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Thousands in Jordan Call for End of Peace Treaty with Israel


Haaretz
Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00 UTC
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© Agence France-PresseJordanians burn an improvised Israeli flag during a protest against the current government following Friday noon prayers in downtown Amman, May 4, 2012.
In series of nationwide protests, leftist and Islamist activists call to cut ties with Israel, burning Israeli flags and chanting 'death, death to Israel.'

Thousands of Jordanians took to the streets on Friday demanding an end to the country's 18-year-old Wadi Araba peace treaty with Israel.

In a series of nationwide protests, leftist and Islamist activists urged Amman to cut ties with Israel, burning Israeli flags and chanting "death, death to Israel" and "the people want an end to Wadi Araba."

Protesters rallied in seven cities across the country, urging authorities to expel the Israeli ambassador from Amman, chanting "no to a Zionist embassy on our land."

Protest organizers, including the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and youth movements, said the demonstrations came as a direct response to King Abdullah's recent nomination of Prime Minister Fayez Tarawneh, who served as a key figure in the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace process.
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Propaganda

Propaganda Left and Right

Paul Craig Roberts
Informationclearinghouse.info
Sat, 05 May 2012 16:25 UTC
Some readers have come to the erroneous conclusion that the Matrix consists of Republican Party disinformation as if there is no disinformation from the left. Others think that propaganda is the business of Obama and the Democrats. In fact, propaganda from the right, the left and the middle are all part of the disinformation fed to americans.

If I may give some examples: The other day Chuck Colson, one of the Nixon officials imprisoned for Watergate crimes, died. This gave NPR the opportunity to relive the Nixon horror.

What precisely was the Nixon horror? Essentially, there was no such thing. Watergate was about President Nixon lying about when he learned about the Watergate burglary.

When Nixon learned about the burglary, he did not act on it prior to his reelection, because he reasoned, rightly, that the Washington Post would blame him for the burglary, although he had nothing to do with it, in the hopes of preventing his reelection.
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Vader

The President's Private War

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
Fox News
Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00 UTC
obama war drones
© UnknownThousands of civilians have been killed in US drone attacks on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya.
Did you know that the United States government is using drones to kill innocent people in Pakistan? Did you know that the Pakistani government has asked President Obama to stop it and he won't? Did you know that Pakistan is a sovereign country that has nuclear weapons and is an American ally?

Last week, the Obama administration not only acknowledged the use of the drones; it also revealed that it has plans to increase the frequency and ferocity of the attacks. White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan argued that these attacks are "in full accordance with the law" and are not likely to be stopped anytime soon.

Brennan declined to say how many people were killed or just where the killings took place or who is doing it. But we know that Obama has a morbid fascination with his plastic killing machines, and we know that these machines are among the favored tools of the CIA. We also know that if the president had been using the military to do this, he'd be legally compelled to reveal it to Congress and eventually to seek permission.

We know about the need to tell Congress and ask for permission because of the War Powers Act. This law, enacted in 1973 over President Nixon's veto, permits the president to use the military for 90 days before telling Congress and for 180 days before he needs congressional authorization. Obama must believe that he can bypass this law by using civilian CIA agents, rather than uniformed military, to do his killing.

Comment: For more information about the use of drones please read:
Celebrating our "Warrior President"
Obama's Death Panels: Jeremy Scahill at the Drone Summit
Spy in the Sky: Is It Only a Matter of Time Before Drone Technology is Used in Civil Society?
Police State: "Robots R'US": Military-Style Drones on 63 Military Bases In The USA

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Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Analysing Syria - The West's Greatest Fear

Dan Glazebrook
Information Clearing House
Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00 UTC
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© Ahmed Jadallah/ReutersFree Syrian Army fighters patrol a street in the Damascus suburb of Saqba.
Western attempts to destroy Syria have not been going to plan, revealing that what the West fears most is a peaceful resolution to the crisis

The strategy was simple, clear, tried and tested. It had been used successfully not only against Libya, but also Kosovo (in 1999), and was rapidly underway in Syria. It was to run as follows: train proxies to launch armed provocations; label the state's response to these provocations as genocide; intimidate the UN Security Council into agreeing that "something must be done"; incinerate the army and any other resistance with fragmentation bombs and Hellfire missiles; and finally install a weak, compliant government to sign off new contracts and alliances drawn up in London, Paris and Washington, whilst the country tore itself apart.

Result: the heart torn out of the "axis of resistance" between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah, leaving Iran isolated and the West with a free hand to attack Iran without fear of regional repercussions.

This was to be Syria's fate, drawn up years ago in the high- level planning committees of US, British and French defence departments and intelligence services. But this time, unlike in Libya, it has not all gone according to plan.

First, there was Russia and China's veto of the "regime change" resolution at the UN Security Council in October 2011, followed by a second veto in February of this year. This meant that any NATO attack on Syria would be denied the figleaf of UN approval, and seen instead as a unilateral act of aggression not just against Syria, but potentially also against China and Russia as well.

Vicious and reckless as they are, even Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama do not necessarily have the stomach for that kind of a fight. That left the burden of destroying the Syrian state to NATO's proxy forces on the ground, the "Free Syrian Army" -- a collection of domestic and (increasingly) foreign militias, mostly ultra-sectarian Salafi extremists, along with a smattering of defectors and Western special forces.

Comment: For a better idea of what is really going on in Syria please read the Sott Focus: Syria's Bloody CIA Revolution - A Distraction? by Joe Quinn.

For additional information read:

Mossad, Blackwater, CIA Led Operations in Homs

Wikileaks: US-led NATO Troops Operate Inside Syria

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Mr. Potato

'Socialist' Francois Hollande wins French presidency


BBC News
Sun, 06 May 2012 13:36 UTC
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Socialist Francois Hollande has been elected as France's new president.

He got about 52% of votes in Sunday's run-off, according to early projections, against 48% for centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Sarkozy has admitted defeat, saying: "Francois Hollande is the president of France and he must be respected."

Analysts say the vote has wide implications for the whole eurozone. Mr Hollande has vowed to rework a deal on government debt in member countries.

Exuberant Hollande supporters have already converged on Place de la Bastille in Paris - a traditional rallying point of the Left - to celebrate.

Mr Hollande capitalised on France's economic woes and President Sarkozy's unpopularity.
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Die

Adieu Sarkozy?

Alain Gresh
Le Monde Deplomatique
Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00 UTC
Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande
© The TelegraphNicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande
The first round of the presidential election encouraged François Hollande, the left's candidate, and discouraged the incumbent president. And now for the crucial alliances

What did the first round of voting on 22 April tell us about the French presidential election? The turnout was very high, around 80%, contrary to what many commentators and pundits had expected. This confirmed the central place of the presidential election ("the queen of the elections"), which decides France's main orientation over the next five years.

François Hollande with 28.63% of the votes came in ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy at 27.18%, the first time since the beginning of the Vth Republic in 1958 that a president trying to win a second term has failed to beat his challenger. This is a clear sign of the French electorate's rejection of Sarkozy and a repudiation of his government's policies - especially economic and social, with their resultant high unemployment. Sarkozy was "le président des riches" (president of the wealthy), but there was also a resounding "non" to his personal behaviour since, for many French people, Sarkozy has discredited the presidential role. In one particularly symbolic incident, he insulted a demonstrator in front of television cameras.

Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right Front National party, took 18% of the votes, not that different from the percentage her father won in the 2002 presidential election (more than 16.8%; another far-right candidate won 2.3%), and far more than her father's 10.44% in 2007. Why this difference? In 2007 Sarkozy ran a dynamic campaign, defended ideas important to the far right (security, immigrants) and took some of their votes. This time, despite a campaign that was very rightwing (especially against immigrants and Islam), he failed.
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Light Sabers

A Putsch Against War

Uri Avnery
Antiwar.com
Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00 UTC
Meir Dagan (left) with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
© Associated PressMeir Dagan (left) with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Generals and secret police chiefs get together for an attack on the politicians

In some countries, they arrest the president, occupy government offices and TV stations and annul the constitution. They then publish Communique No. 1, explaining the dire need to save the nation from perdition and promising democracy, elections etc.

In other countries, they do it more quietly. They just inform the elected leaders that, if they don't desist from their disastrous policies, the officers will make their views public and precipitate their downfall.

Such officers are generally called a "junta", the Spanish word for "committee" used by South American generals. Their method is usually called a "putsch", a German-Swiss term for a sudden blow. (Yes, the Swiss actually had revolts some 170 years ago.)

What almost all such coups have in common is that their instigators thrive on the demagoguery of war. The politicians are invariably accused of cowardice in face of the enemy, failure to defend national honor, and such.

Not in Israel. In our country we are now seeing a kind of verbal uprising against the elected politicians by a group of current and former army generals, foreign intelligence and internal security chiefs. All of them condemn the government's threat to start a war against Iran, and some of them condemn the government's failure to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace.

Only in Israel.

Comment:
Will the Real Benjamin Netanyahu Please Stand Up?
Netanyahu, Israel's Mussolini

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Bad Guys

The Fraud of "Humanitarian Wars"

Glenn Greenwald
Salon
Wed, 02 May 2012 05:44 UTC
All wars, even the most unjustifiably aggressive, are wrapped in the same pretty rhetorical packaging

Last month, I spoke at the University of Chicago as part of an event entitled "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Empire: Humanitarian Intervention and Neo-Orientalism." Sponsored by the Muslim Students Association, the event also included Oxford Professor Tariq Ramadan, law professor and U.N. war crimes expert M. Cherif Bassiouni, and University of Chicago Professor Jennifer Pitts. My talk, roughly 30 minutes long, focused on how so-called "humanitarian interventions" are manipulatively used to justify wars of aggression and self-interest, and can be heard on the player below (my talk begins at roughly 57:40: simply move the cursor to that mark, as it loads quickly). The full event, including the other three talks and the question-and-answer session - all of which was really quite excellent - can also be viewed on the player below by starting at the beginning, or can be heard here.

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Clock

A Decade of War - For What?

Patrick J. Buchanan
Information Clearing House
Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00 UTC
Obama
© UnknownPresident Barack Obama
"My fellow Americans, we have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war," said Barack Obama from Bagram Air Base.

"Here in the predawn darkness, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon. The Iraq War is over. The number of troops in harm's way has been cut in half, and more will be coming home. ... The time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end."

Interesting comment, that last.

If "the time of war" is at an end, does that rule out U.S. military action in Syria or war on Iran?

Setting aside the 14,000-mile round trip to Afghanistan to do an end zone dance on the anniversary of Seal Team Six's dispatch of Osama bin Laden, Obama seems to have boxed in his Republican rivals.

His assurance that our wars are ending and our troops are coming home reflects the national will. And his partnership agreement with President Hamid Karzai and pledge that a U.S. force will remain to train the Afghan army and prevent al-Qaida's return inoculates him against the charge that he is cutting and running.
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Bell

Best of the Web: Gerald Celente on The Keiser Report: Fascism is here and now

The Keiser Report
Russia Today
Sun, 06 May 2012 12:40 UTC
Gerald Celente joined Max Keiser on The Keiser Report on May Day in New York City to discuss current trends and the collapse of the West.

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