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PARSING THE EMPIRE: America's Permanent War Agenda (Stephen Lendman)

A useful overview of America's "permanent war agenda." Don't miss the very end of the article, entitled "Obama's Permanent War Strategy, which outlines a strategy that should be painfully obvious to all but the most ostrich-like Obama followers.

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Vermont's on the Right Track: Secession, Independence Not Needed

Gotcha.  That's some of what I've been hearing out there, when talking to people about their concerns... if they're well off, folks are as yet unwilling to even discuss the subject of secession. They haven't been hurt yet by the general decline.  They'll even agree with my first three Senate campaign points, but are afraid of No. 4:

  1. NO further Vermont support for War, Torture…or deployment of VT National
    Guard. Order the Guard home now.
  2. NOT a dime more for Wall Street…Invest VT funds in VT small banks and
    credit unions for lending here at home.
  3. Build a Green Vermont via serious investments in alternative energy,
    human-food-agriculture, and all local community efforts towards self reliance
    and town/village life. Clean, green, decent, peaceful & fun. 
  4. Start the discussion with all Vermonters re returning our state to the
    status of a free Independent Republic [as we once were], maintaining free trade
    & good relations with all other nations of the world. 

...and there's the rub.  Nos. 1 through 3, everything that we hope to achieve in Vermont, can happily be blocked or perverted by a federal government pushing its 'standards' and increasingly desperate economic measures and civil repression onto Vermonters.

If you've still got lots of money, the last paragraph may make me sound like a nutjob, a Jeremiah. If you're like most Vermonters, trying like hell to make ends meet as Montpelier cuts essential services; if your kids, parent, spouse (in one case both spouses, leaving the children behind) have been grabbed for Afghanistan, No. 4 begins to make sense!

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Open Letter to former Governor Madeline Kunin

Dear Governor Kunin,
I am writing to urge you to speak out against further deployments of Vermont troops to Afghanistan and withdrawal of VT troops from Iraq, as Obama promised in his campaign. Obama has betrayed the people who elected him on that basis, and will bring ruin to the US and Vermont if these illegal, immoral wars continue.

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THE DAILY MAUL: The U.S. "Doing No Good" In Afghanistan

An Afghan woman serving in the Parliament, Malali Joya knows of what she speaks in this eye-opening article.

Last Friday, I was driving and listening to National Propaganda Radio (NPR), and I heard Barack Obama discussing his so-called "four options" with regard to Afghanistan (which essentially appears to be a "debate" about how many troops to send and when.)

He said, and I quote:

Ron Miller: Secession, Vermont Style - The Green Mountains and Dixie: Contrasting Voices For Independence (FEATURE)

In October 2007, the Declaration of the Second North American Secessionist Convention began by asserting “The deepest questions of human liberty and government facing our time go beyond right and left, and in fact have made the old left-right split meaningless and dead.”

“If You Don’t Go Out And Try To Change Things..." - Interview with Charlotte Dennett by Kayleigh Blanchette (VERMONT VOX POPULI)

Charlotte Dennett, an attorney and former investigative journalist who lives in Cambridge, Vermont, was the Vermont Progressive Party’s candidate State Attorney General in 2008. In that race she gained national attention for her campaign pledge to bring murder charges against then-President George Bush if elected. She is an activist in labor, women’s, and environmental causes, and has served on the board of the Vermont AFL-CIO.  Since the election, she has completed a book titled The People v. Bush.

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GOOD CAUSES: Sherwood Ross on Afghanistan, Obama's War and Obama's Disgrace

Key Point: President Obama’s argument that the U.S. is in Afghanistan to “disrupt,
dismantle, and defeat” al Qaeda is bogus as al Qaeda is no longer even
in that country, political analysts Hightower and Frazer point out. So why is the U.S. in Afghanistan, "the graceyard of Empires"? Read THE GRAND CHESSBOARD.

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Jared Carter: Vermont and Cuba-An Unlikely And Unique Relationship (FEATURE)

In 1898, Teddy Roosevelt and his band of U.S. Marines known as the “Rough Riders” galloped up Loma Vista in eastern Cuba in a final push to rid the island of Spanish colonialism.  For more than a century, Cuba had been the playground of Spanish colonialism and policies that had vanquished the native populations and decimated the island’s resources.  Despite the appearance of altruistic motives, the story of Roosevelt’s triumph is remembered in Cuba as the moment Cubans freed themselves of colonialism only to fall victim to imperialism.  While the U.S.

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GOOD CAUSES: Sherwood Ross - Congress Shirks Its Responsiblity, Allows White House to Make Wars

On occasion, critics of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have questioned, with good reason, whether the American war in Afghanistan has been carried far beyond what Congress authorized.  This raises a fundamental question that has bedeviled the country since 1950.

PARSING THE EMPIRE: Global Depression and Regional Wars - Stephen lendman Reviews James Petras' New Book

Editor's Note: This is a long and detailed review of an important book. The United States is indeed an Empire, though Americans prefer not to think of ourselves this way. And Petras explains the nuances of  imperial maintenance here.

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