Tom Eley
WSWS

US corporations took in $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, breaking records going back 60 years, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. It was the seventh consecutive quarter of profit growth at “some of the fastest rates in history” according to the New York Times.

If any more proof were needed, the third quarter profit record exposes the lie promoted by Democrats and Republicans alike that only the “free market” and private businesses can reverse the nation’s 9.6 percent unemployment rate. The corporations and banks are sitting on a cash horde in the trillions of dollars. This money is not being used to hire workers, but to line the pockets of the executives and top shareholders.

The profit bonanza that lasted from July through September eclipsed the old record of $1.655 trillion established in the third quarter of 2006—just as the money-mad speculation of the financial elite was hurtling the US and world economy toward the precipice of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The resulting financial crisis, which erupted in the autumn of 2008, threatened a total collapse of the global financial system. In response, the governments of the world, led by the US, used the disaster to hand over tens of trillions in public wealth to the very finance houses that triggered the crisis. This process continues, as demonstrated by the International Monetary Fund/European Union-dictated rescue of the Irish banks this week.

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Eric Blair
Activist Post

When most of us think about "lame duck" Congressional sessions we think of a "do-nothing" government. However, this so-called lame duck session appears to be a time where legislation that has the most restrictions to individual rights is being rammed through.

It seems the members of government who have been recently voted out of office are vying for corporate jobs by pushing such legislation as the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) which are now on the fast track to becoming law. Both of these laws reek of tyranny for the citizens and a means of corporate consolidation for the big boys.

It seems whenever a piece of legislation has the word "safety" in it we can expect to lose our right to make our own decisions. For example, consumer protection groups pushed hard for the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in 2008 after large numbers of Chinese-made toys and other products proved to have dangerously unhealthy toxins.

Consequently, the bill was passed with 407 Ayes, 0 Nays in the House. Only later did the public find out that the bill did more to regulate, tax, and impose fines on neighborhood garage sales than it did to stop dangerous Chinese imports. Clearly, the bill is used to clamp down on an individual's right to sell their used items without governmental oversight. In other words, the corporate-government will not allow any form of black market to threaten their cartel control of consumerism.

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Stephen Lendman

A fire at the UN building in Gaza City after Israeli strikes (Photograph:
Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty)

On October 18, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights offered an "Alternative Report" response to Israel's submission, sent to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR).

Submitting to the UN, Aharon Leshno Yaar, Israel's Permanent Representative to Geneva said "Israel was proud of its long-lasting recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family," omitting to explain he means only Jews, no others, especially Muslims. State belligerence for over six decades proves it. PCHR reviewed recent facts, documenting them in its report. Previous articles discussed them it detail, but they bear repeating. By so doing, peace and self-determination for a beleaguered people may come sooner.

Israeli Violations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)

PCHR addressed each article, detailing Israel's noncompliance, presenting indisputable, convincing evidence. In its July 9, 2004 "Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that:

"In the exercise of the powers available to it on this basis, Israel is bound by (ICESCR provisions)." Throughout its history, however, Israel has grievously violated all international laws, committing crimes of war and against humanity repeatedly, the latter virtually daily in the Territories.

After its 2005 disengagement, Israel claims Gaza was no longer occupied. Therefore, it no longer had ICESCR or other treaty obligations. False on both counts, the ICJ stating that:

"the State's obligations under the Covenant apply to all territories and populations under its effective control."

Israel has controlled Gaza since 1967, today under a medieval siege, little changed after Israel's bogus June easing. The UN Security Council, General Assembly, Special Rapporteur (for Palestine), and the ICRC all said Israel has control. Therefore, it's bound by all international law provisions.

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Robert Bows

TSA fascist groping the crotch of an elderly man

"Of course we will have fascism in America but we will call it democracy!" ~ Huey Long

"Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them." ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

"Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power." ~ Benito Mussolini

The American brand of fascism

There are as many varieties of fascism as there are examples, beginning with Germany (Hitler) and Italy (Mussolini) during the period leading up to and including WWII, followed by Cuba (Batista), Spain (Franco), Paraguay (Stroessner), Nicaragua (Somoza), and Chile (Pinochet), et al.

The brand of fascism currently practiced in the United States by European and North American financiers and bankers-who control a major portion of the world's money supply, as well as the dominant military and intelligence apparatuses-has commonalities with many of its predecessors as well as a few important differences.

Commonalities include: control over the state by unelected persons ("the hidden government," as Teddy Roosevelt called them) or persons whose election is predetermined (through control of the currency, media, and voting process); use of intelligence and security forces to suppress opposition; abrogation of constitutional guarantees and international legal conventions; the justification of torture; and false flag events used to justify imperialism, to name a few.

As so eloquently expressed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials following World War II, we must hold such behavior accountable:

If certain acts and violations of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them. We are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.

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Stephen Lendman

Last March, North Korea was falsely blamed for sinking a South Korean ship, a topic an earlier article addressed, accessed through THIS link.

Seoul said there's "no other plausible explanation....The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that (a) torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine," even though none was detected in the area.

At the time, evidence suggested a false flag, manufactured to blame the North. The incident occurred near Baengnyeong Island opposite North Korea. US Navy Seals and four US ships were conducting joint exercises in the area. The torpedo used was German, not North Korean as claimed. Germany sells none to Pyongyang. Yet it was blamed for what it didn't do, what apparently was Pentagon-manufactured mischief.

What now? According to US media reports, North Korea incited the gravest incident since the Korean War armistice. For example, on November 23, New York Times writer Mark McDonald headlined, "Crisis Status in South Korea After North Shells Island," saying:

"The South Korean military went to "crisis status" on Tuesday (11/23) and threatened military strikes after the North fired dozens of shells at a South Korean island, killing two of the South's soldiers and setting off an exchange of fire in one the most serious clashes between the two sides in decades."

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Stephen Lendman

On November 28, first round legislative and presidential elections will be held. As a previous article explained, democracy will be absent because the nation's most popular party, Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas, and 14 others are excluded, the system rigged to install Washington's favorites.

In a September 8, Miami Herald op-ed, Ira Kurzban, an immigration and employment law expert as well as
Aristide's former legal counsel headlined, "Unfair and undemocratic," saying:

"Imagine if (America's) Federal Election Commission disqualified the Democratic and Republican parties from the 2012 presidential election and declared that only candidates of minor parties could run."

"Yet (Haiti's November 28 elections) are just that - unfair, unconstitutional and undemocratic."

On November 10, Brian Concannon, Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, in the Boston Haitian Reporter headlined, "Haiti's Flawed Elections: They Told Us So," saying:

The November elections "may be the most important in Haitian history," voters to "choose the entire House of Deputies (its lower body) for four years, a President for five years, and one-third of the Senate for six years. These officials (will be responsible for) guiding Haiti's (post-quake) reconstruction for at least four years." What they accomplish "will shape Haitian society for decades." What they won't is deeply worrisome.

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Becky Akers
Lew Rockwell

Becky Akers: The TSA: Control, Humiliate, Intimidate -AUDIO

Almost overnight, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has gone from national joke to national nightmare. Passengers used to laugh when screeners so inept they missed 60—75% of the fake bombs undercover investigators smuggled past them nonetheless proclaimed themselves gods. No one's laughing now, though, as the TSA ogles us with carcinogenic technology and sexually assaults anyone who objects.

Over 300 of the agency's "naked" scanners lurk in 60-some airports nationwide, with more on the way; eventually, the agency will irradiate every passenger on every flight. These gizmos peer through clothing to photograph bodies in graphic detail. The TSA makes much of offering a "choice": if you dislike posing nude for the government, its perverts will grope you instead — "prob[ing]," "prodding" and pushing "up your thighs and between your legs until we meet resistance" (and they don't mean a slap in the face). You also suffer this indignity, even if you submit to the scan, should it reveal "anomalies" such as piercings or prostheses.

Are you still flying? Why? For your own protection and that of your children, for liberty's sake, stay on the ground until Congress abolishes the TSA. No destination on earth or convenience in reaching it, no vacation, Thanksgiving dinner, meeting or sales trip, is worth the degradation the TSA is dishing out.

Its new "pat down procedures... allow security officers to touch passengers of the same gender in sensitive areas such as the breasts and genitals..." These attacks have been "likened to 'foreplay' pat-downs... [screeners are] using the new front-of-the-hand, slide-down screening technique for ... over-the-clothes searches of passengers' breast and genital areas."

Such mass mauling is unprecedented. No regime anywhere at any time, however totalitarian or brutal, has ever routinely denuded and molested citizens.

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Stephen Lendman

Launched in March 2009, "The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RTP) seeks to reaffirm the primacy of international law as the (way to settle) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Its mandate focuses on "the enunciation of law by authoritative bodies," including International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings and dozens of UN resolutions on Palestine with regard to binding international law.

RTP follows in the tradition of the BRussell Tribunal, named after noted philosopher, mathematician, and anti-war/anti-imperialism activist Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970). Established in 1967 to investigate Vietnam war crimes, RTP's mandate is similar, its Tribunals collecting and presenting indictable evidence against Israel, complicit states, and corporate war profiteers.

An earlier article on its Barcelona Session can be accessed through THIS link.

RTP's November 20-21 London Session

Before convening, RTP listed issues to be addressed, including:

(1) corporate involvement in Occupied Palestine, including illegal settlement activities;
(2) foreign banks and other financial institutions illegally financing and profiting from occupation and settlement activities;
(3) foreign and Israeli companies supplying products and services in Occupied Palestine; in addition, Israeli ones exporting agricultural produce and other products from settlements and West Bank industrial zones; and
(4) foreign corporations selling arms and "the infrastructure of war, occupation, colonisation, and repression" in Occupied Palestine; in addition, Israeli companies that export arms, munitions, repressive hardware or knowledge globally.

As in Barcelona, distinguished jurors were assembled, their names and credentials listed below. In addition, expert witnesses were invited to give testimony.

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Gilad Atzmon
Gilad Atzmon's Blog

A few days ago, British Chief of Defence Staff General Sir David Richards admitted that victory in Afghanistan is unachievable. "In conventional war,” said Richards, “defeat and victory is very clear cut and is symbolised by troops marching into another nation's capital."

It took a few years for British military elites to admit that the war in Afghanistan cannot lead anywhere : a valuable lesson to learn from mid to late 20th century warfare, is that conventional military might cannot easily defeat mass civilian resistance.

It is interesting to reflect too, that the Jewish state has exercised a ‘strategy’ of occupation for sixty two years -- and for some reason the penny has still failed to drop. The Israelis are still convinced that they can manage to knock down the resilient Palestinians using siege, indiscriminate killing, carpet bombardment and chemical warfare.

The results are pretty obvious: and bearing in mind that Israel considers itself to be a ‘Jews only democracy’, then every Jewish Israeli is complicit in a colossal war crime against a civilian population.

But it goes further: more and more Israeli soldiers of all ranks are directly involved in an endless list of crimes -- some stop pregnant women from receiving urgent medical attention , while others drop bombs on populated neighbourhoods. Some use children as human shields, while a few perform executions of peace activists. And others just feed the cannons with white phosphorus shells.
The perpetrators of these crimes are actually subject to universal jurisdiction laws. They can be detained everywhere around the world. They may end their life in jail.

A few brave Israelis must be very concerned with the moral condition of their state, because a few days ago, a document identifying 200 Israeli soldiers suspected of war crimes leaked out of Israel. It made it to the internet. The list included the names, ranks, military posts, pictures and addresses.

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Eric Margolis
Lew Rockwell

Foreign occupation soldiers from the U.S. search an Afghan citizen's
house during a home invasion in Nerkh district of Wardak province in
west of Kabul, Afghanistan, , May 1, 2009. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

"If the US loses the Afghan War, its reluctant allies would call into question the reason for the alliance. Europe would hasten building an integrated military independent of US control."

According to the US government, 41.8 million Americans now receive food stamps. Meanwhile, Washington is spending $7 billion monthly on its nine-year old occupation of Afghanistan, not to mention billions more on trying to build an obedient Afghan army and to pay of Pakistani politicians and general.

Last weekend, the US and its NATO allies met in Lisbon to try to hammer out a contradictory strategy that will keep western troops in Afghanistan indefinitely while assuaging public opinion in North America and Europe that wants the war to end. Most observers failed to note the historical irony that in the 1960’s and 70’s, Portugal had waged a long, debilitating colonial war to preserve its crumbling African empire that ended up nearly bankrupting the mother nation and ending for good its imperial pretensions.

All the platitudes, doubletalk, synthetic optimism and fudging at the NATO summit could not conceal the fact that for all their soldiers, fighter aircraft, heavy bombers, tanks, helicopter gunships, armies of mercenaries, and wizardly electronic gear, the western powers are being slowly beaten by a bunch of lightly-armed Afghan farmers and mountain tribesmen.

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"Fauna"
chinaSMACK

Guangxi 6-year-old AIDS orphan lives alone, eats rice and vegetables without oil or salt yet still eats with relish

In your childhood, what were you doing? Begging daddy to buy a toy, being pressed by mommy to learn a foreign language, taking the pocket change that grandma secretly gave you, sharing the bubblegum you just bought with your friends… When you couldn’t get what you wanted, did you sigh like a little adult: “It sucks being a child!” However, A-Long wouldn’t. By himself, he washes his laundry and makes his meals. Alone, he feeds the chickens and raises the dog. Alone, he studies and learns to read. Alone, he goes to sleep. A-Long never feels it sucks being himself, even though he is only 6-years-old this year.

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Stephen Lendman

A personal note.

It's no way to begin a Sunday or any day. An email explained. My first thought was: damn, we lost another good one when we urgently need him and many others, given the state of today's America - out-of-control militarism, imperial arrogance, and homeland repression at a time of economic crisis for millions. Johnson knew the threat, challenging it brilliantly in his important writings and outspokenness. Now he's gone. ~ SL

A former cold warrior, Chal, as friends called him, turned activist critic of US foreign policy, an imperial agenda doomed to fail. When the Cold War ended, he saw no further logic to US global bases, continued heightened militarism, and occupation of Japan, South Korea, Germany and elsewhere.

Peace breaking out was glorious. "Give Peace A Chance," wrote John Lennon, his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame song predated it by a decade.

In a March 2006 Tom Engelhardt interview, Johnson said:

"I was a cold warrior. There's no doubt about that. I believed the Soviet Union was a genuine menace. I still think so....As I saw it, the only justification for our monster military apparatus, its size, the amounts spent on it, the growth of the Military-Industrial Complex....was the existence of the Soviet Union and its determination to match us."

After it imploded, he thought:

"What an incredible vindication for the United States. Now it's over, and the time has come for a real victory dividend, a genuine peace dividend. The question was: Would the US behave as it had in the past when big wars came to an end?" Instead, we "began to seek an alternative enemy. Our leaders simply could not contemplate dismantling the apparatus of the Cold War. That was, I thought, shocking....I was flabbergasted and felt the need to understand what had happened."

Maintaining heightened militarism

"suggest(ed) that the Cold War was, in fact, a cover for something else; that something else being an American empire intentionally created during World War II as the successor to the British Empire. The Cold War was not the clean-cut conflict between totalitarian and democratic values that we had claimed it to be."

Most ominous about US imperialism is that

"militarism is so central to ours....not (for) national defense....but as a way of life, as a way of getting rich or getting comfortable. (Yet it's) bankrupting the country...This is not free enterprise. (It's) state socialism," heading us for ruin. "And the precedents for this should really terrify us."

Johnson ended the interview quoting Pogo's observation, saying: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

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Uri Avnery
Uri Avnery's Column

“A DISASTER!” the courtiers of the King of Hanover cried, “Seven renowned professors at Göttingen University have published a declaration of protest against you!”

That was 173 years ago. The king had suspended the liberal constitution enacted by his predecessor.

“So what,” the king replied, “Tarts, dancers and professors I can always buy.”

This story was told me by Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who was himself a professor of half a dozen vastly different disciplines, from bio-chemistry to the philosophy of science. He held many of his colleagues in profound contempt.

He told me this story when we were talking about one professor in particular: Shlomo Avineri, who had just agreed to serve as Director General of the Foreign Office under Minister Yigal Alon. Alon was the author of the “Alon Plan”, which provided for the annexation of wide stretches of occupied territory.

This week, Avineri published an article under the headline “Fascism? You make me laugh!”

What made him laugh? The ridiculous (for him) argument that there exist fascist tendencies in Israel. He reminded us that fascism means the Gestapo, concentration camps and genocide. How could we forget.

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Ismail Patel
Patrick Mac Manus

"An open-air prison camp where people die from treatable illnesses and suffer malnutrition while living besides openly running sewage – this is Gaza’s reality, and it is man-made by Israel."

The siege on Gaza enters its fourth year this year. The consequences have been catastrophic, but the images of this catastrophe are for the most part kept away from the world and its media.

With Israel controlling all borders, the only lifelines available to Gazans have been a maze of underground tunnels along the border with Egypt. This forced black-market has claimed lives and is being continually challenged by Israeli bombings and Egyptian reinforcement of the border with an underground steel wall.

For the needs of Gaza’s 1.5 million people to be met, there needs to be 1,300 containers of merchandise and foods passing across the Karni Crossing every day. The supplies that do manage to pass fail to meet even 20 pert cents of the populations’ needs. The result has been 80 per cent poverty, dependency on aid for even their daily meals and hundreds of deaths from lack of medical equipment and supplies.

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The Economic Collapse Blog

Full Spectrum Dominance: 8 Examples Of How The Government Is Attempting To Take Total Control Of Our Food, Our Health, Our Money And Even Our Dignity

Over the past several decades, no matter which political party has been in power the government has continued to become a larger part of our lives. These days many people are speaking of the "nanny state" that we have created, but the reality is far worse than that. The truth is that the government has become a gluttonous, out of control behemoth that is gobbling up everything in sight and that is attempting to exert full spectrum dominance over our lives. Today, the government seems to have an insatiable hunger to watch us, track us and control us. Now they even want to feel our private parts before we get on an airplane. No matter what politicians we send to Washington D.C., it just seems to get worse and worse. Anyone who still believes that we live in "the land of the free" is completely and totally delusional.

It isn't just in one particular area that all of this government intrusion into our lives is so offensive. What we are witnessing is the government slowly digging its fingers even deeper into our lives in a thousand different ways. Sadly, most Americans see the government as the one who is supposed to take care of them from the cradle to the grave, as the one who is supposed to fix all of the problems in society and as the one who is their ultimate authority.

This is in direct contradiction to the concept of a "limited government" that our Founding Fathers tried so desperately to enshrine in our founding documents. The American people need a big-time wake up call. The following are 8 examples of how the U.S. government is attempting to take even more control over our lives....

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Peter Schwarz
WSWS

On November 20 in Lisbon, NATO adopted a new strategic concept. It is the seventh in the 61-year history of the military alliance and the first since 1999.

The summit was preceded by months of preparation and discussion. A group of experts chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issued recommendations for the new strategy in May.

After a long tug of war, the strategic concept has now been adopted and was presented to the public in Lisbon. Those attending the summit celebrated it as a historic breakthrough. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “This summit will go down in history. The strategic approach is clear, and it shows we are all working on the same footing.”

In reality, the eleven-page document barely manages to paper over the fault lines that have opened up between the 28 members of the largest military alliance in the world. It is a verbal compromise between divergent interests. The different factions were able to agree on many formulations only at the last minute.

Where the summit was unanimous was that the military should in the future play a far more important role in political and social life. In addition to collective defence with conventional and nuclear weapons, the new strategy sanctions international interventions of various kinds, such as those NATO has already conducted in the former Yugoslavia and is presently carrying out in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere in the world.

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Stephen Lendman

The suburban Chicago-based Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine (CJPIP) "is a diverse, community-based group dedicated to organizing activities and educational events that advance the cause of peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis."

It supports:

● "equal rights and access to resources (equitably) based on" social, economic, environmental, and political justice principles;
● peace and equal justice;
● an end to Israel's illegal occupation and continuing land theft;
● "an end to US policies that sustain the occupation;
● international support for an equitable and just negotiation process;"
● granting Palestinian refugees their right of return, guaranteed under international law; and
● ending all forms of individual, organizational, and state-sponsored terror.

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Paul Larudee

When unknown elements in Israel leaked the name, rank, identification number and other information about two hundred Israeli military personnel who reportedly participated in the 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza, the effect was sudden and profound, according to sources in Israel.

Although the first site on which it appeared was taken down by the host, it has continued to circulate via email, and has appeared on at least one other site, 200 Israeli War Criminals. The Israeli military and other Israeli agencies are reportedly doing all they can to shut down every site on which it appears, and to prevent it from "going viral." At least one popular blog that links to the site has received a record number of death threats.

What is so special about the list? As several critics have pointed out, it doesn't even state the crimes that the listed individuals are alleged to have committed.

The root of the problem, according to the sources in Israel, is a poorly kept secret - namely, that it is hard to serve in the Israeli military without committing war crimes, because such crimes are a matter of policy. What Israeli soldier has not ordered a Palestinian civilian to open the door to a building that might house armed militants or be booby-trapped? Who has not denied access to ambulances or otherwise prevented a Palestinian from getting to medical care, education, or employment?

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James Cogan
WSWS

[An Afghan homeless boy sleeps in a waste disposal site near Kabul, under American Occupation. What happend to his father and mother, brothers and sisters, what happened to his home? It makes my heart cry tears of blood and you? Where is much touted Western Civilisation, drawing cartoons of Mohammed, burning Qurans and bombing poor, innocent, unarmed people around the world because they can’t fight back? Western civilisation is a nice idea; though quite unachieved in practice. ~ Lal Qila]

The NATO summit held in Lisbon from November 19 to 20 endorsed the Obama’s administration’s demand that troops from the US and allied countries occupy Afghanistan indefinitely. The summit declaration stated that any changes in troop numbers would be “conditions-based, not calendar-driven”.

While the end of 2014 was put forward as the date when the US and NATO hope that Afghan government troops and police will be able to carry out all frontline combat against the anti-occupation insurgency, NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: “We will stay after transition in a supporting role… NATO is in this for the long-term. If the Taliban or anyone else aims to wait us out, they can forget it.”

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Stephen Lendman

Three previous articles on the crisis can be accessed through the following links here, here & here.

More will follow as events dictate.

In America, especially on TV, Haiti's epidemic gets scant, if any, coverage. In contrast, daily independent news reports are alarming. Yet, despite raging cholera across Haiti, aid is woefully inadequate. A November 19 Doctors With Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres - MSF) press release headlined, "Cholera in Haiti: MSF Calling on All Actors to Step Up Response," saying:

"While cholera spreads, slow deployment of relief is (a) major concern. Critical shortfalls in the deployment of well-established measures to contain cholera epidemics are undermining efforts to stem the ongoing cholera outbreak in Haiti."

Head of Haiti mission, Stefano Zannini,

"call(ed) on all groups and agencies present in Haiti to step up the size and speed of their efforts to ensure an effective response to the needs of people at risk of cholera infection." "There is no time left for meetings and debate - the time for action is now." The epidemic has spread to at least eight of Haiti's 10 provinces.

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