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Yassin Aref's Struggle for Justice in Police State America
2008-06-05 14:02:00
by Stephen Lendman Yassin Aref is a 37 year old Albany, New York resident and one of many Muslim victims of police state justice in post-9/11 America . They've been hunted down, rounded up, held in detention, kept in isolation, denied bail, restricted in their right to counsel, tried on secret evidence and trumped-up charges, then incarcerated as political prisoners or deported to where they face possible arrest and torture. Because of his faith and ethnicity, Aref was victimized by US "justice" in a post-9/11 climate of fear. He's an Iraqi Kurd who emigrated to the US as a UN refugee in 1999 with his wife and three young children. He's now in federal prison but committed no crime. He's also the author of a poignant memoir/autobiography titled "Son of Mountains: My Life as a Kurd and a Terror Suspect." He wrote it in custody at Troy, New York's Rensselaer County Jail after his wrongful conviction in October 2006. It's his story in prose and poetry coverin...
More About: Justice , Police , Police State , State

How To Spend Your Summer Vacation
2008-06-05 13:57:00
by Tom Chartier Now that the Indy 500 is under our belts and the kids are getting more rambunctious everyday we know what’s coming: Summer vacation! What to do? What to do? Unlike us Plebes, the High and Mighty can do what they what, when they want and where they want. An indoor skiing trip to Dubai? Sounds like a stone groove. Bundle up my overcoat! There’s always the ever-popular family trek to Wally World. Pack up the kids in the Family Truckster and head out across country to the Happiest Place on Earth. Gas prices being what they are this may no longer be an option for the struggling family. I suspect a big family excursion in a rented motor home may be out of the question also. Oh well, both mom and dad are both working stiffs. Each gets only ten days “personal leave” all year. That has to be saved for that ruptured appendix and the dreaded trip to Grandma’s house for Christmas. I like the idea of a Ted Nugent Sunrize Safari. Yes sir! Give little Billy the chance to...
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John Hagee’s Not-So-Bright Vision
2008-06-05 13:52:00
by Ramzy Baroud The recent uproar surrounding Pastor John Hagee is only remarkable in the sense that it took so long in coming. The fundamentalist pastor of the 19,000-member Cornerstone "mega-church" in San Antonio, Texas has long shown himself to be not just anti-Semitic, but also anti-Islamic and anti-Catholic. It doesn't take much probing to find ample examples of racism, bigotry and justification of violent tragedy in the words of the man once described by Senator Joe Lieberman as 'Ish Elokim' — 'Man of God'. Republican presidential candidate John McCain severed his ties with the pastor after the recent publicising of a sermon in which Hagee seemed to rationalise the Holocaust. Hagee's suggested that the Holocaust fulfilled biblical prophecies because it 'enabled' the return of Jews to Palestine. According to this logic, Hitler was doing God's work. McCain decided to reject Hagee's endorsement on May 22, stating that "Obviously, I find these remar...
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Disturbing 2008 Global Peace Index Report
2008-06-05 13:51:00
by Stephen Lendman The Global Peace Index (GPI) was launched in May 2007 and claims to be the first study of its kind ranking nations according to their peacefulness. Last year's report covered 121 countries. The latest increased it to 140. Australian entrepreneur Steve Killelea conceived the idea and won some dubious endorsements. Among them, the Dalai Lama. He served as a CIA asset from the late 1950s until 1974 and may again be in tow if the Bush administration's awarding him a Congressional Gold Medal last year and closeness to him now is an indication. Other endorsers include Jordan's Queen Noor; another member of her royal family; four members of the British House of Lords; Ted Turner; Virgin Group's Richard Branson; other business and community leaders; Australia's former Prime Minister JM Fraser; other former high-ranking government officials; academics; a former BBC war correspondent and MP; plus six Nobel Laureates, including Jimmy Carter. In fairness, a few distin...
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Pens and Swords – (Book Review by Jim Miles)
2008-06-05 13:43:00
by Jim Miles Pens and Swords – How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Marda Dunsky. Columbia University Press, New York, 2008. In an era when American foreign policy has reached the pinnacle of unilateralism by invading other countries pre-emptively, threatening others with nuclear annihilation, and abrogating in doing so many decades if not more than a century of international law development, Marda Dunsky’s book Pens and Swords presents a very strong, well-referenced argument illuminating the bias within American media reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That bias develops under two main themes – a lack of historical context, and a lack of recognition of the effects of U.S. foreign policy. Along with those two major themes, are the related ideas of weaknesses in analysing and criticizing sources, and in not providing references for what discussion there is as the arguments already fit the generally accepted ‘Washington’ consensus...
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A Dream Deferred: Activism And The Arts
2008-06-05 13:39:00
by Gary Corseri What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? - Langston Hughes Langston Hughes was 49 when he published that poem, back in the True-Man era. He’d seen some ups, and he’d seen a lot of downs, born soon after the War to End All Wars, growing up “Negro” in the crime-roaring twenties, and the soul-deep Depression. He’d seen the Labor Movement crushed by hired corporate guns and goons, and government of the mighty by the mighty saved by the “traitor to his class” — who was no traitor to his class! ... He’d seen another War to End All Wars and the holocausts of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dachau, and the beginning, of a “Cold War”--that was no Cold War! And he’d seen a people put their dreams on hold. A “Negro” people, an American people; and the poor and powerle...
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McClellan Suggests Plame Cover-up
2008-06-05 13:27:00
by Jason Leopold Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan says George W. Bush’s political guru Karl Rove arranged a private meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in 2005 when the two men were under mounting suspicion for leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Calling the scene “one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” McClellan writes in his new memoir that “in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, [the meeting] sticks vividly in my mind. … “Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.” In the new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and the Culture of Washington Deception, McClellan doesn’t offer substantive evidence that Rove and Libby used the meeting in 2005...
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Media Alert: Burma And The Making Of Iraq’s Ghost Towns
2008-06-05 13:22:00
by Media Lens The Rules Of The Game The psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan once commented on “how suavely we simply ignore great bodies of experience, any clearly analysed instance of which might present us with a very real necessity for change.” (Quoted, Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths - The Psychology of Self-Deception, Bloomsbury 1997, p.124) The problem for professional journalists is that they are not free to change. Or at least, they are not free to change +and+ flourish in their chosen careers. Ex-CBS producer Richard Cohen explained the relationship between media and politics: "Everyone plays by the rules of the game if they want to stay in the game." (Quoted, Daniel Schechter, The More You Watch, The Less You Know, Seven Stories Press, 1997, p.39) The rules include focusing intently on the crimes of others while suavely ignoring comparable, or worse, crimes at home. Consider the intense criticism heaped on the Burmese government for failing to accep...
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Poisonous Plutocracy Pushes Economic Inequality
2008-06-05 12:51:00
by Joel S. Hirschhorn The biggest political issue receiving no attention by the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates is the powerful plutocracy that has captured the government to produce rising economic inequality. Both major parties have enabled, promoted and supported this Upper Class plutocracy. Myriad federal policies make the rich super-rich and the powerful dominant in both good and bad economic times. Meanwhile, despite elections, the middle class sinks into one big Lower Class as the plutocracy ensures that national prosperity is unshared. Why no attention? Why no explicit reference to a plutocracy that makes a mockery of American democracy? Simple answer: because both major parties and their candidates are subservient to numerous corporate and other special interests that use their money and influence to ensure that their elitist priorities prevail. Make no mistake. Barack Obama with all his slick rhetoric is just as much a supporter and benefactor of...
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Peak Food and Peak Water
2008-06-05 12:47:00
by Shepherd Bliss Peak Oil theorists such as Richard Heinberg, James Howard Kunstler, Matthew Simmons, and others turn out to be correct. Petroleum supplies are declining as demand increases. This unfolding trend will radically change human habitation on the Earth. Among the consequences will be the drastic reduction of food and fresh water available to people, not only in poorer parts of the globe, but throughout the planet. Industrial societies with their industrial agriculture are dependent upon fossil fuels such as petroleum, natural gas, and coal for many things, including transportation, electricity, and making plastics and other modern essentials. Oil is the main ingredient in conventional food. As the supply of petroleum and other fossil fuels decline Peak Water and Peak Food will follow. In recent months we have seen the return of food riots in the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. In April food prices in the United States saw their biggest jump in 18 years, ac...

It’s about TIME.
2008-06-05 12:44:00
by Jim Miles For the past several months I have been receiving TIME magazine. The subscription originally started as a gift from someone unknown, with my last name spelled wrong, lasted for a year. When it came up for renewal, I stalled until the price came down to fifty cents a copy, a much more reasonable price for the quality of the magazine (I could have had another half year free if I had stalled about a month longer). I finally renewed, not because I admire the quality of the magazine but because, even though it is the “Canadian” edition (it has some Canadian advertising in it) it provides a good snapshot of Middle-American thinking. On a different note, at least to start, I have read and am reading a series of books on how American news presents a biased content on foreign affairs.[1] Natural for sure, but it is also surprisingly vacant of critical analysis of what the Washington “sources” and the Washington “experts” are saying, with the same applied to I...
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Tomgram: Chris Hedges, War and Occupation, American-style
2008-06-04 09:12:00
by Tom Engelhardt American soldiers have long scrawled messages to the enemy on the bombs they were about to deliver. In the The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes reminds us, for instance, that "Little Boy," the bomb that would inaugurate a new age over Hiroshima, "was inscribed with autographs and messages, some of them obscene. 'Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis,' one challenged." (The Indianapolis, a heavy cruiser which had transported parts of Little Boy to the island of Tinian for assembly, had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine only a week earlier and most of its crew had died at sea under gruesome circumstances.) Recently, my eye was caught by a report on just such "autographs and messages" from our most recent war. A Washington Post piece discussing the air war over Baghdad and the Hellfire missiles the U.S. military has been regularly firing into the vast Shiite slum, Sadr City, these last m...
More About: Style , Chris

Libby Links Cheney to Plame Leak
2008-06-04 09:10:00
by Jason Leopold FBI documents obtained by a congressional committee indicate that Vice President Dick Cheney may have authorized his former deputy to leak the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. In a June 3 letter sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Rep. Henry Waxman, Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, called on the Justice Department to release transcripts of interviews that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald conducted with President George W. Bush and Cheney about the leak of Plame's identity. Waxman said the Justice Department has turned over to his committee redacted transcripts of interviews that federal investigators conducted with former White House political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby . According to those transcripts, Libby told federal investigators that Cheney may have told him to leak Plame's association with the CIA to reporters, Waxman ...
More About: Links , Leak

Uranium Enrichment: The Bushes, The Saudis and The Bomb
2008-06-03 16:47:00
by Chris Floyd Did you hear the alarming story about a country led by draconian Muslim religious extremists acquiring enriched uranium for their nuclear plants — plants which could be weaponized anytime in the future, putting weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Sharia law fanatics who repress women, chop off heads and throttle all dissent? What's more, they were given this weapons-grade material by a rogue nation led by a goonish tyrant who gained power only because he was the wastrel son of the former leader. Break out the regime change machinery right away; this evil must be stopped! What's that? No, we're not talking about Iran getting souped-up nukestuff from North Korea. We're talking about George W. Bush's bestowal of enriched uranium on his pals and business partners, the Saudi royals, the most draconian religious tyrants in the world. Harvey Wasserman has the goods at Democracy Now: You know, I'd like to know the insane asylum in which this po...
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Bush At His Shrink: The Lame-Duck Session
2008-06-03 16:25:00
by Bernard Weiner "I'm with my closest colleagues at the top of Mt. Everest. Below us on the snow, or maybe it's white sand, are thousands of bloody bodies. Suddenly, I see a line of approaching figures, armed with pitchforks and clubs, coming up the mountain. At first, I'm happy because they're carrying an American flag, but then I realize they're coming after me, led by a Toy Soldier wearing black. I turn around to figure out a counter-attack strategy with my key aides, but I'm all alone. I hear myself shout: 'A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!' And then I wake up, sitting bolt-upright in bed, trembling and covered in sweat." "And that's the dream that brought you back here, Mr. President?" "Well, that one and at my wife's and physician's insistence. They seem to feel I'm in bad shape and could use your help." "And you? What do you feel?" "Those times we talked before?** You made me really angry. You forced me to face...
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American Psychological Association Supports Psychologist
2008-06-03 16:14:00
by Stephen Soldz Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations:  - A Critique of Stephen Behnke's Letter to the ACLU Since 2005, the American Psychological Association (APA) has steadfastly asserted that psychologists participating in detainee interrogations protects detainees by helping to keep these interrogations "safe, legal, ethical, and effective." Last week, the APA's Ethics Director Stephen Behnke seized upon newly released portions of an official investigation of US detainee abuse, called the Church Report, as an opportunity to reinvigorate support for the APA policy of psychologist participation in interrogations. In a letter to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), The APA's Dr. Behnke stated: "In carefully reviewing the documents, we note that according to the information obtained by the ACLU, psychologists supporting interrogations 'emphasized their separation from detainee medical care', and that a psychologist who suspected ...

Plan Colombia Heads for Mexico
2008-06-03 16:03:00
by Stephen Lendman It's called "Plan Mexico ," or more formally the "Merida Initiative," and here's the scheme. It's to do for Mexicans what Plan Colombia has done to that nation since 1999, and, in fact, much earlier. Since then, billions have gone for the following: * to establish a US military foothold in the country; * mostly to fund US weapons, chemical and other corporate profiteers; it's a long-standing practice; in fact, a 1997 Pentagon document affirms that America's military will "protect US interests and investments;" in Colombia, it's to control its valuable resources; most importantly oil and natural gas but also coal, iron ore, nickel, gold, silver, emeralds, copper and more; it's also to crush worker resistance, eliminate unions, target human rights and peasant opposition groups, and make the country a "free market" paradise inhospitable to people; * it funds a brutish military as well; already, over 10,000 of its sol...
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The Case For Mental Health Screening Of Candidates And Electeds
2008-06-03 15:56:00
by Linda Millazo In 1972, after graduating from New York's Queens College, I took the New York State teaching exam. My degrees were in Theater and Speech Communications so I took the exam to teach speech. It was a particularly difficult test since it combined both art and science. The surprisingly good news - after five years of "thespianing," partying and cramming, I passed the written and oral exams. The embarrassingly bad news - I failed MY APPLICATION! My downfall was one simple question: Have you ever used drugs? The application had separate boxes for a simple YES and a simple NO. I simply checked YES!! You see, having gone to school during the drug crazed 60s and 70s, I was convinced my assessors wouldn’t believe my “No” since my wild-hippy-artist-look defined me. Thus I did as any young idealist would – I told the truth – well, the partial truth. I admitted to smoking marijuana, and left it at that. My assessment team was NOT pleased! The reward ...
More About: Health , Mental , Mental Health , Candidates , Case

McCain for president! D’oh!
2008-06-03 15:50:00
by Ed Naha Some alleged Democrats, understandably irritated by their heads being jammed far up their rectums, have, of late, been throwing temper tantrums. Lips in full-pout position, Buster Brown shoes stomping the floor, they have vowed to vote for Republican Senator John McCain should the candidate of their choice not win the final Dem nomination. To all those singing “My way or the highway,” I offer the “Get To Know McCain” pop quiz. Feel free to take the quiz and, then, in honor of your newfound “friend,” use your tax rebate to buy a gun and eat it. 1) McCain has been absent for 60% of this Senate’s votes because: a: He didn’t want to miss his soaps. b: He got lost. c: He forgot. d: He’s a maverick. 2) By January 2013, John McCain has promised: a: The Iraq war will have been won. b: Osama bin Laden will have been killed or captured. c: Iraq will be a functioning democracy. d: Garden gnomes will do the work currently done by illegal aliens. 3) McCain favors the cr...
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Reality Check
2008-06-03 15:38:00
by Pablo Ouziel Sentiments and opinions vary from person to person, city to city and country to country, so one cannot attempt to frame the issue of collective responsibility or awareness towards current affairs, without acknowledging first, that any assumptions or conclusions made cannot in anyway capture the sentiment of every individual in the vast world in which we cohabit. Therefore without assuming that I know what you think, I can however share with you what I am seeing, with the personal hope that we will all wake up to the folly which through our collective collaboration, we are allowing our governments, banks, corporations and the military to perpetrate. Sooner rather than later, we must all take a deep look into ourselves, evaluate those values which were indoctrinated into us from very early age, through our faiths, religions, education and social interaction. Then, we must confront our social reality and evaluate individually if our beliefs are parallel ...
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Obama and the War
2008-06-03 15:35:00
by Shamus Cooke As Barack Obama 's anti-war rhetoric is blasted around the country in his attempt to seal the Democratic nomination, his real position on US militarism is being revealed discreetly to his political, military, and corporate colleagues. Two recent events have proved beyond any doubt that Obama is in total conformity with the US ruling class on the issue of maintaining"” or even expanding"” the role of the military in the Middle East. This of course is the complete opposite of what he tells those who fill stadiums to hear him speak. The first event happened on April 7th, when both the top US diplomat and military man in Iraq"” Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus"” came to testify before two separate congressional committees. This was a chance, both Democratic campaigns boasted, for the two nominees to show that they had the ability to perform as the country's commander and chief (a rightwing debate in itself). It was quickly evident that dur...

Hillary Said What? And What Nightmare Did She Invoke?
2008-06-03 14:27:00
by Michael O’McCarthy The "ready on day one" Democratic Party candidate Clinton put the assassination of presidential candidates in play by her remarks about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Clinton quickly demurred and apologized to the Kennedy family saying she was only trying to make the point that anything could happen on the way to the White House; that topic of Senator Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor the same week had caused her to think of the tragedies of the Kennedy family. Yet she never apologized to Obama in public for raising the linkage of the Kennedy assassination to him. This was now the 3rd time she raised the specter of the Robert F. Kennedy assassination and it must be seen in context of the allegations of race baiting on behalf of her by Bill and coupled with Bill’s calling the Obama campaign "a joke." Then add the demeaning "joke" by the right winger for Vice President Huckabee wherein he implied that Obama was less than brave a...
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Bush and Cheney dictator and psychopath’s checklists are complete: time for
2008-06-03 14:19:00
by Roland Michel Tremblay I believe we are all aware now that George W. Bush is a psychopath, with a personality disorder characterised by chronic immoral and antisocial behaviour. It will be his only defence, his mental health problem, if the War Crime Tribunals catch up with him one day. I will go through his psychopath’s checklist later. What is important to keep in mind though, is that his full political agenda has not been entirely played out yet, and before it is over, George W. Bush will certainly present a perfect case of a full flesh dictator. We still have the time to stop him, but we won’t for much longer. So let’s explore what is really happening. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney dictatorship’s checklist, that I had to quickly establish from many websites, and which is not exhaustive, goes something like this: 1) a leader who holds and/or abuses an extraordinary amount of personal power, 2) the power to make laws without effective restraint by a legislative...
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Hillary Invokes Assassination
2008-06-03 14:14:00
by Marjorie Cohn For weeks, pundits have speculated about why Hillary Clinton insists on remaining in the primary race when Barack Obama has all but clinched the Democratic presidential nomination. On Friday, Clinton answered that question. It appears she's waiting in the wings for something dreadful to befall Obama. When asked by the editorial board of South Dakota's Sioux Falls Argus-Ledger why she is still running, Clinton replied, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it." It's astounding that a presidential candidate could verbalize such a thing when the collective American psyche still aches from the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. Many of us remember where we were when these heroes were shot. The pain we felt i...
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Hopi and Navajo Truth Confirmed in Censored Climate Report
2008-06-03 14:06:00
by Brenda Norrell With the release of the US censored climate report — that Bush and his corporate handlers censored for four years — the words of the late Hopi spiritual leaders are mirrored forth. Hopi Sinom, including Thomas Banyacya and Dan Evehema, foretold of a time when hurricanes, storms and wildfires would seize the planet if human beings did not care for Mother Earth. They also warned if the secret agenda of coal mining was carried out on Black Mesa, under the guise of the so-called Navajo Hopi land dispute and Navajos were relocated, that natural calamities would increase. Just a few days ago in the Navajos' Chuska Mountains, I was listening to a traditional Navajo farmer talk about how dry the earth is. Looking at the dry pinon trees and dusty earth, she said it would be hard to get the corn and squash to grow this summer. The earth is so dry that it does not absorb water like it used to. Every year it gets worse. The U.S. censored climate repor...
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Bolivia: Recall referendums open new struggle
2008-06-03 13:54:00
by Bolivia Rising (Fred Fuentes) A new period of uncertainty has opened in Bolivia with the initiation of recall referendums for the president and prefects of Bolivia's nine departments by the opposition-controlled Senate. The law, first introduced into the House of Deputies by the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) government in December, had been gathering dust due to the refusal of the right-wing opposition to approve it in the Senate. The sudden move this month to pass the law has left many wondering why the opposition would take a decision that will have Bolivia go to the polls on August 10. The idea behind the law is to let the people resolve through the ballot box the "catastrophic deadlock" between the government of President Evo Morales, backed by the social movements, and the opposition, spearhead by the elites from the eastern region who are tied to gas multinationals and agribusiness interests. Elite manoeuvres MAS and the social movements have been campaign...
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But Can We Handle the Truth?
2008-06-02 23:49:00
by Stephen P. Pizzo First, let's take a short accounting: Consumer confidence has just plummeted to a nearly 30-year low. The war in Iraq has become a tar-baby entanglement. Global warming appears to be working up a real head of steam. The world also seems to be running low on it's fuel of choice. Food prices have suddenly surged. Foreclosing on homes and credit counseling have become the nation's only growth industries. The ice caps are melting faster with each passing day. Fishing fleets return home with smaller and smaller catches. Grain, once so plentiful it was often stored in piles on the ground, is suddenly in short supply driving feed and food prices through the roof. The fertilizers and chemicals needed to maintain high grain production are in short supply and prices are at record levels. Diesel, the fuel that moves nearly everything that needs moving, is now over $5 a gallon and going higher each day. Somethings gone wacky with the weather too. Living in...
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Talk is Cheap, Even with Enemies, and By the Way, Rivals Aren't Enemies
2008-06-02 23:46:00
by Dave Lindorff What the hell is Barack Obama talking about? He says that America should be talking with leaders in Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Korea, Syria. Fine. But he calls this “talking with our enemies.” What enemies? Let’s get something straight. Enemies are people who are fighting against you, who are trying to destroy you. Is Cuba fighting against America? Is Iran fighting against America? Is Venezuela fighting against America? Syria? China? No. These countries may be rivals, but they are not enemies. The closest we come to having an actual enemy in today’s world is North Korea, where we are technically still in some kind of truce following a hot war, but of course that war itself has been over for half a frigging century, and nobody has been killing anyone on the Korean Peninsula in decades. The truth is, America doesn’t have any real enemies, except for the ones it has made for itself in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of course the Al Qaeda organization. But Al Qaed...
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Latin America has 'created its own neighbourhood'
2008-06-02 23:33:00
by Bolivia Rising (Fred Fuentes) The drums of war are once again beginning to sound, as US imperialism steps up its propaganda attack on Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution. The new offensive has centred on the supposed documents found on the laptops retrieved from the site of the illegal military assault by Colombia that massacred over 20 people at a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) campsite inside Ecuador in early March. This is despite clear evidence of Colombian government interference with the laptops before handing them over, which many accept would rule such evidence as illegitimate. On May 16, the Venezuelan government denounced as a "provocation" the incursion of 60 Colombian soldiers into Venezuelan territory, intercepted 800 metres over the border. This occurred at the same time as the US Navy has decided to reactivate, after 58 years, its Fourth Fleet to patrol Latin America n waters. Aggression The Interpol report released on May 15 v...
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Tomgram: Cerf and Navasky, The McCain Touch
2008-05-31 10:25:00
by Tom Engelhardt Last fall was a great time for official optimism when it came to Iraq. The military "metrics" looked ever better and, as had happened at crucial moments in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, Bush administration and military statements turned practically peachy with the blush of "success." Progress was announced (repeatedly). Corners were once again about to be turned. Tipping points were on the absolute verge of being reached. "I've never been more optimistic than I am right now with the progress we've made in Iraq," effused Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, late that October. Lt. Col. Val Keaveny, 3rd Batallion, 509th infantry, offered this over-the-top mixed metaphor: "[Iraqis] are fed up with fear. Once they hit that tipping point, they're fed up, they come to realize we truly do provide them better hope for the future. What we're seeing now is the beginning of a snowball." That ...
More About: Touch , Cerf