Len Hart

Chinese rulers and the US elites partnered to enslave US workers and consumers. As a result, the US became a vassal state of China, a huge population which props up the buck so that it can sell us junk via Wal-Mart.

These deals were all worked out with China by Bush Sr et al in the years following Nixon's infamous visit to the forbidden city. In these talks, US leaders, primarily the right wing/GOP, the US consumer and laborer was sold out. The US would become a vassal state, a slave state, a consumer society whose raison d'être was to buy Chinese junk. The big losers are US workers and consumers.

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Chris Floyd

For almost 200 years, since the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has continally asserted – and often physically exerted – its self-awarded right of dominion over all the lands south of its border. Military "partnerships," exploitative sweetheart deals for U.S. corporate and financial elites, and general servility toward Washington's political and economic agenda have been the chief characteristics of this "special relationship."

Whenever these elements are to Washington's liking, the Latin American country in question is considered a "good neighbor" – however heinous it might be to its own people. But if any one of these elements is not pleasing in the eyes of the Beltway lords, then the offending nation becomes a pariah, a dangerous hotbed of radicalism, terrorism and that most dread condition of all: instability. Two recent articles reaffirm the unfortunate vitality of this dreary truth.

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PulseMedia

It has been a year since Israel’s savage assault on Gaza that killed more than 1400 civilians. For the duration of the attack the BBC did not have a single man or a woman inside Gaza to cover it. This would be understandable if there weren’t any means available to get a journalist into Gaza. But this was not the case. The BBC, unlike channels such as Al Jazeera International, appeared content to comply with Israeli demands to keep clear. Worse, its journalists parroted Israeli claims about the rationales and the consequences of the assault. Just as the British government provide tacit support for the assault, so the BBC assisted it by giving Israeli officials ample time to rationalize the atrocities. If this were not bad enough, the BBC then took the reprehensible step of refusing to run a Disasters and Emergencies Commission (DEC) appeal for the victims in Gaza.

When months latter it finally came to acknowledge that its coverage had indeed been biased, it claimed it was…too pro-Palestinian! (This prompted the great Robert Fisk to proclaim The BBC Trust ‘nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Israel Lobby’).

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William Blum

In November I wrote:

Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He's holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Well, on December 10 the president clutched the prize in his blood-stained hands. But then the Nobel Laureate surprised us. On December 17 the United States fired cruise missiles at people in ... not Iran, but Yemen, all "terrorists" of course, who were, needless to say, planning "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset".[2] A week later the United States carried out another attack against "senior al-Qaeda operatives" in Yemen.[3]

Reports are that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Norway is now in conference to determine whether to raise the maximum number of wars allowed to ten. Given the committee's ignoble history, I imagine that Obama is taking part in the discussion. As is Henry Kissinger.

The targets of these attacks in Yemen reportedly include fighters coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, confirmation of the warnings long given — even by the CIA and the Pentagon — that those US interventions were creating new anti-American terrorists. (That's anti-American foreign policy, not necessarily anything else American.) How long before the United States will be waging war in some other god-forsaken land against anti-American terrorists whose numbers include fighters from Yemen? Or Pakistan? Or Somalia? Or Palestine?

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