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Eric Walberg
[URUKNET] Recall the self-satisfied EU celebrations of recent years — the inauguration of the euro and the famous blue Euro passport, the accession of all the Eastern European and ex-Soviet statelets, the gloating as the euro steadily revalued. Fortress Europe was strong and united at last. The 21st century belonged to the new Old World.
But then a few cracks began to appear in the shiny facade. The Poles, especially, carped about just about everything — the thought of giving up their precious zloty (boy, are they sorry now), the EU farming rules, the lack of Euro-support for US wars, and the Euro-cowardice in facing down the Russian bear. They and the Czechs revealed Fortress Europe for what it was by welcoming US missile bases, provoking the Russians into threatening to make Europe once again the world’s nuclear battlefield. Kosovo managed to divide even the big boys, with Spain refusing to recognize this latest US-German plaything, and ratcheting up the tensions between Serbs, Croats — even the Slovenes. The Balkan cauldron is as hot as ever.
Margaret Kimberley
“Every norm of civilized behavior and international law was violated.”
Despite the best efforts of the American corporate media, the Israeli lobby, and compromised politicians, the true nature of Israel’s barbarity towards the Palestinian people is not easily hidden. The massacres of Gaza’s civilian population that were recently carried out by the Israeli Defense Force created a turning point in worldwide public opinion. Only the Israeli and American governments try to deny that war crimes were committed.
The IDF barred the world’s media from witnessing the killings of more than 1,400 people. Every norm of civilized behavior and international law was violated, including the Geneva Conventions prohibition of acts of revenge against civilian populations. Israel kept the borders of Gaza sealed, and would not even allow the population to flee and save their lives. The IDF takes the term “shooting fish in a barrel” very seriously.
Xymphora
I've been thinking more about the peculiar relationship of the Jewish power structure that controls America and the various hangers-on like Cheney and Rumsfeld. What's the connection?
I think it is just power. Political types are always looking for the most powerful star to which to hitch their wagons. They have far better instincts that the average person when its comes to sniffing out power structures, and thus were able to see the rise of the New American Establishment before it was obvious to everybody (except those who still choose not to see). People who aren't Zionists who ride with the Jews do so because their perception is that riding with the most powerful group is the best way to increase personal power. In the short run, they are right. There is also a peculiar element of circularity to this thinking: the New American Establishment is powerful because other powerful people think it is powerful.
Gaither Stewart
A little bit of Leninism for breakfast gives you the strength of a hundred camels in the courtyard.
(My adaptation of a Paul Bowles’ Arab adage)
And then this, straight out of the horse’s mouth:
“It is more pleasant and useful to go through the experience of the revolution than to write about it.” (Vladimir Lenin)
(Rome) Leftists like to cite Lenin. To quote Marx is to delve into the theory of Socialism/Communism. But Lenin is another cup of tea. You get into Lenin and you’re already in revolution. When you read Lenin’s The State and Revolution, which contains the core of Leninist thought, you are no longer in the world of socio-economic theory. This powerful text offers insights into Leninist policies and elaborated Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism, above all the class conflict, but also the crushing of the bourgeois state and the establishment and role of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Stuart Littlewood
Stuart Littlewood argues that, as president of an internationally hated terrorist state that is godfather to thuggish and criminal regimes like Israel, President Barack Obama should stay at home and save our hard-earned tax money from being wasted in a frenzy of ridiculous security measures to protect the pretentious pomp and circumstance of his sinister presidential circus.
You have to laugh.
Mr Obama comes to London for the G20 summit with 500 hangers-on, including 200 secret service goons and a guy with America's nuclear missile launch codes in his briefcase. He arrives in Air Force One accompanied by cargo planes bringing an estimated 35 vehicles for the presidential visit including “The Beast”, the president’s armour-plated limousine.
Sarah Coleman
In a homeless shelter in Dayton, Ohio, three young men gather nervously to pose for photographs. There’s Rob, who wears two wool caps over each other like a helmet on his head, and Antwuan, whose crisp white shirt signals his determination to rise above his circumstances. The third young man, who introduces himself only as Agent Thunder, is an aspiring poet and artist. He stares at the camera through wide, weary brown eyes that make him seem older than his eighteen years.
For Larry Price, the man behind the camera, the shoot feels familiar. The Olympus Visionary photographer, who has won two Pulitzer Prizes, has a track record of documenting social causes in the United States. While a staff photographer at the Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1980s, he spent six months photographing inside a fetid, dangerous housing project – a story that led local government to demolish the project two years later.
Robert W. Barker
Shut down Guantanamo, arrest the liar Cheney, bring Bush to deposition and hearings for war crimes, fire Halliburton and abandon the war in Iraq now, not tomorrow, not next year...now.
The scent of self-indulgence and insatiability raises the ire.
Incompetence and cronyism permeate the public being, and draws our anger. Blatant lies perpetrated by the government we fund - covered up by censorship - sponsored by corporate run media; it all drives us to irritation.
My mind turns to thoughts of possible retribution when I see the sick policies of the last administration dragging on. Differences mingle between the two parties as the distinctions betwixt the two once held sway, now fade into the quest for power, greed and pay offs, bail outs and ravenous spending. Where did we go wrong or were we ever right?
Jeremy Salt
The spate of reports coming out of the Middle East in the past two weeks are signs of a coming danger greater than the region has known in its modern history. The Israeli onslaught on Gaza; the massacre of civilians; the strafing of hospitals, ambulances and medical staff; the vandalisation of Palestinian homes; the violent, racist graffiti scrawled on walls; the soldiers’ t-shirts patterned with graphics showing a pregnant Palestinian woman in the cross hairs of a rifle; the support by 85 per cent of the Israeli population for an attack on civilians which killed hundreds of children; the evidence of Israeli soldiers themselves of how civilians were murdered in cold blood; the march on Umm al Fahm by the followers of Meir Kahane, at the same time as Palestinian cultural festivals in Jerusalem were being prohibited; the choice of a settler racist as Israel’s Foreign Minister; the two-tier colonial society established on the West Bank, reminiscent of Algeria in the 19th century; the wall, the checkpoints, the closures, the daily humiliation, the seizure of land and demolition of homes; the continuing demographic war against the Palestinians in Jerusalem; the recent attack on Sudan by unknown planes said to have been Israeli; the wars of the past and now the preparations for an attack on Iran - what more evidence could anyone need of how utterly dangerous the state of Israel is to regional and global stability?
Khalid Amayreh
From Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem
There is no doubt that the new Israeli government, led by Benyamin Netanyahu, honestly reflects the collective mindset of the Israeli Jewish Zionist society. True, there are Israelis who are averse to racism and fascism, but these are unfortunately very few in numbers and their influence is almost negligible.
Indeed, a fleeting glance at the composition of the new Israeli cabinet reveals an extremist coalition of war criminals, pathological liars, racist thugs (both of the Hitlerian and Stalinist styles), and hateful religious maniacs who inhale and exhale hatred 24 hours per day. For those who don’t know him, Benyamin Netanyahu is a pathological liar par excellence. His modus operandi is based on dishonesty, mendacity, prevarication, and deception.
Jonathan Cook
A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighbourhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey.
After the Israeli army's assault on the Gaza Strip in January, lawyers for the families were given access to Ottoman land registry archives in Ankara for the first time, providing what they say is proof that title deeds produced by the settlers are forged.
On Monday, Palestinian lawyers presented the Ottoman documents to an Israeli court, which is expected to assess their validity over the next few weeks. The lawyers hope that proceedings to evict about 500 residents from Sheikh Jarrah will be halted.
The families' unprecedented access to the Turkish archives may mark a watershed, paving the way for successful appeals by other Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank caught in legal disputes with settlers and the Israeli government over land ownership.
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