Archive for the ‘USA’ Category
April 27, 2010
by William A. Cook, Dissident Voice, April 27, 2010
As Israel attempts today to gloss over the reality of its birth 62 years ago with a sweeping public relations campaign extolling the miraculous “resurrection” of ancient Zion in contemporary times, a new nation seeking only peace with its neighbors, it might be enlightening and valuable to examine the truth.
On May 14, 1948 President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency for Palestine announcing the impending proclamation of the independent republic of Israel.1 That date marks not only the beginning of the State of Israel but, sub missa voce, the assumption by the State of Israel of the calculated, systematic and determined ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of the land of Palestine that had been the business of “The Consultancy” and its agents before May 14, as identified by Dr. Ilan Pappe in his monumental The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.2
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Tags:destruction of Palestinian villages, Israel/Palestine, State of Israel and ethnic cleansing, the Nakba, William A. Cook, Zionists and President Truman
Posted in Palestine, Uncategorized, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2010
By Ray McGovern, Consortiumnews.com, April 26, 2010
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said publicly that Iran “doesn’t directly threaten the United States.” Her momentary lapse came while answering a question at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 14.
Fortunately for her, most of her Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) fellow travelers must have been either jet-lagged or sunning themselves poolside when she made her unusual admission.
And those who were present did Clinton the favor of disappearing her gaffe and ignoring its significance. (All one happy traveling family, you know.)
But she said it: it’s on the State Department Web site. Those who had been poolside could even have read the text after showering. They might have recognized a real story there — but, granted, it was one so off-message that it would probably not we welcomed by editors back home.
Continues >>
Tags:Chirac on Israeli stockpile of nuclear bombs, Hillary Clinton and Iran, Iran no threat to the US, Israel and Iran, Ray McGovern
Posted in Commentary, Iran, Uncategorized, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2010
Truthout, Monday 26 April 2010
by: Mikey Weinstein | Newsweek
Franklin Graham. (Photo: roberthuffstutter)
Let’s just face it: Franklin Graham is an Islamophobe, an anti-Muslim bigot and an international representative of the scourge of fundamentalist Christian supremacy and exceptionalism. As a result, he fails in the worst way as a role model for Constitutional American citizenship. How can Graham or anyone prejudge/brand all members of a specific culture, religion and/or ethnicity? Such prejudice and racist cretinism is nothing new. It’s as old as our species and has been the direct cause of the brutal end of untold multitudes of our species.
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Tags:Franklin Graham as an anti-Muslim bigot, Mikey Weinstein, undamentalist Christian supremacy, United States
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April 27, 2010
By James Cogan, wsws.org, 27 April 2010
The New York Times reported Sunday that American special forces units are operating in and around the Afghan city of Kandahar, assassinating or capturing alleged leaders and militants of the Taliban resistance ahead of the major US-NATO offensive scheduled for June.
Suggestive of the sinister and murderous character of such operations, the Times noted that the “opening salvos of the offensive are being carried out in the shadows”. It reported that “elite” units had been “picking up or picking off insurgent leaders” for the past several weeks.
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Tags:Afghanistan, Bagram and torture of detainees, escalation of troops and war in Afghanistan, James Cogan, Kandahar offensive, objective of Afghan occupation
Posted in Afghanistan, Commentary, Human rights, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 26, 2010
Why We Won’t Leave Afghanistan or Iraq
By Tom Engelhardt, ZNet, April 26, 2010
Source: TomDispatch
Tom Engelhardt’s ZSpace Page
Yes, we could. No kidding. We really could withdraw our massive armies, now close to 200,000 troops combined, from Afghanistan and Iraq (and that’s not even counting our similarly large stealth army of private contractors, which helps keep the true size of our double occupations in the shadows). We could undoubtedly withdraw them all reasonably quickly and reasonably painlessly.
Not that you would know it from listening to the debates in Washington or catching the mainstream news. There, withdrawal, when discussed at all, seems like an undertaking beyond the waking imagination. In Iraq alone, all those bases to dismantle and millions of pieces of equipment to send home in a draw-down operation worthy of years of intensive effort, the sort of thing that makes the desperate British evacuation from Dunkirk in World War II look like a Sunday stroll in the park. And that’s only the technical side of the matter.
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Tags:American occupation of Iraq, Iraq and Afghanistan, South Vietnam, Tom Engelhardt, US armies, US withdrawal
Posted in Afghanistan, imperialism, Iraq, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 26, 2010
Few Notable Militants Reported Killed
After killing a record 700 civilians last year in at least 44 distinct drone strikes against Pakistan in 2009, the Obama Administration looks to be escalating the rate even further in 2010, to the point that drone strikes have become a decidedly ordinary occurrence.
Less than four months into the new year, the US has already launched 40 attacks and killed at least 268 people. The most recent strike yesteray in North Waziristan killed at least nine people.
The identities of the victims are never particularly easy to ascertain, but the number of named militants killed so far this year is trivial, as it was last year, when most of the “suspects” turned out to have no discernible relation to any militant faction.
Since taking office, President Obama has repeatedly escalated the drone strikes against the tribal areas, to the point where multiple attacks a week are a matter of course. With the normal winter lull seeing such a large number of strikes, a new record for killings seems all but assured again in 2010.
Tags:Civialins killed in Pakistan, civilians killed in Pakistan, escalation under President Obama, Jason Ditz, North Waziristan, US drone attacks
Posted in Human rights, Pakistan, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 26, 2010
By William Pfaff, Future Fastforward, April 25, 2010
Tribune Media,
It is a dismaying reflection that the facilitator of major violence thus far in the twenty-first century have been lies told by democratic governments. The lies are continuing to be told, about the supposed “existential” menace posed by Iran to Israel, America and (if you believe some European leaders) to Western Europe.
One can say there is nothing new about lies. I would argue that the influence of mendacious official propaganda in the western democracies is probably greater today than in the last century.
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Tags:fascists, Germany under hitler, Glasnost, Iran, Iraq, United States, William Pfaff
Posted in Commentary, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA | Leave a Comment »
April 25, 2010
WASHINGTON – Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) forcefully criticized the United States’ drone strikes in Pakistan as inspiring the anti-American sentiments they seek to quell, touching upon a consequence of the policy rarely discussed in the media but well-recognized in the region.
“I do not support the drone attacks,” Kucinich told Raw Story, arguing that they are pushing the United States “into an area of unaccountability that would lead to blowback, where we actually lose friends, where we help inspire anti-American sentiments and fanaticism and radicalism.”
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Tags:radicalism, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Sahil Kapur, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, United States
Posted in Commentary, imperialism, Pakistan, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 25, 2010
Daya Gamage – US National Correspondent Asian Tribune
U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drones), comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war is the authoritative opinion of the Obama administration’s Chief Legal Counsel attached to Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
The domestic and international outcry in opposition to the Drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – started during the previous Bush administration in 2002 and increasingly used by the current Obama administration – is for the collateral damage – the vast civilian deaths – that results.
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Tags:Chief Legal Counsel Harold Hongju Koh, civilian deaths, Daya Gamage, drone attacks under Obama administration, Pakistan and Aghnistan targeted, U.S. drone attacks, unlawful extrajudicial killing
Posted in Afghanistan, Pakistan, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
April 24, 2010
Before the US House of Representatives, April 22, 2010, Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act.
I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war with Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one-trillion-dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.
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Tags:Iran sactions, Iran sanctions, Rep. Ron Paul, sanctions bill, United States, war advocates
Posted in Commentary, Iran, President Barack Obama, Uncategorized, US policy, USA, war | Leave a Comment »
Peace and Justice Post 
Is Iran Really a Threat to America?
April 27, 2010By Ray McGovern, Consortiumnews.com, April 26, 2010
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said publicly that Iran “doesn’t directly threaten the United States.” Her momentary lapse came while answering a question at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 14.
Fortunately for her, most of her Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) fellow travelers must have been either jet-lagged or sunning themselves poolside when she made her unusual admission.
And those who were present did Clinton the favor of disappearing her gaffe and ignoring its significance. (All one happy traveling family, you know.)
But she said it: it’s on the State Department Web site. Those who had been poolside could even have read the text after showering. They might have recognized a real story there — but, granted, it was one so off-message that it would probably not we welcomed by editors back home.
Continues >>
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Tags:Chirac on Israeli stockpile of nuclear bombs, Hillary Clinton and Iran, Iran no threat to the US, Israel and Iran, Ray McGovern
Posted in Commentary, Iran, Uncategorized, USA, Zionist Israel | Leave a Comment »