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The winner takes all in Afghanistan

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 By M K Bhadrakumar

(source: Asia Times Online)

The Nobel Peace Prize has a tradition. In the entire period from 1901 to 2009, it has never been awarded twice to any of its 97 individual recipients.

United States President Barack Obama is thus unlikely to win a second Nobel. Yet, in an historical perspective, Afghanistan promises to become the first country in which Islamists will have been ushered into power on the wave of America’s newfound smart power.

That too may only be the beginning. "Of course Afghanistan is not an island. There is no solution just within its borders," North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary general Anders

Fogh Rasmussen said at a security conference in Munich last weekend.

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Why Isaraelis must fight against the boycott law

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By Gideon Levy

(source: Haaretz.com)

With the new boycott law the meager Israeli discourse will become even more threadbare due to the silencing laws; this may be the last call to boycott those who are boycotting Israeli democracy.

I have never preached publicly to others to boycott the products of the settlements. Everyone should follow his own conscience. Just as I try to buy blue-and-white Israeli products, I also try not to buy “black”: products with a very black flag flying over them, a flag of injustice and theft. The Boycott Law that was passed this week is causing me to change direction: From now on I will publicly preach to others, too, not to buy black products. Yes, boycott them!

“Yo, brechen!” was the headline above the article by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, which was published in Heint, the organ of his movement in Warsaw, on November 3, 1932. “Yes, break them!” was the headline of the Hebrew translation of the article, which appeared on the front page of Hazit Ha’am on December 2, 1932, less than two months before Adolf Hitler came to power. At the time Jabotinsky called to break the “demand for monopoly and rule” of the Histadrut labor federation in Palestine. This is the time to raise a no less emotional cry: Yes, break it! The demand for monopoly and unbridled rule of the right and the settlers in Israel.

This is a no less fateful cry than Jabotinsky’s. The domination of the settlers and anti-democratic right-wing circles is endangering the country far more than the Histadrut, against which Jabotinsky was fighting, endangered the nascent state.

One doesn’t buy stolen merchandise. Period. We can and must say that out loud, before this disgraceful law was passed and even more so after it was passed.

Read More »Why Isaraelis must fight against the boycott law

Assassinations anyone? cia claims of cancelled campaign are hogwash

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Assassinations Anyone? CIA Claims of Cancelled Campaign are Hogwash
by Eric Margolis

CIA director Leon Panetta just told Congress he cancelled a secret operation to assassinate al-Qaida leaders. The CIA campaign, authorized in 2001, had not yet become operational, claimed Panetta.

I respect Panetta, but his claim is humbug. The U.S. has been trying to kill al-Qaida personnel (real and imagined) since the Clinton administration. These efforts continue under President Barack Obama. Claims by Congress it was never informed are hogwash.

The CIA and Pentagon have been in the assassination business since the early 1950s, using American hit teams or third parties. For example, a CIA-organized attempt to assassinate Lebanon’s leading Shia cleric, Muhammad Fadlallah, using a truck bomb, failed, but killed 83 civilians and wounded 240.

Read More »Assassinations anyone? cia claims of cancelled campaign are hogwash