Grateful Dissident

Six Children Killed In US Terrorist Attacks In Pakistan

2009-08-27T09:16:00.006-05:00

Toll rises in Pakistan drone attack

Al Jazeera, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/08/200982271735800769.html

UPDATED ON:Saturday, August 22, 2009 13:48 Mecca time, 10:48 GMT

The death toll from a suspected US air raid in Pakistan has risen after nine more bodies were pulled from the rubble, officials have said.

Three Pakistani intelligence officers said on Saturday that 21 people had been killed in the attack in the village of Dande Darpa Khel in North Waziristan a day earlier.

A local tribal elder said six children were among the dead.

The attack on a housing compound in the village was thought to have been aimed at Siraj Haqqani, a Taliban commander with suspected ties to al-Qaeda. It was unclear whether he was among the dead.

None of the dead were identified, but the officials said local informants told them all those in the compound were Afghans. Continued

U.S.-led Terrorist Attacks Continue In Afghanistan, More Innocent People Killed

2009-04-13T10:53:00.004-05:00

Afghan villagers say NATO strike killed civilians

By Amin Jalili

ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - An overnight NATO-led airstrike on a remote Afghan village killed six civilians, including two children, Afghan officials said on Monday, but Western forces said they had targeted armed militants.

Civilian deaths caused by foreign troops hunting the Taliban have become a major cause of friction between the Afghan government and its Western backers, and sapped support for the presence of Western forces in the country.

Click here to read the whole piece

U.S. Terrorist Attacks Kill Women and Children In Afghanistan

2009-04-11T08:15:00.004-05:00

Anger after Afghan family killed in US raid
22 hours ago

ALI DAYA, Afghanistan (AFP) — An Afghan army colonel whose wife and children died in a US-led raid demanded action against the troops responsible Friday as President Hamid Karzai condemned the killings.

The operation in the eastern province of Khost around midnight Wednesday killed the wife of Afghan National Army artillery commander Awal Khan, two of his children and a brother.

Click Here To Read The Whole Piece

3 Million "Liberated" Iraqi Widows Suffering Badly Under U.S. Military Occupation

2009-03-18T09:52:00.005-05:00

A Nation of Widows: Why Any Honest Discussion About Iraq Must Include the Plight of Women

By Rose Aguilar, AlterNet

Posted on March 6, 2009, Printed on March 11, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/130338/

In the run-up to the March 20, 2003 invasion of Iraq, then President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and Condoleeza Rice took to the airwaves to assure the world that their main goal was “liberation,” especially for women. Almost six years after the first bombs dropped, the women of Iraq have all but been forgotten.

Last month, Nawal al-Samarrai, Iraq’s State Minister for Women’s Affairs, quit her job to protest a lack of resources and government support. She faced the daunting task of helping women with a budget that had been slashed from $7,500 to $1,500 per month.

“I think it is wrong to stay as a minister without doing anything for my people, especially in this time and in this situation of Iraqi women -- we have an army of widows, violated women, detainees, illiteracy and unemployment -- many, many problems. I had to resign," she said in an interview with National Public Radio.

Al-Samarrai says there are more than three million widows in Iraq, most of them with children and without a social safety net or steady source of income. Because so many men have been killed by consecutive wars, some estimates put the rate of women to men at 65/35.

As the six-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq approaches, the voices of the women who are dealing with growing unemployment, violence, and seclusion are still missing from the conversation about the continued occupation and President Obama’s decision to keep 50,000 troops in their country.

A new book attempts to give those women a voice and examine why military intervention and occupation have failed to “liberate” them. In What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq, authors Nadje Al-Ali, Reader in Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Nicola Pratt, Lecturer in Comparative Politics and International Relations at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, write, “Official rhetoric puts women at center stage, but we show that in reality women’s rights and women’s lives have been exploited in the name of competing political agendas.”

The authors also challenge the widespread held belief in the Western media and among many U.S. politicians that something inherent in Middle Eastern, Muslim, and Iraqi culture is responsible for the ongoing violence, sectarianism, and systematic erosion of women’s rights in Iraq. “We argue that it is not Islam or ‘culture’ that has pushed Iraqi women back into their homes. Instead we blame specific and rapidly changing political, economic, and social conditions as well as a wide range of national, regional, and international actors,” they write.

When the Western media does highlight the plight of Iraqi women, they almost always fail to note that Iraqi women activists have been organizing since the 1920 revolution against British occupation. The Women’s Awakening Club, the first women’s organization in Iraq, was founded in 1923. The Iraqi Women’s Union, a feminist organization founded in 1945, tackled previously taboo issues such as prostitution, divorce, workplace issues, child custody, and property rights.

“Iraqi women were once at the forefront of the region with regard to women’s education, labor force participation, and political activism,” write Al-Ali and Pratt.

They argue that it is essential for antiwar movements to address the issue of women’s rights and resist U.S. imperialism simultaneously. “Any analysis of what went wrong in Iraq must put gender firmly on the agenda.”

AlterNet caught up with Nadje Al-Ali on a recent visit to San Francisco. Al-Ali is founding member of Act Together: Women’s Action for Iraq, a UK-based group formed in 2000 to campaign against the economic sanctions on Iraq and since late 2001, the U.S. invasion of Iraq. On August 1, 2007, Al-Ali’s uncle and 16-year-old cousin were killed in their home in Baghdad by unmasked gunmen.

Read the Rest of the Interview Here: http://www.alternet.org/story/130338/

Laughing All The Way From The Bank

2009-03-03T11:13:00.000-06:00

Protest U.S. Military Aggression, March On The Pentagon!

2009-03-01T11:50:00.007-06:00

Visit http://www.PentagonMarch.org for more info

7 Reasons You Should Join the March on the Pentagonon March 21, 2009

Please post the March 21st event on your Facebook and MySpace pages, and forward it widely to your friends and family.

1 The war in Afghanistan is expanding and widening. President Obama announced last week that another 17,000 troops are on their way to Afghanistan. Only 18 percent of Afghanis support this escalation and only 34 percent of the people of the United States approve of the added troops despite the president’s popularity, according to the Washington Post/ABC poll announced on February 17, 2009. This is a colonial war. The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, was not involved in the decision to add more occupying troops into his country. Rather, he was “informed of the deployments in a telephone call with Obama” on February 17, according to the Washington Post (February 18, 2009).

2 About 350,000 U.S. troops and U.S.-paid private contractors (mercenaries) still occupy Iraq. The Iraqi people want the occupation to end. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is insisting that only two of the 14 combat brigades in Iraq exit in 2009. The war and occupation of Iraq costs $430 million each day. If the U.S. government were to end the military occupation, any and all future Iraqi governments would return to a position of political independence from the economic and political dictates of the United States. Iraq’s anti-colonial legacy has created a political reality that prohibits the country from becoming like Kuwait or Saudi Arabia--an out-and-out dependency on U.S. imperialism. That is the real reason that the U.S. government fears a complete disengagement from Iraq and an end to its military occupation.

3 Israel’s Siege of Gaza remains in place, with the full backing of Washington. The U.S. government has continued to fund Israel’s war and blockade against the people of Gaza. The Pentagon provided the funding, and technical and logistical support for the establishment of the Israeli war machine, including its massive cluster and white phosphorous bomb arsenal, and the country’s large cache of nuclear bombs.

4 The new Justice Department has announced that it will continue the policy of renditions, meaning the CIA and Pentagon will capture and kidnap individuals anywhere in the world and transfer them to other countries. “The Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.” (LA Times, Feb. 1, 2009)

5 The new administration has stepped up the air strikes that are killing an increasingly large number of Pakistani civilians. Unmanned drone bombing attacks violate Pakistani sovereignty and are creating an ocean of resentment and anger inside of Pakistan. The U.S. government has no right to carry out these drone bombing strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The people of the United States would not accept the legitimacy of other governments ordering air attacks in the United States. We must openly and loudly reject such tactics by the government that speaks in our name and spends our tax dollars for such aggression.

6 The real Pentagon war budget is over $1.3 trillion annually. This is greater than the combined total of most of the other countries in the world, including all the NATO countries, and Russia and China. Some label this “waste spending” because it spends precious resources to build exotic and high cost weapons, a new generation of nuclear weapons, and space-based war fighting capabilities, while filling the coffers of the big investors (i.e., the biggest banks) in the war corporations. Pentagon contracting is often based on guaranteed “cost-plus” contracts that reward price gouging since corporate profit is based on a fixed percentage above their expenses. Another label for this process is “extreme corruption” and theft from the public treasury.

7 More than 20 million people are now unemployed and under-employed. Nine million families are either in foreclosure or are at risk of foreclosure this year, according to the statistics just released by the government. Forty-seven million people are without health care. College tuition hikes are soaring and millions of students are at risk of being forced out of school. The people want change. They don’t want a simple tweaking of Bush’s criminal foreign policies. They want to put people's needs before corporate greed. They want an end to wars of aggression that are wreaking havoc, death and destruction abroad, and diverting urgently needed resources in the service of semi-colonialism and Empire.

Get Involved
Find Transportation to DC
Sign up if you are organizing transportation
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Go to http://www.pentagonmarch.org for more information.

Obama Pledges NOT To End Iraq War, Ever

2009-02-26T22:06:00.006-06:00

so much for *hope* that a *change* in presidency would put an end to the hostile u.s. imperialism in iraq. i'd like to know obama's definition of "u.s. interests".

Associated Press
President Barack Obama told lawmakers on Thursday he plans to withdraw most American troops from Iraq by August 2010 but leave tens of thousands behind to advise Iraqi forces and protect U.S. interests, congressional officials said.

snip
In a closed-door meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders, Obama and his top advisers estimated that 35,000 to 50,000 troops would remain in Iraq after the bulk of troops are withdrawn.

Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq war and pledged to do so in 16 months.
He said in his speech to the marines in Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, the u.s. will:
"....retain a transitional force to carry out three distinct functions: training, equipping, and advising Iraqi Security Forces as long as they remain non-sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilianand military efforts within Iraq."
I have problems with what Obama is telling us.
Implying that Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are "non-sectarian" stinks. The ISF's main role is to protect Iraq's new government, which was created under U.S. influence, is supported by the U.S., and has been deservedly accused of instituting sectarian policies (eg: http://tinyurl. com/atl4ke ). In my cynical view, Obama's "non-sectarian" remark is another classic example of schizophrenic, Orwellian double-speak from Washington, when translated means, "a function of the U.S. transitional force in Iraq will be to enable the sectarianism that's beneficial to the U.S. in its pursuit of foreign-policy goals."
Another reason to keep up to 50,000 troops in Iraq, in Obama's words, is to conduct "targeted counter- terrorism missions". Could be this was just a slip of the tongue and he meant to say, "targeted counter-counter- terrorism missions." Nah. Obama, like Bush, would never publicly acknowledge the fact that when the U.S. uses violence to coerce people (on a massive scale in Iraq) it's committing acts of terrorism or that victims of U.S. terrorism have a right to defend themselves. In Orwellian double-speak from Washington language, victims can be terrorists and terrorists can be terrorists, victims, and/or liberators.
Lastly, Obama says that a third function of the up to 50,000 troop transitional force is to protect "our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq." If I use examples of past U.S. military efforts as a guide, "ongoing military efforts" means the ongoing murder ( eg: http://tinyurl. com/dabnpg ) , rape (eg: http://tinyurl. com/avswef ), and torture (eg: http://tinyurl. com/bkjm5l ) of innocent Iraqis.
Shameful that is.

On 'Fundamentalist Consumerism'

2009-02-24T17:09:00.004-06:00

According to the author, we are psychologically, socially, and spiritually assaulted by a consumerism-based culture that creates increasing material expectations, devalues human connectedness, socializes people to be self-absorbed, obliterates self-reliance, alienates people form normal human emotional reactions, and sells false hope that creates more pain.

I think he's right on.

Other consequences of being 'assaulted', in my view, are apathy and complacency, which could explain why we can so easily rationalize and passively accept grave injustices....
-es

(source: http://www.zmag.org/zmag )

Fundamentalist Consumerism and an Insane Society

February 2009

By Bruce E. Levine

Levine's ZSpace page

At a giant Ikea store in Saudi Arabia in 2004, three people were killed by a stampede of shoppers fighting for one of a limited number of $150 credit vouchers. Similarly, in November 2008, a worker at a New York Wal-Mart was trampled to death by shoppers intent on buying one of a limited number of 50-inch plasma HDTVs.

Jdiniytai Damour, a temporary maintenance worker was killed on "Black Friday." In the predawn darkness, approximately 2,000 shoppers waited impatiently outside Wal-Mart, chanting, "Push the doors in." According to Damour's fellow worker Jimmy Overby, "He was bum-rushed by 200 people.

They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me." Witnesses reported that Damour, 34 years old, gasped for air as shoppers continued to surge over him. When police instructed shoppers to leave the store after Damour's death, many refused, some yelling, "I've been in line since yesterday morning."

The mainstream press covering Damour's death focused on the mob of crazed shoppers and, to a lesser extent, irresponsible Wal-Mart executives who failed to provide security. However, absent in the corporate press was anything about a consumer culture and an insane society in which marketers, advertisers, and media promote the worship of cheap stuff.

Along with journalists, my fellow mental health professionals have also covered up societal insanity. An exception is the democratic-socialist psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1900-1980). Fromm, in The Sane Society (1955), wrote: "Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself."

While people can resist the cheap-stuff propaganda and not worship at Wal-Mart, Ikea, and other big-box cathedrals—and stay out of the path of a mob of fundamentalist consumers—it is difficult to protect oneself from the slow death caused by consumer culture. Human beings are every day and in numerous ways psychologically, socially, and spiritually assaulted by a culture which:

creates increasing material expectations
devalues human connectedness
socializes people to be self-absorbed
obliterates self-reliance
alienates people from normal human emotional reactions
sells false hope that creates more pain

Increasing material expectations. These expectations often go unmet and create pain, which fuels emotional difficulties and destructive behaviors. In a now classic 1998 study examining changes in the mental health of Mexican immigrants who came to the United States, public policy researcher William Vega found that assimilation to U.S. society meant three times the rate of depressive episodes for these immigrants. Vega also found major increases in substance abuse and other harmful behaviors. Many of these immigrants found themselves with the pain of increased material expectations that went dissatisfied and they also reported the pain of diminished social support.

Devaluing of human connectedness. A 2006 study in the American Sociological Review noted that the percentage of Americans who reported being without a single close friend to confide in rose in the last 20 years from 10 percent to almost 25 percent. Social isolation is highly associated with depression and other emotional problems. Increasing loneliness, however, is good news for a consumer economy that thrives on increasing numbers of "buying units"—more lonely people means selling more televisions, DVDs, psychiatric drugs, etc.

Promotes selfishness. Self-absorption is one of many reasons for U.S. skyrocketing rates of depression and other emotional difficulties—and self-absorption is exactly what a consumer culture demands. The Buddha, 2,500 years ago, recognized the relationship between selfish craving and emotional difficulties, and many observers of human beings, from Spinoza to Erich Fromm, have come to similar conclusions.

Obliterates self-reliance. The loss of self-reliance can create painful anxiety, which fuels depression and other problematic behaviors. In modern society, an increasing number of people—women as well as men—cannot cook a simple meal. They will never know the anti-anxiety effects of being secure in their ability to prepare their own food, grow their own vegetables, hunt, fish, or gather food for survival. In a consumer culture, such self-reliance makes no sense. At some level, people know that should they lose their incomes—not impossibilities these days—they have no ability to survive.

Alienation from humanity. The priests of consumer culture—advertisers and marketers—know that fundamentalist consumers will buy more if they are alienated from such normal reactions as boredom, frustration, sadness, and anxiety. If these priests can convince us that a given emotional state is shameful or evidence of a disease, then we will be more likely to buy not only psychiatric drugs, but also all kinds of products to make ourselves feel better. When we become frightened and alienated from a natural human reaction, this "pain over pain" creates more fuel for depression and other self-destructive behaviors and harmful actions.

Pain of false hope. The false hope of fundamentalist consumerism is that we will one day discover a product that can predictably manipulate moods without any downsides. Modern psychiatry is a full member of consumer culture. Its "Holy Grail" is a search for the antidepressant that can take away the pain of despair, but not destroy life. In the late 19th century, Freud thought he had found it with cocaine. In the middle of the 20th century, psychiatrists thought they had found it with amphetamines, and later with tricyclic antidepressants like Tofranil and Elavil. At the end of the 20th century, there were the SSRIs, such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft, which were ultimately found to create dependency and painful withdrawal and to be no more effective than placebos. Whatever the antidepressant drug, it is introduced as taking away depression without destroying life. Time after time, it is then discovered that when one tinkers with neurotransmitters, there is—as there is with electroshock and psycho-surgery—damage to life.

Fundamentalists reject both reason and experience. Fundamentalists are attached to dogma and if their dogma fails, they don't give it up, but instead resolve to deepen their faith and double down on their dogma.

Erich Fromm, 54 years ago, concluded: "Man [sic] today is confronted with the most fundamental choice; not that between Capitalism or Communism, but that between robotism (of both the capitalist and the communist variety), or Humanistic Communitarian Socialism. Most facts seem to indicate that he is choosing robotism and that means, in the long run, insanity and destruction. But all these facts are not strong enough to destroy faith in man's reason, good will, and sanity. As long as we can think of other alternatives, we are not lost."

Breaking free of fundamentalist consumerism means thinking of alternatives and it also means an active defiance: choosing to experience the various dimensions of life that have been excluded by the dogma.

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007).

US Supported Israeli Government Set To Destroy Palestinian Homes In East Jerusalem

2009-02-24T14:30:00.002-06:00

Palestinians ask Obama to press Israel to halt demolitions

Monday, February 23, 2009 - AFP

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) — The Palestinian Authority urged the US president on Monday to press Israel to scrap a plan to raze almost 90 homes in annexed Arab east Jerusalem.

"We call on President Barack Obama to intervene personally to have this project stopped," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, one of the main aides of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

The Palestinian owners of 88 houses in the Silwan neighbourhood have received eviction notices saying that the structures will be destroyed because they were built or expanded without the necessary permits. The move would affect about 1,500 people.

"It is a massacre that Israel will commit in this Holy City," Abed Rabbo told a news conference, calling for "urgent Arab and international action to halt this dangerous project."

He said some of the houses affected by the orders had been built before Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War.

He called for a day-long strike in east Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied West Bank to protest against the plan.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, which groups the six Gulf Arab states, backed the call for US intervention to stop what it called these "racist acts that defy human rights and international law." Read On

Muntather Zaidi, My Hero

2009-02-20T20:15:00.004-06:00

Iraqi shoe-thrower's case is adjourned

Throngs crowd a court in support of Muntather Zaidi, the man who hurled his shoes at President Bush. Judges will decide March 12 whether the assault charge is warranted.

By Tina Susman and Raheem Salman, LA Times
February 20, 2009

Reporting from Baghdad — It was the hottest ticket in town. It drew spectators from as far away as Sweden and sparked a scramble for choice seats. Police formed human chains to block the crowds that surged forward to glimpse the star attraction: a defiant-looking man in black loafers.

This time, Muntather Zaidi's shoes stayed put as he went on trial Thursday for flinging his footwear at President Bush during a December news conference in Baghdad. If convicted of assaulting a visiting head of state, the Iraqi journalist could face 15 years in prison. Nobody questions whether Zaidi, 30, hurled his shoes at the president's face during Bush's farewell visit to Iraq on Dec. 14. The act was captured live on TV and has been replayed endlessly, like a spectacular touchdown pass.

Nor does Zaidi deny trying to clock Bush as he stood at a lectern beside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki that night, shortly before the two leaders sat down to dinner.

On Thursday, standing in the wooden defendant's pen, Zaidi said he acted in a burst of rage as Bush, "smiling that icy smile," spoke of achievements in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in March 2003 and mentioned his upcoming meal with Maliki.

Zaidi, voice calm but forceful and an Iraqi flag draped like a cravat around his neck, said it was more than he could bear. "I thought about what the achievements were -- killing about a million Iraqis," Zaidi said. Read On

In Amerika Today: Rising Poverty, Lengthening Bread Lines, Flooded Food Pantries

2009-02-18T23:35:00.003-06:00

America on $195 a Week

How the working poor get by. Barely.

—By Sasha Abramsky Mother Jones
January/February 2009 Issue

"I'll take a sandwich to work and that's about it," says Aubretia Edick, who is 58 and works in the pharmacy department of a Wal-Mart in Hudson, New York. "I drink a lot of tea. Once in a blue moon I'll go into Save-A-Lot and I'll get some meat. Eggs is kinda like a luxury kind of thing."

Edick first landed a $6.40-an-hour gig at Wal-Mart back in 2001, and over time her wages inched upward, reaching $10.50 last year. But with inflation factored in, it isn't that much better than when she first started. To make matters worse, while Edick was technically full time, her manager often slashed her hours due to the slowing economy. In mid-2008, she was grossing roughly $297 a week—$195 after taxes and deductions.

It's not just the unemployed who are hurting. Across the country, unskilled, nonunionized workers like Edick are barely scraping by on stagnant or declining wages. Bob Pollin, codirector of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, calculates that a single person needs about $400 a week, pretax, to achieve even a semblance of economic security—the ability to pay bills on time, eat three square meals a day, and set aside a small rainy-day fund. By Pollin's calculation, tens of millions of American workers fall short of that minimum.

You'll find many of them in food prep, where more than 11 million Americans command a median hourly wage of $8.24, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are another 4.5 million workers doing maintenance-related tasks for $10.18 an hour, 3.3 million in "personal care" at $9.50, and 14.5 million in retail jobs that pay $11.41. Last year, Wal-Mart said its employees averaged $10.83 an hour, although labor-activist group Wal-Mart Watch claims that many longtime workers still make less than $10. These meager wages have helped push 6.2 million more Americans into poverty between 2000 and 2007. And that was before the banking industry imploded.

The fallout can be seen in breadlines across the country. Dozens of food-pantry workers I've interviewed for my upcoming book on hunger report a flood of working-poor clients. Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest), a nonprofit that supplies 63,000 pantries and once primarily served "the poorest of the poor," learned in 2006 that more than one-third of its beneficiaries come from working households. "We're seeing faces we've never seen before," says spokesman Ross Fraser. At a pantry in Gallup, New Mexico, visited back when gas prices were soaring, one 29-year-old Navajo woman told me how the grueling drive to her 7-Eleven job in the town of Cuba came to burn up nearly half of her $6.80-per-hour take. In the end, the math didn't make sense, so she quit. "I feed my three boys potatoes," she said. "We eat two meals a day—just breakfast and dinner. Usually oatmeal for breakfast, and in the evening, gravy potatoes with tortillas."

Edick's monthly take-home pay—about $800 at the time I visited—doesn't go far either. She lives in a tiny apartment with a broken stove and mostly empty fridge that barely works. Rent and utilities run about $450 a month; when it's cold outside, she often sets the thermostat to 50 degrees to lower her bill. Gas and car insurance cost another $160 or so, depending on prices at the pump. And then there are the doctor visits, covered only after a $1,000 deductible—plus medicines for a thyroid problem, chronic anxiety, and osteoporosis.

To balance the budget, Edick often skimps on food, some weeks spending little more than $10 on groceries, about one-quarter what the federal food stamp program calculates is needed for three "thrifty meals" a day. She patronizes the grimy discount stores whose prices run even lower than Wal-Mart's, and can tick off their notable sales going back for months. "I had some oranges," she recalls with a self-deprecating smile. "A couple of months ago, they had grapes on sale." And, "If it's less than three dollars for a package of six steaks, that looks like a good deal to me." (She tries not to think too hard about the quality of a 50-cent steak.) Her staples include PB&J, canned ham salad, soup: "I'll get chicken noodle or Campbell's Chunky. There's meat in there. You can pour it over noodles and put butter on it. It's like a delicacy."

In essence, the nation's biggest employers of unskilled labor often leave workers having to feed from the public trough. In 2004, a year in which Wal-Mart reported $9.1 billion in profits, the retailer's California employees collected $86 million in public assistance, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley. Other studies have revealed widespread use of publicly funded health care by Wal-Mart employees in numerous states. In 2004, Democratic staffers of the House education and workforce committee calculated that each 200-employee Wal-Mart store costs taxpayers an average of more than $400,000 a year, based on entitlements ranging from energy-assistance grants to Medicaid to food stamps to WIC—the federal program that provides food to low-income women with children.

For her part, Edick, unlike many Americans, hasn't resorted to handouts. (An estimated 28 million people were on food stamps as of last April, up from 17 million in 2000.) "There's times I'm hungry, and I'll look in the refrigerator for something—I'll find a snack pudding. Some leftover rice," Edick says softly. "I'm not starving or anything like that."

Sasha Abramsky's new book, Breadline USA, is due out in May from PoliPoint Press.

Obama Escalates US-led Terrorist Attacks In Afghanistan, More Innocent Women and Children Killed

2009-02-18T18:59:00.006-06:00

Afghans say 13 civilians killed in US-led strike

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) — Afghan authorities said Wednesday that at least 13 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a US-led air strike on militants, prompting the military to order an inquiry.

The latest charges of civilian casualties from foreign operations follow tensions on the issue between Kabul and Washington, its main military backer in an escalating fight against a Taliban insurgency.

The strike outside the western city of Herat on Monday targeted a "key insurgent commander" named Gholam Yahya Akbari, the US military said.

"Killed in the attack were up to 15 militants suspected of associating with Yahya," it said.
However, provincial authorities said teams sent to the area to investigate found that civilians were killed.

"The information we have states that 13 civilians have been killed in that air strike -- six women, two children and five men," said provincial government spokesman Naqibullah Arwin.

The identities of three other men killed in the same attack were unclear, the spokesman said.
"Initial information indicates that two of the three bodies could also be civilians. Apparently they were two car mechanics taken there to fix a broken car which belonged to the armed opposition," Arwin said.

Ikramuddin Yawar, police chief for western Afghanistan, earlier confirmed the deaths of six women and two children whom he said were from a nomad tribe, and were killed close to their tents. Read On

Un-Changely, Obama Surges Troops In Afghanistan

2009-02-17T18:43:00.003-06:00

more troops, more death & destruction, more billion$ (that could be spent on people's needs here in the US), more of the same....

Obama OKs 17,000 new troops for Afghanistan
Additional Marines, Army soldiers expected to deploy in coming months

NBC News and news services

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama approved adding some 17,000 U.S. troops for the flagging war in Afghanistan, his first significant move to change the course of a conflict that his closest military advisers have warned the United States is not winning.

"To meet urgent security needs, I approved a request from (Defense) Secretary Gates to deploy a Marine Expeditionary Brigade later this spring and an Army Stryker Brigade and the enabling forces necessary to support them later this summer," Obama said in a statement issued by the White House. Read On

US Military Officials Commit Major Fraud In Iraq?

2009-02-17T18:17:00.004-06:00

( the RAW Story is also covering this breaking news here: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Missing_Iraq_billions_could_be_greatest_0216.html )

A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff
Senior US soldiers investigated over missing Iraq reconstruction billions

By Patrick Cockburn in Sulaimaniyah, Northern Iraq
The Independent, Monday, 16 February 2009

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.

"I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.
In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering.

Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown. One of the few visible signs of government work on Baghdad's infrastructure is a tireless attention to planting palm trees and flowers in the centre strip between main roads. Those are then dug up and replanted a few months later.

Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. In 2004-05, the entire Iraq military procurement budget of $1.3bn was siphoned off from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in return for 28-year-old Soviet helicopters too obsolete to fly and armoured cars easily penetrated by rifle bullets. Iraqi officials were blamed for the theft, but US military officials were largely in control of the Defence Ministry at the time and must have been either highly negligent or participants in the fraud. Read On

The Harder They Come, The Harder They Fall

2009-02-15T00:26:00.001-06:00

US-led NATO Forces Kill Woman & Children In Afghanistan

2009-02-14T22:18:00.002-06:00

Afghanistan condemns civilian deaths in Australian raid

Fri Feb 13, 2009 6:44am EST

By Jonathon Burch

KABUL, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Afghanistan condemned on Friday the killing of civilians in a raid by Australian soldiers in the south of the country which it says was not coordinated with Afghan forces.

The Australian Defence Force said five children had been killed in a shootout between Taliban insurgents and Australian Special Forces in southern Uruzgan province on Thursday, where they were "clearing" a number of compounds.

The Afghan Defence Ministry said one woman and two children were killed and eight other people wounded in the attack."The Defence Ministry condemns the martyring of one woman and two children and the wounding of eight others ... in an operation by international forces ... and asks international forces not to conduct operations without the coordination of Afghan forces," the ministry said in a statement. Read On

US Army Neglects Combat Veterans, Suicides On The Rise

2009-02-14T22:04:00.002-06:00

Death in the USA: The Army's fatal neglect
Returning U.S. combat soldiers are committing suicide and murder in alarming numbers. In a special series, Salon uncovers the habitual mistreatment behind the preventable deaths.

Editor's note: This is the introduction to a weeklong series of stories called "Coming Home." Read the first story in the series here; see photos of Heidi Lieberman painting over her son's suicide note, and a copy of the "Hurt Feelings Report," here.

By Mark Benjamin and Michael de Yoanna
Salon.com

Feb. 9, 2009 FORT CARSON, Colo. -- Preventable suicides. Avoidable drug overdoses. Murders that never should have happened. Four years after Salon exposed medical neglect at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that ultimately grew into a national scandal, serious problems with the Army's healthcare system persist and the situation, at least at some Army posts, continues to deteriorate.

This story is no longer just about lack of medical care. It's far worse than sighting mold and mouse droppings in the barracks. Late last month the Army released data showing the highest suicide rate among soldiers in three decades. At least 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008.

Another 15 deaths are still under investigation as potential suicides. "Why do the numbers keep going up?" Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a Jan. 29 Pentagon news conference. "We can’t tell you." On Feb. 5, the Army announced it suspects 24 soldiers killed themselves last month, more than died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Read On

50,000 People Homeless After U.S.-Supported Violent Rampage In Gaza

2009-01-29T15:08:00.005-06:00

Uprooted lives

'The struggle now is to come to terms with what physically happened here.'

By Ewa Jasiewicz - Jabaliya, Gaza
The Palestine Chronicle

Yesterday saw the first canvas tents go up in the Gaza strip to house internally displaced people. The UN estimates 50,000 people have been made homeless due to the bombing and bulldozing of homes and properties by Israeli occupation forces in Israel's 21 day offensive in the Gaza Strip. The displacement is just meters in the case of many families who don't want to move far from their ancestral land, and have opted to move into tents on the site of their destroyed houses.

People have lost more than their homes here. Entire families, living on family land, handed down throughout generations, have had their protection, life's investment, and community networks literally crushed. The Al Eer family, living on land close to the border in 'Izbat 'Abed Rabbu had eleven homes reduced to rubble, and had five members dragged out from under one home. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, medical crews found Ibrahim Mohammed al-'Err, 11; Rakan Mohammed al-'Err, 4; Fidaa' Mohammed al-'Err, 17; Iman Nember al-'Err, 27; and Mohammed Mousa al-'Err, 48 in the early hours of Sunday 18th January. Ibrahim al-Err, standing in the ruins of his home told me his family left their home on January 7th, after being told by Israeli Occupation Forces to get out. The family was told to leave immediately by loudhailers perched on tanks. 'We saw 10s of tanks, they were everywhere, we didn’t even have five minutes, we didn’t have time to take our belongings'. Nasser al-Err, 40, living close by explained, 'My sons left without their shoes, I had 5-6000 Dinars at home – I don’t know where it is or how to reach it. My son is disabled, where will he go?'

The Ajrawi family lost five houses, the Jned family at least four. Naima Ajrami's vulnerable asbestos roofed three bedroom home housed nine people. 'We now live with our family in Falluja.' She gestures to the crushed brick, furniture and pieces of her life behind her and under her feet. 'We built this house ourselves. This is not the first time it's been destroyed; half of it was bulldozed in the invasion of 2005.' She lets her hands fall down, 'I don’t know how we will rebuild it, my husband has no work, I don’t know, we wont be able to rebuild'. Read On

How Many Deaths Will It Take

2009-01-26T02:10:00.001-06:00

U.S. Terror Attacks Continue In Iraq, More Innocent People Killed

2009-01-25T12:57:00.002-06:00

U.S. troops kill ex-Iraqi army officer, his wife in northern Iraq
www.chinaview.cn 2009-01-25 16:59:41

BAGHDAD, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- U.S. troops stormed the house of a former Iraqi army officer in a village in northern Iraq, killing him and his wife and wounding his daughter, U.S. military and an Iraqi police source said Sunday.

A police source told Xinhua that a U.S. force conducted a pre-dawn raid Saturday on the house of Dhiya Hussein in the village ofKanusiyah, near the town of Hawijah, some 70 km south of Kirkuk.

During the operation, the troops opened fire on Hussein, who was a colonel in former Iraqi army, killing him and his wife and wounded his eight-year-old daughter, the source said.
read on

U.S. Terror Attacks Continue In Afghanistan, More Innocent People Killed

2009-01-25T10:36:00.003-06:00

Afghans protest against U.S. on civilian deaths report

Sun Jan 25, 2009 12:30pm EST
By Mohammad Rafiq

MEHTAR LAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Thousands of Afghans protested against President Hamid Karzai and the United States on Sunday over reports of fresh civilian deaths caused by U.S.-led troops during a raid against Taliban militants.

The issue of civilian casualties is sensitive in Afghanistan and has eroded public support for Karzai's government and the foreign troops backing it.

It has also caused a rift between Karzai and his Western allies more than seven years after U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban's government.

The operation causing the latest controversy happened this week in eastern Laghman province. The U.S. military said on Saturday that troops, backed by air support, had killed 15 militants in an overnight operation.

Assadullah Wafa, a Karzai adviser investigating the deaths, said on Sunday that "16 civilians, many of them children and women, were killed" in the operation. read on

U.S. Terror Attacks Continue In Pakistan, More Innocent People Killed

2009-01-25T10:32:00.003-06:00

Thousands attend funeral of drone victims

Sunday, January 25, 2009

By Mushtaq Yusufzai, Malik Mumtaz & Irfan Burki

PESHAWAR/MIRAMSHAH/WANA: Thousands of tribesmen on Saturday attended the funeral prayers of the victims of Friday’s drone attacks in the North and South Waziristan Agencies. They condemned the killings and asked US President Barack Obama to spend the money on the welfare of the tribal people instead of killing them with sophisticated weapons.

Hundreds of tribesmen thronged Zyaraki village of North Waziristan Agency (NWA) to attend the funeral prayers of those killed in the drone attack.

Tribal militants and religious scholars present on the occasion were critical of the reporting of the international wire agencies and the national electronic media which, they said, reported that al-Qaeda operatives were killed in the CIA-operated spy-plane attack.

Religious scholars, including former MNA Maulana Deendar, Maulana Muhammad Alam and others, addressed a sizeable gathering of mourners at Zyaraki village of the Mirali subdivision and condemned air strikes by the US planes on the tribal villages.

They claimed that all those killed in the attack were innocent and local villagers, who had nothing to do with militancy or Taliban.

The CIA-operated spy plane on Friday evening fired three Hellfire missiles on the outhouse (Hujra) of Haji Khalil Dawar, killing 10 people and injuring several others.

There were also reports that four among the dead were Arabs, probably Egyptians, and one hailed from the Punjab, sources close to the militants confirmed. There were also rumours that a low-level Al-Qaeda operative — Mustafa al-Misri — was also among the dead.

However, relatives of Khalil Dawar and residents of Zyaraki village denied the killing of foreign nationals in the attack.

Agencies add: The death toll from two suspected US missile attacks on al-Qaeda bases has risen to 22, officials and residents said on Saturday. Eight suspected foreign militants were among the dead. A senior security official said authorities were trying to determine the seniority of an Egyptian al-Qaeda militant believed to have been killed.
(source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=19872 )

One Way Or Another This Darkness Got To Give

2009-01-21T10:00:00.000-06:00

And The War Machine Keeps Turning...

2009-01-21T09:52:00.001-06:00

More Americans joining military as jobs dwindle

By Lizette Alvarez, International Herald Tribune
Monday, January 19, 2009

As the number of jobs across the nation dwindles, more Americans are joining the military, lured by a steady paycheck, benefits and training.

The last fiscal year was a banner one for the military, with all active-duty and reserve forces meeting or exceeding their recruitment goals for the first time since 2004, the year that violence in Iraq intensified drastically, Pentagon officials said.

And the trend seems to be accelerating. The army exceeded its targets each month for October, November and December the first quarter of the new fiscal year bringing in 21,443 new soldiers on active duty and in the reserves. December figures were released last week.

Recruiters also report that more people are inquiring about joining the military, a trend that could further bolster the ranks. Of the four armed services, the army has faced the toughest recruiting challenge in recent years because of high casualty rates in Iraq and long deployments overseas. Recruitment is also strong for the Army National Guard, according to Pentagon figures. The Guard tends to draw older people.

"When the economy slackens and unemployment rises and jobs become more scarce in civilian society, recruiting is less challenging," said Curtis Gilroy, the director of accession policy for the Department of Defense. Read On

U.S.-Supported Israeli Government Guilty of War Crimes

2009-01-21T09:37:00.005-06:00

Jordanian doctors returning from Gaza: 90% of injuries from phosphorus bombs

The Palestinian Information Center
[ 21/01/2009 - 10:57 AM ]

AMMAN, (PIC)-- The Jordanian medical team that returned from the Gaza Strip told a press conference in Amman on Tuesday that 90% of injuries suffered by Palestinians in the Israeli occupation forces' aggression were from the white phosphorus bombs.

Members of the team said that the IOF used internationally banned weapons in the war on Gaza, which earned Israeli leaders a deserved international arbitration for "war crimes".

Norwegian medical experts, who previously worked in Afghanistan and Lebanon and finally in Gaza, asserted that the injuries were the result of non-conventional, internationally banned weapons, the Jordanian doctors underlined.

They added that the Norwegian doctors took samples of the injuries to check them in Norway, and would issue a report and document their findings before providing them as evidence in the trial of the Israeli war criminals.

Jordanian doctors also said they took with them samples of the wounded people's tissues to check them. They added that clinical diagnosis proved that white phosphorus was used in the Israeli attacks, noting that white smoke was seen emanating from the open wounds of the injured persons after being hit with shrapnel of white phosphorus bombs.

Dr. Zuhair Abu Fares, the head of the Jordanian syndicate of doctors, said that his syndicate was going to send a third medical delegation in the required specializations to Gaza including experts in artificial limbs.

The first medical team that returned from Gaza grouped 8 doctors while the second team, which is currently in Gaza, included 24 doctors, a dentist and a paramedic.

An Apology

2009-01-21T09:23:00.002-06:00

Cops Execute Un-Armed Man In Public

2009-01-17T12:33:00.007-06:00

Please demand justice. Follow the link, sign the pledge:
http://www.colorofchange.org/oscar_update/?id=1804-709202

(WARNING! Graphic video shows cop shooting and killing a person)

U.S. -Supported Israeli Government Kills Palestinian Women and Children w/ White Phosphorus Bombs

2009-01-11T17:49:00.007-06:00

( more about evil white-phosphorus weapons, like those the U.S. used to slaughter Iraqi people, here, here, and here WARNING! Graphic Photos)

Gaza assault enters third week - Dozens killed since midnight - Death toll nears 1,000

Date: 11 / 01 / 2009 Time: 10:42

Gaza - Ma'an - Five Palestinians were killed in separate strikes near Gaza City and in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp on Sunday evening. Despite a so-called lull in fighting for the delivery of humanitarian aid, Israeli shelling killed two Palestinians in the Ash-Shuja'eiyah neighborhood, which is east of Gaza City.

Meanwhile, two others died in the northern Gaza Strip refugee camp of Jabaliya, local sources told Ma'an, adding that specifically the Al-Jurn area was hit in the deadly attack.Those three victims were identified as Mus'ab Khader, Husein Abu Sulkltan and 15-year-old Amal A'lush. A number of others were injured.

Also, Israeli warplanes shelled the home of Mohammad Dahlan in the Ar-Remal neighborhood of Gaza City. Jets also hit the home of Shadi Abu Labad in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip. Earlier SundaySome 30 Gazans have been killed since midnight Sunday and nearly 100 injured, apparently by newly used weaponry that set fires to both the people and buildings targeted.

Israel had not previously used white phosphorous bombs during the Gaza offensive, but by Sunday residents and experts were reporting widespread damage by the weapon, which is not illegal, in the Ghuza’a and Abasan villages east of Khan Younis. Medical sources at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said most of the morning’s casualties had been women and children. Read On

U.S. Government Endorses Mass Slaughter In Gaza....

2009-01-11T15:21:00.012-06:00

From Reuters:
WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate voiced strong support on Thursday for Israel's battle against Hamas militants in Gaza, while urging a ceasefire that would prevent Hamas from launching any more rockets into Israel.

The chamber agreed on a voice vote to the non-binding resolution co-sponsored by Democratic and Republican party leaders in the chamber.

"When we pass this resolution, the United States Senate will strengthen our historic bond with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel's inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza, as well as our support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said before the vote.

Noting that Israel was bent on halting Hamas rocket fire into its southern towns, Reid said: "I ask any of my colleagues to imagine that happening here in the United States. Rockets and mortars coming from Toronto in Canada, into Buffalo New York. How would we as a country react?"

Co-sponsor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican said before the vote: "The Israelis ... are responding exactly the same way we would."

The House was expected to pass a similar resolution.

The Senate resolution encourages President George W. Bush "to work actively to support a durable, enforceable and sustainable ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible that prevents Hamas from retaining or rebuilding the capability to launch rockets or mortars against Israel," Reid said.

It also expresses an "unwavering" commitment to Israel's welfare and recognizes its right to act in self defense to protect citizens against acts of terrorism, he said. "It allows for the long-term improvement of daily living conditions of the ordinary people of Gaza," he said.

Palestinians faced even grimmer conditions in Gaza on Thursday after a U.N. aid agency halted work, saying its staff was at risk from Israeli forces after two drivers were killed.

The reported Palestinian death toll in the 13-day-old conflict topped 700. At least 11 Israelis have been killed, eight of them soldiers, including four hit by "friendly fire."

( Once again the hypocritical, schizophrenic U.S. government simultaneously supports and condemns terrorism, not to mention, completely ignores the possibility that Israel's seige on Gaza and decades long oppression of Palestinian people may be provoking rocket attacks. )

________________

......Meanwhile, People Around The World Stand With Palestinians Against Israeli Atrocities

March For Gaza In Chicago Draws Thousands
Protests In Lebanon, Syria Against Gaza Offensive
50,000 In Cairo, Egypt Rally Against Israel
Spain: 100,000 Urge Israel to 'Stop Gaza Massacre'
Irish Protests Against Israeli Attacks On Gaza Escalate
Thousands Rally In World Capitals To Protest Against Gaza War
Tens of Thousands March Against Israel In France
San Francisco Streets See 10,000 Rally For Gaza
Venezuelans Protest Israeli Military Actions Against Gaza
Jewish women protest in Toronto’s Israeli Consulate
New Zealanders protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza
Multi-cultural rally protests fighting in Gaza
Protesters in Charleston Rally Against Israel's Actions in Gaza

What's the Point of Callin' Shots, This Cue Ain't Straight In Line

2008-11-17T17:40:00.001-06:00

White Cops Terrorize Black Citizens On Election Night

2008-11-17T06:51:00.004-06:00

Lawsuits Claim Election Night Hate Crimes By Cops

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Two more women are suing Chicago Police for hate crimes and battery after officers allegedly sprayed pepper spray on the women and their children and barged into their West Side home as they celebrated Barack Obama's Election Night victory.

The suit marks the second in two weeks alleging police abuse of civilians celebrating Obama's win. Niger Arnold and Roslyn Arnold filed suit Thursday in U.S. District Court on behalf of their six children, including four minors, against five unnamed police officers for the Nov. 4 incident.

"If you can't trust police officers, who can you trust?" Arnold said at a news conference Thursday.

Her family was standing outside their home in the 3400 block of West Chicago Avenue cheering and celebrating Obama's victory when police squad cars drove down the street and one or more officers hung out the window and discharged pepper spray at the crowd, the suit said.

After some words were exchanged, officers exited their vehicles with guns drawn and kicked open the door to the Arnold family home, according to the suit.

The officers allegedly knocked some of the family members to the ground and made racial comments, the suit said.

Arnold says during this alleged encounter with police, the officers' guns were drawn the entire time, which terrified her 3-year-old nephew. Read On

US Terror Campaign Strikes Wedding Party In Afghanistan, 40 Civilians Killed

2008-11-05T18:29:00.001-06:00

Karzai says air strike kills 40 in Afghanistan
Wed Nov 5, 12:57 pm ET

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday an air strike by coalition forces earlier this week killed some 40 civilians and wounded about 28 in Kandahar province.
Karzai called on U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to make it his priority to stop the killing of civilians.

Scores of Afghans have been killed in U.S. air strikes this year, leading to resentment against the presence of foreign troops and a rift between Karzai and his Western backers.
The air strike took place on Monday in the Shah Wali Kot district in the southern Taliban heartland of Kandahar province.

"By bombing Afghanistan, the war against terrorism cannot be won," Karzai told a news conference.

Several villagers who had taken a group of wounded to the hospital in Kandahar city said the air strike hit a wedding party. Read On

American Terrorist Attacks In Syria Condemned

2008-10-30T08:26:00.002-05:00

BBC Thursday, 30 October 2008

Syrians stage mass anti-US rally

Thousands of people have held a peaceful demonstration in Damascus against an alleged US raid on a village that Syria says killed eight people.

Riot police armed with batons and shields surrounded the US embassy in Damascus, which closed due to what it said were increased security concerns.

The US state department and the White House have refused to confirm, deny or comment on the alleged attack.

The Syrian government has demanded an apology from Washington. Read On

U.S. Killing Spree Extends Into Syria, Eight People Dead Including Four Children In Helicopter Raid

2008-10-28T08:24:00.004-05:00

'US helicopter raid' inside Syria

BBC Monday, 27 October 2008

US military helicopters have carried out a raid inside Syria along the Iraqi border, killing eight people including four children, Syrian officials say.

The official Syrian news agency Sana said the attack took place in the Abu Kamal border area, in eastern Syria.

Damascus has condemned the strike as a "serious violation" of its territory.

The US has neither confirmed nor denied the incident. It has previously accused Syria of allowing foreign militants into Iraq.

Syria has summoned the US and Iraqi envoys in Damascus to protest at the raid.

"Syria condemns this aggressive act and holds American forces responsible for this aggression and all of its repercussions," a government official said.

If confirmed, the raid would be the first known attack by US forces inside Syrian territory, says BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus. Read On

Iraq War Vet Crushed By Police Horse At Presidential Debate

2008-10-27T09:00:00.003-05:00

U.S. Constitution, Amendment I - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

2700 American Dreams Shattered Per Day

2008-10-26T15:34:00.004-05:00

Other woes makes foreclosure crisis hard to break
By ALAN ZIBEL, AP Business Writer
October 26, 2008

WASHINGTON - Each day from July through September, more than 2,700 Americans lost their homes in foreclosure.

That number, up from 1,200 a day a year ago, is a sign that the mortgage industry and government programs have done little to help troubled homeowners.

The mortgage market's troubles have proved to be far more serious and intractable than most in government or the private sector had predicted a year ago.

"We are behind the curve. We are falling behind," Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. told a Senate hearing Thursday. "There has been some progress, but it's not been enough, and we need to act. And we need to act quickly, and we need to act dramatically to have more wide-scale, systematic (loan) modifications...."

More than 4 million homeowners with a mortgage were at least one month behind on their payments at the end of June, according to the latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, and a record 500,000 had entered the foreclosure process. Read On

Meanwhile, the rich are rewarded for their contributions to the foreclosure crisis:

"Wall Street Bankers In Line For $70 Billion Payout"
"CEOs Parachute to Safety"
"After Bailout, AIG Execs Lounged At Resort"
"As Lehman Collapsed, Execs Were Rewarded"
"Bailout No Bar To Bonus At Banks"

Both leading presidential candidates support the $850 billion wall street bailout, er, rescue package. Is it a quid pro quo exercise?

Top Contributors to Barack Obama
University of California
$777,593
Goldman Sachs
$743,371
Harvard University
$505,989
Citigroup Inc
$499,598
Google Inc
$493,705
JPMorgan Chase & Co
$478,462
National Amusements Inc
$437,669
Microsoft Corp
$434,156
UBS AG
$419,350
Lehman Brothers
$391,624
Time Warner
$388,063
Wilmerhale Llp
$383,024
Sidley Austin LLP
$371,166
Skadden, Arps et al
$361,409
Morgan Stanley
$344,130
Stanford University
$342,749
Latham & Watkins
$328,879
Jones Day
$314,760
General Electric
$299,434
University of Chicago
$294,237

Top Contributors To John McCain

Merrill Lynch
$349,920
Citigroup Inc
$290,101
Morgan Stanley
$249,377
Goldman Sachs
$220,045
JPMorgan Chase & Co
$210,992
AT&T Inc
$181,813
Credit Suisse Group
$175,503
PricewaterhouseCoopers
$163,670
Blank Rome LLP
$161,576
US Army
$150,470
Wachovia Corp
$150,006
US Government
$149,818
Bank of America
$142,776
UBS AG
$141,365
Greenberg Traurig LLP
$141,137
US Dept of Defense
$127,325
FedEx Corp
$123,654
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
$122,546
Lehman Brothers
$115,707
Bear Stearns
$108,000

source: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?id=N00006424&cycle2=2008&goButt2.x=10&goButt2.y=6

Heartbroken over U.S. killing innocent Iraqis, Afghans, Pakastanis

2008-10-26T11:26:00.015-05:00

It's a tragedy, no doubt, when a fellow human being is murdered. I'm glad future president Barack Obama (yah, i'm calling it) expressed his heartbreak over the murders of actress Jennifer Hudson's family members. It shows compassion, an important human characteristic that, in many of us, is veiled by our nationalism or American exceptionalism.

Los Angeles (E! Online) – Sen. Barack Obama, a fan and friend of Jennifer Hudson, took time out from his campaign Saturday to send his condolences to his fellow Chicagoan.

"Michelle and I were absolutely heartbroken to learn about this unimaginable tragedy, and we want Jennifer and to know that she is in our thoughts and prayers during this very difficult time. We also pray for the swift and safe return of her young nephew."

What should be of great concern to all people is that Obama's compassion seems to be selective as evidenced here:

Obama hasn't expressed any heartbreak over the deaths of a million civilians , the severe refugee crisis, and the destruction that resulted from the United States' unprovoked war of aggression on Iraq.

To the dismay of Pakistani officials, Obama threatens to use military attacks in Pakistan, which have already caused violent deaths of many innocent people and is fueling anti-American sentiment.

Obama wants to escalate war in Afghanistan, where U.S.-led bombing campaigns have violently killed and injured thousands of innocent people, and justifiably angers Afghans, which the Taliban successfully uses as a recruiting tool.

If you're reading this, please do me a favor and direct me to any statements Obama has made in which he expresses concern for the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan who are, have been, and will be subjected to unimaginable violence by the U.S. military.

I worry for humanity.

Iraqis Want U.S. Out of Their Country

2008-10-19T12:04:00.002-05:00

Thousands rally in Iraq against proposed U.S troop deal

Posted on Saturday, October 18, 2008
By Hussein Kadhim and Corinne Reilly McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Tens of thousands of Iraqis rallied in the streets of Baghdad Saturday against a proposed American-Iraqi deal that would allow U.S. troops to stay in the country for three more years.

Muqtada al Sadr, a widely influential Shiite cleric who called for the demonstration, issued a statement demanding that Iraq's parliament reject the deal.

"These are the Iraqi people in front of you, rejecting this agreement," Sadr's statement said. "The treaty is in your hands, so the destiny and reputation of Iraq also is in your hands ... If (the government) told you that this agreement will give you sovereignty, they are liars."

After seven months of wearying back and forth, negotiators completed a draft deal this week. For it to take effect, however, the proposal must win approval from Iraq's Political Council for National Security, the prime minister's cabinet and parliament.

U.S. officials are desperately hoping to finalize the agreement before Dec. 31, when a United Nations mandate that has allowed American troops to operate in Iraq will expire. If a deal isn't in place by the end of the year, American forces in Iraq could technically become illegal occupiers. Read On

US Still Murdering Innocent Civilians, Including Women and Children, In Afganistan

2008-10-16T23:50:00.003-05:00

Afghan strike 'kills civilians'
BBC Thursday, 16 October 2008 18:19 UK

At least 18 civilians have been killed in an air strike by foreign forces in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, reports say.

A BBC reporter in the provincial capital Lashkar Gah saw the bodies - three women and the rest children - ranging in age from six months to 15.

The families brought the bodies from their village in the Nad Ali district, where they say the air strike occurred. Read On

'Cuz I'm Moanin' Low

2008-10-10T08:57:00.000-05:00

US is Still Killing Innocent People, Including Women and Children, In Pakistan

2008-10-10T08:34:00.005-05:00

Four Foreigners Among Nine Killed In US Drone Attack
Friday, October 10, 2008By Mushtaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR: Nine people, five of them civilians, and four suspected foreign militants, were killed and several others injured in yet another missile attack by a US spy plane on Ghundai village of Tapi area of the North Waziristan tribal region Thursday evening.

Tribal sources said two US spy planes were seen flying at extremely low altitude over Ghundai village during the attack. Sources close to militants told this correspondent from Tapi village near Mirali that the US aircraft fired two Hellfire missiles on the house and hujra of Maulvi Sahar Gul in Ghundai village.

Maulvi Sahar Gul is said to have affiliation with pro-government tribal militants led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who gave up fighting against Pakistani security forces under a peace agreement signed between the two sides on February 17.

The sources said both the missiles levelled the house and hujra of Maulvi Sahar Gul to the ground. Five among nine people killed in the attack were family members of Maulvi Sahar Gul, including three children and two women, and four guests staying at the hujra. Read On

Amerika, The Land of the Free to be Spied On by our Government

2008-10-10T08:21:00.003-05:00

Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans
U.S. Officers' "Phone Sex" Intercepted; Senate Demanding Answers

ABC News
By BRIAN ROSS, VIC WALTER, and ANNA SCHECTEROct. 9, 2008

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia. Click Here To Read On

Business Booming For Military Equipment Manufacturer While Millions Face Foreclosure and Eviction

2008-10-10T08:08:00.007-05:00

Pierce lands $10.7M Army contract
The Post-Crescent • October 9, 2008

APPLETON — Pierce Manufacturing announced Thursday that it was awarded a $10.7 million U.S. Army contract for 68 Pierce pumper rescue vehicles.

The order also has provisions for up to 115 additional trucks, the company said. The order from the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Command will support military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq security forces. Delivery is scheduled to begin in July and be completed by November.

The order for Pierce is in addition to five other military orders announced by its parent Oshkosh Corp. in recent weeks. On Oct. 1, the company announced it was awarded a contract of $180 million to supply 1,500 reducible-height armor kits to the U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command. Click Here To Continue Reading

Highly Professional Assassinations of Political Leaders In Iraq Common After US Troop Surge

2008-10-10T07:49:00.006-05:00

US blamed for killing of prominent Shia MP
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, Friday, 10 October 2008

A powerful member of the Iraqi parliament that is loyal to the anti-American Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was killed in a carefully planned assassination in Baghdad yesterday.

A bomb hidden in a hole in the road exploded as a convoy carrying Salehal-Auqaeili and other lawmakers went past an Iraqi army checkpoint near Sadr City. It is probable that the killing was carried out by the Badr Organisation, the armed wing of the other large Shia party, the Iraqi Supreme Council of Iraq, who are long-time rivals of the Sadrists. Click Here To Read On

In Amerika Today

2008-10-08T18:37:00.003-05:00

An estimated six million of us will default on our mortgages this year and next.

We're being evicted from our homes. Tent cities are popping up all over the place.

Flush with a humongous amount of fresh cash our government is transferring from us to them, against our will, fuckers who created this mess are living large:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - American International Group Inc could get nearly $38 billion in fresh cash under a program announced by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, as the insurer tried to fend off criticism of a lavish event held days after getting an initial $85 billion government loan.
Under the new plan, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will take up to $37.8 billion in investment-grade, fixed-income securities from AIG in exchange for cash.

The securities were previously lent by AIG's insurance company subsidiaries to third parties. The Fed said the new program will allow the company to replenish liquidity used in settling transactions with counterparties.

AIG had drawn fire in Washington on Tuesday for spending $200,000 on hotel rooms and $23,000 on spa services at an event, just days after it got the emergency loan from the government to avoid bankruptcy in the middle of the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression.

As lawmakers grilled former top executives at a hearing, Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, said: "They were getting facials, manicures and massages, while the American people were footing the bill." (Click here to continue reading)

Outrageous.

Askin' You Nice, Now, Keep the Mother Rollin' One More Time

2008-10-08T16:32:00.000-05:00

While we were sleeping....

2008-10-08T11:09:00.004-05:00

"Two blasts occurred near Baghdad's Green Zone outside Iraq's foreign ministry, as John Negroponte, the US deputy secretary of state, was preparing to hold a news conference about his visit to Iraq."

REPORT: US military and political elite place very low value on Afghan civilians' lives

Federal agents terrorize 300 people at South Carolina poultry plant

"At least 12 Iraqis were killed and 29 more wounded"

"US backs Taliban return to power in Afghanistan"

US Army brigade assigned to US to help with 'civil unrest' and 'crowd control'

Shell opens new office in Baghdad in deal with US-backed Iraqi government

Does The World Have A Blank Check For America's Mistakes?

2008-10-06T23:50:00.003-05:00

COUNTERPUNCH
October 6, 2008

A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

America has become a pretty discouraging place. Americans, for the most part, will never know what happened to them, because they no longer have a free and responsible press. They have Big Brother’s press. For example, on September 28, 2008, a New York Times editorial blamed the current financial crisis on “antiregulation disciples of the Reagan Revolution.”

What utter nonsense. Every example of deregulation that the New York Times editorial provides is located in the Clinton Administration and the George W. Bush administration. I was a member of the Reagan administration. We most certainly did not deregulate the financial system.

The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking, was the achievement of the Democratic Clinton Administration. It happened in 1999, over a decade after Reagan left office.

It was in 2000 that derivatives and credit default swaps were excluded from regulation.

The greatest mistake was made in 2004, the year that Reagan died. That year the current Secretary of the Treasury, Henry M. Paulson Jr, was head of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. In the spring of 2004, the investment banks, led by Paulson, met with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this meeting with the New Deal regulatory agency tasked with regulating the US financial system, Paulson convinced the SEC Commissioners to exempt the investment banks from maintaining reserves to cover losses on investments. The exemption granted by the SEC allowed the investment banks to leverage financial instruments beyond any bounds of prudence. Click Here To Continue Reading
___________________________________________________________________

Here's a link to a NY Times piece on the meeting that took place with the SEC and top wall street bankers, including Henry Paulson, then CEO of Goldman Sachs and now Bush-appointed US Secretary of Treasury.

Police State Rising, Part IV

2008-09-19T17:48:00.004-05:00

This Land Is Your Land

2008-09-19T17:48:00.003-05:00

Violence Down In Iraq Due To Ethnic Cleansing, Not US Troop Surge

2008-09-19T17:48:00.001-05:00

Satellite images show ethnic cleanout in Iraq

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor 2 hours, 24 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a U.S. troop surge in 2007, graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report published on Friday.

The images support the view of international refugee organizations and Iraq experts that a major population shift was a key factor in the decline in sectarian violence, particularly in the Iraqi capital, the epicenter of the bloodletting in which hundreds of thousands were killed.

Minority Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighborhoods by Shi'ite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. The bombing, blamed on the Sunni militant group al Qaeda, sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

"By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left," geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.

Some 2 million Iraqis are displaced within Iraq, while 2 million more have sought refuge in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Previously religiously mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad became homogenized Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim enclaves. Read On

Stand Up!

2008-09-15T15:00:00.001-05:00

by Blue King Brown

Wanting Peace

2008-09-15T14:07:00.003-05:00

Imagine If There Were More Of Us...

Click Here To Visit: FreewayBlogger

U.S. Continues Killing Innocent People In Pakistan

2008-09-13T12:41:00.008-05:00

From Mathaba.net:

Pakistan: 10 killed in US missile strike in Pakistan tribal region

From the AP: "Pakistan Could End Cooperation in 'War On Terror'"

From the India Tribune: "Pakistan Army To Retaliate If US Conducts Raids"

From Reuters: "Pakistan To Protest New US Missile Strike"

No wonder resentful Pakistanis are in the streets burning US flags.

Gentrification and the War on the Poor In NOLA,

2008-09-12T08:33:00.001-05:00

part ii

Katrina Pain Index: New Orleans Three Years Later

2008-09-12T07:47:00.004-05:00

Tuesday 26 August 2008
by: Bill Quigley, t r u t h o u t Perspective

Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast three years ago this week. The president promised to do whatever it took to rebuild. But the nation is trying to fight wars in several countries and is dealing with economic crisis. The attention of the president wandered away. As a result, this is what New Orleans looks like today.

0. Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant - compared to 116,708 homeowners.

0. Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.

0. Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed, privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.

.008. Percentage of rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied - a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.

1. Rank of New Orleans among US cities in percentage of housing vacant or ruined.

1. Rank of New Orleans among US cities in murders per capita for 2006 and 2007.

4. Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of flooding as they were before Katrina.

10. Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.

11. Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.

17. Percentage increase in wages in the hotel and food industry since before Katrina.

20-25. Years that experts estimate it will take to rebuild the City of New Orleans at current pace.

25. Percent fewer hospitals in metro New Orleans than before Katrina.

32. Percent of the city's neighborhoods that have less than half as many households as before Katrina.

36. Percent fewer tons of cargo that move through Port of New Orleans since Katrina.

38. Percent fewer hospital beds in New Orleans since Katrina.

40. Percentage fewer special education students attending publicly funded, privately run charter schools than traditional public schools.

41. Number of publicly funded, privately run public charter schools in New Orleans out of total of 79 public schools in the city.

43. Percentage of child care available in New Orleans compared to before Katrina.

46. Percentage increase in rents in New Orleans since Katrina.

56. Percentage fewer inpatient psychiatric beds compared to before Katrina.

80. Percentage fewer public transportation buses now than pre-Katrina.

81. Percentage of homeowners in New Orleans who received insufficient funds to cover the complete costs to repair their homes.

300. Number of National Guard troops still in City of New Orleans.

1,080. Days National Guard troops have remained in City of New Orleans.

1,250. Number of publicly financed vouchers for children to attend private schools in New Orleans in program's first year.

6,982. Number of families still living in FEMA trailers in metro New Orleans area.

8,000. Fewer publicly assisted rental apartments planned for New Orleans by federal government.

10,000. Houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina.

12,000. Number of homeless in New Orleans even after camps of people living under the bridges have been resettled - double the pre-Katrina number.

14,000. Number of displaced families in New Orleans area whose hurricane rental assistance expires in March 2009.

32,000. Number of children who have not returned to public school in New Orleans, leaving the public school population less than half what it was pre-Katrina.

39,000. Number of Louisiana homeowners who have applied for federal assistance in repair and rebuilding who still have not received any money.

45,000. Fewer children enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare in New Orleans than pre-Katrina.

46,000. Fewer African-American voters in New Orleans in 2007 gubernatorial election than in 2003 gubernatorial election.

55,000. Fewer houses receiving mail than before Katrina.

62,000. Fewer people in New Orleans enrolled in Medicaid public healthcare than pre-Katrina.

71,657. Vacant, ruined, unoccupied houses in New Orleans today.

124,000. Fewer people working in metropolitan New Orleans than pre-Katrina.

132,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the City of New Orleans current population estimate of 321,000 in New Orleans.

214,000. Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the US Census Bureau current population estimate of 239,000 in New Orleans.

453,726. Population of New Orleans before Katrina.

320 million. Number of trees destroyed in Louisiana and Mississippi by Katrina.

368 million. Dollar losses of five major metro New Orleans hospitals from Katrina through 2007. In 2008, these hospitals expect another $103 million in losses.

1.9 billion. FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to metro New Orleans for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.

2.6 billion. FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to State of Louisiana for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.

Bill is a human rights lawyer, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and author of the forthcoming book, "STORMS STILL RAGING: Katrina, New Orleans and Social Justice." A version with all sources included is available. Bill's email is quigley77@gmail.com. For more information see the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and Policy Link.

Economic 'slowdown' continues in US

2008-09-09T06:35:00.002-05:00

Auto Industry Asks Congress for $50 Billion; Insists This Isn't a Bailout
Posted: Sep. 08, 2008 10:09 a.m.
The Big Three Detroit automakers have begun lobbying Congress for up to $50 billion in loans that would help them adjust to a market that demands more fuel-efficient vehicles. But the automakers insist the loans would not amount to a government bailout of the struggling auto industry.

The AP explains, "With Congress returning this coming week from its summer break, the industry plans an aggressive lobbying campaign for the low-interest loans. The situation is growing dire after months of tumbling sales, high gasoline prices and consumers' abandoning profitable trucks and sport utility vehicles." Congress has technically authorized $25 billion in loans "to help the companies build fuel-efficient vehicles such as hybrids and electric vehicles." But the government hasn't provided money to fund that program. "With credit tight, automakers and suppliers now want lawmakers to come up with the money for the program -- and expand the pool of money available to $50 billion over three years." Click Here To Read The Whole Piece
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Republican red faces as regulators close bank
By Andrew Ward in Washington and Joanna Chung in New York
Published: September 8 2008 03:11 Last updated: September 8 2008 03:11

A bank with ties to the family of John McCain was shut down by federal regulators on Friday, marking the 11th US bank failure this year and threatening to cause ripples across the presidential election campaign.

Andrew McCain, son of the Republican presidential nominee, was a director of Nevada-based Silver State Bank until resigning in July for “personal reasons”.

He was a member of Silver State’s audit committee, which has responsibility for overseeing the bank’s financial accounts.

Silver State was heavily exposed to construction and land development loans that have come under pressure as the housing market slumps. Click Here To Read The Whole Piece
______________________
Bush bails out US mortgage giants
By Stephen Foley in New YorkMonday, 8 September 2008
The Bush administration ripped up years of laissez-faire economic policies last night and launched a government takeover of two of the most powerful mortgage companies in the US. The move is designed to forestall a collapse in house prices that could plunge America into a new Great Depression and trigger chaos on the world's financial markets. Click Here To Read The Whole Piece
________________________
U.S. job losses point to economy in recession
BY CARRIE MASON-DRAFFEN carrie.mason-draffen@newsday.com
September 6, 2008
The U.S. economy turned in a worse performance than economists had predicted for August, with bigger job losses and the highest unemployment rate in five years. The latest report once again raised the specter of a recession. The nation lost 84,000 jobs in August, compared with July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was far more than the 75,000, economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had predicted. The unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent, higher than the 5.7 percent analysts had expected. "It certainly increases the probability that we really are in a recession," William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. The national economy has now lost jobs for eight consecutive months. Click Here To Read The Whole Piece
_______________________
Home foreclosures reach record high
Fri Sep 5, 2008 12:20pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Home foreclosures and the rate of homes entering foreclosure rose to record highs in the second quarter, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Friday.
"The national foreclosure numbers continue to be driven by the hardest-hit states continuing to get much worse," Jay Brinkmann, the association's chief economist and senior vice president for research and economics, said in a news release. Click Here To Read The Whole Piece
______________________

Free-Speeching in Madison, WI

2008-09-05T10:18:00.002-05:00

Profit Motive Leads to Slavery, Torture in Miami

2008-09-05T10:05:00.005-05:00

Farm bosses in Immokalee plead guilty in slavery scheme

Posted on Fri, Sep. 05, 2008
Miami Herald
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

Five farm bosses have pleaded guilty to a scheme to enslave Mexican and Guatemalan nationals as agricultural workers in southwest Florida, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Cesar Navarrete, Geovanni Navarrete, Villhina Navarrete, Ismael Michael Navarrete and Antonio Zuniga Vargas were convicted of harboring undocumented immigrants for profit and identify theft in the farming community of Immokalee, authorities said.

Cesar and Geovanni Navarrete also pleaded guilty to beating, threatening, restraining and locking workers in trucks to force them to work.

They face up to 35 and 25 years in prison, respectively. The other defendants face 10 to 25 years in prison.

Previously, codefendant Jose Navarrete had pleaded guilty to harboring undocumented foreigners for profit. He faces up to 37 years in prison.

According to prosecutors, the defendants were accused of paying the workers minimal wages and driving them into debt, threatening physical harm if they left before their debts were repaid to the Navarrete family.

''In this case, we are given yet another example of how human trafficking of all kinds victimizes vulnerable human beings,'' said Grace Chung Becker, acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division.

This case was investigated by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI, assisted by the Collier County Sheriff's Department. Victim assistance was provided by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. It was prosecuted by the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida.

Pace the Halls, Climb the Walls, And Get Out When They Blow

2008-09-05T09:35:00.001-05:00

U.S.-led Forces Now Killing Innocent People, Including Women and Children, In Pakistan

2008-09-04T08:06:00.004-05:00

Pakistani parliament condemns US-led attack
By NAHAL TOOSI Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Parliament passed resolutions Thursday condemning an American-led attack in Pakistani territory after the government summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest the unusually bold raid that officials say killed at least 15 people.
The criticism grew two days before Asif Ali Zardari is expected to be chosen as president in a vote by legislators. A spokesman said Zardari condemned Wednesday's pre-dawn assault in the South Waziristan tribal region - the first known foreign ground assault in Pakistan against a Taliban haven. But Zardari also said Pakistan stands with the U.S. against international terrorism. Read On

Mingling Church and State

2008-09-04T07:28:00.003-05:00

Palin: Iraq war 'a task that is from God'

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 3, 7:23 PM ET

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God."

In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."

Palin asked the students to pray for the troops in Iraq, and noted that her eldest son, Track, was expected to be deployed there.

"Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

feeling the urge to vomit? it's okay. go ahead and puke first, then Read On
thomas jefferson must be rolling in his grave.

Nationalizing Police Suppression of Free Speech

2008-09-03T10:38:00.002-05:00

From Glen Greenwald at Salon.com
Sunday Aug. 31, 2008 11:46 EDT
Federal government involved in raids on protesters
(update below - Update II)
As the police attacks on protesters in Minnesota continue -- see this video of the police swarming a bus transporting members of Earth Justice an environmental activist group, seizing the bus and leaving the group members stranded on the side of the highway -- it appears increasingly clear that it is the Federal Government that is directing this intimidation campaign. Minnesota Public Radio reported yesterday that "the searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff's office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Today's Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically "aided by informants planted in protest groups." Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force -- an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI -- was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate "vegan groups" and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday.

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by the endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided that we want our Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and media class and, therefore, from the citizenry.

Beyond that, there is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve what they get, even if nothing they've done is remotely illegal. We love to proclaim how much we cherish our "freedoms" in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic -- but we've decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it's therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them. Read On

More About Police Terrorizing Lawful Protesters At RNC

2008-09-03T10:14:00.002-05:00

From Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild:

Monday, September 1, 2008

Preemptive Strikes Against Protest at RNC
In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called "Moles Wanted." Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.

Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by "teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets." Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.

"I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns," said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. "The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint." Read On

Amerika, Land of the Free to Be Illegally Arrested by Police Thugs

2008-09-02T09:02:00.003-05:00

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar Released After Illegal Arrest at RNC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 1, 2008
Contact: Mike Burke

Goodman Charged with Obstruction; Felony Riot Charges Pending Against Kouddous and Salazar

ST. PAUL--Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on Monday afternoon.

All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar’s violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, “I’m Press! Press!,” resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman’s arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.
On Tuesday, Democracy Now! will broadcast video of these arrests, as well as the broader police action. These will also be available on: www.democracynow.org

Goodman was arrested while questioning police about the unlawful detention of Kouddous and Salazar who were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were arrested on suspicion of rioting, a felony. While the three have been released, they all still face charges stemming from their unlawful arrest. Kouddous and Salazar face pending charges of suspicion of felony riot, while Goodman has been officially charged with obstruction of a legal process and interference with a “peace officer.”

Democracy Now! forcefully rejects all of these charges as false and an attempt at intimidation of these journalists. We demand that the charges be immediately and completely dropped.
Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities’ law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amendment rights of these journalists.

During the demonstration in which the Democracy Now! team was arrested, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force against protesters and journalists. Several dozen demonstrators were also arrested during this action, including a photographer for the Associated Press.

Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States. She has received journalism’s top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and the subsequent criminal charges and threat of charges are a transparent attempt to intimidate journalists.

Democracy Now! is a nationally-syndicated public TV and radio program that airs on over 700 radio and TV stations across the US and the globe.

Video of Amy Goodman’s Arrest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ

wake up! rise up!

America the Beautiful Torturer

2008-08-30T22:46:00.002-05:00

Torture in Cook County Jail

A Prisoner's Tale of Abuse
By STANLEY HOWARD

After a 17-month investigation concerning the conditions in the Cook County Jail, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald issued a scathing report calling for change and reforms.

The 98-page report on the nation's largest county jail was released July 17 and sent to County Board President Todd Stroger and Sheriff Thomas Dart with its findings and recommendations. It cited many cases of gross "medical negligence, mismanagement and abusive behavior by guards," which led to "unnecessary deaths, amputation and routine inmate beatings."

The outside world would be shocked to hear stories such as that of an inmate left untreated for a gunshot wound, who developed sepsis and died; a female inmate who suffered from HIV and died after a preventable infection went untreated; and an inmate beaten so bad by guards that his dentures were kicked out and he was sent to the hospital on a respirator.

The report pointed out that there is just one dentist for the entire 9,800-inmate population--and he only deals in extractions, with 25 percent of those resulting in infection. Read On

Police Suppress Free Speech In Minneapolis Ahead of RNC

2008-08-30T22:09:00.004-05:00

Crackdown begins: Food Not Bombs house among Saturday raids
By Paul Schmelzer 8/30/08 9:41 AM

MnIndy RNC reporter Jeff Severns Guntzel is at the Minneapolis Food Not Bombs house, which was raided by police this morning. Facts are still coming in, but Guntzel says that at 8 a.m. neighbors near the home, located at 2301 23rd Avenue South, reported hearing a loud bang followed by yelling. A single police squad car was parked out front. When Guntzel arrived he saw eight or nine officers enter the house in what he says is a joint operation between officers of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department, the Minneapolis Police Depatment, and the FBI.

According to one witness who was in the house at the time of the raid, the action is related to last night’s raid on the RNC Welcoming Committee’s “convergence space.” Several other spaces have been raided this morning.

so this is what a police state looks like. more coverage here and here.

DuPage County Rejoins U.S.

2008-08-27T14:35:00.004-05:00

THE Freeway Blogger alerts us:

Falsely Arrested Anti-War Protester Seeks Apology From DuPage County

2008-08-27T13:51:00.007-05:00

[DuPage County, IL]
Downers Grove resident Jeff Zurawski wrote a column that appeared in today's edition of the Downers Grove Reporter. He is one of two peace activists arrested last year after displaying political signs while standing on a pedestrian walkway above a local toll road. Zurawski believes he and his friend, fellow peace activist Sarah Hartfield of Naperville, were wrongfully arrested and maliciously prosecuted. He is seeking apologies from the DuPage County sheriff's department and state's attorney's office.

Contact DuPage County's law enforcement officials and urge them to issue public apologies for their wrongdoing:

Sheriff John Zaruba
DuPage County Sheriff's Office
501 North County Farm Road
Wheaton, Illinois 60187
(630) 407-2400
sheriff@dupagesheriff.org

Joseph Birkett, State's Attorney
503 N. County Farm Road
Wheaton, IL 60187
(630) 407-8000
stsattn@dupageco.org

U.S. Imperialist Strategy At Work In Iraq

2008-08-26T08:07:00.004-05:00

IRAQ: Sectarian Clashes Flare Up Again
By Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail*

BAQUBA, Aug 26 (IPS) - A military operation said to target al-Qaeda has ended up targeting Sunni Muslims instead, creating new sectarian tensions.

A U.S.-backed security operation launched last month has only targeted cities with majority Sunni populations such as Buhriz, Tahreer, Qatoon, Mafraq, and Hay in Diyala province, north of Baghdad. The operation has drawn more than 50,000 Iraqi soldiers.

The deputy governor of Diyala, Awf Rahoomi, has demanded in a public speech in Baquba that "the new security plan should also include Shia cities like Hwaider, Khirnabat and Abara." These Shia districts are strongholds of the Mehdi militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and of the Badr organisation (the militia of the ruling Shia party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.)

"The forces of the new security plan took all our weapons to the extent that we cannot fight al-Qaeda any more; we are impotent," Mullah Shihab al-Safi, commander of the Popular Committees Fighters (the Sunni leadership of the U.S.-backed Awakening Group militias), said at a meeting of the Commitment Council established by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Read On

U.S.-led Forces Continue Killing Innocent People In Afghanistan

2008-08-23T08:09:00.003-05:00

76 civilians killed in airstrike, Afghan officials say

Reuters
Published: August 22, 2008

HERAT, Afghanistan: U.S.-led coalition forces killed 76 Afghan civilians in western Afghanistan on Friday, most of them children, the Interior Ministry said. The coalition denied having killed civilians.

Civilian deaths in military operations have become an emotive issue among Afghans, many of whom feel that international forces take too little care with airstrikes.

"Seventy-six civilians, most of them women and children, were martyred today in a coalition forces operation in Herat Province," the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Coalition forces bombarded the Azizabad area of Shindand district in Herat Province on Friday afternoon, the ministry said. Nineteen of the victims were women, seven of them men and the rest children younger than 15, it said. Read On

Some Rise, Some Fall, Some Climb...To Get To Terrapin

2008-08-23T08:00:00.002-05:00

DuPage Free Speech Case Ends, Score 1 For THE PEOPLE!

2008-08-21T06:46:00.003-05:00

Disorderly conduct charges dropped against anti-war protestors
By Christy Gutowski Daily Herald Staff

Charges against protesters dropped
Complaining witness doesn't show up to trial
August 21, 2008
By Jennifer Golz, Naperville Sun

DuPage County war protesters see charges dropped
Main witness fails to show to testify in disorderly conduct case
By Art Barnum Chicago Tribune reporter
11:20 PM CDT, August 20, 2008

BREAKING NEWS: Charges dismissed for protesters
By Dan Petrella, dpetrella@mysuburbanlife.com
Suburban Life Publications
Wed Aug 20, 2008, 02:33 PM CDT

Denver Police Dept Prepares 'Concentration Camp' For DNC Protesters

2008-08-18T10:01:00.001-05:00

News crew crashes Denver's DNC 'concentration camp'
Stephen C. Webster
Published: Friday August 15, 2008 The Raw Story

UPDATE: RAW STORY has obtained a letter from ACLU Colorado, sent to the Denver Police Department regarding the protest detention facility. Read it here.

During the 2004 Republican Nation Convention in New York City, over 1,700 protesters were taken into police custody in one of the most sweeping mass-arrests in US history. Many were held in Manhattan's Pier 57, inside a warehouse which was contaminated with lead and asbestos. Some were held for days, and without proper access to food, water, outside communication or legal counsel.

In Denver, police are preparing what a local political organizer calls a 'concentration camp,' laying in wait for mass arrests anticipated during the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
On Wednesday, a Denver CBS affiliate sent a news crew to crash the police department's improvised detention facility, found in a warehouse owned by the city on the north-east side of town.

"This is a building filled with metal holding cells," described reporter Rick Sallinger, introducing the segment. "We showed up at the facility unannounced today, the doors were wide open, and we managed to shoot for several minutes until a Denver sheriff's captain asked us to leave."
Footage of the warehouse revels tall, chain-link fence capped by barbed wire, and segmented pens each bearing an identifying letter at about shoulder height.

The news crew was not invited, nor welcome. Cpt. Frank Gale of the Denver Sheriff's Department called the facility "a secured area," and worried that information related to the site would be used "by people who are potentially trying to be disruptive."

"Each of these fenced in areas is about five yards by five yards," said Sallinger. "There's a lock on the door. How long those arrested will be kept here is not known. A sign on the wall reads, 'Warning! Electric stun devices used in this facility.'" Read On

U.S. Invasion of Iraq - For Better or Worse?

2008-08-18T09:39:00.001-05:00

August 18th, 2008

Reuters
Posted by: Mike Collett-White
(Posted by: Khalid al-Ansary)

The Iraqi government says it is negotiating a “time horizon” with the United States for withdrawing its troops from Iraq.

That has Iraqis like me thinking back to how the Americans got here in the first place, and whether the U.S. promises of peace and democracy after the fall of Saddam Hussein five years ago have been fulfilled.

To sum it up in a phrase: Saddam, for me, was not a good leader but what we have witnessed in the following years has not been any better. Read On

NATO Forces Murder Innocent Afghan Children Again

2008-08-18T09:10:00.002-05:00

British rocket fire kills four Afghan civilians
· MoD says troops targeted armed insurgents on roof
· Two children among dead and two others injured

Damien Francis
The Guardian,
Monday August 18 2008

Four civilians, including two children, were killed in a rocket attack by British troops in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said last night. The MoD has launched an investigation into the incident, which left two other children seriously injured.

The rocket attack, involving the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, occurred on Saturday in the Sangin district of Helmand province, in southern Afghanistan. British soldiers in Helmand province.

Troops on a routine patrol fired rockets after intercepting a radio message calling for insurgents to converge on the area, a spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force said.

After identifying insurgents on the roof of a compound, the soldiers fired the rockets, not realising that there were women and children inside the building. Read On

We Can Fight Together

2008-08-16T09:44:00.005-05:00

Ef Swagee discovered the vibe flowing powerfully through these revolutionaries last night at the Double Door. HOT!

Blue King Brown - "Water"

The Law Come To Get Ya If You Don't Walk Right

2008-08-15T08:23:00.001-05:00

Iraq War Vets Discuss Random Killing of Civilians

2008-08-13T09:39:00.001-05:00

Privatizing 'War'

2008-08-13T09:23:00.003-05:00

NY Times
August 12, 2008

Use of Iraq Contractors Costs Billions, Report Says

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — The United States this year will have spent $100 billion on contractors in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, a milestone that reflects the Bush administration’s unprecedented level of dependence on private firms for help in the war, according to a government report to be released Tuesday.

The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, according to people with knowledge of its contents, will say that one out of every five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the United States military and other government agencies, in a war zone where employees of private contractors now outnumber American troops.

The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield. Read On

Bush Undermines Endangered Species Act

2008-08-12T06:46:00.002-05:00

from the raw story: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Bush_to_relax_protected_species_rules_0811.html

Bush to relax protected species rules

The Associated Press
Published: Monday August 11, 2008
By DINA CAPPIELLO

WASHINGTON — Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press.

The draft rules also would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.

If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of the Endangered Species Act since 1988. They would accomplish through regulations what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects. Read On

Corporatocracy Rising

2008-08-09T09:15:00.003-05:00

Big Business Is Making Sure It Wins the Presidency
By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted August 9, 2008.

It's the same old story: Money talks, and bullshit walks. And don't be surprised if we're the ones still walking after November.

snip

.....The truth is that the campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain are being inundated with cash from more or less exactly the same gorgons of the corporate scene. From Wall Street to the Big Oil powerhouses to the military-industrial complex, America's fat-cat business leaders know that the Animal House-style party of the last eight years that made almost all of them rich with bonuses, government contracts and bubble profits is about to come to an end, and someone is going to have to pay to clean up the mess. They want that someone to be you, not them, and they've spared no expense to make sure both presidential candidates will be there to bail them out next year.

They're succeeding. Both would-be presidents have already sold us out. They've taken the money and run -- completing the cyclical transformation of the American political narrative from one of monopolistic Republican iniquity to an even more depressing tale about the overweening power of corporate money and the essentially fictitious nature of our two-party system.

In layman's terms, we've gone from being screwed to being fucked. Who knows -- maybe Barack Obama will surprise us if he wins the election. But if you look at the money, it doesn't look good.
Thanks in part to the dormant FEC, corporate America has had even easier access to the candidates than usual in its effort to buy off the next government before the crash........

read the whole piece here

In Another Time's Forgotten Space...

2008-08-08T08:54:00.000-05:00

Score 1 For 1st Amendment In Providence

2008-08-08T08:30:00.002-05:00

Judge rules law on campaign signs is unconstitutional
01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, August 6, 2008
By Paul Edward ParkerJournal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — A federal judge has struck down a state law that allowed police chiefs to remove political campaign signs from the side of public roadways at their discretion.
U.S. District Judge William E. Smith ruled that the law unconstitutionally infringed on the freedom of speech by letting police chiefs decide who can post signs, but not listing criteria chiefs should use in making that decision.

Rodney D. Driver, whom Smith described as a perennial candidate for Congress, filed suit after Richmond Police Chief Raymond A. Driscoll removed campaign signs that Driver had placed on private property across the street from the entrance to the Washington County Fair in 2006.

“I thought it outrageous that a police chief could decide who may or may not post political signs, and then tear down those he disapproved of,” Driver said yesterday in a statement issued by the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Driver in court.
read on

Free Speech to be Corralled at DNC in Denver

2008-08-07T09:42:00.007-05:00

Judge: Denver can restrict protests at convention

Thu Aug 7, 2008 1:10am EDT

DENVER (Reuters) - Protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver can be restricted to fenced-in areas, federal judge ruled on Wednesday, saying that security needs outweighed curbs on their rights.

A dozen groups who intend to protest at the August convention sued the U.S. Secret Service and the city of Denver over plans to confine their activities to a parade route and fenced-in zone, saying that their Constitutional rights to free speech were being violated.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee and others argued that the rules would keep them too far away from delegates to get their message across during the convention, which is scheduled for Aug 25-28 at the city's downtown Pepsi Center.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Krieger agreed that the protesters would suffer some infringement on their freedom of expression but said those interests had to be balanced with security concerns.

"The restrictions inhibit the plaintiffs' ability to engage in some forms of expressive conduct, (but) ... the plaintiffs have a wide variety of alternative means of expression that will allow them to effectively communicate their messages," Krieger wrote in her 71-page ruling.

(Editing by Jackie Frank)

mad yet?

We Don't Need A "War On Terrorism"

2008-08-06T07:14:00.001-05:00

First Published 2008-08-06

Middle East Online

The US government should not militarily invade countries and try to change their form of government, economic system or money-making activities. This applies to both Afghanistan and Iraq, says Ivan Eland.

Many opponents of the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq have always argued that this conflict is an irrelevant and even counterproductive sideshow to the real "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan.

In fact, Barack Obama led the parade to initiate a troop surge in Afghanistan after having opposed it in Iraq. The more hawkish John McCain, not to be outdone by a weak-kneed Democrat, proposed that even more troops be sent to Afghanistan.

In American politics after 9/11, it seems that candidates have to support some sort of war or they will be perceived as being too wimpy to get elected.

Only a small minority of foreign policy gadflies has doubted whether any war on terrorism is needed in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Now a new report by RAND, the government's own captive think tank, supports this small band of renegades.

The study, "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al-Qaeda," written by terrorism experts Seth Jones and Martin Libicki, followed more than 600 terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, over the long-term.

The report concluded that the administration's war on terrorism has not significantly degraded al-Qaeda and that the group has morphed into a more formidable enemy. In fact, al-Qaeda has perpetrated more attacks after September 11, 2001 than before it.

RAND deduced that the best way to kill a terrorist group is to capture or kill its leaders. This task is best carried out, according to the study, by law enforcement, intelligence, and, if needed, troops from the local country.

Instead of giving terrorists the exalted status of warriors, they should be deemed criminals.
Read On

Cindy Sheehan Tells It Like It Is

2008-08-06T07:01:00.002-05:00

from After Downing Street . Org

This Is Horseshit!
By Cindy Sheehan

It is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

You know, I don't care if it's not proper for a Congressional candidate to say: "horseshit." I don't care if it is not a good "tactic" to get kicked out of a Congressional non-impeachment hearing that was just a bunch of horseshit anyway. I don't care if I get accused of being too "extreme" for bucking the (cyst)em by doing everything form camping in a ditch in Crawford, Tx to non-violent civil disobedience to, lately, running for Congress as (oh no!) an independent.

If people can't see how this nation is teetering on the precipice of financial ruin and dragging the rest of this planet down with us as we destroy our ecology, too…and if people don't realize how desperate our situation is, then I must say, that's horseshit!

I am angry. No, I am incensed that hundreds of thousands of people are dead, dying, wounded, displaced from their homes or being imprisoned and tortured by the sadists that reside or work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the approval of their accomplices down the road in Congress.

I am furious that I buried my oldest son when he was 24 years old for the unrepentant lies and the unpunished crimes of the Bush mob. Are you incensed? If not, maybe you should ask yourself: "Why?" Hypothetically: "Why am I not enraged that my country has killed or hurt so many people for absolutely no noble cause in my name and with my tacit approval?"

I am steamed that the working class has to, once again, pay for the excesses of the capitalist criminals that feeds its rapacious appetite with the flesh and blood of our children and won't rest until it owns every penny in this world and has all the power.

You may say, "But Cindy, it is not polite to be angry or to use such strong language in public." Horseshit! In my opinion, every citizen in this country should rise up in anger and DEMAND that George Bush and Dick Cheney not only be impeached and removed from office, but be tried and convicted for murder and crimes against the peace and humanity!

We should all walk off of our jobs and refuse to work and refuse to be cogs in the wheels of psychotic consumerism until our troops, military contractors and permanent bases are removed from Iraq and Afghanistan. Read On

Promoting Peace In Cali

2008-08-05T12:02:00.003-05:00

THE FreewayBlogger shows us how...

U.S. Refuses to Join Majority of World in Abolishing Cluster Bombs

2008-08-04T11:58:00.004-05:00

U.S. Tries but Fails to Scuttle Cluster Bomb Treaty
By Daniel Allen, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted August 4, 2008.

The U.S. government's claims, examined and annotated.

Well over half the world's governments agreed last week to "consign cluster munitions to the trash bin of history," in the words of the Cluster Munition Coalition, the civil society collective that delivered the treaty. Meeting in Dublin, Ireland, representatives of 110 governments completed negotiations on a new international treaty that bans the production, use, and export of all existing cluster munitions and commits them to destroy their stockpiles within eight years.

The U.S. government did not attend the negotiations, instead arm-twisting its allies to weaken the treaty. In the end, though, all other major NATO countries joined with the majority in agreeing to get rid of these weapons, which are designed to kill or maim every living thing in an area as large as two football fields. The vast majority of victims of cluster bombs have been civilians. Read On

If I Knew The Way, I Would Take You Home

2008-08-01T10:38:00.000-05:00

Iraq War Realities Suppressed

2008-08-01T08:12:00.007-05:00

Military censorship of the war in Iraq
By Naomi Spencer31 July 2008
World Socialist Website

Five years of bloody US occupation have seen numerous crimes against humanity unfold in Iraq. Millions of Iraqi civilians have been killed and wounded, with millions more made into refugees. Ancient, once-vibrant cities have been destroyed by air raids and chemical weapons. Thousands of Iraqis have been imprisoned by the US military in barbaric conditions, and in many cases tortured. In carrying out the occupation, more than 4,400 military personnel—most of them American—have died and tens of thousands have been wounded.

Little reflection of these realities is to be found, however, in the US media, particularly in visual form. Censorship by the military—and self-censorship by media outlets—is part of an effort by the ruling elite to sanitize the war and keep the American public in the dark about its real nature.

As highlighted in a July 26 piece in the New York Times, titled “4,000 U.S. Deaths, and a Handful of Images,” very few photographs of the occupation have trickled out from the military-embedded journalists and been released by the American media. The military and Bush administration have imposed rules barring photos of flag-draped caskets, as well as documentation of battlefield casualties in which faces, ranks, or other identifiers are visible.
Read On

Violence Down In Iraq Due To Ethnic Cleansing

2008-08-01T07:14:00.003-05:00

Defeated in Iraq?

First Published 2008-31-07
By Mike Witney
Middle East Online

The surge was created to disguise what was really taking place on the ground; ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, says Mike Whitney.

The United States did not invade Iraq to "stop the violence". That was never the goal. So, it's foolish to say that the surge achieved its objective. It hasn't. Nor has the surge "created the space for a political solution"; another meaningless slogan regurgitated endlessly by the Bush troupe. The political agenda in Iraq has failed utterly. We know that because the Shiite-led government has asked the US to leave "as soon as possible" and for the Bush administration to set a "timetable for withdrawal". Not a "time horizon" as the administration-spinmiesters like to say; a Timetable, which means a fixed time when the United States must leave. So, if the Iraqi government has asked the US to leave; where is the "political solution" the surge was supposed to create? There isn't one. The mission has failed; it's as plain as day. This is not an arguable point.

What the surge really proves is that ethnic cleansing works. Baghdad was a city of roughly 65% Sunnis. Now it is nearly 75% Shiites. Most of the million or so Iraqis who have been killed in the conflict, and most of the 4 million who are either internally displaced or have become refugees, are probably Sunnis. This is an important point and one that Americans should understand. The surge was created to disguise what was really taking place on the ground; ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. No one disputes this. The Sunnis have been effectively purged from the capital. That's not a "political solution". It is a war crime.

More important, the United States military has helped the Shiites win their war against the Sunnis. The Shiites control Baghdad now; the Sunnis will never get it back. That is why they are moving on to the next phase of their strategy, which is to demand that the foreign troops leave. So, at least in one respect the surge has worked; it has helped the Shiites and their allies in Tehran win the war. Bush has helped to strengthen Ahmadinejad. Was that the objective?
The Shiites have no experience running the government. That's always been the Sunnis role dating back hundreds of years. That does not mean they are incapable of leadership, it simply means that the Bush administration decided to break with traditional imperial policy to pursue their colonial ambitions. Normally, imperial powers choose to remove just a few hundred of the top political leaders and leave the existing system in place so the society keeps functioning with as little disruption as possible.

Not Bush. Bush chose to raze the country to the ground; rip-apart the social fabric, destroy the critical infrastructure, and spread chaos far and wide. Now, as author Nir Rosen says, "Iraq no longer exists". By conceding control of the government to the Shiites, Bush has not established democracy, but anarchy and sectarian hatred. The idea of creating a "Shiite Crescent" in the Middle East is part of a wacky theory cooked up in a Washington think-tank. Imagine if the Russians invaded the United States and decided that the quickest path to political stability was to wipe out the government, disband the bureaucracy, and appoint inexperienced people from the poorer sections of the inner-cities and barrios to run the country. This is the level of stupidity in the Bush administration. The strategy has cost the lives of over a million Iraqis. That's a high price for stupidity.

There was never the slightest chance that the US would succeed in establishing strategic outposts in the heart of the Arab world. It was doomed from the get-go. The Bush administration points to the temporary lull in the violence as a sign of progress, but they are mistaken. They're using the wrong yardstick. The Iraqi resistance has achieved what every guerrilla army hopes to achieve; they have undermined their enemy's ability to wage war. The US is facing growing resistance to its imperial policies around the world, but it can't address those problems because its army is tied down in Iraq. This is quickly becoming one of the main areas of disagreement in the 2008 political campaign. The world is drifting away from the United States and it isn't coming back whether Obama or McCain are elected. The superpower model of global government is on its way out.

The real way to measure success or failure in Iraq is to look at the US fiscal budget which has suddenly skyrocketed to nearly $500 billion. This is mainly due to the exorbitant costs of prosecuting an open-ended conflict in the Middle East. The American consumer is not confused by the surge rhetoric; he knows we are losing. He's not blind. He sees evidence of defeat every time he pulls up to a gas-pump. Tell me: Is $4 dollar per gallon gas a sign of victory or defeat? This isn't rocket science.

Once again, the individual battles and skirmishes in Iraq are meaningless; what matters is that America's ability to wage war has been greatly undermined. By the end of 2009, the troops will begin to withdraw or they will be left to fight with sling-shots and bows-and-arrows. The housing market is collapsing, the financial system is in meltdown phase, and the country is facing the greatest funding crisis in its 230 year history. Don't look for proof of America's defeat in Iraq. Look for it at home. Look for it at the pawn shops, the homeless shelters, and the growing number of empty sub-divisions which have turned into ghost towns. This is where one can see the true costs of the war; a war that was lost before the first bomb was dropped.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state and can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com
source: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=27184

More About The Iraqi Refugee Crisis...

2008-07-31T07:39:00.003-05:00

Humanitarian crisis: Displaced in Diyala

DIYALA, Iraq (UWIRE) – “The militias are not allowing us to return to our homes,” said Karima Abas Kuydayer. She is one of an estimated 4.2 million Iraqis displaced around the world. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, this figure includes 2.4 million persons displaced inside Iraq. The center tracks conflict-induced internal displacement worldwide.

During the last 24 months, sectarian and generalized violence have replaced military operations as the primary causes of recent population displacement within postwar Iraq.

Read On

US troops killed three Iraqi civilians: military

2008-07-31T07:30:00.002-05:00

Wed Jul 30, 2:15 PM ET

SAMARRA, Iraq (AFP) - US soldiers killed three unarmed Iraqi civilians, including a woman, near the central city of Samarra, the American military said Wednesday.

The incident which is under official investigation occurred early Wednesday as US troops carried out what the military described as operations targeting Al-Qaeda in the central zone of the war-ravaged country.

It said that US soldiers moving towards a building had observed four "suspicious" individuals and had perceived "hostile" intent after being fired upon.

"The force engaged them, killing two men and a woman, and wounding another woman. A third man who was detained on site admitted to working with explosives," the US statement said.

But Nusayf Jassim, a resident on Samarra, 125 kilometres (80 miles) north of Baghdad, told AFP that US soldiers had raided his home in search of insurgents and in the ensuing gunfire his mother and two brothers were killed.

"The US forces burst into our home at 2.00 am and opened fire in all directions, Jassim told AFP at his home on the edge of the city.

"They killed my 50-year-old-mother and two of my brothers, aged 21 and 26," he said.
US troops also wounded two of Jassim's sisters prior to detaining his 23-year-old brother, he said.

Jassim added that the raiding US soldiers had told him that "terrorists" were living at his home.
The US military said no weapons were found.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080730/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestusmilitarycivilians

Two Iraqi Officials Assassinated In Separate Attacks In Mosul

2008-07-31T07:23:00.002-05:00

IRBIL, July 30 (KUNA) -- An Iraqi Judge in Mosul and a member of the Islamic Party in Iraq were assassinated in two separate armed attacks in northern part of the country, Iraqi police said on Wednesday.

A police source told KUNA unknown armed men fired at a vehicle carrying Judge Mohammad Khalaf Al-Sabeel who was on his way to court from home in Al-Sadiq area in northern Mosul.
The source added unknown gunmen also killed a member of the Islamic Party headed by Iraqi Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi.

Meanwhile, a military force unit fired and killed two gunmen who were planting explosives in eastern Mosul, the source noted. (end) sbr.mb KUNA 302113 Jul 08NNNN

source: http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1928360&Language=en

Try To Give A Little Love

2008-07-29T13:41:00.003-05:00

Free-Speeching and Impeaching in LA

2008-07-29T12:50:00.002-05:00

from The FreewayBlogger

Free-Speeching and Impeaching in Austin, TX

2008-07-29T12:45:00.002-05:00

Hold Bush Administration Accountable For Crimes Against The People

2008-07-29T12:34:00.003-05:00

From Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH):

URGENT: need your help - Impeachment Petition Deadline Midnight Wednesday

Dear Friends,
Because of your vigilance and support for democracy, last Friday was a day of singular importance in Washington. The House Judiciary Committee met to discuss the Bush Administration's abuse of executive power and for the first time the case for Impeachment was discussed in front of a Congressional committee, in depth, at length and with authority.

Twenty members of the Judiciary Committee attended the six hour hearing, during which twelve witnesses, including myself and four members of Congress testified. In this hearing I called for the Impeachment of the President for misrepresenting a case for war.

This week I will present members of Congress with Impeachment petitions submitted by those of you who have signed the on-line impeachment form.

I need your help. In the next few days we must redouble our efforts to get more signatures on the online petition at kucinich.us. I'm asking each of you to please contact at least ten of your friends to go to www.Kucinich.us now and sign the Impeachment petition that will be delivered by me. Wednesday night is the deadline.

Please send out an email to all your friends and family, post this link, http://kucinich.us to your blogs and make this effort count as this is the only petition that I will deliver.

Thank you so very much.
[Dennis Kucinich]

What It's Like To Be An Iraqi Refugee From Iraqi Refugees' Perspectives

2008-07-29T06:48:00.004-05:00

snip

“I do my best to get through each day and keep what is left of my family together,” says “H” of his current situation as a refugee in Amman, Jordan, “my boys are my life, my love.” H and his two sons live in an apartment without refrigerator, or cooker. His wife died 4 years ago from blood poisoning. He now does everything for his two sons, including protecting them by not telling his story. He is too scared. Scared of his fellow Iraqi refugees, scared of the Kurds who he says now run the Iraqi Embassy in Jordan, scared of the UNHCR because they ask him questions he will not answer, scared of the Iraqi government, scared because he converted to Christianity, scared of the Americans, scared of his and his sons.

“H” wants to live in peace, no more killing, no more death, no more army.

What “H” did tell me is that Saddam Hussein is his father, the father of Iraq, the number 1 President for all Arabs. “He was the one who kept Iraq together, he was fair, everyone was equal, Shia, Sunni, Muslim, Christian, Kurd it didn’t matter as long as you swore fidelity to Saddam, he would protect you and your family. Now look at the government, they are run by Shia and Kurds and they don’t stop the killing, they want the killing,” was all H would tell me.

He also said he came to Jordan in 2003 before the Iraq War started.

read more here: http://hiddeninplainsightexhibition.blogspot.com/2008/07/trust-is-issue.html