Global Research News: Russian Forces Protect Syria's

Chemical Weapons Stockpile against Terrorists! According to the Israeli Intelligence News outlet, DEBKA, Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles are being protected by Russian forces. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that "Syria has consolidated its chemical weapons stockpile in one or two locations, and they are under control." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are training Syria's military. We have kept a close watch over its chemical arsenal, Debka, December 22, 2012.
Related content: Russian Foreign Ministry: Danger of Syria Chemical Weapons Falling into the Hands of Terrorists. Russia is concerned by the prospect of Syrian chemical weapons falling into terrorist hands. Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Thursday: "The greatest danger is that parts of Syria continue to fall in the hands of terrorists. We reported yesterday: 10,000 US troops, as well as French, British and NATO troops are massing off the coast of Syria for a potential invasion. "Anonymous US sources are claiming that Syria is mixing chemical weapons. US NATO Supported Syria Rebels use Chemical Weapons against Government Forces: Militants fighting against the Syrian government have used chemical weapons against the army in Daraya near the capital, Damascus, military sources say. According to a commander of the Syrian Presidential Guard, at least seven Syrian soldiers were killed on Saturday. US Defense Contractors Training Syrian Rebels to Handle Chemical Weapons. The US and some of its European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, according to a senior US official and several senior diplomats, CNN reports. US funded training: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the authors. The Center of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross post original Global Research articles on community internet sites, as long as the text and title are not modified!

Michel Chossudovsky: Wiping Countries Off the Map!

Who's failing the "Failed States". Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread, that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, Israel must be wiped off the map. Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made. The United States has attacked, directly or indirectly, some 44 countries throughout the world, since August 1945, a number of them many times. The avowed objective of these military interventions has been to effect regime change. The cloaks of human rights and of democracy were invariably evoked to justify what were unilateral and illegal acts. This is a Pentagon memo that describes how we are going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off, Iran. I said, Is it classified? He said, Yes sir. I said, Well, don't show it to me. General Wesley Clark, Democracy Now, March 2, 2007. Washington is in the business of destroying a very long list of countries. Who is "Wiping Countries off the Map"? Iran or the United States? During a period which is euphemistically called the post war era, extending from 1945 to the present, the US has directly or indirectly, attacked more than 40 countries. While the tenets of US foreign policy are predicated on the "spread of democracy", US interventionism, through military means and covert operations, has resulted in the outright destabilization and partition of sovereign nations. Destroying countries is part of a US Imperial project, a process of global domination. Moreover, according to official sources, the US has a total of 737 military bases in foreign countries. The Washington based National Intelligence Council (NIC) in its Global Trends report, December 2012, predicts that 15 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, will become "failed states" by 2030, due to their potential for conflict and environmental ills". The list of countries in the 2012 NIC report includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, DR Congo, Malawi, Haiti, and Yemen. In its previous 2005 report, published at the outset of Bush's second term, the National Intelligence Council has predicted that Pakistan would become a failed state by 2015, "as it will be affected by civil war, complete "Talibanisation" and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons".    

Chris Hedges: The Idol Smasher!

Ishmael Reed has spent the last five decades smashing idols. Idols of race, idols of capitalism, celebrity idols, and the idols of national virtue and greatness. His essays, novels, poems, plays, songs and cartoons routinely shatter the delusions and myths of a nation stubbornly unwilling to confront its past or understand its present. He rips open a history that saw white Europeans exterminate one race and enslave another, to create the nation's prosperity, a past that includes the violent plundering of nations around the globe: Cuba, the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan among them, to show us what we have become. He names the corrosive disease of empire. He excoriates what Alexis de Tocqueville called our "perpetual practice of self applause." He battles back against the sophisticated forms of propaganda, especially from Hollywood, that perpetuate patriotic fantasies, and pander to the dark streams of paranoia, racism and fear that run like electric currents through white society. Reed's righteous fury is a heartening antidote to the squeamishness of liberals and the lunacy of the right wing. He says the editors of The New York Times, and most other major media outlets "sound like they get their instructions from Julius Streicher, the Nazi propagandist, when it comes to blacks." He calls the HBO series "The Wire", "a Neo Nazi portrait of of black people" and dismisses the movie "Precious" as a film that makes D W Griffith look like a progressive." "Lazy, no good black people, who are welfare cheats, sitting around eating chicken, and having sex with their children, right out of Lee Atwater, Master of tactics for Bush and GOP, Paul Ryan playbook, he said of the portrayals in Precious, when I reached him by phone at his home in Oakland California, "The wonderful novelist Diane Johnson was right, when she said that largely white audiences are thrilled by images of black people as dysfunctional. This has become a billion dollar market, which led critics to assert that Black Bogeyman movies sell better than sex, according to the critic C Liegh McInnis.     

Adele M Stan: Senate Leaders Work Through Weekend

to Avoid Fiscal Spending Cuts. After a White House meeting with congressional leaders of both parties, President Barack Obama appeared in the White House press room to urge lawmakers to vote on a package that would avert the automatic across the board spending cuts and tax hikes that are scheduled to go into effect on New Year's Day, if the Congress fails to act by December 31. The cuts and hikes law, known as the sequester, and dubbed the "Fiscal Cliff" by Federal Chairman Ben Bernacke, were passed into law last year under Republican pressure, in return for a lifting of the debt ceiling that allows the government to borrow enough money to meet its obligations. Emerging from this meeting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, announced their plan to work through Saturday to arrive at a deal, that the Senate could take up on Sunday, December 30. Any bill passed by the Senate would then have to see a vote in the House, which has already passed two bills on spending and revenue measures that are unacceptable to Democrats and to the president. While the president wants to raise income taxes on households earning more than $250,000 per year, the bill passed by the House in August would maintain the Bush era tax cuts on all Americans, including the wealthiest. The House also passed a package of spending cuts, intended to replace the sequester cuts, including repealing sections of Obama-care, including the funding of state based exchanges for the purchase of affordable individual health insurance policies. Other cuts target Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program, all of them unacceptable to the White House. The bill, HR 6684, which passed the Republican led House on December 19, is clearly an ideological statement, and not a piece of legislation that would stand a chance of passage in the Democratic held Senate. Yet, because the House passed these bills, Speaker John Boehner is insisting the Senate take up the job of hammering out a workable deal. The House is also slated to vote on Sunday on any bill that Reid may bring to the Senate floor. Appearing in the White House press room on Friday afternoon, President Barack Obama demanded that congressional leaders bring a proposal, regardless of its prospects for passage, to the Senate floor for an up or down vote.  

Tony Cartalucci: The United Nations Syria "Peace Plan"

is a Fraud! UN "peace envoy" Lakhdar Brahimi is attempting to broker a transitional government ahead of proposed elections in Syria. For Brahimi, his efforts are not only in vain, they are entirely disingenuous. The proposal of a "transitional government" in the midst of what is in fact a foreign invasion, funded, armed, and perpetuated openly by foreign interests, violates both Syria's sovereignty and the UN's own founding charter. It would be not unlike a UN envoy visiting Poland at the beginning of World War II, and proposing a transitional government in the midst of the Nazi invasion. The UN would clearly be a facilitator of justice, not a broker of peace. The LA Times reports in their article, "Lakhdar Brahimi works to revive Syria peace plan". "Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi made a new push Thursday to draw Syrian officials and rebels into negotiations, aiming to revive a plan for a transitional government and elections that faltered because of disagreements over the future of President Bashar Assad." The UN has categorically failed to delineate between legitimate opposition inside of Syria, and bands of roving armed terrorists committing wide scale atrocities against the Syrian people, many of which are not even from Syria, all of whom are heavily armed by the US, NATO, and its regional allies including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar as part of a long standing plan to effect regime change in both Syria and Iran. The Western Press is not only supporting the UN's disingenuous efforts, it has gone through great lengths to de-legitimise any opposition in Syria that refuses to pick up arms, or that speaks out against foreign intervention. While the LA Times attempts to make the UN plan seem reasonable, with only Syrian President Bashar al Assad and Russia standing in the way of peace, in reality, the plan is yet another effort to frame the conflict as a political struggle, instead of the foreign invasion it actually is. The armed "rebels" the UN is refusing to condemn, constitute foreign Al Qaeda fighters, including the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office, listed international terrorist organization, the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Al Nusra, also known as "Al Qaeda in Iraq," and Syria Muslim Brotherhood extremists. None of these terrorist factions would be negotiated with by Western nations, if by some means their weapons turned around from Syria and back toward the West,yet the West demands that they not only be recognized and negotiated with, but indeed handed the entire nation of Syria to rule over.         

Mike Stathis: Solving the Mystery of America's Persistently

High Jobless Rate. In many respects, much if not all of the economic gains made in the United States from the past decade have been wiped out due to Wall Street malfeasance. Looking forward, I expect America to lose at least another decade. While some of the economic turmoil is certainly due to the biggest real estate collapse in US history, a much larger portion is the result of the weak job market, which is likely to persist for a number of years. Although the real estate market appears to have bottomed, you should not expect anything other than a very gradual rise from here. In the absence of bubble conditions, the rate of real estate appreciation generally tracks that of inflation. The biggest lift to the real estate market would come from lasting improvements in the job market. Thus, it's important to identify the real reasons for the persistently high unemployment rate so that adequate solutions can be designed. If the factors accounting for the continued weakness in the labor market are not addressed, America stands a good chance to lose much more than a decade. Establishment economists have offered some ridiculous explanations when trying to account for the high unemployment rate. The purpose of this propaganda is to distract attention away from misguided economic policies, put in place by  America's fascist government. Before we discuss the establishment's explanation of the high jobless rate, let's examine some facts about the US labor market. Since mid 2009, there have been between 3.5 and 6 unemployed Americans for every job opening. This means jobs have been in short supply. This ratio is roughly double what it was in the last recession in 2001. This data reflects, in large part, that job openings are one fourth lower now than they were in the last recovery. In the first 12 months of the so called "recovery" there were 32 million job openings. While this may sound like a large number, it was 10 million fewer openings than the first 12 months of the prior recovery, which was known for being a so called jobless recovery. The shortfall in job openings during the current "recovery" compared to the previous one is widespread. Job openings continue to be small in number in nearly every sector including labor intensive service industries, such as hospitality, entertainment, and accommodation. Layoffs during the early stages of this recovery are comparable to those in the prior recovery, and thus cannot explain the lasting high unemployment rate.     

The Economist: The wolf returns, Call of the Wild!

In August 2011, Desiree Versteeg, a Dutch mortuarist, was driving home in the suburbs of Arnhem in the eastern Netherlands, when she saw an animal in the road. "At first I thought it was a dog. Then I thought it was a fox. Then, I couldn't believe my eyes, I saw it was a wolf." She got out of the car to take a picture. "I was seven or eight meters away from him. He couldn't get away, because a fence was blocking his path. He turned and stared at me. That was a frightening moment." Both she and the wolf fled. From Ms Versteeg's photographs, and from the carcass of a deer found nearby, its throat torn out in classic wolf fashion, scientists verified that she was the first person to have seen a wolf in the Netherland's since 1897. Having talked to the experts, she now understands that the wolf was probably more frightened than she was, "But all you know at the time is: It's a wolf, it's a predator, and I'm in it's way." Ms Versteeg's experience illustrates a dramatic reversal that has taken place in the West over the past couple of decades. Economic change has led to a fundamental shift in humanity's attitude to wolves. For the first time since man first sharpened a spear, he has stopped trying to exterminate them and taken to protecting them instead. The effort has been so successful that wolves are recolonizing areas from which they disappeared as much as a century ago. As they do so, they are forging revealing divisions over whether mankind can live side by side with the species it replaced as the Western world's top predator. Most man-made extinctions have been accidental, the result of over hunting, or importing predators or diseases. Wolves are different. Through most of human history, killing them has been regarded as a public good. As soon as anything that looked like a state developed, it set about exterminating wolves. In England King Edgar imposed an annual tribute of 300 wolf skins on Idwal, king of Wales. In 960, monarchs made land grants on condition that the beneficiaries carried out wolf hunts. King Edward I employed a wolf hunter in chief, to clear central and western England of wolves. 

Stephen Lendman: Four More Years of War!

Expect Obama to prioritize advancing America's imperium. He did aggressive in term one. New wars are planned. Current ones won't end. Proxy ones continue. So does increasing America's global military footprint. Fiscal cliff hype is about greater force fed austerity to free up more funds for America's war machine. Waging them isn't cheap. Profiteers depend on wasteful spending to boost bottom line performance. It pays to have friends in high places. They assure all the billions wanted. Social America is being sacrificed to provide them. Over the next decade, trillions of dollars will shift from people needs to war making, generous corporate handouts, tax breaks for the rich, and hardened homeland repression against nonbelievers. At the same time, deficits will keep rising exponentially. Hype about urgently cutting them is fake. Post 9/11 has been the worst of times. Expect more of the same on steroids ahead. Conditions today are the most perilous in world history. Global war is possible. The threat is real and ominous. Open discussion is suppressed. Media scoundrels won't touch it, nor do they explain Project Censored top Censored 2013 story: "Signs of an Emerging Police State." It began pre 9/11, accelerated under Bush, then Obama exceeded his extremism. Tyranny in America is a hair's breadth from full blown. For those affected,it arrived long ago. Project Censored's number 4 story is: "FBI Agents Responsible for Majority of Terrorist Plots in the United States." Innocent people are wrongly imprisoned. Media scoundrels convict them in the court of public opinion. Other top censored stories include criminalizing nonviolent protests, corporate predators running the global economy, Federal Reserve money printing madness, enriching Wall Street, Washington joining forces with Al Qaeda, prison slavery, wrecking public education by privatizing it, and NATO war crimes in Libya, but it's much the same wherever this killing machine shows up. Media scoundrel managed news suppresses these and other vital truths people most need to know. Instead, they get The New York Times running cover for Obama's foreign policy by praising what it should condemn.

Ismail Salami: The Good Terrorists versus the Bad

Washington's Dilemma: The Good Terrorists versus the Bad Terrorists: Terrorism is terrorism, and it cannot be defined otherwise unless the interests of one party tilt the scale in disfavor of another, and the dichoto-mization of the terrorists in Syria into good and bad by the West casts doubts on its claims on democracy. In a somber political tone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed out as absolutely unacceptable the West's support for the terrorists in Syria, in his exclusive interview with Russia Today. Lavrov said the West has divided the terrorists into bad and acceptable, throwing its support behind the latter. It's absolutely unacceptable, and if we follow this logic it might lead us to a very dangerous situation, not only in the Middle East, but in other parts of the world, if our partners in the West would begin to qualify terrorists as bad terrorists and acceptable terrorists, the Russian foreign minister said. The "dichotomization" of such a grave issue by the West is almost nothing new. The de listing of MKO, a long considered terrorist group by Washington is in line with this process of redefining well established concepts and terms by the West. Paradoxically, the MKO has been supported by Washington, even when it was on the terrorist list. They even received their training at the hands of the Bush administration. In an enlightened article, Seymour Hersh showed that US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained members of the Iranian Mujahideen e Khalq (MKO) at a secretive site in Nevada from 2005 to at least 2007. According to Hersh, MKO members were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site up until President Obama took office. In a separate interview, a retired four star general said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of MKO members in Nevada by an American involved in the program. He said that they got the standard training in commo, crypto, small unit tactics, and weaponry that went on for six months. They were kept in little pods. He also was told, he said, that the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administrations global war on terror.   

Dr. Ismail Salami: Good Terrorists Versus Bad Terrorists in Syria!

Terrorism is terrorism, and it cannot be defined otherwise, unless the interests of one party tilt the scale in disfavor of another, and the dichotomization of the terrorists in Syria into good and bad by the West, casts doubt on its claim on democracy. In a somber political tone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed out as "absolutely unacceptable"the West's support for the terrorists in Syria, in his exclusive interview with Russia Today. Lavrov said the West has divided the terrorists into "bad" and "acceptable," throwing its support behind the latter. "It's absolutely unacceptable, and if we follow this logic, it might lead us to a very dangerous situation, not only in the Middle East, but in other parts of the world, if our partners in the West would begin to qualify terrorists as bad terrorists and acceptable terrorists," the Russian foreign minister said. The dichotomization of such a grave issue by the West is almost nothing new. The delisting of MKO, a long considered terrorist group by Washington, is in line with this process of re-defining well established concepts and terms by the West. Paradoxically, the MKO has been supported by Washington even when it was on the terrorist list. They even received their training at the hands of the Bush administration. In an enlightening article, Seymour Hersh showed that US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained members of the Iranian Mujahideen e Khalq (MKO) at a secretive site in Nevada from 2005 to at least 2007. According to Hersh, MKO members were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site up until President Obama took office." In a separate interview, a retired four star general said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of MKO members in Nevada by an American involved in the program. He said that they got "the standard training program in communication, cryptography, small unit tactics and weaponry. That went on for six months. They were kept in little pods." He also was told, he said, that the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administration's global war on terror.            

Michel Chossudovsky: The Destabilization of Pakistan!

This article first published five years ago in December 2007, focuses on the historical process of collapse of Pakistan as a nation state, following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Washington's intent goes beyond the narrow objective of "regime change". The thrust of US foreign policy consists of weakening the central government and fracturing the country. The ongoing US drone attacks under the banner of the "Global War on Terrorism" are part of that process. Washington's intent goes beyond the narrow objective of "regime change". The thrust of US foreign policy consists of weakening the central government and fracturing the country. The ongoing US drone attacks under the banner of the "Global War on Terrorism" are part of that process. Washington had already envisaged a scenario of disintegration and civil war. According to a 2005 report by the US Intelligence Council and the CIA, Pakistan is slated to become a "failed state" by 2015, "as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons". What is not mentioned in this report, is that the destabilization process, including the drone attacks, is part of a longstanding US led intelligence operation. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has created conditions which contribute to the ongoing destabilization and fragmentation of Pakistan as a Nation. The process of US sponsored "regime change", which normally consists in the re formation of a fresh proxy government under new leaders has been broken. Discredited in the eyes of Pakistani public opinion, General Pervez Musharaf cannot remain in the seat of political power, but at the same time, the fake elections supported by the "international community" scheduled for January 2008, even if they were carried out, would not be accepted as legitimate, thereby creating a political impasse. There are indications that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was anticipated by US officials:"It has been known for months, that the Bush Cheney administration and its allies have been maneuvering to strengthen their political control of Pakistan, paving the way for the expansion and deepening of the war on terrorism across the region. Various American destabilization plans, known for months by officials and analysts proposed the toppling of Pakistan's military. The assassination of Bhutto appears to have been anticipated. There were even reports of chatter among US officials about the possible assassinations of either Pervez Musharraf or Benazir Bhutto, well before the actual attempts took place!   

Dirk Adriaensens: CIA Interrogations in Iraq.

Torture and Rape of Detained Women. Kitabat reports on 18 December. The chairman of the Iraqi List, Hamid al Mutlaq, said in a press conference in Baghdad on 18 December: "Iraqi prosecutors have submitted today a report to the Chairman of the Iraqi judiciary, Medhat al Mahmoud, that confirms the occurrence of torture and violations and rape of women detained in Iraqi prisons. The report is based on confidential testimonies of female prisoners in Iraqi jails." Mutlaq said that "the report confirms what has been recently stated by some parliamentary committees and human rights organizations, that there is a systematic violation, torture and rape of female prisoners in Iraqi prisons," The Chairperson of the Committee on Women presented a report on the situation of women prisoners. This report confirms that prisoners are routinely subjected to torture and rape. The presentation led to a heated argument between the deputies of the Iraqi List and the Coalition of State of Law, evolving into a serious affray. Mutlaq demanded that the Iraqi government and the judiciary system would "do their legal duties by issuing a death sentence against those who commit such crimes against Iraqi women, and take the necessary measures to prevent these abuses. He also asked to protect the confidential informant, and to implement Article IV of the Anti terrorism Act. The announcement of the Public Prosecutor to the Iraqi Judicial Council coincides with the statement of the Governor of Nineveh, Ethel Nujaifi, on Tuesday, about an officer in the Second Division of the Iraqi army, who raped a 17 year old minor, after forcing her into the Headquarters of his Regiment in the Nimrod's District. On 12 December, the Sadrist movement submitted a request to the Public Prosecutor, to issue an arrest warrant against the Minister of Justice Hassan Shammari and other officials in the ministry, for preventing the Iraqi MP's from visiting prisons, after they received information about the existence of torture and rape of some of the inmates.          

Richard Eskow: For Wall Street It's "Peace On Earth"

Goodwill Toward Remington. Despite an epic of gun deaths, the river of gun cash never stops flowing. If you follow that river upstream you'll see that the source lies very close to Wall Street, and the river's mouth speaks with the voice of politicians, whose campaign fundraising is undoubtedly taking place even on this supposedly holy day for most of them. "Tis the season to be lobbied. "More than 50 firearms related companies have given at least $14.8 million to the National Rifle Association, Bloomberg News reports, and that's just the money we know about. The NRA spent nearly $25 million in the last election cycle alone. True to form, the NRA's chief said this week that we need more guns in the schools to end the killing of our children. That's like spreading a flu virus to stop an epidemic, but Wayne La Pierre did his job. Everyone is talking about how crazy he is. Noone is talking about how crazy we are for tolerating this situation, or how immoral our corporate class is for financing it. Wall Street's investments extend beyond the manufacturers themselves, to the NRA, and to all the other groups supporting the NRA's nihilistic objective, the total elimination of any and all controls on even the deadliest weapons. That includes ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which foments the "Stand Your Ground" reign of terror, that so effectively distracts millions of Americans from the true source of their anxiety and hardship. It's working. As we reported after another gun tragedy this year, "Firearms and ammunition sales rose 45 percent between 2009 and 2010 alone." The tragedy of Newton has been great for business all around the country. Just look at a sampling of headlines we've seen in the last week: "Tucson Gun Sales Surge After Newtown" (Arizona Daily Star). "New Hampshire sets record on background checks for gun sales after Newtown shootings" (Nashua Telegraph). "Local gun dealers see sales increase after Newtown tragedy" Indianapolis local television). Somebody's making money from these tragedies. But who?

William Rivers Pitt: All I want for Christmas. Guns Peace & Justice!

I want Wayne La Pierre to sit in a room with the families of the victims of the Newtown massacre, and explain to them his grand theories on further arming our hyper armed society. I will not get that wish, however, because Wayne LaPierre is a cowardly blowhard who gives "press conferences" where no questions are allowed. I want those children to be alive on Christmas morning. I want those teachers to be alive. I want Adam Lanza to be alive. I want his mother to be alive. I want those teachers to be alive. I want her guns to be un-bought, sitting in a gun store display case gathering dust, forever unloaded. Early on Christmas Eve morning, a man outside of Rochester set fire to a house and waited with his firearm for firefighters to arrive. When they did, the man shot four of them, killing two and wounding two severely, before killing himself. Because of the gunshots, the fire could not be dealt with, and several neighboring houses also burned. I want those two dead firefighters to be unharmed, I want the shooter alive, those houses unburnt, and I want someone to explain to me how a man who would set a trap for firefighters by burning down his own house got his hands on a gun, and why that is the definition of American freedom. I want Wayne LaPierre to be in a roomful of firemen when he announces the solution to problems like this is to arm firefighters. I want to watch what happens next. I want a broad national conversation on sane and sensible gun control, but I won't get that, either, because "gun control" is the Israel Palestine of American policy discussions, the opinions are so entrenched, and the arguments have been repeated so many times that nobody actually talks to each other about it anymore, but merely belch well worn cliche responses like some demented exercise in cut and paste conversation, while the bodies pile up, and up, and up. If I get my wish about having a real conversation on the issue, I want the idea of establishing a 28th Amendment to the Constitution, one that clarifies the 2nd Amendment, and for all time nails down what gun rights are in America, to be part of the debate,   

Veterans Today: Top 10 Veterans Stories in Today's News!

We encourage you to browse the list, so that you can take what you want, and keep what you need. 1. Mexico frees ex-Marine jailed for bringing in a gun. Jon Hammar, the Marine veteran from South Florida, detained for months in a Mexican border prison for bringing his great grandfather's shotgun into the country, was released Friday night, in what his mother called a "Christmas miracle." 2. Obama's Offer Holiday Wishes, Call for All to Remember Vets. During the weekly address from the White House, President Obama and his wife Michelle wished service members, veterans and their families a happy holiday season, and called on all Americans to remember those in harm's way. 3. Defense Secretary Leon E Panetta called four service members deployed to Afghanistan today to wish them happy holidays. Panetta expressed his gratitude, and that of the American people, to the service members and to their families for their service and sacrifice, according to a statement issued by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. 4. Sex assault reports at Air Force Academy continue to rise. Sex assault reports involving Air Force Academy cadets increased by about 50 percent over the previous academic year, accounting for the majority of reported assaults across the nation's three military academies, according to a Defense Department report issued Friday. 5. Obama takes heat on Hagel candidacy. President Barack Obama's consideration of Chuck Hagel to be the defense secretary, has set off an outcry of criticism that would force a second damaging White House retreat over a Cabinet pick. 6. Texas Department of Veterans Affairs to track deaths. The Department of Veterans Affairs in Texas will conduct a mortality study to track causes of death for veterans, putting together a model that could allow similar data to be gathered. 7. Bay of Pigs invasion veterans mark 50 years since their release. In the days before Christmas 50 years ago this weekend, 1,113 Bay of Pigs fighters captured by Fidel Castro's forces, and imprisoned for 20 months, were finally released to a heroes' welcome in Miami. 8. WWII veteran returns to Germany, where injury ended combat career. Fred Woelkers never thought he'd return. But there he was, 68 years and 13 days later, standing near the same spot where a Nazi bullet ended his fighting days on the front lines of World War II.  

Lynn Stuart Parramore: Crazed Republicans Turn on Each Other!

in Ugly Fiscal Cliff Battle. Fear gripped Middle Earth. The little people looked nervously toward the horizon,, wondering if their few remaining possessions would be snatched away by marauding bands of goblins and orcs. For years the simple, honest folk had suffered as the twin forces of greed and hatred darkened the land, but this time, maybe there was hope. Maybe the goblins and the orcs would turn their fury upon each other, as they battled on the edge of a cliff over which both might fall. And so things appear, as Americans watch the fiscal cliff deadline draw near. There is just a week to go for lawmakers to make a deal, to avert automatic tax increases and spending cuts. Last week negotiations
broke down as Speaker Boehner failed to get enough votes to pass a bill that would have required the wealthy to pay a miniscule increase in taxes, at a time when income inequality is crippling the nation's future. With the House gridlocked, attention turns to the Senate, where some Republicans appear to be in favor of Obama's call for a partial deal, that insulates most Americans from the tax increases, but defers a resolution on spending. A deal may yet pass, but it's getting very ugly in the GOP. The Republican Party, particularly in the House of Representatives, is so blinded by greed and stupidity, that factions are turning on each other. One group, let's call them the goblins, is just plain greedy, but not completely crazy. These are the folks who favored Mitt Romney for president, and simply want to continue shoveling money toward the one percent, as they have been doing very successfully for the past three decades. They are willing to make a deal, because they know that any deal, particularly one that will shred the social safety net, with cuts like those Obama has proposed to make to Social Security, the widely condemned chained CPI adjustment, will work out very nicely to their advantage. They are thrilled, that instead of focusing on the jobs crisis, the country has been railroaded into a premature deficit reduction deal that serve as a cover for conservative wealth redistribution schemes.    

James F. Tracy: The Sandy Hook Massacre. Unanswered Questions!

and missing information. Inconsistencies and anomalies abound when one turns an analytical eye to news of the Newtown school massacre. The public's general acceptance of the events, validity and faith in its resolution suggests a deepened credulousness, born from a world where almost all news and information is electronically mediated and controlled. The condition is reinforced through the corporate medias unwillingness to push hard questions vis a vis Connecticut and federal authorities, who together bottle-necked information, while invoking prior restraint through threats of prosecuted action against journalists and broader citizenry seeking to interpret the event on social media. Along these lines, on December 19, the Connecticut State Police assigned individual personnel to each of the 26 families who lost a loved one at the Sandy Hook Elementary. The families have requested no press interviews, State Police assert on their behalf, and we are asking that this request be honored. The de facto gag order will be in effect until the investigation concludes, now forecast to be several months away even though lone gunman Adam Lanza has been confirmed as the sole culprit. With the exception of an unusual and apparently contrived appearance by Emilie Parker's alleged father, victims family members have been almost wholly absent from public scrutiny. What can be gleaned from this and similar coverage, raises many more questions, and glaring inconsistencies than answers. While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place, at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nations news media have described. An especially important, yet greatly under reported feature of the Sandy Hook affair, is the wholly bizarre performance of Connecticut's top medical examiner H Wayne Carver II at a December 15 press conference. Carvers unusual remarks and behavior warrant close consideration, because in light of his professional notoriety they appear remarkably amateurish and out of character. H. Wayne Carver II has an extremely self assured, almost swaggering presence in Connecticut state administration. In early 2012, Carver threatened to vacate his position, because of state budget cuts and streamlining measures that threatened his professional autonomy over the projects and personnel he oversaw.        

Stephen Lendman: Four More Years of War!

Expect Obama to prioritize advancing America's Imperium. He did aggressive in term one. New wars are planned. Current ones won't end. Proxy ones continue. So does increasing America's global military footprint. Fiscal cliff hype is about greater force fed austerity to free up more funds for America's war machine. Waging them isn't cheap. Profiteers depend on wasteful spending to boost bottom line performance. It pays to have friends in high places. They assure all the billions wanted. Social America is being sacrificed to provide them. Over the next decade, trillions of dollars will shift from people needs to war making, generous corporate handouts, tax breaks for the rich, and hardened homeland repression against nonbelievers. At the same time, deficits will keep rising exponentially. Hype about urgently cutting them is fake. Post 9/11has been the worst of times. Expect more of the same on steroids ahead. Conditions today are the most perilous in world history. Global war is possible. The threat is real and ominous. Open discussion is suppressed. Media scoundrels won't touch it. Nor do they explain Project Censored's top Censored 2013 story. "Signs of an emerging Police State." It began pre-9/11, accelerated under Bush, then Obama exceeded his extremism. Tyranny in America is a hair's breadth from full blown. For those affected, it arrived long ago. Project Censored number 4 story is: "FBI Agents Responsible for Majority of Terrorist Plots in the United States." Innocent people are wrongly imprisoned. Media scoundrels convict them in the court of public opinion. Other top censored stories include criminalizing nonviolent protests, corporate predators running the global economy, Federal Reserve money printing madness enriching Wall Street, Washington joining forces with Al Qaeda, prison slavery, wrecking public education by privatizing it, and NATO war crimes in Libya, but it's much the same wherever this killing machine shoes up. Media scoundrel managed news suppresses these and other vital truths people most need to know. Instead, they get The New York Times running cover for Obama's foreign policy by praising what it should condemn. 

Ted Rall: Six Weeks After Reelection, Obama Sells Out Liberal Democrats!

After the election Kerry Eleveld wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled "Why Barack Obama Will Be a More Effective Liberal in His Second Term." "In response to their initial disappointment with the president's early performance, many progressives speculated that Obama was just waiting for a second term to be more liberal," he said. That was true. They were. Eleveld continued: "A more likely explanation is that Obama was just waiting for a second term to be more liberal," he said. That was true. They were. Eleveld continued: "A more likely explanation is that Obama was still finding his groove, figuring out which levers worked best for him in the context of governing the nation, and in some ways, he was still developing the courage of his convictions." That, it turns out, was false. He wasn't. You can't develop convictions that you don't have in the first place. It's hard to remember now, more than six weeks later,but there was once a time, six long weeks ago, when liberal Democrats who naively chose to ignore Obama's consistently conservative first term, his consistently conservative career in the Senate, and his consistently conservative pre politics career as a University of Chicago law professor, seriously believed that his reelection would lead to a progressive second term. "It's hard to remember now, more than six weeks later, but there was once a time, six long weeks ago, when liberal Democrats who naively chose to ignore Obama's consistently conservative first term, his consistently conservative career in the Senate, and his consistently career in the Senate, and his consistently conservative pre-politics career as a University of Chicago law professor, seriously believed that his reelection would lead to a progressive second term. "It's time for President Obama to assume the Roosevelt inspired mantle of muscular liberalism," Anthony Woods wrote in The Daily Beast. This is his moment. He only has to take it." It's his moment all right, and he's taking it, but when it comes to Obama, liberals are once again guilty of some major wishful thinking. Obama's economic policies are closer to Herbert Hoover than Franklin Roosevelt.  

Michel Chossudovsky: The Spirit of Christmas:

George W. Bush and Tony Blair were banned from the Birthplace of Jesus Christ. War criminals George W Bush and Tony Blair were banned for life in April 2003 from the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, widely believed to be the birth place of Jesus Christ. The ban was announced at the height of the illegal US allied bombing and invasion of Iraq. Below are the original 2003 press reports pertaining to that decision, as well as a subsequent introductory note published by Global Research in December 2006. "The Bethlehem sanctuary issued a ringing reprisal Sunday, April 2003 of the coalition attack, going as far as banning US President George W Bush, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw from entering church grounds, due to their aggressive war in Iraq. The priest in the Church of the Nativity has every right to ban Bush and his supporters, since they have marred the teachings of Christ. Their entry into the church will tarnish it as Bush's hands are covered with blood of the innocent, Karmash told The Jordan Times. The local priest went on to say that he felt the punishment was not enough. We need a tougher one to eradicate evil at its very root, he exclaimed. The Nativity Church's parishioner, Father Panaritus, said during a rally organized Sunday by the Greek Orthodox community in Bethlehem that Bush, Rumsfeld, Blair and Straw are war criminals and children killers that will be banned from entering the church forever! The Church parishioner, Father Panaritus, said during a rally organized Sunday by the Greek Orthodox community in Bethlehem that Bush, Rumsfeld, Blair and Straw are war criminals and children killers that will be banned from entering the church forever! The Church Parishioner, Father Panaritus made the decision public at a massive protest demonstration organized by Orthodox institutions in front of the Church of Nativity. "They are war criminals and murderers of children. Therefore the Church of Nativity decided to ban them access into the holy shrine for ever." the parishioner said." 

Chris Hedges: The Final Battle!

Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain US citizens, strip them of due process, and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all US citizens would be exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners, but restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate of our most basic and important rights, ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution, will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place. Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Mike Lee, R-Ariz., however, removed the amendment from the bill last week. "I was saddened and disappointed that we could not take a step forward to ensure at the very least, American citizens and legal residents could not be held in detention without charge or trial," Feinstein said in a statement issued by her office. "To me, that was a no-brainer." The House approved the $633 billion NDAA in the House, including Rep Morgan Griffith, R-Va., cited Congress' refusal to guarantee due process and trial by jury to all citizens as his reason for voting against the bill. He wrote in a statement after the vote that "American citizens may fear being arrested and indefinitely detained by the military without knowing what they have done wrong." The Feinstein Lee amendment was woefully adequate. It was probably proposed mainly for its public relations value, but nonetheless it resisted the concerted assault on our rights, and sought to calm nervous voters objecting to the destruction of the rule of law.

Jonathan Cook: Ruppert Murdoch's Bid to Persuade

General David Petraeus to run as Republican Candidate in the 2012 Presidential Election. Carl Bernstein, of All the President's Men fame, has a revealing commentary in the Guardian today, though revealing not entirely in a way he appears to understand. Bernstein highlights a story first disclosed earlier this month in the Washington Post by his former journalistic partner Bob Woodward, that media mogul Rupert Murdoch tried to buy the US presidency. A taped conversation shows that in early 2011 Murdoch sent Roger Ailes, the boss of his most important US media outlet, Fox News, to Afghanistan to persuade General David Petraeus, former commander of US forces, to run against Barack Obama as the Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Murdoch promised to bankroll Petraeus campaign and commit Fox News to provide the general with wall to wall support. Murdoch's efforts to put his own man in the White House failed, because Petraeus decided he did not want to run for office. Tell Ailes, if I ever ran, Petraeus says in the recording, "but I won't, but if I ever ran, I'd take him up on his offer. Bernstein is rightly appalled, not just by this frontal attack on democracy, but also by the fact that the Washington Post failed to splash with their world exclusive. Instead, they buried it inside the paper's lifestyle section, presenting it as what the section editor called a buzzy media story, that didn't have the broader import that would justify a better showing in the paper. In line with the Washington Post, most major US news outlets either ignored the story or downplayed its significance. We can probably assume that Bernstein wrote the piece at the bidding of Woodward, as a covert way for him to express his outrage at his newspaper's wholesale failure to use the story to generate a much deserved political scandal. The pair presumably expected the story to prompt congressional hearings into Murdoch's misuse of power, parallel to investigations in the UK that have revealed Murdoch's control of politicians and the police there. As Bernstein observes: The Murdoch story, his corruption of essential democratic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, is one of the most important and far reaching political/cultural stories of the past 30 years, an ongoing tale without equal!    

Jim W. Dean: Israel Activates American 5th column

for Sandy Hook damage control. The Veterans Today site counts Gush Shalom, founder Uri Avnery and rabid anti Israel activist Gilad Atzmon as writers, Ilan Ben Zion, The Times of Israel, First published in Press TV, December 19, 2012.  This article was a follow up to Gordon Duff's on Press TV,  which went viral and became the most read article in Press TV history. It triggered a quick and organized Israeli Lobby smear campaign before the day was done, which we enjoyed. It began 36 hours ago during a TV interview about gun control, with an angry American radio show host, Mike Harris, made his case for Israeli complicity in the Connecticut school killings. Mike based his feelings on the recent Gaza outrages, access to Intel reports on the Berwick killings in Norway, backed by a wealth of circumstantial evidence that raised very serious questions, but did not "close." Mike based his feelings on the recent Gaza outrages, access to Intel reports on the Berwick killings in Norway, backed by a wealth of evidence that raised very serious questions, but did not "close." Then Gordon Duff wrote a short article on the Harris interview, giving some background, but stayed well short of endorsing Harris' conclusions. Today Duff's article went viral on Press TV. It hit a nerve, the UN votes, Gaza bombings, the world was, it seemed, ready to blame Israel for whom killing children has been part of their state defense policy for some time. What can put the "Israeli stamp of approval" on a preemptive attack more than killing children, right? In the intelligence world especially, Israel has a very long history of state terrorism, going back to their pre 1948 war market basket bombs. Many of their top leaders came up through their terrorist ranks, where having murdered people was considered a resume enhancer to the voters. Every counter intelligence officer and analyst working the Israel desk carries around a mental encyclopedia of the methods used in every Israeli attack on record, including those the public is unaware of. When any nation, group, company, be it a bank, insurance company or even a political party needs a convenient car bombing, no matter which side or who or what dies, you cab always hire Israelis. They have a reputation. When they blow things up, they stay "blown up."      

Alex Henderson: 10 Key Court Decisions That Prevent Right Wing

Christians from Controlling Your Sex Life. If the Christian Right had its way, the United States would be a fundamentalist theocracy in which contraception, homosexuality, abortion, sexually explicit hip hop lyrics, and all adult pornography were illegal, but making the US that much of a theocracy would mean overturning a lot of major Supreme Court decisions. Over the years, the US Supreme Court has had many rulings that helped to advance sexual freedom in the United States, and it will be easier to protect those advances if fewer socially conservatives to the High Court, if Republican Mitt Romney had been elected president on November 6, while President Obama has shown a tendency to nominate justices who are at least centrist in their judicial philosophy, and now that Obama is getting ready to begin his second term, he will be more likely to appoint justices who will uphold, or perhaps even expand Supreme Court decisions that are favorable to gay rights, contraception, or one's right to possess sexually explicit adult erotica. Below are 10 landmark decisions that have had major implications for sexual freedom in the United States: 1. Stanley v Georgia, 1969. The Christian Right loves to demonize the late Earl Warren, who served as chief justice of the US Supreme Court from 1953-1969, and social conservatives' hatred of Warren is quite ironic, in light of the fact that he was a Republican who was nominated by GOP President Dwight D Eisenhower. Warren served three terms as California's Republican governor, and was Republican Thomas E Dewey's running mate in the 1948 presidential election. But then, the term "socially liberal Republican" wasn't an oxymoron in the days of the Warren Court, and shortly before Warren's retirement in 1969, the Warren Court handed down one of the rulings social conservatives are still cursing 43 years later: It's decision in Stanley v Georgia, ruling upheld that it is not a crime even if the material is obscene. The Stanley v Georgia ruling upheld that selling, creating or distributing obscene adult material was illegal, but a consumer could not be charged with obscenity, merely for being in possession of that material.     

Felicity Arbutnot: America's Hype Over WMD: Five Invasion Plots!

Three Continents, Identical Lies! "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favor of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. I am strongly in favor of using gas against uncivilized tribes. Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965, from War Office minute, 12th May 1919. As the saber rattling against Syria gets even louder, the allegations ever wilder and double standards stirring, plotting and terrorist financing, it is instructive to look at the justifications presented by US Administrations for a few other murderous incursions in recent history: This month is the twenty third anniversary of the US invasion of Panama on 20th December 1989, as Panamanians prepared their Christmas celebrations. A quick check reminds the late Philip Agee recalling President George HW Bush, telling the American people that the threat from Panama, population 3,571,185 -2011 was such that our way of life is at stake. Agee referred to this in his aptly named talk "Producing the Proper Crisis." Apt then as now. Nothing changes. The aim of the invasion was to capture the country's leader, General Manuel Noriega and, of course, to establish a democratic government. Regime change. With the approaching transfer of control of the Panama Canal to Panama, originally scheduled for 1st January 1990, after a century of US colonial stewardship, America wanted to ensure it was in the hands of malleable allies. Noriega is a CIA asset, since 1967, who had also attended the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, came to power with US backing, but seemingly his  support for the US was cooling. To encapsulate a long story, the US kidnapped him and sentenced him to forty years in jail. Plans to invade were called: Operation Prayer Book, later renamed Operation Just Cause, with General Colin Powell commenting that it was a moniker of which he approved as: Even our severest would have to utter Just Cause while denouncing us. (Colin Powell, with Joseph E Persico: My American Journey, 1995.) All military marauding should simply be called: Operation Silly Name 1, then 2,3,4 etc, until the numbers finally run out.

Jim W. Dean: Lieberman Plays His EU Holocaust Card

Isreal's Racist Foreign Minister pretends to be anti-holocaust, when he is really pro holocaust for Palestinians. Corruption indictment has sidelined Lieberman, but I think he will be back, like the Terminator. The Likud Mafia is still resorting to the old 'good guy, bad guy' interrogation tactic. Netanyahu led with his expected response to the EU Palestinian vote in the UN,'it changes nothing'. And when the 27 EU countries formally denounced the settlement expansion, he claimed that it should in no way obstruct starting peace negotiations. To follow this opening act Bibi sent foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman out to do some public relations work, representing Israel's racist and fascist ministries. This was supposed to make Bibi look like a moderate, but people are wise to this old game. As a long time observer of Israeli and Jewish Lobby guilt tripping tactics, I knew the holocaust card was going to be trotted out once again. Jews the world over love to be reminded of their special victim status, in their own heads anyway, and it is a good vote getter. 'Evet', as Lieberman is called in Russian, did not disappoint. When asked during an interview with Israel Radio what his feelings were on the EU's united opposition to the new round of settlement construction in Jerusalem (Al Quds) he replied: "Europe once again in history is ignoring calls to destroy the state of Israel. Europe is keeping silent. We have been through this with Europe at the end of the 1093's and in the 1940's." Mr. Lieberman seems to have the situation confused. It is not the Jews who are in the largest prison camp on earth, 1,5 million people in Gaza. It is not Jews who are being bombed by Hamas F-16's and GPS guided munitions paid for by the people of Europe to support their cleansing of the last Zionist invaders. Hamas does not have the decades old WMD programs, nuclear submarines, and soon to arrive ten warhead ICBM's being jointly developed with India. I don't think Mr Lieberman is into the hate racism lifestyle: Love Palestine, hate racism. One people, one World! It is militant Israelis, along with their Russian Pretend a Jews, who have been working to finish the 65 year holocausting of the Palestinian state. Let's go ahead and give them a new name, one that describes what they do. Let's call them the Neo-holocausters. If they sue us for libel, we can then bring all our evidence into court, and have some real fun!

Adele M. Stan: How I Gave Up Christmas and Found Serenity

I can't remember exactly when it was that I gave up Christmas, but I've never regretted it. While my friends and family run around in a frenzy of mall purchases and the attendant anxiety of how to pay for it all, I bask in the serenity of having let it all go, well, most of it. It seemed to happen in stages. One year, I asked my brothers that they stop buying gifts for me, and to forgive me for not buying gifts for them. It took a while for that to take. One brother refused to buy into the pact. Another has a wife from a non Western country who, in dealing with her in laws, expresses her love by thoroughly embracing the traditions of her new homeland, but as time went on, everyone seemed to accept, however grudgingly, that I was not taking part. Eventually, I stopped making the 300 mile trek to go home for Christmas. I made a point of getting there every Thanksgiving instead, a holiday for which the company of family is its own reward, and love is shown through the preparation and sharing of food. Sometimes we even pull out the guitars and make bad music together, passing out rhythm instruments to the kids. Christmas, on the other hand, held such expectations of material splendor, that it was impossible to have any quality time with my nieces and nephews, wound up as they were on the highs of the day, with their exhausted parents busy trying to police the pandemonium, and so, one year, I decided to stay home and cook myself a duck. I could have gone to the families of friends nearby, but that would have been just another permutation of what I had escaped, so I opted for solitude. It was delicious, both the duck and the solitude. On Christmas, the phone doesn't ring, except for the occasional well wisher. The streets are quiet, and no one expects you to check your e-mail. If you've ever wished for a moment of silence, of peace, of space to contemplate the abundance of life, spend a Christmas alone, and your wish will be granted. Now, I'm not anti Christmas. I love the decorations, the special foods, and some of the seasonal music. I'm not religious in the traditional sense, but Christmas Eve often finds me in church, hearing friends sing in choirs, or play liturgical music. I love the Christmas story, the notion of the redemption of the world through the birth of a child is breathtakingly beautiful, and so I come back to that.

Stuart Littlewood: Is Palestinian Leadership Still Asleep at the Wheel?

Empowered, emboldened, but what is the PLO doing with its new UN status? The Palestinian Embassy in London has just issued a press release under the heading: "Pressing need to halt Israel's illegal settlement colonization campaign via political, legal, and diplomatic means". It complains about Israel's "flagrant disrespect of international law" in announcing, the day after the UN upgraded Palestine's status, a further 3,000 illegal settlement units in Palestinian East Jerusalem. "It is time that political, economic and legal means are used so that Israel bears its responsibility for its violations and obstruction of peace efforts," says Ambassador Manuel Hassassian. He wants the British government and the EU to ban Israeli settlement products and bar Israeli extremist settlers. "This is the only way to halt Israel's illegal settlement campaign, salvage the two state solution, and revive the peace process." What's more, he urges the British public to write to their MP outlining Israel's illegal settlement expansion activities, which are a breach of article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention and constitute war crimes. Ask their MP to call for a ban on import of settlement products into the UK. Contact the Foreign Office. Inform the Embassy of any responses. There has been a "pressing need" to halt Israel's illegal settlement building, ever since the Allon Plan of 1967, but the PLO did remarkably little over the years to use the channels open to it, until last month, when it finally got around to applying for, and getting non Member observer status at the UN. Why is the newly empowered Palestine, fresh from its victory, still asking us to do the donkey work? One hoped that President Abbas would waste now time in signing up to the Rome Statute, and joining the International Court of Justice in order to lay long overdue charges against Israel for its illegal occupation, blockade, war crimes and crimes against humanity. First among the many legal options, surely, is to cut the endless whining, and apply for an injunction against further settlement construction. True, reports are circulating that Palestinian officials talk of filing war crime charges and encouraging the international community to impose sanctions, but there may be a long wait before this Zionist corrupted British government suspends trade with the thugs it repeatedly pledges to support, and persuades its EU partners to do the same.    

James Petras: The Religious and Social Crisis in America.

Political Consequences. The opening long decade of the 21st century (2000-2012) has been a period of repeated and profound economic and social crises, of serial and prolonged wars and declining living standards for the vast majority of Americans. How have people responded to this crisis? No large scale, long term, socio political movements have emerged to challenge the bi partisan dominant classes. For a brief moment the Occupy Wall Street movement provided a platform to denounce the 1% super rich, but then faded into memory. Questions arose whether in the midst of prolonged hardship, people would turn to religion for solace, escape into spiritual pietism. The question this essay addresses is whether religion has become the opium of the people, as Karl Marx suggested, or whether religious beliefs and institutions are themselves in crisis, losing their spiritual attraction in the face of their inability to resolve the everyday material needs of a growing army of impoverished, low paid, unemployed and contingent workers, and a downwardly mobile middle class. In other words, are major religions growing and prospering in our time of permanent economic crises and perpetual wars, or are they on the down-slope part and parcel of the decline of the US Empire? According to the latest data, as of 2008 the biggest religious group is Christianity with 173, 402 million members, representing 76% of adult population, followed by Judaism with 2,680 million,  representing 1.2% of the adult population, followed by Eastern religions 1.961 million, and representing .9% Muslims 1.349 million, representing .6% of adults. The second most populous group after the Christians are those who state they have no religion 34.169 million or 15%. The dynamic trends over time show a declining percentage of adults who are Christians: between 1990-2008, they dropped from 86.2% to 76%. Jews have declined from 1.8% of adult population in 1990 to 1.2% in 2008, and Eastern religion is growing from .4% of adult population to .97% of population. Likewise, the percentage of Muslims in the adult population has grown from .3% in 1990 to .6% in 2008. The percentage of non religious adult population has increased from 8.2% in 1990 to 15% in 2008.    

Steven Strauss: Is Our Republic Ending?

Eight Striking Parallels Between the Fall of Rome and our US. Lawrence Lessig's Republic Lost documents the corrosive effect of money on our political process. Lessig persuasively makes the case that we are witnessing the loss of our republican form of government, as politicians increasingly represent those who fund their campaigns, rather than our citizens. Anthony Everitt's Rise of Rome is fascinating history and a great read. It tells the story of ancient Rome, from its founding, circa 750 BCE to the fall of the Roman Republic, circa 45 BCE. When read together, striking parallels emerge, between our failings and the failings that destroyed the Roman Republic - circa 45 BCE. When read together, striking parallels emerge, between our failings, and the failings that destroyed the Roman Republic. As with Rome, just before the Republic's fall, America has seen: 1. Staggering Increase in the Cost of Elections, with Dubious Campaign Funding Sources: Our 2012 election reportedly cost $3 billion. All of it was raised from private sources, often creating the appearance, or the reality, that our leaders are beholden to special interest groups. During the late Roman Republic, elections became staggeringly expensive, with deplorable results. Caesar reportedly borrowed so heavily for one political campaign, he feared he would be ruined if not elected. Politics as the Road to Personal Wealth: During the late Roman Republic period, one of the main roads to wealth was holding public office, and exploiting such positions to accumulate personal wealth. As Lessig notes: Congressman, Senators and their staffs leverage their government service to move to private sector positions, that pay three to ten times their government compensation. Given this financial arrangement, "Their focus is therefore not so much on the people who sent them to Washington. Their focus is instead on those who will make them rich." Continuous War: A national state of security arises,, distracting attention from domestic challenges with foreign wars, Similar to the late Roman Republic, the US, for the past 100 years, has either been fighting a war, recovering from a war, or preparing for a new war: WWI, 1917-18, WWII 1941-1945, Cold War 1947-1991, Korean War 1950-1953, Vietnam 1953-1975, Gulf War 1990-1991, Afghanistan 2001 ongoing, and Iraq 2003-2011, and this list is far from complete.      

Alan Hart: Obama's Hagel Test!

By all accounts, President Obama wants to nominate Chuck Hagel, the former two term Republican senator from Nebraska to replace Leon Panetta at the Pentagon as Secretary of Defense, but a coalition led by the Zionist lobby is mounting a smear campaign against Hagel. Why? It hopes to persuade Obama that he would be foolish to nominate Hagel, because he is unlikely to be confirmed by a Senate, in which many members are content to do Zionism's bidding in order to protect their own backs. I'll get to what it is about Hegel's record that troubles and even frightens the Zionist lobby in a moment, but first can we, please, get the terminology right. Almost everyone who speaks and writes about the Israel Palestine conflict does not get it right, and that creates an obstacle to understanding. The monster that controls Congress, and ties any president's hands on policy for dealing with Israel Palestine is not the "Jewish lobby" and not the "Israel lobby." It is wrong to describe it as the Jewish lobby for two reasons. One is that such a description implies that it represents and speaks for all Jews. It most certainly does not. The other is that such a description implies that it's not only Jews who make up the lobby. Another key element of it is composed of the "Bring on Armageddon" Christian fundamentalists. It is wrong to describe it as the Israel lobby because such a description implies that it represents and speaks for all of Israel's Jews, and the nearly one quarter of its citizens who are Arabs. It most certainly does not. The most accurate long description of the Zionist lobby would be that it is composed of those of all faiths and none who give and demand unconditional support for the Zionist (not Jewish) state of Israel, right or wrong. In my view the most practical short form of that is the Zionist lobby, though some call it the "Likud lobby".  That was a case for doing so in the past, but today there are emerging fascist forces in Israel even further to the right than Likud, and the Zionist lobby speaks for them, too. Even the term "pro Israel" is an obstacle to understanding. When it is used without qualification, as it almost is, it can mean either pro Israel inside its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war, or pro an Israel in occupation of the West Bank (in defiance of international law) and laying siege to the Gaza Strip.      

James F Tracy: The Newtown School Tragedy!

More than one gunman? It is now beyond question that the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr all involved patsies, additional gunmen and perhaps mass media complicity to achieve their political ends. Along these lines, and in a fashion now characteristic of how such public executions are framed, the observations and analyses of citizen journalists and alternative media suggest how coverage of the Newtown Connecticut school shooting was substantially altered in the several hours and days following the event. After the 1995 Murrah Federal Building bombing, central elements that would help the citizenry make sense of the event, such as unexploded ordnance found in the structure and Timothy McVeigh's accomplice, were stricken from the official narrative. Along these lines at the probable behest of government authorities, a second gunman accompanying Jared Lee Loughner in 2011 was quickly tossed down the memory hole by news outlets covering the incident. Similar reportorial lapses took place at the Aurora Colorado massacre last July, where eyewitnesses attested to spotting James Holmes collaborators, or handlers inside the theater. When the news media act as willing partners in such acts, the public becomes an unwitting accessory in its own psychic imprisonment, lulled into the notion that fair play still exists, and public servants remain intent on service. One of the most important red flags of a staged shooting is a second gunman, health science and investigative writer Mike Adams observes, indicating the shooting was coordinated and planned. There are often mind control elements at work in many of these shootings. James Holmes, for example, was a graduate student actually working on mind control technologies funded by the US government. There were also chemical mind control elements linked to Jared Lee Loughner. Several independent researchers, and most recently Infowars.com reporter Rob Dew have over the past few days pointed to evidence strongly suggesting how two additional Sandy Hook shooting suspects were apprehended by police in the minutes following 9:35 AM, when officers were dispatched to the elementary school. Recordings of the 911 dispatcher and the first responders to the campus all but wholly corroborate initial reports of at least two persons attempting to flee from the scene, with audio evidence of law enforcement officers actually encountering the suspected assailants at around 9:40 AM. Excerpts were replayed on Fox News the evening of December 14.   

Wolfgang Peter May: By the way, when I was the Intelligence Operations Officer fo , you snivelling jew:

Officer under Colonel Akula, I was the first person to document the Israeli atrocities against the USS Liberty, which was being destroyed by Israeli aircraft and subsequently sunk, with all hands on board. When I gave the sad news to General Sherrer, he had only one comment: With friends like Israel, we have no need of enemies. The atrocities committed by Israel will continue to live in infamy!

Ira Chernus: Are the US and Israel Heading for a Showdown?

No one thinks so, but it just might happen! Here's the question no one is asking as 2012 ends, especially given the effusive public support the Obama administration offered Israel in its recent conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Will 2013 be a year of confrontation between Washington and Jerusalem? It's on no one's agenda for the New Year, but it could happen anyway. It's true that the Israeli Palestinian peace process appears dead in the water. No matter how much Obama might have wanted that prize, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rebuffed him at every turn. The president appears to have taken it on the chin, offering more than the usual support for Israel, and in return getting nothing at all. However, the operative word here is "appears." In foreign affairs what you see, a show carefully scripted for political purposes often bears little relation to what you actually get. While the Obama administration has acceded to the imagery of knee jerk support for whatever Israel does, no matter how outrageous, behind the scenes its policies are beginning to look far less predictable. In fact, unlikely as it may seem, a showdown could be brewing between the two countries. If so, the outcome will depend on a complicated interplay between private diplomacy and public theater. The latest well masked US intervention came in the brief November war between Israel and Gaza. It began when Israel assassinated a top Hamas leader deeply involved in secret truce talks between the supposedly non communicating foes. Destructive as it was, the war proved brief indeed for one reason: the American president quickly stepped in. Publicly, he couldn't have sided more wholeheartedly with Israel. It felt as if Mitt Romney had won, not lost the election. In private though, as he pressured Egyptian President Morsi to force Hamas to a truce, he reportedly pushed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu just as hard. The truce agreement even had an Obama required twist. It forced Israel to continue negotiating seriously with Hamas about easing the blockade that, combined with repeated destructive Israeli strikes against the Palestinian infrastructure, has plunged Gaza so deep into poverty and misery. Talks on the blockade are reportedly proceeding, though wrapped in the deepest secrecy. It's hard to imagine Israel upholding the truce and entering into a real dialogue to ease the blockade without significant pressure from Washington.   

Jim W. Dean: Israel's deep cover agents inside the IAEA

Why the IAEA is an ongoing fraud, a tool to be used against some, or a free pass for others. Would Israel have a reason to penetrate the IAEA? Oh yes, I said it. And I will say it again. The IAEA is an ongoing fraud. Why? Because it has become totally politicized and I strongly suspect, an intelligence asset for someone. I will give you a homework assignment of figuring out who. In intelligence analysis you generally use a dual track approach of reviewing what can be seen, and then, what is often more revealing, what you don't see that you should. The IAEA's main qualification for the Nobel Prize fake international agency medal is its many years of secret service to the Israeli weapons of mass destruction programs. And what service is that, you ask? It is giving the Zios a free pass on any mention of their decades long programs, in effect putting their stamp of approval on offensive WMD proliferation. Excuse me if I have a little problem with this. I cannot think of another organization that has failed so miserably in its appointed purpose, but therein the plot begins to thicken. Why would the IAEA continue to be funded, while not being able to discover and report to the world about the Zionist weapons hoard that we all knew they had? After all, American intelligence, declassified and classified, has always concluded that Israel had had complete conventional military superiority over all of its neighbors. This left only one reason for its long running investment in all of these WMD programs, their offensive threat value. Now why would an organization like the IAEA not want to discover a threat like this? Could it be that it is working with a group that is selective about what threats are spotlighted, and which are not? After all, the Israeli WMD was an obvious incentive for surrounding nations to try to have some kind of a retaliatory deterrent. Would Israel have a reason to penetrate the IAEI? Oh yes, I said it. And I will say it again. The IAEA is an ongoing fraud. Why? Because it has become totally politicized, and I strongly suspect, an intelligence asset for someone. I will give you a homework assignment of figuring out who. In intelligence analysis you generally use a dual track approach of reviewing what you can be seen, and then, what is often more revealing, what you don't see that you should.  

Michel Chossudovsky: The Mayan 2012 Prophecy

Orwellian "End of the World" Doomsday is "Made in America". The 2012 Mayan Prophecy has been readily distorted and misunderstood. The End of the Mayan Calendar on December 21, 2012 has nothing to do with the "End of the World". In fact, the Mayan calendar does not end on December 21st. Rather, December 21 marks the beginning of a new "Long Cycle" in the Mayan calendar system. The End of the World concept is a falsehood and misinterpretation of Mayan thought. What is at stake is a renewal, the unfolding of a new era. For the Mayans, December 21 marks the beginning of a new long cycle. Meanwhile, "End of the World" stories and commentary are plastered on the news tabloids. While the Western media readily refutes the Mayan prophesy, the apocalypse narrative, when repeated ad nauseam, serves as a distraction and distortion. A Reuters Ispos poll conducted last May confirms that 10% of the World's population believe that. "The Mayan calendar, which some say ends in 2012, marks the end of the world". Ironically, in sharp contrast to the Mayan prophesy of "renewal, the real World we live in at the outset of the 21st Century is marked by a formidable economic and social crisis, which is impoverishing millions of people, literally destroying people's lives. In the figurative sense, we are in the midst of an unfolding "doomsday scenario"of a complex political, social and economic nature: it's man made, it's "Made in America", it is the consequence of the fracture of the judicial system, the evolving Homeland Security apparatus, the fraudulent deregulation of financial markets, the mismanagement of the real economy. These fundamental shifts in America's institutional and social fabric are coupled with a far reaching global military agenda, and a self serving US foreign policy. The latter under the helm of Secretary Hillary Clinton points towards a potential breakdown of the channels of international diplomacy. War and Economic Crisis are intimately related. While the global economy is in a state of chaos, marked by the collapse of productive systems, the US and its allies, including NATO and Israel, have embarked upon a military adventure, a long war under the disguise of a "global war on terrorism". The Pentagons global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously. Pentagon war games routinely focus on simulating World War III scenarios. This "End of the World" military agenda potentially threatens the future of humanity.    

Lesley Clark: Obama Urges Congress to ban Assault Weapons

President Barack Obama urged Congress on Wednesday to ban the sale of military style assault weapons and high capacity ammunition clips, and said Vice President Joe Biden would lead an effort to stem an epidemic of gun violence that plagues this country every single day. Obama said he'd asked Biden to deliver his recommendations by next month, and the president pledged to move quickly to enact them. "This is not some Washington commission," Obama said, speaking at the White House five days after a lone gunman in Connecticut opened fire in an elementary school with a semi automatic rifle, killing 20 first graders and six adults. "This is not something where folks are going to be studying the issue for six months and publishing a report that gets read and then pushed aside. This is a team that has a very specific task to pull together real reforms right now. The Biden led team, which will include members of the president's Cabinet and outside organizations, also will look at improving access to mental health services and, Obama said, at a culture that, all too often, glorifies guns and violence. The president argued that there is a growing consensus for stepped up gun control, contending that a majority of Americans support banning the sale of military style assault weapons and high capacity ammunition clips. He said most Americans also supported background checks before gun purchases, including those at gun shows, and he urged the incoming Congress to vote on gun control in a timely manner. An ABC News Washington Post poll taken after the Connecticut shooting found that 54 percent of Americans favor stricter gun control laws in general. The powerful gun lobby has resisted most new regulations. Obama said he believed that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms, but he added that he also believes that most gun owners think the US should be able to keep an irresponsible, law breaking few from buying a weapon of war.  

G. Pascal Zachary: Why is the Will to Secede not a Right Wing Fantasy?

From time to time, the breakup of the United States becomes appealing to many citizens, patriots of various stripes who "in the Course of human events" have come to believe that it is necessary for one people to dissolve the political band which have connected them. We are in one of those periods now, and while the reasons are unique and the historical moment singular, looking forward at past episodes of secessionist fervor exemplify a passing fancy? Or does it rather suggest a deeper, even revolutionary, change in the American political terrain? The immediate trigger was Barack Obama's victory, which heralded a new coalition of voters, women, people of color and young people, who voted for the Democratic candidate at such a rate that, given the prevailing demographic trends, the Democratic Party appears to possess a major advantage for the foreseeable future. After the election, right wing activists immediately called for Texas to secede from the union. This echoed a declaration by progressive Vermonters, first made in 2003, to explore ways to opt out of a country that they deemed too reactionary. A November 9 petition asking the Obama administration to peacefully grant the state of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America, has garnered nearly 120,000 signatures to become by far the most popular petition on White House.gov. Additional secession petitions have come in from the other 49 states, with those from Louisiana, Florida and Georgia amassing more than 30,000 signatories apiece. One thing is certain: a bloc of Southern states that once were essential to any Democratic majority, from Wilson to Clinton, from the onset of World War I to the defeat of Al Gore in 2000 is no longer. Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina: The Democrats now can lose every one of these states in a presidential race and still win handily. Obama just did. The Southern strategy is gone.  

Meghan Murphy: Why are Men Committing Horrible Massacres?

But what about these men? It's a question that has been avoided by the mainstream media within the context of mass shootings. The recent tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut sparked thousands of conversations across the continent about gun laws, mental illness, and violence, and sadly, we've been here before. We have had conversations about access to guns. The victims would still be alive today, after all, if there were no gun. We have talked about the need to better address mental illness in Noryh America, about how people need access to services and treatment. With proper support, potential perpetrators could get the help they need before it's too late, and what about the media? We see violence all the time in movies, video games, and on television. Have we become so desensitized to violence that mass murder has become par for the course? Or, worse, a way to achieve fame in a culture obsessed with celebrity as a goal unto itself? All these factors are relevant. All of these conversations should be had, but no one is asking what is, for once, the single most important question: What about the men? In 1984, a 39 year old man opened fire at an upscale nightclub in Dallas, after a woman rejected his aggressive sexual advances. The man, Abdelkrim Belachheb, went out to his car, retrieved his gun, and returned to the bar, shooting the woman to death. He then reloaded his gun, returned to the bar, shooting the woman to death. He then reloaded his gun and killed a total of six more people. Capital punishment quickly became the center of the national conversation. In fact, Belachheb's crime is most remembered as it lead to the passage of House Bill 8 in Texas, the "multiple murder" statute, which made serial killing and mass murder capital crimes. That same year, James Oliver Huberty, a man whose violent temper and history of domestic violence is documented, opened fire at a McDonald's restaurant in California, killing 21 people, before being shot dead by a police officer. At the time, this shooting was the largest single day, single gunman massacre in US history.      

Jack A Smith: What's Behind America.s Gun Violence?

There is more than the act of one individual involved in the mass gin killings that take place in America, the most recent being the massacre of 20 young children and seven school workers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton Connecticut December 14. The main culprit, of course, is the late killer, Adam Lanza, 20. But such events occur within a context of shared responsibility for the unparalleled number of mass and individual shooting deaths that take place in the United States every year. This includes the political system and politicians, the National Rifle Association and other gun lobbies, and federal, state and local governments. Each has played an indirect role in the latest and earlier slaughters. Of these other responsible parties, one is our political system that refuses to strengthen absurdly deficient federal and state restrictions on the possession of various types of arms. Another is the irresponsible politicians who make it relatively easy for criminals, people with mental problems, and those who are unfit to possess weapons for other reasons to accumulate a private arsenal. In recent decades, despite the fact that last year there were over 11,000 murders by firearms in the US, and another 20,000 gun deaths from accidents and suicide, not to mention many more injuries, the great majority of American politicians have been too gutless to fight for tougher laws. President Obama was moved to tears in announcing the deaths of 6 and 7 year old children in Newtown, and said he might take meaningful action of an unidentified nature, but Obama is risk averse, and has shown a disinclination to tangle with the pro gun lobbies throughout his first term, so there's a chance all well get is tears and rhetoric, even though 80% of the American people want gun owners to secure police permits, and nearly 90% would require background checks on all gun sales. On the other hand, the fact that 20 youngsters were massacred, has shocked the nation to the extent that it may be politically advantageous for the White House and Congress to pass token legislation. Most conservative Republicans will do whatever is possible to block progress on gun control, but they may be less obstructive if a proposed law is weak and limited. No major changes are anticipated.         

James F Tracy: Chemtrails, Aerosol Geoengeneering

and Bio-engineering: A Massive Biological Experiment of Unknown Purpose. "The ultimate solution is a multiplication of leverage by citizens to the point where it simply cannot be denied". Clifford Carnicom. The materials disbursed in stratospheric aerosol "geo-engineering" operations contain a combination of "ionizable" metallic salts, filaments, gel type materials, and crystals. These are the longstanding and deeply interrogated observations of independent environmental research scientist Clifford Carnicom given on a December 10 conference call organized by Global Skywatch.com director Russ Tanner. During the meeting, coincidentally held on International Human Rights Day, Carnicom asserted that because the system of responsible government has failed, the immediate collective efforts of citizens are necessary to claim their rights on this planet. His remarks were made just three months after his presentation at the Consciousness Beyond Chemtrails conference held in Los Angeles last summer. In that talk, Geo-engineering and Bioengineering: The Unmistakable Link, Carnicom upheld his research detecting such a correlation. Is there a direct relationship between the alteration of living systems (us) and ecosystems (the environment)?" he asks. "My answer is unequivocally, Yes. Mr. Carnicom's work began in 1999, when he noted clear changes in the skies overhead. He has since produced a large body of sound and meticulous, yet accessible research reports examining the nature and contents of such aerosols, all of which are available at carnicom institute.org. Carnicom also oversees the Morgellons Research Group, a body of concerned citizens, health care professionals, scientific researchers and microbiologists who devote their time to investigating this unfolding syndrome. The implications of his observations that virtually every breathing organism is an unwitting participant in a massive biological experiment of unknown purpose have proven terrifying enough to prevent many individuals from even tentatively considering his investigations and hypotheses. There's a personal journey everyone has to take about the reality of this, Carnicom told call participants.       

Israeli Embassy: If alive today, Jesus and Mary would be lynched b

by hostile Palestinians. Israel's diplomatic corps finds itself in hot water, after posting an inflammatory message on an official Facebook page. Although the message has not been deleted, this is not the first time Israel has used social media to post controversial views. The message appeared on the Israeli Ireland Facebook page, which is linked to on the official embassy site, on Monday morning. The post comprised a painting of Mary and Jesus, accompanied by the following caption: "A thought for Christmas. If Jesus and mother Mary were alive today, they would, as Jews without security, probably end up being lynched in Bethlehem by hostile Palestinians. Just a thought." The message sparked immediate heated debate, but was taken down within hours. "An image of Jesus and Mary with a derogatory comment about Palestinians was posted without the consent of the administrator of the Facebook page. We have removed the post in question immediately. Apologies to anyone who may have been offended," said an official statement from the Israeli embassy in Dublin. Since then, the Israeli Ireland page has been shut down altogether, and the link on the official website has been removed. This was not the first time the account, which is updated by an unnamed embassy staff, broadcast strong opinions. It previously claimed that Palestinian children play how to launch a missile in order to hit innocent Israeli children, women and men. The apple does not fall far from the tree, and that Pro Palestinianism is often just a politically correct cover for anti Semitism. Although a popular tourist destination for Israelis, Ireland has a tempestuous relationship with Israel. The Israeli mission, which is headed by Boaz Mozai, who is deputized by his wife, Nurit Mondai, has captured the headlines with its confrontational approach. Last year Tinari Modai claimed in a letter that Ireland based Jews should have their private information made public, if they criticize their homeland, yet the post doesn't appear to be an isolated incident, and appears as an example of Israel's wider policy of hasbara. Hasbara is seen as the concerted effort to forcefully promote Israeli views in the face of what Jerusalem perceives to be predominantly anti Israeli media coverage worldwide. Although the term appeared in the 1970's the policy has gained new impetus with the ascent of social media. 

Stephen Lendman: Gun Violence in America!

US civilian gun ownership is the highest worldwide. Yemen ranks second. America doubles the Yemeni level. Gun related violence follows. In America it's endemic. In Chicago alone, gun related deaths exceed one a day. More Chicago' ans are shot and killed than US forces in Afghanistan by any means. Gun ownership makes it simple as ready, aim, fire. It lowers the threshold between anger and homicide. Proliferation in society leaves everyone vulnerable. On Friday, 28 Sandy Hook Elementary School Newtown, CT children and teachers were murdered. A heavily armed 20 year old man used semiautomatic pistols and a semiautomatic rifle. It was the third deadliest gun related massacre in US history. The second worst occurred in Blacks-burg, VA Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's campus. On April 16, 2007, 33 students and teachers were shot and killed. Others were wounded. In January 1923, shootings and other violence killed 150 Rosewood, FL Blacks. No convictions followed. Governor Lawton Chiles, 1991-1998 later called what happened a "blind act of bigotry." In 2004, Florida declared Rosewood a state Heritage Landmark. Survivors of dead victims are unforgiving. Numerous other gun related lesser scale massacres pockmark US history. The right to own, conceal, and use assault and other deadly weapons is an ugly America tradition. It's long past time it ended. On November 18, 2012, the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence said "epidemic levels of gun violence claim over 30,000 lives annually." US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data document it. Every gun related death leaves two others wounded. Every year, about 100,000 Americans are gun violence victims. Countless others are irreparably harmed. Nothing whatever is done to curb or prevent what's shocking and intolerable. The 1968 Gun Control Act fell woefully short. Federal regulation enacted was weak and ineffective. Gun manufacturers supported the measure. It prohibits interstate firearms transfers except among licensed manufacturers, dealers and importers. It did nothing to curb gun proliferation across America. 

Editing: Jim W. Dean: Israeli Foreign Minister Liberman

resigns following indictment. A 12 year investigation resolved with indictment a month before elections. Israeli politicians beat a lot of these corruption charges. This could easily follow that path. Rampant Israeli corruption spawns investigations lasting more than ten years. Avigdor Lieberman has resigned as Israel's foreign minister following his indictment for fraud and breach of trust. "I have committed no offense but wish to put behind me this issue, which is what remains of many years of investigation," Lieberman said in a statement Friday. Lieberman said he would also step down as vice prime minister, and lift his immunity from prosecution, to which he is entitled as a member of Knesset. On December 13, Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein closed a 12 year investigation on Lieberman, dismissing most of the charges, but he indicted Lieberman for fraud and breach of trust for advancing former ambassador to Belarus Ze'ev Ben Aryeh's position in the Foreign Ministry, allegedly in exchange for information about an investigation against Lieberman being conducted in Belarus. Last spring, Ben Aryeh confessed that he had received and passed documents to Lieberman in 2008. In his statement, Lieberman added: "I am stepping down also because I believe the citizens of Israel deserve to go to the ballot box with this thing already settled, so I can resume serving the state of Israel and its citizens." According to Ynet, Lieberman does not plan to resign as number two of Halikud Beiteinu, the merger of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud, and the movement headed by Lieberman, Yisrael Beiteinu. Lieberman has said he wished for a "quick trial" but it is not known whether this could be concluded ahead of Israel's general elections scheduled for January 22.  

Joshua Holland: How an Astounding New Right Wing Lie Is Born!

There's a new economic myth that's now being amplified by the conservative media. It demonizes vital public services, and suggests that the poor are doing just fine, thanks to the largesse of the country's "makers." Conservatives are being told that the United States is now spending vast fortunes combating poverty, more than we dedicate to national defense, Social Security and Medicare. This new spin is notable not for its mendacity, although it is completely divorced from reality, but because its origins are easily traced, allowing us to see how these kinds of distortions come to be. This one originated with the work of an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, which is well known for its intellectual dishonesty. It was then picked up by Republican staffers on Capitol Hill, who lent the claim credibility by requesting a Congressional Research Service report on the analysis. They then further distorted the narrative before distributing it to friendly writers at conservative media outlets, who dutifully reported the falsehood. It will soon become conventional wisdom on the Right, further distorting conservative's view of taxes and spending. Several conservative outlets had the story before Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard, but his piece is the one that's been cited by hundreds of conservative blogs, right wing radio talkers and Fox News. Halper, citing "the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee," framed the story like this: "Welfare spending per day per household in poverty is $168, which is higher than the $137 median income per day. When broken down per hour, welfare spending per hour per household in poverty is $30.60, which is higher than the $25.03 median income per hour." For fiscal year 2011, CRS identified roughly 80 overlapping federal means tested welfare programs that together represented the single largest budget item in 2011, more than the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare, or national defense. The total amount spent on these federal programs, when taken together with approximately $280 billion in state contributions, amounted to roughly $1 trillion. Common sense should tell you that this is a ridiculous claim. Given that the United States has one of the weakest social safety nets in the world, it's pretty obvious that we're not spending more on each family in poverty than the median income, or more on the poor than we spend on defense, Social Security and Medicare.