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The Third Battle of Fallujah
by Stephen Lendman
Iraq today is a grim reflection of America's ruthless imperial agenda. It includes mass slaughter, destruction, devastation, deprivation, human misery and unending violence. On August 31, 2010, Obama displayed criminal contempt. He's done it many times. He declared an end to America's combat mission in Iraq, saying:
"Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility." Ignored was America's genocidal legacy. Iraq was ravaged and destroyed. Pre-1990 Iraq no longer exists. Charnel house conditions replaced it.
So did plunder on the grandest of grand scales, millions of internal and external refugees, ongoing violence, dozens of daily deaths, a plague of preventable diseases, ecocide, and overall conditions too horrific to ignore.
Israel's War on Asylum Seekers
by Stephen Lendman
Israeli policy reflects the worst of Zionism's dark side. Separate and unequal defines longstanding policy.
Non-Jewish asylum seekers and refugees fleeing persecution aren't wanted. Arabs and black African ones are deplored most of all.
Israel treats them like criminals. Discriminatory laws target them. Fundamental rights are denied.
Torture victims fleeing repression face enormous hurdles to gain entry. Israel spurns international law with impunity. It does what it wants unaccountably. Protecting refugees and asylum seekers doesn't matter.
Article I of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees calls them:
"A person who owning to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country."
Criminal Unaccountability
by Stephen Lendman
Israel gets away with murder and much more. Crimes against humanity repeat multiple times daily. Palestinians are defenseless.
Who can contest Israel's military might? It's other security forces are ruthless. So are extremist settlers. Yesh Din Volunteers for Human Rights addresses them.
"Acts of violence are being committed by Israeli civilians against Palestinians in the West Bank on a daily basis," it says.
They repeat in many forms. They include violence and vandalism. They're not isolated incidences. They reflect more than hate or anger.
They're "part of a sophisticated wider strategy," says Yesh Din. They're "designed to assert territorial domination of Palestinians in the West Bank.
They include settler-imposed "no go zones." Palestinians face armed militants. They come from nearby settlements and outposts.
They "create effective 'no go zones.' " They're on privately owned Palestinian land.
Doing so gets them to abandon it. The do it in fear for their lives. Israeli soldiers, police and other security forces provide no protection. They support lawless settlers.
Rogue State Accuses Victims of Incitement
by Stephen Lendman
Blaming victims repeats with disturbing regularity. More on this below. Extremist ideologues run Israel.
They're criminals. They're thugs. They're militantly hardline. They threaten humanity. They deplore democratic rights. Rule of law principles are ignored.
Institutionalized racism is official policy. So is occupation harshness. State terror reflects it.
For over six decades, Palestinians endured its worst form. They still do today. Daily suffering persists. No one's sure each day who'll live, die, remain free or be arrested, imprisoned and tortured. State terror occurs daily.
In the week ending January 1, Israeli forces conducted 53 Palestinian community incursions. Defenseless civilians were terrorized.
A Century of War
by Stephen Lendman
July 29 marks WWI's 100th anniversary. It was called the war to end all wars. Never again was heard.
In 1928, Kellogg-Briand policy renounced aggressive wars. The UN Charter's Preamble states:
"We the Peoples of the United Nations Determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind..."
America, key NATO partners and Israel wage them on humanity. They're ongoing in multiple theaters. They cause horrific human suffering. America waged wars at home and/or abroad every year in its history. They began long before the republic's inception It's an unparalleled record. It's shocking. It's deplorable. It continues out-of-control. Peace never had a chance. It's more endangered than ever.
Wars assure more of them. America by far is the world's leading offender. Israel, Britain, France and other key NATO partners are willing partners. So are other rogue states.
The Saudi Bull in Arab China Shop
By Nicola Nasser*
Obsessed with the “Iran threat,” which leads to its warmongering in Syria, Saudi Arabia is acting like a bull in a china shop, wreaking regional havoc in an already Arab fragile political environment and creating what George Joffe’ of Cambridge University’s Centre of International Studies, on last December 30, called the “second Arab cold war,” the first being the Saudi-led cold war with the Pan-Arab Egypt of Gamal Abdul Nasser since the 1960s.
The kingdom stands now almost isolated politically. Its “going it alone” in the Syrian conflict has cornered Saudi Arabia into a self-inflicted foreign policy no-win deadlock, to be at odds with three super powers, including its strategic U.S. ally as well as Russia and China, in addition to regional heavy weights in Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Algeria, all who advocate a political settlement of the conflict.
Corporate Taxes in America
by Stephen Lendman
Raising them should be a national imperative. Corporations should pay their fair share. Not according to Laurence Kotlikoff.
He's a right-wing economist. He's a corporatist writ large. He claims abolishing corporate taxes will create jobs.
Doing so requires dropping money on Main Street. Get it in people's pockets directly. Do it by cutting their taxes.
Guarantee a living wage. Support worker-friendly legislation. Restore their bargaining power with management.
Return money creation power to public hands where it belongs. Initiate government jobs creation programs.
New Deal ones put millions back to work. Doing so reinvigorated the national spirit.
Unemployment was measurably cut. It dropped from 25% in 1933 to 11% in 1937. Doing the right things work.
Exonerate Edward Snowden Unconditionally!
by Stephen Lendman
It's long past time to stop Obama's war on whistleblowers. It's time to hold him accountable for waging it.
Whistleblowing is a national imperative. Exposing government wrongdoing is essential. Responsible parties must be punished.
Whistleblowers deserve praise, not prosecution. Snowden is a world hero. He connected important dots for millions.
Lots more vital information awaits revealing. Everyone needs to know. The NSA operates lawlessly. It's a power unto itself. It's an out-of-control agency.
Global spying is espionage. It's stealing other countries' secrets. It's doing so for political and economic advantage. It's not about keeping us safe.
Domestic spying has nothing to do with national security. It's for control. It's transformed America more than ever into a police state.
America Greatest Threat to World Peace
by Stephen Lendman
A new poll affirms it. Respondents in 68 countries said so. Anti-US sentiment is palpable. It doesn't surprise. It's for good reason.
Around one-fourth of people surveyed believe America is the greatest threat to world peace. Pakistan was second with 8%. Other countries mentioned were Afghanistan, Iran, Israel and North Korea.
About 13% of Americans believe the same thing as many abroad. Others in Latin America feel the same way. Moroccans, Lebanese and Iraqis called Israel the number one threat.
For sure Palestinians, Syrians and many others throughout the Middle East and beyond feel the same way about Israel and America.
Both countries threaten world peace. They wage war on humanity. They deny their own people fundamental rights.
They ignore rule of law principles. They operate extrajudicially. They do whatever they please. They remain unaccountable.
Talkin’ ‘bout a global revolution
Adam Parsons
As the global financial crisis now enters its seventh year, it is time to start asking difficult questions about the right priorities for popular protest if we want to realise a truly united voice of the world’s people. There can be no revolution in a truly moral or global sense until the critical needs of the extreme poor are prioritised and upheld, which will require mass mobilisations in the streets like we have never seen before.
At the onset of 2014, many people are now anticipating the prospect of a ‘global revolution’. The intense revolutionary fervour of 2011 may have dissipated in North America and much of Western Europe in the past couple of years, but a new geography of protest continues to shift and transmute in different countries and world regions - the million people on the streets of Brazil in June last year; the earlier defence of the commons in Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park; the indigenous uprising and student protests across Canada; the Ukraine demonstrations that are still under way.
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