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Where there were massacres there are now power plants
By David Swanson
In the United States it's hard to imagine admiring an attorney general. The words call to mind people like Eric Holder, Michael Mukasey, Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Janet Reno, and Edwin Meese. There were those who fantasized that Barack Obama would not prevent an attorney general from prosecuting top officials for torture, but the idea of a U.S. attorney general prosecuting a U.S. president for war/genocide doesn't even enter the realm of fantasy (in part, because Americans don't even think of what the U.S. military does in the Middle East in those terms). For a lesson in daring to imagine equality before the law, we can turn our eyes toward Guatemala. Here's a country suffering under the Monroe Doctrine since the dawn of time, a place where the United States engaged in human experimentation giving syphilis to unwitting victims during the time that U.S. lawyers were prosecuting Nazis in Nuremberg. Guatemala had a relatively decent government in 1954 when the CIA overthrew it. U.S. destruction has been unremitting in Guatemala, with the U.S. government backing dictators, killers, and torturers, including during the 1980s and 1990s, a period from which Guatemala is still trying to recover.
33 years after the Sabra-Shatila Massacre Takfiri calls for “Intifada!” waft from Lebanon’s camps
Franklin Lamb
Shatila Palestinian camp, Lebanon
“Palestinians have no reliable friends Abu Ammar! This summer proved it! Where are the worthless Arabs? Only some foreign implanted “Resistance” elements that for their own hegemonic political purposes want to play the Palestinian card and wear your keffiyeh and pose for photos making the V for Victory sign! This disgusts me Abu Ammar! Palestinians must rely only on themselves. The PLO must return to “Revolution until Victory!” You should postpone your exit from Lebanon and you must protect the camps. Without the gun to protect them what does Reagan’s olive branch “we will give you back most of Palestine if you leave Beirut” convey? Nothing worth anything in my opinion”!
Thus was the plea to PLO leader Yassir Arafat, made 33 years ago by a distraught and prescient American journalist and Palestinian advocate from Atlanta, Georgia named Janet Lee Stevens. At the time she was four floors underground in Arafat’s Fakhani South Beirut bunker across from Arab University. She and her colleagues were secure from American bombs that rained down 12 hours that day from Zionist aggressors as she made her case.
The Sanhedrin Is Back With A Vengeance
William Hanna
“The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.”
Mark 14:55
The earliest record of a Sanhedrin is by Josephus — a Romano-Jewish scholar, historian and biographer (37 - c. 100 CE) — who wrote of a political Sanhedrin convened by the Romans in 57 BCE. Hellenistic sources generally depict the Sanhedrin as a political and judicial council headed by the country’s ruler. Tannaitic (rabbinic works written from about 10 - 220 CE) sources describe the Great Sanhedrin as a religious assembly of 71 sages who met in the Chamber of Hewn Stones in the Temple of Jerusalem. They constituted the supreme religious body in the Land of Israel during that time and had their own equivalent of a police force with powers to arrest people, as was the case with Jesus Christ.
Near Zero Percent US Federal Funds Rate Since December 2008
by Stephen Lendman
Low rates benefit investors at the expense of savers, retirees and pensioners without paychecks needing income especially harmed. At near zero percent for nearly seven years, virtually none is forthcoming for most people.
Weeks of debate over whether a long overdue rate hike was forthcoming ended Friday when the Fed again left rates unchanged - the usual boilerplate given as reasons, “reaffirm(ing) its view that the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate remains appropriate.”
All Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members agreed except Jeffrey Lacker - urging a 25 basis point increase. Greenspan/Bernanke/Yellen monetary policy has been a bonanza for Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.
Pentagon Updating War Plans Against Russia
by Stephen Lendman
Longstanding US policy calls for regime change in all sovereign independent countries - by color revolutions or wars, notably targeting Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela, to eliminate major rivals and control world resources, especially oil.
The Pentagon maintains war plans against all targeted countries, updating them as needed, ready to act if ordered - risking potential global war.
On September 18, Washington Post-owned Foreign Policy magazine featured longtime anti-Russian writer Julia Ioffe’s article headlined “Exclusive: The Pentagon Is Preparing New War Plans for a Baltic Battle Against Russia,” saying:
“For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US Department of Defense is reviewing and updating its contingency plans for armed conflict with Russia.”
California’s Right-to-Die Bill & The New York Times
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD of The New York Times
September 22, 2015
Gov. Jerry Brown of California is hearing plenty from opponents and supporters of a bill state lawmakers passed earlier this month that would allow some terminally ill patients to hasten their death. Modeled after the pioneering right-to-die bill Oregon put into effect in 1997, California’s End of Life Option Act would allow people in the advanced stages of a terminal illness to obtain a lethal dose of painkillers from a physician. Mr. Brown should sign the bill into law.
And for those who don't know why we don't have the ultimate civil right, that is why you can’t kill yourself?, keep reading.
Why Can’t You Kill Yourself?
by Elizabeth Young [published June 20, 2011]
The recent passing of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, and the arrest of the 91-year old woman making a "killing" selling $60 suicide kits, has forced society to look at why we are not allowed the right to die with dignity.[1]
UN Condemns Ukrainian Government Cover-Ups
Eric Zuesse
On September 18th, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights headlined “Statement of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns Ukraine: Lives lost in an accountability vacuum,” and condemned there the current Ukrainian Government in strong language, regarding not only the coup which had brought them to power in February 2014, but regarding also the massacre of the people who on 2 May 2014 had been peacefully demonstrating in Odessa against the coup. Specifically, the ongoing cover-ups by the Ukrainian Government concerning both of these matters were condemned by him.
The High Commissioner, Christof Heyns, said: By allowing almost immediate access of the scene to ‘pro-unity’ protesters, members of the public or to municipal authorities, investigators lost a large proportion of potentially valuable forensic evidence.
Russia’s Real Involvement in Syria
by Stephen Lendman
Big Lies continue circulating, claiming a Russian military buildup in Syria, reminiscent of fabricated accusations of “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, long ago discredited.
Russia is Europe’s leading force for peace, stability, nation-state sovereign independence, the inviolability of international law, and against countries interfering in the internal affairs of others.
Putin, Sergey Lavrov and other Russian officials have gone all-out to resolve conflicts in Ukraine and Syria diplomatically - the only effective solution. Anti-Russian propaganda claiming otherwise stems from Washington’s longtime regime change objective - Western media in lockstep with its destructive imperial agenda.
Netanyahu Vows Harsher Police State Viciousness on Palestinians
by Stephen Lendman
Israel considers unrestrained viciousness against Palestinians defending law and order. Legitimate Palestinian resistance against ruthless Israeli persecution is called terrorism.
Justice is upside down. Militarized rule denies longtime suffering people fundamental rights everyone deserves.
They’re considered enemies of the state for demanding them - in greater danger after Netanyahu authorized police to use live fire against Palestinian protesters (using .22 caliber Ruger rifles allegedly less lethal than heavier weapons) and new legislation mandating harsh prison sentences for stone-throwers, subjecting youths and young children to years behind bars in one of the world’s most dehumanizing and brutal gulags.
Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. for ISIS
Eric Zuesse
The British polling organization ORB International, an affiliate of WIN/Gallup International, repeatedly finds in Syria that, throughout the country, Syrians oppose ISIS by about 80%, and (in the latest such poll) also finds that 82% of Syrians blame the U.S. for ISIS.
The Washington Post summarized on September 15th the latest poll. They did not headline it with the poll’s anti-U.S. finding, such as “82% of Syrians Blame U.S. for ISIS.” That would have been newsworthy. Instead, their report’s headline was "One in five Syrians say Islamic State is a good thing, poll says.” However, the accompanying graphic wasn’t focused on the few Syrians who support ISIS (and, at only one in five, that’s obviously not much — it’s hardly even news). It instead (for anyone who would read beyond that so-what headline) provided a summary of what Syrians actually do support. This is is what their graphic highlighted from the poll’s findings:
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