The Soviet intervention was a golden opportunity for the CIA to transform the tribal resistance into a holy war, an Islamic jihad to expel the godless communists from Afghanistan. Over the years the United States and Saudi Arabia expended about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its allies recruited, supplied, and trained almost 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among those who answered the call was Saudi-born millionaire right-winger Osama bin Laden and his cohorts.

by Michael Parenti

12/3/08

Barack Obama is on record as advocating a military escalation in Afghanistan. Before sinking any deeper into that quagmire, we might do well to learn something about recent Afghan history and the role played by the United States.

Less than a month after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, US leaders began an all-out aerial assault upon Afghanistan, the country purportedly harboring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization. More than twenty years earlier, in 1980, the United States intervened to stop a Soviet “invasion” of that country. Even some leading progressive writers, who normally take a more critical view of US policy abroad, treated the US intervention against the Soviet-supported government as “a good thing.” The actual story is not such a good thing.

Some Real History

Since feudal times the landholding system in Afghanistan had remained unchanged, with more than 75 percent of the land owned by big landlords who comprised only 3 percent of the rural population. In the mid-1960s, democratic revolutionary elements coalesced to form the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). In 1973, the king was deposed, but the government that replaced him proved to be autocratic, corrupt, and unpopular. It in turn was forced out in 1978 after a massive demonstration in front of the presidential palace, and after the army intervened on the side of the demonstrators.

The military officers who took charge invited the PDP to form a new government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and novelist. This is how a Marxist-led coalition of national democratic forces came into office. “It was a totally indigenous happening. Not even the CIA blamed the USSR for it,” writes John Ryan, a retired professor at the University of Winnipeg, who….

Click HERE to read the article in its entirety at After Armageddon News.

Do not forget that these are the original sadistic authors of the Afghan and Iraq wars and the resultant mass genocide, the usage of horrible weapons of war, the Patriot Act, torture, water boarding, Abu Ghuraib, Guantánamo, falsified intelligence, the global economic depression, the Katrina debacle, wire tapping, loss of Habeas Corpus, vetoing of stem cell bill, Blackwater mercenaries; you name it. There is not a crime in the book that they did not commit.

By Anwaar Hussain

Thursday November 20, 2008

Dear Americans,

With your election of Barack Hussein Obama, you have almost realized the dream of Martin Luther King. Now truly you have a chance to rise up as a nation and live out the proper meaning of the creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Now you have an opportunity to ensure that ‘on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners indeed are able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood’. Now is the time to make certain that your great country does really get ‘transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice’. Now is that moment in time to become color blind forever to the skin tones of not just your countrymen but of all the citizens of our planet. Do that and you have arrived.

But before you can join Barack Obama’s sweet lilting voice in singing, Free at last! Free at last!, Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!, you have one last ritual to perform. And that is the killing of the demons of your recent past lest they come back to haunt you yet again. Unless you perform that sacred rite too, this transformation stands incomplete.

Look around yourselves and you will see on your national scene the authors of your misfortunes….

Click HERE to read the article in its entirety at PakTribune

[Traditional Veterans Day Parade(rs) vs. Pro Peace Vets]

By Horace Coleman  Print This Post

11/17/08

In 2007 Long Beach, CA made national news.

It wasn’t for something typically Californian. Not an earthquake, forest fire, movie première, Rose Bowl game or a surfing contest.

It wasn’t about something new to inject into your lips or face, the latest fashion craze or the “in” recreational drug. It was about veterans and veterans support groups being kept out of a parade. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Military Families Speak Out (MFSO and Veterans for Peace (VFP) were banned from marching in a city backed and aided public Veterans Day parade.

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Disaster capitalism is according to Klein …orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities…. One recent example was the dramatic use of shock and awe, including using those very words to describe it, against the nation of Iraq during the invasion by the U.S. in 2003. A more recent example to which Klein devotes a great deal of attention is the devastation of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.

By Carolyn Baker

12/1/08

Since many months before the November election, Truth to Power has been researching and informing readers regarding the fundamental underpinnings of Barack Obama’s agenda and his likely appointments in the areas of economic, foreign policy, and energy issues. Not only have I written several pieces on the topic, so have a variety of other researchers. In reviewing our reporting, what has remained consistent and therefore validates it, is Obama’s adherence to neoliberal, globalist policies couched in the rhetoric of “change” but offering no substantial departure from the ultimate strategies of imperialism, corporate capitalist supremacy, and almost total ignorance (or ignore-ance) of the energy and environmental suicide perpetuated by endless growth.

Some would argue that the United States government is somewhat like a sophisticated 747 airliner, the controls of which cannot simply be turned over to individuals who have no knowledge of flying but must be steered by experts who have only earned such a title by way of their expertise as former airline pilots. Thus, the argument goes, we should not criticize Obama for his appointments, particularly before he even takes office….

Click HERE to read the article in its entirety at Speaking Truth to Power….

AN INTERVIEW WITH GARY CORSERI BY LLOYD ROWSEY  Print This Post

12/3/08

(INTRO: Gary’s Biography: “Revolution without the Arts is meaningless,” writes Gary Corseri, whose articles, poems, stories and plays have appeared in/at The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook, The Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Japan Times, Georgia Review and hundreds of periodicals and websites worldwide. His dramas have been presented on PBS-Atlanta and in five states, and he has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Dr. Corseri has taught in public schools and prisons in the U.S., and in universities in the U.S. and Japan. He has published two collections of poems. His novels, Holy Grail, Holy Grail, and A Fine Excess, as well as the Manifestation anthology he edited, may be ordered at Borders, etc. He is also the senior arts and culture editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online and can be contacted at Gary_Corseri@comcast.net.

Lloyd’s Biography: A graduate of Stanford Law School, Lloyd Rowsey worked for the U.S. Forest Service for 23 years. His poems and articles have appeared at OpEdNews and elsewhere. He can be contacted at lloydrowsey@hotmail.com.)

Question by LR: Gary Corseri, I’m familiar with your writings – some of which are prose-poems - at several notable websites, and from them and from our personal emails, I know that you are a radical, a political activist, an internationalist, and a poet of considerable achievements.

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By Adam Engel  Print This Post

11/30/08

The only way outta town tonight is Santa Claus. Kris Kringle. The Man in the Red Suit.

Couldn’t think anything but bad thoughts Sunday when I heard it in the other room: “Santa Clause is Coming To Town.” Clay-mation or stop-action-mation or however they made those cool Christmas specials featuring lights and snow and joyous elfin jesters back in the day.

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By Gary Corseri  Print This Post

11/30/08

“Our lives flow from our beliefs, and our beliefs are conditioned by our daily actions. As we act, so we build our character and so we become.”
*
“Because of the industrialization of food production, we eat artificially colored, flavored, refined, processed, irradiated, engineered, and chemical-laden products that confirm we will eat virtually anything and everything.”
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“In a herding culture, nothing is more subversive to the established order of exploitation and privilege than consciously refusing to participate in buying and eating the animal foods that define the culture.”
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“To meditate for world peace, to pray for a better world, and to work for social justice and environmental protection while continuing to purchase the flesh, milk, and eggs of horribly abused animals exposes a disconnect that is so fundamental that it renders our efforts absurd, hypocritical, and doomed to certain failure.”

– from Will Tuttle’s World Peace Diet, Lantern Books, 2005

The holiday season is upon us.

The preposition is apt. We are not in the season, not even in the spirit of the season, but we feel it upon us, like a nightmare chimera. Many feel oppressed and depressed by it. We struggle for more light.

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By Steven Jonas  Print This Post

11/29/08

Simulposted with Buzzflash

It is often said that the United States “has no energy policy,” that we “need to develop one as quickly as possible,” and that it should be based on alternate fuels and more importantly, alternative and renewable energy sources. The first part is true. The second should read “we need to develop a new one.” The third is of course correct. As we enter an era of debate on and development of a new energy policy, it is very important to understand these facts. If and when we develop a new one, we would not be substituting something for nothing. Rather we would be replacing the current energy policy with another one. Further, the new one would be highly antithetical to the interests (to say nothing of the profits) of the developers and defenders of the old one. They would (and indeed will) constitute a very powerful enemy of change. It is impossible to estimate just how far they will go in defending their interests. But these folks have fought dirty in the past and there is no reason to believe that they will change their stripes anytime soon. However, no old policy can be changed to a new one if one does not clearly understand just what the present one is.

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Simone de Beauvoir et Jean-Paul Sartre au Café de Flore

By Gaither Stewart  Print This Post

11/29/08

(Paris) It is useless and counterproductive to even attempt to debunk Parisian cafés and café culture. Anyway I am the last to desire to try. Whether revisionists and debunkers approve or not, the Café de Flore on Boulevard Saint Germain is a living institution. Its atmosphere and clientele are forever in change, but not its décor. Since it was founded in 1870 it has existed as a café and second home for writers, artists and intellectuals of the likes of Apollinaire, Camus, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and frequented by Hemingway and even Truman Capote. In the 1920s and 30s, the meeting place of the Right, after World War II for the Left. Forming a triangle with the famous but touristy Deux Magots (today “out” and taboo for the Parisian intelligentsia) and the Brasserie Lipp just across the street, the Flore has its own particular history, always linked with Paris, culture and political ideas.

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(Four Thanksgiving Day Vignettes)

By David Irving  Print This Post

11/27/08

I

The Hunter

Among twenty snowy mountains the only thing the hunter saw in the early morning light from behind his blind was a deer moving at the edge of the woods. The young doe lifted her head and sniffed the crisp air just as the 160 grain bullet tore into the flesh of her left hip and shattered the bone there. A whine cut the air as the doe leaped in agony. Adrenalin poured through her system, fear coated her eyes, a gush of red erupted onto the snow at her feet.

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