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White Christian America versus Everybody Else
Sara Robinson
In the current issue of The Nation (which also featured a cover story co-authored by our own Bob Borosage), Chris Bowers pointed out a structural truth that lies at the heart of both American political parties. In the Age of Reagan, it came to pass that the GOP consolidated itself as the party of people who are white and Christian. Everybody else—black, brown, women, gays, immigrants, urban dwellers, non-Christians, you name it— found themselves on the receiving end of conservative scapegoating so often that they eventually decamped and aggregated in the other party. At this point, it's statistically true that If you are either not white or not Christian, then you are (with varying degrees of certainty, depending on what you identify as) far more likely to be a Democrat.
Ex-ISI Chief Says Purpose of New Afghan Intelligence Agency RAMA Is ‘to destabilize Pakistan’
Jeremy R. Hammond
Then Maj. Gen. Hamid Gul, Director General of the ISI (far left), with William Webster,
Director of Central Intelligence, Clair George, Deputy Director for Operations, and Milt
Bearden, CIA station chief, at a training camp for the mujahedeen in Pakistan's North-
West Frontier Province in 1987 (RAWA.org)
In an exclusive interview with Foreign Policy Journal, retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul responds to charges that he supports terrorism, discusses 9/11 and ulterior motives for the war on Afghanistan, claims that the U.S., Israel, and India are behind efforts to destabilize Pakistan, and charges the U.S. and its allies with responsibility for the lucrative Afghan drug trade.
Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul was the Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1987 to 1989, during which time he worked closely with the CIA to provide support for the mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Though once deemed a close ally of the United States, in more recent years his name has been the subject of considerable controversy. He has been outspoken with the claim that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were an “inside job”. He has been called “the most dangerous man in Pakistan”, and the U.S. government has accused him of supporting the Taliban, even recommending him to the United Nations Security Council for inclusion on the list of international terrorists.
The Evidence Mounts Still Further
Andrew Sullivan
You will notice once again that the New York Times is able to use the word "torture" to describe torture - but only when it is committed by governments other than that of the US. The NYT under the editorial guidance of Bill Keller has, by cowardice and weakness, abetted the degeneracy that Cheney accomplished.
I'll write at more length when I'm back off my summer bloggatical, but the question of torture - and the United States' embrace of inhumanity as a core American value under the presidency of George W. Bush - remains, in my view, the pre-eminent moral question in American politics. The descent of the United States - and of Americans in general - to lower standards of morality and justice than those demanded by Iranians of their regime is a sign of the polity's moral degeneracy.
BUSH'S LEGACY OF SHAME BEGAN WITH 9/11
Allen L Roland
We all know who authorized illegal torture in the Bush administration. It was Darth Vader himself, Dick Cheney ~ and his trusted accomplice Donald Rumsfeld ~ who were intent on masking their treasonous actions on 9/11 by the means of forced confessions of highly questionable, if not innocent, Muslim suspects:
As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11 ~ we must remember that 9/11 became the justification for virtually every abuse of power in the Bush/Cheney administration as well as the resultant breakdown in America's moral authority ~ which still continues today.
Organ Donation and Theft in Contemporary Jewish Folklore
By Gilad Atzmon
Donation According to Larry David
In his highly acclaimed TV satire ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, LA screen writer and comedian Larry David engages courageously with subjects to do with American Jewish identity. In his fifth season (2005) David tackles the subject of organ donation (1). Performing an American eccentric and egotistical Jew David is confronted with a serious dilemma. His best friend Richard Lewis (another Jewish comedian) happens to suffer an acute kidney failure. His survival is dependent on an urgent kidney donation and as one may expect Larry David is the perfect donor. David, who comes across as the ultimate selfish persona in American popular culture is obviously reluctant to donate his Kidney. He procrastinates, finds excuses and plays games. He even tries to make friends with a wealthy Orthodox Jew who is in a position to ‘sort things out’ as far as kidneys are concerned. He does it all just to avoid donating his own kidney to his best and closest friend.
Why Not Crippling Sanctions for Israel and the US?
Paul Craig Roberts
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
In Israel, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week Netanyahu called for “crippling sanctions” against Iran.
The kind of blockade that Netanyahu wants qualifies as an act of war. Israel has long threatened to attack Iran on its own but prefers to draw in the US and NATO.
Why does Israel want to initiate a war between the United States and Iran?
Is Iran attacking other countries, bombing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure?
No. These are crimes committed by Israel and the US.
Is Iran evicting peoples from lands they have occupied for centuries and herding them into ghettoes?
No, that’s what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for 60 years. What is Iran doing?
Iran is developing nuclear energy, which is its right as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran’s nuclear energy program is subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which consistently reports that its inspections find no diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.
America's Tortured Past
by Stephen Lendman
On August 24, an ACLU press release stated:
In response to two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits, "The government today handed over to the American Civil Liberties Union (one of dozens of documents comprising an unprecedented 130,000 previously secret pages, including) a detailed official description of the CIA's interrogation program."
Message to President Obama and Americans with a Conscience
eileen fleming
"There comes a time comes when silence is betrayal...History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
"We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims...We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular?
“We don’t want your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to trash the planet” The Federal Reserve, 2009
By Robert Singer
Having trouble understanding the events since the October 2008 financial crisis?
Any of this sound familiar:
Banks hoarding their TARP funds Gas prices going up when they should be going down Automobile dealerships closed without regard to profitability Health Care reform: The Kevorkian is out of jail early
Joe Finder Is CIA’s Keeper
As several here have noted, there is a particularly odious op-ed spinning the CIA torture innocence position in today's New York Times by self professed novelist Joseph Finder:
Mr. Holder doesn’t seem concerned that each of these cases was exhaustively reviewed, beginning in 2005, by career prosecutors under the supervision of the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Those men had access to the complete, unredacted report of the agency’s inspector general, an expurgated version of which was released on Monday. Yet these prosecutors recommended against criminal charges in all but one case. (That exception involved a contractor named David Passaro, who had assaulted a prisoner with a flashlight and kicked him in the groin, shortly after which the prisoner died. Mr. Passaro was convicted of assault and sentenced to eight years in prison.)
Mr. Holder’s decision, then, implies that justice wasn’t done five years ago probably because high-level officials in the George W. Bush administration put their thumbs on the scale of justice. This seems unlikely. The prosecutors in Virginia were well experienced in dealing with classified intelligence matters, as most of the federal intelligence agencies are in their district. They have a reputation for being hardheaded and unforgiving of C.I.A. transgressions.
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