Wages tumble toward 18-year low
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-10-15-cola-wages-drop-recession_N.htm
$400 per gallon gas to drive debate over cost of war in Afghanistan
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/63407-400gallon-gas-another-cost-of-war-in-afghanistan-
Our Cheap Politicians
http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew10152009.html
Smart investors have certainly had plenty of opportunity to make money lately. Gold is up twenty percent. Oil has doubled. The Dow roars through 10,000. But one investment has far, far, outperformed all others in epic returns: politics.
Wall Street balance sheets make this very clear. Last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, major banks and other financial institutions in receipt of $295 billion in TARP money pumped $114 million into Washington in lobbying and campaign contributions. As a stand-alone figure, $114 million sounds like a lot. Set against the torrent of cash flowing in the opposite direction, it is minimal. At 258,449 percent it has been called “the single best investment in history.” Our elected representatives are giving it away.
No one should be surprised at the bankers’ dominance of Washington. They even boast about it. Hailing a further emasculation of the powers of the proposed Consumer Finance Protection Agency, the American Bankers’ Association recently issued a press release commending lawmakers for removing “the unworkable requirement that communications with consumers be ‘reasonable.’”
Canadian military officials deny Taliban insurgents were paid for peace
( Without making any representations as to the accuracy of this claim one way or another - I wonder how reassured we are by pronouncements from the fellow whose last headline was
MacKay denies seeing Afghan torture warnings : this being a case where he was not aware of what was going on despite known activities to alert people. )
Truth is war's first casualty. The Afghan war's biggest untruth is, "we've got to fight terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them at home." Many North Americans still buy this lie because they believe the 9/11 attacks came directly from the Afghanistan-based al-Qaida and Taliban movements.
False. The 9/11 attacks were planned in Germany and Spain, and conducted mainly by U.S.-based Saudis to punish America for supporting Israel. Taliban, a militant religious, anti-Communist movement of Pashtun tribesmen, was totally surprised by 9/11. Taliban received U.S. aid until May, 2001. The CIA was planning to use Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida to stir up Muslim Uighurs against Chinese rule, and Taliban against Russia's Central Asian allies.
Al-Qaida only numbered 300 members. Most have been killed. A handful escaped to Pakistan. Only a few remain in Afghanistan. Yet President Barack Obama insists 68,000 or more U.S. troops must stay in Afghanistan to fight al-Qaida and prevent extremists from re-acquiring "terrorist training camps."
This claim, like Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, is a handy slogan to market war to the public. Today, half of Afghanistan is under Taliban control. Anti-American militants could more easily use Somalia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, North and West Africa, or Sudan. They don't need remote Afghanistan. The 9/11 attacks were planned in apartments, not camps.
The United States should not be waging war on Taliban. However backwards and oafish its Pashtun tribesmen, they have no desire or interest in attacking America. Even less, Canada.
Taliban are the sons of the U.S.-backed mujahidin who defeated the Soviets in the 1980s. As I have been saying since 9/11, Taliban never was America's enemy. Instead of invading Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. should have paid Taliban to uproot al-Qaida.
The Pashtun tribes want to end foreign occupation and drive out the Afghan Communists, who now dominate the U.S.-installed Kabul regime. But the U.S. has blundered into a full-scale war not just with Taliban, but with most of Afghanistan's fierce Pashtun tribes, who comprise over half the population.
Obama is wrestling with widening the war. After eight years of military operations costing $236 billion US, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan just warned of the threat of "failure," a.k.a. defeat. Canada has so far wasted $16 billion Cdn. on the war. Western occupation forces will be doomed if the Afghan resistance ever gets modern anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.
The U.S. is sinking ever deeper into the South Asian morass. Washington is trying to arm-twist Pakistan into being more obedient and widening the war against its own independent-minded Pashtun tribes -- wrongly called "Taliban."
Why the Taliban Has Tripled in Size in the Last Three Years
The Afghan insurgency, we are repeatedly told, is based on intimidation and violence. This is true in parts of the country, but dubious in others. Indeed, seeing any insurgency as resting mainly on force is wrong and it will lead to wrong responses. Insurgencies develop when a non-government group builds rapport with at least parts of the populace. This was the case in Malaya, the Philippines, Algeria, and South Vietnam. And it is the case in Afghanistan.
Pashtun elders meet with western officers and accept development programs, yet too often they make only desultory efforts to fight insurgents.
The Pashtun tribes are vaunted warriors who repelled the Russians, British, Persians, and numerous lesser-known powers unwise enough to venture into their lands. Yet these same tribesmen are said to bow before a band of lightly-armed guerrillas. Elders have the authority, weapons, fighters, and local knowledge to mount formidable resistance, but they elect not to.
The spread of the insurgency in recent years, according to many observers with local knowledge, is often based more on negotiation than on force. Insurgents cannot match the resources of western powers, but they are able to win local support in other ways. Taliban figures settle disputes in accordance with Islamic law, stand as opponents of northern/Tajik dominance, offer the prospect of fairer government, listen to local needs without the western assumption of superior knowledge, fight without the use of massive firepower, and represent the promise of restored Pashtun greatness. Most critically, they present themselves as an enduring, indigenous power adamantly opposed to the presence of transient, foreign ones.
The Wrong House
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23724.htm
The Wrong House
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23724.htm
Ask Awal Khan About Obama's Prize
By Brendan Cooney
October 14, 2009 "Counterpunch" -- Giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize is like giving someone the literature prize because you hope he writes some good books.
He doesn’t even have to be an aspiring writer. To say Obama aspires to peace is to ignore his escalation of the occupation of Afghanistan.
It may be a joke, but the Norwegians have told more morbid ones: Roosevelt in 1906 and Kissinger in 1973 both had records far more blood-soaked than anything Obama has had time for.
But he has had time to make an impact on people such as Awal Khan, who might want to weigh in on Obama’s prize.
Khan was serving as an artillery commander in the Afghan National Army away from his home in the eastern province of Khost on April 8, when U.S. forces came knocking. In a case of “wrong house,” they killed his 17-year-old daughter, Nadia, and his 15-year-old son, Aimal. They also killed his wife, a schoolteacher who taught villagers for free. They killed his brother and wounded another daughter.
After she thought the dust had cleared, Khan’s cousin’s wife walked outside. She was nine-months pregnant. She took five shots to the stomach. Her fetus died, but she lived. She might have some thoughts on Obama as a man who “created a new climate,” as the Nobel committee claimed.
U.S. military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian said the slaughtered family had no connection to U.S. enemies. “It was an unfortunate set of circumstances,” he said.
A grieving Khan told Agence France-Press, “The (international) coalition has to stop this cruelty and brutal action.”
Khan is not likely to get his wish from Obama. Even in his announcement that he would accept the prize, Obama resorted hawk talk: “I am the Commander-in-Chief of a country that's … working … to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies.”
That is audacity. At its greatest, the threat to the American people from the Taliban is indirect. And whatever the risk in pulling out, it’s something we have to live with. To say that it’s worth thousands of dead civilians to possibly reduce an indirect risk to Americans makes sense only in the twisted nationalistic calculus in which an American life is worth many foreign lives. A peace prize should go only to someone who believes in the following math: 1 human life = 1 human life.
Perhaps the only reason we know the name Awal Khan is that he was an army colonel. The Khost Provincial Council closed its offices for a month in protest. Provincial councils of Laghman, Logar and Zabol have closed their offices to protest other civilian killings. And Obama is still listening to military advisers talk about how the secret to counterinsurgency is winning over hearts and minds........ Does someone who calls the occupation of Afghanistan “a war of necessity” and adds tens of thousands more troops to it have something to do with “the abolition or reduction of standing armies,” as Alfred Nobel stipulated for the prize in his will?
In a Pew Global Attitudes survey in June 2009, a plurality or majority in every one of the 25 countries surveyed was opposed to increasing troops in Afghanistan. An overwhelming majority of Pakistanis oppose the drone attacks that Obama has launched. With 58 percent of Americans now opposing the war, one wonders why Obama will not listen to anyone arguing what seems so clear: that the United States has no business being in Afghanistan.
Instead of listening to the left, most of which is still stunned by his ethnicity as if hit with a cartoon frying pan, Obama wants to placate the right. Like a long line of liberals before him, he’s worried about looking weak. He has hesitated on Honduras, waffled on Guantanamo, and exacerbated Afghanistan. This is discouraging news for peacemongers. As Lou Brock said, “Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.”
Even U.S. Puppet Hamid Karzai has had enough with the civilian dead. In 2005 he said, “I don’t think there is a big need for military activity in Afghanistan anymore.” In 2007: “The Afghan people understand that mistakes are made. But five years on, six years on, definitely, very clearly, they cannot comprehend as to why there is still a need for air power.” On Nov. 5, 2008, after U.S. warplanes killed 23 women and 10 children at a wedding party, he said: “This is my first demand of the new president of the United States: to put an end to civilian casualties.”
Veteran Army Officer Urges Afghan Troop Drawdown
http://www.truthout.org/1016096
In a 63-page paper representing his personal views, but reflecting conversations with other officers who have served in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis argues that it is already too late for U.S. forces to defeat the insurgency.
"Many experts in and from Afghanistan warn that our presence over the past eight years has already hardened a meaningful percentage of the population into viewing the United States as an army of occupation which should be opposed and resisted," writes Davis.
Providing the additional 40,000 troops that Gen. McChrystal has reportedly requested "is almost certain to further exacerbate" that problem, he warns.
Davis was a liaison officer between the Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan (CFC-A) and the Central Command in 2005, just as the Afghan insurgency was becoming a significant problem for the U.S. military. In that assignment he both consulted with the top U.S. officers and staff of the CFC-A and traveled widely throughout Afghanistan visiting U.S. and NATO combat units.
He also commanded a U.S. military transition team on the Iraqi border with Iran in 2008-09.
In the paper, Davis suggests what he calls a "Go Deep" strategy as an alternative to the recommendation from McChrystal for a larger counterinsurgency effort, which he calls "Go Big".
The "Go Deep" strategy proposed by Davis would establish an 18-month time frame during which the bulk of U.S. and NATO combat forces would be withdrawn from the country. It would leave U.S. Special Forces and their supporting units, and enough conventional forces in Kabul to train Afghan troops and police and provide protection for U.S. personnel.
The forces that continue to operate in insurgent-dominated areas would wage "an aggressive counterterrorism effort" aimed in part at identifying Taliban and al Qaeda operatives. The strategy would also provide support for improved Afghan governance and training for security forces.
Davis argues that a large and growing U.S. military presence would make it more difficult to achieve this counterterrorism objective. By withdrawing conventional forces from the countryside, he suggests, U.S. strategy would deprive the insurgents of "easily identifiable and lucrative targets against which to launch attacks".
Typically insurgents attack U.S. positions not for any tactical military objective, Davis writes, but to gain a propaganda victory.
The "Go Deep" strategy outlined in the paper appears to parallel the shift in strategy from counterinsurgency to counterterrorism being proposed by some officials in discussions in the White House in recent weeks.
Iraqi asylum seekers sent back to Baghdad by the UK government have been refused re-entry to their homeland, and flown back to Britain.
The flight, carrying about 40 asylum seekers, landed in Baghdad on Thursday. Ten were admitted but the rest were turned away and have now arrived back.
Human rights group Refugee and Migrant Justice said this was "unprecedented".
The Home Office said it was working with the Iraqi government to iron out issues that caused some to be returned.
The reason for their return, it said, was a matter for the Iraqi authorities.
It is understood that about 80 escorts were also aboard the government-chartered flight.
The asylum seekers are now at Brook House detention centre near Gatwick airport where they are being given legal advice, according to a Refugee and Migrant Justice spokeswoman.
She said: "One would have expected with such a high profile remove, the Home Office would have sorted this out with the Iraqi authorities.
The free-market nostrums that have been exalted as unchallengeable truths by politicians, media talking heads and many academic economists for nearly three decades have been discredited, intellectually and morally. There is growing apprehension about the future that awaits the capitalist system. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times wrote on March 8:
It is impossible at such a turning point to know where we are going... Yet the combination of financial collapse with a huge recession, if not something worse, will surely change the world. The legitimacy of the market will weaken. The credibility of the US will be damaged. The authority of China will rise. Globalization itself may founder. This is a time of upheaval.
2. In another column, the Financial Times quotes the following statement by Bernie Sucher, the head of Merrill Lynch operations in Moscow:
Our world is broken—and I honestly don't know what is going to replace it. The compass by which we steered as Americans has gone. The last time I saw anything like this, in the sense of disorientation and loss, was among my friends [in Russia] when the Soviet Union broke up.
US and European powers threaten Iran
By Patrick Martin
26 September 2009
In what has all the hallmarks of an orchestrated political provocation, the United States, Britain and France, with the support of Germany, denounced a supposedly secret Iranian nuclear plant, threatened stepped-up economic sanctions and possible military action unless the facility was immediately open to inspection.
In a joint announcement Friday morning at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared together before television cameras to issue the warning. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had left Pittsburgh to return home, issued her own statement of support for the threats against Iran.
Obama declared, “The Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.” He gave Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad six days to respond—by the time of an October 1 meeting in Geneva. His approach echoed that of George W. Bush seven years ago in citing an alleged nuclear weapons program as the basis for going to war against Iraq.
This time, however, France has joined the US and Britain in the manufacture of a casus belli.
Both Brown and Sarkozy made even harsher threats than Obama at their joint press conference. Brown demanded the drawing of “a line in the sand” and denounced what he called a shocking “level of deception by the Iranian government and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments.” This from a man who happily embraced all the lies peddled by Bush and Blair throughout the launching and waging of the war with Iraq.
Sarkozy declared, “If by December there is not an in-depth change by the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken.” In what was taken by observers as a direct threat of military force, he added, “Everything, everything must be put on the table now. We cannot let the Iranian leaders gain time while the motors are running.”
The Politics of Exaggeration...
I don't hear anymore about the silently forward creeping NATO 'exercises' towards the Ukraine, Georgia and Pakistan. In fact everywhere pipelines are (projected) to Western-Europe and America: imperialism at gunpoint sold as 'reconstruction-work'? The pipeline as a 21st century Trojan Horse, like ancient rebels once conquered Naples (Italy) and started a myth? What is presented to the current ignosphere about nuclear threats by Iran has its historical parallels. Likewise threats and acts from Israel against rockets fired upon it. One tends to forget that exaggeration of threats only and always serves dictatorshipand freezing of mental dynamics. As history has proven. No agreement between Versailles(1919) and 1939 with 'der Führer' could stop Hitler from starting a war. Stanley Kubrick's monumental "Dr. Strangelove" makes a perfect persiflage of these mental dynamics...
Ubuntu Karmic Koala - Doh! How fast....
Jason Perlow is a long-time computer technologist ...
stumbled upon the new Ubuntu release Karmic Koala, that will be officially released in (at most) a few weeks time. With a grin on my face I watched his video presentation. Count with me the number of 'wow, that's pretty fast'... My answer to that and his article about who should use Linux is: if you want to spent another 200 dollar to start with and play numerous games stay with Windows, otherwise feel free to use the gratis Ubuntu Karmic. Small businesses can safely use it too. If it works flawless for me, why not for you, particularly when value for the money and older hardware becomes a factor?
Journalist Ann Louise Bardach on How Cuban Exile Luis Posada Carriles Remains a Free Man in Miami Despite His Role in Airline and Hotel Bombings
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/16/journalist_ann_louise_bardach_on_how
French told to quit unsafe Guinea
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8310221.stm
France has already said it will stop weapon sales to the military government.
Concern has also been raised over a mining deal which a Guinean minister said had been agreed this week, which could see a Chinese firm pumping $7bn (£4.5bn) into the country.
Amnesty International Head Irene Khan on “The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights”
AECL says N.B. reactor delay now 16 months
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/16/journalist_ann_louise_bardach_on_how
DHS Reshapes Its Immigration Enforcement Program
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101503933.html
The Good Seed
( Change of pace. )
Bible Study - Bible Prophecy
Does traditional Christian teaching make sense to you? Have you ever questioned the customs of religion? Do you know what the Bible says? This Bible study may be helpful to you, but it is no substitute for your own careful scrutiny of the Bible under the instruction of the Holy Spirit. There is no substitue for your own personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=c4cc8177-382c-4d8b-b8fb-b5184d9a295d)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment