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By FRANKLIN LAMB
Tripoli
One of the jokes heard at this week’s massive pro-government Friday post prayer rally at Green Square (in most of the other Arab countries Fridays are days of rage against the government du jour but in Libya Friday prayers are followed by massive pro-Qadaffi rallies, attended two weeks ago by close to 65% of Tripoli’s population) is about how each morning Libya’s leader, following early morning Fajr prayers dons his formal uniform, complete with those huge epaulets, and salutes the small NATO flag he tapes to his bathroom mirror as he moves from place to place dodging NATO drones and assassins. “Our leader does this”, one young lady informed me first with a wide smile and then growing serious, “because the NATO bombing of Libyan civilians, which the US/NATO axis claims Qaddafi is doing, has caused his popularity to skyrocket among our proud and nationalist tribal people. I am one example of this. Yes, of course we can use some new blood and long overdue reform in our government. Which country cannot? But first we must defeat the NATO invaders and then we can sort out our problems among our tribes including the so-called “NATO Rebels.”
by Stephen Lendman
America's dirty war, in fact, targets Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, political activists, and Muslims for their faith, ethnicity, and at times prominence and charity, exploiting them as "war on terror" scapegoats.
On July 9, a Press TV US prison system racket interview highlighted the problem and urgency to address it, accessed through the following link:
By Khalid Amayreh
Recent Israeli behavior toward a host of issues and events portrays a state in the throes of an existential anxiety. For example, the clearly hysterical response by the Israeli government to the mobilization of a few ships carrying humanitarian aid to blockaded Gazans caricatured a state that reacts in a phobic manner to dangers and threats that don’t really exist.
After all, the volunteers on board the ships, who include people from different cultures and religions, made it abundantly clear that their mission was to deliver badly-needed humanitarian materials to the people of Gaza Strip, hermetically besieged by Israel for the fifth consecutive year for no convincing reasons.
By Michael Collins
So this is how it is going to be:
"After putting controversial cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table in negotiations with congressional Republicans over a plan to raise the nation's debt ceiling, President Obama still doesn't have a deal in the works." Chris Moody, Yahoo News, July 7
Who told President Obama to put "controversial cuts on Social Security and Medicare on the table"? Hasn't the president seen his public opinion polling numbers lately? He is consistently at or below 50% job approval. (Image)
Didn't he pay attention to the special congressional election in the highly conservative, long-time Republican upstate New York district that elected a Democrat for the first time in years?
Isn't the President Obama aware that there's an election coming up; that many of the people he is so willingly and openly betraying rely on Social Security to live and Medicare to stay alive?
What planet does he live on? (Unless this is what he truly desires.)
James Petras
The US government (White House and Congress) spends $10 billion dollars a month, or $120 billion a year, to fight an estimated “50 -75 ‘Al Qaeda types’ in Afghanistan”, according to the CIA and quoted in the Financial Times of London (6/25 -26/11, p. 5). During the past 30 months of the Obama presidency, Washington has spent $300 billion dollars in Afghanistan, which adds up to $4 billion dollars for each alleged ‘Al Queda type’. If we multiply this by the two dozen or so sites and countries where the White House claims ‘Al Qaeda’ terrorists have been spotted, we begin to understand why the US budget deficit has grown astronomically to over $1.6 trillion for the current fiscal year.
by Stephen Lendman
Two earlier articles discussed them in detail, accessed through the following links:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/from-goldstone-to-uribe.html
"http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/from-goldstone-to-uribe.html" target="_blank">http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/08/from-goldstone-to-uribe.html
Last September, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), issued its damning findings on Israel's Flotilla I massacre, killing nine and wounding dozens of peaceful humanitarian activists heading for Gaza with aid.
by Stephen Lendman
Friday's jobs report threw more cold water on so-called recovery. Since 2008, Main Street America's been in Depression.
Conditions have worsened, not improved, because of force-fed austerity, not badly needed stimulus to create jobs, reemploy people, and revive real economic growth, not the illusory kind since the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) officially declared June 2009 the end of recession.
At 11:05AM on July 8, Obama commented from the Rose Garden, doing what he does best - dissembling and distorting reality to conceal what's going on and why.
His best shot was saying:
"We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do to give people the security and opportunity that they deserve."
By Timothy V. Gatto
The current state of affairs in America is untenable. The government that the American people put into power has turned its back on the majority of Americans. Both major political parties are sustained by corporate dollars for their political campaigns and by out and out bribery. There are fundamental ills that are destroying the United States that must be addressed. These are;
1. Unpopular wars in the Middle East, North Africa and in the Horn of Africa, some that have been waged by the President without consulting Congress, which is the law of the land, as spelled out in Section 1, Article 8 of the U.S. Constitution. We are spending far too much on the military and the American “security state”, ignoring the general welfare of the citizens of the United States.
2. Laws which were imposed on the American people that usurp the Bill of Rights and therefore limit our civil liberties. These include the Patriot Acts (in all forms), The Military Commissions Act, The new FISA Laws and other draconian laws and Presidential Directives including the PD that authorizes the assassination of American citizens under orders from the President with no oversight.
by Stephen Lendman
Before and after Mubarak was ousted, Egypt's military arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and disappeared thousands, a practice continuing to ruthlessly stay in power and prevent change.
Moreover, thousands arrested are being tried in military courts, denying them due process or judicial fairness. Allowed only court-appointed counsel, attorneys get minutes with clients to review charges before presenting their case in proceedings.
In addition, multiple defendants are tried simultaneously. Ten thousand or more were sentenced in recent months, some to death, and lawyers can't appeal. Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) attorney Adel Ramadan said nothing under Mubarak was like this. The ruling junta is much more extreme, cracking down ruthlessly against challenges to its authority.
Stephen Lendman
In six editions of "The Media Monopoly" and subsequent update titled, "The New Media Monopoly," Ben Bagdikian explained how deregulation let major media corporations consolidate to oligopoly size.
Since 1983, the number of corporations owning most newspapers, magazines, book publishers, recorded music, movie studios, television and radio stations shrunk from 50 to a handful, including Time-Warner, Disney, News Corp., Viacom, Comcast, and Bertelsmann AG.
In 1996, Telecommunications Act backers claimed it would increase competition, lower prices, and improve service. In fact, TV station ownership limits were raised to let broadcast giants own twice as many local stations as before, charge what they wished, and dismiss public concerns in the process.
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