Dr. Thorsten Pattberg - Diary of a Mad Imperialist: Why Countries Stay in Abusive Relationships

About 111 years ago, the German emperor Wilhelm II. farewelled the East-Asian Expedition Corps from Bremen's harbor to China in order to beat down China's resistance to European imperialism. His orders were unequivocal: bring civilization to China, show no mercy to reactionaries, and teach China a memorable lesson so that no Chinaman will ever dare to look askant at one of us. Things of course have changed since then.

Airplanes have been invented. Germany's Federal Minister of Education and Research and her delegation of top officials once again landed in Shanghai. China's Pearl River Delta's megalopolis is more populous than Germany's capital Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and the next ten biggest German cities combined. It's awesome.

The Federal Minister certainly prefers Beijing, China's capital and the center of politics and educational policy. Yet, most of the schaffenden Germans, those who actually produce material value since bilateral trade agreements began in 1979, have traditionally settled in Shanghai and farther down in the industrial south, Shenzhen and Guangdong, China's manufacturing bases. Over 5300 German companies are active in China, and 8000 German administrators are stationed in Shanghai alone.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29653

Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay - The Corrupt Influence of Money in the American Political System

" I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I’ve made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests." U.S. President Barack Obama, Sunday, March 5, 2012, speech to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)

“There are about 50 countries in the world that have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon if they chose to do so, making Iran far from unique but for its persistence as a thorn in the side of Israel and Israel’s powerful lobby in the United States.” Philip Giraldi, Council for the National Interest

"The truth is there are very few members [of the U.S. Congress] who I could even name or could think of who didn't at some level participate in that [system of bribery and corruption in Washington D.C.]." Jack Abramoff, professional lobbyist and onetime power broker for the elite of Washington, D.C. (during a CBS's 60 Minutes interview, Sunday November 6, 2011)

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29655

Robert Scheer - Dennis Kucinich: Conscience of the Congress

“Dennis will be back, you can count on it; he’s on the right side of things.” I recall those words from a printer in Cleveland who had rented Dennis Kucinich a room in the back of her plant when that city’s former “boy mayor” was living in suddenly reduced circumstances. He was as sanguine then as he was Tuesday night when I spoke with him by phone about his gerrymandered eviction from the U.S. House of Representatives. Although he had just lost the position he has held for eight terms, by the end of our conversation he was optimistic and promised to continue the fight: “I am not about to abandon what I stand for.”

Most of the newly drawn district was made up of the Toledo home base of the fellow Democrat who defeated Kucinich in Tuesday’s primary, Rep. Marcy Kaptur, his more conservative colleague in Ohio’s congressional delegation. What remained of his Cleveland base, which he carried by 75 percent, was not sufficient to stave off the defeat the Republican-controlled state Legislature had intended when it drew the new boundaries in response to Ohio’s loss of two House seats. Kucinich knew it would be a tough primary fight, especially in the face of unexpected attack ads from his former friend in Congress.

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/dennis_kucinich_conscience_of_the_congress_20120308/

Robert Koehler - PTSD: A Cancer of the Spirit

Can we squeeze the glory out of the word “war”? Can we talk about savage irrationality and lifelong inner hell instead? Can we talk about the wreckage of two countries?

Can we talk about spiritual cancer?

In the extraordinary documentary On the Bridge — an unstinting look at the reality of war and the terror of PTSD, directed by Olivier Morel — each of the six Iraq vets who opens his or her heart in the course of the film has a moment of deep, almost unbearable silence at the end, staring into the camera and through the camera at the viewer . . . and at the nation they are committed to waking up. In that silence, those are the questions that begin to emerge.

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/08

Marge Baker - The War on Women in the Courts

In 2007, five men on the Supreme Court told Lilly Ledbetter that she was out of luck. Ledbetter, after two decades working as the only female supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama, had sued her employer for wage discrimination–she had discovered that for all those years she had been paid less than male colleagues doing the same job. But the Supreme Court told her that the way they did the math it was too late for her to sue.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at that time the only woman on the Supreme Court, took the unusual step of reading her dissenting opinion from the bench, accusing the five-Justice majority of not understanding the reality of Ledbetter’s situation. She declared, “In our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.”

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http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2012/03/07/the-war-on-women-in-the-courts/

Laurie Penny - That's enough politeness – women need to rise up in anger

To get into the UN Commission on the Status of Women, you have to get past several ranks of large armed men. In the foyer, you can buy UN women-themed hats and tote bags, and pick up glossy pamphlets about this year's International Women's Day, but what you can't pick up is the slightest sense of urgency. In the 101 years since the first International Women's Day, all the passionate politics seems to have been leached out of the women's movement.

International Women's Day began as a day of rebellion and outlandish demands – Equal pay! Votes for women! Reproductive rights! – but 101 years later, judging by the invitations in my email inbox, it seems to be more about jazzy corporate lunches, poetry competitions and praising our valued sponsors. At the UN, in a session on body image and the media, delegates (who are meeting this week) applauded politely as a promotional anti-airbrushing video by Dove cosmetics was shown. Cabinet Minister Lynne Featherstone gave a speech in which she condemned the "distorted image of beauty" offered by cosmetics advertisers, and lauded the efforts Dove has apparently made to change this while selling body lotion at £7.49 a tube.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/laurie-penny-thats-enough-politeness--women-need-to-rise-up-in-anger-7544480.html

The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom

A profile of billionaire natural gas tycoon, Aubrey McClendon, by Rolling Stone's Jeff Goodell is out today and it paints a frightening, if not complex, picture of one of the men profiting most from the nation's insatiable appetite for fossil fuels.

Speaking to Goodell over a $100 glass of Bordeaux, McClendon, who is CEO of and co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, challenges the objections to the gas extraction practice known as 'fracking' in which huge amounts of pressurized water and chemicals are pumped down deep into shale formations in the earth to unlock trapped natural gas, forcing it to the surface.  "Where is the mushroom cloud?" McClendon asks. "Where are the dogs with one leg? Where are the people that have been maimed or hurt?"

He is referring to environmentalists and homeowners who claim that fracking is inherently dangerous and underregulated and that is leads to contamination of drinking water supplies and creates enormous amounts of surface waste in and around the communities where drilling operations exist.  If he really wanted to know where the damage was occuring, he might start with Josh Fox's documentary, GasLand, which has served as a rallying cry for anti-fracking activists.

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/01-3

Bo Cutter - The Coming Economic Growth Collapse

We are about to see an abrupt slowdown in economic growth this year and next. It will be a policy-induced slowdown, not some mysterious event caused by aliens. We have delayed obvious policy actions for so long now that a slowdown is virtually inevitable. There is absolutely no room — or inclination, so far as I can see — for a compromise between the two parties that might conceivably change this outcome. We have pushed more and more major decisions into the post-election lame duck congressional session, making a policy “accident” (and there are no good accidents) more and more likely. This slowdown, which will begin in the second half of 2012 and extend through 2013, could happen rapidly enough to influence the 2012 presidential election. And it certainly won’t help President Obama.

The story begins with a still fragile and low-level economic recovery. President Obama’s budget projects 2.7 percent growth for 2012 and 3 percent for 2013. These are very low growth numbers after a recession as major as the one we just lived through. But I’ve always thought they were too high. As a comparison, the CBO, a public source of economic forecasts, and Merrill Lynch, a private source, are each projecting much lower growth. For example, in its most recent weekly research report, Merrill projects growth of 2 percent this year and 1.4 percent in 2013. The CBO is even lower. So our base economic picture is one of very low growth.

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http://www.newdeal20.org/2012/03/01/the-coming-economic-growth-collapse-73253/?utm_source=New+Deal+2.0+newsletter&utm_campaign=0b27fa080a-ND20_Weekly_3_1_123_1_2012&utm_medium=email

NASA Finds Sea Ice Driving Arctic Air Pollutants

Drastic reductions in Arctic sea ice in the last decade may be intensifying the chemical release of bromine into the atmosphere, resulting in ground-level ozone depletion and the deposit of toxic mercury in the Arctic, according to a new NASA-led study.

The connection between changes in the Arctic Ocean's ice cover and bromine chemical processes is determined by the interaction between the salt in sea ice, frigid temperatures and sunlight. When these mix, the salty ice releases bromine into the air and starts a cascade of chemical reactions called a "bromine explosion."

These reactions rapidly create more molecules of bromine monoxide in the atmosphere. Bromine then reacts with a gaseous form of mercury, turning it into a pollutant that falls to Earth's surface.

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http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Finds_Sea_Ice_Driving_Arctic_Air_Pollutants_999.html

John Buell - The Science and Ethics of Austerity: Lessons from the US and Europe

Around the world, corporate media and even substantial segments of the working class have embraced an old religious creed, the celebration of austerity. Its cold bath is supposed to rid us of our sins. Its tenets stand in contrast to the academic wisdom of post World War II generation and to many of the metrics commonly accepted across the political spectrum. We cannot understand the power of this reborn orthodoxy without addressing its complex roots. Several historical narratives converge. They reflect and sustain compelling social and personal identities. These seem especially comforting amidst cultural and economic turmoil. Nonetheless, if this austerity is not effectively challenged, it may unleash forces as destructive as those of the thirties. And stopping austerity will also require critical scrutiny of much of the liberal and neo-Keynesian critiques that thus far constitute the only serious systemic response to austerity’s lure

The story of the new austerity is truly intercontinental and transhistorical. Its most recent vintage begins with a crisis narrative: The Eurozone stands on the brink of collapse because devious or shortsighted European politicians overspent and now are unwilling to curb excess government spending. Greece is the most flagrant example.

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/01-9