Stephen Lendman

Warren Buffett once said:

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." (Obama's deficit-cutting agenda the latest battle).

On May 4, Hugo Radice, Life Fellow of the University of Leeds School of Politics and International Studies, headlined an article, "Cutting Public Debt: Economic Science or Class War?" asking:

"Is cutting the public debt really an objective economic necessity, or is it actually a deeply political stance, reflecting the interests of the business and financial elites?"

Analyzing historical public policies, he explained the shift from earlier Keynesianism to "the unchallenged hegemony of free-market neoliberalism since the early 1990s." In fact, over the past three decades, it was notable, beginning under Britain's Margaret Thatcher and America's Ronald Reagan, establishing practices that succeeding administrations hardened. As a result, Britain's New Labour governs like Conservatives while American Democrats mimic Republicans, especially on imperial and pocket book issues.

Radice calls it class warfare, pitting private wealth against public good, "a new common-sense" based on property rights, individualism, and notion that free markets work best so let them, including the right to demand massive public spending cuts, ones Radice says "are not, repeat not, economically necessary."

Nonetheless, for over 30 years, they've been ongoing. Since the mid-1970s, real wages haven't kept pace with inflation. Benefits have steadily eroded. High-paying jobs disappeared. Improved technology forced wage earners to work harder for less. More than ever, "free" markets work only for those who control them.

As a result, the class struggle between haves and have-nots escalated. A handful of powerful winners emerged. Wealth disparity extremes became unprecedented. Exploitation increased and successive crises, busts following speculative booms. Easy credit fueled them by excess lending and spending as well as high public and private debt levels. To heal, officials now call for "shared sacrifice," their sharing, our sacrifice.

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Albert Jay Nock
Lew Rockwell

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
By Frank Chodorov, New York City, May 28th, 1946

When OUR ENEMY, THE STATE appeared in 1935, its literary merit rather than its philosophic content attracted attention to it. The times were not ripe for an acceptance of its predictions, still less for the argument on which these predictions were based. Faith in traditional frontier individualism had not yet been shaken by the course of events. Against this faith the argument that the same economic forces which in all times and in all nations drive toward the ascendancy of political power at the expense of social power were in operation here made little headway. That is, the feeling that “it cannot happen here” was too difficult a hurdle for the book to overcome. By the time the first edition had run out, the development of public affairs gave the argument of the book ample testimony. In less than a decade it was evident to many Americans that their country is not immune from the philosophy which had captured European thinking. The times were proving Mr. Nock’s thesis, and by irresistable word-of-mouth advertising a demand for the book began to manifest itself just when it was no longer available. And the plates had been put to war purposes.

In 1943 he had a second edition in mind. I talked with him several times about it, urging him to elaborate on the economic ideas, since these, it seemed to me, were inadequately developed for the reader with a limited knowledge of political economy. He agreed that this ought to be done, but in a separate book, or in a second part of his book, and suggested that I try my hand at it. Nothing came of the matter because of the war. He died on August 19, 1945.

This volume is an exact duplication of the first edition. He intended to make some slight changes, principally, as he told me, in the substitution of current illustrations for those which might carry less weight with the younger reader. As for the sequel stressing economics, this will have to be done. At any rate, OUR ENEMY, THE STATE needs no support.

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Stephen Lendman

Police have been carrying out "counter-terrorism" raids in Indo-
nesia's Aceh province since February 2010.

An earlier article said it was expected, accessed through THIS link.

It discussed Indonesia's National Armed Forces (TNI), especially its thuggish Kopassus Special Forces Command, its red beret unit responsible for political killings, torture, rape, and massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians in East Timor, Aceh, Papua, and elsewhere in the country.

TNI aid was restricted following a November 12, 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre of over 270 demonstrators in Dili, East Timor. In July, it was restored, a July 22 East Timor Action Network (ETAN) press release "condemn(ing) the Obama administration's decision to resume engagement with Indonesia's notorious Kopassus special forces," ETAN's National Coordinator, John Miller, saying:

"Slipping back into bed with Kopassas is a betrayal of the brutal unit's many victims in Timor-Leste (East Timor), West Papua and throughout Indonesia. It will lead to more people (suffering) abuses. Working with Kopassus which remains unrepentant about its long history of terrorizing civilians, will undermine efforts to achieve justice and accountability for human rights in Indonesia and Timor-Leste."

"For years, the US military provided training and other assistance to (TNI and its infamous) Kopassus, and when the US was most involved, Kopassus crimes were at their worst. While this assistance improved (TNI's) deadly skills, it did nothing to improve its behavior."

Yet Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Washington "will begin a gradual, limited program of security cooperation activities," a veiled assurance of business as usual. It's no surprise as CIA armies, US Special Forces, and other military units replicate the worst of Kopassus manyfold.

Kopassus terrorizes Indonesia. America does it globally, a record no other country approaches.

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Michelle Chen
ColorLines

“You cannot be completely happy with all these wounds—both in your body and in your mind.” ~ 15 year-old child soldier

The phenomenon of child soldiers, like genocide, slavery and torture, seems like one of those crimes that no nation could legitimately defend. Yet the Obama administration just decided to leave countless kids stranded on some of the world’s bloodiest battlegrounds.

The administration stunned human rights groups last month by sidestepping a commitment to help countries curb the military exploitation of children. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy reported that President Obama issued a presidential memorandum granting waivers from the Child Soldiers Prevention Act to four countries: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Yemen. The memo instructed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton that it is in our “national interest” to continue extending military aid to those countries, despite their failure to comply with the rules Congress passed and George W. Bush signed in 2008.

A thumbs-up for child soldiers from the pen of President Obama? Whitehouse spokesperson P.J. Crowley explained it was a strategic decision to ease the 2008 law. The rationale is that on balance, it’s more effective for the U.S. to keep providing military assistance that will help countries gradually evolve out of the practice of marshaling kids to the battlefield, rather than isolating them.

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Jeremy Salt
The Palestine Chronicle

This turning point has arrived quietly, no fanfare or advance warning signifying its importance. After 62 years there is nothing left to talk about with Israel. Finally, all possibilities have been eliminated. Past plans are scattered across the landscape like the whitened bones of dinosaurs, their only purpose to remind us and future generations of what might have been but never was. The last flimsy veil has been pulled away from a 'peace process' that was never a peace process in the first place but a different kind of war process. Netanyahu slaps Obama's face time after time (and Obama does not react). Michael Oren tells the world Israel will decide its borders and noone else. Lieberman tells European Foreign Ministers to mind their own business. When you have solved your own problems come and talk to us, he says, and by the way, Israel is not going to be the Czechoslovakia of 2010, demonstrating that his knowledge of history is as twisted as his understanding of manners, ethics, law and morality. Only this week, Netanyahu paid a special visit to the 'commandos' who killed nine civilians on board the Mavi Marmara. They have already been decorated for their bravery but Netanyahu wanted to congratulate them in person. Livni made belligerent statements of her own. Why would Israel not want to settle this problem with a country which over the centuries was a haven for Jews and which was well placed to arbitrate between Israel and the Arab states? Why would it actually go out of its way to antagonise Turkey, and even to rub salt into the wound? The answer would seem to lie at the intersection between folly, stupidity and lunacy. Meir Kahane, whose followers celebrated his genocidal ideas in the streets of Umm al Fahm only the other day, would be dancing with delight at the way things are turning out.

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Michael Hudson
Michael Hudson's Blog

Now that President Obama is almost celebrating his bipartisan willingness to renew the tax cuts for the super-rich enacted under George Bush ten years ago, it is time for Democrats to ask themselves how strongly they are willing to oppose an administration that looks like Bush-Cheney III. Is this what they expected by Obama’s promise to rise above partisan politics – by ruling on behalf of Wall Street, now that it is the major campaign backer of both parties?

It is a reflection of how one-sided today’s class war has become that Warren Buffet has quipped that “his” side is winning without a real fight being waged. No gauntlet has been thrown down over the trial balloon that the president and his advisor David Axelrod have sent up over the past two weeks to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 per cent for “just” two more years. For all practical purposes the euphemism “two years” means forever – at least, long enough to let the super-rich siphon off enough more money to bankroll enough more Republicans to be elected to make the tax cuts permanent.

Obama seems to be campaigning for his own defeat! Thanks largely to the $13 trillion Wall Street bailout – while keeping the debt overhead in place for America’s “bottom 98 per cent” – this happy 2 per cent of the population now receives an estimated three quarters (~75 per cent) of the returns to wealth (interest, dividends, rent and capital gains). This is nearly double what it received a generation ago. The rest of the population is being squeezed, and foreclosures are rising.

Baudelaire quipped that the devil wins at the point where he manages convince the world that he doesn’t exist. Today’s financial elites will win the class war at the point where voters believe it doesn’t exist – and believe that Obama is trying to help them rather than shepherd them into debt peonage as the economy settles into debt deflation.

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"Devilstower"
Political Cortex

There's a scene in the last of the three Lord of the Rings movies in which valiant hobbit Sam rescues his captive friend Frodo from a tower in the heart of an evil stronghold. In the process, he kills a good number of orcs. Did you cry for them? Did you worry about any orcish widows left waiting by the window? Little orclings wondering when papa was coming home? Of course not. You cheered Sam's courage and didn't give a second thought to the orcs. Why? Because... they're orcs. They're ugly, vile, evil. The very definition of 'other'.

Now, wherever I wrote the word "orc," imagine that it said "liberal."

For the last few days, people have been astounded at the fury with which the right wing blogs have gone after the New York Times reporters over the horrible crime of posting photos of vacation homes. Their agitation seems so over the top that it's difficult to make sense of why such an innocent story should generate such heat. But it's not really hard to understand -- they think we are orcs.

Conservatives are prone to tribal behavior -- it's practically the definition of the term. Conservatives like those who conform to a certain dress, a certain way of talking. Those who shout "ditto" at the proper moment. They like those who go to the right churches and belong to the right clubs. More than anything else, they like those who can hate.

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Steve Hendricks
HNN

Seventy percent of Americans believe we should commit crimes against humanity. Not that they would put it that way. They would say something like, in the words of a Pew poll from some months ago, that torturing suspected terrorists is “often justified” (19 percent), “sometimes justified” (35 percent), or “rarely justified” (16 percent). That such beliefs persist, in such numbers, after years of talk about torture, signifies a moral chasm almost too depressing to contemplate.

If hope remains for spanning that chasm, it lies in the possibility—I would even argue the probability—that the better part of those 70 percent are not barbarous, merely benighted. To maintain such hope, it helps to have faith in American ignorance. Mine is pure. I derive immense comfort, for example, from the similarity between the pro-torture 70 percent and the 68 percent of Americans who believe “angels and demons are active in the world.” Surely many of my pro-torture countrymen just need a little more education about torture. Well, a lot more.

There is ample reason to believe they aren’t getting enough to make a difference. As other commentators have described, our educators on such affairs—reporters, editors, producers—have failed us abysmally. They have deferred grossly to hawks (including torture hawks), have dismissed doves as frivolous, have soft-pedaled the worst of tortures as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” have only rarely told us that to torture (or to send captives elsewhere to be tortured, as we still do) is to violate the UN Convention Against Torture (which the United States has adopted as law), and have told us even more rarely that international law regards systematic torture as a crime akin to those for which we executed Nazis at Nuremberg.

I would add one important failing to this list—one almost never discussed, as I found in four years of working on my new book about extraordinary rendition and torture, A Kidnapping in Milan: The CIA on Trial. To wit: the media almost never describe torture in all its savage detail. They abbreviate, elide, or wholly omit the gruesome specifics that many people need if they are to understand the horror that is torture. The media censor this, they tell us, because to do otherwise would be too disturbing. Evide ntly they do not consider that we should be disturbed.

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Saman Mohammadi
The Excavator

"Cantor's comments will be revisited in the future because they reveal an emerging political crisis in America that is becoming apparent to more and more people. It is common knowledge that America's political establishment totally betrayed the American people, and destroyed the country."

Last week, the new House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York City to privately discuss U.S. sanctions against Iran, U.S.-Palestinian relations, the United Nations, the Republican smackdown in the recent election, and various subjects dealing with Israel and America's special relationship. Laura Rozen of Politico reported on the meeting, writing:

Regarding the midterms, Cantor may have given Netanyahu some reason to stand firm against the American administration.

"Eric stressed that the new Republican majority will serve as a check on the Administration and what has been, up until this point, one party rule in Washington," the readout continued. "He made clear that the Republican majority understands the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of each nation is reliant upon the other."

Veteran observer of U.S.-Israeli relations Ron Kampeas said he found that statement "an eyebrow-raiser."

"I can't remember an opposition leader telling a foreign leader, in a personal meeting, that he would side, as a policy, with that leader against the president," Kampeas wrote at JTA's blog -- an interpretation which Cantor's office later disputed to Kampeas.

Cantor's comments reflect either a deep naivety, or a new found arrogance that came with the Republican victory less than two weeks ago.

Is he at all aware that it is an act of treason to meet with a foreign head of state as a senior government official in your own country, and candidly expressing your loyalty to him and his state's aims instead of siding with your own leader and your own country? Maybe he knows what he did is national sabotage, but he likes the idea of being hanged. Or maybe he has no respect for the American state at all. He could be an anarchist in that way. Or he could just be a filthy traitor. I guess time will reveal the answers to such questions.

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Stephen Lendman

Agreements like NAFTA, DR-CAFTA, and various bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have proved hugely destructive, superseding national laws, sovereignty, labor rights, environmental concerns, and more.

"There's no free collective bargaining for workers," says Ralph Nader. "There's no rule of law (either, just) bribery, (worker exploitation and plunder). These companies (can) pollute at will. There's no judicial independence to make (them) accountable," to stop them from "abus(ing) workers and consumers and communities, as" they all do repeatedly.

In other words, "free trade" is a license to steal, plunder, exploit, pollute, and overall operate unrestrained, the sole consideration being maximum profits, no matter how gotten.

As a result, level playing fields don't exist. Jobs are exported and destroyed. Corporate giants alone win, trade managed solely for their benefit. An Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study showed NAFTA-related imports cost America 879,280 jobs in its first decade, besides downward pressure on wages and benefits. Saying FTAs will create them is deceptive hooey, a big lie based on historical experience, instructive for Korean and American workers as Washington pressures Seoul for a deal, a KORUS-FTA.

If agreed, EPI estimates that imports will displace around 888,000 existing or potential US jobs by 2015, causing a net 322,000 loss, the differential over export produced ones. Obama said he wanted a Bush negotiated KORUS voted on by Congress by early 2011 the latest after unspecified modifications were made. However, the current text replicates NAFTA and DR-CAFTA, contradicting his promise to use trade as a vehicle to create jobs, assure worker rights, protect ecological sustainability, and ensure financial stability.

As in America, worker rights violations, for example, are widespread in Korea. Authorities use their "obstruction of business" law to imprison labor leaders and employers, often using police repressively against union activity. America is more subtle for similar results, organized labor here a shadow of its former self.

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Adam Horowitz
Mondoweiss

Students for Justice in Palestine responds to its inclusion on the ADL's "top ten anti-Israel groups" in the U.S. This statement represents over 60 student groups promoting Palestinian freedom across the US:

On October 14th, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) named Students for Justice in Palestine on its list of the “Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups in America,” claiming that “SJP chapters regularly organize activities presenting a biased view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including mock ‘apartheid walls’ and ‘checkpoint’ displays.” As members of several student groups working for justice in Palestine, we affirmatively state that the ADL’s characterization of our campus educational efforts and activism about Israeli injustices against Palestinians as “biased” is a disingenuous and misguided attempt to vilify students that criticize Israel’s occupation, which denies Palestinian human rights and self-determination. In this statement, we clarify our principles and invite the ADL to reconsider its categorical silence on egregious Israeli human rights violations by joining the movement for freedom, equality, and justice in Palestine.

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K. Ratnayake
WSWS

A pro-Western bourgeois leader, Suu Kyi has a record of seeking reconciliation with the military rulers. Strategic rivalry between the US and China in Myanmar is part of a broader strategic rivalry throughout Asia. By releasing Suu Kyi, the Burmese junta is moving to facilitate diplomatic communications with the Western powers.

A day after her release from house arrest, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi made a public call yesterday for unity and reconciliation talks with the military junta. On Saturday the military junta in Myanmar (formerly Burma) released Suu Kyi, who had been held under house arrest since 2003, and has been under house arrest for 14 of the last 20 years.

Her release came six days after the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won rigged elections for national and regional assemblies.

Suu Kyi’s call for talks, under these circumstances, belies the international media’s claim that her release was a “victory for democracy.” In her first public speech yesterday to thousands of NLD followers, from party headquarters in the former capital city of Yangon (Rangoon), Suu Kyi made clear gestures towards the junta.

The military regime released Suu Kyi in the face of increasing pressure by the Western powers, including the US and the European Union. Condemning last week’s election as a “sham,” the US and EU called for her release and for the military to ease the ban on her National League for Democracy (NLD), while threatening more economic sanctions against Burma.

She called for reconciliation talks, adding: “I am prepared to talk with anyone. I have no personal grudge towards anybody.” She added: “I don’t have any antagonism toward the people who kept me under house arrest...the security officials treated me well. I want to ask them to treat the people well also.”

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Stephen Lendman

Four Custom Therapeutic [sic] Modules delivered to State
prison at Walpole (Massachusetts Correctional Institution-
Cedar Junction, formerly known as MCI-Walpole)

In March 2005, a UK Deborah Davis Channel 4 report titled, "Torture, Inc., America's Brutal Prisons" highlighted the horrors, including prisoners savaged by dogs, brutally shocked with cattle prods, burned by toxic chemicals, harmed by stun guns, beaten, stripped naked and abused in various other ways. Sound familiar? Welcome to mainland Guantanamo.

"It's terrible to watch some of the videos," witnessing torture, at times resulting in death. Routinely, guards yell at and abuse prisoners, "ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl." If they don't "drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stomps on his back." Another man screams when a dog bit his lower leg.

One other has a broken ankle, can't crawl fast enough so gets jabbed with a stun gun on his buttocks. Hours later his whole body still shakes. Men line up across the cellblock, guards standing over them shouting, prodding, kicking, and beating, their humiliation captured on video. The images are horrifyingly brutal, reminders of Guantanamo and Baghdad's Abu Ghraib. They're as commonplace in America, but unreported except by Channel 4 UK, calling it "wholesale torture taking place inside the US prison system," uncovered by a four-month investigation, not based on rumor or suspicion. Throughout America, videos and other solid evidence confirm it, what US major media reports won't reveal.

In most states, prison regulations mandate that guards videotape "use of force operations" like cell searches, in theory to show proper procedures were used. Most often, they reveal otherwise, clear evidence of inmate abuses - "a shocking insight into the reality of life inside" US prisons. Even the best of them are harsh, the worst hellish, Davis explaining that videos are "terrible" to watch, saying:

"you're not only seeing torture in action but, in the most extreme cases, you are witnessing young men dying. In one horrible scene, a naked man, passive and vacant, is seen being led out of his cell by prison guards. They strap him into a medieval-looking device called a 'restraint chair.' His hands and feet are shackled. There's a strap across his chest. His head rolls forward. He looks dead. He's not. Not yet."

He's being punished for having a pillowcase on his head in his cell and refusing to remove it. Why? He has a long history of schizophrenia, yet he's restrained for 16 hours. Two hours later, "he dies from a blood clot resulting from his barbaric treatment....We found 20 (other cases of) prisoners who've died in the past few years" after being brutally restrained, what American media won't report.

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Uri Avnery

For the attention of Mr. Obama

On Saturday evening, two weeks ago, we returned by taxi from the annual memorial rally for Yitzhak Rabin, and as usual got into a conversation with our driver.

Generally, these conversations flow smoothly, with lots of laughs. Rachel loves them, because they bring us face-to-face with people we don’t normally meet. The conversations are necessarily short, the people express their views concisely, without choosing their words. They are of many kinds, and in the background we generally hear the radio news, talk shows or music chosen by the driver. And, of course, the soldier-son and the student-daughter are mentioned.

But this time, things were less smooth. Perhaps we were more provocative than usual, still depressed by the rally, which was devoid of political content, devoid of emotion, devoid of hope. The driver became more and more upset, and so did Rachel. We felt that if we had not been paying customers, it might have ended in a fight.

The views of our driver can be summed up as follows:

There will never be peace between us and the Arabs, because the Arabs don’t want it.

The Arabs want to slaughter us, always did and always will.

Every Arab learns from early childhood that the Jews must be killed.

The Koran preaches murder.

Fact, wherever there are Muslims, there is terrorism. Wherever there is terrorism, there are Muslims.

We must not give the Arabs one square inch of the country.

What did we get when we gave them Gaza back? We got Qassam rockets!

There’s nothing to be done about it. Only to hit them on the head and send them back to the countries they came from.

According to the Talmudic injunction: He who comes to kill you, kill him first.

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Johnny Edge
JohnnyEdgeBlogspot

[These events took place roughly between 5:30 and 6:30 AM, November 13th in Terminal 2 of the San Diego International Airport. I'm writing this approximately 2 1/2 hours after the events transpired, and they are correct to the best of my recollection. I will admit to being particularly fuzzy on the exact order of events when dealing with the agents after getting my ticket refunded; however, all of the events described did occur. I had my phone recording audio and video of much of these events. It can be viewed below. Please spread this story as far and wide as possible. I will make no claims to copyright or otherwise.]

This morning, I tried to fly out of San Diego International Airport but was refused by the TSA. I had been somewhat prepared for this eventuality. I have been reading about the millimeter wave and backscatter x-ray machines and the possible harm to health as well as the vivid pictures they create of people's naked bodies. Not wanting to go through them, I had done my research on the TSA's website prior to traveling to see if SAN had them. From all indications, they did not. When I arrived at the security line, I found that the TSA's website was out of date. SAN does in fact utilize backscatter x-ray machines.

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Stephen Lendman

"Bombastically back on the world stage, Bush began a whirlwind tour on prime time NBC TV, promoting his book, defending his illegal wars, rationalizing his abandonment of New Orleans post-Katrina, and more, trying to reinvent himself."

"Instead, soft-ball hosts doted on Bush calling the world "better off without Saddam Hussein in power, as are 25 million (Iraqis) who now have a chance to live in freedom." The millions dead, suffering, and immiserated perhaps feel otherwise. Their country (like Afghanistan) is occupied, destroyed, corrupted, tryannized, and contaminated, the undiscussed Bush legacy Obama continues seamlessly, his memoirs ahead in a future volume, no less disgusting than Decision Points."

The Bush legacy is based on lies, deceit, crimes of war and against humanity, and complicity in criminal fraud, a disgusting record deserving denunciation and prison, not shameless feting.

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Lawrence Davidson
Redress

Lawrence Davidson argues that the failure of the United Nations to deliver justice to the Palestinians has condemned it to oblivion and that rather than look to the UN to deliver justice, fairness and equity, civil society must mobilize to do what is right in Palestine, as happened in the struggle that brought down apartheid South Africa.

♣ ♣ ♣

The United Nations celebrated its 65th birthday (1945 to 2010) on 24 October 2010. At 65 the world body has lasted 27 years longer than its predecessor, the League of Nations (1919 to 1946). Will the UN go another 65 years? To help answer that question a quick look at what did in the League of Nations is in order.

Fall of League of Nations

The League of Nations was certainly not a perfect organization, infected as it was with the colonialist notions of its European founders. We can see that aspect of the organization in its mandate system which served as a cover for imperialism.

But ultimately the mandate system is not what brought the League low. The fatal flaw was its inability to achieve its primary goal of preventing war by transcending the power of nationalism and compelling all states to end their quarrels through negotiation or arbitration.

What success the League did have in this effort was restricted to a category of relatively weak states. For instance, it successfully brought an end to disputes between Columbia and Peru, Greece and Yugoslavia, Finland and Sweden, and even, in 1921, Poland and a very weak Germany.

However, when disputes involved aggressive "great" powers, as they did in the 1930s, the League failed utterly. It was ultimately destroyed by its inability to project authority and influence, as well as punishment, on countries like belligerent Italy and resurgent Nazi Germany. As Mussolini observed while, with impunity, using poison gas on the Ethiopians, "the League is very good when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out." He thought of Italy as an eagle.

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Gordon Duff
Veterans Today

“The 2010 election had one purpose, war with Iran, even if the risk is world conflict and the real loser, no matter what happens on the battlefield is the United States.”

Plans are in motion for a “false flag” attack on America. Iran will be blamed, everyone knows that and Iran will be totally innocent. This is the last thing Iran would ever want. The most likely scenario is a nuclear attack. Two bombs are missing, bombs built by Israel in South Africa and lost long ago. These were supposedly Saddam’s bombs. Now we are told Iran has them. Israel has had them all along and the fear, they may be inside the United States already.

The Israeli game with these weapons is one of the worst kept secrets in the world and has already cost the deaths of many. It will take nothing short of the detonation of one of this Hiroshima sized Israeli nukes to push America into Israel’s war with Iran, much as hunting for these nukes which Israel informed President Bush were in Iraq, led “the decider” to making one of the many blunders of his career. Our next 9/11 will be nuclear.

The purpose will be to push America into a 20 year war that will destroy Iran and Pakistan, take oil to over $300 per barrel and collapse the dollar and Euro. Iran isn’t Iraq of 2003, toothless and starving. This will be America’s last military adventure, and the end of America’s place in the world as we know it. We know the details of the proposed military campaign and the military and political leaders who support it are the worst imaginable incompetents and traitors.

Invading Iran is an impossible task for America. Other than there be no reason whatsoever to engage in such folly, something that, of recent years, seems to concern fewer and fewer Americans. Turn on the TV, if the “rodeo clown” says “wipe ‘em out” then we do it. -So, invading Iran is an impossibility for America. Going to the moon was easier. No matter how senseless, how impossible, the decision has been made, more in Tel Aviv than Washington, for sure, but one that will be obeyed.

There are only two scenarios that can fulfill the nightmare Israel and her shiny new congress have in store with us. One is a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran and the other full scale total war with up to 500,000 Americans being drafted into the military.

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Dahlia Lithwick
Slate

The baby steps that have taken the United States from decrying torture to celebrating it.

The old adage held that if they couldn't get you for the crime, they would get you for the coverup. But this week, it was revealed that both the crime and the coverup will go permanently unpunished. Which suggests that everything in between will go unpunished as well.

In an America in which the former president can boast on television that he approved the water-boarding of U.S. prisoners, it can hardly be a shock that following a lengthy investigation, no criminal charges will be filed against those who destroyed the evidence of CIA abuse of prisoners Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. We keep waiting breathlessly for someone, somewhere, to have a day of reckoning over the prisoners we tortured in the wake of 9/11, without recognizing that there is no bag man to be found and that therefore we are all the bag man.

President Barack Obama decided long ago that he would "turn the page" on prisoner abuse and other illegality connected to the Bush administration's war on terror. What he didn't seem to understand, what he still seems not to appreciate, is that what was on that page would bleed through onto the next page and the page after that. There's no getting past torture. There is only getting comfortable with it. The U.S. flirtation with torture is not locked in the past or in the black sites or prisons at which it occurred. Now more than ever, it's feted on network television and held in reserve for the next president who persuades himself that it's not illegal after all.

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Stephen Lendman

Some background. In his January 27 State of the Union address, Obama announced plans to "freeze government spending for three years," starting in 2011, saying he'd establish a bipartisan fiscal commission by executive order to cut the deficit by imposed austerity. In other words, harm the many by social spending cuts, including Social Security and Medicare, not defense, banker handouts, other corporate favorite subsidies, or the rich.

Then on February 18, a White House press release announced the commission's establishment - a "bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRF)," co-chaired by two deficit hawks, former Senator Alan Simpson (R. WY) and Erskine Bowles, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff, heading an 18-member team stacked with like-minded members. Their mandate: slash Medicare, Social Security and other social spending. Fiscal austerity for the many, unlimited wealth opportunities for the few, an agenda from hell.

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