The Guerrilla Campaign

- by Stephen Lendman 5/2/07 Economist and media critic Edward S. Herman and social and political critic Noam Chomsky note two kinds of victims in their classic 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent." So does journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger in his writings. "Unworthy" ones are the many unmentioned tens of thousands killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and all other places by US, Israeli and other rapacious imperial waring and occupying forces. "Worthy" ones, however, are those prominently mentioned who died or were hurt on September 11, 2001 in the US, on July 7, 2005 in a dubious London "terrorist" bombing, on March 11, 2004 in the Madrid train bombings, and the Israeli corporal practically the whole free world still knows about since he was taken captive in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) last summer and is still being held. More recent "worthy" victims are the 15 British Royal Navy seamen arrested by Irani...

by Richard L. Franklin 5/2/07 The pell mell rush of states to amend their constitutions so as to deny civil marriages to gays and lesbians reminds me of how profoundly ignorant Americans are regarding the purpose of the Constitution. I doubt that more than one percent of Americans has ever paused to think about why the founding fathers concluded that our future American democracy absolutely had to have a constitution. Why didn't they simply go ahead with a system of popular elections followed by democratic lawmaking and governance? Such a state would certainly qualify as a pure democracy, and it would be happily unencumbered by such irrelevancies as constitutional hindrances in the running of the nation. Well, maybe not so 'happily'. The main reason the founding fathers were adamant about crafting and establishing a constitution was a philosophical principle that had been debated and thought about in the colonies for many years prior to American independence. The foremost o...

by Mary Pitt 4/29/07 Years ago, I developed the habit of watching the cable television Sunday news channels in order to learn what was happening in the world. Today I watched but not for the same reason; today it was just for comic relief! I snickered, snorted, and even laughed out loud as the vaunted pundits lied, alibied, and wriggled out of their share of responsibility for the mess in which our nation now finds itself. They discussed the stories about Tilman and Lynch. Why did they buy into them with such gusto? Well....... they had those twenty-four hours a day that they had to fill and they were such good stories! And, besides the tales were spoon-fed to them by the military! On to critiques of the Democratic debates. Who "won"? Who "lost"? They are all married to the "tier system". Hillary did well, and Barack was not up to par. For "some reason" the major question posed to Edwards was his $400 haircut! Mike Gravel made the most of his ...

Posted by Jeff Huber April 27, 2007 http://www.atlargely.com/2007/04/son_of_stay_the.html As the Senate sent legislation to the White House that calls for troop withdrawal timelines , General David Petraeus , top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that the war will require "an enormous commitment" by the United States. When asked by reporters what kind of troop commitment would be required to get the job done, Petraeus answered, "I wouldn't try to truly anticipate what [that] level might be some years down the road." Petraeus noted historic case studies of long-term U.S. peacekeeping missions, and added that Iraq is "an endeavor that clearly is going to require enormous commitment and commitment over time." Petraeus has revealed himself to be a follower in the fine tradition of other four-star officers who have served under the Bush administration--a mouthpiece who's perfectly willing to polly cracker whatever message the regime wants injected into the...

by Richard L. Franklin 4/27/07 "Demagogue" is often applied to one who spouts spurious oratory that nonetheless is emotionally stirring. We think of people such as Hitler, Mussolini, or the American neofascist Father Coughlin when we use words such as 'demagogue' or 'demagoguery'. These three men had an oratorical gift, which is why I never feel totally comfortable referring to the inarticulate Bush as a 'demagogue', most notably when he speaks off the cuff. In either case, his language is nonetheless often marked by some of the classic devices of demagoguery. Such is the case when Bush takes a shot at those who question his reasons for the so-called 'war' in Iraq and Afghanistan. A growing number of Americans are coming to realize that the supposed ongoing 'war' is not even a real war. It's a bloody, imperialistic occupation of another country. A growing number of Americans are beginning to suspect the massive bloodshed and destruc...

by riverbend - Baghdad Burning Thursday, April 26, 2007 …Which is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It's a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest 'Sunni' area in Baghdad- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will 'protect' A'adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn't empty of Sunnis. The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look- we're just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out. The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apa...

By Peter Phillips t r u t h o u t Guest Contributor Tuesday 24 April 2007 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042407C.shtml Threats of terrorism and twelve million "illegal" immigrants are being used to justify new police-state measures in the United States. Coordinated mass arrests, big brother spy blimps, expanded detention centers, repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act, and suspension of habeas corpus have all been recently implemented and are ready to use against anyone in the US. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) flooded Mexico with cheap, subsidized US agricultural products that displaced millions of Mexican farmers. Between 2000 and 2005, Mexico lost 900,000 rural jobs and 700,000 industrial jobs, resulting in deep unemployment throughout the country. Desperate poverty has forced millions of Mexican workers north in order to feed their families. In the wake of 9/11, Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) has conducted workplace and home invasions ac...

By Ann Davidow Finding A Voice April 16, 2007 http://www.findingavoice.com/mt/archives/000376.html Because language is so often used these days to confuse and obfuscate rather than to clarify and define it is difficult, but more important than ever that voters dig feverishly beneath the surface of prevailing information sources. Getting at the truth is confounded by an avalanche of banter and disinformation that consumes much network and cable air time as well as newsprint - - such is the ongoing challenge for all of us. In an appearance on a recent Washington Journal, James Dorn of The Cato Institute provided some insight into the mind-set of right-wing conservatives. Callers who spoke of job losses to overseas companies were told that often those losses were due to expensive union contracts that left US businesses less competitive in world markets. But should American workers have to lower their living standards in order to compete with third-world or emerging economies where working...

by Stephen Lendman 4/23/07 Chris Hedges is a journalist who for two decades was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times spending much of his time reporting from conflict zones in El Salvador, the Middle East and from Serbia covering the Balkan wars of the 1990s that divided and destroyed a country under the guise of humanitarian intervention providing cover for naked imperialism. There it allowed NATO (meaning the US) to expand into Central and Eastern Europe to keep predatory capitalism on the march for markets, resources and cheap labor everywhere using wars to get them and eliminate "uncooperative" heads of state like Slobodan Milosevic who was kidnapped, Mafia/Mossad-style, by the ICTY kangaroo court in the Hague, hung out to dry when he got there, and in the end effectively or, in fact, murdered to shut him up and prevent ugly truths coming out about what the conflict was really about and who the real criminals were. The wars and subsequent show-trials had nothin...

by Mary Pitt 4/22/07 While spending my usual Sunday morning, watching the news shows on television, I founds myself in total empathy with the parents of the slain college students at Virginia Tech. Having lost a child of my own a year ago, I understand intimately the pain which they now must bear. I thought of how nice it is that some find solace in speaking to the nation which mourns with them about their lost sons and daughters via the television interviewers. Also, according to the news, grief counselors are being sent in to help the students and families to deal with this intense grief. Then, as it is wont to do, the news moved on to the war in Iraq and so did my thoughts. Without taking a thing from the sympathy for the Blacksburg parents, I realized that these young people who are dying in Iraq are contemporaries of the college kids. Who grieves for them? While we have lost a hundred children in that conflagration for every student who fell prey to the mad gunner, the nation mour...

by Rodrigue Tremblay April 23, 2007 "We know where [the weapons of mass destruction] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." - Donald Rumsfeld, (March 30, 2003) "The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy [to invade Iraq]." - Downing Street Memo (July 2002) "Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." - Mark Twain. The Mysterious Stranger 1916 Now Karl Rove , Bush's political brain, says that the Iraq War was "Osama bin Laden’s Idea." —This is crazy. The fact is that the world was ready to accept a case for dest...

by Mary Pitt 4/21/07 These words spoken by Senator Harry Reid have raised the Republican hackles and created headlines. While, actually, these words were predicated by a phrase which was widely overlooked, "Unless the President changes his plan." However, even if we "win" the war in Iraq, what will we have won? How does that compare with what we have lost? First and foremost, we have lost the lives of well over 3,000 of our most precious treasure, the young men and women who might have been our future leaders and certainly would have been mother and fathers, factory workers, professional people, and generally productive and responsible citizens. Add to that the many thousands of lives that have been blighted by permanent disabilities, both mental and physical, due to the wounds and horrors which they have needlessly suffered. And the question will endure as to how much more they will suffer at the tender mercies of the VA health care system. We have, as a nation, lo...

By Dennis Rahkonen Online Journal Contributing Writer Apr 19, 2007 http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1987.shtml U.S. soldiers’ tours of duty have been extended by three months in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In the latter country, this development plays out ominously against unprecedented levels of popular anti-Americanism, as evidenced by a huge rally targeting the occupation, recently held in Najaf, which united Shiites, Sunnis, and uniformed members of Iraq’s police and military. It’s a recipe for disaster, in more ways than one, as past history demonstrates. Those too young to remember the early ’70s are unaware of a remarkable phenomenon from that era. During the latter stages of the Vietnam war, as Americans were still being sacrificed in a conflict that was both unequivocally wrong and hopelessly lost, U.S. rank-and-file troops engaged in open rebellion. Downplayed by the government and major media as it was occurring, evidence of that rebellion has been expunged or ...

In case you missed it. Wednesday: 312 Iraqis, 1 GI Killed; 302 Iraqis Wounded Updated at 11:29 p.m. EDT, April 18, 2007 http://antiwar.com/updates/?articleid=10837 A series of coordinated bomb attacks shook Baghdad hours after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that security would be in Iraqi hands by the end of the year. Overall, at least 312 people were killed and 302 wounded throughout Iraq. One American soldier died yesterday of non-battle releated injuries. In Baghdad, one truck bomb killed 140 people and wounded 150 more in the mostly Shi’ite Sadriya neighborhood. A second bomb killed 41 and wounded 76 in Sadr City. In Karrada, the third bomb killed 11 and wounded 13 more . Two were killed and eight wounded in a checkpoint bombing in Saidiya. And, a bomb in a mini-bus in Risafi killed four and wounded six people . Also in the capital, gunmen killed a police major who also worked a security detail for the Speaker of Parliament. Four policemen were killed and six civilians wo...

by Stephen Lendman 4/18/07 The US Constitution's First Amendment guarantees the right of free expression including a press free to do it in. Jefferson, Madison and Congress wanted information easily and cheaply disseminated to the public and structured a comprehensive postal system designed to do it reaching into cities and villages alike including in new developing parts of the country in the West. The mass media of that time consisted largely of pamphlets like those Tom Paine wrote and colonial era newspapers beginning with the first ever published called the Boston News-Letter debuting in April, 1704 and later Ben Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette first published in 1728 that gained the largest circulation of that time and was considered the best newspaper in the colonies. Later ones survived and flourished because Congress wanted them to. It chose to underwrite their proliferation by not taxing them and through a system of low affordable postal rates and free exchange of n...

by Larry C Johnson Monday, 16 April 2007 http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/04/now_do_you_unde.html Breaking news! At least 22 Virginia Tech students gunned down. Cable news channels are wild with activity as they pump up the coverage a focus on the latest "crisis". The media is commenting that this shooting is overwhelming the local medical facilities. Crisis is in the air. Well, at least it ain't Iraq. Okay. Big deep breath. This is horrible and this is tragic and this gives us an idea of what it is like to live just one day in Iraq. Consider the following: 04/15/07 Reuters: 19 bodies found in Baghdad on Saturday Police found the bodies of 19 people in various parts of Baghdad in the past 24 hours, police said 04/15/07 Reuters: 20 Iraqi troops and policemen abducted A group linked to al Qaeda said it abducted 20 Iraqi troops and policemen and demanded the release of all Sunni women held in Iraq's prisons, according to a Web statement 04/15/07 Reut...

By Sheila Samples 4/16/07 "...the high office of the President has been used to forment a plot to destroy the American's freedom, and before I leave office, I must inform the citizens of this plight." - John F. Kennedy (November 12, 1963, Columbia U, 10 days before his assassination) I cannot recall a single day since Vulcans' Godfather James Baker sent his thuggish henchman John Bolton to Florida's Palm Beach County to screw up the vote count that has not been filled with horror, anger, shame -- despair. On Dec. 9, 2000 -- three days before the Florida deadline -- the US Republic shuddered on its axis when Bolton crashed through the doors of a Tallahassee library where Miami-Dade ballots were being recounted and shouted triumphantly -- "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count!" In that instant we lost most of what had taken more than two centuries to build. In one fell swoop, Americans were thrust into the mire of an Orwel...