1. “FBI issues new Bin Laden photo
And the “updated” photos are very misleading—they don’t look at all like a man who’s been dead for over eight years.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/22381
2. “Who Killed Massoud Ali Mohammadi?
Imagine the following scenario: The chief executive of a foreign country decides to conduct terrorist operations inside U.S. territory, and signs a “presidential finding” to that effect. Furthermore, that “finding” authorizes the foreign government’s agents to engage in “defensive lethal action,” i.e. assassinations. And what if, shortly after this information has been leaked to the public, prominent US government officials and even a nuclear scientist or two are assassinated, kidnapped, or otherwise targeted by mysterious terrorists, with no one taking “credit” for these actions?
How long before the United States military turned that country into a pile of molten rock and charred debris?
I give it about fifteen minutes, max.
However, if that chief executive happened to be an American president, and if the “finding” was approved by Democratic congressonal leaders, and if the targets of these assassinations and kidnappings were Iranian – well, then, it isn’t terrorism, now is it – since nothing we do is ever so characterized, no matter how accurate such a description may be.
…
Who killed Mohammadi? We don’t know, and may never know for sure: but all indications point to Israel, and it’s no wonder that even Debka, the Israeli web site with links to Mossad, practically claimed “credit” for the act on Tel Aviv’s behalf.
What’s interesting is that this explanation for Mohammadi’s unsightly end underscores the role played by Israel in the geopolitics of the Middle East, as not only Iran’s chief adversary in the region but also as a subverter of American policy and interests. The Iranians, with their cartoon-version worldview of the US and Israel as two heads of the same hydra-headed monster, are too simplistic by far: when it comes to the Middle East, Israel is working to undermine not only Tehran but also Washington – and anyone who gets in the way of their agenda.”
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/01/14/who-killed-massoud-ali-mohammadi/
The American political system is set up to persuade citizens that they must choose between starkly different policies. In reality, campaigns are mostly a showy exercise in what Sigmund Freud called the “narcissism of small differences.”
When it comes to defense, history suggests that the two major parties offer a choice on the order of McDonald’s and Burger King. Anyone looking back 50 years from now at objective indicators would have trouble identifying a meaningful difference between the current president and the last one.
For that matter, it’s easy to assume that when President Obama began addressing national security policy, he accidentally picked up John McCain’s platform instead of his own. Critics suspect Obama is a closet Muslim. But maybe his real secret is that he’s a closet Republican.”
http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/14/is-obama-a-republican
4. “Gene Healy: He’s the president, not America’s ‘daddy’
“Americans are scared” after the failed Christmas bombing, MoDo proclaimed in her column Sunday. But by responding coolly, Barack Obama let a good crisis go to waste. He missed his “moment to be president,” Dowd says, “to be the strong father who protects the home from invaders.”
Could there be a more infantile conception of the chief executive’s role?
National security is central to the president’s job, of course. But no one — whether liberal or conservative — should think of the president as a national father-protector. That view treats the American people like children, and it practically begs for a dangerous concentration of executive power.”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/He_s-the-president_-not-America_s-_daddy_-8751544-81175307.html
5. “Israel Declares War on Peace NGOs
Now, Israel is fighting back with a report on the reports, picking on international NGOs such as Amnesty, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Trocaire, Finn Church Aid, Diakonia and Cordaid.”
http://original.antiwar.com/kessel-klohendler/2010/01/14/israel-declares-war-on-peace-ngos-2/
6. “Canada cuts funding to anti-Israel groups
Pro-Palestinian, Christian groups among those targeted by Canadian government
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3834666,00.html
7. “What You’re Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be)
From the standpoint of the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti was the perfect candidate for this neoliberal facelift. The entrenched poverty of the Haitian masses could be used to force them into low-paying jobs sewing baseballs and assembling other products.
But USAID had plans for the countryside too. Not only were Haiti’s cities to become exporting bases but so was the countryside, with Haitian agriculture also reshaped along the lines of export-oriented, market-based production. To accomplish this USAID, along with urban industrialists and large landholders, worked to create agro-processing facilities, even while they increased their practice of dumping surplus agricultural products from the U.S. on the Haitian people.
This “aid” from the Americans, along with the structural changes in the countryside predictably forced Haitian peasants who could no longer survive to migrate to the cities, especially Port-au-Prince where the new manufacturing jobs were supposed to be. However, when they got there they found there weren’t nearly enough manufacturing jobs go around. The city became more and more crowded. Slum areas expanded. And to meet the housing needs of the displaced peasants, quickly and cheaply constructed housing was put up, sometimes placing houses right “on top of each other.”
Before too long, however, American planners and Haitian elites decided that perhaps their development model didn’t work so well in Haiti and they abandoned it. The consequences of these American-led changes remain, however. “
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16985
8. “Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal
Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is (which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for ”cognitive infiltration of extremist groups,” as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph:
So Sunstein isn’t calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) — having Government ”ban conspiracy theorizing” or “impose some kind of tax on those who” do it — but he says “each will have a place under imaginable conditions.” I’d love to know the “conditions” under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will “have a place.” That would require, at a bare minumum, a repeal of the First Amendment. Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
