Link to source: http://www.socialistappeal.org/content/view/820/65/

For young workers, the so-called recovery is meaningless to nonexistent. Most of us have been facing a crisis from the very beginning of our working lives. We’ve been unable to build up even the most meager basis for establishing ourselves. Those of us who have tried to strike out on our own in our late teens or early twenties, the way our parents or grandparents did, have found it nearly impossible.

We’ve been faced with poverty wages and non-union jobs, no benefits and zero job security. Most young people are forced to float from job to job, searching desperately for one that might pay fifty cents or a dollar more per hour. And that is if we get really lucky. A few quick facts will help to show the full scope of the picture.

According to one survey, most workers between the ages of eighteen and thirty make $30,000 or less per year, nowhere near a living wage. In Maryland, as of August, the youth unemployment rate (for workers under twenty) was approximately 50 percent, while the picture was even worse in Washington, DC with 55 percent of those under twenty terminally unemployed. If the figures for immigrant youth were included, these statistics would be far, far worse.

Those lucky enough to have gone to college enter the work force under a mountain of debt. More than 31 percent of workers under thirty have no health insurance. Most can barely pay the bills and are often forced to live in communal homes or with their families in order to cover the cost of living.

Link to source: http://www.chavezcode.com/2010/02/colored-revolutions-new-form-of-regime.html

In 1983, the strategy of overthrowing inconvenient governments and calling it "democracy promotion" was born.

Through the creation of a series of quasi-private "foundations", such as Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), Freedom House and later the International Center for Non-Violent Conflict (ICNC), Washington began to filter funding and strategic aid to political parties and groups abroad that promoted US agenda in nations with insubordinate governments.

Behind all these "foundations" and "institutes" is the US Agency for Inter- national Development (USAID), the financial branch of the Department of State. Today, USAID has become a critical part of the security, intelligence and defense axis in Washington. In 2009, the Interagency Counterinsurgency Initiative became official doctrine in the US. Now, USAID is the principal entity that promotes the economic and strategic interests of the US across the globe as part of counterinsurgency operations. Its departments dedicated to transition initiatives, reconstruction, conflict management, economic development, governance and democracy are the main venues through which millions of dollars are filtered from Washington to political parties, NGOs, student organizations and movements that promote US agenda worldwide. Wherever a coup d'etat, a colored revolution or a regime change favorable to US interests occurs, USAID and its flow of dollars is there.

Link to source: http://agonist.org/michael_collins/20100208/cuomo_takes_on_the_money_party#comment-205991

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/aafia-siddiqui-victimized-by-american.html

On February 3, a Department of Justice press release headlined "Aafia Siddiqui Found Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court of Attempting to Murder US Nationals in Afghanistan and Six Additional Charges."

At her scheduled May 6 sentencing, she "faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each of the attempted murder and armed assault charges; life in prison on the firearms charge; and eight years in prison on each of the remaining assault charges. SIDDIQUI faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison on the firearms charge."

On February 3, New York Times writer CJ Hughes headlined: "Pakistani Scientist Found Guilty of Shootings," convicting her on all seven counts, including attempted murder - "capping a trial that drew notice for its terrorist implications as well as its theatrics," but omitting convincing evidence of Siddiqui's innocence. Instead, Hughes said she was arrested with "instructions (in her purse) on making explosives and a list of New York landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building." Her defense team acknowledged their existence, but Siddiqui denied packing them or knowing of their origin. She later suggested she copied them from a magazine, planned no terrorist acts, nor did her indictment claim them.

Link to source: http://liberalpro.blogspot.com/2010/02/american-empire-part-2-of-3.html

As his presidency was drawing to a close, Dwight David Eisenhower gave the people of the United States a clear and unmistakable warning. He clearly spelled out the dangers involved in maintaining a defense industry that is constantly researching new weapons and a defense industry that employs millions of people, military and civilian. I believe that what he had to say then is more important now than it was when he delivered his speech. I believe it should be read by everyone in America that cares for its future.

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual --is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

There is no such thing as safe, clean nuclear power, and there never will be. There is no such thing as safe containment of nuclear waste, and there never will be. Therefore, we should not put our money into President Obama's misguided nuclear dementia.

Did we learn nothing from 9-11? Did we learn nothing from the tsunami in Banda-Ache? Did we learn nothing from the earthquake in Japan that nearly initiated "Genpatsu-Shinsai"? Did we learn nothing from Davis-Besse's near-meltdown in 2002? Did we learn nothing from Chernobyl?

So far we have been lucky: Lucky the terrorists only flew directly over, instead of into, the Indian Point Nuclear Power Facility. Lucky the nearest nuclear power facility to the 2004 tsunami was thousands of miles away and the waves only did "minor" damage. Lucky none of the seven nuclear power plants at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Facility melted down when a "beyond design basis" earthquake occurred in 2007. Three years later, only two of those plants have come back online. Lucky a worker at Davis-Besse inadvertently leaned against a control rod housing during maintenance, and it gave way, alerting them to the severe corrosion in the reactor pressure vessel head below them. Lucky Chernobyl happened there, not here.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/human-rights-abuses-in-israel-and.html

Founded in 1972, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is its leading human and civil rights organization through activities involving litigation, legal advocacy, education, and public outreach. Each year it publishes an annual report covering flagrant violations, positive trends, if any, and "significant human rights-related processes" affecting Israelis and Palestinians.

Its latest December 2009 one is examined below, discussing "a disturbing (government-sponsored) trend that has (gained) currency in Israel over the past year - both in public discourse and sometimes in practice - to make human rights conditional: on fulfilling some obligation, having financial means, or belonging (or not belonging) to certain groups."

For example, free expression is targeted, and Israeli Arabs threatened, denied equality, education, employment, and their citizenship without "declaring loyalty" to Israel - in other words, on condition they abandon their national identity, culture, language, and historic heritage that's the equivalent of asking Jews to renounce Judaism.

Financial means involves regarding social rights, including healthcare and education, as commodities, accessible to those who can pay. And for Occupied Palestinians, Gaza was devastated by war, remains under siege, and sustains near daily assaults, killings, and targeted assassinations.

In the West Bank, security forces enforce land seizures, home demolitions, displacement, segregation, isolation, closures, movement and travel restrictions, the Separation Wall's construction, daily home invasions, arrests, attacks on peaceful protestors, imprisonments, and torture of detainees under a rigid "matrix of control" involving checkpoints, bypass roads, roadblocks, curfews, electric fences, and various other harassments to cow all Palestinians into submission or make them give up and leave.

Link to source: http://www.lahaine.org/petras/b2-img/petras_usven.pdf

Historically Latin America has been of great importance to the United States on numerous counts: the region has in the past, provided the US with a trade surplus; its outflows of licit and ill-begotten funds to US banks, numbers annually in the tens of billions; the US has been, up to recently, the major trading partner in the region; Latin America has provided a lucrative outlet for US buyouts of oil, telecoms, banking and related strategic mining companies during the golden age of imperial pillage (1975 – 1999). Throughout most of the 20th century the US could rely on the vote of its client regimes in the United Nations (UN), the Organization of American States (OAS) and in the international financial institution (IMF, WB, IDB) to back its efforts to sustain its global political and economic expansion.

In the latter half of the 20th century Latin America was an important target for the expansion of US based agro-mineral, transport (Ford, General Motors and Chrysler), farm machinery and other multi-national manufacturers. Within this regional pattern of US empire building, each country played a different role: Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Columbia were targeted by manufacturing multi-national corporations (MNC) banks and exporters; Central America and the Caribbean for tropical fruits, tourism and export platforms, Bolivia, Peru and Chile for minerals; Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador for oil and gas. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, were principle suppliers of cheap labor in the agricultural, construction and low paid service sector.

Within this imperial matrix, Venezuela was of special importance as the most important provider of petroleum. This was especially true in times of heightened US and Israeli induced political hostility and military warfare in the Middle East, with the onset of the US invasion of Iraq and sanctions against Iran, Sudan and other Muslim oil suppliers.

Under US hegemony Venezuela was a major player in the US effort to isolate and undermine the Cuban revolutionary government. Venezuelan client regimes played a major role in support of the successful US led effort to expel Cuba from the OAS; in 1961 and brokering a deal in the early 1990’s to disarm the guerillas in El Salvador and Guatemala without regime or structural changes in exchange for legal status of the ex-combatants. In short, Venezuelan regimes played a strategic role in policing the Central American-Caribbean region, a supplier of oil and as an important regional market for US exports.

Link to source: http://waynemadsen.sites.subhub.com/articles/20100204_3

WMR's South African intelligence sources report that last year's posting of former opposition Democratic Party/Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon as South African ambassador to Buenos Aires is part of an effort to coordinate the Zionist and right-wing campaign to destabilize populist and progressive governments in Latin America.

Leon, who is married to an Israeli national, took up his post in Buenos Aires last year. In 2007, Leon was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, an operation, which ironically has many connections to the U.S. intelligence community notwithstanding President Kennedy's opposition to CIA activities and his threat to abolish the agency. In 2008, Leon was a visiting fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity in Washington, DC.

As the foreign policy spokesman for the Democratic Alliance, Leon led the effort against a follow up to the United Nations World Conference against racism in Durban. Leon coordinated his activities with such organizations as the Womens International Zionist Organization (WIZO). South Africa's Palestine Solidarity Alliance accused Leon of being silent during Israel's attack on Gaza and of being an agent of "apartheid Israel." Leon;s fellow South African Jew, jurist Richard Goldstone, has been labeled anti-Semitic because his United Nations report on Israel's invasion of Gaza suggested the Jewish state may be guilty of carrying out war crimes.

A series of emails and chat room postings in 2005 between African National Congress officials accused Leon of conspiring with Mossad and the South African anti-corruption police, the Scorpions, to discredit Zuma, whose government Leon now represents in Buenos Aires. Then-Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, who, according to WMR's South African sources, embroiders his anti-Israeli public statements with a close working relationship with South Africa's Jewish Board, denounced the emails as fakes. Kasrils, like Leon, is Jewish.

WMR has reported in the past on Leon's activities with pro-apartheid South African agent Jack Abramoff, the Republican uber-lobbyist now serving a federal prison sentence for bribery and conspiracy.

Link to source: http://liberalpro.blogspot.com/2010/02/american-empire-1st-of-3-parts.html

I stopped trusting the United States a long time ago. I find it very hard to believe anything that comes from the federal government. I am convinced that both major political parties have the same agenda; world domination. I also believe that Congress has lost most of the power reserved for it by the United States Constitution. The Bush administration greatly expanded Executive Branch power, especially in the area of military operations. The Authorization for the Use of Force passed in 2002 had a stipulation that the Executive Branch must report to Congress every 60 days on how the AUOF was being used. (Public Law 107-243, Oct 16, 2002). This practice to my knowledge is not being followed by the Obama Administration in violation of the law. This means that the President, by not informing Congress on the use of force covered by the authorization every 60 days, is guilty of breaking the law. This gives the President carte blanche to use military force without any supervision by Congress in violation of the War Powers Act and the Constitution. I believe that this wanton disregard for the law is far more dangerous to our republic than President Clinton having oral sex with an intern for which he was impeached by the House of Representatives. The American people seem to be learning deceit from the top down.

Link to source: http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/04/the-unruly-us-backyard

U.S. AGGRESSIVENESS towards the Venezuelan, Bolivian, and Ecuadorian governments has increased in response to diminishing U.S. influence over the Latin American and Caribbean area, which Washington has been blaming on Hugo Chávez in particular (and also on Cuba, but Cuba is a much older story).

Several examples illustrate the United States' waning control.

During the negotiations that followed Colombia's attack on Ecuador on March 1, 2008 [1], instead of appealing to the Organization of American States (OAS), of which the United States is a member and which is headquartered in Washington, the Latin American presidents held a meeting in Santo Domingo, within the framework of the Rio Group [2], without inviting their great neighbor from the North, and clearly laid the blame on Colombia, a U.S. ally.

In 2008, Honduras--traditionally and wholly subordinated to U.S. policy--joined Petrocaribe, which was created on the initiative of Venezuela to provide oil to the non-exporting countries in the region at a lower price than that practiced on the world market. Honduras also joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), another initiative for regional integration launched by Venezuela and Cuba.

In December 2008, another important summit took place bringing together most of the Latin American presidents in Salvador de Bahía, with the noteworthy presence of the Cuban head of state, Raúl Castro, next to whom was seated the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, who until recently had adopted a hostile attitude towards Cuba, to keep in line with the directives from Washington.

Link to source: http://www.chavezcode.com/2010/02/us-intelligence-report-classifies.html

As is custom at the beginning of each year, the different US agencies publish their famous annual reports on topics ranging from human rights, trafficking in persons, terrorism, threats, drug-trafficking, and other issues that indicate who will be this year’s target of US agression. Yesterday, it was the intelligence community’s turn. Admiral Dennis Blair, National Director of Intelligence, presented the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The report details the principle threats to the interests and security of the US worldwide. This year, in addition to mentioning the usual suspects – Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Al Qa’ida and Iraq – the report dedicates significant space to Venezuela.

In the section referring to threats in Latin America, which carries the title “Latin America Stable, but Challenged by Crime and Populism”, a large portion is dedicated to Venezuela. “In…countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, elected populist leaders are moving toward a more authoritarian and statist political and economic model, and they have banded together to oppose US influence and policies in the region. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has established himself as one of the US’s foremost international detractors, denouncing liberal democracy and market capitalism and opposing US policies and interests in the region.”

Classifying President Chavez as “one of the US’s foremost international detractors” already gives indication that the US intelligence community considers the Venezuelan president as an enemy. But following that paragraph, further down, a section titled “Venezuela: Leading Anti-US Regional Force”, further confirms the official US vision of Venezuela as a major adversary. “President Chavez continues to impose an authoritarian populist political model in Venezuela that undermines democratic institutions. Since winning a constitutional referendum in early 2009 that removed term limits and will permit his reelection, Chavez has taken further steps to consolidate his political power and weaken the opposition in the run up to the 2010 legislative elections.”

Link to source: http://old.japanfocus.org/products/topdf/3087

Korea – “a national defense/conscription state"

It is a well-known fact that warfare and obligatory military service system long played decisive role in the formation of modern nation-states, first in Europe and later elsewhere in the world. While externally the military prowess of a given state was (and still is) decisive for defining its place in a competitive international system explicitly based upon an equilibrium of military force and hegemonic interstate relations [1], internally conscription-based national armies formerly served as main pillars of the state, linking conscript-age able-bodied males with the nationalist ethos [1] and acculturating them to views and practices often referred to as “militarized masculinity culture”. “Militarized masculinity”, both in the conscription states and in states possessing large-scale military but relying upon a volunteer force in peacetime, usually involves both a gendered view of the world in which the able-bodied man, the “defender of the fatherland”, was unconditionally privileged over women, defined either as sexualized objects or as child-rearing “mother of the nation”, and a shared feeling of superiority towards men unfit for or unwilling to engage in combat (handicapped, conscientious objectors, etc.).[2] Examples of modern states which chose to define their whole able-bodied male citizenry as potential soldiers and use conscription as the primary instrument of “creating nationals”, include revolutionary and post-revolutionary France (which began the history of modern conscription by declaring the levée en masse on August 23, 1793), and the Prussian state, which began introducing French-style conscription practices after suffering a defeat at the hands of Napoleon’s conscript army in 1806-1807.[3] In more recent times, the state of Israel successfully used a comprehensive conscription system applicable to both men and women. The conscription system inculcated Zionist ideals and the newly-forged Israeli national identity, as well as a siege mentality based upon the imperative of the “national defense” against the demonized Arabic/Muslim world, into the minds of a very heterogeneous body of citizens,[4] In South Korea too, as we will see below, conscription provides an ideological fiction of equality, the exclusion of women from the conscription system and, consequently, much more manifestly the “hegemonic masculine” character of the army being an important difference.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/child-slavery-in-haiti.html

In November 1989, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, recognizing "that in all countries in the world, there are children living in exceptionally difficult conditions, and that such children need special consideration." Then in May 2000, the General Assembly adopted an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

In 1990, the UN Commission on Human Rights appointed a Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography with a mandate to investigate the problem and submit reports to the General Assembly.

Today, Gulnara Shahinian holds the post, and on June 10, 2009 addressed Haiti's Restaveks, a century-old system under which impoverished families, mostly rural and unable to adequately provide for their children, send them to live with wealthier or less poor ones in return for food, shelter, education, and a better life in return for tasks performed as servants - de facto slaves subjected to verbal and physical abuse.

Some as young as three are beaten, forced to do anything asked, request nothing, speak only when spoken to, display no emotion, and receive none of the benefits parents expected, just exploitation and mistreatment that's often severe. Too often it's from relatives as poor families often send their children to live with those better able to provide care, yet they seldom do.

Link to source: http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/03/budget-only-republicans-could-

BARACK OBAMA'S budget contains a message to everyone concerned about mass unemployment, ramped-up military spending and social service cutbacks: Get used to it.

"We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences, as if waste doesn't matter, as if the hard-earned tax money of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money," Obama said.

He was channeling the Republican Party's talking points in defense of a budget proposal that would impose a three-year freeze on non-military discretionary spending, while devoting a relative pittance to additional stimulus measures to create jobs.

The budget proposal that the administration submitted to Congress--a broad outline that, once passed, is meant to serve as the guide for appropriations legislation worked out during the year--predicts record federal deficits for next year and a high level of debt for at least the decade to come.

But under the $3.8 trillion proposal, the Pentagon war machine is exempt from the freeze. So military outlays would continue the upward curve begun under George W. Bush to pay not only for endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but to maintain the U.S.'s military grip on its worldwide empire.

Just in case some Pentagon contractors whose profits have grown fat off the "war on terror" got the wrong message from the talk about the government tightening its belt, Defense Secretary Robert Gates invited top defense company executives to a meeting last week. Gates emphasized "the need for a closer partnership with them and [pledged] to work with the White House to secure steady growth in the Pentagon's budgets over time, according to his spokesman," the Politico reported.

Link to source:

In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created the global BDS movement for "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights" for Occupied Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian diaspora refugees.

Since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions and civil society actions condemned Israel's lawlessness; its crimes of war and against humanity; occupation; discriminatory policies; illegal home demolitions, land seizures and settlements; oppression of a civilian population; the Separation Wall; the Gaza siege; and preemptive imperial wars.

Nothing so far has worked. Palestine is still occupied. Its people continue to suffer. Their human rights are denied. World leaders ignore them. This no longer can be tolerated. In solidarity, people of conscience everywhere must pressure Israel with BDS initiatives that include boycotting Israeli companies, their products and services, and global ones supporting the occupation. They're numerous, many with familiar names.

Below is a partial list, starting with global giants, Israeli companies following. Others can be added, but use it as a good start along with a New Year's resolution to boycott them and encourage others to do it as well.

Link to source: http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/02/pushing-schools-to-the-bottom

TEACHERS ACROSS the country returned from a much-needed winter break to find their school districts lining up to apply for the Obama administration's competitive education grant, Race to the Top (RTTT). First round applications for the $4.3 billion pot of money were due January 19.

Many state legislatures rushed to pass laws that would help make states more competitive for RTTT money. On January 15, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, signed a new law requiring districts to count student test scores as at least 50 percent of a teacher's evaluation. Kentucky also cleared the path to merit pay--states with laws that prevent the linking of teacher information to student test scores are automatically ineligible for RTTT funds.

California, with a budget deficit of $19.9 billion, was no exception to the legislative frenzy. In early January, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a new package of laws sponsored by Los Angeles Democratic state Sen. Gloria Romero.

As in other states, so-called education reformers like Romero, a candidate for state Superintendent of Education, are using Race to the Top as a crowbar to force through legislation that is far more sweeping than what RTTT requires.

Link to source: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-12-10/article/34245?

The Alameda County district attorney’s office Monday dropped charges against anti-war activist Stephanie Tang pertaining to her involvement in demonstrations two years ago outside downtown Berkeley’s Marine Recruitment Center.

The protests surrounding the Marine Recruitment Center took place in 2008, with anti-war activists vociferously often clashing with Berkeley police while urging military recruiters to leave Berkeley.

Tang was scheduled to appear in court Monday at 9 a.m. for a hearing in a criminal misdemeanor case charging that she had obstructed a police officer.

Tang was represented by attorney Walter Riley at the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse in Oakland, where friends, supporters and even Berkeley Councilmember Max Anderson showed up to speak in her defense.

Tang said Alameda County Superior Court Judge Carol Brosanahan called Riley into her private chambers and told him that the DA had reduced the charges to a non-criminal infraction and a $200 fine.

“I accepted that infraction because it was for disturbing the peace,” Tang said. “There’s no criminality attached to it.”

On Feb. 2, 2008, Tang led a group of protesters in an anti-military recruitment march in Berkeley, which soon escalated, leading to skirmishes with Berkeley police.

According to a police report, Tang was trying to help World Can’t Wait member Raphael Schiller, who had been detained by police for illegally using a loudspeaker, when she pulled an officer’s arm and wrapped her leg around him in order to “impede his movement.”

The police report said Tang was deliberately trying to “incite a riot.”

Tang, who has taken part in protests against the Marine Recruitment Center as well as against UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo, one of the authors of the Bush administration torture memos, said that she was clubbed by police officers during the protest, causing injuries that she said required treatment at a hospital.

“They even came charging into the hospital room asking me for a statement,” she said. “The police claimed I was very physical, very violent and even asked the DA to issue a stay-away order to keep me away from downtown Berkeley, but that was not granted.”

Although Tang was not arrested at the time of the protest, the Alameda County district attorney later charged her with one misdemeanor count of obstruction of a police officer.

“I am happy we won,” Tang said. “It’s a genuine victory for everyone who understands that what’s truly criminal is not protesting against the war, but the war itself.”

If you wish to respond to any content on MediaLeft please send a letter to the editor.

Link to source: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/remembering-howard-zinn-1922-2010.html

Distinguished scholar, author, political scientist, people's historian, activist, and son of blue-collar immigrant parents, Zinn was born on August 24, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York and died in Santa Monica, CA of a reported heart attack while swimming on January 27. He's survived by two children, Myla Kabat-Zinn and Jeff Zinn, and five grandchildren.

He was 87, and a valued guest several times on The Lendman News Hour and Progressive Radio News Hour. He'll be sorely missed.

Writing in CounterPunch on January 28, journalist, author and activist Harvey Wasserman called him "above all a gentleman of unflagging grace, humility and compassion."

Interviewed on Democracy Now, his former student, author Alice Walker, said "he had such a wonderful impact on my life and on the lives of the students of Spelman and of millions of people....he loved his students."

On the same program, Noam Chomsky spoke about Zinn during the Vietnam war period saying:

His book, The Logic of Withdrawal "really broke through. He was the first person to say - loudly, publicly, very persuasively - that this simply has to stop; we should get out, period, no conditions; we have no right to be there; it's an act of aggression; pull out."

Link to source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17330

Clinton said: “China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing effect that a nuclear-armed Iran would have, from which they receive a significant percentage of their oil supply.”

The implication here is that China will be cut off from a major energy source if they do not support U.S. foreign policy — this, too, would equal an act of war.