Julia ‘Judy’ Bonds, “(a) coal miner’s daughter… no longer (could) tolerate the blasting that rattled her windows, the coal soot that she suspected was clotting her grandson’s lungs, and the blackwater spills that bellied-up fish in a nearby stream.”

As a result, she moved downstream and joined Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW), an activist group against mountaintop removal.

CRMW is an initiative “to stop the destruction of our communities and environment by mountaintop removal, to improve the quality of life in our area, and to help rebuild sustainable communities.”

In January 2011, Bonds died of cancer at age 58, CRMW co-director Vernon Haltom saying:

“Judy endured much personal suffering for her leadership. While people of lesser courage would candy-coat their words or simply shut up and sit down, Judy called it as she saw it. (As a result, she) endured physical assault, verbal abuse, and death threats because she stood up for justice for her community. I never met a more courageous person, one who faced her own death,” yet wouldn’t back down. “Fight harder,” she always said, in the vanguard always doing it.

On January 3, 2011, coal toxins silenced the “passion, conviction, tenacity, courage, and love for her fellow human beings” that coal barons tried and failed to do for years. “Judy will be missed by all in this movement as an icon, a leader, an inspiration, and a friend.”

National Geographic quoted her saying: “What the coal companies are doing to us and our mountains is the best kept dirty little secret in America.”

Because of her efforts and fellow activists, the secret’s out. “Coal companies have obliterated the summits of scores of mountains scattered throughout Appalachia….”

According to iLoveMountains.org, coal companies destroyed or severely impacted about 500 mountains and 1.2 million acres, reclaiming only a small fraction of the land for so-called beneficial economic uses.

In fact, a 2009 Appalachian Voices report (based on 2008 aerial and mining permit data) found “one in every ten (Central Appalachia studied) acres” ravaged by surface mining. Moreover, in some locations, it’s much more. In Wise County, VA, it’s nearly 40%. States affected include Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee.

In June 2006, Vanity Fair writer Michael Shnayerson’s article called it “The Rape of Appalachia,” saying:

Its mountains “are being blasted at a rate of several ridgetops each week. Parents fear for the health of their children. And those trying to fight the devastation have found that coal baron Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, is tougher than bedrock.” So are his counterparts at Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and CONSOL Energy.

Industry arrogance is hidden underground, except when avoidable disasters kill miners because its profiteers flout laws and regulations for bottom line priorities.

Above ground, miners rarely die, just the environment and human health incrementally over time. The visible evidence includes: “mile after mile of forest-covered range, great swaths of Appalachia, in some places as far as the eye can see, are being blasted and obliterated in one of the greatest acts of physical destruction this country has ever wreaked upon” nature and humanity.

They’re sacrificed for King Coal profiteers, the 1917 title Upton Sinclair used for his novel about Western America’s poor industry working conditions, based on the 1913-15 Colorado coal strikes, including at Ludlow.

In his People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn poignantly described its 1913-14 strike and subsequent massacre, killing 75 or more strikers, strikebreakers, and bystanders for defying what he called “feudal kingdoms run by (coal barons that) made the laws,” imposed curfews, and ran their operations more like despots than businessmen. To this day, little has changed.

As a result, something is very wrong, including in Whitesville, WV. “It looks desolate, its storefronts abandoned, its streets and sidewalks still. Hardly a car is parked here, not a soul to be seen.”

Only two florists remain. Though poor, West Virginians “buy a lot of funeral flowers. Whitesville resembles a wartime town pillaged by an advancing army.” So do many others throughout Appalachia, raped by coal profiteers. For maximum profits, they denuded former panoramic landscapes, blasted away majestic mountaintops, and left desolation behind.

More affluent communities might have stopped them, but not Appalachia, “a land unto itself, cut off by” mountains East and West, its people too poor, isolated and cowed by generations of King Coal dominance to stop the destruction of their communities, homes and lives.

Moreover, few Americans elsewhere know it or even care. They’re oblivious to “three million (daily) pounds of explosives” destroying a mountain culture, producing the most toxic fossil fuel used to supply more than half of the nation’s electricity, as well as power for manufacturers of paper, chemicals, metal products, plastics, ceramics, fertilizers, tar, and high carbon coke used for steel industry metal processing.

In addition, other coal-derived compounds and residues are used in many other manufacturing processes for synthetic rubber, fiber, insecticides, paints, medicines and solvents.

A 2010 Environmental Integrity Project/Sierra Club/EarthJustice study, however, found that ash produced by coal-fired power plants contaminated ground water and air with dangerous toxins, including arsenic, benzene, mercury and lead. They’re linked to cancer, congestive heart failure, nervous system damage, respiratory diseases, asthma, other health related problems, and lower life expectancies.

Moreover, the Union of Concerned Scientists calls coal burning “a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, and air toxins,” saying each year a typical coal plant generates:

– “3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2),” the equivalent of “cutting down 161 million trees;

– 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2),” causing acid rain damaging forests, lakes, and physical structures, as well as harmful airborne particles able to penetrate deeply into lungs;

– “500 tons of small airborne particles, (responsible for) chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, as well as haze obstructing visibility;”

– 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx),” the equivalent of what’s emitted by half a million late-model cars; it produces lung inflaming ozone, making people susceptible to respiratory diseases; and

– smaller amounts of other toxins, including carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, benzene, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.

No matter. King Coal is empowered to destroy environments and human health for a buck, lots of them, in fact, for well-connected coal barons buying federal, state and local politicians like toothpaste.

As a result, nearly 24,000 people die annually, according to a 2004 Clean Air Task Force study. In 2009, a National Research Council “external costs of coal” report titled, “Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use” estimated a 2005 hidden $62 billion health damage and air pollution cost from electricity generated by coal-fired power plants. The figure excludes the enormous harm to ecosystems.

A 2009 Jonathan Levy/Joel Schwartz/Lisa Baxter Harvard University study titled, “Uncertainty and Variability in Health-Related Damages from Coal-Fired Power Plants in the United States” estimated a range from $30,000-$500,000 (depending on facility age and types of coal used) for every ton of fine particulate matter pollution (PM2.5), with a median rate of $72,000 per ton.

Moreover, damage from each ton of sulfur dioxide ranged from $6,000 to $50,000, with a median rate of $19,000. For nitrogen oxide, it was $500 to $15,000, the median cost being $4,800.

Numerous other studies are just as damning, showing the health and environmental harm from coal production to burning, including a February 2011 Harvard Medical School one titled, “Mining Coal, Mounting Costs: the Life Cycle Consequences of Coal.” It estimated the full public cost of extraction, transportation, processing and combustion at from $175-$500 billion annually.

Nonetheless, King Coal’s power remains strong, including to offload mine reclamation costs to taxpayers,  another way they’re made to pay. Even trying to beat industry giants in court is futile because occasional district court level wins get overturned on appeal by bought and paid for judges, as much in the tank as politicians.

That’s how stories end in Coal River Valley, said Vanity Fair’s Shnayerson, “with a whimper, followed by a bang from blasting,” destroying mountains, communities, ecosystems and people in combination. Judy Bonds called it “stealing our soul.”

Mountaintop Removal: How It’s Done

Mountain Justice calls it “mountain range removal/valley fill mining,” a process that “annihilates ecosystems, transforming some of the most biologically diverse temperate forests in the world into biologically barren moonscapes.” Its steps include:

(1) Clear-cutting forests, including scraping away topsoil, lumber, herbs, and other life forms, denuding the landscape. In the process, wildlife habitat and vegetation are destroyed, leaving areas vulnerable to floods and landslides.

(2) Up to 800 feet of mountaintops are blasted, causing immediate damage to home foundations, structures and wells. Moreover, unleashed “fly rock” boulders endanger lives and property.

(3) Huge shovels rip into soil, loading coal onto trucks to haul away or push into adjacent valleys.

(4) Giant dragline machines dig into rock, exposing coal deposits.

(5) Other machines scoop it out, dumping millions of “overburden” tons (former mountaintops) into valleys below, creating valley fills. As a result, coal giants “forever buried over 1,200 miles of biologically crucial Appalachian headwater streams.”

(6) Mandated land reclamation areas are usually left stripped and bare. Mountains are destroyed and lost. Once maximum coal is extracted, mining communities and jobs disappear. Residents are driven out by dust, blasting, residues, toxins, flooding, landslides, and “dangers from overloaded trucks careening down small, windy mountain roads.”

Enormous amounts of waste are generated. In solid form, it’s valley fills. Liquid is stored in “massive, dangerous coal slurry impoundments, often built in” watershed headwaters. A carcinogenic chemical “witch’s  brew” is used to wash coal for market, leaving behind poisonous residues. Frequent blackwater spills choke life from streams.

For example, the Southeast’s worst ever environmental disaster sent 306 million gallons of sludge up to 15 feet thick into residents’ yards. It also fouled 75 miles of waterways.

Another affected Southern West Virginia’s Buffalo Creek when heavy rain caused a slurry pond to fill up, breaching its containment dam. As a result, “a (132 million gallon) wall of black water” blighted the valley below, killing 125 residents, injuring 1,100, and leaving 4,000 homeless.

In addition, over 1,000 cars and trucks were destroyed, causing $50 million in damage overall. Though warned about the dangerous dam, Pittston Coal Company took no precautions, dismissively calling the disaster an “act of God.”

A Final Comment

EarthJustice and other environmental groups are urging Congress to pass HR 1375: Clean Water Protection Act. Introduced on April 5, 2011, then referred to Committee, it’s legislation to “amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify that fill material cannot be comprised of waste.”

EarthJustice calls it a way to put “tighter restrictions on dumping pollution into Appalachian streams by overturning the dangerous fill rule.” If enacted, it will  restore eroded Clean Water Act protections, even though passage won’t assure coal giants’ compliance. They may, in fact, accept hand slap citations and fines to keep doing business as usual like always in the past.

Another March 2009 bill never made it out of committee – S. 696: Appalachia Restoration Act, “A bill to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to include a definition of fill material.” If passed, it would have prohibited dumping mountaintop removal “excess spoil” into streams and headwaters. But it would have allowed other mining and industrial waste dumping into waters, practices once prohibited by the Clean Water Act.

EarthJustice and other committed groups also campaign to stop mountaintop removal mining. Former congressman Ken Hechler is involved. A feisty 96, his image is featured on Washington, DC area billboard ads saying:

“My name is Ken. I’m 96 and a fighter. And I’m fighting to save our mountains.” He’s part of EarthJustice’s Mountain Heroes campaign, organizer Liz Judge saying:

We also plan to go to other cities. Our purpose is to tell the stories of people who live in the coalfields, people who deal with the impact of mountaintop removal mining on a daily basis.

Representing West Virginia’s 4th congressional district from 1959 – 1977, Hechler then served as its Secretary of State from 1985-2001, retiring at age 86. A Columbia University Ph D in history and government, he spent decades fighting for miners’ health and safety laws.

Judge called his efforts “heroic,” even coming out of retirement in 2010 at age 95 to run against then Gov. Joe Manchin in the Democrat special primary, solely on ending mountaintop removal.

Like others, he believes there’s “light at the end of the tunnel. But the tougher it gets, the more exciting it gets when you can see victory,” or a chance of getting what so far proved elusive. “I’m still hoping,” says Hechler, “that before I leave this world I get to see that victory, which I’m sure is going to come.”

On June 6, he participated in a five-day march  commemorating the 90th anniversary of the historic 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain when 10,000 or more coal miners courageously participated in the largest US rebellion since the Civil War. Struggling to unionize for basic rights, including decent wages and working conditions, they confronted a coal operator-backed army of police, strikebreakers, and US Army troops.

Dozens were killed or wounded, hundreds arrested. The battle challenged appalling conditions miners faced, culminating later with New Deal labor victories. Eroded later, they’re now lost, but not in the memories of activists struggling to regain them.

At the time, the Battle of Blair Mountain was a watershed event. In April 2008, the National Register of Historic Places nominated the site for its protected places list, a decision the state of West Virginia contested, leaving its status under review.

On or off, Blair Mountain symbolizes a struggle anti-mountaintop removal activists don’t intend to lose.

For them and beleaguered Appalachian residents, winning can’t come a moment too soon.

Military forces “secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass (anti-Mubarak) protests began, (and) at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.”

Moreover, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other human rights organizations cited years of army involvement in disappearances and torture. Former detainees confirmed “extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation.” Electric shocks, Taser guns, threatened rapes, beatings, disappearances, and killings left families grieving for loved ones.

Under Mubarak, Egypt’s military wasn’t neutral. It’s no different now, cracking down hard to keep power and deny change, policies Washington endorses, funds and practices at home and abroad.

On February 17, even New York Times writer Liam Stack headlined, “Among Egypt’s Missing, Tales of Torture and Prison,” saying:

Trademark Mubarak practices continue under military rule, “human rights groups say(ing) the military’s continuing role in such abuses raises new questions about its ability to midwife Egyptian democracy.”

“We joined the protests to liberate the country and end the problems of the regime,” said a man identified as Rabie. “After 18 days, the regime is gone but the same injustices remain.” Indeed so without letup.

In fact, on February 11, everything in Egypt changed but stayed the same. Mubarak was out, replaced by military despots, reigning the same terror on Egyptians he did for nearly three decades. A new Amnesty International (AI) report explains, titled “Egypt Rises: Killings, Detentions and Torture in the ’25 January Revolution.’ ”

Covering the period January 30 – March 3, it documents excessive force, killing hundreds and injuring thousands of Egyptians, as well as mass arrests, detentions and torture, policies still ongoing to prevent democracy from emerging.

On May 18, an AI press release headlined, “Egypt: Victims of Protest Violence Deserve Justice,” calling trying former Interior Minister Habib El Adly “an essential first step, (but authorities) must go much further than this.”

“Families of those who were killed, as well as all those who were seriously injured or subject to arbitrary detention or torture….should expect that the authorities will prioritize their needs.”

AI’s report provides “damning evidence of excessive force” against protesters posing no threat. In addition, it covers brutal torture in detention, “including beatings with sticks or whips, electric shocks,” painful stress positions for long periods, verbal abuse, threatened rape, and other forms of ill-treatment.

Earlier in May, AI released another report titled, “State of Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: January to Mid-April 2011,” covering all regional countries, including Egypt, saying ongoing human rights abuses continue.

Strikes, sit-ins, and protests persist for decent jobs, better wages, improved working conditions, human and civil rights, ending corruption, and real democratic change so far denied. More killings, arrests, detentions, and torture followed, showing that “Egypt’s ’25 January Revolution’ is far from over.” In fact, it’s just begun.

AI’s report documents dozens of individuals Egypt’s security forces killed or injured in Cairo, Alexandria, Beni Suef governorate, Suez, Port Said, and El-Mahalla El-Kubra, Egypt’s industrial heartland.

They attacked peaceful protesters with tear gas, water cannons, shotguns, rubber bullets, live ammunition, and at times running them over with armored vehicles. They also used disproportionate brutality, including beatings with batons or sticks as well as lethal force, followed by mass arrests, disappearances, detentions, torture, and at least 189 confirmed deaths in custody and hundreds injured.

Others targeted included human rights and online activists, independent journalists, people bringing supplies to protesters, doctors treating those injured, and anyone suspected of anti-regime activities. In detention, brutal treatment followed. One man identified as Fouad said:

“As we entered our block, we had to lie face down in the court yard and were beaten by soldiers. They beat us with cables and canes and used electric prods. The most severe beating in Sign al-Harbi (Military Prison) was on the day of arrival.”

Detained for 19 days in numerous locations, Mohamed Hassan Abdel Samiee said he was tortured in all of them. Mohamed Essam Ibrahim Khatib said he was blindfolded, handcuffed, stepped on, beaten with a rifle butt, and administered electric shocks including to his face and neck, adding:

“When we got off the vehicle, we were ordered to take off our clothes, except the underpants, and we had to lie face down in the sand. There were three soldiers in camouflage uniforms belonging to the Saraya al-Sa’iqa (The Lightening Brigade), each of them with a different instrument to beat us. One had a whip, another a wooden stick and another an electric prod. The commander would blow into his whisle and the soldiers would start beating us for a few minutes until he blew his whistle again. They beat all of us without exception,” an ordeal continuing throughout their detention.

Other detainees said they were blindfolded, handcuffed suspended upside-down by a rope, administered electric shocks, submerged head first in water, and ordered to confess they were trained by Israel or Iran. Some lost consciousness during the ordeal.

Another was warned if he didn’t talk he “would face the same situation as (a man) I heard being raped and pleading with his rapist to stop. So I told the interrogator, ‘I prefer that you shoot me.’ ”

Moreover, contact with lawyers, doctors, and family members was denied, unaware if loved ones were alive or dead. Thousands endured the same treatment. They still do with no letup under brutal military junta rule.

A Final Comment

On April 29, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) news release headlined, “Egypt: Military Trials Usurp Justice System,” saying:

Egypt’s military “should immediately end trials of civilians before military courts and release all those arbitrarily detained or convicted after unfair hearings….”

Since February, more than 5,000 civilians were tried in military tribunals. Nearly all participated in peaceful protests during and after Mubarak’s dictatorship. “Trials of civilians before the military courts constitute wholesale violations of basic fair trial rights….”

Egypt’s military courts administer wholesale justice for alleged “crimes,” handling multiple cases simultaneously in proceedings lasting 20 to 40 minutes. Those convicted got sentences ranging from six months to 25 years or life imprisonment for protesting peacefully, breaking curfews, and various bogus charges, including possessing illegal weapons, destroying public property, theft, assault, or threatening violence. Those charged were judged guilty by accusation and denied lawyers of their choice to represent them.

Obama’s embracing military commissions “justice” replicates Egypt’s junta. His March 7 Executive Order reversed an earlier EO halting the practice for new cases. In response, the Center for Constitutional Rights condemned the ruling, saying:

His “reopening of flawed military commissions for business does nothing other than codify the status quo. (It’s) a tacit acknowledgment that (his) administration intends to leave Guantanamo as a scheme for unlawful detention without charge and trial for future presidents to clean up.”

Washington’s Guantanamo detentions and “military tribunal system are no longer an inheritance from the Bush administration – they will be President Obama’s legacy.” In fact, they show American justice replicates Egypt, both nations revealed as police states.

Let us face the truth… (N)either Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovar Albanians. This action has been another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile… to consolidate… American domination of Europe.

Today, Obama doesn’t give a damn about Libyans, any more than about Iraqis, Afghans or working Americans. At issue only is Washington wanting unchallenged dominance everywhere, including over the Mediterranean Basin, using two missiles – NATO and so-called rebels, enlisted, funded, trained and armed well before bombing began on March 19.

Besides civilians and former regime soldiers, Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) paramilitaries comprise their hardcore – Al Qaeda-linked insurgents, cutthroat killers, showing no mercy for suspected pro-Gaddafi sympathizers.

On March 23, London Telegraph writer Rob Crilly headlined, “Libya: it wasn’t supposed to be like this in free Benghazi,” saying: Every night, vigilante gangs “mop up (suspected) pro-Gaddafi elements.” Foreign workers long ago fled the city. Most refugees, in fact, are foreign workers, not Libyan nationals, what major media reports don’t explain.

Under rebel control, Benghazi residents are terrorized, many “too frightened to drive through the dark streets at night, fearing a shakedown or worse at the proliferating checkpoints.” One man said unless they know you, they assume you’re pro-Gaddafi.

On April 17, Financial Times writer Robin Wigglesworth headlined, “Fears rise as Gaddafi loyalists purged,” saying: Former Benghazi mayor and Gaddafi loyalist Huda Ben Amer’s mansion “is now a charred husk… gutted by fire and obscene graffiti…”

Throughout rebel-held areas, “firebombed buildings, defaced posters, incendiary graffiti, (and other actions) testify to the depths of hatred (toward) the regime.”

Perhaps it’s also effective recruiting, choosing the right fighters and convincing them that Western imperialism is humanitarian intervention when, in fact, it’s to carve up another conquered nation’s corpse, installing new leaders to serve Washington, not Libyans.

As a result, “(m)any associated with (Gaddafi) have been arrested, exiled or killed,” in a rampaging purge, “raising some uncomfortable issues” for rebel leaders and independent observers.

Claiming only pro-Gaddafi supporters “with blood on their hands” are being targeted, youth gangs are terrorizing Libyans, using “rat-hunting” harassment, arrests, and “spontaneous roadside executions.”

Actions, in fact, are so out-of-control that unchecked witch-hunt justice threatens anyone suspected of pro-regime support. In other words, they’re guilty by accusation, rebels acting as judges, juries and executioners with full Western backing.

On May 10, New York Times writer Kareen Fahim headlined, “Killings and Rumors Unsettle a Libyan City,” saying: Bodies are showing up around Benghazi. “Three weeks ago, a traveler spotted (one) in farmland on the city’s outskirts, shot twice in the head with his hands and feet bound.” He disappeared the previous day after visiting a market. Days later, another one was also found, murdered the same way. “Masked, armed men had taken him from his home the night before, without giving a reason, his wife said.”

Like many others, both killings are unsolved, and in rebel-held territory, investigations aren’t conducted in a climate of death squad justice. As a result, Benghazi residents are “paranoid,” wondering who’s next, and when lawless killings will stop.

In fact, the entire city is unsettled, intimidated by rebel gangs rounding up suspected Gaddafi sympathizers. Unless stopped, “it will pose a (stiff) challenge to (insurgent leaders) trying to present a vision of a new country committed to the rule of law, while potentially undermining hopes for” peace and justice.

For weeks without letup, episodes like the following have raged: In early May, “about a dozen men wearing balaclavas (ski masks) and carrying guns arrived at the house of Youssef al Tobouli in three pickup trucks.” A former prison guard, he defected and was at his store. “His terrified relatives called friends, and in the gunfight that followed, the room (he) shared with his wife and three children was destroyed by fire.”

Numerous other attacks are reported. According to Benghazi Jalaa Hospital’s Dr. Omar Khalid, bodies of executed men show up regularly though no one knows if they were regime sympathizers. Some were shot. Others had their throats cut. They all came dead on arrival.

Deadly episodes leave everyone gripped with fear. “Last week, rebel fighters in pickup trucks rushed to the city’s radio station,” suspecting Gaddafi loyalists inside. “Guns were fired, and a bystander was… killed…. This is a war of rumors,” said the station’s security guard. “People are very edgy” with good reason.

Even defectors like Hussein Gaith turn up dead, his wife saying: “He didn’t have any enemies. He joined the revolution 20 days after it started.”

Yet he was abducted and killed, showing signs he resisted. Until America intervened, Libya functioned normally. Now it’s the wild west, becoming the worst of what Iraqis and Afghans face daily, including deep poverty, unemployment, repression, and extreme violence, mostly affecting civilians.

Oscar Wilde once called a “hypocrite (someone) who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.”

Twenty-eight months into his presidency, Obama mastered the art of duplicity, contemptuously calling imperial slaughter humanitarian intervention, using NATO and human “missiles” for regime change, no matter how many corpses it takes.

On November 18, 2006, Middle East analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya’s Global Research article headlined, “Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a ‘New Middle East,’ ” saying:

In June 2006 in Tel Aviv, “US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (first) coin(ed) the term” in place of the former “Greater Middle East” project, a shift in rhetoric only for Washington’s longstanding imperial aims.

The new terminology “coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean.” During Israel’s summer 2006 Lebanon war, “Prime Minister Olmert and (Rice) informed the international media that a project for a ‘New Middle East’ was being launched in Lebanon,” a plan in the works for years to “creat(e) an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.”

In other words, “constructive chaos” would be used to redraw the region according to US-Israeli “geo-strategic needs and objectives.” The strategy is currently playing out violently in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria, and may erupt anywhere in the region to solidify Washington’s aim for unchallengeable dominance from Morocco to Oman to Syria.

Partnered with Israel, it’s to assure only leaders fully “with the program” are in place. Mostly isn’t good enough, so ones like Mubarak, Gaddafi, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, likely Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh (now damaged goods), and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad are targeted for removal by methods ranging from uprisings to coups, assassinations, or war, perhaps in that order.

Nazemroaya now says Syrian “protesters are being armed and funded by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states via Jordan and Saad Hariri in Lebanon,” besides US and Israeli involvement.

Pack Journalism Goes to War with Washington

America’s pack journalism never met an America imperial initiative it didn’t support and promote, no matter how lawless, mindless, destructive or counterproductive. For example, an April 28 New York Times editorial headlined, “President Assad’s Crackdown,” saying:

He “appears determined to join his father in the ranks of history’s blood-stained dictators, sending his troops and thugs to murder anyone who has the courage to demand political freedom.”

Whether about Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Haiti’s Aristide, former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, Venezuela’s Chavez or others for many decades, Times “journalists” and opinion writers have a sordid history of supporting America’s imperial ruthlessness, including perpetual wars killing millions for power, profit, and unchallengeable dominance.

Now Times writers laud Obama for intervening in Libya and trying “to engage Syria… in hopes that Mr. Assad would make the right choice,” meaning get “with the program” by surrendering Syrian sovereignty.

Despite clear evidence of US intervention, Obama “issued a statement condemning the violence and accusing Mr. Assad of seeking Iranian assistance in brutalizing his people. That is a start, but it is not nearly enough.”

War is always a last choice so the Times endorses “international condemnation and tough sanctions, (as well as) asset freezes and travel bans for Mr. Assad and his top supporters and a complete arms embargo.”

However, “Russia and China, as ever, are determined to protect autocrats. That cannot be the last word.”

Times‘ opinions are shamelessly belligerent, one-sided, wrong-headed, and mindless on rule of law issues, including about prohibitions against meddling in the internal affairs of other countries except in self-defense until the Security Council acts.

Instead, the “newspaper of record” remains America’s leading managed news source, backing the worst of Washington’s imperial arrogance and ruthlessness. As a result, it omits inconvenient facts to make its case, including America’s notorious ties to numerous global despots on every continent.

WikiLeaks Released Cables Expose America’s Regime Change Plan

Though widely reported since mid-April, the Times hasn’t acknowledged information (though sketchy) from Washington Post writer Craig Whitlock’s April 17 report headlined, “US secretly backed Syrian opposition groups, cables released by WikiLeaks show,” saying:

Through its Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), “The State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel (London-based Barada TV) that beams anti-government programming into the country, according to previously undisclosed diplomatic cables.”

“Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of (pro-Western) Syrian exiles.”

Funding began at least after the Bush administration cut ties with Damascus in 2005. In April 2009, a diplomatic cable from Damascus said: “A reassessment of current US-sponsored programming that supports anti-(government) factions, both inside and outside Syria, may prove productive.”

In February 2006, Bush officials announced funding to “accelerate the work of reformers in Syria.” Nonetheless, Barada TV denied receiving money, its news director Malik al-Abdeh saying: “I’m not aware of anything like that. If your purpose is to smear Barada TV, I don’t want to continue this conversation. That’s all I’m going to give you.”

America’s National Endowment for Democracy: A Global Regime Change Initiative

Besides covert CIA activities, US-government funded organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and International Republican Institute (IRI) operate as US foreign policy destabilizing instruments. They do it by supporting opposition group regime change efforts in countries like Syria, despite claiming “dedicat(ion) to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world… in more than 90 countries.”

In MENA nations (Middle East/North Africa) alone, NED’s web site lists activities in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait, Morocco, Lebanon, Bahrain, Libya, Sudan, and Syria.

The IRI’s web site includes (destabilizing anti-democratic) initiatives in Afghanistan, Egypt, GCC states, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Palestine.

Other US imperial organizations are also regionally active, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), operating contrary to their stated missions.

In January 1996, based on firsthand knowledge, former CIA agent (from 1952-1977) Ralph McGehee discussed covert NED efforts in Cuba, China, Russia and Vietnam, saying:

The government-funded organization “assumed many of the political action responsibilities of the CIA,” including:

– “efforts to influence foreign journalists;”
– money laundering;
– isolating “democratic-minded intellectuals and journalist in the third world;”
– distributing propaganda articles “to regional editors on each continent;”
– “disseminating an attack on people in Jamaica;”
– funding anti-Castro groups in South Florida as well as Radio and TV Marti, airing regime change propaganda;
– anti-communist grants; and
– much more while claiming its mission is “guided by the belief that freedom is a universal human aspiration that can be realized through the development of democratic institutions, procedures and values.”

In a 2005 interview, another former CIA agent (1957-1968), Philip Agee, author of Inside the Company, explained NED’s origins and covert efforts to destabilize and oust Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, calling efforts “similar to what (went on) in Nicaragua in the 1980s minus the Contra terrorist operations (that) wreaked so much destruction on the Nicaraguan economy.”

Founded in 1982, NED distributes government funds to four other organizations, including the IRI, NDI, Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the AFL-CIO’s American Center for International Labor Solidarity.

In fact, a 2010 Kim Scipes book titled, AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?, discusses its covert anti-worker “labor imperialism,” including regime change initiatives.

Manipulated Popular Uprising in Syria

Since late January, popular uprisings began, suspiciously orchestrated by outside forces to destabilize and oust Assad. In fact, Richard Perle’s 1996 A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared for Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu during his first term, stated: “Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli objective in its own right.”

It added: “Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An affective approach, and one with which America can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizbollah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon…”

“Given the nature of the regime in Damascus (much the same today), it is both natural and moral that Israel abandon the slogan comprehensive peace and move to contain Syria, drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction programs, and rejecting land for peace deals on the Golan Heights,” Syrian territory colonized by Israel since 1967.

Perle’s report was a destabilization and regime change manifesto, implemented in Iraq, Libya, elsewhere in the region, and now Syria. The strategy includes managed news, funding internal and external dissident groups, and other initiatives to oust leaders like Assad.

On March 30, 2011, Haaretz writer Zvi Bar’el headlined “Why did website linked to Syria regime publish US-Saudi plan to oust Assad?” saying: “According to the report… the plan was formulated in 2008 by the Saudi national security advisor, Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Jeffrey Feltman, a veteran US diplomat in the Middle East who was formerly ambassador to Lebanon and is currently the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs.”

Dividing Syria into large cities, towns and villages, the plan involved “establishing five recruitment networks,” using unemployed youths, criminals, other young people, and media efforts “funded by European countries but not” America, as well as a “capital network of businesspeople from the large cities.”

Training included “sniper fire, arson, and murdering in cold blood,” journalists reporting it by hard to monitor satellite phones depicting “human rights activists… demanding not the regime’s fall,” but need for social networks training “as a means for recruitment.”

“After the recruitment and training phases, which would be funded by Saudi Arabia for about $2 billion,” thousands of “activists” would be given communications equipment to begin public actions. “The plan also suggest(ed) igniting ethnic tensions between groups around the country to stir unrest,” including in Damascus “to convince the military leadership to disassociate itself from Assad and establish a new regime.”

“The hoped-for outcome is the establishment of a supreme national council that will run the country and terminate Syria’s relations with Iran and Hezbollah.”

The Jordan-based Dot and Com company was named as the behind the scenes recruiter, a company run by Saudi intelligence under Bandar to destabilize Syria and oust Assad.

Whether or not the plan was implemented, some of its features are now playing out violently across the country. Orchestrated in Washington, it’s to install a totally “with the program” regime, the same war strategy ongoing in Libya.

A Final Comment

On April 28, Russia and China blocked a US-backed UK, French, German and Portugal proposed Security Council resolution condemning Syrian violence. Damascus’ UN ambassador, Bashar Ja’arari, said it failed because several members were fair-minded enough to reject it, knowing Libya’s fate after Resolution 1973, calling only for no-fly zone protection.

UN Undersecretary General for Political Affairs Lynn Pascoe reported about 400 deaths so far. Other estimates are higher. Russian, Chinese and Syrian representatives say government security forces killed by armed extremists are among them. According to RT.com: “Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry had clearly outlined its position: it condemned all those responsible for the deaths of protesters during the clashes with the police. But, it urged (no intervention) in Syria’s internal affairs,” that could easily escalate to Western regime change plans.

Federation Council to the Asian Parliamentary Assembly, Rudik Iskuzhin, believes Syrian intervention may mean Iran is next, saying: “We very well understand that the hidden motive of all of the recent revolutionary processes is Iran, to which the destabilization in Syria will eventually ricochet. Libya, just like Syria, was an important ally of” Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Western powers and Israel want the alliance subverted.

On April 29, China ruled out force against Syria, Foreign Affairs Ministry Vice-Minister He Yafei saying it “cannot bring a solution to the problem and will only cause a greater humanitarian crisis.” Insisting proposed solutions comply with the UN Charter and international law, he added: “Any help from the international community has to be constructive in nature, which is conducive to the restoration of stability and public order and ensuring the maintenance of economic and social life.”

American intervention assures “constructive chaos,” the agenda Washington pursues globally, focusing mainly on controlling Eurasia’s enormous wealth and resources. Either one or multiple countries at a time, it includes turning Russia and China into vassal states, a goal neither Beijing or Moscow will tolerate.

Other events took place throughout Palestine, including protests following Friday’s prayers across from the UN’s Gaza headquarters. Bil’in and Al Masara also dedicated their weekly demonstrations to Vittorio, Vic to his friends.

On Saturday, the Popular Committee in Nablus held a commemoration with political parties in Nablus center, celebrating his work and condemning his killing.

ISM explained his activism for Palestinian liberation and justice for almost 10 years, including the past two and a half years in Gaza with ISM:

– monitoring Israeli human rights violations;
– supporting Palestinian resistance against occupation, and siege; and
– daily violations of international law and democratic values.

Moreover, as a journalist, he wrote for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto and Peacereporter, providing information about Gaza to a worldwide audience. The next Freedom Flotilla was renamed “Stay Human,” honoring him and his book titled, Gaza Stay Human.

Weeks earlier, he wrote comments like:

The mighty flow of blood and hope from Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria and Libya also washed over young Palestinian minds in Gaza. What started as a stream has become a torrent and will soon spill its banks…. Palestinians are working hard to mobilize thousands of people (on March 15) to the squares of Ramallah and Gaza on the day (now) named “The Day of Reconciliation” rather than “The Day of Anger.”

He also participated in the Free Gaza Movement’s August 2008 siege-breaking flotilla. Established that month, it visited Gaza nine times by sea “to break Israel’s illegal stranglehold on 1.5 million Palestinian civilians,” suffocating under siege.

However, it never was clear sailing. In 2008, Free Gaza succeeded five times, but were “violently intercepted on the(ir) past four voyages,” including the lethal May 31 massacre, killing nine or more activists and injuring many more.

Free Gaza and its coalition partners are the only organizations “sen(ding) boats directly to Gaza in defiance of Israel’s criminal” blockade. They “sail as an expression of citizen nonviolent, direct action, confronting” Israeli lawlessness, together with:

– the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza;
– IHH – the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights;
– Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief;
– the International Committee to End the Siege on Gaza;
– Ship to Gaza Sweden; and
– Ship to Gaza Greece.

Ahead, missions from growing numbers of countries plan to deliver vitally needed aid, sending a message that Israeli lawlessness won’t stand.

During Cast Lead, Arrigoni helped medics and reported on IDF attacks to a worldwide audience. As a result, Israeli forces arrested him many times for his writing, activism, and support for Palestinian liberation and justice. His last arrest and deportation came after he reported on Israel’s lawless confiscation of Gazan fishing vessels in Palestinian waters, one of many other times they’ve done it.

On April 15, a Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) press release headlined, “With Great Shock and Sorrow, PCHR Condemns the Murder of Italian Activist, Vittorio Arrigoni,” saying: That day his “body was found in an abandoned house in the north of the Gaza Strip, following his murder at the hands of kidnappers.”

According to its own investigation, extremists called “Group of the Companion Mohammed Bin Maslamah” announced his kidnapping on April 14, demanding the release of its detained members affiliated with the so-called “Salafist Jihadist Group.” If authorities didn’t release them within 30 hours, they threatened to kill him, a threat fulfilled as broadcast on You Tube.

His face showed clear signs of beating, as well as handcuffs and strangulation marks on his neck. A Gaza Ministry of Interior press release condemned the crime, announcing the arrest of two of the group’s members, as well as efforts to find the others.

On April 15, London Guardian writer Conal Urquhart headlined, “Palestinians rally to mourn kidnapped Italian activist murdered by extremists,” saying:

He was abducted to force authorities to release Sheikh Abu Walid-al-Maqdas. The New York Times named Hisham Saidani as their imprisoned Tawhid and Jihad (TJ) leader, saying “details of the crime remain muddled,” especially with TJ denying responsibility.

Luigi Ripamonti, deputy mayor of his hometown of Bulciago, told Italy’s Sky 24 Television: “Today we los(t) an Italian citizen, a citizen of Bulciago, and also a Palestinian citizen, because he married a Palestinian.”

Egidia Beretta, Bulciago’s mayor and Arrigoni’s mother said he first arrived in The Territories in 2002, where “(h)e was taken with Palestine and Palestine took to him.”

At first Hamas was reluctant to accuse anyone of the crime, suggesting possible Israeli involvement, spokesman Mahmoud Zahar saying:

“We cannot deny the relation between this incident and an international campaign by the Zionist enemy to restrict the arrival of pro-Palestinian activists. This crime is not in line with our norms as Muslims and Palestinians.”

He added that “(s)uch an awful crime cannot take place without arrangements between all the parties concerned to keep the blockade imposed.”

In Rome, the Italian Foreign Ministry said the killing was a “barbaric murder and vile and irrational gesture of violence on the part of extremists indifferent to the value of a human life.”

Haaretz said a group calling itself Monotheism and Holy War released a video showing Arrigoni blindfolded with cuts on his face. It demanded authorities free its leaders and two others or they’d kill him. Despite the video, the group denied responsibility, raising suspicions of its origin.

The Guardian said a fellow US activist, Nathan Stuckey, said he spent most of his time as a journalist, but was involved in promoting the rights of Gaza fishermen to work freely in their own waters, adding: “At the moment, he was particularly focused on the launch of our new boat, which we will use to monitor (Israel’s navy) violation of the rights of the fishermen. He often said that he now felt more at home in Gaza than in Italy and he was strongly committed to the Palestinian cause.”

Arrigoni’s death comes days after a gunman killed Juliano Mer-Khamis, an Israeli actor who ran a Jenin refugee camp theater. He also supported Palestinian liberation and justice. His mother, Arna Mer, was a Jewish activist for Palestinian rights. His father, Saliba Khamis, was born and raised in Nazareth.

In 2006, he opened the Jenin Freedom Theater with Zakariya Zubeidi, former local Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades military leader. He was threatened numerous times, and his theater was torched twice previously. Jenin’s Governor Qadura Moussa called him a great Palestinian supporter.

Haaretz‘s senior editor and theater critic called him a “great actor and extraordinary human being whose life-story is part of the tragic reality of this country,” who in death, became “another tragic victim of life in the Middle East.”

Shot dead on April 4, he’s remembered as one of the best along with Arrigoni and Rachael Corrie, a 23-year old American peace activist, murdered in Gaza on March 16, 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer operator when she tried to stop it from demolishing a Rafah refugee camp home.

According to witnesses, she climbed up on it, spoke to the driver, climbed down, knelt 10-20 meters in front in clear view, blocking its path with her body. With activists there screaming for it to stop, the soldier-operator crushed her to death deliberately by running her over twice to be sure.

For many years, Israel killed numerous other peace activists, including Tom Hurndall, a 21-year old photojournalist shot in the head by an Israeli sniper in April 2003, trying to rescue Palestinian children under fire. He clung to life in a vegetative state until succumbing on January 13, 2004, another victim of Israeli barbarity and contempt for human life, a testimony to an out-of-control rogue state.

Like Arrigoni, Corrie and Hurndell were also ISM members, heroic peace activists for Palestinian liberation and justice.

In fact, however, a far greater Middle East menace threatens the entire region, the Israeli war machine based in Jerusalem. Besides illegally occupying Palestine, brutalizing Palestinians daily, persecuting Israeli Arabs, threatening and attacking its neighbors, its longstanding plan calls for dividing and dominating the region.

In fact, it’s nightmarish vision calls for partitioning Arab nations into small states – balkanizing them along ethnic and sectarian lines as Israeli satellites, controllable satraps. The idea is modeled after the Ottoman Empire’s Millet system under which local authorities governed confessional communities with separate ethnic identities.

Israel’s 1967 Golan seizure followed the plan. So did the 1978 and 1982 Lebanon invasions, using preemptive  belligerence against regional states, targeting them to be weakened, fragmented, divided, and reconfigured under Israeli control.

However, instead of sanctioning Israel, demanding Gaza’s siege end, and imposing no-fly zone protection against regular air and ground attacks, Washington is Israel’s paymaster/partner, providing generous funding and arms, supporting its killing machine lawlessly.

As a result, Israel is a modern day Sparta, able to mobilize over 600,000 combatants in 72 hours, equipped with nuclear and other state-of-the-art weapons, as well as strong Western backing to do what it pleases. Moreover, accomplishing it involves indoctrinating Israeli youths to be warriors, a process to prepare underage boys and girls for future mandatory service.

They’re taught to believe force and belligerence are preferred ways to solve political problems. Their education highlights it, including by uniformed soldiers in classrooms. Moreover, teachers, especially principals, are retired career officers, and school walls are adorned with names and photos of fallen heros among their graduates. In addition, field trips for all ages visit military memorials on former battlegrounds.

Curricula and textbooks also reflect militarism, from kindergarten through high schools with mandatory programs in all state-run ones called “preparation for the IDF.” They feature training, glorifying military heros and conquests, while, at the same time, vilifying Arabs, proselytizing kids to hate them.

They learn early and it sticks, disciplining them for later conscription, combat, and a lifetime of military support. In fact, by raising children in a hostile, violent environment, they’re conditioned to wage war against anyone called a state enemy, whether or not true.

As a result, Palestinians pay dearly under suffocating military occupation, inflicting daily violence, targeted killings, mass arrests, land dispossessions, displacement, torture, severe poverty and unemployment, as well as violation of their basic civil and human rights, notably in Gaza under siege, suffering slow-motion genocide from depravation.

In addition, regular incursions and attacks occur, Israel acting with impunity. In America especially, not a harsh word, let alone condemnation, calls for sanctions, isolation, and no-fly zone protection to prevent further Gaza air and ground assaults.

As a result, from March 10 – 16 alone, Israeli air strikes killed two Palestinian workers, wounded two others, and destroyed three non-military buildings. Other Gaza farmers, fishermen and civilians were also targeted.

In addition, peaceful West Bank demonstrations were attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets. Two international human rights activists were arrested, and 47 separate incursions were conducted in Palestinian communities, resulting in 66 arrests, including six children.

In the West Bank, on March 17, with government approval, Israeli settlers unleashed a “day of rage,” attacking Palestinians in response to a recent settler family killing, arbitrarily blaming them with no evidence.

As a result, Palestinians were attacked with rocks and Molotov cocktails, and a home was firebombed. In addition, four cars and a tractor were burned, another seven cars damaged. Numerous injuries were also reported, and armed settlers and Israeli soldiers uprooted hundreds of olive trees near Bethlehem.

On March 14, a Palestinian was stabbed, a shop set ablaze, and cars near Hebron were stoned. On March 20, an 11-year old girl was run over en route to school.

Moreover, Israel announced 500 new settlement units and intensified home demolitions in response to the killings, despite no evidence linking them to Palestinians.

On March 21, Israeli air attacks again shelled and bombed Gazan civilian sites, wounding 15 civilians, including two women and two children. Dozens of homes, seven stores, several cars, a municipal building, a metal workshop, and a plastic waste recycling facility sustained total, heavy or partial damage.

On March 22, more attacks killed four, including two children, wounding 11, including eight children, three seriously. Members of the al-Quds Brigades were also targeted near the Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi mosque in eastern Gaza City, killing four.

On March 24, Israeli warplanes conducted two more attacks, targeting a Rafah city training site, causing heavy damage. No deaths or injuries were reported. In addition, according to the SAFA News Agency, air strikes hit a tunnel east of Rafah’s Salah Al-Din gate. Four missiles were also fired at a Hamas military site in southern Gaza City, and Israeli attacks destroyed electric lines in several neighborhoods.

Israeli radio claimed Gaza launched rocket and mortar shells prompted the response. Islamic Jihad took responsibility, saying it acted “in retaliation for the ongoing Israeli aggression.” Hamas says it’s committed to a truce provided Israel stops attacking. Otherwise, it maintains its right of self-defense.

According to the International Middle East Media Center:

“Israeli politicians are said to be considering a further escalation, perhaps resulting in a ‘Cast Lead 2.’ ” Given Washington’s war on Libya, besides ongoing ones in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, plus numerous Middle East uprisings, an Israeli offensive now seems unlikely. But don’t rule it out later at a more opportune time.

More War Ahead?

Most often, Israel uses real or contrived provocations to unleash violence or wage war. A March 23 Jerusalem bombing might, in fact, have been one if a major assault was planned. The incident at a crowded bus stop killed one, injuring 30 or more others, three seriously. Haaretz reported a likely explosive device “hidden in a bag next to a telephone pole.” On March 24, Ma’an News said Israeli police will remain “on high alert,” following the attack. An unnamed official claimed “authorities know who was behind” it, the usual suspects for sure.

For nearly 44 years, the above incidents and occasional intense conflict highlight daily Occupied Palestine life. It reflects sustained harshness and brutality, but instead of condemning and demanding it stop, Washington generously rewards it, at the same time attacking targets of opportunity like Gaddafi in pursuit of imperial aims.

Always, innocent civilians suffer most, including women and children, the main casualties of wars and violence, the hidden victims little discussed, considered, or bothered about in mainstream reports, supporting the worst of imperial slaughter and destruction.

As a result, thousands of Palestinians globally endorse a third Intifada, inspired by other regional uprisings for democratic change. In early March a new Facebook page was created supporting it saying, “Palestine will be freed and we will free it.”

Within days, the page had nearly 140,000 “Likes” toward a one million goal, then maintaining momentum for many more – a global groundswell for ending occupation and democratic change for an oppressed people long denied it. It’s coming because popular energy drives it toward fruition, but not easily, quickly, or without more pain and suffering, what Palestinians have long endured.

A Final Comment

On March 22, Palestinians got more reasons to act after the Knesset passed two discriminatory laws. One called the Acceptance to Communities Bill lets small Galilee and Negev communities maintain racist admissions committees to exclude potential Arab and other unwanted residents from living on Israeli confiscated land.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said passage “will anchor discrimination and separatism in Israeli law,” based on vague criteria, including “fitting with the life of the community” or “fitting with the social fabric,” meaning no Arabs need apply. Or perhaps single parents, disabled persons, same-sex couples, Mizrachi Jews, or others deemed undesirable.

The other is called the Nakba Law, officially the Budget Principles Law (Amendment 39) – Reducing Budgeting Support for Activities Contrary to the Principles of the State, letting Finance Ministry bureaucrats fine municipalities and public institutions for:

– publicly supporting organizations commemorating the Nakba, Israel’s Independence Day;

– opposing the term “Jewish and democratic State;” or

– violating State symbols.

ACRI said “(t)his bill severely damages freedom of political expression, freedom of artistic expression, and freedom of protest, which are basic rights and are essential to the very existence of a democracy.”

Of course, Israel isn’t a democracy and never was,  affording rights solely to Jews, increasingly fewer of them, the more privileged like in America. Others more than ever are on their own sink or swim, the reality major media in both countries downplay or don’t report.

“Today I authorized the Armed Forces of the United States to (attack) Libya in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians,” he, in fact, doesn’t give a damn about. “That action has now begun,” he added, claiming military action was a last resort.

In fact, it was long-planned. All military interventions require months of preparation, including target selections, strategy, enlisting political and public support, troop deployments, and post-conflict plans.

Weeks, maybe months in advance, Special Forces, CIA agents, and UK SAS operatives were in Libya, enlisting, inciting, funding, and arming so-called anti-Gaddafi opposition forces, ahead of Western aggression for imperial control. More on it below.

A March 19 Department of Defense (DOD) Armed Forces Press Service release announced America’s led “Operation Odyssey Dawn,” saying:

Coalition (of the willing) forces launched “Operation Odyssey Dawn” today to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1973 to protect the Libyan people from the country’s ruler….Today we are part of a broad coalition. We are answering the calls of a threatened people.

False! In fact, Washington-led naked aggression was launched to replace one despot with another, perhaps assassinate Gaddafi, his sons and top officials, colonize Libya, control its oil, gas and other resources, exploit its people, private state industries under Western (mainly US) control, establish new Pentagon bases, use them for greater regional dominance, perhaps balkanize the country like Yugoslavia and Iraq, and prevent any democratic spark from emerging.

According to DODspeak, Libya is being attacked, its people killed, civilian targets destroyed, and a humanitarian disaster created to save it. In other words, “destroying the village to save it” on a nationwide scale like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 70s, and Korea in the 1950s since WW II alone. Besides numerous proxy wars in Central America, Africa and elsewhere. Wherever America shows up, blood spills followed by horrific human suffering, what Libyans can now expect.

Military and government targets include:

– command-and-control centers;

– air defense systems;

– Gaddafi, his sons and senior officials;

– communications systems;

– government buildings and other facilities; and

– military air fields, tanks, artillery, other weapons, munitions, fuel depots, mobile and other targets.

About 25 US, UK, French, Canadian and Italian ships are involved, 11 from America, including three nuclear submarines. The Pentagon is providing command, control and logistics support. Air and surface-launched munitions are being used, including against Tripoli, the capital and Gaddafi stronghold.

Moreover, invasion and perhaps occupation may follow, despite official denials.

Either way, widespread death and destruction is likely. Surgical war is an oxymoron. Expect considerable “collateral damage,” the Orwellian designation for war crimes against noncombatants and civilian targets.

In his 1992 book titled, “Beyond Hypocrisy,” Edward Herman referred to “nuclear chicken analysis,” defining “collateral casualties” as “civilians killed as a regrettable ‘spillover effect’ of a nuclear attack on a military target’ more generally, allegedly unintended casualties” of any type attack.

In other words, “inadvertent and tragic errors” that, in fact, constitute wanton murder and destruction of schools, hospitals, vital infrastructure and other non-military targets.

Pack Journalism Promotes War

A previous article explained how it enlists public support for imperial war.

Western media, including BBC and Al Jazeera, incite it, no matter how lawless, mindless, destructive and counter-productive. Smell it. It arrived again because inflammatory journalism stoked reasons to attack. As a result, America, Britain and France primarily readied strikes. Ground and submarine-launced cruise missiles inflicted widespread destruction. In addition, French jets struck “targets of opportunity,” preceded by exaggerated/unverified/inflammatory reports like the following:

On March 19, New York Times writers David Kirkpatrick and Elisabeth Busmiller headlined, “Reports Say Attacks by Regime Against Rebels Continue,” saying:

Unverified “(r)eports indicated that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces were continuing to press their attacks despite warnings that such moves would provoke military action.”

On March 19, Financial Times writer Tobias Buck headlined, “Gaddafi launches assault on Benghazi,” saying:

Forces loyal to Gaddafi attacked “in violation of the regime’s promise of a ceasefire.”

Libyan state TV channel, Al Jamahiriya, reported it differently, saying “the people of Benghazi have risen up against the rebels and raised the flag of Libya over the government building in the middle of the city.”

On March 19, New York Times writers Steven Erlanger and David Kirkpatrick headlined “Allies Open Push in Libya to Block Qaddafi Assaults,” saying:

“American, European and Arab leaders began the largest international intervention” since 2003 against Iraq, omitting the illegality of both aggressions.

On March 19, New York Times writers David Kirkpatrich and Elisabeth Musmiller headlined, “France Sends Military Flights Over Libya,” saying:

Flying reconnaissance missions, it’s “the first sign” of premeditated war, launching new hostilities against a war-torn region, without explanation why.

On March 19, Times writers Steven Erlanger and David Kirkpatrick headlined, “Allies Open Push in Libya to Block Qaddafi Assaults,” saying:

Hostilities began to stop “Qaddafi’s war on the Libyan opposition,” after a no-fly zone was established.

As a result, war arrived preemptively. French President Sarkozy said it’s to stop Gaddafi’s “murderous madness,” no matter that he responded to violence. He didn’t instigate it. So would Sarkozy, Obama or any leader against armed insurrection.

Love or hate him, Gaddafi said:

“Libya is not yours. Libya is for all Libyans. This is injustice, it is clear aggression, and it is uncalculated risk for its consequences on the Mediterranean and Europe. You will regret it if you take a step toward intervening in our internal affairs.”

Hours earlier, he pledged a ceasefire. Conflicting reports disagree if he honored it. Is he or Western intervention stoking violence? US media reports point fingers one way.

Washington, Britain, France, other NATO allies, and complicit Arab States back armed anti-Gaddafi insurrection. They’re promoting it, inciting it, funding it, arming it, with clear imperial aims. A previous article explained.

On March 19, ahead of intervention, Al Jazeera headlined, “Gaddafi forces encroaching on Benghazi,” saying:

Gaddafi unleashed “a fresh act of defiance even as the United States and its allies prepared to launch military attacks on Libya.”

Unverified “(r)eports from Libya say pro-government forces have entered the western outskirts of the opposition stronghold of Benghazi, with the city also coming under attack from the coast and the south.”

Unnamed “(w)itnesses….said they heard large explosions….Government troops reportedly bombed the southern Benghazi suburb of Goreshi among other places.”

No verification was given, except to quote Mustafa Abdel Jalil, opposition National Libyan Council leader. More on him below. Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley reported “a lot of jittery people…a lot of activity and a lot of firing going on.”

In contrast, Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim told the BBC that “the ceasefire is real, credible and solid. We are willing to receive (international and NGO) observers as soon as possible.” He insisted no air strikes were launched.

Hours later Al Jazeera headlined, “Airstrikes begin on Libya targets,” saying:

“French warplanes hit four tanks….on a day when opposition fighters in (Benghazi) reported coming under constant artillery and mortar fire.” Expect sustained strikes to follow.

Al Jazeera and other media reports don’t explain that  “opposition” officials from organizations like the National Libyan Council and National Front for the Salvation of Libya have close Western ties, pretending they’re credible. More about them below.

Headquartered in Qatar, moreover, Al Jazeera noticeably abstains from criticizing its government, now part of Washington’s anti-Gaddafi coalition-of-the-willing, complicit in illegal aggression.

On March 18, Obama stopped short of declaring war, announcing “all necessary measures” against Gaddafi without full compliance with UN Resolution terms, including an immediate ceasefire, withdrawing his forces, reestablishing essential services to all parts of the country, and letting in “humanitarian assistance,” including foreign imperial forces opposed to his leadership.

In other words, impossible terms to accept to be followed by others likely demanding he step down, permit balkanization, predatory Western investment, US bases, and free exploitation of his resources and people. Imagine comparable demands made on America – non-negtiable to be followed by military action for non-compliance.

On March 18, NATO Secretary-General Anders Rogh Rasmussen signaled war, saying the alliance was “completing its planning to be ready to take appropriate action in support of the UN resolution as part of the broad international effort.”

Launched the next day, the resources of another resource-rich Arab state will be divided among Western belligerents, to benefit Libyans, they claim.

On March 20, New York Times writers David Kirkpatrick, Steven Erlanger and Elisabeth Busmiller headlined, “Qaddafi Pledges ‘Long War’ as Allies Pursue Air Assault,” saying:

“On Sunday, American (stealth) B-2 bombers were reported to have struck a major Libyan airfield,” following initial attacks against Libya’s air defense systems, “missile, radar and communications centers around Tripoli,” Misurata and Surt.

Reuters said “US fighter planes backed by electronic warfare aircraft” attacked Gaddafi’s ground troops and air defenses. A Pentagon statement stated:

US Navy Growlers provided electronic warfare support over Libya while AV-8B Harriers from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted strikes….

Parliamentary secretary Muhammad Zweid said attacks “caused some real harm against civilians and buildings.” According to an unnamed US official, Libya’s air defenses are now “severely disabled.”

As of Sunday morning, visible destruction also included 14 tanks, 20 armored personnel carriers, two or more trucks, rocket launchers, dozens of pick-ups, and exploding munitions. Ahead of cruise missile attacks, France initiated reconnaissance flights and aggression.

On March 19, Middle East/Central Asian analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya’s Global Research.ca article headlined, “Breaking News: Libyan Hospitals Attacked. Libyan Source: Three French Jets Downed,” saying:

Regime change-planned naked aggression was launched. “The war criminals are back at it again,” Washington, of course, in the lead. On March 19, “sources in Libya have reported that three medical facilities were bombarded. Two were hospitals and one a medical clinic. These were civilian facilities.”

Targets attacked included Al-Tajura and Saladin hospitals as well as a clinic near Tripoli, unrelated to military necessity, distant from combat areas. Moreover, civilian air facilities were struck as well as “all Libyan military bases” – air, naval and ground. In addition, “a vast naval blockade around Libya has now been imposed,” America the lead belligerent.

Further, Libyan sources report “two French jets were also shot down….near Janzour” plus another “near Anjile.” Washington and co-belligerents “are creating a real humanitarian disaster,” waging war for peace, killing civilians to save them, and destroying Libya by “humanitarian intervention.”

Moreover, Washington enlisted Egypt and Saudi Arabia to supply “opposition forces” with weapons, in violation of Resolution 1973 prohibiting any sent. Of course, international and US law forbid aggressive war, but that never deterred imperial America from preemptively attacking, invading, occupying and colonizing nations illegally, Libya its latest target.

Libya’s So-Called “Opposition”

Included are the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, its officials with ties to the CIA and Saudi Arabia. Also, Muhammad as-Senussi, Libya’s so-called heir to the Senussi Crown, concerned only for his own self-interest.

Central is the National Libyan Council (NLC), announced on February 26, established officially on March 5, led by former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, a Western-allied opportunist.

NLC is an umbrella group of local so-called opposition leaders headquartered in Benghazi. Bogusly, it claims to represent all Libyans. Abdel-Jalil calls it a “transitional government” ahead of future elections after Gaddafi is deposed.

At the same time, Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, a Benghazi lawyer, refuted his leadership, calling himself NLC’s official spokesman. Both men, however, have similar aspirations, including controlling Libya by ousting Gaddafi.

As of now, Abdel-Jalil remains NLC’s official head, Ghoga its spokesman, and Omar El-Hariri in charge of military operations. General Abdel Fattah Younis may be another key member, his status, however, not confirmed. In total, NLC has about 30 members. Most aren’t named. Two known include, Mahmoud Jebril and Ali al-Essawi, former Libyan ambassador to India in charge of foreign affairs.

On March 5, Reuters headlined, “Rebel National Libya Council sets up (a three-member) crisis committee,” saying:

In charge of military and foreign affairs, members include Omar El-Hariri, Ali al-Essawi, and Mahmoud Jebril as leader.

Western Hypocrisy – Denouncing Violence While Backing It

At Obama’s behest, about 1,000 Saudi troops invaded Bahrain guns blazing, attacking peaceful protesters, arresting opposition leaders and activists, occupying the country, denying wounded men and women medical treatment, and imposing police state control in support of the hated monarchy.

Not an angry Western demand was heard to stop hostilities and leave. Nor against similar Egyptian army attacks or on civilians in Tunisia, Jordan, Algeria, Oman, Iraq, and Yemen, let alone daily against Palestinians.

On March 18, in fact, dozens of Yemenese were killed, scores more wounded in Sanaa, the capital, when security forces attacked thousands, demanding President Ali Abdullah Saleh step down.

Ally turned bete noire Gaddafi was targeted for removal. In contrast, Saleh is supported because of Yemen’s strategic location near the Horn of Africa on Saudi Arabia’s southern border, the Red Sea, its Bab el-Mandeb strait (a key chokepoint separating Yemen from Eritrea through which three million barrels of oil pass daily), and the Gulf of Aden connection to the Indian Ocean.

Instead of denouncing his brutality, Obama endorsed it, calling on “all sides (to pursue) a peaceful, orderly and democratic path to a stronger and more prosperous nation.”

Friday’s massacre was the bloodiest since resistance erupted in mid-February. Security forces and plainclothes police opened fire on demonstrators, shooting to kill, hitting some in the back of the head as they fled. Afterward, Saleh imposed a state of emergency and nationwide curfew.

Demonstrations, nonetheless, persist, Yemenese wanting his 32-year dictatorship ended. Achieving it, however, entails overcoming Washington’s imperial grip on regional client states, all run by favored despots.

A Final Comment

On March 19, Professor As’ad AbuKhalil’s Angry Arab.com headlined, “Bush Doctrine revised: Obama puts his stamp,” saying:

“Western/Saudi/Qarari military intervention in Libya sets a dangerous precedent.” Under Bush, ousting regimes for democracy “was a bloody farce….” Obama’s model may be installing puppets “without having ‘boots on the ground,’ ” but don’t discount them. He expanded Bush’s Afghan war, began his own in Pakistan as well as in Somalia, Yemen and Bahrain, backing favored despots besides the Saudi monarchy.

AbuKhalil calls NLC’s Abdel-Jalil “a useful idiot.” Moreover, “Western enthusiasm for (Libyan) intervention” was never properly explained beyond nonsensical platitudes about “humanitarian intervention” to protect civilians.

In contrast, “why (didn’t) the hundreds of deaths in Egypt or Tunisia….warrant” similar outrage, let alone Israel’s Cast Lead, occupation and daily aggression against defenseless Plestinians.

Intervening militarily is Libya “is far more dangerous: it is intended to legitimize the return of colonial powers, (and) abort democratic uprisings all over the region. Bahrain (Yemen and Saudi Arabia) of today (are) the vision for Libya for tomorrow,” Western-dominated, of course.

Will it work? Love or hate Gaddafi, Libyans know what Iraqis, Afghans and Palestinians endure. Moreover, its society is fractious, divided by tribal loyalties, suspicious of Western intervention, and long-governed locally as well as nationally.

Against them is America’s military might under leaders not shy about using it. As a result, Libyans are experiencing firsthand what’s ahead under Western control, what makes Iraqis yearn for Saddam, almost saintly compared to Washington.

He “headed back to his country on Friday after ignoring US opposition to a homecoming some fear could disrupt Haiti’s presidential election runoff on Sunday.”

For months, State Department officials obstructed him, wanting him permanently excluded, especially during Sunday’s illegitimate elections, featuring two unpopular presidential candidates most Haitians spurn. Most, in fact, won’t participate, knowing either winner represents Washington, not them.

First round November 28 elections and Sunday’s runoff were rigged to defraud. Haitians want democracy, what’s absent in Sunday’s vote.

Earlier, Obama and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked South African President Jacob Zuma to prevent his return. He delayed but didn’t stop him. In fact, Aristide’s charismatic presence runs counter to America’s imperial plans – to solidify colonization, resource theft, and exploitation of poor Haitians, what legitimate democrats oppose, including Aristide.

He’s wanted to return any time, “to contribute to serving my Haitian sisters and brothers as a simple citizen in the field of education.” He has no further political interests. Believe him. It’s true. He wants only to aid Haiti’s recovery, doing what he knows and loves best.

On March 17, AP said “South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane was on hand to see (him) off,” accompanied by his wife Mildred and daughters Michaela, aged 12 and Christine, aged 14.

In Zulu, Aristide said, “The great day has arrived! The day to say goodbye before returning home. We are delighted to return home after seven years. In Haiti also they are very happy,” adding that “their dream will be fulfilled,” shared by millions of supporters worldwide.

Anticipatory joy awaits him. Supporters prepared a warm welcome, including Port-au-Prince banners displaying “Titide,” as he’s affectionately known.

According to Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

Aristide’s return marks an end to the era when the United States gets to choose the political leaders of other countries. It is a historic victory for democracy and self-determination.

Weisbrot is a distinguished analyst. Perhaps his conclusion is somewhat premature, but others agree that decades of destructive US power left America weaker, not stronger. Its influence is ebbing. One day, world leaders will reject it. Why not! It’s counter to their own self-interest.

On March 18, AP headlined, “En route to Haiti, Aristide plane refuels in Dakar,” saying:

“The plane landed in (Dakar, Senegal) Friday, and is expected to arrive in Haiti” Friday afternoon local time. For millions of Haitians who love him, they’ve awaited this moment for over seven years. A joyous welcome is planned.

Despite Washington already bogged down in two losing ones, Obama’s heading for another on Libya, the media pack in the lead clamoring for it, perhaps by “shock and awe,” supplemented by special forces death squads on the ground recruiting, inciting, and arming opposition elements.

Notably favoring intervention, a New York Times February 24 editorial headlined, “Stopping Qaffafi,” saying:

Unless he’s stopped, he’ll “slaughter hundreds or even thousands of his own people in his desperation to hang on to power.”

Where’s the Times outrage over millions Washington slaughtered, hundreds more killed daily, its ties to global despots, its funding and support for Israeli brutality against Palestinians, and its imperial insanity to achieve unchallengeable global dominance, no matter how many corpses it takes to do it.

Nonetheless, The Times hailed Libyan courage, asking for more Western support, implying the belligerent kind.

Colonel Qaddafi and his henchmen have to be told in credible and very specific terms the price they will pay for any more killing. They need to start paying now. (The) longer the world temporizes, the more people die.

On February 28, The Times editorial headlined, “Qaddafi’s Crimes and Fantasies,” saying:

His “crimes continue to mount. Rebel commanders said (his) warplanes bombed rebel-controlled areas in the eastern part of the country.” However, Russian satellite imagery showed no bombing evidence or destruction on the ground. So much for The Times or other major media credibility, reporting the same unverified accounts.

On March 8, The Times headlined, “Washington’s Options on Libya,” saying:

….some way must be found to support Libya’s uprising and stop (Gaddafi) from slaughtering his people….It would be a disaster if (he) managed to cling to power by butchering his own people.

Indisputably, Gaddafi is a despot, but he didn’t initiate conflict. Western powers did, sending in covert intelligence and special forces to incite, arm and support it.

Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron admitted that UK commandos were in Benghazi. So did Foreign Secretary William Hague, telling Parliament it was “a serious misunderstanding,” drawing laughs from opposition benches.

Channel 4 News aired a video with him saying intelligence and elite special forces were on “a diplomatic mission” to make contact with rebel elements. However, he left unexplained why they arrived secretly by helicopter at 2AM with no advance warning. In fact, the Cameron/Hague “misunderstanding” came to enlist and incite violence along with US special forces there for the same purpose. Commandos are trained killers, not diplomats.

As a result, Gaddafi responded in self-defense. Washington and NATO bear full responsibility for growing daily casualties. Blood’s on their hands. It’s their cross to bear, costing many Libyan lives.

It hardly matters for greater stakes, including:

– replacing one despot with another;

– preventing democratization;

– colonizing Libya;

– controlling its oil, gas and other resources;

– privatizing its state industries, handing them over to Western interests;

– perhaps balkanizing the country like Yugoslavia and Iraq; in other words, effectively destroying it for profit and control, as well as using it as a platform to intimidate other regional states to comply fully with Western diktats – or else; and,

– exploiting its people ruthlessly as serf labor.

It’s a familiar Western scheme, justified as “humanitarian intervention,” what America, above all, doesn’t give a damn about and never did, seeking only imperial dominance, no matter how much death and destruction it takes to get it. “Operation Libya” had antecedents, notably in Yugoslavia and Iraq, two previous countries Western powers destroyed and now exploit.

International Law on Self-Defense and External Intervention – Humanitarian or Otherwise

International law authorizes Gaddafi to respond in self-defense. Article 51 of the UN Charter’s Chapter VII: Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression” states:

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

In other words, self-defense is permissible. Moreover, the UN Charter explains under what conditions intervention, violence and coercion (by one state against another) are justified. Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes. Article 2(4) prohibits force or its threatened use, including no-fly zones that are acts of war.

In addition, Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit any unilateral or other external threat or use of force not specifically allowed under Article 51 or otherwise authorized by the Security Council.

Three General Assembly resolutions also prohibit non-consensual belligerent intervention, including:

– the 1965 Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty;

– the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations; and

– the 1974 Definition of Aggression.

Under no circumstances, with no exceptions, may one nation, NATO, or other combination of nations intervene against another without specific Security Council authorization. Doing so is illegal aggression, a lawless act of war. Washington and NATO have already initiated conflict. Gaddafi, or any other democrat or despot, legally may respond in self-defense as he’s doing, love him or hate him. By law, he’s justified.

Yet The Times urges NATO to expand “its air surveillance over Libya (and) share relevant information with the rebels.” No matter that violating its air space is illegal and aggressive. The Times also wants pressure put on “Qaddafi and his cronies to cede power,” by what authority it didn’t say because there is none. No matter because in Times-think, “(i)t would be a disaster if (he) managed to cling to power by butchering his own people.”

Hyperbole, misinformation, imperial support, and disdain for international and US laws as well as democratic values are Times specialties – on display backing Washington’s attempt to destroy, colonize and exploit another country, no matter the corpse count to do it.

In his March 9 commentary, longtime insider Bob Chapman said the following:

….as we pointed out after the Tunisian episode, this was the beginning of CIA, MI6 and Mossad planned activities in the Middle East. As usual there were several objectives. The first was a distraction to cover up (Western) financial troubles….The second was to remove Mubarak from his dictatorial position, because (he refused) to participate and agree to an invasion of Iran and to cause chaos in the region, so that (Iranian allies) would not give it assistance in the event of war.

There was also the matter of controlling Libya’s oil and toppling its dictator Gaddafi….From behind the scenes, (new leadership will emerge) tied to the CIA, MI6 and the Mossad. (These plans) have been in the works for years.

Unrest will continue. “A solution will be found for Libya, and the west hopes its puppet (Saudi) regime stays in place.” If disruption occurs there, America will intervene. Turmoil will continue for some time. “It won’t take long for Mr. Gaddafi to be deposed and sent on his way,” perhaps by US troops.

More Major Media War Endorsements

With total editorial control, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal aggressively backs imperial wars, notably now against Libya. On February 23, it editorial headlined, “Liberating Libya,” saying:

“The US and Europe should help Libyans overthrow the Gadhafi regime,” replacing him, of course, with a Western favored despot, ceding control to imperial interests.

On March 6, the Journal headlined, “Obama’s Libyan Abdication,” asking:

“Will the US let Gadhafi slaughter his way back to power? The greatest danger now to US interests – and to Obama’s political standing – would be for (him) to regain control….isolated and dangerous (he’ll) likely (abet) terrorists,” hyperbole exceeding The New York Times and most other corporate sources.

Not far behind, a February 21 Washington Post editorial screamed, “Moammar Gaddafi must pay for his atrocities,” calling them “genocide.” It was the same deception used before, including against Slobodan Milosevic to justify NATO’s punishing 1999 illegal aggression to complete its long-planned Yugoslavia balkanization, defended then as “humanitarian intervention,” no matter the vast destruction and loss of lives it caused.

The Post’s resident zealot, Charles Krauthammer, called Gaddafi “a capricious killer” in his March 4  “Baghdad to Benghazi” article, saying he’s “delusional, unstable and crazy.”

On March 8, the Post’s Marc Thiessen headlined, “Apply the Reagan Doctrine in Libya,” by arming opposition elements, and inciting violence to topple Gaddafi the way Reagan operated in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union and Central America, notably against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and FMLN in El Salvador, killing countless tens of thousands in the process, a record airbrushed from official history, calling imperial slaughter “liberation.”

Arming Libya’s Opposition

On March 7, London Independent writer Robert Fisk headlined, “America’s secret plan to arm Libya’s rebels,” saying:

Washington asked “Saudi Arabia (to) supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi.” In the 1980s, Saudis helped arm Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan and Contra forces in Central America. Asking Saudi help lets Washington deny involvement, perhaps impossible with Fisk breaking the news. He also said “US Awacs surveillance aircraft have been flying around Libya” for days, violating its air space illegally.

Moreover, he noted an “Arab awakening, the demand for democracy in North Africa, the Shia revolt, and the rising against Gaddafi become entangled in the space of just a few hours with US (UK, and NATO) priorities in the region.” They augur no good for Libyans for sure.

A Final Comment

At times, Al Jazeera sounds like BBC, falling short of what viewers deserve. On February 18, Professor As’ad AbuKhalil’s Angry Arab News Service discussed its coverage, saying:

I am seething. The coverage of Aljazeera Arabic has become too blatantly politically biased for my taste. They protect their allies and friends and go intensely after the rivals and enemies of Qatar (where it’s based) like the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

When GCC countries “decided to back the Bahrain monarchy, Aljazeera quickly reflected that. It is not a story anymore. Aljazeera is extensively covering Libya and Yemen now: not close allies of Qatar. If Mubarak was a member of the GCC, he would have been protected by Aljazeera.”

Nonetheless, its service is vastly superior to US corporate news, offering entirely propaganda, sanitized reports and infotainment, a worthless mix to be avoided and condemned.

Reaching 40 million viewers, The New York Times called Al Jazeera “the bete noire” of Arab governments (shaping) popular rage against oppressive American-backed Arab governments (and against Israel) ever since its (1996) founding.”

In their recent study on “How Al Jazeera Shapes Political Identities,” Erik Nisbet and Teresa Myers found that exposure to Arabic media weakens national identities and strengthens Muslim and Arab ones.

Asked how it affects Middle East protests, Nisbet said:

In the short term, the Pan-Muslim and Pan-Arab narratives typically embedded in Al Jazeera content, in combination with growing Pan-Muslim and Pan-Arab identification among Arab audiences, most likely facilitate the contagion begun by the Tunisian revolt.

The long-term implications for US foreign policy are also significant, posing “a serious challenge for Egyptian relations with the United States and Israel.” Perhaps also for America’s regional agenda. The “greater political liberalization combined with the growth of transnational political identification may challenge the United States to enact foreign policy within a regional context dominated by transnational political identities whose interests may be more opposed, or at least less amenable, to US foreign policy goals compared to state-centric identities.”

Anything weakening Washington’s dominance anywhere is important. Hopefully, Al Jazeera will promote and encourage it by more forcefully opposing imperial intervention, especially by belligerence and occupation. That would make its service invaluable.

Daily, many thousands braved cold and snow – marching, demonstrating, and sleeping over, sacrificing personal comforts to keep struggling for justice. Teachers, police, firefighters, nurses, maintenance workers, and other public employees were joined by union and nonunion private sector ones, along with doctors, lawyers, other professionals, and thousands of college and high school students from across Wisconsin and other states.

Behind the scenes, however, union bosses and Senate Democrats plan capitulation. Negotiations accomplished nothing, Senator Bob Jauch saying, “In order to kill this bill we could never go home. That’s not practical and most people realize it.”

They, in fact, “realize” that elected officials are supposed to serve them, governing fairly, what neither party does, serving only wealth and power interests, not their constituents. That’s the core issue – partisan politics for the privileged, producing unprecedented wealth inequality both parties conspire to exacerbate.

At the same time, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said:

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca said he came away from a meeting with Walker on Thursday with hope that an agreement could be reached. He said Walker was talking to Senate Democrats and understood the two sides needed to come up with a ‘win-win’ solution to bring them back.

However, neither side knows it’s possible so faking it is planned, pretending collective bargaining will be saved when, in fact, returning assures its demise, followed by greater draconian measures without it. Even union bosses agreed to let workers bear the budget balancing burden, not Wisconsin elites and corporate favorites getting handouts, not ultimatums that sacrifices must be shared.

On March 7, New York Times writer, Monica Davey, headlined, “Talks to Resolve Wisconsin Battle Falter,” saying:

Senator Fred Risser (one of 14 absent senators) said it now seemed conceivable that he and his fellow Democrats would return to Wisconsin, at some point in the future, without a negotiated compromise.

‘We have always said we would go back eventually,’ he said. ‘We will have accomplished some of our purpose – to slow things up and let people know what was in this bill.’

In fact, returning is capitulation achieving nothing, what Republicans are counting on and expect. They’ve held firm, yielding nothing, threatening layoffs and other draconian measures, stiffening their resistance, daring Democrats and public employees to blink. Workers won’t. Democrats will, so it’s up to rank and file people to struggle on alone. More on how below.

Meanwhile, general strike calls keep growing, perhaps the best alternative left, despite clear negatives, including empty classrooms and essential services not performed. Yet thousands of copies of this statement circulated, saying:

“Walker must go! For a general strike in Wisconsin!” calling for mass action to halt state activity; force Walker and his administration out; reject unfair health care and pension contribution hikes;  demand social spending increases and right to continue to bargain collectively; and raise taxes on state elites and corporations, making them close Wisconsin’s budget deficit and pay for essential social spending, the way all fair societies should function.

Public workers know Walker’s “budget repair bill” is fraudulent, a way to reward special interests by gutting hard-won gains. Democrats and union bosses agree. Protesters want none of it, displaying signs saying, “tax the rich,” and “we didn’t create this crisis; don’t make us pay for it.”

Workers know draconian cuts mean more are coming, placing an enormous burden on them, already struggling to make ends meet. Many can’t. A Madison teacher spoke for others saying:

“We need a general strike. We have to shut down the whole state unless they kill this bill and budget. Walker is gutting BadgerCare (healthcare for needy Wisconsinites earning too much for Medicaid) and education, selling off the publicly owned power plants,” and providing more benefits to corporate favorites while hammering workers.

So far, public demands are firm despite powerful odds against them. No mas signifies street sentiment. Hopefully it won’t wane when Democrats and union bosses blink. Indications are they already have short of announcing it. In Wisconsin and across America, battle lines indeed are drawn in a struggle affecting all public and private sector workers, victimized by predatory capitalism, the real villain needing to be expunged.

A Final Comment

On March 6, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Craig Gilbert headlined, “Recall drives could make history: Rarely have multiple lawmakers faced such action,” saying:

After three weeks of street protests, “Wisconsin is about to embark on another wild ride into the political unknown – a series of legislative recall campaigns on a scale the nation has rarely, if ever, seen.”

According to Boise State University’s Political Science Professor Gary Moncrief:

I don’t think there’s a precedent for what’s going on in Wisconsin. I don’t think there’s ever been a case where pretty much everyone has been subject to a recall attempt at one time on both sides. That’s really amazing.

He and other experts mentioned only four other times when multiple state lawmakers were recalled at the same time for the same issue:

– 90 years ago in North Dakota for the governor and two other state officials;

=- two in Idaho in 1971 over a pay raise;

– two in Michigan in 1983 over a tax vote; and

– two California Republicans in 1995 for collaborating with Democrats.

Notably in 2003, a recall election let Arnold Schwarzenegger replace California Democrat Governor Gray Davis. Voters, in fact, removed one top official for a worse one, not a hopeful sign for Wisconsinites.

According to University of Iowa Professor Caroline Tolbert, “Recall is an extreme measure (under) extreme circumstances.” Wisconsin and other state public and private sector workers face them through no fault of their own. “We’re all watching,” said Tolbert. “Everybody’s watching.” UC San Diego Professor Thad Kousser calls Wisconsin uncharted territory. In the state’s history, only two lawmakers were ever recalled.

So far, recall efforts have been initiated against eight Republican and Democrat senators, everyone able this year. Amazing indeed, and despite enormous obstacles, “some political insiders expect (current) petition drives (will force) multiple lawmakers to face recall elections this summer.”

Moreover, far more than Wisconsin is at stake. Success there could spread everywhere, even to Washington against corrupted Democrats and Republicans who long ago sold out their constituents. Relieving today’s crisis depends on it there, from state capitals, and local communities, replacing them with independent populists, despite long odds against success, and the hurdle of only 20 states permitting recall efforts, each with its own barriers, presenting daunting challenges.

Nonetheless, widespread public anger is real. Effective leadership can mobilize it. Wisconsin requires enough signatures from 25% of voters in the most recent gubernatorial race in the district of targeted legislators. In Kansas, it’s 40%. In California, it’s 12% for governor, 20% for legislators.

Wisconsin also requires one year in office before recall is possible. In other states, it’s only 90 days. As a result, only 16 Wisconsin senators have served long enough to qualify. The remaining 17 and Walker may be targeted next year. In his case, over 540,000 valid signatures are needed.

Moreover, Wisconsin petitioners have only 60 days to collect enough signatures once collection drives began. Other states provide more time. Nonetheless, full-scale campaigns are underway, aided by social networks promoting them. If enough signatures are gathered, a 31-day grace period follows for review and challenges. Court-ordered extensions may be granted.

If enough signatures are declared valid, elections six weeks later follow. If for more than one challenger, a primary is held, then a general election if no candidate gets a majority.

According to University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor John Coleman:

Once this story became such a national flashpoint and the first recall effort was launched, it increased the incentive for further (ones) – neither side wants to be outpaced by the other. That kind of perceptions battle can feed off itself and multiply, and the recall efforts themselves become part of the battle for public opinion, along with ad campaigns (and) rallies.

Moreover, what’s ongoing in Wisconsin can spread anywhere, perhaps even in states with no laws permitting them if enough residents demand they be enacted. It’s high time they did, rousting lawmakers everywhere for betraying their constituents – especially corrupted Washington Democrats and Republicans, serving America’s aristocracy, not popular interests they disdain.

Despite popular passion for democratic change, uprisings in Egypt and Libya were externally orchestrated, funded and armed by Washington to replace one despot with another. Democracy won’t be tolerated. It’s never been at home.

America’s media go along, especially when Washington goes to war or plans one. In the lead: The New York Times, the nation’s equivalent of an official information and propaganda ministry, posing as independent journalism.

It’s February 28 editorial headlined, “Qaddafi’s Crimes and Fantasies” made baseless accusations, then called on the International Criminal Court to investigate potential war crimes. Indeed it should – against America and Western co-conspirators, not Libya, for instigating regional aggression, a reality The Times ignored, besides previously against Afghanistan, Iraq, and other US targets.

On March 4, writer David Kirkpatrick headlined, “Qaddafi Brutalizes Foes, Armed or Defenseless,” saying:

Gaddafi attacked “unarmed protesters….His militia’s actions seemed likely to stir renewed debate over international intervention to limit his use of military power against his own citizens, possibly by imposing a no-flight zone.” If established, it’s an act of war ahead of aggressive air attacks against a defenseless country, America’s latest imperial target.

Kirkpatrick’s article read more like bad fiction than real journalism, borrowing a page from now disgraced former Times writer Judith Miller, who functioned as a Pentagon press agent, promoting America’s planned Iraq conquest and occupation. Now it’s Libya, struggling to defend itself against naked aggression, covert so far but not for long, claiming “humanitarian intervention.”

US warships are now positioned in the Mediterranean close by. About 1,200 Marines went to Greece for “Operation Libya.” “Rebels” are being sent military and other supplies. Armed intervention is coming, colonial subjugation planned. Libya’s “humanitarian crisis” was made in the USA. The pattern by now is familiar, used against many past targets.

On March 4, hinting about what’s already begun, Obama said:

So what I want to make sure of is that the United States has full capacity to act potentially rapidly if the situation deteriorated in such a way that you had a humanitarian crisis on our hands, or a situation in which civilians were – defenseless civilians were finding themselves trapped and in great danger.

He already called on Gaddafi to step down. Among his options, he included a no-fly zone, saying:

I don’t want us hamstrung. I want us to be making our decision based on what’s going to be best for the Libyan people in consultation with the international community.

In Geneva, Hillary Clinton called intervention “an option we are actively considering,” referring to a no-fly zone and other measures. Stiff economic sanctions were also imposed, effective 8:00 PM EST February 25.”

The die is cast. Colonizing Libya is planned to exploit its vast energy reserves, other resources, and people, doing what’s best for Washington, not Libyans, what’s always top priority.

Major Media Suppressed Independent Voices

On August 13, 2011, Fidel Castro will be 85. An elder statesman, he remains active, thoughtful and incisive, now writing commentaries on world issues. On March 3, the Havana Times headlined, “Fidel Castro Forecasts War on Libya,” publishing his full article in English.

Until America intervened, Libya “occupie(d) the first spot on the Human Development Index for Africa,” including the continent’s highest life expectancy. Authorities gave special attention to health care and education. Poverty is low. “The cultural level of the population is without a doubt the highest. The population wasn’t lacking food and essential social services.” Employment was plentiful, including for “hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other countries (to) carry out ambitious plans for production and social development.”

America plans naked aggression to halt them. “The colossal campaign of lies, unleashed by the mass media,” distorts reality on the ground, including by Al Jazeera. Its daily commentaries feature misinformation and distortions based on unverified reports, including about alleged bombings that Russian satellite imagery proved untrue. Nonetheless, Gaddafi is falsely called an aggressor, not victim, his regional despot status notwithstanding.

Telesur Journalists Targeted

Reporting from Libya, Pan American broadcaster Telesur’s Jordan Rodriguez said members of his team were threatened, assaulted, and arrested for trying to report events accurately, including about pro-Gaddafi rallies in Tripoli’s Green Square.

Prior to Mubarak’s ouster, Egypt’s military junta detained and interrogated its Cairo team, preventing them from reporting the same way. Other independent journalists were also accosted. Dozens of incidents were reported.

Telesur’s Rodrigo Hernandez said he and his colleagues were bullied face down on the pavement, left there for hours, then “forced into an armored police vehicle, with armed personnel inside, and blindfolded,” en route to a military barracks for questioning.

They were also threatened with imprisonment, deportation, or “something much worse” if they kept reporting and were detained again. Similar tactics are ongoing in Libya to prevent accurate reports coming out. Imperial Washington wants none of its plans exposed.

Accurate Independent Journalism

Keith Harmon Snow is an independent journalist, war correspondent, human rights investigator, photographer, lecturer, and longtime observer of African country events. On March 1, his article titled, “Petroleum & Empire in North Africa: Muammar Gaddafi Accused of Genocide? NATO Invasion Underway” provided detailed Libyan information. Access it through the following link:

Key points he stressed included:

– In 2004, America’s sanctions were dropped “in exchange for Gaddafi’s (limited) collaboration, (paving) the way for a new era of US-Libyan bilateral trade.” America’s main interest is Libya’s vast oil, gas and other mineral reserves. The Oil and Gas Journal estimates 46.4 billion barrels of oil and around 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, producing 95% of Libya’s 2010 export earnings. Its petrodollars “were reportedly invested in US Equity and Big Banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and others, and into (companies) like the Carlyle Group, one of America’s most seedy arms dealers.”

– the CIA “long wanted” Gaddafi removed and replaced.” In 1986, Reagan-ordered air strikes tried to kill him. His infant daughter was murdered instead. “The CIA (downed) Pan Am 103,” not Gaddafi who had nothing to do with it.

– Libya’s “opposition” includes “unspecified, unnamed, unidenfied ‘rebels’ of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). These are not innocent ‘pro-democracy’ protesters….” They seemingly “appeared out of thin air.” Who they are isn’t explained. NFSL, in fact, was established in 1981 by Sudan’s Colonel Jaafer Nimieri, a US puppet dictator from 1971 – 1985.

– For decades, CIA front groups have been operating in Libya, “backing armed insurgents and interventions” portrayed as “pro-democracy” movements.

– Western media is reporting misinformation about events on the ground, including alleged bombings, massacres, and possible nerve gas used. None of it is credible. Libya, in fact, is being attacked. It’s responding in self-defense.

– Vicious propaganda is being used to enlist support for imperial intervention. “US troops have already moved ashore….joining the ‘opposition….The US, France and Britain have already set up Bases in Libya.” British and American Special Forces are operating out of Benghazi and Tobruck. Other covert US forces have been on the ground for weeks. Nothing humanitarian is planned.

– More than oil and gas is wanted. So are valued mineral deposits. “Libya has a huge land mass with massive untapped mineral potential (including uranium),” besides known energy resources.

– Accusing Gaddafi of genocide is malicious and untrue, like other major media fabrications. Their “disinformation frenzy and hysteria knows no bounds.” No verifiable evidence exists, but there’s plenty proving US genocides in Iraq, Afghanistan, and earlier in other targeted countries, causing many millions of deaths for decades. Western media air brushed them out, including The New York Times, America’s lead propaganda instrument.

In “Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective,” Gerald Perreira wrote:

The conflict in Libya is not a revolution, but a counter-revolution. (It’s) fundamentally a battle between Pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi’s vision of a united Africa, and reactionary racist Libyan Arab forces who reject (his) vision of Libya as part of a United Africa.

For those of us who have lived and worked in Libya, there are many complexities to the current situation that have been completely overlooked by the Western media and ‘Westoxicated’ analysts who have nothing other than a Eurocentric perspective to draw on….Libya’s system and the battle now taking place on its soil, stands completely outside the Western imagination.

As a result, all Western government and media reports lack credibility. They’re malicious imperial agitprop, including from top officials, BBC and Al Jazeera, each with its own agenda, all serving Western interests, harmful to Libyans.

A Final Comment

Ongoing events in Libya are familiar. Like many of his past counterparts, Gaddafi’s been targeted for removal. For weeks or much longer, covert CIA and Special Forces operatives recruited, funded and armed so-called “opposition forces.” They, not Gaddafi, instigated violence, heading for civil war. He responded in self-defense. Doing less would be irresponsible.

Western media portray instigators as victims, saying Gaddafi’s waging war on his people. America and Western nations are called white knights, offering “humanitarian intervention” when, if fact, imperial colonization is planned. The longer violence continues, the more false media reports will exaggerate it, enlisting support for another nation to be destroyed to save it.

Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Pakistanis, and many other oppressed people understand, victimized by imperial aggression, occupation, exploitation, immiseration, and regular drone attacks murdering innocent men, women and children called militants.

The latest in Afghanistan were nine young children, aged seven to 12, gathering wood in the mountains near their village. They were murdered in cold blood, what’s escalating in Libya, being softened up in preparation for colonization and greater harshness.

We would be against any military intervention against the Arabic people of Libya, and I’m sure that all peoples of the world would support a struggle against any interventionism that some powerful countries would commit against it….Arabic people who are in a process of rebellion, seeking a better destiny, (can) find their way to peace. (Venezuelans understand) very difficult times, (but have) gone about finding our ways to independence, democracy, and freedom, which in our case” is Bolarivarianism.

Just as we were against the invasion of Iraq and the massacre of the Palestinian people of Gaza, we would be against any military (attack or) invasion of Libya.

Chavez added: We “want peace for this country and for the peoples of the world. Those who immediately condemn Libya don’t talk about (Israel’s) bombing (of Gaza, America assault on) Fallujah, and the thousands and thousands of deaths including children, women, and whole families. They are quiet about the bombing and massacres in Iraq, in Afghanistan, so they don’t have the right to condemn anyone,” especially from unverified reports.

Amidst hawkish official rhetoric and supportive media reports, Chavez and Maduro are shut out, unheard voices in the wilderness outside Venezuela and parts of Latin America.

Official US Policy: War Yes, Peace No

For imperial America, giving peace a chance isn’t an option when war is planned to destroy another nation, replace its leader with a more amenable one, and plunder its resources. In Libya, its to exploit its vast energy reserves and people, commodities for greater profit.

A previous article said Gaddafi without question is despotic, governing by “fear and cronyism,” treating Libya as his “private estate,” as well as spawning a hierarchy of corrupt officials, disdainful of popular interests.

The same holds for dozens of other countries, most of which Washington supports, some as close allies. Ones allied with America escape media scrutiny, their crimes airbrushed from daily reports. Enemies, however, are pilloried, including by unverified misreporting, willfully distorting the truth, violating good journalism principles.

Until it closed at year end 2005, Chicago’s famed City News Bureau gave young reporters rigorous training, explained in its notable principle: “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out with two independent sources.” In other words, get it right or not at all, what’s absent in today’s deplorable reporting, from Fox to The New York Times, BBC and others, offering managed, not real news and information.

Fox News especially, as America’s official voice of right wing politics. On US television, it’s in full battle mode, beating the drums of war, its staff under strict management guidelines, manipulating facts to be hardline.

As a result, news anchor Jon Scott said, “If I were President Obama, I would unilaterally” impose a no-fly zone, no matter that doing so is an act of war. Bill O’Reilly called Obama’s position “beyond wimpy.” Sean Hannity wonders when America will attack Libya, calling Obama “extraordinarily weak.” Glenn Beck said Wisconsin protests prove the Caliphate’s presence in America. Other hosts are just as extreme. No wonder Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) calls Fox “the most biased name in news.” It reports. It decides. Truth is nowhere in sight.

The New York Times editorial headlined, “Qaddafi’s Crimes and fantasies,” matched Fox, saying:

His “crimes continue to mount.” Citing unverified reports, it said “Libyan Air Force warplanes bombed rebel-controlled areas in the eastern part of the country. Libyan special forces mounted ground assaults on two breakaway cities near the capital. (Finally), the United States (EU and UN want) Qaddafi and his cronies to go (and) called on the International Criminal Court to investigate potential war crimes.”

This is the same paper that exonerated Washington and Britain for fabricating Iraq WMD intelligence to justify war, citing London’s whitewash Hutton inquiry in its January 29, 2004 editorial headlined, “Testing Two Leaders; Tony Blair, Vindicated.”

Despite clear indictable evidence, The Times endorsed the findings for being “fully consistent with the information available to British intelligence (and Washington) at that time and that no claims then known to be false or unreliable were concluded.” In fact, they were independently exposed as false and misleading, though nonetheless used to wage war.

Moreover, discredited reporter Judith Miller wrote daily propaganda, functioning as a Pentagon press agent, not a legitimate journalist. Commenting on her earlier, Alex Cockburn said:

With Miller, we (sunk) to the level of straight press handout. Lay all Judith Miller….stories end to end, from late 2001 to June 2003, and you (got) a desolate picture of a reporter with an agenda, both manipulating and being manipulated by US government officials, Iraqi exiles and defectors, an entire Noah’s Ark of scam-artists.

Worst of all was The Times, itself, for giving her daily front page space, then never adequately apologizing when their complicity was exposed. Powerful media outlets never have to say they’re sorry. They stay in full battle mode against new targets.

Now Times editors have the audacity to advocate Libyan intervention for reasons other than humanitarian, including asset freezes, a no-fly zone, harsh sanctions, travel bans, encouraged insurrection, criminal prosecution, stopping just short of endorsing war, but expect that to change if Washington attacks.

The Washington Post is just as belligerent, its February 21 editorial headlined, “Moammar Gaddafi must pay for atrocities,” saying:

His “beleaguered dictatorship (is) waging war against its own people and committing atrocities that demand not just condemnation but action by the outside world,” accusing Gaddafi of committing genocide based on mostly unverified reports, according to reliable independent in-country sources. Nonetheless, the Post endorses “regime change” and International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecution, ignoring far greater Bush and Obama administration crimes, ongoing daily but not reported.

On March 2, a Wall Street Journal editorial headlined, “The Reluctant American,” saying:

The moral and strategic case for US leadership in Libya is obvious. A terrorist regime is slaughtering its people who will appreciate America’s support and protection. A bloody civil war could create chaos that turns Libya into a northern African failed state, an ideal home for terrorist groups. The US should support a provisional government that can take over when the regime collapses….What is Obama waiting for?

Ask beleaguered Iraqis and Afghans if they appreciate US intervention, occupation, mass destruction, genocide, depravation, disease, and for many living early deaths! Ask them if they recommend this for Libyans! Ask them if they prefer America to Saddam and Taliban rulers!

Ask Kosovars and Serbs! Ask Koreans and Southeast Asians with long memories! Ask Central and Latin Americans! Ask Somalis and other African nationals! Ask Palestinians! Ask Libyans if they know what awaits them if America intervenes! If not, explain and let them decide! It won’t for Washington’s military option, growing more imminent daily.

On February 28, New York writers, Mark Landler and Thom Shanker, headlined, “US Readies Military Options on Libya,” saying:

“The United States began moving warships toward Libya and froze $30 billion in (its) assets on Monday,” ahead of plundering them, Libyan oil, and other resources, not mentioned in The Times report.

Conflict looks increasingly likely. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton want Gaddafi out “without further violence or delay.” “No option is off the table,” said Clinton, stopping just short of declaring war. Secretaries of State can’t do it. Neither can presidents, but it hasn’t stopped them since December 8, 1941, the last time America legally went to war.

In meetings with NATO allies, said The Times, “European officials have resisted military action,” but didn’t rule it out. “Should NATO get involved in a civil war to the south of the Mediterranean,” asked French Prime Minister Francosi Fillon? “It is a question that at least merits some reflection before being launched,” weasel words perhaps ahead of proceeding.

Pentagon officials want an international action mandate, either from NATO or the UN, usually easily pressured to get. War winds are blowing. Expect anything ahead, especially if misreporting incites it the way it precedes all US wars.

Notable was Al Jazeera’s March 1 report headlining: “Battles rage in Libya,” saying:

Gaddifi’s forces stepped up attacks, including “fighter jets bomb(ing) an ammunition depot in the eastern city of Ajdabiya.” Up to 2,000 deaths were reported in Tripoli. Many thousands fled. Gaddafi remains defiant.

Most of what Al Jajeera and Western media report isn’t verified. Yet it’s inflammatory enough to stoke war for “humanitarian intervention,” the usual bogus reason America and Western nations use, the same one earlier for Iraq, Afghanistan and other imperial interventions. Affected nations are never the same.

Breaching Libyan Sovereignty

Britain and Germany already launched air operations to evacuate their citizens. France is sending two or more planeloads of aid to opposition forces in Benghazi. Italy suspended its Libyan nonaggression treaty, saying the state no longer exists, an outrageous assertion.

In a BBC interview, Gaddafi called Western actions “betrayal,” adding: “They have no morals.” Indeed not and never did, despite Big Oil profiting handsomely in Libya, and Gaddafi offering his security forces for America’s “war on terror.”

Nonetheless, he’s targeted for removal, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley saying US officials have “been reaching out…to a range of figures within the opposition.” Hillary Clinton added: “We are going to be ready and prepared to offer any kind of assistance that anyone wishes to have from the US.” Nothing is ruled out, including weapons, intervention and war.

Nothing is said about client regimes engaged in similar or worse practices, including killing, arresting, torturing, and otherwise abusing thousands of its citizens. Decades of Israeli atrocities are ignored. So are those of Iraq and Afghanistan puppet governments, proxy force belligerence in Somalia and elsewhere, and numerous global client states doing the same things.

Only outlier leaders are vilified, in Gaddafi’s case an embraced one now betrayed for broader aims. Washington seeks greater regional dominance. Doing it requires compliant leaders, willing to let America and European nations colonize their countries, plunder their resources, exploit their people, and provide locations for new Pentagon bases. For six and half million Libyans, that awaits them as Washington moves in for the kill.

Final Comments

According to Russia Today (RT) television:

Russia’s military has been monitoring Libya by satellite since unrest began for accurate information about what, in fact, is ongoing. Its Joint Staff confirms no evidence of air strikes or destruction on the ground. Reports from US media, BBC, other Western sources, and Al Jazeera are entirely bogus.

Writer Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, a Middle East/Central Asian special, maintains reliable Libyan contacts, essential for accurate accounts on the ground.

On March 2, he said the following:

– “Qaddafi still has control over much of the country.”

– “There are claims that cities have fallen, but in reality old videos or (ones) of other cities are being shown (in airing) these reports….to the public.”

– “The words ‘claim’ and ‘claimed’ are now systematically being used….to (corroborate) distorted or incorrect information.”

– World attention is on Libya, excluding other vital events “in the Arab world – such as the continued protests and demands of the Egyptian people (and others regionally) for authentic democracy,” jobs, better wages, and other social issues.

– “Reports have been made (about) fighting in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, (saying) parts of it have fallen, when it has been peaceful for days.”

– “On February 26, 2011, claims were (falsely) made that all the main cities were not in Qaddafi’s control.” In fact, he controls the following ones: “Sabha (in central Libya), Sirt/Surt (on the coastal mid-point of Libya), Ghat (on the southern border with Algeria), Al-Jufra, Al-Azizya (close to Tripoli) and Tripoli itself.”

– Media reports ignore Qaddafi “trying to negotiate with the places not under his control.”

– Most important: Outrageous misreporting persists, “blowing the violence out of proportion to justify foreign intervention.”

It’s coming – Washington-led naked aggression justified as “humanitarian intervention.” In fact, it’s imperial lawlessness against another target before advancing to the next one.

While one-sidely focusing on Libya, Western media ignore the March 1 Amnesty International (AI) report titled, “Tunisia in Revolt: State Violence during Anti Government Protests,” saying:

During December and January protests, Tunisian security forces engaged in “unlawful killings and acts of brutality….act(ing) with reckless disregard for human life in all too many cases,” according to Malcolm Smart, AI’s Middle East and North African program director.

“People detained by the security forces were also systematically beaten or subjected to other ill-treatment, according to (corroborated) evidence” obtained. Innocent bystanders were killed in cold blood, some shot from behind. Death, injury and arrest numbers are far higher than acknowledged. Major media sources, including Al Jazeera, largely suppress this.

Brutal Egyptian military treatment is also ignored, including mass arrests, disappearances and torture. An Egyptian human rights group said thousands are in military custody. Many have been beaten or tortured. US media ignored Egypt after Mubarak was ousted, despite protests, strikes and violence continuing after a brief quiet period.

On February 15, AI condemned Bahrain’s “heavy-handed….excessive police force” violence, including killings against peaceful protesters. An eyewitness said police, without provocation, opened fire on demonstrators, wanting a new constitution and democratically elected government.

In its January 11 report titled, “Crackdown in Bahrain: human rights at the crossroads,” AI cited serious human rights abuses, including suppressing free expression, closing critical web sites, and banning opposition publications, besides arrests, killings, beatings and other abuses.

US major media reports suppress client regime crimes. Only leaders Washington opposes draw attention, mostly by distorted misreporting. Major focus now is on Gaddafi to provide legitimacy for imperial intervention. As issue is replacing one despot with another willing to open Libya to Western colonization, ahead of regional expansion for greater plunder, exploitation and profits.

Arabs and North Africans want democratic change. Washington and Western allies plan raw power to suppress it. Battle lines are drawn. Sustained popular resistance is essential for real reform, what people want, not dark forces allied against them repressively, especially America treating all developing countries as exploitable low-hanging fruit. What better time than now to stop it.

On February 25, writer Madhi Darius Nazemroaya, a Middle East/Central Asian specialist, based on reliable in-country contacts, headlined an important article, “Libya: Is Washington Pushing for Civil War to Justify a US-NATO Military Intervention?”

For greater readership, this article covers key information in it. Its entirety explains much about what’s ongoing – what major media accounts misreport or suppress, especially television reaching large audiences, presenting distorted managed news. It shouldn’t surprise. Representing powerful interests, carefully filtered sanitized reporting substitutes for the real kind.

Gaddafi indisputably is despotic, governing by “fear and cronyism,” treating Libya as his “private estate,” and spawning “an entire hierarchy of corrupt officials,” disdainful of popular interests.

Nonetheless, something is “(r)otten in the so-called ‘Jamahiriya’ (state of the masses) of Libya.” Popular anger is justified and real. At issue is whether it’s spontaneous or externally generated, and, if so, by whom and for what reasons.

Western powers, especially America, gladly support despots. They only fall into disfavor by forgetting who’s boss. Mubarak forgot. So did Gaddafi, long targeted for removal despite rapprochement with America and Western nations. As a result, in-country reports lack credibility without verifiable proof. Much of it is lacking.

At issue is removing an outlier while keeping his regime intact, one friendly to Washington and Western interests. Acquiescence assures support for the world’s most ruthless tyrants. Straying gets them in trouble. Gaddafi strayed, leaving him vulnerable for removal.

Comparing Yugoslavia to Libya

In the 1990s, “pack (or) advocacy journalism” substituted for the real kind, including by promoting the 1999 US-led NATO war of aggression to complete Yugoslavia’s long-planned balkanization, characterized as “humanitarian intervention,” the same theme repeated now.

From March 24 – June 10, 1999, daily attacks were relentless. Around 600 aircraft flew about 3,000 sorties, dropping thousands of tons of ordinance as well as hundreds of ground-launched cruise missiles. Its ferocity to that time was unprecedented. Large numbers were killed, injured or displaced. Vast destruction was inflicted. Two million people lost their livelihoods, many their homes and communities, and for most their futures under military occupation.

Diana Johnstone’s “Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions” remains the definitive Balkan wars history, explaining what Western media reports suppressed. For America and European powers, it was about deterring Slobodan Milosevic’s “Greater Serbia” ambitions, a gross mischaracterization about 1990s events, culminating in naked aggression.

Libyan turmoil appears headed for a similar resolution, driven by unverified misreporting of events on the ground. In Yugoslavia, it was about removing Milosevic for a more accommodative replacement. In Libya, Gaddafi appears headed for the same fate, again by raw force, Washington’s alternate “diplomacy,” the same kind used to “liberate” Iraq and Afghanistan, destroying both countries, causing millions of deaths as well as vast devastation and despair.

Libyan Analysis in Bullet Points

– Unlike Tunisia, Egypt, and other regional allies, “upsetting (Libya’s) established order is a US and EU objective,” by replacing one despot with another.

– the West “seek(‘s) to capitalize on the revolt” for new leadership it controls.

– Heavy weapons are coming in.

– Destabilizing Libya affects its vast energy reserves and neighboring states, perhaps the entire region.

– Tensions among Libyan factions complicate matters further, including between Gaddafi’s son, Saif Al-Islam, “and his father’s circle of older ministers. Libyan ministers are generally divided amongst those (close to Said) and” member’s of the “old guard.”

– Other tensions exist between Gaddafi and his sons, perhaps one generation against another, each with its own ideas incompatible with the other.

– Gaddafi spent years purging opposition. Even so, “little loyalty is felt for (him) and his family.” Fear alone gives them power. Now it’s gone, denunciation of his regime openly stated. “Aref Sharif, the head of Libyan Air Force,” renounced him. Ministers and ambassadors resigned, some going abroad. “Defections are snowballing amongst the military and government.” Yet what’s ongoing may differ significantly from unverified or willful major media misreporting, including by Al Jazeera.

– Authentic opposition is real, but not organized. It’s “been encouraged and prompted from outside Libya through social media networks, international news stations, and events in the rest of the Arab World.” As a result, major media reports are suspect. Accept nothing from them at face value.

– Internal opposition leadership comes “from within the regime itself.” However, corrupt officials aren’t populists. They oppose Gaddafi but not tyranny, corruption, and other trappings of power and privilege. Some of them, in fact, wish “to save themselves, while others” want to “strengthen their positions.” It’s also possible or likely that they’ve allied with Western powers for their own self-interest.

– Major media reports, including by Al Jazeera, “about Libyan jets firing on protesters in Tripoli and the major cities are unverified and questionable….No visual evidence of the jet attacks has been shown.” Gaddafi, in fact, controls cities reported to be occupied by  opponents. Moreover, some accounts of violence are spurious. Stories are invented to “justify no-fly zones,” perhaps heading for war led by America and NATO.

– Corporate and Western interests in Libya, not despotism, explain what’s ongoing. They’re fueling civil war to replace one despot with another, one they control. “Chaos in the Arab World has been viewed as beneficial (to) Washington, Tel Aviv,” and other Western powers. Balkanization may be planned, similar to Yugoslavia, culminating as explained above – “liberation” for control, not democracy America won’t tolerate, including at home. If it happens, regional destabilization may follow, leaders everywhere wondering who’s next.

– Henry Kissinger once said: “to be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” If balkanization is planned, friends and foes alike may be targeted if thought unreliable. Libya’s chaos also affects Europe and global energy issues, including price, for oil heading over $100 a barrel and maybe much higher, threatening fragile economies with deeper crisis.

– Washington wanted Gaddafi replaced for years. Former NATO commander General Wesley Clark once included Libya among future targeted countries besides Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Divide, conquer and control, a game way pre-dating modern America.

– Libya conducted secret negotiations with Washington in 2001. Formal rapprochement followed, but doing business with imperial powers is dangerous, and in Gaddafi’s case perhaps fatal with no safe haven if civil war or NATO ousts him. Either “provides the best cover” for controlling Libya’s “energy sector and to appropriate (its) vast wealth.”

– Libyans should be wary. America and Western powers play hardball against popular interests throughout the region.

– “Actions of opposition to Gaddafi are strong, but there is no strong organized ‘opposition movement.’ The two are different.” Moreover, no opposition force wants democracy.

– Serious discussion suggests a Yugoslav-type “humanitarian intervention.” A “no-fly” zone is mentioned, an act of war if imposed, giving Western powers the right to intervene militarily the way Iraq was bombed in the 1990s. Invasion and occupation, in fact, could follow to replace the already weakened regime. Libya’s assets would be plundered, its people left with one despot replacing another.

A Final Comment

For decades, Gaddafi denied Libyans democratic freedoms. Imperial occupation, however, is worse, creating nightmarish conditions for Iraqis, Afghans, and others experiencing US-style rule, exceeding the worst of regional despots’ harshness, making some look benign by comparison.

Under more populist leaders than Gaddafi and internal opposition forces, mobilized resistance may prevent it, but not easily or quickly. Libyans must now liberate themselves, independent of Western powers wanting to exploit them for their own self-interest.

On February 26, Egyptians again protested in Tahrir Square. This time, however, military forces confronted them, Reuters headlining, “Egypt military angers protesters with show of force,” saying:

“Soldiers used force on Saturday to break up a protest demanding more political reform in Egypt, demonstrators said, in the toughest move yet against opposition activists who accused the country’s military rulers of ‘betraying the people.’”

New York Times writer Liam Stack headlined, “Egyptian Military Forces End to New Protest,” saying:

“Tens of thousands of protesters returned Friday to Tahrir Square… to keep up the pressure on Egypt’s military-led transitional government.”

Violence followed, including beatings, use of tasers, and live firing in the air, threatening perhaps harsher action if protests continue. Al Jazeera said: “Protesters left the main (square) but many had gathered in surrounding streets…. Witnesses said they saw several protesters fall to the ground, but it was not clear if they were wounded or how seriously.”

Participant Ashraf Omar said: “I am one of the thousands of people who stood their ground after the army started dispersing the protesters, shooting live bullets into the air to scare them.”

He said soldiers wore black masks to avoid being identified. Military buses were used for those arrested. It’s “a cat-and-mouse chase.There is no more unity between the people and the army.”

In fact, there never was, only the illusion that unsympathetic generals were populists at heart. In fact, they’ve been regime hard-liners for decades, rewarded handsomely for backing state repression.

“They were using tasers and (batons) to beat us without any control,” said Omar. “I thought things would change. I wanted to give the government a chance, but there is no hope with this regime. There is no use. I am back on the street. I either live with dignity or I die here.”

Egyptians want the military junta-led government to resign and immediately release all political prisoners. They’re outraged by no reforms, and because Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq reshuffled his cabinet, leaving Mubarak cronies in power.

As a result, battle lines are again drawn. “Counterrevolution” comments are heard, protesters chanting:

We do not want Shafiq any more, even if they shoot us with bullets…. Revolution until victory, revolution against Shafiq and the palace…. We won’t leave! He will go!” This isn’t “what hundreds of people died (for). Shafiq is a student of Mubarak. We have demanded a new beginning, and (he’s) not part of it. We refuse him.

Reuters also said many thousands demonstrated in Ismailia, Arish, Suez and Port Said. Moreover, strikes continue across the country for better wages, decent living conditions, ending corruption, and workplace democracy. Involved are miners; steel, textile, chemical and pharmaceutical workers; others at an agricultural processing facility; teachers; bus drivers and other transport workers; religious endowment workers; and others long denied rights all workers deserve. They rarely get it anywhere, including in developed countries.

Egypt’s junta called the strikes illegal, saying it won’t let them continue because they “pose a danger to the nation, and they will confront them.” It also said “(t)he current unstable political conditions do not permit a new constitution.” Their expertise is repression, not democratic governance. None will be forthcoming.

Protests in Jordan

Barely noticed in the West, especially by America’s major media focusing largely on Libya, Haaretz writer Avi Issacharoff headlined on February 25, “Thousands of Jordanians demonstrated in Amman for sixth consecutive Friday,” saying:

Over 5,000 “demand(ed) political reforms and the dissolution of the lower house of parliament.” A week earlier, plainclothes thugs attacked them. Six or more were injured. Jordan’s government denied involvement. Many are skeptical. They demand change, shutting Israel’s Amman embassy, and restoring Jordan’s 1952 constitution, allowing representative government. In recent decades, democratic rights severely eroded. Protesters want them back. King Abdullah II promised reforms, so far not delivered and won’t be without continued pressure.

Mass Iraq Protests

On February 25, tens of thousands rallied throughout the country against occupation, oppression, corruption, unemployment, impoverishment, better services (including clean water, electricity and healthcare), inadequate food and high prices, and overall human misery after eight years under Washington’s rule.

Violence resulted, Iraqi security forces using live fire in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Fallujah, Tikrit, and elsewhere. At least 15 were reported killed, dozens wounded. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani spoke on Al Sumaria Television against demonstrations, saying it would benefit “infiltrators.” Moktada al-Sadr shamelessly said:

State forces “are attempting to crack down on everything you have achieved, all the democratic gains, the free elections, the peaceful exchanges of power and freedom. So I call on you… to thwart the enemy plans by not” demonstrating.

In fact, occupied Iraqis have no rights, no democracy, no freedom, few jobs, horrid living conditions, and no possibility for change without seizing it. One man spoke for many, denouncing the al-Maliki government, calling him a liar, and saying:

“I’m a laborer. I work one day and stay at home for a month. (Maliki) says (we’re better off than) under Saddam Hussein – where is it?” Tens of thousands across the country now demand it. Look for protests to gain momentum.

Tunisia Protests

Days earlier, new protests rocked the country, tens of thousands in Tunis demanding Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi and other Ben Ali holdovers resign. Police fired in the air to disperse them. Helicopters circled overhead. Marchers chanted “Leave!” and “We don’t want the friends of Ben Ali!”

The Interior Ministry banned protests, saying participants would be arrested. Washington and other Western countries back Ghannouchi’s regime, saying it guarantees stability when, if fact, it leaves old policies in place, largely under the same officials. Visiting Tunisia a week ago, Senator John McCain (one of the Senate’s four most reactionary members by his voting record) told Reuters: “The revolution in Tunisia has been very successful and it has become a model for the region. We stand ready to provide training to help Tunisia’s military to provide security.”

In fact, nothing in Tunisia changed, nor in Egypt, Jordan or elsewhere in the region. Regime holdovers remain in charge. Moreover, only uprisings occurred, not revolutions. They’re far short of violent, convulsive, insurrections, removing old orders for new ones, except perhaps ahead in Libya where opposition forces now control parts of the country. More on that below.

Protests in Yemen

On February 26, Reuters headlined, “Two more die after protests in Yemeni city of Aden,” saying:

Security forces killed them and two others, wounding dozens. Weeks of protests have continued, daily since February 17 in cities and provinces throughout the country. “Unrest has been especially intense in the once-independent south, where many people resent rule from the north.”

Large demonstrations continued in the capital Sanaa after Friday prayers, protesters shouting, “The people demand the downfall of the regime.” Local media said up to 80,000 participated, including women, chanting, “Out, out!”

Large numbers of police and military forces confronted them. After weeks of protests, dozens have been killed. Yemenis, however, remain resolute, one on Friday saying “We are coming to take (Saleh) from the presidential palace.” Others said this is “the beginning of the end for the regime.”

So far, neither side’s yielding, but if demonstrations continue and grow, either Saleh and his cronies will go, or more bloodshed in the streets will follow. Resolution one way or other remains uncertain.

Protests Rage in Libya

On February 26, Al Jazeera said pressure is building for Gaddafi to step down. “Within the country, anti-government protesters said the demonstrations were gaining support,” including soldiers reportedly deserting the ranks to join them. So far, Libya’s Khamis Brigade, an army special forces unit remains loyal to the regime, fighting opposition forces.

Violence has been extreme. Hundreds are reported dead, many others wounded. Libya’s east is largely in opposition hands. “Security forces… fire(d) on anti-government protesters in the capital, Tripoli, after” Friday prayers. “Heavy gunfire was (also) reported (in) Fashloum, Ashour, Jumhouria and Souq Al.”

On February 26, Haaretz headlined, “US imposes unilateral sanctions on Libya, freezes Gaddafi’s assets,” saying, Obama did it by Executive Order against him, his family, top officials, and Libya’s government.

On February 26, New York Times writers Helene Cooper and Mark Landler headlined, “Following US Sanctions, UN Security Council to Meet on Libya,” saying:

Under consideration is imposing international sanctions, including an arms embargo and travel ban against Gaddafi, his family and all key government officials. “The tougher American response came nine days” after protests erupted. “American officials are also discussing a no-flight zone” to prevent use of military aircraft on threat of NATO intervention, meaning undeclared war if it happens besides others in the region.

At issue, of course, is defending Libya’s oil assets and the interests of Western oil giants in the country. As in Egypt, throughout the region, and elsewhere, it has nothing to do with replacing despots with democracy.

A Final Comment

Of special note is how America’s media react, especially television where most people get what passes for news and information. For weeks, demonstrations have occurred in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq, Iran, and now Libya, as well as labor protests in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Only Egypt and Libya got extensive coverage, against their leaders, not regimes or policies.

Moreover, in recent days, large protests in Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, and Friday’s in Egypt were largely ignored, except for occasional print accounts reaching small audiences by comparison.

In addition, except against Mubarak, no major broadsheet ran editorials like the New York Times‘ February 24 one headlined, “Stopping Qaddafi,” saying: “Unless some way is found to stop him, (he’ll) slaughter hundreds or even thousands of his own people in his desperation to hang on to power.”

What about stopping other regional despots maintaining close Washington ties. What about denouncing America’s imperial madness, responsible for killing millions throughout the region (and elsewhere), directly or indirectly, since the 1980s alone.

What about defending democracy, fundamental freedoms, the rule of law, and Palestinian rights under brutal Israeli occupation, oppressed daily by belligerence, land theft, mass arrests, targeted assassinations, and torture, as well as beleaguered Gazans under siege since mid-2007, suffering severely as a result.

What about supporting right over wrong and denouncing lawless US policies, including at home, instead of:

• ignoring unmet human needs;
• record numbers impoverished, homeless and hungry;
• sham elections;
• deep corruption at the highest government and corporate levels;
• colluding with corporate interests, federal, state and local governments are waging war on organized labor;
• a deepening social decay; and
• many other symptoms of national decline, recognized more abroad than internally, while, at the same time backing monied interests, imperial wars, and many other unprincipled policies.

Why not editorialize against American policies, calling for “harder (efforts) to stop mass atrocities,” and that “(t)he longer the world temporizes, the more people die.” Where more than in countries Washington occupies where Times coverage airbrushes out popular suffering, focusing only on leaders Washington opposes, not policies, it wants left unchanged.

Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.

His type governance, that is, and from administrations that followed, Democrats as ruthless as Republicans.

For decades, bipartisan consensus governed lawlessly, waging imperial wars, trashing human rights and civil liberty protections, unabashedly backing monied interests, letting them loot the federal treasury, fleecing working Americans, and targeting organized labor for destruction.

Washington is ground zero for government’s assault. Outside the beltway, it’s Wisconsin, but spreading fast to other states and cities. An unfair fight pits major media-supported federal, state and local governments allied with union bosses against American workers, largely on their own, relying on their grit and resourcefulness to survive in a very hostile environment.

Threatened are hard-won worker rights, including secure jobs, a living wage, essential benefits, and the right to bargain collectively with management to protect them. They’re going, going, and soon gone unless mass grassroots activism saves them, what’s so far absent. Wisconsin worker heroics are impressive, but not enough.

Much more is needed  – there and across America, because workers in all states and communities are threatened, their rights being trashed and have been for decades, especially since the Carter administration drafted plans Reagan implemented:

Firing over 11,000 PATCO workers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of dollars, and effectively busting it for monied interests. It was a shot across organized labor’s bow, a clear message to Wall Street and other corporate favorites – supported by then AFL-CIO president, Lane Kirkland, one of many labor bosses who betrayed rank and file trust. They still do for their own self-interest. No wonder organized labor is a shadow of its former self, headed for extinction unless stopped.

Reagan’s administration set the pattern. Union bosses conspired with management against their own membership. During bitter coal miner, steel worker, bus driver, airline worker, copper miner, auto worker, and meatpacking worker strikes, they denied rank and file support, assuring them defeat. At decade’s end, trade unionism in America was decimated and kept declining since, heading for oblivion with little pressure to stop it.

Obama’s war on labor shows he matches Republican harshness. He abandoned US auto workers for management forcing:

– plant closures;
– jobs shipped abroad;
– permanent ones lost;
– lower wages;
– gutted work rules, including on-the-job health and safety protections; and
– forfeited security through lost benefits and pensions, including for retirees, besides everything lost in 2007 under Bush.

Obama also abandoned the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) after promising support. If enacted, it would have been labor’s most impressive triumph since passage of the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, letting labor bargain collectively for the first time with management on even terms.

It would have mandated good faith bargaining as a fundamental right, protected from management or government interference.

It also would have strengthened Wagner Act provisions to unionize, bargain collectively through chosen representatives, and provide other worker protections. It would have leveled the playing field to empower them more than since Taft-Hartley weakened them significantly.

It would have affirmed the 1937 Supreme Court Virginia Railway Co. v. Railway Employees decision that “employees (have) the right to organize and bargain collectively through a representative of their own selection, doing away with company interference and ‘company union.’ ”

Also, the Courts 1937 National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation ruling that J & L engaged in unfair labor practices by “discriminating against members of the union with regard to hire and tenure of employment, and was coercing and intimidating its employees in order to interfere with their self-organization.” It said union representation “was essential (to) give laborers opportunity to deal (equally) with their employer,” public workers afforded the same rights as private ones.

No longer. We’ve come a long way from New Deal policies and fair Justices. Today’s Democrats, Republicans, and courts are supremely pro-business, especially the Roberts Court, selected to be anti-labor, in the tank for monied interests, and it shows.

Big Media Bashes Labor

On February 17, Media Matters headlined, “Right-Wing Media Freak Out Over Union Protests,” quoting Fox News hosts and guests saying:

– Glenn Beck calls union protests “riots” and “uprisings,” adding that “Evil (is) spreading around the globe;”

– Hard-right commentator, Michelle Malkin, said protesters “stormed” the Capitol, using students as “kiddie human shields….sacrificial lambs,” also calling demonstrators “union thugs;”

– Republican strategist, Kate Obenshain, told Sean Hannity: “We see something that’s going on, say, in Wisconsin, where they have the rallies for the teachers, where teachers are yanking kids out of the classrooms and calling in sick – totally lying…;” and

– Fox’s Tracy Byrnes called Wisconsin protests “actually, borderline gonna get violent, it sounds like” when, in fact, they’ve been remarkably peaceful unlike how extremist right-wingers agitate.

CNN is just as bad, competing with Fox for bottom-of-the-barrel honors, but nothing on corporate TV or radio has merit. Nor in print; to wit, Time magazine’s Joe Klein in his February 18 article headlined, “Wisconsin: The Hemlock Revolution,” saying:

In the Middle East, “protesters are marching for democracy; in the middle west, they’re protesting against it….trying to prevent a vote….(trying) to stymie majority rule….”

Republicans won, said Klein. “In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees union, are exempt from that.” Even labor contacts aren’t sacrosanct he believes. “We hold elections to decide” those things. “And it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker’s basic requests are modest ones….”

If Time prints this anti-labor screed and similar op-eds, why should Fox surprise? America’s entire corporate establishment, including big media, is united against labor rights, targeting them for destruction.

Even the New York Times opposes closed schools and public services blocked for any reason, no matter how important doing it is to force change, what’s never possible without it and much more. Timidity yields nothing but tears.

Like other Wall Street Journal writers and its editorial staff, Steven Malanga is no friend of labor, his February 22 WSJ article headlined, “The Showdown Over Public Union Power,” saying:

“Public unions (are) among the biggest players in national politics,” contributing millions compared to billions from corporate donors way out-muscling them. “If Gov. Walker succeeds….other reformers will follow (to) restrict public-sector” union power. It “would give opponents around the country a new playbook to follow in countering the rich resources and deep influence of public unions over taxes and spending.”

No wonder observers call WJS opinion writers the print version of Fox News, both Murdoch owned, his editorial policy rigorously enforced.

In spring 2009, the corporate media enthusiastically embraced Obama’s assault on auto worker rights for decent jobs, a living wage and essential benefits, including pensions. The New York Times took the lead, supporting General Motors’ “government-backed bankruptcy process,” saying it would let GM “discard (its) liabilities and unwanted assets and produce a profitable, albeit smaller, car company,” with thousands fewer employees.

The Financial Times agreed, listing preferred “liabilities” to be shed, including “legacy” ones, meaning pensions and health care benefits. The Washington Post said it’s “important that the president did not flinch in demanding even deeper concessions from workers.” The Wall Street Journal said it was “glad the Administration is at least talking a tougher line on bankruptcy than Mr. Bush (to) force the companies and their unions to make the hard decisions that politics may still let them avoid.”

The unanimity of corporate managed news offered support then and now against worker rights they disdain, and why not? They’re giants with large workforces they want without rights, beyond minimal ones too little to matter.

On August 20, 1999, New York Times writer, Tom Friedman, headlined, “Foreign Affairs; An American in Paris,” saying:

“The most important thing (Ronald) Reagan did was break the 1981 air traffic controllers’ strike, which helped break the hold of organized labor over the US economy.” Crushing workers gave US corporations greater flexibility to invest in new labor-saving equipment, technology and methods to cut staff, pay less, and achieve great cost savings, said Friedman. He practically gloated about the collapse of labor rights, weaker now after a decade under Bush and Obama.

More recently on May 8, 2010, Friedman headlined, “Root Canal Politics,” denouncing workers for believing in the “tooth fairy,” expecting government services without paying for them. Baby boomers, he said, had “eaten through all that abundance like hungry locusts.” After getting their way for decades, “it’s now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics.” He barely concealed joy, crowing over worker pain like all pro-business columnists, even ones claiming progressive credentials.

On February 21, The Times featured commentaries from anti-union advocates like Professor Daniel DiSalvo headlining, “Hitting the Unions Where It Hurts,” saying:

Walker wants “to dismantle (the) dysfunctional, circular relationship between unionized government employees, the politicians they help elect, and the rising wages and benefits to which they commit government.” In fact, wages have stagnated for over three decades, and essential benefits have eroded.

Nonetheless, DiSalvo took sides, saying, “If successful, Walker’s plan may (make) Wisconsin (more) like Texas or Virginia (where) most collective bargaining in the public sector is illegal and the percentage of unionized public employees is paltry.” He hopes Wisconsin “will have as bright a fiscal outlook” as those states, affording workers there few or no rights.

Christian Schneider also got space headlining, “Fiscally Modest, Politically Bold,” saying:

Walker only asks workers to “accept modest changes to their benefits, or face losing their jobs.” False. Layoffs are coming and without collective bargaining power no job or essential benefit is safe. “Public employee unions will continue to protest,” said Schneider, “even though (Walker) is the first politician who has told them the truth in ages.” In fact, Obama backs the same policies, enforcing them since taking office.

Even the hard-right Heritage Foundation got space, James Sherk headlining “FDR Warned Us,” saying:

“Government workers….don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money.” In fact, like private sector ones, they deserve similar rights. Moreover, unlike corporate predators, they earn, not steal what they get, what Sherk noticeably side-stepped. Instead, he hailed Walker’s plan, saying it “reasserts voter control over government policy,” perhaps forgetting public workers also vote and deserve officials treating them equitably.

A Final Comment

Mass protests in Wisconsin continue. Tuesday was day eight. Involved are over 200,000 state workers and supporters, including students and teachers. Key is preserving collective bargaining rights without which no others are safe. Neither side so far is budging, Walker ordered by Republican leaders to hold fast. Other states are watching, governors there to grab all Walker gets, or more like in Ohio where Governor Kasich’s bill is even more draconian.

Though major demonstrations continue, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), representing 98,000 teachers, told its members to return to work. Other unions also expect the bill’s passage, perhaps before week’s end. So far, absent Democrat senators remain secluded in neighboring Illinois, denying Republicans a quorum. They continue being hardline. Sooner or later expect Democrats to concede. When they return, Walker can declare victory.

Nonetheless, rank and file opposition remains strong, including among teachers, students and supporters traveling long distances to march and protest in Madison. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Teaching Assistants Association (TAA) called for a “teach-out,” replacing a walkout saying, “We are calling for instructors to use their discretion to cancel classes, reschedule them or hold them off campus.”

Demonstrations around the country support them from Maryland and New Hampshire to Nevada and Olympia, Washington, knowing workers there can expect their own moment of truth. It’s spreading everywhere, pitting bought-and-paid-for-pols allied with union bosses against working Americans. They’re fighting for hard-won rights fast eroding toward elimination unless mass activism draws the line and holds it, no matter what. Their choice now is fight or lose. There’s no middle ground against forces unwilling to yield.

Important ones included an eight hour day, a living wage, essential benefits including healthcare and pensions, and the pinnacle of labor’s triumph with passage of the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, establishing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It guaranteed labor the right to bargain collectively with management on equal terms for the first time, what’s now sadly lost.

After signing it on July 5, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt said:

This Act defines… the right of self-organization of employees in industry for the purpose of collective bargaining, and provides methods by which the Government can safeguard that legal right….A better relationship between labor and management is the high purpose of this Act… it seeks for every worker within its scope, that freedom of choice and action which is justly his… it should serve as an important step toward the achievement of just and peaceful labor relations in industry.

Grassroots activism won important gains. Management gave nothing until forced nor did government, siding always with business, yielding only to stop sustained disruptive work stoppages, street violence or possible insurrection.

In 1935, a worried Congress and administration acted. After WW II, however, organized labor declined. Passage of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Labor-Management Relations Act was the first major blow. Harry Truman vetoed it, calling it a “slave labor bill,” then hypocritically used it 10 times, the most ever by a president to this day.

Under Reagan, labor rights declined precipitously, beginning in August 1981 by firing 11,000 striking PATCO air traffic controllers, jailing its leaders, fining the union millions of dollars, effectively busting and declaring war on organized labor by a president openly contemptuous of worker rights.

From then to now, so are Democrats and Republicans, exacting a devastating toll thereafter. From union membership’s post-war 1950s 34.7% high, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported the following on January 21, 2011:

In 2010, membership ranks declined from 12.3% in 2009 to 11.9% currently, a shadow of its former self in collapse. “The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions declined by 612,000 to 14.7 million.” Among public sector workers, 36.7% are organized compared to 6.9% for private sector ones, down from 30% in 1958, their peak.

According to 2009 BLS figures, organized public sector ranks surpassed private ones for the first time, even though commerce and industry employs five times more workers.

Today, the US Postal Service has three times more than auto companies, no thanks to corrupted union bosses colluding with business and government, betraying their rank and file. As a result, labor historian Paul Buhle sees organized labor collapsing, and labor author Robert Fitch compared American workers to “owners of a family car whose wheels fell off long ago. Each family member (now must rely) on their own two feet; they scarcely remember what it was like being able to ride together.” They don’t recall once having rights long ago stripped and lost.

Why? Because union bosses sold out, siding with employers, getting big salaries and fancy perks, and being more concerned with their own welfare than rank and file members they represent. Or so they claim.

Continuing where Reagan/Bush, Clinton and Bush II left off, Obama colluded with union bosses to impose his business-friendly agenda on working Americans, gutting their rights methodically since taking office.

Should his gutless response to Wisconsin protesters surprise? In a February 16 Milwaukee WTMJ television interview, he posed fraudulently as worker-friendly, saying:

“Everybody’s got to make some adjustments to new fiscal realities,” endorsing wage cuts to “save jobs,” adding:

“Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain, generally seems like more of an assault on unions.”

This by a president who disdains working Americans. Many thought his election would end Bush era politics. Instead they intensified by trashing worker rights, including under an appointed Auto Task Force, eliminating tens of thousands of jobs, ravaging communities, imposing draconian new hire demands, and appointing a “pay czar” to reward management.

His administration endorses the “new normal,” including 22% + unemployment, poverty wages, eroding benefits, and pensions targeted for elimination to help states and enrich corporate bosses more. Yet for some, he’s a “people’s president,” a man with a message: “Change,” and “Yes We Can.” Yes he did, in fact, serve corporate interests, not loyal constituents he trashed for big money.

Feigning support for Wisconsin protesters, he said nothing about Governor Walker’s threat to use National Guard force against them, a clear constitutional First Amendment assault.

Protesters so far are undaunted, their ranks growing and spreading across the state in solidarity, but to what avail. Expected passage of Walker’s bill was only was delayed when Senate Democrats walked out. They took refuge in neighboring Illinois, ignoring a Republican “call of the House,” sending police off to find them, a shameless political stunt.

Their maneuver, in fact, is delay, negotiate, co-op union bosses, and reach accommodation with Walker and majority Republicans. As a result, the fix is in to force first-step draconian measures, more coming later, including concessions on collective bargaining rights. Activists know the scheme well, University of Wisconsin-Superior Professor Joel Sipress saying:

“We all know that this is part of a broader assault on the ability of working people in this state and this country to have decent, humane lives. The same people who want to strip public workers of their rights – they’re the same (ones) who want to say to all of us ‘it is a sink-or-swim society.’ We will not allow Wisconsin to become a state where the working people live off the scraps that are thrown to them by the economic elite.”

Protests Spread to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Perhaps Beyond

Building on Middle East and Wisconsin momentum, over 1,000 people rallied in Ohio’s Columbus Statehouse on February 15, opposing Senate Bill 5 (SB5), a measure eliminating collective bargaining rights for 40,000 state workers, reducing it for firefighters, police, teachers, and others, as well as facilitating other draconian measures when existing contracts expire. They include wage and benefit cuts, elimination of seniority-based pay increases and job security, heading toward ending all worker rights, including empowering government to abrogate worker contracts in case of “emergencies.”

Similar anti-worker schemes are proceeding in other states, including California, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and eventually perhaps most, if not all, unless sustained Wisconsin momentum intervenes everywhere.

In Ohio, Republican legislators and Governor John Kasich (a former congressional Republican stalwart), support SB5. The bill’s author, Senator Shannon Jones, backed it “to give the government flexibility and control over its workforce,” leaving no doubt where she, Kasich and most state lawmakers stand – united against worker equity, job security, wages, benefits, and pension rights to make Ohio more “competitive” for business.

Angry workers responded, knowing their hard-won gains will be lost if SB5 passes which seems likely. Lashing out, a firefighter told AP: “When you take away collective bargaining, we have no rights at all.” At a Columbus press conference, a retired state employee warned:

“We’re not going back to the 20th century. We’re going back to the 19th century. These are the stories that Charles Dickens wrote about, those kind of employers. If you allow this to happen, what comes next?”

Kasich said he’s committed to SB5, regardless of public sentiment, adding that if passage fails, he’ll prohibit state worker strikes in his upcoming budget proposal. In mid-February, addressing the Ohio Newspaper Association, he said:

“I can promise you that big-city mayors favor what I’m doing. They want this. They’re not going to tell you that, but they want this,” meaning, of course, he’ll assure they get it and more.

Indiana workers take note. On January 27, AP’s Deanna Martin headlined, “Indiana panel OKs bill limiting teacher bargaining,” saying:

“A Republican-controlled Senate committee advanced a contentious proposal… critics contend would strip Indiana teachers of their collective bargaining rights.” It’s a measure Republican Governor Mitch Daniels supports as part of his sweeping education agenda.

If enacted, only wage and benefits negotiating will be permitted. Local contracts henceforth will exclude the right to bargain on evaluation and dismissal procedures, working conditions, and other related issues. Special education teacher Diana Koger told lawmakers that proposed measures strip teachers of all rights, giving school boards full authority.

Nonetheless, passage by Indiana’s Republican seems likely, step one before targeting all state workers.

On February 18, Michigan’s WILX television reported state worker protests over cuts, saying their message is “Enough is enough,” rallying in the Lansing capital to make lawmakers and Republican Governor Rick Snyder listen.

Chanting “Legislators get the gold mine, workers get the shaft,” they rallied outside the Capitol building against Snyder’s budget proposal, wanting public workers to absorb $180 million dollars in cuts, including hundreds of eliminated jobs.

One worker had it right saying:

They can fire every state employee… but you’re not going to fix the budget cause you’re not generating revenue. Everyone… is responsible for this debt, not just state employees, not just the poor, not just kids trying to get an education.

According to Ken Moore, president of the Michigan State Employees Association, “Let’s close up the corporate loopholes where come of the big money’s at. Let’s close those up so we can get back to a reasonable budget.” He wants workers to be part of the solution, not a casualty they’re becoming as in other states across the country. As a result, Main Street America is becoming a wasteland, a backwater, facing inhumane third world harshness.

Dismissive Major Media Responses

On February 17, New York Times writer Monica Davey headlined, “Democrats Missing, Wisconsin Vote on Cuts Is Delayed,” saying:

They walked out, “Republicans fumed,” and Senator Michael Ellis called it “disgraceful that people who are paid to be here have decided to skip town.” He’s right because they’re coming back to support a marginally changed bill too little to matter. The fix is in, worker rights are being trashed. It’s disgraceful in Wisconsin and across America.

A same day Times editorial headlined, “Gov. Walker’s Pretext,” feigning worker sympathy clearly evident in shameless concluding comments, saying:

“Keeping schools closed and blocking certain public services is not a strategy we support and could alienate public opinion and play into the governor’s hand.”

Times management one-sidedly supports wealth and power interests, not populist ones it disdains.

So do Wall Street Journal op-ed and editorial writers, producing the print version of Fox News, Murdock, of course, owning both.

On February 18, the lead editorial headlined, “Athens in Mad Town (Mad for Madison),” saying:

Thousands of Wisconsin workers “swarmed the state capitol and airwaves to intimidate lawmakers and disrupt Governor Scott Walker’s plan to level the playing field between taxpayers and government unions.”

“Mr. Walker’s very modest proposal would take away the ability of most government employees to collectively bargain for benefits,” except for wages no greater than annual CPI increases.

Saying Mr. Walker has no other choice to close his budget gap, comments entirely omitted what’s absent in all major media reports – making corporations and America’s aristocracy pay their fair share. Nothing in the New York Times, Washington Post, WSJ, other major broadsheets or on corporate TV, backing monied interests, not worker rights they disdain.

On February 18, Washington Post writers Brady Dennis and Peter Wallsten lied headlining, “Obama joins Wisconsin’s budget battle, opposing Republican anti-union bill,” when, in fact, his rhetoric masks support.

“The battle in the states underscores the deep philosophical political divisions between Obama and Republicans over how to control spending and who should bear the costs,” they said, when, in fact, they only disagree on timing, united in supporting monied, not populist, interests.

On February 18, Financial Times writer Hal Weitzman also ducked real issues headlining, “Wisconsin deadlock as Democrats flee budget vote,” quoting Republican Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald saying:

Democrats were “not showing up for work…. That’s not democracy. That’s not what this chamber is about.”

What’s not democracy, of course, is trashing worker rights, supporting wealth and power interests only, and mocking worker courage to confront power no matter how daunting the challenge.

Today, working Americans face losing more of their hard-won rights because bipartisan collusion intends to trash them. Unless mass activism erupts, America indeed is becoming a wasteland, a backwater on a fast track toward tyranny and ruin, a bleak future no one should accept.

His administration is “discussing with Egyptian officials a proposal for (Mubarak) to resign immediately and turn over power to a transitional government headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman with the support of the Egyptian military,” including Lt. Gen. Sami Enan, armed forces chief, and Field Marshall Mohamed Tantawi, defense minister.

The alleged plan includes constitutional reform, a transitional government with opposition groups like the Muslim brotherhood, and “free and fair elections in September.”

Testifying during a February 3 Senate hearing, senior CIA official, Stephanie O’Sullivan, said earlier tracking of Cairo instability showed conditions were “untenable,” but “we didn’t know what the triggering mechanism would be.”

On February 4, Times writer, David Kirkpatrick, headlined, “Egyptian Government Figures Join Protesters,” saying:

During Friday protests, “(c)racks in the Egyptian establishment’s support for (Mubarak)” emerged with Amr Moussa, Arab League head, and other notable figures appearing on Cairo streets, including defense minister Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, the first member of Egypt’s ruling elite to do so.

Non-Negotiable People Demands

Obama’s proposal is absurd, an insult to courageous people risking their lives for real change, not replacing one despot with another with the same regime in place. They demand ouster of all Mubarak officials, followed by free and fair elections for new ones they choose. Getting it is another matter, and Obama losing faith in Murabark masks his uncompromising support for continuity.

The New York Times as well in its disingenuous February 3 editorial headlined, “Egypt’s Agonies,” saying:

Attacking protesters and targeting journalists are  “familiar tactics of dictators who want to brutalize their citizens without witnesses.” Mubarak telling “ABC News that the government is not responsible – is patently absurd. (He’s) chosen survival over his people. He told ABC that he had to stay in office to avoid chaos. In fact, his presence ensures only more chaos and instability.”

Then, cutting to the chase, The Times said, “The cost of the turmoil is being felt. Tourists are fleeing. The economy is paralyzed. Egypt and its people need a quick transition….”

In other words, profits, not social democracy matter. It’s been uncompromising Times policy for decades, including support for legions of US-allied despots,  Mubarak a longtime favorite before falling from grace.

What’s Next?

Workers suffer painfully from neoliberal harshness, often hardened by IMF diktats, including mass privatizations, layoffs, wage and benefit cuts, and public debt service over people needs, causing massive impoverishment and human suffering. Replacing one regime with another with this agenda leaves deep-rooted misery unaddressed. Examples are numerous, including  Corazon Aquino replacing Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in February 1986.

Despite two decades of loyalty, Marcos turned liability and had to go. Aquino was ideal to replace him. Wife of assassinated political opponent, Benigno Aquino, and endorsed by conservative Cardinal Jaime Sin, she represented elitist interests with generous National Endowment for Democracy funding.

Her legacy includes subservience to Washington, human rights violations, corruption, and the worst of neoliberal harshness – business-friendly policies at the expense of popular needs she ignored, as did her successors to this day, including a decade under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from January 2001 – June 2010.

She ran a death squad regime, targeting unionists, human rights activists, peasants, and anyone against state policies. Yet Washington strongly supported her like Mubarak, practicing the same agenda for three decades until falling out of favor.

South Africa Under Nelson Mandela

In 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) gained power under Mandela after generations of brutality and decades of apartheid harshness, the worst form of racism. From 1948 – 1993, pass laws segregated blacks from whites, restricted their movements, required pass books be carried at all times, and produced on demand or face arrest and prosecution. Evolving from the 18th and 19th century until their 1986 repeal, they restricted entry to cities, forcibly relocated blacks, denied them most public services, many forms of employment, and became apartheid’s most hated symbol.

An anti-apartheid activist, Mandela was imprisoned in 1962 for life, served 27 years until released on February 11,1990, days after President FW de Klerk ended the official ban against anti-apartheid organizations, including the ANC.

Addressing the nation, Mandela said:

I am a loyal and disciplined member of the African National Congress. I am therefore in full agreement with all of its (social justice) objectives, strategies and tactics.

There must be an end to white monopoly political power and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed and our society thoroughly democratized.

He quoted his own 1964 words saying he was prepared to die for “a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.” As president, he reneged, surrendering totally to finance capital, though not at first rhetorically.

On May 10, 1994, two weeks after taking office, he addressed parliament, endorsing ANC Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) socioeconomic issues, including, democracy, growth, development, reconstruction, redistribution and reconciliation. Specific concerns were housing, health care, land reform, jobs, education, public works, clean water, and electrification.

He called the RDP the “centerpiece of what this Government will seek to achieve, the focal point on which our attention be be continuously focused.”

Five years later in his last parliamentary speech, he ignored RDP mandates after abandoning them in principle.

During his tenure, he shifted from RDP to GEAR – Growth Employment and Redistribution Program – based on neoliberal free market diktats. It reflected IMF harshness, serving capital not popular needs.

State assets were privatized. Mass layoffs followed. Services were commodified, harmfully raising prices for millions. Markets were opened for trade. Taxes for corporations and the rich were cut, and social spending reduced. Bottom-line priorities trumped other issues. Record profits followed. Accessing health care, education and other essential services required “user fees.” Few could afford them.

Wealth distribution benefitted rich whites at the expense of poor Blacks, worse off than ever, their average income declining 19% from 1995 – 2000, while whites rose 15%.

ANC-run South Africa empowered elite Blacks, enriched white capital more than ever, and created far greater inequality, poverty and depravation than under apartheid, reflecting neoliberal betrayal, exploiting the poor for the rich.

Post-Soviet States

Free market shock therapy devastated them, lowering, not raising, living standards, Poland one of its victims. In the 1980s, Solidarnosc (Solidarity) unionized 10 million members, gaining the right to bargain and aspire to transform state-controlled companies into worker-run cooperatives. Instead, mines, shipyards and factories were privatized, subsidies slashed, and price controls lifted, skyrocketing unemployment, poverty, depression, and overall worse times than before.

On January 18, Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers headlined their article, “The Spectre Haunting Europe: Debt Defaults, Austerity, and Death of the ‘Social Europe’ Model,” saying:

(D)ecades of neoliberalism….crashed the US and several European economies. Years of deregulation, speculation and lack of investment in the real economy left them with rising inequality and little consumer demand, except for what was financed by running up debt.

In an earlier April 2010 interview, Hudson explained that suffering economies “from Greece to the Baltics and Iceland (were) directed to pay the financial sector first – international bankers, creditor-nation governments (like America, Britain, France and others), the IMF, World Bank, and financial institutions – before (spending) on sustaining their own employment and economic growth.”

In other words, depriving their people for finance capital as well as balancing their budgets on their backs. IMF diktats shrink economies. As a result, enormous hardships throughout Eastern Europe were created, targeted nations having no choice but go along.

It’s a “financial war against industry, against labor, against the post-Soviet economies, against the Third World….(It’s) a war against government, against public spending. Its solution to unpayable debts is to demand that governments sell off whatever assets remain in the public domain. (It’s) the most naked property grab since the Viking invasions.”

It’s opposite of what responsible governments should do, putting popular interests ahead of predatory foreign lenders. It’s redistributing wealth equitably and fulfilling a social contract. It’s growing their economies, not shrinking them.

Forced to go along under threat of economic and political reprisals, no wonder people yearn for the “good old Soviet days” with jobs and basic needs met. Today they’re cursed with neoliberal hardships, proving commissars were friendlier than bankers.

Economic Hit Men Enforcers

In his book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” John Perkins discussed his own work with the IMF, World Bank and other global financial institutions, saying his job was to convince countries to accept unaffordable loans for infrastructure development, contracted to US corporations.

He defined economic hit men as:

highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, (USAID, the IMF), and other foreign ‘aid organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.

His mandate was to impoverish and bankrupt countries, trapping them in debt bondage, those refusing facing economic, political or other reprisals.

Starving Third World Economies

In her February 3 article titled, “The Egyptian Tinderbox: How Banks and Investors Are Starving the Third World,” Ellen Brown explained:

that roughly 40 percent of Egyptians struggle (with incomes) of under $2 per day,” facing unsustainable annual 17% annual food price inflation. As a result, “as much as 60 to 80 percent of (their) incomes go for food, compared to just 10 to 20 percent in industrial countries.

Credit, not Fed policy, is at fault, hiking prices “by too much money chasing too few goods, but the money is chasing only certain selected goods” like food and fuel.

Speculation and market manipulation also hammer economies unwilling to deregulate and allow free capital flows. Methods include hot money created real estate, stock and other asset bubbles as well as currency attacks, causing destructive devaluations, debt bondage and impoverishment.

A Final Comment

Independent new leaders face enormous challenges, including destructive reprisals for defying Western diktats. As a result, most accede, accepting neoliberal harshness over public needs, no matter their popular mandate or desire. That’s Egypt’s dilemma whatever new regime emerges. If Mandela failed South Africans, how will new Egyptian leadership fulfill campaign pledges if doing so means economic disaster, political isolation or worse.

As a result, expect new faces continuing old policies, letting everything look changed but be the same, including deep-rooted needs. That spark ignited Tunisia and spread regionally, assuring Mubarak’s regime ends, leaving his policies in place unless heroic new figures defy risks, no matter potential consequences.

It “obtained more than 1,600 internal documents from a decade of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,” writer, Gregg Carlstrom, explaining that:

Over the last several months, Al Jazeera has been given unhindered access to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

They include “nearly 1,700 files, (and) thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of” peace process negotiations.

Included (from 1999 – 2010) were “emails, maps, minutes of private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even power point presentations….”

Releasing them from January 23 – 26, they reveal information about:

– the PA’s willingness to concede all East Jerusalem settlements except one;

– PA “creativ(ity)” about Islam’s third holiest site, Haram al-Sharif (Nobel Sanctuary), what Jews call the Temple Mount;

– compromise on the right of return, suggesting  abandonment beyond token amounts;

– numerous details of PA-Israeli “cooperation,” suggesting complicity and unconditional surrender to Israeli demands; and

– private late 2009 PA-US negotiator exchanges when Goldstone Report discussions were ongoing at the UN.

Because of obvious sensitivity, Al Jazeera will keep source information confidential as well as how documents were obtained.

In a January 23 London Guardian article, Karma Nabulski headlined, “This seemingly endless and ugly game of the peace process is now finally over,” saying:

It’s over. Given the shocking nature, extent and detail of these ghastly revelations from behind closed doors (shows none) of the villains on the Palestinian side can survive it….A small group of (duplicitous) men who have polluted the Palestinian public sphere with their private activities are now exposed.

In fact, the PA is infested with traitors, some more recent like Salam Fayyad. As appointed prime minister, he’s Israel’s man in Palestine as a previous article explained.

President Mahmoud Abbas’ treachery way predates him also discussed in a previous article.

Jeffrey Blankfort called him a “double agent (serving) his Israeli and US masters in plain sight.” Saying he’s “Israel’s sheriff,” Edward Said called him “colorless, moderately corrupt and without any clear ideas of his own, except that he wants to please the white man.”

As chief Oslo negotiator, he surrendered unconditionally to Israeli demands, Said explaining:

the fashion-show vulgarities of the (1993) White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the suspension of most of his people’s rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton’s performance, like a 20th century Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of reconciliation and obeisance, (and) the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation.

It was unilateral surrender, a Palestinian Versailles. They got nothing for renouncing armed struggle, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, letting it colonize Palestine, and leaving major unresolved issues for later final status talks, including self-determination, the right to return, the future of settlements, borders, water rights, and status of Jerusalem as sovereign Palestinian territory and future home of its capital.

Under Arafat, a new PA was established as Israel’s enforcer. At Oslo, Abbas arranged it, getting nothing except White House photo-ops and undisclosed personal favors. Nearly two decades later, they’ve still gotten nothing under him as president, serving his Israeli and US masters.

Main PA Negotiators/Traitors

Besides Abbas, they include:

(1) Saeb Erekat: Since the 1991 Madrid Conference attempt to restart the peace process, he was involved. Thereafter, he took part in every major negotiation, including Oslo and what followed. Overall, he participated in 116 meetings with Israeli, US, and European officials, and for the past two years, served as chief negotiator.

(2) Ahmed Qurei: From 2003 – January 2006 elections defeating Fatah for a new Hamas government, he was Palestinian prime minister. After leaving office, he became chief PA negotiator until late 2008. The documents suggest political infighting reduced his status.

(3) Maen Areikat: In 1992, he began working with Hanan Ashrawi, at the time, official spokeswoman of the Palestinian delegation to peace talk negotiations. In 1998, he served as PLO director general of the Negotiations Affairs Department, supervising its Negotiations Support Unit, providing legal, policy, communications and technical support to Palestinian negotiators. He’s currently heads the PLO mission to the US representative.

(4) Mohammed Dahlan: After Oslo, he headed the PA’s Preventive Security Service in Gaza. In the 1990s, his soldiers were accused of torturing Hamas prisoners. As a notorious Palestinian strongman, he’s perhaps its most controversial figure. In 2007, he headed the failed CIA-funded attempt to unseat Hamas in Gaza, and since August 2009, he’s been an elected member of Fatah’s Central Committee.

Erekat’s Yerushalayim/Haram al-Sharif Solution

As chief PA negotiator, he “suggested unprecedented compromises on the division of Jerusalem and its holy sites,” including ceding control to an international committee. Palestinians accused Israel of Judaizing East Jerusalem as well as pursuing destructive excavations to undermine the al-Aqsa mosque’s foundation, damaging its structural integrity, perhaps intending to destroy it.

Documents reveal that during an October 21, 2009 meeting with George Mitchell and other US negotiators, he said:

It’s solved. You have the Clinton Parameters formula. For the Old City sovereignty for Palestine, except the Jewish quarter and part of the Armenian quarter….the Haram can be left to be discussed – there are creative ways, having a body or a committee, having undertakings, for example, not to dig (under the mosque). The only thing I cannot do is convert to Zionism.

Haram’s status was seldom considered. As late as a July 2, 2008 meeting, Israeli negotiators were told discussing it was off-limits and that they couldn’t bargain on Jerusalem. Yet Erekat and those under him did so, “regardless of the tactical consequences.”

A month later, at a June 30, 2008 meeting, he said:

It is no secret that on our map we proposed we are offering you the biggest Yerushalayim in history. But we must talk about the concept of Al-Quds (Jerusalem). (We) have a detailed concept (and) it’s doable.

He seemed willing to accept an international overseeing arrangement, what never before was considered, fearing it would be a first step to losing it entirely and angering the entire Arab world. As chief negotiator, he “appeared totally disconnected from his own people, as well as his wider Arab and Muslim constituency.”

He was “so consumed by the negotiations that he became oblivious of the import of his remarks among Arabs, Muslims, and – most of all – his own people. Even among some Israelis, this seemed infantile.” According to Israeli lawyer Danied Seidemann:

(A)ny attempt to construe the API (Arab Palestine Initiative) in a manner that falls short of ‘full-stop’ Palestinian or Arab sovereignty on the Haram/Mount would be an exercise in self-delusion.

World Headlines

On January 14, Haaretz News Agencies headlined, “Abbas: Concessions in Palestine papers came from Israel, not us,” saying:

He “denied offering secret concessions to Israel and said that reporting of purportedly leaked documents” mistakenly presented Israeli positions, not those of his negotiators. Calling it a “mix-up,” he said it was “intentional….We say things very clearly, we do not have secrets.”

Clearly embarrassed like Abbas, Ahmed Qureia, chief 2008 negotiator, said “many parts of the documents were fabricated, as part of the incitement against the (PA) and the Palestinian leadership.” He denied making duplicitous offers, calling reports about Erekat “lies and half truths.” In fact, they came from his own verbatim comments.

On January 24, Haaretz writer, Akiva Eldar, headlined, “Lieberman’s map for future Palestinian borders is a joke,” calling it:

a predetermined ritual: The government refuses to freeze settlement construction, the Palestinians freeze the negotiations, (Netanyahu) blames (Abbas), the international community presses Israel, Netanyahu/Lieberman/Barak (leak) ‘a new political program,’ (and) Palestinians reject it.

With nothing constructive in it, it’s like trying to make eggs out of omelets or caterpillars out of butterflies.

BBC headlined, “Excepts: Leaked Palestinian ‘proposals,’ ” saying:

Their negotiators offered unprecedented concessions, including willingness “to accept Israel’s annexation of all but one of its settlements built illegally in occupied East Jerusalem.” They also “show how the Palestinians offered concessions on” Haram.

They could not be independently verified and the chief Palestinian negotiator has dismissed them as a ‘pack of lies.’

The last refuge of a scoundrel caught red-handed is lying about it, revealing even greater treachery.

On January 23, London Guardian writers, Seumas Milne and Ian Black, headlined, “Secret papers reveal slow death of Middle East peace process,” saying:

Offered concessions sent “shockwaves (across Occupied Palestine and) the wider Arab world.” Revelations include:

– unprecedented “confidential concessions,” including on some of the most sensitive issues;

– Israeli leaders asking “some Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state;”

– intimate “covert cooperation between Israeli security forces and the” PA;

– British intelligence’s “central role (in) drawing up a secret plan to crush Hamas…;”

– how PA “leaders were privately tipped off about” Cast Lead, showing their complicity and willingness to go along; as well as much more.

Most revealing is “the weakness and growing desperation of PA leaders (to) reach agreement or even halt (settlement construction) temporarily,” undermining “their credibility in relation to their Hamas rivals.” In addition, Israeli negotiators showed “unyielding confidence,” and US politicians “dismissive(ness) towards Palestinian representatives,’ mere pawns to manipulate freely.

After the revelations, former Palestinian negotiator, Diana Butto, demanded Erekat resign, saying he “must step down and if he doesn’t it will only serve to show just how out of touch and unrepresentative the negotiators are.”

On January 23, New York Times writers, Ethan Bronner and Neil MacFarquhar, headlined, “Word of Palestinian Concession in 2008 Roils Mideast Debate,” saying:

New details emerged as Washington “is facing unusual pressure from its Arab and European allies, and even some former top American officials, not to veto a draft Security Council resolution reaffirming the longstanding international view” that Israeli settlements are illegal.

Of course, it’s far more than a “view.” Fundamental international laws affirm it, including Fourth Geneva prohibiting an occupying power from transferring its own population into territories it controls or changing their demographic makeup. Moreover, on March 22, 1979, UN Security Council Resolution 446 determined:

that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

At the time, Washington abstained. Now it obstructs by vetoing anything detrimental to Israel. According to Maged Abdelaziz, Egypt’s UN ambassador:

The statements by the secretary of state and the American administration are that ‘We are against settlements and we are not going to do anything about (them) and we don’t want you to do anything about (them). We will let Israel do what they want. We will wake up one day to find that the two-state solution has become a dream that is unachievable.

That day, in fact, long since passed, given how untenable division is after Israel expropriated all choice land and plans total Jerusalem Judaization, one home demolition and stolen dunam at a time.

On January 23, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said “The US government is reviewing the alleged Palestinian documents released by Al-Jazeera. We cannot vouch for their veracity.” Later he added that Washington “remains focused on a two-state solution and will continue to work with the parties to narrow existing differences on core issues.”

So far, Obama and Netanyahu said nothing, and on January 24, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal was silent.

In contrast, Financial Times contributor Nadia Hijab headlined, “Leaks will cripple Palestinian authority,” saying:

“It is likely to deal a death blow to an American-led peace process already on life support, and hasten the end of the” Oslo-created PA. Al Jazeera’s revelations confirm what’s been “clear to Palestinians for decades: their leadership” has conceded virtually all their rights, getting nothing back in return. Ahead are “two plausible options,” likely neither of which will be taken:

– dissolving the PA, uniting all factions (including Hamas), and refocusing on liberation, the only viable goal; or

– “continu(ing) down the road of hoping” pressure will get Israel to yield what it never did before.

Because of PA treachery, it looks “increasingly (like) a hollow shell, that may soon be blown away. The winds are coming from Tunisia. Palestine may be next.”

A Final Comment

Haaretz writer, Akiva Eldar, said Al Jazeera’s bombshell “trump(ed) WikiLeaks.” Perhaps so if duplicitous peace talks end, exposed Israeli/US perfidy weaken their influence internationally, PA credibility crumbles, then self-destructs, inspiring Palestinians to unite under viable leaders, choosing liberation as their goal.

Achieving those objectives won’t come easily or soon, but what’s more important than seizing a rare opportunity for change. Tunisian winds are spreading regionally. Thousands are demonstrating in Tunis, other Tunisian cities, Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, and may erupt anywhere from Morocco to Egypt to Occupied Palestine.

Sustained grassroots anger brings change, and what better reasons than poverty, unemployment, repression, occupation, and suffocating conditions under siege. Maybe exposed PA treachery created a rare chance seldom possible. Now’s the time to seize it.

The UK-based Stop the War Coalition called the attack “Yet another act of Israeli barbarism.” Global protests erupted. Haaretz columnist, Gideon Levy, cited Israel’s “propaganda machine….reach(ing) new highs (in distributing) false information….embarrass(ing) itself by entering a futile public relations battle,” filled with malicious fiction and deceit.

What happened was clear. IDF commandos planned and executed a premeditated attack against unarmed, nonviolent humanitarian activists, trying to break Israel’s illegal blockade to deliver essential aid. Cold-blooded murder resulted. The entire world knows it except Israeli government and military officials, as well as its self-appointed Turkel Commission, established to whitewash, not reveal, facts.

Two earlier articles here and here discussed it.

Commission members included:

– two voting members: former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Jacob Turkel (its head) and Amos Horev, a retired major general; and

– two non-voting observers: (1) close Israeli ally David Trimble, a Northern Ireland unionist allied with death squads during “The Troubles;” and (2) retired Canadian General Ken Warkin, involved in the coverup of the Canadian Airborne Regiment Battle Group’s early 1990s Somalia atrocities.

Like similar Israeli and Washington commissions, it was established for coverup and denial. As a result, it unanimously endorsed bald-faced lies, distortions, omissions, false conclusions, and exoneration of cold-blooded murder, as ordered by top Israeli government and military officials who’ll get off as usual scot-free. The outcome was preordained as was Israel’s Cast Lead whitewash.

On August 9, it began hearings. On January 23, Haaretz writer, Barak Ravid, headlined, “Israel’s Gaza flotilla probe: IDF soldiers acted in self-defense,” saying:

In the first part of its report, the Turkel Commission absolved Israeli commandos of criminality. It “also determined that Israel’s (illegal siege) does not break international law….(and) there were clear indications that the flotilla intended to break the naval blockade….By clearly resisting capture, the Mavi Marmara had become a military objective,” despite on board activists offering no resistance. Saying so was a lie.

Moreover, the Commission “determined that Israel had been in compliance with (its unilaterally imposed) conditions for such a blockade,” a clear oxymoron. It also suggested Israel “examine the medical needs of the people of Gaza in order to find ways to improve the current situation….focus(ing) its sanctions on Hamas while avoiding harm against the civilian population.”

Omitted was admitting the siege’s illegality or that Hamas is Palestine’s legitimate government, obligated to serve, protect and defend its people. Sanctioning it for doing its job is criminal and inhumane.

In several months, the report’s part two will be out, discussing Israel’s procedures for investigating its international law violations, as well as the government’s decision-making process ordering the assault.

Last September 22, the UN Human Rights Council’s (HRC) fact-finding mission held Israel entirely culpable, calling its assault brutal and disproportionate as discussed in an earlier article.

Based on eye witness testimonies, forensic evidence, video footage, and other photographic material, it:

concluded that a series of violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, were committed by the Israeli forces during the interception of the flotilla and during the detention of passengers in Israel prior to deportation….The preponderance of evidence from impeccable sources is far too overwhelming to come to a contrary opinion.

Israel’s justification on “security grounds” was called entirely baseless. Moreover, prosecuting Israeli criminals is warranted and essential under Fourth Geneva’s Article 147, covering:

– willful killing;

– torture or inhuman treatment; and

– willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.

HRC commission members included:

– Desmond de Silva, a UK lawyer and former chief prosecutor for the Sierre Leone Special Court investigation into widespread killings there;

– Karl Hudson-Phillips, a former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge and former Trinidad and Tobago attorney general and parliament member; and,

– Malaysia’s Mary Shanthi Dairiam, active in gender equality issues, including on the UN Development Program’s gender equity task force.

In an emergency session ahead of its investigation, the HRC criticized Israel’s “outrageous attack on aid ships attempting to breach a blockade on the Gaza Strip,” calling it “piracy, (an) act of aggression, (a) brutal massacre, (an) act of terrorism, (a) war crime, (a) crime against humanity – unprovoked, unwarranted, atrocious, (and) brutal.” It described activists onboard as “peaceful, innocent, noble, unarmed, (and) defenseless, setting a hopeful tone for a Goldstone Commission-like investigation and conclusions.”

Following its own investigation, Turkey’s report (like the HRC mission) held Israel entirely culpable, accurately concluding what actually happened, not Israel’s web of lies and coverup, its speciality.

A Final Comment

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected Israel’s findings, saying they have “no value or credibility.” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said it was “appalled and dismayed.”

As expected, New York Times writer, Isabel Kershner’s, article leaned heavily toward Israel, headlining, “Israeli Panel Rules Flotilla Raid Legal,” saying:

Israeli officials expressed hopes that the (panel’s) conclusions….would vindicate Israel and win it at least some foreign support, quoting Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev saying “the findings….are clear: Israel acted in justifiable self defense. Our soldiers acted to protect themselves and to protect their country.

Video footage, said Kershner, “showed Israeli naval commandoes being set upon as they rappelled from helicopters onto the ship’s deck. Some soldiers had their equipment seized, and the commission found that two were shot during the melee, but it said it was unable to determine whether (Turkish) activists brought their own firearms on board.”

False on all counts. What, in fact, happened was opposite of what Kershner reported. No one on board had arms. Israeli commandos killed activists before coming aboard, then with photos of ones targeted, they shot them at point blank range.

Viva Palestina’s, Kevin Ovenden, on board the Mavi Marmara, responded saying:

The claim by Israel’s Turkel Commission that Israeli forces acted legally when they killed nine people (and) left another brain dead, will be laughed out of court by all but the Israeli government and its most fanatical supporters.

This whitewash commission was set up by the Netanyahu government, the same people who commissioned the assault on the aid ship….Israel has refused (to cooperate with an) independent international inquiry and instead was brazen enough to establish this farce. No Turkish official, lawyer or representative was allowed to take part,” even though its citizens were killed….However hard the Israeli Government attempts to rewrite history, they can’t rewrite the truth.

Israel committed premeditated slaughter in international waters, murdering unarmed activists in cold blood, trying to deliver humanitarian aid.

Dealing only with Israel’s blockade, the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement said:

No Commission of inquiry can authorize collective punishment of a civilian population by restricting its movement and access, as did Israel.

We disagree with the Commission’s conclusion that the restrictions were justified for military or ‘strategic’ reasons.

It’s unjustifiable to claim preventing “the transfer into Gaza of industrial margarine, paper, and coriander (among other non-military staples) contributed to a legitimate military goal.”

Gisha rightfully calls Israel’s closure policy “illegal” under international law. It was established illegitimately to weaken Hamas, as well as punish and strangle Gaza’s economy, not protect security as claimed. Murdering unarmed, nonviolent humanitarian activists trying to deliver essential aid compounds Israel’s culpability. Ongoing without letup or accountability, Turkel’s whitewash commission absolved it.

Since forcibly abducted, “the people of Haiti have never stopped calling for my return….Despite the enormous (post-quake) challenges that they face….their determination to make the return happen has increased.”

“As far as I am concerned, I am ready….today, tomorrow, at any time. The purpose is very clear: To contribute to serving my Haitian sisters and brothers as a simple citizen in the field of education.”

Returning is also vital “for medical reasons: It is strongly recommended that I not spend the coming winter in South Africa because in 6 years I have undergone 6 eye surgeries. The surgeons are excellent and very well skilled, but the unbearable pain experienced in the winter must be avoided in order to reduce any risk of further complications and blindness.”

Aristide is ready to come any time, and hopes Haitian and South African officials let him. Of course, Washington controls all Haitian affairs. The Bush administration ousted him in 2004, militarily occupied the country with proxy Blue Helmet paramilitaries, banished him abroad, and thus far Obama won’t let him back. One word from him changes everything. So far it’s not forthcoming.

He’s been treated maliciously, victimized by Washington’s intolerance to democracy, abroad and at home. It’s time public outrage demanded better, including in Haiti, the region’s poorest, most oppressed nation, the rights of their people entirely denied, including having their beloved leader back home with them.

New York Times Coverage of Haiti under Aristide

After Washington’s February 29, 2004 middle-of-the-night coup ousted him, a Times March 1 editorial lied, saying:

– he resigned;

– letting marines abduct him “was the right thing to do;”

– they only came after “Mr. Aristide yielded power;”

– he “contributed significantly to his own downfall (because of his) increasingly autocratic and lawless rule;” and

– he manipulated the 2000 legislative elections and didn’t “deliver the democracy he promised.”

Malaciously false on all counts. Under Aristide, Haiti had its only freedom since successfully liberated in 1804, turning slaves into citizens for the first time.

On January 19, Times writer Ginger Thompson headlined, “Aristide Says He Is Ready to Return to Haiti, Too,” saying:

Days after Duvalier’s return, he “issued a statement on Wednesday that fueled rumors that he, too, was angling to return.”

“Angling?” He explained clearly why, and as a Haitian citizen, he’s entitled under international law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, giving everyone the right to leave and return to their countries.

Unwittingly in part, Thompson exposed the malicious Times 2004 editorial claiming he resigned and yielded power, saying he “was ousted in 2004 in the midst of growing unrest and under intense pressure from the United States.”

In fact, Washington instigated unrest and “pressure(d)” Aristide at gunpoint by trained marine killers.

Aristide’s statement, said Thompson, “threatened to fuel tensions already stirred by” Duvalier’s return. Of course, one event has nothing to do with another, except to explain that if a former despot comes freely, letting a beloved democrat is imperative.

She also said as President, Aristide “became notorious for his violent crackdowns of political dissent” when, if fact, he did nothing of the kind. Flippantly, she claimed he’s “been hopscotching across Central America and the Caribbean in anticipation of making his own surprise re-entry.”

In fact, in March 2004, he returned briefly to Jamaica. Activist lawyer and TransAfrica founder, Randall Robinson, accompanied him, telling Democracy Now on March 25:

I have learned from a White House source that Condoleezza Rice has pointedly threatened the Jamaican government, telling it to expel President Aristide or face the consequences. The (Bush) administration wants (him) out of the region. (It) views his mere presence in Jamaica as a threat to their (hegemonic) control along with the thugs and the installed (Haitian) government.

Aristide arrived in Jamaica on March 14, 2004. On March 25, the Jamaican government said he’d take “permanent asylum” in South Africa after its April 14 elections. He’s been there since, “hopscotch(ing)” nowhere.

Further, Thompson claimed he has no valid Haitian passport, saying the Preval government won’t issue him one so he can’t return, despite knowing (or should know) that citizens don’t need passports to their own countries.

At issue is one unnamed analyst’s opinion, saying:

Aristide could have 15 passports and he’s still not going to come back to Haiti (because) France and the United States are standing in the way.

In fact, Washington has full control as colonial occupier, denying Haitians all rights, including sovereignty, democratic elections with all legitimate parties participating, and the right of their beloved leader to return in any capacity. He only wishes to as a private citizen for health reasons and to provide whatever help he can. No longer should he be denied.

Let Aristide return!