Rizwan Asghar
The News

[Boys hold up poster of children killed by US military and Obama, in Kabul on March 6, 2011. Captions in the posters read, 'Occupation equals killing and destruction' and 'We demand the withdrawal of all foreign troops' and 'Where are human rights'. AP/Dar Yasin. The WE!]

It is said that every time history repeats itself, the price goes up. The case of US madness in Afghanistan is no exception and failure in this war is inevitable.

A series of events over the past few months have further reinforced the view that the war in Afghanistan has taken an unwelcome course and Obama’s Afghan strategy is in tatters. In a show of desperation, General Petraeus appears to have adopted the “counter-Afghan strategy” after the complete failure of his so-called counter-insurgency strategy.

A recent ITV documentary shows US troops in Afghanistan forcing Afghan people from their homes and then destroying them, simply to provide access for vehicles or lines of sight. Inside reports also suggest that US troops in Afghanistan are so frustrated that children are being picked up one by one and killed ruthlessly.

On March 1, nine Afghan children were killed by Nato helicopters while they were gathering firewood which was no ‘heat of the battle blunder’. A few days earlier, on February 17, Nato ground and air strikes had killed 64 civilians including 29 children in the Kunar province. The situation has worsened to the extent that President Karzai has openly turned against the Americans because of the latter’s total disregard for the Afghan people’s dignity.

Excessive reliance on aerial bombardments by Nato forces while the Taliban continue to use ordinary people as human shields have resulted in civilian deaths and subsequent rage among the Afghans.

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Ellen Brown
Web of Debt

Countries everywhere are facing debt crises today, precipitated by the credit collapse of 2008. Public services are being slashed and public assets are being sold off in a futile attempt to balance budgets that can't be balanced because the money supply itself has shrunk. Governments usually get the blame for excessive spending, but governments did not initiate the crisis. The collapse was in the banking system and in the credit that it is responsible for creating and sustaining.

Contrary to popular belief, most of our money today is not created by governments. It is created by private banks as loans. The private system of money creation has grown so powerful over the centuries that it has come to dominate governments globally. The system, however, contains the seeds of its own destruction. The source of its power is also a fatal design flaw.

The flaw is that banks advance "bank credit" that must be paid back with interest, continually requiring more money to be repaid than was created as loans; and the only way to get additional money from the private banking system is to take out yet more loans, at interest. The system is, in effect, a pyramid scheme. When the banks run out of borrowers to support the pyramid, it must collapse; and we are nearing that point today.

There are more sustainable ways to run a banking and credit system, as will be shown.

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Stephen Lendman

Congress has passed a declaration of worldwide war without end, and without clear enemies.

With regard to war, international and constitutional laws are clear. Under the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, only Congress may declare war, not the president. That, in fact, last happened on December 8, 1941 after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. As a result, all subsequent US wars have been illegal, including Obama's against Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya.

Moreover, the UN Charter explains under what conditions violence and coercion (by one state against another) are justified.

Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes. Article 2(4) prohibits force or its threatened use. And Article 51 allows the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security."

In other words, justifiable self-defense is permissible. However, Charter Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit any unilateral threat or use of force not:

● specifically allowed under Article 51;
● authorized by the Security Council; or
● permitted by the US Constitution only amendments ratified by three-fourths of the states can change.

In addition, three General Assembly resolutions also prohibit non-consensual belligerent intervention, including:

● the 1965 Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty;
● the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations; and
● the 1974 Definition of Aggression.

Nonetheless, Washington spurns international and US laws repeatedly, especially waging preemptive aggressive wars, what the Nuremberg Tribunal's Justice Robert Jackson called "the supreme international crime against peace," sentencing convicted Nazi war criminals to death for committing it.

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Nahida Izzat, Exiled Palestinian

Gilad Atzmon: This is a very important, informative piece. I suggest anyone who is interested in Palestine to take the time and follow the links. Once again, a Palestinian identifies the enemy within. (GA)

It appears that, yet again, Anti-zionist Jewish organizations are trying to silence Palestine's supporters, to frame the debate, to secure the future of their brethren in occupied Palestine and to steer the course of Liberation of our Homeland

I would invite people to hear a Palestinian voice, here:

A strategy of liberation requires emancipation

● No decent human-being would demand to live on STOLEN land and still claim to have a fiber of morality.
● No decent human-being could claim that the perpetrator should have the same rights as the victim while claiming to be a humanist.
● Palestinians are under no obligation to hold back their march for freedom, to curtail their aims or to smother their rights for the sake of accommodating and not offending their Jewish supporters.
● Palestinians are always grateful and appreciative of the hard work and dedication of all their supporters whomever they are, however, Palestinians have NO obligation to adopt the aims and objectives of the anti-zionist Jewish supporters instead of their own.
● Dismissing the Palestinian voice as radical, reactionary, intolerant, or unreasonable, and requiring instead the Jewish-anti-zionist stamp of approval to have legitimacy to speak for Palestine, is preposterous and contradicts basic concepts of human rights and does not do justice to Palestinians.
● Palestinians have the ultimate right to choose their vision for their future, of a FREE and sovereign Palestine including the type of government, the writing of constitution, the construction and implementation of their legal and juristic system, which stems from and corresponds to their ethics and reflects and protects their culture.
● Palestinians have the ultimate right to make the final decision on who is allowed to stay in liberated Palestine and who is not, using the legal procedure of their own choice.
● The future of the Palestinian struggle and the aim of liberation of Palestine should not be designed to shield the occupier from paying the full price of his crimes; including the punishment of all those who participated in transgression, and the deportation of the illegitimate Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants who colonized Palestine forcefully and were engaged in acts of aggression against Palestinians including serving in the IOF.
● All refugee and their descendents have the unconditional right to come back home, they as the rightful indigenous owners are also entitled to the reinstatement of ALL confiscated (stolen) land and property, compensation for all their losses over the many years of exile and they are also entitled to Palestinian citizenship wherever they are.
● The aims and aspirations of most Palestinians are not confined to the change of zionist regime or the vacuous declaration of abandonment of zionism by the Jewish-zionist occupiers, but rather to the FULL Liberation of Palestine and the restoration of all their rights.
● It is the privilege of Palestinians to decide who should stay in their homeland and who not.
● After a century of terror, theft and crimes; had the Zionist shown any signs of remorse, respect or willingness to be decent guests, had they embraced with open arms the hospitable people of Palestine rather than destroying them with fire-arms; they might have had a chance to be accepted and forgiven. Not any more, as far as I am concerned. They have lost that opportunity.

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