Tom Sullivan's blog

Ask an awkward question, get a silly answer: “Israel is a non-nuclear weapons state”

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Ever since UK Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour pronounced the Balfour Declaration on 2 November 1917, promising a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, Palestinians have endured ongoing violation of their basic human rights.

The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan. Together they planned force-fed pain. They met secretly. They mandated poverty, unemployment, homelessness, and hunger during hard times.

"Picture a country at the height of its international power and prestige. It has military forces stationed around the globe. It is an intellectual leader...." It's not the one you're thinking of.

With barely a week and a half to go until the November 6 presidential elections, the entire spectrum of the American pseudo-left is exerting maximum efforts to turn out votes for Obama with the claim that the reelection of the incumbent Democrat would represent the “lesser of two evils.”

Dear Mr Cameron, How self-interested and partisan was your speech last week to the Jewish Israel Appeal. Carefully pre-scripted, it said everything the Jewish Zionists in your audience wished to hear. Your final quips about settlement- building and house- demolitions were moral soundbites for the Media, to give the appearance of being fair-minded and caring about the Law. Your audience knew full well, as indeed you do, that the government has not the slightest intention of lifting a finger to help the displaced victims of settlement-building and house demolitions.

So who is this Susan Schmidt that appears to be so concerned about undue foreign influence in the United States?

The terms insurgency and counterinsurgency can quickly become confusing in a politically motivated context. However, generally speaking, an insurgency seeks to overthrow an established institution or political order, while a counterinsurgency seeks to maintain that order.

Australia has 40% of the world's uranium, all of it on indigenous land. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has just been to India to sell uranium to a government that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and whose enemy, Pakistan, is also a non-signatory. The threat of nuclear war between them is constant. Uranium is an essential ingredient of nuclear weapons. Gillard's deal in Delhi formally ends the Australian Labor Party's long-standing policy of denying uranium to countries that reject the NPT's obligation "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament".

So there is a magic wand after all. A revolutionary paper by the International Monetary Fund claims that one could eliminate the net public debt of the US at a stroke, and by implication do the same for Britain, Germany, Italy, or Japan.

Sanctions and the True Intentions of the "International Community"

Whenever financial swindlers prosper at the expense of investors or a bank jiggers interest rates to bugger their competitors or tax evaders flee fiscal crises or rent gouging petrol monarchies recycle profits or oligarchs pillage economies and drive millions to drink, drugs and destitution they find a suitable secure sanctuary in London.

In the West, the Ministry of Propaganda continues to talk about the “Syrian revolt.” There is no revolt. What has happened is that the US and Israel have equipped with weapons and sent into Syria Islamists who wish to overthrow the secular Syrian government. Washington knows that if the Syrian government can be destroyed, the country will dissolve into warring factions like Iraq and Libya.

Washington has long engaged in psychological operations that aim to foment the kind of “hate and discontent” among Iran’s factory workers, merchants, shopkeepers, students, and manufacturers – as part of a series of measures taken to coax widespread social discontent and unrest throughout the country to topple the government.

The Syrian insurgency will never win its war because its means are unsupported even among the opposition, political analyst Dan Glazebrook told RT. But thanks to a flood of weapons from the West, they will continue to destabilize the countr

In his speech, the president admonished the Muslim World by underscoring the important belief that people must “resolve their differences peacefully” and that “diplomacy” should take “the place of war.” Laudable words, but only if America practiced what it preaches.

A writer’s greatest disappointments are readers who have knee-jerk responses. Not all readers, of course. Some readers are thoughtful and supportive. Others express thanks for opening their eyes. But the majority are happy when a writer tells them what they want to hear and are unhappy when he writes what they don’t want to hear.

A new project aimed at “countering illegal use of the Internet” is making headlines this week. The project, dubbed CleanIT, is funded by the European Commission (EC) to the tune of more than $400,000 and, it would appear, aims to eradicate the Internet of terrorism.

Skimming Profits Off Bad Loans

Continuation of the present situation adds to hostilities and violence. Oppression and military aggression must be stopped. Regrettably, official reports concerning the brutalities of the Zionist regime in Gaza have not been completely published. The Secretary-General and the United Nations have crucial responsibilities in this respect and the international community is impatiently waiting for the punishment of the aggressors and the murderers of the defenseless people of Gaza.

We will all swallow our cup of corporate poison. We can take it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine and play the victim, or we can take it from nurse Obama, who will assure us that this hurts him even more than it hurts us, but one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down our throats. The choice before us is how it will be administered. Corporate power, no matter who is running the ward after January 2013, is poised to carry out U.S. history’s most savage assault against the poor and the working class, not to mention the Earth’s ecosystem. And no one in power, no matter what the bedside manner, has any intention or ability to stop it.

Russia’s parliament has advanced sweeping spy legislation targeting civil groups that work with foreigners to upset domestic politics in what rights groups call another attack on freedoms.

There was something missing from the release of a tape showing Mitt Romney pandering to fat cats in Boca Raton, Florida with these very inflammatory words: “There are 47 percent who are with him, (Obama) who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. These are people who pay no income tax.” Romney said his job “is not to worry about those people.”

Once upon a time, President Richard Nixon wanted to appoint a certain lawyer to the US Supreme Court.

“But the man is a complete moron!” one senator exclaimed.

“So what,” answered another, “There are a great many morons in the US, and they have a right to be represented in the court as much as any other sector of society.”

The “arc” of capitalism, is about 600 years long, from 1500 to 2100. It is our particular (mis)fortune to be living through the beginning of the end, the disintegration of capitalism as a world system. It was mostly commercial capital in the sixteenth century, evolving into industrial capital in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and then moving on to financial capital—money created by money itself, and by speculation in currency—in the twentieth and twenty-first. In dialectical fashion, it will be the very success of the system that eventually does it in.

With the November elections right around the corner, the millions of unemployed and under-employed have little reason to care. Aside from some sparse rhetoric, neither Democrats nor Republicans have offered a solution to job creation. Most politicians seem purposefully myopic about the jobs crisis, as if a healthy dose of denial might get them through the electoral season unscathed.

The new conventional wisdom, in the wake of angry protests roiling the Middle East, is that Muslims are either way too sensitive or irrational. How else to explain the fury over an offensive anti-Islam video? But the video was just the spark that ignited a long-smoldering fire, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

It's a cruel and unusual punishment for any Monday morning, having to listen to Tony Blair on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Why the programme's editors chose to interview the former prime minister on the controversy over the anti-Islamic film that has triggered demonstrations throughout much of the world is beyond me. The man who has done more than most to contribute to anti-western feeling among Muslims in the Middle East and Asia is called upon to tell us why Muslims shouldn't be angry about anything.

Repeated Lies Call for Repeated Truth Regarding Iran.