December 2010

Peter King: ‘I’m willing to’ be called a bigot if that’s what it takes to target Muslim community

by News Sources 12.20.2010

ThinkProgress reports: The Islamophobia gripping the U.S. grows more entrenched by the day. Once confined to the far right, more and more pundits, power-brokers, and politicians are bringing it into mainstream. Apparently unsatisfied with dragging Muslims through the mud, Rep. Pete King (R-NY) is now committed to dragging them before Congress. Elected Chairman of the [...]

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The racist wave overflowing Israel

by News Sources 12.20.2010

Ynet reports: After a rabbis’ letter instructing Jews to not sell or rent apartments to Arabs, racist behavior reaches new low: An organization called Jews for a Jewish Bat Yam is expected to protest on Monday against the “assimilation of young Jewish women with Arabs living in the city or in nearby Jaffa.” [...] During [...]

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Why a nuclear Iran could be good for the US

by News Sources 12.20.2010

Chan Akya presents an interesting argument — even if no one in Washington would be so bold as to articulate such thoughts. Most of the hijackers on September 11, 2001, were of Saudi origin and despite nominally falling under the leadership of Osama bin Laden it stands to reason that they were mainly disenchanted due [...]

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Max Blumenthal: the great fear

by TomDispatch 12.20.2010

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com Moments of imperial and economic decline — according to a recent poll, 65% of Americans now believe this country to be “in a state of decline” — can also be periods of cultishness, even of madness incarnate.  Such a mood now seems to be spreading through the United States.  It’s not so [...]

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WikiLeaks and the hypocrisy of the Obama administration

by News Sources 12.19.2010

Maximilian Forte writes: A regime that banishes truth, shuts down accountability, and ignores its own laws, is a regime that invites anything but peace. Soon after taking office, President Barack Obama declared on the White House website, on a page devoted to “Transparency and Open Government,” that his, Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented [...]

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History is repeating itself in Afghanistan

by News Sources 12.19.2010

Patrick Cockburn writes: During the mid-1960s, America’s goal during a crucial stage in the Vietnam war was to defeat the enemy militarily. But it had no realistic political strategy to underpin the goal, and it was this which ultimately led to failure. America’s strategy in Afghanistan is now suffering from a similar weakness. Barack Obama [...]

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Enforcing ignorance by design

by News Sources 12.19.2010

Agence France Presse reports: The Pentagon has banned journalists with the popular defense daily Stars and Stripes from consulting leaked diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, prompting charges of censorship. “The editorial independence of Stars and Stripes and its readers’ right to news free of censorship are being threatened by an overly broad and misdirected response [...]

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Your right to protest is under threat

by News Sources 12.19.2010

Johann Hari writes: So now we know. When our politicians complained over the past few decades, in a low, sad tone, that our young people were “too apathetic” and “disengaged”, it was a lie. A great flaring re-engagement of the young has take place this year. With overwhelmingly peaceful tactics, they are demanding policies that [...]

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Israel/West Bank: separate and unequal

by News Sources 12.19.2010

Human Rights Watch: Israeli policies in the West Bank harshly discriminate against Palestinian residents, depriving them of basic necessities while providing lavish amenities for Jewish settlements, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report identifies discriminatory practices that have no legitimate security or other justification and calls on Israel, in addition to [...]

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The campaign to demonize WikiLeaks

by News Sources 12.18.2010

Glenn Greenwald writes: It’s really not an overstatement to say that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are the new Iraqi WMDs because the government and establishment media are jointly manufacturing and disseminating an endless stream of fear-mongering falsehoods designed to depict them as scary villains threatening the security of The American People and who must therefore [...]

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Bradley Manning’s pre-trial punishment

by News Sources 12.18.2010

Forbidden to lie down in his cell between 5am to 8pm; forbidden from exercising in the cell inside which he is confined 23 hours a day — these are just two features of the barbaric conditions in which Private First Class Bradley Manning is being confined as he awaits trial. His lawyer describes Manning’s detention. [...]

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CIA gave waterboarders $5M legal shield

by News Sources 12.18.2010

The Associated Press reports: The CIA agreed to cover at least $5 million in legal fees for two contractors who were the architects of the agency’s interrogation program and personally conducted dozens of waterboarding sessions on terror detainees, former U.S. officials said. The secret agreement means taxpayers are paying to defend the men in a [...]

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How a secret gets revealed and then becomes secret again

by Paul Woodward 12.18.2010

On November 30, The Express Tribune, Pakistan’s first internationally affiliated newspaper (partnered with The International Herald Tribune – the global edition of The New York Times) reported: A North Waziristan tribesman, whose brother and teenage son were killed in a drone strike last year, said on Monday that he would sue all those US officials [...]

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The devil’s in the discourse

by News Sources 12.18.2010

Nadia Hajib writes: Three aspects of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Saban Center speech on Friday have escaped general notice. First, though she spoke boldly of asking “tough questions and expecting substantive answers” on the core issues of the conflict, the process will not culminate in a “just, lasting and comprehensive peace” as Clinton claimed, [...]

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If President Obama is sincere …

by News Sources 12.17.2010

The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee comments on the Obama administration’s silence on the continued imprisonment of a Palestinian champion of non-violence. Amid a flurry of European diplomatic attention over the imprisonment of Bil’in’s Abdallah Abu Rahmah, the United States has stayed strangely silent on the issue. Abu Rahmah, a non-violent leader from the West Bank [...]

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How the Afghan counterinsurgency threatens Pakistan

by News Sources 12.17.2010

Anatol Lieven writes: By now, almost all the likely outcomes of US strategy in Afghanistan are bad ones. They range from unending civil war, with government forces barely managing to hold their own against the Taliban, to de facto partition of the country. There is a chance that the Taliban would accept a settlement involving [...]

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Israel leaves us no choice but to boycott

by News Sources 12.17.2010

Ali Abunimah writes: Israel’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, Danny Ayalon, paints a picture of an innocent Israel yearning for peace, virtually begging the intransigent Palestinians to come negotiate so there can be a “two-states-for-two-peoples solution” (“Who’s stopping the peace process?” Dec. 14). But it’s one that bears no resemblance to the realities Palestinians experience [...]

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Threat of civil war looms in Lebanon

by News Sources 12.17.2010

The Guardian reports: More than six months of menacing political rhetoric is likely to reach a potent day of reckoning in Lebanon soon when indictments are handed down after a five-year investigation to determine who killed the fragile state’s former leader Rafik Hariri. The indictments are almost certain to implicate at least three members of [...]

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The legal assault on WikiLeaks and press freedom

by Paul Woodward 12.17.2010

As the Justice Department develops a legal strategy for attacking WikiLeaks it will be looking for political cover to defend itself from the charge that it is attacking the First Amendment rights of a free press and will do so by arguing that what WikiLeaks does is not journalism. The administration’s lack of interest in [...]

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The United States: imperial by design

by News Sources 12.17.2010

In The National Interest, John Mearsheimer writes: In the first years after the Cold War ended, many Americans had a profound sense of optimism about the future of international politics. President Bill Clinton captured that mood when he told the UN General Assembly in September 1993: It is clear that we live at a turning [...]

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The House Committee for Promoting Islamophobia in America

by News Sources 12.17.2010

The New York Times reports: The Republican who will head the House committee that oversees domestic security is planning to open a Congressional inquiry into what he calls “the radicalization” of the Muslim community when his party takes over the House next year. Representative Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman [...]

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India accused of systematic use of torture in Kashmir

by News Sources 12.17.2010

The Guardian reports: US officials had evidence of widespread torture by Indian police and security forces and were secretly briefed by Red Cross staff about the systematic abuse of detainees in Kashmir, according to leaked diplomatic cables released tonight. The dispatches, obtained by website WikiLeaks, reveal that US diplomats in Delhi were briefed in 2005 [...]

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Al Qaeda braced for a war without end

by News Sources 12.16.2010

Syed Saleem Shahzad reports: Richard Holbrooke, the United States special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan who died on Monday aged 69, had come to the realization that the nine-year war in Afghanistan had to come to an end. Stopping the war will not be an easy matter. The situation on the ground is not so [...]

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Who gets to feed from the trough of classified information?

by News Sources 12.16.2010

Robert Naiman points out that the only reason we know that President Obama’s Afghan “progress” report is at variance with the reports coming from the intelligence community, is thanks to classified information being made public — without being declassified. [T]he reason that we know that the collective assessments of the 16 US intelligence agencies give [...]

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