Wayne Madsen

The United States is being destroyed by a mega-wealthy elite intent on preying on the United States like a swarm of locusts.

The Rockefeller global oil and banking empire has been the subject of much critical commentary on the Internet. However, the Rockefeller Octopus’s tentacles into every facet of America’s banking, oil (through their control of Standard Oil), military, educational, and foreign policy apparatus was exposed in a monograph prepared by the Soviet Union in 1959. An English translation of the Soviet article prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Foreign Documents Division and dated December 16, 1959, was uncovered from the CIA’s archives. The paper is titled: “About Those Who Are Against Peace.”

The arguments in the Soviet paper generally concur with President Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the American people shortly before the inauguration of President Kennedy in January 1961. In his speech, Eisenhower warned the American people about the dangers posed to America’s democracy by the “military-industrial complex.”

There is nothing in the Soviet paper that rings false about the Rockefellers… The oligarchic family has exercised control over America’s foreign policy through their part-sponsorship of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, and Bilderberg Group – all three shadowy organizations of the world’s elite class who determine monetary, foreign, and military policies behind closed doors. Rockefeller funding of Columbia University and the University of Chicago have helped inflict on the United States some of the most brazen neo-conservatives serving inside and outside of government.

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Philip Giraldi

Photo: Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani, center, attends a protest after the Friday prayer, on Friday, Sept. 14, 2012, while a worshipper holds up a poster of US President Barack Obama, as part of widespread anger across the Muslim world about a film ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

There have been a number of conspiracy theories floated by those who are seeking to learn exactly how a video clip guaranteed to provoke riots throughout the Middle East surfaced at this time, close to a U.S. presidential election. The Romney team has already worked hard to make hay from the past week’s events, claiming that the protests are a symptom of Obama administration weakness. Israel too has an interest in portraying an unstable Middle East to support its attempts to nudge Obama into hardening U.S. policies in the region to include drawing new red lines vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear program, but it surely also realizes that there is far more to be lost than gained in encouraging Muslim uprisings on its doorstep.

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Kourosh Ziabari

The fact that the inhumane sanctions of the United States and its European allies against Iran are taking a heavy toll on the ordinary Iranian citizens is still hard to believe for many Western citizens who suppose that their governments are sincere in their claims of being concerned for human rights and freedom.

In different articles, I've pointed out this fact that the economic sanctions against Iran have become so intensive and rigorous that they have nothing to do with Iran's nuclear program anymore; rather, they are aimed at paralyzing the daily life of the innocent civilians in the country with the ultimate goal of persuading them to revolt against the government to protest the deteriorating living conditions, hence creating an all-out chaos and unrest in the society.

Since 2006, the United Nations Security Council passed 7 resolutions on Iran's nuclear program, demanding the country to suspend uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities. In four of these resolutions, the UNSC has imposed sanctions on Iran, including a ban on the supply of nuclear-related materials and technology, an arm embargo, travel bans on individuals connected to Iran's nuclear program, a freezing of the assets of Iranian banks in the United States and EU countries and the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines along with various embargoes on the assets and activities of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

However, the thirst of the United States and its allies in crippling Iran's nuclear program and harming its economy has not been quenched with the UNSC resolutions. The United States and its allies have sought to put a huge amount of economic and political pressure on Iran outside the framework of the Security Council, and through imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran's banking, insurance, oil, industry, aviation, shipping and medical sectors, they have taken up an unjustifiably aggressive stance in regards to Iran which has caused a dramatic surge of the anti-American, anti-Western sentiments among the Iranian people, instead of turning them against the government.

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Chris Floyd

Sparked by a deliberate provocation put together by Christian extremists, riots by groups of Islamic extremists are spreading across the world -- a convenient symbiosis for both groups, as they use each other's actions to "justify" their hysterically constricted worldviews.

There is an added layer to the reaction in the Muslim countries, as the extremists there can draw on the seething resentments built up by the depredations and atrocities inflicted indiscriminately on Muslims by the Western powers in recent decades, particularly since the launch of Terror War.

But of course these depredations and atrocities are the work of yet another group of sectarian extremists gripped by a hysterically constricted worldview: the Western power elites, who are maniacal adherents to the Dominationist cult. This bizarre but very powerful sect holds that American domination of the world, militarily and economically, is part of the divinely ordained structure of the universe.

Those who adhere to Dominationist dogma and obey the dictates of the sect's high priests in Washington are rewarded; but unbelievers, heretics and apostates are to be cast out, cursed, attacked and, when possible, destroyed.

In the last 11 years alone, state-backed Dominationist terrorists have killed far more innocent people than their counterparts among the scattered clumps of Islamic extremists around the world. More than a million people have been killed as a result of the Dominationist terrorist attack on Iraq, for example. Hundreds of innocent people in Pakistan have been murdered by the drones fired by Dominationist terrorists. Dozens are dying monthly in violent Dominationist attacks in Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines and elsewhere.

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Alan Hart

Netanyahu to commission a Mossad false flag operation – an attack on a vital American interest or interests for which Iran will be framed?

The headline over an article in Ha-aretz by Bradley Burston on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s poker game with President Obama was "If Obama wins in November, is Netanyahu in trouble?" That’s a question I’ve had in my own mind for quite some time and it begs another. What, really, worries Netanyahu most – the prospect (not real) of Iran posing an existential threat to Israel or the prospect (real) of a second-term Obama?

There is, Burston wrote, something new in the air, something Netanyahu does not like. What is it? “American conservatives have begun to think out loud that Barack Obama will win in November.”

In my opinion there’s a better than evens chance that in the course of a second Obama term, America would put its own best interests first, which would mean an end to unconditional American support for the Zionist state of Israel right or wrong. (As is often the case, the Gentile me and Gideon Levy are on the same page. The headline over one of his recent articles in Ha-aretz was "It’s only a matter of time before U.S. tires of Israel").

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Stephen Lendman

He's undisciplined, unchecked, and unambiguous. He never knows when to leave well enough alone. He makes more enemies than friends. He's a consummate loudmouth bully. He hurls unrestrained verbal assaults. He presides over Israel's worst government. It's belligerent, hardline, and neoliberal. It's offensive to both Jews and Arabs.

Fiction for him is fact. It's whatever he's saying at the time. He claims he doesn't lie but doesn't tell the truth. Perhaps he can't tell the difference between the two.

He menaces the entire region and beyond. His finger on Israel's nuclear trigger should worry everyone. Maybe he'll squeeze during one in his frequent tantrums.

He claims Armageddon is just around the corner. Who's he afraid of in a region where only Israel threatens neighbors? He presides over a government Gideon Levy calls "racis(t), untranationalis(t), arrogan(t), and messiani(c)" for good reason. Nonetheless, "this country is still not the worst," he says. He's right. It's the second worst. America is number one in every shameful thing mattering most.

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Robert Fisk

On massacres, atrocities and holocausts: Sabra and Shatila...

The memories remain, of course. The man who lost his family in an earlier massacre, only to watch the young men of Chatila lined up after the new killings and marched off to death. But – like the muck piled on the garbage tip amid the concrete hovels – the stench of injustice still pervades the camps where 1,700 Palestinians were butchered 30 years ago next week. No-one was tried and sentenced for a slaughter, which even an Israeli writer at the time compared to the killing of Yugoslavs by Nazi sympathisers in the Second World War. Sabra and Chatila are a memorial to criminals who evaded responsibility, who got away with it.

Khaled Abu Noor was in his teens, a would-be militiaman who had left the camp for the mountains before Israel's Phalangist allies entered Sabra and Chatila. Did this give him a guilty conscience, that he was not there to fight the rapists and murderers? "What we all feel today is depression," he said. "We demanded justice, international trials – but there was nothing. Not a single person was held responsible. No-one was put before justice. And so we had to suffer in the 1986 camps war (at the hands of Shia Lebanese) and so the Israelis could slaughter so many Palestinians in the 2008-9 Gaza war. If there had been trials for what happened here 30 years ago, the Gaza killings would not have happened."

He has a point, of course. While presidents and prime ministers have lined up in Manhattan to mourn the dead of the 2001 international crimes against humanity at the World Trade Centre, not a single Western leader has dared to visit the dank and grubby Sabra and Chatila mass graves, shaded by a few scruffy trees and faded photographs of the dead. Nor, let it be said – in 30 years – has a single Arab leader bothered to visit the last resting place of at least 600 of the 1,700 victims. Arab potentates bleed in their hearts for the Palestinians but an airfare to Beirut might be a bit much these days – and which of them would want to offend the Israelis or the Americans?

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Alex Lantier

NATO coalition forces have killed eight women and girls in
an airstrike. The airstrike came shortly before dawn. (RAWA)

In the latest atrocity carried out by US-led occupation forces in Afghanistan, an air strike killed nine young women shortly before dawn Sunday morning in Laghman province’s Alingar district, near the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The women, aged 18 to 25, were reportedly gathering firewood in a mountainous area NATO forces claimed was being used by insurgents as a base for attacks on Kabul. Laghman provincial officials said that seven more women and girls had also been wounded in the attack, including some as young as 10 years old.

Mourning villagers carried the dead women to the provincial capital, Mihtarlam, in protest. They showed the corpses wrapped in blankets to journalists and lay them down outside the Laghman governor’s residence, demanding an investigation of the massacre and the trial of those responsible.

Commenting on the attack, Alingar District Governor Alif Shah said: “We strongly condemn it—killing innocent women is not justifiable at all. The operation was not coordinated with the Afghan authorities.”

After initially denying reports of civilian casualties and claiming that the strike had destroyed a group of 45 insurgents, the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) released a statement declaring that “ISAF takes full responsibility for this tragedy.” It extended its “regrets and sympathies” to “civilians who died or were injured” in the ISAF attack.

ISAF spokesman US Air Force Captain Dan Einert said that ISAF is investigating the attack. The US-backed regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that it would launch its own investigation.

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Eric Peters

Clovers are ok with the American Police State because to them, it’s not a police state. They see no imposition – much less tyranny. They see “democracy,” lawful order. The flag – and (to them) freedom. The mindset is nicely articulated by the well-worn Clover cliche: “If you just obey the law you won’t have any problems.”

It’s circular reasoning, obviously – with the circles becoming ever tighter as they spiral down toward the drain into outright and abject slavery. Which even then, Clover will not see as slavery. He will still be free to act, he thinks – provided of course that he acts within the boundaries laid down for him. In the same way a slave was free to pick cotton; or the medieval serf free to farm his small plot… so long as he gave his Lord the specified portion of his crop.

Clover does not grasp that each time he submits, he has surrendered a piece of his life. And much worse, the lives of others, too.

Eventually, there will be nothing left to surrender.

But this ugly inevitability does not trouble Clover. He agrees to allow others to direct and control his life, to make his decisions for him. And because he has accepted this “direction,” so also must others. If they do not, if they object in any way, then they deserve what comes to them. It will please Clover to see them punished.

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Glenn Greenwald

Westerners love to decry censorship aimed at them by Muslims while ignoring the extreme censorship they impose on them

Nothing tests one's intellectual honesty and ability to apply principles consistently more than free speech controversies. It is exceedingly easy to invoke free speech values in defense of political views you like. It is exceedingly difficult to invoke them in defense of views you loathe. But the true test for determining the authenticity of one's belief in free speech is whether one does the latter, not the former.

The anti-US protests sweeping the Muslim world have presented a perfect challenge to test the free speech convictions of both the American right and the Democratic party version of the left. Neither is faring particularly well.

Let's begin with the Democrats. On Thursday, the Obama White House called executives at Google, the parent company of YouTube, and "requested" that the company review whether the disgusting anti-Muslim film that has sparked such unrest should be removed on the ground that it violates YouTube's terms of service.

In response, free speech groups such as the ACLU and EFF expressed serious concerns about the White House's actions. While acknowledging that there was nothing legally compulsory about the White House's request (indeed, Google announced the next day they would leave the video up), the civil liberties groups nonetheless noted – correctly – that "it does make us nervous when the government throws its weight behind any requests for censorship", and that "by calling YouTube from the White House, they were sending a message no matter how much they say we don't want them to take it down; when the White House calls and asks you to review it, it sends a message and has a certain chilling effect".

Right-wing commenters loudly decried the White House's actions on free speech grounds. Some of their rhetoric was overblown (the sentiment behind the request was understandable, and they did nothing to compel its removal). But, for reasons made clear by the ACLU and EFF, these conservative objections were largely correct.

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Stephen Lendman

Sparring between the two leaders has reached a point of no return

Much has been made about an Obama/Netanyahu rift. At times, it's hard separating rhetoric from reality. Nonetheless, neither leader, it appears, particularly likes the other. Disagreement between them is palpable. It's over Iranian red lines and deadlines.

Former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said he doesn't believe in "red line policies." He responded to Netanyahu saying:

"The world tells Israel 'wait, there's still time.' And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?' Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel."

"Now if Iran knows that there is no red line. If Iran knows that there is no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it's doing. It's continuing, without any interference, towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there, nuclear bombs."

A previous article called Netanyahu the mouth that roars for good reason. He repeatedly puts both feet in his mouth and risks swallowing them.

He's arrogant, offensive, duplicitous, thuggish, and dangerous. He's an embarrassment to legitimate governance. It's hard imagining why any Israelis put up with him. If ever a bum deserved to be thrown out it's Netanyahu.

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Chris Floyd

As protests against the Mohammed-bashing film now spread to Yemen -- where the Peace Laureate is drone-bombing the hell out of the populace on a regular basis -- Simon Tisdall has more on the bitter blowback of the Laureate's much-lauded regime change in Libya. First, Tisdall notes that despite the effusion of shock and horror emanating from Washington over the attack on its diplomats, the American government had in fact anticipated the possibility of such an incident:

The assassination in Benghazi of the American ambassador to Libya is an appalling act – and one foreseen by his employers. On 27 August, the state department warned US citizens against all but essential travel to Libya, painting a picture of a country beset by increasing instability and fraught with danger.

"The incidence of violent crime, especially carjacking and robbery, has become a serious problem… Political violence, including car bombings in Tripoli and assassinations of military officers and alleged former regime officials in Benghazi, has increased. Inter-militia conflict can erupt at any time or any place in the country," the state department said.

This is in marked contrast to the vague and gauzy notion of a plucky young democracy that was the general image of the new Libya advanced by our political and media classes. As always, those on the inside -- such as the late ambassador -- were given the real picture, while the rabble are palmed off with soundbites and fairy tales.

Any number of other Libyan armed groups might have had a hand in the killings. But in truth, responsibility may also be traced back, directly or indirectly, to those in London, Paris, Brussels and Washington who launched last year's Nato intervention in Libya with insouciant disregard for the consequences. It was clear then, or should have been, that toppling Muammar Gaddafi was the easy bit. Preventing an Iraq-style implosion, or some form of Afghan anarchy, would be much harder.

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Stephen Lendman

Post-9/11, Washington declared war on Islam. Islamophobia facilitates war on terror policy. Muslims became public enemy number one. Imperial wars followed. Endless direct and proxy ones continue. Others are planned.

Dehumanizing Islam violates core US beliefs about religious freedom and respecting all faiths equally. America only respects money power and imperial dominance.

It targets anyone challenging its quest for global hegemony. Millions of corpses attest to its resolve. They're strewn across North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and other parts of the world without end. Their numbers increase daily.

The business of America is war, imperial dominance, and corporate empowerment. Ravaging one country after another follows. Fear is created and manipulated to facilitate what should be condemned. Where it ends who knows. Perhaps a mushroom-shaped cloud future awaits.

Muslims know America's dark side best. It victimizes them daily. Millions died since Gulf War mass killings ignited nearly 22 years of genocidal slaughter.

They've been mercilessly targeted for praying to the wrong God. They're used for political advantage. They're pretexts for permanent wars. They're ongoing with no end in sight.

Media scoundrels misreport or ignore them. Attacks on US Cairo and Benghazi diplomatic missions made headlines and ignited rage. Capitol Hill flags were ordered lowered to half mast. US Libyan ambassador Chris Stevens and three members of his staff were killed. Millions of dead Muslims go unnoticed.

Stevens previously was Obama's representative to America's puppet Libyan National Transition Council. It helped Washington and NATO partners ravage the country mercilessly.

They're responsible for killing tens of thousands of civilians, causing widespread destruction, leaving countless numbers homeless, displaced, and impoverished, as well as ending cherished social programs Gaddafi instituted.

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Bill Van Auken

What was promoted to the public as a crusade for human rights and to save the lives of Libyan civilians was in reality a war of imperialist plunder whose main objectives were to establish hegemonic control over the North African country’s oil wealth at the expense particularly of Russia and China.

In his sardonic 1955 novel “The Quiet American,” Graham Greene offered a devastating portrait of Alden Pyle, a young American covert agent in Vietnam, exuding idealist notions of democracy and Americanism while trying to cobble together a “third force” to stem the tide of the Vietnamese revolution. Unleashing mayhem upon the country’s population in the process, he ultimately becomes the victim of his own political intrigues.

“I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused,” Graham Greene’s narrator says of Pyle.

The description seems apt as the eulogies pour in for J. Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, who was slain together with three other Americans in an armed assault on the American consulate in Benghazi Tuesday.

No one should take joy in the violent death of a 52-year-old man. But for all the tributes to his “idealism” and—in the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—his commitment to “advancing America’s values and interests,” it is impossible to understand the demise of Stevens without recognizing that this was an individual with blood on his hands who, like the fictional Pyle, fell victim to the very forces he helped unleash.

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Philip Giraldi

Eric Posner gives intellectual cover to the unitary executive

My college alumni magazine is featuring an article entitled “Octopotus” on the kind of reasoning in some jurisprudential circles that has supported the “unitary executive.” The article is about the University of Chicago Law School’s Professor Eric Posner, whose most recent book is The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic, co-authored with Harvard’s Adrian Vermeule. Posner and Vermeule would appear to agree that when George W. Bush declared the US Constitution to be just a piece of paper he was being candid and also acting in the best interests of the American people. Posner unambiguously sees the non-constitutional accumulation of presidential power as a good thing, enabling rapid response to crises, and describes the Madisonian separation of powers in government as a “historical relic.”

The article, written by one Jason Kelly of the magazine staff, is a strange amalgam of political correctness combined with a puff piece on Posner’s Straussian views, which I suspect most U of C alumni would find repugnant if they bother to read the article. Kelly cites “undocumented immigrants” at one point and refers to Posner’s support of executive power as a “common view” in legal circles. He accepts Posner’s lead in defining those who criticize the unitary executive as engaging in “irrational fear” that Posner labels “tyrannophobia,” which colors the discussion that follows. Kelly might equally have referred to critics of Posner as constitutionalists, which would result in a different perception.

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Philip Giraldi

Comrade Napoleon: Jerusalem platform omission a 'mistake' - No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all [human beings are chosen]. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? ~ G. Orwell, Animal Farm

I really did not want to write about Israel again this week, but the outrageous manipulation of the Democratic Party platform, moves in California to make any criticism of Israel a hate crime, and news that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had dressed down the U.S. ambassador in the presence of a congressman before insisting that the United States has no moral right to judge Israel has made it unavoidable to go “once more into the breach, dear friends.”

There is a fundamental issue at stake here. That is, does the United States have a national interest in its dealings with the countries in the Middle East that is fundamentally distinct from the Israeli interests? It is a question for dummies, as the answer is clearly yes. Well, if the answer is yes, why are leading politicians and talking heads insisting that the answer is no? Why are so many prominent Americans prepared to ignore the U.S. national interest in support of a foreign nation that has been the source of numerous armed conflicts, that has spied relentlessly on the U.S., and that is a serious drain on the U.S. Treasury? One might add that Americans have become terrorist targets as a consequence while the sharp decline in the favorable views of the United States around the world is largely attributable to the ties to rogue state Israel, even if the Bushes and Obamas have no doubt done their bit through the policy of unrestricted preemptive warfare that has evolved over the past 11 years.

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Stephen Lendman

Bad as things are now, expect much worse ahead.

As expected, the Court caved. On September 12, headlines reported it. The Financial Times said "German politicians declared the road clear for the creation of the eurozone's (500 billion euro) rescue fund after the country's constitutional court rejected a petition to block it." At issue is: Does it matter? More on that below.

Two Eurozone rescue schemes exist. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is running out of funds. Germany's High Court approved the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Originally it was scheduled to take effect July 1. Germany's parliament was still debating it. Constitutional Court approval is required. It could have linked passage to constitutional law change. Doing so would have required Germany's first post-war national referendum. It stopped short and approved what lacks legitimacy, and in the end won't work.

On the one hand, countries are running out of resources. On the other, the ECB has few bullets left. Everything it tried so far failed. Constitutional approval changes nothing. With it came conditions. The Financial Times said those imposed appear less onerous than feared. The Court ruled Germany's maximum 190 billion euro liability can't be increased without its ESM representative approving it. According to Court President Andreas Vosskuhle:

"(No) provision of this treaty may be interpreted in a way that establishes higher payment obligations for the Federal Republic of Germany without the agreement of the German representative."

It also insures Bundestag involvement. Under German law accompanying ESM approval, the parliament must approve its representative's positions. It's unclear if full parliamentary or budget committee voting is required.

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Wayne Madsen

The Central Intelligence Agency cobbled together the forerunner of the present Muslim jihadist terrorist network in the late 1970s to battle Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Throughout the next three decades, the CIA continued to maintain links with the jihadist groups, using them as allies for certain operations and attacking them when America’s «commitment» to the «war on terrorism» required an propaganda boost in the world’s media.

An example of the CIA ‘s flip-flopping between using its mujaheddin and jihadist allies and then declaring them «terrorists» and putting a price on their heads is the recent declaration by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Haqqani network based in North Waziristan, Pakistan is a «foreign terrorist organization».

The Haqqani network, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, was cobbled together by the CIA and the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the 1980s.

The Haqqani network is the latest former CIA ally to be branded a terrorist group. The Haqqanis are the latest in a long line of so-called terrorist groups that were organized and funded by the CIA only later to be thrown to the side of the road and branded «terrorists». Others include «Al Qaeda», led by CIA Afghan war veteran Osama bin Laden and Hezb-I Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatayar. With the designation of the Haqqani network as a terrorist organization, after the demise of Bin Laden and the designation of Hekmatayar as a terrorist, the CIA has run the table on its old mujaheddin allies. Only those «Al Qaeda» operatives who have allied themselves with the CIA in the Western-backed insurgencies in Libya and Syria.

Bin Laden and «Al Qaeda» were the convenient scapegoats for the CIA and its Mossad allies to provide a «logical» perpetrator for the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the 11th anniversary of which is now being observed across America. Hekmatayar’s falling out with the CIA appears to be over his attempt to cut into the opium smuggling in Afghanistan run by intelligence cut-outs for the CIA, as well as the family opium harvesting and smuggling business of the family of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

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John Glaser

The Obama administration has superseded both domestic and international law in its targeted killing program in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. A legal memo from the Congressional Research Service has concluded that “none of the established legal frameworks is a perfect fit for the Administration’s lethal targeting operations because the current US practice of lethal targeting involves features that are improvised, inconsistent or otherwise questionable,” according to Secrecy News.

While the laws of war have traditionally been relegated to certain geographic areas of declared conflict, the Obama administration has expanded Congress’s authorization of the use of force, initially granted for Afghanistan, to apply to a borderless conflict that is defined however the President wants. The administration has also extended the authorization for the use of force against those who carried out the attacks of September 11th to apply to anyone the President says is a member of al-Qaeda, anywhere in the world, without any checks or balances or legal process to prove such membership. The administration has also extended this reasoning to US citizens, who have undeniable rights to due process under the Constitution, and while they seem to have written a legal memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, they have refused to release it.

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Stephen Lendman

Thousands have taken to the streets of Ramallah to
call on PM Fayyad to resign. (Photo: Haaretz)

Haaretz contributor Amira Hass is right saying so. Current headlines highlight thousands of West Bank protesters. Palestinians took to the streets against unaffordable rising prices. In some areas, things got violent. Demonstrators smashed windows, tried to storm a municipality building, and clashed with police.

On Sunday, trucks and taxis blocked the Bethlehem to Hebron road. In Ramallah, tires were set ablaze. Streets were blocked. University and other school classes were cancelled. Duheishe refugee camp residents marched on Abbas' headquarters. Beit Jala protest leaders urged nonviolence but joined others expressing outrage. Balata refugee youths blocked Al-Quds Street. They forced traffic onto bypass roads. Traffic was also blocked in Jenin. Taxi union director Abu al-Wafa said strike action shut down 700 cabs and 120 buses. At issue is unaffordable fuel prices. Public transportation across the West Bank is paralyzed. Thousands of drivers walked out. Tulkaren and Jericho residents also staged protests. Hundreds turned out. One protest sign read:

"We're tired of hearing about reform….a council after another….a minister after another….and corruption that hasn't gone away."

General strike calls resonate. Unelected Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is a longtime Israeli collaborator. He's neoliberal, corporatist, and hardline. Rage targets him. He claims budget shortfall constraints. Palestinians want him out. One youth spoke for others, saying:

"We'll do anything, throw rocks, to get rid of the Fayyad government. They call it sabotage, but we'll do whatever we need to get rid of him."

He agreed to resign to cool things down. Fellow longtime Israeli collaborator Abbas defended him. He's doing his job, he said.

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