Lest We Forget

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by Anwaar Hussain

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As November 2007 draws to a close, it will be full three years since American forces razed the Iraqi city of Fallujah to ground. It was in November 2004 that George Bush’s forces played havoc with that city and its unfortunate inhabitants in the name of God. While the American media chose to remain blind to the utter horror of it all, busy as it was with keeping a close watch over the life and death of Terri Schindler Schiavo, Dr. Hafidh al-Dulaimi, the head of “the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah citizens” reported the destruction that American troops inflicted on Fallujah.

According to the report, there were some 7000 totally destroyed, or nearly totally destroyed, homes in all districts of Fallujah. 8400 stores, workshops, clinics, warehouses, etc. were completely destroyed. 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries were demolished. 59 kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools and technical colleges were flattened. 13 government buildings leveled. Four libraries, that housed thousands of ancient Islamic manuscripts and books, were gutted completely. The number of human beings slaughtered in those buildings, of course, is any body’s guess.

Here once again is a reprint of the article that was one of the first to report the atrocities to the truth seekers in America, and to the world at large, amid a chorus of applause, accusations and denials. Lest we forget.

Anwaar Hussain Read more



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CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces

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By James Petras

CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces

On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007.

The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled ‘Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer’ and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym ‘HUMINT’ (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA’s polls concede that 57 per cent of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60 per cent abstention.

The US operatives emphasized their capacity to recruit former Chavez supporters among the social democrats (PODEMOS) and the former Minister of Defense Baduel, claiming to have reduced the ‘yes’ vote by 6 per cent from its original margin. Nevertheless the Embassy operatives concede that they have reached their ceiling, recognizing they cannot defeat the amendments via the electoral route. Read more



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Moral Primitivism Anyone? A Satirical Examination of an Apologia for Industrialized Torture

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“Again, if PETA is putting something out, I will always have my doubts - they see things one way and one way only. Theirs. In many ways the activists in this country are terrorists of a kind….” [Excerpt from an email written by a heavily indoctrinated and reactionary US American]

By Jason Miller

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For a year now I have been an ethical vegetarian. Last Thanksgiving, I made what I thought was an enlightened moral decision to stop eating meat and to severely restrict my egg and dairy consumption. However, an email recently hit my inbox that presents such a powerful argument justifying the wanton torture and slaughter of animals (so we can please our palates) that my moral sensibilities and capacity to reason have been utterly disarmed. Signed with a cryptic “JC,” this missive pummeled me with points I had not even considered when I made what I now rightly view as my ridiculous decision to go “meatless.”

In fact, rarely a day goes by that I don’t catch scent of the pungent aroma of the famous Kansas City barbeque I still crave-one can barely travel a mile or two in KC without finding oneself in olfactory range of restaurants that prepare extraordinarily delicious servings of non-human animal flesh. I fully admit that I miss devouring tender, succulent sauce-drenched ribs, burnt ends, sliced beef, brisket….As I write this, I’m salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs tethered to the Cathedral Tower in Limerick on a Sunday morning…. Read more



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Death and Resurrection of the US Dollar

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A view from Argentina 

A Review Article by Adrian Salbuchi (*)

Note: This article was published by Global Research (www.globalresearch.ca) on 15-Oct-2006 and distributed by various web sites, including www.scoop.co.nz. However, since it was originally written in June 2005, much has occurred. Following is its most recently updated version.

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Analysts the world over are recognizing the early warning signs of a gathering storm regarding the strength of the international financial system in general, and the stability of the United States Dollar, in particular.  This brief paper provides an alternative view on this impending crisis, written from the viewpoint of an Argentinian analyst whose country has undergone recurrent monetary and financial crises over the past forty years, albeit on a domestic rather than an international scale. 

Argentina has experienced recurrent banking system collapses, inflation, hyperinflation, sovereign debt defaults, stock market crashes and just about anything else you may care to imagine in terms of financial and monetary crises.  Chronic inflation was so bad that since 1970 the Argentine currency - the Peso - was revamped four times and had to have a total of 13 zeroes knocked off its nominal value, in order to cope with inflation; the result being that One Peso which today will just barely buy you a bus ride in Buenos Aires City, is equivalent to 10.000.000.000.000 pesos from 1970, which at that time would have allowed you to purchase the entire country and left some change in your pocket.

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Institutionalized Glorification of our Greed and Gluttony: Thanksgiving Reflections of an Anti-Capitalist

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By Jason Miller

Gluttony and greed kill more than the sword.

Italian proverb

Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving.

Charles Lamb, 1821

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Another propaganda-driven greed-fest has nearly passed in the land of the corporatized and the home of the subservient. Obedient little wage slaves and consumers that most of us are (to varying degrees of course), we have once again dutifully greased the wheels of the monstrous capitalist machine and made our proper sacrifices at the altar of Mammon. Between our voracious inhalation of all manner of edibles to our obscene spree of rapacious spending using money eagerly fronted by the usurious kings of finance capital, Thanksgiving and Black Friday are celebratory days indeed for the moneyed elite comprising the allegedly non-existent ruling class in our “egalitarian” and “democratic” nation.

I celebrated Thanksgiving. However, I wasn’t bowing my head and expressing gratitude to the Calvinist God in which I am “supposed to” believe for the things for which I “should” be grateful. There was an interesting duality to my day as I contemplated that for which I feel a deep ingratitude and celebrated that which sparks my feelings of sincere gratitude. Read more



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Venezuela: Between Ballots and Bullets

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By James Petras* - November 2007

Chávez I am with you

Introduction
Venezuela’s democratically elected President Chavez faces the most serious threat since the April 11, 2002 military coup.

Picture: The poster reads “Chávez I am with you”.

Violent street demonstrations by privileged middle and upper middle class university students have led to major street battles in and around the center of Caracas. More seriously, the former Minister of Defense, General Raul Isaias Baduel, who resigned in July, has made explicit calls for a military coup in a November 5th press conference which he convoked exclusively for the right and far-right mass media and political parties, while striking a posture as an ‘individual’ dissident.

The entire international and local private mass media has played up Baduel’s speeches, press conferences along with fabricated accounts of the oppositionist student rampages, presenting them as peaceful protests for democratic rights against the government referendum scheduled for December 2, 2007.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC News and the Washington Post have all primed their readers for years with stories of President Chavez’ ‘authoritarianism’. Faced with constitutional reforms which strengthen the prospects for far-reaching political-social democratization, the US, European and Latin American media have cast pro-coup ex-military officials as ‘democratic dissidents’, former Chavez supporters disillusioned with his resort to ‘dictatorial’ powers in the run-up to and beyond the December 2, 2007 vote in the referendum on constitutional reform. Not a single major newspaper has mentioned the democratic core of the proposed reforms - the devolution of public spending and decision to local neighborhood and community councils. Once again as in Chile in 1973, the US mass media is complicit in an attempt to destroy a Latin American democracy. Read more



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Charlatans, humbugs and a few heroes

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By Ayaz Amir

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OUR tin-clad Generalissimo may not be blessed in his own talent or powers (if he were he wouldn’t be in the mess he is in) but he sure is blessed in the humbugs masquerading as the people’s champion.

With a stellar cast that includes Benazir Bhutto, one thing in the morning and another in the evening, and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the deadliest secret weapon in Musharraf’s arsenal, it is no wonder the opposition parties are in such a state of confusion.

But if they are not to miss the bus altogether they better make up their minds quickly. The Generalissimo, political genius that he is, has put himself in a desperate hole and the only way he can get out is if the opposition parties are foolish enough to fall into the trap of his Jan 8 election. Read more



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The Bush Administration Conquers Washington

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Tomgram: John Brown, Invading Washington

bush_war_passion.jpg Over the last seven years, it’s often been said that George W. Bush exists in a bubble. When it comes to the cast of characters in his administration — and the Washington Consensus generally — it turns out he isn’t alone. The other night I watched Harvard academic Joseph Nye and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage discuss the crisis in Pakistan with talk-show host Charlie Rose. The two of them had just finished co-chairing a Center for Strategic and International Studies commission that produced a report, clearly meant for the next administration, on wielding American “smart power” in the world.

Nye is an exceedingly conventional American internationalist; Armitage is a former “Vulcan” who, in the first years of the Bush administration, though Colin Powell’s deputy at the State Department, was close to the neocons of the Pentagon, but may now be repositioning himself for a Democratic administration. They could be said to represent the heartland of the present Washington Consensus. Read more



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Lincoln Was Wrong

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The Case Of Fooling Most Of The People, Most Of The Time

By John Chuckman

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This year marks the forty-fourth anniversary of John Kennedy’s assassination. What is most remarkable about this is the stunningly simple fact that, despite innumerable books and several official investigations, we still do not know what happened in 1963.

Not understanding what happened is no mere curiosity of history. It tells us something profound about the nature of government in America today, all of it running against the received notion of a free and open society.

I might not say that were the assassination a simple, straightforward matter that had occurred with few witnesses, but it was an event with many witnesses, many of whom were ignored by the Warren Commission with some of the most credible discounted. And it was anything but simple, although the conclusions of the Warren Commission are just that, simple.

At least some of the key parties involved - Lee Oswald, Jack Ruby, and David Ferrie, for example - are subjects of voluminous government records about their bizarre or criminal activities, and forty-four years later, parts of these essential records remain secret. Read more



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The White Man Unburdened

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TS Admin : Norman Mailer died November 10th 2007. His following essay was published in July 2003 issue of The New York Review of Books.

By Norman Mailer

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The stage, however, remains occupied. The question posed at curtain-rise has not been answered. Why did we go to war? If no real weapons of mass destruction are found, the question will keen in pitch. Or, if some weapons are uncovered in Iraq, it is likely that even more have been moved to new hiding places beyond the Iraqi border. Should horrific events take place, we can count on a predictable response: “Good, honest, innocent Americans died today because of evil al-Qaeda terrorists.” Yes, we will hear the President’s voice before he even utters such words. (For those of us who are not happy with George W. Bush, we may as well recognize that living with him in the Oval Office is like being married to a mate who always says exactly what you know in advance he or she is going to say, which helps to account for why more than half of America now appears to love him.) Read more



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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
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