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Russia, Turkey and the Great Game: Changing teams
Eric Walberg
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s visit to Turkish last month shows that Turkey and Russia are rapidly developing close economic and political ties.
For all intents and purposes, Turkey has given up on the European Union, recognising it as a bastion of Islamophobia and captive to US diktat. As Switzerland bans minarets and France moves to outlaw the niqab, the popular Islamist government in Istanbul moves in the opposite direction -- supporting the freedom to wear headscarfs, boldly criticising Israel and building bridges with Syria. This is nothing less than a fundamental realignment of Turkish politics towards Turkey’s natural allies -- the Arabs ... and the Russians.
PermalinkThe Anti-War Peace Movement Needs a Re-Start, America Needs a Patriotic, Broad-Based and Politically Independent Opposition to War
By Kevin Zeese
In his first year President Obama broke several war-making records of President George W. Bush. He passed the largest military budget in U.S. history, the largest one-year war supplementals and fired the most drone attacks on the most countries. He began 2010 asking for another $30 billion war supplemental and with the White House indicating that the next military budget will be $708 billion, breaking Obama’s previous record.
While some commentators on MSNBC hailed Obama as the peace candidate, he has done more for war in a shorter time than many other commanders-in-chief. U.S. attacks on other countries are not challenged in any serious way even if they result in consistent loss of innocent civilian life. It is not healthy for American democracy to allow unquestioned militarism and put war budgets on a path of automatic growth despite the U.S. spending as much as the rest of the world combined on weapons and war.
THE SHOA MUST GO ON
BY GILAD ATZMON
Last week saw Holocaust survivor Thomas Blatt, 82 give testimony at the trial of John Demjanjuk. Blatt stated that he still has nightmares about his time at the camp at Sobibor, "I go there in my dreams, they are so real. In them I am still there. I can't get it out of my head. This is the price I paid for getting out."
Ukrainian born John Demjanjuk, 89, is accused by the Munich court of being an ‘accessory’* in the death of 27,900 Jews at the Sobibor camp while being a German POW. As it happens, the German Justice system is now chasing ‘accessories’ to the Nazi crime. Embarrassingly enough it doesn’t do very well in the current case. Demjanjuk denies anything to do with the crime referred to him and furthermore, the German prosecution lacks any evidence whatsoever that supports or links Demjanjuk personally with murder or any other holocaust related criminal event.
Mr Blatt does not remember John Demjanjuk either, nor can he say if he is guilty as charged of helping to gas 27,900 Jews. "More than 60 years have passed” said Blatt “I can't even remember the faces of my parents. The court must decide if he was there. If he was there when I was there then I can imagine he shoved Jews at bayonet point to the gas chambers”.
What Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. might say to Bono and US!
eileen fleming
In 1967 at Riverside Church, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the sermon and speech, Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break Silence, and addressed three of America’s demons; racism, materialism and militarism.
He called our government; "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and "the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit."
Being a person of faith, King knew the power that was within and that, "there is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war."
GAZA: what are promises of humanitarian aid worth?
Stuart Littlewood
We keep hearing from the British government that they have spent £millions in humanitarian aid for Gaza. But nobody is saying exactly where the money has gone and who benefited.
Of course, if they had done what they were supposed to and (with the rest of the international community) made sure the Palestinians were left in peace to run their own affairs with their homeland intact, there would be no need to endlessly raid taxpayers’ pockets for aid.
Here’s the text of a letter to foreign secretary David Miliband…
Googles Deep CIA Connections
by Eric Sommer
The western media is currently full of articles on Google's 'threat to quit China' over internet censorship issues, and the company's 'suspicion' that the Chinese government was behind attempts to 'break-in' to several Google email accounts used by 'Chinese dissidents'.
However, the media has almost completely failed to report that Google's surface concern over 'human rights' in China is belied by its their deep involvement with some of the worst human rights abuses on the planet:
Lebanon and the Middle East continue to reject AIPAC’s H.R. 2278 as tensions rise Why doesn’t the US Embassy in Beirut ‘get it’?
Franklin Lamb, Beirut
It is being reported in Beirut this morning that at exactly 3 a.m. Beirut time, a supporter of the National Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah, on duty above the Mediterranean coastal town of Saadyat, between Damour and Saida was watching the skies of over Beirut for signs of Israeli aircraft, which daily violate Lebanese airspace.
What sources report to this observer was that he saw a Boeing 737-800 aircraft which had taken off from Rafiq Hariri airport gain altitude as it headed for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Hezbollah, on full military alert these days, presumably called in the report to Al Manar (the Dawn) station which it founded in 1991 and which since 2004 has been on one o the various US Terrorism lists.
As Lebanese woke to the news this morning an estimated 80% of the population is thought to have turned into Al Manar at least once sometime between the hours of 7 am and 11 am, as they and the region regularly do during war or crisis. The reason is Al Manar’s reputation for accuracy, thoroughness and objectivity and getting the latest news on the air fast.
Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs
by Stephen Lendman
On January 15, Haaretz reported that:
"The Israel Defense Forces' aid mission to Haiti left Israel overnight (January 14) with equipment for setting up an emergency field hospital. Around 220 soldiers and officers (were) in the delegation, including 120 medical staff (to) operate the hospital in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince."
According to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it includes "40 doctors, 25 nurses, paramedics, a pharmacy, a children's ward, a radiology department, an intensive care unit, an internal department and a maternity ward (able to) treat approximately 500 patients each day," including in two surgery rooms.
On January 20, Lebanon's Al-Manar TV reported on the mission, citing a damning You Tube video posted by an American named T. West from a group called AfriSynergy Productions.
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