North America

NOVANEWS We have not in fact yet returned to normal operating hours, and I know this isn't about Palestine. Cross-posted from Truthout. The news from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe keeps on worsening. First, we heard about a piddling 1,000 barrels per day. That number was from the Coast Guard. Then, there was a quick rise upward to 5,000 barrels daily. Then, rumors suggested about 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day was more likely. BP and Obama administration spokespersons alike hushed us: Fifteen-thousand barrels a day, folks. This is no Exxon Valdez. Don't worry a bit! Of course not, why would we? Now, the government and BP are admitting to the "range" of 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day, and, to quiet surging rage, have acquiesced to a 20 billion dollar escrow fund. Perhaps, in several w...

NOVANEWS Why Can’t Mainstream American Journalists Tell Truth About Horrors of America’s Wars? July 14, 2010  by Michael Leon Sebastian Junger’s new documentary “Restrepo” presents the story of US soldiers at an isolated combat outpost, keeping Afghan suffering safely off the screen.  By Nick Turse via AlterNet I’ve heard a shot fired in anger.  But I might know a little bit more about war than Sebastian Junger. Previously best known as the author of The Perfect Storm, Junger, a New York-based reporter who has covered African wars and the Kosovo killing fields, and Tim Hetherington, an acclaimed film-maker and photographer with extensive experience in conflict zones, heard many such shots, fired by Americans and Afghans, as they made their new documentary film Restrepo — about an isolat...

NOVANEWS America Embroiled in Ethics of Endless War July 18, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba     Endless War A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE Who Will Answer? By Brig. Simon S. Sharraf Though ordinary citizens may look at war as an end to politics and diplomacy, statesmen of realism paradigm know that it is ‘a continuation of the policy in concert with other means’ (Clausewitz). According to Julian Lider, the transition point to state sanctioned violence however, remains a challenge. US President Truman faced a very difficult choice after having received the lengthy Kennan Telegram from Moscow. In the midst of electioneering, both Truman and his opponent Thomas Dewey did not want to appear spineless against Stalin. What followed was a Cold War built on containment. Ironically the issue then was not military...

NOVANEWS Afghanistan: — Can General Petraeus turn the tide in Kandahar? July 17, 2010 by Khalil Nouri   By Khalil Nouri STAFF WRITER / EDITOR  The southern city of Kandahar, the last Afghan territory to be handed over by the British in 1830, was also known as the center of greatest resistance to the Russian occupation in the 1980’s. Today it measures as the epicenter of intense political competition, drug trafficking and an operational nightmare for a U.S. led counterinsurgency campaign; once again proving its historic destiny as a make-or-break location for another Afghan war. --General Petraeus-- Prior to the Rolling Stones article that caused the sacking of General Stanley McChrystal, the bewilderment was clearly apparent regarding how he was to eliminate the Taliban from their cradle...

NOVANEWS Some Harsh Views As to Why the U.S. is Supposedly a “Failed State” July 15, 2010 by Lorimer Wilson “I see the U.S. as a failed state. Why? Because this war on terror … has destroyed the Constitution and the civil liberties that the Constitution embodies. The Bill of Rights has been eviscerated. The Obama regime has institutionalized the Bush/Cheney assault on American liberty” says Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary US Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal and Professor of Political Economy Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Lorimer Wilson, editor of Financial Article Summaries Today, provides below further reformatted and edited [..] excerpts from Dr. Roberts’ interview with Global Research  for the ...

NOVANEWS July 15, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba   By Brig Asif Haroon Raja The US is deeply concerned that Haqqani network based in North Waziristan (NW) is killing American soldiers in Afghanistan. It complains that the militants have safe havens in FATA which seriously jeopardizes US efforts to defeat militancy. The issue is not whether the militants take off from Pakistan’s tribal belt or not, the reality is that battleground for US military is Afghanistan where the militants launch guerrilla attacks. Why are they allowed to cross over when they make a material difference upon the outcome of Afghan war? Why they are not nabbed or killed when in the process of crossing the border, or when the group is received across the border, taken forward to base camp well in depth, sheltered for few nigh...

NOVANEWS I used to tell my husband, Ameer Makhoul, "One day, they'll come for you." As chairman of the Public Committee for the Protection of Political Freedoms he'd begun to organize an awareness-raising campaign to push back against the security services' harassment of our community, the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Come for Ameer they did, late one night this May, pounding at our door, ransacking our house and terrifying our two teenage daughters. And now I've joined the ranks of Palestinian prisoners' wives, many thousands of us from the occupied territories as well as within Israel. His 13 July hearing -- persecution really -- could begin the legal nightmare that ruptures our family for many years. This is the likely course of events unless Ameer gets a fair trial and his coerced s...