Category: Thought

“U.S. Soldiers Accused of Proselytizing in Afghanistan”?¹

“Al Jazeera broadcast footage on Monday that showed troops apparently preparing to convert Afghans to their faith. […] The video, shot about a year ago, appeared to show military chaplains stationed in the US air base at Bagram discussing how to distribute copies of the Bible printed in the country’s main Pashto and Dari languages…”²

Here’s the kicker. When Greg Julian, a US colonel in Afghanistan, was questioned on such matters by Al Jazeera, he said they [as in Al Jazeera] were “irresponsible and inappropriate”?

Continue reading ‘Proselytizing in Afghanistan’?

Yesterday on Democracy Now‘s broadcast, the last bit of the show, Historian Alfred McCoy: Obama Reluctance on Bush Prosecutions Affirms Culture of Impunity, was so very interesting;

“We’re at a critical moment in the debate about torture. We’re at the exact moment historically we’ve been at six times over the past forty years. What’s happened since really 1970, right up to the present, because we’ve been engaged in torture continuously throughout this entire period, is that Congress and the press will conduct a major exposé of torture; the public will be momentarily aroused; there will be no sustained investigation, no prosecution, no penalty; the practice will continue. […] So I think what’s fairly certain to say, that if the past teaches us anything, that unless there is serious prosecution and something beyond simply a legislative investigation, something more binding, something more permanent, that within five or six years, we’ll be faced with another major torture scandal just like this one, except it will be worse, because the world will remember this exposé. They’ll think that we tried to correct, and we didn’t correct, and they’ll realize that this is in fact American state policy, that torture is part of the apparatus of American power.”

While many aspects of the conversation–which you really should see–were extremely interesting, this was, by far, the most telling about a current state of affairs;

Continue reading ‘Psychopaths Run the World’

With well enough responsibility (which will never get owned) to go around concerning the current “Swine Flu” (I’ll call it what it is, thanks) epidemic, I was directed to an article today, that cited yet one more cause for the outbreak;

“Welcome to the aftermath of “free trade.” […] [I]f you start to feel dizzy, or a flush with fever, or other symptoms begin to molest you or your children, remember this: The real name of this infirmity is “The NAFTA Flu,” the first of what may well emerge, as many new illnesses to emerge internationally, as the direct result of “free trade” agreements that allow companies like Smithfield Farms to escape health, safety and environmental laws.”

So right along side of the intensive animal agriculture, responsible for much (read: virtually all) of the animal flesh and reproductive secretions humans consume, it would seem we have NAFTA to thank as well…

It would seem today marks Barack Obama’s one-hundredth day in office. And with such a mile-stone reached came the warranted, yet slightly misguided, review of all he has accomplished by the media. Fair enough. But the emphasis has been unduly placed on where he differs from Bush, as opposed to his reckless similarities;

“In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama.”

“Change we can believe in?” John Pilger‘s not so sure and argues The Mad Men Did Well, in these first 100 days. Interesting…