Wednesday, November 25:

Sheila Dean: *Fusion center data consolidation effort failing, Texas seeks public input Since the passage of the PATRIOT Act, data collection has been a part of an ambitious effort to coordinate national security efforts. Many state governments are in the process of developing warehouses for private and public information in centralized digital hubs called fusion centers, over 70 of which have already been established around the country.One fusion center is the North Central Texas Fusion Center (NCTFS).

Sunday, November 22:

Bryant Welch: Fort Hood: A Harbinger Of Things To Come? (6 comments) If we can identify the real problem that caused the tragedy at Ford Hood we can possibly prevent such episodes in the future. Our troops have been through enough.

Saturday, November 21:

Douglas A. Wallace: A RACKETEERNG INFLUENCED CORRUPT ORGANIZATION FRONTED BY A CHURCH IS SUBJECT TO PROSECUTION UNDER (RICO) (1 comments) Over time so called religious orders have committed crimes against humanity for which no recourse is available. However under the RICO statute a church can be defined as a Racketeering Corrupt Organization which allows private prosecution. Under this statute the writer is seeking justice against his former church Mormon (LDS) Church.

Liz Grover: *My Experience in Afghanistan & My Message to President Obama Liz Grover, an activist who lived and worked in Afghanistan for two years, makes her please to President Obama to use dialogue and genuinely listen to what the Afghan people want.

Ed Tubbs: Rosaries, Rostrums, and the God's Awful Truth Looking over the course of history, all the way to today, I don't think we can . . . handle the truth. At least insofar as the truth tends to impale many of our most sacred and endearing beliefs we can't.

Friday, November 20:

Ray McGovern: McChrystal to Obama: Fogh You; McChrystal Testing the Limits (14 comments) It's hard to know if the Obama-led ongoing consultation on Afghanistan is for real, or just a charade. I seem to be in the minority comprised of those who tend to give the President the benefit of the doubt. This decision is a BIG one. What is abundantly clear is the extreme pressure he is under, mostly from the senior military, some of whom (Petraeus) have political ambitions of their own.

Muhammad Khurshid: Another Army Takeover Is Imminent In Pakistan (2 comments) There are reports that Pakistan Army has almost finalised the plan for taking over the power as the civilian leadership has failed in controlling the situation. It is not yet clear whether General Kiyani will take all the matters in his own hands or he will allow formation of a national government.

Thursday, November 19:

Mick Youther: *Do You Know Afghanistan? President Obama says that he is still weeks away from a decision on Afghanistan--So call your Senators and Representative at the Congressional switchboard ((202) 224-3121), and call the Obama White House at (202) 456-1111, and let them know that the United States has wasted enough money on George W. Bush's misadventures in the Mideast. We have sacrificed enough lives. Enough is enough.

Wednesday, November 25:

Stephen M. Walt: Why They Hate Us: on military occupation One of the many barriers to developing a saner U.S. foreign policy is our collective failure to appreciate why military occupations generate so much hatred, resentment, and resistance, and why we should therefore go to enormous lengths to avoid getting mired in them.

Tuesday, November 24:

Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan Members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan.

Watchdog puts no bite on despots, Gerald M. Steinberg and Dan Kosky The president and communications director of NGO Monitor supports the call for reform of Human Rights Watch (HRW) by its founder, Robert Bernstein.

Monday, November 23:

The Memory Scrub About Why Ft. Hood Happened Is Almost Complete ... If It Weren't for Archives What happened to all the initial reports that accused Fort Hood killer Maj. Nidal Hasan snapped because he was distraught over the Army's refusal to grant him either a discharge or an exemption from being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, wars which the Muslim psychiatrist abhorred?

Saturday, November 21:

Iraqi Freedom One of my correspondents has said that from what she's heard, the Iraqis appreciate the freedom that the US military is "providing" them. If that's so, they have an interesting value system.

Friday, November 20:

Did Hitler Inspire the U.S. Post-9/11 Tribunal System? by Jacob G. Hornberger I don't know how President Bush and the Pentagon came up with the idea of establishing a new judicial system for trying terrorists, but there is the distinct possibility that they got the idea from German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

Thursday, November 19:

Dan Froomkin: Obama's Afghan Dilemma: The Only Real Exit Strategy Is Political Suicide (1 comments) What's taking so long? Obama wants his plan to include an exit strategy--or an "endgame" as he put it yesterday. And there isn't one--at least not one that's politically palatable. The only genuine exit strategy left involves unilateral disengagement. But politically, that's a nonstarter--he would be derided in the press and by Republicans as a coward and a quitter.

Wednesday, November 25:

British People Against Troops in Afghan, so Brown Sends More Troops Gordon Brown insists that British troops in Afghanistan are necessary to protect the UK from the threat of al Qaeda, yet this poll indicates the British people overwhelmingly don't buy this. So the war goes on anyway. Why, other than the fact that there is little genuine democracy in England either? Follow the money and energy resources trail, and the sycophant trail. Fabricated fear serves profit and the Devil.

Study shows government contract fraud is hitting disabled veterans In a case-study of 10 firms, including one Florida company, the Government Accountability Office found ineligible companies had won about $100 million worth of contracts earmarked for service-disabled veteran-owned companies.

Tuesday, November 24:

Obama plans to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan President Obama met Monday with his national security team to finalize a plan to dispatch some 34,000 additional troops over the next year to what he's called "a war of necessity" in Afghanistan. The administration's protracted deliberations have escalated into open warfare between McChrystal and his supporters and advocates of a more limited strategy led by Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Iraq inquiry: British officials heard 'drum beats' of war from US before 9/11 British officials heard the "drum beats" of war with Iraq emanating from the US government more than two years before the 2003 invasion and several months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sir John Chilcot's Iraq inquiry has heard.

Monday, November 23:

Ann Garrison: Rwanda Green Party activists claim illegal detention Saboteurs disrupted the Rwandan Green Party's fourth attempt to meet, on 10.30.2009, which was then shut down by police. Today's Rwandan News Agency reports that eight Rwanda Greens charge they were illegally arrested and detained during the following week, and that they have now been prevented from convening again.

Hostility between British and American military leaders revealed In the papers, the British chief of staff in Iraq, Colonel J.K.Tanner, described his US military counterparts as “a group of Martians” for whom “dialogue is alien,” saying: “Despite our so-called ‘special relationship,' I reckon we were treated no differently to the Portuguese.”

4 American Military Personnel Die in Afghanistan Four United States troops have died fighting in Afghanistan in the last 24 hours, NATO said in a statement Monday. American forces lost 59 service personnel killed in October, the deadliest month in the war that began with the overthrow of the Taliban regime in late 2001. The latest deaths brought to 16 the number of Americans killed so far this month.

Sunday, November 22:

UK paper questions Iraq war timing The UK's Sunday Telegraph newspaper published details of private statements made by senior British military figures that show plans for the US-led 2003 invasion were being made more than a year earlier than Blair said.

Saturday, November 21:

Eileen Fleming: Gilo and Last Straws (3 comments) This week's announcement of Israel's plan to build 900 more dwellings in Gilo with a price tag of NIS 1.86 million for a 5-room apartment has garnered international criticism as well as from the US.

Prison holds promise for job-strapped town The Obama administration, anxious to deliver on a campaign promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has told Illinois officials that a firm decision about acquiring the state facility at Thomson will be made in four to six weeks.

Friday, November 20:

Gates: No handover to Afghan forces any time soon President Barack Obama claimed in an interview on Wednesday that he would bring the Afghan war to an end before he leaves office. Obama also emphasized that "a multi-year occupation won't serve the interests of the United States." However, none of the options have called for the scaling back of the US presence in Afghanistan.

Islamabad under pressure over Blackwater presence Blackwater, now known as Xe Services LLC, attracted international condemnation for killing 17 civilians in Iraq in 2007. The State Department, however, has refused to waive the company's permission to carry arms there. It also continues to be extensively involved in Afghanistan where nearly 70,000 US-commissioned contractors almost doubly outnumber the US troops.

Lawmakers Call Ft. Hood Shootings ‘Terrorism' Senator Joe Lieberman said that the Nov. 5 shootings allegedly carried out by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was a “homegrown terrorist attack” and that law enforcement and military agencies may have failed to act appropriately.

Thursday, November 19:

Deborah Emin: A Letter from Jennie Green about Afghanistan A letter from a friend about the state of affairs in Afghanistan.

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