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Protesters slam Pakistan’s role in Saudi-led coalition

Press TV – January 9, 2016

Pakistanis have taken to the streets in Islamabad to express their anger at the government’s decision to join a Saudi-led coalition allegedly set up to counter terrorism.

Protesters presented a memorandum to the Pakistani Foreign Office, calling on Islamabad to withdraw from the Saudi-led alliance.

The demonstrators said Islamabad had agreed to join the Saudi-led coalition for money.

“Neither the Pakistan army nor the nation is for rent, we will oppose any attempts to sell the army to the House of Saud for a few billion riyals,” Gul-e-Zahra, a senior activist, said in an address to the rally.

Last December, Saudi Arabia said it had formed an alliance of 34 countries to combat terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and Syria.

The kingdom has long been accused of supporting terror groups operating against the Damascus government.

Meanwhile, some of the key countries in the coalition have said they were surprised by inclusion in the group without their knowledge.

At the time when the coalition was announced, Pakistan reacted cautiously and said it needed further details before deciding the extent of its participation.

In a U-turn following the two-day visit by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, Islamabad said Thursday it would join the Saudi-led coalition.

“Pakistan welcomes Saudi Arabia’s initiative and supports all such regional and international efforts to counter terrorism and extremism,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement.

Pakistanis are also angry at the Saudi regime’s execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

On Friday, people staged a demonstration, chanting slogans against Saudi Arabia. They had staged another demonstration a day earlier to protest Saudi foreign minister’s arrival in Islamabad.

January 9, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

North Korea’s bomb test hysteria

By Jan Oberg | January 6, 2016

Here media hysteria goes again. This is BBC.

It is very difficult to know what has happened. The media and many governments around the world immediately condemn this test. The EU says it is against UN Security Council resolutions – a council consisting exclusively of much stronger, nuclear powers.

Before we get carried away, it should be pointed out that North Korea’s military expenditures (US$ 7-10 bn and very complicated to calculate, but anyhow) is around 1% of those of the U.S., about 20% of South Korea’s and about 15% of Japan’s.

North Korea’s entire military costs a bit less than the newest single nuclear bomb the U.S. tested last year.

Nuclear weapons remain a huge problem to the world. However, countries that have nuclear weapons themselves focus on proliferation. Humanity focuses on the existence of nuclear weapons. Simply put, as long as there are some who have nuclear weapons, others will try to acquire them.

Mass media that blow this inferior nuclear power’s test of whatever it was up on the front pages but forget to tell their audiences much much more serious nuclear stories are – knowingly or not – part of a militarist propaganda machine. Thereby they promote what I have called MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex.

That should not be the role of any media. It would be to highlight all nuclear activities by any government, get some proportions, highlight how these weapons violate international law and inform the world about both the huge risks and what would happen if they are used and, finally, inform us about the activities for nuclear disarmament and abolition.

Just contributing to “fearology” about a nuclear dwarf and keeping us uninformed about the giants militates against objectivity, pluralism and freedom of the press. And it contributes indirectly to militarism.

What are the much more serious nuclear stories I mentioned above?

Well, it has just been revealed that 33,000 U.S. atomic factory workers have died over the last 70 years because of the dangerous environment.

Fact is that nuclear weapons cause many problems even without being used directly – such as the war on Iraq [depleted uranium munitions?], such as polluting the environment and making larges areas – like in Khazakstan – uninhabitable. There are constant nuclear accidents and the world could be more or less totally destroyed from a single technical or human failure.

And what does the U.S. do with a president who wanted to work for a nuclear-free world and received the Nobel Peace Prize?

It has decided to spend US$ 1 trillion – i.e. 1000 billion – the next 30 years on new nuclear weapons. Read more about this perverse ‘peace’ policy here.

January 7, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia top buyer of UK arms in 5 years: Report

Press TV – January 7, 2016

The UK has licensed the sales of over eight billion dollars of military hardware to Saudi Arabia since British Prime Minister David Cameron took office in May 2010.

According to the latest figures released by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) NGO, since Cameron was elected almost six years ago, Britain has also sold arms to 24 of the 27 states on its own list of “countries of humanitarian concern,” The Independent reported on Wednesday.

Apart from Riyadh’s ongoing purchase of the 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets, which are worth over six billion dollars at completion, major licenses worth over two billion dollars including Hawk fighter jets, bombs, guns and tear gas were sold to Saudi Arabia during the said period.

Based on the figures released by CAAT, the Saudis have access to twice the number of British-made warplanes than the Royal Air force has.

CAAT spokesperson Andrew Smith noted that the amount of arms sales to countries on the list, especially Saudi Arabia, shows that “human rights are playing second fiddle to company profits.”

He went on to say that the income from arms sales “is being put over the rights of people being executed and tortured. It’s completely inconsistent to condemn these regimes while signing off on billion-pound arms deals.”

“Two-thirds of UK arms exports go to the Middle East, and that’s unlikely to change. We know that Saudi Arabia is arming a number of groups in and around Syria, but we’ve no idea what weapons are being sent there. Once a weapon enters a war zone there’s no such thing as arms control,” Smith added.

Cameron has been under pressure to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia which faces massive criticism from the international community for launching an unabated war against impoverished Yemen, its growing number of beheading and other forms of execution, cracking down on political dissidents and the most recent atrocity of the mass execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other people.

In October last year, during an interview with the UK’s Channel 4, Cameron suggested that London’s “relationship” with the Saudi Arabia supersedes its human rights record.

January 7, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

‘US politicians exploiting intl. tensions to shore up campaigns’

Press TV – January 6, 2016

The United States is the greatest threat to world peace, not North Korea, which only seeks to protect itself from the depredations of US imperialism, an American scholar and political analyst says.

Dennis Etler, professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Wednesday, after Republicans called North Korea’s surprise nuclear test yet another failure of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio argued that North Korea was playing off President Obama’s weakness. “Our enemies around the world are taking advantage of Obama’s weakness.”

Professor Etler said, “As the US presidential race heats up all the old, tired campaign saws of yesteryear are being recycled. Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, with little of note in his political career to tout, seems to have little else to offer.”

“One tried and true political tactic is to accuse your opposition of being ‘soft’ on national defense or crime and proclaim that once elected more resources, that is money, will be thrown at the problem to ensure the country’s safety,” he added.

America’s bogeyman

“Generally speaking there has to be a bogeyman to give life to the charge. In this instance Rubio has chosen a villain who all can hate on, Kim Jong-un, perhaps the most vilified and ridiculed adversary in the US pantheon of enemies. Thus, in a statement issued Tuesday night Sen. Rubio says ‘We need new leadership that will stand up to people like Kim Jong-un and ensure our country has the capabilities necessary to keep America safe.’”

“Lost in the demagogic rhetoric is the fact that it is the US that has threatened the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea, since its inception after WW2, not the other way around,” he noted.

N Korea never used nukes, US did

Professor Etler said the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea “never invaded the US, but the US did invade North Korea. In fact the DPRK has never invaded another country. Unlike the US it has never sent bombers to drop napalm on foreign villages in order to indiscriminately burn and maim their inhabitants, it has never sprayed toxic chemicals such as agent orange on other nation’s forests and crops, producing generations of deformed infants, it has never sent drones to assassinate its political enemies, killing innocent bystanders as collateral damage.”

“It has never used depleted uranium, white phosphorous or cluster bombs in combat on foreign soil and it has never dropped nuclear bombs on population centers, murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians,” he stated.

“The DPRK has however been invaded, sanctioned, embargoed and threatened for over 50 years by, and is still officially at war with, the United States which always portrays itself as above reproach and a bastion of peace and freedom.”

Why US politicians set-up straw dogs

Professor Etler said, “It is the US that has the largest nuclear weapons arsenal and is the greatest threat to peace and stability throughout the world not North Korea, which only seeks to protect itself from the depredations of US imperialism and Japanese militarism to which it has been subjected throughout the 20th century.”

“The US feels that it is its prerogative to do and say what it pleases. To threaten, bully, invade and destroy any nation it sees fit to. But any country that attempts to protect itself from the provocative actions of the US is deemed irrational and a threat to world peace and US security. Rubio’s rhetoric is just more of the same,” he pointed out.

“The same jaundiced diatribe that has been repeated time and again as US politicians set-up straw dogs to frighten the electorate into voting for them. In this instance North Korea serves as a convenient scapegoat and whipping boy to further Rubio’s political ambitions,” the analyst concluded.

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

Saudi Game-Changing Head-Chopping

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | January 5, 2016

For generations, U.S. officials have averted their eyes from Saudi Arabia’s grotesque monarchy – which oppresses women, spreads jihadism and slaughters dissidents – in a crude trade-off of Saudi oil for American weapons and U.S. security guarantees. It is a deal with the devil that may finally be coming due.

The increasingly undeniable reality is that the Saudis along with other oil sheikhs are the biggest backers of Al Qaeda and various terrorist groups – helping these killers as long as they spread their mayhem in other countries and not bother the spoiled playboys of the Persian Gulf.

President George W. Bush – and then President Barack Obama – may have suppressed the 28 pages of the congressional 9/11 report describing Saudi support for Al Qaeda and its hijackers but the cat is thoroughly out of the bag. Mealy-mouthed comments from the State Department spokesmen can no longer hide the grim truth that U.S. “allies” are really civilization’s enemies.

The big question that remains, however, is: Will Official Washington’s dominant neocon/liberal-interventionist claque continue to protect the Saudis who have built a regional alliance of convenience with Israel over their shared hatred of Iran?

Inside Official Washington’s bubble – where the neocons and liberal hawks hold sway – there is a determination to make the “designated villains,” the Iranians, the Syrian government, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Russians. This list of “villains” matches up quite well with Israeli and Saudi interests and thus endless demonization of these “villains” remains the order of the day.

But the Saudis – and indeed the Israelis – are showing what they’re really made of. Israel has removed its humanistic mask as it ruthlessly suppresses Palestinians and mounts periodic “grass mowing” operations, using high-tech munitions to slaughter thousands of nearly defenseless people in Gaza and the West Bank while no longer even pretending to want a peaceful resolution of the long-simmering conflict. Israel’s choice now seems to be apartheid or genocide.

Meanwhile, the Saudis – though long-hailed in Official Washington as “moderates” – are showing what a farcical description that has always been as the royals now supply U.S.-made TOW missiles and other sophisticated weapons to Sunni jihadists in Syria, fighting alongside Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

Using advanced U.S.-supplied warplanes, the Saudis also have been pulverizing poverty-stricken Yemen after exaggerating the level of Iranian support to the Houthis, who have been fighting both a Saudi-backed regime and Al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate. Amid the Saudi-inflicted humanitarian crisis, Al Qaeda’s forces have expanded their territory.

And, at the start of the New Year, the Saudi monarchy butchered 47 prisoners, including prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr for his offense of criticizing the royals, or as the Saudis like to say – without a touch of irony – supporting “terrorism.” By chopping off Nimr’s head – as well as shooting and decapitating the others – the Saudis demonstrated that there is very little qualitative difference between them and the head-choppers of the Islamic State.

The Usual Suspects

Yes, the usual suspects in Official Washington have sought to muddle the blood-soaked picture by condemning angry Iranian protesters for ransacking the Saudi embassy in Tehran before the government security forces intervened. And there will surely be an escalation of condemnations of anyone who suggests normalizing relations with Iran.

But the issue for the neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks is whether they can continue to spin obviously false narratives about the nobility of these Middle East “allies,” including Israel. Is there a limit to what they can put over on the American people? At some point, will they risk losing whatever shreds of credibility that they still have? Or perhaps the calculation will be that public credibility is irrelevant, power and control are everything.

A similar choice must be made by politicians, including those running for the White House.

Some Republican candidates, most notably Sen. Marco Rubio, have gone all-in with the neocons, hoping to secure largesse from casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and other staunch supporters of Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On the other hand, real-estate magnate Donald Trump has distanced himself from neocon orthodoxy, even welcoming Russia’s entry into the Syrian conflict to fight the Islamic State, heresy in Official Washington.

On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the most closely associated with the neocons and the liberal hawks – and she has dug in on the issue of their beloved “regime change” strategy, which she insists must be applied to Syria.

She appears to have learned nothing from her misguided support for the Iraq War, nor from her participation in overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi’s secular regime in Libya, both of which created vacuums that the Islamic State and other extremists filled. (British special forces are being deployed to Libya as part of an offensive to reclaim Libyan oil fields from the Islamic State.)

A Sanders Opportunity

The Saudi decision to chop off Sheikh Nimr’s head and slaughter 46 other people in one mass execution also puts Sen. Bernie Sanders on the spot over his glib call for the Saudis “to get their hands dirty” and intervene militarily across the region.

That may have been a clever talking point, calling on the rich Saudis to put some skin in the game, but it missed the point that – even before the Nimr execution – the Saudis’ hands were very dirty, indeed covered in blood.

For Sanders to see the Saudis as part of the solution to the Mideast chaos ignores the reality that they are a big part of the problem. Not only has Saudi Arabia funded the extreme, fundamentalist Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam – building mosques and schools around the Muslim world – but Al Qaeda and many other jihadist groups are, in essence, Saudi paramilitary forces dispatched to undermine governments on Riyadh’s hit list.

That has been the case since the 1980s when the Saudis – along with the Reagan administration – invested billions of dollars in support of the brutal mujahedeen in Afghanistan with the goal of overthrowing a secular, Soviet-backed government in Kabul.

Though the “regime change” worked – the secular leader Najibullah was castrated and his body hung from a light pole in Kabul – the eventual outcome was the emergence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, led by a Saudi scion, Osama bin Laden.

Though Sanders has resisted articulating a detailed foreign policy – instead seeking to turn questions back to his preferred topic of income inequality – the latest Saudi barbarism gives him a new chance to distinguish himself from front-runner Clinton. He could show courage and call for a realignment based on reality, not propaganda.

President Obama, too, has a final chance to refashion the outdated and counter-productive U.S. alliances in the Middle East. At least he could rebalance them to allow a pragmatic relationship with Iran and Russia to stabilize Syria and neutralize the Saudi-backed jihadists.

Standing Up, Not Bowing Down

Instead of being supplicants to Saudi riches and oil, the West could apply stern measures against the Saudi royals to compel their acquiescence to a real anti-terrorist coalition. If they don’t comply immediately, their assets could be frozen and seized; they could be barred from foreign travel; they could be isolated until they agreed to behave in a civilized manner, including setting aside ancient animosities between Sunni and Shiite Islam.

It seems the European public is beginning to move in this direction, in part, because the Saudi-led destabilization of Syria has dumped millions of desperate refugees on the European Union’s doorstep. If a new course isn’t taken, the E.U. itself might split apart.

But the power of the neocon/liberal-hawk establishment in Official Washington remains strong and has prevented the American people from achieving anything close to a full understanding of what is going on in the Middle East.

The ultimate barrier to an informed U.S. public may also be the enormous power of the Israel Lobby, which operates what amounts to a blacklist against anyone who dares criticize Israeli behavior and harbors hopes of ever holding a confirmable government position or – for that matter – a prominent job in the mainstream media.

It would be a test of true political courage and patriotism for some major politician or prominent pundit to finally take on these intimidating forces. That likely won’t happen, but Saudi Arabia’s latest head-choppings have created the possibility, finally, for a game-changing realignment.

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).

January 6, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Refuses to Accept Nuclear North Korea – State Department

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby holds a press conference in the Press Briefing Room at the Pentagon, Sept. 25, 2014. Kirby showed slides and videos highlighting U.S. airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria and answered questions from reporters. DoD Photo by Glenn Fawcett (Released)

Sputnik – 06.01.2016

WASHINGTON — According to the US Department of State, Washington refuses to accept North Korea as a nuclear state.

The United States will not accept North Korea as a nuclear state and will respond to provocations, US Department of State spokesman John Kirby said in a statement as North Korea announced it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.

”North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and, until today, has done so twice since, but we have consistently made clear that we will not accept it as a nuclear state,” Kirby said.

”We will continue to protect and defend our allies in the region, including the Republic of Korea, and will respond appropriately to any and all North Korean provocations,” he added.

In 2003, Pyongyang withdrew from the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a deal meant to prevent the making and use of nuclear weapons.

On December 10, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that North Korea had a hydrogen bomb and was ready to use it to protect its sovereignty.

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

American Casualties of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program

By Lawrence Wittner | CounterPunch | January 4, 2016

When Americans think about nuclear weapons, they comfort themselves with the thought that these weapons’ vast destruction of human life has not taken place since 1945—at least not yet. But, in reality, it has taken place, with shocking levels of U.S. casualties.

This point is borne out by a recently-published study by a team of investigative journalists at McClatchy News. Drawing upon millions of government records and large numbers of interviews, they concluded that employment in the nation’s nuclear weapons plants since 1945 led to 107,394 American workers contracting cancer and other serious diseases. Of these people, some 53,000 judged by government officials to have experienced excessive radiation on the job received $12 billion in compensation under the federal government’s Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. And 33,480 of these workers have died.

How could this happen? Let’s examine the case of Byron Vaigneur. In October 1975, he saw a brownish sludge containing plutonium break through the wall of his office and start pooling near his desk at the Savannah River, South Carolina nuclear weapons plant. Subsequently, he contracted breast cancer, as well as chronic beryllium disease, a debilitating respiratory condition. Vaigneur, who had a mastectomy to cut out the cancer, is today on oxygen, often unable to walk more than a hundred feet. Declaring he’s ready to die, he has promised to donate his body to science in the hope that it will help save the lives of other people exposed to deadly radiation.

Actually, workers in nuclear weapons plants constitute only a fraction of Americans whose lives have been ravaged by preparations for nuclear war. A 2002 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintained that, between 1951 and 1963 alone, the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons—more than half of it done by the United States—killed 11,000 Americans through cancer. As this estimate does not include internal radiation exposure caused by inhaling or swallowing radioactive particles, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research has maintained that the actual number of fatal cancers caused by nuclear testing could be 17,000. Of course, a larger number of people contracted cancer from nuclear testing than actually died of it. The government study estimated that those who contracted cancer numbered at least 80,000 Americans.

Who were these Americans? Many of them were “downwinders”—people whose towns and cities were located near U.S. nuclear testing sites and, thus, were contaminated by deadly clouds of nuclear fallout carried along by the wind. During the 1950s, the U.S. government conducted close to a hundred atmospheric nuclear explosions at its Nevada test site. Nearly 30 percent of the radioactive debris drifted over the towns to the east, which housed a population of roughly 100,000 people. The residents of St. George, Utah recalled that a “pink cloud” would hang over them while they worked amid the fallout, walked in it, breathed it, washed their clothes in it, and ate it. “Even the little children ate the snow,” recalled one resident. “They didn’t know it was going to kill them later on.”

During subsequent decades, leukemia and other cancer rates soared in the counties adjoining the Nevada test site, as they did among the 250,000 U.S. soldiers exposed to U.S. nuclear weapons tests. From the standpoint of U.S. military commanders, it was vital to place American soldiers close to U.S. nuclear explosions to get them ready to fight in a nuclear war. Subsequently, as many of these soldiers developed cancer, had children with birth defects, or died, they and their family members organized atomic veterans’ groups to demand that the federal government provide medical care and financial compensation for their suffering. Today, atomic veterans receive both from the federal government.

Uranium miners comprise yet another group of Americans who have suffered and died from the U.S. nuclear weapons program. To obtain the uranium ore necessary to build nuclear weapons, the U.S. government operated thousands of uranium mines, often on the lands of Native Americans, many of whom worked as miners and died premature deaths. The U.S. Public Health Service and the National Institute for Public Safety and Health conducted studies of uranium miners that discovered alarmingly high rates of deaths from lung cancer, other lung diseases, tuberculosis, emphysema, blood disease, and injuries. In addition, when the uranium mines were played out or abandoned for other reasons, they were often left as open pits, thereby polluting the air, land, and water of the surrounding communities with radiation and heavy metals.

This American nuclear catastrophe is not only a matter of the past, but seems likely to continue well into the future. The U.S. government is now beginning a $1 trillion program to “modernize” its nuclear weapons complex. This involves building new nuclear weapons factories and labs, as well as churning out new nuclear weapons and warheads for firing from the air, land, and sea. Of course, if these weapons and their overseas counterparts are used, they will destroy the world. But, as we have seen, even when they are not used in war, they exact a dreadful toll—in the United States and, it should be noted, in other nations around the world.

How long are people going to tolerate this nuclear tragedy?

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany.

January 4, 2016 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

1,000 crack British troops deployed to Libyan oil fields to ‘halt the advance of ISIS’

RT | January 4, 2016

British Special Forces have been deployed in Libya to wrest back control of more than a dozen oil fields seized by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants, it has emerged.

Approximately 6,000 European and US soldiers, including 1,000 British troops, will be involved in a number of offensives set up to halt the advance of the jihadist terror group.

The operation will be led by Italian forces and supported mainly by Britain and France.

Special Forces, including military close observation experts from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, are spearheading the major coalition offensive against the jihadist group, according to the Daily Mirror.

IS has seized several revenue-boosting oil fields in Libya and is eager to win more control over the country, as the land could provide them with millions of dollars to fund terror attacks.

The terrorist network is now targeting the Marsa al Brega oil refinery, the biggest in North Africa.

If jihadists successfully capture the oil refinery, located between Sirte and Benghazi, they would gain full control of the country’s oil.

Britain’s SAS is working with Libyan commanders to advise them on key “battle-space management” tactics to control the battlefield using troops, tanks, warplanes and navy ships.

They will also send intelligence to Ministry of Defence (MoD) chiefs that could be used to determine whether airstrikes are needed.

A senior military source told the Mirror: “This coalition will provide a wide range of resources from surveillance, to strike operations against Islamic State who have made significant progress in Libya.

“We have an advance force on the ground who will make an assessment of the situation and identify where attacks should be made and highlight the threats to our forces.”

“Moreover, the ideologies of jihadism and of political Islam are alive and well. It is far too soon to write off Islamic State and organizations similar to it.”

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told IB Times : “In Libya, there is the perfect mix ready to explode and in case it explodes, it will explode just at the gates of Europe.”

The Libya intervention would mark the first time British troops have officially taken part in a direct ground assault against IS.

Libya has been in the throes of a chaotic civil war since the 2011 ousting of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi. Today, two rival governments and parliaments compete for dominance amid a deepening Islamist insurgency.

More than 5,000 IS extremists are active in the country, according to the Libyan Interior Ministry.

January 4, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel military launches artillery into Lebanon

Press TV – January 4, 2016

The Israeli military has fired a number of artillery rounds into Lebanon amid a pledge by the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah, that it will not leave unanswered Israel’s assassination of its high-ranking member Samir Qantar.

On Sunday, Israeli forces shelled the Lebanese border fence for the fourth consecutive day. The Israeli military feared that Hezbollah forces might take advantage of the stormy weather and the poor visibility to launch a strike.

The Israeli shelling comes two weeks after Qantar was killed during the Israeli raid that targeted his home in the southern Syrian city of Jaramana, located 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) southeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus, early on December 20, 2015.

Following Qantar’s death, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said, “We reserve the right to respond to this assassination at the time and place of our choosing. Those of us in Hezbollah will exercise that right.”

“We have no doubt or question that Israel is the one which assassinated Samir Qantar, its planes fired precise missiles on an apartment (he was in),” Nasrallah noted.

Senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine also said that Tel Aviv will be held accountable for Qantar’s death.

“If the Israelis think by killing Samir Qantar they have closed an account then they are very mistaken because they know and will come to know that they have instead opened several more,” Safieddine added.

Israel launched two wars on Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. About 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians, lost their lives during the 33-day war in the summer of 2006.

On both occasions, Hezbollah fighters gave befitting responses to the Tel Aviv regime’s acts of aggression, forcing Israeli military to retreat without achieving any of its objectives.

The Tel Aviv regime has resorted to an intelligence and psychological campaign against Hezbollah to compensate for its fiascos in the two wars on Lebanon.

Israel violates Lebanon’s airspace on an almost daily basis through sending reconnaissance drones, claiming the flights serve surveillance purposes.

January 4, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Besieged Kurdish Towns Under Heavy Bombardment by Turkish Army

Sputnik – 03.01.2016

Kurdish neighborhoods in Silopi and Diyarbakir are under attack from Turkish military forces. Heavy tank bombardment in civilian areas is being reported.

On the 20th day of a curfew, several Silopi neighborhoods in southeastern Turkey have come under heavy gunfire from tanks and armored vehicles, according to local media.

​“Residents are trying to find shelter in safe areas as the neighborhoods, which house thousands, are being targeted by heavy fire from tanks and armored vehicles that have surrounded the area under curfew,” ANF News described.

The Kurdish neighborhoods of Barbaros, Basak and Zap have introduced self-rule and have strong local self-defense, including YDG-H youth units, who are resisting government forces attempting to impose the curfew, ANF News reported. YDG-H, or Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement, was founded in 2013 by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) youth members.

​“People struggling with hunger and thirst take shelter in the basements of their houses. No passages are allowed out of the blockade,” People’s Democratic Party of Turkey, (HDP) reported on Saturday.

A local Kurdish official, Emine Esmer, a co-mayor of Silopi, was taken into custody and released while investigating a water shortage in the municipality, according to BestaNews.com.

​Reports from the Kurdish district of Sur in Diyarbakir, also under curfew, say that tank bombardments in the residential areas intensified on Saturday, with two people injured, according to Jin News Agency.

​The HDP reports that almost 200 people have been killed during the blockade and attacks by Turkish government forces. Over 100,000 people have reportedly been displaced in ongoing military actions in Turkey’s majority-Kurdish southeast.

January 3, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Is NATO’s European honeymoon on the rocks?

By Robert Bridge | RT | January 1, 2016

Amid NATO’s non-stop campaign of overseas military misadventures, which are displacing millions of people and forcing them to EU shores, Europeans may be finally losing their patience with the military organization’s reckless ways.

The year 2015 came to a screeching, white-knuckle end for the 28-member states that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

As Europe struggles to accommodate a tidal wave of refugees escaping the blood and violence of its former colonial lands, right-wing parties are winning over the hearts and minds of Europeans who are increasingly wary of multiculturalism, neo-liberal reforms, austerity measures – and now, it seems, even NATO itself.

Just this month, Polish military police, accompanied by Antoni Macierewicz, the new defense minister of the newly elected Law and Justice Party, conducted a dramatic midnight raid on a NATO-linked counterintelligence center in Warsaw. Yes, you read that right: Polish authorities conducted a raid on a NATO-linked facility on their own territory.

According to the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, authorities entered the complex using a duplicate key and then unceremoniously dismissed the director in absentia, Col Krzysztof Dusza and replaced him with Col. Robert Bala. Dozens of other bureaucrats and assorted paper-shufflers were also relieved of their shadowy duties on the spot.

The former Polish defense minister Tomasz Siemoniak told reporters: “Nothing like this has happened in the history of NATO, where a member state attacks a NATO facility.”

One NATO official attempted to downplay the unprecedented event, calling the night raid “an issue for the Polish authorities.”

But clearly there is much more to the story than what the public is being told.

After all, what would cause a traditionally pro-Western country like Poland to ignore constitutional due process and risk relations with Brussels, NATO – not to mention the group’s top dog, Washington – by conducting a crack of dawn, neo-Nazi-style raid? For those who were surprised by Warsaw’s tough tactics fail to see which way the political winds are blowing not just in Poland, but across the EU.

Much of the winds of change howling through the streets of Europe can be connected to the failure of US foreign policy, and the repercussions that has had on the European status quo.

For much of Europe: No hope, no change

First, the promise of ‘hope and change’ that failed to materialize under US President Barack Obama has been a major letdown not just for millions of Americans, but for countless Europeans as well. On April 5, 2009, 20,000 people jammed in front of the Prague Castle to listen to America’s first black president seduce his audience with tele-prompted tales of peace, prosperity, non-proliferation and promises, promises and more promises.

In fact, Europe was so giddy about the arrival of Barack Obama that the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded him the Peace Prize just nine months into his first term as president. Today, the reality of the farce is painfully conspicuous: Guantanamo Bay detention facility is still open for business, Libya is in dire straits, while the US military is operating in Syria, albeit it with little or no effect on Islamic State, its proclaimed target.

Clearly, what Obama has delivered over the course of his two terms in office has been strikingly different from the advertisement. Instead of being relieved from the warmongering insanity of the Bush era, the world is still embroiled knee-deep in crisis – and in new places (Libya, Syria and Pakistan) that exploded on Obama’s watch, as well as in Russia, where the Kremlin wised up fast to the fairy tale known as ‘reset’ (The one bright spot in US foreign policy has been the Obama administration’s conclusion of a controversial nuclear deal with Iran, yet judging by recent events – which included the US Navy accusing Iran of firing missiles in proximity of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Persian Gulf – charges Tehran has slammed as “psychological warfare”).

But the crisis now enveloping the world is not limited to those of a military nature: Ever since the 2008 Financial Crisis, the worst economic setback since the Great Depression, Europe has been mired in dismal economic growth and high unemployment, compounded by an insane influx of millions of refugees that are only serving to erode Europe’s financial prospects, to say nothing about demographics.

And in order to ‘cure’ the disease of insolvency, many once-proud, self-sufficient European countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, to name a few) are forced to rely on impossible-to-return loans from the very same global bankers that wrecked these national economies in the first place (the fact that only isolated Iceland was politically independent enough to punish its bankers and restructure its economy without suicidal austerity measures proves that Europe is under the influence of powers far beyond the control of democratic procedure).

The lesson that Europeans learned was an old one: ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.’ Ever since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Washington (and by extension, NATO) has only delivered Europe a series of global military debacles that the Old World – already suffering under the brutal dictate of IMF debt and World Bank measures – can now ill afford. Now toss a few million desperate refugees into the mix and you have awakened the raw spirit of right-wing political parties – from Le Pen’s Front National in France to Golden Dawn in Greece.

The Financial Times, sympathizing with the neo-liberal globalists, summed up the scenario that is playing itself out in national elections across the EU: “All over the world, globalisation is under challenge from resurgent nationalist forces. One of the great political challenges of the coming year will be to defend the benefits of globalisation — while fending off the arguments of nationalists such as Mrs Le Pen, Donald Trump in the US and his new admirer, President Vladimir Putin of Russia.”

FT failed to mention, of course, that globalization thus far has been a boon for the transnational corporations and a total bust for the denizens of the global village.

Personally, I can’t imagine that, in a situation where nearly every US foreign policy initiative over the last 15 years has resulted in utter chaos and catastrophe, the European people (still highly educated despite biting austerity) will fail to correctly add two-plus-two and conclude that NATO as an institution designed to defend their interests is also failing them in dramatic fashion.

The Western military bloc continues to agitate Russia, pushing smack against the very border of NATO’s Cold War nemesis, while recklessly hampering one of Europe’s most reliable trading partners.

The Cold War, according to reliable history books, has been over for about a quarter-of-a-century, yet the Western military bloc continues to incite Russia with clearly threatening moves, most notably the US missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, which Russia has warned will upset the strategic balance and invoke a new arms race.

But judging by the frustration and even anger of many European people, which is manifesting itself in the rise of far-right movements that are serving up the heady cocktail of national patriotism and economic protectionism, NATO’s European honeymoon really may be hitting the rocks.

In addition to the Polish midnight raid on the NATO-linked center comes this news: German politicians slammed the Merkel government as well as NATO command after it emerged that German troops will be sent to help NATO-member Turkey defend its border – without notifying parliamentarians in the Bundestag.

“The government must immediately inform parliament of the details of this deployment, in particular what missions will be assigned to these planes and the destination of any data they collect,” Tobias Lindner, the Green party’s head of defense issues, stated in the German daily Bild.

Yet Berlin – sounding every bit as arrogant and self-important as Washington these days – declared it has no intention of consulting the Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament for approval.

The unilateral, undemocratic transfer of German troops (units of the AWACS data-collecting aircraft) on the part of NATO and the Merkel government comes amid smoldering tensions ever since Ankara shot down a Russian fighter jet that Turkey claims entered its airspace for a whole 17 seconds.

Although these two events in two major European countries may be nothing more than mere blips on the radar screen concerning NATO’s relationship with Europe, they could also be warning signals of an approaching earthquake in which the steady encroachment of nationalistic political demands begin to seriously clash with NATO’s global objectives, which, at this stage, don’t seem remotely concerned with the true well-being and security of the European people.

Robert Bridge is the author of the book on corporate power, “Midnight in the American Empire”, which was released in 2013.

@Robert_Bridge

January 2, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Operation Occupy Afghanistan Forever: Hope or Hype?

Fars News Agency – December 31, 2015

TEHRAN – The United States and its NATO partners have once again given themselves the opportunity to prick Afghanistan wherever possible in 2016.

Army General John Campbell says he wants to keep US troops (9,800) in Afghanistan for as long as possible – and is considering asking for even more boots on the ground, which means America’s longest official war could become even more protracted.

To this end, the Pentagon is planning a military role long into Afghanistan’s future despite indications that its long-term intervention and occupation has worsened conflict and violence, with the Taliban showing signs of increased strength and ISIL capturing territory. Meanwhile, Afghan civilians continue to pay the greatest price. In the first half of 2015 alone, United Nations agencies documented 4,921 civilian casualties.

The US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was premised on the fantasy that the War Party could quickly win the so-called “War on Terror” and remake the Middle East to its benefit, a goal spelled out by the Project for a New American Century. Instead, America’s longest war has crushed the elected government and largely destroyed the national economy, leaving a failed state, refugees, and extremists who thrive on chaos in its wake.

The decision by the Pentagon to stay the course now means there will be plenty more casualties this year, and not just because of the seemingly permanent US military presence there. The Empire of Chaos plans to create a string of bases as staging areas for a permanent “War on Terror.” And there is no end in sight to the US at war, declared and undeclared, both because the War Party has found the perfect enemy (terror), and because no one at the United Nations is willing to stand up to it.

This is while the botched “War on Terror” has only brought immense, atrocious, sustained loss of life and chaos to the people of Afghanistan and the rest of the region. From their standpoint, all foreign occupying troops must leave Afghanistan, despite the inherent security risks. They say the war and occupation only advances the aims of those who profit from the circumstances – US military contractors and a global banking/financial elite.

Under the circumstances, it is past time for the world community to robustly push for an Afghan peace process since security and stability are crucial for the development of the war-torn country as well as for the advancement of regional peace and security. In addition, the competing big powers must acknowledge the crucial need of cooperation in the “real” war on terrorism and extremism. What’s more, Afghanistan and its neighbours are on the same page in promoting the peace talks and encouraging all parties in this regard. The pressing question is whether the United States and its NATO partners are also on the same page?

Unsurprisingly, President Obama has lost no time to personally back Dempsey’s new mission to Kabul. Obama is thrilled that his “Operation Occupy Afghanistan Forever” and “Pivoting to Asia” is not in jeopardy. He has in fact put a spoke in the wheel of the nascent peace talks that Afghanistan’s neighbours have been fostering for some time. Both Dempsey and Obama are walking away laughing, leaving the world community in no doubt that amid multiple layers of deception and newspeak, the War Party’s “surge, bribe and stay” gambit will remain a non-negotiable issue.

January 1, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

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