From : New Internationalist, October 2009 • Issue 426 Islamic fundamentalist militants are the enemies of Israel and Western governments, right? Think again. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed reports. Once upon a time, the CIA trained, financed and supported Osama bin Laden and his mujahidin networks in Afghanistan to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After the end of [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Al Qaeda, Algeria, Banking, Big Oil, Bosnia, Chechnya, CIA, Dana Rohrabacher, Dick Cheney, Ed Dearborn, George W Bush, Graham Fuller, Hamas, Heinie Aderholt, Intelligence, Israel, Mujahideen, Mujahidin, Niaz Naik, Oil Pipelines, Oliver North, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, Richard Secord, Saudi Arabia, Taliban, Terrorism, Terrorism Funding
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Transcription of Arundhati Roy and Howard Zinn Lensic Performing Arts Center Santa Fe, New Mexico 18 September 2002 Howard Zinn: Well, thank you. [Applause]. This is a very nice crowd. [Laughter] Thank you Patrick Lannan for that introduction. I almost recognized myself. [Laughter] I’m here to introduce Arundhati Roy. I say this in hushed tones. Really, [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Andrew Card, Arundhati Roy, Augusto Pinochet, CAFTA, Chile, CIA, Corporatism, Free Market, George H W Bush, George W Bush, Globalization, Golda Meir, Hamas, Hamid Karzai, Hegemony, Henry Kissinger, Howard Zinn, IMF, Intifada, Israel, John Berger, Levi Eschol, Madeleine Albright, Menachem Begin, Militarism, NAFTA, Palestine, PLO, Richard Perle, Saddam Hussein, Salvador Allende, Victor Jara, War, Winston Churchill, World Bank, WTO, Yitzhak Shamir, Zionism
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Remember these facts: Bush was briefed on September 18, 2002 by the CIA and was told at that time Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. That briefing directly contradicted the National Intelligence Estimate Congress relied upon during the debate about the Iraq War. Colin Powell also relied upon the National Intelligence Estimate to [...]
Statusquobama | The Range: The Tucson Weeklys Old Pueblog | Tucson Weekly.
War Is Making You Poor Act – HR5353 : Rep. Grayson introduces a bill to cut separate funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and uses the money to eliminate federal income taxes on every American’s first $35,000 of income. Cosponsors of this bill include Ron Paul, Walter Jones, John Conyers, Lynn Woolsey, and Dennis [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich, Economy, Federal Debt, Federal Deficit, House, John Conyers, Lynn Woolsey, Pentagon, Ron Paul, Taxation, Walter Jones, War Spending
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Over the past five years, the U.S. government has spent a combined $80 billion on contractors to support its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that has U.S. military leaders concerned: On Friday, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan suggested that the coalition had become too dependent on private contractors to carry out its mission there effectively. [...]
Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country’s Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say. The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni [...]
To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video: We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses. We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 [...]
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once declared that individuals captured by the US military in the aftermath of 9/11 and shipped off to the Guantanamo Bay prison facility represented the “worst of the worst.” “If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield,” Rumsfeld [...]
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Also tagged Abdul Rashid Dostum, Adel Hassan Hamad, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Beth Jones, Bounties, Cofer Black, Colin Powell, CSRT, Detainees, Dick Cheney, DOD, Donald Rumsfeld, George W Bush, Guantanamo, Indefinite Detention, Intelligence, Jack Straw, Lawrence Wilkerson, Liz Cheney, Lying Liars, Pakistan, Pentagon, Pierre Prosper, Rendition, Richard Myers, Robert Gates, Saddam Hussein, SOF, Torture
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5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of [...]
At least one in six service members is on some form of psychiatric drug. And many troops are taking more than one kind, mixing several pills in daily “cocktails” — for example, an antidepressant with an anti-psychotic to prevent nightmares, plus an anti-epileptic to reduce headaches — despite minimal clinical research testing such combinations. The drugs come [...]
As a journalist, as well as a military veteran and former Iraq contractor, I try to keep abreast of the latest developments in America’s warfighting forces—public and private. Which is why I was unsurprised to find a new report this month by the DOD inspector general on KBR’s lazy Iraq contracting. But I was surprised when I found no [...]
Imagine, for a moment, if Pentagon officials, supposedly toiling in our name, actually condescended to ask us for our thoughts. What do we think about global military strategy, garrisoning the planet, the ways in which our forces are structured, and how, where, and for what they should be deployed abroad? Sound crazy? Here in the U.S.A. [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Contractors, DOD, Economy, Homeless, Homeless Veterans, Homelessness, Housing, Jobs, Military, Military Spending, Pentagon, Poverty, Unemployment, VA, Veterans, Veterans Administration
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From Mark Perry at Foreign Policy: On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, CENTCOM, David Petraeus, EUCOM, Gaza, Israel, JCS, Joe Biden, Michael Mullen, Middle East, Military, Palestinian Authority, Pentagon, Settlements, West Bank
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Aside from the underlying issues–such as that some if not most of the interrogators in question are contractors who were working for Mitchell and Jessen, the fact that their identities are obvious enough for hippie human rights lawyers to discover them, and the fact that (contrary to Gertz’ use of the word “terrorist” throughout) some [...]
The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Al Qaeda, Balkans, CIA, Contractors, DOD, Intelligence, Iran-Contra, Michael Furlong, Pakistan, Pentagon, Psyops, Taliban
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Pain and death suffered by people become less important as time moves on, and that is significant when we come to think about the Iraq war, launched seven years ago this month. Already there is competition for the ear of future historians and there is an attempt under way to fix the record of the actual [...]
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3_EXqJ8f-0[/youtube] 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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
Monday, February 15, 2010
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8DSnVlGnbo[/youtube] 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 [...]
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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 [...]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NThzeYgFypU[/youtube] 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 [...]
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 [...]
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