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Expected Obama Administration Backing for Indonesian State Terror
By Stephen Lendman
Indonesia's National Armed Forces (TNI), especially its thuggish Kopassus Special Forces Command, has a long, sordid human rights record, including political killings and massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians in East Timor, Aceh, Papua, and elsewhere in the country.
In response to the November 12, 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre of over 270 demonstrators in Dili, East Timor's capital, Congress restricted Indonesia's TNI from receiving International Military Education and Training (IMET). It brings foreign military officers to America for what's taught at the infamous School of the Americas (SOA, renamed WHINSEC ) - namely, the latest ways to kill, maim, torture, oppress, exterminate poor and indigenous people, overthrown democratically elected governments, suppress popular resistance movements, assassinate targeted leaders, and work cooperatively with Washington to solidify hard-right rule, intolerant of democratic rights, social justice, and progressive change.
Army Intel ACORNing WikiLeaks? Web Publisher Under Attack
Michael Collins
U.S. Army Counterterrorism issued a report that said WikiLeaks is a threat to U.S. security, particularly in Afghanistan. The report says that the organization should be destroyed and offered a plan. Does the government really think it can destroy WikiLeaks or is the leaked report part of a plan to smear the organization so badly, it will lose supporters and money?
Since its launch three years ago, WikiLeaks has produced more scoops than the Washington Post has in the past thirty years according to a report by The Guardian. The web based service was "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa" according to their "About" page. WikiLeaks targets oppressive regimes throughout the world, as well as regimes seeking to repress information on illegal and unethical government actions and policies.
Health Care: What Did We Get? Where Are We? And, Where Do We Go From Here?
By Kevin Zeese
Prosperity Agenda
A year ago health care was in crisis. Its cost burdened individuals, businesses, and all levels of government. Americans were dying at a rate of 45,000 per year due to lack of access to health care, health care bankruptcies were rising. Change was urgently needed. The crisis was an opportunity to create the best health care system in the world.
Because we have extensive experience with three health systems, we could have had a very informed debate. The U.S. has a market-based system (private insurance-controlled health care); a single payer system (Medicare) and a socialist system (the Veterans Administration). We could have asked which worked best, which covered the most people, which was least expensive, and which produced the best health outcomes. This fact-based discussion could have resulted in putting in place an efficient, effective national health system moving the U.S. into the top tier of health programs from its current dismal ranking of 37th in the world.
Sarah Barracuda flirts with violence
Mary Shaw
On March 23, former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tweeted to her followers the following message:
Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" Pls see my Facebook page.
On her Facebook page was a U.S. map marking the locations of 20 House Democrats who voted for the health care bill and who represent districts that the Republicans carried in 2008. The 20 locations were marked with crosshairs. Not red dots or any other relatively benign symbols. No, they were marked with crosshairs.
So, of course, in light of all the recent death threats aimed at Democratic lawmakers by the tea party crazies, Palin has come under fire (no pun intended) for her use of gun-related words and symbols in her recent posts.
And rightly so.
Haiti Post-Quake: Devastation, Depravation, Exploitation, and Oppression
by Stephen Lendman
Two and half months post-quake, the major media mostly ignore Haiti, the calamitous conditions on the ground, and the growing desperation of millions forced to largely endure on their own - out of sight, mind, the concern of world leaders, and UN, USAID and other aid organizations diverting most of the $700 million + donated to contractors and profiteering NGOs.
A March 11 New York Times editorial titled, "Haiti, Two Months Later," tried to have it both ways, citing relief effort failures, yet praising the US, UN, foreign countries, and aid organizations for:
The Apartheid Walls of Jerusalem Breached on Palm Sunday
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Wow, what a day: over 100 native Palestinian Christians and Muslims and internationals including Israelis, breached the tight security separating the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem from the occupied city of Jerusalem. Donkeys and people arrested!
We were initially some 150 strong and started from the Church of Nativity at 11:45 AM carrying palm leaves an banners asking for freedom of worship and movement (as demanded by international law). The demonstration included individuals riding 2 donkeys and a horse. Appropriate since Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey. Like him, we knew this was not going to be an easy entry but we did believe in the goodness of humanity. We arrived at the main gate used for tourist buses at around 12:30 and decided to just keep going. The few soldiers and police at the gate tried to close it but we managed to get in and the huge 8 meter high metal gate stopped half way perhaps as a safety mechanisms since there were dozens of people passing and they could be crushed if it continued.
Letter to Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network
Raymond Ponzini
So, you are for the genocide being committed against the Palestinian people in a land they lived in for centuries before the British government decided 'illegally' in 1945, to let 1500 Jews immigrate into Palestine each month. And within only two years those Jews whom the Palestinian people had welcomed into their homeland as brothers, formed an army and attacked them, raping and murdering thousands of Palestinian women and children while driving millions of people from hundreds of towns and villages.
Today Israel is a brutal racist state which employs the world’s most sophisticated weapons to mass murder the Palestinian civilian population in much the same way white Americans eradicated the Indians from North America.
HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL SMELLS ROTTEN
Allen L Roland
President Obama's Health Care Reform Bill has BO as signified in Obama's signing signature. A thorough reading of its massive political trade offs and sweetheart deals with Big Pharma with no public option explain the smell of this false promise of reform:
President Obama on Thursday began an aggressive White House public relations blitz to sell his newly-signed health care overhaul to a skeptical and sometimes confused public, calling the measure “pro-jobs” and “pro-business” and taunting Republicans who are vowing to repeal it.
I Had a Dream...
Greg Bacon
That I lived in a nation that had informed, educated people that loved and fiercely protected their Constitution and Bill of Rights that enshrined forever those unalienable rights so vital and necessary to a free republic.
That this country had a healthy and robust educational system, with free schooling all the way thru college. And that these schools at all levels taught Civics with an emphasis on the Constitution which led to many a lively debate in the classrooms about the rights the people had and how much power should be accorded to the federal government.
These vigorous debates didn't stop after graduation from college, but carried on in many a restaurant, bar, club and home.
That this country had a national health insurance plan that was based on single-payer. The people paid some taxes to help support the plan, but those costs were minimal and were not thought to be a burden because the medical care was excellent and no citizen was turned away when seeking help.
After Haiti: A conversation with John Perkins
Elizabeth Ferrari
When the earthquake struck Haiti last January, the first person I wanted to hear from was John Perkins. Several years before Naomi Klein coined the phrase “disaster capitalism”, John Perkins’ first person account Confessions of an Economic Hitman described very clearly how US economic interests set about exploiting crises in third world nations in order to gain control of them. I did finally get to speak to John in March, and our conversation ranged from Haiti to US policy in Latin America and the Caribbean, to a recent film that collates material from his books on this topic. Perkins, for readers not familiar with his work, is what is called in Hollywood a “hyphenate”. He doesn’t have one area of expertise that he can call on – he has several if not many of them and can speak to economics, to geopolitics, to culture clashes and compatibilities; in our brief conversation, he moved among these seamlessly, now describing the big picture, now zooming in on fine detail.
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