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Pakistani Bloggers on Waziristan Campaign
Security forces patrol streets in a vicinity of Waziristan,
Sat, Oct. 17, 2009. Pakistan Times
Pakistani Bloggers Oct 18, 2009
Two Conflicting Interpretations Of The Latest Wave
by Ahsan: There are, broadly speaking, two interpretations of the spike in violence in the last ten days. One is optimistic, and one is pessimistic. The optimistic version, predictably forwarded by the government, is that this is a last desperate stand from the Taliban and their allies, in advance of the Army assault in Waziristan. The logic is that this wav... Read more at Five Rupees »
Expensive Afghanistan: Million Dollar Soldiers and $400 for a Gallon of Gas
By Martha Rose Crow
Taxpayers Pour Money Into a Black Hole to Subsidize Oil & Dope Industries
Big U.S. politicians, including Nobel ‘Peace Prize' Laureate President Obama, want to escalate the unofficial war in Afghanistan by putting 40,000 or more boots on the ground. What they hide from the public is the cost: One million dollars per soldier per year!
“The cost of sending one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for one year is $1 million versus an estimated $12,000 for an Afghani soldier, according to Steve Daggett, a specialist with the Congressional Research Service…The Obama administration is calculating $1 billion per 1,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan.” http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/63121-crs-calculates-cost-of-us-troop-presence-in-afghanistan
Responding to Stephen Colbert and Justice Scalia
eileen fleming
"Our tradition of separation of church and state too often separates church and state."-Stephen Colbert, Oct. 13, 2009
The other night on The Colbert Report, on a segment called "Symbol Minded"
View it here: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/252639/october-13-2009/the-word---symbol-minded
Hardly any respite
Khaled Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem
Israeli paramilitary police stormed the Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary)
While some calm has returned to the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Muslim holy site is still under grave threat.
An uneasy calm is descending over East Jerusalem after thousands of Israeli troops lifted a tight siege lasting two weeks on Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, one of Islam's holiest sanctuaries.
The site witnessed violent disturbances two weeks ago when Israeli paramilitary police stormed the Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) in an effort to arrest Palestinians who had repulsed an attempt by a group of Jewish fanatics who were trying to arrogate "prayer rights" at the Islamic shrine.
Israel rejects UN council backing for Gaza war crimes report
Rory McCarthy
UN human rights council passes resolution endorsing Goldstone report, which accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes.
Israel has angrily rejected what it called a "one-sided" resolution by the UN human rights council today that backed a highly critical report on the Gaza war and opened the way to possible international war crimes investigations.
The council voted to endorse the report by a South African judge, Richard Goldstone, which accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the three-week war in Gaza in January. Goldstone, whose work was hailed by leading international human rights groups, found there may be individual criminal responsibility over the killing of civilians.
Imperial Globalization and Social Movements in Latin America
James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer
Introduction
The unimpeded growth of Euro-American capitalism following the collapse of Soviet and European communism, the conversion of China and Indochina to state capitalism, and the rise of US backed, free market military dictatorships in Latin America give new impetus to Western empire building, labeled “globalization”.
The process of globalization was the result of ‘external’ and ‘internal’ conditions and class coalitions embedded in the social structure of both the imperial and ‘recipient’ or targeted countries. The expansion of capital was neither a linear process or continual expansion (accumulation) nor of sustained collaboration by the targeted countries. Crises in the imperial centers and regime transformations in collaborator regimes affected the flow of capital, trade, rules and regulations.
Venezuela is no tyranny
Francisco Dominguez
Honduras
Dictatorship has returned to Latin America in Honduras, not in the genuine, if imperfect, democracy of Venezuela
As Latin Americans witness the return of dictatorship – with Honduras suffering political executions, widespread repression and condemnation from human rights organisations about curtailing of press freedoms – it seems a strange time for the media to repeat opposition allegations that Venezuela is becoming a tyranny.
Venezuela is far from the "dictatorship which has a facade of democracy" described by General Raúl Baduel, who has been accused of corruption. What kind of tyranny oversees a 70% increase of participation in presidential elections, as Chávez has, or the government holding 13 free and fair elections in 10 years?
Funding Sweatshops Globally
by Stephen Lendman
In July 2008, SweatFree Communities (SFC) released a report titled, "Subsidizing Sweatshops: How Our Tax Dollars Fund the Race to the Bottom, and What Cities and States Can Do" in which it studied 12 factories in nine countries that produce employee uniforms for nine major companies.
Widespread human and labor rights violations were revealed, including child labor; illegal below-poverty wages; few or no benefits; forced or unpaid overtime; hazardous working conditions; verbal, physical, and sexual abuses; forced pregnancy testing to be hired and while employed; excessive long working hours causing physical ailments, stress, and harm; denial of free expression, association, and collective bargaining rights; and elaborate schemes to commit fraud and deceive corporate auditors.
In April 2009, Subsidizing Sweatshops II followed to provide more evidence of a global problem. It tracked developments in four factories from the first report and four new ones in five countries on three continents producing uniforms for nine major firms in China, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and America.
Jerusalem – Evicted Palestinian family keeps watch near home taken by settlers
Rev. Pat McCaughan
Most days, Sharihan Hannoun and her family sit along the sidewalk on dusty white plastic chairs watching the East Jerusalem home from which they were forcibly evicted, watching as the strangers who took it over come and go.
"Today we stay in the street 65 days," said Hannoun, on October 8. "The first few nights, we slept here," recalled the 20-year-old who was a psychology student at Birzeit University in Jerusalem. That was before August 2 early morning police raids left 37 members of her extended family homeless.
Hannoun, wearing black slacks, a long-sleeved white turtleneck sweater and matching white head covering worn by Muslim women, recalled being awakened at 5 a.m. when Israeli police broke down the front door of the home owned by her parents since 1956.
"I told them we have ownership papers. They said they didn't want to see them. They said, 'it's not your house, it's our house. They put a gun to my brother's back and said for him to leave the house. He is just 10 years old," she said. "They broke everything in the house, the television, everything," she recalled. "They went to the refrigerator and ate the food. They took my brother's football and started playing with it in the yard. They said, you are Palestinians and we can do what we want with you."
A salute to Turkey, a salute to Erdogan
By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine
The recent Turkish decision to exclude Israel from an aerial military exercise over Turkish territory is another indication that Turkey will not allow itself to be blackmailed by criminal international Zionism.
Following the decision, Zionist officials and media sought to mitigate its impact on the increasingly troubled relations with Turkey by claiming that it had little to do with the genocidal blitz which the Israeli army carried out in winter against the Gaza Strip.
However, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey, and other Turkish officials have made it amply clear that the cancellation of the military drill is consistent with the feelings of the vast bulk of the Turkish masses vis-à-vis the Nazi-like atrocities in the Gaza Strip.
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