December 2010

The DOJ’s conspiracy to criminalize investigative journalism

by News Sources 12.16.2010

The New York Times has reported that the Department of Justice is investigating the possibility that Julian Assange could be charged as a conspirator in the leaking of classified documents. The aim would be to draw a distinction between Assange’s actions and those of journalists. But as Glenn Greenwald points out, investigation journalism involves all [...]

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Will the Afghanistan war break Obama’s presidency?

by News Sources 12.16.2010

Simon Tisdall writes: Barack Obama puts a brave face on it. The Afghan war is winnable, he insists. “We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum,” he told US troops at Bagram this month. He repeated the mantra today. But American commentators and analysts, across the political spectrum, are wondering aloud: will it happen the [...]

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Bill McKibben: Why Obama and Cancún miss the point

by TomDispatch 12.16.2010

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com At the moment, if you live in the American Midwest, where part of the roof of a football stadium just collapsed under the weight of a massive snowfall, or in Europe in the grips of a frigid cold spell, it may seem strange to be talking about warming, global or otherwise, no less [...]

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Israel never really wanted peace

by News Sources 12.16.2010

Elie Podeh writes: To a great extent, Netanyahu and his cabinet are representative of Israeli society today. Public opinion polls point to increasing extremism, bordering on racism, in Jews’ opinion of Arabs, as well as to alienation and a distrust of the other side’s goals and intentions. Given these circumstances, it’s no wonder there is [...]

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Top Democrat sticks up for WikiLeaks

by News Sources 12.16.2010

Justin Elliot reports: The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing this morning on WikiLeaks and the Espionage Act, the law that has been touted as opening up a possible route to prosecute Julian Assange. But the most interesting part of the hearing has been listening to a prominent congressional Democrat, committee chairman John Conyers [...]

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In Britain’s effort to crush political dissent, the disabled have become fair game

by Paul Woodward 12.16.2010

How dangerous is a man in a wheelchair? British police officers attempting to restore order on the streets of London during recent student protests, decided they couldn’t take any chances when facing the threat posed by 20-year-old Jody McIntyre who suffers from cerebral palsy and is a self-described revolutionary. In an interview, the BBC’s Ben [...]

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Julian Assange freed on bail

by News Sources 12.16.2010

The Guardian reports: Britain’s high court today decided to grant bail to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who is wanted in Sweden for questioning over allegations of rape. Justice Duncan Ouseley agreed with a decision by the City of Westminister earlier in the week to release Assange on strict conditions: £200,000 cash deposit, with a [...]

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Middle East peace process: Dead but not buried

by News Sources 12.15.2010

In an age where the newspaper editorial has become an anachronism, few are worth reading. This, from The Guardian, is an exception and for that reason I include the whole piece. The Middle East peace process died a quiet, undramatic death with the statement last week that the US had given up trying to persuade [...]

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The killing spirit in America

by Paul Woodward 12.15.2010

“I don’t want to just end the war,” Barack Obama said in January 2008, “but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place.” That was a line which seduced many a progressive across America during the presidential campaign and it’s one reason so many now feel betrayed. Either [...]

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Why Ahmadinejad fired FM Mottaki

by News Sources 12.15.2010

insideIRAN.org reports on the sudden removal of Iran’s foreign minister on Monday. Mohammad Reza Heidari, a former high-ranking Iranian diplomat in Norway, announced in December 2009 that he was quitting the foreign ministry and not returning to Tehran. He now lives in Oslo, where he spoke with Arash Aramesh of insideIRAN.org about Mottaki’s firing. Q: [...]

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US Air Force censors media access

by News Sources 12.15.2010

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. Air Force is blocking its personnel from using work computers to view the websites of the New York Times and other major publications that have posted classified diplomatic cables, people familiar with the matter said. Air Force users who try to view the websites of the New York [...]

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Too much freedom in America

by Paul Woodward 12.15.2010

There’s too much freedom, a few constitutional amendments need tossing out and the government needs greater powers — this would seem to sum up the views of the majority of Americans… if the latest polling is reliable. The American public is highly critical of the recent release of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks [...]

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Stephan Salisbury: politics in the Terrordome, 2011

by TomDispatch 12.15.2010

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com Here in the United States of Fear, official voices are again rising in a remarkable crescendo of hysteria. My advice: don’t even try getting on the subway car filled with American politicians and their acolytes accusing WikiLeaks and Julian Assange of terrorist activity.  It’s already standing room only.  Among those who [...]

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Rethinking terrorist blacklisting

by News Sources 12.15.2010

Gavin Sullivan writes: Terrorist blacklisting has been a central plank of the “war on terror” pursued by western states since 9/11. The idea is simple. International or regional bodies (such as the UN and EU) and states (such as the UK) designate individuals and groups thought to be terrorists or “associated with” terrorism, freeze their [...]

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An end to the Israeli occupation first

by News Sources 12.14.2010

Akiva Eldar writes: Like every year-end, once again they’re promising that the next 12 months will be “a decisive year.” Fact: Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said that in August 2011, when Prime Minister Salam Fayyad finishes building institutions in the West Bank, the United Nations will recognize the Palestinian state. Brazil and Argentina [...]

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Holbrooke’s death-bed ‘stop the war’ comment just a joke

by Paul Woodward 12.14.2010

The real story is not the one reported. The real story we can only imagine — but it’s buried in here somewhere. The Washington Post reports that Richard Holbrooke’s final words before entering surgery in which he died yesterday evening, were these: “You’ve got to stop the war in Afghanistan.” Did Obama’s Af-Pak envoy go [...]

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Press freedom threatened by the Obama administration

by News Sources 12.14.2010

Glenn Greenwald writes: During the Bush era, I frequently wrote about escalating attacks by the U.S. Government on press freedoms. The Bush DOJ vowed to prosecute whistleblowers while steadfastly refusing to do the same for the high-level criminals they exposed. Alberto Gonzales openly threatened that the DOJ could prosecute editors and reporters of The New [...]

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No act of rebellion is wasted

by News Sources 12.14.2010

Chris Hedges writes: I stood with hundreds of thousands of rebellious Czechoslovakians in 1989 on a cold winter night in Prague’s Wenceslas Square as the singer Marta Kubišová approached the balcony of the Melantrich building. Kubišová had been banished from the airwaves in 1968 after the Soviet invasion for her anthem of defiance, “Prayer for [...]

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The expiration of the ‘peace process’: where now for the Middle East?

by News Sources 12.14.2010

Alastair Crooke writes: A ‘peace process’ that, from its inception, took Israel’s self-definition of its own security needs as the sole determinate of the walls within which any solution for Palestinians was to be conducted, has reached exhaustion. Based on such a reductive premise, its arrival at this deathly nadir, with no more than a [...]

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An open letter from Afghanistan experts to Barack Obama

by News Sources 12.14.2010

An open letter from Afghanistan experts to Barack Obama: To the President of the United States: Mr. President, We have been engaged and working inside Afghanistan, some of us for decades, as academics, experts and members of non-governmental organisations. Today we are deeply worried about the current course of the war and the lack of [...]

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Richard Holbrooke’s final words: “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”

by News Sources 12.13.2010

Richard Holbrooke died this evening. The Washington Post looked back at his career. Mr. Holbrooke was sent to Vietnam in 1963, assigned to the lower Mekong Delta as a field officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, a post that would later give him unique perspective on reconstruction efforts and provincial stabilization in Afghanistan. [...]

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The FBI’s effort to silence political dissent in America

by News Sources 12.13.2010

In These Times reports: September 24 began like any other Friday for Joe Iosbaker and Stephanie Weiner. Then, at 7 a.m., FBI agents knocked on the door of the Chicago couple’s house in the city’s North Side. Armed with a search warrant, more than 20 agents examined the couple’s home, photographing every room and combing [...]

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Visa, Mastercard and PayPal help fund Israel’s illegal settlements

by News Sources 12.13.2010

Crikey reports: Visa, Mastercard and PayPal all enable donations to be made to US-registered groups funding illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank in defiance of international law. It appears at least one of the major credit cards also enables donations to an extremist Jewish group that has placed a bounty on the lives of [...]

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$52bn of American aid and still Afghans are dying of starvation

by News Sources 12.13.2010

Patrick Cockburn reports: The most extraordinary failure of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan is that the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars has had so little impact on the misery in which 30 million Afghans live. As President Barack Obama prepares this week to present a review of America’s strategy in Afghanistan which is [...]

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