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Iraq Today: America's Genocidal Legacy
by Stephen Lendman
America came to Iraq to stay. Contingents of US forces remain. America's embassy cost over a billion dollars to build. It's the world's largest.
It's inside Baghdad's Green Zone. It includes 21 buildings. Extraordinary security measures protect them. They're on 104 acres of land. It's the equivalent of 80 football fields.
Democracy is verboten. So-called liberation is a convenient illusion. Iraq was ravaged and destroyed. Daily violence rages out-of-control. Unemployment, poverty and human misery are extreme.
An epidemic of birth defects, cancer and other war related diseases plague the country. So do tens of thousands of US and other Western private military contractors, advisors and security personnel.
The Bank Guarantee That Bankrupted Ireland
by Ellen Brown
The Irish have a long history of being tyrannized, exploited, and oppressed—from the forced conversion to Christianity in the Dark Ages, to slave trading of the natives in the 15th and 16th centuries, to the mid-nineteenth century “potato famine” that was really a holocaust. The British got Ireland’s food exports, while at least one million Irish died from starvation and related diseases, and another million or more emigrated.
Today, Ireland is under a different sort of tyranny, one imposed by the banks and the troika—the EU, ECB and IMF. The oppressors have demanded austerity and more austerity, forcing the public to pick up the tab for bills incurred by profligate private bankers.
The official unemployment rate is 13.5%—up from 5% in 2006—and this figure does not take into account the mass emigration of Ireland’s young people in search of better opportunities abroad. Job loss and a flood of foreclosures are leading to suicides. A raft of new taxes and charges has been sold as necessary to reduce the deficit, but they are simply a backdoor bailout of the banks.
Gaza Running Out of Fuel and Medicines
by Stephen Lendman
Gaza's suffocating siege persists. Israel imposes it illegally. It's been ongoing since June 2007. It began a year earlier in less extreme form. It constitutes collective punishment. Fourth Geneva’s Article 33 states: "No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited."
"Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited."
Fourth Geneva mandates protecting civilians in time of war. Doing so includes letting goods and people move freely.
When Will You Say “Enough is Enough”?
by Phillip Faruggio
You don’t have to search the internet for the truth. Sometimes it is right in front of you… inside the mainstream newspapers:
The Friday, October 18, USA Today main section, page 4A ran this story: “Army warns of trouble handling even a single war”.It goes on to say that “budget restrictions could render the Army at high risk to meet even one major war, a warning the Army is sounding because it sees another war as inevitable before long.” Did you catch that last part? The masters of this Military Industrial Empire are not only doing their best to scare the shit out of us with “declining budget cuts putting our Army at risk”, but they are sounding the alarm that we are going to get another war sooner than not! They further tell us that plans to reduce the number of active duty soldiers from a wartime high of 570,000 to 450,000 (as planned by 2017) is “too small and too risky”. Now this is not from some comic book story. No, this is really being hyped up to get YOU out there on board with the propaganda to NOT cut our bloated and obscene military spending (close to 600 billion of yours and mine hard earned dollars). Question is: are you going to sit back and let this happen?
Israel Buys the US Congress: Sabotaging the US-Iran Peace Negotiations
James Petras
“Pro-Israel Policy groups such as AIPAC work with unlimited funding to divert US policy in the region (Middle East)” Jack Straw, Member of Parliament and former Foreign Secretary of the British Labor Party
“The United States should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran to spur the country to end its nuclear program” Sheldon Adelson, biggest donor to the Republican Party and major fundraiser for pro-Israel political action committees, speech at Yeshiva University, New York City, October 22, 2013.
Georgia's Saakashvili
by Stephen Lendman
Wall Street Journal editors call him "Georgia's Washington." Turning truth on its head is official editorial policy. More on how they reinvented a first class thug below.
On October 27, Georgians elected Giorgi Margvelashvili president. He won decisively. He'll replace Mikheil Saakashvili.
He'll have less power. Constitutional amendments shifted it more to the prime minister and parliament.
Sunday's vote marked the end of an era. It didn't come a moment too soon. Georgians deplored Saakashvili's ruthlessness. Despotism defined his rule.
He backed David Bakradze. He finished second with less than 22% of the vote. Former parliament speaker Nino Burdzhanadze got slightly over 10%. Margvelashvili got over 62%.
Appeals Court Stays Stop and Frisk Ruling
by Stephen Lendman
Stop and frisk is longstanding NYPD policy. It reflects brazen racial profiling. It affects hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino New York city residents annually.
No evidence proves it's effective. Plenty shows it's racially motivated. It violates core constitutional rights. It's one of many abusive practices.
On August 12, US District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Shira Scheindlin issued a landmark ruling. It was scathing.
She said NYPD "adopted a policy of indirect racial profiling." Doing so violates "violated their constitutional rights in two ways:
(1) they were stopped without a legal basis in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and
(2) they were targeted for stops because of their race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment."
Israel Attacks Syria and Gaza
by Stephen Lendman
Israel gets away with daily crimes of war, against humanity and slow-motion genocide. It does so with impunity. It does it because world leaders able to act do nothing.
Failure to hold Israel accountable reflects complicity with crimes too great to ignore. They've persisted for decades.
They show no signs of ending. On October 30, reports said Israeli warplanes struck Latakia. It's Syria's principle port city. Damascus was attacked. An administration official confirmed what happened.
Washington partners with Israeli crimes. Annual billions of dollars in military aid supports them. Going along with attacking Syria shows Obama's true intentions.
America’s Intelligence Spying Scandal Draws Global Outrage
Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.
From George Bush onward to President Obama, the sadistic politics of the few flourishes in darkness being unable to know the difference between the foes and friends, fair and foul. The draconian mindsets try to envisage the unknown - the distant future out of the perpetuated animosity if missing dots and codes and secret voices could usher something useful to protect the solidarity of the few warmongers. They have not learned any lessons from the living history to be compatible with the civilized norms of the contemporary relationships. Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald are blamed for much of the uproar coming out of the disclosures of secretive American spying networks, yet, both are taken seriously by the global community and appear to have earned moral and intellectual credibility as responsible citizens of the global mankind. President Obama and others need to work hard to earn respect, not claim it. In the 21st century knowledge-based rational culture of global thinking and relationships most nations have one image, one face to be recognized with in international affairs, but America has many and conflicting ones unknown to the informed global community. Its policies and practices have generated worldwide reactions coupled with resentment and interwoven emotions of fear and hatred. Its most reliable allies and ethnically trusted friends are questioning its sincerity and intents of collaborative relationships. America’s individualistic absolute rulers and politicians are not deterred but appear out of touch to defend their conspired onslaught on the friendly European and other nations by the on-going illegal spying networks conducted by the NSA- the federal agency under scrutiny.
Counterinsurgency, Death Squads, and the Population as the Target: Empire Under Obama, Part 4
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
While the American Empire – and much of the policies being pursued – did not begin under President Obama, the focus of “Empire Under Obama” is to bring awareness about the nature of empire to those who may have – or continue – to support Barack Obama and who may believe in the empty promises of “hope” and “change.” Empire is institutional, not individual. My focus on the imperial structure during the Obama administration is not to suggest that it does not predate Obama, but rather, that Obama represents ‘continuity’ in imperialism, not “change.” This part examines the concept of ‘counterinsurgency’ as a war against the populations of Iraq, Afghanistan and spreading into Pakistan.
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