by Stephen Lendman

The old saying goes be careful what you wish for. You may get more than you bargained for. Washington's wars often don't turn out as planned.

Middle East, North African, Eurasian countries are embroiled in conflict. No end game looms. Unresolved conflicts continue. Escalation's likely.

US-sponsored death squads infest the region. They commit mass murder and destruction.

Official silence followed Al Nusra militants massacring 450 Kurdish civilians. Media scoundrels reported nothing. Mostly women and children were slaughtered. Assad's often blamed terrorist crimes.Syria's infested with extremist fighters. They've come from dozens of countries. They want Islamofasist rule. They want it in all or part of the Syria.

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Dr Salim Nazzal

In 1995, I conducted a number of interviews with elderly Palestinians expelled from their homes in 1948. This generation, have known the Jewish terrorism, and experienced the pain of loosing relatives, and the pain of loosing their homes. The interviews were made with various categories of Palestinians: those expelled from Palestinian cities and villages and with persons of various educational backgrounds, and both Muslims and Christians.

All absolutely agree that Palestinians view the Jewish minority in Palestine as friendly people. None of them say anything negative about Jews. But all make a clear distinction between Palestine Jews living alongside Palestinians (Palestine Jews are like us in everything: food, music, language!). And, between the terrorist Jews who came mostly from Eastern Europe.

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Stuart Littlewood

Choose new leaders and fight for justice under fair and decent procedural rules
While a fanfare of trumpets announced the resumption of so-called peace talks between Israel and the trampled Palestinians, to be held under the watchful eye of America’s Zionist ‘facilitators’, the Israelis were awarding special priority grants and other government funding to a number of their outlying West Bank “settlements”. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/israel-moves-to-boost-west-bank-settlements-before-peace-talks-1.1484539

Settlement is a nice friendly word suggesting a peaceful pioneering enterprise. Israeli settlements are anything but. Let us call them what they really are: illegal colonizer squats on land seized at gunpoint.

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By David Swanson

Hammer in hand, one sees nails everywhere. Successful unpunished genocide at home in hand, the Pentagon sees Indian Country on six continents. But don't imagine the U.S. military is finished with the original Indian Country yet, including Native American reservations and territories, and including the places where the rest of us now live.

Compare and contrast:

Exhibit 1 from the New York Times:

"Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

Exhibit 2 from a U.S. Army dispatch in 1864:

"All Apache . . . large enough to bear arms who may be encountered in Arizona will be slain whenever met unless they give themselves up as prisoners."

Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech at Fort Carson with cavalry troops on horseback dressed in Indian-killing outfits behind him, as he praised troops in Iraq for living up to the legend of Kit Carson -- a man who marched hundreds of human beings to a camp later used as a model for the Nazis'.

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by Stephen Lendman

Societies are best judged by how they treat children, the elderly, the infirm, their most disadvantaged and prisoners. America fails on all counts.Human and civil rights don't matter. US prisons are notoriously harsh. California's Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) is a Supermax facility.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) National Institute of Corrections calls them "special housing unit(s), maxi-maxi, maximum control facilit(ies), secured housing unit(s), intensive management unit(s),They're "highly restrictive, high-custody housing unit(s) within a secure facility."

They "isolate inmates from the general prison population and from each other due to grievous crimes, repetitive assaultive or violent institutional behavior, the threat of escape or actual escape from high-custody facilit(ies), or inciting or threatening to incite disturbances in a correctional institution."

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Link: http://rt.com/news/fukushima-water-overrun-barrier-335/

Contaminated groundwater accumulating under the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant has risen 60cm above the protective barrier, now freely leaking into the Pacific Ocean, plant’s operator TEPCO admitted. Water samples showed extreme levels of radiation. Protective barriers no longer coping.

by Stephen Lendman

On August 7, Obama cancelled a long-planned Moscow summit. He and Vladimir Putin planned meeting in early September. A previous article explained.

A White House statement said in part:

"Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a US-Russia Summit in early September."

This comment and others ring hollow. Washington demands subservience. It wants things its way. Bullying substitutes for responsible bilateral relations.

Doing so makes more enemies than friends. It threatens world peace. It's more evidence of America's dark side. It shows Obama's true face. He's not ready for prime time.

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by Stephen Lendman

Thousands of Palestinian political prisoners languish in Israel's gulag. Netanyahu got cabinet approval to release 104. They've been held longterm. They've been denied justice.

Release is meaningless. It's shameless. It's contemptuous of Palestinian rights. It falls short of freedom. They'll be ruthlessly harassed. They're denied a moment's peace.

Many are rearrested. Trumped up charges follow. Doing so assures convictions. Release is short-lived.

At the same time, hundreds of others are arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. Palestinians are systematically denied all rights.

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by Stephen Lendman

Paul Simon's 1975 "Still Crazy After All These Years" album featured the hit song "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover."

Subverting peace perhaps is simpler. Four decades of futile Israeli/Palestinian talks prove it. There never was a peace process. There's none now.

It's a convenient fiction. It's an illusion. It's fake. It's a sham. It's a charade. Pretense pretends otherwise. It substitutes for reality.Here's why. Israel deplores peace. So does Washington. They're warrior states. They're not peacemakers. They never were. They're not now. They proliferate violence and instability. Their entire histories reflect it. Peace is inherently abhorrent. It defeats their agenda. Imperial marauding requires conflict.

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by Jeffrey Steinberg

Aug. 6—Lyndon LaRouche warned on Aug. 3 that ongoing Israeli actions, including the July 5 Israeli Air Force (IAF) bombing of a depot near Latakia, Syria which held Russian-made anti-ship cruise missiles, could trigger a wider war, drawing the United States into thermonuclear conflict with Russia.

LaRouche charged that Israel's behavior is "criminally insane," adding that the financial and economic breakdown crisis in Europe and the United States has reached an advanced stage, such that any day, there could be a triggering event that leads to global conflict. He cited the period between now and the end of September as the final phase of an economic cycle, in which the prospects of a systemic crash are greatly increased, moving to the end of the fiscal year. He warned that this fact exacerbates the grave danger of an eruption of conflict. One cannot rule out the outbreak of some kind of general war between now and November, he concluded.

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