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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