Stephen Lendman

Demagogic doublespeak dots his rhetoric. So do mumbo jumbo Big Lies. They systematically drown out truth. It's consistent Obama policy. He mocks democratic values. Justifying the unjustifiable. Defending the indefensible. Supporting the unthinkable. Believing militarism is the be all and end all. Waging permanent wars on humanity. It may not survive on his watch.

Removing him is a moral imperative. An urgent necessity. He presides over a police state apparatus. He institutionalized tyranny. It's headed toward full-blown. He's advancing America's imperium ruthlessly. He's a war criminal multiple times over. He's guilty of high crimes against peace. He risks WW III.

On October 11, he spoke in San Francisco. At a scripted DNC event. Selected guests alone were invited. He repeated one Big Lie after another. "(N)ews lately has been dominated by what's taking place overseas," he said. He bears full responsibility for what he called "scary to people, and understandably so."

His Afghan war continues. It's America's longest conflict. Responsible for millions of deaths. No end in sight looms. He made Libya a cauldron of violence. A dystopian wasteland. North Africa's most developed country no longer exists. He's waging Iraq War III. Without Security Council or congressional authorization. All US wars are illegal. Aggressive. Premeditated. Ones of choice.

Obama bears full responsibility for Syria's war. In March 2011, he launched it. Using imported proxy death squads. Radicalized Islamists. US special forces and CIA operatives arm, fund, train and direct them. Deploy them against Assad. Wanting pro-Western stooge governance replacing him. Bombing since late September. Headed for deploying US troops. Hundreds infest Iraq already. Perhaps many more covertly.

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Richard Seymour

I'll tell you what I think. I think this country is going to the dogs. I think it's being flooded, over-run, taken over. By thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of right-wing racist scum.

You can't even hear proper English spoken on a train any more. It's all "faaackin immigrants" this and "faaaackin immigrants" that. And they're not happy behind the privet-hedges any more. They're not comfortable in their cosy little ruts, their weekends of beer, barbecues and bigotry. They suddenly think they can run the country.

I wish I could say that this was the UKIPisation of politics. The answer then would be simple: send them back. Send them back to their provinces, their suburbs, their village Wetherspoon's, their urban overspill conurbations, their motorway service stations famed for dogging. But it's much, much worse than that.

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Stephen Lendman

Nahida Izzat: The Expression of Hatred for Gentiles

Decades of Israeli high crimes against peace are reason enough for all Jews [who are] for justice to renounce Judaism.

Shlomo Sand for one. On October 10, he headlined his London Guardian commentary " 'I wish to resign and cease considering myself a Jew.' "

Zionism harms Jews and non-Jews alike. Its roots date from the late 19th century.

In his book titled "Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine," Joel Kovel said:

Zionism seeks "the restoration of tribalism in the guise of a modern, highly militarized and aggressive state." It "cut Jews off from (their) history…It "led to a fateful identity of interests with antisemitism the only thing that united them." It "fell into the ways of imperialist expansion and militarism…(It) show(s) signs of the fascist malignancy." If you accept "the idea of a Jewish state," you mix its twin notions of "particularism (and) exceptionalism…" They're "the bane of Judaism…" They give "racism an objective, enduring, institutionalized and obdurate character." Doing so turns Israel "into a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses…"

Three former prime ministers were terrorists. Menachem Begin (1977 - 83), Yitzhak Shamir (1983 - 84 and 1986 - 92), and Ariel Sharon (2001 - 06) dispelled the illusion of Israeli democracy, morality and respect for rule of law principles. Today's "world would be a far better place without Zionism('s) corrosive effects," Kovel stresses.

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Paul Craig Roberts

I have come to the conclusion that the West is a vast lie machine for the secret agendas of vested interests. Consider, for example, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnership.

These so-called “partnerships” are in fact vehicles by which US corporations make themselves immune to the sovereign laws of foreign countries in which they do business. A sovereign country that attempts to enforce its laws against an American corporation can be sued by the corporation for “restraint of trade.” For example, if Monsanto wants to sell GMO seeds in France or US corporations wish to sell genetically-modified foods in France, and France enforces its laws against GMOs, the Transatlantic Trade Partnership allows France to be sued in jurisdictions outside the courts of France for “restraint of trade.” In other words, preventing the entry into France of a prohibited product constitutes restraint of trade.

This is the reason that the US has insisted that the Transatlantic and Transpacific Partnerships be totally secretive and negotiated outside the democratic process. Not even the US Congress has been permitted knowledge of the negotiations.

Obviously, the Europeans and Asians who are agreeing with the terms of these “partnerships” are the bought-and-paid-for agents of the US corporations. If the partnerships go through, the only law in Europe and Asia will be US law. The European and Asian government officials who agree to the hegemony of US corporations over the laws of their countries will be so handsomely paid that they could enter the realm of the One Percent.

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Paul Craig Roberts

A number of readers have read reports that the CIA was active in West Africa just prior to the ebola outbreak, and some have read reports that the ebola strain is a weaponized version engineered to spread by air and surface contact. Some readers ask me to confirm or refute these reports, and others want to know if the One Percent or the Bilderbergers have started the process of eliminating the surplus population.

The only people who would be able to answer these questions would be the people responsible, if such a plot is actually underway. Even then, the warning would likely to ignored or discredited. A top NSA official, William Binney, told us years ago about the illegal and unconstitutional NSA spying, but nothing was done about it. Edward Snowden told us again, and the response was to label him a Russian or Chinese spy. Congress has not conducted a meaningful investigation. No heads have rolled. The presstitute media attacks Snowden, not the NSA. And so on.

Although I cannot answer the questions, I can draw important conclusions from the fact that so many are asking them. It is clear as day that the US government has lost credibility among large segments of the American population as well as abroad. Increasingly, Americans do not believe their government or the media that lies for the government. This is why the print and TV media are on the decline, making it easier for the CIA to buy the media to serve its agendas.

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Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The United States is doing its best to estrange the European Union from Russia to get the upper hand in a free trade deal, and also, to manipulate European countries into buying America’s relatively more expensive natural gas.

The TTIP and Ukraine - The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a Euro-Atlantic free trade agreement that is the subject of ongoing negotiations between the US and the EU. The deadline for finalizing the TTIP free trade agreement is in 2015. Its goal is to create what is referred to as the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) and to cement the European Union with the United States as one supranational trading bloc.

These trade negations have been passing under the public’s radar, because they have been taking place very discreetly behind closed doors. The very TTIP’s name is designed to conceal, and was selected by policy and trade mandarins, because of their fears that a public backlash could erupt against the negotiations, as it did in the case of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) talks in 2001. Like the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which was signed in Ottawa between Canada and the EU on September 26, wordsmiths calculatingly picked the name TTIP to try to hide the fact that it is a free trade agreement.

Washington is doing its best to disrupt trade ties between its EU partners and the Russian Federation in order to get greater leverage in the TTIP negotiations. Its strategy is to economically weaken its European partners by getting them to cut ties with Moscow through anti-Russia sanctions that will directly hurt their economies too. Washington calculates that this will force a weakened EU to maximize the economic concessions to the US in the TTIP talks.

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Vladislav Gulevich

The independent Ukraine boasts a rather short history. The relations with minorities have never been a feather in the hat of Kiev authorities. The real state of things was largely muted to make it a smouldering problem. The «national revolution» has exacerbated the situation to the boiling point, especially talking about Hungarians and Romanians.

Romanians are the second largest group in Bucovina (historically the region has been Russian, now the northern part of it belongs to Ukraine). 97% Romanians live in Chernovitsy (115 thousand) and Transcarpathia (32 thousand). According to CEMES (Centre for European Migration and Ethnic Studies), the main problems faced by the Romanian community are social development and their low representative proportion in higher education and in professional work. Numerous reports from Romanian-based sources raise concerns for the situation of the Romanian minority in Ukraine and specifically criticize the availability of educational opportunities in the Romanian language. The 2012 law «On the principles of the state language policy» was abolished as a result of the 2014 coup pouring even more fuel on the discontent among Ukrainian Romanians. Kiev refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing when reproached for its neglect of Romanian culture. This attitude makes the situation worse. In June 2014 the Bessarabia Romanians held a convention in Odessa with assistance of Romanian Cultural Institute (Romania). There were many voices raised calling for opening new Romanian cultural centers (there are too few of them and quite often the staff has no command of the language). The head of Odessa regional national-cultural association Bessarabia said that the main problem for the Romanian community in the Odessa region is the availability of schools teaching in Romanian language and their funding.

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Les Visible

ISIS stands for, The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria AND ISIL stands for, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. I mention this because I am pretty sure that most people do not know what these acronyms or initialisms are. This is human nature. Our eyes see things and our minds bounce off of them. It's human nature. A trained professional focus is something possessed by competent scientists, detectives; people who must have it in order to be effective at what they do. Hermetic Scientists and Occult Scientists, competent Metaphysicians must also possess this, IF... they expect to get anywhere useful or profound in their efforts. Of course, with these last avocations, one needs more than a trained professional focus. One is engaged in a pursuit that can turn dangerous and which requires, besides an unusual skill set, certain qualities of being that must be strong enough to stand against certain 'inevitable' tests. This is why I state, unequivocally, one must have help.

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Stephen Lendman

It was just a matter of time before China surpassed America as the world's leading economy based on purchasing power parity (PPP). It's an exchange rate between currencies measured by the cost of a representative basket of goods in one country v. another.

Surprisingly, China's growth happened faster than experts expected. In 2011, IMF economists estimated it would overtake America in 2016. At the time, they projected its PPP GDP at $18,975.7 trillion v. $18,807.5 trillion for America. They now estimate America's 2014 PPP GDP at $17.4 trillion v. $17.6 trillion for China.

The speed of China's growth is remarkable. As recently as 2005, its economy was less than half the size of America's. By 2019, IMF economists expect it to be 20% larger based on PPP. Its phenomenon reflects overall emerging market growth v. developed ones. In 2007, they accounted for around half of global output. It's now about 57% and rising. By the 2020s, it may approach, reach or surpass two-thirds. Overall emerging market growth is extraordinary by any standard. Since 2007, it's ninefold what developed nations achieved. Analysts call China's growth over the past three and a half decades one of the greatest success stories in modern times.

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John Pilger

In transmitting President Richard Nixon's orders for a "massive" bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, "Anything that flies on everything that moves". As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger's murderous honesty.

As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery - including the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields - I am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again. A telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had much in common with today's Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They, too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.

According to Pol Pot, his movement had consisted of "fewer than 5,000 poorly armed guerrillas uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty and leaders". Once Nixon's and Kissinger's B52 bombers had gone to work as part of "Operation Menu", the west's ultimate demon could not believe his luck.

The Americans dropped the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on rural Cambodia during 1969-73. They levelled village after village, returning to bomb the rubble and corpses. The craters left monstrous necklaces of carnage, still visible from the air. The terror was unimaginable. A former Khmer Rouge official described how the survivors "froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half-crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told... That was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over."

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Gilad Atzmon

Jews and philosophy have had a pretty troubled relationship. The collision between ‘the tribal’ and ‘the universal’ or, more accurately, between Jerusalem and Athens, is inevitable. The few great Jewish thinkers who transcended the tribal, such as Spinoza or Otto Weininger, have been harassed and labelled by the rabbis as ‘self haters’ and enemies of the Jews.

Some contemporary Zionist merchants insist upon wrapping their Judeo centrism in crypto philosophical arguments. Bernard-Henri Levy, for instance, advocates his Zionist warmongering using a pseudo ‘moralist’ terminology.

Today I came across a uniquely banal rant by Asa Kasher, a Jewish ‘philosopher’ at Tel Aviv University. Kasher, who also authored the ‘IDF ethical code,’ defended Israel’s military conduct in the recent Gaza campaign in an article published in the Jewish Review of Books.

Kasher wrote, “Hamas unscrupulously violates every norm in the book.” And I wonder, what book? I would like to find out, at a minimum, what ‘book’ grants the Jewish State the right to uproot an entire nation in the name of a Jewish homecoming? Is there a book that permits the Jews to turn a city into an open-air prison? Is there a book that legitimates reducing Gaza into a pile of rubble? I am afraid that the answer is affirmative. There is more than one such book. But these books aren’t exactly philosophical texts. These books are the prime Judaic texts. The Talmud and The Old Testament are suffocated by Goy hatred and stories of Jews and their God pouring their ‘wrath on the Goyim.’ Rabbinical Judaism has historically been very careful in the way it treated some of those vile and barbaric Judaic verses and teachings. But Israel and Zionism draw inspiration from those genocidal verses, and the outcome is evident in the shattered urban landscape of Gaza.

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Sam Kriss

Pictured: front-page reviews of Stephen Fry’s latest TV drama

Hallowe’en is coming. If, like all sensible decent right-thinking people, you live in the temperate portion of the northern hemisphere, you’ll have noticed its portents already. The night draws its claws from one languidly extended arm; the days are racked by a series of shuddering contractions. These temporal shifts leave debris everywhere. As we begin to approach the winter solstice the nocturnal howls of the neighbourhood dogs are drawn out longer and longer with every passing night; by the time Christmas starts to roll around even the flimsiest yappiest terrier can sustain a single note for up to thirty-five minutes. Meanwhile as the sunlight hours – or what passes for them – are condensed into an ever-smaller period of time, the tiny specks of water vapour in the air are forced together: the clear skies of summer cloud over, and it rains for days on end. Maybe it’s all the fault of the trees. When their leaves crinkle into those soft yellows and burnished browns people are so fond of it’s because they’re being filled with a summer’s worth of poisons. Then the leaves fall and get mulched up into the earth, and their rot drifts up into the atmosphere to feed the endless nights. If they didn’t put on this prismatic striptease for our distraction maybe none of it would happen – but they do, and so Hallowe’en is coming. For one night in the year, the spirits of the dead once again walk the earth; according to some experts, the Devil is granted free reign over the sublunar world. Like all earthquakes, it has its tremors. Already several respected media outlets are reporting on an epidemic of black-eyed ghost children, ferocious snarling creatures haunting our public spaces and wreaking strange vengeance on our cherished local businesses. Lock your doors, hug your loved ones: the frost outside has fangs.

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Stephen Lendman

US-controlled NATO operates lawlessly. It's a killing machine. A monster threatening world peace and stability. Anders Fogh Rassmussen is gone. Jens Stoltenberg replaced him. He did so seamlessly. He's an imperial tool. A puppet serving US interests. His marching orders are clear. Instituting Washington's policy. Serving Western monied interests. Benefitting war-profiteers. Like his predecessor and others before him, he's a convenient US stooge.

He wasted no time proving it. On Sunday, he said NATO will deploy forces wherever it wants. For any reason. Anywhere. "These capabilities already exist. We have them, and we can deploy them in individual regions. And this is only an add-on to what the alliance already has," he said. It intends using its might how it wishes. Regardless of potential harm. No matter the consequences. He was in Poland at the time. Visiting Lask Air Base.

Heading for Kiev on Wednesday. Meeting with illegitimate putschist foreign affairs minister Pavlo Klimkin. Doing so to plot resumed war strategy once Ukraine's battered military finishes regrouping. He expressed gratitude to Alliance members for prioritizing regional security. He praised their commitment to NATO.

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Charles Bausman

Ukrainian military and right wing political leaders say they are. The evidence seems to support them.

In the past two weeks persistent rumors that Kiev has been hiding thousands of killed and wounded Ukrainian servicemen and ‘volunteers battalion’ casualties have forced their way into the Ukrainian press.

The most vocal allegations of a cover-up of Ukrainian combat deaths comes not from Russian media or the leaders of the ‘separatist’ Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, but from right wing MP and Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko, and from the commander of Kiev’s ‘Donbas Battalion’ Semyon Semchenko.

Last month on his Facebook page Lyashko directly accused President Petro Poroshenko of hiding over 8,000 Ukrainian combat deaths — a number nearly eight times the ‘official’ KIA figures reported by the English-language Kyiv Post, which as of Friday was still stubbornly reporting ‘only’ 974 confirmed Ukrainian combat deaths - a highly dubious figure that has barely budged since the disastrous battle for Ilovaisk in early September.

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James Petras

Introduction: In order to overcome massive US and world public opposition to new wars in the Middle East, Obama relied on the horrific internet broadcasts of ISIS slaughtering two American hostages, the journalists James Foley and Steve Sotloff, by decapitation. These brutal murders were Obama’s main propaganda tool to set a new Middle East war agenda – his own casus belli bonanza!

This explains the US Administration’s threats of criminal prosecution against the families of Foley and Stoloff when they sought to ransom their captive sons from ISIS.

With the American mass media repeatedly showing the severed heads of these two helpless men, public indignation and disgust were aroused with calls for US military involvement to stop the terror. US and EU political leaders presented the decapitations of Western hostages by the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) as a direct and mortal threat to the safety of civilians in the US and Europe. The imagery evoked was of black-clad faceless terrorists, armed to the teeth, invading Europe and the US and executing innocent families as they begged for rescue and mercy.

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