by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase. The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat. Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

by Ramzy Baroud

“Any depictions of the prophet are considered blasphemous by Muslims,” wrote Agencies, as reported readily by Aljazeera.net English. The above statement is meant to fully summarize the reason behind the outrage that arises in Pakistan and other parts of the Muslim world whenever some provocative ‘artist’ decides to express his freedom of expression and ‘expose’ Muslims as anti-democratic.

Such a simplistic interpretation of such an intricate issue.

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP’s oil spill is a gleeful suggestion that the gulf blowout is Obama’s Katrina.

In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration’s doorstep. For eight years, George Bush’s presidency infected the oil industry’s oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe.

by Sara Flounders

More than 150 years ago Karl Marx explained that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Patrician and plebian, lord and serf, in a word oppressor and oppressed.” The struggle is an “uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight.” With modern society come “new conditions of oppression and new forms of struggle.”

A fierce struggle has gripped the Catholic Church for the past 25 years as some of the most oppressed survivors of childhood sexual abuse have increasingly demanded an accounting against individual priests and ultimately against the powerful church hierarchy, including bishops and cardinals who consistently protected the abusers.

by Hans Küng

Pope Benedict has made worse just about everything that is wrong with the Roman Catholic Church and is directly responsible for engineering the global cover-up of child rape perpetrated by priests, according to this open letter to all Catholic bishops

VENERABLE BISHOPS,

by Ramzy Baroud

A widely popular Islamic website has been, until very recently, an undisputed success story. IslamOnline arrived at a time that millions of Muslims needed a common platform and a unifying outlet. Here was a website that neither shunned nor alienated. Its influence was upbeat and positive, rather than destructive or divisive. While it wasn’t an apologetic outlet, it reached out to patiently and progressively present Islam and Muslim issues to the world. These were understood and communicated by hundreds of scholars and qualified journalists, who toiled day and night from their Cairo offices.

by Martin Matishak

WASHINGTON — The successor agreement to a landmark U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms control treaty faces a number of political and technical challenges to its chances for ratification in Russia, a leading foreign policy expert said yesterday (see GSN, April 1).

“I would be happy to say that the Russian people enthusiastically wait for the new [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] to be ratified and implemented,” Alexei Arbatov, head of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ International Security Center, said during an event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But that would be a great exaggeration.”

by Wei Guoan

BEIJING, April 2 –After nearly a year’s negotiations, the U.S. and Russian governments finally reached an agree-ment on further reduction and limitation of nuclear weapon arms. The agreement will be signed on April 8, limiting the total number of warheads to less than 1,550. Overall, it is good for world peace and stability as well as the prevention of nuclear proliferation, but we shouldn’t be over-optimistic about the treaty.

The motivations behind the treaty are clear. Russia is opposed to the U.S. missile defense system and its deployment in Eastern Europe. The U.S. continues to expand the scope of the missile defense system, which constitutes a real threat to Russia in Eastern Europe.

by Mike Whitney

Pope Benedict should do everyone a favor and resign. By hanging on, he’s just making matters worse. Who does he think he’s fooling anyway? Everyone knows that he was involved in the sex-scandal cover up. Does he really think that a few papal apologies will make a difference? He was in charge and knew everything that was going on. That makes him responsible. His best option now is to “man up” and face the consequences. He needs to arrange a press conference, tell the truth, and resign. End of story.

By Dielle D’Souza

North Indian farmers are selling their wives to survive, it has been revealed.

Left without money due to failing crops, debt-ridden farmers in Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh, have reportedly been selling their wives to money lenders for Rs 4,000 – 12,000 (£50-150).

The more beautiful the woman, the higher the price that she fetches, it was claimed.

The deals are allegedly being settled on a legal stamp paper under the heading “Vivaha Anubandh” meaning Marriage Contract. Once the new “husband” is tired of the woman, she is allegedly sold to another man.