

Christians who believe Israel represents an outpost of Western Civilization might benefit from a book entitled "Jewish History, Jewish Religion" (1994) by Israel Shahak, a Professor Emeritus at Hebrew University.

Shahak escaped from a Nazi concentration camp and later served in the Israeli army. He is an organic chemist who combines a research scientist's objectivity with a humanist's commitment to universal ideals.

It appears that Judaism made a mistake when it rejected Christ's gospel of Love. As a consequence, Judaism may have become a primitive and possibly dangerous anachronism in the 21st Century. According to Shahak, Judaism is a xenophobic totalitarian belief system that has morphed into a fanatical Zionist ideology that now threatens the whole world.

I must admit that, even as an assimilated Jew, reading this book was like taking cod liver oil, not pleasant.

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Shulamit Aloni

Remembering Shulamit Aloni (by Stephen Lendman)

Jewish self-righteousness is taken for granted among ourselves to such an extent that we fail to see what’s right in front of our eyes. It’s simply inconceivable that the ultimate victims, the Jews, can carry out evil deeds. Nevertheless, the state of Israel practises its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population.

The US Jewish Establishment’s onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: through its army, the government of Israel practises a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp. All this is done in order to keep an eye on the population’s movements and to make its life difficult. Israel even imposes a total curfew whenever the settlers, who have illegally usurped the Palestinians’ land, celebrate their holidays or conduct their parades.

If that were not enough, the generals commanding the region frequently issue further orders, regulations, instructions and rules (let us not forget: they are the lords of the land). By now they have requisitioned further lands for the purpose of constructing "Jewish only" roads. Wonderful roads, wide roads, well-paved roads, brightly lit at night–all that on stolen land. When a Palestinian drives on such a road, his vehicle is confiscated and he is sent on his way.

On one occasion I witnessed such an encounter between a driver and a soldier who was taking down the details before confiscating the vehicle and sending its owner away. "Why?" I asked the soldier. "It’s an order–this is a Jews-only road", he replied. I inquired as to where was the sign indicating this fact and instructing [other] drivers not to use it. His answer was nothing short of amazing. "It is his responsibility to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here and let some antisemitic reporter or journalist take a photo so he that can show the world that Apartheid exists here?"

Indeed Apartheid does exist here. And our army is not "the most moral army in the world" as we are told by its commanders. Sufficient to mention that every town and every village has turned into a detention centre and that every entry and every exit has been closed, cutting it off from arterial traffic. If it were not enough that Palestinians are not allowed to travel on the roads paved ‘for Jews only’, on their land, the current GOC found it necessary to land an additional blow on the natives in their own land with an "ingenious proposal".

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Eric London

A report issued January 23 by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) on the legality of the government’s domestic spying programs amounts to an admission that the programs are against the law and that the Obama administration may have violated the US Constitution. But far from representing a serious attempt to curb the growth of the police state apparatus, the panel’s report is an exercise in damage control.

The make-up and history of the panel are indications of the panel’s true character. PCLOB was formed in 2004 by Congress as a hollow response to the public opposition engendered by the anti-democratic measures of the Bush administration. But despite the government’s repeated violations of civil liberties over the past decade, the panel had not held hearings on any substantive matter until November 2013.

Its five members—whose only “powers” are to make recommendations to the president—are hand picked by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The current members represent the pinnacles of the political establishment: they were respectively appointed from the Department of Justice, the federal judiciary, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Chamber of Commerce.

The content of the report makes clear that the authors are motivated not by a genuine desire to defend democratic rights, but rather by a desire to limit the damage that has been done by the Snowden revelations.

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