The Longest War

The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda
by Peter L. Bergen
Free Press, New York, 2011

Writing history is a matter of placing points in time as bookends or markers for significant events that have occurred around the world. Generally this is done by the winners of the particular struggles that create the events of history in order to highlight their own prowess and beneficence as compared to the other parties backwardness and ignorance.

Peter Bergen, representing the U.S. as putative winner of the war on terror, bookends the "war on terror" with the dates spanning Sept 11, 2001 to the extra-judicial assassination of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. The latter date is not written in stone yet, as Bergen's last statement is "In 2011, the Longest War, finally, began to wind down." I will return to that final statement later, partly because of the convenient name change from the "war on terror" and partly because of the "winding down" aspect.

Render unto Rove the things that are rogue, and unto God the things that are God’s

The original notice that Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush, would be speaking at Cedarville University in Ohio came from Warcriminalswatch.org. What piqued my interest is how a Bible-based fundamentalist university would invite the country's most famous Machiavellian to speak on Constitution Day.

As a frequent critic of Rove, my writings have argued that he's not only a war criminal as Bush's advisor during the illegal Iraq War, but also a violator of human rights on the issue of torture for supporting Bush's torture policies. Also, I've argued that he's a criminal racketeer because of his illegal activities regarding the Florida presidential election in 2000 and the Ohio election in 2004.

To Cedarville University's credit, the Alpha Sigmas invited me to speak prior to Rove's visit and outline my case against him. The 60 or so people who filled the lecture room applauded politely at the beginning, and even at the end, but that was nothing compared to the standing ovation Rove would get in the Jeremiah Chapel during his introduction and conclusion.

Mastercard's dolphin cruelty

Hotel room at a Singapore resort: $253.
Discounted tickets to watch wild dolphins suffer in captivity: Priceless.
Mastercard is offering discounted tickets to the infamous Resorts World Sentosa, a resort in Singapore that recently kidnapped 27 wild dolphins for an exhibit. Two of those dolphins have already died, and the 25 other dolphins are being held in brutal conditions until construction of the exhibit is complete. The surviving dolphins' risks of illness and death increase with each day of captivity.

100,000 Change.org members have already called on Resorts World Sentosa to release its captive dolphins. If Mastercard cancels its ticket discount promotion, it will put big financial pressure on the resort to finally set the dolphins free.

Please sign dolphin activist Barbara Napoles's petition on Change.org calling for Mastercard to stop offering discounted tickets to Resorts World Sentosa.

Statistics for captive dolphins are bleak. While dolphins in the wild usually live for 45 years, more than half of all captured dolphins die within their first two years of captivity.

If I went hiking

Leonard Peltier moved again

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Leonard Peltier has been moved from Oklahoma City to the U.S. Penitentiary at Coleman, Florida.

The United States Penitentiary I in Coleman is a high security facility located in central Florida approximately 50 miles northwest of Orlando, 60 miles northeast of Tampa, and 35 miles south of Ocala.

LEONARD PELTIER #89637-132
USP COLEMAN I
U.S. PENITENTIARY
P.O. BOX 1033
COLEMAN, FL 33521

This is nearly 2,000 miles from Leonard's Nation, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, in North Dakota! Tell the Federal Bureau of Prisons that the only acceptable transfer is one to a medium security facility in close proximity to (within a 500-mile radius of) his family and Nation. Ideally, Leonard should be moved to the medium security facility at Oxford, WI.

Dr. Thomas Kane, Acting Director
Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)
320 1st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20534
Phone: (202) 307-3250 (Director); (202) 307-3198 (Switchboard)
Fax: (202) 514-6620

Launched into cyberspace by the

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg endorses Norman Solomon for Congress: Will join the candidate on campaign trail

Daniel Ellsberg, the renowned advocate for peace and the First Amendment who leaked the historic Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War, endorsed congressional candidate Norman Solomon on Thursday. Ellsberg will join the independent progressive Democrat on the campaign trail next week.

Once referred to by President Nixon’s adviser Henry Kissinger as “the most dangerous man in America,” Ellsberg is an enthusiastic supporter of Norman Solomon for Congress. The famed whistleblower will speak at a house-party fundraiser for the Solomon campaign in Marin County on Sept. 22, an event bringing together two generations of antiwar leaders.

Solomon is running for Congress in the new coastal district that stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border.

For details on scheduled campaign events, please click here.

On Thursday, Ellsberg issued the following statement in support of Solomon for Congress:

The theology of armageddon

The woo-woo nuttiness of it all defies the imagination, beginning with the idea of a course in “Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare” at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Nuclear ethics? Does that mean no nuclear weapons should ever be used to promote sexual harassment?

Well actually, turns out the point of the mandatory course recently canceled by the Air Force after officers of numerous faiths complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation about it and TruthOut published an exposé in July — was to give officers in the first week of missile-launch training a Bible-verse-studded indoctrination in faux-Just War Theory, cynically known in the ranks as the “Jesus Loves Nukes” training.

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war.”

Five years after U.S. embassy wrongly predicted no coup

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Marking the fifth anniversary of a disastrous coup by Thailand's U.S.-trained military, thousands of Red Shirts blocked streets on Sunday (September 18), warning against another putsch amid demands to punish the generals and politicians who were in power during anti-coup clashes in 2010 which killed 91 people.

Less than one month before the September 19, 2006 coup, the American Embassy said Army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratkalin was unlikely to stage a putsch, according to a "confidential" cable, "06BANGKOK5148," sent to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, and elsewhere.

"The relative power and influence of the Royal Thai Army (RTA) dwarfs the other services," said the cable, dated Aug. 23, 2006, which was recently published by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.

"As such, the Royal Thai Army Commander, Gen. Sonthi, traditionally wields more real power than the Supreme Commander," it said, describing the general who led the coup, and then shredded the 1997 constitution while setting up a repressive junta.

The theft of 2012

That was nuthin': In 2000, the Palast investigations team uncovered the purge of 58,000 legal Florida voters, most of them African-Americans, by Katherine Harris.

In 2004, we uncovered the "caging lists" which 're-elected' George Bush.

That was nuthin' too ... compared to the theft of 2012 that is now in the making.

Major TV and print outlets are finally recognizing that the Palast team has the expertise, the cojones and the nose to sniff out mass vote bending.

We are planning our strategy right now for the hard-core, dig deep, multi-state research that we need to get the details, the documents and the proof of the fix of 2012.

So, for the first time in this entire year, I am asking—frankly, I'm pleading—for your financial support to get this investigation going right now.

You've convinced me...Now go out and make me do it.

Ellen Baumgarter

The story of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt saying that during a meeting with activists in the 1930s is apocryphal, but Ellen Baumgartner is a local activist who is holding on to the "make-me-do-it" method for getting Obama to deliver at least some of the changes he promised during his campaign in '08. A couple of weeks after being jailed for civil disobedience in front of the White House during protests against the Keystone XL tars sands pipeline, Baumgartner said she supports Obama's reelection.

"I believe in Obama. I think he has had tremendous challenges. But he has done a number of good things. People are expecting too much of him, because he has inherited a mess. Now, with the Congress being so antagonistic and determined to not give him anything that he wants, it's very discouraging. However, if the choice is between Obama and a Republican of the ilk we have been seeing, it's Obama hands-down."

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