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Saudis Fight a Lost Battle against Change
By Nicola Nasser*
The ongoing aggressive Saudi policy for a militarized “regime change” in Syria is more an expression of internal vulnerability, trying hopelessly to avert change outside their borders lest change sweeps inside, than being a positive show of leadership and power, but Syrian developments are proving by the day that the Saudis are fighting a lost battle against change.
Riyadh is fighting several preemptive battles outside its borders in its immediate proximity in a disparate attempt to prevent an historic regional tide of change from changing the country’s pre-medieval system of governance and social life.
Surrounded by a turbulent changing regional and international environment, the Saudi Arabian rulers seem worried as hell that their system is facing an historical existential test for the survival of which they are unwisely blundering in foreign policy to alienate friends, win more enemies, exacerbate old animosities and trying counterproductively to promote their unmarketable way of life as the only way they know to survive, instead of reforming to adapt to modern irreversible changes that are sweeping throughout their surroundings and the world like a tsunami of an irresistible fate.
Sham Israeli/Palestinian Peace Talks Continue
by Stephen Lendman
Palestinians never had a legitimate peace partner. They have none now. Decades of talks went nowhere. Oslo was unconditional surrender.
So were Oslo II, Wye River, Camp David, Taba, Bush's Road Map, Annapolis, and other negotiating rounds. Israel demands things its way. So does America. They're all take and no give.
Peace is a convenient illusion. Israel and Washington remain hardline. Long suffering Palestinians are on their own. It's always been this way. It's no different now.
Senate Legislation Legitimizes Lawless Surveillance
by Stephen Lendman
War is America's national pastime. So is mass surveillance. Post-9/11, it escalated dramatically. It way exceeds the most lawless previous practices.
Privacy no longer exists. Big Brother watches everyone. It has complete access to our most personal information.
It reads our emails. It monitors our phone calls. It knows our medical and education histories. It knows our financial status and transactions.
It knows as much about our private lives as close family members. It knows with technological ease. It's unrelated to national security. It's for unchallenged control.
Constitutional rights don't matter. The USA Patriot Act and follow-up legislation destroyed Bill of Rights protections.
Due process, habeas, free expression, association and protection from unreasonable searches and seizures are gravely compromised.
Where were you when they told us the world as we know it is over?
Michael Collins
The responsibility for the calamities awaiting us needs to be clearly assigned. When you hear pundits talk about how we're all responsible, that represents a misinformed opinion or propaganda by the elites that enabled this most dismal future.
re to reach consensus until the apparent point of no return required deliberate denial of the facts as they emerged. The climate change deniers who argue from no scientific basis other than the title of scientist somewhere receive vast support from those who have no desire to clean up cars, factories, toxic waste production, etc. The media that claims that there are two sides to every issue are in the service of the financial and political elite that can only imagine a world with shrinking resources and wealth. Through their lack of imagination, denial, and negligence, they've made their vision come true.
It's their fault.Two Editorials Fall Short
by Stephen Lendman
It's no surprise. Major media opinion at its best goes so far and no further. Sensitive red lines aren't crossed.
News and information consumers are cheated. What's most important to know isn't reported. Sanitized content substitutes.
Haaretz is Israel's oldest broadsheet. It was founded in 1918. It was the year WW I ended. Britain's Mandate government sponsored it. In 1919, Zionist immigrants took control.
Initially it was called Hadashot Haaretz (News of the Land). Later it became Haaretz (The Land).
In 1937, Salman Schocken bought the paper. In 1939, his son Gershom became editor-in-chief. He remained so until death in 1990.
Police State Britain
by Stephen Lendman
Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) operates like NSA. They work cooperatively. They're out-of-control rogue agencies.
They spy on their own populations. They do it globally. They conduct espionage. They collect enormous amounts of personal information. They do it illegally.
Obama wages war on freedom. He targets whistleblowers and investigative journalists exposing government wrongdoing. So does Britain. It equates doing so with terrorism.
London's Guardian is threatened. Its offices were raided. Hard drive stored information was destroyed. Its editor, Alan Rusbridger, was warned. Cease and desist or else.
Israeli Apartheid Ruthlessness
by Stephen Lendman
Israel exceeds the worst of apartheid South Africa. Ninety-year-old Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) founder, Uri Avnery, has many commendable attributes. Recognizing apartheid reality isn't one of them. More on that below.
He supports peace between Israel and all Arab countries. He calls Gush Shalom "resolute," "militant," "radical," and "consistent." He wants Israeli occupation ended.
He endorses Palestinian self-determination inside pre-1967 Green Line borders. It represents 22% of historic Palestine. He's for minor territorial exchanges based on mutual consent.
He wants Jerusalem established as the East and West capitals of two states. He opposes the inviolable right of all diaspora Palestinians to return. He wants annual quotas.
Former New York Times Executive Editor Defends the Indefensible
by Stephen Lendman
Bill Keller
From 2003 until September 2011, Bill Keller was Times executive editor. Earlier he was a reporter and Washington bureau chief.
He's now an op-ed columnist and Times Magazine contributor. His columns are best avoided. They shun truth and full disclosure. They avoid telling readers what they most need to know.
Managed news misinformation substitutes. All of it fit to print isn't fit to read. It's typical Times journalism. Readers are cheated. They're betrayed. They deserve better. Growing millions seek it. Alternative media sources provide it.
One day perhaps they'll entirely replace sanitized corporate journalism. It can't come a moment too soon.
George Seldes (1890 - 1995) called corporate journalists of his day "prostitutes of the press." This writer calls them paid liars. Paul Craig Roberts calls them "presstitutes."
FUKUSHIMA IS HERE TO STAY
Allen L Roland
Hundreds of volunteers spell out the obvious to an apathetic world.
Like a relentless invisible creeping fog, Fukushima's poisonous presence is already here on the West Coast and it won't go away. This ongoing ominous radiation threat will be impossible to ignore by 2014 and its effect could double within five years when its life threatening symptoms will begin to fully surface.
The map below comes from the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center and it shows that Fukushima radiation levels at radiation monitoring stations all over the United States are rising and particularly on the West Coast ~ for every day 300 tons of radioactive water from Fukushima is flushed into the Pacific Ocean and is building up in our food chain.
6.6 Million Children Under the Age of Five Died Last Year Mostly from Easily Treatable Diseases
by Brian McAfee
Most of the deaths have been from pneumonia, malaria, or diarrhea. Over 70% of these deaths have occurred in Africa and South-East Asia. Nearly half of all under five deaths occur in five countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China, India, Nigeria and Pakistan.
The women and children of the Congo have had to endure two decades of warfare, hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees and systematic rape and other atrocities committed against the women and girls by both government soldiers and rebels. This system is propped up by foreign mining of rare earth minerals for cell phones and other electronics. Western governments and capitalism props up this system of abuse and violence.
Nigeria accounts for more than 30% of early childhood deaths for malaria and 20% for HIV/AIDS. According to the UN Nigeria accounts for one in every eight child death, this is a trend that must be combated.
Other regions where the situation has been dire for tens of thousands of children are Cambodia, Guinea, Mozambique and Nepal.
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