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Michael Chertoff…Don’t Mess with Texas
2008-05-23 09:30:00
by Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr. Back on February 6, 2008, “Inside the Checkpoints” had the privilege of breaking the news that Michael Chertoff , with the dictatorial powers of the Department of Homeland Security, was being sued. He was sued by one woman, Eloisa Tamez, a property owner. He threatened her that he was going to seize her small piece of land along the banks of the Rio Grande. With the help of Peter Schey of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, Chertoff ultimately lost that law suit, which set a precedent for other victims of Chertoff. Back in February, “Inside the Checkpoints” concluded with the following paragraph. Eloisa Tamez, along with hundreds of others, has been a victim of trauma, your tyranny and…terror. No one in government, local, state, or national, elected or otherwise, has stepped up to protect Eloisa, to right the wrongs being leveled on her and her property. So much for security in her homeland! It has taken the voluntee...
More About: Texas , Michael Chertoff , Mess

President Bush's Week-Long Adventure
2008-05-19 07:07:00
by Walter Brasch President Bush is in Egypt today to meet with President Hosni Mubarak. It is Bush's last day of a week-long adventure into the Middle East, where he also met with the leaders of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, and Afghanistan. It is probably Bush's last formal chance to pretend that he's going to broker a peace between Israel and the rest of the Arab world and secure a legacy that leads to the Nobel Prize. He must be thinking that if Jimmy Carter could do it between Israel and Egypt, it must be time for a neo-con war-mongering Republican to get a few accolades. So far, the trip of the "war president," as he often calls himself, has produced no significant results, and a huge embarrassment. In Israel, speaking to the Knesset and pandering to the sensitivity of the victims and descendants of the holocaust, he unsuccessfully tried to link his strong stand against terrorism to the weak stand of appeasement to the Naz...
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Hunters and Soldiers: Brothers in Arms
2008-05-19 06:58:00
by Mickey Z. Thanks to the Associated Press (AP), I recently learned about an innovative new method in psychological therapy: killing. Thanks to the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), wounded American soldiers are now attempting to “recover” from their violent trauma by, well, imposing violent trauma onto defenseless animals. "The PVA learned many years ago that participating in sporting events helped restore self-confidence and that ‘can do' attitude to someone who has received a catastrophic injury,” said Bill Kokendoffer, president of the Mid-America Chapter of PVA. "We older injured, like myself, try to show the newly injured that life is not over after an injury, just changed.” "It is about giving them the experience,” added Lew Deal, a retired Marine who serves as director of outdoor programs for PVA. Deal’s venue of choice was the Great Turkey Hunt 2008 in Miami, Oklahoma. Four paralyzed veterans took part this past April. One of them, acco...
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Progressive Vision Failure: The Real Scandal of Bush’s Knesset Speech
2008-05-19 06:26:00
by Chris Floyd There has been much throwing about of brains in the "progressosphere" about George W. Bush 's shocking and unseemly injection of – gasp! – partisanship into his address to the Israeli Knesset the other day. Evidently this was the first time in American history that a president has ever indulged in such un-statesmanlike behavior while gadding about in foreign parts. And what exactly did Bush do, what was this act of unprecedented moral and political depravity? Brace yourself: he made a remark that could be construed as an implied criticism of Barack Obama. Now, it so happens that there was indeed a very grave and sinister scandal in Bush's appearance before the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding. But it had nothing to do with his witless ejaculation of that clapped-out right-wing trope of yore: the "Neville Chamberlain gambit," in which anyone who fails to evince sufficient eagerness to immediately obliterate Was...
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Kiss American Security Goodbye - 15 Numbers That Add Up to an Age of Insecu
2008-05-19 05:36:00
by Tom Engelhardt Once upon a time, I studied the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi — until, that is, I realized I would never locate my "chi." At that point, I threw in the towel and took up Western exercise. Still, the principle behind Tai Chi stayed with me — that you could multiply the force of an act by giving way before the force of others; that a smaller person could use the strength of a bigger one against him. Now, jump to September 11, 2001 and its aftermath — and you know the Tai Chi version of history from there. Think of it as a grim cosmic joke — that the 9/11 attacks, as apocalyptic as they looked, were anything but. The true disasters followed and the wounds were largely self-inflicted, as the most militarily powerful nation on the planet used its own force to disable itself. Before that fateful day, the Bush administration had considered terrorism, Osama bin Laden, and al-Qaeda subjects for suckers and wusses. What they were intent on ...
More About: Security , Kiss , American , Numbers , Goodbye

Oil, Food, and Agrotherapy
2008-05-18 15:29:00
by Shepherd Bliss Petroleum supplies slowly dwindle as demand rapidly soars. So the prices of gasoline and oil that supply modern societies with their industrial production of food will go up, up, and away. A radically different future than the oil-energized twentieth century is dawning. Let’s face it: our world has become increasingly maddening. Bad news mounts each day: unending wars, financial crises, earthquakes, hurricanes and cyclones killing thousands, chaotic climate change, vanishing pollinating bees and polar bears, rising oceans, thinning forests and a host of human-created or –worsened threats. We live in uncertain times with an even more uncertain future. We face unprecedented, unpredictable converging threats. What can one do to remain somewhat sane? The ostrich approach of denial by burying one’s head in the sand will not be effective or life-enhancing. It is a good time for an increasing number of people to return to the multiple benefit...
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Grow Them Young, Pay Them Well - Anti-Chavistas, That Is
2008-05-18 15:25:00
by Stephen Lendman Who said crime doesn't pay? Read on. The Washington-based Cato Institute is all about "Individual Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace," or so says its web site. It's been around since 1977 preaching limited government and free market religion with plenty of high-octane corporate funding for backing. It better have it for the award it presented on May 15. It was to a 23 year old fifth year Venezuelan law student at Universidad Catolica Andres Bello. Yon Goicoechea was the fourth recipient of the "Milton Friedman Liberty Prize" in the amount of $500,000. For what? What else. For serving the interests of capital back home and leading anti-Chavista protests. Goicoechea is leader of Venezuela's "pro-democracy student movement" that in Cato's words "prevented Hugo Chavez's regime from seizing broad dictatorial powers in December 2007." The reference is to the narrow defeat of Venezuela's reform referendum last December. Goic...
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Nakba March
2008-05-18 15:16:00
by Jonathan Cook in Nazareth It has been a week of adulation from world leaders, ostentatious displays of military prowess, and street parties. Heads of state have rubbed shoulders with celebrities to pay homage to the Jewish state on its 60th birthday, while a million Israelis reportedly headed off to the country’s forests to enjoy the national pastime: a barbecue. But this year’s Independence Day festivities have concealed as much as they have revealed. The images of joy and celebration seen by the world have failed to acknowledge the reality of a deeply divided Israel, shared by two peoples with conflicting memories and claims to the land. They have also served to shield from view the fact that the Palestinians’ dispossession is continuing in both the occupied territories and inside Israel itself. Far from being a historical event, Israel’s “independence” — and the ever greater toll it is inflicting on the Palestinian people — is very much a live issue. Awa...
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The Stamp of Upheaval
2008-05-18 15:13:00
by Will Durst Like a blind squirrel tripping over a discarded acorn, the pundits may have accidentally stumbled onto a piece of truth in their speculation that Hillary is making Barack a better candidate. Or maybe he’s just a quick learner. Either way, Mr. Obama seems to have gotten real good real quick. This week, in less than twelve hours, he managed to turn a debilitating loss into a triumphal moment of celebration complete with two males holding hands in a non- California or Massachusetts way. From goat to hero in less than a single revolution of Mickey’s little hand. That’s way beyond Clinton- good. We’re verging on Reagan- good here. Mr. Elitist has become Mr. Smoothiest. He’s as polished as a casaba melon wrapped in a velour golf towel covered in baby powder. More fluid than the lines on a Lamborghini fashioned out of Italian cream cheese resting under heat lamps. Less friction than a bead of sweat between two bodies in high heat at full rut. And if he’s not real careful, ...
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Everybody Knows
2008-05-18 15:00:00
by Sheila Samples Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That's how it goes. Everybody knows. -Leonard Cohen The fate of millions was sealed the moment Dick Cheney selected himself as The Destroyer whose charge to keep for the next eight years would be — as Capitol Hill Blue's Doug Thompson so succinctly described George W. Bush — a "criminally insane, pill-popping dry drunk." I don't know about that. I've seen some drunks in my time — even dry ones — and George Bush appears to be more than a little moist. Bush was the perfect foil for Cheney. The Scalia-driven 2000 election coup catapulted Bush to the top of the political heap. For the first time in his worthless, impotent, cruelly indifferent life, Bush was suddenly important — the most powerful man on the face of ...

Nature Adds to Occupation Blows
2008-05-18 14:53:00
by Dahr Jamail and Ahmed Ali BAQUBA, May 15 (IPS) - Farmers in the Diyala province in Iraq have been hit by just about every crisis possible. First the security disaster dried up supplies and markets, then lack of electricity cut irrigation, and now comes a drying up of water resources. Nothing now seems more difficult in Iraq than the business of farming. "The shortage of water is the biggest threat that Iraqi agriculture has ever faced," an employee in the directorate-general of irrigation for Diyala province, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "It threatens not only food but also employment in this city (Baquba, capital of the province). "The shortage of water can be ascribed to the shortage of rain and snow at the main sources," the employee at the irrigation centre said. Many farmers say that they fear that the northern Kurdish-controlled region of Iraq is facing a dry 2008. The mountains there, besides the mountains of southwe...
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Solving the Oil Crisis
2008-05-18 14:43:00
by Jerome Grossman High oil prices and a hotly contested election have turned the energy debate into political football. Calls for a gasoline tax holiday this summer would produce miniscule savings to drivers. Cries to force OPEC to pump more oil have been futile as the cartel enjoys enormous profits and wants more. Drilling in Alaska and offshore Florida and California risks serious environmental damage. Demands to tax the multi-billion dollar profits of the oil companies lack political clout and would be opposed by corporate America coast – to – coast. There are only two ways to reduce prices: increase supplies or reduce demand. This is basic Capitalism 101. Increasing supplies is limited by environmental concerns and cartel power. Reducing demand in the United States, the nation that consumes about a quarter of global production would have an immediate effect on oil prices, bringing them down dramatically but still several hundreds of percent over cost. Here are some suggestio...
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Frances Fox Piven's "Challenging Authority"
2008-05-18 14:38:00
by Stephen Lendman Frances Fox Piven is a Canadian-born Professor of Political Science and Sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Her career is long and distinguished. She's the recipient of numerous awards, has combined scholarship with activism, and is the author of many important books. Most notable is her 1971 classic "Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare." It's a landmark historical and theoretical analysis of how welfare policy is used to control the poor and working class. A more recent book is her 2006-published "Challenging Authority " and subject of this review. It's about how social movements can be pivotal forces for change because ordinary people in enough numbers have enormous political clout. Abolitionists, labor movements and civil rights activists proved it. Piven examines their collective actions plus one other in the four examples she chose - the American Revolution. Piven's book is succinct ...

Tomgram: Ann Jones, Changing the World One Shot at a Time
2008-05-17 11:22:00
by Tom Engelhardt In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Ann Jones spent several years as a humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan focusing on the lives of women and wrote a moving book, Kabul in Winter, about her experience. More recently, she took Tomdispatch readers to West Africa. There, she laid out the chilling nightmare of women's lives in strife-torn lands in which the war against women doesn't end just because grim wars between men finally do. Today's dispatch from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a place where war between men of an especially brutal sort remains an ongoing reality, highlights quite a different aspect of women's lives in Africa — the way in which some women are moving from victims to actors in their own life dramas. This is the second in a series of reports Jones will be writing for this site in the coming months, as she works with refugees in Africa and elsewhere. To check out an accompanying Tomdispatch video (filmed by site videographer Bret...
More About: World , Time , Changing , Shot , The World

In a Casino Mentality, The Economy Goes From Bubble to Bubble
2008-05-17 11:04:00
by Rodrigue Tremblay [U.S.] "strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power."...[His removal is absolutely vital to] "the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century" and for "the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world's supply of oil." - Neocons' January 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton [About the Iraqis] “If they turn on their radars we're going to blow up their goddamn missiles. They know we own their country. We own their airspace... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need.” - U.S. Air Force Brig. General William Looney, head of the US-UK flying operation south of the 32nd parallel over Iraq (no-fly zones), interview reproduced in the Washington Post, ...
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Some Unsolicited Advice for Barack Obama
2008-05-17 10:56:00
by Ernest Partridge TO: Barack H. Obama , Presumptive Nominee, Democratic Party. FROM: Ernest Partridge, Philosopher at Large, Incorrigible Gadfly. RE: The Campaign: How to Learn from the Past and Avoid Repeating It. Congratulations on your long, hard-fought and well-executed (presumptive) victory in the pre-convention campaign! You will need all that energy, endurance, and strategic intelligence if you are to prevail against John McCain and the Republican Party in November. And even so, if you regard McCain and the GOP as the extent of your opposition, you will surely lose. For you are up against a hostile corporate media, the United States Department of Justice, and a rigged vote-counting system that is secret, privately owned, and in the pocket of the Republican Party. Clearly, Al Gore and John Kerry were defeated, not by the voters, but by the corrupted voting machines and compilers and by a hostile media. You will be too, unless you acknowledge and ...
More About: Advice , Barack Obama

Want Cheaper Gas and Oil? End the Damned Wars!
2008-05-17 10:48:00
by Dave Lindorff Americans are in a panic over rising gas and heating oil prices, and with reason. For months, the price of a barrel of crude oil has been rising steadily, hitting a record $127 yesterday. Analysts keep getting trotted out on TV and in print, attributing the dramatic price rise to everything from “peak oil”—the idea that producing countries have reached their peak of productive capacity, and that the only direction for oil supplies looking forward is down, while demand continues to rise—to increasing demand in China and India, to supply bottlenecks, to specific news events, like a pipeline break in Nigeria, or a closed refinery in California. Politicians, like Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have called for a two-month moratorium on federal gas taxes, but with taxes running at something on the order of 18 cents a gallon, this is not going to do much to bring prices down—in fact it mi...
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"Shock Doctrine" Spin in U.S., Burma and Beyond
2008-05-17 10:42:00
by Bernard Weiner Suppose you have a controversial project you wish to push through, but you're afraid that if you come right out and say what you're up to, there will be so many objections from other officials and ordinary citizens that you might never get a chance to implement your agenda. But you're savvy about how influence-molding works and you know that with the right kind of massive publicity and P.R. campaigns, you probably can "spin" public perception in your direction. So, on a foundation of lies and deception, you decide to launch your project, careful to keep absolutely secret the most controversial aspects. And then, under the table, you hire (a.k.a. "bribe") numerous journalists, opinion pundits and respected "consultants" to speak on behalf of your product. It works! The public is snowed by the P.R. momentum and by the overwhelming consensus of the "experts," and your project takes off. This is how such things are done ev...
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Media Alert: Somalia - Hidden Catastrophe Hidden Agenda
2008-05-17 10:38:00
by Media Lens   On May 1, the BBC website reported an attack on Somalia with the “Air raid kills Somalia.One might think the BBC’s headline would identify the agency responsible for the bombing, but the first few sentences also shed no light: “The leader of the military wing of an Islamist insurgent organisation in Somalia has been killed in an overnight air strike. “Aden Hashi Ayro, al-Shabab's military commander, died when his home in the central town of Dusamareb was bombed. “Ten other people, including a senior militant, are also reported dead.” Only in the fourth sentence, was responsibility. “A US military spokesman told the BBC that it had attacked what he called a known al-Qaeda target in Somalia.” English teachers often illustrate use of the passive form with the sentence: ‘A man has been arrested.’ The passive is preferable, students are told, because the active form, ‘The police have arrested a man,’ contains a redundancy - the agent is already indicate...
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Another Supreme Outrage
2008-05-17 10:14:00
by Michael Collins in Washington, D.C.  Justices Stevens, Kennedy, and Roberts combined with Scalia, Alito, and Thomas to take voting rights back to1898. Image (left), Image (right) POLITE FASCISM CONTRACTS THE RIGHT TO VOTE William Crawford, et al, Petitioners 07-21 v. Marion County Elections Board et al. Indiana Democratic Party, et al., Petitioners 07-25 v. Todd Rokita, Indiana Secretary of State, et al. U. S. ____ (2008) Opinion of STEVENS, J. They wear their robes but leave the hoods off, the polite justices of the Supreme Court. They write decisions then issue them in a formal setting, behind the columns of a capitol monument, with a history that confers a dignity not deserved. The Court embodies the dilemma of our modern culture. The most awful acts are committed with bland justification by polite people who hide behind institutional trappings; for the sake of the few, at the expense of the many. When a vital right is denied to any group or clas...

NLG Calls To Investigate Administration And Lawyers Who Wrote Torture Memos
2008-05-17 09:47:00
The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) calls on Congress to appoint a Special Prosecutor, independent of the Department of Justice, to investigate and prosecute high Bush officials and lawyers including John Yoo for their role in the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody. The NLG has issued a White Paper explaining why the memos, which purported to give objective legal advice, subject all those involved to prosecution under international and U.S. domestic law. This includes people who ordered the torture, approved it or gave advice to justify it. Guild President Marjorie Cohn testified on May 6 before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the House Judiciary Committee, that some lawyers in the Department of Justice were "part of a common plan to violate U.S. and international laws outlawing torture." The 14-page White Paper details the ways in which the lawyers, including Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, and Will...
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The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy - So what's in your water?
2008-05-17 09:44:00
by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank The nation's biggest polluter isn't a corporation. It's the Pentagon. Every year the Department of Defense churns out more than 750,000 tons of hazardous waste — more than the top three chemical companies combined. Yet the military remains largely exempt from compliance with most federal and state environmental laws, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Pentagon's partner in crime, is working hard to keep it that way. For the past five decades the federal government, defense contractors and the chemical industry have joined forces to block public health protections against perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel that has been shown to effect children's growth and mental progress by disrupting the function of the thyroid gland which regulates brain development. Perchloraten has been leaking from literally hundreds of defense plants and military installations across the country. The EPA has reported that perchlo...
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60 Years of Denial
2008-05-17 09:39:00
by Ramzy Baroud Don't ask for what you never had,' is the underlying message made by supporters of Israel when they claim Palestine was never a state to begin with. The contention is, of course, easily refutable. Following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th Century, colonial powers plotted to divide the spoils. When Britain and France signed the secretive Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916, which divided the spheres of influence in west Asia, there were hardly any 'nation-states' in the region which would fit contemporary definitions of the term. All borders were colonial concoctions that served the interests of the powerful countries seeking strategic control, political influence and raw material. Most of Africa and much of Asia were victims of the colonial scrambles, which disfigured their geo-political and subsequently socio-economic compositions. But Palestinians, like many other people, did see themselves as a unique group linked historically to a sp...
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Food Crisis Hits Fallujah
2008-05-17 02:42:00
by Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily Sharp increases in food prices have generated a new wave of anti-occupation and anti-U.S. sentiment in Fallujah . "This is a country that was damned by the Americans the moment they stepped on our soil," Burhan Jassim, a farmer from Sichir village just outside Fallujah told IPS. "This is Iraqi land that has always been blessed by Allah with the best production in quality and quantity, but now see how it has been turned into a wasteland." Fallujah faces this new crisis after much of the city was destroyed by U.S. military operations in 2004. The area around Fallujah city, which lies 70 km west of Baghdad, has traditionally been one of the most agriculturally productive in Iraq. Farmers planted tomatoes and cucumbers north of Fallujah, others grew potatoes south of the city near Amiriya. Both areas had plenty of date palm trees and small fruit plantations. Now production is down to a fraction of what it was. Farmer...
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Lebanon in Crisis - Choufeit's Bloody Pentecost
2008-05-17 02:32:00
by Franklin Lamb In the lower Chouf village of Choufeit with its panoramic view of Beirut's closed airport (which will likely stay closed for 4 or 5 more days as a Hezbollah pressure point on the Bush administration to achieve a settlement that it views as fair and just), Dahiyeh, Sabra, Shatila and Burj Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camps; Pentecost Sunday started in a somber mood for the few remaining Christians and dominant Druze population of this picturesque, rugged, hilly and ancient village. The reason was that virtually the whole village was in attendance at a 9 a.m. memorial service for two supporters of the Druze Lebanese Democratic Party, 18 year old ____ and 22 year old _____ (names withheld at the request of family pending notification of family members living outside Lebanon ) who were probably shot as they drove too fast through a newly setup check-point on May 10th. (The exact circumstances and who exactly was responsible are not clear given the myriad...
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Disturbing Stirrings - Ratcheting Up For War on Iran
2008-05-17 02:29:00
by Stephen Lendman Led by Dick Cheney, Bush administration neocons want war on Iran . So does the Israeli Lobby, but it doesn't mean they'll get it. Powerful forces in Washington and the Pentagon are opposed and so far have prevailed. Nonetheless, worrisome recent events increase the possibility and must be closely watched. Recall George Bush's January 10, 2007 address to the nation. He announced the 20,000 troop "surge" and more. "Succeeding in Iraq," he said, "also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing 'terrorists' and 'insurgents' to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt (those) attacks....we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." That was...

All the News That Fits—In 500 words or a Graphic
2008-05-17 02:14:00
by Walter Brasch The editors of USA Today, as they do every day, had to decide what to make its “Cover Story.” The death toll from the cyclone in Myanmar was approaching 25,000, with about almost a million homeless, and the ruling military junta was still refusing to accept foreign assistance. A Pentagon report revealed that about 43,000 medically unfit troops were sent into combat. In Philadelphia, six police officers were under investigation for beating suspects. And, in Russia a new president was inaugurated. What the editors chose to dominate the front page was a three-column head photo of presidential daughter Jenna Bush and a story about her forthcoming non-public private wedding. The only reason USA Today didn’t run the story on its front pages Saturday and Sunday is because it doesn’t publish on weekends. But, just about every other news medium gave the wedding heavy play. When USA Today debuted in 1982, it was a glitzy full color alternative to...
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Myanmar and why they should fear us
2008-05-17 02:11:00
by Pablo Ouziel In the chaotic “west” it is often difficult to gain the attention of the public, but one must be committed to trying due to the severity of our current existential crisis. We are psychotic as a society, we have become so dumb and manipulable that we are truly being led towards digging our own grave and smiling while working. We cannot go on like this. We cannot pretend that we are a decent society with good intentions any longer. We are not! The “west” as a civilization is corrupt and decrepit, “we” are not the bearers of morality in the eyes of the “other” peoples. We are not an exemplary civilization which people admire and adulate. We are too arrogant and ignorant to realize, that we are seen by the “others” like the enemy, because “we” are. As a collective of people, the “west” believes itself to be the holder of the truth, the one which understands what is good for the world. This “west” doesn’t exist however, it is a figment of our imagination,...
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Hillary Clinton’s “Final Solution” to the Persian Problem
2008-05-17 02:08:00
Robert Weitzel “To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it . . . An evil unchecked is the prelude to genocide.” - Dr. Mordechai: The Ezekiel Option There are over 70 million human beings living in Iran, 17.5 million of whom are under the age of fifteen. Hillary Clinton vowed to attack Iran and “totally obliterate” the majority of the Persian race in a furnace of primordial fire should the Iranian government attack Israel with nuclear weapons, which they do not now possess or are likely to for some time — if ever. Hillary’s “final solution” to the Persian problem bests Adolf Hitler by a magnitude of ten. Missing in Clinton’s campaign trail pandering to America’s pro-Israel lobbies and the mushrooming evangelical Christian Zionist movement is the “inconvenient truth” that Israel has the most modern and most deadly army in the Middle East thanks to an annual $3.5 billion in American aid — one third of the U.S. aid budget. Israel ...
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Bolivia: Fraud, violence and mass resistance marks right-wing push
2008-05-17 01:54:00
by Bolivia Rising (Fred Fuentes) A day of violence, fraud and a “grand rebellion” against the Santa Cruz oligarchy. This is how Bolivian president, Evo Morales Ayma, described the result of the unconstitutional May 4 “autonomy” referendum organised by the authorities in Santa Cruz — which many feared was aimed at dividing Bolivia. The referendum was the first in a series of proposed referendums to be held in the departments of the so-called Half Moon — Santa Cruz plus Pando, Beni and Tarija, resource-rich departments in Bolivia’s east. The Half Moon remains dominated by the white oligarchy despite the coming to power nationally of Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, on the back of a mass movement against neoliberalism led by the indigenous majority. Illegal vote While the National Electoral Court had ruled that the autonomy referendum — which the government had proposed be held simultaneously with a referendum to approve the new constitution — could...
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