Julie Hyland

Clegg has the toughest job praising
Thatcher. (Financial Times)

Wednesday’s reconvening of Britain’s parliament to mark the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a gathering of her political offspring.

Baroness Thatcher, who led the Conservative government between 1979 and 1990, died Monday of a stroke, aged 87. Her premiership was the expression in Britain of a right-wing shift in international politics aimed at removing any obstacles on the accumulation of private wealth at the expense of the working class.

In little over a decade under her rule, the social gains made by [ordinary people] in the post-war period were sent into sharp reverse. By the time she left office in 1990, the proportion of wealth controlled by the richest ten percent of the population had doubled. So too had child poverty.

In the following decades, not only has social inequality become more ingrained. The processes she helped set in motion—of rampant and criminal financial speculation—are directly responsible for the global banking crisis of 2008, and the policies of mass austerity being rolled out internationally: more than £150 billion in spending cuts in Britain alone, and counting.

This social misery accounts for the massive security operation being put into place for her funeral next Wednesday, including threats that police may make “pre-emptive arrests” of potential protestors. It is why, even amid the sycophantic coverage of her passing, the media acknowledged Thatcher as a “divisive” figure. What this means is that she was widely despised by working people and remembered with fondness primarily by a much smaller number of the wealthy whom she served so well.

The parliamentary tribute to Thatcher expressed the sentiments of the rich and powerful towards their political mentor. They united to celebrate as a great stateswoman, even a national heroine, the “shopkeeper’s daughter” who “broke the glass ceiling” to become the UK’s first female prime minister.

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Chris Hedges

The appointment of Suzanne Nossel, a former State Department official and longtime government apparatchik, as executive director of PEN American Center is part of a campaign to turn U.S. human rights organizations into propagandists for pre-emptive war and apologists for empire. Nossel’s appointment led me to resign from PEN as well as withdraw from speaking at the PEN World Voices Festival in May. But Nossel is only symptomatic of the widespread hijacking of human rights organizations to demonize those—especially Muslims—branded by the state as the enemy, in order to cloak pre-emptive war and empire with a fictional virtue and to effectively divert attention from our own mounting human rights abuses, including torture, warrantless wiretapping and monitoring, the denial of due process and extrajudicial assassinations.

Nossel, who was deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs under Hillary Clinton in a State Department that was little more than a subsidiary of the Pentagon, is part of the new wave of “humanitarian interventionists,” such as Samantha Power, Michael Ignatieff and Susan Rice, who naively see in the U.S. military a vehicle to create a better world. They know little of the reality of war or the actual inner workings of empire. They harbor a childish belief in the innate goodness and ultimate beneficence of American power. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents, the horrendous suffering and violent terror inflicted in the name of their utopian goals in Iraq and Afghanistan, barely register on their moral calculus. This makes them at once oblivious and dangerous. “Innocence is a kind of insanity,” Graham Greene wrote in his novel “The Quiet American,” and those who destroy to build are “impregnably armored by...good intentions and...ignorance.”

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Ellen Brown

Cyprus-style confiscation of depositor funds has been called the “new normal.” Bail-in policies are appearing in multiple countries directing failing TBTF banks to convert the funds of “unsecured creditors” into capital; and those creditors, it turns out, include ordinary depositors. Even “secured” creditors, including state and local governments, may be at risk. Derivatives have “super-priority” status in bankruptcy, and Dodd Frank precludes further taxpayer bailouts. In a big derivatives bust, there may be no collateral left for the creditors who are next in line.

Shock waves went around the world when the IMF, the EU, and the ECB not only approved but mandated the confiscation of depositor funds to “bail in” two bankrupt banks in Cyprus. A “bail in” is a quantum leap beyond a “bail out.” When governments are no longer willing to use taxpayer money to bail out banks that have gambled away their capital, the banks are now being instructed to “recapitalize” themselves by confiscating the funds of their creditors, turning debt into equity, or stock; and the “creditors” include the depositors who put their money in the bank thinking it was a secure place to store their savings.

The Cyprus bail-in was not a one-off emergency measure but was consistent with similar policies already in the works for the US, UK, EU, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, as detailed in my earlier articles here and here. “Too big to fail” now trumps all. Rather than banks being put into bankruptcy to salvage the deposits of their customers, the customers will be put into bankruptcy to save the banks.

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John Pilger

An undated photograph of the genocidal leader Pol Pot

[This article was originally published on 17 April 2000]

Almost two million Cambodians died as a result of Year Zero. John Pilger argues that, without the complicity of the US and Britain, it may never have happened.

On 17 April, it is 25 years since Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. In the calendar of fanaticism, this was Year Zero; as many as two million people, a fifth of Cambodia's population, were to die as a consequence. To mark the anniversary, the evil of Pol Pot will be recalled, almost as a ritual act for voyeurs of the politically dark and inexplicable. For the managers of western power, no true lessons will be drawn, because no connections will be made to them and to their predecessors, who were Pol Pot's Faustian partners. Yet, without the complicity of the west, Year Zero might never have happened, nor the threat of its return maintained for so long.

Declassified United States government documents leave little doubt that the secret and illegal bombing of then neutral Cambodia by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger between 1969 and 1973 caused such widespread death and devastation that it was critical in Pol Pot's drive for power. "They are using damage caused by B52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda," the CIA director of operations reported on 2 May 1973. "This approach has resulted in the successful recruitment of young men. Residents say the propaganda campaign has been effective with refugees in areas that have been subject to B52 strikes." In dropping the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on a peasant society, Nixon and Kissinger killed an estimated half a million people. Year Zero began, in effect, with them; the bombing was a catalyst for the rise of a small sectarian group, the Khmer Rouge, whose combination of Maoism and medievalism had no popular base.

After two and a half years in power, the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by the Vietnamese on Christmas Day, 1978. In the months and years that followed, the US and China and their allies, notably the Thatcher government, backed Pol Pot in exile in Thailand. He was the enemy of their enemy: Vietnam, whose liberation of Cambodia could never be recognised because it had come from the wrong side of the cold war. For the Americans, now backing Beijing against Moscow, there was also a score to be settled for their humiliation on the rooftops of Saigon.

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Bill Van Auken

US Secretary of State John Kerry has made a series of public statements ostensibly in mourning for the 25-year-old Foreign Service officer Anne Smedinghoff—one of five Americans, including three soldiers, killed in a Taliban car bomb attack in Afghanistan’s southern province of Zabul on Saturday.

The death of someone so young is tragic, as it has been for nearly 2,200 American troops killed in 11 years of war and occupation. Yet Kerry’s remarks aim not so much at comforting grieving family members and friends, as at justifying and defending the war that cost this young woman’s life.

He said that the death presented “a stark contrast for all of the world to see between two very different sets of values.” On the one hand, he said, was “a brave American … determined to brighten the light of learning through books written in the native tongue of the students that she had never met, but whom she felt compelled to help,” while on the other, were “cowardly terrorists determined to bring darkness and death to total strangers.”

The same day that Anne Smedinghoff lost her life, a US airstrike killed at least 18 people, including 11 children ranging from a few months to eight years old. Six women were badly wounded in the attack. Kerry uttered not a word of sympathy for the loss of these young lives, nor for the parents left to grieve them. Needless to say, the death of 11 children received not one one-hundredth of the coverage given to that of the American diplomat in the US media, which, as always, is contemptuous of Afghan lives.

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Nil Nikandrov

Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), (Former President) Lula da Silva (Brasil), Hugo Chávez
(Venezuela), (Current) Dilma Rousseff (Brasil) and C. Fernández de Kirchner (Arg.)

In a series of his public speeches Hugo Chávez called an “epidemic” of cancer among Latin American presidents a strange and alarming phenomenon. This hard to cure desease was identified in case of Chávez himself, Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo, Dilma Rouseff and Lula da Silva (Brazil), Crisitina Fernández (Argentina). Al of them are known as left of the center politicians struggling to expedite Latin America’s integration process and to get rid of the US dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Chávez let drop words about empires that go to any length to achieve their goals.

The Washington’s response didn’t keep waiting. Victoria Nuland, US State Department official spokesperson, said the Chávez’ words were “horrific and reprehensible.” That is they were perceived by the Obama administration as imputation of using special biological technologies to cause cancer among Latin American leaders not friendly towards the USA.

Of course, Hugo Chávez was not that rude. He understood Washington would demand evidence. So the president explained his position saying he never blamed anyone but rather used freedom of thought facing a strange string of events that were hard to explain. The anxiety is well understood, to overcome the decease he had to go through harassing session of chemotherapy in Cuba. And the anxiety is here to stay. How did the desease appear? What made a malignant tumor hit a healthy man, a retired serviceman, former baseball player, regular gym goer and race runner? Why only the populist politicians got into the trouble that never occurred with the right wing presidents who stay in favor with the Empire?

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William Blum

Wikileaks has done it again. I guess the US will really have to get tough now with Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.

In a secret US cable to the State Department, dated November 9, 2006, and recently published online by WikiLeaks, former US ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to destabilize the government of the late President Hugo Chávez. The cable begins with a Summary:

During his 8 years in power, President Chavez has systematically dismantled the institutions of democracy and governance. The USAID/OTI program objectives in Venezuela focus on strengthening democratic institutions and spaces through non-partisan cooperation with many sectors of Venezuelan society.

USAID/OTI = United States Agency for International Development/Office of Transition Initiatives. The latter is one of the many euphemisms that American diplomats use with each other and the world – They say it means a transition to “democracy”. What it actually means is a transition from the target country adamantly refusing to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs to a country gladly willing (or acceding under pressure) to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs.

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Stephen Lendman

It shouldn't surprise. It's already policy. Market analyst Graham Summers explained. Depositor theft is coming. Europe is banker occupied territory. So is America.

Finance is a new form of warfare. It's more powerful than standing armies. Banking giants run things. Money power has final say.

Economies are strip-mined for profit. Communities are laid waste. Ordinary people are impoverished. Even their bank accounts aren't safe.

Cypriot officials agreed to tax them. Canada, New Zealand, and Euroland member states plan doing the same thing. So does America.

Officially they're called "bail-ins." It's code language for grand theft. Instead of breaking up, nationalizing, or closing down failed banks, depositor funds will keep them operating.

Money printing madness can't go on forever. Regulators, like Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), haven't enough money to insure depositors. It's simple mathematical logic. Ordinary people and richer ones have trillions in bank accounts. It's low-hanging fruit. It's a treasure trove begging to be looted. Legislative shenanigans legitimize it.

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Stephen Lendman

Prisoners of the "little camp" in Buchenwald

What other genocides and mass atrocities are remembered and acknowledged in this way?

Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated annually. It runs from sundown April 7 to sunset April 8. This year's theme is "Defiance and Rebellion during the Holocaust: 70 years Since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising."

Sunday night Warsaw and Jerusalem ceremonies included government officials, dignitaries and holocaust survivors.

At 10AM Monday morning, a two-minute siren echoed across Israel. It marked the beginning of other ceremonies that followed.

Yad Vashem is Israel's official holocaust memorial. It's located on Mount Herzl's western slope on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem. Its complex includes the Holocaust History Museum. It's second only to the Western Wall as Israel's most visited site.

A wreath-laying ceremony was held there. Holocaust victim names were publicly recited all day. Much more takes place annually. Never forget. Never again. Hollow words. Other holocausts go unmentioned. More on that below.

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Julie Hyland & Chris Marsden

Margaret Thatcher with mass murderer Augusto Pinochet

Margaret Thatcher, the friend of Chile’s fascist dictator General Augusto Pinochet and supporter of the apartheid system of racial discrimination in South Africa, has died of a stroke at the age of 87.

Neither the media’s eulogies to Thatcher as a great stateswoman, nor the staging of a day of national mourning complete with military honours, can conceal the fact that she died arguably the most hated figure in British politics.

[Ordinary people] will have greeted the announcement of her demise with cold indifference, contempt, and, in some cases, celebration. Impromptu street parties were underway in several cities within hours of her death.

Comparisons have been made repeatedly between Thatcher and Winston Churchill. They are inappropriate. A right-wing defender of British imperialism, not even Churchill’s opponents would deny his obvious political stature. At a time of acute crisis, he was able to invoke history and make an appeal to social layers far beyond his natural constituency in the ruling elite. In contrast there is not a single intelligent remark that can be cited as coming from Thatcher, only inane sound-bites tailored to a supportive press such as “The lady’s not for turning.”

Margaret Hilda Roberts embodied everything that is narrow-minded and philistine in the English middle class. She was preoccupied solely with self-advancement and enrichment, owing much of her success to having secured a rich husband. Her political talents, such as they were, consisted of the nasty cunning and ruthlessness of the social climber.

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Chris Hedges

It is only the outcasts and the rebels who keep truth and intellectual inquiry alive.

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false.

The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

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Stephen Lendman

Secretary of State John F. Kerry straps himself into a helicopter
as he prepares to fly out of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Kerry
will travel to Israel and the West Bank on Sunday.

On April 6, John Kerry began a multi-nation tour. He'll travel to Europe and East Asia. His first stop is Turkey. He'll meet with Netanyahu and Abbas. He wants peace talks restarted. More on that below.

Peace process deception is policy. It's always been a charade. It is now. Israel wants it that way. So does Washington.

It's been stillborn from inception. It's a scam. It doesn't exist. Palestinians never had a legitimate partner. For sure they don't now. Netanyahu deplores peace. So does Obama. Both are warrior leaders.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon once called peace talks a useful fiction. They're used "to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people," he said.

Golda Meir said Palestinians don't exist. They "never existed," she claimed. She deplored peace. She wanted all Arabs out of historic Palestine. "(M)y conscience would be absolutely clear" dispossessing them, she said.

Former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir wanted talks dragged out for years. He hoped doing so would facilitate settlement expansions. Other Israeli leaders felt the same way.

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Thomas Gaist

A NATO airstrike killed 20 people in eastern Afghanistan during the weekend, including at least one woman and 10 children ages 1 to 12. The attacks came at the end of one of the bloodiest weeks of the entire US occupation, which began in 2001.

The airstrikes were apparently part of an operation targeting Taliban leaders in the Shigel district of Kunar province. When US ground forces encountered resistance, they called for International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) air support. At least two Taliban militants were allegedly killed in the fighting.

In response to an attack in February of 2013 which killed 10 civilians, Karzai prohibited Afghan forces from calling in airstrikes in residential areas and publicly criticized the slaughter of civilians by the US and NATO. Nevertheless, US forces continue to murder innocent Afghan civilians.

“Government officials might tell you that Afghan and foreign forces only have the right to use airstrikes in unpopulated areas, but in practice it is different,” said Afghan General Amrullah Aman. “Americans will use their air support whenever they need it, no matter where it is and no matter how many presidential decrees are issued.”

Last Wednesday, another NATO airstrike in Ghazni, near DehYak district claimed the lives of four Afghan police officers. A helicopter attack in Ghazni, also last week, killed two children. At least seven civilians were killed in another attack last week in Logar province.

Last Wednesday, in the highest death toll attack since 2011, Taliban fighters stormed a courthouse in Farah, killing 46 as they sought to free insurgents standing trial. Last year, the Taliban initiated their spring offensive in May, with a series of bloody actions. With the Afghan winter coming to an end, fighting season is set to begin.

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Paul Craig Roberts

At the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 36 foreign govern-
ments and the United States have $255 billion worth of gold
bullion on deposit, the largest such accumulation on the planet.

Assault On Gold - Update
Update to the Update: The Attack on Gold

The US will be a third world country. We are halfway there.

For Americans, financial and economic Armageddon might be close at hand. The evidence for this conclusion is the concerted effort by the Federal Reserve and its dependent financial institutions to scare people away from gold and silver by driving down their prices.

When gold prices hit $1,917.50 an ounce on August 23, 2011, a gain of more than $500 an ounce in less than 8 months, capping a rise over a decade from $272 at the end of December 2000, the Federal Reserve panicked. With the US dollar losing value so rapidly compared to the world standard for money, the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing $1 trillion annually in order to support the impaired balance sheets of banks and to finance the federal deficit was placed in danger. Who could believe the dollar’s exchange rate in relation to other currencies when the dollar was collapsing in value in relation to gold and silver.

The Federal Reserve realized that its massive purchase of bonds in order to keep their
prices high (and thus interest rates low) was threatened by the dollar’s rapid loss of value in terms of gold and silver. The Federal Reserve was concerned that large holders of US dollars, such as the central banks of China and Japan and the OPEC sovereign investment funds, might join the flight of individual investors away from the US dollar, thus ending in the fall of the dollar’s foreign exchange value and thus decline in US bond and stock prices.

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Stephen Lendman

Wars define America. They reflect longstanding policy. They're permanent. They've been waged every year in the nation's history. They target enemies at home and abroad. When none exist, they're invented. Peace is a non-starter. It's always been that way. It never had a chance. It doesn't now. It's systematically spurned.

America's culture reflects belligerence. It's glorified in the name of peace. It's normal and commonplace. Pacifism is considered sissy and unpatriotic. America the Beautiful never existed. It doesn't now. Peace, human dignity, and democratic values are more illusion than reality. Enormous sums go for militarism and war. Unconscionable amounts are spent today. More on that below.

Vital needs go begging. Things go from bad to worse. Endless wars continue. One leads to others. Ravaging the world one country at a time or in multiples is policy.

Paul Craig Roberts is right. He calls America

"a lost land where nuclear weapons are in the hands of those who are concerned only with their own power." "Washington is the enemy of the entire world and encompasses the largest concentration of evil on the planet."

It is systematically destroying it one country at a time. It has got oceans of blood on its hands. It is responsible for tens of millions of deaths. Its human rights record is by far the world's worst. It is unprincipled and unconscionable. Its rap sheet includes diabolical crimes of war, against humanity and genocide. They persist worldwide.

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