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US, South Korea launch provocative joint military drill

Press TV – August 16, 2011

The United States and South Korea are carrying out a joint military exercise within the East Asian country’s territories despite opposition from neighboring North Korea.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) annual military drill, launched on Tuesday, is reportedly aimed at strengthening the defense capabilities of the alliance against any possible attack by North Korea, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.

The Combined Forces Command (CFC) has said in a statement that the UFG will try to enhance the US-South Korea’s joint ability “by exercising senior leaders’ decision-making capabilities and by training commanders and staffs from both nations in planning, command and control operations, intelligence, logistics, and personnel procedures.”

“It is challenging and realistic training focused on preparing, preventing and prevailing against the full range of current and future external threats to the Republic of Korea and the region,” claimed the commander of CFC, General James D. Thurman.

The military exercise provoked severe criticism from the North, as the state had earlier appealed for cancellation of the drill.

Pyongyang cited the move as “extremely provocative,” calling it a preparation for an “all-out war” against the North and the “largest-ever nuclear war exercise”.

“The Korean peninsula is faced with the worst crisis ever. An all-out war can be triggered by any accidents,” North Korean media reported on Tuesday.

“The US war-mongers are planning to carry out a realistic war drill to remove our nuclear facilities with a mobile unit led by the US 20th Support Command which was sent to Iraq to find and disable weapons of mass destruction,” they added.

The North had previously called on the two states to cancel the drill, describing the move as a blow to new efforts to restart six-nations talks aimed at dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

Pyongyang usually views such exercises as a rehearsal for invasion, and launches its own counter-maneuvers.

Tensions have been running high on the Korean Peninsula since November 2010, when an exchange of artillery fire left four South Koreans dead on a border island.

The North accuses US President Barack Obama of plotting with regional allies to topple the country’s government, insisting that its nuclear program is a deterrent to US forces in the region.

August 16, 2011 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

Ahmadinejad: Europe & US need freedom most of all

RussiaToday | August 14, 2011

In an exclusive interview with RT, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pointed out that the 21st century is about knowledge, while nukes are the means of the past.

Commenting on the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, Ahmadinejad said, “We do not want nuclear weapons for a few reasons… This weapon is inhumane. Because of our faith, we are against it. Our religion says it is prohibited, and we are religious people.”

“Nuclear weapons have no capabilities today. If any country tries to build a nuclear bomb, in fact, they waste their money on resources and, secondly, they create a big danger to themselves,” he stated.

No country possessing nuclear weapons has benefited from it, Ahmadinejad said, adding, “The Americans have nuclear bombs and nuclear weapons. Could they win in Iraq or in Afghanistan? Could nuclear weapons help the Zionist regime win in Lebanon and Gaza? Could nuclear weapons help the former Soviet Union avoid collapse?”

August 14, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Video | Leave a comment

Robert Fisk, Amnesty International and ‘progressive’ shrieking sacks of emotion

Liberal imperialism and the refusal to learn

By Maximilian C. Forte | Monthly Review | August 10, 2011

Two of my favorite quotes come into play here, one by the English poet, Alexander Pope, who explained that “some people will never learn anything . . . because they understand everything too soon,” and George Bernard Shaw, much more resigned and ironic in stating that “we learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.”  From various misguided and superficial “open letters” to “the left” on Libya, to the recent renewal of righteous interventionism with respect to Syria, it seems that the greatest deficit in Western thinking about these unruly and barbarous others is not a deficit in sincerity, as I once mistakenly thought, but a learning deficit.  One detects a strong tendency among liberal imperialists and assorted self-designated “progressives” to think of their actions and thoughts as being above history, as if residing in some altostratus of unimpeachable rectitude.  If they pretend to act and think as if they were gods, it is not an historical accident.  At the end of their day, as believers in Western progress, they remain convinced that they are at the high point of evolutionary teleology.  At the last stage of a dying empire, imperial advocates (not confined to any one ideology) are still gripped by the conviction that theirs is the highest stage of human achievement.  They resent history (inevitable imperial decline) as much as they resent particularity (difference they can never tolerate).  High up in the clouds, perched on the wings of various stealth bombers, they preach the ideology of universal, individual human rights.  Blinded by their own wind, they lose the ability to see that even their own “universal declaration of human rights” contained distinct concerns for social and economic rights — though buried at the end, past the point of the current imperial attention deficit disorder (Arts. 21-27).  If people have the right to eat, but not the right to tweet, then they are judged to be living under tyranny.  This is shallow humanitarianism, callous in its disregard for the materialities that make human life possible, a humanitarianism at the end of empire and as bankrupt as the state powers whose authority the humanitarians invoke.

Here are two recent examples, both involving Syria, but really much more about us than about Syria.  In fact, Syria really does not exist — you could insert the name of any nation-state outside of Greater Europe (Europe and its settler states), or even a fictitious name the way that NATO and the Pentagon do — let’s say Southland.  First, there is Robert Fisk.  Some fancy Fisk to be a radical reporter, a courageous speaker of truth.  He fancies himself as such too, declaring himself “in favour of the suffering.”  I regard him as a little old Englishman, prone to betraying the prejudices of his dominant class.  He finds radical difference rather distasteful, as his comments on Hamas tell us, and wishes everyone could stand in single file behind his preferred world order.  He has now taken to snapping at NATO, not for what it has done and is doing to Libya, but for what it failed to do to Syria.  “The trouble is,” Fisk informs us, “that everyone has been running out of patience with Syria since the spring.”  Everyone.  Patience.  We are uniform, and we have certain demands.  “Had Messrs Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama stopped short after they saved Benghazi” (they saved Benghazi?), Fisk adds, “they may have had the spittle . . . and the munitions to destroy some of Assad’s 8,000 tanks.”  An American militarist might have worded this slightly differently, preserving the same meaning: “they lack the cojones to royally kick some Syrian ass.”  Fisk objects to UK Foreign Secretary William Hague for “waffling on about how little the West can do to stop Assad” — the West, I did not insert that.  “This is rubbish,” Fisk of Arabia adds, before proceeding to give some military advice: “Britain’s RAF bases in Cyprus are infinitely closer to Syria than to Libya.”  He is quite clear that he wants regime change, and for the West to carry out that regime change — though again, and as always, it violates international law (not that it matters, that is the law of the strong against the weak).  Fisk writes, “The Israelis don’t want regime change in Damascus.  Do the Americans?”  But then he ends: “Assad is almost certainly doomed” — well alright then, so do you want/need Western intervention to fulfill your goals, or not?  Perhaps he is uncertain about the certainty, or just not thinking . . . historically.  All regimes are always doomed: not a single Egyptian pharaoh, Inca or Roman emperor is alive to disagree.  The question is when, how soon, and here Fisk would like to see more Western agency in taking over from Syrian protesters, even after they repeatedly proclaimed that it is precisely Western intervention of Fisk’s liking that they do not want.  Come to think of it, theirs are the only voices absent from Fisk’s call to Western arms.

However, even less sensitive than Fisk to the irony of Saudi tyrants calling for human rights to be respected in Syria is Amnesty International.  Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International, in “UN Security Council Must Act to End Repression in Syria” begins, with the very title, by admitting to basic, ahistorical naïveté.  The UN Security Council has never acted to end oppression anywhere, it is a tool of the most oppressive powers on earth, and if they act to end anyone else’s oppression it is only to superimpose their far greater oppression.  Sucking up to imperial powers, as if these were the guarantors of human rights, says a lot about Amnesty’s Eurocentric agenda.  It is an agenda as bankrupt as the powers to which it pleads.  Like Fisk, Shetty (as well as those in Amnesty behind him, I assume) finds that “the UN Security Council’s continuing inability to react adequately to the carnage is deeply frustrating and dispiriting.”  Shetty condemns the UN’s presidential statement: “it falls far short of what is really needed.”  And what really is needed?  Shetty never actually gets to articulating that — “something must be done — and done now” — so he leaves it to be understood by reading between the lines.  Like Fisk he writes: “The Council’s impotence in relation to Syria stands in stark contrast with the quick and decisive action it took in the case of Libya.  But, in fact, it is the aftermath of its resolution on Libya that has paralyzed the Council.”  The “quick and decisive” action against Libya — when he could have said the foolish rush to regime change that has prolonged war and violated the human rights of many more Libyans than were at stake back in February.  At any rate, Libya is now made to stand as the benchmark for good action.  (It’s a wonder that these people do not invoke the good old days of the genocidal “oil for food” program applied by the UN, among its other sanctions, against the people of Iraq.)  Shetty wants Brazil, South Africa, and India to prevail upon the Security Council to get beyond political disagreement and do “something” about Syria.  Having posited military action in Libya as the starting point of discussion, his lament about lack of action on Syria at least implies a desire for military action: then Syria and Libya would be equal in their reception of the generous care and loving attention of NATO.  Shetty, who is from India, and so should know better (if anything, just from reading past and current Amnesty documents on India), hails India as a “vibrant democracy” and as a “free and open democracy” in spite of the continuing reality of a brutal counterinsurgency war, discrimination against tribal peoples, land grabs, and vast inequalities maintained by force.  He says that a “free and open democracy” like Brazil cannot be accused of “neo-colonialist ambitions” — oh no?  Just ask countless Indigenous Amazonians about that, or, if too lazy, at least consult with Survival International.  Would Brazil, India, and South Africa be the ones to carry out actions against the Syrian government — because if not, why bother with all the flattery?  Or is it that they are the best window dressing for NATO warfare?  More than unbelievable is that Shetty invokes the moral authority to speak of Syria’s Arab neighbors: “such key players as the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council and now the Saudi Arabian government have spoken out against the killings there [in Syria].”  Fisk was neither as funny, nor as incompetent.  This is Amnesty International, invoking Saudi opinion on human rights, invoking the voices of Gulf state tyrants, an Arab League of dictators.  “Now is the time. . .” says Shetty, mimicking the sentence construction currently en vogue in Obama’s Washington, “to stand and be counted.”  Stand up, and do what?  Be counted . . . by whom?  “They should not fail the Syria test,” he ends, and not too soon.

In the name of democracy, freedom, human rights, and openness, Amnesty deleted the comment I posted in disagreement with them.  Perhaps they thought being called “shameless and irresponsible” was too much to openly bear, democratically, or the persistent pointing out of the absurd irrationality of Shetty’s argument for “something.”

These are people who would train us not to think, not to learn, but to simply react.  Always Be Reacting.  Like NATO’s propaganda outfit for the war against Libya, operated by the likes of Tim Kilbride of the Rendon Group, the vision of our humanity that liberal imperialists entertain is one which constructs us as shrieking sacks of emotion.  This is the elites’ anthropology, one that views us as bags of nerve and muscle: throbbing with outrage, contracting with every story of “incubator babies” (in Iraq, now Syria), bulging up with animus at the arrest of Gay Girl in Damascus, recoiling at the sound of Viagra-fueled mass rape.  From Twitter, to Avaaz, we turn to NATO.  And this is NATO’s sociology: societies can be remade through a course of high-altitude bombings and drone strikes.  It can be heard in the words of the Manchester police: “We want to make it absolutely clear . . . there has been no spark that has led to this” — we are animate, but headless.  Bags.  Absolutely clear.

In our “social media”-induced state of psychotic frenzy, we scream for action.  Which action?  Whatever, any action, “do something . . . stand up and be counted,” no time to think, just act.  Libya — lather, rinse, repeat — Syria.

~

Maximilian C. Forte is an associate professor in anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.  His website is at www.openanthropology.org.

August 11, 2011 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Does the World Really Need New and Improved Nuclear Weapons?

How to Save a Quarter Trillion Dollars

By LAWRENCE S. WITTNER | CounterPunch | August 10, 2011

In the midst of the current stampede to slash federal spending, Congress might want to take a look at two unnecessary (and dangerous) “national security” programs that, if cut, would save the United States over a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next decade.

The first of these is the Obama administration’s plan to spend at least $185 billion in the next ten years to “modernize” the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons arsenal. At present, the U.S. government possesses approximately 8,500 nuclear warheads, and it is hard to imagine that this country would be safer from attack if it built more nuclear weapons or “improved” those it already possesses. Indeed, President Barack Obama has declared—both on the 2008 campaign trail and as president—that he is committed to building a world without nuclear weapons. This seems like a perfectly sensible position—one favored by most nations and, as polls show, most people (including most people in the United States). Therefore, the administration should be working on securing further disarmament agreements—not on upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal in preparation for future nuclear confrontations and nuclear wars.

In late June of this year, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wrote: “It is deeply troubling that the U.S. has allocated $185 billion to augment its nuclear stockpile over the next decade, on top of the ordinary annual nuclear-weapons budget of more than $50 billion.” Not only has the International Court of Justice affirmed that nations “are legally obliged to negotiate in good faith for the complete elimination of their nuclear forces,” but “every dollar invested in bolstering a country’s nuclear arsenal is a diversion of resources from its schools, hospitals, and other social services, and a theft from the millions around the globe who go hungry or are denied access to basic medicines.” He concluded: “Instead of investing in weapons of mass annihilation, governments must allocate resources towards meeting human needs.”

Another project worth eliminating is the national missile defense program. Thanks to recent congressional generosity, this Reagan-era carryover, once derided by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy as “Star Wars,” is currently slated for an increase in federal spending, which will provide it with $8.6 billion in fiscal 2012.

The vast and expensive missile defense program—costing about $150 billion since its inception—has thus far produced remarkably meager results. Indeed, no one knows whether it will work. As an investigative article in Bloomberg News recently reported: “It has never been tested under conditions simulating a real attack by an intercontinental ballistic missile deploying sophisticated decoys and countermeasures. The system has flunked 7 of 15 more limited trials, yet remains exempted from normal Pentagon oversight.”

Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, reported that his committee was “deeply concerned” about the test failures of the nation’s missile defense program. He also implied that, given the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the United States might not need such a system to deter its potential enemies, which have a far inferior missile capability. “The threat we have now is either a distant threat or is not a realistic threat,” he remarked.

Why, then, do other nations—for example, Russia—fiercely object to the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system near their borders? Perhaps they fear that, somehow, U.S. scientists and engineers will finally figure out how to build a system, often likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet, that makes the United States invulnerable while they are left vulnerable. Or perhaps they think that, one day, some U.S. government officials might believe that the United States actually is invulnerable and launch a first strike against their own nations. In any case, their favorite solution to the problem posed by U.S. national missile defense—building more nuclear-tipped missiles of their own—significantly undermines the security of the United States.

Projecting the current annual cost of this program over the next decade, the United States would save $86 billion by eliminating it.

Thus, by scrapping plans for nuclear weapons “modernization” and for national missile defense—programs that are both useless and provocative—the United States would save $271 billion (well over a quarter of a trillion dollars) in the next ten years. Whether used to balance the budget or to fund programs for jobs, healthcare, education, and the environment, this money would go a long way toward resolving some of the nation’s current problems.

~

Dr. Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

August 10, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Russia must decide fate of sunken nuclear subs – official

RIA Novosti – 08/08/2011

Russia must decide by 2013 what to do with two sunken nuclear submarines in the Barents and Kara seas in order to avoid the potential radioactive pollution of the area, a senior Russian nuclear official said on Monday.

“We must decide as soon as possible whether we will lift these subs or bury them completely on site,” Ivan Kamenskih, deputy general director of Russia’s nuclear corporation Rosatom, told a conference on board the Yamal nuclear icebreaker.

The B-159 (K-159) was a November class nuclear submarine, which sank in the Barents Sea in August 2003, 238 meters down, with nine of her crew and 800 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel, while being moved for dismantling.

The K-27 was an experimental attack submarine built in 1962 and decommissioned in 1979 due to its troublesome nuclear reactors. Her reactor compartment was sealed and the submarine was scuttled in the eastern Kara Sea in 1982 at the depth of 33 meters.

“I think the issue should be resolved in 2012…We must decide on their fate now to make sure that in the future we will not have problems with radioactive pollution of the areas where these subs are located,” Kamenskih said, adding that at present radiation levels at wreckage sites are normal.

The official also said that the wreck of the third sunken submarine, the Komsomolets, will most likely remain at the site of the 1989 accident forever, as the salvage operation will be too costly and dangerous.

The K-278 Komsomolets nuclear submarine sank in the Norwegian Sea on April 7, 1989, south of the Bear Island. The submarine sank with its active reactor and two nuclear warheads on board, and lies at a depth of 1,685 meters.

August 9, 2011 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism | Leave a comment

UK mulls use of military on London riots

Press TV – August 9, 2011

British Home Secretary Theresa May has threatened the use water cannons and even military force to quell widespread protests in London against power abuse by police.

As the British capital witnessed the third night of spreading violence and the evident loss of police control over several parts of London, May said that officers would be allowed to use water cannons.

The decision was soon backed by Former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who believes that police must be allowed to use ‘the weapon’ to disperse protesters. Livingstone said, “The issue of water cannon would be very useful given the level of arson we are seeing here.”

The riot-control weapon that shoots a high-pressure stream of water was employed to control mass protests in Northern Ireland.

May also insisted that in case the police fail to regain control of London streets, the government will consider the option of deploying military forces throughout the city.

Patrick Mercer, the Tory MP and former Army officer, asked the Home Secretary to use water cannons to control the violence that has spread across the capital.

“I find it strange that we are willing to use this sort of measures against the Irish yet when Englishmen step out of line and behave in this atrocious and appalling way, we are happy to mollycoddle them,” said Mercer.

“If the police want cannon then they should be allowed to use them. I have used water cannon myself and I found them extremely effective,” he said.

Several other figures also urged the Home Office to apply the so-called anti-riot weapon, claiming that in some cases cannon use was necessary.

Met Police said in a statement that they used armoured vehicles to push back London protesters on the third night of spreading unrest in London.

Commander Christine Jones, said, “We are using tactics flexibly to respond to the disorder we are still seeing in different areas of the capital. Anyone involved in criminality should be under no illusion that we will pursue you. We have been making arrests all evening and have a team working during the night examining CCTV images. We will follow up evidence in the coming days in order to bring anyone else responsible for criminal acts to justice.”

August 9, 2011 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

‘Deal lets US keep bases in Afghanistan’

Press TV – August 7, 2011

The draft of a strategic deal between Washington and Kabul envisions giving the United States the authority to set up permanent military bases in Afghanistan.

American and Afghan official are set to discuss the deal at Loya Jirga (Traditional Grand Assembly) with tribal elders and political figures.

The recently-released draft shows that the US would be able to establish permanent military bases in Shindand, Shorabak, Kandahar, Bagram, and Khost.

According to the agreement, Washington can set up more military bases in other parts of Afghanistan whenever it deems necessary.

The military bases, which will be run based on US Army regulations, would be in complete control of the US government.

The Afghan airspace will be handed over to American forces after the strategic deal comes into effect.

If an agreement is reached on the permanent bases, US troops will remain on Afghan soil beyond 2014, when they are scheduled to transfer their security responsibilities to Afghan forces.

The draft also states that all US military and civilian personnel must act according to the American constitution at the time of military operations.

August 7, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

31 US Occupation Troops Killed in Afghanistan

Al-Manar | August 6, 2011

Thirty-one members of the US occupation special forces were killed when a helicopter crash in eastern Afghanistan.

“This helicopter crashed in Wardak province last night, as a result of which including the crew members, 31 personnel of American Special Forces lost their lives”, a statement from Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office said Saturday. […]

The statement said that seven Afghan troops were also killed in the incident.

The crash late Friday represents the biggest death toll in a single incident for international forces in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001.

The helicopter from the NATO-led foreign force has crashed during an anti-Taliban operation in the eastern province of Wardak, southwest of Afghan capital Kabul, a provincial spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, said.

In a written statement, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the group claimed responsibility for the crash. He said NATO had attacked a house in Sayd Abad where Taliban fighters were gathering on Friday.

The Taliban then fired on NATO and downed the helicopter, killing the crew, Mujahid said.

Earlier before the presidential statement, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was still looking into what had happened.

“An International Security Assistance Force helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan today and recovery operations are under way”, a spokesman for ISAF, the foreign military force in Afghanistan, said.
“ISAF is still in the process of assessing the circumstances to determine the facts of the incident. Reporting indicates there was enemy activity in the area.”

An eyewitness told AFP news agency that the helicopter had crashed as it was trying to take off after landing on the roof of a Taliban commander’s home during a firefight.

August 6, 2011 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

Shop and Shoot

By Linh Dinh – State of the Union – 8/3/11

We are being ruled by thespians and gangsters. Far from incompetent, they are lethally good at what they do. They create crisis after crisis, then solve each by sacrificing countless innocents while enriching themselves. Whatever the challenge, domestic or international, their only goals are to gorge and to gouge, so they never fail, actually, even when they miscalculate. They’ll make money blowing things up, and they’ll make even more pretending to fix what they have destroyed. They never pay for their mistakes, only you do, and when they function perfectly, you will still pick up the check, if not bleed. In fact, you will pay even more if they’re in top form.

During this never ending public spectacle, they’ve introduced us to a cast of rather outlandish characters: a stuttering Texas idiot; a fist bumping, long range shooting and Harvard educated Muslim Commie; a blow job-loving burger clown. Splitting into opposing camps, they’ve climbed into a ring to perform for the whole world. In the front row, a mob of rightish and leftish pundits. These ad-peddling charlatans have parsed each choke slamming and brain busting move as if it was real. Thus, Obama tapped out on canvas. Thus, Obama steam rolled by Republicans. Thus, Obama’s bad bargain. Obama caved in. He’s no criminal, he’s weak. Thus, Obama surrendered.

Those who don’t swallow entire these farcical blow by blows are branded nutcases and conspiracy theorists. Whether it’s about 9/11, Bin Laden, Iraq, Afghanistan, War on Terror, Iran, Underwear Bomber, BP oil spill, Corexit, Libya, death of Bin Laden, on and on and on, the official narrative is always, and I mean always, nonsense, yet repeated often enough, from all angles, left, right and center, these clumsy fairy tales will coalesce in the brainpans of the inattentive or stupid as uncontestable truths and history.

In spite of all the recent bombast about fiscal responsibility and shared sacrifice, the wasteful wars continue, though few Americans can tell you why or even where we’re unleashing horror, hatred and sorrow. America must kill because wars are so lucrative. No other country has been fighting so continuously, for so long. Anham, a Northern Virginia company, has just been busted for charging the Pentagon $900 for a $7 control switch, $3,000 for a $100 circuit breaker, and $80 for a $1.41 piece of plumbing equipment. Blah, blah, blah. Tell me something new, why don’t you? And Lockheed Martin has just been given a $72 million contract to install those universally despised irradiating scanners at 300 U.S. airports.

Meanwhile, one in six Americans is on food stamps, and more and more Americans are losing jobs, including teachers, firemen and cops, as unemployed and deranged teens run wild in “flash mobs” to beat up random strangers. It has happened repeatedly in Philadelphia, my neck of the woods, as well as Chicago, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Boston, Brooklyn, South Orange and Greensboro. There are racial and class components to this phenomenon, as these wilding youngsters are invariably poor blacks converging on white shopping districts. In the latest episode, an 11-year-old Philly kid was arrested for assaulting a stranger.

With these mobs, all the pathologies of a post-industrial, post productive society, with its dead-end jobs, bad schools and a nonstop, stupefying media, are on full display. Another factor not often cited is the phenomenon of children being raised almost exclusively by strangers, practically right after birth, and the poorer the kids, the crappier the quality of daycare and subsequent schooling. How many times have you seen black women push strollers with well dressed white children, so the rich kids are pampered by their parents and nannies, while the poor ones are left alone in nightmarish neighborhoods. Also, when your government is so openly corrupt, anger is inevitable, although punching a stranger in the face is certainly not a solution. The biggest criminals are out of sight, leaving us bottom feeders to inflict pain on each other.

In any struggle, it’s important to know the nature of your enemy. Is he a klutz, prone to a goofy mistake now and then, or does he have murder on his mind? Again, we are being lorded over by a gang of criminals. War criminals.

For two years, there was a military entertainment complex inside a Philadelphia area shopping mall. At the Army Experience Center, young teens could play shoot them up, blood splattering video games for free, while those over 18 could climb into a realistic mockup of a tank or chopper to massacre bad guys in desert settings, also for free. An advertisement: SHOP FOR SOCKS. GRAB A BITE. PILOT AN AH-64 ATTACK HELICOPTER. After receiving 40,000 visitors and enlisting 236 recruits, the Army decided to shut down this 13-million dollar facility on July of 2010, “It’s been a great success. Basically it’s mission accomplished.”

Though it had planned on opening more of these centers, the Army soon realized there was no longer a need. Thanks to the Mother of All Depressions and rapidly increasing unemployment, desperate Americans are flocking to recruitment stations even without the promise of a free video game. It’s a win, win situation for our military industrial complex: destroy the economy, and Americans will enlist. They will beg to be blown up.

August 5, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Economics, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | Leave a comment

The decline and fall of the American Empire

By Paul Craig Roberts | Intrepid Report | August 4, 2011

The United States Government and its presstitute media have wasted time and energy creating hysteria over a non-existent “debt ceiling crisis.”

After reading the “news” in the Ministry of Propaganda and witnessing the stupidity of the US government, the rest of the world is struck dumbfounded by the immaturity of the “world’s only superpower.”

What kind of superpower is it, the world wonders, that is willing to go to the eleventh hour to convince the world, which holds its banking reserves in US Treasury debt, that the US government will default on the debt?

Every country in the world now worries about the judgment and sanity of the country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

This is the achievement of the Republicans, who took an ordinary commonplace increase in the debt ceiling limit, an event that has occurred routinely many times over the course of my life, and turned it into a crisis threatening the world financial system.

To be clear, there was never any risk whatsoever of US default as President Obama has power established by President George W. Bush’s Presidential Directive 51 to declare default a National Emergency and to set aside the debt ceiling limit and Congress’ power of the purse, and to continue to issue the debt necessary to fund the US government and its wars.

That the American press ever took this highly-hyped “crisis” seriously merely demonstrates their prostitute status.

The US public debt is rising too rapidly against US GDP, although it is still below the percentages during World War II. The problem that is ignored by the idiots in Washington and the presstitutes is that the debt is rising relative to the economy because the economy is not rising, but war expenditures are.

Why is the economy not rising?

It is not rising, because it has been offshored. What formerly was US GDP produced in Gary, Indiana, St. Louis, Detroit, Silicon Valley, and other US locations is now GDP for China, India, Indonesia and other countries where manufacturing labor and professional services can be hired below US rates.

What happens with offshoring? The answer is clear. US GDP, consumer income, career opportunities, and tax base leave the country. Corporate profits and bonuses rise due to the lower labor costs.

Who is this good for?

The answer is that it is only good for Wall Street, corporate shareholders, and corporate management. Their incomes go up, and the GDP goes down along with the employment opportunities of Americans and the tax base for government.

The other destroyer of American economic prospects was the deregulation of the financial sector. Economists theorized that markets were self-regulating and created the illusion that greed was never a problem. This was music and dollars to Wall Street’s ears. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the Wall Street-owned US Treasury jumped on board. Those, who like Brooksley Born, were empowered by US law to regulate derivatives, were driven out of office by the Federal Reserve chairman, the US Treasury secretary, and the Securities and Exchange chairman.

Financial institutions freed from Glass-Steagall, freed from capital requirements, and freed from oversight, immediately took debt leverage on highly unrealistic bets to amazing heights. When the schemes collapsed, the Federal Reserve lent US and foreign banks $16.1 trillion dollars, a sum larger than the US national debt and larger than the US GDP.

Where did the Federal Reserve get $16.1 trillion to lend? The Fed created it out of thin air with a stroke of a computer entry.

While the Federal Reserve created $16.1 trillion in new loans for private banks, the bailed out banks bulldoze the foreclosed homes of the evicted Americans.

So in America, the light unto the world, American citizens are thrown out of their homes in order that banks can bulldoze their homes.

Only in America does this makes sense.

And it is not only Americans who are being made homeless by US policies. Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Yemenis, Somali, Libyans are also consigned to homelessness by American policy. Moreover, America’s wars against these peoples together with the supporting military/security budget account for 75 percent of the US budget deficit. Indeed, the cost of these wars exceed the planned future budget savings from the debt limit deal.

In other words, the cost of the wars that make millions of foreigners homeless use up revenues that the federal government could have used to keep Americans in their homes and teachers in the schools. As much as many Republicans profess to be concerned about the US public debt, Republicans were not sufficiently concerned to address their issue by cutting back the $1.2 trillion military-security budget or by raising the low tax rates on the mega-rich.

Look at these July 30 headlines, just two days prior to the default deadline, from the online group, Stop NATO:

What in the world is a country facing bankruptcy and default doing conducting military exercises in Mongolia and Central Asia? What is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, designed to counter a Soviet thrust into Western Europe, doing in Mongolia?

Why are these military expenditures necessary, but not expenditures to keep America’s homeless population from rising while homes are destroyed?

Why do not the Republicans listen when mega-billionaire Warren Buffett says that the tax rate on his massive income is lower than the tax rate on his secretary’s income?

The answer is that the Republicans have an agenda: War. And Republicans want to fund this war, not by taxing high incomes but by cutting support programs for the down and out.

To cut to the chase: Even if all the cuts actually happen, the weakening economy will result in new deficit projections that will wipe out the expected savings from the debt limit agreement.

What then will the government do?

Until US policymakers comprehend that the economy has been moved offshore and take steps to bring it home, there will be no solution to America’s debt problem or to its unemployment problem.

~

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.

August 4, 2011 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

US Department of ‘Defense’ is the Worst Polluter on the Planet

Project Censored | Top 25 of 2011

#2: The US military is responsible for the most egregious and widespread pollution of the planet, yet this information and accompanying documentation goes almost entirely unreported. In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations and was not the focus of any discussions or proposed restrictions at the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. This impact includes uninhibited use of fossil fuels, massive creation of greenhouse gases, and extensive release of radioactive and chemical contaminants into the air, water, and soil.

The extensive global operations of the US military (wars, interventions, and secret operations on over one thousand bases around the world and six thousand facilities in the United States) are not counted against US greenhouse gas limits. Sara Flounders writes, “By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.”

While official accounts put US military usage at 320,000 barrels of oil a day, that does not include fuel consumed by contractors, in leased or private facilities, or in the production of weapons. The US military is a major contributor of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that most scientists believe is to blame for climate change. Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports, “The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. . . . That war emits more than 60 percent that of all countries. . . . This information is not readily available . . . because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under US law and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

According to Barry Sanders, author of The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, “the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency . . . the Armed Forces of the United States.”

Throughout the long history of military preparations, actions, and wars, the US military has not been held responsible for the effects of its activities upon environments, peoples, or animals. During the Kyoto Accords negotiations in December 1997, the US demanded as a provision of signing that any and all of its military operations worldwide, including operations in participation with the UN and NATO, be exempted from measurement or reductions. After attaining this concession, the Bush administration then refused to sign the accords and the US Congress passed an explicit provision guaranteeing the US military exemption from any energy reduction or measurement.

Environmental journalist Johanna Peace reports that military activities will continue to be exempt based on an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for other federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, “The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government’s energy demand.”

As it stands, the Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined. Depleted uranium, petroleum, oil, pesticides, defoliant agents such as Agent Orange, and lead, along with vast amounts of radiation from weaponry produced, tested, and used, are just some of the pollutants with which the US military is contaminating the environment. Flounders identifies key examples:

– Depleted uranium: Tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste contaminate the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans.

– US-made land mines and cluster bombs spread over wide areas of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East continue to spread death and destruction even after wars have ceased.

– Thirty-five years after the Vietnam War, dioxin contamination is three hundred to four hundred times higher than “safe” levels, resulting in severe birth defects and cancers into the third generation of those affected.

– US military policies and wars in Iraq have created severe desertification of 90 percent of the land, changing Iraq from a food exporter into a country that imports 80 percent of its food.

– In the US, military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as perchlorate and trichloroethylene seep into the drinking water, aquifers, and soil.

– Nuclear weapons testing in the American Southwest and the South Pacific Islands has contaminated millions of acres of land and water with radiation, while uranium tailings defile Navajo reservations.

– Rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon in bases around the world.

The United States is planning an enormous $15 billion military buildup on the Pacific island of Guam. The project would turn the thirty-mile-long island into a major hub for US military operations in the Pacific. It has been described as the largest military buildup in recent history and could bring as many as fifty thousand people to the tiny island. Chamoru civil rights attorney Julian Aguon warns that this military operation will bring irreversible social and environmental consequences to Guam. As an unincorporated territory, or colony, and of the US, the people of Guam have no right to self-determination, and no governmental means to oppose an unpopular and destructive occupation.

Between 1946 and 1958, the US dropped more than sixty nuclear weapons on the people of the Marshall Islands. The Chamoru people of Guam, being so close and downwind, still experience an alarmingly high rate of related cancer.

On Capitol Hill, the conversation has been restricted to whether the jobs expected from the military construction should go to mainland Americans, foreign workers, or Guam residents. But we rarely hear the voices and concerns of the indigenous people of Guam, who constitute over a third of the island’s population.

Meanwhile, as if the US military has not contaminated enough of the world already, a new five-year strategic plan by the US Navy outlines the militarization of the Arctic to defend national security, potential undersea riches, and other maritime interests, anticipating the frozen Arctic Ocean to be open waters by the year 2030. This plan strategizes expanding fleet operations, resource development, research, and tourism, and could possibly reshape global transportation.

While the plan discusses “strong partnerships” with other nations (Canada, Norway, Denmark, and Russia have also made substantial investments in Arctic-capable military armaments), it is quite evident that the US is serious about increasing its military presence and naval combat capabilities. The US, in addition to planned naval rearmament, is stationing thirty-six F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets, which is 20 percent of the F-22 fleet, in Anchorage, Alaska.

Some of the action items in the US Navy Arctic Roadmap document include:

– Assessing current and required capability to execute undersea warfare, expeditionary warfare, strike warfare, strategic sealift, and regional security cooperation.

– Assessing current and predicted threats in order to determine the most dangerous and most likely threats in the Arctic region in 2010, 2015, and 2025.

– Focusing on threats to US national security, although threats to maritime safety and security may also be considered.

Behind the public façade of international Arctic cooperation, Rob Heubert, associate director at the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, points out, “If you read the document carefully you’ll see a dual language, one where they’re saying, ‘We’ve got to start working together’ . . . and [then] they start saying, ‘We have to get new instrumentation for our combat officers.’ . . . They’re clearly understanding that the future is not nearly as nice as what all the public policy statements say.”

Beyond the concerns about human conflicts in the Arctic, the consequences of militarization on the Arctic environment are not even being considered. Given the record of environmental devastation that the US military has wrought, such a silence is unacceptable.

Student Researchers:

  • Dimitrina Semova, Joan Pedro, and Luis Luján (Complutense University of Madrid)
  • Ashley Jackson-Lesti, Ryan Stevens, Chris Marten, and Kristy Nelson (Sonoma State University)
  • Christopher Lue (Indian River State College)
  • Cassie Barthel (St. Cloud State University)

Faculty Evaluators:

  • Ana I. Segovia (Complutense University of Madrid)
  • Julie Flohr and Mryna Goodman (Sonoma State University)
  • Elliot D. Cohen (Indian River State College)
  • Julie Andrzejewski (St. Cloud State University)

August 3, 2011 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism | Leave a comment

‘US turning Yemen into another Somalia’

Press TV – August 3, 2011

A political observer says the US militaristic approach to the ‘democratic revolution’ in Yemen is antagonizing the population, turning the Middle Eastern country into another Somalia.

“Instead of dealing with the democratic process, which they (the US administration) say they believe in, they [have] hurried and built a drone base in Yemen and now they are using drones to attack the people of Yemen,” Eugene Michael Jones, editor of Culture Wars magazine, told Press TV on Tuesday.

“You (the US) are radicalizing the [Yemeni] population by doing this thing, … the danger [is] that Yemen [is] going to become Somalia. It can split up into two countries; it can split up into tribes,” Jones added.

Considering that there can be no military solution to the situation in Yemen, the analyst said that the US has to close down its drone base in the country and to allow the formation of a transitional council that the Yemeni demonstrators have been demanding.

For several weeks, Yemeni protesters have been calling for the establishment of such a council to prevent the country’s longtime dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, from remaining in office.

Earlier this week, thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of the city of Taizz to condemn US and Saudi interference in the country.

The demonstrators, who were carrying banners calling for the boycott of the US and Saudi products, accused Washington and Riyadh of attempting to prop up Saleh.

The protesters also chanted slogans denouncing Ali Abdullah Saleh’s three-decade dictatorship, stressing that the regime’s officials should be brought to trial for the killing of hundreds of people during months of anti-government rallies.

The protests have intensified since Saleh vowed to return from Saudi Arabia — where he has been receiving treatment for burns and wounds he sustained in an attack by tribesmen on his palace in Sana’a in June — to oversee a national dialogue and elections.

The Yemeni revolution began in January, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in the major cities to call for an end to corruption and unemployment.

Hundreds of people have been killed and many more injured by forces loyal to Salah in the violent repression of the anti-regime protests.

August 3, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

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