Tag United States

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Actually Obama, America did seek war in Afghanistan

Dec 11, ’09 9:34 AM

Obama accept­ing his Nobel prize:

… per­haps the most pro­found issue sur­round­ing my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is wind­ing down. The other is a con­flict that Amer­ica did not seek …

Except that Amer­ica did seek armed con­flict with Afgh­anistan.

In Octo­ber of 2001 the Taliban pub­licly offered to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third coun­try, provided the U.S. hal­ted the illegal bomb­ing of Afgh­anistan and pro­duced the neces­sary evid­ence about involve­ment of bin Laden or any of his asso­ci­ates in the 11 Septem­ber attacks. Bush rejec­ted this, put­ting an end to any pos­sib­il­ity of a poten­tially peace­ful, legal res­ol­u­tion to the events of 11 Septem­ber 2001, and opened up the way for the inva­sion and occu­pa­tion of Afgh­anistan, Iraq and the threat of inva­sion of Iran, along with the mil­lions who have lost their lives or had them des­troyed as a result.

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U.S. militarism, oil and global warming

Dec 3, ’09 1:05 PM

A friend just for­war­ded this art­icle from 2007 on mil­it­ar­ism and global warm­ing. Con­sider this:

US mil­it­ar­ism has to be con­sidered under three head­ings: First, the US mil­it­ary is the largest single con­sumer of fossil fuel in the world. Second, the US eco­nomy, the largest national con­sumer of fossil fuel in the world, has shown that its primary mode of main­tain­ing a sup­ply of fossil fuel for itself is through mil­it­ary action (assault, inter­ven­tion, occu­pa­tion of other oil pro­du­cing nations). Third, the US mil­it­ary oper­ates in the interest of a cor­por­ate eco­nomy of which it (the mil­it­ary) is the fore­most sec­tor in the US.

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Peak oil swept under the carpet?

Nov 12, ’09 11:02 PM

Sounds like the U.S. has been play­ing silly bug­gers with oil pro­duc­tion fore­casts.

From a senior fig­ure at the Inter­na­tional Energy Agency, who has now left but is unwill­ing to give his name:

We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situ­ation is really bad.

It’s worth listen­ing to the audio in the above linked art­icle too.

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Jacqui Janes is wrong about why her son is dead

Nov 10, ’09 8:37 PM

Jac­qui Janes believes her son is dead because the war in Afgh­anistan is under-resourced.

He’s not. He’s dead because he was fight­ing an unjust war.

The stated aim of the inva­sion of Afgh­anistan was to find Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al-Qaeda mem­bers. On 14 Octo­ber, 2001, the Taliban pub­licly offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third coun­try, provided the U.S. hal­ted the illegal bomb­ing of Afgh­anistan and pro­duced the neces­sary evid­ence about involve­ment of bin Laden or any of his asso­ci­ates in the 11 Septem­ber attacks.

George Bush junior dis­missed this offer and con­tin­ued with the offens­ive, put­ting an end to any pos­sib­il­ity of a poten­tially peace­ful, legal res­ol­u­tion to the events of 11 Septem­ber 2001.

The United Nations Secur­ity Coun­cil never author­ised the inva­sion of Afgh­anistan and it cer­tainly wasn’t an act of self-defence. It was an act of aggres­sion, the supreme inter­na­tional crime.

Neither George Bush nor Gor­don Brown had to go off to war, but Jac­qui Janes’ son did, and now he’s dead.

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Iran should tell the West to fuck off

Nov 2, ’09 7:37 PM

As part of nego­ti­ations with Iran over nuc­lear fuel Mohamed ElBaradei of the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency recently pro­posed that Iran trans­fer about 70 per­cent of its low-enriched uranium to Rus­sia for fur­ther enrich­ment by the end of this year, then to France for con­ver­sion into fuel plates for med­ical use, effect­ively neg­at­ing its use in alleged poten­tial nuc­lear weapons.

Iran has appar­ently made the per­fectly jus­ti­fi­able sug­ges­tion that rather than send their fuel off, and cross their fin­gers that it comes back, they instead do a dir­ect swap of their low-enriched uranium for fuel plates. This makes even more sense when you real­ise that the U.S. and France have reneged on com­mer­cial deals in the past to sup­ply Iran with nuc­lear fuel.

Accord­ing to this Reu­ters report (typ­ic­ally vague on sources) this sug­ges­tion is “unac­cept­able” to “West­ern diplomats.”

If you wanted evid­ence that these nego­ti­ations are not being car­ried out in good faith then here you have it. What does it mat­ter to the West if a dir­ect swap is made? The only reason it could mat­ter is that peace is not the West’s aim.

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‘We invaded Iraq and all we get is this lousy t-shirt’

Oct 24, ’09 11:40 AM

They invade and lay waste another coun­try, des­troy the lives of mil­lions of Iraqis for gen­er­a­tions to come, all on some trumped up drivel about “weapons of mass destruction.”

Now they’re arguing over the real reason. Oil. It’s not enough that con­trol of Iraq’s crude is being div­vied up amongst the cap­it­al­ists of the world. Thomas Pick­ens — an oil tycoon and polit­ical act­iv­ist who hasn’t served a day in the army him­self — has been arguing a line, and accord­ing to Reu­ters, recently told U.S. con­gress that he thinks U.S. cap­it­al­ists alone are “entitled” to Iraqi crude because “we” spent bil­lions of U.S. taxes and the lives of 5000 U.S. army pawns invad­ing and occupy­ing the country.

Classy.

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The best government money can buy

Oct 2, ’09 6:52 AM

When a gov­ern­ment as deeply cor­rupt as the U.S. retains the label of demo­cracy you really have to won­der if the word still has any meaning.

No Right Turn on how bribery — oth­er­wise known in the U.S. as “cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions” — has turned health care reforms into a fas­cist money-making ven­ture for private insur­ance companies.

Bring­ing this into a New Zea­l­and context:

By rais­ing spend­ing lim­its and start­ing an arms race for dona­tions, National’s elect­oral fin­ance “reforms” risk tak­ing us down this path (with the added bonus of less dis­clos­ure than the US — Amer­ican politi­cians get away with it by shame­less­ness, not secrecy). Don’t let it hap­pen here.

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‘No credible evidence’ of Iranian nuclear weapons

Sep 30, ’09 7:50 PM

‘No cred­ible evid­ence’ of Ira­nian nuc­lear weapons, says UN inspector:

The UN’s chief weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today he had seen “no cred­ible evid­ence” that Iran is devel­op­ing nuc­lear weapons, reject­ing Brit­ish intel­li­gence alleg­a­tions that a weapons pro­gramme has been going on for at least four years.

Any­one sur­prised by this is just a fuck­ing plonker.

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The truth about Amersterdam vs. Bill O’Reilly 2

Sep 7, ’09 7:40 AM

Bill O’Reilly being called out again out on what can only be described as his feeble fact-free attempt to paint Amer­s­ter­dam as a cess­pool of crime and corruption.

You can watch the ori­ginal Bill O’Reilly clip here, and the Roberwter’s first response here.

(via Rus­sell Brown’s Hard News)

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Cheney: an evil person for evil times

Aug 14, ’09 7:19 AM

The Guard­ian: ‘Mem­oirs to reveal Dick Cheney thought Bush had gone soft on war on terror.’

Who knows what dark place we’d all be in if this man had become U.S. President.

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