Stephen Lendman

After Greece's government surrendered to banker occupation, trends analyst Gerald Celente told Russia Today that:

America's "economy continues to decline. There's no recovery in sight." Across Europe in Greece, Britain and elsewhere, people are reacting against forced austerity to assure bankers get paid.

In fact, Trends Journal months ago called it

"off with their heads 2.0....The global ponzi scheme is under collapse....whether it's in Egypt, Tunisia, whether it's in the UK, Greece. Watch out for Spain. Here comes Italy. Ireland's coming up the backstretch. It's only going to get much worse."

"The people know the score....What killed capitalism (is explained) in four simple words: too big to fail...The banks are failing, and they want the people to bail them out....I want to make this clear. The IMF is nothing more than the International Mafia Federation, the loan sharks of last resort, and the people know it. They call it privatization. Adults call it stealing valuable public assets, and selling them to your friends really cheaply."

In all these countries,

"the politicians only represent the people who give them the most amount of money....And what do these austerity measures bring - a lot more poverty and unemployment."

People know it. They're mad, and they're reacting globally.

Expect it eventually in America, the heart of predatory capitalism, stealing from the many for the privileged few, bankers and war profiteers always first in line for handouts, as much as they want whenever they want it.

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Nahida Izzat, Exiled Palestinian

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Stephen Lendman

Western media, especially America's, mostly ignore multiple Obama wars (including against Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia), focusing mainly on promoting terror bombing Libya, slaughtering civilians to save them.

Ongoing since March 19, killing and destruction continue daily. NATO's second in command, US Admiral Samuel Locklear, told Congress that Washington wants Gaddafi assassinated. Earlier, one of his sons and three grandchildren were murdered, as well as around 40 Libyan imans, attending a peace conference to end the carnage. Ruthlessly, Obama, the peace candidate, wants it continued, claiming lawless executive privilege to do it.

On the Progressive Radio News Hour, live Tripoli reports discussed hospitals, schools, residential homes, and other non-military targets bombed, civilians killed, anti-NATO anger, and growing popular Gaddafi support, including a million Libyans rallying in Tripoli on his behalf.

On air, Cynthia McKinney said she saw it all, including fishermen killed at sea, food and medicine imports blocked, evidence that mercenary rebels murdered, tortured, harassed and raped dark-skinned residents like herself, and daily terror bombings - war crimes by any standard to conquer, colonize and plunder Libya for profit and greater regional control.

Like McKinney and other Progressive Radio guests, Tripoli-based Western journalists also witness NATO crimes. Nonetheless, their reports airbrush them, providing a sanitized version of war, detached from reality they conceal, no matter the daily horror enough to give anyone nightmares and second thoughts about who's right and wrong in this conflict.

Is there any doubt? Does it take keen perceptiveness to know? Can human misery be blocked in turning out daily copy?

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

From a previous US attack on Afghan civilians (AFP/Getty)

At least eight women and two children were killed Wednesday when a NATO warplane dropped a bomb on a house in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost district.

The house was targeted after members of an armed resistance group sought shelter there while fleeing a combined force of US and Afghan National Army troops, the provincial police chief, Sardar Mohammed Zazai told the New York Times.

Earlier Wednesday, several hundred Afghans took to the streets in an angry protest over a US-NATO air raid that claimed the lives of two young shepherds in Ghazni province, southwest of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul.

According to Reuters, over 250 villagers marched from villages in the Khogyani district to the provincial capital, Ghazni City, carrying the shrouded bodies of the boys and chanting “death to foreign troops.”

The air strikes were only the latest in a series of military actions that have claimed the lives of Afghan civilians. As in all such attacks, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) claimed that the air strikes were carried out against legitimate military targets.

In regard to the bombing in Khost that killed 10 women and children, the Times reported:

“A NATO spokesman said he was familiar with the attack but did not have details yet and said that there may have been civilians present in the place where the Taliban took shelter.”

An ISAF spokesman claimed that only one person was killed in the Ghazni strike, after he had been seen digging, supposedly to plant an improvised explosive device.

The local residents who demonstrated, however, insisted that the two victims, both under the age of 15, were killed while herding cattle and were not “insurgents.”

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