Stuart Littlewood

We can already see how disastrously the US election turned out, not just for Americans but the rest of us also. “The US president is simply the voice of the Zionist parasite,” writes a friend in Norway. “It is sickening and frightening that Obama is seen toeing the Zionist line.

“Zionism has the US administration and other western governments by the balls.”

Well, that’s certainly the way it looks. Last month Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu slapped America in the face by approving more illegal settlements during vice-president Joe Biden’s visit. What did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton do? She repeated the pathetic mantra: “We have an absolute commitment to Israel’s security. We have a close unshakeable bond between the United States and Israel and between the American and Israeli people”.

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Written by Frederick Alexander Meade

In recent weeks, considerable turmoil has emerged among some elite members of the Civil Rights community.

Publicly aired expressions germinating from PBS’s Tavis Smiley and the National Action Network’s President Rev. Al Sharpton, in which both parties have accused the other of working against the interests of the African-American community in an effort to garner favor from members of the political class - Former President Bill Clinton in relation to Smiley and the current Head of State Barack Obama with respect to Sharpton - have created a stir within many African-American quarters.

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eileen fleming

On April 14, 2010, Mordechai Vanunu reported from occupied east Jerusalem, "The restrictions, not to leave the country for one more year renewed. Now 7 years since my release AFTER 18 YEARS in Israel PRISON."

Twenty-four years after the Mossad kidnapped Mordechai Vanunu from Rome after luring him from London, they have returned to track down another who followed his conscience but has been labeled a traitor by the state and a public who view truth tellers as a threat to their sense of security.

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by Stephen Lendman

Occupied Palestinians and Israeli Arabs never had rights in a state affording them solely to Jews. Now even they're at risk as democratic freedoms fast erode on their way to extinction; to wit, free expression, a right without which all others are endangered. It includes free speech, a free press, freedom of thought, culture, intellectual inquiry, and the right to challenge government authority peacefully, especially in times of war and cases of injustice, lawlessness, incompetence, and abuses of power. Israel has no constitution or specific laws guaranteeing equality or free expression. Yet its Basic Laws protect human dignity and liberty as fundamental democratic values, more rhetoric than fact given its persecution of journalist Anat Kam and Haaretz's national security reporter Uri Blau.

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James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya

The run-up to presidential elections is a time of heightened state-sponsored repression as Asia’s foremost ‘death squad democracy’ wages war on its progressive rural medical workers.

The notoriously violent and corrupt elections in the Philippines stand in sharp contrast with those in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Malaysia, where the ruling elites have secured their hegemony via economic prosperity, rising salaries, increased employment and extensive social services for their citizens. In these countries, the elite can abide by the results of a relatively ‘open’ election, whereas in the Philippines, any challenge to the closed, family-based ruling class is met with relentless terror.

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Khaled Amayreh
from Ramallah

Israel's latest scheme is ethnic cleansing by any other name.

In a new provocative measure aimed at narrowing Palestinian horizons and consolidating the Israeli grip on the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel has issued new military orders that would enable the Israeli occupation army to deport thousands of Palestinians from their homes and places of residence in the West Bank.

The new orders define as "infiltrator" any Palestinian or non-Palestinian living in the West Bank but not bearing an Israeli-issued identity card or special permit issued by the Israeli occupation army.

Thus, even Palestinians who were born in the West Bank and have been living there all their lives, but are not in possession of Israeli documents, would be viewed as "infiltrators" who could be deported at a moment's notice.

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by Stephen Lendman

On April 9, Justice John Paul Stevens delivered a letter to President Obama stating:

"Having concluded that it would be in the best interests of the Court to have my successor appointed and confirmed well in advance of the commencement of the Court's next Term, I shall retire from regular active service as an Associate Justice."

NBC anchor Brian Williams called him a "liberal lion," a "lawyer's lawyer." UPI's Michael Kirkland said he led the Court's "four-member liberal bloc." AP's Mark Sherman and Calvin Woodward said he "carved a liberal legacy on the high court." Clinton's acting Solicitor General, Walter Dellinger, called him "the Chief Justice of the Liberal Supreme Court." Writing in The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin said he was a "liberal leader (who's) views suggest a sensibility more than a philosophy."

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Franklin Lamb
Beirut

Tensions are rising in Lebanon between elected representatives in Parliament, ‘Unity’ Cabinet members and the American Embassy, as the 27th anniversary of the attack 1983 attack on the US Embassy approaches and the Embassy issues another warning for Americans to leave Lebanon.

On March 29, 2010 the US Embassy instructed Americans not to travel to Lebanon citing ‘safety and security concerns.” Simultaneously it warned those who are in Lebanon to seriously consider leaving.

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By Margaret Flowers

It was with a sense of déjà vu that I watched the latest Frontline documentary about health care. “Obama’s Deal” endeavored to reveal the significant influence of health industry dollars on our political process; however, as in Frontline’s Sick Around America, the producers did a disservice by the failure to educate the public about the bigger picture of the health care situation in this nation and the range of possible solutions.

Curiously, just as it was in the health “debate,” single payer, improved Medicare for All, was also excluded from the film. The major point of the influence of health industry dollars on the reform process which should have been mentioned is that these dollars were spent in order to restrict the debate and protect industry profits. The lucrative status quo would have been threatened if single payer had been openly discussed because a publicly-financed national health program can provide high quality universal health care and control health care costs, something that a private insurance based system cannot accomplish.

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Michael Collins

There they are, the people who brought you every bit of the action in the WikiLeaks video and all of the other horrors flowing from invasion of Iraq. Madeleine Albright (far right, above), former Clinton Secretary of State, is a good place to start. From 60 Minutes:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it. --60 Minutes (5/12/96)

An exhaustive study found that 227,000 children under five (table 13) died during the George H.W. Bush - Bill Clinton regime of total sanctions against Iraq from 1990 through 2000.

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