By Daniel Patrick Welch

"Us versus them" and other "modern" myths of war and civilization

Against the background of the leaking of the USA?s secret Iraq war crimes files by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, Daniel Patrick Welch peers beneath the West's self-proclaimed cultural and moral superiority in the face of atrocities against innocent people all over the world.

"When we peel away all the layers of burning flesh, all the carefully constructed fiction of human progress and benefits of science and technology, we must face a reality perhaps even more grim. There simply is no 'us versus them'. The side claiming to represent progress has done more and done worse, using as low-tech and brutal methods as any on either side of the technological and cultural divide."

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by Stephen Lendman

Ahead of the November 11 - 12 G-20 meeting in Seoul, South Korea, the Fed announced QE II, another $600 billion between now and end of June 2011, a flexible figure to be raised or lowered freely, the Fed saying it will:

"....regularly review the pace of its securities purchases and the overall size of the asset-purchase program in light of incoming information and will adjust the program as needed to best foster maximum employment and price stability."

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James Petras

Introduction:

The November 2, 2010 electoral debacle of the Democratic Party in the US cannot be solely ascribed to the failed policies of President Obama, the Congressional leadership or their senior economic advisers. Nor is the demise of what passes for the American “center-left” confined to the US – it is a world-wide pattern, expressed in countries as diverse as Greece, Portugal, Spain, Great Britain and Japan.

The central question is why the left-center left governing parties are everywhere in crisis and will be for the foreseeable future?

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by Gordon Duff

"AL QAEDA" CALL FOR ATTACKS ON AMERICA, NOT ISRAEL, UNDER SUSPICION

The people of Yemen simply don't believe in Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden, and for good reason. When Abdullah al-Faqih, professor of political science at Sana University told the New York Times, "We cannot differentiate between what is propaganda and what is real¡­Some of what looks like Al Qaeda is really terror as a business."

With early news stories being continually contradicted, bombs that weren't really bombs heading out on flights that never existed, carrying packages for companies that don't service Yemen, all heading for Chicago synagogues, part of the wildest "persecution complex" of all time, the whole "Al Qaeda/Yemen" thing has been little more than a "borscht belt" comedy act.

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by Stephen Lendman

More than ever today, Muslims are public enemy number one. Post-9/11, they've been ruthlessly vilified and persecuted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence and activism. As a result, innocent men and women have been spuriously called terrorists, or charged with conspiracy to provide them material support.

No wonder as an earlier article explained. They've been unfairly portrayed as culturally inferior, dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy, religiously fanatical, violent, gun-toting terrorists. As a result, hundreds have been wrongfully arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned, guilty only of being Muslims in America at the wrong time. Their treatment represents a clear indictment of US injustice, targeting innocent victims for political advantage.

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By Elizabeth Young

The controversy surrounding the Large Rube Goldberg Hadron Atom smashing Collider (RLHGC) from CERN got me thinking: What’s all the fuss about? [1]

So I followed the money to find out who really benefits, Cui bono.

There is only one grass roots organization big enough to come up with the $80 Billion (the tunnel probably cost 8 billion) to pay for the Collider: the two billion Christians in the world looking for Higgs boson (a very, very tiny god).

The Christians and the Scientists (the Christian Scientists) aren’t really worried about the surreal aspects of the collider, like the micro black holes, because the scientists at CERN said, “Any such holes would be so weak that they would vanish almost instantly without causing any damage.” [2]

It’s the Tribulation Stupid

The Tribulation is seven years of hell on earth when Yahweh takes his wrath out on anyone who hasn’t taken Him up on the free gift of salvation.

The Rapture (you are literally snatched up in the air) theory was invented during the early 1800s and gave the Christians, who were not prepared to die for their faith, a way out.

Unfortunately The Rapture isn’t in the Bible.

If you are unlucky enough to be alive when the tribulation begins, you are going to experience seven years of hell on Earth. [3]

That all changed when CERN built the LHC and Professor David Evans came up with another way out.

It’s really very simple: if Jesus isn’t coming back before “a time of trouble that mankind has never seen” then the only compassionate thing to do is to heat up the earth to say, ten trillion degrees for about a trillionth of a second, and poof, everyone with the free gift of salvation is in Heaven.

Unfortunately a trillionth of a second isn’t enough time for the rest of us to repent and get a “thief on the cross” ticket out of here:

And he said unto Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” And Jesus said unto him, “Verily, I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:39‑43

Therefore it is incumbent upon anyone, with or without a ticket out of here, to help us stop the Large Hadron Collider.

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Ellen Brown

For two years, politicians have danced around the nationalization issue, but ForeclosureGate may be the last straw. The megabanks are too big to fail, but they aren’t too big to reorganize as federal institutions serving the public interest.

In January 2009, only a week into Obama’s presidency, David Sanger reported in The New York Times that nationalizing the banks was being discussed. Privately, the Obama economic team was conceding that more taxpayer money was going to be needed to shore up the banks. When asked whether nationalization was a good idea, House speaker Nancy Pelosi replied:

“Well, whatever you want to call it . . . . If we are strengthening them, then the American people should get some of the upside of that strengthening. Some people call that nationalization.

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by Stephen Lendman

Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, including Fourth Geneva's Article 49 stating:

"Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of the motive."

In addition, various UN resolutions (including 446, 452 and 465) condemned Israel's settlement building, declaring they have "no legal validity" to exist. However, they do and regularly expand, endangering all Palestinian communities, Sheikh Jarrah one of many and their longstanding residents.

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by Stephen Lendman

An earlier article reviewed the April Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel report titled, "One Year for Israel's New Government and the Arab Minority in Israel," accessed through the following link: sjlendman.blogspot.com

This article discusses a new Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) report titled, "Project Democracy - Fighting for the Ground Rules" for Israeli Arabs.

Israel's bogus democratic credentials are shameless and transparent, for growing numbers of Israeli Jews, but mainly for denying equal rights to minority Arabs, comprising 20% of the population. ACRI explained, saying:

"One of the most important principles in a democracy is to protect the minority against....tyranny. A democratic state is by nature pluralistic and respectful of diversity among its citizens, and enables each group within its population that so wishes to maintain all the components of its own identity, including its heritage, culture, and national identity."

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Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.

Leaders create leaders. There are no “people-oriented” proactive leaders at the global theatre of politics sensitive to humanitarian thinking and actions and striving to make rational policies and decisions to lead the besieged humanity out of the man-made catastrophic wars of deaths and destruction engulfed in the 21st century age of reason. The contemporary world is coerced to egoistic political governance by the wrong people, with wrong thinking, wrong agenda and doing the wrong things. The issue that whole of humanity faces is how to change the wrong thinking of the wrong people into positive thinking and rational human discipline articulating basic human values of freedom, morality, compassion, equality, justice and service to all.

Irony of the Ironies: Failure of the 21st Century Global Institutions

All the global organizations- the presumptuous claimant of representatives of the human ideal principles and values, have failed miserably once again to bring the whole of humanity to tragic man-made conflicts and consequential horrible impacts of the sophisticated wars on human life and habitats. The same ideals embodied the making of the League of the Nations- a first global experience in peacemaking and collective security but its members led it to failure.

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