Video & Text Fwd: BROKEN PROMISES ABOUND

Bruce Gagnon's Organizing Notes
Thursday, January 13, 2011
BROKEN PROMISES ABOUND



Not only is the closing of Guantanamo a broken promise. Now we are hearing this:

“We are not leaving in 2014,” V-P Joseph Biden assured President Hamid Karzai during a news conference in Afghanistan on Tuesday, insisting that the U.S. was prepared to continue with its military occupation “well beyond 2014" if Karzai wants us to stay.

Guess what? Karzai will ask us to stay. Of course he will. All very neat and tidy. Now if George W. Bush did this the "liberals" would be howling from the top of Capital Hill. But when a Democrat plays the shell-game there is virtual silence in Washington and from much of the peace movement. People still will find a reason to excuse Obama-Biden on these broken promises. Why are they afraid to challenge their own party? How can "liberals" expect to have any credibility any longer?

Currently there are some 150,000 NATO troops, predominantly from the U.S. in Afghanistan. In November, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen signed a long-term partnership agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai under which "NATO will stay as long as necessary to support Afghanistan until it can no longer become a safe haven for terrorism."

How do we pay for these occupations, now costing us $10 billion per month?

Here is a song for those out there who are "too scared to complain" (Click)

Text Fwd: WHICH PATH SHOULD WE WALK?

From Bruce Gagnon blog on Jan. 4, 2011

WHICH PATH SHOULD WE WALK?

The 9th year of the prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba will be marked on January 11 with protests by Witness Against Torture. On that day activists will gather at the White House for a news conference with a coalition of human rights and grassroots groups and then proceed in a “prisoner procession” to the Department of Justice, where they will engage in nonviolent direct action. Two years into Obama’s administration the outlook for the remaining 174 prisoners in Guantánamo is bleaker than ever. Despite Obama's campaign promise to close the prison and end torture it appears to be another sad example of the magician at work where he says one thing to get elected but then governs in virtually an opposite manner.