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Where do the two June elections leave Hezbollah?
Franklin Lamb,
Dahiyeh
Some Legmen for the US Israeli lobby, and even some here in Lebanon appear barely able to contain themselves, such is their felt glee over the Lebanese and Iranian election results. Some supporters of Israel see this election as two recent victories while others calculate that Israel is scratching for some good news given that polling data from Israeli surveys show that more than 50% of its population favors bombing Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Another survey, late last month, found that nearly one third of Israelis polled said they would leave Israel if Iran gets a nuclear weapon which it likely will have-if it decides to-within the next 18 months according to estimates by the Israeli Defense Ministry. Meanwhile US visa applications have broken records, according to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv for three out of the past five months..
One, election Israel hoped would help it maintain its occupation of Palestine was the June 7th Lebanese election (which the Hezbollah led opposition actually won by nearly ten percent of the popular vote.) But it may have to look elsewhere for solace because rather than being defeated and weakened, Hezbollah is currently stronger in Lebanon than it has ever been. The Party is dominating the construction of the next Lebanese government, as it negotiates the terms of its support for Saad Hariri as Prime Minister. Hezbollah’s popular support has increased due it its post election sportsmanlike acceptance of the results and its conduct and efforts at accommodation with its political adversaries.
Beyond Politics: People for Sale in Hungry World
By Ramzy Baroud
One might be tempted to dismiss the recent findings of the US State Department on human trafficking as largely political. But do not be too hasty.
Criticism of the State Department's report on trafficked persons, issued on 16 June, should be rife. The language describing US allies' efforts to combat the problem seems undeserved, especially when one examines the nearly 320- page report and observes the minuscule efforts of these governments. Also, it was hardly surprising to find that Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria -- Washington's foremost foes -- languish in the report's Tier 3 category, i.e. countries where the problem is most grave and least combated. Offenders in Tier 3 are subject to US sanctions, while governments of countries in Tier 1 are perceived as vigilant in fighting human trafficking.
Who's A Low Level Terrorist? Are You?
By Emily Spence
Recently, an American Civil Liberties Union report pointed out, "Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as ‘low level terrorism’.” [1]
Despite that DoD officials removed the offensive section from their educational resources at the urging of ACLU members, the DoD stance is still troubling since a longstanding practice to designate peaceful, law abiding activists as dangerous and treasonable still exists in many government departments and agencies. Indeed the participants of the first antiwar protest against the Vietnam incursion, put together in the mid-1960's by peaceable Quakers and FOR members after having discussed Gandhi's Salt March as a model for a nonviolent demonstration, faced government operatives filming them face by face from rooftops as they moved en masse down Broadway to the UN Plaza. (My mother, a pacifist married to a World War II Conscientious Objector, and I, a child at the time of the march, both were in attendance. When the film crew focused on us, she stood tall, faced the agents with their telephoto lens, glared in disdainful defiance and, simultaneously, throw the corner of her coat over my face. Afterwards, she muttered, "How dare they try to intimidate us!")
Have a cup of coffee with Vanunu
eileen fleming
Photo © eileen fleming, Mordechai Vanunu,
July 14, 2009 @ the American Colony
Mordechai Vanunu can be found most any day from 3-5 PM, having coffee in the garden restaurant of the American Colony, in occupied east Jerusalem.
On June 14, 2009 Vanunu said:
"They renewed the restrictions to not speak to foreigners until November.
"I meet foreigners every day. I am talking with people every day.
"But I am not writing or announcing the appeal until after it happens.
"It was scheduled for January, then May 6th and June 18th. Now I am waiting for a new court date.
"The Central Commander of the General Army testified in court that it is OK if I speak in public as long as I do not talk about nuclear weapons.
America's "Bases of Empire"
by Stephen Lendman
Besides waging perpetual wars, nothing better reveals America's imperial agenda than its hundreds of global bases - for offense, not defense at a time the US hasn't had an enemy since the Japanese surrendered in August 1945.
So when they don't exist, they're invented as former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Charles W. Freeman, Jr., suggested in a May 24, 2007 speech to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs:
"When our descendants look back on the end of the 20th century and the beginning of this one, they will be puzzled. The end of the Cold War relieved Americans of almost all international anxieties." As the world's sole remaining superpower, "We did not rise to the occasion."
Ignorance is strength
Paul Craig Roberts
Thinking independently is rapidly becoming a serious Thoughtcrime. Winston Smith was the only one among Big Brother’s subjects capable of independent thought. His ability to think independently was discovered and terminated. -Already we see that the US media is incapable of independent thought. Independent thought in the universities, where careers are dependent on government grants, is already half dead. Independent thought does not exist in think tanks, which serve the interests of donors. In America independent thought is rapidly becoming an anti-American act, which is itself morphing into a terrorist act.
The American media’s one-sided and propagandistic coverage of the Iranian election has made an American hero out of the defeated candidate, Mousavi. This leaves one wondering if anyone anywhere in the US media or US government knows that Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who served as prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1981 to 1989, the decade following the overthrow of the American puppet government by Khomeini, has been fingered as the Butcher of Beirut, responsible for the bloody attacks on the US embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut during the Reagan administration that blew to pieces 241 US Marines, sailors, and Army troops.
Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex
Robert Parry
The usual knock on government programs is that they’re not as efficient as the private sector, which we’re told can provide the same product for less money and with higher quality. Thus, it should be no big deal when the public and private collide because the private sector should prevail.
However, in providing health insurance, those rules clearly don’t apply, which is why congressional Republicans and so-called “centrist” Democrats are going to such lengths to deny the American people access to a public option on health insurance.
Indeed, if a public option were to be piggybacked onto the existing Medicare bureaucracy, the chances for savings could be impressive for average Americans and the overall American economy.
Insurance middlemen could be eliminated; investigators who ferret out “preexisting conditions” wouldn’t be needed; doctors could save on administrative costs; the burden on U.S. industry providing health benefits could be reduced; and more money could be freed to cover the nearly 50 million uninsured or for actual doctoring.
For a nation facing multiple fiscal crises – all complicated by the costs of health care – one might think that the most sure thing in the health care debate would be to allow a cost-saving public option, which as President Barack Obama says would help keep private health insurers “honest” regarding their promises to trim waste and control premiums.
No Reason to Favor Private Health Insurers
Joel S. Hirschhorn
In the national debate about health care reform absolutely nothing makes less sense than the positive views of much of the public about private health insurers. There is no good reason to have positive views of private health insurers, the companies that have relentlessly increased the costs for very limited health insurance. Copays, deductibles and premiums have raped those lucky enough to have health insurance while also making it very difficult much of the time to get coverage for all kinds of health problems. The US health care system is unbelievably inefficient, providing far less effective health care for what is incredibly high costs, compared to all other industrialized countries. The main reason is the private health insurance industry.
Iraq: the dirty “racket” of petro-politics
Stuart Littlewood
A speech made 75 years ago by a US Marine Corps general, Smedley Butler, helps put today’s belated Iraq war inquiry, promised by the British government, into proper context.
”There are only two things we should fight for,” said Butler. “One is the defence of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket…
“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
ODE TO THE DEATH OF NEDA AGHA-SOLTAN
Allen L Roland
Neda Agha-Soltan moments before bleeding to death from a sniper wound
June 20, 2009, as her music teacher and others try to resuscitate her.
The bloody video of Neda's violent
death on Saturday has circulated in Iran and around the world on the World Wide Web. It has made Ms. Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old musician, who relatives said was not political, an instant symbol of the Iranian anti-government movement.
One short seven line poem circulating on the Internet explicitly linked Neda's death to other symbols of the Iranian protest movement ~ and I've taken the liberty to complete the poem:
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