The "Evil Powers That Be" Are Still Being Evil, and Still in Power

Read it and weep:

KABUL, Afghanistan — A U.S. warplane shot people trying to flee a burning hospital destroyed in airstrikes last month, according to the charity that ran the facility.

"Thirty of our patients and medical staff died [in the bombing]," Doctors Without Borders General Director Christopher Stokes said during a speech in Kabul unveiling a report on the incident. "Some of them lost their limbs and were decapitated in the explosions. Others were shot by the circling gunship while fleeing the burning building."

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Despite Israeli-inflicted shootings and injuries to over 200 Palestinian children over a 6-day period earlier this month, the U.S. has promised to boost military aid to the country by at least $1 billion a year to a total of over $4 billion. The announcement comes on the heels of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom are condemning the Palestinian response to Israeli attacks. In the meantime, the Obama administration has cut humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Authority by $80 million, reducing their annual aid package to $290 million.

According to Haaretz, the U.S. recently pledged an additional $1 billion in aid for Israeli “self-defense,” on top of the $3.1 billion annual aid package Israel already receives from the U.S. Earlier this year, months before the recent violence in Israel and Palestine, the Pentagon proposed sending up to $1.9 billion in arms to the Israeli government, which would include 750 bunker buster bombs, 3,000 hellfire missiles, 250 mid-range air-to-air missiles, and 4,100 glide bombs, according to the Times of Israel.

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The troop contingent that Obama has ordered [in Syria] amounts to 50 Special Forces personnel. That is hardly going to be a decisive blow to Islamic State militants, even if we believe the official rationale for their deployment. The White House, in its announcement, was at pains to emphasize that the troops would not be in a combat role and would only be acting to “advise and train” Kurdish fighters and others belonging to the little-known Syrian Arab Coalition.

But here is perhaps the significant part of the story. “The move could potentially put the American troops in the cross hairs of Russia,” reports one outlet. Significantly, too, the Pentagon will not be informing the Russian military of the exact whereabouts of its ground personnel. That suggests that the real purpose for Obama sending in the troops is to restrict Russian offensive operations by introducing the risk of bombing American forces.

In effect, the US Special Forces are being used as human shields to protect American regime-change assets on the ground.

These assets include an array of jihadist mercenary brigades, which the US and its allies have invested billions of dollars in for the objective of regime change in Syria. The misnomer of “moderate rebels” belies abundant evidence that the mercenaries include Al Qaeda-linked terror groups, including Islamic State. CIA supplies of anti-tank TOW missiles as well as Toyota jeeps are just a glimpse of the foreign covert-sponsorship.

 Russia’s devastating air campaign over the past month – over 1,600 targets destroyed according to Moscow – has no doubt caused apoplexy in Washington, London, Paris, Ankara, Riyadh and Doha. An urgent stop to their “losses” had to be invoked. But the foreign sponsors can’t say it openly otherwise that gives the game away about their criminal involvement in Syria’s war. This perspective most likely explains the hastily convened “peace conference” in Vienna. US Secretary of State John Kerry’s apparent concern to “stop the bloodshed” does not seem credible as the primary motive. Why the concern now after nearly five years of bloodshed?

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Perhaps the most alarming revelation to emerge from the new Bush biography is the elder man’s recollection that while Cheney had been his defence secretary, he had commissioned a study on how many tactical nuclear weapons would be needed to eliminate a division of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard.

Apparently the answer was 17, though a more profound conclusion is that Cheney was a more dangerous figure than anyone knew. It adds weight to reporting by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker that Cheney also contemplated the use of low-yield nuclear bunker-busters against Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facilities. The more we hear about the George W Bush administration, the clearer it becomes that the global damage it wrought could have been even worse.

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Days after tea party republican Matt Bevin shocked the state of Kentucky by winning the election for governor in a landslide despite having been notably behind in every poll, political experts are still trying to figure out what happened. Initially the blame was directed at registered democratics, who appeared to have turned out to vote in historically small numbers. But now numerical evidence is pointing to the possibility that the election may have simply been rigged in favor Bevin.

That’s not an accusation to be made lightly. While an average of all polls in a race on this level is very rarely wrong, and is literally never off by a double digit margin like this, that alone is far from sufficient evidence to suggest that one party may have done something as dire as tampering with the results. However in the case of the Kentucky governor’s election, the initial belief that democrats didn’t show up to vote has been disproven. Democrats did show up to the polls in large numbers, as evidenced by the votes cast for the democratic candidates running for lesser offices such as Attorney General.

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The details are out on the the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and critics say the trade deal is worse than they feared. The TPP’s full text was released Thursday, weeks after the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations—a group representing 40 percent of the world’s economy—reached an agreement. Activists around the world have opposed the TPP, warning it will benefit corporations at the expense of health, the environment, free speech and labor rights. Congress now has 90 days to review the TPP before President Obama can ask for an up-or-down vote.

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America's ongoing mistreatment of refugees in modern day concentration camps.

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"The Price We Pay"-- How the "evil powers that be" avoid taxation and must be held accountable.

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Shit is fucked up and bullshit and I need a fucking drink.