“Blackwater Worldwide’s legal woes haven’t dimmed the company’s prospects in Afghanistan, where it’s a contender to be a key part of President Barack Obama’s strategy for stabilizing the country,” the AP reported recently.

Now called Xe Services, the company is in the running for a Pentagon contract potentially worth $1 billion to train Afghanistan’s troubled national police force. Xe has been shifting to training, aviation and logistics work after its security guards were accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians more than two years ago.
Yet even with a new name and focus, the expanded role would seem an unlikely one for Xe because Democrats have held such a negative opinion of the company following the Iraqi deaths, which are still reverberating in Baghdad and Washington.

During the presidential campaign, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now Obama’s secretary of state, backed legislation to ban Blackwater and other private security contractors from Iraq.

Xe eventually lost its license to operate as guardian of U.S. diplomats in Iraq and the State Department, with Clinton at the helm, elected not to rehire the company when the contract expired in 2009. Delays in getting a new company in place led to a temporary extension of the State contract.

Derrick Crowe of Rethink Afghanistan notes that Xe is in the running for this contract “despite the fact that they’ve ‘trained’ the notoriously corrupt and incompetent Afghan Border Police. Recently, two Blackwater / Xe trainers were indicted for murdering Afghan civilians, and the company has a history of hiring people with a criminal record. Xe Services / Blackwater is a liability to the American cause around the world and doesn’t deserve another dime of taxpayer money.”

Rethink Afghanistan has posted a new video on the topic featuring Afghanistan-based correspondent Anand Gopal.

Laura Chinchilla won Costa Rica’s presidential election in a landslide victory Sunday that is eliciting cheers from women across Central America.

By Chrissie Long Correspondent, Sara Miller Llana Staff writer / February 8, 2010

U.S. Iraq Occupation Casualties

Deaths in Iraq: A look at the faces of American lives lost

This list includes fatal U.S. government casualties  military and civilian in the  Occupation Of Iraq.  Its totals will usually be slightly less than those in media reports because they are based on Defense Department reports of each casualty’s name and other personal details, which are not released until next of kin are notified. The information is cross-checked with reports by the Associated Press and local news media and periodic updates by the Defense Department. The list for U.S. casualties in the Occupation of Afghanistan is below.

• Total To Date:

• Killed: 4,383*

  *Includes eight soldiers who died from their wounds but not listed as such by the Pentagon. One of the unnamed:

  Wounded: Can not find a reliable source.
  

  In addition thousands upon thousands of soldiers have suffered and are continuing to suffer from PTS and a broad spectrum of mental illnesses.

• Names of the Dead

• Recent Confirmations

• Pfc. Scott G. Barnett, 24, of Concord, Calif., died Jan. 28 in Tallil, Iraq, of injuries sustained while supporting combat operations. He was assigned to the 412th Aviation Support Battalion, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, Katterbach, Germany.
• Pfc. Scott G. Barnett, 24, of Concord, Calif., died Jan. 28 in Tallil, Iraq, of injuries sustained while supporting combat operations. He was assigned to the 412th Aviation Support Battalion, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, Katterbach, Germany

Yet To Be Named

None

• For Other Iraq Casualties since June 1, 2009 see page:

Iraq & Afghanistan Occupation Confirmed U.S Casualties – Since June 1, 2009

U.S. Afghanistan Occupation Casualties

Deaths in Afghanistan: A look at the faces of American lives lost

This list includes fatal U.S. government casualties  military and civilian in the  Occupation Of Afghanistan. Its totals will usually be slightly less than those in media reports because they are based on Defense Department reports of each casualty’s name and other personal details, which are not released until next of kin are notified. The information is cross-checked with reports by the Associated Press and local news media and periodic updates by the Defense Department.

Total To Date:

Killed: 984

Wounded: Can not find a reliable source.

Names of the Dead

Recent Confirmations

Sgt. Dillon B. Foxx, 22, of Traverse City, Mich., died Feb. 5 in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Sgt. 1st Class David J. Hartman, 27, of Okinawa, Japan. He was assigned to the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne), 95th Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C…died Feb. 3 in Timagara, Pakistan, from wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device.

 Sgt. 1st Class Matthew S. Sluss-Tiller, 35, of Callettsburg, Ky. He was assigned to the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion (Airborne), 95th Civil Affairs Brigade (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C…died Feb. 3 in Timagara, Pakistan, from wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device.

 Staff Sgt. Mark A. Stets, 39, of El Cajon, Calif. He was assigned to the 8th Psychological Operations Battalion (Airborne), 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, N.C…died Feb. 3 in Timagara, Pakistan, from wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device.

 Pfc. Zachary G. Lovejoy, 20, of Albuquerque, N.M…died of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their vehicle with an improvised explosive device Feb. 2 in Zabul province, Afghanistan. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.Capt. Daniel Whitten, 28, of Grimes, Iowa…died of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their vehicle with an improvised explosive device Feb. 2 in Zabul province, Afghanistan. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Sgt. Carlos E. Gill, 25, of Fayetteville, N.C., died Jan. 26 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center of an illness. He was evacuated from Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan, Dec. 19, 2009, where he was supporting combat operations. Gill was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Wash.

Lance Cpl. Jeremy M. Kane, 22, of Towson, Md., died Jan. 23 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve, based out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Lance Cpl. Timothy J. Poole, 22, of Bowling Green, Ky…assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

Lance Cpl. Zachary D. Smith, 19, of Hornell, N.Y…assigned to 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C… died Jan. 24 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province

Sgt. Daniel M. Angus, 28, of Thonotosassa, Fla..assigned to 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C… died Jan. 24 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province

For Other Afghanistan Casualties since June 1, 2009 see page:

Iraq & Afghanistan Occupation Confirmed U.S Casualties – Since June 1, 2009

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Al-Qaeda leader threatens US   Deputy leader of Yemen-based group praises bin Laden for US plane bombing bid.

Iran to step up uranium enrichment   Tehran informs UN atomic agency that processing will begin in less than 24 hours.

 

Israeli forces raid West Bank camp	Indian soldiers die in avalanche	Costa Rica elects female president
Egypt arrests Brotherhood members	Malaysia sodomy trial halted	Karzai demands end to Nato raids

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‘A prescription for civil war’   US-backed security operations in the West Bank reinforce bitter political divide.

‘To Israel I am stained with blood’   Before his death, Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh spoke to Al Jazeera.     Interview: Anwar al-Awlaki   Yemen-based religious scholar says he supports attempt to blow up a US-bound plane.     Mixed news on Haiti’s recovery   Rob Reynolds returns to Port-au-Prince to find that aid is flowing but too little has

For the People of Iran

Donate Now: 1-877-99-HAITI in US/Canada, or go to www.hopeforhaitinow.org

***********************************************************

Donate Now: 1-877-99-HAITI in US/Canada,

or go to www.hopeforhaitinow.org

A year in, we have learned that all the conciliatory rhetoric won’t cut it. But a president with a big megaphone and large legislative majorities has more powerful strings to pull, no matter what happened in one special election in Massachusetts. If he can’t get a working government, at least he can shake things up in November.

By FRANK RICH, NYT  Op-Ed Columnist, January 31, 2010

HANDS down, the State of the Union’s big moment was Barack Obama’s direct hit on the delicate sensibilities of the Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. The president was right to blast the 5-to-4 decision giving corporate interests an even greater stranglehold over a government they already regard as a partially owned onshore subsidiary. How satisfying it was to watch him provoke Alito into a “You lie!” snit. Here was a fight we could believe in.

There was more to admire in Obama’s performance as well. He did not retreat into the bite-size initiatives — V-chips, school uniforms — embraced by an emasculated Bill Clinton after his midterm pummeling of 1994. The president’s big original goals — health care, economic recovery, financial reform — remained nominally intact, as did his sense of humor. In a rhetorical touch William Safire would have relished, Obama had the wit to rush the ritualistic “our union is strong” so it would not prompt the usual jingoistic ovation.

Good thing, too, since our union is not strong. It is paralyzed. Many Americans were more eagerly anticipating Steve Jobs’s address in San Francisco on Wednesday morning than the president’s that night because they have far more confidence in Apple than Washington to produce concrete change. One year into Obama’s term we still don’t know whether he has what it takes to get American governance functioning again. But we do know that no speech can do the job. The president must act. Only body blows to the legislative branch can move the country forward.

The historian Alan Brinkley has observed that we will soon enter the fourth decade in which Congress — and therefore government as a whole — has failed to deal with any major national problem, from infrastructure to education. The gridlock isn’t only a function of polarized politics and special interests. There’s also been a gaping leadership deficit.

In Obama’s speech, he kept circling back to a Senate where both parties are dysfunctional. The obstructionist Republicans, he observed, will say no to every single bill “just because they can.” But no less culpable are the Democrats, who maintain “the largest majority in decades” even after losing Teddy Kennedy’s seat — and yet would rather “run for the hills” than accomplish anything.

Apart from the risks inherent in these activities, they also present virtually insolvable conflicts of interest with customer relationships, conflicts that simply cannot be escaped by an elaboration of so-called Chinese walls between different divisions of an institution.

By PAUL VOLCKER, Op-Ed Contributor, January 31, 2010

PRESIDENT OBAMA 10 days ago set out one important element in the needed structural reform of the financial system. No one can reasonably contest the need for such reform, in the United States and in other countries as well. We have after all a system that broke down in the most serious crisis in 75 years. The cost has been enormous in terms of unemployment and lost production. The repercussions have been international.

Aggressive action by governments and central banks — really unprecedented in both magnitude and scope — has been necessary to revive and maintain market functions. Some of that support has continued to this day. Here in the United States as elsewhere, some of the largest and proudest financial institutions — including both investment and commercial banks — have been rescued or merged with the help of massive official funds. Those actions were taken out of well-justified concern that their outright failure would irreparably impair market functioning and further damage the real economy already in recession.

Now the economy is recovering, if at a still modest pace. Funds are flowing more readily in financial markets, but still far from normally. Discussion is underway here and abroad about specific reforms, many of which have been set out by the United States administration: appropriate capital and liquidity requirements for banks; better official supervision on the one hand and on the other improved risk management and board oversight for private institutions; a review of accounting approaches toward financial institutions; and others.

As President Obama has emphasized, some central structural issues have not yet been satisfactorily addressed.

A large concern is the residue of moral hazard from the extensive and successful efforts of central banks and governments to rescue large failing and potentially failing financial institutions. The long-established “safety net” undergirding the stability of commercial banks — deposit insurance and lender of last resort facilities — has been both reinforced and extended in a series of ad hoc decisions to support investment banks, mortgage providers and the world’s largest insurance company. In the process, managements, creditors and to some extent stockholders of these non-banks have been protected.

The most revealing thing was how little he understood about the situation on the ground.

• Wilmshurst: An ovation for witness of principle
• Blair: Denounced as liar and murderer
• John Rentoul: Another act in the Leader’s Tragedy
• Leading article: The truth on trial

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Leading article: The truth on trial

As much as with Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands, Britain’s role in the Iraq conflict has been personally identified with Tony Blair. He often referred to it as “my decision”, and did so again in his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry on Friday. Yet one of the important themes emerging from the inquiry is the extent to which the Iraq war was a collective enterprise.

This newspaper, which opposed the war more strenuously and consistently than any other, has always tried to avoid the simple view of the decision-making process as that of an over-mighty prime minister riding roughshod over a supine Cabinet and a feeble House of Commons. Mr Blair was the principal architect of British policy – even if the original mover of the invasion was George Bush – but he was not an absolute monarch.

It ought to be one of the functions of the Iraq inquiry report, which Sir John Chilcot said on Friday that he hopes to publish at the end of this year, to name the other guilty parties. Sir John did say at the outset that his committee “cannot determine guilt or innocence”, but he went on to say: “We will not shy away from making criticisms where they are warranted.”

The inquiry has heard more than enough evidence to know that criticisms are warranted. In particular, the new information about the way in which the legal case for war was constructed has vindicated the stance taken by The Independent on Sunday from the start.

This was not Mr Blair’s responsibility alone. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary; John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee; Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6; Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, at No 10; they all played their part. But Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary, and Lord Goldsmith, Attorney General, were two of the main villains of the piece. Mr Straw, who returns for a second session at the inquiry next week, seems to have regarded it as his job to insulate No 10 from the lawyers in his department, knowing that all 27 regarded military action in Iraq as contrary to international law. Once Mr Straw had lectured his own lawyers on how he knew the law better than they did, and had been proved right in the courts when he disagreed with the lawyers at the Home Office, he turned his attention to writing a long letter to Lord Goldsmith.

Intro
In forming his administration, President Obama abandoned the movement that had begun during his campaign for deal-making and a pragmatism that hasn’t worked. That movement is still possible and needed now. Here is a look at what is required, and how a version of it is forming in California.

AuthorGeorge Lakoff

We begin with this week’s triple whammy.

Freedom vs. The Public Option

Which would you prefer, consumer choice or freedom? Extended coverage or freedom? Bending the cost curve or freedom?

John Boehner, House Minority Leader, speaking of health care, said recently, “This bill is the greatest threat to freedom that I have seen in the 19 years I have been here in Washington….It’s going to lead to a government takeover of our health care system, with tens of thousands of new bureaucrats right down the street, making these decisions [choose your doctor, buy your own health insurance] for you.”

This is exactly what Frank Luntz advised conservatives to say. They have repeated it and repeated it. Why has it worked to rally conservative populists against their interests? The most effective framing is more than mere language, more than spin or salesmanship. It has worked because conservatives really believe that the issue is freedom. It fits the conservative moral system. It fits how conservatives see the world.

The Democrats have helped the conservatives. Their pathetic attempt to make any deal to get 60 votes convinced even Massachusetts voters that government under the Democrats was corrupt and oppressive, not just inept, but immoral.

All politics is moral

All political leaders argue that they are doing the right thing, not the wrong thing, that their policies are moral, not evil.

Conservatives understand this, liberals tend not to. Conservatives know a morality tale when they see it: Greedy Wall Street bankers, who have cost people their homes, their jobs, and their savings get billion-dollar bailouts from the government, while those honest hard-working people get nothing. Corruption. Oppression. A threat to freedom.

The conservatives are winning the framing wars again — by sticking to moral principles as conservatives see them, and communicating their view of morality effectively. In the 2008 election, Barack Obama ran a campaign based on his moral principles and communicated those principles as effectively as any candidate ever has.

But the Obama administration made a 180-degree turn, trading Obama’s 2008 moral principles for the deal-making of Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner, assuming it would be “pragmatic” to court corporations and move to the right, in the false hope of bipartisan support. A clear unified moral vision was replaced by long laundry lists of policy options that the public could not understand, and that made ordinary folks feel they were being bamboozled. And in many cases, they were.

So why does the president feel he must give his props to a group that often works against the national interest, and whose most prominent congressional members — Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to name a few — have acted as his nemeses? Power. It’s all about the group’s perceived power in the very structure of the U.S. government. “You don’t want to alienate them,” one religious right leader explained to Sharlet. 

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on February 1, 2010, Printed on February 1, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145366/

The National Prayer Breakfast, an annual Washington exercise attended by politicians of all stripes who wish to demonstrate their piety, is one of those must-go events for the U.S. president, or so the conventional wisdom has it. Every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has attended.

But the prayer breakfast, however benign it may seem on the surface, is really a display of power for an underground religious group that often shapes U.S. foreign policy in ways not easy to see, and sometimes at odds the policy goals of the government itself. This Thursday, President Barack Obama is expected to address the gathering, as he did last year. But if there was ever a year for the president to back out, to have a sudden scheduling conflict, it’s this one.

The breakfast draws leaders from all sectors of society, including a hefty contingent from the military. It’s a coveted invitation.The event is usually the only public sighting of its sponsor,.the shadowy right-wing religious network known as the Family. Around the periphery of the event, the Family does what it does best: bringing together leaders from developing countries of special concern to U.S. business interests with members of Congress and people in government who hold the keys to the foreign aid kingdom.

“This is the bullying tactics of banality,” said Jeff Sharlet, author of the definitive book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, in an interview with AlterNet. “This is not about a banality of evil, but the evil of banality. The breakfast itself is a very bland event, but it’s surrounded by this week-long lobbying festival which isn’t visible.”

Introductions are made and meetings arranged for foreign dignitaries through the auspices of a the Family, led for the past 40 years by Washington insider Doug Coe and comprising powerful men from all over the world, including a number of prominent members of Congress. That group of powerful men also includes two behind a controversial anti-gay law in Uganda, proposed by two politicians with strong ties to the Family. The law carries the death penalty for something called “aggravated homosexuality.”

“In the United States, bribery is legal and it’s terrifying,”

by: Romain Raynaldy  |  Les Echos

At the Sundance Festival, American documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney recounts the descent into hell of the former lobbyist with links to the Republican Party, Jack Abramoff, offering an indictment of the corruption that infects political financing in the United States.

Filmmaker Alex Gibney’s new documentary, “Casino Jack and the United States of Money” – an expose of US campaign financing focused on Jack Abramoff premiering at the Sundance Festival this week – could hardly be better timed, so soon after the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision.

Alex Gibney, a Sundance regular, won an Oscar in 2008 with “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a documentary about the acts of torture Americans practiced in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in the prison at Guantanamo.

His latest film, “Casino Jack and the United States of Money”, is presented in competition at the independent film festival that is taking place in Park City, Utah, until Sunday.

In the film, the director, in a deeply ironic mode, recounts the glory days and decline of Jack Abramoff – presently serving a six-year prison sentence for bribery – who also took several members of the Republican Party who profited from his largesse down along with him when he fell.

“In many respects, Abramoff was simultaneously extremely serious and deeply ridiculous,” Alex Gibney declared to AFP. “And some things were too bizarre and amusing to be treated in a serious way. You had to laugh and cry at once. It’s a comedy, but the joke’s on us,” he says.

Jack Abramoff, a staunch Republican “who saw his life as an action movie” – he was also a movie producer – embodied all the excess of American lobbying, with its millions of dollars spent to attract the good graces of members of Congress.

Alex Gibney hopes his film will open the eyes of his fellow citizens by “showing people how it works. When you go into the back kitchens of a sausage-making factory, it’s rather frightening. Well, then, this film takes you into the (campaign financing) kitchen and it’s not pretty.”

“In what other country in the world, aside from the most deeply corrupted ones such as Indonesia or Nigeria, is money as openly distributed to buy and sell political officials? It’s profoundly shocking,” deplores Alex Gibney.

He considers it was Ronald Reagan’s accession to the presidency in 1981 that saw the United States “change its fundamental principles.” Gibney said, “We made money the sovereign principle through which everything had to be measured: success, failure, and now the political system.

“In the United States, bribery is legal and it’s terrifying,” the film-maker asserts. Election campaign financing, very lightly supervised in the United States, “is a system that legalizes bribery. How can we put up with that?” he wonders.

“Abramoff and people like him are political terrorists,” he deems. “They don’t use a revolver, but they want to destroy the government since, fundamentally, they don’t believe in its principles. They believe in a kind of libertarian law of the jungle.”

The film debuts just as the United States Supreme Court has lifted the limits on corporate financing of national electoral campaigns, a revolution in American electoral law that had limited this right for twenty years.

Alex Gibney makes the case for “a system of public campaign finance. We must achieve that, or else we’re damned,” he says, nonetheless convinced that it is still “possible to change the situation.”

In a certain sense, “Jack Abramoff did us a great service,” the filmmaker observes. “He showed us in a spectacular way how bad (the system) was. We should be profoundly grateful to him for that.”

Translation: Truthout French Language Editor Leslie Thatcher.

Les Echos is France’s premier business newspaper. Created by the brothers Robert and Emile Servan-Schreiber in 1908, it has been part of the LVMH conglomerate since 2007.

Articles remembering Howard Zinn

Howard’s ZNet page. Pieces remembering Zinn:

• Amy Goodman interviews with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Anthony Arnove, Naomi Klein
• by Peter Bohmer
• by Henry A. Giroux
• by Greg Ruggiero

• by Paul Street

• by Daniel Ellsberg

•  
  

• You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train    

Do not quit until all the cards are played

By Howard Zinn, ZNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/145499/

American historian, playwright and social activist Howard Zinn died January 27, 2010, aged 87. His light will shine bright into the far off future. A new socially just world will owe a great debt to Howard and others like him who gave so much of themselves for us. — ZNet Staff

Below is an excerpt from his recent book A Power Governments Cannot Suppress published by City Lights Books, www.citylights.com. At the bottom of this commentary are links to various ZNet obituaries remembering Howard.

In this world of war and injustice, how does a person manage to stay socially engaged, committed to the struggle, and remain healthy without burning out or becoming resigned or cynical?

I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.

There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.

What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia in that most sluggish of semi feudal empires not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II-the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?

And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise, perplexing everyone.

No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created in the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialism of Nyerere’s Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin’s adjacent Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists, everyone.

The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most striking evidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons does not guarantee domination over a determined population.

The United States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in Indochina, conducting the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the presumably powerless, as in Bolivia and Brazil, where grassroots movements of workers and the poor have elected new presidents pledged to fight destructive corporate power.

1. Watch the video
2. Sign the Act.ly Petition

Dear Friend,

This year, 30,000 additional American troops will be deployed to Afghanistan – despite the fact that the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan expressly opposed troop escalation in two strongly worded cables sent to the White House in 2009.

As shown in our latest video, Ambassador Eikenberry is a retired general who previously led the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan. In his cables, Eikenberry stated that “the proposed troop increase will bring vastly increased costs and an indefinite, large-scale U.S. military role in Afghanistan…in a mission that most agree cannot be won solely by military means.”

The White House ignored Eikenberry’s warnings and sent troops anyway.

Sign our Act.ly petition urging House Armed Services Committee Members to to read the Eikenberry cables.

Today, House Armed Services Committee (HASC) members are meeting to begin writing a 2011 budget for the Afghanistan war. It’s absolutely essential that they read the Eikenberry memos before they authorize more troops and funds for a war that will cost the U.S. a fortune when we can least afford it and that is not making us safer.

Let’s make sure HASC members hear Eikenberry’s warning before they compound the mistake of sending more troops into a bloody, expensive war in Afghanistan.

Sincerely,

Derrick Crowe
Political Associate

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U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry.

In November he contributed two reports to the Obama administration’s policy debate regarding the escalation, both of which argued against General McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy and questioned whether Afghan President Hamid Karzai could be counted a reliable partner:

“Sending additional forces will delay the day when Afghans will take over, and make it difficult, if not impossible, to bring our people home on a reasonable timetable,” he wrote Nov. 6. “An increased U.S. and foreign role in security and governance will increase Afghan dependence, at least in the short-term.” [...]
“Yet Karzai continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance or development. He and much of his circle do not want the U.S. to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further,” Mr. Eikenberry wrote. “They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending ‘war on terror’ and for military bases to use against surrounding powers.”

Eikenberry feared that sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan would only serve to make America “more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves, short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos.”

He has since said that his concerns have been alleviated, but it is unclear how. (Read more about the reports HERE.)

David Bromwich wrote of Eikenberry’s diplomatic cables:

It is as if we had been offered a long look at several pages of the most disturbing prognosis in the Pentagon Papers; as if we could see the president reading them with us, and then deciding in spite of everything to go ahead with the war.

For more on the significance of the Eikenberry cables, watch the Rethink Afghanistan video below

Margaret and Helen

Best Friends for Sixty Years and Counting… 

My name is Helen Philpot. I am 82 years old.  My grandson taught me how to do this so that I could “blog” with my best friend Margaret Schmechtman who I met in college almost 60 years ago.  I have three children with my husband Harold.  Margaret has three dogs with her husband Howard.  I live in Texas and Margaret lives in Maine.

Visit Margaret and Helen at Their Web Site

The Elephant in the Room is a Kangaroo

 Margaret, I really do like this President.  He is young and smart… and I think he is trying his best under bad circumstances to do the right thing and create change for good.  Not easy these days… Sort of like  your convincing Howard that  seeing a doctor annually at his age is still preventative medicine.  You’ve both got a tough sales job ahead of you. 

I really do appreciate his trying to reach across the aisle - as they say – and get Republicans to work towards bipartisanship.  But honey, that dog just don’t hunt.  Trying to reach bipartisanship with this particular Republican Party will probably achieve bipolarism instead of bipartisanship.

Harsh?  Well yes maybe I am being a bit harsh.  Part of the problem?  Well maybe that too.  After all bipartisanship requires a little give and take from both sides.  So who am I to suggest that the problem is mainly with the Republicans?

Good questions all of them – particularly because I was the one who asked them.  You know me, Margaret.  I’m always trying to play both sides of the same issue.   Well what do you expect from a woman who invented the all pie diet?

To all my Republican readers out there – I have had quite enough of your nonsense. 

Your party gave us Sarah Palin and George W. Bush – dumb and dumber.  He’s the guy whose mission still isn’t accomplished and she’s the gal who couldn’t handle being governor of one of our least populous states.  Even the “professional” wrestler was able to finish the job in Minnesota.

Your party had an issue with President Obama telling school children to stay in school and study hard.  I guess a black man can’t be trusted with your children regardless of his credentials.    And your party decided the tradition of separating church and state had an expiration date.  You love the constitution but you seem to pick through that document the same way you pick through the Bible – with all the effectiveness of eating corn on the cob through a picket fence.

We are actively involved in  two wars, but you  just can’t understand why the deficit is so big?   Regardless of what you have been told,  every time a bomb is dropped, an angel does not get her wings.  Hint:  Defense spending represents almost one quarter of all federal spending.

Today’s Republican Party has an issue with abortion, but then fights against healthcare reform knowing full well that more than 9 million children lack health insurance.  A stretch argument to be sure, but then again 18 19 Children and Counting is a big hit. 

My party at least recognizes the need for increased access to birth control.  Your party is pro-life right up until they cut the cord and then you turn your attention to electing judges who promote shortening the waiting time on death row.

And for Pete’s sake your party has an issue with gay people, but you gladly send your straight children to war while telling gays they cannot serve.  This one, more than any other, has me scratching my head.  Aren’ t you just delaying their eventual trip to Hell? 

You  actually have Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as your spokesmen.   Rush Limbaugh?  Are you serious?  Even the NFL didn’t want Limbaugh.  And Beck… Glenn Beck?  When people use the expression ”nuttier than a fruitcake” Glenn Beck is the main ingredient.

The Republican Party of yesteryear was respectable.  You were all about a small government that carried a big stick.  Now you are just despicable.  You used to be the Party of Lincoln and now – honest to God –  you make Archie Bunker look progressive. 

If it wasn’t for Fox News you would be irrelevent.  That’s right.  You have become a party that owes its entire existence to a cable news channel owned by an Aussie.  Your mascot should be a kangaroo instead of an elephant.  After all, the last guy you sent to the White House arrived there thanks to a kangaroo court ruling rather than an election.   He then spent the next 8 years bringing our nation to its knees.   How about sitting down and shutting your damn pie holes long enough to see if the guy in office now can actually clean up your mess.  Honestly, you are embarrassing yourself. 

Look.  My party has problems too.  It’s biggest problem might be in attempting to please everyone, the Democratic Party seems to please no one.  But diversity of opinions is something I am willing to work through.  Bigotry and ignorance is not.  I mean it.  Really.

Salon.com | On the claimed “war exception” to the Constitution

An Obama official acknowledges the targeting of American citizens for assassination — with no judicial oversight

By Glenn Greenwald, Feb. 04, 2010

Last week, I wrote about a revelation buried in a Washington Post article by Dana Priest which described how the Obama administration has adopted the Bush policy of targeting selected American citizens for assassination if they are deemed (by the Executive Branch) to be Terrorists.  As The Washington Times‘ Eli Lake reports, Adm. Dennis Blair was asked about this program at a Congressional hearing yesterday and he acknowledged its existence:

The U.S. intelligence community policy on killing American citizens who have joined al Qaeda requires first obtaining high-level government approval, a senior official disclosed to Congress on Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said in each case a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission. . . .

He also said there are criteria that must be met to authorize the killing of a U.S. citizen that include “whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans. Those are the factors involved.”

Although Blair emphasized that it requires “special permission” before an American citizen can be placed on the assassination list, consider from whom that “permission” is obtained:  the President, or someone else under his authority within the Executive Branch.  There are no outside checks or limits at all on how these “factors” are weighed.  In last week’s post, I wrote about all the reasons why it’s so dangerous — as well as both legally and Consitutionally dubious — to allow the President to kill American citizens not on an active battlefield during combat, but while they are sleeping, sitting with their families in their home, walking on the street, etc.  That’s basically giving the President the power to impose death sentences on his own citizens without any charges or trial.  Who could possibly support that?

But even if you’re someone who does want the President to have the power to order American citizens killed without a trial by decreeing that they are Terrorists (and it’s worth remembering that if you advocate that power, it’s going to be vested in all Presidents, not just the ones who are as Nice, Good, Kind-Hearted and Trustworthy as Barack Obama), shouldn’t there at least be some judicial approval required?  Do we really want the President to be able to make this decision unilaterally and without outside checks?  Remember when many Democrats were horrified (or at least when they purported to be) at the idea that Bush was merely eavesdropping on American citizens without judicial approval?  Shouldn’t we be at least as concerned about the President’s being able to assassinate Americans without judicial oversight?  That seems much more Draconian to me.

The mother, Veronica Bowers, and her infant daughter were killed by bullets fired at the plane.

ABC News has obtained some incredibly dramatic footage [scroll down for video] of an incident from nine years ago in which the CIA watched as a Peruvian air force fighter jets shot down a plane carrying American missionaries even as the pilot screamed for help.

The tape was shot from a CIA plane which was on assignment in Peru as part of anti-smuggling operations undertaken in coordination with the Peruvian air force. As ABC’s Brian Ross notes, it has taken this long for the CIA to acknowledge its responsibility in the matter.

Traveling in the plane, which was mistakenly believed to be carrying drug smugglers, was a family of Christian missionaries from Michigan, the Bowers. The mother, Veronica Bowers, and her infant daughter were killed by bullets fired at the plane. Her husband and six-year-old son, as well as the pilot, survived. The family was flying back from a trip to Brazil.

What’s perhaps most chilling about the video is that the CIA pilots clearly doubt that the plane is actually being used for drug smuggling, but are unable to communicate this to the Peruvian air force in time to stop an attack. “I don’t know if this is bandito or amigo,” one of the CIA pilots says. “This guy doesn’t fit the profile.” Later on, not long before the plane is shot down, one of the CIA pilots mutters. “I think we’re making a mistake.” They warn the Peruvian pilots not to shoot the plane down, but their warnings don’t seem to be understood due to a language barrier.

In 2008, CIA inspector general John Helgerson accused his agency of trying to cover up the incident, the New York Times reported:

An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency has found that the agency withheld crucial information from federal investigators who spent years trying to determine whether C.I.A. officers committed crimes related to the accidental downing of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.

On Wednesday the CIA said its investigation had concluded that 16 of its employees should be disciplined, though many of them are no longer with the agency. In a statement to ABC News, a CIA spokesperson laid the blame for the tragedy on the Peruvian Air Force.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, who has campaigned on behalf of the Bowers family, insisted that justice had still been denied.

“These were Americans that were killed with the help of their government, the community covered it up, they delayed investigating,” Hoekstra said.

GOP Senator Shelby Blocks ALL Obama Nominations Over Alabama Earmarks

Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-Ala.) decision to place a “blanket hold” on all presidential nominations until a pair of billion-dollar earmarks for his home state are fast-tracked has reignited the debate over the parliamentary tactics being deployed by the Republican Party. It also has thrust into the spotlight the clout that major defense contractors often yield on the political process.

On Thursday evening, news broke that the Alabama Republican has taken the extraordinary measure of holding up at least 70 “nominations on the Senate calendar” — essentially threatening to filibuster the confirmation processes if they came to a vote. The move has spurred a series of recriminations from Democratic officials who see it as yet another instance of over-the-top obstructionism of the president’s agenda.

It also has turned inquisitive eyes towards Shelby himself.**************************

White House Outraged .. Earmarks Turn Spotlight On Shelby’s Defense Contractor Ties

US denies Iran nuclear deal ‘close’ Defence secretary dismisses Iran’s claims uranium swap could be agreed in near future. A nuclear war of words Iran and the US Nuclear double standard Timeline: Iran’s nuclear programme

Severe storms batter North America Washington area shut down by heavy snow, while flooding leads to deaths in Mexico.

Karachi mourns bomb attack victims Thousands of people attend funerals after attacks on Shia Muslims in Pakistani city.

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Afghan police ‘kill civilians’	Deaths reported in Yemen clashes	Clinton urges speed in Haiti case
Nigeria’s Anambra state vote begins	N Korea frees US religious activist	Ukraine rivals end campaigning

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02/05/10 AP: Death Toll In Iraq Attack Rises To 40

At least 40 people have died in the latest attack on Shiite pilgrims in Iraq. More than 150 others were wounded when twin car bombs tore through a crowd walking to the holy city of Karbala (KAHR’-bah-lah) for a major religious observance.

02/05/10 Reuters: Two car bombs kill at least 40 people, wound 145 in Kerbala,

Two car bombs killed at least 40 people and wounded 145 others in Kerbala, 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Baghdad, health officials said.

02/05/10 Reuters: Roadside bomb kills one pilgrim, wounds 13 others in eastern Baghdad

A roadside bomb struck a bus carrying pilgrims, killing one and wounding 13 others in eastern Baghdad, police said.

02/05/10 Reuters: Sniper wound pilgrim in eastern Baghdad

A sniper wounded one pilgrim in Zayouna district of eastern Baghdad, a Baghdad security spokesman said.

02/05/10 Reuters: Body of kidnap victim found in western Mosul

Police found the body of a kidnapping victim riddled with bullets in western Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said

02/05/10 Reuters: Roadside bomb wounds Iraqi soldier in western Mosul

A roadside bomb wounded one Iraqi soldier on foot patrol in western Mosul, police said.

02/05/10 Reuters: Gunmen kill two policemen in an attack south of Mosul,

Unknown gunmen killed two policemen in an attack on a checkpoint south of Mosul, police said.

02/05/10 AP: Car bomb kills 27 Shiite pilgrims

A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb Friday alongside a crowd of Shiite pilgrims walking to a holy city south of Baghdad, killing at least 27 people and wounding 60, Iraqi police officials said.

 Voters Fed Up With Both Parties