For the past five years or so, Iraq was always in the headlines. In the past few months, the plight of the country is mentioned less-and-less. President Obama has told us all that Afghanistan is the number one threat to the U.S.
Pundit-after-pundit has hailed the diminishing violence in Iraq. There is a Santa Claus. Iraq is now peaceful and the Iraqi people are free. This newly-assessed theory about Iraq is false. There is still much violence, only the players may have changed. Many U.S. forces stick close-by their barracks as the new Iraqi police and military forces take over security. There has been a recent increase in resistance attacks that has devastated some Iraqi police forces and military personnel. We are not reading about this in the West. Plus, electricity and clean water supplies are just as minuscule as they were after the March 2003 invasion.
If an Iraqi lapsed into a coma before March 2003 and recovered today, he/she would not recognize Iraq. Plus, the person would probably prefer to relapse because of the horrible nightmare that is today’s Iraq.
The country has no leadership. There is a U.S.-appointed “government” that must reside in the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. If any of the members stroll outside this area without the benefit of being guarded by tanks and other military hardware, his/her life-span would be measured in minutes.
Big Brother-style databases of DNA records and personal details of millions of Britons held by the Government must be scrapped, a report says.
The study of almost 50 large-scale public sector computer systems highlights what it claims are serious breaches of human rights and data protection laws.
It warns that Britain is becoming a ‘database state’ because politicians are scared to step in to halt the spread of costly and flawed projects.
Academics at Cambridge University, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, singled out the DNA database and the Contact-Point index of all children in the UK among the 11 worst examples.
But they also found serious problems with 29 other data systems which they claimed were wasting billions of pounds a year and putting children at risk, as well as eroding privacy.
Thousands of UK workers are being trained to help respond to a future terror attack as part of an updated counter-terror strategy, ministers say.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said shop and hotel workers would be among 60,000 people able to deal with an incident.
The updated approach, aimed at tackling immediate terrorist threats and the causes of extremism, would be the most comprehensive in the world, she added.
But the Tories said not enough action was being taken against extremists.
‘Closed doors’
The Home Office’s new counter-terrorism document – to be published on Tuesday – will go into more detail than ever before in the interests of public accountability.
It will reflect intelligence opinion that the biggest threat to the UK comes from al-Qaeda-linked groups and will also take into account recent attacks on hotels in the Indian city of Mumbai.
The Department of Homeland Security and police forces label anyone who they disagree with – or who disagrees with government policies – as “terrorists”.
Don’t believe me?
Well, according to a law school professor, pursuant to the Military Commissions Act, “Anyone who … speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.”
George Galloway, British Member of Parliament, has been banned from entering Canada because of his outspoken support of Palestine, Hamas, and Hezbollah. This is a short video blog from a Jewish Canadian giving her opinion on the situation.
The decision to ban George Galloway from Canada seems odd, but now it emerges that the Jewish Defence League (JDL) pressured the Canadian Government to so the action takes on sinister connotations for Canada, why? Because the Jewish Defence League are according to the FBI a Terrorist Group. In its report, Terrorism 2000/2001, the FBI referred to the JDL as a “violent extremist Jewish organization”. This “violent extremist Jewish organization” now it seems has power and influence over the Canadian Government.
Today marks six years since Washington launched its “shock and awe” campaign against Iraq, raining bombs and missiles on Baghdad. Despite the massive opposition of the American people to this war and the change from the Bush to the Obama administration, the US war in Iraq continues, with no end in sight.
This anniversary is both tragic and infamous. It marks the beginning of a war of aggression based upon lies. Launched in the name of “liberating” the Iraqi people, it has inflicted a catastrophe of world historic proportions upon their country and constitutes the greatest crime against humanity of the 21st century.
In six years, the Iraq war has, by the most credible estimates, claimed the lives of over 1 million Iraqis, while leaving countless others wounded and maimed. Nearly 5 million people have been driven from their homes, either forced into exile or displaced in Iraq by US repression and sectarian violence.
The US government and media have extolled the “improved security” situation in Iraq and the “return to normalcy.” Such claims can only be made in comparison to the bloodbath that was carried out beforehand.
Few of his contemporaries and far fewer since knew of the nineteenth century French journalist and novelist Alphonse Karr, but most everyone is familiar with some variant of his quip plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: The more it changes the more it’s the same thing.
Anyone driving the streets of major American cities over the past year or more has seen a bumper sticker that simply read 01-20-2009.
The numbers indicated the date that George W. Bush would leave the White House.
Until last November no one knew who his replacement would be or even with which of the two major political parties he or she would be affiliated; it was enough to anticipate Bush’s departure as an end in itself.
Judging by other bumper stickers that often accompanied this one on a given vehicle, it was assumed that those who so adorned the back of it looked forward to the end of eight years of an aggressive foreign policy, one marked by the war in Iraq and, for anyone who had paid attention to other matters, that in Afghanistan and assorted counterinsurgency and proxy wars such as those in Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines.
