Rep Ron Paul - "It will Lead to War", Statement on H.R.4133, The US-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012

Mr. Speaker: I rise in opposition to HR 4133, the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, which unfortunately is another piece of one-sided and counter-productive foreign policy legislation. This bill's real intent seems to be more saber-rattling against Iran and Syria, and it undermines US diplomatic efforts by making clear that the US is not an honest broker seeking peace for the Middle East.

The bill calls for the United States to significantly increase our provision of sophisticated weaponry to Israel, and states that it is to be US policy to "help Israel preserve its qualitative military edge" in the region.

While I absolutely believe that Israel – and any other nation -- should be free to determine for itself what is necessary for its national security, I do not believe that those decisions should be underwritten by US taxpayers and backed up by the US military.

This bill states that it is the policy of the United States to "reaffirm the enduring commitment of the United States to the security of the State of Israel as a Jewish state." However, according to our Constitution the policy of the United States government should be to protect the security of the United States, not to guarantee the religious, ethnic, or cultural composition of a foreign country. In fact, our own Constitution prohibits the establishment of any particular religion in the US.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30838

Prof. Marjorie Cohn - Romney the Bully

Last week, I was invited to speak to 40 high school freshman about human rights. When we discussed the right to be free from torture, I asked the students if they could think of an example of torture. They said, “bullying.” A major problem among teens, bullying can lead to depression, and even suicide. When most people list the qualities they want to see in their President, “bully” is not one of them.

Yet evidence continues to emerge that Mitt Romney is a bully. When he was a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School, Romney orchestrated and played the primary role in forcibly pinning fellow student John Lauber to the ground and clipping the terrified Lauber’s hair. The soft-spoken Lauber, it seemed, had returned from spring break with bleached-blond hair draped over one eye. Romney, infuriated, declared, “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” Lauber eyes filled with tears as he screamed for help. One of the other students in the dorm at the time, said, “It was a hack job . . . It was vicious.”

But instead of owning up to his stupidity and expressing regret at his bullying attack on Lauber, Romney told Fox News that he didn’t remember the incident, although he apologized for his pranks that “might have gone too far.” It’s hard to believe that Romney cannot recall an incident that others who assisted in the attack have regretted for years. Or perhaps there were so many more that he doesn’t recall this one.

Lauber wasn’t the only student Romney harassed. Gary Hummel, a gay student who had not yet come out, says Romney shouted, “Atta girl!” when Hummel spoke out in English class. Once again, Romney claims he doesn’t remember that insult.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30830

Stephen Lendman - Predatory Capitalism Failed

Listen to Stephen every Thursday @ 11am and Saturday & Sunday at 1pm (All Eastern Time) on his show "The Progressive Radio Hour." 

Independent observers knew it long ago. Today's global economic crisis provides added confirmation. In 2008, a staunch champion of the system expressed second thoughts. More on him below.

An ideology based on inequality, injustice, exploitation, militarism, and imperial wars eventually self-destructs or gets pushed. Growing evidence in America and Europe show systemic unaddressed problems too grave to ignore. They remain so despite millions without jobs, savings, homes or futures.

Imagine nations governed by leaders letting crisis conditions fester. Imagine voters reelecting them despite demanding change. OWS aside, one day perhaps rage will replace apathy in America. The latest jobs report alone provides incentive enough to try and then some.

On May 4, the Labor Department reported 115,000 new jobs. It way overstated the true number. Official figures belie the dire state of things. At most, two-thirds the headline total were created. Even that's in doubt. 

Most were low-pay, part-time, or temp positions with few or no benefits. Decades ago, workers would have avoided them. Today, there's no choice.

The report also showed economic decline. Expect much worse ahead. In 2008, Main Street Americans experienced Depression. It rages today. Poverty's at record levels. Real unemployment approaches 1930s numbers. Dire conditions are worsening.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30763

US Military Taught Officers: ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics For ‘Total War’ On Islam

The U.S. military has been teaching its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims will be necessary to protect America from terrorists, according to documents released today in a stunning story in Wired's Danger Room.

A cartoon included in the Joint Staff Forces College presentation on "Jihad: Defined and Operationalized" contains a number of ugly stereotypes. Hundreds of US military officers have enrolled in the course on Islamic radicalism since it was first offered four years ago at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

Among the other chilling assertions in the documents:

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/10-4

Paul Craig Roberts - THE NEW TYRANNY: Does The West Have A Future?

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence.  Consider:

We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax.  The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.

This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they built one, they probably built more.”  

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people.” Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder woman and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa.  The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as “a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect--what, fake plots?  In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers’ lives. 

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30799

Jon Mitchell - U.S. Veteran Exposes Pentagon’s Denials of Agent Orange Use on Okinawa

Thousands of barrels of Agent Orange were unloaded on Okinawa Island and stored at the port of Naha, and at the U.S. military's Kadena and Camp Schwab bases between 1965 and 1966, an American veteran who served in Okinawa claims.

In a Jacksonville Florida interview in early April with The Japan Times and Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting Co., a TV network based in Okinawa, former infantryman Larry Carlson, 67, also said that Okinawan stevedores were exposed to the highly toxic herbicide as they labored in the holds of ships, and that he witnessed it being sprayed at Kadena Air Base.

Carlson is one of only three American servicemen who have won benefits from the U.S. government over exposure to the toxic defoliant on Okinawa — and the first of them to step forward and reveal that massive amounts of it were kept on the island.

His claims, which are corroborated by five fellow soldiers and a 1966 U.S. government document, directly challenge the Pentagon's consistent denials that Agent Orange was ever stored on Okinawa.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/us-veteran-exposes-pentagon-s-denials-agent-orange-use-okinawa-1336665501

Eloise Lee - The Way The Pentagon Is Predicting Your Potential To Become A National Threat Is Frightening

Tom Cruise made "pre-crime'" a futuresque and controversial method of law enforcement in the 2002 movie Minority Report.

Ten years later, the idea of preemptively identifying a criminal — particularly an inside threat — is taking shape within the U.S. Defense Department, reports Joe Gould at Army Times.

Whether it's a low-ranking soldier intent on dumping secret information to WikiLeaks, or a rogue Sergeant going on a shooting rampage, insider threats can seriously plague the military and the government as a whole.

Taking a novel approach, the Pentagon is spearheading research into studying the predictive behavior of personnel in the lead-up to a betrayal. 

From Army Times:

The Army’s efforts dovetail with a broader federal government initiative. President Obama signed an executive order last October that established an Insider Threat Task Force to develop a government wide program to deter, detect and mitigate insider threats.

Among other responsibilities, it would create policies for safeguarding classified information and networks, and for auditing and monitoring users.

In January, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo directing government agencies that deal with classified information to ensure they adhere to security rules enacted after the WikiLeaks debacle.

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http://www.businessinsider.com/the-number-of-ways-the-pentagon-is-working-on-to-predict-your-behavior-is-frightening-2012-5#ixzz1uJcj0GXR

Drew Armstrong - Drugmakers’ Deal With Obama Said to Be Probed by House

Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and Merck & Co. (MRK) are being pulled into an expanding congressional investigation about the agreement drugmakers reached with the Obama administration to support the Democrats’ overhaul of the U.S. health-care system, according to three people familiar with the talks.

The probe began last year, with Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee seeking documents from an industry trade group, said the people, who aren’t authorized to speak publicly. When that group didn’t cooperate, the panel decided to target Pfizer, the world’s biggest drugmaker, along with Merck, Amgen Inc. (AMGN), Abbott Laboratories (ABT) and AstraZeneca Plc (AZN), said one of the people.

The Republicans last month began negotiating directly with the companies in e-mails, calls and meetings demanding documents and information outlining what the industry agreed to with President Barack Obama in 2009 and 2010, when the law was being worked on in Congress. Michael Burgess, a Representative from Texas, said he’s been frustrated by a lack of cooperation.

Read More:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-04/obama-deal-with-drugmakers-said-to-be-probed-by-house.html

Danny Schechter - ICEBERG AHEAD: The Big Money That is Sinking Democracy

Listen to Danny's Radio show "The News Dissector" weekly on Friday's at 1pm (Eastern Time)

I keep thinking of that clear April night 100 years ago when the unsinkable HMS Titanic steamed towards New York. It was actually on its way to dock just a few blocks from where I live at what are now the Chelsea Piers. There was a sense of optimism abroad as a new record for a speedy transatlantic passage was about to be set.

There was music, dancing and fine wine. That is, until they saw that iceberg high in the water. The Captain and his mates were aware that 80 percent of it was underwater and out of sight.

They didn't react in time.

Everyone knows the story -- most recently recreated in 3-D -- but the lesson is really not just about that great ship that went down, or even the company that bypassed safety regulations, or even the hubris of the owners whose greed sent so many passengers to that legendary "watery grave."

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-schechter/political-iceberg-ahead-t_b_1496027.html

Maria Margaronis - Greece takes a leap into the dark, driven by defiance and despair

The message of Sunday's election in Greece is clear: the Greeks have said no to more of the cuts and austerity measures that have devastated the country, pushing unemployment above 20%, shattering the healthcare system, tearing families apart and leading some to suicide. It was above all a vote of rage against the two major parties, Pasok and New Democracy, which between them ran the economy into the ground, signed up to a disastrous austerity programme in exchange for dead-end bailouts from the EU and IMF, and then allowed the blows to fall on the most vulnerable.

The medium, though, is more confused and troubling. As elsewhere in Europe, the draining away of the centre has revealed a jagged landscape: the shorthand of "extremes of left and right" doesn't begin to map it. The most obvious rift in Greece in the last months – a rift that's been described to me more than once as a "civil war"– has been between those who are for and against the "memorandum", the EU/IMF schedule of demands. The pro-memorandum forces want to keep Greece in the eurozone at any cost; most of their opponents also want to stay in Europe – but not of "Merkozy", austerity and the banks.

Across that rift runs an older, deeper one, whose roots go back at least as far as to the actual civil war that followed the Axis occupation, leading to 30 years in which the left was outlawed, and culminating in the neo-fascist junta of 1967 to 1974. The social and political collapse brought by the crisis has revived those memories, too, as well as old family loyalties. In the summer of 2011, when the aganaktismenoi ("outraged") of Syntagma Square briefly became the darlings of the foreign media, conservative truck drivers could rub shoulders with eco warriors and direct democracy mavens; the Greek flag could stand for self-determination as well as nationalism. But not any more.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/07/greece-leap-into-the-dark