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Lauren Booth: go go go
from Gilad Atzmon
Lauren Booth
The previously secretive campaign to halt Press TV Ltd, the British production company, from making programs critical of Western Imperialism, is finally out in the open.Thanks to Wikileaks.
Last month, Julian Assange’s incredible agency, released the news Her Majesty's Government (HMG) is now fully implicated in efforts to shut Press TV Ltd down. Backing, quite clearly, US led efforts, to cripple this tiny, yet heavyweight, British production company.
Let me explain. Ever since it first began making programs some four years ago, Press TV Ltd (the British company, who sells documentaries and series to the Iranian channel of the same name), has been under pressure from what Princess Diana would have known as 'dark Forces.'
Britain's War on Islam
by Stephen Lendman
Western vilification of Islam is longstanding, cruel, and unjustifiable. In his 1978 book "Orientalism," Edward Said explained a pattern of Western misinterpretation of the East, especially the Middle East. In "Culture and Imperialism" (1993), he broadened Orientalism's core argument to show the complex relationships between East and West by referring to colonizers and the colonized, "the familiar (Europe, West, us) and the strange (the Orient, East, them)."
He explained Western high-minded/moral superiority notions compared to culturally inferior Muslims. They're now portrayed as dangerous bomb-throwing terrorists, making them easy prey to wrongfully victimize.
Daily Israeli Crimes Against Humanity
by Stephen Lendman
Daily accounts can be followed on important sites such as Palestine Chronicle.com, Palestine Telegraph.com, and the Electronic Intifada.net as well as others like Israel's oldest daily newspaper, Haaretz, available online in English.
They and others document harrowing crimes virtually ignored in the West, especially by America's media offering one-sided pro-Israeli reports with imperfect exceptions like Isabel Kershner's January 7 New York Times article headlined, "Israeli Soldiers Kill Palestinian, 65, in His Bedroom," saying:
"Israeli soldiers shot and killed an unarmed 65-year-old Palestinian man....in what appeared to be a case of mistaken identity. The man's wife said he was sleeping and she was praying when soldiers burst into the apartment before dawn, entered the bedroom and immediately opened fire."
How to Defeat American Fascism
By Timothy V. Gatto
Almost every day I think to myself “What the hell has happened to my country”? I still have a hard time coming to terms with the brutality and the crass disregard for human life that has become a cornerstone of American foreign policy. I also have a hard time coming to terms with this new American concept of fighting this so-called “War on Terror” that has led to the dissolution of our fundamental freedoms as expressed in the bill of rights.
This new America is fundamentally a dictatorship of the affluent. I was watching a book review on C-Span yesterday where the book “Was I Born on the Wrong Continent?” was being discussed. The subject of workers’ rights came up and a woman asked the author a question that was preceded with this statement “We all understand that the elephant in the living room that no one wants to talk about is campaign finance reform”. I was a bit taken aback at that statement only because I have been writing about that particular subject for the last six years.
I have to agree with that young woman who made that statement, but I don’t believe for a minute that “We all understand”. In fact, I believe that most of us in this country don’t understand how political campaigns as they are conducted in the United States has, for all intents and purposes, become so expensive that politicians have sold their souls in order to win elections.
Drugging Guantanamo Detainees
by Stephen Lendman
From inception, most Guantanamo detainees were uncharged. On January 5, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said:
"....the vast majority of the men at Guantanamo should never have been detained in the first place, and that over 550 have been released and are peacefully rebuilding their lives." Most of the 800 captured and brought there were lawlessly "seized in broad sweeps and sold to the US (for) substantial bounties." From the Pentagon's own records, "most (have) no link to terrorism."
For over seven years, CCR "organiz(ed) and coordinat(ed) more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country" to represent detainees, and helped to resettle about 60 others still at Guantanamo "because they cannot return to their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture."
Abbas is naïve
By Khalid Amayreh
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is quite optimistic these days. He is even nearly euphoric about the recent recognition by a number of South American states of Palestine. His Fatah organization cites these "diplomatic successes" as a proof for the correctness of Abbas's approach.
However, it is crystal clear that his optimism in this regard is unwarranted and nearly totally unjustified.
It is always good to be optimistic and hopeful, and it is nice to receive diplomatic support or any kind of support from foreign states. In fact, all Palestinians, irrespective of their political orientation, applaud and appreciate the courageous steps taken by major South American states in recognizing Palestine. These steps do represent a direct challenge to American hegemony in the western hemisphere as well as a clear diplomatic failure to the thuggish state, known as Israel , especially its hoodlum foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.
Death Panels, Palin's Targets, and Political Assassination
Michael Collins
The attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords raises the bar for political lies and hate to a new level. Previously, incendiary political lies stopped just short violent imagery. Sarah Palin's Take Back 20 campaign presented a violent threat in the form of rifle site crosshairs placed over the congressional districts of 20 Democratic supporters of health care reform.
Ironically, Giffords sent Palin a clear message to end the violent allusion in the ads. In this brief video, she warns:
"… we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list but the thing is that the way she's had it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun site over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there [are] consequences to that action." Rep. Giffords
The Retirement Age Is Too Damn High!
By Dave Johnson
The D.C. elite insist that the retirement age should be raised even more than the current 67. They have jobs where they sit in nice chairs behind nice desks in nice offices in affluent areas. They don't even know anyone who waits tables or cleans or lifts boxes all day. They don't even know anyone without a fat 401K, or who is in their 50s who can't find work. That's not their problem; paying their share of taxes is what they are worried about.
But when you leave the affluent areas it becomes obvious that the retirement age is too high and Social Security pays too little. The Great Recession began with waves of layoffs that seemed to concentrate on people over 50 -- because of health care costs and reasonable pay (and they just smell bad). Two years later these people are having a very hard time finding work -- and don't even mention health insurance. Their savings are gone, their unemployment checks are stopping (the "99ers") and they are heAded for the streets. The DC elite solution is to keep them on the streets even longer.
Gitmo is staying open, no matter what the cost
Mary Shaw
January 11, 2011, marks the ninth anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. That's the same Guantanamo prison that Barack Obama promised to close in his first year as president. But Gitmo won't be closing any time soon. Congress has seen to that. And so has Obama.
Just before Christmas, Congress passed a defense spending bill that specifically prohibits the use of defense funding to establish an alternative prison in the United States or to transfer Gitmo detainees to the U.S. And, on January 7, President Obama signed it into law.
The Economic Hydra
By Dr. Elias Akleh
Economic crises are lately sweeping the globe like a contagious virus. They started in the US, the strongest economy in the globe, and then crept onto most European countries. They degraded the value of the American Dollar, the European Euro, and all international currency that use them as money reserve. The crises had led to what is referred to as austerity measures; cutting down luxury expenses, but instead the cutting down was on the necessary expenses; budget cuts on major social services including education, health, unemployment benefits, and social security, increase of taxes and educational tuitions, loss of jobs leading to homelessness and poverty, loss of businesses, increase of retirement age, theft of retirement funds and attempts to tab into social security funds, among many other devastating measures.
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