The most fateful chapter of the war in northern Syria may be deemed to have commenced on Sunday with the launch of the offensive by Syrian Kurdish militia, backed by American and French Special Forces, to retake control of Raqqa, ‘capital’ of the Islamic State, situated almost mid-point between Aleppo and Mosul. (Japan Times)
Raqqa’s fall will be a lethal blow for IS. But expert opinion has been that US is ill-prepared for a full-bodied campaign on Raqqa. A former US Army colonel Daniel Davis wrote in the National Interest magazine last week that with no state-supported military unit leading the assault, no allied militia, no resupply lines through friendly territory, wresting control of a major city such as Raqqa, “in a hostile foreign land enmeshed in a years-long civil war… could… result in deadly consequences.” (National Interest)
Yet, President Barack Obama decided otherwise. US soldiers have been spotted on the frontline. (RT)
What is the US gameplan? Indeed, driving the IS out of Raqqa is invested with symbolism, as Obama will be fulfilling his pledge to “degrade and defeat” the IS before leaving office. With the November 8 election no longer constraining him, Obama hopes to notch up a legacy in Syria as the president who ‘defeated’ the IS.
Second, there is the ‘big picture’. Washington is hoping to stall the capture of Aleppo by Syrian government forces (backed by Russia and Iran) so that the next US president has the option to revisit Syrian conflict. Control of Raqqa would allow the US to keep a direct influence on Aleppo.
Again, in immediate terms, the IS fighters coming under pressure in Mosul may evacuate to Raqqa and the US intends to blockade Raqqa at least partially so as to revisit the front after the battle for Mosul has been won.
To be sure, Raqqa is shaping up to be the bloodiest battle yet in the Syrian conflict. An estimated 5000 IS fighters are located in Raqqa.
The ‘known unknown’ will be the reactions of Turkey and Russia. The Turkish-Russian rapprochement faces a litmus test here. Suffice it to say, Russia will be watching Turkey’s ‘strategic autonomy’ vis-à-vis the US. There are conflicting signals that US and Turkey have a tacit understanding over Raqqa. (KUNA)
Meanwhile, Syrian Kurds also claim to have an understanding with the US to keep Turkey out in the cold. (Rudaw)
The Americans are playing a smart game. Turkey couldn’t have chosen this moment to push to capture the hugely strategic town of al-Babi without informing US, because the operation’s main aim is to thwart Kurdish plans to establish a contiguous enclave in northern Syria. Simply put, how is it possible that Turks are ostensibly hitting the Syrian Kurds hard just when the latter are fighting Obama’s war on IS in Raqqa? How could that possibly happen without some back-to-back US-Turkish understanding? (Read an excellent analysis in Al-Monitor on the Turkey’s plans in northern Syria)
In the developing situation, a Russian-Syrian consolidation in Aleppo becomes complicated if Americans and the French manage to establish a base camp in Raqqa from where they can lend support seamlessly to rebel groups in Aleppo. Prima facie, Obama’s one-year old warning of a ‘quagmire’ for Russians in Syria no longer seems far-fetched. (Reuters)
But then, Russians seem to estimate that capturing Raqqa is beyond the US’ capability anytime soon. For Tehran, too, Turkey and US’s control of al-Bab and Raqqa could foreclose a direct Iranian access route via Iraq and Syria to Lebanon, which is crucial for bolstering the military capability of Hezbollah. In fact, Raqqa leads to Zeir e-Zor city in eastern Syria, just 120 kilometers away, which is under Syrian government control and is a gateway for Iran to access Lebanon. The US and Israel have been hoping to bring Zeir e-Zor under control of Salafi groups hostile to Iran.
Why are they lying? Everything is being done to convince the public that Russia wants war; that it has annexed Ukraine; that it will attack Western Europe; that it will crush the Baltic states and Poland in its advance; that it’s committing war crimes in Syria; that Assad is a dictator and a butcher; that he has met peaceful demands for reform with brutal repression; that those fighting Assad are moderate rebels; that he is dropping barrel bombs on civilians.
Why are they lying? Because the people don’t want war: they want jobs and bread. They will not agree to murder people who have done them no harm. They will consent to war if told they are under attack or that the war will save other people from genocide, rape, or other gross violations of human rights. The people are not interested in world domination, but the elite are. The people are, therefore, the enemy within. They must be persuaded to support the elite’s plan by perverting their decency. They must be made to cringe in fear. They must be made to believe that war—any war—will be defensive.
This is the tactic of terrorists: terrorizing the population to obtain political ends.
Hillary Clinton is lying: a no-fly zone in Syria will not “save lives.”
In her last presidential debate, Clinton said that she wants a no-fly zone in Syria because it will “save lives”:
“I’m going to continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria, not only to help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees, but to, frankly, gain some leverage on both the Syrian government and the Russians.”
The “leverage” she is seeking is Russian roulette with the planet. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford, noted in response that a no-fly zone in Syria might trigger a war with Russia, a nuclear power. Neither does she believe that a no-fly zone will save lives. In a closed-door speech to Goldman Sachs in 2013, Clinton said:
“To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk—you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians.”
She knows what is at stake with a no-fly zone in Syria, and yet she tells us the opposite of what she knows will happen. In other words, she’s lying.
What has changed Clinton’s mind since 2013?
In 2013, there was no need to risk nuclear war over Syria. The so-called Free Syrian Army and assorted rebel groups were doing just fine in their offensive. In 2013, Syria stood alone, apart from some Iranian assistance. Until 2015, the Assad government was on its last breath, in retreat from the provinces of Raqqa, Aleppo, Hama, Idlib, and Latakia. By September 2015, the generous financial, military, and operational support by the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to the “anti-Syrian coalition”– Islamic State, the Jabbat al-Nusra, the “Free Syrian Army”–was paying great dividends in advancing the destabilization of the Assad government. Soon, it could be expected that the symbolic head of Assad would sit on a silver platter in the White House, along with other colonial trophies.
The humanitarian consequences for Syrians, however, were catastrophic. Fleeing the terror of a Syria in the clutches of cutthroat mercenary armies, refugees flooded Turkey, Jordan, Greece, and other countries, becoming human barter between Turkey and the European Union. The EU paid Turkey two billion euro to keep within its borders this human avalanche of “collateral damage.”
That was the situation in September of 2015, when Russia, invited by the legitimate Syrian government, legitimately intervened in Syria with aircraft, support personnel, military advisors and equipment. In a year of Russian efforts to establish a premise for a peaceful solution in Syria by eliminating the militant rabble the Western chorus of “Assad must go” has mutated into a furious hiss of impotent rage. No one expects Assad to go now, unless the US comes up with a strategy to reverse the losses the Russian intervention has inflicted.
Enter Hillary’s reversal on the no-fly zone, which now, contrary to her judgment in 2013, will “save lives.”
What is a no-fly zone?
A no-fly zone is a coercive appropriation of the partial airspace of a sovereign country. It is the arbitrary creation of a demilitarized zone in the sky to prevent belligerent powers from flying in that air space. In Syria, the “belligerent power,” ironically, would be the internationally recognized legitimate Syrian government and its legitimate ally, Russia.
According to former UN Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in an interview with John Pilger, a no-fly zone is illegal under international law. No-fly zones are post-Soviet inventions. The measure was never proposed, used, or authorized to this day by the UN Security Council until the Soviet Union virtually dissolved. This restraint was exercised by the US for the excellent reason that no such aggression on a sovereign state would have been tolerated without massive fuss at the UN Security Council and a bad rap for the US. There have been only three instances of a no-fly zone so far, all in the wake of the disappearance of the USSR: Iraq (1991-2003), Bosnia (1993-95), and Libya (2011), all initiated on the hypocritical pretense of “saving lives.”
What is Plan B?
In one word: escalation. Apart from partitioning the air space of Syria, Plan B would provide for supplying, through Qatar or Saudi Arabia, man-portable air defense systems to the “moderate opposition,” including if it is acknowledged that the “moderate opposition” has allied itself openly with the al-Nusra front. Plan B has not been approved, but the media has floated a series of reports throughout October as being under consideration.
On October 28, the New York Times published an astonishing conclusion about an aspect of the Obama administration’s strategy in Syria, though gently and benevolently worded. The Times indicated that it was being felt that Obama had insufficiently armed the “moderate opposition,” so that in Aleppo it had “no choice” but to partner with al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra) to fight off Putin and Assad. At the same time, Reuters noted that the Obama administration had formerly considered arming the “moderates” with anti-air missiles but was constrained by the fear that such weapons would fall in the hands of ”extremists.”
Such reports suggest, rather boldly, I think, that “former restraint” might have to give way to greater support for the “moderate” militants, including if they partner with “extremists.” Thus, we arrive at a point of utter bewilderment in which we verify the absurdity of launching a War on Terror to end up fighting a War with Terror.
Oppose US imperialism
It is good and proper that we should denounce Hillary Clinton for her vile record of regime change (in Honduras), crime of aggression (Libya), threats to Russia and China, corruption, illegality, and abuse of power. She’s clearly unfit to be president of any decent country that calls itself democratic.
However, fixating on her individual agency lets the policy off the hook. The US is not yet a banana republic, in which the patriarch of some rich landowning family becomes the patriarch-autocrat of a country. An intricate network of powerful interests, which determine the policy, rules the US, frantic to maintain global economic and military dominance. This ruling class selects the candidate who will best carry out the policy. Hillary Clinton will be the servant of the interests of the ruling class of which she is a member. She will be their president.
So it’s the policy that must be opposed, and this policy is imperialist. We must develop a principled opposition to this policy, without prevarications. The task falls on the left, but it cannot be a left divided by relativist consideration of “evil” on all sides. However we may feel about the morality of governments in Russia, China, Syria, Iran, etc., one thing is clear: they did not launch a war on Iraq, opening the door to all the crimes that followed from that original crime. It is time to decide whether we want to live with things as they are or change them. And we must begin by changing them at home.
Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: lbohne@edinboro.edu
The presidential campaign has mortified millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times. Since 9/11, we have lived in a perpetual emergency which supposedly justifies trampling the law and Constitution. And the illegalities will not end after Tuesday’s vote count. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have signaled that they will perpetuate power grabs in the next four years.
For generations, politicians have touted voting as a magical process which almost automatically protects the rights of everyone within a 50 mile radius of the polling booth. But the ballots Americans have cast in presidential elections since 2000 did nothing to constrain the commander-in-chief.
Bush’s declaration in 2000 that America needed a more “humble” foreign policy did not deter him from vowing to “rid the world of evil” and launching the most catastrophic war in modern American history. Eight years later, Barack Obama campaigned as the candidate of peace and promised “a new birth of freedom.” But that did not stop him from bombing seven nations, claiming a right to assassinate American ciizens, and championing Orwellian total surveillance.
Bush was famous for “signing statements” decrees that nullified hundreds of provisions of laws enacted by Congress. Obama is renown for unilaterally endlessly rewriting laws such as the Affordable Care Act to postpone political backlashes against the Democratic Party and for effectively waiving federal immigration law. Both Bush and Obama exploited the “state secrets doctrine” to shield their most controversial policies from the American public.
While many conservatives applauded Bush’s power grabs, many liberals cheered Obama’s decrees. After 16 years of Bush-Obama, the federal government is far more arbitrary and lethal. Richard Nixon’s maxim – ‘it’s not illegal if the president does it’ – is the lodestar for commanders-in-chief in the new century.
There is no reason to expect the next president to be less power hungry than the last two White House occupants. Both Trump and Clinton can be expected to trample the First Amendment. Trump has talked of shutting down mosques and changing libel laws to make it far more perilous for the media to reveal abuses by the nation’s elite. Clinton was in the forefront of an administration that broke all records for prosecuting leakers and journalists who exposed government abuses. She could smash the remnants of the Freedom of Information Act like her aides hammered her Blackberry phones to obliterate her email trail.
Neither candidate seems to recognize any limit on presidential power. Trump calls for reviving the torture that profoundly disgraced the United States during the George W. Bush era. Clinton opposes torture but believes presidents have a right to launch wars whenever they decide it is in the national interest. After Clinton helped persuade Obama to bomb Libya in 2011, she signaled that the administration would scorn any congressional cease-and-desist order under the War Powers Act. She continues to tout the bombing of Libya as “smart power at its best.”
If Americans could be confident that either Trump or Clinton would be leashed by the law, there would be less dread about who wins on Tuesday. But elections are becoming simply coronations via vote counts. The president will take an oath of office on Inaugural Day but then can do as he or she damn well pleases.
We now have a political system which is nominally democratic but increasingly authoritarian. The proliferation of despotic precedents in the past 15 years would have horrified America’s Founding Fathers. The Rule of Law has been defined down to finding a single federal lawyer to write a secret memo vindicating the president’s latest unpublished executive order. And Washington has never had a shortage of weasely lawyers.
By the end of the next presidential term, America will have had almost a 20-year stretch of dictatorial democracy. Washington’s disdain for the highest law of the land is torpedoing the citizenry’s faith in representative government. Forty percent of registered voters have “lost faith in American democracy,” according to recent Survey Monkey poll.
The United States may be on the verge of the biggest legitimacy crisis since the Civil War. Whoever wins in November will be profoundly distrusted even before being sworn in. The combination of a widely-detested new president and unrestrained power almost guarantees greater crises in the coming years.
Neither Trump nor Clinton are promising to “make America constitutional again.” But, as Thomas Jefferson declared in 1786, “an elective despotism was not the government we fought for.” If presidents are lawless, then voters are merely designating the most dangerous criminal in the land.
Show me an American Neocon today and I will show you a pro-Clinton supporter. In fact, it is indicative of Hillary Clinton’s particular brand of foreign policy that Republican hawks have fled the GOP standard to join ranks with the warmongering Democrats.
In order to guarantee another 4-8 years of US-led military aggression in the Middle East, and heightened tensions with Russia and China (which all translates into lucrative defense spending), the Neocons have found it necessary to drag Russian President Vladimir Putin into the 2016 presidential race as a means of deflecting attention away from a devastating series of leaked emails, courtesy of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, that portray Clinton and her campaign team in less than glowing terms.
The latest Neocon to grease the wheels of Clinton’s War & Wall Street machine is Madeleine Albright, 79, the former Secretary of State, who is perhaps most famous for two quotes, “What’s the point of having this superb military… if we can’t use it?” And second, when asked in a 1996 interview with the news program 60 Minutes if the price of UN sanctions against Iraq – which was half a million dead Iraqi children – was worth it, Albright unhesitatingly responded, “We think the price is worth it.”
Albright opened her opinion piece in USA Today with a fast curve ball, no easy feat even for professional throwers: “Democrats have been renewing their call this week for the FBI to release more information on the connections among Donald Trump, his top advisers and the Russian government. But it is already clear that Russia’s intervention in our election on Trump’s side is the real scandal of 2016… ”
Like a veteran manipulator, Albright attempts to control the narrative, not to mention the history books, by telling the reader that Russia’s (unproven) intervention in the 2016 presidential election is the “real scandal” of the year, as opposed, of course, to Julian Assange’s torturous, slow-drip outing of Hillary Clinton and her mind-boggling list of ‘poor decision-making.’
“The Russian government has already hacked into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in an effort to create confusion and turn voters off from politics,” Albright wrote, essentially telling Americans ‘nothing to look at here, please move on and have a nice day.’
Nowhere does Albright question the meaty contents of the emails. Instead, she waxes poetic about the undefiled beauty of the democratic landscape and the authoritarian governments and their “shadow campaigns” that would trash them. This deliberate oversight explains why Albright and her fellow Neocons found it so necessary to drag Russia into this scandal. The allegations contained in the WikiLeaks emails are so potentially damaging to Clinton’s chances at the White House that they required a diversion as large as Russia to conceal them.
Yet, even the FBI admits there is no convincing evidence linking the leaked emails as an effort by Russia to boost Trump’s victory chances on Nov.8th. And judging by the tarnished reputations of the Republican and Democratic contenders, it should come as no surprise that Russia should have no clear favorite in this dog race even if they could rig the game.
But all this misses the main point, indeed as it is cunningly designed to do. With all of the spin going on, can anybody still recall what the released Clinton emails revealed?
In short, the leaked documents revealed that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had colluded with the Clinton campaign to ensure Hillary Clinton received the nomination ahead of other potential candidates, including the popular Bernie Sanders. These damning revelations led to the ouster of DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The Russians clearly had nothing to do with that.
Second, the woman who replaced Schultz, Democratic strategist and former CNN contributor, Donna Brazile, was found to have tipped off the Clinton campaign on the content of two questions ahead of the final Clinton-Trump CNN-hosted debate. The horrific implications of that explosive finding, which could have tipped the scales in favor of Clinton, deserves nothing short of a Watergate-style investigation.
By the way, the Russians had nothing to do with that bit of insider intrigue, either.
But that’s mere child’s play compared to documents that show how Clinton, as the Secretary of State, severely mishandled the 2012 Benghazi attack, which was orchestrated by a radical Islamic group. US Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was killed in the attack. In an interview with Democracy Now, Assange said Clinton was even responsible for arming Islamic State fighters in Syria in an effort to bring down the government of President Bashar Assad.
Clinton’s leaky emails point to “the disastrous, absolutely disastrous intervention in Libya, the destruction of the Gaddafi government, which led to the occupation of ISIS of large segments of that country, weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton, into jihadists within Syria, including ISIS, that’s there in those emails,” the WikiLeaks co-founder said. “There’s more than 1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton’s collection, that we have released, just about Libya alone,” he added.
Nor did the Russians help the United States to bungle Benghazi, or command Clinton to furnish arms to Islamic State, as the correspondences suggest she did.
So why all the mindless media chatter about Russia?
There was yet another potential bit of ‘collateral damage’ in the ongoing WikiLeaks drama that has largely gone overlooked. Since it is preposterous to think that Russia would have any need or desire to influence the US elections, nor has there been a single piece of convincing evidence to support the claim, WikiLeaks somehow managed to get the leaked documents. Why not from a DNC insider? In fact, why not from Seth Rich, the director of voter expansion with DNC who would have had access to the incriminating emails?
We’ll probably never know because Mr. Rich is no longer around to provide his testimony.
In the early hours of July 10th, Rich was shot multiple times in the back as he walked home alone from a Washington pub. Was Rich the victim of a robbery? If so, investigators were baffled as to why his wallet, credit cards, wrist watch and cellphone were not removed from his body.
Police Chief Cathy Lanier admitted at a press conference, “Right now, we have more questions than answers.”
Julian Assange, falling short of admitting Rich – as opposed to Russia – was the source of the leaked information, offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the individual(s) responsible for the premature death of Mr. Rich.
Neverthless, Newsweek was just one of many media outlets that brushed off the incident as “yet another round of Clinton conspiracy theories, this one claiming that Rich was murdered—at dawn—as he was on his way to sing to the FBI about damning internal DNC emails.”
Funny how the Western media regularly accuses foreign media of jumping on wild “conspiracy theories,” yet they have no qualms saddling up their own highly questionable ideas about “Russian involvement” in the WikiLeaks.
Although it may be true that Mr. Rich died the victim of a robbery gone awry, there are still grounds to believe that he was the DNC whistleblower. Somehow the mainstream media, however, found it more expedient to pin the blame on a foreign power without a shred of evidence.
Indeed, Newsweek was apparently satisfied that it had performed due diligence by quoting an anonymous source that said: “There was no indication that any insider was involved in this… Every indication is this was a remote attack from a foreign government—the Russians.”
When the Neocon defection began
When Donald Trump first announced he would scale back the size of America’s global military footprint if elected president, neo-conservatives unleashed a collective howl of pain as they began fleeing en masse the ship of the Republican Party.
Robert Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a top Neocon ideologue, signaled the defection when he said a Trump presidency would herald in a new age of American-style fascism.
Today, the tattered flag of the Neocons is flapping high above the Clinton camp, distant fires glowing, as they continue to spearhead a scathing attack on Trump just days before the election. What is the source for this great defection against their own party? Quite simply, it shows the Neocons have no allegiance except to individuals – like George W. Bush and, yes, Barack Obama – who pledge to continue America’s wars of expansion and empire.
Clinton’s past record in Iraq, Libya and Syria strongly suggest she will lead the Neocons to more plunder; Trump has pledged to bring home the troops in order to “Make America Great Again.” Neocons are not big fans of filling potholes and spending on schools.
Trump alienated the Republican warhorses when he pledged to pursue, like a real disciple of the conservative political creed, a foreign policy that does not send American men and women off to distant battlefields to be killed and maimed in senseless military adventures.
The following passage by Joseph A. Mussomeli – in the Washington Post, of all places – really nailed it as to why the Neocons hate Donald Trump:
“Our cadre of neoconservative foreign policy experts, unhumbled after marching us into a reckless war in Iraq and a poorly conceived one in Afghanistan, who applauded as we bombed Libya and bitterly resent our having failed to bomb Bashar al-Assad in Syria, are frightened… But what really troubles them is [Trump’s] generally level-headed and unmessianic attitude toward foreign affairs… Clinton is just another neocon, though wrapped in sheep’s clothing — just as on some foreign policy issues Trump is little more than Bernie Sanders in wolf’s clothing.”
Anne Applebaum, perennial anti-Russia scaremonger and notable Neocon, tossed a smoke grenade into the WikiLeaks scandal, attempting to obfuscate Julian Assange’s work with groundless accusations:
“Russia will continue to distribute and publish the material its hackers have already obtained from attacks on the Democratic National Committee, George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, former NATO supreme commander Gen. Philip Breedlove and probably others. The point will be to discredit not just Hillary Clinton but also the U.S. democratic process and, again, the “elite” who supposedly run it.”
Applebaum wants the distracted public to forget that the leaks already discredited Clinton. Moreover, the lesson between the lines of Applebaum’s diatribe is that all the bad things Clinton has been connected with should be forgiven and forgotten because, well, Russia allegedly had a hand in the mess. A disturbing example of ‘killing the messenger’ who never delivered the message to begin with. Now, all the news is about the fictional messenger who should know better than to be the bearer of bad news, or meddle in America’s lily-white affairs.
Albright claimed that Russia seeks to “undermine Western leaders by making them seem corrupt or malicious.” The reader may discern, based on what we already know from Mr. Assange, the value of that statement for themselves.
So in closing, here we have the very same provocateurs that cheered when former Secretary of State Colin Powell shook a vial of fake anthrax in the UN General Assembly, spooking the world into believing Saddam Hussein was sitting on a hoard of WMDs, thereby triggering war against a sovereign state that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and counting, now would like us to believe Russia is behind the WiliLeaks emails that threaten to sink Clinton’s rat-infested ship once and for all.
We would be fools to let them get away with such deliberate deception again.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist based in Moscow, Russia. His articles have been featured in many publications, including Russia in Global Affairs, The Moscow Times, Lew Rockwell and Global Research. Bridge is the author of the book on corporate power, “Midnight in the American Empire”, which was released in 2013. email: robertvbridge@yahoo.com
As of this writing, the increased U.S. troop presence in Eastern Europe includes a battalion-sized element of American troops being placed in the Suwalki Gap, Polish territory that borders Lithuania in a 60-mile stretch of corridor. The Russian Defense Ministry announced that 600 Russian and Belarussian airborne troops conducted training exercises in Brest, on the Belorussian-Polish border only a few miles from where the U.S. forces are deploying in Poland. This on the heels of Britain deploying 800 men, tanks, and jets to Estonia, along with pledges of Challenger 2 tanks, APC’s (Armored Personnel Carriers), and drones. Two companies of French and Danish Soldiers will join the British in the deployment to Estonia.
For the first time since 1945, Norway has violated its treaty with Russia (then the Soviet Union) not to station foreign troops on its soil. A company of U.S. Marines will soon be stationed for a 6-month deployment in Norway. The situation is heating up in Ukraine, according to a report on fort-russ.com entitled Ukraine Moves Massive Force up to Lugansk Frontline, published October 28, 2016. The report reveals the Ukrainian Army is deploying 3,500 soldiers and 200 armored vehicles of the 15th Motorized Infantry Brigade to Krasny Oktyabr in the district of Lugansk in Eastern Ukraine. For the first time in history, Romanian airspace is being patrolled by the RAF (Royal Air Force) of Britain.
In addition, the Ukrainian National Guard is deploying a tactical company equipped with 82 mm mortars and AGS-17 auto grenade launchers, along with APC’s and missile launchers. A separate reconnaissance battalion named the “Night Shades,” a nationalist volunteer battalion will be deploying to Lugansk as well. No doubt they will receive a “warm” reception, as the fighting has been ongoing in the region for more than two years. The area is a severe flashpoint, as the separatists are ethnic Russians of Ukrainian nationality who wish to secede in the manner that Crimea did… Russia annexed them after the popular vote to leave Ukraine. Now (since December 2015) the Congress gave the green light to send weapons and munitions to Ukraine; the “holdup” is due to Obama not wanting to jeopardize the election of Hillary Clinton, as the Russians have stated weapons to Ukraine means war with the U.S. and NATO.
Meanwhile the Varshankya-class stealth subs are deploying into the Black Sea as the Russian fleet is moving toward Syria. The Russian and Syrian armies continue to bomb and attack the al-Nusra/Jabhat Fatah ash-Sham fighters emplaced in the city of Aleppo. The mainstream media, meanwhile, is faltering in its attempt to create a “sacred U.S.-coalition crusade” to “free the city of Mosul,” as the offensive is not working quite as planned. There are also reports that the U.S. government has plans to “navigate” Islamic terrorists from Mosul into Syria, to cause more problems for Assad and the Russians; the mainstream media is notoriously silent on the collateral damages being caused by the U.S.-led Mosul attacks, in which U.S. aircraft are supporting with bombing missions.
Let’s be clear on this: The U.S. is beefing up conventional forces of American troops into Eastern Europe and convincing NATO countries to augment these deployments with soldiers and equipment. The Russians have been responding with opposing counter-deployments to offset the U.S.-NATO movements. The aggressive stance is being taken by the U.S.-NATO-IMF hegemony in its military buildup in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, the very “backyard” of Russia.
The bottom line: the stage is being set to start WWIII on the slightest provocation.
The domestic perspective yields that just a few weeks after the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) transfer from U.S. control to (basically) the UN on October 1, 2016, the U.S. has had a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack from hackers on October 21, 2016 affecting the east and west coast of the U.S. as well as Texas and part of Europe. Just one week before, on October 13, 2016Obama signed an Executive Order for Space Weather anomalies just “in case” some “space weather anomaly” were to cripple the power grid and electrical infrastructure of the United States.
Something even worse that happened may really tie into this.
Last week it was reported by the U.S. Army that Major General John Rossi had committed suicide. Rossi had been slated to take over as the Commander of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, and the Army Forces Strategic Command. General Rossi was about to complete 33 years of service and was only 55 years old. He was “found” at Redstone Arsenal, and the Army just ruled it a suicide. The Daily Mail on reported that a U.S. government official told USA Today : “It seemed that Rossi was overwhelmed by his responsibilities” as a potential reason for his suicide.
The problem is, he committed suicide on July 31, 2016… and it’s taken two months for the Army to rule it as being a suicide?
With the command assignment, Rossi would have been privy to every procedure and protocol to defend the United States against an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) attack or an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack or event. He would know everything from the “top” down: that is, the Commander-in-Chief (Obama) would have to foster a one-on-one relationship with the man who would hold the key post to defending against a foreign missile attack.
Maybe this time the missile would not have been foreign, or if it was? It may not have been the leader of a foreign country to direct it against the United States.
It is almost impossible to believe that a Major General of the United States Army just receiving a top command post, a 55-year-old soldier… a general officer… with 33 years of service, a wife, and a loving family would “off” himself because of being “overwhelmed by responsibility.” Men such as Rossi (the highest-ranking member of the military to do such a thing) do not shirk responsibility: they meet it, head on. The whole thing stinks of a purge, in the manner that the entire military of the United States has been purged of hundreds of senior General Staff officers, Admiralty, and Senior Noncommissioned Officers… replaced by “yes” men over the course of Obama’s term.
The whole thing stinks of an assassination: no suicide note, no real press coverage, and nothing from his friends, family, or fellow soldiers. This occurs, and then Obama signs his Executive Order to “protect” us from the dreaded space anomaly that will take down our infrastructure. Could this have possibly been a suicide? Think of all of the heartache and grief his family is going through with his loss. What about the benefits and retirement that his family would lose with such an act? If he really committed suicide, then it was probably because he found out about something so heinous, so vile that would occur to the U.S. that he couldn’t live with it and probably couldn’t stop it.
Bottom line: Was he terminated when he wouldn’t go along with a false flag EMP-plan conceived by Obama to take down our grid, cripple our response time, and set the stage for martial law and the suspension of all rights under the Constitution of the United States?
As I have mentioned in the past, I repeat once again:
I never said that it wouldn’t be Obama who initiated the EMP device, and in all probability if he doesn’t initiate it… he’ll either provoke it, allow it, or request it. We haven’t even mentioned the voting (early voting) taking place where fraud is occurring in Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, and Florida, among others. The illusion of the vote: the joke of the year, but the joke is on us.
And Obama is the joker, setting the stage for the transfer of power. That transfer is not going to occur with the losing candidate (in either case) going gently into that good night. The stage is set for a war to begin. The stage is set for a false flag operation to take down our grid. The stage is set to steal the election for Clinton or declare it null and void. Within the next few weeks, the future of the United States will be decided… with or without the consent of the governed.
Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape). He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here.
A few days after Burundi, South Africa and The Gambia announced their intention to withdraw from the International Criminal Court an article appeared in the American journal, Foreign Policy, stating that the ICC is considering investigating allegations of war crimes that may have been committed in Afghanistan. The allegations are spread among the Afghan resistance to the western invasion and occupation of the country, the puppet government installed by the United States, and the United States itself.
This has caused some surprise among observers of the ICC who have correctly criticised the tribunal as an asset of the US and its allies since it has only gone after certain African leaders who stand in the way of western interests while providing complete immunity to other leaders who are useful agents of those interests. Some of them have accused it of racism, a charge difficult to refute but which misses the point that the objective is the projection of imperial power.
The United States, though not a member of the ICC, has established its dominating influence in the staff of the tribunal so that it and its Canadian and EU allies effectively control its machinery, most importantly the prosecution, the administration and the selection of judges. It is because of this influence that the ICC falsely accused Muammar Gadhafi with crimes in 2011 thereby helping it excuse the NATO aggression against Libya and also provoking and excusing his murder.
The ICC is meant to prevent war crimes and war but it has been used in fact to overthrow governments and throw their leaders in prison, or in the tragic case of Muammar Gadhafi, provoke war and excuse murder; just as the ICTY in The Hague was used to justify the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia and the arrest and death in NATO hands of President Milosevic. The ICC continues in that criminal tradition.
But is this announcement a surprise, a hopeful step that the ICC may live up to its claims? The answer is a clear no. The timing of the announcement and its delivery are interesting. It comes within a few days of the disastrous blows to its prestige and credibility with the withdrawal of the African countries. Something needed to be done to try to restore some credibility, some appearance of impartiality; and that is what the announcement does, or tries to do because it will soon be realised that it is a cheap trick, a charade, designed to save the ICC so that the United States and its allies can continue to use it as they see fit, as a means of control, not justice.
It is not a surprise in the first place because the ICC made public its Report on Preliminary Examination Activities on November 12, 2015. In that report there is a section on Afghanistan setting out more or less the contents in the Foreign Policy Report. It makes interesting reading and starts off with a lie that indicates where we can expect this investigation to go.
On page 26 the document states,
“After the attacks of 11 September 2001, in Washington D.C. and New York City, a United States-led coalition launched air strikes and ground operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban, suspected of harbouring Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban were ousted from power by the end of the year. In December 2001, under the auspices of the UN, an interim governing authority was established in Afghanistan.”
This is a lie because the Taliban government, a government installed by the United States in the first place, was not “harbouring” Bin Laden. They stated to the US government, when it demanded they turn him over in 2001, that he was in the country but by law they were required to demand that the US provide them with evidence that he was involved in the events in New York. The US flatly refused to provide any evidence to form the basis of a legal extradition so the Afghanistan government refused to hand him over. Any country would have been required by law to do the same. Instead of a file containing evidence they received cruise missiles and exploding bombs. Bin Laden of course was just the excuse, not the reason for the war. So for the ICC to state a lie that serves the narrative of the United States and then to continue with the joke that instead of the US overthrowing the Afghan government, (they were “ousted from power” they say, but how and by who is not said), they in fact helped to reestablish government, with the help of the peace loving UN, is to give the United States immunity from prosecution of the ultimate crime of aggression against Afghanistan that still continues today and all the war crimes that have flowed from that aggression. They bear the ultimate responsibility. But since the ICC sees fit to rewrite history in favour of the United States in its investigation of the war how can we expect it to ever prosecute that nation for the crimes it has committed?
Most of the document discusses allegations of crimes and some attention is paid to allegations against US forces and Afghan government forces but most of it is concerned with crimes of the Taliban. Where it discusses war crimes allegedly committed by the United States it points out that the US is investigating those allegations and has taken disciplinary action against those responsible in hundreds of cases. The question then is whether the United States is properly investigating and then prosecuting those cases in its military discipline system. For if the United States were in fact properly investigating and actively prosecuting soldiers and officials then the ICC cannot step into the situation. Only if this is not being done and cases appear to be sham cases can the ICC claim jurisdiction. This writer cannot imagine the United States ever accepting a finding from the ICC that it is not acting correctly, and having regard to its rewriting of history, I do not expect it to make such a finding.
That this is a public relations exercise is supported by the source of the article, Foreign Policy, which is owned by the Washington Post ; and the writer, David Bosco, who lectures on international law and the ICC at the Washington College of Law, in Washington D.C. has an interesting career. After graduating from Harvard he worked on “refugee issues” in Bosnia, first for an “NGO” then the UN and NATO and interned at NATO Military Headquarters in Belgium, then went to the State Department, and has largely been an editor at the journal and law lecturer ever since. You can understand my doubts of the bone fides of their intentions when you know that.
Why is it that this information had to come from this source and not the ICC itself? The answer is that if it came from the ICC no one would believe it. Its credibility is in tatters. It would look like the face-saving action it is. So it had to be made to look like a revelation of something daring that the ICC was reluctant to make it public, a bold step for mankind, all hush hush, so the US cannot get in the way of justice. But instead of a revelation it looks like a manipulation, a propaganda action to support the ICC as a tool of domination by the west against the rest of the world. And so, the game continues.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes.
For the past eight years millions of people have expended billions of words speculating about exactly how the United States kills people with missiles from drones (and missiles from other sources, such as manned aircraft, targeting people identified with drones). There is good reason to believe that for each such attack there exists a video and audio record of what the drone pilots saw and what they and their colleagues said to each other as they decided to launch a missile and as they observed its results.
This is a level of documentation we rarely have with killings by domestic police officers, who are typically filmed by observers with phones, a method of documentation that excludes the leadup and the aftermath.
It’s also a level of documentation that is almost entirely denied to the public, meaning that it doesn’t actually do us much good. As far as I know we have not seen a single video or heard a single audio recording of a drone murder. The “Collateral Murder” video is a powerful record of a non-drone attack.
With drones, however, we do have one (incomplete) transcript of what was said during the hours leading up and the minutes following one particular attack. This was an attack in Afghanistan in February 2010 that killed zero fighters but numerous innocent civilians. According to survivors, 23 men, women, and children were killed. According to the U.S. military 15 or 16 were killed and 12 wounded. The U.S. military apologized and paid some $4000 to the family of each acknowledged victim.
The ACLU obtained the transcript in 2011, and it was published by the Los Angeles Times, which wrote an account of the incident, but I didn’t pay much attention until the new film, National Bird, dramatized part of it. I think it deserves a bit longer excerpt than either the Times or National Bird provided. So, here is my selection plus commentary. Feel free to read the whole thing at the links above and make of it what you may.
00:38 (JAG25): We are going to hold on containment fires and try to attempt PID, we would really like to take out those trucks.
PID means positive identification. This individual is eager to send missiles into trucks on the ground in Afghanistan but is aware of the need to identify somebody in one or more of them as an armed fighter. In fictional fantasies like Eye in the Sky or presidential speeches, targets must exclude any possibility of killing civilians and the targeted people must be known, specifically identified, be beyond any possibility of arrest, and be “immediate and continuing” threats to the United States of America. None of those criteria or anything like them are even discussed in this actual drone attack. Instead, the question of whether to launch hellfire missiles at automobiles is whether the targeted people are males over 10 years old and whether at least one of them has a gun. As we’ll see, even those standards are not met, but they are discussed.
00:38 (Slasher03): Copy that. Break, break, Slasher, we passed you coords for the vehicle on the west side of the river again you have multiple dismounts in the open break. On the east side of the river there’s an additional vehicle majority of the dismounts are inside a compound located just to the north of that vehicle if you get eyes on that compound. Compound has multiple movers as well as one pickup truck hot.
00:38 (Slasher03): Kirk97, Slasher in addition if you’re able to pick up illumination it appears the two vehicles are flashing lights signaling between.
Before anyone was murdered on this day, everyone was discussed for hours with words like “vehicle,” “compound,” “dismounts,” and “movers” — which simply has to have a different impact than “cars,” “houses,” “pedestrians,” and “people walking around.”
…
00:41 (Pilot): Does he have a weapon?
00:41 (Sensor): Can’t tell yet
00:41 (MC): Can’t tell
CLASSIFIED
…
00:42 (Kirk97): Jag25/Slasher03/Kirk97 we are eyes on a vehicle, personnel in the open, definite tactical movement, cannot PID weapons at this time, how copy?
…
Still, they are hoping to positively identify a weapon. But, in the absence of that justification, they have spotted “definite tactical movement.” How, one wonders, given that these were a bunch of civilian commuters, does such movement differ from a handful of families and students walking about and arranging themselves into a couple of SUVs and a pickup truck?
00:43 (Sensor): possible mortars (reference to what the JTAC is trying to PID)
00:43 (Pilot): Kirk97, good copy on that, be advised personnel in the open, by the vehicles moving tactically definitely carrying objects at this time we cannot PID what they are however we’ve got eyes on and we are working our best
…
So now there are automobiles with objects and human beings in them, and those automobiles are moving (as they are principally designed to do).
00:44 (Jag25): Jag25, roger, ground force commander’s intent is to destroy the vehicles and the personnel, right now Kirk97 is showing that the individuals egressed the trucks holding cylindrical objects in their hands *radio static*
…
Personnel egressed some trucks, meaning that some people got out. And they had objects with them. As you read on, see if you notice eagerness or wariness to interpret such a phenomenon as a threat.
00:44 (Pilot): Be ready for a lot of (exploitive deleted) squirters dude
00:44 (Pilot): These guys look to be lookouts, man
…
People who get out and walk away from a group are “squirters” though not yet “bugsplat” (what drone pilots have sometimes called those they’ve killed). They are also “lookouts.” This identification of them as “lookouts” is made on the basis of the fuzzy little green linear shapes these people appear as in the video being observed, not on the basis of a high resolution color image in which something like binoculars or facial expressions could be identified.
00:45 (MC): See if you can zoom in on that guy, ‘cause he’s kind of like
00:45 (Pilot): what did he just leave there
00:45 (Pilot): Is that a *expletive* rifle?
00:45 (Sensor): Maybe just a warm spot from where he was sitting; can’t really tell right now, but it does look like an object
Well an object could be a rifle. There’s at least a 1% chance, as Dick Cheney would say.
00:45 (Pilot): I was hoping we could make a rifle out, never mind
Why was this man or woman hoping that? Why not fearing it? After all, it could mean being ordered to do something horrific: to kill. Even believing that killing to be somehow justified and possibly even somehow legal, the drone pilot of our imagination faces it regretfully and somberly. Not these guys.
00:45 (Sensor): The only way I’ve ever been able to see a rifle is if they move them around, when their holding them, with muzzle flashes out or slinging them across their shoulders
…
And yet no such identification happens on this day. Nonetheless, 23 people lose their lives while others lose their limbs. You can see the survivors and hear them tell their stories in National Bird.
00:48 (Slasher03): jaguar25, slasher03 again, on the west side you have 10 pax that are dismounts that appear to be huddled down, hunkered down, holding position they are all static on the east side, you have the original vehicle with 2 dismounts waiting outside, believe you had up to two to three to four that are still inside the vehicle, then just north of that position you have the compound where our 1 individual exited the vehicle and rendezvous, you have multiple movers within that compound as well as a hot pickup truck
…
Pax does not of course mean peace. It means passengers. “Hot” I believe actually means hot, as pilots are able to observe heat recorded by heat sensors. They sometimes observe the cooling of a body on the ground as the blood leaves it.
************END OF 0023z VIDEO SEGMENT********BEGINNING OF 0054z VIDEO SEGMENT*******
…
The line above suggests that there is a video we could be shown. Exactly whose embarrassment — er, I mean, national security — overrides our right to see it?
00:54 (Jag25): … we believe we may have a high level Taliban commander …
…
Don’t they always? If you want to prove they don’t always, make the videos public.
00:55 (Pilot): wouldn’t surprise me if this was one of their important guys, just watching from a distance, you know what I mean?
00:55 (Sensor): yea he’s got his security detail
…
A group of people, by virtue of containing multiple people, is now wishfully seen as a Taliban bigshot with a “security detail.”
00:55 (Pilot): … Be advised on the west side of the river we still have one vehicle with ten pax, two lookouts, could be definite tactical movement with a commander over watching, definitely suspicious how copy?
…
These bees are acting suspicious, said Winnie the Pooh.
00:56 (JAG): roger good copy, due to distance from friendlies we are trying to work on justification, we’re gonna need PID
00:56 (Pilot): Good copy on that, no PID on weapons at this time only tactical movements on the west side, can you pass coords for the east please?
…
00:59 (Sensor): not sure what compound they came from or what we are apparently dealing with.
…
These guys have no idea who they are looking at, but they are working on coming up with a “justification” to murder them.
00:59 (Pilot): what about the guy under the north arrow, does it look like he is hold’n something across his chest
00:59 (Sensor): yea it’s kind of weird how they all have a cold spot on their chest
00:59 (Pilot): It’s what they’ve been doing here lately, they wrap their *expletive* up in their man dresses so you can’t PID it
…
The conversation oozes with respect for the people whose country is being “liberated.”
1:00(Sensor): maybe five in the back of the bed 1:00 *broken radio chatter*
1:00 (Jag25): Jag25 have you loud and clear
…
1:01 (Pilot): Jag25, Slasher03, Kirk97 it looks like the dismounted pax on the hilux pickup on the east side is carrying something, but we cannot PID what it is at this time but he is carrying something
1:02 (Sensor): He slung it on his shoulder whatever it was, just switched arms with it or something, and is getting in the truck
…
01:03 (Sensor): the screener is reviewing, they think something is up with that dude as well. I’ll take a quick look at the SUV guys, sorry
1:03 (JAG25): Slasher03 JAG25 1:03 (Sensor): what do these dudes got, yeah I think that dude had a rifle
1:03 (Pilot): I do too
…
There’s a wishful guess that a group of two dozen people traveling through an extremely dangerous country might have a gun. Wait and see what that is taken to justify.
1:04 (Pilot): All players, all Players from KIRK97, from our DGS the MAM that just mounted the back of the hilux had a possible weapon, read back possible rifle
…
1:04 (JAG25): Kirk we notice that, but you know how it is with ROEs, so we have to be careful with those, ROE’s *broken radio chatter*
…
1:04 (Sensor): sounds like they need more than possible
…
A MAM is a military aged male and an ROE a rule of engagement. These guys are figuring out that they should come up with more than the possibility of a gun before blowing up this convoy.
1:05 (JAG25): copy, slasher03 1:05 (Sensor): that truck would make a beautiful target, ok that’s a Chevy suburban
1:05 (Pilot): yeah,
(Sensor): yeah
…
Beautiful.
1:07 (MC): screener said at least one child near SUV 1:07 (Sensor): bull (expletive deleted)…where!?
1:07 (Sensor): send me a (expletive deleted) still, I don’t think they have kids out at this hour, I know they’re shady but come on
1:07 (Pilot): at least one child… Really? Listing the MAM, uh, that means he’s guilty
1:07 (Sensor): well maybe a teenager but I haven’t seen anything that looked that short, granted they’re all grouped up here, but.
…
The eagerness to spot a gun is just not matched by eagerness to spot a child. And having a child on the road with his or her family early in the morning is taken as a sign of evil deeds. Or if the child is a military aged male (later defined as having an age in the “double digits”) that is taken as “guilt.” Guilt is the language of a court. Drone piloting has often been discussed as law enforcement, although it violates numerous laws and does not enforce any.
1:07 (Pilot): Yeah review that (expletive deleted)…why didn’t he say possible child, why are they so quick to call (expletive deleted) kids but not to call (expletive deleted) a rifle
1:08 (MC): two children were at the rear of the SUV… I haven’t seen two children
…
1:09 (Sensor): little bit of movement by the SUV. I really doubt that children call, man I really (expletive deleted) hate that.
…
1:10 (MC): is this the child entering the rear of the SUV?
1:10 (Sensor): they’re moving, I’ll stay with the pickup truck
…
1:11 (Pilot): they just threw someone into the back of that truck, and were like, wrestling with somebody did you see that?
1:11 (Senor):Yeah I saw those two dudes wrestling.
1:11 (Pilot): they probably are really using (expletive deleted) human shields here, that’s probably what that is.
…
Here is an incredible case of believing ones own propaganda. People are here imagined to be forcing victims into their trucks in order to use them as “human shields,” a phenomenon as ill conceived in U.S. culture as “voter fraud.”
1:21 (Pilot):yeah, exactly man. So what’s the, we passed him potential children and potential shields, and I think those are both pretty accurate now, what’s the ROE on that?
And here we are back to eye-of-the-murderer medieval “just war” theory in which someone pretends to determine that killing a certain number of children would be “proportionally” acceptable, although no empirical test of such a thing has ever been devised, and President Obama claims that no shots are fired by his drone warriors without “near certainty” that no civilians will be harmed. You can’t calculate how many civilians are acceptable to kill AND claim that you’re certain of not killing any.
01:32 (Sensor): Wonder what these other dudes at this compound are doing. Picked‐up at third vehicle on their train.
01:33 (MC): Guilty by association.
…
I suppose they know that’s not a legal term.
01:48 (Pilot): JAG25 just want to confirm that you copied we have about 20 pax dismounted, they are outside the trucks praying at this time and we’re 3 1⁄2 miles from the friendly location.
…
01:48 (Sensor): … Praying? I mean seriously, that’s what they do.
01:48 (MC): They’re gonna do something nefarious.
…
When I was very briefly in Afghanistan I didn’t meet anyone who didn’t pray. I also didn’t meet anyone who did anything nefarious. I have also never heard a presidential speech in which President Obama explains that he targets people who pray.
01:50 (MC): Adolescent near the rear of the SUV.
01:50 (Sensor): Well, teenagers can fight.
01:50 (MC): Pick up a weapon and you’re a combatant, it’s how that works.
…
Got that?
01:52 (Sensor): Oh sweet target. I’d try to go through the bed, put it right dead center of the bed.
01:53 (MC): Oh that’d be perfect.
01:52 (Sensor): Like more of them from the other vehicles are around this one right now.
…
Such cool, level headed reluctance to use excessive force is no doubt what we would hear in police videos as well.
01:54 (Sensor): MAM near SUV appear to be holding a weapon.
01:54 (Jag25): Roger, still awaiting confirmation.
01:54 (Pilot): JAG25 be advised, our screener just called 1 MAM near the SUV in the line of 3, appears to be holding a weapon.
…
01:56 (MC) :one weapon on ground may have picked it up and walking around the pickup.
01:56 (Sensor): I didn’t quite catch that but I believe it.
…
I didn’t see it either. Should I believe it too?
02:29 (Pilot): Can’t wait till this actually happens, with all this coordination and *expletive*
(agreement noises from crew)
02:29 (Pilot): Thanks for the help, you’re doing a good job relaying everything in (muffled), MC. Appreciate it
…
02:48 (Sensor): Still a sweet *expletive* target, geez….Take out the lead vehicle on the run and then uhh bring the helos in
…
Sweeeeeeeet!
02:54 (MC): Looks like they’re bringing a Reaper in
…
02:54 (Sensor): *Expletive*that, man
02:54 (MC): just claim we’re here first
02:54 (MC): At least we know these guys have weapons
02:55 (Muffled talking off comms, some profanity, a chuckle)
…
Laughing and eagerness to be the one to pull the trigger.
02:58 (Sensor): Hey, that dude just put a weapon down right above the truck. See it?
02:59 (Pilot): See it. See if DGS will call that
…
DGS is an office that is supposed to approve before eager pilots push the button. A veteran in National Bird describes routinely trying to restrain the eagerness of pilots at Creech Air Force Base to kill.
03:01 (Sensor): Aww where is he going? Just pulling off the road maybe. They probably mostly left their weapons in the vehicles. I’ll be damned, it looks like a short dude back there.
…
No weapons? They must be inside. A child? It must be a short dude.
03:05 (Pilot): Jag 25 standby one. Kirk 97, we’re checking. Looks mostly to be military aged males. We have seen approximately two children. Standby.
03:05 (Pilot): Dude the only thing I can see if this isn’t something [expletive deleted]is the locals trying to get away. You know what I mean? But I don’t think so.
…
Here a pilot surmises the situation accurately but chooses not to believe it.
03:06 (Sensor): 24 or 25 at the praying stop.
03:07 (Sensor): CLASSIFIED view I saw the one that looked short enough to be a child.
…
03:08 (Pilot): And Jag 25, our screeners are currently calling 21 MAMs no females, and 2 possible children. How copy?
03:08 (JAG25): Roger. And when we say children, are we talking teenagers or toddlers?
03:08 (Sensor): I would say about twelve. Not toddlers. Something more towards adolescents or teens.
03:08 (Pilot): Yeah adolescents
…
03:10 (Pilot): And Kirk 97, good copy on that. We are with you. Our screener updated only one adolescent so that’s one double digit age range. How Copy?
03:10 (JAG25): We’ll pass that along to the ground force commander. But like I said, 12‐13 years old with a weapon is just as dangerous.
03:11 (Sensor): Oh we agree. Yea.
…
04:05 (Pilot) : Yeah. Alright, so the plan is man, uh, we’re going to watch this thing go down, the helo’s are going to take out as much as they can and when they Winchester we can play clean up.
…
04:07 (Pilot) : As long as you keep somebody that we can shoot in the field of view I’m happy.
…
Happy! It’s good to stay positive about your job! Everybody knows that.
04:09 (Pilot) : Yeah, well that’s what we were talking on this. I was talking to the JTAC he said the exact same thing man. Um they called them an adolescent. We called it you know… most likely double digits age range. And he was like that’s old enough to be dangerous.
…
04:13 (Pilot): It’s a cool looking shot
04:13 (Sensor): O, awesome
…
Awesome, dude!
04:16 (Sensor): Roger. And, oh … and there it goes!
04:16 (Sensor): Have another guy … did they get him too? Yep.
04:16 (Pilot): They took the first and uh the last out. They’re going to come back around
04:16 (Safety Observer): I see squirters at the first one
…
Missiles have just blown up the first and third of the three automobiles packed with people.
04:16 (Pilot): Uh, follow what you think makes the most sense. In fact, stay on the middle truck for now …
04:16 (Sensor): I will
04:16 (Pilot): … until they take that out or we do
04:17 (MC): Do we want to switch back to other frequency?
04:17 (Pilot): I tried, nobody was talking to me over there
04:17 (Sensor): Looks like they’re surrendering
04:17 (Sensor): They’re not running
04:17 (Pilot): CLASSIFIED
[NOTE: At this point, additional voices appear on the recording – presumably those of the safety observers – and identifying which individual is speaking at any given time becomes very difficult.]
…
04:18 (Sensor): That guy’s laid down? They’re not running.
04:18 (Safety Observer): Dude, this is weird
04:18 (Sensor): They’re just walking away
04:18 (Sensor): I think I’ve got the bulk of whoever’s left in the field of view
04:18 (Pilot): Yeah, I think so
…
Now we start to see that these eager killers really had convinced themselves that they were targeting dangerous enemies. When their victims behave like civilians, they are disturbed by it.
04:18 (Unknown): Oh!
04:19 (Pilot): Holy [expletive deleted]
04:19 (Sensor): I don’t know about this. This is weird.
04:19 (MC): Yeah
04:19 (Pilot): Got nowhere to go
04:19 (Pilot): Probably confused as [expletive deleted]
04:19 (Sensor): Oh yeah, they just got thrown from the vehicle, too
04:19 MIC(?): We did call, we did tell them there was adolescents in the second vehicle, so I thought that was the reason they didn’t shoot the (unintelligible) second vehicle
04:19 (Safety Observer): No
…
04:19 (Sensor): Current recommended target is … I just want to do the most veh‐ … either this one, the most … or the one with the guys in the front, they were in the lead vehicle
04:19 (Pilot): There’s like a trail of like three or four (unintelligible)
04:19 (Sensor): Right
04:19 (Pilot): … to the right of your crosshair
04:19 (Sensor): Yeah, and those are, that’s the most, the most, most individuals, right there
04:19 Pilot(?): Yeah, I’d say let’s do that then
04:20 (Sensor): But I’ll keep this field of view … the previous field of view, uh, so we can maintain eyes on as many as possible
And yet, the momentum here is still for killing the survivors.
04:20 (Bam Bam 41): Kirk 97, Bam Bam 41, confirm, uh, those were hits on the vehicles you were watching
04:20 (Pilot): And Bam Bam, Kirk 97, that is affirm, that is uh three good hits on all three of our vehicles. We are still tracking.
Now all three vehicles have been blown up and burned.
04:20 (Sensor): I’m going to zoom in on the rear vehicle again real quick. It looks … it looks like there’s a bunch of people just hanging out
…
04:23 (Safety Observer): Are they wearing burqas?
04:23 (Sensor): That’s what it looks like
04:23 (Pilot): They were all PIDed as males, though. No females in the group
04:23 (Sensor): That guy looks like he’s wearing jewelry and stuff like a girl, but he ain’t … if he’s a girl, he’s a big one
We sense reluctance to recognize that there are females among those targeted.
04:23 (Pilot): Bam Bam, uh Kirk 97, we are eyes on the squirters at this time. No weapons PIDed yet.
…
04:26 (Unknown): Wow 04:26 (Sensor): (unintelligible) That truck is so dead
04:26 (Unknown): Wow
…
04:27 (Sensor): Trying to, to PID veh‐, uh, weapons, but yeah, we can scan
04:27 (Sensor): The thing is, nobody ran
04:27 (Safety Observer): Yeah, that was weird
04:27 (Sensor): So, all the squirters are, have returned to the road at this point
04:27 (Unknown): Yeah
04:27 (Safety Observer): We need to probably let them know that
…
04:30 (Pilot): Bam Bam41, uh, Kirk97. We are still eyes on, uh, eyes on trying to PID [Positively Identify] any weapons, uh, on the remaining MAMs [Military Age Male]. Uh, we had previously PID’ed weapons in the group but, uh, nothing at this time. We’re still looking.
…
04:32 (MC): There’s one guy sitting down.
04:32 (Sensor): What you playing with? (Talking to individual on ground.)
04:32 (MC): His bone.
04:33 (Sensor): Thanks, thanks SOTF‐South.
…
04:34 (Sensor): So, it looks like those lumps are probably all people.
04:34 (Safety Observer): Yep.
04:34 (MC): I think the most lumps are on the lead vehicle because everybody got…the Hellfire got…
…
04:35 (Sensor): Yeah, there’s definitely no weapons on the guys in the middle vehicle.
…
04:36 (MC): Is that two? One guy’s tending the other guy?
04:36 (Safety Observer): Looks like it.
04:36 (Sensor): Looks like it, yeah.
04:36 (MC): Self‐Aid Buddy Care to the rescue.
04:36 (Safety Observer): I forget, how do you treat a sucking gut wound?
04:37 (Sensor): Don’t push it back in. Wrap it in a towel. That’ll work.
…
04:38 (Pilot): They’re trying to *explicative* surrender, right? I think.
04:38 (Sensor): That’s what it looks like to me.
04:38 MC: Yeah. I think that’s what they’re doing.
…
04:39 (UNKNOWN): On those individuals. Break.
Uh, exiting from that vehicle was probably about 4 personnel. Believe possibly two of those, maybe 3, were female. They wore bright colored clothing. Uh, those remaining personnel are gathered just west of the middle vehicle. They’re standing about 20 meters to the west.
04:40 (MC): Screener said there wasn’t any women earlier.
04:40 (Sensor): Those are all people.
04:40 (MC): Yeah.
04:40 (Sensor): That’s what I was worried about.
04:40 (Safety Observer): What?
CLASSIFIED
CLASSIFIED
CLASSIFIED
04:40 (Sensor): What are those? They were in the middle vehicle.
04:40 (MC): Women and children.
04:40 (Sensor): Looks like a kid.
04:40 (Safety Observer): Yeah. The one waving the flag.
…
04:41 (Pilot): Kirk97. Uh, negative, we are still observing at this time. Still no weapons PID, everything else matches with your assessment. Uh, still looking.
…
04:41 (Sensor): Nah, that guy doesn’t have a weapon…just shru, shrugged off his coat. Nothing underneath.
04:42 (Pilot): Anything on ICOM?
04:42 (MC): Nothing so far. I think the rocket hit the front of the street here.
04:42 (Pilot): He’s calling females? They said 21 males, no females.
04:42 (MC): Earlier, yeah.
04:42 (Sensor): Now they’re calling 3 females and 1 child. 1 possible child.
04:42 (MC): Called him a adolescent earlier.
…
04:43 (Sensor): Yeah, at this point I wouldn’t…I personally wouldn’t be comfortable shooting at these people.
04:43 (MC): No.
04:43 (Sensor): Uh, esp…especially just on DGS’s…If I couldn’t tell with my own eyeball that they had weapons, I wouldn’t just go off of DGS’s, uh, (another crew member: Yeah.) assessment…for this reason.
04:43 (Pilot): That lady is carrying a kid, huh? Maybe.
04:43 (Safety Observer): No.
04:43 (MC): No. 04:43 (Sensor): Uh, yeah.
04:43 (MC): The baby, I think on the right. Yeah.
04:43 (Sensor): Yeah.
04:43 (Pilot): The middle.
04:43 (MC): Yeah.
04:43 (Sensor): Right there in the crosshairs.
04:43 (Safety Observer): *Explicative,* let them know, dude. Have them pass it to Jag. There’s…
04:43 (MC): Yeah.
…
04:44 (Safety Observer): Yeah, they called out the kid.
04:44 (MC): Yep. 04:44 (Sensor): I got another kid.
04:44 (Safety Observer): That’s one of the adolescents from earlier.
…
04:45 (Pilot): Bam Bam41, Kirk97. Uh, just be advised, uh, our DGS is calling out, uh, potential 3 females and, uh, 2 adolescents, uh, near the center vehicle. Uh, just want to confirm that you saw that and passed to Jag.
…
04:48 (Sensor): These guys all need to get their asses kicked.
04:48 (MC): What’s that?
04:48 (Sensor): These dudes over here. Ones that are standing up…[Radio static]
04:48 (Broken Radio Transmission) Jag25, Bam…(static)
04:48 (Sensor): All their women are over here. Kids.
04:48 (Safety Observer): I know.
04:48 (Sensor): They’re sitting around on their ass over by the blown‐up truck.
Humility in foreign policy “is useful trait,” outgoing President Barack Obama said, adding that America is “an indispensable nation” that has “a lot to be proud of” in the world – thanks to having the most powerful military force.
The assertion came during Obama’s sit in with HBO’s Real Time show host Bill Maher on Friday. The interview was focused on the president’s political legacy and domestic problems, but the commander-in-chief also shared his thoughts on why the US needs a military that costs over $600 billions a year, according to Maher’s count.
“The US having the most powerful military on Earth… helps up check the impulses of some other bad folks,” Obama said, giving North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his country’s nuclear weapons program as an example.
The Pentagon stages annual military exercises with its ally, South Korea, to prepare for a possible conflict with North Korea. South Korea is the world’s tenth biggest defense spender, investing about $34 billion in its military annually, compared to North Korea’s estimated $10 billion. Pyongyang insists it needs nuclear weapons to deter possible military aggression from the US.
Obama said the US has a natural inclination to intervene globally, though sometimes things go “haywire.”
“Bad things happen around the world and our natural instinct is – we should do something. There are times where our intervention makes a difference, but there are a lot of times where the unintended consequences can result in more problems when we intervene. And sorting out where those issues play out is, I think, one of the biggest challenges that any president has,” he said.
While the president didn’t elaborate on which of his decisions to employ America’s military might had caused unintended consequences, the destruction of Libya in 2011 may come to mind first. NATO’s bombing campaign helped rebels topple the country’s government, and, five years on, Libya is a fractured nation over which competing militant groups, terrorists, and criminals run rampant. In his earlier interviews, Obama said that he regretted not having a plan of action for after the intervention.
Yet Obama said he still believes the US and its military should continue to play a major role in the world.
“As flawed as our foreign policy can be, and whatever blind spots we have, we really are the indispensable nation,” he bragged.
American troops are heavily involved in providing humanitarian relief after natural disasters occur or when diseases break out, Obama explained, mentioning the Ebola virus outbreak of 2014. The Pentagon has infrastructure in place for rapid response and can often act before anyone else.
America’s important role goes beyond its military presence, however.
“There is not an international meeting I go to in which, if we were not sitting at the table, nothing gets done. For the most part, other countries don’t have either the capacity or the inclination,” he said.
“When you have a bunch of authoritarian governments out there and a creeping authoritarian impulse around the world, we also are the ones who are pushing back – imperfectly, but most effectively – against locking up journalists and killing human rights activists and making sure that poor people get food and dealing with health crises,” he said.
While Obama didn’t elaborate on how successful America was in pushing back against Turkey’s impulse to arrest journalists or Saudi Arabia’s executions of human rights activists, for example, he insisted that the world needed America’s influence.
“Our values and our ideals actually matter. We do a lot of good around the world. There are some things that we do that are either ineffective or imperfect, but there is a lot to be proud of,” the president said.
The interview came a week ahead of the US presidential election. Before wrapping up, Obama reiterated his call to vote for fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The U.S. is entering a dangerous political phase where a distant and cloistered political class threatens the use of state power to legitimize itself in the face of declining popular support and serial military calamities of its own making. In 2001 the George W. Bush administration used the opaque and as yet not fully explained events of 9/11 to claim legitimacy as faux protector of the American people as it launched catastrophic wars that destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan and unleashed ongoing chaos across the Middle East.
With uber-hawk and unindicted co-conspirator Hillary Clinton favored to win election under a cloud of suspicion for pay-to-play practices as Secretary of State and in widely declining economic circumstances an imperative to change the subject will assert itself the day after election day. Having demonstrated a propensity for wanton slaughter in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and the streets of major American cities (1994 ‘Crime’ bill), Mrs. Clinton is already busy stoking a new Cold War with Russia to cover her own activities.
The neo-con choice of Russia as menace-of-opportunity joins a long history of defining American politics through negation. In the original (‘classic?’) Cold War national identity served as an envelop-of-convenience for conciliatory economic policies within the U.S. and repressive and opportunistic policies abroad. Since the 1970s selective (class based) economic liberalization has cut labor and the poor adrift as a self-serving ruling class has gorged itself at the public trough through bailouts, privatizations and special privileges.
The Cold War was always largely a business enterprise— the communist boogeyman was used by the U.S. to overthrow democratically elected governments and install business-friendly regimes that would answer to U.S. (corporate) interests. Its resurrection is to reassert a national ‘envelop’ as cover for economic interests now ‘freed’ to treat a growing portion of the domestic population as imperial subjects. Growing resistance suggests a need for more convincing misdirection if the status quo is to be maintained.
Ongoing neo-con claims that Russia invaded Ukraine are to cover the U.S. role in facilitating a coup against the popularly elected government there and depend on American ignorance of the longstanding Russian naval base at Sevastopol for plausibility. Furthermore, against explicit promises not to do so, since the early 1990s the U.S. (through NATO) has built military bases in Eastern Europe surrounding Russia. This as the U.S. embarks on a multi-decade program to ‘upgrade’ its nuclear weapons arsenal.
Surrounding Russia with NATO (U.S.) military bases is generally analogous to the Russians building military bases on the Mexican and Canadian borders with the U.S., only without the historical precedent of sequential, devastating land invasions that the Russians have faced. What cloistered neo-cons in the U.S., led by Hillary Clinton, call military ‘strength’ is a perpetual upping of the ante where each step is ‘rational’ in some political-economistic sense while the broader enterprise risks collective suicide.
As strategy, doing so leaves either capitulation or full scale confrontation as likely responses. A ‘third-way’ was tried when American economists were sent to post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s to ‘help’ with privatization of the Russian economy. The result was a bifurcated economy where 99% of Russians were deeply immiserated while select ‘oligarchs,’ were made stupendously rich. Luckily for the economists, enough Russians died from privation during their ‘experiment’ to leave few witnesses to the fiasco.
For cynical Americans raised on Cold War propaganda, the idea of Western academics scamming gullible Russians with long-discredited capitalist ideology might be good for a laugh were these same people not the ‘brain trust’ behind the bi-partisan governing consensus in the U.S. in 2016. The economics used to loot Russia were absolutely conventional, the very same used by Bill Clinton to ‘liberate’ Wall Street from social accountability, to liberate the American working class from gainful employment and to ‘free’ the American poor from burdensome food and rent money.
The Russian reaction to being immiserated was to turn away from the American-style economic liberalization that remains the Democrats’ core economic program in the U.S. The seeming inability of the American political class to learn from its mistakes proceeds from the assumption that current outcomes are mistakes in any sense recognizable to it. Highly cloistered class divisions leave it impervious to the negative consequences of its economic policies much as it is to those of its foreign policies.
Following passage of NAFTA economic competition was used to explain the engineered immiseration of the American working class. But without commensurability of circumstances the idea of a global labor market makes little sense. The implausibility of displaced auto workers in Detroit packing up their families and possessions to live for $10 per day in southeastern China illustrates the conundrum. ‘Capital,’ connected capitalists with extensive social resources, can build factories abroad. But without a standing army to repatriate profits, that scheme has never worked very well.
Conversely, with the racial repression that followed the nominal end of slavery in the U.S., at what point did American Blacks receive the market wage that no longer suppressed wages more broadly? Notice the formulation: Blacks whose wages were held down through systematic racial repression (Black codes, convict leasing, Jim Crow and now mass incarceration) acted in a ‘market’ sense to lower the wages of wage-dependent Whites. This is the ‘market’ explanation of race relations in a market economy when the (liberal) premise of market-driven outcomes is applied.
It is this latter point— that rigged economic institutions produce rigged outcomes, that liberal Democrats try to explain away with identity politics. NAFTA, like the TPP that follows, is designed to shift economic power from labor to capital. It is also designed to exploit residual imperial relations to divide labor along engineered lines of division. In the U.S. the state created and enforced racial repression to serve economic interests. This is the residual of imperial relations that to which NAFTA was added.
By siding with existing economic power Western liberals chose the paradox that by destroying the institutions that make markets ‘free’ like labor unions and collective bargaining (see Adam Smith on manufacturer combines suppressing wages) economic outcomes can still be claimed to be ‘market’ based. In a general sense in the case of Russia, the Russian people wanted none of it once it became clear that American intentions were collaborative looting of the Russian economy.
Americans have a longer history of market mythology to wade through. If slaves produce goods that have economic value then demand for wage labor is reduced relative to the goods produced and the difference accrues to capitalists. If NAFTA ‘frees’ capitalists to produce goods in Mexico or China under neo-colonial conditions (see Foxxcon suicide nets) a similar process takes place. This sleight-of-hand works by tautologically defining all labor, including slave labor, as freely undertaken.
It is hardly accidental that Barack Obama, and soon most probably Hillary Clinton, frame corporate-power enhancing agreements like the TPP in terms of geopolitical competition. Much as Democrats use Republicans (and vice-versa) as foils, the U.S. powers-that-be need a Russian ‘strongman’ and Chinese economic ‘connivance’ to sell trade deals and foreign entanglements to an already hard-pressed American working class. Here the relation of economic interests to geopolitics re-enters.
Like her husband before her, Hillary Clinton has committed to the economically paradoxical position of increasing social spending and balancing the Federal budget. Bill Clinton addressed this paradox by reneging on his promise to increase social spending. In terms of factual possibility, balancing the budget has always been a canard used by Republicans (and national Democrats) to cut social spending. There is no fact-based reason why a balanced budget is either necessary or virtuous.
The political-economic position that this leaves Mrs. Clinton in is that her major benefactors on Wall Street and in executive suites want policies that weaken the position of labor and immiserate the bottom 90% or so of the population. And the pressure relief value of increased social spending will be ‘off-the-table’ much like it has been under Barack Obama and Bill Clinton so as to balance the budget. Even if neo-Keynesian pleaders get through to her the response will be ‘public-private partnerships,’ privatization and tax cuts that benefit the wealthy.
The political problem for the establishment is that the polity is in various stages of open revolt. In the long-held American tradition of dividing to conquer, Mrs. Clinton has drawn battle lines in a class war by dismissing the most economically put-upon half of the polity as ‘deplorables,’ as racist hicks who lack the vocabularies and table manners to properly earn their keep. That these same people had jobs until the Clintons sent them to Mexico and earned their keep until Wall Street cut their pay to nothing helps clarify precisely who it is that is deplorable.
Russia re-enters as the mythical boogeyman, a/k/a convenient foil, for the remote and calcified ruling class to pin its own misdeeds on. Julian Assange has now clarified that, Clinton ‘team’ assertions to the contrary, Russia is not the source of the Wikileaks revelations that will serve as fodder for ongoing investigations if Mrs. Clinton wins election. A crisis of legitimacy is all but guaranteed. If ‘things’ begin to unwind as circumstances suggest they might, expect the war drums to beat louder.
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is published by CounterPunch Books.
Russia expects Washington to provide an explanation after a report claimed that Pentagon cyber-offensive specialists have hacked into Russia’s power grids, telecommunications networks, and the Kremlin’s command systems for a possible sabotage.
“If no official reaction from the American administration follows, it would mean state cyberterrorism exists in the US. If the threats of the attack, which were published by the US media, are carried out, Moscow would be justified in charging Washington,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, according to the ministry’s website.
NBC News said earlier in an exclusive report that US military hackers have penetrated crucial infrastructure in Russia, “making them vulnerable to attack by secret American cyber weapons should the US deem it necessary.”
The report was based on the account of a senior US intelligence official and top-secret documents. NBC said the hack was carried out in preparation for waging a full-scale cyberwar with Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also commented on the report, saying Russia had “cybersecurity measures taken at the level proper for the current situation, and the threats voiced against us by officials of other nations.”
US officials earlier alleged that countries like Russia and China could use hackers to disrupt American power grids and other crucial infrastructure.
Last week, the United Nations took an historic step towards global elimination of nuclear weapons, in voting to begin negotiations next year on a treaty to ban nukes. The U.S. and other nuclear weapon states, other than North Korea, declined to support the resolution, with the U.S. and its allies lobbying hard to defeat it. The contradictions in the official U.S. statement are myriad, but here are just a few.
“How can a state that relies on nuclear weapons for its security possibly join a negotiation meant to stigmatize and eliminate them?” argued Ambassador Robert Wood, the U.S. special representative to the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, “The ban treaty runs the risk of undermining regional security.”
Taking the first sentence, Ambassador Wood actually has it backwards. With its huge conventional military superiority, the U.S. would be much more secure in a world free of nuclear weapons. Instead, nuclear weapons are increasingly relied on by other countries, particularly Russia, as a counterweight to the U.S. conventional advantage (which is why nuclear disarmament is unlikely to happen in a vacuum; U.S. conventional military superiority is an impediment to global denuclearization).
So, other countries are more likely to hang onto their nukes, making the U.S. and the whole world less secure, not more. As for the second sentence about the risk of undermining regional security, Wood did not say which regions he was referring to, probably because he couldn’t plausibly name one. Regional nuclear-free and weapons of mass destruction-free zones, which cover the entire global South, are wildly successful and have helped increase regional security. And wouldn’t the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, and Korean peninsula be much safer if Israel, India, Pakistan, China and North Korea ditched their nukes?
Similarly, Wood’s statement “…while we respect the views of the proponents, we disagree with the practicality of their approach and are concerned with the negative effects of seeking to ban nuclear weapons without consideration of the over-arching international security environment” is a head scratcher. Nuclear-free and WMD-free zones have been very effective and practical, and moreover, the increasingly unstable, insecure and militarized international security environment is a terrific reason to move toward banning nuclear weapons worldwide. And hasn’t U.S. military intervention, particularly in the greater Middle East and Near East Asian regions over the last decade and a half significantly degraded said international security environment?
The following paragraph uttered by Ambassador Wood packs a lot of unwise “conventional wisdom” into a short statement and deserves some critical deconstruction:
“The current challenge to nuclear disarmament is not a lack of legal instruments. The challenges to disarmament are a result of the political, technical and security realities we presently face. The United States is ready to take additional steps including bilateral reductions with Russia and a treaty ending the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, some states are currently unwilling to engage in further nuclear reductions, and others are increasing their arsenals.”
“The current challenge to nuclear disarmament is not a lack of legal instruments.” That is true. The problem is the U.S. and other nuclear states blowing off, since 1970, their legal obligation under article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue negotiations toward nuclear disarmament. If they were doing this in good faith, last week’s UN vote would never have happened. The Republic of the Marshall Islands courageously stepped up to sue the nuclear weapons states at the International Court of Justice for the failure to uphold article VI. The court recently threw the cases out on procedural grounds, but the Marshalls and their allies will persist with appeals, including in U.S. District Court.
“The challenges to disarmament are a result of the political, technical and security realities we presently face.” Also true, but with a heavy dose of cynical, feigned naivete, as if those realities fell from the sky one day. As the unipolar super power, the world’s leading country politically, economically and militarily, doesn’t the U.S. bear a disproportionate responsibility for the dangerous state of global affairs? Aren’t our “security realities” mostly of our own making through our overly militarized foreign policy, which has earned us enemies and adversaries in so many corners of the globe?
“The United States is ready to take additional steps including bilateral reductions with Russia and a treaty ending the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, some states are currently unwilling to engage in further nuclear reductions, and others are increasing their arsenals.” There is a lot to dissect here. Yes, the Obama Administration did want to negotiate further nuclear cuts with Russia. Regrettably, Russia refused, but it was understandable. Between astonishingly arrogant U.S. post-Cold War triumphalism, NATO expansion eastward to Russia’s borders (violating a pledge not to do so by the first President Bush), vilification not just of Russian President Vladimir Putin but of Russia itself, and the afore-mentioned U.S. conventional superiority (with foreign bases and military allies surrounding Russia, and also China), U.S. interests in further nuclear cuts were thwarted – by U.S. foreign policy. And in terms of increasing arsenals, the U.S. has initiated a 30 year, $1 trillion program to upgrade and overhaul the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex, from weapons labs to warheads to missiles, planes and submarines, predictably starting a new nuclear arms race, as every other nuclear state has followed suit in announcing plans to “modernize” their own nuclear arsenals.
The phrase that jumps to mind in all of this is “Physician, heal thyself.” Instead of whining about the majority of the world’s countries (123 of the 177 countries voted for the resolution to commence nuclear weapons ban treaty negotiations) being unrealistic, the U.S. needs to cancel its exorbitant, proliferation-inducing nuclear “modernization” plans and get serious about banishing the scourge of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. Joining in, and perhaps even leading, the ban treaty negotiations would be fitting for the only country ever to use nuclear weapons in war.
Kevin Martin is President of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund, the country’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization with 200,000 supporters nationwide. www.peace-action.org
Imagine if a local business in your town invented a brand new tool that was intended to have an almost magical effect thousands of miles away. However, where the tool was kept and used locally became an area unsafe for children. Children who got near this tool tended to have increased blood pressure and increased stress hormones, lower reading skills, poorer memories, impaired auditory and speech perception, and impaired academic performance.
Most of us would find this situation at least a little concerning, unless the new invention was designed to murder lots of people. Then it’d be just fine.
Now, imagine if this same new tool ruined neighborhoods because people couldn’t safely live near it. Imagine if the government had to not only compensate people but kick them out of living near the location of this tool. Again, I think, we might find that troubling if mass murder were not the mission.
Imagine also that this tool fairly frequently explodes, emitting highly toxic chemicals, particles, and fibers unsafe to breathe into the air for miles around. Normally, that’d be a problem. But if this tool is needed for killing lots of people, we’ll work with its flaws, won’t we?
Now, what if this new gadget was expected to cost at least $1,400,000,000,000 over 50 years? And what if that money had to be taken away from numerous other expenses more beneficial for the economy and the world? What if the $1.4 trillion was drained out of the economy causing a loss of jobs and a radical diminution of resources for education, healthcare, housing, environmental protection, or humanitarian aid? Wouldn’t that be a worry in some cases, I mean in those cases where the ability to kill tons of human beings wasn’t at stake?
What if this product, even when working perfectly, was a leading destroyer of the earth’s natural environment?
What if this high-tech toy wasn’t even designed to do what was expected of it and wasn’t even able to do what it was designed for?
Amazingly, even those shortcomings do not matter as long as the intention is massive murder and destruction. Then, all is forgiven.
The tool I’m describing is called the F-35. At RootsAction.org you can find a new petition launched by locally-minded people acting globally in places where the F-35 is intended to be based. Also at that link you’ll find explanations of how the tool I’ve been describing is the F-35.
The petition is directed to the United States Congress and the governments of Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Israel, Japan and South Korea from the world and from the people of Burlington, Vermont, and Fairbanks, Alaska, where the F-35 is to be based. This effort is being initiated by Vermont Stop the F35 Coalition, Save Our Skies Vermont, Western Maine Matters, Alaska Peace Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks Peace Club, North Star Chapter 146 Veterans For Peace, World Beyond War, RootsAction.org, Code Pink, and Ben Cohen.
The F-35 is a weapon of offensive war, serving no defensive purpose. It is planned to cost the U.S. $1.4 trillion over 50 years. Because starvation on earth could be ended for $30 billion and the lack of clean drinking water for $11 billion per year, it is first and foremost through the wasting of resources that this airplane will kill. Military spending, contrary to popular misconception, also hurts the U.S. economy (see here) and other economies. The F-35 causes negative health impacts and cognitive impairment in children living near its bases. It renders housing near airports unsuitable for residential use. It has a high crash rate and horrible consequences to those living in the area of its crashes. Its emissions are a major environmental polluter.
Wars are endangering the United States and other participating nations rather than protecting them. Nonviolent tools of law, diplomacy, aid, crisis prevention, and verifiable nuclear disarmament should be substituted for continuing counterproductive wars. Therefore, we, the undersigned, call for the immediate cancellation of the F-35 program as a whole, and the immediate cancellation of plans to base any such dangerous and noisy jets near populated areas. We oppose replacing the F-35 with any other weapon or basing the F-35 in any other locations. We further demand redirection of the money for the F-35 back into taxpayers’ pockets, and into environmental and human needs in the U.S., other F-35 customer nations, and around the world, including to fight climate change, pay off student debt, rebuild crumbling infrastructure, and improve education, healthcare, and housing.
By Maryanne DemasiMaryanne Demasi | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2026
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
“No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines,” Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America’s overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I’ve spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won’t save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn’t get to say “trust me” the way many doctors do. “I need to prove claims with real data.”
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