Holder: Osama bin Laden will never face US trial
By Devlin Barrett | Associated Press

Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Tuesday that Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive.

In testy exchanges with House Republicans, the attorney general compared terrorists to mass murderer Charles Manson and predicted that events would ensure "we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden" not to the al-Qaida leader as a captive.

Holder sternly rejected criticism from GOP members of a House Appropriations subcommittee, who contend it is too dangerous to put terror suspects on trial in federal civilian courts as Holder has proposed.

The attorney general said it infuriates him to hear conservative critics complain that terrorists would get too many rights in the court system.

Terrorists in court "have the same rights that Charles Manson would have, any other kind of mass murderer," the attorney general said. "It doesn't mean that they're going to be coddled, it doesn't mean that they're going to be treated with kid gloves." Read more.

United for Peace of Pierce County published alarming news of US military preparations for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Scotland's Sunday Herald published "Final Destination Iran" reporting that "Hundreds of powerful U.S. 'bunker-buster' bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran."[1] -- "Contract details for the shipment to Diego Garcia were posted on an international tenders’ website by the U.S. Navy," Rob Edwards said. -- "A shipping company based in Florida, Superior Maritime Services, will be paid $699,500 to carry many thousands of military items from Concord, California, to Diego Garcia. -- Crucially, the cargo includes 195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs. -- 'They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,' said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran." -- Iran's Press TV summarized the report on Monday but added no new information.[2] ...

"Jeopardizing U.S. Standing" – the Petraeus Controversy
By Michael Collins | Election Fraud News

How about a new doctrine to improve U.S. standing everywhere? The United States will engage all foreign governments constructively to assure benefits to our citizens and the citizens of the foreign country. The U.S. will not initiate invasions or efforts to destabilize foreign countries. The U.S. military will protect the citizens of this country but never use its military force to further the financial or other special interests of any individual or group.

Leaks from a recent top level briefing by General David Petraeus are causing quite a controversy. The general pointed out that, "Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region." Mark Perry reported this on March 13 in Foreign Policy. Perry said, "No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue... "

When I read a statement like that, it's like hearing the opening music for The Twilight Zone. What on earth is Perry talking about? Every CENTCOM commander, from General Tommy Franks, through Petraeus, has endorsed the continuation of the Iraq war and occupation. That's as essentially political as you can get.

There was no basis for invading Iraq: no weapons of mass destruction and no terrorist threat. Even the flawed October 2, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) admitted that the primary threat of an Iraqi terrorist attack on the United States would come if, "an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge."

By Dave Lindorff

Three months after it initially lied about the murder by US forces of eight high school students and a 12-year-old shepherd boy in Afghanistan, and a month after it lied about the slaughter by US forces of an Afghan police commander, a government prosecutor, two of their pregnant wives and a teenage daughter, the US military has been forced to admit (thanks in no small part to the excellent investigative reporting of Jerome Starkey of the London Times), that these and other atrocities were the work of American Special Forces, working in conjunction with “specially trained” (by the US) units of the Afghan Army.

Obama Brings Dennis Kucinich On Air Force One For Health Care Speech
By Sam Stein | Huffington Post

Traveling to the Cleveland area to make yet another major speech for passing health care reform into law, President Barack Obama chose as a travel companion one very skeptical lawmaker.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is from the area where Obama is speaking. That would normally make his appearance on Air Force One Monday morning a non-event. But the Ohio Democrat also happens to be one of, if not the only progressive holdout in the House, on health care legislation. And he has hinted strongly that his vote, which could be the deciding margin, is firmly in the "no" camp.

The White House pool reporter on the trip did not get an immediate readout of any conversation between Kucinich and Obama. Though accompanying the two on the trip was Phil Schiliro, the president's liaison to Congress. Read more.

HEALTHCARE NOT WARFARE VIGILS IN 82 DISTRICTS ON MARCH 17 | Press Release

Labor and advocacy groups organized "brown bag" lunch vigils against war funding in 22 congressional districts in January and 67 in February. Currently 82 are planned for March 17th, with more being added. Organizations participating include: Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), AfterDowningStreet, the Backbone Campaign, Democrats.com, the California Nurses Association / National Nurses Organizing Committee, Healthcare Now, CodePINK, and United for Peace and Justice.

On March 10th, 65 members of Congress voted to end the occupation of Afghanistan. Yet only 14 have publicly committed to voting No on funding the same war. A $33 billion supplemental spending bill for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is expected to be voted on in April or May. 
Brownbaggers are asking members of the House to publicly commit to voting No on any bills that fund wars, and to publicly urge their colleagues and the House leadership to make the same commitment. As lesser steps in the same direction, the Brown Bag Vigils are encouraging congress members to cosponsor HR 2454, calling for an exit strategy from Afghanistan, and HR 3699, prohibiting any increase in the number of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan. Congress members' commitments are tracked at http://defundwar.org.

Vigil participants, who support a shift in resources from warfare to healthcare, are also asking their representatives to join the growing movement calling for "Medicare for All" by demanding passage of the Kucinich amendment facilitating state-level single-payer healthcare and by offering their support to single-payer efforts moving forward in state legislatures, including in California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Note: The bookstore links are not working yet, but will be soon.

The 1,000 Day Siege of Gaza
By Ann Wright

This week marked 1,000 days of an Israeli and international siege on Gaza—1,000 days of an open air prison where “inmates”, the civilian Palestinian population of 1.5 million, cannot leave or enter at will -by land, sea or air, the tiny area known as the Gaza Strip.

60 years after the World War II Nazi military siege of Leningrad that lasted for 900 days and caused the greatest destruction and largest loss of life ever known in a modern city, the Israeli military has imprisoned Gaza for 1,000 days. The blockade has caused incredible physical and emotional suffering those crowded into an incredibly small space-25 miles long and 5 miles wide—one of the most densely populated areas in the world.

The siege means that the Israeli government controls the entry of food, medicines, and gasoline and construction materials for the Palestinians. The purpose of the blockade is to force by blatantly violating international law, a change in the government represented by Hamas, the political organization the people elected. The siege began in June, 2007, following Hamas' takeover of governmental functions in Gaza.

Hamas is named by the Israeli and American governments a “terrorist” organization because its militant wing and other militant groups in Gaza, have fired homemade unguided rockets at border villages of Israel which have killed 30 Israelis over the years.

Compounding the siege, a year ago, in a disproportionate use of force that violated international law, the Israeli military, the largest and most powerful in the region, attacked the people of Gaza with U.S. provided F-16 jet fighters, Apache attack helicopters, rocket firing unmanned drones, white phosphorus and dense inert metal explosive bombs. The attack killed 1,440 persons, wounded 5,000, left 50,000 homeless and destroyed schools, hospitals, and civil infrastructure including the water facility and the sewage plant for the entire area.

As one could predict, the siege and the attack have caused the people of Gaza to suffer from long term low levels of nutrition and lack of appropriate medical treatment and care. Most children and many adults have the symptoms of post traumatic stress from the indiscriminate violence waged on them by the Israeli military.

Peace Process Hypocrisy: Stillborn from Inception
By Stephen Lendman

Journalist Henry Siegman titled his August 2007 London Review of Books article, "The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam," calling it likely "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history."

This writer omits most likely calling it the no-peace peace process, stillborn from inception, while Haaretz writer Gideon Levy, on March 7, 2010, wrote "There has never been an Israeli peace camp," saying "let's call the child by its real name: The Israeli peace camp is still an unborn baby," the mother yet to become pregnant given decades of Israeli-Washington obstructionism.

In September 2009, former IDF chief of staff and current Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs, Moshe Ya'alon, said Jews have an "unassailable right (to) settle anywhere, particularly here, (in) the land of the Bible," and earlier called the peace process a useful fiction "to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people."

In 1968, former IDF chief of staff and then defense minister, Moshe Dayan, called the West Bank occupation "permanent," and a decade later reiterated his commitment to the status quo, the same position held by all Israeli officials to the present.

Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir (1983 - 1984 and 1986 - 1992) once said he wanted to drag out peace talks for a decade while vastly expanding settlements.

Activist Cindy Sheehan revives anti-war efforts
By Oren Dorell | USA Today

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is restarting her campaign against wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today, setting up tents and teaching protest seminars near the Washington Monument.

Dubbed "Camp OUT NOW," the protest is geared to pressure President Obama and Democrats, whom Sheehan says have abandoned the anti-war cause now that they have control of the White House and Congress.

"Obama said there'd be one combat battalion coming home per month, and that has not happened," Sheehan says. "We still have significant troops in Iraq, and he's ramped up in Afghanistan.

"I don't think this is what people understood they were voting for. I think they were voting for a change."

White House officials declined to comment.

The number of U.S. servicemembers in Iraq have declined to 98,000 in February from a peak of 170,000 during President George W. Bush's surge. Obama has presided over plans to send 30,000 more servicemembers to Afghanistan and has expanded missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen. Read more.

Dennis's Eulogy for Granny D, Dublin, New Hampshire, March 14, 2010
By Dennis Burke

Thousands of news services, from Peterborough to Bangkok, from personal diaries to the New York Times, have reported these last few days on the life and death of Doris Haddock. In her life, she did not cure a disease or end a war. She did not write ten symphonies or do whatever normally occasions such notice. So what did she do? It is worth thinking about in this moment.

If people no longer spoke aloud, or if they no longer looked at things with their own eyes or through their own thoughts, if they let others do those things for them, then they would take it as unusual if one among them suddenly spoke up and dared see the world independently, describing without filter or permission the vivid colors and true conditions of the world.

It is difficult to understand why a lady from New Hampshire who did little more than take morning walks--though she sometimes did so without coming back for several years--should be so lionized in death, unless we also consider what has become of the world around her that made her exceptional by comparison. She is seen as exceptional perhaps because the rest of us have become a little too reticent, a little too slow-moving, in response to these times of high challenge.

A thousand people have told me that, when they reach her age, they want to be like Granny D. I have always agreed with them, but we have had it a little wrong. We must not wait until we are 90 or 100; we have to be, even today, a little more like Granny D. Our challenges will not wait for us to age.

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The Video That Will Put Geithner Behind Bars The NY Fed, and likely Geithner himself, undermined, perhaps even violated, laws designed to protect investors and markets. By Mike Whitney | Alternet

You gotta see this! [Video above.] If this doesn't convince you that Timothy Geithner knew about the securities shenanigans that were going on at Lehman, than I don't know what will.

Keep in mind, that Geithner ran Lehman through 3 "stress tests" prior to bankruptcy; all of which Lehman failed, and yet, nothing was done. Anton R. Valukas--the examiner who wrote the 2,200 page investigative-report which was released on Thursday-- has provided plenty of information detailing Lehman's “materially misleading” accounting and “actionable balance sheet manipulation.”

In other words, they cooked the books. Read more.

THE ANTI-WAR MAJORITY IGNORED BY POLITICIANS

As Seumas Milne reported last week in The Guardian, "the gulf between people and politicians could scarcely be wider" on the issue of the war in Afghanistan.

The British Army is taking casualties at a level not seen since the 1950s, with six British soldiers killed in as many days earlier this month. The United Nations reported recently that Afghan civilian deaths doubled in 2009.

The UK costs of the war are spiralling: the current estimate for 2009/2010 is £3.7 billion, up from £2.5 billion last year.

Two thirds of the British public believe the war is unwinnable and all the troops should be brought home by Christmas.

And yet, despite the imminent general election, as Seumas Milne points out, "the political class seems determined to cling to Nato and its US patron, rather than represent the now settled will of the voters". And it does so supported by much of the media.

In the coming weeks, Stop the War aims to campaign as widely as possible to make the war in Afghanistan a central issue in the election, reflecting the view of the vast majority of electors.

We are encouraging local Stop the War groups to organise debates, meetings, days of action, lobbying of MPs in their constituencies, hustings etc. We need to take every opportunity to raise the profile of the anti-war voice in an election in which all three main political parties are united in supporting the government's war policies.

Normalizing the police state (and how it ends with taser-firing drones)
By Allison Kilkenny | Allison Kilkenny Unreported

The activist-police clashes in the sixties were bloody and violent. They were loud and terrible, and they made the news. Black protesters were attacked by police dogs. The moment the populace saw those images, everything changed. “The black community was instantaneously consolidated behind King,” said David Vann, who would later become mayor of Birmingham.

Now, imagine if dogs hadn’t been used, but the police instead utilized “non-lethal personal suppression projectiles.” In this world, the civil rights protesters in the sixties didn’t scream and fight. They just got kind of loopy, smiled, and walked home. Yes, technically the police prevented injuries, but the larger damage is much more severe. The police prevented political change. That may be a good thing for the regime of the moment, but it’s a bad thing for justice and society at large.

Bob Herbert recently wrote about the overzealous enforcement of “peace officers” assigned to New York City schools. The officers are accused of detaining, searching, handcuffing, and arresting students for silly things like drawing on desks, or handling — not using, but handling — cell phones in school.

In one case, a safety officer kicked in the door of a stall in the boys’ bathroom, wounding a student’s head. The officer’s response to questioning about the matter was: “That’s life. It will stop bleeding.”

Another student, this time a 5-year-old, was shipped off to a hospital psychiatric ward for throwing a tantrum.

These absurd reactions to normal childhood behavior is all part of “Zero Tolerance.” Six-year-old Zachary Christie faced disciplinary action after bringing a Cub Scout utensil that can serve as a knife, fork, and spoon to school. Apparently, the state of Delaware is terrified of children shanking each other, and after all, it’s the era of Zero Tolerance. Read more.

Wall Street: Inside the Collapse - Read the transcript.
Author Tells "60 Minutes" What Led to Wall Street Collapse and Who Predicted It"

Good-bye "capitalist, free market;" only "free enterprise" survives SBOE | Texas Politics Blog

Texas public school students no longer would hear the terms "capitalism" or "free market" under new social studies curriculum standards the State Board of Education is developing.

All references will be limited to "free enterprise" after an 8-7 board vote.

Pat Hardy, R-Fort Worth, pleaded with the board not to change the style recommended by board-appointed experts who proposed "free enterprise" with "capitalist, free market" is parenthesis.

"A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this (compromise)," Hardy said. "This board is getting too specific. Leave it as it is."

State law requires the term "free enterprise," although college students use "capitalism" and "free market" descriptions. Read more.