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Two Corrupt Establishments

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | March 9, 2016

The United States is led by two corrupt establishments, one Democratic and one Republican, both deeply dependent on special-interest money, both sharing a similar perspective on world affairs, and both disdainful toward the American people who are treated as objects to be manipulated, not citizens to be respected.

There are, of course, differences. The Democrats are more liberal on social policy and favor a somewhat larger role of government in addressing the nation’s domestic problems. The Republicans embrace Ronald Reagan’s motto, “government is the problem,” except when they want the government to intervene on “moral” issues such as gay marriage and abortion.

But these two corrupt establishments are intertwined when it comes to important issues of trade, economics and foreign policy. Both are true believers in neo-liberal “free trade”; both coddle Wall Street (albeit seeking slightly different levels of regulation); and both favor interventionist foreign policies (only varying modestly in how the wars are sold to the public).

Because the two establishments have a chokehold on the mainstream media, they escape any meaningful accountability when they are wrong. Thus, their corruption is not just defined by the billions of special-interest dollars that they take in but in their deviations from the real world. The two establishments have created a fantasyland that all the Important People treat as real.

Which is why it has been somewhat amusing to watch establishment pundits pontificate about what must be done in their make-believe world – stopping “Russian aggression,” establishing “safe zones” in Syria, and fawning over noble “allies” like Saudi Arabia and Turkey – while growing legions of Americans have begun to see through these transparent fictions.

Though the candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have many flaws, there is still something encouraging about Americans listening to some of straight talk from both Trump and Sanders – and to watch the flailing reactions of their establishment rivals.

While it’s true Trump has made comments that are offensive and stupid, he also has dished out some truths that the GOP establishment simply won’t abide, such as noting President George W. Bush’s failure to protect the country from the 9/11 attacks and Bush’s deceptive case for invading Iraq. Trump’s rivals were flummoxed by his audacity, sputtering about his apostasy, but rank-and-file Republicans were up to handling the truth.

Trump violated another Republican taboo when he advocated that the U.S. government take an evenhanded position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and even told pro-Israeli donors that they could not buy his support with donations. By contrast, other Republicans, such as Sen. Marco Rubio, were groveling for the handouts and advocating a U.S. foreign policy that could have been written by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump’s Israel heresy brought the Republican foreign-policy elite, the likes of William Kristol and other neoconservatives, to full battle stations. Kristol’s fellow co-founder of the neocon Project for the New American Century, Robert Kagan, was so apoplectic over Trump’s progress toward the GOP nomination that he announced that he would vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Clinton’s Struggles

Clinton, however, has had her own struggles toward the nomination. Though her imposing war chest and machine-driven sense of inevitability scared off several potential big-name rivals, she has had her hands full with Sen. Bernie Sanders, a 74-year-old “democratic socialist” from Vermont. Sanders pulled off a stunning upset on Tuesday by narrowly winning Michigan.

While Sanders has largely finessed foreign policy issues – beyond noting that he opposed the Iraq War and Clinton voted for it – Sanders apparently found a winning issue in Michigan when he emphasized his rejection of trade deals while Clinton has mostly supported them. The same issue has worked well for Trump as he lambastes U.S. establishment leaders for negotiating bad deals.

What is notable about the “free trade” issue is that it has long been a consensus position of both the Republican and Democratic establishments. For years, anyone who questioned these deals was mocked as a know-nothing or a protectionist. All the smart money was on “free trade,” a signature issue of both the Bushes and the Clintons, praised by editorialists from The Wall Street Journal through The New York Times.

The fact that “free trade” – over the past two decades – has become a major factor in hollowing out of the middle class, especially across the industrial heartland of Middle America, was of little concern to the financial and other elites concentrated on the coasts. At election time, those “loser” Americans could be kept in line with appeals to social issues and patriotism, even as many faced borderline poverty, growing heroin addiction rates and shorter life spans.

Despite that suffering, the twin Republican/Democratic establishments romped merrily along. The GOP elite called for evermore tax cuts to benefit the rich; demanded “reform” of Social Security and Medicare, meaning reductions in benefits; and proposed more military spending on more interventions overseas. The Democrats were only slightly less unrealistic, negotiating a new trade deal with Asia and seeking a new Cold War with Russia.

Early in Campaign 2016, the expectations were that Republican voters would again get behind an establishment candidate like former Florida Jeb Bush or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, while the Democrats would get in line behind Hillary Clinton’s coronation march.

TV pundits declared that there was no way that Donald Trump could win the GOP race, that his high early poll numbers would fade like a summer romance. Bernie Sanders was laughed at as a fringe “issue” candidate. But then something expected happened.

On the Republican side, blue-collar whites finally recognized how the GOP establishment had played them for suckers; they weren’t going to take it anymore. On the Democratic side, young voters, in particular, recognized how they had been dealt an extremely bad hand, stuck with massive student debt and unappealing job prospects.

So, on the GOP side, disaffected blue-collar whites rallied to Trump’s self-financed campaign and to his promises to renegotiate the trade deals and shut down illegal immigration; on the Democratic side, young voters joined Sanders’s call for a “political revolution.”

The two corrupt establishments were staggered. Yet, whether the populist anti-establishment insurrections can continue moving forward remains in doubt.

On the Democratic side, Clinton’s candidacy appears to have been saved because African-American voters know her better than Sanders and associate her with President Barack Obama. They’ve given her key support, especially in Southern states, but the Michigan result suggests that Clinton may have to delay her long-expected “pivot to the center” a bit longer.

On the Republican side, Trump’s brash style has driven many establishment favorites out of the race and has put Rubio on the ropes. If Rubio is knocked out – and if Ohio Gov. John Kasich remains an also-ran – then the establishment’s only alternative would be Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a thoroughly disliked figure in the U.S. Senate. It’s become increasingly plausible that Trump could win the Republican nomination.

What a Trump victory would mean for the Republican Party is hard to assess. Is it even possible for the GOP establishment with its laissez-faire orthodoxy of tax cuts for the rich and trickle-down economics for everyone else to reconcile with Trump’s populist agenda of protecting Social Security and demanding revamped trade deals to restore American manufacturing?

Further, what would the neocons do? They now control the Republican Party’s foreign policy apparatus, which is tied to unconditional support for Israel and interventionism against Israel’s perceived enemies, from Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, to Iran, to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Would they join Kagan in backing Hillary Clinton and trusting that she would be a reliable vessel for neocon desires?

And, if Clinton prevails against Sanders and does become the neocon “vessel,” where might the growing ranks of Democratic and Independent non-interventionists go? Will some side with Trump despite his ugly remarks about Mexicans and Muslims? Or will they reject both major parties, either voting for a third party or staying home?

Whatever happens, Official Washington’s twin corrupt establishments have been dealt an unexpected and potentially lasting punch.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

March 10, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Disarmament or Bust

Nations Meet to Discuss International Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons

By Lesley Docksey | Dissident Voice | March 9, 2016

With the debate going on about whether the UK should renew the Trident missile programme or get rid of it, hardly anything is said about what is happening internationally to rid the world of nuclear weapons – which shows how inward-looking Britain can be, despite claiming a prime position on the world stage.

While national media reported on the Stop Trident demonstration in London, it ignored the discussions taking place in Geneva, or their background including:

  • three international, government-level conferences, the last in Vienna, on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, which produced
  • the signing and endorsing of the Humanitarian Pledge by a majority of nations
  • a vote in the UN General Assembly (voted against by nuclear-armed states which called the Resolution ‘divisive’) but passed by 135 states, to establish an Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) to take forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations
  • the first meeting of which took place in Geneva in February

You’d think that deserved a headline or two, the attention of more than some MPs and loud trumpeting from anti-nuclear campaigners, but no. At the London demonstration, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Labour’s Leader Jeremy Corbyn did speak about the Vienna conference and the humanitarian issues.

And the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas mentioned the OEWG talks in Geneva. In a New Statesman article she also urged the UK government to take part in those meetings. Take part? They are boycotting them.

But no one mentions that.

Yet the wit, wisdom and yes, the whingeing, displayed in statements from Ambassadors and delegates, the depth of the debates, were in many ways far more worthy of our attention than another march to Trafalgar Square.

The aim was to identify the legal gaps in the nuclear weapons treaties and agreements that prevented genuine progress towards disarmament. Naturally some states insisted that there were no legal gaps and the old ‘step-by-step’ process was working even though the world is no nearer to disarmament.

Delegates from 90 nations were there, as was civil society.  In a statement delivered by Beatrice Fihn on behalf of ICAN and its 440 partner organisations, she listed all the legal gaps needing to be filled. And she reminded all those there that “Non-nuclear-weapon states are not merely encouraged to take positive steps towards nuclear disarmament; they are required to do so – regardless of the continued failure of nuclear-weapon states to act.”

From the start, a treaty banning nuclear weapons was mentioned more than any other legal instrument as a path towards disarmament, even by nuclear-alliance states begging for ‘caution’ and ‘we can’t do this without the input of nuclear states’. They can; and a ban treaty seems the best way forward.

“States that ‘rely on nuclear weapons in their security doctrines remain reluctant to consider moving ahead without the nuclear-armed states” reported the daily updates from Reaching Critical Will.

So what are the nuclear-alliance states?  They are those states (such as NATO members) which, although they have no nuclear weapons of their own, claim that they base their ‘security’ on those that do.  To quote Reaching Critical Will:

“While many states called for urgent action, others, including Germany, Netherlands, Japan, Canada speaking on behalf of a group of states, and Finland, cautioned that security considerations of states must be taken into account… Bangladesh asked what could be a bigger security concern than being the victim of a nuclear attack.” Good question.

Does this second-hand security mean that these states are depending on someone else to blow up the world? Would they not be equally guilty under international humanitarian law?

Still, give these states their due. They are at least taking part. The nuclear-armed states are determinedly boycotting the OEWG. Not being able to control what’s happening, they are relying on their alliance to fling a few spanners into the works for them.

The Netherlands tried. It argued that the nuclear-armed states should take part in the discussions. The majority of the world somehow cannot move forward without their willingness to take part. The OEWG should use its time thinking of ways to tempt the armed states into giving up their toys. And how was this for a circular argument:

… the Netherlands is not against a ‘ban’. We see it as a final element towards a world without nuclear weapons, when nuclear weapons no longer fulfil a function in the security of states. It is clear that we have not reached this stage yet and that starting negotiations on a ‘ban’ would therefore be premature.

So we should only have a ban when nuclear weapons are deemed useless anyway.

But as the Irish Ambassador said, in a very quotable speech:

This is a small planet, getting smaller every day… In such a world, questions of security impact us all… And in such a world there is no place for nuclear weapons… In any area of life, work or governance, if something wasn’t working for 20 years, or indeed for over 70, we would try to fix it.

As all those taking part in the OEWG wanted a world free of nuclear weapons; that, having signed up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), they seemed to know how to get there; that they were even more aware now of the terrible humanitarian consequences of using such weapons and the inability of any nation to cope with such an event; despite all that, said Ireland:

… the problem is that we are no nearer multilateral nuclear disarmament now than we were 20 years ago, when the NPT was indefinitely extended.

Ah, but look at how the non-proliferation part of the NPT has succeeded, was the reply. South Africa, among those nations that got rid of their nuclear arsenals, made a telling point: “nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are mutually reinforcing processes — the disregard of one has a direct impact on the advancement of the other.”

Delegates were coming to realise that working for a ban treaty does not exclude other legal processes towards disarmament. They can work together, but the big gap is the lack of a ban treaty. By the second day they were agreeing that, given the refusal of nuclear-armed states to take part in the discussions, a ban treaty was perhaps the most sensible way forward.

Malaysia explained that as most legal measures proposed are currently blocked by the nuclear-armed states, three not mutually exclusive options remain: a treaty banning nuclear weapons, a framework convention, and increasing verification capacity. They also pointed out that a ban treaty could be negotiated now and be part of a wider framework later, something the nuclear alliance has difficulty accepting, perhaps because they know their ‘security blanket’ will not approve.

New Zealand’s delegate was quite clear:

I have heard some recent suggestion that while a legally-binding prohibition may be necessary for maintaining a nuclear weapon-free world, it is not in fact necessary in order to attain one. However, no clear explanation for why, as a matter of international law, this might be the case has yet to be put forward.

This is surely part of the ‘smoke and mirrors’ game played by nuclear-armed states.

We see no reason why the pathway adopted for the elimination of other weapon systems, including the elimination of both other types of WMD – that of a legally binding prohibition – should not equally be applicable as a pathway for the elimination of nuclear weapons… There is no need to reinvent the wheel…

Indeed no. But we can make it very, very ornate. Australia delivered a fascinating working paper on behalf of itself and 17 other countries – fascinating because nowhere does it mention a ban treaty. Instead it talks of ‘no quick fixes’, ‘addressing the legitimate security concerns’ of nuclear-armed states and ‘incremental but necessary steps that will enhance security for all’.

It is all about ‘means and sequencing’ and identifying “concrete and practical building blocks”. The NPT is brought into play, as is the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. There are lists of all the tiny steps we might take, or consider taking, along with a), b), c) and so on to m).  There absolutely must be transparency and… well, think of it all as a trust-building exercise.

Mexico took up the challenge of the ‘legitimate security concerns’. This concept was not elaborated enough, Mexico argued, as it is not clear whose security these concerns focus on and if states are for or against collective security.  As Austria pointed out, collective security is a very different thing to the security of individual nations.

As for the lack of trust, Austria argued this is due to the failures of states to implement various agreements and commitments that had been agreed to by consensus. The onus is on those countries that have nuclear weapons or rely on them as part of nuclear alliances to diminish that mistrust.

Unable to resist a tiny dig at the pro-nuclear states Mexico pointed out that nuclear-armed states boycotting the meeting would not increase trust. Rather the reverse, one would think.

Austria, a leading light in these discussions, reminded delegates that in the Humanitarian (Pledge now adopted by the UN) it says:

We call on all states parties to the NPT to renew their commitment to the urgent and full implementation of existing obligations under Article VI, and to this end, to identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons…

A large number of states share the belief that such a legal gap exists, something pro-nuclear states try to deny. Austria’s working paper on this issue is masterly, laying out all the arguments and exposing the legal gaps. The very structure of the NPT requires additional legal (and non-legal) measures for its full implementation. This applies to Article VI just as much as it applies to the non-proliferation obligations.

(Article VI commits the nuclear armed states to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control,” (emphasis added).

All approaches to implementing Article VI should be followed. The ‘step-by-step’ method can sit alongside a comprehensive ban treaty. They are, argues Austria, complementary, and the humanitarian issue is now so serious that all available steps should be taken. Brazil reminded delegates that provisions under the NPT allowed the Nuclear Weapon States only to hold those weapons temporarily, something constantly ignored.

Austria also ripped up the ‘security’ and ‘deterrence’ arguments used by the USA et al. Deterrence rests on the threat of readiness to inflict mass destruction on a global scale, and on the awareness this would be suicidal. Thus, explains Austria:

Ultimately, it is difficult to reconcile this with the underlying foundation of nuclear deterrence that it leads to rational behaviour of all actors involved.  The threat is either credible, which requires – in light of the new evidence – readiness to act entirely irrationally. Alternatively, the threat is non-credible since rational analysis cannot lead to the conclusion of risking the use of nuclear weapons.

Not for nothing was Mutually-Assured-Destruction considered MAD.

During 5 days of presentations and debate, many states called for a ban treaty. And key supporters of the Humanitarian Pledge – Mexico, Austria, South Africa, Brazil, and Indonesia – stressed the time has now come to start the negotiations to prohibit nuclear weapons.

The OEWG reconvenes in May for another session. Dare we hope that we will see them start negotiating and putting together the text for a treaty that bans these weapons? It’s beginning to look that way.

• (With grateful thanks to Reaching Critical Will)

• See here for an overview of civil society’s campaign which led, finally, to the disarmament talks in Geneva

Lesley Docksey is the former editor of Abolish War.

March 10, 2016 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Pluto-Zionists Support for Hillary Clinton

By James Petras | March 9, 2016

Pluto-Zionism is the three-way marriage of plutocracy, right-wing Zionism and US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a serial war criminal, racist and servant of Wall Street. How did this deadly ménage-a-trois come about? The answer is that a stratospherically wealthy donor group, dedicated to promoting Israel’s dominance in the Middle East and deepening US military intervention in the region, has secured Clinton’s unconditional support for Tel Aviv’s ambitions and, in exchange, Hilary receives scores of millions to finance her Democratic Party foot soldiers and voters for her campaign.

Pluto-Zionism and Clinton

Pluto-Zionists comprise the leading financial backers of Clinton. Her million-dollar backers, among the most powerful financiers and media moguls in America, include: George Soros ($6 million), Marc Benioff, Roger Altman, Steven Spielberg, Haim and Cheryl Saban ($3 million and counting), Jeffrey Katzenberg, Donald Sussman, Herb Sandler, Jay and Mark Pritzker, S. Daniel Abraham ($1 million), Bernard Schwartz, Marc Lasry, Paul Singer, David Geffen, Fred Eychaner, Norman Braman and Bernie Marcus. Waiting in the wings are the Republican billionaire ‘king-makers’, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, the Koch brothers as well as the ‘liberal’ multi-billionaire, Michael Bloomberg who had contributed $11 million in 2012 elections. These erstwhile Republican funders are increasing frightened by the anti-‘free trade and anti-intervention’ rhetoric of their party’s front-runner, Donald Trump, and are approaching the solidly pro-Israel, pro-war and pro-Wall Street candidate, Madame Clinton.

Israeli-First Ideologues and Clinton

In addition to the powerful Pluto-Zionists, a vast army of Israel-First ideologues is behind Clinton, including ‘veteran’ arm-chair war mongers like Victoria Nuland Kagan, Donald and Robert Kagan, Robert Zoellick, Michael Chertoff, Dov Zakheim among so many other promoters of Washington’s continuous wars on many fronts. Ms Nuland-Kagan, as US Undersecretary of State for East European Affairs, openly bragged about using hundreds of millions of dollars of US taxpayer money to finance the right-wing Ukrainian coup. Michael Chertoff, as head of Homeland Security after 9/11, jailed thousands of innocent Muslims while freeing five Israeli-Mossad agents arrested by the FBI for suspected involvement or pre-knowledge of the attacks in New York after they were seen filming the collapse of the towers and celebrating the event from a warehouse rooftop in New Jersey!).

Pluto-Zionists and the Israel-First ideologues support Ms Clinton as a reward for her extraordinary military and economic activities on behalf of Tel Aviv’s quest for regional dominance. Her accomplishments for the Jewish State include the promotion of full-scale wars, which have destroyed Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan; economic sanctions and blockade against Iran (she threatened to ‘obliterate Iran’ in 2007; and her own repeatedly stated unconditional support for Israel’s devastation against the people imprisoned in Gaza, which has cost thousands of civilian lives and rendered hundreds of thousands homeless. (In a letter to her ‘banker’, Haim Saban, Hillary stated: “Israel didn’t teach Hamas (the people of Gaza) a harsh enough lesson last year”).

Clinton versus Trump: ‘Moderation’ is in the Eyes of the Deceiver

The Pluto-Zionists, Israel-First ideologues, the US mass media and their acolytes on Wall Street and the Republican and Democratic Party elite are all on a rampage against the wildly popular Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, labeling him as ‘a danger to everything America stands for. (sic)’ Apart from savaging his persona, the anti-Trump chorus contrast his ‘extremism’ with warmonger Clinton’s ‘pragmatism’.

A careful examination of the facts reveals who is the ultra-extremist and who deals with reality:

Women

Madame Clinton’s much touted wars against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya have killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of women and children and uprooted millions of households. This bloody and undeniable record of mayhem was cited by Donald Trump when he argued that his policies would be much better for women than the Feminist Clinton’s had been.

So far, Trump’s worst offenses against women are his crude rhetorical misogynist quips, which pale before Hillary’s bloody record of devastation.

African-Americans

Clinton is backed by the leading black politicians who have long fed out of the Democratic Party patronage trough while selling the Clintons to the black electorate as ardent protectors of civil rights. In fact, as Steve Lendman has written, Hillary had referred to marginalized black youth as “super predators (with) no conscience, no empathy”. During her husband Bill’s presidency, she was on record supporting his draconian ‘three strikes’ crime laws, leading to the mass incarceration of hundreds of thousands of young blacks; and she backed his ‘welfare reform’ program, which shredded the social safety net for the poor and forced millions of impoverished mothers to work for sub-poverty wages, further eroding the stability of black female-headed households. On the African front, ‘Sister’ Secretary of State Hillary’s war on Libya led to the displacement, rape and murder of tens of thousands of black women of sub-Saharan origin at the hands of her jihadi war-lord allies. Millions of black sub-Saharan migrants had lived and worked in Gadhafi’s Libya for years, tens of thousands becoming Libyan citizens. They endured the horror of rampant ethnic cleansing in Clinton’s ‘liberated’ Libya.

Trump, at worst, has done nothing of direct harm to African Americans and remains an enigma on black issues. He opposes Clinton’s war on Libya and has vividly blamed her policies as responsible for the chaos and human misery in post-NATO bombing Libya.

Latinos

Under the Obama-Clinton administration almost 2 million Latino immigrants have been seized from their homes and workplaces, separated from their families and summarily expelled. As Madame Secretary of State, Clinton backed the Honduran military coup that overthrew the elected government of President Zelaya and led directly to assassination of over three hundred activists, including feminist, indigenous, human rights and environmental leaders, like Berta Caceres. Clinton actively backed unsuccessful coups against the democratically elected Bolivian and Venezuelan governments.

Trump has verbally threatened to extend and deepen the Obama-Clinton expulsion of whatever remains of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrant Latino workers after Obama’s expulsion of the 2 million and the hundreds of thousands who have voluntarily gone home. His ‘extremist’ vision is completely in line with that of his allegedly ‘pragmatic’ opponent whose State Department promoted the destruction of so many Latino families in the US.

Foreign Policy

Clinton has launched or promoted more simultaneous wars than any Secretary of State in US history. She was the leading force behind the US bombing of Libya and the brutal ‘regime change’ that has fractured that nation. She promoted the military escalation in Iraq, backed the violent seizure of power in Ukraine, ‘engineered’ the military build-up (pivot to Asia) against China and negotiated the continued presence of thousands of US troops in Afghanistan.

Clinton has repeatedly pledged to her supporter Haim Saban and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Victoria Nuland Kagan, Donald and Robert Kagan, Robert Zoellick, Michael Chertoff, Dov Zakheim that she will give Israel with “all the necessary military, diplomatic, economic and moral support it needs to vanquish Hamas” regardless of the many thousands of Palestinian civilian casualties. The ‘pragmatic feminist’ Hillary is a fervent supporter of the Saudi despotism and its genocide war against the popular forces in Yemen. Hillary tried to pressure President Obama to send US ground troops into Syria. She promotes the continuation of harsh trade sanctions against Russia.

Trump opposes any further direct US intervention in the Middle East. During his debate in South Carolina, he repeatedly denounced President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq – as based on ‘deliberate lies to the American people’, to the shock and horror of the Republican Party elite. He has rejected Pluto-Zionist financing, arguing that only as an independent ‘honest broker’, who doesn’t take the side of Israel in its conflict with Palestinians, can he be effective in brokering a ‘deal’. He opposes sending ground troops overseas to Europe or Asia, which imposes a huge financial burden on the US taxpayers. He has gone on to suggest that European and Asian powers can and should pay for their own defense. Trump argues that the US could work with Putin against radical Islamist terrorism and he regards Russia as a potential trading partner. His anti-interventionism has been labeled as ‘isolationist’ by the Pluto-Zionist ideologues and militarist warlords holed up in their Washington think tanks, but Trump’s ‘America First’ resonates profoundly with the war-weary and economically devastated US electorate.

Israel

Clinton has totally and unconditionally pledged to widen and deepen US subordination to Israel’s war aims in the Middle East and to defend Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories and within apartheid Israel. As a result, Clinton has built a coalition made-up of unsavory mafia-linked, gambling, media and speculator billionaires, whose first loyalty is not to America but Israel. She denounces all critics of Israel as ‘anti-Semites’.

Trump has never been a critic of Israel but he has called for greater ‘evenhandedness’, which is anathema within Zionist circles. For that reason he has not secured a single Pluto-Zionist supporter. So far, he has not been labelled an anti-Semite…. perhaps because his own daughter converted to Judaism following her marriage, but his lack of effusive philo-Zionism has him marked as ‘unreliable’ to the Jewish State. As a subterfuge for his lack of servility to Tel Aviv, Democratic Party Zionist hacks emphasize his ‘racism’ and ‘fascist’ tendencies…

The Democratic Elections: The Real Muck

Clinton currently leads Sanders for the Democratic nomination mostly on the basis of non-elected delegates, the so-called ‘super delegates’, who are party loyalists appointed by the bosses and elite politicians. Sanders’ call for a “political revolution in America” has no traction unless there is first a political revolution within the Democratic Party. But the Democratic Party is like the Augean Stable – a clean up requiring a Herculean effort and a loud pugnacious leader with a big broom. Senator Sanders is no Hercules.

As a positive beginning, Sanders has mobilized grass roots support, raised progressive health, education and tax policies that adversely affect Clinton’s billionaire Wall Street backers (Big financier Jaime Diamond called Sanders ‘the most dangerous man in America’), and secured millions of contributions from small donors. But he has failed to target and demand the exit of the Pluto-Zionists, the Wall Street bankers and speculators and venal black politicians controlling the Democratic Party. They run the elections of US presidents and will make sure Hillary Clinton secures the nomination by hook or (more likely) crook.

Clinton is backed by this formidable authoritarian (profoundly anti-democratic) electoral machine. She is totally embedded in the process. Clinton has a track record of enthusiastic support for the barbarism of torture – laughing at and cheering on the torture-death of the wounded Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. In the pursuit of wars and war crimes, Hillary Clinton knows no limit and has borne no accountability. What makes Hillary so terrifyingly dangerous is that she could be ‘Commander in Chief’ of a great military power. While Clinton may be no Hitler, the US is vastly more engaged in world politics than Weimer Germany ever was. Her dictate would bring on global destruction.

If the Democratic primaries are as profoundly undemocratic as they have been in the past, the Republicans and their plutocrat partners are openly planning and plotting to ‘Dump the Donald’ and prevent Trump from obtaining an electoral victory. They have been discussing ways to use convention procedures to undermine a majority vote, and set up a ‘brokered convention’, where the ‘big-wigs’ jigger the delegates, rules and voting procedures behind closed doors robbing the populist front-runner of his party candidacy.

Conclusion

The US presidential primaries reveal in all their facets the decay and corruption of democracy in an era of imperial decline. The ascendancy of a financial oligarchy in the Democratic Party, backing a psychopathic militarist, like Hillary, cannot disguise her track record by labeling their candidate a ‘pragmatist’; the majority of Sanders supporters have no illusions about Madame Clinton. Panic and hysteria among an unsavory elite in the Republican Party and its efforts to block a sui-generis conservative Republican isolationist speaks to the fragility of imperial rule.

If the psychopathic war-monger Clinton is crowned the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, there is no way she can be considered the pragmatic ‘lesser evil’ to Donald Trump or any Republican – their bosses decide to spew out. At best, she might be the ‘equal evil’. In this case, more than 50% of the electorate will not vote. If, after being robbed of his growing movement for the Democratic Party candidacy, ‘Bernie’ Sanders does not break out with an independent bid for the White House, I will join the minuscule 1% who vote for Green Party candidate, Dr. Jill Stein.

James Petras is author of The Politics of Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle East.

March 10, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Have We Witnessed a Dramatic Change in the Military Doctrine of the DPRK?

By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 08.03.2016

As it was reported on Friday by the KCNA, during a visit to a closed firing range where advanced multiple rocket launchers were tested, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced that the country should be prepared to use its nuclear weapons at any moment to ensure its self-defense. The North Korean supreme leader has also underlined that he perceives the upcoming South Korean-US maneuvers as a dangerous gamble that could lead to disastrous consequences, so he ordered the North Korean army to raise all forces to high alert. The KCNA has also noted that “hostile forces led by the United States,” adopted a resolution that is “undermining the rights of the DPRK as a sovereign state.”

The part that one can consider to be crucial in all this information warfare is the fact that in the same speech, Kim Jong-un announced that Pyongyang would reconsider its military doctrine to allow the possibility of preemptive strikes being launched in connection with the dangerous situation on the Korean Peninsula. On March 4, a statement issued by the DPRK government stated that in circumstances when the United States and its satellites have openly challenged North Korea’s sovereignty and have endangered its right to existence, any hostile actions would lead to a decisive response. The statement has also added that should some disastrous event occur on the Korean Peninsula or in the region adjacent to it, the entire responsibility will lie on the United States and its collaborators.

Later, the same notion was repeated in an official statement of the DPRK National Defense Commission that was released by the KCNA on March 7. The statement announced that due to the joint military exercises of the United States and South Korea labeled as “training for a nuclear war,” any hostile military act would lead to a preemptive nuclear strike launched in accordance with the procedure established by the high command of the Korean People’s Army.

It’s only natural that such statements aroused suspicion. Moscow has expressed serious concern over the entire situation. On March 4, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed the hope that all the parties involved will exercise restraint. The United States urged North Korean leaders to refrain from provocative statements and actions and focus on the fulfillment of DPRK’s international obligations. A Pentagon spokesman said the US is prepared to destroy North Korea’s nuclear arsenals if North Korea poses a threat to the US, while noting that he had no evidence that the DPRK conducted test launches of intercontinental ballistic missile armed with nuclear warheads. In turn, the press secretary of the South Korean Ministry of Defence announced that North Korea must put an end to its defiant and destructive comments and actions, noting that Seoul will mercilessly respond to any provocation made by North Korea.

Such crises are truly alarming for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is necessary to take into account the context in which that decision is taken. While traditional news coverage of North Korea’s actions has been reduced long ago to suggesting Pyongyang’s actions are irrational and unprovoked, in fact we are witnessing a response to  upcoming US-South Korean exercises “Key Resolve” and “Foal Eagle,” which will be held on the peninsula in the next two months. It’s reported that more than 300,000 South Korean and 15,000 US troops, including US nuclear aircraft carrier USS John Stennis will be participating in these exercises. And there’s little doubt in anyone’s mind that those will mimic an  invasion of North Korea, especially when it’s stated as an official goal.

Each military exercise in the immediate vicinity of DPRK’s border understandably affects the nerves of North Korea’s military commanders. There is absolutely no certainty that during such exercises due to some mysterious incident, they will not transform into a full-scale invasion. This can happen as a result of a deliberate provocation by the South, or when some North Korean officer loses his nerve. Yet, there’s a possibility that we will witness the repetition of the situation that occurred back in 2015, when South Korean officers were reluctant to investigate their own criminal carelessness so they decided to push all blame instead on the North for an accident that occurred with their own soldiers.

In such a situation, Pyongyang is trying to look as vicious and dangerous as it possibly can. It doesn’t stand a chance in a fight against South Korea, supported by the United States. However, the North could inflict so much damage on the South that a military victory against it will become meaningless. Such a threat works like a tub of cold water on hot heads: understanding that the North will “die singing” doesn’t make anyone all too willing to fight.

A similar situation occurred during the previous round of nuclear crisis on the peninsula back in 2013. At that time the sitting President of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, just came to power, and there was a possibility that supporters of the former president or young officers bewildered with revanchist ideas might try to escalate the situation. They were consumed by the idea that if politicians did not interfere with their actions, they could destroy the Pyongyang government in 90 hours. Then, in 2013, the DPRK also made a number of  risky statements against the background of the upcoming exercise. Although the headlines once again shouted that the Korean peninsula is on the brink of war, no one decided to jump the gun. However, the situation today is somewhat more complicated. Park Geun-hye has deviated from her initially moderate positions becoming conservative, and former young majors have now become colonels. In this situation, Pyongyang raises the stakes higher than three years ago.

However, this leads to a new round amid the ongoing security dilemma of North Korea, since the statements made by Kim Jong-un can be interpreted as changes in North Korean military doctrine. Until recently, Pyongyang has positioned its missile and nuclear program solely as a self-defense option, and all the promises of drowning Seoul in a sea of fire were made in the wake of possible provocations. And now the DPRK is talking about America’s all time favorite ‘preemptive strikes’ that can be unleashed by somewhat more uncertain provocations. That’s a truly dangerous dilemma. Firstly, this level of military readiness can not but be seen with concern by others in the region, a readiness to take action in response to a possibility of such a strike being launched against them, which clearly raises tensions. Secondly, in the fight of the weak against the strong, the weak striking first is a good way to increase one’s chances of prevailing. But this can only be said about an inevitable fight, while a preemptive strike destroys all chances for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Three years ago I noted in one of my articles that the path chosen by the DPRK provides it a tactical advantage, but may lead it to a dead end on the strategic level. In response to ever increasing pressure of new sanctions, North Korea will become more heavily involved in the arms race, and the vicious circle will be tightening at every turn with ever increasing speed. Yet, North Korea’s problems, like its security dilemma or the tensions between Pyongyang on one side and Beijing and Moscow on the other, are not going anywhere. At the same time Washington keeps exploiting the North Korean threat for its own ends.

This vicious circle has yet another drawback, since there’s few exit strategies one can find in it. Although North Korea believes that its nuclear program provides it with independence, in fact it makes the actions of its government more predictable.The DPRK has now lost any strategic initiative and is now acting “reactively,” which makes it even more dependent on external factors. So it’s not rocket science at this point to get a certain reaction from the government of North Korea once one has applied pressure from a certain angle. Let’s hope no one will take advantage of this fact to launch additional provocations.

Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D, Chief Research Fellow of the Center for Korean Studies, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences

March 10, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon’s War on the Earth

By Tom H. Hastings | CounterPunch | March 9, 2016

We are waging war. We are the Nation of War. We destroy. We kill. Everyone fears us.

Fewer and fewer admire us.

But our fighting forces—and their attendant industries which manufacture the bombs, bullets, and ballistic delivery devices—also wage a war on the clean air, clean water, and clean soil many Americans falsely regard as protected by legislation fought for by those trying to protect our environment.

Recent reports from around the country show the party most likely to toxify our land is our own military. These are just a small fraction of the reports from the past couple of weeks:

* California: New model homes are open for viewing in a beautiful canyon west of Los Angeles despite the land there being “stained with radioactive and toxic chemical waste.”

* New Hampshire: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stepping in to monitor the health and toxic exposure of those living near or on the Portsmouth, New Hampshire former US Pease Air Force base after tests showed terrible contamination.

* Kentucky: There is an ongoing effort to clean up the site of the uranium enrichment facility in Kentucky, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. It is costing hundreds of millions of dollars and the feds are slowly trying to get back a bit of it from responsible parties with settlements, the most recent a $5 million deal with Lockheed Martin for its contamination of the site.

* Maryland: The Army is claiming immunity from its killer pollution from Fort Detrick, with the Army as defendant in a class action law suit claiming numerous wrongful deaths from the site where toxins, biological weapons, radiological materials and hazardous waste contaminated the area for decades. US Attorney U.S. Attorney “Rod Rosenstein, representing the Army’s interests, asked Monday that the case be dismissed. In online court documents, Rosenstein argued that the government has no particular duty to respond to hazardous substances and the Army can use its own judgment to decide whether to clean up.”

* Louisiana: A private contractor will burn 16 million pounds of M-6 propellent, the largest burn of explosives in the history of the world, at Camp Minden in April and May.

* New York: Fort Drum is contaminated. Proposed remedies would inject other chemicals into the groundwater to try to neutralize the “chlorinated volatile organic chemical (CVOC) groundwater plume.”

The Pentagon is relentless in seeking immunity from federal environmental protection laws. One wonders, since the list of environmental disasters created by the military and its contracting producers would extend to multiple current issues in every single US state and dozens of foreign countries with US bases, with friends and protectors like these, who needs enemies?

Tom H. Hastings is core faculty in the Conflict Resolution Department at Portland State University and founding director of PeaceVoice. 

March 9, 2016 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon mulls more permanent troops in Europe – report

RT | March 7, 2016

The US military is reportedly considering plans for permanent deployment of “one or more” US Army brigade combat teams (BCT) to Europe, as the West continues to ramp up rhetoric over alleged Russian aggression.

The head of the US military’s European Command (EUCOM) and NATO’s supreme commander, Air Force General Philip Breedlove, was said to have discussed his proposals with senior Pentagon officials in Washington last week, according to a defense official familiar with the plans, the Military Times reported on Sunday.

“They are looking at ways to increase the permanent Army forces in Europe… They’re trying to figure out ‘how much do we need, and where would it come from?’”

If approved, the new deployment could involve thousands of US troops. An average American BCT is composed of between 3,000 and 5,000 personnel. The US Army had four brigades in Europe until 2012, when it decided to deactivate two of them. Recently, the Army has returned more than 200 vehicles, but those are prepositioned in warehouse and not attached to permanent combat units.

“We do not have, in my opinion, enough US forces permanently stationed forward … so I believe that the permanent forces forward need to be reviewed,” General Breedlove told reporters last Tuesday.

In February, Breedlove also told the US House Armed Services Committee that American troops were ready to defeat Russia in a European war. “To counter Russia, EUCOM, working with allies and partners, is deterring Russia now and preparing to fight and win if necessary,” Breedlove said.

The decision to add more troops to the ongoing massive build-up in Eastern Europe was backed up by the outcomes of a February report by the RAND Corporation, according to the Military Times. The analysis said that in a NATO-Russian armed conflict the Russian military would outperform the bloc and “reach the outskirts of Tallinn and Riga in 60 hours.”

Such a “rapid defeat,” the RAND’s paper urged, would “leave NATO with a limited number of options, all bad: a bloody counteroffensive, fraught with escalatory risk, to liberate the Baltics; to escalate itself …or to concede at least temporary defeat, with uncertain but predictably disastrous consequences for the alliance.”

There are approximately 67,000 US troops in Europe, while around 57,000 personnel are assigned to EUCOM. The United States has also pledged several thousand service members to the NRF, including a brigade combat team from the Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division, a hospital ship, air-to-air refueling tankers, and escort ships.

Under the so-called European Reassurance Initiative launched during an armed conflict in Ukraine, Washington drastically increased exercises and “rotational presence” across Eastern Europe, including “more persistent deployments” of the US Navy to the Black and Baltic seas.

Russia’s Defense Ministry has repeatedly denounced the statements by citing the connection between the “Russian threat” and discussions on the US military budget. “It is not a thing to be impressed by,” MoD spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov told journalists in February.

“The reason is simple – the discussion of the military budget in Congress for the next year.”

He pointed out that the idea of a so-called Russian threat is not new. “One needs to remember that the ‘Russian threat’ has been the best-selling threat delivered by the Pentagon not only to Congress, but also to NATO partners since the middle of the previous century,” he said. “What would they do without us?”

March 7, 2016 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Britain to Spend Additional $905 Million on Nuclear Submarine Program

Sputnik – 05.03.2016

The British Government is going to spend additional $905 million on its nuclear submarine program, media reported.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon announced the new investment Friday, although the Parliament has not yet voted whether to go ahead with the program, UPI reported. The vote is scheduled later this year.

According to Fallon, the additional funding will support construction of new facilities and the purchase of submarine parts, as well as the development of new submarines that are to replace the royal Navy’s current Vanguard-class submarines.

A significant part of this funding — about $317 million — will be spent on new facilities at BAE Systems at Barrow-in-Furness, England, where the submarines will be assembled. There will also be a significant investment in the joint UK/US collaborative R&D called the ‘Common Missile Compartment’, a unified launcher system for new ballistic missiles that will replace current Trident II/D5 missiles, used by both the United Kingdom and the United States.

This initiative, however, is not exactly backed by the Labour party. According to Labour representatives, nuclear submarines will soon become redundant, since underwater drones are becoming advanced enough easily track down and destroy them.

“Tell that to the Americans, the Russians, and the Chinese who are all modernizing their nuclear-armed submarines,” Fallon said to The Guardian. “Perhaps these drones will be so sophisticated they can track down Nessie while they are at it,” he added, implying that cost-effectiveness ratio of both technologies is a subject for discussion.

The Labour party’s position on nuclear weapons is generally negative, since they view the whole concept as an extremely expensive political symbol that will never be used.

During 2015, Russia has launched two nuclear Project 877/636 submarines, armed with Kalibr cruise missiles (NATO designation “Sizzler”), capable of carrying nuclear warheads, while two more are scheduled for launch in 2016, which would make a total of six ships. Project 877/636 has been dubbed ‘Black hole’ for its extremely low noise emission and radar visibility.

The People’s Republic of China has also reportedly launched a new Jin-class nuclear submarine during 2015. According to different sources, the PRC Navy has from 4 to 8 active Jin-class submarines that are supposed to be capable of reaching any point on US territory, should the ship be located near the Hawaiian islands.

March 6, 2016 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Marshall Islands take on nuclear powers at UN court

RT | March 6, 2016

© atomcentral

© atomcentral / YouTube

The Marshall Islands launch a legal campaign against the UK, India and Pakistan this week in a David versus Goliath battle to achieve the goal of a “nuclear free universe”.

The islands accuse the nuclear states of failing to halt the nuclear arms race, and are urging the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), to pursue a lawsuit against all three.

The Pacific Ocean territory, used as a US nuclear testing site for 12 years, filed applications with the ICJ in April 2014 accusing the world’s nine nuclear-armed states of not respecting their nuclear disarmament obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law.

The nine nations possessing nuclear arsenals are the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel – though Israel is the only one which never acknowledged holding nuclear weapons.

The court admitted the cases brought against the UK, India and Pakistan because the three states have already recognised the ICJ’s authority.

The islands’ former Minister of Foreign Affairs Tony de Brum said they commenced “this lawsuit with the greatest respect and the greatest admiration for the big countries of the world, but we think it must be done”.

Hearings will take place in The Hague Monday to examine whether the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is competent to hear the lawsuits against India and Pakistan. Another hearing will take place on Wednesday to examine “preliminary objections” raised by London in the case against Britain, according to AFP.

De Brum has said the people of the Marshalls suffer quietly but they take this suit in “the cause of a nuclear free universe”.

“We are fighting for what we believe is the only solution in terms of peace and prosperity in the world.”

Olivier Ribbelink, senior researcher at the TMC Asser Institute in The Hague says “the case is in a very preliminary stage at this point”, but added: “Either way the outcome, the case has certainly sharply refocused attention on the dangers of nuclear proliferation.”

De Brum and the Marshall Islands legal team have been nominated for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.

US nuclear test ground

De Brum was nine years old when the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb was dropped by the US on Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954 during the Cold War nuclear arms race.

The 15-megatonne bomb was the largest US nuclear test on record at 1000-times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The resulting characteristic mushroom cloud reached a diameter of 7km (4.5 miles) and a height of almost 40,000 meters (130,000ft) within six minutes of detonation.

The US carried out 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958.

Bikini Islanders lived in exile since they were moved for the first US weapons test, though some returned in the early 1970s after government scientists declared Bikini safe for resettlement.

However, residents were removed again in 1978 after ingesting high levels of radiation from eating local foods grown on the former nuclear testing site.

The Marshall Islands is appealing to the US Supreme Court after its case against the country was dismissed by a US federal court last year.

March 6, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Costs of Storing US Nuclear Weapons Rising $4.4Bln More Than Planned

Sputnik — 05.03.2016

The cost of storing and safeguarding all US nuclear weapons from 2021 through 2025 will be $4.4 billion higher than previously estimated, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced in a report.

The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has stated that the cost will need to be addressed as part of fiscal year 2017 programming, the GAO pointed out.

“The ‘Fiscal Year 2016 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan’ includes estimates for 2021 through 2025 that are $4.4 billion higher than the same time period… for funding levels that were included in a joint report by the Department of Defense and Department of Energy,” the report, released on Friday, said.

Budget estimates for safeguarding the US nuclear stockpiles over the next 25 years increased by 13.2 percent over the nominal values in the fiscal year 2015 plan, the report noted.

The NNSA fiscal year 2016 estimates for efforts related to modernizing the US nuclear weapons stockpile total $297.6 billion for the next 25 years, the report added.

March 6, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Riyadh to receive French-made arms intended for Lebanon

Press TV – March 5, 2016

Saudi Arabia will take delivery of French-manufactured arms originally ordered for the Lebanese army, following Riyadh’s recent decision to retract USD four billion in military aid to Beirut.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced the plan on Saturday during a visit to France.

Last month, the Saudi regime said it had suspended USD three billion in military assistance to the Lebanese military and another USD one billion to the country’s internal security forces.

The aid was cut after Lebanon refrained from endorsing Saudi-crafted statements against Iran at separate meetings held in Cairo and Jeddah.

The move also followed victories by the Syrian army, which is backed by fighters of Lebanon’s resistance movement of Hezbollah, in its battle against Takfiri terrorists battling to topple the government in Damascus.

“We made the decision that we will stop the USD three billion from going to the Lebanese military and instead they will be re-diverted to the Saudi military,” Jubeir told journalists in Paris, adding, “So the contracts (with France) will be completed but the clients will be the Saudi military.”

The aid is vital as the Lebanese army is fighting Takfiri militants from the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and Daesh near the country’s northeastern border with Syria.

France’s arms delivery to Saudi Arabia comes amid Riyadh’s ongoing military aggression against Yemen and its support for militant groups in Syria.

Several European countries including Germany, Britain and France have been engaged in major arms deals with the Saudi regime, turning a blind eye to calls by rights groups to cancel the agreements.

Back in February, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for the imposition of an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia, and urging EU member states to stop selling weapons to Riyadh as it is accused of targeting civilians in Yemen.

According to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Saudi Arabia’s imports for 2011-15 increased by 275 percent compared with 2006–10. The British government has licensed USD 7.8 billion in sales of arms, fighter jets and other military hardware to Riyadh since Prime Minister David Cameron came to power in 2010. France also signed USD-12-billion contracts with Saudi Arabia in 2015 alone.

Yemen has been under military attacks by Saudi Arabia since late March 2015. More than 8,300 people, among them 2,236 children, have been killed. The strikes have taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools and factories.

March 5, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Taliban sets conditions for peace talks with Afghan government

Press TV – March 5, 2016

The Taliban militant group has refused to participate in peace talks with the Afghan government until its preconditions are fulfilled.

In a statement on Saturday, the militant group said “until the occupation of foreign troops ends, until Taliban names are removed from international blacklists and until our detainees are released,” peace talks for an end to the conflict in Afghanistan will yield no results.

The Taliban also criticized the increase in the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan.

It also said that Afghan forces have intensified their battle against the militants.

Officials from Afghanistan, the United States, Pakistan and China met in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in February for a new round of talks aimed at reviving the peace process in the country.

The quartet said that the Afghan government and Taliban were expected to meet for face-to-face peace talks by the first week of March in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. But the Taliban denied they would be participating in any upcoming talks in Islamabad.

Over the past months, Taliban militants have captured some key areas in the north and south of Afghanistan. The militants have also carried out attacks in the capital, Kabul.

This has prompted renewed efforts in the country and by neighbors to revive stalled negotiations between the militant group and the Afghan government.

Pakistan brokered direct peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban last summer following the announcement of the death of the group’s founder Mullah Omar some two years earlier.

Many suspect that Taliban could reappear on the negotiating table as factional infighting and leadership division has deepened in the group since the death of Omar.

Afghanistan is gripped by insecurity more than 14 years after the United States and its allies attacked the country as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. Although the 2001 attack overthrew the Taliban, many areas across Afghanistan still face violence and insecurity.

Despite a previous pledge to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by the end of his presidency, US President Barack Obama announced last October that Washington will keep thousands of troops in the country when he leaves office in 2017.

March 5, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Blair excluded MoD from strategic discussions on 2003 Iraq invasion

RT | March 4, 2016

Senior officials in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) were excluded from talks in the run-up to Britain’s 2003 invasion of Iraq by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, an explosive new biography claims.

‘Broken Vows’ was authored by investigative journalist Tom Bower, and is due to be published later this month. Drawing from interviews with key sources, it paints a damning portrait of Blair’s conduct in and out of office.

In its pages, Bower alleges that the MoD was omitted from key discussions on Iraq despite the fact it is responsible for sending British troops on foreign missions.

Bower says that Sir Kevin Tebbit, the top civil servant in the MoD at the time of the invasion, phoned Blair’s foreign affairs adviser Sir David Manning to enquire why the MoD was being excluded from the conversation.

“How can you plan a war without the head of the Ministry of Defence?” Tebbit is quoted as asking Manning.

Manning reportedly replied: “We can’t have you because we would then have to include the permanent secretaries of the Foreign Office and DFID [the Department for International Development] and we don’t want Michael Jay [then permanent secretary at the Foreign Office] and Clare Short [the development secretary] involved.”

Bower said Blair rejected MoD advice about the movement of manpower and the supply of equipment prior to and after the invasion. He said that Blair did not want Tebbit’s advice because he would inevitably have challenged the former PM.

Bowers went on to suggest that Britain’s Iraq policies were wrought from the heart of Number 10 and Blair preferred to speak to Britain’s then-Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon about the war.

Although Hoon was included in the discussions, Bowers notes his involvement was also limited.

“Unlike education or the NHS, Blair cared little about defense and, as Hoon discovered, never discussed detail,” Bowers wrote.

“Blair’s detachment meant he resisted providing the services with sufficient money to fulfill their task, thus scuttling the military’s inviolability.”

‘Broken Vows’ explores Blair’s decade in power, his resignation from the prestigious role of Middle East peace envoy and the commercial empire he constructed advising tyrants and tycoons in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere.

In scrupulous detail, Bowers uncovers how Blair “blurred” the lines between his commercial interests and charity work, was branded pro-Israel while occupying the role of Middle East peace envoy, and benefitted from classified intelligence data while hunting for lucrative business deals with far-flung regimes.

Bowers also notes that Blair accepted money from questionable sources. A firm called PetroSaudi reportedly paid the former PM £41,000 (US$58,000) per month and a 2 percent commission on each contract he brokered with wealthy Chinese officials. However, the lucrative arrangement came to a close after Blair was accused of bribing Malaysian officials.

The former Labour PM also brokered a £20 million contract to conduct a review of the Kuwaiti economy, according to the book. Remarkably, Kuwait’s government was so irked by Blair’s findings it buried the review.

March 4, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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