President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy isn’t working. So said a parade of Afghanistan watchers during the flap over war commander General Stanley McChrystal’s firing. But what does that phrase, so often in the media these days, really mean? And if the strategy really isn’t working, just how can you tell? The answers to these questions raise even [...]
Liberal Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman, writing in the Los Angeles Times about “An increasingly politicized military,” argued that the McChrystal affair is more ominous than the celebrated Truman-MacArthur clash of 1951, which ended with MacArthur’s dismissal in the midst of the Korean War. That is because McChrystal voices openly the sentiments of an officer [...]
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Earlier this month, President Obama asked the Department of Health and Human Services to order all hospitals that participate in Medicaid and Medicare to allow patients to designate who shall be allowed to visit them and make medical decisions on their behalf. This is one of the most pro-LGBT rights policies so far adopted by [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Civil Rights, Congress, DADT, Discrimination, DOMA, Gender, Harry Reid, Human Rights, Identity, LBGT, Nancy Pelosi, Pentagon, Steny Hoyer
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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 [...]
Two months ago, U.S. Special Operations forces led an assault on what they claimed to be a militant hideout in Paktiya Province, Afghanistan. Three civilian women were killed in the raid, two of them pregnant, along with two civilian men. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force admitted later that the two men were non-combatants. As for [...]
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 [...]
Q: Why would U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan go out of their way to smear a journalist? A: Because he told the truth about a night raid that killed Afghan civilians, including pregnant women. Last week, I spoke with Afghanistan-based journalist Jerome Starkey about his reporting on special forces raids that killed civilians and [...]
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Controversy is not something new for WikiLeaks – a website notorious for leaking sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational, or religious documents. In the past, they have leaked Guantánamo Bay procedures, documents belonging to the Church of Scientology, contents of Sarah Palin’s e-mail account and internet censorship lists. Obviously, over the years WikiLeaks has managed to anger [...]
There are now three armies in America: the regular volunteer force, the secret volunteer force — the folks at the Joint Special Operations Command — and the paramilitaries and contractors used by the CIA. Three armies, a welter of conflicting laws, domains and territories. The scariest part of the Ellen Nakashima’s story on Friday on how [...]
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Also tagged Accountability, CIA, Contractors, Cyber Attacks, Cybersecurity, Cyberwar, DNI, DOD, Intelligence, Internet, JSOC, Law, Michael Furlong, NSA, Oversight, Pentagon
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America has spent more than $6 billion since 2002 in an effort to create an effective Afghan police force, buying weapons, building police academies, and hiring defense contractors to train the recruits—but the program has been a disaster. More than $322 million worth of invoices for police training were approved even though the funds were [...]
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Also tagged Accountability, Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Audit, Blackwater, Contractors, Department of State, DynCorp, Education, Police, Poverty, Training, Xe Services
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“We knew we were going to be forced to shut this thing down,” recalled one former civilian official, describing tense internal discussions in which military commanders argued that the site was putting Americans at risk. “CIA resented that,” the former official said. Elite U.S. military computer specialists, over the objections of the CIA, mounted a [...]
Filed in News Blurbs, Technology
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Also tagged CIA, Cyber Attacks, Cyberwar, DNI, DOJ, Intelligence, NSA, NSC, OLC, Saudi Arabia, Surveillance, Terrorism
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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. [...]
Filed in Essays, News Blurbs
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, Contractors, DOD, Economy, Homeless, Homeless Veterans, Homelessness, Housing, Iraq War, Jobs, Military Spending, Pentagon, Poverty, Unemployment, VA, Veterans, Veterans Administration
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Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The legal issues can’t really be fully assessed without much more information than has been reported so far, but I see three separate problems—in ascending order of significance: Appropriated funds. Specific rules govern the use of congressionally appropriated funds, requiring the money to be used for the purpose for which it was in fact approved. [...]
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Also tagged Assassinations, CIA, Civilians, Contractors, Courts, Detainees, Donald Rumsfeld, Geneva Conventions, Law, Laws of War, Military Tribunals, Predator Drones, Propaganda
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The Times report, written by Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti, has the character of a controlled release of information for the purpose of containing the damage to US covert operations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. It is not only the US military and intelligence agencies that are being protected, but the Times itself. According to the [...]
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Also tagged Afghanistan War, American Security Corporation, Assassinations, Black Ops, CIA, Contractors, Corporatism, Covert Ops, David Rohde, Eason Jordan, Espionage, Intelligence, International Media Ventures, Iran-Contra, Michael Furlong, Mike Taylor, Oliver North, Pentagon, Robert Pelton, Special Operations
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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, Iraq War, Israel, JCS, Joe Biden, Michael Mullen, Middle East, Palestinian Authority, Pentagon, Settlements, West Bank
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(Xinhua) Updated: 2010-03-12 16:52 BEIJING – China’s Information Office of the State Council published a report titled “The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009” here Friday. Following is the full text: The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010, posing [...]
Filed in Documents, News Blurbs, Notable
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Also tagged AIDs, Arms Trafficking, BATF, Censorship, Child Labor, China, CIA, Civil Rights, Crime, Cuba, Cuban Embargo, Detainees, Discrimination, DOJ, ECHELON, Education, Environment, Equal Pay, Espionage, FBI, FISA, Freedom of Press, Freedom of Speech, Hate Crimes, Healthcare, Hegemony, Homeless, Homelessness, Human Rights, Hunger, Hypocrisy, Imperialism, Internet, Labor, Minorities, Murder, NSA, Oppression, Overseas Military Installations, Patriot Act, Poverty, Prisoners, Prisons, Racism, Rape, Rendition, Surveillance, Torture, Unemployment, US Human Rights Record 2009, Veterans, Walmart, Wiretapping, Women
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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 [...]
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, Iraq War, Korean War, Law, Liberty Bonds, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, 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, Iraq War, Liberals, Media, Militarization, Poverty, Reform, Republicans, Tea Party, Wall Street, Wealth
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Plumlee and other pilots have testified to Congress that they were working for a secret U.S. military intelligence operation that clandestinely sent them from the United States to bring back the so-called damaged and disappeared weapons for retrofitting and repair. “When the weapons were repaired and tested at China Lake and Twentynine Palms, in California, [...]
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Also tagged Arms Trafficking, California, CFR, CIA, Colombia, Costa Rica, Covert Landing Strips, DEA, DOD, Drug Trafficking, El Salvador, Gary Hart, Homicide, Investigations, Iran Contra Affair, John Kerry, Kiki Camarena, Latin America, MCAS El Toro, Mexico, Murder, Narcotics, Nicaragua, NSC, Operation Penetrate, Pentagon, Robert Tosh Plumlee, Senate, Tosh Plumlee, Unmarked Planes, USMC, Whistleblower, White House
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Kavita Ramdas and Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls discuss the militarization of society and how it hurts everyone, but especially women. - GRITtv with Laura Flanders [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS-unajw77I[/youtube]
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Also tagged Education, GritTV, Healthcare, Infrastructure, International Womens Day 2010, Laura Flanders, Militarization, Social Problems, Social Programs, Women
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About half the states in the US require that a woman seeking an abortion be told certain things before she can obtain the medical procedure. In South Dakota, for example, until a few months ago, staff was required to tell women: “The abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being”; [...]
Sunday, February 21, 2010
“They are screwing these two guys,” the first U.S. defense official said of the field commanders. “They were looking for heads,” the second American defense official said. “It’s a travesty.” Penalizing the pair is even more egregious, the U.S. defense officials and the former NATO official said, because their plans to close the outposts were [...]
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, Iraq War, JSOC, Torture, War Crimes, Waterboarding
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Saturday, February 13, 2010
“This is a policy,” Hutson continued, that was “devised primarily by men who, like me, were born in the ‘40s and grew up in the ‘50s, but was being imposed on people who were at that time born in the ‘70s and grew up in the ‘80s. Now it’s born in the ‘80s and grew [...]
Saturday, February 13, 2010
3. You present the question of the draft as a moral issue for society, and you trace it from the draft riots of the Civil War to the present day. Politicians today appear broadly to support a professional army as a way of avoiding the public controversy presented by the draft. It also means that [...]
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Also tagged Civic Duty, Common Good, Conscription, Conservatives, Consumerism, Corporatism, Democrats, Ethics, Executive Compensation, Fairness, Justice, Liberals, Libertarians, Morality, Morals, Pay Inequity, Religion, Republicans, The Draft, Wages, War
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Listening To
