"Paul Craig Roberts" - World War III Scenario? The War on Libya, the US- NATO Agenda and the Next Great War

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, April 4, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24146

In the 1930s the US, Great Britain, and the Netherlands set a course for World War II in the Pacific by conspiring against Japan. The three governments seized Japan’s bank accounts in their countries that Japan used to pay for imports and cut Japan off from oil, rubber, tin, iron and other vital materials. Was Pearl Harbor, Japan’s response?

Now Washington and its NATO puppets are employing the same strategy against China.

Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen arose from the people protesting against Washington’s tyrannical puppet governments. However, the protests against Gaddafi, who is not a Western puppet, appear to have been organized by the CIA in the eastern part of Libya where the oil is and where China has substantial energy investments.

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"Mike Whitney" - Class Warfare Scorecard

By MIKE WHITNEY

http://counterpunch.org/whitney04042011.html

According to a new report by the BEA, personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased by $69 billion (7 percent), while personal income rose by only $38 billion (3 percent) in February.

So consumers are back to their old ways again, spending more than they earn?

Well, not exactly. The truth is, consumer spending is slowing down because food and energy are taking a bigger chunk out of the old paycheck. After factoring in inflation, personal consumption is up just 3 percent while real income fell to 1 percent. In other words, the numbers look a lot different once you factor in inflation.

The reason all this matters, is because consumption is 70 percent of GDP, so if the consumer is on the ropes and getting pummeled by stagnant wages and inflation at the same time, then you can bet the economy is headed for the dumpster. Of course, a good portion of the blame for this mess goes to Ben Bernanke whose miracle QE2 elixir has kept the stock market bubbly while commodities and food prices have skyrocketed. That's the real source of the problem, an uneven policy that rewards the investment class while leaving the workerbees (you and me) fending off soaring prices.

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"Nancy Abrams & Joel Promack" - THE NEW UNIVERSE AND THE HUMAN FUTURE: HOW A SHARED COSMOLOGY COULD TRANSFORM THE WORLD

March 28, 2011

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/cosmic-wonder-human-opportunity

by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack
Yale Press, 2011

This book is in every sense of the word, a prophetic book. Its message ranks right up there with those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Joel. Like the prophets, it is at times poetic, demanding, grounded, soaring, empowering, and always awe-inspiring.

Rabbi Heschel says the essence of the prophet’s work is to interfere, and Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams are doing nothing if they are not interfering. They are interfering with apathy, couch-potato-itis, anthropocentrism, and despair by inspiring us with the newly found reasons we have for waking up, getting involved, and resisting dumb media, amoral education, and frozen religious ideologies. They inspire us to do what prophets do: give birth to justice from a newly born heart, a newly born consciousness. And to shout the dangerous paths, the ways of folly, we are on. This book does all that and more.

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"Kristen Breitweiser" - The Sad Defeat of Our Constitution

Published on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 by The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-breitweiser/military-commission-9-11-_b_844661.html

by Kristen Breitweiser

Today I was given two hours of "advance notice" regarding DOJ's decision to not prosecute the remaining alleged 9/11 conspirators in an open court of law. According to DOJ's statement, the remaining individuals will be sent to military tribunals.

I recognize that there are many, many other things for Americans to be upset with today, but I hope everyone can take a second to contemplate this decision and recognize what it says about President Obama, the Department of Justice, and the United States.

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“Susan Lindauer” - Whistleblower: Libya "Vampire War" is About Oil, Lockerbie and CIA Heroin Op

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Libya-s-Blood-for-Oil-The-by-Susan-Lindauer-110327-21.html

By Susan Lindauer, former U.S. Asset who covered Libya at the United Nations from 1995 to 2003

Who are we kidding? The United States, Britain and NATO don't care about bombing civilians to contain rebellion. Their militaries bomb civilians every day without mercy. They have destroyed most of the community infrastructure of Iraq and Afghanistan before turning their sights on Libya. So what's really going on here?

According to the CIA, the following never happened"

Last October, US oil giants-- Chevron and Occidental Petroleum-- made a surprising decision to pull out of Libya, while China, Germany and Italy stayed on, signing major contracts with Gadhaffi's government.  As the U.S. Asset who started negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial with Libyan diplomats, I had close ties to Libya's U.N. Mission from 1995 to 2003. Given my long involvement in the Lockerbie saga, I have continued to enjoy special access to high level intelligence gossip on Libya.

Last summer that gossip got juicy!

About July, I started hearing that Gadhaffi was exerting heavy pressure on U.S. and British oil companies to cough up special fees and kick backs to cover the costs of Libya's reimbursement to the families of Pan Am 103. Payment of damages for the Lockerbie bombing had been one of the chief conditions for ending U.N. sanctions on Libya that ran from 1992 until 2003. And of course the United Nations forced Gadhaffi to hand over two Libyan men for a special trial at The Hague, though everybody credible was fully conscious of Libya's innocence in the Lockerbie affair. (Only ignorant politicians trying to score publicity points say otherwise.)

Knowing Gadhaffi as well as I do, I was convinced that he'd done it. He'd bided his time until he could extort compensation from U.S. oil companies. He's a crafty leader, extremely intelligent and canny. That's exactly how he operates. And now he was taking his revenge. As expected, the U.S. was hopping mad about it. Gadhaffi wasn't playing the game the way the Oil Bloodsuckers wanted. The Vampire of our age--the Oil Industry--roams the earth, sucking the life out of every nation to feed its thirst for profits. Only when they got to Libya, Gadhaffi took on the role of a modern-day Robin Hood, who insisted on replenishing his people for the costs they'd suffered under U.N. sanctions.

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"Thom Hartmann" - Is the Demise of the Tea Party Near?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Is-the-Demise-of-the-Tea-P-by-Thom-Hartmann-110404-87.html

By Thom Hartmann

Is the demise of the Tea Party near?  

According to a new CNN poll -- the Tea Party's favorability rating has sunk to an all-time low -- just 32%.  And 47% of respondents view Tea Partiers negatively.  The poll is on the heels of nearly three months of Tea Party rule in the House of Representatives that's seen nothing accomplished on jobs or getting our economy moving again.  And this week -- there are reports that Tea Party Republicans are threatening to shut the government down unless they get everything they want in budget negotiations. 

Maybe people are finally starting to see the Tea Party for what it really is -- a large group of politically naïve white voters who are being manipulated to vote against their best interests by radical millionaires and billionaires like the Koch brothers and Dick Armey.

Thom Hartmann talks about the TRUE Story of the Tea Party here!

http://www.thomhartmann.com/bigpicture/thom-hartmann-must-see-true-story-tea-party

“Chris Hedges” - This Is What Resistance Looks Like

http://www.opednews.com/articles/This-Is-What-Resistance-Lo-by-Chris-Hedges-110404-772.html

 By Chris Hedges

The phrase consent of the governed has been turned into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. Civil disobedience is the only tool we have left.

We will not halt the laying off of teachers and other public employees, the slashing of unemployment benefits, the closing of public libraries, the reduction of student loans, the foreclosures, the gutting of public education and early childhood programs or the dismantling of basic social services such as heating assistance for the elderly until we start to carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience against the financial institutions responsible for our debacle. The banks and Wall Street, which have erected the corporate state to serve their interests at our expense, caused the financial crisis. The bankers and their lobbyists crafted tax havens that account for up to $1 trillion in tax revenue lost every decade. They rewrote tax laws so the nation's most profitable corporations, including Bank of America, could avoid paying any federal taxes. They engaged in massive fraud and deception that wiped out an estimated $40 trillion in global wealth. The banks are the ones that should be made to pay for the financial collapse. Not us. And for this reason at 11 a.m. April 15 I will join protesters in Union Square in New York City in front of the Bank of America.

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“David Catanese” - Bellavia fails to qualify for N.Y. special election

David Catanese

April 01, 2011

http://www.politico.com/blogs/davidcatanese/0411/Bellavia_fails_to_qualify_for_NY_special_election.html

Iraq war veteran David Bellavia has failed to qualify for the ballot in the upcoming special election for a western New York congressional seat.

Bellavia, who mounted a petition drive after unsuccessfully seeking the GOP nomination, failed to secure the 3,500 signatures needed to run in the May 24 race, the New York Board of Elections said Friday.

Bellavia had sought out tea party support and insisted that Republican candidate Jane Corwin lacked conservative credentials.

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"Arab News"- Kingdom condemns Iranian statement

ARAB NEWS

April 1, 2011

http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article339622.ece

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has strongly condemned a statement issued by Iranian authorities that demanded Saudi Arabia to pull its forces out of Bahrain and describing the Saudi policy in the Gulf as playing with fire.

An official source of the Saudi government said, "It condemned in strong terms the irresponsible statement issued in the name of the Committee for National Security and Foreign Policy of the Council of Iranian Islamic Shoura which described the Saudi policy in the Gulf region as playing with fire and demanded the Kingdom to withdraw its forces from Bahrain," the Saudi Press agency reported on Friday.

"The statement (of the Iranian committee) ignores the premeditated interference in the internal matters of the countries in the region violating the sovereignty and independence of those countries. It also attempts to stoke sedition and incite trouble with hostile policies contravening international laws and norms and principles of good neighborliness. The latest instance of Iran's brazen interference was in Kuwait where it used a network, linked to the Iranian mission, to plot against that country," the Saudi statement said.

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“Anant Vijay & Mukesh Jagota” - India Exports Jump Nearly 50%

Anant Vijay Kala & Mukesh Jagota

April 1, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576235910758480104.html

NEW DELHI –India's merchandise exports surged almost 50% in February from a year earlier thanks to improving global demand while local manufacturing activity remained buoyant because of steady order inflows, helping douse worries that economic growth might slow.

Exports during the month stood at $23.5 billion, according to provisional data issued Friday by the Ministry of Commerce.

The ministry didn't give any reasons for the growth in exports.

For the April-February period, or the first 11 months of the just-ended fiscal year to March 31, exports were $208.2 billion, setting them on course to comfortably meet the government's upwardly revised projection of $225 billion for the last fiscal year.

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