Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Does the World Really Need New and Improved Nuclear Weapons?

How to Save a Quarter Trillion Dollars

By LAWRENCE S. WITTNER | CounterPunch | August 10, 2011

In the midst of the current stampede to slash federal spending, Congress might want to take a look at two unnecessary (and dangerous) “national security” programs that, if cut, would save the United States over a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade.

The first of these is the Obama administration’s plan to spend at least $185 billion in the next ten years to “modernize” the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons arsenal. At present, the U.S. government possesses approximately 8,500 nuclear warheads, and it is hard to imagine that this country would be safer from attack if it built more nuclear weapons or “improved” those it already possesses. Indeed, President Barack Obama has declared—both on the 2008 campaign trail and as president—that he is committed to building a world without nuclear weapons. This seems like a perfectly sensible position—one favored by most nations and, as polls show, most people (including most people in the United States). Therefore, the administration should be working on securing further disarmament agreements—not on upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal in preparation for future nuclear confrontations and nuclear wars.

In late June of this year, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wrote: “It is deeply troubling that the U.S. has allocated $185 billion to augment its nuclear stockpile over the next decade, on top of the ordinary annual nuclear-weapons budget of more than $50 billion.” Not only has the International Court of Justice affirmed that nations “are legally obliged to negotiate in good faith for the complete elimination of their nuclear forces,” but “every dollar invested in bolstering a country’s nuclear arsenal is a diversion of resources from its schools, hospitals, and other social services, and a theft from the millions around the globe who go hungry or are denied access to basic medicines.” He concluded: “Instead of investing in weapons of mass annihilation, governments must allocate resources towards meeting human needs.”

Another project worth eliminating is the national missile defense program. Thanks to recent congressional generosity, this Reagan-era carryover, once derided by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy as “Star Wars,” is currently slated for an increase in federal spending, which will provide it with $8.6 billion in fiscal 2012.

The vast and expensive missile defense program—costing about $150 billion since its inception—has thus far produced remarkably meager results. Indeed, no one knows whether it will work. As an investigative article in Bloomberg News recently reported: “It has never been tested under conditions simulating a real attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile deploying sophisticated decoys and countermeasures. The system has flunked 7 of 15 more limited trials, yet remains exempted from normal Pentagon oversight.”

Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, reported that his committee was “deeply concerned” about the test failures of the nation’s missile defense program. He also implied that, given the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the United States might not need such a system to deter its potential enemies, which have a far inferior missile capability. “The threat we have now is either a distant threat or is not a realistic threat,” he remarked.

Why, then, do other nations—for example, Russia—fiercely object to the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system near their borders? Perhaps they fear that, somehow, U.S. scientists and engineers will finally figure out how to build a system, often likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet, that makes the United States invulnerable while they are left vulnerable. Or perhaps they think that, one day, some U.S. government officials might believe that the United States actually is invulnerable and launch a first strike against their own nations. In any case, their favorite solution to the problem posed by U.S. national missile defense—building more nuclear-tipped missiles of their own—significantly undermines the security of the United States.

Projecting the current annual cost of this program over the next decade, the United States would save $86 billion by eliminating it.

Thus, by scrapping plans for nuclear weapons “modernization” and for national missile defense—programs that are both useless and provocative—the United States would save $271 billion (well over a quarter of a trillion dollars) in the next ten years. Whether used to balance the budget or to fund programs for jobs, healthcare, education, and the environment, this money would go a long way toward resolving some of the nation’s current problems.

~

Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

August 10, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Does your Congressperson represent you – or Israel?

By Medea Benjamin | Mondoweiss | August 9, 2011

In this time of economic austerity, when jobs are being slashed and Americans are fearful about their future, the Congressional recess is the time for our elected representatives to be home in their districts, reaching out to their constituents and servicing the people they are paid to represent. Instead, this August one out of every five representatives will be taking a junket to Israel, compliments of an affiliate of the Israel lobby AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) but still clocked in on the taxpayer’s dime.

Americans who have lost their jobs and seen their life savings evaporate because Congress can’t seem to get it together deserve an explanation of how this crisis will be solved. Following the recent debt debacle, the public is hungry for information about the mysterious 12-person “super committee” that will slash over one trillion dollars from the federal budget. But instead of opening their doors to their constituents, 81 members of Congress will be getting briefings from Israeli government officials, touring historic religious sites, and perhaps “seeking a salty dip in the Dead Sea.” Representative Steny Hoyer, who is leading the Democratic delegation, said he is pleased members of Congress have this opportunity “to gain a deeper understanding of the issues involved in increasing stability in the region.” One has to wonder whether our elected officials are more concerned about the stability of Israel or the well-being of American families.

Not surprisingly, trip expenses are being paid by an affiliate of the all-powerful AIPAC lobby, the American Israel Educational Foundation. AIPAC lobbies hard to ensure that Israel is kept on the U.S. dole, with $3 billion of US taxpayers’ dollars a year going to the Israeli military. Without AIPAC and the financial contributions to Congressional campaigns made by its affiliate organizations, our representatives would be freer to speak out against funneling precious taxdollars to this already wealthy nation. This junket goes to show that those who claim AIPAC has a stranglehold over our Congress are not far off the mark.

Going on an AIPAC-sponsored trip to Israel is the moral equivalent of using an Anglo-Boer travel company to visit apartheid-era South Africa. Although they claim to be visiting leaders “across the political spectrum”, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, you can bet your bottom dollar that AIPAC will not be giving these 81 Congresspeople a fair and balanced view of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They won’t observe one of the weekly demonstrations in Bi’lin or Nabi Saleh, where Israeli soldiers routinely tear gas and arrest non-violent protesters. They won’t spend time with grieving Palestinians whose homes have been demolished to make way for more Jewish-only housing. They won’t spend a few hours at a checkpoint to witness how Palestinians are detained, abused and humiliated, or how this “thriving democracy” forbids Palestinians from driving on Jewish-only roads. They won’t go to Gaza, where 1.5 million people are suffering under an unbearable siege, unable to travel freely, conduct business transactions across borders or even rebuild their homes destroyed by the Israeli invasion. And they won’t likely be visiting the burgeoning tent cities in Tel Aviv where hundreds of thousands of Israelis are currently camped out protesting the lack of affordable housing, gas and food.

With the disapproval rate for Congress at a record 82%, now is not the time for our representatives to pander to AIPAC. Now is not the time for “free” junkets to Israel—with an implicit promise of $3 billion of our taxdollars in return. Now is the time to stop the freefall of the American economy. If our representatives want to earn more respect from the American public, they better prove that their allegiance is not to a foreign government or a group that lobbies on behalf of a foreign government, but to their constituents back home.

~

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK. She encourages you to contact your congressperson and ask where they will be this August recess. Call  202-224-3121.

August 10, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | 6 Comments

Black Britain Revolts: What If It Had Been New York?

Glen Ford | Black Agenda Radio | August 9, 2011

It is impossible to observe the outbreak of Black rebellions on the streets of Great Britain without a comparison with the United States. In many respects, the confrontations with police that began in the Tottenham district and quickly spread to neighborhoods around London and to the cities of Liverpool, Nottingham, Bristol and Birmingham, England’s second largest city, followed patterns that would be familiar to any Black American.

Just as with virtually every U.S. urban rebellion over the past 75 years, the London police set off the violence when they shot to death a young Black man. African Americans would also immediately recognize the institutionalized racism that pervades the British criminal justice system. Black Brits are six times more likely than whites to be stopped and searched on the street by police, and are incarcerated at about seven times the rate of British whites, although studies show that whites are just as likely to commit crimes as Blacks. Racial reformers in the United Kingdom point to many of the same social imbalances as highlighted by their counterparts in the United States. For example, “for every African Caribbean male on [college] campus, there are two in jail.” People of African descent in Britain are heavily ghettoized and clustered in relative poverty.

Black Brits and Black Americans are, indeed, in many ways, in much the same boat. But the difference is in the scale of racial repression in the two countries. When it comes to state violence against people of African descent, Britain isn’t even in the same league with the United States. At the time of this writing, besides the initial Black victim, possibly one person had died in days of disturbances in London and other cities. In contrast, the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion left 54 dead, thousands injured and 7,000 people arrested. There can be no doubt that, had London’s current disturbances occurred on a similar scale in New York City, with outbreaks across the various boroughs, the police would have unleashed a bloodbath. And if the disturbances were to spread to Chicago and other cities, a post-911 United States would likely declare a kind of marshal law.

British police struggle to cope with young people linked by instant-message technology who move from neighborhood to neighborhood in “flying squads” of mopeds and bicycles to find the best looting opportunities. But authorities were reluctant to impose curfews, and rejected the use of rubber bullets or water cannon. British Home Secretary Theresa May explained: “The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon. The way we police in Britain is through consent of communities.”

You will never hear a cabinet-level officer of the United States government speak of respecting the “consent of communities” while imposing order – certainly not the consent of African American communities. In Philadelphia, at the same time that parts of London were burning, the Black mayor slammed a curfew on the city in reaction to a couple of incidents of “flash mobs” that caused little more than public anxiety, and promised harsh measures if people did not go home and stay home. In the U.S. of A., that means deadly force.

So, yes, the workings of racism in Britain bear many similarities to the United States. But the Brits don’t come close to matching the Americans in the sheer scale of racist violence and repression.

August 10, 2011 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

AFGHANISTAN: Nearly nine million face food shortages


Photo: Mohammad Popal/IRIN
IRIN |  August 9, 2011

KABUL  – Ongoing drought in northern, northeastern and western Afghanistan is likely to push 1.5-2 million more people into food insecurity this autumn, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP).

This is in addition to the seven million country-wide already facing food shortages.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) is reporting a failure of the rain-fed wheat crop, which accounts for about 55 percent of the total domestic wheat yield.

Irrigated wheat, which tends to yield more per hectare, has also been affected by the drought. The average wheat yield (without fertilizers) on irrigated land is about 2.7 tons per hectare (3.5 tons with fertilizer), versus only 1.1 tons on rain-fed land, according to MAIL.

In a normal year Afghanistan produces 4.5 million tons of wheat and around one million tons are imported. The shortfall of 1.9 million tons of wheat this year means more will either have to be imported or secured from other sources.

“Satellite derived rainfall estimates indicate that most of Afghanistan had an untimely and inadequate rain and snow season this year. As a result, there will be heavy losses in rain-fed wheat crops, underperforming irrigated wheat crops, poor pasture conditions, and low income earning opportunities in northern Afghanistan and the central highlands this year,” said the US Agency for International Development’s FEWSNET.

Increased need due to the drought comes as WFP is already facing a severe funding shortage for its existing programmes in Afghanistan.

“WFP had originally planned to feed more than seven million Afghans this year, but currently has the resources to reach less than four million,” WFP spokesman Assadullah Azhari told IRIN in Kabul.

He said additional funds would be required to cover the new drought-related needs.

President Hamid Karzai also expressed concern about the drought at a cabinet meeting on 30 July: “The current drought in certain provinces is hugely damaging to the life of people and their livestock.”

Sultan (he goes by only one name), 35, a farmer in Paghman District not far from Kabul, has been trying to truck in water for his wheat crop from a water source more than 10km from his village.

“All the water sources including the underground water have dried up in my village and now I need to pay a tanker to bring me water,” he told IRIN in Kabul. “I feel so sad… After two months my wheat is still only 20cm tall.”

He said that if he had had sufficient water for irrigation, his wheat crop would have been almost ready for harvest now. Even with expensive trucked-in water he would only get 20 percent of his normal crop, he added.

Assessments under way

According to MAIL officials, assessments are under way in drought-affected areas of the north, northeast, the west and the central highlands to determine exactly how many people will require food assistance and for how long.

Much of the looming wheat shortfall will be covered by government reserves and commercial imports. But additional humanitarian assistance may be required to support an estimated 1.5 to 2 million drought victims, according to WFP.

Karzai called on the ministries of commerce, finance and MAIL to take extra measures, and import wheat from India to try to meet needs.

WFP said the USA had cut its funding of WFP activities in Afghanistan by more than two-thirds since 2009. “But we continue to appeal to donors for the support that will allow us to ensure all those in need of help in the coming months are assisted,” said Azhari.

“The areas affected by drought are hard or impossible to reach by road during the winter. So it is critical to get food assistance in place early, before those people are cut off by snowfall,” he warned.

August 10, 2011 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Looking into the background of the execution of Oscar Grant

Atheo News  | January 9, 2009

Nearly nine days after an obvious execution in front of hundreds of commuters, which was subsequently shown on local Bay Area television to hundreds of thousands of viewers, the perpetrator has not only not been questioned about the incident, he has also not even been charged with a crime by the district attorney’s office.

This seemed rather odd, but with a bit of quick research into the matter a likely explanation surfaced that makes everything fit into place.

The execution was very similar to that of the Brazilian immigrant, Carlos Mendes, that took place in the summer of 2005 in the London Tube. According to reports, Mendes was shot in the back of the head by a group of officers that had just been “psyched up” by special Israëli counter-terrorism training. The method is very basic: simply shoot to kill any dark-skinned guy whom you could imagine to possibly be a “terrorist” in the back, after he has been subdued, lest he possibly activate his [imaginary] bomb belt. During training this must be rehearsed so often to become purely instinctive, so as to preclude any rational assessments. If the wires dangling from his shirt or pocket happen to merely connect earpieces with an IPod, well, it’s preferable to determine this later after the suspect is already dead.

Where did this cop most likely get his brainwashing?

Check out this web page of an Israeli run SWAT and Counter-Terrorism training operation:

http://www.ims-security.com/government_training.htm

Here’s a news story that initially appeared at the UC Berkeley campus paper (but seems to have disappeared from its online archives), confirming BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police participation with IMS:

UC Berkeley:Israeli Expert Helps BART Conduct Counterterror Training
by Emma Guiterrez

As part of a four-day training session with an Israeli counterterrorism expert, the BART Police Department SWAT Team demonstrated how to take down a potential suicide bomber last week. BART police hired Aaron Cohen, founder and managing director of the Israeli Military Specialists, following increased concerns about public transportation becoming the target of terrorism after bomb attacks on public transit systems in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005, respectively. (Daily Californian)

http://www.israelcampusbeat.org/ICB/Archive/20060312/CampusNews/

Here’s a puff-piece on the IMS training outfit:

http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=847

Here’s a puff-piece about the kid from Beverly Hills who started the outfit:

Security—Israeli Style

Cohen, 26, likes to tell people he was “born and raised here, but grew up in Israel.” After graduating Beverly Hills High School in 1995, he went to Israel, volunteered for the IDF and was selected for counterterrorism work. He won’t give details of training or assignments, which adds to the mystique. He will say he spent three years undercover in the disputed territories, then he came home. …

The Israelis have a method: If you attack them, they not only fight back, they make sure you’re dead before they leave. Again, it adds to the mystique. A dramatic demonstration for our cameras? Yes, but at the same time, very impressive.

There is competition from larger established companies, but Cohen thinks he has an edge that comes with the “I” in the company name. He says it’s not about the money.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/community_briefs/article/security_israeli_style_20021011/

Additional research will show that this outfit is also much engaged in the Hollywood celebrity bodyguard scene.

In light of this, it seems understandable, that certain people are very keen to not have all this information come out. Imagine all the other police officers out there who have also already been subjected to these four-day brainwashing excursions, at taxpayer’s expensive, their mind imprinted with this perverse Zionist Paranoia mindset. These people don’t want to deal with the outrage that the general population might feel.

August 10, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | 1 Comment

Hamas: No improvement at Rafah crossing

Ma’an – August 10, 2011

GAZA CITY — Gaza Interior Ministry deputy Kamel Abu Madi said Wednesday there had been no improvements at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

“The working procedures at the Rafah crossing are as usual and no improvement has occurred,” Abu Madi said.

He added that Egyptian authorities were still preventing Palestinians who had fled Libya from entering the Gaza Strip.

The official said there were serious discussions with Egyptian authorities over ongoing issues which he hoped would be resolved soon.

Egypt permanently opened the Rafah crossing for Palestinians in May 2011 in a significant change of policy from the previous Mubarak regime.

The Rafah border with Egypt is Gaza’s only crossing that bypasses Israel, although it is still lacks the infrastructure required to transport large quantities of goods into the Gaza Strip.

Egyptian and Gazan authorities have struggled to cope with huge demand and coordinating procedures, leading to travel delays.

August 10, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

Population of Gaza fears Israeli invasion in midst of communication blackout

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC News | August 10, 2011

Late Tuesday night, residents throughout Gaza lost internet, cell phone and landline phone service, creating a communication blackout similar to one which occurred just before a massive Israeli invasion in 2008. The blackout sparked fear among Gaza residents that an Israeli invasion might be underway.

Just before the communication blackout began, residents of northern Gaza witnessed Israeli armored bulldozers mobilizing along the northern border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

The main Palestinian cellphone company, Jawwal, told reporters with Ma’an News Agency that they were aware of problems with service, but did not know what was causing it.

During the 2008-9 invasion of Gaza, Israeli forces bombed the main power plants, plunging Gaza into a sea of darkness. Due to the ongoing Israeli siege, the electricity infrastructure of the Gaza Strip has been unable to fully recover, and fuel shortages have prevented the power plants from operating at full capacity. Since the 2008 invasion, Gazans have been on rolling electricity blackouts most of the time – in most parts of Gaza, people receive just six hours of electricity a day.

The Israeli military did not issue any statement or comment on the communication cut-off.

According to local sources, telephone landlines run by Paltel, the Palestinian Telecommunications Agency, were cut off, along with cell phone service by all of the major cell companies.

The source of the blackout is still unknown.

August 10, 2011 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

London Riots: West Indian writer Darcus Howe sets the BBC straight

BBC – London Riots (The BBC will never replay this)

Darcus Howe, a West Indian Writer and Broadcaster with a voice about the riots. Speaking about the mistreatment of youths by police leading to an up-roar and the ignorance of both police and the government.

~

Pre-order book:

‘Darcus Howe: a Political Biography’

Description

This is a political and intellectual biography of an important and controversial figure in British race politics. In recent years Darcus Howe has been a high-profile (and not uncontroversial) television journalist, but he also has a long history as a grass-roots activist. He moved to America from Trinidad in the 1960s where he was active in student committees fighting racial segregation. On arrival in Britain in the early 70s he joined the British Black Panthers – the first Black Panther organization outside the US. Here he attracted the attention of Special Branch, was arrested and had to defend himself at the Old Bailey. Over the next decade he was a member of a number of high profile campaigns that took on the National Front and police racism – campaigns which led to a seismic shift in British attitudes to race and culture more generally. The book uses Howe’s dramatic personal history as a lens through which to explore the British civil rights movement in the defining years of the 1970s and 80s. It also links the struggle for racial justice in Britain with the fight for black emancipation in the USA and the anti-colonial movement in the Caribbean. Howe has a unique intellectual position forged through his personal experience and through his interaction with leading black thinkers such as C. L. R. James (his great uncle) and Kwame Ture.

August 9, 2011 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | 2 Comments

Russia must decide fate of sunken nuclear subs – official

RIA Novosti – 08/08/2011

Russia must decide by 2013 what to do with two sunken nuclear submarines in the Barents and Kara seas in order to avoid the potential radioactive pollution of the area, a senior Russian nuclear official said on Monday.

“We must decide as soon as possible whether we will lift these subs or bury them completely on site,” Ivan Kamenskih, deputy general director of Russia’s nuclear corporation Rosatom, told a conference on board the Yamal nuclear icebreaker.

The B-159 (K-159) was a November class nuclear submarine, which sank in the Barents Sea in August 2003, 238 meters down, with nine of her crew and 800 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel, while being moved for dismantling.

The K-27 was an experimental attack submarine built in 1962 and decommissioned in 1979 due to its troublesome nuclear reactors. Her reactor compartment was sealed and the submarine was scuttled in the eastern Kara Sea in 1982 at the depth of 33 meters.

“I think the issue should be resolved in 2012…We must decide on their fate now to make sure that in the future we will not have problems with radioactive pollution of the areas where these subs are located,” Kamenskih said, adding that at present radiation levels at wreckage sites are normal.

The official also said that the wreck of the third sunken submarine, the Komsomolets, will most likely remain at the site of the 1989 accident forever, as the salvage operation will be too costly and dangerous.

The K-278 Komsomolets nuclear submarine sank in the Norwegian Sea on April 7, 1989, south of the Bear Island. The submarine sank with its active reactor and two nuclear warheads on board, and lies at a depth of 1,685 meters.

August 9, 2011 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism | 1 Comment

Woman threatened with exile, children held in vendetta against Jerusalem family

Palestine Information Center – 09/08/2011

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — In an apparent vendetta against Jerusalem native Nasser Abu Sanad, the Israeli occupation authorities have arrested four of his sons and are pursuing banishing his wife to Jordan.

His sons, ranging in age from 13 to 18 years, have all been arrested on suspicion of throwing stones at Israeli occupation forces.

Abu Sanad himself spent seven years in Israeli custody and was just recently released.

With regards to his wife Ala al-Hadira, she is wanted by the occupation authorities for allegedly staying in Jerusalem illegally. They seek to exile her to Jordan.

The woman left for Jordan seven years ago to visit her mother but was not allowed to return. A month ago she managed to enter Jerusalem with a visit permit, but after the one-month term ended, she was denied renewal of her stay with her children and husband.

The Israeli Interior Ministry has issued an arrest and deportation warrant against her. Several attempts have been made to apprehend her, but she managed to evade the occupation authorities and gain refuge in areas Palestinian Authority control.

Abu Sanad said the obvious persecution of his family is an act of retaliation against himself and his wife.

August 9, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 1 Comment

Israeli occupation forces bulldoze Palestinian land east of Al-Khalil to expand settlements

Palestine Information Center – 09/08/2011

AL-KHALIL — Israeli occupation forces (IOF) bulldozed 19 dunums of Palestinian land in Baka’a area to the east of Al-Khalil on Monday in preparation for annexing them to nearby Jewish settlements, local sources said.

They said that the IOF soldiers, accompanied by police and border police forces and civil administration officials raided the area and destroyed part of the irrigation network and confiscated it.

The sources noted that the act was the second of its kind and targeted lands owned by two Palestinian citizens.

They charged that the step was meant to evict the farmers out of their land and to annex it to the nearby settlements of Kharsina and Kiryat Arba.

The Baka’a is the most fertile area in the region and its farmers are constantly harassed by Jewish settlers.

August 9, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 2 Comments

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »