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Netanyahu's War on Gaza
by Stephen Lendman
Governing lawlessly by any standard, Netanyahu waged war on Gaza since becoming Israel's prime minister for the second time on March 31, 2009.
Under his leadership, May 31 marked the anniversary of Israel's barbaric slaughter of nine Freedom Flotilla activists in international waters, injuring dozens more trying to deliver thousands of tons of vital aid to besieged Gazans, suffocating illegally since June 2007.
At the time, Defense Minister Ehud Barak blamed Flotilla organizers for inciting the attack, while his deputy, Danny Alalon, said they were connected to international terrorist organizations, trying to smuggle in arms. In fact, none were on board nor on other aid ships trying to breach Israel's lawless blockade.
The U.S.-Israeli Train Wreck
Jeff Gates
President Obama hopes to head off a train wreck in September at the U.N. General Assembly. That’s when member nations plan to press for an independent Palestine. The Israel lobby is furious.
Critics doubt that the General Assembly has the authority to recognize Palestine. Yet protection of member sovereignty has been a goal of the U.N. since its founding. Thus the priority that Israel placed on U.N. recognition after President Harry Truman acknowledged Israel on May 14, 1948, eleven minutes after the Zionist enclave declared itself a state.
Truman refused to recognize this enclave as “the Jewish state.” Despite Barack Obama’s reference to the Jewish state in a recent speech on the Middle East, during the final days before granting recognition and thereby “legitimacy,” Truman was consumed with the fear that Zionist aspirations would lead to a racist or a theocratic state.
Waging War at Home and Abroad While Pledging Peace
by Stephen Lendman
Promising peace on May 19, Obama wages war against Middle East/North African and Central Asian states, as well as Muslim Americans at home. Earlier articles explained they've:
-- been targeted;
-- hunted down;
-- bogusly entrapped by stings, false evidence or other means;
Public Banking: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
by Stephen Lendman
The 1913 Federal Reserve Act let powerful bankers usurp America's money system in violation of the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, giving only Congress the power to "coin Money (and) regulate the Value thereof...." Thereafter, powerful bankers victimized working Americans, using money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment by bankrolling and colluding with Congress and administrations to implement laws favoring them.
As a result, decades of deregulation, outsourcing, economic financialization, and casino capitalism followed, eroding purchasing power, producing asset bubbles, record budget and national debt levels, and depression-sized unemployment far higher than reported numbers, manipulated to look better.
Michael Collins: Things are Different (and sometimes much better) in the East
The nation formerly known as the Ottoman Empire is building a strong foundation for a bright future. That nation is also addressing its scandalous recent past as it reaches out to old enemies. The dynamics producing real change in Turkey are well worth understanding. Turkey is on a path to rapid economic growth, cultural liberalization, and will emerge as a key player in world affairs.
Why Innovation Needs Big Government
Ian Fletcher
Most people realize that the Federal budget deficit and the trade deficit are serious problems. Unfortunately, as I have argued previously, few people grasp the importance of another big deficit in our economy, without which it will be extremely hard to fix the first two: our innovation deficit.
Simply put: despite appearances to the contrary, our economy is not innovative enough. And it’s costing us, big-time.
Despite our smug self-image as a global innovation leader, the U.S. actually only ranks in the middle of the pack for resources committed to innovation. See the chart below. (Source.)
Vietnam and the New American Way of War
Here was a new generation . . . grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.
– F Scott Fitzgerald
Baghdad falls to US forces.
– 2003 headline
By Brian Downing
When Saigon fell and the last Huey was pushed overboard into the sea, Americans looked back with dismay on their many foreign entanglements that had culminated in the recent calamity. Those who cared to look ahead saw little prospect of war. Surely, they thought, the nation had learned from a war that had brought so much turmoil, cost fifty-eight thousand lives, and ended in defeat.
But Americans settled into a period of inwardness and few saw the new way of war coming into being. The military rebuilt itself, largely independent of the breadth of society, and became the most fearsome army in the world. War-making, in astonishing contrast to post-Vietnam sensibilities, became a de facto presidential power, legitimized by invocation of national security arguments only desultorily debated. This power was ceded by congress and endorsed by a gratefully uninvolved nation.
Arab Spring of Bloody Freedom, Palestine and Wicked Leaders
Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.
With the failing of international institutions responsible for saving the humanity from the scourge of wars and maintenance of peace and security, global politics is fast becoming a puppet show for fantasy and amusement. Politicians with borrowed public funds, time and interests ruling the societies act like sadistic maniacs deduced to preservation of self –interest, falsification of the facts of human life, cynicism and ruthless behavior toward the people. Undoubtedly, since ancient times, politics is game of pretension, favorite perversion, stage acting and tyranny of good intentions and deeds. The Arab world is no different and its oil-riched rulers think and behave like draconian creature, some Israeli leaders are a master piece of the epic script of deception and the American President and Congress are the moving force of this incredibly influential powerhouse of global hegemonic imagery of conceit and dichotomy. The liberal democracy exposes many illusion of human dignity, preservation of human rights, freedom and liberty but it fails to tell the real cost – how disjointed and derailed the world finds the gimmick of so called democracy working nowhere on this planet as it should have been a force for change, peace, human equality and human emancipation.
Memorial and Veterans Day Hypocrisy
by Stephen Lendman
Annually America's warrior tradition is commemorated in major media editorials and op-eds, honoring fallen men and women for reasons not explained. More on that below.
On May 29, The New York Times headlined, "Among the Graves This Memorial Day," saying:
Besides families mourning soldiers "recently lost in Iraq or Afghanistan....(t)here is still a generation mourning friends, relatives and fellow servicemen lost in Vietnam, Korea and World War II...."
Obama Plans Gutting Regulations for Corporate Favorites
by Stephen Lendman
Promising change after eight Republican dominated years, Obama betrayed the public trust by special favors given business at the expense of essential growing needs.
Spurning them, in fact, he shows contempt for the things he rhetorically supports, proving he's no different from the worst of the bipartisan criminal class, serving wealth and power interests only.
As a result, he backed Wall Street's financial coup d'etat, looted the nation's wealth for them, institutionalized speculation and corporate racketeering, wrecked the economy, and consigned millions to impoverishment without jobs, homes, savings, social services, or futures.
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