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“Reckless” to sail in international waters - official
Stuart Littlewood
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/sets/72157620573384201/
Britain’s foreign secretary David Miliband - or rather, a henchman on his behalf – has written to me about the government’s response to Israel’s hijacking of the mercy ship Spirit of Humanity on the high seas and the outrageous treatment of six peace-loving British citizens (including the skipper), en route to Gaza not Israel, who had their gear stolen or damaged and were thrown into Israeli jails. The letter contains the usual wet and meaningless expressions like deplore and press and raise the issue, which are the familiar hallmark of Foreign Office mentality.
And I’m told it is "reckless" to travel in international waters. It should, of course, be safe – and would be if the high and mighty Western allies, always talking big against terror, were to enforce maritime law and rid the Eastern Mediterranean of marauding Israeli pirates.
Thinking Outside of the Secular Box
By GILAD ATZMON
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
-- Karl Marx 1843
Before I launch into a disclosure of liberal and leftist delusional treatment of religions, Islam and Palestine in particular, I would like to share with you a bad racist joke. Beware; you may not want to share this short tale with your feminist friends.
An American female activist who visited Afghanistan in the late 1990s was devastated to find out that women were marching 15 ft behind their men. She soon learned from her local translator that this was due to some religious guidelines that ruled [this is the way we show] respect for the ‘head of the family’.
Headed to National Socialism
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Beware of leaders who come to power in troubled times, and then use foreign threats and economic crises to bolster their own power.
It was common on the left to intimate that George W. Bush was like Hitler, a remark that would drive the National Review crowd through the roof but which I didn't find entirely outrageous. Bush's main method of governance was to stir up fear of foreign enemies and instigate a kind of nationalist hysteria about the need for waging war and giving up liberty through security.
Hitler is the most famous parallel here, but he is hardly the only one. Many statesmen in world history have used the same tactics, dating back to ancient times. Machiavelli wrote in his Art of War advice to the ruler: "To know how to recognize an opportunity in war, and take it, benefits you more than anything else." But what's the point of studying Hitler's rise to power unless it is to learn from that history and apply the lessons?
Hey Buddy, It's Cooling!
From LPAC
Even as the U.S. Senate and the Group of 8 nations meeting in Italy continue their endless jabbering about greenhouse gases, nature is not cooperating.
The global climate has entered a phase of cooling and reduced solar activity, which some experts believe could bring on serious crop failures and food shortages. The serious fear now is that the continued low activity of the Sun forebodes an extended period of cooling, perhaps enough to bring on another Little Ice Age. Anyone who is not addressing that reality is blowing bubbles in the wind.
The global average temperature for the Earth has been decreasing over the past 8 to 10 years. The cooling that was shown by the satellite temperature data for May 2008 negated the entire globally averaged temperature increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius for the past 150 years, which Al Gore says was dangerous global warming. The latest release of the global average satellite temperature data for June 2009 revealed another large drop in the Earth's temperature. This latest drop in global temperatures means, despite all of his scary stories of drowning polar bears and massive sea-level rise, the Earth's temperature has cooled 0.74 degrees Fahrenheit (0.39 degrees Celsius) since former Vice President Al Gore released his sci-fi horror comedy documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" in January 2006.
IT'S NOW AN OBAMA DEPRESSION - REAL UNEMPLOYMENT ACCELERATING
Allen L Roland
It's now an Obama Depression...
By refusing to take the necessary steps to bail out Main Street versus Wall Street ~ the Bush Recession has become the Obama Depression and the worst is yet to come as real unemployment accelerates:
I went shopping yesterday with Keiko. We were looking for a fun dress for my granddaughter Sofia ~ who will be celebrating her ninth birthday this weekend. We visited the Corte Madera Shopping Center which features an abundance of high end shops including Macy's, Nordstroms, Gap, Banana Republic Pottery Barn and many other well known names.
HR 2749: A Stealth Agribusiness Empowering Act
by Stephen Lendman
America is the truest example of what George Bernard Shaw meant when he said "Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for the appointment by the corrupt few." Obama is upholding the tradition and then some.
In fact, in less than six months, he's done the impossible. With congressional Democrats, he's compiled a worse record than even his fiercest critics feared, worse than George Bush, straight across the board on both domestic and foreign policies that include:
Blackwater/Xe: How did it happen that the U.S. came to rely on mercenaries?
The Rev. Gordon C. Stewart
A cagey professor used to provoke his students’ curiosity by asking, “Does anything bother you about that?”
Since the private “security” contractor Blackwater (re-branded last February as “Xe”) hit the news last fall for allegedly killing unarmed civilians in Iraq, the professor’s question has led me to a more important question for a constitutional republic: When, why, and how did the United States of America become the land of mercenaries?
My grade-school teachers taught us to be proud that the land of the free and the home of the brave was not the home of mercenaries, professional soldiers who rent themselves out for any cause for the right price. Our national security rested in a standing Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and Coast Guard under civilian oversight, accountable to the people through an elected government.
Obama's Rollback Strategy: Honduras, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan (and the Boomerang Effect)
James Petras
The recent events in Honduras and Iran, which pit democratically elected regimes against pro-US military and civilian actors intent on overthrowing them can best be understood as part of a larger White House strategy designed to rollback the gains achieved by opposition government and movements during the Bush years.
In a manner reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s New Cold War policies, Obama has vastly increased the military budget, increased the number of combat troops, targeted new regions for military intervention and backed military coups in regions traditionally controlled by the US. However Obama’s rollback strategy occurs in a very different international and domestic context. Unlike Reagan, Obama faces a prolonged and profound recession/depression, massive fiscal and trade deficits, a declining role in the world economy and loss of political dominance in Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia and elsewhere. While Reagan faced off against a decaying Soviet Communist regime, Obama confronts surging world-wide opposition from a variety of independent secular, clerical, nationalist, liberal democratic and socialist electoral regimes and social movements anchored in local struggles.
NSA Security running amok to plug leaks about 9/11
Wayne Madsen
We have learned that the National Security “Q” Group, responsible for security, has grown to an immense security and counter-intelligence force, with an estimated one thousand government employees, contractors, and paid informants. NSA’s Security force is reportedly primarily tasked with plugging any leaks of classified or other information that points to U.S. government’s involvement with the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
NSA Security has doggedly pursued a number of NSA employees, some in “sting” operations, others in frequent polygraphs and repeated security interviews where threats are made by thuggish NSA security agents with and without the presence of FBI agents, and others in constant surveillance operations at their homes, churches, and other locations away from the Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters of the agency.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Dick Cheney?
Helen Philpot
To solve a problem, you have to know what causes the problem. For example, to understand Dick Cheney you have to understand that his name is Richard but people call him Dick for a reason. To understand Ann Coulter, you have to understand what it must be like to go through life with a ginormous foot in your mouth. To understand Rush Limbaugh, you have to understand how a frontal lobotomy works. To understand George W. Bush, you have to…. well there really is no understanding that. But I am sure you get the point.
As Americans, many of us just can’t understand why terrorists from the Middle East would want to destroy us. The very idea of their hating us so much is almost unfathomable. Never mind that we have been occupying their homelands for more than 60 years. Never mind that today we have dozens of “enduring” military bases just in Iraq and dozens more in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar… Is that really so terrible? We’re just there looking to send back a little oil to help run our cars and our factories back home. Why do they hate us so much? I don’t know, but I wish it was a problem we could finally solve.
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