1. Unfortunately, not a surprise:
“Telephone Company Is Arm of Government, Feds Admit in Spy Suit”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/att-doj-foia/
2. “The principal argument for continuing the 8-year occupation of Afghanistan is that if the Taliban regain power, they will provide a “sanctuary” for al-Qaeda. It is a fallacious rationale for the continued killing of Afghanis and the continued sacrifice of U.S. troops.
For one thing, if the U.S. Empire were to exit Afghanistan and Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, the al-Qaeda threat would become largely irrelevant.
Why?
Because the principal reason that al-Qaeda is attacking the United States is because the U.S. Empire has troops over in that part of the world and is killing, abusing, torturing, and humiliating people there. Once the U.S. Empire exits that part of the world, the principal justification for al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks against the United States dissipates.”
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-10-07.asp
3. “Our exclusive right to self-defense
This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We’re entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism.
That’s the way it’s always been, that’s the way it was in Operation Cast Lead.
AND THERE are no limits on our right to self-defense. There is no such thing as “disproportionate.” We can blockade Gaza, we can answer Kassams with F-16s and Apaches, we can take 100 eyes for an eye.
We can deliberately destroy thousands of Gazan homes, the Gazan parliament, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior, courthouses, the only Gazan flour plant, the main poultry farm, a sewage treatment plant, water wells and God knows what else.
Deliberately.
…
Why? Because we’re better than them. Because we’re a democracy and they’re a bunch of Islamo-fascists. Because ours is a culture of life and theirs is a culture of death. Because they’re out to destroy us and all we are saying is give peace a chance.
One look at the ruins of Gaza ought to make that plain enough.
Here is our idea of the “laws of war”: When Israeli bulldozers rolled across the border into Gazan villages and flattened house after house so Hamas wouldn’t have them for cover after the IDF pulled out, that was self-defense. But if a Palestinian boy who’d lived in one of those houses threw a stone at one of the bulldozers, that was terrorism.
The Goldstones of the world call this hypocrisy, a double standard. How dare they! Around here, we call it moral clarity.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1254861893834&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
4. Awful lot of war-mongers on this list:
“Peace Nobel has a history of sparking controversies”
5. Peace Prize:
“The Right in the US objected to Obama getting the peace prize on the alleged grounds that he had not yet done anything to deserve it. But the Right in the United States is to peace as velociraptors were to vegetarianism. They don’t believe in the ideal for which the award stands in the first place. And they find President Obama laughable, so they can’t imagine him getting any awards.”
6. Obviously dead:
“In addition to this objective evidence, we had considerable testimony in 2002, from people in position to know, that bin Laden was dead, or probably so. These people included:
• President Musharraf of Pakistan;
• Dale Watson, the head of the FBI’s counterterrorism unit;
• Oliver North, who said: “I’m certain that Osama is dead. . . And so are all the other guys I stay in touch with”;
• President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan;
• Sources within Israeli intelligence, who said that any new messages from bin Laden were “probably fabrications”;
• Sources within Pakistani intelligence, who “confirmed the death of . . . Osama Bin Laden” and “attributed the reasons behind Washington’s hiding news on the death of Osama Bin Laden to the desire of the hawks of the American administration to use the issue of al-Qaida and international terrorism to invade Iraq.
…
In October 2008, former CIA case officer Robert Baer suggested in passing during an interview on National Public Radio that bin Laden was no longer among the living. When Baer was asked about this, he said: “Of course he’s dead.”
In March of 2009, former Foreign Service officer Angelo Codevilla published an essay in the American Spectator entitled “Osama bin Elvis.” Explaining his title, Codevilla wrote: “Seven years after Osama bin Laden’s last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis’s presence among us than for his.”
…
Hello, long time no see. It is me, Osama bin Laden. And no, this not to be confused with just-for-men hair color commercial. . . . I make this video to prove to world that me still alive and kicking.
This video is very funny. But there is, of course, nothing funny about the fact that obviously fake bin Laden videos have been used, and are still being used, to justify the AfPak war, which continues to kill dozens if not hundreds of innocent people each week, including women and children attending weddings and funerals.
…
Its other main point, to which a separate chapter is devoted, is that these fake bin Laden tapes appear to be simply one part of an extensive propaganda operation, in which the US military intelligence is using tax dollars – illegally – to propagandize the American public, with the aim of furthering the militarization of America and its foreign policy.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15601
7. “Sweatshop Conditions in US Cities
The report documented flagrant workplace violations, core protections most Americans take for granted, including a guaranteed minimum wage, overtime pay, regular meal and other breaks, worker compensation for on-the-job injuries, and the right to bargain collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15605
8. Bailouts:
“As Kaptur said, given the size and scope of “the largest transfer of wealth from the American people to the biggest banks in this country,” one would expect there to be massive public interest in what happened and why, and, more so, whether any of this is being fixed (it plainly isn’t). One would particularly expect the Democratic Party — which has long branded itself as being the populist party against Wall Street — would be leading that charge, for political benefit if not for substantive reasons. But that’s clearly not happening, and the primary reason why is because both political parties, as institutions, are dependent on and thus controlled by the very industry that is at the heart of it.
…
This is hardly unique to the banking industry. This is how the political system works generally. Earnest, substantive debates over this or that policy are so often purely illusory, as the only factor that really drives that outcomes is the question of who owns and thus controls the political system. That central fact subsumes just about everything else.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
9. “The other reason is that Obama doesn’t actually appear to be doing anything that requires any particular toughness. He’s not trying to sell a bullshit war or dismantle Social Security, like Bush. He’s not trying to end legal and institutional racism in a country where it was as pervasive as bibles in ‘Bama, like Lyndon Johnson did. He’s not attempting to bring the country kicking and screaming into the twentieth century, even after it was already one-third over, like FDR was.
In fact, he doesn’t really appear to be doing much of anything, including producing the much-vaunted ‘change’ we heard endlessly about during last year’s campaign. Unless, of course, you count the nice demeanor with which he continues the predatory policies of Reagan, Clinton, and the Bushes. This is essentially George W. Bush’s third term. It’s Barry in the Bush with Smiles.
Obama more or less just seems to want to hang for a while, passively swaying in whatever winds happen to be blowing through at the moment. That might have worked in the 1950s, or even the 1970s, but not today.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23687.htm
