Paris court convicts Israeli doctor of slander
Ma’an – 30/04/2011
JERUSALEM — Knesset member Ahmad Tibi is calling on Israeli authorities to punish a doctor convicted of slandering the father of Mohammad Ad-Durra by a French court Friday.
In 2000, the television station France 2 reported that Israeli soldiers shot dead Mohammad Ad-Durra, 12, in Gaza City. The killing was filmed by French reporters and the channel broadcast footage of the incident, in which Ad-Durra’s father Jamal was also shot and injured as he tried to take cover with his son.
In an interview to a French Jewish publication in 2008, Israeli doctor Yehuda David claimed Jamal Ad-Durra’s injuries stemmed from a previous accident. He had operated on Ad-Durra in 1994.
Ad-Durra sued David and the publication for slander.
A Paris court on Friday convicted the doctor, a reporter and the editor of Jewish News Weekly, of defaming Jamal Ad-Durra. The three were fined 1,000 euros each and ordered to pay 5,000 euros in damages.
MK Ahmad Tibi urged the Israeli Medical Association and the Ministry of Health to prosecute the doctor, noting that misusing and distorting confidential medical files is a criminal offense.
David has previously claimed that the video footage of Mohammad’s killing was fabricated, and that the boy was killed by Palestinian fire.
In 2000, the Israeli army conducted an internal investigation and admitted responsibility for the killing but in 2007 the Israeli government officially denied involvement.
Bernard-Henri Levy, philosopher and hypocrite
By Gilad Atzmon | Redress | 29 April 2011
What makes one a philosopher?
Probably, the capacity to aim at the essence of things, while celebrating the love of wisdom (philo-sophos).
Although Bernard-Henri Lévy presents himself as a French philosopher, he seems to lack that elementary capacity. Unlike a true philosopher, Levy engages in an endless spin, typical of a hasbara – Israeli propaganda – agent.
On 2 February the Huffington Post gave a platform to the so-called “philosopher” Levy.
Levy doesn’t approve of the Boycott, Disinventment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. He claims that the campaign is “anti-democratic”.
Levy the Israeli propagandist
I would have expected Levy eloquently to advocate freedom of speech and human rights, but the Zionist “intellectual” failed miserably. Levy followed the well-trodden Judaeo-centric Zionist template and spouted half-baked ideas that hardly form an argument. Pathetically, Levy’s ranting is mostly counter-productive to his own cause.
“First of all” he said, “one boycotts totalitarian regimes, not democracies… One can boycott Sudan, guilty of the extermination of part of the population of Darfur. One can boycott China, guilty of massive violations of human rights in Tibet and elsewhere. “
For some bizarre reason, Levy seems to be convinced that his beloved Jews-only state is an “exemplary democracy”. He says: “One does not boycott the only society in the Middle East where Arabs read a free press, demonstrate when they wish to do so, send freely-elected representatives to parliament and enjoy their rights as citizens.”
I guess that Levy either doesn’t know or pretends not to know that in the “Jews-only democracy” laws are racially orientated. The Law of Return, for instance, favours Jews and Jews only.
Levy should also learn about the case of Azmi Bishara, the Arab citizen of Israel and member of the Israeli parliament, who had to run for his life for suggesting that Israel should be transformed into a “state of all its citizens” based on equality for all.
But it actually goes much further.
Levy’s argument is totally flawed and counterproductive to his Zionist cause. It is actually democracies, rather than dictatorships, that should be subjected to humanitarian boycotts because in democracies the people are complicit in their governments’ crimes.
We must boycott Israel because in the Jewish state every citizen is culpable in the war crimes committed by the democratically-elected government. We must boycott Israel because 94 per cent of its Jewish population supported the Israeli armed forces’ genocidal tactics during Operation Cast Lead against the people of Gaza. We must boycott Israel because its state-terror policies are a reflection of the public’s true will as proven in opinion polls and democratic elections.
According to Levy, in a democracy the voters have the power to sanction, modify and reverse the position of their government. It would be fabulous if Levy could enlighten us and suggest how exactly the Jews-only democracy is progressing towards an acceptance of universal rights for all.
Apologist for racism
As with all hasbara agents, Levy is outraged by the attempt to delegitimize Israel, yet, the philosopher in him fails to tell us what is exactly so wrong in delegitimizing a racially-driven, murderous collective. I also wonder what is so unacceptable about delegitimizing a state that was illegitimate to start with.
Levy doesn’t approve of the “one-state” enthusiasts. He far prefers to divide the land into two states. Someone had better remind this lame mind that Israel is currently one state that is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Those who support one state are actually far from being radical. They have their feet on the ground. They accept Israel as one state, with one international dialing code and one power grid.
However, the supporters of one state also realize that one-state Israel is dominated by Jewish Talmudic racism that is far more vicious than Nazi ideology. Proponents of the one state also realize that by the time Jewish racist ideology is defeated this one state between the river and the sea will become Palestine.
Levy is furious with one-state advocate Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, who, according to him, “does not hesitate to compare Israel to Nazi Germany”. It would be a little bit more useful if “philosopher” Levy is kind enough to suggest to us once and for all what is so wrong with comparing the Jews-only state with the Aryans-only state also known as Nazi Germany.
Towards the end of his Huffington Post article, Levy comes up with something that could almost pass for an argument. For Levy, the Western world should have hoped to be “cured of its worst criminal past”. It would be helpful and productive if Levy and other Zionists grasp that it is actually the West’s problematic past that shapes our criticism of the murderous Israeli present. It is our troubled past that makes us into enemies of racist Israel.
I was looking forward to read a Zionist “thinker” advocating for Israel. Levy obviously failed.
However, I admit that, as with Levy, I also have reservations regarding the BDS movement.
For instance, I believe that if the demand to boycott Israeli academics is valid, then we should also boycott academics and intellectuals who advocate Israeli policies and Zionism worldwide, because Israel is racist to the bone and racism must be opposed. If the BDS movement is taking itself seriously, then it should also demand the boycott of Levy, Alan Dershowitz, David Hirsh and many others.
On the one hand, this would underline the BDS movement’s integrity. But as an advocate of freedom of speech, I actually want Dershowitz, Hirsh and Levy to speak their minds. I believe that together with Mark Regev, they are the best promoters of Zionist tribal morbidity.
Netanyahu: Israel won’t be center of WikiLeaks release
AFP – 29/11/2010
JERUSALEM — Israel will not be at the center of the expected release of classified US documents by WikiLeaks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
The whistle-blower website was reportedly hours away from releasing hundreds of thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables, with several governments fearing damaging revelations.
But Netanyahu said that Israel, a close US ally, would not be “the center of international attention.” … Full article
Abbas: Obama behind failed peace talk conditions
Palestine Information Center – 26/04/2011
WEST BANK — Palestinian de facto president Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview with Newsweek on Monday that conditions he set for the recently failed peace talks with Israel were proposed by US President Barack Obama.
Abbas threatened then to walk out of resumed peace talks if Israel did not agree to curb settlement activity in the West Bank. He later fulfilled his vows after a settlement freeze expired as peace talks were heightening.
”It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. I said O.K., I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder, and he removed the ladder and said to me, ‘jump.’ Three times, he did it,” Abbas said.
Abbas also criticized mediation efforts by US envoy to the Mideast George Mitchell, who made repeated visits to the region for more than two years before coming to a complete halt.
”Every visit by Mitchell, we talked to him and gave him some ideas. At the end, we discovered that he didn’t convey any of these ideas to the Israelis. What does it mean?”
Similarly, Abbas confessed he warned Obama of the dangers of forsaking ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
He said how Obama dealt with Mubarak was not gracious, and that he wasn’t intelligent in dealing with the Egyptian revolutionaries.
Abbas added that he informed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the Egyptian revolution that she did not comprehend the consequences of the fall of the then Egyptian regime.
Nuke protester murdered in India as police open fire on peaceful crowd
By Rady Ananda | COTO Report | April 22, 2011
Authorities responded to peaceful protest of a proposed nuclear power plant site in India by shooting at the crowd, killing one and injuring eight. Over sixty others were arrested. Killed by police on Monday, the body of 30-year-old Tabrez Sayekar was carried through the streets at a funeral march attended by more than 2,000 people on Wednesday. No one has been charged in his murder.
The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), along with the French nuclear energy giant, Areva, plan to build the world’s largest nuclear power plant complex generating nearly 10,000 megawatts of electricity in an agricultural area at Jaitapur in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra.
In December, the world renowned Tata Institute of Social Sciences published a social and environmental assessment of the proposed project conducted by Jamsetji Tata Centre for Disaster Management last April, calling it a potential disaster. According to DNA India, the report charges that the government has hidden and suppressed important and relevant information, and “has subverted facts” by labeling the proposed 968-hectare site as barren land though the locals use it for agriculture, horticulture and grazing.
“‘Farmers and horticulturists have spent lakhs of rupees to make the land cultivable over years and even the government has supported them. This includes Alfonso mangoes and cashews. Now, when the time has come for them to reap their investments, they are afraid of losing their land as the government now claims it is barren land,’ says the report. It adds that even the fisherfolk of the region are against the project.”
Even the level of seismicity was changed, from a high severity earthquake zone to moderate seismic severity zone.
“‘The government is not only hiding facts, but also manipulating them,’ the report alleges.”
NPCIL, an agency of the Indian government, defends the moderate label. “Seismicity is one of the key criteria in site selection for nuclear power plants and the Jaitapur site meets the requirements for siting as stipulated in the atomic energy regulatory board’s code on safety,” it said in response to TISS.
However, last month, Times of India reported:
“[T]he Geological Survey of India shows that between 1985 and 2005, there were 92 earthquakes [in the area].
“The ground is unstable, say activists and geologists, and there is no guarantee that the government’s safeguards will protect the people and ecologically sensitive Konkan coast from a nuclear disaster should there be another earthquake.
“Environmental activist Pradeep Indulkar said: ‘The third explosion at the Fukushima plant in Japan on Tuesday confirms that in the event of an earthquake, precautionary measures and safeguards will not avert a disaster. It is better not to have a nuclear power plant in this seismic zone region.’
“At Shivane village, 20 km from Jaitapur, Chandrakant Padkar remembers the day the earth shook and the road outside his house vanished. The unreported earthquake took place two years ago, and the village still bears the scars.”
Greenpeace India plans to deliver a petition to the Maharashtra Chief Minister on April 26, the 25th anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine. You can sign the petition here.
“Instead of ignoring and ruthlessly suppressing the protest against the Jaitapur nuclear reactor park, Prithviraj Chavan, Maharashtra Chief Minister, needs to scrap the project. The CM needs to know that he cannot build Jaitapur against the people’s will when alternatives exist.”
Sane Response to Deadly Energy Source
Nuclear power is the deadliest, costliest form of energy on record, according to Dr. Benjamin Sovacool of Project Syndicate. “Not counting the Fukushima catastrophe, there has been more than one nuclear incident and $330 million in damage every year, on average, for the past three decades.”
In a policy brief published in January, Sovacool notes, “The nuclear fuel cycle involves some of the most dangerous elements known to humankind. These elements include more than 100 dangerous radionuclides and carcinogens such as strontium-90, iodine-131 and cesium-137, which are the same toxins found in the fallout of nuclear weapons.”
The damage done to Earth by nuclear accidents and waste is permanent, for a mere 20-30 years of electricity, a dirty secret that the nuclear industry has not resolved. In the U.S., for example, the waste is stored in holding pools at four to five times the pool’s capacity.
Despite the world’s clean water shortage, Sovacool reports:
“Nuclear plants use 25-50% more water per unit of electricity generated than fossil fuel plants with equivalent cooling systems…. The average US plant operating on an open–loop cooling system withdraws 216 Million litres of water every day and consumes 125 Million litres of water every day.
“Nuclear plants and uranium mining also contaminate water and the methods used to draw the water and exclude debris through screens kill marine and riparian life, setting in place a destructive chain of events for ocean/river systems.”
Der Spiegel writes, “The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, for all the attention it gets, is far from the only nuclear no-go area on the planet.” In its recent catalogue of several now-uninhabitable spots on the planet as a result of nuclear use, leaks, waste and accidents, Spiegel documents thousands of square miles in the U.S., Germany, Kazakhstan, Japan, India, Britain and Northern Africa contaminated by radiation, areas which produce high rates of birth defects and cancers. Their report doesn’t even touch the depleted uranium used in the Middle East by the U.S. and its allies.
While we watch Fukushima’s radiation fall on the northern hemisphere, contaminating our milk and water in the U.S., Canada and Europe, it’s notable that, like previous nuclear accidents, governments lie about the severity. Fifty years after the UK’s worst nuclear disaster, experts advise that the radiation released was twice what was originally reported.
Chernobyl was no different, as a recent book published by the New York Academy of Sciences reveals. Government authorities reported 3,000 casualties from that disaster, but in Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, the authors conclude that, based on now available medical data, 985,000 people died as a result of the Chernobyl disaster, as of 2004. The researchers based their conclusions on 5,000 radiological surveys, scientific reports and health data.
Because of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, EnviroVideo released a video based on that book: “Chernobyl: A Million Casualties.” Watch it at http://blip.tv/file/4922080.
Neither is Japan any different. Engineer Keith Harmon Snow writes:
“In a recent WikiLeaks diplomatic cable, politician Taro Kono, a high-profile member of Japan’s lower house, told U.S. diplomats that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (MITI) — the Japanese government department responsible for nuclear energy — has been ‘covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry.’ In 2002 ‘the chairman and four executives of TEPCO, the company that owns the stricken Fukushima plant, resigned after reports that safety records were falsified.’”
Corporate-run governments will not stop destroying the planet for profit. It is up to humanity to do all in its power to end the ongoing ecocide. Sometimes this means putting your life on the line, as Tabrez Sayekar did on Monday, just short of the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Freedom of Information Act Reveals Files Suggesting FDR’s Role in Pearl Harbor
Alexis Bonari | Activist Post | April 22, 2011
September 11th is hardly the first “day of infamy” to undergo public scrutiny and accusations of government conspiracy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the phrase on December 7th after the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The attack, according to author and WWII Navy veteran, Robert B. Stinnett, however, had been no surprise at all for Roosevelt.
It was only at the author’s insistent calls on the Freedom of Information Act that the U.S. Navy at last released formerly hidden evidence that led Stinnett to conclude: FDR knew and had the power to avert disaster on December 7th.
Interview with Stinnett
The government’s claims that Japan’s codes had yet to be broken in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor have been met with questions and skepticism since 1945’s September issue of Life magazine. Stinnett himself, in an interview featured on The Independent Institute’s website, says that he believed the article to be an anti-Roosevelt tract at the time. After reading At Dawn We Slept
The likes of Gore Vidal and John Toland, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of Infamy
Because the American public still ached from the appalling death toll of the First World War (and because FDR had already promised his people, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”), FDR focused most of his energy on coming up with a reason for the nation to change its mind. In November 1941, all US military commanders received the order: “The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.” That would explain why, according to Lynne Olson’s research published in Citizens of London, Churchill and Governor John G. Winant practically danced at the news in December that America would be joining the European campaign, forgetting that over 2,000 Americans were already dead.
Cracking the Code
According to Stinnett’s research, the US Navy had in fact cracked Japanese naval codes and even intercepted eighty-three messages from Admiral Yamamoto to his warships. A message from November 25 read:
…the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow.
Even Thomas Dewey, Roosevelt’s competitor in the 1944 presidential elections, had heard whispers of FDR’s role in arranging the massacre. Although Dewey planned speeches to charge FDR with foreknowledge of the attack, General George Marshall (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) convinced Dewey that he would risk American security in doing so, since Japan’s navy had yet to realize their codes had been cracked. Dewey kept his silence, and nearly everyone else has since, too—until Stinnett.
Day of Deceit has received much criticism (predictably) from conventional historians and readers as well as notable acclaim from revisionists. Still others disapprove of Stinnett’s ubiquitous tone that suggests throughout the book that FDR had no choice but to arrange for the deaths of over 2,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor. Stinnet most notably fails to mention FDR’s refusal to meet Prime Minister Konoye for peace talks in late 1941.
Stinnett seems to have broken ground, but it is still only the surface.
The People Who Brought You Fukushima
Same Old Tricks From the Nuclear Gang
By SAUL LANDAU and JACK WILLIS | April 22, 2011
For 60 years the nuclear industry has promised the world cheap, safe and clean energy. As the Japanese government continues to extend its nuclear evacuation zone and with the eerie glow of the Fukishima plant as background, the pushers of nuclear power – including the President – still demand subsidies for new plants of Congress. As another Chernobyl-size disaster looms, the energy-fixated “problem solvers” continue to suffer from both temporary blindness and long-term amnesia – ignoring or down-playing the history of nuclear “mishaps.” […]
From the 1950s on, for example, “thousands of workers were unwittingly exposed to plutonium and other highly radioactive metals at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Kentucky Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Workers … inhaled radioactive dust while processing the materials as part of a government experiment to recycle used nuclear reactor fuel.” (Washington Post, August 22, 1999)
In July 2000, wildfires near the Hanford facility hit highly radioactive waste disposal trenches, raising airborne plutonium radiation levels in nearby cities to 1,000 times above normal. (http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html)
Compare those “little accidents” (multiply by a thousand) with the Chernobyl and now Fukishima catastrophes or with those who got cancer from the Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania) “mishap.” http://www.albionmonitor.com/9703a/3milecancer.html
The government nuclear agencies have shied away from doing the long-term studies of the impacts of low-level radiation. Indeed, in the 1970s they de-funded a study under the guidance of University of Pittsburg scientist Dr. David Mancuso when it became apparent he would find that the “precautions” taken were insufficient, and that low-level radiation (at government levels) had deleterious affects on human health.
The government did no health follow-up after the numerous “little” leaks, fires and “mishaps” that occurred routinely at the Rocky Flats plutonium trigger and Hanford nuclear weapons installations. Oh, they did at least check the radiation badges of the employees.
In 1981, we made a Public Television documentary: “Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang.” In it, we documented how government officials obfuscated their failure to provide, as they promised, “cheap, safe and clean” energy and safe work environments in and around nuclear weapons facilities.
Jacobs had earlier reported on how the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its successor three-letter agencies lied about, distorted, and then classified (thereby withholding) reports on the health impact of low level radiation.
One example provided in the film was Sergeant James Gates, who described how the army positioned men near the blast and had them cover their eyes. Bates said: “the blast threw me 15 feet into the air. It made all of us sick.” In 1978, he had terminal cancer.
Jacobs interviewed “downwinders” – those living in cities directly in the path of nuclear fallout after the Nevada tests. They described how hot hailstones pelted them after the blasts. Jacobs interviewed a man on horseback who told of large tumors growing from his neck right after his exposure.
In the 1950s and again in the early 1970s, Paul Jacobs inspected the government’s claims and then wrote award-winning articles featuring interviews with St. George, Utah residents. In this city directly east of the test site, Jacobs found inordinate numbers of cancer cases and a nuclear-nervous public. (“Clouds from Nevada,” The Reporter, May 16, 1957; (“Precautions Are Being Taken By Those Who Know,” The Atlantic, Feb. 1971)
In the film, Jacobs described how he surreptitiously acquired a classified document from a Public Health office in Las Vegas that revealed the Atomic Energy Commission knew “low-level radiation” constituted serious health hazards. Later, he found de-classified internal memos indicating why the government classified the health report: to keep the public from having to choose between nuclear tests and getting cancer.
In 1977, Jacobs’ doctors and his friend Linus Pauling (a chemistry Nobel prize-winner) concluded that Paul (a non-smoker) developed lung cancer during his exposure to “low level radiation” around the Atomic Test Site.
After 74 years, the evidence would lead one to conclude that “cheap safe and clean” sounds more like a condom ad than a believable promise from the nuclear gang. The public should think of two words that have been uttered in nuclear plants when “mishaps” occur. “Oops” and “duh.” And remember, there’s at least one Homer Simpson.
Saul Landau and Jack Willis also worked together on WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP available through Cinema Libre Studio.
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The Obama-Gates Scam on Military Spending
By GARETH PORTER | CounterPunch | April 21, 2011
Last week Barack Obama announced that he wants to cut $400 billion in military spending and said he would work with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs on a “fundamental review” of U.S. “military missions, capabilities and our role in a changing world” before making a decision.
Spokesman Geoff Morrell responded by hinting that Gates was displeased with having to cut that much from his spending plan. Gates “has been clear that further significant defense cuts cannot be accomplished without future cuts in force structure and military capability,” said Morrell, who volunteered that the Secretary not been informed about the Obama decision until the day before.
But it is difficult to believe that open display of tension between Obama and Gates was not scripted. In the background of those moves is a larger political maneuver on which the two of them have been collaborating since last year in which they gave the Pentagon a huge increase in funding for the next decade and then started to take credit for small or nonexistent reductions from that increase.
The original Obama-Gates base military spending plan – spending excluding the costs of the current wars – for FY 2011 through 2020, called for spending $5.8 trillion, or $580 billion annually, as former Pentagon official Lawrence Korb noted last January. That would have represented a 25 per cent real increase over the average annual level of military spending, excluding war costs, by the George W. Bush administration.
Even more dramatic, the Obama-Gates plan was 45 per cent higher than the annual average of military spending level in the 1992-2001 decade, as reflected in official DOD data.
The Obama FY 2012 budget submission reduced the total increase only slightly – by $162 billion over the four years from 2017 to 2020, according to the careful research of the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA). That left an annual average base military spending level of $564 billion – 23 per cent higher than Bush’s annual average and 40 percent above the level of the 1990s.
Central to last week’s chapter in the larger game was Obama’s assertion that Gates had already saved $400 billion in his administration. “Over the last two years,” he said, “Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.”
The $400 billion figure is based primarily on the $330 billion Gates claimed he had saved by stopping, reducing or otherwise changing plans for 31 weapons programs. But contrary to the impression left by Obama, that figure does not reflect any cut in projected DOD spending. All of it was used to increase spending on operations and investment in the military budget.
The figure was concocted, moreover, by using tricky accounting methods verging on chicanery. It was based on arbitrary assumptions about how much all 31 programs would have cost over their entire lifetimes stretching decades into the future, assuming they would all reach completion. That methodology offered endless possibilities for inflated claims of savings.
The PDA points out that yet another $100 billion that Gates announced in January as cost-cutting by the military services was also used to increase spending on operations and new weapons program that the services wanted. That leaves another $78 billion in cuts over five years also announced by Gates in January, but most of that may have been added to the military budget for “overseas contingency operations” rather than contributed to deficit reduction, according to the PDA.
Even if the $400 billion in ostensible cuts that Obama is seeking were genuine, the Pentagon would be still be sitting on total projected increase of 14 per cent above the level of military spending of the Bush administration. Last week’s White House fact sheet on deficit reduction acknowledged that Obama has the “goal of holding the growth in base security spending below inflation.”
The “fundamental review” that Obama says will be carried out with the Pentagon and military bureaucracies will be yet another chapter in this larger maneuver. It’s safe bet that, in the end, Gates will reach into his bag of accounting tricks again for most of the desired total.
Despite the inherently deceptive character of Obama’s call for the review, it has a positive side: it gives critics of the national security state an opportunity to point out that such a review should be carried out by a panel of independent military budget analysts who have no financial stake in the outcome – unlike the officials of the national security state.
Such an independent panel could come up with a list of all the military missions and capabilities that don’t make the American people more secure or even make them less secure, as well as those for which funding should be reduced substantially because of technological and other changes. It could also estimate how much overall projected military spending should be reduced, without regard to what would be acceptable to the Pentagon or a majority in Congress.
The panel would not require White House or Congressional approval. It could be convened by a private organization or, better yet, by a group of concerned Members of Congress. They could use its data and conclusions as the basis for creating a legislative alternative to existing U.S. national security policy, perhaps in the form of a joint resolution. That would give millions of Americans who now feel that nothing can be done about endless U.S. wars and the national security state’s grip on budgetary resources something to rally behind.
Three convergent political forces are contributing to the eventual weakening of the national security state: the growing popular opposition to failed wars, public support for shifting spending priorities from the national security sector to the domestic economy and pressure for deficit and debt reduction. But in the absence of concerted citizen action, it could take several years to see decisive results. Seizing the opportunity for an independent review of military missions and spending would certainly speed up that process.
~
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.
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How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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