To the rest of the world, at least, it's clear enough that the Pentagon knows how to redden city streets in the developing world, just not win wars there; but in Washington - by the evidence of the "Joint Urban Operations, 2007" conference - it matters little. Advised, outfitted, and educated by these mild-mannered men who sipped sodas and noshed on burnt egg rolls between presentations, the Pentagon has evidently decided to prepare for 100 years more of the same: war against various outposts of a restless, oppressed population of slum-dwellers one billion strong and growing at an estimated rate of 25 million a year.

All of these Urban Op experts are preparing for an endless struggle that history suggests they can't win, but that is guaranteed to lead to large-scale destruction, destabilization, and death. Unsurprisingly, the civilians of the cities that they plan to occupy, whether living in Karachi, Jakarta, or Baghdad, have no say in the matter. No one thought to invite any of them to the conference.

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It is now an incontrovertible fact, known all over the world, that George W. Bush and his regime lied through their teeth in order to launch wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the Bush regime is doing the same thing again in hopes of launching an attack on Iran.

As a consequence of Bush’s lies, there are a million dead Iraqis, mostly women and children, and four million displaced Iraqis, 4,100 dead American soldiers and tens of thousands of seriously wounded. No one knows how many dead in Afghanistan. And there is the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese that has fallen under the rubric of the “war on terror.” The only ones pleased with these wars are the American neoconservatives, the Israeli right-wing, the U.S. corporate military-security complex, and Osama bin Laden...

Reelecting Republicans means the end of the United States as a land of liberty. [More]

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. . . read more

The major premise of Bugliosi's case against Bush is that the former Texas governor, who unapologetically executed more death row inmates than any other governor in the country (and joked about killing one of them), intentionally lied and deceived the American public while he was president about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, which has caused the deaths of over 4,000 U.S. service men and women and over a 100,000 Iraqis.

But how can Bush be prosecuted and convicted of murder if he personally did not kill anyone? Bugliosi asks, and then answers his own question: "...it is not necessary for a criminal defendant to have physically committed a murder to be guilty of it. For example, I convicted Charles Manson of the seven Tate-La Bianca murders even though he himself did not participate in any of the killings, nor was he present at the time."

Interesting comparison. Bush and Manson - two twisted sociopaths who revel in death and destruction. But Bugliosi goes further: "I was able to obtain this conviction because of the vicarious liability rule of conspiracy, which provides that each member of a conspiracy is criminally responsible for all crimes committed by his coconspirators... Necessarily, (Bush) conspired with certain members of his inner circle, co-conspirators like Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice." [More]

Related: Will John Howard be tried for war crimes? . . read more

This trend has nothing to do with real supply and demand, since the demand for clean energy technology could not be higher. With oil reaching US$100 a barrel, it is clear that we badly need green alternatives, both as consumers and as a species. So why is "homeland security," not green energy, the hot new sector? Perhaps because there are two distinct business models that can respond to our climate and energy crisis. We can develop policies and technologies to get us off this disastrous course. Or we can develop policies and technologies to protect us from those we have enraged through resource wars and displaced through climate change, while simultaneously shielding ourselves from the worst of both war and weather.

In short, we can choose to fix, or we can choose to fortress. Environmental activists and scientists have been yelling for the fix. The homeland security sector, on the other hand, believes the future lies in fortresses. [More] . . read more

More important, nowhere in the Constitution or in any other public document that frames the government of the United States is there mention that the president, a senator, a secretary of defense or any other federal official should have served in the armed forces. Military service can be ennobling, but there is no evidence that military service confers greater moral authority on a soldier over matters pertaining to war and peace.

Perhaps this explains why Americans automatically blame politicians for whatever is wrong — and politicians are rarely blameless. However, the record shows that whereas bad political judgment in war can often be rescued through effective military leadership, the reverse is rarely true... No, Obama needs no help from former generals or from anyone sporting medals to win in November. [More] . . read more

It is really bad in Rangoon, please can someone do something for our country... it looks like War Zone, i even heard shooting over the phone. It is over 50 shots, right now. but people are not giving up to protest and more and more people coming out to street. They even fired tear gas into primary school.

I sadly announce that the Burmese military junta has cut off the internet connection... I therefore will not be able to feed in pictures of the brutality by the Burmese military junta. I will try my best to feed in their demonic appetite of fear and paranoia by posting any pictures that I receive though other means (Journos!! please don't ask me what other means would be). Please lobby the Chinese government or UN to get junta to switch on the Internet. Please!

Now, the government is trying to make a diversion. They give 10,000 kyats (around $7) & a set of Thin Gan (yellow robe) to "Swan Arr Shin" (to create a SWAT squad) and to disguise them as Monks. Then, command them to destroy the Islamic Mosque. This intends to become a fight between Buddhisms & Islams. So, if you hear or see the news that the monks are destroying the Mosque, these are not real monks. They are just fakes. As you all know, the real monks have no intention like that. . . read more

Even if there were no time for a Senate trial, the simple act of impeaching the president for one or more abuses of power would serve notice on future presidents that future such abuses would not be tolerated. Failure to do so, and allowing this administration to leave office unimpeached, would send the opposite message: that Congress is no longer a co-equal branch of government, but is merely a consultative body, at best, and that a president is in effect a dictator.

That Pelosi buckled and permitted a hearing on impeachable crimes by the Bush/Cheney administration is a major victory for the impeachment movement, but it must not be the end of the line... As former Republican representative Bob Barr, now the Libertarian candidate for president, told Friday’s hearing, “We had a nuclear clock during the Cold War. In the ‘90s we had a debt clock. Now we have a Constitution Clock.” That clock is getting close to midnight, and it is ticking. [More] . . read more

Arbour, the former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (responsible for the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic)... knows war crimes when she sees them. Clearly, she had enough of the double-speak masquerading as justice. Traditional prohibitions against war crimes, torture and, most scandalously, sexual terror against girls and women have seriously eroded over the last seven years. She had enough.

The rape of female (and occasionally male) non-combatants by male soldiers during a war is a feature of human social relations since the earliest times... Reported rapes of female non-combatants by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq appear to be limited. However, given the U.S. military's inherent secrecy and repeated cover-ups, the true story of war rape will likely not be revealed until well-after the occupation ends...

Over the last century-and-a-half, total war has been systematically extended from food stuffs to innocent collateral victims to anyone who... is part of the "hostile people." Louise Arbour's decision to resign her UN position is testament to how Bush administration policies of total war are fostering international moral crises. [More] . . read more

The worst option, which Georgia took, is to create a toy army. A handful of modern jet fighters, a battalion or two of tanks, a frigate for the navy, all add up to nothing. Against a Great Power, a toy army goes down to defeat in days if not hours. More, even a few modern jet fighters or tanks cost so much there is no money left for a real defense. Unless the Baltic states want to fight each other, they should leave military toys to children.

Second, the Baltics could try to ally with other near-by Powers strong enough to balance Russia. But this option exists only in theory. Germany could fill the role but has lost all Great Power ambitions, while Sweden has been out the game for two centuries. There could be benefit for all concerned in a union of the Baltic states and Finland under the Swedish crown... but it is probably only historians who can see the potential.

A third option is to ally with distant Great Powers in order to balance the threat from a local Great Power. That is what the Baltic States have done through their membership in NATO. Unfortunately, while central European states have attempted this over and over again for centuries, it never works. It may involve Western Powers in war with Russia... but it does nothing to protect the country in question. Poland is a recent example: Britain and France went to war with Germany in 1939 over Poland, but Poland remained an occupied country for 50 years. [More] . . read more