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POPSWhere will the drones go in 2010? Perhaps more important, they can, to steal a Star Trek line, boldly go where no man has gone before. Since the first drone assassination attack of the Global War on Terror -- in Yemen in 2002 -- in which several men, reputedly al-Qaeda militants, were incinerated inside a car, drones have been taking war into new territory. They have already struck in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and possibly Somalia. As the first robot terminators of our age, they symbolize the loosing of American war-making powers from the oversight of Congress and the American people. In principle, they have made borders (hence national sovereignty) increasingly insignificant as assassination attacks can be launched 24/7 against those we deem our enemies, on the basis of unknown intelligence or evidence.
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POPSTop 25 Censored Stories for 2009 # # 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights # # 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights # # 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers # # 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction # # 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record # # 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option # # 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid # # 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs # # 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror # # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
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POPSTop Ten Reasons to Give Back the Peace Prize Reason Number Three: The US Continues to Ignore Israeli nukes, while it acts as banker, diplomatic cover, and armorer its brutal Israel's sixty year occupation of Palestine. Reason Number Two: The US is Funnelling Billions Into Expanding Its Military Presence Across the African Continent. Reason Number One: It just ain't right.
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POPSHolocaust in Yugoslavia Whether we are studying the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks, the genocides against Serbs, Jews and Roma during World War II, the extermination of Native American peoples by the US government, or any other crime of genocide against an entire people, the root cause can be traced to a deliberate policy of imperialist rule. The case of Yugoslavia is instructive because it shows how the imperialist countries, in this instance Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, used smaller client states or nations, such as the Croats, the Albanians, the Bosnian Muslims, the Bulgarians, and the Hungarians to commit genocide, even when, as with the case of Bulgarians, they would not do this within their own national borders. In most instances, civil war or genocide serve the interests of imperialist powers whose aim is to rule through a condominium of power with client states. This lesson is not lost on anyone concerned with the situation in Iraq.
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POPSFemale Vets Struggling to Get Treatment for PTSD The veteran's service organization Swords to Plowshares says female Iraq war vets are the fastest growing population of homeless. "There numbers in terms of homelessness is growing exponentially. There are very few services for them because homeless veterans services, VA services have grown up serving a male cliental," said Swords to Plowshares Amy Fair-Weather. These vets are hoping sharing their stories through pictures and books will help make the road to recovery easier for the women currently serving in Iraq.
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POPS$125 Billion Fraud: The Iraq Reconstruction "Stimulus" Plan This is how the US gov't manages a "stimulus" plan, in the case of "rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure", which is now being investigated as the largest fraud in U.S. history. To put this figure in perspective, after 9/11 Bush requested $40 billion from Congress for the "war on terrorism", which was considered huge and extraordinary amount. Now consider how much cash this was, distributed partly in "pallets", without a trace of documentation. Where did this money really go?
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POPSOn Veterans Day, Don't Forget About the War (cont.)Most Americans want to put the war behind them, but this feeling is based not on a coherent critique but on a kind of collective exhaustion. In many ways, we as a country find ourselves in a mood like the one towards the end of the Vietnam War: we are tired and simply want to move on and forget the conflict ever happened. Yet this feeling can come at a great cost, because it is this same dynamic that led to the betrayal of more than three million Vietnam veterans.
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POPSAmerican Election: An Illusion of Democracy A natural resources monopoly system was, thus, created in the US, and many parts of the world, based solely on capital gain and profit rather than the well being of human life. This power elite has gained total control over the American government and its departments, and dictates its laws and its foreign policies. In such a game the peoples’ choices are easily misled. The worst form of slavery is the one where slaves believe they are free. After the elections, there's still going to be massive problems to deal with. The "War on Terror", the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guantanamo, surveillance, torture, climate change, Palestine etc. Who ever wins, don't forget both candidates are slaves to the system. It's really only the people, who in the end, can change things. Demand change, no matter who ends up in that big ol' White House. Don't forget.