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Tel Aviv University imposes restrictions on Nakba Day events

MEMO | May 11, 2012

Tel Aviv University has imposed policies and procedures intended to restrict those Arab students who wish to organise Nakba commemorative events on campus. Palestinians remember the Nakba (Catastrophe) on 15th May every year, the date on which the state of Israel was created on their land.

According to a report in Haaretz newspaper, the presidency of the university has told the organisers of Nakba Day activities to provide the necessary funding for hiring at least six security guards from the university’s own security company to maintain control and order. The university wants to prevent any disturbances or riots during the ceremony scheduled for next week.

The event organisers must provide the required sum of money two days ahead of the proposed date of the programme, failing which it will be cancelled. The university has also banned the use of flags, banners and loud PA systems even though the Nakba Day commemoration has been approved by the students’ council, considered widely to be the first time such permission has been granted.

The organisers of the ceremony told Haaretz that the purpose behind the event is to introduce to non-Arab students the facts about the disaster that befell the Palestinians in 1948. In doing so, they also hope to influence Israeli public opinion and remind all citizens of the loss and human tragedy experienced by the Palestinians as a result of the Israeli occupation of their land.

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May 13, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Radical History of Mother’s Day

Nation of Change | May 12, 2012

There’s a good number of us who question holidays like Mother’s Day in which you spend more time feeding money into a system that exploits our love for our mothers than actually celebrating them.  It’s not unlike any other holiday in America in that its complete commercialization has stripped away so much of its genuine meaning, as well its history.  Mother’s Day is unique in its completely radical and totally feminist history, as much as it has been forgotten.

Mother’s Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, her proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in fighting for an end to all wars. She called for women to stand up against the unjust violence of war through their roles as wife and mother, to protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers’ sons.

Howe wrote:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”[Read the remainder of Howe’s quote here] 

The holiday caught on years later when a West Virginia women’s group led by Anna Reeves Jarvis began promoting it as a way to reunite families after the Civil War.  After Jarvis’ death, her daughter began a campaign for the creation of an official Mother’s Day in honor of peace. Devoting much of her life to the cause, it wasn’t until 1914 when Woodrow Wilson signed it into national observance in 1914.

The holiday flourished, along with the flower industry.  The business journal, the Florists Review, actually admitted to its desire to exploit the holiday. Jarvis was strongly opposed to every aspect of the holiday’s commercialization, arrested for protesting the sale of flowers, and petitioning to stop the creation of a Mother’s Day postage stamp.

Today we are in multiple wars that continue to claim the lives of thousands of sons and daughters.  We are also experiencing a still-rising commercialization of nearly every aspect of life; the exploitation of every possible human event and emotion at the benefit of corporations.

Let’s take this Mother’s Day to excuse ourselves from the pressure to consume and remember its radical roots – that mothers, or rather all women, in fact, all people, have a stake in war and a responsibility as American citizens to protest the incredible violence that so many fellow citizens, here and abroad, must suffer through.

The thousands of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the devastating impact of post-traumatic stress disorder on our veterans are just the beginning of the terrible repercussion of war.  As we saw last week an announcement of an extension of the military occupation of Afghanistan, let this mother’s day be a day after Julia Ward Howe’s own heart as we stand up and say no to 12 more years of war.

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May 13, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

UN approves guidelines against land grabbing

DW | May 12, 2012

After three years of discussions, the UN has agreed a document meant to protect local populations against land grabbing. It should help ensure the right to food.

When big investors buy up land, small farmers are often driven from the land that feeds them. On Friday (11.05.2012) the 128 countries in the UN Committee on World Food Security unanimously adopted policies to protect the local population.

The voluntary guidelines specify how soil and land use rights, fisheries and forests should be handled. They are intended to increase transparency in land investment, give residents a greater say and especially to strengthen the position of the local small farmers. Often, they have only informal land rights – and no official land titles.

“The key point is that all rights for people to use land and other resources should be recognized, and that these people have proof. And they cannot easily lose these rights overnight because someone else may have more money or more influence,” said Babette Wehrmann, responsible for climate, energy use and rights at the FAO.

Up to 83 million hectares of land have been sold or leased to investors since 2000 – especially in Africa. The International Land Coalition, an alliance of non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, operates a website on which land investments can be followed. However, because many deals are not disclosed, the land-matrix database is far from complete, the ILC’s Michael Taylor says. Even so, some trends can be identified: African countries are of particular concern, including Sudan, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Targeted investments in countries with weak legislation

These countries are particularly vulnerable “because they have weak policies and weak land ownership legislation. The international investors sought out the most vulnerable countries where it was worthwhile to invest because of the fertile ground,” says Frank Brassel, rural development expert at Oxfam.

According to the country matrix the major investors include India, China and the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Even these countries have now agreed to the voluntary guidelines.

The ILC sees more risks than opportunities for local people in the land deals that are currently being negotiated, Taylor said. It would make most sense for investors to work with small farmers. Many countries are now worrying about new approaches to strengthen farmers’ rights, Taylor says.

“Countries such as Madagascar and Ethiopia have begun to issue certificates to confirm the ownership of land, and while they are not the same as a (legal ownership) title, they still ensure ownership of the land and only cost a fraction of the price,” says Taylor. “In Madagascar, the cost for a small farmer who wants to certify his land has fallen from 600 dollars to 15 dollars, or about 12 euros.”

This certificate assures the farmers that they can continue to cultivate “their” land. Because if big investors oust the local population, they lose twice: First, they can no longer grow anything, and second, the products are then mostly exported. So-called “flex crops” are especially popular – plants such as palm oil, soya beans and sugar cane – that can be sold according to market demand as a biofuel or food, says Taylor.

Local farmers are often forced off their land

And it would be a mistake to think that investors are looking for idle land, says Kerstin Nolte, an expert on land grabbing at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA).

“Investors are, of course, looking for land that is very fertile and is close to infrastructure. And that is usually populated,” says Nolte. “This means that it often involves expulsions.”

Nolte traveled to Zambia, Kenya and Ghana for field studies. In Zambia, traditional local authorities decide which family cultivates which piece of land.

“When the chief performs his role well in the traditional sense, then he will negotiate with the investor and consult with his people. These chiefs are only slightly better off, which means they do not have very much money, property or land” Nolte said. “That means the system is very susceptible to corruption, both because there’s no one monitoring the chief and because there are a lot of money or valuables coming in from the outside.” Nolte says that this has led to much communal land in Zambia being transferred to commercial agriculture.

The rapid growth of land grabbing in recent years has depended in particular on the fact that food prices have risen dramatically since 2007. “This has led to two major groups seeing that it pays to invest in land: the first are the Gulf countries and emerging economies such as China and India. They want to secure their future food supply by buying or leasing huge areas of land in weaker countries,” Brassel said.

“The other group is traditional investors, who have also seen that it pays to invest in land, for food and for biofuel, as both promise to be lucrative businesses for the future.”

The largest land grabbers are not necessarily foreign investors. “We hear from our member organizations working in countries such as these it is the local elites who are responsible for the largest land scarcity. The cumulative effect of many people acquiring small plots of land for speculative purposes may be greater than that of two investors who purchase vast areas of land,” Taylor said.

More transparency?

The experts agree the voluntary guidelines of the UN member states are now an important first step to strengthen the situation of the local population and create more transparency. The guidelines can help to set a certain standard for the local population.

Although they are voluntary, the guidelines could put a lot of positive developments into motion, Brassel says. Oxfam has seen positive effects of the 2004 voluntary guidelines for the human right to food, he says. Even so, Oxfam would have liked to expand the newly adopted guidelines against land grabbing. “We should have not only applied the guidelines to land, but also to water resources,” he said.

“We would have liked a statement at the beginning that says, in the next three years we will have a moratorium on large land investments to be able to apply these guidelines on-site in the most affected countries first.”

The protection of small farmers now depends on the extent to which the individual states consider the voluntary guidelines to be binding.

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May 13, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , , , | 2 Comments

US drone attacks kill ten in Yemen

Al Akhbar | May 13, 2012

Two apparent US drone attacks killed at least 10 people in Yemen on Saturday, while Yemeni government forces killed 15 others in a new offensive against insurgents, local and military officials said.

Two air strikes destroyed three vehicles and killed 10 people in the eastern oil-producing Maarib province and near the border of the southeastern Shabwa province, the Defence Ministry website said, without elaborating.

Yemen and Washington do not acknowledge US drone attacks as they undermine the idea of Yemeni sovereignty.

The government claimed those killed were militants but provided no evidence for this.

Local officials told Reuters the strikes were believed to have been carried out by US drones and up to 12 people were killed, including an Egyptian and two Saudis.

It was the latest in a series of reported drone attacks on militants in the south of the impoverished Arab country who exploited mass protests last year against then-President Ali Abdallah Saleh to seize large swathes of territory, including Zinjibar, the capital of restive Abyan province.

Last week, the US Defense Department said Washington had resumed training Yemeni armed forces, after a suspension during the political upheaval that ousted Saleh.

In a sign of growing lawlessness after more than a year of unrest, Bulgaria’s ambassador to Yemen escaped with minor injuries on Saturday after masked gunmen opened fire on his car in the capital and tried to kidnap him, a Western diplomat said.

US officials said this week they had thwarted a plot by the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to arm a suicide bomber with a non-metallic device, an upgraded version of the “underwear bomb” carried onto an airliner on Christmas Day 2009.

(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

May 13, 2012 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

No war is necessary to destroy Israel: President Ahmadinejad

Press TV – May 13, 2012

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says there is no need to take up arms against Israel in order to destroy it.

Criticizing the regional countries for buying billions of dollars worth of weaponry from certain powers, Ahmadinejad said, “If their objective for buying these weapons is to fight with the Zionist regime (Israel), they should know that a war is not necessary for destroying the regime.”

“If the regional countries cut their ties with the Zionists and give the Zionist regime (Israel) a small frown, this fabricated regime will be over,” President Ahmadinejad added.

The Iranian chief executive made the remarks in the city of Kashmar in the eastern province of Khorasan Razavi on Saturday.

The president also criticized certain regional rulers for spending their oil revenues on USD 60 billion worth of [Western] arms.

In December 2011, the US formally announced a USD 30-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia which included the sales of F-15 fighter jets to the Arab monarchy.

The deal is part of a multi-year arms agreement between Washington and Riyadh, unveiled in October 2010, which is worth a whopping USD 60 billion overall.

The Iranian president also slammed the massacre of Afghan civilians at the hands of the US military forces stationed in Afghanistan.

May 13, 2012 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Google, Facebook to help Israeli colonists combat “cyberhate”?

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | May 13, 2012

In a May 10 press release, the staunchly pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL) announced it “will convene a new working group on cyberhate that will bring together Internet industry leaders and others to probe the roots of the problem and develop new solutions to address it head-on.”

According to the ADL statement, the establishment of a “Anti-Cyberhate Working Group” was approved by the Task Force on Internet Hate at a May 7 meeting held at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society in Palo Alto, California. The task force was created by the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA).

“Internet hate continues to have a global impact on civil society and a transparent process to respond to it will lead to reviewability and consistency,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “We welcome the commitments of Google and Facebook to participate in this dialogue to combat online hate speech, Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. Working alongside the Internet’s leaders will allow for the development of industry standards that balance effectiveness with respect for the right to free speech.”

The ICCA Task Force is co-chaired by Yuli Edelstein, Israel’s Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, who is charged with countering antisemitism. A member of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, Edelstein lives in the illegal West Bank settlement of Neve Daniel, which he sees as part of “Greater Israel.” As far as the Israeli minister is concerned, however, those who dare to nonviolently oppose Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian land are motivated only by hate. According a report on Edelstein’s anti-Arab racism, he told delegates at a 2009 international conference on “combating antisemitism”:

We must repeat again and again these basic facts – TO BE ‘anti-Israel’ IS TO BE ANTI-SEMITIC. TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL, ISRAELI PROFESSORS and ISRAELI businesses, these are not political acts, these are acts of hate, acts of anti-Semitism! Anti-Israel hysteria is anti-Semitic hysteria. They are one and the same. [Ed: Upper case letters in the transcript]

If this is what is meant by “cyberhate,” perhaps the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement should consider targeting Google and Facebook for their apparent willingness to collaborate in the defense of the Israeli occupation.

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May 13, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Sniffing Out Privacy Issues That May Be In Our future

By Jay Stanley | ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project | May 11, 2012

MIT’s Technology Review has an article today on research that is underway to make extremely sensitive and rapid molecular sensors—aka “artificial noses”—that are so thin they could even be integrated into paper or textiles.

The use of particle detectors and chemical sensors to identify tiny amounts of chemicals or odors is an area that we’ve been keeping an eye on for a while—something we file under “possible future privacy-invasive technologies.” As Technology Review describes it, this technology

rapidly detects volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—gases in our surrounding environment that are produced by a wide variety of sources, everything from household paints to a person’s own skin. Many do not have an odor, but an electronic sensor could alert a user to the presence of harmful chemicals or perhaps indicate that something is off-kilter with a user’s health.

The main context in which Americans have encountered chemical sensors so far is in bomb detection—mainly at the airport when they or their belongings are swabbed and tested for traces of explosives. A “puffer machine” that blows air on passengers standing inside a booth was also tested for a while but found to be so far impractical for mass deployment. We’ve never had a problem with particle detectors; as long as they are tuned only to look for explosives, they do not raise substantial privacy concerns, as explosives are not something people normally have. (We have pointed out that there can be questions about their effectiveness, and the importance of treating people who “alarm” properly given that false negatives are probable.)

But such deployments may be only the beginning. Here are some other chemical detection efforts that we have seen already:

• DHS has been working on a scheme to place chemical sensors in cell phones so that every American becomes a roaming chemical sensor able to alert the authorities to the release of chemical toxins resulting from accidents or terrorist plots.

• Companies are selling sensitive drug-sniffing products that go way beyond breathalyzers, such as contactless hand-held scanners that claim to be able to detect trace amounts of drugs on virtually all surfaces, including skin and clothing.

• DHS is also researching the use of body odor as a unique identifier or “odor fingerprint.” In theory, if that panned out, cheap and pervasive sensors could identify you everywhere you go.

• As part of the same project, DHS is also researching their use “as an indicator of deception”—in short, they are pursuing that perennial chimera, a lie detector. While lie detection is a fool’s errand, it’s possible that odor detectors could reveal very crude facts about people’s emotional state.

• Researchers are developing techniques for detecting medical conditions including cancer, asthma, and many other diseases by detecting “trace amounts of distinctive biomarkers in their breath.” (Sounds great in the hands of your doctor; used secretly during a job interview or bank loan application, not so much.)

• Under a pilot program spearheaded by the White House’s “drug czar” in 2006, the government tested sewage from treatment plants in the Washington, D.C. area to measure the amount of trace cocaine that was present. This was done in an effort to estimate the level of drug use in those communities. It did not reveal anything about specific individuals.

The breadth of activity in this area makes it clear that if this technology continues to advance rapidly and becomes cheap and widespread as so many other technologies have in recent years, we will be facing an entirely new set of privacy issues. A whole new range of facts about ourselves (health conditions; emotional state; drug, alcohol and pharmaceutical use; our identity) could become open to unwelcome scrutiny by others (government, employers, insurance companies, nosy neighbors).

Sometimes such technologies get scary very fast; other times they don’t turn out to be a problem. We’ll be watching closely.

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May 12, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

South Africa may be hit with US sanctions over Iran oil imports

Press TV – May 12, 2012

South Africa would likely face sanctions from the United States if the largest economy in the African continent fails to meet the deadline to cut its crude oil imports from Iran.

The South African Petroleum Industry Association (PIA) said on Friday that it would have to expedite requests to the United States for a postponement and temporary exemption from the economic sanctions if South Africa fails to slash its imports of Iranian petroleum.

“This is not a business decision for us. It involves a political decision about political pressure,” PIA Executive Director Avhapfani Tshifularo said.

“We expect a Cabinet decision by the end of the month, and we will allow ourselves to be guided by that,” Tshifularo said.

The report comes as South African crude oil imports from the Islamic Republic of Iran have increased to $434.8 million in March from $364 million in February.

South Africa’s Revenue Service said on April 30 that Africa’s biggest economy imported 505,908 tons of Iranian crude in March, up from 417,188 tons the previous month.

South Africa has come under pressure from Washington to cut its crude imports from Iran in line with the sanctions designed to halt Tehran’s nuclear energy program.

According to the March data, South Africa’s crude imports totaled 1.6 million tons, with Nigeria supplying 38 percent, Iran 32 percent, Saudi Arabia 22 percent, and Angola the rest.

The US sanctions require foreign financial institutions to make a choice between transactions with the Central Bank of Iran and Iran’s oil and financial sectors or being banned from the US economy.

On January 23, the EU agreed to ban oil imports as well as petroleum products from Iran and freeze the assets of the Central Bank of Iran across the EU.

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May 12, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 3 Comments

Muslim toddler removed from US flight on security grounds

Press TV – May 11, 2012

An 18-month-old girl has been taken off a JetBlue Airways plane in the United States because her name appeared on a no-fly security list.

The parents of the toddler, who were also taken off the plane, said on Friday that they were humiliated by the security officials’ action.

“We were put on display like a circus act because my wife wears a hijab,” Riyanna’s father told WPBF 25 News, ABC’s local affiliate in West Palm Beach, Florida.

He said the incident was motivated by prejudice because they are Muslims and of Middle Eastern descent.

A JetBlue spokeswoman called it a “computer glitch” and stated that the airline was investigating the May 8 incident, which occurred at Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida. JetBlue also issued an apology to the family, who live in New Jersey.

“We believe this was a computer glitch,” JetBlue said in a statement. “Our crewmembers followed the appropriate protocols, and we apologize to the family involved in this unfortunate circumstance.”

The family was eventually allowed to re-board the flight, but the family instead left the airport in protest.

The Transportation Security Agency said the little girl could not have been on the government watch list because she’d already been issued a boarding pass.

A poll by the Pew Research Center conducted last year showed that abuse of Muslims by US airport security, law enforcement officers, and others has increased considerably since American Muslims were first polled in 2007.

Almost 43 percent of American Muslims reported experiencing harassment in 2010, a three percent increase in the number reported in 2007.

May 11, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Islamophobia | , , , , , | 2 Comments

New Postal Service Plan a Bait and Switch, Equivalent of Closing 5,567 Post Offices

New “POSt Plan” Is Not Good News for Rural Post Offices or Their Customers

Ralph Nader | May 11, 2012

Consumer watchdog, Ralph Nader, today said, “The Postmaster General’s Post Office Structure Plan (“POSt Plan”) is a bait and switch tactic, and is not good news for rural Post Offices.”

The Postmaster General claims that his new strategy, released on Wednesday, is designed to benefit rural Americans and keep open the 3,652 postal facilities it was considering for closure. Though it is unclear how many of these offices are included in the “POSt Plan”, it seems that many of them have been incorporated in the new plan as well. The new direction that the Postmaster General proposed is to cut hours at nearly 13,000 Post Offices and offer early retirement incentives for more than 21,000 non-executive postmasters.

“As more details about the plan emerge, the picture grows increasingly dire for rural customers of the U.S. Postal Service,” Nader observed. “I expressed deep concern about the preliminary details of the Postmaster General’s plan on Wednesday. Unfortunately, those fears were confirmed as we have analyzed the details of the Postmaster General’s new strategy.”

After examining 260 pages of the U.S. Postal Service’s proposal for Post Office hour reductions nationwide, we found that the new strategy eliminates 42,699 hours per day from retail window hours of nearly 13,000 Post Offices.

“This proposal is calling for a gargantuan cut in retail window hours nationwide – 42,699 total hours each day. To put this in perspective, 42,699 hours equates to nearly 5 years,” Nader explained.

The current average retail window hours of the nearly 13,000 Post Offices proposed for reduced hours are 7.67 hours per day. “The enormous cut in hours that the U.S. Postal Service has proposed is the equivalent of closing 5,567 of these Post Offices. The Postmaster General started with a list of 3,652 offices being considered for closure. Now we see that by reducing window hours he has proposed the equivalent of closing 2,000 more offices than he started with,” Nader continued.

Nader concluded by saying, “This is, plain and simple, a bait and switch. As I said on Wednesday, by further restricting Post Office hours the Postmaster General makes the corporate “alternatives” to the U.S. Postal Service more likely and sets the stage for future Post Office closings when the revenues and workload of reduced-hours offices inevitably suffer. The Postmaster General has effectively taken a list of 3,652 offices that were on the chopping block and added nearly 10,000 more offices to that list.”

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May 11, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Economics | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Loving the bomb: NATO to splurge billions on nuclear weapons overhaul

RT | May 11, 2012

The US is planning to spend $4 billion to upgrade NATO’s Western European nuclear arsenal. The “unnecessary and expensive” initiative is likely to stir new animosity with Russia, a report says.

­The alliance is preparing to replace “dumb” free-fall nuclear bombs with new generation of precision-guided nuclear gravity bombs, reveals a report by the European Leaders Network (ELN), a political think tank. The new bombs will also require new delivery aircraft, the Lockheed Martin F-35, each costing $100 million.

The report “Escalation by Default? The Future of NATO Nuclear Weapons in Europe” is authored by Ted Seay, a former arms control advisor to the US mission at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. It points to the fact that the upgrade will target such countries as Russia and Iran, who will be the most unlikely to be overjoyed with the prospect.

“This will increase NATO’s ability to reach targets in Russia with tactical nuclear weapons,” the paper reads. The initiative comes at a time when NATO and Russia are already “locked in a tense stand-off over missile defense.”

“This could alienate Russia in particular and worsen the prospects for further negotiations on non-strategic nuclear weapon reductions in Europe as a whole,” the report states.

A nuclear escalation “by default” would only harm security and safety prospects throughout Europe, and should be avoided, the paper concludes.

Commenting on the research, ELN chief Ian Kearns stressed to The Guardian that Washington’s plans for the upgrade are exorbitant.

“The planned upgrade of NATO’s tactical nuclear forces in Europe will be expensive and is unnecessary,” said Kearns. “NATO states are fully secure without this additional capability and should be focused on removing all tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, not on modernizing them.”

NATO currently possesses around 180 B61 free-fall tactical nuclear bombs stored at bases in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Turkey. The report states that they are increasingly regarded as obsolete.

In the meantime, a US interceptor successfully downed a ballistic missile as part of a military test in Hawaii, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency stated.

The Raytheon Co-Built Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Interceptor is a key component in the anti-missile defense (AMD) shields the United States is due to build in Poland, Romania and Turkey. The SM-3 Interceptor is to be deployed to Romania by 2015 and will also be used aboard ships equipped with Lockheed Martin’s Aegis anti-missile combat system.

Russia has been calling for NATO to give legally-binding guarantees that its AMD system would not target Russia, thereby upsetting the global balance of power. NATO and the United States have so far refused to give such guarantees.

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May 11, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US military school taught “total war” against Muslims

Al Akhbar | May 11, 2012

A senior US military official has been forced to condemn a class taught at a military college that advocated a “total war” against Muslims.

The course at the Joint Forces Staff College in Virginia also suggested possible nuclear attacks on holy Islamic cities such as Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

The story, originally published on Wired.com’s danger room blog, risks damaging America’s already tarnished image in the Islamic world, where it maintains a heavy military presence.

The head of the course Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley laid out a possible four-phase plan to carry out a forced transformation of Islam, with the aim of reducing it to “cult status.”

He added that it was possible to apply “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” to Islam’s holiest cities, and bring about “Mecca and Medina[‘s] destruction.”

“We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” Dooley noted in a July 2011 presentation, which concluded with a suggested manifesto to America’s enemies.

“It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”

The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, said the course was “against our values.”

“It was just totally objectionable, against our values, and it wasn’t academically sound,” General Dempsey said.

He said he had ordered a full investigation when the course was suspended in April after one of the students objected to the material.

However Dempsey’s argument appeared to be undermined after it emerged that Dooley has not been fired from his job.

US forces continue to occupy Afghanistan, as well as maintaining bases inside friendly regimes in the Middle East.

There was widespread fury earlier this year when dozens of Afghans were killed in protests following the burning of Qurans at a US-run military prison in southern Afghanistan.

May 11, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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