by Stephen Lendman

A personal note. Chicago's my home. I live north of the Chicago River. It's the traditional North/South dividing line. I'm close to where protests occurred on the Michigan Ave Bridge and nearby.

Cops were everywhere. In partial lockdown, my building was affected. Some residents felt unsafe to go out. With well-armed police in riot-gear, knowledgeable Chicagoans know the risks of getting in harm's way.

Anyone can be targeted for any reason. Cops are notoriously brutal. They have carte blanche authority to operate with impunity. They take full advantage.

Victims pay dearly. They're harassed, abused, beaten, detained, and falsely charged. From Friday through Monday, affected areas reflected battleground conditions. Sunday was worst of all.

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by Stephen Lendman

Congressional hawks want war. Bipartisan support backs it. Moderates outnumber hotheads. At issue is for how long.

Saber rattling, fear mongering, and bogus accusations persisted for years. Now it's showing up in legislation. More on that below.

Possibly a false flag will ignite another Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) for "the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States."

At high-anxiety times, options often dwindle to war. Knee-jerk congressional support authorizes it with no formal declaration. The Constitution's Article 1, Section 8 mandates it.

It hasn't been declared since December 8, 1941. Why bother when presidential diktats send Americans to war with no congressional opposition.

Threats don't exist so they're invented. False flag attacks masquerade as real ones. Body counts rise exponentially. Buildings and other facilities topple like tenpins.

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Peter Chamberlin

It had to eventually happen–Afghan politics have come full circle, and then some. It was only a matter of time before the TAPI pipe dream would once again be offered as a solution to the Afghan conflict. The Taliban are once again being handed the keys to the kingdom in exchange for partnering with Western oil giants as the means for ensuring TAPI pipeline security. The last time we heard the snake charmers make this offer was in 1996, when Marty Miller of Unocal tried to convince all the factions that the “pipeline was a conflict resolution process.” When this approach also failed to keep all parties satisfied, speculation arose that Unocal or another consortium partner gave secret support to the Taliban, in order to push-out the Northern Alliance forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud from their northern sanctuary, the location of the finalized pipeline route. What will happen this time, when the Taliban or the mega-corporations prove to be unmovable and the whole diplomatic episode is exposed as another charade? Karzai is a marked man, just as Rabbani before him was marked for termination by the medieval Taliban.

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