Pentagon Preps for Cruise Missile Attack on Syria

CBS


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How the Elite Carve Up The World

James Corbett

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Obama UN Ambassador Tries To Claim Protests Had Nothing To Do With Obama Policies

Youtube

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Watch This Only if You Can Handle the Truth

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This is Your Murderous War Policy on Blow(back): Any Questions?

Activist Post

For those still confused about what the term "blowback" means in regards to America's despicable foreign policy of preemptive war, violent regime change, and sponsorship of terrorist groups to do their dirty work, perhaps the two images below can clarify what many peace activists have been warning about for some time.

NATO cheered Gaddafi being murdered and dragged through the streets
by terrorist rebels sponsored by the West.

U.S. To Start Carving Up Afghanistan's Vast Resources

Wikimedia Commons

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

In yet another move that could be seen coming from a mile away by even the most casual observer, a recently released statement from the Department of Defense is announcing that U.S. agencies are now “aiding” Afghanistan to locate and pinpoint the nation’s mineral wealth.

This “treasure mapping” of Afghanistan is being conducted in anticipation of the opening of the bidding process for private companies who are no doubt salivating as they wait in the wings for their opportunity to gobble up the natural wealth of the impoverished and war-torn nation and, subsequently, turn it into massive profits.

Indian family resists Mumbai's 'Trump Tower'

Mumbai is India's economic and financial capital
© AFP/File Indranil Mukherjee

AFP


MUMBAI (AFP) - An Indian family is refusing to budge from their home in Mumbai to make way for a new luxury apartment block being built by billionaire US property tycoon Donald Trump, a city newspaper said on Friday.


The Panvalkar family say they will not move from their first-floor flat in a building earmarked for demolition to make way for the tower block, claiming that Trump's local partner has refused to give them alternative accommodation.


Property firm Rohan Lifescapes denied the allegations, insisting that they had offered to relocate the family until the new complex was complete, at which time they would get an apartment in the block, the Mumbai Mirror reported.

A Firestorm On The Eastern Horizon

Dees Illustration

Brandon Smith
Alt-Market

The Middle East is and always has been an incredible waste of time, energy, capital, and of course, human lives. Every civilization that has attempted to tame and corral the region has met with resounding frustration and defeat. Every empire that moves to extend its borders around its existing cultures has withered under the strain of constant war and revolution. Long before petroleum became a sought after commodity and long after its free flow was established, the Middle East has been used as a fulcrum point for turning nations and worlds inside out. One might begin to wonder where the West’s mindless obsession with the place actually comes from...

From crusades for the holy land, to crusades for oil, to crusades for “WMD’s” and the “downtrodden masses”; we have been regaled for centuries by governments and elitists with elaborate rationalizations for indefinite war within the cradle of civilization. Our government in particular has seen fit to topple dictatorships, install new dictatorships, embroil our troops in the quagmire of nation building, instigate social instability and civil unrest, fund terrorist organizations, elevate madmen, and then brandish them like weapons to frighten the American public into relinquishing their civil liberties. Every decade, and every new layer of conflict, brings the U.S. closer to the breaking point, and closer to bankruptcy.

Peter Van Buren, How Not to Withdraw from Iraq

The Fall of Baghdad - Wiki Image

Peter Van Buren
TomDispatch

Iraq?  Where’s that?  Most Americans no longer seem to know and evidently could care less, but don’t tell that to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, various key military figures and Washington officials, or some of the neocons, warrior-pundits, and liberal war-fighters circling them. They continue to relentlessly promote Iraq as a mission-never-accomplished-but-never-to-be-ended experience.  Somehow, two decades after our Iraq wars began, they still can’t get enough of them.  Learning curve?  Don't even think about it.  It’s as if they’re trapped in that old Thomas Wolfe novel, You Can’t Go Home Again.

For more than a year now, a crew of lobbyists eager to abrogate the withdrawal agreement the Bush administration negotiated with the Iraqis have been dropping the broadest of hints.  Should the Iraqis ask, they say, the U.S. military must stay in that country (whatever war-ending pledgesPresident Obama might once have made).  General Martin Dempsey, the newly appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is typical.  Only weeks before the president picked him, he reaffirmed his support for “keeping American troops in Iraq beyond December if requested by Iraqi leaders.”  And when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki nonetheless continued to insist on sticking to an end of 2011 withdrawal date for all U.S. troops (and assumedly for emptying those monster military bases the Pentagon sank billions of dollars into), top Washington officials began pleading, wheedling, and undoubtedly pressuring him in all sorts of ways to change his mind.  Now, he’s provisionally done so.

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Libyan rebel group sells first oil to U.S.

Dees Illustration

Jamie Crawford
CNN

Washington (CNN) -- The rebel government in control of the eastern part of Libya has made its first sale of oil from territory it controls, the State Department confirmed Wednesday.

Tesoro, a U.S. oil refiner, entered into a deal May 25 with the Transitional National Council based in Benghazi, Libya for 1.2 million barrels of Libyan crude oil, the State Department said in a written statement. The shipment was scheduled to arrive aboard the MT Equator, a Liberian-flagged tanker, at the Single Point Mooring in Hawaii on Wednesday. The dollar value of the deal is not known.

U.S. support for additional oil sales with the TNC will continue as a means to support additional revenue streams for the Libyan people, the statement said.

The sale was made possible following an April announcement by the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department that established a new licensing policy with Libya. That action was taken to ease barriers to certain oil related transactions with the TNC, in place because of wider U.S. sanctions on Libya.

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NATO-led coalition to plan post-Kadhafi Libya: US officials

© AFP/File Mahmud Turkia

AFP

ABU DHABI (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday for talks with European and Arab partners on planning for a democratic Libya without Moamer Kadhafi, aides said.

The talks in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi on Thursday come after President Barack Obama said NATO's mission in Libya was forging "inexorable" advances that meant it was only a matter of time before Kadhafi's departure.

The meeting will be the third International Contact Group event since the organisation was launched in Qatar two months ago.

Hip-Hop Star Lupe Fiasco calls Obama/US "The Biggest Terrorist" (Video)

Activist Post

CBS interviewed hip-hop star and activist, Lupe Fiasco, where he called Obama and the U.S. government the "biggest terrorist.":

"In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama, and the United States of America...I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's actually causing the other forms of terrorism. You know, the root cause of terrorism is the stuff that the U.S. government allows to happen, and the foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it's easy for us because it's just some oil." -- Lupe Fiasco

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Difficult to put timetable on Kadhafi endgame: US Mullen

US Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen
© AFP/POOL Asmaa Waguih

AFP

CAIRO (AFP) - The top US uniformed commander Admiral Michael Mullen said Wednesday that it is difficult to say how long it will take for Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi to quit office even though he "has to leave".

"It's the US position that Kadhafi has to leave and it is a challenge for anybody to put a timetable to that," the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff told a news conference on a visit to Cairo.

He was responding to a question on whether NATO would end its campaign with Kadhafi staying in power.

India approves $4bn Boeing military deal

© AFP/File Pierre Verdy

AFP

NEW DELHI (AFP) - India on Monday cleared a more than $4.0-billion deal to buy military transport planes from Boeing in the biggest ever defence deal between New Delhi and an American firm, officials said.

The agreement for the C-17 Globemaster III planes, used for transporting heavy equipment, was cleared at a meeting of the government's cabinet committee on security affairs, a senior government official said.

The Indian defence ministry declined to comment but the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the cabinet gave its clearance to buy 10 C-17 aircraft.

War is the new normal

“On an average day, eighteen veterans of our nation’s armed forces take their own lives..."

Bill Boyarsky

Afghanistan - Wiki Image

TruthDig

Remember the war, the one in Afghanistan? The recent Memorial Day weekend forced the news media to briefly focus on it. But otherwise the war and its heavy toll have faded from our national consciousness, leaving President Barack Obama free to continue the combat without much pressure to get out.

Just how forgotten the war has become is revealed in the latest news coverage report of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The project gives its findings in a nonjudgmental, just-the-facts manner, no how maddening they are. The Afghanistan War didn’t make the top five stories covered in newspapers, online or on cable and network television for the period May 16-May 22.

I wish Pew would go a step farther in these monthly reports. I’d like a few paragraphs on the harm being done to the United States by the longest war in our history, both to the country as a whole and to the women and men fighting it.

The Heavy Cost of the Bush-Obama Murder Rampage

Dees Illustration

Anthony Gregory
Lew Rockwell

In every election cycle, the politicians love to pretend there is a difference among them on the foreign policy questions. Yet on these issues of unsurpassed importance, we see the Democrats and Republicans are all part of the same bloodthirsty gang.

On the superficial level of presidential politics, Obama and Bush appeared light-years apart. They play opposites in the DC-approved official culture war between those who pretend to be genuine red-blooded Americans of the heartland and those who feign an understanding of the beleaguered urban minorities and oppressed underclass, when in truth both perfectly embody the same Wall Street-Pentagon-friendly power elite. This is most clearly seen in their virtually identical approach toward empire.

Assad must lead transition, or move aside: Obama

Syrian soldiers on patrol
© AFP Joseph Eid

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must lead a political transition or "get out of the way" US President Barack Obama said Thursday in a major speech on the revolutions sweeping the Arab world.

"President Assad now has a choice. He can lead that transition or get out of the way. The Syrian government must stop shooting demonstrators and allow peaceful protests," Obama said.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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Veteran U.S. Diplomat: We Are Becoming the USSR

Chas Freeman

Mark Thompson
TIME Magazine

Chas Freeman was President Nixon's interpreter during Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972. Now, nearly 40 years later, after an impressive diplomatic and defense career, he's interpreting China for the rest of us.
Last week he said:

The balance of prestige, if not yet the balance of power, between the United States and China has shifted...In some disturbing ways, Sino-American competition is beginning to parallel the contest between us and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. This time, however, the United States is in the fiscally precarious position of the USSR, while China plays the economically robust role we once did.

Freeman has long been a global agent provocateur. His outspoken views, especially on the Middle East and China, doomed President Obama's nomination of him two years ago to serve as head of the National Intelligence Council. But he also tends to be enlightening. During his talk last week, he ruminated on a key point about the U.S. Navy's presence in the western Pacific: why shouldn't Beijing be ticked off at us for loitering in their neighborhood?

The bad news:

China has been patient for four decades, but it is now actively pondering how best to remove the United States from what is – from its point of view – our very unhelpful residual military role in cross-Strait relations so that Beijing's negotiators can settle the Taiwan issue with their counterparts in Taipei. That, I take it, is a principal focus of the national review of policy toward the United States that China is reportedly poised to launch. Americans cannot safely assume that China's recent objections to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan or other military actions on our part are pro forma or “just more of the same.” It's at least as likely that we will soon once again confront the necessity to choose between the self-imposed shackles of longstanding policy and the imperatives of our long-term strategic interests.

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US tells Syria's Assad to lead transition or leave

Assad said the unrest was coming to an end
© AFP/SANA

AFP

DAMASCUS (AFP) - The United States told Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday to lead a transition or step down and slapped him with sanctions in its latest effort to press him to end deadly violence against his people.

The news came as Syrian forces were accused of killing at least eight people in a besieged border town and as Assad said the two-month-old revolt against had been mishandled by the authorities but was now drawing to a close.

US President Barack Obama hit Assad and six top aides with sanctions to "increase pressure on the government of Syria to end its use of violence and begin transitioning to a democratic system that ensures the universal rights of the Syrian people," said an executive order.

US, Europe warn Syria of further steps within days

A Syrian family sits at a school in
 the northern town of Bireh
© AFP/File Anwar Amro

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States and the European Union (EU) warned here Tuesday that they will within days take further punitive steps against Syria over its deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

The warning came as diplomats in Brussels told AFP that EU ambassadors were due to decide Tuesday whether to add President Bashar al-Assad's name to a list of Syrian officials targeted by a travel ban and assets freeze.

In her talks in Washington with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the pair had expressed their "serious concern" about the violent crackdown in Syria.