Deciphering the Doublespeak

“Help” – read “Saddle with huge debts as precursor to crippling austerity measures as a result of inevitable non-payment”
“Transform/stabilize/modernize the economic model” – read “Neoliberalise – open markets, remove import taxes, allow Western multinationals to eviscerate all public industries, deregulate prices, drive costs down, crush unions, lay off workers”
“Political development” – read “Funding of pro-US, pro-EU movements that will ensure a subservient government (just like the US State Department and its proxy NGO’s have been doing for years already)”
“We are on your side” – read “Economically, militarily and …

By James Corbett, 24 May, 2011.

This is James Corbett of corbettreport.com with the last word on Osama Bin Laden.
Osama Bin Laden was one of the 54 children of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a construction magnate who made his fortune by cozying up to the royal family of Saudi Arabia. The bin Laden family has had an intimate relationship with the upper reaches of global power politics for the past half a century.
In 1976 Salem bin Laden, Osama’s half-brother, co-founded Arbusto Energy with George W. Bush.
In …

By Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D. May 20, 2011.
China has officially put the United States on notice that Washington’s planned attack on Pakistan will be interpreted as an act of aggression against Beijing. This blunt warning represents the first known strategic ultimatum received by the United States in half a century, going back to Soviet warnings during the Berlin crisis of 1958-1961, and indicates the grave danger of general war growing out of the US-Pakistan confrontation.
“Any Attack on Pakistan Would be Construed as an Attack on China”
Responding to reports that China …

By Chris Hedges, via American Everyman.
The liberal class, which attempted last week to discredit the words my friend Cornel West spoke about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation. Its guiding ideological stance is determined by what is most expedient to the careers of its members. It refuses to challenge, in a meaningful way, the decaying structures of democracy or the ascendancy of the corporate state. It glosses over the relentless assault on working men and women and the imperial wars that …

By Maidhc Ó Cathail, May 20, 2011.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” When it comes to what’s been dubbed the “Arab Spring,” most Middle East analysts pass Fitzgerald’s test with flying colours.
Hardly anyone would dispute the claim that Haim Saban cares deeply about Israel. After all, the Egyptian-born Israeli-American media mogul has admitted to the New York …

By Chris Hedges, May 16, 2011, via American Everyman.
The moral philosopher Cornel West, if Barack Obama’s ascent to power was a morality play, would be the voice of conscience. Rahm Emanuel, a cynical product of the Chicago political machine, would be Satan. Emanuel in the first scene of the play would dangle power, privilege, fame and money before Obama. West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by …

By David North and David Walsh.
The arrest of French financier and politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York City on sexual assault charges and his continued imprisonment is a disturbing event with far-reaching implications.
Strauss-Kahn is the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), perhaps the most powerful global capitalist financial institution, and a prominent figure in the French Socialist Party, one of that country’s leading big business parties. He was expected to announce soon his candidacy for the presidency in 2012, and polls in France had him leading his rivals, …

By Paul Craig Roberts, May 18, 2011.
The International Monetary Fund’s director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested last Sunday in New York City on the allegation of an immigrant hotel maid that he attempted to rape her in his hotel room. A New York judge has denied Strauss-Kahn bail on the grounds that he might flee to France.
President Bill Clinton survived his sexual escapades, because he was a servant to the system, not a threat. But Strauss-Kahn, like former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, was a threat to the system, and, like …

By Mike Whitney, May 16, 2011.
I have no way of knowing whether the 32-year-old maid who claims she was attacked and forced to perform oral sex on IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is telling the truth or not. I’ll leave that to the braying hounds in the media who have already assumed the role of judge, jury and Lord High Executioner. But I will say, the whole matter smells rather fishy, just like the Eliot Spitzer story smelled fishy. Spitzer, you may recall, was Wall Street’s biggest adversary and a likely …