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The "But For" costs: Why we’re broke
By Jeff Gates
Though brilliant in its simplicity and the ability to convey the scope and scale of this ongoing disaster, the presentation understates the long-term costs of this latest war.
In addition, it provides no means to identify the parties that brought us to this perilous point. It was Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who in Congressional testimony assured us Americans that the war in Iraq would cost no more than $50 billion, that it would be quickly over, that we would be welcomed, and that the costs would be recovered from the sale proceeds of Iraqi oil. As with the intelligence fixed around this same goal, none of what Wolfowitz said was true.
ARE HATE CRIME LAWS LEGALIZING TREASON?
Jeff Gates
Winning wars in the Information Age largely depends on winning the battle for public opinion. Thus the opinion-shaping role of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) when it attacked a high profile California professor for his criticism of Israeli policy in Palestine.
That ADL intimidation campaign successfully chilled debate on campuses nationwide during several time-critical months while a new president, promising the hope of change, reassessed U.S.-Israeli relations. His only change—endorsing more Israeli settlements on Palestinian land—quashed any hope of peace.
This ADL silencing strategy offers a microcosm of how the U.S. was induced to war in Iraq based on false intelligence. From the provocation of September 11, 2001 until the invasion of March 2003, war-planners ignored, dismissed or sought to silence anyone critical of the spurious premises offered for war.
Lebanon accepts Hezbollah’s weapons and Congress prepares its reply, 52 words that shook Washington and may light up the region
Franklin Lamb, Beirut
“It is the right of the Lebanese people, Army and the (Hezbollah led—ed.)Resistance to liberate the Shebaa Farms, the Kfar Shuba Hills and the northern part of the village of Ghajar as well as to defend Lebanon and its territorial waters in the face of any enemy by all available and legal means.”
So reads the Policy Declaration of the new Government of the Republic of Lebanon, issued on 11/26/09, four days after the celebration of Lebanon’s 66 years of independence from the French colonial power, achieved in 1943.
Legally, constitutionally, and politically, Lebanon’s new National Unity Government policy legitimizes, embraces, and incorporates by reference, according to some Pentagon and State Department analysts, the National Lebanese Resistance.
Political Prisoner Jalil Muntaqim Denied Parole
by Stephen Lendman
On November 18, Jalil Muntaqim (formerly Anthony Bottom) was refused parole a day after his November 17 hearing. The board called his record exemplary, but still denied him. Muntaqim thanked everyone who wrote letters of support and said he'll appeal the decision. Failing that, his next scheduled hearing is in June 2010. His earlier 2002, 2004 and 2006 hearings were also unsuccessful.
In a November 19 letter to supporters, he wrote as follows:
"The parole board ignored the overwhelming support from the community for my release, and denied me parole. I have come to the conclusion after this, my fourth parole appearance....that the parole system is not a fair and impartial decision making body. It is a political institution with a law enforcement agenda....incapable of being fair and impartial in cases where a police officer's death is involved....The judiciary generally supports the law enforcement agenda of the parole board."
New Study Shows Ten States Face Fiscal Crisis
by Stephen Lendman
The Pew Center on the States (PCS) "works to advance state policies that serve the public interest," through "credible research (to) advance nonpartisan, pragmatic solutions for pressing problems affecting Americans." Its new report titled, "Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril," says the following:
"Many economists are optimistic that America's Great Recession may be turning the corner. States, however, are not celebrating. Plagued by record-setting revenue losses, the housing bust and credit crisis, high unemployment and a host of other challenges, (they've) struggled through nearly two years of budgetary pain - and are bracing for more."
Wingnuts: 'Rogue', Rouge or Irrelevant?
by Len Hart The Existentialist Cowboy
Wingnuttery gets more absurd with each passing day. The wingnut la-la land has come un-glued and completely out of touch with reality. Found on Facebook a poignant reminder of the state of the economy, fact apparently lost on wingnuts!
Here's where I get my stamina and keep my sanity to:
Now --the right wing has derided Barack Obama's plan to put millions to work in a new industry --green energy! The right wing is in no position to deride anyone. This is the US right wing that put millions out of work with idiotic tax cuts and other windfalls for Wall Street bankers, buddies, and privileged elites. To these idiots and elites, I have an appropriate epithet that begins with the letter 'F' and ends with 'you'!
Zionist propaganda body seeks volunteers to distort Wikipedia input on Middle East
by Khalid Amayreh
A Zionist hasbara (propaganda) body based in North America is trying to recruit “volunteers” whose main job is to distort the input of the internet’s most visited websites in Israel’s favor.
Propaganda efforts are reportedly focused on popular sites such as Wikipedia, the huge on-line encyclopedia which can be edited by anyone.
CAMERA, which calls itself a “committee for accuracy in Middle East reporting in America,” already has a team of dozens of paid Jewish propagandists who regularly and often scandalously distort basic data pertaining to such themes as Israeli apartheid, Zionism and its ideological similarity to Nazism, Israeli state terror and ill-treatment of Palestinians as well as other issues related to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.
Social Media, Autism and Performance
Andrew Lehman
Clive Thompson's September Wired article, "The New Literacy," had me thinking several things.
The article describes an academic's conclusion that there is a writing renaissance going on with astonishing increases in writing by students as they use communications technologies. It has been believed by many that texting and social media are deprecating communication. Professor Andrea Lunsford concluded the opposite. New technologies are encouraging the young to share experiences by writing.
Several things come to mind.
Why U.S. Nukes Did Not Shorten the War with Japan
by Len Hart The Existentialist Cowboy
U.S. President Harry Truman is said to have nuked Japan because he wanted an 'unconditional surrender'! In fact, he got nothing more than what had been offered prior to the use of two nuclear weapons first against Hiroshima and, later, against Nagasaki. The Geneva Conventions which prohibit genocide were not codified until 1948. But it is the purpose of the law to codify prohibitions against acts that are --already --wrong! The law cannot make right a wrong nor can it make wrong acts that are clearly right!
I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that? Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of "face" --Dwight David Eisenhower
HUNGER RIOTS THEN, MILLIONS MISERABLY HUNGRY NOW
Excerpted with minor edits by Carolyn Bennett
Long lens of history frame a Revolution rising from misery, a relentless hunger amidst plenty.
"The people had patiently endured misery and oppression under Louis XV. As soon as that King died in 1774, they began to revolt, knowing well that, with a change of masters at the palace, there comes an inevitable slackening of authority. A continuous series of riots broke out between 1775 and 1777.
"These were the riots of hunger that until then had been repressed only by force. The harvest of 1774 had been bad and bread was scarce. Accordingly rioting broke out in April 1775.
"At Dijon the people took possession of the houses of the monopolists, destroyed their furniture and smashed up their flour-mills...
"Sometimes these risings had a religious character; sometimes they were to resist military enlistment - every levy of soldiers led to a riot... ; or it might be the salt tax against which the people rebelled, or the exactions of the tithes.
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