Anti-Empire Report
by William Blum / February 4th, 2012
As we all know only too well, the United States and Israel would hate to see Iran possessing nuclear weapons. Being “the only nuclear power in the Middle East” is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. But — in the real, non-propaganda world — is USrael actually fearful of an attack from a nuclear-armed Iran? In case you’ve forgotten …
In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister …
by Walter Brasch / February 4th, 2012
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, Thursday.
That means there will be an additional six weeks of winter.
Or it means there will be an early Spring.
It doesn’t make much difference. Phil has an accuracy rate of about 39 percent, according to the StormFax Weather Almanac. That’s probably about the same as TV weather forecasters.
StormFax has tracked Phil’s predictions since 1897, the year he (with the help of the Punxsatawney Spirit) made his first trip to Gobbler’s Knob, about two miles from the town in the northwest part of Pennsylvania.
The name, Punxsutawney, is probably derived from an Algonquin or Delaware Indian name which …
Iraq War Crimes
by Felicity Arbuthnot / February 4th, 2012
We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected round the world.
— President Barack Obama, State of the Union address, 24th January 2012
On January 24th, the day President Obama delivered his last State of the Union speech to Congress before the election, citing the “selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces, (their) focus on the mission at hand”, the “selfless” Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, leader of the massacre at Haditha, in Iraq, became the seventh soldier to walk free from the mass murder of twenty four unarmed men, women and children …
by Shepherd Bliss / February 4th, 2012
The Sonoma County daily’s Press Democrat February 1 editorial “Occupy Movement in Ashes” is wishful thinking. Our phoenix will rise during this month. You wait. You watch. You see.
Occupy is still an infant, having been born in New York September 17 with Occupy Wall Street. It is not even five months old and already the local daily tries to editorialize it into ashes. Rumors of our death are premature. We have made mistakes, including in Oakland. We’re learning and experiencing what one activist calls “growing pains.”
Provoked by police violence in Oakland, a few cornered occupiers among the 2000 present reacted. …
by Graham Peebles / February 3rd, 2012
Violence, abuse, non-accountability, hate — such is communal living today within the occupied West Bank, where some 518,974 colonisers sit within “200” illegal settlements. According to Noam Chomsky:
The settlements cover over 42% of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), not counting the Jordon valley, which they are taking over
Estimates of colonisation vary from the 42% reported by Chomsky and BT Salem to that of Human Rights Watch who, at 60%, set the figure even higher.
Around half a million ‘settlers’, more accurately, colonisers, now squat upon Palestinian soil, huddled within walled encampments upon stolen land, branded blue and white. Noisily perching upon hilltops, …
by Ben Schreiner / February 3rd, 2012
The isolationist Senator Hiram Johnson once remarked, “The first casualty when war comes is the truth.” And so, as the West’s “covert war” (or campaign of terror) against Iran continues, drawing military confrontation ever-closer in the process, we find the truth repeatedly sacrificed upon the alter of militarist propaganda.
In fact, indifferent to the substantial evidence to the contrary, the corporate media continues to insist that a fictitious Iranian nuclear weapons program is a fact firmly established by both Israel and the Untied States.
As the New York Times writes (1/26/12):
The uranium enrichment program in Iran has become
…
by David Macaray / February 3rd, 2012
Unless a miracle occurs, Indiana (with approximately 11-percent of its workforce unionized) is going to become the 23rd “right-to-work” state in the U.S. (and the first one to take that dreadful plunge since Oklahoma did it in 2001), making it illegal to require union membership as a condition of employment.
Since 1935, unions have been pretty much mainstream. When a person hired into a “union shop,” he or she was required to join up, and begin paying regular monthly membership dues, and that’s how it worked. Given that union jobs generally offered 15-20 percent better wages and benefits (not to mention …
by Greg Felton / February 3rd, 2012
On March 24, Canada’s New Democratic Party will do more than elect a new leader; it will face a test of character.
As it stands, the NDP is the only major national party not led by an avowed zionist. Stephen Harper leads a cabal of governing “Likudniks,” who value subservience to Israel above all else, and the interim leader of the “Labour-Zionist” Liberals Bob Rae, is on the board of the Jewish National Fund, an organization so criminal that it has been condemned in Israel as racist.
The NDP, therefore, is the only apparently Canadian governing choice that voters have, but even …
by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / February 3rd, 2012
Capitalism will end when oil runs out, according to Fleeing Vesuvius, a collection of essays first published in Ireland in 2010. The US and New Zealand editions came out in mid-2011. The basic theme of Fleeing Vesuvius, which is aimed at the growing sustainability movement, is TEOTWAWI (The End of the World as We Know It). The title refers to the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD, specifically the large number of residents who failed to save themselves, despite weeks of earthquakes, gaseous clouds and other obvious signs that an eruption was imminent. For more than a decade, …
by Media Lens / February 3rd, 2012
Our most recent media alert, Silence Of The Lambs, created a small ripple in the Guardian universe. We had asked why even the paper’s most radical journalists, Seumas Milne and George Monbiot, are silent on the propaganda role of the liberal media, particularly the Guardian, in propping up power. We noted that, in this regard, they are no different from other journalists. Of course, it is obvious why any corporate employee would be reluctant to criticise his or her employer in public; but our primary intention was to shine some light on an issue that is never discussed. After …
by Linh Dinh / February 2nd, 2012
Outrageously yet routinely, America is preparing for yet another war. Though warned by Iran not to bring an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf, the US now has an unprecedented three. (Gee, I wonder why they call it the Persian Gulf, but don’t be surprised if, say, 200% of our high school seniors don’t even realize that Persia is Iran.) Forget the nuclear weapon babble, America is harassing Iran because it ranks in the top five in both oil and natural gas preserves. Further, it has the chutzpah to wrest itself away from the dollar hegemony by selling oil to …
by E.R. Bills / February 2nd, 2012
Texas comedian Ron White is famous for a bit he does claiming you can’t fix stupid. He says there’s no class you can attend to alleviate it. He says there’s no pill you can take to cure it. “Stupid is forever,” he insists.
The bit gets lots of laughs, but here in White’s home state, it’s less and less funny—because we’ve been pretty stupid of late.
If that comes as news to you, let me bring you up to speed.
A little while back we re-elected a governor who refused to take part in a single debate. It was a preposterous antic that …
by Ramzy Baroud / February 2nd, 2012
In a recent article, columnist Yaniv Halili described British author Ben White as ‘anti-Semitic’. He also denounced Arab Knesset member Hanin Zoabi for writing a forward to White’s latest book, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy.
Those of us who can see through such distorted thinking know that White is a principled writer who has never displayed a shred of racism in his work. Zoabi is very well-known civil rights leader with a long-standing reputation of courage and poise.
How could anti-racist endeavors themselves become the subject of accusation by Halili and others like him?
It goes without saying there should be …
by Gareth Porter / February 2nd, 2012
IPS — Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders January 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, according to accounts from well-placed senior military officers.
Dempsey’s warning, conveyed to both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, represents the strongest move yet by President Barack Obama to deter an Israeli attack and ensure that the United States is not caught up in a regional conflagration with Iran.
But the Israeli government remains defiant about maintaining its freedom of action to …
by Sean Fenley / February 2nd, 2012
Thanks to the “help” of the US and NATO, and their Islamist proxy butchers of Libya, the African Sahel is now potentially facing a “slide into hell”. Libya is, of course, facing its own disharmony, but its Sahelian neighbors are facing a host of problems too. Like Qaddafi was, many of the countries of the Sahel are fighting their own Al-Qaeda/Islamist elements as well. And many of the governments of this region have suggested that the Libyan disarray/chaos handed Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb — a golden opportunity — to obtain looted arms, guns and a …
