Barry Grey

What is already occurring is the collapse of any globally integrated and stable monetary system and the outbreak of currency wars.

The Commerce Department on Wednesday reported that the US economy contracted in the fourth quarter of 2012, the first decline in the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) since the second quarter of 2009, the final three months before the official end of the recession.

The report, showing a decline at an annual rate of 0.1 percent between October and December, stunned Wall Street and government economists, who were expecting a growth rate lower than the 3.1 percent recorded in the third quarter of last year, but still well above zero. The consensus projection was for an increase of 1.1 percent.

The dismal report on the US economy follows downwardly revised estimates for world economic growth issued this month by both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Commerce Department statement reflects the impact on the US of stagnation and decline in major centers of the world economy as well as the lack of any genuine recovery in the real economy of the United States.

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Stephen Lendman

Bodies of executed men were found on the side of a canal in the
northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday. (AFP/Saudi Gazette)

Israel partners with Washington's wars. It's been largely covertly involved against Syria. It's now blatantly overt. Since last weekend, Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace multiple times. They overflew the Beka Valley. They attacked a weapons storage facility. They struck a convoy allegedly en route to Lebanon. On Wednesday, they bombed a scientific research center near Damascus. These actions and similar ones are naked acts of aggression. A follow-up article will discuss this further.

Washington planned war on Syria years ago. Previous articles discussed General Wesley Clark's "Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire." Post-9/11, Pentagon sources told him plans targeted Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iran and Syria for regime change. Earlier they were finalized against Afghanistan. Clark asked:

"And what about the real sources of terrorists - US allies in the region like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia?" "Wasn't it repressive policies of the first, and the corruption and poverty of the second, that were generating many of the angry young men who became terrorists?" "And what of the radical ideology and direct funding spewing from Saudi Arabia?" "It seemed that we were being taken into a strategy more likely to make us the enemy - encouraging what could look like a 'clash of civilizations' - not a good strategy for winning the war on terror."

For nearly two years, Syria's been on the boil. Conflict shows no signs of ending. Washington's dirty hands prevent it. The latest Aleppo massacre reflects earlier ones. Western-recruited death squads bear full responsibility.

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Bill Van Auken

The X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator runs on
the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman on Dec. 9, 2012.

The move to militarize Africa’s Sahel region is part and parcel of the Obama administration’s so-called “pivot” to Asia, based on a steady escalation of Washington’s confrontation with China.

Washington has secured an agreement with the government of Niger to establish a US military base in the Northwest African country, which borders Mali. The agreement comes in the midst of the French intervention in Mali, employing ground troops and warplanes.

The deal, first reported Monday by the New York Times, citing unnamed US officials, would clear the way for the Pentagon to set up a base for drone flights over the entire region. While US officials and the media have placed the base agreement in the context of the French war in Mali, it is evident that Washington had been negotiating with the Niger government well before the advance of Islamist militias toward southern Mali triggered the French intervention on January 11. It appears more the case that the recent Mali events have served as a pretext for an already planned US militarization of the region.

For several months there has been a drumbeat in the media and official circles about Africa being the “new front” in the war on terror, along with reports that AFRICOM (Africa Command), the US military command set up for operations in Africa, was seeking to establish bases on the continent and deploy for the first time a combat brigade on African soil. The deal reached with the Niger government is a status of forces agreement of the kind demanded by the Pentagon wherever US forces are deployed. It grants blanket immunity to American troops for any crimes committed in the country.

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