Auteur/autrice : Heidi Barathieu-Brun

The Coming Era of Tiny Wars and Micro-Conflicts – Published on ZNet (first on TomDispatch), by Tom Engelhardt, Oct 23, 2013.

In terms of pure projectable power, there’s never been anything like it … //

… Despite this stunning global power equation, for more than a decade we have been given a lesson in what a military, no matter how overwhelming, can and (mostly) can’t do in the twenty-first century, in what a military, no matter how staggeringly advanced, does and (mostly) does not translate into on the current version of planet Earth.   Continuer la lecture de « Why Washington Can’t Stop »

Published on World Socialist Web Site WSWS, by Barry Grey, Oct 23, 2013.

A series of reports released over the past several days document the killing of thousands of people, including hundreds of non-combatant civilians, in US drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries. The reports, issued by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, 105 pages, on Tuesday and the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions last Friday, expose as lies the claims of President Obama and administration officials that the drone strikes are “surgical” attacks that kill few civilians.  Continuer la lecture de « Reports document US slaughter of civilians in drone strikes »

Published on truthdig, by Chris Hedges, Oct 20, 2013.

“The rich are different from us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway, to which Hemingway allegedly replied, “Yes, they have more money.”

The exchange, although it never actually took place, sums up a wisdom Fitzgerald had that eluded Hemingway. The rich are different. The cocoon of wealth and privilege permits the rich to turn those around them into compliant workers, hangers-on, servants, flatterers and sycophants. Wealth breeds, as Fitzgerald illustrated in “The Great Gatsby” and his short story “The Rich Boy,” a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities.   Continuer la lecture de « Let’s Get This Class War Started »

Published on VOX.org, by Knut Are Aastveit, Gisle James Natvik, Sergio Sola, October 19, 2013.

Many analysts blame uncertainty for at least part of advance nations’ poor economic performance since the crisis. This column discusses new research showing that the economic impact of monetary policy is dampened when uncertainty is high. This means that high uncertainty forces monetary policymakers into a trade-off between acting decisively and acting correctly as policy must be more aggressive than otherwise in order to stabilise economic activity. The finding is particularly stark when uncertainty measures from financial markets are utilised.   Continuer la lecture de « Economic uncertainty and the effectiveness of monetary policy »

• on Outside The Box/on YouTube-search, an UK Column hosted by Jason Liosatos, uploaded by ukcolumn: Patrick Henningsen as guest – Episode 1: 38.36 min, September 19, 2013; Episode 2: 51.16 min, Sept 20, 2013;
• on Red Ice Radio: Patrick Henningsen, Hour 1 Syria …, 59.35 min, uploaded by jack jill, Sept 11, 2013: (Homepage);
• on On The Edge: Patrick Henningsen, 47.49 min, uploaded by OfficialEdgeMediaTV, May 10, 2013: (Series 3, Episode 32 – Homepage);
• on News For The Waking Generation: Patrick Henningsen of Info Wars & Russia Today, 81.36 min, uploaded by Videos From The Underground,Nov 5, 2012 (Homepage).

Published on Civil Eats, by Bob St Peter and Raj Patel, October 18, 2013.

Imagine a country where ideologues bent on land reform turn agriculture into the plaything of the world’s richest investors, and poor local farmers are locked out of millions of acres prime agricultural land. Then stop imagining some African country run by a despot and his friends and start picturing the United States. Rural America is on the cusp of one of the greatest transfers of land in its history and no one’s talking about it.   Continuer la lecture de « USA: This Land is Our Land? »

Published on Dissident Voice (first on AlterNet), by Anna Simonton, October 18, 2013.

From the narrow windows of New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, 24-year-old anarchist Jerry Koch can see the last place he stood as a free person.  Continuer la lecture de « How the FBI Manipulates Grand Juries to Intimidate Political Dissidents and Radicals »

Published on Spiegel Online International, an essay by Erich Follath, October 16, 2013.

China, India and Brazil are taking the global economy by storm, becoming more politically confident on their way. But even as they form a front against the West, they will have to tackle slower growth and major domestic problems that their newly prosperous citizens are no longer willing to tolerate … //

… Getting in on Western Commerce:   Continuer la lecture de « Emerging Challenges: What's In Store for the New Global Powers, Part 1 »

Published on Russia Today, Oct 16, 2013.

Toiling in terrible conditions, no salaries for months, passports confiscated by employers – that’s the horrendous reality for migrant workers helping with preparations for the World Cup 2022 in Qatar, as revealed by German filmmaker, Peter Giesel.

He and his cameraman were detained and imprisoned after they tried to investigate the story. The two went to Qatar following the publication of a report in the Guardian, claiming that workers are enduring appalling labor abuses.   Continuer la lecture de « German filmmaker imprisoned for exposing dire Qatar World Cup worker conditions »

Published on Xinhuanet News, by Liu Chang, Oct 13, 2013.

As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world.   Continuer la lecture de « Commentary: U.S. fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world »

as Washington stalls … join it and celebrate it – Published on ZNet (first on AlterNet), by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, October 14, 2013.

… In fact, change takes time and is not linear; it is not an ever-rising crescendo but in fact comes in stages. Lakey describes this as a “Living Revolution” and sees five stages: Continuer la lecture de « a new economy is growing under the radar of the corporate media »

Published on Global Research.ca (first on Zero Hedge), by Tyler Durden, Oct 14, 2013.

We assume it is a coincidence that on the day in which we demonstrate China’s relentless appetite for gold, driven by what we and many others believe is the country’s desire to have a call option on a gold-backed reserve currency when the time comes, just posted in China’s official press agency, Xinhua, is an op-ed by writer Liu Chang in which he decries the “US fiscal failure which warrants a de-Americanized world” Continuer la lecture de « China calls for new reserve currency, and new world order »

Watch the video, 25.00 min, published on AlJazeera, Oct 12, 2013.

(Europeans are very keen on data protection, maybe because of their history. The trust in what is done with your personal data is not very high, and that might be the reason why data protection as a must, as an obligation, is inscribed in our fundamental laws, in our treaties, in our charter of fundamental rights. So for Europeans it is a basic value and a fundamental right).

Millions of emails and phone calls have been registered, in secret, by US intelligence agencies. It seems the US government is now keeping an eye on all of us – regardless of our citizenship.  Continuer la lecture de « Talk to AlJazeera with Viviane Reding: Data protection is a right »

Google Inc. is now aligned with the notorious ALEC – Published on ZNet, by Norman Solomon, October 10, 2013.

… In the process, Google has signed onto an organization that promotes such regressive measures as tax cuts for tobacco companies, school privatization to help for-profit education firms, repeal of state taxes for the wealthy and opposition to renewable energy disliked by oil companies.   Continuer la lecture de « Google: Doing Evil with ALEC »

Published on Global Research.ca, by Prof. John McMurtry, October 04, 2013.

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul”, Nelson Mandela says, “than the way in which it treats its children”. Who would disagree? Yet today children may be assaulted, diseased, or killed by pervasive corporate drugs, junk-foods and beverages, perverted by mindless violence in multiple modes, deployed as dead-end labour with no benefits, and then dumped into a corporate future of debt enslavement and meaningless work. How could this increasing systematic abuse be publicly licensed at every level? What kind of society could turn a blind eye to its dominant institutions laying waste the lives of the young and humanity’s future itself?

The abuse is built into the system. All rights of child care-givers themselves – from parent workers to social life support systems – are written out of corporate ‘trade’ treaties which override legislatures to guarantee “investor profits” as their sole ruling goal.  Children are at the bottom, and most dispossessed by the life-blind global system. Continuer la lecture de « Corporate Child Abuse: The Unseen Global Epidemic »