The trite old phrase 'What's Sauce for the Goose is also Sauce for the Gander' means quite simply that if a person does something that is approved by society, then another person should not be criticized or penalized for doing exactly the same thing. That seems fair enough. But it doesn't apply in international affairs, in which sauce-allocation is the privilege of the powerful.

The world knows the position of the United States in regard to Israel's defiance of international law. On November 29, rather than censure Israel for its longtime rejection of dozens of UN Security Council Resolutions, Washington and its wagatail puppies rolled over and enjoyed a Tel Aviv tummy tickle for voting against a General Assembly resolution acknowledging the right of the Palestinian people to aspire to statehood. America supports the Jews of the world in having their own country called Israel but refuses to permit Arab citizens of the region to have their own country called Palestine in land which belongs to them.

There are 193 nations in the UN General Assembly, and 138 of them voted to recognise Palestine. 41 pathetic fence-sitters abstained. Five didn't even turn up. And seven little lapdogs actually voted with Israel and the US against the resolution.

The United States of America is a member of the United Nations Security Council which in its Resolution 487 required "Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards." Israel has done no such thing. Nor will it ever do. And that Resolution also "strongly condemned" Israel for its "clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct."

In the years following that unambiguous censure of Israel, Washington has changed its game dramatically. Nowadays the Council can't condemn Israel for anything.

An Israeli border guard officer on Wednesday shot dead a Palestinian teenager in Hebron's Old City in the southern West Bank.

Locals identified the victim as 16-year-old Muhammad Ziad Awad Salaymah.

A local doctor, hearing shots fired, rushed to the Salaymah neighborhood, near the Ibrahimi Mosque, but was unable to revive the teenager.

The doctor told Ma'an that local women were arguing with Israeli forces who were preventing them from reaching Salaymah.

"I followed the women, and when I felt his pulse, I found that he was dead," the doctor said.

Israeli police said the victim appeared to be carrying a fake pistol.

The widow of murdered Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane today dismissed the report into his death by Sir Desmond de Silva as "a sham... a whitewash... a confidence trick", telling a London press conference: "This report is not the truth."

Renewing her call for a full public inquiry into her husband's 1989 death, Geraldine Finucane said that the British Government had suppressed the truth and attempted to throw all blame on dead individuals and disbanded organisations while exonerating ministers, serving officers and existing security agencies.

Mrs Finucane said: "Yet another British government has engineered a suppression of the truth behind the murder of my husband, Pat Finucane.

"At every turn it is clear that this report has done exactly what was required - to give the benefit of the doubt to the state, its Cabinet and ministers, to the Army, to the intelligence services and to itself.

• Activists claim there have been nearly 20 attacks in the last 10 days
• Country has seen rise in mob sex attacks on protestors in the last year
• Demonstrators in Tahrir Square yesterday protested against a draft constitution approved by allies of President Morsi
• Muslim Brotherhood today marched in support of the president

Egypt's ruling party is paying gangs of thugs to sexually assault women protesting in Cairo's Tahrir Square against President Mohamed Morsi, activists said.

They also said the Muslim Brotherhood is paying gangs to beat up men who are taking part in the latest round of protests, which followed a decree by President Morsi to give himself sweeping new powers.

It comes as the Muslim Brotherhood co-ordinated a demonstration today in support of President Mohamed Morsi, who is rushing through a constitution to try to defuse opposition fury over his newly expanded powers.

Just 24 hours earlier around 200,000 people gathered in Tahrir Square, the heart of last year's revolution which toppled President Hosni Mubarak, yesterday to protest against a new draft constitution.

US admits Al Qaeda "amongst" Syrian rebels, recognizes them as the "legitimate representative of the Syrian people"

As expected, after a long pause of feigned "consideration," the US has recognized the militants it has been arming, funding, aiding logistically and supporting diplomatically since as early as 2007, as the "legitimate representatives of the Syrian people," with the added caveat, "in opposition to the Assad regime." The Wall Street Journal would report that US President Barack Obama's announcement actually read:

"The Syrian National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime."

The bizarre, uncertain wording sends a message of both uncertainty and resounding illegitimacy, indicating that the US itself recognizes the true nature of the so-called "Syrian" opposition is apparent to an increasing number of people both in public office and across the public, and that a certain degree of rhetorical distance must be kept.

Israel is conducting a covert cross-border operation directed against Syria in liaison with NATO and the Pentagon.

After looking for a "smoking gun" in Iran earlier this year, Israeli special forces are now "tracking" Syria's "stocks of chemical and biological weapons", according to The Sunday Times.

"The cross-border operation is part of a secret war to trail Syria's non-conventional armaments and sabotage their development. 'For years we've known the exact location of Syria's chemical and biological munitions,' an Israeli source said, referring to the country's spy satellites and drones. 'But in the past week we've got signs that munitions have been moved to new locations.'" (Uzi Mahnaimi and Lucy Fisher Israel tracks Syria's chemical arsenal, The Sunday Times 9 December 2012.)

Everyone recalls the WMD hype prior to launching the war on Iraq. It turned out that the Iraqi WMD threat was an outright fabrication.

Those involved in the Iraq WMD propaganda ploy are now applying their skills with a view to fabricating a WMD pretext to intervene in Syria. According to a report from the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, "Israelis 'misread' the Iraqi threat". In 2003, the BBC wrote on the report's findings:

© Anthony Fredawww.AnthonyFreda.com

American Military Starts Assassinating Children

Obama and the American military label all young men - between the ages of say 15 and 35 - who happen to be in battle zones as suspected insurgents who they can target and kill.

Under the Bush administration, children were tortured.

Now, the U.S. military is starting to target children for assassination in battle zones. As the Nation reports:

In a despicable article in Military Times, the US military says that children are legitimate targets in the war in Afghanistan because sometimes the Taliban and other insurgents use kids.

In the original incident, which I cited in October, The New York Times reported it this way:

The...case of three children allegedly killed in a coalition strike was reported by local officials in Helmand Province's Nawa district. The officials said that the children were killed in a NATO strike on Sunday afternoon as they were gathering dung to burn as fuel, a common practice in the desert reaches of southern Afghanistan where there are few trees.

***
The Marja governor said that NATO forces watched as improvised explosive devices were being planted, and targeted the insurgents planting them. "As a result two I.E.D. planters were killed and the shrapnel killed the three children who were wandering nearby," he said. Other reports said that three insurgents had been killed.

A spokesman for the international forces, Maj. Adam Wojack, said that the coalition forces were aware of the allegations and that the episode was being investigated. "I.S.A.F. did conduct a precision airstrike on three insurgents in Nawa district, and the strike killed all three insurgents," he said.

"None of our reporting shows any civilian casualties or any children."

The Obama administration has decided to launch a covert operation to send heavy weapons to Syrian rebels, Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times of London reports.

Diplomatic sources told the Sunday Times that the U.S. "bought weapons from the stockpiles of Libya's former dictator Muammar Gaddafi."

The heavy arms include mortars, rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and the controversial anti-aircraft heat-seeking SA-7 missiles, which are integral to countering Bashar Al-Assad's bombing campaign.

The German cabinet on Thursday agreed to participate in a NATO mission sending Patriot missiles and some 400 soldiers to Turkey to help the country cope with potential security threats from Syria.

"Turkey is currently the most-affected partner in the Syria conflict. It is exposed to a potential threat from Syria," the foreign and defense ministries said in a joint statement.

Turkey, a vocal opponent of the Syrian government, had asked NATO to reinforce its air defense facilities as the conflict between Syrian government and rebels pose a mounting threat to Turkish citizens living close to borders.

In October, several artillery shells from Syria struck a Turkish border town and killed five civilians.

Political crisis deepens as judges refuse to oversee referendum on new constitution proposed by president

An International Monetary Fund loan to Egypt has been delayed until next month, intensifying the political crisis gripping the country.

The delay, announced on Tuesday, came as judges voted decisively against overseeing the referendum on the controversial new constitution.

Ahmed El Zend, the head of the judges club, an unofficial body with most of Egypt's judges among its members, said 90% had decided not to supervise the referendum. However, the high elections commission, the judicial body supervising the referendum, said there were enough judges on board to oversee the voting but only by staging the referendum in two phases, on 15 December and 22 December.