Some???

For years, the government has denied that depleted uranium (DU), a radioactive toxic waste left over from nuclear fission and added to munitions used in the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars, poisoned Iraqi civilians and veterans.

But a little-known 1993 Defense Department document written by then-Brigadier Gen. Eric Shinseki, now the secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), shows that the Pentagon was concerned about DU contamination and the agency had ordered medical testing on all personnel that were exposed to the toxic substance.

The VA, however, never conducted the medical tests, which may have deprived hundreds of thousands of veterans from receiving medical care to treat cancer and other diseases that result from exposure to DU.

The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center recently reported that ten years of data confirm that service members tend to have higher rates of certain cancers compared to civilians, according to the Army Times. While researchers suspected that service members are diagnosed with cancer more often and at a younger age because they have guaranteed access to health care and mandatory exams, the data does not explain the disparities in diagnosis among branches of the military. For example, the rate of lung cancer among sailors is twice that of other branches, while Marines have much lower cancer rates across the board.

The solution to our fiscal crisis, The Nation magazine editorializes, is to “end the wars, allow the tax cuts to expire and restore robust growth.” That’s because nearly the entire deficit this year and those projected at least for the short term are the result of “the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession,” the publication says in its lead editorial of August 2nd.

Yet, while the Obama administration has just pushed through $59 billion more to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan to intensify that war and for "nation-building", it has done way too little to help the States maintain needed jobs. “Spending on local projects plummets,” was a June 25th headline in “USA Today.”

I asked the IPPNW member aboard the Mavi Marmora, how he, as a practicing psychiatrist, would evaluate the mental state of the Israeli leadership, he quipped that he was merely a psychotherapist, and did not deal with cases of grave psychosis.

BAGHDAD – A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It's cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose

In the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is credited with masterminding the 9/11 attacks, their purpose was to focus "the American people ... on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people …."

I missed this. After the Israelis came out with their lame investigation saying that they would indict several officers and soldiers in four cases arising from the Gaza conflict of ’08-’09, a fairminded South African columnist, Allister Sparks, published an important piece a few days ago, calling on South African rabbis to apologize to Judge Richard Goldstone for slamming Goldstone’s report last year.

OVER 200,000 AMERICAN JEWS TRAINED AND ONLY 4,000 SERVE

According to the Department of Defense, only 4000 Jews serve in the American military. Over 200,000 American Jews have been trained at US expense by the IDF in Israel but only a handful defend Israel in the current wars in the military of the country of their birth, the United States of America. 40% of the world’s Jews live in Israel. 40% of the world’s Jews live in the United States with 2.2 million residing in New York City alone. If any nation has been the homeland of the Jews, it has been the United States.

For: My Catbird Seat
Humanity and Humanity, is the first of a series of poems written and narrated by Richard Falk

Richard Falk, author of Human Rights Horizons, The Pursuit of Justice in a Globalizing World, delivers a profound message that needs to be heard. He evokes and reminds us of the fundamental principles of humanity. In so doing, he awakens our spirit of compassion and guides us towards a kinder, gentler world.

Poetry, such as this, based upon the leveling and humbling of humanity, is not going to be popular with the Western Press in this day and age, regardless of its merit as art.

It is unfortunate, but Ezra Pound was right in his Cantico del Sole.

Continue Reading

What is America doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? It’s called “nation building.” What business is it of America to be building other’s nations? It’s really none of their business. It’s nothing more than the arrogance of power.

Salem-News.Com

We hope the impact will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and modern warfare in general. - Wikileaks

(SALEM, Ore.) – WikiLeaks has done it again; over 90,000 documents from the war in Afghanistan have been released to the public. Wikileaks called, The Afghan War Diary (AWD), “An extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.

“The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related detail.”

Latest Tweets
* Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:50:42 wikileaks: WikiLeaks' "war logs" are online. NYT: nyti.ms/dacIql Guardian: bit.ly/dlNzWx Der Spiegel: bit.ly/bpjIZk
Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-milit...
* Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:22:55 wikileaks: Afghan war logs: massive leak of secret files exposes hundreds of abuses bit.ly/9KJWfq
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html

Christopher King calls on Britain’s coalition government to release the postmortem report – so far kept secret – on the death of Iraq war whistleblower and UN weapons inspector David Kelly, who allegedly committed suicide but is suspected of having been murdered by US or Israeli agents.

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

By Tomás Rosa Bueno (Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran)

Paul J. Balles argues that the continued presence of 1,000 American military bases outside the USA nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union is a symptom of the arrogance of power that threatens local communities and ultimately the USA itself.

”What is America doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? It’s called 'nation building'. What business is it of America to be building other’s nations? It's really none of their business. It's nothing more than the arrogance of power.”

Tim Coles takes us through 11 steps necessary to create a “terrorist state”. Using Yemen as a case study, he argues that these steps precisely match US and British policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran as well as Yemen to grow “very poisonous seeds”, some which have ripened while others are ripening.

As Green was executing the family, Cortez finished raping Abeer and switched positions with Barker. Green came out of the bedroom and announced to Barker and Cortez, "They're all dead. I killed them all." Cortez held Abeer down and Green raped her. Then Cortez pushed a pillow over her face, still pinning her arms with his knees. Green grabbed the AK, pointed the gun at the pillow, and fired one shot, killing Abeer.

The men were becoming extremely frenzied and agitated now. Barker brought a kerosene lamp he had found in the kitchen and dumped the contents on Abeer. Spielman handed a lighter to either Barker or Cortez, who lit the flame. Spielman went to the bedroom and found some blankets to throw on the body to stoke the fire.

By Stephen M. Walt – Foreign Policy

Via Ben Smith at Politico, we learn that the usual suspects have started yet another organization whose objective is to promote a hard-right, Likudnik agenda in the Middle East. The new group apparently intends to go after anyone who thinks U.S. Middle East policy has been less than totally successful in recent years, and who is willing to think for themselves (and U.S. interests), instead of reflexively echoing the positions favored by AIPAC and other groups in the “status quo” lobby.

By Alex Kane — Desertpeace

With “peace talks” between the Palestinian Authority and Israel seeming more and more like a dead end, many people around the world, including dissident Jewish voices, are turning to grassroots activism to pressure Israel to end the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Recently, Jewish Voice for Peace launched a campaign to pressure TIAA-CREF, one of the largest financial services in the U.S., to divest from companies that profit off of the Israeli occupation. Yesterday, the Olympia Food Co-Op, located in the hometown of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer, announced a decision to boycott Israeli goods at their two locations.

*hyperlinks and interview live at source*

James Fetzer interviewed me on his radio show and podcast, The Real Deal, in discussion of the evidence to prove beyond any doubt current US wars are tragic-comic unlawful; Orwellian in the distance between the disclosed and verifiable evidence and the law. The article with links of documentation is here to prove all claims for war were known lies as they were told, with this information now uncontroversial but corporate media lying in omission in their failure to announce this to the American public.

These lies that levied war on US soldiers are treason; with escalated war policy under President Obama that includes threat to attack Iran based on similar lies that preceded war with Iraq.

As a candidate for president, Senator Hillary Clinton vowed to ban the use of private security contractors, which she referred to as mercenaries. "These private security contractors have been reckless and have compromised our mission in Iraq," Clinton said in February 2008. "The time to show these contractors the door is long past due." Clinton was one of only two senators to sponsor legislation to ban these companies. Fast forward to the present and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is presiding over what is shaping up to be a radical expansion of a private, US-funded paramilitary force that will operate in Iraq for the foreseeable future--the very type of force Clinton once claimed she opposed.

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban
Is it not odd that the two most important generals in the American army are more realistic and more keen on ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than the politicians who are supposed, by nature, to be against wars and more capable of ending them?

The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.

According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,” the people of Fallujah are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb strikes in 1945.

The irony here is that the decision to declare enemy fighters in Afghanistan as "unlawful enemy combatants" -- which is what, in turn, "justified" denial of Geneva Conventions protections for them (at least until the Supreme Court ruled otherwise) -- was grounded in the fact that they do not, as Mukasey put it, "wear uniforms, follow a recognized chain of command, carry their arms openly." That's what made them, in the U.S. lexicon, not only "unlawful combatants" but even Terrorists. But, of course, exactly the same is true for our countless private contractors who are acting as combatants for the U.S. in multiple parts of the world; as Priest and Arkin document, they are so numerous and unaccountably embedded in secret government functions that they are literally "countless":

Maidhc O'Cathail
Snopes purports to debunk a claim that “four thousand Israelis employed by companies housed in the World Trade Center stayed home from work on September 11, warned in advance of the impending attack on the World Trade Center.”

The latest in a series of statements designed to imply Iranian complicity with the insurgency in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, the top US commander in Iraq, named three Shi’ite groups that he claimed have ties to Iran.

Can we get the bullshyt meter for this?? :)

Revenues from about a dozen oil contracts will not start being significant until 2013 or 2014, when Iraq will be able to produce enough oil, according to Odierno.

OUR UNREPORTED ”COLD WAR” WITH ISRAEL

9/11 was like Pearl Harbor to America, uniting many, awakening bitter skepticism in a few. Where Pearl Harbor began America’s official role in crushing the Fascist juggernaut that threatened to dominate the world, 9/11 had quite the opposite effect. America’s response to 9/11 was oppression at home and a tirade of frenzied phobic reactions around the world. No American institution suffered more than the military. The team of Cheney and Rumsfeld, together since the disastrous Nixon years, began a process of purging America’s military of talent and leadership, instead building a force to serve a sinister agenda of religious heresy and extremist politics.

'Scary' growth of gangs in war zones
Chicago cop who served in Afghanistan and Iraq has warning: Gang members are coming home with military training
July 18, 2010
BY FRANK MAIN Staff Reporter
Stoleson, who stressed he was not speaking for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections or the Army, said it appears the problem is worse than ever. He warned that soldiers who return to gang life back home are especially dangerous because they know military tactics that they can use against the police and the public -- as a Marine did in 2005 when he killed a police officer and wounded three others in a California ambush.
"Gang members are coming home now with one or two tours," he said. "Some were on the field of battle."

By Lawrence Davidson

While in Israeli custody I, along with everyone else was subjected to endless abuse and flagrant acts of disrespect. Women and elderly were physically and mentally assaulted. Access to food and water and toilets was denied. Dogs were used against us, we ourselves were treated like dogs.

Ken O'Keefe
My 1984 reality is culminating with the United States and Israeli Governments treating me and/or charging me with being a “terrorist”. Americans worry not, you can sleep better at night knowing your “homeland” is being defended from the likes of me. And Israel, rest easy as well, it’s Ken O’Keefe and his Arab collaborators who are in the Mossad crosshairs.

Where the US claims its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is only temporary the massive infrastructures established in these countries in the form of military bases belies this claim. They are not dispensing “Enduring Freedom” but an enduring presence and Afghanistan and Iraq are only the most recent franchises in a global network of over 700 US military bases.

Imperialism is a very expensive game and has left America the most indebted country in the world. It is fighting foreign wars with borrowed money on borrowed time. It then becomes necessary to defray the costs of this cretinous extravagance by coercing allies, namely NATO, into being the whores of US imperialism all too willing to cough up cash and lives in a sorely corrupted cause for despicable motives.

By Mark Perry - Foreign Policy

by Ramzy Baroud

Resistance is not a band of armed men hell-bent on wreaking havoc. It is not a cell of terrorists scheming ways to detonate buildings.

True resistance is a culture.

It is a collective retort to oppression.

Veteran Middle East correspondent David Hirst, author of the seminal work on the Palestinian plight The Gun and the Olive Branch, has a new release: Beware of Small States, an equally important book on Lebanon’s complex tragedy. The Electronic Intifada contributor Robin Yassin-Kassab interviewed Hirst on his work and views.

Robin Yassin-Kassab: You did your national service in Cyprus and Egypt just before the 1956 Suez War. What effect did your first experience of the Middle East have on you? Why did you end up spending your life in the Middle East, particularly in its more violent corners? Have kidnappings and bannings discouraged you?

Blair certainly did what he "thought was right" for Tony Blair. As Peter Oborne pointed out in March : "We now know that the wretched Blair has multiplied his personal fortune many times over by trading off the connections he made while in Downing Street. Shockingly, he fought a long battle to conceal the source of his new-found wealth, and only this month did it finally become public that one of his largest clients was a South Korean oil company, the UI Energy Corporation, with extensive interests in Iraq ... he has also made £1million from advising the Kuwaiti royal family. It can be fairly claimed that Blair has profiteered as a result of the Iraq War in which so many hundreds of thousands of people died ... in the league of shame, Tony Blair is arguably the worst of them all."

The US Congress and the Israeli Knesset are Siamese twins bound together by an umbilical cord of dependency through interlocking arteries of corporate and military budget lines that keep the complex alive while force feeding our representatives with blood money.

One wonders what to make of the American politicians who are very much like an echo chamber for Israel’s talking points concerning Iran. Do they realize that by being led around by the nose by Israel and its Lobby is very much against U.S. interests?

With record foreclosures and child poverty at a shameful level, can we really afford to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq for 10 years?

Philip Weiss, author of the blog MondoWeiss, on Antiwar Radio discusses the role of the Israeli government, the Likudniks and the neoconservative movement in lying the American people into war in Iraq, the dishonesty of the American media on all issues related to the occupations of the West Bank and Gaza strip, the hillarious recent story of Gen. David Petraeus’ pathetic belly crawling before the feet of his neocon masters, as revealed in his correspondence with Max Boot, which he accidentally forwarded in an email to James Morris a long time, anti-neocon activist and author of the blog Wake Up America!, which gives it all away. There is no question of whose man Petraeus is!

Oil convoys to Iran drive through US sanctions
SAM DAGHER PENJWIN, IRAQ
July 10, 2010
Day after day, without formal authorisation from Baghdad, more than 1000 tankers snake through this town on Iraq's border with Iran, not only undercutting recent US sanctions but worsening tensions with Baghdad over how to divide the country's oil profits.

A number of prominent Republican and Democrat congressmen slammed Turkey’s “disgraceful conduct,” warning that there would be “payback” if Ankara continued to pursue its close relations with Iran and hostility towards Israel.

Israeli news service Haaretz published a next-day headline that read, “Israel won’t attack Iran without coordinating with the U.S.” That caption implies that Obama gave the blessing of the U.S. for an Israeli attack, ensuring that Americans can once again be portrayed as…guilty by association.

By Kenneth O’ Keefe
Welcome to Orwell’s ‘1984’ ladies and gentlemen, where black is white, white is black, and the truth is nothing but a word.

My 1984 reality is culminating with the United States and Israeli Governments treating me and/or charging me with being a “terrorist”. Americans worry not, you can sleep better at night knowing your “homeland” is being defended from the likes of me. And Israel, rest easy as well, it’s Ken O’Keefe and his Arab collaborators who are in the Mossad crosshairs.

All kidding aside, I am a family man, with a beautiful family, a loving wife and baby boy, a boy who will be the biggest victim if his father is no longer in his life.

BY DEBBIE MENON

Come August, a military commission in Guantánamo will try Omar Khadr, a Canadian national captured outside Kabul in 2002. He was a boy, aged 15 then. Now a burly, bearded 23-year-old who has spent one-third of his life at Guantanamo. He bears scant resemblance to the fresh-faced, teen, who had survived multiple gunshots wounds and several major surgeries. There must be some reason why this lad did not die from his wounds. A shotgun blast to the back with sufficient force to exit the chest is a pretty fatal event. Perhaps the Power that kept him alive this long will reveal His purpose in time.

Gen. Mattis has the same habit of speaking his mind as McCrystal. Eric Garris writes today that Mattis was quoted back in 2005 as saying he finds pleasure in shooting and killing people in Afghanistan. “Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot,” Mattis said, prompting laughter from some military members in the audience, CNN reported on February 4, 2005. “It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.” Mattis, who commanded Marine expeditions in Afghanistan and Iraq, made the comments during a panel discussion in San Diego, California.

The CIA death squads and kindred units from the military killed many, many people and most certainly there was extensive ‘collateral damage’ – meaning innocent people being murdered

Iraq is America’s Gaza and, like Gaza, it cries for justice to a world which would rather ignore its plight as well as America and Great Britain’s role in this murderous error of judgement . Our karmic debt, like Israels with Gaza , is immeasurable:

Yes, we needed economists to tell us this. A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds “strong evidence for a revenge effect” when examining the relationship between civilian casualties caused by the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan and radicalization after such incidents occur. The paper even estimates of how many insurgent attacks to expect after each civilian death. Those findings, however intuitive, might resolve an internal military debate about the counter-productivity of civilian casualties — and possibly fuel calls for withdrawal.

State Department budgets show that since 2008, Israel's place in U.S. foreign spending has remained undiminished. The fiscal year 2011 budget contains a proposed $3 billion for Israel. All of this money is appropriated for foreign military financing, a program that helps foreign countries to purchase weapons and defense equipment produced in the United States., as well as military training. This $3 billion comprises 42 percent of the total assistance to the Near East region.

MJ Rosenberg

Some readers think I exaggerate the influence of the lobby. I don’t — I used to work at AIPAC and on its favorite stomping ground, Capitol Hill. The latest evidence of the fear and trembling produced by the Israel lobby was evidenced last week when it was revealed that General David Petraeus was upset and worried by a column I wrote in March.

The old adage “politics stops at the water’s edge” does not apply to the Middle East.

When it comes to all matters relating to Israel, foreign policy is politics. It is absolutely impossible to imagine US policy toward Israel not being intertwined with politics and political fund-raising.

By Stephen J. Sniegoski

While Obama is often portrayed as a political neophyte finding himself confronting situations that are way over his head, his choice of General David H. Petraeus to replace General Stanley A. McChrystal was in some ways a masterful political stroke, though it does not seem to have achieved all that might have been intended.

The destruction of this museum is inexcusable and was avoidable - which makes one wonder if it was allowed on purpose.

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Our petulant president’s ego can’t handle a general letting off steam. Neither can any of the spoiled children who comprise “our” government in DC, the capital of the “superpower.”

Generals have to fight wars that civilians start, either from the incompetence of their diplomacy or the arrogance of their hubris. Generals have to get young troops killed because of the stupidity or ambition or corruption of civilian government officials.

All McChrystal did was to let off steam. A real president would have realized that and let it go.

Don’t get me wrong. McChrystal is a militarist, and I am pleased to see him gone.

However, McChrystal didn’t restart America’s aggression against Afghanistan. Obama did.

The Obama Presidency: An Unfolding Disaster
Written by Larry Pinkney
Friday, 02 July 2010 04:35
Barack Obama is in fact, shrewdly facilitating and overseeing the dismantling, not of the U.S. corporate / military empire, but rather of the economic and political human rights and legitimate needs of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow peoples in this nation. It is for this purpose that the corporate / military establishment and the corporate media ensured that Barack Obama was installed in the White House. This is an increasingly obvious disaster not for the wealthy elite who already have homes, villas, gated mansions, yachts, and cushioned financial holdings all over the world. It is however, a horrible disaster for everyday common folks in this nation and around this planet.

By Jeff Gates

What news outlets can our military trust? Fox News? CNN? The New York Times? For a nation dependent on informed consent, where can we as veterans turn for the real facts?

Weak on Defense and Bill of Rights, Not During War Time

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is untrustworthy, weak on defense and supports the Bill of Rights only with conditions. With our military imbedded in foreign conflicts on false premises, her wartime appointment must be rejected.

By GORDON DUFF

SIMPLE CARD TRICKS FOR WAR

By Puppet Government Productions

A hard hitting new video debunking the continuing puppet show in Washington DC, and the “doubletalk” complicity of President Obama in continuing the phony “war on terror.”

A Must Watch:

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2010/07/puppet-government-new-video-%e2%80%9c...

Nearly 8,000 New Vets Suffer from PTSD, Over 7,000 Suffer from TBI, Over 4,000 Suffer from Both
07/01/2010
“After being redeployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of New York veterans are suffering from PTSD and TBI and many are not even aware of it,”.... Additionally, Senator Gillibrand is expressing concerns over the increased reliance on psychotropic medication to treat TBI, which has nearly tripled, increasing from approximately 100,000 prescriptions to more than 300,000, with no clear evidence as to its effectiveness."

As far as human rights groups were concerned the Obama administration got off to a flying start with the executive orders pledging to close Guantanamo and restricting all US personnel to using interrogation techniques delineated in the 2006 Army Field Manual on Interrogations.

Unfortunately this was high point and it has been downhill all the way ever since. While the Executive Order put an apparent end to waterboarding and CIA black sites the 2006 Interrogations Field Manual is itself far from unproblematic.

There is nothing in the manual to prevent the reintroduction of the so-called "frequent flyer" technique of constantly waking and rewaking an individual after only a few minutes sleep so that no effective rest is gained at all.

The Zionist McCarthyism dominating the corridors of power in Washington, with the inquisitions held by the Zionist lobby with its legendary financial capacities capable of buying consciences and blackmailing politicians and journalists

CIA TRIES TO PREPARE AMERICAN PUBLIC FOR TRUTH ABOUT BUSH/BIN LADEN DECEPTION

VETERANS TODAY WRITER Ken O’Keefe ON BBC “HARD TALK”

WATCH THE SPARKS FLY….

Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith warned Tony Blair three months before the Iraq war that an invasion would be illegal, secret memos showed today.

The Cabinet Office published Lord Goldsmith's first draft of his legal advice and confirmed that he had serious doubts about the legality of the conflict without a fresh UN mandate.

The memo, released under the orders of Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, was written on January 14, 2003.

It stated: “My opinion is that resolution 1441 does not revive the authorisation to use of force... in the absence of a further decision of the Security Council.”

Using the McChrystal Moment to Raise a Forbidden Question

By Prof. David Ray Griffin

Global Research, June 25, 2010

There are many questions to ask about the war in Afghanistan. One that has been widely asked is whether it will turn out to be “Obama’s Vietnam.”1 This question implies another: Is this war winnable, or is it destined to be a quagmire, like Vietnam? These questions are motivated in part by the widespread agreement that the Afghan government, under Hamid Karzai, is at least as corrupt and incompetent as the government the United States tried to prop up in South Vietnam for 20 years.

Senator Joseph Lieberman,claims that the Jewish state is their greatest ally, if they knew that Israeli agents planted firebombs in American installations in Egypt in 1954 in an attempt to undermine relations between Nasser and the United States; that Israel murdered 34 American servicemen in a deliberate attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967; that Israeli espionage, most notably Jonathan Pollard’s spying, has done tremendous damage to American interests; that five Mossad agents were filming and celebrating as the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001;

U.S. CITIZEN KILLED BY ISRAELI FORCES, OTHERS BEATEN: U.S. MUST ACT!
The statement requests that the United States join other nations to call for an independent inquiry into the matter by an impartial tribunal and demand that Israel immediately release property appropriated from the flotilla.

Nahida the Exiled Palestinian
If Palestinians were to comply and abide by the rules of the game as defined by the colonial “super-powers” the sheer word “Palestine” would have disappeared by now. There would be no mention of us anywhere, and yet we achieved already so much. We have more than ever the strength to resist, to dream and to force our way to expose and defeat the criminal Zionist project.

Israel agreed to sell South Africa nuclear weapons.

More than that, it makes any aid America gives Israel illegal. If Israel is nuclear, which is now official, and in violation of international treaties, just as with Iraq and Iran, then America has to demand inspections and disarmament. There is no choice. This is the law. Law for Iran, law for Iraq is also law for Israel. Israel has expected this day for years.

“Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”
Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

This book not only provides a detailed account and illustration of Israeli war crimes in Gaza but equally important it provides a comprehensive analysis of the reasons why more and more people are recognizing that the US Congress and White House are zionized occupied territory.

FROM THE PREFACE

Such as is eminently personified in 1980 when General Sharon signed an oath with his blood along with very many senior IDF officers who aligned themselves with the same blood oath throughout the years since, “In the event of a government of Israel seeking to withdraw from Judea and Samaria for peace with the Palestinians, the oath commits those who signed it to make common cause with the settlers and fight that government to the death.

Special thanks to our friends at: AUSTRALIANS FOR PALESTINE

Palestinian lawyer and advocate Diana Buttu will be joining fellow compatriot UCLA Prof SAREE MAKDISI in a forum entitled “Apartheid and Boycotts” that will also include Dr NED CURTHOYS from ANU and Sydney Peace Foundation Chairman Professor Emeritus STUART REES AM. Below you will find details of the event being held tomorrow evening in Melbourne and also some background to the participants in the forum. Ms Buttu has been brought out specifically to speak to unions, the media and the public on the impossible conditions endured by the Palestinians under Israel’s apartheid policies and brutal military rule.

What do chocolate, cookies, A4 paper, potato chips, cumin, toys, jelly, nuts, dried fruit, nutmeg, and goats have in common?

It’s a tricky one. If you’re a moderate, they have absolutely nothing in common. But if you are a hard-line Israeli politician, they are all potentially dangerous goods that could threaten Israel’s security.

The world we live in, is like a big school, the day we stop learning, is the day we die.

And as students in the big school of life, we all know that in every class room there are students who tend to act out or misbehave. There are students who are trouble makers by nature, or maybe suffer from (ADHD) attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. But those don`t worry me as much as the student who suddenly misbehave after being the topnotch kid of his class, I’m talking about the four- star General, Stanely McChrystal who suddenly started mocking his civilian leaders, and showed disrespect to the American political and military administration.

By Robert Parry (A Special Report) Veterans Today

As the Official Story of the 1980 October Surprise case crumbles – with new revelations that key evidence was hidden from investigators of a congressional task force and that internal doubts were suppressed – history must finally confront the troubling impression that remains: that disgruntled elements of the CIA and Israel’s Likud hardliners teamed up to remove a U.S. president from office.

Indeed, it is this disturbing conclusion – perhaps even more than the idea of a Republican dirty trick – that may explain the longstanding and determined cover-up of this political scandal.

*hyperlinks and video live at source*

In the interview below, Southern California Republican Congressperson Dana Rohrabacher is reported by Judge Andrew Napolitano as admitting the “emperor has no clothes” obvious: US war in Iraq is unlawful and almost all House Republicans know it.

The war in Afghanistan is also Orwellian unlawful, with all 9/11 “justifications” now correctly understood as obvious lies upon inspection of the uncontroversial government-disclosed facts.

There are also many evidence implicating Israeli Mossad agents in the 911 bombing of the Trade Center.
The story of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard is very well known. Pollard was responsible for the murder of 100 CIA agents, whose names were included in vital intelligence he turned over to the Soviet Union.

Paul J. Balles recounts how every time he spoke out against injustice, disinformation and bigotry – the Vietnam war, the Palestine-Israel conflict, the aggressions against Iraq and Afghanistan – he was told to shut up. But he will never shut up.

”It's my patriotic duty ... to criticize my own country where there's injustice, inhuman cruelty, bigotry, brainwashing or disinformation inadequately revealed in any major media.”

To millions of Americans, the “end times” seem to be on us.

The BP disaster in the Gulf may leave 25% of America virtually uninhabitable, eco-systems destroyed for sure but maybe much more, a destroyed sea floor, toxic gas clouds moving inland and warnings of something worse, a geological disaster of biblical proportions sitting offshore like a ticking time bomb. Millions of American believe the president is a foreign born Muslim, a puppet of the terrorists while millions believe he is working for Israel. Every speech, every state visit, everything done is seen to support one side or another, sometimes both. The destruction of the American presidency is only part of it, part of a program of racial division, fear, hate and a descent into class warfare and violence.

Born and raised in America, I learned that my country was built on outstanding principles propped up by a great constitution. When I saw those principles violated and the constitution ignored, I complained. At times, I was told to shut up.

The Vietnam War was well underway when I started teaching at a California university. I learned as much as I could about the war, believed it was wrong and joined the protesters. My untenured position was at risk for joining the peaceniks.

I also learned that Arabs and Israelis were more alike than different when expressing their antagonism toward each other. One of each happened to be in a class I was teaching. Each would sidle up to me, separately and at different times, to explain what was wrong with the other.

BY DEBBIE MENON

THE events that have unfolded in the past decade, we would never have thought would have occurred 10 years ago. Elements of changes in world power, focus upon the Middle East, battle cries of holy wars, nuclear threats, thousands of innocents taken in a single morning, and the list goes on.

Now, I am battling the impulse to generalize my anger at to “be prejudiced” against all Americans in general.

How can that be? I definitely know that most Americans are decent, good hearted, peaceful people who, while gullible perhaps, do not generally advocate the mass murder of others in the name of war on terror or war on anything. But in my emotions they are and my heart aches and I am angry at “Americans”.

MFSO says “Seize the Moment” – Veterans Today

The reverberations from General McChrystal’s interview in Rolling Stone are just beginning. It will likely gain more attention as the 24-hour news outlets dig in to cover it from every conceivable angle. The circumstances that have been revealed by General McChrystal’s lapse in judgment reflects more than an out-of-control general in Afghanistan. It’s about a failed strategy that puts young men and women – our family members – at risk.

This is an opportunity to get our voices included in the discussion. As military family members who have loved ones who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, our perspective has impact!

The looting of Iraq’s ancient ruins is thriving again. This time it is not a result of the “stuff happens” chaos that followed the American invasion in 2003, but rather the bureaucratic indifference of Iraq’s newly sovereign government.

Thousands of archaeological sites — containing some of the oldest treasures of civilization — have been left unprotected, allowing what officials of Iraq’s antiquities board say is a resumption of brazenly illegal excavations, especially here in southern Iraq.

The Technological Revolution and the Future of Freedom, Part 1
by Andrew Gavin Marshall at Globalresearch.ca.

There is a new and unique development in human history that is taking place around the world; it is unprecedented in reach and volume, and it is also the greatest threat to all global power structures: the ‘global political awakening.’ The term was coined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and refers to the fact that, as Brzezinski wrote:

For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.[1]

Operation Cage: a case study in Israeli false flag tactics
By Wayne Madsen — Online Journal Contributing Writer

WMR) – Top Turkish government and intelligence sources told WMR in Ankara and Istanbul that Turkish intelligence has obtained evidence that Israeli intelligence is squarely behind repeated Ergenekon “deep state” plots aimed at overthrowing the Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, including Operations Sledgehammer and Cage.

The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has failed in an attempt to assassinate Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Jordanian weekly says.

Informed sources in Turkey say that the Mossad plot has been foiled by the country’s security forces, al-Manar quoted a report in the most recent edition of the Al-Majd weekly as saying.

There are also reports that Israel has been trying to incite violence inside Turkey by lending support to the militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Earlier in June, Sedat Laciner, the head of the International Strategic Research Organization — a Turkish think tank — said Mossad agents and Israeli military retirees had been sighted providing training to PKK militants in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Petraeus is an evolved form of general. He “won” in Iraq by paying protection money to the Sunnis who were effectively resisting the US occupation. Petraeus figured out that it was far cheaper and more efficient to put the Sunnis on the US military payroll and to pay them to stop fighting, which is how the war between the Sunnis and the Americans ended. To keep the Americans out of the ongoing large scale sectarian violence that continues to slaughter Iraqis, the US military was confined to remote bases.

If history is a guide, the Afghans will also accept Petraeus’ protection money, and Petraeus has just enough time to buy the Afghan war before the next presidential election.

The Afghans will, of course, take the money and wait us out, just as the Iraqis are doing.

WATCHING DARKNESS DESCEND IN THE INFORMATION AGE

Today the Israeli news service sent out an email broadcast, 87 US Senators affirmed unquestioning support for Israel in the wake of worldwide condemnation for Israeli actions against the Freedom Flotilla. In Australia, Prime Minister Rudd, after strongly admonishing Israel for counterfeiting Australian passports for use in political assassinations was removed from office, victim of a relentless media campaign orchestrated from Tel Aviv. How does this tell us we no longer live in democracies, the US, Australia, Britain, Germany and Canada?

Turkey is the Key

Bombs go off in Turkey, a great spree of terrorist bombings and attacks. Practically every day Turkish soldiers and civilians are being killed. The killings are done ostensibly by the Kurd terrorists of PPK, but this is a new step in Israel’s warfare against Turkish independence. Encouraged by Israel, PKK extended its operations to the Aegean and the Black Sea resorts all the way to Izmir.