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America’s Options in Afghanistan
Shahid R. Siddiqi
The neo-cons led by with Dick Cheney, who at that time represented American oil interests, had visualized multiple advantages in colonizing Afghanistan much before 9/11 occurred. For controlling and moving oil and gas from Caspian Sea and Central Asia, whose deposits are considered critical to future global supply but which could not be transported to a seaport for lack of pipelines, Afghanistan was indispensable. So was Pakistan.
Besides, this colonization could serve several other geo-political interests. From there America could contain and infiltrate Iran, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and Pakistan and deny China the use of Gawadar port and Pakistani Baluchistan’s land corridor for transporting its oil and industrial raw material. It could install India as its proxy regional power to control the rise of Jehadis and Chinese influence once it leaves and use Afghanistan to launch operations for denuclearizing Pakistan, Balkanizing it in the process. --Nine-eleven was accordingly orchestrated, Al Qaeda blamed, Afghanistan attacked and the Taliban overthrown. Behind the façade of threat to American security and the war on terror, Afghanistan’s occupation began.
Cast Lead: Injured girl (14) found 60 hours after family members killed
dci-pal.org
Amira Al Karrem (15), Tel Al-Hawa, Gaza, filed a War crimes
complaint yesterday against Israel at ICC, The Hague (Netherlands).
During "Cast Lead" israeli operation this winter, she spend 60 hours,
wounded, alone, without food and medical treatment. Her father,
brother, and sister were killed befor her eyes.
As of 7, February 2009, DCI-Palestine has confirmed the deaths of 304 children, and is investigating a further 96 reports of child fatalities. This means that as many as 400 children could have been killed in Operation Cast Lead.
On Wednesday, 14 January 2009, at around 5:00pm, 14-year-old Amira was on the first floor of her home in Tel al-Hawa in southern Gaza City. She was with her father, brother Ala (13) and sister Ismat (15) when Israeli tanks entered their neighbourhood: “We were very scared,” recalls Amira.
At approximately 6:30pm, Amira’s father, who is the muezzin (person who leads the call to prayer) for the mosque next door left the house to call the Isha (night) prayer. He quickly returned home, and shortly after put the children to bed amidst the sound of nearby shelling and gunfire.
Should Governments Manipulate the Personal Behavior of Citizens?
Giuseppe Abatangelo
In order to master the art of politics, you must attain the ability to control your environment. This is priority number one, and remains true regardless of how a particular social position is both defined, and used. You are a player, nothing more and nothing less. A player on a stage, just as Shakespeare wrote... and whom or what you allow to control the actions of your character, will indefinitely dictate this life completely.
Governments are not meant to play nanny, neither with benevolence nor malicious intent. Behavioral control belongs solely to each individual with respect to his or her immediate sphere of influence. A rather elusive truth to begin to consider is it not? A truth to break the camels back, and inadvertently thrust our imagination into a spiral of reason. Therefore just like Alice, if you fall into the rabbit hole it will be one wild ride trying to get out.
The pervasive abuse of democratic rights: Obama formalizes Bush policy on digital searches and seizures
Tom Eley
Obama won the support of millions of voters by campaigning against the pervasive abuse of democratic rights under the Bush administration. In office, he has sought again and again—from extraordinary rendition to military commissions trials to the formation of the new Pentagon "cyber command"—to place the same policies on a quasi—legal and firmer institutional footing.
The Obama administration disclosed on August 27 that it will carry on Bush administration policies that allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seize and search international travelers' laptop computers, cellular phones, cameras, and other electronic devices, even in the absence of suspicion of criminal activity.
Two DHS directives made public Thursday formalize operational practices established by the Bush administration to carry out searches of the personal digital instruments of travelers, US citizens or not, passing across US borders. By proclaiming that agents can confiscate any digital device that may contain "information," even without suspicion of criminal activity, the directives amount to an open repudiation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Israel’s Natanyahu launches his latest trick to gullible Europeans
Paul J. Balles
[Paul J. Balles considers Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s latest ruse, launched last week in talks with European leaders and in off-the-record briefings to gullible and sycophantic news editors: concede a temporary hold on illegal settlements built on stolen lands in exchange for agreement to trample or desecrate Iran.]
Israeli maxim: Occupy a country and then make the people pay a price to get part of it back. When they object, accuse them of refusing to take advantage of opportunities for peace.
Havah Nagilah provides the background music for Binyamin Netanyahu's latest dance to America and Europe.
One of the problems with Israel seems to be that they can never do something because it's the right thing to do. They usually have to bargain for something in exchange. --Here's the way Netanyahu put it: “The continuation of unilateral withdrawal without receiving anything must stop. In business, there are no free lunches, and this also is true with politics. There can be no free withdrawals.”
White Christian America versus Everybody Else
Sara Robinson
In the current issue of The Nation (which also featured a cover story co-authored by our own Bob Borosage), Chris Bowers pointed out a structural truth that lies at the heart of both American political parties. In the Age of Reagan, it came to pass that the GOP consolidated itself as the party of people who are white and Christian. Everybody else—black, brown, women, gays, immigrants, urban dwellers, non-Christians, you name it— found themselves on the receiving end of conservative scapegoating so often that they eventually decamped and aggregated in the other party. At this point, it's statistically true that If you are either not white or not Christian, then you are (with varying degrees of certainty, depending on what you identify as) far more likely to be a Democrat.
Ex-ISI Chief Says Purpose of New Afghan Intelligence Agency RAMA Is ‘to destabilize Pakistan’
Jeremy R. Hammond
Then Maj. Gen. Hamid Gul, Director General of the ISI (far left), with William Webster,
Director of Central Intelligence, Clair George, Deputy Director for Operations, and Milt
Bearden, CIA station chief, at a training camp for the mujahedeen in Pakistan's North-
West Frontier Province in 1987 (RAWA.org)
In an exclusive interview with Foreign Policy Journal, retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul responds to charges that he supports terrorism, discusses 9/11 and ulterior motives for the war on Afghanistan, claims that the U.S., Israel, and India are behind efforts to destabilize Pakistan, and charges the U.S. and its allies with responsibility for the lucrative Afghan drug trade.
Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul was the Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1987 to 1989, during which time he worked closely with the CIA to provide support for the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Though once deemed a close ally of the United States, in more recent years his name has been the subject of considerable controversy. He has been outspoken with the claim that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were an “inside job”. He has been called “the most dangerous man in Pakistan”, and the U.S. government has accused him of supporting the Taliban, even recommending him to the United Nations Security Council for inclusion on the list of international terrorists.
The Evidence Mounts Still Further
Andrew Sullivan
You will notice once again that the New York Times is able to use the word "torture" to describe torture - but only when it is committed by governments other than that of the US. The NYT under the editorial guidance of Bill Keller has, by cowardice and weakness, abetted the degeneracy that Cheney accomplished.
I'll write at more length when I'm back off my summer bloggatical, but the question of torture - and the United States' embrace of inhumanity as a core American value under the presidency of George W. Bush - remains, in my view, the pre-eminent moral question in American politics. The descent of the United States - and of Americans in general - to lower standards of morality and justice than those demanded by Iranians of their regime is a sign of the polity's moral degeneracy.
BUSH'S LEGACY OF SHAME BEGAN WITH 9/11
Allen L Roland
We all know who authorized illegal torture in the Bush administration. It was Darth Vader himself, Dick Cheney ~ and his trusted accomplice Donald Rumsfeld ~ who were intent on masking their treasonous actions on 9/11 by the means of forced confessions of highly questionable, if not innocent, Muslim suspects:
As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 ~ we must remember that 9/11 became the justification for virtually every abuse of power in the Bush/Cheney administration as well as the resultant breakdown in America's moral authority ~ which still continues today.
Organ Donation and Theft in Contemporary Jewish Folklore
By Gilad Atzmon
Donation According to Larry David
In his highly acclaimed TV satire ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, LA screen writer and comedian Larry David engages courageously with subjects to do with American Jewish identity. In his fifth season (2005) David tackles the subject of organ donation (1). Performing an American eccentric and egotistical Jew David is confronted with a serious dilemma. His best friend Richard Lewis (another Jewish comedian) happens to suffer an acute kidney failure. His survival is dependent on an urgent kidney donation and as one may expect Larry David is the perfect donor. David, who comes across as the ultimate selfish persona in American popular culture is obviously reluctant to donate his Kidney. He procrastinates, finds excuses and plays games. He even tries to make friends with a wealthy Orthodox Jew who is in a position to ‘sort things out’ as far as kidneys are concerned. He does it all just to avoid donating his own kidney to his best and closest friend.
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