CIA leaves explosives on school bus borrowed for training
RT | April 1, 2016
For at least two days a school bus in northern Virginia has been carrying students with explosive material hidden in its engine compartment. The explosives fell out of a container, which was used by the CIA for training last week.
“During the exercise, explosive training material was inadvertently left by the CIA K-9 unit in one of the buses used in the exercise,” the CIA said in a statement. The agency attested that the explosives were “incredibly stable” and “benign” and didn’t put anyone in danger.
The explosive was discovered on Wednesday during a routine maintenance check. It had been unnoticed for nearly a week since March 24.
The CIA was called to retrieve the material. Neither the federal agency nor local authorities would go into detail about what kind of explosive was involved.
“The exact nature of the training material used in this exercise is not being released at the request of the CIA so as not to compromise its training techniques,” Loudoun County officials said.
Loudoun schools spokesman Wayde Byard described the explosive as a “putty-type” material designed for use on the battlefield and which requires a special detonator. Putty or plastic explosives, including the well-known C-4, are easily shaped and well-suited for demolition works.
The Briar Woods High School, which provided its premises to the CIA for the spring break training, said the vehicle was used for eight runs on Monday and Tuesday before the explosives were discovered. It carried 26 students attending Rock Ridge High School, Buffalo Trail Elementary School and Pinebrook Elementary School.
The CIA said the training was routine and part of exercises its agents do with local law enforcement. The container with explosive was designed to see how good sniffer dogs would be at finding it.
Derailing Peace Deal in Colombia
By Jonathan Marshall | Consortium News | March 31, 2016
Cuban and U.S. leaders overcame immense obstacles to end more than a half century of confrontation between their countries with President Barack Obama’s visit to Havana. But they were unable to end more than a half century of political violence in Colombia by brokering a peace pact that was scheduled to be signed in Havana on March 23, one day after Obama departed.
That target date was set by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, during negotiations hosted by Cuban President Raúl Castro last September. Now the parties are aiming for a new deadline at the end of this year.
After 52 years of conflict, they are used to setbacks and delays. But the armed struggle has already killed more than 220,000 and claimed 7.9 million registered victims — including 77,000 who disappeared — so Colombia desperately needs peace and reconciliation as soon as possible.
The key sticking point concerns parties who are not at the negotiating table. They include a smaller but still potent rebel group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN. More important are right-wing and criminal paramilitary groups who have the motive and means to massacre FARC soldiers and their civilian sympathizers if they get the opportunity.
Until Bogota — and Washington — find a convincing way to restrain these paramilitary terrorists after FARC lays down its arms, Colombia will never find peace.
The peace process has made great strides over the past year. Overall violence is down. The government pardoned some FARC prisoners and helped them return to civilian life. FARC promised to end child recruitment and release children under the age of 15 from its ranks; it also conducted an historic ceremony of public apology for its part in killing civilians during a 2002 firefight with paramilitary forces. The two sides engaged in clearing mines for the first time this spring. They have jointly asked the United Nations Security Council to monitor an eventual ceasefire.
But the Colombian government demands that FARC guerrillas demobilize and hand over their weapons in remote rural “concentration zones.” They would be spared arrest as long as they remain in isolation. FARC insists that it be permitted to store weapons in the zones and be granted their freedom anywhere in the country.
Explaining the organization’s reluctance to totally disarm, a FARC negotiator pointedly questioned whether the government could guarantee their security in the face of paramilitary threats.
“In the last month, more than 28 community organizers, human rights defenders and peasant farmers have been murdered and their killers continue to enjoy impunity,” he said. “Solving the paramilitary problem the main challenge we are facing today, to help this process move ahead.”
Opposing the Peace Process
The U.N. Human Rights Council for Colombia reported in March that “diverse local interests and groups opposed to change resulting from the peace process” — including armed political and criminal groups engaged in land seizures, drug trafficking, illegal mining and extortion — “are already employing violence and intimidation to protect their interests, and the State has not had a sufficiently effective response.”
It added, with a strong affirmation of FARC’s concerns, that “demobilizing guerrillas . . . could also be vulnerable.”
Referring to right-wing death squads that annihilated supporters of a prominent leftist political party affiliated with FARC, the report declared, “The hundreds of assassinations of Unión Patriótica political party leaders and members in the 1980s and 1990s illustrate the elevated risk for new political movements. Security guarantees and transformation of the political reality are essential to avoid repetition of this situation.”
Many experts estimate that more than 2,000 Unión Patriótica members were murdered by right-wing death squads serving powerful drug lords and allied government security forces. The victims included two of the party’s presidential candidates, one elected senator, eight congressmen, 70 councilmen, and dozens of deputies and mayors. The assassination campaign ended a ceasefire reached by FARC and the government in 1987 and destroyed hopes for peace.
Much of this terrorist violence was perpetrated by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a paramilitary organization that eventually took over the cocaine trade from its original patron, the Medellín Cartel. The AUC enjoyed support from government and military officials who appreciated its help in the war against FARC (which also had dirty hands in the drug trade).
The AUC’s 30,000 members officially demobilized in 2006. Subsequent testimony by some of them helped convict 60 former congressmen and seven former governors for collaborating with the criminal organization. Former President Alvaro Uribe accepted money from the AUC for his 2002 presidential campaign; his brother Santiago was arrested in February on charges of helping to create a paramilitary group of his own.
The Colombian human rights group MOVICE reported in March that a new generation of criminal bands have launched a campaign of murder and intimidation to disrupt the current peace talks. Their victims include community leaders and peasants who claim their lands were illegally seized.
“I think part of the message [of the killings] is to intimidate the FARC, and let them know what awaits them if they enter politics,” said a MOVICE spokesman.
Rightist Drug Lords
Chief among the threats to FARC and its community supporters is Colombia’s most powerful drug trafficking organization, “Los Urabeños,” which has muscled its way into many former guerrilla territories and today controls much of the country’s Caribbean coast. It is a direct successor to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.
“We feel obligated to continue our anti-subversive fight,” a spokesman for Los Urabeños declared soon after the group announced it formation.
The Santos government has made genuine moves to seek justice against the instigators of political violence. It recently arrested a senior general on charges of overseeing the grisly killing of thousands of civilians whom the Army falsely claimed were guerrillas in order to inflate body counts and win bonuses.
State prosecutors also said they will arrest a former head of the army — and ally of former President Uribe — for the same crime, known as the “false positives” scandal.
According to Human Rights Watch, at least 16 active and retired army generals are currently under investigation by the Attorney General’s office for “false positive” killings, and about 800 lower-ranking soldiers have been convicted. But human rights groups warn that rules tentatively worked out by the government and FARC to promote reconciliation by granting immunity for war crimes could prevent further prosecution of false positive cases.
The United States, which bears a heavy responsibility for promoting state violence and the growth of paramilitary organizations to combat communism in Colombia in the 1950s and 1960s, can make partial amends by supporting President Santos’s efforts at reconciliation while pressing to see that justice is served by holding war criminals accountable.
In the interests of peace and justice, Washington should also offer all reasonable aid to help Colombia suppress organizations like Los Urabeños that continue the terrible legacy of previous terrorist and criminal paramilitary groups.
As Adam Isacson, a Colombia security analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, noted recent murders by the new generation of paramilitary forces “make it a lot harder for the FARC leadership to convince their rank and file to demobilize. The U.S. has to make it clear that the paramilitaries…are right up there with the Zetas, Sinaloa [cartels] and the MS-13 as security threats, because of their ability to threaten a peaceful outcome in Colombia.”
Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international affairs, including The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War and the International Drug Traffic (Stanford University Press, 2012).
Are Saudis buying Israeli drones through South Africa?
RT | March 31, 2016
Saudi Arabia announced that it is building a drone plant in cooperation with South Africa, but a well-known Saudi defense analyst claimed this is a guise to hide the clandestine purchases of aircraft from Israel.
The analyst, who calls himself “Mujtahid” has been leaking exclusive information about the royal family of Saudi Arabia on Twitter since the early 2000s. He challenged the official report released by the Saudi Defense Ministry this week, which stated the kingdom would build a drone factory in collaboration with South Africa.
“The report aims to hide the fact that Saudi Arabia intends to purchase drones from Israel via South Africa,” he said.
“Saudi Arabia buys Israeli drones through South Africa. These drones later arrive from South Africa, dismantled, to Saudi Arabia, where they are assembled,” Mujtahid added, describing the mechanism developed to carry out the Israeli-Saudi deal.
He went on to accuse Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who is Saudi Defense Minister and, according to some experts, the country’s second most powerful person, of serving Israel’s interest by purchasing drones from the Jewish state.
Saudi Arabia has been trying for years to strengthen its armed forces with drone capabilities. In 2010, General Atomics, the US producer of the Predator drone family, announced it had acquired export licenses for a number of Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia. Export to Saudi Arabia has so far failed to materialize, even though a similar deal with the United Arab Emirates was approved by the US Congress in 2015.
As supplies from its primary arms supplier were hanging in limbo, Riyadh was reportedly looking for alternative sellers of the technology. In 2013, reports said Saudi Arabia would be buying reconnaissance drones from the South African arms manufacturer Denel Dynamics. Last year, some reports said both the Saudis and the Emirates had managed to buy ground attack drones from China for their stalling Yemeni campaign.
Israel is one of the world’s leading producers of drones, but selling the technology to Saudi Arabia would be politically disastrous, as public opinion in both Israel and the Arab nation would be strongly against such a deal.
The two countries were said to have some military cooperation in their mutual rivalry with regional competitor Iran. Some reports suggested Israel and Saudi Arabia had discussed the possibility of an Israeli attack through Saudi airspace against Iranian nuclear sites amid the tense negotiation for a nuclear deal between Tehran and six leading world powers.
Anti-Trump NYT Blasts His Foreign Policy
By Stephen Lendman | March 30, 2016
He’s a serious presidential contender with unorthodox views on some issues – making him appear anti-establishment, worrying duopoly power brokers and media scoundrels supporting them.
Wide-ranging interviews with NYT and Washington Post editors, as well as opinions expressed separately, showed his foreign policy views differ considerably from other candidates.
“I want to get along with Russia,” he said, calling good relations “very good… I’d get along very well with Vladimir Putin.”
“I want to get along with all countries, and we will,” he said, calling his approach to world affairs “unabashedly noninterventionist.”
He opposes expensive worldwide nation-building projects while America’s infrastructure deteriorates.
He’s against massive US military buildups in Europe and East Asia. “We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore. NATO is costing us a fortune…”
“Why are we (risking) potentially (a) third world war with Russia?” He questions involvement in protecting allies like Japan and South Korea, wanting them to do more on their own.
US intervention abroad caused more problems than solutions, notably in the Middle East, he said.
“Every bad decision that you could make in the Middle East was made.” If Obama and Bush “just (went) to the beach and enjoyed the ocean and the sun, we would’ve been much better off… than all of this tremendous death, destruction, and… monetary loss. It’s just incredible,” he stressed.
He called NATO obsolete, preferring an alternative organization focusing on counterterrorism. He questioned the benefit of America’s global empire of bases.
He called nuclear weapons “the biggest problem the world has,” saying he’d use them only as “an absolute last step,” instead of renouncing them altogether.
The New York Times is America’s leading establishment media organization – supporting policies favoring wealth and power interests exclusively.
It editors called Trump’s foreign policy views “dangerous babble,” uneasy about an administration under his stewardship curbing its warmaking appetite – hyping nonexistent “Russia(n) aggressive movements in Ukraine and threats to the Baltics…”
Saying “this is no time (for) Washington” to restrain its global militarism. Trump’s views “are contradictory and shockingly ignorant.”
Times editors support US military involvement worldwide, its wars of aggression in multiple theaters.
They call today’s world “dangerous,” failing to explain Washington allied with Israel and other rogue states bear full responsibility for its deplorable state.
Trump if elected president will differ from traditional candidates largely in style. At the same time, if he favors more cooperation and less confrontation with other nations, “that’s a good thing” as he puts it in his own words.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Japanese media accuse govt of silencing criticism
RT | March 26, 2016
Senior Japanese journalists have denounced PM Shinzo Abe’s government for its recent clampdown on press freedom after the communications minister threatened to revoke their licenses for biased coverage last month.
Five Japanese journalists called a press conference to express their concerns over the government’s tightening grip on media.
“In Japan today, rather than the media watching the authorities, the government watches the media,” said Shuntaro Torigoe, a former news anchor on Japanese TV Asahi, adding that the Abe government “is most nervously checking what the media say, because what’s said on television affects his support ratings.”
Last month, Japan’s minister of internal affairs and communications, Sanae Takaichi, repeatedly warned broadcasters that they must produce “politically neutral” news coverage in compliance with the country’s broadcast law if they didn’t want to lose their licenses.
Despite growing concerns that such remarks can have an adverse effect on the press freedom, Takaichi’s words were reiterated by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, who supported the ministry’s stance, calling her comments “common sense.”
Following the remarks, Hiroko Kuniya, a prominent Japanese journalist, was ousted after 23 years of working as a popular primetime show host for public broadcaster NHK [Japan Broadcasting Corp]. After her last appearance on the show she commented on the departure by saying that “expressing things has gradually become difficult.”
Among other victims of the government`s crusade on media were veteran anchors Ichiro Furutachi, 61 (TV Asahi Corp), who stepped down last December and Shigetada Kishii, 71 (Tokyo Broadcasting System). Kishii announced he would leave the channel on March 31. He believes the broadcasters are being pressured by the government to sack outspoken anchors to stem the flow of criticism.
Last year, Kishii publicly opposed the government’s security policy legislation, which stipulates that Japan’s armed forces will be able to engage in the military operations overseas in defense of an ally, including the US, under attack. Despite being labeled “war legislation” by the public, it was approved by Abe’s government, triggering mass protests.
Article 174 of Japan’s broadcast law allows the minister of internal affairs to suspend operations of any station that fails to comply with the neutrality clause. However, media professionals didn’t see the minister’s words as a simple reminder, but rather a dangerous attempt of suppressing the media.
“It sounds as if the government can suspend the activities of broadcasters or remove newscasters just because they criticized the government,” said Soichiro Okuno, an MP for the Democratic Party of Japan.
“It was a remark that could even topple the government in a Western democracy,” wrote Akira Ikegami in a newspaper column last month.
Japan’s remilitarization has become the center topic of the national agenda under Abe’s government with many opposing the authorities’ efforts to broaden the mandate of Japan’s self-defense force and relocate a US military base on Okinawa. Nearly 30,000 people joined the mass rallies against the government’s plan to relocate the base, while hundreds of students marched through the streets of Tokyo protesting “war legislation” in February.
READ MORE: Up to 30,000 flock to Japan parliament to protest US base relocation in Okinawa
WaPo slams Trump on climate because nuke weapon explosion is ‘hypothetical’
Junk Science | March 23, 2016
“The problem with this response is that man-made climate change is real and happening now. The detonation of a nuclear bomb is a hypothetical.”
From the WaPo :
Surprise: Flying Nuclear Bombers Overhead Tends to Increase Tensions
Sputnik – 22.03.2016
The recent and historical record on US nuclear “signaling,” or flying nuclear armed aircraft over opposition nations, shows that it increases the risk of conflict and war.
In an editorial this week, military defense experts Adam Lowther and Chris Winklepleck argue that the strategic aircraft arm of the US nuclear triad provides unique “nuclear signaling” and serves a critical deterrence role in US military strategy.
Recent and historical evidence, however, shows that their claim lacks merit, as brandishing nuclear weapons only serves to exacerbate tensions and heighten the risk of conflict, former nuclear weapons expert at Los Alamos National Lab Jim Doyle writes for Defense News.
South Korea saw nuclear flyovers by the US in 2013 and 2016 using B-2 and B-52 aircraft, but the maneuvers have done nothing to diminish tensions on the Korean peninsula nor have they been a corrective to Pyongyang’s militaristic brinksmanship.
Recent North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests show that nuclear signaling does not achieve its desired effect. Reports out of Pyongyang suggest that US nuclear flyovers have been used instead by the Kim regime to increase domestic support for the dictatorship by confirming that a threat exists.
Specifically, the 2013 “long-range show of presence missions” by the US on the Korean peninsula was followed by North Korea’s restart of its Yongbyon nuclear reactor one month later. Following the second show of presence mission in 2016, DPRK conducted a fourth nuclear test explosion and expedited ballistic missile production and testing.
While military experts may write off aggressive North Korean military response as an anomaly, citing the country’s sometimes incoherent foreign policy, history points to the ineffectiveness of similar missions elsewhere.
On October 27, 1969, Doyle writes, the Nixon administration attempted to “signal” to the Soviet Union and the Viet Cong, in what became known as the “madman nuclear alert,” that Nixon was aggressive enough to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam if Moscow did not pressure the Hanoi government to seek peace. In that effort, 18 B-52s approached the USSR from the arctic. The posturing failed, heightening tensions with the Soviet Union, and doing nothing to resolve the Vietnam quagmire.
History shows that nuclear deterrence by means of mutually assured destruction is not an effective way to keep the peace, especially when global economic and political interests seek to end the threat of nuclear weapons. Research illustrates heightened tensions and conflict in the use of nuclear signaling. Nations seeking peace have no need to wield a larger club.
Photo – © Flickr/ Christopher Ebdon
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The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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