Arrogance

Or- If you refuse to do what I tell you then I’m taking my ball and going home, nah!

 (Reuters) – The United States on Tuesday questioned the value of monthly public meetings of the U.N. Security Council on the Middle East, saying the angry speeches delivered often made the problem worse.

The United States is a strong supporter of Israel and Khalilzad’s comments appeared mainly aimed at Arab speakers. He stopped short of calling for the meetings to be stopped, urging countries to use them instead to promote peace.

Ministry Of Defence A Little Hazy On That Whole Logic/Truth Deal

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “We do not recruit in schools.
“The single-service schools teams visit about 1,000 schools a year between them only at the invitation of the school – with the aim of raising the general awareness of their armed forces in society, not to recruit.”

Yeah and guns don’t kill people, bullets do. Sorry ‘awareness’ yep no recruiting going on there, oh no siree bob. Actually it’s quite a good lesson, they see first hand how the MOD lie through their teeth and spin bullshit. Who’s betting PTSD and homelessness gets the lion’s share of the ‘awareness’, right after the bit on imperialism & resource wars.

Another teacher, Chris Kelly, from Lambeth, south London, said: “The Ministry of Defence has got a programme for distributing information to every secondary school. They run programmes across the country and send army personnel to talk to young people in schools. These are often in areas of high levels of unemployment.”

National Union of Teachers delegates in Manchester will debate a motion later calling for an end to “recruitment” in schools in England and Wales. 

Catherine Brennan, a teacher from Croydon, south London, who is presenting the motion, said recruiters use information which does not allow young people to make informed choices. “They are too young to vote, too young to drink, too young to drive, but they are considered old enough to sign up for years in the armed forces without being fully aware of what they are signing themselves up for in their lives,” she said.

Raed Jarrar On Iraq- Separatists Backed By The US Vs. Nationalists

Otherwise known as divide and conquer. If you read one thing about Iraq this week, make it this-

While the majority of Iraqis know that the current Sunni-Shiites tension did not exist before 2003, no one can deny that after five years of U.S. occupation, sectarian tension is now a reality. Sectarianism is another disaster that was brought to Iraq by the war and occupation of Iraq.

The U.S.-led invasion did not only destroy the Baath political regime, it also annihilated the entire public sector including education, health care, food rations, social security, and the armed forces. The Iraqi public sector was a great example of how millions of Iraqis: Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, Muslims and Christians, religious and secular, all worked together in running the country. The myth that the former Iraqi government was a “Sunni-led dictatorship” was created by the U.S. government. Even the Iraqi political regime was not “Sunni-led,” let alone the rest of the public sector. A good way to debunk this fairy tale is through a close look at the famous deck of cards of the 55 most wanted Iraqi leaders. The cards had the pictures of Saddam, his two sons, and the rest of the political leadership which most Iraqis would recognize as the heads of the political regime. What is noteworthy is that 36 of the 55 were Shiites. In fact, the two vice presidents were a Christian and a Shiites Kurd.

Sometimes I feel like Iraqis and Americans are analyzing two different wars happening in two different countries. In one narrative, there is a civil war based on ancient sectarian hatred where a U.S. withdrawal will cause the sky to fall. In the other, there is a country struggling under occupation to get its independence back where the occupation is not welcomed and it is causing political, not sectarian, splits and violence.