Weekend Magazine: Werewolf Issue 28

Binoy Kampmark: Desecrating The Enemy - The US Marines And The Taliban
Modern wars, fought with what are often misplaced high-minded ideals, are often the stuff of public relations. Indeed, the public relations feature is paramount – to be a good war, the circulated story needs to be good... More>>

ALSO:

• TV3 Video - Marines urinate on dead Afghan fighters in video - Marines investigating video of urination on corpses

Sherwood Ross: Americans Ignored NDAA Precedents At Their Peril
“I believe,” warned James Madison in a speech to the Virginia Convention on June 16, 1788, “there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden ... More>>

Sherwood Ross: U.S. Obligated To Arbitrate Dispute With Iran
It may come as a surprise to Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum but the U.S. is obligated under international law to the peaceful resolution of its grievance against Iran. More >>

ALSO:
• Prof. Francis A. Boyle - Preventing War by the United States against Iran
• TV3 Video - US Navy rescues Iranian fishing boat from pirates

Franklin Lamb: Muslim Brotherhood Strongest Contender In Libya - It appears, from interviews and discussions with a wide range of Libyans including students, lawyers, judges at the Ministry of Justice, shopkeepers and casual acquaintances that the Muslim Brotherhood currently has very little popular support among this ... More >>

Out-Link Reuters: Muslim Brotherhood goes public with Libya summit

Uri Avnery: The Stolen War - FOR SOME weeks now, our almost new Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, has been announcing at every possible opportunity that a new war against the Gaza Strip is inevitable. Several commanders of the troops around the Strip have been repeating this dire forecast, ... More >>

Julie Webb-Pullman: No Need For New Year's Resolutions For Israel - In response to the nameless Israeli Embassy Official’s criticisms of a recent photo-essay published in SCOOP, I feel compelled to point out the ventriloquisms this wooden dummy is mindlessly purveying, and to suggest some appropriate New Year's Resolutions. More >>

ALSO:

• Embassy of Israel - Hamas Celebrating Culture of Hate, a response to Julie Webb-Pullman
• Julie Webb-Pullman - Photo Essay: Hamas 24th Anniversary, Gaza

Honours List: Connie Lawn Gets A Gong (and Beats The Drum For NZ) - Like many Kiwis my age, I grew up hearing Connie Lawn’s reports from Washington on Radio New Zealand. She has covered every US Administration since Lyndon Johnson’s time, and is the longest-serving correspondent in the White House Press Corps. In ... More>>

Martha Rosenburg: FDA Critic Stripped Of Voting Rights - It's said that it takes 22 FDA safety officers to change a light bulb: 12 to defend the decision to install it, 8 to call it another More>>

Catherine Austin Fitts: Wall Street's Corruption, the Austrian School and Who's 'Really' in Charge - Introduction: Catherine is the president of Solari, Inc., publisher of The Solari Report, and managing member of Solari Investment Advisory Services, LLC and Sea Lane Advisory, LLC. Catherine served as managing director and member of the board of directors ... More >>

Binoy Kampmark: ET Wars With China: Future Engagements In Space
It was central to old occidental fantasies of the east that Cathay stood tall and strong as a majestic force, an intangible entity that mystified and terrified with its technological prowess and despotic enchantments. In a sense, the language of ... More >>

Middle East: Iran Threatens 150,000 Missile Response To Israeli Jerichos
Saber-rattling rhetoric in the Middle East is reaching new heights. Israel is reportedly deploying its long-range Jericho missiles around Jerusalem, while the Iranian defense minister threatened massive missile retaliation against Israel. More>>

Franklin Lamb: Will 2012 Bring Tribal War To Libya? - The weather in Tripoli this New Year’s weekend is unseasonably bone chilling with heavy rains flooding the streets reminding this observer more of dreary London this time of year than the southern Maghreb coast of the Mediterranean. My modest family ... More>>

David Swanson: Obama Crowned Himself On New Year's Eve - "He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. More>>

Julie Webb-Pullman: No Need For New Year'S Resolutions For Israel
In response to the nameless Israeli Embassy Official’s criticisms of a recent photo-essay published in SCOOP, I feel compelled to point out the ventriloquisms this wooden dummy is mindlessly purveying, and to suggest some appropriate New Year's Resolutions. More >>

Politics: I Wish 2012 Would Be A Year Of Change
Politically, I would like to call 2012 – A Year of CHANGE. When I look into the politically development of the last 10 years around the year I feel that 2012 will now, hopefully, bring the CHANGE. More>>

Walter Brasch: One Jew’s Christmas
I am a Jew. I don’t mind receiving Christmas cards or being wished a “Merry Christmas” from friends, clerks, or even in junk mail trying to sell me something no sane person should ever buy. More >>

Richard S. Ehrlich: Burma Frees A Comedian To Travel To America
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Burma's most famous dissident comedian, who survived "electronic shock" torture during eight years in prison, has been allowed out of his Southeast Asian country for the first time and is traveling to the Clinton Foundation in America ... More >>

From The Field: Keeping Hope Alive In Mogadishu
It is a hot, dusty morning in Mogadishu, the war-ravaged capital of Somalia, and Ahmed Farah Roble is in a makeshift settlement for internally displaced persons (IDPs), listening to a mother tell him about her baby daughter. More >>

Uri Avnery: The Duke Of Nablus
THE NAME of Munib al-Masri has recently come up as a possible candidate for Prime Minister of a Palestinian national unity government. Not being a member of either Fatah or Hamas, he is acceptable to both. More >>

Embellishing Iraq War: Moral Victory, Selective Body Counts
Someone ought to let mainstream news producers know that the nearly 4,500 US soldiers killed in the Iraq war were not the only victims. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have also been killed as a result of the unwarranted US invasion, and many more have ... More >>

Absurdity And Truth: The Passing Of VáClav Havel
In certain countries, theatres do not merely hire half-starved performers to act out the writings of half-starved writers. They also launch revolutions. The activity on the stage of a theatre assumes a force that moves beyond its confines, seeping ... More >>

Keith Rankin: Understanding The Great Depression Of The 30s
At a time when the likelihood of a global crisis of the magnitude of the 1930s' Great Depression is significantly raised, we remain stoically ignorant of the underlying causes of that event, and of the eventual recovery. More>>

ALSO:

• Keith Rankin - The Global Debt Crisis

Gordon Campbell: On The Guy Who's Really Running North Korea
Years ago and while still a cub reporter, I had to accompany Muhammad Ali, Bundini Brown and rest of the Ali retinue on a week long tour in NZ. It was only on the last day I finally figured out that Ali was not the kingpin of this troupe, and that the road manager was actually the boss of the entire operation... More>>

ALSO:

• Scoop Business - NZ dollar little changed after Draghi comments, Kim’s death
• Labour - Death of Kim Jong Il
• NZ DPRK Society - Death of Kim Jong Il will release a tide of grief
• UN - Secretary-General Voices Sympathy to Citizens of DPR Korea
• TV3 Video - Kim Jong Il, a Cold War-era leader in modern times - Photos, video: Kim Jong Il dead - North Korea mourns - Mystery surrounds son set to succeed Kim Jong Il - North Korea's Kim Jong Il died two days ago - reports