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Armed Truce: Surging Into Slaughter on Jerusalem Street

Civilians are still streaming out of Baghdad’s Sadr City, despite the announcement of a truce late last week designed to avert – or at least give the appearance of diverting – a major bloodbath from an all-out assault on the densely-populated area by U.S. forces and their local junior partners. Announced on Saturday, the deal was immediately eviscerated by U.S. forces, who bombed three neighborhoods in Sadr City that very afternoon, as dpa reports.

Oddly enough, when Iraqi government forces tried to enter disputed Sadr City quadrants the next

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Shot of Wonder: Supporting Arthur Silber

Arthur Silber needs your help. It’s as simple as that. One of the most insightful, original, informed and meaningful voices in our political discourse today, Silber must scrape by from month to month on the jagged edge of circumstance, battling ill health with notable courage, surviving on nothing but what his blog can bring in. This is a shameful reflection of how our society regards wisdom and truth: as something to be cut off, unsupported, crushed if possible, and if not — as

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Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America’s New Moral Universe

Tell me that this doesn’t sound like something out of a history of Nazi tactics in World War II:

The rules [of engagement]t explicitly allowed the killing of unarmed Iraqis under certain circumstances…Specifically, the snipers were allowed to shoot unarmed people running away from explosions or firefights….Of course, it’s not unusual for innocent people to run from explosions.

Didier, who has since been promoted to captain, said that “if that individual makes contact with you and then breaks contact of their own accord
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Fallujah Revisited: Bush, Petraeus Prepare ‘Cleansing’ of Sadr City

I.
George W. Bush and David Petraeus are preparing to make a new Fallujah in Sadr City, home to two million Shiites in Baghdad. Thousands of people are already fleeing the area before the full-scale slaughter and destruction begin. As in Fallujah, the multitudes who cannot escape will be trapped in a “free fire zone”, subjected to ruthless bombardment and ground assault. Thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of innocent civilians stand in the shadow of imminent death.<br

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Serving the System: Disillusion, Deception and the Obama Campaign

Arthur Silber has the second part of his powerful “Choosing Sides” series up now: Killing Truth and Hope — The Fatal Illusion of Opposition. There is little I can add to the insight and eloquence of the piece — just go read the whole thing, and follow up on the links provided there as well.

But I would like to highlight two particular aspects of the post. First is Silber’s succinct description of the “corporate-authoritarian political system” that confronts us at every turn with its

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Willing Executioners: America’s Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia

Do you want to know what the entire American political establishment — Democrat and Republican, conservative and “progressive” — really stands for? Do you want to know what they all support, whole-heartedly, without the slightest objection or demur? Do you want to see their true vision for the world, behind all the pious rhetoric and poisonous lies? Then look no further; here it is, in the raw:

A leading human rights group on Tuesday accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people’s throats,
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The Terror Master: Bush Orders Covert ‘Surge’ Against Iran, with Dem Support

The world’s most dangerous terrorist, who has already slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people, has launched yet another campaign of murder and destruction.

A few days ago, we wrote that the Bush Administration has systematically removed the last remaining barriers for a military attack on Iran. Now Andrew Cockburn reveals in Counterpunch that George W. Bush has ordered a major escalation of the long-running covert war the United States has already been waging inside Iran itself.

With the approval of

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Cage Match: Criminal Complicity on the Campaign Trail

We’ve examined various aspects of America’s Torture State many times at this site (most recently here), but in his latest column, Ted Rall pulls it all together and provides a succinct and powerful bill of indictment (excerpts below), drawing the only conclusion that anyone not corrupted or cowed into servility can possibly draw: George W. Bush and his chief advisers should be arrested and tried on charges of torture and murder.

Anyone who actually believed in democracy and the rule of law — anyone who actually

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Feeding Moloch: Last Barriers to War on Iran Come Down

Anyone who thinks the Bush Administration does not intend to attack Iran either has rocks in the head or their head in the sand. The warmongers have raised their cacophonous howling of threat and accusation against Iran to entirely new levels. Every day now, some major Administration figure makes fiery charges that Iran is directly, deliberately killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq: a clear casus belli, if it were true, which it almost certainly is not.

(That is, it a clear cause for war in the perverted logic of Establishment discourse,

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The Tide is High

When the murderous absurdity of our times swells to high tide, few are those who can cling fast to the rock and sing songs of scorn against the fools. One such rare singer is Arthur Silber, who here demolishes the New York Times’ portentous hand-wringing over Iran’s release of photos showing its not-so-top-secret nuclear site, giving the world an intimate look at the supposed furnace of evil wherein the cloven-footed Persians are plotting the destruction of all humankind.

As Silber notes, the Times does its best

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