Danny Richardson

"In addition to confiscating land claimed to be vacant, and demolishing Palestinian homes built without permits that are almost impossible to secure, Israel has for many years used the excavation and reclamation of Jewish historical sites as a reason for the removal of Arab dwellings within East Jerusalem."

Israel is planning a major land-grab in East Jerusalem worth tens of billions of dollars.

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has informed the Supreme Court that the state plans to apply the law on abandoned properties in East Jerusalem. This will mean that Israel can “legally” take over thousands of acres and buildings that are the property of Palestinians, some of whom fled to what the state claims were “enemy states” during the Israeli “War of Independence” and others who have property in East Jerusalem but reside in the Occupied Territories.

The issue was brought before the Supreme Court after four cases were tried in the Jerusalem District Court, which ruled in favour of the owners in two cases and against in two. A special legal panel later ordered the Attorney General to tell the District Court whether it intended to apply a 1950 law to properties in East Jerusalem.

The total worth of the property belonging to the four applicants that was seized in Abu Ghneim mountain is estimated at $10 billion—equivalent to the Israeli defence budget for a year.

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Chris Floyd

In the last decade of the 20th century, a nation often hailed (not least by itself) as the "world's greatest democracy" directed a program of savage economic warfare against a broken, defenseless country. This blockade, carried out with an exacting bureaucratic coldness, killed, by very conservative estimate, at least one million innocent people. More than half of these victims were young children.

Dead children. Thousands of dead children. Tens of thousands of dead children, Hundreds of thousands of dead children. Mountains of dead children. Vast pestiferous slagheaps of dead children. This is what the world's greatest democracy created, deliberately, coldly, as a matter of carefully considered national policy.

The blockade was carried out for one reason only: to force out the broken country's recalcitrant leader, who had once been an ally and client of the world's greatest democracy but was no longer considered acquiescent enough to be allowed to govern his strategically placed land and its vast energy resources. The leadership of both of the dominant power factions in the world's greatest democracy agreed that the deliberate murder of innocent people -- more people than were killed in the coterminous genocide in Rwanda -- was an acceptable price to pay for this geopolitical objective. To them, the game -- that is, the augmentation of their already stupendous, world-shadowing wealth and power -- was worth the candle -- that is, the death spasms of a child in the final agonies of gastroenteritis, or cholera, or some other easily preventable affliction.

It is, by any measure, one of the most remarkable -- and horrific -- stories of the last half of the 20th century, outstripped in that period only by China's 'Great Leap Forward' and by the millions killed in the conflicts in Indochina in which the world's greatest democracy played such an instrumental role. Yet it remains an "invisible war," as Joy Gordon calls it in the title of her new book on the United States and the Iraq sanctions. Not only that, the perpetrators of this Rwanda-surpassing genocide walk among us today, safely, serenely, in honor, comfort and privilege. Some of them still hold powerful positions in government. If their savage war was invisible, then so is the innocent blood that smears them from head to foot.

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Philip Giraldi

The Ministry of Truth was how George Orwell described the mechanism used by government to control information in his seminal novel 1984. A recent trip to Europe has convinced me that the governments of the world have been rocked by the power of the internet and are seeking to gain control of it so that they will have a virtual monopoly on information that the public is able to access. In Italy, Germany, and Britain the anonymous internet that most Americans are still familiar with is slowly being modified. If one goes into an internet café it is now legally required in most countries in the European Union to present a government issued form of identification. When I used an internet connection at a Venice hotel, my passport was demanded as a precondition and the inner page, containing all my personal information, was scanned and a copy made for the Ministry of the Interior -- which controls the police force. The copy is retained and linked to the transaction. For home computers, the IP address of the service used is similarly recorded for identification purposes. All records of each and every internet usage, to include credit information and keystrokes that register everything that is written or sent, is accessible to the government authorities on demand, not through the action of a court or an independent authority. That means that there is de facto no right to privacy and a government bureaucrat decides what can and cannot be "reviewed" by the authorities. Currently, the records are maintained for a period of six months but there is a drive to make the retention period even longer.

The excuses being given for the increasing government intervention into the internet are essentially two:

First, that the anonymity of the internet has permitted criminal behavior, fraud, pornography, and libel.

Second is the security argument, that managing the internet is an integral part of the "global war on terror" in that it is used by terrorists to plan their attacks requiring governments to control those who use it.

The United States government takes the latter argument one step farther, claiming that the internet itself is a vulnerable "natural asset" that could be seized or damaged by terrorists and must be protected, making the case for a massive $100 billion program of cyberwarfare. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) argues that "violent Islamist extremists" rely on the internet to communicate and recruit and he has introduced a bill in the Senate that will empower the president to "kill" the internet in case of a national emergency.

But all of the arguments for intervention are essentially themselves fraudulent and are in reality being exploited by those who favor big government and state control.

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Mitch Perry

The vast majority of early LSD research was sponsored by
the CIA’s MKULTRA program – acting through the Macy
Foundation among others.

"[LSD] had no potential whatsoever as a truth drug, but they continued to use it and even use it today at Guantanamo and other black sites mainly to frighten people and scare the hell out of them and throw them off balance."

Beginning after World War II and escalating through the early 1950s, the U.S. government launched a multimillion-dollar series of experiments in mind control and behavior modification.

It wasn't until the mid-1970s that Americans learned of such programs, which went by the names of Bluebird, ARTICHOKE and, most notably, MK/ULTRA. That's when a commission led by then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and a subsequent Senate investigation revealed what our government had been up to.

In December of 2000 in this newspaper (then known as Weekly Planet), reporters H. P. Albarelli Jr. and John Kelly published a lengthy investigation that went beyond government reports. "The Strange Story of Frank Olson" explored the fate of a biochemist working for the U.S. Army who reportedly fell from a hotel window in New York City in November of 1953, after he had been dosed with LSD by the CIA.

Now, nearly a decade later, H.P. "Hank" Albarelli Jr. has published a book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments, that he says was inspired by the positive reaction to the Planet story.

In the book, the author -- a resident of Indian Rocks Beach -- weaves a fascinating tale about the CIA's mind control programs. Albarelli told CL last month that he was inspired to write about Olson by the 1979 book The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, in which author John Marks used data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act to document the CIA's use of LSD on unwitting subjects.

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Mario Pecheny

Argentina: A propósito del informe de la Universidad Austral “Matrimonio homosexual y adopción por parejas del mismo sexo”

Hoy es inaceptable defender la quema de brujas y homosexuales en la hoguera, la inferioridad femenina, el genocidio de los judíos, la esclavitud de los negros o el apartheid. Por supuesto que podrían encontrarse datos y pensarse argumentos denigratorios para las mujeres, los judíos y los negros, y hasta comentarlos por lo bajo o no tan bajo. Pero una institución como el Senado no se atrevería a recibir 177 páginas escritas como parte del enriquecimiento de sus debates. Diría: por más que exhiban profusión de datos y presenten argumentos, están basados en el odio, y esto es inaceptable.

Sin embargo, el Senado recibió un texto de la Universidad Austral, que publicó en junio de 2010 bajo el título de “Matrimonio homosexual y adopción por parejas del mismo sexo”. Un texto de 177 páginas, cuyo subtítulo afirma que es un “Informe de estudios científicos y jurídicos y experiencia en otros países”. Pero no, no es un informe científico. Son 177 páginas que explican por qué hay vidas condenadas a ser menos dignas que otras.

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Stephen Lendman

An April 2010 Pew Research Center (PRC) for the People & Press study and others report growing public anger, distrust, and hostility toward business and government because of a "perfect storm of conditions" - wrecked economies, fueling "epic discontent" toward responsible officials.

PRC found nearly 80% of Americans don't trust government to do the right thing, the highest distrust level in half a century, this writer's April 28 article, titled "Growing Public Anger in America," discussing its findings, accessed through THIS link.

People want help when they most need it, but aren't getting it, privilege always trumping the public interest, getting more extreme in America, Canada, and throughout Europe, a prescription for greater outrage, perhaps fury for beneficial change.

It bears watching as the deepening global depression plays out, throwing millions more to the wolves, abandoned by fiscal harshness, governments protecting business, not their people.

On December 9, 2005, in better times, New York Times writer Claudia Deutsch headlined, "New Surveys Show That Big Business Has a PR Problem," saying:

"More than ever, Americans do not trust business or the people who run it," according to pollsters, researchers, and corporate bosses feeling the heat, yet "bent on destroying the environment, cooking the books and lining their own pockets" ad infinitum in good and bad times.

Prior to public knowledge about Wall Street banksters, corporate scandals outing Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and other company executives fueled growing anger and distrust, management consultant Michael Hammer saying:

"There is a sense that business is a zero-sum game, that if companies are making a lot of money, it must be coming out of someone else's pocket."

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Justin Raimondo

In 2001, Bibi Netanyahu paid a condolence call on a group of Israeli settlers in the village of Ofra, widows whose husbands had been killed in the Intifada: the videotaped conversation has just been leaked, and broadcast by Israel’s Channel 10, and it is a blockbuster. At one point, Bibi is telling the widows that the Palestinians “think they will break us,” but don’t worry, ladies, Bibi has a plan:

“To hit them. Not just one blow, but blows that are so painful that the price will be too heavy to be borne. The price is not too heavy to be borne, now. A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority. To bring them to the point of being afraid that everything is collapsing…

“Woman: Wait a moment, but then the world will say ‘how come you’re conquering again?’

“Netanyahu: The world won’t say a thing. The world will say we’re defending.

“Woman: Aren’t you afraid of the world, Bibi?

“Netanyahu: Especially today, with America. I know what America is. America is something that can easily be moved. Moved to the right direction.”

A child speaks up, and, surprisingly articulate, avers: “They say they’re for us, but, it’s like…”

Yes, even the children are little ideologues. Today that boy is a teenager on the verge of adulthood, and likely a fervent supporter of Israel’s ultra-rightist government, led by Bibi, who, back then, quickly assured him: “They won’t get in our way.” The child, hardliner that he was and no doubt still is, seemed doubtful: “On the other hand,” the kid ventured, “if we do some something, then they…”

That’s when Bibi really let his hair down:

“So let’s say they say something. So they said it! They said it! 80% of the Americans support us. It’s absurd. We have that kind of support…. Look. That administration [Clinton] was extremely pro-Palestinian. I wasn’t afraid to maneuver there. I was not afraid to clash with Clinton.”

Of course he wasn’t, because he knew he’d win, what with the Republicans in Congress passing resolutions unconditionally supporting the Israelis and AIPAC and the rest of the Lobby going all out to mobilize their fifth column against Oslo and the very idea of a rapprochement. Oslo was a dagger placed against the throat of the hard-line Likud movement, which explicitly embraces the rather nutty idea of a “Greater Israel,” and there was no way Netanyahu or his party could accept it without betraying who and what they were and are.

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Stephen Lendman

In July 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled the Separation Wall illegal, saying

its route inside the West Bank, and associated gate and permit system, violated Israel's obligations under international law, ordering the completed sections dismantled, and "all legislative and regulatory acts relating thereto" repealed or rendered "ineffective forthwith."

The ICJ also mandated reparations for the "requisition and destruction of homes, businesses, and agricultural holdings (and) to return the land, orchards, olive groves, and other immovable property seized," obligating member states to reject the illegal construction and demand Israel comply with international law.

Most nations ignored the ruling. Israel defied it and continued building, now 61% finished, another 8% under construction, and the remaining 31% planned but not begun. When completed, its expected to be over 800 km, twice the length of the Green Line, four times as long as the Berlin Wall, and in some places twice as high on about 12% of stolen Palestinian land, its erection devastating the people affected.

Based on its current route, about 33,000 Palestinians with West Bank ID cards in 36 communities will be located between the Wall and the Green Line, in the so-called Seam Zone along with most East Jerusalemites. Another 126,000 in 31 communities will be surrounded on three sides, and 28,000 more in nine communities entirely, with a tunnel or road connection to the West Bank, requiring hard to get permits to access.

In July, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released a Special Report titled, "The Impact of the Barrier on Health," especially patient and staff access to East Jerusalem's specialized medical facilities (unavailable in Gaza or the West Bank) because of the Wall's intrusive route and associated permit/gate system.

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Maggie Jones

One morning when he was 15, Takeshi shut the door to his bedroom, and for the next four years he did not come out. He didn't go to school. He didn't have a job. He didn't have friends. Month after month, he spent 23 hours a day in a room no bigger than a king-size mattress, where he ate dumplings, rice and other leftovers that his mother had cooked, watched TV game shows and listened to Radiohead and Nirvana. "Anything," he said, "that was dark and sounded desperate."

I met Takeshi outside Tokyo not long ago, shortly after he finally left his parents' house to join a job-training program called New Start. He was wiry, with a delicate face, tousled, dyed auburn hair and the intensity of a hungry college freshman. "Don't laugh, but musicians really helped me, especially Radiohead," he told me through an interpreter, before scribbling some lyrics in English in my notebook. "That's what encouraged me to leave my room."

The night Takeshi and I met, we were at one of New Start's three-times-a-week potluck dinners at a community center where the atmosphere was like a school dorm's - a dartboard nailed to the wall over a large dining table, a worn couch and overstuffed chairs in front of a TV blaring a soccer match. About two dozen guys lounged on chairs or sat on tatami mats, slurping noodles and soup and talking movies and music. Most were in their 20's. And many had stories very much like Takeshi's.

Next to us was Shuichi, who, like Takeshi, asked that I use only his first name to protect his privacy. He was 20, wore low-slung jeans on his lanky body and a 1970's Rod Stewart shag and had dreams of being a guitarist. Three years ago, he dropped out of high school and became a recluse for a miserable year before a counselor persuaded him to join New Start. Behind him a young man sat on the couch wearing small wire-frame glasses and a shy smile. He ducked his head as he spoke, and his voice was so quiet that I had to lean in to hear him. After years of being bullied at school and having no friends, Y.S., who asked to be identified by his initials, retreated to his room at age 14, and proceeded to watch TV, surf the Internet and build model cars - for 13 years. When he finally left his room one April afternoon last year, he had spent half of his life as a shut-in. Like Takeshi and Shuichi, Y.S. suffered from a problem known in Japan as hikikomori, which translates as "withdrawal" and refers to a person sequestered in his room for six months or longer with no social life beyond his home. (The word is a noun that describes both the problem and the person suffering from it and is also an adjective, like "alcoholic.") Some hikikomori do occasionally emerge from their rooms for meals with their parents, late-night runs to convenience stores or, in Takeshi's case, once-a-month trips to buy CD's. And though female hikikomori exist and may be undercounted, experts estimate that about 80 percent of the hikikomori are male, some as young as 13 or 14 and some who live in their rooms for 15 years or more.

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Robert Logan

In reading a number of books on the destructive manipulative behavior of people with personality disorders I became increasingly struck by how the behavior of our politicians and our nation, especially with respect to foreign policy, was so precisely described.

The lesson from this study is not just sobering, but taken alongside the invincible tide of history – the collapse of every empire – the prognosis for our nation is bleak.

The most important book for me was titled In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People by Dr. George Simon. The title and tactics identified within it accurately describes not only our national leaders, but our national character. Our nation has not just one, but multiple destructive personality disorders.

I do not mean this in the metaphorical sense, but in the direct clinical sense. Dr. Simon indicates that in a repressive Victorian society individual citizens suffer more neurotic kinds of disorders because they have natural human sexual desires that are relentlessly suppressed and vilified, resulting in anguish over reconciling natural human urges with extreme social sanctions against them.

In more recent decades, with the "anything goes" revolution in the 1960′s and onward, the kinds of personality disorders in his clinical work came to be more dominated by the opposite end of the spectrum, known as character disorders. Neurotic disorders are from "too much conscientiousness". Character disorders are from "not enough conscientiousness".

Character disorders are destructively aggressive. The most interesting to me is a type called "covert aggression" where underhanded, deceitful tactics are used to serve highly narcissistic and flatly evil objectives. Covert aggressors use "innocent" cover to give plausible deniability to base motives of power, greed, and even sadism. The foreign policy of our nation is exactly so described – aggressive wars cloaked in "humanitarian" garb.

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Stephen Lendman

This writer's November 2009 article titled "Paid Lying: What Passes for Major Media Journalism" also discussed it in detail, accessed through THIS link.

It called major media journalism biased, irresponsible, and sensationalist - misreporting, distorting, exaggerating, misstating, or suppressing vital truths - serving state and corporate interests over the common good, including bankers controlling the nation's money, unpunished corruption at the highest levels, democracy for the select few, sham elections, a de facto one party state, imperial wars, occupation, and torture.

Harvard Report on Waterboarding

Prepared by Neal Desai, Andre Pineda, Majken Runquist and Mark Fusunyan, Harvard's JFK School of Government published their April 2010 Harvard Student Paper titled, "Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media," [.pdf] documenting how the practice was covered by America's four largest newspapers over the past 100 years - The New York Times (established in 1851), Los Angeles Times (established 1881), Wall Street Journal established 1889), and USA Today (established 1982, America's most widely circulated newspaper, why it was chosen for the study).

Waterboarding Defined

By any definition, it's torture, strictly prohibited under US and international law at all times, under all circumstances, with no allowed exceptions.

Yet the Bush administration defended it, saying it's used to train US service members to resist torture, when, in fact, training involves a cloth placed over their face one time (perhaps twice) for about 20 seconds, a love tap compared to detainee torture, using so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

It involves six or more 40-second "applications" in each two hour session, multiple ones daily, forcing water in detainees' mouths and noses for 12 minutes, repeated daily, sometimes for weeks.

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Robert Fisk

It is the season of grovelling.

Only a week after CNN's Octavia Nasr and the British ambassador to Beirut, Frances Guy, dared to suggest that Sayyed Hassan Fadlallah of Lebanon was a nice old chap rather than the super-terrorist the Americans have always claimed him to be, the grovelling began. First Ms Nasr, already fired by the grovelling CNN for her effrontery in calling Fadlallah a "giant", grovelled herself. Rather than tell the world what a cowardly outfit she had been working for, she announced that hers was "a simplistic comment and I'm sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah's life's work. That's not the case at all".

What is this garbage? Nasr never gave the impression that she supported "Fadlallah's life's work". She merely expressed her regret that the old boy was dead, adding - inaccurately - that he had been part of Hizbollah. I don't know what her pompous (and, of course, equally grovelling) "senior vice president" said to her when she was given her marching orders. But like victims of the Spanish Inquisition, Nasr actually ended up apologising for sins she had never even been accused of. Then within hours, British ambassador Guy began her own self-flagellation, expressing her regrets that she may have offended anyone (and we all know what that means) by her "personal attempt to offer some reflections of a figure who, while controversial, was also highly influential in Lebanon's history and who offered spiritual guidance to many Muslims in need".

I loved the "controversial" bit - the usual "fuck you" word for anyone you want to praise without incurring the wrath of, well, you know who. The Foreign Office itself took down poor Ms Guy's blogapop on old Fadlallah, thus proving - as Arab journalists leapt to point out this week - that while Britain proclaims the virtues of democracy and the free press to the grovelling newspaper owners and grotty emirs of the Middle East, it is the first to grovel when anything might offend you know who.

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Uri Avnery

Uri Avnery considers the current profile of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, which has become home to a large and growing number of vulgar fascists, racists and ignoramuses.

When I was first elected to the Knesset, I was appalled at what I found. I discovered that, with rare exceptions, the intellectual level of the debates was close to zero. They consisted mainly of strings of clichés of the most commonplace variety. During most of the debates, the plenum was almost empty. Most participants spoke vulgar Hebrew. When voting, many members had no idea what they were voting for or against, they just followed the party whip.

That was 1967, when the Knesset included members like Levy Eshkol and Pinchas Sapir, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan, Menachem Begin and Yohanan Bader, Meir Yaari and Yaakov Chazan, for whom today streets, highways and neighbourhoods are named.

In comparison to the present Knesset, that Knesset now looks like Plato’s Academy.

What frightened me more than anything else was the readiness of members to enact irresponsible laws for the sake of fleeting popularity, especially at times of mass hysteria. One of my first Knesset initiatives was to submit a bill which would have created a second chamber, a kind of Senate, composed of outstanding personalities, with the power to hold up the enactment of new laws and compel the Knesset to reconsider them after an interval. This, I hoped, would prevent laws being hastily adopted in an atmosphere of excitement.

The bill was not considered seriously, neither by the Knesset nor by the general public. The Knesset almost unanimously voted it down. (After some years, several of the members told me that they regretted their vote.) The newspapers nicknamed the proposed chamber “the House of Lords” and ridiculed it. Ha'aretz devoted a whole page of cartoons to the proposal, depicting me in the garb of a British peer.

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Stephen Lendman

In May 2005, then FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, John Lewis, told a Senate panel that ecoterrorism is "one of today's most serious domestic terrorism threats," the 2001 USA Patriot Act creating the crime of "domestic terrorism," broadening the definition to apply to US citizens as well as aliens - henceforth, the Bureau dividing the crime into two categories, international and domestic, the latter changing dramatically in the past decade.

Then FBI's Domestic Terrorism Section Chief, James Jarboe, said two organizations are principally responsible: the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF), committing over 600 criminal acts since 1996, causing over $43 million in damage. Lewis cited over 1,100 acts since 1976, resulting in about $110 million in damages, and on June 30, 2008, the FBI used the same figure for over 2,000 crimes since 1979 - against "international corporations, lumber companies, animal testing facilities, genetic research firms," and other companies harming the environment or animals, defining the crime as follows:

"the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature."

The FBI calls ELF and ALF 'loosely-organized movements whose adherents engage in crimes like arson, fire bombings, vandalism, intimidation, assaults, (and) stalking, etc."

On their web sites, ELF says its

"mission is to defend and protect the Earth for future generations by means of direct action," nonviolent civil disobedience it calls "the moral road," adhering to Hippocrates' dictum, to "do no harm."

ALF defines animal rights as

"the philosophy of allowing nonhuman animals to have the basic rights that all sentient beings desire: freedom to live a natural life, free from human exploitation, unnecessary pain and suffering, and premature death."

Direct action qualifies anyone for membership. No formal organizational structure exists.

Through surveillance, harassment, and infiltration, the FBI pursues suspects, "taking advantage of the 2006 revision to the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (ACTA)," a law the Center for Constitutional Rights calls:

unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments....because it criminalizes protected speech that causes an animal enterprise to lose profits or goodwill, and (uses) undefined terms, requiring guesswork to define their meaning and scope. Neither the AETA's overbreath nor its vagueness can be cured by the statute's rules of construction." Only rescinding the law can do it.

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Khalid Amayreh

While the rest of the world talks about a peace process, and while President Barack Obama raises false hopes of a resolution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, Israel is working frantically to create irreversible facts in occupied East Jerusalem as well as across the West Bank.

These facts, which take the form of tens of thousands of Jewish settler units built all over the occupied city and beyond, are changing the demographic features and overall panorama of East Jerusalem in particular.

Jerusalem is not just another town. It is extremely sacred to more than 1.5 billion Muslims around the world, being home to some of Islam's holiest shrines. Hence, progressive Judaicisation of the town by Israel is likely to drastically complicate any future effort to find a peaceful settlement to the conflict.

One Palestinian intellectual related to the situation in Jerusalem by saying that

"it is now open-ended conflict similar to the Muslim quest to rid the city of the Franks in the 11th and 12th centuries." "This strife might take several decades, even a century or more, but it must end with the dismantling or destruction of something called Israel," said one resident of Hebron in the southern West Bank.

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The Green Voice Of Freedom ندای سبز آزادی
Translated by The Green Voice Of Freedom ندای سبز آزادی

In a meeting with professors from the University of Tarbiat Modares, Mir Hossein Mousavi said, “we believe that deceit, oppressions, and lawlessness undermine the legitimacy of the [Islamic] system and the promises [given to us] by the Quran, the stories and an analysis of the events of Karbala and Ashura reveal that oppression will not remain.” Mousavi said that the Green Movement’s goal was for the people’s votes to be in control of affairs.

“I believe that God willing, the Green Movement will one day triumph because it seeks the rights of the people. Because it is a defender of human liberties, because it defends reason and logic, because it is against oppression, deceit and tyranny.”

Greens have lost fear

The former prime-minister said that the Green Movement draw great inspiration from the events of Ashura (martyrdom of Imam Hussein in 680 AD) and the “freedom-seeking spirit” of those martyred on that day and above all Imam Hussein and his half brother Abbas, “one must stand against wrongdoing and must seek to return to [the path of] righteousness and justice. This resistance comes with hardships, but we should know that it is the promise of Quran that ‘indeed, with hardship [will be] ease’, with any hardship there is an opening and today we are witnessing this opening in our society and in the public sphere. Despite enduring the difficulties, imprisonments, killings, pressures, Kahrizak [prisons], a vigour can be seen among the nation—especially among the youth—for moving towards a society that is just and free from oppression and tyranny.”

“The greens have become fearless, is this not [considered] ease and comfort?” Mousavi asked. “The greens are striving for a state where the rule of the people is recognised and the rights of the nation as stated in the constitution are revived. Is this not a breakthrough in itself? Is it not a breakthrough when murder and crime committed by the so-called headstrong forces both in the past and present are condemned? “

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Gilad Atzmon

The Jewish community in Britain seems to be over the moon. A survey that was published a few days ago suggests that British Jews are nothing but ‘peace lovers’. The Guardian was also quick to report that 77% of “British Jews favour a 'two-state solution' in Israel”.

In practice, this actually means that at least 77% of British Jews believe that millions of dispossessed Palestinians should continue to dwell in refugee camps and never be allowed to their homes, cities, and villages. I am actually far from impressed with British Jewry’s inclination towards peace.

Professor Dan McGowan pointed out recently that Israel and Palestine are in fact “one country with one water system, one electrical grid, one monetary system, one telephone system and one postal system. It is already one state, although half the population has lesser rights or none at all.” Bearing McGowan’s insight, I wonder what drives 77% of British Jews? Why don’t they really welcome Palestinian people to return to their land and enjoy exactly the same civil rights British Jews celebrate in the UK?

But a further question must be raised here. What is it that qualifies British Jews or any other Diaspora Jews to interfere or engage so closely with the fate of millions of Palestinians?

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Stephen Lendman

"A giant among us, she won't be forgotten, a Supreme Court appeal expected, despite little chance for compassion or judicial fairness, qualities absent in the Roberts court."

Describing Lynne, one of this writer's previous articles said the following:

She worked selfishly, tirelessly, and heroically for 30 years as a human rights champion, defending America's poor, underprivileged, and unwanted - people never afforded due process and judicial fairness without an advocate like her. She knew the risks, yet took them courageously until bogusly indicted on April 9, 2002 for:

■"conspiring to defraud the United States;
■ conspiring to provide and conceal material support to terrorist activity;
■ providing and concealing material support to terrorist activity; and
■ two counts of making false statements."

Detailed information can be gotten from this writer's previous articles, accessed through the following links:

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Stephen Lendman

Under siege for over three years, Gaza's humanitarian crisis continues unabated, Israel's bogus easing doing little to relieve it, including a serious electricity shortage, what the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement addressed in a May report titled, "Electricity Shortage in Gaza: Who Turned Out the Lights?"

Besides earlier attacks, Cast Lead severely damaged Gaza's sole power plant, putting it on the verge of collapse, exacerbated by inadequate industrial diesel supplies and the destruction of power lines supplying electricity from Israel and Egypt.

As a result, Gaza experiences outages of up to 12 hours a day, severely disrupting "normal functioning of humanitarian infrastructure, including health and education institutions and water and sewage systems, as well as the agricultural sector." In addition, faulty generators at times kill or injure users, an untenable situation because of Israeli attacks and siege, in violation of international law.

Chronology of Gaza's Electricity Crisis

In 2002, Gaza's sole power producer (the private Gaza Power Plant - GPP) became operational. In 2004, its potential capacity was 140 megawatts (MW), its remaining needs bought from Israel. In June 2006, IDF aircraft destroyed GPP's six transformers. In September 2006, the company bought 17 MW of electricity from Egypt.

In November 2006, seven transformers became partially operational, a year later reaching its 80 MW capacity not used because of Israeli fuel restrictions, worsened after the June 2007 siege, preventing entry of equipment, spare parts, other essential items, and enough diesel. By January 2008, operations were at 30% of capacity, causing outages up to eight hours daily - now 12 since January 2010 for lack of fuel and funds.

Gaza needs from 240 - 280 MW, almost half purchased through 10 high-voltage Israeli lines, 17 MW (6 - 7%) coming from Egypt to the Rafah area, and the rest (107 MW) supplied internally when GPP is fully operational, hampered by Gaza's dependence on Israeli diesel, severely restricted under siege.

Presently, about 2.2 million liters a week come in, only 63% of GPP's needs for full capacity - hence, outages.

In 2009, GPP produced about 65 MW, creating a 42 MW shortfall, exacerbated by the grid's poor condition, electricity thus lost after transmission through waste. Worse still is Israel's building materials ban, preventing proper maintenance and rehabilitation. As a result, the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company (GEDCo) has regular, rotating outages throughout the Strip, distributing the burden, not relieving what only a siege lift can accomplish, only possible if public outrage forces world leaders to demand it with harsh recriminations if ignored.

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Patrick O’Connor

May 10, 2010: Gillard rules out replacing Rudd. Treasurer
Wayne Swan and the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in
federal parliament. Photo: Glen McCurtayne

[The meaning of 'spruik'] Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard appeared at the National Press Club yesterday to deliver what the government had billed as a major address on the economy and its “reform” credentials. The event was entirely overshadowed, however, by new reports of Gillard’s personal role in the coup against her predecessor, Kevin Rudd. Despite the prime minister’s, and her colleagues’, best efforts to “move forward” and prevent any scrutiny of the unprecedented manoeuvres of June 23-24, the still unclear story as to how Rudd was brought down, and by whom, continues to dog the Labor government.

During question time, Laurie Oakes, veteran Canberra journalist with Channel 9, asked Gillard about her meeting with Rudd the night before she was installed as prime minister: “Is it true that Mr Rudd told you that night that he was working towards an October election because he knew issues like climate change needed to be sorted out? Is it true that Mr Rudd indicated to you that if closer to the election, polling showed he was an impediment to the re-election of the government, and if leading Labor figures such as [former defence minister] John Faulkner agreed he was an impediment, that he would then voluntarily stand aside and hand over the leadership to you before the election? Is it also true that you agreed this offer was sensible and responsible? Is it true that there was then a brief break during which Mr Rudd went outside and briefed a couple of colleagues on what he thought was a deal, while you contacted your backers, and that when the meeting resumed you said you’d changed your mind? You’d been informed he didn’t have the numbers in caucus and you were going to challenge anyway?”

Gillard refused to answer the questions, insisting that she would never, “for the rest of my life”, reveal what was said in the meeting she had with Rudd. She absurdly attempted to present this stonewalling as a principled gesture of respect for a private discussion with the former prime minister, but it in fact amounted to a contemptuous dismissal of the right of the Australian people to know the means through which she became head of government.

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