Stephen Lendman

Palestinians want and deserve long denied full UN de jure membership and official statehood recognition, including all rights granted other members.

On September 23, Abbas formally petitioned the Security Council. Normally it reviews applications for a maximum 35 days. Whether or not America vetos Palestine's bid is irrelevant. It solely recommends. Only the General Assembly admits new members.

Abbas can petition it through the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution 377 for an up or down two-thirds member vote to override potential Security Council rejection or inaction.

More than enough GA support assures what could have been gotten days ago regardless of Security Council members do or don't do.

On September 26, informal discussions began. No quick decision is expected. Washington plans obstruction, delay, and subversion, hoping to scuttle the idea entirely.

On October 21, new Council members were elected by secret ballot. In January, Pakistan, Morocco, Togo and Guatemala will replace Brazil, Lebanon, Nigeria, Gabon, Bosnia. After a second round vote, either Azerbaijan or Slovenia will join them.

Palestinian officials claim support from nine Council members, enough to force Washington to veto. If resolution isn't achieved before January, slippage is certain as Pakistan, Morocco and Guatemala most likely will back America.

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Gilad Atzmon

An editorial in the London Jewish Chronicle in 1896 anti-
cipates little hope for the scheme to create a Jewish State.

As always, the London Jewish Chronicle (JC) is providing us with an accurate insight into Jewish influence within the media and beyond. The JC is desperate to stop my book, The Wandering Who? -- and it is also foolish enough to disclose its tactics, openly revealing to us the pressure which some elements within the Jewish community are willing to mount on Britain’s leading newspapers and other outlets.

This weekend The JC seems to be particularly frustrated, explaining to their concerned readers that “Britain's largest book distribution database company has said it cannot withdraw The Wandering Who unless the title is found to have breached race hate legislation”

And yet, it seems that no one in the Jewish Chronicle has read the book, or any of my writing -- otherwise it is hard to explain why the JC keep labeling me as an ‘anti-Semite’ or a ‘racist’. Had the JC actually bothered to read my writing or taken the time to follow my speeches and debates, they would have realised that there is no trace of ‘racism’ or ‘anti-Semitism’ in my work: yes, I am critical of Jewish politics; yes I am an opponent of Jewish political power, and yes, I follow my duties as a humanist to expose Jewish identity politics for what it really is. This fact alone may explain why my book is supported by respected humanists and some of the most distinguished academics, all of whom are held in high regard in their fields and beyond.

The JC complains that “in the book Atzmon discusses his belief that ‘the Holocaust religion was well-established’ before the Nazis carried out aspects of the Shoah including the Final Solution and Kristallnacht.”

The JC is absolutely correct here. That is exactly what I am discussing. And yet, the question is, what is wrong with doing so? Is it racist or anti-Semitic? And indeed, I also insist that trauma is inherent to Jewish Culture.

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Bill Van Auken

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton solemnly announced Sunday that Washington “strongly supports” an independent investigation into the barbaric murder of Libya’s deposed head of state Muammar Gaddafi. - What exactly is it that Ms. Clinton wants investigated that she doesn’t already know?

Gaddafi was captured Thursday while fleeing his hometown of Sirte. Over the previous month Sirte had been under continuous NATO bombardment and a brutal siege by the so-called “rebels” that destroyed the city and claimed untold numbers of civilian dead and wounded.

His convoy, detected by US spy planes, was attacked first by an American Predator drone aircraft, operated by remote control from an airbase in Nevada. An American AWAC surveillance aircraft then called in French fighter jets, which dropped two 500-pound bombs on the vehicles in which Colonel Gaddafi and his entourage were fleeing.

The air strikes left dozens dead and the Libyan leader wounded. He was then hunted down by the NATO-backed “rebels,” who were operating together with “advisors” from the SAS British special forces.

Gaddafi’s final moments have been recorded in a number of jumpy videos filmed on his attackers’ cell phones. They show a wounded Gaddafi shouting and feebly resisting a mob of frenzied militiamen who are taunting and attacking him, while screaming “Allahu Akbar”—“God is greatest.” He is dragged, kicked and beaten bloody with guns and fists before being thrown onto the hood of a vehicle. Footage shows a gun placed to his head and then his body on the pavement, blood pouring from the back of his skull.

As one member of the NATO-backed National Transitional Council (NTC) based in Benghazi has succinctly stated, “They beat him very harshly, and then they killed him.”

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Ellen Brown

Among the demands of the Wall Street protesters is student debt forgiveness—a debt “jubilee.” Occupy Philly has a “Student Loan Jubilee Working Group,” and other groups are studying the issue. Commentators say debt forgiveness is impossible. Who would foot the bill? But there is one deep pocket that could pull it off—the Federal Reserve. In its first quantitative easing program (QE1), the Fed removed $1.3 trillion in toxic assets from the books of Wall Street banks. For QE4, it could remove $1 trillion in toxic debt from the backs of millions of students.

The economy would only be the better for it, as was shown by the G.I. Bill, which provided virtually-free higher education for returning veterans, along with low-interest loans for housing and business. The G.I. Bill had a sevenfold return. It was one of the best investments Congress ever made.

There are arguments against a complete student debt write-off, including that it would reward private universities that are already charging too much, and it would unfairly exclude other forms of debt from relief. But the point here is that it could be done, and it (or some similar form of consumer “jubilee”) would represent a significant stimulus to the economy.

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Stephen Lendman

Class war raged for decades. Business and America's super-rich always win. In his 1925 short story titled "Rich Boy," F. Scott Fitzgerald said:

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early...They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we.."

"Even when they enter deep into our world....they still think that that they are better than we are. They are different."

In his article, titled "The Truth About 'Class War' in America," economist Richard Wolff said:

"The last 50 years have indeed seen continuous class warfare in and over federal economic policies."

Corporate giants and America's super-rich waged war against working Americans and won. Notably since the 1970s, "(b)usiness and its allies shifted most of its federal tax burden onto individuals."

Since WW II, tax rates on super-rich Americans fell from 91% to 35% today. Obama's deficit cutters want it lowered to 24% along with eliminating some deductions with loopholes to compensate and save others. Moreover, they want the top corporate tax rate slashed from 35% to 26%.

Many corporate giants, in fact, pay minimal or no taxes. Some, like General Electric, get generous rebates in highly profitable years. They game the system, benefitting form tax laws they write. American workers lose out from greater than ever burdens on them.

Obama schemers also want deeper Medicare cuts, higher Medicaid co-pays, and Social Security's retirement age raised to 69 with lower cost-of-living increases. Privately they want Wall Street to control it to suck out maximum profits, then shut it down entirely. In addition, they want home mortgage interest and tax-free employer provided health insurance capped or ended. They represent business and super-rich elites. America's middle class is targeted for extinction.

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Pepe Escobar

Beware of strangers bearing gifts. Post-modern Amazon and United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally landed in Tripoli - on a military jet - to lavish praise on the dodgy Transitional National Council (TNC), those opportunists/defectors/Islamists formerly known as "North Atlantic Treaty Organization rebels".

Clinton was greeted on Tuesday "on the soil of free Libya" (her words) by what the New York Times quaintly described as an "irregular militia" (translation: a heavily armed gang that is already raising hell against other heavily armed gangs), before meeting TNC chairman Mustafa Abdel-NATO (formerly known as Jalil).

The bulk of the US gifts - US$40 million - on top of the $135 million already disbursed since February (most of it military "aid") is for a missile scramble conducted by "contractors" (ie mercenaries) trying to track the tsunami of mobile anti-aircraft rockets that by now are already conveniently ensconced in secret Islamist warehouses.

Clinton told students at the University of Tripoli, "We are on your side." She could not possibly connect the dots and note that the shabab (young people) who started demonstrating against Muammar Gaddafi in February have absolutely nothing to do with the TNC's opportunists/defectors/Islamists who hijacked the protests. But she did have time to unveil another US foreign policy "secret" - that the US wants Gaddafi "dead or alive", George W Bush-style (or as the beneficiary of targeted assassination, Barack Obama-style).

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Pepe Escobar

They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. The French Ministry of Defense said they got him with a Rafale fighter jet firing over his convoy. The Pentagon said they got him with a Predator firing a Hellfire missile. After a wounded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought refuge in a filthy drain underneath a highway - an eerie echo of Saddam Hussein's "hole" - he was found by Transitional National Council (TNC) "rebels". And then duly executed.

Abdel-Jalil Abdel-Aziz, a Libyan doctor who accompanied Gaddafi's body in an ambulance and examined it, said he died from two bullets, one to the chest, one to the head.

The TNC - which has peddled lies, lies and more lies for months - swears he died in "crossfire". It may have been a mob. It may have been Mohammad al-Bibi, a 20-year-old sporting a New York Yankees baseball cap who posed to the whole world brandishing Gaddafi's golden pistol; his ticket perhaps to collect the hefty $20 million dangled as the bounty for Gaddafi "dead or alive".

It gets curioser and curioser when one remembers that this is exactly what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her lightning visit to Tripoli, had announced less than 48 hours before; Gaddafi should be "captured or killed". The Fairy Queenie satisfied Clinton's wishes, who learned about it by watching the screen of a BlackBerry - and reacting with the semantic earthquake "Wow!"

To the winners, the spoils. They all did it; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Pentagon and the TNC. From the minute a United Nations resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya became a green card to regime change, plan A was always to capture and kill him. Targeted assassination; that's Barack Obama administration official policy. There was no plan B.

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Bill Van Auken

The savage killing Thursday of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi served to underscore the criminal character of the war that has been prosecuted by the US and NATO over the past eight months. From the beginning, the entire operation has been directed at the re-colonization of North Africa and pursued on behalf of US, British, French, Italian and Dutch oil interests.

The assassination follows NATO’s more than month-long siege of Sirte, the Libyan coastal city that was Gaddafi’s hometown and a center of his support. The assault on this city of 100,000 left virtually every building smashed, with untold numbers of civilians dead, wounded and stricken by disease, as they were deprived of food, water, medical care and other basic necessities.

Gaddafi was apparently traveling in a convoy of vehicles attempting to break out of the siege after the last bastion of resistance had fallen to the NATO-backed “rebels”. NATO warplanes attacked the convoy at 8:30 a.m. Thursday morning, leaving a number of vehicles in flames and preventing it from moving forward. Then the armed anti-Gaddafi militias moved in for the kill.

The death of Gaddafi appears to have been part of a larger massacre that has reportedly claimed the lives of a number of his top aides, loyalist fighters and his two sons, Mo’tassim and Saif al-Islam.

While details of the killings remain somewhat clouded, photographs and cell phone videos released by the NATO-backed “rebels” clearly show a wounded Gaddafi struggling with his captors and shouting as he is dragged onto the back of a vehicle. His stripped and lifeless body is then shown, drenched in blood. It seems clear that having first been wounded, perhaps in the NATO air strikes, the former Libyan ruler was captured alive and then summarily executed. One photograph shows him with a bullet hole in the head.

Gaddafi’s body was then taken west to the city of Misrata, where it was reportedly dragged through the streets before being deposited in a mosque.

The fate of the body is politically significant in that it was seized by a Misrata militia faction that is operating under its own command and has no loyalty to the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC), which Washington and NATO have anointed as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Libyan people.

Thus this grisly event, which President Barack Obama hailed in the White House Rose Garden Thursday as the advent of “a new and democratic Libya,” in reality only exposes the regional and tribal fault lines that are setting the stage for a protracted period of civil war.

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Stephen Lendman

On December 31, 1993, (New Year's eve) Skinner's live-in girlfriend Twila and her two adult sons were stabbed to death in Pampa, TX. On March 18, 1995, he was convicted and sentenced to death.

On November 9, he'll be executed, despite convincing evidence he's innocent. Justice will be denied. As America's death penalty capital, Texas rarely grants it.

Since presidential aspirant Rick Perry took office in December 2000, 234 executions occurred, more than under any other modern governor. At the same time, he refuses to admit erroneously putting anyone innocent to death, despite over 130 exonerated inmates nationwide since 1973.

In fact, 12 were in Texas, besides known and unknown others unjustly facing execution. Unless Skinner's spared at the 11th hour, he'll be number 13.

Capital punishment is barbaric and cruel. Amnesty International (AI) call it "the ultimate denial of human rights. It is premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state. This cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is done in the name of justice."

There's nothing just about state-sponsored murder, especially against wrongfully convicted victims. In America, they're mostly poor Blacks and Latinos, denied due process and judicial fairness. The system is rigged to convict known innocent defendants.

Georgia's September 21 cold-blooded murder of Troy Anthony Davis symbolizes a longstanding rogue practice.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia abolished it. Federal law should have stopped it long ago, ending a system with no regard for human life.

It disproportionately affects society's least advantaged unjustly. On November 9, Henry W. (Hank) Skinner will be its next victim without 11th hour help to save him.

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William Bowles

Who will break up Shell or Goldman Sachs? Who will smash the military-industrial-media complex?

Four years ago in a Ministry of Defence Review, the Whitehall Mandarins, more astutely than any so-called Lefty, determined the following:

“The Middle Class Proletariat — The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.” — ‘UK Ministry of Defence report, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036’ (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007

Yeah, I know, I’m always using this quote (I first used it four years ago) but it illustrates the great intellectual divide between the political class and the citizens they rule, including our Left, now made so apparent by what the pundits are now calling the ‘Occupy The World’ (OTW) movement. It seems that only our very own ruling class foresaw OTW.

Dig a little deeper into OTW and we find that with a few exceptions, there are no challenges to capitalism, mostly it’s a ‘clean up your act’ kinda thing. Throw a few billionaires in jail, add some regulation and things will eventually turn out just fine. Dream on…

But we’ve been here before. This is what attempts at ‘reforming’ capitalism in the past have looked like. We lived under such a system from 1945 until the late 1970s, before the Empire reasserted itself, proving once again, that concepts like ‘democracy’ under capitalism, are at best, mere conveniences and so vague a concept that it can be made to resemble almost anything.

And once the so-called Good Life that capitalism allegedly had offered us started to wear thin and capitalism once more plunged us into war and poverty, so too the ‘Good Life’ had to be dumped. Belt-tightening time again.

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Ismail Salami

What seemed at first to be a simplistic effort by the US to corner Iran into political isolation has begun to branch out into ramifications of Kafkaesque proportions.

Despite its evidently make-believe facade, the cooked-up story of the Saudi envoy assassination plot does not seem to be something which can be easily banished from the minds of the American powers that be.

The heat over Iran in the US government is growing rapidly. Some Republican congressmen have expressed their interest in waging an all-out war against Iran, a threat they keep refreshing every time they have an excuse. They have clearly stated that Washington should not dismiss the idea of resorting to military force against Iran, an idea which is being strengthened in Congress.

“I don't think you should take it off the table,” Michigan Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has said.

It is quite natural that he was vehemently supported by the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator John McCain, who have always maintained an antagonistic approach towards Iran.

Hawkish Gingrich said on CNN, “Our goal should be the replacement of the Iranian dictatorship, and we have done nothing of consequence to systematically undermine the regime.”

The US government keeps preaching at others and talking of dismantling this or that regime which they term as 'dictatorial' or 'sponsor of terrorism'. Now that the lot has fallen to the US government itself, they are at a loss and appear despondently desperate. The implosive voice that is eroding the American system from within cannot be easily smothered or contained.

Therefore, the US has to find a way to divert international attention from what is going on in the country and zoom in on Iran. This can be one simple reason but it is very plausible. However, a bigger scenario is at work in collaboration with the Mossad and other intelligence services.

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Stephen Lendman

Terror weapons have been used, including depleted uranium (DU), thermobaric fuel-air bombs and white phosphorous able to burn flesh to the bone.

Obama is an unindicted war criminal. So is Clinton. More on her staged photo-op theater below.

On October 18, NATO deputy spokesperson Carmen Romero said:

"We are very close to (ending the Libya operation), but there are still threats to the civilian population and as long as these threats persist we will continue the campaign."

Fact check

Libya's only threat is NATO's presence with its army of paid mercenaries. The country was mostly calm and peaceful until terror bombing began on March 19. It's been ongoing daily for seven months.

Widespread areas have been ravaged. Tens of thousands have been killed, many more injured and displaced.

About 100,000 residents once called Sirte home. Under intense daily bombardment and shelling, it's in ruins. Remaining inhabitants are now homeless refugees.

Imagine turning Libya's showpiece of urban development into a ghost town. Nonetheless, loyalists defend it courageously, besting air and ground attacks. They control most of the city.

Nonetheless, NATO military spokesman Col. Roland Lavoie claimed

"(m)ost of Sirte in now under (TNC) control and fighting is limited to a very small area where a few remaining Gaddafi fighters are vainly trying to hold their positions."

He lied about Sirte and Bani Walid, claiming

"significant (rebel) advances....As of this morning, it appears that Gaddafi fighters are unable to sustain significant offensive capability."

False. They control most of Sirte, Bani Walid, Tripoli, Benghazi and most other cities and towns across Libya. NATO's desperation is palpable. Without victories, they're manufactured out of whole cloth.

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Rodrigue Tremblay

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd U.S. President.

Presently, one has the net impression that today's governments, both in Europe and in the United States, have their fingers plugging the holes in the financial dike, but fear that that the entire dam could collapse in the not too distant future with dire economic consequences.

Let's see if we can make sense of it all.

Let's say to begin that most financial crises are the direct result of unsustainable debt levels relative to income that need to be wrung out of the economic system. It has happened in the past (notably in 1873, in 1907 and in 1931, for example), and numerous times in developing countries, and it will undoubtedly happen again in the future. The process is more often than not always the same: some large banks, corporations, consumers or governments take on too much risky debt that becomes unsustainable when economic conditions change, thus launching the entire economy into a devastating process of debt deflation. Sometimes, it may take decades to overcome such a debt deflation and it usually creates an environment of economic stagnation when aggregate demand collapses.

What makes the current financial crisis so troublesome is not only that debt levels are historically high for some countries, but also because the usual instruments and procedures to reduce the debt burden, while doing the least damage to the real economy, have been rendered inoperative, due to a large extent, to the poisonous so-called financial “innovations” that have taken place since 1999 in the general climate of wholesale financial deregulation. As a consequence, financial debt in many countries creates a sort of financial black hole that siphons off money income and prevents it from being re-circulated back into the economy. This creates a serious deficiency of demand (when consumers spend less, when corporations postpone investments and when governments adopt austerity programs) that translates into low output growth, economic stagnation and high unemployment.

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Stephen Lendman

Candidate Obama promised peace. As president, he double downed Bush and then some, waging multiple direct and proxy wars.

The business of America is war. Washington has a permanent war policy. Republicans and Democrats perpetuate it.

Obama's latest mission adds another to dozens of similar ones ongoing globally. On October 14, New York Times writers Thom Shanker and Rick Gladstone headlined, "Armed US Advisors to Help Fight African Renegade Group," saying:

Obama ordered "100 armed military advisers to central Africa to help regional forces combat the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity."

Independent journalist, war correspondent, African expert, and human rights investigator Keith Harmon Snow challenges major media distortions and lies.

He calls the LRA "a Ugandan guerrilla force....wag(ing) a low-intensity war against" Uganda's Museveni regime since 1987. Ugandan factions back LRA resistance. It's also "clandestinely supported by unnamed factions in Congo, Europe and Washington."

Some believe it's "a tool of the Museveni government used to manipulate public opinion, create chaos across the region, gain international sympathy from foreign donors, (and serve as a) perfect ruse to facilitate permanent foreign military intervention."

In 2001, the State Department named it a terrorist organization. Since 2008, it's been called a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.

US intervention also targets China's growing African influence to feed its insatiable resource needs, especially oil and gas. WikiLeaks disclosed a February 17, 2010 US cable, saying:

"China's economic ties to Uganda continue to accelerate on all fronts making it one of the country's top foreign investors."

It's also true in other African countries, including resource rich Congo.

"Greater Chinese investment and assistance in Uganda has generated some resentment due to local perceptions that Chinese investments favor their own businesses."

China, in fact, prefers partnership arrangements benefitting both sides in contrast to Washington's one-way deals.

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Stephen Lendman

"How many times was Khamis (Gaddafi) killed?" Still believed to be alive, he's now a legend. "Killed by NATO five times, and resurrected," he symbolizes loyalist resistance.

Whenever major media Libya reports appear, truth is distorted, manipulated and falsified. For seven months, despite daily terror bombing and ground attacks, courageous loyalists bested the ferocity of NATO and its rebel army.

As a result, they control most of Tripoli, Benghazi and other cities across the country. Fighting, however, still rages. Loyalists are holding their own. They're determined to liberate Libya, live free and rebuild.

NATO ravaged widespread areas, willfully targeting civilians and sites unrelated to military necessity. They include hospitals, schools, residential neighborhoods, and at times anything that moves.

Loyalist victories are called NATO ones. On October 17, bogus reports again said Bani Walid fell. New York Times writer Rick Gladstone headlined, "Pro-Qaddafi Enclave in Desert Is Said to Fall After a Battle," saying:

"Libyan forces (read cutthroat mercenaries) fighting the vestiges of (Gaddadi's) toppled government said Monday that (they) were in control of Bani Walid," south of Tripoli.

Claiming it and Sirte are "the last holdouts of pro-Qaddafi resistance," completely ignores reality as loyalists control most of Libya.

Despite years of more credible reporting, Al Jazeera now functions mainly as Qatar's propaganda arm. On October 18, it headlined, "Libyan fighters claim capture of Bani Walid," saying,

"NTC military commanders....said they captured about 95 per cent of" the city."

Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley is a notorious liar, saying:

"We are very much in the center of Bani Walid. (Rebels) came through here just over an hour ago and they are saying this is an almost complete liberation of the town." "The gunfire of celebration is ringing out and they are going completely crazy here because they know this (will) send a very clear message to those pro-Gaddafi elements who are still holding out in Sirte. Basically, there is nowhere left to go."

At least Times reporter Gladstone explained that other claimed TNC victories "proved overly optimistic." In fact, they were willfully falsified. Media scoundrels, including The Times and Al Jazeera, reported them like gospel.

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Colorado AIM / Republic of Lakotah

“Now we put our minds together to see what kind of world we can create for the seventh generation yet to come." ~ John Mohawk (1944-2006), Seneca Nation

As indigenous peoples, we welcome the awakening of those who are relatively new to our homeland. We are thankful, and rejoice, for the emergence of a movement that is mindful of its place in the environment, that seeks economic and social justice, that strives for an end to oppression in all its forms, that demands an adequate standard of food, employment, shelter and health care for all, and that calls for envisioning a new, respectful and honorable society. We have been waiting for 519 years for such a movement, ever since that fateful day in October, 1492 when a different worldview arrived – one of greed, hierarchy, destruction and genocide.

In observing the “Occupy Together” expansion, we are reminded that the territories of our indigenous nations have been “under occupation” for decades, if not centuries. We remind the occupants of this encampment in Denver that they are on the territories of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute peoples. In the U.S., indigenous nations were the first targets of corporate/government oppression. The landmark case of Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), which institutionalized the “doctrine of discovery” in U.S. law, and which justified the theft of 2 billion acres of indigenous territory, established a framework of corrupt political/legal/corporate collusion that continues throughout indigenous America, to the present.

If this movement is serious about confronting the foundational assumptions of the current U.S. system, then it must begin by addressing the original crimes of the U.S. colonizing system against indigenous nations. Without addressing justice for indigenous peoples, there can never be a genuine movement for justice and equality in the United States. Toward that end, we challenge Occupy Denver to take the lead, and to be the first “Occupy” city to integrate into its philosophy, a set of values that respects the rights of indigenous peoples, and that recognizes the importance of employing indigenous visions and models in restoring environmental, social, cultural, economic and political health to our homeland.

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Jacob G. Hornberger

President Obama’s reaction to the alleged Iranian assassination plot reflects, once again, the dictatorial powers that the president of the United States now wields in foreign affairs.

As many commentators are noting, the whole scheme appears to be as bogus as a 3-dollar bill, but that isn’t really the point. The point is that we now live in a country in which the ruler wields the omnipotent power to send the entire nation into war for whatever reason he wants, bogus or not.

That’s not the way things were supposed to be. The Framers didn’t devise a system where the president had that omnipotent power. When they called the federal government into existence with the Constitution, they delegated the power to declare war to Congress and the power to wage war to the president.

Thus, under the Constitution Obama is required to come to Congress with a request to declare war on Iran (or even to impose sanctions on the country). Presumably Congress would say, “Show us the evidence on which you’re relying for your request for us to declare war on Iran.”

At that point, it would be “put up or shut up” time for Obama and his FBI, Justice Department, CIA, and Pentagon. They would have to submit their evidence to rigorous scrutiny from Congress, just as they’re going to have to do in a criminal trial of the alleged assassination plotter, Manssor Arbabsiar. (That’s assuming, of course, that they don’t send Arbabsiar down the “enemy combatant” route by removing him from the jurisdiction of America’s constitutional judicial system and delivering him into the clutches of the U.S. military.)

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Stephen Lendman

At an October 11 press briefing, NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu claimed Operation Unified Protector (NATO's aggression on Libya)

"has been a great success. We're pretty close to the end, but we're not there yet." "We did the right thing. We saved countless lives. We did it the right way, fast, with flexibility, involving Partners from the start, and we did it for the right reasons; to fully implement the mandate of the United Nations Security Council." "Now we will make sure the end of the operation will come when the time is right. We will not leave the job half done." "Our mission, as you know, is to prevent attacks and threats against civilians, so we will terminate the mission once we assess that there is no longer a systematic and significant threat...."

NATO military spokesperson Col. Roland Lavoie followed Lungescu with similar comments, claiming "we have witnessed a significant evolution of the situation in Libya." He added that "NATO is exercising air power only when necessary and always with caution, discernment and precision."

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Charles E. Carlson

Israel's Pending Attack on Iran to Spur War Based Economy, Wikileak Exposes Mexico Farce

I have listened to many commentaries and interviews by reasonable writers who just do not buy the conspiracy story from Eric Holder and the White House. I agree with most, from Iran's point of view, a plot to murder the Saudi Arabian envoy to Washington makes no sense. Some compare the scheme to a "B" movie.

But even a “B” movie develops a plausible reason why the killer did it. If Iran would not benefit from this scheme, who would? Is there a motive for a U.S. secret service, say the FBI, to hatch this plot and blame Iran? It is easy to see this could have been done, but I have yet to hear others hit one the plausible argument why the US leadership might invent this illogical scheme. The U.S.'s motive is so simple it is easy to overlook, and it is almost too horrible to contemplate so the obvious is ignored.

We American have been living in a war-based economy for decades and those who steer our leaders know they need a newer and bigger war to keep it going. About 100 years ago, Calvin Coolidge said "the business of America is business." Today his statement must be modified to "The business of America is ‘Warbusiness’.” We are officially coining this new noun for the special kind of business that began with World War I, when for the first time, the cost of war was no longer an obstacle. Why, because the world warmakers had just installed the Federal Reserve System over the US dollar.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down. Warbusiness can only sell one to us gullible consumers for so long, and these two of America's longest running wars. And you Warmakers know the US economy can not be stimulated fast enough by finance infrastructure, like roads and bridges. However, money can be deployed in a hurry to destroy things, which is why war works best to stimulate a crumbing economy. Ask yourself, which can be done quicker, break a clock or build one?

The logical reason for the lie is the economic need for another war, larger and more draining. This is the simple theory of war spending, and it is the simple and untold reason why Ben Bernanke's bosses, the state of Israel, and our behind the curtain political leaders want war with Iran right now. It is a big enough goal for them to take great risk, and they are.

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Allison McCracken

We are part of the growing Occupy movement sweeping the country, and we are becoming much stronger than the sum of our parts.

"Assault? Who- or what- did I assault??" I asked the police officer incredulously as I sat in his office at the police station, handcuffed to the wall. "Well, looks like it was Leon Panetta himself," the officer responded as he flipped through a pile of paperwork.

Me? A 22-year-old mild-mannered peace activist, assaulted the Secretary of Defense? I had simply tried to tell him how I felt about the wars. On the morning of October 13th about 25 activists who are occupying Washington DC, as part of the nationwide occupations, went on a field trip to Congress. We wanted to attend the House Armed Services Committee hearing where Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, and Martin Dempsy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were testifying about “lessons learned by the Department of Defense over the preceding decade” and “how those lessons might be applied in the future in light of anticipated reductions in defense spending.” After all, these hearings are open to the public. And shouldn’t we have a say in where our money is being spent?

As a peace activist with the group CODEPINK for the past 10 months, I have done my fair share of sending letters and emails and delivering petitions to our government representatives, asking them to stop pouring trillions of our taxpayer dollars into the endless cycle of death, destruction and reconstruction halfway across the world. There are so many critical things that we could spend that money on here in America, such as education, healthcare, helping the homeless, the elderly, the disabled, the veterans.

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