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Friday, January 27,2012

World News
Libya, gloriously 'freed' by the Western Axis, “in danger of descending into a bottomless pit"

Social Ideas
Vladimir Putin wants to see a 100-book Russian canon all students must read. What is in his head and heart?

Thursday, January 26,2012

World News
Libyans seen losing faith in new Western Axis-backed regime

Commentary
Slouching toward open warfare with Iran: After Iraq, after Afghanistan, after Libya, after all of these horrors and many more, can the American people be led into another war? Why, it's the easiest thing in the world. EU will obediently follow

Wednesday, January 25,2012

Commentary
USA: The military is savior of the nation Obama said in his State of the Union address. Now that's a claim that would sound familiar to most Egyptians

Commentary
Egypt: After the revolution that shame built, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces fears a plot to topple the state

World News
Film: "The West Bank: Whose Promised Land?" & 2011 a record year for West Bank settlement construction

Tuesday, January 24,2012

World News
US law: The uphill battle against Citizens United—tricky legal terrain and no easy fixes

Commentary
The NASA scientist: Jim Hansen risks handcuffs to make his research clear

Commentary
South Carolina primary: Corporatism in action?

Monday, January 23,2012

World News
Git Syria!

World News
Fight for a nation: Libyan Arab Jamahiriya loyalists retake town of Bani Walid—for now at least

World News
Shall we have "much fun" with Iran?

Sunday, January 22,2012

Arts
Sense and sensibility: The cursed poets and their gods

Commentary
Was the Third Reich a unique, one-time phenomenon, or do humans possess some ever-present receptivity to the appeal of primal, herd-like hatred?

Commentary
Putin and the uses of history

The material interests of the invaders are highly likely to be served, but not the human rights of the people of the invaded country. - Glenn Greenwald

‘NTC head may resign – if he makes it out alive’
RT Russia January 23, 2012

The deputy head of Libya’s National Transitional Council is resigning in light of continuing protests. Sukant Chandan, a spokesman for British Civilians for Peace in Libya, says the Council’s head may resign as well – if he doesn’t get killed first.

"The Gaddafi regime could control all of Libya, could find peace amongst all the tribes. The new regime cannot even control something in one town or one area," Chandan told RT. "They’ve been selling their oil and natural resources and sovereignty to NATO. And now the thieves – that is, the rebels – are all falling out with each other, they can’t even be paid by their own masters." He continues, "they've performed regime change on behalf of the former colonialists of Libya.”

Chandan says those who wish not to believe what Gaddafi said of life in Libya after the fall of his regime should listen to Jalil, who he says “probably is about to resign – if he’s not assassinated, like NTC military head Abdel Fatah Yunis.” The analyst says Jalil has warned that Libya is “in danger of descending into a bottomless pit.”

“So really, this is the achievement of ‘freedom and democracy’ by NATO,” Chandan concluded. ...

The human rights “success” in Libya
Glenn Greenwald Salon.com USA January 26, 2012

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It quickly became ossified conventional wisdom that NATO’s war in Libya to aid rebel factions in overthrowing Moammar Gaddafi was a clear human rights victory. But the reality in post-Gaddafi Libya has long been in tension with that claim, and that’s true today more so than ever: ... This is not the first report of serious, systematic abuses in Libya. ... The situation is quite redolent of the celebratory claim that Freedom was brought to Iraq by the U.S. invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein. ...

Obviously, the Gadaffi and Saddam regimes were horrible human rights abusers. But the point is that one cannot celebrate a human rights success based merely on the invasion and overthrow of a bad regime; it is necessary to know what one has replaced them with. Ironically, those who are the loudest advocates for these wars and then prematurely celebrate the outcome (and themselves) bear significant responsibility for these subsequent abuses: by telling the world that the invasion was a success, it causes the aftermath — the most important part — to be neglected. There is nothing noble about invading and bombing a country into regime change if what one ushers in is mass instability along with tyranny and abuse by a different regime: typically one that is much more sympathetic to the invading regime-changers.

That last point underscores the other key lesson from these types of invasions. They are almost always sold by appeal to human rights concerns — Iraqi babies pulled from incubators and Saddam’s rape rooms — but that is very rarely their actual objective. When the West invokes human rights concerns to justify an attack on a dictator whom it has long tolerated (and often even supported), that is rather compelling evidence that human rights is the packaging for the war, not the goal. The fact that it is not the goal means more than just another war sold deceitfully based on pretexts: it means that human rights concerns will not drive what happens after the invasion is completed. ...

All of these points are particularly worth keeping in mind with the mounting sanctions regimes and other forms of attack aimed at the two countries that just so happen to be those which most thwart the interests of the U.S. and Israel in that region: Iran and Syria (indeed, some of the most vocal supporters of the Libya intervention are now calling on the same to be done in Syria). ...

Tortured freedom: Libya’s new rulers resort to old tactics
RT Russia January 27, 2012

Despite the changes sweeping Libya, violence and bloodshed have not stopped. In shocking revelations, military and security forces stand accused of torturing detainees to death. Rights groups say Libya's new rulers have not addressed the problem. ...

The news comes amidst rising frustration with Libya’s interim government. Demonstrations in Benghazi last week ended with the resignation of a high-ranking member of the National Transitional Council (NTC). In the former Gaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid, locals pushed out the NTC’s forces, claiming systematic abuse. ...

Painting: Boris Sholokhov ((1919 - 2003), an artist and citizen of the Soviet Union. Sholokhov was a talented Russian painter who was a master of portrait and large genre paintings. Sholokhov´s uncle, the prominent painter Pyotr Sholokhov, taught him how to paint as a child. Sholokhov studied art at the Leningrad Academy of Fine Arts and the Moscow Surikov Art Institute. He was a member of the Union of Soviet Artists and he taught at Moscow Polygraphic Institute

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of little children tends towards the formation of character. - Hosea Ballou (1771 – 1852), an American Universalist clergyman and theological writer

It is well known, and will be acknowledged by every candid person, that the human heart is capable of becoming soft, or hard; kind, or unkind; merciful or unmerciful, by education and habit. On this principle we contend, that the infernal torments, which false religion has placed in the future world, and which ministers have, with an overflowing zeal, so constantly held up to the people, and urged with all their learning and eloquence, have tended so to harden the hearts of the professors of this religion, that they have exercised, toward their fellow creatures, a spirit of enmity, which but too well corresponds with the relentless cruelty of their doctrine, and the wrath which they have imagined to exist in our heavenly Father. By having such an example constantly before their eyes, they have become so transformed into its image, that, whenever they have had the power, they have actually executed a vengeance on men and women, which evinced that the cruelty of their doctrine had overcome the native kindness and compassion of the human heart. - Hosea Ballou

My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary productions which reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson and less intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning; yet because I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn as they have had theirs. - Matthew Arnold (1822 – 1888), a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Items: The lasting guarantee of a decent education
David Conway Daily Telegraph UK January 4, 2010

Critics of the national curriculum – and they are legion in our classrooms and teacher training colleges – seem curiously unaware that the first person to propose such a curriculum for England was Matthew Arnold.

Today, Arnold is best known as a leading Victorian social and literary critic, as well as a poet. But education was in his blood. His father, Thomas, was the famed headmaster of Rugby School and for 35 years Arnold was also an elementary schools inspector. It was in that capacity that, on several occasions, he was asked by parliamentary commissions to tour Europe and inspect educational arrangements there, reporting back with recommendations on how schooling in England might be improved.

The foreign schools that most impressed Arnold were those of France and Prussia. Both had started to subsidise their secondary schools in ways England had not. Additionally, both had introduced into them strikingly similar curricula which, and not by accident, bear striking resemblance to both the 1904 Regulations for Secondary Schools – the first ever attempt at prescribing classroom subjects in secondary schools – and the present national curriculum introduced in 1988. ...

Arnold believed such a curriculum would be "the first great stage of a liberal education". He did not invent the idea of such a form of education. Its roots go back to classical antiquity, when it was widely recognised that, to use Aristotle's words, "there is a form of education which we must provide for our sons, not as being useful or essential but as elevated and worthy of free men."

Arnold believed liberal education should be the prime aim of all schooling beyond the most elementary and crudely vocational. His reasons have great contemporary relevance, given how increasingly less focused on traditional subjects state-schooling is becoming: "The aim and office of instruction… is to enable a man to know himself and the world… To know himself, a man must know the capabilities and performances of the human spirit… [which is] the value of the humanities… but it is also a vital and formative knowledge to know the world, the laws which govern nature, and man as a part of nature."

For Arnold, and all who followed him, the principal value of such knowledge was not vocational, however useful such knowledge might be. Its main value was thought to reside in its providing a sound basis for action, as well as the means to appreciate and derive insight and solace from "the best which has been said and thought". This was Arnold's term for culture whose canonical literary and artistic works, he believed, it should be the aim of schooling to make the patrimony of everyman. ...

Jim comment: I want to insert this snippet from an Arnold poem here.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead
The other powerless to be born,
With nowhere yet to rest my head
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.

Vladimir Putin plans 100-book Russian canon all students must read
Alison Flood guardian.co.uk UK January 26, 2012


Vladimir Putin talks to students in the Siberian city of Tomsk on January 25. Photo: Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images

Vladimir Putin has laid out his plans to compile a canon of 100 Russian books "that every Russian school leaver will be required to read" in an attempt to preserve the "dominance of Russian culture".

In an article running to more than 4,500 words in Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper, the Russian prime minister writes that "in the 1920s, some leading universities in the United States advocated something referred to as the Western Canon, a canon of books regarded as the most important and influential in shaping Western culture", adding that "each self-respecting student was required to read 100 books from a specially compiled list of the greatest books of the Western world".

Putin, who is running for a third term as president in March, says that Russia has "always been described as a 'reading nation'", and proposes taking a survey of the country's "most influential cultural figures" and compiling "a 100-book canon that every Russian school leaver will be required to read – that is, to read at home rather than study in class or memorise. And then they would be asked to write an essay on one of them in their final exams. Or at least let us give young Russians a chance to demonstrate their knowledge and world outlook in various student competitions." ...

Vladimir Putin would like you to read a book: Why his proposal for a "Russian canon" is scary as hell
Alexander Nazaryan New York Daily News USA January 25, 2012

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“Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed,” said the poet Osip Mandelstam, who became the victim of his own morbid prediction in 1938, sent to die in a Soviet prison camp for writing an unflattering verse about Josef Stalin.

And while we love to trot out that old Percy Bysshe Shelley line about poets (and writers in general) being “unacknowledged legislators of the world,” literature hardly has the power here that it did in my native Soviet Union.

Nobody, after all, is going to send Alice Walker to Alaska if she maligns the Republicans. ...

It is precisely because ink and blood comingle so freely in Russia that I was disturbed to read about Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s newest proposal – put forth in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, or “Free Newspaper” – to unify the disparate peoples of Russia through a common literary canon. ... If you’re not frightened by this, I suggest you listen to one of Hitler’s speeches. Substitute Russki narod for Volksdeutsche and you pretty much have the same idea. ...

Clashes, torture on the rise in ‘disillusioned’ Libya
Jason Ditz Antiwar.com USA January 25, 2012



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In “liberated” Libya, violence is on the rise as militias attack one another on a regular basis and seemingly everyone accuses everyone else of being a Gadhafi ally. Arrest, in this environment, often means open-ended detention without charges. And torture.

Nominally under the control of the US and NATO-backed National Transitional Council (NTC), this new Libya is a nation awash in arms and grudges, the product of an ugly civil war and an international community that seems determined to throw its weight behind any interested party still alive on the ground. ...

Western diplomats are shrugging off the problems as a “country coming down off a victory high.” But Libyans don’t trust their new interim government and mass protests are breaking out against the brand-new regime.

The NTC is looking to placate the public with a few token resignations, but the issue goes well beyond the unpopularity of a few late-in-the-game defectors from the old regime. The protests against the Gadhafi regime began with the hope of a free country, and the realization that the NTC commandeered their revolution — possibly replacing one tyrant with another — is not something that can be easily tamped down.

Analysis: Libyans losing faith in fair division of power
Christian Lowe Reuters/Chicago Tribune UK/USA January 25, 2012

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Behind Libya's flare-up of violence and protests in the past five days lies a quandary.

How do you share out power in the new Libya when the jumble of tribes, militias and interest groups do not trust each other and, even worse, when the people supposed to be acting as neutral referees are widely mistrusted?

It would be a tough problem to solve for any country. For Libya, with a lack of institutions that its people view as legitimate, it seems - for now at least - to be insurmountable.

And so people are tempted to resort to violence in defense of their interests, especially when militia men with anti-aircraft guns and beyond the control of government are already roaming the streets.

The risk is that Libya could slip from being the triumph against dictatorship that was trumpeted just a few months ago by Western powers to a maelstrom not unlike Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. ...

Libyan government concedes to restive town's demands
Oliver Holmes Thomson Reuters Canada/UK January 25, 2012

TRIPOLI - Libya recognized a tribal-based local government in the former Gaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid on Wednesday, illustrating the power of tribal leaders over the fragile interim government.

Fighters from the Warfallah tribe -- the dominant tribe in Bani Walid and the most populous in Libya -- drove out a pro-government militia from the town this week.

Salah al-Maayuf, a member of the Warfallah Elders Council in Bani Walid, said his tribal body appointed a new local council on Tuesday and that Defense Minister Osama al-Juwali recognized the body during all-day talks on Wednesday.

"The Defense minister told us that if we, as a tribe, believe that the new local council in Bani Walid will work, then we have convinced him that it can," Maayuf told Reuters from Bani Walid, a bastion of support for former leader Muammar Gaddafi during last year's rebellion.

"We told him that we want to keep the whole country peaceful and that national unity was a priority," Maayuf added.

An official at the Defense ministry confirmed that Juwali had accepted the new council, but did not give further details. Juwali is a member of the provisional government installed in November by the National Transitional Council (NTC), the self-appointed body which won Western backing in the uprising that ousted Gaddafi in August. ...

Bani Walid is not alone. Towns and cities across Libya are being run with little reference to central authority. ...

The European Union oil embargo on Iran is aimed at reducing the risk of conflict ... British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Tuesday. Speaking in parliament, a day after the EU's decision, Hague also made clear that Britain had 'contingency plans' in place should the situation deteriorate. ... - Deutsche Presse-Agentur reporting, January 24, 2012

The name of the game in Iran will always be regime change because the perennial wet dream of Washington and the European poodles is to grab Iran's fabulous oil (12.7% of global reserves) and gas wealth. And the fact is that wealth is increasingly profiting the Asian Energy Security Grid - and not the West. - Pepe Escobar

Items: Stopping the rush to war against Iran
Sheldon Richman The Future of Freedom Foundation USA January 23, 2012

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A growing group of individuals and organizations has designated Saturday, February 4, as a “National Day of Action” aimed at preventing a war against Iran. The manifesto is simple: “No War, No Sanctions, No Intervention, No Assassinations.”

Nothing is more urgent than stopping the march to war now underway. Economic warfare has begun already. Sanctions and embargoes are belligerent acts under international law; such policies goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941. The U.S. State Department recently reassured Israeli leaders, who along with their American lobby are in a bigger hurry for war than President Obama is, that the sanctions will devastate the Iranian economy — more precisely, the Iranian people.

U.S. officials also say that Iran’s economy will be throttled by the crippling of that country’s central bank. Sanctions authorized by Obama in late December aim to stop the rest of the world from doing business with the bank, which would amount to isolating the Iranian people from world commerce. If successful, this would create indescribable misery for average Iranians. (Rulers always find a way to get by.)

The demanded oil boycott is accompanied by a U.S. suggestion that Iranian oil be replaced with Libyan oil, which sheds new light on the Obama administration’s intervention in the Libyan civil war and the regime change it accomplished. Not all nations can be counted on to boycott Iranian oil, but those that do not will still be in a position to demand lower prices from Iran’s government.

Meanwhile, Iranian scientists are being assassinated, and various Iranian facilities are mysteriously exploding. This is surely the work of the CIA or the Israeli Mossad or both of them in conjunction with Iranian groups with histories of violent activity. The covert war is on.

The national day of action, with events planned in many cities, is intended to bring all of this to the attention of a complacent American people. Americans are said to be war-weary after an eight-year occupation of Iraq (in fact, twenty years of hostilities) and a decade-long and continuing war in Afghanistan, a quagmire if there ever was one. You’d think a war-weary people would be demanding no war against Iran, but Americans seem not to be paying attention. ...

The easiest thing in the world
Arthur Silber Once Upon a Time USA January 24, 2012

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... So the powerful nation embarks on a course designed to make life intolerable for the country and/or those people that stand in its way. The more powerful nation is confident that, given sufficient time and sufficient provocation, the weaker country and people will finally do something that the actual aggressor can seize on as a pretext for the policy upon which it had already decided. In this way, what then unfolds becomes the victim's fault.

The United States government has utilized this tactic with Mexico, to begin the Spanish-American War, even, dear reader, in connection with the U.S. entrance into World War II, most recently in Iraq, possibly (perhaps probably) with Iran in the future, and in numerous other conflicts. It's always the fault of the other side, never the fault of the United States itself. Yet the United States has always been much more powerful than those it victimizes in this manner. The United States always claims that its victims represented a dire threat to its very survival, a threat that must be brought under U.S. control, or eliminated altogether. The claim has almost never been true. This monstrous pattern is "The American Way of Doing Business."

If this pattern remains unchanged, the U.S. will initiate a much broader and more overt attack on Iran at some point (that is, much broader and more overt than the covert operations already ongoing). A decade passed between the first Gulf War and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but the bipartisan agreement on regime change and American control of the Middle East arrived at outright war in time.

If the pattern holds, the same will be true of Iran. The timing will depend on events, many of which are unforeseeable with the requisite degree of specificity. ...

A few of our political leaders, as well as many commentators, say that Americans are exhausted by a decade of bloody war and death. (It's odd that the same thought seems not to occur to them with regard to Iraqis, or the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, etc. The wars are being fought in their countries, not ours. Of course, we are superior to all other peoples in all respects, including in our capacity for exquisite suffering.) These leaders and commentators insist that Americans would reject another conflict, that they are not "prepared" for it. This pays Americans a compliment they have done nothing to deserve. ...

I leave the final words on this question to the superbly perceptive and wise Robert Higgs. In a long-ago post which also discussed the sheer idiocy of appeals to the wise, gentle, peace-loving "American people," I excerpted Higgs as follows:

No one should be surprised by the cultural proclivity for violence, of course, because Americans have always been a violent people in a violent land. Once the Europeans had committed themselves to reside on this continent, they undertook to slaughter the Indians and steal their land, and to bullwhip African slaves into submission and live off their labor—endeavors they pursued with considerable success over the next two and a half centuries. Absent other convenient victims, they have battered and killed one another on the slightest pretext, or for the simple pleasure of doing so, with guns, knives, and bare hands. If you take them to be a "peace-loving people," you haven’t been paying attention. Such violent people are easily led to war.

After Iraq, after Afghanistan, after Libya, after all of these horrors and many more, can the American people be led into another war? Why, it's the easiest thing in the world.

Related: Of the top five Iranian oil importers, four are in Asia; two BRICS members (China and India), plus US allies Japan and South Korea. It's fair to argue that all these importers would severely blame the Americans/Europeans for their provocations (in fact some are already doing that).... The EU for its part imports around 600,000 barrels of oil a day from Iran; that's about 25% of Iran's daily exports of 2.6 million barrels. The top EU importer is Italy. Other key importers are Spain and Greece. All these Club Med countries, to put it mildly, are currently mired in deep economic mess. ... Pepe Escobar

Iran oil embargo set to be agreed by EU ambassadors
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor guardian.co.uk UK January 18, 2012


An oil tanker leaving the dock at Kharg island, Iran. Oil provides 80% of Iran's foreign currency revenue. Photo: Roger Wood/Corbis

A meeting of European ambassadors in Brussels on Thursday is expected to decide on an EU oil embargo on Iran to be imposed later in the year, diplomats have said.

Talks have been under way over the past few weeks aimed at narrowing differences between European capitals over the details of the ban on Iranian oil, including the grace period before the sanctions take effect and the timing of a review of the decision.

Majority opinion within the EU has coalesced around a proposal from the Danish government, acting EU president, for the embargo to be put into effect on 1 July, and for the decision to be reviewed beforehand in light of conditions in the oil market and developments in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme. No new oil purchase contracts could be signed with Iran in the intervening period.

Greece, which is heavily dependent on Iranian oil, has asked for a longer grace period, to allow it to arrange alternative suppliers and if necessary reconfigure its refineries to accommodate a new source and type of crude oil. ...

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that the oil sanctions had "nothing to do with a desire to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation". He added: "It's aimed at stifling the Iranian economy and the population in an apparent hope to provoke discontent," and would derail hopes for resuming negotiations with Iran on the nuclear programme. ...

Pups on parade: EU obediently pushes toward war with Iran
Chris Flyod Empire Burlesque January 23, 2012

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This week, the warlords of the West took yet another step toward their long-desired war againt Iran. (Open war, that is; their covert war has been going on for decades -- via subversion, terrorism, and proxies like Saddam Hussein.) On Monday, the European Union obediently followed the dictates of its Washington masters by agreeing to impose an embargo on Iranian oil.

The embargo bans all new oil contracts with Iran, and cuts off all existing deals after July. The embargo is accompanied by a freeze on all European assets of the Iranian central bank. In imposing these draconian measures on a country which is not at war with any nation, which has not invaded or attacked another nation in centuries, and which is developing a nuclear energy program that is not only entirely legal under international law but is also subject to the most stringent international inspection regime ever seen, the EU is "targeting the economic lifeline of the regime," as one of its diplomats put it, with admirable candor.

The embargo will have serious, perhaps disastrous effects on many of Europe's sinking economies, which are heavy users of Iranian oil. This is particularly true in Greece, the poster boy for our modern "Shock Doctrine über alles" global economic system. For even as Greece writhes beneath the blows of European bankers determined to bleed the country dry to avoid the consequences of their own knowingly corrupt loan policies, the Iranians have been giving the Greeks substantial discounts on oil, which has helped ease -- at least in some measure -- the economic ruin being imposed on the "birthplace of democracy."

Now this slender lifeline is being cut, leaving Greece -- and other nations under assault by the plutocrats and their political lackeys -- to seek a replacement for discounted Iranian oil in what will be a seller's market, thanks to the shortages caused by the embargo. The result will be higher prices across the board, leading to more economic ruin for all those beyond the golden penumbra of the One Percent.

And of course, the effects will be even more catastrophic for millions of innocent people in Iran. Already the lives of these innocent people -- including all of the dissidents supposedly so cherished by the West -- are being diminished and degraded by the series of sanctions imposed by the United States and its pack of tail-wagging Europuppies. But who cares about that? After all, it is glaringly obvious that our Euro-American elites are more than happy to see their own rabble go down the shock-doctrine toilet; it is inconceivable that the ruin of a bunch of dirty Mooslim furriners would disturb them for even a nano-second. ...

Europe at war with Iran
Pepe Escobar Asia Times Online Hong Kong January 25, 2012

No one ever lost money betting on the foolishness of European Union (EU) politicos. And if you are an oil trader, rejoice - all the way to the bank; as expected, EU foreign ministers - meekly following the Barack Obama administration - have given a green light for a full Iranian oil embargo.

The embargo applies not only to new contracts but also existing contracts - to be voided by July 1, and includes extra sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and petrochemical exports to the EU.
It's always crucial to remember the embargo - a de facto European declaration of economic war - was forcefully proposed in the first place by the neo-Napoleonic "liberator" of Libya, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy. The official EU excuse for the economic war is "serious and deepening concerns over the Iranian nuclear program.

It didn't help that Moscow had already warned the EU to stop acting as mere pawns of Washington - once again shooting themselves in their Ferragamo-clad feet. The Russians know all there is to know about how this embargo may horribly backfire.

The EU defends its strategy - or economic war - as the only way to avert "chaos in the Middle East". Yet the economic war may end up sparking the full-blown war it is theoretically trying to avert; talk about an array of unintended consequences waiting in the wings. ...

And then there's the crucial petrodollar front. Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), slightly before he was forced to resign as the International Monetary Fund's director general over a sex scandal, was insisting on the end of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, proposing instead the IMF's special drawing rights - the IMF's virtual currency including the US dollar, euro, pound, yen and yuan.

Well, it's already happening, via other means. Memo to an asleep at the wheel Washington/Brussels axis; China and India are already bypassing US/EU sanctions on Iran.

Three BRICS members (Russia, India and China), plus Japan and Iran - a mighty mix of the world's largest producers and consumers of energy - are already trading, or about to trade, in their own currencies. Russia and Iran have just started trading in rials and roubles. All of these powers have bilateral agreements - inexorably surging to multilateral; and that translates as the US dollar slowly fading as the global reserve currency, with all the seismic consequences this implies. ...

Below: The real "international community" is now very much aware that India will start paying Iranian oil with gold - and not only rupees. Beijing - which already trades with Iran in yuan - may also turn to gold. Talk about the Year of the Dragon starting with a bang. And talk about the new Year of the Dragon gold standard. The latest from South America's Pepe Escobar.

All that glitters is ... oil
Pepe Escobar Asia Times Online Hong Kong January 26, 2012

... In an earlier statement, Obama had "applauded" the European Union's decision to slap its own Iranian oil embargo, adding, "These sanctions demonstrate once more the unity of the international community."

So, let's talk about the "unity of the international community" - which comprises the US, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries, Israel and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club); the rest of the world is just a mirage. ...

BRICS members India and China, together, buy at least 40% of Iran's oil exports, roughly 1 million barrels a day. That's 12% of India's oil needs. As for China, last year it bought 30% more oil from Iran than in 2010, an average of 557,000 barrels a day.

The real "international community" is now very much aware that India will start paying Iranian oil with gold - and not only rupees, via Indian state bank UCO and Turkish state bank Halk Bankasi. Beijing - which already trades with Iran in yuan - may also turn to gold. Needless to say, both Delhi and Beijing are major gold producers and holders of gold assets.

Talk about the Year of the Dragon starting with a bang. And talk about the new Year of the Dragon gold standard.

Everyone remembers the doomed United Nations oil-for-food program that starved Iraqis to death for years prior to the 2003 US invasion/occupation. Average Iraqis paid the terrible price for UN/US sanctions, and oil-for-food only benefited the Saddam Hussein system.

Now it's a much more serious business; the oil-for-gold program, a BRICS + Iran initiative that will benefit the Islamic Republic leadership and perhaps alleviate the effects of sanctions over the Iranian population. Global consequences: gold shooting up, petrodollar going down, oil traders opening bottles of Moet in droves.

Another BRICS member, Russia, is already trading with Iran in rials and roubles. And an aspiring BRICS member, Turkey - also a NATO member - will not follow the US/EU sanctions unless they are imposed by the UN Security Council (a no-no, because permanent members Russia and China would veto it).

In two months, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - who angers/terrifies Washington and Brussels to Vlad the Impaler levels - is certain to be back as president of Russia. That's when the Atlanticist poodles will see real hardball at play.

Meanwhile, Tehran will never bow down to Western sanctions - much less with multiple lateral/underground mechanisms to sell its oil involving three BRICS members plus US allies Japan and South Korea, which eventually will get exemptions from the Obama administration.

As this never was about a non-existent nuclear weapon, the Tehran leadership only has to follow a supreme strategic parameter; don't fall for any provocation or false flag black ops that would provide the casus belli for a US/British/Israel axis of war attack.

And all this while trends in the - overcast - horizon point to what could be dubbed an Asian Dollar Exclusion Zone, which for many sharp minds in the developing world might pave the way for an energy-backed currency used by the BRICS and the Group of 77 (G-77) to counter the increasingly desperate - and clueless - Atlanticist West. ...

Intro: We have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. Our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and maintain social stability for our investments. This tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and Peru. Increasingly the role our nation has taken is the role of those who refuse to give up the privileges and pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment." -- Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Time to Break the Silence", his speech given at Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1967

Phil Donahue on Ron Paul & U.S. foreign policy: "We've become a warrior nation"
The Daily Bail USA January 25, 2012

Video (6:19) - Phil Donahue on CNN, "Piers Morgan Tonight" - January 5, 2012

...

Excerpt:

"How many bombs are you going to drop! It looks like we've become a warrior nation. ... We are dropping bombs on crowded cities at night where old people and children are sleeping, and we are watching it on CNN. And the only voice that's spoken up in this campaign about this is Ron Paul."

It is true, as Donahue says, you can't get elected president in the USA on an antiwar platform.

Item: State of the Union: Will the US be saved by its military?
Mark LeVine Al Jazeera English Qatar January 25, 2012


"A State of the Union address, with the entire military leadership staring at you from the floor of the Congress, is not the easiest place for a President to speak truth to power," writes LeVine. Photo: GALLO/GETTY

Irvine, CA - How do you judge a State of the Union speech that begins with a lie?

There was any number of anecdotes or stories with which President Obama could have begun his talk to the nation. But he decided to begin with the most overused trick in any leader's rhetorical arsenal - to celebrate the military.

"We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world."

Does the President really believe that the United States is more respected around the world because of its military activities? Did no one point out to him that the morning of his speech, the marine sergeant who led the 2005 assault on Haditha that killed 24 Iraqi civilians received no jail time for his action, same as the seven other American soldiers who were part of the raid? As the LA Times reported in the wake of the decision, "The lack of trial convictions in the Haditha case is likely to further inflame anti-US sentiment in Iraq, as well as fuel criticism by some legal analysts of the 6-year-long investigation and prosecution."
Obama delivers populist speech

We can thank Obama for completing the withdrawal of most troops from Iraq - he carefully said that there were no troops "fighting in Iraq", but there are still thousands of Americans there, training Iraqis and otherwise engaged in security-related activities. But where is the apology for a war he owes his rise to power on condemning?

It's true the President was speaking to an American audience in an election year, but if there was ever a time to take stock of American actions and own up to the "blood and treasure" - not just American, but much more Iraqi - that was lost on an illegal war that permanently damaged the US' position and respect in the world, this was it.

The army as saviour of the nation. A claim that would sound familiar to most Egyptians. In fact, in both countries the military - or rather the conglomeration of forces tying the military to leading economic actors with whom they disproportionately control their country's political and economic life - is perhaps the single most important factor responsible for the lack of democratic accountability or sustainable and broadly distributed economic growth.

Egypt's young revolutionaries have risked arrest, torture and death to force the army "back to the barracks". But in the US, the uncritical celebration of the military is so strong that it clouds over its role in draining a huge share of the country's economic lifeblood away from areas where it's desperately needed or in fomenting precisely the kinds of wars and violence that have permanently eroded the view of the US around the world. How Egypt's generals must envy the ease with which their American comrades ensure their continued grip on a huge share of the country's power and wealth. ...

The call to meet at Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, was spread by online social media and word-of-mouth. Photo: EPA. If the emerging political system begins to look and feel too much like the one so many Egyptians thought they'd helped to topple a year ago, the calls to Tahrir will again go out.

Below: Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist based in Cairo. He is a correspondent for the TV/radio show "Democracy Now!" and a fellow at the Nation Institute. Al-Masry Al-Youm for Journalism and Publication is an independent Egyptian media organization established in 2003. Its board is headed by Kamel Tawfiq Diab and includes a number of prominent Egyptian businessmen. The organization issues Al-Masry Al-Youm daily newspaper, Egypt's foremost Arabic-language independent daily. The organization also runs www.almasryalyoum.com and www.almasryalyoum.com/en which include an extensive multimedia section and an English Edition. The following article is from the latter wepsite.

The plot to topple the state
Sharif Abdel Kouddous Egypt Independent Egypt January 24, 2012

As the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution approaches, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is continuing to issue shrill warnings of a plot to topple the state. The most direct came from Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi himself, when he said last week, "Egypt is facing grave dangers it has not seen before." He added, "The armed forces are the backbone that protects Egypt. These schemes are aimed at targeting that backbone."

Tantawi is right. There is a plot to topple the state. Egypt's revolution has evolved from an uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak into a deeper struggle aimed at uprooting the military regime that has ruled the country for the past 60 years and served as the backbone of its modern autocracy. Since 1952, the army has enjoyed a special autonomy in Egypt, both political and economic, above any civilian control or oversight. It is this very autonomy and privilege that the revolution is now targeting and has the military council talking of a threat to destabilize the country. ...

Related: Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and Distinguished Visiting professor at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden.

Egypt: The revolution that shame built
Mark LeVine Al Jazeera English Qatar January 25, 2012

Irvine, CA - They were two "new media" events that changed history, unalterably shifting its course into uncharted waters - not merely in the Arab world, but globally as well. And yet their very impact points to two of the most important weaknesses underlying the past year's worth of revolutionary protests across the region.

The first, an image shot by a cell phone camera, is heartrending to view, as it shows a young man completely on fire, like a still from some bad horror film. Today the world knows the pain behind the grainy image of 26-year-old fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, which lit the Arab world on fire. A young man, struggling to survive in an economy that had made him and so many young Arabs expendable, suffers one too many indignities, and is driven - or inspired - to stage a death that would give life to the hopes of his generation.

Today, revolutionaries across the Arab world circulate his supposed final words on Facebook: "Maybe by setting myself on fire, life can change". Bouazizi's last Facebook entry was a plea for forgiveness from his mother: "Blame the times and not me."

"Living in a land of treachery," he explained, had driven him out of his mind. It was a mental state that was shared by so many of his friends - indeed, for the past decade it has been impossible for me to count how many young Arabs have told me they feel schizophrenic or mentally ill, just from living their daily lives in a system that only crushes them down and offers little hope for the future. And so several young men from Sidi Bouzid told me that, when they heard the news about what he'd done, their first reaction was: "Why wasn't I brave enough to have been the one to do it?"

Across North Africa, in Egypt, pro-democracy activist Asmaa Mahfouz, also 26 years old, watched the unfolding revolution in Tunisia with great anticipation. Bouazizi's hometown of Sidi Bouzid was a relative backwater, without much of a robust or well-developed public sphere or civil society network to channel his frustrations into more positive action. Mahfouz, however, was a founding member of the April 6 movement, which itself emerged out of the struggle for jobs and dignity by Egyptian workers in the previous half decade.

She well understood the despair and the circumstances that drove Bouazizi to take his own life; but, crucially, she also had the training, vision and networks to take the energy unleashed by Bouazizi in Tunisia and attempt to translate it into concrete political action - not merely one time, but multiple times, until her words broke through the wall of fear that had long kept most Egyptians, such as their counterparts in Tunisia, away from political protest. If Bouazizi acted alone and in desperation, her actions were the product of years of preparation, even if the speech on the video was ad-libbed.

And so, if on December 17, 2010, Bouazizi addressed his final Facebook posting only to his mother, almost one month later to the day, on January 18, 2011, Mahfouz put up a video on Facebook addressed to the entire Egyptian nation. "Four Egyptians have set themselves on fire to protest humiliation and hunger and poverty and degradation they had to live with for 30 years," she declared, setting the context for her call to Tahrir.

"[They were] thinking maybe we can have a revolution like Tunisia, maybe we can have freedom, justice, honour and human dignity. Today, one of these four has died, and I saw people commenting and saying: 'May God forgive him. He committed a sin and killed himself for nothing.'"

And then she uttered the words that would bring her generation into the streets: "People, have some shame!" ("Ya gama', haram 'aleyku!")

The idea of shame is crucial in the history of the Arab Spring, and not, as the Bush administration's torture masters would have had us believe, because Arab culture and Arab men especially are uniquely preoccupied with shame. Rather, because Mahfouz understood that she had to shame her compatriots out of their passivity in order to awaken a level of political consciousness, and through it agency, necessary to create a powerful, mass-based protest movement against the Mubarak regime. ...

Meet the Egypt Lobby
Jason Ditz Antiwar.com USA January 24, 2012

Visit this page for its embedded links.

Foreign lobbying is big business these days. With billions of dollars in US aid potentially at stake, a number of nations throw large sums of money at buying lobbyists. The enormous Israel Lobby is of course well-known, and every time an Armenian genocide bill crops up, the Turkey Lobby brings its own power to bear. As one of the world’s largest recipients of US foreign aid it is common sense that Egypt would have a lobby of its own, but it is not well known.

That is until now. When the US State Department expressed public “concerns” about the military junta’s crackdown on “pro-democracy” NGOs that receive US funding, the Livingston Group — a recipient of some of the $90,000+ monthly Egyptian lobbying funds — went into action.

The lobbyists have defended the raids against the NGOs, arguing that some of them were never licensed by the former Mubarak regime and that they were technically “operating outside Egyptian law.” They have also forwarded a set of “talking points,” including that the NGOs should not be allowed to “operate outside the law.”

The move has spawned a retaliatory round of condemnations from some politicians, notably Sen. John McCain (R – AZ), who is chairman of the board of directors of one of the NGOs. McCain demanded that the lobbyists stop, saying they “conflict with US national interests” and “undermine American values.” The Livingston Group is run by former House Appropriations Committee head Bob Livingston (R – LA).

The raids and the Livingston lobbying clearly reflect the interest of the current military junta, while McCain’s condemnations are a function of his own NGO’s ambitions in the country. Ironically both the junta and the NGO are heavily on the take from the US government, and more than a serious ideological split, their respective positions represent efforts to keep their respective gravy trains running.

The West Bank: Whose Promised Land?
War in Context USA January 25, 2012

Visit this page to watch the film (25:05) and for its appended links.

Esti Marpet made this film about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank almost 30 years ago. The settlement project was already gaining pace even though at that time there was only a fraction of the population that now numbers over 700,000.

What strikes me about the people represented in this film is this: the two sides do not simply reflect an imbalance in power.

I don’t hear the Palestinians denying the humanity of the Israelis. They are angry but not filled with contempt.

The settlers on the other hand express the purest contempt, denying the Palestinians’ rights, their history, and their existence as human beings. This contempt is so deeply embedded in their outlook that it buries the Palestinians alive.

Anyone who dehumanizes their adversary in this way, cannot do so without sacrificing their own humanity.

Related: Below: Americans for Peace Now (APN), the United States partner of Israel’s Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) organization, is an American coalition working to help Israel achieve an immediate secure peace with the Arab states and the Palestinian people.

2011 a record year for West Bank settlement construction
Americans for Peace Now USA January 10, 2012

Visit this page for its embedded links.

A new report by Peace Now's Settlement Watch project shows that 2011 was a record year in West Bank settlement construction. Worse, the past years highlighted dangerous trends on the ground in the West Bank, which may end up torpedoing a two-state solution: an Israeli government intention to legalize illegal outposts and thus transform them into full-fledged settlements, and building in sensitive locations such as E-1, Efrat, and Givat Hamatos, which would deny contiguity for a future Palestinian state.

Click here to read a summary of the report.

Click here to listen to an interview that APN's Ori Nir and Lara Friedman conducted with Hagit Ofran, the director of Peace Now's Settlements Watch.

Click here to read a Reuters story about the new report.

From the January 10, 2012 Reuters article:

... A Palestinian government spokesman said Peace Now's figures were proof of the accuracy of their warnings about settlements.

"(The report) shows the credibility and seriousness of the Palestinian warnings to world," spokesman Ghassan Khatib said.

"By allowing Israel to build ... it will destroy all the opportunities to continue the peace process and it will wreck the opportunity for a two-state solution as these settlements are being built on land that will be part of the future Palestinian state."

Dipatches from occupied territory: U S Congress to Palestine: Statehood or Sesame Street ... you can't have both & Settler leader says dismantle Israeli democracy and replace it with Jewish law
Salt Spring News January 9, 2012

Three links.

Veteran Israeli settler says democracy is obstacle
Karin Laub Associated Press/Guardian USA/UK January 15, 2012

ELON MOREH, West Bank - Israel's democracy has long been a point of pride for its citizens — setting the country apart in a region of autocratic governments. But veteran settler leader Benny Katzover says democracy is getting in the way of what he believes is a higher purpose.

Katzover has been at the forefront of a religiously inspired movement to take over the West Bank, hilltop by hilltop, helping build a network of settlements over four decades that are now home to hundreds of thousands of Israelis.

Today he argues that democratic principles, such as equality before the law, have become an obstacle to deepening Jewish control over all of the biblical Land of Israel — though he stops short of calling for dismantling Israel's democratic institutions. They are disintegrating on their own, he says, and losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

"We didn't come here to establish a democratic state," Katzover said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We came here to return the Jewish people to their land."

Katzover's comments appear to reflect a growing radicalization among some right-wing religious groups. They come at a time of a rise in attacks on Palestinians by vigilante settlers and an increase in complaints by liberal Israelis that the country's right-wing parliament and government have launched an unprecedented attack on the pillars of democracy. Israel has preserved its democratic system through decades of turmoil, though it never extended it to Palestinians in occupied lands. ...

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship.

Corporate personhood
Wikipedia Last modified on January 24, 2012

Corporate personhood is the status conferred upon corporations under the law, which allows corporations to have rights and responsibilities similar to those of a natural person. There is a question about which subset of rights afforded to natural persons should also be afforded to corporations as legal persons.

The Supreme Court of the United States (Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819), recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to enforce contracts. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394 (1886), the Supreme Court recognized corporations as persons for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a headnote—not part of the opinion—the reporter noted that the Chief Justice began oral argument by stating, "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does." ...

The uphill battle against Citizens United: Tricky legal terrain and no easy fixes
Steven Rosenfeld AlterNet USA January 19, 2012

Visit this page for its embedded links.

(Editor's note: This weekend, hundreds of events across the country are protesting the second anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United< ruling. This article examines the reforms being championed and obstacles facing this growing progressive movement.)

The movement to overturn the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling and confront the doctrine of corporate personhood stands at a perilous crossroads.

Across the country, two distinct strategies are converging on Congress. More than a million people have signed online petitions. State legislators, city and township governments, Democratic Party groups and unions have sponsored and passed measures in 23 states demanding that Congress pass a constitutional amendment to reassert and elevate the political speech of ordinary citizens and roll back the growing political speech and legal privileges of corporations.

The two approaches can be seen in the protest signs and sound bites proclaiming, “Money is Not Speech” and “Overturn Corporate Personhood.” But these slogans are not calling for the same remedy, especially when transformed into legal language in 10 proposals that have been introduced in the current Congress.

The first would address campaign finance setbacks in a 35-year line of Supreme Court rulings, including the Citizens United ruling in 2010, which deregulated campaign spending by corporations and unions. The second would go further and seek to revoke the status of corporations as persons under the Constitution, rolling back more than a century of Supreme Court rulings under various amendments—not just those concerning political speech.

These two approaches expose an emerging split among progressives with deeper problems that go beyond the steep if not improbable political climb required to adopt any constitutional amendment: passage by two-thirds of Congress followed by ratification by three-quarters of state legislatures. ...

NASA's chief climate scientist built his career studying Earth's atmosphere and modeling humans' potential impacts on climate. Then he realized that laboratory work was only part of the equation. Photo: James Hansen after being arrested at the White House during the Appalachia Rising rally protesting mountaintop-removal coal mining. Photo credit: Rainforest Action Network/flickr

The scientist: Jim Hansen risks handcuffs to make his research clear
Interview conducted and condensed by Douglas Fischer The Daily Climate USA January 24, 2012

Editor's note: Climate Query is a semi-weekly feature offered by Daily Climate, presenting short Q&A's with players large and small in the climate arena. Read others in the series here.

Left: Janes Hansen

James E. Hansen never thought his decision to study atmospheric models would lead to his arrest. But there he was in handcuffs last summer, protesting at the White House against a pipeline that would carry crude oil from Alberta's oil sands to the Gulf of Mexico.

t wasn't the first arrest, either. Hansen, who has directed NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 31 years, earned the sobriquet "father of global warming" after testifying before Congress in 1988 on the dangers of global warming. He appeared again in 1989. Then he quietly returned to his work, turning aside television and media requests for the next 15 years because, as he said, "you have no time to do the science if you're talking to the media."

That approach changed in 2004, when he realized government climate policies worldwide failed to reflect the dangerous story his science was telling. Emerging from his lab, Hansen attacked Bush Administration officials for censuring and watering down climate findings. In 2008 he testified in British court on behalf of the "Kingsnorth Six," a group of Greenpeace activists who successfully claimed their effort to shut down a power plant was justified under British law because it prevented the greater harm of climate change. In 2009 and 2010, Hansen was arrested protesting mountaintop-removal coal mining.

DailyClimate.org editor Douglas Fischer caught up with Hansen in December at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, where the scientist previewed findings about impacts the world courts with its unslacked appetite for carbon-based fuels.

...

Do you fear you have lost some of your scientific credibility by protesting at the coal plants or by becoming more of a voice in the climate debate?

If I was not publishing papers in the peer reviewed literature, then that would be a valid criticism. But I am still publishing. I'm trying to make that science clear to the public. It's not easy: The scientific evidence has really become very clear, and we're not doing a very good job of communicating that.

Climate policy has become less a scientific question and more a cultural marker. How can science influence those values and attitudes?

We need to make clear to the public what's really going on. If they just listen to politicians, they don't understand the story because nothing is being done.

...

100% of South Carolina votes go through SCYTL
Bev Harris Black Box Voting USA January 21, 2012

The genius of democracy is dispersed public control.

As we saw in Iowa when alert public citizens captured evidence of the actual vote count BEFORE it was reported by a centralized state committee, the state Republican Party and the news media initially claimed victory for the wrong winner. They only corrected this mis-call two weeks later, buying the favored candidate half a month of fund raising prowess and prestige.

In South Carolina, 100% of election results will be redirected through a private Barcelona, Spain-owned company, Scytl/SOE Software, before being reported to the public.

There is only one way to immediately find out whether Scytl/SOE reported the right results*, and that is for members of the public to capture evidence of reported precinct results when polls close tonight. Think of it as a giant neighborhood watch.

Precinct results should be posted at each polling site. In addition, during poll closing the public has a right to be in the polling place watching and videotaping what goes on.

Here is a four-minute video showing exactly what to do: ...

Newt's victory: Was it a "Surge" of popularity or faulty voting machines?
Mike Whitney The Smirking Chimp USA January 22, 2012

By now you've heard the story a million times: The Gingrich bandwagon limps into South Carolina trailing frontrunner Mitt Romney by a full 10 points (or more), but the pugnacious Newt rallies the troops with his fiery performance at the debates turning certain defeat into a landslide victory. Woo-hoo!

By Sunday, the philandering ex-Speaker's triumphant grin can be seen plastered in headlines across the country while political pundits from both sides of the aisle scratch their heads and ponder the shocking upset that's turned the campaign into a two-man, no-holds-barred, steelcage smackdown.

Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Too bad it's all baloney.

Here's a clip from an article in FOX News mulling-over the Gingrich buzz:

"Newt Gingrich’s South Carolina State co-chairman John Napier knew the “Gingrich surge” was real last Sunday afternoon. Napier, a former U.S. Congressman and retired Federal Judge, pulled into the parking lot of the Land’s End Restaurant in Georgetown, S.C. for a Gingrich event expected to draw 25-30 people. Instead, over 350 people showed up before others had to be turned away. Napier said, “There were people there we hadn’t seen since Reagan ran.” Napier should now. He was swept into Congress from a rural district in SC in 1980 on the coattails of the Reagan Revolution." (Newt- Gingrich wins South Carolina primary by uniting Reagan Republicans", Fox News)

Oh, yeah; they're packing them in for Newtster, just like they did for the Gipper.

Are you kidding me; a “Gingrich surge"? That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Gingrich attracts about as much attention as McCain did on his dismal "whistlestop" tour across the country in 2008. Do you remember that fiasco? Every time the disfigured senator from Arizona pulled into a stop, there were maybe 15 or 20 elderly white guys with their baseball caps cinched around their ears grimacing darkly at the 100 or so reporters from the major media who had gathered to cover the event. There were more journalists than ordinary people! What a joke.

Do you really want to talk about the “Gingrich surge"? Then get a load of this article in Saturday's Washington Post:

"Poor attendance leads Gingrich to cancel appearance at College of Charleston arena", Washington Post: "Newt Gingrich has cancelled a campaign appearance in South Carolina because of poor attendance....

There were just a few dozen people in the audience at the College of Charleston’s arena, where the event was taking place. The conference has suffered from low attendance all week but Gingrich rival Rick Santorum went ahead and addressed the group on Thursday." (Washington Post)

Oh dear. So much for the "Gingrich is popular" theory, eh?

And this whole rigmarole about "swarms of tea partiers, evangelicals, and young white men" flocking to this washed-up narcissist is utter hogwash. For some reason, liberals are stuck on the idea that there's a secret army of ignoramuses who only emerge from their spiderholes at electiontime so they can gum-up the balloting. It's total nonsense; another groundless media invention. Newt Gingrich has no base of support; he is a mind-numbingly tedious person with zero charisma. And that's why I think something else is going on.

But what would that be? ...

Ba'athist: A member of a pan-Arab socialist political party active principally in Syria and Iraq. (See Ba'athism for an introduction.)

From our desk dictionary:

git (noun)

a foolish or worthless person

and

git: dialect variant of get

That damned Ba'athist al-Assad is impeding Western Axis plans. That git is ruining everything! Git 'em!!

In cradle of Syrian revolt, army is now in charge
Mariam Karouny Thompson Reuters Canada/UK January 22 2012

... Reuters visited Deraa, an impoverished city near the Syrian-Jordanian border, on a state-sponsored trip accompanied by a government minder.

Syria has been rocked by unrest as government forces struggle to quell protests against President Bashar al-Assad that have fuelled an armed insurgency.

The government says it is fighting foreign-backed militants trying to destabilize this strategic country, which straddles the faultlines of many Middle East conflicts.

More than 5,000 people have died in the crackdown, according to the United Nations. Syria says it has lost 2,000 of its security forces to terrorists.

Deraa, on Syria's southern plain, was the heartland of a rebellion that began in March. Enraged protesters took to the streets after police arrested and tortured a group of teenagers who wrote anti-government slogans on city walls.

The army crushed Deraa's rebellion several months later, but revolt spread to Syria's central cities and into the mountainous northern regions bordering Lebanon and Turkey.

Visitors must now pass at least five army checkpoints to enter Deraa. Soldiers search their cars and check identification cards.

In March, protesters toppled and torched a statue of the president's father and Syria's former leader Hafez al-Assad, a symbol of the family's 42-year rule of Syria.

Now, posters of both Hafez and Bashar al-Assad adorn storefronts and city streets. ...

At Deraa's Omari mosque, where clashes erupted during the protests, troops and checkpoints now encircle the building. Passers-by eye strangers with suspicion.

The mosque looks undamaged. Shopkeepers around it refused to speak.

"Go, and don't cause me trouble," one vendor said. "Whoever wants to see the truth can see it."

A Syrian journalist approached Reuters to say she had been threatened because she supported President Assad.

"My heart is burning, when I see what is happening to my country it breaks my heart," she said, declining to give her name. "They want to terrorize us here in Deraa, why?" ...

Related: Saudi Arabia calls for outside intervention in Syra
Richard Spencer, Cairo and Ruth Sherlock in Beirut Daliy Telegraph UK January 22, 2012

The region's major oil power put new pressure on the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, accusing his regime of using the month-long mission to "hide its crimes".

"It is not a quality of Arab leaders to kill their people," a statement by its foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said. ...

Aside: Guess the Prnce has forgotten what the 17,000 Saudi troops who invaded Bahrain in support of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa did.

Mr Assad was also facing an ever bleaker situation at home. Rebels said they were in control of Douma, a town on the outskirts of Damascus itself and just ten miles from the city centre, after the army was forced to withdraw. ... Rebels hope they can become hubs of further resistance, as Benghazi did in Libya. "He is losing his forces, that is apparent. He is getting weaker day by day. More frequently now the leaders of the troops run away," said the Douma activist. "They know they are in the wrong."

The Arab League argues that the regime is softening its stance due to the monitors' presence. Indeed, the regime may have been keen to avoid the intense fighting that would be necessary to reclaim the two towns while the League decided on its next steps.

A majority of Arab states, including Tunisia and Egypt which have experienced their own revolutions, fear that outside intervention might trigger a further spiral of violence.

However, Saudi's political clout and Qatar's growing assertiveness mean that those hoping for continued engagement with the Assad regime are holding an ever thinner line.

2 US senators seek sanctions on Syria
AP/CBS News USA January 22, 2012

ALBANY, N.Y. — The United States would hit Syria with sanctions against trade as long as it continues a violent crackdown on protesters under sanctions proposed by two U.S. senators.

The bill, to be released Sunday by Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, would require President Barack Obama to identify violators of human rights and call for reform and protection of pro-democracy demonstrators. It would also block any financial aid and property transactions in the United States involving Syrian leaders involved in the crackdown on protests.

The sanctions measure, to be proposed this week, would also prohibit the sale of high technology and telecommunications to Syria by any companies if the technology could be used for what the senators call censorship or human rights abuse. Visas to the United States would also be denied. ...

Numerous reports indicate that the Western proxy NTC is rife with discord. Will this provide opportunity for nationalists to retake control of their country? We dunno.

Gaddafi loyalists take back Bani Walid
Chris Stephen in Tripoli, Luke Harding and agencies Guardian UK January 23, 2012

Fighters loyal to Muammar Gaddafi have seized back the town of Bani Walid and raised the late dictator's green flag, in a blow to Libya's struggling provisional government.

Reports said at least four people were killed during clashes between besieged forces loyal to the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) and armed and well-organised supporters of Gaddafi. "They control the town now. They are roaming the town," one militia member was quoted as saying of the pro-Gaddafi fighters, according to Reuters. ...

Bani Walid was the scene of prolonged fighting last November when pro-government forces entered the town searching for war crimes suspects and battled with local militias, leaving twelve fighters dead. Skirmishes between competing militias have been common in western Libya since the Gaddafi regime was toppled last October. But the recapture of Bani Walid is something new – not least because with Gaddafi dead and his son Saif al-Islam in custody, anti-government forces have no leadership figure around whom they can unite.

The green flag of Libya's ousted regime was reportedly flying again over many parts of the city. There were reports that the attackers were shouting the old regime slogan: "Allah, Muammar, Libya, that's it!" They were also carrying green flags.

The NTC is supposed to be paving the way for a new constitution and democratic elections, but it has been struggling to assert its political authority. On Sunday it was due to announce a new electoral law and the composition of an election commission. The announcement was delayed after protesters ransacked the NTC's offices in the eastern city of Benghazi, where Libya's revolution began almost year ago. ...

Gadhafi loyalists attack Libyan town, killing 4
AP/USATODAY.com USA January 23, 2012

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) – Forces loyal to Libya's late leader Moammar Gadhafi attacked the former regime stronghold of Bani Walid on Monday, killing at least four fighters from the new government, officials and residents said.

The fierce clashes in the town, located some 90 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli, comes as the Libya's new leaders struggle to stamp out lingering resistance from pro-Gadhafi forces and unify a deeply fractured country after eight months of civil war and more than 40 years of authoritarian Gadhafi rule. ...

Exclusive: New U.S. commando team operating near Iran
Spencer Akerman Wired, Dager Room blog USA January 19, 2012


Photo: U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ashley Myers. Not many details are available about the task force. It’s built around Naval Special Warfare Unit Three, one of the elite Navy SEAL teams.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are at a high point, as the Islamic Republic threatens to close off a vital waterway and two U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups sit in the seas off the Iranian coast. But across the Persian Gulf, the U.S. has a previously unacknowledged weapon in reserve: a new special operations team.

Danger Room has confirmed with the U.S. Special Operations Command that a new elite commando team is operating in the region. The primary, day-to-day mission of the team, known as Joint Special Operations Task Force-Gulf Cooperation Council, is to mentor military units belonging to the U.S.’ oil-rich Arab allies, who collectively are known as the Gulf Cooperation Council. Those Arab states consider Iran to be their primary foreign threat. Col. Tim Nye, the chief spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, says the task force is responsible “for coordinating all SOF [Special Operations Forces] engagements and training with Gulf Cooperation Council nations.”

The special operations forces of those nations have shown a notable improvement over the past year. Qatari commandos quietly traveled to Libya ahead of Moammar Gadhafi’s downfall to prepare Libyan rebels for the successful capture of Tripoli. The United Arab Emirates, another close U.S. ally, has also made its elite forces a priority, even hiring Blackwater’s founder to bolster their training. ...

Some special-operations veterans — who did not wish to be identified or quoted — downplayed the significance of the new task force, expecting it to primarily advise Gulf nations on how to train their own forces, and speculated that its actual role against Iran was indirect at most. ...

Newt’s plan to overthrow Iran: Bombs, hackers, popes and oil
Spencer Akerman Wired, Dager Room blog USA January 23, 2012

Visit this page for its embedded links.

Now that Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina primary, the Republican presidential hopeful and former speaker of the House can return to one of his decades-long interests: plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.

There isn’t much time. Iran’s nuclear program is advancing. That’s a “mortal threat to the United States,” Gingrich believes. But the problem isn’t limited to the Iranian bomb: The weapon is merely a symptom of the malignancy of the Iranian government, which Gingrich believes must be toppled if America is to be saved from nuclear bombs detonating in unsuspecting heartland supermarkets.

How to overthrow the Iranian regime? Gingrich has floated a variety of tactics. Some days, he suggests unleashing bombs and cyber attacks. Other days he thinks all you need are a few radio broadcasts, deniable assassinations, the good intentions of the Iranian people — and, just maybe, the moral force of the leader of the Catholic Church. Either way, Gingrich is promising a reckoning with Tehran. And he’s going to have “so much fun” doing it. ...

Related: Political posturing and Iran: What does it have to do with us?
Bruce Ramsey Seattle Times USA January 17, 2012 Modified January 20, 2012

What is this problem with Iran? I don't get it.

America and Iran are not neighbors. There is no West Bank to fight over between us. We have different theologies, and so what?

A threat? I grew up in the Cold War. I remember the Soviet missiles in Cuba, and President Kennedy's demand that the Russians take them out. There was a threat. People were scared. Nobody is scared now. Iran is a name in the newspapers. ...

On Jan. 11, someone took out Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 32, an engineer in Iran's uranium-enrichment works. A man on a motorcycle veered alongside Roshan's Peugeot on a street in Tehran and slapped on a magnetic bomb. Boom! Iran said it was an American job, or a "Zionist" one.

Probably.

Several candidates have promised to do "whatever is necessary" to stop Iran from having a nuclear bomb. That means war — another one.

Americans were told the Iraq war was about a weapons-of-mass-destruction program, but the program wasn't real. Here is another such program. Is it real? Iran admits to enriching uranium, but says the uranium is for civilian reactors, which it has. Well, governments lie. If Iran's government wanted a bomb, it might lie about it.

What if it had the bomb? Would it attack Israel? But Israel has nuclear weapons. No government would dare drop a nuclear bomb on Israel.

Americans wouldn't like Iran to have a bomb. We don't like it that North Korea has one or that Pakistan has, nor did we like it when Stalin and Mao had them. The world has lived with nuclear weapons for two-thirds of a century, and the only country that ever dropped one was the United States, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ...

The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! - Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics. The quote appears in her 1811 novel, Sense and Sensibilty, her first published work under the pseudonym, "A Lady."

When shall we go beyond the shores and the mountains, to salute the
birth of the new work, the new wisdom, the flight of tyrants and demons,
the end of superstition, to celebrate—the first!—Christmas on earth!
The song of the heavens, the march of peoples! Slaves, let us
not curse life.

The cursed poets and their gods
Algis Valiunas First Things USA February 2012

The term poète maudit, or “cursed poet,” was coined by Paul Verlaine. His little book Les poètes maudits (1884) interleaved his own honorific prose with poems by some of the poets he most esteemed but whose very greatness assured that they were known only to the cognoscenti. It was their obscurity—society was indifferent to them because they were hard to understand—that prompted Verlaine to speak of them as cursed. This cultivated sense of neglect, even oppression, at the hands of the bourgeois philistines became the classic pose of the avant-garde.

But the curse seemed to be as much moral and spiritual as social, contributing to the presumption that a true artist must suffer agonies of genius. Verlaine himself happened to be about as cursed as they come: alcoholic, wife beater, child abuser, jailbird, syphilitic, down-and-outer. In no small part because of Verlaine’s own harrowing life, the meaning of maudit has come to include not only the troubles such poets suffer from society but also the troubles nature inflicts on them and the ones they inflict on themselves, body and soul. ...

Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud: They were remarkable artists, yes, among the greatest of their time. But the perversity of unhappiness cherished and cultivated constricts their excellence: The pursuit of unhappiness assumed too large a place in their souls.

Yet they were better men than the twenty-first-century intellectuals who have supplanted them as cultural heroes. Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud fought for their souls, even if theirs was not exactly a winning fight. Today’s intellectuals scorn the very notion of a soul. ...

Among the supposedly best-educated persons of our time, the idea of a disenchanted world, grim and cruel, has largely replaced the living spiritual reality of which poets used to sing. ...

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. - Philip K. Dick, an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. The quote appears in his short story, "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon", first published in Playboy magazine as "Frozen Journey", December 1980. Like most of Philip K. Dick's work, "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" involves a questioning of what it is to be human and of what reality is. The story also has a theme of guilt, as the memories of the spaceship passenger are spoiled by the guilt he retains about his past actions.

Below: Recently reissued, William L. Shirer's seminal 1960 history of Nazi Germany is still important reading. William Shirer devoted 1,250 pages and 25 years to understanding the Third Reich. He didn’t pretend to have all the answers. Some things are inexplicable.

Revisiting The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Ron Rosenbaum Smithsonian Magazine USA February 2012


William L. Shirer, who witnessed a 1934 Nazi rally in Nuremberg, would link the criminality of individuals to communal frenzy. Photo: Corbis

Nineteen sixty: Only 15 years had passed since the end of World War II. But already one could read an essay describing a “wave of amnesia that has overtaken the West” with regard to the events of 1933 to 1945.

At the time, there was no Spielberg-produced HBO “Band of Brothers” and no Greatest Generation celebration; there were no Holocaust museums in the United States. There was, instead, the beginning of a kind of willed forgetfulness of the horror of those years.

No wonder. It was not merely the Second World War, it was war to the second power, exponentially more horrific. Not merely in degree and quantity—in death toll and geographic reach—but also in consequences, if one considered Auschwitz and Hiroshima.

But in 1960, there were two notable developments, two captures: In May, Israeli agents apprehended Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and flew him to Jerusalem for trial. And in October, William L. Shirer captured something else, both massive and elusive, within the four corners of a book: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He captured it in a way that made amnesia no longer an option. The issue of a new edition on the 50th anniversary of the book’s winning the National Book Award recalls an important point of inflection in American historical consciousness.

The arrest of Eichmann, chief operating officer of the Final Solution, reawakened the question Why? Why had Germany, long one of the most ostensibly civilized, highly educated societies on earth, transformed itself into an instrument that turned a continent into a charnel house? Why had Germany delivered itself over to the raving exterminationist dictates of one man, the man Shirer refers to disdainfully as a “vagabond”? Why did the world allow a “tramp,” a Chaplinesque figure whose 1923 beer hall putsch was a comic fiasco, to become a genocidal Führer whose rule spanned a continent and threatened to last a thousand years?

Why? William Shirer offered a 1,250-page answer.

It wasn’t a final answer—even now, after tens of thousands of pages from scores of historians, there is no final answer—but Shirer reminded the world of “what”: what happened to civilization and humanity in those years. That in itself was a major contribution to a postwar generation that came of age in the ’60s, many of whom read Shirer as their parents’ Book of the Month Club selection and have told me of the unforgettable impact it had on them. ...

Related: Anti-Syrian pack journalism
Stephen Lendman Veterans Today USA January 1, 2012

Visit this page for its embedded links.

When America wages war or plans it, major media scoundrels cheerlead in lockstep. Incendiary managed news follows. Truth and full disclosure lose out.

As a result, readers and viewers are uninformed. Imperial Washington gets free reign to keep ravaging the world one country at a time, threatening humanity in the process.

Arguably, three major broadsheets are America’s most influential – The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Each has large followings, especially among opinion makers.

They also contradict London Guardian commentator Jonathan Steele‘s January 17 article titled, “Most Syrians back President Assad, but you you’d never know from western media,” saying:

“When coverage of an unfolding drama ceases to be fair and turns into a propaganda weapon, inconvenient facts get suppressed.” ...

Iran's Press TV loses UK licence
Mark Sweney Guardian UK January 20, 2012

Press TV, the Iranian state broadcaster's English-language outlet, has been forced off the air in the UK after Ofcom revoked its licence for breaching the Communications Act. ... Ofcom has contacted BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster that carries the Press TV channel, to have it removed from its broadcast schedule. Press TV is expected to be removed from the Sky satellite service by the end of Friday. ...

The Press TV newsroom director, Hamid Emadi, said the channel had been taken off air in the UK for "for airing a 10-second news clip" of [Maziar Bahari, an imprisoned Newsweek journalist}. "He claims he has been interviewed under duress. Press TV has strongly rejected that," Emadi added. "Press TV believes that Ofcom is the media tool of the British government – the same government that sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan to participate in the killing of innocent civilians.

WikiLeaks cables say London and Washington have explored ways to limit the operations of Press TV in the UK. And here it comes; Press TV is removed from the Sky platform." He added that Press TV is examining ways of continuing to broadcast into the UK. "The British government and Ofcom will not be able to silence Press TV's voice in the UK. We will exhaust all possibilities and will try to stay in the UK as an active media player and an alternative voice," Emadi said.

Disgrace, USA: Guantanamo torture continued
Paul J. Balles Pacific Free Press British Columbia Canada January 21, 2012

Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Guantanamo has got to go!” chanted protestors marking the tenth anniversary of the American detention camp.

Writing in Truthout, Mark Engler cited a “recent New York Times op-ed by former detainee Murat Kurnaz, who had been rounded up on spurious charges in 2001, taken to Guantanamo, nearly drowned by interrogators, hung by his hands for days, exposed to prolonged abuse, and held for years before being released, still without trial, in 2006.”

Peter Finn and Julie Tate observed on January 11th in the Washington Post, “The failure to close Guantanamo nullifies the entire American judicial system. The best that can be said for it is that sometimes it functions as a kangaroo court. ...

The most disgusting aspect of the entire Guantanamo fiasco has been the attempts to justify it, including torture, which experts have said is only useful for getting people to tell you what you want to hear. According to CNN, 544 prisoners have been released, repatriated or otherwise transferred to about 40 countries without criminal charges or trial. Will America compensate those whose lives they have destroyed? Not likely! We’re much too self-righteous.

Who is Vladimir Putin? A master of persuasion, not coercion. No ordinary KGB-trained thug, he doesn’t destroy enemies. He manipulates them.

Below: Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy say:

We propose here to offer a portrait of the man from official biographical accounts, his numerous interviews and speeches, our personal interactions with individuals who have known and worked with him, and our participation in the annual Valdai sessions. These offer an image of Putin as a student of Russian history who is moving increasingly into the dangerous territory of writer, manufacturer and manipulator of history.

Putin and the uses of history
Fiona Hill, Clifford G. Gaddy The National Interest USA January-February 2012 Webposted January 4, 2012

Left: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Photo: www.kremlin.ru

At last fall’s Valdai Discussion Club, the annual Moscow session where Russian leaders meet with Western journalists and academics, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin made clear he would issue no apologies for his recent maneuver to reclaim the Russian presidency from his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, and dominate his country’s politics for perhaps the next dozen years. Responding to one question, he declared, “I do not need to prove anything to anyone.”

Such defiance reflects two central elements of the Putin persona: his firm conviction that his personal destiny is intertwined with that of his country; and his resolve to fashion the Russian destiny through slow, methodical decision making over a long period of time. In past public appearances, Putin has made repeated references to one of his Russian heroes, Pyotr Stolypin, the reformist prime minister under the last czar, Nicholas II, who also favored measured, evolutionary change; and to his American model, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who brushed aside the unwritten two-term presidential limit that had guided all U.S. executive leaders up to his time. At one point at the recent Valdai conference, Putin was asked directly about these references to Stolypin and Roosevelt, both of whom, noted the questioner, “did not survive to see their projects through.”

Putin did not miss a beat. “Well,” he interjected, to a smattering of nervous laughter, “don’t go planning my funeral just yet.” Clearly, he does not conceive of the next phase of Russia’s history moving forward without him.

Putin is back, or almost assuredly will be back, as Russian president in 2012. Notwithstanding all his time as Russian president or as the stealthy power behind the presidency, Putin remains a shadowy and inaccessible figure. This is not by accident, given that he has invested extraordinary efforts into hiding his true identity. There are large discrepancies in his official narrative—not surprising, perhaps, for a former KGB case officer adept at masking his real self as well as, sometimes, his very existence. His KGB role, including his East German service in Dresden, remains a mystery. Little is known even of his activities as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. So little, in fact, that to our knowledge there may be only one published photo of the man from this important period of his official career. This is a striking contrast to his more recent penchant for projecting his political persona widely through photographs. ...

• Click on a headline below to go to that news item

Friday, January 20,2012

Commentary
Thoughts on the coming year from the USA and from Canada

Thursday, January 19,2012

World News
The Syrian theater in the Western Axis war

World News
The African theater: Libya and a related dispatch

World News
Israel's brewing Kulturkampf

Commentary
Iran: The crazy people's war. Time for the sensible to quieten the war drums with Iran

Wednesday, January 18,2012

World News
Phantom future, prospects are very uncertain: The new normal—economic weakness and decline

Civil Society
Life in those United States: Did Romney win Iowa's caucuses? Definitive answer may never come. & Internet blackout highlights failure of American politics. Just ain't no justice anymore

Labour News
Stephen Harper seems determined to turn Canada into an anti-union paradise

Tuesday, January 17,2012

Social Ideas
Should Rocky be America's hero? Despite the evil, ignorant, cartoonish faces of Republican hopefuls (save for Ron Paul) and the vile cruelty of American foreign policy, there are many decent Americans and, now, a new third party

World News
Thank God Rick Perry won't be president—at least in this cycle: Christian Zionism = BE (bovine excrement)

Commentary
Making war under false flags? Looking back; musing on the present

Monday, January 16,2012

National News
The Northern Gateway Pipeline Project is an affront to the public interest and long term energy security of Canadians and part of the Harper government's attempts to weaken Canada's social fabric

Sunday, January 15,2012

Social Ideas
The end of honesty. Have we reached a tipping point of social dysfunction?

Living
Buying 'The Body of Christ': The transformation of a good, or a useful object, into a product

Commentary
Devalued think tanks: Less and less good, useful analysis. The 24-hour news channels are constantly looking for new stories to draw ratings, and complicated studies with cautious conclusions do not fit the bill

Commentary
From the US perspective war is peace, freedom is slavery … and fighting back is “aggression” & Any conflict with Iran is a direct threat to Russia’s security says Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin

Arts
Of roast beef and plover eggs; champagne, cognac and whisky: On Churchill's strategic use of dinners to advocate his strategy for fighting WWII

Trends 2012: The good, the really bad and the very ugly
RT Russia January 12, 2012

Are you ready for a 2012 that will be “Good” for the well-prepared, really “Bad” for wishful thinkers, and very “Ugly” for the see-nothings and do-nothings – those with their heads in the sand who blindly trust their leaders?

A few weeks ago we sent you a recap of the Trends Journal’s“ Top Trends 2011” forecasts. There is very little in today’s headline news that was noting last year’s Trends Journal forecasts.

The newly released Top 12 Trends 2012 cuts through the hype, confusion and political baloney. This Trends Journal provides directions for navigating through the turmoil along with practical advice on how to capitalize on the positive trends-in-the-making we have identified. Top 12 Trends 2012 runs the gamut from “Economic Martial Law” to “Safe Havens" to “Going Out in Style.”

...


Interview: Kalle Lasn, publisher, Adbusters magazine
Canadian Business, Outlook 2012 Canada January 18, 2012

...

Canadian Business: Will these actions translate into real change, though?
Kalle Lasn: Well, this is something the business community has to think about. There is something fundamentally wrong with this business-as-usual system. These young people who feel their future doesn’t compute, they’re onto something, they have to be listened to. A society that doesn’t listen to its young people is destined to have a hard time. I think things will change, especially if this economic pain and austerity continue tightening on us. If I was a CEO of some big company, I would look into the future and see some pretty heavy waves coming at me, and start taking very seriously the idea that the future doesn’t compute, that this $1 trillion sloshing around the global economy each day has turned it into a casino that needs to be dismantled.

On a much deeper level, I think there are a couple of very profound ideas percolating. One is challenging this neo-classical economics paradigm that’s been taught in universities’ Econ 101 for generations. There is a new bunch of heterodox economists—ecological economists, some call themselves bio-economists, there are feminist economists—all pointing out that the neo-classical paradigm is a relic of the past. I think there’s a real possibility that students all around the world will rise up against their professors and start demanding more realistic economic theories. There may well be a shift to an ecological paradigm over the next few years. This would be a very deep-down change in the theoretical foundations of our capitalist system.

The other thing is that at the moment, our market is not a true-cost market. You buy a car for $30,000 and you drive it around for 10 years and you’re pumping carbon into the atmosphere and creating maybe $20,000 to $30,000 worth of damage to the environment and to future generations. So that $30,000 you paid for the car just paid for the production of the car; it didn’t pay for the damage you do in using the car. If you look at anything from the napkin you get at McDonald’s to the car you buy, very few products in the global marketplace actually tell the ecological truth. There’s a real possibility that we may be at the early stages when we come up with a true-cost global market regime. That is an earth-shattering idea.

It will be difficult, but as this Occupy movement showed, young people are at the breaking point. And if the global economy tanks, there’s a real possibility that we may be in a 1929 scenario—you wake up tomorrow morning and the Dow Jones goes down by some incredible number and we suddenly find ourselves in a whole different world. And when that happens, radical ideas, like economic paradigm shifts and movement toward true-cost markets—ideas that people easily dismiss right now—will suddenly become possible. You need the crisis. Especially in places like America and Canada where, by and large, we’re still doing well.

CB: Do you foresee any other big issues and causes in 2012?
KL: In the private realm, there will be the birth of a kind of “mental environment” movement. People will wake up to the fact that the few thousand marketing messages that our brains are forced to absorb every day are making us stressed and giving us mood disorders and making us vulnerable to depressions and other mental illness. I think that advertising is going to be one of those industries that is heavily hit over the next few years, and will collapse down to something much more modest.

CB: Any parting words?
KL: I would like to say to the business people: Watch out. Interesting times are ahead.

Arab League meeting to condemn Syria brutality
Alastair Beach The Independent UK January 18, 2012

Cairo - The Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad looked dangerously isolated last night, with a wall of regional opposition steadily building around him and Arab League sources suggesting his regime will face unprecedented condemnation when the organisation meets this weekend. ...

It leaves Arab League delegates with the unenviable task of deciding how to punish one of its own, a country which, until recently, was a cornerstone of regional politics. The options range from ditching the monitors, to extending the mission or even allowing in armed protection and ramping up the international presence.

But according to Wissam Tarif, a Syria specialist from the New York-based Avaaz human rights group, Assad – whose name means lion in Arabic – may be beyond taming. “He is under the illusion he can manipulate the whole world,” he said. ...

Baghdad sends International Rescue to Syria
Mohammed Tayyeb AKNews.com Kurdistan Region, Iraq January 18, 2012

BAGHDAD, Jan. 18 (AKnews) - The Iraqi Migration Ministry has formed a rescue team to protect the Iraqi refugees in chaos-stricken Syria. Speaking to AKnews, Mirgration Minister Dindar Doski said that his ministry with the interior and transport ministries, the International Red Crescent Organization and United Nations High Commission for Refugees has formed the team. The step is taken following reports that the Arab League may use force to stop the massacre of civilians in Syria, a crisis ongoing since March last year. ...

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates there are 112,000 Iraqii people who fled to Syria after the start of the American invasion and occupation of their nation.

Lebanese Druze leader fears civil war in Syria
Reuters/Daily Times UK/Pakistan January 19, 2012

BEIRUT: Syria risks plunging deeper into violence and even civil war because President Bashar al-Assad “listens to nobody” inside or outside the country calling for change, Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said. A veteran politician whose ties with Damascus have ebbed and flowed over decades of shifting alliances, Jumblatt said he had no contact with the Syrian leader since meeting him in Damascus seven months ago in the early weeks of Syria’s uprising. ...

An Arab League initiative, which calls for Assad to withdraw troops from protest centres, free detainees and start talks with the opposition, offered the only hope of a solution, Jumblatt said, but prospects were bleak “unless a miracle happens”.

There is a “slow but sure decaying of the Syrian situation. It’s fatal,” he added. The turmoil in Syria has fuelled tensions in neighbouring Lebanon where Syria has many allies, including the powerful Shia group Hezbollah, as well as foes who resent the nearly three decades of Syrian military presence which ended in 2005. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has defended Assad and said he should be given the chance to implement political reform, while anti-Syrian Sunni former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has openly called for the Syrian leader’s downfall. “We have to insist on trying to isolate Lebanon from the Syrian problem,” Jumblatt said. “There is a need for the Lebanese to talk to each other and mainly the leaders of the main Shia and Sunni communities”. Criticising his former ally Hariri for rejecting political dialogue unless Hezbollah hands its weapons to the state, as other Lebanese armed groups did after Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, Jumblatt said Hariri’s stance “leads nowhere”. ...

The US-GCC fatal attraction
Pepe Escobar Asia Times Online Hong Kong Dateline January 20, 2012

... And now a tragic joke reigns supreme; the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] trying to intervene and actually financing hardcore Sunni fundamentalists in Syria under the cover of helping pro-democracy protesters. When the meek UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon urges President Bashar al-Assad to stop the violence against Syrian protesters and says the time of dynasties and one-man rule in the Arab world is coming to an end, obviously he believes the GCC is a colony in one of Saturn's rings.

After the NATOGCC win in Libya, no wonder they are on a roll. The GCC strategy of regime change in Syria is the preferred way to weaken Iran and the so-called Shi'ite crescent - a fiction jointly concocted during the George W Bush administration by the Playstation king of Jordan and the House of Saud.

And that leads to an inevitable question; what are two of the top BRICS - Russia and China - doing about all this? ...

Russia vows to block Western intervention in Syria
Associated Press/Detroit Free Press USA January 18, 2012

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria's powerful allies in Russia vowed Wednesday to block any Western attempts to intervene militarily in Syria as Damascus fights off an increasingly chaotic 10-month-old revolt against President Bashar Assad.

The support came as Assad was showing fresh confidence that he can ride out the uprising with the help of a small — but influential — set of friends in Russia, China and Iran.

Iran also gave Syria another boost Wednesday. According to Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency, with the commander of Iran's Quds Force, Brig. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, said Assad's government enjoys public support and won't collapse. ...

The Russian foreign minister also addressed reports that a Russian ship had recently delivered munitions to Syria in violation of a European Union arms embargo. He said Russia doesn't feel a need to explain or offer excuses. Lavrov said Russia was acting in full respect of international law and wouldn't be guided by unilateral sanctions imposed by other nations. "We haven't violated any international agreements or the U.N. Security Council resolutions," he said. "We are only trading with Syria in items which aren't banned by international law."

Lavrov accused the West of turning a blind eye to attacks by opposition militants and supplies of weapons to the Syrian opposition from abroad. "They are dodging the main question: Why we should keep silent about the extremist opposition's actions against administrative buildings, hospitals, schools?" He urged the West to use its contacts with the opposition to pressure activists to refrain from violence. He said that arms supplies to the Syrian opposition are "unacceptable and absolutely counterproductive because it only fuels more violence." ...

Russia says will stand firm with China on Syria
Thomas Grove and Steve Gutterman Thompson Reuters Canada/UK January 19, 2012

MOSCOW - Russia will offer Washington no explanation for arms deliveries to Syria and together with China will prevent the U.N. Security Council from approving any military intervention in the conflict-torn nation, its foreign minister said on Wednesday.

Using his annual news conference to draw lines in the sand on Syria, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said veto-holding Security Council members Russia and China would stand firm against foreign intervention. "We will insist - and we have an understanding with our Chinese colleagues that this is our common position - that these fundamental points be retained in any decision that may be taken by the U.N. Security Council," Lavrov said. "If somebody intends to use force ... it will be on their conscience. They will not receive any authority from the Security Council," said Lavrov, who also emphasized that Russia and China oppose any sanctions against Syria. ...

"Russia's playing games," a Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "Negotiations aren't really going anywhere. China and others would probably agree not to block a tougher resolution, but Russia isn't compromising." ...

China calls for political solution in Syria
DayPress Qatar/Syria January 19, 2012

DOHA (Dp-news - Sana) - In a press conference in Doha on Wednesday, Premier Wen Jiabao of China called for a political solution to the crisis in Syria, indicating that China is constantly monitoring the Syrian crisis.

Jiabao underlined the necessity of respecting the demands of the Syrian people who aspire for reform and change, as well as activating the role of the Arab League as to reach a political solution through dialogue. He added that China aims to see a solution to the crisis as soon as possible and seeks an improvement in the living conditions of the Syrians, meeting the people's needs and helping Syria realize stability and development. ...

"China appreciates Russia's commitment and the efforts exerted to solve the crisis… we are ready to continue consultations regarding the Russian draft resolution," Liu Weimin, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson said at a press conference. Weimin added that China calls on all sides concerned in Syria to cooperate with the efforts exerted by the Arab League to apply an immediate halt to the violence, undertake a comprehensive political process as soon as possible and accelerate reforms in order to defuse the crisis' primer. ...

Noted: Bloomberg reports today:

Iran is selling Syrian crude on the Arab nation’s behalf to help the government of President Bashar al-Assad skirt international sanctions, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing U.S. officials it didn’t identify. ...

Visit the WSJ link and you will find:

... In response, the Treasury Department has begun targeting the insurance and registration of international tankers shipping Syrian oil overseas.

Concerns aren't limited to Iran. Washington and its allies are also intensifying the scrutiny of maritime and air traffic moving into Syria from Russia.... Damascus has been increasingly reliant on oceangoing vessels for arms shipments, because neighbors have been making air shipments difficult, according to U.S. and European officials. ...