The U.S. government has now extended its assassination program to the drug war. According to the New York Times, the Pentagon now has an assassination list for suspected drug dealers in Afghanistan.
No arrests. No hearings. No attorneys. No judges. No trials. Just kill them.
There appear to be two teams in Washington playing under the banners of elephants and donkeys. They have different platforms, use different rhetoric, call each other bad names, and (in the case of the elephants) filibuster bills and impeach and prosecute abuses and crimes by the other side. One team wants to provide us with more healthcare, maybe, sort of, and the other does not. One side is hesitant about or even resistant to demonizing or discriminating against foreigners and immigrants and gays and racial minorities, and the other is not. One side wants to protect the right to unionize, maybe, sort of, and the other does not.
As with suicides, the rate of sexual assaults within the US military now exceeds that of the general population. A Pentagon report earlier this year found one in three female service members are sexually assaulted at least once during their enlistment. Sixty-three percent of nearly 3,000 cases reported last year were rapes or aggravated assaults. Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within is a documentary that focuses on the cases of three female service members victimized by rape and other forms of sexual assault.
A few days ago, New York Times columnists Bob Herbert and David Brooks engaged in an online conversation in which they lamented that the American people are not doing enough to support the troops who are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. They said that Americans just aren’t taking these “wars” seriously and should be engaging in much more shared sacrifice for the sake of the troops.
Yes, I am a survivor, for I have managed to survive all the scary accounts of the Holocaust: the one about the soap (1), the one about the lamp shades, the one about the camps, the mass shooting, the one about the gas (2) and the one about the death march (3). I just managed to survive them all.
In order to convert the sleepy, Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia into a dominating military base, the U.S. forcibly transported its 2,000 Chagossian inhabitants into exile and gassed their dogs.
Post-9/11, Muslims have been victimized, vilified, and persecuted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, activism, and charity. They've been targeted, hunted down, rounded up, held in detention, kept in isolation, denied bail, restricted in their right to counsel, tried on secret evidence, convicted on bogus charges, given long sentences, then incarcerated for extra harsh treatment as political prisoners in segregated Communication Management Units (CMUs) in violation of US Prison Bureau regulations and the Supreme Court's February 2005 Johnson v. California decision.
ACCORDING TO a Chinese saying, if someone in the street tells you that you are drunk, you can laugh. If a second person tells you that you are drunk, start to think about it. If a third one tells you the same, go home and sleep it off.
Recently the lovely looking, media savvy and well endowed actress, Pamela Anderson came up above the 49 parallel to protest against the sick seal hunt in Canada. She calls it “barbaric”. Yes it is just that; a bestial and medieval and outdated practise. But then most Canadians don’t care about it which means they simply to approve it, just like the Japanese do, who support their “sacred, tradional” whale and dolphin slaughter. How patriotic this is indeed? How brave and daring it is to mass murder harmless animals in their habitat? No, not really it is all quite abject and repugnant.
Using and abusing Keynes to fight the twin crises of our era
In the early 21st century, as polar ice sheets melt, deserts expand, hurricanes intensify and the ocean acidify, faced with governments focused on the next election instead of survival of the next generation, people are losing their faith in democratic governments being able to uphold the ideals of the enlightenment, indeed the physical survival of their citizens.
Now is the time for all good men to put their hands together, pull them apart and rapidly put them back together again, and repeat, to give props to the President for not curling up into a fetal position with a “Kick Me” sign taped to his butt. You know. Like a Democrat.
The Pentagon has paid anti-war activist Noam Chomsky the highest honor any totalitarian entity can bestow upon an author: they’ve banned his book “Interventions” at Guantanamo Bay prison.
The West & the rest of their progeny are out to malign Pakistan Armed Forces one way or the other, for instance; Morton Abramowitz’s piece, ‘Swat Valley’s Hidden Crisis’ published in Jewish media, in September, 2009. And now the press release of Amnesty international USA, published on October 22, 2009 in his own blog.
A federal judge has rejected a series of arguments by lawyers for the private military contractor Blackwater who were seeking to dismiss five war crimes cases brought by Iraqi victims against the company and its owner, Erik Prince. We speak to award-winning investigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent, Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
A recent article in the New York Times reported that the military has become frustrated with President Barack Obama because he hasn’t quickly decided to risk more of their lives in an Afghan war that is likely to be unwinnable. In a post-World War II world that has featured a non-traditional militarized foreign policy of profligate interventions into the affairs of other nations, the U.S. military and its opinion have acquired great prestige and are accorded hushed reverence in American society. The military and flag are worshiped as never before. But is this really patriotism?
Founded in 1958 for aged 50 and older Americans, AARP call itself "a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization (dedicated to) improv(ing) the quality of their lives," even though from inception it sold insurance to earn royalties - now to its 40 million members in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands while claiming a mandate to:
Opinions 
