Robert Stevens
WSWS

"A warning must be made. The US government and its accomplices have gone a long way towards crippling WikiLeaks and creating the conditions where Assange will likely end up spending a long time in prison. Their ability to do so testifies to the vast erosion of democratic rights in the US and internationally."

The ruling by Judge Howard Riddle at Belmarsh Magistrates Court in London that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden represents a grave threat to his liberty and even to his life.

The decision is only the latest episode in a massive, internationally coordinated campaign headed by the Obama administration and US intelligence agencies to discredit and destroy WikiLeaks.

Assange is the victim of a politically motivated attempt at character assassination and legal frame-up based on trumped-up charges of sexual misconduct. Washington’s chief collaborators are the British government and courts, the Swedish government and its legal system, and the Gillard government in Australia, which has done nothing to defend one of its own citizens.

Julian Assange has emerged as a major figure in journalism, fighting for a genuinely independent press. As opposed to the New York Times and the rest of the establishment media, which routinely and systematically collaborate with the state to conceal the truth and keep the public in the dark, he has worked to expose the crimes of American imperialism. For this reason he has been targeted for destruction.

The frame-up is aimed at silencing WikiLeaks, which has made public thousands of secret US military documents exposing the criminal character of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and US diplomatic cables documenting the filthy conspiracies that have been carried out against the world’s people by Washington and its allies.

The determination of the United States to destroy Assange has only grown as the revelations made by WikiLeaks have helped spark mass popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries, cutting across the efforts of the US and Europe to portray themselves as benevolent advocates of democracy.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo courtesy of Amber Appelbaum

"Fascism landed in Wisconsin under Walker and his cronies, aiming to turn the whole state into Guatemala in the worst sense of its meaning. More than ever, exposing and stopping him is crucial. It's no exaggeration saying, as Wisconsin goes, perhaps also America, a possibility too grim to allow."

Egyptians want it. So do Palestinians, Arabs throughout the region, protesting East and West Europeans, others across the world, and growing numbers in America, especially in Wisconsin - ground zero to save organized labor.

At issue is freedom v. tyranny, what Aaron Russo's 2006 film called "Freedom to Fascism," identifying America's money system as inimical to liberty and justice for all. Along with American-style corporatism, it lets banking giants control money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment, colluding with government for laws favoring them, as well as others destroying democratic principles, fast eroding and disappearing throughout the country.

It produces:

● pervasive public and private corruption;
● concentrated wealth;
● government serving America's aristocracy, not popular interests;
● alliances with global despots, replaced when they forget who's boss;
● America's war machine and imperial arrogance;
● subjugation, not freedom;
● mass impoverishment and human misery;
● a war on dissent; and
● another preventing constructive change, forcefully when other ways fail.

It makes America and similar societies unfit to live in, heading them for tyranny and ruin. It also fuels popular anger, bubbling eventually to the surface, growing and now spreading across the Middle East and parts of America.

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Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

"As long as the American population remains proud that their relatives serve as cannon fodder for the military/security complex, war will remain a racket."

The United States government cannot get enough of war. With Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime falling to a rebelling population, CNN reports that a Pentagon spokesman said that the U.S. is looking at all options from the military side.

Allegedly, the Pentagon, which is responsible for one million dead Iraqis and an unknown number of dead Afghans and Pakistanis, is concerned about the deaths of 1,000 Libyan protesters.

While the Pentagon tries to figure out how to get involved in the Libyan revolt, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific is developing new battle plans to take on China in her home territory. Four-star Admiral Robert Willard thinks the U.S. should be able to whip China in its own coastal waters.

The admiral thinks one way to do this is to add U.S. Marines to his force structure so that the U.S. can eject Chinese forces from disputed islands in the East and South China seas.

It is not the U.S. who is disputing the islands, but if there is a chance for war anywhere, the admiral wants to make sure we are not left out.

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Ann Talbot
WSWS

New Hardwick Hall seen from the window of old Hardwick Hall

It is said by the locals that the ghost of Thomas Hobbes can be heard grumbling to himself and singing out of key as he walks along the lower terrace of Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, where he died in 1679 at the age of 91. It is a hard and undignified fate for a convinced materialist who denied the existence of all boggarts, goblins and sprites, to be posthumously converted into an immaterial spirit, but Hobbes’s reputation has suffered worse indignities at the hands of posterity. An article by Corey Robin in the Nation last year lined up Hobbes alongside the Italian Futurists and Friedrich Nietzsche as a “blender of cultural modernism and political reaction”. [1]

Robin teaches political science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is the author of Fear: the History of a Political Idea, [2] which aims to cover topics as diverse as the fear of Communism during the Cold War, the fear among black Americans of the police, white fears of black revolt under segregation, the fear a woman feels towards her abusive husband, or an employee might feel towards an employer. Robin self-consciously identifies with the sense of panic that afflicted sections of the American intelligentsia after 9/11.

Robin’s Nation article purports to be a review of Quentin Skinner’s Hobbes and Republican Liberty, [3] but the points of contact with the book are slight to nonexistent. It is really a vehicle for his “fear” theme. For Robin, Hobbes is one of the great purveyors of fear in the modern era. Hobbes used to say that he and fear were born twins, so he would seem to be the ideal figure for Robin’s purposes.

Hobbes, in point of fact, had a good deal to be afraid of, since most of his adult life was dominated by the Thirty Years War, which was the bloodiest European war until the twentieth century. An estimated 30 percent of the population of what is now Germany was killed. Neighbouring France was rent by the Fronde, and, in the 1640s, two civil wars consumed England, Scotland and Ireland. As if that were not enough for one lifetime, Hobbes was born in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada. His mother was said to have given birth to him prematurely when she heard that the invasion fleet had already arrived. That was what he meant by saying fear was his twin.

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Stephen Lendman

In 2003, an ACLU report warned that "Big Brother" no longer is fiction, America having advanced to where total surveillance is now possible. Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program said:

"Given the capabilities of today's technology, the only thing protecting us from a full-fledged surveillance society are the legal and political institutions we have inherited as Americans. Unfortunately, the September 11 attacks have led some to embrace the fallacy that weakening the Constitution will strengthen America."

As a result, civil liberties fast eroded. In 2007, another ACLU report warned about America being six minutes to midnight "as a surveillance society draws near...." Powerful new technologies potentially make total monitoring possible under a president, a compliant Congress and courts that believe national security takes precedence over constitutional freedoms.

As a result, "we confront the possibility of a dark future where our every move," transaction, and communication is "recorded, compiled, and stored away" for ready access for whatever authorities may want.

One of several earlier articles on institutionalized spying can be accessed through this link.

It reviewed undiscussed police state tools used without congressional authorization, oversight, or legal standing - state-of-the-art technology, including satellite imagery, to spy on unsuspecting Americans.

In his article titled, "Creating the Domestic Surveillance State," Alfred McCoy explained that Obama embraced the same executive powers as Bush, including NSA surveillance, CIA renditions, drone assassinations, indefinite military detentions, and more - virtual lawlessness across the board. As a result, constitutional Law Professor Jack Balkin believes bipartisan affirmation of unchecked executive powers could "reverberate for generations," subverting constitutional freedoms.

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Stephen Lendman

So far, weeks of regional protests achieved nothing. Despite ousting Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali, their regimes remain in place, offering nothing but unfulfilled promises.

On February 26, Egyptians again protested in Tahrir Square. This time, however, military forces confronted them, Reuters headlining, "Egypt military angers protesters with show of force," saying:

"Soldiers used force on Saturday to break up a protest demanding more political reform in Egypt, demonstrators said, in the toughest move yet against opposition activists who accused the country's military rulers of 'betraying the people.' "

New York Times writer Liam Stack headlined, "Egyptian Military Cracks Down on New Protest," saying:

"Tens of thousands of protesters returned Friday to Tahrir Square....to keep up the pressure on Egypt's military-led transitional government."

Violence followed, including beatings, use of tasers, and live firing in the air, threatening perhaps harsher action if protests continue. Al Jazeera said:

"Protesters left the main (square) but many had gathered in surrounding streets....Witnesses said they saw several protesters fall to the ground, but it was not clear if they were wounded or how seriously."

Participant Ashraf Omar said:

"I am one of the thousands of people who stood their ground after the army started dispersing the protesters, shooting live bullets into the air to scare them."

He said soldiers wore black masks to avoid being identified. Military buses were used for those arrested. It's "a cat-and-mouse chase.There is no more unity between the people and the army."

In fact, there never was, only the illusion that unsympathetic generals were populists at heart. In fact, they've been regime hard-liners for decades, rewarded handsomely for backing state repression.

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PressTV
PressTV

“The objective of US intervention in Libya is to contain the revolutionary upsurge of the masses and have a forward base for introducing troops,” says political commentator Ralph Shoenman.

This also raises the question of whether the US and NATO are pushing for a civil war in Libya in order to justify a military intervention. Press TV seeks Mr. Shoenman's elaboration of his analysis.

Press TV: I'd like to ask you about an argument that is being made by the Libyan opposition movement saying that the US business lobby in fact helped prolong Gaddafi's reign?

Shoenman: Well of course everybody understands that for the past nearly a decade the Gaddafi regime has made a complete accommodation to US imperialism and indeed the major oil companies of western Europe and the US are once again in charge of Libyan oil production. Consequently, the previous anti-imperialist posture of Gaddafi, which gave rise to usual false flag provocations by the US as we've discussed before on Press TV: the false flag operation of the blowing up of the discotheque in Germany, the false flag operation of the blowing up of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, which was a CIA operation - these things were deployed to justify the US intervention in Libya. At the time, they bombed Libya, they killed Muammar Gaddafi's daughter. Subsequent to that Gaddafi made a complete accommodation and consequently this current posture of the US and with the UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon orchestrating it about major interventions on the part of NATO plan of establishing a blockade in Libya is a very very dangerous and sinister undertaking.

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Anon.

The WikiLeaks founder says the charges are baseless and if extradited, he believes he will not face a fair trial. Assange posed some interesting questions:

Why is it that I am subject, a non-profit free-speech activist, to a US$360,000 bail? Why is it that I am kept under electronic house arrest when I have not even been charged in any country?"

And he is not the only one asking those questions, particularly as the British government has a history of granting asylum to some fairly controversial characters, including Russian business tycoon Boris Berezovsky who has blood of many on his hands. Berezovsky later said he had been trying to overthrow the Russian government, using the UK as his base. "It shows here the hypocrisy of the British court. Berezovsky has quite clearly been involved in the mafia over the years. All sorts of very serious offences, which you may actually, quite literally, equate with terrorism, and yet he is not being extradited," says investigative journalist Tony Gosling. "And yet we see here, what appears to be anyway, a trumped-up charge of rape, which hasn't actually even come to charges in Sweden. Assange appears anyway being taken over to Sweden and there's going to be an appeal, so we will see, but there certainly does appear to show blatant political interference into the court system here in Britain and total hypocrisy from the British justice system."

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Silvia Cattori
Silvia Cattori's Blog

Gilad Atzmon is an outstandingly charming man. He is often described by music critics as one of the finest contemporary jazz saxophonists. But Atzmon is more than just a musician: for those who follow events in the Middle East, he is considered to be one of the most credible voices amongst Israeli opponents. In the last decade he has relentlessly exposed and denounced barbarian Israeli policies. Just before his departure on a European Spring Tour, “The Tide Has Changed“, with his band the Orient House Ensemble, he spoke to Silvia Cattori.

Silvia Cattori: As a jazz musician, what brought you to use your pen as a weapon against the country where you were born and against your people?

Gilad Atzmon: For many years my music and writings were not integrated at all. I became a musician when I was seventeen and I took it up as a profession when I was twenty four. Though I was not involved with, or interested in politics when I lived in Israel, I was very much against Israel’s imperial wars. I identified somehow with the left, but later, when I started to grasp what the Israeli left was all about, I could not find myself in agreement with anything it claimed to believe in, and that is when I realised the crime that was taking place in Palestine.

For me the Oslo Accord was the end of it because I realised that Israel was not aiming towards reconciliation, or even integration in the region, and that it completely dismissed the Palestinian cause. I understood then that I had to leave Israel. It wasn’t even a political decision — I just didn’t want to be part of the Israeli crime anymore. In 1994 I moved to the UK and I studied philosophy.

In 2001, at the time of the second Intifada, I began to understand that Israel was the ultimate aggressor and was also the biggest threat to world peace. I realised the extent of the involvement and the role of world Jewry as I analysed the relationships between Israel and the Jewish State, between Israel and the Jewish people around the world, and between Jews and Jewishness.

I then realised that the Jewish “left” was not very different at all from the Israeli “left”. I should make it clear here that I differentiate between “Left ideology”— a concept that is inspired by universal ethics and a genuine vision of equality – and the “Jewish Left”, a tendency or grouping that is there solely to maintain tribal interests that have very little, if anything, to do with universalism, tolerance and equality.

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Stephen Lendman

On February 25, AP said the Wisconsin Assembly, after days of debate, passed Walker's contentious bill, but the standoff is far from over. Senate Democrats remain absent in Illinois, vowing to resist ending collective bargaining rights for public workers. So far, Walker won't compromise, so resolution is on hold.

Much more, however, is at issue. On February 24, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman headlined, "Shock Doctrine, USA," saying:

"What's happening in Wisconsin is....a power grab - an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy."

It involves much more than union busting, bad as that is.

Hidden in the bill's 144 pages are "extraordinary things," including a provision letting Walker appoint a health czar to make draconian healthcare cuts to Wisconsin's poor and low-income households unilaterally.

Another one states:

"16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state-owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss.196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49(3)(b)."

Call it the Koch brothers provision, multi-billionaire owners of Koch Industries, an industrial giant heavily invested in energy and power-related enterprises. According to Wisconsin campaign finance filings, Koch Industries PAC contributed $43,000 to Walker's gubernatorial campaign, second only to the $43,125 given by state housing and realtor groups.

Moreover, the Koch PAC helped Walker and other Republicans by contributing $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (RGA), that, in turn, spent $65,000 to support Walker and $3.4 million on television attack ads and mailings against his opponent, Milwaukee Democrat Mayor Tom Barrett. It made the difference between victory and defeat. Republican out-spent Democrats, sweeping many of their candidates to victory last November.

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Stephen Lendman

In December 2010, the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel published a study titled, "Inequality Report: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel," saying:

Affecting Jews as well, it takes many forms, including:

● privileged v. deprived groups;
● Western Jews (Ashkenzim) v. Eastern ones (Mizrakhim);
● men v. women;
● Israeli-born Jews (Sabar) v. immigrant ones (Olim);
● Orthodox v. secular Jews;
● urban v. rural ones;
● progressive v. hardline extremists;
● gay v. straight, and so forth.

Mostly, it represents majority Jews against minority (largely Muslim) Israeli Arabs, indigenous people living in their historic homeland, comprising 20% of the population or about 1.2 million people, excluding East Jerusalem and Golan.

Under international law, they're considered a national, ethnic, linguistic and religious minority, but not under Israel's Basic Laws. As a result, they face "compound discrimination" as non-Jews, as well as for belonging to one or more sub-groups. For example, women, Bedouins, the disabled or elderly.

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Julie Hyland
WSWS

“Why is it that I am subject—a non-profit free speech activist—that I am subject to a $360,000 bail, that I am subject to house arrest when I have never been charged in any country?”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault, Judge Howard Riddle, sitting at Belmarsh Magistrates Court, London ruled Thursday.

The verdict marks a new stage in efforts to silence Assange and WikiLeaks and prevent further disclosure of the duplicitous and criminal actions undertaken by the United States and governments across the world.

Assange has made clear his intention to appeal the ruling. He has just seven days to do so. If the appeal is rejected, he could be extradited within 10 days.

This is despite the fact that Assange has yet to be charged with any offence, and a mountain of evidence that he is the victim of politically motivated, trumped-up allegations.

The WikiLeaks leader was arrested on December 7 on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by the Swedish authorities, alleging sexual misconduct. Two women in Sweden admit having sex with Assange willingly on separate occasions last August. But one alleges that, in one instance, Assange failed to use a condom. The other alleges that on one occasion Assange had sexual intercourse while she was not fully awake. Assange admits consensual sex with each woman, but rejects any wrongdoing.

In August, Sweden’s chief prosecutor Eva Finne dropped the investigation into the allegations against Assange, on the grounds that there was no “reason to suspect that he had committed rape.” By this time, however, the allegations had been disclosed to the media by the Swedish authorities.

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John Pilger
t r u t h o u t

Former CIA officer Ray McGovern. (Photo:
Cheryl Biren)

Shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I interviewed Ray McGovern, one of an elite group of CIA officers who prepared then-president George W. Bush's daily intelligence brief. At that time, McGovern was at the apex of the "national security" monolith that is American power and had retired with presidential plaudits. On the eve of the invasion, he and 45 other senior officers of the CIA and other intelligence agencies wrote to Bush that the "drumbeat for war" was based not on intelligence, but lies.

"It was 95 percent charade," McGovern told me.

"How did they get away with it?" I asked.

"The press allowed the crazies to get away with it."

"Who are the crazies?"

"The people running the [Bush] administration have a set of beliefs a lot like those expressed in 'Mein Kampf,'" said McGovern. "These are the same people who were referred to, in the circles in which I moved at the top, as 'the crazies.'"

I said: "Norman Mailer has written that he believes America has entered a pre-fascist state. What's your view of that?"

"Well ... I hope he's right, because there are others saying we are already in a fascist mode."

On January 22, 2011, McGovern emailed me to express his disgust at the Obama administration's barbaric treatment of the alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning and its pursuit of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange.

"Way back when George and Tony decided it might be fun to attack Iraq," he wrote, "I said something to the effect that fascism had already begun here. I have to admit I did not think it would get this bad this quickly."

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Stephen Lendman

"Strong unions in America face an existential struggle for survival, pitting worker rights against big money allied with all levels of government and union bosses, harming rank and file interests for their own privilege and self-enrichment. As a result, workers are largely dependent on their own tenacity, resourcefulness, and courage to struggle for rights too precious to lose."

The issue is simple and straightforward - organized big money v. organized people essential to beat it. Since February 15, Wisconsin public workers, students, and supporters have sustained heroic resistance against corrupted dark forces determined to crush unionism there and across America. A previous article explained, accessed through this link.

The scheme is old, dirty and ongoing - a conspiracy involving corporate bosses, federal, state and local Democrat and Republican leaders, and corrupted union heads to bust unions, effectively depriving workers of collective bargaining and other hard-won gains, returning them to 19th century harshness when they had none.

The battle lines are drawn. Across America, public and private worker rights are threatened unless mobilized resistance saves them. Governments at all levels are using dire economic conditions to make ordinary people bear the burden of recovering from the hardest times since the Great Depression. The solution is worse than the problem - the usual IMF diktat, including:

● wage and benefit cuts;
● less social spending;
● eliminating pensions and other entitlements;
● privatized state resources;
● mass layoffs;
● deregulation;
● debt service superseding public need;
● lower taxes for corporations and America's super-rich; and
● eroding hard won worker gains before eliminating them entirely.

In the 1980s, it was Reaganomics, trickle down and Thatcherism. In the 1990s, it was shock therapy. Today, it's austerity to make workers pay for a Wall Street/Washington caused crisis - a Main Street Depression, leaving them struggling on their own to get by. Nonetheless, officials are capitalizing on crisis conditions to inflict more pain on the backs of already victimized people.

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Vera Macht
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

It’s stormy, the wind is whipping through the trees, and scattered rain drops hit us in the face as we go down the muddy dirt road to Nasser's house. It’s a few hundred yards from the couple of houses around the cemetery, which form the village of Juhor al-Dik, to his small house near the border. "Goodbye," shouted the driver who will pick us up from this remote area again, and with a look at the path we chose he added laughingly: "Insha Allah - God willing."

But even under these circumstances, and even in this weather you cannot help but noticing how beautiful this area must have been, and actually still is, in spite of everything. While almost every other place in Gaza is loud and overcrowded, here's open land and soothing silence. There are a few olive trees that have survived the uncountable tank invasions, and a few new minor ones planted bravely. In between there’s the lush green grass from the winter rain. At least where it wasn’t again plowed up by Israeli bulldozers. And just as we talk about how peaceful this place actually is, we become suddenly aware of this calm being deceptive. On the other side of the barbed wire border, a jeep of the Israeli military appears. He stops as he sees us. My two colleagues and I exchange anxious glances, and without a word we open our hair and begin to inconspicuously walk in front of our Palestinian translator. What kind of a world is that in which blonde hair is a lifesaver.

The jeep drives on, we breathe a sigh of relief. I cannot even imagine how it is to know one’s children are in this danger every day.

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Dr. Dawg
Dawg's Blawg

That was always talk in faraway places, where hope springs eternal among the optimistic and the naive. The farmers know better. The truth of the occupation is written on their bodies, their minds and their lands. There is nothing left for them but resistance. And there is nothing left for us but to support Palestinians in their struggle against a tyranny no less brutal than the ones that are currently crumbling. Surely now is the time to choose sides.

A few days ago the US finally had the courage to let us all in on the truth: it supports the continued annexation of the West Bank by Israeli settlers. All of its protestations to the contrary have been erased by a simple veto —a monumentally cowardly act.

When we read about the settlements, and too often when we write about them, we tend to slip into geopolitical abstractions, familiar rhetoric, entrenched positions. What all of us need to do is to grasp the cost in human terms.

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Stephen Lendman

Pinkerton guards escort strikebreakers in Buchtel, Ohio, 1884

It dates from America's 19th century industrial expansion when workers moved away from farms to factories, mines, and other urban environments, with harsh working conditions, low pay, and other exploitive abuses. As a result, labor movements emerged, organizing workers to lobby for better rights and safer conditions, pitting them against corporate bosses yielding nothing without a fight.

During unionism's formative years, workers were terrorized for organizing. In company-owned towns, they were thrown out of homes, beaten, shot, and hanged to leave management empowered.

The 1892 Homestead Steel Works strike culminated in a violent battle between Pinkerton agents and workers. As a result, seven were killed, dozens wounded, and, at the behest of Andrew Carnegie, owner of Carnegie Steel, Governor Robert Pattison sent National Guard troops to evict workers from company homes, make arrests, and help CEO Henry Clay Frick's union busting strategy. It worked, preventing organizing of the Works for the next 40 years.

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions chose May 1, 1886 as the date for an eight-hour work day to become standard. As the date approached, unions across America prepared to strike. On May 1, national rallies were held, involving up to 500,000 workers.

On May 4, the landmark Haymarket Square riot protested police violence against strikers the previous day. Someone threw a bomb. Police opened fire. Deaths resulted. Seven so-called anarchists were convicted of murder. Four were executed.

Radicalized by the incident, Emma Goldman became a powerful social justice voice through writing, lecturing, being imprisoned for her activism, and finally emigrating to Russia after its revolution, then elsewhere in Europe. After her death, she was buried in Chicago near the graves of the Haymarket radicals she supported.

Led by American Railway Union's Eugene Debs, the 1894 Pullman strike was the first national one, involving 250,000 workers in 27 states and territories. America's entire rail labor force struck, paralyzing the nation's railway system. At the time, The New York Times called it "a struggle between the greatest and most important labor organization and the entire railroad capital."

At issue were unfair labor practices, including long hours, low pay, poor working conditions, and little sympathy from owner George Pullman. On his behalf, President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops. Hundreds of others were given police powers. At the time, unionists were seen threatening US prosperity.

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Ray McGovern
Consortium News

It was not until Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walked to the George Washington University podium last week to enthusiastic applause that I decided I had to dissociate myself from the obsequious adulation of a person responsible for so much death, suffering and destruction.

I was reminded of a spring day in Atlanta almost five years earlier when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld strutted onto a similar stage to loud acclaim from another enraptured audience.

Introducing Rumsfeld on May 4, 2006, the president of the Southern Center for International Policy in Atlanta highlighted his “honesty.” I had just reviewed my notes for an address I was scheduled to give that evening in Atlanta and, alas, the notes demonstrated his dishonesty.

I thought to myself, if there’s an opportunity for Q & A after his speech I might try to stand and ask a question, which is what happened. I engaged in a four-minute impromptu debate with Rumsfeld on Iraq War lies, an exchange that was carried on live TV.

That experience leaped to mind on Feb. 15, as Secretary Clinton strode onstage amid similar adulation.

The fulsome praise for Clinton from GW’s president and the loud, sustained applause also brought to mind a phrase that – as a former Soviet analyst at CIA – I often read in Pravda. When reprinting the text of speeches by high Soviet officials, the Communist Party newspaper would regularly insert, in italicized parentheses: “Burniye applaudismenti; vce stoyat” — Stormy applause; all rise.

With the others at Clinton’s talk, I stood. I even clapped politely. But as the applause dragged on, I began to feel like a real phony. So, when the others finally sat down, I remained standing silently, motionless, wearing my "Veterans for Peace" T-shirt, with my eyes fixed narrowly on the rear of the auditorium and my back to the Secretary.

I did not expect what followed: a violent assault in full view of madam secretary by what we Soviet analysts used to call the “organs of state security.” The rest is history, as they say. A short account of the incident can be found here.

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Tom Eley
WSWS

Protestors march in front of Capitol building in Madison

"This is, above all, a political fight against the entire economic and political set up in the United States, which sacrifices the interests of masses of working people to the wealthy few."

The Wisconsin legislature began debate on Tuesday over a bill that would force major wage cuts on government workers and further restrict their legal right to strike and organize. Democratic legislators are maneuvering with the trade unions to wind down protests and reach a compromise with Republicans that will leave intact the drastic cuts to workers’ wages. At the same time the Democrats are seeking to remove elements of the bill aimed at destroying the public sector unions in Wisconsin, such as the legislation’s abolition of the automatic dues check-off and its requirement that unions be re-certified by election each year.

The bill, pushed by Republican Governor Scott Walker, has provoked massive resistance among Wisconsin workers and youth, who have launched a wave of school and college walkouts and an unprecedented series of demonstrations, including an ongoing occupation of the capitol building in Madison going back to Tuesday, February 15. Inspired by developments in Wisconsin, similar protests and sympathy actions are proliferating across the US.

The demonstrations are anticipated to continue. According to Chad, an unemployed worker in Madison who has attended the demonstrations, rallies at the capitol continue to draw many thousands and are expected to be larger over the weekend. Hundreds of workers and youth have been streaming into Wisconsin from across the US, hoping to take a stand against wage-cutting and attacks on workplace rights. Several hundred teachers from New York City went to Madison on Wednesday, as did 160 government workers from Los Angeles.

In an effort to stall for time while negotiating with Republicans to reach a compromise, assembly Democrats forced a debate on the bill through Tuesday night and Wednesday morning by introducing a series of amendments that were voted down along party lines. The debate continued all day Wednesday, with Democrats promising to introduce as many as 200 amendments. The bill was to have been first considered by the senate, but the flight of 14 Democratic senators to Illinois on Thursday, February 17, denied Republicans a quorum. They remain in Illinois.

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Patrick O’Connor
WSWS

An injured Afghan child at the hospital in Farah province.
Photo: Abdul Malek/AP [From an earlier US massacre]

In the worst of several US air strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent days, up to 51 civilians were killed last Thursday in Afghanistan’s north-eastern Kunar province. General David Petraeus, the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, expressed the colonial-style hostility of the occupation force’s senior command toward the Afghan population, reportedly accusing local residents of burning their children to fake evidence of civilian casualties.

In a five-hour operation on the night of February 17, US Apache helicopters strafed a group of alleged Afghan insurgents with gunfire, rockets and Hellfire missiles. Surveillance drones guided the helicopter assault in the mountainous district of Ghaziabad, near the Pakistan border, and according to the Washington Post, bombs were dropped by at least one of the unmanned Predator aircraft. The attack was one of a number of recent US operations in the district, ordered as part of President Barack Obama’s broader escalation of the Af-Pak war.

Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, senior military spokesman in Kabul, stated that three dozen people were killed in the incident. He maintained they were all “suspected insurgents who had gathered to attack US and Afghan troops”. However, the remarks of one unnamed military official, cited by the Washington Post on Monday, made clear that American authorities had no knowledge of the identities of those killed. The official admitted that those targeted had been wearing civilian clothes.

Kunar Governor Said Fazlullah Wahidi contradicted Smith’s claims. He said: “According to our information 64 people were killed: 13 armed opposition, 22 women, 26 boys and 3 old men.” The governor sent a three-man “fact-finding team” to the area on Saturday, which returned with seven injured people suffering burns and shrapnel wounds, including a young man and woman and five boys and girls.

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Fred Reed
Fred on Everything

Date: The following is a somewhat amplified letter to a friend. I know I've said some of this before.

Jim,

Permit me respectfully to disagree about the potency of American intelligence agencies. It seems to me that they are clowns, incompetent at their assigned work but adept at causing grave problems for the United States. Their almost comic ineptitude lies hidden behind a veil of romantic secrecy a la James Bond. But look at their known record.

Your belief that a few jets and Marines would have changed the outcome in the Bay of Pigs rests on the characteristic inability of US intel to grasp how other people look at things. Cubans hated Batista, did not yet hate Castro to whatever extent they ever would, and the exiles used to invade the island were agents of the people Cubans hated most—that is, the rich property owners who fled Castro. The Americans, remember, had always supported Batista, as they had supported every ugly dictator in Latin America. America itself is detested throughout South America. No warm welcome was in the cards.

Americans still have no understanding of how other people work, and therefore of what they are likely to do. I remember that in Afghanistan the Pentagon was going to conquer Marjah and give it a “government in a box.” That is, the Afghans were going to fall in love with brutal invaders who destroyed most of their city. Fat fucking chance. Iraq would be a cakewalk? A friend of min--Jack McGeorge--on Blix’s team briefed Langley on WMD before the invasions of Iraq. I asked him whether the CIA really believed the cakewalk theory or were lying for political reasons. They really believed it, he said.

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Jerry White
WSWS

Demonstrations continued in the state capital of Wisconsin Tuesday against Governor Scott Walker’s budget-cutting proposal and attack on public employees. Protests inspired by the stand taken by Wisconsin workers also spread to other states across the country, including Indiana and Ohio.

In Indianapolis workers marched at the state capitol against Republican governor Mitch Daniels’ proposal to restrict bargaining by public school teachers. In Columbus, marchers denounced a bill that would prohibit collective bargaining for 42,000 state workers in addition to 19,500 workers in the state’s university and college system. (See “Columbus, Ohio rally against anti-worker legislation”) Protests also took place in Lansing, Michigan, Boston and other cities.

In New Jersey, Republican Governor Chris Christie announced a state budget Tuesday that would double a property tax rebate program only if lawmakers voted to require public workers pay 30 percent of their health care benefits, more than triple what they pay now.

In addition to draconian cuts in public and higher education, Medicaid and other services, Wisconsin’s Republican governor is demanding public employees sharply increase their contributions to health care and pension benefits, a move that would result in hundreds of dollars in lost wages each month.

The governor is also seeking to strip teachers, nurses, firefighters and other state and municipal employees of bargaining rights and bar negotiations on any issues except pay increases, which could not exceed a rise in the Consumer Price Index. The measure would also end automatic deduction of union dues and compel bargaining units to have a revote every year to maintain union representation.

In a 10-minute “Fireside Chat” Tuesday night, Walker reiterated his determination to press ahead and once again attempted to pit private sector workers against public employees by claiming public workers had not given up the type of wage and benefit concessions during the recession as workers in private industry.

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Stephen Lendman

Ronald Reagan was right saying:

"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."

His type governance, that is, and from administrations that followed, Democrats as ruthless as Republicans.

For decades, bipartisan consensus governed lawlessly, waging imperial wars, trashing human rights and civil liberty protections, unabashedly backing monied interests, letting them loot the federal treasury, fleecing working Americans, and targeting organized labor for destruction.

Washington is ground zero for government's assault. Outside the beltway, it's Wisconsin, but spreading fast to other states and cities. An unfair fight pits major media-supported federal, state and local governments allied with union bosses against American workers, largely on their own, relying on their grit and resourcefulness to survive in a very hostile environment.

Threatened are hard-won worker rights, including secure jobs, a living wage, essential benefits, and the right to bargain collectively with management to protect them. They're going, going, and soon gone unless mass grassroots activism saves them, what's so far absent. Wisconsin worker heroics are impressive, but not enough.

Much more is needed - there and across America, because workers in all states and communities are threatened, their rights being trashed and have been for decades, especially since the Carter administration drafted plans [that] Reagan implemented:

Firing over 11,000 PATCO workers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of dollars, and effectively busting it for monied interests. It was a shot across organized labor's bow, a clear message to Wall Street and other corporate favorites - supported by then AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland, one of many labor bosses who betrayed rank and file trust. They still do for their own self-interest. No wonder organized labor is a shadow of its former self, headed for extinction unless stopped.

Reagan's administration set the pattern. Union bosses conspired with management against their own membership. During bitter coal miner, steel worker, bus driver, airline worker, copper miner, auto worker, and meatpacking worker strikes, they denied rank and file support, assuring them defeat. At decade's end, trade unionism in America was decimated and kept declining since, heading for oblivion with little pressure to stop it.

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Ann Talbot
WSWS

"The popular uprising in Libya threatens to bring down a tyrant long courted by European governments and seen as a reliable partner who would ensure Europe’s oil supplies and invest the riches that his family had looted from the Libyan people in European banks, companies and universities."

As the uprising in Libya spreads throughout the country, the toll of protesters killed and wounded by the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi continues to rise. Jets have opened fire on protesters, including, according to some reports, in the capital Tripoli. Fighter planes reportedly attacked demonstrators and bombed the approach roads to the city, which is home to two million people.

Speaking live over the phone to Al Jazeera, Adel Mohamed Saleh, a Tripoli resident, described what was happening:

“What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. War planes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead. “Our people are dying. It is the policy of scorched earth. Every 20 minutes they are bombing. “It is continuing, it is continuing. Anyone who moves, even if they are in their car, they will hit you.”

The uprising spread to Tripoli Sunday night when 4,000 protesters gathered in Green Square calling for the overthrow of the regime. Government thugs attacked them and security forces opened fire with live ammunition. Clashes went on until dawn. Heavily armed mercenaries were said to be driving through the streets shooting on sight and running people down. On-the-spot reports speak of the mercenaries including not only Africans, but also Italians.

Gaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, went on government television late Sunday night to threaten civil war. He warned “We will fight to the last minute, to the last bullet.” He said there would be “rivers of blood” in Libya if the protests continued.

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Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch

Protesters shout slogans against Libyan leader
Muammar al-Gaddafi during a demonstration in
front of the United Nations.

World Report 2011: Libya | Country Summary

[PDF] Government control and repression of civil society remain the norm in Libya, with little progress made on promised human rights reforms. While releases of large numbers of Islamist prisoners continued, 2010 saw stagnation on key issues such as penal code reform, freedom of association, and accountability for the Abu Salim prison massacre in 1996.

Libya maintains harsh restrictions on freedom of assembly and expression, including penal code provisions that criminalize “insulting public officials” or “opposing the ideology of the Revolution,” although there has been slightly more media debate in recent years, particularly online.

Arbitrary Detention and Prisoner Releases

An estimated 213 prisoners who have served their sentences or been acquitted by Libyancourts remain imprisoned under Internal Security Agency orders. The agency, under the jurisdiction of the General People’s Committee for Public Security, controls the Ain Zara and Abu Salim prisons, where it holds political and “security” detainees. It has refused to carry out judicial orders to free these prisoners, despite calls from the secretary of justice for their release.

In March Libyan authorities released 214 prisoners, including 80 of a group of 330 detained despite the fact that courts had acquitted them and ordered their release. Some former prisoners have received compensation from the state for years of arbitrary detention. Others are still struggling to receive compensation, and many are banned from travelling outside Libya.

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Stephen Lendman

"Leaving", oil and graphite on paper, © Karen Rice

In Washington, Obama, Democrats and Republicans are doing it. In Wisconsin and other states, so are Governor Scott Walker, other governors, and mayors across America - planning major social benefits cuts and other ways to address budget shortfalls through layoffs, fewer services, and other draconian measures on the backs of working people, ones least able to afford them.

At the same time, America's aristocracy is thriving, benefitting largely from tax cuts, other benefits, and bipartisan complicity to reward them by exemption from planned austerity when stimulus, job creation, and other populist measures are needed, including for Chicagoans facing hard times. Instead, all major mayoral candidates promise worker sacrifices to benefit business and city elites.

On February 22, voters will choose a new mayor. Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel holds a commanding lead, numerous polls confirming it against:

● former Senator Carol Moseley Braun;
● former Richard Daley chief of staff and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Board of Trustees president Gery Chico;
● former state senator and current Chicago city clerk Miguel del Valle;
● former Harold Washington aide, once Rainbow/PUSH national political director, and current Committee For A Better Chicago William "Dock" Walls III; and
● Patricia Van Pelt Watkins, Executive Director of TARGET Area DevCorp, a self-styled regional grassroots social justice organization.

Odds favor either a first-round Emanuel win or a clear April 5 runoff one if he gets less than a majority. Either way, Chicagoans will be cheated by a man promising draconian cuts as mayor. Unfortunately, so are the other major candidates faced with an estimated $1 billion city budget shortfall.

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David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

Whodathunkit, eh?

Insignificant, backwater, third world banana republics like Tunisia and Egypt pioneering the way for the greatest superpower and richest country on the planet. That’s not supposed to happen.

I mean, we pay for a military that costs as much as every other one in the world, combined, even though it can’t win endless wars against insignificant, backwater, third world banana republics. They can’t say that about their militaries! We’ve got annual deficits that are bigger than their entire economies. The size of our economy is half-again bigger than the number two in the world (with one-fourth the population), and we’ve managed to produce a health care system that ranks 39th globally. Who else can claim that badge of honor? No doubt that ranking partially explains why our life expectancy figures are lower than just about every country in the developed world. Our education system, once the envy of the world, is crumbling, along with the size of our college enrollments. Ditto our infrastructure, much of which hasn’t been maintained in decades. Who can touch that? We have the highest polarization of wealth in the entire developed world, and more than any country in the Arab world too. Sweet! Another cool thing is our incarceration rate. It’s 743 per hundred thousand people. The next highest country has less than half that figure. Our use of torture and rendition and the remote-controlled aerial bombings of civilians has earned us the scorn and hatred of the world, while our political leaders, unmatched in their capacity for hypocrisy and buffoonery, have made us a laughingstock that few puffy-chested, medal-covered third world dictators can match. You got Mugabe? We got Palin. You got Charles Taylor? We got George W. Bush, in a democracy no less.

So, with a record like that, who in the world are these punky backwater countries to teach high and mighty America anything about anything?!?!

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Nahida Izzat
Exiled Palestinian

"When given the freedom to vote, why do people in the Middle East end up voting for the so called "Islamists"?"

The toppled X-president Ben Ali of Tunisia -like his counterpart Husni Mubarak of Egypt, and the rest of tyrants of the Arab world- was a Secular, Liberal and Westernized DICTATOR. This corrupt puppet was supported and admired by the Western governments, his anti-Islam policies were glorified and his “moderate version" of Islam was puffed up and endorsed.

Ben Ali has oppressed and terrorized his people for decades, he imprisoned them, starved them, closed down mosques, made it illegal for women to wear hijab, and for men to gather in mosques or to even grow beards.

This was one of Ben Ali palaces, after liberation, please watch to the end, even though it’s in Arabic:

Jewelry, Money and Treasure in one of Ben Ali's palaces

In contrast, this is the "Palace" of the so called "Islamists", the Palestinian Prime-minister Ismail Haneyeh, who has won a fair election in occupied Palestine in 2006:

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Stephen Lendman

What began in Tunisia spread to Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Bahrain, and now Libya, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The entire region is erupting in protests, mischaracterized as revolutions. They're not, falling far short convulsive, violent, unstoppable tsunamis for change, removing old orders for new ones. So far, they're absent in the region, not even close despite popular passion for change. More on that below.

On February 20, Al Jazeera said Libya protesters want Gaddafi's 42-year rule ended. He's violently suppressing popular anger to prevent it. On Sunday night, one of his sons, Saif El Islam, warned of civil war on state television, saying "we are not Tunisia and Egypt," then gave notice about a "fight to the last minute, until the last bullet." Attempting to diffuse popular anger, however, he offered new media laws, an amended constitution, changes in the penal code, other unspecified reforms, and, unrelated to street anger, a new national anthem and flag.

On Sunday, Warfala tribal leaders, representing 500,000 Tuareg people, said they're joining the anti-Gaddafi struggle. Al Jazeera reported they've been attacking government buildings and police stations. The common thread throughout the region is poverty, unemployment, corruption and repression, varying only by degree from one country to another.

Precise numbers aren't known, but some accounts say hundreds have been killed since violence erupted a week ago. As a result, divisions in Gaddafi's government got two diplomats to resign - Libya's China ambassador, Hussein Sadiq al Musrati, and Arab League representative Abdel-Monem al-Houni. Other reports say members of Libya's military have joined protesters, and army weapons and vehicles have been seized.

Residents said at least at least 200 had died in Benghazi alone....Protests have also reportedly broken out in Bayda, Dema, Tobruk and Misrata. In the capital, Tripoli, government supporters and security forces prevented spreading anti-government demonstrations. On February 21, however, heavy gunfire was reported in central Tripoli.

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Stephen Lendman

It was reminiscent of November 22, 2000 Florida, outside the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board offices when dozens of imported Bush-Cheney ruffians rampaged through Miami's County Hall, disrupting the recount of about 10,000 undervotes, ballots with no presidential choice registered.

They assaulted Democrat party representatives, near rioted, and succeeded in halting the process. As a result, hundreds of Gore-Lieberman votes weren't counted in largely Democrat Dade County.

Fraud, intimidation and ties to big money infest US politics. Washington's criminal class is bipartisan, but Republicans are especially brazen. Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker matches the worst of his Capitol Hill counterparts. Likely he's been chosen for his role and was directed by party bosses to wage open warfare on labor rights, the same scheme playing out across America, including by Democrats, many as extremist as Republicans at a time working people are being hammered relentlessly.

Target one is America's middle class, headed for extinction by decades of wealth shifts to super-rich elites, millions of high-pay/good benefit jobs offshored to cheap labor markets, and unions earmarked for elimination - policies Washington's duopoly endorses.

Outside the beltway, Wisconsin is ground zero, but anger is spreading and may erupt anywhere at a time workers are struggling to save hard-won labor rights, targeted for elimination. As Wisconsin goes, so goes America perhaps.

The stakes are that high. Bipartisan complicity is involved. So are union bosses tied to corporate interests against their own rank and file, concerned only for their own welfare and self-enrichment. For decades, they betrayed their loyal members, functioning as wealth and power instruments, not legitimate labor leaders the way early organizers envisioned.

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Stephen Lendman

On February 18, as expected, Washington vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements as illegal under international law. The vote: 14 yes, America the sole no, isolating the US and Israel on this long festering issue. The measure had nearly 120 co-sponsors.

In a post-vote briefing, ambassador Susan Rice outrageously lied, saying:

"....as the United States has said on many, many occasions for many years, we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued settlement activity."

Unsaid was that America, for many decades, funded Israel generously to build them, a process continuing grievously under Obama, besides outlandish amounts of military aid, support for Israel's occupation, and partnering in all its aggressive wars.

In a February 18 press release, Americans for Peace Now (APN) expressed "disappointment," APN's President and CEO Debra DeLee, saying:

"President Barack Obama missed a key opportunity today to demonstrate US leadership on peace. America's failure to hold both sides accountable for their actions is a contributing factor to the state of" today's moribund peace process because Washington and Israel won't tolerate it.

Nor do they support Palestinian sovereignty, ending occupation, the right of return, and long denied democratic freedoms. Instead they enforce imperial harshness against millions of oppressed Palestinians, exploited and brutalized for decades. February 18 offered more evidence how.

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Francis Shor
t r u t h o u t

(Photo: Neon Hallway/Jared Rodriguez)

The US political class [...] may [now] be preparing to expand the definition of treason to include [all] those who are dedicated to freedom of information, especially when it reveals the duplicities of empire.

While empires try to maintain their hegemony through economic and military prowess, they must also rely on a form of ideological legitimacy to guarantee their rule. Such legitimacy is often embedded in the geopolitical reputation of the empire among its allies and reluctant admirers. Once that reputation begins to unravel, the empire appears illegitimate.

The establishment of the US empire in the aftermath of World War II built upon its economic and military supremacy. That empire created an architecture of financial and geopolitical institutions that served not only its own interests, but also those of global capital and international legal and democratic structures. There were, of course, myriad contradictions that materialized throughout the earliest cold war period, but much of the West accepted the general framework and ideological legitimacy of the empire. While a crisis of legitimacy emerged around the Vietnam War and the undermining of the Bretton Woods agreement by the Nixon administration, it was not until the end of the cold war and the development of reckless unipolar geopolitics over the last decade that a real decline in US hegemony became apparent.

Given the battered economic and military standing of the United States over the past several years, the hysterical reaction of the American political class over the recent release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks is not surprising. However, it is instructive to note the response of those in the West to such "displays (of) imperial arrogance and hypocrisy" as reported by Steven Erlanger in The New York Times. Erlanger cites an important editorial from the Berliner Zeitung that underscores the question of ideological legitimacy: "The U.S. is betraying one of its founding myths: freedom of information. And they are doing so now, because for the first time since the end of the cold war, they are threatened with losing worldwide control of information."

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Stephen Lendman

For decades, organized labor has been hammered after painful years of organizing, taking to the streets, going on strike, holding boycotts, battling police and National Guard forces, and paying with their blood and lives before real gains were won.

Important ones included an eight hour day, a living wage, essential benefits including healthcare and pensions, and the pinnacle of labor's triumph with passage of the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, establishing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It guaranteed labor the right to bargain collectively with management on equal terms for the first time, what's now sadly lost.

After signing it on July 5, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt said:

"This Act defines....the right of self-organization of employees in industry for the purpose of collective bargaining, and provides methods by which the Government can safeguard that legal right....A better relationship between labor and management is the high purpose of this Act....it seeks for every worker within its scope, that freedom of choice and action which is justly his....it should serve as an important step toward the achievement of just and peaceful labor relations in industry."

Grassroots activism won important gains. Management gave nothing until forced nor did government, siding always with business, yielding only to stop sustained disruptive work stoppages, street violence or possible insurrection.

In 1935, a worried Congress and administration acted. After WW II, however, organized labor declined. Passage of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Labor-Management Relations Act was the first major blow. Harry Truman vetoed it, calling it a "slave labor bill," then hypocritically used it 10 times, the most ever by a president to this day.

Under Reagan, labor rights declined precipitously, beginning in August 1981 by firing 11,000 striking PATCO air traffic controllers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of dollars, effectively busting and declaring war on organized labor by a president openly contemptuous of worker rights. From then to now, so are Democrats and Republicans, exacting a devastating toll thereafter.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon:

Three months ago, I briefly participated in a Palestinian solidarity conference in Stuttgart. The event was dedicated to the 'One State Solution'. As it happened, I was touring in Germany at the time, and thus accepted an invitation by the organiser to say a few words.

Being primarily an artist, rather than a politician or an activist, I am committed to truth and beauty rather than a party-line or any given ideological doctrine. Yet, without my intending to do so, and in just a few sentences – I managed to cross every possible ‘red line’, and I bought myself a few more enemies.

In my speech, I said that as much as ‘universalism’ is a beautiful idea, it is incompatible with Jewish culture, since Jewish culture is tribally oriented. I also told the German Palestinian supporters that as much as ‘peace’ is a beautiful concept, associated as it is with harmony and reconciliation, Shalom, the Hebrew word for peace, is actually interpreted by Israelis as ‘security for the Jews’.

I thought that the supporters of the ‘One State Solution’ should be aware of the complexities that lie ahead.

I also managed to infuriate some, by suggesting that I was against the comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. Indeed, I believe that from certain ideological perspective, Israel is actually far worse than Nazi Germany, for unlike Nazi Germany, Israel is a democracy and that implies that Israeli citizens are complicit in Israeli atrocities.

Needless to say, a few of the attendants of the conference were angry with me. Such ideas are hardly expressed on German soil. Some of the Jewish activists, and at least one Marxist, demanded that I should be removed from the protocol.

I was obviously sad about it -- I believed that those who advocated the ‘One State solution’ should be able to support intellectual pluralism -- But it turns out that a few of those who promote democracy in Palestine would be better advised to first confront their own Stalinist tendencies.

Later, I learned that one legendary German Jewish activist and speaker at the conference stood by me. Evelyn Hecht-Galinski firmly announced that if I was to be removed from the protocol, then she also wanted to be removed. She argued in my defense that I was telling the truth about both Jewish and Israeli culture.

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Lawrence Davidson
Redress

Lawrence Davidson assesses the value of Universal Jurisdiction. He argues that it is “the best hope the world has to … hem in the criminal leaders of great power states who everyone had assumed were untouchable”, and urges citizens to protect it against attempts by Western leaders to undermine it in order to gain impunity for themselves and their allies.

One of the really progressive acts that followed the end of World War II was the establishment of the principle of Universal Jurisdiction (UJ).

Inception

UJ is a legal process that allows states that are signatories to various international treaties and conventions (such as the Geneva Conventions to prosecute alleged violators of these treaties, even when these violations are committed outside the country’s usual jurisdiction. This is particularly so if it can be demonstrated that the home government of the accused has no intention of bringing them to trial for the alleged offence. The assumption behind this principle is that the crime committed is so egregious as to be seen as a crime against humanity at large.

In the wake of the Nazi Holocaust and other such crimes against humanity, UJ was accepted as a necessary and positive legal step by almost all Western nations. So, with the images of concentration camps freshly impressed upon their minds, one can only imagine that the leaders who agreed to UJ in the mid to late 1940s never imagined the possibility that their own successors might someday be subject to its consequences. Yet, fast fowarding to our own time, that is exactly what is happening (albeit rather imperfectly).

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Stephen Lendman

It landed, but it's too soon to know where it's going or how committed workers are to stay the course and spread it to other US states.

On February 16, however, former Senator Russ Feingold launched Progressives United.org (PU), an initiative he hopes will inspire "a new progressive movement" to hold elected officials accountable by challenging corporate influence in politics.

It also opposes the Supreme Court's January 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, sanctioning unlimited corporate spending in elections (the one dollar = one vote ruling by America's supremely pro-business court). Feingold called it:

"one of the most lawless decisions in the history of our country. The idea of allowing corporations to have unlimited influence on our democracy is very dangerous, obviously. That's exactly what it does. Things were like this 100 years ago....with the huge corporate and business power of the oil companies and others. But this time, it's like the Gilded Age on steroids."

According to Feingold, PU won't take soft money or unlimited contributions, saying:

"We're going to be reporting every dime that we get, whether required by law or not....It will be 100 percent accountable, and that is an important principle that I believe in that we'll follow to the T....as a way of contrasting it to what's going on with the corporate money" that buys politicians like toothpaste.

It remains to be seen whether Feingold will prove true to his word, if his agenda also challenges other major issues, including imperial lawlessness and growing homeland repression. Crucially also is whether it spreads, inspiring similar efforts across America.

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Nahida Izzat
Exiled Palestinian

Read more »

Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights
Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights

[.pdf] In view of the upcoming EU-Israel Association Council scheduled for 21 February 2011 we, the undersigned Palestinian human rights organisations committed to the promotion and protection of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), would like to express our grave concerns about the continuous deterioration of the human rights situation. In particular, we are alarmed by Israel’s protracted policies aimed at entrenching the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.

1. The Human Rights Situation in East Jerusalem

Since its de facto annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has implemented various measures and policies in order to consolidate its territorial, demographic and political control over the city. This includes the systematic attempt to secure a Jewish majority while reducing any Palestinian presence in the city through a process of acquiring more land and the introduction of the centre-of-life requirement.

The centre-of-life policy requires Palestinian residents of East-Jerusalem (whom Israel considers as “permanent residents” rather than citizens) to consistently prove that their “centre of life” is in East Jerusalem or else they risk losing their residency rights.[1] Since this policy was adopted, in 1995, Israel has revoked the status of over 10,000 Palestinian residents of the city.[2]

Moreover, Israel prevents Palestinians who are registered - in the Israeli-controlled population registry - as residents of the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) or the Gaza Strip from residing in Jerusalem. If Palestinian permanent residents wish to live in East Jerusalem with their non-resident spouses and children, they need to apply for family unification, a process that Israel de facto suspended as of 2000. Moreover, in 2003, Israel adopted the “Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law,” which makes it illegal for mixed residency couples to live in East Jerusalem.[3]

The restrictive planning and zoning regime of the Jerusalem municipality is another tool used by Israel in order to induce the transfer of the Palestinian population out of the city.[4]

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Mike Head
WSWS

Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi

Egypt’s military has been presented by the Obama administration, as well as by the leaders of Egypt’s official “opposition,” such as Mohamed ElBaradei, as the guarantor of an “orderly transition” to a new democratic order. This is false to the core. The generals have a long record of repression against the working class, starting with the court-martial and execution of two textile workers’ strike leaders just a month after the 1952 military coup that inaugurated the Nasser regime (see: “The Egyptian working class moves to the forefront”).

Contrary to the myth of the armed forces’ neutrality, every acute crisis of the military-backed dictatorship has seen troops mobilised to suppress working class discontent. These occasions included the 1977 food riots triggered by the implementation of World Bank and International Monetary Fund-ordered price rises, and an uprising of police conscripts in Cairo and other cities in 1986.

Last August, eight employees of Military Factory 99 were placed on trial—in a military court—for calling a strike. The workers had demanded safer working conditions, as they are formally entitled to do under Egyptian law, after a boiler exploded, killing one civilian worker and injuring six. The strikers were charged with “disclosing military secrets” and “illegally stopping production”. In the end, after a quick trial, three were acquitted and the five others received suspended sentences. The outcome was regarded as lenient, but the military had sent an unmistakeable message. “There are no labor strikes in military society,” a retired army general, Hosam Sowilam, told the New York Times.

In addition to its unabiding commitment to maintain the capitalist order as a whole, Egypt’s officer caste commands its own huge business empire, which has mushroomed since the 1952 coup. Military Factory 99, at Helwan, in Cairo’s south, is a prime example. The plant produces a wide variety of consumer goods—stainless steel pots and pans, fire extinguishers, scales, cutlery—in addition to its primary function of forging metal components for heavy ammunition.

Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, a life-long henchman of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, remains both Defence Minister and Minister of Military Production, posts he has held since 1991. That makes him not only the commander-in-chief of the military junta but, in effect, the chief executive officer of a giant military-run commercial enterprise.

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Ellen Brown
The Web of Debt

Ellen Hodgson Brown

"It is time to declare economic sovereignty from the multinational banks that are responsible for much of our current economic crisis. Every year we ship over a billion dollars in Oregon taxpayer dollars to out-of-state and multinational banks in the form of deposits, only to see that money invested elsewhere. It's time to put our money to work for Oregonians." ~ Bill Bradbury, former Oregon Senate President and Secretary of State, quoted in The Nation

Responding to an unfilled need for credit for local government, local businesses and consumers, three states in the last month have introduced bills for state-owned banks -- Oregon, Washington and Maryland – joining Illinois, Virginia, Massachusetts and Hawaii to bring the total number to seven.

While Wall Street is reporting record profits, local banks are floundering, credit for small businesses and consumers remains tight, and local governments are teetering on bankruptcy. There is even talk of allowing state governments to file for bankruptcy, something current legislation forbids. The federal government and Federal Reserve have managed to find trillions of dollars to prop up the Wall Street banks that precipitated the credit crisis, but they have not extended this largesse to the taxpayers and local governments that have been forced to pick up the tab.

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Rodrigue Tremblay
The New American Empire

The 1920′s German Inflation. Their money
became worthless. - The dollar's next?

"If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions." ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President

[Corruption in high places would follow as] “all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” ~ Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), American 16th US President (1861-65)

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." ~ Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist

“Inflation made here in the United States is very, very low.” ~ Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman, Thursday, February 10, 2011

Let us begin with some macroeconomic indicators of reference.

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Stephen Lendman

"She's "no more a terrorist than Nelson Mandela" or hundreds of others Washington bogusly charged, imprisoned and abused."

Numerous previous articles discussed how Washington/Pakistani collusion victimized her. A brief recap explains.

In March 2003, after visiting her family in Karachi, Pakistan, government Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agents, in collaboration with Washington, abducted her and her three children en route to the airport for a flight to Rawalpindi. Handed to US authorities, she was secretly incarcerated at one or more prisons, including Afghanistan's Bagram for more than five years of brutal torture and unspeakable abuse.

Bogusly charged and convicted, she was guilty only of being Muslim in America at the wrong time. A Pakistani national, she was deeply religious, very small, thoughtful, studious, quiet, polite, shy, soft-spoken, barely noticeable in a gathering, not extremist or fundamentalist, and, of course, no terrorist.

She attended MIT and Brandeis University where she earned a doctorate in neurocognitive science. She did volunteer charity work, taught Muslim children on Sundays, distributed Korans to area prison inmates, dedicated herself to helping oppressed Muslims worldwide, yet lived a quiet, unassuming nonviolent life.

Nonetheless, she was accused of being a "high security risk" for alleged Al-Qaeda connections linked to planned terrorist attacks against New York landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge and Empire State Building, accusations so preposterous they never appeared in her indictment.

The DOJ's more likely interest was her connection through marriage to a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the bogusly charged 9/11 mastermind who confessed after years of horrific torture. US authorities tried using them both - to coerce KSM to link Siddiqui to Al Qaeda, and she to acknowledge his responsibility for 9/11 - something she knew nothing about or anything about her distant relative.

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Stephen Lendman

Bahraini youths demonstrate in front of the police in Manama.

They continue in Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia, and most recently in Iran and Bahrain, Al Jazeera saying:

"At least one person has been killed and several others injured after [Bahrain] riot police opened fire at protesters holding a funeral service for a man killed [a] day earlier."

Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at thousands in Manama, Bahrain's capital, demanding the regime's removal. Majority Shias want redress, saying Sunni rulers unfairly discriminate. However, more than sectarian issues are involved. Others include political freedoms, ending media and Internet state controls, prohibiting police use of excessive force, and addressing the extreme wealth gap between Bahrain elites and majority citizens.

On February 15, Al Jazeera's unnamed correspondent for his safety said:

"Police fired on the protesters this morning, but they showed very strong resistance. It seems like [a] funeral procession was allowed to continue, but police are playing a cat-and-mouse game with protesters."

Angered by deaths from their ranks, al-Wefaq Shia opposition members suspended their parliamentary participation, calling it a first step toward continuing or resigning, depending on future developments. In a rare gesture, Bahrain's king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, offered condolences on state television. Words, of course, don't suffice.

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Stephen Lendman

"Whether now, later or in between, Obama's budget hammers working Americans, especially those poor, forgotten, vulnerable, and ignored since Reagan succeeded Carter. Democrats have been as cruel as Republicans, serving wealth and power interests alone while pretending to care."

Despite its flaws and failures during America's Great Depression, FDR's New Deal was remarkable for what it accomplished. It helped people, put millions back to work, reinvigorated the national spirit, built or renovated 700,000 miles of roads, 7,800 bridges, 45,000 schools, 2,500 hospitals, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 1,000 airfields, and various other infrastructure, including much of Chicago's lakefront where this writer lives. It cut unemployment from 25% in May 1933 to 11% in 1937, before declaring victory too early and letting it spike before early war production revived economic growth and headed it lower.

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Gilad Atzmon
Vera Macht
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Gilad Atzmon: In the last month I circulated some invaluable reports by Vera Macht, an ISM (International Solidarity Movement) activist operating in Gaza.

My friend Gabi Weber decided to launch an urgent appeal for Vera Macht and ISM in Gaza.

Gabi writes, “These young activists who work with the ISM in Gaza, do it on a voluntary basis. They do not earn a single penny. In fact most of their activity is financed by themselves. At the moment there is no money left for urgent medical treatment.

The work of these young ISM activists is admirable and should be supported by every humanist. Day by day they witness horrific crimes committed by the Israeli army. The least we can do, is help them financially.

In the following you’ll find data from Vera´s bank account in Germany. We decided to collect all the money on this account and then transfer it to Gaza. This will be less expensive.

Jazza production also lends its PayPal account for the cause. In the next month (until March 15th 2011) money that will be channeled to Jazza Production’s PayPal will be sent to Vera Macht and the ISM in Gaza.

Please spread this appeal widely, so we’ll have the chance to help Vera and the ISM.

THANK YOU ALL.

SALAM

Gabi Weber, Freiburg, South Germany

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Ilan Pappe
Patrick Mac Manus Blog

The view from Israel is that if they indeed succeed, the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are bad, very bad. Educated Arabs — not all of them dressed as “Islamists,” quite a few of them speaking perfect English whose wish for democracy is articulated without resorting to “anti-Western” rhetoric — are bad for Israel.

Arab armies that do not shoot at these demonstrators are as bad as are many other images that moved and enthused so many people around the world, even in the West. This world reaction is also bad, very bad. It makes the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and its apartheid policies inside the state look like the acts of a typical “Arab” regime.

For a while you could not tell what official Israel thought. In his first ever commonsensical message to his colleagues, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked his ministers, generals and politicians not to comment in public on the events in Egypt. For a brief moment one thought that Israel turned from the neighborhood’s thug to what it always was: a visitor or permanent resident.

It seems Netanyahu was particularly embarrassed by the unfortunate remarks on the situation uttered publicly by General Aviv Kochavi, the head of Israeli military intelligence. This top Israeli expert on Arab affairs stated confidently two weeks ago in the Knesset that the Mubarak regime is as solid and resilient as ever. But Netanyahu could not keep his mouth shut for that long. And when the boss talked all the others followed. And when they all responded, their commentary made Fox News’ commentators look like a bunch of peaceniks and free-loving hippies from the 1960s.

The gist of the Israeli narrative is simple: this is an Iranian-like revolution helped by Al Jazeera and stupidly allowed by US President Barack Obama, who is a new Jimmy Carter, and a stupefied world. Spearheading the Israeli interpretation are the former Israeli ambassadors to Egypt. All their frustration from being locked in an apartment in a Cairean high-rise is now erupting like an unstoppable volcano. Their tirade can be summarized in the words of one of them, Zvi Mazael who told Israeli television’s Channel One on 28 January, “this is bad for the Jews; very bad.”

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Kourosh Ziabari
Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Craig LaMay is an associate professor of journalism at the Northwestern University. He is a former editorial director of the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center and editor of Media Studies Journal; and a former newspaper reporter. LaMay's articles and commentaries have appeared on New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, Communication & the Law and a number of other media outlets.

LaMay has published several books on journalism and mass media of which we can name Journalism and the Problem of Privacy (2003), Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector, with Burton Weisbrod (1998) and Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children, Television and the First Amendment with Newton Minow (1995).

Prof. LaMay joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss the constraints of journalism in the United States, freedom of speech in the EU, the performance of local magazines as opposed to the national news outlets and the gradual disappearance of traditional media with the emergence of new internet-based technologies. What follows is the complete text of my interview with Prof. Craig LaMay of the Northwestern University.

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John W. Whitehead
Online Journal

“We end up punishing honor students to send a message to bad kids. But the data indicate that the bad kids are not getting the message.” -- Professor Russell Skiba

What we are witnessing, thanks in large part to zero tolerance policies that were intended to make schools safer by discouraging the use of actual drugs and weapons by students, is the inhumane treatment of young people and the criminalization of childish behavior.

Ninth grader Andrew Mikel is merely the latest in a long line of victims whose educations have been senselessly derailed by school administrators lacking in both common sense and compassion. A freshman at Spotsylvania High School in Virginia, Andrew was expelled in December 2010 for shooting a handful of small pellets akin to plastic spit wads at fellow students in the school hallway during lunch period. Although the initial punishment was only for 10 days, the school board later extended it to the rest of the school year. School officials also referred the matter to local law enforcement, which initiated juvenile proceedings for criminal assault against young Andrew.

Andrew is not alone. Nine-year-old Patrick Timoney was sent to the principal’s office and threatened with suspension after school officials discovered that one of his LEGOs was holding a 2-inch toy gun. That particular LEGO, a policeman, was Patrick’s favorite because his father is a retired police officer. David Morales, an 8-year-old Rhode Island student, ran afoul of his school’s zero tolerance policies after he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and tiny plastic Army figures in honor of American troops. School officials declared the hat out of bounds because the toy soldiers were carrying miniature guns. A 7-year-old New Jersey boy, described by school officials as “a nice kid” and “a good student,” was reported to the police and charged with possessing an imitation firearm after he brought a toy Nerf-style gun to school. The gun shoots soft ping pong-type balls.

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Steve James
WSWS

"This is all smoke and mirrors. Working people in Ireland confront a constellation of political parties committed to the defence of capitalism, to bailing out most or all of the Irish banks and state finance at the expense of social spending, while defending the island as an investment base."

Campaigning has begun for Ireland’s general election on February 25. The poll was called following the collapse of the Fianna Fail/Green coalition led by Taoiseach Brian Cowen, after revelations about Cowen’s close relations with leading figures in the ruined Anglo-Irish Bank. The next government, whatever its labels, will aim to take up where Fianna Fail and the Greens left off, by sharply intensifying the attack on the working class.

Facing electoral disaster following a string of emergency cuts imposed to transfer banking debts onto the working class, Fianna Fail and the Greens sought to delay the election as long as possible. In the end, however, Cowen was forced to resign as leader of Fianna Fail, shortly before the Greens walked out of the government, convinced that a change of government was needed to press ahead with attacks on living standards. The coalition’s final act was to ensure that a Finance Act was passed, implementing the first tranche of cuts demanded by the European Union/International Monetary Fund following the €85 billion bailout last year.

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Rick Rozoff
Stop NATO

On January 27 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took the most decisive step yet toward the implementation of the decades-old project first proposed by the Ronald Reagan administration for a Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars.

In what will be the culmination of five years of extensive planning by the U.S. and NATO to construct an impenetrable interceptor missile shield to cover the European continent, the military bloc announced on the above date that it had handed over the first-ever theater ballistic missile defence capability to NATO military commanders at the NATO Combined Air Operations Centre in the German city of Uedem, which occurred “after NATO technicians computer-tested a software system linking anti-missile equipment from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States.” [1]

Italian Air Force Brigadier General Alessandro Pera, head of the NATO Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) Programme Office, delivered the plan to NATO Deputy Secretary General Claudio Bisogniero while the second day of a NATO Military Committee meeting at the Atlantic Alliance headquarters in Brussels with chiefs of defense staff and other military representatives from 66 countries was underway.

Those also present in Germany included U.S. Air Force Major General Mark Ramsay, deputy chief of staff for Operations and Intelligence at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (NATO’s main European command) and other military and civilian authorities from the Alliance and Germany. General Mark Welsh III, commander of Allied Air Command Ramstein, paid his first visit to the NATO Combined Air Operations Centre to coincide with the capability demonstration of the ALTBMD program. Brigadier General Pera “handed over a symbolic key to the operational user of the capability,” represented by Major General Ramsay. [2]

This year the Pentagon will begin its announced ten-year Phased Adaptive Approach (sometimes with a comma between the first two words) project to deploy medium- and intermediate-range interceptor missiles on ships in the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Sea, which will be followed by the stationing of no fewer than 48 advanced Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors in Eastern Europe: 24 each in Romania and Poland.

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