Eric Zuesse

On August 19th, the brilliant Thad Beversdorf opened by posting a five-minute-long 2003 video of Vermont’s then-congressman Bernie Sanders, who was interrogating the deified Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, and ripping to shreds Greenspan’s record — and Sanders pointed out Greenspan’s falsely opening his response by Greenspan’s saying then, “Congressman, we have the highest standard of living in the world.” Bernie immediately shot back against that, “No, we don’t,” and he promptly cited several nations whose standard of living is, in fact, higher than ours. And that’s just for starters.

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by Stephen Lendman

A previous article explained overwhelming anti-regime opposition. Ordinary people are fed up with economic conditions creating enormous hardships - ignored to enrich privileged interests and wage war on Donbass.

Sporadic protests erupted various times before - again Monday in front of parliament violently after police stopped thousands from storming the building, led by Right Sector Nazis, likeminded Svoboda party extremists and other ultranationalist elements.

Whether Monday’s violence signals the beginning of Maidan 2.0 remains to be seen. Elements involved include the most extremists segments of Ukrainian society - hooligan supporters of Nazi-era Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B). He collaborated in mass executions and ethnic cleansing.

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Eric Zuesse

According to German Economic News (September 1st, based on reports from ynetnews and others), Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apparently decided to establish in Syria a military base with thousands of soldiers and sufficient air power to do in Syria what the Obama Administration won’t, which is to defeat ISIS and the other jihadists.

On the same day, washingtonsblog bannered, “Former CIA Boss and 4-Star General: U.S. Should Arm Al Qaeda,” and linked to several sources indicating that not only David Petraeus favors arming Al Qaeda, but much of the American establishment (who have sponsored Petraeus’s entire career) also does. The British aristocracy likewise does. In fact, that academic propaganda-piece, , discusses “the stark choices Western governments face in their policies towards Russia,” while it says nothing about “the stark choices” that Russia now faces in its policies toward the U.S. aristocracy, and toward Britain’s and other U.S-allied aristocracies.

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by Stephen Lendman

Western support for Israeli high crimes is longstanding. Vicious persecution of an entire population evokes no opposition, except for duplicitous lip service.

Israel is a ruthless police state - a regime run by hate-mongering thugs, exercising total control over all aspects of Palestinian life, brutalizing an entire population, depriving it of fundamental human and civil rights.

Last month, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Israeli security forces raided Palestinian homes on average 79 times weekly (nearly a dozen times a day) - terrorizing families, traumatizing children, making arrests without just cause - for fabricated security reasons.

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by Stephen Lendman

The scientific and world community know GMOs harm human health. So why does Washington and other governments permit their use - and in America, ban labeling, suppressing vital consumer information?

Ecowatch asked: “What if we could feed our students the nutritious, delicious and sustainably sourced food they truly deserve?”

Sausalito, California Marin City School District is the nation’s first one offering “100 percent organic and non-GMO” foods to children. Why aren’t all US school districts doing the same thing? Why aren’t only foods and ingredients safe to eat allowed to be sold in America? The Conscious Kitchen says it’s dedicated to a systematic transformation of school dining, to the health and well being of our children, and to a thriving future for our planet.”

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by Stephen Lendman

Palestinians under PA governance are ill-served, abused, lied to and exploited. Abbas is an illegitimate president - installed by Israel in a 2005 rigged election. His term expired in January 2009. He refuses to step down.

He’s a longtime Israeli collaborator - enforcing its harshness against his own people. Betrayal pays well. Reportedly he amassed a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars - profiting from secret land deals, other investments and grand theft. US and EU funds were stolen. Operations are opaque. Irregularities are rampant - transparency nonexistent.

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James Petras

Introduction

The single greatest feat of Israel and its overseas missions has not been material success, or the military conquest of millions of unarmed Palestinians, it has been ideological – the widespread acceptance in the US of a doctrine that claims ‘Jews are a superior people’.

Apart from small extremist rightwing sects who exhibit visceral anti-Semitism and denigrate everything Jewish, there are very few academics and politicians willing to question this supremacist doctrine. On the contrary, there is an incurable tendency to advance oneself by accepting and embellishing on it. For example, in August 2015, US Vice-President Joseph Biden attributed ‘special genius’ to Jews, slavish flattery that embarrassed even New York’s liberal Jewish intellectuals.

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by Ellen Brown

British MP Jeremy Corbyn has proposed a “People’s QE” that has critics crying hyperinflation and supporters saying it’s about time.

Dark horse candidate Jeremy Corbyn, who is currently leading in the polls for UK Labour Party leadership, has included in his platform “quantitative easing for people.” He said in a July 22nd presentation:

The ‘rebalancing’ I have talked about here today means rebalancing away from finance towards the high-growth, sustainable sectors of the future. How do we do this? One option would be for the Bank of England to be given a new mandate to upgrade our economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects: Quantitative easing for people instead of banks.

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by Stephen Lendman

A previous article explained Putin says what he means and means what he says. His forthright style follows through responsibly - in contrast to Obama, a serial liar with no credibility whatever.

Putin addressed reporters at Russia’s first Eastern Economic Forum - held from September 3 - 5 in Vladivostok, attended by about 1,500 business officials and other participants from Russia and Asia-Pacific nations.

Putin called the most serious refugee crisis since WW II “absolutely expected. We in Russia, and me personally a few years ago, said it straight that pervasive problems would emerge, if our so-called Western partners (America most of all) continue maintaining their flawed…foreign policy, especially in the regions of the Muslim world, Middle East, North Africa, which they pursue to date.”

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Eric Zuesse

The Obama U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has quietly issued its important Law of War Manual, and, unlike its predecessor, the 1956 U.S. Army Field Manual, which was not designed to approve of the worst practices by both the United States and its enemies in World War II, or after 9/11, this new document has been alleged specifically to do just that: to allow such attacks as the United States did on Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and in Iraq, and elsewhere.

First here will be a summary of previous news reports about this historically important document; then, extensive quotations from the actual document itself will be provided, relating to the allegations in those previous news reports. Finally will be conclusions regarding whether, or the extent to which, those earlier news reports about it were true.

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