14 February 2012 — williambowles.info
VIDEO: Protests on Bahrain anniversary
BBC News Today at 13:30
Police try to prevent people marking the anniversary of pro-democracy protests in Bahrain’s capital, after a second day of clashes in outlying villages.
25 October, 2011 — Global Research
by Fidel Castro
This brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious tool of repression known in the history of humanity.
NATO assumed this global repressive role as soon as the USSR, which had served as the U.S. pretext for its creation, disappeared. Its criminal purpose became obvious in Serbia, a country of Slavic origin, whose people heroically struggled against the Nazis during World War II.
In March of 1999, when the countries of this nefarious organization, in its efforts to break up Yugoslavia after the death of Josip Broz Tito, sent in troops to support the Kosovar secessionists, they met with strong resistance on the part of the country’s experienced forces which remained intact.
13 February 2012 — Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
14 February 2012 — The Bullet • Socialist Project – E-Bulletin No. 598
On Sunday 12 February 2012 the people of Greece, in demonstrations and street fights all over the country expressed in a massive, collective and heroic way their anger against the terms of the new loan agreement dictated by the EU–ECB–IMF ‘troika’ (Eurpoean Union, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund). Workers, youth, students filled the streets with rage, defying the extreme aggression by police forces, setting another example of struggle and solidarity.
14 February, 2012 — Media Lens
It has been said that compassion is ‘the only beauty that truly pleases’ (Aryasura, The Marvelous Companion, Dharma Publishing, 1983, p.305). While beauty ordinarily provokes the fiery itch of desire or the sullen shadow of envy, compassion is cooling, blissful, inspiring awe and wonder. It implies an ability to stand outside our own needs as observers, to perceive the suffering of others as of equal or greater importance. But like all forms of beauty, compassion can be faked, exploited.
13 February, 2012 — The Real News Network
As someone who has been using a Mac since 1984, the thought that it’s made with parts assembled with virtual slave labour, doesn’t sit well with me. Yet, can anything different be said of the many millions more computers and other consumer products assembled with parts made in China? Or for that matter any of the other cheap labour production centres scattered across the planet? Seems to me that opposition to Apple is highly selective. We’ve been living off the labour of most of the planet for the past five centuries and continue to do so without too many complaints from us privileged people. Surely the focus should be on Capitalism not China? Let the Chinese workers deal with their end. The fact is, if we were to have to pay the real price for all the marvels of consumer capitalism, how many pcs do you think there would be in people’s homes and workplaces? See Apple Asks Outside Group to Inspect Factories, NYT, 14 February 2012
Video produced by Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior
14 February 2012 — 012
13 February, 2012 — Monthly Review
John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, Editors, Monthly Review
Five years after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09 began there is still no sign of a full recovery of the world economy. Consequently, concern has increasingly shifted from financial crisis and recession to slow growth or stagnation, causing some to dub the current era the Great Stagnation.1 Stagnation and financial crisis are now seen as feeding into one another. Thus IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde declared in a speech in China on November 9, 2011, in which she called for the rebalancing of the Chinese economy:
13 February 2012 — New Left Project
Steve McGiffen has had a long involvement with left politics in Europe. He is a former official of the United European Left Group in the European Parliament and has been associated in various capacities with the Socialist Party of the Netherlands since 1999. He is also the editor Spectrezine. He spoke to Ed Lewis about the class politics driving both the euro and the ever-deepening austerity in Europe, Neo-Nazism in Greece, and how to frame a left response to the EU.
13 February 2012 — Greanville Post – Bella Caledonia
Post sponsored by Gaither Stewart, Senior Editor, TGP
With our thanks to Paul Carline
Television images of demonstrators being teargassed by riot police in Athens on Sunday night followed the usual rules of media coverage of civil unrest – plenty of graphic images with little or no honest representation of the story behind the actual events.
13 February 2012 — CounterPunch
‘Western politicians and media are not yet fighting World War III, but they are talking themselves into it.’
Road to Damascus… and on to Armageddon?
13 February 2012 — VTJP
News
International Middle East Media Center
Court Confirms Sentencing Of Ailing Hunger-Striking Detainee
IMEMC – An Israeli Military Court rejected on Monday evening the appeal that was filed by the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) against a military order confining ailing detainee, Adnan Khader, who has been on hunger-strike since 59 days protesting his illegal imprisonment. …
The New Dark Age 