Matthew Nasuti

Al-Qaeda does not have to make up stories about the West abusing Muslim women. Al-Qaeda merely has to report the truth.

The unofficial message from the West to victims of oppression is:

“We will liberate you as long as your women agree to service our officials and contractors.”

That is a sad reality of both NATO and United Nations peacekeeping missions.

The U.S. State Department’s “Trafficking in Persons Report 2010" highlights the continuing growth of brothels in Kabul following the U.S. invasion in 2001. Many of the victims are poor Afghan women. A press release issued on January 13, 2011, by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul blamed the scandal on lax enforcement against traffickers by the Afghan Government, with no recommendation that the “johns” or clients be prosecuted (because many of them appear to be NATO and U.N. officials and their contractors). The most that the U.S. Embassy would meekly say is that:

“Some international security contractors may be involved in the sex trafficking of these women.”

(It is interesting how ineffective U.S. intelligence agencies seem to be at determining brothel ownership in Kabul, despite the importance of the issue due to the use of these facilities by NATO officials)

This issue is not new. The British newspaper “The Sun” ran a story on April 7, 2008 entitled: “NATO Men Romp in Afghan Brothels.”

Sun Defense Editor Tom Newton Dunn detailed how NATO troops were observed drinking contraband alcohol and heading off to rooms with prostitutes. It quoted a NATO official as stating that one out of every five NATO civilians in Afghanistan frequent these brothels. The report quoted Afghan Member of Parliament Shukria Barakzai as stating that if this conduct continues: “They will undermine their reason for being here.”

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Charles E. Carlson

["Judeo-Christians' Role - Mr. Sharon's Final Solution" and Judeo-Christians' Role - Hate-Bus Tours American Churches were originally published in June, 2004]

The Judeo-Christians - why would they distort what their own Bible teaches, and what their own professed faith demands of them. Jesus demands peace and love of all men, even ones' enemies. There is not one phrase in the Christian New Testament that supports anything Israel does to the Palestinians, including the claims of being a "chosen people". Judeo-Christianity is not Christian at all. It is a hodgepodge of bits from unrelated stories patched together to create an illusion. The illusion is of an "end times" apocalypse, and a "chosen people" who enjoy the right to kill and imprison other people who are not "chosen."

A powerful new lobby tells the world its purpose is to direct Congress to act on behalf of the State of Israel. Unity Coalition for Israel (UCI) is strictly an Israeli controlled organization that calls for a militant, no compromise solution to its Arab problem. What makes UCI unique among radical Israeli political groups is that it finds its support among prominent USA professing Christians. Some stumping Americans raise the UCI agenda in colleges and churches. In fact, the UCI "Christians" go far beyond the Israelis in their call for Arab blood. This paper examines who these Judeo-Christians are, their motives, and the impact on peace in the world.

Israeli political lobbies in the US Congress are hardly new. Upward to 100 pro-Israel PACs swarm over the American Washington, approaching every new candidate for Congress before his fur is dry. Most big campaigns have, in the past been orchestrated by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). As detailed in Andrew Hurley's book, Holocaust II Saving Israel from Suicide, former Congressmen have, for three decades, privately and occasionally publicly, called AIPAC the most powerful lobby in Washington. Few dare talk about it in public.

What makes UCI different from AIPAC is that its lobbyists are mostly celebrity Christians. Nevertheless, strictly Israelis and American non-Christians control the organization. This might be likened to a flock of turkeys laboring for the elimination of fox skin coats.

UCI does not stop with bending Congress; it openly and without reservation seeks to re-define Christianity to conform to Judaic requirements, seeking Christian support for Israel's policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians, while openly declaring that its aims are to control the rest of the Middle East. The foxes, it seems, pay the Christian turkeys highly to perch on the low limbs.

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Stephen Lendman

The US/UK/French-led war on Libya will be remembered as one of history's greatest crimes. It violates the letter and spirit of international law and America's Constitution.

The Nuremberg Tribunal's Chief Justice Robert Jackson (a US Supreme Court Justice) called Nazi war crimes "the supreme international crime against peace."

His November 21, 1945 opening remarks said:

"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."

He called aggressive war "the greatest menace of our times."

International law defines crimes against peace as "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing." All US post-WW II wars fall under this definition.

Since then, America waged direct and proxy premeditated, aggressive wars worldwide, killing millions in East and Central Asia, North and other parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as Central and South America.

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Chris Marsden

The riots that swept London and other cities earlier this month threw a harsh light on the real state of social relations in Britain. They revealed the extent to which the UK is a nation torn apart by intractable class divisions, in which millions of workers and young people have no escape from a life of grinding, unremitting poverty while they are forced to watch others live a life of unparalleled luxury.

Thousands of youth rioted because they have no avenue through which to articulate their grievances or realise their aspirations for a better life—least of all through the Labour Party and the trade unions, which are as much the corrupt playthings of the financial elite as the governing Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Theirs is a degrading situation that has continued year after year without change, or even the apparent possibility of change, because the entire social and political order is stacked in the interests of the super-rich.

The universal response of the state, the political establishment and the media to the riots has confirmed that nothing else can be expected from the ruling elite and its hangers-on. Brutal police repression, mass arrests and the doling out of punitive prison terms for minor offences have been accompanied by a blanket denial that legitimate social grievances played any part in the riots. They were, according to the official narrative, solely the product of a criminal “underclass.”

For this reason, the riots were not merely an exposure of what exists but a portent of the future. They demonstrate above all that for the working class and the younger generation, nothing can be achieved outside of the revolutionary overthrow of the existing system. They also served another essential political function—revealing the plethora of fake-left groupings that portray themselves as “socialist,” “communist” and even “Trotskyist” to be the champions of capitalist “law and order.”

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Adnan Al-Daini

People could accept hardship and cuts if they perceived that the load was being shared fairly and justly, with those most able shouldering a heavier load. David Cameron (Britain’s Prime Minister), a month after taking office (June 2010), made his “we are all in this together” speech in which he said:

“I want to make sure we go about the urgent task of cutting our deficit in a way that is open, responsible and fair. I want this government to carry out Britain's unavoidable deficit reduction plan in a way that strengthens and unites the country. I have said before that as we deal with the debt crisis we must take the whole country with us - and I mean it. George Osborne has said that our plans to cut the deficit must be based on the belief that we are all in this together - and he means it…But this government will not cut this deficit in a way that hurts those we most need to help, that divides the country or that undermines the spirit and ethos of our public services. Freedom, fairness, responsibility: those are the values that drive this government, and they are the values that will drive our efforts to deal with our debts and turn this economy around.” 

Who could possibly disagree with that?  The problem is that the actions of this government do not quite mesh with the rhetoric. Many of the working poor and vulnerable are suffering extreme hardship, while the lives of the super-rich, on the other hand, are hardly affected; in fact if anything their wealth has been increasing. 

The use of food banks by desperate families is on the rise in this country, according to a charity that runs them nationwide. Mr. Chris Mould, chief executive of the Trussell Trust, explained on Radio 4 Today programme (August20, 2011) that there are 13 million people in Britain already living below the poverty line and increases in energy prices, cuts in working hours and wage rises not keeping up with inflation have pushed families to the edge, with a dramatic increase in those having to rely on food banks, with food donated by the public, to survive. How can this be acceptable in a rich country like Britain?

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Bill Van Auken

A column by Philip Zelikow entitled “Gaddafi’s fall will renew the Arab spring,” published on the Financial Times web site Monday, provides a glimpse into the far-reaching aims being pursued by Washington and the other major imperialist powers in their supposedly “humanitarian” intervention in Libya.

Zelikow is a former State Department counselor under Condoleezza Rice in the George W. Bush administration and a former advisor on the National Security Council under George H.W. Bush during the period of the collapse of the Soviet bloc. He is a trusted and experienced operative within the US political establishment, so much so that he was tapped to serve as executive director of the 9/11 Commission. In that position he was the individual most responsible for organizing a cover-up of the US government’s role in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Close to the Project for a New American Century and one of the authors of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war, Zelikow has intimate experience in both the theory and practice of US imperialism’s drive to impose its hegemony over the Middle East.

Zelikow begins his column by debunking the arguments of those on the Republican right who opposed the Libyan war as an example of “liberal interventionism.” He dismisses this concern, saying it is merely a misunderstanding “fed by some rhetoric, especially from the government.” The war, he writes, was launched because of Libya’s particular “history and a geography that well justified hard-headed calculations by the US, Britain, France and many other countries that they should seize this opportunity to help the rebels get rid of this particular demented regime.”

In other words, the major imperialist powers saw a set of circumstances in the Libyan events that allowed them to “seize the opportunity” to execute a military campaign for regime-change for the purpose of establishing firm control over the oil-rich North African nation.

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Stephen Lendman

Mark Twain once called reports of his death greatly exaggerated. The same hold for Libyans, not ready to submit to NATO colonization, occupation, plunder and exploitation. Not at least without a fight.

The stakes are high - stay free or die socially, economically, politically, emotionally, and/or perhaps physically.

Washington-led NATO is a rogue killing machine plunderer. It comes, sees, slaughters, ravages, and pillages all its surveys.

In March, it arrived in Libya on cruise missiles, bombs, shells, other munitions, fifth column infiltrators, media liars, and other rogue elements, not white horses, not as liberators nor humanitarian interveners.

It came for another imperial trophy at the expense of free Libyans. They know it and won't submit without a fight, a long-term struggle perhaps that may ebb and flow, but won't end until NATO's scourge ends.

It's the same spirit driving Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, and millions of others throughout North Africa/Middle East/Central Asia/and elsewhere. Live free or die.

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Dmitriy Sedov

Libyans inspects the site of massive explosion that occurred
during the night in Benghazi. (AP/Tara Todras-Whitehill)

The West Scores Another Triumph Over the Arab World

The fall of M. Gadhafi's regime will come as a huge success of the globalization forces seeking to establish a new world order. The proportions of the campaign the West launched in Libya and the level of sophistication of the technologies employed were impressive regardless of the accompanying political assessments – altogether they combined into a fundamental political initiative with far-reaching historical goals.

In Libya, the West managed to undermine and eventually demolish a completely viable regime which must be credited with keeping the country stable and the population's living standards – fairly high. Even though, customarily for the region, Gadhafi was an eccentric and self-righteous autocrat, a relatively short time ago he used to be a figure to which the majority of Libyans showed no signs of allergy. Under such circumstances, it had to take serious manipulative skills to convince the people that things in their country were skewed and to lead them to rebel against the legitimate government.

The shift in the public atmosphere is hardly attributable to the impact of any particular subversive programs or to the sway of a handful of Western satellite TV channels over Libya's public opinion. Rather, it could be induced within a wider approach based on what specialists these days refer to as informational warfare. Currently, whole populations in a number of countries enduring regime changes are the targets of informational warfare altering traditional models of human existence and conduct. The alliance of the West's ideological agencies and media built around a certain type of information policies is the force behind the ongoing informational aggression. Its key objective is to saturate all information flows with the notion of an a priori superiority of the Western democracy standard and to instill among the nations whose political lives are not aligned with it a humiliating sense of inferiority. Under appropriate external influence, the sense of inferiority automatically nourishes public discontent. Given the background of pervasive informational aggression, ideological campaigns and provocations aimed at destabilizing and in the long run dislodging otherwise stable regimes tend to become extremely efficient.

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Adnan Al-Daini

[Photo: "Allied air strikes will go on in Libya until Muammar al-Gaddafi stops attacking civilians, pulls back his forces and allows in humanitarian aid," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. PM David Cameron listening.]

NATO Chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today (August 22, 2011)

“NATO wants the Libyan people to be able to decide their future in freedom and in peace.”

Dare I hope that the statement is sincerely meant?  Or am I being naïve? 

At the start of the Arab spring in Tunisia followed by Egypt, the West was hesitant in its support of the revolutionary young.   Remarks such as "Mubarak is not a dictator" by Joe Biden, or the French offer to the Tunisian President of sending French advisers and equipment to help him deal with demonstrators, underscored their support for despots; not much concern for human rights there. As far as they were concerned, the model of controlling the Arab world and its resources through dictators that they could bribe and control had served them well. It is much easier to control a despot who rules by instilling fear in the people than having to deal with the messy business of democratically elected leaders and institutions.

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Robert M. Cutler

Negotiations this month have opened the way to conclusion of a Gas Sales Price Agreement for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline, despite a number of obstacles still remaining.

On August 18, a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan meeting at the level of technical experts from the two countries' competent ministries reached agreement on a number of implementation and construction issues, also including their economic provisions, according to reports by the State News Agency of Turkmenistan.

Agreement has also been reached bilaterally between Turkmenistan and India over the price of the former's natural gas to the latter. India had proposed a price of US$460 per thousand cubic meters (tcm) to Ashgabat, which had counter-offered $505-$525/tcm. New Delhi did not want to pay a price making TAPI gas more expensive than the liquefied natural gas (LNG) that it already imports, mainly from Qatar. Natural gas represents only 6% of India's total energy consumption, and the country is keen to increase that proportion.

The four countries signed in Ashgabat last December 11 an intergovernmental agreement that was complemented by a framework document approved by the respective energy ministers. According to Turkmenistani sources, it confirmed that the 1,735-kilometer pipeline would be built in Afghanistan alongside the road from Herat to Kandahar (and at least partly underground to deter terrorist attacks), then routed by way of Quetta and Multan in Pakistan to reach the Indian border town of Fazilka.

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Amal Hanano

[This is the twelfth and last installment of Amal Hanano's diary of her trip back to Aleppo. You can read previous posts here.]

There is always a certain acclimation period needed when moving from east to west or west to east, a few days to re-situate yourself. It disguises itself as jet lag, but it is more of a re-calibration of your inner compass. This time, my resetting lasted for weeks not days. The phone kept ringing, from family and friends in the U.S. making sure I was okay and asking endless details. I had to say, ma fi shi, so many times it irritated me. Even non-Arabs were shocked when they found out I had gone back, and my response was like a broken record, “Where I was, in Aleppo, there was nothing happening.” “Oh,” was their relieved but slightly disappointed reply. Tell me about it.

My few short weeks in Syria had felt like months, yet I returned to an America unchanged. Everything around me felt tired: tired tastes, tired radio, tired news about corrupt media moguls and dead pop stars, tired politics and an exhausted economy, a tired, mad world occupied with vampires and wizards. I was tired, living in black and white, any color existed only in this journal, and it was quickly fading. I lived through my words, extending my trip line by line, fighting, as always, against letting go.

I was disconnected from the Syrian-American community around me, the ones who could not go back this summer, the ones from Homs, Hama, Latakia, and Daraa. The ones who flew to D.C. for protests, drafted petitions, and posted videos on Facebook every five minutes. There was a split between us, they labeled me as the girl from Aleppo, the land of greedy merchants and silent masses. I expected the sentiment, but felt resentful and defensive at their hypocrisy. In their eyes, I was much closer to the silent Aleppo elite than I would like to admit. But in mine, they were acting like victims while living in their posh suburban bubbles. They demand Syrian ambassador, Imad Moustafa’s resignation now, but conveniently forget that they were honored to rub shoulders with him a few short years ago. And so, I came back to be treated as an outsider once more. In Aleppo I was a mundasseh, an infiltrator, and in America, I was apathetic.

I wondered if this confusion I felt about home and belonging, was not exclusively my own, as I had always believed. Have we all lost the sense of what home is, or what it should be? Are we searching for an elusive, utopian place that didn’t exist? Anthony Shadid wrote in my favorite article about the Arab Spring: “Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts’ success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands of justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism.” He believes a driving factor of the regional uprisings is what he calls a search for “a new sense of self.” Why are we searching for a new sense of self? When did we lose our selves? How did we let our selves slip away? It is sad, but the reality is for decades, all Syrians, there or here, by the sheer force of our brutal history, were robbed of our true selves.

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Stephen Lendman

NATO is a killing machine, a destructive US-led evil force everyone needs to understand, condemn, and struggle to abolish.

NATO intends to get the bloodbath it wants through intensified terror bombing and low-level strafing of civilians and nonmilitary sites. No matter that it grossly violates international and constitutional law, what Washington-led member states long ago trashed.

Through August 22, air operations included 19,877 sorties and 7,505 strike ones, with no elaboration of their intensity or deadliness. What is known is that powerful, high-explosive munitions are used, able to cause deadly force casualties and destruction.

In recent days, strikes intensified. Without them, rebels would disintegrate and collapse. Most of them are little more than ragtag mercenary hooligans, imperial tools, used for what won't benefit them.

It's largely true of all wars, especially America's waged for conquest, dominance, plunder and exploitation, never for democracy or humanitarian reasons Washington doesn't give a damn about and never did.

NATO is no different. Established in April 1949, a previous article said it calls itself a "political and military alliance for peace and security."

In fact, it was more for offense than defense. Cold War hysteria was contrived to incite fear and assure an arms race for corporate enrichment. Napoleon once said, "Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self-interest."

Until the Soviet Union dissolved, communism was the alleged enemy. Today it's terrorism, as bogus now as then. Both, however, were used for hugely profitable imperial wars from Korea to Libya to numerous proxy ones, as well as trillions of dollars for military readiness - in fact, scandalous amounts in America without enemies for justification since WW II.

Strategically intervening under US control, NATO, in fact, threatens world peace and human survival.

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Bill Van Auken

Major European oil companies saw their stock prices rise precipitously on expectations that they would reap bonanzas from renegotiated deals with a NATO-installed regime in Libya.

The so-called “revolution” has in fact been a coup sponsored by the major imperialist powers working with the big energy conglomerates and executed by US, British and French military and intelligence. Using the upheavals in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia as cover, and a “humanitarian” mission as pretext, these powers launched a colonial-style war with the aim of toppling the Gaddafi regime and installing a more pliant client regime in Tripoli.

Fierce fighting raged into the night in Tripoli Monday, even as leaders of the major Western powers proclaimed the end of the 42-year-old regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and maneuvered for position in the scramble for Libya’s oil wealth.

After their surprisingly rapid advance into the Libyan capital, the armed groups backed by NATO have encountered stiff resistance from forces loyal to the Gaddafi regime. The crowds that initially greeted the so-called “rebels” melted away and streets remained largely deserted as the two sides exchanged automatic weapons fire as well as mortar and anti-aircraft rounds.

Heavy fighting continued around Gaddafi’s fortified Bab al-Aziziya presidential compound, while smoke billowed over sections of the city. A spokesman for the NATO-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) based in Benghazi predicted that the fortified compound would not fall easily and fighting there would be “fierce.” The huge Tripoli compound has been subjected to heavy bombardment by NATO warplanes.

While the NTC has claimed to control between 80 and 90 percent of the Libyan capital, reporters in the city have described the situation as “fluid,” and few checkpoints have been set up to secure the streets.

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Stephen Lendman

Note: A follow-up article will continue the narrative below. Currently, events in Tripoli are fluid.

Progressive Radio News Hour contributor Mahdi Nazemroaya's overnight email said:

"NATO landed insurgents in (Tripoli) harbor. They are attacking my hotel. I almost got shot. They're still lying a lot (about claims of controlling the capital), but we are in real danger."

He's saying that armed guerrilla gangs, mercenaries, indistinguishable from (also armed) Tripoli residents, are waging street warfare.

Russia Today reported about 1,300 deaths. No one knows for sure. However, events are fast-moving and chaotic.

On Russia Today, Nazemroaya also said heavy looting occurred, including insurgents breaking into hotel rooms and ransacking them. In addition, he said NATO WANTS A BLOODBATH. In fact, they're getting one, exacerbated by intense terror bombing, deliberately targeting civilians.

"Myself, the Press TV journalist (Lizzie Phelan), three French nationals, the Cuban and Telesur journalists are in danger."

"One of my French colleagues was told: 'You are going to suffer the consequences of your actions for opposing the NATO war."

Sunday, on Russia Today, Nazemroaya said he was told that CNN said he personally would pay for opposing the war.

REPEAT: CNN THREATENED MADHI NAZEMROAYA FOR REPORTING TRUTHFULLY ABOUT EVENTS ON THE GROUND, NOT THE PRO-NATO PROPAGANDA CNN (THE NEW YORK TIMES, AND OTHER MAJOR MEDIA) REPORT DAILY.

What's ongoing in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, as well as throughout North Africa/the Middle East/Central Asia is part of A COUP D'ETAT AGAINST FREEDOM - PLANNED, ORCHESTRATED AND DIRECTED FROM WASHINGTON.

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Julia Churley

We all knew it was coming. We knew we'd be hit hard tonight. As soon as the news from Israel broke....the first attack on the bus....I KNEW Gaza was in for it. Whether or not anyone from here had actually even carried out the attack, we were going to feel Israel's wrath. We're an easy scapegoat. Seal up the borders, keep the media quiet, and have some fun...

Rafah, in the south, was hit first, before sundown and 7 were killed, including a child and the leader of the Popular Resistance Committee. Then we got reports of tanks on the border, and by the time iftar (the breaking of the fast at sundown during Ramadan) came around, we were all braced for more. F16s and drones were overhead all evening, but that was it. Nothing more. I spent most of the night staring at my screen between conversations with friends....tweeting and Facebooking trying to make sure someone....anyone....was paying attention when all hell broke loose. I was fighting off rumors about an UNRWA evacuation and then trying to confirm whether or not the US embassy in Tel Aviv had told Americans to leave Gaza....the former not being true and the latter being true.

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Stephen Lendman

Repeatedly, Israel preemptively bombs, shells, and inflicts other forms of lawless violence on Gazans, bogusly claiming self-defense.

When they respond, Israel calls it terrorism, claiming justification for greater attacks in "self-defense," what international law prohibits.

In fact, UN Charter Article 2(4) says:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

Only two exceptions apply. Under Chapter VII, the Security Council may authorize force to restore peace. Individual states must abide by Chapter VII, Article 51 stating:

"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."

In addition, individual states may use defensive force against armed attacks until the Security Council acts. No other exceptions apply, including armed reprisals. Calling them unlawful, the General Assembly said all states must refrain from using them. The right of self-defense is limited solely to deterring armed attacks, preventing future ones after initial assaults, or reversing the consequences of enemy aggression, such as ending an illegal occupation.

Even then, however, force must conform to the principles of necessity, distinction, and proportionality. Necessity permits only attacking military targets. Distinction pertains to distinguishing between civilian and military ones. Proportionality prohibits disproportionate force likely to damage nonmilitary sites and/or harm civilian lives. Moreover, a fourth consideration requires preventing unnecessary suffering, especially affecting noncombatant civilians. If these objective aren't possible, attacks are prohibited.

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Vera Macht

As we speak, Gaza is being bombed. As we speak, innocent people are dying. Fifteen people have been killed so far, and no end in sight.

Tomorrow the foreigners will be evacuated, Israel threatens with a "massive military attack", a "ground invasion" is not ruled out. Fifteen killed people, including two children. I can give their names, Malek, two years old, and Mahmoud, thirteen years. I can tell how Mahmoud's teacher has described him as an intelligent, bright student, or I can show photos of the two.

As if that would create an outcry , as if the Western media would care enough for the lives of Palestinian children. No, [it's] "Israel was attacked" and "Israel must defend itself."

Neither the circumstances, let alone the actual perpetrators of the attack on Israel have been identified so far, every Palestinian military faction has denied any involvement in it. But Gaza is blamed, as Gaza is always to be blamed for, Gaza must be punished, Gazan blood must flow so that the murder on Israelis will be avenged.

How much blood must still flow, you Israeli generals? How many Mahmouds and Maleks will have to die, how many women and children will have to be injured and killed? The signs suggest that it will still be many. And the signs suggest that the world is going to accept it. That it will accept that innocent people are being killed who had nothing but nothing to do with the attack on Israel.

But of course Palestinians must be "punished", simply because they are Palestinians.

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Stephen Lendman

[Israeli medics evacuate a person wounded in one of several attacks in the Arava desert, to the Soroka hospitan in Beersheba, southern Israel, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2011. Assailants armed with heavy weapons, guns and explosives crossed into southern Israel from the neighboring Egyptian Sinai peninsula on Thursday, killing six Israelis and wounding at least a dozen more in an audacious string of attacks. AP Photo/Ilan Assayag]

Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel's Security Agency) have long, odious histories of committing them. More on that below.

At issue now is whether the August 18 bus and other attacks inside Israel were committed by external elements or Israel, and if so, why?

Also at issue always is cui bono? In fact, Hamas and various Palestinian resistance groups have nothing to gain. Clearly Israel benefits greatly at least two ways:

(1) The upcoming September UN General Assembly vote on Palestinian self-determination Israel very much wants to derail.
(2) Weeks of nationwide internal social justice protests Netanyahu also wants to diffuse and end.

Both are compelling reasons for employing tried and true tactics - change the subject by diverting public attention.

In this case, scaring people enough to put safety above pocket book issues, as well as getting UN member states perhaps to rethink the wisdom of supporting Palestinian sovereignty at this time, with Israel allegedly under attack.

Whether it works will be known when the UN General Assembly meets in September. What's clear is that last March, Israel informed all Security Council members and prominent EU countries that if Palestinian self-determination efforts within 1967 borders persisted, unilateral Israeli steps would follow, implying harsh ones.

In addition, diffusing social justice protests temporarily worked based on an August 18 Reuters report, saying campaigners

"called off planned weekend demonstrations against the high cost of living after a series of terror attacks in the south left seven people dead."

Of concern is how to reignite protest energy after it wanes, even for a short time. Resumption often lacks initial levels of passion, mass support, and commitment to stay the course, especially when people have other daily priorities, besides worrying whether their country is under attack.

Add it up and it suggests classic false flag reasons, perhaps with planned follow-up attacks for reinforcement. They're likely if Israel also has another objective in mind - using the attacks as pretext for Cast Lead II.

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

No one is against the principle of Jews living peacefully in Palestine. However, Jews or any other people have no right to lord it over the truly native people of the land or worse, enslave, torment, oppress, and murder them as Israel has been doing ever since its misbegotten birth sixty-three years ago.

Israeli leaders have nearly lost their composure, reacting to a rare resistance attack originating from the Sinai Peninsula near the southernmost town of Um al Rushrash, renamed by the Zionists as Elat.

Appearing existentially anxious and morbidly hypochondriac, Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu was behaving in a conspicuously convulsive manner.

He vowed to murder Palestinians, saying "we must kill those trying to hurt Jews." Netanyahu, an inherently dishonest and racist politician, thought that the only way Israel could prove her military might was by ganging up on nearly helpless and virtually undefended Gazans who are languishing under a lingering blockade that has made the coastal enclave very much a modern-day version of the Warsaw Ghetto.

But like the rest of the Zionist establishment, Netanyahu is living in a state of denial. He easily forgets or ignores the fact that Israel itself is a gigantic crime against humanity if only because that state happens to be the effect of the grandest land theft in history.

In fact, Israel not only occupies the ancestral homeland of another people, the Palestinians, but is also trying rather incessantly to ethnically cleanse the native Palestinians and obliterate the Arab-Islamic identity of their patrimonial homeland from time immemorial.

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Stephen Lendman

They appear daily like weeds on all topics. As a result, Times reports aren't fit to read, let alone print. August 18 was no exception, publishing lies about Libyan insurgent victories.

On August 18, headlining, "Libyan Rebels Gain Control of Oil Refinery as Qaddafi Forces Flee," Kareem Fahim's article was pure Pentagon propaganda, duplicitously lying to readers. Yet he said

"(r)ebel fighters claimed complete control of a sprawling (Zawiyah) oil refinery, seizing one of (Gaddafi's) most important assets after just three days of fighting and delivering the latest in a string of small victories that have suddenly put the rebels at Tripoli's door."

Reporting from Tripoli, independent Middle East/Central Asian analyst, Mahdi Nazemroaya refuted him, telling Progressive Radio News Hour listeners that:

• Gaddafi forces are winning;
• rebels are in disarray;
• the so-called National Transitional Council (NTC) is falling apart;
• Misrata was liberated from rebels;
• Tripoli is peaceful and calm, despite daily NATO bombing, willfully targeting civilians and nonmilitary sites;
• scattered fighting continues along routes to Tunisia and elsewhere;
• arteries between the two countries remain open;
• Intense Western propaganda wants to intimidate Gaddafi supporters to give up hope of prevailing;
• it's had the opposite effect, in fact, galvanizing Libyans overwhelmingly behind Gaddafi, making him by far the most popular African/Middle East leader; and
• his forces control Gheryan, Sorman, Sabratha, and Zawiyah, its oil refinery and others; reports saying otherwise are lies; rebels are south of the city, not in it.

In an August 18 morning email, he added:

"Nothing has changed thus far. There is fighting in the area, but (rebels) do not have control. Bombings over Tripoli are very bad though."

As part of NATO's intimidation campaign, they continue daily, inflicting pain and suffering on Libyans unrelated to military necessity. As a result, they're war crimes, what Times and other major media sources won't explain.

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