Soraya Chemaly: Six Absurdly Demeaning Attacks on Women!

Everyone knows women can be bitches sometimes, right? Unless they're cougars, that is, on the prowl, or if they're a bit younger, they're more like vixens, kinda foxy. They henpeck when married and go wet and wild when single. They can take out their claws out or put them away. Less dangerous are the girls and the young women, softer and fuzzier, who are more like bunnies,or, as the English say, like birds. Either way, diminutive and harmless. Girls like these are more like pets. Chicks or kittens. Everyone does it, using language that renders women as animals -the list is endless. This culturally ingrained misogyny, as reflected in acceptable language that dehumanizes half the world's population, is not limited to anyone country or religion, or followers of one or another ideology. But in US politics, a particular trend has emerged among a certain set of conservatives,, that of equating a woman with a farm animal. When, last week, Safeway Senior Vice President General Counsel Bob Gordon stood before a shareholders' meeting that portrayed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as being worth less "than a pair of hogs, he clearly had no reservations about publicly making this joke, and obviously thought it was funny. After all, he was only elaborating on a meme that's been evolving among right-wing Republican politicians in state legislatures. Let's see: There is state Rep Terry England, the infamous Georgia legislator comparing pregnant hogs and cows to women, while debating a proposal that became known as the "women as livestock bill, which would hold pregnant women to the animal husbandry standard of carrying a dead fetus to term.

Marat Musin: Terrorists Killed Families Loyal to the Government!

This incisive report by independent Russian journalist Marat Musin dispels the lies and fabrications of the Western media. The report is based on a chronology of events as well as eyewitness accounts. Entire pro-government families in Houla were massacred. The terrorists integrated by professional mercenaries, were not pro-government militia as conveyed in chorus by the mainstream media, they were in large part mercenaries and professional killers operating under the auspices of the self-proclaimed Free Syrian Army (FSA). "When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children. Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of the Abdul Razak. The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies." We call on our readers to forward this report far and wide. The massacre in Houla is being blamed on the Syrian government without a shred of evidence. The objective is not only to isolate Syria, but to develop a pretext and a justification for waging an R2P humanitarian war on Syria. It is essential to reverse the tide of war propaganda, which uses civilian deaths as a pretext to wage war, when those civilian deaths were carried out not by the government, but by professional terrorists operating under the helm of the US-NATO supported "Free Syrian Army."  

Ellen Brown: Reform of the US Monetary System!

The you-tube video of 12 year old Victoria Grant speaking at the Public Banking in America conference last month has gone viral, topping a million views on various websites. Monetary reform is the contention that governments, not banks, should create and lend a nations money has rarely even made the news, so this is a first. Either the times they are a-changing, or Victoria managed to frame the message in a way that was so simple and clear that even a child could understand it. Basically, her message was that banks create money out of thin air and lend it to people and governments at interest. If governments borrowed from their own banks, they could keep the interest and save a lot of money for the taxpayers. She said her own country of Canada actually did this, from 1939 to 1974. During that time, the governments debt was low and sustainable, and it funded all sorts of remarkable things. Only when the government switched to borrowing privately did it acquire a crippling national debt. Borrowing privately means selling bonds at market rates of interest, which in Canada quickly shot up to 22%, and the money for these bonds is ultimately created by private banks. For the latter point, Victoria quoted Graham Towers, head of the Bank of Canada for the first twenty years of its history. He said: Each and every time a bank makes a loan, new bank credit is created, new deposits brand new money. Broadly speaking, all new money comes out of a Bank in the form of loans. As loans are debts, then under the present system all money is debt. Towers was asked. Will you tell me why a government with power to create money should give that power away to a private monopoly, and then borrow that which parliament can create itself, back at interest, to the point of national bankruptcy?  

Robert Scheer: Hope Burning?

So now we have Rambo Obama, a steely warrior who, according to a lengthy leaked insider account in The New York Times, hurls death-dealing drones at anyone who threatens the good old USA. Including children. Those children are presumed guilty by virtue of proximity, and the Times plays along, not even modifying a targeted terrorist with the word "alleged," as once had been the paper's convention: When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises, but his family is with him, it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation." Obama as the "cool trigger-man" is an image useful to White House operatives as they buff the president's persona for the coming election, but what it reveals is the mindset of a political cynic, whose seductive words cloak the moral indifference of a methodical executioner. Forget Harry Truman, who obliterated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Lyndon Johnson, who carpet-bombed millions in Vietnam. The Democrats have got themselves another killer, one whose techniques are as devastatingly effective, but brilliantly refined. The story was obviously planted in The New York Times to benefit the Obama political campaign. Otherwise, why would the president's former chief of staff, William Daley, and three dozen current and past intelligence insiders provide the newspaper with the most sensitive details of national security decision-making? Pfc Bradley Manning was held for many months in solitary confinement for allegedly disclosing information of far lower security classification. The difference is that the top secrets in the news article are ones the president wants leaked in the expectation they will burnish his "tough on terrorism" credentials.

Bill Boyarsky: Whom Will the President Kill Next?

The revelation that President Barack Obama is personally selecting names for a kill list of suspected al-Qaida terrorists is a striking illustration of what actually occurs behind the White House's closed doors. The New York Times revealed Tuesday how the president "has placed himself at the helm of a top secret 'nominations' process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. "He insists "on approving every new name on an expanding 'kill list,' poring over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre 'baseball cards' of an unconventional war." The Times described how more than 100 members of "the government's sprawling national security apparatus" meet in a video conference to go over potential nominees for the death list and"recommend to the president who should be the next to die." The nominations then go to the White House where Obama, guided by his top counter-terrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, approves names added to the list. Brennan, without mentioning the president's role, had outlined the process in an April 30 speech to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, posted on the Law-fare website. Those who make the list, he said, pose "a significant threat to United States interests. "In such cases, he said, stopping them would prevent attacks, and capture is "not feasible." Each nominee "will go through a careful review and, as appropriate, will be evaluated by the most senior officials in our government for decision." The most senior, of course, is the president. The idea of Obama picking out individuals for the death list brings back memories of President Lyndon B Johnson selecting targets for bombing in Vietnam: So intent was Johnson on micromanaging the war, that he lost sight of how the bombing strengthened the will of North Vietnam!

Blair Hickman: How We Treat Our Troops!

We rounded up some of the best accountability journalism for US soldiers in our recent wars. Check them out while you're basking on a boat this weekend, and remember the reason for this federal holiday. Armored Humvees are in short supply. When the insurgency in Iraq started, the US Army didn't have enough armored Humvees to protect its troops. As soldiers died in vehicles not built to withstand combat, the Army boosted their orders, but that takes time. While waiting for requests to be filled, soldiers rigged their own with sandbags. Barrage of Bullets Drowned Out Cries of Comrades, The Washington Post, 2004. After NFL-star-turned-soldier Pat Tillman died in Afghanistan, the Army took weeks to admit friendly fire had killed him. Over a year later, records emerged indicating they'd also withheld details of his death by fratricide, and the case spun into a saga of an investigation. When we asked national security expert Andrew Exum for a seminal piece on the case, he replied: We're looking for the seminal article on the Pat Tillman case. Anyone know one? Behind The Walls of Ward 54, Soldiers at Walter Reed said that the facility's psychiatric care was outdated and inadequate, heavily medicating soldiers in "lock-down wards," offering group therapy that often didn't address wartime experiences, and in some cases, hesitating to diagnose PTSD at all. Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration, at Army's Top Medical Facility: The first article in a Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigation of neglect and bureaucratic failures at Walter Reed. While the surgical hospital was held up as a paragon of care, hundreds of soldiers went unnoticed in decrepit outpatient wards with few services or oversight. Soldiers described the experience as living in a chapter from Catch-22!    

The Telegraph: Palestinian Prisoners Enter Hunger Strike!

A pair of Palestinian prisoners being held without charge enter day 74 without food, as physicians believe their lives are in "immediate danger". Humanitarian organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), expressed concern about prisoners Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh as they began their 74th day without food on Friday. An estimated 1,600 out of 4,800 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails stopped taking food on April 17, demanding better conditions, an end to administrative detention and solitary confinement and more family visits. Diab and Halahleh, two of six prisoners, have refused food for between 49 and 74 days according to PHR, were among the first wave of inmates whose initial refusals to accept food prompted the mass hunger strike. The scope of the strike has posed a new challenge to Israel, which has come under international criticism over detentions without trial, and could face a violent Palestinian backlash if any of the protesters die. At the PHR offices in Tel Aviv, the director of the Prisoners and Detainees department said Halahleh's life was in "immediate danger." His doctor told him that hislifew is in immediate danger, and that he could die any moment. What is very worrisome is the fact that he doesn't want to be saved if something happens to him, and he loses consciousness. He doesn't want resuscitation," Anat Litvin said, adding that the organization believed that the prisoners did not have access to adequate equipment or expertise. The fate of the hunger strikers has touched a nerve in the Palestinian territories, with daily demonstrations in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip to support the movement.    

Rasool Dawar: US Missile Attacks kill 4 in Northwest Pakistan

An American drone fired two missiles at a bakery in northwest Pakistan Saturday, killing four suspected militants, officials said, as the US pushed ahead with its drone campaign despite Pakistani demands to stop. This was the third such strike in the country in less than a week. Drone attacks in Pakistani tribal areas, where Afghan and other militants have found refuge are considered a key tactic by US officials in the war against al-Qaida and its Taliban supporters, but many Pakistanis resent the strikes, which they consider an affront to their sovereignty. Two Pakistani intelligence officials said the latest attack took place in Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region. The officials said the victims were buying goods from a bakery when the missiles hit. Residents were still removing the debris, officials said. All of the dead were foreigners, but the officials did not have any information on their identities or nationalities. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The US rarely talks publicly about the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan. Drone strikes have become an increasingly contentious issue between Washington and Pakistan. Pakistan's parliament has demanded the US end all attacks on its territory. Some figures within the Pakistani government and military are widely believed to have supported the attacks in the past. Washington-Islamabad security cooperation has declined as relations between the two countries have deteriorated, but many analysts believe there is still some support for the attacks on militants within Pakistan's senior ranks. 

Sarah Seltzer: The "Evolution" of President Obama!

The "evolution"of President Obama from a "libera-constitutional law professor to a man who oversees extrajudicial killing abroad, sometimes ruthlessly, always in questionable legal territory: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret "nominations" process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values, the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be. Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding "kill list," poring over terrorist suspects' biographies on what one official calls the macabre "baseball cards" of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone-strike at a top terrorist arises, but his family is with him, it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation. The officials interviewed by the Times' reporters, dozens of them, describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counter-terrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda, even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Obama told colleagues was "an easy one." As the ACLU reminds us in cases like this, if we can't summon up outrage here, imagine a president Romney with these kinds of powers. 

Mark Ames: Shameless Oligarchs Plunder Our World!

At the end of the 1990s, after the total collapse of the mass-privatization experiment in Boris Yeltin's Russia, some of the more earnest free-market proselytizers tried making sense of it all. The unprecedented collapse of Russia's economy and its capital markets, the wholesale looting, the quiet extermination of millions of Russians from the shock and destitution,  the terrible consequences of imposing radical libertarian free-market ideas on an alien culture, turned out worse than any worst-case-scenario imagined by the free-market true-believers. Of all the disastrous results of that experiment, what troubled many Western free-market true-believers most wasn't so much the mass poverty and population collapse, but rather the way things turned out so badly in Russia's newly-privatized companies and industries. That was the one thing that was supposed to go right. According to the operative theory, developed by the founding fathers of Libertarianism/Neoliberalism, Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman and the rest, a privately owned company will always outperform a state run company, because private ownership and the profit motive incentivise the owners to make their companies stronger, more efficient, more competitive, and so on. The theory promises that everyone benefits except for the bad old state and the lazy. That was the dominant libertarian theory framing the whole "shock doctrine" privatization experiment in Russia and elsewhere. In reality, as everyone was forced to admit by 1999, Russia's "privatized companies" were stripped and plundered as fast as their new private owners could loot them, leaving millions of workers without salaries!

Bijan C Bayne: On JFK's 95th Birthday!!

President Kennedy, whose mother lived to be 104 and his sister Eunice to be 88, would have been 95 years old today, but JFK was robbed of the chance for a ripe old age on November 22, 1963, in Dealy Plaza, Dallas, Texas when he was fatally shot in the head and neck. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the murder, and a presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren found that the gunman acted alone. But ever since, questions about the tragedy have haunted the public, and more than a few writers have taken their turn to try to untangle the web of mystery surrounding the killer. Were CIA agents really behind the murder? KGB operatives? The mob? Speculations about the crime could fill up your entire summer reading list. In his latest bestseller, 11/22/63, Stephen King weaves time travel into a fictional narrative about the Kennedy assassination. After several years devoted to researching the book, suspense master King concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. In that belief, King joins the late Norman Mailer, who arrived at the same conclusion after writing the 828-page historical novel "Oswald's Tale" in 1995. What led two of America's most successful purveyors of fiction, whose living depends on character development, to decide Oswald was not a pawn of the New Orleans Cosa Nostra, the CIA, pro-Castro Cubans, the KGB, or any combination thereof? Upon careful character examination, both scribes determined that Oswald's motives were more personal than political. The belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a plot, has been a persistent theme in our national conversation.   

James Petras: The Politics of Language and Political Regression

Capitalism and its defenders maintain dominance through the material resources at their command, especially the state apparatus, and their productive, financial and commercial enterprises, as well as through the manipulation of popular consciousness via idealogues, journalists, academics and publicists who fabricate the arguments and the language to frame the issues of the day. Today, material conditions for the vast majority of working people have sharply deteriorated, as the capitalist class shifts the entire burden of the crisis and the recovery of their profits onto the backs of wage and salaried classes. One of the striking aspects of this sustained and on-going roll-back of living standards is the absence of a major social upheaval so far. Greece and Spain, with over 50% unemployment among its 16-24 year olds and nearly 25% general unemployment, have experienced a dozen general strikes and numerous multi-million person national protests, but these have failed to produce any real change in regime or policies. The mass firings and painful salary, wage, pension and social services cuts continue. In other countries, like Italy, France and England, protests and discontent find expression in the electoral arena, with incumbents voted out and replaced by the traditional opposition. Yet throughout the social turmoil and profound socio-economic erosion of living and working conditions , the dominant ideology informing the movements, trade unions and political opposition is reformist: Issuing calls to defend existing social benefits, increase public spending and investment and expand the role of the state where private sector activity has failed to invest or employ. In other words, the left proposes to conserve a past when capitalism was harnessed to the welfare state. 

Michel Chossudovsky: Iraq, A History of War Crimes and Genocide!

The adage that it is the victors who write history in matters relating particularly to war and conflict is something of a euphemism, when applied to recent military campaigns conducted by America and its NATO allies. For what is disputable, no, let us say repugnant about the official accounts of these events, is not merely a difference in emphasis or nuance on the matter, which the adage may infer. It is rather that the victors' version of history is a wholesale fabrication, an obscene travesty of actual events. It is not a case of victors writing history, more one of victors violating history. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and what is unfolding covertly in Syria and Iran stand out as egregious examples of how the dominant Western powers are not just writing history with a certain self-reflecting vainglorious bias. They are instead concocting events in such a way, as to completely distort the facts of history. It is fair to say that in many ways what is taking place is an inversion of realities and language. Peace-keeping really means war-making, protecting human rights really means bombing civilian centers, upholding international law, really means committing crimes against humanity. Accusations of tyrants, miscreants, rogues and renegades are hurled like bricks in a glasshouse by perpetrators who arrogate the privilege to call themselves civilized, democratic, law-abiding "governments". What needs to be contested, therefore, is not some kind of half-baked history, pitted here and there with flaws and hubris, but rather what needs to be challenged is out-and-out willful propaganda purporting as history.  

Tom Engelhardt: How Memorial Day Glosses Over the Real Horrors of War

It's the saddest reading around: The little announcements that dribble out of the Pentagon every day or two, those terse, relatively uninformative death notices: Rank, name, age, small town, suburb, or second-level city of origin, means of death"small arms fire," "improvised explosive device," "the result of gunshot wounds inflicted by an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform," or sometimes vaguer like "while conducting combat operations," "supporting Operation Enduring Freedom," or simply no explanation at all, and the unit the dead soldier belonged to. They are seldom 100 words, even with the usual opening line: "The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom." Sometimes they include more than one death. They are essentially bureaucratic notices designed to draw little attention to themselves. Yet cumulatively, in their hundreds over the last decade, they represent a grim archive of America's still ongoing, already largely forgotten second Afghan War, and I've read them obsessively for years. May is the official month of remembrance when it comes to our war dead, ending as it does on the long Memorial Day weekend, when Americans typically take to the road and kill themselves and each other in far greater numbers than will die in Afghanistan. It's a weekend for which the police tend to predict rising fatalities and news reports tend to celebrate any declines in deaths on our roads and highways. Quiz Americans and a surprising number undoubtedly won't have thought about the "memorial" in Memorial Day at all, especially now that it's largely a marker of the start of summer and an excuse for cookouts!

Michel Chossudovsky: The Globalization of Poverty!

In these unprecedented economic times, the world is experiencing as a whole what most of the non-industrialized world has experienced over the past several decades. For a nuanced examination of the intricacies of the global political-economic landscape and the power players within it, pick up your copy of: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order. Michel Chossudovsky takes the reader through an examination of how the World Bank and IMF have been the greatest purveyors of poverty around the world, despite their rhetorical claims to the opposite. These institutions, representing the powerful Western nations and the financial interests that dominate them, spread social apartheid around the world, exploiting both the people and the resources of the vast majority of the world's population. As Chossudovsky examines in this updated edition, often the programs of these international financial institutions go hand-in-hand with covert military and intelligence operations undertaken by powerful Western nations with an objective to destabilize, control, destroy and dominate nations and people, such as in the cases of Rwanda and Yugoslavia. To understand what role these international organizations play today, being pushed to the front lines and given unprecedented power and scope as ever before to manage the global economic crisis, one must understand from whence they came. This book provides a detailed, exploratory, readable and multi-faceted examination of these institutions and actors as agents of the 'New World Order,' for which they advance the 'Globalization of Poverty.'  

Arianna Huffington: The Extreme Brevity of Financial Memory!

Financial crises are a lot like childbirth, they both involve a lot of pain, and end up costing you a lot of money, but after a while, you forget about all the negatives and are ready to do it again. Of course, with childbirth you at least get something positive out of it. In my own case, I'd forgotten enough about the downside of having a baby to do it again two years later, without an epidural. This propensity to forget, so useful when it comes to having babies, is incredibly destructive when it comes to our economy. So why do it? In 1990, John Kenneth Galbraith tried to answer this vexing question in his book: A Short History of Financial Euphoria. Using the 1987 market crash as his launching pad, Galbraith looks at the history of financial bubbles, and the subsequent and inevitable crashes, and why the lessons that would would prevent boom and bust cycles from happening with devastating regularity are never learned. To Galbraith it's a combination of "the extreme brevity of the financial memory" and a general ignorance of history. "There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance," he writes. "Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present." Not only is the boom and bust cycle repeated endlessly, so is the response. See if this sounds familiar: When the initial wave of public anger at a financial bubble bursting is at its highest, there are pledges from politicians to get tough, and "never let this happen again." Some reforms are proposed but, as the public's anger and memory weakens, so does the "reform."  

Susanne Posel: Legal Authority to Deploy Reservists on American Streets

Thanks to Posse Comitatis, the US military are forbidden from responding on the streets of America whenever the whim is announced. The Posse Comitatus Act, Section 1385, states that only under "circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress" can the military presence on American streets be allowed. Yet, if the Defense Department has their way, a new authorization act will give them the power to order the armed forces to be used against the American public. Air Force reservists are stated to be the new response team for domestic disturbances. Disseminated from Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) and other reserve agencies, these men and women could be called to be first response to natural disasters within the US. The legislation would extend mobilizations for indeterminate periods of time. The AFRC affirms that reservists are traditionally not used in "homeland disaster response". The governors of individual states can request the National Guard's assistance during a natural disaster, when local law enforcement becomes overwhelmed. "Our reservists have been asked and often volunteer to assist after disasters hit the homeland," said Lt Gen. Charles E Stenner Jr, chief of Air Force Reserve and AFRC commander. "Mobilizing needed reservists will help sustain their support for longer periods and make operations more efficient. We mobilize reservists to handle contingencies overseas, so it makes sense that we do that to take care of our own country." Because of the specialized training that reservists are given in dealing with disasters, the US government has decided they would be perfect as a first response team!      

Finian Cunningham: Eurovision Song Contest!

NATO and Western Oil Giants behind the Stage of Euro Trash Spectacle: The Euro-vision Song Contest was watched by over 120 million TV viewers as a fun spectacle, a "carnival of kitsch" as one commentator put it, but off stage there are deadly serious political and economic interests at play. This year's annual finale of the 56-year-old competition comes from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, where the purpose-built Crystal Hall on the shores of the Caspian Sea will project glitzy images of the Caucasus nation to the rest of the world. The autocratic government of President Ilham Aliyev has spared no expense or effort to stage the event, a spectacle that has become over the decades a byword for feelgood "Euro Trash" pop culture. In the weeks leading up to this event, Azerbaijan's state paramilitaries and secret police have been cracking down on the slightest public protest, jailing hundreds of human rights and pro-democracy activists. The majority Muslim nation saw a surge in public protests against the authoritarian Aliyev administration back in early 2011 as a spillover from pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East. Azerbaijanis have grown weary of the Aliyev dynasty, accusing the leader's family of misappropriating the Central Asian country's vast oil wealth. While Azerbaijan, the biggest of the Caucasus nations that were formerly Soviet Republics has parliamentary elections, few consider Aliyev to have a genuine mandate from the less than 10 million population. The "president" appoints the cabinet, judiciary, has veto over the national assembly parliament, and has direct control over Azerbaijan's supposedly state-owned oil company. 

Global Research: When Media Gives You the Answers!

When media gives you the answers, you need to ask more questions. Turn on the television today, and you will undoubtedly hear the voice of mainstream newscasters reassuring you that the safety and security of you and your loved ones is being "taken care of" by your government, so much so that they are preparing to go to war on your behalf. Don't worry, they'll tell you, the military will eliminate the "threats" before they can even become threats! Just go about your daily life, spend your money, and trust that your tax dollars are where they need to be, protecting you from bogeymen, the ones who so selfishly refuse to bend to this so-called Western-style "democracy". Clearly, there's a problem here. No matter how many times we're sold the line that war is the only way to peace, the fundamental paradox in this statement can never be masked, not with all the corporate dollars thrown into creating mainstream media spin, nor by the best PR campaigns waged so smoothly by political lobbyists. The truth is the following: "The majority of Americans want the wars ended and the military spending cut, and the more they learn, the more they agree. The message of peace is one that you can expect people to agree with, even if they don't at first. So, never believe your television. Never doubt the popular demand for peace. Never stop spreading the word. Never accept that mass murder has been civilized. Know your own strength!" That may seem easier said than done, but engaged citizens across the globe are proving that we will not acquiesce quietly to the militarized media machine. Ever increasingly, people are waking up to the fact that tyranny, repression and exploitation are not, and should never be the norm. Another way is possible! 

Ross Ruthenberg: When "War is Peace" !

Considering the current state of world peace and NATO's Responsibility to Protect (R2P) policy and to maintain a proper sense of balance, George Orwell's book "1884" should be reviewed periodically. In the spirit of the NATO Summit in Chicago, I present a few quotes from that textbook-for-tomorrow. "If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened-that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death." "Don't you see that the whole aim of New-speak is to narrow the range of thought? Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." "All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers." Then the face of Big Brother faded away again and instead the the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals: WAR IS PEACE, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance is strength! Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, 'just to keep people frightened'. This was an idea that had literally never occurred to him." The object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

Peter Dale Scott: Drug Financed Salafi Jihadism.

I delivered the following remarks at an anti-NATO conference held in Moscow on May 15 2012. Unlike other speakers, my paper urged Russians, despite the expansionist and aggressive activities in Central Asia of the CIA, SOCOM, and NATO, to cooperate under neutral auspices with like-minded Americans, towards dealing with the related crises of Afghan drug production and drug-financed Salah jihadism. Since the conference I have continued to reflect intensely on the battered state of US-Russian relations, and my own slightly utopian response to it. Although the speakers at the conference represented many different viewpoints, they tended all to share a deep anxiety about US intentions towards Russia and the other former states of the USSR. Their anxiety was based on shared knowledge of past American actions and broken promises, of which they, unlike most Americans, are only too aware. A key example of such broken promises was the assurance that NATO would not take advantage of detente to expand into Eastern Europe. Today of course, Poland is a member of NATO, and there are still proposals on the table to expand NATO also into the Ukraine, ie, the very heart of the former Soviet Union. This push was matched by US joint activities and operations, some of them under NATO auspices with the army and security forces of Uzbekistan. These began in 1997, ie, in the Clinton administration. Some of the conferees I spoke to, see Russia has having been threatened for two decades after World War Two by active US and UK plans for a nuclear first strike against Russia, before it could gain nuclear parity.