Medea Benjamin

The ceremonies for the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington DC were kicked off on August 24 at an event billed as Honoring Global Leaders for Peace. But some of those honored are a far cry from King’s beloved community of the poor and oppressed. The tribute to peacemakers, organized by the MLK National Memorial Foundation, was mostly a night applauding warmakers, corporate profiteers and co-opted musicians.

The night started out with great promise when MC Andrea Mitchell mentioned Dr. King’s brilliant anti-war speech Beyond Vietnam as a key to understanding the real Dr. King. And sure, there were a few wonderful moments—a song by Stevie Wonder, a speech about nonviolence by the South African Ambassador and a quick appearance by Jesse Jackson in which he managed to spit out a call to “study war no more.”

But most of the evening’s speakers and guests of honor had little to do with peacemaking. One of the dignitaries thanked at the start of the program was Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, representing a country that uses $3 billion a year in precious U.S. tax dollars to commit war crimes against Palestinians.

Then came a parade of representatives of corporations that want to cleanse their image by being associated with Dr. King. The first was General Motors VP Eric Peterson. His company took billions from government coffers to keep it afloat, then showed its “generosity” by donating $10 million of our tax dollars to the memorial. Mr. Peterson gave a speech paying tribute to the company’s first black board member, Rev. Leon Sullivan. Peterson claimed that the Sullivan Principles, principles that established a social responsibility code for companies working in South Africa, helped abolish apartheid. The truth is that the Sullivan Principles ended up being a cover for U.S. corporations—like General Motors–to continue doing business in racist South Africa instead of respecting the international divestment campaign.

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Tammy Obeidallah

If the word “retaliation” is used to describe military operations or draconian economic embargoes carried out by the Jewish State, it must be understood that this is a euphemism for genocide.

The latest round of atrocities unleashed upon Palestinians proves yet again that the Israeli government is a homicidal opportunist. Instantly, the problem of mass demonstrations deploring increased cost of living and other economic issues plaguing the Jewish State was solved by rallying Israelis behind the one issue they all seem to have in common: the singular desire to annihilate Palestinians.

If that assessment seems harsh, or unfair to Israeli peace activists, it certainly rings true of broader Israeli society. Joseph Dana, a Tel Aviv-based writer and journalist spoke with Aljazeera regarding the protests, which according to him, were mute regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine. “The sad reality is that if Israelis discuss Palestinian rights and specifically the rights of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, they very quickly lose public support,” he stated.

Of course the Israeli spin machine claims the bombardment of Gaza was in response to the Eilat operation, although there is no evidence that Hamas or the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) perpetrated the attack. Dana also wrote in a recent article, “Israel maintains that the PRC is responsible for the attacks but has yet to release any verifiable proof connecting the Gaza based group to the attack which has so far claimed eight lives.”

It is rather sinister that 81 members of our Congress just spent a week in the Jewish State, meeting with Israeli officials at taxpayers’ expense; days later, Gaza is attacked. It is quite probable that the strikes were carefully coordinated while conveniently, world focus is on Libya and Syria.

However, even if armed groups from within Gaza were responsible for the Eilat attacks, retaliation of this sort for a blockade that has led to the deaths of untold thousands is certainly understandable. The siege of Gaza, subsequent incursions and almost daily shootings of civilians for straying too close to the “buffer zone” are acts of war in themselves, thus warrant reaction.

Israel’s 63-year campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people is neatly packaged as “retaliation” or “self-defense” against “mortars fired by Palestinian militants” or the hackneyed “homemade rockets.” Mysteriously, the media never reports on these mortars or rockets until Israeli forces “retaliate” for them; then it serves as an excuse for continued genocide.

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Stephen Lendman

Libyan patriotic forces defend capital from counterrevolutionary
rebels. (Pan-African News Wire File Photos)

Trapped for days in Tripoli's Rixos Hotel, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) arranged for the release of over 30 foreign journalists yesterday. They're now at the Corinthia Hotel, awaiting a boat for transport to Malta, then home via Europe that can't arrive until fighting subsides. Given the chaos and violence, it could be a while.

Among them are heroic independent journalists, unable to report vital truths on the ground. For now, only their safe passage home matters, but what they witnessed firsthand will be sorely missed.

As a result, it'll be much harder to know what's ongoing. Rest assured, this writer and others will report what's known as fully and accurately as possible to keep the freedom flame for all Libyans alive. They deserve no less in light of what NATO has in mind, including carving up the Libya corpse for profit.

In fact, scrambling for its oil began began last April when Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said energy giant ENI CEO Paolo Scaroni had talks with Transitional National Council (TNC) officials "to restart cooperation in the energy sector and get going again the collaboration with Italy in the oil sector."

In June, the Washington Post said ConocoPhillips, other US oil giants, and related companies also held talks with TNC officials. Engineering firm Quantum Reservoir Impact CEO Nansen Saleri said:

"Now you can figure out who's going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi. Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The Western companies are positioning themselves. Five years from now, Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in."

Or so he hopes. Though accounting for only 2% of world production, Libya is Africa's most oil rich state. Moreover, its high quality is especially valued, and reports suggest vast reserves yet to be explored.

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Geoff Brumfiel

Experiment probes connection between climate change and radiation bombarding the atmosphere.

It sounds like a conspiracy theory: 'cosmic rays' from deep space might be creating clouds in Earth's atmosphere and changing the climate. Yet an experiment at CERN, Europe's high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, is finding tentative evidence for just that.

The findings, published today in Nature [1], are preliminary, but they are stoking a long-running argument over the role of radiation from distant stars in altering the climate.

For a century, scientists have known that charged particles from space constantly bombard Earth. Known as cosmic rays, the particles are mostly protons blasted out of supernovae. As the protons crash through the planet's atmosphere, they can ionize volatile compounds, causing them to condense into airborne droplets, or aerosols. Clouds might then build up around the droplets.

The number of cosmic rays that reach Earth depends on the Sun. When the Sun is emitting lots of radiation, its magnetic field shields the planet from cosmic rays. During periods of low solar activity, more cosmic rays reach Earth.

Scientists agree on these basic facts, but there is far less agreement on whether cosmic rays can have a large role in cloud formation and climate change. Since the late 1990s, some have suggested that when high solar activity lowers levels of cosmic rays, that in turn reduces cloud cover and warms the planet. Others say that there is no statistical evidence for such an effect.

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Franklin Lamb

This observer’s tentative appraisal of Tuesday’s events along the north Tripoli port area as of late afternoon 8/23/11 is that the “65,000 well trained and well-armed troops” hyped Sunday by the Gaddafi government don’t in fact exist and that the pockets of government troops here in Tripoli and across Libya that do, will continue to resist what it views as NATO aggression designed to usurp the country’s oil and add Libya to Africom.

NATO is widely viewed in Tripoli as having violated the three main terms of UNSCR 1973, to wit, NATO did engage in regime change, it did take sides in a civil war, it did arm one side, and it did refuse to allow a negotiated diplomatic settlement which many here and internationally believe could have been achieved by early April, thus saving hundreds Libyan lives. NATO’s more than 160 days of bombing are seen as egregious violations of UNSCR 1973, Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter and numerous provisions of international law, all part of its campaign to secure Libyan oil and this rich countries geopolitical cooperation for the US, UK, France, Italy and their NATO allies.

I am told that some Gaddafi loyalists are headed to the colonel’s home town of Serte to prepare to defend it. Some of my reasons for these tentative conclusions include the no show government troops, the intensifying NATO bombings of Tripoli, which is the only reason the rebels have not negotiated an end to this conflict last April, and my tentative conclusion that there is no reason for massive numbers of government troops, if they existed, not to challenge the increasing numbers of NATO rebels who appear to be sitting ducks as they tool around Tripoli’s troops. According to journalists who arrived at this hotel yesterday from the west, south and east, there appear to be no government forces moving toward Tripoli to join in an Alamo type last stand battle.

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Matthew Nasuti

Al-Qaeda does not have to make up stories about the West abusing Muslim women. Al-Qaeda merely has to report the truth.

The unofficial message from the West to victims of oppression is:

“We will liberate you as long as your women agree to service our officials and contractors.”

That is a sad reality of both NATO and United Nations peacekeeping missions.

The U.S. State Department’s “Trafficking in Persons Report 2010" highlights the continuing growth of brothels in Kabul following the U.S. invasion in 2001. Many of the victims are poor Afghan women. A press release issued on January 13, 2011, by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul blamed the scandal on lax enforcement against traffickers by the Afghan Government, with no recommendation that the “johns” or clients be prosecuted (because many of them appear to be NATO and U.N. officials and their contractors). The most that the U.S. Embassy would meekly say is that:

“Some international security contractors may be involved in the sex trafficking of these women.”

(It is interesting how ineffective U.S. intelligence agencies seem to be at determining brothel ownership in Kabul, despite the importance of the issue due to the use of these facilities by NATO officials)

This issue is not new. The British newspaper “The Sun” ran a story on April 7, 2008 entitled: “NATO Men Romp in Afghan Brothels.”

Sun Defense Editor Tom Newton Dunn detailed how NATO troops were observed drinking contraband alcohol and heading off to rooms with prostitutes. It quoted a NATO official as stating that one out of every five NATO civilians in Afghanistan frequent these brothels. The report quoted Afghan Member of Parliament Shukria Barakzai as stating that if this conduct continues: “They will undermine their reason for being here.”

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Charles E. Carlson

["Judeo-Christians' Role - Mr. Sharon's Final Solution" and Judeo-Christians' Role - Hate-Bus Tours American Churches were originally published in June, 2004]

The Judeo-Christians - why would they distort what their own Bible teaches, and what their own professed faith demands of them. Jesus demands peace and love of all men, even ones' enemies. There is not one phrase in the Christian New Testament that supports anything Israel does to the Palestinians, including the claims of being a "chosen people". Judeo-Christianity is not Christian at all. It is a hodgepodge of bits from unrelated stories patched together to create an illusion. The illusion is of an "end times" apocalypse, and a "chosen people" who enjoy the right to kill and imprison other people who are not "chosen."

A powerful new lobby tells the world its purpose is to direct Congress to act on behalf of the State of Israel. Unity Coalition for Israel (UCI) is strictly an Israeli controlled organization that calls for a militant, no compromise solution to its Arab problem. What makes UCI unique among radical Israeli political groups is that it finds its support among prominent USA professing Christians. Some stumping Americans raise the UCI agenda in colleges and churches. In fact, the UCI "Christians" go far beyond the Israelis in their call for Arab blood. This paper examines who these Judeo-Christians are, their motives, and the impact on peace in the world.

Israeli political lobbies in the US Congress are hardly new. Upward to 100 pro-Israel PACs swarm over the American Washington, approaching every new candidate for Congress before his fur is dry. Most big campaigns have, in the past been orchestrated by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). As detailed in Andrew Hurley's book, Holocaust II Saving Israel from Suicide, former Congressmen have, for three decades, privately and occasionally publicly, called AIPAC the most powerful lobby in Washington. Few dare talk about it in public.

What makes UCI different from AIPAC is that its lobbyists are mostly celebrity Christians. Nevertheless, strictly Israelis and American non-Christians control the organization. This might be likened to a flock of turkeys laboring for the elimination of fox skin coats.

UCI does not stop with bending Congress; it openly and without reservation seeks to re-define Christianity to conform to Judaic requirements, seeking Christian support for Israel's policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians, while openly declaring that its aims are to control the rest of the Middle East. The foxes, it seems, pay the Christian turkeys highly to perch on the low limbs.

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Stephen Lendman

The US/UK/French-led war on Libya will be remembered as one of history's greatest crimes. It violates the letter and spirit of international law and America's Constitution.

The Nuremberg Tribunal's Chief Justice Robert Jackson (a US Supreme Court Justice) called Nazi war crimes "the supreme international crime against peace."

His November 21, 1945 opening remarks said:

"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."

He called aggressive war "the greatest menace of our times."

International law defines crimes against peace as "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing." All US post-WW II wars fall under this definition.

Since then, America waged direct and proxy premeditated, aggressive wars worldwide, killing millions in East and Central Asia, North and other parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as Central and South America.

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Chris Marsden

The riots that swept London and other cities earlier this month threw a harsh light on the real state of social relations in Britain. They revealed the extent to which the UK is a nation torn apart by intractable class divisions, in which millions of workers and young people have no escape from a life of grinding, unremitting poverty while they are forced to watch others live a life of unparalleled luxury.

Thousands of youth rioted because they have no avenue through which to articulate their grievances or realise their aspirations for a better life—least of all through the Labour Party and the trade unions, which are as much the corrupt playthings of the financial elite as the governing Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Theirs is a degrading situation that has continued year after year without change, or even the apparent possibility of change, because the entire social and political order is stacked in the interests of the super-rich.

The universal response of the state, the political establishment and the media to the riots has confirmed that nothing else can be expected from the ruling elite and its hangers-on. Brutal police repression, mass arrests and the doling out of punitive prison terms for minor offences have been accompanied by a blanket denial that legitimate social grievances played any part in the riots. They were, according to the official narrative, solely the product of a criminal “underclass.”

For this reason, the riots were not merely an exposure of what exists but a portent of the future. They demonstrate above all that for the working class and the younger generation, nothing can be achieved outside of the revolutionary overthrow of the existing system. They also served another essential political function—revealing the plethora of fake-left groupings that portray themselves as “socialist,” “communist” and even “Trotskyist” to be the champions of capitalist “law and order.”

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Adnan Al-Daini

People could accept hardship and cuts if they perceived that the load was being shared fairly and justly, with those most able shouldering a heavier load. David Cameron (Britain’s Prime Minister), a month after taking office (June 2010), made his “we are all in this together” speech in which he said:

“I want to make sure we go about the urgent task of cutting our deficit in a way that is open, responsible and fair. I want this government to carry out Britain's unavoidable deficit reduction plan in a way that strengthens and unites the country. I have said before that as we deal with the debt crisis we must take the whole country with us - and I mean it. George Osborne has said that our plans to cut the deficit must be based on the belief that we are all in this together - and he means it…But this government will not cut this deficit in a way that hurts those we most need to help, that divides the country or that undermines the spirit and ethos of our public services. Freedom, fairness, responsibility: those are the values that drive this government, and they are the values that will drive our efforts to deal with our debts and turn this economy around.” 

Who could possibly disagree with that?  The problem is that the actions of this government do not quite mesh with the rhetoric. Many of the working poor and vulnerable are suffering extreme hardship, while the lives of the super-rich, on the other hand, are hardly affected; in fact if anything their wealth has been increasing. 

The use of food banks by desperate families is on the rise in this country, according to a charity that runs them nationwide. Mr. Chris Mould, chief executive of the Trussell Trust, explained on Radio 4 Today programme (August20, 2011) that there are 13 million people in Britain already living below the poverty line and increases in energy prices, cuts in working hours and wage rises not keeping up with inflation have pushed families to the edge, with a dramatic increase in those having to rely on food banks, with food donated by the public, to survive. How can this be acceptable in a rich country like Britain?

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Bill Van Auken

A column by Philip Zelikow entitled “Gaddafi’s fall will renew the Arab spring,” published on the Financial Times web site Monday, provides a glimpse into the far-reaching aims being pursued by Washington and the other major imperialist powers in their supposedly “humanitarian” intervention in Libya.

Zelikow is a former State Department counselor under Condoleezza Rice in the George W. Bush administration and a former advisor on the National Security Council under George H.W. Bush during the period of the collapse of the Soviet bloc. He is a trusted and experienced operative within the US political establishment, so much so that he was tapped to serve as executive director of the 9/11 Commission. In that position he was the individual most responsible for organizing a cover-up of the US government’s role in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Close to the Project for a New American Century and one of the authors of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war, Zelikow has intimate experience in both the theory and practice of US imperialism’s drive to impose its hegemony over the Middle East.

Zelikow begins his column by debunking the arguments of those on the Republican right who opposed the Libyan war as an example of “liberal interventionism.” He dismisses this concern, saying it is merely a misunderstanding “fed by some rhetoric, especially from the government.” The war, he writes, was launched because of Libya’s particular “history and a geography that well justified hard-headed calculations by the US, Britain, France and many other countries that they should seize this opportunity to help the rebels get rid of this particular demented regime.”

In other words, the major imperialist powers saw a set of circumstances in the Libyan events that allowed them to “seize the opportunity” to execute a military campaign for regime-change for the purpose of establishing firm control over the oil-rich North African nation.

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Stephen Lendman

Mark Twain once called reports of his death greatly exaggerated. The same hold for Libyans, not ready to submit to NATO colonization, occupation, plunder and exploitation. Not at least without a fight.

The stakes are high - stay free or die socially, economically, politically, emotionally, and/or perhaps physically.

Washington-led NATO is a rogue killing machine plunderer. It comes, sees, slaughters, ravages, and pillages all its surveys.

In March, it arrived in Libya on cruise missiles, bombs, shells, other munitions, fifth column infiltrators, media liars, and other rogue elements, not white horses, not as liberators nor humanitarian interveners.

It came for another imperial trophy at the expense of free Libyans. They know it and won't submit without a fight, a long-term struggle perhaps that may ebb and flow, but won't end until NATO's scourge ends.

It's the same spirit driving Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, and millions of others throughout North Africa/Middle East/Central Asia/and elsewhere. Live free or die.

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Dmitriy Sedov

Libyans inspects the site of massive explosion that occurred
during the night in Benghazi. (AP/Tara Todras-Whitehill)

The West Scores Another Triumph Over the Arab World

The fall of M. Gadhafi's regime will come as a huge success of the globalization forces seeking to establish a new world order. The proportions of the campaign the West launched in Libya and the level of sophistication of the technologies employed were impressive regardless of the accompanying political assessments – altogether they combined into a fundamental political initiative with far-reaching historical goals.

In Libya, the West managed to undermine and eventually demolish a completely viable regime which must be credited with keeping the country stable and the population's living standards – fairly high. Even though, customarily for the region, Gadhafi was an eccentric and self-righteous autocrat, a relatively short time ago he used to be a figure to which the majority of Libyans showed no signs of allergy. Under such circumstances, it had to take serious manipulative skills to convince the people that things in their country were skewed and to lead them to rebel against the legitimate government.

The shift in the public atmosphere is hardly attributable to the impact of any particular subversive programs or to the sway of a handful of Western satellite TV channels over Libya's public opinion. Rather, it could be induced within a wider approach based on what specialists these days refer to as informational warfare. Currently, whole populations in a number of countries enduring regime changes are the targets of informational warfare altering traditional models of human existence and conduct. The alliance of the West's ideological agencies and media built around a certain type of information policies is the force behind the ongoing informational aggression. Its key objective is to saturate all information flows with the notion of an a priori superiority of the Western democracy standard and to instill among the nations whose political lives are not aligned with it a humiliating sense of inferiority. Under appropriate external influence, the sense of inferiority automatically nourishes public discontent. Given the background of pervasive informational aggression, ideological campaigns and provocations aimed at destabilizing and in the long run dislodging otherwise stable regimes tend to become extremely efficient.

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Adnan Al-Daini

[Photo: "Allied air strikes will go on in Libya until Muammar al-Gaddafi stops attacking civilians, pulls back his forces and allows in humanitarian aid," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. PM David Cameron listening.]

NATO Chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today (August 22, 2011)

“NATO wants the Libyan people to be able to decide their future in freedom and in peace.”

Dare I hope that the statement is sincerely meant?  Or am I being naïve? 

At the start of the Arab spring in Tunisia followed by Egypt, the West was hesitant in its support of the revolutionary young.   Remarks such as "Mubarak is not a dictator" by Joe Biden, or the French offer to the Tunisian President of sending French advisers and equipment to help him deal with demonstrators, underscored their support for despots; not much concern for human rights there. As far as they were concerned, the model of controlling the Arab world and its resources through dictators that they could bribe and control had served them well. It is much easier to control a despot who rules by instilling fear in the people than having to deal with the messy business of democratically elected leaders and institutions.

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Robert M. Cutler

Negotiations this month have opened the way to conclusion of a Gas Sales Price Agreement for the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline, despite a number of obstacles still remaining.

On August 18, a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan meeting at the level of technical experts from the two countries' competent ministries reached agreement on a number of implementation and construction issues, also including their economic provisions, according to reports by the State News Agency of Turkmenistan.

Agreement has also been reached bilaterally between Turkmenistan and India over the price of the former's natural gas to the latter. India had proposed a price of US$460 per thousand cubic meters (tcm) to Ashgabat, which had counter-offered $505-$525/tcm. New Delhi did not want to pay a price making TAPI gas more expensive than the liquefied natural gas (LNG) that it already imports, mainly from Qatar. Natural gas represents only 6% of India's total energy consumption, and the country is keen to increase that proportion.

The four countries signed in Ashgabat last December 11 an intergovernmental agreement that was complemented by a framework document approved by the respective energy ministers. According to Turkmenistani sources, it confirmed that the 1,735-kilometer pipeline would be built in Afghanistan alongside the road from Herat to Kandahar (and at least partly underground to deter terrorist attacks), then routed by way of Quetta and Multan in Pakistan to reach the Indian border town of Fazilka.

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