[url=http://www.inquisitr.com/2877468/u-s-judge-orders-iran-to-pay-10-5-billion-to-911-victims-and-insurers/]US Judge Orders Iran to Pay $10.5 Billion to 9/11 Victims and Insurers[/url] | Inquisitr
[i]
Judge Daniels’ latest judgment comes after he cleared Saudi Arabia of liability last year. Daniels ruled that Saudi Arabia had sovereign immunity.
[/i]
Upshot: Saudi-friendly (and one wonders what inducements may be in play, or perhaps we should be kind and put it down to senility) NY judge rules that SA, which had a whole lot to do with 9/11, is immune due to its being a sovereign nation. Iran, OTOH, which has precious little connection to 9/11 and apparently refused to dignify the legal circus by sending representatives to appear in Judge Daniels' kangaroo court, is judged guilty in absentia and is clearly not immune due to its also being a sovereign nation, but not one named 'Saudi Arabia'.

But I'm sure it's ultimately Iran's fault, for not trusting the American legal system. You Persian people are so cynical!

[url=www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/14/exposing-the-libyan-agenda-a-closer-look-at-hillarys-emails/]Exposing the Libyan Agenda: a Closer Look at Hillary’s Emails[/url] | Counterpunch
[quote]Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world’s largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa.

But that was before US-NATO forces bombed the irrigation system and wreaked havoc on the country. Today the situation is so dire that President Obama has asked his advisors to draw up options including a new military front in Libya, and the Defense Department is reportedly standing ready with “the full spectrum of military operations required.”[/quote]
So when Hillary describes Bernie Sanders' talk of commie/Libyan-style government-funded college education and universal single-payer health care as "unrealistic" pie-in-the-sky fantasies, perhaps she is speaking from her own "vast policy experience" at using monies which could pay for such things at home in order to instead violently deprive others of them abroad. "The voice of experience," indeed!

I wonder if the bit about Qaddafi "embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa" and thus threatening the profits of various multinational corporations busily privatizing Africa and renting it back to its inhabitants points to the real reasons for the trumped-up Libyan "intervention". That jibes with "pan-African currency independent of the French Franc" plan, which also conveniently died (or at least was put on indefinite hold) with Qaddafi. And the genius idea of shipping weapons from his erstwhile arsenal to those Al-Qaeda-affiliated "moderate rebels" in Syria as part of another U.S.-fomented coup using the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as a CIA-run key transshipment point - that was a bonus!

My partner firmly believes that Qaddafi was taken out exactly because he had the wherewithal and intention to start a pan-African bank which would cut in on the World Bank/IMF hammerlock on poor countries. Dan also believes that "banks are banks" and doubts that a Qaddaf-run bank would have been any more fair to debtor nations than WB/IMF.

I don't think of Qaddafi as having been benign. It's just that instead of one brutal dictator, there are now scores of tin-pot brutal dictators running around Libya. One supposes that education and health care are much more scarce now, as well.

I do have this nagging sense that bombing a country's irrigation system might, possibly, maybe, have a whiff of Crimes Against Humanity about it. Of course, that did not bother Western forces when they were repeatedly bombing water treatment plants in Iraq, and keeping chlorine for treatment under embargo on the grounds it might be used to kill people. Except, wait! Such shenanigans did kill a half million Iraqi children through dysentery and other water-borne diseases. I wonder if dying that way was less brutal than being gassed.

Some believe that's why Ceausescu was taken out too, he was the only leader who paid all the external debt to the big guys. Which ends with the big orchestration of 89 (some people call it revolution).

o [url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/hillary_clinton_s_aipac_speech_was_a_symphony_of_craven_delusional_pandering.html]Hillary Clinton’s AIPAC speech was a symphony of craven, delusional pandering[/url] | Slate -- Hillary kneels and kisses the ring. Not that The Donald was much better in his obeisance yesterday, mind you - he conveniently seems to have forgotten his earlier public comments about "not taking sides" w.r.to the Israel vs Palestine issue (But see NC reader JohnnyGL's [url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/03/links-32216.html#comment-2568560]attempt at rationalization here[/url]). Sanders OTOH declined to play toady to said uber-powerful lobby.

o Another incident of ME blowback-terror (cf. [url=http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/250420152]Belgium claims 5% of coalition airstrikes in Iraq[/url]), this time in Brussels. Belgian PM Charles Michel describes as a “blind, violent and cowardly” act. I beg to differ - attacks clearly targeted another European capital (and the EU capital), thus not blind. By definition no one who risks his own life deliberately is a coward, even if said risk is undertaken to commit mass murder. "Classically asymmetric" is more apt. They were certainly violent, though - that is the point. You spend decades meddling in and helping to terrorize the middle east and radicalize its population, then address the resulting refugee exodus not by stopping the terrorizing and regime-destabilization program, but by letting millions of the refugees (plus a few of the aforementioned radicalized folks with ulterior motives) in, perhaps with an eye toward the resulting captive pool of cheap labor. Then you act shocked when some of them don't love you for your largesse.

Of course the esteemed propaganda Wurlitzer that is the NYT a priori takes "maybe we should stop blowing countries up because they resist complete co-option by our corporate and military complexes" off the table as far as possible options is concerned - not even gonna bother linking the rag, easy enough to find if you overate and need to induce a purgative vomiting:

“The attacks have set off a new round of soul-searching about whether Europe’s security services must redouble their efforts, even at the risk of further crimping civil liberties, or whether such attacks have become an unavoidable part of life in an open European society.”

And the local evening TV n00z is running through all the usual 'je suis" tropes, in the obligatory context-free fashion. Oddly, I've heard no "je suis Yemen" in the MSM.

The Belgian prime minister is looking at it from the perspective of national security. Viewed in that way, the terrorist attack yesterday was blind and cowardly, because it did no significant damage to critical infrastructure and there was no attempt to engage the security forces, instead deliberately targeting civilians and children.

Right now, our thoughts are still with the victims.

The act of killing yourself in combination with killing others can be very aptly described as "cowardly". It is the ultimate failure of the terrorist to be prepared to live with the consequences of their selfish, destructive actions.

The key response to this cowardly act is to refuse to change course as a result. There is grief and outrage now, and those who have lost loved ones in this attack, or have been injured themselves, have had their lives turned upside down. But Belgium, Europe and the entire peace-loving population of the world will show courage by not changing their values, by continuing to promote justice, harmony and the right to believe what you want, by continuing to help those whose rights are being flouted and providing safe havens for refugees, and thereby ultimately rendering this cowardly terrorism redundant.

[QUOTE=Brian-E;429869]The act of killing yourself in combination with killing others can be very aptly described as "cowardly". It is the ultimate failure of the terrorist to be prepared to live with the consequences of their selfish, destructive actions.

The key response to this cowardly act is to refuse to change course as a result. There is grief and outrage now, and those who have lost loved ones in this attack, or have been injured themselves, have had their lives turned upside down. But Belgium, Europe and the entire peace-loving population of the world will show courage by not changing their values, by continuing to promote justice, harmony and the right to believe what you want, by continuing to help those whose rights are being flouted and providing safe havens for refugees, and thereby ultimately rendering this cowardly terrorism redundant.[/QUOTE]
Well said, Brian.

[QUOTE=Brian-E;429869]The act of killing yourself in combination with killing others can be very aptly described as "cowardly". It is the ultimate failure of the terrorist to be prepared to live with the consequences of their selfish, destructive actions.[/QUOTE]
So being prepared to die for a cause is a noble 'ultimate sacrifice' if you are on the side of the self-anointed "righteous", but cowardly otherwise? Gotcha. would you consider remote-control drone-operator mass killers as "heroic", then?

[quote]The key response to this cowardly act is to refuse to change course as a result. There is grief and outrage now, and those who have lost loved ones in this attack, or have been injured themselves, have had their lives turned upside down. But Belgium, Europe and the entire peace-loving population of the world will show courage by not changing their values, by continuing to promote justice, harmony and the right to believe what you want, by continuing to help those whose rights are being flouted and providing safe havens for refugees, and thereby ultimately rendering this cowardly terrorism redundant.[/QUOTE]
WTF are you one about, "Peace-loving population of the world"? Did you not see my link about Belgium being an active participant in US-led ME warmongering? It seems you mean "peace to enjoy one's own domestic bliss while actively depriving others of theirs". Your noble-sounding words are so full of contradictions that it is a travesty.

Sorry if I am harsh on this stuff, but it will *never* stop until precisely we in the wealthy privileged West *do* commit to changing course with regard to how we treat those in the parts of the world outside our "shared values" bubble, by considering those who have lost and continue to lose their loved ones in *our* attacks, whose lives have been turned so upside down that they are forced to flee their homes and undertake lives as refugees. By showing that "peace-loving" and "promoting justice, harmony and the right to believe what you want" are more than mere empty words which at best apply to our own. By stopping the flouting of those people's rights, and thus stopping the creation of masses of refugees to begin with. How about that?

[i]Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.[/i] -- Noam Chomsky

I take your words seriously, Ernst. I can't really parse your statement and Brian's. I think I share both positions. Regardless, I am a firm believer in "Blowback". We have to remove the causes of asymmetric warfare if we are ever to reduce the symptoms.

I agree completely that the West is as guilty of terrorism as the Middle East. For the record, I have never supported any of the military interventions by Western Allies in the Middle East during my lifetime.

But I stand by the phrase "peace-loving" with respect to the vast majority of the world's population. The murderous terrorists are a tiny minority who take power over everyone else wherever they happen to be in the world. Western leaders included.

I admit to being led by emotion in some of what I write, and also to an unacceptable bias when it comes to attacks close to home. Ernst, I also appreciate your long-running and lucid analysis of the situation in this thread.