An Israeli child from a far-right settler group in the West Bank city of Hebron hurls a stone up the stairs of a Palestinian family close to their settlement and shouts: "I will exterminate you." Another spits towards the same family. Another settler woman pushes her face up to a window and snarls: "Whore!"

They are shocking images. There is footage of beatings, their aftermath, and the indifference of Israel's security forces to serious human rights abuses. There is footage too of those same security forces humiliating Palestinians – and most seriously – committing abuses themselves.

They are contained in a growing archive of material assembled by the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem in a remarkable project called Shooting Back. The group has supplied almost 100 video cameras to vulnerable Palestinian communities in Hebron, the northern West Bank and elsewhere, to document and gather evidence of assaults and abusive behaviour – largely by settlers. [Read more and see video]

The rise of Iran continues. And that rise was made abundantly clear during the 19th World Petroleum Congress in Madrid in early July. A large, supremely confident Iranian delegation attended the triennial gathering that brings together energy officials from all over the world. The Iranian contingent in Madrid was many times larger than the one that attended the 18th World Petroleum Congress...

Of course, the broader question about Iran’s energy sector is not about oil or gas. It’s about nuclear power. Iran’s nuclear power aspirations have been the pivot point for U.S. and European sanctions against the country. But have the sanctions made a difference? A look at the myriad projects now underway in Iran suggests that the impact has been limited...

The confidence that the Iranians displayed in Madrid is further confirmation of their growing influence in Europe and the Mideast. Indeed, their presence at the conference bolsters the belief that Iran may be the biggest winner of the Second Iraq War. And the oil and gas deals they are doing – with the Malaysians, Indonesians, Syrians, Venezuelans, Chinese, and others – provide evidence that America’s ability to influence global energy policy, particularly when it comes to policies that involve sanctions against Iran, is diminishing...

Perhaps the most notable comment from the Iranians came after most of the crowd had left... [Minister for Petroleum] Nozari was... asked, “Are you worried about Israel?” Nozari looked directly at his interrogator, an English-speaking woman (who was not a reporter), and laughed loudly. His peers from the oil ministry joined in the merriment. And then – speaking in English for the first (and only) time – Nozari said, “This is a joke.” [More]

The threat of military attack against Iran has continued to escalate as the European Union this week conceded to pressure from the U.S. to implement stricter sanctions against Iran for refusing to cease from enriching uranium for its nuclear program. Earlier this week, Israeli transport minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, "If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective. Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."

The Office of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is reportedly in favor of military strikes against Iran, and President Bush has repeatedly described an attack as an "option" that he is keeping "on the table". Leading officials and military experts at the Pentagon, on the other hand, have reportedly been opposed to attacking Iran, and the State Department is said to favor a diplomatic approach...

Iran has repeatedly called on Washington to engage in discussions not only about its nuclear program, but on working towards a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, calls which have been rebuffed by the U.S., probably in no small part because any such talks would inevitably include a focus on Israel, the only nation in the region armed with nuclear weapons. [More]

It was only slightly amusing recently when one of the television news networks did a short segment on Nelson Mandela visiting George W. Bush in the White House. The newsperson happened to mention that Mandela was on America’s terrorist watch list. There was no explanation of how this heroic figure from South Africa was able to fly to Washington, D.C...

The newsperson also explained the reason that Mandela was on the terrorist honor roll because the apartheid government of South Africa had labeled him as such, and the United States simply went along with that designation. I found myself wishing that the newsperson would go on to explain exactly how Hizbollah, or Hamas, made the American list of terrorist organizations. But we know how that happened, don’t we? Israel wanted them labeled as terrorists, so the United States went along with it, as accommodating today to apartheid Israel as it was to apartheid South Africa back in the days before South Africa went straight...

If President Bush knew anything at all about the Middle East — which he doesn’t — he would have known not to invade Iraq, and he would have known that it is not our freedoms that anger people in the Middle East, it is our policies toward that unfortunate part of the world that create anger. And as for terrorism, I would tell Mr. Bush there is one way to stop it without using an invading army — change our policies, make them more fair, stop enabling Israel to break every international law ever written. Or, as Spike Lee would put it, “Do the right thing.” [More]

Last September 6, Israel bombed a Syrian building at Dair el Zor. In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, little was said in public, by either Israel or Syria, but later the Israelis started claiming that the Syrians were building a nuclear reactor. On the radio today (April 25), I heard as if it were undisputed fact, the U.S. government claim to have "proof" of a Syrian-North Korean nuclear connection. Now I see that AP have a story headlined "White House says Syria 'must come clean' about nuclear work," while ABC news has a video entitled "Syria's Nuclear Reactor".

Are the wonderful mainstream media, who gave us Saddam's mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction, lying to us again? The answer is yes.

Journalist Laura Rozen spoke with Joseph Cirincione, director of nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress. Cirincione says "In attacking Dair el Zor in Syria on Sept. 6, the Israeli air force wasn’t targeting a nuclear site but rather one of the main arms depots in the country. Dair el Zor houses a huge underground base where the Syrian army stores the long and medium-range missiles it mostly buys from Iran and North Korea"... Cirincione says that there is a small Syrian nuclear research program, which has been around for 40 years and is going nowhere....

So what is really going on here? Cirincione told the BBC that "This appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda." The preexisting political agenda may be promoting a war with Syria and/or Iran, or torpedoing negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea. Finally, Cirincione adds ominously "If this sounds like the run-up to the war with Iraq, then it should." [More]

Why does the Bush Regime want to rule Iraq? Some speculate that it is a matter of “peak oil.” Oil supplies are said to be declining even as demand for oil multiplies from developing countries such as China. According to this argument, the U.S. decided to seize Iraq to insure its own oil supply. This explanation is problematic. Most U.S. oil comes from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela. The best way for the U.S. to insure its oil supplies would be to protect the dollar’s role as world reserve currency. Moreover, $3-5 trillion would have purchased a tremendous amount of oil...

The more likely explanation for the U.S. invasion of Iraq is the neoconservative Bush Regime’s commitment to the defense of Israeli territorial expansion. There is no such thing as a neoconservative who is not allied with Israel. Israel hopes to steal all of the West Bank and southern Lebanon for its territorial expansion. An American colonial regime in Iraq not only buttresses Israel from attack, but also can pressure Syria and Iran from giving support to the Palestinians and Lebanese. The Iraqi war is a war for Israeli territorial expansion. Americans are dying and bleeding to death financially for Israel. Bush’s “war on terror” is a hoax that serves to cover U.S. intervention in the Middle East in behalf of “greater Israel.” [More]

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.