US – Breaking News

Another War, Another Defeat  

 The Gaza offensive has succeeded in punishing the Palestinians but not in making Israel more secure.

By John J. Mearsheimer

John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago and coauthor of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. 

Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don’t believe it. Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win.

The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to restore Israel’s deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the Lebanon fiasco, by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and by its inability to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

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Obama’s Financial Reform Proposal: A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control
by Stephen Lendman

When politicians plan reform, it’s wise to be skeptical and hold on to your wallets. So fixing the economy by bailing out Wall Street is wrecking it, and Obama’s proposed health care reform taxes more, provides less, places profits above human need, avoids the most vital solutions, and leaves a broken system in place.

Now there’s "Financial Regulatory Reform, A New Foundation: Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation" – announced June 17 with Obama saying he’ll send Congress a plan to create new government agencies, give the private banking cartel Federal Reserve more power, and address five major problems needing regulatory and legislative measures to fix.

Addressing business executives in the White House East Room, he said:

"A culture of irresponsibility took root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street" with no mention that months of it worsened on his watch. "A regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th century economic crisis – the Great Depression – was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy." In fact, 30 years of deregulation since the late 1970s, not technology, caused speculative excesses, market bubbles, and inevitable collapses that always follow.

Of course, these problems are endemic under a system that’s crisis-prone, unstable, anarchic, ungovernable, and self-destructive through repeated cycles of booms creating bubbles, then busts, followed by recessions or depressions with today’s collapse grave enough for Michel Chossudovky to call it "far more serious than the Great Depression (because all) major sectors of the global economy are affected."

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By Iqbal Jassat – Chairman, Media Review Network

As Libya and its beleaguered leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi occupy center stage with news coverage being dominated by an American-led military offensive targeting his forces and weapons, a huge debate on it has emerged in many capitals of the world. Apart from the vexing issue of whether military strikes have transgressed the limited mandate of the UN’s security council resolution, there is also divided opinion as to whether the Americans must continue leading the military coalition or hand command over to NATO. With the war on Libya now about to enter a second week, it does appear that Gaddafi’s determination to fight to the last and his appeal on friends in the international community not to ditch him seems to be working for the “brother leader”.

Divisions in the rank of member states of the UN reveal at the outset how certain influential countries abstained from endorsing the resolution. These states, Brazil, Russia, China and India set the tone for further polarization which saw Latin American countries adopting a harsher and more critical approach to the war. It is true too that Gaddafi has been lobbying via telephone calls to a wide array of friends, supporters and business partners around the world, not to gain their sympathy but to exploit weaknesses in the fragile coalition. His four decades of autocratic rule and grand display of solidarity for causes such as the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa has endeared him to many people, particularly in Africa.

It explains his bravado whereby revelations such as claiming that President Zuma had pledged support to him in a private telephonic conversation are made without blinking an eye. Though the Zuma government disputes Gaddafi’s version, it doesn’t deny that a conversation did take place between the two. So while confusion reigns in diplomatic circles about what may have been said or not, Gaddafi rides the storm by attacking his opponents as “terrorists”.

Read More »Libya the enigma of its revolution in western hands

 Velvet Revolution impossible in Iran

By Gisoo Misha Ahmadi, Press TV, Tehran
 
The following is Press TV’s interview with Seyyed Morteza Nabavi, a member of Iran’s Expediency Council and Head of the Resalat daily

Press TV:Let’s go back to 30 years ago. In your opinion, what personality traits did the founder of the Islamic Revolution Imam Khomeini have which enabled him to lead the greatest revolution of the century?

Nabavi: Imam Khomeini was a religious, political leader but the deep influence he had over the people had to with his religious characteristics. Imam Khomeini had deep cultural and spiritual insight. People were attracted to his because he spoke of the Divine of Islamic teachings which have been the answer to all our needs throughout history and will never be out-dated.

Read More »Velvet revolution impossible in Iran