Dissent Mag

by Eric Walberg / July 23rd, 2008

As the United States election race enters the final stretch, Barack Obama as the candidate promising change is revealing his true colors, much to the despair of anyone actually expecting any change. His recent call to declare Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel, his denial of Palestinians’’ right of return, and his support for a Bantustan Palestinian “state” which poses no threat to Israel show how completely he has caved in to the Zionist establishment on that issue.

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by Paul Craig Roberts

“On October 21 (194 the Government of Israel took a decision that was to have a lasting and divisive effect on the rights and status of those Arabs who lived within its borders: the official establishment of military government in the areas where most of the inhabitants were Arabs.”
- Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History

I had given up on finding an American with a moral conscience and the courage to go with it and was on the verge of retiring my keyboard when I met the Rev. Thomas L. Are.

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Global Exchange, (5/02)

US diplomats like to say that when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process the US plays the role of ‘an honest broker. “But the US’s massive foreign aid payments to Israel mean that, in fact, the US is taking sides. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world, receiving more than $6 billion annually-or about $8 million every-day. Until the US stops lending its weight to Israel through biased and unfair support, a truly just peace will remain elusive.

Note video - “Israeli shoots Palestinian with hands bound point blank”, “Video Israel Doesn’t Want You to See” and “If Americans Knew What Israel Is Doing! VIDEO WAS CENSORED!” below the article

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Reality Check

The Democrats Are The Real Problem

By Mike Whitney

20/07/08 “ICH” — – Obama’s candidacy is over; kaput. He’s already stated that he has no intention of stopping the war, so he has disqualified himself. That’s his prerogative; no one put a gun to his head. His op-ed in Monday’s New York Times just removes any lingering doubt about the matter. What Obama proposes is moving the central theater of operation from Iraq to Afghanistan. Big deal. Why is it more acceptable to kill a man who is fighting for his country in Afghanistan than in Iraq?

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By Steven D., Booman Tribune

Posted on July 18, 2008, Printed on July 19, 2008

Yes, you read my title correctly. Today’s New York Times includes an op-ed piece by Benny Morris, a Professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben Gurion University. He claims Israel will most certainly attack Iran within the next 4 to 7 months, and if conventional weapons are unsuccessful to knock out Iran’s nuclear program, than Israel will escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.

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by James Petras / July 17th, 2008

“My strong preference here is to handle all this (US conflict with Iran) diplomatically with the other powers of government, ours and many others as opposed to any kind of strike occurring…From the US perspective, from the United States military perspective in particular, opening up a third front (Israeli and/or US act of war against Iran) would be extremely stressful to us.”
– testimony of Admiral Michael Mulligan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 2, 2008.

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By Ray McGovern

17/07/08 “ICH” — -You say you expected more rhetoric than reality from Senators Obama and McCain yesterday in their speeches on Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, that’s certainly what you got.

What I find nonetheless amazing is how they, and the pundits, have taken such little notice of the dramatic change in the political landscape occasioned by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bombshell on July 7 — his insistence on a “timetable” for withdrawal of US troops before any accord is reached on their staying past the turn of the year.

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July 15, 2008

By Dilip Hiro

The Current Oil Shock: Why there’s no relief in sight from the energy reality we’re facing.

[Introduction by Tom Engelhardt]

Last week, after hitting $146 a barrel, the price of crude oil took a sudden, two-day, $9 plunge, based in part on comments by Iranian President Ahmadinejad that an attack on Iran was unlikely and on a mid-Atlantic turn north by Bertha, the season’s first significant hurricane, away from the oil-rig and refinery rich Gulf of Mexico. It was just long enough for pundits to wonder, hesitantly and somewhat wistfully, whether the global economic bad weather had finally hit the oil market, and whether lowered demand meant that a new (downward) trend was on the way. That was, of course, before the Iranians started lobbing missiles, and traders got edgy about a promised week-long strike at Brazil’s state-run oil giant Petrobras and the kidnapping of at least one foreign oil worker in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. By Friday, the “trend” was toast and the price of a barrel of crude had briefly crested above $147.

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