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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