By Michael Collins

"My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views," he [Zelikow] continued. "They did more than that: The [2006] White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives." Phillip D. Zelikow, State Department Counselor, 2005-2007, to Congress, May 13, 2009

Former legal counsel to the Department of State, Phillip Zelikow, produced a convincing and elegant argument for the immediate cessation of anything that looked like torture in February 2006. The government declassified the memo last week and National Security Archive released it on April 3.

The failure to follow Zelikow's clear statement of the law, withholding the memo without justification, and the failure to prosecute those responsible for the previous acts represent evidence of crimes.

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by Andrew Gavin Marshall

In Part 1 of this series, I examined the elite assault on education ? through the Chamber of Commerce, right-wing think tanks, and the Trilateral Commission ? which arose in response to the massive social and political activist movements of the 1960s. The threat of popular democratic participation ? that is, active and activist participation of the population in the decision-making process of a community or nation ? was too much to bear. The fact that a significant degree of this activism had been mobilizing from the universities was enough reason for elites to declare a “crisis of democracy” and demand more apathy, complacency, and pacification from the population, more authority for themselves, and more control over the society as a whole. The result of this was neoliberalism ? globally and locally ? in government, the media, and the schools. The “Crisis of Democracy” was that there was too much of it. The solution, therefore, was to deconstruct democracy.

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By Dana Gabriel

While bilateral initiatives have dominated North American issues over the last couple of years, the trilateral relationship has suffered. With a series of high-level meetings, the U.S., Canada and Mexico are taking steps to boost the NAFTA partnership. First, the defense ministers met to discuss shared continental security threats. This was followed by a leaders summit which pledged to deepen trade, regulatory, energy and security cooperation. The recent meetings have caused some to once again take notice of the incremental efforts to merge all three countries into a North American Union.

In what was hailed as an historic event, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay, Mexican Secretary of National Defense Guillermo Galvan, and Mexican Secretary of the Navy Mariano Mendoza recently held the Inaugural Meeting of North American Defense Ministers. As part of a framework they agreed to: “Develop a joint trilateral defense threat assessment for North America to deepen our common understanding of the threats and challenges we face. Explore ways to improve our support to the efforts of civilian public security agencies in countering illicit activities in our respective countries and the hemisphere, such as narcotics trafficking. Explore how we can collaborate to increase the speed and efficiency with which our armed forces support civilian-led responses to disasters. Continue to work together to strengthen hemispheric defense forums.”

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By Khalid Amayreh

German poet and Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass deserves to be applauded for his moral courage, intellectual honesty, and audacity to challenge some of the established taboos pertaining to Israel and Jews.

In a piece of poetry published by a German newspaper last week, Grass, 84, condemned his country's arm sales to Israel, saying the Jewish state must not be allowed to threaten its neighbors with overwhelming conventional and nuclear weapons.

Thanks to a decades-old western policy of ignoring the development and possession by Israel of weapons of mass destruction, Israel has effectively become the Nazi Germany of the Middle East.

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By Jack A. Smith

Government surveillance and attacks on the privacy of American citizens were bad enough under the Bush regime but they are getting even worse during the Obama years.

In addition to retaining President George W. Bush's many excesses, such as the Patriot Act, new information about the erosion of civil liberties emerges repeatedly during the era of President Barack Obama from the federal government, the courts and various police forces.

The Supreme Court added judicial insult to persona l injury April 2 when it ruled 5-4 that jail officials may strip-search anyone arrested for any offense, even a trifle, as they are being incarcerated, even if they are awaiting a hearing or trial. The four ultraconservative judges were joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

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Silvia Cattori interviews Gilad Atzmon

Following the publication of the French edition of the “The Wandering Who?” we asked the jazz star Gilad Atzmon to respond to some charges made against him by those who relentlessly try to stop him from speaking and spread his thoughts.

Silvia Cattori, Gilad Atzmon

In his book Gilad is critical of Jewish identity politics. He is also highly critical of Jewish political domination within the Left and the Palestinian solidarity movement in particular. Collected by Silvia Cattori, Gilad’s answers expose the vacuous arguments employed by those who are determined to silence him by way of deception, intimidation and slander.

Silvia Cattori: Your book has just been published in French [1]. Without any promotion it is selling like hotcakes; despite the fact that members of U.J.F.P. (French Jewish Union for Peace) and I.J.A.N. (International Jewish Antizionist Network) launched a campaign to demonize you within the left and the Palestinian solidarity movement, six months before the French publication [2]. Did all theses attacks come as a surprise for you?

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by Stephen Lendman

Soros' Open Society Foundations pretend to be liberal. Their claimed mission is to "work to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens."

In fact, Soros, like other corporate predators, doesn't tolerate democratic values. He's no populist. He supports everything that smells money. He's involved in grabbing all he can.

He promotes marketplace sovereignty; deregulation; privatization of government services; ending popular entitlements, social spending, and affirmative action; prioritizing business friendly policies; class war; controlling electoral politics; supporting scoundrel media cheerleading his ideology; and wars advancing his agenda.

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by FRANKLIN LAMB
Beirut

University students surveyed last month in Lebanon on the subject of how to improve their society and move it in the direction of meeting international human and civil rights norms identified three groups most in urgent need of immediate Lebanese governmental action.

Not surprising perhaps, but nevertheless refreshing, were the students' strongly expressed convictions, regardless of particular sect, that those most victimized by Lebanon's government and current laws are the roughly 200,000 migrant domestic workers, woman, who make up half of Lebanon's population, and the estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees waiting to return to their country, Palestine.

Last month's suicide by domestic worker 33 years old Alem Dechasa-Desisa, following a beating in front of her Ethiopian Consulate by Ali Mahfouz and his colleague, whose recruitment agency arranged for Alem to work in Lebanon, was condemned across this country and angered those watching the video of the beating on LBCI TV.

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