Anti-mosque sentiment rages far from Ground Zero

Image via Wikipedia

Terrorism raises it's ugly head in the US. Obviously, protests about the Mosque placed in Lower Manhattan has inspired American terrorism.

Anti-mosque sentiment rages far from Ground Zero - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:

"Federal officials are investigating a fire that started overnight at the site of a new Islamic center in a Nashville suburb....

The arsonists undoubtedly will be happy to tell you how much they hate Terrorism. And how there's a War on Christianity underway in the U.S. The harm from these actions are not merely the physical damage they cause, but also the well-grounded fear it imposes on a minority of the American population. If you launch a nationwide, anti-Islamic campaign in Lower Manhattan based on the toxic premise that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11 -- and spend a decade expanding American wars on one Muslim country after the next -- this is the inevitable, and obviously dangerous, outcome."

Related articles by Zemanta

• Opposition To "Ground Zero Mosque" Aids The Taliban (oliverwillis.com)
• CBS Uses Opposition to Ground Zero Mosque to Lecture About 'America Becoming Islamophobic' (newsbusters.org)
• Bigots torch religious site in Tennessee (washingtonmonthly.com)
• Tennessee Mosque Cite Burned by Arsonists [Dispatches from the Culture Wars] (scienceblogs.com)
• NYT Accuses Mosque Protesters of Fomenting Muslim Extremism, Reveals Own Manhattan-Centric Snobbery (newsbusters.org)
• Religious Right Group: 'No More Mosques in the United States' [Bigotry] (gawker.com)
• Islamophobia Imported From Europe: An Ugly Trend Gets Uglier (politicsdaily.com)
• Vanguard (citizen-gkar.blogspot.com)
• Fox host: Cabbie stabbing 'nothing to do with anti-Muslim sentiment' (crooksandliars.com)
• Historic UNSC Condemnation of Israel, and of Gaza Blockade; World Body Demands release of Aid Activists, Ships (citizen-gkar.blogspot.com)

New Packaging for Imprisonment Without Trial?

Obama has been little different from Herr Bush, changing his tune after he's been elected.

Image via Wikipedia

The bill is only 12 pages long, but that is plenty of room to grant the president the power to order the arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment of anyone -- including a U.S. citizen -- indefinitely, on the sole suspicion that he or she is affiliated with terrorism, and on the president's sole authority as commander in chief.

The Act begins with the following (convoluted) requirement:

Whenever within the United States, its territories, and possessions, or outside the territorial limits of the United States, an individual is captured or otherwise comes into the custody or under the effective control of the United States who is suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities, and who may be an unprivileged enemy belligerent, the individual shall be placed in military custody for purposes of initial interrogation and determination of status in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

...Now, however, as president, Obama has helped pave the way for such radical legislative efforts as the one introduced by McCain and Lieberman, by embracing -- and re-branding -- the military commissions he once opposed.

"Belligerents" are the new "Combatants"

Three years after Obama eloquently opposed the Military Commissions Act, the now-president signed a Military Commissions Act of his own, as part of the 2010 Defense Authorization Bill. The law, which sought to overhaul the discredited Bush-era military commissions for "alien enemy combatants," introduced what is apparently turning out to be an important new term to the counterterror lexicon: Unprivileged Enemy Belligerent, defined as "an individual who: 1) has engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or 2) has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners."

Months before, in March of 2009, the Obama administration announced that it was phasing out the term "alien enemy combatant," even as it held on to the authority to hold terror suspects indefinitely. "Unprivileged Enemy Belligerent," then, was its replacement.

As Human Rights Watch attorney Joanne Mariner wrote last fall, "this is a cosmetic change, not a real improvement, which mirrors the administration's decision to drop the enemy combatant formula in habeas litigation at Guantanamo Bay."

Related articles by Zemanta

• Human Rights First: An Intelligent Way to Enhance National Security? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Arresting, Interrogating, Persecuting (lewrockwell.com)

US's 'arc of instability' just gets bigger

Pepe Escobar, the author of this article, writes his convictions. Truly his Chinese employers see their agenda served, but in this case, it would appear both Pepe and China have a point. The US has taken on the traditional role of Great Britain. The Brits maintained their dominance of the world by playing divide and conquer. The US is doing the same. Except, it would appear, the availability of information via the internet is undermining the US effectiveness.

Has Obama simply filled Bushes shoes as the world's bully? At this point I'm thinking this is an engine independent of government. Is it a "rogue" CIA operation blacked out to even Obama? Totally blacked out, probably not, but buried in piles and piles of similar operations with few directors and no accountability to maintain plausible denial ability and accessible to the new president only with time and focus. Do you thing Obama has enough on his plate?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Asia Times Online

The New Great Game is not only focused on the face-off between the United States and strategic competitors Russia and China - with Pipelineistan as a defining element.

The full spectrum dominance doctrine requires the control of the Pentagon-coined "arc of instability" from the Horn of Africa to western China. The cover story is the former "global war on terror", now "overseas contingency operations" under the management of President Barack Obama's administration.

Most of all, the underlying logic remains divide and rule. As for the divide, Beijing would call it, without a trace of irony, "splittist". Split up Iraq - blocking China's access to Iraqi oil. Split up Pakistan - with an independent Balochistan preventing China from

accessing the strategic port of Gwadar there. Split up Afghanistan - with an independent Pashtunistan allowing the building of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline bypassing Russia. Split up Iran - by financing subversion in Khuzestan and Sistan-Balochistan. And why not split up Bolivia (as was attempted last year) to the benefit of US energy giants. Call it the (splitting) Kosovo model.

Kosovo, incidentally, is known as the Colombia of the Balkans. What Washington calls the "Western hemisphere" is a sub-section of the New Great Game. The linkage between the recent military coup in Honduras, the return of the living dead - that is, the resurrection of the US Navy's Fourth Fleet in July 2008 - and now the turbo-charging of seven US military bases in Colombia is not to be blamed merely on continuity from president George W Bush to Obama. Not really. This is all about the internal logic of Full Spectrum Dominance.

via Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan.

Related articles by Zemanta

• ACLU Says CIA at Odds With Obama Over Torture (wired.com)


• The Mind Behind Obama's Ramadan Dinner: George W. Bush (usnews.com)


• How the CIA Became Dangerously Dependent on Outside Contractors (usnews.com)


• Holder To Appoint Special Prosecutor To Investigate CIA Interrogators And Contractors (huffingtonpost.com)


• Obama to review Afghan report this week (windsorstar.com)


• FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Tells of Bribery, Espionage and Cover-up at the Highest Levels of US Government (citizengkar.wordpress.com)


• Bombshell: Bin Laden Worked for US Until 9/11 (citizengkar.wordpress.com)


• WTO Bleeding American Economy Dry (citizengkar.wordpress.com)


• Cheney: CIA Interrogators "Deserve Our Gratitude" (huffingtonpost.com)