Wednesday, March 10, 2010
War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired U.S. Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, in which Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests have commercially [...]
Filed in Documents, Notable, Quotable
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, american empire, Anti-War, Authoritarianism, Civil War, Congress, Corporatism, Fascism, Gulf War, House, Imperialism, Interventionists, Korean War, Law, Liberty Bonds, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, Military, Nation-Building, Nationalism, Senate, Spanish-American War, USMC, Vietnam War, War, War Profiteers, WW1, WW2
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from [...]
Filed in Notable
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Class Warfare, Congress, Conservatives, Corporate Welfare, Corporatism, Democracy, Democrats, Despotism, Healthcare, Hedge Funds, Liberals, Media, Militarization, Military, Poverty, Reform, Republicans, Tea Party, Wall Street, Wealth
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The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has issued a strong warning to the Defense Department over plans to award $1 billion in new contracts to the firm formerly known as Blackwater, accusing managers of the private security company of lying to win lucrative jobs in Afghanistan.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) also cited a history of [...]
Monday, February 15, 2010
KARL: … waterboarding, clearly, what was your…
CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques that…
KARL: And you opposed the administration’s actions of doing away with waterboarding?
CHENEY: Yes.
He just admitted being an accomplice. To date approximately 100 detainees (at minimum), including CIA-held detainees, have died during [...]
Filed in News Blurbs, Notable
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Caught on Tape, CIA, Crime, Detainees, Dick Cheney, Evidence, Guantanamo, JSOC, Military, Torture, War Crimes, Waterboarding
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Monday, February 15, 2010
Gregory asked the Vice President if the Iraq War was worth it.
“No I don’t think the war was worth it,” Biden replied. “We paid a horrible price not only in loss of life, the way the war was mishandled from the outset. But we took our eye off the ball putting us in a different [...]
Terrorists. They’re trying to kill Americans at home and our troops abroad. And who’s footing the bill for the attacks against us? Oil money. Filtered through secret organizations in the Middle East and countries like Iran. When oil money hands up in the hands of our enemies, Americans pay the ultimate price. We’ve got to [...]
In the United States, we’re all supposed to have forgotten that the narrative leading to the Iraq War was propelled by false facts and arguments, often in circumstances where the claim of good-faith error is difficult to sustain. We’re supposed to keep listening to political figures who made false claims, and utterly exonerate the media [...]
Thursday, January 28, 2010
After Ali’s death, some of Mohammed’s friends came to him and asked him if the death had changed his attitude toward the Americans. It hadn’t, he told them. “I honestly separate distinctly between Blackwater and the American people and the American government,” he says. “I honestly love America and the American people. What happened to [...]
The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis’s narration. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and has subsequently been broadcast [...]
Filed in Film, Notable
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Also tagged Adam Curtis, Afghanistan War, Al Qaeda, Anwar Al Sadat, Ayman al-Zawahiri, BBC, Bill Clinton, CIA, Dick Cheney, Documentary, Donald Rumsfeld, Egypt, Extremists, Fear, Gamal Abdel Nasser, George HW Bush, George W Bush, Guantanamo, Irving Kristol, Islam, Leo Strauss, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslims, Neo-Conservatives, Osama bin Laden, Paul Wolfowitz, Power of Nightmares, Rendition, Ronald Reagan, Saudi Arabia, Sayyid Qutb, Taliban, Terrorism, Tony Blair, Torture
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Saturday, January 23, 2010
In Baghdad, Vice President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. will appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater guards involved in a 2007 Baghdad shooting that killed 17 people including women and children. (Jan. 23)
via YouTube – Associated Press – Biden: U.S. to Appeal Blackwater Dismissal.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Tony Blair will face pressure at the Iraq inquiry a week on Friday to explain how he was able to claim that Saddam Hussein was building a “growing” programme of weapons of mass destruction six months before the invasion in 2003.
As the inquiry announced that the former prime minister will give evidence, a senior member said [...]
In the so-called Davids Report , the findings of an inquiry into the legality of the Dutch government’s decision to support the US-led invasion in 2003, the conclusion is that there were no legal grounds for invasion.
While a similar inquiry is still ongoing in the United Kingdom, known as the Chilcot inquiry, the Dutch Commission chief Willibrord [...]
Three private security guards working for Blackwater Worldwide who witnessed a 2007 episode in Baghdad in which at least 17 Iraqi civilians were killed by other Blackwater guards told a federal grand jury that they believed the shootings were unjustified, according to newly unsealed court documents.
Two senior United States military officers who arrived at the [...]
Still, the government has failed to hold armed contractors accountable. When its formal occupation of Iraq ended in 2004, the Bush administration demanded that Baghdad grant legal immunity to private contractors.
Congress has tried to cover such crimes with American law. The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act extends civilian law to contractors supporting military operations overseas, and [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Abu Ghraib, Accountability, Blackwater, Congress, Contractors, Crime, ICC, Law, MEJA, Mercenaries, PMCs, Privatization, UCMJ, War Crimes
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Several victims of a 2007 shooting involving American private security guards employed by the firm formerly known as Blackwater alleged Sunday that they were coerced into reaching settlements, and they demanded that the Iraqi government intervene to have the agreements nullified.
The Iraqis said they were pressured by their own attorneys into accepting what they now [...]
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