by Stephen Lendman

Working pro bono for Israeli government agencies, the Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute (RI) provides "real-time strategic decision-making" support in areas of national security and socioeconomic policy. 

Saying global peace and justice groups threaten Israel's legitimacy, its recent series of articles, policy papers, and presentations counterattacked - a combination of damage control and rethink despite legitimate criticism showing Israel delegitimizes itself, and no amount of policy paper makeover will change it. Only Israel can do that, but in its 62 year existence never tried. 

In a January 28 brief, RI said Israel:

"face(s) a dramatic assault on the very legitimacy of its existence as a Jewish and democratic state. While the ideological framework for this delegitimacy was solidified after the first Durban" World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, "the trend (got) a boost by the perceived lack of (political) progress, coupled with Operation Cast Lead in Gaza," followed by the damning Goldstone Report.

Groups "making the fundamental delegitimacy" claim want to internationally isolate Israel and ultimately turn it into a pariah state by:

— demonizing it in public protests, the media, on campuses, and through events like the annual Israel Apartheid Week and World Social Forum, asking its affiliates to excommunicate Israel;
— promoting the Global BDS Movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) in areas of the economy, academia, culture, sport, and security; at risk is it achieving equivalency between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, yet legitimate critics, including Jimmy Carter, accuse Israel of being worse than apartheid; and

by Ljubica Vujadinovic

”DNA molecule is very sensitive on aggression - in this case it is radioactivity,” told Dr. Kovacevic to Provoices. “And the changes on the genetic material caused by DU contamination will affect many future generations.”

Hamad alleges that he was arrested in his apartment in Pakistan in July 2002, rendered to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for three months, where he says he was tortured, and then transferred to Guantanamo, where he allegedly endured further torture at the hands of US military personnel.

by David Swanson

Congressman Dennis Kucinich said on Friday that he is working with Congressman Jim McGovern, a member of the Rules Committee, who has drafted a letter asking that the upcoming war supplemental be a clean vote not muddied by the inclusion of unrelated measures, such as aid to Haiti.  I asked Kucinich if that request for a clean vote included a commitment by McGovern not to propose his own amendments, and Kucinich clearly did not know or did not want to speak for his colleague, but he expressed his own support for McGovern's exit timetable proposal.  Kucinich said he expected the vote on $33 billion to escalate the war in Afghanistan to come up in the next two weeks. 

Kucinich is, thus far, the only member of Congress who, to my knowledge, has publicly urged his colleagues to vote No.  I asked him if he would urge them to join him in publicly committing to vote No ahead of time and in urging others to do the same.  Kucinich said he was writing letters urging them to vote No, but did not reply on the matter of urging them to go public and whip.

Kucinich shared with me two letters he sent in February, one to Attorney General Eric Holder (PDF), the other to Secretary of So-Called Defense Robert Gates (PDF), on the topic of extrajudicial killings, a.k.a. assassinations, a.k.a. murder.

Kucinich writes that "killings of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government or its agents are by definition outside the law."  In the current White House policy, he writes, "the government becomes policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner all in one.  This suspension of basic constitutional protections for U.S. citizens puts in jeopardy our Constitution and the rule of law."

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press.  You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

by Brenda Norrell

On Monday April 12th, 11:00 p.m., Two Akwesasne men were rammed by a boat in Akwesasne waters by two Royal Canadian Mounted Police accompanied by two, U.S. Border Patrol and one Coast Guard, 5 boats in total.

After being rammed and ejected from their boat into the water. They were plucked out of the water by the U.S. Border Patrol and handcuffed and thrown in the boat and brought to shore. Upon being brought to shore, people at the shore realized that they were seriously injured. A call went out to the ambulance. Medical personnel and the people present ordered that the individuals be un-handcuffed so they could receive treatment.

The two individuals were transported by ambulance to Massena Memorial Hospital. At 5:45 a.m. both individuals were airlifted to Burlington Vermont with severe injuries. Both have broken backs and one of the individuals is paralyzed as reported by family members.

This incident is a very serious international issue. The Border Patrol was commanded off the Territory by land and water by Onkwehonweh Signatory Headmen.

Odd that the Cardinal should make such a statement in Chile “where one of the church’s highest-profile pedophile cases involves a priest having sex with young girls.” 

It would be nice if the Cardinal released those “documents of the psychologists” so everyone could see which “psychologists” he was citing. That would be interesting because professional medical and psychological associations have overwhelmingly repudiated any link between homosexuality and pedophilia. 

by Harvey Arden

Voice of the Hawk Elder by Seneca Wisdomkeeper Edna Gordon - We need changes in this world, really big changes. I'm prayin' they'll be peaceable changes, not violent and bloody ones. I'd like to see a peaceable revolution, a revolution of broomsticks instead of guns.Call it a Broomstick Revolution. That's right. The People pick up their broomsticks and march together and Sweep Injustice Out! Make a clean sweep, a big cleanin' like's never been seen before. Broomsticks against Injustice. Now that'll be the day! We'll take our broomsticks and we'll sweep Leonard Peltier right out o' prison, along with all the other innocents. Yep—a Broomstick Revolution! That's what we need!

"Welcome to my umbrella tree," says Hawk Elder Edna Gordon, seating herself opposite me at her well-weathered backyard picnic-table, gesturing with a wide sweep of her hand at the rich tapestry of overhanging branches arching all the way to the ground around us, creating a kind of natural gazebo.

She nods at the tree as at a cherished old friend, and nods at me, her visitor.

"This old tree's the whole of Creation, you know, if you got eyes to see…," she says, and her throaty voice trails away thoughtfully.

I look upward into the drooping canopy of heavily leafed branches all but encasing us.

"Like a house of leaves," I say.

"More'n that," she says, "…the whole Creation's right here in this tree, if you can see it… You're sittin' right inside o' Creation itself! Don't you see it? Can't you feel it?"

I put the palm of my hand on the rough bark of the trunk.

"I …I can feel it, I think," I say.

"Your hand on the tree, that's Life on Life," Edna says. "This Umbrella tree here's at the center of the Universe! And so are we!"

Certainly, when you're with a visionary like Edna Gordon, the Universe, the Creation itself, occupies not the background of your consciousness but the foreground. She's continually reminding me—and all of us—of the oft-forgotten fact that We Exist! that the World, the Universe, the very Creation itself is here and now with us at every magical instant—and that it's our privilege, our joy, and our duty as living beings to realize this in every conscious moment, to see it, to appreciate it, to be ever-thankful and ever-marveling at all of this unthinkable vastness and infinite particularity around us and within us. She insists that we see—and, yes, feel--this miracle that we ourselves are an integral, even essential part of this Mystery beyond all mysteries.

by Alexia Eastwood

Recent empirical studies suggest that people, far from being self-interested ‘rational maximizers’, have an innate tendency to share and cooperate. Could renewed scientific interest in the essence of human nature provide the building blocks for an alternative economic order?

Modern economics uses these underlying assumptions of human behaviour as the basis for mathematical models, which are often used to develop policy and shape social outcomes. Neoliberal ideology, which incorporated ideas of neoclassical economics, rose to political dominance during the 1980s championed by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Helmut Kohl. They drew not only upon economic theory to support their worldview, but also on the findings of contemporary behavioural science such as rational choice theory and John Nash's game theory, both of which aimed to scientifically prove the essentially self-interested and rational nature of individuals. Economic Man thereby left the sphere of philosophy and became perceived by many policymakers as scientific fact, enabling Thatcher to make her infamous claim in 1987 that "there is no society". This marked the advent of an era of socio-economic policies based on assumptions of a highly individualistic and self-interested human being.

by Eileen Fleming

On April 14, 2010, Mordechai Vanunu reported from occupied east Jerusalem, "The restrictions, not to leave the country for one more year renewed. Now 7 years since my release AFTER 18 YEARS in Israel PRISON."

Twenty-four years after the Mossad kidnapped Mordechai Vanunu from Rome after luring him from London, they have returned to track down another who followed his conscience but has been labeled a traitor by the state and a public who view truth tellers as a threat to their sense of security.

The prey this time is Uri Blau, an investigative journalist for the Israeli daily Haaretz, who went into hiding after writing a series of reports exposing lawbreaking approved by Israeli army commanders. Blau faces a lengthy jail term for espionage and Israeli security services have warned they would “remove the gloves” and track down the “fugitive felon.”

Jonathan Cook, reported for The National, “Options being considered are an extradition request to the British authorities or, if that fails, a secret operation by Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, to smuggle him back, according to Maariv, a right-wing newspaper.” [1]

Blau’s informant and professional collegue, Anat Kamm, was put under secret house arrest by Israel last December based on allegations that during her military service she leaked classified documents regarding how Israeli Forces violated laws dealing with targeted killings. Kamm was charged under Israel’s espionage and treason laws while she was working as a reporter for the Israeli site Walla, which had been partially owned by Haaretz until the week prior to her December arrest.

The military censor, which prevents publication of information that they deem could harm Israel’s national security, approved the Haaretz story for publication. The Israeli court gagged details of Kamm’s arrest and news of the arrest itself.

After a cyber storm of reporting, the gag order was lifted and it was reported that shortly after her arrest, Kamm admitted to copying the documents while serving in the office in charge of operations in the West Bank, between 2005 and 2007.  The 23 year old acted out of conscience to expose war crimes and believed she would be forgiven for her honesty and integrity, and only time will tell.

by Salman Abu Sitta Ph.D.

Nobody perfected this art of deception, or double-speak, better than the Zionist agents. How else could you explain the success of a Hungarian man, like Herzl, sitting in a Vienna Café, and professing that a Jews’ State will be established in 50 years in a faraway land he had never lived in? His success, almost solely in Europe at the time, was manifested by convincing colonial powers of the advantages of supporting his colonial project and convincing their people, the Europeans, that this conquest, killing, plunder and destitution of a people is a divine will, a miracle and a victory for western civilization.

Nobody had to create so many myths and falsehoods in their endeavours more than the Zionists. The reason is simple: they did not have credible facts to prove their case, so they had to invent dubious alternatives, relying on the readiness of the gullible people and the opportunistic politicians to believe them.

Take the slogan: “Palestine is a land without people”. It was terra nullius, they say. Of course, Zionists knew that people lived there and built over 1000 towns and villages, most are 2000 years old, according to Eusebius the Bishop of Caesarea (313 AD) who recorded them. Yet Zionists submitted a map to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, showing Palestine as ‘a grazing land for nomads’. They presented this map to the colonial powers, particularly the British and the French. The irony of course is that the British had finished their voluminous survey of Palestine, 40 years earlier, in 10 volumes, listing 12,000 historical sites including towns and villages, and the French finished their survey through their scholar, Victor Guerin, in 1863, who produced 8 volumes of his journey to almost every Palestinian village. Yet they chose to believe the Zionists and hoodwinked their public to support this ‘noble and moral’ conquest, in churches, newspapers and public debates.

What then is the meaning of terra nullius? It does not mean (to them) an empty land. It means that those who live there do not matter, they are worthless. It is like clearing woods from dry bushes and insects.

These are the exact words of Herzl,

“If we move into a region where there are wild animals to which Jews are not accustomed – big snakes etc. – I shall use the natives, prior to giving them employment in the transit countries [read: expulsion], for the extermination of these animals.”

Of course he did not say this in his published book, only in his then unpublished diary.

Balfour said as much:

“… in Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. Zionism [is] of profounder impact than the desires and prejudices [not the rights] of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit this ancient land.”