Hunters and Soldiers: Brothers in Arms
by Mickey Z.
Thanks to the Associated Press (AP), I recently learned about an innovative new method in psychological therapy: killing.

 

Thanks to the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), wounded American soldiers are now attempting to “recover” from their violent trauma by, well, imposing violent trauma onto defenseless animals.

"The PVA learned many years ago that participating in sporting events helped restore self-confidence and that ‘can do' attitude to someone who has received a catastrophic injury,” said Bill Kokendoffer, president of the Mid-America Chapter of PVA. "We older injured, like myself, try to show the newly injured that life is not over after an injury, just changed.”

Caught on Tape! Corrupt Alabama Republicans

by Roger Shuler
We've shown you the video of my house being unlawfully "auctioned" on the courthouse steps Monday in Columbiana, Alabama. We also have explained that Bill Swatek, the attorney behind this little charade has direct ties to the Bush White House.

Now let's bring the law into a little clearer focus, to illustrate just how corrupt this piece of "GOP Masterpiece Theater" truly is.

Have Republicans, or Democrats for that matter, ever been caught on camera in a more blatantly unlawful act than this one? I can't think of another similar example. For those of us who care about the actual law, what does it say about the process that leads up to a sheriff's sale?

 

15 Numbers That Add Up to an Age of Insecurity
by Tom Engelhardt
Once upon a time, I studied the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi -- until, that is, I realized I would never locate my "chi." At that point, I threw in the towel and took up Western exercise.

 

Still, the principle behind Tai Chi stayed with me -- that you could multiply the force of an act by giving way before the force of others; that a smaller person could use the strength of a bigger one against him.

Now, jump to September 11, 2001 and its aftermath -- and you know the Tai Chi version of history from there. Think of it as a grim cosmic joke -- that the 9/11 attacks, as apocalyptic as they looked, were anything but. 

McCain and the 'Unitary Executive'
by Robert Parry
If John McCain wins the presidency – and gets to appoint one or more U.S. Supreme Court justices – America’s 220-year experiment as a democratic Republic living under the principle that “no man is above the law” may come to an end.

 

Six Questions for Sidney Blumenthal, Author of The Strange Death of Republican America
by Scott Horton
Sidney Blumenthal has written for The New Republic, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and most recently served as Washington editor to Salon.com and as a contributor to The Guardian. He is one of America’s foremost political commentators, and also has a noteworthy track-record of political engagement. He served as an assistant and senior advisor to President Bill Clinton and is currently a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton. He was also executive producer for the Oscar Award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. Blumenthal has just published a collection of essays entitled The Strange Death of Republican America.

 

I put six questions to him on the subject of his current book.

The Bush Family's Bad Latin Real Estate Investment
by Dave Lindorff
Back in late 2006, it was widely reported in the Latin American media that President Bush, or perhaps his old man, had bought a 100,000-acre farm in a remote area of Paraguay.

What struck people at the time was the choice of country. Paraguay, of course, has gained a certain Club Med status among the world's villains and criminal elements as the place to go when the law's on your tail.

Torture Policies Undermine 9/11 Case
by Jason Leopold
The Pentagon’s decision to drop war-crimes charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged “20th hijacker” in the 9/11 attacks, again underscores the consequences of the Bush administration’s descent into torture and other abusive treatment of “war on terror” detainees.

If al-Qahtani’s case had gone forward, the U.S. government would have been forced to reveal its own violations of the Geneva Convention, anti-torture statutes and the laws of war, according to lawyers representing al-Qahtani.

Nature Adds to Occupation Blows
by Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail
Farmers in the Diyala province in Iraq have been hit by just about every crisis possible. First the security disaster dried up supplies and markets, then lack of electricity cut irrigation, and now comes a drying up of water resources.

Nothing now seems more difficult in Iraq than the business of farming.

• "The shortage of water is the biggest threat that Iraqi agriculture has ever faced," an employee in the directorate-general of irrigation for Diyala province, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "It threatens not only food but also employment in this city [Baquba, capital of the province.]
  

Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond        
by Chris Floyd

What's going on in Lebanon? Nothing you haven't seen before -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine and other places where "the United States is basically instigating and funding civil wars."

 

 

So says Professor As’ad AbuKhalil -- better known perhaps as the "Angry Arab," for his indispensable website of the same name. AbuKhalil was born and raised in Lebanon and has an intimate knowledge of troubled land's warring factions there -- and their external backers. Needless to say, the American media's framing of the current flare-up of violence in Lebanon is the usual sinister caricature of reality, with "bad guys" attacking "our friends" out of pure, malevolent, world-gobbling evil.