contributions

Every few months a new flurry of speculation erupts about whether Israel is about to launch a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This week the subject is back again — and the smoke seems thicker than usual.
The discussion got started this time in a relatively dramatic way: with a banner-headlined story in one of Israel’s best-read newspapers, under the byline of one the country’s most renowned journalists. Nahum Barnea normally writes a column for the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, (…)

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who previously objected to attacking Iran, was recently persuaded by Netanyahu and Barak to support such a move.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are trying to muster a majority in the cabinet in favor of military action against Iran, a senior Israeli official has said. According to the official, there is a "small advantage" in the cabinet for the opponents of such an attack.
Netanyahu and Barak recently persuaded (…)

The French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has been known to blast “U.S. imperialism.” Her party, after all, is all about chest-thumping French nationalism, so there’s little room for embracing les yankees.
But that was the past. Now she is striving for a softer image. She’s attempting to bring her right-wing party, the National Front, into mainstream French politics. So this week, she is making an official visit to the United States.
So far it’s not going very well.
In (…)

Throughout its history, Israel had belligerent, racist prime ministers, none worse than Netanyahu. He talks peace but mocks and spurns it.
His extremism heads Israel toward the brink. His worst ever government enrages global millions. Eventually, Israel may end up isolated and universally vilified as a pariah state. Already, it’s a regional menace. Lawlessly occupied for 44 years, Palestinians know it best. Gaza remains suffocating under siege. Militantly, Netanyahu wants harsher (…)

State terror embraces many forms of lawlessness, duplicity and depravity. They include violence; war; conquest; colonization; plunder; targeted killings; torture; financial, political and social terrorism, and more.
Washington and Israel fine-tuned it. Both nations redefined the degeneracy of Western societies. They and others benefit from death, destruction, exploitation, and human misery.
Their policies spurn core democratic values, including life, liberty, equity, justice, truth, and (…)

Obama’s Legacy of Shame - by Stephen Lendman
Promising change after eight Bush/Republican years, Obama delivered betrayal.
With congressional Democrats, he exceeded Bush’s harshness, lawlessness, belligerency, and public trust betrayal.
He violating every major domestic and foreign issue promise made. As a result, he’s been complicit in:
looting the nation’s wealth, wrecking the economy, and consigning growing millions to impoverishment without jobs, homes, savings, social services, (…)

Prime minister stuns fellow leaders with proposal that his country should hold referendum on landmark debt deal
The Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, stunned Europe’s leaders on Monday after he proposed that his country should hold a referendum on the landmark European debt deal reached last week.
A Greek vote against the deal could scupper weeks of negotiations over how to rescue the country’s economy and prevent a debt crisis to match the Lehman Brothers crash of three years (…)

Oil rich and deeply divided, the country is vulnerable to outside powers
The death of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi will likely — though it’s too early to know anything for sure — mean the end of the current stage of Libya’s civil war. Whether it will set the stage for peace, national reconciliation, democracy, normalization with the region or other goals is far less clear. And what post-Gadhafi Libya’s relationship with the United States and other NATO countries will look like remains (…)

Can occupations survive a winter of global weirding, escalated police brutality, and the corporate media’s venom? Should they?
In some parts of the country there will be no cold weather. In others, police abuses will result in larger occupations, not smaller. And it’s certainly possible that for the first time in recent years an independent progressive populist campaign will survive the enmity of the corporate media.
In other cases, the cold, the communications assaults, fatigue, and the (…)

On the occasion of passage of Carbon Pricing legislation by the Australian Parliament, the excellent Australian social advocacy group GetUp has asked for written contributions to a time capsule to be opened in 2050. Unfortunately the pro-war, pro-coal, pro-gas Australian Labor Government’s "Clean Energy Bill" is a dishonest, cynical, spin-driven, anti-science, and fraudulent scheme for climate change inaction.
GetUp states: “Next Tuesday the [Australian] Senate is slated to pass the Clean (…)