PRESSTV: Israeli Ground Forces Cross Into Lebanon!

Israeli soldiers have once again crossed into Lebanon in clear violation of the country's sovereignty and a UN Security Council resolution. The incident occurred on Wednesday when an Israeli foot patrol of 11 crossed an electric fence in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese News Agency reported on Wednesday. They reportedly proceeded close to the Wazzani River, and stayed at the river's eastern bank for several hours before withdrawing. The violation of Lebanon's territorial waters and border by the Israeli military occurs on an almost daily basis. Israel has also been violating Lebanon's airspace on an almost daily basis, under the pretext of carrying out surveillance operations. Lebanon has repeatedly condemned the violation of its skies as a breach of the country's sovereignty. In 2004, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1559, reaffirming its call for the strict respect of Lebanon's sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity, and political independence. Lebanon pursues Iran diplomats: 10 Israeli jets violate Lebanese airspace. Man booked for sneaking arms to Syria.

Sarah Jaffe: Rush Limbaugh Thinks the Unemployed Need to Suffer!

When official unemployment's been over 8 percent for over three years, it can be hard to keep focused on the crisis. The endless repetition of jobs statistics can become numbing. But the people struggling every day with the realities of joblessness don't need the reminder: They're living the crisis, day in and day out. So imagine how they felt when Rush Limbaugh, self-proclaimed patron saint of the everyday Joe who's being kept down by the Man, never mind that in his casethe Man is represented by liberals, who might want you know, create jobs or raise the minimum wage declared this week: "The sad truth is that employment is not pivotal. No job, no employment, no pain. For a whole heck of a lot of people whose expectations for themselves are not very high. There are no jobs, and yet they're still eating. I'm telling you, there's a new reality out there, because it's not resulting in that much pain, not nearly as much as it used to be. The so-called victims of the unemployment circumstance are not suffering as unemployed people in the past did." We are supposed to be cheered, I suppose, that Limbaugh says,"Not that I want them to!" Because, of course, Rush wouldn't actually be wishing suffering on those people, whose expectations for themselves are not very high. Where did all this come from? Limbaugh's warning Mitt Romney that he won't be able to win the election on jobs by continuing to point out the high unemployment rate, and not because Romney's personal record is one of slashing and burning jobs, wherever he went. No, Limbaugh thinks that unemployment is still high because those unemployed folks are being coddled with food stamps and unemployment checks.   

Robert Parry: Bohemian Grove and Reagan's 'Treason'. "

In 1992, the protectors of Ronald Reagan's legacy and George H W Bush's presidency were in a bind. They had gained the upper hand in shutting down an investigation into allegations that Reagan and Bush had gone behind President Jimmy Carter's back in 1980 to undermine his negotiations to free 52 Americans held by Iranian radicals, but then one of their crucial alibis collapsed. In a stranger than fiction moment, these protectors turned to the exclusive Bohemian Grove, the target of a new round of Occupy protests this weekend, as a location for cobbling together a replacement alibi, thus sparing the Establishment the unpleasantness of a thorough investigation into what had the appearance of "treason" by the widely admired Reagan and Bush Sr. Official Washington had thought questions about the so-called "October Surprise" of 1980 had been put to rest in November 1991, when the neoconservative New Republic and the pro-establishment Newsweek splashed debunking articles on their covers. Both magazines claimed that an alleged meeting between Reagan's campaign chief William Casey and Iranians could not have happened because Casey had an alibi. Instead of meeting with Iranians in Madrid on Monday, July 28, as Iranian businessman and CIA operative Jamshid Hashemi had indicated, Casey was at a historical conference in London, his presence established by attendance records, the magazine said. Gloating that they had proven once and for all that the October Surprise suspicions were "a myth," The New Republic and Newsweek mocked any remaining doubters as "conspiracy theorists." The impact of the magazine stories, and their ridiculing tone, could not be overstated. Ted Koppel's ABC News "Night-line program, which had aired an interview with Hashemi about the Madrid meeting, was humiliated. The producer who had brought Hashemi for the interview was soon out of a job.   

Prof. John Kozy: Governments Exist to Further the Interests of "Favored Groups"

Governments have never existed to solve problems domestic or international. Governments and their institutions exist merely to further and secure the interests of favored groups, but We the People are never the favored group. Paul Krugman recently wrote that The fact is that the Fed, like the European Central Bank, like the US Congress, like the government of Germany, has decided that avoiding economic disaster is somebody else's responsibility. None of this should be happening. As in 1931, Western nations have the resources they need to avoid catastrophe, and indeed to restore prosperity , and we have the added advantage of knowing much more than our great-grandparents did about how depressions happen, and how to end them. But knowledge and resources do no good, if those who possess them refuse to use them. And that's what seems to be happening. The fundamentals of the world economy aren't, in themselves, all that scary. Its the almost universal abdication of responsibility that fills me, and many other economists, with a growing sense of dread. Krugman and most other Americans are fond of blaming social problems on the personal failings of individuals rather than on the systemic failings of institutions. It is people borrowing more than they can afford, rather than banks lending too loosely, or consumers saving too little, rather than businesses paying too little to enable consumers to save, that causes all of the problems. But borrowing and lending and saving and income are not independent variables. People are persons with personal failures, but banks are institutions with systemic failures, and the systemic failures can entice people to engage in activities that may look like personal failures but are not.  

Gar Alperovitz: How The Big Banks Run the World.

The recent Public Banking conference held in Philadelphia offered a message that is at once so simple, but also so bold, it is hard for most Americans to pause long enough to understand how profoundly their thinking had been corralled by the masters of finance, in ways far, far, far more insidious and powerful than even the latest financial crisis suggests. To understand what has happened, however, you first have to take a minute to shake a few cobwebs out of your brain about "money", and how it is created and by whom and for whose benefit. Money is "created"? Yes, obviously so, or did you imagine there is some fixed pile of "money" some place that exists once and for all and for all times? Think about it: If that were true, it would be impossible for the economy ever to change and grow. If the "money supply" were not increased over time, the original economy of, say, 1776, which served about 2.5 million Americans, would still define the amount of "money" we would have to work with today. And yes, going back further, if money were not increased, the amount that existed even in a far smaller economy prior to 1776 would be all there was and is, even down to today. Once you realize money must be and is regularly created and expanded, then the interesting questions begin to occur, like "How is it done? and Who benefits from it?" Step One: Most people think of money as something real, something that is kind of like gold or silver, or anything that has intrinsic value. Allowing for a very, very few minor exceptions, that is simply not what money is: Money in the real world is a piece of paper, or electronic version of the same, that is a promissory note, a promise to pay you, that legally must be accepted by anyone to whom it is given to settle a debt. 

Ian Murphy: The 9 Most Loathsome Lobbyists in Washington

Tis the bleak post-Citizens United season in America: Money equals speech, and corporations, super PACs, and an egregiously wealthy minority have the biggest mouths in the land, but the oligarchs' work is never done. After the elections are bought, it's back to the business of business and, presumably, consuming yacht loads of caviar and foie gras. Maximum profit demands that figh powered lobbyists grease the wheels of legislation or grind them to a shrieking halt, whichever yields the highest return. For your entertainment, below is a list of some of the most depraved lobbyists money can buy: Chris Dodd: The former Connecticut Senator, and internationally renowned eyebrow haver, isn't the most prodigious scum in the Beltway swamp, but he may be the most hypocritical. When asked in 2010 what would follow his thirty year legislative career, which ended amid financial scandal, Dodd bluntly said, "No lobbying, no lobbying." He then promptly became, as the Hill put it, "Hollywood's leading man in Washington, taking the most prestigious job on K Street," as chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. The gig comes with a $1.2 million annual salary, and complimentary tickets to the Academy Awards: Dodd's most public, and ultimately ill fated advocacy was in pushing two potentially disastrous bills: The Stop Online Piracy Act, and its Senate counterpart, Protect IP Act, both of which would have given the federal government the right to shut down any website that was merely being accused of copyright infringement. The bills were shelved indefinitely after a massive online protest in which thousands of sites went voluntarily dark for a day. Dodd ironically called the blackout an "irresponsible abuse of power." So it's OK for the Feds to make your site go black, but it's not OK for you to do it yourself. 

Kourosh Ziabari: Opposition to Iran War Gaining Momentum

While Israeli leaders have historically demonstrated that they are insane and reckless enough to commit such a malicious and lethal blunder as launching a military strike on Iran, the international opposition to war against Iran is progressively gaining momentum. Several prominent academicians, peace activists, artists, journalists and even Nobel Prize laureates have stood shoulder to shoulder with the international organizations to voice their dismay and alarm at the renewed war rhetoric of Israel against Iran and its possible plans for launching a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities following the unsuccessful conclusion of nuclear talks between Iran and the representatives of six world powers in Moscow. Israel has perpetually been at the forefront of defying Iran's peaceful nuclear program, while according to the Federation of American Scientists, possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads itself. So far, the UN nuclear watchdog has failed to present hard evidence proving that Iran's nuclear program has deviated toward military purposes. However, under the pressure of Israel, the United States and their European cronies, the United Nations Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran and the EU has recently implemented its comprehensive oil embargo against Iran, on which its member states had reached an agreement in January this year. In dealing with Iran's nuclear program, threats of military operation and economic sanctions have been the two sides of the same coin for the US, Israel and EU. From one hand, they impose hard-hitting sanctions to derail Iran's economy, create instability in the country and sow the seeds of discord and disagreement between the people and the government, and from the other hand, they vehemently talk of a possible military expedition so as to demoralize the country's statesmen, forcing them into giving up the nuclear program, and also make other political and economic concessions.