Stage-Managing the War on Terror Ensnaring Terrorists Demands Creativity http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175270/
By Stephan Salisbury

Informers have by now become our first line of defense in our battles with the evildoers, the go-to guys in the never-ending domestic war on terror. They regularly do the dirty work -- suggesting and encouraging the plots, laboring as bag men to move the money, fashioning the bombs, and eliciting the flamboyant dialogue, even while following the scripts of their handlers to the letter.  They have attended to all the little details that make for the successful and now familiar arrests, criminal complaints, trials, and (for the most part) convictions in the ever-distracting war against... what? Al-Qaeda? Terror? Muslims? The inept? The poor?

Obama, Petraeus, and the Cult of COIN in Afghanistan http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175266/
By Robert Dreyfuss

Less than a year ago, General David Petraeus saluted smartly and pledged his loyal support for President Obama’s decision to start withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan in July 2011. In December, when Obama decided (for the second time in 2009) to add tens of thousands of additional American forces to the war, he also slapped an 18-month deadline on the military to turn the situation around and begin handing security over to the bedraggled Afghan National Army and police. Speaking to the nation from West Point, Obama said that he’d ordered American forces to start withdrawing from Afghanistan at that time.

Imminent Canada-India
nuclear pact heightens tensions

by Graeme Smith The Globe and Mail
June 25, 2010
Impending deal could be worth billions for
Canadian industry, but it has already
become a source of concern in Pakistan

An imminent deal that would open the door for Canadian exports of
uranium to India, could add to nuclear tensions in South Asia, some
experts say.

The impending agreement made front-page news this week in India,
amid speculation Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Canada
for the G20 summit will allow him to sign a long-awaited nuclear

NEW YORK, Jun 22 (IPS) - In the wake of Monday's Supreme Court decision upholding a law making it a crime to provide any "material support" to an organisation designated as a "terrorist" by the U.S. government, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter charged that the law "actually threatens our work and the work of many other peacemaking organisations that must interact directly with groups that have engaged in violence".

WASHINGTON, Jun 9 (IPS) - As the right-wing leadership of the organised U.S. Jewish community defends Israel against international condemnation for its deadly seizure of a flotilla bearing humanitarian supplies for Gaza, a familiar clutch of neo-conservative hawks is going on the offensive against what they see as the flotilla's chief defender, Turkey.

Field of Dreams
The CIA & Me & Other Adventures in American Sports
By Lewis Lapham   http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175258/

[This essay appears in "Sports & Games," the Summer 2010 issue of Lapham's Quarterly and is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.]

“The space of play and the space of thought are the two theaters of freedom.”  -- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

Rosenstock

Victoria Vigil for the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
Global Day of Action: 11 am Saturday, June 5

On Saturday, June 5, human rights and community organizations will mobilize to join an emergency Global BDS Day of Action called by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC). In Victoria, we will hold a vigil and procession in memory of those murdered on the Freedom Flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip.