by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Ronald Reagan was already a 'grandfather' figure when he came to office in 1981. It may be unfair to say that he won the election with a single phrase: 'Well....there ya' go again!' In retrospect, it is all that one remembers of Reagan's empty promises and equally empty platitudes! Those and a head nod won him the White House. It is this surface veneer we remember --not his cowardly refusal to assent to Mikhail Gorbachev's offer of complete nuclear disarmament, not his two year long 'depression' which left millions homeless, not the act of 'high treason' called Iran/Contra.

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By James Petras

On January 19 Israel’s international secret police, the Mossad, sent an eighteen member death squad to Dubai using European passports, supposedly ‘stolen’ from Israeli dual citizens and altered with fake photos and signatures, in order to assassinate the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud al Mabhouh.

The evidence is overwhelming: The Dubai police presentation of detailed security videos of the assassins was corroborated by the testimony of Israeli security experts and applauded by Israel’s leading newspapers and columnists. The Mossad openly stated that Mabhouh was a high priority target who had survived three previous assassination attempts. Israel did not even bother to deny the murder. Furthermore, the sophisticated communication system used by the killers, the logistics and planning surrounding their entry and exit from Dubai and the scope and scale of the operation have all the characteristics of a high-level state operation. Furthermore, only Mossad would have access to the European passports of its dual citizens! Only Mossad would have the capacity, motivation, stated intent and willingness to provoke a diplomatic row with its European allies, knowing full well that Western European governments’ anger would blow over because of their deep links to Israel. After meticulous investigation and the interrogation of 2 captured Palestinian Mossad collaborators, the Dubai police chief has stated he is sure the Mossad was behind the killing.

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by Stephen Lendman

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI - stoptorture.org) "believes that torture and ill-treatment of any kind and under all circumstances is incompatible with the moral values of democracy and the rule of law." Yet it's systematically practiced by the Israeli Police, General Security Service (GSS), Israeli Prison Service (IPS), and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

In December 2009, PACTI published its latest report titled, "Accountability Denied: The Absence of Investigation and Punishment of Torture in Israel," explaining "the many layers of immunity that protect" the guilty, specifically the GSS, the focus of this report.

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Mary Shaw

Even though we the people of Pennsylvania finally voted ultra-conservative Republican Rick Santorum out of the U.S. Senate in 2006 in favor of moderate Democrat Bob Casey, Mr. Man-on-Dog continues to find new platforms from which to spew his senseless hatred and fear of gays and lesbians.

Not surprisingly, Santorum turned up at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and preached to the choir about the alleged dangers of allowing gays to openly serve in the military. Dismissing the support of military leaders for repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), Santorum explained that they had been so "indoctrinated" with political correctness that they can no longer "see straight," as Sam Stein reported in the Huffington Post. (Note: I have no idea whether "see straight" was an intentional pun, but I suspect it was not.)

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by Stephen Lendman

Distinguished historian, scholar and activist Gabriel Kolko studied "the nature and purpose of (American) power (since) the 1870s," calling it "violen(t), racis(t), repressi(ve) at home and abroad (and) cultural(ly) mendaci(ous)." It's been the same since inception, historian Howard Zinn calling colonial America:

"a class society from the beginning. America started off as a society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston, and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to" portray a benevolent nation. We weren't then. We're not now.

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Michael Collins

Federal district court Judge Jed S. Rakoff called off a J.P. Morgan deal in an order that revealed the inside track on how the financial giant does business. The ruling of January 28 prevents Morgan from selling or participating the $225 million loan it made to Cablevisión, owned in the majority by Grupo Televisa, one of Mexico's largest telecommunications companies. (Image)

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By Nicola Nasser

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill’s warning on February 18 that it could take months to form a new government in Baghdad after the Iraqi elections, scheduled for March 7, and that in turn could mean considerable political turmoil in Iraq, and the warnings of observers and experts as well as officials against the looming specter of a renewed sectarian war in the country, indicate that security, stability, let alone democracy, and a successful “victorious” withdrawal of American troops from Iraq have all yet a long way to go. A secure, stable and democratic Iraq will have first to wait for an end to the raging power struggle over Iraq between the United States and Iran inside and outside the occupied Arab country.

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By Timothy V. Gatto

I was going to stop writing about political things and concentrate on fiction. Fiction is an easier venue because most of the time it doesn’t get you wrapped around the proverbial axle and make you want to blow your head off. It is infuriating to write a political piece based on recognized facts and the knowledge you impart completely ignored by the majority of Americans that refuse to read anything outside of the mainstream media and would rather live their life in the surreal world of corporate and political pabulum so they can live their lives more “comfortably”.

Lately however, just as I was about to give up on the American people, I see something germinating that should have happened years ago. I see Americans no longer content to hear platitudes and axioms from their elected representatives. I believe that as in the “Wizard of Oz”, the curtain is being pulled back and people are finally seeing that the all knowing Oz isn’t all he has been hyped up to be. Americans are finally admitting that they have been being lied to on a constant daily basis for the advancement of the few that actually run this country.

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Editorial: Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and Justice in the Service of Empire By Zahir Ebrahim

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

Yvonne Ridley's anguished opinion 'Truth about US justice' has appeared worldwide including in the Pakistani press. Ms. Ridley bemoans the travesty of justice in the US court's pronouncement of its guilty verdict on the frail, tortured daughter of Pakistan, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. The veteran journalist is perhaps unaware of the import of the following revealing words of a US Supreme Court justice which were uttered in 1951:

“To those who would paralyze our Government in the face of impending threat by encasing it in a semantic strait-jacket, we must reply that all concepts are relative.”

This lesser known utterance by the highest lawman of the United States came right on the heals of the victorious Allies administering the absolute victor's justice at Nuremberg to the defeated Nazis with these famous words of its chief prosecuting counsel for the United States, Robert H. Jackson:

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by Gilad Atzmon

Alan Dershowitz on Judge Goldstone: “But now I see him as a traitor… It’s as if they would have taken a Jew to edit the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He uses his Jewish last name to kosher his slander of the Jewish People.”

For those who still cannot make their minds up about Jewish nationalism and the Zionist violent abuse of Western academic culture (tolerance, academic freedom, pluralism etc) Rabbi Shmully Hecht of Yale’s University Jewish society, gives an exemplary opportunity to see it all. Rabbi Hecht confronted Judge Goldstone last week while Goldstone was delivering an address at Yale University. Rabbi Hecht and his supporters held up a sign at the back of the conference room equating the Goldstone report with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Dreyfus affair.

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