by Mike Ferner / December 16th, 2008 ()
During the rush to get the Nuremberg Tribunals underway, the Soviet delegation wanted the tribunal’s historic decisions to have legitimacy only for the Nazis. U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson, serving as the chief prosecutor for the Allies, strong-armed the Soviets until the very beginning of the tribunal before changing their mind.
In his opening statement Jackson very purposely stipulated, “Let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now …
by Ramzy Baroud / December 16th, 2008 ()
The United States, Russia and China are sending a terrible message to the rest of the world by refusing to take part in the historic signing of a treaty that bans the production and use of cluster bombs. In a world that is plagued by war, military occupation and terrorism, the involvement of the great military powers in signing and ratifying the agreement would have signaled — if even symbolically — the willingness of these countries to spare civilians’ unjustifiable deaths and the lasting scars of war.
Nonetheless, the incessant activism of many conscientious individuals and organizations came to fruition on …
by Robert Weissman / December 16th, 2008 ()
Nancy Pelosi says the Congressional Republicans are playing Russian Roulette with the economy by refusing to agree to an auto industry bailout.
But for that metaphor to work, you have to add that they’ve loaded the gun with six bullets.
The only hope is that someone — Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson or Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke — will come in and prevent the trigger from being pulled. Luckily, it appears they are ready to do so. A statement from the Bush administration this morning signaled that it would find a way to keep the Big Three automakers in business until next …
by John Pilger / December 16th, 2008 ()
One of the cleverest films I have seen is Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray plays a TV weatherman who finds himself stuck in time. At first he deludes himself that the same day and the same people and the same circumstances offer new opportunities. Finally, his naivety and false hope desert him and he realizes the truth of his predicament and escapes. Is this a parable for the age of Obama?
Having campaigned with “Change you can believe in,” President-elect Barack Obama has named his A-team. They include Hillary Clinton, who voted to attack Iraq without reading the intelligence assessment …
by George Monbiot / December 16th, 2008 ()
Can you think of a major threat for which the British government does not prepare? It employs an army of civil servants, spooks and consultants to assess the chances of terrorist attacks, financial collapse, floods, epidemics, even asteroid strikes, and to work out what it should do if they happen. But there is one hazard about which it appears intensely relaxed. It has never conducted its own assessment of the state of global oil supplies and the possibility that one day they might peak and then go into decline.
If you ask, it always produces the same response: “global oil …
by Stephen Lendman / December 15th, 2008 ()
Post-9/11, the “war on terror” has been a jihad against Islam, the colonizers v. the colonized, or what Edward Said called “the familiar (America, Europe, us) and the strange (the Orient, East, them).” Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is one of its most tragic, aggrieved, and ravaged victims. Her ordeal continues horrifically.
Boston Magazine’s Katherine Oxment asked: “Who’s afraid of Aafia Siddiqui? She went to MIT and Brandeis, married a (physician, lived in Boston), cared for her children… raised money for charities… did other volunteer work, hosted play groups in her apartment, (is) deeply religious… distribute(d) Korans to inmates in area prisons,” and …
by Remi Kanazi / December 15th, 2008 ()
In the United States, a growing number of leftists are voicing their opposition to the Israeli occupation. They condemn the demolition of homes, the jailing of Palestinians without charge, and the confiscation of Palestinian land for settlements. They don’t support the Israeli troops or their mission, nor do they give a free pass to those who are just “doing what they are told.”
Nonetheless, many of these same individuals support the US troops in Iraq. Dangerously, most Americans put forth the notion that the troops’ intrinsic heroism provides them with the impunity to destroy any bogeymen who stand in their …
by John Chuckman / December 15th, 2008 ()
Since leaving the shaded groves of Harvard a few years ago, seeking as his second career the running of a country, Michael Ignatieff has been a prominent politician in Canada. He didn’t just pack his bags and come home – he grew up in Canada – he had the encouragement of some Liberal Party officials as a possible future leader.
While it’s true that the Liberals needed to do something to revive their fortunes – Ignatieff is their third leader in a few years – they have acted desperately both in selecting him and in their manner of …
by James Keye / December 15th, 2008 ()
Without getting too much into the subtleties of the thing, a democracy functions on the will of the majority mediated by legal design. In a “fair” and practical democracy the majority protects its minority members with laws designed to protect behaviors without recourse to the majority or minority status of the actor. However, since the majority on any one issue can “win” in both legal terms and often in power terms, minorities create ways of coping with their lower power status; that is, all minorities save one: the wealth addicted, including certain other forms of social pathology and …
by Tom Burghardt / December 15th, 2008 ()
What do you call a “devout Muslim” who exerts considerable control over South Asia’s heroin, gambling, prostitution and smuggling rackets? Why an intelligence asset, of course!
When Lashkar-e-Taiba (”Army of the Pure”–LET) militants slaughtered nearly 200 people in Mumbai during the November 26 siege in India’s financial capital, one name stood out among a list of 20 fugitives the Indian government has demanded Pakistan extradite as a key suspect responsible for providing funds and logistical support to the Kashmir-based terrorist outfit.
Enter Dawood Ibrahim, the enigmatic Mafia don of Mumbai’s D-Company whose far-flung organized crime empire stretches from Dubai through Pakistan to …
Interview with Professor Guy Standing
by New Unionism / December 15th, 2008 ()
Professor Guy Standing worked for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) from 1975 to 2006. During that time he was director of labour market policies, coordinated technical work in eastern Europe following the collapse of the Berlin wall and was director of the ILO’s Socio-Economic Security Programme. In 1998-99, he served as a member of the transition team of the new Director General Juan Somavia.
It would be fair to say that he knows the ILO inside out. Now Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath in the UK, he is well placed to reflect on the organisation’s potential …
Sorry, The President Elect is Not a Latent Lefty
by Paul Street / December 13th, 2008 ()
One of the more recurrent refrains I heard from many of Barack Obama’s progressive supporters in late 2007 and through the recent election went like this: “oh, he has to say and do that stuff to get elected. The corporate and military powers that be will sink him if he acts as left as he really is. Just wait until he gets in: then you’ll see the real progressive deal.”
“That stuff” included Obama declaring his readiness to bomb Iran, saying that black Americans had come “90 percent” of the way to equality, treating Jeremiah Wright’s anger …
by Joshua Frank / December 13th, 2008 ()
by Bill Berkowitz / December 13th, 2008 ()
In his final days in office, President Bush is pallin’ around with a former felon and a bomb plotter.
There is no way he could win a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize and he wasn’t going to be honored by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, but in the final — and often creepy — days of the Bush Administration, President George W. Bush took time out from his schedule to present Charles Colson, Watergate felon and conservative evangelical Christian extraordinaire, with a Presidential Citizens Medal.
“For more than three decades, Chuck Colson has dedicated his life to sharing the …
by Joel S. Hirschhorn / December 13th, 2008 ()
The current Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, recently charged with crimes by the federal government, just follows in the footsteps of previous convicted Illinois governors and a huge number of other Illinois officials convicted of crimes. What is remarkable is that in the 2008 election Illinois voters had the opportunity to recognize that they needed to use their constitutional convention opportunity to reform state government. They voted not to use it.
Which raises the question: How stupid or brainwashed are most Illinois citizens?
Here is the story behind the headlines. According to the Illinois state constitution, voters must …
Briefing the President-Elect
by Ed Kinane / December 13th, 2008 ()
The assembly of Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Susan Rice and Joe Biden is a kettle of hawks with a proven track record of support for the Iraq war, intervention, neoliberal economic policies and a world-view consistent with the foreign policy arch that stretches from George HW Bush’s time in office to the present.
– Jeremy Scahill on Obama’s proposed new national security team, 1 Dec. ’08 Guardian UK
Dear Senator Obama:
I’m concerned that you’ve yet to show a grasp of Middle East realities. Nor have you provided a broad critique of US policy in that region beyond your early …
by Doug Page / December 13th, 2008 ()
President Obama: You have set up a web site and invite comment from your supporters. Here is something we are profoundly concerned about. We your loyal sovereign supporters and voters are being robbed blind by Wall Street. Professor Michael Hudson tells us that Two Trillion Dollars have been given to 15% or so of the wealthiest banks on Wall Street, investment banks like those that Robert Rubin, Senator Charles Schumer, Senator Chris Dodd and Vice President Biden and many other Senators have long supported. Our money is still being poured out to Wall Street. There is no …
by Michael Keating / December 12th, 2008 ()
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon must be grinding his teeth this morning as word filters out of Eastern Congo that once again his peacekeepers stayed in their barracks while fighting raged just down the road and precious resources were wasted looking for a foreign journalist rather than saving the women and children who were being murdered in the cross-fire between rebels and government militia.
The key indicators of the UNs ineptness in Eastern Congo came from the resignation of Vicente Díaz de Villegas y Herrería, the Spanish General who only was in-country for three weeks before jumping …
by Dan Lieberman / December 12th, 2008 ()
A few graphed statistics, which charted the direction of the U.S. economy during the last years, predicted an eventual economic crisis.
The average increase of housing prices adjusted for inflation rose slowly until about 1999. Its dramatic rise indicates an equally dramatic readjustment still has a way to go.
[caption id=”attachment_5270″ align=”aligncenter” width=”349″ caption=”The average increase of stock prices adjusted for inflation …
by Edward Jayne / December 12th, 2008 ()
Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy
By William A. Cook
Publisher: Dandelion Books, LLC (September 16, 2005)
ISBN-10: 1893302830
Tracking Deception, by William A. Cook, offers a sustained diatribe against Israel and the United States, comprising forty-three articles published between September, 2002, and April, 2005, when the two governments were escalating hostilities against their respective enemies of choice. Not more than thirty-two months transpired, but Cook’s articles went into print on the average once every three weeks for this entire period. The result is something more than a book.
Most histories relax somewhat …
