Steve Lendman: Is Israel Spoiling for Another Fight?

Throughout its history, Israel preemptively attacked Palestinians and regional neighbors, boldly even sinking our American USS Liberty, despite the fact that we are the only state in the world who have to endure our brutal clients' temper tantrums. Until his death, Edward Said passionately defended Palestinian rights. He accused Israel of turning Palestine into an isolated prison, suffocating an entire population, impoverishing and slaughtering them, blaming them for its own state state terror, and creating a wasteland of destruction and human misery. Moreover, he said Israeli regimes sanctioned torture, targeted assassinations, and mass killings as official policy, besides committing every imaginable human indignity and degradation against people for their faith, ethnicity and presence. As a result, Israel perpetuates a never ending cycle of violence and destruction, planning to end "the Palestinian problem," calling courage and resistance "terrorism", offering nothing in return for outrageous demands, and pursuing dominating pacification disguised as "peace". Journalist Henry Siegman once called it "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history". Gideon Levy calls it "an unborn baby", saying there's "never been an Israeli peace camp". How can there be, when decades of Israeli leaders called peace process negotiations "a useful fiction". For example, Moshe Ya'alon, former IDF chief of staff and current Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs, believes Jews have an "unassailable right to settle anywhere, particularly here, in the land of the Bible." Earlier, he mocked the peace process, saying it's used politically "to sear deep into the consciousness of the Palestinians that they are a defeated people." Former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan called the Occupied West bank "permanent," and current Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier said the peace process is "a waste of time", while planning new confrontations to prove it.

Joel S. Hirschhorn: Despicable Lies, Delusional Economic Recovery, Hyped Unemployment Numbers

Bottom Line: The US government lies, and most Americans gobble up false and misleading information that is nothing less than political propaganda. Take the highly hyped unemployment number for March 2011, of 8.8 percent that that moved like a tornado through the media and was praised by Democrat politicians and the White House. As if that number were accurate, as if it fairly describes unemployment. It does NOT. What is called by "experts", such as Leo Hindery, as the real unemployment number was actually 17.7 percent, which is remarkably higher. To appreciate that much higher number is to throw a large bucket of cold water on all the political spin on the economic recovery. The official government unemployment figure has been carefully crafted to intentionally underestimate actual unemployment. The way the data are collected through a survey of homes, intentionally ignores a number of unemployed and underemployed Americans. The latter includes those who have stopped looking for a job, because it has become crystal clear to them that there are no jobs, as well as those working part-time, when what they really want is a good full time job.

Gigantic Concrete Pump Heads to Japan's Hot Spot!

A Sacramento businessman hopes his company's massive concrete boom pump will helpbury Japan's nuclear reactor worries: Mike Parigini, the 60-year-old founderand owner of Associated Concrete Pumping in Sacramento, has sold his nearly 190,000-pound pump back to its maker - Putzmeister America Inc. of Sturtevant, Wisconsin. Parigini said the pump will soon be on its way to Japan, likely to initially help cool leaking nuclear reactors with streams of water, then later, encase them under tons of concrete. Putzmeister America officials said Thursday that Parigini and a Georgia concrete contractor "made the pumps available upon learning of the need in Japan." "To be honest, I feel like my only contribution was helping with initial design of the machine," Parigini said Thursday. "Otherwise, we're just doing what businesses do: take problems and try to fix them. Parigini said Putzmeister - an arm of Germany's Putzmeister Concrete Pumps Gmbh -has already been working with Japanese authorities to help cool the leaky nuclear reactors in northern Japan. But the long-term plan, Parigini said, calls for the pumps to be used to pour acres of concrete onto them, sealing off airborne contamination. Putzmeister is sending Parigini's pump, the one in Georgia and two smaller ones to join a pump already working at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant. Parigini described the effort ahead as "a Herculean logistical task." Putzmeister said Parigini's 70Z-Meter concrete pump is the world's largest, and includes a boom that can reach over 227 feet. It's scheduled to leave Los Angeles International Airport at 5 a.m. Saturday. The pump is so huge that it will travel on a Russian Antonov-225 cargo jet, one of the world's largest aircraft.

Who Wants WAR: Sweden Does!!

Sweden, though NOT a member of NATO, but with a relatively powerful army, wants to join the bombing of Libya! Who's a moron? Sweden's a MORON! Personally, I don't really LIKE war, having seen the bombing of Dresden by Britain and the United States from a hill, only a very short distance from the doomed city. My mother, grandmother, and I first heard the enormous vibrations from Britain's heavy Lancaster bombers, which flew so low over the farmhouse where we had sought refuge that a picture in a heavy frame bounced threateningly against our wall. When the bombers had passed, my mother, grandmother, and I ventured outside to see the damage to that beautiful city, now totally a sea of rubble. Since we had just celebrated Christmas in Breslau, I started singing "Stille Nacht", (Silent Night), while my mother and grandmother wept silently. For nearly 200 years, Sweden has been a neutral country. However, this neutrality lately seems declarative. Swedes (as well as non-aligned Finland) participated in NATO's "Partnership for Peace". NATO forces are conducting increasingly more exercises on Swedish territory. Two years ago, Sweden and Finland had agreed with members of the Alliance Norway, Denmark and Iceland on joint patrolling of maritime boundaries in the Arctic, and creating combined Navy and a rapid response unit.

Was Obama born in the United States?

Why did "President" Obama have to forge his birth certificate? Was he born in the United States or Hawaii? Why won't he produce his long-form birth certificate? Why did he need to spend several million dollars to make sure no one sees it? Exactly what does he have to hide? Why does his Social Security number start with "042", which normally means that it originated from Connecticut, where Obama has never lived? Did he ever register for the draft? In a recent interview on NBC's "Today" show, Donald Trump said: "I want to see the birth certificate" "How come his own family doesn't know which hospital he was born in? How come his own family doesn't know which hospital he was born in? (In my case, I was born in Breslau, Germany - now renamed Wroclaw, Poland, but I digress. Though I served with honor in Vietnam as Advisory Team Leader, I would never stoop to falsify any of my records, even though I might want a better deal from our armed forces when I retired) Back to the Obama problem: In the hospital where Obama was allegedly born, there is NO record of his birth. In other words, we don't know how much his family paid, who the attending doctor was, and where his recovery room was located. Dr. Jerome Corsi will release his new book on May 17, 2011, titled: "Where is the birth certificate?" Corsi researched for two years in order to determine "if" Barack Obama possesses a valid US born birth certificate. According to his interview on the Peter Boyles show in Denver, Colorado , Corsi cannot validate any legal birth certificate for Obama: If indeed he doesn't have one, Trump believes we are looking to one of the greatest scams ever perpetrated on the American people: Obama may not be able to run in several states because legislatures are passing bills to demand that presidential candidates are passing bills to demand that that presidential candidates validate their birth certificates, and that they are valid American citizens by birth.

Wayne Madsen: The Israeli Lobby Owns Congress, Hollywood, and the Whitehouse.

Wayne Madsen is an American investigative journalist and columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the "Wayne Madsen Report". He has appeared on ABC News, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al-Jezeera, MSNBC and Press TV. Madsen has written the introduction to the book "Forbidden Truth: US - Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Failed Search for bin Laden" His articles have appeared on a number of news websites and magazines including Global Research, Pacific Free Press, Online Journal, Counter Punch, The American Conservative, Tehran Times and In These Times. He has more than 20 years of experience in security affairs. As a US Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the US Navy. He has also worked for the NSA National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation: There are many unanswered questions regarding the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001. Madsen: "I believe the 9/11 attacks were an operation carried out by Mossad, Saudi Intelligence, with which Mossad has had, and continues to have a close relationship since the days of the Safari Club of western and Middle East intelligence services, combining their operations and elements of the CIA. Cossiga, Gul, parliament members in Germany, Britain and Japan, the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, and others all understood this was an inside job, that also involved a handful of people at the top of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, A.B. Krongard of the CIA, and Rudolph Giuliani as well.

Lawyer Drafts Articles of Impeachment Over Libya!

Someone has finally been moved to action by Barack Obama's increasingly lawless administration. Bruce Fein, a former high-ranking official in the Reagan Justice Department, who wrote the first article of impeachment against Bill Clinton, has drawn up formal articles of impeachment against the president. Fein explained the final straw was Obama's unwise, unauthorized and unconstitutional military action against Libya. "Barack Hussein Obama has mocked the rule of law, endangered the very existence of the Republic and the liberties of the people, and perpetrated high crime and misdemeanor. The Founding Fathers required the president to seek a Congressional declaration of war before engaging in armed hostilities, with the possible exception of repelling a sudden invasion or a limited military response. The last two Democratic presidents have taken the armed forces into combat without any legislative authorization. Bill Clinton in Kosovo and Obama in Libya. Fein states this usurpation of Congressional authority should concern our elected officials, and lovers of liberty everywhere. Fein is a recognized legal scholar, whose work could be adopted without change as the legal basis for impeachment.

Islamic Terrorists Join Libya's "Pro-Democracy" OppositionK

NOW Hear THIS: In Libya, as in our United States, concepts are turned upside down: The US-NATO military alliance is supporting a rebellion integrated by Islamic Terrorists, in the name of "War on Terrorism". Among the various factions in that mess, we find Royalists, defectors from the Qadhafi regime including the Minister of Justice. Hell, American Veterans, like those of us who served with honor in Vietnam, can't even get "justice" from our own Obama government! But I digress: Rarely acknowledged by the Western media, Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi Libya, the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) is an integral part of the "Libyan Opposition". The Libyan Interim Council DOES NOT constitute a "clearly defined entity". It is based on the representation from "newly created" local councils established to "manage daily life in the liberated cities and villages." Opposition forces are in large part made up of an untrained civilian militia, former members of the Libyan armed forces, together with the trained paramilitary Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The latter, which is aligned with Al Qaeda, is in the frontline of the armed insurrection. Both the LIFG as an entity, as well as its individual members are categorized by the UN Security Council as "Terrorists". According to the US Treasury: "The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group threatens global safety and stability through the use of violence and its ideological alliance with al-Qaida and other brutal terrorist organizations" Here's the downside for Obama: All armies, including the ones I served in Vietnam, consider that they have to be "brutal", so that their team members can survive. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi! - "There goes the glory of our world".

Yoichi Shimatsu: Is Japan's Elite Hiding a Weapons Program Inside Nuclear Plants?

Confused and often cnflicting reports out of the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant CANNOT be solely the result of tsunami-caused breakdowns, bungling or mis-communication. Inexplicable delays and half-baked explanations from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) seem to be driven by some unspoken factor. The smoke and mirrors at Fukushima 1 seem to be obscure, reflecting an iron will and a grim task unknown to outsiders. The most logical explanation is that Fukushima is scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan's civilian nuclear power plants. A secret nuclear weapons program is detectable only when Japan's information control momentarily lapses or breaks down. Here is a close look at the gap between the official account and unexpected events: TEPCO initially reported three reactors were operating at the earthquake and tsunami. Then, a hydrogen explosion ripped Unit 3, operating with plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (or MOX). Unit 6 immediately disappeared from the list of operational reactors, as highly lethal particles of plutonium billowed out of Unit 3. (Plutonium is the stuff of smaller, more easily delivered warheads.) A fire ignited inside the damaged housing of the Unit 4 reactor, reportedly due to overheating of spent uranium fuel rods in a dry cooling pool, but the size of the fire indicates that this reactor was running hot for some other purpose than electricity generation. Its omission from the list of electricity-generating operations raises the question of whether Unit 4 was being used to enrich uranium, the first step of the process leading to extraction of weapons-grade fissionable material. The bloom of irradiated seawater across the Pacific comprises another piece of the puzzle, because its underground source is untraceable. The flooded labyrinth of pipes, where the bodies of two missing nuclear workers were found, could well contain the answer to the mystery: A lab that none dare name!

Michel Chossudovsky: Libya - Largest Military Adventure Since Iraq

Outright lies by the international media: Bombs and missiles are now an instrument of peace. The war against Libya is merely another regional war theater, like Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Vietnam, where I served as Advisory Team Leader! We are looking at the battle for oil in the sands of a merciless desert. The bombing of Libya has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for several years, as confirmed by former NATO commander General Wesley Clark: Operation Odyssey Dawn is acknowledged as the biggest Western military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq began exactly eight years ago. This war is part of the battle for oil. Libya is among the World's largest oil economies, with approximately 3.5% of global oil reserves, more than twice those of the United States. The objective is to gain control of Libya's oil and gas reserves, in the guise of "human intervention". The geopolitical and and economic implications of a US-NATO led military intervention directed against Libya are far reaching: "Operation Odyssey Dawn" is part of a broader military agenda in the Middle East and Central Asia, which consists in gaining control and corporate ownership over more than sixty percent of the world's reserves of oil and natural gas, including oil and gas pipeline routes.

Dean Henderson: Speculators, Cartels and Myths of Scarcity

Last week President Obama stated that we must accept a new reality: Demand for oil will always exceed supply. Of course, his statement was music to the ears of the Rockefeller/Rothschild energy cartel and tax-dodger oil traders. Both know full well that oil companies pay around $18 per barrel to get crude out of the ground. Big Oil rings up its usual quarterly record profit, speculators led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley tack on another $50/barrel and we still are gouged at the gas pump. Governments tighten their belts, economies contract, and the "myth" of scarcity encourages a race to the bottom for the global masses, along a historical concentration of power and wealth by the well-fed and fueled global elite. A day after Obama's endorsement of concentrated corporate power and casino capitalism, the US Department of Energy reported that the main US oil stage depot at Cushing, Oklahoma was holding 41.9 million barrels of crude oil, very near its capacity of 44 million barrels. In other words, the US is awash in crude oil. In South Dakota, the USDA announced that farmers plan to plant an additional 850,000 acres of corn - the most since 1931. According to the same USDA report, US wheat ending stocks for 2010/11 are projected higher this month on reduced export prospects.

Fukushima is Much Worse Than You Have Been Told!

At this stage of the Japanese nuclear catastrophe, its all over but the crying: The global nuclear industry is trying to kill you, and Fukushima is their latest broadside, aimed on our entire struggling planet! The entire nuclear complex, from uranium mining to nuclear weapons, to nuclear electric generating plants, to research reactors, to so-called "nuclear medicine", there is nothing positive to say about our planet's current dilemma. Does any rational person seriously think that such such total destruction can be fixed or repaired? That it is only a question of reconnecting the electricity and turning the pumps back on? The reactors and spent fuel rods have been shredded. It's a war zone, and I mean that literally. The nuclear industry has turned this planet into a giant nuclear war zone that targets the entire human race, and Fukushima is its latest battlefield. Believe me, the situation is worse than bad, its worse than dire, it is history-altering horrific. A lot of people are going to die from what is happening at Fukushima, into the millions for sure, that is not in question. The only question is how many millions. If we are lucky, only one or two million persons will die, and if we are unlucky, well, things could get really grim, unimaginably hellish, on this planet we call home.

Stephen Lendman: Obama's Terror War On Libya

Since WW II, America has gone to war as much to wage as win them, because so many profiteers benefit. The prospect of peace, in fact, terrifies government, military officials, and corporate predators, so new enemies must be invented when old ones are vanquished, are no longer of interest, or conflicts end for other reasons. Wars are solely for wealth and power, never about humanitarian intervention to liberate oppressed people, or promote "democracy." There are notions US leaders won't tolerate - in the case of Obama, doubling down on Bush, waging his Iraq and Afghan wars, fighting two others in Pakistan and Libya, another allied with Israel against Palestine, as well as proxy wars in Somalia, Central Africa, Yemen, Bahrain, Haiti, Honduras, Columbia, and at home against Muslims, Latino immigrants, and working Americans. Perhaps, now more than ever, at home and abroad, America always spurned honor, high-mindedness, justice, and rule of law principles, as well as respect for democratic values, human rights and civil liberties: "All governments lie, and nothing they say should be believed:" IF Stone. As we recall, candidate Obama pledged "hope", "change", "peace" "democratic values", closing Guantanamo in one year, ending torture, illegal spying, and detention without trial, as well as "a new era of openness" etc. etc. As President, Obama broke all of his "pledges" delivering betrayal instead of populist change. Make no mistake: His imperial ambitions are reckless, duplicitous, unscrupulous and lawless!

Congratulations, Israel - 5.8 Israelis are getting 100 Billion in US Tax Dollars!!

By the way, Obama is an illegal alien, using deceased Thomas Woods Social Security Number SSN 042-68-4425. According to the Social Security Administration, that number WAS NEVER ISSUED, said Hollister, who challenged whether the "President" is an American citizen, in a lawsuit the "Supreme Court" refused to hear January 18, without requiring a response from the White House! However, that is the Social Security number which appears on the Selective Service documents Hollister obtained. Of course, Obama can't show what he does not have, so everything he has "signed" is null and void, since he is NOT constitutionally our president! Wood's Social Security number was issued sometime between March and May of 1977. Based on Wood's number, Obama would turn 16 in August of that year, and he supposedly would turn 16 in August of that year. Wood lived on Glenview Drive in Newington, Connecticut, the state from which all "042'2" applied, while Obama "supposedly" lived in Hawaii!
Check Obama out at http://bigclicknews.blogspot.com/2011/03/obama-is-illegal-alien/

POT-KETTLE: Israel Wants an Apology Over UN Report on Gaza War??

The morons who run Israel have got to be kidding!! Yet Israel claims to fake what appears to be outraged indignation, after the leader of a United Nations panel that investigated the war in Gaza two years ago retract his central claim that Israel intentionally killed Palestinian civilians! Ya see, from where we sit as Americans, we are painfully aware that Israeli pimps and shills screw American Taxpayers out of enormous quantities of money, because our idiotic and spineless politicians don't have the guts to say NO, whenever the murderous Jews say how high. Justice Goldstone , who chaired the UN "fact-finding" mission on the Gaza conflict, said in an opinion piece published on washingtonpost.com, and reprinted in the Herald, that "if he had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document." The final report, published in September 2009, found evidence that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, but it prompted widespread condemnation of Israel's conduct of the war, and "severely damaged Israel's international standing". Calling on Justice Goldstone to apologize to Israel, its President, Shimon Perez, said it was "feigned innocence to say now that he sees things differently". NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL REAL "HUTZPA".

James Petras & Robin E. Abaya: The Euro-US War on Libya

Many critics of the ongoing Euro-US wars in the Middle East and now in North Africa, have based their arguments on cliches and generalizations devoid of fact. The most common line heard in regard to the current US-Euro war on Libya's oil wells. On the other hand Euro, and US-Euro war on Libya is that it's all about oil. Of course, the ultimate goal is the seize of Libya's oil wells, though Euro and US government spokespeople defend the war by claiming it's all about saving civilian lives in the face of genocide, calling it 'humanitarian intervention'. Following the lead of their imperial powers, most of what passes for the 'Left' in the US and Europe, ranging from Social Democrats, Marxists, Trotskyists, Greens and other assorted progressives claim they see and support a revolutionary mass uprising of the Libyan people, and not a few have called for military intervention by the imperial powers, or the UN, to help the 'Libyan revolutionaries' defeat the Gaddafi dictatorship. These arguments are without foundation and belie the true nature of US-UK-French imperial power, expansionist militarism, as evidenced in all the ongoing wars over the past decade (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.) What is much more revealing about the militarist intervention in Libya is that the major countries, which refused to engage in the war, operate via a very different form of global expansion based on economic and market forces.

James Petras: Libya and Obama's Defense of the "Rebel Uprising"

Over the past two weeks, Libya has been subjected to the most brutal imperial air, sea and land assault in its modern history: Thousands of bombs and missiles, launched from American and European submarines, warships and fighter planes are destroying Libyan military bases, airports, roads, ports, oil depots, artillery emplacements, tanks, armored carriers, planes and troop concentrations. Dozens of CIA and SAS special forces have been training, advising and mapping targets for the so-called Libyan 'rebels' engaged in a civil war against the Gaddafi government, its armed forces, popular militias and civilian supporters. Despite the massive military support and their imperial 'allies' total control of Libya's sky and coastline, the 'rebels' have proven incapable of mobilizing village or town support and are in retreat after being confronted by the Libyan government's highly motivated troops and village militias. One of the flimsiest excuses for this inglorious rebel retreat offered by the Cameron-Obama-Sarkozy 'coalition', echoed by the mass media, is that their Libyan 'clients' are "outgunned". Obviously, Obama and company don't count the scores of jets, dozens of warships and submarines, the hundreds of daily attacks and the thousands of bombs dropped on the Libyan government since the start of Western imperial intervention.