“Just A Human Being”: Rachel Maddow’s Latest Resistance Hero
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | May 6, 2019
This is where three years of failed Russiagate conspiracy theorizing and fixation leads you — into the arms of fanatical endless war proponent John Bolton: “John Bolton God bless you, good luck..” one can now hear on “resistance” network MSNBC prime time.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is now championing neocon national security adviser John Bolton’s “humanity” given he apparently went loose cannon this past week, vowing to confront Russia over Venezuela even as his boss President Trump downplayed Moscow’s role in the crisis after a Friday phone call with Putin.
“This is what John Bolton, human being, thought his job was this week,” Maddow said on her show Friday night. Both Pompeo and Bolton had clearly gone a bit rogue with their overly bellicose Venezuela comments, while Trump appeared to be more restrained — and for Maddow this was of course cause for championing the neocon interventionist line: “Hey, John Bolton, hey, Mike Pompeo, are you guys enjoying your jobs right now?” she questioned.
On Friday Trump had said following the phone call, Putin is “not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he’d like to see something positive happen in Venezuela, and I feel the same way.”
Maddow, who once prided herself on slamming and deconstructing Bush-era regime change wars, now finds Trump not jingoistic enough. She stridently questioned:
“How do you come to work anymore if you’re John Bolton? Right, regardless of what you thought about John Bolton before this, his whole career and his track record, I mean, just think of John Bolton as a human being. This is what John Bolton, human being, thought his job was this week.”
She further cut to a clip of Bolton criticizing Russia’s alleged military involvement in Venezuela to prop up Maduro, because apparently uber-hawk Bolton is now a “fearless truth-teller” in Maddow’s world.
“You thought that was your job,” Maddow said. “But it turns out not at all, not after Vladimir Putin gets done with President Trump today.”
It bears repeating that among the loudest right-leaning voices who joined the chorus of leading establishment Democrat Russiagaters included previously forgotten about neocons who were quickly rehabilitated by the “Resistance” — David Frum, Max Boot, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol among them.
And then there was the nauseating phenomenon of watching liberals lionizing Trump-skeptical Republican Congressional leaders like Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, and the late Sen. McCain.
Because it’s awful, just awful! – that Trump might actually prefer peace to waging war in multiple places…
Restraint vs. war in multiple places? Maddow apparently advances the humanity of those advocating the latter.
It amounted to, at times, a picture of a President at odds with the officials who this week have called vociferously for a change in power in Caracas and have consistently declined to rule out a US military intervention.
Trump has become frustrated this week as national security adviser John Bolton and others openly teased military options and has told friends that if Bolton had his way he’d already be at war in multiple places. — CNN
And now, months into 2019, we get to hear Maddow waxing eloquent about the innocent “human side” of none other than John Bolton.
Of course, Maddow should first consider whether Bolton or his neocon ilk ever once paused to consider whether those they advocate dropping bombs on — from Iraq to Syria to Libya to Yemen to Gaza to Venezuela — are themselves actually human beings who simply wish to live out their daily lives in peace.
A Nuclear War? Over Venezuela?
By Ron Paul | May 6, 2019
Is President Trump about to invade Venezuela? His advisors keep telling us in ever-stronger terms that “all options are on the table” and that US military intervention to restore Venezuela’s constitution “may be necessary.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the Sunday news programs to claim that President Trump could launch a military attack against Venezuela without Congress’s approval.
Pompeo said that, “[t]he president has his full range of Article II authorities and I’m very confident that any action we took in Venezuela would be lawful.” The man who bragged recently about his lying, cheating, and stealing, is giving plenty of evidence to back his claim.
The president has no Constitutional authority to start a war with Venezuela or any other country that has not attacked or credibly threatened the United States without Congressional approval. It is that simple.
How ironic that Pompeo and the rest of the neocons in the Trump Administration are ready to attack Venezuela to “restore their constitution” but they could not care less about our own Constitution!
While Washington has been paralyzed for two years over disproven claims that the Russians meddled in our elections to elect Trump, how hypocritical that Washington does not even hesitate to endorse the actual overturning of elections overseas!
Without Congressional authority, US military action of any kind against Venezuela would be an illegal and likely an impeachable offense. Of course those Democrats who talk endlessly of impeaching Trump would never dream of impeaching of him over starting an illegal war. Democrats and Republicans both love illegal US wars.
Unfortunately, Washington is so addicted to war that President Trump would likely have little difficulty getting authority from Congress to invade Venezuela if he bothered to ask. Just as with the disastrous US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the mainstream media is nothing but non-stop war propaganda. Even so-called progressives like Rachel Maddow are attacking the Trump Administration not for its reckless saber-rattling toward Venezuela but for not being aggressive enough!
The real lesson is that even a “Constitutional” war against Venezuela would not be a just war. It would be a war of aggression for which Americans should be angry and ashamed. But the mainstream media is pumping out the same old pro-war lies, while the independent media is under attack from social media companies that have partnered with US government entities to decide what is “fake news.”
The latest outrage in the mainstream media is over the most sensible thing President Trump has done in some time: last week he spent an hour on the telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss, among other things, the dangerous situation in Venezuela.
While President Trump’s neocon advisors are purposely trying to position him so that war is the only option, we can only hope that President Putin was able to explain that the Venezuela problem must be solved by the Venezuelans themselves. Certainly the US, perhaps together with the Russians, could help facilitate discussions between the government and the opposition, but the neocon road to war will surely end up like all the other neocon wars: total disaster.
The media is furious that Trump dared to speak to Putin as the two countries increasingly face-off over Venezuela. The Democrats and neocons are pushing for a direct confrontation that may even involve Russia. Republicans agree. Do they really prefer thermonuclear war? Over Venezuela?
Will China engage in arms control?
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | May 5, 2019
US President Donald Trump’s phone call to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Friday comes within 3 weeks of the release of the redacted report of the Robert Mueller inquiry into his ‘Russia collusion’. It was a 90-minute phone conversation, which underscored Trump’s determination to foster good relations with Putin notwithstanding the narrative that he and the people around him were engaged in improper activities with Russia.
The Kremlin readout listed economic ties, ’strategic stability’, North Korea, Ukraine and Venezuela as topics that figured in the conversation.
But the headline-hogging news is that Trump proposed to Putin the idea of expanded arms control talks that would also include China. Trump claimed that China is on board. Talking to the media at the White House, he said:
“We’re talking about a nuclear agreement where we make less and they make less, and maybe even where we get rid of some of the tremendous firepower that we have right now. We’re spending billions of dollars on nuclear weapons, numbers like we’ve never spent before. We need that, but they are also — and China is, frankly, also — we discussed the possibility of a three-way deal instead of a two-way deal. And China — I’ve already spoken to them; they very much would like to be a part of that deal. In fact, during the trade talks, we started talking about that. They were excited about that. Maybe even more excited than about trade. But they felt very strongly about it.”
“So I think we’re going to probably start up something very shortly between Russia and ourselves, maybe to start off. And I think China will be added down the road. We’ll be talking about nonproliferation. We’ll be talking about a nuclear deal of some kind. And I think it will be a very comprehensive one.”
Trump sees a potential signature foreign policy achievement. Trump is known to have a penchant for big deals. The Washington Post reported last week that Trump “has ordered his administration to prepare a push for new arms-control agreements with Russia and China after bristling at the cost of a 21st-century nuclear arms race.” The reports from Washington indicate that the White House is conducting intense interagency talks to develop options for the president to pursue such a deal.
The CNN quoted a senior White House official as saying, “The President has made clear that he thinks that arms control should include Russia and China and should include all the weapons, all the warheads, all the missiles. We have an ambition to give the President options as quickly as possible to give him as much space on the calendar as possible.”
Trump is giving conflicting signals. Even as he talks about arms control, Trump has backed the $500 billion Obama-era project to modernize the US atomic arsenal, pulled out of the INF Treaty with Russia, and updated the US nuclear posture to be more aggressive. But then, earlier last month, in a meeting with Chinese trade envoy and vice premier Liu He, Trump bemoaned the levels of military spending by major powers, suggesting all that money could be better spent on other things.
Clearly, in any emergent scenario, the broader context of relations will be the key factor. Bringing China on board arms control talks is a common Russian-American agenda. To understand this, we need to go back in time to the negotiation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
Fundamentally, China’s approach to arms control has been different from the US or Russia’s. Washington and Moscow have been historically driven by the strategic imperative of parity that generated in turn the Cold-War era arms race and its ‘anti-thesis’ — arms control and reductions. And the concept of mutual nuclear deterrence and stability was shared and interdependent.
China, on the contrary, never sought parity and had no reason to enter into an arms race or to engage in arms control. Today, China reportedly has an arsenal of less than 300 strategy warheads (as against 1550 that the New START Treaty of 2010 allows the US and Russia to keep.) Simply put, China stayed on the sidelines, maintaining that the US and Russia need to reduce their arsenals first before its participation in limitations and reductions.
When the INF Treaty was negotiated in the 1980s, although its leitmotif was European security, the pact also had implications for East Asian security. China was on adversarial terms with Russia at that time and joined hands with the western powers to ensure two things: a) Britain and France were kept out of the INF Treaty (lest that set precedent for China’s inclusion), and, b) INF Treaty also included Soviet deployments east of the Urals.
China scored a big diplomatic coup when the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made the unilateral announcement in July 1987 agreeing to the so-called global ‘zero option’ by the Soviet Union (ie., elimination of Soviet INF missiles in both Europe and Asia.) In essence, China ensured the complete elimination of Soviet missile threat to its nuclear arsenal.
Moscow never quite reconciled with Gorbachev’s compromise. Meanwhile, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union imploded. Yet, by the beginning of 2005, Moscow began to voice unease that INF Treaty banned only the US and Russia from having INF missiles, while other countries were free to deploy them. In 2007, then Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov called the INF Treaty a relic of the Cold War, and President Putin thereafter proposed in October 2007 that the INF Treaty become multilateral—a global ban on INF missiles.
Now, the political-military relationship between Russia and China is vastly different today. China’s nuclear capability has dramatically improved, especially with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. On the other hand, US’ relations with both Russia and China have become tense while Sino-Russian partnership is at its highest level today in history. Equally, Russia and China have common shared threat perceptions regarding the US.
Since there are consultative mechanisms between Moscow and Beijing to mitigate substantive concerns regarding deployment or force projection, China is today more concerned with US missiles (and missile defence systems.) Nonetheless, China has to come to terms with the reality that any significant increase in its nuclear warhead numbers henceforth also concerns the security interests of Russia. It is entirely conceivable that Moscow will also strive to maintain its qualitative and quantitative nuclear predominance over China.
To be sure, China’s rapidly growing missile forces have long troubled the US. China now has the second largest defense budget behind the US – and China’s fire power is largely concentrated in one critical region, East Asia. The trends are worrisome for Washington, too. If in 2000 US defence expenditure was nine times that of China, by 2010, this was down to less than six times, and in 2017 to less than three times.
Russian officials have repeatedly stated that any future reductions of strategic weapons would have to be multilateral, including the UK, France, and China. Chinese officials have stated that the US and Russia would have to make much deeper cuts before China is prepared to join the process. However, we still don’t know the US position apropos extension of New START Treaty beyond 2021 and in further nuclear reductions.
‘Anything is possible’: Trump talks North Korea peace after phone call with Putin
RT | May 4, 2019
President Trump took to Twitter to declare his support for peace on the Korean Peninsula, after discussing the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin. North Korea, meanwhile, test-fired short-range missiles.
“Anything in this very interesting world is possible,” Trump tweeted on Saturday. “But I believe that Kim Jong Un fully realizes the great economic potential of North Korea, & will do nothing to interfere or end it. He also knows that I am with him & does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!”
Trump’s tweet came after he spoke with Putin by phone on Friday. The two leaders discussed a range of geopolitical issues, including nuclear arms control and the Korean peace process.
The president touted the success of the call on Saturday, heralding the “tremendous potential for a good/great relationship with Russia, despite what you read and see in the Fake News Media.” After the phone call, certain media outlets chided Trump for not pressing Putin on supposed Russian election meddling.
Despite Trump’s insistence that a “deal will happen” with North Korea, results thus far have been lacking. A much-anticipated summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore last year ended with a vague promise from Kim to work towards denuclearization, while a follow-up summit in Hanoi, Vietnam this year collapsed with no agreement when Trump found Kim’s demands untenable.
Kim has since broadened his horizons, meeting with Putin in Vladivostok last month. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is also reportedly considering a meeting with Kim, according to a Friday report in the Shankei newspaper.
Diplomacy aside, Pyongyang has reportedly reversed its dismantling of missile and rocket test sites in the wake of the failed Hanoi summit, and on Saturday morning fired a salvo of short-range projectiles out to sea from the city of Wonsan, on its east coast.
The DNC Debates, the Media and Tulsi Gabbard
By Renee Parsons | CounterPunch | May 3, 2019
As some of the last minute Democratic presidential candidates scramble to qualify for the DNC’s upcoming June 26/27 primary debate, the latest poll results become more than nominally important given their elevated role in whether a candidate meets the requirements to participate.
In order to qualify, each announced candidate needs to have received either $65,000 from 200 donors in 20 states or to garner more than 1% support in any three of the DNC’s ‘favored’ polls – which includes those 2016 polls with either a flawed methodology or their thumb on the scale which missed the final election results in a big way, all of which proves that wishing does not make it so.
There is every reason to believe that the favored polls will provide the necessary % of support in order for all 21 candidates to qualify. Given any poll’s margin-of-error in statistical sampling, it would seem that measuring public support via a % is an arbitrary criteria that does not represent a true accurate basis with high precision results. Even if a candidate does not qualify for the June debates, they can still qualify for the July event. A house divided and all that…
The basic structure of the debates as announced by DNC Chair Tom Perez represents a presidential primary process that is “transparent, fair, inclusive” with ‘historic reforms’ and ‘increased trust’ which you may recall, the DNC process in 2016 did nothing to generate increased trust. While Democratic officials have been meeting for months with media partners, there is yet no announcement who the moderator or participating panelists will be or how the questions are being formulated. The June round of debates will be broadcast on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo with the July debates on CNN.
According to the DNC, the max number of candidates participating will be a total of twenty even if all 21 announced candidates qualify as it threatens to eliminate candidates who had already made the cut – so much for “transparent, fair and inclusive.” Ten will appear on June 26 with the next ten on June 27th and selection will be determined by drawing lots. Conceivably, the Main Show of Bernie and Biden may occur on June 26thor they may be split, appearing on two different nights. In any case, it may be difficult for the public to determine a clear ‘winner’ by virtue of candidate separation from the total field.
Leaving First Amendment concerns aside, Perez cited a New Yorker expose “Fox News has always been partisan. But has it become propaganda?” by Jane Mayer reporting on an ‘inappropriate’ relationship between the Trump Administration and Fox News. Perez, therefore, determined that Fox was “not in a position to host a fair and neutral debate” and would not be a participating media partner. True to form, President Trump responded that he would not participate in general election debates with the Democrat favorite MSM outlets.
It is more than ironic when MSM outlets, like the New Yorker reveal their own unprofessional bias without applying the same propaganda standard to itself or to its MSM colleagues for its inappropriate camaraderie with the high level Obama Administration officials or current Democratic Presidential candidates.
As the MSM continues to pat itself on the back and win awards it did not deserve after perpetuating a deep constitutional crisis which has torn the country apart,the NYT and WaPo received $15,000 for its 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for its flawed, erroneous reportage on Russiagate as CNN won $2500 for the 2018 White House Correspondents Merriman Smith Award which was based on leaks from former Obama officials John Brennan and James Clapper rather than the old-fashioned method of investigative reporting. Presumably, all recipients kept the prize money.
On the part of the DNC, the obvious idea is to winnow the field in such a way that it does not appear obvious if any one candidate is being deliberately shoved aside without an equal opportunity. LOL with that. Examination of a less than inspiring slate of candidates leaves considerable space for true excellence to surface. It is ironic that the party so enthralled with diversity and identity politics actually represents a gross lack of diversity in terms of public policy options.
With the new CNN poll showing Joe Biden representing the fossil wing of the Democratic party with a 39% favorable rating as Bernie drops to 15%, it is eerily reminiscent of overstated polls for HRC in 2016. Thanks to CNN, additional White House contenders have qualified for the debate via the % option including former Colorado Gov John Hickenlooper who might take the opportunity to inform the public why he attended the Bilderberg meeting in 2018.
Given her almost totally hostile reception by every MSM outlet who deigned to interview her, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has experienced, as an opponent of regime change wars, more bad manners and outright personal antagonism than any other candidate. While Gabbard easily qualified for the debates via the $65,000 requirement and continues to attract SRO audiences in NH, Iowa, California and elsewhere, yet until the newest CNN poll, she failed to register any % of public support. Something here does not compute given the ‘favored’ polls past history of favoritism. If the Dems continue to put a brick wall around her, Jill Stein has already opened the Green Party door as a more welcoming venue for a Tulsi candidacy. The Dems, who tend to be unprincipled and vindictive, better be careful what they wish for.
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31
Russian and US Positions on Venezuelan Crisis are Incompatible – Lavrov
Sputnik – 02.05.2019
On Wednesday, the Russian foreign minister spoke to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, telling the top US diplomat that Washington’s interference in Venezuela’s affairs was a destructive approach fraught with “the most serious consequences.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged the United States to refrain from returning to the imperious ‘Monroe Doctrine’ in its relations with Venezuela, and indicated that while the Russian and US positions on the crisis in the Latin American country remain incompatible, dialogue must continue.
“We agreed to maintain contacts, including on Venezuela, but I don’t see a way to reconcile our positions — ours, on the one hand, which is based on the UN Charter and the principles and norms of international law, and that of the United States, on the other, in which Washington assigns the acting president of another country,” Lavrov said, speaking to reporters in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on Thursday.
“Our positions are incompatible, but we are ready to talk,” Lavrov stressed.
According to the foreign minister, during their conversation Wednesday, he told Pompeo that the return of the Monroe Doctrine approach to US foreign policy was a sign of disrespect to the people of Venezuela and Latin America as a whole.
Commenting on the possibility of a US military intervention of Venezuela, Lavrov said that Russia plans to create a bloc of countries to counter such plans. This group is already being formed at the UN, he indicated. “I hope that it will receive serious support from the organisation, because we’re talking about a very simple issue — one that’s hard to distort: the defence of the fundamental norms and principles of international law as they are defined in the UN Charter.”
Maduro Never Had Plans to ‘Flee’ Venezuela
Lavrov noted that earlier claims by Secretary of State Pompeo about Maduro’s supposed plans to escape the country and Russia’s efforts to dissuade him from doing so were simply not true. “If one were to review everything that officials in the US administration say about Venezuela, an endless series of questions would arise. And all of these questions, as a rule, have one and the same answer. Putting it diplomatically: this is not true,” Lavrov said.
Asked why Secretary of State Pompeo may have called him in the first place, Lavrov said that as he understood it, “he called so that he could later say publicly that he called me and urged Russia not to interfere. Well, he did so.” At the same time, Lavrov indicated that Russia does not interfere in Venezuela’s internal affairs, calling Pompeo’s allegations to that effect “rather surreal.”
“I told him that based on our principled position, we never interfere in the affairs of others, and urge others to do the same,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov and Pompeo spoke by telephone by Wednesday, a day after Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido announced the beginning of the “final phase” in the opposition’s bid to seize power in the Latin American country. Before the talks, Pompeo told US media that the US could still use military force against the country “if that’s what’s required.”
Guaido proclaimed himself Venezuela’s interim president on January 23, two weeks after Maduro’s inauguration for a second term following elections in May 2018. The opposition leader was immediately recognised by the US and its Latin American and European allies, as well as Canada, while Russia, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and other countries around the world voiced their support for the elected government, or urged non-interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs.
Major hike in US missile spending indicative of approaching ‘new Cold war’: Study
Press TV – May 2, 2019
America has been dramatically increasing its missile development spending after deciding to leave a Soviet-era arms control treaty with Russia, a new study shows, warning that the extravagant approach could be the tell-tale sign of a looming “new Cold War.”
In the three months following President Donald Trump’s announcement in October last year that he would leave the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement, Washington has signed more than $1 billion in new missile contracts, according to the study by campaign group PAX and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
“The withdrawal from the INF Treaty has fired the starting pistol on a new Cold War,” Beatrice Fihn, who heads the Nobel Peace Prize-winning ICAN, warned in a statement on Thursday.
Upon announcing his plans to abandon the INF, Trump accused Russia of violating the treaty through a new missile system and began the official process of withdrawing from the pact in February.
Russia has denied the US charges. It even rolled out the missile in question last year and exposed many of its sensitive details to reporters in order to ensure the international community that the INF was not breached.
Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to Trump’s move by saying that Moscow would also leave the 1987 accord, which is considered the cornerstone of global arms control by preventing the deployment of nuclear-tipped ground-launched ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 kilometers (330 miles) to 5,500 kilometers.
The report by PAX and ICAN detailed over $1.1 billion in new contracts signed with six mainly US companies between October 22, 2018 and January 21, 2019.
Raytheon took the biggest share of the money, scoring 44 new contracts worth some $537 million.
Lockheed Martin meanwhile received 36 new contracts worth $268 million and Boeing scooped up only four new contracts worth $245 million.
Fihn said in a statement that the massive contracts were worthy of congressional investigations because of suspected corporate collusion.
“Congress should investigate the lobbying roles of Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon who took the lion’s share of these contracts,” she asserted.
The report authors said they could not verify whether all of the new contracts were for developing new nuclear weapons.
“What is clear is that there is a new rush towards building more missiles that benefit a handful of US companies and intend to flood the market with missiles regardless of their range,” they noted.
Washington confirmed in March that it was preparing to test two new two ground-launched missiles that it has been developing for more than 30 years in August.
The projects include a low-flying cruise missile with a range of about 1,000 kilometers and a ballistic missile with a range of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers, military officials who could not reveal their name under the Pentagon’s security rules told the media.
American officials insist that none of the new missiles will be capable of delivering nuclear payloads but that is not the real threat of such weapons.
‘New nuclear race has begun’
Susi Snyder, PAX nuclear disarmament program manager and the lead author of the report, accused Washington and its nuclear-armed allies of hypocrisy by calling for the denuclearization of other countries while expanding their own arsenals.
“President Trump is heralding the need for global denuclearization, but US deeds, and those of nuclear-armed allies do not match those words,” She said.
“We see the US and other states planning for a nuclear-armed century, with contracts to maintain weapons through at least 2075, despite growing domestic and global calls to reverse course,” she added.
“The research confirms that there is a new nuclear arms race happening,” Snyder told Quartz.
US tests strategic ICBM
The study came shortly after the US Air Force test-launched an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The Air Force Global Strike Command said the missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base northwest of Los Angeles on early Wednesday and its re-entry vehicle hit its designated target in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands afte traveling approximately 4,200 miles (6,759 kilometers) over the Pacific.
The missile, manufactured by Boeing, is the only land-based ICBM in service in America and its development began in mid-1950s with the specific intent of attacking hardened military targets, specifically those in the former Soviet Union.
The latest version, Minuteman III, with an operational range of 13,000 km entered service in 1970.
Each unit can carry up to three nuclear warheads and is estimated to cost $7 million.
Breaking the Grip of Militarism: The Story of Vieques
By Lawrence Wittner | CounterPunch | May 2, 2019
Vieques is a small Puerto Rican island with some 9,000 inhabitants. Fringed by palm trees and lovely beaches, it attracts substantial numbers of tourists. But, for about six decades, Vieques served as a bombing range, military training site, and storage depot for the U.S. Navy, until its outraged residents, driven to distraction, rescued their homeland from the grip of militarism.
Like the main island of Puerto Rico, Vieques—located eight miles to the east―was ruled for centuries by Spain, until the Spanish-American War of 1898 turned Puerto Rico into an informal colony (a “nonsovereign territory”) of the United States. In 1917, Puerto Ricans (including the Viequenses) became U.S. citizens, although they continue to lack the right to representation in the U.S. Congress and to vote for the U.S. president.
During World War II, the U.S. government, anxious about the security of the Caribbean region and the Panama Canal, expropriated large portions of land in eastern Puerto Rico and on Vieques to build a mammoth U.S. naval base. As a result, thousands of Viequenses were evicted from their homes and deposited in razed sugar cane fields that the navy declared “resettlement tracts.”
The U.S. Navy takeover of Vieques accelerated in 1947, when it designated the base as a naval training installation and storage depot and began utilizing the island for firing practice and amphibious landings by tens of thousands of troops. Expanding its expropriation to three-quarters of Vieques, the navy used the western section for its ammunition storage and the eastern section for its bombing and war games, while sandwiching the native population into the small strip of land separating them.
Over the ensuing decades, the navy bombed Vieques from the air, land, and sea and conducted military training exercises averaging 180 days per year. It also used the island for tests of biological weapons.
Naturally, for the Viequenses, this military domination created a nightmarish existence. “When the wind came from the east, it brought smoke and piles of dust from their bombing ranges,” one resident recalled. “They’d bomb every day, from 5 am until 6 pm. It felt like a war zone. You’d hear . . . eight or nine bombs, and your house would shudder. Everything on your walls . . . would fall on the floor and break,” and “your cement house would start cracking.” In addition, with the release of toxic chemicals into the soil, water, and air, the population began to suffer from dramatically higher rates of illnesses.
Eventually, the U.S. Navy determined the fate of the entire island, including the nautical routes, flight paths, aquifers, and zoning laws in the remaining civilian territory, where the residents lived under constant threat of eviction. In 1961, the navy actually drafted a secret plan to remove the entire civilian population from Vieques, with even the dead slated to be dug up from their graves. But U.S. President John F. Kennedy blocked the plan from implementation.
Long-simmering tensions between the Viequenses and the navy boiled over from 1978 to 1983. In the midst of heightened U.S. naval bombing and stepped up military maneuvers, a vigorous local resistance movement emerged, led by the island’s fishermen. Activists engaged in picketing, demonstrations, and civil disobedience―most dramatically, by placing themselves directly in the line of missile fire, thereby disrupting military exercises.
But this first wave of popular protest, involving thousands of Viequenses and their supporters throughout Puerto Rico and the United States, failed to dislodge the navy from the island. In the midst of the Cold War, the U.S. military clung tenaciously to its operations on Vieques. Also, the prominence in the resistance campaign of Puerto Rican nationalists limited the movement’s appeal.
In the 1990s, however, a more broadly-based resistance movement took shape. Begun in 1993 by the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, it accelerated in opposition to navy plans for the installation of an intrusive radar system and took off after April 19, 1999, when a U.S. navy pilot accidentally dropped two 500-pound bombs on an allegedly safe area, killing a civilian.
Rallying behind the demand of Peace for Vieques, this massive social upheaval drew heavily upon the Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as upon the labor movement, celebrities, women, and university students. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans participated, with some 1,500 arrested for occupying the bombing range or for other acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. When religious leaders called for a March for Peace in Vieques, some 150,000 protesters flooded the streets of San Juan in what was reportedly the largest demonstration in Puerto Rico’s history.
Facing this firestorm of protest, the U.S. government finally capitulated. In 2003, the U.S. Navy not only halted the bombing, but shut down its naval base and withdrew from Vieques.
Despite this enormous victory for a people’s movement, Vieques continues to face severe challenges today. These include unexploded ordnance and massive pollution from heavy metals and toxic chemicals that were released through the dropping of an estimated trillion tons of munitions on the tiny island. As a result, Vieques is now a major Superfund Site, with cancer and other disease rates substantially higher than in the rest of Puerto Rico. Also, with its traditional economy destroyed, the island suffers from widespread poverty.
Nevertheless, the islanders, no longer hindered by military overlords, are grappling with these issues through imaginative reconstruction and development projects, including ecotourism. Robert Rabin, who served three jail terms for his protest activities, now directs the Count Mirasol Fort―a facility that once served as a prison for unruly slaves and striking sugar cane workers, but now provides rooms for the Vieques Museum, community meetings and celebrations, and Radio Vieques.
Of course, the successful struggle to liberate the island from the burdens of militarism also provides a source of hope for people around the world. This includes the people in the rest of the United States, who continue to pay a heavy economic and human price for their government’s extensive war preparations and wars.
Dr. Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press.)
Pompeo Lies, Cheats and Steals (But He’s Still a Good Christian)
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 2, 2019
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently recounted to an audience at Texas A&M University that when he was head of the Central Intelligence Agency he was responsible for “lying, cheating and stealing” to benefit the United States. “Like we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”
The Secretary made the comment with a grin, noting that when he was a cadet at West Point he subscribed to the Academy honor code, which stated that “You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do.” The largely student audience clearly appreciated and irony and laughed and applauded, though it is not clear what they made of the “glory of the American experiment.” The normally humorless Pompeo was suggesting ironically that yesterday’s Pompeo would be required to turn today’s Pompeo in to the appropriate authorities for lying and also conniving at high crimes and misdemeanors while at the Agency.
Certainly, some might find Pompeo’s admission a bit lame though perhaps understandable as he arrived at CIA without any experience in intelligence. Someone should have whispered in his ear, “That is what spy agencies do Mike.” And if he found the moral ambiguities vexing, he should have turned down the job. Equally lame has been the international media coverage of the comments (it was not reported in any major national news outlet in the US) which reflected both shock and vindication at finding a top-level official who would admit that Washington does all that sort of nasty stuff.
And Pompeo is not alone in his doing what would have hitherto been unthinkable as many senior figures in the Trump Administration who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution now find themselves conniving at starting various wars without the constitutionally required declaration of war from Congress. Pompeo has personally assured both the Venezuelans and Iranians that “all options are on the table,” while also arming the Ukrainians and warning the Russians to get out of Caracas or else face the consequences. And it is a good thing that he has now learned how to lie as he does so when he keeps insisting that the Iranians are the leading state sponsors of terrorism or that the Saudis are fighting a just war in Yemen.
And then there is the ethical dimension. The United States government is already involved in economic acts of war through use of its sanctions worldwide. It is currently dedicated to starving the Iranian and Venezuelan people to force them to change their governments. This week, a global boycott of Iranian oil sales to be enforced unilaterally by Washington kicks in with the objective, per Pompeo, of reducing “Iran’s oil exports to zero” to deny its government its “principal source of revenue.” The problem with the Pompeo objective is that attacking a foreign government normally rallies the people around their leadership. Also, denying a country income ultimately hurts ordinary people much more than it does those who make the decisions. One recalls the famous Madeleine Albright line about killing 500,000 Iraqi children through malnutrition and disease brought about by sanctions as “being worth it.”
Pompeo believes himself to be a good Christian. Indeed, a very good Christian in that he believes that the second coming of Jesus Christ is imminent and by virtue of his good deeds he will be saved and “raptured” directly to heaven. He, like Vice President Mike Pence, is referred to as a Dispensationalist, and he also believes that those who are not “born again” and accept Jesus will be doomed to hell. Most Dispensationalists think that the second coming will be preceded by a world war centered in the Middle East referred to as Armageddon, which will pit good against evil. How that shapes Pompeo’s thinking vis-à-vis encouraging a major armed conflict with Iran is certainly something that war-weary Americans should be considering.
One of the really interesting things about fanatics like Pompeo and his dos amigos Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Advisor John Bolton is how they are unable to figure out what comes next after the “lying, cheating, stealing” and shooting are over. After American air and naval power destroy Iran, what comes next? If Iraq and Afghanistan are anything to go by, “next” will be kind of figured out as one goes along. And as for an end game, fuggedaboutit.
Now let us suppose that with the crushing of the Mullahs all the requirements for Armageddon will be met and Jesus Christ makes his second appearance, what happens after that when the world as we know it ends? Presumably the rapture itself is painless but when Pompeo and Pence arrive at heaven what will they do all day? Play cards? There will be no television one presumes and no Muslims or Latinos to kick around as they will all be in hell. Drinking and smoking are probably not allowed and acquiring a girlfriend will likely be discouraged. One suspects that engaging in philosophical symposia to pass one’s time is not particularly favored by either gentleman.
Perhaps Pompeo and Pence look forward to something like the Mormon model, where they and their extended families going back genetically to the Pleistocene period will have their own planets where they can sit around and hobnob all day long. God, who, according to the Mormons, also has his own planet called Kolob, might just pop by for a visit every once in a while.
The point of all this is that we Americans are in the hands of a group of people who are adept at self- deception and who are also quite capable of doing some very dangerous things in light of their religious and personal views. It is one thing to have a strong foreign policy defending actual American interests but it is quite another to have a propensity to go to war to satisfy a personal predilection about how one goes about enabling a biblical prophecy. Equally, having a moral compass that is flexible depending who is on the receiving end is like having no real morals at all.
We have reached a point here in the United States where bad decisions and behavior best described as evil are masked by a certain kind of expressed piety and visions of national greatness. It is time to get rid of the Pompeos and Pences to end the charade and restore genuine morality unencumbered by the book of Revelations together with a national dignity that is not linked to threats or projection of military power.
‘Too much money invested in war’: US defense industry drives global military spending spree
RT | April 30, 2019
Global military expenditures reached their peak in 2018, and the driving force behind this increase is the growing appetite of the US military-industrial complex rather than real threats, analysts say.
The world spent $1.8 trillion on its military in 2018, the latest report by the acclaimed Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The US and its NATO allies – the self-proclaimed defenders of freedom and democracy – account for more than half of this whopping amount.
Washington’s other close friend Saudi Arabia is the third largest military spender, coming ahead of India.
“A lot of this spending, particularly in the case of Saudi Arabia and India, is for political reasons,” Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst at the Pentagon, told RT. New Delhi and Riyadh seek to “curry favor” with Washington by purchasing the US weapons in hope for concessions in other areas, he explained.
Washington’s NATO allies have seen pressure from the US related to their military spending ever since Donald Trump came to power in the White House. Maloof believes it has less to do with security of the alliance and more with the interests of the US arms manufacturers.
“A lot of that is aimed at trying to help the US defense industry to stay ahead [of their competitors] and hire more people,” he explained, adding that the issue of the military expenditures has a “clear economic dimension.”
In its desire to sate the always-hungry domestic military industrial complex, the US risks escalating tensions on the international arena, analysts warn. Washington’s hawks typically justify the need for ever-increasing military expenditures with some perceived threats from Russia or China, portraying them as war mongers.
“There is no good reason” for larger defense budgets, Ted Seay, a former US diplomat and senior policy consultant with the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), told RT. It is the West’s fear of the perceived ‘Russian threat’ that has in fact led to destabilization on the European continent, he noted.
“There are military provocations taking place between NATO and Russia where there should not be any far in the 21th century when there is no logical reason for any confrontation between Europe and Russia,” Seay said.
The former US diplomat also denounced as senseless the NATO “formula” demanding that member states spend two percent of their GDP on defense.
There is not a military situation that necessitates [the likes of] Latvia or Poland to find a solution in greater military spending. It simply does not exist in this age. But there are people who seem to be intent on creating confrontation and encouraging the NATO countries to spend more money with no good reason.
Yet, it is precisely Poland and the Baltic States that top the list of nations with the highest annual defense spending increases in Europe over the recent years.
Poland’s military budget rose by 8.9 per cent in 2018 to $11.6 billion, according to SIPRI, while Latvia upped its military expenditures by staggering 24 percent over the same period. Bulgaria and Ukraine – which is not in NATO – followed closely, increasing their spending by 23 and 21 percent respectively.
Meanwhile, the US and its allies grossly outspend all the nations they perceive as alleged threats. The US expenditures alone accounted for 36 percent of global defense spending while exceeding the expenditures of the next eight largest-spending countries combined in 2018. NATO’s total military spending accounted for 53 percent of the global defense expenditures.
China was the only Washington’s perceived rival that made it into top 5 military spenders in 2018. However, Beijing’s defense budget amounted to only a fraction of the US one and accounted for 14 percent of the global military spending.
Russia, meanwhile, came it at number six by spending some $61.4 billion on the military in 2018, following consecutive defense budget cuts in the last two years. However, these facts do not stop the biggest military spender in the world to accuse Moscow of somehow initiating an “arms race.”
Anyway, the latest trends show that the world is unlikely to see easing of tensions on the international arena anytime soon, Seay warns.
The US-NATO Alliance Has Georgia on Its Mind
By Brian Cloughley | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 29, 2019
Britain’s Daily Express newspaper is a bizarre publication that specialises in sensationalist raving. Some of its reports are weird beyond imagination, and it went even further than usual into fogs of delusion on April 21 when one of its headlines announced “World War 3: UK CONFRONTS Russia by sending warship to Black Sea.”
The vessel despatched on a “freedom of navigation manoeuvre” by the UK’s Royal Navy is HMS Echo, which cannot be described as a warship. It is “designed to carry out a wide range of survey work, including support to submarine and amphibious operations” and it carries a few cannon and machine guns, but it is difficult to see how it could confront anything more deadly than a prawn-boat. It is, however, part of the grand plan of the US-NATO military alliance which on April 4 “agreed a package of measures to improve NATO’s situational awareness in the Black Sea region and strengthen support for partners Georgia and Ukraine.”
HQ NATO much regrets that its encirclement of Russia does not yet include Georgia or Ukraine. The Brussels sub-office of the Pentagon is trying hard to formally enlist both countries and announced on March 26 that “Georgia is one of the Alliance’s closest partners. It aspires to join the Alliance. The country actively contributes to NATO-led operations and cooperates with the Allies and other partner countries in many other areas. Over time, a broad range of practical cooperation has developed between NATO and Georgia, which supports Georgia’s reform efforts and its goal of Euro-Atlantic integration.”
The day before NATO’s declaration the globe-trotting head of the organisation, Jens Stoltenberg, was in Georgia to attend military exercises. At a meeting with Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze he declared it had been “clearly stated that Georgia will become a member of NATO” and “We will continue working together to prepare for Georgia’s NATO membership,” which was first mooted in 2008 but somehow has never come about.
Non-US NATO military spending totals $264 billion a year, four times that of Russia, and the US will splurge $750 billion next year, so Georgia’s 37,000 military personnel, ten Su-25 combat aircraft and military budget of $380 million are not going to make much of a contribution to NATO, but that’s not the point. What the US-NATO grouping wants is to deploy its armed forces even closer to Russia than at present. When Georgia joins, there will be an opportunity to base tanks, aircraft and missiles right up against the Russian border, as in the Baltic states.
The most interesting observation about Georgia by Radio Free Europe in its account of the Stoltenberg visit was that “The country of some 3.7 million people fought a brief war with Russia in August 2008, and Moscow’s continued military presence on the country’s territory adds to tensions in the region.”
It is never mentioned by the Pentagon, Brussels or the Western media that the “brief war” was entirely the fault of Georgia. Nor is it admitted that if Russia had wished to do so, it could have swept through and occupied the whole of Georgia in a few days without interference by NATO or anyone else.
The European Union decided to conduct an inquiry into the conflict, and in 2009 produced a report which, deep down in its 1,000 pages, states that Georgia initiated the war. This was not at all what the Western world wanted to be told, and the paper is full of observations intended to disguise or excuse Georgia’s military antics. The UK’s Independent online newspaper reported that “The first authoritative study of the war over South Ossetia has concluded that Georgia started the conflict with Russia with an attack that was in violation of international law,” but there are very few people in the Western Establishment who will admit that Georgia was to blame, and they steadfastly support Georgia’s foolhardy aggression.
The EU noted that “There were reportedly more than a hundred US military advisers in the Georgian armed forces when the conflict erupted in August 2008, and an even larger number of US specialists and advisors are thought to have been active in different branches of the Georgian power structures and administration. Considerable military support in terms of equipment and to some extent training was provided by a number of other countries led by Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Israel.” In other words, Georgia was considered a prime ally because it opposed Russia, and the US and its allies helped it prepare for its futile attack.
This is not surprising, given the speech by President George W Bush in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, in May 2005. The man who ordered the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 was eloquent about Georgia’s military contribution to these disastrous conflicts, and observed that “last year, when terrorist violence in Iraq was escalating, Georgia showed her courage. You increased your troop commitment in Iraq fivefold. The Iraqi people are grateful and so are your American and coalition allies.” Indeed Washington is so grateful to the Georgian government for contributing to its wars (which involved the needless deaths of 32 Georgian soldiers in Afghanistan and five in Iraq), it provides generous aid packages, both civil and military.
A US Congressional Research Service Report of April 2019 notes that in this financial year Congress approved $89 million in civil aid and that in 2018 military aid was $40 million. These amounts don’t seem much at first glance, especially when compared to the mega-billions doled out to Afghanistan, Israel and Iraq — but given that its population is only 3.7 million, Georgia is doing very nicely.
In June 2018, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs said US policy is to “check Russian aggression,” including by “building up the means of self-defence for those states most directly threatened by Russia militarily: Ukraine and Georgia,” which repay US financial patronage not only by sacrificing their soldiers in Washington’s wars (18 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in Iraq), but in more intriguing ways, including in UN forums.
For obvious reasons it has long been thought by most countries that there should be international agreement to ban weapons in space, and a Russian-Chinese draft treaty proposing such legislation was submitted to the UN in February 2008. Washington refused to consider it, and when an amended version was presented at the UN’s First Committee in 2015 it was voted against by the US — along with its well-paid puppets, Israel, Georgia and Ukraine.
The US-NATO alliance is determined to encircle Russia more tightly, and Georgia wants to help it do so. Such provocative cooperation in these endeavours heightens tension between Georgia and Russia, which in the eyes of the western media serves to justify yet more NATO expansion. It is reminiscent of the 1930 song whose last verse is “Whoa, Georgia, Georgia, No peace, no peace I find; Just this old sweet song, Keeps Georgia on my mind…”
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From the Archive
Zionism’s Violent Legacy
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
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