Jane Adas
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

[Trash, that is, seen from below. On a street near the Abraham Mosque, occupation apartheid takes on unusually sharp visual clarity in the form of Israeli settlements comprising the the upper echelon of houses and Palestinian shops, the lower. This means the settlers can, and do, throw their trash out their windows onto the Palestinians. The torn chain-link fence halving the street manages to keep out the somewhat solid trash like bottles and bags, but not urine, dishwater, and other ugly precipitations such as egg yolks…(Work Abroad)]

Separation ("apartheid" in Afrikaans; "us here, them there," according to the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin) is almost complete in the southern West Bank city of Hebron. The Hebron Protocol of 1997 divided the city into two parts: 80 percent of the city, designated H1, is theoretically under the administration of the Palestinian Authority; H2, which includes the Old City and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, is under Israeli military control. Life for Palestinians in H1, except for occasional Israeli incursions and the fact that every plane heard overhead is military, is almost normal. Israeli settlers stay clear of the area and the uniformed men in the streets are Palestinian security forces.

H2, the eastern fifth of the city, is a different matter. A few hundred Israeli settlers and yeshiva students, guarded by more than a thousand Israeli soldiers, live here in four scattered colonies. For their security and convenience, roads that connect the colonies to each other and to the larger illegal settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Harsina east of the city are off-limits to Palestinians, whether by car or on foot. This includes Shuhada Street, the main road running through the center of Hebron, rebuilt in 1997 as a USAID project ostensibly to benefit both communities. The Israeli military has welded shut the doors of Palestinian homes and shops along the street, meaning that the only way residents, including schoolchildren, can leave and return to their homes is out a back door, then over rooftops and up and down ladders. - For Palestinians living there, the Old City itself is a ghetto.

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Rick Rozoff
Stop NATO

A year after assuming the post of president of the French Republic in 2007, and while his nation held the rotating European Union presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy invited the heads of state of the EU’s 27 members and those of 17 non-EU Mediterranean countries to attend a conference in Paris to launch a Mediterranean Union.

In the words of Britain’s Daily Telegraph regarding the subsequent summit held for the purpose on July 13, 2008, “Sarkozy’s big idea is to use imperial Rome’s centre of the world as a unifying factor linking 44 countries that are home to 800 million people.”

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, however, announced that his nation would boycott the gathering, denouncing the initiative as one aimed at dividing both Africa and the Arab world, and stating:

“We shall have another Roman empire and imperialist design. There are imperialist maps and designs that we have already rolled up. We should not have them again.” [1]

The unprecedented summit was held with the intention of “shift[ing] Europe’s strategic focus towards the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans.” [2]

The Mediterranean Union was renamed the less controversial Union for the Mediterranean and its members include all 44 nations originally invited to join except for Libya.

Less than three years later Sarkozy’s Mirage and Rafale warplanes were bombing Libyan government targets, initiating an ongoing war being waged by France, the United States, Britain and what the world news media refer to as an international coalition – 12 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the emirate of Qatar – to overthrow the Gaddafi government and implant a more pliant replacement.

The Mediterranean Sea is the main battle front in the world currently, superseding the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater, and the empire of the new third millennium – that of the U.S., the world’s sole military superpower in the words of President Barack Obama in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, and its NATO partners – is completing the transformation of the Mediterranean into its mare nostrum.

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Nahida Izzat
Exiled Palestinian

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

It has been six days since Khalifa Hifter was appointed the top military commander for the Libyan rebel forces fighting the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. His appointment was noted by reporter Nancy Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers, a US regional chain that includes the Sacramento Bee and the Kansas City Star.

Two days later, another McClatchy journalist, Chris Adams, wrote a brief biographical sketch of Hifter that left the implication, without saying so explicitly, that he was a longtime CIA asset. It headlined the fact that after defecting from a top position in Gaddafi’s army, Hifter had lived in northern Virginia for some 20 years, as well as noting that Hifter had no obvious means of financial support.

The World Socialist Web Site published a perspective March 28 taking note of both the McClatchy articles and earlier reports providing more details of Hifter’s connections to the CIA. These included a 1996 article in the Washington Post and a book published by the French weekly Le Monde diplomatique. (See "A CIA commander for the Libyan rebels”)

Both the McClatchy sketch of Hifter’s background and the WSWS perspective have been widely circulated on the Internet. The WSWS perspective has been linked to by a myriad of left-liberal and antiwar web sites, although, significantly, there has been no mention of Hifter in the press of the International Socialist Organization and other pseudo-socialist groups that adapt themselves politically to the pro-Obama liberal milieu.

Hifter has been interviewed and his appointment reported by the European press, including the Independent of Britain, the German weekly Stern, and newspapers in Spain, France, Italy and Turkey (with variant spellings, including Heftar and Haftar). But not in America.

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Stephen Lendman

Obama's March 28 television address wreaked of hypocrisy, lies and disdain for basic democratic values, making an indefensible case for naked aggression against a non-belligerent country. America's media approved.

On March 28, New York Times writer Helene Cooper headlined, "Obama Cites Limits of US Role in Libya," saying:

Obama "defended the American-led military assault in Libya on Monday, saying it was in the national interest of the United States to stop a potential massacre that would have 'stained the conscience of the world,' " even though no threat existed until:

● Washington showed up with co-belligerents France and Britain;
● beginning in 2010, armed and funded so-called "rebels" who, in fact, are cutthroat killers, rapists and marauders, terrorizing every area they control, including their Benghazi stronghold; and
● support them with daily "shock and awe" terror attacks, causing increasing numbers of deaths and injuries, as well as destruction and contamination of all areas struck by depleted uranium bombs, missiles and shells, spreading radiation over wide areas.

Despite Pentagon denials, conservative estimates put civilian deaths at over 100, besides combatants killed and unknown numbers murdered by rebel allies. Since March 19 air attacks began, nearly 1,500 sorties have been flown, that number to rise exponentially as daily strikes continue under US command, running all NATO operations under AFRICOM's General Carter Ham. Alleged new commander, Canada's Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, is his subordinate, a Pentagon figurehead.

The alleged handover is fabricated. NATO is code language for America/the Pentagon. Obama lied announcing otherwise, saying Washington's role will be limited to stop potential "slaughter and mass graves" in Benghazi. In fact, he supports and/or ignores rebel terror killings against defenseless civilians, making him complicit in their crimes, besides widespread ones caused by NATO, America's missile. US attacks, in fact, will continue throughout the campaign, perhaps lasting months at an enormous cost, besides hundreds of billions annually in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Making an indefensible case, Obama said, "For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant - Muammar Gaddafi," ignoring the numerous regional and global ones America supports, including rogue Israeli regimes, lawlessly terrorizing Palestinians for over six decades with generous US support and funding.

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Charles E. Carlson
WHTT

America is a war-based economy, this is fundamental. Note that the stock market has gone up every day but one since President Obama announced the USA would bomb Libya. Please, do not take your eyes off the fact that primary Beltway support for new bomb dumping adventures come from interests that benefit from wars. We need to understand how these Warmakers sell us consumers on accepting new invasions where we pay them for killing other people's children.

Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, vowed to continue to hold hearings on "Radicalization of American Muslims." On March 10, King's star witness against Islam was professing Muslim medical doctor Zuhdi Jasser. While these hearings were going on, James Clapper, the director of US National Intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee “the Gadaffi regime will prevail” and the rebels do not have the power to resist. Concurrently, the State Department announced that the US lacks "legal authority" to act against Libya. All of these parties acted in concert to sell out the Libyan revolution.

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Benjamin H. Friedman
The National Interest

American wars require salesmanship, even when Congress surrenders its power to authorize them. Hawks collect justifications, which need not match their motivations. The Obama administration’s case for the war under way in Libya fits this model, except that this time the bombing preceded the PR.

The primary reason we are in Libya is to help replace an especially noxious dictator with something democratic. Though it requires heroic assumptions about the rebels’ liberalism, the apparent ease of this revolution is what excited interventionists.

Certainly humanitarian concerns influenced some Libya hawks, including the President and his advisors. But that rationale is more selling point than motivation. Libya’s is a not particularly brutal civil war compared to others we ignore.

Nor is it clear that bombing Libya serves humanitarian ends. True, absent outside intervention, the Libyan government would likely have reasserted its authority in the east, killing rebellious civilians. But the civil war that intervention prolonged will probably kill more. In his March 18 speech justifying war on humanitarian grounds, Obama quoted Qaddafi’s promise to show “no mercy and no pity,” but failed to note that the dictator was threatening rebel fighters, not civilians, and explicitly excluded rebels that surrendered. The point is not that we should bank on such promises but that the path to minimizing violence is uncertain.

Another of the president’s reasons for war is that Qaddafi “lost legitimacy” to rule. Luckily we have George Will to skewer that nonsense:

Such meretricious boilerplate seems designed to anesthetize thought. When did Gadhafi lose his people's confidence? When did he have legitimacy? American doctrine — check the Declaration of Independence — is that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. So there are always many illegitimate governments. When is it America's duty to scrub away these blemishes on the planet? Is there a limiting principle of humanitarian interventionism? If so, would Obama take a stab at stating it?

The latest White House justification for war is credibility or demonstration effects. The idea is that attacking Qaddafi shows willingness to do so elsewhere, encouraging protesters and pushing dictators to capitulate to them. Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice apparently pushed this line in White House meetings, even including Iran in the list of regimes that would be deterred. Wilsonian pundits of both the neoconservative and liberal internationalist varieties agree.

Credibility arguments attach peripheral concerns to more important ones—hence the term “domino theory.” The Johnson administration claimed that leaving Vietnam would embolden Communists globally, undermining U.S. defense commitments. We bombed Serbia in 1999 partially in the name of bucking up NATO’s credibility for other wars. The Bush administration argued that deposing Saddam Hussein would deter other dictators from seeking nuclear and biological weapons or otherwise defying American and U.N. directives. Opponents of ending the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan often argue that leaving would damage our reputation for resolve and invite trouble elsewhere.

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Patrick O’Connor
WSWS

A NATO helicopter strike in the southern Afghanistan province of Helmand last Friday killed seven civilians, including three children. The atrocity is the latest in a series of recent US-led bombing operations that have inflicted mass civilian casualties.

Nine children collecting firewood were killed on March 1 in an airstrike in northeastern Kunar province. This prompted desperate apologies from President Barack Obama and General David Petraeus, aimed at placating enormous anger among ordinary Afghans. On March 14 another two children, 10- and 15-year-old brothers, were killed in Kunar. One government official said the boys were carrying shovels on their shoulders that may have been mistaken for weapons. On March 23, a NATO airstrike in eastern Khost province reportedly killed three civilians, including one child. These incidents followed last month’s war crime in the Ghaziabad district of Kunar province, where helicopter strikes killed 65 civilians, including 22 women, and 40 children under the age of 13, according to an Afghan government investigation.

Details of the latest incident remain scant. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) ordered an air strike on two vehicles travelling through Helmand’s Now Zad district. According to ISAF, the vehicles were believed to be occupied by a “Taliban leader and his associates”. A statement acknowledged, without providing details, “Afghan civilians were accidentally killed and wounded in Now Zad district, Helmand province”. ISAF added that an investigation was underway.

Two men, two women, and three children were killed, according to Afghan officials in Helmand. Another three children and two adults were reportedly wounded. According to the Associated Press, provincial authorities said the civilians killed and injured had been in a car near the targeted vehicles. ISAF spokesman Major Tim James said he could not confirm that the Taliban leader had been present.

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William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report

Libya and The Holy Triumvirate

The words they find it very difficult to say — "civil war".

Libya is engaged in a civil war. The United States and the European Union and NATO — The Holy Triumvirate — are intervening, bloodily, in a civil war. To overthrow Moammar Gaddafi. First The Holy Triumvirate spoke only of imposing a no-fly zone. After getting support from international bodies on that understanding they immediately began to wage war against Libyan military forces, and whoever was nearby, on a daily basis. In the world of commerce this is called "bait and switch".

Gaddafi's crime? He was never respectful enough of The Holy Triumvirate, which recognizes no higher power, and maneuvers the United Nations for its own purposes, depending on China and Russia to be as spineless and hypocritical as Barack Obama. The man the Triumvirate allows to replace Gaddafi will be more respectful.

So who are the good guys? The Libyan rebels, we're told. The ones who go around murdering and raping African blacks on the supposition that they're all mercenaries for Gaddafi. One or more of the victims may indeed have been members of a Libyan government military battalion; or may not have been. During the 1990s, in the name of pan-African unity, Gaddafi opened the borders to tens of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans to live and work in Libya. That, along with his earlier pan-Arab vision, did not win him points with The Holy Triumvirate. Corporate bosses have the same problem about their employees forming unions. Oh, and did I mention that Gaddafi is strongly anti-Zionist?

Does anyone know what kind of government the rebels would create? The Triumvirate has no idea.

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Stephen Lendman

A child looks at a bottle of mineral water distributed to a nur-
sery in Tokyo Thursday, March 24, 2011. (Kyodo News/AP)

Initial March 27 Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) reports detected Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 radioactive water readings at ten million times normal levels, including:

● 2.9 billion becquerels of iodine-134;
● 13 million becquerels of iodine-131; and
● 2.3 million becquerels (each) of cesium-134 and 137 per cubic centimeter of water in the turbine building's basement.

This measure was 1,000 times above water readings in Units 1 and 3. Emissions happen during nuclear fission. Tokyo University Professor Naoto Sekimura said the leak came from Unit 2's damaged suppression chamber, designed to contain radioactive substance overflows. French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety's Olivier Isnard believes high readings are "proof that the reactor core (at least) partially melted." Others suggest a likely full meltdown, covered up and downplayed.

A later March 27 Mari Yamaguchi and Yuri Kageyama AP report headlined, "More obstacles impede crews in Japan nuke crisis," saying:

"Mounting problems, including badly miscalculated radiation figures and inadequate storage tanks for huge amounts of contaminated water, stymied emergency workers Sunday as they struggled to" step back from the brink of uncontrollable disaster.

After initial Sunday reports had Unit 2 radiation levels 10 million times normal, Tokyo Electric's Vice President Sakae Muto said a later test found them at 100,000 times, either way too dangerously high. In addition, nearby sea readings are 1,850 times normal. Combined, they're the highest measures since the March 11 earthquake/tsunami, showing conditions are deteriorating, not improving despite government and company reassurances.

Later, TEPCO said surface water outside the reactor contained over 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour. According to the EPA, a single dose that high can cause hemorrhaging. In fact, 100 millisieverts causes radiation sickness.

Besides TEPCO's notoriously poor safety record, also at issue is its penchant for coverup and denial. As a result, perhaps true readings are much higher than reported. UCLA Professor Najmdin Meshkati, in fact, believes "the situation is (likely) much more serious than we (are) led to believe."

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Stephen Lendman

A personal note. Writing about America's political prisoners is essential to defend freedom, justice, and other democratic values, especially wrongfully persecuted Muslims for political advantage. I communicate directly with five notable victims, all of whom I greatly respect, including:

● attorneys Lynne Stewart and Paul Bergrin;
● Yassin Aref;
● Dr. Rafil Dhafir; and
● Shukri Abu-Baker.

I've also written about them all, discussed them on the Progressive Radio News Hour, and am committed to help achieve justice so far denied them.

This article concerns Abu-Baker, after Rafil Dhafir emailed me the following from Terre Haute, IN federal prison Communications Management Unit's (CMU) segregation section where Muslims receive excessively punitive treatment:

"Last night Shukri Baker, here in CMU, got a call from his family that his daughter Sanabil is dying in the hospital. She has cystic fibrosis, Thalassemia major and diabetes. She is not eligible for lung transplant. She is only 24 who has only 2 months left to finish college. He is distraught. With tears in his eyes he kept asking:

'What did I do to this country to deny me enough time to talk to my dying daughter by phone? Why am I not allowed to hug my baby in her last days of her life? Who is going to council my young daughters and their mother in this hour of grief and uncertainty?'

He asked for extra phone calls to straighten things out. He was given the run around. The Chaplain claimed that he is new and does not know the procedure for approval. Those who can be talked to are no where to be found. It was late Friday when he learned of his daughter's condition.

It broke my heart to see this great man who helped save the lives of millions in places far away from here, who never hurt anyone intentionally, and who dedicated his life to saving and relieving children and needy people be denied the right of a human being to see his dying daughter off and to help his own children.

It is cruel to imprison one for providing relief but it is far worse in cruelty to deny such person the comfort of talking to his dying child. Would one then wonder why these calamities befall the world all over?"

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Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Stuart Littlewood is a British writer and photographer. He is the co-author of the book "Radio Free Palestine" in which he has elaborately described the plight of the Palestinian nation under the Israeli occupation. Littlewood's articles on the cause of the Palestinian nation have been published on a variety of websites, newspapers and online magazines including Intifada Palestine, Veterans Today, Palestine Chronicle, Dissident Voice, Ramallah Online and Voltaire Net. In a 2009 interview with Media Review, Littlewood described his contributions to raising the public awareness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ignorance of the British people concerning the suffering of the Palestinian nation.

Stuart joined me in an in-depth interview to discuss the ongoing anguish of the people of Palestine, the situation of Gaza Strip and West Bank, the influence of Israeli lobby over the mass media in the West and the international isolation of Iran due to its unconditional support for the Palestinian people.

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Nebojsa Malic
Antiwar Forum

Kosovo Repeated

Twelve years ago, Bill Clinton launched an evil little war in the Balkans, attacking what was then Yugoslavia because he could. The best indicator of that were the ever-changing pretexts for the war, from imposing a "peace" ultimatum and "protecting refugees" (created by the bombing) to stopping a (fictitious) "genocide." Four years later, when Bush the Lesser invaded Iraq, his pretexts were less humanitarian, but no less fictitious. The pattern was obvious even then. Today, the Nobel Peace Prize stands worthless as the Empire engages in yet another evil little war, this time in North Africa. Imperial policy has come full circle, with Barack Obama managing to combine the Clinton restoration with the Bush continuity.

Shifting the Goalposts

Following the 1999 war, which ended with the NATO occupation of the Serbian province of Kosovo, the Empire hired an "independent commission" to whitewash the endeavor as "illegal but legitimate." In actuality, it was both illegal and illegitimate. The war clearly violated the UN Charter, the NATO charter and the U.S. Constitution. Empire’s principal claim to the war’s legitimacy — alleged Serb atrocities against Albanian rebels — was exposed as exaggerated propaganda relatively quickly. Adding insult to injury was the wholesale campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Albanians, which started the moment NATO troops arrived in the province and went on for years with absolute impunity.

Even today, however, criticism of the Kosovo War takes on a "yes, but" form, in which the principal points of NATO propaganda — Serb atrocities, the alleged ethnic cleansing plan, 10,000 dead Albanian civilians, etc. — are taken as unimpeachable facts rather than tailor-made fiction. All that remains of the argument against the war then is that it was "too expensive" and "took too long." So, if the Empire promises and delivers a faster and cheaper war, that would make it all right? - Except there is no such thing, of course.

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Stephen Lendman

Web users in China have turned to microblogging sites to
circumvent state censorship. (The Guardian)

Claiming "honesty (and) integrity (is) what the BBC stands for....free from political and commercial pressure" is untrue about an organization that from inception betrayed the public trust. For nearly nine decades, serving wealth and power alone matters most, now with State Department funds for America like Britain.

One blogger put it this way, "Let me get this straight. The US is broke, borrowing money from China, and we will be funding the BBC to broadcast in China?"

On March 20, the London Guardian's Ben Dowell broke the news, headlining, "BBC World Service to sign funding deal with US State Department," saying:

Britain's government funded BBC will "receive a 'significant" sum of money from the US government to help (circumvent) the blocking of TV and internet services in countries including Iran and China," as well as develop early warning software to more easily detect jamming.

According to Jim Egan, BBC's controller of strategy and business:

Effective software will help "monitor dips in traffic which act as an early warning of jamming, and can be more effective than relying on people contacting us and telling us they cannot access the services."

Proxy servers will also be used to misdirect web site blockers to countries other than where broadcasts emanate.

"China has become quite expert at blocking websites," said Egan, "and one could say it has become something of an export industry for them - a lot of countries are keen to follow suit. We have (also seen) evidence of Libya and Egypt blocking the internet and satellite signals in recent weeks."

Moreover, Egan said, anti-censorship software will likely need regular updating to counter new technologies developed to subvert it. Another BBC source called it "a bit of a game of cat and mouse," but didn't explain why foreign blocking occurs; namely, to prevent anti-government propaganda from being aired, a reason any nation might act defensively.

Funding also buys influence, assuring US propaganda an influential global outlet, complementing its Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Marti (Radio y Television Marti), as well as America's mainstream media and other Western conduits, delivering managed, not real, news and information.

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Stephen Lendman

Libyan soldiers survey the damage to an administrative building
hit by a missile late Sunday in the heart of Moammar Gadhafi's
Bab Al Azizia compound in Tripoli, Libya. (AP / The Hindu)

A March 25 White House press release announced Obama's planned March 28 national TV speech:

"to update the American people on the situation in Libya, including the actions we've taken with allies and partners to protect the Libyan people from the brutality of Moammar Qaddafi, the transition to NATO command and control, and our policy going forward."

Imagine the hypocrisy. US-style "humanitarian intervention" reigns death and destruction "to protect the Libyan people." Recall how "shock and awe" protected Iraqis, how war on Afghanistan helps Afghans and neighboring Pakistanis from predatory drone and ground attacks. Libyans are now tasting imperial viciousness firsthand.

In fact, all US wars are imperial, not humanitarian, a long discredited propaganda ruse major media reports don't explain. Instead they cheerlead for war no matter how lawless, mindless, destructive or counterproductive, spreading malicious misinformation to justify intervention, concealing or downplaying the fallout from all conflicts let alone why they're waged.

As a previous article explained, this one's for regime change like others, to replace one despot with another, control the entire Mediterranean Basin, colonize Libya, perhaps balkanize it, control its oil, gas and other strategic resources, exploit its people, privatize state industries, and establish new US bases for greater regional control.

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David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

Regressives love markets as a tool for organizing our social sphere. Love ‘em!

That’s fine, up to a point. Marketplace of ideas? Great notion. Political choice? Could we have a lot more, please? Competition in commercial relations? I wish the folks on the right were one-tenth as serious about that as is their rhetoric.

In other respects, however, the market is not the way to go. Letting the market take care of my health security (have we already forgotten that “managed care” was originally sold to us on the basis of bringing the wonders of the business model to medicine?) hasn’t worked out so very well. And, as we’re going to realize acutely in the coming decades, turning over environmental stewardship to the magic of the marketplace has been about as brilliant an idea as would be giving nuclear warheads to angry meth-torqued teenagers or religious lunatics sporting apocalyptic visions of the paradise that will follow global annihilation.

But, I’ve got an idea. And perhaps my (mostly imaginary) friends on the right will indulge me and play along. Let’s call it the Marketplace of Countries, shall we? Let’s take two (for the sake of simplicity) countries and compare them to each other. Then we can use the magical market modality to determine our respective assessments of them. If it turns out that one country looks a lot more attractive than the other, surely we’ll want to exercise that much vaunted power of marketplace choice, and validate that one as the superior place to live, right?

Fair enough?

An additional beauty of this test is that while the right and what little that goes for a left in America today can hardly ever agree on any solutions to problems, I think we can mostly agree on what constitutes the problems, right? Not always, but mostly. For example, a richer country is better than a poorer one, isn’t it? No debate on that. A more educated society beats an ignorant one, no? And wouldn’t we all like to feel safe from crime?

Okay, then! Let’s compare Country A and Country B on a variety of measures, and see what we come up with, shall we?

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Stephen Lendman

Curious Libyan onlookers take pictures of dead African teenagers,
members of Moamer Gaddafi forces in al-Wayfiyah, hit by French
war planes. (Photo: AFP / PMNews Nigeria ).

In his weekly March 26 address, Obama said:

"As I pledged at the outset, the role of American forces has been limited. We are not putting any ground forces into Libya....And as agreed this week, responsibility for this operation is being transferred from the United States to our NATO allies and partners."

Earlier he said:

"United States forces are conducting a limited and well-defined mission in support of international efforts to protect civilians and prevent a humanitarian disaster."

As an earlier article explained, American aggression caused a humanitarian crisis. Moreover, the alleged NATO handover is a ruse. NATO is code language for Washington, the Pentagon. It's America's tool, its "missile," reigning death and destruction across Libya and other operational theaters. European allies concur. They're more pawns than partners. Reports now suggest they'll participate in a late April or early May ground operation if air attacks don't oust Gaddafi.

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Stephen Lendman

An elderly lady being screened for radiation exposure in a
testing centre in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture.

Japan's March 11 earthquake/tsunami-caused nuclear disaster affects millions of people regionally and throughout the Northern Hemisphere. But you'd never know it from most major media reports, downplaying an unfolding catastrophe.

In fact, distinguished experts like Helen Caldicott long ago warned of inevitable nuclear disasters, especially in seismically active areas. On May 23, 2004, The Japan Times contributor Leuren Moret headlined, "Japan's deadly game of nuclear roulette," saying:

"Of all the places in all the world no one in their right mind would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would be pretty near the top of the list." "Japan sits on top of four tectonic plates....and is one of the most tectonically active regions of the world. (There) is almost no geologic setting in the world more dangerous for nuclear power than Japan."

In 2004, Kobe University Seismologist/Professor Katsuhiko Ishibashi called the situation then "very scary. It's like a kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to explode."

American cities like New York have no credible evacuation plans in case of nuclear disasters. Neither does Japan, its Fukushima response a clear example. In fact, however, there's no adequate plan possible in cases of catastrophic nuclear events. How and to where do you transfer millions of people. Abandoning the technology alone can work, a possibility not considered, at least not so far.

Japanese nuclear engineer Yoichi Kikuchi told Moret about serious longstanding safety problems at Japanese nuclear facilities, including cooling system cracks in pipes from reactor vibrations. Operators are thus "gambling in a dangerous game to increase profits and decrease government oversight," he said.

Former GE senior field engineer Kei Sugaoka agreed, saying:

"The scariest thing, on top of all the other problems, is that all the nuclear power plants are aging, causing a deterioration of piping and joints which are always exposed to strong radiation and heat."

As a result, Moret, like Caldicott, said that "It is not a question of whether or not a nuclear disaster will occur in Japan (or most anywhere); it is a question of when it will occur," and if catastrophic enough, perhaps nothing can be done to contain it.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

“There is definitely a fear among certain Jews in this industry…And it’s because it’s spreading past Wall Street now. There’s a growing animosity towards the wealthy, and especially the wealthy that have made money on Wall Street and real estate and finance, as so many Jews have—some legitimately, some not so. It’s very easy to generalise that it must be the entire Jewish people.” Jewish employee with a top New York investment bank who asked that his name be withheld. Jewish Journal (October 7 2008)

“Inside Job”, The Academy Award documentary film about the current financial crisis is a worthy documentary, and it certainly delivers on many fronts. It explains the disastrous shift within the American financial industry over the last decade, exposing the elements, the decisions and the people who destabilised the global economy. In doing so, it provides an insight into the systematic, faulty structures that transformed American financial services industry markets into a risky bubble. And it also explains why the bubble eventually burst.

Charles H. Ferguson, the director of the film, managed to unveil the inherent malaise within a corrupted financial elite and within the American economy. The film exposes a chain of disastrous cases of conflicts of interest. In America, credit rating agencies had been receiving huge funds from the financial institutions that they were supposed to critically asses. Clearly, America let the cat look after the milk. The cat failed to confess a conflict of interest. Seemingly, in most cases, the cat was rather corrupted, and as it happens, it still is. But how has America arrived at such a disastrous state of affairs? How are we to begin to understand the origins of such ways of operating?

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Denis G. Rancourt
Activist Teacher Blog

(Illustration: Ravy Puth)

Based on a public event organized by the geography student association at Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM).

In all of human history, what was believed and promoted by the majority of service intellectuals (high priests) in each civilization was only created and maintained to support the hierarchy and the place of the high priests within the hierarchy. To believe that the present is any different regarding any issue managed by our “experts”, whether in medicine, psychology, cosmology, economics, law and governance, population health or ecology, is pure distilled idiocy.

Never mind that the whole climate change scam is now driven by the top-level financiers newly eyeing a multi-trillion-dollar paper economy of carbon trading and that this is the reason it’s now a dominant mainstream media and corporate messaging presence [1].

Never mind that this paper economy of carbon trading will be the largest financial extortion enterprise since the invention of the US-centered military-backed global finance structure of predation itself.

Never mind that establishment scientists are service intellectuals who virtually never diverge from supporting power, who at best look for sanitized and hypothetical “problems” that do not threaten hierarchy and who feed their false self-image of relevance [2][3].

Never mind also the pathetic recent historical record of science with regard to identifying or solving public health and environmental problems [4][5][6].

Never mind all that. Take the red pill by considering the climate “science” fairy tale itself and examine its story elements. Here goes, in five story-element steps.

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Stephen Lendman

War crime: Norwegian F-16s in an unprovoked attack on Libya.
Norway is one of the client states of the US. (Aftenposten)

In 1999, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter called America's bombing and dismemberment of Yugoslavia "barbaric (and despicable), another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile (to consolidate) American domination of Europe."

Against Iraq and Afghanistan it's to dominate Eurasia, and against Libya for greater regional hegemony, including resource control, privatization of state industries, new Pentagon bases for future imperial wars, and deterring any democratic spark from emerging.

Obama lied saying:

"United States forces are conducting a limited and well-defined mission in support of international efforts to protect civilians and prevent a humanitarian disaster."

In fact, he caused a humanitarian crisis by killing civilians, the situation worsening daily as deaths and destruction increase.

"We will seek a rapid, but responsible, transition of operations to coalition, regional, or international organizations that are postured to continue activities as may be necessary to realize (stated) objectives," [he added.]

False. -Giving NATO operational no-fly command is a ruse. NATO is the Pentagon, America's missile to reign death and destruction on targeted nations directly or through proxies. Washington planned, orchestrated and leads naked aggression on Libya. The announced handover changes nothing. European allies are more pawns than partners. They mostly go along to get along.

America remains in charge for what promises to be a protracted, destructive, expensive war to replace one despot with another. Like Iraq and Afghanistan, it'll likely cost billions of dollars at a time homeland needs are neglected to hand America's wealth to Wall Street, other corporate favorites, and militarists for endless wars - lawless naked aggression each time.

Moreover, humanitarian intervention is cover for mass killing and destruction. The more the better to assure corporate crooks huge contracts to rebuild, then on to the next war, and the next one, ad infinitum, America's addiction, the major media its cheerleading chorus.

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Kola Afolabi
Black Star News

US warplane crashes in Libya overnight.

Of all the struggles going on in North Africa and the Middle East right now, the most difficult to unravel is the one in Libya.

What is the character of the opposition to the Gadhafi regime, which reportedly now controls the eastern city of Benghazi? Is it just coincidence that the rebellion started in Benghazi, which is north of Libya’s richest oil fields as well as close to most of its oil and gas pipelines, refineries and its LNG port?

Is there a plan to partition the country? What is the risk of imperialist military intervention, which poses the gravest danger for the people of the entire region? Libya is not like Egypt. Its leader, Moammar al-Gadhafi, has not been an imperialist puppet like Hosni Mubarak.

For many years, Gadhafi was allied to countries and movements fighting imperialism. On taking power in 1969 through a military coup, overthrowing King Idris, he nationalized Libya’s oil and used much of that money to develop the Libyan economy. Conditions of life improved dramatically for the people. For that, the imperialists were determined to grind Libya down.

The U.S. actually launched air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986 that killed 60 people, including Gadhafi’s infant daughter – which is rarely mentioned by the corporate media. Devastating sanctions were imposed by both the U.S. and the U.N. to wreck the Libyan economy.

After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and leveled much of Baghdad with a bombing campaign that the Pentagon exultantly called “shock and awe,” Gadhafi tried to ward off further threatened aggression on Libya by making big political and economic concessions to the imperialists. He opened the economy to foreign banks and corporations; he agreed to IMF demands for “structural adjustment,” privatizing many state-owned enterprises and cutting state subsidies on necessities like food and fuel. The Libyan people are suffering from the same high prices and unemployment that underlie the rebellions elsewhere and that flow from the worldwide capitalist economic crisis.

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Rachelle Marshall
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

[A Palestinian Bedouin sits amid desks and equipment from a classroom destroyed by Israeli troops in a Bedouin camp located in the West Bank village of Dakeka, near Hebron, Jan. 12, 2011. In all, 17 structures providing shelter to some 300 Bedouins were destroyed. (AFP photo/Hazem Bader)]

Like the self-deluding crowds that praised the king's new clothes as he strode by stark naked, U.S. policymakers have long refused to acknowledge that Israel's security is in less danger from its Arab neighbors than from maintaining an oppressive occupation. Thanks to pressure from America's Israel lobby, Washington long ago assumed as a sacred trust the obligation to spend billions of dollars a year assuring Israel's military superiority in the Middle East. As a result, Israel is one of the most heavily armed nations in the world, with a politically powerful military establishment.

Protecting national security has from the beginning been less of a concern to Israeli leaders than acquiring more territory. The Israelis have turned down Arab peace overtures since at least 1949, when at the Lausanne conference they refused Arab offers of peace in exchange for the return of Palestinian refugees. Immediately after the June 1967 war Palestinian elders offered peace if Israel withdrew from the newly captured West Bank, an offer that Israel ignored. Since the late 1970s Palestinians and Arab leaders have indicated they would accept a two-state solution. Today, with a Palestinian president pledged to nonviolent resistance, Israel's concern for security remains more pretext than reality.

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Barry Grey
WSWS

"The level of hypocrisy defies description. The Obama administration has refused to investigate or prosecute any of those in the Bush administration guilty of ordering and overseeing the systematic use of torture—in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in secret CIA black sites around the world. Obama has not only shielded Bush officials, he has continued and in many cases expanded all of the police-state agencies and measures inaugurated under Bush."

President Obama’s order [March 7th, 2011], resuming the drum-head military tribunals at Guantánamo and institutionalizing indefinite detention, is but the latest demonstration of the continuity between his policies of militarism and authoritarianism and those of his predecessor.

The order reversing his pledge to close the US torture center came just five days after his administration added new charges in the court martial of alleged WikiLeaks source Private Bradley Manning, including the capital charge of “aiding the enemy.” That same day the military intensified the abuse of the 23-year-old soldier by requiring that he sleep without any clothing.

Under Obama, an American citizen who is merely awaiting trial—for the “crime” of exposing US war crimes and conspiracies around the world—is now forced to stand naked in front of his maximum custody cell every morning at 5 AM. The forms of sadistic torture associated with Abu Ghraib have, under Obama, come home to America.

As a result of Obama’s order, 124 of the remaining Guantánamo detainees face the possibility of being tried by military commissions that lack even the due process protections of regular military courts martial. The other 48 have been singled out for indefinite detention because, as the government admits, they have been so brazenly tortured that the evidence against them could not stand up even before a military commission.

Among those named as likely to be brought before a military commission is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi accused of plotting the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. The CIA has acknowledged that he was waterboarded. Other detainees include alleged Al Qaeda leaders Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times, and Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded at least 83 times.

Citing the window dressing of periodic administrative reviews of those condemned to indefinite detention without trial, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared, “The steps we take today are not about who our enemies are but about who we are: a nation committed to providing all detainees in our custody with humane treatment.”

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Jonathan Cook
The Jonathan Cook website

Last week the Guardian, Britain’s main liberal newspaper, ran an exclusive report on the belated confessions of an Iraqi exile, Rafeed al-Janabi, codenamed “Curveball” by the CIA. Eight years ago, Janabi played a key behind-the-scenes role -- if an inadvertent one -- in making possible the US invasion of Iraq. His testimony bolstered claims by the Bush administration that Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, had developed an advanced programme producing weapons of mass destruction.

Curveball’s account included the details of mobile biological weapons trucks presented by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, to the United Nations in early 2003. Powell’s apparently compelling case on WMD was used to justify the US attack on Iraq a few weeks later.

Eight years on, Curveball revealed to the Guardian that he had fabricated the story of Saddam’s WMD back in 2000, shortly after his arrival in Germany seeking asylum. He told the paper he had lied to German intelligence in the hope his testimony might help topple Saddam, though it seems more likely he simply wanted to ensure his asylum case was taken more seriously.

For the careful reader -- and I stress the word careful -- several disturbing facts emerged from the report.

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Stephen Lendman

"Israel isn't a democracy and never was, affording rights solely to Jews, increasingly fewer of them, the more privileged like in America. Others more than ever are on their own sink or swim, the reality major media in both countries downplay or don't report."

On April 9, 1986, Ronald Reagan called Muammar el Gaddafi the "mad dog of the Middle East." Today, after an imposed no-fly zone, war rages to remove him. For decades, he ruled despotically, punishing enemies, rewarding friends. His days may now be numbered. Washington won't quit until he's gone, no matter how many corpses it takes to achieve it.

In fact, however, a far greater Middle East menace threatens the entire region, the Israeli war machine based in Jerusalem. Besides illegally occupying Palestine, brutalizing Palestinians daily, persecuting Israeli Arabs, threatening and attacking its neighbors, its longstanding plan calls for dividing and dominating the region.

In fact, it's nightmarish vision calls for partitioning Arab nations into small states - balkanizing them along ethnic and sectarian lines as Israeli satellites, controllable satraps. The idea is modeled after the Ottoman Empire's Millet system under which local authorities governed confessional communities with separate ethnic identities.

Israel's 1967 Golan seizure followed the plan. So did the 1978 and 1982 Lebanon invasions, using preemptive belligerence against regional states, targeting them to be weakened, fragmented, divided, and reconfigured under Israeli control.

However, instead of sanctioning Israel, demanding Gaza's siege end, and imposing no-fly zone protection against regular air and ground attacks, Washington is Israel's paymaster/partner, providing generous funding and arms, supporting its killing machine lawlessly.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Our political map, with its constant shift to the right, reflects precisely this colonial logic, which has become the logic of our lives: The West is allowed what the natives are not.

Two other Arab uprisings are going on aside from the civil war in Libya. But no one in Washington has called on Bahrain's government to step down, and Saudi Arabia, which cuts off the hands of thieves, has been allowed to invade the emirate to take part in the suppression there. Protesters are being slaughtered daily in Yemen, and the West is helping. As always, Arab blood, high octane, is on sale.

To claim that this is a double standard is like complaining that a missile has a warhead and a tail. For two decades now, states have been taken apart in the name of "human rights": Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and now Libya, using human-rights missiles deployed against humans. Western media outlets are already producing a global discourse about "a war with values" and "contradictions between values and strategy," as if strategy didn't include "values."

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Arthur Silber
Once Upon a Time...

Last November, in "On Veterans Day: Fuck that Shit," I excerpted a Laurence Vance article. In part, Vance wrote:

What is there to thank our soldiers for? They are not defending our freedoms. They are not keeping us safe from our enemies. They are not protecting us from terrorists. They are not guaranteeing our First Amendment rights. They are not defending U.S. borders. They are not guarding U.S. shores. They are not patrolling U.S. coasts. They are not enforcing no-fly zones over U.S. skies. They are not fighting "over there" so we don’t have to fight "over here." They are not avenging 9/11. They are not safeguarding the American way of life. Oh, and they are not ensuring that I have the liberty to write what I do about the military.

What, then, should we thank our soldiers for? Should we thank them for fighting an unconstitutional war, an unscriptural war, an immoral war, an offensive war, an unjust war, or a senseless war? Should we thank our veterans for helping to carry out an aggressive, reckless, belligerent, and interventionist foreign policy? Should we thank the military for sucking $1 trillion out of the federal budget?

But, some will say, these soldiers are just doing their jobs. They can’t help it if the U.S. military sends them to fight in an unjust war in Iraq or Afghanistan. They are just following orders. They didn’t enlist in the military to kill people.

What would any sane man think about a doctor who takes a job at a hospital knowing that the hospital instructs its doctors to euthanize old and sickly patients – and then says he was just doing his job, following orders, and didn’t take the job to kill people?

Why are soldiers treated so differently? Why do they get a pass on committing or supporting those who commit murder and mayhem?

If you consult my full essay, as well as the earlier "No, I Do Not Support 'The Troops,'" you will understand the argument that leads to this unavoidable conclusion:

There exists no legitimate, healthy reason for any person to join the United States military today. None.

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Pablo Ouziel
Political Thoughts

I assume that to some, I dare say, to the majority of Western citizens, it must be a relief to see that 'our’ force for good has not lost its momentum – that humanitarian benevolence which characterizes the self-portrait we paint of our societies as we ponder on our own exceptionalism, our magnanimity.

What would the world do without 'our’ greatness, without 'our’ kindness, without 'our’ Altruism? It is in asking ourselves these kinds of moronic questions, that we carry forth the full force of our dogma – our collective delusion, the lie, which once again has facilitated the dropping of 'our’ bombs on the citizens of another part of the planet. This time it is happening in Libya, and just as with all other wars of aggression initiated through the barrel of Western guns, the submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and missiles of all kinds, are only engaged in a 'humanitarian’ mission.

The late Howard Zinn, would often remind his audiences around the world, of the definition of modern warfare – "war is the indiscriminate killing of civilians" he would say. Perhaps it would serve us well to ponder on this thought, as we embark as citizens on some kind of collective response to this new and illegitimate war, this crime against humanity, which once again is being perpetrated in our name.

We can choose to be distracted by the narrow-mindedly articulated debate on the illegitimate repression inflicted by Kaddafi on his people, on his despotic ways, his criminal behaviour, and flamboyant mannerisms. This is the sure way to guarantee a sleeping mass of ignorant and manipulated Western citizens, supportive of the criminal acts Western governments are in the midst of carrying out. Alternatively, we can say enough is enough, and we can begin to arm ourselves with the powerful nonviolent weapons of non-cooperation and civil disobedience, in order to mount a joint, citizen-led, coordinated and extensive campaign, for peace, and against war.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Israeli Military Intelligence (MI) expands its overseas activity ‘monitoring foreign left-wing organizations.'

Haaretz reported today that Israeli Military Intelligence is collecting information about left-wing organizations abroad that the army sees as aiming to delegitimize Israel.

However, some Israelis seem to be confused about it all. "We ourselves don't know exactly how to define delegitimization," said one ministry official. "This is a very abstract definition. Are flotillas to Gaza delegitimization? Is criticism of settlements delegitimization? It's not clear how Military Intelligence's involvement in this will provide added value."

MI officials said the initiative reflects an upsurge in worldwide efforts to delegitimize Israel and question its right to exist.

"The enemy changes, as does the nature of the struggle, and we have to boost activity in this sphere," an MI official said. "Work on this topic proceeds on the basis of a clear distinction between legitimate criticism of the State of Israel on the one hand, and efforts to harm it and undermine its right to exist on the other."

I am left confused here, who exactly decides what ‘legitimate criticism’ is?

The new MI unit will monitor Western groups involved in BDS campaign against Israel (boycott, divestment and sanctions). The unit will also collect information about groups that attempt to bring war crimes or other charges against high-ranking Israeli officials, and examine possible links between such organizations and terror groups.

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Stephen Lendman

When America goes to war, managed news goes with it spreading rumors, half-truths, misinformation, and willful deception about targeted nations, regimes and leaders, whether despots or democrats. Whoever first said it, the first casualty of war is truth, and then some as John Pilger once observed saying:

"Journalism is the first casualty. Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent censorship (and willful misreporting) that goes unrecognised in the United States, Britain and other democracies; censorship by omission, whose power is such that, in war, it can mean the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries...."

As a result, managed news jeopardizes free and open societies by substituting fiction for facts, carefully filtered reports for truth, and cheerleading propaganda for real journalism. As a result, wars of aggression are called liberating ones. Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good, and patriotism means going along with lawless governments, reigning death and destruction on defenseless nations for imperial, not noble, reasons.

Media support backs them, notably in America where dominant electronic and print reporting marches in lockstep with government policy, right or wrong.

As a result, dominant information sources (the major media) are in crisis as leading media scholar/critic/activist Robert McChesney once observed, saying:

"Going to war is arguably the single most important decision any society can make. The track record of the US news media in the twentieth century is that they often went along with fraudulent efforts to get the nation into one war or another" from WW I to today. Each time with no exceptions, "administration(s) in power believed that (truth wouldn't enlist) support (for) war. So they lied. The Pentagon Papers (exposed it about Southeast Asia) in shocking detail."

Post-9/11 through Obama's war on Libya, "the very debate over whether to go to war" is absent. Obama decides. The media salute, and public opinion is manipulated to say amen. Never discussed are justifiable reasons, choosing diplomacy over militarism, America acting as judge, jury and executioner, and cui bono fruits of war. Without them, they'd be none. Said another way, absent the power and profit benefits, who'd wage them, especially capitalist America, generously enriching war profiteers that fund politicians for bottom line friendly policies.

As a result, government is unaccountable to the electorate. Democracy is the best money can buy, and wars are always imperial, not liberating ones, especially the ones America wages.

Today, round the clock media coverage supports them. Long before television, media critic AJ Liebling said, "People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news." Today it's mostly TV, the dominant managed news source, supporting power, not truth, functioning as a propaganda system for elitist interests, especially on matters of war and peace.

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Richard Falk
Citizen Pilgrimage

Long ago Qaddafi forfeited the domestic legitimacy of his rule, creating the moral and political conditions for an appropriate revolutionary challenge. Recently he has confirmed this assessment by referring to the disaffected portion of his own citizenry as ‘rats and dogs’ or ‘cockroaches,’ employing the bloodthirsty and vengeful language of a demented tyrant. Such a tragically criminal imposition of political abuse on the Libyan experience is a painful reality that exists beyond any reasonable doubt, but does it validate a UN authorized military intervention carried out by a revived partnership of those old colonial partners, France and Britain, and their post-colonial American imperial overseer?

From a personal perspective, my hopes are with the Libyan rebels, despite their reliance on violence and the opaqueness of their political identity. As many credible exile Libyan voices attest, it would seem highly likely that a rebel victory would benefit the people of Libya and would be a step in the right direction for the region, especially the Arab world, but does this entail supporting Western-led military intervention even if it is backed by the United Nations? I believe not.

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Roi Maor
+972

The Knesset passed a segregation bill today. Palestinian Israelis are not allowed to live in Jewish localities built on land confiscated from them. Government policy also makes sure they cannot build on the little private land that was left in their ownership. How long can Jewish Israelis continue pretending that Palestinians do not exist?

In a session lasting well after midnight, the Knesset passed (Hebrew) a new law, which allows communities of up to 400 members, in the Negev and Galilee (the south and north of Israel, respectively) to form “acceptance committees” that will screen candidates who wish to live in their locality, on the basis of various parameters, including vague wording relating to social and cultural compatibility. The law nominially forbids discrimination on the basis of race, gender or religion, but its effect and intent to segregate Palestinian Israelis are clear. I highly recommend reading the excellent post by Nimrod Lutz which outlines the background and implications of the bill. But there is an even broader context that should be remembered when this legislation is discussed.

On the one hand, acceptance committees are by no means exclusively intended to prevent Palestinian Israelis from living in Jewish localities. Other “unsuitable” people are excluded as well. For example, a case pending before the High Court of Justice pertains to a Jewish family denied residence because they viewed the move as a means to better their lives. Yes, you read that right – the acceptance committee decided they only want people whose lives are already perfect.

On the other hand, the shocking nature of this exclusion should not obscure the main intention of the bill, which is racial discrimination. It would be upsetting enough if the only element of discrimination was the principle of segregation which it enshrines. But as bad as that is, there is much worse discrimination at work here.

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Rodrigue Tremblay
The New American Empire

"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief." ~ Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and author, born in Martinique

"One must have a strong mind and a soft heart... The world is full of people who have a dry heart and a weak mind."
~ Jacques Maritain (1882 – 1973), French philosopher

"The Seven Blunders of the World are:

1. Wealth without work;
2. Pleasure without conscience;
3. Knowledge without character;
4. Commerce without morality;
5. Science without humanity;
6. Worship without sacrifice;
7. Politics without principle."

~ Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian political leader, ('Mahatma' means 'Great Soul')

This year in 2011, we will be 7 billion people sharing Planet Earth, most of the recent increase in world population originating in the developing world, as has been the case since 1950. We were 3 billion people in 1960 and we will be three times that in 2050, i.e. 9 billion people. That's a lot of people who will have to learn how to live together, if they don't want to perish together.

To show you how big the number '7 billion' is, just consider that if you were today to begin counting 1, 2, 3, etc., (at the pace of one number a second), it would take you some 115 years to reach the number 7,000,000,000 (seven with nine zeros).

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Stephen Lendman

Make no mistake. Another Washington-led resource war targets Libya's riches, besides wanting new US base locations for greater regional dominance.

America doesn't covet regional sun, sand and sea. "Humanitarian intervention" is a lie. So are notions about peace, not war, liberation, equity, justice, and other democratic values. Washington tolerates none of them abroad or at home, plundering the world roguishly.

All US presidents are war criminals. Obama is one of the worst, doubling Bush's lawlessness, adding Pakistan and Libya aggression to Iraq and Afghanistan, spending $1.5 trillion annually for militarism plus multi-trillion dollar handouts to Wall Street crooks, while pleading poverty to cut essential homeland social benefits.

As a result, it's no exaggeration saying America is on a fast-track to tyranny and ruin. It's no longer a fit place to live in. Young people have a choice - leave or be exploited, a shocking indictment of a corrupted, declining, lawless nation.

Unchecked Global Militarism

Waging wars at home and/or abroad every year in its history, a permanent war agenda has been policy since WW II. A previous article explained, accessed through this link.

Historians Charles Beard and Gore Vidal called it "perpetual war for perpetual peace," at all times concealing the real agenda. As a result, since WW II, America's been a global menace, today calling "terrorism" the main threat. In fact, it's bogus nonsense to justify militarism, homeland repression, imperial wars, wanton destruction, and lawless killings, heading the nation for moral, political and economic ruin.

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Jerry White
WSWS

The incident depicted in this image is not part of the court
martial proceedings against members of the "kill team". It
does nevertheless come from the collection of one of the
suspects. (Der Spiegel)

"The individual soldiers involved in these acts must be held accountable. But their actions, as heinous as they are, pale in comparison to the murder of tens of thousands of Afghan and Pakistani civilians carried out by the architects of the war. Those officials in the Bush and Obama administrations and the Pentagon should be tried for war crimes."

The German news magazine Der Spiegel on Monday published photographs of atrocities carried out last year by members of a US Army unit in Kandahar, Afghanistan. One photo includes an American soldier smiling for the camera as he lifts the head of a dead Afghan civilian like a hunter after bagging his game.

Der Spiegel published three photos, but it and Der Spiegel TV have reportedly obtained 4,000 photographs and videos from a collection belonging to a suspected member of a US army “kill team.”

The unit—attached to the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state—is charged with murdering civilians for sport, cutting off body parts for trophies, and planting weapons to make their victims look like insurgents killed in combat. Five soldiers—including the two in the published photos—are facing court martial proceedings for murdering three unarmed civilians and other crimes.

Two of the photos depict US soldiers posing with the half-naked and blood-soaked corpse of Gul Mudin, a 37-year-old farmer who was killed in front of his child on January 15, 2010. The killing occurred in the village of La Mohammed Kalay, near Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Kandahar. The third photo is a picture of the dead bodies of two other civilians, propped up back-to-back with their hands bound, positioned in front of a military vehicle.

The Pentagon and Obama administration deliberately concealed this evidence of US war crimes from the public in the US and internationally. The military judge in the court martial case prohibited the release of the photos, but they were leaked to Der Spiegel by an unknown source. A defense attorney for one of the soldiers in the case told the Washington Post, “The Army is spending most of their time investigating the photos rather than the murder.”

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James Petras
The James Petras Website

A US soldier poses with his "trophy". Gul Mudin, the son
of a farmer, was killed on Jan. 15, 2010. (Der Spiegel)

[PDF] Imperialism, its character, means and ends has changed over time and place. Historically, western imperialism, has taken the form of tributary, mercantile, industrial, financial and in the contemporary period, a unique ‘militarist-barbaric’ form of empire building. Within each ‘period’, elements of past and future forms of imperial domination and exploitation ‘co-exist’ with the dominant mode. For example , in the ancient Greek and Roman empires, commercial and trade privileges complemented the extraction of tributary payments. Mercantile imperialism, was preceded and accompanied initially by the plunder of wealth and the extraction of tribute, sometimes referred to as “primitive accumulation”, where political and military power decimated the local population and forcibly removed and transferred wealth to the imperial capitals. As imperial commercial ascendancy was consolidated, manufacturing capital increasingly emerged as a coparticipant; backed by imperial state policies manufacturing products destroyed local national manufacturers gaining control over local markets. Modern industrial driven imperialism, combined production and commerce, both complemented and supported by financial capital and its auxiliaries, insurance, transport and other sources of “invisible earnings”.

Under pressure from nationalist and socialist anti-imperialist movements and regimes, colonial structured empires gave way to new nationalist regimes. Some of which restructured their economies, diversifying their productive systems and trading partners. In some cases they imposed protective barriers to promote industrialization. Industrial-driven imperialism, at first opposed these nationalist regimes and collaborated with local satraps to depose industrial oriented nationalist leaders. Their goal was to retain or restore the “colonial division of labor” – primary production exchanged for finished goods. However, by the last third of the 20th century, industrial driven empire building, began a process of adaptation, “jumping over tariff walls”, investing in elementary forms of ‘production’ and in labor intensive consumer products. Imperial manufacturers contracted assembly plants organized around light consumer goods (textiles, shoes, electronics).

Basic changes in the political, social and economic structures of both the imperial and former colonial countries, however, led to divergent imperial paths to empirebuilding and as a consequence contrasting development performances in both regions.

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Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Born in 1945 in Philadelphia PA, Dr. Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history.
At Georgetown University he studied modern European intellectual history under the Palestinian ex-patriot Professor Hisham Sharabi. Sharabi and Davidson subsequently became close friends and one can date his interest in Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Zionist, issues from this time.

Dr. Davidson writes regularly on the Middle East affairs, Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. foreign policy. He has written several books of which "America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood" by the University Press of Florida is a prominent example.

Dr. Davidson joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, the collective uprising of the Arab world, Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions of 2011, the humanitarian crisis in Libya, the prospect of anti-government protests in Saudi Arabia and the fate of Israeli regime in the wake of growing international isolation.

What follows is the complete text of my interview with Dr. Lawrence Davidson.

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Stephen Lendman

An F-16 jet fighter flies over the NATO airbase in Aviano,
Italy, Sunday, March 20, 2011. (Photo: Luca Bruno)

Masquerading as "humanitarian intervention," Washington launched full-force barbarism on six million Libyans, all endangered by America's latest intervention. More on how below.

Beginning March 19, it was visible. However, months of planning preceded it, including US and UK special forces and intelligence operatives on the ground enlisting, inciting, funding, arming and supporting violent insurrection to oust Gaddafi and replace him with a Washington-controlled puppet like in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The script is familiar, playing out now in Libya - full-scale "imperial barbarism," a term James Petras used in a September 2010 article titled, "Imperialism and Imperial Barbarism," saying:

"The organizing principle of imperial barbarism is the idea of total war," including:

● use of mass destruction weapons, unleashed on Libya as explained below;
● targeting the entire country and society; and
● dismantling "the entire civil and military apparatus of the state," replacing it with "colonial officials, paid mercenaries and unscrupulous and corrupt satraps" - puppets, figures As'ad AbuKhalil calls "useful idiots."

Moreover, as Petras explains:

"The entire modern professional class is targeted (and) replaced by retrograde religious-ethnic clans and gangs, susceptible to bribes and booty-shares. All existing modern civil society organizations are pulverized and replaced by crony-plunderers linked to the colonial regime. The entire economy is" disrupted by "shock and awe" bombings and ground attacks, affecting essential civilian infrastructure on the pretext of destroying military and "dual use" targets.

As a result, mass casualties follow, many post-conflict from disease, homelessness, starvation, depravation, and environmental contamination. All wars are ugly, especially modern ones Washington wages, unleashing full force human and overall destruction, mostly affecting noncombatant men, women and children - imperialism's hidden victims.

Already, unknown hundreds of Libyans have been killed, wounded, or disabled, besides countless numbers affected overall. Expect much worse ahead, including violent, US-backed proxy insurgence, perhaps later joined by Pentagon troops if current air and ground attacks don't accomplish "Operation Odyssey Dawn's" objectives.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

"Israelis are fully aware of their government and army’s brutal measures against Palestinian civilian population -- and yet, the vast majority of them support it all, and even affirm it democratically."

A German think-tank affiliated with the Social Democratic Party issued a new report last week that revealed “high levels of anti-Semitism in Germany, Poland and Hungary.”

Dr. Beate Küpper, a researcher from the University of Bielefeld who co-authored the study along with her colleagues Andreas Zick and Andreas Hoevermann, told The Jerusalem Post that the study showed a strong presence of “anti-Semitism that is linked with Israel and is hidden behind criticism of Israel, and is not neutral.”

Küpper termed the outbreak of Jew-hatred in Germany “remarkable” because, according to her, “there were widespread Holocaust remembrance and education events in Germany.”

It is possible that Küpper and others in the widely respected University have completely failed to notice a most obvious link here -- It is more than likely that the mushrooming of Holocaust museums actually contributed to the resentment towards the Jewish state. Those who are inclined to interpret the Holocaust as a universal and a moral message against racism and oppression would obviously also identify the Jewish State as a primary enemy of humanity and humanism. I guess that Germans and others expect Jews to be at the forefront of the battle against racism. As it happens, the Jewish State sticks out as the total opposite; it is a leading abuser of human rights. It is a terrorist, racist state that locks millions behind walls and barbed wires.

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Stephen Lendman

In Japan, coverup and denial persist. In a March 18 press conference, Tokyo Electric's (TEPCO) spokesman claimed water-dousing lowered radiation levels from 312 microsieverts per hour to 289. However, 48 hours earlier, chief cabinet secretary Yukido Edano said radioactivity levels were misreported in microsieverts instead of millisieverts - 1,000 times stronger.

Contrary to other reports, TEPCO's spokesman also said water remains in Unit 4's cooling pool. In fact, there's none. Nothing the company says is credible.

In contrast, distinguished nuclear expert Helen Caldicott called Fukushima an unprecedented "absolute disaster," multiples worse than Chernobyl. "The situation is very grim and not just for the Japanese people. If both reactors blow then the whole of the northern hemisphere may be affected. Only one (Chernobyl) reactor blew, and it was only three months old with relatively little radiation. (Fukushima's) have been operating for 40 years, and would hold about 30 times more radiation than Chernobyl."

It killed nearly one million people and counting, according to the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). Yet the official IAEA figure was 4,000. NYAS' report said:

"This is a collection of papers translated from the Russian with some revised and updated contributions. Written by leading authorities from Eastern Europe, the volume outlines the history of the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. According to the authors, official discussions from the (IAEA) and associated (UN) agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findingins reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and consequently have erred by not including these assessments."

In fact, IAEA and UN agencies lied, what's ongoing now on Fukushima to conceal the greatest ever environmental/human disaster by far. Calling it a "diabolical catastrophe," Caldicott, in fact, believes "(i)t could be much, much worse than" 30 multiples of Chernobyl. "In the northern hemisphere, many millions could get cancer." Large parts of Japan may be permanently contaminated, not safe to live in.

Adding a hopeful note, she also thinks "the nuclear industry is finished worldwide. I have said before, unfortunately, the only thing that is capable of stopping this wicked industry is a major catastrophe, and it now looks like this may be it."

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Stephen Lendman

On March 19, ironically on the eighth anniversary of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," a White House Office of the Press Secretary quoted Obama saying:

"Today I authorized the Armed Forces of the United States to (attack) Libya in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians," he, in fact, doesn't give a damn about. "That action has now begun," he added, claiming military action was a last resort.

In fact, it was long-planned. All military interventions require months of preparation, including target selections, strategy, enlisting political and public support, troop deployments, and post-conflict plans.

Weeks, maybe months in advance, Special Forces, CIA agents, and UK SAS operatives were in Libya, enlisting, inciting, funding, and arming so-called anti-Gaddafi opposition forces, ahead of Western aggression for imperial control. More on it below.

A March 19 Department of Defense (DOD) Armed Forces Press Service release announced America's led "Operation Odyssey Dawn," saying:

"Coalition (of the willing) forces launched "Operation Odyssey Dawn" today to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973 to protect the Libyan people from the country's ruler....Today we are part of a broad coalition. We are answering the calls of a threatened people."

False! In fact, Washington-led naked aggression was launched to replace one despot with another, perhaps assassinate Gaddafi, his sons and top officials, colonize Libya, control its oil, gas and other resources, exploit its people, private state industries under Western (mainly US) control, establish new Pentagon bases, use them for greater regional dominance, perhaps balkanize the country like Yugoslavia and Iraq, and prevent any democratic spark from emerging.

According to DODspeak, Libya is being attacked, its people killed, civilian targets destroyed, and a humanitarian disaster created to save it. In other words, "destroying the village to save it" on a nationwide scale like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 70s, and Korea in the 1950s since WW II alone. Besides numerous proxy wars in Central America, Africa and elsewhere. Wherever America shows up, blood spills followed by horrific human suffering, what Libyans can now expect.

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Stephen Lendman

It bears repeating. Government, industry, and major media reports downplay and deny Japan's unprecedented nuclear disaster, potentially able to kill millions now living and in future generations painfully.

Nuclear power is a real life Andromeda Strain. If uncontrollably unleashed, it's potentially able to destroy life worldwide under a worse case scenario.

In his latest article, nuclear expert Harvey Wasserman said "the most devastating thing about (Fukushima) is not what's happening there now. It's that until all the world's reactors are shut, even worse is virtually certain to happen again. All too soon." Fukushima, in fact, may be the nuclear nightmare he suggests.

Globally, 450 reactors operate, including 104 aging American ones, many with bad safety records caused by cost-cutting and shoddy maintenance. Poorly regulated, they're ticking time bombs, accidents waiting to happen, many plagued by near-meltdown misses.

According to Beyond Nuclear's Linda Gunter, American utilities have gambled since the dawn of the nuclear age, NRC regulators letting them get away with cutting corners, taking risks, and being lucky hundreds of times. However, it can't forever avoid a Fukushima-like disaster. From 1986 - 2006, Greenpeace estimates 200 near-misses. Any loss of power for any reason could cause one - an earthquake, tsunami, ice storm, or any number of accidents that can and do happen, including human error.

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Stephen Lendman

On March 18, Washington bullied Security Council members to approve Resolution 1973, a measure authorizing war on Libya. The 10 - 0 vote included five abstentions from China, Russia, Germany, Brazil and India, objecting to sweeping terms, including wide latitude for belligerence on bogus "humanitarian" grounds.

In fact, it's to replace one despot with another, perhaps assassinate Gaddafi, colonize Libya, control its oil, gas and other resources, exploit its people, privatize its state industries under Western control, establish new US bases, use them for greater regional control, and perhaps balkanize the country like Yugoslavia and Iraq.

A same day White House press release headlined, "Readout of President Obama's Calls with (UK) Prime Minister Cameron and (French) President Sarkozy," saying:

"The leaders agreed that Libya must immediately comply with all terms of the resolution and that violence against the civilian population of Libya must cease."

Obama also ordered Gaddafi to implement an immediate ceasefire or face military intervention, saying terms were non-negotiable.

The resolution authorizes "all necessary measures...to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack," including a no-fly zone and illegal air strikes.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

It is possible that when they circumcised Alan Dershowitz, they binned the wrong bit. Following the recent devastating chain of nuclear disasters in Japan, the lame Zionist advocate has managed to draw the most astonishing conclusion: “Israel Has the Right to Attack Iran's Nuclear Reactors Now”

Here is Dershowitz’ fascinating, logical, algorithm for us to consider:

1. “The recent disaster in Japan has shown the world the extraordinary dangers posed by nuclear radiation”
2. “If Iran were to develop nuclear weapons, the next ship destined to Gaza might contain a nuclear dirty bomb”
3. “A dirty bomb detonated in tiny Israel would cause incalculable damage to civilian life.”

Dershowitz is obviously a complete ignorant -- a ‘nuclear dirty bomb’ is not exactly something you blithely throw over the fence onto your next-door neighbour: the Palestinians in Gaza do not need a ‘dirty bomb,’ and have never expressed any desire to have one. All they want is their land back. And they would be the last to radioactively contaminate their beloved soil.

However, unlike the Jewish state that possesses hundreds of nuclear bombs and have also been using WMD against civilians, no one has managed to prove that Iran plans to produce an atomic bomb, or any other weapons of mass destruction. [1]

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Stephen Lendman

On March 18, Reuters headlined, "Haiti's Aristide heads home before runoff vote," saying he

"headed back to his country on Friday after ignoring US opposition to a homecoming some fear could disrupt Haiti's presidential election runoff on Sunday."

For months, State Department officials obstructed him, wanting him permanently excluded, especially during Sunday's illegitimate elections, featuring two unpopular presidential candidates most Haitians spurn. Most, in fact, won't participate, knowing either winner represents Washington, not them.

First round November 28 elections and Sunday's runoff were rigged to defraud. Haitians want democracy, what's absent in Sunday's vote.

Earlier, Obama and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked South African President Jacob Zuma to prevent his return. He delayed but didn't stop him. In fact, Aristide's charismatic presence runs counter to America's imperial plans - to solidify colonization, resource theft, and exploitation of poor Haitians, what legitimate democrats oppose, including Aristide.

He's wanted to return any time, "to contribute to serving my Haitian sisters and brothers as a simple citizen in the field of education." He has no further political interests. Believe him. It's true. He wants only to aid Haiti's recovery, doing what he knows and loves best.

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

According to US officials, the United States is moving war-
ships and aircraft, including the USS Enterprise (photo) into
the Mediterranean Sea near Libya. (PressTV)

There is an element of extreme recklessness in the US-NATO intervention. What will it produce? One likely variant would be Libya’s partition and the resurrection of Cyrenaica, the colonial territory set up by Italy in Benghazi in the 1920s. Any elements coming to power under such a regime would be right-wing puppets of imperialism, comparable to Karzai in Afghanistan or Maliki in Iraq, and would inevitably carry out an even bloodier slaughter of the Libyan people.

The United Nations Security Council Thursday night approved a resolution that paves the way for the United States and other major imperialist powers to conduct a direct military intervention in Libya under the pretense of a “humanitarian” mission to protect civilian lives.

The resolution, sponsored by the US, France, Britain and Lebanon, goes far beyond earlier proposals for a no-fly zone, authorizing the use of military force including “all necessary measures … to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” These “areas” include Benghazi, the city of one million which remains the sole stronghold of the revolt that began against the Gaddafi dictatorship one month ago. The sole limitation placed by the resolution is its exclusion of “a foreign occupation force on any part of Libyan territory.”

The vote sets the stage for a bombardment of Libya by US, French and British warplanes. French Prime Minister Francois Fillon told France-2 Television that military action could begin within hours of the resolution’s approval. And the Associated Press cited an unnamed member of the British Parliament as saying, “British forces were on stand by for air strikes and could be mobilized as soon as Thursday night.”

American military officials have already warned that even the imposition of a no-fly zone entails the prior destruction of Libya’s air defense capabilities, meaning a major bombing campaign against Libya that will undoubtedly entail “collateral damage” measured in the killing and maiming of Libyan civilians.

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Stephen Lendman

Manning is being emotionally destroyed, assuring his inability to defend himself properly at trial. The Pentagon plans it, besides extracting vengeance and warning other whistle blowers what they'll face if they dare emulate him. Obama very much concurs, showing he's as lawless as Bush.

A previous article discussed him in detail, accessed through this link. Another discussed torture as official US policy, institutionalized under Bush II, continued under Obama, practiced despite official denials.

Manning, of course, is the Army intelligence analyst allegedly turned whistle blower, who supposedly leaked thousands of diplomatic cables, many from Iraq and Afghan war databases, as well as two or more explosive videos, showing US air strikes murdering civilians. As a result, he may have felt obligated to reveal them. They reveal criminal acts by the US government, demanding prosecution of everyone up the chain of command ordering them.

If Bradley [in fact] disclosed them, he did so at great personal risk. He then would deserve praise, not prosecution. He would be a hero, risking personal harm to reveal disturbing truths, what government and media reports suppress, sanitize and distort, letting warlords plunder lawlessly so war profiteers can cash in. Americans are the worse off for it.

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Stephen Lendman

Visible in green within the shattered walls of Fukushima nuclear
power plant, the storage pool is dried up, exposing nuclear fuel
rods to the air. AHB (Photo: AP)

Possibly it's ongoing and concealed. All along, Japanese and Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) officials downplayed or lied about the severity of the crisis. Virtually nothing they say can be believed.

Nor from the Obama administration, budgeting loan guarantees for new reactor construction instead of decommissioning all 104 nuclear plants because operating them risks full core meltdowns.

Partial or full ones gravely harm earth, air, water and food. Three hazardous Fukushima radioactive isotopes are especially problematic. University of Rochester Professor Jacqueline Williams, a radiation expert, says ingesting radioactive iodine-131 causes thyroid and other cancers. So does hazardous beta and gamma radiation from Cesium-137. Released Strontium 90 also causes leukemia and other cancers. Large amounts of all three are spewing daily.

Under a worst case scenario, millions of Japanese, Pacific rim and northern hemisphere people will be harmed, many gravely. Millions of deaths may result. The dangers of nuclear power can't be overstated. Potentially, all planetary life is threatened. What better reason to end all commercial and military use now.

Wikipedia calls a nuclear meltdown "an informal term for a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating." Partial or full meltdowns result, releasing toxic atmospheric radiation.

Through nuclear fission, reactors generate high heat to produce electricity - essentially boiling water to create steam, used to run turbines and generate power. Unless controlled, dangerously high heat results.

Core meltdowns occur when heat generated exceeds what cooling systems remove, causing uranium and plutonium fuel to melt. At fault may be coolant problems, including accidents, fires, loss of coolant pressure, low coolant flow, or none at all from high heat causing evaporation. In other words, insufficient cooling elevates temperatures high enough to trigger melting and toxic atmospheric radiation releases.

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Niall Green
WSWS

The result of the US occupation of Afghanistan has been devastating. The United Nations reported last week that 2,777 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2010, a rise of 15 percent over the previous year. According to the UN, 722 civilians were killed by US and allied forces last year. These figures grossly underestimate the number of civilians killed, due to the US policy of either not reporting civilian casualties or mis-recording them as “insurgents.” A large number of civilians have died in US and NATO attacks so far in 2011, including at least 65 civilians killed in a US-led offensive in the province of Kunar. In one such atrocity, on March 3 a US air strike killed nine children collecting firewood near a Forward Operating Base in the Darah-Ye District.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General David Petraeus demanded increased funds and an indefinite US military occupation in order to secure what he described as “fragile and reversible” gains.

Petraeus, the top commander of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan, told senators on Tuesday that “the momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas.”

Since 2009, President Barack Obama has poured an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, while escalating the bombing campaign across the border in Pakistan. There are now 150,000 troops from the US, NATO and other allied countries in Afghanistan, in addition to forces from the Afghan National Army.

Petraeus, the senior military commander in Iraq during the “surge” that brutally suppressed militant opposition to the US occupation between 2007 and 2008, is charged with replicating that policy in Afghanistan.

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