Stephen Lendman

Police have been carrying out "counter-terrorism" raids in Indo-
nesia's Aceh province since February 2010.

An earlier article said it was expected, accessed through THIS link.

It discussed Indonesia's National Armed Forces (TNI), especially its thuggish Kopassus Special Forces Command, its red beret unit responsible for political killings, torture, rape, and massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians in East Timor, Aceh, Papua, and elsewhere in the country.

TNI aid was restricted following a November 12, 1991 Santa Cruz cemetery massacre of over 270 demonstrators in Dili, East Timor. In July, it was restored, a July 22 East Timor Action Network (ETAN) press release "condemn(ing) the Obama administration's decision to resume engagement with Indonesia's notorious Kopassus special forces," ETAN's National Coordinator, John Miller, saying:

"Slipping back into bed with Kopassas is a betrayal of the brutal unit's many victims in Timor-Leste (East Timor), West Papua and throughout Indonesia. It will lead to more people (suffering) abuses. Working with Kopassus which remains unrepentant about its long history of terrorizing civilians, will undermine efforts to achieve justice and accountability for human rights in Indonesia and Timor-Leste."

"For years, the US military provided training and other assistance to (TNI and its infamous) Kopassus, and when the US was most involved, Kopassus crimes were at their worst. While this assistance improved (TNI's) deadly skills, it did nothing to improve its behavior."

Yet Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Washington "will begin a gradual, limited program of security cooperation activities," a veiled assurance of business as usual. It's no surprise as CIA armies, US Special Forces, and other military units replicate the worst of Kopassus manyfold.

Kopassus terrorizes Indonesia. America does it globally, a record no other country approaches.

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Michelle Chen
ColorLines

“You cannot be completely happy with all these wounds—both in your body and in your mind.” ~ 15 year-old child soldier

The phenomenon of child soldiers, like genocide, slavery and torture, seems like one of those crimes that no nation could legitimately defend. Yet the Obama administration just decided to leave countless kids stranded on some of the world’s bloodiest battlegrounds.

The administration stunned human rights groups last month by sidestepping a commitment to help countries curb the military exploitation of children. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy reported that President Obama issued a presidential memorandum granting waivers from the Child Soldiers Prevention Act to four countries: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Yemen. The memo instructed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton that it is in our “national interest” to continue extending military aid to those countries, despite their failure to comply with the rules Congress passed and George W. Bush signed in 2008.

A thumbs-up for child soldiers from the pen of President Obama? Whitehouse spokesperson P.J. Crowley explained it was a strategic decision to ease the 2008 law. The rationale is that on balance, it’s more effective for the U.S. to keep providing military assistance that will help countries gradually evolve out of the practice of marshaling kids to the battlefield, rather than isolating them.

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Jeremy Salt
The Palestine Chronicle

This turning point has arrived quietly, no fanfare or advance warning signifying its importance. After 62 years there is nothing left to talk about with Israel. Finally, all possibilities have been eliminated. Past plans are scattered across the landscape like the whitened bones of dinosaurs, their only purpose to remind us and future generations of what might have been but never was. The last flimsy veil has been pulled away from a 'peace process' that was never a peace process in the first place but a different kind of war process. Netanyahu slaps Obama's face time after time (and Obama does not react). Michael Oren tells the world Israel will decide its borders and noone else. Lieberman tells European Foreign Ministers to mind their own business. When you have solved your own problems come and talk to us, he says, and by the way, Israel is not going to be the Czechoslovakia of 2010, demonstrating that his knowledge of history is as twisted as his understanding of manners, ethics, law and morality. Only this week, Netanyahu paid a special visit to the 'commandos' who killed nine civilians on board the Mavi Marmara. They have already been decorated for their bravery but Netanyahu wanted to congratulate them in person. Livni made belligerent statements of her own. Why would Israel not want to settle this problem with a country which over the centuries was a haven for Jews and which was well placed to arbitrate between Israel and the Arab states? Why would it actually go out of its way to antagonise Turkey, and even to rub salt into the wound? The answer would seem to lie at the intersection between folly, stupidity and lunacy. Meir Kahane, whose followers celebrated his genocidal ideas in the streets of Umm al Fahm only the other day, would be dancing with delight at the way things are turning out.

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Michael Hudson
Michael Hudson's Blog

Now that President Obama is almost celebrating his bipartisan willingness to renew the tax cuts for the super-rich enacted under George Bush ten years ago, it is time for Democrats to ask themselves how strongly they are willing to oppose an administration that looks like Bush-Cheney III. Is this what they expected by Obama’s promise to rise above partisan politics – by ruling on behalf of Wall Street, now that it is the major campaign backer of both parties?

It is a reflection of how one-sided today’s class war has become that Warren Buffet has quipped that “his” side is winning without a real fight being waged. No gauntlet has been thrown down over the trial balloon that the president and his advisor David Axelrod have sent up over the past two weeks to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 per cent for “just” two more years. For all practical purposes the euphemism “two years” means forever – at least, long enough to let the super-rich siphon off enough more money to bankroll enough more Republicans to be elected to make the tax cuts permanent.

Obama seems to be campaigning for his own defeat! Thanks largely to the $13 trillion Wall Street bailout – while keeping the debt overhead in place for America’s “bottom 98 per cent” – this happy 2 per cent of the population now receives an estimated three quarters (~75 per cent) of the returns to wealth (interest, dividends, rent and capital gains). This is nearly double what it received a generation ago. The rest of the population is being squeezed, and foreclosures are rising.

Baudelaire quipped that the devil wins at the point where he manages convince the world that he doesn’t exist. Today’s financial elites will win the class war at the point where voters believe it doesn’t exist – and believe that Obama is trying to help them rather than shepherd them into debt peonage as the economy settles into debt deflation.

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"Devilstower"
Political Cortex

There's a scene in the last of the three Lord of the Rings movies in which valiant hobbit Sam rescues his captive friend Frodo from a tower in the heart of an evil stronghold. In the process, he kills a good number of orcs. Did you cry for them? Did you worry about any orcish widows left waiting by the window? Little orclings wondering when papa was coming home? Of course not. You cheered Sam's courage and didn't give a second thought to the orcs. Why? Because... they're orcs. They're ugly, vile, evil. The very definition of 'other'.

Now, wherever I wrote the word "orc," imagine that it said "liberal."

For the last few days, people have been astounded at the fury with which the right wing blogs have gone after the New York Times reporters over the horrible crime of posting photos of vacation homes. Their agitation seems so over the top that it's difficult to make sense of why such an innocent story should generate such heat. But it's not really hard to understand -- they think we are orcs.

Conservatives are prone to tribal behavior -- it's practically the definition of the term. Conservatives like those who conform to a certain dress, a certain way of talking. Those who shout "ditto" at the proper moment. They like those who go to the right churches and belong to the right clubs. More than anything else, they like those who can hate.

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