Investigative reporting hits the mark from within the corporate mainstream media: a NYTimes report on how the compliant media companies spins the media by reproducing the Administration’s own talking points; David Barstow examines primary source documents detailing the Pentagon’s response to criticism of then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld by a group of prominent retired generals. Could this possibly signal that sections of the establishment are furnishing a basis for the US military to finally withdraw from Iraq?

The Generals Revolt Part 1 (8 minutes)

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Some time-pressed picks and recommended reads on this reprehensible fifth anniversary of the US neocon-led invasion. Cartoon credit: Carlos Latuff, Iraq war: Five Years

• Salon Iraq Roundtable, Robbing the cradle of civilization, five years later

• Jim Lobe, Reasons Revisited: Why Did the U.S. Invade Iraq?

• Dahr Jamail, Five Years, And Counting

• Patrick Cockburn, This is the war that started with lies, and continues with lie after lie after lie

• DN!, Half a Decade of War: Five Years After Iraq Invasion, Soldiers Testify at Winter Soldier Hearings

• Juan Cole, Five years of Iraq lies

• John Ross, What Do We Owe Iraq?

• Seamus Milne, There must be a reckoning for this day of infamy

• Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, ‘We live in a nightmare. Death and carnage is everywhere’ Ali, Baghdad resident Read the rest of this entry »

In response to PM Rudd’s Motion on Israel’s 60th Anniversary year, many Australians, including this blogger, supported and signed an advertisement that appeared prominently on page 7 of The Australian national broadsheet on Wednesday 12 March. The statement reads:

Not in Our Name

We, as informed and concerned Australians, choose to disassociate ourselves from a celebration of the triumph of racism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the al-Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948. As we write, Israel continues to expand illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank including Arab East Jerusalem.

Australia and Australians should not give the Israeli people and its leaders the impression that Australia supports them in their dispossession of the Palestinian people. Israel has poisoned our (the West’s) relations with the whole of the Arab and Muslim world. Rather than celebrating the creation of the State of Israel, we should be recognising the people of Palestine, those who were dispossessed, those who lived and died as refugees, those who continue to live and die and suffer at the hands of the State of Israel, and those who will continue to suffer and die in the future until justice is done. Read the rest of this entry »

Did anyone else notice that Iran got some welcome good press in the New York Times (which offers too few reasons to read it regularly other than good columnists like Dowd). It was in the travel section: Iran made it into the Top 20 of their 53 Places To Go In 2008, with this citation:

18. IRAN

What Axis of Evil? Upscale tour operators are tiptoeing into Iran next year, offering trips that explore the ancient country’s Persian treasures and olive-green desert plains. Next spring, the luxury cruise liner Silversea will make stops in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas on its Dubai to Dubai cruise. And California-based Distant Horizons (www.distant-horizons.com) is organizing two 18-day trips that start in Tehran and then weave through the once-forbidden countryside, including stops in Shiraz and Isfahan. Prices start at $5,390 per person.

Back in the press and making news again is speculation about the possible US airbase in northern Lebanon, renewed by the Lebanese daily As-Safir (Arabic). Only this time, there’s more. In English, the idea was best enunciated by Franklin Lamb in Its The Airbase, Stupid (see also ‘Does “Loving” Lebanon Mean the Bush Administration Never Has To Say Its Sorry?’), and he is cited again in the article from Al-Manar below.

The Daily Star also carries an article on the issue, and how this week’s visit to Lebanon by US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman has renewed speculation that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government has plans to turn the country into a forward base from which the Pentagon can counter what it sees as resurgent Russian influence in Syria, as claimed in Y-Net. Is the Cold War making a comeback?

All this would involve a string of bases in Lebanon: one in the Christian region of Bsharri; one in the Bekaa; and one in the plains of Damour south of Beirut. This would be in addition to the airstrip at Kleiaat being used as an airbase, two naval bases near Tripoli, and a wish-list for radar stations in Qornet Sawda, Barouk and Dahr al-Baidar. This is denied by US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman. What we can be more sure of is that what is being pushed for is a less neutral stance towards the resistance (namely, Hezbollah) and Syria — and a reassessment of Lebanese relations towards Israel—that’s right, let’s forget the willful invasion and nefarious destruction of the country by Israel’s hafrada regime last year ever happened.

See also Iran’s Press TV; Israel’s Ha’aretz carries AP’s Hezbollah slams U.S. call for ‘partnership’ with Lebanon army and the International Herald Tribune also carries the AP piece: US to build “strategic partnership” with Lebanese army, says Pentagon official. In the blogosphere have a look at Zentor’s In the Middle of the East blog with The Mother of all Sparks and Mustapha’s Beirut Spring blog with A US Military Base in Lebanon? On a different but related topic, see Robert Fisk’s Secret armies pose sinister new threat to Lebanon.

Lebanon US base to counter Qaeda, Hezbollah or Russia?

Mohamad Shmaysani

18 Oct 2007 Al Manar

The issue of building a US airbase in northern Lebanon has resurfaced. Senior US political and military officials have been flocking into Lebanon since the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, the last of whom is Eric Edelman, the US Undersecretary of Defense for policy, heading a Pentagon delegation. The Lebanese daily Assafir raised speculations of a likelihood to build US military bases in Lebanon and alter the Lebanese army’s creed. “It is perceived that the US is focusing on the army’s directive which includes the fundamental national policy adopted by the army, particularly article five which stresses on the brotherly and special ties between Lebanon and Syria and article eight which underscores supporting the resistance,” Assafir said.In the report which the daily said is based on “reliable sources”, the Eric Edelman delegation met with the head of the unconstitutional government Fouad Saniora, Defense Minister Elias el-Murr and Army General Michel Suleiman and tackled four issues: the military situation in Lebanon, security and intelligence, the situation of the Lebanese Army and Lebanese state policy.

US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffery Feltman, who reportedly attended the Pentagon delegation meeting dismissed Assafir daily report as insulting to the Lebanese army. Sources closed to Saniora’s unconstitutional government brushed aside as fabricated reports that the US had proposed building military bases.

Earlier reports revealed that a US airbase in the north of Lebanon would be built in the model of El-Udeid base in Qatar, for covert operations against the Syrian regime and to safeguard the oil pipelines of Baku-Tiflis-Ceyhan and Mosul-Kirkuk-Ceyhan. Read the rest of this entry »

Lubricated by US taxpayer dollars that go to Israel each year, the Israeli hafrada regime has in turn been flogging arms to Burma’s military junta, responsible for shooting Buddhist monks and foreign journalists in pro-democracy marches in the past week. Amid the chorus of condemnations and sanctions from Bush, Brown and others, no corresponding condemnation is issued about how these peacefully demonstrating Buddhist monks are being murdered with Israeli arms — why shouldn’t sanctions properly be raised to apply to the military regime-supporting arms pusher?

Let’s be clear — Israel is not the only arms supplier to the military regime. Most countries buy arms from more than one country source, and China has traditionally been a large supplier and a significant trading partner (China is Burma’s third most important export destination, and its largest country of origin for imports– 2005 figures). A possible Indian sale of its Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) to Myanmar also involves vital components sourced from six EU states (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK), also potentially — if the transfer goes ahead — circumventing an arms embargo in place since 1988.

The issue is not simply that of arms sales and hypocrisy however, but intelligence links and other ties, and the Israeli and Myanmar regimes have had a close history, and a strong military relationship that continued well after the 1962 coup as a Jane’s Intelligence Report from 2000, excerpted below, details.

Moreover, while European firms are under scrutiny and investigation for any possible transgression, there is no scrutiny of the key role the Israeli military and armaments have played. Israel, like the Myanmar regime, has a widely-documented record of egregious and systemic human rights abuses. In Myanmar-Burma, these abuses include summary executions, torture, and the recruitment of child soldiers. In Israel, they include ethnic cleansing, ongoing military occupation, starvation and deprivation of electricity and restrictions of movement, tens of thousands of detainees held without charge or trial, and much else besides. While the Chinese government is being pressured to use its influence with the Myanmar regime, no such demands are made of its other ally, whose official line is the claim that Israel “has no form of leverage to apply on Burma.” Read the rest of this entry »

From the Fars News Agency, via Global Research, seven chancellors and presidents of Iranian universities and research centres have sent a letter addressed to their counterpart at Colombia University, Lee Bollinger, inviting him to provide responses to 10 questions by Iranian academics and intellectuals.

Perhaps we can add a few questions of our own for Mr Bollinger.

I’ve added the visuals –click on thumbnails to view the full-size.

The following is the full text of the letter:

Mr. Lee Bollinger
Columbia University President

We, the professors and heads of universities and research institutions in Tehran, hereby announce our displeasure and protest at your impolite remarks prior to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent speech at Columbia University.

We would like to inform you that President Ahmadinejad was elected directly by the Iranian people through an enthusiastic two-round poll in which almost all of the country’s political parties and groups participated. To assess the quality and nature of these elections you may refer to US news reports on the poll dated June 2005.

Your insult, in a scholarly atmosphere, to the president of a country with a population of 72 million and a recorded history of 7,000 years of civilization and culture is deeply shameful.

Your comments, filled with hate and disgust, may well have been influenced by extreme pressure from the media, but it is regrettable that media policy-makers can determine the stance a university president adopts in his speech.

Your remarks about our country included unsubstantiated accusations that were the product of guesswork as well as media propaganda. Some of your claims result from misunderstandings that can be clarified through dialogue and further research.

During his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad answered a number of your questions and those of students. We are prepared to answer any remaining questions in a scientific, open and direct debate.

You asked the president approximately ten questions. Allow us to ask you ten of our own questions in the hope that your response will help clear the atmosphere of misunderstanding and distrust between our two countries and reveal the truth.

1- Why did the US media put you under so much pressure to prevent Mr. Ahmadinejad from delivering his speech at Columbia University? And why have American TV networks been broadcasting hours of news reports insulting our president while refusing to allow him the opportunity to respond? Is this not against the principle of freedom of speech?

2- Why, in 1953, did the US administration overthrow Iran’s national government under Dr Mohammad Mosaddegh and go on to support the Shah’s dictatorship?

3- Why did the US support the blood-thirsty dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraqi-imposed war on Iran, considering his reckless use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers defending their land and even against his own people?

4- Why is the US putting pressure on the government elected by the majority of Palestinians in Gaza instead of officially recognizing it? And why does it oppose Iran’s proposal to resolve the 60-year-old Palestinian issue through a general referendum?

5- Why has the US military failed to find Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden even with all its advanced equipment? How do you justify the old friendship between the Bush and Bin Laden families and their cooperation on oil deals? How can you justify the Bush administration’s efforts to disrupt investigations concerning the September 11 attacks?

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American historian Carl Becker has an astute observation, previously cited here, that often,

Whether arguments command assent or not depends less upon the logic that conveys them than upon the climate of opinion in which they are sustained.

Excepting the encouraging alternative streams of discourse on the web, Becker’s truism seems well demonstrated in the current level of propagated public discourse in the USA regarding Iran and President Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University this week.

It is as if Faux Fox News writ large has permeated even the hallowed halls of Columbia University, with its President Lee Bollinger repeating half-truths, canards and lies and adding ingracious personal insult to these injuries.

First, let’s choose to look at the glass half-full. Under the aegis of academic freedom, Columbia University did not succumb, at least, to the denial of a Head of State’s visit, as happened with the rejection of the Iranian President’s request to visit Ground Zero to pay his respects. The invited address went ahead and many people will now have the opportunity to hear Ahmadinejad directly through the web (videos below; see also full transcript available here).

In a thirty minute address, the populist figurehead President speaks about academic freedom, science and religion. Towards the end of his address (20 minute mark, see third video clip) he is impassioned about the perennial need to have academic inquiry open on subjects such as the Shoah, and questions why Palestinians are paying the price for the Holocaust in WWII. He then defends Iran’s rights to nuclear technology and energy self-determination, citing Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA’s inspections.

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As the much anticipated book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by Walt and Mearsheimer is released this month, the liberal Jewish-spiritual progressive magazine Tikkun has its current issue devoted to the Israel Lobby (including, but not limited to, AIPAC) and its disproportionate and highly unrepresentative influence on US foreign policy, particularly towards the Middle East.

The cover reads: The Israel Lobby: Bad for the U.S., Bad for Israel, Bad for the Jews. With an interview of Democratic Congressman Jim Moran as its centerpiece (interview excerpt follows), the Israel Lobby’s major role in the decision to go to war in Iraq and its position on calling for an attack on Iran is scrutinised.

Congressman Moran speaks sensibly about Iran, and reading his comments here was a breath of fresh air.

Jim Moran’s voicing of the obvious has however all too predictably earned the ire of Lobbyists and some MSM journalists who sing to the Lobby tune (see WaPo here and here—thanks Fanonite). Interviewer Rabbi Lerner defends Moran’s statements as observations with which he himself would agree, supporting his assertions with evidence and personal experience. Lerner writes:

To take an example from these past few months of the Israel Lobby exercising its power, liberals in the House of Representatives in the spring of 2007 sought to include in the defense-funding budget an amendment that would require specific authorization from Congress before the Administration could use the defense budget monies for a military strike at Iran. The amendment failed. Most liberals in the U.S. today oppose preventive wars in general and a military strike against Iran in particular. So who supports such a move? The answer is: the right wing government of Israel and its champion in the U.S., the Israel Lobby.

Don’t be surprised that Jim Moran was pushed from his office as one of the leaders of the Democrats in Congress by AIPAC and other elements of the Israel Lobby. Here is how it happened: Congressman Moran was asked at a constituents’ meeting by a woman identified with the Jewish community why we had gotten into the war in Iraq. Moran responded provocatively “If the Jewish community had organized against it, we wouldn’t be in this war.” It’s the kind of statement I would have made to any religious community, or to any labor movement audience, citing their own failures to act as a critical factor in why we had gotten involved. In the case of the Jewish community there is the added factor that leading people in the Israel Lobby actively supported and still support the war in Iraq and that some of the strong supporters of the Israel Lobby played central roles in the effort to push the Iraq war inside the Bush Administration.

Why the “Liberal” Media is Illiberal on Israel

I’ve had similar experiences with the Israel Lobby and the media. For the first few years of Tikkun’s existence Tikkun’s perspective was covered on many topics in American politics. But once we got on AIPAC’s radar screen, this began to change. I finally got the op-ed editor of The San Francisco Chronicle to tell me the story. He had been approached by the Executive Editor, Dick German and told by German in no uncertain terms to stop publishing op-eds from American Jews critical of Israel, because Israel had “too many enemies.” This is what he told me.

A similar thing happened to me at The New York Times. I was asked by The Times to do a review of a book on Israeli settlers. Without any shame, my editor insisted that I change what I had written so that it would accord with his politics. I was never again given a chance to write a review for The Times. Hundreds of other liberal Jews have had similar experiences trying to write for The Times op-ed or book review—the voices of those of us who are seriously and intensely critical of Israeli policy but still lovers of Israel and proudly committed to Judaism are rarely part of the acceptable discourse.

Here is an excerpt of the Tikkun interview between Rabbi Michael Lerner and Congressman Jim Moran on AIPAC and its role in pushing the United States into war with Iraq and calling for an attack on Iran:

TIKKUN: What do you think the reasoning is for the Democrats who voted against the amendment requiring that the president get authorization from Congress before attacking Iran?

JIM MORAN: Well, AIPAC strongly opposed it. In fact, Rep. Murtha, Rep. Obey, and myself wanted it in the supplemental. We had it in and then the leadership had to take it out because AIPAC was having a conference in Washington, and insisted with the leadership and many of the members with whom they have close alliances.Yesterday [NB. interview conducted in May], AIPAC had an amendment to recommit the whole Armed Services Bill in order to add language requiring America to develop missile defenses jointly with Israel, to share all its missile defense technology with Israel. That passed overwhelmingly. There were only thirty members—that’s less than 10 percent—who voted against sharing all our missile technology with Israel. It received about 400 votes in favor of it. I was one of the thirty.

My feeling was that it wasn’t just the incendiary language that Israel is under immediate attack and we need to protect it from another Holocaust, it was also the idea that the solution to Israel’s security is a militaristic one. I would urge you to read the Congressional record for the debate on the recommital. It put our loyalty to Israel in terms of complete military support. My feeling is that both America and Israel have acted in counterproductive fashion and have undermined their security by focusing exclusively on military capability.

That was a key vote yesterday. It was phrased by many as an “AIPAC vote.” As a result, it prevailed approximately 400 to thirty.

TIKKUN: In your estimation, how does AIPAC get that power?

MORAN: AIPAC is very well organized. The members are willing to be very generous with their personal wealth. But it’s a two edged sword. If you cross AIPAC, AIPAC is unforgiving and will destroy you politically. Their means of communications, their ties to certain newspapers and magazines, and individuals in the media are substantial and intimidating. Every member knows it’s the best-organized national lobbying force. The National Rifle Association comes a close second, but AIPAC can rightfully brag that they’re the most powerful lobbying force in the world today. Certainly they are in the United States. Not in Europe, obviously. Most people that are involved in foreign policy especially look at a broad range of issues and consider a person’s entire voting record. AIPAC considers the voting record only as it applies to Israel. Read the rest of this entry »

Sonja Karkar is an Australian Palestinian advocate and founder of the Melbourne-based Women for Palestine. Her pieces regularly appear in the Electronic Intifada, Z-Net, Counterpunch and local mailing lists.

Another worthwhile read, I post this in honour of the memory of all the victims of that terrible episode, and all those affected by it; that is the least we in the alternative press and blogosphere can do.

As Karkar writes, citing Robert Fisk fifteen years after the massacre,

“Had Palestinians massacred 2,000 Israelis 15 years ago, would anyone doubt that the world’s press and television would be remembering so terrible a deed this morning? Yet this week, not a single newspaper in the United States – or Britain for that matter – has even mentioned the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila.”

Warning: the following article depicts the horror of a massacre and should be read by mature readers — details of the atrocity appear over the jump.

Highly recommended: Franklin Lamb’s Letter to Janet is a must-read if you haven’t already done so, also disseminated widely.

Sabra And Shatila

On massacres, atrocities and holocausts

by Sonja Karkar

September 16, 2007
Women for Palestine

The Massacre

It happened twenty-five years ago – 16 September 1982. A massacre so awful that people who know about it cannot forget it. The photos are gruesome reminders – charred, decapitated, indecently violated corpses, the smell of rotting flesh, still as foul to those who remember it as when they were recoiling from all those years ago. For the victims and the handful of survivors, it was a 36-hour holocaust without mercy. It was deliberate, it was planned and it was overseen. But to this day, the killers have gone unpunished.

Sabra and Shatila – two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon – were the theatres for this staged slaughter. The former is no longer there and the other is a ghostly and ghastly reminder of man’s inhumanity to men, women and children - more specifically, Israel’s inhumanity, the inhumanity of the people who did Israel’s bidding and the world’s inhumanity for pretending it was of no consequence. There were international witnesses - doctors, nurses, journalists - who saw the macabre scenes and have tried to tell the world in vain ever since.

Read the rest of this entry »

Media research group Project Censored have just released their Top 25 Under-Reported and/or Self-Censored News Items for the year past:

http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2008/index.htm

Mild Congressional Democrat-front group MoveOn.org have launched a full-page $65,000 ad in the New York Times entitled “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?: Cooking the Books for the White House.“

First, credit where its due: MoveOn recognises the obvious danger of General Petraeus (read his testimony here), like Colin Powell before him, serving as a shill to deliver the Bush-Cheney White House version in order to justify its agenda of prolonged war, as well as to downplay the extent of violence wracking Iraq. The advertisement (.pdf here) notes, for example, that “We’ll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won’t hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed.” This is the type of public mainstream dissent that was altogether absent when it was Colin Powell justifying war in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

In terms of historic parallels, we are reminded about the Johnson administration’s General Westmoreland during the Vietnam War here (read Westmoreland’s address here). Are these former generals and administration officials troubled about their role? In Powell tried to talk Bush out of war (Sunday Times, 8 July), the former US secretary of state subsequently claimed that he spent 2½ hours vainly trying to persuade Bush not to invade Iraq. He believes, moreover, that today’s conflict cannot be resolved by US forces.

While General Petraeus is rightly copping flak, he’s outranked by the Thief-Commander-in-Chief: he’ll ultimately deliver what’s favourable for the Bush-Cheney junta and the AIPAC lobby, and ultimately do as he’s told. He has been called the iPod general (Pepe Escobar), programmed to play the tune(s) selected by his owner, the White House.

A major glaring error of the advertisement, however, is MoveOn’s claim that

“Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.”

An unwinnable war, yes; a “religious” war, no. This claim altogether fails to address the fact that the root cause of violence is the occupation. Sunni and Shia have been living together and intermarrying for centuries here, why a sudden “religious” war? Any sectarian enmity that now exists is largely being created, its not pre-existing. This also deflects scrutiny from Bush administration culpability and attempts to instead pretend that the “real conflict” is between Shiites and Sunnis and has nothing or little to do with the US military presence. In his ‘progress report’ (video here), General Petraeus also spouted this notion in declaring that “the fundamental source of the conflict in Iraq is competition among ethnic and sectarian communities for power and resources.”

Contrary to MoveOn’s and General Petraeus’s claim, the US-UK invasion, occupation and several psy-, black- and false flag-ops manufactured this sectarian conflict. We recall the bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra, which Mike Whitney argues has been used as a “Pearl Harbor-type” event. We recall the two British SAS snipers who were caught out in Basra disguised as locals, captured with explosives in their car. We recall that the possibility of employing the Salvador Option to use Shia death squads against Sunnis had been openly entertained in the US, and the appointment of John Negroponte as US ambassador to Iraq—Negroponte oversaw death squad activity from Honduras in the 1980s—only added to the suspicions of US-Israeli designs for instigating a civil war in Iraq.

Why would the occupier and its neocon-AIPAC underwriters want to manufacture a civil war? At least three reasons. A civil war in Iraq serves the occupation’s interests not only in deflecting attention away from the crimes of the occupier, it furnishes further rationale for their continued presence, to “protect” the civilian population. This ignores, among other things, how US soldier atrocities in Iraq have been systemic and that increasing numbers of soldiers, already stretched, are resisting the war. Thirdly, it sets up the case for the ‘soft partition of Iraq‘, as raised openly by many punters, including columnist David Brooks in today’s New York Times. Dividing Iraq makes it easier to divide the spoils of war and removes the threat (primarily to Israel) of Iraqi regional hegemony.

As veteran correspondent Robert Fisk acknowledged last year in his suspicions about attempts by the occupation authorities to provoke a civil war in Iraq:

The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it’s Al Qaeda, it’s the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities. I’d like to know what the Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to provoke the civil war. It seems to me not very much…We’re not hearing of death squads all being arrested…Somebody is operating these people…Is it really the case that all of these Iraqis that fought together for eight years against the Iranians – Shiites and Sunnies together in the long massive murderous Somme-like war between the Iranians and Iraqis — suddenly all want to kill each other?…

We need to look at this story in a different light. That narrative that we’re getting - that there are death squads and that the Iraqis are all going to kill each other, the idea that the whole society is going to commit mass suicide - is not possible, it’s not logical. There is something else going on in Iraq…something is wrong with the narrative we’re being given the press, from the West, from the Americans, from the Iraqi Government.

MoveOn started with a strong antiwar message; after coopting 3 million antiwar activists, it watered down to insipid levels its antiwar agenda and became a front for the Democratic “impeachment is off the table” branch of the War Party. Recalling that most voters gave the Democrats a mandate to end the war, let us hope the MoveOn leadership does not betray its own constituency, never mind the contrived establishment outrage.

Read the rest of this entry »

Image below created by Justice Design who designed the art and lay-out for the book Globalize Liberation (ed.) David Solnit (image on p. 175 here).  There are three full sample chapters available online from each of the three parts of the book at Justice Design’s site.

This also recalls a fortuitous screen-shot somebody captured, previously featured (understanding that Bush is merely the figurehead for the current criminal corporatocracy):

Viva la alternative media, so we don’t end up with this:

(Cartoon: Rupert Murdoch announces his latest takeover to the world press)

Sign the Open Letter to the major television networks urging them to NOT follow FOX’s lead to another war. The video shows the evidence of how they are repeating the same distortions and fear mongering they did before the Iraq war.

RT 3.31