Jack A. Smith

Judging by the Barack Obama administration's reports, pronouncements and actions in recent months point to even greater war-making across the planet.

There's more war in America's future - a great deal more, judging by the Barack Obama administration's reports, pronouncements and actions in recent months.

These documents and deeds include the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the Ballistic Missile Defense Report, the nuclear security summit in New York and the May 3-28 United Nations nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, as well as the continuing wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the 2011 Pentagon war budget request.

The United States government presides as a military colossus of unrivalled dimension, but the QDR, which was published in February, suggests Washington views America as being constantly under the threat of attack from a multitude of fearsome forces bent on its destruction. As such, trillions more dollars must be invested in present and future wars - ostensibly to make safe the besieged homeland.

The NPR says the long-range US goal is a "nuclear-free" world, but despite token reductions in its arsenal of such weapons, the Pentagon is strengthening its nuclear force and bolstering it with a devastating "conventional deterrent" intended to strike any target in the world within one hour. In addition this document, published in April, retains "hair-trigger" nuclear launch readiness, refuses to declare its nuclear force is for deterrence only (suggesting offensive use) and for the first time authorizes a nuclear attack, if necessary, on a non-nuclear state (Iran).

Meanwhile, Obama is vigorously expanding the George W Bush administration's wars, and enhancing and deploying America's unparalleled military power.

Lord Monckton

The Select Committee, in its letter inviting testimony for the present hearing, cites various scientific bodies as having concluded that

1. The global climate has warmed; 2. Human activities account for most of the warming since the mid-20th century; 3. Climate change is already causing a broad range of impacts in the United States; 4. The impacts of climate change are expected to grow in the coming decades.

The first statement requires heavy qualification and, since the second is wrong, the third and fourth are without foundation and must fall. The Select Committee has requested answers to the following questions:

1. What are the observed changes to the climate system?
2. What evidence provides attribution of these changes to human activities?
3. Assuming ad argumentum that the IPCC’s projections of future warming are correct, what policy measures should be taken?

Stephen Lendman

Their names - Marshall "Eddie" Conway and Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald, both activist COINTELPRO-targeted Black Panther members, unjustly imprisoned for four decades for crimes they didn't commit.

They're two of many targeted Panthers, victims of COINTELPRO viciousness, "dirty tricks," after J. Edgar Hoover's orders to infiltrate, disrupt, sabotage, and destroy their activist mission for ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines.

In an earlier article, this writer explained that COINTELPRO is the acronym for the FBI's secretive, mostly illegal, counterintelligence program to neutralize political dissidents, including alleged communists; anti-war, human and civil rights activists; the American Indian Movement; Black Panther Party members, and today Muslims for their faith, ethnicity, and activism.

In their book, "Agents of Repression," Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall wrote:

"the term came to signify the whole context of clandestine (often illegal) political repression activities (including) a massive surveillance (program via) wiretaps, surreptitious entries and burglaries, electronic devices, live 'tails' and....bogus mail" to induce paranoia and "foster 'splits' within or between organizations."

Other tactics included:

-- "black propaganda through leaflets or other publications "designed to discredit organizations and foster internal tensions;"
-- "disinformation or 'gray propaganda' " for the same purpose;
-- "bad-jacketing (to) creat(e) suspicion - through the spread of rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc. - that bona fide organizational members (usually leaders) were FBI/police informants," to turn some against others violently;
-- "assassinations (of) selected political leaders," like Fred Hampton and Mark Clark on December 4, 1969 by Chicago police while they slept; and
-- "harassment arrests (on bogus) charges."

Stuart Littlewood

Stuart Littlewood argues that the emergence of the Conservative Party as the largest party in the UK parliament following the 6 May general election, in which Labour came second, will guarantee the continued stranglehold of Israel’s stooges over British politics and put British security at considerable risk.

The battle of the Israel stooges in Britain’s general election has ended inconclusively in what's called a "hung parliament" – i.e. no overall winner.

We can now expect a few days of horse-trading between David "I'm-a-Zionist" Cameron and Gordon “Me-too” Brown to see which stooge can form a credible government.

But regardless of who finally enters Number 10 Downing Street, the real winners will be the Zionists.

Either party chief will ensure Israel has a staunch friend who’s faithful to the thuggish regime. Cameron and Brown are both patrons of the Jewish National Fund and have surrounded themselves with lieutenants who are equally supportive of the Zionist entity's lawless expansion and barbaric conduct. Their loyalty to the British Crown is of course suspect, nevertheless many of them will occupy ministerial or key posts, especially in the Foreign Office and on intelligence, security and defence committees, as was the case under the previous Labour administration.

John Pilger

Staring at the vast military history section in the airport shop, I had a choice: the derring-do of psychopaths or scholarly tomes with their illicit devotion to the cult of organised killing. There was nothing I recognised from reporting war. Nothing on the spectacle of children’s limbs hanging in trees and nothing on the burden of shit in your trousers. War is a good read. War is fun. More war please.

The day before I flew out of Australia, 25 April, I sat in a bar beneath the great sails of the Sydney Opera House. It was Anzac Day, the 95th anniversary of the invasion of Ottoman Turkey by Australian and New Zealand troops at the behest of British imperialism. The landing was an incompetent stunt of blood sacrifice conjured by Winston Churchill; yet it is celebrated in Australia as an unofficial national day. The ABC evening news always comes live from the sacred shore at Gallipoli, in Turkey, where this year some 8000 flag-wrapped Antipodeans listened, dewy-eyed, to the Australian governor-general Quentin Bryce, who is the Queen’s viceroy, describe the point of pointless mass killing. It was, she said, all about a “love of nation, of service, of family, the love we give and the love we receive and the love we allow ourselves to receive. [It is a love that] rejoices in the truth, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And it never fails”.

Ellen Brown

Last week, Goldman Sachs was on the congressional hot seat, grilled for fraud in its sale of complicated financial products called “synthetic CDOs.” This week the heat was off, as all eyes turned to the attack of the shorts on Greek sovereign debt and the dire threat of a sovereign Greek default. By Thursday, Goldman’s fraud had slipped from the headlines and Congress had been cowed into throwing in the towel on its campaign to break up the too-big-to-fail banks. On Friday, Goldman was in settlement talks with the SEC.

Goldman and Wall Street reign. Congress appears helpless to discipline the big banks, just as the European Central Bank appears helpless to prevent the collapse of the European Union. . . . Or are they?

Suspicious Market Maneuverings

The shorts circled like sharks in the Greek bond market, following a highly suspicious downgrade of Greek debt by Moody’s on Monday. Ratings by private ratings agencies, long suspected of being in the pocket of Wall Street, often seem to be timed to cause stocks or bonds to jump or tumble, causing extreme reactions in the market. The Greek downgrade was suspicious and unexpected because the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund had just pledged 120 billion Euros to avoid a debt default in Greece.

Markets were roiled further on Thursday, when the U.S. stock market suddenly lost 999 points, and just as suddenly recovered two-thirds of that loss. It appeared to be such a clear case of tampering that Maria Bartiromo blurted out on CNBC, “That is ridiculous. This really sounds like market manipulation to me.”

Chris Floyd

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." ~ Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

"Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand." ~ Homer Simpson

Our text today is from Tom Englehardt, who is on the case with yet another ignored atrocity by our super-duper Special Ops boys in the goodest good war of them all out in Afghanistan. (See the original for the many links):

"Afghan lawmaker says relative killed after U.S. soldiers raided her home."

[H]ere it is in a nutshell: there was a U.S. night raid somewhere near the Afghan city of Jalalabad. American forces (Special Operations forces, undoubtedly), supposedly searching for a "Taliban facilitator," came across a man they claimed was armed in a country in which the unarmed man is evidently like the proverbial needle in a haystack. They shot him down. His name was Amanullah. He was a 30-year-old auto mechanic and the father of five. As it happened, he was also the brother-in-law of Safia Siddiqi, a sitting member of the Afghan Parliament. He had, as she explained, called her in a panic, thinking that brigands were attacking his home compound.

And here was the nice touch for those U.S. Special Operations guys, who seem to have learning abilities somewhat lower than those of a hungry mouse in a maze when it comes to hearts-and-minds-style counterinsurgency warfare. True, in this case they didn’t shoot two pregnant mothers and a teenage girl, dig the bullets out of the bodies, and claim they had stumbled across "honor killings," as Special Operations troops did in a village near Gardez in eastern Afghanistan in March; nor did they handcuff seven schoolboys and a shepherd and execute them, as evidently happened in Kunar Province in late December 2009; nor had they shot a popular imam in his car with his seven-year-old son in the backseat, as a passing NATO convoy did in Kabul, the Afghan capital, back in January; nor had they shadowed a three-vehicle convoy by helicopter on a road near the city of Kandahar and killed 21 while wounding 13 via rocket fire, as U.S. Special Forces troops did in February. They didn’t wipe out a wedding party – a common enough occurrence in our Afghan War — or a funeral, or a baby-naming ceremony (as they did in Paktia Province, also in February), or shoot up any one of a number of cars, trucks, and buses loaded with innocent civilians at a checkpoint.

In this case, they killed only one man, who was unfortunately — from their point of view — reasonably well connected. Then, having shot him, they reportedly forced the 15 inhabitants in his family compound out, handcuffed and blindfolded them (including the women and children), and here was that nice touch: they sent in the dogs, animals considered unclean in Islamic society, undoubtedly to sniff out explosives. Brilliant! "They disgraced our pride and our religion by letting their dogs sniff the holy Koran, our food, and the kitchen," Ms. Siddiqi said angrily. And then, the American military began to lie about what had happened, which is par for the course. After the angry legislator let them have it ("…no one in Afghanistan is safe — not even parliamentarians and the president himself") and the locals began to protest, blocking the main road out of Jalalabad and chanting "Death to America!," they finally launched an investigation. Yawn.

If I had a few bucks for every "investigation" the U.S. military launched in Iraq and Afghanistan over the years after some civilian or set of civilians died under questionable circumstances, I might be on vacation year around.

The U.S. military can, however, count on one crucial factor in its repetitive war-making: kill some pregnant mothers, kill some schoolboys, gun down a good Samaritan with two children in his car trying to transport Iraqis wounded in an Apache helicopter attack to a hospital, loose a whirlwind that results in hundreds of thousands of deaths — and still Americans at home largely don’t care. After all, for all intents and purposes, it’s as if some other country were doing this on another planet entirely, and "for our safety" at that.

In that sense, the American public licenses its soldiers to kill civilians repetitively in distant frontier wars. As a people — with the exception of relatively small numbers of Americans directly connected to the hundreds of thousands of American troops abroad — we couldn’t be more detached from "our" wars.

♣ ♣ ♣

This is a theme, a reality, that is emerging more clearly as the years of the never-ending Terror War drag on: by and large, the American people do not care about the innocent people being killed, in their names, all over the world. They don't care about "the children’s limbs hanging in trees," as war's eyewitness John Pilger puts it.

They don't care -- even as the inevitable, predictable blowback from these murderous polices comes home to roost on their own streets, the icy voice of revenge that says: "You come to our countries and kill our people; we will come to your country and kill yours." The former is considered a high and noble calling; the latter an act of unspeakable evil. That violence is not the answer -- that it only perpetuates the endless cycle of murder and vengeance that has marked our humankind since our mutation out of apehood -- is of no moment to those who see their loved ones shredded to death unjustly before their eyes.

What would I do if I came home from an ordinary day at work to find my children dead beneath the ruins of my drone-struck house? What would I do if saw my ailing father muscled from his home by masked goons who beat him and humiliate him then drag him off, bleeding, dying, to some iron-fronted dungeon? I hope I would have the strength to hold onto my belief in non-violence as the only hope to one day evolve our natures, and our cultures, beyond their deep-dyed savagery. But how likely is it that I would be that extraordinary, that I would have the extra measure of wisdom and spiritual fibre it would take to hold back the natural and understandable craving for violent retribution?

Not very likely; not in my case, nor in that of most others. Yet every day -- day in, day out, week after week, month after month, year after year -- atrocities like those described above are being carried out, in the name of the American people, in the name of civilization, in the name of our "way of life." Every day, day after day, some father or mother finds their children's limbs hanging in the trees, some child finds his parent's broken bodies smoking in the rubble, some ordinary, innocent human being sees their loved ones beaten, chained, abused and killed. Every day, day after day.

Only a fool -- a bloody-minded, arrogant, puffed-up, pig-ignorant fool -- could not see the horrific harvest of hate and destruction that will spring from such evil seeds. Only a fool -- or an elitist so wadded in wealth and privilege that he believes these monstrous fruits will never touch him personally, and doesn't care what happens to the rabble below, as long as his profits -- and his primitive, psychosexual lust for forcible dominion -- remain safe.

We are ruled today by just such fools, together with just such cold, deadened, malevolent spirits. But we seem to be content with this. Indeed, the most vociferous, active dissent we see these days comes from those who feel the system is not cruel enough -- who rage at the very thought that tax money might be spent to help someone in need, or that the borders have not yet been laced with radioactive razor-wire, or that accused criminals still have their rights read to them, or that Iran has not been destroyed, or that the power of Big Money might in any way be hedged with light restrictions.

These things bring thousands out in anger: but murder, aggression, torture, atrocity, and corruption on a scale unseen and hitherto unimaginable in human history -- these leave them cold ... as cold as the malevolent spirits who with their useful fools accelerate our degradation.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Chris Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. Floyd co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque, and is also chief editor of Atlantic Free Press. He can be reached at cfloyd72@gmail.com.
______________________________________________________________

Source: http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/1965-cold-irons-bound-all-together-on-the-road-to-ruin.html Illustration: "Out of the Darkness" (2003 © D.E. Christman)

Marion Delgado

Colombia's child 'sicarios': Playing with guns in real time

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia -- Sicarii (Latin plural of Sicarius ['dagger']; later used for a contract-killer) is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE (probably), to an extremist splinter group of the Jewish Zealots, who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judea.

The Sicarii used stealth tactics to gain their objective. Under their cloaks they concealed sicae, small daggers, from which they took their name. At popular assemblies, particularly during the pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, they stabbed their enemies (Romans, Roman sympathizers, Herodians, and wealthy Jews comfortable with Roman rule), lamenting loudly afterwards, along with the crowd, to escape detection. Literally, Sicarii meant "dagger-men."

In the past few months I have reported on life and death in Colombia. You have caught a glimpse of the violent forces at play that ordinary Colombians experience every day.

We've looked at the leftist guerrillas, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia -- Ejército del Pueblo (FARC or FARC-EP; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- Peoples Army) and the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional, (ELN; the National Liberation Army). We examined the right-wing paramilitars; the secret police, Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS; Administrative Security Department); the Colombian Army (COLAR), with its massacres and “false positives”; as well as kidnappings, extortion, blackmail, and rigged elections.

We've seen the failed peace processes and the complicity of our U.S. ally, the Government of Colombia, at the highest levels in the violence, and in one of its root causes, the multi-billion dollar trade in cocaine. We've looked also at what we, U.S. taxpayers, are currently funding in Colombia in the way of more bases, more arms, and more potential combatants, our own troops.

I have chronicled hundreds of thousands of deaths, two million displaced citizens, torture, rapes, wars between and among the various violent factions, and chainsaw massacres. In 20 postings, you might think that I've covered it all. Sadly, I have not. There is one more horrifying phenomenon which requires our attention to round out our picture of one of the most violent societies on earth. These are not baby killers, they are babies who kill.

Stephen Lendman

On March 30, 2010, an Amnesty International (AI) Public Statement read:

"USA: Amnesty International calls for immediate end to nearly 73 years of solitary confinement endured by Louisiana prisoners Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox."

Both men are at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (called Angola and The Farm) - in terms of acreage, America's largest prison, a maximum security one with over 5,000 inmates and 1,800 staff members on 18,000 acres. Once a slave plantation, it's the same now as then, and it's legal under the 13th Amendment stating:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Except for brief intervals, Wallace has been there for 38 years, Woodfox for nearly 35 - confined for 23 hours a day in 2 x 3 meter cells with little natural light, and "allowed outdoor exercise in a small cage, for one hour, three days a week, contrary to (what's) specified in the United Nations Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Restrictions are imposed on their personal property, reading materials, access to legal resources, work and visits." Their cages are unprotected from rain or oppressive heat. Overall, they're treated like animals, not human beings.

John Pilger

"Take for example FIFA, which has effectively taken charge of South Africa for the World Cup. Along with the International Olympic Committee, FIFA is sport’s Wall Street and Pentagon combined. They have this power because host politicians believe the “international prestige” of their visitation will bring economic and promotional benefits, especially to themselves. "

As Tiger Woods returns to golf, not all his affairs are salacious headlines. In Dubai, the Tiger Woods Golf Course in Dubai is costing $100million to build. Dubai relies on cheap third world labour, as do certain consumer brands that have helped make Woods a billionaire. Nike workers in Thailand wrote to Woods, expressing their “utmost respect for your skill and perseverance as an athlete” but pointing out that they would need to work 72,000 years “to receive what you will earn from [your Nike] contract”.

The American sports writer, Dave Zirin, is one of the few to break media silence on the corporate distortion and corruption of sport. His forthcoming book Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love (Scribner) blows a long whistle on what money power has done to the people’s pleasure, its heroes like Woods and the communities it once served. He describes the impact of the Texan Tom Hicks’s half-ownership of Liverpool Football Club, which followed another rich and bored American Malcolm Glazer’s “leveraged takeover” of Manchester United in 2005. As a result, England’s most successful club (with Liverpool) is now 716.5 million pounds in debt. How long has this been going on?

Stephen Lendman

Established in 1998, the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (BRC) "defend(s) and promote(s) the rights of Palestinian refugees and IDPs (to) advance (their) collective rights." In January 2010, BRC published a report titled, "Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, 2008 - 2009."

Its web site explains the problem:

-- Palestinian refugees and IDPs are "the largest and longest-standing case of forced displacement in the world today;"
-- in 2007, of a global 9.8 million Palestinians, about seven million are refugees and another 450,000 internally displaced;
-- they include 1948 Nakba victims, more from the 1967 Six Day War, new ones from continuous dispossessions for settlement expansions, and land seizures inside Israel;
-- many thousands were displaced from the Jordan Valley, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and within Israel to cleanse Arab neighborhoods for Jewish only development;
-- Palestinians in host countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Syria are also vulnerable to displacement; further, the 2003 Iraq war forced 34,000 Palestinian refugees to leave the country; and
-- over six decades after their 1948 displacement, Palestinian refugees and IDPs are still denied solutions and reparations for their rights under international law and UN resolutions.

Matthew Nasuti

American military creating an environmental disaster in Afghan countryside (Part 1 of 3)
American military creating an environmental disaster in Afghan countryside (Part 2 of 3)

The American military continues to operate burn pits in Afghanistan eighteen months after the U.S. Congress banned their use. See the February 1, 2010, article by Lindsay Wise and Lise Olsen of the Houston Chronicle. They used the burn pit at Camp Taji in Iraq as an example. It continues to open-burn 120 tons of waste each day. This provides a glimpse as to the volume of waste that is being illegally burned on American bases every day. Multiple that times hundreds of bases and posts in Afghanistan, and factor in that it has occurred every day for the past nine years and the scope of the problem becomes evident. The burn pits are only part of the problem. Other pollution results from spills, releases, illegal ash disposals and secret burials into unmarked landfills.

Last month the American military withdrew from its combat outposts in the Korengal Valley of Kunar Province and ceded the area to the Taliban. While the Western media reported on the American withdrawal, no one asked the question:

“Did the Americans remove all the hazardous waste that they spilled, released or disposed of in the Korengal Valley, and did they restore the locations to their original condition?”

The answer appears to be “No.” There is no evidence of any environmental investigation or soil sampling, let alone environmental cleanup and restoration at these outposts. All the hazardous waste generated by the American military appears to have simply been abandoned.

Similarly when the Americans withdrew in 2008, from Combat Outpost Wanat in Nuristan Province, there does not appear to have been a cleanup of the contamination at that location. The fear is that this is the Pentagon’s model for all American bases in Afghanistan. The underlying (and undisclosed) policy seems to be “cut and run.” Cutting out on their responsibilities and running away from the toxic consequences.

Craig Murray

I have now obtained under the Freedom of Information Act a heavily censored copy of one of my telegrams from Tashkent protesting at the use by the UK government of intelligence obtained under torture.

Every British person should read this telegram and hang their head in the deepest of shame. This is the pitch blackness of New Labour's embrace of authoritarianism. Read it, and remember I was both smeared and sacked for this attempt to apply simply the most basic of humane standards. Page 1: Download file Page 2: Download file

The censored passages detail British ministers' receipt of the torture intelligence from the CIA, and point out that the purpose of the CIA intelligence is consistently to paint a false picture, exaggerating the strength of al-Qaida in Central Asia. Miliband approved the redactions from the telegrams "On grounds of national security". Those are precisely the grounds on which he unsuccesfully sought to suppress the evidence of UK collusion with torture in the Binyam Mohammed court cases.

Ray McGovern

The omnipresent World War II-era poster with the words “Loose Lips Sink Ships” served as a warning to members of the U.S. military to take heed lest they divulge information that could tip off the enemy and result in defeat in battle.

I believe we need a new poster, because loose lips can also sink whole countries — including our own.

This is a lesson that members of Congress and Washington's media honchos should have learned from the disastrous invasion of Iraq; especially the ones whose lips helped President George W. Bush portray Saddam Hussein as a monster bristling with “weapons of mass destruction.”

In that time frame, of course, cooperating with Bush was “the smart play” for one’s career, even for many Democrats and liberal opinion leaders.

But those politicians and pundits now should share responsibility for having allowed Bush to mislead the nation into a war that has maimed and killed thousands of American soldiers, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, with millions more driven from their homes into fetid refugee camps.

The complicit lawmakers also helped sail the American ship of state into a vast iceberg of debt.

Chris Floyd

"Don't even hear the murmur of a prayer...." ~ Brother Bob

Illness and other aggravations have hindered the blogivating of late, so below are some choice items from other quarters that are well worth your attention.

The Children's Crusade
Andy Worthington tells the truly horrendous story of Omar Khadr, who was taken captive as a child by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and has now spent eight years in the lower depths of the American gulag. He is now being "tried" in the kangaroo "tribunals" of the Bush-Obama Continuum, under arbitrarily concocted, illogical "laws" whose cruel absurdity would shame a Stalinist show trial, including this arbitary ruling by the Department of Defense: “a detainee may be convicted of murder in violation of the law of war even if they did not actually violate the law of war.” You must read the whole piece to see the abysmal depravity that now reigns supreme throughout the highest, most respectable reaches of the bipartisan American estabishment.

Matthew Nasuti

American military creating an environmental disaster in Afghan countryside (Part 1 of 3)
American military creating an environmental disaster in Afghan countryside (Part 3 of 3)

American Military Burn Pits Pollute Afghan Countryside

Pentagon officials seem to support the following epitaph for Afghanistan:

“We had to pollute the Afghan countryside in order to save it from the Taliban."

In reality, the American military did not have to pollute. It chose to be sloppy and reckless and to ignore environmental standards.

On October 28, 2009, George W. Bush, in one of his last acts as President, signed into law H.R. 2647, which included provisions of “The Military Personnel War Zone Toxic Exposure Prevention Act.” The Act was sponsored by Congressman Tim Bishop of New York. It banned the use of burn pits in Afghanistan by the military. What is disturbing about H.R. 2647 is that an act of Congress was necessary to force the Pentagon to act responsibly and cease its use of toxic (open air) burning pits. It raises the question about how committed the Pentagon is to environmental protection and to the people of Afghanistan.

The impetus for this legislation was a courageous report written by Lieutenant Colonel Darrin L. Curtis, PhD BSC. Lt. Col. Curtis was a Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight Commander at Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2006. He wrote a report on the environmental and health impacts of the Balad burn pits. His report, dated December 20, 2006, concluded that the burn pit was “the worst environmental site” he had seen in seventeen years of environmental work in the United States. He characterized the smoke released by the military as: “an acute health hazard” to everyone who has been deployed or will be deployed to Balad. He disclosed that the U.S. Army completed a study in April 2006, that supported his findings. It was generated by the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine. Lt. Col. Curtis’ report was reviewed and endorsed by his equally courageous superior, Lieutenant Colonel James R. Elliott, MC, SPS, Chief Aeromedical Services. After that, the report went up the chain of command to more senior military officers much less courageous. They and the Pentagon ignored the report’s findings.

Stephen Lendman

On May 1, New York Times writers Al Baker and William Rashbaum headlined, "Police Find Car Bomb in Times Square," saying:

"A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a 'smoking' Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed

"We were very lucky. We avoided what could have been a very deadly event."

For much of the evening, Midtown New York, from 43rd - 48th streets, was closed, heightening fear reported for hours on cable news shows, including statements by Bloomberg, Governor David Paterson, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, saying the bomb "appeared (to be) in the process of detonating, but it malfunctioned."

Good luck or something else? We've seen this too often not to be suspicious. This one, like others, has all the earmarks of a false flag, more likely given its coverage and location in Times Square on Saturday night, followed by a May 2 video saying the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility.

Who could imagine they had a branch office in New York, and no one even noticed. At least that's the impression from media disinformation, hyped to spread fear and prepare the public for what's to come, perhaps something much worse.

In addition, like previous times, a suspect is already in custody, a Muslim, of course, as part of the anti-Islamic post-9/11 rage, and given how abusively he may be treated (including frightening threats of life in prison or the death penalty), perhaps will confess to anything or make it appear that he did so headlines can blare it.

Huda Jawad

The Peace Prize President in the White House continues to increase his empty, but angry rhetoric in an attempt to garner enough support for a strike on Iran. The propaganda juggernaut is in full action, and thousands of articles, TV shows, and politicians are beating the drums for a war against Iran. If this sounds eerily familiar, it’s because it is. In 2001, the London Observer ran a series of reports linking Iraq to the September 11 attacks and going as far as to claim there were secret bases in Iraq that produced anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction.

In late 2009, The Times of London published a now admittedly forged document it asserted revealed “a four-year plan [by Iran] to test a neutron initiator.” On the same day, Catherine Phillips, another writer for The Times, quoted Mark Fitzpatrick barefacedly saying,

“Is this the smoking gun? That’s the question people should be asking. It looks like the smoking gun. This is smoking uranium.”

To the naïve, this would be a shocking use of the media to garner support for a war that is pre-emptive and unjustified. To everyone else, it’s a repeat of 2001 and the pre-Iraq war legacy of the two biggest war criminals of our generation: George Bush and Tony Blair.

Not surprisingly, very few members of the corporate owned media have bothered to ask: does Iran have nuclear weapons? Does Iran even want nuclear weapons? It doesn’t matter. When the media is as prostituted as it is now, the sole aim is to convince the masses that Iran threatens our very existence and must be dealt with in a manner that disregards every single international law and charter. The Times of London is part of the seasoned propagandist Rupert Murdoch publishing empire that owns Fox News, the Sunday Times, and the New York Post. As expected, each and every Murdoch-owned media outlet views Iran from a decidedly pro-Israeli lens and disregards the need for evidence in making claims against a country that has fulfilled every clause of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT or NNPT). -You know, the same one Israel refuses to sign. Below are the top myths the media tells us daily about Iran.

Tom Eley

The April 20 blowout on a BP oil rig 50 miles off Louisiana’s coast, which claimed the lives of 11 workers, continues to gush millions of gallons of heavy crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico with no clear end in sight. The disaster has already led to major economic and environmental devastation, with the Gulf Coast’s multi-billion-dollar fishing industry suspended in high season.

With the calamity resulting from the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon growing worse by the day, the New York Times, the leading publication of US liberalism and self-styled “newspaper of record,” declares in a Tuesday “new analysis” that the spill is really not so serious after all. The column, “Gulf Oil Spill Is Bad, but How Bad?” is a thoroughly dishonest piece whose clear aim is to chloroform mounting public anger against BP and the Obama administration.

The Times starts its column with a series of lies and half-truths. Dismissing “some experts” who “predict apocalypse,” authors John Broder and Tom Zeller declare that

the “Deepwater Horizon blowout is not unprecedented, nor is it yet among the worst oil accidents in history.” In the Times’ estimation, whether or not it achieves historic status “will depend on a long list of interlinked variables.”

With millions of gallons of oil spilled near a densley populated and economically crucial area, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is already among the worst oil spills in history, the Times’ “long list of interlinked variables” notwithstanding.

Jeffrey Gettleman

Iwawa Island, Rwanda — A few months ago, Gasigwa Gakunzi was hanging around a ramshackle house where poor children pay to watch television when the Rwandan police arrested him for loitering. The next thing he knew, he said, he was taken away from his family and carted off to this remote island in the middle of Lake Kivu.

Gasigwa, 14, now spends his days learning patriotic songs and how to march like a soldier. At night, he sleeps in a huge sheet-metal shed with hundreds of men and boys packed mattress to mattress.

“Please call my father,” he whispered. “He has no idea where I am.”

Nearly 900 beggars, homeless people and suspected petty thieves, including dozens of children, have recently been rounded up from the nation’s neatly swept streets and sent — without trial or a court appearance — to this little-known outpost. They will spend up to three years here being “rehabilitated,” learning skills like bricklaying, hairdressing and motorcycle maintenance.

It is one of the country’s newest self-improvement projects, and it seems a fitting symbol for what many political analysts and human rights groups say Rwanda has become: orderly but repressive.