Nuclear ultimatum: Scottish National Party challenges Labour on Trident
RT | December 16, 2014
The Scottish National Party (SNP) will only support a Labour government in a hung parliament after the May 2015 general election if they agree to scrap Britain’s nuclear weapons program, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.
Sturgeon ruled out a formal coalition with Labour, but suggested the SNP would support the party if they agreed to some “hard conditions.”
A recent YouGov poll highlights the SNP’s growing popularity in Scotland following September’s independence referendum, while Labour support in its historic heartland appears to be dwindling.
While the SNP currently have only five MPs in the House of Commons in Westminster, the party’s surge in support could see them playing a key role in making or breaking a government if no party gains a majority in the May election.
Sturgeon was speaking at a press conference on Monday following face-to-face talks with Prime Minister David Cameron. During the talks Cameron agreed to allow the Scottish Parliament to lower the voting age to 16 in time for the election.
Sturgeon told assembled press she remains staunchly opposed to nuclear weapons on principle, but also argues it makes no economic sense to pursue Trident in the future.
“You add into that at the moment this economic lunacy at a time when services are under pressure, you’re facing the extent and scale of public sector cuts over the next few years, to be spending £100 billion on a new generation of nuclear weapons that even many military experts now say are not required.”
Speaking alongside the leaders of the Green Party and Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru, Sturgeon also attacked the Westminster parties for continuing austerity policies which hit the vulnerable hardest.
“But despite the deeply damaging impacts of failed austerity, the Tories and Labour have made crystal clear their determination to carry on regardless.
“And after four years propping up the Tories, the Lib Dems have no credibility. It is time for a new approach to UK politics – and for our parties to use our influence to bring about progressive change at Westminster,” she said.
Sturgeon was elected SNP leader and First Minister in November following Alex Salmond’s resignation. During the build up to the independence referendum Sturgeon served as Deputy First Minister and has served as an SNP member of the Scottish Parliament since 1999.
The SNP ultimatum will be an added challenge for Scottish Labour’s new leader Jim Murphy, who was elected to the position on 13 December. Increasing support for the SNP means Murphy’s own seat could be vulnerable, SNP Deputy Leader Stewart Hosie told STV News.
“Mr Murphy spent two years campaigning side by side with the Tories in Scotland, and in that sense he is part of Labour’s problem in Scotland, not the solution,” Hosie said.
With Labour unlikely to abandon Trident as a condition of a shared power arrangement, the party faces an uphill battle to secure seats in a nation which appears to be turning its back on them.
Israel’s Arrow Ballistic Missile Shield Fails First Live Interception Test
Al-Manar | December 16, 2014
Israel’s upgraded Arrow ballistic missile shield failed its first live interception test on Tuesday, Reuters said, citing security sources.
Operators of the Arrow 3 battery at Palmahim Air Base on the Mediterranean coast reportedly canceled the launch of its interceptor missile after it failed to lock on to a target missile fired over the Mediterranean.
“There was a countdown to the launch, and then nothing happened,” according to one source.
The Defense Ministry said that a target missile was launched and carried out its trajectory successfully.
Arrow 3 interceptors are designed to fly above the Earth’s atmosphere to destroy incoming nuclear, biological or chemical missiles.
‘America needs a Perestroika’ – Gorbachev to RT
RT | December 15, 2014
The US needs reforms similar to those during Perestroika in the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev told RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze. The former Soviet leader also spoke about Washington’s policy of pressure and intervention into conflicts.
Gorbachev stressed the need for political and economic reforms in the US, saying “they need a Perestroika” (translated from Russian as “restructuring”), referring to the political movement carried out during his rule in the 1980s.
“They can call it any name they want, the American way,” he said, adding that “Americans do not want a war. But it is not easy for them, with the society that they have.”
The US uses tensions and instability to intervene into a conflict, then creates an enemy to enable their “policy of pressure” and shift responsibility, he said.
“Whenever tensions are high, whenever there’s instability in a certain country or throughout the region, it’s an opportunity for [the US] to intervene,” said Gorbachev.
“I am quite familiar with this policy from my own experience,” added the former Soviet leader. Gorbachev has come into the spotlight in recent months, warning Western and Russian leaders against dragging the world into a new Cold War amid the Ukraine crisis.
During his interview with RT, Gorbachev explained that there were always two sides to the conflict in the 20th century – “one was supported by the United States, and the other by the Soviet Union.”
“The US needs an enemy in order to return to their old policy of pressure. They can’t live without it. They are still enslaved by their old policy,” he elaborated.
Speaking on the Ukraine crisis, he said that the current situation is similar, with the US looking for “some pretext to interfere…they need an enemy figure, and they are doing it again.”
Watch the full interview with Gorbachev on RT’s SophieCo on Friday.
Moscow to Sweden: Alleged ‘colliding’ jet 70km from civil route, used NATO tactics
RT | December 14, 2014
Russia’s Defense Ministry has dismissed Sweden’s accusation that an unresponsive Russian military aircraft nearly collided with a passenger plane over the Baltic Sea. The ministry added that NATO planes in the area also have their transponders turned off.
The Russian aircraft in question was 70 kilometers away from the flight path of a passenger jet taking off from Copenhagen, and thus there were “no prerequisites” for collision between the two, Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. He also denied allegations that the military jet was flying right above southern Sweden, breaching its airspace.
“The flight was in strict accordance with international laws on the use of airspace and did not violate state borders while remaining at a safe distance from the routes of civil aircrafts,” Konashenkov said.
Earlier on Saturday, Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told local radio that the Russian jet had its transponders turned off so it could fly undetected, and claimed that it nearly crashed into a passenger plane over Sweden.
“This is serious. This is inappropriate. This is outright dangerous when you turn off the transponder,” Hultqvist said.
Konashenkov called Hultqvist’s assessment of the Russian jet being invisible – and thus dangerous – a “deception,” pointing out that none of NATO’s spy and patrol jets operating in the region have their transponders turned on. That, however, does not prevent Russia from detecting them.
“I want to particularly stress that the flights of NATO military planes in the international space on Russia’s borders – which have intensified more than threefold over the last months – are always conducted with disabled transponders. But that does not mean that the Russian airspace control are not able to detect them,” the spokesman stressed.
As recently as December 12, the country’s detection system spotted a NATO RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft in the same area where the supposed “incident” with the Russian jet took place – only closer to the civilian aircraft route, Konashenkov revealed.
NATO has recently stepped up its military flights in the region, due to a perceived Russian threat and the need to reassure the allied Baltic states. It comes against the backdrop of tensions over Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the defense minister of the non-NATO Sweden announced that the nation is planning to retrain about 7,500 reservists who have served in the Swedish army since 2004.
“The armed forces will be able to carry out fully-manned war preparations which will result in increased operational capacity,” Hultqvist explained, justifying the plans.
Peace activist Jan Oberg told RT that the move is in line with the anti-Russian mood in the country’s media and politics, triggered by the Ukraine crisis.
“The whole thing comes from the Ukrainian crisis – and that was predominantly not created by Russia, but by the West,” Oberg said. “It could be very much to show that we are doing something. You have to follow up on the fact that the Swedish media and political debate in this country are very anti-Russian and that the interpretation what happened in Ukraine has not been very balanced.”
“There is a very uniform media structure in this country. I am sad to say that it is the case. It has become worse over time.”
Back in October, Swedish media went on a wild goose chase for a phantom submarine, alleged to be Russian – even though the knowledge of identity was later denied by the Swedish military.
It all started with a blurry image. A week of searches led to nothing, but cost the Swedish taxpayers almost $3 million dollars.
NATO’s reach
NATO has recently launched a massive military build-up of troops in the Baltic states and other Eastern European NATO member states, following the crisis in Ukraine.
The alliance argues that the expansion is needed to show support and assure that NATO members are protected from a possible attack by Russia.
The US-led alliance has also been boosting its presence through military exercises held on a regular basis.
NATO’s new chief, Jens Stoltenberg, boasted of the bloc’s successes in December.
“We have already boosted our presence in the eastern part of our alliance. We have five times more planes in the air. Our forces start an exercise every two days. And we have also increased the number of ships in the Baltic and the Black Seas,” Stoltenberg told reporters.
One of the most recent war games included servicemen from nine NATO member states participating in nearly two weeks of military exercises in Lithuania.
However, Moscow sees NATO expansion towards its borders as an aggressive move, and a violation of post-Cold War agreements.
In early December, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov called the build-up of NATO forces in Eastern Europe hostile and destabilizing to the Baltic, once the safest region in Europe.
In November, Moscow said that NATO exercises next to Russian borders have “a clearly anti-Russian nature,” and will scarcely contribute to European safety.
READ MORE:
Retraining reservists and rearming! Baltic countries got bellicose over ‘Russian threat’
Mistaken identity: French plane entered Swedish air space – not Russian as reported
Sweden confirms mysterious foreign vessel entered its waters back in October
Iron Sword 2014: NATO stages massive military drill in Lithuania
NATO destabilizing Baltic by stationing nuke-capable aircraft – Moscow
Hawaii under martial law was like ‘military dictatorship’ (1941-1944)
For three years Hawaiians lived under repressive Army rule and without any constitutional protections
Police State USA
HAWAII — Islanders suffered under nearly three years of martial law from 1941-1944; so oppressive that it was later described by a federal judge as a “military dictatorship.” All manner of civilian liberties were replaced by oppressive military orders enforced by American soldiers.
The dark period of Hawaiian history began on December 7, 1941, with the massive surprise attack of Japanese bombers on the U.S. Naval Base Pearl Harbor. The air raid successfully sunk or grounded 18 ships and killed 2,403 Americans.
As the smoke billowed from the harbor, Lieutenant General Walter Short met with Territorial Governor Joseph Poindexter to convince him to declare martial law. Being coerced through tactics discussed below, Gov. Poindexter reluctantly ceded power to the military — temporarily, or so he thought.
In declaring martial law, all forms of civilian law were suspended. An entire new system of justice and order was instituted and controlled at the absolute discretion of Lt. Gen. Short — the newly declared “Military Governor” of the islands.
The transfer of power meant that all civilian courts would be closed, and all government functions — federal, territorial, and municipal — would be placed under military control. The U.S. Constitution was suspended and civilians no longer guaranteed any individual rights or protections from the government. Civilians had no freedom of speech, self-defense, assembly, or protections from from unreasonable search and seizures, inter alia.
Lt. General Short, in his first proclamation as Military Governor on December 7th, 1941, stated that [7]:
I shall therefore shortly publish ordinances governing the conduct of the people of the Territory with respect to the showing of lights, circulation, meetings, censorship, possession of arms, ammunition, and explosives, the sale of intoxicating liquors and other subjects.
In order to assist in repelling the threatened invasion of our island home, good citizens will cheerfully obey this proclamation and the ordinances to be published; others will be required to do so. Offenders will be severely punished by military tribunals or will be held in custody until such time that the civil courts are able to function.
Poindexter relayed his decision to the mainland, which was affirmed with approval from the President of the United States [7]:
The Military Governor’s subsequent orders were designed to “discourage concerted action of any kind.” Saloons were ordered to be closed, as well as schools, theaters — anywhere there might be a “concentration of people.” [6]
Civilians were given strict curfews. The streets were ordered to be cleared between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. under penalty of arrest. All persons of Japanese descent had to be in their homes by 8:00 p.m. [6]
Everyone over the age of six years was fingerprinted, registered, and ordered to carry around military-issued ID cards. [11] Using the extensive registration program, the military drew up intelligence reports on 450,000 Hawaiians. [8]
Stringent censorship of the media went into immediate effect. The Military Governor required that newspapers be made illegal unless they were granted a license to operate. All newspapers and radio stations were shut down for a time. Any publication not printed exclusively in English was denied a license and considered illegal. [6]
The local telephone company was taken over by the military. [6] All outgoing mail was read and censored by the military. All long-distance telephone calls to the mainland were required to be spoken in English and censored. The military government monitored the content and morale of the population this way. [11]
Travel between the islands was restricted. Use of civilian short-wave radio was restricted. Photo materials were restricted to limit photography. [6]
The newspapers that were allowed to reopen with licenses were forced to print military orders and military-controlled news. The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin both published an order directed at every inhabitant of the island:
The Army demands the aid and assistance of every person in the Territory… If you are ordered by military personnel to obey a certain command, that order must be obeyed instantly and without question. [9]
Days after martial law had gone into effect, the United Press reported that “cases of non-cooperation” were “severely dealt with” according to military authorities [1].
Civilian ownership of firearms was prohibited except to those specially authorized [6]. Every male islander was ordered to construct a bomb shelter [9]. Approximately 300,000 acres of private land was confiscated by the military — land, farms, buildings [8]
Civilians were not permitted to switch jobs, and had their wages frozen. U.S. Dollars were confiscated and new money was issued — only valid in Hawaii. Citizens were not allowed to carry more than $200 on them for any reason. [11] The wages of Japanese nationals were capped at $200 per month, with the rest being forced into bank accounts, with weekly withdrawal limits of $50. [9]
Businesses were tightly controlled; they were ordered to shut down daily by 4:30 p.m. Goods on the shelves were inventoried by the military. [9] Liquor sales were banned. Gasoline was rationed. [6]
One of the more onerous measures was the nightly “blackout” of all civilian lights, ostensibly to mitigate the effectiveness of a potential enemy air raid. Every light bulb and every flame was ordered to be extinguished after dark. Even a lit cigarette, a kitchen stove burner, or an illuminated radio dial was grounds for an arrest. It was ordered that all residential doors and windows be covered. Car headlights were to be painted blue to dim the beams. [11]
“We couldn’t see each other nor anything on the table so we literally had to feel our way through the meal,” wrote Honolulu resident Richard Wrenshall wrote in a 1942 letter. “If you reached out for something you’d be liable to stick your finger in the butter or in somebody’s eye.” [11]
Military Governor Green reported that the Army Corps of Engineers had a roving band of armed individuals calling themselves the “vigilance committee” which frequently shot at lights wherever they could be seen and “terrorized” the public. [6]
Of great controversy and consequence was the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus — the common-law court doctrine requiring a party holding a prisoner to demonstrate the legal and jurisdictional basis for continuing to hold the prisoner. With all civilian due process suspended, arrestees could be held without charges or trial; without legal representation, witnesses, a defense, or a jury. [2]
Breaking the blackout order brought about stiff fines or jail time. Numerous violators were thrown before a military judge, Lt. Col. Neal D. Franklin, who swiftly sentenced them to 100 days in jail or minimum fines of $100. A Japanese person might be given as much as 1,000 days imprisonment or up to $1,000 fines. It was reported that a Shinto priest was fined $500 for not extinguishing the “eternal flame” on his temple altar. [9]
The military courts were eager to impose fines for those who broke the military governor’s general orders. However, some individuals who couldn’t pay fines were instead given a “credit” following a forced donation of their blood. The practice was jokingly referred to as being “fined a bucket of blood.” [6]
People of Japanese descent — even American citizens — were looked at with suspicion and scorn by their government and their neighbors alike. Aside from the repressive military orders used to control their lives, thousands of Hawaiian Issei were arrested and shipped off to internment camps for the duration of the war. [13]
The oppression of civil rights was so thorough that it became a main theme in the 1942 platform of one of the major political parties on the islands [7]. The platform stated:
We deplore a system of government whereby the citizens of the Territory of Hawaii can be arrested and held for investigation, without bail, for offenses that have nothing to do with the operations of the military establishment.
We deplore the exercise of public authorities who are making unlawful searches and seizures in the homes of the people of the Territory of Hawaii without a search warrant…
We deplore the continued existence of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus…
It was evident that the continued suspension of civilian law was disconcerting to some on the mainland, including Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, who wrote on January 9th, 1943: “Civilian government has been successfully maintained and its responsibilities carried out by civilian authorities in other parts of the English-speaking world under conditions of much more severe strain than exist in Hawaii,” he wrote. “The idea that restoring the responsibility of civil government and the jurisdiction of the courts would hamper the defense of the territory by the Army and Navy is repugnant of every concept of American democracy and reflects upon the capacity of the people of Hawaii for self-government and self-discipline.” [7]
Finally, in April 1944, Federal Judge Delbert E. Metzger overturned the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, citing that martial law “ceases and becomes unlawful as soon as the civilian government is capable and willing to resume its normal functions.” [3]
Despite the ruling, martial law was enforced for six more months. General Richardson defiantly stated after the ruling that regular blackouts would continue to be enforced as of 10 p.m. that same evening. “Violations of general orders will continue to be tried in provost courts,” he pronounced. [3]
Richardson knew he would be free of consequence, since he had already been granted an executive pardon by President Roosevelt after Judge Metzger had held him in contempt of court on a previous case involving violations of the writ of habeas corpus. [3]
Judge Metzger argued that civilian law should be restored and was sufficient to protect the population. He said: “If present laws do not give the nation the fullest desirable protection against subversive or suspicious Japanese aliens, clearly it is the duty of the army and navy to ask a legislative curb and procedure instead of holding by force of arms an entire population under a form of helpless and unappealable subjugation called martial law.” [4]
Technically, martial law was terminated in Hawaii on October 24, 1944, in Roosevelt’s Presidential Proclamation 2627. While Roosevelt granted that “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus” was restored, his declaration maintained that civilians were still thoroughly under the control of military commanders, and civilian freedoms were still heavily restricted. It was declared:
The military commander will have authority to establish blackouts and curfew periods, organize air raid precautions, regulate the conduct of enemy aliens, take anti-espionage precautions in the military area, control the possession and use of weapons, set up ports and harbors protections, regulate travel and regulate the publication of newspapers “published in a foreign language or in duel languages.” In addition he will have authority to regulate or prohibit the possession or use of radio transmission sets between the military area and points away from it. The authority conferred in the executive order will expire 30 days after the end of war with Japan. [5]
After the war, federal district court magistrate Judge J. Frank McLaughlin condemned the conduct of martial law, saying, “Gov. Poindexter declared lawfully martial law but the Army went beyond the governor and set up that which was lawful only in conquered enemy territory namely, military government which is not bound by the Constitution. And they… threw the Constitution into the discard and set up a military dictatorship.” [12]
Judge McLaughlin, said in a speech that “[Maj. Gen. Short] set up an unconstitutional provost court system to try, without constitutional safeguards, anybody for anything — and they did it, too.”
Evidence explained by Judge McLaughlin revealed that there were some dubious efforts on the part of the military to influence the “civilian” decision to declare martial law. The military’s treachery was described in Hawaii Under Army Rule [7]:
Judge McLaughlin outlined how it was done, pointing out that the proclamation of martial law was prepared by the Army months in advance of December 7, 1941, and noted that the proclamation “was in the hands of the publishers for printing that afternoon some substantial period of time before the governor’s proclamation was signed and received for publication.” Commenting on Secretary Patterson’s letter to Representative Andrews and a public statement by General Richardson on the same subject, Judge McLaughlin said:
“…They did not, of course, mention that the Army went back on its word to the Hawaiian legislature. They did not tell you that it had said one thing while preparing to do another thing. They did not tell you that they prepared Governor Poindexter’s proclamation for him and induced him to sign it, reluctantly. They did not tell you either that he finally agreed to do as they asked with the understanding that the effect of the proclamation would be for maybe 30 days…”
Judge McLaughlin concluded:
“Yes ‘they did it.’ They did it intentionally. They did it with design aforethought. They did it knowing disregard of the Constitution. They did it because Hawaii is not a State. They did it because they did not have faith that Americanism transcends race, class, and creed.”
This period of events marked the longest period that Americans had ever been subjected to military rule, and as many commentators have pointed out, the conditions were more repressive than many actual combat zones.
SOURCES
1. Tremaine, Frank. “Martial Law Proclaimed For Hawaii.” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania] 11 Dec. 1941: 2. Web. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19411211&id=l5RRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LWoDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2442,5301386]
2. Anthony, Joseph Garner. “Martial Law in Hawaii.” California Law Review, Vol. 30. May 1942. Web. [http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/californialawreview/vol30/iss4/1]
3. Associated Press. “Judge Invalidates Martial Law in Hawaiian Islands.” The Evening Independent [St. Petersburg, Florida] 14 April 1944: 9. Web. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19440414&id=GmpIAAAAIBAJ&sjid=CVUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4284,6259680]
4. Johnston, Richard W. “Army Defies Ban On Hawaii Martial Law.” San Jose Evening News [San Jose, California] 14 April 1944: 7. Web. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1977&dat=19440413&id=JygiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FKQFAAAAIBAJ&pg=986,1109323]
5. Associated Press. “Martial Law Ends in Hawaii. The Deseret News [Salt Lake City, Utah] 24 Oct. 1944: 1. Web. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19441024&id=tU5SAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xnwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3153,5465917]
6. Green, Major General Thomas H. “Martial Law in Hawaii, December 7, 1941–April 4, 1943.” Unpublished manuscript. Library of Congress [Washington, D.C.]. Web. [http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/Martial-Law_Green.pdf]
7. Anthony, Joseph Garner. Hawaii Under Army Rule. Stanford University Press [Stanford, California] 1947. [books.google.com/books?id=V66lAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109]
8. Polmar, Norman. “World War II: The Enclyclopedia of the War Years, 1941-1945.” Random House [New York] 1996. [books.google.com/books?id=30gRAGjXrIIC&pg=PA372&lpg=PA372]
9. Dunford, Bruce. “Blackout, Martial Law After Japanese Attack.” The Observer-Reporter [Greene County, Pennsylvania] 9 Dec. 1996: A6. Web. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2519&dat=19961209&id=Al5eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2GENAAAAIBAJ&pg=2763,1190314]
10. Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. “Personal Justice Denied.” 1997. Web. [http://www.archives.gov/research/japanese-americans/justice-denied/]
11. Borreca, Richard. “Martial Law Held Sway in Isles for Three Years.” The Star Bulletin [Honolulu, Hawaii] 13 Sept. 1999. Web. [http://archives.starbulletin.com/1999/09/13/special/story5.html]
12. Borreca, Richard. “Christmas 1941 in Hawaii Was Not a Time to Rejoice.” The Star Bulletin [Honolulu, Hawaii] 13 Sept. 1999. Web. [http://archives.starbulletin.com/1999/09/13/special/]
13. Soga, Keiho. “The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii.” University of Hawaii Press {Honolulu, Hawaii] 31 Oct. 2007. [Amazon.com]
The New Republic’s Ugly Reality
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | December 8, 2014
There has been much hand-wringing of late in Official Washington about an editorial shakeup at The New Republic and the possibility that the century-old political magazine’s legacy will somehow be tarnished by its new owner. But the truth about The New Republic is that it has more blood on its hands than almost any other publication around, which is saying something.
In my four decades in national journalism – that’s two-fifths of The New Republic’s life – what I have seen from the magazine is mostly its smug advocacy for U.S. interventionism abroad and snarky putdowns of antiwar skeptics at home. Indeed, you could view The New Republic as the most productive hothouse for cultivating neoconservative dogma — and at least partly responsible for the senseless slaughter associated with that ideology.
Though The New Republic still touts its reputation as “liberal,” that label has been essentially a cover for its real agenda: pushing a hawkish foreign policy agenda that included the Reagan administration’s slaughter of Central Americans in the 1980s, violent U.S. interventions in Iraq, Syria and other Muslim countries for the past two decades, and Israel’s suppression of Palestinians forever.
Indeed, the magazine’s long-ago-outdated status as “liberal” has long served the cause of right-wingers. The Reagan administration loved to plant flattering stories about the Nicaraguan Contras in The New Republic because its “liberal” cachet would give the propaganda more credibility. A favorite refrain from President Ronald Reagan’s team was “even the liberal New Republic agrees …”
In other words, the magazine became the neocon wolf advancing the slaughter of Central Americans in the sheep’s clothing of intellectual liberalism. Similarly, over the past two decades, it has dressed up bloody U.S. interventionism in the Middle East in the pretty clothes of “humanitarianism” and “democracy.”
The magazine – which has given us the writings of neocons Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, Steven Emerson, Robert Kagan and many more – has become a case study in the special evil that can come from intellectualism when it supplies high-minded rationalizations for low-brow brutality.
In the world of the mind, where The New Republic likes to think it lives, the magazine has published countless essays that have spun excuses for mass murder, rape, torture and other real-world crimes. Put differently, the magazine afforded the polite people of Official Washington an acceptable way to compartmentalize and justify the ungodly bloodshed.
Perhaps The New Republic had a different existence in the years before I arrived on the scene. I’ve heard some longtime New Republic lovers wax on about its era of thoughtful progressivism. But The New Republic that I encountered from the 1970s onward was the magazine of Martin Peretz, a nasty neocon who cared little about journalism or even thoughtful analyses, but rather pushed a dishonest and cruel agenda including crude insults against Muslims.
In his later years after moving part-time to Israel, Peretz began to expose more of his personal agenda. In one TNR blog post regarding the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan which prompted post-9/11 right-wing outrage, Peretz declared: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf [the promoter of the Islamic center] there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood.
“So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.” (Facing accusations of racism, Peretz later issued a half-hearted apology which reiterated that his reference to Muslim life being cheap was “a statement of fact, not opinion.”)
A New York Times magazine profile of Peretz in 2011 noted that Peretz’s hostility toward Muslims was nothing new. “As early as 1988, Peretz was courting danger in The New Republic with disturbing Arab stereotypes not terribly different from his 2010 remarks,” wrote Stephen Rodrick.
Steven Emerson, one of Peretz’s favored TNR writers, also became notorious for similar Islamophobia as well as shoddy and dishonest journalism. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Unmasking October Surprise Debunker.”]
Ignoring the History
Yet, very little of this real history of The New Republic can be found in the mainstream media’s coverage of the recent staff revolt against plans by new owner (and Facebook co-founder) Chris Hughes to modernize the publication. Hughes’s new chief executive – former Yahoo official Guy Vidra – vowed to rebuild the magazine as a “vertically integrated digital media company.”
At the Washington Post, the New York Times and pretty much the entire MSM, there has been much rending of garments over these plans and the ouster of some top editors but almost nothing about what some of those now ex-TNR editors actually did.
One was longtime literary editor Leon Wieseltier, who was a prominent advocate for the Iraq War and a promoter of right-wing Zionism. Another was editor Franklin Foer, another hawkish intellectual. Their departures were followed by a walkout by a dozen or so members of the editorial staff, resignations from contributing columnists, an outraged letter from former TNR writers and furious columns by ex-TNR staffers.
“The New Republic is dead; Chris Hughes killed it,” wailed Post columnist Dana Milbank, another TNR alumnus.
On Monday, the 31-year-old Hughes took to the Post’s op-ed page to offer Official Washington something like a paper bag to control all the hyperventilating. He denied that he was behaving like some spoiled Silicon Valley rich kid imposing an Internet-style culture on an old-fashioned print publication, but rather was trying to save the institution.
“I came to protect the future of the New Republic by creating a sustainable business so that our journalism, values and voice — the things that make us singular — could survive,” Hughes wrote.
But the real question is: Does The New Republic deserve to survive? Wouldn’t it be appropriate that at least one neocon institution faced some accountability for the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, not to mention the other victims of reckless U.S. interventionism in the Middle East or the tens of thousands of murdered Central Americans during the Reagan years?
Though The New Republic’s apologists depict the magazine as an honorable place where “long-form journalism” thrived and “serious thinking” was nourished, the reality was actually much different. Indeed, much of the trivialization of U.S. journalism in the 1980s stemmed from the punchy opinions voiced by TNR columnists as they moonlighted as talking heads on the TV “shout shows,” like “The McLaughlin Group” and “Inside Washington.”
Many of the regulars on those media “food fights” came from The New Republic and lowered the intellectual level of Official Washington into a “thumbs up, thumps down” reductionism where political leaders were rated on scales of one to ten. Their well-compensated behavior was the opposite of true intellectualism or – for that matter – true journalism.
Phony Posture
The typical posture of these media-beloved neocons was to pretend that they were bravely standing up against some “liberal” orthodoxy, courageously daring to embrace the Nicaraguan Contras or other right-wing “freedom fighters” despite the danger of taking such principled stands.
The reality was that TNR’s writers were lining up behind the real power structure, standing with the Reagan administration and much of the major media while joining in the bullying of the relatively weak and vulnerable forces in Washington that went against this grain.
The phoniness of TNR’s pretend bravery was demonstrated by how the neocon commentators were rewarded with plum jobs, prominent op-ed slots, regular seats on the TV shows, lucrative speaking fees, book contracts, etc. The opposite was true for journalists who challenged the Reagan administration’s propaganda. They were the ones who faced real punishment.
Journalists who dared file critical stories about the U.S.-backed Salvadoran army or the CIA-trained Contra rebels found themselves reassigned or out on the street. The New York Times’ Raymond Bonner was the best known example after he was pulled out of Central America while under fierce right-wing attack for his accurate reporting on human rights atrocities in El Salvador.
In a similar case, the Reagan administration’s public diplomacy team browbeat National Public Radio for airing a story about a Contra massacre of farmworkers in northern Nicaragua. Sensitive to government strings on NPR’s funding, NPR executives appeased the administration by getting rid of foreign editor Paul Allen who had allowed the story to air.
Within a short time, Washington journalists understood that their route to professional success required them to swallow any propaganda from Reagan’s team, no matter how absurd.
That servility was on display when Reagan’s White House fumed over one human rights report citing 145 sworn affidavits signed by Nicaraguans who had witnessed Contra atrocities. Many of the witnesses described Contras slitting the throats of captives and mutilating their bodies.
In stepped The New Republic and one of its many pro-Contra writers, Fred Barnes, who countered the eyewitnesses by referencing the findings of a secret U.S. investigation which had absolved the Contras of many charges, he wrote. In a harsh article entitled “The Sandinista Lobby,” Barnes denounced the human rights community for hypocritically criticizing the innocent Contras and other pro-U.S. forces, while allegedly going soft on Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.
But when I got hold of the investigative report in 1986, I found that it had been written by the CIA and was based on the word of the Contras themselves. One of the CIA’s key findings, supposedly debunking the slitting-throat allegations, was that the Contras said they could not have slit throats because they “are normally not equipped with either bayonets or combat knives.” The CIA failed to note that photographs of the Contras from that period showed them slouching off to battle carrying a variety of machetes and other sharp objects.
The absurdity of suggesting that the Contras could not have slit the throats of captives because they weren’t “normally” given knives should have been something a cub reporter would have laughed at. But clearly journalism was not what was going on at The New Republic where there was no interest in exposing the atrocities committed by the Contras. It was all about pushing a hawkish foreign policy and serving the Reagan agenda.
A Contra Exposé
That sort of behavior continued throughout the Reagan era with one notable exception in fall 1986 – when editor Jefferson Morley and investigative reporter Murray Waas asked me and my Associated Press colleague Brian Barger to expand the work that we had done exposing Oliver North’s secret Contra support network into a New Republic cover story.
Our article appeared in November 1986 while Peretz was out of town visiting Israel. But he soon weighed in after receiving a furious letter from then-Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams, another arch-neocon. Abrams ostentatiously canceled his TNR subscription in protest of our article, and Peretz responded to Abrams’s complaint by excluding Waas from the magazine and putting Morley in the publisher’s doghouse.
The situation could have gotten worse for those who had a hand in bringing our story into the magazine, except that the Iran-Contra scandal broke wide open in November 1986, confirming that Barger and I had been right about North’s secret network. Abrams eventually pleaded guilty to misleading Congress (though he was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush and was brought into President George W. Bush’s National Security Council to oversee Middle East policy, including the invasion of Iraq).
The New Republic’s pattern of playing fast and loose with the facts would eventually cause the magazine some embarrassment in 1998 when it was caught publishing a number of fabrications by writer Stephen Glass. But TNR never was held accountable for its support for atrocities in Central America, its pushing for illegal wars in the Middle East or its smearing of honest journalists and human rights investigators.
Though Peretz finally lost control of the magazine’s content in 2010, The New Republic has remained an important vehicle for pushing the neocon agenda. Earlier this year, TNR published a long exaltation to American interventionism by neocon Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and a leading proponent for the Iraq War.
In the essay, “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” Kagan “depicted President Obama as presiding over an inward turn by the United States that threatened the global order and broke with more than 70 years of American presidents and precedence,” wrote Jason Horowitz in the New York Times. “He called for Mr. Obama to resist a popular pull toward making the United States a nation without larger responsibilities, and to re-assume the more muscular approach to the world out of vogue in Washington since the war in Iraq drained the country of its appetite for intervention.”
President Barack Obama, who remains hypersensitive to criticism from well-placed and well-connected neocons, responded by inviting Kagan to lunch at the White House and shaping his foreign policy speech at West Point’s graduation in May to deflect Kagan’s criticism.
So, when you read the endless laments from the mainstream U.S. news media about the tragedy of having some Silicon Valley barbarians violating the sacred journalistic temple of The New Republic, you might reflect on all the suffering and death that the magazine has rationalized and intellectualized away.
~
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).
5 not-so-peaceful Obama actions since nabbing Nobel Prize
RT | December 10, 2014
Five years on from President Barack Obama scooping a Nobel Peace Prize, and the White House has taken anything but a Zen approach to foreign policy under his watch. Here are the top 5 not-so-peaceful moves the laureate has made in the past half-decade.
1. Afghan Surge
Obama didn’t start the war gin Afghanistan, but he certainly took a page from his predecessors playbook in trying to finish it. He recognized his precarious position at prize time.
“But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the commander-in-chief of a nation in the midst of two wars,” he said after accepting the Nobel Prize in Oslo, Norway, on December 9, 2009.
While he said the war in Iraq was “winding down,” things in Afghanistan were just starting to heat up. A week before accepting the prize, Obama announced he was sending 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan as part of his “surge policy,” intended to beat back the Taliban and train Afghan security forces to take the country into their own hands. The following years would become the deadliest for both US troops and Afghan civilians. Again, it wasn’t Obama’s war. But then came…
2. Military strikes in Libya
Following UN Resolution 1973 on March 17, 2011, which called for “an immediate ceasefire” in Libya and authorized the international community to set up a no-fly zone to protect civilians, Obama, along with his NATO allies, would soon launch military strikes to turn the tide of the 2011 Civil War in the North African state. NATO conducted 9,700 strike sorties and dropped over 7,700 precision bombs. A Human Rights Watch report would go on to detail eight incidents where at least 72 Libyan civilians died as a result of the aerial campaign.
But the real damage to overthrowing the Gaddafi regime came in the ensuing years, with the country descending into a civil war between Islamist forces and the weak post-revolutionary government. In August, Obama admitted his Libyan policy was a failure, but not because he chose to intervene militarily. Rather, he says the problem was that America and its European partners did not “come in full force” to take Gaddafi out. Although his then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to rejoice in his death, wryly noting “We came, we saw, he died.”
3. Drone Wars in Yemen, Pakistan
Since the US first started targeting Yemeni militants in 2002, Obama has launched all but one of the 15 airstrikes and 101 drone strikes in the country. According to the web portal New America.net, which has meticulously complied data on the strikes, up to 1,073 people have been killed in the strikes. An estimated 81-87 of those killed were civilians, while the identity of another 31-50 remains unknown. But Yemen was just one prong in Obama’s so-called Drone War, though, as we shall see, it was the site of a game-changing incident.
Unlike in Yemen, drone strikes in Pakistan were in favor long before Obama came to power. A report conducted by Stanford and New York Universities’ Law schools found that between 2,562 and 3,325 people were killed by drone strikes in Pakistan between June 2004 and mid-September 2012. Anywhere between 474 and 881 of those were civilians, and 176 were children. While Obama didn’t start the Pakistani drone war, he aggressively expanded it.
Between 2004 and 2007, only 10 drone strikes were launched in Pakistan. The following year saw 36 such strikes, and 54 were launched in 2009.
But 2010 would be the deadliest year by far, with 122 strikes launched and 849 people killed. He would go on to authorize 73 and 46 strikes in 2011 and 2012 respectively.
Following widespread opposition at home and abroad, in May 2013, Obama promised a new era of transparency to protect civilians, saying control of the program would be transferred from the CIA to the Pentagon. But…
4. Obama has a secret kill list
In February 2013, the Obama administration’s internal legal justification for assassinating US citizens abroad came to light for the first time. According to the Justice Department document, the White House has the legal authority to kill Americans who are “senior operational leaders,” of Al-Qaeda or “an associated force” even if they are not actively engaged in any active plot to attack the US.
In September 2011, a US drone strike in Yemen killed two American citizens: Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. The following month, a drone strike killed al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, who was born in Colorado.
The concept of the US president exercising the right to kill US citizens without the benefit of a trial has resonated throughout American culture.
In the comic-book-inspired film ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’, the issue of targeted killings and “kill lists” features prominently in the plot.
5. Redrawing red lines
President Barack Obama drew a red line around Syria’s use of chemical weapons, pushing the international community to punish Damascus with military strikes following the August 21 Ghouta Attack.
After the UK balked at airstrikes, Moscow and Washington took the diplomatic route, resulting in a historic deal that has seen Damascus abandon its chemical weapons stockpiles.
But US-led airstrikes on Syria were only postponed. On August 8, 2014, the United States started bombing so-called Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq to protect embattled Kurds. The following month, the US would launch airstrikes against IS militants in Syria as well. Of all the US military interventions in recent years, the battle against the IS has been met with widespread approval. Still, Syria was the seventh country Obama has bombed in six years.
Quite a feat for a Nobel Peace Prize-winner.
Feds say cleaning up most contaminated nuclear weapons site in US is too costly
RT | December 9, 2014
The United States government recently argued in court filings that the state of Washington’s request of $18 billion over 14 years to address the nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production site should be rejected based on expense.
The US Department of Justice said in a court filing on Friday that the cost of the state’s proposal for a hastened cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation would cast into doubt other nuclear projects funded by the Department of Energy.
According to The Tri-City Herald, the filings in US District Court by the DOJ and the state of Washington were part of the state’s lawsuit that seeks a more pressing timeline for Hanford’s cleanup.
Friday was the deadline for the parties to comment on new cleanup timelines, as the DOE said many of the existing timelines were at risk of being missed.
Hanford, located along the Columbia River in south-central Washington, is the site of 177 massive underground nuclear waste storage tanks, making it the largest collection of nuclear waste in the US. For four decades, the site was home to plutonium development for use in the production of nuclear weapons.
As RT previously reported, a deal was recently struck between the DOE and Washington state to allow a leaky radioactive storage tank at Hanford to remain as is for more than a year before its contents are removed.
In its court filing, Washington state again criticized federal management at Hanford and asked for an intensified oversight plan to address its leak-prone waste tanks and the construction of a $13 billion vitrification plant to treat waste for future burial.
The state said in its filing that the DOE wants to establish future cleanup deadlines at the expense of hard deadlines already agreed to by the parties in a 2010 consent decree, which sprang from a 2008 lawsuit following the department’s failure to meet an earlier set of deadlines for the plant and its waste tanks.
The construction project “should be matched with the best project management plans in the country,” the state contended. “Energy, however, implies that such planning is impossible.”
The state asked for more than 100 new deadlines to keep the Department of Energy’s cleanup process on track, yet the Department of Justice argued the plan was out of reach.
“The state’s proposal would require a dramatic and unrealistic increase in funding that, if mandated, would jeopardize DOE’s ability to carry out ongoing cleanup operations on other parts of the Hanford site and at other sites across the country,”documents filed by the Justice Department stated.
Hanford’s construction and waste management get $1.2 billion annually from the federal government, more than one-fifth of the Department of Energy’s annual budget for national environmental cleaning projects.
The state’s plan requires $4 billion over the next five years, on top of the current level of annual funding, the Justice Department said.
The Justice Department also said the state’s plan would violate the 2010 consent decree for cleanup, as the proposal would demand new storage tanks and treatment facilities.
The federal government has claimed construction work at Hanford has fallen behind because of technical issues.
Hanford contains”53 million gallons of High Level Radioactive hazardous waste, equivalent to 2,650 rail cars full of waste,”according to the Washington State Dept. of Ecology, making it the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States. Or, as Heart of America Northwest called it,”the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere.”
In 1943, construction began on Hanford as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project.
“Hanford was the producer of the plutonium that fueled the 1st test explosion in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The same plutonium also powered Fat Man, the five-ton atomic bomb that exploded over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945,” according to Heart of America Northwest.
Ready-to-fire nuclear weapons pose ‘accidental launch’ risk – former defense chiefs
RT | December 8, 2014
Cross-border action to lower the risks posed by an intentional or accidental nuclear attack is “insufficient,” international military, political and diplomatic officials have warned.
Ready-to-use nuclear arms leave states vulnerable to accidental nuclear strikes, while insecurely stored stockpiles could potentially be targeted and stolen by terrorists, the European Leadership Network said.
In a letter written in the run up to the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, UK signatories collectively called upon states across the globe to eradicate nuclear arms.
Former home secretary Charles Clarke, former chief of defense staff, Lord Richards and former defense secretaries Lord Browne and Lord King joined other signatories in urging states across the globe to “redouble efforts to work toward a world without nuclear weapons.”
The risks posed by nuclear weapons and current global dynamics that could prompt their deployment are underestimated and poorly understood by world leaders, the signatories warned.
In a post-Cold War era, a proliferation of nuclear arms across the globe that are ready to fire at any moment, greatly amplifies the chance of an accident, they added.
This scenario leaves world leaders who face an imminent threat of attack an insufficient period to liaise with one another and act prudently, the signatories stressed.
Former US general, James Cartwright. (Image from wikipedia.org)
Other high profile figures who supported the call included retired US general James Cartwright, former French prime minister Michel Rocard, former vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and delegates from Russia, China and India.
The warning comes in the wake of reports that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) had stolen uranium compounds from Mosul University in Iraq earlier this year.
Writing to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on July 8, Iraqi UN Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said 88 pounds of uranium used for scientific research at the university had been looted.
Two days later, however, a spokesperson for the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the material was “low grade” and “would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk.”
The Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons began on Monday, and is due to come to a close on Tuesday evening.
The conference follows recent talks between Iran and six western governments. Although the group failed to negotiate a satisfactory deal on Iran’s nuclear program, the talks have been extended for a further seven months.
There are currently thought to be approximately 16,300 nuclear weapons in nine different states across the world.
Global negotiators are concerned that Iranian authorities are using the state’s nuclear development program as a covert means of developing arms, and have imposed sanctions on the Middle Eastern state.
But the Iranian government denies this, and argues the state is only interested in developing peaceful nuclear projects such as the production of power.
Commenting on the recent round of nuclear talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “considerable progress” had been made despite the fact no final agreement was reached. He added he expected the “basic principles” of a final agreement to surface within three or four months.
Reflecting on the negotiations, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond agreed “significant progress” had been achieved.
In late November, it emerged Iran had reduced its stockpile of low-enriched uranium gas to comply with the terms of an interim nuclear agreement signed with six world powers in 2013.
As talks are set to continue next month, Tehran’s access to $700 million per month by way of sanctions relief remains intact.
Earlier this month, the UN General Assembly passed an Arab-introduced resolution calling on Israel not to develop, produce or possess nuclear arms. The resolution also criticized the Israeli administration for not being part of the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
Read more: UN urges Israel to renounce nuclear arms, join non-proliferation treaty
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From the Archives
Bum Rap for the Rapa Nui
By Thomas Riggins | Dissident Voice | February 5, 2014
A new report in Science News Magazine (1-25-2014) by Bruce Bower details a reevaluation of the view that the Rapa Nuians, the native inhabitants of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), were responsible for the collapse of their population and society due to over exploitation of natural resources and the destruction of the rain forest on their island, a view recently popularized by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse (2005).
As Bower reports, the anthropologist Maria Mulrooney has published the results of her studies of the Rapa Nui culture (Journal of Archeological Science, December 2013) based on new radiocarbon dates from archeological sites on the island. She has concluded that after the clear cutting of the forest in the 1500s, to make room for agricultural production, the population of Rapa Nui remained sufficiently vibrant to carry on food production and continue their cultural development.
Exactly when the Rapa Nui arrived on Easter Island is unknown but it was on or before 1200 A.D. or so. Mulrooney maintains they had a thriving culture which was still going strong even after their “discovery” by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday 1722. This would indicate that they had not suffered “collapse” as a result of forest clearance. … continue
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