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Obama’s war
Bill Van Auken
With Obama approaching the end of his sixth month in the White House, there is growing evidence that his administration is in only the first stages of what is shaping up to be a major and sustained escalation of the US war in Afghanistan.
Elected in large part because of the hostility of American working people to the militarist policies of the Bush administration, Obama and the Pentagon are waging an intensified and brutal counter-insurgency campaign that has the potential of dwarfing the carnage in Iraq and dragging on for another decade.
July, little more than half over, has already become the deadliest month for US-led forces since the war began nearly eight years ago. A total of 46 occupation troops have been killed, 24 of them Americans. This death toll—approximately three a day—is equivalent to what took place during the heaviest fighting in Iraq. For Afghan government forces, the toll is far higher, with the regime in Kabul reporting that between six and ten members of the country’s national police are being killed daily.
War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields
Michel Chossudovsky
The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.
The rights to the offshore gas field are respectively British Gas (60 percent); Consolidated Contractors (CCC) (30 percent); and the Investment Fund of the Palestinian Authority (10 percent). (Haaretz, October 21, 2007).
The PA-BG-CCC agreement includes field development and the construction of a gas pipeline.(Middle East Economic Digest, Jan 5, 2001).
The BG licence covers the entire Gazan offshore marine area, which is contiguous to several Israeli offshore gas facilities. (See Map below). It should be noted that 60 percent of the gas reserves along the Gaza-Israel coastline belong to Palestine.
Arrested Pug Owner Fired Over Anti-Semitic Allegation
John Del Signore
A Greenpoint woman's altercation with a police officer over carrying her sick dog through the subway has put her out of a job. To recap: Chrissie Brodigan, a VP for Online Media at Plum TV, says that after she argued with Officer Joel Witriol while trying to carry her pug out of the subway, he arrested her, grabbed her breasts, and punched her in the back while saying, "If you're going to act like a woman I'm going to treat you like a woman." Other witnesses corroborated Brodigan's account, but one witness and an unidentified source told the Post that Brodigan yelled at Witriol, the city's first Hasidic officer, "You f---ing Jew, you're not even human. Jewish people think they own everything."
Brodigan initially said that although she yelled at Witriol, she "did not recall" saying anything anti-Semitic. (The following day she e-mailed us to firmly deny saying anything anti-Semitic or about Witriol's Jewish identity. Other witnesses backed her up.) But it seems that her initial Reaganesque denial is what cost her her job; she tells us today:
| I was terminated for "equivocating" in the press. My boss [Chris Glowacki] is threatening to not offer an agreeable severance package, including health insurance, which is crucial because i have cystic fibrosis and he is aware. He's angry that this is out in the press. I think he made a judgment based on perceived bigotry. |
Musicians ask Obama to ban music torture
Mary Shaw
A few years ago, British attorney Clive Stafford Smith spoke at an Amnesty International conference that I attended. Smith represents some Guantanamo prisoners, and he shared their horrible stories with us.
One chilling example is the story of his client Binyam Mohem, a Londoner who has since been released from Guantanamo:
"They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours of sleep on the second day, then hung up again, this time for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb.... There was loud music, [Eminem's] 'Slim Shady' and Dr. Dre for 20 days.... The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night.... Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off."
That's our tax dollars at work, people.
Dangerous Untreated West Bank Wastewater
by Stephen Lendman
B'Tselem is the Jerusalem-based independent Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (OPT) with a well-deserved reputation for accuracy and integrity. It was founded in 1989 to "document and educate the Israeli public, policymakers (and concerned people everywhere) about human rights violations in the OPT, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public (and elsewhere, especially among Jews), and create a human rights culture in Israel" to convince government officials to respect human rights and comply with international law.
It conducts wide-ranging, carefully researched, and thoroughly cross-checked reports, most recently its June one titled, "Foul Play: Neglect of wastewater treatment in the West Bank." This article discusses its findings as further evidence of how Israel violates international humanitarian law as an occupying power. Because no global authority holds it accountable, over 2.8 million West Bank Palestinians suffer along with another 1.5 million under siege in Gaza for over two years and counting.
Clinton Outlines Continuation of Bush Policies Under Obama at CFR
by Jeremy R. Hammond
In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined the Obama administration’s foreign policy, which has been widely touted as a sharp break from that of his predecessor’s. Judging from commentary in the media, Obama has ushered in a new age of diplomacy and international engagement. Clinton herself suggested as much.
But setting aside the platitudes that comprised most of Clinton’s speech and looking closely at her remarks that actually spoke meaningfully towards U.S. policy under the Obama, a different picture emerges, one not of a change of course from Bush but rather of near perfect continuity between the two administrations.
Obama’s foreign policy parallels Bush’s. The train may have switched tracks, but it’s still headed in the same direction.
Gaza and the Language of Power
By Ramzy Baroud
Nearly six months have passed since the Israeli army ceased pounding the tiny stretch of land that is the Gaza Strip. Since then, Gaza continues to appear on the news once in a while, as a recurring subject of human misery.
The tireless efforts of British MP George Galloway, and the courageous endeavors of the Free Gaza movement have managed to push Gaza back into the spotlight, even if momentarily and with political context which is lacking at best.
Aside from that, the three-week Israeli onslaught in Gaza, starting December 27 – and the catastrophic conditions endured there – have served the purpose of a footnote in many news reports. The event is generally cited as such: “Israel moved against Hamas in Gaza to quell the firing of militants’ rockets, resulting in the death of such and such number.” Hamas, according to media conventional wisdom, is the “militant group that ousted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ forces in a bloody coup in mid 2007.”
BEWARE THAT SWINE FLU SHOT / WATCH THIS CBS VIDEO
Allen L Roland
During the great Swine Flu scare of 1976 ~ 46 million Americans took the vaccine and 4000 ended up seeking damages which amounted to 3.5 Billion dollars. Most of the problems were neurological and death. Mike Wallace nailed the Center for Disease Control official in a 60 Minutes interview that was only shown once and is eerily similar to the current Swine Flu scare :
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ~ Recently saying the new H1N1 ( Swine Flu ) virus is “unstoppable”, the World Health Organization ( WHO ) gave drug makers a full go-ahead to manufacture vaccines against the pandemic influenza strain on Monday and said healthcare workers should be the first to get one.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal government is committing more than $800 million to buy more of the two key ingredients to make the H1N1 swine flu vaccine.
Did Abbas, Dahlan conspire to murder Arafat?
By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
In an impromptu news conference in the Jordanian capital, Amman , on 12 July, Fatah Secretary-General Farouk Kaddumi revealed that Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas and former Gaza strong man Muhammed Dahlan conspired to murder Yasser Arafat in connivance with Israel and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Kaddumi disclosed that Arafat had confided to him the transcript of a secret meeting involving Abbas, Dahlan , US intelligence officials as well as former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The meeting allegedly took place in March 22, 2004.
GIVE IT BACK GOLDMAN!
Michael Collins
Wall Street Welfare Queen Average
Bonuses $1.0 Million Per Employee
(Left) Hacking its way through the financial jungle, Goldman always
comes out on top. Cheers! Image
The Money Party at Work
There are a number of stories out there about Goldman Sachs gaining unfair advantage in the financial markets. One concerns a former employee who allegedly swiped a special program to maximize automated stock trades. Questions were raised about the propriety of this since Goldman is hauling in tons of cash on a daily basis while others struggle. A variation of this story involves speculation that Goldman gets insider information through some internet scheme and uses that to maximize their haul.
But the biggest outrage is what's happened in public.
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