Are the Taliban Beating NATO on Logistics? Why Washington Needs Iran and Russia

Afghanistan has been invaded and conquered numerous times in the past 4000 years. The various Pashtun tribes have defeated the Soviet army in a 10 year war supported by the US. Paradoxically, after installing a fundamentalist Islamic regime and allowing their long time friend and conduit of money from the west bin Ladin to live and train mujaheddin for the fight in Central Asia. And it was only after 9/11 that the money from the US was cut off.

Strange bedfellows can make for unforeseen outcomes.

Image by Army.mil via Flickr

US Commander in Afghanistan General McChrystal presented a secret report to Defense Sec'y Gates and announced the US must change strategy or lose the war.

The United States and its allies must change strategy and boost cooperation to turn around the war in Afghanistan, the top U.S. and NATO commander there said on Monday, wrapping up a much-anticipated review.

U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal said the situation was "serious" but the 8-year-old war could still be won. He gave no indication if he would ask for more troops but is widely expected to do so in the coming weeks.

With U.S. and NATO casualties at record levels in Afghanistan and doubts growing about the war in the United States and other NATO nations, McChrystal is under pressure to reverse Western fortunes within months.

"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," McChrystal said in a statement announcing his report was done.

Meanwhile, Juan Cole has the best information on what is actually going on in AfPak.

In Chaman, Dawn reports, "At least 15 oil tankers, trailers and containers caught fire in Chaman on Sunday night after a blast in a vehicle carrying supplies for Nato forces in Afghanistan." The NATO supply vehicle became a sitting duck because the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been closed for the last few days over a dispute about whether Pakistani border guards may search Afghan fruit trucks.

On the Afghan side of the border, militants from the Hizb-i Islami or "Islamic Party" of Gulbadin Hikmatyar "stormed a NATO supply convoy and torched at least 10 vehicles in the troubled eastern province of Kunar," according to Pajhwok News Service.

Meanwhile, the Taliban have used pockets of Pashtun populations in the north of the country as a base to take over three districts that allow them to block supplies coming in from Tajikistan, according to McClatchy.

In any case, the Taliban are obviously attempting to cut the supply routes that allow the US and NATO to keep their troops supplied with ammunition, fuel and food.

the US increasingly depends on Russian good will, and Iran is influential in Herat, Mazar, the Hazarah regions and Kabul. Iran can play a positive role in its two neighboring countries, de facto acting as an ally of the US. Or it could play spoiler.

[..]The United States has been made a hostage to Iran and Russia by George W. Bush's fooling miring of the US military in the midst of 300 million hostile, anti-imperialist Middle Easterners,

[..]Obama's presidency may succeed or flounder on his success in the recondite art of logistics, both in the strict military sense and in a wider metaphorical sense, of putting the right personnel and "assets" in place for political victories.

via Informed Comment: Are the Taliban Surrounding NATO Armies and Cutting them Off?
Why Washington Needs Iran and Russia.

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The Return of the Welfare Queen and Open Class Warfare

Michael Steele invoked class warfare in his fear mongering attempt to turn seniors against the working poor who can't afford health care by claiming the seniors will lose Medicare benefits if health care goes to the uninsured. This guy is as dishonest as anyone in the Republican Party.

Image by ajagendorf25 via Flickr

The healthcare reform debate took a rather remarkable turn last week when the Washington Post published an Op-Ed piece by Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele telling retirees that his party would fight any effort to modify the benefits they derived from the government-run Medicare program in order to offer similar benefits to others. The Op-Ed was immediately supplemented by an item on the RNC Web page trumpeting a "Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights," similarly pledging the GOP to a to-the-death defense of Medicare benefits and procedures, allegedly under dire threat from universal health coverage.Steele's gambit mainly got attention because it was laughably in conflict with nearly a half century of Republican attacks on Medicare, and because he adopted every ludicrous made-up claim about the impact of this or that health reform bill on Medicare. In a disastrous NPR interview later in the week, the GOP chieftain had a predictably difficult time explaining why the GOP wanted to "protect" Medicare because it was so bad a program that it couldn't withstand any "raids."

[..]This should be familiar to any political observer over the age of 30 as a new version of the old "welfare wedge": the emotionally powerful conservative argument that Democrats want to use Big Government to take away the good things of life from people who have earned them and give them to people who haven't.

[..]What's most interesting, and dangerous, about the new "welfare wedge" is that it's not about poor people who don't work for a living. After all, most very poor families often already have health insurance (depending on where they live) via Medicaid, and those who don't work these days generally don't have the option of working. The target of "welfare" shouters seems to be the working poor, or middle-class minority families who are struggling to stay in the middle class.

via The return of the welfare queen | Salon.

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Testimony of former "Comfort Women"

This video contains stunning interviews of Chinese women who suffered at the hands of the invading Japanese army during WWII. The right wingers in Japan have consistently denied these charges and the so called Rape of Nanking.

Bombshell: Bin Laden Worked for US Until 9/11

Image via Wikipedia

It turns out that Reagan's little adventure with bin Ladin in the Middle East continued in Central Asia after the Russians quit Afghanistan. Apparently directed by the CIA, funded by at least in part, heroin sales world wide, this operation continued right up until 9/11. In 1998 after al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed a dozen Americans and hundreds of Africans, Bill Clinton sent cruise missles into Afghanistan to attach al Qaeda training camps. That appears now to be a warning to reign in bin Ladin's ambitions beyond Central Asia.

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript). In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained 'intimate relations' with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, "all the way until that day of September 11."

These 'intimate relations' included using Bin Laden for 'operations' in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These 'operations' involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner "as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict," that is, fighting 'enemies' via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from 'actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia') as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

Control of Central Asia

The goals of the American 'statesmen' directing these activities included control of Central Asia's vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.

The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities.

Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks.

In turn, the Turks used the Taliban and al Qaeda, appealing to their dreams of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Presumably. Or maybe the Turks/US just paid very well.)

Accordingto Sibel:

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

Uighurs

Sibel was recently asked to write about the recent situation with the Uighurs in Xinjiang, but she declined, apart from saying that "our fingerprint is all over it."

Of course, Sibel isn't the first or only person to recognize any of this. Eric Margolis, one of the best reporters in the West on matters of Central Asia, stated that the Uighurs in the training camps in Afghanistan up to 2001:

"were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China."

And also that:

"Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia."

In a separate interview, Margolis said:

"That illustrates Henry Kissinger's bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America's enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese Muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.

The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama Bin Laden's collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this."

more via GlobalResearch.ca

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SIBEL EDMONDS' DEPOSITION: VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT RELEASED

Long-gagged FBI whistleblower's full under-oath testimony from Ohio election case, details Congressional blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, more...

via The BRAD BLOG : SIBEL EDMONDS' DEPOSITION: VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT RELEASED.

Anti-Immigrant Minutemen Join White-Supremacist Militias on the Radical Right

Anti-immigrant groups like the “Minutemen” vigilantes are not only proliferating, but are rapidly beginning to resemble the white-supremacist and anti-government militias that have populated the netherworld of the Radical Right since the early 1990s. Adding insult to injury, the farcical conspiracy theories that circulate among both extreme nativist groups and right-wing militias are now being mainstreamed by commentators on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. Although the various strains of far-right extremism have by no means coalesced into a single movement, the ideological lines that once distinguished them have begun to blur.

As a result, it is not uncommon to find Minutemen deriving ideological succor from Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, and Glenn Beck as they stockpile weapons to defend against what they believe to be a secret plot by the Mexican government to “re-conquer” the southwestern United States—and another secret plot by the U.S. government to impose socialism under the leadership of a president who they believe to be an “illegal alien” from Kenya rather than a native-born U.S. citizen from Hawaii.

That is the portrait that emerges from a report released yesterday by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) entitled The Second Wave: Return of the Militias. The new SPLC report comes on the heels of a June report by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, Confronting the New Faces of Hate, which details the recent rise in hate crimes directed against immigrants, Latinos, and racial minorities in the United States, as well as the role of mainstream media commentators in fanning the flames of anti-immigrant and anti-Latino hatred. The SPLC report also provides details which supplement the findings of an April report by the Department of Homeland Security on the growing threat posed by right-wing extremists who are driven by white-supremacist and anti-immigrant ideology.

The image presented by these reports of heavily armed white supremacists being cheered on by a CNN commentator is terrifying enough, but even more terrifying in many respects is the fact that some Members of Congress are cheering them on as well. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) plays to delusional yet typical far-right conspiracy theories in warning that the Obama administration is engaged in a “final leap to socialism” and plans to put young people in “re-education camps.” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) attempts to appease the so-called “birther movement” by saying that it “has a point” in claiming that President Obama is not actually a native-born citizen of the United States.

Other politicians would do well not to follow the example set by Bachmann and Inhofe of pandering to the radical right-wing fringe and validating its ideology of hate. As a new report from the Immigration Policy Center details, the ranks of Latino, African American, and Asian voters grew by nearly 5 million between the 2004 and 2008 elections. Moreover, the rapid rise of Latino and Asian voters in particular occurred in electorally important states such as Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Carolina. These newly mobilized voters are unlikely to be impressed by candidates whose campaign rhetoric is more attuned to the membership of white-supremacist militia groups than to the demographic realities of the modern United States.

via Immigration Impact » Blog Archive » Anti-Immigrant Minutemen Join White-Supremacist Militias on the Radical Right.

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One would think that the Obama Administration would be different than Bush about rule of law. But they aren't. Listen to Sibel Edmonds continuing complaints about silence about Turkish bribery of former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and many other shenanegans, and the subsequent coverups by "state's secret privilege" which was used effectively to undermind rule of law and support the "Singular Executive" that effectively makes the President above the law. Obama supports this same principle.

Sibel Edmonds has given her testimony, paradoxically, at a trial involving the Ohio election contest.

The subpoena and request for sworn deposition is part of a case now pending before the Ohio Elections Commission in which Ohio's Republican U.S. Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-2nd District) has filed a complaint against her 2008 independent challenger, David Krikorian who Schmidt has charged distributed false statements about her during last year's campaign.

via Brad Blog

The testimony was relevant enough to this case that some charges have been dropped while attempting to introduce another.

However, the real story here is that even though the testimony is done, the transcripts have not been released and the Mainstream Media has said NOTHING! It is truly a sad day for America. The only way this makes sense to me is that corruption must be everywhere in the US government, so no one wants to talk about it because for some, their steady income might end or fears that the voting public would lose all faith in it's government. I believe that is why the Democrats are all but silent about the stolen Presidential elections in 2000 and 2004.

Discover our government at it's worst. A partial transcript follows.

First, I asked if she specified whether the sitting bi-sexual, married Congresswoman who had been taped sleeping with a woman, without knowing, and then bribed by Turkish interests with the tape, to vote against the Armenian Genocide resolution had been a Democrat or a Republican. She said she is a Democrat, and that she testified to that during her deposition. (See Krikorian's long statement above for more details on that woman.)

Second, I asked about the "real" story on Brewster Jennings, as opposed to the "crap...from the media" as she mentioned at the venue.

"Basically," she said, "I told them how [third-ranking State Dept. official in the Bush Admin and former Ambassador to Turkey] Marc Grossman disclosed" that Brewster Jennings was a CIA front company to the target of an FBI investigation. "And it was under oath and that some lives may have been lost."

"Novak has nothing to do with it. Wilson has nothing to do with it. Valerie Plame has nothing to do with it. The whole operation has to do with something totally different and it had to do with the American Turkish Council and the Turkish clients who were about to hire Brewster Jennings as an analyst ... and Grossman found out about it, and tipped off his diplomatic contact who was a target of the FBI counter-intelligence, and that person notified the ISI [Pakistani intelligence agency], etc."

She says that Brewster Jenning was then "dismantled as soon as the FBI notified the CIA," after which "FBI requested CIA to do a damage assessment, to see if lives would be lost."

All of this, she re-iterated, was "long before, three years before," Novak outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his newspaper column.

Brewster Jennings was "absolutely" dismantled in August of 2001.

"Grossman and [Richard] Armitage, they are the only two people involved. Later on Cheney and his people may have used it, but it had nothing to do with those other things, [Brewster Jennings] was completely destroyed and gone by the summer of 2001."

For those not fully up on Edmonds' story, her job at the FBI was to listen to wiretaps in the counter-intel department, to translate foreign targets caught on those taps. Presumably, that's where her details on the destruction of Brewster Jennings comes from. She was hired by the agency shortly after 9/11.

via Brad Blog

From The Armenian Weekly, we get a glimpse of what no one is talking about, from Sibel Edmonds' point of view. Sadly, she has "given up" trying to get Congressional Hearings in the new Congress during the new Presidential Administration.

S.E. --Nothing has changed. As far as the Congress is concerned, the Democrats have been the majority since November 2006 and I have had zero interest from Congress on having hearings—any hearings—on this issue, whether it’s the states secrets privilege portion of it or the involved corruption cases. The current majority has been at least as bad as the previous one. At least the Republicans were gutsy enough to come and say, We’re not going to touch this. But the new majority is not saying anything! The Obama Administration is pretty new. For what I see, they are continuing the previous administration’s state secrets privilege policies. As far as the whistleblower protection and related legislations are concerned, the new White House has already made it clear that they do not want to provide any protection for national security whistleblowers—these are the whistleblowers from the FBI, CIA, and all the other intelligence and law enforcement agencies and, of course, the Defense Department.As far as the mainstream media is concerned, at least from what I have seen, the situation has actually gotten worse. To me that seems to be the major reason behind the Congress’ and the White House’s inaction and lack of desire to pursue accountability. As long as the pressure from the mainstream media is not there, of course they aren’t going to act. They are driven by that pressure, and the mainstream media in the U.S. today does not fulfill its role and responsibility by providing that pressure.Of the three—Congress, the executive branch, and the media—I would say the biggest culprit here is the mainstream media.

K.M.—The most recent example of the deafening silence of the mainstream media was your deposition during the Schmidt vs. Krikorian case on Aug. 8. There, you spoke, under oath, about how the Turkish government and a network of lobby groups and high-ranking U.S. officials and Congressmen have engaged in treason and blackmail. A big story by any standards, it was only covered by Armenian newspapers and a few blogs. How do you explain this silence?

S.E.—I know field reporters who are so excited and want to chase the story. But when they went to their papers—and I’m talking about mainstream media and very good investigative journalists—their editors are refusing to touch it. When you watch the video or read the transcript, you will see how explosive the deposition was. And remember, I was speaking under oath. If by any standard, if I were to lie or be untruthful in any way, I would go to jail. I am answering these questions under oath, and yet, the mainstream media is refusing to touch it. And this is very similar to what we saw with the AIPAC/Larry Franklin case.

I have emphasized the fact that the American Turkish Council [ATC], the Turkish lobby, and these Turkish networks, they work together, in partnership with AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and JINSA [Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs]. So not only is there pressure on media outlets from the Turkish lobby and the corrupt U.S. persons involved, but they also have this pressure placed on the media via their partners from the Israel lobby—and the latter’s influence on the mainstream media in the U.S. is undeniable.

The irony is that my deposition has made it to the front page of Turkish newspapers—and Turkey doesn’t even pride itself with freedom of the media—yet the mainstream media has not written a single word about it.

K.M.—In an article you wrote about the 4th of July titled, “It Ain’t about Hot Dogs and Fireworks,” you say: “Recall the words of the Constitution Oath that all federal employees, all federal judges, all military personnel, all new citizens are required to take, step back, and pay special attention to these lines: ‘support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies—foreign and domestic.’ Now ask yourself who is meant by ‘domestic’ enemies.”

Talk about these “domestic enemies.”

S.E.—The domestic enemies I refer to are the U.S. officials, whether elected or appointed, who do not represent the interest of the American people—whether they are national security or foreign policy-related interests—and instead, they represent their own greed, their own financial benefit and/or foreign interests. A good example here is Dennis Hastert.

Less than three years after Vanity Fair ran a story about Hastert’s covert relationship with Turkish groups, Hastert’s group announced that it’s the registered lobbyist for the government of Turkey receiving, $35,000 a month from the Turkish interests. How much more vindication does the American mainstream media want? This man, for years, cashed in while he was under oath to be loyal and represent American interests and the Constitution. While in Congress, this man was not only representing foreign governments, but also foreign criminal entities. As soon as this man got out of Congress, he came out of the closet and officially became a representative of foreign interests. Bob Livingston [a former Republican Congressman from Louisiana] is another example. As soon as he got out of Congress, he registered under FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] to represent foreign interests. Steven Solarz [a former Democratic Congressman from New York] is yet another example.

Another prominent example is Mark Grossman at the State Department. For years, he has been representing foreign entities. In fact, he’s been violating criminal laws in the U.S. And guess what? He leaves the State Department in 2005 and he’s immediately placed on the payroll by a company in Turkey called Ihlas Holding, and he goes and joins a lobby and starts representing Turkish entities’ interests.

These opportunities do not come when these people leave their offices. In order for these people to secure these jobs and lucrative payments, they have to serve these foreign entities while they are in office. And they have done just that!

The victims here are the American people, their national security, and the integrity of this government. And in many cases that I know about, it is about our national security-related, intelligence-related information that is being easily provided to foreign entities by these individuals. Based on the laws we have since the beginning of this nation, these people should be prosecuted criminally.

via Exclusive Interview with FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds | Armenian Weekly.

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WTO Bleeding American Economy Dry

It would appear that Fat Cats run our country. The rich get richer while many in the middle class fall into a growing underclass without housing, health care or a future.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

The World Trade Organization is an undemocratic organization run by the rich, for the rich. The bylaws of the organization supersede our own Constitution . If America is to recover economically it must either renegotiate or completely withdraw from the WTO.

The Constitution states that all treaties made under the authority of the United States become supreme law of the land. The U.S. invited the WTO to rule over us when our government signed the treaty, and now we have no choice but to conform U.S. laws, regulation and administrative procedures to the agreement.

[..] Since entering the WTO in 2001, trade with China has resulted in the loss of 2.3 million jobs through 2007, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In 2006 alone, the trade gap with China resulted in the loss of 366,000 American jobs. Those fortunate enough to retain their jobs witnessed their annual earnings decrease by roughly $1,400. American workers are put in direct competition with one another as more and more employers look to offshore production to nations with lower wage rates.

Those jobs losses have affected each and every sector of the economy in both white and blue-collar workers. Over that time the U.S. has lost 561,000 jobs in computer and electronic products, 153,000 in apparel and accessories, 139,000 in administrative support services and 128,000 in professional, scientific and technical services.

In all, those displaced workers lost an average of $8,146 annually - a total of $19.4 billion - as they moved into lower paying jobs.

Those job losses can be directly attributed to China’s rapidly growing trade surplus with the U.S., maintained by the systematic manipulation of the Chinese yuan. By purposely undervaluing their currency, they subsidized exports - some estimates put this subsidy at nearly 30 percent. This practice has allowed America’s trade deficit with China to balloon since China entered into the WTO. In 2001, when China joined the WTO, they held a small trade surplus of $84 billion with the U.S. By 2007, that number has grown exponentially to $262 billion. On average, that deficit will increase by $30 billion each and every year.

With the U.S-China trade deficit exploding, more job losses are forecast in the future. The Progressive Policy Institute, a moderate Democratic think tank aligned with the pro-free trade wing of the party, claims that unless the trade deficit is brought under control, 12 million information-based jobs in the U.S. are highly susceptible in the future.

[..]“The direct impact on incomes, more than $8,000 per displaced worker per year on average, is catastrophic for the individual workers and the single most visible cost of globalization for American workers,” EPI economist Josh Bivens said. “But it’s also critical to recognize the indirect impact of trade on workers. Trade with less developed countries has reduced the bargaining power of all workers in the U.S. economy who resemble those displaced workers in education, credentials and skill.”But beyond the quantifiable numbers of economic hardship in the U.S., the WTO is inherently wrong for other reasons. The organization remains indifferent to issues of workers rights, child labor and environmental protection standards. The organization has little to no transparency as all of its hearing are closed to the public. It is no wonder then that the U.S. comes out a loser in nine of 10 trade disputes brought before the body. The corporate agenda of the organization has destroyed the developing economies of the world, exploiting cheap resources and giving them little in return. This has come to represent the most efficient form of colonization the world has ever seen - reaping all the benefits with no downsides of occupation.

via Economyincrisis.org - America's Economic Report - Daily.

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Bush Admin. worse than our Nightmares

Impeach Bush and Cheney, impeach them now!

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Back in the bad old days of Bush's corrupt gang, we on the left were pilloried for suggesting that the administration was manipulating terrorism-related news in order to win the 2004 elections. But when Tom Ridge says it . . .In fact, I argued in summer, 2004, that when Ridge did raise the terrorism alert, it had the unfortunate effect of outing an al-Qaeda double agent who had been turned by the Pakistani government and was helping set a trap for al-Qaeda in the UK. In turn, that caused the British government to have to move against the people it had under surveillance prematurely, harming the case.

[..]The horrible thing is that Wolf Blitzer on CNN assembled David Frum and Frances Townsend, former members of the Bush administration, to sit around on his afternoon news and analysis program on Thursday afternoon and more or less either call Ridge a liar or pooh-pooh the significance of what he is saying. There wasn't a single centrist or left of center voice to show any outrage. I mean, I know that Time Warner is not made up of people who necessarily care about the little person or social justice or anything. But a little bit of shame?

It isn't enough that the corporate media lied to us for Bush for 8 years, they are continuing to do it. Give money to Amy Goodman.

via Informed Comment: Bush Admin. worse than our Nightmares.

Where does the hatred come from?

It would appear that Homeland Security is promoting Islamo-phobia in it's recommended training for US Law Enforcement! Where is Obama? Is he just pretending to be Bush lite?

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This fall, U.S. law enforcement personnel will have their final chance to take advantage of a rare opportunity. Participants will travel to Israel to receive “homeland security training,” but the counterterrorism briefings and martial arts practice sessions are only one part of the package. The program also includes visits to Christian religious sites in the Holy Land — an aspect likely to be especially attractive to Christian Zionists — along with other sites such as the Knesset and the Israeli “security fence”.

The Israel program is run by Security Solutions International (SSI), a group that has attracted controversy due to its ties to Islamophobic propaganda groups — as well as its apparent view that indoctrinating first responders with alarmist information about Islam is an essential part of counterterrorism training.

Most striking of all, the SSI Israel trip is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. DHS’s funding of this venture is a concrete illustration of the ways that Islamophobic fringe groups have exploited the “global war on terror” for their own purposes.[..]So what does this training involve? In addition to martial arts demonstrations including “how to take down an armed suicide bomber”, meetings with Israeli security personnel, and a three-hour presentation on “suicide terror,” the itinerary also includes more tourist-oriented activities. Tourist excursions are both political visits to the Knesset, the West Bank “security barrier,” and southern Israeli towns that have been the target of rocket attacks from Gaza, and religious trips to Jerusalem’s Old City and to “some of Christianity’s holiest sites”.While this DHS-funded trip might already seem a bit odd — especially the emphasis on Christian religious sites during what is ostensibly a counterterrorism training program — things take a turn towards the bizarre in the section of the website advertising SSI’s two day presentations on “The Islamic Jihadist Threat”.

via LobeLog.com

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The Plan for White Slavery?

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Racism has a hidden face within all of us. Anyone who is different beyond our imaginings is suspect. By placing people in the "other" category, we distance ourselves and make them the enemy. To the Right Wing Nuts, Obama has become the thief.

The Plan for White Slavery | The LA Progressive.

In his bestseller, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell noted that people make powerful associations with appearances and make “snap decisions” based on “thin slices” of experience. One of the many studies he cited required the subjects to assign positive or negative words to images of white or black people. To their surprise, the subjects, including himself, associated positive words with pictures of white people and negative words with photos of black people.

Thus after a history of repeated othering of African Americans in the US, it is not unusual for the picture of the black thief climbing through the windows of our homes to evolve into the imaginings of a black man in the White House stealing our healthcare and hard fought freedoms. As educator and writer Tim Wise, shrewdly observed “the longstanding association in white minds between social program spending and racial redistribution has been long established, by scholars such as Martin Gilens, Kenneth Neubeck, Noel Cazenave, and Jill Quadagno, among others.” What is reparations in the mind of the Right?—another form of stealing. Tim further notes, bestselling writer and conservative commentator Glen Beck, as well as shock talk-show hosts Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, have linked health care reform and every piece of Obama’s legislative program with reparations. “His (Obama’s) goal is to create a new America. A new model. A model to settle old racial scores..,” decries Glen Beck.

Leaders from the healthcare corporate industry and the Right have been tapping into this programming. Observing the town hall rage and media coverage, historian and journalist Rick Perlstein reminds us that throughout history “the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.” Rick goes on to cite various examples such as Vice President Nixon claiming he found hidden in the White House “a blueprint for socializing America” or the various absurdities from the Right that the 1964 Civil Rights Act would “enslave” whites and that the Soviet Union served as an incubator for the “civil rights movement.” He concludes, “Good thing our leaders weren’t so cowardly in 1964, or we would never have passed a civil rights bill—because of complaints over the provisions in it that would enslave whites.”

However, the escapees of the Goldwater asylum are not the only ones prone to their programming being activated. Each one of us has it in them. Remember, during the struggle for desegregation of the lunch counters and outlawing racial housing covenants, a number of opponents used free market arguments of the “right to refuse service.” As Ronald Reagan once said as he successfully campaigned to be governor of California, “If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, he has the right to do so.” Reagan, who publicly opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, still overwhelmingly won as president despite launching his campaign with a speech on state rights at the site of three slain civil rights activists. I am not saying all those who disdain any governmental involvement in healthcare want to push people of color to the back of the bus, but in the current healthcare debate, they have de facto shoved those without healthcare to the side to fend for themselves.

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Whodunnit in Baghdad

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Juan Cole as usual makes the most sense about the most recent bombings in Baghdad. al-Maliki's refusal to reconcile with Sunni's is coming back to haunt him.

Al-Hayat says that the Iraqi government is blaming an "alliance of Baathists and al-Qaeda" for the bombings. But terrorist cells don't work that way. Six coordinated bombings requires tight-knit and cohesive cells along with close command and control. So it was likely one or the other. Given the military discipline and precision of the operation, I suspect former Baath officers of involvement, regardless of their current ideology, whether secular or religious.

Looked at in this way, the attack on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was the most massive in firepower, deaths and woundings, was a continuation of the bombings last week of Shabak and Yazidi Kurdish villages outside the northern, largely Sunni Arab city of Mosul. Mosul is a center for Arab nationalism, Baathism, and Sunni fundamentalism.

The Ilaf newspaper agrees with me that these bombings are a sign that elements in the Sunni Arab community are not reconciled to the rise of Shiite and Kurdish rule over Iraq. The problem cannot be solved either by federalism or democracy, the newspaper argues. Iraqi Sunni Arabs would not benefit from any kind of partition, even soft partition, since they don't have any developed hydrocarbon fields in their part of Iraq. And the Iraqi parliament is so far set up with a single chamber where there is a tyranny of the Shiite majority.

So as I have hinted, I have a slight preference for the theory that ex-Baathist or neo-Baathist or generally Sunni Arab nationalists were behind the attacks. A lot of ex-Baathist officers and leaders are hiding out in exile in Damascus.

[..]After all, al-Maliki has already more or less been running for prime minister in the upcoming January elections on the basis of his ability to get the American troops out of people's hair and to supply security in their stead. It is easy for his Sunni Arab foes in Damascus and Mosul to undermine that claim with bombings like those on Wednesday. Al-Maliki has been adamantly against negotiating with the Baathists or, indeed, any guerrilla group with blood on its hands. A portion of the Sunni Arab community let him know Wednesday that they simply will not accept the new status quo. Al-Maliki has surprised a lot of people by being much more assertive and much more successful in restoring security in places like Basra and Amara in the Shiite south, than many expected. But unless he finds a way to reconcile with the Sunni Arabs, his political future is cloudy.

via Informed Comment: Whodunnit in Baghdad.

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Analysis: The Baghdad attacks

As these analyst make clear, this attack in Baghdad, was against the Maliki government and an attempt to manipulate the election. Certainly this is Al Qaeda's modis operendi, but many others have to gain from this happening.

Mosab Jasim, Al Jazeera English producer in Baghdad

In my experience, getting inside the Green Zone to cover media activity is not easy.

First of all, you have to get at least two or three badges that allow you inside. Then, you have to cross through at least two or three security checkpoints, which are at least 600m outside of the Green Zone. At these checkpoints, you get searched, and after you pass through them, you are allowed on to the street that leads to the Green Zone and, from there, there is a final checkpoint and that's when you've finally arrived.

So it would be really difficult to bring in a truck filled with explosives unless it was co-ordinated from inside the Green Zone. Obtaining a badge means you've gone through all the clearance procedures. The bombers who were able to put the truck inside the area of the Green Zone had gone through all the necessary security measures and once they were cleared, they also received the badges which gave them access into the area.

I spoke to our police source in Baghdad and he was telling me that his sources said an attack would occur every three minutes from each other, exactly timed. He said the attacks had nothing to do with sectarian violence, but that they were something very well organised and co-ordinated.

[..]Ahmed Rushdi, Iraqi journalist in Baghdad

The problem with this government is that its only bonus is the security situation, which means a lot worse goes on in Iraq like corruption, insufficient services.

All these issues show the failure of the government but what happened today sends a very clear message regarding the failure of the security situation in Iraq.

No one knows who was behind these attacks, some say they are inside the ruling coalition and they are opponents of al-Maliki [the Iraqi prime minister], saying that the people who led these attacks did so to prove how poor security is in Iraq.

Al-Maliki simply has too many opponents and the Iraqi people are the ones who must suffer from this the most.

via Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Analysis: The Baghdad attacks.

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95 killed on Iraq's deadliest day since U.S. handover

Al Qaeda WANTS the US to stay in Iraq and remain targets. They know blowing up Iraqis will not help them in the long run unless they can spark the Shia-Sunni war they've so far failed to do.

A series of bombings rocked Iraq's capital within one hour Wednesday, killing at least 95 people and wounding 563 others, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

The six explosions marked the country's deadliest day since the United States pulled its combat troops from Iraqi cities and towns nearly two months ago.

In one attack, a truck bomb exploded outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, damaging the building. Another truck bomb went off outside the Ministry of Finance building.

Near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iraqi security forces stood with shocked expressions as ambulances screamed past.

In central Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded on Kifa Street, and another bomb exploded in the Salhiya neighborhood, where on Tuesday security forces had avoided injuries by successfully defusing a truck bomb. Wednesday's other two bombs exploded in eastern Baghdad's Beirut Square, officials said.

Two people believed to be connected to the bombings have been arrested, an official with the Iraqi army told CNN.

The two suspects were driving in a car rigged with explosives before they were arrested by Iraqi Security Forces, the official said.

The two suspects were believed to be al Qaeda in Iraq senior leaders, the official said.

via 95 killed on Iraq's deadliest day since U.S. handover - CNN.com.

Shiite rebellion in Yemen raises concerns in Saudi Arabia

Evidence of how destabilized the Middle East has become as the result of the Bush debacle continues to emerge.

Saudi Arabia is concerned by the Shiite rebellion taking place just over the border in Yemen, prompting security officials from both countries to consult on the sudden flare-up in violence, Saudi officials said Tuesday. Saudi Arabia, a staunchly Sunni country with the world’s largest oil reserves, is worried about the rebels’ alleged links to Iran, the kingdom’s main regional foe which has established firm footholds in several Arab countries over the past few years. It also fears that Al-Qaeda militants who have sought sanctuary in the impoverished nation will capitalize on the tense situation by smuggling fighters across the long and difficult-to-control Yemeni-Saudi border.

[..]The latest violence in Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, threatens to further undermine Yemen’s weak government, which is also facing secessionists in the south, Al-Qaeda militants, poverty and pirate-infested seas.

More at The Daily Star - Politics - Shiite rebellion in Yemen raises concerns in Saudi Arabia.

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