Stephen Lendman

On Friday, Obama addressed sweeping NSA mass surveillance. He defended the worst of police state lawlessness. He [says he] believes privacy invasion intrusiveness should comfort us. He lied claiming it makes us safer. How does destroying civil liberties protect them?

How does violating core Bill of Rights protections do it? How does trashing all rule of law principles? How does turning America into a police state? How do sweeping surveillance practices greater than anything before possible? How does letting NSA operate as a power unto itself? It's an unrestrained lawbreaker. Imagine Obama calling "(t)he folks at the NSA...our neighbors."

Imagine saying "they're our friends and family." Imagine claiming "(o)ur intelligence community follows the law..." Imagine saying NSA officials and staff are "patriots." One lie followed another throughout his address. They constitute a gross abuse of power. So do his lawless policies.

He never once mentioned his responsibility to respect international, constitutional and US statute laws. He never once admitted how egregiously he violates them. He never once explained how his policies are heading America for full-blown tyranny. He never once acknowledged his war on humanity.

He fronts for monied interests that own him. His entire tenure fails the smell test. He lied saying "US intelligence agencies (are) anchored in a system of checks and balances - with oversight from elected leaders, and protections for ordinary citizens." He lied claiming mass surveillance "prevented multiple attacks and saved lives - not just here in the United States, but around the globe."

Fact check: NSA domestic and foreign spying discovered ZERO terrorist threats. It foiled ZERO terrorist attacks. Claiming otherwise is false! Doing so is a bald-faced lie! Obama lied claiming federal courts and congressional oversight curbed "some of the worst excesses that emerged after 9/11..." He lied saying he "maintained a healthy skepticism toward our surveillance programs after (he) became president." He approved the worst of what's ongoing. He wants it continued. He wants it intensified. He wants nothing escaping NSA's spying eye. He wants it able to monitor everyone, everywhere, all the time. He wants America's fake war on terror continued. It's a war on freedom. It reflects the worst of police state lawlessness.

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Paul Craig Roberts and Dave Kranzler

United States Gold Depository, Fort Knox, Kentucky. - An
Impregnable Fortress? (Image: University of Kentucky)

The deregulation of the financial system during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes had the predictable result: financial concentration and reckless behavior. A handful of banks grew so large that financial authorities declared them “too big to fail.” Removed from market discipline, the banks became wards of the government requiring massive creation of new money by the Federal Reserve in order to support through the policy of Quantitative Easing the prices of financial instruments on the banks’ balance sheets and in order to finance at low interest rates trillion dollar federal budget deficits associated with the long recession caused by the financial crisis.

The Fed’s policy of monetizing one trillion dollars of bonds annually put pressure on the US dollar, the value of which declined in terms of gold. When gold hit $1,900 per ounce in 2011, the Federal Reserve realized that $2,000 per ounce could have a psychological impact that would spread into the dollar’s exchange rate with other currencies, resulting in a run on the dollar as both foreign and domestic holders sold dollars to avoid the fall in value. Once this realization hit, the manipulation of the gold price moved beyond central bank leasing of gold to bullion dealers in order to create an artificial market supply to absorb demand that otherwise would have pushed gold prices higher. The manipulation consists of the Fed using bullion banks as its agents to sell naked gold shorts in the New York Comex futures market. Short selling drives down the gold price, triggers stop-loss orders and margin calls, and scares participants out of the gold trusts. The bullion banks purchase the deserted shares and present them to the trusts for redemption in bullion. The bullion can then be sold in the London physical gold market, where the sales both ratify the lower price that short-selling achieved on the Comex floor and provide a supply of bullion to meet Asian demands for physical gold as opposed to paper claims on gold.

The evidence of gold price manipulation is clear. In this article we present evidence and describe the process. We conclude that ability to manipulate the gold price is disappearing as physical gold moves from New York and London to Asia, leaving the West with paper claims to gold that greatly exceed the available supply.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: Eden Abergil, former IDF soldier: "I hate Arabs and
wish them all the worst. I would happily kill them all, even butcher them." Incredibly, a commentator was worried that the worldwide stir that her statement had caused might have ruined her life. Abergil responded to the comment, making it clear to the surfer that she didn't take the issue too seriously: "No honey, they didn't ruin my life. I can't afford to have Arab-lovers ruin the perfect life I'm leading!!! I am not sorry and I do not regretttttt it." (More here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

♣ ♣ ♣

According to UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine Richard Falk, "Palestinians don't even have the right to have rights." Militarized occupation denies them. Harshness exceeding the worst of South African apartheid describes their status. The UN and Human Rights Council do nothing to help. According to Falk, they "failed to follow through in a way that is effective in bringing peace and justice to the peoples of Palestine, and until (they do, they have) no ethical or (other) basis for not trying (their) utmost to do so."

Palestinians are isolated on their own. In 1948, Israel stole 78% of their homeland. In 1967, it took the rest. Militarized occupation exists. It's lawless. It's illegitimate. It continues because world leaders do nothing to stop it. They turn a blind eye to Israel's worst crimes. They honor its war criminals. They do it disgracefully. They're complicit in their crimes. Imagine calling Ariel Sharon a hero! Imagine being saddened by his death! Imagine saying Israel is poorer without him! Imagine praising a cutthroat killer! Imagine calling him a peacemaker!

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Stephen Lendman

Expect no change going forward. Expect worse ahead than ever. Expect continuing police state lawlessness. Expect full-blown tyranny if not stopped.

Perhaps no president in US history disappointed supporters more than Obama. He pledged "change you can believe it." He promised hope. He did Lincoln one better. He fooled most people enough times to matter. He never cared about rule of law principles. He trashed them in office. He deplores democratic values. He's beholden to monied interests. "Yes we can" conceals his dark side duplicity. He made America look increasingly like Guatemala. Nothing ahead suggests change. International, constitutional and US statute laws don't matter. Bush declared them null and void. So did Obama. He presides over a ruthless police state apparatus. No one is free and safe. Big Brother watches everyone. Mass surveillance is official US policy.

On Friday, Obama will announce so-called new guidelines. He'll ask Congress for help. Expect business as usual to continue. Expect worse than ever ahead. Expect lies claiming otherwise. Ending the fake war on terror matters. So does halting mass surveillance entirely. Restoring rule of law [and] freedoms matters most. Expect Obama's war to destroy them to continue. When Bush signed the Patriot Act into law, Center for Constitutional Rights senior litigation attorney Nancy Chang asked: "What's so patriotic about trampling on the Bill of Rights?"

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Bill Van Auken

The government of Afghanistan has denounced a US airstrike on an Afghan village that took the lives of seven children and one woman on Wednesday morning.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai linked the incident to the continuing tensions with Washington over his postponement of signing a bilateral security agreement (BSA) that would allow some 12,000 US troops to remain in the country indefinitely after the formal deadline for withdrawing all foreign occupation forces at the end of this year.

According to both the Karzai government and the governor of Parwan province, where the massacre took place, the incident began when US special operations troops attempted to enter a home in the Ghorband district, about 25 miles north of the capital of Kabul.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force released a statement on the raid saying that the bombing was ordered after US and Afghan government forces came under attack and “required defensive air support to suppress the enemy fire.”

The statement added that ISAF “regrets that civilians were killed” in the attack, while claiming that the operation had been “Afghan-led.” In addition to the civilians, ISAF reported one US Special Forces soldier killed, as well as 10 “insurgents.”

According to the US military, the operation targeted two Taliban leaders identified as Qari Nzar Gul and Moorullah, who were believed to be in the district. The area has in the recent period become increasingly contested by armed opposition forces and apparently a base of operations for attacks on the US-controlled Bagram Air Base.

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James Petras

Introduction: Saudi Arabia has all the vices and none of the virtues of an oil rich state like Venezuela. The country is governed by a family dictatorship which tolerates no opposition and severely punishes human rights advocates and political dissidents. Hundreds of billions in oil revenues are controlled by the royal despotism and fuel speculative investments the world over.

The ruling elite relies on the purchase of Western arms and US military bases for protection. The wealth of productive nations is syphoned to enrich the conspicuous consumption of the Saudi ruling family. The ruling elite finances the most fanatical, retrograde, misogynist version of Islam, “Wahhabi” a sect of Sunni Islam.

Faced with internal dissent from repressed subjects and religious minorities, the Saudi dictatorship perceives threats and dangers from all sides: overseas, secular, nationalists and Shia ruling governments; internally, moderate Sunni nationalists, democrats and feminists; within the royalist cliques, traditionalists and modernizers. In response it has turned toward financing, training and arming an international network of Islamic terrorists who are directed toward attacking, invading and destroying regimes opposed to the Saudi clerical-dictatorial regime.

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Bill Van Auken

No branch of the US government—executive, legislative or judicial—and no section of the US ruling establishment has any serious commitment to democratic and constitutional rights.

The Obama White House is preparing a National Security Agency “reform” package that is aimed at legitimizing and institutionalizing the NSA’s illegal domestic spying operations, while putting in place stringent security measures to prevent disclosures of its crimes such as those carried out by former contractor Edward Snowden.

President Barack Obama is set to present the so-called “reforms” in a speech he will deliver Friday at the US Justice Department. The measures he has embraced are selected from among those recommended to his administration last month by a hand-picked advisory panel dominated by former intelligence officials.

Even before Obama could make the speech, new revelations provided by Snowden have uncovered yet another sinister operation by the NSA. The latest exposure involves the agency’s secret planting of software in almost 100,000 computers, enabling it to spy on their users even when the computers are not connected to the Internet. The program uses radio waves transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards planted on the devices. The technology also provides the means for launching cyber-attacks.

“The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack," wrote the New York Times, which broke the story. “In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.”

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M. K. Bhadrakumar

What happened in the US-Indian diplomatic row over the arrest and detention of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade in New York and her return to Delhi last week is fairly straightforward: the US intelligence made a concerted attempt to “recruit” an Indian career diplomat, and Delhi successfully thwarted it.

The American side has been taken by surprise. Their perception of the working of the Indian foreign and security policy establishment turned out to be way off the mark. In the recent decade when glaring espionage activities by the CIA surfaced – when they smuggled out a top intelligence official (2004) or when they breached the security perimeters of India’s National Security Council [NSC] in 2006 – the spooks in the American embassy in Delhi got away scot-free.

Any country with self-respect would have reacted strongly when such subversive acts by a foreign power surfaced, but India chose to shove the incidents under the carpet for reasons that are beyond comprehension. Whether it was because of the sense of vulnerability on the part of the Indian functionaries holding fort in the foreign policy and security establishment at that time or because of political interference – Delhi was negotiating the nuclear deal during those years – remains anybody’s guess. All that can be said is that if the Americans developed a sneering contempt toward the Indian establishment, it wasn’t entirely their fault.

The Americans got the impression that the Indian establishment was impotent and highly vulnerable to US pressure and the elites were lacking in integrity and a sense of honor. Delhi must be one of the few capitals where minor flunkeys of the American embassy take undue freedom to backslap cabinet ministers at public receptions. Arguably, a point has been reached where it has become difficult to lend credence to media reporting – from Delhi or Washington-based reporters alike – on matters affecting the US-Indian “defining partnership”.

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Kevin Barrett

Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Minister Ariel Sharon

Ariel Sharon embodied the pure, unmitigated evil of Zionism. He was a war criminal, a terrorist, a mass murderer, a torturer, a rapist. The French term “genocidaire” also applies.

But Sharon did have one redeeming quality: He occasionally told the awful truth about himself and his country. During the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Sharon vented his real feelings in public. In a Hebrew-language interview with Israeli writer Amos Oz, Sharon said:

“Even today I volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug out from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up a few synagogues, I don’t care. And I don’t mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal… What your kind doesn't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it.”

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Stephen Lendman

A New America Foundation report suggests it. NSA spying is longstanding. It's ongoing abroad and at home. It has nothing to do with national security. It's unrelated to uncovering terrorist plots. Homegrown ones virtually don't exist. Alleged ones are hatched. They're fake. Claiming dozens were foiled in time is false. They're Big Lies. Previous articles discussed dozens of innocent victims. They included:

■ a fake shoe bomber;
■ fake underwear bomber;
■ fake Times Square bomber;
■ an earlier one there;
■ fake shampoo bombers;
■ fake Al Qaeda woman planning fake mass casualty attacks on New York landmarks;
■ fake Oregon bomber;
■ fake armed forces recruiting station bomber;
■ fake synagogue bombers;
■ fake Chicago Sears Tower bombers;
■ fake FBI and other building bombers;
■ fake National Guard, Fort Dix and Quantico marine base attackers;
■ fake 9/11 bombers;
■ fake Boston bombers; and
■ numerous others.

At issue is generating fear. Washington's fake war on terror needs public support. FBI operatives are involved. Orchestrated stings are used. Innocent victims are entrapped. Familiar schemes repeat. 9/11 is the Big Lie of our time. So is the fake war on terror.

Innocent victims languish in America's gulag. NSA spying watches everyone. It's unconstitutional. It's for police state control. It's ending privacy. It's destroying freedom.

Global spying is espionage. It's for political and economic advantage. It's to be one up on foreign competitors. It's for information used advantageously in trade, political, and military relations.

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Gilad Atzmon

"I've gotten some of my best light from bridges I've burned." ~ Don Henley

What does it take, in an era dominated by progressive identity politics, to be accepted as a fully qualified member of the Left?

Jane is a London lawyer who identifies politically ‘as a woman,’ and marches enthusiastically for human rights. Can she join? I think the answer is yes, she can.

George is a medical doctor who happens also to be a black man and identifies as ‘Black middle class.’ Can he subscribe to a progressive email group and contribute to the discussion? I hope and suspect that he can.

And what about Julie? She runs an estate agency on the posh side of town but she also identifies as a 'gay lesbian,’ can she join the parade? What a question! Of course she can.

Now Abe is an accountant and very attached to his Jewish heritage. Abe identifies as a 'secular Jew,’ can he join the anti-war movement? More than likely he can, in fact he may even, within hours of his joining, find himself in a position of leadership.

But what about Hammed, a metal worker from Birmingham? Hammed identifies as a 'Muslim’ -- can he join a Left demonstration against the War in Syria? It’s a good question and the answer is not immediately obvious at all because it’s no secret that many of those who subscribe to ‘progressive’ ideology and indeed, activism, are rather troubled by religion in general and Islam in particular.

So, while Hammed is identifying with a universal and humanist precept, Jane, ‘the woman’, Julie ‘the Gay Lesbian’ and George ‘the Black’ openly subscribe to biologically-determined political identities. Furthermore, Abe, Identifying as a secular Jew, affiliates himself with a blood-based ethnocentric tribal identity. Clearly, the Left has no problem with such marginal and exclusivist political identities.

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Jamal Kanj

In memory of my cousin Saleh and for all those people he massacred throughout his murderous career, I will forever remember Sharon as a decorated butcher.

My friend and I were on a cross-country flight from San Diego to Washington, DC on Saturday, September 18, 1982. We arrived at our friends’ home with gleaming smiles, but were received with dejected expressions.

“Haven’t you heard the news?” they asked. “What news?” we replied. “The massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in and around Sabra and Shatila camps,” was their wretched response.

Needless to say we were glued to the TV listening to trickling reports from inside the camps and watching bloated bodies of women and children paraded on TV screens. Starting at 6pm on September 16 until 8am on September 18, the Israeli-armed Lebanese Phalange militia went on a killing spree while the Israeli army besieged the camps – stopping anyone from fleeing the massacre.

American reporter Janet Lee Stevens, who was one of the first foreign journalists to enter the camps, described the scene and documented:

“Children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles”

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William N. Grigg

“See these fists?” Ramos gloatingly said as he snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “They’re getting ready to f**k you up.”

Manuel Ramos and Jay Cincinelli, who were among the six Fullerton, California officers involved in the July 5, 2011 gang beating of Thomas, are currently [January 2, 2014] on trial for involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder. [Ramos now acquitted of all charges.]

Kelly Thomas wasn’t beaten to death by a thugscrum of eight police officers; he simply happened to die while they were striking, kicking, and choking him. That’s what Dr. Steven Karch would have us believe, or at least pretend to. Karch was paid handsomely to peddle puerile lies on behalf of the defense.

Thomas, who had no criminal record, was repeatedly tasered and beaten with batons while the assailants chanted the shared refrain of rapists and police officers: “Stop resisting!” At one point, Cincinelli – frustrated that Thomas didn’t simply submit and die – clubbed the victim in the face with the butt of his Taser. (“We ran out of options,” Cincinelli later explained, “so I got the end of my Taser and I … just smashed his face to hell.”) Numerous eyewitnesses testified that the attack continued long after Thomas was inert and motionless.

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Stephen Lendman

It rages in Israel. It's worse in Washington. It infests most other Western states. Despots rule most regional ones. They dominate other parts of the world. State terror harms global billions. Human torment is extreme. Sharonian evil reflects what's ongoing. More on Palestinian suffering below.

On January 13, Haaretz headlined "Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon laid to rest in state funeral." World dignitaries were there. Showing up honored a mass murderer. Attendees did it disgracefully. They have their own dark crosses to bear. Nations represented partnered with Sharon's crimes. They support Israel's worst ones. They commit their own.

On Sunday, Sharon's body lay in state. Netanyahu, Shimon Peres and Joe Biden delivered keynote addresses. Other foreign dignitaries arrived. Countries represented included America, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Australia, Russia, the Philippines and Singapore. No Arab states were represented. Nor China, Japan, India or Turkey. None from South or Central America. Egypt was the only African one. South Africa sent no one.

No foreign dignitaries attended Yitzhak Shamir's 2012 funeral. He lay in state like Sharon. He did so in Israel's Knesset. When Menachem Begin died in 1992, tens of thousands marched to Jerusalem's Mount of Olives. No foreign dignitaries joined them. Honoring Sharon shows how low they've sunk. Some Israeli officials bristled because of too few foreign countries represented. Those coming shamed themselves.

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Stephen Lendman

On January 11, Ariel Sharon died. He's not missed. A previous article discussed his blood-drenched military and political career. It did so in depth. It explained his decades of high crimes against peace. They began before Israel's creation. They continued until his debilitating stroke induced coma. It occurred in January 2006.

Sharon was pure evil. He was satanic. He was no saint. A special place in hell awaited him. It now claims him. His criminal legacy remains. It's indisputable. It's well documented. Eulogizers largely ignored it. They did so shamelessly. Obama and other world leaders praised him. A previous article quoted them. They ignored his high crimes. They have plenty of their own to answer for. The same place in hell awaits them. Bill Clinton is one of many US unindicted war criminals. He was complicit in Sharon's crimes. One war criminal honored another. He issued a statement saying:

Ariel Sharon gave his life to Israel to bring it into being, to sustain and preserve it, and at the end of his long service, to create a new political party committed to both a just peace and lasting security. It was an honor to work with him, argue with him and watch him always trying to find the right path for his beloved country.

Congressional members mourned Sharon. House Speaker John Boehner (R. OH) called him "one of the greatest warrior-statesmen in modern history. His "contribution to establishing and defending Israel's independence is incalculable, and his devotion to peace undisputed." George W. Bush called him a "man of peace." Vice President Joe Biden said he'll lead a US delegation to his memorial service. He'll do so "to pay tribute to the unshakeable partnership between the United States and Israel." John Kerry said his "journey was Israel's journey. The dream of Israel was the cause of his life, and he risked it all to live that dream." He did so over the corpses of many thousands of Palestinian civilians he slaughtered in cold blood. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R. KY) said "Israel lost one of its greatest sons and America a friend." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D. CA) called him "a powerful voice for his beliefs and values." He "always maintained the courage of his convictions." Other congressional members offered praise. They did so when condemnation is demanded.

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