What I have Been Reading Online in Jan '08

If you're interested.... Juan Cole has been laying out some very blunt advice to Iraqi politicians (my ehphasis);

Radio Sawa reports in Arabic that Iraqi members of parliament dismiss the pledge of US presidential candidate Barack Obama to end the Iraq War and withdraw US troops from the country. They say it is just campaign talk and that if Obama were elected he would swiftly become more realistic. (It is my firm impression that the Iraqi political class has unrealistic expectations of the US public. >The likelihod is that most US troops will be out by summer 2010 no matter who wins, and if Iraqi politicians want to avoid being taken out and shot in the aftermath, they had better cut some deals locally soon.

And Information Clearing House has a great article on the supposed democracy we live in;

For all we know, there is no slippery slope. It's entirely possible that extraordinary rendition, eliminating habeas corpus, and the torture camps at Guantánamo and elsewhere are exactly what the government says they are--tools for fighting terrorists, not domestic political opponents. But how likely is it?

History is clear: Over and over again, the U.S. government places fascists in powerful positions. Once in office, they exploit wars and national tragedies to roll back hard-won freedoms. They're Democrats as well as Republicans.

As has happened with increasing frequency in recent years, another blockbuster story revealing the anti-democratic impulse within the top echelon of the U.S. government has appeared and vanished overnight. According to Cold War-era files declassified last week, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover repeatedly advised President Harry Truman to arrest "all individuals potentially dangerous" to national security, jail them in military prisons and try them before kangaroo tribunals that "will not be bound by the rules of evidence."

Ain't that the truth - and we see it here too with such things as 'control orders', prevention of terrorism acts and ID cards.
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