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The Obama administration's policy toward Iraq largely continues the policies of the Bush years
By Bonnie Bricker and Adil E. Shamoo
Recent suicide bombings in the heart of Baghdad have sent a message to Washington: Maintaining the Iraq policy of the past administration does not inspire hope.
Iraqi insurgents linked to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bombing, which hit hotels frequented by Western journalists. The attacks followed the government’s banning of 511 parliamentary candidates for the upcoming election this March. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government banned a large number of independents, nationalists, secularists and current opponents of the government, including Sunni and Baathist politicians.
Lessons For America From The White Rose
By Gary G. Kohls
(The Heroic College Student Anti-War Anti-Fascist Resistance Movement in Nazi Germany)
Sixty-seven years ago, on February 18, 1943, three courageous, patriotic German college students from Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi party, were arrested by the Gestapo on charges of treason, a crime that was punishable by death. The three, 22 year-old medical student Christoph Probst, 24 year-old Hans Scholl, also a medical student, and Hans’ 21 year-old sister Sophie, were part of a small group of university students whose code name was The White Rose.
Marjah: ‘This is not Fallujah’
Eric Walberg
So says McChrystal as the US surge goes full steam ahead in Marjah — a new "gentler" war. Eric Walberg has heard this before
Apart for Abu Ghraib, Fallujah is perhaps the Iraq war’s defining moment. The hatred and resentment of the occupied people found a catalyst in the four Blackwater mercenaries, who were killed and strung up, and no doubt deserved their fate, certainly as symbols of a cynical, illegal invasion. The US soldiers -- who are just as mercenary, being a professional army invading a country sans provocation -- came and "destroyed the village to save it."
The "success" of the blitzkrieg war in Iraq has been difficult to duplicate in Afghanistan, "the heart of darkness", one British commander quipped to his troops as they went into battle, despite dropping far more bombs -- many of them radioactive. The unflagging resistance of the Afghans, their refusal to submit to the occupiers, is that because they realise the invaders are not there for their purported altruistic motives. The thousands of civilians and resistance fighters who have been killed by airstrikes -- none of them guilty of anything more egregious than defending their homeland -- is more than ample proof, as is the craven propping up of a US-imposed government, and the proliferation of US bases in the country. The unapologetically un-Islamic ways of the invaders, their lack of even the remotest understanding of the people they are occupying, is a constant insult to a proud and ancient people.
Of High Treason and Economic Incompetence: The Reagan Years Revisited!
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
Ronald Reagan was already a 'grandfather' figure when he came to office in 1981. It may be unfair to say that he won the election with a single phrase: 'Well....there ya' go again!' In retrospect, it is all that one remembers of Reagan's empty promises and equally empty platitudes! Those and a head nod won him the White House. It is this surface veneer we remember --not his cowardly refusal to assent to Mikhail Gorbachev's offer of complete nuclear disarmament, not his two year long 'depression' which left millions homeless, not the act of 'high treason' called Iran/Contra.
Mossad’s Murderous Reach: The Larger Political Issues
By James Petras
On January 19 Israel’s international secret police, the Mossad, sent an eighteen member death squad to Dubai using European passports, supposedly ‘stolen’ from Israeli dual citizens and altered with fake photos and signatures, in order to assassinate the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud al Mabhouh.
The evidence is overwhelming: The Dubai police presentation of detailed security videos of the assassins was corroborated by the testimony of Israeli security experts and applauded by Israel’s leading newspapers and columnists. The Mossad openly stated that Mabhouh was a high priority target who had survived three previous assassination attempts. Israel did not even bother to deny the murder. Furthermore, the sophisticated communication system used by the killers, the logistics and planning surrounding their entry and exit from Dubai and the scope and scale of the operation have all the characteristics of a high-level state operation. Furthermore, only Mossad would have access to the European passports of its dual citizens! Only Mossad would have the capacity, motivation, stated intent and willingness to provoke a diplomatic row with its European allies, knowing full well that Western European governments’ anger would blow over because of their deep links to Israel. After meticulous investigation and the interrogation of 2 captured Palestinian Mossad collaborators, the Dubai police chief has stated he is sure the Mossad was behind the killing.
Israeli Unaccountability and Denial: Suppressing the Practice of Torture
by Stephen Lendman
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI - stoptorture.org) "believes that torture and ill-treatment of any kind and under all circumstances is incompatible with the moral values of democracy and the rule of law." Yet it's systematically practiced by the Israeli Police, General Security Service (GSS), Israeli Prison Service (IPS), and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
In December 2009, PACTI published its latest report titled, "Accountability Denied: The Absence of Investigation and Punishment of Torture in Israel," explaining "the many layers of immunity that protect" the guilty, specifically the GSS, the focus of this report.
Santorum continues bashing gays in the military while ignoring a real threat
Mary Shaw
Even though we the people of Pennsylvania finally voted ultra-conservative Republican Rick Santorum out of the U.S. Senate in 2006 in favor of moderate Democrat Bob Casey, Mr. Man-on-Dog continues to find new platforms from which to spew his senseless hatred and fear of gays and lesbians.
Not surprisingly, Santorum turned up at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and preached to the choir about the alleged dangers of allowing gays to openly serve in the military. Dismissing the support of military leaders for repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), Santorum explained that they had been so "indoctrinated" with political correctness that they can no longer "see straight," as Sam Stein reported in the Huffington Post. (Note: I have no idea whether "see straight" was an intentional pun, but I suspect it was not.)
American Genocides: Is Haiti Next?
by Stephen Lendman
Distinguished historian, scholar and activist Gabriel Kolko studied "the nature and purpose of (American) power (since) the 1870s," calling it "violen(t), racis(t), repressi(ve) at home and abroad (and) cultural(ly) mendaci(ous)." It's been the same since inception, historian Howard Zinn calling colonial America:
"a class society from the beginning. America started off as a society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston, and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to" portray a benevolent nation. We weren't then. We're not now.
Judge Rakoff Nails JP Morgan
Federal district court Judge Jed S. Rakoff called off a J.P. Morgan deal in an order that revealed the inside track on how the financial giant does business. The ruling of January 28 prevents Morgan from selling or participating the $225 million loan it made to Cablevisión, owned in the majority by Grupo Televisa, one of Mexico's largest telecommunications companies. (Image)
U.S. – Iran Power Struggle over Iraq
By Nicola Nasser
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill’s warning on February 18 that it could take months to form a new government in Baghdad after the Iraqi elections, scheduled for March 7, and that in turn could mean considerable political turmoil in Iraq, and the warnings of observers and experts as well as officials against the looming specter of a renewed sectarian war in the country, indicate that security, stability, let alone democracy, and a successful “victorious” withdrawal of American troops from Iraq have all yet a long way to go. A secure, stable and democratic Iraq will have first to wait for an end to the raging power struggle over Iraq between the United States and Iran inside and outside the occupied Arab country.
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