Stephen Lendman

Obama long ago lost credibility. Nothing he says can be believed. He lies, deceives and misinforms. His political career reflects it. He can't be trusted.

On August 28, he held a short press conference. He did so ahead of America's Labor Day weekend.

He began with a statement before taking questions. It's painful listening to his dissembling. His comments exclude telling Americans what they most need to know.

Willful deception substitutes. His agenda excludes good faith. His public posturing reflects it. His war against American workers went unexplained ahead of the day commemorating their struggles. His support for corporate America facilitates permanent job losses, lower wages, fewer benefits, gutted work rules, less health and safety protection, and forfeited security through lost benefits and pensions.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The cumulative effect of lie piled upon lie for most people is to build the view that the Russians are up to no good. Once this view is established, Western governments can take more serious moves against Russia.

The latest Washington lie, this one coming from NATO, is that Russia has invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops and self-propelled artillery. - How do we know that this is a lie? Is it because we have heard nothing but lies about Russia from NATO, from US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, from assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, from Obama and his entire regime of pathological liars, and from the British, German, and French governments along with the BBC and the entirety of the Western media?

This, of course, is a good reason for knowing that the latest Western propaganda is a lie. Those who are pathological liars don’t suddenly start telling the truth. But there are even better reasons for understanding that Russia has not invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops.

NATO Releases Satellite Imagery “Proof” That Russia Has
Invaded Ukraine...and that allegedly show Russian combat
forces engaged in military operations inside Ukraine...

One reason is that Putin has invested heavily in diplomacy backed by unprovocative behavior. He would not risk his bet on diplomacy by sending in troops too few in number to have a decisive effect on the outcome.

Another reason is that if Putin decides he has no alternative to sending the Russian military to protect the Russian residents in eastern and southern Ukraine, Putin will send in enough troops to do the job quickly as he did in Georgia when the American and Israeli trained Georgian army invaded South Ossetia and was destroyed in a few hours by the Russian response. If you hear that 100,000 Russian troops accompanied by air cover have invaded Ukraine, it would be a more believable claim.

A third reason is that the Russian military does not need to send troops into Ukraine in order to stop the bombing and artillery shelling of the Russian populations by Washington’s puppet government in Kiev. The Russian air force can easily and quickly destroy the Ukrainian air force and artillery and, thereby, stop the Ukrainian attack on the secessionist provinces.

It was only two weeks ago that a fabricated report spread by the UK Guardian and the BBC that a Russian armored convoy entered Ukraine and was destroyed by the Ukrainian Military. And two weeks prior to that we had the hoax of the satellite images allegedly released by the US State Department that the corrupt US ambassador in Kiev spread around the world on social media allegedly showing that Russian forces were firing into Ukraine. One or two weeks from now we will have another lie, and another a week or two after that, and so on.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The United States, wallowing in arrogance and hubris, pretends to be “the world’s sole superpower,” the “exceptional and indispensable nation” chosen by history to exercise hegemony over the world. In truth, the US is the two-bit punk puppet of the Israel Lobby. If the Zionist government orders Washington to eat dog excrement, Washington eats it.

Not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Military could get the facts acknowledged that Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, which made casualties of most of the crew, was not a “mistake,” but the intentional act of destruction of a US Navy vessel and its crew.

Not even state universities in the hinterlands of America are independent of the Israel Lobby, which can determine tenure and hiring decisions independently of the decisions of faculty and deans. Thanks to the cowardice and integrity deficit of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign chancellor Phyllis Wise, Professor Steven Salaita is the latest victim of the Israel Lobby. Salaita was a tenured professor at Virginia Tech. He resigned his position to accept a job offered to him by the University of Illinois only to find that the chancellor, with no basis whatsoever in law for her decision, told him that she, and she alone, “revoked” his job offer.

Why did Phyllis Wise allow her university to make a job offer to Steven Salatia that caused him to resign his tenured position at a distinguished academic institution (where I once taught) in order to accept the Illinois offer and then pull the rug out from under Salatia?

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Stephen Lendman

Anti-Russian lies keep repeating. So many proliferate, it hard keeping up. The latest is over-the-top and then some. It accuses Russia of launching a major offensive against Ukrainian forces. Accusations without evidence are made.

Kiev sources are cited. They've been caught red-handed lying many times. Nothing they say is credible. It doesn't matter. Major media scoundrels repeat their rubbish like gospel. More on this below.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki claimed unsubstantiated reports "indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway in Donetsk and Luhansk."

"(W)e're also concerned by the Russian Government's unwillingness to tell the truth even as its soldiers are found 30 miles inside Ukraine," [she said]. "Russia is sending its young men into Ukraine but are telling - are not telling them where they’re going or telling their parents what they’re doing."

Asked why she said "likely" instead of saying a Russian invasion is underway, Psaki said she "decided to say likely." "But why," she was asked? "(L)ikely implies…some uncertainty because there is a possibility that it's not." Psaki ducked the question. She merely cited "a range of (unsubstantiated) reports." "Well, is it an invasion," she was asked? "(A)re we seeing, like, brigades or divisions crossing the borders into Ukraine?" "I don't have any other details to read out for you at this point in time," she said.

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Paul Craig Roberts

According to Lenin, the Soviet government rested “directly on force, not limited by anything, not restricted by any laws, nor any absolute rules.” (V.I. Lenin, “A Contribution to the History of the Question of the Dictatorship,” October 20, 1920, in Collected Works, 4th Russian edition, p. 326.)

In the 21st century the US government has echoed Lenin. No laws, domestic or international, restrain the US from torture. Laws do not prevent the US from attacking sovereign countries or from conducting military operations within the borders of sovereign countries. Constitutional protections and due process do not prevent the US from detaining citizens indefinitely or from murdering them on suspicion or accusation alone.

The latest manifestation of Washington’s Leninism is Washington’s announcement that the US government has no plans to coordinate US attacks on ISIS on Syrian territory with the Syrian government. Washington recognizes no limitations on its use of force, and the sovereignty of countries provides no inhibition. In Washington coercion has supplanted the rule of law.

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Kevin Barrett

With the news of the truce stipulating the end of the blockade of Gaza, Palestine erupted in victory celebrations Tuesday.

After nearly two months of vicious and pointless Zionist assaults on hospitals, ambulances, UN emergency shelters, high-rise apartment buildings, children playing soccer, and other non-military targets, Palestine has emerged as the clear winner in the latest round of conflict.

The bottom line: no amount of Zionist butchery can break the Palestinians' spirit of resistance.

Will Israel respect the truce and lift the blockade? Or will the Zionists break their word, as they so often do?

Either way, the Palestinians have won. Israel's failure to achieve any of its military objectives, and its loss of any international respect it may have had due to outrageous massacres of civilians, have handed the Palestinians victory on a silver platter. In the larger sweep of history, this summer's Gaza war will be seen as a decisive step toward the end of the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

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zuddhi

After 51 Days Of Destruction, Invaders Lose Out

Despite having an advanced, American-donated military, dutiful puppets in governments worldwide and a patron with veto-power in the United Nations Security Council, “Israel” still lost.

It wrought massive and far reaching destruction of infrastructure as well as agricultural lands, homes and historic mosques. It made roughly half a million Palestinians in Gaza homeless, killed over 2100, wiped out nearly 100 families entirely and made almost two thousand children orphans.

But it could not break Gaza. It did not destroy all or even a significant fraction of tunnels, nor the ability of resistance in Gaza to respond to its barbaric savagery.

It also committed blatant war crimes in full view of the world, which will be impossible to explain away. The International Criminal Court will not accept cartoons as proof, nor will the pretext that over 10000 houses all had rocket launchers inside in the kitchens. The enormity and savagery of the genocide shocked the conscience of the world in a way that other conflicts haven’t and brought millions out into the streets to demand their governments stop capitulating to Jewish power politics and lobbies. The public of the world was horrified, disgusted and enraged that the population of the largest open-air prison in the world was subject to such brutality with nary a peep from the UN or our governments, most particularly the Americans (whose public, despite being larger than Britain’s, did not take to the streets en masse).

Regardless, the southern land of “Israel” was shut down, as was its airport and large sections of its economy, most notably tourism. And while Jewish media in “Israel” try to put a happy face and bluster with typical bravado about how ‘the khamas was khumiliated’ not even the Jewish public believes it.

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Bill Van Auken

While Washington is preparing to intervene in Syria on the pretense of defeating ISIS, its goal remains regime-change—the toppling of what would be a third secular Arab head of state.

President Barack Obama delivered a militarist speech Tuesday to the annual convention of the American Legion in Charlotte, North Carolina amid reports that US spy drones are already operating over Syria and air strikes could begin there by the end of this week.

Obama told the veterans’ organization that “the United States is and will remain the one indispensable nation in the world,” a boast that is belied by the bloody debacle unleashed throughout North Africa and the Middle East by a string of US military interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Turning to the present intervention in Iraq following the overrunning of much of the country by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a split-off from Al Qaeda, the US president reiterated the formal pretexts for US military action: protecting “our diplomats and military advisors who are there,” and humanitarian assistance.

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John W. Whitehead

“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.” ~ D.H. Lawrence

No matter what your perspective on the showdown between locals and law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri, there can be no disputing the fact that “local” police should not be looking or acting like branches of the military.

Unfortunately, in the police state that is America today, we’re going to find ourselves revisiting Ferguson over and over again. Every time an unarmed citizen gets shot by a police officer who is armed to the hilt, or inclined to shoot first and ask questions later, or so concerned about their own safety, to the exclusion of all else, that everything becomes a potential threat, we’ll find ourselves back in Ferguson territory again.

Here’s the thing, though: whether or not it ever gets reported, whether it incites any protests or marches or showdowns of epic proportions, whether it elicits any outrage on the part of the citizenry, Ferguson is already happening over and over again, all around us.

It’s happening in small towns and big cities alike every time a citizen gets stopped and frisked for no better reason than they “look” suspicious. It’s happening on the nation’s highways and byways, where corporate greed disguised as road safety is making a hefty profit off of drivers who have the misfortune of passing a red light camera or a speed camera or a license plate reader. It’s happening in the privately run jails, which are teeming with prisoners doing time for nonviolent crimes that should have landed them with a slap on the wrist and a fine instead of hard time and forced labor.

It’s happening in our airports and train stations and shopping malls, where menacing squads of black-garbed, jack-booted, up-armored soldiers disguised as law enforcement officials are subjecting Americans to roving security checkpoints, allegedly in the pursuit of terrorists. And it’s happening in the schools, where the school-to-prison pipeline is fully operational and busy churning out newly minted citizens of the American police state who have been taught the hard way what it means to comply and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

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Jeff Halper

Operation Protective Edge was not merely a military assault on a primarily civilian population. As in its previous “operations” (Cast Lead in 2008-9 and Pillar of Defense in 2012), it was also part of an ongoing assault on international humanitarian law (IHL) by a highly coordinated team of Israeli lawyers, military officers, PR people and politicians, led by (no less) a philosopher of ethics. It is an effort not only to get Israel off the hook for massive violations of human rights and international law, but to help other governments overcome similar constraints when they embark as well on “asymmetrical warfare,” “counterinsurgency” and “counter-terrorism” against peoples resisting domination. It is a campaign that Israel calls “lawfare” and had better be taken seriously by us all.

The urgency of this campaign has been underscored by a series of notable legal setbacks and challenges Israel has incurred over the past decade or so, beginning with the indictment of Ariel Sharon in 2001 by a Belgian court over his involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, for which he escaped trial. In the wake of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, when Sharon’s government oversaw the demolition of hundreds of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, the utter destruction of virtually all the infrastructure of Palestinian cities, the death of 497 Palestinians and the arrest of 7000 people, Israel was accused of war crimes, but succeeded in foiling a UN investigation.

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Peter Hart

The New York Times published this photo of Palestinian wo-
men mourning children killed in an Israeli airstrike under the
heading "Telling Blows Against Hamas." (W. Nassar/NYT)

Though it has faded somewhat from the headlines, Israel's war on Gaza is still going on, with a round of airstrikes that killed dozens this week. And how was this reported in the New York Times? As Hamas breaking a cease-fire agreement.

Jodi Rudoren's dispatch (8/21/14) begins with a rather astonishing lead:

Hamas is the party that keeps extending this summer's bloody battle in the Gaza Strip, repeatedly breaking temporary truces and vowing to endlessly fire rockets into Israel until its demands are met.

The idea that it has been Hamas that has "repeatedly" broken cease-fire agreements is deeply misleading. An August 1 agreement, for instance, broke down under disputed circumstances (FAIR Blog, 8/6/14), with Hamas claiming that its attack on Israeli soldiers inside Gaza came before the cease-fire was to start. The Israeli reaction was a massive attack on Rafah that killed dozens.

But declaring Hamas to be the party that rejects good faith efforts to stop the fighting is common (Electronic Intifada, 7/15/14), while little attention is paid to Hamas offers of a cease-fire or truce, one of which came very early in the war (Mondoweiss, 7/16/14). And when there is evidence that Israel has violated a new cease-fire agreement–as was the case on August 4–media reports do their best to obscure this fact (FAIR Blog, 8/6/14).

On a more fundamental level, Israel's insistence on maintaining a blockade on Gaza is itself an act of war–meaning that most discussions about "ending" the conflict are really about how to extend a state of war against Gaza.

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Roman Baudzus

Introduction by Paul Craig Roberts: Dear Friends: I am pleased to be able to share with you this revealing article written for our website by the editor of an important website in Germany. Washington’s lies echoed by the presstitute media that serves Washington are destroying Washington’s credibility and that of the Western media among Europeans, especially Germans who understand that the threat to peace comes from across the Atlantic, not from east of the Oder River. The success or failure of Vladimir Putin’s bet that reasonable diplomacy and unprovocative behavior on Russia’s part will contrast favorably with the shrill provocations by Washington depends upon whether European politicians respond to their own citizens or continue in their role as Washington’s whores.

In the aftermath of the downing of the Malaysian airliner in Ukraine, the Western media followed Washington’s lead and manipulated reports in order to make Europeans believe that Russia and Russian-supported separatists in eastern Ukraine were responsible for downing the airliner. In Germany, the press was an extension of Washington’s propaganda machine despite the lack of evidence from both Washington and Kiev to support their irresponsible claims.

It was not long, however, before the public mood in Europe began to turn. A pivotal factor was openly voiced U.S. threats in a law that had been passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate of the U.S. Congress that could eventually result in an invasion of the Netherlands by United States army forces.

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Kevin Barrett

Israel calls itself a "Jewish state". Al-Baghdadi's terrorist group calls itself "Islamic State." — Both of these terrorist entities define themselves in terms of rigidly sectarian ideologies. Both are squatting on stolen land. Both brutally trample on the rights of those they consider lesser beings – simply because they hold "second-class" religious views. And both proudly commit horrendous atrocities.

The world's Jews are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with so-called State of Israel, which purports to represent them without ever having asked their permission. (Israel defines itself as the so-called state of, by and for all Jews, and gives all Jews everywhere the automatic right to Israeli citizenship – while denying citizenship to most non-Jews, including the vast majority of Palestinians, simply because they profess another religion.)

Ex-liberal-Zionist Anthony Lerman, writing in the New York Times, has just written a political obituary entitled "The End of Liberal Zionism." Like many other Jews, Lerman recognizes that it is becoming impossible for liberal, tolerant, reasonable Jewish people to continue to support the so-called Jewish State of Israel.

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Eric S. Margolis

Is the orchestrated outrage over Foley the media prelude to direct US intervention in Syria?

The beheading of freelance journalist James Foley by the shadowy ISIS (or Islamic State) has sparked outrage and horror around the globe.

After three decades of covering wars in the Mideast, Africa, Latin America, and Afghanistan, my reaction as a journalist was also outrage – but cautious outrage.

We westerners have a charming and quaint belief that killing people from the air by using bombs, rockets, shells, napalm and cluster munitions – or even nuclear weapons – is somehow not really as bad as ramming a bayonet into an enemy, blowing him to pieces with heavy artillery, or slashing his throat the way sheep are killed.

Air warfare is clean. Air warfare is the American way of war.

Furthermore, on the same day Foley was being decapitated, 19 people in Saudi Arabia, a close US ally, were publicly beheaded for various crimes. One of the men was executed for witchcraft. There was no outcry at all over this medieval horror. Saudi Arabia is suspected of charging political opponents of the monarchy with drug offenses, which carry the penalty of beheading by a sword-wielding executioner.

Not a peep about this in the US media trumpeting the Foley story.

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Gilad Atzmon Interviewed by Alimuddin Usmani for Egalité et Réconciliation

Alimuddin Usmani: As I write to you, the ceasefire has, once again, collapsed between Israel and Palestinian fighters in Gaza. In its attempt to kill Hamas armed wing leader, Mohammed Deif, the IDF failed, and instead killed his wife and infant son. It is increasingly clear that Israel is stuck in this conflict and doesn't know how to end it. You were the first to say that Israel was "desperate for a break in the violence." How were you able to predict this outcome when most analysts failed?

Gilad Atzmon: Unlike the Jewish ‘progressive’ commentators who have dominated the Palestinian solidarity discourse for about two decades, I am a reactionary essentialist. I believe that events in history and politics become meaningful only when analyzed within an rigorous essentialist context. Righteous progressive Jews suffocate the discourse with tons of anecdotal details in order to conceal the Jewish ideology at the core of the crimes committed by the Jewish State and the Lobby. I firmly believe that every Israeli and Jewish collective political activity from AIPAC to Mondoweiss can be understood within the framework of Jewish culture, ideology and heritage.

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