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Rafik Hariri Murder Trial
by Stephen Lendman
On January 16, the UN's Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) convened. It did so in the Hague.
Nine years after Hariri's assassination, show trial proceedings began. Hezbollah members were wrongfully accused. More on this below.
A crime scene courtroom mockup was displayed. Hariri's killing took place on Beirut's waterfront. On February 14, 2005, his motorcade was targeted.
A powerful car bomb killed him. Around 20 others perished. Over 100 were injured. The blast left a 30-foot-wide/six-foot-deep crater.
On arrival at Beirut's American University Hospital, Hariri was pronounced dead. Fingers straightaway pointed the wrong way. Guilty parties were absolved. Innocent ones were accused.
The Ghost of Ariel Sharon
by Stephen Lendman
Previous articles discussed Sharonian evil. It's perhaps worse than ever without him. Multiple daily abuses explain best.
Palestinians are fair game. Most people can't imagine what they endure. Police state ruthlessness defines Israeli policies. Settler violence compounds it. More on this below.
Gazans continue suffocating under siege. Israeli air, ground and sea attacks compound it.
On January 16, Israeli warplanes bombed civilian targets. Northern Gaza was struck. Areas east and west of Gaza City were hit.
Medical sources said four children were injured. So was one woman. They were lucky to escape death. Israeli authorities repeat the Big Lie.
"Terror sites" were struck, they claim. Israel considers civilians legitimate targets. Nonviolent men, women and children are called terrorists.
Since New Year's day alone, Israel bombed Gaza several times. Artillery fired cross border. Most recently was on January 9. Three Palestinian civilians were injured. Israel remains unaccountable.
Constitutional Despotism in Egypt
by Stephen Lendman
Junta power runs Egypt. Democracy is verboten. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) rules.
Fascist generals control things. US-trained Abdul Fatah-al Sisi heads them. Interim civilian officials provide fig leaf cover.
A new constitution was drafted. It has no legitimacy whatever. More on its provisions below.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, a national referendum was held. Violence marred two days of voting.
Security forces killed 11 or more people. Dozens were injured. Numerous arrests were made. Police states operate this way. Egypt is one of the region's worst.
Israel Denies Palestinians All Rights
by Stephen Lendman
According to UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine Richard Falk, "Palestinians don't even have the right to have rights."
Militarized occupation denies them. Harshness exceeding the worst of South African apartheid describes their status. The UN and Human Rights Council do nothing to help.
According to Falk, they "failed to follow through in a way that is effective in bringing peace and justice to the peoples of Palestine, and until (they do, they have) no ethical or (other) basis for not trying (their) utmost to do so."
Palestinians are isolated on their own. In 1948, Israel stole 78% of their homeland. In 1967, it took the rest. Militarized occupation exists.
It's lawless. It's illegitimate. It continues because world leaders do nothing to stop it. They turn a blind eye to Israel's worst crimes.
Obama's War on Freedom
by Stephen Lendman
Perhaps no president in US history disappointed supporters more than Obama. He pledged "change you can believe it." He promised hope.
He did Lincoln one better. He fooled most people enough times to matter. He never cared about rule of law principles. He trashed them in office. He deplores democratic values.
He's beholden to monied interests. "Yes we can" conceals his dark side duplicity. He made America look increasingly like Guatemala. Nothing ahead suggests change.
International, constitutional and US statute laws don't matter. Bush declared them null and void. So did Obama.
He presides over a ruthless police state apparatus. No one is free and safe. Big Brother watches everyone. Mass surveillance is official US policy.
The “Israel First” Industry and CEO Profiteering
James Petras
During the first half of the 20th century, socially conscious Jews in the United States organized a large network of solidarity and charity associations financed mostly through small donations, raffles and dues by working and lower middle class supporters. Many of these associations dealt with the everyday needs of Jewish workers, immigrants and families in need. Some were linked to labor unions, social democratic and leftist parties. Their leaders were, in many cases, individuals who worked long hours engaged in resolving problems and intervening in local crises. They drew a modest paycheck – (when funding was available) – comparable to that of a skilled worker. A few women’s groups like the Hadassah went door to door in predominantly Jewish commercial districts, hitting up Jewish and non-Jewish storekeepers with raffle tickets to purchase beds in Hebrew hospitals in Palestine/Israel. The predominant ethic was improving the livelihood of Jews in America, joining with the America left and labor groups in united fronts against fascism and domestic, ethnic and racial supremacist organizations. Up until the establishment of Israel, Zionist organizations were a small minority in the Jewish community, especially among working class Jews.
The Greatest Achievement by Mankind: Why the Moon Landing Could Never Have Been a Hoax
By Robert Singer
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July 20th 1969: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." [1] The apparent flag waving on the "atmosphere free" moon is discussed below.
Why the Moon landing could never have been a Hoax?
43 years later there are still some who won’t believe mankind’s greatest scientific achievement of the last 50 years. I can still remember that magical, awe inspiring remarkable moment in history when Neil Armstrong planted the American flag in the lunar soil on the moon.
James Longuski, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering at Purdue University, dismissed the idea that man didn't land on the moon.
To suppose a conspiracy to fake a moon landing because the United States was technologically incapable of going to the moon, that numerous photos and films have been doctored, that a trip to the moon would have resulted in radiation killing the astronauts and that numerous key members of the Apollo program died under suspicious circumstances considering it would have to be a ten-year conspiracy involving more than 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo project including the 12 men who walked on the Moon, the six who flew with them as Command Module pilots, and another six astronauts who orbited the Moon is absurd in the highest degree.[2]
Hundreds of thousands of people—including astronauts, scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled laborers—would have had to keep the secret. Longuski argues that it would have been much easier to really land on the Moon than to generate such a huge conspiracy to fake the landings. Penn Jillette made note of this in the "Conspiracy Theories" episode of his contrarian television show, Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, in 2005. He said that keeping that many people from talking about the Hoax would be impossible.
And as far as keeping people quiet, there were only eleven Apollo astronauts who died within the twenty-two month period before the first manned Apollo fight. And seven of them had non-space related fatal accidents within a year of one another. Yes that seems a bit odd, but the odds of that happening are 1 in 10,000. We don’t know why James B. Irwin, Don F. Eisele, Stewart Allen Roosa and Jack Swigert all resigned from the program but there must have been a good reason.
Virgil Grissom, the NASA astronaut who hung a lemon on his Apollo capsule and told his wife Betty: "If there is ever a serious accident in the space program, it's likely to be me." Soon after, he and his two co-pilots were dead, burnt to death during a test run when their capsule, pumped full of high pressure pure oxygen, exploded. Some openly questioned NASA’s knowledge of chemistry. Even a high school chemistry student knows that high-pressure oxygen is extremely explosive.
Op-Ed: Obamacare — The fast track to the next life
By Ruth Hull
Want health care in America? You may find it easier and faster to buy a cemetery plot and line up an undertaker. Putting a brave front on the Obamacare fiasco, Dave Jones pointed out that America has the worst health care in the industrialized world.
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones is running for re-election this year. But he's got a problem. If too many Californian's die before being able to navigate the Obamcare sign-up game, their relatives might not be voting for incumbents in November.
Dave would have preferred to implement an actual health care plan, like the Kucinich/Conyers single-payer, not-for-profit plan that would have kicked the health care insurance companies out of the U.S. of A Instead, Jones got stuck with the Republican give-insurance-executives-your-life-savings-plan put forth by two governors (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mitt Romney) and by former tobacco-spokesperson and Presidential candidate Bob Dole and implemented by Wall Street “yes” man Barack Obama. Is anyone here still calling Obama a Democrat? The term seems to have evolved over the years.
It’s Not Just the Mainstream Media That Is Scripted to Manufacture Consent, so Are Our Politicians
via chycho
I. Manufacturing Consent
To say that mainstream media is controlled is an understatement. We’ve gone far past the time of relatively semi-covert CIA programs such as Operation Mockingbird where “some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts.” Those days are long gone; the mainstream media is now openly scripted (2-pdf) to manufacture consent.
“We're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the eighteenth century or something like that. We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in, we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and are responsible for, and what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of the suffering people, and not even the needs of the American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that's dripping from their hands because of the way they are allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by the system.” - Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992
From Austerity to Abundance: Why I Am Running for California Treasurer
by Ellen Brown
Governor Jerry Brown and his staff are exchanging high-fives over balancing California’s budget, but the people on whose backs it was balanced are not rejoicing. The state’s high-wire act has been called “the ultimate in austerity budgets.”
Welfare payments, health care for the poor, and benefits for the elderly and disabled have been slashed. State workers have been downsized. School districts in need of cash have been reduced to borrowing through “capital appreciation bonds” bearing 300% interest. In one notorious case, the Santa Ana school district actually borrowed at 1,000% interest. And the governor acknowledges that California still faces a “wall of debt” amounting to $28 billion. Some analysts put it much higher than that.
At the end of the 20th century, California was ranked the sixth largest economy in the world. By 2012, it had slipped to number twelve. It is coming back up, in part because European countries are falling further into recession; but California’s poverty rate remains the highest in the country. More than eight million Californians struggle to meet their daily needs, and one in four children lives in poverty. Income inequality is higher in the nation’s most populous state than in almost any other.
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