1. “Spanish Inquiry of Alleged Bush-Era War Crimes Begins TODAY
On Monday February 15 in Madrid, Judge Baltasar Garzon will convene an investigation of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity allegedly committed by U.S. government officials and others during the Bush administration.
In his Opinion submitted to the Court last spring, Pepper concluded:
“… from the U.S. government’s own documents and the public statements of its leaders, that there is prima facie evidence of the following crimes:
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- Torture and the Conspiracy to Commit Torture
- War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
- Waging Aggressive War
- Illegal (Arbitrary) Detention
[He] places varying degrees of responsibility on particular government officials including George W. Bush and Richard Cheney and dismisses as inapplicable to serious international crimes the relevant defenses available to them and their subordinates including the government lawyers who [he argues] have a special professional responsibility.”
He further concluded that the Spanish Court, “is fully able and obligated …under international law and Universal Jurisdiction” to prosecute if the evidence indicates that prosecutions are legally justified.”
http://thedesperateblogger.com/2010/02/spanish-inquiry-of-alleged-bush-era-war-crimes-begins-monday/
2. “9/11 Never Ends
Fear has a way of reordering human worlds. That only a relatively small number of determined fanatics with extraordinarily limited access to American soil keep Fear Inc. afloat should, by now, be obvious. What the fear machine produces is the dark underside of the charming Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover, “A View of the World from 9th Avenue,” in which Manhattan looms vast as the rest of the planet fades into near nothingness.
When you see the world “from 9th Avenue,” or from an all-al-Qaeda-all-the-time “news” channel, you see it phantasmagorically. It’s out of all realistic shape and proportion, which means you naturally make stupid decisions. You become incapable of sorting out what matters and what doesn’t, what’s primary and what’s secondary. You become, in short, manipulable.
This is our situation today.
People always wonder: What would the impact of a second 9/11-style attack be on this country? Seldom noticed, however, is that all the pinprick terror events blown up to apocalyptic proportions add up to a second, third, fourth, fifth 9/11 when it comes to American consciousness.
So the next time a Flight 253 occurs and the Republicans go postal, the media morphs into its 24/7 national-security-disaster mode, the pundits register red on the terror-news scale, the president defends himself by reaffirming that he is doing just what the Bush administration would have done, the homeland security lobbyists begin calling for yet more funds for yet more machinery, and nothing much happens, remember those drunken drivers, arsonists, and tobacco merchants, even that single dust devil and say:
Hold onto your underpants, this is not a national emergency.”
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/02/14/hold-onto-your-underwear/
3. “The torture memos show how illegal wars turn even the nicest people bad
The deceit, the slaughter, the atrocity, the abuse of human rights. Today, Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil is everywhere
To call such crimes acts of war gives them rhetorical force, but in no sense did al-Qaida or its imitators threaten the integrity or security of a western state. These countries are too strong for such threat to be meaningful. The only damage they can do beyond sudden carnage is self-inflicted, by governments that decide to react with exaggerated fear. Yet the pretence of “going to war” has unleashed two of the most destructive, costly and prolonged state-on-state aggressions in half a century.
What is extraordinary is the reluctance of British politics to bring a sense of proportion to the terrorist threat. Every agency of democracy, from parliament to the army, the police and the media, is directed at exaggerating the status and menace of al-Qaida – and thus at doing Osama bin Laden’s work for him.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/11/miliband-mi5-terrorism-war-chilcot
4. “We weren’t on the wrong side [in Vietnam], we were the wrong side. –Daniel Ellsberg,
And just in case you want a more complete accounting — and you have a bunch of spare time — here’s a more complete list of United States military operations.
And if you’re morbidly curious of how many lives these sorts of operations have squandered — and have a strong stomach — you can find out from the University of Hawaii’s R.J. Rummel.
And, if you’ve read this far and want to know how much you contribute to this mayhem if you consider yourself a U.S. Taxpayer, the kindly Quaker folks from the Friends Committee on National Legislation have figured that out for you. (HINT: 43% of your 2008 tax bill went to pay for “wars,” past and present.)”
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/02/15/we-werent-on-the-wrong-side-in-vietnam/
5. “Bumper Sticker of the Year: Be Nice to America or We’ll Bring Democracy to Your Country”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17619
6. “Surveillance Drones To Zap Protesters Into Submission
Illustrating once again that the prison planet being built around us far outstrips anything Aldous Huxley or George Orwell ever imagined, a Wired News report details how police forces worldwide are preparing to unveil drone aircraft that can not only conduct surveillance of protesters, but also zap them into submission
…
“French company Tecknisolar Seni has demonstrated a portable drone armed with a double-barrelled 44mm Flash-Ball gun,” states the report. “Used by French special police units, the one-kilo Flash-Ball resembles a large calibre handgun and fires non-lethal rounds, including tear gas and rubber impact rounds to bring down a suspect without permanent damage — “the same effect as the punch of a champion boxer,” claim makers Verney-Carron.”
Of course the fact that the Flash-Ball devices have caused “permanent damage” in the form of head injuries is glossed over.
Another option will be a mini-flying saucer drone fitted with a Taser gun, primed to shoot 50,000-volts into anyone who refuses to bow down at the feet of global government.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17609
7. “White House Projects Long-Term Mass Unemployment
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17620
8. More evil from the Christian Right:
“Right-wing Christian leaders are making a concerted push to gain thousands of new signatures for their hate-filled Manhattan Declaration.
Religious right leaders are making a concerted push to gain thousands of new signatures for their “Manhattan Declaration,” a manifesto released late last year by about 150 conservative Christian leaders. The document, signed by such religious-right heavy-hitters as Focus on the Family eminence James Dobson and Prison Fellowship Ministries leader Chuck Colson, compares pro-choice advocates to eugenicists (and implicitly to Nazis) and equates same-sex marriage with polygamy and a gateway to legalized incest. Its authors promise to defy any law that does not comport with their religious beliefs. Joining the religious right’s Protestant leaders as signatories to the declaration are four Roman Catholic bishops, including those presiding over the powerful archdioceses of New York and Washington, DC.
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In other words, the declaration suggests the only difference between Nazi master-race theorists and today’s pro-choice and death-with-dignity advocates is rhetorical.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17622
9. “U.S. Forces Kill Children,
Other Civilians in Marjah, Afghanistan, with “Precision” Weapons”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24684.htm
10. “ The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup,
Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class
The economic elite have robbed us all. The amount of suffering in the United States of America is literally a crime against humanity.
“The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight.” — Michael Lind, To Have and to Have Not
