White House petition on ‘47 GOP traitors’ draws 260,000 signatures
US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (left), Senator Ted Cruz (center) and Senator John Cornyn
Press TV – March 13, 2015
A petition to the White House demanding treason charges against 47 Republican senators who attempted to sabotage US President Barack Obama’s efforts to reach a nuclear accord with Iran has garnered more than 260,000 signatures.
The petition, on whitehouse.gov, was filed on Monday and had 263,312 signatures as of early Friday morning, well above the threshold of 100,000, which requires the White House to respond.
In an unprecedented move on Monday, a group of Republican senators ignored protocol and sent a letter to Iran, warning that whatever agreement reached with Obama would be a “mere executive agreement” that could be revoked “with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
The letter appears at a time when US negotiators are preparing to return to Switzerland to participate in the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries – the US, Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany, which have entered a sensitive final stage.
According to the petition, the 47 Republican lawmakers “committed a treasonous offense when they decided to violate the Logan Act, a 1799 law which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.”
The US federal law prohibits unauthorized American citizens from interfering in relations between the United States and foreign governments. Violation of the Logan Act is a felony.
“At a time when the United States government is attempting to reach a potential nuclear agreement with the Iranian government, 47 Senators saw fit to instead issue a condescending letter to the Iranian government stating that any agreement brokered by our President would not be upheld once the president leaves office,” the petition states.
“This is a clear violation of federal law. In attempting to undermine our own nation, these 47 senators have committed treason,” it adds.
In an interview with Press TV on Wednesday, Mark Dankof, former US Senate candidate, said, “The 47 Republican senators in all likelihood had violated the Logan Act, which, if understood properly, would suggest very strongly that there may be a legal case against these Republican senators in regard to having committed treason.”
Tom Cotton, a freshman senator from Arkansas, drafted the much-criticized letter. He claimed that the letter has more support in the US Congress than the Republican senators who have signed it.
On Tuesday, the New York Daily News denounced the 47 Republican senators as “traitors” for writing the letter to Iran. The Manhattan-based newspaper used its front page to condemn the Republicans for sending the letter to Iran’s leaders.
The tabloid’s front page prominently featured Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Rand Paul.
Here are the names of 47 Republican senators who signed the Iran letter:
Signatories
Richard Shelby (Ala.)
Jeff Sessions (Ala.)
Dan Sullivan (Alaska)
John McCain (Ariz.)
John Boozman (Ark.)
Tom Cotton (Ark.)
Cory Gardner (Colo.)
Marco Rubio (Fla.)
Johnny Isakson (Ga.)
David Perdue (Ga.)
Mike Crapo (Idaho)
Jim Risch (Idaho)
Mark Kirk (Ill.)
Chuck Grassley (Iowa)
Joni Ernst (Iowa)
Pat Roberts (Kansas)
Jerry Moran (Kansas)
Mitch McConnell (Ky.)
Rand Paul (Ky.)
David Vitter (La.)
Bill Cassidy (La.)
Roger Wicker (Miss.)
Roy Blunt (Mo.)
Steve Daines (Mont.)
Deb Fischer (Neb.)
Ben Sasse (Neb.)
Dean Heller (Nev.)
Kelly Ayotte (N.H.)
Richard Burr (N.C.)
Thom Tillis (N.C.)
John Hoeven (N.D.)
Rob Portman (Ohio)
Jim Inhofe (Okla.)
James Lankford (Okla.)
Pat Toomey (Pa.)
Lindsey Graham (S.C.)
Tim Scott (S.C.)
John Thune (S.D.)
Mike Rounds (S.D.)
John Cornyn (Texas)
Ted Cruz (Texas)
Orin Hatch (Utah)
Mike Lee (Utah)
Shelley Moore Capito (W.V.)
Ron Johnson (Wis.)
Mike Enzi (Wyo.)
John Barrasso (Wyo.)
Intimidation in Puerto Rico?
By Carlos Borrero | CounterPunch | March 12, 2015
The significance of a recently divulged plan of the Pentagon to carry out military exercises in Puerto Rico under the name “Operation Borinquen Response” between the 14th and 21st of this month must not be underestimated. On the pretext of the need to prepare for a natural disaster, US imperialism has cynically prepared a series of military maneuvers for Puerto Rico in which more than 1,000 troops from the island, National Guard troops from West Virginia, Washington, Tennessee, Vermont and Nebraska, as well as international observers from Honduras and the Dominican Republic are slated to participate.[1]
This military deployment does not represent an isolated phenomenon. Rather, it is an extension of the policy of increased militarization of US society to its colony in anticipation of an intensification of mass discontent. In the past several years there have been a number of similar military simulations based on urban warfare scenarios carried out in US cities such as Houston, Miami and Minneapolis-St. Paul. These exercises have included the deployment of military aircraft such as Blackhawk helicopters as well as heavily armed paratroopers into residential areas. Indeed, Obama added a key piece to the legal architecture for this militarization of US society with the signing of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which essentially repealed what remained of the Posse Comitatus statute that made the deployment of US armed forces on US soil illegal during times of peace. In this way, this Nobel Peace laureate has expanded the militarist policies of the previous administration both domestically and abroad.
Another critical component of this militarization of US society in recent years has been the supply of military grade equipment and weapons to urban police forces through the Department of Homeland Security. The brutal repression unleashed upon protesters in Ferguson, Missouri last year, as well as the recent revelations by The Guardian of the existence of secret prisons or ‘black sites’, such as the now infamous Homan Square[2], maintained by the Chicago Police in which the torture of civilians has been carried out are just two patent examples of this tendency.
In an age of the historical decline of its system, the only solution proposed by the capitalist class is war, both against the working masses within national borders and foreign rivals abroad. In fact, the practice of domestic military exercises is consistent with the recommendations made in a recent Pentagon study[3] that warns of the need to revise military doctrine in preparation for the eventuality of future interventions by the US Army in large urban areas. According to military theorists, the social and economic crises within so-called megacities, which they describe as ‘petri dishes’ for radicalism, will be particularly acute. The incipient wave of working class resistance, which is evidenced by recent strikes by west coast longshoremen and US refinery workers, coupled with the massive protests within working class communities of color subjected to brutal police repression, appear to be just the beginning of a new phase of intense class struggles within the center of world imperialism. As such, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, the strategists of US capitalism know very well that they are not immune to the type of social convulsions that have recently rocked other countries.
The objective conditions for popular opposition to the system have become particularly acute in Puerto Rico. Massive structural unemployment as well as economic stagnation over the past 8 years has highlighted the complete bankruptcy of the economic solutions imposed by the capitalists and their acolytes in the colony. In a recent report by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics it was revealed that in 2014 Puerto Rico registered the lowest labor participation rate in last 22 years, seeing a reduction of 37,000 people employed. It is a well known fact that this prolonged unemployment crisis has provoked a massive exodus of Puerto Ricans from the island, many of which are highly skilled, in what can only be described as brain drain. All of this is taking place within the context of a $70 Billion public debt, which represents almost 70% of GDP, and serves as a pretext for a campaign of austerity measures carried out against the mass of working class Puerto Ricans. And in an effort to guarantee the steady transfer of wealth to the financial parasites of Wall Street as well as their junior partners in the colony, the colonial administration has recently proposed an increase to the consumption tax as part of what it cynically calls ‘tax reform’.
This panorama of social and economic crises increasingly provokes a popular questioning of all the political institutions within the colony. As such, the planned military exercises represent a policy of psychological intimidation being carried out in anticipation of a new wave of popular protests within a colonial society that is crumbling from within. From the perspective of US imperialism and its defenders within the colony, there is a concern that any political change that takes place within its colony be carried out under terms that are acceptable and consistent with its strategic interests.
Notwithstanding, the military exercises planned for Puerto Rico cannot only be understood within the context of a response to the deepening of the social crisis in the colony. It must also be understood as an imperative of US imperialism within the context of the sharpening of geopolitical conflicts. Undoubtedly, the recent rapprochement between Washington and Havana as well as the destabilizing campaign carried out against Venezuela form part of the same strategy of the US ruling class to reassert its hegemony in the hemisphere against the threat of emerging rivals like China.
There exists in recent Puerto Rican history a powerful precedent for popular opposition to US militarism in the struggle to remove the US Navy from the island of Vieques. The task of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of this experience now falls upon those popular forces most committed to the working masses. Their capacity to foster the reorganization of popular resistance and international solidarity against this most recent example of US militarism is more urgent than ever.
Carlos Borrero is a New York-based writer.
Notes
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/27/chicago-abusive-confinment-homan-square
Neocons Guided Petraeus on Afghan War
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | December 19, 2012
Even after the Iraq War disaster and Barack Obama’s election in 2008, neoconservatives retained their influence over U.S. war policies in Afghanistan through their close ties to George W. Bush’s national security holdovers, such as Gen. David Petraeus who partnered with neocon war hawks in escalating the Afghan War.
How tight Petraeus’s relationship was with two neocons in particular, Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, was explored in a Washington Post article by war correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran who described how Petraeus installed the husband-and-wife team in U.S. offices in Kabul, granted them top-secret clearances and let them berate military officers about war strategy.
Though the Kagans received no pay from the U.S. government, they drew salaries from their respective think tanks which are supported by large corporations, including military contractors with interests in extending the Afghan War. Frederick Kagan works for the American Enterprise Institute, and Kimberly Kagan founded the Institute for the Study of War [ISW] in 2007 and is its current president.
According to ISW’s 2011 annual report, its original supporters were mostly right-wing foundations, such as the Smith-Richardson Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, but it was later backed by national security contractors, including major ones like General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and CACI, as well as lesser-known firms such as DynCorp International, which provides training for Afghan police, and Palantir, a technology company founded with the backing of the CIA’s venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir supplies software to U.S. military intelligence in Afghanistan.
In her official bio at the ISW’s Web site, Kimberly Kagan touts her work “in Kabul for fifteen months in 2010 and 2011 as a ‘directed telescope’ to General David H. Petraeus and subsequently General John Allen, working on special projects for these commanders of the International Security Assistance Force.”
In the ISW’s 2011 annual report, Petraeus praises Kagan as “a barracuda at some times,” hails her leadership and poses with her for several photographs, including one in his dress uniform with the U.S. Capitol in the background.
The Post article noted that “For Kim Kagan, spending so many months away from research and advocacy work in Washington could have annoyed many donors to the Institute for the Study of War. But her major backers appear to have been pleased that she cultivated such close ties with Petraeus, who went from Kabul to head the CIA before resigning this fall over his affair with [biographer Paula] Broadwell. …
“On Aug. 8, 2011, a month after he relinquished command in Afghanistan to take over at the CIA, Petraeus spoke at the institute’s first ‘President’s Circle’ dinner, where he accepted an award from Kim Kagan. … ‘What the Kagans do is they grade my work on a daily basis,’ Petraeus said, prompting chortles from the audience. ‘There’s some suspicion that there’s a hand up my back, and it makes my lips talk, and it’s operated by one of the Doctors Kagan.’ …
“At the August 2011 dinner honoring Petraeus, Kagan thanked executives from two defense contractors who sit on her institute’s corporate council, DynCorp International and CACI International. The event was sponsored by General Dynamics. All three firms have business interests in the Afghan war.
“Kagan told the audience that their funding allowed her to assist Petraeus. ‘The ability to have a 15-month deployment essentially in the service of those who needed some help — and the ability to go at a moment’s notice — that’s something you all have sponsored,’ she said.”
Earlier Warning Signs
Though the Post article provides new details about Petraeus’s coziness to Washington’s neocons, there have been warning signs about this relationship for several years. In 2010, I wrote articles describing how Petraeus and other holdovers from George W. Bush’s administration, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, had trapped the inexperienced Obama into expanding the Afghan War.
On Sept. 27, 2010, I noted that “after his solid victory in November 2008, Obama rebuffed recommendations from some national security experts that he clean house by installing a team more in line with his campaign pledge of ‘change you can believe in.’ He accepted instead the counsel of Establishment Democrats who warned against any disruption to the war-fighting hierarchy and who were especially supportive of keeping Gates. …
“Before Obama’s decision to dispatch [an additional] 30,000 troops [in an Afghan War ‘surge’ in 2009], the Bush holdovers … sought to hem in the President’s choices by working with allies in the Washington news media and in think tanks. …
“For instance, early in 2009, Petraeus personally arranged for Max Boot [a neocon on the Council on Foreign Relations], Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan to get extraordinary access during a trip to Afghanistan. … Their access paid dividends for Petraeus when they penned a glowing report in the Weekly Standard about the prospects for success in Afghanistan – if only President Obama sent more troops and committed the United States to stay in the war for the long haul. …
“‘Fears of impending disaster are hard to sustain, … if you actually spend some time in Afghanistan, as we did recently at the invitation of General David Petraeus, chief of U.S. Central Command,’ they wrote upon their return.
“‘Using helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and bone-jarring armored vehicles, we spent eight days traveling from the snow-capped peaks of Kunar province near the border with Pakistan in the east to the wind-blown deserts of Farah province in the west near the border with Iran. Along the way we talked with countless coalition soldiers, ranging from privates to a four-star general,’ the trio said.”
Update 2015: (Frederick Kagan is the brother of Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, which began the drive in 1998 for invading Iraq. Robert Kagan, now with the Brookings Institution and a columnist for the Washington Post, is married to Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who oversaw last year’s coup in Ukraine. For more on the outsized influence of the Kagans, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’”)
Trapping the President
How Obama was manipulated by Bush’s holdovers – with the help of the neocons – was chronicled, too, in Bob Woodward’s 2010 book, Obama’s Wars, which revealed that Bush’s old team made sure Obama was given no option other than to escalate troop levels in Afghanistan. The Bush holdovers also lobbied for the troop increase behind Obama’s back.
Woodward’s book notes that “in September 2009, Petraeus called a Washington Post columnist to say that the war would be unsuccessful if the president held back on troops. Later that month, [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Adm. Mike] Mullen repeated much the same sentiment in Senate testimony, and in October, [Gen. Stanley] McChrystal asserted in a speech in London that a scaled-back effort against Afghan terrorists would not work.”
This back-door campaign infuriated Obama’s aides, including White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Woodward reported. “Filling his rant with expletives, Emanuel said, ‘Between the chairman [Mullen] and Petraeus, everyone’s come out and publicly endorsed the notion of more troops. The president hasn’t even had a chance!’” Woodward reported.
According to Woodward’s book, Gates, Petraeus and Mullen refused to even prepare an early-exit option that Obama had requested. Instead, they offered up only plans for their desired escalation of about 40,000 troops.
Woodward wrote: “For two exhausting months, [Obama] had been asking military advisers to give him a range of options for the war in Afghanistan. Instead, he felt that they were steering him toward one outcome and thwarting his search for an exit plan. He would later tell his White House aides that military leaders were ‘really cooking this thing in the direction they wanted.’”
Woodward identified Gates, Petraeus and Mullen as “unrelenting advocates for 40,000 more troops and an expanded mission that seemed to have no clear end.”
The Bush holdovers even resisted passing along a “hybrid” plan that came from outside their group, from Vice President Joe Biden who had worked with JCS vice chairman, Gen. James Cartwright. The plan envisioned a 20,000 troop increase and a more limited mission of hunting Taliban insurgents and training Afghan government forces.
Woodward reported, “When Mullen learned of the hybrid option, he didn’t want to take it to Obama. ‘We’re not providing that,’ he told Cartwright, a Marine known around the White House as Obama’s favorite general. Cartwright objected. ‘I’m just not in the business of withholding options,’ he told Mullen. ‘I have an oath, and when asked for advice I’m going to provide it.’”
Rigged War Game
Later, Obama told Gates and Mullen to present the hybrid option as one possibility, but instead the Bush holdovers sabotaged the idea by organizing a classified war game, code-named Poignant Vision, that some military insiders felt was rigged to discredit the hybrid option, Woodward reported.
According to Woodward’s book, Petraeus cited the results of the war game to Obama at the Nov. 11, 2009, meeting as proof the hybrid option would fail, prompting a plaintive question from a disappointed President, “so, 20,000 is not really a viable option?” Without telling Obama about the limits of the war game, Mullen, Petraeus, Gates and then-field commander McChrystal asserted that the hybrid option would lead to mission failure.
“Okay,” Obama said, “if you tell me that we can’t do that, and you war-gamed it, I’ll accept that,” according to Woodward’s book.
Faced with this resistance from the Bush holdovers – and unaware that their war game may have been fixed – Obama finally devised his own option that gave Gates, Petraeus and Mullen most of what they wanted – 30,000 additional troops on top of the 21,000 that Obama had dispatched shortly after taking office.
Obama did try to bind the Pentagon to a more limited commitment to Afghanistan, including setting a date of July 2011 for the beginning of a U.S. drawdown. Though Obama required all the key participants to sign off on his compromise, it soon became clear that the Bush holdovers had no intention to comply, Woodward reported.
Backstabbing
The incoming Obama administration was warned of this possibility of backstabbing by Gates, Petraeus and other Bush appointees when it was lining up personnel for national security jobs.
As I wrote in November 2008, “if Obama does keep Gates on, the new President will be employing someone who embodies many of the worst elements of U.S. national security policy over the past three decades, including responsibility for what Obama himself has fingered as a chief concern, ‘politicized intelligence.’ … It was Gates – as a senior CIA official in the 1980s – who broke the back of the CIA analytical division’s commitment to objective intelligence.”
More than any CIA official, Gates was responsible for the agency’s failure to detect the collapse of the Soviet Union, in large part because Gates had ridden roughshod over the CIA analysts on behalf of the Reagan administration’s desire to justify a massive military buildup by stressing Soviet ascendance and ignoring evidence of its disintegration.
As chief of the CIA’s analytical division and then deputy CIA director, Gates promoted pliable CIA careerists to top positions, while analysts with an independent streak were sidelined or pushed out of the agency.
“In the mid-1980s, the three senior [Soviet division] office managers who actually anticipated the decline of the Soviet Union and Moscow’s interest in closer relations with the United States were demoted,” wrote longtime CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman in his book, Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
Instead of heeding these warnings, Obama’s team listened to Establishment Democrats like former Rep. Lee Hamilton and former Sen. David Boren, who were big fans of Gates. [For more on Gates’s role, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative.]
Petraeus was much the same story. A favorite of Official Washington and especially the influential neocons, he was credited with supposedly winning the war in Iraq by implementing the “surge” in 2007, which was advocated strongly by Frederick Kagan and other key neocons.
However, in reality, all Petraeus did was extend that misguided war for another few years – at the cost of nearly 1,000 more U.S. dead and countless more dead Iraqis – thus giving President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney time to get out of Washington before the ultimate failure of the mission became obvious. The last U.S. troops were forced to leave Iraq at the end of 2011.
Begging Boot
Petraeus had such close ties to the neocons that he relied on them to pull him out of difficult political spots. In one embarrassing example in 2010, e-mails surfaced showing the four-star general groveling before Max Boot, seeking the neocon pundit’s help heading off a controversy over Petraeus’s prepared testimony to Congress which contained a mild criticism of Israel.
The e-mails from Petraeus to Boot revealed Petraeus renouncing his own congressional testimony in March 2010 because it included the observation that “the enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests” in the Middle East.
Petraeus’s testimony continued, “Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. … Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”
Though the testimony was obviously true, many neocons regard any suggestion that Israeli intransigence on Palestinian peace talks contributed to the dangers faced by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan – or by the U.S. public from acts of terrorism at home – as a “blood libel” against Israel.
So, when Petraeus’s testimony began getting traction on the Internet, the general turned to Boot at the high-powered Council on Foreign Relations, and began backtracking on the testimony. “As you know, I didn’t say that,” Petraeus said, according to one e-mail to Boot timed off at 2:27 p.m., March 18. “It’s in a written submission for the record.”
In other words, Petraeus was saying the comments were only in his formal testimony submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee and were not repeated by him in his brief oral opening statement. However, written testimony is treated as part of the official record at congressional hearings with no meaningful distinction from oral testimony.
In another e-mail, as Petraeus solicited Boot’s help in tamping down any controversy over the Israeli remarks, the general ended the message with a military “Roger” and a sideways happy face, made from a colon, a dash and a closed parenthesis, “:-)”.
The e-mails were made public by James Morris, who runs a Web site called Neocon Zionist Threat to America. He said he apparently got them by accident when he sent a March 19 e-mail congratulating Petraeus for his testimony and Petraeus responded by forwarding one of Boot’s blog posts that knocked down the story of the general’s implicit criticism of Israel.
Petraeus forwarded Boot’s blog item, entitled “A Lie: David Petraeus, Anti-Israel,” which had been posted at the Commentary magazine site at 3:11 p.m. on March 18. However, Petraeus apparently forgot to delete some of the other exchanges between him and Boot at the bottom of the e-mail.
~
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).
Weapons in space would undermine global stability – Russia
RT | March 11, 2015
The deployment of weapons to outer space must be prohibited, as an attack from Earth’s orbit could potentially target any country in the world at any time and ruin global stability, a Russian delegation said at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.
The risks of this becoming a reality are now more “likely in light of scientific and technological developments,” the Russian representatives said, as quoted by TASS.
Speaking at the plenary session on the prevention of an arms race in space, they drew attention to the draft treaty introduced by Russia and China last year.
The Russian delegation noted “it is not a complete recipe, but rather an invitation to work together on its future development.”
The address stated that it is important to use the time when there are no weapons in space “to start substantive work on the text.”
At the same time, it has been a priority to pursue global policy initiatives to encourage countries not to become the first to place weapons in space, the delegation said, referring to “voluntary political commitments that would confirm peaceful nature of [nations’] space activities.”
The prevention of the placement of weapons in orbit has been an important goal of Russia’s foreign policy.
Russia has been promoting various initiatives that would prohibit the weaponization of space. One such project includes the draft resolution ‘No First Placement of Arms in Outer Space,’ presented at the UN General Assembly.
The draft resolution outlines further action to keep outer space free from weapons. One of the points included in the resolution is to discuss the issue at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, in order to create and adopt a binding international treaty on the prevention of placing arms in space.
The initiative was originally proposed by Russia and China in 2008, with an updated Russian-Chinese draft submitted to the Conference on Disarmament in June 2014.
Some space activities fall under international regulation of space law, as well as a series of treaties on nuclear disarmament and nuclear test bans. However, not all types of weapons are covered within this legal framework.
Read more:
‘Dialogue not arms’ deters ISIS in Libya
MEMO | March 11, 2015
The prime minister of the provisional government set up by the Libya Dawn coalition in Tripoli has said that the ISIS presence in Libya is extremely limited and can be confronted by “dialogue and not arms”.
In an interview with Anadolu news agency in Tripoli, Omar Al-Hassi said that there is a small group of “Islamic State” militants in Libya, one in Darna and the other in the Sirte area. “The Libyan people will never accept extremism or foreign military intervention, because they consider these issues as internal affairs that can be resolved and treated with dialogue,” he insisted.
Pointing out that examples of extremism have existed throughout Islamic history and that such issues must be addressed wisely, he warned against the use of arms. “This could have deadly results and increase tension and calls for revenge.”
The Libyans, said Hassi, need development and peace and want stability and to solve their problems with negotiations. He urged the international community to stop the “genocidal war” waged by renegade General Khalifa Haftar, the army chief of the Tobruk-based rival government.
According to the prime minister, Haftar is waging a war of extermination in the major cities, bombing the most important airports and attacking service institutions, universities and oil wells. “The world,” he insisted, “must unite to stop these attacks that cause us pain.” He called specifically on Turkey to play a role in this and condemned the recent bombing of Ameitikh airport in Tripoli on Monday. “The airport,” he explained, “is used to transport the wounded and receive medical supplies.”
Russia ‘completely ending’ activities under Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty
RT | March 10, 2015
Moscow has announced it is “completely” ending activities under the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). Russia’s participation in the treaty was first halted in 2007.
“The Russian Federation has taken the decision to halt its participation in meetings of the [consulting group] from March 11, 2015. Therefore, Russia is ending its actions in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, announced in 2007, completely,” a statement from the Foreign Ministry said.
Moscow has asked Belarus to represent Russia’s interests in the group starting from Wednesday, the statement said.
According to the Ministry, the move does not mean that Moscow refuses to continue further dialogue on control of conventional armed forces in Europe – “if and when our partners are ready for it,” the Ministry official said in the statement, adding that future work on the project should serve the interests of both Russia and other European states.
The original CFE Treaty, signed in 1990 by 16 NATO and six Warsaw Pact, set equal ceilings for each bloc on key categories of conventional armaments, with tanks, combat armored vehicles, artillery, assault helicopters and combat aircraft among them. For instance, under the treaty, each side is supposed to have no more than 16,500 tanks or 27,300 armored combat vehicles in active units.
1999 saw an “adapted” version of the treaty signed. However NATO members refused to ratify it until Russia withdrew troops from Georgia and the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdnestria. Russia slammed the condition as an “artificial linkage.”
In December 2007 this led to Moscow imposing a moratorium on the CFE treaty. Moscow also said the treaty was “irrelevant” since NATO planned to increase its military presence in Eastern Europe.
Four years later, the North Atlantic bloc stated exchange of information on conventional weapons and troops with Russia would be stopped. In November 2014, Moscow suspended the implementation of the CFE Treaty. Two months later, the US House of Representatives issued a resolution condemning Russia and, among other points, urging president Obama to review US and NATO armed forces readiness under the CFE.
“For many years the Russian Federation has been doing everything possible to maintain… the treaty, initiated talks on its adaptation and ratified the adaptation agreement,” Moscow said Tuesday, adding that all such efforts have been dismissed by NATO in favor of the alliance’s expansion.
Shutting Down AIPAC
Removing Israel from American politics
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • March 10, 2015
[The following is a lightly edited version of a speech I gave on March 1 st in Washington during the anti-AIPAC and Netanyahu visit demonstrations. Two days later Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan, whom I cite below, was sitting in the House VIP visitors’ gallery beaming as he listened to Netanyahu’s love fest with Congress. It might have been the first time a clandestine agent for a foreign country who spied on the United States was so honored but I would observe that the event was doubly significant in that the speaker Prime Minister Netanyahu was also involved in the same theft of American nuclear technology.]
I would like to concentrate on two issues. First is the nature of the special relationship between Israel and the United States and second is the role of the Israel Lobby and most particularly AIPAC in shaping that relationship. I was a foreign policy adviser for Ron Paul in 2008 and consider myself politically conservative. I respect the fact that nations must be responsive to their interests, but because of my personal experience of living and working overseas for many years I have come to recognize that the United States is an anomaly in that it persists in going around the world doing things that just do not make any sense. This has been particularly true during the past fourteen years, with invasions, interventions and targeted assassinations having become the preferred form of international discourse for Washington.
Many would agree with what I have just observed, but few recognize the role of the special relationship with Israel in shaping what the United States has become. Quite frankly, the relationship is both lopsided in terms of favoring perceived Israeli interests as well as being terrible for the long suffering Palestinians, very bad for the United States as it damages the American brand worldwide and even bad for Israel as it enables its governments to act in ways that are ill advised and ultimately self-defeating.
I would first like to address the often repeated mantra that Israel is America’s best friend or closest ally as it is a bedrock issue that is frequently trotted out to excuse behavior that would otherwise be incomprehensible. Apart from being a recipient of more than $3 billion per year from the US taxpayer, Israel is no ally and never has been. There is no alliance of any kind with Israel, in part because Israel has a border that has been moving eastward for the past fifty years as it continues to absorb Palestinian land. Without an internationally recognized border it is impossible to define a relationship between two nations. Israel also has no strategic value to the United States, so to speak of an alliance, which posits reciprocity is ridiculous.
But that is not to say that Israel does not interact with Washington. Indeed, some might say that it possesses a disproportionate voice relating to some foreign and domestic policies. The penchant to use force as a first option in international interactions is perhaps itself due to Washington imitating Tel Aviv or vice versa as neither the United States nor Israel seems any longer interested in diplomacy.
American protection of Israel in international bodies like the United Nations is a disgrace, making the United States de facto complicit in Israeli violations of international law, to include its settlement expansion, as well as its war crimes. Under Bill Clinton the United States more or less adopted the Israeli model in dealing with terrorism, which consists of overwhelming armed response and no negotiations ever. Washington’s uncritical support for Israel politically and militarily was a major factor in motivating the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attack.
Deferring to Israel often results in U.S. policies that are absurd and highly damaging to other interests. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described Israel’s devastation of Lebanon in 2006 in which nearly 1,000 civilians were killed and more than $2 billion in infrastructure was destroyed as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”. Rice, who also spoke of fear of a nuclear mushroom cloud rising above Washington to justify invading Iraq, far from being discredited due to her lack of discernment, is currently a professor at Stanford University and is now being spoken of as a possible Senator from California or, alternatively, as the next Commissioner of the National Football League. So much for accountability in the United States.
One might well conclude that Israel is not only not an ally but also not much of a friend. It has run massive spying operations inside the United States to include hundreds of Art Students and celebrations by the employees of an Israeli moving firm located in New Jersey when the twin towers were going down. Israel is regularly named by the FBI as the most active friendly country in terms of running espionage operations against the U.S. but nothing ever happens. Israeli spies are sent home quietly and Americans who spy for Israel are rarely prosecuted. Last year we witnessed Hollywood producer and Israeli citizen Arnon Milchan receiving an Oscar even as stories were circulating about his criminal collusion to obtain restricted American technology to enable Israel to build nuclear weapons. The Justice Department has not seen fit to do anything about him.
Israel also has a hand in what is going on domestically in the United States. Many states now have their own departments of homeland security and many of the companies that obtain contracts to provide security services are Israeli. Airport security is a virtual Israeli monopoly. Increasingly militarized American police officers now use federal government grants to travel to Israel for training based on the Israeli experience with the Palestinians. Israelis have advised CIA and Pentagon torturers and Israeli advisers were also present at Abu Ghraib.
Israel’s influence over Washington policies frequently means war. American officials extremely close to the Israeli government were behind the rush to war with Iraq. If Washington goes to war with Iran in the near future it will not be because Tehran actually threatens America, it will be because Israel and its powerful lobby in the U.S. have succeeded in creating an essentially false case to mandate such action. Congress is obligingly advancing legislation that would commit the United States to intervene militarily in support of a unilateral Israeli attack, meaning that Israel could easily be empowered to make the decision on whether or not the U.S. goes to war.
Israel interferes in American elections, in 2012 on behalf of Mitt Romney, and also this week by aligning itself with the Republicans against the President of the United States to harden existing policy against Iran. Looking ahead to elections in 2016, two Jewish billionaires have already stated clearly that they will spend whatever they have to to elect the candidate that is best for Israel. As Sheldon Adelson is a Republican and Haim Saban is a Democrat both major parties are covered and I would warn “Watch out for Hillary,” Saban’s candidate of choice.
Israel has corrupted our congress which we will witness again on Tuesday. Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rebukes and belittles our own head of state, its government ministers insult and ridicule John Kerry, and its intelligence officers have free access to Capitol Hill where they provide alarmist and inaccurate private briefings for American legislators. In short, Israel has no reluctance to use its enormous political and media clout in the US to pressure successive administrations to conform to its own foreign and security policy views.
Beyond the corruption of our political process, I believe many in this room would agree that the depiction and treatment of the Palestinians has been disgraceful. Israel has engaged in land and water theft and is doing its best to make Palestinian life so miserable that they will all decide to leave. Some would describe that as ethnic cleansing. Just last week there were reports of how Israeli authorities cut off water and electricity to parts of the West bank and also won a bogus court case in New York City that will bankrupt the Palestinian authority.
Netanyahu’s policy is to punish the Palestinians incessantly no matter what they do. The United States has certainly embraced a lot of unpleasant policies over the past fourteen years, but I honestly think that most Americans would be appalled if they knew how Palestinians really have been treated. Unfortunately the Israel propaganda machine has been able to maintain a tight grip on the narrative promoted in the mainstream media. Arabs are depicted as terrorists while Israelis are seen as folks just like us.
How does all this happen? Because of money which enables the Israel firsters to control the media and buy the politicians, but unfortunately no one is allowed to say that lest Abe Foxman of the Anti Defamation League accuse one of propagating a stereotype that is an “anti-Semitic myth.” American media corporations and national politics are in fact totally corrupted by money and the control that it buys and not just on behalf of Israel. One would have to be blind not to recognize that fact.
This is where groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee better known as AIPAC come in. AIPAC is only one part of the octopus like Israel Lobby but it might well be regarded as the most effective component. AIPAC has an annual budget of $70 million and 200 full time employees. It has thousands of volunteers and tens of thousands of contributors and supporters, many of whom are in Washington right now. On Tuesday they will descend on Congressional offices to pressure congressmen to agree to conform to AIPAC talking points.
AIPAC, which is an IRS 501(c)4 lobbying organization, is able to keep its donor list secret. It characteristically operates in the shadows. It prepares position papers that are then distributed in congress and many congressmen, largely ignorant of the issues, parrot what AIPAC gives them. AIPAC operative Steve Rosen once boasted that he could have the signatures of seventy Senators on a napkin in twenty-four hours.
Congressmen know that crossing the Israeli Lobby is career damaging. Senators William Fulbright and Chuck Percy were among the first to feel its wrath when they were confronted by well-funded challengers backed by effective media campaigns who defeated them in spite of their own outstanding records as legislators. The founder of my own organization the Council for the National Interest Congressman Paul Findley also suffered the same fate when he fell afoul of the Lobby. Within the government the purge has also been widespread with the traditional Arabists at State Department forced out to be replaced by friends of Israel, many of whom have been political appointees rather than career diplomats.
There is no easy solution to what I have been telling you. Certainly a more honest media would produce American voters who are better informed, but even though AIPAC has long been defending the indefensible the corruption in Congress runs deep and it is difficult to find a constituency anywhere in the United States where it is possible to vote for a candidate who is not openly and enthusiastically supportive of the Israel relationship. In Virginia last year there were several important congressional elections. All the candidates were vetted for their views on Israel well before the voting took place.
But to return to AIPAC there should be demands that it and other similar Israel-advocacy organizations register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. That would require them to have complete transparency in terms of their funding and it would also tell the American people that the organizations themselves are not necessarily benign and acting on behalf of U.S. interests, which is the subterfuge that they currently engage in. It is certainly past time to push back against an organization that is brazenly promoting the interests of a foreign government at the expense of the American people. Thank you.
Norway holds massive drills near Russia border
Press TV – March 9, 2015
Norway has started massive military exercises, involving 5,000 servicemen, in the northern parts of the country near the border with Russia, the largest such drills in nearly 50 years.
The country’s military launched drills dubbed “Joint Viking” on Monday in the northern regions of Lakselv and Alta in the Finnmark County, which border Russia’s Murmansk region.
The exercises will include the Norwegian army, navy, air force and civil defense troops (Heimevernet).
Aleksander Jankov, a spokesman for the Norwegian Armed Forces, said 400 military vehicles and all types of weapons will be used in the drills, which are the largest to take place in the region since 1967.
According to Norwegian media, the massive exercise is to show that Norway has the ability to defend Finnmark.
Prior to the kickoff army spokesman Vegar Gystad said, “If we’re to have a credible defense that can defend the entire country, we also have to train in the entire country.”
The war games come amid tensions between the West and Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.
Norway, a member of the Western military alliance NATO, suspended all military cooperation with Russia after the Black Sea Peninsula Crimea voted to break away from Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation in March, 2014.
Meanwhile, NATO plans to expand its military presence in Eastern Europe amid the crisis in Ukraine and has held numerous war games over the past year. In 2014, NATO forces held some 200 military exercises, with the alliance’s General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg having promised that such drills would continue.
In addition, the defense ministers of NATO’s 28 member states agreed on February 5 to establish six new command and control posts in the Eastern European nations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned NATO’s exercises and military buildup toward its borders.
Government deems security risks too low to ‘exempt defense from austerity,’ says think tank
RT | March 9, 2015
The government believes strategic threats posed to Britain are not serious enough to merit insulating military spending from budget cuts, according to a report by a top defense think-tank.
The paper by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) centers on the economics of defense under austerity.
It concludes: “The government is not yet convinced that strategic security risks are high enough to justify an exemption for defense from austerity.”
The findings jar with recent statements by politicians and leading generals on the dangers faced by the UK.
In February, the top British officer in NATO – General Sir Adrian Bradshaw – referred to Russia as an “obvious existential threat to our whole being,” while Prime Minister David Cameron has called the rise of the Islamic State a “mortal threat.”
The investigation also indicates Britain is unlikely to meet the symbolic spending of 2 percent of GDP on defense, expected by NATO in coming years, and that thousands of soldiers could be cut irrespective of who wins the general election this year.
It warns that up to 30,000 service personnel could be axed. Given the Royal Navy may be largely exempt from redundancies, to ensure it can crew Britain’s aircraft carriers, the army could be forced to handle 80 percent of the intended reductions.
The report comes at a difficult time for David Cameron who this week faces a rebellion by a number of Tory MP’s over defense cuts.
Last week Bob Stewart, an army colonel turned Tory MP, argued defense is in a “parlous state” and that service chiefs should resign over cuts. He suggested he might step down himself, either as an MP or from the influential Defence Select Committee.
UK allies are also worried. General Raymond Odierno, chief of staff of the US Army, recently told the Telegraph he was “very concerned” at the cuts being made to the UK’s armed forces.
He criticized Chancellor George Osborne’s refusal to confirm whether the UK will meet NATO member states’ spending target of 2 percent of respective national GDP.
“What has changed, though, is the level of capability. In the past we would have a British Army division working alongside an American army division,” he added. Cuts mean the US Army now expects Britain to provide only half its previous commitment.
European Commission chief wants to create EU army
Press TV – March 8, 2015
President of the European Commission (EC) Jean-Claude Juncker has called for the creation of a European Union army, amid tension with Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.
“Such an army would help us to build a common foreign and security policy, as well as jointly assume the responsibilities of Europe in the world,” said Juncker in an interview with German weekly Welt am Sonntag published on Sunday.
Juncker added that the formation of a European armed forces would signal to Moscow the political and economic union is “serious about upholding the values of the European Union.”
“A common European army would show the world that there will by no means be war once more amongst EU nations,” said Juncker.
According to the EC chief, an EU army could be used to “react credibly” to dangers facing one of the 28-member states or any of the bloc’s neighboring countries.
The German weekly reported that Juncker has backing in the German legislature, including chairman of Germany’s foreign affairs committee Norbert Rottgen, who said it is time to put such a proposal in action.
“The Europeans spend enormous sums of money for the military combined, much more than Russia,” said Rottgen, adding, “But our military capabilities remain an insufficient security policy as long as we maintain small national armies, which make and buy many parts of the same thing on a smaller scale.”
Former EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is set to present the findings of a report titled, More Union in European Defense. The report calls for a new European protection method, which would have “a political and military ability to autonomously conduct intervention operations beyond the EU’s borders.” The report also calls for the establishment of a military EU headquarters in the bloc’s de facto capital, Brussels.
According to the report, a common security policy would bring savings to the bloc’s member states, which altogether spends €190 billion annually to maintain 28 national armies, consisting of roughly 1.5 million service personnel.
The proposals to extend EU’s military capabilities come amid tensions between European countries and the US over the Ukrainian crisis. The Western governments accuse Russia of destabilizing Ukraine, an allegation which Moscow has repeatedly denied.
Meanwhile, NATO plans to expand its military presence in Eastern Europe amid the crisis in Ukraine and has held numerous war games over the past year. In 2014, NATO forces held some 200 military exercises, with the alliance’s General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg having promised that such drills would continue.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned NATO’s exercises and military buildup toward its borders.
3 NATIONAL NUCLEAR WAR LABORATORIES HAVE RUN AMOK, BLOCK DISARMAMENT, AND SHOULD BE SHUT DOWN, WATCHDOG SAYS
By Sherwood Ross | Aletho News | March 6, 2015
NEW YORK — The nation’s three privatized nuclear warhead laboratories are bloated, redundant, stand in the way of progress on real 21st century security issues, and should be shut down, a conference on peace and security here was told.
“These privatized labs have become a considerable racket” and this year will consume more than $4 billion for their nuclear weapons activities, said Greg Mello, Executive Director of the Los Alamos Study Group (LASG), of Albuquerque, N.M., which tracks their activities.
The laboratories are the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Los Alamos, N.M., the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) in Albuquerque, NM, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, CA.
Civil society’s disarmament’s efforts since the demise of the Soviet Union “have all foundered in substantial part because they failed to realize the central importance of attenuating and then eliminating the political power of these laboratories,” Mello says.
The laboratories are pushing “an ambitious plan to replace all current warheads and (nuclear) bombs with redesigned models” that will actually make them more destructive, threatening further to destabilize our relationship with Russia, and with their new delivery systems will cost taxpayers over time more than an estimated one trillion dollars, Mello said.
In a talk Feb. 28th to the Helen Caldicott Foundation conference on “The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction” in the New York Academy of Medicine, Mello said the labs “are the primary institutions through which corporate prerogatives have replaced government decision-making in the nuclear weapons arena.”
“The labs were given sweeping new powers in 1996,” Mello recalled, and since 2006 all are fully privatized. “They now wield enormous policy power by a variety of means both crude and subtle, direct and indirect, and they do not hesitate to blackmail government whenever that power is threatened.”
Nuclear weapons should be banned, as dozens of countries are now considering, Mello said, “and the nuclear weapons laboratories should be closed entirely as part of such a ban.”
“After 25 years of close examination of the labs,” he continued, “we have finally concluded, and for the first time, that the labs have no unique role in disarmament, nonproliferation, verification, cleanup, intelligence, or in any other mission” that cannot be performed “more objectively, cheaper, and better” by other institutions. All government-led and civil society efforts at reform have failed.
Privatization deepened the conflict of interest at the labs, since now the three labs’ directors corporate officers have a legal responsibility to advise the Secretary of Energy and the President regarding the (nuclear) stockpile while also having a legal responsibility to bring in more business, Mello warned. “What’s more,” he pointed out, “The corporations are fully indemnified and protected from the consequences of their many failures, misuses of funds, violations of law, and accidents, and they have never paid a dime for any of these.”
“It is now critically important,” Mello concluded, “to dethrone the nuclear weapons laboratories now in public, in the executive branch, and in congressional eyes to prepare for disarmament – to expose the transgressive nature of nuclear weapons institutions right along with nuclear weapons themselves. If we don’t, we won’t be able to grapple with the real problems this country faces.”
In 2002, Prior to his current position, Mello was a Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton’s Program of Science and Global Security.
The conference at which Mello spoke comes at a time when tensions between Russia and the U.S. are escalating. “As the Cold War heats up again, the U.S. and Russia maintain over 1,000 weapons on hair-trigger alert to be launched with a press of a button,” says Dr. Caldicott, an Australian pediatrician who has become perhaps the most prominent opponent of nuclear war and nuclear power.
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The toxic legacy of nuclear weapons testing serves as a stark warning of the danger these weapons pose
By Scott Ritter | RT | March 11, 2021
Millions of people suffer and die from the effects of radiation exposure from decades of nuclear weapons testing. Their experience should give serious pause to those who continue to embrace the viability of a nuclear deterrent.
A dust storm originating in the Sahara Desert swept across parts of Spain, France, the UK, and Ireland last month. In addition to bringing a red tinge to the sky, the dust caused a slight, yet noticeable, spike in radiation in the areas it reached. This radiation spike was caused by the presence of cesium-137, a radioactive isotope produced through the nuclear fission of uranium-235 in nuclear weapons. A legacy of French nuclear weapons testing that occurred in Algeria during the 1960s, the cesium-137 contamination is a reminder that while the testing of nuclear weapons may have been halted for the time being, the consequences of these tests live on through the poisoning of the planet mankind calls home.
The Saharan radioactive dust cloud is but the most recent visible phenomenon of a plague that has infected much of the world. … continue
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