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Defend Bradley Manning! Facing 52 years for sharing video
posted at www.couragetoresist.org
By Courage to Resist. July 14, 2010
“From what I’ve heard of (Pfc. Bradley) Manning, he is a new hero of mine.” —Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
In April, the Wikileaks website released a video depicting a US helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed eleven unarmed Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters employees, and seriously wounded two children. Titled “Collateral Murder”, the video was widely posted and reported on.
Last week, the Army charged 22-year-old intelligence analyst Pfc. Bradley Manning with providing the video after he allegedly took credit for doing so online. For the past month, he has been held in isolation from supporters and civilian legal assistance in a US military confinement facility in Kuwait....
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/846/27/
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From A World To Win News Service
Israel and the U.S.: who is whose tool?
28 June 2010. A World to Win News Service. The American international policy professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who are critical of U.S. support for Israeli settlement expansion and its attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, argue that "the unmatched power of the Israel lobby" distorts U.S. foreign policy. Many people outraged by these crimes have been influenced by their still widely circulated article "The Israel Lobby" that first appeared in The London Review of Books in 2006 (available at lrb.co.uk) and was later expanded into a book published in 21 countries.
(at VVAWAI we've been grappling with the relationship between U.S. imperialism and Israel for a long time. This article is very helpful-- Anton, VVAWAI)
Read on… http://revcom.us/a/207/AWTWNS-Israel-en.html
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Emergency Committee to Stop the Gulf Oil Disaster:
"MISSION STATEMENT -- sign your name -- AN EXTRAORDINARY CRISIS REQUIRES AN EXTRAORDINARY RESPONSE – THE PEOPLE MUST ACT TO STOP THE GULF CATASTROPHE
ACT NOW! SIGN THIS MISSION STATEMENT TODAY --and urge everyone you know to do the same-- by clicking "comments" at the bottom of this Statement. Please fill out the form that comes up.
The BP oil blowout is an environmental catastrophe, bringing great peril to marine and wildlife in the Gulf and threatening ecosystems of the planet. The spill is still out of control and spreading. It jeopardizes communities and livelihoods. The government and BP have proven unable and unwilling to stop the disaster, protect the Gulf, or even tell the truth.
The people must come together now to stop this nightmare...."
http://www.stopgulfoildisaster.org/2010/06/mission-statement-sign-your-name_24.html
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The Gulf of Mexico and the Niger River Delta: oil spills worlds apart
21 June 2010. A World to Win News Service. The oil spill off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico is the kind of disaster people living in the Niger River Delta have suffered continuously for half a century.
Predatory pumping and almost unbridled burning of fossil fuels is killing the planet. But nowhere has oil brought more devastation than Nigeria. Making matters even worse, there is little effort to clean up this poison.
To give an idea of the scale of the catastrophe, BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico has spewed between 2-4 million barrels of oil in the two months since the blowout. Almost six million barrels have oozed and washed through Nigeria's main river delta over the last 50 years. Most of it has been concentrated in a thousand-square-kilometre area called Ogoniland....
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The Gaza flotilla murders: Israel adds insult to injury
7 June 2010. A World to Win News Service. In a radio message demanding the surrender of the merchant vessel carrying supplies to Gaza 5 June, Israeli officials refused to call it the MV Rachel Corrie, the ship's legal designation. Instead they addressed it by its former name, the Linda. They refused to pronounce the name its current owners had given it in honour of an American university student because it was the Israeli military that killed her. An armoured bulldozer deliberately crushed her to death as she stood in front of a Palestinian home they were about to demolish. The fact that this time an Israeli military action went off without loss of life – unlike the murder of Rachel Corrie in 2003 and unlike the killing of at least nine people aboard the MV Rachel Corrie's sister ship the Mavi Marmara – has not disarmed the explosive contradictions involved in the current situation. In fact, Israel seems determined to add insult to injury.
The more facts come out about its seizure of the Mavi Marmara, the more the criminality of Israel's actions is highlighted....
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Once again it is Memorial Day and we are to "honor" this country's war dead.
But the questions that are not talked about on this day, and are always ignored, it seems, in the rush to war, are: What did they die for? and For what are we honoring them?
Here are several thoughts on the subject.
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Joshua Claus: The Rape Threat and the Dead Detainees
posted at www.uruknet.de
Emptywheel
May 8, 2010 - ...Which really ought to encourage those of us who would like to confound DOD"s attempt at censorship to focus on what new information can now be connected to Joshua Claus: specifically, that the same guy involved in the killing of the Afghan taxi driver Dilawar also implicitly threatened Omar Khadr with rape. Both Steven Edwards and Michelle Shepherd (who are both among the journalists banned on Thursday) previously reported that Claus conducted most of Khadr?€™s interrogations at Bagram. Both raised the question whether Khadr was subjected to the same kind of abuse Claus used on other detainees, most of all Dilawar, who died after abuse in US custody...
[20]Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=65813
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Union-Busting: Rio Tinto Style
[col. writ. 4/30/10] (c) '10 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Not since the infamous PATCO action of the '80's, the Reagan-era attack on the air traffic controllers union, have we seen such an open assault on a union, as has happened to hundreds of workers at Rio Tinto, the California open pit mine owned by the global conglomerate in Boron.
On a brisk morning in Jan. 2010, Rio Tinto bosses locked out nearly 600 workers; members all of Local 30, of the ILWU (Int'l Longshoremen & Warehouse Union), and brought in a scab crew waiting in the wings.
The lock-out came because the workers rejected an unconscionable collection of union give backs which essentially nullified not only previous contract agreements, but Federal and State laws in support of labor and human rights standards.
At a time when politicians cry crocodile tears at miners funeral, the livelihoods and living standards of real, living miners (and their families), like the hundreds locked out of Rio Tinto, gets barely a whisper.
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Afghanistan: Another massacre as a bloody summer looms in Kandahar
posted at www.uruknet.de
By James Cogan
April 23, 2010 - A car carrying an Afghan police officer and three teenagers was blasted with machine gun fire by NATO troops on Monday, allegedly because it came "too close" to a convoy traveling along a highway in the eastern province of Khost. All four occupants were killed. Once again, the US-NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) occupying Afghanistan made the false claim that two of the passengers were "known insur gents" and the others their "associates." After protests by the local Khost authorities and Afghan president Hamid Karzai, the ISAF admitted that all four were civilians and that no weapons had been found in the vehicle. According to the father of two of the boys who were killed, the teenagers were returning from a volleyball game...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=65334
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Obama administration spending billions on new global strike weapons
posted at www.uruknet.de
("As veterans, we have been to the edge and seen the viciousness of Amerikkka unmasked. We have no doubt that the bastards who sent us to war will use their nuclear arsenal, along with unspeakably cruel conventional weapons, to maintain their empire.
The world we live in today is like a grenade with the pin pulled. Nobody knows where it will pop off next. An invasion of Iran or North Korea? Additional slaughter in the deserts of the Middle East? "The War on Terror" or "Defense" is always the excuse, and the battle cry is "Keep America #1!"...- VVAWAI)
By Bill Van Auken
April 24, 2010 - The Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to develop new weapons systems, including powerful conventional warhead missiles capable of striking any target in the world within less than an hour. The US Air Force carried out two separate test launches April 22—one at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and the other at Cape Canaveral, Florida—designed to further the development of these weapons s ystems. The first system, known as Conventional Prompt Global Strike, or CPGS, would be capable of striking anywhere across the globe within under an hour of a launch order, using intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from the US to deliver conventional warheads against targets in other countries...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=65376
see also--
Pentagon's Cyber Command: Civilian Infrastructure a "Legitimate" Target
posted at antifascist-calling.blogspot.com
http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/2010/04/pentagons-cyber-command-civilian.html
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Iraq Vet calls for Vets to join up with
The We Are Not Your Soldiers speaking tour is a crucial instrument in the counter military recruitment campaign being launched by the World Can’t Wait organization.
As a veteran of the Iraq war affected by PTSD, it’s difficult to talk about some of the abhorrent atrocities that are rife in combat, but I truly feel that it would be irresponsible of me to not speak out against the continuing crimes of our government.
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Heavy Metal and....Rock
posted at www.uruknet.de
Layla Anwar
April 7, 2010 - The "clean, brave" americans (no capital A for subhumans) use heavy metal "music" to intimidate Afghans and their Resistance Fighters.... These same killers used heavy metal music in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo...to rock and drive the detainees insane...with their shaytan music, their music from the devil... These same serial killers also use heavy metal music when driving in their humvees around Baghdad, it gives them punch...an uplift, a high, a satanic high, so they can engage on another rampage of murder and blood and lick their fingers afterwards... they smile and say "you're gonna die" -- the taste of blood with heavy metal is good, damn good...they become godlike...all this power in the hands of barbarity...what a high, what a climax... Got news for you, Resistance fighters, whether they are innocent detainees, poor farmers, ordinary civilians or freedom seekers, are not intimidated by your so-called music...nor your guns...
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64877
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Blockade! Dockworkers, Worldwide, Respond to Israel’s Flotilla Massacre and Gaza Siege
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/14/blockade-dockworkers-worldwide-...
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Obama Dismisses McChrystal
The Firing of a War Criminal.... And the Criminal War in Afghanistan
Wednesday, June 23, President Obama held a press conference to announce what he had decided to do about Stanley McChrystal—the general in charge of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The day before, an article about McChrystal in Rolling Stone magazine (see box below) had hit the internet. And by the time the general was on a plane, summoned to Washington, people all over the world were reading how he had mocked and disrespected U.S. officials in charge of foreign policy and made comments challenging the president’s authority. This was a big deal. And airwaves quickly filled with speculation about what would happen next.
In an extraordinary move, Obama promptly fired McChrystal from command of U.S. operations in Afghanistan. But he made two things clear right away. One, that the U.S. appreciated the great service the general had made to America. And two, that this “is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy.”
[Great article - read rest at http://revcom.us/a/206/mcchrystal-en.html -- VVAWAI Ed.]
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End U.S. support for Israeli terrorism against Gaza
(we received this from the Freedom Socialist Party, U.S. Section)
June 4, 2010
The longstanding U.S. policy of arming the Israeli government to the teeth, and uncritically defending every anti-Palestinian policy it initiates, has resulted in an Israeli commando raid against a flotilla of boats bringing humanitarian aid to 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza. This “Freedom Flotilla” was attempting to break the Israeli blockade which has turned the people of Gaza into malnourished prisoners in their own land. Nine participants in this international effort were killed when Israeli soldiers boarded boats containing food, medicine, building supplies and other essentials for survival and began shooting.
The Obama administration supports the blockade, just as the Bush administration did before it, and continues to give $3 billion a year in aid to the Israelis....
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CNDH condena agresión a joven en Juárez
posted at www.eluniversal.com.mx
Ciudad de México | Miércoles 09 de junio de 2010
RUTH RODRÍGUEZ | El Universal
La Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos condenó la agresión que sufrió Sergio Adrián Hernández Huereca, quien murió por disparos de un agente fronterizo estadounidense, en las inmediaciones del puente Paso del Norte, en Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua....
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/686573.html
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IDF boards GAZA boats - 9 people killed:
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US to expand Pakistan drone strikes
posted bat www.uruknet.de
Aljazeera.net
May 6, 2010 - The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been granted approval by the US government to expand drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal regions in a move to step up military operations against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, officials have said. Federal lawyers backed the measures on grounds of self-defence to counter threats the fighters pose to US troops in neighbouring Afghanistan and the United States as a whole, according to authorities. The US announc ed on Wednesday that targets will now include low-level combatants, even if their identities are not known...
[9]Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo:
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=65731
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Tea Parties and Fear of the Future
[col. writ. 4/24/10] (c) '10 Mumia Abu-Jamal
For every event in society, there are at least two sides; the side seen; and the side unseen.
Oftentimes, the side seen is simply that which coincides with media narratives, a perverse kind of shadow theater, where the media, by its choices of what to cover, and what to ignore, writes the script of social reality.
All of us saw this several years ago during the run to the Iraq War, where the government, using all the tools at its disposal, mobilized the media to make the Iraq War seem inevitable - and indeed, made the illogical, seem logical.
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Guantanamo to Bagram: From bad to worse
19 April 2010. A World to Win News Service. Earlier this year the U.S. moved prisoners out of the Soviet-built hanger that served as the U.S.'s main prison abroad – a symbol of the similarity between the two occupying superpowers – and into a new complex on the same Bagram Air Base called The Detention Facility in Parwan. The fact that the American successors to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan felt it necessary to build a new expanded prison, designed to hold at least 1,100 inmates, is an indication that they intend to continue the occupation for the foreseeable future, with indefinite detention and no legal rights as part of that.
There are already 800 prisoners in Parwan, four times the number remaining at the still operational Guantanamo prison camp. Many hundreds of them have been held at Bagram since the U.S. first invaded Afghanistan almost nine years ago. Not one has ever seen a lawyer, let alone had a trial, and no one has any idea when they might be released.
But new prisoners are arriving, too – 250 in the last six months. In fact, U.S. military authorities have been bringing captives to Bagram from other countries, some even beyond the region. After U.S. court rulings over the past several years endangered Guantanamo's status as a law-free zone, the Obama government has replaced it with Bagram. They have made it into an even deeper legal black hole, mostly beyond the reach of American and international law. They have also ruled out the idea that Afghan courts –...
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US soldier on Baghdad massacre: “Not out of the ordinary in Iraq”
By Bill Van Auken
April 23, 2010 - Iraq war veteran Josh Stieber, whose company is seen in the video posted by WikiLeaks of a July 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad, talked to the World Socialist Web Site about his experiences in Iraq and why he has chosen to speak out. Stieber, together with another former member of the company, Ethan McCord, have addressed an open "Letter of Reconciliation" to the Iraqi people taking responsibility for their r ole in this incident and other acts of violence. Both soldiers deployed to Iraq in 2007. In the interview, Josh Stieber, who left the Army last year, declaring himself a conscientious objector, stressed that the incident depicted in the leaked videotape should not be seen as an aberration. Rather, such acts have occurred on a daily basis and are the inevitable product of rules of engagement set by the military, deliberately dehumanizing training of US soldiers and the very nature of the colonial-style war and occupation in Iraq....
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=65350 |
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Engineers of Human Souls: The Pentagon's Cult of Killing Strikes Again
posted at www.uruknet.de
Chris Floyd
April 12, 2010 - ...Actually, it is very clear why these troops would have decided to "light up" a bus crammed with civilians that was pulling subserviently off the road to let even more of the occupier's military muscle barrel through their invaded homeland. It's because for generations, the Pentagon has been employing every mind-bending technique it can find to turn human beings into killing machines. And oddly enough, the impetus for this massive, long-term "engineering of human souls" was ... the greatest feat of arms in American history: victory in World War II...
Read the full article / Leggi l'articolo completo: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=65008
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AFRICOM AND THE USA's HIDDEN BATTLE FOR AFRICA
posted at www.uruknet.de
Accra Mail
March 31, 2010 - What is the current meaning of "War against Terror” for Africa? The true intention of America's recent military interventions in the African continent (both covert and open) is nothing other than the expansion and consolidation of Western capital. It all started in 2001 when George W. Bush declared his "War on Terror" in the continent, but has developed in a manner that has gone beyond human imagination in the body counts on the street s ....
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=64697
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