March 2008

Murdering Iranians
Posted: Monday, March 31, 2008

¤ Iraq's never-ending war
All explanations are possible for the current fighting in Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq situated in an area which floats on massive oil riches.
But the reality of the situation which tells volumes about what is happening is the fact that war, in the fullest sense of the word, has been raging without interruption in Iraq for the past five years.
Over those years, bombing by war planes and shelling by heavy artillery have been raging across the country, telling everyone inside and outside Iraq that conditions for normal life are no longer possible.

¤ Death to the Arabs!
¤ The Opium Brides of Afghanistan
¤ Basra: Trapped in their homes, families fall victim to sickness and hunger
¤ Framing Iraqi Deaths
¤ OF troops kill Palestinian teenager, block ambulance from collecting his body
¤ Weapons used by Israel against Lebanon
¤ Police: US airstrike kills 8 in Basra

¤ wenty Questions Radio/TV interviewers avoid asking about Israel....
The abysmal performance of western TV and radio interviewers when dealing with issues surrounding Israel - that 'Rogue Regime' or 'Zionist Entity', as many now call it - is not only embarrassing but a blot on the escutcheon of journalism.
Even the most fearsome inquisitors purr like a pussycat. Their rottweiler instincts evaporate, their investigative skills desert them, objectivity takes a nosedive. Penetrating questions are seldom asked, lies go unchallenged. Any Israeli spokesperson or cheerleader is guaranteed an easy ride.

¤ The Farce goes on

¤ The decline & coming fall of us hegemony
When I went back to Ankara in late 1992 to head the Indian Embassy, many of my friends from the Turkish Foreign Office from my 1969-73 tenure as First Secretary, were going out as ambassadors to newly independent states in Central Asia and the Baltic, following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Looking at the creation of so many new missions, a cheeky young Turkish diplomat in the Foreign Ministry said rather mischievously than hopefully, that only if United States of America broke up into 50 independent states, could he ever hope to head like them a Turkish Embassy, in north America. Turkish diplomats trace their traditions and archives to six centuries of Ottoman rule over an empire from which more than two dozen nations have emerged.

¤ What was under the table has been revealed…there's even more!!
¤ The Smart Way Out of a Foolish War
¤ Halliburton poisoning US occupation forces in Iraq ? Video
¤ CIA director says Iraq government may need U.S. 'help' for "years"
¤ Ensuring Permanence

¤ Five Things You Need to Know To Understand The Latest Violence in Iraq
Heavy fighting has spread across Shia-dominated enclaves in Iraq over the past two days. The U.S.-backed regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered 50,000 Iraqi troops to "crack down" -- with coalition air support -- on Shiite militias in the oil-rich and strategically important city of Basra, U.S. forces have surrounded Baghdad's Sadr City and fighting has been reported in the southern cities of Kut, Diwaniya, Karbala and Hilla. Basra's main bridge and an oil pipeline connecting it to Amara were destroyed Wednesday. Six cities are under curfew, and acts of civil disobedience have shut down dozens of neighborhoods across the country. Civilian casualties have reportedly overwhelmed poorly equipped medical centers in Baghdad and Basra.

¤ Russian Intelligence Sees U.S. Military Buildup on Iran Border
¤ Murdering Iranians
¤ Will Cheney Ever Sleep on a Concrete Bed?
¤ Hersh: Don't trust Washington on Iraq

¤ Russia challenges US in the Islamic world
When US President George W Bush named Karachi-born Pakistani American Sada Cumber as the first US envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the White House announcement of February 27 almost passed off as pork-barrel politics on the part of a lame-duck administration. Cumber is a Texan entrepreneur - and so was Bush.

¤ The Great American Disconnect

¤ How German "intelligence" helped fabricate the case for war in Iraq.
One of the reasons the Bush-Cheney regime was able to lie so effectively to the American public in selling its case for invading Iraq was the appearance of legitimacy that came from foreign intelligence agencies. Five years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States of America (with a coalition of coerced and bribed allies that eventually fell apart as the occupation went sour), the truth of how German intelligence officials helped fabricate the case for war is being told -- but not in America.

¤ I'm just missayin'
Man, did I have a tough morning. I went outside to get the newspaper and, from out of nowhere, seven samurai, Bushido blades shimmering, attacked. Pulling an AK-47 out of my bathrobe I mowed them down. Sensing more danger, I whirled as the legendary Golden Gorilla of Oingo-Boingo swung down from a tree, fangs bared. I dispatched it with the grenade I carry in my skivvies for just such an occasion. Grabbing the newspaper, I spotted terrorist leader Ali-Ali Oxenfree closing in for the kill. Unsheathing my scimitar, I beheaded him near the petunias. I then, made it back into the house, discovering D.B. Cooper, alive and well, en route.
What? You say you have video of me just scratching my butt and watching "The Today Show?" Uh, I misspoke. I misremembered. I was tired. I slept on my leg funny. Hey, I'm only human.

¤ Hillary Misremembers Again!
¤ Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's Oil

¤ China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
The latest protests in Tibet and crackdown by Chinese authorities have brought up the usual sermonizing in the West about Chinese government oppression and illegitimate control of the Tibetans. Although I have little love for the Chinese leaders -- I think they run a cruel system -- some proper historical perspective is called for here.

¤ I Wonder Why Many Don't Love Us
¤ How Not To Write American History
¤ Saving, Investing, and Hoarding
¤ US gave $300m arms contract to 22-year-old with criminal record
¤ When They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
¤ Those Who Control Oil and Water Will Control The World
¤ Let Us Reason Together

¤ Colombian Troops Kill Farmers, Pass Off Bodies as Rebels'
All Cruz Elena González saw when the soldiers came past her house was a corpse, wrapped in a tarp and strapped to a mule. A guerrilla killed in combat, soldiers muttered, as they trudged past her meek home in this town in northwestern Colombia.0330 01 1
She soon learned that the body belonged to her 16-year-old son, Robeiro Valencia, and that soldiers had classified him as a guerrilla killed in combat, a claim later discredited by the local government human rights ombudsman. "Imagine what I felt when my other son told me it was Robeiro," González said in recounting the August killing. "He was my boy."

US Draws On Its Dominion To Wreak Havoc In Iran
Posted: Friday, March 28, 2008

¤ Rev. Jeremiah Wright Isn't the Problem
Maybe we really are doomed to elect John McCain, remain in Iraq forever and nuke Iran. Nations that forget history may not be doomed to repeat it, but those that never even recognize reality in the first place definitely are. Last week's ridiculous uproar over Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons proves yet again that America has still not come to terms with the most rudimentary facts about race, 9/11 - or itself.The great shock so many people claim to be feeling over Wright's sermons is preposterous. Anyone who is surprised and horrified that some black people feel anger at white people, and America, is living in a racial never-never land. Wright has called the U.S. "the United States of White America," talks about the "oppression" of black people and says, "White America got their wake-up call after 9/11." Gosh, who could have dreamed that angry racial grievances and left-wing political views are sometimes expressed in black churches?

¤ Million Acres of Guyanese Rainforest To Be Saved In Groundbreaking Deal
¤ Cheney Believes War Is Not the People's Business

¤ Letter from Venezuela's Communications Minister to the Washington Post
Over the past several years, we have informed you of our concerns regarding the hostile, distorted and inaccurate coverage of Venezuela in your newspaper, and particularly on the Editorial Page. Previously, we communicated our alarm at the unbalanced reporting and writing on Venezuela during the period 2000-2006, which evidenced one-sided analyses and false claims regarding President Chávez's tendencies and events within the country. Since then, however, the Post coverage has gotten worse. More editorials and OpEds have been written this past year about Venezuela than ever before, 98% of which are negative, critical, and aggressive and contain false or manipulated information. We are therefore led to believe that the Washington Post is promoting an anti-Venezuela, anti-Chávez agenda.

¤ Bush and McCain's Shared Foreign Policy Approach
¤ Discriminating Against the Big Fish?
¤ Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
¤ Ashes of Lies
¤ Knocking Down False Economic Gods

¤ Growing Dread About Iraq
Now that either could win the big race, Obama and Clinton fudge and hedge about withdrawing troops immediately from Iraq. Barack "will keep some troops in Iraq to protect our embassy and diplomats; if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda." (BarackObama.com)

¤ Iraq Is Not a Suitable Place To Live as a Human
¤ U.S. forces drawn deeper into Iraq crackdown
¤ From Worship To War: Reverend Wright Sermon - Video

¤ Meet The (White) Man Who Inspired Wright's Controversial Sermon
Meet the man who inspired Reverend Jeremiah Wright's now famous tirade about America's foreign policy inciting the terrorist attacks of September 11.
His name is Ambassador Edward Peck. And he is a retired, white, career U.S. diplomat who served 32-years in the U.S. Foreign Service and was chief of the U.S. mission to Iraq under Jimmy Carter -- hardly the black-rage image with which Wright has been stigmatized.

¤ Fox News Busted by Huffington Post

¤ The Swiftboating of Barack Obama
If there's anything I've learned about American politics over the past decade, it's this: First, regressives will do anything - and I mean anything - to obtain power (the real purpose of which is to loot the public fisc of all items not securely nailed to the floor). And, second, just about everything they try works when employed against an American public possessed of stunning political immaturity.
It comes as little surprise, therefore, that two things happened over the last couple of weeks. One, that Barack Obama was swiftboated by means of a bogus inference in order to make him look like an angry black radical. And two, that a lot of dumb voters went for it.

¤ Pakistan Beware, They Are Cornering China
Next to her bad Collagen-injected facelift job, Nancy Pelosi has given us one of the worst lessons in deceitful diplomacy on behalf of the United States. Pelosi, who is third in line of power in Washington after George Bush and Dick Cheney, flew halfway around the world to our neighborhood last week. Her mission? To further stoke the fire in China's Tibet.
Tibet is striking a nerve in Islamabad because it is a classic example of the oldest trick in modern espionage: a host country, India, facilitates a superpower, the United States, to use Indian soil to create and sustain ethnic unrest in Tibet, China's backwater joined at the hip with India.

¤ The Tibet Card
¤ The March 20, 2008 US Declaration of War on Iran
¤ US Draws On Its Dominion To Wreak Havoc In Iran
¤ Demonstrations in Baghdad against al-Maliki
¤ Charges dropped against US Marine over Iraq massacre
¤ Classified Memo Reveals Iraqi Prisoners as "Starving"
¤ Hannity, Clinton, Obama, Rev. Wright and "Racism 101"

The Mortgage Mess and the Economic Meltdown
Posted: Wednesday, March 26, 2008

¤ 97 percent of US death toll came after 'Mission Accomplished'

¤ The Science of Terror
Sometimes the science community, hiding behind the guise of empirical research, cannot see its own bias even while correctly analyzing a situation. The latter statement may seem contradictory, but given the manner in which it studies 'terror' and then applies those findings and definitions only to some 'other' group, it ignores the reality of terror at home and the reality of terror perpetrated by the 'homeland'. Not 'home grown terror' such as the Timothy McVeighs of the world, nor the terror inflicted on the people by the very infrequent acts of foreigners acting on the homeland, but the terror of the country itself, the acts of the people in government, in the military, in politics, in religion, who either spread terror themselves or spread the fear of terror in order to control not only the domestic audience but foreign audiences as well.

¤ 40% of aid to Afghanistan goes to consultants: report

¤ Where Are the Iraqis in the Iraq War?
Five years following the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the mainstream media is once more making the topic one of intense scrutiny and analysis. The costs and implications of the war are endlessly covered from all possible angles, with one notable exception - the cost to the Iraqi people themselves.

¤ How big is the Animal Farm?
¤ Threat to millions as food aid scheme runs out of money

¤ Manta Air Base Tied to Colombian Raid on FARC Camp
Military and diplomatic sources see a link between the Manta air base, operated by the United States in Ecuadorean territory, and this month's bombing raid by Colombia on a FARC guerrilla camp in Ecuador. The U.S. air force was granted a 10-year concession in 1999 to use the base, located in the port city of Manta on Ecuador's northern Pacific coast, in its counter-drug trafficking activities in the region.

¤ McCain says US succeeding in Iraq
Fresh off his eighth Iraq visit, Sen. John McCain declared Monday that "we are succeeding" and said he wouldn't change course - even as the U.S. death toll rose to 4,000 and the war entered its sixth year. To underscore his view of the stakes in Iraq, the certain Republican presidential nominee twice referenced a recent audio tape from Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaida leader urged followers to join the al-Qaida fight in Iraq and called the country "the greatest opportunity and the biggest task."

¤ The Tibet Myth

¤ When America Can't Handle the Truth
The word, attributed to the late writer Saul Bellow, is "angelization" - willfully putting someone beyond blame. Angelizing America is the common tongue of all national politicians, the oath candidates implicitly take when running for president. It's what the most sentimental people on Earth expect. It's what enables a country that committed its share of atrocities in the past and is committing more than its share of moral degradations today to look itself in the mirror and see something exceptional looking back, rather than just another empire trampling down its march of folly, as the great historian Barbara Tuchman called it. Angelizing America is the unspoken, self-evident pledge of allegiance. Someone didn't tell the Obamas.

¤ Torture in Our Own Backyards
¤ America's Ruling Clique
¤ The Coming War on Venezuela
¤ Mahdi Army arrested 17 American soldiers
¤ Chevron reportedly in talks to tap Iraq's oil
¤ Land Deal Could Open Alaska Wildlife Refuge To Oil
¤ The Mortgage Mess and the Economic Meltdown
¤ Cheney Contradicts Facts and Findings Concerning Iran's Nuclear Goals

¤ Tax My Rich White Torturer
Just so we have this straight: You are not paying taxes merely to fund torture and bomb-dropping and the killing of countless innocents in Iraq in a futile and lost war that's not really a war and is far more of a massive fiscal, tactical and moral failure which will end up costing the nation an estimated $3 trillion, burn through any remaining sense of national dignity and leave repercussions that will last for generations.

¤ Dreams Turned Into Rubble in New Orleans

¤ Welfare on Wall Street
On March 19, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon joined Bear Stearns chief executive Alan Schwartz to face a group of 400 stunned Bear executives. Five days earlier, Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street's five largest investment banks, had lost $17 billion of wealth, triggering the biggest financial panic since the Great Depression.

¤ Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
¤ The Nuisance Next Time?
¤ CBS Exposes Hillary Clinton Bosnia Trip.
¤ African Union troops invade rebel island

Venezuela Slams US in UN Terrorism Debate
Posted: Tuesday, March 25, 2008

by Kiraz Janicke
March 20th 2008
Venezuelanalysis.com

Venezuela's Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Aura Rodriguez de Ortiz, slammed the U.S. government's "double standard" on combating terrorism during a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, for its failure to prosecute former CIA operative and international terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles. The criticism comes amidst U.S. President George W. Bush's renewed accusations that Venezuela has ties to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which Washington classifies as a "terrorist" organization.

"The case of the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is an example that shows and confirms the double standards of a government which says it fights against terrorism but endorses terrorist methods," Rodriguez de Ortiz said.

Posada, a Cuban-born Venezuelan citizen who has been described as the "Bin Laden of Latin America," is wanted in Venezuela on 73 counts of first-degree murder in connection to the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976. He was previously charged in connection with the bombing in Venezuela, but escaped from prison in 1985 before going to trial.

While he denies involvement in the Cuban airliner attack, Posada freely admitted his involvement in numerous other terrorist attacks in an interview with the New York Times, including a string of hotel bombings in Cuba, which killed an Italian tourist in 1997.

Posada is also wanted in Venezuela in relation to a series of abuses, including a massacre of 40 people, which occurred under his command as Chief of Operations of Venezuelan Intelligence, (the DISIP), in 1973.

Venezuelan authorities have requested Posada's extradition three times since 2005 when he entered the U.S. on a fake passport. However, rather than processing the extradition request, the Department of Homeland Security charged Posada for illegal entry into the country. In May last year a U.S Federal Judge dismissed all the charges and Posada now lives freely in Miami.

Rodriguez de Ortiz questioned why the Posada case was treated as a minor immigration crime, and suggested that the U.S wants to hide its own involvement in his crimes.

The U.S. is bound, not only by the 1922 U.S.-Venezuelan extradition treaty she said, but also by international treaties on terrorist bombings and the safety of civil aviation "to extradite or submit his case for prosecution without any exception."

Carolyn Willson, diplomat at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said a Texas judge refused Posada's extradition to Venezuela, "because it was more likely than not that he would be tortured if he were so transferred," - a claim that the Venezuelan government says is baseless.

In a speech in Jacksonville, Florida on Tuesday, Bush reiterated accusations that Venezuela is funding the FARC and claimed that alleged links between the Venezuelan government and the guerrillas were "closer" than previously thought.

Referring to Colombia's illegal military attack on the FARC guerrillas in Ecuadoran territory on March 1, which sparked a major diplomatic crisis between Colombia and it's neighbors, Ecuador and Venezuela, the US President said, "Recently, when Colombian forces killed one of the FARC's most senior leaders, they discovered computer files that suggest even closer ties between Venezuela's regime and FARC terrorists than we previously knew."

Colombia also claimed that the computer files show "evidence" of links between the FARC and the Ecuadoran government. Both Ecuador and Venezuela have categorically rejected the allegations as false.

In a statement released today the FARC said accusations that it has connections or received funding from the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador are false.

"In no way do we accept the blackmail that is trying to be put together against the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador by using a computer that, not even with special armor could have survived the bombing," the statement continued.

Twenty-one archconservative Republican lawmakers, including Connie Mack and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida, have used the "evidence" as the basis for a call to place Venezuela on the U.S. State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

Venezuelan government officials say the accusations are part of a stepped up U.S. campaign to isolate the Chavez government and defeat the Bolivarian revolution, as the process of radical change unfolding in Venezuela is known.

In an earlier address to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington last week, Bush accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of backing "terrorists" in neighboring Colombia and using his country's oil wealth to fuel an anti-American campaign across Latin America.

"In the process, regime leaders have squandered their oil wealth and left their people to face food shortages," he added.

During his weekly television program Alo Presidente on Sunday, Chavez retorted that Bush is a "terrorist" responsible for the genocide of more than one million people in Iraq, and that Venezuelans "today, are better fed than ever."

Since coming to power in 1998, the Chavez government has increased public spending dramatically, directing billions of dollars of oil revenue towards social programs that provide free education and healthcare to the poor, as well as providing low cost oil and unconditional aid to Latin American and Caribbean countries.

In contrast, Venezuelan political commentator Luigino Bracci said, "the regime in Washington" has spent $3 trillion on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, "who is squandering their country's resources?"

Source: www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3291

How Lethally Stupid Can One Country Be?
Posted: Monday, March 24, 2008

¤ America's Next 9/11

¤ Curveball: 'I Am Not To Blame' for U.S. War in Iraq
The Iraqi defector known as "Curveball," whose fabricated stories about mobile biological weapons labs helped lead the U.S. to war in Iraq five years ago, says he is not to blame for the war and that he never said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, according to a new report released this weekend in the German magazine Der Spiegel.
Curveball is still living in Germany under a new name and protection and money offered by German intelligence services.

¤ This is the war that started with lies, and continues with lie after lie after lie
It has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War.
The outcome has been an official picture of Iraq akin to fantasy and an inability to learn from mistakes because of a refusal to admit that any occurred. Yet the war began with just such a mistake. Five years ago, on the evening of 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on American television to say that military action had started against Iraq.

¤ How Lethally Stupid Can One Country Be?
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy.
As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration, (No, it's not a terrorist attack - that was 2001! No, it's not a catastrophic war - that was 2003! No, it's not a drowning city - that was 2005! This one is an economic meltdown, ladies and gentlemen!) bringing to it the same blithe disengagement with which he's attended the previous ones, you cannot but stop and gaze in stark, comedic awe, realizing that the most powerful polity that ever existed on the planet twice picked this imbecilic buffoon as its leader, from among 300 million other choices. Seeing him clown with the Washington press corps yet once again - and seeing them fawn over him, laugh in all the right places, and give him a standing ovation, also yet once again - is the equivalent of having all your logic circuits blown simultaneously. Truly, the universe has a twisted and deeply ironic sense of humor. Monty Python is about as funny - and as stiff - as Dick Nixon, by comparison.

¤ The Naive Armchair Warriors Are Fighting A Delusional War
¤ Tibet and the March 10 commemoration of the CIA's 1959 'uprising'

¤ They show terror plots, but raise new questions about some U.S. claims.
President Bush said lots of things about Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the Iraq War. But few of his charges grabbed more attention than an unscripted remark he made at a Texas political fund-raiser on Sept. 26, 2002. "After all, this is a guy who tried to kill my dad at one time," Bush said. The comment referred to a 1993 claim by the Kuwaiti government—accepted by the Clinton administration—that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) had plotted to assassinate President George H.W. Bush during a trip to Kuwait that spring. Ever since, armchair psychologists have suggested that personal revenge may have been one reason for the president's determination to overthrow Saddam's regime.

¤ How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq

¤ Pakistani Prime Minister Frees Judges
he deposed chief justice emerged from house arrest Monday after Pakistan's new prime minister ordered police to pull back razor-wire barricades and release judges ousted last year by President Pervez Musharraf.
The judge's appearance on the balcony of his Islamabad villa drew cheers from hundreds of flag-waving, drum-beating supporters and dramatically underlined how power is slipping away from a stalwart U.S. ally.

¤ Fallujah Has Been "Reconstructed" As "A Big Jail"
¤ Young Guantánamo detainee details abuse
¤ The Iraq War was a Conspiracy
¤ Italy's toxic waste crisis, the Mafia – and the scandal of Europe's mozzarella

¤ Scientists Find Potential 'Off-switch' For HIV Virus
While there is no cure for lingering viral infections such as HIV and herpes, a recent study at Princeton University suggests it may be possible to deactivate such viruses indefinitely with the flick of a genetic switch.

¤ OAS supports Ecuador, Venezuela on 'path of true peace'
¤ Digging Out of the Recession
¤ The Coming War on Venezuela

¤ So? ...
It would have to happen on Easter Sunday, wouldn't it, that the 4,000th American soldier would die in Iraq. Play me that crazy preacher again, will you, about how maybe God, in all his infinite wisdom, may not exactly be blessing America these days. Is anyone surprised? 4,000 dead. Unofficial estimates are that there may be up to 100,000 wounded, injured, or mentally ruined by this war. And there could be up to a million Iraqi dead. We will pay the consequences of this for a long, long time. God will keep blessing America.

¤ Slavery's Staying Power
¤ Racism: A Refresher Course
¤ No Carville apology for Judas remark
¤ Victimizing Obama
¤ The Bungled War

¤ The Clout of George Bush
There are advantages to be gained from taking possession of a country rather than simply befriending its leader. Consider Iraq and Pakistan.
Iraq, as was recently observed in this space, is a possession of George Bush. Though sovereign in theory, Iraq was powerless to contradict Mr. Bush when he said it was all right for Turkey to invade that country. All Iraq could do was have its prime minister, Nouri al Maliki, make a phone call to Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime minister, to let him know of the need to "respect Iraq sovereign authority." The call preceded the invasion. Being sovereign, however, Iraq could play host to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad even though Mr. Bush dislikes him and he is the leader of one of the countries that might be described as the Bush-Cheney axis of hatred.

Five Years of Genocide
Posted: Saturday, March 22, 2008

¤ 'We live in a nightmare. Death and carnage is everywhere'
In most cities of the world a person might expect to be feted for surviving a single bomb attack. In Baghdad, survival stories can be found on every street corner.
Ali is a painter and a student at the academy of art in north Baghdad. A few years ago he moved to the Baghdad suburb of Karrada, where many artists live because of its art market.

¤ Five Years of Genocide
Five years ago to the day, it was the dawn of the American invasion that carried Iraq to the endless darkness of the occupation. The fall of Baghdad, the Arab capital which they almost dubbed Saddam Hussein's capital, was nothing but the onset of a massive volcanic eruption in the region; its fires still consume the Arabs' stability and security and rewrite maps from the Ocean to the Gulf.

¤ What Do We Owe Iraq?
Lurching down Valencia Street in San Francisco last week, I all but stumbled over a homeless young man squatting against the wall of the now moribund New College. Begging his pardon, I could not help but note that he was leafing through a dog-eared volume scavenged from a nearby free book box serendipitously entitled "What We Owe Iraq." Indeed, my inattentiveness to the young man's pedal extremities was the by-product of my contemplation of just that subject.

¤ There Is No Such Thing As A War For Free
¤ U.S. "Enhancing Terror" Interview with Noam Chomsky Video

¤ Iraqi police say civilians killed by US fire; US military denies
¤ Iraq Burn Rate > $12 billion per month?
¤ Iran military 'shells Iraq villages'

¤ $5.1B Proposed in Sales, Upgrades, Weapons for Pakistan's F-16s
On June 28/06, the US DSCA notified Congress via a series of releases of its intention to provide Pakistan with a $5.1 billion Foreign Military Sales package to upgrade the F-16s that serve as the PAF's top of the line fighters. Some of these items had been put on hold following the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan & Kashmir, but the request for 36 new F-16 Block 50/52s is now going ahead following the required 30-day review period, along with new weapons, engine modifications, 60 F-16 upgrade kits that would cover Pakistan's older F-16 A/Bs plus other aircraft it might buy second-hand, and related equipment.

¤ Iraq begins sixth year of chaos, bloodshed

¤ Five years of Iraq lies

¤ The Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
It's appropriate that on this week of the fifth anniversary of the criminal US invasion of Iraq, we are also seeing several other things: the death toll of American troops in that doomed adventure is rising past 4000, the economy is sliding into a recession which could be deep and long, and the financial markets are teetering on the edge of a possibly historic collapse.

¤ McCain's repeated "slips of the tongue" on Iran and al-Qaida
¤ The media's special relationship with John McCain

¤ McCain: A History of Being Wrong About Al Qaeda, Iraq and Iran

¤ US blocks Venezuelan purchase of food
The Venezuelan minister, speaking on the program Counter Coup in Synthesis, accused the US of blocking purchases by the government, especially of food, from foreign sources. Venezuela's economy is essentially oil-based. It imports around 70 percent of its food products. The blocking of food supplies is just one of the methods being used by the US in its attempts to undermine the popularity of the government and destabilise the internal situation there.

¤ Dick Cheney tour sparks Iran war rumours

¤ The Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Since August 2007, US and European banks have constantly made headline news concerning the deep crisis they are going through and its knock-on effect on the neoliberal economic system as a whole. Asset depreciation for these banks currently stands at over 200 billion dollars. Several banking research services and seasoned economists estimate that the final damage will exceed 1,000 billion dollars .

¤ Stop Financing Shock Journalism
¤ Penn's War: Media Lap Dogs Backed Iraq Mess
¤ Climate Change Deepening World Water Crisis
¤ Spitzer? I Hardly Knew Her!

¤ The World According to Monsanto
¤ Why?
¤ Corporate Media's Virtual Blackout on Iraq Atrocity Hearings

¤ Dell to buy $52 bln components from China
Dell Inc (NasdaqGS:DELL - News) plans to buy $23 billion of components from China this year and $29 billion in 2009, helping it reduce costs while the company's main market, the United States, is facing recession.

Psychopaths made in America
Posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2008

¤ The Terrible Reality of Iraq
It has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War.
The outcome has been an official picture of Iraq akin to fantasy and an inability to learn from mistakes because of a refusal to admit that any occurred. Yet the war began with just such a mistake. Five years ago, on the evening of 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on American television to say that military action had started against Iraq.

¤ U.S. army kills 3 cops in Kirkuk

¤ Five years after the invasion of Iraq: A debacle for US imperialism
Five years after Washington inaugurated its "shock and awe" campaign, striking Baghdad with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs, it has become abundantly clear that the war of aggression against Iraq has produced the greatest geo-political disaster in American history.
The war's costs, in terms of both US imperialism's global position and sheer dollar amounts, have eclipsed the immense damage wrought by the protracted intervention in Vietnam nearly four decades ago. It has already lasted longer than the American Civil War, World War I, World War II and the Korean War. Even in Vietnam, after five years of major troop deployments, the withdrawal of American forces had already begun.

¤ Iraq: a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic dimensions
¤ AMERICA'S WAR DOLLAR$ AT WORK
¤ 15-year-old Guantanamo prisoner says interrogators threatened him with rape
¤ Psychopaths made in America.

¤ How Many Child Prostitutes Is Bush Responsible for?
George Bush has been tied to a prostitution ring involving as many as 50,000 women and girls. The prostitutes, some as young as 13, are among the 1.2 million desperate Iraqis who fled to Syria after Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the U.K. Independent.
Bush's invasion destroyed the Iraqi government and unleashed a wave of political and sectarian violence that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4 million to become refugees, according to the UN.
Facing starvation, as many as 50,000 women and girls have been forced into prostitution in Syria alone, according to Hana Ibrahim of the Women's Will Association.

¤ New Yorker: Abu Ghraib abuses were 'de facto US policy'
¤ Bush Says Iraq War Was Worth It

¤ The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn
Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster".
But we have used these parallels before and they have drifted away in the Tigris breeze. Iraq is swamped in blood. Yet what is the state of our remorse? Why, we will have a public inquiry – but not yet! If only inadequacy was our only sin.
Today, we are engaged in a fruitless debate. What went wrong? How did the people – the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world – not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September? How did we let it happen? And how come we didn't plan for the aftermath of war?

¤ What is the real death toll in Iraq?
¤ Venezuela's state-run oil company begins demanding payment in euros
¤ How to Destroy a Country and Get Off Scot-Free

¤ Bush Still Spinning Nukes in Iran
The unanimous conclusion of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, that Iran ceased pursuing a program of nuclear weapons in 2003, has dealt a severe blow to the Bush-Cheney agenda of forcible regime change in Iran. For several months, the rhetoric emerging from the White House escalated to the point that many observers predicted Bush would attack Iran before he leaves office.

¤ America Was Conned - Who Will Pay?
¤ McCain Gaffe: "Common Knowledge" That Iran Is Training Al-Qaida

¤ Confronting America's Racial Disparities
¤ The Kool-Aid That Kills
¤ Hugo Chavez and the Obama/Clinton Twins

¤ Of National Lies and Racial America
For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.

¤ Past, Present and Wannabe
¤ Beware an Attack on Iran
¤ Democracy Day in Pakistan

¤ Globalization Bush-style
Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a small town somewhere near the Southern California coast. You're going about your daily life, trying to scrape by in hard times, when the missile hits. It might have come from the Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) - its pilot at a base on the outskirts of Tehran - that has had the village in its sights for the last six hours or from the Russian sub stationed just off the coast. In either case, it's devastating.

¤ New report: Abu Ghraib

¤ Afrocentricity for Dummies (and other Conservatives)
Afrocentricity has long been a dirty word in America. Its very utterance conjures up images in the minds of many white folks of a mob of wild eyed, spear welding, black militants storming the village and pillaging and ravaging everything in sight. This fear has been exacerbated by the controversy over Senator Barack Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his "Afrocentric Liberation Theology." Not to mention the pictures that "mysteriously" started poppin' up in email boxes, a few weeks back, featuring the senator decked out in his Kenyan garb.

Five Years Of Failure
Posted: Sunday, March 16, 2008

¤ Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan 2008 Audio

¤ We Own The World
You all know, of course, there was an election -- what is called "an election" in the United States -- last November. There was really one issue in the election, what to do about U.S. forces in Iraq and there was, by U.S. standards, an overwhelming vote calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces on a firm timetable.
As few people know, a couple of months earlier there were extensive polls in Iraq, U.S.-run polls, with interesting results. They were not secret here. If you really looked you could find references to them, so it's not that they were concealed. This poll found that two-thirds of the people in Baghdad wanted the U.S. troops out immediately; the rest of the country -- a large majority -- wanted a firm timetable for withdrawal, most of them within a year or less.

¤ Five Years Of Failure
¤ Silenced by the men in white socks
¤ I Came, I Saw, I Destroyed!

¤ Bearly Alive: Investment Giant Rushed To I.C.U.
On Friday, Bear Stearns blew up. It was the worst possible news at the worst possible time. A day earlier, the politically-connected Carlyle Capital hedge fund defaulted on $16.6 billion of its debt. Carlyle boasted a $21.7 billion portfolio of AAA-rated residential mortgage-backed securities, but was unable to make a margin call of just $400 million. (Where did the $21.7 billion go?) The news on Bear was the last straw. The stock market started reeling immediately; shedding 300 points in less than an hour.

¤ John Pilger: Australia's hidden Empire
When the outside world thinks about Australia, it generally turns to venerable clichés of innocence – cricket, leaping marsupials, endless sunshine, no worries. Australian governments actively encourage this. Witness the recent "G'Day USA" campaign, in which Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman sought to persuade Americans that, unlike the empire's problematic outposts, a gormless greeting awaited them Down Under. After all, George W Bush had ordained the previous Australian prime minister, John Howard, "sheriff of Asia".

¤ Venezuela opts for oil contracts in euros
¤ Argentina, Brazil to drop U.S. dollar in bilateral commercial transactions
¤ How can Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn and colleagues remain silent?
¤ King of the gaffe charms Italy again
¤ U.S. missiles kill 9 militants in Pakistan

¤ How to Destroy a Country in Five Years
"It reminds me of Iraq under Saddam," said a militant opponent of Saddam Hussein angrily to me last week as he watched red-capped Iraqi soldiers close down part of central Baghdad so the convoy of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki might briefly venture into the city.

¤ It's Still the Economy, Stupid

¤ In the American Media, It's All About the John
Prostitution is hot news on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, Eliot Spitzer is being treated by the media as a fallen hero, a tragic figure brought down by recklessness. Some are even acting like a bunch of frat boys, snickering at a pal who got caught with his pants down. The British press, on the other hand, is more serious and sedate; and it's focused on the women. It took five dead women to get the British media to recognize that prostitution is not all fun and games for those who sell sex for money.

¤ Things More Important Than the Spitzer Spectacle

'No link between Saddam and al-Qaeda'
Posted: Friday, March 14, 2008

¤ 'No link between Saddam and al-Qaeda'
A detailed Pentagon study confirms there was no direct link between late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda network, debunking a claim President George W Bush's administration used to justify invading Iraq.
Coming five years after the start of the war in Iraq, the study of 600,000 official Iraqi documents and thousands of hours of interrogations of former Saddam Hussein colleagues "found no smoking gun (ie direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda," said the study, quoted in US media today.

¤ Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan 2008
¤ The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
¤ FBI Found to Misuse Security Letters
¤ Stocks Retreat on Credit Fears
¤ Bush: Economy Is Going Through A 'Rough Period'
¤ Surging costs of groceries hit home

¤ MRSA Superbug Infections Now Killing More Americans than AIDS
An antibiotic-resistant strain of the common staph bacteria is now responsible for more deaths in the United States than AIDS, according to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "This is a significant public health problem" said CDC medical epidemiologist Scott K. Fridkin. "We should be very worried."

¤ What the Independent says... and what it omits
¤ Tibet gripped by violent clashes

¤ Dollar demise: 111 per barrel of oil and 1,000 per ounce of gold
The US dollar rate set a new record low against the Japanese yen as it dropped below 100 yens per one dollar for the first time since 1995. Interest rates, stock prices and the dollar rate continuers to decline in the USA, whereas investors continue to wonder whether they should keep their funds in US assets.

¤ Bolivia's African king -11 March 08 Video

¤ Afghanistan: Why Canada Should Withdraw Its Troops
¤ Weak dollar costs U.S. economy its No. 1 spot

¤ Watching the Dollar Die
I've been watching the dollar die all my life. I sometimes think I will outlast it.
When I was a young man, gold was $35 an ounce. Today one ounce gold bullion coins, such as the Canadian Maple Leaf, cost more than $1,000.
Our coinage was silver. Our dimes, quarters, and half dollars had purchasing power. Even the nickel could purchase a candy bar, ice cream cone or soft drink, and a penny could purchase bubble gum or hard candy. If a kid could collect 5 discarded soft drink bottles from a construction site, the 2 cents deposit on the returnable bottles was enough for the Saturday afternoon movie. Gasoline was 32 cents a gallon. A dollar's worth was enough for a Saturday night date.

¤ Bush "Envious" Of Soldiers Serving "Romantic" Mission In Afghanistan

¤ Anti-War Protesters Chant "War Criminal" at Rice
Chanting "war criminal," anti-war protesters waved blood-colored hands at U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, but police held them back as she left a Capitol Hill hearing room.
Earlier, Republicans had complained about the distraction from the group as they held up signs saying "Condi Kills Kids" during the hearing on the State Department budget.
But the chairman of the House of Representatives committee, a New York Democrat, declined to eject the protesters.

¤ In Torture We Trust
The U.S. Congress sent President Bush a bill that would have banned the CIA from using 'harsh interrogation methods,' which most of the world sees as torture and which even the military is forbidden to use. Said Mr. Bush: "The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror."
It is not surprising that the irony of that statement is lost on Mr. Bush. Terrorist tools that he allows the Central Intelligence Agency to use are a 'valuable tool' in the war against terror.

¤ Chavez says US can 'shove' terror list
¤ Powerless on Oil Prices
¤ A Cause Bigger Than Any Scandal
¤ Afghan Hero Who died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story

¤ The Gaza Bombshell
After failing to anticipate Hamas's victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

The War and the Recession
Posted: Wednesday, March 12, 2008

¤ 'Fox' Fallon Fired

¤ Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders?
While virtually every country in Central and South America, including the Caribbean, has waged in on the debate of the Colombian state conducting an illegal military campaign within Ecuadorian sovereign territory, resulting in the deaths of various high ranking officials in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo, FARC-EP), the United States have remained virtually silent. Such silence from the US is quite perplexing consdiering the administrations of Ronald Regan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush have wielded a twenty-two year old assault on this insurgency movement.

¤ 'The War on Democracy'
¤ Severed fingers of 5 hostages held in Iraq delivered to U.S.
¤ The Arab-Israeli Conflict

¤ Syria slams 'hypocritical' addition to US blacklist
Syria accused the United States of hypocrisy on Wednesday after it added the Damascus regime to a blacklist of "the world's most systematic human rights violators."
The foreign ministry said that the history of abuses by US personnel in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the allegations surrounding the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba denied Washington any right to set itself up as an arbiter of human rights.

¤ US slams rights record in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal
¤ Venezuela to introduce new tax on oil companies
¤ Dollar Trades at Record Low Versus Euro as Fed Plan Disappoints
¤ Crude rallies to surpass $110 as dollar falls

¤ Bush and Uribe v. Chavez and Correa
Call it another salvo in Bush v. Chavez with Ecuador's Raphael Correa as a secondary target and Colombia's Alvaro Uribe as a proxy aggressor. The Ecuadorean incursion was no ordinary cross-border raid. It was a made in Washington affair that escalates a nine year attempt to remove the Venezuelan leader and return oligarchs in the country to power. It also threatens two regional leaders who know what they're up against in Uribe and Washington, "friendly" handshakes in the Dominican Republic notwithstanding. The situation is far from settled, and here's how events unfolded so far

¤ UN expert raps US for barring prison access in Iraq
¤ Double Standards Apply To Terrorists In Israel
¤ Israeli Deaths Matter More
¤ Spitzer resigns post
¤ Bringing Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother Us

¤ The $3 Trillion War in Iraq
With March 20 marking the fifth anniversary of the United States-led invasion of Iraq, it's time to take stock of what has happened.
In our new book The Three Trillion Dollar War, Harvard's Linda Bilmes and I conservatively estimate the economic cost of the war to the U.S. to be $3 trillion, and the costs to the rest of the world to be another $3 trillion - far higher than the Bush administration's estimates before the war.
The Bush team not only misled the world about the war's possible costs, but has also sought to obscure the costs as the war has gone on.

¤ The Iraq Follies
In putting together my new book, So Wrong for So Long, on Iraq and the media, I revisited the good, the bad, and the ugly in war coverage from the run-up to the invasion through the five years of controversy that followed. Even though I monitored the coverage closely all along, I was continually surprised to come across once-prominent names, quotes, and incidents that had faded to obscurity. Here is a list of 18 of those nearly forgotten episodes, in roughly chronological order.

¤ It's the 'Oh Shit!' Moment on Iran

¤ How to be An Israeli Journalist Never Write "Murder" or "Palestine"
A year ago I applied for the job of Occupied Territories correspondent at Ma'ariv, an Israeli newspaper. I speak Arabic and have taught in Palestinian schools and taken part in many joint Jewish-Palestinian projects. At my interview the boss asked how I could possibly be objective. I had spent too much time with Palestinians; I was bound to be biased in their favor. I didn't get the job. My next interview was with Walla, Israel's most popular website. This time I did get the job and I became Walla's Middle East correspondent. I soon understood what Tamar Liebes, the director of the Smart Institute of Communication at the Hebrew University, meant when she said: 'Journalists and publishers see themselves as actors within the Zionist movement, not as critical outsiders.'

¤ Geraldine Ferraro's Ugly Words - Accidental, or Campaign Ploy?

¤ Iraq's Surging Violence

¤ A Way To stave Off Iran Sanctions

¤ The War and the Recession
With the release of the February jobs numbers, everyone except for the economists now acknowledges we are in a recession. The economy is shedding jobs at a rapid pace and it is only a matter of time until we see the unemployment rate rising. In addition to greater difficulty finding jobs, workers can look forward to falling wages and reduced access to health care insurance and pension coverage.
Naturally, people are looking for an explanation for the cause of the recession, and many have turned to the Iraq War. This view is wrong. The war is a drain on the economy, but it is not the cause of the recession. The recession is due to the collapse of the $8 trillion ($110,000 per homeowner) housing bubble.

¤ The Mexicans: A Documentary Film By John Pilger - 1980
¤ Afghan violence at highest level since US invasion
¤ Iran's President Thanks Indonesia for Not Supporting UN Resolution

¤ USA exercises double standards again
The USA proudly displays its double standard policies to the whole world. This time the selective approach to international issues touches upon the recognition of small republics. Having recognized Kosovo, the US administration looks right through the similar right of the republic of South Ossetia. The US Department of State continues to emphasize the uniqueness of the "Kosovo phenomenon."

¤ Many more going bankrupt
¤ A matter of Western oil interests, not democracy
¤ Spokesman: Iran to continue co-op with IAEA
¤ Venezuela reopens embassy in Columbia

Buckle Up! - CheneyBush's Final 10 Months
Posted: Sunday, March 9, 2008

¤ Spain cancels election rallies after murder

¤ The meaning of Gaza's 'shoah' :: Israel plots another Palestinian exodus ::
"Their ultimate goal appears to be related to Vilnai's "shoah" comment: Gaza's depopulation, with the Strip squeezed on three sides until the pressure forces Palestinians to break out again into Egypt. This time, it may be assumed, there will be no chance of return."

¤ Fidel Castro, the First Superdelegate

¤ Getting Smart About Cuba
The announcement of Fidel Castro's retirement and the subsequent election of his brother Raul Castro as Cuba's new president came as no surprise to Cuba experts and certainly not to the Cuban people themselves. Most Americans, though, seemed to expect that the passing of Castro - however it should happen - would be a convulsive event for Cuba. Instead, the changes happened peacefully and quietly, illustrating how U.S. perceptions of Cuba are, in general, painfully ignorant. It's time we recognized why.

¤ The Raid on Ecuador
I remember when Rafael Correa visited us, months before the electoral campaign when he was thinking of running as a candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador. He had been the Minister of the Economy in the government of Alfredo Palacio, a surgeon with professional prestige who had also visited us as Vice President, before becoming the President in an unexpected situation that took place in Ecuador. He had been receptive to a program of ophthalmologic operations that we offered him as a form of cooperation. There were good relations between our two governments.

¤ Clinton Calls for Escalation Against Venezuela

¤ Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
¤ What is the Face of Collateral Damage?
¤ Now It Gets Dangerous for Democrats

¤ To Blame the Victims for This Killing Spree Defies Both Morality and Sense
The attempt by western politicians and media to present this week's carnage in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate act of Israeli self-defence - or at best the latest phase of a wearisome conflict between two somehow equivalent sides - has reached Alice-in-Wonderland proportions. Since Israel's deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, issued his chilling warning last week that Palestinians faced a "holocaust" if they continued to fire home-made rockets into Israel, the balance sheet of suffering has become ever clearer. More than 120 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces in the past week, of whom one in five were children and more than half were civilians, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. During the same period, three Israelis were killed, two of whom were soldiers taking part in the attacks.

¤ The ugly truth in Afghanistan
¤ Failed London bombers say plot 'a hoax'

¤ Afghanistan: A War We Can't Believe In
Five years after the Republicans got us into war against Iraq, Democrats want to double down on a war that's even more unjustifiable and unwinnable--the one against Afghanistan.
By any measure, U.S. troops and their NATO allies are getting their asses kicked in the country that Reagan's CIA station chief for Pakistan called "the graveyard of empires." Afghanistan currently produces a record 93 percent of the world's opium. Suicide bombers are killing more U.S.-aligned troops than ever. Stonings are back. The Taliban and their allies, "defeated" in 2001, control most of the country--and may recapture the capital of Kabul as early as this summer.

¤ The 'Great Satan' Strikes Out

¤ Better Buckle Up! - CheneyBush's Final 10 Months
If anyone still harbors any illusions that the lame-duck CheneyBush Administration will taxi relatively harmlessly to its departure gate in January 2009, recent events suggest otherwise. It's been made abundantly clear that in the next ten months, these guys are going to behave even more brutishly in amassing and misusing their power, and in screwing things up, than they've already done in the past seven-plus years.

¤ Bush - Cheney Indicted in Vermont

The War Election
Posted: Wednesday, March 5, 2008

by Norman Solomon

Maybe it sounded good when politicians, pundits and online fundraisers talked about American deaths as though they were the deaths that mattered most.Maybe it sounded good to taunt the Bush administration as a bunch of screw-ups who didn't know how to run a proper occupation.

And maybe it sounded good to condemn Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush for ignoring predictions that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to effectively occupy Iraq after an invasion.

But when a war based on lies is opposed because too many Americans are dying, the implication is that it can be made right by reducing the American death toll.

When a war that flagrantly violated international law is opposed because it was badly managed, the implication is that better management could make for an acceptable war.
Full Article : commondreams.org

Oil Jumps to New Record on Dollar's Fall
Posted: Tuesday, March 4, 2008

¤ Oil Jumps to New Record on Dollar's Fall
The surging price of oil reached another milestone Monday, jumping to an inflation adjusted record high of $103.95.
The weaker dollar that has propelled oil and other commodities prices higher sent light, sweet crude for April delivery past $103.76 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That's the level many analysts consider to be the true record high for oil, after its $38 barrel price from 1980 is translated into 2008 dollars.

¤ Back to the Past in Cuba
¤ How Could Hillary Have Known?

¤ Half the City's Poor Now Permanently Displaced
Government reports confirm that half of the working poor, elderly and disabled who lived in New Orleans before Katrina have not returned. Because of critical shortages in low cost housing, few now expect tens of thousands of poor and working people to ever be able to return home.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) reports Medicaid, medical assistance for aged, blind, disabled and low-wage working families, is down 46% from pre-Katrina levels. DHH reports before Katrina there were 134,249 people in New Orleans on Medicaid. February 2008 reports show participation down to 72,211 (a loss of 62,038 since Katrina). Medicaid is down dramatically in every category: by 50% for the aged, 53% for blind, 48% for the disabled and 52% for children.

¤ The War Election
"With all the recent media spin about progress in Iraq, many commentators say that the war has faded as a top-level "issue" in the presidential race. Claims of success by the U.S. military have undercut precisely the antiwar arguments that were supposed to be the most effective in political terms -- harping on the American death toll and the inability of the occupying troops to make demonstrable progress at subduing Iraqi resistance and bending the country's parliament to Washington's will."

¤ The stupid season
¤ Gaza Holocaust in 'Free' Media
¤ Gaza Massacre

¤ The Gaza Bombshell
The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel's airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering he endured 11 months before at the hands of his fellow Palestinians. Abu Dan, 28, is a member of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, but I have a good reason for taking him at his word: I've seen the video.

¤ U.S. forces find mass grave in Iraq's Samarra
¤ On a Silver Platter

¤ US missile strike kills women and children in Somalia
The US military fired missiles at a town in southern Somalia in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, killing and wounding civilians. Local officials in the town of Dobley told news agencies that at least three women and three children were killed in the attack and another 20 wounded.
Fatuma Abdullah, a resident of Dobley, told the BBC that he and other residents were awakened by the sound of explosions. "When we came out we found our neighbor's house completely obliterated, as if no house existed there."

¤ Israel kills kids in the West Bank too
¤ Israel warns of full-scale invasion as it quits Gaza leaving 114 dead
¤ U.S. Mortgage Rates Will Tumble to Four-Decade Low

¤ Warren Buffett says U.S. in recession
Billionaire Warren Buffett said Monday he believes the United States economy is in a recession, based on what he is seeing from the businesses owned by his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway.
Speaking on the U.S. business news channel CNBC, Buffett said the economy is in a recession "by any common-sense definition."
Buffett said his retail subsidiaries are seeing a significant slowdown. He also said millions of homeowners have lost equity in their homes due to falling prices.

¤ The Federal Reserve's rescue has failed
¤ Ecuador Denounces Colombia's Most Serious and Artful Aggression
¤ Colombian Deaths in Ecuador

¤ Iran calls on US to quit Iraq
The Iranian president, on a landmark visit to neighbouring Iraq, has called for US troops' withdrawal from the war-torn nation, saying that the country will "live in peace" without them.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the call on Monday while signing seven pacts with Iraq in the areas of trade, industry and transport.
"Without the presence of the foreign troops the region will live in peace and brotherhood," said Ahmadinejad.

¤ US economy a '$3 trillion' casualty of war in Iraq

¤ Oil and Health in Venezuela

¤ I Was Kidnapped by the CIA
For hours, the words come pouring out of Abu Omar as he describes his years of torture at the hands of Egypt's security services. Spreading his arms in a crucifixion position, he demonstrates how he was tied to a metal door as shocks were administered to his nipples and genitals. His legs tremble as he describes how he was twice raped. He mentions, almost casually, the hearing loss in his left ear from the beatings, and how he still wakes up at night screaming, takes tranquilizers, finds it hard to concentrate, and has unspecified "problems with my wife at home." He is, in short, a broken man.

¤ 'Restraint' is deceitful, and 'forbearance' is vain

Kenyan Deal: A compromise between Britain and America
Posted: Sunday, March 2, 2008

¤ Abbas: Gaza attacks 'a holocaust'
¤ U.N. chief condemns Israel after bloody day in Gaza
¤ White House blocks inquiry into construction of $736m embassy in Iraq

¤ Time To Get Out Of Our Blood Debt In Iraq
Will the next president be the second coming of Jimmy Carter? Given Thursday's economic headlines, full of dire warnings about the return of 1970s-style stagflation, you might think so.
Bush wants to leave to the next president the burden of ending the debacle he started five years ago when he ordered the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, against a people who had done us no harm.
Bush cannot explain his reasons for the war without compounding his folly. To this moment, Bush has not given a logical explanation for his disastrous militarism.

¤ Media's embargo on "Harry's war" sparks debate
¤ Record-High Ratio of Americans in Prison
¤ The Race Card
¤ Cuba After Fidel
¤ The Three Trillion Dollar War
¤ Ahmadinejad calls visit to Iraq 'brotherly'

¤ The people's prince: with Harry in Afghanistan. Dog of war or PR pawn?
Tousle-haired, in fatigues, with kitbag on his back and a mate at his shoulder, Prince Harry stepped back into Britain at RAF Brize Norton yesterday for an immediate reunion with his father and brother. He may be third in line to the throne, but, in keeping with the welcome brush with normal life the Army has given him, he was 41st in line off the plane.
That is how he has always wanted it. But, as he knows by now, when it comes to the media, what he wants and what he gets are two very different things.

¤ 'Harry's War': The ugly truth

¤ Never mind 'the other' - we are all to blame
The wave of condemnations of the racist video made by the four University of the Free State students has thrown up a basic but terrible question: how could this have happened?
How, we are asked, is it possible that, 14 years into our democracy, such a film could have been made, a film that degrades and humiliates a group of people from among the most vulnerable in our country - the women whose job it is to clean up the campus residence that housed these scions of Afrikaner privilege?

¤ Race row students are unrepentant

¤ Medvedev heads for victory in Russian election
¤ Venezuela on war alert after killing

¤ Kenyan Deal: A compromise between Britain and America
For the time being the Anglo-American struggle over Kenya has subsided, but a lot rests on the formation of the coalition government, the redistribution of Presidential powers and US policies put forward by Kibaki for the new parliament to approve.

Obama, Being Called a Muslim Is Not a Smear
Posted: Saturday, March 1, 2008

by Naomi Klein

Hillary Clinton denied leaking the photo of Barack Obama wearing a turban, but her campaign manager says that even if she had, it would be no big deal. "Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely."

Sure she did. And George W. Bush put on a fetching Chamato poncho in Santiago, while Paul Wolfowitz burned up YouTube with his antimalarial African dance routines when he was World Bank prez. The obvious difference is this: when white politicians go ethnic, they just look funny. When a black presidential contender does it, he looks foreign. And when the ethnic apparel in question is vaguely reminiscent of the clothing worn by Iraqi and Afghan fighters (at least to many Fox viewers, who think any headdress other than a baseball cap is a declaration of war on America), the image is downright frightening.
Full Article : commondreams.org

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