Stephen Lendman

American intervention assures "constructive chaos," the agenda Washington pursues globally, focusing mainly on controlling Eurasia's enormous wealth and resources. Either one or multiple countries at a time, it includes turning Russia and China into vassal states, a goal neither Beijing or Moscow will tolerate.

Despite genuine popular Middle East/North Africa uprisings, Washington's dirty hands orchestrated regime change plans in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria as part of its "New Middle East" project.

On November 18, 2006, Middle East analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya's Global Research article headlined, "Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a 'New Middle East,' " saying:

In June 2006 in Tel Aviv, "US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (first) coin(ed) the term" in place of the former "Greater Middle East" project, a shift in rhetoric only for Washington's longstanding imperial aims.

The new terminology "coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean." During Israel's summer 2006 Lebanon war, "Prime Minister Olmert and (Rice) informed the international media that a project for a 'New Middle East' was being launched in Lebanon," a plan in the works for years to "creat(e) an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan."

In other words, "constructive chaos" would be used to redraw the region according to US-Israeli "geo-strategic needs and objectives." The strategy is currently playing out violently in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria, and may erupt anywhere in the region to solidify Washington's aim for unchallengeable dominance from Morocco to Oman to Syria.

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Wayne Madsen
Strategic Culture Foundation

Plans by President Obama to name General David Petraeus, the current commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, replacing Leon Panetta, who will move to the Pentagon as Secretary of Defense, not only represents a continuation of America’s war policy but will result in an increase in America’s bellicose foreign policy around the world. Petraeus’s reign at the CIA also represents the further militarization of the CIA, a process that began when President George W. Bush appointed General Michael Hayden, the former Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Deputy Director of National Intelligence, to replace George Tenet, as CIA director. Hayden’s dual military-civilian role at the CIA forced Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to order the uniform-clad Hayden to retire from the Air Force and shed the uniform while serving as CIA director.

Petraeus, considered an “academic general” by combat troops who have served under him, comes to the CIA after launching bloody military “surges” against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. A product of the elitist Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University, Petraeus has been a long-time favorite of neo-conservative nationalistic American political leaders like Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman. Petraeus’s actual front line combat experience as a flag-rank officer is so thin and his leadership qualities so political in nature, many of his troops have called him General “Betray Us.”

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

Lee Raymond, CEO of Exxon Mobil, left, takes his seat before the start
of Wednesday’s joint Senate Energy and Commerce Committee hearing
on record oil industry profits on Capitol Hill. (Pablo Martinez/AP)

Exxon-Mobil, the world’s biggest and most profitable corporation, raked in a staggering $10.7 billion in profits during the first quarter of 2011, the company reported Thursday. The figure was a 69 percent increase over the same quarter last year, and the highest quarterly profit since 2008, the last time oil prices topped $100 a barrel.

The company’s total revenues hit $114 billion in the first quarter, making it likely that in 2011 it will break its 2008 record of $458 billion, and could become the first oil company to reach half a trillion dollars in revenue. Exxon-Mobil’s revenues exceed the Gross Domestic Product of all but 18 of the 194 countries listed by the World Bank.

The profit figure for Exxon-Mobil was only the most obscene of a flood of multi-billion-dollar earnings reports from the major oil companies. Shell’s profits rose 22 percent to $6.9 billion, while the profits of ConocoPhillips rose 44 percent to $3 billion.

One year after the Gulf oil disaster, BP posted a first-quarter profit of $7.1 billion, an increase of 17 percent. Occidental Petroleum saw its profits soar 46 percent to $1.55 billion in the first quarter, while Apache Corporation netted $1.1 billion, an increase of 51 percent.

Contrary to the free-market mythology embraced by the Obama administration, the Democratic and Republican parties, and the corporate-controlled American media, the record oil profits were not a reward for superior performance in the production of petroleum and its derivatives.

Nearly all the major oil companies actually produced and sold less oil and gas in the first three months of 2011 than in previous quarters, but they charged far higher prices. Exxon-Mobil was the only major firm reporting Thursday whose output actually rose, largely because of its acquisition of the natural gas producer XTO.

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Stephen Lendman

A Palestinian vendor displays a poster of Hamas leader in the Gaza
Strip Ismail Haniya (L) and Palestinian president and Fatah head Mr.
Abbas in front of his shop in Gaza City today. (M. Abed/AFP/Getty)

On April 27, the International Middle East Media Center headlined, "Rival Palestinian Factions Reach Reconciliation Agreement," saying:

Meeting in Cairo, Palestinian media sources announced a Hamas - Fatah reconciliation draft agreement, signaling hope for rapprochement between the two sides.

Both parties agreed to form a transitional government soon. The two delegations, headed by Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal discussed security issues and ways to coordinate forces on both sides. They also chose an election date, but didn't disclose it.

"A Hamas official (Izzat Ar-Rishiq) reported that all points of differences with Fatah have been overcome....Egyptian sources said that the two parties will be invited into Egypt soon (for an) official signing ceremony."

Egypt's official MENA news agency confirmed "a complete understanding after talks on all the points, including the formation of a transitional government with a specific mandate and setting a date for elections."

Fatah delegation chief Azzam Al-Ahmad confirmed the report, saying both sides agreed to a "government of independents....tasked with preparing for presidential and legislative elections within a year."

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Stephen Lendman

It's a sad testimony to a two centuries old experiment that failed because absolute power corrupted too many with it wanting more.

What distinguished experts long knew (timetables aside), the IMF just recognized, saying China's economy will surpass America's in 2016. If so, it will signal an end to the "Age of America," and no wonder after decades of heedless profligacy. More on that below.

The IMF's 2011 World Economic Outlook shows China overtaking America in five years based on purchasing power parity (PPP) - a criterion for an appropriate exchange rate between currencies as measured by the cost of a representative basket of goods in one country v. another.

IMF's 2016 PPP GDP estimate:

● China - $18,975.7 trillion
● America - $18,807.5 trillion

In current dollar terms, America retains its lead, but it's slipping noticeably.

IMF's 2016 dollar GDP estimate:

● America - $18,807.5 trillion
● China - $11,220.2 trillion

Economic forecasts, of course, vary. Moreover, long-range ones combine extrapolated trends with reasoned judgments. However, as economist Alec Craincross (1911 - 1998) once observed:

"A trend is a trend is a trend. But the question is, will it bend? Will it alter its course through some unforeseen force and come to a premature end?"

Not China's for over three decades, "growing 17-fold in real (inflation-adjusted) terms since 1980," according to economist Mark Weisbrot. As a result, it's been the world's fastest growth engine, a pace it's maintained during the current global economic crisis in contrast to America in decline.

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Nahida Izzat
Exiled Palestinian

The world has almost become desensitized to hearing horrible news; there isn't a day that passes without being bombarded with horrific reports; of some killed in a street in Pakistan, more are blown up in a village in Iraq, a drone dropped over a wedding in Afghanistan, a child shot in the back in Palestine, a bomb exploded in Libya, a "new and improved" version of an Israeli threat to Iran…etc…etc.

However, some types of news might still have some sort of an impact; the type that catches the eye causing it to flood with tears, the type that grabs the soul by the throat causing it to choke, the type that contains within an oxymoron; the kernels of extinction and the seeds of annihilation, the type that feels like throbbing, suffocating pain running through every cell of the body, the type that smells of burnt death, radiates with isotopes and gamma-rays and looks like dark smoky mushroom-cloud.

For example:

● On 28 September 2010, the "Israeli" Newspaper Haaretz reported that a virus targeted a large nuclear facility in Iran
● On 16 January 2011, Haaretz reported that Israel tested the destructive Stuxnet worm in Dimona nuclear plant
● On 20 February 2011, Haaretz reported a further attack on 'Iran nuclear facilities in Natanz, Bushehr sites'
● On 27 April 2011, the Iranian Government computers were attacked yet again by the highly specialized aggressive computer virus, Stuxnet, a new generation of software programs that can fail entire production lines.

The German cyber-security expert Ralph Langner, has been working to unravel the mystery of the Stuxnet virus. In March this year, Langner told his audience that the Stuxnet worm could be used as a "weapon of mass destruction against targets in the West"

In his speech, Langner warned of "the plot behind Stuxnet" calling its mode of operation "creepy."

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Tom Burghardt
Antifascist Calling

As the United States morphs into a failed state, one unwilling and soon perhaps, unable, to provide for the common good even as it hands over trillions of dollars to a gang of financial brigands engorged like parasitic ticks on the wealth of others, keeping the lid on is more than just an imperial obsession: it's big business.

Earlier this month, New Scientist reported that "a new way of working out where you are by looking at your internet connection could pin down your current location to within a few hundred metres."

Although similar techniques are already in use, they are not very accurate in terms of closing the surveillance trap. "Every computer connected to the web has an internet protocol (IP) address, but there is no simple way to map this to a physical location," reporter Jacob Aron informs us. "The current best system can be out by as much as 35 kilometres."

However, Yong Wang, "a computer scientist at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, and colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have used businesses and universities as landmarks to achieve much higher accuracy."

According to New Scientist, "Wang's team used Google Maps to find both the web and physical addresses of such organisations, providing them with around 76,000 landmarks. By comparison, most other geolocation methods only use a few hundred landmarks specifically set up for the purpose."

With geolocation tracking devices embedded in smartphones (and, as we'll see below, this data is stored without their users' consent), all of which is happily turned over to authorities by telecoms (for the right price, of course!), as privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian revealed in 2009, it becomes abundantly clear that sooner than most people think they'll be no escaping Big Brother's electronic dragnet.

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Stephen Lendman

Hassan Diab arrives at the Ottawa Courthouse on Nov. 8, 2010.
Photograph by: Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen

An earlier article discussed the case of Canadian Professor Denis Rancourt. In March 2009, the University of Ottawa unjustly fired him for heroically supporting Palestinian liberation and justice. Access it through this link.

His "(a)rticles and entries about activist teaching and radical pedagogy" can be followed daily on his blog site, accessed here.

Depending on how events unfold, the case of former University of Ottawa and Carleton University Professor Hassan Diab is more disturbing and shocking. A November 13, 2008 Ottawa Citizen article explained, headlining:

"Ottawa university instructor arrested in 1980 blast at Paris synagogue," saying, "The October 3, 1980 Union Liberale Israelite de France incident killed four, injured dozens, and was followed by similar attacks in Vienna, Antwerp, Belgium, and elsewhere."

On November 13, 2008, Diab "was arrested by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) at Gatineau residence....as he was getting dressed, placed in custody at the RCMP's A division," and for over four months, denied bail, his lawyer, Rene Duval, said at the time. He now lives under virtual house arrest, wears a GPS electronic ankle monitor, and can only leave home accompanied by one of five sureties who posted his $250,000 + bond.

His apprehension followed an international arrest warrant issued by two French judges earlier in November, "believed to be the first such (instance) for (alleged) terrorism ever executed in Canada."

With no corroborating evidence, France's Le Figaro newspaper cited unnamed 2007 sources, saying Diab led "the small commando team responsible for the attack and had asked Canada for assistance with their investigation."

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Dallas Darling
World News

By the time former President George W. Bush ordered massive and deadly bombing campaigns over Iraq, followed by a preemptive military invasion that killed thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, there was no need to burn books. Neither was there concern over public demonstrations, anti-war rhetoric, acts of sedition, or Americans disrupting Congressional hearings and televised news accounts of the war. In a nation that no longer reads books, there is no need for book burnings. In a society that no longer knows how to think, there is no need for the thought police. In a country that speaks only in euphemisms-words and phrases devoid of any meaning and reality and facts-there is no need to suppress speech. In a state that fences and cordons off areas for protesters, the Gestapo and secret police are not needed. Furthermore, in a society socially engineered to consume manufactured, yet illegal, wars and high-tech atrocities, brutal occupations and collectivized murder becomes entertainment. Reality in an empire, or what appears to be reality dictated through illusions, is much more comfortable and easier to digest and to live with than moral convictions, moral courage, and moral outrage.

This is exactly the kind of totalitarian society and state George Orwell warned and wrote about in his book: "1984." It also appears to be what is now occurring in Iraq. Recently, and similar to America's Orwellian State, when thousands of protesters in Iraq demonstrated and demanded the same reforms that other Arab nations were experiencing, Iraq's government declared there would be no more demonstrations, except, of course, in certain "assembly zones" surrounded by fences. Several days later, Iraq's government announced a total ban on protests in the capital city of Baghdad, claiming that it was hurting street vendors businesses. These were the same common tactics used by both Republican and Democratic Parties in the United States to suppress free speech and the right to assemble at their meetings, rallies and conventions. The reason is always for "security purposes." Other protests in Iraq, including many against U.S. occupation troops, have either been denied because of no "legal" marching permits and strict curfews, or spatially limited due to Iraqi security forces. These same ploys have been used for years to "cage" American protesters and free speech movements.

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

Libyan soldiers near a damaged building at the Bab al-Aziziya
compound in Tripoli. Photograph: Mohamed Messara/EPA

The Obama administration and spokesmen for NATO have publicly defended the targeting of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi through air strikes on his residential compound in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. NATO warplanes struck the residence on Monday and destroyed much of it, but the Libyan leader escaped the assassination attempt unhurt.

F-16 fighter-bombers operated by Norway carried out the attack. NATO said later that one of its F-16 jets had crash-landed at the Sigonella airbase in western Sicily after a mission over Tripoli. It was not clear whether this was one of the warplanes that bombed the Bab-al-Aziziyah compound where Gaddafi and his family live.

A Libyan government spokesman, Moussa Ibraham, denounced the air strike. “We are regarding it as an attempt to assassinate the leader and unifying figure of this country and other political leaders of this country,” he said at a news conference in front of the destroyed buildings, calling it an act “worthy of the mafia, of gangs, but not of governments.”

He asked, “How is this act of terrorism protecting civilians in Libya? How is this act of terrorism helping establish peace in Libya? Targeting political leaders will only help make the situation worse.”

The Libyan government also charged that NATO was blockading the port of Tripoli and preventing humanitarian supplies from entering, although a NATO spokesman denied that food, medicine and other relief supplies were being turned away.

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Gareth Porter
Inter Press Service

Not just at the NDS: Body of Agha Mohammad,
who died on a US airbase in Shindand, Afghani-
stan, on December 29, 2008. (HRW)

During 2009, ISAF transferred a total of 350 detainees to NDS

WASHINGTON, Apr 26, 2011 (IPS) - Starting in late 2005, U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan began turning detainees over to the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), despite its well-known reputation for torture.

Interviews with former U.S. and NATO diplomats and other evidence now available show that United States and other NATO governments become complicit in NDS torture of detainees for two distinctly different reasons.

For the European members of NATO - especially the British and Dutch - the political driver was the need to distance themselves from a U.S. detainee policy already tainted by accounts of U.S. torture.

The U.S. and Canada supported such transfers, however, in the belief that NDS interrogators could get better intelligence from the detainees.

The transfers to the NDS were a direct violation of the United Nations Convention against Torture, which forbids the transfer of any person by a State Party to "another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture."

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

It is slightly embarrassing for me to admit that sometime Zionists are actually well ahead of our favorite intellectuals in understanding the depth of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It is not that they are more clever, they are just free to explore the conflict without being subject to the tyranny of ‘political correctness’. Also being proud nationalist Jews, they do not need the approval of the Jewish left thought police.

I have recently come across a short Haaretz article by Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua*.

Yehoshua is a proud Zionist. He believes in the right of his people to dwell on Palestinian land. He is also convinced that the Jewish state is the true meaning of contemporary Jewish life. I guess that Yehoshua loves himself almost as much as I despise everything he stands for and yet, I have to confess, he seems to grasp the depth of the Israeli Palestinian conflict’s parameters slightly better than most solidarity activists I can think of.

In his Haaretz article, Yehoshua stressed that Zionism was “something original and one of its kind in human history - a people arrived at the homeland of another people, attempting to replace [their] old identity with a new/old identity”. Yehoshua also counters the faulty colonial paradigm and practically repeats my own theses almost word by word. “There was also no (Zionist) attempt to impose a colonial regime, since the Jews had no (mother) state that could have sent them to perform a colonial conquests like in the case of England or France.”

Yehoshua, is certainly correct here, as much as some amongst us are [inclined] to argue that Zionism is a ‘colonial project’ and [that] Israel is a ‘settler State’, such a position has no ground and cannot be supported factually or historically.[1] The Colonial paradigm is simply a fantasy that is clumsily imposed on our discourse in a desperate attempt to make the Israeli/Palestinian conflict meaningful within a decaying Marxist discourse.

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Stephen Lendman

Ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees (from left, in back) Ablikin
Turahun, Salahidin… (Bates for NYDailyNewscom)

Post-9/11, The New York Times became the leading misreporting source about Guantanamo detainees, largely characterizing them as dangerous terrorists threatening US security.

For example, on July 25, 2007, (like its many other reports) William Glaberson headlined, "New US study calls Guantanamo captives dangerous," saying:

A new Pentagon study "argues that large numbers of detainees were a direct threat to United States forces, including Al Qaeda fighters, terrorism-training camp veterans and men who had experience with explosives, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades."

"It paints a chilling portrait of the Guantanamo detainees, (saying) 95 percent were at the least a 'potential threat,' including detainees who had played a supporting role in terrorist groups or had expressed a commitment to pursuing violent jihadist goals."

More on The Times' reassessment below.

Under Professor Mark Denbeaux's direction, Seton Hall University School of Law's Center for Policy & Research (CP&R) published 17 "GTMO Reports," including profiles of detainees held, allegations against them, and discrepancies in government (and media) accounts, characterizing innocent men as dangerous.

An earlier report analyzed unclassified government data (obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests) based on evidentiary summaries of 2004 military hearings on whether 517 detainees held at the time were "enemy combatants."

Most were non-belligerents. In fact, a shocking 95% were seized randomly by bounty hunters, then sold to US forces for $5,000 per claimed Taliban and $25,000 for supposed Al Qaeda members. At least 20 were children, some as young as 13.

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Sergey Pravosudov
War among World Centers

Why is the United States waging war in the oil-rich regions of Middle East and Northern Africa if it inevitably causes the high oil prices? We have to keep in mind that North America has tremendous deposits of so-called «heavy oil» (oil-bearing sands). Their development might be profitable only in case of high oil prices — no less than $100 per barrel.

High oil prices have recently become word of the day. Economists are arguing about how long this trend will last and whether it will cause another world crisis. When the USA along with their NATO allies started the military operation in Libya, numerous observers were perplexed, as long as Americans have already waged two wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan) at the moment. Let me remind you that Barack Obama has won the elections with his promises to renounce bellicose Bushesque policy and withdraw the troops (at least from Iraq). The situation was aggravated by the fact that U.S. debt has already exceeded $14 trillion and it keeps growing. There’s nothing surprising in that — war is a costly leisure.

In fact the situation can be explained quite simply. Instead of cutting their defense budget after the Cold War, the US has increased it furthermore. Today Americans spend more money on their military industry than the rest of the world combined. And if bombs and missile are produced, they should explode somewhere (otherwise, they will just cram the warehouses). At that, the USA have moved major parts of civilian production capacities to the Asian countries with cheaper labor force (China first of all). This allowed to drastically increase net incomes of share-holders and top managers of American corporations.

As a result, we’re having a situation when the military-industrial complex has a major share in American production sector and any attempts to reduce the defense budget face fierce counter-action of lobbyists, frightening authorities with the vanishing jobs. Corporate tycoons are unable to move the war industry abroad (due to possible leaks of military secrets) and are unwilling to do so — after all, they still have the substantial profits from selling the weapons to the state.

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Peter Schwarz
WSWS

On January 1, Hungary took over the presidency of the European Union for six months.

On the same day, a new law came into force in Hungary placing the public and private media under the control of the government and virtually eliminating freedom of the press. The coincidence of these two events is significant. Freedom of expression and democracy in general are disintegrating throughout Europe.

The right-wing Hungarian government has lost no time in demonstrating its power over the media. No sooner had the law come into effect than the newly created Media Council launched proceedings against the small, left-liberal broadcaster Tilos Radio. It was charged with having aired a song by rapper Ice-T four months ago. Since very few Hungarians would understand the rapper’s American slang, the Media Council simultaneously published a Hungarian translation of the disputed text in order to demonstrate its allegedly harmful effect on children.

The next to be targeted by the Media Council was the TV channel RTL Klub. This broadcaster is also regarded as relatively liberal and critical of the government. It has been accused of “sensationalism” in its reporting of the “brutal murder of one brother by another in a southern Hungarian village.” The photo it published of a bloodstained mattress was said to be “damaging to young people and even adults.”

Both cases demonstrate that the new law gives the government a blank check to silence media outlets on the basis of virtually any pretext. While the Media Council makes moral accusations such as “glorifying violence,” “placing youth at risk” and “pornography” in order to take action against targeted media outlets, the pro-government broadcasters, which poison the social atmosphere daily with hateful tirades against Roma, Jews, homosexuals and “communists,” need not fear sanctions.

Thus far, no penalties have been imposed on Tilos Radio or RTL Klub, but the Media Council has the power to revoke their licences or bankrupt them by levying draconian fines. The Council consists solely of members of the ruling party, Fidesz. At its head is Anna Maria Szalai, a long-standing confidante of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The European Commission, responsible for ensuring compliance with EU treaties, has so far reacted timidly to the trashing of press freedom in Hungary, although there have been disputes over the new media law for months, and even within the EU some isolated critical voices have been heard.

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Stephen Lendman

On April 23, a New York Times editorial headlined, "Quick Help for the Gulf," mocking grave environmental damage as well as affected communities and residents in typical Times cavalier fashion, saying:

BP's April 21 announced "$1 billion down payment on its obligation to restore the Gulf of Mexico to good health is such welcome news that it seems almost churlish to offer caveats" or question its motives.

In fact, BP committed America's greatest ever environmental crime, destroying the entire Gulf, as well as the welfare, livelihoods, health and futures of millions of coastal residents, a disaster perhaps no amount of money can restore, but don't expect BP even to try.

However, saying "(l)ong-term restoration is a goal we have backed ever since Hurricane Katrina," The Times dismissively suggested $1 billion "is enough for now just to get started." In fact, it's inconsequential pocket change for the incalculable human, economic and environmental toll. But don't expect Times editors to explain.

Others do, however, including Dahr Jamail, detailing Gulf "toxicity, suffering and death" on April 16, and on April 20, its "criminal negligence," discussing mounting lawsuits for what BP won't pay.

Ryan Lambert is one of many affected. Jamail quoted him saying:

"I'm seeing people starving to death and BP won't pay them....They know what they did is wrong and they still won't pay me (or most others). I'm done playing their games. All they are doing is starving people out and trying to get them to take (pocket change settlements to) give up their right to sue. I know thousands of people in the fishing industry, and I don't know one person who has been made whole yet."

In previous articles, Jamail covered similar ground, highlighting the plight of Gulf residents stonewalled by BP and Kenneth Feinberg's firm, paid nearly $1 million a month to administer compensation by denying it, a dirty expertise he developed years ago handling previous settlement cases.

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

A detainee peers through a plastic window in Camp Iguana detention
facility on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Wednesday,
Nov. 19, 2008. (AP/Brennan Linsley)

A new trove of documents released Sunday night by WikiLeaks profiles more than 700 prisoners who passed through the Guantanamo Bay detention camp between 2002 and 2009. The documents demonstrate that, even in the eyes of the US military/intelligence apparatus, there was no evidence connecting the vast majority of the prisoners to any form of terrorism, let alone terrorist threats against the United States and US citizens.

The documents consist largely of Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs), short summaries of the alleged evidence against individual detainees, as well as accounts of their physical and mental health, how they came into US custody, their value as intelligence sources and their eventual disposition, if any. Along with the DABs on 704 prisoners—out of 779 men believed to have been imprisoned at Guantanamo for any length of time—there are documents providing guidelines for interrogators and other procedures at the US-run prison camp in Cuba.

The documents require careful review, but certain preliminary conclusions can be drawn immediately from the digests which have appeared in a dozen newspapers and magazines, some of which are collaborating with WikiLeaks and others which are openly hostile to the whistle-blower web site. There is also a useful summary posted on WikiLeaks itself (http://wikileaks.ch/gitmo/).

Few of the DABs contain any detail on the interrogation techniques practiced by US torturers at CIA “black prisons,” before the victims arrived at Guantanamo, or at Guantanamo itself. But there are several references to torture, without using that word, perpetrated by US allies on a contract basis. Thus, Australian prisoner Mamdouh Habib is described as having undergone “severe duress” at an Egyptian prison before he was sent to Guantanamo. During those interrogations, he made the absurd claim to having personally trained in martial arts six of the 19 terrorists who perpetrated the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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Ed Hightower
WSWS

US State Department human rights reports

The US State Department recently released its “2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.” This year’s annual report provides details on human rights conditions in over 190 countries. Included are reports on the member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which represents the US-backed monarchies of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait.

This Saudi-dominated alliance backed the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya, and has provided key support for the attack on Libya by the United States and European powers. The GCC has also provided military and police personnel to put down insurrections against the repressive regimes in Bahrain and Yemen.

While the US seeks to cloak its imperialist assault on Libya in “humanitarian” terms, its allies in the GCC are guilty of widespread violations of human rights and practice repression and torture in their own countries. This WSWS series examines these human rights abuses as documented in the State Department reports. This installment covers Bahrain. For our report on Saudi Arabia, click here; for Qatar click here.

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Nil Nikandrov
Strategic Culture Foundation

"It is an established pattern that political murders become widespread wherever the US “helps restore democracy”."

President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya was displaced slightly over a year ago in a coup staged by the local oligarchy and the US intelligence community. The coup came as a punishment for Zelaya’s alignment with H. Chavez and other populist Latin American leaders. Since the time, the news flow from Honduras abounds with stories of political assassinations, the victims being activists of trade unions, peasant and student organizations, and the National Popular Resistance Front opposing the pro-US regime of Porfirio Lobo. Ten journalists who expressed support for the ousted Honduran president have been killed this year alone.

The most recent case of the type was the murder of Israel Zelaya, 56, who was kidnapped by an armed group which easily crossed by car numerous police checkpoints set up as a part of the security-tightening campaign. The journalist was taken to a secluded location, tortured, and shot two times in the head and once – in the chest.

Dozens of similar incidents show that a program of ”political cleansing” is underway in Honduras. Killers selectively target potential leaders capable of galvanizing protesters. Peasant leader Maria Teresa Flores, 50, was the coordinator of the Council of Peasant Organizations of Honduras and a proponent of an agrarian reform including the abolition of latifundias and the establishment of rural cooperatives. She was kidnapped, and a week later her bullet-ridden body with numerous traces of machete strikes and one hand cut off was found by the roadside in the Comayagua department.

Only a fraction of the cases of political assassinations in Honduras become widely known. The operations are carried out in secrecy by specially trained and lavishly paid death squads staffed by police agents, bandits, and professional killers of Honduran origin or brought in from Columbia. These days, mass graves of opponents of the current regime are discovered in Honduras increasingly often. It is an established pattern that political murders become widespread wherever the US “helps restore democracy”. Berta Oliva, president of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras, told the media a few days ago about the discovery of another mass grave with the bodies of over 100 people reported missing in June-August, that is, after the coup that propelled P. Lobo to power.

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Vera Macht
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

You are missed with such an intensity that makes you even more present. In all of our minds, in all of our hearts. It's your absence that makes your strength, your kindness and your impressive dedication to people and to humanity so incredibly present.

You are missed as a symbol of the struggle for justice, and for the value of each individual, the value of especially those people who seem to have been forgotten.

You are missed in this world. Vik, I miss you in my world. I miss you as my best friend, as the one who was always there in the last year, in good and bad times. You once told me I should smile, because my smile would light you. But Vik, it was you who made me laugh. Not only by your great sense of humor, but through your unique way to make the world around you a little brighter, just by being there. Everybody who knew you knows that, even those who met you even just once.

You cast a spell on people, through your charisma, through your personality, through your warmth. The world has become a bit darker without you, and it is also my own little world that has become a bit darker through your absence.

And Gaza of course, which I can’t imagine without you, probably no one here can imagine it without you yet. Your Arabic vocabulary of: Mushkile? Leeesh? Mish Mushkile! Yallah! was completely enough to brighten up the people around you, and to make everyone in Gaza your rafiq and your rafiqa.

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Theodore Dalrymple
City Journal

The British, never fond of children, have lost all knowledge or intuition about how to raise them; as a consequence, they now fear them, perhaps the most terrible augury possible for a society.

Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report. Ordinarily, I would not set much store by such a report; but in this case, I think it must be right—not because I know so much about childhood in all the other 20 countries examined but because the childhood that many British parents give to their offspring is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at least on a mass scale. The two poles of contemporary British child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.

Consider one British parent, Fiona MacKeown, who in November 2007 went on a six-month vacation to Goa, India, with her boyfriend and eight of her nine children by five different fathers, none of whom ever contributed financially for long to the children’s upkeep. (The child left behind—her eldest, at 19—was a drug addict.) She received $50,000 in welfare benefits a year, and doubtless decided—quite rationally, under the circumstances—that the money would go further, and that life would thus be more agreeable, in Goa than in her native Devon.

Reaching Goa, MacKeown soon decided to travel with seven of her children to Kerala, leaving behind one of them, 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, to live with a tour guide ten years her elder, whom the mother had known for only a short time. Scarlett reportedly claimed to have had sex with this man only because she needed a roof over her head. According to a witness, she was constantly on drugs; and one night, she went to a bar where she drank a lot and took several different illicit drugs, including LSD, cocaine, and pot. She was seen leaving the bar late, almost certainly intoxicated.

The next morning, her body turned up on a beach. At first, the local police maintained that she had drowned while high, but further examination proved that someone had raped and then forcibly drowned her. So far, three people have been arrested in the investigation, which is continuing.

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David Kerans
Strategic Culture Foundation

As we discussed in our previous piece, the authoritarian revolution of the US right that has generated so much tumult in various state capitals over the last two months is more than a struggle over economic spoils. Money is at stake, to be sure, in the form of tax policies, pay packages for public sector workers, andproposed cuts to public services. But the key catalysts for mass street demonstrations and the wider mobilization of progressive sentiment in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and elsewhere have been the attempts to strip collective bargaining rights from unions representing public-sector employees. Clearly, the right has in mind to skew the balance of power in society even further towards capital. As we explained, the intended neutering of public-sector unions will hamstring Democratic party mobilizations and fund-raising for the foreseeable future. Beyond that, it will muzzle some of civil society's most important defenders against large corporations' influence over government. In short, once public-sector unions are demoralized, the Republican party will be free to shape the framework of economic relations even more decisively in favor of their large corporate donors.

Although mass media coverage of the authoritarian revolution has not emphasized the above-mentioned dimensions of the struggle, it has at least deigned to acknowledge them. A broadening portion of the adult population, perhaps even a majority, has by now been exposed to the interpretation of the Republican party as brazenly doing the bidding of the extremely wealthy to strip as much power as possible from the working and middle-classes of the country. Other important dimensions of the authoritarian revolution are going almost undiscussed, however. Here we have in mind assaults on women's reproductive rights, on voting rights, on civil rights, and on the integrity of the judiciary itself. Understanding these features of the current right wing aggression will give us a clearer idea of where the US might be headed in the near future.

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Stephen Lendman

Based on its recent Libyan and Gulf states reporting (or lack thereof), Qatar-based Al Jazeera's credibility appears extremely compromised.

A previous article said the following:

Overall, its Libya misreporting has been deceitful, functioning more as a propaganda arm for Washington, NATO and insurgents, indistinguishable from US and other western media, representing imperial conquest, colonization, and pillaging of another non-belligerent country.

In late March, moreover, Front Page writer Mohammed al-Kibsi accused Al Jazeera of airing old Iraqi prisoner abuse video, broadcast by Al-Arabiya in 2007, in fabricating news about Yemen.

Yet it was aired repeatedly, claiming it showed Yemeni Central Security forces torturing protesters. Later admitting its mistake, Al Jazeera blamed a technical error and apologized, too late to undue the damage to those blamed and its own reputation, badly tarnished by frequent misreporting on the region, despite earlier worthy efforts that built its standing as a reliable broadcaster. That now is very much in question.

California State University Professor As'ad AbuKhalil runs the Angry Arab News Service, accessed through this link.

His recent comments on Al Jazeera's Libya coverage include:

April 20: "According to Al Jazeera's legal opinion," UN Resolution 1973 permits use of nuclear weapons.

America, in fact, has an arsenal of so-called deep-penetrating mini-nuke buster busters, able to destroy underground targets with varying yields from one to 1,000 kilotons. Hiroshima's bomb was about 15 KT, Nagasaki's about 21 KT.

Since the Bush administration's 2001 Nuclear Policy Review, Washington claimed a unilateral right to use first-strike nuclear weapons preemptively, including against non-nuclear states under three conditions:

● against targets able to withstand non-nuclear weapons;
● in retaliation against nuclear, biological or chemical WMDs; or
● against any perceived real or contrived national security threat.

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Andrew Gavin Marshall
Global Research

The Century of Social Engineering
Part 1

Introduction

In Part 1 of this series, “The Century of Social Engineering,” I briefly document the economic, political and social background to the 20th century in America, by taking a brief look at the major social upheavals of the 19th century. For an excellent and detailed examination of this history, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (which provided much of the research for this article) is perhaps the most expansive and detailed examination. I am not attempting to serve it justice here, as there is much left out of this historically examination than there is included. The purpose of this essay is to examine first of all the rise of class and labour struggle throughout the United States in the 19th century, the rise and dominance of the ‘Robber Baron’ industrialists like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, their convergence of interests with the state, and finally to examine the radical new philosophies and theories that arose within the radicalized and activated populations, such as Marxism and Anarchism. I do not attempt to provide exhaustive or comprehensive analyses of these theoretical and philosophical movements, but rather provide a brief glimpse to some of the ideas (particularly those of anarchism), and place them in the historical context of the mass struggles of the 19th century.

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Walter Starck
Quadrant Online

A combination photo shows Australia's Prime Minister
Julia Gillard (L) and the leader of the opposition Tony
Abbott during a pre-election televised debate at the
National Press Club in Canberra July 25, 2010. (Photo:
Reuters / Andrew Meares/Pool)

Julia Gillard’s promise of no carbon tax under her government was not just an extemporaneous comment or even an expression of intent which was subordinated by subsequent events. It was a considered statement of policy, unequivocal and repeated.

The only relevant changes in circumstances have been an ongoing weakening of the political, economic and scientific support for any urgent necessity to impose costly measures to curtail use of fossil fuels.

At the time of the last election polls clearly indicated that a majority of the electorate were opposed to a carbon tax and that majority has only increased since then. Gillard’s promise of no carbon tax effectively removed this issue from the election debate. Without this promise it seems certain that the close balance of votes would have favoured the opposition. The attempt to now impose a carbon tax makes it difficult to perceive the promise of no tax as other than a deliberate lie calculated to deceive voters.

This situation clearly constitutes an electoral fraud. It was both a fraud against voters and a defrauding of the Commonwealth government of some millions of dollars in salary, pension and benefits thus falsely obtained. While it is reasonable that politicians be extended some latitude in stating intentions, there is no reason in law or natural justice that they should be exempt from clear and deliberate violations of the statutes prohibiting fraud.

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Keith Jones
WSWS

Pakistani protesters belonging to United Citizen Action shout anti-
US slogans during a protest in Multan on April 22, 2011 against the
US drone attacks in Pakistani tribal areas. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

A US predator drone strike killed 25 people in the village of Spinwam in North Waziristan yesterday. According to a Pakistani government official, the dead included at least five children and four women.

In response to mounting public outrage, Pakistan’s government has repeatedly denounced the US drone strikes in recent months, calling them “unhelpful” and urging that they be discontinued or at least massively scaled back. But the Obama administration and the Pentagon have brushed these complaints aside, publicly insisted that the missile strikes are a pivotal part of the AfPak War, and continued to mount such strikes at a rate of well over one per week.

While Washington postures as the foremost proponent of international law, it claims the right to violate Pakistani sovereignty at will, so as to carry out summary executions with callous disregard for civilian life.

Yesterday’s missile strike came on the eve of a two-day mass sit-in against the drone attacks that its organizers claim will mobilize hundreds of thousands of people. Protesters—including persons who have been displaced by the drone strikes and the counterinsurgency war that the Pakistani military has mounted against anti-US militias in the tribal areas of Pakistan’s majority-Pashtun northwest— are to take to the streets of Peshawar, with the stated aimed of disrupting NATO shipments to Afghanistan.

Claiming it fears violence, Pakistan’s government has announced that the US-NATO supply shipments will be suspended for the duration of the protest

The capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkwa (the former North West Frontier Provinces), Peshawar serves as the administrative center for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)—the site of virtually all the US drone attacks.

Peshawar is also the gateway to the Khyber Pass, a vital supply line for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. While the US has gone to great lengths in recent years to develop alternate supply routes, the bulk of the food and fuel that supports the almost 150,000 US-NATO forces in Afghanistan still goes through Pakistan.

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Jeffrey Smith
Institute for Responsible Technology

A new paper shows that consuming genetically modified (GM) corn or soybeans leads to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice, particularly in livers and kidneys. By reviewing data from 19 animal studies, Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini and others reveal that 9% of the measured parameters, including blood and urine biochemistry, organ weights, and microscopic analyses (histopathology), were significantly disrupted in the GM-fed animals. The kidneys of males fared the worst, with 43.5% of all the changes. The liver of females followed, with 30.8%. The report, published in Environmental Sciences Europe on March 1, 2011, confirms that “several convergent data appear to indicate liver and kidney problems as end points of GMO diet effects.” The authors point out that livers and kidneys “are the major reactive organs” in cases of chronic food toxicity.

“Other organs may be affected too, such as the heart and spleen, or blood cells,” stated the paper. In fact some of the animals fed genetically modified organisms had altered body weights in at least one gender, which is “a very good predictor of side effects in various organs.”

The GM soybean and corn varieties used in the feeding trials “constitute 83% of the commercialized GMOs” that are currently consumed by billions of people. While the findings may have serious ramifications for the human population, the authors demonstrate how a multitude of GMO-related health problems could easily pass undetected through the superficial and largely incompetent safety assessments that are used around the world.

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Stephen Lendman

As best we know it, the shocking truth is that preventable disasters keep proliferating life destroying contamination globally. Yet news about them is suppressed, so few people everywhere are unaware how calamitously they're being harmed.

As a result, distinguished environmental researcher, Dr. Ilya Perlingieri, now warns to stay out of rain because it's likely radioactive. So is drinking water, food and air with unknown levels because governments like America and Japan won't say.

However, Norwegian Institute for Air Research static and dynamic maps show radiation contamination across the Northern Hemisphere with estimates of potential releases, increasing daily. Access them through this link. Also, Radiation Network.com gives levels across America, accessed through this link.

Minimally, the danger is extreme and worsening as Fukushima releases are expected to continue for months, perhaps years.

Reporting what little is known about Japan, Kyodo News headlined an April 21 article, "Radioactive leaks into sea were 20,000 times above limit: TEPCO," saying:

In early April, "an estimated 5,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances," amounting to 520 tons were released over a six-day period alone. However, leakage began on March 11 and continues daily in unreported amounts. One terabecquerel = one trillion becquerels. Already, contamination levels are disastrous.

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Stephen Lendman

In her book, "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law," Marjorie Cohn quoted a former CIA agent saying:

"If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear....you send them to Egypt."

In fact, Egypt under Mubarak and current military leadership is proficient in all of the above. These practices go on daily but unmentioned in US media reports, claiming September elections promise democracy, when, in fact, everything changed but stayed the same.

Each year, the State Department publishes human rights reports on over 190 countries. Its complete one on Egypt can be accessed through this link.

It bears repeating that practices under Mubarak continue, including harsh crackdowns, mass arrests and torture of protesters and others challenging regime authority. Emerging democracy in Egypt is nowhere in sight - never, in fact, as long as its military has dominant power, with or without the facade of elected civilians.

That said, the State Department's report covered disturbing human rights violations, explaining them by category.

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Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

William Norman Grigg is an author and journalist of Mexican and Irish descent. He was born on February 4, 1963 in Idaho. He was a senior editor of "The New American" magazine and has authored several books from a Constitutionalist perspective. Grigg graduated from Utah State University in political science. He was a "Provo Daily Herald" columnist for a while and also covered the United Nations summits and conferences from 1994 to 2001 for the John Birch Society's official biweekly magazine.

Grigg is also a studio musician and served as lead guitarist in the Wisconsin band "Slick Willie and the Calzones" until his 2005 move to Idaho.
Grigg has interviewed prominent world leaders, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. His investigations of terrorism and international organized crime included interviews with high-ranking officials of the Chinese Communist Party, former operatives of the Soviet KGB, and - long before the group was thrust into the spotlight during the 2008 presidential election - leaders of the New Black Panther Party.

Will writes and publishes the Pro Libertate blog, and is a frequent contributor to LewRockwell.com, the most widely read freedom-oriented website in the world. He also produces the "Liberty Minute," a one-minute syndicated radio commentary archived at www.prolibertate.us.

Grigg has published several books of which we can name " The Gospel of Revolt: Feminism Vs. the Family" by Northwest Publishing Inc. and "Liberty In Eclipse: The Rise of the Homeland Security State" by Welch Foundation.

William Norman Grigg joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss with me the latest developments in the Middle East, the prospect of Egyptian revolution, the massacre of peace activists and pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt and the blurred destiny of Libyan civil war.

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William A. Cook
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

“Hell is where many false commitments must be unlearned.” ~ Ricardo J. Quinones, "Dante Alighieri"

Richard Goldstone’s journey from Justice to Sinner represents the spiritual act of dying in the Zionist world. By recanting his own report he has attempted to break the bonds that cast him into the sufferings in Caina, Antenora, and Judecca where, in Dante’s Inferno, those treacherous to their own, are removed from the light and warmth of their kin, their country, and their masters and suffer eternal damnation in the remorseless dead center of the ice in the most bottomless circle of Hell. Fortunately, Goldstone like Dante can learn that he has, in his journey, aligned himself with many false gods and many false attachments ignoring on the way the elementary truths that bind humankind ineluctably in one race in a bond of human grace.

The Zionist world needs no Hell since it heeds no conscience. It exists on one foundation, a solid block of ice that freezes the soul of all who bear allegiance to its creed of absolute obedience, an ancient form of tribal slavery bound by fear that shackles the soul, by isolation that instills despair, by humiliation that corrodes self, and by victimhood that bonds the tribe in self-perpetuating agony. It is in this sense Medieval, a remnant of the inquisitorial mind that harbored no dissent, gave no credence to personal freedom, and obligated all to one monolithic understanding of commitment to the powers that control.

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Stephen Lendman

"It's "back in business....Benghazi to Malta was the route the human trafficking racket (took) between North Africa and Europe," exploiting millions of refugees in countries like Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya and others."

Escalated intervention keeps incrementally building toward sending combat troops against Gaddafi, French and UK leaders signaling what may, in fact, have been planned all along, perhaps including US marines. More on that below.

On April 16, New York Times writer Rod Nordland admitted what's already known headlining, "Libyan Rebels Say They're Being Sent Weapons," saying:

Interviewed by Al Arabiya on Saturday, rebel military leader General Abdel Gattah Younas said "his forces had received weapons supplies from unidentified nations that supported their uprising." National Transitional Council spokesman Mustafa Gheriani confirmed it without naming sources thought to be Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and NATO members directly.

Gheriani also said that rebels had "professional training centers," adding:

"We have a lot of people being trained, real professional training, that we don't talk to the world about."

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Nahida Izzat
Exiled Palestinian

Contrary to what the Jewish-Zionist occupiers of Palestine are saying, the “Facts on the Ground” are all but a humanistic achievement. The most visible part of it, the criminal behavior, the sociopathic cruelty and violence, is there for everyone to see. This however stems from a total absence of empathy and compassion. This absence is what these sadistic occupiers of Palestine in fact do give evidence of.

Were it not for the deception, hypocrisy, lies and trickery, their crimes would appear for what they are: Monstrous, and belonging to the dark ages.

The victims of these barbarians ought to be vigilant, more than ever, because the aims now are more obvious than before: annihilation of the Palestinians, destruction and rewriting of the history of the Holy Land.

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Agidea Prata [Mother of Vittorio Arrigoni]
Desert Peace

“Don’t cry for me if I die, do what I was doing and I will live on in you.” ~ Che Guevara

One has to die to become a hero, to hit the headlines and to have TV crews around the house, but does one have to die to stay human? I recall Vittorio in the Christmas of 2005, detained and incarcerated in the Ben Gurion Airport, the scars left by the handcuffs that cut his wrists, the denial of any contact with the consulate, the farcical process. And I recall Easter that same year, when just across the Allenby Bridge at the Jordanian border the Israeli police blocked his entrance in the country, put him on a bus and, seven against one (one of the seven was a policewoman), they beat him up “with skill”, without leaving any external marks, like the real professionals they are, then hurling him to the ground and throwing at his face, as a last scar to add to the others, the hair they had ripped off him with their machines.

Vittorio was unwanted in Israel. Too subversive, for having joined his friend Gabriele one year earlier and demonstrated along with the women and men of the village of Budrus against the Wall of Shame, teaching them the lyrics and singing together our most beautiful partisan song ‘O bella ciao, ciao…’. (see below)

Back then no TV crew came by, not even when in the Fall of 2008 a commando attacked in Palestinian waters off Rafah the fishing boat he had boarded. Vittorio was incarcerated in Ramle and soon after sent back home with nothing but the clothes on his body. Nevertheless, I cannot but be thankful to the press and television that have approached us with composure, that have ‘besieged’ our home with restraint, without excesses and that have given me the chance to talk about Vittorio and about his ideals and the choices he made.

This lost child of mine is more alive than ever before, like the grain that has fallen to the ground and died to bring forth a plentiful harvest. I see it and hear it already in the words of his friends, above all the younger among them, some closer, some from afar. Through Vittorio, they have known and understood, and now even more, how one can give ‘Utopia’ a meaning, like the thirst for justice and peace, how fraternity and solidarity still stand and how, as Vittorio used to say, ‘Palestine can also be found at your doorsteps’. We were a long way from Vittorio, but now we are closer than ever, with his living presence magnified at every passing hour, like a wind from Gaza, from his beloved Mediterranean, blowing fierily to deliver the message of his hope and of his love for those without a voice, for the weak and the oppressed, passing the baton.

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article discussed the dirty game, accessed through this link.

It explained bipartisan support for incrementally ending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, no matter that:

● Medicaid provides essential healthcare for low-income beneficiaries, jointly funded by the states and Washington, managed at the state level.

● In contrast, Social Security and Medicare are insurance programs, funded by worker-employer payroll tax deductions. They're contractual federal obligations to eligible recipients who qualify.

However, you'd never know it the way both programs are publicly discussed, explaining everything but the truth, including about S & P conspiring with Washington and Wall Street to end them as they're now structured to create greater profit opportunities for financial vultures, while, at the same time, shutting out growing millions losing what they can't afford.

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Daniel Saarinen
Strategic Culture Foundation

Introduction

The world economic depression is a dire threat to the national security of the United States. To date, little or nothing has been done to address the causes of the depression and rebuild the economy. With the lack of leadership and vision in the western world, the depression will continue until the Anglo-American economic system known as the Washington Consensus self-destructs. This is occurring rapidly, and the Beijing Consensus is being asserted to replace it. At some point during this process the center of world politics, economics and military power will shift to North East Asia. This shift will not happen peacefully, and system wide warfare is the likely outcome if this breakdown crisis is allowed to run its course.

Let us be clear that we are in a depression on par with the Great Depression, not a downturn, a slowdown, a rough patch or a recession. Housing values have already fallen on average 26%, and during the Great Depression they fell 25.9% (1). We are not at the bottom for real estate by any means either. Unemployment the way it was measured back then was at least 24.9% (2). Today by those measures it stands at about 23% (3). Let there be no mistake, we are in an extreme crisis. The purpose of this passage is to emphasize the magnitude of the crisis. Calling it by other names and creating a false propaganda reality will only delay the actions needed to combat the depression. The longer our leaders delude themselves, the more severe the crisis will become.

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Pyotr Iskenderov
Strategic Culture Foundation

The parliamentary elections, held in Finland on April 17, were marked by an unprecedented success of the True Finns, which is regarded as a nationalist party.According to the preliminary results, the True Finns have received 19% of votes and increased their representation at the parliament to 39 from only 5 seats in comparison with 2007. Considering that, the right wing conservative National Coalition, which won the elections, received slightly more than 20% and the Social Democrats of the current president Tarja Halonen was ahead of the True Finns by only 0.1% we can say that the party of the charismatic Timo Soini is one of the three leading political parties in Finland.

The discussion on the formation of the ruling coalition, in which the True Finns are going to play a significant role, may last for several weeks. But it is already clear that this party, which protects the national values and opposes the uncontrolled flow of refugees and illegal immigrants, the single European currency and the bureaucracy of the EU, is enjoying a growing support in Finland.

The positions of other leading parties (including the Centre Party of the former Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi) have weakened – they have lost from 3 to 16% of votes. "This is a big, big bang in Finnish politics. This is a big, big change. This will change the content of Finnish politics." Jan Sundberg, professor with University of Helsinki says.

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Stephen Lendman

In his powerful 2006 book titled, "The Power of Israel in the United States," James Petras explained the enormous Jewish Lobby influence on US Middle East policies. Often harming American interests, they're pursued anyway because of its grassroots and high-level control over government, business leaders, academia, the clergy and mass media since at least the 1960s.

As a result, anyone challenging Israeli policy risks being intimidated, blackmailed, smeared, pressured, removed from positions of authority, or called a national security or terrorist threat, leaving them vulnerable to unprincipled ostracization, persecution or worse.

Among America's 52 Conference of Major American Jewish Organization(s) (CPMAJO), the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is the oldest, founded in 1897.

Established by B'nai Brith in 1913, perhaps the Anti-Definition League is best known.

However, in terms of its influence over US Middle East policies, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) stands out. Calling itself "America's Pro-Israel Lobby," it's represented Israeli interests since founded in 1953, then incorporated in 1963 as a division of the American Zionist Council (AZC), its precursor.

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Stephen Lendman

On April 15, International Solidarity Movement (ISM) members grieved for one of their own, their press release headlining, "Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank unite in mourning of slain activist Vittorio Arrigoni," saying:

"People will gather in Al Manara square in Ramallah and at Al Jundi al Majhull, (Gaza's) unknown soldier park," honoring the death of their comrade, slain and abandoned in a house north of Gaza. More on his death below.

Other events took place throughout Palestine, including protests following Friday's prayers across from the UN's Gaza headquarters. Bil'in and Al Masara also dedicated their weekly demonstrations to Vittorio, Vic to his friends.

On Saturday, the Popular Committee in Nablus held a commemoration with political parties in Nablus center, celebrating his work and condemning his killing.

ISM explained his activism for Palestinian liberation and justice for almost 10 years, including the past two and a half years in Gaza with ISM:

● monitoring Israeli human rights violations;
● supporting Palestinian resistance against occupation, and siege; and
● daily violations of international law and democratic values.

Moreover, as a journalist, he wrote for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto and Peacereporter, providing information about Gaza to a worldwide audience. The next Freedom Flotilla was renamed "Stay Human," honoring him and his book titled, "Gaza Stay Human."

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Steve James
WSWS

[In this photo taken Saturday April 2, 2011 one of three Swedish Air Force JAS 39 Gripen fighter aircraft takes off from the Blekinge Wing F17, based in Kallinge southern Sweden for a base in Sardinia to join the Nato-led operation in Libya. Swedish fighter jets are roaring into action over Libya under NATO command. (AP Photo/Scanpix/Patric Soderström )]

Eight Swedish SAAB JAS 39 Gripen fighter aircraft joined the NATO operation against Libyan government forces last week.

Based in Sicily and backed up with a transport aircraft and 130 support staff, it is the Swedish Air Force’s first airborne combat operation since 1963. The deployment follows the Swedish government’s decision in March to freeze €1 billion of Libyan assets and its refusal to recognise the Libyan embassy.

The Swedish military contingent will not be dropping its own bombs. But neighbouring Norway’s six US-made F-16 fighters have dropped laser-guided munitions on Libyan airbases and tanks.

Denmark has also sent six F-16s, which were involved in bombing raids from March 21 onwards. Finland has not sent any forces to date, but fully supports the NATO operation.

Cross party support was given to the operations in all the participating countries. Along with flight and transit rights offered to the operation from traditionally “neutral” Switzerland, Austria and Ireland, the assault on Libya has brought to the surface a universal embrace of imperialist militarism by the smaller governments of Europe. All view support for NATO’s attack on Libya as vital to secure their own international business and energy interests and to divert from social tensions at home.

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Stefan Steinberg
WSWS

L-R: Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron

In an open letter issued printed simultaneously in the Washington Post, the Times of London and Le Figaro, the Obama administration, together with the heads of government in France and Great Britain, openly acknowledged that the purpose of the NATO bombing of Libya was regime change, i.e., the forcible expulsion of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from power.

On March 28, Obama made a speech in Washington in which he denied that the aim of the current NATO war against Libya was regime change. Obama was subsequently criticized for his remarks by John McCain and other leading members of the US Senate Armed Services Committee. Obama’s comments at that time were welcomed by supporters of his government at home and abroad, including a layer of former leftists, who have repeatedly sought to justify the savage NATO bombing campaign against Libya as a “humanitarian action.”

Now, in his open letter on Friday, co-signed by the French and British leaders, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, Obama has made his most explicit call for the overthrow of Gaddafi.

The three leaders write that the world would have committed an “unconscionable betrayal” if the Libyan leader is left in government. If Gaddafi is left in place, they continue, then Libya risks becoming a failed state.

The letter also indicates that the US and its closest Western allies in the Libyan campaign are digging in for a prolonged war.

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article headlined, "Arab Spring Yet to Bloom," explaining that despite months of heroic Middle East/North African uprisings in over a dozen countries from Morocco to Syria to Oman, none so far achieved change. It suggested that months, perhaps years, of sustained struggles lie ahead. Access it in full through this link.

Liberating struggles, in fact, never come easily, quickly, or without pain against entrenched power determined to keep it. However, social movements at times succeed when ordinary people sustain heroic determined efforts. In America, abolitionists, suffragettes, unionists, and civil rights champions proved it against imposing power forced to yield.

In her book, "," Professor Frances Fox Piven said:

"(O)rdinary people (have) power....when they rise up in anger and hope, defy the rules....disrupt (state) institutions....propel new issues to the center of political debate (and force) political leaders (to) stem voter defections by proferring reforms. These are the conditions that produce democratic moments," but never easily, quickly, nor, in reality, long-term.

Electoral participation rarely does it faced with structural, legal and practical challenges, including the corrupting power of money, misinformation, intimidation, and voter fraud. Yet history is dotted with examples of mobilized disruptive power, achieving leverage by breaking down institutionalized cooperation through strikes, boycotts, riots, and other forms of civil disobedience.

In other words, ordinary people have enormous power when used disruptively against systemic structures, dependent on their cooperation. However, it takes much more than protests, marches, slogans, or even violence. In fact, actualizing power depends on effective disobedience, breaking the rules, coordinating efforts for strategic advantage, and staying the course long-term that often means passing the baton to others.

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Nahida Izzat
Uprooted Palestinians

It is perplexing to observe the “soft-zionist” or the upholders of “post-zionism”, the “doves” of the “peace camp”, exerting tremendous effort to "teach" Palestinians the ethics of "non-violent resistance":

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article addressed an independent Palestinian state within 1967 borders, accessed through this link.

It explained a likely September UN vote on recognition, establishing de jure General Assembly membership despite strong Washington and Israeli opposition. The implications are stunning.

Haaretz reported that Netanyahu privately said he doesn't take the possibility "lightly, but we should also not exaggerate its" importance....Perhaps the Palestinians will have a majority in the UN, but what matters is not only the quantity but also the quality," adding "no one can impose a solution on Israel," suggesting non-compliance or hostile action will follow.

According to sources close to his government, he won't negotiate on 1967 borders, but may face the reality of a Palestinian state within them, whether or not he concurs. However, his response is another matter, as well as subsequent international actions.

Also at issue is the power of Washington, supportive Western nations, and Israel to demand subservience from any leader or risk removal by coups, wars, or other means.

Nonetheless, independence establishes important new diplomatic and political dynamics, including the status of Israel's occupation of a sovereign state, possibly incurring international sanctions if not ended, as well as regular cross border Gaza raids and incursions into West Bank and East Jerusalem communities. Also, the confiscation of Palestinian land, persecution of its people, and status of Jews-only settlements in a sovereign country.

These issues indeed can't be taken lightly, no matter the power of Israel and its Washington paymaster/partner, complicit in all its crimes of war, against humanity, and brutal occupation that must end.

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Paul Craig Roberts
Vdare

"It is paradoxical that Washington and its European "partners" are seeking to extend control over foreign lands abroad while immigration transforms their cultures and ethnic compositions at home."

What we are observing in Libya is the rebirth of colonialism. Only this time it is not individual European governments competing for empires and resources. The new colonialism operates under the cover of "the world community," which means NATO and those countries that cooperate with it. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was once a defense alliance against a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Today NATO provides European troops in behalf of American hegemony.

Washington pursues world hegemony under the guises of selective "humanitarian intervention" and "bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed peoples." On an opportunistic basis, Washington targets countries for intervention that are not its "international partners." Caught off guard, perhaps, by popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, there are some indications that Washington responded opportunistically and encouraged the uprising in Libya. Khalifa Hifter, a suspected Libyan CIA asset for the last 20 years, has gone back to Libya to head the rebel army.

Gaddafi got himself targeted by standing up to Western imperialism. He refused to be part of the US Africa Command. Gaddafi saw Washington’s scheme for what it is, a colonialist’s plan to divide and conquer.

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Stephen Lendman

"Liberating struggles throughout the region just began. Expect no resolution easily or quickly."

Despite months of heroic Middle East/North African uprisings in over a dozen countries from Morocco to Syria to Oman, none so far has achieved any [significant] change, suggesting months, perhaps years, of sustained struggles lie ahead.

Media commentators first used term Arab Spring in March 2005 to suggest a beneficial Iraq war spinoff, what, of course, never happened nor could it, given Washington's intent to prevent any emerging democracies.

However, it partly succeeded in Lebanon after Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri's February 14, 2005 assassination. Afterwards, "Cedar Revolution" anger erupted, ending Syria's occupation, reducing, but not eliminating the Bashar al-Assad regime's influence in the country.

In late 2010, the term resurfaced to reflect regional uprisings still ongoing, on and off, across the Middle East/North Africa. In recent days, notably they've occurred in Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt.

Libya is noticeably different - a Western influenced insurrection now war to replace one despot with another, discussed in numerous previous articles.

Throughout most of the region, people want jobs, decent pay, better services, ending corruption and repression, as well as liberating democratic change in a part of the world where poverty, unemployment and despotism reflect daily life for tens of millions.

A previous AWIP article headlined, "Hold the Celebration: Egypt's Struggle Just Began," saying everything changed but stayed the same, a common bait and switch scheme, notably because a military junta replaced Mubarak, assuring no possibility of democracy and social justice without sustained heroic pressure forcing it, though never easily against powerful pro-Western rulers.

As a result, after initial jubilation, Egyptians know their struggle just began against adversarial military leaders, continuing the same Mubarak era policies.

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Yuri Gavrilechko
Strategic Culture Foundation

The presidential race opened in the US this April when incumbent B. Obama officially announced a re-election bid via various outlets including YouTube, saying that the second term in the White House would enable him to implement the plans that failed to materialize during his first presidency. Jim Messina is to take charge as the future campaign chief, and Obama expects to raise at least $1b – an amount unprecedented in the US history – to advance his candidacy.

Obama's campaign total was reported at $750m when he ran for president in 2008. The fund-raising was largely Internet-based, prompting talks about the importance in today's world of blogging and social media to a politician's public image. If re-elected, Obama will, on top of becoming America's first black president, be the first black president in the US to count two terms in office, the US presidential candidate with the biggest ever campaign fund, and the first presidential hopeful in the US history to avoid pouring his own money into the race to the White House.

These days, social media like Facebook and Twitter are instrumental not only in promoting political figures but also in coordinating mass protests, as the recent unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, and Yemen clearly showed. To a large extent, Obama can be credited with pioneering the wide-scale use of new media in politics.

Truly speaking, the incumbent cannot boast considerable success over the three years since being elected. While Obama relied on a reformist image to sell his candidacy, his policies in many respects failed to depart from those of his Republican predecessor G. Bush. Some watchers even went as far as to liken Obama to the Soviet Union's first and last president M. Gorbachev, the leader who epitomizes overturned expectations, though there was a time when Obama's promised role – beating the crisis, achieving economic growth, reducing unemployment – seemed almost messianic.

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article explained that America's led NATO war on Libya was long-planned. All military interventions require months of preparation, including:

● strategy and conflict objectives;
● enlisting coalition partners;
● selecting targets;
● promoting political and public support;
● deploying troops;
● in Libya, recruiting, funding, and arming so-called rebels; and
● post-conflict imperial plans.

Washington wants one despot replaced with another, a useful puppet to salute and obey orders, not independent-minded ones like Gaddafi who went along most often but not always on all issues, some major enough to want him ousted. An important overlooked one is discussed below.

Other objectives are to colonize Libya, balkanize it like Yugoslavia and Iraq, prevent democracy from emerging, privatize its state enterprises, exploit its people, establish new Pentagon bases, and control its oil, gas and other resources, a key one getting little attention - Libya's Great Man-Made River (GMMR).

The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) lies beneath four North African countries - Chad, Egypt, Sudan and Libya, called the world's largest fossil water system because it's ancient and non-renewable. In fact, the Qur'an's (Koran) Surah 2, Verse 74 says:

"For among rocks there are some from which rivers gush forth; others there are which when split asunder send forth water."

In fact, three major aquifers lie beneath the Sahara, NSAS the largest, containing an estimated 375,000 cubic km of water.

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Stephen Lendman

Since taking office, Obama shamelessly betrayed his constituents by:

● ignoring popular needs during America's greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression;
● giving Wall Street crooks trillions of taxpayer dollars;
● spending another $1.5 trillion annually on militarism, imperial wars, and related policies at a time America has no enemies;
● waging war on organized labor and public education, as well as civil and human rights; and
● claiming "tough choices" demand class warfare through neoliberal austerity for working Americans, mainly middle and lower income ones least able to afford it.

On April 13, he announced his latest plan through $4 trillion in largely social spending budget cuts over the next 12 years. More on them below.

The same day, New York Times writers Mark Landler and Michael Shear headlined, "Obama's Debt Plan Sets Stage for Long Battle Over Spending," saying:

Obama's Wednesday George Washington University speech "propos(ed) a mix of long-term spending cuts, tax increases, and changes to social welfare programs," omitting that they harm working Americans most.

A Times editorial headlined, "President Obama, Reinvigorated," saying:

"The man America elected president has re-emerged." His budget speech "was a reasonable basis for a conversation and is far better than its most prominent competitors. That is because it is grounded in themes of generosity and responsibility....(I)t was a relief to see Mr. Obama standing up for the values that got him to the table."

These aren't surprising comments from a broadsheet long associated with wealth and power interests, now pretending hammering working Americans is fair and just.

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Stephen Lendman

[War Crime:] The Israeli army used white phosphorus, a weapon
with a highly incendiary effect, in densely populated civilian resi-
dential areas of Gaza City, according to indisputable evidence.

"Over 18 months after publication, no contrary facts have been determined. [We] "have yet to establish a convincing basis for any claims that contradict the findings of the mission's report."

A previous article addressed chairman Richard Goldstone's fall from grace, accessed through this link.

It discussed his shameless retraction of irrefutable evidence he and other commission members found - namely, that Israel willfully committed crimes of war and against humanity by attacking Gazan civilians and non-military targets in clear violation of international law. Moreover, it was done disproportionately to cause mass deaths, injuries and destruction.

Shockingly, however, Goldstone accepted Israel's internal investigation findings, knowing facts were suppressed and distorted to justify policies. For whatever reasons, he capitulated, selling his soul at the expense of his honor, character, dignity, and high-mindedness, erased in his April 1 Washington Post op-ed too late to retract.

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