Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a 'genocidal' strategy.

Since the mysterious explosion at the Shia al-Askari shrine in Samara in February last year, more than 100 Iraqis have been killed daily on average, without any forceful action by the Iraqi government and the U.S. military to stop the killings.

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One ordinary December day, I took a tour of my hospital with Deborah Yokoe, an infectious disease specialist, and Susan Marino, a microbiologist. They work in our hospital's infection-control unit. Their full-time job, and that of three others in the unit, is to stop the spread of infection in the hospital. This is not flashy work, and they are not flashy people. Yokoe is forty-five years old, gentle voiced, and dimpled. She wears sneakers at work. Marino is in her fifties and reserved by nature. But they have coped with influenza epidemics, Legionnaires' disease, fatal bacterial meningitis, and, just a few months before, a case that, according to the patient's brain-biopsy results, might have been Creutzfeld-Jakob disease -- a nightmare, not only because it is incurable and fatal but also because the infectious agent that causes it, known as a prion, cannot be killed by usual heat-sterilization procedures.

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But I was waiting
For the miracle,
For the miracle to come
Waiting For The Miracle --- Leonard Cohen

We're bringing the war back home
Where it ought to have been before.
Bringing The War Back Home --- Firesign Theatre

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From Um Khalil

Your people, Bir'im have not died/And will not forsake a grain of sand from you/As long as you have men like these/As long as you have men like these/Who continually strive for justice. -Issa Chacou

Why should I, a Jew from north London, be permitted to take up Israeli citizenship, when that right is denied to a Palestinian who languishes in a refugee camp in Lebanon? Especially when I acknowledge that a large majority of those that left in 1948 were ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces.

Those are the words of Alex Stein, writing for Comment is free last week. A commendable admission of injustice to Palestinians, you would say. But then he derives conclusions that are contrary to this premise; that the right of a Palestinian to return to his home is neither sacred, legal nor possible.

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To: His Excellency, Jimmy Carter, former American president, and Nobel laureate
From: Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Subject: Introducing Palestine, Justice Not Apartheid

Dear distinguished scholar, humanitarian, Nobel peace-laureate, former President:

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A friend recently asked me what I knew about The Secret, and I had to confess, absolutely nothing. A couple of days later, another friend asked the same question, so I decided I’d better investigate this supposedly revolutionary new book and DVD that have taken the country by storm. As I did so, I discovered that nothing about The Secret is revolutionary or new but rather a glitzy, twenty-first century redux of what has come to be called in metaphysical circles “New Thought”.

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Gilad Atzmon

A guide for the curious: tactics from Z to A (Zionists to Atzmon)

Hecklers

In the beginning they heckled me during my concerts. I can recall the first time, it was back in 2001, three days after 9/11. It was at the Hull Jazz festival in a sold out room. During the break, I was asked by a Palestinian Solidarity activist to announce a fundraising event for ‘Palestinian Medical Aid’. Just to be on the safe side, I approached the promoter and asked him whether or not I am allowed to mention the event. With his approval at my disposal I let myself go in between two tunes. It didn’t take seconds before a female Zionist heckler cut into my speech “and what about the Jews?” She shouted in a funny, high-pitch squeaky voice.

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From Rense

What got us into this nightmare was a lengthy string of mega-lies that originated within the twisted plans of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, back in the 1970's. The U.S. presidents that have come and gone since then, have each played their part, in bringing us kicking and screaming to this decision point. There are several major parallax-views that have led the public to misunderstand and misinterpret the political events and military actions in the Middle-East: Actions that have kept our invasions going, and that now threaten to up-end the world-if these lies are allowed to serve, yet again; for another cover-story that can only end in chaos!

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Flanked by international and regional non-Arab dignitaries representing the UN, EU, OIC, NAM and the leaders of Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan as well as the foreign minister of Iran, the leaders of the 22-member League of Arab States on Wednesday re-launched in Riyadh their five-year old Arab Peace Initiative, determined to reactivate it with mechanisms and a follow-up diplomatic campaign that will again take it to the United Nations Security Council despite a U.S. veto, which aborted a similar move in the bud last year.

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Trade policies are finally starting to get serious consideration in Congress, and among Presidential candidates, for the first time since the 1993 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) debates. Trade policy, by our federal government in the past 14 years, has been a disaster for the working people of America.

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Kansas City

Hello.

Tomorrow I give Ruth a hug and drive away to Kansas City for the first stop on my book tour, a meeting of the K.C. Drinking Liberally group.

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Photo, weekly.ahram.org

This March 30th marks the 31st year Palestinians throughout the world remember Land Day or 'Youm al-Ard' in Arabic. On March 30, 1976, in the Galilee, during a peaceful protest, six unarmed Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army and police, who also injured 96 others and arrested over 300.

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Emma Lazarus' memorable words on Lady Liberty's pedestal once had meaning as a new nation grew. No longer in a country hostile to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless and many others not making the grade in a white supremacist Judeo-Christian state worshiping wealth and privilege. No welcome sign is out for the unwanted poor and desperate. At best, they're ignored to subsist on their own. At worst, they're scorned and abused, exploited and discarded like trash or labeled "terrorists" in a post-9/11 world of mass witch-hunt roundups aimed at Muslims because of their faith or country of origin and Latinos coming north to survive the fallout from NAFTA's destructive effects on their lives.

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From PeacePalestine

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced yesterday the decision of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas to meet bi-weekly with the US mediating. Indeed ‘great news for the Palestinians and the Israelis’.

More or less at the same time at least five Palestinians drowned in a “sewage Tsunami” when a water treatment reservoir burst, flooding Umm Naser, a village in the northern Gaza Strip.

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From Atlantic Free Press

One day after posting Part One of this article, which focused on seven pages found in Ismael Hossein-Zadeh's recent book, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism, I ran across Chris Floyd's article: "Doomsday Book: Bush Literary Lunch Foretells Horrors Ahead," which linked to Glenn Greenwald's article at salon.com ("The president receives 'lessons' from his neoconservative tutors"). Both articles provided new evidence substantiating Bush's God-emboldened narcissism and, thus, the continuing menace he poses to the United States, the Middle East and the rest of the world.

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From Annie's Letters

PLANNING FOR ETHNIC CLEANSING IN PALESTINE

Zionist ethnic cleansing operations of 1948 were planned way before 1948. Ethnic cleansing was part and parcel of the Zionist plans for the creation of the Jewish State they had in mind. The Haganah, an illegal military organization, was formed in 1920 headed by an elected political leadership and was transferred to the joint authority of the Jewish Agency Executive and the Va'ad Leumi in 1929. The Arab rebellion in 1936-39 was quelled by the British forces in cooperation with the Haganah. Palmach, the Haganah’s strike force, was formed in 1941.

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From VDare

Professor David Ray Griffin is the nemesis of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. In his latest book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Griffin destroys the credibility of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Popular Mechanics reports, annihilates his critics, and proves himself to be a better scientist and engineer than the defenders of the official story.

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According to James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” if a President were to order or allow the “wanton removal of meritorious officers” such as US attorneys, such an action “would subject the President to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.”

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From Huffington Post

Four and a half years ago, I addressed the issue of war in an open letter to our President. Today I would like to again speak to him and his, directly. Mr. President, Mr. Cheney, Ms. Rice et al: Indeed America has a rich history of greatness -indeed, America is still today a devastating military superpower.

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"The Pentagon, which is the iron fist of American capitalism,
requires enemies..."

"The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house." - Andre Lorde

It should surprise no one that the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq four years ago was based upon lies and fabricated evidence. Other wars instigated by the U.S. were begun in the same way, but we never seem to learn the lessons that history could teach us. The purpose of the U.S. invasion was not to free the Iraqi people or to spread democracy (when has the government ever done that?); it was to privatize the natural wealth of the region and to transfer ownership from the Iraqi pubic domain to the coffers of U.S. corporations. We have a long and shameful history of imperial invasions and occupations, and no experience building democracies.

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“If my competitor were drowning, I’d stick a hose in his mouth and turn on the water.” --Ray Kroc

“….a funny, jowly, canny, barbarous guy who lives in a multimillion-dollar condo on Park Avenue in Manhattan and conveys himself about the planet in a corporate jet and a private yacht. At sixty-seven, he is unrepentant in the face of criticism. He describes himself as a "tough man in a tough business"….. "The animal-rights people," he once said, "want to impose a vegetarian's society on the U.S. Most vegetarians I know are neurotic." --Jeff Tietz’s description of meat processing magnate, Joseph Luter III (from his Rolling Stone article, “Boss Hog”)

Despite the obvious signs that our nation is declining rapidly and despite the increasing global animosity against us for our greed, excesses, hypocrisy, and belligerence, we US Americans are defiantly “staying the course”. Neither harsh reality nor the ire of the world community has shaken our foundations. Mouthing hollow platitudes about freedom and liberty while supporting a war machine perpetrating genocide in Iraq, we mindlessly buttress a socioeconomic system some of history’s most notable fascists would envy.

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From Ma'an News Agency

INCREDIBLE! In Palestinian schoolbooks, there is no trace of the Green Line! They do not recognize the existence of Israel even in the 1967 borders! They say that the 'Zionist gangs' stole the country from the Arabs! That's how they poison the minds of their children!

These blood-curdling revelations were published this week in Israel and around the world. The conclusion is self-evident: the Palestinian Authority, which is responsible for the schoolbooks, cannot be a partner in peace negotiations. What a shock!

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"You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods. You most shouts out: Bethicket me for a stump of beech if I have the poultriest notions what the farest he all means."~~James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

My friend Bernie says ever since the Bush gang stormed the White House in 2000, then stormed the World Trade Center in 2001, we've done nothing but run in circles like a bunch of terrified chickens with our heads chopped off. "We have no sense of direction," Bernie said, "we're staggering around in a jungle of lies, deceit, and scandal with no way out -- and that's the way they planned it."

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The rapid, almost hasty, developments on the Arab Israeli front, almost immediately following the Saudi sponsored Makkah Agreement on February 2, should be examined in their proper context, as a part and parcel of the regional shifts, exasperated by the US war in Iraq and the dramatic adjustment in Iran's position vis-à-vis the region and its sectarian, religious composition.

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Horizon © 2007

From IslamOnline

Iran before the United Nations ‘Security’ Council: We must defend justice with our lives lest we need justice to defend our lives.

As I watched Iran being hauled in front of the United Nations ‘Security’ Council, a vivid picture conjured up in my mind – my native country Iran, a vulnerable and defenseless beauty being prepared for violation by brutal savages. As she struggles to defend her honor, no one is prepared to come to her aid, save a few. Even her own children, those raised on her soil hope she will be brutally raped. With lust-filled eyes, they hope to fulfill their ambitions on her ravaged ruins, her broken pride.

Who are these beasts, and what has transformed this United body to such a menace?

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February's Mecca Agreement between Fatah and Hamas under Saudi supervision breathed life into the dormant peace process when Hamas pledged to respect past agreements between the PLO and Israel and agreed to an implicit recognition of the Jewish state: the major bugaboo imposed by the Quartet [ U.S., Russia, EU, and U.N.] in exchange for cooperation with and funding of the Palestinian government.

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“Iraq, like Vietnam, is a no-win, no-end war.” - Ex-U.S. Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA), and also a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War.

Baltimore, MD - If her administrative aide said one more time how much her boss, U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), “cares about the troops,” I think I would have burst a blood vessel. On March 13, 2007, about 30 or so Peace activists met with a representative of her office. The senator, of course, was a no-show. I suspect that if it were the lobbyists from Washington, DC’s K Street , AIPAC or Lockheed-Martin calling, she would have been there. Mikulski just loves taking those campaign donations from the Fat Cats, particularly from the Israel Lobby and the Defense Industry. (1) And, of course, if she gets a telephone call from Ann F. Lewis, her former chief of staff, ex-Democratic Party windbag, Sen.-Hillary-Clinton-for-President pusher and fervent supporter of Zionist Israel, you better believe she’ll answer it--pronto!

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Pat Tillman

The American football hero may be gone but details of his mysterious death in Afghanistan just won't go away. Most recently, as reported by Time Magazine, "Nine officers, including up to four generals, should be held accountable for missteps in the aftermath of the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan."

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"How could anyone ever forget Scarborough's
infamous claim to fame. There was a young wo-
man found dead in the republican congress-
man's office."

On Alex Jones Infowars.net I read the article: 'Scarborough Unleashes Attack Dogs On Walters Over O'Donnell 9/11 Comments' by Steve Watson

"Latest 9/11 truth hit piece has anyone with half a brain kicking in the TV in disgust. Last night MSNBC's Joe Scarborough devoted a whole segment to attacking veteran journalist, and co-presenter of ABC's The View, Barbara Walters over Rosie O'Donnell's now public stance that 9/11 was an inside job.

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The March 21, 2007 edition of the "New York Times" featured an article called "Prevalence of Alzheimer's Rises 10% in 5 Years." It began: "More than five million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, a 10 percent increase from the last official tally five years ago, and a number expected to more than triple by 2050." Alzheimer's disease, it seems, now afflicts 13% ofpeople 65 and over, and 42% of those past 85.

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From Investigating new Imperialism

‘[We come not as] conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.’ — Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude, Commander in Chief of British forces in Iraq, after entering Baghdad in March 1917.

According to the best estimates, the dozen years of sanctions following Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait led to something like one million deaths in Iraq, including 500,000 children and since the invasion in 2003 a further 650,000 have died as a result of the illegal occupation.

It’s a staggering number of slaughtered people, all done in the name of ‘democracy building’ but it doesn’t stop here, we need to add the slaughtered of the former Yugoslavia and who knows how many massacred in Afghanistan as nobody’s bothering to count. But lest we forget, the invasion and occupation of Vietnam resulted in the slaughter of at least three million Vietnamese and the effects of Agent Orange and the other toxic chemicals dumped on Vietnam is still killing and maiming people to this day.

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From Islam Online

The recent Warner Bros. box office hit 300 has indeed crossed political and ethical boundaries and tarnished concepts of creativity. It has also provoked the Iranian public, which now views the filmmakers as politically motivated.

The movie “300”, which premiered on March 5, and narrates the story of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans of ancient Greece withheld Persian attacks despite the retreat of their fellow Greek soldiers who thought that the Persian army was too sizable to hold back, has occupied news headlines in the vast majority of the Iranian media outlets.

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From Anna's Eyewitness Reports from Palestine

Anna is Jewish American and her peacework document human rights abuses & support nonviolent direct action in the West Bank with the Int'l Women's Peace Service.

One week after I left Nablus I found myself again looking out across the city's majestic sunlit hills, this time from one of the highest mountains in the West Bank. In all my reporting on Israel's invasion and human rights violations, I never mentioned how beautiful the ancient city is, from the surrounding mountains to the enchanting Old City, so easy to get lost in. Both remind me of Damascus (one pessimistic Palestinian pointed out the comparison early during my stay, claiming that the Nablus invasion was practice for an attack against Syria).

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On March 19, 2007, this website featured an article written by me entitled “Godfather Government: A Way Of Life Is Not A Scandal” in which I quoted Greg Palast regarding Choicepoint, a controversial data-gathering company and its spurious practices in relation to the 2000 election, its connection with the Republican party, and its information gathering and dispensing services with regard to individuals and organizations. The following day, I received an email from Chuck Jones, Choicepoint’s Director of External Affairs who stated:

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Colonel Daniel M. Smith, USA (Ret.) is Senior Fellow, Military and Peaceful Prevention Policy with the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

Dan graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1966. Commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant of Infantry, Colonel Smith's initial assignment was as an infantry and heavy weapons platoon leader with the 3rd Armor Division in Germany. Following language training, he then served as an intelligence advisor in Vietnam before returning to the U.S. to do graduate work at Cornell University and teach philosophy and English at West Point . . .

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“Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find. In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation.” Bernard M. Baruch (1870 - 1965)

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John Ross is a Latin American correspondent and activist who's been living in and writing about Mexico for nearly four decades turning out some of the most important and incisive analysis of events there of anyone covering the country, its history, politics and people. Few writers anywhere make the country come alive like he can. He lives among the people and knows them well including Zapatista leader Subcommandante Marcos who may have given Ross his first ever interview.

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From for His name's sake

Last Easter, NBC gave air time to freemason and Christ-basher Michael Baigent, whose work helped inspire The Da Vinci Code. This year, elite media fires another Lenten missile at Christians at the start of the 40-day period before the resurrection of our Lord.

On Sunday, the Discovery Channel aired “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” followed by a roundtable discussion led by no less than Ted Koppel. The “documentary” was also shown on Channel 8 in Israel. Created by a religious Jew, Simcha Jacobivici, it argues for the Talmud’s vengeful myth that Christ was not bodily resurrected and that he had a sex partner and a child.

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From Islam Online

A coalition of European, American and Israeli forces has decided to starve the Palestinian nation.

As a result of the unjustified cut of international aid that followed the official rise of Hamas with the Palestinian legislative elections in January last year, and the economic sanctions Israel imposed on the extremely poor population, the Palestinians were left to suffer the worst ever rates of poverty.

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From Um Khalil

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled or were driven from their homes during the Israeli-Arab wars in 1948 and 1967. The fate of the estimated four million Palestinians living in refugee communities scattered around the Middle East remains at the heart of the conflict. The photographs come from a UN exhibition on the lives of Palestinian refugee children to mark World Refugee Day on 20 June 2006. West Bank, 1968. By G Nehmeh. (BBC)

RE: A. Stein/Comment-Is-Free/The Guardian

Jerusalem-region Palestinian villages depopulated (and in most cases completely razed) in '47/'48:
There's something about numbers and abstractions that makes us lose our minds.
Allar, founded 1596 CE, pop 440, Muslim
Everybody says that the Nazis killed six million Jews, but nobody really kills "six million" of anything.

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This is a global emergency

No bombs have been dropped in this war. Instead, the aggressors have chosen two weapons that kill silently, slowly. Those weapons are deliberate contamination of India’s seeds with genetically engineered organisms and radioactive contamination of around 400 million people in India. The aggressors are: the United States Government and the multinational seeds companies [chiefly Monsanto and its Indian partners]. Other Ag-biotech firms are not far behind.

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Without warning, the Bush-Cheney White House is once again overwhelmed by new evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, by both the President and the Vice President, that once again put the issue of impeachment squarely on the table. And this time, the evidence of official criminality is hitting the White House as a whole, including the President's chief political hit-man Karl Rove, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and, according to several highly placed Washington sources, the President himself.

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"You can't arrest me, I'm on a book tour." — Michael Moore

Hello,

I am somebody from Nebraska who now lives in Iowa, who will soon be taking a country drive, a road trip, because our country seems on the verge of something bad.

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What is this thing called democracy? So easy to talk about, so difficult to make real. Pure democracy is not what our Founders gave us. Who would want a simple majority to control the minority? Instead, America was given a representative democracy within a constitutional republic where laws that protect all people trump majority rule. Standing between majority-won elections and government power are elected representatives: writing, overseeing and implementing laws. But when you can no longer trust the elected representatives what happens to American democracy? It becomes an oxymoron.

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Four years ago this week, the tanks rolled for what President Bush originally called, "Operation Iraqi Liberation" -- O.I.L. I kid you not.

And it was four years ago that, from the White House, George Bush, declaring war, said, "I want to talk to the Iraqi people." That Dick Cheney didn't tell Bush that Iraqis speak Arabic … well, never mind. I expected the President to say something like, "Our troops are coming to liberate you, so don't shoot them." Instead, Mr. Bush told, the Iraqis,

"Do not destroy oil wells."

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From Palestine Chronicle

The structure of power of the world imperial system can best be understood through a classification of countries according to their political, economic, diplomatic and military organization.

Introduction:

The imperial system is much more complex than what is commonly referred to as the “US Empire”. The US Empire, with its vast network of financial investments, military bases, multi-national corporations and client states, is the single most important component of the global imperial system (1). Nevertheless, it is overly simplistic to overlook the complex hierarchies, networks, follower states and clients that define the contemporary imperial system (2). To understand empire and imperialism today requires us to look at the complex and changing system of imperial stratification.

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There is nothing as corrupt as using the governmental powers of law enforcement, to selectively prosecute your political enemies and to cover-up criminal behavior by your political organization and allies, while in a position of political power. This situation is the essence of the current scandal concerning the firing of US Attorneys by the Bush White House.

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From The London Times