As Pentagon Officials Whine about Budget Cuts, How about Canceling some of These Projects?
By Matt Bewig | AllGov | April 22, 2013
Even as Pentagon officials complain that budget cuts threaten to hollow out its ranks and degrade its military capabilities, they have been able to find money for new sun rooms, a museum, golf course netting and other “questionable projects,” according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report released last week.
The report focuses on the military’s $10 billion-a-year overseas construction efforts, about 70% of which is spent in just three countries with a large U.S. troop presence: Japan, South Korea, and Germany. According to the report, much of this spending occurs with little oversight, sometimes in violation of military regulations and Pentagon promises to Congress.
The specific boondoggles include addition of sun rooms to housing for senior officers in Stuttgart, Germany; a $10 million museum in South Korea praising the U.S. Army; and $2.9 million worth of netting around an Army golf course at Camp Zama, Japan.
Perhaps more disturbing than the amounts involved is the surreptitious manner in which the Pentagon spent the money and kept Congress and the public in the dark. The U.S. is withdrawing or relocating troops in all three countries, and as the military relinquishes various facilities to the host countries, they are expected to pay the U.S. for the returned properties. However, a little-known rule lets local American commanders waive these payments in return for work of an equivalent value performed by the host country—without approval from Congress or even the Pentagon itself. Each of the most questionable expenses—the sun rooms in Germany, the pro-Army museum in South Korea and the golf netting in Japan—was financed this way.
“When the Pentagon and the entire federal government face enormous fiscal challenges, the questionable projects and lack of oversight identified in this review are simply unacceptable,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), the committee chairman.
“We are aware of the report, and we take it very seriously,” said Air Force Maj. Robert Firman, a Department of Defense spokesman. “The DOD strives to be a good steward of taxpayer resources and we look forward to discussing it with Congress in the near future.”
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Spain approves deployment of US Marines
Press TV – April 21, 2013
Spain has authorized the temporary deployment of US Marine forces to an airbase in the southwestern city of Moron de la Frontera, Seville Province.
The Spanish government granted the air base to the US forces on Friday for a period of one year for 500 Marines and eight aircrafts.
The United States Embassy in the capital, Madrid, stated that it needed a force able to respond quickly to crises in northwest Africa. On September 11, 2012, four Americans were killed in the city of Benghazi, Libya.
Africa has experienced a surge in the US military involvement recently.
On February 14, Army General David Rodriguez, the head of US military’s African Command, said in a Senate hearing that the military needed to boost its “intelligence-gathering and spying missions in Africa by nearly 15-fold.”
In December 2012, the Pentagon announced that the “Dagger Brigade” consisting of 3,500 combat troops was set up to be deployed to as many as 35 African nations to train local forces.
The US Africa Command has been based in Stuttgart, Germany, since it was established in 2007. Efforts to move the headquarters to an African country faced hurdles as numerous nations expressed concern that the Pentagon was seeking to militarize US policy or infringe on their sovereignty.
Spain also granted the US another temporary deployment from March to November 2011, in which up to 45 US aircraft were stationed at the Moron and Rota airbases in the southwestern parts of the country.
Spain’s authorizations originate from a 1988 defense cooperation agreement between Spain and the United States.
Israel seeks Turkish airbase for attack on Iran: Report
Press TV – April 21, 2013
A recent report says the visit by Israeli National Security Council Head Yaakov Amidror to Turkey is aimed at securing an airbase in Iran’s neighbor to pave the way for a military attack against the Islamic Republic.
In an article, the Sunday Times said that during his visit on Sunday, Amidror is expected to solicit Turkey’s agreement with regard to the deployment of Israeli fighter jets in Akinci airbase, northwest of Ankara, in exchange for advanced military equipments and technology, the Times of Israel reported.
“Until the recent crisis, Turkey was our biggest aircraft carrier. Using the Turkish airbases could make the difference between success and failure once a showdown with Iran gets underway,” Sunday Times quoted an unnamed Israeli military source as saying.
Ankara agreed to restore relations with Tel Aviv on March 22 after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to Turkey for the deaths of nine Turkish activists in a 2010 Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound international flotilla.
Israel also agreed to pay compensation to the families of those who were killed by Israeli commandos. The apology was brokered by US President Barack Obama during his recent visit to Israel.
The Israeli source added that the regime’s military has been “lobbying hard for the politicians to find a form of apology, in order to restore the Israeli-Turkish alliance against Syria and Iran.”
The trip comes as the Israeli military chief recently repeated its war threats against Iran, saying the regime can invade Iran on its own.
“We have our plans and forecasts… If the time comes we’ll decide” on whether to take military action against Iran, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said on April 16.
Netanyahu has also recently said that the US-engineered sanctions against Iran over its nuclear energy program might not be enough.
The US, Israel and some of their allies accuse Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program with the Israeli regime repeatedly threatening to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities based on the unsubstantiated allegation.
Iran argues that as a committed signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has every right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Iran has further promised a crushing response to any act of aggression against it.
Unlike Iran, Israel, which is widely believed to possess between 200 to 400 nuclear warheads, is a non-signatory to the NPT and continues to defy international calls to join the treaty.
Related articles
- Gantz Claims Zionist Entity Can Invade Iran (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Hagel: U.S., Israel eye-to-eye on Iran (politico.com)
Give North Korea some respect
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 20.04.2013
Negotiating with the US over nuclear issues, sovereignty, peace and much else, is like playing card poker with a punk in a Wild West saloon. You’re never going to win because the punk makes up all the rules of the game. In fact, he can change the rules of the game as he goes along to make sure he always wins.
In the saloon game, Washington insists that the adversary must lay down all his cards on the table, while the US can keep its hand close to its chest, never revealing what its suite comprises. The adversary must also wager all betting chips up front without an inkling of the outcome; and, since this is the Wild West, the adversary has to put his gun on top of the table while the US gives itself the prerogative to hold a cocked gun under the table.
Moreover, the American punk is allowed to have an unknown number of aces up his sleeve in order to furtively deploy just in case, somehow, he feels that the loaded game is going against his winning streak.
Sounds a bit far-fetched? Well, let’s take a look at the recent standoff with North Korea.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, rode into East Asia earlier this month affecting an air of reason and restraint. It helps when you have a global posse of dutiful corporate news media on your side. This is the beginning of loading the game. From the outset, it is presumed and projected that Washington is on a mission of peaceful mediation, a voice of sanity and fair play.
The projected image of American restraint and reason is set against the backdrop of the same Western media portraying North Korea and its young leader Kim Jong-un as wild, reckless and wanton, issuing threats of nuclear war and turning Washington-backed South Korea into «a sea of flames». Yee-ha!
In Tokyo, Kerry told reporters in earnest tone: «The United States remains open to authentic and credible negotiations on denuclearization, but the burden is on Pyongyang [the North Korean capital]».
Kerry also called on China’s leadership to «help bring North Korea back to the negotiating table».
So here is the scene: the American punk is sitting at the table wearing the white hat of civility and legal probity, offering the opportunity for «credible negotiations» to establish peace. The unruly one is North Korea, wearing a costume black hat, permitted to come to the table on condition that he first lays down all cards, that is, forswear capability for nuclear weapons. In truth, the impoverished Stalinist state does not have many cards to play, yet it is being mandated to surrender whatever leverage it may have for no certain outcome. And given the past performance of perfidy by the US towards other adversaries, who could blame North Korea for being reluctant to comply?
Meanwhile, the aces-up-sleeve and guns-under-the-table all belong to the US and its clients. The American nuclear-powered B-2 bombers that can fly over the Korean Peninsula at any moment are not part of the admission fee to the table; neither are the American nuclear-capable submarines and Aegis class destroyers that are patrolling the South and East China Seas around Korea; nor is the giant hemispheric missile system that the US is scaling up and networking between its Pacific West Coast, Alaska, South Korea, Guam and Japan.
In Beijing, Kerry would only offer the most vague and inscrutable «reciprocation» for North Korea’s surrender of its nuclear capability. Kerry said: «Obviously if the threat disappears, that is, North Korea denuclearizes, the same imperative does not exist at that point of time for us to have that kind of robust forward-leaning posture of defense».
Note the two asymmetric parts of Kerry’s poker-game gambit: North Korea denuclearizes, which is definitive; and if that happens «the same imperative does not exist for [the US] to have that kind of robust forward-leaning posture of defense». In other words, the US gives nothing definite in return. The latter US move is subjective, noncommittal, indefinite and loaded with deceiving euphemisms, such as «robust forward-leaning posture of defense» – meaning, in all probability, the continuance of America’s armed-to-the-teeth aggressive capability in East Asia.
That is a simple matter of unacceptable double standards. Why should one party have to disarm under unilateral compulsion, while the second party retains the prerogative to blow others off the face of the earth?
This week, North Korea dismissed belated overtures from America and South Korea for «dialogue».
North Korea’s response is indisputably reasonable, although the Western media have done their best to make that state sound even more of a deranged pariah by reporting that Pyongyang «rejected» the «offers of dialogue».
South Korea condescended that North Korea’s rejection was «incomprehensible», while John Kerry said he was weary from the «same-old, same-old horse-trading», and the ever-so patient US President, Barack Obama, characterized the regime in Pyongyang like a spoilt child that keeps demanding concessions by «banging its spoon on the table».
Now, hold on a minute. This is the very same table that Washington insists none of its options are off. That is, in particular its pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against North Korea. This is the same option of annihilation that Washington has always threatened against North Korea ever since the Korean War (1950-53) and over the ensuing six decades. This is the same option of devastation that Washington threatens behind the thinly veiled annual «war games» that it holds with South Korea, including the recent flyover of the Korean Peninsula by B-2 and B-52 nuclear bombers, dropping dummy ordnance just to heighten the terror factor.
When you begin to look into the «unreasonable» demands of the «pariah» North Korean state, instead of relying on Western news spin, you begin to realize just how much this geopolitical poker game is loaded and stacked.
The official North Korean news agency, KCNA, says the state wants the following conditions for dialogue about denuclearization of the Peninsula: 1) that the UN sanctions that have been slapped on North Korea should be revoked; 2) that the US withdraws its nuclear weapons and capability from the region; 3) that the US and its South Korean client regime desist from provocative threats of war in the form of perennial military maneuvers; and 4) that the US and South sign a full peace treaty with the North, declaring that the Korean War is officially and definitively ended.
Note that, contrary to Western depiction of North Korea as a belligerent reprobate, the official position of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is that it wants to engage in dialogue to resolve the recurring threat of nuclear war, but that the above conditions must be met in order for there to be successful negotiations.
On point 1) North Korea argues, with fair reason, that the latest UN sanctions were imposed at the behest of Washington after the DPRK launched a satellite into space last December. Washington labeled this launch as a ballistic missile test, even though the US space agency, NASA, confirmed that it was a satellite launch. The UN sanctions are thus unwarranted, and that is why North Korea defiantly carried out a nuclear test in February.
Points 2) and 3) should be self-evident.
On point 4) few people in the West appreciate that North Korea has lived for six decades, since the end of the Korean War, under the threat of the US and its Southern ally resuming hostilities at any time owing to the fact that the US refused to sign a full peace treaty in 1953. There has only ever been a cessation of violence under an armistice, not a full peace settlement. This shadow of war, including the use of American nuclear weapons, explains why North Korea appears so truculent and fiery in its rhetoric. What country forced to live under the latent threat of war from a nuclear superpower would not be a bit edgy?
During the George W Bush White House (2001-09), the six-party talks held between the US, China, Russia, Japan and North and South Korea had worked out a road map for denuclearization of the Peninsula. However, Bush scuttled the deal by reneging on the US part of the bargain to supply North Korea with development aid and to demilitarize American holdings on the Peninsula. That is why North Korea resumed its nuclear weapons program. The rules of the game had been unilaterally changed – by the Americans.
The first nuclear test by the DPRK had been in 2006, but after the talks process ran into a dead-end, largely because of US obduracy, North Korea conducted its second nuclear test in 2009, followed by the third on 12 February earlier this year. The pattern here is obviously the DPRK trying to push the Americans back to the former agreement for denuclearization. So, it’s not a case of North Korea having to be coerced back to the negotiating table, as John Kerry makes out. But rather, it’s a case of Washington living up to its agreed commitments worked out under the erstwhile six-party deal. Unfortunately, Barack Obama has followed the same baleful bad-faith policies of his predecessor with regard to North Korea.
Obama’s top diplomat, John Kerry, may be recently proffering the opportunity for dialogue with North Korea, but Pyongyang has rightly responded with the terse attitude – what’s there to talk about? The US and its South Korean client have not put anything on the table that meets North Korea’s reasonable demands for meaningful dialogue. All that is on the table is the demand that the North solely commits to denuclearization, while all American options, including nuclear war, are non-negotiable. In this kind of loaded poker game, the punk always wins.
Rather than pressurizing North Korea to accede to petulant American demands, Beijing and Moscow should insist that Washington play by the same standard rules for everyone. That means, among other things, Washington making a mutual commitment to withdraw its nuclear forces from the Korean Peninsula and respecting the sovereignty of the DPRK with a full peace treaty.
Washington needs to be told that the days of it playing geopolitics-poker in the manner of a Wild West saloon, under its own bent rules, are well and truly over… It needs to begin paying the same respect to all other players befitting the 21st century, where all countries are treated equally, and no-one is above the law.
That’s where the money goes
By Lawrence Wittner | International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War | April 18, 2013
According to a report just released by the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditures in 2012 totaled $1.75 trillion.
The report revealed that, as in recent decades, the world’s biggest military spender by far was the US government, whose expenditures for war and preparations for war amounted to $682 billion — 39 percent of the global total.
The United States spent more than four times as much on the military as China (the number two big spender) and more than seven times as much as Russia (which ranked third). Although the military expenditures of the United States dipped a bit in 2012, largely thanks to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, they remained 69 percent higher than in 2001.
US military supremacy is even more evident when the U.S. military alliance system is brought into the picture, for the United States and its allies accounted for the vast bulk of world military spending in 2012. NATO members alone spent a trillion dollars on the military.
Thus, although studies have found that the United States ranks 17th among nations in education, 26th in infant mortality, and 37th in life expectancy and overall health, there is no doubt that it ranks first when it comes to war.
This Number 1 status might not carry much weight among Americans scavenging for food in garbage dumpsters, among Americans unable to afford medical care, or among Americans shivering in poorly heated homes. Even many Americans in the more comfortable middle class might be more concerned with how they are going to afford the skyrocketing costs of a college education, how they can get by with fewer teachers, firefighters, and police in their communities, and how their hospitals, parks, roads, bridges, and other public facilities can be maintained.
Of course, there is a direct connection between the massive level of US military spending and belt-tightening austerity at home: most federal discretionary spending goes for war.
The Lockheed Martin Corporation’s new F-35 joint strike fighter plane provides a good example of the US government’s warped priorities. It is estimated that this military weapons system will cost the US government $1.5 trillion by the time of its completion. Does this Cold War-style warplane, designed for fighting enemies the US government no longer faces, represent a good investment for Americans? After twelve years of production, costing $396 billion, the F-35 has exhibited numerous design and engineering flaws, has been grounded twice, and has never been flown in combat. Given the immense military advantage the United States already has over all other nations in the world, is this most expensive weapons system in world history really necessary? And aren’t there other, better things that Americans could be doing with their money?
Of course, the same is true for other countries. Is there really any justification for the nations of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America to be increasing their level of military spending — as they did in 2012 — while millions of their people live in dire poverty? Projections indicate that, by 2015, about a billion people around the world will be living on an income of about $1.25 per day. When, in desperation, they riot for bread, will the government officials of these nations, echoing Marie Antoinette, suggest that they eat the new warplanes and missiles?
President Dwight Eisenhower put it well in an address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors 60 years ago:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. . . . This world in arms is not spending money alone; it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. . . . This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
That sentiment persists. On April 15, 2013, people in 43 countries participated in a Global Day of Action on Military Spending, designed to call attention to the squandering of the world’s resources on war. Among these countries was the United States, where polls show that 58 percent of Americans favor major reductions in US military spending.
How long will it take the governments of the United States and of other nations to catch up with them?
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Gantz Claims Zionist Entity Can Invade Iran
Al-Manar | April 17, 2013
The Israeli military chief claimed the Zionist entity can invade the Islamic Republic of Iran on its own.
Chief of Staff Lt. Gen Benny Gantz made the remarks in an interview on public radio in East al-QudsGantz (Jerusalem) on Tuesday, AFP reported.
“We have our plans and forecasts… If the time comes we’ll decide” on whether to take military action against Iran, he said.
Other Israeli officials made similar remarks, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister for Military Affairs Moshe Ya’alon.
Netanyahu said that US-engineered sanctions against Iran over its nuclear energy program might not be enough.
Ya’alon also said Iran’s nuclear energy program is the most dangerous threat to the world.
The United States, Israel and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program with the Israeli regime repeatedly threatening to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities based on the unsubstantiated allegation.
Iran rejects the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
Pentagon to allocate $400 million to Iron Dome over next two years
Press TV – April 17, 2013
The US Defense Department plans to spend nearly 400 million dollars during the next two years on Israel’s Iron Dome missile system, despite budget cuts affecting the lives of many Americans.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the Pentagon intends to allocate $220 million for the Israeli missile batteries in fiscal year 2014, which starts on October 1.
Washington also plans to spend $175.9 million in 2015.
If the budget is approved during the annual defense budget process, it will be added to the $486 million that Washington has already spent on the Israeli regime’s Iron Dome missile system during the past few years.
Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is planning to travel to Israel in a few days.
“Our interests are very clear and common,” Hagel said at a US House hearing on Tuesday, adding, “I think the Israelis know that.”
The Israeli regime receives more than three billion dollars from the United States in direct foreign assistance every year.
Hagel recently reassured Tel Aviv that Washington would continue funding Israel’s costly Iron Dome.
On March 5, Hagel held a meeting with then Israeli Minister for Military Affairs Ehud Barak at the Pentagon, during which he voiced Washington’s “strong commitment” to backing funding for the Iron Dome, despite fiscal uncertainty for the US administration.
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Obama’s betrayal of social security
By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening! | April 13, 2013
What’s wrong with the Obama administration’s proposal to change the way Social Security checks are adjusted for inflation from using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to instead using something called a “chained” CPI?
Let’s start with the fundamental problem: Social Security is not a cause of the federal budget deficit, and will not be for years, even if nothing is done to raise more revenue for the program.
Sure the US will eventually have to come up with more money to pay the benefits earned by retirees in the Baby Boom generation, but that problem of an eventual shortfall in Social Security tax revenues can be easily solved by simply eliminating the cap — currently $113,000 in annual income — that is subject to the FICA tax. If the cap were completely eliminated, so that all income was subject to the tax, as is the case with the Medicare tax, the shortfall would be nearly eliminated. Any remaining shortfall could be erased too, by extending some kind of FICA tax to unearned income from investments. My favorite is one that is common in Europe: a small — say 0.25% — tax on short-term stock and bond trades.
But there is a bigger problem with this Obama proposal to cut both Social Security benefits and Medicare funding: Adopting a long-time Republican proposal, it only looks at those programs in isolation, and concludes that they need to be cut. Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president does not look at the biggest and most wasteful spending in the entire federal budget, which is the military. That bloated white elephant, which this year is sucking up close to $800 billion, not counting the interest on money borrowed to pay for past wars and armaments, could be cut in half or even by three-quarters, and it would still leave the US military budget larger than any other nation’s in the world. The US would be no less safe in that case. In fact, it would be a hell of a lot safer because we would no longer have US troops stationed expensively and provocatively in 1,000 foreign locations.
Nobody in Congress is talking about slashing military spending and spending the savings on medical care, Social Security, education and other pressing needs. The public needs to demand this.
But let’s leave those two points aside for a moment, important as they are.
What the Obama administration is calling for — a switch from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI to a new chained-CPI to determine inflation adjustments in Social Security checks each year — is a brazen attempt to cut benefits for the elderly without admitting it. This is unconscionable, and as poorly reported as the story has been, the American people, regardless of age, are smart enough to be solidly opposed to the idea. People old enough to be drawing Social Security benefits, or who are close to filing for Social Security, know it’s stealing from them. But younger people, who almost all have parents or grandparents who are depending on Social Security, also know intuitively that this is a bad idea, and are opposed to it.
Chained-CPI has long been a favorite scam among Republicans and conservative Democrats, who are in thrall to business interests that want to reduce the payroll taxes they have to pay into the Social Security system. But their claim that it is a “more accurate” way to measure inflation’s impact on the cost of living is clearly a fraud and a lie.
The rationale behind a chained-CPI calculation of inflation is a theory that when the price of some good or service rises too much, people supposedly switch to a cheaper alternative, so that alternative should be substituted in the “market-basket” used to calculate the cost of living.
Now sometimes that may be true. When gasoline prices soared during the Bush invasion of Iraq, many people downsized their cars to cut their gasoline bills. That move to smaller cars also cut families’ overall transportation expenses because small cars are generally cheaper than big ones. A chained-CPI would account for this by substituting small cars in the market basket, and might also lower the allocation for gasoline, since people would be buying less.
But the theory falls down, especially when it comes to older people, who drive a lot fewer miles than those who are commuting every day to work, and who also tend not to buy new cars. The old gas-guzzler they have, which doesn’t get many miles put on it in a year, is kept on the road and repaired as needed. They continue to buy whatever gasoline it takes to drive the thing.
Old people and the disabled also spend vastly more on health care than most other people, and the cost of that health care is rising much faster than most other things. That’s a point the CPI, chained or not, doesn’t factor in. And the elderly and disabled have little choice about making substitutions on health care. They don’t — and shouldn’t — change doctors. And if you need an operation, you go where your doctor practices. If you need heart medication or cholesterol-lowering medication, you buy what is prescribed, whatever it costs. If you need Medi-gap insurance to cover your health needs, you buy it, whatever the inflated premium. Even Medicare itself has become more expensive at a pace well above the inflation rate!
Housing is another problem area. Young people, if their rent goes up, can move to cheaper digs. Old people can’t do that so easily. If they are in some kind of senior housing, it’s probably the only one in their neighborhood, and they’re not going to move to some place cheaper where they don’t know anyone, or where they are too far from their family, or to the son or daughter who lives nearest and who has been helping them out as needed. Nor should we expect them to move just to save money. If they are in their family home, it is where they are comfortable. It would take a lot to make them move, so they probably won’t.
Food is another area where the elderly have a harder time making substitutions. As people get older, they tend to get much more set in their ways. A young person can decide that buying salmon is too expensive, so they’re going to switch to mackerel or sardines, but an older person can get very fussy. They may not know how to cook a new fish, and won’t even try to switch. They may not even be doing that much cooking, and are relying on prepared foods that can be put in a microwave. There’s not much room for switching there.
All in all, this chained-CPI proposal from the White House is a disgusting betrayal by a president who swore as a candidate that he would stand firm against any cuts in Social Security or Medicare.
There are only two proper responses to this betrayal. One: we must demand that there be no cuts in Social Security or Medicare benefits, or increases in the taxes paid by those already paying taxes into the program or receiving benefits, until the military budget is first cut by at least 50 percent. Two: We must demand that no change be made in the way Social Security benefits are adjusted for inflation unless or until the government conducts an honest, unbiased and transparent academic study to develop a valid market basket for the elderly and disabled, to determine what their actual costs of living are, and how they are impacted by inflation.
Related article
- Top 5 Myths About Chained-CPI, Debunked (thenation.com)
Air Force General who Overturned Sexual Assault Conviction Says Accused was Too Good a Husband and Father to be Guilty
By Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky | AllGov | April 12, 2013
Lieutenant General Craig A. Franklin, commander of the Third Air Force in Europe, shocked political leaders in Washington with his decision on February 26 to overturn the sexual assault conviction of a celebrated fighter pilot, saying the defendant was just too good a husband and father to be guilty.
“Letters from Lt Col and Mrs Wilkerson’s family, friends and fellow military members,” wrote Franklin in a letter to his superiors, “painted a consistent picture of a person who adored his wife and 9-year old son, as well as a picture of a long-serving professional Air Force officer…. Some letters were from people who did not personally know the Wilkersons, but wanted to convey their concerns to me about the evidence and the outcome of the case”
When the testimony of Wilkerson and his wife were in conflict, Franklin interpreted this as proof that they had not colluded in creating a cover story.
Wilkerson was convicted by an all-male jury of raping a woman while she slept in his home. He was sentenced to a year in the brig and discharged from the Air Force.
Franklin used his authority to overturn the court’s decision, which allowed the accused to return to active duty.
Members of Congress and advocacy groups have strongly criticized Franklin’s interference with the ruling, with some saying it is yet another sign of how the U.S. military refuses to take sex crimes seriously and punish those responsible.
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Book Review
Shattered Dreams: The HPV Vaccine Exposed (2019)
By Christina England – 30 Q&As – Book Review & Summary
Lies are Unbekoming | September 4, 2026
… Gardasil received FDA fast-track approval in 2006, Cervarix followed in 2009, and Gardasil 9 was approved in December 2014 with more than double the aluminium adjuvant content of the original. The commercial context is specific. Merck was about to lose patent protection on Zocor and faced $18 billion in Vioxx injury claims from a cardiovascular drug the company had marketed while suppressing its own data showing a five-times increase in heart attacks. Analysts projected the global HPV vaccine market at $4 billion by 2011, contingent on government-funded national programs for teenage girls. The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act had already granted manufacturers complete liability immunity. By 2013, Japan had withdrawn its HPV vaccine recommendation after cataloguing severe adverse reactions in hundreds of girls. No Western government followed. The establishment position across the UK, US, Australia, and most of Europe held, and still holds, that the vaccines are safe and effective, that reported injuries are coincidental, and that cervical cancer prevention justifies the program. The book was published into this position, not against a vacuum.
Shattered Dreams sits alongside Mary Holland’s The HPV Vaccine On Trial and Viera Scheibner’s foundational vaccination work as part of the documented record on what has been done to a generation of teenage girls under the banner of cancer prevention. The full summary unpacks three specific findings: that Merck used the aluminium adjuvant itself as the “placebo” control in 92.5% of trial subjects, making it structurally impossible to detect excess reactions from the adjuvant; that Dr. Sin Hang Lee found HPV DNA fragments bound to aluminium in every one of sixteen Gardasil samples tested, and in the blood and spleen of a New Zealand girl six months after her third dose; and that in every country with high vaccination coverage, including Australia, the UK, Norway, and Sweden, cervical cancer rates have stopped declining and started rising specifically in the vaccinated cohort. Martínez-Lavín’s 2017 calculation puts the number needed to seriously harm with Gardasil 9 at 140, and the number needed to vaccinate to prevent one case at 1,757. Thirteen young women are seriously harmed for every one who benefits. The vaccine was approved on the basis of trials that could not detect what the trials were supposed to detect, and it is still being given to twelve-year-olds today. … Read full review
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- If Americans Knew
- “We See Our Homes Now From A Satellite, Like Strangers”
- Watch “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack”, originally censored by BBC
- NAZA: Israeli embassies in UK and US promote rival documentary to challenge Gaza genocide allegations
- David Ellison appoints Israeli to lead merged Paramount-Warner studios
- Turkish Red Crescent helps elderly Gaza man walk again after Israel confiscates his prosthetic limb
- Four Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks in Gaza
- Two Palestinian youths killed and village razed as Israeli attacks on West Bank continue
- Two more Christian women victims of Israeli raids on Gaza
- Cruelty, Deprivation, Indignity: A Journalist’s 22 Months in Israeli Prison
- New IDF Website Frames Slain Gaza Journalists as Terrorists
- No Tricks Zone
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
