By Khaled Amayreh

American Consul General to Jerusalem Michael A. Ratney on Monday, 23 June, addressed the 56th annual convention of the American Federation of Ramallah, Occupied Palestine (AFRP), held for the first time in Ramallah.

Speaking before more than 1500 Palestinian-Americans, Ratney said the U.S. government was still committed to the "peace process," saying that the two-state solution “required building a strong and self-sustaining economy."

He didn't explain how such an economy can be built let alone sustained in the presence of a sinister foreign military occupation and absence of any semblance of Palestinian sovereignty.

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James Petras

Introduction

There are two major beneficiaries of the two major wars launched by the US government: one domestic and one foreign. The three major domestic arms manufacturers, Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrop Grumman (NOG) and Raytheon (RTN) have delivered record-shattering returns to their investors, CEOs and investment banks during the past decade and a half. The Israeli regime is the overwhelming foreign beneficiary of the war, expanding its territory through its dispossession of Palestinians and positioning itself as the regional hegemon. Israel benefited from the US invasion which destroyed Iraq, a major ally of the Palestinians; the invasion provided cover for massive Israel’s settler expansion in the Occupied Palestinian territories. In the course of its invasion and occupation Washington systematically destroyed Iraq’s armed forces and civil infrastructure, shredding its complex modern society and state. By doing so, the US occupation removed one of Israel’s major regional rivals.

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by Sergei Glazyev

Current events in Ukraine are guided by the evil spirit of fascism and Nazism, though it seemed to have dissipated long ago, after World War II. Seventy years after the war, the genie has escaped from the bottle once again, posing a threat not merely in the form of the insignia and rhetoric of Hitler’s henchmen, but also through an obsessive Drang nach Osten policy. The bottle has been uncorked, this time, by the Americans. Just as 76 years ago at Munich, when the British and the French gave Hitler their blessing for his eastward march, so in Kiev today, Washington, London and Brussels are inciting Yarosh, Tyahnybok, and other Ukrainian Nazis to war with Russia. One is forced to ask, why do this in the 21st century? And why is Europe, now united in the European Union, taking part in kindling a new war, as if suffering from a total lapse of historical memory?

Answering these questions requires, first of all, an accurate definition of what is happening. This, in turn, must start with identifying the key components of the events, based on facts. The facts are generally known: Yanukovych refused to sign the Association Agreement with the EU, which Ukraine had been under pressure to accept. After that, the United States and its NATO allies physically removed him from power by organizing a violent coup d’état in Kiev and bringing to power a government that was illegitimate, but fully obedient to them. In this article, it will be called “the junta.” The goal of this aggression was to gain acceptance of the Association Agreement, as is evidenced by the fact it was indeed, prematurely, signed by the EU leaders and the junta only a month after the latter had seized power. They reported (the document bearing their signatures has not yet been made public!) that only the political part of the agreement has been signed, the part that obligates Ukraine to follow the foreign and defense policy of the EU and to participate, under EU direction, in settling regional civil and military conflicts. With this step, adoption of the Agreement as a whole has become a mere technicality.

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By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

Ending Empire and the War Culture that Supports It are as Important as Confronting Wall Street

Take action: We can stop the next Iraq War. A majority of Americans oppose a military attack. Contact Congress tell them to warn President Obama: a military attack violates the Constitution and is an impeachable offense.

In the last week, there has been a rapid march toward military action in Iraq despite widespread opposition to more war among the US population for a variety of reasons. One concern is that it would require more military spending despite immense and unmet needs for funding in a broad array of areas at home. Unlike any other policy area, there never seems to be a lack of funds for a military attack or even a war. The military-industrial complex has a powerful hold on US lawmakers.

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Hanzai E.

Of all the mega-corps running amok, Monsanto has consistently outperformed its rivals, earning the crown as “most evil corporation on Earth!” Not content to simply rest upon its throne of death, atop a mountain of rotting corpses, it remains focused on newer, more scientifically innovative ways to harm the planet and its people.

As true champions of evil, they won’t stop until…well, until they’re stopped! But what is Monsanto and how did they get to be so obscenely evil in the first place? I think that’s the best place to start this journey, so grab a few non-GMO snacks or beverages and let’s go for a ride into the deep, murky sewers of their dark past.

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by Ellen Brown

Finance is the new form of warfare – without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means? — Dr. Michael Hudson, Counterpunch
, October 2010

When the US Federal Reserve bought an 80% stake in American International Group (AIG) in September 2008, the unprecedented $85 billion outlay was justified as necessary to bail out the world’s largest insurance company. Today, however, central banks are on a global corporate buying spree not to bail out bankrupt corporations but simply as an investment, to compensate for the loss of bond income due to record-low interest rates. Indeed, central banks have become some of the world’s largest stock investors.

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by FRANKLIN LAMB

Ein el Helwe Palestinian camp

One need not be prescient to understand the unfolding “Jihadi Spring” is fueling the plans and perhaps destiny of ascendant Islamists in this region with the increasing help of in-country nationalists, including remnants of the Iraqi Baath Party. This, according to more than a dozen ardent supporters of The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), known locally as DAASH whose representatives allowed this observer over the past six months to interview some of its supporters to discuss what they found inaccurate in a piece I wrote about DAASH actions in Raqqa, Syria. In that article I claimed that DAASH was selling Syria’s archeological treasures, just as they are selling Syria’s oil and in some instances, food warehouse contents, to the highest foreign bidder. There is no paucity of the latter.

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By Nicola Nasser*

Excluding “boots on the ground” and leaving combat missions to local and regional “partners,” President Barak Obama and his administration say the United States keeps “all options on the table” to respond militarily to the terrorists’ threat to “American interests” in Iraq, which are now in “danger.”

Similarly, former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on TV screens and in print has recently urged western governments to “put aside the differences of the past and act now” and to intervene militarily in Iraq “to save the future” because “we do have interests in this.”

Both men refrained from indicating what are exactly the “American” and “western” interests in Iraq that need military intervention to defend, but the major prize of their invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the country’s hydrocarbon assets. There lies their “interests.

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Andrew Gavin Marshall

In Part 1 of this series - 'The West Marches East' - I examined the circumstance that while Russia has received the majority of the blame for the more than six-month-crisis in Ukraine, these events did not take place in a vacuum, and, in fact, the Western powers and institutions - notably the United States, NATO and the European Union - have broke promises made at the end of the Cold War to expand NATO - a Western military alliance that was created in opposition to the Soviet Union - to Russia's borders. Simultaneously, the European Union has expanded eastwards, bringing Eastern and Central European countries within its orbit and in adherence to its economic orthodoxy. Further, many NATO powers had worked together to promote 'colour revolutions' across much of Eastern Europe over the previous decade or so, helping to overthrow pro-Russian leaders and replace them with pro-Western leaders. After nearly a quarter-century of Western expansion - militarily, politically, economically - to Russia's borders, Russia has had enough. But Ukraine was not the first instance in which Russia has been provoked by the West into a response that the West subsequently declared as an act of imperial "aggression." In 2008, the small Caucasus nation and former Soviet republic of Georgia started a war with Russia, leading to Russia's invasion of the tiny country, effectively ending nearly two decades of NATO and Western expansion. This report examines the 2008 war in Georgia and the roles played by Russia and the NATO powers.

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Eric Zuesse

Gallup headlined on 28 January 2014, “Democrats and Republicans Differ on Top Priorities,” and reported that the biggest difference between supporters of the two Parties concerned “The environment,” where 71% of Democrats said it’s important to them, versus only 32% of Republicans who did: a whopping difference of 39%, between the two Parties, considered that issue to be important. The second-biggest difference was on “The distribution of income and wealth”: 72% of Democrats, versus only 38% of Republicans – a 34% difference. Third came “Poverty and homelessness”: 82% of Democrats, versus 53% of Republicans – a 29% difference. Fourth came “Education”: 91% of Democrats, versus 70% of Republicans – a 21% difference.

Here were the four issues on the conservative end, the four issues where Republicans scored the largest amount higher (more concerned) than Democrats: First, “The military and national defense”: 76% of Republicans, versus 61% of Democrats – a 15% difference – considered that issue to be important. Second, “Taxes”: 69% of Republicans, versus 56% of Democrats – a 13% difference. Third, “Terrorism”: 77% of Republicans, versus 68% of Democrats – a 9% difference. Fourth, “Government surveillance of U.S. citizens”: 45% of Republicans, versus 37% of Democrats – an 8% difference (but if the President had been a Republican, Democrats might have been more concerned about that issue than Republicans would have been).

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