One of the elements of cultural ideology in the USA is that the United States is somehow exceptional compared to other countries; that is, it is different in a number of positive ways that distinguish it from all other countries.

Exceptional in Health, Education & Retirement?

In a perverted way, there is some truth to this. The United States is exceptional in that it is the only advanced economy in the world that has failed to provide universal health care for its citizens. It has a large, parasitical for-profit health care system, dominated by multi-billion dollar profit making private health insurance companies that suck $1 trillion a year from the wallets of US consumers for pushing paper around, a vast network of 'for profit' hospital chains that suck another $900 billion a year, pharmaceutical drug companies that charge $94,000 for drugs to treat someone with hepatitis C (that's $1,125 per pill) and charge patients $14,000 to $64,000 a month for cancer drugs, and it has the highest paid professional medical personnel in the world.

The US spends more than $3 trillion a year, and rising, on health care. That's about 18% of its $17.4 trillion annual GDP, or almost one dollar out of every five spent on everything is for healthcare. That's the highest spending on healthcare in the industrial world. In return for that massive spending, it ranks 39th in infant mortality rates, 42nd in adult mortality, and 36th in life expectancy. Yes, the US is exceptional in health care.

It is also exceptional in education. Its college students have become, in effect, indentured servants to the education establishment of overpaid administrators and bankers, owing more than $1.1 trillion in debt just to get a college education—more per capita higher education debt than any other country in the world. The cost of attending a four year college today is, on average, $30,000 to $60,000 a year for a four year undergraduate education. For those who can't afford college there's no meaningful job training programs available any longer. Meanwhile, 70% of college professors and instructors in the US are part time/temp workers, many of whom earn poverty wages and have no benefits. That too is 'exceptional', I suppose.

For all its rhetoric about "liberal democracy" and "freedom," Europe has quietly become a hotbed of political repression. While some groups are allowed to express themselves openly - from fascists that praise Nazi collaborators of the World War II period, to feminist and gay rights groups - there is one particular brand of free speech that is simply not allowed: anti-war protest.

Masking the repression of anti-war, anti-NATO, and anti-imperialist groups behind defamatory rhetoric and demonization, the mass media in Europe attempts to portray such activists as little more than "pro-Kremlin" puppets whose strings are secretly being pulled by the wicked villains of Moscow. Rather than engaging with the critical issues raised by such groups, the political and media establishment instead targets them for repression.

Police and state repression, often of a violent nature, has been carried out under the auspices of "fighting terrorists" in Ukraine all throughout the conflict that erupted in early 2014. So too has such repression reared its ugly head in Lithuania in recent months, as anti-imperialist leftist organizers have been singled out for political persecution by the vehemently Russophobic, Euro-sycophant government. Additionally, Estonia has continued its systematic oppression of its Russian-speaking population which has been forced to exist as second class citizens, with dubious legal protections to say the least.

[The following is slightly adapted from chapters two and three of Grégoire Chamayou's new book, A Theory of the Drone, with special thanks to his publisher, the New Press.]

Initially, the English word "drone" meant both an insect and a sound. It was not until the outbreak of World War II that it began to take on another meaning. At that time, American artillery apprentices used the expression "target drones" to designate the small remotely controlled planes at which they aimed in training. The metaphor did not refer solely to the size of those machines or the brm-brm of their motors. Drones are male bees, without stingers, and eventually the other bees kill them. Classical tradition regarded them as emblems of all that is nongenuine and dispensable. That was precisely what a target drone was: just a dummy, made to be shot down.

However, it was a long time before drones were to be seen cruising above battlefields. To be sure, the idea dates back quite a while: there were the Curtiss-Sperry aerial torpedo and the Kettering Bug at the end of World War I, and then the Nazi V-1s and V-2s unleashed on London in 1944. But those old flying torpedoes may be considered more as the ancestors of cruise missiles than as those of present-day drones. The essential difference lies in the fact that while the former can be used only once, the latter are reusable. The drone is not a projectile, but a projectile-carrying machine.

It was during the Vietnam War that the U.S. Air Force, to counteract the Soviet surface-to-air missiles that had inflicted heavy casualties on it, invested in reconnaissance drones nicknamed "Lightning Bugs," produced by Ryan Aeronautical. An American official explained that "these RPVs [remotely piloted vehicles] could help prevent aircrews from becoming casualties or prisoners... With RPVs, survival is not the driving factor."

Nearly two weeks of unrelenting air strikes on Yemen by a US-backed Saudi foreign coalition is turning the already impoverished Arab Peninsula country into a humanitarian disaster. The imposed suffering seems to be part of a policy to coerce the Yemenis into accepting a US-endorsed talks process aimed at rehabilitating the ousted Washington and Saudi-backed regime of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

Saudi Arabia, the main protagonist in the 10-country bombing coalition striking Yemen, has vowed to continue the aerial attacks and has refused Russia's calls for a humanitarian ceasefire. Russia tabled a draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council for a «humanitarian pause» in the aerial bombardment to allow aid agencies access. But the UNSC said it needs «time to consider» the Russian proposal. It is not clear whether the United States, the main foreign backer of the Saudi military coalition, will block the resolution.


This is in spite of reliable reports that over 500 people, including at least 90 children, have been killed in the violence that erupted when Saudi-led fighter jets began pounding Yemen on March 26 with nighty raids. Over the weekend, three people were killed in Saudi air strikes on a humanitarian aid convoy in the southern city of Taizz.

With Yemen now under an air and naval blockade, aid agencies are reporting critical shortages of food, water, medical supplies and fuel for the civilian population. Cities, including the capital Sanaa, are cut off from electricity and other basic necessities in what can only be described as a deliberate siege designed to maximise suffering.

In Odessa — the same city where the Ukrainian civil war started on 2 May 2014 with a massacre of opponents that had been carefully planned by a team connected to the U.S. White House — there are reported to be two bloggers for the "Voice of Odessa" political site who were seized by the Security Bureau of Ukraine on April 7th, and whose "whereabouts are unknown." This report appeared in the local Odessa News.

The "Voice of Odessa" site was formed right after the massacre, in order to get an independent investigation and prosecution of the perpetrators of that massacre, in which officially 46 people were burned, shot and clubbed to death, but unofficial estimates run over 200, all victims who have not been heard from since, and some of whom had allegedly even been abducted from hospitals after the massacre.

This report's translated headline reads "SBU Detained Activists at Kulikov Field." Kulikov Field is the square or plaza in front of the former Odessa Trade Unions Building, which is the building where the massacre-victims, who had been printing and distributing pamphlets opposing the newly installed government, were murdered, by Right Sector troops in plain clothes, and also by mercenaries in the private army of Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who had allegedly announced in advance that he would pay $5,000 per corpse. (There has been no reported follow-up, regarding whether he actually paid everyone who participated, or how he paid them.)

The report on these disappearances says that the names of the missing bloggers are Svetlana Naboka and Marina Zhavoronkova, and that both women were seized at around 10 in the morning of April 7th. Furthermore, "one of the detainees seized during the search is now lacking her home computer, telephone and other personal belongings," which presumably, were also taken by the state security force.

Pakistan contributing to Saudi Arabia's mission in Yemen is bound to have reprehensible consequences for Pakistan.
To say that the Middle East never ceases to surprise is an understatement. Players in the region throw curveballs just when they are least expected. This time, it's Saudi Arabia's turn to pitch, and the kingdom's airstrikes in Yemen have initiated what could be a dramatic turn of events. For its closest client state, where Saudi Arabia goes, Pakistan follows with blind obedience.

When Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif departed for Riyadh at the beginning of March, few eyebrows were raised in Pakistan. The Pakistani premier was simply going to meet the newly crowned king and catch up with old friends in the royal court. There were murmurs of Saudis wanting Pakistani help to control Iranian influence in the region, but the honorable prime minister played hard to get and gave a tenuous no to Pakistan's patrons in Riyadh. After receiving a $1.5 billion "friendly grant" from Saudi Arabia at the beginning of his term, Sharif was playing hard to get. The prime minister managed to receive the $1.5 billion without ever publicly committing to Saudi's regional interests.

The United States could respond to Iran's possible attempts to escalate tensions in the Middle East, the US State Secretary John Kerry said Wednesday.

The US top diplomat spoke in the wake of reports that Iran had dispatched two naval ships, including a destroyer, to waters off Yemen earlier in the day.

"Iran needs to recognize that the United States is not going to stand by while the region is destabilized or while people engage in overt warfare across lines — international boundaries — in other countries," Kerry told the PBS television.


The US State Secretary added that the United States were able "to stand up to interference that is inappropriate or against international law."

Earlier, Yemeni officials had claimed that Iran was supplying weapons to the Shiite Houthi rebels, who control large parts of Yemen including capital Sanaa.

Tehran has criticized the Saudi-led air operation targeting the Houthi positions in Yemen and has called for a ceasefire in the country.

Criticized by the West, Thailand's ruling junta seems to be turning eastward for political and economic support, as Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev's recent visit to the country shows, says analyst Zachary Abuza.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is on two-day visit to Thailand, the first by a Russian PM in 25 years aimed at boosting trade and tourism and strengthening bilateral ties. During the trip, which began on April 7, Medvedev and his Thai counterpart General Prayuth Chan-ocha have signed bilateral agreements to combat drug trafficking, increase investment and develop the Thai energy sector. The goal is to double bilateral trade to $10 billion by 2016.

Medvedev's trip comes just a week after Thailand's ruling military junta, known as the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), was criticized by the United Nations, rights groups and some Western countries for lifting martial law only to replace it with sweeping security powers for the military.

Greece has so met the deadline and transferred €448 million to the International Monetary Fund calming fears Athens could soon leave the euro.

"The tranche of €448 million has been delivered to the IMF," said the Greek news agency ANA referring to senior sources in the Greek Finance Ministry. The money was transferred despite rumors the country would not manage to do it on time, which could push the country out of the eurozone.

The payment comes as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is in Moscow on a two-day official visit. On Thursday, he said the main objective of the Greek government is to keep the country in the eurozone and to find a common European solution to its financial problems.

"The purpose of our government is that Greece remained in the eurozone, we are looking for a common European solution to this [debt restructuring - Ed.] problem," Tsipras said, speaking to students at the Moscow State Institute for International Affairs.

Three cooperation agreements in communication, finance and economic development areas will be signed when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrives in Moscow for an official visit on April 12, Palestinian Ambassador to Russia Fayed Mustafa told Sputnik Thursday:

"We will sign three cooperation agreements. The first one is on cooperation between Russian, Palestinian ministries of communication, the second one is an agreement between the finance ministries of Palestine and Russia, and the third one is between the Economic Development Ministry of Russia and the Palestinian Ministry of National Economy."

Earlier in the day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will arrive in Moscow on April 12 for an official visit.