Stephen Lendman

Expect no change going forward. Expect worse ahead than ever. Expect continuing police state lawlessness. Expect full-blown tyranny if not stopped.

Perhaps no president in US history disappointed supporters more than Obama. He pledged "change you can believe it." He promised hope. He did Lincoln one better. He fooled most people enough times to matter. He never cared about rule of law principles. He trashed them in office. He deplores democratic values. He's beholden to monied interests. "Yes we can" conceals his dark side duplicity. He made America look increasingly like Guatemala. Nothing ahead suggests change. International, constitutional and US statute laws don't matter. Bush declared them null and void. So did Obama. He presides over a ruthless police state apparatus. No one is free and safe. Big Brother watches everyone. Mass surveillance is official US policy.

On Friday, Obama will announce so-called new guidelines. He'll ask Congress for help. Expect business as usual to continue. Expect worse than ever ahead. Expect lies claiming otherwise. Ending the fake war on terror matters. So does halting mass surveillance entirely. Restoring rule of law [and] freedoms matters most. Expect Obama's war to destroy them to continue. When Bush signed the Patriot Act into law, Center for Constitutional Rights senior litigation attorney Nancy Chang asked: "What's so patriotic about trampling on the Bill of Rights?"

More »

Bill Van Auken

The government of Afghanistan has denounced a US airstrike on an Afghan village that took the lives of seven children and one woman on Wednesday morning.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai linked the incident to the continuing tensions with Washington over his postponement of signing a bilateral security agreement (BSA) that would allow some 12,000 US troops to remain in the country indefinitely after the formal deadline for withdrawing all foreign occupation forces at the end of this year.

According to both the Karzai government and the governor of Parwan province, where the massacre took place, the incident began when US special operations troops attempted to enter a home in the Ghorband district, about 25 miles north of the capital of Kabul.

NATO’s International Security Assistance Force released a statement on the raid saying that the bombing was ordered after US and Afghan government forces came under attack and “required defensive air support to suppress the enemy fire.”

The statement added that ISAF “regrets that civilians were killed” in the attack, while claiming that the operation had been “Afghan-led.” In addition to the civilians, ISAF reported one US Special Forces soldier killed, as well as 10 “insurgents.”

According to the US military, the operation targeted two Taliban leaders identified as Qari Nzar Gul and Moorullah, who were believed to be in the district. The area has in the recent period become increasingly contested by armed opposition forces and apparently a base of operations for attacks on the US-controlled Bagram Air Base.

More »

James Petras

Introduction: Saudi Arabia has all the vices and none of the virtues of an oil rich state like Venezuela. The country is governed by a family dictatorship which tolerates no opposition and severely punishes human rights advocates and political dissidents. Hundreds of billions in oil revenues are controlled by the royal despotism and fuel speculative investments the world over.

The ruling elite relies on the purchase of Western arms and US military bases for protection. The wealth of productive nations is syphoned to enrich the conspicuous consumption of the Saudi ruling family. The ruling elite finances the most fanatical, retrograde, misogynist version of Islam, “Wahhabi” a sect of Sunni Islam.

Faced with internal dissent from repressed subjects and religious minorities, the Saudi dictatorship perceives threats and dangers from all sides: overseas, secular, nationalists and Shia ruling governments; internally, moderate Sunni nationalists, democrats and feminists; within the royalist cliques, traditionalists and modernizers. In response it has turned toward financing, training and arming an international network of Islamic terrorists who are directed toward attacking, invading and destroying regimes opposed to the Saudi clerical-dictatorial regime.

More »