jimstaro's blog

In this I will just add a few reports I've come across this morning while waking up, might add some more as they trickle in.

Dishonored Americans: That's All of Us When A Vet Is Left Homeless

April 20, 2011 - L. Tammy Duckworth came to Hartford on Monday and told a sad story.

Duckworth was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in 2004 when she lost both legs and the partial use of one arm in combat. Now, she's assistant secretary of veterans affairs in D.C., and recently, she was in Vermont talking to a man who was staying with his family at a homeless shelter.

That's sad enough, but the man was excited. A member of the Vermont National Guard, he was getting ready to deploy, and his family had received permission to stay in the shelter for the duration of his tour overseas.

Imagine. Excitement that your family could stay in a homeless shelter.

Analysis: Conflict leads to Afghan displacement, but which side most to blame?

Displaced families head out of the conflict-hit Orakzai Agency in Afghanistan

21 April 2011 (IRIN) - One irony of the current security situation in Afghanistan is that foreign forces, whose ostensible aim is to protect civilians while fighting the Taliban, may be responsible - directly or indirectly - for the bulk of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country, whose number is rising.

About 400 individuals were displaced each day in 2006-2010 - 730,000 in total - mostly due to military operations by US/NATO forces, according to the Oslo-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), an affiliate of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Can't say Nobody told them so!!!!

Secret memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq

Reuters: A British Army soldier investigates a large fire near Basra's Shuiba refinery

19 April 2011 - Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Striking miners and their families being evicted from company houses

April 18 1912 - Members of the United Mine Workers of America on Paint Creek in Kanawha County, West Virginia, demanded wages equal to those of other area mines. The operators rejected the wage increase and miners walked off the job. Miners along nearby Cabin Creek, having previously lost their union, joined the Paint Creek strikers and demanded:
• the right to organize
• recognition of their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly
• an end to blacklisting union organizers
• alternatives to company stores
• an end to the practice of using mine guards
• prohibition of cribbing
• installation of scales at all mines for accurately weighing coal
• unions be allowed to hire their own checkweighmen to make sure the companies' checkweighmen were not cheating the miners.

A new generation of war poets is providing powerful insight into ongoing conflicts by putting their vivid impressions into words. Sean Rayment and Michael Howie report.

17 April 2011 - For centuries, soldiers have used poetry to describe the horrors of war. The celebrated First World War poets – Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke – memorably used cathartic verse to illustrate the futility of a conflict that saw a generation of young men perish.

Yet war poetry offers much to the reader, too.

April 15th, 2011 - This week on War News Radio, we investigate media coverage of the protests in Afghanistan,

Next, we learn about communications in the Libyan conflict.

Finally, we hear from a journalist who was kidnapped in Afghanistan.

All this, and the week's news.

 

Banana Giant's Paramilitary Payoffs Detailed in Trove of Declassified Legal, Financial Documents

Evidence of Quid Pro Quo with Guerrilla, Paramilitary Groups Contradicts 2007 Plea Deal

Colombian Military Officials Encouraged, Facilitated Company's Payments to Death Squads

More than 5,500 Pages of Chiquita Records Published Online by National Security Archive

March 2000 notes of Chiquita Senior Counsel Robert Thomas indicate awareness that payments were for security services.

Anybody know of a state, or national mega, that has a lottery, playing mostly to the lower income citizen, dedicated to prison spending, me neither!

SUMMARY

A new report from the NAACP shows states are devoting increasingly larger portions of their budgets to prisons, while education gets smaller and smaller portions. Judy Woodruff discusses the report with NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. Transcript

ProPublica just sent out the following, with some 886 Government Documents that were released by the Federal Reserve:

Search the Fed’s Documents Detailing Their Lending to Banks During the Crisis

If the teabaggers get their ShutDown Congress has to pass a Special Bill just so our Military Personal, at war in their wars of choice, Can Get Paid!

Report: Shutdown would hurt military families

Apr 6, 2011 - The pay freeze that would come with an extended government shutdown would severely hurt military families and require the military to organize financial help for those who don’t have savings to cover bills, a nonpartisan arm of Congress is warning lawmakers.

A shutdown could come as early as midnight Friday. As a months-long dispute over federal spending continues, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget warned Wednesday morning that military members would be expected to report to work without pay. The military will be fully paid once government funding is restored, Obama administration officials said.

Goldstone report: the unanswered questions

Indiscriminate warfare, as opposed to deliberate killing, was undoubtedly Israel's state policy

AFL-CIO blog site about rallies-link in graphic

If you thought you didn't have a reason to participate in the April 4th "We Are One" {face book page link} rallies around the country this report will certainly plant that needed seed as they continue trying to destroy what America once was building successfully, through it's workers!

60min. 3 April 2011, if you missed this it's a must watch and or read!

Omar Khadr's Canadian Lawyer Speaks at U of O

April 1, 2011 - Dennis Edney, the Canadian lawyer for Omar Khadr, gave a powerful talk on Mar. 21 at the University of Ottawa, where he presented the case that Khadr has been pushed through a sham legal system devoid of any real justice.

The event was sponsored by Amnesty International UO and a number of other campus groups, including the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa.

Adrian Hamilton: Don't let Libya distract us from what {bush} Blair did

2 April 2011 - A terrible thought has struck me. Could the excitement over the war in Libya serve to make Tony Blair look less awful and deprive the Chilcot inquiry of what little sting it may have when it finally publishes later this year?

Of course the Government, and the many MPs who supported military intervention, argue that this time is different, that they have learnt the lessons of Iraq, sought proper UN sanction and eschewed action on the ground.

April 1st, 2011 - This week on War News Radio, Foreign Affairs, we learn about the role of Chinese investment in Afghanistan. Then, we hear from a freelance journalist about his time in the Middle East. Finally, we look at the changing status of foreign correspondants. Our program begins with a round up of this week's news.

 

War's a farce in Afghan truce village

KAPISA PROVINCE - Mar 31, 2011 - Alasay district in this province northeast of the Afghan capital Kabul, is the scene of an unusual arrangement where local government officials and the Taliban turn a blind eye to one another.

Recognizing that neither side can defeat the other, the two have effectively decided to coexist as peaceably as conditions will allow.

Taliban guerrillas and government policemen, both armed, wander around the open-air market in the district center without bothering one another. They have even been known to attend each other's weddings and funerals.

To ease relations further and remove any embarrassment, a decision was taken recently to have the insurgents do their shopping in the morning and the security forces theirs in the afternoon.

Cleaning up our environment is not only related to climate change, it means cleaning up the damage done, and in many cases known to be damaging by the businesses and corporations who caused it, all around us, especially that which kills over time, shorter times!

And people talk about the Taliban or al Qaeda video's while condemning them and any who are of the religious ideology they profess to be while the supporters of these wars call us a christian Nation as we say "God Bless America"!

This Rolling Stone updated report has more of the very graphic photo's then Der Spiegal first posted along with two Very Graphic Video's you may or may not want to view!

How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses - and how their officers failed to stop them

March 27, 2011 - Early last year, after six hard months soldiering in Afghanistan, a group of American infantrymen reached a momentous decision: It was finally time to kill a haji.

{This may not be put together well as I've got some thirty plus years of thoughts rushing through my head, have since watching this last night, as I lived in and watched all this go down and the growth of their total control, not only here but across this planet, as compared to the first some thirty years of growing into and starting in the working professions.}

That own our Government, now are covered under the First Amendment, and 'our' representatives fighting so hard for while now gaining millions in campaign contributions, from their real employers, because corporations are now individual citizens and can give unlimited funds to garner what all they want!

I thought foreign contributions to political campaigns were illegal, that's what all the tepublicans were screaming about any Democratic Candidate from President on down for these past decades!

We may have fallen rapidly behind many as to our once vibrant and envied economy, workforce, innovations, advancing forward and much more, we were envied for, but we still are leading or on par for much of the ideologies an ACORN and NGO type communities bring forth and spread to the World Communities. These are now probably the only really important thing's many don't now either hate us for or are turning their backs on us for the many other issues and policies!

To rise once more, hopefully bigger and better, here in the once known as United States of America, gone starting soon after 9/11!

ACORN International puts down roots in South Korea, Egypt

John McCusker, The Times-Picayune archiveWade Rathke

March 23, 2011 - The number of people around the world uprooted by conflict or violence and displaced within their country has increased to 27.5 million, the highest figure in the last decade, according to a new report released Wednesday.

The report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, established by the Norwegian Refugee Council in 1998 at the U.N.'s request, said close to three million people in 20 countries were newly displaced by conflict or violence in 2010 including 1.2 million in Africa.

 

One wonders why there is so little knowledge of these others uprisings and confusion, as I see it, as to the Libyan actions by the U.S. and NATO as well as seeming little support. One big reason is we already were familiar with a couple of the players in the Egyptian opposition and through the internet got familiar with the younger generation people that were so active in bringing it on. These others we have extremely little knowledge, if any, of the players in opposition, we do know that some in the Libyan movement are not considered friendly to the west, especially us here in the U.S. after the previous decade!!

Facebook group calls for uprisings all over Syria on Saturday

New Book on the Peril of Nuclear Weapons Highlights the Archive's Nuclear Vault

Ron Rosenbaum's How the End Begins Lauds "Astonishing Compilation" of Declassified Documents on the Bomb