Stephen Lendman

On August 15, AP reported that Obama gave his "personal assurances of (the) Gulf's safety," saying:

"Beaches all along the Gulf Coast are clean, they are safe, and they are open for business."

He lied.

The same day, Britain's government owned BBC reported:

"Barack Obama has taken a swim in the Gulf of Mexico (to) reassure Americans that the waters are safe despite the recent oil spill."

US corporate media reporters repeated the message, CNN's senior White House correspondent Ed Henry among them, saying "Obama takes (the) plunge, swims in the Gulf (to show it's safe and) open for business."

In fact, area businesses continue to be severely impacted, and the entire region is dangerously unsafe.

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Gilad Atzmon

I guess it shouldn’t take us by surprise that the Israeli flag has become a common feature at the ultra nationalist English Defence League's (EDL) demonstrations and gatherings.

The EDL calls for taking action against the "Islamization of Britain" and “Muslim fundamentalists”. It is a magnet for extremist right-wing activists and is driven by xenophobia and ethno centrism. Recently the organisation gained an ‘important’ addition to its coalition of hatred. It is called the "The EDL Jewish division." According to the Jewish Chronicle “hundreds of (Jewish) followers” joined immediately. Supporters include an ex-Community Security Trust volunteer who claims "a lot of Jewish guys want to get stuck in". Another follower wrote on Facebook "we are all Shayetet 13", the barbarian Israeli Navy commando unit that was directly responsible for the massacre and executions on the Mavi Marmara. It is also notable that this Jewish bloodthirsty ‘patriot’ didn’t say ‘we are all SAS, British Navy or RAF’. He for some reason preferred to affiliate himself with a foreign Navy, a Navy unit that fights Jewish wars rather than so-called British ones.

I guess that the English Defence League's leaders are not aware of the fact that their ‘Jewish Division’ is there to exploit the new organization.

Roberta Moore, a prominent persona within the Jewish Division admitted this week to the Israeli Haaretz that it is “actually the Jewish Division that exploits the EDL.”[*]

As we are trying to recover from the devastating influence of the infamous ‘Labour friends of Israel’ and while becoming accustomed to the unethical impact of the “Conservative Friends of Israel” that already has succeeded in amending British universal jurisdiction, we are also becoming used to seeing the Israeli flag wave at us in extremist right wing demonstrations. Clearly, this is far from being a big surprise. The continuum between apartheid Israel, European Islamophobia, Melanie Philips’ Londonistan and Nick Cohen's anti Islam is apparent and transparent.

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Felicity Arbuthnot

Flood victims, seen from an Army helicopter, take refuge under a date tree
in Pakistan's Rajanpur district in Punjab province August 15, 2010. Reuters/
Adrees Latif

" .. to wade through slaughter ... and shut the gates of mercy on mankind." Thomas Gray (1716-1771.)

The scale of the disaster caused by the floods in Pakistan, is barely comprehensible. As Juan Cole has written, expressing near disbelief : "The submerged area of the country is as big as the United Kingdom, fourteen million Pakistanis are affected, two million are homeless." Six million need immediate relief, according to the UN., and thirty six thousand are suffering from acute diarrhoeal symptoms, with cholera already diagnosed. 1,600 are reported dead, with the number certain to multiply. Famine is a real possibility.

The great Indus river, the world's longest, which flows also through China, India and Kashmir, rising in Tibet and flowing in to the Arabian Sea, has flooded Sindh and Balochistan provinces, forcing the evacuation of over ninety percent of the villages. With no place to hide, people watched their homes washed away, in a monsoon season that continues through September. Hundreds of villages are inundated or completely under water, with roads, rail links, thus transportation cut, as frantic people try to flee to safer ground. It is the worst flooding in the country's history, with some experts saying the region worst affected for nearly one hundred years. A far wider area is now threatened.

When the waters subside, the million-plus people who are directly or indirectly dependent on the mangroves, will have had their livelihood affected or erased, as will the fishermen along this great expanse. Looking at US., news sites, the enormity of this tragedy has evoked not pity, but almost universal vindictiveness. "Serves you right", "You had it coming", "Where is Allah now?" "So now you want help from the Great Satan's troops and helicopters", are a few of the milder ones, addressed to a River Valley civilization which dates to about 3,300 BC., with tools found, used fifteen thousand years ago.

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Peter Symonds

(Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted:
Señor Lebowski - 1, 2, Tim Dorr)

A lengthy article in the New York Times on Sunday entitled “A Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents” has provided a glimpse into the extent of the Obama administration’s covert wars. Obama has not only continued, he has expanded the murderous operations that were waged under the banner of the “war on terror” by the CIA and Pentagon during the Bush administration.

As the authors explain: “In roughly a dozen countries—from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics [in Central Asia] crippled by ethnic and religious strife—the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.”

Obama has dramatically intensified the CIA’s drone missile attacks against alleged insurgents inside areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. The White House has “approved raids inside Somalia,” it has “carried out clandestine operations from Kenya,” and it has collaborated with European allies in covert operations in North Africa, including a recent French strike in Algeria.

The most detailed information concerns the Obama administration’s expanding covert war inside Yemen, where the US military has carried out four air strikes since last December, killing dozens of civilians, including the deputy governor of Marib Province, Jabir al Shabwani, in May. The article incidentally confirms what has not previously been acknowledged: that all of the air strikes were carried out by the United States.

These attacks are just one aspect of American operations inside Yemen. “The Pentagon and the CIA have quietly bulked up the number of their operatives at the embassy in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, over the past year,” the Times explains. The US is also training elite Yemeni units, providing equipment and sharing intelligence to support Yemeni operations against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

While the Times article acknowledges some political risks are involved, it is uncritical, even laudatory in tone. Under the banner of the “war on terror,” the US is aggressively prosecuting its ambitions for strategic and economic dominance throughout the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The neo-colonial occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have been extended into a series of covert wars aimed at consolidating the American presence and expanding Washington’s political influence.

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Sherwood Ross

Three former U.S. soldiers involved in the infamous “Collateral Murder” helicopter gunship attack on Baghdad civilians in July 2007, say that attack was nothing out of the ordinary. The massacre---that killed more than a dozen Iraqis, two of them employed by Reuters---ignited a wave of international revulsion against the U.S. military in Iraq when a video of the massacre was released by WikiLeaks last April.

“What the world did not see is the months of training that led up to the incident, in which soldiers were taught to respond to threats with a barrage of fire---a “wall of steel,” in Army parlance---even if it put civilians at risk,” report Sarah Lazare and Ryan Harvey in the August 16th issue of The Nation magazine.

Former Army Specialist Josh Stieber said that newly arrived soldiers in Baghdad were asked if they would fire back at an attacker if they knew unarmed civilians might get hurt in the process. Those who did not respond affirmatively, or who hesitated, were “knocked around” until they realized what was expected of them, added former Army Specialist Ray Corcoles, who deployed with Stieber.

A third former Army specialist, Ethan McCord, said his battalion commander gave orders to shoot indiscriminately after attacks by improvised explosive devices. “Anytime someone in your line gets hit by an IED…you kill every motherfucker in the street,” McCord quotes him as saying.

Corcoles told the reporters he purposely turned his gun away from people. “You don’t even know if somebody’s shooting at you. It’s just insanity to just start shooting people.”

“From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region,” say McCord and Stieber in an open letter to the Iraqis who were injured in the July attack. Together with Corcoles, they have decided to go public about the true nature of the war.

McCord was shown in the video rushing the wounded children from a van. For this humanitarian act, he was “threatened and mocked by his commanding officer,” say TheNation reporters, and his platoon leader also yelled at him “to quit worrying about those ‘motherfucking kids’.”

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