Russia Alleges that NATO Aiding Afghan Heroin Production

Com­ment: the refusal by the Marines to destroy the crop should not be sur­pris­ing in and of itself. The impov­er­ished Afghan farm­ers depend on it for income and in the “bat­tle for hearts and minds,” that is an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion. Con­sid­er­ing that other options are avail­able, such as pur­chas­ing the opium to make med­ical morphine, [...]

NATO Refuses Russian Request to Destroy Afghan Opium Fields

Com­ment: In light of the mas­sive vol­ume of broad­casts avail­able on this site about intel­li­gence com­mu­nity involve­ment in drug traf­fick­ing, this should come as no sur­prise.
“NATO Rejects Russia’s Demand to Destroy Afghan Poppy Fields”; New Europe; 3/26/2010.
NATO and Rus­sia clashed on 24 March over how to tackle the drug prob­lem in Afghanistan, where West­ern nations [...]

Hamas: Darlings of the “Progressive Sector”

Com­ment: In the wake of the Gaza War of 2009–2010, Hamas has been lion­ized and ide­al­ized by much of the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor” par­tic­u­larly in the United King­dom and Europe. Below is the char­ter of that orga­ni­za­tion, the Pales­tin­ian branch of the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. It is, sim­ply put, undi­luted Nazi ide­ol­ogy.
Hamas sol­diers salut­ing are [...]

FTR #659 Heatin’ It Up for Obama

Mul­ti­ple and esca­lat­ing crises with which the incom­ing U.S. Pres­i­dent must deal.

Georgia war is a neocon election ploy

by Robert ScheerCre­ators Syn­di­cate, Inc.
Is it pos­si­ble that this time the Octo­ber sur­prise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave lit­tle Geor­gia strug­gling for its sur­vival from the grasp of the Russ­ian bear was stoked to influ­ence the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion?
Before you dis­miss that pos­si­bil­ity, con­sider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, [...]

Commentary: The Winds of Fascism Blowing Across Europe

by Gaither Stew­art
ONLINE JOURNAL
ROME — I feel sick.
She says I’m sick in the head.
Actu­ally I’m sick in the heart, sick in my vis­cera. My head reels, I feel chronic ver­tigo.
She says it’s only para­noia.
I tell her the old Pol­ish joke pop­u­lar dur­ing the mil­i­tary regime. He con­stantly felt spied on, tailed every­where, his phone tapped, his mail [...]

FTR #628 It’s Not Easy Being Green: Nazi infiltration and Co-option of the Green Party

Recorded March 9, 2008
MP3: 30-Minute Seg­ment
REALAUDIO NB: This RealAu­dio stream con­tains both FTR #627 and FTR #628 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.
“Green” pol­i­tics has become an impor­tant part of the polit­i­cal scene, assum­ing a piv­otal posi­tion in the pro­gres­sive com­mu­nity. This broad­cast high­lights Nazi and fas­cist infil­tra­tion and co-option of the Green [...]

Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth

Iran, Rus­sia and Venezuela Feel the Ben­e­fits
By Steven Muf­sonWASHINGTON POST
High oil prices are fuel­ing one of the biggest trans­fers of wealth in his­tory. Oil con­sumers are pay­ing $4 bil­lion to $5 bil­lion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pump­ing more than $2 tril­lion into the cof­fers of oil [...]

FTR #613 The Socialism of Fools, Part 2: American Dreyfus

Recorded Octo­ber 7, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO
Sup­ple­ment­ing FTR#567, this pro­gram high­lights the resur­gence of anti-Semitism in the United States and else­where. [The title of the pro­gram refers to a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of anti-Semitism by a 20th cen­tury social critic as “the social­ism of fools.”] Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance in the pro­gram is the scape­goat­ing of [...]

FTR #611 Update on 9/11 and Related Matters — Caution: Networks at Work

Recorded Sep­tem­ber 23, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

Explor­ing the eco­nomic and polit­i­cal net­works that both pre­cip­i­tated and exe­cuted the 9/11 attacks, this pro­gram high­lights the links between Islamist ele­ments involved at the oper­a­tional level and indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that dom­i­nate the global geo-political land­scape. These networks—belonging to elite indus­trial, finan­cial and reli­gious insti­tu­tions, as [...]