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Let’s face it, this relationship with the Obama administration just isn’t working out. I’m going to give some concrete reasons why. I’m also going to give my opinion at the end of this article. Let me say that this list is flabbergasting. Anyone with any common-sense can figure out why. I didn’t enjoy writing this at all. It’s because I’m an American citizen. All of this was done in my name and the name of every American citizen. It’s about time we changed the direction of this government and you can’t do it at the ballot box voting for the Democrat or Republican they decide to put in front of you. There isn’t a dimes worth of difference between the political parties. The Democrats represent fascism light while the GOP represents regular fascism.Here’s what’s going on :

1. Not Charging Anyone in the Bush Administration with War Crimes or Criminal Misconduct. The first thing that should have tipped us all off is when he told us all that he was going to look forward and not backwards, meaning that he wasn’t going to go after members of the Bush regime for war crimes or for breaking any other laws while in office. Of course most Americans figured he was just avoiding a partisan fight in Congress, but what we really found out is that he was just staying silent about the war crimes and executive power abuses of the Bush era so that he could pull off his own war crimes and executive power abuses.

2. Drone Strikes . Probably the most heinous behavior of this morally corrupt administration is the weekly war conference between his advisors and the military and civilian intelligence agencies about who should be killed by drone strikes that week. Imagine having a weekly conference to decide who lives and dies in a place half way around the planet and choosing victims. This is without any semblance of due process. No charges, no investigation, no trial…nothing except hearsay. This includes choosing Americans to die. Can anyone say War crime?

3. Uncritical Support of Israel. We supported this rogue state as they attacked the Gaza strip with white phosphorus and cluster bombs, both of which are banned by the Geneva Convention as inhumane. We watched as fighter jets attacked, all of these weapons supplied by the United States. We give these brave Israeli’s three billion dollars for “defense “each year. We turn a blind eye as they use weapons that don’t discriminate between friend or foe when they kill women and children. Over two thousand Palestinians died during that brave Israeli “incursion” into Gaza with tanks and armored personnel carriers. Not a word was said, not even by that recipient of a Noble Peace prize. This was a colossal refusal to point out pure evil.

4. Sabre-rattling on Iran. Every day we hear of the treachery and deceit by the evil Islamic State of Iran. We hear of their intention to develop nuclear weapons. Even though the IAEA has claimed that Iran had stopped working on development of nuclear weapons in 2003 the noble entity of Israel does not believe that it has. Benjamin Netanyahu received numerous standing ovations from the thugs in Congress. No one thinks twice about the claims Israel makes about the dangers of a nuclear Iran. Even though the top brass in the Iranian Army were trained largely in the US when the Shah was in power and Iran was a close ally. Now it has turned into an evil empire. No one talks about Iran’s track record on aggression, noting that Iran has not attacked any State in more than two hundred years. Just like the lead up to war in Iraq, every day brings new accusations about Iran’s real intentions. Like watching a repeat of a bad TV show… Iraq redux. It appears that the US didn’t learn a thing from the Iraq war. Will this be the spark that turns the Middle-East into a smoldering hell?

5. Interfering in Syria. The United States and its allies, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and The United Arab Emirates send M-16’s and other weapons of war in an obvious bid to cause the much desired “regime change” in Syria. Rebel fighters from Libya and other nations sneak into Syria and fight to establish an Islamic State in Syria while the US turns a blind eye, hoping that a new regime in Syria will be friendly towards the West. Nobody can say for sure what outcome will arise from toppling the Bashir regime. Russia and China warn the United States about “meddling” in Syrian affairs. The United States, the World’s only “superpower” seems to ignore the threats from these two nuclear states. Once the US decides that regime changer is the only solution, the game will not stop until its objectives have been met. A bully in foreign affairs, nobody in Washington remembers that “reset button” that was pushed last year to set relations with Russia right. The US consistently toys with the Russian Bear. Not unlike the situation with Iran, could this confrontation about Syria be the nuclear start button that leaves the Middle East and maybe the planet in a smoldering hell?

6. Propping-up the regime in Bahrain. We turn a blind eye again to the troubled State of affairs in Bahrain. There, the Khalifah monarchy uses troops from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to keep those that cry for democracy down. The ruthless Khalifah regime even imprisons and tortures medical personnel, doctors and medics that treat the wounded. The United States, which has its mighty Fifth Fleet anchored at the Capitol of Manama, has congratulated the regime for coming to a “accommodation” with the protestors, when in fact there was no “accommodation”, just a ruthless crackdown on dissidents, using torture and imprisonment. More ruthless than the regime in Damascus, the US, acting in its own self-interest, abides the human rights violations of the monarchy. Where is the much-touted call for democracy here?

7. Plotting Against Venezuela. The government of Venezuela, led by the vilified socialist, Hugo Chavez, was toppled by the wealthy right-wing elements of the Venezuelan opposition with help from the CIA in 2002. The US recognized the new government just hours after the coup. The people of Venezuela became incensed by the coup and took to the streets in protest. As a crowd of almost a million people descended on the Capitol, the Army changed sides and a firefight erupted between the Army and the Secret Police. The Army took control and demanded that Hugo Chavez be reinstated as President. The Bolivarian State of Venezuela, a democratic socialist republic, still exists there. This is a thorn in the side of the American administration in Washington. By all means possible, they vilify Chavez at every opportunity. Why is a functioning democracy in Latin America a problem there? The reason is that Chavez nationalized oil refineries that refused to split profits from oil 50-50, insisting that 80-20, the 80% going to the oil companies and 20% going to the people of Venezuela (the standard contract around the world). The only oil company that agreed to the split was Citgo. This was an affront to capitalism, the de-facto religion of America. Watch for more interference from America in Venezuelan affairs.

8. Our Armament Economy. Just as our industry in America was outsourced to nations that had cheap labor pools, our defense industry grew by leaps and bounds. With the many wars that America is involved in, from Central Africa, to the Horn of Africa all the way to Afghanistan and Pakistan, our defense budget boomed. Between The Department of Defense to the Intelligence Departments either belonging to the military or connected to the military, the actual budget according to different sources is about three trillion dollars. Also according to IPS: U.S. Sets Another Record on Defence Sales, Already .

“Despite the global economic strain, demand for U.S. defence products and services is stronger than ever,” Andrew J. Shapiro, an assistant secretary in the U.S. State Department, said on Thursday.

He confirmed that the U.S., long the world’s largest weapons exporter, has already seen more than 50 billion dollars in government-to-government military sales this fiscal year.”

9. Shifting the Military focus from the Middle-East to the Pacific. Some regard this as an attempt to contain the World’s second largest economy and a nuclear rival, The People’s Republic of China. Negotiating with the Philippines for the right to use Subic Bay for use of the port for the Seventh Fleet the US is also negotiating with Vietnam for the deep-water port of Cam Ranh Bay. Singapore has offered its naval facilities for use by high-speed Littoral ships. Marines will be stationed in Australia. According to The Japan Times :

“The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the new force layout would divide the Marine Corps command, ground force, air and logistic units into an arc of bases forming a flank along the eastern seaboard of China.”

This of course, will not be a stepping stone for better relations between China and the United States.

10. Paying Wall Street. In what amounted to a gigantic “giveaway” The United States and The Federal reserve decided to heap $4.76 TRILLION Dollars on the financial firms and investment banks “Too big to fail”. This is according to Source Watch . This amount is staggering. Hardly any accounting for the funds was demanded by Congress. Some claim that investment banks and other entities are sitting on trillions while small business loans and mortgages remain next to impossible to attain. This gigantic bail-out was the spark that ignited the Occupy Movement that was started by Occupy Wall Street located in Zucotti Park. CEO’s received huge million dollar bonuses directly after the bail-out. This incensed Americans when Wall Street defended the bonuses claiming that they were based on “performance”. This so-called “performance” took place when casino-economics ruled the financial markets with the selling of derivatives.

“A derivative is a financial contract whose value is derived from the performance of underlying market factors, such as interest rates, currency exchange rates, and commodity, credit, and equity prices. Derivative transactions include an assortment of financial contracts, including structured debt obligations and deposits, swaps, futures, options, caps, floors, collars, forwards, and various combinations thereof.”

Investors could buy these derivatives, betting on the failure of any number of things. Financial wizards bet on “credit default swaps”. “A credit default swap (CDS) is a financial swap agreement that the seller of the CDS will compensate the buyer in the event of a loan default or other credit event. The buyer of the CDS makes a series of payments (the CDS “fee” or “spread”) to the seller and, in exchange, receives a payoff if the loan defaults.”

Buyers of these credit default swaps bet on different investment houses and banks that would experience loan defaults. Lehman Brothers was a good bet. These credit default swaps could be bought even though the buyer had no financial interest in the institution they were betting on. Unlike insurance, where the buyer had to have a financial interest in what they were insuring, these were like bets at a casino, hence the term “casino economics”. When Lehman Brothers went belly up, along with a number of banks, ING, the largest insurance company in America, held most of these derivatives and had no way to make the pay-outs that the investors demanded. To stop ING from going belly-up the Federal Government stepped in and poured billions into the firm.

These derivatives made some investors rich, courtesy of the Federal Government. The figures foResearch in Washington, D.C. This table relies entirely on government data and represents an accounting of actual government funds disbursed, mostly in the form of loans. Our total includes major programs of the U.S. Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and other government agencies to assist the financial sector and institutions that had a role in the crisis.”

All of the reasons above are the reasons why I doubt that the United States acts in the best interests of the American people. The war taking place in Afghanistan is a prime example of this logic. The American people have no vested interest in that nation . This “War on Terror”is a façade for the real goal of Full-Spectrum Dominance by the United States. The US is striving for global hegemony. Is this what the majority of Americans want? Where does it say in the Constitution that our number one priority should be top dominate the World?

The trouble with empires is that they not only rise, in the end they fall. It appears that the earlier empires such as Egypt and Rome lasted hundreds of years. As time went by, the empires that rose after lasted for shorter and shorter times. The Soviet Empire only lasted nearly one hundred years. How long will the American Empire last. Is it worth spending more on our military than all the other nations on the planet together?

We spend 711 Billion dollars according to our military budget alone. This does not take into account appropriations for ongoing wars and intelligence costs that balloon the cost to almost three trillion dollars. The rest of the world spends 851 billion dollars combined. Why is that? It’s because we have military bases in 63 different countries. “The US tends to view the Earth surface as a vast territory to conquer, occupy and exploit. The fact that the US Military splits the World up into geographic command units vividly illustrates this underlying geopolitical reality”. Is this what the American people want? It’s not what I want. As far as conquering the world, just because we believe that we can, is an idea that I don’t support. 53 cents out of every dollar in taxes goes to the military. I don’t think that the majority of Americans would support that if they knew and thought about it.

This march toward global domination is insane, insane and expensive too. Funding the military and associated intelligence agencies is like pouring money down the toilet. If Romney is elected Defense spending t will spike $2.1 trillion. Wow. These people just won’t stop. In all of this you can count me out. I just want to live the rest of my life and see my granddaughter grow up.

I have simple needs and one of those needs isn’t watching my government try to conquer the world. r the amount it took to bail-out Wall Street were a calculation that “was peer-reviewed by economists at the Center for Economic and Policy

By Timothy V. Gatto

19 June, 2012
Countercurrents.org

Tim Gatto is former Chairman of the Liberal Party of America, Tim is a retired Army Sergeant. He currently lives in South Carolina. He is the author of “Complicity to Contempt” and “Kimchee Days” available at Oliver Arts and Open Press.

William A. Cook’s ‘Decade of Deceit’ is a collection of spectacular articles written by a man who has gradually awakened to the disastrous meaning of the Zionification of our universe. Being an authentic and unique poetic voice, Cook manages, layer by layer, of to unravel the hypocrisy that has contaminated every aspect of our life – morally, culturally, spiritually and politically.

But Cook is not only a superb poet, he is also an English Professor and it is this synthesis between the aesthetic and the academic that makes this book such a staggering and fascinating spiritual text. It is this unique shift between scientific precision and creative beauty that makes ‘Decade of Deceit’ a must-read.

Collections of articles can be tedious, but sometimes they can also provide us with a glimpse into the workings of a sharp and astute prophetic mind. ‘Decade of Deceit’ introduces us to an ethical thinker and the ways in which he has formed his thoughts about Israel, Palestine, the USA, contemporary politics, and ourselves – the witnesses of our own emerging tragedy.

Cook is a natural wordsmith with the rare capacity to deliver, by way of beauty, a very poignant message. This American English scholar clearly knows how to turn his pen into a sword, yet he aims only at peace, harmony and reconciliation. In December 2002 he writes to Osama Bin Laden “vengeance is a disease that multiplies, divides, and becomes the scourge of humankind; it is anathema to creation because it destroys what exists.” But then, just a few pages later, as hell is about to break loose, we are captivated by Cook’s search for harmony. In March 2003 as America went to war he wrote “I went to the lake to find peace, this being the week the president gave one of his rare prime time press conferences, the only opportunity we, the public, get to see him perform. It’s also the week America goes to war.”

It takes courage to look evil in the eye but it takes even more courage to pose the following questions in free America. “What fuels slavery, ethnic cleansing, land theft, and genocide? What enables a mind to justify imprisoning another without cause, without trial, without rights of due process and assumption of innocence until proven guilty? What enables a soul to accept dominance over another, to degrade and humiliate other humans, to participate in or acquiesce to genocide?” And Cook doesn’t shy away from answering his question: “Genocides and holocausts arise out of unchecked zeal, unquestioned duty, and silent acquiescence. They are fueled by blind belief, personal fear, and a sense of superiority that gives license to slaughter.” This is clearly an astute reading of both Israeli and American exceptionalism – the combination of fear, superiority and dogmatism are indeed lethal.

As we progress through the text the questions and observations posed by Cook becoming increasingly crucial. From 2003 onward, the English-speaking Empire has submissively allowed itself to become an Israeli mission force, the Iraq war being just one obvious example. In November 2007 Cook writes, “I woke from a dream last night with a sudden start, the world had turned inside out … the sun did not shine, the moon did not come out … darkness enveloped the earth, and all that had been was no more.”….” But the bleak reality in which we live, led Cook to realise that he actually ‘did not wake from that dream’.

“I am living that dream today as I watch the world walk in darkness, befuddled by deceit, desirous to end the violence of these past 60 years, expectant, hopeful, a little fearful that the joy of the season may be marred for themselves and the Palestinians if the conditions of the Zionists are not met even if it means that all of us must accept the will of those who control by force of might and rule in ruthless disregard of any who stand in the way of their desires. The Beast of Hypocrisy walks the streets of Annapolis, it hides its ugliness beneath its cashmere long coat as it enters the conference hall to present in elegant verbiage its compassionate intent that peace might at last come to the mid-east, but in the darkness we do not see the maggots that reside beneath that elegant exterior, the maggots that have eaten away the moral innards of the people that have gathered to deny the people of Palestine the justice they so rightfully deserve.”

We are indeed, day after day, deceived by a system that has been hijacked by a foreign power. In October 2011 Cook discloses his own vision of the current American reality:

“Citizens no longer control their government; they are slaves to it. Representatives no longer serve the citizen seeking their consent to govern, they are servants of the corporations and lobbies that control the economic system to which the citizen is enslaved. Presidents no longer lead, they are the obedient lackeys of their corporate overseers. Freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want do not determine the needs of humans, economics of the market place supersedes all at the expense of the citizen and human rights. We exist in a corporate world of unending wars, of vengeance and recrimination, of fear as a commodity that imprisons the mind, of greed that destroys the resources of this planet without remorse, and of insatiable arrogance that harbors no concern for those it destroys.”

I can only assume that Cook’s journey has led him to realize that, by now, we have all become Palestinians. We are all subjected to that same total abuse that has robbed and distorted each and every precious value that ever made the West worthwhile. So I guess that one possible interpretation of Cook’s work may as well be that solidarity with Palestine should start at home and that unless we liberate ourselves first, there is only little we can offer others.

By Gilad Atzmon

13 July, 2012

Counterpunch.org

Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician, writer and anti-racism campaigner.. Gilad Atzmon’s latest book is The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics

Cultures that endure carve out a protected space for those who question and challenge national myths. Artists, writers, poets, activists, journalists, philosophers, dancers, musicians, actors, directors and renegades must be tolerated if a culture is to be pulled back from disaster. Members of this intellectual and artistic class, who are usually not welcome in the stultifying halls of academia where mediocrity is triumphant, serve as prophets. They are dismissed, or labeled by the power elites as subversive, because they do not embrace collective self-worship. They force us to confront unexamined assumptions, ones that, if not challenged, lead to destruction. They expose the ruling elites as hollow and corrupt. They articulate the senselessness of a system built on the ideology of endless growth, ceaseless exploitation and constant expansion. They warn us about the poison of careerism and the futility of the search for happiness in the accumulation of wealth. They make us face ourselves, from the bitter reality of slavery and Jim Crow to the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans to the repression of working-class movements to the atrocities carried out in imperial wars to the assault on the ecosystem. They make us unsure of our virtue. They challenge the easy clichés we use to describe the nation—the land of the free, the greatest country on earth, the beacon of liberty—to expose our darkness, crimes and ignorance. They offer the possibility of a life of meaning and the capacity for transformation.

Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification. They trust naively in the notion of linear progress and in assured national dominance. This is what nationalism is about—lies. And if a culture loses its ability for thought and expression, if it effectively silences dissident voices, if it retreats into what Sigmund Freud called “screen memories,” those reassuring mixtures of fact and fiction, it dies. It surrenders its internal mechanism for puncturing self-delusion. It makes war on beauty and truth. It abolishes the sacred. It turns education into vocational training. It leaves us blind. And this is what has occurred. We are lost at sea in a great tempest. We do not know where we are. We do not know where we are going. And we do not know what is about to happen to us.

The psychoanalyst John Steiner calls this phenomenon “turning a blind eye.” He notes that often we have access to adequate knowledge but because it is unpleasant and disconcerting we choose unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, to ignore it. He uses the Oedipus story to make his point. He argued that Oedipus, Jocasta, Creon and the “blind” Tiresias grasped the truth, that Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother as prophesized, but they colluded to ignore it. We too, Steiner wrote, turn a blind eye to the dangers that confront us, despite the plethora of evidence that if we do not radically reconfigure our relationships to each other and the natural world, catastrophe is assured. Steiner describes a psychological truth that is deeply frightening.

I saw this collective capacity for self-delusion among the urban elites in Sarajevo and later Pristina during the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. These educated elites steadfastly refused to believe that war was possible although acts of violence by competing armed bands had already begun to tear at the social fabric. At night you could hear gunfire. But they were the last to “know.” And we are equally self-deluded. The physical evidence of national decay—the crumbling infrastructures, the abandoned factories and other workplaces, the rows of gutted warehouses, the closure of libraries, schools, fire stations and post offices—that we physically see, is, in fact, unseen. The rapid and terrifying deterioration of the ecosystem, evidenced in soaring temperatures, droughts, floods, crop destruction, freak storms, melting ice caps and rising sea levels, are met blankly with Steiner’s “blind eye.”

Oedipus, at the end of Sophocles’ play, cuts out his eyes and with his daughter Antigone as a guide wanders the countryside. Once king, he becomes a stranger in a strange country. He dies, in Antigone’s words, “in a foreign land, but one he yearned for.”

William Shakespeare in “King Lear” plays on the same theme of sight and sightlessness. Those with eyes in “King Lear” are unable to see. Gloucester, whose eyes are gouged out, finds in his blindness a revealed truth. “I have no way, and therefore want no eyes,” Gloucester says after he is blinded. “I stumbled when I saw.” When Lear banishes his only loyal daughter, Cordelia, whom he accuses of not loving him enough, he shouts: “Out of my sight!” To which Kent replies:

See better, Lear, and let me still remain

The true blank of thine eye.

The story of Lear, like the story of Oedipus, is about the attainment of this inner vision. It is about morality and intellect that are blinded by empiricism and sight. It is about understanding that the human imagination is, as William Blake saw, our manifestation of Eternity. “Love without imagination is eternal death.”

The Shakespearean scholar Harold Goddard wrote: “The imagination is not a faculty for the creation of illusion; it is the faculty by which alone man apprehends reality. The ‘illusion’ turns out to be truth.” “Let faith oust fact,” Starbuck says in “Moby-Dick.”

“It is only our absurd ‘scientific’ prejudice that reality must be physical and rational that blinds us to the truth,” Goddard warned. There are, as Shakespeare wrote, “things invisible to mortal sight.” But these things are not vocational or factual or empirical. They are not found in national myths of glory and power. They are not attained by force. They do not come through cognition or logical reasoning. They are intangible. They are the realities of beauty, grief, love, the search for meaning, the struggle to face our own mortality and the ability to face truth. And cultures that disregard these forces of imagination commit suicide. They cannot see.

“How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,” Shakespeare wrote, “Whose action is no stronger than a flower?” Human imagination, the capacity to have vision, to build a life of meaning rather than utilitarianism, is as delicate as a flower. And if it is crushed, if a Shakespeare or a Sophocles is no longer deemed useful in the empirical world of business, careerism and corporate power, if universities think a Milton Friedman or a Friedrich Hayek is more important to its students than a Virginia Woolf or an Anton Chekhov, then we become barbarians. We assure our own extinction. Students who are denied the wisdom of the great oracles of human civilization—visionaries who urge us not to worship ourselves, not to kneel before the base human emotion of greed—cannot be educated. They cannot think.

To think, we must, as Epicurus understood, “live in hiding.” We must build walls to keep out the cant and noise of the crowd. We must retreat into a print-based culture where ideas are not deformed into sound bites and thought-terminating clichés. Thinking is, as Hannah Arendt wrote, “a soundless dialogue between me and myself.” But thinking, she wrote, always presupposes the human condition of plurality. It has no utilitarian function. It is not an end or an aim outside of itself. It is different from logical reasoning, which is focused on a finite and identifiable goal. Logical reason, acts of cognition, serve the efficiency of a system, including corporate power, which is usually morally neutral at best, and often evil. The inability to think, Arendt wrote, “is not a failing of the many who lack brain power but an ever-present possibility for everybody—scientists, scholars, and other specialists in mental enterprises not excluded.”

Our corporate culture has effectively severed us from human imagination. Our electronic devices intrude deeper and deeper into spaces that were once reserved for solitude, reflection and privacy. Our airwaves are filled with the tawdry and the absurd. Our systems of education and communication scorn the disciplines that allow us to see. We celebrate prosaic vocational skills and the ridiculous requirements of standardized tests. We have tossed those who think, including many teachers of the humanities, into a wilderness where they cannot find employment, remuneration or a voice. We follow the blind over the cliff. We make war on ourselves.

The vital importance of thought, Arendt wrote, is apparent only “in times of transition when men no longer rely on the stability of the world and their role in it, and when the question concerning the general conditions of human life, which as such are properly coeval with the appearance of man on earth, gain an uncommon poignancy.” We never need our thinkers and artists more than in times of crisis, as Arendt reminds us, for they provide the subversive narratives that allow us to chart a new course, one that can assure our survival.

“What must I do to win salvation?” Dimitri asks Starov in “The Brothers Karamazov,” to which Starov answers: “Above all else, never lie to yourself.”

And here is the dilemma we face as a civilization. We march collectively toward self-annihilation. Corporate capitalism, if left unchecked, will kill us. Yet we refuse, because we cannot think and no longer listen to those who do think, to see what is about to happen to us. We have created entertaining mechanisms to obscure and silence the harsh truths, from climate change to the collapse of globalization to our enslavement to corporate power, that will mean our self-destruction. If we can do nothing else we must, even as individuals, nurture the private dialogue and the solitude that make thought possible. It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one’s own country, than an outcast from one’s self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind.

By Chris Hedges

10 July, 2012

@ Truthdig.com

Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years

The Egyptian revolution’s fight for life has reached a critical stage. The massive energy that toppled Egypt’s hated dictator seems to have hit a wall after Egypt’s Supreme Court dissolved parliament in what many are calling a “coup.” The military then took further action to consolidate itself, putting a halt to their fake steps towards democracy. According to the New York Times :

“… the generals had shuttered the parliament and locked out its members, taken over legislative authority even after the election of a president, and unveiled a new interim constitution protecting their power and privilege. They also named their own 100-member panel to draft a permanent charter [constitution].”

The recent winner of the presidential election, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, now must operate within the narrow confines allowed by the military, which has seized all legislative power and nearly all real executive power. Martial law remains in effect. The new president has found himself surrounded by military officials who will not allow him to make a single independent decision.

How could this happen?

What the Egyptian revolution has thus far failed to do was to destroy the real basis of the old regime’s power, ensuring that the regime would re-consolidate itself. The dictator was toppled, yes, but the institutions that upheld the regime are still in place; the state structures accustomed to a totalitarianism that serves the wealthy elite have finally made their intentions open to the public, now feeling confident that their positions are invulnerable to the revolution.

Consequently, the dictator’s inner circle responsible for approving the killing of over 900 innocent protesters will not be imprisoned, nor will the ruthless police chiefs who carried out the orders. This is because the judiciary of the country was appointed by the old regime, and are using every power at their disposal – and creating new ones in the process – to turn the wheel of history backwards to pre-revolution Egypt.

After the dictator-appointed judiciary dissolved parliament, the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, Mohammed Morsi, downplayed the event, accepting the decision.

“It is my duty as the future president of Egypt, God willing, to separate between the state’s authorities and accept the rulings [?!] “

The Brotherhood has vowed to respect “the law,” when the law is merely the military’s guns combined with a sock-puppet Supreme Court. The bizarre response of Mr. Morsi is not only a symptom of the Brotherhood’s political cowardice, but proof of its collusion with dictators; the Brotherhood is desperately attempting to integrate itself into the ruling spectrum of Egypt’s pro-capitalist politics, having accommodated itself to the old regime long enough to eat its crumbs. The new president finds himself in a situation from which any honest person would instantly resign.

Thankfully the Brotherhood’s half-hearted “opposition” has been mostly exposed to any half-conscious Egyptian. This fact is proved by the results of the first round of the presidential election: the Brotherhood received half the votes it received from the months-earlier parliamentary election.

Also, during the first round of the presidential election, the largest cities in Egypt voted for the 3rd place candidate, a Nasserite “socialist,” who more closely resembles the striving of the average working person in Egypt. The more recent actions of the Brotherhood have further exposed their leadership for what they are: an unwitting prop for the military to remain in power.

Those who started the revolution and drove out the dictator are still in the process of funneling their revolutionary energy into an organizational form capable of destroying the political and economic power of the rich on which the old regime rests.

Once the revolutionaries re-establish themselves, they’ll surely have learned that, in order to push the revolution forward the entire state apparatus of the previous regime must be shattered, especially the military elite, police, and judiciary, who are using their institutional power to strike blows against the revolution.

Equally important is the economic base of the state’s power, which also needs to be taken from those who currently control it. Many of Egypt’s big businesses are powerful because of their direct connections with the military, and are often owned by generals and their government friends.

The Los Angeles Times recently explained :

“… the [Egyptian] army controls a multibillion-dollar business empire that trades in products not normally associated with men in uniform: olive oil, fertilizer, televisions, laptops, cigarettes, mineral water, poultry, bread and underwear…Estimates suggest that military-connected enterprises account for 10% to 40% of the Egyptian economy. It is an opaque realm of foreign investments, inside deals and privilege that has grown quietly for decades, employing thousands of workers and operating parallel to the army’s defense industries.”

If the military’s wealth isn’t nationalized – and much of its wealth comes from recent privatizations of public utilities – the money will continue to fuel the power of dictators.

To reach these goals the revolutionary working people of Egypt need to act independently in massive numbers, as they did at the revolution’s beginning. However, this independence needs to be organized enough to fully displace the existing powers of Egypt; the demands of “Mubarak must go” need to be replaced by new demands that address the deeper military and economic ties of the old regime.

To help give voice and organization to these demands, a revolutionary constituent assembly will likely remain a popular and necessary demand, so that a really democratic constitution can be created with the active participation of all working people. The demand for a constituent assembly has proved to be a revolutionary demand throughout the Latin American revolution, whose situations were very similar to Egypt’s today.

The electoral process of Egypt has been proven a sham, and the working people will not so easily accept the same dictatorship with a slightly different face. Since the election failed to solve anything of substance, Tahrir Square will once again be the political venue of choice for working Egyptians seeking revolutionary political and economic change.

By Shamus Cooke

19 June, 2012
Countercurrents.org

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org ) He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

Many scholars have argued that the events of September 11, 2001 marked a new era in world history. After 9/11, the United States drastically intensified its foreign policy towards the Middle East. Its involvement in the region is largely influenced by Israel and the Jewish lobby within the US, and due to sustaining its oil interests. The events of September 11 not only allowed the United States to target a new enemy, terrorists, but it also allowed Israel to classify Palestinian freedom fighters as terrorists. The new enemy, terrorism, legitimized the Israeli government’s war on the Palestinian population and the United States government “Global War on Terror.” As a result of 9/11, national security became a priority for the American government and was also a reason for the United States to promote a stronger grip in the Middle East.

On June 27, 2012, the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) hosted Professor David Griffin, a philosophy and a theology professor at Claremont University, to give a lecture about September 11 and its relation to the ecological crisis. Griffin first discussed the graveness of the transnational problems of carbon emissions and ocean acidification. He stated that, “the failure of politicians to deal with this is one of the greatest political failures.” He was very critical of the role that the United States plays in dealing with environmental damages. While the US is a global leader, it is also the chief polluter along with other countries such as China and Brazil. Though there are other global problems such as the build-up of nuclear weapons, Griffin states that the ecological threat is more dangerous because with a nuclear war, someone would have to trigger it, whereas the ecological crisis is a gradual process and a deteriorating problem. If business continues in an uncontrollable way and does not take into consideration environmental damage, “civilization will be threatened.” According to Griffin, the political response has been negligent: no steps have been taken in order to stabilize the problem and measures have not been taken to reduce the parts per million figures. Moreover, an effective instrument to control man-made crises such as environmental degradation does not exist. Corporations are concerned with profits and political leaders are subservient to their activities because it is in their interests. He states that one of the main reasons for not controlling businesses is because this would hurt the potential of the US economy.

In the second part of Griffin’s lecture, he questions the validity of the United States’ government claim of who was responsible for 9/11. He believes that after the Cold War ended, a new enemy had to replace the Soviet Union, thus terrorism became the new intimidation. This however, is rhetoric in order to maintain military build-up and spending. Griffin provides a chain of facts and evidence that questions the official report produced by the US government of September 11. For example, after the plane crashed into the twin towers, palladium molten was found as part of the residue, but how was an office fire strong enough to melt a metal that needs a higher temperature to melt? He also criticized President Bush for not acting faster when he had heard about the attack. Another piece of evidence that does not fit the official version was the attack on the Pentagon. Griffin states that the Consensus 9/11 Panel, a panel that opposes the narrative of 9/11, has concluded that it is impossible for a Boeing 757 to hit the Pentagon as it did. Griffin concludes that the evidence does not match the story published by the government and leans towards the idea that the US itself could have been involved in the attacks.

The paranoia of terrorism is a way for the US government to direct the public’s attention to trivial issues. Instead of dealing with serious problems such as the ecological crisis, the US government and media ignore the problem and promote the fight against terrorism. Griffin concludes that countries should not and cannot depend on the United States to combat environmental damage because as a global leader, it has neglected one of today’s most important issues. He suggests that other countries form a coalition against the United States to combat and stabilize environmental damage. Because its tribunal denounced the American leaders of the Bush administration as war criminals, Malaysia is an ideal nation in this region to lead the way for a united coalition.

The audience asked many questions regarding this last statement. One of the participants asked how Malaysia could become a leader when under Prime Minister Mahathir the government was involved in a few ecological-damaging projects. Another question was how important is Malaysia to lead a coalition against the United States. Other comments included America’s negligence of national security in the twin towers areas on September 11. The audience was very interested and responded well to Griffin’s lecture.

The conclusion of the lecture is that elites ignore global challenges because they serve their own interests rather than national interests. They have not yet come to terms with the ecological crisis and create deceptive scenarios to divert the public’s attention. Lastly, in order to be aware of the unobvious, one must be critical of the media and see more than one side of the story.

By: Nama Al-Aboodi

A new report by the Tax Justice Network released Sunday reveals that between $21 trillion and $31 trillion is currently tucked away in global tax havens by the global super-rich–an amount that far exceeds previous estimates. Through exploiting gaps in global tax rules, the global financial elite are managing to hide “as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together” from taxation, leaving the world’s poor to carry the burden of global debt through harsh austerity measures.

$32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens represents up to to $280 billion in lost income tax revenues, according to the study released to the Guardian’s Observer.

The report pools data from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and global central banks.

In the report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, the Tax Justice Network details the ways in which the trillions of dollars are essentially smuggled out of countries into tax free havens such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands through private banks.

According to the calculations, £6.3tn of assets is owned by only 92,000 people–0.001% of the world’s population

“The problem here is that the assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments,” the report says.

“These estimates reveal a staggering failure: inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people,” said John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network. “People on the street have no illusions about how unfair the situation has become.”

By Common Dreams

22 July, 2012

@ CommonDreams

James Henry, who compiled the report, stated: “[Wealth is] protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy.”

Between the chaos and artillery fire unfolding in Homs and Damascus, the current siege against the Ba’athist State of Bashar al-Assad parallels events of nearly a century ago. In efforts to maintain its protectorate, the French government employed the use of foreign soldiers to smother those seeking to abolish the French mandated, Fédération Syrienne. While former Prime Minister Faris al-Khoury argued the case for Syrian independence before UN in 1945, French planes bombed Damascus into submission. Today, the same government – in addition to the United States and its client regimes in Libya and Tunisia – enthusiastically recognize the Syrian National Council as the legitimate leadership of Syria. Although recent polls funded by the Qatar Foundation claim 55% of Syrians support the Assad regime, the former colonial powers have made a mockery of the very democratic principles they tout.

Irrespective to the views of the Syrian people, their fate has long been decided by forces operating beyond their borders. In a speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California in 2007 retired US Military General Wesley Clark speaks of a policy coup initiated by members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Clark cites a confidential document handed down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2001 stipulating the entire restructuring of the Middle East and North Africa. Portentously, the document allegedly revealed campaigns to systematically destabilize the governments of Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.Under the familiar scenario of an authoritarian regime systematically suppressing peaceful dissent and purging large swaths of its population, the mechanisms of geopolitical stratagem have freely taken course.

Syria is but a chess piece being used as a platform by larger powers. Regime change is the unwavering interest of the US-led NATO block in collaboration with the feudal Persian Gulf Monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This is being accomplished by using Qatar-owned media outlets such as Al-Jazeera to project their version of the narrative to the world and by arming radical factions of the regions Sunni-majority population against the minority Alawi-Shia leadership of Assad. Since 2005, the Bush administration began funding Syrian opposition groups that lean toward the Muslim Brotherhood and their aspirations to build a Sunni-Islamic State. The Muslim Brotherhood has long condemned the Alawi-Shia as heretics and historically attempted multiple uprising in the 1960’s. By arming radical Sunni factions and importing Iraqi Salafi-jihadists and Libyan mercenaries, the NATOGCC plans to topple Assad and install an illegitimate exiled opposition leader such as Burhan Ghaliun (leader of the Syrian National Council) to be the face of the new regime.

The recent example of implementing foreign policy by arming Al-Qaeda fighters in Libya has proved disastrous – as the rule of law passes from the NATO-backed Libyan Transitional Council to hundreds of warring guerilla militias. At a meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Hillary Clinton, Davutoglu pledged to find ways outside the United Nations Security Council to pressure Assad. In addition to bolstering longstanding sectarian divides in Syria, the US is smuggling arms into Syria from Incirlik military base in Turkey and providing financial support for Syrian rebels. Syrian opposition forces led by defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad have been trained on Turkish soil since May 2011. Exclusive military and intelligence sources have reported to Israel’s DEBKAfile that British and Qatari special operations units are assisting rebel forces in Homs by providing body armor, laptops, satellite phones and managing rebel communications lines that request logistical aid, arms and mercenaries from outside suppliers.

Although the UK has vehemently denied these reports, Qatar’s leader Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani recently suggested sending troops into Syria to battle Assad’s forces. Military bases situated near Turkey’s southeastern border with northern Syria have become a crucial hub used for the delivery of outside supplies. Unmarked NATO warplanes near Iskenderum have received fighters from Libya’s Transitional National Council wielding weapons formerly belonging to Gaddafi’s arsenal. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, (former leader of the extremist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group turned NTC military governor at the directive of NATO) is leading the infiltration of Libyans into Syria in person with the help of the Turkish government. It has also been reported that Mahdi al-Harati, resigned from his functions as deputy chief of the Military Council in Tripoli to oversee the Free Syrian Army.

Syrian press has also reported that armed terrorist groups brandishing up-to-date American and Israeli weapons have roamed the countryside of Damascus committing blind acts of terror by setting off explosive devices and kidnapping civilians. As the NATOGCC continue to insist that Assad is committing acts of genocide against unarmed civilians, one must draw correlations between events reported by the Syrian state media and recent statements released by the leadership of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, praising the arrival of Iraqi fighters in Syria and advising rebels to use roadside bombs. Paradoxically, Al-Qaeda front man Ayman al-Zawahri has called on Muslims from across the Arab World to mobilize and support the Free Syrian Army after the disappointing Russian and Chinese veto at the UNSC. Few things are more absurd than the notion of Al-Qaeda terrorists – unanimously portrayed as ostensible “savages” by virtually all-Western media sources – entrust the apparatus of the United Nations and their capacity to resolve the Syrian conflict. The true purpose of Al-Qaeda and its role in influencing foreign policy has never been more evident.

Surely, Assad accusing foreign-sponsored terrorist groups of fomenting violence in Syria is simply evidence of his illegitimacy – as Western and Gulf allies assert. Even as Syrian state TV broadcasts reports showing seized weapons stockpiles and confessions by terrorists describing how they obtained arms from foreign sources, the NATOGCC continues to draft legislation in an effort pressure the Assad regime into dissolution. In the face of an outright campaign of foreign-funded sabotage, Syrian hackers have targeted Al-Jazeera’s “Syria Live Blog”, which provides ongoing coverage of the unrest. The hacker-ring boldly denounced Al Jazeera for broadcasting “false and fabricated news to ignite sedition among the people of Syria to achieve the goals of Washington and Tel Aviv.”

Through the fiery rhetoric of Susan Rice and her relentless condemnation of Assad – like Gaddafi before him – the United States is again attempting to invoke the Right to Protect (R2P) doctrine to take direct action against the Assad regime. In another parallel to the Libyan conflict, the UN’s astounding official death toll in Syria is taken solely from human rights groups, backed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Criminal Court and the Syrian National Council. The official numbers rely exclusively on an obscure organization known as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) – based in London, not Damascus – whose evidence is largely reliant on hearsay, pixelated YouTube videos and activist Twitter feeds. SOHR’s disputed reports present evidence that would not hold up in any court of law, much less should it be the basis of United Nations resolutions. The Observatory’s director Rami Abdelrahman collaborates directly with British Foreign Minister William Hague and derives legitimacy solely from connections with corporate/foundation-funded civil society networks. Claims that Assad’s security forces indiscriminately kill scores of newborn babies are palpably a product of Britain’s foreign office.

As a further indication of the on-going media war in Syria, none is more telling than the report produced by the Arab League’s observer mission into Syria. The contents of the report were completely ignored by the corporate-media after Qatar disputed its findings, the only nation to do so in the Arab League’s Ministerial Committee. The report unalterably concluded that the Syrian government was in no way lethally repressing peaceful protestors. Furthermore, the report credits armed gangs with the bombing of civilian buses, trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and the bombing of bridges and pipelines. During an interview with Arab League observer Ahmed Manaï, he praises the Sino-Russian veto at the UNSC and encouraged the Syrian leadership to implement reforms. Manaï states, “The Arab League is entirely discredited by burying the report of its own observers’ mission and its appeal to the Security Council. It missed the opportunity to participate in the settlement of the Syrian affair. All it can offer in the future will be worthless.”

While the initial observer report is predictably absent from mainstream media coverage and cited as inept (presumably for contradicting the official line of the allied Western-Gulf powers), Arab League mission leader Mohammed al-Dabi officially resigned, stating, “I won’t work one more time in the framework of the Arab League, I performed my job with full integrity and transparency but I won’t work here again as the situation is skewed.” The United Nations and the Arab League are now considering what was originally a joint observer mission – now referred to as a peacekeeping mission. The Arab League, in tandem with Saudi Arabia is preparing a nearly identical resolution calling for an armed peacekeeping council to present to the UN. Much like the indistinguishable saber rattling seen before Libyan intervention, the new resolution condemns Assad for lethal repression and calls for a transitional shift to democracy. The resolution is expected to create similar Sino-Russian divisions over its implementation, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Gennady Gatilov, previously scorned the document as “the same unbalanced draft resolution text.”

The conflict in Syria has brought light to longstanding Cold War divisions between world powers. The Sino-Russian veto of the UNSC resolution calling for intervention has blocked the opportunity for Western powers to exert overt aggression, as demonstrated by NATO in Libya. Instead, it appears that the Assad regime will be destabilized through covert mercenary groups bent on committing blind acts of terrorism by means of sniper assassinations and roadside bombs. Learning from the Libyan experience, Russia and China perceive the UN Human Rights Report authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the Washington-based corporate-funded think-tank, Middle East Policy Council – to be explicitly comprised; victims among the civilian population are a result of armed paramilitaries doing battle with the Syrian military in residential areas. In an interview with former Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov pledges that Russia will protect Iran, Syria, and the world from American fascism. In a show of support for the Syrian government, Russia has sent a large naval force into the region and China has further warned against a strike on Syria.

It is truly a paradox that the countries least fit to dictate principles of human rights, do so largely unhindered on the world stage. Without hesitation Hillary Clinton proclaimed, “What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty” referring to the Sino-Russian veto. She then called for the formation of an international alliance between the war-profiteering elite of the West and absolutist Wahhabi Persian Gulf monarchies – amusingly titled, the Friends of Syria. International calls to abstain from violence have done little to influence the Gulf Cooperation Council and their brutal crackdown against Shiites in Bahrain. Incredibly, Saudi Arabia has entered the dialogue on human rights and democracy promotion – perhaps the world’s most defining feudalistic theocracy, a nation that prohibits political parties and national elections and executes those who apostatize Islam.

Iran’s Press TV news network has reportedly leaked intelligence exposing the American agenda in Syria. The report calls for the recognition of the Syrian National Council as the legitimate government and their positioning in Turkey to work against the Assad regime. Washington would then task Turkey with sending troops into Syria to arm the opposition forces, followed by Wahhabi fighters and Libyan mercenaries. Ominously, the intelligence stipulates that Israel will enter the fray to carry out military operations against Syria.  If the regime fails to dissolve, Syrian state television channels will be taken down and Assad will be assassinated. Considering how other enemies of the West have faired in recent times, the sequence of events reported by Press TV would be largely unsurprising. The Wahhabis of the Persian Gulf are playing junior to American aggression in an effort to dominate the Shia-Alawi religious faction presently upheld by the leadership of Syria and Iran, but also to secure their places as regional powers.

Domestic affairs in Syria are of little consequence to the powers trying to topple the nation; the real priority is to further isolate Iran by eliminating its Shia-Alawi ally in Damascus. Israel reaps enormous benefit from toppling the Assad regime, as the Syrian Nation Council pledges to cut ties with Iran and discontinue arms shipments to Hezbollah and Hamas. If Syria falls and Iran is directly threatened, the potential for a regional conflict of the utmost seriousness exists, assuming China and Russia move in to defend Iran. Such a conflict would create detrimental implications for the global economy, potentially triggering a hyper-inflationary financial crisis. William Hague and billionaire financiers behind the civil society groups bestowing legitimacy to violent opposition actors are not the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. Although the reforms have been slow, the Assad government is in the midst of drafting a new constitution. Syria’s sovereignty has come under direct fire from powers claiming to be defending Syria’s people. An attempt on the life of Bashar al-Assad may have similar consequences to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As the Syrian National Council familiarly calls for the implementation of a no-fly zone over, those members of the International Community with any integrity left must work diligently to diffuse conflict in the region.

By Nile Bowie

Global Research, February 14, 2012

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared Tuesday that the country was in a state of war as intense fighting erupted in the capital Damascus between the government and opposition forces that are backed by the US. There were also reports of British special operations forces entering the country from neighboring Turkey.

The fighting came the same day as a belligerent speech by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan before the Turkish parliament, threatening a military response to any Syrian troop movements near the border of the two countries. This followed a meeting of NATO members, including Turkey and the US, to discuss a coordinated response to the downing of a Turkish jet by Syria late last week.

“We will not fall into the trap of warmongers,” Erdogan said, “but we will not stay silent in the face of an attack made against our plane in international airspace.” Turkey’s “wrath is fierce and intense when it needs to be,” he added.

Erdogan also said that Turkey would provide “all possible support to liberate the Syrians from dictatorship,” i.e., to assist opposition forces in overthrowing the Assad government.

The United States, in particular, is leading a campaign to seize on the downing of the plane—the details of which are still unclear—to escalate attacks on the Assad government that could pave the way for direct military intervention.

Syrian opposition forces, which have a base of operations in Turkey and are being coordinated and armed by the US and its allies, were clearly emboldened by these developments. The coordinated attack on Syrian troops in Damascus was the most significant violence in the capital since the conflict began more than a year ago. Attacks targeted the presidential palace and the Republican Guard.

The right-wing Israeli intelligence web site DebkaFile reported that British special operations forces had crossed into Syria on Tuesday. “Our military sources estimate that the British military drive into Syria, if confirmed, is designed to establish the first safe zone along the Syrian-Turkish border, to be followed by more Western military incursions,” it reported.

The actions of Turkey and NATO are aimed at bolstering the opposition forces and ensuring that they have greater freedom of movement along the 500-mile-long Syria-Turkey border.

In his speech before parliament, Erdogan said that Turkey was modifying its military rules of engagement. “Every military element approaching Turkey from the Syrian border and representing a security risk and danger will be assessed as a military threat and will be treated as a military target,” he said. At the same time, he ordered Turkish military units to deploy along the border.

This effectively prevents Syria from taking any military action against Free Syrian Army forces near the border, or if it does take such measures, they can be used as justification for a military response from Turkey.

This will give the US and Turkey a freer hand to prosecute their campaign of destabilization. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the opposition militias “are developing into a more effective fighting force with the help of an increasingly sophisticated network of activists here in southern Turkey that is smuggling crucial supplies across the border, including weapons, communications gear, field hospitals and even salaries for soldiers who defect.”

The CIA is already directing arms to the opposition forces while seeking to organize them into an effective fighting force. The Syrian “rebels” are in fact a proxy force for US imperialism and its allies.

While threatening war, NATO and Turkey have provided no new evidence to support their account of the shooting down of the Turkish warplane, which Syria maintains was inside Syrian airspace. Turkey claims that the plane did briefly enter Syrian airspace, but was two kilometers outside at the time it was shot down.

At a press conference Tuesday, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the shooting down of the plane “unacceptable” and said the NATO countries stood together “in the spirit of strong solidarity” with Turkey. The shooting down of the jet, he claimed, “is another example of the Syrian authorities’ disregard for international norms, peace and security, and human life.”

However, Rasmussen refused to answer any questions from journalists about the details of the incident itself.

While Turkey claims the plane was on a mission to test Turkish radar, several commentators have speculated that it may have been seeking to determine the location of Syrian air defense systems. Any attempt to provide greater coverage for oppositional forces or carry out a direct military attack would have to take out these systems.

There are many inconsistencies in the Turkish-NATO account of the incident, including the fact that the plane wreckage landed in Syrian waters.

Syrian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Jihad Makdissi said on Tuesday that Syria had given the Turkish government wreckage from the fighter, including the tail, where “you can see clearly the holes and traces of the machine gun” bullets that took down the plane. The maximum range of these guns is 2.5 kilometers, which would not allow them to shoot down a plane outside of Syrian airspace (which extends 22 kilometers from the coastline).

An account published on the Syrian state media web site stated that the plane was traveling at a very low altitude towards Syria, below the reach of radar. It was shot down when it appeared “one to two kilometers from the beach and Syrian land, and became suddenly visible to the naked eye.”

Regardless of the specific circumstances, the United States has clearly decided to use the incident to shift its campaign against the Assad government to a new stage. The basic aim of the Obama administration is the overthrow of the Syrian government, which it is determined to achieve in one form or another. Its broader aim is to establish more direct control over the Middle East and Central Asia, an agenda that has already produced wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Any military conflict with Syria could quickly involve its principal allies—Iran, Russia and China. American imperialism is creating the conditions for a global catastrophe.

By Joseph Kishore

27 June, 2012

@ WSWS.org

A new book reveals that a department known as Kidon within the Mossad has dispatched assassins into Iran in order to murder the nuclear scientists, thereby stunting the country’s nuclear energy program.

Authors Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman in their book Spies against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars state that the notorious spy agency has killed at least four Iranian nuclear scientists, including targeting them with operatives on motorcycles, an assassination technique used by the elite killers at Kidon.

The Kidon killers “excel at accurate shooting at any speed and staying steady to shoot and to place exquisitely shaped sticky bombs” and consider it their hallmark.

Kidon, known to be one of the world’s most efficient killing machines, is technically described as a little Mossad within Mossad.

Tasked with carrying out covert ops across the world, Kidon has embarked on a number of black ops and assassinations in different countries.

Those who kill for Kidon are selected either from within the Mossad spy agency or from among the natives of the countries where they plan to carry out assassinations.

For instance, in case of the nuclear assassinations conducted in Iran by Kidon, they basically hired people with Iranian or dual nationalities. One of the Mossad assassins was Majid Jamali Fashi who confessed he had cooperated with Mossad for financial reasons only.

Majid Jamali Fashi assassinated Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, a professor at Tehran University in January 2011 by blowing an explosive-laden motorbike via a remote-controlled device. He reportedly received training from Mossad inside Israel as well as $120,000 to assassinate the Iranian scientist. According to his confession, Jamali Fashi received forged documents in Azerbaijan’s Heydar Aliyev Airport to travel to Tel Aviv.

He confessed, “I woke up early in the morning and as we were trained I went to the warehouse. I had to prepare the box which contained the bomb. I took the motorbike out of the house and reached a location that I had to contact them. I went to the alley [where the professor resided]. It was vacant. No one was there. I brought the bike to the sidewalk and parked it in front of the house. They told me that the mission had been accomplished and that I had to discard my stuff.”

Jamali Fashi was executed under the Iranian judicial system on 15 May, 2012. Parenthetically, Azerbaijan has in recent years become an apparent haven for Mossad spies and assassins.

Another Mossad operative of Iranian nationality has been identified as Ja’far Khoshzaban, alias Javidan, who has been working under the auspices of Azeri security forces and who has been involved in nuclear assassinations. Iranian intelligence ministry has demanded the extradition of Mossad’s Iranian spy from Azerbaijan. Iran has reportedly obtained documents, suggesting that Azeri officials have aided and abetted Mossad and CIA agents in their targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists, namely Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. As a matter of fact, CIA is constantly mentioned along with Mossad as the main elements in the nuclear assassinations.

Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated on January 11, 2012 when an unknown motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car near a college building of Allameh Tabatabaei University in northern Tehran.

Using the same ‘sticking bomb technique’, the Kidon assassins attached bombs to the vehicles of Iranian university professors Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi and detonated the explosives on November 29, 2010. Professor Shahriari was killed immediately, but Dr. Abbasi and his wife only sustained minor injuries.

As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men: 1. Tracer 2. Transporter 3. Helper 4. Killer. The tracer spots the target. The transporter guides the assassination team to the target. The helper basically serves as the motorcycle driver who helps the killer and the killer is tasked with shooting the target or attaching magnetic bomb to the car of the victim.

According to the book Spies against Armageddon , the Kidon agents are well-trained in shooting and placing “exquisitely shaped sticky bombs” and consider it their hallmark.

These facts aside, it rather seems sort of naïve to disregard the role of the CIA-backed MKO terrorists in the nuclear assassinations and give all the credit to the Kidon agents. There is solid evidence which evinces the MKO role in the assassination of the Iranian scientists.

American commentator Richard Silverstein believes that the primary source of income for the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) comes from the assassinations the group conducts within the Iranian soil at the behest of the Mossad. He argues that “If you’re a terrorist on behalf of Israel, as MKO is, then you’re kosher as far as (US-based Israeli publicist) Dershowitz is concerned. And your money is golden. Where does the money come from? Possibly from the Iran assassinations the MKO performs on Mossad’s behalf, which undoubtedly pay well. Then there’s the possibility that the USD 400-million Bush allocated for destabilizing Iran in 2007 has found its way either to the MKO or Mossad (or both)”

More to the point, the CIA works in the same satanic league with the Mossad and MKO. Time and again, the officials in Washington have encouraged and even confessed to the killings of the Iranian nuclear scientists.

Former US senator Rick Santorum callously described the assassination of Iranian scientists as “wonderful,” threatening that those who work for Iran’s nuclear program “are not safe.”

“On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that’s a wonderful thing, candidly.”

He also said, “I think we should send a very clear message that if you are a scientist from Russia, North Korea, or from Iran and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a bomb for Iran, you are not safe.”

Also, former Bush administration ambassador to the UN John Bolton said on Fox News that the killing of an Iranian scientist and sanctions against Iran constitute only “half-measures in the quest to stunt Iran’s nuclear ambitions”.

Former White House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called for covert action, including ” taking out their scientists ” and cyberwarfare.

Quotations of this nature are legion and all these facts reinforce the idea that Washington has been making clandestine efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear energy program in cahoots with Tel Aviv and their lackey i.e. the MKO.

By Ismail Salami

10 July, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

Due to a recent spate of abusive, racist and xenophobic comments we are forced to revise our comment policy and has put all comments on moderation que.

With the issuance of a constitutional decree Sunday night, the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) finalized the coup it staged last Thursday and proclaimed a military dictatorship.

Only two days before the run-off of the Egyptian presidential election, the US-backed junta had dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament and the constitutent assembly, which had been tasked with the drafting of a new constitution.

With the constitutional decree, an amendment to the military-authored constitutional declaration issued March 30, 2011, SCAF is asserting full control over political life in Egypt.

Article 56 of the decree hands over all budgetary and legislative powers to the junta until a new parliament is elected. Article 60 B allows the generals to decide the composition of the constituent assembly and control the drafting of a new constitution.

Article 53 further expands the economic and political influence of the military. It codifies that SCAF stands above the law and enshrines the military’s control over any future government, including the president.

It specifies that “the incumbent SCAF members are responsible for deciding on all issues related to the armed forces, including appointing its leaders and extending the terms in office of the aforesaid leaders. The current head of the SCAF is to act as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and minister of defense until a new constitution is drafted.”

Article 53/1 states that “the president can declare war only after the approval of SCAF.”

Under these conditions, the results of the run-off of the presidential election between Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister under ousted President Hosni Mubarak, and Mohamed Mursi, the Islamist candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), have little significance. The future president will be nothing more than a figurehead of SCAF.

The decree was announced only 20 minutes after the polling stations closed on Sunday. The elections–held at gunpoint, with military helicopters circling over the polling stations–were marked by fraud and numerous violations. On Monday, both campaigns declared their candidate the winner with 52 percent of the vote.

Al-Ahram Online and most other Egyptian media outlets reported that Mursi was in the lead. Official results are to be announced on Thursday.

Workers and youth reacted with a mass abstention to the first presidential election since the revolutionary ouster of longtime dictator Mubarak. Both candidates are right-wing representatives of the Egyptian ruling elite, deeply hostile to the revolution and widely despised in the working class.

The orchestrated election, the military coup and the constitutional amendments have exposed the “democratic transition” promoted by the Egyptian ruling elite and its imperialist allies in the US and Europe as a cynical fraud. These developments have also exposed the political bankruptcy of all the official political forces in Egypt–Islamist, liberal, and petty-bourgeois “left”–who declared that democracy could be established under the junta’s heel.

It was never the junta’s aim to organize a “democratic transition,” but rather to protect the power and wealth of the Egyptian ruling elite, beginning with the social privileges of the generals. From the day of the revolutionary ouster of US-stooge Mubarak, it was the single-minded goal of SCAF to defend the Egyptian bourgeois state and imperialist domination of Egypt and the entire region against the threat posed by the mass strikes and protests of the working class.

With the coup and the constitutional amendments, the generals are seeking to intimidate and suppress any renewed struggle of the working class, the main force behind the Egyptian revolution.

Article 53b of the decree allows the army to intervene to crush any mass protests that challenge the authority of the generals: “If the country faces internal unrest which requires the intervention of the armed forces, the president can issue a decision to commission the armed forces–with the approval of SCAF–to maintain security and defend public properties.”

One day before the coup, SCAF issued a decree allowing military and police forces to arrest anyone who is “harmful to the government” or who “destroys property,” “resists orders” or “obstructs traffic.”

US imperialism, the main backer and sponsor of the military junta, is clearly behind the establishment of open military rule in Egypt. AFP reported that US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the leader of SCAF, one day after the coup.

According to a Pentagon statement, Panetta called “to discuss current events in Egypt” and emphasized the need to “move forward expeditiously with Egypt’s political transition, including conducting new legislative elections as soon as possible.”

Tantawi in turn “reiterated” the commitment of the junta “to hold free and fair presidential elections as scheduled and to transfer power to a democratically elected government by July 1.” According to the statement, both “agreed on the importance of the US-Egyptian strategic relationship,” and Panetta stated that “he looks forward to working with Egypt’s newly elected government to advance our mutual interests.”

On Monday, Pentagon spokesmen George Little told reporters the US was “deeply concerned about new amendments to the constitutional declaration, including the timing of their announcement as polls were closing for the presidential election.”

Little’s comments are a cynical evasion. Panetta’s talk with Tantawi one day after the coup makes clear that the US is backing SCAF’s counterrevolutionary offensive as firmly as it backed the Mubarak regime in the initial days of the revolution, when it cracked down on mass working class protests with deadly violence.

By Johannes Stern

19 June, 2012
WSWS.org