Ellen Brown

“To some people, the European Central Bank seems like a fire department that is letting the house burn down to teach the children not to play with matches.”

So wrote Jack Ewing in the New York Times last week...

“The E.C.B. has a fire hose — its ability to print money. But the bank is refusing to train it on the euro zone’s debt crisis.

“The flames climbed higher Friday after the Italian Treasury had to pay an interest rate of 6.5 percent on a new issue of six-month bills . . . the highest interest rate Italy has had to pay to sell such debt since August 1997.

“But there is no sign the E.C.B. plans a major response, like buying large quantities of the country’s bonds to bring down its borrowing costs.”

Why not? According to the November 28th Wall Street Journal, “The ECB has long worried that buying government bonds in big enough amounts to bring down countries’ borrowing costs would make it easier for national politicians to delay the budget austerity and economic overhauls that are needed.”

As with the manufactured debt ceiling crisis in the United States, the E.C.B. is withholding relief in order to extort austerity measures from member governments—and the threat seems to be working. The same authors write:

“Euro-zone leaders are negotiating a potentially groundbreaking fiscal pact . . . [that] would make budget discipline legally binding and enforceable by European authorities. . . . European officials hope a new agreement, which would aim to shrink the excessive public debt that helped spark the crisis, would persuade the European Central Bank to undertake more drastic action to reverse the recent selloff in euro-zone debt markets.”

The Eurozone appears to be in the process of being “structurally readjusted” – the same process imposed earlier by the IMF on Third World countries. Structural demands routinely include harsh austerity measures, government cutbacks, privatization, and the disempowerment of national central banks, so that there is no national entity capable of creating and controlling the money supply on behalf of the people. The latter result has officially been achieved in the Eurozone, which is now dependent on the E.C.B. as the sole lender of last resort and printer of new euros.

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Stephen Lendman

Last February, Mubarak's 30-year dictatorship ended. Another one replaced him. Egypt's military holds absolute power.

Authoritarian dominance is unchallenged. Elections are more theater than real. Egypt's multi-round complex process complicates them further. So do logistics. Understanding what to do is daunting.

The hybrid ballot lists parties and individual candidates. Voters choose from both. Candidates represent professionals and worker/farmers. Influence peddling and fraud are rife.

Egypt's process perhaps has no parallel anywhere. Voters cast three votes, including for scores of new parties and candidates they don't recognize.

Egypt's junta deliberately designed a hard to comprehend complex system despite strong opposition from participating parties.

Individual candidates will be chosen by popular vote. Party totals may not determine representation in Parliament. Party listed candidates will get seats based on how high they're listed.

At issue is controlling the process and outcome.

Vote-counting is especially prone to fraud. One of Stalin's memorable quotes was,

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

Some results will be announced after each round. Party list ones won't come until January.

Human rights activist Hossam Bahgat complained about Egypt's allegedly first ever "free and fair election," saying "we've opted for one of the world's most complicated electoral systems."

Of course, regime supporters call it free and fair. Independent observers see it otherwise.

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redscribe

Political Islamist - Osama bin Laden and Theodore Herzl
- Jewish analogue of political Islamist?

Gilad Atzmon: The following lengthy article by Red Scribblings proves that the issues raised by The Wandering Who are at the centre of today's philosophical and ideological thinking. It is no secret that Zionist lobbies together with some Jewish anti Zionists are desperate to stop the book or its author. I believe that they would actually do themselves a big favour reading the book first.

The controversy over Gilad Atzmon and his book The Wandering Who?, which I recently reviewed on Red Scribblings, raises a lot of important questions about history and the politics of the last two centuries. I make no apology for writing about this question again because some of the issues he raises are of great importance to questions relating to war and peace, the nature of contemporary capitalism, national questions and the composition of major classes in society, particularly the capitalist class. All these questions are of central importance to anyone who wants to see capitalism superseded by socialism – they also touch intimately on questions intertwined with the causes of at least one world war in living memory, as well as other traumatic and world historic events including the currents wars and now revolutions shaking the Middle East and neighbouring regions and states. So its pretty important.

Atzmon is not a Marxist thinker, but an idiosyncratic left-wing liberal, born and raised in a racist ethnocracy. His own rejection of a racist upbringing and his privileged birthright as a Jew in a Jewish state, has generated some ferocious rhetoric and not a little incoherence and misunderstanding by friend and foe alike in some cases. But Atzmon’s writings are significant: this is also acknowledged by his enemies, usually rabid Zionists though also a few semi-Bundist socialists who on most issues are on the opposite side of the barricades to the Netan-yahoos. My point here is not to dwell on that conflict, but to acknowledge the significance of his work on ‘Jewish identity’. If it was just, as his enemies proclaim, reheated anti-semitism from the pre-WWII years, Atzmon would be unable to defend himself against a tidal wave of universal opprobrium.

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Laura Stuart

As an activist against Human Rights abuses, particularly of the sort that the Nazi style entity called Israel inflicts on Palestinians on a daily basis, I have been fortunate to be involved in some direct actions which were very effective in exposing among other things the illegal collective punishment on one and a half million Palestinians a.k.a. the Siege of Gaza. More recently I have had the privilege to attend many lectures by intellectuals on various subjects relating to zionism and it's evil ideology. A learning process which often finds me agreeing with most of what someone states as the issues facing Palestinians but perhaps not always agreeing on how each person or group sees the solution, such as was the case with the amazing Dr Norman Finkelstein lecture recently.

All protests, flotillas, convoys and lectures feature people of different religions (or none) from a broad spectrum of political backgrounds, yet amazingly there is a huge amount of solidarity across the board with everyone contributing in many different ways within their own area of expertise. The common thread holding us all together is a firm belief in Truth and Justice.

The Meir Institute report after the Mavi Marmara particularly noted, to their great consternation that Muslims (Islamists as they call politically active muslims) and people from every kind of religious and political background were able to unite against the common enemy of Zionist oppression. This is the real meaning of Solidarity.

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Stephen Lendman

Washington's Greater Middle East project involves waring against the region one country at a time to replace independent regimes with client ones.

Softer targets were attacked first. Tougher ones remain, notably Iran and Syria. Subduing them may involve turning the entire region into an uncontrollable cauldron, not least because China and Russia have interests to defend.

Russia maintains a strategic naval base at Tartus, Syria, its only Mediterranean location. It considers it vital protection for its Black Sea Fleet. It's being modernized to accommodate heavy warships after 2012. Russia came to stay.

Three Russian warships now patrol Syrian waters. Unofficial sources confirm it, saying Russia's there to protect strategic and national security interests, as well as prevent war.

About 120,000 Russian citizens are in Syria. Moscow's obligated to protect them the way they aided South Ossetian Russians after Georgia attacked the province in August 2008.

Provocatively, America's nuclear carrier USS George HW Bush anchored off Syria. Its Strike Group and additional vessels are conducting maritime security and support operations nearby. The US 6th Fleet patrols the area.

Meanwhile, Washington and Turkey urged their citizens to leave Syria. A November 23 US statement said "depart immediately while commercial transportation is available." Whether something's brewing isn't known. Tough talk alone doesn't suggest it. Nonetheless, it's worrisome.

Syria's being assaulted like Libya. Heavily armed insurgents are involved. Washington orchestrated everything. Neighboring countries are involved, including Israel. Syria's blamed for defending itself. Libya redux looks possible. Continued violence and escalating tensions suggest it.

An anonymous Russian intelligence official said America "is playing a very dangerous game here. One that may result in Russia taking defensive actions to protect itself, its military installation and Russian citizens."

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Stephen Lendman

The operative word is contagion. It's malignant and spreading because it's unresolved and irresponsibly addressed.

Germany, Europe's strongest economy, just had its worst ever bond auction since 1999. Over a third of 10-year bunds offered were unsold. More on the failure below.

Comparable Italian yields jumped to 7.3%. Italy's two-year bond hit 7.7%. The inverted curve signals tougher times ahead. Italy also sold six-month bills at 6.50%, its highest rate in 14 years.

Troubled Spain had to pay 5.11% for three-month money, the highest short-term rate since formation of Europe's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999.

Other Eurozone rates also rose, including Portugal's after Fitch downgraded its debt to junk and retained a negative outlook. Hungary was downgraded to junk as well with a negative outlook. Yields there jumped close to 10%. Belgium's in trouble. So are France and Britain. Credit default swaps on European sovereign debt and banks reached all-time highs.

Earlier in the week French bonds were hammered. Europe's debt crisis moved from periphery countries to core ones. Many believe the Eurozone can't survive, except perhaps with fewer stronger members.

The European Investment Bank (the EU's financing institution) is also being pressured. Yields on its debt rose. So did European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) bond rates. Yields on its 10-year maturities jumped from 3 3/8% to 3.88%, up from 2.68% two months ago.

In other words, not only are Eurozone countries being pressured, but institutions established to rescue them. Smart money's saying don't bet on Europe. Bet against it. Some say it also about America. Expect that chorus to grow.

Belgium's key business confidence measure was negative for three straight months. French consumer sentiment reached a two-year low.

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Wayne Madsen

The Four Masks of Hypocrisy: Which face is
that of the United States?

The Obama administration, in yet another display of the use of Orwellian language, has embarked on a military doctrine called "Mass Atrocity Prevention" (MAP), the Pentagon operational plan to implement the White House's "R2P" or "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine. Essentially, the Pentagon doctrine is crafted to militarily support the intervention of regional and worldwide international forces operating under the umbrella of NATO, UN, the African Union, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Arab League, and other organizations in the name of “humanitarian” intervention to prevent widespread massacres. The doctrine’s first major test case was in Libya, where NATO forces, in support of Western- and Saudi/Gulf potentate-backed rebel forces, ousted the 42 year-old regime of Muammar Qaddafi.

And in yet another display of oxymoronic Orwellian “Newspeak,” the main Defense Department activity for developing “Mass Atrocity Response Operations” or “MARO” is the Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

The new American justification for military intervention arises from Presidential Study Directive 10/PSD-10, a memorandum issued by the White House on August 4, 2011, which created an Interagency Atrocities Prevention Board and interagency review to bring administration policy in line with a new presidential policy that deems “preventing mass atrocities and genocide” a “core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.”

The new American foreign policy initiative was justified by the 2008 report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. The task force was heavily influenced by the neoconservative and federally-funded U.S. Institute of Peace, as well as George Soros-funded think tanks like the Center for American Progress and pro-Israeli organizations like the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

PSD-10 was largely the brain child of National Security Council staff member Samantha Power, who is married to Obama’s “propaganda czar” Cass Sunstein, and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN. The White House press briefing on Obama’s Mass Atrocity Prevention doctrine specifically mentioned Syria, Libya, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire, and Kyrgyzstan as examples of when U.S. diplomatic and stronger intervention was required. The announcement cited the Holocaust in Europe and the genocide in Rwanda as reasons for the new U.S. policy but curiously omitted the U.S.-supported Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia and the CIA-supported post-1965 coup genocide in Indonesia, the latter involving President Obama’s Indonesian step-father, a lieutenant colonel in the Indonesian army.

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Stephen Lendman

Congress is now considering legislative language to mandate indefinite military detentions of US citizens suspected of present or past associations with alleged terrorist groups, with or without evidence to prove it. More on that below.

The 2006 Military Commissions Act authorized torture and sweeping unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate, and prosecute alleged suspects and collaborators (including US citizens), hold them (without evidence) indefinitely in military prisons, and deny them habeas and other constitutional protections.

Section 1031 of the FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act contained the 2009 Military Commissions Act (MCA). The phrase "unprivileged enemy belligerent" replaced "unlawful enemy combatant."

Language changed but not intent or lawlessness. Obama embraces the same Bush agenda, including keeping Guantanamo open after promising to close it, allowing torture there and abroad, and treating US citizens as lawlessly as foreign nationals.

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Lauren Booth

Lauren Booth (Photo: © Unknown)

This week, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has revealed itself to be ethically compromised at the highest level.

In recent months it has become clear that the central office of the PSC, are increasingly pandering to the whims of Israeli hasbara activists. Joining with the likes of the rabid Zionist site Harry’s Place in efforts to silence some of this movement’s most outspoken and popular, thinkers.

Last week the British media carried a rare report into the pressure exerted on British news outlets including BBC, Sky News and Financial Times pro-Israeli lobbying group, Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM). The report found that BICOM's efforts had produced results, in that major channels and papers had “changed their narrative” to meet the Zionist regime's demands. This week, we see the fruits of Zionist labours in a more surprising arena. Sarah Colborne, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, was quoted in the pro Israeli paper, the Jewish Chronicle, as supporting a boycott of the highly renowned musician and academic Gilad Atzmon. Atzmon was booked to perform in his professional capacity as a saxaphonist at an event celebrating political song in Bradford, called 'Raise your Banners.' The musician/author has recently published his best selling treatise on Jewish cultural identity called ‘The Wondering Who’. A work that, unlike Sarah Colborne, I have actually read, and can highly recommend, as it pulls no punches, when asking to what degree the racist idealogy - Zionism, when mixed with the Jewish sense of ‘Choseness’, is to blame for the existence of todays Apartheid Israel. It has been endorsed by some of the finest thinkers and writers on Israel/Palestine of our age.

But the subject matter alone (predictably) proved more than enough to have Atzmon, once again, falsely, branded an anti semite by the sections of the Jewish diaspora committed to stopping debate into their awkward, yet staunch, support for Israeli war crimes.

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Stephen Lendman

Is Israel a rogue state?

Rogue states spurn international law, treaties, conventions, and in Israel's case its own laws and Supreme Court decisions.

Daily examples offer proof, including from Ahmed el-Helah and Mariam Itani's new book titled, "The Suffering of the Palestinian Child under the Israeli Occupation," saying:

Over a million Palestinian children "live and suffer every moment of their lives under the painful reality of occupation."

Growing numbers are killed, injured, maimed, handicapped, arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. Most are impoverished and many hungry.

● "What about those who have lost their parents, friends, brothers and sisters due to" continuous Israeli oppression?
● "What about the children who live in fear and who suffer distress or cannot sleep, who feel unprotected in the face of a ruthless and arrogant Israeli occupation?"
● They're Palestine's children, out of sight and mind to most people everywhere. Who outside Palestine understands their suffering?
● Who can imagine the indifference of world leaders, supporting a ruthless, racist occupier, disdainful of human and civil rights?
● Who understands enduring daily assaults, police state justice, and fear of being bombed, shot, or otherwise harmed? How do you comfort young children to hold up in the face of what adults can't tolerate?

From September 29, 2000 (the start of the second Intifada) through December 31, 2008, Palestinian children witnessed around 5,900 killings and another 35,000 Israeli caused injuries. [If Americans Knew]

During Israel's war on Gaza, another 1,400 died and thousands sustained injuries, many of them permanently disabling.

Children enduring Israeli atrocities "lose their childhood and innocence, just as they lose hope and joy in their lives."

The occupation's extreme harshness causes physical and emotional problems. It also "ignite(s) the spirit of resistance and deepen(s) hatred" against a rogue oppressor disdainful of their rights.

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Evelyn Hecht-Galinski

Der Publizist Henryk M. Broder wird im "Manifest"
des norwegischen Attentäters zitiert. (Foto: BTS)

Henryk M. Broder hat es also geschafft! Er hat einen (mörderischen) Fan in Norwegen, der ihn vor seiner grauenvollen, unvorstellbaren Bluttat in einem schon monatelang geplanten "Manifest" zitiert. Dass Broder Fans hat, wissen wir. Diese Tatsache an sich ist normal in der heutigen Zeit. Schließlich hat Thilo Sarrazin auch viele Fans.

Gab nicht Broder einen an ihn gedachten Journalistenpreis des Deutschen Kulturrates aus Protest gegen "antidemokratische Äußerungen" gegen den Besuch von Thilo Sarrazin in Kreuzberg zurück? Ist dieser Schritt nicht die Konsequenz einer Zusammengehörigkeit zweier "Kleingeister"? Wird Broder im "Manifest" des mutmaßlichen Rechtsterroristen Anders Berhring Breivik nicht mit den Passagen aus dem "De Volkskrant"-Interview zitiert, dass junge freiheitsliebende Menschen Europa lieber verlassen sollten?

Ich zitiere weiter aus dem Berliner Tagesspiegel, einer Zeitung des Holtzbrinck-Verlages, für den Broder als Gastkommentator tätig war, wie folgt: Der Autor oder die Autoren des "Manifests", dessen Authentizität die norwegische Polizei inzwischen laut einer "Reuters"-Meldung bestätigt hat, zieht Broder vor allem als Kronzeugen dafür heran, dass sich Europa widerstandslos dem Islam unterordne. Dabei zitiert das "Manifest" einen drastischen Vergleich aus dem Broder-Gespräch mit der niederländischen Zeitung: Der in Europa dominante Ethos werde "perfekt ausgedrückt von einer dummen blonden Frau, mit der der Autor kürzlich diskutierte. Sie sagte, dass es manchmal besser sei, sich vergewaltigen zu lassen als schwere Verletzungen zu riskieren, weil man sich wehrt. Es sei manchmal besser, den Kampf zu vermeiden als das Risiko einzugehen, getötet zu werden."

Hier allerdings hakt Broder ein: "Nur ein Detail stimmt nicht", schreibt er in seiner Stellungnahme. "Ich habe mit keiner blonden Frau diskutiert, die vergewaltigt wurde, ich habe aus irgendeinem Artikel zitiert, in dem eine vergewaltigte Frau darüber räsonierte, dass es besser wäre, sich nicht zu wehren, wenn man mit dem Leben davonkommen will." Davon abgesehen, so Broder weiter in seiner Stellungnahme, stimmten aber insgesamt die ihm zugeschriebenen Zitate im "Manifest." Ende des Original Textes im Tagesspiegel.

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Gilad Atzmon

On the South Bank with the Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
Harry Potter and West Wing actor Jason Isaacs, Normandy
veteran, Kenneth Riley, Holocaust survivors Zigi Skipper
and Ben Helfgott and Searchlight's Nick Lowles.

Hope not Hate is presented as a British anti racist/anti Fascist organsisation but in fact it is an offshoot of the notoriously Zionist Searchlight magazine. As if this is not enough, its leader Nick Lowles also co-posts on Harry’s Place, the infamous anti-Muslim site and, according to Wikipedia, nominee for the Islamic Human Rights Commission's 'Annual Islamophobia Awards' 2006 (won by none other than Condoleezza Rice). Harry’s Place is known as a Hasbara pro-war Neo-Con outlet and is, in my opinion, far more dangerous of any English right wing party. Harry’s Place openly serves foreign interests, and promotes clear racist ideology in clear opposition to everything we hold to be associated with Western pluralism and tolerance.

Could you imagine any humanist, anti-racist posting news items on an Islamophobic Neocon, Zionist pro-war site? Well, I suppose this is the price that we pay in Britain for turning a blind eye for so long to Zionist stooges.

But now their game is over. I will not be silent about this or anything else - and I am not alone. Despite not being a member of any party, league or group and although I speak with my own voice, I am surrounded by the most supportive people. Hundreds of thousands of them who, just like me, believe in Truth, Peace and Justice, as opposed to the Lies, Falsification and Deceit of Hope not Hate, Nick Lowles, Harry’s Place and the rest.

So let us be clear about it: To oppose racism means also to oppose Jewish racism and Jewish supremacy. To oppose racism means to say YES to hope but NO to Zionist hate mongers such as Lowles and Harry’s Place.

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Paul Craig Roberts

On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35% of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private banks that hold the troubled sovereign debt from Greece, Italy, and Spain must accept part of the cost of their bailout by writing off some of the debt. The private banks want to avoid any losses either by forcing the Greek, Italian, and Spanish governments to make good on the bonds by imposing extreme austerity on their citizens, or by having the European Central Bank print euros with which to buy the sovereign debt from the private banks. Printing money to make good on debt is contrary to the ECB’s charter and especially frightens Germans, because of the Weimar experience with hyperinflation.

Obviously, the German government got the message from the orchestrated failed bond auction. As I wrote at the time, there is no reason for Germany, with its relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the troubled countries, not to be able to sell its bonds.

If Germany’s creditworthiness is in doubt, how can Germany be expected to bail out other countries? Evidence that Germany’s failed bond auction was orchestrated is provided by troubled Italy’s successful bond auction two days later.

Strange, isn’t it. Italy, the largest EU country that requires a bailout of its debt, can still sell its bonds, but Germany, which requires no bailout and which is expected to bear a disproportionate cost of Italy’s, Greece’s and Spain’s bailout, could not sell its bonds.

In my opinion, the failed German bond auction was orchestrated by the US Treasury, by the European Central Bank and EU authorities, and by the private banks that own the troubled sovereign debt.

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Stephen Lendman

It's been planned for years. Republicans want them eliminated. Democrats agreed to incremental cuts to make ending core social contract programs look normal. Slashing Social Security comes later.

On November 24, New York Times writer Robert Pear headlined, "Support Builds for a Plan to Rein in Medicare Costs," saying:

Congressional Supercommittee members "built a case for major structural changes in Medicare (and Medicaid) that would limit the government's open-ended financial commitment...."

Privatization is recommended. Republicans and some Democrats agree. Expect more to come on board. Methodology might be to provide beneficiaries fixed sums for private plans. They'll cost more and deliver less.

Proponents call the idea "premium support." At issue is shifting government's responsibility to beneficiaries. Washington would pay premiums in increasingly smaller amounts until they bear full responsibility.

Doing so will leave seniors entirely on their own for healthcare when they most need it. Unaffordability won't matter. Understating the problem, John Rother, National Coalition on Health Care president said:

"The Supercommittee may have laid the groundwork for future reductions in the growth of Medicare."

In fact, "the gang of 12" secretly agreed to major cuts on the way to eliminating government's responsibility for healthcare entirely. After that, attack Social Security.

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William T. Hathaway

From the book RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War by William T. Hathaway. Published by Trine Day 2010. This is a collection of reports from peace activists in the USA, Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan. An American exchange student in one of my courses here in Germany contributed the following essay.

Jason was my boy-friend for a while in high school. It wasn't a match made in heaven. Looking back, I think the main thing we had in common was that I wanted a boy-friend and he wanted a girl-friend. Other than that there wasn't much between us, as we discovered whenever we tried to talk about anything. I broke up with him when he asked me to go rabbit hunting with him. We stayed friends, though, probably because since it was obvious we could never be a real couple, neither of us had hard feelings.

We both left town after graduation; I went to college, Jason went to the marines. Two years later we were both back home; I was on summer vacation, Jason was on medical leave after having half his leg blown off in Iraq. He'd been riding in a truck that hit a mine.

Everybody in town felt terrible about what had happened to him. The American Legion post gave him a parade. The high school marching band played, the vets marched, and Jason walked in front next to the mayor, who was carrying the American flag. Jason could walk pretty well, considering.

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