Michael Hudson

About 75% of Iceland’s voters turned out on Saturday to reject the Social Democratic-Green government’s proposal to pay $5.2 billion to the British and Dutch bank insurance agencies for the Landsbanki-Icesave collapse. Every one of Iceland’s six electoral districts voted in the “No” column – by a national margin of 60% (down from 93% in January 2010).

The vote reflected widespread belief that government negotiators had not been vigorous in pleading Iceland’s legal case. The situation is reminiscent of World War I’s Inter-Ally war debt tangle. Lloyd George described the negotiations between U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and Stanley Baldwin regarding Britain’s arms debt as “a negotiation between a weasel and its quarry. The result was a bargain which has brought international debt collection into disrepute … the Treasury officials were not exactly bluffing, but they put forward their full demand as a start in the conversations, and to their surprise Dr. Baldwin said he thought the terms were fair, and accepted them. … this crude job, jocularly called a ‘settlement,’ was to have a disastrous effect upon the whole further course of negotiations …”

And so it was with Iceland’s negotiation with Britain. True, they got a longer payment period for the Icesave payout. But how is Iceland to obtain the pounds sterling and Euros in the face of its shrinking economy. This is the major payment risk that is still unaddressed. It threatens to plunge the krona’s exchange rate.

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Stephen Lendman

In his book, "Winning Modern Wars," General Wesley Clark said Pentagon sources told him two months after 9/11 that war plans were being prepared against Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Libya. Months earlier, they were finalized against Afghanistan.

Clark added:

"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."

Since insurgency in Libya began, reports of a ground invasion circulated despite no UN authorization and official denials.

On April 1, they gained credence after release of an EUFOR Libya (European Union Force) decision from Brussels, saying:

"The Council has adopted today the decision, underpinning the mandates of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973, establishing an operation, called 'EUFOR Libya' in order to stand ready to support humanitarian assistance in the region, if requested by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)."

In fact, "humanitarian assistance" is code language for aggression, invasion, colonization, and balkanization for profit and imperial control of the entire Mediterranean Basin. Libya, Syria, and Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon are the last links to complete it, suggesting after Libya's conquest, Syria and perhaps Lebanon may be next.

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article profiled him in-depth, accessed through this link.

It explained he represents the worst of Israel's lunatic fringe, sort of a combination Dick Cheney/John McCain/Joe Lieberman, too extremist to be entrusted with power, but he's got it.

Robert Fisk once said he "out-Sharons even Ariel Sharon. (He's) talked of drowning Palestinians in the Dead Sea or executing Israeli Palestinians who talked to Hamas. (His) incendiary language (promotes) executions....drownings....hell and loyalty oaths," perfect for the role he assumed, allied with Israel's most extremist ever Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who also out-Sharons Sharon, no easy feat by any means.

Israel under Netanyahu/Lieberman institutionalized racism in its worst form - potential expulsion or extermination. Gideon Levy called him a "nightmare (who's) here and now. (Extremist Rabbi Meir) Kahane is alive and kicking - is he ever - in the person of his thuggish successor."

He promotes "hatred for Arabs, hatred of democracy and the rule of law, and the stink of nationalism, racism and bloodthirstiness. (He's) the voice of the mob, and the mob craves hatred, vengeance and bloodshed."

He's a malignancy on the body politic, a "cancerous growth (throughout) society, (a dangerous, embarrassing) abomination," one step removed from being Prime Minister.

An unnamed Meretz party member once said "If you liked Mussolini, if you were missing Stalin, you'll love Lieberman."

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Stephen Lendman

On June 28, 2009, a coordinated State Department-Pentagon project allied with Honduran military commanders and top opposition figures ousted President Manuel Zelaya, establishing the current fascist dictatorship, supported, armed, and funded by Washington.

In fact, all Honduran officers from captains on up are trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the School of the Americas (SOA), popularly known as the "School of Assassins."

Established in 1946, SOA Watch calls it "a combat training school," teaching soldiers how to torture, repress, exterminate poor and indigenous people, overthrow democratically elected governments, assassinate targeted leaders, and suppress popular resistance when it erupts.

As a result, its graduates have "left a trail of blood and suffering in every country," sending recruits to learn the latest ways to brutalize, disappear, and massacre their people back home, including in Honduras.

On March 31, Rights Action contributor Karen Spring headlined, "Honduras Is Burning - Endless Repression by Military-Backed Regime," saying:

After two weeks of brutal repression, anger over 18 political prisoners on trial for illegally protesting and sedition, and attempts by the fascist government to privatize public education, public school teachers and the National Front of Popular Resistance (NFPR) called a nationwide strike.

On March 30, NFPR reported widespread protests, shutting down many highways. "Live rounds (were) fired at protesters at some of the take-over" locations, injuring many people. "Severe repression (was reported) in Nacaome, Planes, Tegucigalpa, Potrerillos, Santa Cruz de Yojoa, Santa Rosa de Copan and San Pedro Sula, as well as in other communities and neighborhoods throughout the country.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Ynet published yesterday an exceptionally stupid review of the economy behind the Iron Dome, Israel’s new anti missile defence system. The article attempts to present the ‘reasoning’ behind the new anti missile system. Believe it or not, it compares the running cost of the system with the potential lost caused by the death of an Israeli.

“The Iron Dome system is very good for Israeli economy”, says Dr. Adam Reuter, a ‘financial risk management’ expert. “A 25 year-old Israeli citizen should yield an average of 40 years of production … In other words, the death of an Israeli citizen at age 25 could cause a potential loss of economy of some 1.2 million dollars.”

According to Dr Reuter, the economy is pretty clear; the cost of a battery of Iron Dome which includes 100 missiles is about $100 million. The cost of each missile is about 50 thousand dollars. Reuter logic is simple; if you spend $50.000 on a missile, you may save a young Israel who could potentially contribute 1.2 million dollars to the Jewish State’s economy for the next 40 years.

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David Lindorff
This Can't Be Happening

Libyan rebels celebrating on burned-out Gaddafy military
vehicle may be unknowingly inhaling toxic uranium oxide.

President Obama’s criminal launch of an undeclared and Congressionally unauthorized war against Libya may be compounded by the crime of spreading toxic uranium oxide in populated areas of that country.

This is latest concern of groups like the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons [1], which monitor the military use of so-called depleted-uranium (DU) anti-tank and bunker-penetrating shells.

Images of Libyan civilians and rebels celebrating around the burning hulks of the Libyan army’s tanks and armored personnel carriers, which had been hit by US, French and British aircraft ordnance in the early hours of the US-led assault on the forces of Col. Muammar Gaddafy, could well have been unknowingly inhaling the deadly dust of the uranium weapons favored by Western military forces for anti-tank warfare.

Specifically, the British-built Harrier jets used by British naval air forces and also by US Marine pilots, are often equipped with pod-mounted cannons that fire 20 mm shells--shells that often have uranium projectiles designed to penetrate heavy armor.

So far, the US has not introduced its A-10 Thunderbolts, known also as Warthogs, into the Libyan campaign, probably because these sub-sonic, straight-wing craft, while heavily armored, are vulnerable to shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles which Libyan forces are known to possess in large numbers. Once the air-control situation is improved by continued bombardment, however, these specialized ground-attack aircraft will probably be added to the attacking forces. The A-10 has a particularly large automatic cannon which fires an unusually large 30 mm shell. These shells are often fitted with solid uranium projectiles for attacking tanks, APCs or groups of fighters holed up in concrete bunkers.

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Ilan Pappé

Richard Goldstone in the Gaza Strip, June 2009. (UN Photo)

"If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document." Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone's much-discussed op-ed in the Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor might have tampered with the text and that the original sentence ought to have read something like: "If I had known then that the report would turn me into a self-hating Jew in the eyes of my beloved Israel and my own Jewish community in South Africa, the Goldstone report would never have been written at all." And if that wasn't the original sentence, it is certainly the subtext of Goldstone's article.

This shameful U-turn did not happen this week. It comes after more than a year and a half of a sustained campaign of intimidation and character assassination against the judge, a campaign whose like in the past destroyed mighty people such as US Senator William Fulbright who was shot down politically for his brave attempt to disclose AIPAC's illegal dealings with the State of Israel.

Already In October 2009, Goldstone told CNN, "I've got a great love for Israel" and "I've worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so" (Video: "Fareed Zakaria GPS," 4 October 2009).

Given the fact that at the time he made this declaration of love he did not have any new evidence, as he claims now, one may wonder how could this love could not be at least weakened by what he discovered when writing, along with other members of the UN commission, his original report.

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Stephen Lendman

In his April 8 article headlined, "The Economic Crisis in Iceland: 'IMF Medicine' is not the Solution," Michael Hudson asked:

"Will Iceland Vote 'No' on April 9, or commit financial suicide," their choice being:

>

Reject debt bondage or "subject their economy to decades of poverty, bankruptcy and emigration of their work force."

In other words, destroying the nation for profit, extorting its wealth, selling off its natural resources and public enterprises, raising taxes on working Icelanders, and transforming the country into a dystopian nightmare, what Merriam-Webster calls "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives," the opposite of utopia under conditions of deprivation, poverty, disease, violence, oppression, and terror, like in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In other writing, Hudson called debt bondage "as deadly as outright military" defeat. Loss of livelihoods and assets leave people vulnerable to sickness, despair, and early deaths, much like what happened in post-Soviet Russia under Washington-imposed "shock therapy" when:

● 80% of farmers went bankrupt;
● around 70,000 state factories closed;
● unemployment became epidemic;
● a permanent underclass was created;
● poverty rose from two million in 1989 to 74 million by the mid-1990s, and in half the cases it was desperate;
● alcoholism and drug abuse soared;
● so did HIV/AIDS 20-fold;
● suicides also and violent crime four-fold; and
● the population declined by 700,000 a year; by 2007 it was 10% lower than in 1989 because of sharply reduced life expectancies.

In March 2010, Hudson explained that 93% of Icelanders rejected bailout terms. Otherwise, they faced repayment for billions in banking fraud. In fact, they've already been mercilessly hammered by "a falling GDP, rising unemployment, defaults, foreclosures," and housing prices down 70% from their peak valuation, heading for mortgaging their futures unless freed from perpetual debt bondage.

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article explained his sellout to Republicans last year on extending tax cuts to America's aristocracy, accessed through this link.

It shouldn't surprise that on April 8, he repeated what's become a habit - breaking every major campaign pledge by backing reactionary Republican measures, harming working Americans most, besides governing lawlessly at home and abroad and much more, hurtling the nation dangerously far right, tipping it toward neoserfdom enforced by repressive harshness.

Last December he said, "without a willingness to give on both sides, there's no reason to believe (the current) stalemate won't continue well into next year....I am not willing to let that happen....it would be the wrong thing to do. As a result, we arrived at a framework for a bipartisan agreement," what, in fact, was assured well in advance of his announcement.

Obama's notion of "tough choices" includes:

● permanent wars;
● greater super-rich enrichment;
● temporary social benefit crumbs; as well as
● class warfare through neoliberal austerity for working Americans, mainly middle class ones, targeted for elimination.

Neither Obama or congressional allies explain, or that both parties accelerated it in recent years, most recently on April 8, again betraying loyal constituents who support him, besides America's most needy.

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Stephen Lendman

According to media scholar/critic Robert McChesney, today's corporate journalism is co-opted, corrupted, gutted, and virtually worthless as a source of real news, information and analysis.

As a result, a free and open society is at risk because fiction substitutes for fact. News is carefully managed. Dissent is marginalized, and supporting wealth and power interests replace full disclosure and accurate reporting. No wonder imperial wars are called liberating one. Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good, and patriotism means going along with lawless governments. America's under both parties certainly qualifies.

Two previous articles explained that for many decades, The Times has been America's closest equivalent to an official ministry of information and propaganda, masquerading as real news, commentary, analysis and opinion.

Its long history reveals a record of suppressing truth, supporting powerful interests, backing corporate predators, and endorsing imperial wars, no matter how much killing, destruction, and human misery they cause, let alone why they're waged.

In Times logic, America's are legitimate, liberating and just when, in fact, they're lawless, brutal, exploitive wealth and power grabs, intolerant of democratic values, including at home.

As a result, an April 7 editorial headlined, "Keeping Ahead of Qaddafi" doesn't surprise, saying:

America should use A-10 Warthogs to attack tanks and armor and AC-130 gunships to escalate killing on the ground, explaining they "can fly slow enough and low enough" to destroy targets better than "highflying supersonic French and British jets." American ones as well still participating.

In fact, AFRICOM's General Carter Ham, commanding the Libyan war, not NATO, said these and other strike aircraft are deployed and available to provide close air-ground support. Recent bad weather and threats from Gaddafi's mobile surface-to-air missiles restricted their use so far, he explained.

Claiming this will avoid civilian casualties, Times reasoning ignores the historic record that democratic and authoritarian governments willfully kill large numbers of civilians strategically to win wars at all cost, especially imperial ones to colonize conquered foes, control their resources, and exploit their people ruthlessly for profit.

During and since WW II alone, America killed millions of mostly civilian Japanese, Germans, Italians, Koreans, Southeast Asians, Central Americans, Africans, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, and now Libyans.

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Stephen Lendman

Throughout its history, Israel has been a regional menace, intimidating and preemptively attacking Palestinians and regional neighbors for any reason or none at all. Each time, it has self-righteously claimed it was acting in "self-defense" ― that's what scoundrels always say.

Until his death, Edward Said passionately defended Palestinian rights. He accused Israel of turning Palestine into an isolated prison, suffocating an entire population, impoverishing and slaughtering them, blaming them for its own state terror, and creating a wasteland of destruction and human misery.

Moreover, he said Israeli regimes sanctioned torture, targeted assassinations, and mass killing as official policy, besides committing every imaginable human indignity and degradation against people for their faith, ethnicity and presence.

As a result, Israel perpetuates a never ending cycle of violence and destruction, planning to end "the Palestinian problem," calling courage and resistance "terrorism," offering nothing in return for outrageous demands, and pursuing dominating pacification disguised as "peace." Journalist Henry Siegman once called it "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history."

Gideon Levy calls it "an unborn baby," saying there's "never been an Israeli peace camp." How can there be when decades of Israeli leaders called peace process negotiations a useful fiction.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

Intolerance in the Occupied West Bank: A Palestinian mother is
kicked by a Jewish boy while a Jewish woman rips off her Islamic
headscarf.

In a New Statesman article, law professor John Dugard ,who was a Judge on The International Court of Justice as well as being Special Raporteur for United Nations Commission on Human Rights, summarises the Goldstone apology saga :

‘there are no new facts that could possibly have led Richard Goldstone to change his mind about the UN-backed investigation into Israel and the conflict in Gaza.’

While Goldstone claimed that the Israeli investigations produced some results also recognised by a follow-up UN committee report chaired by Judge Mary McGowan Davis, Dugard stresses that the McGowan Davis report was actually very critical of the Israeli investigations, finding them to be “lacking in impartiality, promptness and transparency.”

According to the McGowan Davis report, the Israeli ‘probe’ has resulted in “two convictions; one for theft of a credit card, resulting in a sentence of seven months' imprisonment, and another for using a Palestinian child as a human shield, which resulted in a suspended sentence of three months.”

Dugard is clearly bewildered by Goldstone’s latest zigzag: “Richard Goldstone is a former judge and he knows fully well that a fact-finding report by four persons cannot be changed by the subsequent reflections of a single member of the committee.” What made Goldstone change his mind “remains a closely guarded secret,” says Dugard.

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Stephen Lendman

Measuring 7.1 (one or more other reports said 7.4), rocked northeast Japan, causing more damage and disruption to a devastated area. It cut electricity to four million homes, disrupted power at two nuclear facilities, and according to Kyodo News:

"Radioactive water spilled from pools holding spent nuclear fuel rods at the Onagawa power plant in Miyagi Prefecture," according to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).

For up to 80 minutes, power was lost at Onagawa and the Higashidori nuclear facility. "A small amount of contaminated water spilled on the floor (inside) all three (Onagawa) reactors....In all, water spilled or leaked at eight sections of the plant," also run by Tokyo Electric (TEPCO). In addition, blowout panels designed to control pressure were damaged in reactor number three's turbine building, TEPCO saying a complete damage assessment was ongoing.

Moreover, a Rokkasho village (Aomori Prefecture) spent nuclear fuel disposal facility also lost power temporarily. The extent of nuclear facility damage is unknown, except for sketchy and unreliable official reports.

As always, they say damage, new or earlier, poses no dangers. Already, in fact, Fukushima caused potentially apocalyptic ones, covered up to conceal their gravity, extending far beyond Japan and the Pacific rim.

Other reports also downplay them, including from The New York Times and Al Jazeera, often indistinguishable from and as unreliable as BBC, headlining (on April 8) "Japan quake causes radioactive spill," saying:

"A powerful earthquake in northeast Japan rocked a nuclear plant, causing a small amount of radioactive water to spill, but the operator said there was no immediate danger," [case closed.]

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William Bowles
Strategic Culture Foundation

'The BBC's Tim Willcox takes a look at a tank destroyed in recent air
strikes near the Libyan town of Ajdabiya.' - 'VIDEO: How air strikes
destroy Libyan tanks', BBC Website, 4 April 2011

"This is pure hypocrisy and demagogy, they are already giving weapons to the rebels, and not only that: they are interfering in the struggle of the Libyan people," he said, adding that “this action is against international law and the United Nations Charter.”-- Miguel D'Escoto

One thing should surely be clear and that is the pivotal role played by the corporate/state media in selling the Libyan 'no-fly zone' and the subsequent invasion by the Empire, albeit by first 'softening up the enemy' and then as illegal arms supplier. Thus the 'rebels', about whom absolutely nothing is known, become the West's 'democratic' torch-bearers and all pretence at it being some kind of 'humanitarian intervention', is dropped.

But in spite of the all-embracing media barrage it didn't take long for the real story behind the 'rebels' to emerge.

“Today as Colonel Haftar finally returns to the battlefields of North Africa with the objective of toppling Gaddafi, his former co-conspirator from Libya’s 1969 coup, he may stand as the best liaison for the United States and allied NATO forces in dealing with Libya’s unruly rebels.”-- 'Rebel army chief is veteran Gaddafi foe-think-tank', Reuters news service, 1 April, 2011

What's so incredible about the power of the media to transform reality for us is best illustrated by the fact that the political elite knew what the 'no-fly zone' really meant, that it was an act of war, the media just omitted this particular detail from its coverage, or rather it relegated it to a footnote, just as it did with the way it presented the illegal invasion of Iraq to the public. Crimes become 'omissions' and 'errors' and finally 'historical' footnotes.

“Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that the Obama administration knew that the Libyan opposition was eager to be seen “as doing this by themselves on behalf of the Libyan people — that there not be outside intervention by any external force.”— ‘Libyan Rebels Said to Debate Seeking U.N. Airstrikes‘, New York Times, 2 March, 2011.

Gaddafi of course, is just one of a whole slew of stereotypes that can be conveniently pulled out of storage as and when necessary and used to dehumanize and transform into the 'other' without missing a beat (no images in the MSM of Gaddafi hugging Blair or hanging out with Berlusconi). Reality gets literally 'boilerplated' by an all-embracing electronic media where rumour /disinformation becomes reality as it is wrapped around the planet 24/7.

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Stephen Lendman

On April 2, New York Times writer Ethan Bronner headlined, "In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out," saying:

The UN may vote to "welcom(e) the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has been steadily building support for such a resolution in September, a move that could place Israel into a diplomatic vice."

According to Defense Minister Ehud Barak:

"We are facing a diplomatic-political tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of and that will peak in September. It is a very dangerous situation, one that requires action. Paralysis, rhetoric, inaction will deepen the isolation of Israel."

On April 4, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned UN officials against recognizing an independent Palestine, saying, "It will destroy everything we have accomplished to date" with no further explanation. President Mahmoud Abbas said he'll seek recognition at the UN General Assembly this September when the body holds its annual meeting. A notorious occupation enforcer, he may or may not follow through. So far, over 130 countries have officially recognized Palestine within its 1967 borders. Israel remains contemptuously opposed.

So does America, White House Middle East advisor Dennis Ross, saying:

"We have consistently made it clear that the way to produce a Palestinian state is through negotiations, not through unilateral declarations, not through going to the UN. Our position on that has been consistent in opposition" to legitimate Palestinian rights. Neither Washington or Israel tolerates them, so it's up to the UN to act.

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Stephen Lendman

On April 6, Reuters reported that "the core at Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel," Rep. Edward Markey told a House hearing on the disaster, saying:

"I have been informed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that the core has gotten so hot that part of it has probably melted through the reactor pressure vessel."

Recklessly promoting nuclear proliferation, America's NRC is notorious for coverup and denial of its harmful effects. As a result, their rare admission virtually confirms a full core meltdown in one or more reactors, meaning vast amounts of radiation are being uncontrollably released into the atmosphere, water and soil, spreading over a vast area. It's the ultimate nightmare scenario now unfolding, but don't expect major media reports or government officials to explain.

Nonetheless, on April 6, New York Times writers Matthew Wald and Andrew Pollack headlined, "Core of Stricken Reactor Probably Leaked, US Says," stating:

America's NRC "said Wednesday that some of the core of a stricken Japanese reactor had probably leaked from its steel pressure vessel into the bottom of the containment structure, implying that the damage was even worse than previously thought."

Far worse, in fact, because molten core material then burns uncontrollably through the concrete foundation, meaning all bets are off.

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Andrei Serenko
New Eastern Outlook

University students during a demonstration in Kabul, Afghani-
stan today. Hundreds of Afghans shouted anti-US, NATO and
Afghan government slogans and burned a effigy of President
Barack Obama during a rally to protest a rumor that U.S. forces
had bombed a mosque and burned a copy of the Muslim holy
book, the Quran, in nearby Wardak province in mid-October.
Authorities say Taliban supporters spread the false report to
stir trouble. (The Associated Press)

The events of April 1-2, 2011 in Afghanistan suggest that new trends are emerging in Afghan society. We believe they will grew stronger in the near future and influence the formation of a new Afghan political reality. New active protest movements are making themselves heard, and official Kabul has so far been unable to react to them constructively and confidently.

It seems that the “new protest” phenomenon in Afghanistan is the result of several factors—the long-standing military-political conflict, Afghan society’s weariness with it and the fierce competition by world and regional states interested in increasing their impact on Afghanistan—and that includes the reformatted American presence there.

The two faces of the new Afghan protest

Two different kinds of active protests movement have shown up in Afghanistan over the past few days.

1. The Quran Defenders Movement. The spark that ignited this movement occurred when the evangelic pastors Sapp and Jones burned a copy of the Quran in Florida on March 20, 2011. News about the stunt brought thousands of the Afghan Muslims onto the streets in seven provinces—Balkh, Takhar, Jowzjan, Kabul, Kandahar, Bamyan, Herat and Jalalabad. Violent demonstrations by members of the Quran Defenders Movement in Balkh and Kandahar shook the world. From 3000 to 8000 people participated in demonstrations involving the use of firearms in Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar on April 1-2. At least 20 people were killed, including seven foreigners, and 100 people were wounded. The Quran Defenders Movement shouted tough anti-American slogans (it should be noted, however, that not one US citizen was injured during the protests). The Center for the Study of Modern Afghanistan (TsISA) reports that according to sources in the country radical Islamic clerics played a prominent role in organizing the armed protests in Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar (the violent crowd in Mazar-e-Sharif responded to calls by several mullahs who had led the Blue Mosque congregation during the period of Taliban rule).

2. The “Supreme Reformers Council.” This movement, which emerged in Internet social networks, has already called for an active (massive, street) protest. However, in contrast to the Quran Defenders Movement, which is directed and organized by Islamic clerics, the Supreme Reformers Council is primarily focused on secular and civil values. It organizes the activities of its followers using Internet technologies (Facebook), and its goal is the implementation of anticorruption reforms in Afghanistan. This movement represents the interests of educated young people in Afghan cities. The Supreme Reformers Movement held its first press conference in Kabul in late March (which, incidentally, was ignored by most Afghan and foreign media). Dozens of the new movement’s followers gathered on a street in the Deh Mazang area for the press conference, during which members of the movement announced their main demand—a stepped-up fight against corruption. Participants demanded that President Hamid Karzai fire government ministers accused of corruption.

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Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque

Wise man William Pfaff speaks the truth like rolling thunder here:

The struggle is under way to re-establish American control over the successors to those despots whom popular uprisings have ousted from Tunisia and Egypt, threatening the careers of still other abusive absolute monarchs and presidents-for-life (and their offspring).

The report that Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh is to be thrown to the crocodile crowds by the American government, allowing for bids by the CIA for a successor, was “leaked” (meaning not announced at a press conference) to The New York Times. His fault, in American officials’ eyes, is not so much the killing and other violence he has deployed against citizen protestors of his rule, tolerable until now (as in the earlier cases of Presidents Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia), as it is the failure of this violence to suppress popular uprising. These figures are not disqualified by despotism but for unsuccessful despotism.

...The authentic sources of revolutionary unrest were deeper than perceived in Western government offices. Obviously there was social distress, callous maldistribution of wealth and arbitrary rule through powerful security establishments. However, these are not “underdeveloped” nations. To apply that term to Lebanon or Syria, or to pre-2003 Iraq, or Iran, or to Egypt, the most ancient and sophisticated civilization of all, is preposterous.

Their political problem might be described as overdevelopment; these civilizations have seen everything.

The Arab states created out of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s were assigned artificial frontiers that often disregarded established ethnic, sectarian, historical, dynastic, and tribal interests and realities. Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Libya are all cases of political artificiality and Western intervention to suit European colonial interests. Into this, the new and non-Arab, non-Islamic state of Israel was imposed in what was historic Palestine, ostensibly to right the atrocity of the Holocaust, a European crime for which Islamic civilization bore no responsibility whatever. The notion that the U.S. and the European states automatically possess solutions relevant to all of this is absurd.

...The worst outcome is, however, the one that seems most likely: a new American effort to manage the region through chosen political clients and favorites, in the self-deluding belief that this is “democratization”—the identical policy that has already given the region wars in or around Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the threat of war with Iran and now the Libyan intervention.

Pfaff nails it cold. The American imperium has indeed found its feet after being stunned for a few weeks by the outbreak of the Arab Awakening. Now it is moving full-speed ahead on a variety of fronts to strangle the regional uprising against corrupt, oppressive elites.

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Stephen Lendman

"The rule of law is null and void. Whatever the president says goes. No one any longer is safe. Obama is as lawless as Bush. America is a police state, making everyone potentially vulnerable."

[In this file photo of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin, reviewed by the U.S. Military [!!!], the five Sept. 11, 2001 attack co-defendants sit during a hearing at the U.S. Military Commissions court for war crimes, at the U.S. Naval Base, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Monday, Jan. 19, 2009. From top to bottom, they are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Waleed Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmad al Hawsawi. [After being waterboarded 183 times,] the five men charged with the Sept. 11 attacks [now] say they "are terrorists to the bone" in their most detailed response to [the false] U.S. war crimes charges. The Associated Press on Tuesday March 10, 2009 obtained the six-page court filing in which the defendants [allegedly] refer to Sept. 11 as "the great attack on America." (AP Photo/Janet Hamlin, Pool, File)]

On April 4, New York Times writer Charlie Savage headlined, "In a Reversal, Military Trials for 9/11 Cases," saying:

After months of indecision, the Obama administration "will prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) and four other (suspects) accused of plotting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks before a military commission and not a civilian court, as it once planned."

In fact, candidate Obama pledged:

"As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions...."

On January 22, 2009, he signed an Executive Order (EO) to close Guantanamo in one year. - More promises made. More broken. Obama's record is near-perfect showing nothing he says can be believed.

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Stephen Lendman

"Despite a severe Main Street depression, Democrats and Republicans plan austerity instead of essential stimulus, including for entitlement programs, vital to strengthen, not undermine when they're most needed."

Public rhetoric obscures important facts about these plans politicians won't discuss in their zeal to end them incrementally.

Medicaid is welfare for low-income beneficiaries, jointly funded by the states and Washington, managed at the state level.

Social Security and Medicare are insurance programs, funded by worker-employer payroll tax deductions. They're contractual federal obligations to eligible recipients who qualify. However, you'd never know it the way both programs are publicly discussed, explaining everything but the truth.

On August 14, 1935, the Social Security Act became law, known as the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program (OASDI). It provides retirement, disability, survivorship, and death benefits. It's still America's most effective poverty reduction program that's worked remarkably well since inception. It exists to provide secure inflation-adjusted retirement or disability income, unlike risking personal savings to create private wealth and perhaps lose it.

Despite bogus claims, it's not going bankrupt. When properly administered, it's sound and secure, needing only modest adjustments at times to assure it.

On July 30, 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed the Social Security (Medicare) Act into law, enrolling Harry and Bess Truman as its first recipients.

Medicare.gov calls it "the nation's largest health insurance program," covering 40 million Americans. It's a "Health Insurance program for people age 65 or older, some disabled people under age 65, and people of all ages with End-Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure treated with dialysis or a transplant)."

Bipartisan complicity wants Medicare and Social Security ended, citing the nation's burgeoning debt and enormous unfunded liabilities for both programs.

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