1. “Farewell Interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts expresses his frustration with the censorship of 9/11 and why he is no longer going to write his bi-weekly column for such sites as Counterpunch and AntiWar.com. He explains that if people can’t deal with 9/11 they can’t adequately deal with any of the other important topics we need to deal with as well.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/23129
2. “Afghan Official Says US Raiders Hid Killings
The head of the Afghan Ministry of Interior investigation said publicly for the first time his investigators had accepted the testimony of family members of the victims of the Feb. 12 raid by U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) that the U.S. troops had dug bullets out of the bodies of their victims in an apparent effort to cover up the killings and that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal had agreed with the team’s conclusions.
http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/04/07/afghan-official-says-us-raiders-hid-killings/
3. Good:
“New Kyrgyz Regime Backs Russia, Vows to Shut US Base
Key US Supply Route to Afghanistan Likely to Close
The new government of Kyrgyzstan, installed yesterday evening after ousting US-backed President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, today thanked Russia for the support provided in their uprising, and promised to see the US base at Manas shuttered.
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/04/08/new-kyrgyz-regime-backs-russia-vows-to-shutter-us-base/
4. “The Guy Who Stole All Our Money Now Wants to Steal Our Paycheck, Too
Ben Bernanke has funneled trillions of dollars worth of bailouts, guarantees and sweetheart deals to U.S. (and foreign – and see this) banks.
This money was pickpocketed from you and me, directly (through government spending) and indirectly (increasing debt costs, future inflation, etc).
Bernanke is now calling for tax increases and raising the possibility of reductions in entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security.
Tax increases means we keep less from each paycheck. Reduction in services means that money we’ve already paid to the government (through social security, etc.) will now instead be paid to the bankers to service the U.S. debt.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/04/guy-who-stole-all-our-money-now-wants.html
5. “Iraq War Vet: “We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us”
Moon brought back a video that shows his sergeant declaring, “The difference between an insurgent and an Iraqi civilian is whether they are dead or alive.”
Moon explains the thinking: “If you kill a civilian he becomes an insurgent because you retroactively make that person a threat.”
…
What is happening in Iraq seems to reflect what psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls “atrocity-producing situations.” He used this term first in his book “The Nazi Doctors.” In 2004, he wrote an article for The Nation, applying his insights to the Iraq War and occupation.
“Atrocity-producing situations,” Lifton wrote, occur when a power structure sets up an environment where “ordinary people, men or women no better or worse than you or I, can regularly commit atrocities…. This kind of atrocity-producing situation … surely occurs to some degrees in all wars, including World War II, our last ‘good war.’ But a counterinsurgency war in a hostile setting, especially when driven by profound ideological distortions, is particularly prone to sustained atrocity – all the more so when it becomes an occupation.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18558
6. “Convince People of Absurdities and get them Acquiescing to Atrocities: The Enduring Power of Machiavellian Political Science”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18560
7. “
Americans, I have some bad news for you:
You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.
If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.
…
All this begs the question: Why would anyone put up with this? Ask any American and you’ll get the same answer: because America is the freest country on earth. If you believe this, I’ve got some more bad news for you: America is actually among the least free countries on earth. Your piss is tested, your emails and phone calls are monitored, your medical records are gathered, and you are never more than one stray comment away from writhing on the ground with two Taser prongs in your ass.
And that’s just physical freedom. Mentally, you are truly imprisoned. You don’t even know the degree to which you are tormented by fears of medical bankruptcy, job loss, homelessness and violent crime because you’ve never lived in a country where there is no need to worry about such things.
But it goes much deeper than mere surveillance and anxiety. The fact is, you are not free because your country has been taken over and occupied by another government. Fully 70% of your tax dollars go to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon is the real government of the United States. You are required under pain of death to pay taxes to this occupying government. If you’re from the less fortunate classes, you are also required to serve and die in their endless wars, or send your sons and daughters to do so. You have no choice in the matter: there is a socio-economic draft system in the United States that provides a steady stream of cannon fodder for the military.
If you call a life of surveillance, anxiety and ceaseless toil in the service of a government you didn’t elect “freedom,” then you and I have a very different idea of what that word means.
If there was some chance that the country could be changed, there might be reason for hope. But can you honestly look around and conclude that anything is going to change? Where would the change come from? The people? Take a good look at your compatriots: the working class in the United States has been brutally propagandized by jackals like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Members of the working class have been taught to lick the boots of their masters and then bend over for another kick in the ass. They’ve got these people so well trained that they’ll take up arms against the other half of the working class as soon as their masters give the word.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25166.htm
