Afghanistan: West’s 21st Century War Risks Regional Conflagration by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/
October 11, 2009

On October 7 the United States’ and NATO’s war in Afghanistan entered its ninth year. The escalating conflict has over the past year become indistinguishable from military operations in neighboring Pakistan where the U.S. and NATO have tripled deadly drone missile attacks and the Pakistani army has launched large-scale offensives that have displaced over 3 million civilians in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, with the province of Baluchistan the next battle zone.

On September 29 the U.S. conducted four drone attacks in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency in twenty four hours and during the past year has fired over 60 missiles into the area causing more than 550 deaths.

Noam Chomsky: Crisis and Hope in the Age of Obama

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

pdxjustice Media Productions
Oct. 11, 2009

MIT Professor Emeritus, linguist, author and lecturer, Noam Chomsky, provides the keynote address for “Crisis and Hope in the Age of Obama”, a special program at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, on Sunday, October 4, 2009. The program also features community organizer and author, Steve Williams, policy analyst and author, Antonia Juhasz, and labor journalist, David Bacon.

OEC rules in favor of Schmidt

Dandelion Salad

By BRYAN PECK
http://newsdemocrat.com
October 11, 2009

A decision has been made by the Ohio Elections Commission regarding complaints filed against David Krikorian by Congresswoman Jean Schmidt earlier this month. Krikorian, a Democrat candidate in next year’s primary, is not happy with the results. Schmidt originally filed nine complaints against Krikorian, stating that he had made false claims during the 2008 election about her taking thousands of dollars in Turkish Political Action Committee money in exchange for denying the Armenian genocide in World War I.

During the course of the proceedings, Schmidt dropped four of the complaints against Krikorian, leaving just five to be contested by the Ohio Elections Commission. During the course of the investigation, the commission heard from numerous witnesses, including a deposition from Jean Schmidt and former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, a well known whistleblower. A video copy of Edmonds’ deposition can be seen at http://www.newsdemocrat.com.

[…]

via OEC rules in favor of Schmidt

see

Sibel Edmonds ungagged! Part 2

American Conservative: Sibel Edmonds by Luke Ryland

Edmonds-Sibel

from the archives:

Whistle blower Sibel Edmonds Deposition Video

News report on Sibel Edmonds, David Krikorian, Turkish Lobby

Several Charges Dropped in ‘False Statements’ Case Following FBI Whistleblower’s Testimony

Sibel Edmonds: Kill The Messenger (must-see video)

Sibel Edmonds (archive of posts)

Two More Guantánamo Prisoners Released: To Kuwait And Belgium by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
11 October 2009

So it’s good news — of a sort — from Guantánamo, as two more prisoners were released on Thursday. The first is Khalid al-Mutairi, a Kuwaiti whose habeas corpus petition was granted by District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly two months ago, after she ruled decisively that “there is nothing in the record beyond speculation” that al-Mutairi had been involved in any way with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

Pay the Mob or go to Jail By Nikki Alexander + Larry Kalb on Healthcare Reform

By Nikki Alexander
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://nikkialexander.wordpress.com
October 11, 2009

The Senate Finance Committee is set to vote Tuesday on a health care bill that has gained preeminence over four other health care bills that have emerged from House and Senate committees. The Senate Finance bill does not include a public insurance option to compete with private insurers. Nor does it allow Medicare to use its bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices.

Under the Finance Committee bill, Americans would be required to buy corporate health insurance or pay an “excise tax” of $1,900. If you don’t pay that tax, the IRS could punish you with a $25,000 fine or up to one year in jail, or both. Read that again.

Father Miguel D’Escoto: The UN has failed + On Palestine and the UN + The US in the age of Obama

Dandelion Salad

Updated: Oct. 16, 2009

The Real News Network
October 9, 2009

As he leaves the office of the President of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto gave Real News Senior Editor Paul Jay a no holds barred interview on the issues plaguing the United Nations. D’Escoto held the democratization of the UN as a key pillar of his Presidency, but along the way he learned of the various obstacles that keep the General Assembly from becoming an effective body within the UN, and the UN from becoming an effective body within the world. He blames the world’s most powerful states for this ineptitude to act, which has resulted in what he calls the failure of the UN to address the two objectives for which it was founded, the avoidance of war and the eradication of poverty.

Produced by Jesse Freeston