Stephen Lendman

Extremist Israel officials favor wealth, power, privilege and dominance. Tuesday's elections hardened fascism. Palestinians have the greatest cross to bear. Jews have their own. Humanity very much is threatened. Expect occupation harshness to be worse than ever. Palestinians are blamed for Israeli crimes. World leaders target them.

On January 20, Electronic Intifada contributor Amena Saleem said Britain's Foreign Office blames Gazans "for bringing suffering on themselves." Doing so exposed its "one-sided view."

Identical letters were sent the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and PSC members. They advocate for "peace & justice for Palestinians." They champion right over wrong. They support international rule of law principles. They deplore apartheid. They oppose all forms of racism.

Britain's Foreign Office turned truth on its head. It wasn't the first time. It blamed Palestinians for eight days of Israeli Pillar of Cloud mass murder. - It was premeditated naked aggression. Israel's hegemonic ambitions take precedence. Palestinian lives don't matter. Slow-motion genocide is official policy. It's been that way for decades.

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Paul Craig Roberts

"Life will perish as the environment perishes"
~ 21st century ecological economist

Only in science fiction can humans escape the consequences of destroying their own habitat. In Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love, the “Great Diaspora of the Human Race” began “more than two millennia ago” and has spread to more than “two thousand colonized planets.” The once “lovely green planet” Earth is a slum planet barely able to support life where only the poorest live, Earth’s natural capital having been consumed over two thousand years ago. Humans have found the ability to rejuvenate themselves and to live almost endless lives, but they are unable to rejuvenate the planets whose natural capital they devour. Humans have not encountered “one race as mean, as nasty, as deadly as our own.” As homo sapiens use up the environments of colonized planets, “human intergalactic colony ships are already headed out into the Endless Deeps,” leaving their ruins behind them.

In his book, Collapse, University of California biogeography professor Jared Diamond describes the nonfictional past and present destruction of Earth’s natural capital. Surprisingly, Diamond begins his story of the self-destruction of Easter Island, Anasazi, and Maya civilizations with present-day Montana and ends with Australia. We think of these two lands as scenic, lightly populated, and largely untouched, but they have been brought to the brink of ruin. Diamond’s point is that modern scientific and technological man is no better at managing nature’s capital than previous societies.

Many associate ecological destruction with population pressure. However, the toxicity associated with mining, fracking, chemical fertilizer and GMO farming, and the adverse watershed effects of logging is turning even low density states such as Montana into an environment with ruined soil and water.

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Louis Girard and Keith Jones

Unbeknownst to the vast majority of the Canadian people, the Canadian government and armed forces are deeply implicated in the French invasion of Mali and in the growing imperialist intervention in West Africa of which it is part.

Knowing that there is no enthusiasm in the Canadian populace for the country’s participation in yet another imperialist war, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper has been at pains to present the role of Canada’s military in the war in Mali as limited and unexpected.

This is a subterfuge. Discussion in government circles of a Canadian role in an imperialist-orchestrated military intervention in Mali has been underway since at least last spring. Furthermore, Canadian special forces were providing training to Mali’s army for at least a year prior to a February 2012 military coup that was triggered by the loss of much of the country’s north to an ethnic Tuareg rebel army. A December 3, 2011 Postmedia report cites Brigadier-General Denis Thompson of Canadian Special Operations Forces Command as saying the “deployment of Canadian special ops to Mali is expected to be an ongoing mission, with small teams moving in and out of the country whenever it is determined that Malian forces need such training.”

Canada’s military has also developed an increasing presence in other states in the region, with the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) assisting in the training of African forces that are now being readied for combat in Mali.

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