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

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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