Russia is fully complying with commitments made under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and does not want to withdraw from it, Viktor Ozerov, the Chairman of the Federation Council on Defense and Security, told RIA Novosti.
However, if the United States decides to put its missiles in Eastern Europe, Russia will seriously consider pulling out of the agreement, Ozerov said.
Earlier, AP reported that the Obama Administration plans to deploy land-based missiles in Eastern Europe that “could pre-emptively destroy the Russian weapons” in response to Moscow’s alleged violation of the INF treaty.
If Washington deploys its missiles in Eastern Europe, its objective wouldn’t be to target sites in the Middle East, but to fire at Russia from a close distance, Ozerov said, adding that in this case Russia will have to respond with force.
“Russia has enough strength and means for an adequate response — starting from the withdrawal from the INF treaty and deploying “Iskanders” (short-range ballistic missile system, also known by its NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone) along our Western borders,” Ozerov told RIA Novosti.
The Chairman of the Defense Committee stressed that Russia is fully complying with the INF treaty, and although Washington says Moscow violated the agreement in the past, it was not able to provide factual evidence of that.
As long as the United States sticks to its commitments under the treaty, Russia is willing to respect the agreement as well, Ozerov said, adding that it’s pointless to blackmail Russia by threatening to deploy missiles in Eastern Europe. Instead, it is a much better idea to try to find a partnership-based agreement with Russia.
The INF treaty was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987. The agreement eliminates all nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with intermediate range, between 500 and 5,000 km (300 — 3,400 miles).
In recent years, both the United States and Russia accused each other of violating terms of the treaty. In 2012, Washington accused Moscow of violating the agreement by allegedly launching a cruise missile from an “Iskander” missile system. However, the US government was not able to provide any factual evidence of their claim. Russia, on the other hand, said US drones were also a violation of the treaty.
See also:
US Might Add Missiles to Its Military Buildup in Europe to Counter Russia
Russia Will Respond to NATO’s Missile Defense Buildup in Europe – General
June 5, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Eastern Europe, INF treaty, NATO, Russia, United States |
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The Ukrainian parliament has adopted amendments to state law allowing “admission of the armed forces of other states on the territory of Ukraine.” The possible hosting of foreign weapons of mass destruction is also mentioned in the documents.
Amendments to Ukrainian law were adopted on Thursday by the Verkhovna Rada, receiving a majority of 240 votes (the required minimum being 226). The bill was submitted to the parliament in May by PM Arseny Yatsenyuk. It focuses on the provision of “international peacekeeping and security” assistance to Ukraine at its request.
Peacekeeping missions are to be deployed “on the basis of decision of the UN and/or the EU,” the bill published on the parliament’s official website says.
Previously, the presence of any international military forces on the territory of Ukraine not specifically sanctioned by state law was only possible by adopting a special law initiated by the president. Implementation of the new amendments “will create necessary conditions for deployment on the territory of Ukraine international peacekeeping and security” missions without the need for additional legal authorization, the explanatory note to the draft bill said.
The presence of such armed forces in Ukraine “should ensure an early normalization of situation” in Donbass, the note added, saying that they would help “restore law and order and life, constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens” in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
In a comparative table, published among the accompanying documents to the bill, “potential carriers of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction are permitted under international agreement with Ukraine for short-term accommodation,” with Kiev providing proper control during the period that such forces were stationed there.
Implementation of the law “will not require additional expenditures from the State Budget of Ukraine,” its documents say.
The previous law also required that the length of time temporary peacekeeping forces were to be deployed in Ukraine be stipulated, while the new amendments allow an indefinite period, long enough “to achieve the goal of the stay.”
A separate amendment banned the presence of “armed forces of states that unleash military aggression against Ukraine.” This appears to be a clear reference to the Rada’s January statement calling Russia an “aggressor” – although the body has been reluctant to approve a legally binding law saying exactly that.
Moscow denies being part of the conflict, stressing that Kiev is fighting a civil war with eastern Ukrainians, not Russian forces. The Kremlin has consistently and adamantly denied any presence of Russian troops or hardware in eastern Ukraine, pointing out that there is no evidence proving otherwise.
With violence in south-eastern Ukraine on the rise again, it is “very important to avoid any actions or steps that provoke escalation of tension,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday, as quoted by RIA Novosti. Saying that there is “no shortage” of provocative actions from Kiev’s side, Peskov said the main point is “to concentrate on implementation of [Minsk] agreements.” “This is what Moscow expects the most,” he added.
The new bill on international peacekeeping missions in Ukraine contradicts the Minsk agreements, Russian State Duma MP Leonid Slutsky said. “Minsk-2 did not provide for peacekeepers in resolution of the national conflict,” Slutsky said, as quoted by TASS.
The new legal act is “doomed for inaction,” a member of the Russian Duma’s defense committee, Franz Klintsevich, said, adding that the bill is “pure PR and propaganda.” “I cannot simulate a situation in which the United Nations will vote to deploy international military to Ukraine,” Klintsevich told journalists, as cited by RIA Novosti.
The Lugansk People’s Republic’s envoy to the so-called Contact Group on Ukraine in Minsk, Vladislav Dainego, commented that the law was adopted to “justify the presence” of foreign military that are “already operating in Ukraine.” “There are some 20,000 [troops], primarily from Hungary and Poland,” Dainego claimed when speaking to Interfax, adding that the status of those forces was unclear.
Kiev came up with the initiative to employ peacekeeping missions in Donbass earlier this year. Moscow has insisted that deployment of such forces in Ukraine would be relevant only after all points of the Minsk agreement have been fully implemented, and only if both sides of the conflict – Kiev and the rebel republics – agree to the measure.
Read more:
Deployment of peacekeepers should be agreed with both sides of Ukrainian conflict – Lavrov
‘Stick to Minsk deal’: Russia slams Ukraine idea for EU peacekeepers
June 5, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Army, Breakaway regions, EU, Europe, Military, NATO, Nuclear weapons, Ukraine, UN |
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The Russian European dreamers have included Pushkin, Lenin, Gorbachev and, until relatively recently, President Vladimir Putin. They have all seen their country’s future as part of the “European house”. But history and events have not been kind to Russia. Napoleon’s invasion, revolution, two world wars, Stalin’s communism and, most recently, the expansion of NATO, have shattered the dream again and again.
At the end of the Cold War and with agreement on the NATO-Russia Founding Act it seemed that big steps towards that goal were being taken. First, Russia would have a seat at NATO’s table. Later it would join NATO. Later still, the European Union. Some said this would happen over ten years, others 20.
Then, smash, the dream came to an end as President Bill Clinton, bucking America’s academic foreign policy elite, decided to expand NATO’s membership to former members of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact. George Kennan, America’s elder statesman on Russian issues, commented, “It shows so little understanding of Russian and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then the NATO expanders will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are – but this is just wrong.” He characterized it as the most dangerous foreign policy decision that the US had made since the end of the Second World War.
Defending Clinton and, later, George W. Bush and Barack Obama who continued the NATO expansion policy, their supporters have said that in expanding NATO eastward the West did not break its promise to Moscow not to.
But it did. As ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has said on many occasions there was a promise not to expand NATO “as much as a thumb’s width further to the East.” This is an echo of the US secretary of state, James Baker, when he spoke in St Catherine’s Hall in the Kremlin on February 9th 1990, saying, there would be “no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east”.
Some re-writing of history has gone on. Now Baker has ambiguously denied there was any such agreement.
There has even been an effort to show that Gorbachev himself denies that there was an agreement. And it is true that in the last few years he has said one thing and then another. This is perhaps because he is embarrassed that he never asked for the US/German commitments in writing. He has defended that decision arguing, “The Warsaw Pact still existed at the beginning of 1990. Merely the notion that NATO might expand to include countries in the alliance sounded completely absurd at the time”.
Nevertheless, the evidence that a commitment was made not to expand is strong. Rodrick Braithwaite who was the UK’s ambassador to the Soviet Union and then the new Russia, has written, “After Germany reunited, Václav Havel, the Czech president, called for Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary to enter NATO. The British prime minister and foreign secretary assured Soviet ministers that there was no such intention. NATO’s secretary general added that enlargement would damage relations with the Soviet Union.”
Jack Matlock, who was ambassador to Moscow for both Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior, has said on a number of occasions that Moscow was given “a clear commitment” not to expand NATO.
Der Spiegel, the German political weekly, has been through the German and British archives. It found a minute of a conversation on February 10, 1990 when foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher spoke with Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze. Genscher said, “For us one thing is certain: NATO will not expand to the east.” Because the conversation revolved mainly around the future of East Germany Genscher added explicitly, “As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned this also applies in general.”
In a major speech on January 31 1990 in Tutzing, Genscher said there would not be “an expansion of NATO territory to the east, in other words, closer to the borders of the Soviet Union”.
The British foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, when meeting Genscher on February 6th 1990 to discuss Hungary’s forthcoming free elections, was told that the Soviet Union needed “the certainty that Hungary will not become part of the Western alliance.” The Kremlin, Genscher said, would have to be given assurances to that effect. Hurd agreed.
In April 2009 Gorbachev told the German newspaper Bild, “the West have probably rubbed their hands, rejoicing at having played a trick on the Russians.” It very much looks like it.
Moreover, the US gratuitously abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and decided also to employ missile defences in central Europe, thus undermining the so-called “nuclear balance”.
The West has taken advantage of a weakened Russian when instead it should have been paving the way for Russia to enter the “European House”. History will not smile kindly on the dangerous and counterproductive expansion of NATO.
Copyright: Jonathan Power
June 5, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | European Union, NATO, Russia, United States |
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In their bid to brand Canada a “warrior nation,” Stephen Harper’s Conservatives seek to glorify Canadian military history, regardless of its horrors.
On Saturday Canada’s Minister of Veteran Affairs released a statement to mark “113 years since the end of the South African war.” Erin O’Toole said, “Canada commemorates all those who served in South Africa, contributing to our proud military history.”
But the Boer War was a brutal conflict to strengthen British colonial authority in Africa, ultimately leading to racial apartheid. In the late 1800s the Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers, increasingly found themselves at odds with British interests in southern Africa. Large quantities of gold were found 30 miles south of the Boer capital, Pretoria, in 1886 and the Prime Minister of U.K.’s Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes, and other British miners wanted to get their hands on more of the loot.
There was also a geostrategic calculation. The Boer gold and diamond fields in the Orange Free State and Transvaal were drawing the economic heart of southern Africa away from the main British colonies on the coast. If this continued London feared that the four southern African colonies might unite, but outside of the British orbit, which threatened its control of an important shipping lane.
Between 1898 and 1902 London launched a vicious war against the Boer. With Cecil Rhodes’ Imperial South African Association promoting anti-Boer sentiment in this country, some 7,400 Canadians fought to strengthen Britain’s position in southern Africa.
The war was devastating for the Boers. As part of a scorched-earth campaign the British-led forces burned their crops and homesteads and poisoned their wells. About 200,000 Boer were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Twenty-eight thousand (mostly children) died of disease, starvation and exposure in these camps.
In Another Kind of Justice: Canadian Military Law from Confederation to Somalia, Chris Madsen points out that, “Canadian troops became intimately involved in the nastier aspects of the South African war.” Whole columns of troops participated in search, expel and burn missions. Looting was common. One Canadian soldier wrote home, “as fast as we come up the country… we loot the farms.” Another wrote, “I tell you there is some fun in it. We ride up to a house and commandeer anything you set your eyes on. We are living pretty well now.” There are also numerous documented instances of Canadian troops raping and killing innocent civilians.
As with the Boer, the war was devastating for many Africans. Over 100,000 Blacks were held in concentration camps but the British failed to keep a tally of their deaths so it’s not known how many died of disease or starvation. Some estimate that as many as 20,000 Africans were worked to death in camps during the war.
Unlike the Boer, the plight of black South Africans didn’t improve much after the war. In Painting the Map Red: Canada and the South African War, 1899-1902, Carman Miller notes, “Although imperialists had made much of the Boer maltreatment of the Blacks, the British did little after the war to remedy their injustices.” In fact, the war reinforced white/British dominance over the region’s Indigenous population.
The peace agreement with the Boer included a guarantee that Africans would not be granted the right to vote before the two defeated republics gained independence. In The History of Britain in Africa, John Charles Hatch explains: “By the time that self-government was restored in 1906 and 1907, they [the Boer] were able to reestablish the racial foundations of their states on the traditional principle of ‘No equality in church or state.'” Blacks and mixed-race people were excluded from voting in the post-war elections and would not gain full civil rights for nine decades.
For Harper’s Conservatives the details of the Boer War are barely relevant. What matters is that Canadians traveled to a distant land to do battle beside a great empire. That’s the “warrior nation” they seek to create.
June 4, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Africa, Canada, South Africa, UK |
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Russia – The latest horrible ceasefire violations in Donbass by the Kiev’s regime are likely intended to demonstrate the “inefficiency” of the OSCE mission to its Western patrons and are evidence of Ukraine’s attempts to circumvent the jurisdiction of the Minsk truce co-brokered by Russia, Germany, and France.
Indeed, Minsk-2 is very inconvenient for Poroshenko, because it documents for the first time the need for direct dialog between Kiev and the Donbass. And they need to discuss more than just war and peace, because in fact there are a whole range of issues that must be resolved politically, such as the format for local elections, as well as constitutional reform and economic recovery in Ukraine. Minsk-2 undermines the power structure in Ukraine, which after Maidan has been built around nationalist and military mobilization and the persecution of political opponents. There’s a good reason why President Poroshenko immediately tried to disavow the agreement as soon as he returned from Minsk. In March 2015 the Verkhovna Rada passed an amendment to the law on the special status of the districts controlled by Donetsk and Luhansk (in violation of the spirit of the Minsk agreement), rather than adopting a new law as Angela Merkel had asked Poroshenko to do. These actions, as well as others that undercut the foundations of the truce, are causing extreme irritation in Berlin and Paris.
It is already clear that Poroshenko’s regime is incapable of negotiating. The two Minsk agreements – dating from Sept. 5 and Feb. 12 – would never have been reached had Kiev not suffered military defeats. As soon as Petro Poroshenko won the election on May 25, 2014, Russia and the EU leaders offered to open a dialog with the Donbass militia. At that time there had been no mass casualties or widespread public acrimony. It seemed that Poroshenko, who had been elected to office (albeit without the voters of the Donbass), was capable of listening to the urgings of the leaders in Europe and Russia and begin a peace process. At least his campaign platform offered some hope of that. However, pressure from US officials forced Poroshenko to embrace a military solution. On May 26, 2014, for the first time since WWII, Donetsk was subjected to an air raid, the Donetsk airport was bombed, civilians were killed, and a real war began.
By late August, Ukraine had suffered a crushing defeat on all fronts and in all directions, and Poroshenko, finding himself trapped in a hopeless situation in which the militia threatened to advance further west, had to hastily sign the Minsk Protocol on Sept. 5, in which the parties agreed to pull back from the zone of engagement. That offered the hope that a political process of reconciliation could begin. But instead Kiev took an extremely harsh stance: a de facto economic blockade of the Donbass began; banks closed; public institutions, schools, and hospitals shut down; the payment of pensions and salaries to state employees was suspended; and later – entry to the Donbass was limited to holders of residential passes, in essence creating an internal border. Unable to win on the battlefield, Kiev declared war on the people of the Donbass in order to deprive the militia of popular support. That culminated in yet another fiasco: Ukraine lost Debaltsevo and other territories.
Autonomy or independence? That depends on Kiev.
The most important step in the establishment of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics was the election in November 2014. That election was not recognized by Kiev or the EU, but played a huge role in establishing a legitimate government in those republics. In spite of Kiev’s economic blockade and the constant threat of renewed hostilities, it resulted in an undeniable improvement in the humanitarian situation. Even as hostilities raged, behind the front lines peaceful civilian life continued, infrastructure was restored, doctors were able to save lives, children attended school, and many businesses reopened. Regular payment of pensions and public subsidies has begun again, but in order to accomplish this, a new system of social support had to be built from scratch. Due to the lack of cash in hryvnia (the Ukrainian currency) a multicurrency system was introduced, and pensions are already being paid in rubles. Direct economic ties between companies in Donetsk and Russia have been revived. Taxes have also been collected from those businesses, and the republics now have actual budgets, and although they have not been formally approved due to the uncertainty of the revenue base, those budgets serve as guidelines for estimating bare-bones expenditures. A clear and transparent system has been put together for distributing humanitarian aid. Humanitarian convoys are arriving from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Management, and community organizations are also doing their bit, including Donbass Fraternity Fund, Dr. Elizaveta Glinka’s Fair Aid Foundation, and many others. Throughout the war some local charities in, such as Compassion (Dobrota), have continued their work in Donetsk. In every town, no matter how tiny, volunteers have been laboring selflessly.
The more Kiev drags its feet on any political resolution or recognition of special rights for the areas under the control of the governments in the republics, the worse its chances to maintain its current borders. Ukraine will never be stable until she agrees to change. If Ukraine continues to insist on the status quo and persists in pursuing a military solution to the conflict, she will continue to lose ground.
A range of emotions are being experienced in the republics. It is clear that neither the militia nor the majority of the population can envision any sort of future life with Kiev: too much blood has been spilled and Kiev has brought too much suffering to the people of the Donbass – in addition to bombings, humiliation, and the economic blockade.
Nevertheless, Ukraine still has the potential to devise a more nuanced policy than just their extremely nationalistic current plan. This was clearly evident during the elections for the Verkhovna Rada on Oct. 26, 2014. The opposition Bloc even won in Dnepropetrovsk (where nationalist patrols are stationed on every street corner and government leverage coupled with street gangs worked to thwart any opposition movement), not to mention the cities of Zaporozhye and Kharkov. Certainly not all the credit for that success was due to Opposition Bloc itself – which barely waged any sort of political campaign at all – but could rather be chalked up to the public, who voted against the government and against the war. The turnout in Odessa (39.5%), the lowest seen since the end of the Soviet Union, was virtually an act of popular sabotage against “the outsiders’ elections.”
Ongoing protests in Kiev against Yatsenyuk government and Ukraine’s National Bank are not covered much by the intl media
The potential for protest is huge, because Ukraine has no desire to be the country that the nationalists have envisioned. Every day of peace means new and difficult questions for the Ukrainian government: the population sees the results of the “reforms,” the economy is languishing, social payments are shrinking, prices are rising, political repression is everywhere, political opponents are being murdered, and the bodies of soldiers who died in the Donbass are being shipped home to every district in the country.
The law prohibiting Soviet symbols and the ban on the memory of the Great Patriotic War, the glorification of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army – therein lies the path to the further destruction of their own country. And that’s not coming from Russia, but from the Ukrainian people. Most Ukrainians will not tolerate such a policy or such a government.
The problem lies in the immaturity of the Ukrainian political elite. For over 23 years of the country’s independence, that elite has been fixated on dividing and redividing the country’s resources, in the end always shifting the political blame onto outside factions: sometimes pointing the finger at Moscow, and currently – at the West. They have not yet learned how to be responsible for their own state. Now they follow the lead of the US, crippling their own country.
The big game
A lasting peace in the Donbass is achievable only if Europe and Russia can reach an agreement. It is impossible to imagine Poroshenko – or even less Prime Minister Yatsenyuk – behaving in a constructive manner, if Europe and Russia do not coerce them into working for peace.
With all the problems of the past year, it is clear that France and Germany trust Russia far more than their Ukrainian protégés. They can recognize the issues on which “the Russians cannot be trusted” – and the matters on which they can. But those are fixed, clearly defined questions – because Russia does not change her position minute by minute. But all bets are off when it comes to the politicians in Kiev. They might promise to lay down their arms or adopt a law on special status, and then completely flip-flop after a telephone call with Washington.
Of course Europe has phobias and fears of “Russian expansion,” but those are more common among the talking heads and the press, while the leaders and diplomats understand that “expansion” is the very essence of international politics. The European Union itself pursues an active policy of “partnership,” and in recent decades has also been expanding, while Russia is doing no more than attempting to safeguard her room to maneuver economically. Europeans understand that Russia would not have taken steps to reunify with Crimea and support the Donbass if the West had not provoked the conflict. After many incidents of the most cynical violence aimed at seizing and retaining power over the last year, it is reasonable to assume that the shootings on Maidan were the responsibility of those forces that took power in Ukraine in February 2014. All this is an example of very dirty politics. No matter how indignant the Europeans might be in public, they understand that Russia could not remain on the sidelines.
And that would not be because of any imaginary “imperial ambitions” or in order to merely seize territory. Russia’s most important and closest neighbor had entered into a period of disintegration and civil war after a coup d’etat. Forces had assumed power that did not shy away from overt violence – ideological, cultural, repressive, and military – against their own people. The problem was not Ukraine’s “European” path, but the bluff – the West was never planning to spend its resources on the economic development of a foreign country, much less help her integrate into European organizations. The result of Maidan could mean nothing but chaos in Ukraine. And until this chaos is overcome, Russia will not remain on the sidelines.
Publication is based on a frontpage article recently released by the Russian Expert journal. Text adapted and translated by ORIENTAL REVIEW.
June 4, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism | European Union, Ukraine, United States |
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The British government has spent £16 million storing and maintaining its unused nuclear submarines over the past five years, figures suggest.
The 19 laid-up submarines have been stored in Fife, Scotland, and Devonport, England since 1980 and 1994, respectively.
Figures obtained by the BBC in a Freedom of Information request found that of the 12 submarines at Davenport, eight were still fuelled and four were sitting without fuel. In Rosyth, Fife, all seven submarines are still fueled.
The cost of keeping them safe involves preventing any of the nuclear substances on board being released into the atmosphere.
Campaigners have called the cost a “huge embarrassment,” while the Ministry of Defense (MoD) said it takes its duties to manage the submarines “very seriously.”
The MoD revealed in documents that the “cost to the taxpayer of maintaining them safely is rising significantly as they age and as more submarines leave service,” adding that full dismantling of the subs could not take place until a site was found for the nuclear reactors.
Ian Avent, of Plymouth based campaign group Community Awareness Nuclear Storage and Radiation, told the BBC: “The big problem is that eight submarines on Devonport still have their fuel on board and that is potential for [a] disaster.
“The submarines are a huge embarrassment for the MoD.
“They need to make a decision soon on where they are going take the waste fuel, so dismantling can start.”
Jane Tallents, an anti-nuclear campaigner and adviser on the MoD’s submarine dismantling project, said: “The MoD dragged its feet after the first submarine was laid up but 12 years ago they decided to do something.
“It is a complicated project and there have been points where they have stalled and gone slowly but they have kept moving with it.”
The MoD said the submarines “undergo regular maintenance to keep them in a safe condition.”
John Large, an engineering consultant, said the “lack of decision and decisive management” was halting the decommissioning process.
“It also exposes the public, and the naval base workforce, to continuing radiological risk arising from untoward accident or incident,” he said.
An MoD spokesperson said: “As a responsible nuclear operator, the MoD takes its duty to manage the disposal of submarines very seriously.
“All activity is undertaken in a safe, secure, cost-effective and environmentally sound manner.”
June 3, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Arms, Army, Military, Nuclear weapons, UK |
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What is a leftist? This question is always an important one but it looms especially large as another presidential election approaches in 2016. The confusion about this issue is caused by opportunism, wishful thinking, and by the need to feel comfortable within America’s narrative of dubious distinction.
In political discussions we often hear about disputes among those who claim to be on the left. Some may favor intervention in Syria or Ukraine or somewhere else targeted by the United States. Should leftists support Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton? Should leftists vote for Democrats who “disappoint” them?
Worthwhile debate can be separated from nonsensical chit-chat with a few hard questions. Does a policy in dispute promote neo-liberal schemes, increase mass incarceration, make war, steal other nations’ resources, enrich the already wealthy, impoverish the already poor or make one race dominant over others? If the answer is ever yes, then the issue in question is one that leftists can’t support and the people who promote these things can’t be supported either.
Why then do millions of people who think of themselves as progressives or left wing end up giving money, time and votes to people and organizations who continually flunk the litmus test? Some fear the status of “spoiler” even as the Democrats do less and less for their constituents. Some are opportunists who want to get a piece of the action. Others engage in fantasy and live in hope that the scoundrels will suddenly become ethical.
There is another very dangerous dynamic at work. Many people don’t want to find themselves outside of the popular narratives about America. They want to be included in the myth of a good and great country. They pin their hopes on someone they find acceptable standing atop a heap that is inherently corrupt.
Most people who call themselves progressives or who protested the war in Iraq didn’t really want fundamental change. They don’t have the stomach to challenge the assumptions upon which American aggressions are based. That is why they so quickly forgot their supposedly antiwar sentiments and clung so fiercely to Barack Obama. They want to wrap themselves in the flag or in being on a winning team but that means being a part of America’s horrendous tale of conquest, race based terrorism and numerous other oppressions.
The siren song of American superiority is strong. How often did antiwar activists or other progressives claim that a particular atrocity or outrageous act was “un-American.” Of course enslavement and genocide were very American so the claim always rang hollow, but the urge to want to be the good, patriotic American is still there and very, very strong.
Exceptionalism is a concept that is rarely questioned. Manifest Destiny and the violence that comes with it are still considered not just acceptable but noble and benevolent. That explains why Obama’s wars are accepted by the same people who protested against Bush.
It can be difficult to remain in opposition to the American state. It requires an ability to oppose not just war, or economic policy, but a desire for inclusion in a rotten system. The yearning for freedom expressed in the liberation movements was often little more than a yearning to be accepted or to have a seat at the table.
The black misleadership class is a perfect example of this phenomenon. They may have protested fifty years ago but they are now happy and comfortable getting big pay checks, recognition and occasional access to powerful people. The concerns of people behind bars in the American gulag or even poor struggling workers rarely cross their minds. That lack of concern is caused by political expediency for some and rank cynicism by others.
How many people who start out opposing the system really want to get rid of it and how many just want to be a part of it? There is always someone advising the resister to be “reasonable,” “pragmatic” or “realistic” and cling to the Democrats no matter what they do.
Leftists should want freedom from racism, freedom from predatory capitalism and freedom from imperialism. They should want that for themselves and for people all over the world. Anyone who gives the United States government a pass for intervening anywhere in the world is no leftist. It doesn’t matter if the intended target is a “dictator” or “tyrant” or “cruel to his own people.” These are weasel words used to promote violence and to hide inconvenient truths about America’s role in creating its own tyrannies.
The opportunists and even some sincere people will advise supporting the Democratic Party in the November 2016 election. The Republicans’ barely concealed racism and blatant misogyny will be held up as boogie men to frighten anyone who begins to think independently. Yet the Democrats can’t even provide the low hanging fruit of their past.
In 2009 and 2010 the Democrats controlled the White House and both Houses of Congress. If they were interested in raising the minimum wage they had a golden opportunity to do so. That type of treachery must be kept in mind when the “I’m disappointed in the Democrats but still support them” arguments are made.
Self-determination should be the question upper most in every mind. Who will stand independently when mealy mouthed liberals advise standing pat with failure? Who will speak up for Americans who want to free themselves from police violence, gentrification, job loss and surveillance? Who will speak up for people around the world who are subjected to drone strikes, occupations and interventions?
The people who are complicit or even just silent will have exposed themselves. When they counsel accommodation and still claim to be on the left they must be called out as liars. There should be little confusion about what it means to be a leftist.
June 3, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, United States, Zionism |
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“For in lapse of time men are constrained to see things they would not willingly suffer.” [1]
Canada’s recent international role includes being a serial participant in US-NATO wars of aggression – which at Nuremberg was deemed the greatest crime. Organized mass murder of people and the destruction of their infrastructure, not as an act of self defense; blowing babies to bloody bits, reducing homes to rubble, this is the stuff of ‘wars of aggression’.
The typical contemporary template for perpetrating wars of aggression is to demonize the victims, and to justify, even sanctify, the perpetrator. And it is not unknown in the modern era, progress being what it is, to explain to the victims that it was a beneficent act to conquer them, occupy them, plunder them, murder them, wound them, destroy their country.
The aggressor usually has a large military advantage, and in the modern context, destroying the designated victim may feature banal distant mechanical and electronic acts, push a button, turn a dial, the perpetrators remote and safe.
That many Canadians do not understand, or are in denial about, Canada’s crimes is testimony to the effectiveness of modern mass media’s ‘public perception management’. Pretty hard for busy people, including many people who work in the media and academia and the military and in politics, to find their way to the real, subjected as they are to a dizzying disinformation maze: a litany of lies and distortions and distractions called ‘news’, either presented with accomplished feigned sincerity, or in ignorance with real sincerity. It all gets very confusing, even for the most gifted manipulators. Rigorous censorship is practiced under the rubric of a free press, and endless trivia contaminate just about everyone. [2]
A diabolical aspect of the formal disinformation system is the provision of a wide range of pretend-to-be-honest ‘alternative’ media outlets. [3]
Then add to the disinformation system the seemingly systematic corruption of high profile regulatory agencies [4] and corporate- linked science, and a vast number of NGO’s that pretend to be serving some ideal, and the entire global public is enveloped in a rather overwhelmingly bewildering complex of disinformation. Our collective capacity for coherent policy, for intelligent cohesive societal decision, is just about nil. And this all comes just at the moment in human history – the nuclear age – when the best we have to offer would be our only chance of success.
But back to our story: On the other hand, some do understand that Canada has gone criminally militaristic. And most of those remain silent. Some are governed by fear, some don’t care, some embrace evil; some who do speak concoct bizarre justifications.
But Canada cannot escape ‘karmic justice’ for its international crimes. Shameful militarism elsewhere has inevitable insidious impact at home: You can’t endorse or commit mass murder of innocents based on lies without being a monster, or becoming one.
And there are other consequences: Fully forthright and knowledgeable discourse pertaining to international and national issues is now just about absent from Canadian mass media or politics: commentary offered either wallows in ignorance or is mere pretense, disingenuous theater. Real unfettered discourse is the forbidden; critical truths are silenced, lies and self-censorship are conjoined perniciously and normalized; integrity is marginalized. This is a recipe for the triumph of the worst elements, the empowerment of social pathology, ensuring societal dysfunction leading to catastrophe.
But this is not the way it had to go, for Canada.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, a different outcome had seemed quite possible: Canada previously had earned some honour as occasional peacemaker on a planet plagued by conflict; in international affairs, Canada was perceived as capable of periodic common sense and decency and fairmindedness, and sometimes, on a really good day, even verging on virtuous.
Within Canada, some decades ago, ‘The Just Society’ was proffered , without irony, as an honourable national ambition. The future seemed to offer unprecedented beneficial opportunity at home, and prospect was that Canada would be able to provide a significant helping hand abroad. After all, was there not modernity’s burgeoning repertoire of amazing new technology which could be allied to Canada’s wealth of natural resources, and its wealth of human decency, intelligence and creativity, to build a country of great accomplishment, and help to build a better world?
Consistent with such musing, not long ago, a pleasing self-identity – seriously fanciful, yes, but not entirely so – could be held by many Canadians: it went something like this: Canada was a special, safe, bountiful democracy endowed with a peace-loving, respectable conglomeration of peoples; and furthermore, Canada was a land of boundless opportunity, proceeding relentlessly from good to better. And many Canadians took satisfaction from the fact that Canada displayed – nothing extreme or eccentric mind you – something of an independent streak.
One important example of this independent streak was the establishment of the Bank of Canada in 1938 as a public institution – a national bank as public utility. The Bank of Canada was mandated to provide large amounts of interest free funds to Canadian governments, to be used for worthy public projects and infrastructure. This was done with great success until 1974. [5] [6] There is now, through a court case, an attempt being made to restore that previous beneficent function. The government of Canada is opposing it, and the media is censoring news of it. [7]
Another example of Canada’s independent streak is the establishment half a century ago of a universal health care system, which warts and all has been a tremendous success, and much different than the American for profit health services approach.
But back to the less and less pleasant story: An independent streak notwithstanding, there are the insistent facts and funnels of history and circumstance: For example, Canada had centuries ago been conquered by Britain, and somehow the head of the ‘royal’ aberration-prone bloodline of England retains sovereign powers of sorts, over Canadians. A pretend-democracy has been the result. [8] New citizens and those who work for governments in Canada are asked to swear allegiance to the British Monarch, not to be mistaken for the dwindling lovely orange butterfly that in great numbers graced Canada long before the British got here.
Another pertinent Canadian ‘fact of life’: Canada stretches across an entire continent right beside the United States, and is continually inundated by its ‘cultural’ emissions.
But for all that, there really was, for much of its history, an independent streak, and many Canadians, until recently, could take some satisfaction in the work in progress: a home-brewed , distinctive, modestly progressive, more or less pragmatic, socio-political experiment with great potential. Both in the eyes of Canadians and much of the planet. So it was that Canadians could, again until recently, travel the world with the Canadian flag pinned on, and expect to receive signs of approval. Americans caught on and it was not unknown for desperate reviled Americans to attempt to unsully themselves in foreign lands with a conspicuous maple leaf.
Sometimes, when occasion seemed to require it, – especially if the British were in a tough spot – Canada would majorly go to war, with reluctant French Canadian participation.
But Canada had over the generations displayed at least a somewhat judicious approach when it came to participating in wars.
Canada for example refused to get involved in Britain’s Suez conflict in the 1950s. Former Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize winner at a time when that prize had less putrid connotation, as in say Kissinger and Obama, was famously verbally and physically abused by US President Lyndon Johnson for mildly chiding US policy in Indochina. Canadians made money from the war, but did not directly participate in the American carnage upon and mass murder of the Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians, during the so-called War in Vietnam. [9]
Prime Minister Jean Chretien signaled a residual Canadian reluctance to go to war by refusing to involve Canada militarily in the 2003 version of American (justified by lies) atrocities against Iraq. [10]
But tragically, as the twentieth century neared its end, and a new century began, Canada did not have what it takes to resist a deepening involvement on the hell-bent slippery slope of the geo-political agendas and machinations of those who control the United States.
And so it was that Canada did not remain marginally independent, and marginally judicious, and marginally good and a bit of an honest broker, and stay out of direct participation in clearly illegal and immoral wars. The NATO war of aggression, facilitated and justified by lies, [11] on Yugoslavia in 1999, included Canada’s direct participation. In 2001, based on the false flag lie of 9/11 2001, [12] Canada signed on to the falsehood-enabled ‘War on Terror’ aka Wars of Terror, and went to war in Afghanistan. [13]
Canada in 2004 took sordid part in the overthrow of the government of Haiti. And in 2011, Canada within NATO participated in mass murder and the destruction of the most successful country in Africa, Libya, again on the basis of brazen lies.[14]
The Canadian military, camouflaged by lies, has recently been killing people in the middle East, in a veiled attack on Syria under the guise of attacking the Western Powers-That-Be-concocted pathology that is ISIS. [15]
And now, Canadian people and weapons and lies are employed to support the war mongering leadership of Ukraine, a demented offspring of an American-engineered coup over the Ukrainian democracy in 2014. [16] And this offspring, true to its Nazi and fascism-tinged ideology and its murderous origins, launched a pitiless war of aggression on its own people. [17]
Among the reasons for Canada’s descent into international war criminality is Canadian continued participation in the so-called defense alliance NATO, long after NATO lost its nominal reason for being. NATO had long been infected by the hidden perversity of Gladio [18] before its more recent war criminality.
The process by which Canada lost its way also includes an economic ‘paradigm shift’ short decades ago. Canada’s Powers-That-Be, spouting lies, foisted upon reluctant Canadians greatly increased economic integration with the United States: So-called free trade, which was lauded by its prominent advocates as the certain route to national prosperity and jobs aplenty; not the basket case that is the current North American economy. [19]
This new policy trumped traditional wariness of, or strong repudiation of, significantly increased entanglement with the United States. Generations of Canadian politicians of all varieties had understood that the price of more formal economic union with the United States was less sovereignty and less independence.
Canada’s increased economic integration with the United States made Canada more involved with the attempt by those who dominate the US to achieve unrivaled global political, military and economic domination, a global empire: necessary to this massive criminal ambition, a hi-tech version of militarized police state/fascism has been put into place within the United States [20]; and abroad, the global domination project has made the US prolific in wars and war crimes, death squads, torture, destruction, subversion, and boundless cruelty.
Canada’s recent embrace of the demonic has culminated today in some utterly irresponsible national political and mass media behaviour: Currently Canada is simultaneously helping to raise the risk of a major war, including the risk of global nuclear war, by arming the Ukrainian crazies, while lying about Russia’s involvement, [21] and threatening Russia.
Canada’s devolution from peacekeeper to war monger happened while many Canadians dozed in the fading glow of the previously described self-congratulatory national image. But there were many signposts – some subtle, some glaring – that indicated ongoing cultural and societal deterioration [22]. But central to the deterioration was the hobbling of probing, free, full, unfettered public discourse, and the ever increasing power of dishonesty, in all its manifestations, throughout the culture.
And then there is Fukushima: Canadian politics and mass media are ignoring the ongoing global nuclear mega-catastrophe of Fukushima, ignoring the death of much of the life of the northern Pacific Ocean adjoining Canada, censoring news of it, lying about it, censoring news of greatly elevated levels of radioactivity across Canada and around the planet: Second hand tobacco smoke incurs much greater outrage. That’s about as crazy and stupid as it gets. [23]
Canadians are being kept in the dark regarding ways in which individuals and their families can at least mitigate the effects of increased exposures to radioactivity. [24] But that doesn’t address the big problem itself.
What must be done, pertaining to Fukushima, and nuclear energy and weapons, is the most widely and deeply searching honesty-anchored brain-storming effort that humanity can muster, at this very late date. And that effort must enlist and heed practical people of common sense and broad experience, for it is precisely the naivete and tunnel vision of the specialists and experts – the professionals – who got us into this, and never got us out. Experts are necessary; but very far from sufficient.
Nuclear power was born in iniquity, and began its global-reach poisoning enveloped in secrecy and lies. Nuclear power plants having proliferated, something like a Fukushima was inevitable, meaning slow motion ecocide. Thousands of nuclear weapons have long been poised to achieve a near instantaneous hell on earth. The nuclear age is madness merged with dishonesty and secrecy and a terminal technology. [25]
So is it to be with Sophocles, via Oedipus Rex: “… sorrows beyond all telling, sickness rife in our ranks, outstripping human invention of remedy, blight on barren earth, and barren agonies of birth, life after life from the wild-fire winging swiftly into the night.” [26]
Will a preponderance of people choose to sleep with eyes open or party towards the grave, or choose the fleeting comfort of make believe?
Or will a growing number begin to examine the bitter truth to be found in the mirror and in the world, and very late now do what they can to honour and protect earth’s wonders?
In any case, whatever is to be Canada’s or the planet’s fate, it will neither disturb not delight those previously vibrant, happy, bright-eyed Libyan children blown to bits by Canada in 2011; in Canada they did not even merit mention, let alone contrition, or mourning.
Notes:
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Solon, via Herodotus, Clio 1, 32, via Baehr, translated by Henry Carey, M.A.
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George Orwell aptly described the missing information as the biggest lie of all. See Operation Mockingbird regarding CIA’s long-ago-initiated attempt at controlling global communications. Senator Church’s hearings in the US in 1975 were quite revelatory. The CIA’s depredations are now conjoined to extremely concentrated ownership of mass media, with Zionism disproportionately influential, and the co-opting of much so-called alternative media. Recently, a prominent German Journalist has confessed to being a tool of CIA, along with just about all his colleagues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adz-cLDZGBU
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Here the events of 9/11 were illuminating, as there was an obvious shortage of 9/11 truth telling in many prominent so-called alternative and dissident sources of news and analysis. For every forthright prominent voice on 9/11, like Paul Craig Roberts, there was a gaggle of deceivers posturing as truth-tellers.
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For example, a little known book by Shiv Chopra, PhD, recounts his career at Health Canada: It is titled Corrupt to the Core. Is there any prominent regulatory agency on the planet that would not qualify for the same title?
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Robust Canadian participation in WW2, the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Trans Canada Highway were financially facilitated by the Bank of Canada’s previous role. It should be noted that the potential productive capacity of Canadians, now, compared to 1945, is immeasurably greater. Yet back then Canada could carry out visionary huge projects, while today it wallows in financial and infrastructural – and visionary – insufficiency. After 1974, when the Bank of Canada’s interest free money and credit creation function was discontinued, the country quickly accumulated huge debts, and its ability to finance public projects was severely hampered. By 1974, after its first century, when the Bank of Canada became an appendage of the global private banking cartel, Canada had accumulated about 18 billion dollars of national debt; by 1991-92, on a national debt grown to 423 billion, the interest alone was 41 billion dollars. For a revealing chart see: https://ccc4mr.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/obviously-something-went-terribly-wrong-after-1974/ Also, after 1974, in addition to increased national financial difficulty, provincial and municipal governments also were greatly disadvantaged.
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Pertinent words of wisdom from Mackenzie King, Canada’s 10th Prime Minister, 1938. “Once a nation parts with control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nation’s laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.”
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In 2011 Canadians William Krehm and Ann Emmett along with the organization COMER (Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform) initiated a court case intending to restore the Bank of Canada to its previous role. Lawyer Rocco Galati represented them in court. The case’s first foray into the courts met with initial disappointment. In the words of Galati the court had argued that “the court had jurisdiction to hear the case, that my client had standing, that they had the right to bring the case forward, that there was public interest and individual interest standing.” But the claim was defeated in effect because the court felt it was outside its competence to decide. This initial court decision was described by Galati as “completely lacking in logic and in the application of the law.” But the case proceeded: In 2013 Galati appealed the case, and now in early 2015 the case found some success in Federal court, when three judges ruled that the case against the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Finance Minister of Canada can proceed. News of the COMER lawsuit is hard to find. Galati: “I have a firm basis to believe that the Government has requested or ordered the mainstream media not to cover this case.” Galati added that the case is more important than all other cases he’s been involved in, and those had received “wall to wall” coverage by the press. He predicted the case will end in the Supreme Court.
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The term ‘democracy’ refers to that political system which dignifies the citizens as a whole with sovereignty, a rare achievement indeed. Monarchy is something else entirely, and previously common. At the federal level in Canada, much potential power has been concentrated in the Prime Minister, or whoever influences or controls that person. The PM is not elected directly as such, but is merely the boss of the largest political party, which may have the support of a minority of citizens.
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In Vietnam the Americans perfected ‘saving villages’ by obliterating everything in them, people, animals, houses, with chemical warfare thrown in for good measure; everything was saved from existing. Years later, with Canada’s support, ‘protection reaction strikes’ and ‘humanitarian interventions’ became fashionable, sometimes achieving similar results.
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The “weapons of mass destruction” charade famously featured Colin Powell lying to the world at the UN: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3710.htm
Curiously, both current Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and brief Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff supported the American 2003 version of their many atrocities against Iraq.
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Michael Parenti’s To Kill a Nation is a succinct and powerful primer on the machinations and lies behind the deliberate destruction of Yugoslavia. For a revealing investigation of the pernicious mass media lying and censorship collusion in enabling war against Yugoslavia, see Peter Brock’s Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting (with the subtitle) Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia. Incidentally, since those who are involved in planning wars of aggression are deemed war criminals, and since the egregious dishonesty and manipulation skills of mass media are indispensable to creating public passive acceptance of or outright support for wars of aggression, justice would see media managers severely dealt with. For full fledged hypocrisy, involving Canada and the other ‘winners’ over Yugoslavia: the establishment of the International Criminal Court which put victims of aggression ont trial, and gave the United States a free pass for every international perversity. See for example John Laughland’s book Travesty,. The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice.
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Everything about the official narrative on 9/11 is a lie. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth offer much material on the demolition of the twin towers, and anyone in their right mind who finds out about World Trade Center Building #7′s 47 story free fall collapse later in the afternoon on September 11th, 2001, despite the 9/11 official commission’s omission of its occurrence, can hardly not raise an eyebrow…. The film ZERO is one of many exposes that offer a wake up regarding 9/11 to any remaining naive or sleepy or in denial folk. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1297858/
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The Canadian troops sent to Afghanistan were told their ‘mission’ was about building bridges and schools and and human rights and letting girls go to school, and besides, Osama bin Ladin was hiding in some cave there, and so on. They were not told that the attack on Afghanistan was about controlling heroin flows and its vast profits, potential oil and gas pipelines, setting up military bases, geo-poliical agendas relating to Iran, Russia and China, getting secure access to rare earth minerals, or pouring profits into the Military Industrial Complex, for starters.
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For heart rending and honest information about Libya and its the destruction see http://libyanwarthetruth.com/ and Joanne and James Moriarty. The UN Security Council’s lie-enabled ‘No Fly Zone’ was perversely used by NATO as a means for massive bombardment of Libya, resulting in vast but uncounted death, wounding and destruction, and many fleeing the country. Hell had been unleashed on one of the most lovely and successful and happy countries on the planet
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40347.htm https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-295-who-is-really-behind-isis/http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-23/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-us-created-isis-tool-overthrow-syrias-president-assad
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Czech President Milos Zeman even came out publicly saying, in a conspicuous face-slap to Obama, on 3 January 2015, that the U.S. overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 had been a couphttp://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse100515.htm
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The war against the former eastern Ukraine has included the use of banned by international law, phosphorus bombs and cluster bombs. These have been directed into civilian areas. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUF-hPcu7Ks
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Daniele Ganser’s book NATO’s Secret Armies published 2005 gives a useful country by country overview. Blowing up school buses for political advantage was a typical part of the repertoire.
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Paul Craig Roberts has written repeatedly and lucidly about the egregious dishonesty of US economic stats. When all else fails, pretend: for example: http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=3YCO7U&m=3jwYbqu_u5njM89&b=Yk0Np5HMPpLE.K8X4Mr6aw
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http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/05/30/act-now-terminate-gestapo-patriot-act-john-v-walsh/
The US now rivals the Soviet Gulag for record numbers of prisons and prisoners, with more prisoners by far than India and China combined. Lots of money to be made, lots of slave labour, lots of innocent people behind bars. And what are we to make of 80 thousand swat team raids last year? Are Police in America Now a Military, Occupying Force? By John W. Whitehead. And, US creation of death squads is not an ad hoc venture: There is a school: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13436.htm
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www.uacrisis.com/ukrainian-general-no-russian-troops-are-fighting… Ukraine’s top general Viktor Muzhenko contradicts allegations of Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.
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A few examples: Hunger in rich Canada? By 2008 there were guesstimated to be over 700 food banks in Canada, but in addition there were many hundreds of other hunger-relief efforts, including breakfast clubs, school meal programs, community kitchens, and emergency shelters providing food. Many people are helped privately by family members and friends. World class environmental disaster: The Alberta Tar Sands: see Andrew Nikiforuk’s Dirty Oil: Tar Sands and the Future of a Continent. Genetically mutilated foods are not labelled http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-06/meta-study-genetically-modified-food-virtually-all-independent-scientists-are-concer ; the addictive neurotoxic carcinogen aspartame is a nearly ubiquitous ingredient in food, and aluminum-bountiful geo-engineering takes place overhead without a murmur from Canadians. Echelon happened ages ago, and now: Canada’s electronic-intelligence agency intercepts citizens’ private messages without judicial warrants.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadian-intelligence-sweeps-often-intercept-private-data/article19868523/ And then there was that insane, unnecessary, portentous venture into nuclear energy.
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See http://enenews.com/ for a large archive of material on Fukushima, Dana Durnford for vast photographic documentation of disastrous situation in the tidal pools and shorelines of British Columbia, as well as trenchant description oif situation at Fukushima. Jeff Rense at Rense.com has repeatedly interviewed Durnford. Also: Dana Durnford’s Post-Fukushima Odyssey: Documenting Ecocide on Canada’s West Coast. www.countercurrents.org/snefjella210415.htm
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Eating organic foods low on the food chain, Spirulina and Chlorella, greenhouse gardening, high quality vitamin E combined with high quality selenium, are helpful. ENE news has a forum on mitigating radiation:http://enenews.com/forum-best-practices-combating-effects-radiation
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Consistent with every book I have on nuclear weapons and energy, here are bits and pieces from Stewart Udall, former Secretary of the Interior in the US, in the foreword to Atomic Harvest: Hanford and the Lethal Toll 0f America’s Nuclear Arsenal: “…pattern of deceit that infected the nuclear weapons industry.” “…astounding levels of lethal contamination.” “Nothing in our past compares to the official deceit and lying that took place to protect the nuclear industry.” “…an elite corps of public officials were so willing to violate the basic rights of their fellow human beings [on behalf of] the nuclear establishment.” “… politicians and bureaucrats ran roughshod over democracy and morality.” “… the deception that poisoned the dialogue of democracy.”
- Sophocles: King Oedipus, translated by E.F. Watling.
Robert Snefjella is an organic farmer living in Ontario, Canada
June 2, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Canada, NATO, United States |
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The latest recruitment methods in Ukraine | 27. Juni 2015 | www.kla.tv from KlagemauerTV on Vimeo.
The [originally posted] video [which has been sent down the memory hole by Youtube] shot in the city of Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine shows soldiers and police boarding public transport to hunt for young men and issue them military draft notices. But passengers and the bus driver shout at them, eventually forcing them to leave the bus.
Passengers shout, “F*** off!” “What are you telling me? You’ve no right.” “Leave the bus before you are kicked off of it” “Get out!”
In the end, the confused looking soldiers are obliged to leave the bus.
A Ukrainian editor commenting on the film footage writes on Facebook, “One cannot but feel in these past months a certain despair among our pro-Maidan nationalists and patriots. They realize only too well the limited base of support for their agenda and that the patriotic wave in support of their civil war is almost exhausted.
June 1, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Militarism, Video | Human rights, Ukraine |
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When you sign up to be in the United States military, in many ways the deck is stacked against you. You are required to go where you are told and to do what you are told — including, potentially, to kill people. You can forget the rosy representations the recruiter made before you enlisted. Plus, unlike in other jobs, you cannot quit. Nonetheless, there may still be a way out of being forced to participate in war’s killings — conscientious objection.
Bill Galvin, counseling coordinator at the Center on Conscience and War, provided in an interview last week on the Tom Woods Show an informative introduction to how a military member can seek US government-recognized conscientious objector status. While Galvin cautions that, “except for the very end of the Vietnam period, it’s always been difficult to get out of the military as a conscientious objector” in America, he also says that it can be done.
Galvin explains that, contrary to many people’s assumption, a conscientious objector does not have to be a member of a church that includes in its doctrine opposition to participation in war. In fact, Galvin states that even a person who is not religious can be recognized as a conscientious objector; philosophical belief regarding war can be a sufficient basis.
Some people may be skeptical of someone who chose to join the military and later decides that he does not want to take part in warfare. But, people do change their minds, especially when they find themselves in the middle of something that had always seemed rather abstract and is now very real. Galvin further argues that ‘virtually nobody who joins the military knows what they are getting into.” “Recruiters are trained salespeople,” he adds.
There is a big difference, Galvin continues, between saying “in the abstract ‘I would fight to defend my country’” and looking “down the barrel of your gun at a live human being.” Galvin also notes that some non-battlefield occurrences can trigger military members’ thought processes and lead to changes in their beliefs regarding war. He mentions, as examples of such triggering events, taking part in military training designed to overcome people’s aversion to killing, being surrounded by a culture that promotes killing, and being required to conduct searches of people’s private possessions.
Listen to the complete interview here, and visit here the website of the Center on Conscience and War. The center provides education regarding conscientious objection and helps people seeking to obtain government recognition of their conscientious objector status.
May 30, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, United States |
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The rise in the number of refugees in the Ukrainian conflict is resulting in one of the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis” today, the UN has confirmed, as sporadic fighting and a lack of aid forces civilians flee to neighboring countries, mainly Russia.
The number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and those seeking refuge abroad is reaching catastrophic proportions despite the February-implemented Minsk II ceasefire agreement which barely holds ground with intermittent fighting continuing in the Donbass region.
The latest statistics from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that some 857,000 Ukrainians have sought asylum in neighboring countries. That is an increase of about 23,000 people in the last two weeks.
“The situation seems to be getting worse,” William Spindler, UNHCR Senior Communications Officer for Europe, West Africa, Statelessness told RT. He says that the number of IDPs and refugees from Ukraine has surpassed 2 million people. He added that people in Donbass continue to live in “substandard accommodation” as a result of the ongoing fighting.
“1.2 million people have been displaced inside Ukraine and over 800,000 people have gone to neighboring countries,” Spindler said, confirming the latest figures disclosed by his office. He added that those fleeing to neighbouring countries have gone “mainly to the Russian Federation” as well as Belarus, Poland, Germany and France.
In the latest report on the Ukraine conflict, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that between mid-April 2014 and 14 May 2015, at least 6,334 people were killed and 15,752 wounded. It also reported a danger posed to civilians by “unexploded ordinance and landmines” that are still left in Donbass.
“The situation is very serious, very worrying. This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today,” Spindler said.
The lack of medicine and medical equipment in conflict areas in Ukraine poses great danger, OCHA reported earlier. Both humanitarian and political efforts on the ground by the parties involved need to be “stepped up,” Spindler says, in order to reverse the dire situation that resulted from Kiev’s ongoing so-called “anti-terrorist operation” in eastern Ukraine.
“We are distributing essential aid but our efforts are not sufficient to deal with the needs,” said Spindler, stressing that more funding is needed to continue humanitarian aid work as the current financing covers only some 40 percent of the organization’s mission to Ukraine.
One of the main areas of concern for the UN refugee agency is the “difficulty” civilians have crossing the conflict line, Spindler told RT. He said that in some cases people were “separated” at the crossing line between Ukrainian and rebel controlled territories, as they tried to join their relatives or “obtain benefits that they are entitled to.”
Russia meanwhile continues to receive refugees from Ukraine, accommodating those seeking shelter in refugees camps before helping them settle all across the federation. “During multiple visits to a refugee center for Ukrainians we did not notice any problems with accommodation, food, medical services and education. Everything is organized as it should be, on the same level as for Russian citizens,” UN Refugees Agency (UNHCR) representative in Russia Baisa Vak-Voya told journalists Monday.
At the same time, Federal Migration Service chief Konstantin Romodanovsky called the situation in Ukraine a humanitarian disaster, as up to 600 Ukrainians cross into Russia daily.
“It is a catastrophe, of course. Homes have been ruined there. People vote with their feet, leaving their home country and entering Russia, where they get the status of temporary refugees – not because this is something Russia wants, but simply because there is no place they can live in,” Romodanovsky told Interfax on Monday.
Russia meanwhile estimates that over a million of Ukrainians have entered Russia since the conflict began last year, according to Valentina Kazakova, head of the Federal Migration Service’s Department for Citizenship.
Out of that number some 350,000 have applied and most of them granted temporary refuge status. “Another 105,000 have applied for entrance onto the state program for assisting the voluntary resettlement of compatriots from foreign countries,” Kazakova told Interfax earlier this month.
Since the conflict began another 195,000 Ukrainians requested temporary residence permits in Russia, while 40,000 applied for permanent residence cards and 88,000 for citizenship.
May 29, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Human rights, Ukraine, UN |
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The United States is perhaps the principle nuclear weapons proliferator in the world today, openly flouting binding provisions of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Article I of the treaty forbids signers from transferring nuclear weapons to other states, and Article II prohibits signers from receiving nuclear weapons from other states.
As the UN Review Conference of the NPT was finishing its month-long deliberations in New York last week, the US delegation distracted attention from its own violations using its standard Red Herring warnings about Iran and North Korea — the former without a single nuclear weapon, and the latter with 8-to-10 (according to those reliable weapons spotters at the CIA) but with no means of delivering them.
The NPT’s prohibitions and obligations were re-affirmed and clarified by the world’s highest judicial body in its July 1996 Advisory Opinion on the legal status of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The International Court of Justice said in this famous decision that the NPT’s binding promises not to transfer or receive nuclear weapons are unqualified, unequivocal, unambiguous and absolute. For these reasons, US violations are easy to illustrate.
Nuclear Missiles “Leased” to British Navy
The US “leases” submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (SLBMs) to Britain for use on its four giant Trident submarines. We’ve done this for two decades. The British subs travel across the Atlantic to pick up the US-made missiles at Kings Bay Naval base in Georgia.
Helping to ensure that US proliferation involves only of the most verifiably terrible nuclear weapons, a senior staff engineer at Lockheed Martin in California is currently responsible for planning, coordinating and carrying out development and production of the “UK Trident Mk4A [warhead] Reentry Systems as part of the UK Trident Weapons System ‘Life Extension program.’” This, according to John Ainslie of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which closely watchdogs the British Tridents — all of which are based in Scotland, much to the chagrin of the Scots.
Even the W76 warheads that arm the US-owned missiles leased to England have parts made in United States. The warheads use a Gas Transfer System (GTS) which stores tritium — the radioactive form of hydrogen that puts the “H” in H-bomb — and the GTS injects tritium into the plutonium warhead or “pit.” All the GTS devices used in Britain’s Trident warheads are manufactured in the United States. They are then either sold to the Royals or given away in exchange for an undisclosed quid pro quo.
David Webb, the current Chair of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament reported during the NPT Review Conference, and later confirmed in an email to Nukewatch, that the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico announced, in March 2011, that it had conducted “the first W76 United Kingdom trials test” at its Weapons Evaluation and Test Laboratory (WETL) in New Mexico, and that this had “provided qualification data critical to the UK [United Kingdom] implementation of the W76-1.” The W76 is a 100 kiloton H-bomb designed for the so-called D-4 and D-5 Trident missiles. One of the centrifuges at Sandia’s WETL simulates the ballistic trajectory of the W76 “reentry-vehicle” or warhead. This deep and complex collusion between the US and the UK could be called Proliferation Plus.
The majority of the Royal Navy’s Trident warheads are manufactured at England’s Aldermaston nuclear weapons complex, allowing both the Washington and London to claim they are in compliance with the NPT.
US H-bombs Deployed in Five NATO Countries
An even clearer violation of the NPT is the US deployment of between 184 and 200 thermonuclear gravity bombs, called B61, in five European countries — Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, Turkey and Germany. “Nuclear sharing agreements” with these equal partners in the NPT — all of whom declare that they are “non-nuclear states” — openly defy both Article I and Article II of the treaty.
The US is the only country in the world that deploys nuclear weapons to other countries, and in the case of the five nuclear sharing partners, the US Air Force even trains Italian, German, Belgian, Turkish and Dutch pilots in the use of the B61s in their own warplanes — should the President ever order such a thing. Still, the US government regularly lectures other states about their international law violations, boundary pushing and destabilizing actions.
With so much a stake, it is intriguing that diplomats at the UN are too polite to confront US defiance of the NPT, even when the extension and enforcement of it is on the table. As Henry Thoreau said, “The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.”
May 27, 2015
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Belgium, Germany, Italy, NATO, NPT, The Netherlands, Trident, Turkiye, UK, United States |
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