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US troops ‘kidnap’ 4-year-old drone strike victim from hospital, allege parents

RT | June 02, 2014

A four-year-old girl whose face was blown off during a US drone strike in Afghanistan was kidnapped by American troops and hidden by an international organization, her family says.

The child, named Aisha Rashid, was travelling with her parents, a sibling and several other relatives from Kabul to their home in the village of Gamber in the Kunar province on a hot September day, when the drone exploded, Expressen.se reported. An uncle, Meya Jan, is at home on his farm in that village when he receives a phone call about the strike from the neighboring village. He and others rush to the strike.

Suddenly they hear a voice. “Water, water…”

It is Aisha. She is missing a hand, her leg is bleeding, and there is nothing left of her eyes or nose.

Older relatives rush her to the hospital in Asadabad, but doctors there can do nothing. She is transported by ambulance to a hospital in Jalalabad, where surgeons do what they can to patch her face, but her case is too difficult for them. Hospital staff contact the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), who arranges for her to be sent by medical helicopter to Kabul four days later.

The incident occurred on September 7, 2013, when NATO drones destroyed a pickup truck with civilians inside after its driver agreed to give a lift to Taliban insurgents, provincial governor Shuja ul Mulk Jalala said at the time. A report listed that four women, four children, and four men had been killed in the strike. The remaining four fatalities were said to be Taliban militants. NATO command acknowledged that the strike took place, but stated that the operation killed only militants – not civilians.

Once in the Kabul hospital, Aisha is visited by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. “She had lost the whole family, the entire family, 14 of them, in the bombing in Kunar. And that day . . . [note: there is a 39-second pause as Karzai struggles with his emotions] . . . that day, I wished she were dead, so she could be buried with her parents and brothers and sisters,” he said, recalling the visit in an interview with the Washington Post five months later.

“She is walking now, she is in America. We arranged for her to be taken to America. She’s there now,” Karzai said in the March phone interview.

But Jan and Aisha’s other uncle, Hasrat Gul, did not give permission for the only surviving member of the Rashid family to be taken to the US, nor were they allowed to go with her. And they were not given any news of their niece.

“We think she is in the US, that’s what they told us, but we have no contact and we don’t know if she is still in Bagram or if she’s been flown out,” Gul told Expressen’s Av Terese Cristiansson in early October. They said they believed the US military was trying to hide her because drone strikes are such a sensitive subject.The two uncles give the reporter power of attorney to find Aisha.

And so Cristiansson embarks on a journey to find Aisha that she describes as “Kafkaesque.”

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) took over the case days after Karzai visited Aisha. Cristiansson emails the ISAF, but they have turned Aisha’s case over to a relief organization named Solace, which helps Afghan children with war injuries to receive international treatment. Solace’s strategy is to pay for foreign treatment and then place the children with foster families until they can be flown back to their own country. The reporter contacts them in November, and they initially seem willing to work with her on following the case for an article and documentary. But when Cristiansson says she wants to visit Aisha at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, DC (where Solace says the girl is located), the group becomes unresponsive.

In the meantime, the family had been receiving no communications. “We were informed that she didn’t have any family,” says Patsy Wilson, one of the founders of Solace told Cristiansson. The press office at Walter Reed said the family should ask local representatives at the base in Kunar about Aisha’s condition.

The family, with no updates, believes the US military have taken Aisha. “They probably don’t want her to become a poster girl for drone repercussions,” they said. They even start doubting whether she is alive.

Karzai spoke to Aisha at the end of February, days before his Post interview. “I called the family with whom she was. She’s still blind; she will not be a normal girl again. They’re trying to conduct plastic surgery on her,” he said. “The lady that looks after her, an Afghan lady, says she keeps asking about her younger brother who was 3 years old when they were killed.”

Jan and Gul did not speak to their niece until March.

“She cried and wondered where we are and how everyone in the village is. She spoke to my son and said that ‘as soon as I’m strong I’m coming home to the village’,” Jan said to Cristiansson at the time. “She said she has learnt her ABC.”

But the two uncles say they do not want Aisha in the United States. “We were against the US taking her. They killed our entire family and now they have her,” they said. “Even Germany and France said they could help her, but the US wanted her so that the case didn’t become too big in other countries. We don’t understand why none of us got to go with her either, that she had to travel alone.”

Gul told Cristiansson they have been compensated $2,000 per victim who died in the drone strike. “They want to give us money, but we don’t want America’s money. We have said that the only apology we can accept is what it says in the Koran: 100 camels,” he said. They also want the person responsible for killing their family brought to justice, and for Aisha to return to them. They think she realizes she cannot live in a country that killed her mother, father and little brother.

“She belongs at home with us,” Jan said.

June 2, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Taken under control’: GPS sites in Russia can’t be used now for ‘military purposes’

RT | June 1, 2014

Russia has “taken under control” the operation of 11 American GPS sites and ensured they cannot be used for military purposes, as Washington and Moscow show no progress in negotiations on setting up Russian GLONASS stations on US territory.

May 31 was the last day when Russia and the US could have reached a deal on the issue.

“In compliance with the Russian government’s instruction, Roscosmos and the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations implemented measures on June 1, 2014, which excluded the use of information from global seismographic network stations working on signals from the GPS system and located on the territory of the Russian Federation for purposes not stipulated by the existing agreements, including for military purposes,” Russia’s Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) said on Sunday morning.

The statement referring to agreements between Russia and the US, which date back to 1993 and 2001, stirred up some confusion in the media with some outlets reporting GPS stations work has been suspended, while others said they continued to work. Russia’s deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the official behind the move elaborated: “We have worked out and implemented measures that exclude the use of these [GPS] stations for military purposes. Now they are under our full control,” Rogozin, who is in charge of space and defense industries, wrote in his Twitter micro blog.

The Differential GPS ground stations located on Russia’s soil will continue to operate under existing agreements to fulfill civil purposes. The so-called DGPS provides differential corrections to a GPS receiver in order to improve position accuracy.

The correction is received by the roving GPS receiver via either a radio signal or a satellite signal, depending on whether a source is land-based or satellite-based, and applied to the position it is calculating.

According to Rogozin, Moscow has initiated talks with the United States on GLONASS deployment on the US territory.

If agreement is reached by the August-31 deadline, “new decisions will be taken.”

“We hope that by the end of summer, these talks will bring a solution that will allow our cooperation to be restored on the basis of parity and proportionality,” Rogozin said back on May 13, the day when he first announced plans to shut down 11 American correctional GPS stations.

The development of the GLONASS global navigation system began in the Soviet Union, which put the very first satellite of the system into orbit on October 12, 1982. The system was officially commissioned on September 24, 1993.

Today GLONASS is supported on products from world-leading handheld device producers, such as Samsung, Nokia, Apple, Motorola and others, simultaneously with GPS.

So far there are 14 monitor stations in Russia, one in Brazil and one in Antarctica at Russia’s Bellingshausen station.

More GLONASS stations are expected to be built in the near future: eight in Russia, two in Brazil, one in Australia, Cuba, Indonesia, Spain, Vietnam and an additional station in the Antarctic.

June 1, 2014 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Le Pen on Ukraine crisis: US pursuing own interests, not those of EU

RT | June 1, 2014

The EU is responsible for the developments in Ukraine, French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen said in an interview, stressing the bloc should have its own opinion on global events and not slavishly follow the America’s lead.

“The EU added fuel to the fire by offering the partnership to the country where half of the population is looking to the East,” Le Pen told Der Spiegel newspaper.

Le Pen said she supports federalization in crisis-torn Ukraine, where the coup-appointed government has launched a massive military operation in the country’s eastern regions. The offensive has already claimed dozens of lives, both among the militias and local civilians. Schools, a kindergarten and hospitals in several cities have come under fire.

The French leader warned the EU against falling into Washington’s steps, as those have nothing to do with Europe’s interests.

“The United States is trying to expand their influence in the world and first of all in Europe. They are pursuing their own interests, not ours,” Le Pen said.

She went as far as to call the EU “an anti-democratic monster,” where people’s right to self-determination is stolen.

“I want to stop it [the EU] getting fatter, continuing to breathe, touching everything with its paws and reaching into all areas of our legislation with its tentacles,” she said.

Earlier Le Pen repeatedly stated that Russia is being unfairly “demonized” and that the campaign against the Russian political administration has been cooked up at the highest levels of EU leadership, with the implicit support of the US.

“I am surprised a Cold War on Russia has been declared in the European Union,” she said at a meeting with Russia’s State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin in April. “It’s not in line with traditional, friendly relations, or with the economic interests of our country or EU countries and harms future relations.”

Le Pen’s National Front far-right party in France has been steadily gaining popularity and scored a triumphant success in the latest EU elections by gaining around 25 percent of the votes.

June 1, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU vote: Freight train of opposition

By Brett Redmayne-Titley | Press TV | May 31, 2014

While EU leaders and their Washington sympathizers marginalize, rationalize, and excuse away Sunday’s historic European Union parliamentary election results, they deliberately avoid the greater point of concern. The people are coming.

French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, called the sudden increase in new opposition Members of the European Parliament ( MEP) an, “earthquake.” He, too, missed the correct metaphore. This staggering election result is a freight train. More passengers are climbing aboard daily. Destination: Capital City.

On Sunday, May 25, 2014, recently formed national opposition parties scared the status quo to the marrow. In Greece, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland pro-nationalist parties gave, for the first time, a viable, potentially foundation changing political presence to their disenfranchised countrymen. Many of these opposition parties have sharply divergent philosophies. In values these parties are not a coherent group. Some have established track records in their governments and some are fringe parties, even devoutly neo-fascist.

Regardless of their philosophy these parties share a similar agenda. As Pepe Escobar wrote in a piece for Russia Today:

“What matters to the average citizen is… How to deal with immigration; how to fight the eradication of the welfare state; the implications of the free trade agreement with the US (TTIP); the value of the euro – and what the ECB Mafia is actually doing to fight unemployment.”

Fed up with being ignored by their governments and with the daily unhealthy reminders of the “benefits” of EU austerity measures, the public well knows the decisions made in Brussels benefit only the top 1%. Established EU voting power in the parliament will now face an opposition that is making its presence shown as they already have in their homelands.

Shocking the EU old-guard, the damage to established politics in Brussels summed up as; UK Independence party- UKIP (27.5%/ 19 seats); Front National/ France (25%/ 24 seats); Syriza Party/Greece (26.5%/ 8 seats); Alternative fur Deutschland/ Germany (7%/6 seats); . Danish People’s Party/ Denmark (26.7%/seats ).

The big surprises were, the Sweden Democrats (9.7%/ 1 seat); the Congress of the New Right/Poland (7.1%/4 seats); the Golden Dawn Party/ Greece (9.4%/ 5 seats) and Spain’s Podemos that formed just this past March 2014(8%/ 5 seats).

Far worse for EU national leaders, UKIP, Danish People’s Party, Front National, and the specifically anti-austerity Syriza Party all came in first place in their nations’ EU ballot boxes.

David Cameron, showing his keen grasp of the obvious, looked pale while muttering his blasé synopsis of Sunday’s disaster:

“People are deeply disillusioned with the European Union. The EU needs to change; it can’t be business as usual.”

Indeed.

Writing in, Open Europe, Mats Perrson had a more accurate take on Sunday’s election.

“The temptations in Brussels will be to view this as the peak of anti-EU sentiment. This would be a huge gamble. These elections are a clear warning: offer voters a polarized choice between more Europe and no Europe and sooner or later they will choose the latter.”

The “latter” is likely to be shown in several upcoming national elections. The existing EU leaders have never shown a foundation in populist thought, therefore commanding austerity for all. Except themselves. The chance that the EU will voluntarily shift from pure US backed capitalist thought and return to a preferred socialist model is zero. The will of the people is bad for “business as usual.”

Cameron had good reason to look pale. Despite his Conservative Party losing six seats and the lapdog, supposedly opposition Labor Party losing ten of their eleven seats, the new populist freight train is now bearing down on him from two more directions — Scotland and UKIP.

The Scottish independence referendum is set for September 18, 2014, and thanks to their party’s affable, answer-for-everything leader, Alex Salmond, chances of victory are getting closer to 50-50 everyday. This scares Westminster to the core of their elitist souls. Sunday’s vote will only embolden UK fence-sitters who have, thanks to the persistent Salmond, a lot of good reasons to rid themselves of the sinking UK ship.

Cameron’s nemesis is Nigel Farage and his brash take-no-prisoners UKIP party. The devastation of EU austerity policies is obvious in every corner of the UK except the power center of London. With a completely ethnocentric, UK first agenda UKIP has many reasons to be popular. Before the EU election UKIP was already surging in preparation for the upcoming national election.

“The most extraordinary political event in the past 100 years,” crowed Farage with that mocking grin that has so endeared him to his parliamentary adversaries. Well, maybe not. But UKIP was the first political party other than the Tories and Labor to win a national election in over one hundred years. With the UK national election of May 17, 2015 next in UKIP’s headlights, social conditions worsening, and privatization buying up the country, including the beloved Royal Mail, Sunday may be a timely precursor to a pending historic moment. For Mr. Salmond, the surging opposition support across the EU is very good press indeed.

Speaking in France, Francois Hollande looked to be in shock. Despite his approval ratings plummeting, austerity measures increasing, and growing unemployment, all thanks to a shrinking GDP, Hollande has strangely developed a penchant for multiple expensive wars in central Africa. Like his Washington war partners, his French public can be damned, but he always has more money for war.

All this from a socialist?

Hence, Marine Le Pen’s Front National scored a clear first place victory with almost 25% of the French vote. The Front National has a long history in France but has only come to prominence, by necessity, in recent years. Small wonder that Front National had rendered Hollande virtually speechless. The light bulb had suddenly gone on. He’s done.

Across Europe every one of these suddenly relevant political parties are the new subject of passionate conversation. The uninformed are asking, the informed are growing, and the accelerating freight train of opposition is stopping to add new cars for more passengers, more and more often. With the EU governments currently in denial, the repeatedly discredited press unable to spin this disaster into victory, and Ukraine reminding everyone daily of the horrors of EU democracy, conditions for these opposition leaders are very favorable.

Of course, across the pond Washington was also in denial. Writing for the “respected” Brookings Institute, Douglas J. Elliott, as a true American, was of course blind to the value of growing opposition via democracy. Offering of a synopsis he summed up, “Protest parties critical to the status quo did very well,… but not well enough to upset the fundamental balance of power in Brussels.” He added, “The French and UK governments were weakened a bit. Most other governments avoided serious new problems.”

Really? Likely Farage, Le Pen, and Salmond would enjoy a hearty laugh responding to Mr. Elliott. They will not have to. Their parties will in upcoming national elections.

Sweden is first up. With the Feminist Initiative and Sweden Democrats having taken their first ever European Parliament seats by offering very pro-Austria, nationalist opposition agendas, the National election of Sept, 14, 2014, will be a litmus test for the following May.

May 7, 2015, could see a truly historic change in UK politics. In the national election it will be UKIP versus those other two parties. Regardless of the outcome UKIP will pick up more Members of Parliament and at the very least be a very powerful force in the many coalitions the UK government functions as. Mr. Farage already has reason to grin from ear-to-ear. A year from now?

Greece has the potential to rock the world to the core on June 16, 2016. With Syriza serving notice on Sunday and even the vile agendas of Golden Dawn getting votes enough to be members of the European Parliament, two years hence they may take over power. Greece is the laboratory setting for exposing every possible horrifying social condition of EU austerity which continues to get worse. Both parties blame the EU and want to have Greece opt-out. In the summer of ’16 this is now a very distinct possibility. If Greece was to leave the EU it would set a disastrous precedent since already UKIP is calling for a national referendum on doing just that. If London leaves the EU the Euro is done.

The EU citizens are not so easily put down. Unlike the completely bought-and-paid-for US government and court system voter manipulation via money has not yet had the same controlling effect on voters and elections. As with America, it is the established political parties that are the bar to actual democracy. National opposition parties began to cure this on Sunday.

Democracy in the EU still has a chance. Sunday’s vote proves this. In America there is no viable third party for socially impoverished Americans to attach themselves to in order to get some, any, representation. The Golden Dawn party now sitting at the EU table, despite its similarities to the American tea party, would never be allowed a seat in the U.S. Congress.

Mr. Elliott, like the rest of the established elite, miss the greater point of the EU vote. While the freight train of opposition loads more passengers in preparation for huffing and puffing into Brussels, it will pick up even more passengers before making one more stop. Washington DC.

Previously across a disadvantaged developing world democracy is pro-American, or it is terrorist and therefore brutalized.

The “Empire”, i.e., America and its Zionist puppet masters must have EU support to survive. Too far afield to effectively conquer the world by itself, so far EU leaders have been the support troops for the American conquest of Ukraine. Come the next national elections throwing ever more precious national coffers at America’s feet will be a subject of great campaign controversy. This will slow the “empire” at the very least.

An impoverished Europe knows that there is no money left for war and that the wars are not in their countries’ true national interests. As these many opposition parties continue to gain national and EU power their aversions for war will be part of their very vocal opposition.

Syriza leader, Alexis Tsipras, regarding Ukraine and Russia said, “Our message is: No New Cold War in Europe!”

Nigel Farage caused an uproar when he said that the EU had,”blood on its hands over its imperialist expansionist policies towards Ukraine.”

These kinds of statements will become a European mantra. This is very bad for the success of the empire. America is stone broke. Except for multiple financial crimes against humanity it would have no money for war. These financial war crimes are rampant across the EU and within the EU parliament. Replenishing the coffers and troop build-ups of NATO will not likely continue. This will leave America only its own people to pillage for a few shekels more for war.

Let’s now strip the veneer of political correctness regarding the EU vote and translate it for all to hear far and wide. The people are “mad as hell.” They are not going to take it anymore. No more austerity. No more war!

Mr. Cameron. Mr. Holland. Mr. Kerry. You had better be listening. That sound you ignore coming from Brussels…. Its a train! …

Brett Redmayne-Titley spent his formative years with his family in Queensland, Australia, Ghana, West Africa, and the Bahamas. Visiting over fifty counties over four decades he has seen the world slowly destroyed by greed, capitalism and empire.

May 31, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Feds Leave Radioactive Waste Stranded In Wildfire Danger Zone

DOE won’t meet deadline for removal of radioactive containers held above-ground at northern New Mexico nuclear weapons lab

By Sarah Lazare | Common Dreams | May 31, 2014

At least 3,706 cubic meters of radioactive waste are being stored at the Los Alamos National Laboratory complex after the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an underground nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico, was shut down indefinitely in February due to an airborne radiation leak.

Officials in New Mexico have warned that the waste at Los Alamos could be within the reach of wildfires and must be transferred elsewhere by the end of June. According to the Associated Press, “The agreement for removal of the waste by June 30 was reached after a massive wildfire lapped at the edge of lab property three years ago, raising concerns about the thousands of barrels of waste that were being stored outside.”

“The waste at Los Alamos is trapped with no place to go,” Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer and nuclear safety advocate at Fairewinds Associates, told Common Dreams.

The stranded waste is “transuranic” described by the DOE as “clothing, tools, rags, debris, soil and other items contaminated with radioactive material generated during decades of nuclear research and weapons development.”

Concerns have been raised about the safety of these barrels after it was discovered that changes in methods of packaging at Los Alamos, using organic cat litter to absorb moisture, may have been responsible for chemical reactions that set off the “heat event” behind the WIPP leak. According to New Mexico state regulators, more than 500 nuclear waste containers originating from Los Alamos were packed with this cat litter.

The DOE had been sending some Los Alamos radioactive waste to a Texas facility for temporary storage until WIPP is functional. Upon discovering that Los Alamos shipments may be dangerous, the DOE halted all shipments, citing public safety.

But Gundersen warns that these barrels of waste now pose a threat in Texas and Los Alamos, where they are being stored above-ground. “It is worse in the summer, because it is hotter in the summer, and the reactions become less stable,” he said.

In a statement (pdf) released Friday, the New Mexico Environment Department said it is “disappointed, but not surprised” that the DOE will not meet its deadline to remove the waste.

Meanwhile, it is still not clear when WIPP will reopen. The facility, which was never supposed to leak, is the bedrock of the U.S. government’s current approach to dispose of military-generated plutonium-contaminated transuranic waste from decades of nuclear bomb production and testing.

Critics have warned that WIPP’s failure raises serious questions about the overall federal strategy for disposing of nuclear waste.

May 31, 2014 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Nuclear Power, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

The ‘dirty secret’ about Obama’s Afghan plan

Press TV – May 30, 2014

US President Barack Obama recently said Washington will keep “approximately 9,800” troops in Afghanistan for two more years after 2014 but a report says an “invisible army” of US officials and intelligence personnel will remain in the country well in the future.

“Together with our allies and the Afghan government, we have agreed that this is the year we will conclude our combat mission in Afghanistan,” Obama said Tuesday during an appearance in the White House Rose Garden, referring to America’s 13-year war in Afghanistan, which is the longest war in US history.

“At the beginning of 2015, we will have approximately 9,800 US servicemembers in different parts of the country,” he added.

Writing for Foreign Policy magazine, however, Phillip Carter said on Wednesday that the “dirty secret about Obama’s Afghan plan is that tens of thousands of American civilians will be on the ground long after the troops have left.”

The “invisible army” of US civilians who will remain in Afghanistan for an unknown duration include intelligence agents, contractors, diplomats, and civilian government officials.

While Obama said on Tuesday that “by the end of 2016, our military will draw down to a normal embassy presence in Kabul,” what remains unclear is the extent of US operations under the auspices of agencies like the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was recently in the headlines for the covert creation of a text-based social network to stir political unrest in Cuba.

US foreign service officers in Afghanistan will work “alongside scores more from USAID, the Justice Department, the Department of Agriculture” and “a clandestine force reportedly including hundreds of personnel from the CIA and other agencies,” wrote Carter.

During a speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, on Wednesday, Obama made it clear that there are some differences between his foreign policy and that of his predecessor George W. Bush, saying he would rely on allied or indigenous troops more than on US forces.

He said his foreign policy strategy “expands our reach without sending forces that stretch our military too thin.”

May 30, 2014 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Covert US Military Training Goes to Africa

By William R. Polk | Consortium News | May 30, 2014

With everyone’s attention focused on the European elections or President Barack Obama’s speech at West Point or the Ukraine, a story by Eric Schmitt in The New York Times on Tuesday may not have caught your attention. I believe, however, that it provides an insight into some of the major problems of American foreign policy.

What Mr. Schmitt reports is that the U.S. has set up covert programs to train and equip native teams patterned on their instructors, the U.S. Army Delta Force, in several African countries.  The program was advocated by Michael A. Sheehan who formerly was in charge of special operations planning in the Department of Defense and is now, according to Mr. Schmitt, holder of the “distinguished chair at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.”

Mr. Schmitt quotes him as saying, “Training indigenous forces to go after threats in their own country is what we need to be doing.” So far allocated to this effort, Mr. Schmitt writes, is $70 million, and the initial efforts will be in Libya, Niger, Mali and Mauritania.

How to do this, according to the senior U.S. officer in Africa, Major General Patrick J. Donahue II, is complex: “You have to make sure of who you’re training. It can’t be the standard, ‘Has the guy been a terrorist or some sort of criminal?’ but also, what are his allegiances? Is he true to the country or is he still bound to his militia?”

So let me comment on these remarks, on the ideas behind the program, its justification and the history of such efforts. I begin with a few bits of history. (Disclosure: I am in the final stages of a book that aims to tell the whole history,  but the whole history is of course much too long for this note.)

Without much of the rhetoric of Mr. Sheehan and General Donahue and on a broader scale, we have undertaken similar programs in a number of countries over the last half century.  Iran, Turkey, Indonesia, Guatemala, Egypt, Iraq, Thailand, Chad, Angola to name just a few. The results do not add up to a success almost anywhere.

Perhaps the worst (at least for America’s reputation) were Chad where the man we trained, equipped and supported, Hissène Habré, is reported to have killed about 40,000 of his fellow citizens. In Indonesia, General Suharto, with our blessing and with the special forces we also had trained and equipped, initially killed about 60,000 and ultimately caused the deaths of perhaps 200,000. In Mexico, the casualties have been smaller, but the graduates of our Special Forces program have become the most powerful drug cartel. They virtually hold the country at ransom.

Even when casualties were not the result, the military forces we helped to create and usually paid for carried out the more subtle mission of destroying public institutions. If our intention is to create stability, the promotion of a powerful military force is often not the way to do it. This is because the result of such emphasis on the military often renders it the only mobile, coherent and centrally directed organization in societies lacking in the balancing forces of an independent judiciary, reasonably open elections, a tradition of civil government and a more or less free press.

Our program in pre-1958 Iraq and in pre-1979 Iran certainly played a crucial role in the extension of authoritarian rule in those countries  and in their violent reactions against us.

General Donahue suggests that we need to distinguish among the native soldiers we train and empower those who are “true to the country.” But how? We supported Hissène Habré so long that we must have known every detail of his life. He is now on trial as war criminal. General Suharto has never been charged (nor have those Americans who gave him a “green light”) for his brutal invasion of East Timor. Both probably believed that they met General Donahue’s definition of patriotism.

And in Mali, our carefully trained officers of the Special Forces answered what they thought was both patriotic and religious duty by joining the insurgency against the government we (and we thought they) supported. We have a poor record of defining other peoples’ patriotism.

And, in the interest of more urgent objectives, we have been willing to support and fund almost anyone as long as we think he might be of value. General Manuel Noriega, our man in Panama, went on to spend 22 years in an American prison after we invaded his country and fought the soldiers we had trained.

Indeed, we have a poor record of even knowing who the people we train are. After the Turkish army carried out one of its coups in the 1960s, when I was the member of the Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East, I asked the appropriate branch of the Defense Department who were the new leaders, all of whom had been trained in America, often several times during the years. The answer was that no one knew. Even in army records, they were just Americanized nicknames.

And, more generally, our sensitivity to the aspirations, hopes and fears of other people is notoriously crude or totally lacking. Growing out of the Cold War, we thought of many of them as simply our proxies or our enemies.

Thus, we found Chad not as a place with a certain population but just as a piece of the Libyan puzzle, and today we think of Mali in the same way. Now we are talking of training “carefully selected” Syrian insurgents to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Do we have any sense of what they will overthrow him for?

Beyond these, what might be considered “tactical” issues are “strategic,” legal and even  moral considerations. I leave aside the legal and moral issues — such as what justification we have to determine the fate of other peoples — as they do not seem very persuasive among our leaders.

But just focus on the long-term or even middle-term results of the new policy:  the most obvious is that we meddle in and take some responsibility for the politics of an array of countries in which we have little direct interest. And often with the obvious danger of a deeper, more expensive and more painful result. We are close to this commitment in Syria.

Less obvious is that our activities, no matter how carefully differentiated, will be seen to add up to an overall policy of militarism, support of oppressive dictatorships, and opposition to popular forces. They also meld into a policy of opposition to the religion of over a billion people, Islam. And they do so at great expense to our expressed desires to enable people everywhere, including at home, to live healthier, safer and decent lives.

I end with a prediction: in practically every country where Mr. Sheehan’s and General Donahue’s program is employed, it will later be seen to have led to a military coup d’etat.

~

William R. Polk is a veteran foreign policy consultant, author and professor who taught Middle Eastern studies at Harvard. President John F. Kennedy appointed Polk to the State Department’s Policy Planning Council where he served during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His books include: Violent Politics: Insurgency and Terrorism; Understanding Iraq; Understanding Iran; Personal History: Living in Interesting Times; Distant Thunder: Reflections on the Dangers of Our Times; and Humpty Dumpty: The Fate of Regime Change.

May 30, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Shells hit hospital as Ukrainian army resumes strike on Slavyansk

RT |May 30, 2014

Kiev’s troops renewed the shelling of Slavyansk on Friday morning, residents told RT. A local children’s hospital and a clinic came under fire. There are no reports of injuries.

“This morning they hit the children’s policlinic in the center of the city and the reception ward of the children’s hospital. It was at 5 am,” Vladimir, a Slavyansk resident, told RT.

“The hospital and the policlinic stand close to each other. The hospital was damaged worse than the policlinic,” another resident said. “There were no victims.”

There were some children staying in the hospital at the time of the attack. They were all taken to the building’s basement for cover after the shelling started, said Olga, a nurse working there.

“I’ve worked here for 30 years, and I never thought I would have to come to a ruin to do my job. That’s our government and our ‘valorous’ Ukrainian troops for you,” she said.

Kiev said it did not use artillery on Friday and claimed that it was the militia, who trained their own guns on the hospital to put the blame on the Ukrainian military.

Troops loyal to Kiev intensified the military crackdown on the militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in mid-April. They are using artillery, aviation and armor in a bid to take control of the restive region.

The military operation in eastern Ukraine will continue until the region“can live and function normally and the people are calm,” acting Defense Minister Mikhail Koval stated on Friday.

Slavyansk has been in the focus of the confrontation, which has claimed dozens of lives, both among the belligerents and local civilians.

The militias are holding off the attacks through a combination of guerrilla tactics and weapons seized from the Ukrainian troops. They scored a major success on Thursday, when they shot down a helicopter carrying one of Kiev’s generals.

Some people in Slavyansk believe that Kiev’s troops will now retaliate for the general’s death and devastate the city.

May 30, 2014 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | | Leave a comment

US Secretly Training and Funding ‘Elite’ African Commandos

By  Sarah Lazare | Common Dreams | May 27, 2014

The Pentagon has been secretly backing a U.S. Special Operations program to build elite units to fight “terrorism” in Libya, Niger, Mauritania and Mali, the New York Times revealed Monday.

The program was launched last year and is backed by millions of dollars in classified Pentagon funds. U.S. military trainers, including members of the Green Berets and Delta Force, are working with African “commandos” to “build homegrown African counterterrorism teams,” according to the Times.

According to the reporting, $70 million in Pentagon funds is going towards “training, intelligence-gathering equipment and other support” for commandos in Nigeria and Mauritania. And $16 million is going towards commandos in Libya. In Mauritnaia, $29 million has been allotted for “logistics and surveillance equipment in support of the specialized unit.” According to the Times, the program in Mali “has yet to get off the ground as a new civilian government recovers from a military coup last year.”

The U.S. military has for years been increasing its role across the continent of Africa, including the expansion of AFRICOM, drone attacks in Somalia, air strikes and arms shipments to Libya, and more.

May 28, 2014 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Putin to Kiev: End violence against people

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Press TV – May 27, 2014

Russia has called on Ukraine to put an end to violence against people after dozens of civilians were killed in clashes in the main airport of the self-proclaimed Republic of Donetsk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called for an immediate end to military operations in eastern Ukraine, accusing Kiev of carrying out “punitive” operations against the citizens.

Putin “underlined the need for an immediate end to the military’s punitive operation in southeastern regions and the establishment of peaceful dialogue between Kiev and regional representatives,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

This is while Kiev said it has regained control of the main airport in Donetsk.

Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said the airport is now under full government control following a day of fierce clashes.

Meanwhile, Donetsk Mayor Oleksandr Lukyanchenko said 40 people, including two civilians, have been killed in the airport clashes.

On Monday, pro-Russia protesters moved to seize the airport.

The Ukrainian army used combat jets and helicopter gunships to repel the move.

The government in Kiev has been staging military operations since mid-April in the eastern and southern regions in a bid to root out pro-Moscow demonstrations.

Ukraine’s President-elect Petro Poroshenko pledged on Monday to put an end to the war and bring peace to the former Soviet state. The 48-year-old chocolate tycoon has also ruled out negotiations with pro-Russian activists, vowing to continue military operations in the country’s southeastern provinces.

May 27, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Lavrov: West’s ‘Megalomania’ triggered Ukraine Crisis

Al-Manar | May 23, 2014

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov slammed the west over the current situation in Ukraine, saying that the West triggered the crisis by its megalomania.

In a speech at a security conference in Moscow organized by the Russian Defense Ministry, Lavrov said that the Ukrainian crisis is a natural result of the West’s expansion of its influence eastwards at the expense of Russian interests.

The turbulence in Ukraine is reminiscent of the violence and bloodshed that Europe experienced in the 20th century, Lavrov told the conference.

“The European continent, which brought two global military catastrophes in the last century, is not demonstrating an example to the world of peaceful development and broad cooperation,” he said, adding that the situation wasn’t accidental, but rather “a natural result of the developments over the past quarter of a century.”

“Our Western partners rejected a truly historic chance to build a greater Europe in favor of border lines and the habitual logic of expanding the geopolitical space under their control to the East,” Lavrov stressed.

“This is de facto a continuation of a policy of containing Russia in a softer wrapping,” he added.

“If we sincerely want to help the Ukrainian people overcome this crisis, it’s necessary to abandon the notorious zero-sum games, stop encouraging xenophobic and neo-Nazi sentiments and get rid of dangerous megalomania,” the top Russian diplomat said.

May 23, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Intellectual Conformity

By Lawrence Davidson | Consortium News | May 21, 2014

World Wars I and II created watershed moments in the lives of Western intellectuals, defined here as those who are guided by their intellect and critical thinking and who understand various aspects of the world mainly through ideas and theories which they express through writing, teaching and other forms of public address.

Just how were they to respond to the call of patriotic duty that seduced the vast majority of citizens to support acts of mass slaughter? What constituted a proper response is often debated. How most of them did respond is a matter of historical record.

During the world wars most intellectuals on all sides of the conflicts uncritically lent their talents to their government’s war efforts. Some did so as propagandists and others as scientists. Some actually led their nations into the fray, as was the case with President Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson held a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, had taught at Cornell, Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan, and became president of Princeton University. Eventually he was elected President of the United States and, having taken the nation to war, sanctioned the creation of a massive propaganda machine under the auspices of the “Committee on Public Information.” He also supported the passage of the Sedition Act of 1918 to suppress all anti-war sentiments.

Wilson never experienced combat, but another intellectual, the British poet Siegried Sassoon, did so in the trenches of the Western front. After this experience he wrote, “war is hell and those who initiate it are criminals.” No doubt that was his opinion of the intellectual President Woodrow Wilson.

In 1928, the French philosopher and literary critic Julien Benda published an important book, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals. In this work Benda asserted that it is the job of the intellectual to remain independent of his or her community’s ideologies and biases, be they political, religious or ethnic. Only by so doing could he or she defend the universal practices of tolerance and critical thinking that underpin civilization.

Not only were intellectuals to maintain their independence, but they were also obligated to analyze their community’s actions and, where necessary, call them into question.

However, as the memory of the intellectuals’ complicity in World War I faded, so did the memory of Benda’s standard of behavior. By World War II it held little power against the renewed demands of national governments for citizens to rally around the flag.

Thus, in that war, with even greater atrocities being committed, most intellectuals either supported the slaughter or remained silent. Some became fascists, others communists, and all too many once more lent their talents to propaganda machines and war industries in all the fighting states.

As a result, the debate over the proper role of the intellectual in relation to power and ideology continues to this day. It is not a question that needs a world war to be relevant. There are any number of ongoing situations where nationalism, ethnicity or religious views spark intolerance and violence. And with each of them the intellectuals, particularly those whose home states are involved, have to make the same age-old choice: Do they follow Woodrow Wilson’s path or that of Julian Benda?

Fate of the Jewish Intellectual

This problem has recently been raised in reference to the seemingly endless Palestinian-Israeli conflict. On April 14, Eva Illouz, a professor of sociology at Hebrew University, published an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz entitled, “Is It Possible to Be a Jewish Intellectual?”

In this piece, she sets forth two opposing positions: one is the Zionist/Israeli demand for the primacy of “ahavat Israel,” or the “love of the Jewish nation and people” – the claim that all Jews have a “duty of the heart” to be loyal to the “Jewish nation.” The other position is that of the lone intellectual (here her model is the philosopher Hannah Arendt), whose obligation is to maintain the “disinterested intelligence” necessary to, if you will, speak truth to power.

Illouz explains that Zionists have a “suspicion of critique” and use “the memorialization of the Shoah” (the Holocaust) and “ahavat Israel” to mute it, adding: “The imperative of solidarity brings with it the injunction to not oppose or express publicly disagreement with official Jewish bodies.”

It is within this context that she can ask if it is still possible to be a Jewish intellectual, at least as portrayed by Julien Benda. Illouz’s conclusion is that it has become exceedingly difficult to be so, particularly in the diaspora communities, where the demands for Jewish solidarity are particularly “brutal.”

Illouz is unhappy with this situation. While she feels the allure of “ahavat Israel,” she ultimately supports the position of the independent-mindedness of Benda’s thinker. She insists that the “contemporary Jewish intellectual has an urgent task … to unveil the conditions under which Jewish solidarity should or should not be accepted, debunked or embraced. In the face of the ongoing, unrelenting injustices toward Palestinians and Arabs living in Israel, his/her moral duty is to let go, achingly, of that solidarity.”

Primacy of Group Solidarity 

While the portrayal of the intellectual as a thinker insisting on and practicing the right of critical thinking about society and its behavior is an ancient one (consider Socrates here), such behavior is not common in practice. This, in turn, calls Benda’s notion of a proper intellectual into question.

Thus, the description of an intellectual offered at the beginning of this essay (which is in line with common dictionary definitions) does not reference any particular direction of thought. For instance, in practice there is nothing that requires an intellectual to think about societal or government behaviors, much less take a critical public position on such matters.

And, no doubt, there are many very talented minds who, deeply involved in aesthetic matters or certain branches of scientific, linguistic, literary or other pursuits, do not involve themselves with issues of the use or abuse of power.

In addition, one might well be judged an intellectual and be a supporter or even a perpetrator of criminal policies and actions. Woodrow Wilson might fall within this category, as might Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice and many others.

Indeed, from a historical perspective most people of high intellect have sought to serve power and not critique or question it. This is quite in line with the fact that most non-intellectuals accept the word of those in power as authoritative and true.

According to Eva Illouz, this reflects the primacy of group solidarity over truth. She is correct in this judgment. That, no doubt, is why the independent-minded, outspoken intellectuals demanding moral integrity and responsibility from those in power are so rare, be they Jewish or gentile.

~

Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest;　America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism.

May 22, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

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