New laws will require schools to teach patriotism and once again elevate the Defense Agency its pre-war status. Students may in fact be graded in patriotism and schools will “cultivate an attitude that respects tradition and culture, that loves the nation and home country.”
The education reform bill triggered controversy, both because of its sensitive content and because of disclosures this week that the government had planted officials posing as ordinary citizens at “town meetings” discussing the measure.
Sounds a lot like how they do things in America then, with fake town hall meetings, superpatriotism and all. All of this of course sounds fairly backward to many European observers, who have in fact learned from past mistakes. Then again, perhaps something good will come of this. With greater nationalism comes a very real possibility of a major fallout between the US and Japan. And with that in mind, any price is worth paying.
This has also been confirmed by Swedish immigration authorities who are now — despite the geographical distance — increasingly swamped by a neverending stream of refugees.
David Duke is allowed on CNN in an attempt to discredit the Holocaust Conference and any serious criticism of Zionism. The result isn’t entirely what Wolf Blitzer was hoping for as he gets his poorly corroborated slogans turned around. Deals with the constant and deliberate misquoting of Ahmadinejad, media bias and Blitzer’s shoddy history which incidentally is just as questionable as that of David Duke — both having been involved with ethnic supremacy, inciting violence and indirectly killing people.
Given recent events, Israel’s continued aggression towards neighbouring states, and its flouting of human rights, conventions and good practice, one could say that patience is pretty much expended at this point. It’s time that we show these bastards that we wont stand for their sickening behavior. The gloves are definitely off.
The Israeli butcher in charge goes to Berlin and seems to admit to nuclear weapons, while conjecturing that Iran is building nuclear weapons and that they can’t be allowed to. When in Italy, Olmert is found out coaching Romano Prodi into being sympathetic to Israel and saying exactly what Olmert wants him to say. Not that any political leader I know of would have the balls to criticise Israel publicly in any serious and meaningful way.
“Please say this?” Olmert asks his nodding counterpart in English.
Prodi then delivered words to that effect. He also endorsed Israel’s vision of remaining a Jewish state, which rules out an influx of Palestinian refugees.
3 commentsDecember 6th, 2006 at 07:51Björn Hallberg
People in the Philippines are increasingly upset with the current arrangement - and they have every right to be. Historical crimes notwithstanding, having the audacity to conspire to spirit away a convicted felon to what would likely be a jail-free life in the US is beyond reprehensible. But certainly in line with what the US has done in the past with regard to crimes committed on foreign soil. The underhanded tactics employed by the US defence team and the abusive assumptions pretty much says it all. Hopefully things will continue to sour between the US and the Philippines and in the end provide the archipelago with true independence and a democracy free of American meddling.
The United States has demanded interim custody of a US marine sentenced to 40 years in jail for raping a Filipina woman, the Philippines foreign department said.
The US embassy in Manila filed a diplomatic note invoking the right of the US military authorities to exercise custody of the marine in keeping with the provisions of the Visiting Forces Agreement between the two countries.
The other three defendants were acquitted on account of the lack of evidence — if anyone believes that — and quickly whisked away to bases in Japan. I can’t wait until these fine young rapists come home to roost.
And also, the VFA notwithstanding, how likely would it be that foreign nationals could get this sort of treatment if they were convicted by a US court? Bloody unlikely that is for sure. I recall a certain Swedish citizen that has languished in an American dungeon (American prisons are to us what Philippine prisons are to Americans I suppose) for 25 years now, despite lack of evidence, due to a misguided plea bargain, local crooked laws and political grandstanding. If anything that has convinced me that Americans deserve nothing less than the same vindictive treatment. There are no mitigating circumstances, no excuses — just cold hard malice and unbending justice.
Say goodbye to the “clash of civilizations” myth. This is perhaps the most important UN report in a decade as it cuts right through the idea that has been nurtured not only by the usual Zionist and US suspects but by certain Islamic leaders as well, exposing the deception that is driving foreign policy and the spiral of violence.
Politics - not religion - lies at the root of a growing divide between Muslim and western societies, according to a report presented to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, yesterday.
An international panel of scholars, politicians and religious leaders warned that cultural stereotypes were turning negotiable disputes into “seemingly intractable identity-based conflicts” and that the clash-of-civilisations theory has obscured “the real nature of the predicament the world is facing”.
In their recommendations the 20-strong panel, which included Nobel peace prize winner Desmond Tutu and former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, suggested steps towards defusing the crisis, including an urgent reinvigoration of the Middle East peace process and initiatives aimed at the young.
Another week and the steady march towards global meltdown continues. The pattern is all too familiar by now.
Israeli artillery shelling kills 19 civilians in Gaza - Supremacist Israel continues to slaughter civilians while the world looks on from the sidelines, indifferent or afraid to offend Israel or the US. With no Jewish settlers left to protect, Gaza is now essentially a free-fire zone where you can take potshots with artillery no less. Even though everyone is well aware of the risks of such military tactics. But few in racist Israel would even consider that Palestinian lives are worth anything (at least not as much as Jewish lives mind you). If they did care one iota they would not have subjected the former tenants to more than half a century of hardship in the first place.
Democats win US House of Representatives and Senate - Democracy at work? Winds of change? Don’t worry, because Pelosi is still a Zionist collaborator. Same shit, different assholes. Bolton most likely will be sent back to whatever slimy pit he came from, but his replacement will surely just be a smoother, more cunningly disguised version of the same old US attitudes. All in all, the best one can hope for is domestic controversies that will paralyze the ability to act, but as noted, even a starved, more covert policy may well do far more damage and sway far more foreign states. After all, the illusion of the good that supposedly is the US is never far away. Critics of the US who herald this as a victory must be as deluded as they are naive.
Outrage at London sting by US spies - “Undercover American agents are staging secret ’sting’ operations in Britain against criminal and terrorist suspects they want to extradite to the US.”
In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President’s ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.
Public Law 109-364, or the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007″ (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a “public emergency” and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.”
President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is “martial law.”
Israel Admits Using Phosphorous Bombs in Lebanon - “Israel has acknowledged for the first time that it attacked Hezbollah targets during the second Lebanon war with phosphorus shells. White phosphorus causes very painful and often lethal chemical burns to those hit by it, and until recently Israel maintained that it only uses such bombs to mark targets or territory.”
We Have Turned Iraq Into the Most Hellish Place on Earth - “This country has been turned by two of the most powerful and civilised nations on Earth into the most hellish place on Earth. Armies claiming to bring democracy and prosperity have brought bloodshed and a misery worse than under the most ruthless modern dictator. This must be the stupidest paradox in modern history. Neither America nor Britain has the guts to rule Iraq properly, yet they lack the guts to leave.”
Time to Go! Inside the Worst Congress Ever - “These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the US parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula - a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.”
Iraqis Were Better Off Under Saddam, Says Former Weapons Inspector - “Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix on Wednesday described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq as a “pure failure” that had left the country worse off than under the dictatorial rule of Saddam Hussein. In unusually harsh comments to Danish newspaper Politiken, the diplomatic Swede said the U.S. government had ended up in a situation in which neither staying nor leaving Iraq were good options.”
German ministers ‘knew about CIA torture cells’ - “The German government is alleged to have received first-hand evidence that the CIA began torturing terrorist suspects at secret prisons in Europe shortly after the September 11 attacks, despite claiming it only knew about such sites through the media. Stern magazine quoted a leaked German intelligence report yesterday which said that only weeks after September 11 2001, two agents and a translator visited a US military prison at the American “Eagle Base” in the Bosnian town of Tuzla, where they saw a torture victim. The German intelligence report said US interrogators at the base had beaten a 70-year-old terrorist suspect with rifle butts and that “his injuries meant that he had to be given 20 stitches to the head wound he sustained”. The report said the American interrogator responsible “appeared to be proud” of his actions.”
Now Europe Targets Bloggers As Terrorists - “Bush administration efforts to infiltrate, misdirect, regulate and pollute the Internet with Neo-Con propaganda, as well as their openly stated agenda to target American bloggers as terrorists, is now being aped by the British government across the pond as well as other major European countries. Home Secretary John Reid met with ministers from the six largest European Union countries and, according to a BBC report, “agreed to work together to make the internet a “more hostile” place for terrorists.” How will they accomplish this? By initiating a crackdown on people who use the Internet to “spread propaganda.” The very website you are now reading would be considered propaganda by these neo-fascists- no matter the fact that the criminal syndicates Bush and Blair front for are the most deceitful progenitors of lurid propaganda since the third reich.”
War in the Dark? - “A new book in Germany is casting light on Israel’s covert program to provoke violence among Muslims in Western Europe and engage in “false flag” operations in order for Western governments to blame Muslim radicals. The book, Der Krieg im Dunkeln (War in the Dark) by Udo Ulfkotte, formerly a correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, provides details of the operations of two Israeli intelligence units — the Metsada, which specializes in sabotage, including “false flag” terrorist attacks and assassinations; and LAP (Lohamah Psichlogit), which engages in psychological warfare.”
1 commentOctober 25th, 2006 at 07:27Björn Hallberg
We knew the number was in the thousands (14,000?), but this latest indication is surely shocking.
I’m at the Center for American Progress, listening to Sid Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald talk about the Imperial Presidency, and one thing is important enough for me to want to live blog. Sid says that Wilkerson, Powell’s old chief of staff, believes that the correct number of victims in secret Bush prisons is 35,000, only %5 of which “may” have to do with terrorism. More than twice what I thought, and hardly any to do with the “war on terror.”
It has been a long year. The author is currently biding his time. Lets just say the journal is on a prolonged and much needed vacation. In the meantime you can be sure that I’m watching you all. I guess that at some point I will get so angry that I will in fact have to write something.
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