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Monday, February 25, 2008
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The Fear Factory 
White House Backtracks on Claims of
Lost Intelligence  |
“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and
murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
~George Orwell~
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Militarism
is Destroying America Think of the costs of our foreign policy
of perpetual war: the Iraq war alone may end up costing us $3 trillion. Billions more go to the maintenance
of a network
of bases
worldwide that guard the far frontier of the Empire. Think of what we could do with all
that wealth right here at home. America doesn't have the money to fix
its decaying bridges and roads, which are collapsing under our feet – and yet we are building an "embassy" in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican, at a fantastic cost. When
are we going to get our priorities straight?
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Iraq war could
cost US over $3 trillions, says Nobel prize-winning economist Economists say official estimates are far too low
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FOREIGN
POLICY BLOWBACK! Bush approval
rating drops below 20 percent George
W. Bush's overall job approval rating has dropped to a new low in American
Research Group polling as 78% of Americans say that the national economy is
getting worse according to the latest survey from the American Research
Group. BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian
guerrillas vowed Saturday to hold three U.S. hostages for "60 years in a
jungle prison," because a U.S. court sentenced a fellow rebel to a
similar term in their kidnapping. The three U.S. defense contractors,
captured when their plane went down in rebel-held jungles in February 2003,
will remain hostages for that time unless U.S. and Colombian officials
release captive guerrillas, Ivan Marquez of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was quoted as saying. .. His comments follow the
January sentencing of FARC commander Ricardo Palmera, known as "Simon Trinidad," who was extradited to the U.S. and convicted in
the three contractors' kidnapping. A federal judge in Washington D.C. gave
him the maximum sentence of six decades in prison. In the same interview,
Marquez confirmed that the FARC will soon release four Colombian politicians
held captive for years, including ailing former congressman Jorge Gechem. Stephen Kinzer, The Guardian - London Fidel Castro's rule was defined by
his defiance of the United States, but it was US intervention in Latin
America that made him who he was Raul Castro
Confirmed As Cuba's President Raul Castro became Cuba's new
president Sunday, succeeding his sick and elderly brother Fidel Castro, who
retired five days ago after 49 years at the helm. PAKISTAN: The Empire is Displeased Despite
the sound defeat of President Pervez Musharraf's party in the Pakistani
parliamentary elections, the Bush administration is still thrashing about trying to
"construct a coalition that will keep Mr. Musharraf in power as
president." Washington Politicals admit that Musharraf remains the Empire's preferred Pakistani leader. ·
US, UK Warn Pakistani Election Winners Against Ousting
Musharraf ·
Pakistan
Vote Puts Bush's Efforts Into Question ·
Monitors:
No Rigging in Pakistani Election ·
Pakistan Victors Lack
Strength to Oust Washington Backed Musharraf Turkey
launches land offensive into Iraq with 10,000 troops Turkish Raid
Strains US-Kurd Ties US-led forces
targeting Taliban kill insurgents, woman, child in southern Afghanistan THE
PHILLIPINES – Back to the future? Military denies ‘secret US military base’ AFRICOM – Dead
on arrival? Bush quietly
drops military command headquarters plan in Africa.  WASHINGTON’S TORTURE REGIME THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE Political
fall-out from rendition Apology that
flies in face of integrity Voice of the
Mirror Voice of the Daily Mirror: Torturing the truth Much to be sorry
for U-Turn On Cia
Jets Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible
Evidence Justice
at Guantanamo Romania Base Suspected CIA Prisoner Site EU rebukes Poland and Romania over CIA rendition role  Interminable US “Detention” of Iraqis Grows Without End Christopher
Kuttruff, Truthout contributor, writes: "The United States is, once
again, expanding the size of its largest detention center in Iraq. According
to an October 31 report by the military paper Stars and Stripes, US forces
will be increasing the capacity of detainees at Camp Bucca from 20,000 to
30,000." UK Army Chief: 'Warnings Over Iraqi Civilian Deaths Were
Ignored' Sunday: 2 US
Soldiers, 75 Iraqis Killed, 110 Wounded  Homeland:
courts unable to keep up with border arrests With
federal detentions taking in the extra misdemeanor-immigration convicts, some
prison-reform watchdogs worry that the prisons will run out of bed space ...  Kosovo and the
Rise of the Humanitarian Hawks By
Matthew Yglesias The
American Prospect February
21, 2008 The Kosovo conflict marked the start of a
humanitarian hawk movement that advocated military force to advance liberal
values. However, Kosovo's formal declaration of independence shows how modest
our accomplishments in Kosovo have been. 
Does Balkanization Beckon Anew? by Patrick Buchanan When the Great War comes, said old Bismarck, it will come out
of "some damn fool thing in the Balkans." … On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip shot the archduke and heir to
the Austrian throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, setting in motion the train
of events that led to the First World War. In the spring
of 1999, the United States bombed Serbia for 78 days to force its army out of
that nation's cradle province of Kosovo. The Serbs were fighting Albanian
separatists of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). And we had no more right to
bomb Belgrade than the Royal Navy would have had to bombard New York in our
Civil War. We bombed
Serbia, we were told, to stop the genocide in Kosovo. But there was no
genocide. This was propaganda. The United Nations' final casualty count of
Serbs and Albanians in Slobodan Milosevic's war did not add up to 1 percent
of the dead in Mr. Lincoln's war. Albanians did flee in the tens of thousands during the war. But since that war's end,
the Serbs of Kosovo have seen their churches and monasteries smashed and
vandalized and have been ethnically cleansed in the scores of thousands from
their ancestral province. In the exodus they have lost everything. The
remaining Serb population of 120,000 is largely confined to enclaves guarded
by NATO troops. "At a Serb monastery in Pec," writes the Washington
Post, "Italian troops protect the holy site, which is surrounded by a
massive new wall to shield elderly nuns from stone-throwing and other abuse
by passing ethnic Albanians." On Sunday, Kosovo declared independence and was recognized by
the European Union and President Bush. But this is not the end of the story.
It is only the preface to a new history of the Balkans, a region that has
known too much history. By
intervening in a civil war to aid the secession of an ancient province, to
create a new nation that has never before existed and, to erect it along
ethnic, religious and tribal lines, we have established a dangerous
precedent. Muslim and Albanian extremists are already talking of a Greater
Albania, consisting of Albania, Kosovo and the Albanian-Muslim sectors of
Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. If these Albanian minorities should demand the right to secede
and join their kinsmen in Kosovo, on what grounds would we oppose them? The
inviolability of borders? What if the Serb majority in the Mitrovica
region of northern Kosovo, who reject Albanian rule, secede and call on their
kinsmen in Serbia to protect them? Would we
go to war against Serbia, once again, to maintain the territorial integrity
of Kosovo, after we played the lead role in destroying the territorial
integrity of Serbia? Inside the
U.S.-sponsored Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the autonomous Serb
Republic of Srpska is already talking secession and unification with Serbia.
On what grounds would we deny them? The U.S. war
on Serbia was unconstitutional, unjust and unwise. Congress never authorized
it. Serbia, an ally in two world wars, had never attacked us. We made an
enemy of the Serbs, and alienated Russia, to create a second Muslim state in
the Balkans. By
intervening in a civil war where no vital interest was at risk, the United
States, which is being denounced as loudly in Belgrade today as we are being
cheered in Pristina, has acquired another dependency. And our new allies, the
KLA, have been credibly charged with human trafficking, drug dealing,
atrocities and terrorism. And the clamor for ethnic self-rule has only begun to be heard. Rumania has refused to recognize the new Republic of Kosovo, for
the best of reasons. Bucharest rules a large Hungarian minority in
Transylvania, acquired at the same Paris Peace Conference of 1919 where
Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were detached from Vienna and united
with Serbia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two provinces that have broken away
from Georgia, are invoking the Kosovo precedent to demand recognition as
independent nations. As our NATO expansionists are anxious to bring Georgia into NATO,
here is yet another occasion for a potential Washington-Moscow clash. Spain, too, opposed the severing of Kosovo from Serbia, as Madrid faces similar
demands from Basque and Catalan separatists. The Muslim world will enthusiastically endorse the creation of a
new Muslim state in Europe at the expense of Orthodox Christian Serbs. But Turkey is also likely
to re-raise the issue as to why the EU and United States do not formally
recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Like Kosovo, it, too, is
an ethnically homogeneous community that declared independence 25 years ago. Breakaway Transneistria is seeking independence from Moldova,
the nation wedged between Rumania and Ukraine, and President Putin of Russia
has threatened to recognize it, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in retaliation for
the West's recognition of Kosovo. If Putin
pauses, it will be because he recognizes that of all the nations of Europe,
Russia is high among those most threatened by the serial Balkanization we may
have just reignited in the Balkans. Serb minister
blames US for anti-embassy riots
Serbia Blames
US for Crisis in Balkans Week of Independence Sees Kosovo Sink Into Deeper
Division Russia threatens to use force over Kosovo Russia's NATO envoy warns alliance against overstepping
mandate in Kosovo EU removes staff from Kosovo's divided city Serbs clash with UN police in Kosovo The Real Story Behind Kosovo's
Independence All of a sudden, DC establishment figures care about
"international law" when it suits their interests in Kosovo. … On
May 7, 1999, at the height of the 78 day US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia,
the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese
citizens, two of them journalists, and wounding 20 others. The Clinton
administration later said that the bombing was the result of faulty maps
provided by the CIA (Sound familiar?). Beijing rejected that explanation and
alleged it was deliberate. Eventually, under strong pressure from China, the
US apologized and paid $28 million in compensation to the victims' families.
If the US was serious about international law and the protection of
embassies, those responsible for that bombing would have been tried at the
Hague along with other alleged war criminals. But "war
criminal" is a designation for the losers of US-fueled wars, not bombers
sent by Washington to drop humanitarian munitions on "sovereign
territory." 
Israel Gets Ready as Gazans Prepare Mass Protest Zionist Slaughter Of Palestinians Continues - World Yawns Israel “Detained” 926 Palestinians Last Week Gaza Diary: Sewage on Our Doorstep Missile Strike by Israelis in Gaza Kills 3 Palestinians Israel Fears EU To Break Gaza Blockade Israeli army
rolls into southeastern Gaza Strip Defense Minister Warns Syria That Israel
Planning New War Against Hezbollah and Hamas Jewish
settlers build new neighborhood in West Bank Israel denied
94% of the building permit requests of West Bank Palestinians |
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Video Database The CIA’s Coups of Terror
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An extraordinarily prescient video interview
with General Norman Schwarzkopf and Robert Gates - Deputy National Security
Advisor to Former President George Bush Sr. Why Invading Iraq Was A Profoundly Stupid Idea…
(Click on blinking dot above
for video)
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