Archive | March, 2011

Yesterday, for reasons of space and time, I didn’t say one word about the speech on the Libyan War given by Barack Obama on Monday the 28th. I had a copy of the official version, supplied to the press by the U.S. government. I had underlined some of the things that he asserted. I reviewed […]

  The West should not arm the Libyan opposition, says Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This video was released by Press TV on 30 March 2011.  Cf. “Moscow absolutely disagrees with statements by certain participants in the operation in Libya and their intentions to arm rebels who resisted Muammar Gaddafi’s troops” (“Russia, Austria Reveal Close […]

United Nations, Mar. 31 (Prensa Latina) — Former Nicaraguan foreign minister Miguel D’Escoto, now appointed as the representative of Libya to the UN, said Thursday that the United Nations has become a “lethal weapon of the Empire (United States).” “We have to get it back, because if it dies it will not be born again,” […]

Today the IAEA has finally confirmed what some analysts have suspected for days: that the concentration per area of long-lived cesium-137 (Cs-137) is extremely high as far as tens of kilometers from the release site at Fukushima Dai-Ichi, and in fact would trigger compulsory evacuation under IAEA guidelines. The IAEA is reporting that measured soil […]

Joshua Landis: Well, this [speech delivered by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on 30 March 2011] was a classic hard-line speech.  It was a nationalist speech.  It was an us-against-them speech.  And he rallied the nation.  And that’s what he sought to do.  He was fairly relaxed.  He made some jokes.  But he said this is […]

Today I had the pleasure of greeting Jimmy Carter, who was President of the United States between 1977 and 1981 and the only one, in my opinion, with enough equanimity and courage to address the issue of his country’s relations with Cuba. Carter did what he could to reduce international tensions and promote the creation […]

Millions of Syrians rallied all over Syria, pledging loyalty to the country, in support of Bashar al-Assad, on 29 March 2011.  The dialectic of the regime and the opposition in Syria, it is safe to say, is neither like Tunisia and Egypt, nor like Iraq and Libya.  Instead, it is more like what happened in […]

Testimony before the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, 29 March 2011 The Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant in Japan experienced a station blackout.  A station blackout occurs when a nuclear power plant loses electrical power from all sources except that provided by onsite banks of batteries.  The normal power supply comes from the plant’s […]

When the current economic crisis hit, the Obama campaign blew away Bush and McCain by promising hope, change, and a solution that would overcome this crisis and prevent future crises.  Likewise some governments in Europe came to power based on public fear reacting to the global meltdown.  Ongoing crisis, mass economic pain, and deepening public […]

  Against the strong will of Ohioans, the House Commerce and Labor Committee passed a version of Senate Bill 5 today that goes further in gutting the rights of workers and destroying the working middle class than the bill passed by the Senate. This blatant assault on working families, orchestrated by Gov. Kasich and his […]

The rebel leaders tipped their hand too early.  Now the whole of Libya, including the rebels, understand what they are: traitors dependent on invaders.  The rebels thus now lack motive force as well as military training: “Libyan Rebels Flee as Kadafi’s Forces Defend Surt” (Los Angeles Times, 29 March 2011).  The only way they can […]

The Case-Shiller 20-City index fell by 1.0 percent in January, the fourth consecutive month where it has fallen by at least 1.0 percent.  It is now down by 5.4 percent from its peak in July.  Nineteen of the 20 cities had a drop in prices.  The exception was again Washington, D.C. where prices edged up […]

  Long before it happened in Japan, regulators in the United States knew that a similar, days-long power failure, whatever the cause, could lead to a radioactive leak in this country. Alan Kolaczkowski, Nuclear Engineer: Looking at the blackout situations and losses of all power, we know that once those pumps finally die off — […]

Yes, “collaborators,” that’s the word, not “revolutionaries.”  Calling a spade a spade can at least get rectification started, though, pace the street-fighting intellectual, too late in the game. — Ed. The US-Nato intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one […]

You didn´t have to be clairvoyant to foresee what I wrote with great detail in three Reflection Articles I published on the CubaDebate website between February 21 and March 3: “The NATO Plan Is to Occupy Libya,” “The Cynical Danse Macabre,” and “NATO´s Inevitable War.” Not even the fascist leaders of Germany and Italy were […]

Nuclear power is unreliable for fighting global warming. Scandals, earthquakes and accidents can shut down numerous plants simultaneously. When one of these problems occurs, without sustainable alternative energy sources, fossil fuel plants must kick in, spiking greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s difficult to make any sense of the data being reported from various quarters regarding dose rates and contamination levels at varying distances from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could do a public service by establishing a consistent reporting framework so the public can assess whether radionuclide release rates […]

Bassam Haddad: The differences between Syria and Egypt and Tunisia are several.  This does not mean that things cannot spin out of control to produce the same effect.  But, structurally speaking, the Syrian society is far more heterogeneous and divided than either the Egyptian or the Tunisian society.  So the opposition is not cohesive.  There […]

A few weeks can do a lot to sweep away old assumptions.  Last year U.S. leftists were wondering why the worst economic crisis in 70 years hadn’t inspired a stronger response from its victims; now Arabs have toppled neoliberal regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and U.S. workers have fought cutbacks and union-busting in Wisconsin with […]

Bashar al-Assad, unlike other Arab heads of state, appears to have masses of supporters, who took to the streets on 24-26 March 2011, as shown in the videos below.  (Search YouTube for تأييد بشار الأسد, and you’ll find many more lovingly uploaded by his fans.)  However, “God, Syria, only Bashar” and “With our soul and […]