Gilad Atzmon

We are indeed in a win-win situation. And it’s all because we know that truth is on our side.

It was a few years ago that I grasped that Zionism was just one manifestation of Jewish political power in the West. But at the time, hardly anyone was either brave or stupid enough to tackle the topic. In spite of Israel defining itself as the ‘Jewish State’, despite the fact that the warplanes that dropped their bombs on Palestinian civilians were covered in Jewish symbols, still no one was willing to openly ask exactly what Jewishness was all about or what it stood for – and those few who did dare to raise the question were subject to total abuse until they took cover or just faded away.

It’s also been clear for quite a while that many Palestinian solidarity activists, intellectuals and academics have been begging for recognition from mainstream Western institutions. For obvious reasons, many of us have been fearful of open confrontation with exponents of Zionist power, whether mainstream Zionist media organisations or even those AZZ (Anti Zionist Zionists) who have managed to lodge themselves so comfortably within our ranks.

But recently things have changed and the popularity of my book ‘The Wandering Who?’ (TWW) is just one example of that clear shift in consciousness. Somehow, we have lost our fear, somehow we have found the courage to say what we know to be the truth.

I’ve been engaged with Jewish identity politics issues for over a decade now but it was back in 2003 that I realised that total and uncompromised opposition to any form Jewish of identity politics was the only way forward. I also realised that I might be able to expose the framework of Jewish political infrastructure, not only within Israel but also within Zionist organisations, Western politics, Western media and the so-called Jewish ‘anti Zionist’ network. And it didn’t take long to realize I was in a true win-win situation. If they managed to destroy me, it would merely prove my point about their overwhelming influence but if they failed to neutralize me, that could only mean that Jewish power was disintegrating - which was exactly what I set out to achieve.

Stephen Lendman

Corporate greed and profits over people priorities launched nationwide OWS protests in hundreds of US cities for change. Mindless of growing public rage, political Washington keeps cutting vital social benefits needing increases during hard times. With real unemployment approaching 23%, earlier cuts affected:

• Pell Grants help for college tuitions;
• federal wages;
• the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) to help impoverished families have heat in winter;
• the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP);
• community healthcare centers;
• nonprofit health insurance cooperatives;
• HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other disease prevention programs;
• WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) grants to states for supplemental foods, healthcare, and nutrition education for low-income families;
• Head Start, providing comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income families with children;
• the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (targeted earlier with more coming), providing food stamps for poor households;
• community development block grants for housing, overall reducing HUD's budget by $1.1 billion;
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) first-responder funding;
• energy efficiency and renewable energy programs;
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) clean/safe water and other projects;
• National Institutes of Health (NIH) medical research;
• the National Park Service;
• vital infrastructure and transportation needs; and
• other non-defense discretionary spending.

New cuts will sustain Wall Street, militarism, favoritism, waste, fraud, and other rewards for Washington's usual special interests. They'll benefit at the expense of ordinary people losing out. Increasingly on their own sink or swim, Obama calls it "shared sacrifice." Ordinary people sacrifice to let business and super-rich elites share.

John Chan

Residents gather on a street during a demonstration in Wukan
village in China's Guangdong province on Thursday.

Heavy-handed police-state responses to protracted protests by thousands of farmers at Wukan village in China’s Guangdong province have increasingly made the 20,000 villagers a national symbol of resistance against the Stalinist bureaucracy and the powerful corporate interests behind it.

Hundreds of paramilitary police armed with automatic weapons and water cannons sealed off the village throughout last week, cutting off food supplies for days. Despite this, the residents’ struggle against the sale of collective farmland to real estate developers has attracted the sympathy of working people throughout the country. Neighbouring villages and town people are providing food and supplies to Wukan.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal reporter in Wukan explained: “Interviews with people living near Wukan, meanwhile, suggested widespread sympathy with the protesters there and anger over what the locals said were many similar cases of local officials misappropriating farmland, or failing to pay sufficient compensation for land seized.”

Significantly, the unrest is drawing support from a section of the working class. Last Wednesday, a small demonstration in the provincial capital, Guangzhou, in solidarity with the Wukan villagers was quickly suppressed by the police. The crackdown revealed the Beijing regime’s fear that the protests could trigger broader anti-government demonstrations, not only in rural areas, but in the province’s manufacturing centres.

Stephen Lendman

Under the UN Charter, other international law, and principles of sovereign equality, all states are equal. None are more or less legitimate than others.

Under the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, Israel qualifies as one. It has:

• a fixed recognizable territory;
• a permanent population;
• a functioning government; and
• the capacity to have relations with other countries.

At issue isn't its legal nation state legitimacy. Its lawless ideology is illegitimate.

It is corrosive, destructive, racist, extremist, undemocratic and hateful. It claims Jewish supremacy, specialness and uniqueness as God's "chosen people." It espouses violence, not peaceful coexistence. It chooses confrontation over diplomacy. It employs strength through militarism, intimidation, and naked aggression. It is contemptuous of moral values and ethical principles.

According to Joel Kovel, it's "a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses." Alan Hart calls it "the real enemy of the Jews," and no wonder. It's a monster threatening its host and all humanity, especially in partnership with its Washington paymaster/partner.