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The Perpetual War
By Numerian posted by Michael Collins
On December 7th of this year – the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor – the United States will celebrate seventy years of perpetual war. September 11th will commemorate one aspect of this long war – the War on Terror – but the calendar could be filled with other bellicose starts and stops: the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the War in Iraq (parts I and II), the Afghanistan War, and various incursions into places like Nicaragua, Grenada, the Balkans, and even South America as part of something called the War on Drugs.
What’s it like to be at perpetual war for nearly three-quarters of a century? Americans have become a fearful people. They are so alarmed at the possibility of a terrorist attack they have willingly given up important Constitutional liberties, even to the point of submitting to intrusive and degrading inspections at airport security. Fear of crime is such an undercurrent of American society that all new cars come with theft alarms. Americans spend billions of dollars yearly to protect themselves from identity theft, and they are greeted at supermarkets with sanitary wipes because of the fear that some stranger left dangerous bacteria on the shopping cart. Fear has caused Americans to turn upon themselves: Democrats against Republicans, Red states against Blue states, liberals against conservatives, Christians against the non-religious, rural against urban, South against North, blacks against whites, the middle class against poor people, and so on. This is a fractured nation, but at the same time a highly militarized nation, and is it any wonder that Americans love their guns, even though firearm violence kills 39 Americans every day?
What MLK would see today
Mary Shaw
I am writing this on the third Monday of January - Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the U.S. It is a day set aside each year to honor the birth, life, and legacy of the great civil rights leader.
And, on this day, I wonder how the Reverend Dr. King would feel about today's American politics if he were still alive.
Surely he would be delighted by the fact that an African-American family now occupies the White House. This is something I didn't think I'd see even in my own lifetime.
But surely, too, he would see the backlash.
He would see the racism on display at tea party gatherings, with signs sporting slogans such as:
Updates on Two Political Prisoners
by Stephen Lendman
Earlier articles addressed them, accessed through the following links:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/10/canadas-war-on-islam-case-of-mahboob.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/11/oscar-lopez-rivera-imprisoned-for.html
Pakistani Canadians Mahboob Khawaja, his son Momin, and family were wrongfully targeted for alleged involvement in terrorism. Mahboob is an "academic specializing in Strategic Studies with special interests in Western-Islamic Civilizations, Change and Conflict Resolution."
While working in Saudi Arabia, dozens of Royal Canadian Mounted police arrested his family at gunpoint in Ottawa. They blew open his door, then searched his home lawlessly with no warrant and found nothing. At the same time, Mahboob was arrested in Saudi Arabia, jailed for two weeks, then released. The affair ruined his academic career as a professor of global politics, and Momin's as a software developer and free man.
Banking in Venezuela
by Stephen Lendman
The Banco Central de Venezuela's web site (Venezuela's Central Bank) relates BCV history from its September 8, 1939 inception. At the time, conservative forces feared monetary instability under uncontrolled Central Bank spending. As a result, opponents (unsuccessfully) said giving it exclusive money creation power was unconstitutional.
Thereafter BCV reforms occurred in 1943, 1960, 1974, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1992, 2001, and most recently making banking a "public service" in 2010. More on that below.
Looking Backwards Through the Gun-sight
Nozomi Hayase
Cross hairs and gun-sights are all the rage in the media these days after the killings in Tucson, with Sarah Palin getting flack for her mindless cross hairs map, to the inflamed calls for illegal assassination of Julian Assange. Could this be a time for a more self-conscious look at the violent undercurrents of our 'civilized' American society? Perhaps each one of us has at some point put someone in our own gun sights after reducing them into the role of an enemy. What responsibility does each of us share for this violent rhetoric and behavior?
The shooting in Tucson was an event that has brought home how deeply violent American culture can be. The American people have drifted into what I term a gun-sight consciousness, one that is extremely narrow and turns others into caricatures, easily targeted with hate and manipulated with fear-based reactions. The 'big guns' US military budget that feeds at least three active wars is sacrosanct, all the while the country is going bankrupt and under no real threat from any nation. This is as senseless as the over-hyped rhetoric of right vs. left when both parties clearly serve the same billionaire masters. Maybe it a good time to wake up and become aware of how we are moving quickly into self-destruction phase through manipulation of irrational fear and outrage.
MARTIN LUTHER KING / THE VOICE THAT CAN’T BE SILENCED
Allen L Roland
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Born Jan. 15, 1929
Assassinated April 4, 1968
The voice of Martin Luther King will never be silenced because his words resonate with the truth that love and the urge to unite lie deepest within us regardless of our feeble and ignoble attempts to justify preemptive wars and man’s ongoing inhumanity to man.
The Pentagon sank to a new low this week in their attempt to sell the Afghanistan War to the American people. At their Martin Luther King, Jr., Day observance, a Pentagon official actually claimed that if King were alive today, he might support violence and the ongoing war and occupation of Afghanistan.
This is simply not true. As shown in this video, Dr. King could not have been more clear in his 1967 speech denouncing the Vietnam War ~ which most certainly would apply to today’s wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan;
"A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war ~ this way of settling differences is not just ~ a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Here are more of King’s words which still call us to unite and love one another versus destroy each other;
America must change back to what it was
Raymond Ponzini
"When once a republic is corrupted there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principle." - Thomas Jefferson
Do you believe in freedom from the corporations and the banks or do you want to be ruled by them, because right now we are ruled by them and no longer have a government of by and for the people.
Jimmy Carter called it the ‘misery index’. The government has a way of measuring how much misery is caused for the people by corporate and government greed and exploitation. The more our government allows corporations to heap on the people’s backs the more their suffering is heightened. Years of unbridled corporate greed and government corruption have weakened our democracy and made it susceptible to political sickness from within.
UPDATE ON SINGLE PAYER: Interview with Margaret Flowers, MD
By Joan Brunwasser
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My guest is Dr. Margaret Flowers, congressional fellow of Physicians for a National Health Program [PNHP]. Welcome back to OpEdNews, Margaret. Republican lawmakers, fresh from their November victory, are pledging to move immediately in the new Congress to dismantle the health care law that President Obama gave so much attention to. What's your take on that?
Thank you for inviting me back, Joan. As you know, Physicians for a National Health Program does not support the new health law. Overall we find that it does more harm than good by further privatizing our health care and failing to address the fundamental problems of rising health care costs and lack of access to care for tens of millions of people. That said, we find the Republican plans to dismantle the health law reprehensible given that they are willing to remove what coverage was gained under the law and offer no effective alternative to our growing health care crisis.
The Republican calls to repeal the law are mere political posturing and will not succeed. In fact the health industries, which contributed more heavily to Republican campaigns in the last election cycle than to Democrats, do not want the full law repealed. The Republicans will more likely succeed in defunding portions of the bill and relaxing regulation of the health insurance industry. This will escalate our health care crisis.
Response from The White House RE: Mordechai Vanunu Via The New York Times
eileen fleming
When President Obama took office, this activist reporter began phoning, faxing and emailing him and Secretary of State Clinton seeking a statement regarding the fact that Israel continues to deny the Nuclear Whistle Blower the right to leave the state ever since he emerged from a tomb sized windowless cell on 21 April 2004, after 18 years in jail for telling the world the truth and providing the photographic proof that Israel had manufactured upwards of 200 nuclear warheads by 1986, in the Dimona's seven-story underground nuclear facility. For the last two years, I have been requesting a statement from this Administration vis-à-vis the fact that Israel’s very statehood was established contingent upon their upholding the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a co-signer of the Declaration of Human Rights, America is responsible for holding all Member States accountable when they fail to honor it. I have relentlessly reminded my government that Article 13-2 guarantees “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
The Politics of Hate—and Hate Speech
by Walter Brasch
Just about anything that could be said about the murders in Tucson have been said.
We know that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was holding a "Congress on the Corner" meeting outside a Safeway grocery store.
We know that a 22-year-old named Jared Lee Loughner is in FBI custody, and has been charged with one count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress, two counts of killing an employee of the United States and two counts of intent to kill employees of the United States. We know that six people are dead, that 14 were wounded, several of whom were in grave or critical condition. We know there will be additional state charges filed against Loughner.
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