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 …

Monday 16 May 2011, by Felicity Arbuthnot.
It was May 12 1996 when I got the call. Kathy Kelly, a peace activist who constantly risked the wrath of the US government for her compassion, was phoning from Chicago, stunned.
Washington’s UN ambassador Madeleine Albright had just appeared on Sixty Minutes, Kelly told me.
Presenter Lesley Stahl had confronted her guest on the US-driven embargo on Iraq.
“We have heard that a half million children have died,” said Stahl. “I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is …