Renewed focus is being turned to the nearly 200 individuals being held as suspected “enemy combatants” at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba with deteriorating conditions creating unrest at the prison and President Obama asserting that the facility “is not necessary to keep America safe.” The complicated history and uncertain future of the U.S. prison [...]
“INSUFFICIENTLY PRO-ISRAELI?” New U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had his appointment held up on such “insufficiency” charge but now, on a trip to Israel, he seems to be establishing his sufficiency bones. In presenting a large deal for U.S. arms shipments to Israel, he says that the deal is a “clear signal” to Iran [...]
BOMB AT BOSTON MARATHON KILLS 3 PEOPLE, INCLUDING 1 CHILD AND THERE IS AN OUTPOURING OF U.S. SYMPATHY FOR THE VICTIMS. A secret C.I.A. counter-terrorist raid in Afghanistan kills 17 people, including 12 children. Sympathy out-pouring?—not so much, at least in the U.S. Not so, however, in Afghanistan itself, where the PM Hamid Karzai [...]
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL ON FORMER YUGOSLAVIA DELIVERS NO JUSTICE AND NO RECONCILIATION BUT A LOT OF CONTINUED SERB-BASHING. Diana Johnstone reviews the recent activities at the Tribunal and concludes that it has and continues to demonize the Serbian state and its leaders in pursuit of defining NATO’s 1999 bombing of Kosovo as a “humanitarian [...]
IS AMERICA DEALING WITH THE NEEDS OF ITS GROWING HOMELESS POPULATION? NOT EVEN CLOSE, SAYS DIANE NILAN. Ever since the War on Poverty became the War on the Poor and the federal government opened its boondoggling agenda of “10 year plans” to “eradicate” homelessness, most U.S. communities have managed to ignore the immediate needs [...]
STOCK MARKET RECORD HIGHS: THE RICH GET RICHER, EVERYONE ELSE GETS POORER… Last week saw the Dow Jones stock index shatter its all-time record highs, an occurrence trumpeted by the press and the Obama administration as a clear sign of a full turnaround from the depths of the Great Recession and proof of a [...]
CLIMATE CRUSADERS “UNDER ATTACK.“ Bill Mckibben writes in Grist of the recent travails facing two of the globe’s most ardent and respected leaders of the movement to take aggressive action against climate change. NASA scientist James Hansen, arrested last month for his dogged opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, a project he says will [...]
JIM CROW GOES TO PALESTINE. Israel is practicing against its Palestinian minority the same repressive apartheid-maintaining measures that kept blacks in “their places” (literally) in the U.S. in the years leading up to the civil rights movement. The walls that attempt to separate Jews and Muslims are the equivalent to the “red lining” in [...]
AMERICANS ARE A SIGNIFICANTLY “THREATENED” PEOPLE. A new Gallup survey of “1015 adult Americans” shows that 99% perceive Iran’s nuclear development a threat to U.S. “interests.” 83% of them (97% of Republicans, 79% of Democrats) view this threat as “critical” while another 16% see it as “important.” Nor is this fear confined to [...]
SRI LANKA IS “COUNTRY OF CONCERN” TO BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE FOR ITS HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES; BUT A MAIN BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY FOR U.K. ARMS DEALERS. Expose article by U.K. Independent shows that millions of pounds worth of small arms have flown into the country, many of them used in the escalated violence of the government [...]
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