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The millions donated to Ethiopia in 1985 thanks to Live Aid were supposed to go towards relieving a natural disaster. In reality, donors became participants in a civil war. Many lives were saved, but even more may have been lost in Live Aid's unwitting support of a Stalinist-style resettlement project Isn't it better to do something rather than give in to despair or cynicism and do nothing? This is the reproachful question familiar to anyone who has criticised organisations that view themselves as dedicated to doing good in the world. To those UN agencies, relief organisations and development groups working...

President Obama’s Monday night speech on the “kinetic military activity” in Libya revealed that he has fully accepted the faddish “responsibility to protect” (R2P) rationale for military intervention abroad. Unfortunately, this action is not just a direct attack on Libya’s state sovereignty, but also on America’s. R2P - sounding a bit like a droid from Star Wars - is a school of thought that developed in response to the propensity of some regimes to commit crimes against their own people and the reticence of the international community to take decisive action. “Responsibility to protect,” however, lacks the firm legal basis...

What Is Samantha Power Thinking?The charismatic Obama adviser believes that stopping "genocide" is the United States' top foreign-policy priority. On March 18, President Obama explained his decision to mobilize the United States military for international intervention in Libya. “Left unchecked,” he said, “we have every reason to believe that Qaddafi would commit atrocities against his people. Many thousands could die. A humanitarian crisis would ensue. The entire region could be destabilized, endangering many of our allies and partners.” (As if it hasn’t been already?) That last sentence was a Realpolitik, national-interest justification for the U.S. intervention. But it rang hollow....

WASHINGTON---The Obama White House issued new measures on Friday to prevent genocides and mass atrocities, creating an "Atrocities Prevention Board" in the wake of the failure of the "Never Again" vow taken following the German Holocaust to stop the murders of entire populations. Obama's directive forming the board states: "Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America." The directive creates an important new tool in this effort, establishing a standing interagency Atrocities Prevention Board with the authority to develop prevention strategies and to ensure that concerns...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Radical Anti-Israel Advocate Appointed to Genocide Prevention BoardPosted By Arnold Ahlert On April 26, 2012 @ 12:48 am In FrontPage | 10 Comments Last August, president Obama created an Atrocities Prevention Board. “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America,” stated a presidential directive. He appointed Samantha Power, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, as chair. Ms. Power won a Pulitzer Prize for her book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” That’s the good news. The...

A member of the president’s National Security Council who shares Noam Chomsky’s foreign-policy goals? An influential presidential adviser whom 1960s revolutionary Tom Hayden treats as a fellow radical? ... Samantha Power, senior director of multilateral affairs for the National Security Council and perhaps the principal architect of our current intervention in Libya, is all of these things. These scary-sounding tidbits might be dismissed as isolated “gotchas.” Unfortunately, when we view these radical outcroppings in the full sweep of her life’s work, Samantha Power emerges as a patriot’s nightmare — a woman determined to subordinate America’s national sovereignty to an international...

Anyone heard this bit of audio? Economic crisis President Bush mortgage speech 2002 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW9viaJatpo

The May 29 edition of Rolling Stone looks ahead to the summer concert season, and the rock-music mag is praising the Dave Matthews Band for their use of biodiesel for buses and "biodegradable goods for catering." But this exchange was interesting, about Al Gore's "Live Earth" concerts. ROLLING STONE: Some people argue that the live experience is sort of inherently "un-green."DAVE MATTHEWS: ThereÂ’s no doubt that it is. The whole joke of Live Earth was how wasteful it was. But the idea that touring will end is sad. IÂ’d like to think that the traveling minstrel is not a thing...

(They're designed to enhance children's safety, but unsecured, unoccupied seats can become dangerous projectiles in a high-speed crash) George Clark clicked his seat-belt buckle and relaxed in the back seat of his friend's car as they headed home from a Boy Scout leader training weekend in Kiel. It was a warm June afternoon, and Clark, 52, chatted with the other two dads sitting up front. Clark paid no attention to the empty booster seat beside him. Then a car darted across the highway in front of them and they hit it, going close to 50 mph. Clark doesn't remember what...