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Ponerology: The Science of Evil Now Available!Preface to the book Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Political Ponerology, by Dr. Andrew M. Lobaczewski, may be the most important book you will ever read; in fact, it WILL be. No matter who you are, what your status in life, what your age or sex or nationality or ethnic background, you will, at some point in your life, feel the touch or relentless grip of the cold hand of Evil. Bad things happen to good people, that's a fact. ~ Read More ~ - Order your copy now! -
V is for Vendetta
The subject of COINTELPRO in the 911 Truth Movement is becoming more and more contentious everyday. By way of shedding some light upon this problem, I want to paraphrase a story from the Bible found in II Chronicles, Chapter 18. It's a classic description of COINTELPRO...
Alan Dershowitz: Apologist For Inhumanity
Alan Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard University, an apologist for the Israel lobby in the US and a self-confessed "big mouth". He is also a man completely in thrall to the NeoCon agenda and who takes every opportunity to promote the extremist warmongering disguised as "freedom and democracy" that has come to define the reign of the Bush administration, who, we should remember, entered the white house in 2000 in much the same way as other great dictatorships of history - without the consent of a majority of the population
Bombs Bursting in Air
The rockets red glare,
Bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that Star spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free,
And the home of the brave.
The star
spangled banner has been in the news quite a lot lately. Some
"courageous" Senators, including one of my own, Dianne Feinstein and
everyone's favorite left-wing liberal, Hillary Clinton, bravely stuck
their necks out to support an amendment that would make it illegal to
burn the flag of the USA under certain circumstances. Heaven forbid one of these pussillanimous
public servants introduce, or even support a bill, that would call for
an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq...or to even require that
the President set a timeline for the withdrawal of our troops from a
deadly quagmire of an occupation while they are handing him more money
to wage the war crime in Iraq. As our nation's children are trying to
only survive in the worst of circumstances, and by surviving are
committing reprehensible atrocities on an innocent population which
(especially in Ramadi right now) is having bombs burst in air all
around them, that our Senate would even consider taking away first
amendment rights from Americans is wretchedly ironic. Call me
naïve, but I always thought that we elected our representatives to
protect our rights, not take them away from us. Bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that Star spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free,
And the home of the brave.
Patriotism & The Fourth of July
In celebration of the 4th of July there will be many speeches about the young people who "died for their country." Let's be honest about war. Those who gave their lives did not die for their country, as they were led to believe but for their government. The distinction between country and government is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, which will be referred to again and again on July 4, but without attention to its meaning.
Independence Day
"I have to get home to my mother, she will be so worried if I am not back soon." 9 year-old Mona clutched at the gaping hole in her stomach, blood pouring out of her as if someone had turned on a faucet. There was something so terribly and indescribably out of place in her frail words, the colliding of two disparate worlds, that of a mother's child, and that of a little girl facing down the ugliest of what life and humanity had to offer.
Eyewitness Testimony Of US Rape, Murder Of Iraqi Family
In a dispatch posted Saturday night, Mafkarat al-Islam submitted its correspondents' in-depth report on the rape and murder case in March that the American military have now been compelled to investigate...
Osama, Death Squads and the Biggest Lie Ever Told
You may have missed it, and I wouldn't blame you if you deliberately ignored it, but 'Osama' released a new audio message two days ago...
A Wave of Sexual Terrorism In Iraq
Behind the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family lies a far larger story of what's happened to women in Iraq since they were 'liberated' by the Bush administration.
Mystery of the Day
50% of Americans today think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003. 64% Believe that Saddam Hussein had "strong ties" with al Qaeda. Someone has obviously done a lousy job... the media or those who did the poll? And how to explain the increase? (They were respectively at 35% and 62% a year ago.)
Corporate Media Ignores War Against Palestinians
In a brazen attempt to sugar coat Israel's flagrant violations of the Geneva Convention, specifically Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is intended to protect civilians, the corporate media continues to spin the situation in the Gaza Strip.
The British Media And The Invasion Of Gaza
Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the "World in brief" section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to "detain" two Palestinians Israel claims are members of Hamas...
Morning Came: A letter from Palestine
Please forward widely
Morning came and we found that 90 of the nation's best men were captured by Israel from their homes in the night. Our mayor, who was released from four years in prison just a month ago. Someone for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration, as do his people here, political allies and opponents alike. And our vice mayor, too. The last time I talked with him, earlier this week, he was struggling a lot with chronic back pain. I wonder where they are now. If they have been fed today, or tortured. If they will sleep on beds tonight, or not at all. If they will be home tomorrow. If we will never see some of them again alive.
Destroying the Gaza Strip - The Score: 9,000 Prisoners
to 1?Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert lost no time in exploiting Hamas' capture of an Israeli soldier to justify Israel's long-planned re-occupation of the Gaza Strip and mass arrest of the Hamas leadership. In his haste, he has inadvertently achieved a rare thing. He has managed to reduce the absurdity of Israel's position to a known ratio: 9000 to 1. Nine thousand captured Palestinians languish in Israel's notorious "security prisons", including 380 children and 115 women. Every day Israeli troops and Border Police kidnap, interrogate, torture and imprison Palestinians, often by the dozen. The arrest raids never stop, regardless of summits, truces, or cease-fires. It is estimated that 650,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel since the current occupation began in 1967.
Pioneers of terrorism
Below are some rarely-mentioned facts about the relationship between Zionism and modern-day terrorism...
Notable Israeli Violations Of Human Rights Prior To The Gaza Invasion
# Israeli mock air raids over Gaza were carried out to terrorize the population, firing missiles at uninhabited areas, including a playground, and flying low over densely populated civilian areas. (1-7 June)
# Israeli gunboats shot at Gaza's coast and wounded 2 Palestinian children playing on the beach (1 June)
# Israeli border positions fired artillery shells at Jabalya town, injuring two Palestinian children inside their homes, and at Um al-Nasser village, injuring a 48-year-old Palestinian man (3 June)
Europe's response to the siege of Gaza is shameful
Thank goodness for the Swiss. Alone in Europe, their government has dared to condemn what the Israelis are doing to Gaza. It is collective punishment, they say. It violates the principle of proportionality. Israel has not taken the precautions required by international law to protect civilians. Inevitably, the bloggers are pouring out the usual irrelevancies about the role of Swiss banks during the Nazi period. But as the depository of the Geneva conventions, one of the key legal advances to emerge from the ravages of the 20th century, Switzerland has a duty to speak out.
Dispatch from Palestine: Israel uses chemical/radioactive weapons in Gaza
Interview with Doctor Juma Saka of the Hospital Shifa in Gaza
Q: It seems that you are receiving people with wounds that are very difficult to treat. Do you know what kind of arms are being used?
A: We dont know exactly what kind of weapon it was but we suggest it was a chemical weapon or a weapon with radio-radiation [inaudible] they also had a very strong explosion. There was shrapnel trapped in the bodies.
Why You Should Think That The War On Terror Is A Sick Joke
The big question, and one that has caused serious arguments in families around the country is: Is the War On Terror real?
Exposing the 9/11 Conspiracy Wingnuts
I began researching the mainstream media coverage of the controversy regarding the attacks of 9/11/2001, when reading an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Newspaper, dated June 29th, 2006. It was titled, "Sept. 11 claim stirs UW probe -- Instructor says U.S. planned the attacks to provoke war." This led to my discovery of some wild conspiracy theorists that endanger our government and media establishments, with quite frankly insane assertions. I'll address this in full in the final paragraph.
Entry denied: Deporting witnesses of Israeli occupation and unilateralism
In another Israeli move designed to further isolate Palestinians from the rest of the world community, it is being reported that the Israeli army will be declaring the West Bank closed to foreign nationals. The Gaza Strip has already been made virtually inaccessible to foreign nationals; those who wish to enter must apply to the Israeli authorities, weeks in advance, to receive elusive permits. The effect is that the plight of the Palestinian civilian population living under Israeli occupation becomes all the more invisible to the international community.
Israel's latest bureaucratic obscenity
The same malign intent by Israel towards the Palestinians is stamped through its history like the lettering in a children's stick of seaside rock. But despite the consistent aim of Israeli policy, generation after generation of Western politicians, diplomats and journalists has shown a repeated inability to grasp what is happening before its very eyes. The Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi once noted that the first goal of Israel's founders as they prepared to establish their Jewish state on a large swath of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 was to empty Palestine's urban heartlands of their educated elites.
Atrocities...
It promises to be a long summer. We're almost at the mid-way point, but it feels like the days are just crawling by. It's a combination of the heat, the flies, the hours upon hours of no electricity and the corpses which keep appearing everywhere. The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the number is nearer 60.
Dispatch from Gaza: We Suffer Together
Testimony recorded by Silvia Cattori on July 14, 2006
S.C.: Afraid of me? Are you joking?
A: All of these soldiers and spies that make up the most formidable army in the world, in spite of their power, are afraid of anyone who uses his words...to speak the truth. They are afraid of those who speak the truth. They are weak people. We can win this fight even though our means are nothing compared to theirs, because we have the will and the courage that they don't have.
It's Time to End the "Last Taboo"
The "Last Taboo" was the title of eminent Palestinian-born writer, scholar and activist Edward Said's essay written shortly before his death in September, 2003. It was also the title of distinguished author and documentary filmmaker John Pilger's chapter about Palestine in his important new book Freedom Next Time that's reviewed and can be read at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com. Said explained his title in what he wrote: "The extermination of the Native Americans can be admitted, the morality of Hiroshima attacked, the national flag (of the US) publicly committed to flames. But the systematic continuity of Israel's 52-year oppression and maltreatment of the Palestinians is virtually unmentionable, a narrative that has no permission to appear." It appeared boldly and courageously in Pilger's book, and it's long past time for it be prominent in the mainstream as well to finally expose Israeli crimes and demand they end. It's especially important now as Israel just began an intensive military assault against the defenseless people of Gaza, which, before it ends, may result in many deaths, great destruction of property and an overwhelming humanitarian disaster even beyond the one already existing in The Occupied Territories.
The Blackest of Lies
"You told a lie, an odious, damned lie; Upon my soul, a lie, a wicked lie." ~ William Shakespeare ~
Not long ago, I said the alternative media is broken. But the alternative media is not just broken. By and large, it is controlled, co-opted, doomed, diseased, dysfunctional, and basically dead in the water. It's devolved into a stinking cesspool of lies and filth that is anything but alternative or truthful, and serves no patriot, truth seeker, or human being for that matter. The only entity it DOES serve is the enemy. More aptly put, the alternative media is fully exposed as another facet of the enemy. It is the enemy. There is no movement, patriot or otherwise. All that exists is a façade, a sham, a caricature of a movement and an alternative media. This is garbage dressed up as truth, the kind of manure that busts the pipes.
London Bombings - The Facts Speak For Themselves
One year ago, on the morning of July 7th 2005, someone detonated four carefully placed bombs in London. Three exploded on London underground trains within 50 seconds of each other at 8.50 am, the first on the sub-surface eastbound Circle Line, the second on the sub-surface westbound Circle Line, a third on the deep-level underground southbound Piccadilly Line. A fourth bomb exploded almost an hour later at 9.47 am on the upper deck of a double decker bus in Tavistock Square. Fifty two innocent British civilians were killed, many of whom had already become seriously disenchanted with the Blair government as evidenced by the massive voter turnaway from the Labour party in the British general elections of March 2005...
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Their film records what was probably history's shortest-lived coup d'état. It's a unique document about political muscle and an extraordinary portrait of the man The Wall Street Journal credits with making Venezuela "Washington's biggest Latin American headache after the old standby, Cuba." Chavez, elected president of Venezuela in 1988, is a colorful folk hero, beloved by his nation's working class and a tough-as-nails, quixotic opponent to the power structure that would see him deposed. Two independent filmmakers were inside the presidential palace on April 11, 2002, when he was forcibly removed from office [in an apparently CIA-sponsored coup]. They were also present 48 hours later when, remarkably, he returned to power amid cheering aides.
Running Time: 1 Hour 15 Minutes [Click here to watch]
Zionist Israel - The True Enemy Of The Jewish People
A recent Time magazine report on the effects of the current Gaza crisis on the many Palestinians whose family members are being held in Israeli prisons, many on no charge, quite clearly shows (as if we needed any confirmation), that the Israeli government, in refusing to end the crisis, cares nothing for the suffering of the Palestinian population. However...
A Republic or an Empire?
Gentle reader, did you know that in April President Bush went to Stanford University to speak to the Hoover Institution fellows at the invitation of former Secretary of State George Shultz but was not allowed on campus? The Stanford students got wind of it and blocked Bush's access to the campus. The Hoover fellows had to go to Shultz's home to hear Bush's pitch for war and more war. A person might think that it would be national news that Stanford University students would not allow the President of the US on campus. It happened to be a day that hundreds of prospective freshmen were on campus with their parents, many of whom joined the demonstration against Bush. I did not hear or read a word about it. Did you? I learned of it from faculty friends in June when I attended Stanford's graduation to witness a relative receive her degree. The June 16 edition of The Stanford Daily reprints its April 24 report of the episode.
War crimes: Israel's offensive against peace
The 1949 Geneva Conventions state, in article 54 of their additional protocol: "Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited". It is also "prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population". That means that the Israeli army's latest offensive in the occupied territories amounts to war crimes; it includes the blockade of the civilian population and their collective punishment, the bombing of Gaza's $150m power station, depriving 750,000 Palestinians of electricity in the intense summer heat, and the kidnapping on the West Bank of 64 members of the political wing of Hamas, including eight cabinet ministers and 22 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. On 5 July the Israeli government said it would expand its military operation in Gaza.
The Age of Irony
It is tragic to witness the transformation of a victim into the worst perpetrator of that which he suffered from in the past. But this is what is unfolding before our eyes. This statement is evidently clear in its meaning and intent. The entire world knows that what I have in my mind is the Israelis and their loss of all sense of morality and reason. They have descended, without any inhibitions, into unprecedented savagery directed against the defenseless Palestinians. Rarely have a people suffered under such brutality that they are denied the very essence of their humanity.
Aggression Under False Pretenses
As Americans commemorated their annual celebration of independence from colonial occupation, rejoicing in their democratic institutions, we Palestinians were yet again besieged by our occupiers, who destroy our roads and buildings, our power stations and water plants, and who attack our very means of civil administration. Our homes and government offices are shelled, our parliamentarians taken prisoner and threatened with prosecution. The current Gaza invasion is only the latest effort to destroy the results of fair and free elections held early this year. It is the explosive follow-up to a five-month campaign of economic and diplomatic warfare directed by the United States and Israel. The stated intention of that strategy was to force the average Palestinian to "reconsider" her vote when faced with deepening hardship; its failure was predictable, and the new overt military aggression and collective punishment are its logical fulfillment. The "kidnapped" Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit is only a pretext for a job scheduled months ago.
Israel's Latest Bureaucratic Obscenity
The same malign intent from Israel towards the Palestinians is stamped through its history like the lettering in a children's stick of seaside rock. But despite the consistent aim of Israeli policy, generation after generation of Western politicians, diplomats and journalists has shown a repeated inability to grasp what is happening before its very eyes. The Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi once noted that the first goal of Israel's founders as they prepared to establish their Jewish state on a large swath of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 was to empty Palestine's urban heartlands of their educated elites.
The Influence of Israel and it's American Lobby over US Middle East Policy
The apparent ability of Israel, one of the world's smallest countries, to shape the Middle East policies of the world's remaining superpower has been a source of puzzlement, conjecture, and constant frustration on the part of those fighting for justice for the Palestinians and for the peoples of the region, as a whole. One of the roots of this unique historical phenomenon may be found in the interpretation of a 120-year-old US Supreme Court decision that afforded corporations the same rights as individual American citizens. One of those rights is the freedom of speech that is guaranteed by the 1st amendment to the US Constitution.
Israel's Real Enemy
Another day, another slaughter. That's the latest news from the Middle East in a nutshell.
Over the weekend, Israel stepped up its attacks on Lebanon, killing who knows how many innocent people. Of course, the Zionists running Israel claim that they're battling terrorists and after George W. Bush popularized the infamous "pre-emptive strike", no one in the international community has the cajones to stand up tell Israel point-blank to back down. Besides, everyone knows that the US arrives loaded for bear at any and all UN gatherings and shoots down any ideas that Israel doesn't like; it's already happened over, and over, and over again.
The Killing of Civilians as a Policy
"When Israel's interests are being considered, members of Congress act like trained poodles. They jump dutifully through hoops held by Israel's lobby." -- George W. Ball (1909-1994), former U.S. Undersecretary of State. "The [Pro-Israel] Lobby has succeeded in redefining anti-Semitism to include any criticism of Israeli behavior, an inferred threat that prompts all major media to ignore or sanitize reports of Israeli violations." -- Paul Findley, U.S. Republican Congressman, (1961-83). "I've never seen a president-I don't care who he is-stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles your mind. -They always get what they want. The Israelis know what's going on all the time. ... If the American people understood what grip those people have on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens don't have any idea what goes on." -- Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 1970-June 1974. Dead children lying on the ground-that's the barbarous legacy left by the Israeli bombings of Lebanon, in early July 2006. In less than one month, the Israeli government willfully delivered two collective punishments against civilians, in direct violation of international law according to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War; first, it was against Gaza's civilian Palestinian population; then, they extended this unquestionable policy to the civilian population of Beirut and other regions of Lebanon.
Acts of war, or war crimes?
Israel says the seizing of two Israeli soldiers by Hizballah is an "act of war" (on the part of the Lebanese government). I wonder what they consider this to be, then?
Police said 52 Lebanese civilians, including 15 children, were killed in attacks on Hezbollah targets in Beirut's southern suburbs and across southern Lebanon. Security sources said the air strikes in south Lebanon also wounded 100 people. Ten members of a family were killed in Dweir village and seven family members died in Baflay.Note that Israel has not declared war. Therefore these acts can be nothing other than war crimes. Not that most of the Israeli attacks wouldn't qualify as war crimes even if they had declared war.
Beirut waits as Syrian masters send Hezbollah allies into battle
It's about Syria. That was the frightening message delivered by Damascus yesterday when it allowed its Hizbollah allies to cross the UN Blue Line in southern Lebanon, kill three Israeli soldiers, capture two others and demand the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. Within hours, a country that had begun to believe in peace - without a single Syrian soldier left on its soil - found itself once more at war. Israel held the powerless Lebanese government responsible - as if the sectarian and divided cabinet in Beirut can control Hizbollah. That is Syria's message. Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's affable Prime Minister, may have thought he was running the country but it is President Bashar Assad in Damascus who can still bring life or death to a land that lost 150,000 lives in 15 years of civil conflict.
Reality in Lebanon
Put this video slideshow together today. Please link widely. Note: there are disturbing images of war and dead civilians in the video.
Hizballah The Terrorist
The war in Lebanon is due to the terrorist behavior and actions of Hizballah. One can imagine the terrorist bluntness of Hizballah that captured a couple of Israeli soldiers in purpose of freeing Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. Why are these in Israeli jails? Because they attacked Israeli targets. Why did they do so? Because the Israelis are angels descending from heavens to spread love, peace and fraternity in the world.
"Recognize the Centrality of the Palestine Question": An Interview with George Galloway
George Galloway MP is the controversial British politician who has proved a thorn in the side of advocates of the Iraq war. He is a fierce advocate of the Palestinian state, and a redoubtable campaigner against oppression and injustice throughout the world. In 2005 he made a memorable appearance before the US Senate, successfully defending himself against claims that he benefited from the Iraqi oil-for-food program. I'm Not the Only One is his critically acclaimed book on the Middle East, and the US and British administrations approach to this troubled region.
Dispatch from Palestine - Nablus: "It is our life"
Our friend Silvia Cattori sends this report from Nablus:
Every night the city of Nablus is shaken by the sounds of war, sounds that drive away sleep. One awakens with a start, not knowing if one has slept, not slept, or if we are in a waking nightmare. There is shooting, nearby explosions resonate, go off in the distance, and return as an echo. You don't know what is happening or where it is happening. At first, you are very worried, then you stop thinking about it. One waits for daybreak with resignation. The people around tell you it is like that every day of the year here in the district of Nablus, that nothing has changed since 2000, that it is simply part of the panoply of the war of terror waged by Israel, added on top of the countless other repressive measures.
Hell
What do you do when the entire world is siding with murder? When the life of one Israeli soldier is worth more than the lives of an entire civilian population? Make that two civilian populations - Gaza and Lebanon. What do you do when the deliberate gunning down and bombing of villagers evacuating their town calls forth no shouts of protest, when the premeditated massacre of women and children is called "defence"?
Appetite For Destruction: Neoconservative Guns and Poses
As the violence in both Gaza and Lebanon rages out of control, the apocalyptic and nihilistic urges of prominent neoconservatives such as Michael Ledeen, David Horowitz, and William Kristol has finally surfaced in full public view. They cheer on the increasing destruction and advocate for United States intervention against Syria and Iran, whom they view as the real powers behind Hezbollah and Hamas provocations against Israel. Human Events' Joel Mowbray reports that Israel faces a "two-front" war against a common enemy, because "both Hamas and Hezbollah are funded by Iran, leaders for both receive sanctuary in Syria, and both have a common goal: elimination of the Jews and the establishment of an Islamic state."
Israeli Diplomat: All Arabs are Terrorists
Imagine a member of the KKK going on the Bill O'Reilly show and declaring all African-Americans are shiftless crackheads. Imagine the outrage and calls for Fox News to be investigated for promoting racism and hatred. Now imagine an Israeli diplomat going on Bill O'Reilly's show and declaring all Muslims are terrorists. In fact, this happened, and nobody is calling the diplomat, Dan Gillerman, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, a racist or are there demands Fox News be investigated for promoting racism and hatred. In Bushzarro world, it is fine and dandy to characterize all Muslims as terrorists.
Israel Must concede
I know that the title is offending for Israel that has been all the time reminding everybody in the area of its uncontested strength. Things have changed, and Israel has no chance to win the war against Hizballah, and it is to the best of its interest to stop its attacks and resort to prisoner exchange negotiations. Hizballah is well-organized, well-disciplined, well-equipped, and, above all, strictly and willingly devoted.
The Abyss Beckons
The Israel-Lebanon conflict has opened up a possible route for George W. Bush and his neoconservative strategists to achieve a prized goal that otherwise appeared to be blocked for them - military assaults on Syria and Iran aimed at crippling those governments. After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003 - after only three weeks of fighting - the question posed by some Bush administration officials was whether the U.S. military should go "left or right," to Syria or Iran. Some joked that "real men go to Tehran."
Israelis are dying: it must be an escalation
Here we go again -- another "serious escalation" has begun in the Middle East, or so BBC World was telling audiences throughout Sunday. So what prompted the BBC's judgment that the crisis was escalating once more? You can be sure it had nothing to do with the more than 130 Lebanese dead after five days of savage aerial bombardment from at least 2,000 sorties by Israeli war planes that are making the country's south a disaster zone and turning Beirut into a crumbling ghost town. Those dead, most civilians and many of them women and children, hardly get a mention, their lives apparently empty of meaning or significance in this confrontation. Nor is it the Lebanese roads and bridges being pounded into dust, the petrol stations and oil refineries going up in smoke, the phone networks and TV stations being obliterated, the water and electricity supplies being cut off. The rapid transformation of a modern vibrant country like Lebanon into the same category of open-air prison as Gaza is not an escalation in the BBC's view. No, the BBC proffered a first, hesitant "escalation" on Thursday night when Hizbullah had the audacity to fire a handful of rockets at Haifa in response to the growing Lebanese death toll. The worst damage the Katyushas inflicted was one gouging a chunk of earth out of the hillside overlooking the port. But the BBC felt confident to declare the escalation had turned "serious" on Sunday when Hizbullah not only fired more rockets at Haifa but one killed a group of eight railway workers in a station depot. Now that Israeli civlians as well as Lebanese civilians are dying -- even if in far smaller numbers -- the BBC's battalions of journalists in northern Israel finally have something to report on.
We're Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East
The old adage, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" does not apply to Americans, who have shown that they can be endlessly fooled.Neoconservatives deceived Americans into an illegal attack and debilitating war in Iraq. American neoconservatives are closely allied with Israel's Likud Party. In the past, some neocons lost their security clearances because of "mishandling" of classified information. According to Insight magazine, "the Pentagon has banned security clearance to Americans with relatives in Israel. Government sources and attorneys said the Pentagon has sought and succeeded in removing security clearance from dozens of Americans, mostly Jews, who either lived, worked, or have relatives in Israel."Despite questions of dual loyalties, neocons hold high positions in the Bush regime. Ten years ago these architects of American foreign and military policy spelled out how they would use deception to achieve "important Israeli strategic objectives" in the Middle East. First, they would focus "on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." This would open the door for Israel to provoke attacks from Hezbollah. The attacks would let Israel gain American sympathy and permit Israel to seize the strategic initiative by "engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."
The Jewish State's Final Solution: The Assault on Gaza
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonization or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." (Ariel Sharon, former Likud Party Prime Minister, Agence France Press, November 15, 1998). "We must expel Arabs and take their place." (David Ben Gurian, former Labor Party Prime Minister, 1937). "There's no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist." (Golda Meir, former Labor Party Prime Minister). "Israel will create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to Jordan." (Yitzak Rabin, former Labor Party Prime Minister). "You don't simple bundle people onto trucks and drive them away. I prefer to advocate a positive policy, to create, in effect, a condition that in a positive way will induce people to leave." (Ariel Sharon, August 24, 1988). "The partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized...Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever." (Menachem Begin, former Likud Party Prime Minister). "I believed and to this say still believe, in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land." (Ehud Olmert, Israeli Prime Minister, to the US House of Representatives, June 2006). "But this is not merely faulty reasoning; arresting people to use as bargaining chips is the act of a gang, not of a state." (Haaretz Editorial, June 30, 2006)
"This is our war, too"
How many babies has Israel slaughtered today? REUTERS reports:
"An Israeli newspaper said Israel's offensive had so far destroyed a quarter of Hezbollah's fighting capabilities. [But the REUTERS continues] It has also killed 176 people and wounded more than 500, Lebanon's health ministry said. All but 13 of them were civilians. The dead include seven Canadians killed in a strike on a southern village on Sunday." [UPDATE - REUTERS: Israel's campaign has killed 203 people, all but 13 of them civilians, and wounded more than 500. Twenty-four Israelis have been killed in the fighting, including 12 civilians hit in rocket attacks.]Note from Lebanon
Thank you all for your letters of concern. Yes, I am in Lebanon, and, yes, I am safe, as safe as one can be when one's country is under attack. I appeal to you all: we need your voices of outrage to be heard. Since Wednesday, we have been under vicious, unjustified attack, and the attacks have been intensifying. Vicious. Perhaps you have not heard the news because the western news has not been reporting it. Perhaps you have seen the pictures because the western news is not printing the pictures (the media has access to the pictures, but is choosing not to print them).
I am not making this up
I am not making this up. Upon learning of the Israeli massacres of Marwahin, Rumaylah, Duwayr, etc in South Lebanon, the White House took a stand. Today, it called on Syria to stop the aggression.
The Real Enemy
At the moment, many writers in the alternative media are feeling extremely angry, depressed and frustrated at what is happening in Palestine and Lebanon. Despite hundreds of editorials and essays eloquently decrying Israeli aggression and provocation and spelling out the very obvious reason for the long-standing violence in the Middle East, Israel continues its murderous rampage, killing almost 70 Lebanese civilians yesterday. Yesterday's attacks involved Israeli bombing of entire Lebanese villages, such as Srifa in the south west of Lebanon where Israeli F-16 jets, supplied free of charge by the US government, destroyed 15 houses, killed at least 20, and wounded at least 30, men women, young and old alike. The truly horrifying thing however is that the inhabitants of the villages were fleeing on the orders of the Israeli government itself, yet as the villagers attempted to leave in their cars and vans, they were targeted by Israeli jets and blown to pieces...
From Israel to Lebanon
For more photos of the destruction and killing in Labanon because of the ruthless and premeditated attacks of Israel, go here.
Is Israel Using Arab Villages as Human Shields?
Nazareth hit the international headlines for the first time in this vicious war being waged by Israel mostly on Lebanese civilians. Reporter Matthew Price, corseted in a blue flak jacket in Haifa, told BBC viewers that for the first time Hizbullah had targeted Nazareth late on Sunday. "Nazareth is a mostly Christian town", he added, managing to cram into a single sentence of a few words two factual mistakes and a disturbing hint of incitement. Whatever the precision of its rockets (and Nazareth's residents are certainly worried enough about that), Hizbullah struck not at Nazareth but at a site some distance from Nazareth -- a site of strategic significance to Israel, though I cannot say more than that as we are now officially under martial law in the country's north. Matthew Price was also wrong about Nazareth being a "mostly Christian town". During the 1948 war in which Israel's army ethnically cleansed much of the surrounding area of Palestinians, Muslim villagers fled to Nazareth in search of sanctuary. Today, two-thirds of the city's 75,000 inhabitants are Muslim -- or at least they are by the religious classification system imposed on all citizens by the Israeli authorities. Which brings us to the nasty element of incitement from our BBC reporter.
Watching American TV in Beirut
War in Lebanon has once again become breaking news on television screens across the world, but a growing body of distorted reporting is being disseminated just as rapidly as the country is being destroyed. In recent days, many American news programmes have demonstrated an exceptionally weak knowledge of Lebanese politics, skewed further by a lack of access to areas that have been attacked in the country and their victims. Take Monday's coverage of the conflict on NBC's popular Today Show with anchorwoman Nathalie Morales, who in introducing a report on Hezbollah, rhetorically asks: "So just who is Israel at war with in this latest chapter of an ancient conflict?"
Cheerleading The Ethnic Cleansing Of The Middle East
As with every other Israeli act of agression, the inhuman Israeli bombing of Lebanese civilians is as much an American war as an Israeli one. The obsequious and disgusting American poliiticians, from both parties, recently enthusiastically endorsed Israel's campaign of attempted ethnic cleansing of Lebanon and the murder of its civilians...
Did The Palestinians Really Dig A Tunnel Under The Noses Of The Israelis?
I don't know what has happened to Cpl. Gilad Shalit. I don't know if he was captured, or, if he was, I don't know how he was captured. Frankly, I don't even know that he actually exists apart from the pictures of him that we have all seen. One hopes that these are all questions that will eventually be answered.
A View From The Southern Lebanese City of Sidon
Signs of the Times correspondent MK shares his first hand account of life in the Southern Lebanese city of Sidon, currently being bombed by the Israeli military...
The Crime of Lebanon and Palestine - Are Iran and Syria Next?
By any interpretation of international law, Israel today is committing massive and egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity against the defenseless people of Palestine and Lebanon. It's doing it with the full support and encouragement of the US and willful compliance of the West, most of the Arab world, the UN and the dominant corporate media worldwide acting as cheerleaders for the mass killing, crippling destruction, and immiseration of innocent civilians in Lebanon and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Israel falsely claims its duel assaults are in response to Hamas' capture of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier near Kerem Shalom crossing, southeast of Rafah, on June 25 and Hezbollah's cross-border incursion on July 12, killing eight IDF soldiers in the exchange that followed and taking two others prisoner.
Tzahal: A Barbarian Army
A Nablus, as soon as night falls, one feels even more violently the climate of terror coming from Tsahal, that army of vandals equipped with such an impressive arsenal. Every night dozens of vehicles loaded with soldiers invade the besieged city. Recently, however, the population of Nablus is even more choked and persecuted than is usual. During the night of July 17, after four of their own were arrested, some youths threw a bomb at a patrol, killing an Israeli soldier. Ever since the population has been expecting an even more violent collective punishment.
Did you know?
"I, Tsilli Goldenberg, Israeli citizen Accuse you - Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel, Amir Peretz, Minister of Defense, Dan Halutz Head of Staff Chief Commander of the Israeli Army, of committing this bestial barbaric slaughter in Lebanon. I accuse you of committing Crimes against Humanity towards the Palestinian People. I accuse you of deserting our soldiers, when their lives could be saved by negotiations, and I accuse you of starting an unjustified war in my name." - Tsilli Goldenberg, Masarik 11, Jerusalem 93106 IsraelDid you know that
"the daughter of Israel's newly elected prime minister added her voice to those of the anti-Israel [sic] forces around the world when she actively participated in a demonstration outside the home of IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, calling him a 'murderer'"?
Annexation, ethnic cleansing continue amid Zen-like calm from Western media
You remember how quickly the driving out of the Lebanese population from the area south of the Litani and the annexation of the land became 'buffer zone'? Mark how rapidly the 'buffer zone' has become 'civil administration'. See the Jerusalem Post:
OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Udi Adam acknowledged in a briefing at Northern Command headquarters in Safed on Sunday afternoon that the commander of the IDF's civil administration unit had already begun preparations toward the possibility of instituting a military administration in areas captured by the IDF over the last week.Democracy, Mexican Style
What do these presidential elections all have in common: Mexico, 1988, US, 2000, US, 2004, Colombia and Peru, 2006 and the just concluded Mexican election on July 2? In each case, the outcome was "arranged" and known in advance before voters went to the polls. They're what economist and media and social critic Edward Herman calls "Demonstration Elections" - the characterization and title he gave his 1980s book analyzing and documenting sham elections in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Vietnam. Professor Herman is an expert, and although his book was written over 20 years ago, it's clear little has changed except for the added sophistication gained since then in the ability of officials to make elections turn out the way they wish. The same fraud occurs in many countries, and Professor Herman might have included many others besides the ones he chose but had he done so he'd have had to have written a book with no end.
Democracy, Mexican Style - Part II
There's much happening in Mexico in the aftermath of the nation's most contentious election ever, but it began many months before the first vote was cast. The popularity of leftist opposition candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) scared the ruling National Action Party (PAN) enough to get them to try to deny him the right to run for president in the election just concluded. In April, 2005, a commission of four members of the Chamber of Deputies (Mexico's Congress) held there was sufficient cause to suspect Obrador committed a crime when he ordered the construction of a service road to a hospital ignoring a judge's order against doing it. Obrador said he was just widening the road and stopped when he learned of the court order. The full Chamber ignored his explanation and then voted to strip him of his government immunity from prosecution so he could be indicted, have to stand trial and be constitutionally barred from holding or running for high office. The transparent scheme didn't work because the people of Mexico wouldn't tolerate it and turned out in mass street protests to support him.
World Cup: Zidane - Materazzi : Italy's Shameful Win
As a rule, I don't do football; never liked sitting around watching other people do stuff; would rather be doing stuff myself. That rule, naturally, extends to soccer which - to an American - is like "football lite." Just to illustrate the point, let me tell a little story.
That right-wing logic
My dad is always sending me crappy e-mail jokes. You know the kind: dependent on stereotypes, often predicated on violent fantasies, and utterly devoid of wit or insight. I think everyone has someone in their family like this. I love my dad, though, and am content to have him send me these things. It's kind of a way of staying in touch. So last week he sends me this joke. It depends on the usual stereotypes (this time about rural hicks and professors), but ...
Lebanese Doctor Says 'Phosphorus Weapons' Cause Suffering
CNN video correspondent, Karl Penhaul, follows a family that had been mistakenly caught in an Israeli air strike. The doctor treating the family says that there is phosphorus in the weapons that cause extremely painful burns on its victims.
The Untermensch Syndrome: Israel's Moral Decay
The labeling as anti-Semitic of anyone critical of the state of Israel's policies in the continued destruction of Palestinian identity and the increasing domination into American foreign policy no longer has the sting of threat or intimidation it once mastered. For too long this masquerade has been used to silence those opposing anything Israel, shouted at anyone disseminating truth and seeking justice. Like the boy who cried wolf, this charade has lost its power or hypnotic control, and today only serves to breed more anger and resentment against the apologists and smear mongers protecting the cancerous tentacles of Zionism and the crimes against humanity it spawns...
Is Beirut Burning?
Tel Aviv - "IT SEEMS that Nasrallah survived," Israeli newspapers announced, after 23 tons of bombs were dropped on a site in Beirut, where the Hizbullah leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker.
The Public Eye: Take Me To Our Leader
It's a famous cartoon setup: Aliens descend from a space ship, walk up to a human, and demand, "Take me to your leader." If aliens actually did land in Washington D.C., they’d probably be taken to meet George Bush. After all, he's the nominally elected president of the United States. Ah, but is he our leader? No. Most of us believe that President Bush has failed as a leader. That's the crux of the problem facing the United States as we gaze into the eye of the Middle East maelstrom: There's civil war in Iraq; Israel is rampaging in Gaza and Lebanon; Iran grows more belligerent by the hour and seems determined to have nuclear weapons; India and Pakistan are at each other's throats; and George Bush cannot be counted upon to guide us through this tempest
Helplessly Hoping
I have been in such a blue funk of depression and worry since Israel's over-reaction - or "over action" - in Lebanon in what seems to be insanity escalating out of control. What our media and some world leaders seem to expediently forget is that Israel massacred an entire family on a beach in Lebanon with a rocket and kidnapped two Palestinian citizens before Hezbollah and Hamas kidnapped some Israeli soldiers. Who started the cycle of violence in those countries? Who knows? Who cares! The important question is: who are going to be the courageous ones with integrity, wisdom and compassion who are going to at long last stop the absurdity?
"Hell is empty, all the devils are here." - William Shakespeare
Washington, D.C. - Close to 400 protesters showed up for a spirited demonstration on Tuesday, July 25, 2006, at the Israeli Embassy, 514 International Drive, NW, in the nation’s capital. They were there, despite the sweltering heat, to express their strong opposition to the ongoing barbaric conduct of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in Lebanon, as well as in Gaza. The IOF has given new meaning to the term “collective punishment” by their reckless, disproportionate and murderous treatment of the Lebanese and Palestinian civilian populations. It is a war crime under the provisions of the 4th Geneva Convention, (Article 33), to deliberately target a protected population for punishment.
Demonizing Hezbollah: Usher in Ayman al-Zawahiri
Now that Ayman al-Zawahiri, or rather the stand-in we are told is Ayman al-Zawahiri, has sanctioned Hezbollah's resistance against Israel's invasion of Lebanon, we can expect the corporate media to have a field day, connecting Hezbollah to "al-Qaeda" and its crazed Sunni beheaders.
As we know, al-Zawahiri has verified links to the Pentagon, as he served as commander of the Mujahedeen forces in the Balkans.
The Crime of Lebanon and Palestine - Are Iran and Syria Next?: Part II
On July 26, Aljazeerah reported a story headlined - "Israeli invasion of Lebanon planned by neocons in June (2006)." It was done at a June 17 and 18 meeting at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado at which former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with US Vice President Dick Cheney. The purpose was to discuss the planned and impending Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invasions of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Cheney was thoroughly briefed and approved the coming assaults - before Hamas' capture of an IDF soldier on June 25 or Hezbollah's capturing of two others in an exchange first reported as occurring in Israel and now believed to have happened inside Lebanon after IDF forces illegally entered the country.
Friends True and False
After two weeks, the war settled down comfortably in the Middle East, like an old aunt on a regular visit to her nephews. It came to stay for a while, and as the first shock of the battle for Lebanon is over, the picture clears up. First, the news. Despite the awesome, crushing might of the Israeli onslaught, despite its unprecedented viciousness and brutality, the steadfast warriors of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah held their ground. The blitzkrieg planned by Tel Aviv strategists ground to a halt in the low hills of Maroun Ras, and came to naught in the streets of Bint Jbail. If in 1982, during the previous Israeli invasion, Jewish tanks crossed the Litani River in just 48 hours, now their advance is measured in single yards.
A Planet On The Edge Of Anarchy?
In a recent article, Michael Chossudovsky asks an interesting question: Is there a relationship between the bombing of Lebanon and the inauguration of the World's largest strategic pipeline, which will channel more than a million barrels of oil a day to Western markets?
Israel's New Middle East: Kill All Arabs
As expected, Israel plans to completely flatten southern Lebanon and murder anybody who remains there, no matter there are thousands of people unable to leave-the sick, elderly, and those without resources. "Everyone remaining in southern Lebanon will be regarded as a terrorist, Israel's justice minister said yesterday as the military prepared to employ 'huge firepower' from the air in its campaign to crush Hizbollah," reports the Telegraph.
Gaza: "Israel wants to drive us out our lands"
Khaled lives precariously in a refugee camp in Gaza. His poignant reports have been translated into many languages. Today, his voice, usually cheerful, was filled with revolt and a great lassitude. Sivlia Cattori: The Israeli bombings have already killed over 500 people and have wounded thousands in a few weeks in Gaza and Lebanon. Don't the Israeli authorities have any human consideration? Khaled: Now the soldiers are in the process of bombing us from all sides, from the sky, from their tanks posted on the frontier north of Gaza. It is very worrisome. Every day we are plunged in an boundless pain because of our dead and wounded. Yesterday, Israeli shooting claimed 25 new victims and more than 75 wounded among the inhabitants of Al Shijaeeya in Al Sha'af, east of the city of Gaza, and in the neighbourhood of Jabalyia, they bombed a house only 100 metres from my own.
Alex Jones and the Scholars for 911 Truth: The Parable of the Shepherd
They saw a Samaritan carrying a lamb and going to Judea. [Jesus] said to his disciples, "Why is he carrying the lamb around?" They said to him, "So that he may kill it and eat it." He said to them, "He will not eat it while it is alive, but only after it has been killed and has become a carcass." They said, "it cannot happen any other way." He said to them, "So also with you: seek a place of rest for yourselves, that you may not become a carcass and be eaten." -- Gospel of Thomas
US - Israeli UN Resolution Hypocrisy
Two nations stand out above all others as notorious serial abusers of UN resolutions - the US and Israel. Over the last half century, the US has used its Security Council veto many dozens of times to prevent any resolutions from passing condemning Israel for its abusive or hostile actions or that were inimical to Israeli interests. It's also voted against dozens of others overwhelmingly supported by the rest of the world in the UN General Assembly. By its actions and with 6% of the world's population, the US has thus arrogantly ignored the will of nearly all the other 94% to support its client state even when Israel had committed war crimes or crimes against humanity the rest of the world demanded it be held to account for. In the words of one UK observer using a baseball analogy: "Only the USA could have a World Series and not invite the rest of the world."
A Lawless World: How Israel Gets Away with Murder
"I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts, [and those who died because of] Israel's military action." -- John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations "I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a U.N. Observer post in southern Lebanon," -- Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-general "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for the good people to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797) British statesman . The list of war crimes and of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the government of Israel is very long and getting longer by the day.
When Jews Behave Like Nazis, They Become Nazis
On 23 March, 1944, 33 German soldiers were killed when members of an Italian resistance group set off a bomb close to a column of German troops who were marching on via Rasella. Adolph Hitler got furious and ordered that within 24 hours, ten Italians were to be shot for each dead German. Herbert Kappler, the local German commander, quickly compiled a list of 320 civilians who were to be killed. On 24 March, the victims were transported to Adreatine caves where they were summarily executed by the SS. Numerous similar "pacification operations" were carried out by the Nazi armies against civilians throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, in which men, women and children were brutally killed to avenge the death of German soldiers by local resistance fighters.
Video: What Israel Has Wrought
The following video gives an insight into the extreme brutality and disregard for innocent human life shown by the Israeli government. A must see..
Imperial Rulers and the Deadly Games They Play: Lamentations for the Sacrificial Pawns
As Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz recently boasted of "changing the reality on the northern border," the citizens of Israel became the subjects of a serious reality change. Appearing in a video-taped monologue aired on Al-Jazeera, Al Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called for a Muslim holy war against Israel and its Neocon enablers cowering behind their ramparts on Turtle Island: "The shells and rockets ripping apart Muslim bodies in Gaza and Lebanon are not only Israeli (weapons), but are supplied by all the countries of the crusader coalition. Therefore, every participant in the crime will pay the price."
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The Failed Administration of George W. Bush
"We now live in a nation in which the president has the omnipotent power to ignore all constitutional restraints on his power." -- Jacob Hornberger ( Future of Freedom Foundation). "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," -- Vice President Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002. "The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor." -- President Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush has failed as president. Indeed, it looks like the political legacy that George W. Bush will leave behind will be a terrible heritage. His administration, (which should more appropriately be called 'the Bush-Cheney administration' because of the predominant and crucial role played by Vice President Dick Cheney) will be remembered as an administration built on lies, fabricated "evidence", duplicity, deception, manipulation, propaganda, improvisation, bad policies and gratuitous warmongering. In other words, the 'Bush-Cheney administration' is the reverse of what you would like a democratic government to be. The end result is an administration that has profoundly corrupted the daily working of the U. S. government.
American Patriots
Patriotism, Tom Paine observed, is not best measured in times of national comfort and quiet. It is in times of crisis, when the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots have retreated to the safety of official talking points and unquestioning loyalty, that those who truly understand the meaning and merit of the American experiment come to its defense. On the 230th anniversary of the launch of that experiment, let us reflect on those who have met the test, noting in particular that some of the boldest expressions of patriotism have come from groups not necessarily associated with dissent.
Bush's Assault on Freedom: What's To Stop Him?
On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-3 decision ruled that President Bush's effort to railroad tortured Guantanamo Bay detainees in kangaroo courts "violates both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions." Better late than never, but it sure took a long time for the checks and balances to call a halt to the illegal and unconstitutional behavior of the executive. The Legal Times quotes David Remes, a partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling: "At the broadest level, the Court has rejected the basic legal theory of the Bush administration since 9/11 - that the president has the inherent power to do whatever he wants in the name of fighting terrorism without accountability to Congress or the courts."
Perhaps the Court's ruling has more far-reaching implications. In finding Bush in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the ruling may have created a prima facie case for charges to be filed against Bush as a war criminal. Many readers have concluded that Bush assumed the war criminal's mantle when he illegally invaded Iraq under false pretenses. The U.S. itself established the Nuremberg standard that it is a war crime to launch a war of aggression. This was the charge that the chief U.S. prosecutor brought against German leaders at the Nuremberg trials. The importance of the Supreme Court's decision, however, is that a legal decision by America's highest court has ruled Bush to be in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
For His Eyes Only: Bush's Secret Crimes
The Justice Department has finally taken decisive action in the mounting legal challenges to the President Bush's domestic spying program. But there's only one problem: It has acted to defend illegal spying, not stop it. On June 15, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to block the New Jersey Attorney General from demanding that telephone companies answer whether they have broken the law by providing records to the National Security Agency (NSA). On behalf of the Bush Administration, government attorneys argued that New Jersey cannot investigate whether the phone companies broke the law, because this could compromise national security. Government attorneys used the same argument in May to demand a federal court drop a case challenging warrantless domestic wiretapping--without even hearing the evidence. They declared that the court case itself would compromise national security. The Bush Administration demanded the judge throw out the case without any more review.
How are these unilateral demands even possible in American courts?
Shadows On The Wall
"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." --Winston ChurchillAnd so we sit, shackled by self-imposed chains of fear, captivated by shadowy forms that move discordantly across the walls of our perception. Once again we are eager to accept appearance for reality. The Supreme Court ruling last week rejecting George Bush's military commissions to try Guantanamo detainees casts a huge shadow on the wall. Many are saying it not only curbed Bush and Cheney's unlimited presidential power grab, but absolved us of the responsibility of having to do anything about it. Everybody's talking about this stunning victory for democracy.
Obstacles to the abolition of war
Some say "What a silly idea that war could ever be abolished. You can't change human nature!" But when you think about it, human nature has actually undergone significant evolutionary change. Just consider the development of language, and with it, the complexity of human communication and thought. And when it comes to resorting to war, it has become increasingly clear - at least to some observers - that it is a societal phenomenon rather than an unchangeable quality of human nature. It's true that violent social conflict has been around for as long as recorded history, but this doesn't make it a law of nature. Still, many a conservative persists in invoking "human nature" to deny the very possibility of resolving societal conflicts without using permanently established armed forces. Nor is it surprising that those who benefit from militarism and the arms trade defend their deadly business in the name of patriotism, and rationalize it with the notion that warfare is part and parcel of good old "human nature". (It was really memorable that even the World War II military leader President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the power of the "military-industrial complex".)
Britons tire of cruel, vulgar US: poll
People in Britain view the United States as a vulgar, crime-ridden society obsessed with money and led by an incompetent president whose Iraq policy is failing, according to a newspaper poll. The United States is no longer a symbol of hope to Britain and the British no longer have confidence in their transatlantic cousins to lead global affairs, according to the poll published in The Daily Telegraph. The YouGov poll found that 77 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement that the US is "a beacon of hope for the world".
Ehud Olmert's Ties to 9/11
The first two months of Ehud Olmert's term as Israel's prime minister have been described as "the bloodiest, deadliest and the most criminal period of the 58-year-old state of Israel." Although the controlled press overlooks the new Israeli leader's crimes, Olmert's ties to the convicted Israeli criminal who controlled airport security at Boston airport on 9/11 cannot be ignored. Although Zionism is probably the most potent force influencing U.S. politics, it is safe to say that it remains a political philosophy woefully misunderstood by the majority of the U.S. population. Although President George W. Bush and his war cabinet are clearly Zionists advancing the Zionist agenda, an agenda which is promoted and supported by nearly every member of Congress, Zionism and its bloody history are subjects which most Americans know virtually nothing about.
What would Mark Twain say?
For the past decade or so it has been my privilege to be a member of an online discussion devoted to Mark Twain. Most of the time it is a seamless mix of distinguished Twain scholars (including many of the people you saw in the Ken Burns special) and people who simply love Twain's work. Twice in the past 3 years this mix has broken down badly over the issue of the War in Iraq. There is a division here - not of Republican vs. Democrat, but of how these people look at Twain. Group A believes that he was a great author who is worth studying for his art and for his sharp comments on 19th century America. A second group looks at what is going on in the world and keeps hearing the voice of Twain, who authored some of the most incendiary anti-war texts in human history. For those of us on the B team, Twain is talking to us every day and he's fighting mad.
George W. Bush Is Dead To Me
Nation cringes as the worst president ever continues long, painful slog to the end
It is like some sort of virus. It is like some sort of weird and painful rash on your face that makes you embarrassed to walk out the door and so you sit there day after day, waiting for it to go away, slathering on ointment and Bactine and scotch. And yet still it lingers. Some days the pain is so searing and hot you want to cut off your own head with a nail file. Other days it is numb and pain-free and seemingly OK, to the point where you think it might finally be all gone and you allow yourself a hint of a whisper of a positive feeling, right up until you look in the mirror, and scream. George W. Bush is just like that.
Busted for wearing a peace T-shirt; has this country gone completely insane?
Friday afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago's south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, "Okay, you've had your 15 minutes, it's time to go." "Huh?" I asked intelligently, not quite sure what he was talking about. "You can't be in here protesting," Officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt. "Well, I'm not protesting, I'm having a cup of coffee," I returned, thinking that logic would convince Adkins to go back to his earlier duties of guarding against serious terrorists. Flipping his badge open, he said, "No, not with that shirt. You're protesting and you have to go."
Fascism: An American reality
Contrary to the well perpetuated myth, fascism is not limited to storm troopers blatantly goose-stepping down streets and alleyways, engaging in bloody search and destroy missions. Germany's fascism under Adolf Hitler differed from Italy's fascism under Benito Mussolini, but they were both fascist nation states. Fascism has different forms, all of which are equally deadly, all of which must be identified, seriously resisted and stopped. Complacently insisting that the organized state repressive apparatus of, in and by the United States must not be defined as fascism is incredibly dangerous, especially at this point in history. It's a bit like quibbling with a person who is in the death throes of drowning that he is not actually drowning but merely suffocating! No matter how it is defined, the person is dying, and immediate action is needed to save his or her life!
Inequality and Plutocracy in America
"Democracy [is] when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers." -- Aristotle, (384-322 BC). "Money becomes evil not when it is used to buy goods but when it is used to buy power... economic inequalities become evil when they are translated into political inequalities." --Samuel Huntington. One of the greatest benefits of a well functioning democracy is its capacity to bring about change: change of government, change of policies, change in the distribution of income and wealth, etc., and to avoid stagnation and immobilization. In any society, the tendency is for a few to concentrate power and wealth in their hands, leaving the many in a situation of dependence and despondency. The right to vote and to engage in political activity changes the balance of power in a country and opens the door for the establishment of a government, in Lincoln's words, "of the people, by the people, and for the people." However, too great a concentration of wealth inevitably brings forth corruption in government and a concentration of the tools of propaganda, both of which constitute the greatest threats to democracy.
"Israel Imprisons the Vice President of the Euro-Med Assembly and where is the EU?"
"I have no more words to express my indignation for the repeated and unpunished violations of the legality by the Israeli government. But it seems that the European Union is speechless either, since it hasn't condemned yet the imprisonment, that took place on Friday 7 July, of Mr Hassan Khreshi, Vice President of the Political Committee on Security and Human Rights of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliament Assembly (EMPA), of which I am member as well" declared Luisa Morgantini (GUE/NGL). "What more Israel has to do, which other violation Israel has to commit, how many other murders of civil victims have to be completed before the EU firmly orders to Israel to respect the international law and the human rights?"
The Despicable Arab Elite
While 'Rome Burns' They Party, Buy Prostitutes of all types,
and Squander Their History as well as their National Wealth. From the
oil, energy, and petrodollar centers of Arabia they are probably the
most despicable class of people in modern history. Few will or can say
this out loud; for those who try find their publications either
undermined or bought-out and their personal situations endangered. From
Saudi Arabia to Dubai and Qatar and Kuwait they spend untold fortunes
on prostitutes of all kinds -- from sex to business to government --
building unbelieveably tasteless snow mountains in the desert,
ridiculously outlandish palaces in the sands, and lavish extravagansas
that sometimes seem to compare with the worst Roman days of Caligula.
Now departed from the U.S. and 'back home' manuevering one way or
another to line himself up for the throne of 'The Kingdom' of 'Saudi
Arabia', Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz continually threw his
multi-millions at takers far and wide during his 20+ year rein as U.S.
Ambassador. More than any other individual Bandar infiltrated, bribed,
used, and undermined, nearly all of the Arab and Muslim civic and
public organizations in Washington, terribly corrupting and
compromising nearly all of them. What he did during his American rein
is more responsible than anything else for how weak and discredited
nearly all of these organizations are today when they are so deperately
needed but instead are MIA (Missing in Action).