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Iran Is Not Our Enemy

Video is archived.

Despite what all the media are yammering at you, despite all the fear mongering about Iran’s “nuclear threat” (Iran has been fully verified by the IAEA and ALL the U.S. intelligence community agree and are on record that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons), despite talk that Iran is intolerant, despite the daily barrage of bad press and unpleasant innuendo, Iran is a great country, friendly, cultured, fun and spiritually-minded!

The “Powers That Were” are dead set on taking us to war against Iran, but “They lied about Vietnam… Iraq… Afghanistan…” and “Iran Is NOT Our Enemy ! “

March 1, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

U.S. Policy Shift on Syria: Edging Closer to Direct Military Intervention

By Ben Schreiner | Aletho News | March 1, 2013

Though President Obama last year rejected a proposal from the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA to directly arm Syrian rebel fighters, his administration is once again edging closer to directly intervening in the Syrian war.

As the Washington Post reported Tuesday, “The Obama administration is moving toward a major policy shift on Syria that could provide the rebels with equipment such as body armor, armored vehicles and possible military training and could send humanitarian assistance directly to Syria’s opposition political coalition.”

White House spokesperson Jay Carney confirmed the Post‘s reporting Wednesday, stating that the U.S. is “constantly reviewing the nature of the assistance we provide to both the Syrian people, in form of humanitarian assistance, and to the Syrian opposition in the form of non-lethal assistance.”

The exact nature of the additional U.S. assistance is expected to be announced Thursday at a meeting of the “Friends of Syria” in Rome.  The U.S. has previously sent communications equipment and night-vision goggles to rebels fighting in Syria.

John Kerry the Interventionist

The – perhaps – unlikely driver of the reported shift in U.S. policy on Syria has been none other than new Secretary of State John Kerry. The very man many continue to insist on mislabeling a dove.

Speaking as early as February 13, Secretary of State Kerry proclaimed that there were “additional things that can be done” to force Syrian President Bashar al-Assad aside. And on Monday, Kerry again went on to reiterate that the West was “determined to change the calculation on the ground for President Assad.”

“We are examining and developing ways to accelerate the political transition that the Syrian people want and deserve,” Kerry commented further.

Although a policy change for the Obama administration, advocating for a more direct role for the U.S. in Syria has long been Kerry’s position. As Kerry commented in May of 2012: “The concept of a safe zone is a reality and worth the discussion. The concept of working with the Turks and the Jordanians, if everybody is on the same page, there could be some [military] training [of the opposition forces]. If we can enhance the unity of the opposition, we could consider lethal aid and those kinds of things.”

In the same interview Kerry went on to voice support – under the right conditions – for “U.S.- or NATO-led airstrikes on the Syrian military.”

This should come as no surprise given Kerry’s previous support for U.S. bombing campaigns in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Some dove! Of course, the American foreign policy establishment as a whole has steadily veered toward a greater affinity for missile and bomb diplomacy.

“Once war was considered the business of soldiers, international relations the concern of diplomats,” C. Wright Mills wrote of the U.S. over 50 years ago in The Power Elite.  “But now that war has become seemingly total and seemingly permanent… Peace is no longer serious; only war is serious.”

If nothing else, then, Kerry has proven himself once again to be a rather “serious” man.

Intervention by Proxy

While Kerry helps edge Washington closer to direct military intervention into Syria, U.S. proxies continue to ramp up their campaign to topple the Syrian regime.

As the New York Times reported Monday, Saudi Arabia has recently begun to funnel heavy weapons purchased from Croatia to Syrian rebel groups via Jordan. The Saudi shipments, the paper goes on to note, “have been a factor in the rebels’ small tactical gains this winter against the army and militias loyal to Mr. Assad.”

The U.S. role in the Saudi arms flow, the Times reports, “is not clear.” Yet, it is hard to fathom that such shipments were not sanctioned by Washington, given the close military ties the U.S. maintains between those involved.  After all, Saudi Arabia remains one of the largest purchasers of U.S. arms. The Pentagon, meanwhile, maintains “a robust military-to-military relationship with Croatia,” providing the Croatian military with “training, equipment, equipment loans, and education in U.S. military schools.” And U.S. military aid to Jordan tops $300 million a year.

Moreover, the U.S. has had upwards of 150 military planners stationed along the Jordanian border with Syria since last summer, where the Croatian arms are reported to have passed into rebel hands. It has long been reported that the CIA is overseeing the arms shipments to Syrian rebels from within Turkey.

The U.S. is thus already well entangled in the Syrian war – albeit if by the use of proxy forces.

Thwarting Dialogue

The push to further enhance the degree of U.S. intervention – from guiding regional proxies to direct military support – comes as the rebel drive to oust Assad appears to be reaching its limits. In fact, Mouaz Mustafa, the political director of the U.S.-based Syrian American Task Forced, recently argued that, “Assad cannot be deposed without the consent of the U.S.”

This realization has even left some in the West to admit that Assad still retains a sizable base of domestic support.  As former U.S. diplomat Karen AbuZayd commented in a recent interview with CBC Radio, “there’s quite a number of the population, maybe as many as half, if not more, who stand behind him [Assad].”

Thus, we see the exiled Syrian opposition – long opposed to dialogue – now hinting at a new willingness to engage in negotiations with the Syrian regime.  Yet, the U.S. continues to insist that any political dialogue must be preempted by regime change.

As State Department spokesperson Patrick Ventrell commented on Wednesday, “the [political] process has to include Assad leaving, but it’s really up to the Syrian people.”  Another example of the limits of America’s democratic ideals, as we see that the choice for the Syrian people begins and ends with supporting Washington’s agenda.

Of course, as long as a sizable segment of Syrians stand behind Assad – or at least refrain from supporting the armed rebels – demanding that Assad leaves only portends a protracted military struggle. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was left to comment Monday, “It seems extremists, who bet on a military solution to Syria’s problems and block initiatives to start dialogue, have for now come to dominate in the ranks of the Syrian opposition.” And the ranks of Washington, it appears as well.

Yet, even as Washington and its European allies antagonize Russia by preparing to heighten their intervention into Syria, they still desperately seek the legitimacy of a United Nations Security Council resolution endorsing a military intervention. And for this they need Moscow.

Cajoling Russia to Pave the Road to Tehran

Writing in Foreign Policy, Christopher Chivvis of the RAND Corporation and Edward Joseph, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, argue that the threat of Western military intervention is what is needed to bring Russia around to supporting the “regime change” line.

“Changing the Russian position means changing Moscow’s calculus on Syria,” Chivvis and Joseph write.  “And that means presenting the Kremlin with an alternative that it finds more unpalatable than the status quo: a NATO-backed, Turkey-led military coalition invited by the Arab League to intervene in the Syria conflict.”

And here we have the bankruptcy and hubris of the American foreign policy elite.  It’s all rather transparent: capitulate to our demands, or face the brunt of military force. Only war is serious.

Of course, Chivvis and Joseph go on to tout the “blow to Iran and a boon to the United States and its regional partners and allies” a toppled Assad would present. “Israel would be a primary beneficiary, with its antagonist, Hezbollah, having been dealt a serious setback,” they continue.

How all this is supposed to entice Moscow is not exactly clear. What is good for American is good for the world, it appears. Indicative, perhaps, of what Chalmers Johnson once wrote to be the self-aggrandizement of imperial rot.

And so with the typical delusions of grandeur, the U.S. edges closer to direct military intervention into Syria – closer, too, to unleashing a dangerous regional conflagration. In fact, the Iran war drums are already beating louder; for regime change in Damascus only paves the road to Tehran.

Ben Schreiner can be reached at: bnschreiner@gmail.com.

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March 1, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Six Underground Tanks Leaking Nuclear Waste in Washington State

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman | AllGov | February 27, 2013

The nation’s most daunting environmental cleanup project has a new toxic problem on its hands.

Within the Hanford Nuclear Reservation along the Columbia River in Washington State, six underground storage tanks are leaking radioactive waste. Some of the tanks hold as much as 500,000-750,000 gallons of dangerous fluid that is slowing seeping into the soil.

State and federal officials said the leaks don’t pose an immediate threat to human health, since the tanks are located more than five miles from the Columbia River.

The newly discovered problem only adds to the soil contamination at Hanford, which was used for five decades to produce plutonium for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

There are nearly 150 tanks, similar in size and design, to the six spilling radioactive liquid and sludge at the site. Four of the six tanks have leaked in the past. The news led the state’s governor, Jay Inslee, to wonder about the “integrity” of the other tanks.

“It points to the age of the tanks and how there’s going to be an increased probability of this happening in the future,” Suzanne Dahl, tank waste treatment manager for the state’s Department of Ecology, told Reuters. “Once [the waste is] out of the tanks and in the soil, it’s much harder to manage it, remove it, and down the road you’re adding to contamination in the groundwater that already exists.”

The U.S. Department of Energy reported that the tanks are leaking at a rate of up to 300 gallons per year.

With a total area comparable to the size of Los Angeles, Hanford is considered by experts to be the most challenging environmental remediation in North America. The nuclear site was built near the city of Hanford in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. government research program that produced the first atomic bombs. Federal environmental regulators estimate the site now contains more than 130 million cubic yards of radioactive soil, thanks in large part to the dumping of 475 billion gallons of contaminated wastewater into the ground during the Cold War.

A multi-billion-dollar plan to secure all the waste within a glass-like material and house it in subterranean stainless steel canisters is years away, according to Dahl. But Americans don’t have to wait that long to get a first-hand look at the infamous nuclear site; the U.S. government offers regular public tours, at no cost.

To Learn More:

At the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a Steady Drip of Toxic Trouble (by Eric Nusbaum, Daily Beast)

Radioactive Waste Leaking from Six Tanks at Washington State Nuclear Site (by Eric Johnson, Reuters)

Energy Dept. Accuses Bechtel of Botching Nuclear Cleanup in Washington (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Plutonium Cleanup in Washington State Could Take Millennia (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Contractor Approved Funding for Own Government Contract (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

February 27, 2013 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Nuclear Power | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Shameful Symbolism: Commemorating the Ten Year Anniversary of the Beginning of the Disastrous Iraq War

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By Doug E. Steil | Aletho News | February 25, 2013

Nearly ten years ago, on the eve of the Jewish festival of Purim, invoking the slaughter of Persians, an American student protesting house demolitions in Gaza, Rachel Corrie, was killed by a bulldozer (March 16, 2003).

Shortly after this festival had ended, the Iraq War, waged primarily on behalf of Israel — and still in progress on a more covert level — began on land amidst much media fanfare, including live television coverage. Around the time of the vernal equinox on March 20, 2003, multiple tank formations entered from staged positions in Kuwait, and even now there is still no end in sight to the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in that region.

To commemorate and possibly even celebrate the tenth anniversary of this disastrous debacle, of “Neocon” inspired servitude to Zionism, Israel will welcome Obama on his first official state visit on March 20, yes, just at the time of the equinox (11:02 GMT), a key reference point used in astronomy, astronautics, and astrology.

Here is the planned itinerary:

Obama is scheduled to land in Ben Gurion International Airport around noon on Wednesday, March 20.

How symbolic!

This scripted event should not be lost on the alternative media. Ten years ago it used to be taboo to openly talk about the “War for Israel” because a large segment of the population was still enthralled by the lies (for instance, “Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction” and “war for oil”) the media deployed in order to trick them into supporting the operation. Now, after the lies have been exposed, it’s a brazen “in-your-face” attitude that is regularly on display, and Obama’s planned ceremonies in Israel next month will only highlight the obsequious stance of the US government vis-a-vis Israeli leaders dictating their demands.

Since the symbolism is important, though shameful, beware of “coincidence theorists” who will want to deny the intent of the timing!

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February 25, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Black Churches Condemn Obama Administration’s Drone Policy as Murder and Evil

National Black Church Initiative |  February 19, 2013

Washington DC – The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), a faith-based coalition of 34,000 churches comprised of 15 denominations and 15.7 million African Americans calls Obama’s policy on the right to kill Americans who are associated with terrorist organizations either at home or abroad murder, which constitutes evil in the Christian tradition. The Holy Scripture says, “THOU SHALT NOT KILL”.

Our founding fathers and decent, hard-working American find such policies irrational and without moral merit. The Obama Administration has us believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to humanity, and that they reserve the right through the secular American creed to kill anyone, anywhere, who they label part of a terrorist organization. This is why they spent 1 trillion dollars to go after ONE man. To make the point that we will kill you dead, and that is the creed of the American soul.

The church is trying to transform the evil mentality that exists in this country. That is our goal. We believe that the greatest threat to humanity are laws that assume moral absolutism to determine who lives and who dies. This is not only foolish in nature, this is destructive. Should we be reminded of the words of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Ghandi, and Martin Luther King, that violence can only beget more violence. There can never be a legal rationale that gives a government the right to destroy a human being that God created. Only God preserves that right for himself.

The Revered Anthony Evans says, “I do not know what to say after the pronouncement of this evil policy. This policy has led me to a life of prayer for the soul of this administration and for this President. Anyone who has had anything to do with formulating a policy like this either in the Bush or Obama administration will have to answer before God one day. May God have mercy on their souls.”

Rev Evans continued to ask where the outcry against such a policy is, saying “Where are the loud the mouths and the so-called drum majors for justice when it comes to correcting this president and this administration on this evil policy. Where are you Al Sharpton?? Where are you Jesse Jackson?? Where are you Ben Jealous?? Where are you John Lewis?? Where are you members of the Black caucus? Where are the Catholic bishops?? Where are you “The American Way”? Where are you Rev. Jim Wallis? Where are you Pastor T.D. Jakes? Pastor Creflo Dollar? Where are you Joseph Lowry? Where are the Southern Baptists? Where are you Pastor Joel Osteen? Where are you Dean Alton Pollard? If the church does not speak against this immoral policy we will lose our moral voice, our soul, and our right to represent and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The black church is not only appalled that this comes out of the administration of the only black president, but we are frightened by the monstrous tendencies that have emerged from this administration. The unleashing of the mechanical drones kill not only their target but everyone that is near who is morally innocent of any crime. The church’s heart cries out for mercy and sanity for such an ill-conceived policy. President Obama has to be roaringly condemned by the entire Christian church for allowing such a policy to emerge from such a promising administration.

NBCI cannot be proud of this, and neither can we be supportive of it. This policy should be condemned by both liberal and conservative and especially those who love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly before God.

About NBCI

The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) is a coalition of 34,000 churches working to eradicate racial disparities in healthcare, technology, education, housing, and the environment. NBCI’s mission is to provide critical wellness information to all of its members, congregants, churches and the public. NBCI offers faith-based, out-of-the box and cutting edge solutions to stubborn economic and social issues. NBCI’s programs are governed by credible statistical analysis, science based strategies and techniques, and methods that work. Visit our website at www.naltblackchurch.com.

February 24, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

‘Mali war will cost the French dearly’

PressTVGlobalNews

February 22, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Video | , , | Leave a comment

An Argument in Defense of Haredim Jews and Against Secular Zionist Militarism

By James Petras :: 02.20.2013

Israel is heading towards a profound internal crisis: a Jew on Jew confrontation, which, however, has major implications for its relations with Palestinians, as well as its Middle East neighbors. The conflict is between the highly militarized Zionist state and the Haredim religious movement over a number of issues, including recent proposals by Netanyahu to end the religious exemption of Haradi youth from serving in Israel’s colonial armed forces.

Haredim and the Zionist Colonial State

Even before the forcible imposition (‘founding’) of the Israeli state, the Haredim were opposed to Zionism. Today the vast majority of Haredim in Israel remain staunchly opposed to the Zionist state for religious, ethical and political reasons. Haredim religious teaching claims that the Jewish people are bound by three oaths (1) not to settle in Israel by using force (2) not to war with other nations and (3) not to act as if the nations of the world would persecute Israel. Haredim were in opposition to Israel’s violent ethnic cleaning of over 850,000 Palestinians in the course of establishing the Israeli State and continues to oppose Israel’s settlers’ violently dispossession of Palestinians. Unlike other so-called “ultra-Orthodox” sects, who support Israeli colonialism and bless the military, Haredim believe that Israeli militarism corrupts the spirit and that Zionists have converted Jews from worshipers of the Torah to rabid ethnocentric upholders of a militarist State. For the Haredim, State worship especially the waving of the Israeli flag in the houses of worship, is a sacrilege comparable to the renegade Jews condemned by Moses for worshiping the Golden Calf.

The majority of Haredim boycott elections, organize their own schools (Yeshivas), encourage students to deepen their religious studies, emphasize community and family values (of a oppressive patriarchal sort) with numerous children and strongly reject the State’s attempt to conscript Haredim youth into their colonial occupation army, the so-called Israeli Defense (sic) Force (IDF). All the major Zionist political parties and the ruling colonial regime demonize the Haredim, claiming they are shirking their military responsibilities. Via the mass media and public pronouncements they incite Israeli hatred toward the Haredim: a study in 2006 claimed that over a third of Israeli Jews considered the Haredim the most hated group in Israel.

The Haredim, on the other hand, have reason to fear and loath the secular militarist Zionist state and politicians. After World War II in the Zionist controlled camps for Jewish refugee children in Teheran, the Jewish Agency imposed Zionist ideology and militarist anti-religious policies to cut Haredim children from their spiritual roots. According to one Haredim report many groups of Jewish youth from Poland, mostly survivors of the Holocaust and Soviet Russia, were subjected to “unimaginable mental and physical cruelty with one goal in mind: obliteration of Judaism”. Given the Israeli drive today to harness a corrupted form of Judaism to colonial militarism, the Haredim have every reason to believe that the conscription of its youth will be accompanied by cruel, systematic Zionist brainwashing to ensure they make “good”, brutal occupation soldiers.

Haredim versus Israeli State Values

The Haredim fervently believe and practice in the Biblical teaching, “Be fruitful and multiply”. They have large families and the median age of Haredim is 16 years. Their peaceful message to militarist Zionists could be “make babies not bombs”.

Some Haredim leaders have met with Palestinian and Iranian leaders and in line with their religious doctrine have declared their support for peaceful resolution of conflicts and have denounced Israel’s aggressive military posture.

Haredim are intensely religious and discuss and debate the readings of some of the great religious scholars: their message to the Zionists is read Maimonides’ ethical treatises not Netanyahu’s bellicose, blood curdling rants.

Haredim live and study largely in the confines of their cohesive communities. They send their sons to the yeshivas to study religious doctrine not to the West Bank to kill Palestinians. They call on their children to serve G-d not the IDF. They seek truth in the Torah not in conquest via the Preventive War Doctrines espoused by prestigious Israeli and overseas Zionist academic militarists.

Haredim focus on building a better life within their community; they reject the efforts of the Zionist state to entice them into joining self-styled “Jewish” settlers engaged in vicious land grabs in the West Bank, in the name of “contributing to society (sic)”. Haredim’s ‘introverted way of life’ is seen as a prophylactic alternative to the crass militarism, money laundering, financial speculation, body parts enterprises and real estate swindles rife among the elite Jews in Israel and among sectors of overseas Zionists engaged in procuring multi-billion dollar tribute from the US Treasury.

Haredim believe, with exemplary evidence, that conscripting their youth into the Israeli colonial army would destroy their moral values, as they would be forced to grope Arab women at checkpoints, break the legs of stone throwing Palestinian children, defend lawless self-styled “Jewish” settlers scribbling obscene graffiti in mosques and churches … not to speak of the ill effects of what secular Israeli Jews call a “modern education”, full of historical fabrications about the origins of Israel, scientific readings on high tech war-making and “advanced” economic doctrines proclaiming the sacred role of the free market,and justifying the 60% poverty rate among Haredim as “self-induced”:

No, the Haredim demand that the Israeli Jewish elite stop trying to conscript their youth into the Army and practicing employment discrimination, which triples the unemployment rate among Haredim.

The Coming ‘Civil War’: Zionist State versus the Haredim

The elected leader Yair Lapid of newly formed Yesh Atid Party, dubbed a “centrist” by the New York Times and a ‘moderate’ by the leading ideologues of the Zionist “lobby”, ran on a platform of forcibly ending the Haredim exemption from conscription into colonial military service. Yair Lapid, in the run-up to joining a new Netanyahu coalition regime, has launched a vicious attack on Haredim. Lapid premises his agreement to joining Netanyahu’s war machine on forcibly confronting the Haredim leadership. Yair Lapid taps the class and secular resentments of Israel’s upwardly mobile youth who bitterly complain of having to serve in the army and delaying their money-making opportunities while the poor, semi-literate “blacks” (derogatory term for the clothing of Haredim) engage in “worthless studies” of the Torah. Lapid, using the same perverted logic as Netanyahu, claims that “Ten percent of the population cannot threaten 90 percent with civil war” (Financial Times, 2/14/13, p. 6.). The executioner (Lapid) accuses the victim (Haredim) of the violence he is about to commit. Yesh Atid, the “centrist party” (sic), has allied with Naftali Bennett’s neo-fascist Jewish Home Party (pushing for the annexation of all of Palestine) in support of smashing Haredim’s opposition to conscription. They hold veto power over the next cabinet. This rabid secular military assault has provoked the opposition and unity of other Zionist-religious parties. The Shahs and United Torah Judaism have taken up the defense of the Haredim.

Lines are being drawn far beyond a Haredim-Zionist State confrontation.

The Larger Meaning of the Haredim-Zionist Conflict

The Haredim hostility to the secular Zionist state is in part based on its opposition to military conscription thus calling into question Israeli militarism, in general, and specifically its policy of colonial occupation and regional aggression. While some Haredim may oppose conscription for religious reasons and seek exemption solely for its own youth, objectively, the effect is to undermine Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights and to call into question the entire apartheid system. By speaking to spiritual values, they deny the legitimacy of the idea of a Jewish police state based on force, violence, torture and disappearance of political prisoners. In their questioning of the institutional configuration upholding Jewish supremacy and Israel as the homeland of the Chosen People, they strike a powerful blow at the ideological underpinnings of the overseas activity of the Zionist power configuration. Their animosity to the fusion of Jewish chauvinism and religious rituals and the tribal deification of the Israeli state is counter-posed to their embrace of Moses Ten Commandments.

The Haredim study the teaching of the renowned Judaic philosophy Maimonides and abhor Zionist militaristic strategists like Walzer, Dershowitz, Kagan, Feith, Netanyahu, etc. who preach colonial “just war” doctrines. Representing 10% of the Israeli population and a far greater percentage of military age youth, the Haredim are in a position to sharply limit the scope of future Zionist wars. If they succeed in blocking conscription, they would provide a lasting contribution to making the world in general, and the Middle East in particular, a more secure and peaceful place to live.

Facing the prospect of a loss of future cannon fodder to sustain its colonial ventures, and in their frenzied attacks on the Haredim, the Israeli-Zionist elite have incited the majority of Israeli Jews to demonize them as ‘backward’, illiterate, freeloaders and to blame the religious curriculum for their growing and current 60% rate of poverty and high unemployment. Israel’s war machine needs fresh recruits to maintain its imperial quest for a Greater Israel. Demographics – with families exceeding five children –indicate the Haredim are likely to double their percentage of the Israeli population over the next two decades. Faced with the facts in the womb, the colonial expansionist imperative drives all the leading Zionist parties to end Haredim’s exemptions. In response Haredim leaders threaten to engage in massive civil disobedience if the Zionists impose conscription, rightly seeing conscription of its youth as an assault on its most profoundly held spiritual and family values and as an opening wedge in destroying community solidarity and reciprocal relations.

The Haredim share a common plight with Israel’s Arab population: both face increasing police harassment, discrimination, religious persecution and rising levels of poverty. A Haredim-Arab alliance would unite 30% of the population against a common secular militarist and plutocratic enemy. Farfetched as it seems on the subjective level, there are objective historical and structural processes which are driving the two groups together.

It is one of the great ironies of history that the world’s modern secular anti-imperialist movements should find their most consequential allies among Israel’s most traditional and deeply religious movement.

February 21, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

US general urges Pentagon to boost its African spying missions by 15-fold

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Press TV – February 15, 2013

A US general nominated to lead the American military’s Africa Command has called for a 15-fold surge in US spying missions in Africa amid reports of Pentagon’s plans to further expand its growing military presence in the continent.

Army General David Rodriguez estimated in a written statement submitted to the US Senate Arms Services Committee during his confirmation hearing on Thursday that the American military needs to boost its “intelligence-gathering and spying missions in Africa by nearly 15-fold,” The Washington Post reports Friday.

“I believe additional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities are necessary to protect American interests and assist our close allies and partners,” said the four-star general who has previously commanded US-led intervention forces in Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The recent crises in North Africa demonstrate the volatility of the African security environment,” he added.

Rodrigues further emphasized during the hearing that Africa Command requires additional drones, other spying aircraft and more satellite imagery, adding that the US command currently gets only half of its “stated need” for North Africa and just seven percent of its total “requirements” for the entire continent, the report says.

The surging US military involvement in Africa has emerged despite earlier instructions by the Obama administration for the Pentagon to “pivot its forces and reorient its strategy toward fast-growing Asia,” the daily underlines.

The development comes as the American military has intervened over the past two years in internal conflicts in African nations of Somalia, Libya and Mali, as well as central Africa.

This is while the US Air Force is building its fourth assassination and spying drone base in the poor African state of Niger as American Navy warships are expanding their missions along the coastlines of East and West Africa, according to the report.

Despite insistence by US military authorities that they did not have plans to establish bases or move troops to Africa when they created the Africa Command in 2007, the Pentagon has since built a network of “staging bases,” including assassination drone facilities in Ethiopia and the Seychelles, and “a forward operating base for special operations forces in Kenya,” the report notes.

It further adds that the Pentagon has also expanded its military operations and construction at “the only permanent US base on the continent, Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, which serves as a hub for ‘counterterrorism missions’ in Somalia and Yemen.”

Now, the daily emphasizes, there is a growing pressure to add even more bases in North and West Africa as the US military is set to build an assassination drone base in the West African country of Niger, which borders Mali, Libya and Nigeria, all nations that the Obama administration claims are threatened by an increasing influx of ‘al-Qaeda-linked’ Muslim militants.

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,” according to the report.

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February 15, 2013 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The U.S.’s Grossly Corrupt Health Protection System

Blame the Pentagon

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR and JOSHUA FRANK | CounterPunch | February 15, 2013

The nation’s biggest polluter isn’t a corporation. It’s the Pentagon. Every year the Department of Defense churns out more than 750,000 tons of hazardous waste — more than the top three chemical companies combined.

Yet the military remains largely exempt from compliance with most federal and state environmental laws, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Pentagon’s partner in crime, is working hard to keep it that way.

For the past five decades the federal government, defense contractors and the chemical industry have joined forces to block public health protections against perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel that has been shown to effect children’s growth and mental progress by disrupting the function of the thyroid gland which regulates brain development.

Perchlorate has been leaking from literally hundreds of defense plants and military installations across the country. The EPA has reported that perchlorate is present in drinking and groundwater supplies in 35 states. Center for Disease Control and independent studies have also overwhelmingly shown that perchlorate is existent in our food supplies, cow’s milk, and human breast milk. As a result virtually every American has some level of perchlorate in their body.

Currently only two states, California and Massachusetts, have set a maximum allowable contaminant level for perchlorate in drinking water. But the EPA won’t follow these states’ lead. In the Colorado River, which provides water for over 20 million people, perchlorate levels are high. The chemical is most prevalent in the Southwest and California as a result of the large number of military operations and defense contractors in the region.

In 2001 the EPA estimated that the total liability for the cleanup of toxic military sites would exceed $350 billion, or five times the Superfund Act liability of private industry. But the federal government has been complacent and allowed perchlorate to run rampant throughout our water supplies. This negligence and lack of regulatory oversight has left the Pentagon, NASA and defense contractors free to set their own levels, trimming the high, but necessary costs of restoring groundwater quality.

While the situation has become dire in recent years, it was the Clinton administration that didn’t do nearly enough to begin cleaning up these sites and certainly did not keep a close eye on how the Pentagon spent the money it received. During the 1990s the Defense Department spent only $3.5 billion a year cleaning up toxic military sites — much of that on studies, not actual work. In 1998, the Defense Science Review Board, a federal advisory committee set up to provide independent advice to the secretary of defense, looked at the problem and concluded that the Pentagon had no clear environmental cleanup policy, goals or program, which led lawyer Jonathan Turley, who holds the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at George Washington University, to call the Pentagon the nation’s “premier environmental villain.”

“If they can spend $1 million on a cruise missile, it seems kind of ridiculous they won’t spend $200,000 to see if our food is contaminated with rocket fuel,” says Renee Sharp, a scientist with Environmental Working Group. But if the Clinton program was chintzy, the Bush plan has been downright penurious.

While Bush has boosted overall Pentagon spending by billions, the administration has simultaneously slashed its environmental remediation program. Moreover, the Bush defense plan has called for “new rounds of base closures” to “shape the military more efficiently.” Efficiency is usually a code word for sidestepping environmental rules.

These military sites, which total more than 50 million acres, are among the most insidious and dangerous legacies left by the Pentagon. They are strewn with toxic bomb fragments, unexploded munitions, buried hazardous waste, fuel dumps, open pits filled with debris, burn piles and yes, rocket fuel. An internal EPA memo from 1998 warned of the looming problem: “As measured by acres, and probably as measured by number of sites, ranges and buried munitions represent the largest cleanup program in the United States.”

When a site gets too polluted, the Pentagon has chosen simply to close it down and turn it over to another federal agency. Over the past three decades, the Pentagon has transferred more than 16 million acres, often with little or no remediation. The former bombing areas have been turned into wildlife refuges, city and state parks, golf courses, landfills, airports and shopping malls.

Serious contamination of streams, soil and groundwater is a problem at nearly every military training ground. The sites are often saturated with heavy metals and other pollutants as well as unexploded weapons. The Government Accountability Office’s list of the kinds of unexploded munitions left behind on many training sites reads like a catalogue for a Middle East arms bonanza: “hand grenades, rockets, guided missiles, projectiles, mortars, rifle grenades, and bombs.”

But the government has gone to great extents to cover up its deadly legacy. In 2002 the Pentagon, defense contractors and perchlorate makers persuaded the editors of a prestigious journal to rewrite an article on the chemical’s health effects without the lead author’s knowledge or consent. Then in 2005 the White House loaded a National Academy of Science panel, which was set up to assess the health risks of perchlorate, with paid consultants of the rocket fuel industry, which, not surprisingly, recommended that exposure levels be set many times higher than the lower doses recommended by numerous independent research studies.

“Perchlorate provides a textbook example of a corrupted health protection system, where polluters, the Pentagon, the White House and the EPA have conspired to block health protections in order to pad budgets, curry political favor, and protect corporate profits,” Richard Wiles, Executive Director of the Environmental Working Group, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on May 7 during a hearing held by committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) who would like to see national safety standards for perchlorate in drinking water.

“All the pieces needed to support strong health protections are in place,” said Wiles. “This is a nightmare of epic proportions for the Department of Defense and its contractors, and rather than address it head-on, they have spent 50 years and millions of dollars trying to avoid it.”

Jeffrey St. Clair’s latest books are Born Under a Bad Sky and Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is now available in Kindle format.  He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net

Joshua Frank, Managing Editor of CounterPunch, is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, and of Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is now available in Kindle format. He can be reached at brickburner@gmail.com.

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February 15, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Pentagon’s Budget Crunch: No Dissenting Views

By Peter Hart | FAIR | February 13, 2013

We’ve noted many times that when it comes to corporate media coverage of the so-called budget “sequester”–the immediate cuts to military and social spending set to hit in a matter of weeks–what matters most is what will happen to the military.  The Washington Post had a whole piece (2/13/13) devoted to yet another round of complaints from military leaders–without a single comment from anyone who might take the view that cutting military spending would not be such a disaster.

“Defense Officials Again Sound Alarm on Sequestration,” said the Post headline, signaling that readers were probably well aware by now that this perspective has been heard loud and clear. Steve Vogel was reporting on a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing that featured a series of military leaders warning of the disaster to come– “the looming sequestration cuts represent a dire and unpre­cedented threat to the U.S. military.”

The quotes all reiterated that point: “The wolf is at the door,” we may return to “a hollow Army,” military forces would be “degraded and unready,” and on a scale of 1 to 10, “it sure feels like a 10.”

Apparently the Post’s idea of balance is quoting spokespeople from different branches of the military–the Army’s point of view, but also someone from the Marine Corps!

Near the end, Vogel writes:

The military panel met with a sympathetic audience Tuesday, as most members of the Senate panel expressed support for ­protecting the defense budget from automatic, across-the-board cuts.

The senators’ failure to challenge the military line is all the more reason to seek out a different perspective;  say, someone who would point out that military spending skyrocketed since the 9/11 attacks, and the current round of reductions–both as part of the sequester and a separate set of budget cuts–still leave total military spending levels at around 2006 levels.

There are military analysts who could provide a different take on the supposed crisis in military spending. An article like this could use another point of view.

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February 13, 2013 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The NUMEC Cover-up: The Diversion of U.S. Weapons Grade Uranium from NUMEC to Israel

IREMP | February 11, 2013

On January 31, 2013 the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy hosted a public education event just north of Apollo Pennsylvania. Author Grant F. Smith discussed key findings from his 2012 book, “Divert! NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro, and the Diversion of US Weapons-Grade Uranium into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program” at the Parks Township Volunteer Fire Hall.

Smith’s talk covered the corporate histories of NUMEC and Apollo Industries, how regulators dealt with the plant’s massive losses of bomb-grade nuclear material, the FBI’s investigation of NUMEC’s joint venture with a front for Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and the ongoing clandestine interactions of NUMEC executives with Israeli intelligence and covert nuclear weapons program operatives.

Smith also unveiled a major new effort to declassify all remaining CIA, NSA, Justice Department and National Security Council files revealing how American presidents quietly grappled with NUMEC as a proliferation and safeguards issue from the LBJ to the Carter administrations.

February 12, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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