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As Italy’s elections go from bad to worse, Vicenza remains the silver linin
2008-05-06 09:40:00
by Stephanie Westbrook Just when it seemed things could get no worse on the Italian political landscape following the first round of elections, run-off elections this past Sunday and Monday proved the contrary. But the northern city of Vicenza , home to a vibrant citizens’ movement against a second US military base in their city, proved to be the silver lining. Round One In the mid-April elections that came after the collapse last January of the center-left government led by Romano Prodi, the center-right coalition led by media magnate, billionaire and staunch Bush ally Silvio Berlusconi not only beat out former Rome Mayor and leader of the newly formed Democratic Party, Walter Veltroni, but also with a very comfortable 9-point lead. In a campaign run on fear of immigrants, aided by the all too fresh memory of the Prodi government that managed disillusion across the board, and with the benefit of his 3 television networks, Berlusconi’s newly formed co...
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The Harsh Reality of the Middle East Conflict
2008-05-03 11:22:00
by Dan Lieberman A century old conflict between the state of Israel and stateless Palestinians, many of whom have been disposed from lands that created the Israel state, has provoked an argument: Is it preferable to have two states living side by side or have one state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River that includes Jews and Palestinians without prejudice and with equal rights for all?Those who propose a single-state do so because they sense the two-state solution is nonviable and those who propose two-states do so because they sense the one-state solution is unacceptable. The argument is doomed to irresolution because Israel has overwhelming military power, faces no countervailing power, doesnÂ’t intend for the Palestinians to have a viable state and wonÂ’t approve a single state for all. If Israel intended to allow a viable Palestinian state, would the Israeli government proceed in the continuous construction of West Bank settlements? W...
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Pseudo-Capitalism in Disarray
2008-05-03 11:14:00
by Stephen Bindman, Ph.D From Stephen Bindman's forthcoming book: PSEUDO CAPITALISM: Socialism for the Rich The Flatlanders Continue to Deny That We Live in a World of Statist Economies As the US economy tips over, the government once again intervenes and the Federal Reserve is its arm. But who will benefit? The current ruling eliteÂ’s argument has been to act with interest rate and liquidity interventions, while mystifying and pretending to obey the apparently "divine" function of the "free market." Actions in the current crisis have made this attitude increasingly described and questioned. The contradiction between what members of the new elite, directors of our economic system mandate for the majority of society and what they do to profit for themselves and their fellow elitists - members of "the class of Davos"-becomes increasingly visible and annoying to the rest of the world. As the Flatlanders fatten their coffers, underwriting th...
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How to Get Universal Health Care
2008-05-03 10:56:00
by Joel S. Hirschhorn Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama say they believe in giving Americans universal health care. I donÂ’t believe them. Anyone who takes the time to understand universal health care should conclude that only a simple single payer system will reform the current outrageous system that benefits the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. The contorted plans from Clinton and Obama are not sufficient reforms. And what John McCain has proposed is sheer nonsense and by itself should cause any conscious American to avoid voting for him. Fights for health care system reform are centered in Congress, as if legislators will do what they have never done before: achieve true, major and systemic reforms that only serve the public interest, not lobbyists and campaign contributors from business sectors. Both Clinton and Obama believe that Americans have a moral right to universal health care. If this is correct and if this is what you believe, th...
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The Bomb Squads: How to Survive a Gaza Refugee Camp
2008-05-03 10:54:00
by Ramzy Baroud The following are excerpts from Baroud’s upcoming book, “101 Ways to Survive a Refugee Camp .” We waited breathless. Breathing heavily was hazardous under these somewhat exceptional circumstances. The army, my father often advised, was sensitive to the slightest movements or sounds, including a whisper, a cough, or God forbid, a sneeze. Thus we sat completely still. Muneer, my younger brother was entrusted with the mission of peering through the rusty holes in the front door. It bothered me that I was not the one elected for the seemingly perilous mission. My father explained that Muneer was smaller and quicker, he could negotiate his way back and forth, seamlessly, between the observation ground and the room where everyone was hiding. The house’s main door was riddled with holes; the upper half spoke of past battles between the neighbourhood’s stone throwers and Israeli soldiers. The holes on the lower half, however were not those of bullets, bu...
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NLG President To Testify On Torture Liability At Hearing On The Constitutio
2008-05-03 10:29:00
by Marjorie Cohn On Tuesday, May 6, 2008, National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn will provide testimony at a hearing titled “From the Department of Justice to Guantánamo Bay: Administration Lawyers and Administration Interrogation Rules,” before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties of the House Judiciary Committee. The hearing will begin at 10:00 a.m. at 2141 Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC. Cohn is a Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, in which she documents the illegal policy of torture established by high officials of the Bush administration and lawyers in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, including former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo. Yoo was also invited to testify at Tuesday's hearing but declined the invitation. Testimony will also be provided by Philippe Sands, ...
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The Convenient "Suicide" Of The DC Madam
2008-05-03 10:22:00
by Linda Milazzo I don't like to speculate - but the reported suicide of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "DC Madam ," is difficult for me to fathom. The suspicion I hold that the "suicide" of this 52 year old seemingly vibrant woman, who could reveal the identities of powerful Washingtonians who used her "escort" services, may have not been a suicide at all, causes me sadness - over the tragic death of Palfrey herself, and over my distrust of the powerful who have proven time and again that they will do anything to protect their fortunes and their "good" names. "I am not planning to commit suicide." - Deborah Jeane Palfrey According to the HuffingtonPost, reporting on the suicide,, Palfrey had spoken out on suicide in the past when she reflected on the death of one of her former escorts, University of Maryland Professor, Brandy Britton. Palfrey said of Britton's suicide: "This is a woman who was divorced, who was...
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We Can Survive But Can We Communicate?
2008-05-03 10:11:00
by Carolyn Baker And Sally Erickson Building community as the world unravels The distance between us is holy ground To be traversed feet bare, Arms raised in joyous dance So that it is crossed. And the tracks of our pilgrimage shine in the darkness To light our coming together In a bright and steady light. - Raphael Jesus Gonzales [As promised in my last article "Peak Civilization And The Winter Of Our Disconnect", my colleague and friend, Sally Erickson and I are offering what we believe are vitally important tools for enhancing communication with our peers as we navigate collapse.-CB] When we think of preparing our minds, bodies, hearts, and living situations for collapse, the focus is often on our individual or household living situations. Equally important is our need to develop a circle of trusting, mutually interdependent relationships. The culture we live in is based on hierarchies of control and influence. Work relationships, kept in plac...
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The Unity Ticket: Obama and Hillary
2008-05-03 10:07:00
by Jerome Grossman Traveling serenely down Pennsylvania Avenue on his way to the White House, Barack Obama had an accident that he should have anticipated. If anybody knew of Jeremiah Wright's opinions and meanness and self-centeredness, it was Obama, whose twenty year association with the pastor included close family relationships as well as significant political cooperation. However, Obama tried to repudiate Wright when he excluded him from the presidential campaign but Jeremiah refused to be excluded. He had messages, many hateful messages, to be delivered to the world and nothing was going to stop him from using this rare opportunity. Obama has been hurt and his campaign will suffer in the nomination struggle and in the general election in November. How important was Wright in the beginning of Obama's political career? Why did the association last for 20 years? Why did it take so long for Obama to renounce his pastor and denounce his opinions? Obama remains the...
More About: Hillary , Unity , Ticket

A Brief ExposeÂ’ of a Fraudulent War
2008-05-03 10:00:00
by Richard W. Behan The “War on Terror” is a fraud and a façade, a mere label concocted and trumpeted by an Administration known for its signature dishonesty. The label conceals the Bush Administration’s international crimes of unprovoked military aggression—the armed invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, two sovereign nations the Administration meant to attack from its first days in office.1 With its pathological lying, secrecy, and brilliant propagandizing the Administration has prevented a compliant mainstream press from communicating fully the realities of the war. But now, as the country chooses a new president, the truth must prevail, to foreclose another catastrophic Administration—candidate McCain says “No surrender!”—and to make certain instead the fraudulent war is terminated with dispatch. The “War on Terror” was launched in retaliation for 9/11, we were told, to apprehend Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Then, justifying a quantum escalation i...

AmericaÂ’s Shame
2008-05-03 09:49:00
by Zahir Ebrahim I wrote this essay as the Preface to "Prisoners of the Cave" during 2003. That was four years ago. What has changed in America since then? With another aggression against another defenceless nation in the offing, I inexplicably find the American peoples still quite absorbed in the pursuits of their "American Dream" and hardly anyone gives a damn! Those handful who do, are entirely neutralized, with the efficacy of their anaemic protests exactly ZERO! And I continue to hear the same nonsense as I heard in 2001 and 2002 and 2003 and 2004 and 2005 and 2006, and once again in 2007, from my American friends, colleagues, and from the general mainstream population, about the necessity of lifetime of battle against the "terrorist Islamists" and "evil doers" which is "Not [even] a Clash of Civilizations, It's a Clash between the Civilized World and Barbarians", and the primacy imperative of "preemption" ...
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Longest Walk herald for Mother Earth at Kansas Capitol
2008-05-03 09:37:00
by Brenda Norrell Dennis Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement, and Kickapoo Chairman Steve Cadue joined forces on the steps of the Kansas Statehouse to draw attention to the destruction of Mother Earth , vanishing rivers and assaults on American Indian rights. Standing with the Longest Walk ers, Kickapoo Chairman Cadue said his people in northern Kansas have been hauling water around the clock because the Delaware River is dry, threatening the economic and cultural survival of his people. Although Kickapoo water rights are ensured by treaty and federal law, the Kickapoo must now spend enormous amounts of money to obtain water and their right to water for the future. “If the Kickapoo tribe loses our argument for water in the court system, we will cease to exist as a viable sovereign Indian Tribe in the next decade.” “We had the right to the water and the land before the establishment of Kansas,” Chairman Cadue said. The federal court case, the Winters...

Feeding Moloch: Last Barriers to War on Iran Come Down
2008-05-03 09:29:00
by Chris Floyd Anyone who thinks the Bush Administration does not intend to attack Iran either has rocks in the head or their head in the sand. The warmongers have raised their cacophonous howling of threat and accusation against Iran to entirely new levels. Every day now, some major Administration figure makes fiery charges that Iran is directly, deliberately killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq: a clear casus belli, if it were true, which it almost certainly is not. (That is, it a clear cause for war in the perverted logic of Establishment discourse, which ignores the fact that U.S. forces have illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, and the fact the Bush Administration itself supports the same violent sectarian Shiite factions that Iran does in Iraq, factions responsible for killing thousands of innocent people. What's more, Bush and his beloved General Petraeus are now directly paying extremist Sunni factions, including members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who are likewise engage...
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Since I gave up hope, I feel better - The Anti-Empire Report
2008-05-03 09:24:00
by William Blum "More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly." — Woody Allen Food riots, in dozens of countries, in the 21st century. Is this what we envisioned during the post-World War Two, moon-landing 20th century as humankind's glorious future? It's not the end of the world, but you can almost see it from here. American writer Henry Miller (1891-1980) once asserted that the role of the artist was to "inoculate the world with disillusionment". So just in case you — for whatever weird reason — cling to the belief/hope that the United States can be a positive force in ending or slowing down the new jump in world hunger, here are some disillusioning facts of life. On December 14, 1981 a resolution was proposed in the United Nations General Assembly which declared that "educati...
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The Bush Family's Bad Latin Real Estate Investment
2008-05-03 09:20:00
by Dave Lindorff Back in late 2006, it was widely reported in the Latin American media that President Bush , or perhaps his old man, had bought a 100,000-acre farm in a remote area of Paraguay. What struck people at the time was the choice of country. Paraguay, of course, has gained a certain Club Med status among the world's villains and criminal elements as the place to go when the law's on your tail. The country, ruled for six decades by the dictatorial and fascist Colorado Party of Gen. Alfredo Stroesser, an almost cartoon charicature of a Latin American dictator, has no extradition treaty with any nation. That's why it has long harbored aging Nazis, bank robbers, and a string of ousted or retired Latin American dictators and their assistants over the years. Given that President Bush, once he leaves office on January 20, 2009, will no longer have the diplomatic immunity conferred upon heads of state, or the Constitutional protection against indictment by domestic prosecuto...
More About: Estate , Real Estate , Real Estate Investment , Investment

Falluja's struggle after invasion
2008-05-03 09:10:00
by Dahr Jamail Five years ago, George Bush, the US president, announced aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier that the war in Iraq was a "mission accomplished". But events in the western Anbar province had already been spiralling out of control and were threatening the volatile security situation in occupied Iraq. On April 28, 2003, US soldiers occupying the Al-Qaid school in Falluja opened fire on dozens of demonstrators who had been protesting the use of the premises as a forward base for the US 82nd Airborne Division. Residents of Falluja had also been protesting against the use of night vision goggles, which they mistakenly believed were used by US soldiers to spy on their wives and daughters. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and scores wounded. The US military said its soldiers had responded properly after coming under "effective fire" from some 25 armed men hiding within the Iraqi crowds outside the school and atop adjacent buildings....
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Want to Save the Economy?
2008-05-03 08:24:00
by Mike Whitney Insolvency's dark shadow hangs over Wall Street. One major player, Bear Stearns, has already gone under, and from the looks of it, another investment giant may be on the way down. It's getting ugly out there. The so-called TED spread*, which measures the reluctance of banks to lend to each other, has begun to widen ominously suggesting that the money markets think another dead body will be floating to the surface any day now. The ongoing deleveraging of financial institutions and the persistent downgrading of assets has the Fed in a tizzy. Bernanke has backed himself into a corner by stretching the Fed's mandate to include everyone on Wall Street with a mailing address and a begging bowl. Now he's taken on the even larger task of fixing the plumbing that keeps credit flowing between the various investment banks. Good luck. There's plenty of more pain ahead. The IMF expects the final tally will be $945 billion, that means $3 trillion i...
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Denying Palestinians Free Movement in the West Bank
2008-05-03 08:22:00
by Stephen Lendman This article summarizes an August 2007 B'Tselem report now available in print. It's one of a series of studies it conducts on life in Occupied Palestine to reveal what major media accounts suppress. This one is titled: "Ground to a Halt - Denial of Palestinians ' Free dom of Movement in the West Bank ." B'Tselem has a well-deserved reputation for accuracy and integrity. It's the Jerusalem-based independent Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). It was founded in 1989 by prominent academics, attorneys, journalists and Knesset members to "document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in (Occupied Palestine), combat (the Israeli public's) denial, and create a human rights culture in Israel" to convince government officials to respect human rights and obey international law. Its work is detailed, wide-ranging, carefully researched, and based on hundre...
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US Military Coordinated Day of Prayer Events With Christian Right Group
2008-05-03 07:20:00
by Jason Leopold At least half-a-dozen active-duty military officials have been working closely with a task force headed by the far-right fundamentalist Christian s planning religious events at military installations around the country to commemorate Thursday’s National Day of Prayer . In working directly with the National Day of Prayer (NDP) Task Force and agreeing to work as event coordinators, these military officials not only violated constitutional provisions governing the separation of church and state but they also signed an oath that states they “believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God” and that “Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God,” according to materials posted on NDP Task Force’s website. Furthermore, the declaration signed by the military officials says that they promise to “ensure a strong, consistent Christian message throughout the natio...
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Of dictators and their cronies
2008-05-03 07:16:00
by Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq In 1992, The Herald, Karachi, decided to interview the great intellectual of our time, Edward W. Said. The interviewer posed a question to him, “Why we must continue to turn to the Zias of the world….” In 2008, we are still faced with the challenge of undoing the legacy of the Zias of the world, which can now be called “Musharrafs of the world”. In fact the change in nomenclature has no relevance, as the substance remains the same even after 16 years. Professor Said pointed out in his reply that in a world where might is right, the powerful in the global politics ensure the perpetuation of their control through handpicked cronies and lackeys in different countries. This explains why it is so difficulty to undo the legacy of dictators in countries like Pakistan, even after the clear mandate of people, through elections. Those possessing power always strive to dispossess the masses of their rights through cronies. Why do t...
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Election Piffle - Thinking Outside the Voting Booth
2008-05-03 07:11:00
by Joshua Frank This is what it has come to. Hillary Clinton seems poised to damage Barack Obama so badly in the Democratic primary that he will end up flopping around like a suffocating trout in the general election when he faces John McCain. From the progressive left, the Green Party, totally strapped for cash and lacking an effective platform, seems intent on running former Democrat Cynthia McKinney for president, known in mainstream America only for her ugly spat with Capital Hill police. And of course there is Ralph Nader who is running another quixotic campaign on sound issues and moral fortitude, but with absolutely no grassroots base to form a rebellion against the powers that be — a campaign that will inevitably become mired in expensive ballot-access battles that will drag on far beyond the election itself. It's a dismal time for electoral politics indeed. Candidates that oppose the Iraq war, Israel's occupation of Palestine, the oil cartel, the bankin...
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Permanent Wars for Oil and Permanent Terrorism
2008-05-03 07:09:00
by Dr. Bernard Weiner “Oil in the next war will occupy the place of coal in the present war, or at least a parallel place to coal. The only big potential supply that we can get under British control is the Persian [now Iran] and Mesopotamian [now Iraq] supply....Control over these oil supplies becomes a first class British war aim.” Sir Maurice Hankey, Britain’s First Secretary of the War Cabinet, 1918 "Whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction,' American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbours a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy." Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman 1987-2006 [We cannot leave Iraq because] "extremists [may] be in a position to use oil as a tool to blackmail the West... and they will do so unless we abandon Israel " George W. Bush, November 1, 2006 "When there is a regime change in Iraq, you could add 3 million to...
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John McCain WonÂ’t Be Looking for the Union Label
2008-05-03 06:49:00
by Walter Brasch Don’t expect any labor union to endorse John McCain for president in the general election. The wounds from the Bush–Cheney Administration are just too deep. But, their reasons aren’t because of social justice issues that once pervaded the labor movement, but on bread-and-butter issues that have dominated unions the past five decades. “Our economy is in crisis after years of failed Bush Administration policies that Sen. McCain has adopted as his own,” says Karen Ackerman, AFL-CIO political director. McCain, says Steve Smith, AFL-CIO senior media outreach specialist, “assails working families from worker health care and safety to trade policies.” McCain, in agreement with Bush, has voted against protecting overtime pay and for trade deals that consistently send American jobs off-shore, often to countries where sweat shop labor is common. McCain has also voted against health insurance for children and worker safety and health. American ...
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According to Plan?
2008-05-03 06:47:00
by Ernest Partridge The pre-convention Democratic campaign could not be working out better for the Republicans even if the GOP had planned it this way. Perhaps they did. If so, their wholly-owned subsidiary, the corporate media, appears to be dutifully following their instructions to the letter. Prolonging the Agony The optimum course of events for both the GOP and the media is a continuation of the Clinton-Obama slugfest for as long as possible. The media benefits with sustained public interest and inflated ratings, while the Republicans enjoy the advantage to a severely damaged Democratic candidate in the November election. And so, when Clinton entered the primaries a heavy favorite, the media chatter was all about “Obamamania.” Then Obama won the Iowa primary and most states in “Super Tuesday” and headed toward New Hampshire, ahead in the polls. An Obama victory in New Hampshire could have wrapped up his nomination. But instead, Clinton’s campa...
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Obama – Delusions – And Of Course The Right Reverend Haggee
2008-05-03 06:43:00
by Michael OÂ’McCarthy Barack Obama is not the first relevant African American Presidential candidate. That would be Frederick DouglasÂ’s short moment before he realized the futility of running for president of a WHITE houseÂ… The second most notable was Congressperson Shirley Chisum who in 1972 became the first major party African-American candidate for President of the United States. She won 152 delegates. And of course we honor, (having been remind of recent by the other BLACK president Wild Wily Clinton,) was Civil Rights leader Jesse Jackson. The latter two of course, didnÂ’t have a chance. Any more than Douglas. Obama appeared to be the only male of African American heritage who might have a chance, if he could please all the white owned corporations; the white rich folks; the white clergy of the lily white right; and create a movement of people whose primary politics were denial of American reality and hope for a new politics mixed together in a sensitive brew. That brew,...
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From Balance of Terror to Unilateral Terror on the Grand Chessboard!
2008-05-03 06:36:00
by Zahir Ebrahim Douglas J. Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, in his Hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 14, 2002 in the aftermath of 911, explaining the rationale for the Department of Defence 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, summarized the overarching reasons for “new thinking” by the United States as the unchallenged sole superpower in the following words: 'A half a century ago, in the midst of the Cold War, Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted in the House of Commons the “sublime irony” that in the nuclear age, “safety will be the sturdy child of terror and survival the twin brother of annihilation.” The Cold War is long over and new approaches to defense are overdue. As President Bush has stated, “We are no longer divided into armed camps, locked in a careful balance of terror.…Our times call for new thinking.” ' In essence, and as has been empirically evident over the past seven years, what Douglas Feith was argu...
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The Torture Election
2008-04-30 11:00:00
by Chris Floyd As the presidential horse race grows more frenzied and absurd — Flag pins! Bowling! Obliteration! — it is important to keep in mind what the election is really about: torture. Specifically, the use of torture as an openly admitted, formally recognized instrument of national policy, approved at the highest level of government. The Bush Administration has now dropped all pretense that it is not engaging in interrogation techniques and incarceration practices long recognized by both international and U.S. law as blatantly criminal. What's more, the Administration boldly asserts that the president can simply ignore laws prohibiting torture if he feels that circumstances warrant the use of "interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law," the New York Times reported over the weekend. (The Washington Post had a similar story — similarly buried deep inside the paper. A brazen declaration of presidential tyranny...
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Tomgram: Petraeus, Falling Upwards - Selling the President's General
2008-04-30 10:53:00
by Tom Engelhardt You simply can't pile up enough adjectives when it comes to the general, who, at a relatively young age, was already a runner-up for Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2007. His record is stellar. His tactical sense extraordinary. His strategic ability, when it comes to mounting a campaign, beyond compare. I'm speaking, of course, of General David Petraeus , the President's surge commander in Iraq and, as of last week, the newly nominated head of U.S. Central Command (Centcom) for all of the Middle East and beyond — "King David" to those of his peers who haven't exactly taken a shine to his reportedly "high self-regard." And the campaign I have in mind has been his years' long wooing and winning of the American media, in the process of which he sold himself as a true American hero, a Caesar of celebrity. As far as can be told, there's never been a seat in his helicopter that couldn't be filled by a friendly (or adoring) ...
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Tomgram: Turse, A Pentagon's Who's Who of Your Life
2008-04-30 09:10:00
by Tom Engelhardt Last Sunday, David Barstow of the New York Times revealed just how effectively the Pentagon orchestrated a propaganda campaign for "information dominance" when it came to the President's various wars (and prisons). Pentagon officials, from the Secretary of Defense on down, put together a "rapid reaction force" of retired generals and other retired military officers (aka "message force multipliers" or "surrogates"). With copious Pentagon help and perks, these "experts" became key go-to guys for the mainstream media when it came to the War on Terror and the war in Iraq. As the Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel put the matter, "This was an all out effort at the highest levels of the Bush administration, continuing to this day, to dupe, mislead and lie to the American people — using propaganda dressed up and cherry-picked as independent military analysis. As one participant described it, 'It was psy...
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To Understand Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Recall Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2008-04-30 07:02:00
by Walter C. Uhler Today, Senator Barack Obama felt compelled to disassociate himself from his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright . Not only from the snippets of Rev. Wright's sermons - largely taken out of context by vile humans like Sean Hannity at FOX News, in order to smear Senator Obama - but also from his speech at the National Press Club yesterday, as well as from anything Rev. Wright might say in the future. It appears to be an irreparable breach. Brainless partisans, such as those who further abuse their already limited intellectual faculties by watching O'Reilly and Hannity on FOX, will hear much about the tactics behind Obama's move, as well as repetition ad nauseam about how poorly Obama's ties to Rev. Wright reflect on his own "judgment." Yet, properly understood, the breach has nothing to do with Senator Obama's judgment. It represents only a belated recognition by him that the objectives of a politician cannot possibly be the objecti...
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