When doctors started reporting that some of the victims of the US bombing of several villages in Farah Province last week - an attack that left between 117 and 147 civilians dead, most of them women and children - were turning up with deep, sharp burns on their body that "looked like" they'd been caused by white phosphorus, the US military was quick to deny responsibility.

From its very infancy, our government has made a vital part of its existence the theft of property that belongs to others and the demonization of those who would resist, or those who see the state for what it really is.

From the American Indian to the veterans who have fought the state's illegal wars, resistance to, or speaking out against the criminality of the state will bring down the full force of the state's wrath, up to and including elimination.

from Crikey .....

Rumsfeld and Cheney's torture approval was about self-justification

Editor of Overland Jeff Sparrow writes:

"He's a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that."

So said Richard Nixon, a man who knew something about ruthlessness and bastardry, about Donald Rumsfeld back in 1971.

On Friday, April 24, Australia Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, addressed the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, and referring to the recent speech given by Iranian President Ahmadinejad at the Durban conference on racism, said:

The inflammatory remarks of President Ahmadinejad of Iran at the conference are unacceptable and underlined the Australian Government's decision not to attend the conference. The Australian Government condemns the continued campaign of anti-Semitism on behalf of the government of Iran.

To paraphrase Al Pacino in "Godfather III," just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can't.

Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration's high ambitions.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery, QC, has condemned the Government's new bikie laws as "very troubling legislation" that could lead to a police state and represent "another giant leap backwards for human rights and the separation of powers - in short, the rule of law".

Mr Cowdery's warning comes after a second wave of anti-bikie laws passed through Parliament this week, this time providing for penalties of up to five years' jail for members of a proscribed gang who "recruited" members.

These are the photos the American Government doesn't want you to see.....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11944.htm

Recall that immediately after 9/11, U.S. officials put out the official version of what had motivated the terrorists. "They hate America for its freedom and values," they cried. The anger and hatred that had motivated the attackers had nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy, U.S. officials claimed.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has alleged that elusive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was a US operator who had tried to destabilise his late wife Benazir Bhutto's government back in 1989.

In fact, as premier Bhutto had "warned America about Osama bin Laden in 1989 with a call to then US president George H. Bush", Zardari said on NBC's Meet the Press programme Sunday.

from Crikey .....

Afghan War update: civilian assassinations, warlords and napalm like substance

Overland editor Jeff Sparrow writes:

Just when you think the war in Afghanistan can't become any more obscene, it suddenly does.

from Crikey .....

UK terrorism laws are a failure

Greg Barns writes:

In the frenzied and irrational world that was post 9/11 politicians in the US, UK, Australia and other democracies told us that draconian anti-terror laws were needed to protect the community from further attacks by extremist Islamic terror networks.

President Barack Obama will try to block the court-ordered release of hundreds of photos showing U.S. troops allegedly abusing prisoners, reversing his position after military commanders warned the graphic images could stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger soldiers.

The pictures show mistreatment of detainees at locations beyond the infamous U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

As an ideology, as public policy, laissez-faire capitalism is in crisis. Unlike in the 1930's, no alternative model is today available to replace it, which leads to the thought that what is presently playing out is perhaps more a reinvention of capitalism than its definitive disappearance. Can we imagine the return of a contemporary form of "liberal socialism"(2), or of a Walter Lippmann-style capitalism, named after that American intellectual whose theses were much-discussed during the 1930's?

As Barack Obama heads into his second hundred days in office, let's head for the big picture ourselves, the ultimate global plot line, the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order. In its first hundred days, the Obama presidency introduced us to a brand new acronym, OCO for Overseas Contingency Operations, formerly known as GWOT (as in Global War on Terror). Use either name, or anything else you want, and what you're really talking about is what's happening on the immense energy battlefield that extends from Iran to the Pacific Ocean. It's there that the Liquid War for the control of Eurasia takes place.

Taliban stocks rise with the massacre of the Pashtuns

Benjamin Gilmour writes:

Kohler: The 2009 budget mirage

Business Spectator's Alan Kohler writes: