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US-Russian START treaty: A comprehensive flicker
Eric Walberg
Two floundering presidents grabbed at a chance to show some results. No one will be happy, as always with compromises.
The US administration is preening itself on finally clinching a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia, President Barack Obama calling it “the most comprehensive arms control agreement in nearly two decades”. It is to be signed in Prague 8 April, where Obama launched his campaign for a nuclear weapons-free world a year ago, and which was supposed to get a US missile defence base. Obama axed this, at least for the moment, to mollify the Russians.
Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Depravity
by Stephen Lendman
On February 3, 2010, after a sham trial, the Department of Justice announced Siddiqui's conviction for "attempting to murder US nationals in Afghanistan and six additional charges." When sentenced on May 6, she faces up to 20 years for each attempted murder charge, possible life in prison on the firearms charge, and eight years on each assault charge.
In March 2003, after visiting her family in Karachi, Pakistan, government Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agents, in collaboration with Washington, abducted Siddiqui and her three children en route to the airport for a flight to Rawalpindi, handed them over to US authorities who took them secretly to Bagram prison, Afghanistan for more than five years of brutal torture and unspeakable abuse, including vicious beatings and repeated raping.
Bogusly charged and convicted, Siddiqui was guilty only of being Muslim in America at the wrong time. A Pakistani national, she was deeply religious, very small, thoughtful, studious, quiet, polite, shy, soft-spoken, barely noticeable in a gathering, not extremist or fundamentalist, and, of course, no terrorist.
Iraq's Baby Steps Toward Democracy
By Adil E. Shamoo
The Obama administration may finally get some good news. Iraq’s recent elections for parliament might actually result in a non-sectarian, pro-American government. This outcome would enable the Obama administration to fulfill its goal of removing all but 50,000 support troops by this August and drawn U.S. forces down to zero by the end of 2011.
The resilient and courageous Iraqi people voted in higher percentages than the American electorate, with 62 percent of eligible voters going to the polls. This voter participation is a positive step toward a free, sovereign, and democratic Iraq. The future, however, will depend on the actions and attitudes of Iraqis, Americans and Iraq’s neighbors.
Moscow Bombings FORECAST
By Geopoliticalmonitor.com
Monday’s dual suicide bombing attack on the Moscow Metro will have profound consequences for Russian domestic politics.
It didn’t take long for the FSB to state the obvious: that a group from the North Caucasus is the likely culprit behind Monday’s bombings that killed 38 people during morning rush hour. Chechen rebel leaders such as Doku Umarov have warned that they will be expanding their field of operations into Russian territory as recent as last February. Moreover, early tests on various body fragments recovered from the two female suicide bombers have corroborated that they were native to the North Caucasus.
Why GOP Policies Are a Cruel Fraud
by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
U.S. GDP declines during GOP regimes. It does so because 'wealth' is literally transferred upward to a 'ruling elite' class, a laundered pay-off to the 'base'. At present, just one percent of the nation's total population owns, by some estimates, more wealth than is owned by about 95 percent of the rest of the population.
This is the culmination of a trend that may have begun in the era of infamous 'robber barons' whose banker of choice was J.P. Morgan. The trend reversed during WWII but resumed with Ronald Reagan's tax cut for the very wealthy in 1982.
9/11 Reconstruction: Mental Before Physical
Joel S. Hirschhorn
The failure to rebuild the World Trade Center site in Manhattan has received endless attention. But public anger about this failed reconstruction should not been seen so negatively. After all, mental reconstruction has also still not been successful and is surely more needed, with too many Americans still accepting the official government story about 9/11. This, despite a huge amount of compelling evidence that elements of the US government played some role, despite a very large, active 9/11 truth movement, and despite an impressive number of highly credible people demanding a new investigation as documented at patriotsquestion911.com.
Expected Obama Administration Backing for Indonesian State Terror
By Stephen Lendman
Indonesia's National Armed Forces (TNI), especially its thuggish Kopassus Special Forces Command, has a long, sordid human rights record, including political killings and massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians in East Timor, Aceh, Papua, and elsewhere in the country.
In response to the November 12, 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre of over 270 demonstrators in Dili, East Timor's capital, Congress restricted Indonesia's TNI from receiving International Military Education and Training (IMET). It brings foreign military officers to America for what's taught at the infamous School of the Americas (SOA, renamed WHINSEC ) - namely, the latest ways to kill, maim, torture, oppress, exterminate poor and indigenous people, overthrown democratically elected governments, suppress popular resistance movements, assassinate targeted leaders, and work cooperatively with Washington to solidify hard-right rule, intolerant of democratic rights, social justice, and progressive change.
Army Intel ACORNing WikiLeaks? Web Publisher Under Attack
Michael Collins
U.S. Army Counterterrorism issued a report that said WikiLeaks is a threat to U.S. security, particularly in Afghanistan. The report says that the organization should be destroyed and offered a plan. Does the government really think it can destroy WikiLeaks or is the leaked report part of a plan to smear the organization so badly, it will lose supporters and money?
Since its launch three years ago, WikiLeaks has produced more scoops than the Washington Post has in the past thirty years according to a report by The Guardian. The web based service was "founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and start-up company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa" according to their "About" page. WikiLeaks targets oppressive regimes throughout the world, as well as regimes seeking to repress information on illegal and unethical government actions and policies.
Health Care: What Did We Get? Where Are We? And, Where Do We Go From Here?
By Kevin Zeese
Prosperity Agenda
A year ago health care was in crisis. Its cost burdened individuals, businesses, and all levels of government. Americans were dying at a rate of 45,000 per year due to lack of access to health care, health care bankruptcies were rising. Change was urgently needed. The crisis was an opportunity to create the best health care system in the world.
Because we have extensive experience with three health systems, we could have had a very informed debate. The U.S. has a market-based system (private insurance-controlled health care); a single payer system (Medicare) and a socialist system (the Veterans Administration). We could have asked which worked best, which covered the most people, which was least expensive, and which produced the best health outcomes. This fact-based discussion could have resulted in putting in place an efficient, effective national health system moving the U.S. into the top tier of health programs from its current dismal ranking of 37th in the world.
Sarah Barracuda flirts with violence
Mary Shaw
On March 23, former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tweeted to her followers the following message:
Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" Pls see my Facebook page.
On her Facebook page was a U.S. map marking the locations of 20 House Democrats who voted for the health care bill and who represent districts that the Republicans carried in 2008. The 20 locations were marked with crosshairs. Not red dots or any other relatively benign symbols. No, they were marked with crosshairs.
So, of course, in light of all the recent death threats aimed at Democratic lawmakers by the tea party crazies, Palin has come under fire (no pun intended) for her use of gun-related words and symbols in her recent posts.
And rightly so.
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