Noam Chomsky describes Gaza as the world’s largest open-air prison, where some 1.5 million people on a roughly 140-square-mile strip of land are subject to random terror and arbitrary punishment, with no purpose other than to humiliate and degrade. Such cruelty is to ensure that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed, and…
Editorials
BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY
We are still a very young country – a mere 226 years old. We have packed an awful lot of living into those precious few years, and it is easy to forget we are brash youth. From Columbus’s discovery of the New Land in 1492 to the Declaration of Independence, 284 years elapsed. We have…
KILLING THEM HARSHLY WITH OUR DRONES
The following is an excerpt from an article in The Economist. Readers who want more can link here. THE killing in Yemen of Anwar al-Awlaki and three al-Qaeda associates by a drone on September 30th has caused far more fuss in America than previous drone attacks. The reason is that al-Awlaki and one of his…
A Time to Love, A Time to THINK
1917- Robert LaFollette: “Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely. It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. … If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another.” 1917 –…
RWANDA VERSUS LIBYA/TWO TAKES
Here is Atlantic magazine’s take on the so-called genocide in Libya that is so driving Barack Obama to fury. Rwanda was genocide. Libya is a civil war. The Rwandan genocide was a premeditated, orchestrated campaign. The Libyan civil war is a sudden, unplanned outburst of fighting. The Rwandan genocide was targeted against an entire, clearly…
IT’S TOUGH TO BE A SOCIALIST
I have admitted in these pages that socialism is, at best, a dream. In the first place, it is not even clear what socialism is. There is libertarian socialism, according to which the State must wither away and we must aim for a society in which nobody has private property. To me, this sounds crazy…
A CALL TO HATE ALL MUSLIMS
Reprinted from aljazeera.net Israel and the anti-Muslim blow-up By MJ Rosenberg, Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network A visiting rabbi from Israel gave a sermon [in Washington, D.C.] about the intifada that was then raging in Israel and the West Bank. The sermon’s ending which was unforgettable. The rabbi concluded with the…
Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh’s address to the nation on India’s 64th Independence Day:
The following is the COMPLETE text of Dr. Singh’s address to the nation of India. If you can even find an extended excerpt of this in the NY Times or any other American newspaper, I’ll spit out my delicious Cadbury chocolate bar and never eat one again. It is reprinted from the Deccan Chronicle. “Dear…
ONE MAN’S SPEEDY TRIAL IS ANOTHER MAN’S SLOW BOAT TO CHINA
Ahmad Khaifan Ghailani spent five years in prison waiting for his trial. No big deal according to Southern District of New York Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Kaplan, obviously not the father of Ghailani, said “The government is entitled to attempt to hold Ghailani accountable in a court of law for his alleged complicity in the…
A PROBLEM FOR CAPITALISTS
The followng is reprinted from CommonDreams.org. My question, after reading this, is this: Must it not be true that every member of what Professor Michael Green calls the “Predatory overclass” is an atheist? Professor Green makes it clear that the awfulness of it all is not a mere accidental coalescence of many thoughtless raids on…
IN DEFENSE OF ISRAEL
While watchingpolitics.com is sympathetic to the Israeli cause, it takes no particular position about the “flottilla” incident. It welcomes any submission from any reader who wishes to present an alternative point of view. The following article by the former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar was published in the British newspaper ‘The Times of London’…
WHORES ON THE HILL
Compared to the congressmen who were giving him the third degree, Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, came across as a nice guy. Sure, he is really a dirty rat fink but the congressman present at the inquisition are rabies-infested dirty rat finks. They have only a few purposes and these do not include getting to…
AN OUTSIDER’S VIEW OF GUSHING OIL
World Socialist Web Site WSWS…..June 15, 2010 The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a corporate crime whose magnitude almost defies comprehension. The eventual cost—combining damage to complex Gulf and coastal ecosystems, wiping out of the fishing and tourism industries, and long-term health consequences for the population of the region—is likely to total…
THOSE DAMNABLE FLOTILLAS AND THE NON-NEUTRALITY OF THE U.N.
The NY Times weighs in with an unenlightening editorial. Israel’s government has decided to tough out the criticism of its attack this week on a six-ship flotilla trying to run the Gaza blockade. The story, and the anger, aren’t going away…..Israel’s charges that its commandos were attacked and shot at by some of the ship’s…
AMERICAN AGENTS OF TERROR
This is an excerpt with slight editing of a letter appearing in the NY Review of Books by David Cole on April 8, 2010. “US officials strip suspects naked, deprive them of sleep for up to eleven days straight, hit them, slam them into walls, force them into painful stress positions, and waterboard them. These…
POLITICAL BOOKS/ ISRAEL VS. ISLAM
Admittedly, this is a one-sided list but that does not detract from the power of the arguments each of these books contains. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1591025540/ref=pe_606_15135190_pe_ar_t2 Sample Reviews of two of the books: “Andrew Bostom produces a vast literature of Middle Eastern Islamic antisemitism, and critics may be as surprised at his conclusions as they are unable to…
OBAMA – OUR WORST NIGHTMARE?
Barack Hussein Obama has already authorized unmanned drone attacks in areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan where the risk of killing civilians is very high. In fact, killings have occurred, occasionally followed by apologies but sometimes not. The attacks are not even by our military forces but by the CIA, which has no authority to conduct…
COMPARING DISASTERS
The 2004 tsunami that struck the Indian Ocean region is the worst or 2nd worst earthquake in history in its registered 9.3 magnitude. It took at least 230,000 lives, mostly in Indonesia. In comparison, the recent Haiti disaster seems mild but we most consider that Haiti is small and the tens of thousands of dead…
TWO RESPONSES TO OBAMA’S SPEECH
Barack Obama laid out his plans for Afghanistan the other night before the assembled cadets of West Point, and it was broadcast throughout America. Its essence was (1) to commit another 30,000 troops, (2) to abandon the deadline of January 22, 2010 as the departure date he set while he was campaigning, and (3) to…
OBAMA’S WAR/PART 10 BILLION
It is almost useless to criticize President Obama because he has descended from incompetent analysis of the Afghanistan situation into conscious fraud. He made frequent references to our NATO allies in his speech the other night in which he committed another 30,000 soldiers to that worthless piece of Middle East rock. He knows fully well…
IT’S CAPITALISM, STUPID
Even people with Ph.D. degrees in economics should be able to understand the minimal effects that fiscal and monetary policies have on the unemployment crisis. Fiscal policy may be defined as government policy for dealing with the budget, especially with taxation and borrowing. Monetary policy controls (i) the supply of money, (ii) availability of money,…
WHAT WOULD GANDHI DO?
It is possible we have been fooled. The best confidence men are the ones who are least likely to be taken as con men. I hate to think Barack Obama is a confidence man but am beginning to worry. His charisma and presidential bearing are over-the-top. Never in my lifetime have I seem a person…
OBAMA CONTINUES CRACKDOWN ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT
Obama continues edging closer and closer to the Bush goal of ending transparency in government activities and the adoption of maniacal superpower. Here is the latest from today’s NY Times: “The Obama administration is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack…
MR OBAMA DOES NOT KNOW LAW
The two fundamental principles of law are as follows: 1. Morality dictates law; law does not dictate morality. 2. The scope of law is unrestricted. These principles supersede such principles as: 3. The presumption of innocence 4. The right to a trial before one’s peers. 5. The right to see and dispute the alleged evidence…
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