Category: politics

Bomb kills 18 in attack on Pakistan police

horror.

KARACHI – Pakistan on Friday accused Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked bombers of attacking police in Karachi, stoking fears that Islamist networks are expanding their fight in the country’s economic capital. Gunmen rode up to the Crime Investigations Department, used to detain terror suspects, on Thursday evening, exchanged fire with police and detonated a truck packed with explosives. The attack killed up to 18 people and damaged the building in Karachi’s most fortified downtown area. Full article.

bush vs kanye west

why is there such a brouhaha over bush being called a racist? hey, what about war criminal? mass murderer? torturer extraordinaire? annihilator of the first human civilization? corporate mercenary? or just plain dumbass?

Kashmir’s Fruits of Discord

arundhati roy on her visit to kashmir and the consequences of speaking out against state violence. “But India’s military domination ought not to be confused with a political victory. Ordinary people armed with nothing but their fury have risen up against the Indian security forces. A whole generation of young people who have grown up in a grid of checkpoints, bunkers, army camps and interrogation centers, whose childhood was spent witnessing “catch and kill” operations, whose imaginations are imbued with spies, informers, “unidentified gunmen,” intelligence operatives and rigged elections, has lost its patience as well as its fear. With an almost mad courage, Kashmir’s young have faced down armed soldiers and taken back their streets.” Full article.

The Impossible Dream

As a society, we’ve lost our way, and there is no chance of getting reoriented if we can’t find the courage to make some really tough decisions about warfare, taxes, public investment, the crying need to educate all young people, and the paramount importance of gainful employment as the cornerstone of a revitalized America. Full article.

Assassination in Court, U.S. Argues to Make Legal What It’s Always Done

The history of the United States and assassination, post-World War II, and particularly from the 1960s on, has been a sorry tale of botched public attempts (as of Castro), and a bloodbath dealt by U.S. proxy death squads, and if we can believe the Watson story, by deep cover U.S. assassins themselves. In 1976, in the wake of the many revelations about U.S. government crimes, including assassinations, President Gerald Ford issued a presidential directive banning assassinations, a directive whose basic premises lie in shreds after ten years of Bush/Obama rule. Full article.

The Politics Behind Misunderstanding Islam

We think of the Crusades as the archetypal “clash of civilizations” between the followers of Jesus and the followers of Mohammed. In the popular version of those Crusades, the Muslim adversary has, in fact, replaced a remarkable range of peoples the Crusaders dealt with as enemies, including Jews killed in pogroms on the way to the Holy Land, rival Catholics slaughtered in the Balkans and in Constantinople, and Christian heretics hunted down in southern France. Much later, during the Cold War, mythmakers in Washington performed a similar act, substituting a monolithic crew labeled “godless communists” for a disparate group of anti-imperial nationalists in an attempt to transform conflicts in remote locations like Vietnam, Guatemala, and Iran into epic struggles between the forces of the Free World and the forces of evil. In recent years, the Bush administration did it all over again by portraying Arab nationalists as fiendish Islamic fundamentalists when we invaded Iraq and prepared to topple the regime in Syria. Full article.

US ‘exploited’ Iraq communal strife

In fact, the US military and the US Embassy were well aware of the serious risk that the strategy of relying on vengeful Shia police commandos to track down Sunnis would exacerbate sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shia. In May 2005, Ann Scott Tyson wrote in the Washington Post that US military analysts did not deny that the US strategy “aggravates the underlying fault lines in Iraqi society, heightening the prospects of civil strife”. In late July 2005, when Petraeus was still heading the command, an unnamed “senior American officer” at MNSTC-I was asked by John F. Burns of the New York Times whether the US might end up arming Iraqis for a civil war. The officer answered, “Maybe”. Full article.

GOP lawmaker: Consider neutering Iran’s ‘ability to wage war’

“Instead of a surgical strike on their nuclear infrastructure, I think we’re to the point now that you have to really neuter the regime’s ability to wage war against us and our allies. And that’s a different military scenario. It’s not a ground invasion but it certainly destroys the ability of the regime to strike back.” — is lindsey graham insane? Full article.