1933key presents information resources encouraging user-driven research into histories of concentrated geopolitical power and modern Empires of political wealth. 1933key also exports a range of technology tools to protect privacy as well as property, from concealed cameras, wireless surveillance, spying and otherwise unappealing intrusions.
Israeli Settlement Expansions Continue
By Stephen Lendman
Currently, around 500,000 Jews reside illegally in over 120 West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements as well as dozens of outposts. Their numbers grow daily despite occasional pledges to curtail or slow them, the latest last November when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a 10 month freeze, calling it a move to "help launch meaningful negotiations to reach a historic peace agreement that would finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians."
Never mind Israel's history of past peace process futility because all previous efforts were more pretense than real, or as some Palestinians say - How can they negotiate in good faith without a willing partner? They've never had one and don't in Netanyahu, an extremist hard-right zealot.
The same holds for a settlement freeze, just rhetoric with no substance, especially given Israel's plan to make all Jerusalem a Jewish city, according to Netanyahu. During a May 22, 2009 Jerusalem Day ceremony (commemorating the city's 1967 reunification), he declared:
"United Jerusalem is Israel's capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided."
For East Jerusalem Palestinians, it means removing them one settlement expansion and home demolition at a time.
So much for the peace process and freeze, evidenced by a February 26 Haaretz report saying Israel "plans to build another 600 homes in East Jerusalem" on Occupied Palestinian land.
Yes, you've heard plenty about Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme, and maybe even about Allen Stanford, the garrulous Texan who built a sprawling Caribbean compound from his $8 billion Ponzi scheme. But what about "mini Madoff," "Miami Madoff" and "Montreal Madoff"? What about all the fraudulent real-estate schemes and farm-grain schemes or the Ponzi built on investments in state-worker uniforms and the one that siphoned off retirement funds from bus drivers? What about the two brothers in Williamstown, Michigan, themselves bilked in a Ponzi scheme, who turned from prey to predator, and used their church and family ties to bilk neighbors out of $50 million for nonexistent gas and oil exploration in the Southwest?
TomDispatch associate editor and regular contributor Andy Kroll has done a remarkable job of mapping the U.S. as a coast-to-coast "Ponzi nation" at a time when an open credit spigot, a booming housing market, and visions of unimaginable wealth on Wall Street left practically every American with dreams of future riches. It was an extraordinary era, one that may have left the "roaring Twenties" in the dust, and its legacy, as Kroll lays it out, is a mood that has its own striking dangers. As he writes, "Disillusionment with the past decade is such that many Americans now simply assume that our world is little but a giant Ponzi scheme."
Kroll concludes: "Ours is now a Ponzi nation. There is a new mood in the land. Just how it will play out is unknown, but a sense of having been conned is still spreading -- as if not just surprising numbers of investors, but the whole country had experienced the last days of a giant Ponzi scheme. With it goes a feeling that what we’ve been living through, even in 'the best of times,' wasn’t an American dream, but pure nightmare. Welcome to America, sucker."
"I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left me," Charles Ponzi once told the New York Times. An Italian, who emigrated to the New World in 1903, his glory, such as it was, involved leaving countless immigrants and other Americans with only $2.50 in their pockets and nothing to hope for.
While he was hardly the first Ponzi schemer, he milked his particular con with particular success and dramatic flare in the 1920s. Ever since, his name has been attached to any scam in which you promise outrageous returns -- he offered a 50% return on investment in only 45 days -- and pay off old investors with the money eagerly offered by newer ones. The aura of success only brings in more money until, of course, it all goes bust. Ponzi’s last recorded words to a reporter caught the financial-showman spirit of his time: “Even if they never got anything for it,” he said of those whose lives he destroyed, “it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over." Read more.
China Friday retorted US criticism by publishing its own report on the US human rights record.
"As in previous years, the (US) reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory," said the Information Office of the State Council in its report on the US human rights record.
The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 was in retaliation to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 issued by the US Department of State on March 11.
The report is "prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States," said the report.
The report reviewed the human rights record of the United States in 2009 from six perspectives: life, property and personal security; civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; racial discrimination; rights of women and children; and the US' violation of human rights against other countries.
It criticized the United States for taking human rights as "a political instrument to interfere in other countries' internal affairs, defame other nations' image and seek its own strategic interests."
China advised the US government to draw lessons from the history, put itself in a correct position, strive to improve its own human rights conditions and rectify its acts in the human rights field.
This is the 11th consecutive year that the Information Office of China's State Council has issued a human rights record of the United States to answer the US State Department's annual report.
"At a time when the world is suffering a serious human rights disaster caused by the US subprime crisis-induced global financial crisis, the US government still ignores its own serious human rights problems but revels in accusing other countries. It is really a pity," the report said.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich Takes on Democratic Leaders with Insistence on Public Option, Call for Afghan Withdrawal
Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich joins us to discuss two House debates in which he’s played a central role this week. The Ohio Democrat is threatening to vote against his party’s healthcare reform package because it does not contain a robust public option. Meanwhile, Kucinich’s bill to force the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan was taken up on Wednesday. After a rare three-and-a-half-hour debate on the war, the majority of House Democrats joined with Republicans to defeat the measure. [includes rush transcript]
Taboo Thwarts Candor on Israel/Iran
By Ray McGovern
Participants at an otherwise informative discussion on “Iran at a Crossroads” at the Senate on Wednesday seemed at pains to barricade the doors against the proverbial elephant being admitted into the room — in this case, Israel.
This, despite the fact that the agenda virtually dictated that the elephant be allowed in. The cavernous hearing room also could have accommodated it — however awkward and untidy the atmosphere might have become.
Otherwise, as was entirely predictable, the discussion would be lacking a crucial element. Which is exactly what happened. Which is exactly what always happens.
The tongue-tied impediment displayed by some of the presenters can be chalked up mostly to the all-too-familiar timidity on Capitol Hill to countenance candid discussion of any issue on which Israel can be revealed to be a fly in the ointment.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, obtained use of the hearing room for the organizers of the discussion, the thoroughly professional National Iranian American Council headed by Professor Trita Parsi. This is to Levin’s credit, in my view.
At the same time, Sen. Levin holds the all-time-high record for PAC contributions from groups affiliated with the self-described “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby” — the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). I’m guessing that Levin’s office may have asked that some caution be exercised, so that it would be difficult for Fox News to misrepresent the proceedings as “Israel bashing.”
A senior adviser to former US President George W Bush has defended tough interrogation techniques, saying their use helped prevent terrorist attacks....
He said waterboarding, which simulates drowning, should not be considered torture....
"Yes, I'm proud that we kept the world safer than it was, by the use of these techniques. They're appropriate, they're in conformity with our international requirements and with US law." Read more, watch Rove in video.
Senator Sanders' Office Published Links to Various Articles About Health Care Reform
Health Care President Obama is pushing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to strip the final health care reform bill of narrow deals aimed at appeasing specific senators. "We have defended it, and we will defend it," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose state picked up $600 million in extra Medicaid funding, Politico reported. LINK
Single Payer Sanders outlined a strategy for single payer that some liberals might want to think about, Ezra Klein bloggedfor The Washington Post. "The way we move to single payer in this country is to let one state like California go first," Sanders told a conference of progressive journalists. LINK
Public Option Prominent Senate liberals told Roll Call they are determined to put the public option question to the test when reconciliation comes to the floor. Sen. Sanders said he believes supporters will have the votes when the amendment comes up. LINK
Public Option Sen. Sanders chalked up the difficulty Democrats have had passing health care to a mistaken belief about party unity, according to Talking Points Memo. He told the progressive media conference that Senate Democrats do have 50 votes to pass a public option, Firedoglake added. LINK and LINK
Republican Obstructionists Senators frustrated at procedural roadblocks by Republicans met Wednesday with Majority Leader Reid. "We're working on a strategy to become more aggressive to combat that obstructionism," Sen. Bernie Sanders told Politico. LINK
Missed Opportunity The Senate's leading progressives expressed concern that President Obama squandered the transformational political coalition that propelled him into office. Sen. Sanders called it a "tragic mistake" that the White House fruitlessly chased Republican votes on health care rather than pass legislation, The Huffington Post reported. LINK
Sanders: White House Finally Gets It Sen. Sanders assailed the White House for purportedly wasting a year vying for Republican votes on health care reform, alleging that the protracted debate weakened the bill and damaged the party's standing among progressives, according to Raw Story. LINK
Progressive Pundits Some of the pundits at a Progressive Media Summit on Capitol Hill, including MSNBC's Ed Schultz, treated it as a forum to tell senators what they are doing wrong. Schultz complained that Democratic leadership avoids the Sunday shows. Sen. Sanders said Democrats forget "Rush Limbaugh was campaigning 365 days a year." LINK
Democrats, White House Close in on Health Bill A final agreement nearly in hand, President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders are about to embark on one last sales job that will determine the outcome of the president's signature health care overhaul, The Associated Press reported. LINK
U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy has a withering assessment of news media coverage: ‘despicable.’ The Democrat says reporters are focusing ‘24/7′ on sexual harassment allegations against a New York lawmaker while ignoring the war in Afghanistan.
The event on the House floor Wednesday afternoon was monumental — the first major congressional debate about U.S. military operations in Afghanistan since lawmakers authorized the invasion of that country in autumn 2001. But, as Rep. Patrick Kennedy noted with disgust on Wednesday, the House press gallery was nearly empty. He aptly concluded: “It’s despicable, the national press corps right now.”
Sure enough, the Thursday edition of the New York Times had no room for the historic debate on its front page, which did have room for a large Starbucks ad across the bottom.
Despite the news media and the lopsided pro-war tilt on Capitol Hill (reflected in the 356-65 vote Wednesday against invoking the War Powers Act), antiwar organizing has a lot of hospitable terrain at the grassroots. National polling shows widespread opposition to the Afghanistan war effort — a far cry from the dominant lockstep conformity in Congress.
“Apparently, as with many issues in Washington,” Congressman John Conyers said in a written statement hours before the vote, “those who are forced [to] bear the costs of war are the first to recognize a flawed policy, while those who profit from perpetual war do their best to blunt any change in course.” Read more.
Skeptics have reason to be weary of democracy in Iraq.
For starters, up to 500 candidates were banned a few weeks before the recent election by the Commission of Accountability and Justice as part its ’de-Baathification’ campaign of Iraqi politics and life.
The Baath party, as many are well aware, was Saddam Hussein’s party. Many Iraqis are paranoid about the Baathists to this day, so much so that a Commission has banned its members outright from partaking in the recent elections.
World Can’t Wait leaflet for March 20 protests: PDF version here
The U.S is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, and now has more combat troops – 166,000, with 30,000 more on the way – than during the Bush years. President Obama is using drones (pilotless aircraft) on raids into Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, killing hundreds of civilians. All of these attacks are against international law, because none of these countries attacked the U.S.
It has been 17 years since Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed on March 10th. He was the first abortion provider murdered by the so-called "pro-life" movement.
Begun by the group Refuse & Resist in 1996, March 10th: "Abortion Providers Appreciation Day" is marked by people who care about women and our continued right to control our reproduction.
I was marching this past weekend to commemorate International Women's Day (actually on March 8th). It's the year 2010, but there couldn't be a better time to get in the streets and take a stand for women here and around the world. See the latest attack on women's right to abortion in Nebraska: the "fetal pain" law being debated. What about the pain of the woman? ABCLocal Affiliate
A week from Saturday, protests are scheduled for Washington, DC; LA; San Francisco, and smaller cities around the country. I'll be in DC, helping to surround the White House as the ANSWER coalition notes on March20.org: Anti-War Leaders: "Why I am Marching on March 20"
"Visible protest-marching to stop the crimes of our government-makes a difference because we show what we won't accept, and we learn what we're up against. These wars are not legitimate. People around the world must see that we don't support them, and know that to us, American lives are not more important than their own. Join World Can't Wait Saturday March 20 in protest..." Read more
A "Family-Friendly" Community Center in Austin Texas recently hosted a War Criminal. Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Colonel Bentzion Gruber spoke at the Austin Jewish Community Center on March 4, 2010.
Protesters started gathering outside the center about an hour before his lecture, carrying signs "Judaism-Yes, Zionism-No" and "Bentzion Gruber, WAR CRIMES are not ethical."
The controversy arises from the fact that a community center such as the JCC-Austin would allow, and even co-sponsor, the lecture of a man who is directly involved in the violation of International Law and is responsible for directing 18,000 soldiers in human rights abuses in Occupied Palestine.
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Our foreign policy is atrocious. A-T-R-O-C-I-O-U-S. An atrocity.
In a nationalistic frenzy to avenge the deaths of the 9/11 victims, we invaded Afghanistan and, then, Iraq, killing many more civilians than we lost on that September morning when two planes were used as weapons to take down symbols of prosperity in NYC, when one plane cratered a field in Pennsylvania, and yet another pierced the Pentagon.
1st time in U.S. history that court allows torture suit
against current or former Cabinet Secretary by Andy Thayer
CHICAGO – Federal Judge Wayne R. Andersen issued an historic ruling today allowing a suit charging former Defense Secretary with authorizing torture.
Rumsfeld asked the court to dismiss the case because he is a high-placed governmental official and argued that he was immune from suit even for allegations of torture. Mr. Rumsfeld also argued that due to his position, the Constitution permitted him to order interrogation techniques that are widely considered by human rights experts to be torture. The Court rejected both of Mr. Rumsfeld's arguments and held that high-placed placed cabinet officials can be held personally liable if they authorize the use of torture.
George W. Bush and his cronies are not ashamed of themselves, but they certainly should be. They should also be held in front of the International Criminal Court for their gross crimes against humanity.
A study conducted by the British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reveals that over 1,000,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the United States’ illegal invasion of Iraq.
The OBS sampled 15 of the 18 provinces of Iraq. Two of the provinces which were not included in the report were Kerbala and Anbar – two of Iraq’s most deadly areas.
Furthermore, OBS interviewed over 2,000 Iraqis and found that one in five had at least one dead family member.
"Peace of the Action" starts Monday, March 15 near the Washington Monument as an ongoing protest to demand that the occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan end. Cindy Sheehan was in New York recently with Chelsea Neighbors for Peace, calling on people to participate in its first action, Camp OUT NOW. I will be speaking there on Wednesday March 17, with David Swanson on the need for prosecution of war crimes.
Cindy's new book, Myth America II is online. She includes World Can't Wait in acknowledgements as a group that has made her life easier over this past year and thanks "Debra Sweet from World Can't Wait for being the unwavering moral backbone of this movement and my support 'group' when I was at my all-time Obama-lowest."
To this house where nearly all of the light has been cut off because the windows are boarded up, choking off the air, comes now a large crew of carpenters to rip down these cursed boards. The vermin and mold that have been filling the suffocating air with their toxic fumes can then be exposed to the sunlight and the house cleansed by powerful gusts, the winds of genuine change.
The March 4th demonstrations to defend public education involved hundreds of thousands of students, faculty, staff, workers, and community members in thirty plus U.S. cities. The call for these protests originated in California in November 2009, and was taken up not only by many other states, but also in a number of countries.
Drug money used as a geopolitics weapon by CIA-RAW-Mossad Asian Tribune Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, silenced for years by George W. Bush Administration, testified to the use of NATO planes transporting drugs as well as ...
Return to military tribunals? Politico Forget about (no) WMD, .......... and ALL the rest, like killing Americans, Sibel Edmonds, ALL the questions, ALL the protests, ALL the propaganda reportage ...
The Traitors Among Us Gather.com Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. ...
FBI Whistleblowers Speak Out Against S. 372 Common Dreams (press release) Dr. Whitehurst's letter comes shortly after two other FBI whistleblowers, Jane Turner and Sibel Edmonds, issued a similar plea that the Senate bill be fixed ... Support whistleblowers !Firedoglake (blog)
Sibel Edmonds The Traitors Amongst Us Before It's News SIBEL EDMONDS, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. ...
Powerful interests are leading the people astray Cabinet.com Sibel Edmonds, the “most gagged person” in our history, has just published an article in Hustler magazine (March issue), exposing high-level corruption in ...
Who stands to gain from forcing the administration to try the 9/11 suspects in a military tribunal, where standards of evidence are lower? A vigorous defense in civilian court would put the true conspirators to shame, as the Moussoui trial showed.
Cass Sunstein is Pres Obama's appointed head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Cass Sunstein also authored an article two years ago which advocated covert government infiltration of the 9/11 Truth movement in order to sow confusion and distrust within the movement. We may assume that this has already been happening, accounting for some of the confusion, in-fighting and wilder ideas that plague 9/11 Truth.
This is the seventh and final interview conducted via e-mail with Scott Fentermaker. In our previous interview, Mr. Fenstermaker called for an international investigation of our legal policy towards terrorist suspects. He also revealed a "demographic consistency" among the attorneys and judges trying cases related to the the war on terror.
This is the sixth in a series of interviews with Scott Fesntermaker, the lawyer for several Quantanamo Bay detainees. In our previous interview, Mr. Fenstermaker revealed that the CIA was manipulating the defense attorneys representing the detainees. He also told us that the CIA had used the legal proceedings to enter a motion that will keep their secret prisons operating, despite a Presidential order to the contrary.
Review: The Ground Truth by John Farmer In recent public opinion surveys, roughly half the country believes the official account of what occurred on 9/11/2001 to be substantially true, and half is skeptical. Apparently John Farmer, the man who penned the official 9-11 Commission Report in 2003, is in the latter group.
NYC CAN, an organization that led a signature drive to let New Yorkers choose whether to reinvestigate 9-11, has decided against mounting another attempt after a Judge ruled against their effort. The organization will instead emphasize a public relations outreach.
Conspiracy theory is something the TV channel Russia Today (RT) is providing more and more often, not just for 9-11. On just about any American topic in the news, RT pops up with a conspiracy theory. One with American Power always as the central conspirator.
Before the United States began kidnapping Muslim males from around the world after 9/11, the State Department/CIA Consulate in Saudi Arabia had an altogether opposite relationship with young, out of work, young Muslim men.
For the 9/11 truth movement to be an effective force we must resist efforts to splinter us into dissenting factions. This effort, known as divide and conquer, has been used by tyrants since time immemorial. Only through effective communication and co-operation can we quickly and efficiently realize our goal of a competent investigation of what happened on 9-11, 2001.
The perception of an America bent on expanding empire across sovereign borders is going to take more than the president's demonstration of an understanding and appreciation of Islam in his Cairo address.
Former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes and I have just returned from a successful two-day trip showing the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself) in Bradford and Norwich, as part of an ongoing UK tour.
As with recent screenings — at Amnesty International’s London HQ, at the NFT [...]
Last Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review a case brought on behalf of seven men in Guantánamo whose release into the United States was ordered by a US judge 17 months ago. The men in question are Uighurs, Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province, and the ruling ordering them to be rehoused in the US [...]
The following interview, with the London Bangla free newspaper, was conducted by email and published in two parts, in the most recent issues of the newspaper, which has a print run of 30,000 copies. I’d like to thank Emdad Rahman for coming up with a great set of questions that allowed me to cover all [...]
I’m delighted to report that three screenings of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself), which is currently on a UK tour, have been arranged by pioneering grass-roots activists in the US. All the screenings are free, and Polly and I, and the production company Spectacle, [...]
On Friday, there was another successful screening of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” the new documentary film, co-directed by Polly Nash and myself, which was chosen as the closing film in Oxford Brookes University’s 8th Human Rights Film Festival (also see here). The screening was part of an ongoing UK tour of the film, [...]
Throughout 2010, former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes and I are touring the UK, showing the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself). The film focuses on the stories of three British residents — Shaker Aamer, Binyam Mohamed and Omar — and throughout the tour we are encouraging [...]
On Friday, prior to a screening at Oxford Brookes University of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself), Polly and I met up with my old friend, the photographer Adrian Arbib, at the Art Jericho gallery, where his exhibition “Homeland” is showing until March 13. Featuring [...]
Over on Crooks and Liars, Nicole Belle located a recent interview I did with George Galloway on his TalkSPORT radio show, which I hadn’t realized was online. The nine-minute interview, recorded in a slightly Alan Partridgesque manner while I was sitting in the breakfast room of a Premier Inn in York, where I was staying [...]
Last Wednesday, when the Spanish government announced that the first of up to five cleared Guantánamo prisoners to be offered new homes in Spain had arrived in the country (and three other men were given new homes in Albania), I noted that, although the Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba told reporters that the man [...]
Please support my work!
On Monday, I put out an appeal for financial support for my ongoing quest to expose the dark truths about Guantánamo and the “War on Terror,” which, for the last four years, has involved a concerted and consistent effort to fight back against the Bush administration’s insidiously successful rhetoric of fear [...]
In the News
Senator Sanders' Office Published Links to Various Articles About Health Care Reform 
by Craig Considine
STOP THE WARS & TORTURE FOR EMPIRE!
By Debra Sweet
By Debra Sweet.jpg)
By Gail Alfar
By Missy Comley Beattie
1st time in U.S. history that court allows torture suit.gif)
By Craig Considine
By Debra Sweet 
By Dennis Loo
