May 2012
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On the various types of death by robot and...
Medea Benjamin (in an interview with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales):
[…] Well, there’s a—they divide them between what’s called the “personality” strikes, when you actually have a hit list and you know the names of the people you’re trying to take out, and the other is the “signature” strikes, where it’s just by suspicious behavior, if you look like—if you’re with a group and you’re...
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Abbottabad raid and Pak-US relations | The Nation... →
2011 was truly a terrible year in the context of Pak-US relations. Apart from the calamitous Abbottabad raid, it was repeatedly punctuated by incidents of US military/intelligence walking roughshod over Pakistan’s sovereignty; pushing the troubled relations to the edge of the precipice. In January 2011, Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor whom President Obama referred to as “our diplomat in...
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“The fertile land around Jaar appeared deserted. The irrigation canals, neglected...”
– Al-Qaida’s wretched utopia and the battle for hearts and minds | The Guardian
Yemen.
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April 2012
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Holder Admits Obama Misled Rolling Stone About... →
While attending the White House Correspondents’ dinner Attorney General Eric Holder admitted to the Huffington Post that President Obama misled Rolling Stone about federal marijuana law. From the Huffington Post:
Attorney General Eric Holder was a guest of The Huffington Post at the correspondents’ dinner. Before it began, a HuffPost reporter noted to Holder that Obama’s reference to...
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“Blessed are the rich, the reign of this world is ours. The rich rule the world,...”
– GOP Je$us (via azspot)
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Unexceptionalism: A Primer | E.L. Doctorow →
To achieve unexceptionalism, the political ideal that would render the United States indistinguishable from the impoverished, traditionally undemocratic, brutal or catatonic countries of the world, do the following:
PHASE ONE
If you’re a justice of the Supreme Court, ignore the first sacrament of a democracy and suspend the counting of ballots in a presidential election. Appoint the candidate...
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AP EXCLUSIVE: US not reporting all Afghan attacks →
The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan is under-reporting the number of times that Afghan soldiers and police open fire on American and other foreign troops.
The coalition routinely reports attacks in which a coalition soldier is killed by an Afghan in uniform. But it does not report the instances in which an Afghan wounds U.S. or NATO troops or misses his target.
Officials acknowledge...
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“[The] power of the president as commander-in-chief has never been greater. If...”
– Tom Engelhardt
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A Marxist History of the World part 73: 1917: the... →
The very success of the October Insurrection hides its true character. The revolution was so ripe – the social crisis so deep, the authority of the government so hollowed out, the masses so well-prepared for decisive action – that a few tens of thousands were sufficient to execute the popular will.
On the day of the insurrection, 25 October 1917, the whole energy of Russia’s mighty...
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“Five banks — JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc. (C), Wells Fargo &...”
– Bloomberg financial news (via humanformat)
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#MayDay OWS Schedule | Job Party →
#M1NYC schedule
Check maydaynyc.org for the full May Day schedule and any last-minute updates.
8 a.m. to 2 p.m. - Bryant Park
* Pop-up Occupation(unpermitted) Bryant Park will be the site of a fun and friendly “Pop-up Occupation” with Mutual Aid, featuring free food, a free market, free services, skill-shares, workshops, teach-ins, speak-outs, meditation, public art, performances,...
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mehreenkasana:
“Once upon a time, American presidents didn’t consider micro-managing a permanent war state as a central part of their job description, nor did they focus so unrelentingly on the U.S. military and the doings of the national security state. Today, the president’s word is death just about anywhere on the planet and he exercises that power with remarkable frequency. He appears in...
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Student protests force Quebec’s Liberal Party... →
sinidentidades:
MONTREAL — The Liberal Party of Quebec Premier Jean Charest, faced with a student protest movement that has turned violent, said Sunday it was relocating its annual convention to a city outside Montreal.
The party, which has been in power for nine years in the French-speaking Canadian province that is home to eight million people, had been scheduled to hold its party meeting at...
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The Post Office is not broke--and it hasn't taken... →
What’s going on here? Right-wing sabotage of USPS financing, that’s what. In 2006, the Bush White House and Congress whacked the post office with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act—an incredible piece of ugliness requiring the agency to PRE-PAY the health care benefits not only of current employees, but also of all employees who’ll retire during the next 75 years. Yes, that includes...
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Deadly Drone Strike on Muslims in the Southern... →
From March 5th. I’ll bet you didn’t hear about it either.
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Self-admitted unpunished torturer admits crime... →
Former CIA torturer and interrogation video melter, Jose Rodriguez, was on 60 Minutes last night, defending the agency’s decent into lawless barbarism under the guise of “national security”. David Atkins explains the idiocy of Rodriguez’ justifications for torture:
[The ticking time bomb defense is] one of the most infuriatingly stupid premises ever devised to permit...
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Bahrain court orders retrial for 21 activists | Al... →
A Bahraini appeals court has ordered a retrial in a civil court in the cases of 21 opposition activists, including hunger striker Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, alleged to have been involved in the Gulf kingdom’s uprising last year.
The Court of Cassation on Monday accepted the appeal of the human rights activists who were convicted by a military court last year; they include Khawaja and Ibrahim...
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“All that concerns itself with beauty and truth, with those forces that have the...”
– Chris Hedges
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Welcome to the Asylum | Chris Hedges →
On the endemic political cynicism of dying empire:
When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on...
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“Yale’s canny historian Paul Kennedy (of ‘imperial overstretch’ fame)...”
– Pepe Escobar
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Drone attack follows failed Pak-US talks | The... →
The latest middle finger from the U.S. to Pakistan:
At least four suspected militants were killed and two others injured when US unmanned predator fired two missiles on a deserted government school in Miranshah Bazaar, North Waziristan Agency, on Sunday. It was the first drone strike in almost a month and came after the failure of fresh round of talks between US and Pakistan. American special...
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Celebrating our “Warrior President” | Glenn... →
“Peter Bergen, the Director of National Security Studies at the Democratic-Party-supportive New America Foundation, has a long Op-Ed in The New York Times today glorifying President Obama as a valiant and steadfast ‘warrior President’…”
Yesterday on his MSNBC morning show, Chris Hayes conducted an excellent, two-part discussion of Obama’s escalated civilian-killing...
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Is There a Future for Socialism? | Jacobin →
The future that Marx forecasted is unemployment. And this historical tendency has brought the whole story of development into question. [Our] recent economic “recovery” is the weakest since they started to keep track of the numbers. The fact that we’ve failed to recover the majority of the jobs lost during the recession is part of a wider historical change: the decline of the dynamism on which...
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Greece opens detention camp for immigrants as... →
pieceinthepuzzlehumanity:
Greece opened its first purpose-built detention centre for illegal migrants on Sunday in Athens, a week before a national election where illegal immigration has emerged as a key issue.
About 130,000 immigrants cross the country’s porous sea and land borders every year, the vast majority via Turkey, and the authorities are forced to release those who are arrested...
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“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making...”
– Kurt Vonnegut (via seventyfourspecies)
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Forgotten Bahrain | As'ad AbuKhalil (2) →
It is rather amusing to watch Western governments subscribe to the agenda and rhetoric of GCC countries, which are subcontractors – mere implementers – of US/Israeli policies in the Middle East. The word Shia has to appear in every sentence in every commentary on Bahrain. Western media may not be as blatantly sectarian as mouthpices of Saudi princes, like the notorious Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat, but...
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Banks cooperate to track Occupy protesters →
After evictions and arrests from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to London that began last year, the movement against income inequality and corporate abuse will regain strength, said Brian McNary, director of global risk at Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations.
He works with international financial firms to “identify, map and track” protesters across social media and at their assemblies, he...
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Debating Syria | John Feffer →
[…] If the United States wants Russia to sever its relationship with Assad, it should begin by severing its relationship with the Bahraini dictatorship. The first and most important sign of such a divorce would be the withdrawal of the U.S. Fifth Fleet from Bahrain.
“The huge U.S. naval presence in Bahrain has not improved western security in the Gulf; has not altered Iran’s behavior;...
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“The life-serving market system we want and the life-destructive capitalist...”
– David Korten (via azspot)
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Bin Laden raid not one in milllion after all |... →
In remarks reported by the U.S. government’s official news network, Voice of America, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — like every other Obama administration official this election season — recounts with pride that glorious spring day when, flowers blooming and birds chirping, a team of Navy SEALs found what they admit was an unarmed Osama bin Laden and shot him dead.
While the...
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“Western media and governments don’t even bother with the story of Bahrain. David...”
– As’ad AbuKhalil
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Forgotten Bahrain | As'ad AbuKhalil →
For all intents and purposes, Bahrain is forgotten. The people of Bahrain and their struggle will never get the attention and admiration of people and governments in the West.
This week, it was rather ironic to watch and listen to BBC coverage of Bahrain in comparison to their coverage of Syria. Activists who were interviewed were treated like criminals, while Syrian activists are allowed to...
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SYRIA: "Media Warfare" undermines UN Peace Mission →
braddogott:
Annan spoke to the crucial role that accurate information must play in helping to ease the crisis in Syria. “We continue to be hampered by the lack of verified information in assessing the situation,” he said. “We need eyes and ears on the ground,” he emphasized. “This will provide the incontrovertible basis the international community needs to act in an effective and unified manner,...
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Talks fail as U.S. refuses to apologize for... →
The New York Times reports: The first concentrated high-level talks aimed at breaking a five-month diplomatic deadlock between the United States and Pakistan ended in failure on Friday over Pakistani demands for an unconditional apology from the Obama administration for an airstrike. The White House, angered by the recent spectacular Taliban attacks in Afghanistan, refuses to apologize.
The...
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“[The Obama Administration] simultaneously use secrecy as a sword and a shield:...”
– Selective bin Laden leaking
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Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life | The... →
If the Justice Department wants to get serious about investigating financial fraud by Wall Street big boys, it ought to drop by the White House and interview Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric. Immelt is chair of President Obama’s jobs and competitive council, where he strategizes about how to revive American manufacturing. In some other places, only thirty miles from the White House,...
