be just

Who's Blocking Health Care Reform Now? Blue Dogs? Senate Dems? House Progressives? Or the White House Itself? | Black Agenda Report : "It made Democrats unable to present a health care reform package as a job creating economic stimulus more real than anything the president has yet proposed. Adopting a single payer system, as the National Nurses Organization pointed out at the beginning of the year, would create 3.3 million new jobs. Subtracting out the 550,000 in the insurance industry who would have to find other livelihoods, a single payer health care plan would create a net surplus of 2.6 million new jobs, as many as the economy lost in all of 2007, and provide tens of billions in taxes that support the budgets of local governments. So with millions unemployed and underemployed Democrats cannot argue that their health care bill will put Americans back to work, or help fund local and state governments. Progressives in the House, many of whom supported single payer when Bush ...

From the People (And Sarah Palin!) Who Brought Us the Iraq War « Antiwar.com Blog : "The same neo-conservatives (and some new ones like Sarah Palin(!), plus Amb. Ryan Crocker) who created the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) 12 years ago and subsequently campaigned ceaselessly for the ouster and invasion of Iraq have just called on Pres. Obama to “fully resource” the war in Afghanistan in their new guise as the more modest sounding Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). It’s remarkable that more liberal interventionists did not sign on to this, as the letter, according to Politico’s Ben Smith, has been circulating for some days, and PNAC had a history of reaching out to their political cousins on the liberal side of the political spectrum, as during the Iraq War when they, like some at Brookings and elsewhere, felt Rumsfeld wasn’t as committed to the war and remaking Iraq as he should have been."

From the People (And Sarah Palin!) Who Brought Us the Iraq War « Antiwar.com Blog : "The same neo-conservatives (and some new ones like Sarah Palin(!), plus Amb. Ryan Crocker) who created the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) 12 years ago and subsequently campaigned ceaselessly for the ouster and invasion of Iraq have just called on Pres. Obama to “fully resource” the war in Afghanistan in their new guise as the more modest sounding Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). It’s remarkable that more liberal interventionists did not sign on to this, as the letter, according to Politico’s Ben Smith, has been circulating for some days, and PNAC had a history of reaching out to their political cousins on the liberal side of the political spectrum, as during the Iraq War when they, like some at Brookings and elsewhere, felt Rumsfeld wasn’t as committed to the war and remaking Iraq as he should have been."

Al Jazeera English - Africa - Sudanese woman jailed over trousers : "A Sudanese woman arrested for wearing trousers has been found guilty of flouting Sudan's decency laws, but spared the expected punishment of 40 lashes. Sudanese officials on Monday instead ordered Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein to pay a fine of about $200 following a court hearing in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. But al-Hussein refused to pay the fine, saying she would 'rather go to prison'. The court later jailed her for a month after she failed to pay, her lawyer Kamal Omar told reporters. As al-Hussein made her way to the courtroom, scores of female supporters, some of them wearing trousers, had rallied around her, some shouting: 'Freedom, freedom!' Police rounded many of them up and marched them away."

US Hypocrisy Astonishes the World by Paul Craig Roberts -- Antiwar.com : Isn’t this passing the buck? The Marine lost his life not because of the Associated Press and a photographer, but because of the war criminals – Gates, Bush, Cheney, Obama, and the U.S. Congress that supports wars of naked aggression that serve no American purpose, but which keep campaign coffers filled with contributions from the armaments companies. Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard is dead because the U.S. government and a significant percentage of the U.S. population believe that the U.S. has the right to invade, bomb, and occupy other peoples who have raised no hand against us but are demonized with lies and propaganda. For the American war secretary it is a photo that is insensitive, not America’s assertion of the right to determine the fate of Afghanistan with bombs and soldiers. The exceptional "virtuous nation" does not think it is insensitive for America’s bom...

Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed : Information Clearing House - ICH : "'The endgame came down to damage limitation,' said the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, 'because the evidence amassed by [Megrahi's] appeal is explosive and extremely damning to the system of justice.' New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft – he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognize him in the courtroom. The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, 'discovered' in the Scottish countryside and said to have been in Megrahi’s suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demo...

US killed Zia with Pak internal power help: Ex-spymaster - Pakistan - World - NEWS - The Times of India : "Imtiaz Ahmed, a former chief of the Intelligence Bureau, said the US collaborated with 'internal powers' in Pakistan to assassinate Zia. Ahmed, who also served in the ISI, has shaken up political parties with revelations of huge payments allegedly made by the Inter-Services Intelligence to strengthen the opposition to former premier Benazir Bhutto in 1990."