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Ethnic Cleansing as a State Policy
Nicola Nasser
In his speech at Bar Ilan University on June 14, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a new Israeli “peace plan,” with preconditions that a Palestinian negotiator must first meet before he would “promptly” engage in “unconditional” bilateral talks to meet an international consensus demanding the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. His preconditions added to the fourteen conditions the former Israeli government of comatose Ariel Sharon attached to Israel’s adoption in grudge of the 2003 Road Map blueprint for peace with the Palestinian side, on the basis of which the U.S. administration of President Barak Obama and his presidential envoy George Mitchell are now urging an early resumption of “immediate” Israeli – Palestinian peace talks, which Mitchell on June 26 hoped “very much to conclude this phase of the discussions and to be able to move into meaningful and productive negotiations in the near future."
John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld and the Systematic Torture of Prisoners
Jason Leopold
[Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld instructed officials at the Department of Defense to organize a working group to access the fallout from harsh interrogation methods. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters)]
On January 17, 2003, Mary Walker, the Air Force general counsel, received an urgent memo from the Pentagon's top attorney. Attached to the classified document was a set of directives drafted two days earlier by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "Establish a working group within the Department of Defense to assess the legal, policy and operational issues relating to the interrogations of detainees held by the US Armed Forces in the war on terrorism," the directives said.
Among the issues to be addressed were "policy considerations with respect to the choice of interrogation techniques, including contribution to intelligence collection, effect on treatment of captured US military personnel, effect on detainee prosecutions, historical role of US armed forces in conducting interrogations, recommendations for employment of particular interrogation techniques by [Defense Department] interrogators." John Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, drafted the document, dated March 14, 2003. It essentially provided military interrogators with legal cover if they resorted to brutal and violent methods to extract information from prisoners.
Pirates of the Mediterranean
Paul Craig Roberts
[A Lebanese journalist holds an anti-Israel placard during a protest in front of the Al Jazeera TV office in Beirut February 5, 2009, against the Israeli seizure of a freighter trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip. It was the first apparent attempt by a foreign ship carrying aid to reach the Palestinian enclave since Israel ended its 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip two weeks ago. (Reuters/ Mohamed Azakir/Lebanon)]
On June 30, the government of Israel committed an act of piracy when the Israeli Navy in international waters illegally boarded the "Spirit of Humanity," kidnapped its 21-person crew from 11 countries, including former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Laureate Mairead MaGuire, and confiscated the cargo of medical supplies, olive trees, reconstruction materials, and children’s toys that were on the way to the Mediterranean coast of Gaza. The "Spirit of Humanity," along with the kidnapped 21 persons is being towed to Israel as I write.
Gaza has been described as the "world’s largest concentration camp." It is home to 1.5 million Palestinians who were driven by force of American-supplied Israeli arms out of their homes, off their farms, and out of their villages so that Israel could steal their land and make the Palestinian land available to Israeli settlers.
Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion
Jason Leopold
Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.
That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves.
"Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East," the report said. "Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the U.S. should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments."
USA's role in the Honduran coup -- and how we must fix it
Mary Shaw
"The U.S. Army School of the Americas ... is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world."
-- Congressman Joseph Kennedy
They're baaaaaa-aaaack! "They" being military dictatorships in Latin America, such as the Reagan administration loved so much and so readily supported with guns and money.
Last weekend, a military coup in Honduras overthrew the democratically elected government of that Central American nation and sent President Manuel Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica. The coup was apparently led by Romeo Vasquez, a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas (SOA), a military/torture school located at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Marching out of step in the US military
Dahr Jamail
(Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.)
On May 1, at Fort Hood in central Texas, Specialist Victor Agosto wrote on a counseling statement, which is actually a punitive United States Army memo:
| There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect. |
Ten days later, he refused to obey a direct order from his company commander to prepare to deploy and was issued a second counseling statement. On that one he wrote,
| "I will not obey any orders I deem to be immoral or illegal." Shortly thereafter, he told a reporter, "I'm not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong. It's a matter of what I'm willing to live with." |
Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of Imperial America"
by Stephen Lendman
First written in 1972, it was updated in a 2003 edition that's every bit as relevant now - thus this review focusing on Hudson's new preface, introduction, and detailed account of the book's theme.
He revisited it in his 2008-09 Project Censored award- winning article titled: "Economic Meltdown - The 'Dollar Glut' is What Finances America's Global Military Build-up" in which he explains the following - the "inter-related dynamics" of:
Amnon Kapeliouk (1931-2009) Est Mort An extraordinary Journalist
Franklin Lamb
Ramlet al Baida Beach, Lebanon
"Our race is the Master Race. We Jews are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves." - Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a speech to the Knesset quoted in Begin and the Beasts," New Statesman, June 25, 1982 by Amnon Kapeliouk.
LET'S MAKE IT SIMPLE - MEDICARE FOR EVERYONE
Allen L Roland
Let's make it simple, America ~ Medicare for everyone and studies have estimated that Medicare ~ which has a fairly simple system of payment and claim filing ~ would save up to 33% of healthcare costs over private insurance ! Let's take the dollars out of Lobbyists pockets and put them in our pockets:
Greed is killing our heath care system and the American public must demand a cost effective public healthcare system such as Medicare, that is already working for seniors, and could well do the same for all Americans.
As Mark Karlin writes in Buzzflash ~ "The goal and slogan of "healthcare reform" should be quite simple: "Medicare for Everyone ... Why do we have to wait until we are 65 to be guaranteed the right of health coverage? " http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/8801
No one is aware the propaganda machine is on
Roland Michel Tremblay
We are blind to what is truly going on in the world, it is an unexplained mystery. After all that has happened in the last decade, how will politicians, religious leaders and financial institutions ever to regain our trust? The answer is simple, they don’t have to. From the point of view of the masses, after the propaganda machine went on, they never lost our trust. We are blissfully unaware of what truly happened since we only read and watch the mass media.
None of them lied to us, none of them worked for their own interests, all is well in the best world there is, and salvation is just around the corner. Trust me, I know what to do, things will be much better afterwards. Trust me, you don’t need to know anything about it. Although this is all done in secret, I’m working toward solving all humanity’s problems. Here is the truth, or at least a distorted version of it.
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