(Institute for Public Accuracy — IPA) GARETH PORTER, (703) 532-0124, (703) 600-9057, porter.gareth50@gmail.com, http://ipsnews.net
Porter recently wrote the piece “Obama Had Rejected His Own Speech’s Surge Rationale,” which states that Obama in his West Point speech “said the escalation was for a ‘vital national interest’ and invoked the threat of attacks from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, asserting that such attacks ‘are now being planned as I speak.’

“Despite Obama’s embrace of these new national security arguments, however, he has rejected within the past few weeks the critical link in the national security argument for deploying tens of thousands of additional troops — the allegedly indissoluble link between the Taliban insurgency and al Qaeda.” http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49495

ZOLTAN GROSSMAN, cell: (360) 359-8871, (360) 867-6153, grossmaz@evergreen.edu, http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz
Grossman, a geographer and faculty member at The Evergreen State College (Olympia, WA), just wrote the article “Afghanistan: The Roach Motel of Empires,” which states: “In just a few months, Afghanistan will surpass Vietnam as the longest single war fought by the United States in its history. In his West Point speech, President Obama denied that ‘Afghanistan is another Vietnam’ — and in some senses he is correct. Vietnam in 1975 was a far more unified state — ethnically and politically — than Afghanistan ever has been. Afghanistan is far more mountainous and difficult to occupy. …

“Like the Soviets, the Americans are perfectly capable of denouncing human rights violations by their Islamist enemies, but completely ignoring abuses by the violent warlords they are supporting. … The Islamization of Afghanistan did not begin when the Taliban took power in 1996, but when the U.S.-backed mujahedin ousted the pro-Soviet government four years earlier. …

“Instead of unifying the different ethnic regions of Afghanistan, the NATO occupation seems headed more toward a de facto partition of these regions. The foreign policy team that President Obama has assembled includes some of the same figures who advocated the ethnic-sectarian partition of Yugoslavia and Iraq. … Some trends in Afghanistan show traces of a similar partition strategy. …

“In both former Yugoslavia and Iraq, the U.S. interventions have left behind large permanent military bases, just as they have in Afghanistan. … Many of the largest air bases, at Kabul, Bagram, Kandahar, Shinand and Jalalabad, were the same bases from which the Soviets launched air attacks on the mujahedin in the 1980s. These military bases are the epitome of the ‘roach motel’ — they become a self-fulfilling argument for continuing an occupation: to defend the bases.” http://consortiumnews.com/2009/120209c.html

Grossman also wrote the piece “New U.S. Military Bases: Side Effects or Causes of War?” http://www.counterpunch.org/zoltanbases.html

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

via Scrutinizing U.S. Goals in Afghanistan — Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA).

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging a law that critics say treats human rights advocates as criminal terrorists, and threatens them with 15 years in prison for advocating nonviolent means to resolve disputes.

The case is known as Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, and is the first case to challenge a portion of the Patriot Act before the Supreme Court. Originally brought in 1998, the suit challenges the constitutionality of the law that makes it a crime to provide “material support” to groups the administration has designated as “terrorist.”

The plaintiffs, led by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), charge that the law goes too far in making speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity a crime. The lower courts have unanimously declared several provisions of the law – including one added by the Patriot Act – unconstitutionally vague because they encompass speech and force citizens to guess as to their meaning.

via High Court to Hear PATRIOT Act Challenge by William Fisher — Antiwar.com.

Scientists at the University of Montreal launched a search for men who had never looked at pornography – but couldn’t find any.

Researchers were conducting a study comparing the views of men in their 20s who had never been exposed to pornography with regular users.

But their project stumbled at the first hurdle when they failed to find a single man who had not been seen it.

“We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography,” said Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse. “We couldn’t find any.”

By Jonathan Liew  via All men watch porn, scientists find – Telegraph.

(WSJ)  FTC Chairman Jon Leibowit’s said his agency will examine whether government should change the way the industry is regulated, from making news-gathering companies exempt from antitrust laws to granting them special tax treatment to making changes to copyright laws.

The Federal Communications Commission is already reconsidering rules that prevent a company from owning newspapers and TV stations in a single market.

Mr. Leibowitz said other ideas include extending government subsidies to commercial news organizations, granting them special tax treatment or an exemption from antitrust regulations

via FTC Workshop Examines Journalism in Internet Age – WSJ.com.

Republicans sound like they’re conducting a giant experiment in saying whatever they can get away with, and I suspect they’re surprised as any of us by some of the results.

More here.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon – Thurs 11p / 10c

The annals of inappropriate departmentalization…or just the plain truth?

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.
In his suave but deceptive Los Angeles Times article (“Honduras’ non-coup,” Jul. 10) on the current Honduras crisis, Miguel A. Estrada recommends reading the Constitution of Honduras and other relevant legal documents before pre-judging the situation.

I’m fluent in Spanish. Over the past several days, I’ve read the Supreme Court case documents, the Honduran constitution and pertinent parts of the Honduran penal code, the full text of laws regulating referendums and plebiscites and citizen participation in government, as well as news and opinion reports from Honduran, Latin American and Hispanic media. I also consulted experts in Latin American social and political issues.

I found that the legal and logical deficiencies were so obvious that no neutral observer could conclude that Manuel Zelaya received anything remotely resembling due process. Neither the Supreme Court nor Congress had the power to remove him from office, although — interestingly enough — it appears he could have been detained and tried for criminal conduct by a special tribunal made up of Supreme Court justices. As far as I can tell, the only immunity from prosecution under the constitution is for acts of war committed by military personnel. Instead, President Zelaya was deported in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order to bring him before a court for arraignment.
Read more »

The story so far: Coupled since 2003 in the San Francisco Zoo, same-sex male partners Harry and Pepper nested together and even incubated an egg laid by another penguin. Female penguin Linda, who had some years earlier left her first mate for Fig (now deceased), hooked up with Harry and he moved in with her. Domestic violence occurred. The three quarreling penguins were separated by zoo authorities for a while, but eventually learned to get along. Harry and Linda successfully nested this year. Pepper seems fine with that now, but with the mating season coming up in August, things could change.
Photograph of Harry (left) and Linda by Cindy Chew. Go to original by Katie Worth, S. F. Examiner

Michael Scheuer as Glenn Beck nods approval:
“Only Osama can execute an attack that will force Americans to demand a government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary. “