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Condemned by UN, Is Detroit’s Water Shutoff About Privatization?
“This is a major crisis. When 45 percent of water customers struggle to pay their water bills, it is clear that this is not just a problem with delinquent payment. It’s indicative of broader, systemic issues resulting from decades of policies that put profits before people. Because leasing or selling the DWSD [Detroit Water and Sewerage Department] will only lead to more problems, Mayor Duggan and Emergency Financial Manager Kevyn Orr should abandon all plans to privatize the DWSD.”
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Disastrous Iraq Policies From a State Department Hostile to Truth-Telling
“American military involvement will serve as an accelerant to and a prolonger of this Iraqi civil war. American bombs, bullets and dollars will further strengthen the bond between Sunnis and extremist groups like ISIS, increasing Sunni desperation by intensifying their backs-to-the-wall dilemma and justifying the propaganda and rhetoric of ISIS: a narrative of a Western campaign of international subjugation enacted through Shia, Kurdish and Iraqi ethnic minority puppets.”
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Egypt: Broad Repression with U.S. Backing
“What has to be understood is that the enormity of the issue is not just about the foreign Al Jazeera journalists, or even journalists in general, but that the scope and scale of politically motivated imprisonment in Egypt right now is astonishing. Also, while the criminalization and targeting of journalists is a heinous act in itself, instances of incitement and targeting of journalists and those who would seek to expose the truth has been a sad constant for years now. What is new, perhaps, is merely the cloaking of such attacks under the pretext of ‘rule of law.’ The judiciary…
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Drone Memo: Justifying Murder
“Separate from problems with the substance of this memo, the administration needs to release all of its legal memos; this is only one among as many as a dozen we still haven’t seen. It also needs to release data about how many killed, who, where, why. Everything we know comes from non-government sources.”
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Iraq: Is Yemen the Model?
“Yemen as a model for Iraq; wouldn’t that just be lovely! Quietly remove an intractable puppet and replace him with one that is compliant; support a public discourse on progressive issues for those who will enjoy it; and use drones to bomb any emergent resistance around the critical issues of power sharing and basic distribution of resources. Sounds like a perfect recipe for pacification to me.”
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Key Author of War Powers Resolution: “Attack on Iraq Would Violate Constitution”
“Just as with threats to attack Syria last year, an attack on Iraq would violate the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution. As with any president, he [President Obama] commits an impeachable offense if he does not follow the Constitution.”
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Iraq * Beyond ISIS: GMCIR * Iraq Vets Speak Out
“When the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, the formerly secular country was destabilized. The United States and the Department of Defense intentionally created and agitated sectarian divisions that would not have otherwise existed. The result of this is what we see today, and Iraqi civilians are paying for it.”
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FIFA’s Impact on Brazil; Israel
“The Brazilian people are happy about having the World Cup, but hate FIFA. The way it works is detrimental to the host country in a number of ways. It compels the country to change laws about who has access to the stadiums, with corporate sponsors controlling much of the process. It’s often not regular fans who are able to see the World Cup games in the stadiums, but a tiny elite. It’s been a similar pattern in South Africa and elsewhere.”
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Iraq Sectarianism Spawned by U.S. War and Maliki’s Crushing of Peaceful Protests
“When the ISIS took over Mosul, right away, the Kurdish peshmerga, the Kurdish power in northern Iraq, took over Kirkuk, the richest city in the northern part of Iraq. … Since 2003, the inner fight has been based on dividing Iraqis into sects and ethnic groups, like Sunni, Shia, Arab, Kurd, religiously Christian and Muslim. That’s what is going on after the invasion. Iraq was one piece; now we see it falling apart.”
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Could FIFA Suspend Israel?
“FIFA has not fulfilled its mandate. This is the first comprehensive report which has documented scores of examples of obstacles enacted by the Israelis in the area of movement of Palestinian players and in many other areas outside FIFA’s current efforts.”
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn