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Obama's Campaign to Glorify the War on Vietnam
By David Swanson
Wars exist because lies are told about past wars.
When President Obama escalated the war on Afghanistan, he revived virtually every known lie about the war on Iraq, from the initial WMD BS to the "surge." While Americans remain unfathomably ignorant about the destruction of Iraq, a majority says the war shouldn't have been fought. A majority says the same about the war on Afghanistan. This is, pretty wonderfully, impeding efforts toward a U.S. war on Syria or Iran.
The new wars were supposed to cure the Vietnam Syndrome -- that public reluctance to support mass murder for no good reason. The Pentagon is now turning to the source of the disease. The war in most need of beautification for Americans, the military has decided, is the war the Vietnamese call the American War.
The Killers of Peace
By Nicola Nasser*
The Israeli Jewish settlers of the Palestinian territory, which was occupied by Israel in 1967, are dictating unilaterally the demarcation of the borders with any future Palestinian state, thus rendering its creation impossible; holding the Israeli decision-making process hostage, they have become the real killers of peace, who brought the twenty –year old Palestinian – Israeli peace process to its current stalemate.
As early as the summer of 1995, the Iraqi born Israeli – British “new historian” Avi Shlaim wrote in the Journal of Palestine Studies: “The settlers now are the ones who determine Israel’s internal political agenda.”
Her Name Is Jody Williams
By David Swanson
Jody Williams' new book is called My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl's Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize, and it's a remarkable story by a remarkable person. It's also a very well-told autobiography, including in the early childhood chapters in which there are few hints of the activism to come.
One could read this book and come away thinking "Anyone really could win the Nobel Peace Prize," if people in fact told their children they could do that instead of telling them they could be president, and if one was thinking of Nobel peace laureates as saintly beings. In a certain sense, of course, anyone can win the Nobel Peace Prize, as it's often given to good people who have nothing to do with peace, and at other times it's given to warmongers. To win the Nobel Peace Prize and deserve it, as Williams did -- that's another story. That requires, not saintliness, but activism.
Activism is usually 99% perspiration and the dedication that drives it, just like genius. But in the case of the Nobel Peace Prize, and of the sort of rapid success it honors when applied in accordance with Alfred Nobel's will, the perspiration is 49%. The other 50% is timing. The activists who recruited Williams to lead the campaign to ban landmines had the timing perfect. Williams tapped into something powerful. She orchestrated some initial successes, communicated the viability and importance of the project, worked night and day, and watched many other people, in many countries, throw themselves into the campaign in a manner that people only do when they believe something will dramatically and rapidly improve the world.
Spinning the Israeli/Palestinian Peace Process
by Stephen Lendman
New York Times editors, correspondents and contributors do it as well as anyone. They deceive regular readers in the process.
Illusions substitute for facts. Pro-Israeli bias reflects longstanding Times policy. The worst of occupation harshness goes unreported. Settler violence is ignored. Palestinians are blamed for Israeli crimes.
In their book titled "Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East," Richard Falk and Howard Friel said:"The Times regularly ignores or under-reports a multitude of critical legal issues pertaining to Israel’s policies, including Israel's expropriation and settlement of Palestinian land, the two-tier system of laws based on national origin evocative of South Africa’s apartheid regime, the demolition of Palestinian homes, and use of deadly force against Palestinians."
Wall Street Take-Off: 2012 – 2013
James Petras
On July 16, 2013, Goldman Sachs, the fifth largest US bank by assets announced its second quarter profits doubled the previous year to $1.93 billion. J. P. Morgan, the largest bank made $6.1 billion in the second quarter up 32% over the year before and expects to make $25 billion in profits in 2013. Wells Fargo, the fourth largest bank, reaped $5.27 billion, up 20%. Citigroup’s profits topped $4.18 billion, up 42% over the previous year.
The ruling elite, the financial CEOs pay is soaring: John Stumpf of Wells Fargo received $19.3 million in 2012; Jamie Dimon of J. P. Morgan Chase pocketed $18.7 million and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs took $13.3 million.
Fukushima: Uncontainable
by Stephen Lendman
Japan's apocalypse continues. Emergency conditions persist. No end in sight looms. Fukushima's radioactive discharges can't be stopped. They continue. They're uncontainable.
At issue is by far the worst environmental disaster in history. It's multiples worse than Chernobyl. It's an unprecedented catastrophe. It's reason enough to abolish nuclear power.
According to Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, about 300 tons of radioactive groundwater flow into the Pacific daily.
It's done so since Japan's March earthquake and tsunami triggered Fukushima's meltdown.
Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) says water's getting over and around "chemical walls." It can't be stopped. Three Fukushima reactors suffered meltdowns. A fourth was badly damaged. The worst fear remains. Unit Four's structural integrity was seriously undermined. It contains hundreds of tons of highly radioactive water.
Is Obama's War on Weed Coming to an End?
By Rady Ananda
Activist Post
Attorney General Eric Holder today announced an Obama Administration policy change on mandatory sentences as they relate to drugs. The new policy includes the “compassionate release” of some prisoners and expanding “at-risk” programs for teens.
“Prisons are operating at 40% above capacity,” Holder told the audience at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco, which was broadcast on C-SPAN.
“Incarceration rates have increased 800% since 1980,” he added, putting over 200,000 people in federal prisons this year. Half of those inmates are incarcerated for drug-related crimes, he said, costing $80 billion a year.
"The plain and simple truth is that alcohol fuels violent behavior and marijuana does not," said Norm Stamper, Seattle's former Chief of Police, in the forward to Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?"
Edward Snowden Has Awakened the Sleeping Giant
By Vincent L. Guarisco
"Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it... There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment...You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." ~~George Orwell, 1984
There's no denying Mr. Orwell was a visionary before his time. However, if George was with us today, he would surely cringe (even in darkness) and blush three shades of red if he knew about today's night-vision technology. The following information should send goose bumps rippling across your skin. It did for me. This essay is no science fiction novel. It is real. All societies are in big trouble. We are facing a most egregious situation that extends much further than Orwell's large fictional country -- "Oceania." This is worldwide and, once again, it's real.
Israeli Occupation Harshness Prevents Peace
by Stephen Lendman
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is perhaps the longest one in modern times. It's festered for decades. Resolution's nowhere in sight.
Multiple peace talk rounds don't work. They never did. They were orchestrated to fail. They're pretense. They're fake. Nothing's different this time.
Conflict arguably began on November 2, 1917. UK Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour's Declaration "establish(ed) in Palestine (a) home for the Jewish people."
At the time, Palestinians way outnumbered Jews over ten to one (about 550,000 to 50,000). They lived peacefully with each other. They did so for generations.
Balfour changed things, saying:
"His majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object(ive)..."
Lebanon offers Palestinians fleeing death in Syria Ramadan greetings: “Eid Mubarak, dear brothers and sisters! Yalla! Go back where you came from!”
Franklin Lamb
The Syria/Lebanon border crossing at Masnaa
On 8/5/13 this observer decided, quite on the spur of the moment, to take a three day break from Damascus the next morning and make a quick trip to Beirut to do some errands because offices would be closed starting at dawn for Eid al Fitr celebrations (a day later for Shia Muslims). The annual Eid al-Fitr, being the festival of the breaking of the month long Ramadan fast, which observance is regarded as one of the Five Pillars of Islam. And by the way, this year has been undertaken, approximately 16 hours each day in inordinately hot weather in the Middle East.
Let me say from the start: I did not anticipate the delay into which I was about to run. In fact, I felt that with a little bit of luck—and by leaving Damascus by no later than six in the morning—I might even break my record of 205 minutes total from Sameriyeh bus station to my apartment in Dahiyeh, south Beirut.
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