by Felicity Arbuthnot

“Out beyond ideas of right thinking and wrong thinking, there is a field, I’ll meet you there.”

The Surviveable, the Bad and the Over the Top

The wedding of the heir to the British throne, Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales, to his lady friend of eight years Catherine Elizabeth Middleton (“Kate”) promises to be a modest affair, in these austere times, with nineteen hundred guests, a near unprecedented police presence, possibly a thousand members of the armed forces lining the route the couple will take to the ceremony, in the nine hundred years old, Westminster Abbey, on 29th April.

by Vi Ransel

Even as the overall population of the world continues to increase, the increase in the number of poor people outstrips that growth. How is this possible? Are the poor simply breeding like rabbits, increasing their numbers geometrically in a suicidal, lemming-like production line of poverty-stricken people? Or are they getting some outside aid in their catastrophic endeavor?

by Finian Cunningham

The British royal wedding is turning swiftly into a public relations disaster, with news that Bahrain’s Crown Prince is respectfully turning down his invitation to the event because of the “situation reigning” in the Persian Gulf kingdom.

However, the real story behind the headlines is that the diplomatic shuffle reveals that the British establishment is well aware of the vicious repression being conducted by the Bahraini rulers along with the armed forces of neigbouring Gulf states, including Western allies Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

by Dr. Mary W Maxwell

Meeting of the Minds: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Myers. “Did Not Happen,” Says Judge Chin in Dismissing April Gallop’s Case. Will the Higher Court Agree?

In 2009, the federal district court judge who heard April Gallop’s very strong lawsuit against Cheney (et al) received a request from the defendants to dismiss the case. This is normal; every sued person wants to get rid of a case. When the judge got that request from Cheney, he granted it. This, too, is normal for judges. In fact when the defendant is a powerful corporation or a government official it is ‘very, very normal’ for the case to be dismissed. Of course it should not be normal. The judge should earn his pay and live up to the public trust by ruling according to law.

by Manlio Dinucci

The objective of the war against Libya is not just its oil reserves (now estimated at 60 billion barrels), which are the greatest in Africa and whose extraction costs are among the lowest in the world, nor the natural gas reserves of which are estimated at about 1,500 billion cubic meters. In the crosshairs of “willing” of the operation “Unified Protector” there are sovereign wealth funds, capital that the Libyan state has invested abroad.

by Bob Chapman

Many banks are insolvent, yet are allowed to stay in business. Being allowed to keep two sets of books is obscuring their real estate loan problems. This is the shadow inventory you sometimes hear about. Those millions of homes “that exist, but they don’t.” They presently admit to owning some 1 million homes they cannot sell, which is almost 25% higher than last year. If you put everything together you could be looking at an 8-year supply. Making matters worse lenders are holding homes on the books at values 40% higher than what they are worth. This is very similar to what is going on in Spain presently. We’ll say this one more time. Most major banks and some middle tier and small institutions are broke and you are being lied to regarding their condition.

by Thierry Meyssan

It has been said that truth is the first casualty of war. The Libyan military operations and Resolution 1973, which functions as their legal basis, are not an exception to the rule. These are presented to the public as a necessary measure to protect the civilian population against indiscriminate repression at the hands of Colonel Gaddafi. In reality they are classic imperial goals. Let us look at the following elements for clarification.

Crimes Against Humanity

by Danny Schechter

The global economy and its recovery, and the living standards of millions of plain folks, are now at risk from the sudden rise in oil and commodity prices.

Gas at the pump is up, and going higher. Food prices are following.

The consequences are catastrophic for the global poor as their costs go up while their income doesn’t. It’s menacing American workers too, who in large part have not seen a meaningful raise since the days of Reagan (keeping it this way is clearly behind the current flurry of attacks on unions).

by Joel S. Hirschhorn

Massive economic inequality is killing America and we the people. It has already killed American democracy. The rich have captured the political system so they could manipulate the economy and benefit unfairly. Economic freedom and opportunity are gone. Greed among the top one percent has succeeded so well that a true uprising and revolt by Americans, like that seen in Egypt , may be needed to restore America .

by Michael Hudson

Large amounts of surplus dollars are pouring into the rest of the world.Central banks have recycled these dollar inflows towards the purchase of U.S. Treasury bonds, which serve to finance the federal U.S. budget deficit. Underlying this process is the military character of the U.S. payments deficit and the domestic federal budget deficit. Strange as it may seem and irrational as it would be in a more logical system of world diplomacy, the “dollar glut” is what finances America’s global military build-up. It forces foreign central banks to bear the costs of America’s expanding military empire: effective “taxation without representation”.