The World We Live In !!

The US has every characteristic of a failed state.

The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.

Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorism and military aggression.

Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400.

“It is a number that we were not aware of and it is worrisome,” said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the subcommittee.

According to reports, the US Marines in Afghanistan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon, that comes to a $320,000,000 daily fuel bill for the Marines alone. Only a country totally out of control would squander resources in this way. Read more…

“What does imperialism mean?  It means the assertion of absolute force over others.” — Robert Lowe 1878

The G-20 ministers declared their meeting in Pittsburgh a success, but as Rob Kall reports in OpEdNews.com, the meeting’s main success was to turn Pittsburgh into “a ghost-town, emptied of workers and the usual pedestrians, but filled to overflowing with over 12,000 swat cops from all over the US.”

This is “freedom and democracy” at work.  The leaders of the G-20 countries, which account for 85% of the world’s income, cannot meet in an American city without 12,000 cops outfitted like the emperor’s storm troopers in Star Wars.  And the US government complains about Iran.

The US government’s complaints about Iran have reached a new level of shrillness.  On September 25 Obama declared: “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.”  The heads of America’s British, French, and German puppet states added their two cents worth, giving the government of Iran three months to meet the “international community’s demands” to give up its rights as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty to nuclear energy.  In case you don’t know, the term “international community” is shorthand for the US, Israel, and Europe, a handful of arrogant and rich countries that oppress the rest of the world.

Who is breaking the rules?  Iran or the United States?

September 28, 2009
by Paul Craig Roberts

Via FPJ

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DI KHAN: The man whipping a girl publicly in Swat, as shown in a video footage on media some months ago, has been arrested.

Nine suspects were nabbed from Dera Ismail Khan a few days ago including Amin alias Chhota Aftab, source said. Police said during investigation it was found that he is the same man whipping the Swat girl, as shown in the footage.

He is said to hail from Swat and is not even the relative of the girl he whipped.

Chhota Aftab was shifted from DI Khan eight days ago

via Police arrests man whipping Swat girl publicly – GEO.tv.

India is condemning another generation to brain damage, poor education and early death by failing to meet its targets for tackling the malnutrition that affects almost half of its children, a study backed by the British Government concluded a week ago.

The country is an “economic powerhouse but a nutritional weakling”, said the report by the British-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS), which incorporated papers by more than 20 India analysts. It said that despite India’s recent economic boom, at least 46 per cent of children up to the age of 3 still suffer from malnutrition, making the country home to a third of the world’s malnourished children. The UN defines malnutrition as a state in which an individual can no longer maintain natural bodily capacities such as growth, pregnancy, lactation, learning abilities, physical work and resisting and recovering from disease.

In 2001, India committed to the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving its number of hungry by 2015. China has already met its target. India, though, will not meet its goal until 2043, based on its current rate of progress, the IDS report concluded.

“It’s the contrast between India’s fantastic economic growth and its persistent malnutrition which is so shocking,” Lawrence Haddad, director of the IDS, told The Times. He said that an average of 6,000 children died every day in India; 2,000-3,000 of them from malnutrition. Read more…

Police in Pakistan say they have raided the offices of a private security firm hired by the US embassy in Islamabad.

Police allege that the weapons were not licenced

The offices of the Inter-Risk company were entered and around 70 weapons were seized and two personnel arrested.

Officials in Pakistan allege that the haul of 61 assault riffles, nine pistols and ammunition were unlicensed.

It follows allegations that the US is using the security firm once known as Blackwater. The US embassy in Islamabad denies it has any contract with them.

The media in Pakistan have reported that the US embassy in Islamabad was involved in hiring the firm Xe services, formerly known as Blackwater, a company which was embroiled in allegations of civilian killings while hired to protect US diplomats in Iraq. Read more…

KABUL: The Taliban’s reclusive leader said in a Muslim holiday message Saturday that the U.S. and NATO should study Afghanistan’s long history of war, in a pointed reminder that foreign forces have had limited military success in the country.

The message from Mullah Omar comes less than a month before the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban for hosting al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. This year has been the deadliest of the conflict for U.S. and NATO troops, and political support at home for the war is declining.

Taliban attacks have spiked around Afghanistan in the last three years, and the militants now control wide swaths of territory. In his message for the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which ends the fasting month of Ramadan, Omar said the U.S. and NATO should study the history of Alexander the Great, whose forces were defeated by Pashtun tribesmen in the 4th century.

Omar’s message said the international community has “wrongly depicted” the Taliban as a force against education and women’s rights. It did not elaborate. Taliban militants don’t allow females outside the home without a male escort.

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As the convoy neared home, the street lights were abruptly turned off. The police snipers were ready in position; some had climbed up the trees lining the avenue to get clear shots. Their guns were loaded, the roadblocks had been erected, the surrounding lanes sealed off. The guards outside the different embassies nearby had been told to retreat within their compounds in expectation of trouble. By nine o’clock, all 80 police were in position, commanded by four senior officers. There was complete silence, but for the occasional buzz of static on the police radios.

It was September 20, 1996, and Murtaza Bhutto, Benazir’s younger brother, was returning late from campaigning in a distant part of Karachi. He had come home to Pakistan the previous year after a long period in exile to challenge his more famous sister for a role in the leadership of the family party, the Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP. Benazir was then the prime minister, and Murtaza’s decision to take her on had put him into direct conflict not only with his sister, but also with her ambitious and powerful husband, Asif Ali Zardari.

Murtaza had an animus against Zardari, who he believed was not just a nakedly and riotously corrupt polo-playing playboy, but had pushed Benazir to abandon the PPP’s once-radical agenda fighting for social justice. By doing so, believed Murtaza, Zardari had turned their father’s socialist-leaning party into a political moneymaking machine for the PPP’s wealthy feudal leadership. But Benazir was deaf to the voluble complaints being made about Zardari, which had led to him being dubbed “Mr Ten Per Cent”. Instead of reprimanding him, she appointed her husband minister for investment, so making him the channel through which passed all investment offers from home and abroad.

A few weeks earlier, according to a widely reported story, an incident took place the truth of which is now difficult to establish. In view of their worsening relations, Murtaza is said to have rung Zardari and invited him for a chat at the Bhutto headquarters, 70 Clifton. It was agreed he should come without bodyguards, in order that the two might meet privately and try to settle their differences. Zardari agreed. But as the two men were walking through the garden, Murtaza’s guards suddenly appeared and grabbed Zardari. Murtaza took out a cut-throat razor, and after slowly sharpening it, personally shaved off half of Zardari’s moustache. Then he threw him out the house. A furious Zardari, who had presumably feared much worse than a shave, was compelled to remove the other half of his moustache once he got home. Read more…