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US Bombing of Afghan Hospital Called a War Crime by Doctors Without Borders

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By Nadia Prupis / Common Dreams

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Sunday called the U.S. military’s Saturday airstrike on its charity hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan a war crime and announced it was withdrawing all staff from the beleaguered area.

MSF said 22 people, including medical workers and patients, were killed in the bombing, which occurred around 2:10 am local time and reportedly lasted for at least half an hour.

“Under the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed, MSF demands that a full and transparent investigation into the event be conducted by an independent international body,” said MSF general director Christopher Stokes in a statement on Sunday.   [Read more…]

Bush AND Obama Both Responsible for Screwing Up the Middle East

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Regime Change Was Their Common Theme

By John Lawrence

Obama wanted it to be part of his legacy that he ended two wars, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were started by his predecessor, George W Bush along with his vice President Dick Cheney. Only it’s not working out entirely as he planned, and he’s coming in for a lot of criticism from, among others, Cheney himself. In a new book, Exceptional, Why the World Needs a Powerful America, written with daughter Liz Cheney, Cheney criticizes Obama while defending his own legacy. Cheney has been in full self-rehabilitation mode ever since he stepped down as George W Bush’s brain.

The criticism now is that Obama left Iraq too soon and thus created a power vacuum that ISIS has filled. No doubt ISIS stepped into the vacuum created by the departure of Saddam Hussein, but the part that Cheney is missing is that his administration took out Saddam for no valid reason whatsoever and created the power vacuum in the first place. As long as Saddam was in power, no group such as al Qaeda or ISIS could possibly have gained a foothold in Iraq.

As Colin Powell said recently on Meet the Press, and I paraphrase, you can’t take out the guy at the top if there is no structure beneath him to support a stable government and expect good results. Certainly neither George W Bush, who wanted to create western style democracies in the Middle East using war as a means, nor Barack Obama, who wanted to do the same thing by encouraging the youth to rise up after getting rid of despicable dictators, have achieved the results they were hoping for.   [Read more…]

With Victories From Coast to Coast, Fight for $15 Has Always Been About More Than a Paycheck

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By Doug Porter

I went downtown on Thursday for a media event inspired by the Fight for Fifteen movement. Representatives from unions, community and faith groups gathered outside City Hall to hail recent victories and rededicate themselves to continue the campaign.

In recent weeks the country’s largest county government (Los Angeles County) and one of the biggest public university systems in the U.S. (University of California) raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour. As fast food workers in New York were celebrating a win, Gov. Andrew Cuomo stood beside Vice President Joe Biden proposing $15 an hour legislation including an additional 3 million workers in other industries.  

This news is bittersweet for San Diego activists. They held aloft signs with quotes from mayors of other cities around California who’ve supported successful drives to increase the minimum wage, along with a sign quoting Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s excuse for opposing a much more modest increase.   [Read more…]

As Young Refugee Boy Identified, Photos Representing His ‘Outcry’ Reverberate

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Three-year-old Aylan Kurdi drowned along with his mother, Rehan, and older brother, Galip, while the family attempted to cross the sea from Turkey to Greece on Wednesday.

By John Queally / Common Dreams

As new details emerge about the young Syrian boy, now identified as three-year-old Aylan Kurdi—who drowned along with his mother, Rehan, and older brother, Galip, while the family attempted to cross the sea from Turkey to Greece on Wednesday—the global impact of the pictures has perhaps fulfilled the “sorrowful” hopes of the photographer who took the images in order to “make heard his outcry.”

It has now been reported that the father, Abdullah Kurdi, was the only member of the family of four to survive when the boat they and other refugees were traveling in capsized off the Turkish coast. In all, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency, 12 people drowned when two boats attempting to reach the island of Kos capsized. Eight of the 12 were children. The news agency subsequently reported that several individuals had been arrested on smuggling charges related to the incident.   [Read more…]

Cal Pensions Cutting Coal Stock Called an “Emotional” Response to Climate Change

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By Doug Porter

You would think that losing $5 billion in pension fund investments in fossil fuel companies in 2014 would cause the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) to change course.

But Republican reaction to passage of SB 185, also called “Investing with Values and Responsibility,” beginning an eighteen month process to disinvest in any holdings of thermal coal is quite the opposite.

Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City decried the measure, saying, “We need to make (investment) decisions based on good, sound financial decisions, not based on emotions.”

So there you have it. Global climate change is simply an emotional issue.   [Read more…]

Where Did the Antiwar Movement Go?

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War, Sunny Side Up, and the Summer of Slaughter (Vietnam and Today)

By Tom Engelhardt / TomDispatch.com

Let me tell you a story about a moment in my life I’m not likely to forget even if, with the passage of years, so much around it has grown fuzzy. It involves a broken-down TV, movies from my childhood, and a war that only seemed to come closer as time passed.

My best guess: it was the summer of 1969. I had dropped out of graduate school where I had been studying to become a China scholar and was then working as a “movement” printer — that is, in a print shop that produced radical literature, strike posters, and other materials for activists. It was, of course, “the Sixties,” though I didn’t know it then. Still, I had somehow been swept into a new world remarkably unrelated to my expected life trajectory — and a large part of the reason for that was the Vietnam War.   [Read more…]

As California Expands Eligibility, the Voting Rights Act Becomes a Proxy War

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By Doug Porter

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla did the right thing on Tuesday, withdrawing a challenge to the voting rights of the formerly incarcerated championed by his predecessor.

On Thursday, the 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, President Obama along with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), will call for upon Congress for restoration of provisions struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Twenty one Republican-controlled states have enacted laws making it more difficult to register or vote since the 2010 election.

These three examples are all aspects of the same phenomena: the act of voting is a proxy war for issues of class and race facing our society.   [Read more…]

The Party of Death is Dying

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By Bob Dorn  

For years now the Republican Party has been the party of death. Now it may itself be dying. More about that later. For now, some numbers.

In 2014, 1,100 of 1359 executions performed by the states were the work of “Republican-dominated states,” according to Republicanviews.org on Oct. 26 of that year. Just more than 508 of those executions were in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which did the report.

Last May, the Quinnipiac poll taken on attitudes toward the war in Iraq, asked the question, “Do you think going to war with Iraq in 2003 was the right thing to do or the wrong thing?” Overall, 59% of Americans responded that it was wrong and 32% said it was right. Among the Republicans those numbers were more than reversed; 62% of them said it was right to go there and kill, while only 28% said it was wrong.   [Read more…]

Facing Dire Threats, Greek Voters Reject Austerity

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“And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.”–Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis

By Doug Porter

US newspapers today are telling readers about a “shocking rebuff” or a “stunning rejection” by Greek voters of a deal offered by international lenders to refinance that country’s debt.

The overwhelming “No” vote may be stunning for bankers and neo-liberal economists as it flies on the face of the presumption holding there was only one way out of the current crisis. The Greek people saw their vote as rejection of blackmail; they’ve had enough austerity, thank you.

Today, I’ll offer readers some viewpoints not commonly seen in coverage of the Greek financial crisis. The No vote is not the end of the world. Much of what we’ve been told/sold paints an incomplete picture. And anybody (Carl DeMaio, for instance) who’d like you to believe that Greek pensioners are at the root of the problem is selling snake oil–they are a symptom, not a cause.   [Read more…]

Fun, Fear and Fireworks on the Fourth of July

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By Doug Porter

America’s most patriotic holiday is a complicated event. What was once a day set aside for pontificating, picnics and patriotism is too often filled with fear, loathing and enough fireworks to scare the cilia off paramecium six states away.

By ignoring the merchants of faux patriotism–an admirable, if difficult goal–many Americans do manage to make the day special. So let’s take a look around at what is and is not happening on the Fourth of July, 2015.

In San Diego County there are (at least) seventeen fireworks shows, eight parades, eight concerts, one flotilla and assorted performances. And that’s not counting the ad hoc displays of patriotic bang-bangs and boom-booms. Listings for events can be found at KPBS, the Times of San Diego, and the Union-Tribune.   [Read more…]

La Jolla Playhouse’s ‘Come From Away’ is a Different Take on 9/11

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By Mukul  Khurana

On 9/11 of 2001, Gander was discovered by America. To put it correctly, this small Canadian town on the island of Newfoundland was rediscovered by America. It is the location of Gander International Airport.

Here comes an important fact—it was, by virtue of its geography, an important refueling site for transatlantic aircraft as they had to stop somewhere after crossing the ocean.

Here is another fact—most of the streets in Gander are named after aviators—Earhart, Lindbergh, Yeager, and the like. To this day, Gander International Airport still serves as the airport of choice when it comes to medical or security emergencies–hence the 9/11 connection.   [Read more…]

NSA Collection of American Phone Records Ends – Thanks to Edward Snowden

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Halt to Records Collection Probably Temporary As Senate Expected to Pass Reform Measure

By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag

As of today – June 1st – the National Security Agency is no longer legally allowed to collect Americans’ phone records in bulk.  The NSA massive collection of telephone records ended at 11:59 p.m. EDT Sunday, right after the Senate failed to pass a measure to extend the controversial program, part of the Patriot Act.

And Americans can thank Edward Snowden for it. Snowden was the one who heroically revealed the massive surveillance program to the American public and is now sitting in Russia for his punishment.   [Read more…]

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