The key evidence - the identity of bin Laden's courier - is revealed only after a detainee is brutally and repeatedly abused. Sitting at a table with his CIA torturer, who gives him food as part of a ruse, that detainee reveals this critical information only after the CIA torturer says to him: "I can always go eat with some other guy - and hang you back up to the ceiling." That's when the detainee coughs up the war name of bin Laden's courier -
Today I read a column by my old buddy whom I have never met, Fred Reed. I suppose it could be called a poem but it definitely is not a feel-good piece. After reading it I considered putting a link here but felt that it needed some context, so after thinking about it for a while I started doing some googling.
The Palestine Papers provide unprecedented access into the internal workings of the U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process. But the leaked documents and meetings also touch on other key issues surrounding U.S. intervention in the conflict – including dozens of documents on Palestinian security issues. At the heart of these is the work of the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC), what many refer to as “The Dayton Mission,” – a designation derived from the USSC’s chief, Lt. General Keith Dayton, who retired last October.
The crucial point is this: as tens of millions of U.S. voters were choosing Barack Obama in 2008, in part because he was promising to end the war in Iraq, a powerful cross-section of Washington elites was drafting an aggressive blueprint for a future U.S. strategy in the region that stretched from North Africa to Central Asia and that the Pentagon was then still calling the “arc of instability.” And the key plank in this strategy was a program to create the conditions for a military strike against Iran.
On Thursday, Bradley Manning, one of the foremost prisoners of conscience in the world today, testified in open court -- the first time his voice has been heard since he was arrested, confined and subjected to psychological torture by the U.S. government.
Is Hamas a puppet of the Iranian regime? An affirmative answer to this question is, from the point of view of Bibi Netanyahu, a dual-use rhetorical technology:
This is slightly adapted from a presentation given at a Congressional briefing on drone strike policy on November 16, sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).
I want to talk about what Congress could do about drone strikes in the next one to two years.
To begin with, some political context, as I see it.
Just days before Obama embarked on a high profile trip to Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia, which was intended to symbolise this "pivot", Israel assassinated Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas' military wing. The eight-day conflict that followed not only pushed Obama's three-day Asia tour off the US' front pages, it sent ripples of exasperation through the administration's foreign policy establishment.
Following last Wednesday's announcement that PFC Bradley Manning acknowledges releasing classified documents as an act of conscience, Nobel Peace Laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize, 1984), Mairead Maguire (Nobel Peace Prize, 1977) and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (Nobel Peace Prize, 1980), have published a letter in support of the WikiLeaks whistle-blower.
The late Professor Seymour Melman (Columbia Univ.) wrote a prescient book, Profits Without Production (Knopf, 1983) that explained how the militarization and managerialization of our economy were becoming the central causes of the decline in America’s manufacturing competitiveness. This decline started in the 1970s, but Melman showed how it grew out of seeds planted by the permanent military mobilization of a huge defense industry in the 1950s.
Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Adviser to President Obama, met with a delegation from the SOA Watch movement in Washington DC on November 13, 2012.
The Independent reports: Israeli troops massed on the Gaza border last night, poised for a possible ground invasion as Israel launched a major military operation it said was designed “to severely impair the command and control chain of the Hamas leadership, as well as its terrorist infrastructure.”
November 9, 2012. “I’ve backed Bradley Manning on the belief that he was the heroic whistle-blower in question,” explained Jeff Paterson of the Support Network. “Now that Bradley appears to have acknowledged this in court, its reason to redouble efforts to support him.” This trial may now pose a simple question to Judge Lind, "Bradley Manning--idealistic and patriotic whistle-blower or enemy of the state?" This is a question welcomed by Bradley's supporters.
As a community organiser Obama was well aware that it was only by making demands on the powerful that the powerless could further their interests. As president he must be delighted to realise that all too few of his progressive supporters have grasped that reality.
Interest charges are a strongly regressive tax that the poor pay to the rich. A public banking system could realize savings up to 40 percent - allowing taxes to be cut, services increased and market stability created - with banks feeding the economy rather than feeding off it.
The military-industrial complex has not emerged in quite the way Eisenhower envisioned. ......... But Eisenhower’s least heeded warning — concerning the spiritual effects of permanent preparations for war — is more important now than ever.
Arab-Americans are poised to play a critical role in the US presidential election. Numbering about 4 million, they're heavily concentrated in several battleground states — including Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — where every vote will count in a race that many consider too close to call.
Among the attributes I most envy in a public man (or woman) is the ability to lie. If that ability is coupled with no sense of humor, you have the sort of man who can be a successful football coach, a CEO or, when you come right down to it, a presidential candidate. Such a man is Mitt Romney.
