RussiaToday
July 14, 2009
Barack Obama’s indefinite detention claim, coupled with the enemy combatant right he inherited, enables him to lock up any US citizen forever without a trial, author and political consultant Naomi Wolf told RT.
Day: July 14, 2009
From WW II To WW III: Global NATO And Remilitarized Germany, Part II by Rick Rozoff
by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/40691
July 14, 2009
Part II
The reunification of Germany in 1990 did not signify a centripetal trend in Europe but instead was an anomaly. The following year the Soviet Union was broken up into its fifteen constituent federal republics and the same process began in Yugoslavia, with Germany leading the charge in hastening on and recognizing the secession of Croatia and Slovenia from the nation that grew out of the destruction of World War I and again of World War II.
Two years later Czechoslovakia, like the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia a multiethnic state created after the First World War, split apart.
With the absorption of the former German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic, which since 1949 had already claimed an exclusive mandate to govern all of Germany, the entire nation was now subsumed under a common military structure and brought into the NATO bloc.
Honduras cardinal urges Zelaya to stay away
AlJazeeraEnglish
July 14, 2009
Honduras’ ousted president has traveledzel to Guatemala to muster more regional support.
Manuel Zelaya says negotiations will be a failure unless he’s reinstated.
But the country’s highest-ranking Cardinal has now entered the political dispute and called on Zelaya to stay away. Gabriel Elizondo reports.
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Season of Travesties – Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009 By Noam Chomsky
The Convoy of Death: Will Obama Investigate The Afghan Massacre Of November 2001? by Andy Worthington
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
14 July 2009
On Friday, in the New York Times, James Risen resuscitated a story that some commentators — myself included — presumed had dropped off the radar, never to be heard of again. The story concerns the massacre of at least 1,500 prisoners in northern Afghanistan at the end of November 2001, after the fall of the city of Kunduz, the Taliban’s last stronghold, and is known, to those who recall it, as the “Convoy of Death,” because those who died suffocated in vast numbers, or died as a result of gunshot wounds, while being transported in container trucks to a prison at Sheberghan run by General Rashid Dostum, a leader of the US-backed Northern Alliance.
In my book The Guantánamo Files, I devoted a chapter to the “Convoy of Death,” which includes the following passages, reproduced here to establish a context for the massacre, based on descriptions from survivors, and from those who covered the story at the time, or who investigated it afterwards:
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Is The World Ignoring A Massacre of Uighurs In China? by Andy Worthington
by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
14 July 2009
I have just received disturbing information from several Uighur correspondents in the United States, regarding the “riots” that began just nine days ago in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China.
When the unrest began, the world’s media suddenly discovered the story of the Uighurs, who describe their situation as akin to that of the Tibetans, but without the popular support. Once known as East Turkestan, the Uighurs’ long-contested homeland was conquered by the People’s Liberation Army in 1949, and anyone even remotely familiar with recent Uighur history will be aware that, in the 1960s, Mao Zedong encouraged Han Chinese to settle in the area in large numbers, and that the Uighurs — some of whom came to the attention of the West when 22 refugees were sold to US forces and imprisoned in Guantánamo — maintain that, as a result, they are marginalized and persecuted in their own country.
Season of Travesties – Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009 By Noam Chomsky
By Noam Chomsky
July 14, 2009 “Information Clearing House”
June 2009 was marked by a number of significant events, including two elections in the Middle East: in Lebanon, then Iran. The events are significant, and the reactions to them, highly instructive.
The election in Lebanon was greeted with euphoria. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that he is “a sucker for free and fair elections,” so “it warms my heart to watch” what happened in Lebanon in an election that “was indeed free and fair — not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.” Crucially, “a solid majority of all Lebanese — Muslims, Christians and Druse — voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri,” the US-backed candidate and son of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, so that “to the extent that anyone came out of this election with the moral authority to lead the next government, it was the coalition that wants Lebanon to be run by and for the Lebanese — not for Iran, not for Syria and not for fighting Israel.” We must give credit where it is due for this triumph of free elections (and of Washington): “Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 — and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing — this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.”
This Land Was Our Land by Ed Ciaccio
by Ed Ciaccio
Dandelion Salad
Featured Writer
July 14, 2009
(With apologies to Woody Guthrie)
This land was our land, but now it’s their land,
From coast to coast, a most unfair land.
From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters,
They stole this land from you and me.
The Wall Street banksters and corporate cronies,
The weapons makers, the Congress phonies,
The liars and lobbies, and radio ranters,
They stole this land from you and me.
This land was our land, but now it’s their land,
From coast to coast, a most unfair land.
From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters,
They stole this land from you and me.
In halls of Congress, where Corporate Tools lurk,
To serve their masters, while all us fools work
To feed our families, they count their campaign checks.
They stole this land from you and me.
A bleeding soldier, dying in foreign sands
Wonders why she was sent to far-off lands,
As Exxon’s profits set all-time records.
They stole this land from you and me.
This land was our land, but now it’s their land,
From coast to coast, a most unfair land.
From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters,
They stole this land from you and me.
A young man dies in an E.R. ward,
Health care payments were too high to afford.
Insurance CO’s jet to the Caymans.
They stole this land from you and me.
This land was our land, but now it’s their land,
From coast to coast, a most unfair land.
From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters,
They stole this land from you and me.
The native people have always known how
Their land was stolen, so what we feel now
Is the cost of “progress” for corporate rulers
Who stole this land from you and me.
This land was our land, but now it’s their land,
From coast to coast, a most unfair land.
From the redwood forests, to the gulfstream waters,
They stole this land from you and me.
The Secret, Ignored Value of Labor by Gary Sudborough
by Gary Sudborough
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
14 July 2009
To give a logical answer as to why laboring people are not paid nearly the real value of their labor, I need to go back in history and give a basic scientific explanation of the situation. As most people know the energy that powers life on Earth comes from the sun, and is trapped by photosynthesis in plants, and animals by consuming plants or other animals obtain this energy. This energy enables animals to move, and in certain animals like human beings to do what is known as work.
Why is this labor necessary? Because human beings are born into this world naked and frail and with a multitude of wants and needs necessary for their survival. Other mammals have fur to protect from the environment, many are much stronger or swifter or like humans band together for their survival. Human beings must have food for energy, shelter to protect from the environment, clothing for the cold and because they are intelligent, entertainment and culture, and because they are curious animals, scientific needs to try and understand the universe and why they exist.
How McNamara Lost World War II by Greg Palast
by Greg Palast
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.gregpalast.com
July 9, 2009
Excerpted from “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” (Penguin 2003).
It’s been a good week. Robert McNamara’s dead and my book, Armed Madhouse, was released in translation in Vietnam.
I don’t blame McNamara for losing the war in Vietnam. After all, the good guys won. I do, however, blame him for losing World War II.
2 Honduras Activists Killed; Venezuelan Journalists Expelled; Coup Leaders Hire Top Democrat Lobbyists by Eva Golinger
by Eva Golinger
Postcards from the Revolution
July 13, 2009
Things are getting worse each day inside Honduras. Over the weekend, two well-known social leaders were assassinated by the coup forces. Roger Bados leader of the Bloque Popular & the National Resistance Front against the coup d’etat, was killed in the northern city of San Pedro Sula. Approximately at 8pm on Saturday evening, Bados was assassinated and killed immediately by three gun shots. Bados was also a member of the leftist party, Democratic Unity (Unificación Democrática) and was president of a union representing workers in a cement factory. His death was denounced as part of the ambiance and repressive actions taken by the coup government to silence all dissent.
Ramon Garcia, another social leader in Honduras, was also killed on Saturday evening by military forces who boarded a bus he was riding in Santa Barbara and forced him off, subsequently shooting him and wounding his sister. Juan Barahona, National Coordinator of the Bloque Popular & the National Resistance Front against the coup, stated that these actions are committed by the coup government “as the only way to maintain themselves in power, by terrorizing and killing the people.”
[…]
So what’s up with the Clinton advisors and lobbyists hanging out with the coupsters? Obviously, it’s a clear indication of Washington’s support for the coup regime in Honduras, despite the rhetoric we heard last week “condemning the coup” and blah, blah, blah. The real actions show just the opposite: clear, undivided support for Micheletti and a definite rejection of President Zelaya’s return to the presidency in Honduras.
[…]
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What Is It That We’re Missing In The ‘Cheney Ordered The CIA To Lie’ Story?
http://earth2obama.org/
July 13, 2009 MSNBC Keith Olbermann
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Is Another Shoe About To Drop In The ‘Cheney Ordered The CIA To Lie’ Story?
Dandelion Salad 