North America

NOVANEWS July 28th, 2010 | Author: Patriot Who Owns General Petraeus? Posted By Philip Giraldi On July 28, 2010 @ 11:00 pm http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/07/28/who-owns-general-petraeus/ Anyone who has ever served in the military would confirm that to become a general in the armed forces of the United States requires highly developed political skills.  One must be politically astute to guide large military forces while at the same time answering to largely ignorant constituencies in Congress, the White House, and the media.  Many generals tire of the exercise after a certain point and retire to well paid sinecures on the boards of defense contractors.  Others stage their own forms of rebellion, speaking the truth and walking the plank as a reward.  Admiral William Fallon insisted...

NOVANEWS    24 Hours To Act: Critical Vote Tuesday Morning   Fight bigotry threatening Lower Manhattan Muslim center now. Dorothy -- I'm appalled by opposition to plans by American Muslims to build a community center in Lower Manhattan modeled after Jewish Community Centers (JCC's) and Y's all over the country. [1][2]
 Tapping into fear, prejudice, and partisanship, opponents of the project are trampling core values on which our country was founded and on which I was raised. On what possible basis do Muslim Americans have less of a right than Americans of another background to develop this communal center?
 The rhetoric being tossed around is not only offensive and wrong, it's a propaganda gift to Islamic extremists globally who hope to whip up anger over the treatment ...

NOVANEWS You stood up, they backed down. Because of your pressure, the White House Correspondents Association denied FOX the coveted front row center seat in the White House press briefing room recently vacated by Helen Thomas.   Dear Friend, On Wednesday we asked: Should the White House Correspondents Association let FOX News have the best seat in the White House press briefing room and the legitimacy that it confers? Your answer was a resounding "Hell no!" In just four days, over 311,000 CREDO Action members and 180,000 MoveOn members — over 491,000 people — petitioned the board of the White House Correspondents Association and asked them not to give the best seat in the White House press briefing room to the rightwing noise machine's key ...

NOVANEWS  On July 29, the Obama administration published its new policy banning abortion coverage in the temporary high-risk insurance pools. This policy means that women who are part of these pools because they have significant health problems, such as diabetes or cancer, will not be able to access abortion care, even if their health is at further risk. We need to send a powerful message that women's access to abortion should not be used as a bargaining chip in the new health-care system. Add your name by Friday, August 6 to a petition that NARAL Pro-Choice America will send to comment on this bad policy. http://bit.ly/c2ylOJ Thank you! To take action on this issue, click on the link below: http://action.prochoiceamerica.org/site/Advocacy?s_oo=twKoFuEhSxWShhsHbUpizg..&id=4441 .If the...

By Ben Fox SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – As the U.S. military prepares for the first war crimes trial under President Barack Obama, its most high-profile case against the planners of the Sept. 11 attacks is stuck in political and legal limbo. Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr, accused of killing an American soldier during a raid on an al-Qaida compound, is scheduled to go to trial Aug. 9 at the U.S. base in Cuba. But Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the attacks, and four alleged accomplices are still sequestered at Guantanamo without charges. The Obama administration, after months of review, hasn’t made a decision on whether to seek a military or civilian trial. It’s a delay that has angered relatives of Sept. 11 victims. It also has created an unusual situation: Previous war-crime...

NOVANEWS Long journey back for troops with brain trauma July 29, 2010   by Michael Leon     Veterans By Gregg Zoroya – USA Today TAMPA, Fla. — Army Ranger Cory Remsburg was thrown like a rag doll into an Afghanistan canal Oct. 1 by the blast from a 500-pound roadside bomb, the right side of his head caved in by shrapnel. After a medical evacuation and six surgeries at military hospitals in Afghanistan, Germany and Bethesda, Md., Remsburg arrived at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital here in November in a vegetative state. Doctors, therapists, family and friends rallied to help with Remsburg’s therapy. They massaged joints, stretched limbs and exercised muscles. They stimulated him with drugs, aromas and episodes of the TV comedy Scrubs. They questioned, commanded and cajoled — anythi...

NOVANEWS The CIA: Beyond Redemption and Should be Terminated July 24, 2010  by Sherwood Ross   CIA By Sherwood Ross The Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) has confirmed the worst fears of its creator President Harry Truman that it might degenerate into “an American Gestapo.” It has  been just that for so long it is beyond redemption. It represents 60 years of failure and fascism utterly at odds with the spirit of a democracy and needs to be closed, permanently. Over the years “the Agency” as it is known, has given U.S. presidents so much wrong information on so many critical issues, broken so many laws, subverted so many elections, overthrown so many governments, funded so many dictators, and killed and tortured so many innocent human beings that the pages of its official history could be w...

NOVANEWS July 26, 2010  by Michael Leon By Paul J. Balles at Redress.com Paul J. Balles argues that the continued presence of 1,000 American military bases outside the USA nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union is a symptom of the arrogance of power that threatens local communities and ultimately the USA itself. ”What is America doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? It’s called ‘nation building’. What business is it of America to be building other’s nations? It’s really none of their business. It’s nothing more than the arrogance of power.” When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ending the Cold War, America breathed a sigh of relief. A problem that should have been addressed at that point was neglected. The question that should have dominated American thinking is: Do we...

NOVANEWS July 25, 2010  by Gordon Duff “BOSTON BRAKES” ASSASSINATION TECHNIQUE BECOMES BIG “PROBLEM SOLVER” By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor I had never heard of “Boston Brakes” until two days ago.  I had been on the Kevin Barrett radio show yesterday, discussing, among other things, the endless ways to gain control of an aircraft and plow it into a building, something I had been briefed on by my Air Force buddies.  There are a dozen ways to gain control of a plane, in fact, the more “fly by wire” a plane is, the more ways to control it remotely.  Now I am told the same thing works for cars, not exactly the same but close enough. Nothing particularly clever is required, especially when the plane is capable of landing itself or, with a bit of hacking, making an inconvenient st...