by Stephen Lendman

For years, Helen Caldicott warned it's coming. In her 1978 book, "Nuclear Madness," she said:

"As a physician, I contend that nuclear technology threatens life on our planet with extinction. If present trends continue, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink will soon be contaminated with enough radioactive pollutants to pose a potential health hazard far greater than any plague humanity has ever experienced."

More below on the inevitable dangers from commercial nuclear power proliferation, besides added military ones.

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Jack A. Smith

Republican politicians in Washington and the nation's state houses are virtually wilding in the streets. It's as though they are drunk with power, even though the Democrats actually are stronger by virtue of controlling the White House and Senate.

The actions by Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker to crush the public unions in the name of closing the budget deficit — after first gifting state businesses with tax breaks and programs amounting to $117 million — are just the leading edge of a broad national assault on worker rights, union rights, women's rights, abortion rights, minority rights, and civil liberties.

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Gilad Atzmon

“Even the Israelis in Gaza, when they moved into the Gaza Strip, they moved in with tanks to fight such extremists. It's the same thing here” Muammar Gaddafi (France 24)

In the last few days the UN have paved the way for a no-fly zone in Libya.

David Cameron and Barack Obama have also agreed to draw up "the full spectrum" of military responses to the crisis in Libya.

British PM David Cameron outlined his conversation with Obama, saying "We have got to prepare for what we might have to do if he [Gaddafi] goes on brutalising his own people…”

I find myself overwhelmed by Cameron's humanist stand -- it seems he really cares about the Libyan people.

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Larry Pinkney

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” -James Baldwin

“Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.” -Ralph Ellison

In the U.S. political system, liberals and liberalism have always served to perniciously stymie people’s movements for real systemic change.

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Bahrain Freedom Movement

The people’s revolution is on its track; calling for the removal of the regime and performing various activities on the road to victory. In the past week several remarkable activities were undertaken with sounding success. First came the picketing of the financial harbor owned by the regime’s prime minister, Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa. It was conducted at night when hundreds of protesters moved from their base at the Pearl Square and took position near the main financial center. Then came the massive demonstration and picketing of the main torture headquarters at Bahrain’s Fort where a human wave flooded to highlight the role that place had been playing in torturing Bahrainis over the years. It stands as a reminder of the most brutal periods of the Al Khalifa reign of terror. The revolutionaries then organized another qualitative demonstration outside the main TV station which is the mouthpiece of the repressive Al Khalifa regime. In addition to these there have been massive demonstrations nearer to the Pearl Square where hundreds of thousands took part chanting anti regime slogans and calling form a regime change. Today, one of the demonstrations was held outside the government offices in Qudhaibiya where participants called for the downfall of the regime.

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By Nicola Nasser*

When allowed to turn freely, the metaphoric Palestinian compass points in one direction -- that of Palestinian struggle. But most of the time, someone is interfering with this compass, rigging it to other directions, as in the case of the continually failing peace process.

Now, with much of the Arab world up in arms against its autocratic rulers, the Palestinian compass is given another nudge, also in the wrong direction. The Palestinian public is seething, and yet Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) officials are telling us that the only way forward is through more negotiations. The "peace process", we're told, is the only thing worth saving from the current sea of Arab discontent.

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By Robert Singer

Click here to read why “this article is not currently available” at OpEdNews.

October 13, 2008

An Amero For Your Thoughts

The dollar has been poised to collapse since 1980. Turns out Iraq had no nuclear weapons but, by rejecting the dollar in favor of the euro, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela now have weapons of Financial Mass Destruction to use against the U.S. By converting most of their currency reserves to Euros they threaten our ability to export our debt.

So, we're hearing "it's time to go in a new direction."- What new direction?

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Joel S. Hirschhorn

I can explain why so many Americans are angry about President Obama and dislike or hate him with passion, and why it has little to do with his actions and policies. But first I must examine the confluence of two historical inflection points that explains so much resentment and opposition to Obama.

The first is the increasingly recognized but painful reality that in almost all respects that matter to citizens the USA is no longer the great nation it once was. As a recent Time magazine issue proclaimed, especially a great essay by Fareed Zakaria, the US is in decline, similar to what happened to other once dominant nations. The Great Recession and the huge numbers of unemployed, underemployed, foreclosed, homeless, hungry and other pained citizens have drilled into the public consciousness that America is like a terminally ill cancer victim. There is little realistic hope for truly better times. For example, new research data show that upward mobility in the US is now worse than in a number of other industrialized countries, such as France. The American Dream, in other words, is dead. The game is lost.

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Ian Fletcher

Protectionism is frequently tarred as a backward-looking policy which merely preserves yesterday’s jobs at the expense of tomorrow’s.  This is a snappy-sounding canard, but it has nothing to do with the contemporary critique of free trade.  It does, however, have something to do with some of the cruder protectionist impulses that have sometimes surfaced in the past. As a result, it’s worth distinguishing between forward-looking protectionism (the good kind) and backward-looking protectionism (the bad kind.)

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by Dan Lieberman

Fidel Castro and Muammar Al Gaddafi have distinction of being the two world leaders whose non-royal governments survived the longest. Their continual presence testifies to the inadequacy of United States foreign policy – years of economic sanctions, military attacks, intensive propaganda and threats did not displace the two most outspoken critics of U.S. actions – only Castro’s illness and the effects on Gaddafi by the domino rebellions in North Africa have separated these leaders from their people.

U.S. policies during the years strengthened its antagonists and shaped them into massive figures. By not responding with their own deeds to offset Gaddafi’ promises to help the oppressed and replace the oligarchic Arab regimes, western nations displayed a callousness and hypocrisy that energized his initiatives. More significant than how fast Gaddafi fell from grace is how long he stayed in power. Attacks on Gaddafi and the Libyan people enabled the leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to rationalize repression and convince his people of threats to their nation’s sovereignty and that only he could protect them.

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