MEK winning support in Congress – but questions raised over whether lobbying campaign amounts to support for terrorism.

Among those under investigation are the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Hugh Shelton, the former FBI director, Louis Freeh, and Michael Mukasey, who, as attorney-general, oversaw the prosecution of terrorism cases. The heavyweight political backing for the MEK has surprised some US officials because of the organisation's past as a Marxist-Islamist group responsible for the killing of Americans. At one time the MEK supported the Islamic revolution in Iran. Later it allied itself with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The group was banned in 1997.

PressTV: Israel funds terrorist MKO: Investigation - The MKO fled to Iraq in 1986 where it enjoyed the support of the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up its camp, known as Ashraf, near the Iranian border. The group is also known to have cooperated with Saddam in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and carrying out massacre of Iraqi Kurds. The terrorist group has as well conducted numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials. Israel has been funding the MKO for the past two decades in return for the organization’s providing Tel Aviv with intelligence, security and, if required, operational services.

Even if President Obama wanted to, it would be almost impossible for his administration to come to an agreement with the Iranians on this issue in a presidential election year. The big campaign money is vehemently pro-Israel, and so is the core leadership of the Democratic party. Being "pro-Israel," in this context, doesn’t merely mean wishing the Jewish state well, or even sending billions in "aid" money at a time when our budget deficit is measured in the trillions. It means using US military forces to fight Israel’s wars. It means spilling American – and Iranian – blood. It means a war that will spread throughout the Middle East, send oil prices skyrocketing, and send the global economy – already reeling from instability – hurtling into the abyss of a worldwide depression.

Stephen Lendman: Iran Nuclear Talks in Baghdad
PressTV: Iran: Nuclear energy for all, atomic weapons for no one

Last night I had to flee a raging mob not too far from my home in south Tel Aviv. After long speeches of incitement by right-wing parliamentarians, the masses stormed after me and a fellow journalist, and then turned on African asylum seekers, their businesses and their homes. This is how it happened. - It started out as a fairly quiet demonstration – or demonstrations, to be precise. One small demonstration took place in Shapira, my neighborhood, where several weeks ago an Israeli young man threw Molotov cocktails into asylum seekers’ homes. The dominant discourse here was, as is typical of the neighborhood, more moderate, and focused on blaming the government (and not the asylum seekers) for local hardships in south Tel Aviv.

The continuously expanding Surveillance State in the United States is easily one of the most consequential and under-discussed political developments. And few are doing more to ensure it continues than top-level Obama national security officials. - Perhaps worst of all, the Obama administration is aggressively seeking to block any efforts to have federal courts rule on the constitutionality of [the] new FISA law. Immediately after its 2008 passage, the ACLU, on behalf of journalists, activists, and writers, sued to invalidate the law on the ground that it violates the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans by subjecting them to warrantless eavesdropping. As they always do in such cases, the Bush and Obama DOJs demanded dismissal of the suit on the ground of “standing”: namely, they asserted the definitively Kafkaesque claim that because the list of Americans who have their conversations intercepted is kept secret, the plaintiffs cannot prove they were eavesdropped on under the law, and thus lack “standing” to challenge it.

During the reporting period, 5 Palestinian civilians were wounded by IOF in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. A 6th civilian was also wounded by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Additionally, a Palestinian civilian was stabbed by Israeli soldiers at Kfar Etzion checkpoint near Bethlehem. During the reporting period, IOF wounded 4 demonstrators, including two children and an international human rights defender, during the dispersion of peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to the construction of the annexation wall and settlement activities in the West Bank. ■ On 19 May 2012, a number of Israeli settlers from “Yits’har” settlement attacked Palestinian agricultural areas in the southeast of Southern ‘Assira village, south of Nablus, and set fire to some of them. A number of Palestinian civilians gathered to extinguish fire. Soon, Israeli settlers threw stones and empty bottles at houses in the village. When Palestinian civilians attempted to stop this attack, an Israeli settler fired at them. As a result, a Palestinian civilian was seriously wounded by a bullet that entered the right eye and exited the left ear. IOF were present in the area and did not intervene to stop the attack. Video clips from the area showed two Israeli soldiers standing near an Israeli settler while he was firing at Palestinian civilians, which indicates that IOF support Israeli settlers in their attacks on Palestinian civilians and their property. Additionally, 5 Palestinian civilians were injured by stones thrown by Israeli settlers. ■ On 20 May 2012, a Palestinian was seriously wounded near Etzion intersection, south of Bethlehem. IOF claimed that he attempted to stab an Israeli soldier using a sharp tool, and quarrel erupted between him the soldier, as a result of which he fell onto the ground and the sharp tool entered his abdomen. He was evacuated to an Israeli hospital and was put under detention. He told a lawyer who visited him that a number of Israeli soldiers attacked him with a knife and they stabbed him in the abdomen. ■ In the Gaza Strip, on 20 May 2012, a Palestinian civilian was wounded when IOF positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel opened fire at al-Qarara village, northeast of Khan Yunis. ■ During the reporting period, Israeli gunboats opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats in the northern and central Gaza Strip. No casualties were reported.