Stephen Lendman

"J'ai confiance, l'Afrique est en marche."

It shouldn't surprise. Nobel committee members prioritize doing it. America's Presidential Medal of Freedom honors genocidists. So does Israel's equivalent award.

UNESCO is the UN's educational, scientific and cultural organization. It stresses "building peace in the minds of men and women." It "works to create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values." Through dialogue it hopes "world can achieve global visions of sustainable development encompassing observance of human rights, mutual respect and the alleviation of poverty, all of which are at the heart of UNESCO’S mission and activities."

Its rhetoric and policies differ. Double standards reflect UN priorities. Officials are Western tools. They honor their own. They violate UN Charter provisions. They do so with impunity. Millions die as a result. Millions more suffer horrendously. Imperial ruthlessness assures it. Global dominance is prioritized. Mass destruction and slaughter further what international law prohibits.

UNESCO paid no attention. Doing so allies it with wrong over right. It betrays its mandate. It calls for respecting commonly shared values and human rights.

On February 21, the UN News Centre headlined "French President François Hollande awarded UNESCO peace prize." It's for his "valuable contribution to peace and stability in Africa."

He's gone all out to wreck it. He's waging lawless imperial aggression. He's slaughtering innocent civilians. He's committing crimes of war and against humanity.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Thinking is America’s national disability.

“What If?” histories are a good read. They are entertaining, and they provoke thought and encourage the imagination. How different the world would be if different judgments, decisions, and circumstances had prevailed at history’s turning points. Certainly English history would have been different if King Harold’s soldiers had obeyed his order not to pursue the defeated fleeing Normans down the hill. This broke the impenetrable Saxon shield wall and exposed King Harold to Norman calvary.

Would there ever have been a Soviet Union if the Czar had stayed out of World War I?

Would there have been a World War II if British, French, and American politicians had listened to John Maynard Keynes’ warning that the Treaty of Versailles would result in a second world war? Germany had been promised a different outcome–no reparations and no territorial loss–in exchange for an armistice. As Keynes realized, the betrayal of the peace led to another great war.

There are a couple of what ifs that I have been waiting for historians to explore. As no historians have risen to the challenge, I will have a go. Keep in mind that a what if outcome is not necessarily a better outcome. It might be a worse outcome. As what if did not happen and there is no what if history, there is no way of making a judgment.

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Bill Van Auken

John Brennan, the president’s choice to lead the C.I.A., with
Senator Dianne Feinstein of the intelligence committee

There is no significant opposition within the US ruling establishment to the president acting as judge, jury and executioner in the name of an endless “war on terror.”

The Obama White House has stonewalled requests from Congress for access to legal opinions written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel justifying the administration’s drone assassination program.

According to a report published Thursday in the New York Times, the administration has worked out a cynical political strategy to keep the documents secret while avoiding any disruption in its bid to gain Senate confirmation of its nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, the architect and director of the assassination program.

While denying the drone legal memos requested by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, thereby risking having one or two of them cast votes against the nomination, the White House is soliciting Republican votes by releasing classified material on the attack last September that killed four Americans at the US consulate and a secret CIA annex in the eastern Libyan port city of Benghazi.

“The strategy is intended to produce a bipartisan majority vote for Mr. Brennan in the Senate Intelligence Committee without giving its members seven additional legal opinions on targeted killing sought by senators and while protecting what the White House views as the confidentiality of the Justice Department’s legal advice to the president,” the Times reported.

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