Fafblog explains : Breaking Terror Update! Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his friends are going to stand trial!It's taken about six and a half years for this to happen, during which they were all presu...
November 13-15, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
A Man in a Hundred
Patrick Cockburn
Meet Our Afghan Ally: Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys
Tariq Ali
Short Cuts in Afghanistan
Douglas Lummis
Obama, Hatoyama and Okinawa
Vijay Prashad
Can the Major Speak?
Carl Ginsburg
Cornering the Market on Ambition
Manuel García, Jr.
The Purpose is Pork
Rannie Amiri
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas
Mary Lynn Cramer
Death By Denial: the Militarization of Mental Health
Fred Gardner
Pot Doc Down
Dave Lindorff
Health Care Reform: DOA
Robert Jensen
How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to be Afraid
David Macaray
Wal-Mart Death Stampede Revisited
Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing Timberland: Nike Foe Jeff Ballinger Zeros in on a New Target
Ron Jacobs
No More Star Spangled Eyes
David Model
NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan
John V. Walsh
Godless China: What Obama Will Find
Jon Mitchell
Beggars' Belief
Stuart Easterling
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico
Dan Bacher
Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California
Franklin Lamb
Lebanese Students Advise Obama on How to Get It Right
Farzana Versey
Moderns, Models and Martyrs
Charles R. Larson
War, Peace and Paramilitaries in Colombia
Saul Landau
The Coen Bros. Brutalize Job
David Yearsley
When the Cirque Meets the Beatles
Lorenzo Wolff
At the Side of the Frontman
Poets' Basement
Blaine, Rivas and Cox
November 12, 2009
Robert Weissman
Maniacal Deregulation
Franklin Spinney
The Afghan War Question
Nadia Hijab
After Fort Hood
Afshin Rattansi
Night Vision: Why US Sanctions on Syria Will Kill American Soldiers
Paul Craig Roberts
America's Dismal Future
Ralph Nader
Failing the People on Health Care
Belén Fernández
Tourists of the Honduran Counter-Revolution
Allan J. Lichtman
A National Peacemaker's Day
Dave Lindorff
President Peacenik's War
Jayne Lyn Stahl
Headline of the Year
November 11, 2009
Andrew Cockburn
The Crafting of a Loophole
Mike Whitney
A Small "d" Depression
Rev. Jesse Jackson
Where's the Jobs Stimulus?
Jeff Nygaard
Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not
Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Regime Reneges on Political Deal
James Ridgeway
The End of the Little Red Cars: Memories of East Berlin
Eamonn McCann
Blood on Their Hands
Michael Ortiz Hill
Unbecoming War and Terrorism
Shepherd Bliss
From Oklahoma City to Fort Hood
Walter Brasch
"This is Jenna Bush Reporting ... "
November 10, 2009
Ellen Cantarow
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape
Dean Baker
How to Raise $140 Billion a Year From Wall Street Banks
Rose Ann DeMoro
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill
Ramzy Baroud
Inch by Inch, House by House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again
Peter Lee
The Dalai Lama Sticks His Thumb in the Dragon's Eye
Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Workers
Roberto Rodriguez
Running Past PTSD (Or My Susto Profundo)
Winslow T. Wheeler
The Self-Dismembering F-35
Alan Farago
The Rising Tide
Joseph Grosso
The Legacy of Albert Parsons
November 9, 2009
Patrick Cockburn
Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans
Linn Washington
Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman
Carl Ginsburg
To be Young and Unemployed Forever
Jeff Leys
War Funding, 2010
John A. Murphy
Can Lieberman Save Single Payer? Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster
John Halle
Bard and the Lobby: Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair
Bouthaina Shaaban
Clinton Dances With Netanyahu
James Ridgeway
Heath Care: Winning a Battle, Losing the War
Dave Lindorff
The Kafka Economy
David Macaray
The Philadelphia Transit Strike
Stephen Fleischman
The Tea Party System
Website of the Day
Cap-and-Trade: The Huge Mistake
November 6-8, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
Too Fat to Fight
Mark Grueter
Inside the American University of Iraq
Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Empire
Patrick Cockburn
Friendly Fire
Gareth Porter
Karzai's Cabinet of Warlords
Mike Whitney
The Battle of Seattle, 10 Years Later
James Bovard
How the Media Enables Government Lies
Dean Baker
Don't Touch the Banks!
Robert Lawless
Empires and the Sullying of Anthropology
Saul Landau
Afghanistan: a War Without Logic
Jayne Lyn Stahl
Black Ops and Fort Hood
Stephanie Westbrook
My Memories of Fort Hood
M. Shahid Alam
How Eurocentric Are You?
Marc Levy
Walking With Mr. Muhammad
Franklin Lamb
Obama's Mid-East Mess
Ron Jacobs
A New Map of Hell
David Ker Thomson
Afternoon With Tulip
John V. Whitbeck
Moment of Truth
Julien Mercille
Drugs and Afghanistan: the UN's Misleading Report
Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Next Unelected President?
John Ross
Legalize It!
David Michael Green
Can You Hear Us Now?
Carl Finamore
Strike One for Hotels in San Francisco
Farzana Versey
The Farce of Fatwas and Political Expediency
Missy Comley Beattie
No to Single Payer, Yes to Prayer?
Charles R. Larson
Business as Usual in India
David Yearsley
Anna Magdalena, Music and the Art of Dying
Kim Nicolini
"Paranormal Activity:" a DIY Horror Film
Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Devreaux Baker
November 5, 2009
Pam Martens
The Fire Sale of America
Vijay Prashad
The Great Heretic
Brian Gallagher
The Soldiers From Standard Oil: Harvard, ROTC and American Foreign Policy
Norman Solomon
The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid
Nadia Hijab
The Battle for Palestinian Representation
Joseph Shansky
And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?
Andy Thayer
Questions and Answers From Maine
Tracy Rosenberg
Pacifica and the Barbarians Who Pay the Bills
Website of the Day
All Folked Up
November 4, 2009
Stan Cox
The Inflated Promise of Natural Gas
Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs?
Robert Weissman
The Medicare-for-All Moment
Susan Galleymore
Of Veterans and Volunteers
Ralph Nader
Hoh's Afghanistan Warning
Michael Leonardi
Italy's Secret Ships of Poison
Bitta Mistofi
Death to No One: Isolating and Taunting Iran Will Only Empower the Regime
Robert Bryce
From Lahore to Copenhagen
Martha Rosenberg
Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?
Dave Lindorff
Democrats Crash and Burn
Website of the Day
Single-Payer Backtrackers
November 3, 2009
Patrick Cockburn
The Delegitimization of Karzai
Mike Whitney
Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away
Franklin C. Spinney
Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear
Laura Carlsen
The Little Coup That Couldn't
Serge Halimi
Don't Blame the Internet
John Stanton
Social Decay in America
Sophia Weeks
A Guatemalan Lament
Dave Lindorff
Country Joe, Kenny Rogers and Obama
November 2, 2009
Steven Higgs
Autism Spikes, Toxins Suspected
Ishmael Reed
White in America: Behind the Scenes at CNN
David Macaray
UAW Members Vote Down Ford; and the Media Attacked the Union
Bouthaina Shaaban
Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages
David Michael Green
Coming to Get You
David Swanson
The Two Percent Robustness
Ellen Brown
Cutting Wall Street Out
Adam Federman
Trading the Watershed to Trash the Catskills
James McEnteer
Doppleganger Politics: Star Wars, Clone Wars
Stephen Fleischman
Foot in the Door: Capitalism and Health Care
Website of the Day
Secret California Park Giveaway
October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009
Alexander Cockburn
The Long Gaze of the State
Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Facing Down the Machine: Mike Roselle Draws a Line
Carl Ginsburg
Living in the Shadow of Yankee Stadium
Mike Whitney
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Stimulus
Joe Bageant
The Iron Cheer of Empire
Gareth Porter
Security By Warlords: the CIA's Afghan Payroll
Saul Landau
The Cuban Embargo
Anthony DiMaggio
Conspiracy, Inc.: Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right
Dave Lindorff
Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down
Rannie Amiri
The Spooks of Beirut
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Afghan Travelogue
Jayne Lyn Stahl
Who Will Reform the Health Care Reform?
Rev. William E. Alberts
God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion)
Alvaro Huerta
The Abominable Mr. Dobbs
Martha Rosenberg
Marketing Drugs to Psychoneurotics
Binoy Kampmark
Don't Give Us Your Wretched: Refugee Policy in OZ
Norm Kent
Not Just Zig-Zag Any More: Medical Marijuana Goes Mainstream
Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro
Ron Jacobs
One Man's Truth, Another Man's Lies
David Yearsley
Not Loud Enough by Half
Lorenzo Wolff
The Vulnerability of Lauryn Hill
Kim Nicolini
"Big Fan:" Football, Class and Sexuality in America
Poets' Basement
Davies, Heyen and Orloski
Website of the Weekend
Coal Country Music
When small countries lead the way
Among the conventional wisdom that we hear everyday in the business press is that developing countries should bend over backwards to create a friendly climate for foreign corporations, follow orthodox (neoliberal) macroeconomic policy advice, and strive to achieve an investment-grade sovereign credit rating so as to attract more foreign capital.
Guess which country is expected to have the fastest economic growth in the Americas this year? Bolivia. The country’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, was elected in 2005 and took office in January 2006. Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, had been operating under IMF agreements for 20 consecutive years, and had a per capita income lower than it had been 27 years earlier. Evo sent the IMF packing just three months after he took office, and then moved to re-nationalize the hydrocarbons industry (mostly natural gas). Needless to say this did not sit well with the international corporate community. Nor did Bolivia’s decision in May 2007 to withdraw from the World Bank’s international arbitration panel (ICSID), which had a tendency to settle disputes in favor of international corporations and against governments.
But Bolivia’s re-nationalization and increased royalties on hydrocarbons has given the government billions of dollars of additional revenue (Bolivia’s entire GDP is only about $16.6 billion, with a population of 10 million people). These revenues have been useful for a government that wants to promote development, and especially to maintain growth during the downturn. Public investment increased from 6.3 percent of GDP in 2005 to 10.5 percent for 2009. Bolivia’s growth through the current world downturn is even more remarkable in that it was hit hard by falling prices for its most important exports – natural gas and minerals, and also by a loss of important export preferences in the U.S. market. The Bush administration cut off Bolivia’s trade preferences that were granted under the ATPDEA (Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act), allegedly to punish Bolivia for insufficient co-operation in the “war on drugs.” In reality, it was more complicated: Bolivia expelled the U.S. Ambassador because of evidence that the U.S. government was supporting the opposition to the Morales government, and the ATPDA revocation followed soon thereafter. In any case, the Obama administration has so far not changed the Bush administration’s policies toward Bolivia; but Bolivia has proven that it can do quite well with or without Washington’s cooperation.
Ecuador’s leftist president, Rafael Correa, is an economist who, well before he was elected in December 2006, had understood and written about the limitations of neoliberal economic dogma. He took office in 2007, and established an international tribunal to examine the legitimacy of the country’s debt. In November 2008 the commission found that part of the debt was not legally contracted, and in December Correa announced that the government would default on roughly $3.2 billion of its international debt. He was vilified in the business press, but the default was successful. Ecuador cleared a third of its foreign debt off its books by defaulting and then buying the debt back at about 35 cents on the dollar. The country’s international credit rating remains low, but no lower than it was before Correa’s election - and it was even raised a notch after buyback was completed.
The Correa government also incurred foreign investors’ wrath by renegotiating its deals with foreign oil companies to capture a larger share of revenue as oil prices rose. And Correa has bucked pressure from Chevron and its powerful allies in Washington to drop his support of a lawsuit against the company for massive pollution of ground waters, with damages that could exceed $27 billion.
How has Ecuador done? Growth has averaged a healthy 4.5 percent over Correa’s first two years. And the government has made sure that it has trickled down: health care spending as a percent of GDP has doubled, and social spending in general has expanded considerably from 5.4 percent to 8.3 percent of GDP in two years. This includes a doubling of the cash transfer program to poor households, a $474 million increase in spending for housing, and other programs for low-income families.
Ecuador was hit hard by a 77 percent drop in the price of its oil exports from June 2008 to February 2009, as well as a decline in remittances from abroad. Nonetheless it has weathered the storm pretty well. Other unorthodox policies, in addition to the debt default, have helped Ecuador to stimulate its economy without running too low on reserves. Ecuador’s currency is the U.S. dollar, so that rules out using exchange rate policy and most monetary policy for counter-cyclical efforts in a recession – a significant handicap. Instead Ecuador was able to cut deals with China for a billion-dollar advance payment for oil and another one billion dollar loan. The government also has begun requiring Ecuadorian banks to repatriate some of their reserves held abroad, expected to bring back another $1.2 billion, and has started repatriating $2.5 billion in Central Bank reserves held abroad in order to finance another large stimulus package. Ecuador’s growth will probably come in at about 1 percent this year, which is pretty good relative to most of the hemisphere – e.g. Mexico, at the other end of the spectrum, is projected to have a 7.5 percent decline in GDP for 2009.
SIGINT coverage of the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China by the Air Force Security Agency (an NSA predecessor) during the early 1950s was so bad that a senior CIA official referred to this period as “the dark ages for communications intelligence.”
The Agency provided no warning that North Korea intended to invade South Korea in June 1950 because it was paying no attention to Korea.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a major strategic intelligence failure for NSA. SIGINT provided no warning of the presence of Soviet nuclear-armed intermediate and medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba prior to their discovery by U-2 reconnaissance aircraft; according to Johnson, this “marked the most significant failure of SIGINT to warn national leaders since World War II.”
In April 1975, as the North Vietnamese military prepared for the final offensive to capture the beleaguered South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, ambassador Graham Martin refused to believe SIGINT reporting which clearly indicated that the offensive was about to commence, arguing that the intercepts were a “deception.” He believed that North Vietnamese wanted a coalition government, not military victory. The offensive began on April 26, 1975. Three days later, Saigon fell.
As it relates to the making and sustaining of the Arab-Israeli conflict, there is no better or more shocking example of how the truth of history has been suppressed than the Liberty Affair.
San DiegoUnion Tribune op-ed was headlined Forty Years Later, Searching for Truth. The writer of it was Ward Boston, Jr.
Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel’s June 8th1967 bombing of the USS Liberty.
On that sunny, clear day 40 years ago, Israel’s combined air and naval forces attacked our American intelligence-gathering ship for two hours, inflicting 70 percent casualties. Thirty-four American soldiers died and 172 were injured. The USS Liberty remained afloat only by the crew’s heroic efforts.
Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, president of the Court of Inquiry, that President Johnson and Secretary of Defence McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”
The ensuing cover-up has haunted us for 40 years.What does it imply for our national security, not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East, when we cannot question Israel’s actions, even when they kill Americans?
On June 8th, survivors of Israel’s cruel attack will gather in Washington DC to honor their dead shipmates as well as the mothers, sisters, widows and children they left behind. They will continue to ask for a fair and impartial congressional inquiry that, for the first time, would allow the survivors themselves to testify publicly.
For decades I have remained silent. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary of Defence and President of the United States, I follow them. However, attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to tell the truth.
Admiral Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.
We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.
I am certain that Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.
I am outraged at the efforts of Israel’s apologists to claim this attack was a case of “mistaken identity”.
Admiral Kidd told me that after receiving the President’s cover-up orders, he was instructed to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defence Department, and rewrite portions of the Court’s findings. He said, “Ward, they are not interest in the facts. It’s a political matter and we cannot talk about it.” We were to “put a lid on it” and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.
I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt. Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given to the Court of Inquiry and included in the original transcript, is now missing.
I join the survivors in their call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel, even when they kill Americans, in the halls of Congress?
Let the survivors testify. Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink “the American ship.”
The attack on the Liberty was ordered by Defence Minister Moshe Dayan, Israel’s charismatic, one-eyed warlord and master of deception.
It was on patrol, listening, because some in the Johnson administration, perhaps Defence Secretary McNamara especially, did not trust the Israelis to keep their word with regard to the scope of the war.
Less than 15 minutes after the start of the Israeli attack, Captain Joseph Tully launched planes from the American aircraft carrier USS Saratoga to go to the aid of the Liberty. Johnson ordered the planes to be recalled. There was to be no engagement with the Israelis, even if that meant letting Americans die.
Johnson didn’t want any kind of confrontation with the Zionist state of Israel and its awesomely powerful lobby in America. He knew better than anybody else that if the lobby mobilised American Jews against him and the Democratic Party, he and it would be in very deep trouble. Very many Democrats who run for election are dependent on campaign funding organised by the Zionist lobby and, in six states in close election races, they can also be dependent on organised Jewish votes. (One problem with what passes for democracy in America is that it’s for sale to the highest bidders; and Zionism is one of the highest, if not the highest, bidder. An eminent Jewish American said recently that the Democratic Party would not be able to come up with a foreign policy different from that of Bush and Cheney “unless it ends its intellectual and financial dependency on the Israel lobby.”)
Missing Iran general abducted by Mossad, being held in Israel 
By Haaretz Service
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1128282.html
A former Iranian defense official who disappeared in 2006 was kidnapped by forces collaborating with the Mossad and is currently being held in an Israeli prison, an investigative news website in Iran claimed on Sunday in a report picked up by Army Radio.
Ali-Reza Asgari, a onetime commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, went missing in Turkey in 2006.
Iranian officials and Asgari's family have claimed that he was abducted.
On Sunday, the Iranian website Alef reported that German, British and Israeli intelligence agencies were responsible for Asgari's disappearance.
SomeUnknownUSHistory
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SomeUnknownUSHistory
1963 The CIA killed JFK and the cover ups part one
Jan 1963 to the cover ups: copyrighted Nov. 8, 2009 The 1963 US national security chain of command: National Security Council National Security Advisor:
( and parts 3 - 6 )
metatron
USS Liberty Incident: "The Missing Piece of the Middle East Peace Puzzle"
In their noble pursuit of justice and long endeavor to establish historical truth, the USS Liberty survivors just happened to have exposed a chronic obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
The USS Liberty incident and cover-up constitute a hot political potato especially for AIPAC driven politicians who shun constituent requests to take up the cause of the USS Liberty survivors. One wonders how any member of Congress could give a cold shoulder to the Liberty crew and still be fit for the duty of care of our twenty year olds in far-flung places like Iraq and the Persian Gulf. After all, Zionist Neoconservatives maintain that aircraft carriers are old fashioned and expendable and a costly drag in their quest for world domination. Is this why carriers have been placed within range of Iran's supersonic anti-ship missiles? Is this how warmongers break eggs for their omelets?
ERSATZ ISRAEL: On those who say they are Jews, but are not.
A disquisition on Khazar Jews, the real Israel and the situation in Palestine. And a message to the Ashkenazim, who are properly known in prophecy as Gog: Thus saith the Lord God; In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it?
The vast majority of people who call themselves Jews today are Ashkenazi Jews. Unlike the Sephardim, who are Jews descended by blood through Abraham, the Ashkenazim are actually a Turkic people descended from Khazars who had converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages, prior to their westward migrations centuries later into eastern and central Europe and eventually on to Palestine. This, in a nutshell, is the main theme of Arthur Koestler's book The Thirteenth Tribe.
Pro-Israel lobby group bankrolling Tories, film claims
(50% of MPs in the shadow cabinet are Conservative Friends of Israel members, according to Channel 4's Dispatches).
Pro-Israeli organisations in Britain look set to see their influence increase if the Conservatives win the next election, a film scrutinising the activities of a powerful but little-known lobby warns today.
At least half of the shadow cabinet are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), according to a Dispatches programme being screened on Channel 4. The programme-makers describe the CFI as "beyond doubt the most well- connected and probably the best funded of all Westminster lobbying groups".
Inside Britain's Israel Lobby claims that donations to the Conservative party "from all CFI members and their businesses add up to well over £10m over the last eight years". CFI has disputed the figure and called the film "deeply flawed".
The programme also describes how David Cameron allegedly accepted a £15,000 donation from Poju Zabludowicz, a Finnish billionaire who chairs Bicom (the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre). Zabludowizc, the film reveals, has business interests in an illegal West Bank settlement. He also gave £50,000 to Conservative Central Office. Zabludowicz says his contributions "are a matter of public record".
Two years ago a controversial study by American academics Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer explored the influence of the Israel lobby over US foreign policy. But Britain's pro-Israel organisations have been subjected to far less scrutiny.
"The pro-Israel lobby … is the most powerful political lobby," Michael Mates, a Conservative MP and privy councillor, told the film-makers. "There's nothing to touch them."
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