Foreign Affairs
Israel's Crimes, America's Silence
Wed, 07/01/2009 - 10:46 — Dave CulverThere is now sufficient evidence to charge Israel with war crimes for its actions in Gaza. Why is Obama silent?
John Dugard, The Nation
Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away
Tue, 06/23/2009 - 11:47 — Dave CulverThe fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite.
Chris Hedges, TruthDig
Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell
Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi speaks to supporters at a demonstration in Tehran. AP photo / Ali Zare
Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.
Guns from America fuel Jamaica's gang wars
Mon, 06/22/2009 - 16:10 — Dave CulverAs the Obama administration cracks down on smuggling into Mexico, Jamaicans fear even more firearms will reach the gangs whose turf wars plague the island of 2.8 million people.
Mike Melia, Associated Press
Ships from Miami steam into Jamaica's main harbor loaded with TV sets and blue jeans. But some of the most popular U.S. imports never appear on the manifests: handguns, rifles and bullets that stoke one of the world's highest murder rates.
The volume is much less than the flow of U.S. guns into Mexico that end up in the hands of drug cartels - Jamaican authorities recover fewer than 1,000 firearms a year. But of those whose origin can be traced, 80 percent come from the U.S., Jamaican law enforcement officials have said in interviews with The Associated Press.
And as the Obama administration cracks down on smuggling into Mexico, Jamaicans fear even more firearms will reach the gangs whose turf wars plague the island of 2.8 million people.
Related:
The American Empire Is Bankrupt
Sat, 06/20/2009 - 14:41 — Dave CulverBarack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt.
Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Wikimedia Commons
This week (June 14-20) marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.
Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.