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Russia warns US, Romania over base

Press TV – May 5, 2011

Russia has issued a warning after Romania agreed to host the US missile system site at a Soviet-built base in the country’s southern town of Deveselu.

Moscow warned that the deployment of US interceptor missiles on Romanian territory comes without considering the talks between Moscow and Washington on the issue.

Earlier in the week, the US and Romania announced that elements of US missile system would be stationed at the former Romanian airbase of Deveselu.

Russia said that the planned missile system “may pose risks for Russian strategic nuclear deterrence forces in the future,” Russia Today reported on Wednesday.

“We regret to say that practical steps on building the European segment of the US global missile defense system are being made regardless of the Russian-US dialogue on missile-defense issues, which was launched under the initiative of President Dmitry Medvedev and President Barack Obama,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

It said Washington continues to implement “the phased adaptive approach” toward building a segment of the US global missile system in Europe.

Washington announced these plans back on September 17, 2009.

Russia had warned earlier that it would take “adequate measures” if the US and NATO choose to build the European missile system without Moscow’s participation.

US Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher, however, said on Wednesday that the missile system posed no threat to Russia.

“It is a system that will defend NATO and, if Russia chooses to work with us in a cooperative manner, the system will defend Russia, too,” she said.

“We have good relations with Russia. We have just ratified the New START treaty, we are working together on various other issues,” she told Romanian lawmakers.

Tauscher is scheduled to meet with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Thursday.

Russia was not the only one caught off-guard by the surprise announcement of the US-Romanian decision. Reports say that Romanian officials were also unaware of the decision and the Romanian media kept mum on the issue until President Traian Basescu announced it on Tuesday night.

May 5, 2011 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

Skyrocketing Crime Rates and Imperial Wars

By James Petras | 05.04.2011

Imperial interventions in civil wars have a devastating effect on countries that last for decades and affect the entire economy and society. One indicator of the long-term consequences of imperial military intervention is the tremendous increase of violent crime, the multiplication of gangs, homicides and general insecurity in Central America.

Violence increased far beyond what existed prior to imperial wars in such countries as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. In the period prior to imperial intervention in Central America, during times of revolutionary ferment, high levels of social organization via inclusive social movements, channeled discontent into political and social channels. Revolutionary movements organized armed resistance against specifics targets; repressive police, military and death squad militias. Imperial intervention included military advisers and counter-insurgency strategies which uprooted peasants via scorched earth policies and destroyed communities. Assaults on urban barrios led to the break-up of family and neighborhood networks. The social bonds which integrate people into a moral and social community were ruptured: the goal of imperial planners is to decimate any independent popular civil-society organization as a political threat to its illegitimate collaborator regime.

In El Salvador, the US provided over $300 million a year in arms and training for almost a decade. The Pentagon through its advisory missions, in collaboration with local landlords and generals, financed and forcibly recruited thousands of peasants into death squad ‘civilian militias’ to assassinate local movement activists and terrorize farm workers’movements and trade union organizations. Under imperial military pressure the leaders of the major Central American guerrilla organizations signed on to a peace agreement. The “peace accords” retained the US collaborator regimes in power and the promised social reforms were never implemented. As a result, the homicide rate skyrocketed. The discharged guerrilla militants and unemployed right wing militia members, armed and trained, and with no future, became the bases for gangs, drug and people traffickers, kidnappers and extortionists. The number of people who were annually killed in violent crime (1991-2011) exceeded the number who died each year during the revolutionary struggle (1979-1990).

Having successfully blocked the prospects of positive socio-economic transformations in wealth, land ownership, the judicial system and allocation of public investments, the US pushed for neo-liberal ‘free trade agreements’ which further decimated small farmers and retail commerce. Mass outmigration and crime became the ‘roads out of poverty’ in the aftermath of imperial intervention. Violent crime became so pervasive that the business elites of the US and Central America were hesitant to invest and profit from the low wages and the unemployed who crowded the labor market. The cost of hiring private security armies to protect upscale neighborhoods, business operations, country clubs, and exclusive restaurant and leisure centers became prohibitive. Faced with the “unfavorable climate for business” created by the very same pro-business Pentagon intervention, after two decades of murder and mayhem, the World Bank intervened. The World Development Report (WDR) for 2010 (published in 2011) focuses on the theme of “conflict, security and development”. The Report proposed a series of measures to lessen what it calls “mass violence”. The Report was taken up and elaborated in the Financial Times (4/27/11 p. 9) by Martin Wolf in an article titled “Remove the scourge of conflict”. The Report and Wolf provide time series data between 1999-2009 showing the vertical growth of “criminal violence after civil wars”; time series data show that countries with high poverty rates based on the (percent of population with income below $1.25 per day) have experienced greater violence than those with low poverty rate; time series data show that greater ‘violence’ reduced real GDP growth.

Both the WB Report and the Financial Times fail to identify the true nature of the ‘violent conflict’, the principle source of violence and the foreign and domestic elite economic policies which deepen and prolong ‘violence’.

In the case of Central America, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, the WB and Financial Times resort to vacuous generalization to avoid discussing the massive military role of US imperialism in promoting large scale, long term violence in the countries. Instead the FT strikes a phony philosophical note “man is a violent animal” (Alas). In fact imperialist rulers are violent animals; especially with regard to poor countries attempting to free themselves of US backed oligarchies. To their discredit the WB and FT obfuscate the data by claiming that the deaths were a product of “civil wars”.

Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s the US and Israel provided arms, advisers, technical capacity to the murderous Guatemalan regime which slaughtered over 300,000; mostly Indians and wiped off the map over 420 villages. During the US decade long proxy war against the progressive Sandinista revolutionary movement via the Somoza dictatorship (1969-78) and the decade long Contra terror war against the Sandinista government (1979-89), over 50,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands maimed and displaced and productive farms, factories, infrastructure, clinics and schools and co-operatives were targeted by US counter-insurgency advisers.

As mentioned earlier, El Salvador’s social movements and their supporters throughout civil society were targeted by US backed military and paramilitary groups forcing hundreds of thousands to flee to urban squatter settlements or across borders and overseas. Similar outcomes occurred during the US counter-insurgency campaign in Honduras and invasions of Grenada and Panama in the 1980’s.

Imperial backed invasions, counter-insurgency campaigns and the subsequent imposition of corrupt oligarchs led to the total disarticulation of local social networks and the bankruptcy of small scale farms because of the importation of subsidized US foodstuffs. These led to the presence of a deadly combination: thousands of automatic rifles, tens of thousands of unemployed displaced rural youth living in urban slums and an economy geared to enriching elite importers, exporters and US bankers and creditors. The WB Report in all of 301 pages and numerous tables does not contain a single phrase about the nature, consequences and the profound and lasting impact of imperial intervention on the out of control homicide rates in Central America or elsewhere. Instead we are told it’s all about a “civil war”.

The mendacious cover-up proceeds to the current decade. The WB Report and the FT sound an optimistic note claiming that annual battle deaths have “fallen to 42,000 in the 2000’s”. First, calling the US-NATO invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan a “civil war” is a travesty to common knowledge; and then falsifying the over 1 million Iraqi deaths into a few thousand, flies in the face of independent surveys published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet.

What is striking about the imperialist interventions and most relevant to the growth of violent crime, is the fact that the subsequent client rulers, are themselves deeply enmeshed in international criminal networks. Drug dealing and large scale theft of billions in aid funds and public revenues is the hallmark of Central American clients who are most intimately tied to Washington. The same is true in Iraq and Afghanistan: tribal clans and ethnic gangs who pledged allegiance to the US occupiers run billion dollar heroin enterprises. They murder civil society activists and undermine the bases of community based organizations.

Policy Proposals

Based on a diagnosis that ignores the imperial causes of social breakdown and the subsequent spiraling violent crime rate, the WB Report and the FT propose “lessons” for a “successful transition to ending high rates of violence”.

Since their diagnosis of the historical roots of crime is deeply flawed, the prescriptions fail to come to terms with the political and economic transformations necessary to reduce spiraling homicide rates.

The WB Report proposes (1) “inclusive coalitions” for change, (2) impact programs that produce quick results and impress people, (3) reforms of the security and justice institutions, (4) a pragmatic perspective of several decades to bring about change. In other words the WB Report recognizes that its policies, allies and agencies are so embedded in the current system that its “reform proposals” are at best designed to co-opt local leaders in coalitions, to pursue incremental changes, which will not reverse homicide rates for several decades.

The WB Report proposes to create bottom-up “links” between the neo-liberal state and civic society: an impossible task when “the state” is the principle agency undermining employment via its free market policies. Their proposal to act against corruption and to reform the police and judicial system overlooks the fact that the past and present closest political and judicial collaborators of US counter-insurgency and dominance are precisely those corrupt officials willing to repress popular movements and provide military bases. The WB Report calls for greater intervention by “external institutions” (like itself and US AID) to “deliver support”, when it was precisely external intervention which short circuited changes fought for by “bottom up” grass roots movements.

The point of departure for a reduction of violent crime is precisely to reduce or eliminate external intervention by the US: the need to eliminate military aid and training programs which block and repress social movements and organize coups; to eliminate WB programs promoting agro-export elites and to promote agrarian reforms led by and for co-operatives and family farmers; to end free trade and the saturation of the local market with subsidized US food exports so as to allow peasants to produce for local markets. Above all there is a need for the US and WB to pay $ multi-million dollar compensation for the destruction caused by the counter-insurgency war and neo-liberal policies, as a way of creating alternative employment for young people tempted by the drug gangs. Because of the long term destruction resulting from imperialist wars, the process of decriminalizing society will require a profound revolution in institutions and culture, one which will by necessity need to root out the current crop of generals, oligarchs and World Bank trained economists who perpetuate the conditions which spawn crime. Those changes will require supporting social movements independent of the state; immediate positive impacts to attract popular support will result from movements engaged in direct action – like occupying large rural estates. Police and security reforms can only be instituted as part of a process of regime changes in which ties to repressive overseas experts are replaced by links to community councils. Crime will be reduced in direct relation to greater independence from the regional policemen and with greater freedom to pursue an alternative economy based on social solidarity.

May 5, 2011 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

The Future Children of Fukushima

Cancer, Deformities and Chronic Diseases

By JOE GIAMBRONE | CounterPunch | May 3, 2011

“[A] woman in her fourth month of pregnancy was contaminated with 137Cs [radioactive cesium]… The concentration of 137Cs in the mother (0.91 kBq/kg bw) was similar to that in her newborn child (0.97 kBq/kg bw).” 1

Children in Belarus, Ukraine and certain provinces of Russia tell us what to expect from a massive radiation contamination such as Japan is currently experiencing. Radiation attacks the young to a harsher degree than it does adults, and yet we do know that it kills adults. Radioactivity causes numerous illnesses including terminal cancers, and not just from a large initial dose but over time from absorbed emitting particles inside the body.

A senior nuclear adviser to the Japanese Prime Minister, professor Toshiso Kosako resigned in protest from his government. This as the Japanese government raised the level of permissible exposure to schoolchildren twenty fold, from 1mSv/year to 20mSv.

The atomic power industry, it can be proved, has been an unprecedented catastrophe for mankind.

One of the world’s leading experts on radionuclide contamination is Dr. Yury Bandashevsky based in Minsk, Belarus. Near Chernobyl’s “ground zero” Bandazhevsky has published hundreds of scientific papers and has studied the radioactive contamination absorbed by children there for decades.

The parents of northern Japan had best investigate Dr. Bandashevsky’s dietary recommendations. He’s found that apple pectin helps remove radioactive cesium-137 from the body.

However, food grown and animals grazed in contaminated regions will pass along radiation to human populations for centuries. The Japanese reliance on fish will soon produce another shock to their nation as larger fish absorb more radioactive particles up the food chain.

Dr. Bandashevsky has placed hard numbers on the dangers of internal contamination from radiation,

“Chronic Cs-137 levels over 30 Bq/kg body weight is often associated with serious cardiovascular diseases 2.”

For children with cesium 137 in excess of 50 Becquerels/kg body weight, “pathological disorders of the vital organs or systems will occur 3.” These levels can produce grotesque malformations in newborn babies and increase the risk of spontaneous abortions.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) says, “Both 134Cs and 137Cs emit beta particles and gamma rays, which may ionize molecules within cells penetrated by these emissions and result in tissue damage and disruption of cellular function 4.”

Expecting Japanese mothers should flee the north of Japan as quickly as possible. Abandon the region for the sake of their children’s safety. Fetuses are in imminent danger and are many times more vulnerable to radiation than are adults.

How much radiation is Japan bathed in right now?

Nature magazine online reported that soil 40km northwest of the plant contained, “Cesium-137 levels of 163,000 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) and iodine-131 levels of 1,170,000 Bq/kg, according to Japan’s science ministry 5.”

Tellingly, the new official “exclusion zone” is only a 30km radius from the plant. This means that those living atop the irradiated soil described above will not even be prompted to leave. Most will not. They will eventually return to life as usual. Only the colorless, tasteless, odorless radioactive isotopes will poison their families ceaselessly for the rest of their lives. Cesium, strontium, iodine and other radionuclides will continue to attack life forms in that contaminated environment despite any hollow assurances to the contrary.

Plutonium, the most toxic substance on earth, has been detected at eight different monitoring stations in Korea.

Radioactivity is a highly contested and controversial subject. Vast caches of medical evidence are routinely ignored in the mainstream media. At the nerve center of the controversy is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose entire purpose is to promote the atomic power industry worldwide. Many don’t know, but the IAEA has the authority on all health matters concerning radiation, both military and civil.

The World Health Organization can simply be blocked – by the IAEA – from publishing its findings concerning radioactive disasters like Chernobyl. This exact scenario occurred in 1995 under the tenure of WHO Director Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima 6.

A Swiss documentary team discovered that Dr. Nakajima’s 1995 international conference of “700 experts and physicians” was prevented from publishing its findings on Chernobyl by the IAEA. The 2004 Swiss film Nuclear Controversies documents this battle between doctors and scientists on the scene vs. the IAEA.

Regarding the IAEA, Dr. Nakajima said, “for atomic affairs, military use and civil use, peaceful or civil use they have the authority. They command 7.”

The elephant in the room is that word “military,” and the desire of Western militaries to pummel other lands with “depleted uranium” (sic) munitions. As NATO currently plasters Libya with uranium tipped bombs, it must deny that the uranium contamination will harm the civilian population there. That admission alone would constitute a confession of war crimes, and so the fiction continues.

Radiation attacks DNA and causes horrific malformations, sudden mortality, and diseases that persist for the rest of the person’s life.

Several films have documented the radiation effects on the children of Chernobyl including the Academy Award winning Chernobyl Heart (2003). This film shows harrowing images of deformed infants and numerous teenagers who suffer from thyroid cancers and other thyroid diseases. Fewer than 20% of children in the nation of Belarus can be classified as “healthy,” according to official government studies.

A Ukrainian study found that, “for each case of thyroid cancer there were 29 other thyroid pathologies 8.”

Dr. Bandashevsky found further health effects at even lower levels of cesium contamination. For “children having 5 Bq/kg more than 80% are healthy, while having 11 Bq/kg only 35% of children are healthy 9.”

Chernobyl Heart, The Battle of Chernobyl (2006) and Nuclear Controversies (2004) have been available streaming online for all to see. The evidence that radiation destroys the lives of entire populations is irrefutable.

Official United Nations studies have failed to reflect this reality on the ground. What the UN has fallen back on as a rationale for its behavior is found in the 2008 UNSCEAR report on Chernobyl:

“As discussed previously in the section on the attribution of effects to radiation exposure, because presently there are no biomarkers specific to radiation, it is not possible to state scientifically that radiation caused a particular cancer in an individual 10.”

By their own logic it is also not possible to scientifically rule out that radiation caused the epidemic of cancers found in the highly contaminated regions. But, that’s exactly what the UN has shamelessly done in a series of reports that deliberately under-count the deaths from the Chernobyl catastrophe.

While the IAEA refuses to accept medical consequences of the radioactivity it promotes, it does acknowledge that radiation has spread from the crippled Fukushima plant. Readings as high as 25 Megabecquerels per sq. meter iodine-131, and 3.7 Megabecquerels per sq. meter cesium-137 were reported “at distances of 25 to 58 km 11” from the still out of control plant. These numbers should prompt massive evacuations at much greater distances than the official exclusion zone (read: uninhabitable zone) of 30km.

Facing that reality would render a large chunk of Japan a wasteland with economic costs beyond calculation. The numbers of refugees would surpass anything that the government could possibly manage. The absolute insanity of atomic power would instantly become an unavoidable fact to the entire (sane) world.

All exposures to radiation increase the risks of cancer, and there is no such thing as a “safe dose.” This is the determination of the National Academy of Sciences 12, the EPA 13, NRC 14, CDC 15 etcetera. Thus, when a population is exposed to any increase in radioactive particles, some percentage of people and animals will be adversely affected. The exact number is difficult to determine, but estimates are made through extrapolation.

Dr. Chris Busby has predicted “400,000” cases of cancer for the population within 200 kilometers of Fukushima 16. That includes the suburbs of Tokyo. Studies from Europe after Chernobyl were used in his calculations. Cancers include thyroid, leukemia, pancreas, prostate, lung, skin, bone – every type of cancer that exists. This is what radiation does to living organisms.

The evidence is clear. Children living “in contaminated regions, in a radius of 250 – 300 km from Chernobyl show an increase in mutations 17.” From the years 1987 to 2004, “the incidence of brain tumors in children up to 3 years of age doubled and in infants it increased 7.5-fold 18.”

Thousands of studies from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the surrounding countries were compiled in 2009 by Dr. Alexey Yablokov and Drs. Vassily and Alexey Nesterenko. Chernobyl, Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment was published by the New York Academy of Sciences and cites 5,000 studies. Forty percent of Europe was dosed with significant radiation. Radioactivity spread across the northern hemisphere where it continues to affect human health to this day.

The most contaminated provinces show human devastation directly correlated to radiation levels. Gomel province in Belarus had 90% healthy children in 1985, the year before the meltdown. By 2000, “fewer than 10% of children were well 19.” Effects were directly related to the levels of contamination, eliminating other possible factors.

Rare deformities in infants increased radically. Severe Congenital Malformations (CMs) “such as polydactyly, deformed internal organs, absent or deformed limbs, and retarded growth increased significantly in the contaminated districts… officially registered CMs increased 5.7-fold during the first 12 years after the catastrophe 20.”

This is what the parents of Northern Japan should expect if they decide to stay. This is what the promotion of high risk atomic power has bequeathed to the next generations of those who live near the contaminated zone.

The IAEA’s methodology showed obvious holes in the counting of victims, post-Chernobyl. Stillbirths aren’t counted at all. The reality is that up to 2004, “the estimated total number of miscarriages and stillbirths in Ukraine as a result of Chernobyl was about 50,000 21.”

Those are fifty thousand human deaths in the single nation of Ukraine that did not even merit a mention in the UN’s so-called “official death toll.”

How many really died from Chernobyl’s meltdown?

The Yablokov/Nesterenko book places the death toll at about one million.

“Thus the overall mortality for the period from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated at 985,000 additional deaths. This estimate of the number of additional deaths is similar to those of Gofman (1994a) and Bertell (2006). 22”

Three independent studies arrived at similar findings.

The atomic energy industry today across many nations displays a reckless disregard for human life bordering on Crimes Against Humanity. The Rome Statute, employed by the International Criminal Court, added the following category to Crimes Against Humanity:

(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

As all nuclear plants regularly and routinely discharge harmful radioactive particles, which all governments admit are unsafe, the case is pretty clear. Nuclear power must be abolished while there is still enough uncontaminated arable farmland to sustain us.

In a strictly moral sense, these reckless plants endanger millions of other people’s children, perhaps 12,000 human generations yet to be born 23. Radioactive power generation places us in jeopardy at risk for catastrophic illnesses. This is a gross deliberate violation of millions of people’s human rights.

Plutonium remains a threat to future civilizations. This reckless, uncontrolled release of radioactive isotopes has fouled the earth.

The people of Japan should remember the people of Belarus. Birth defects in children “whose mothers live in contaminated zones is twice as high as compared to those, whose mothers live in clean regions 24.”

Notes

1. World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer IARC, Monographs on the Evaluatiion of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Vol. 78 Ionizing Radiation Part 2: Some Internally Depostited Radionuclides, 2001, IARCPress, Lyon France, p. 343.

2. Yuri Bandazhevsky, Chronic Cs-137 incorporation in children ‘s organs, 488 SWISS MED WKLY, 2003;133:488–490 · www.smw.ch (peer reviewed), Official journal of, the Swiss Society of Infectious disease
the Swiss Society of Internal Medicine, Swiss Respiratory Society

3., 17., 24. The Chernobyl Catastrophe and Health Care, By Dr. Michel Fernex, Professor emeritus, Medical Faculty of Basel, F-68480 Biederthal, France.

4: Center for Disease Control Publication p157-c2, CESIUM, 2. RELEVANCE TO PUBLIC HEALTH, CDC website.

5. Nature Journal Online, Radioactivity Spreads in Japan, March 29 2011, http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110329/full/471555a.html

6., 7. Nuclear Controversies, 2004, Swiss TV, Film by Wladimir Tchertkoff, Feldat Film Switzerland.

8. ,18., 19., 20., 21., 22. Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Alexey V. Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko, Alexey V. Nesterenko, 2009, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol.1181.

9. V.B. Nesterenko’s report at the International conference “Medical Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe: results of 15-year researches”, June 4-8, 2001, Kiev, Ukraine.

10. SOURCES AND EFFECTS OF IONIZING RADIATION, United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the General Assembly with Scientific Annexes, VOLUME II Annex D Health effects due to radiation from the Chernobyl accident

11. IAEA website, Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log, March 30, 2011, http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/fukushima300311.html

12. National Academy of Sciences, 2006, Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11340&page=1#

13. EPA website, Radiation Risks and Realities, “The more radiation dose a person receives, the greater the chance of developing cancer… Current evidence suggests that any exposure to radiation poses some risk, however, risks at very low exposure levels have not been definitively demonstrated.” [“very low” not defined –JG] www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/402-k-07-006.pdf

14. NRC website, Fact Sheet on Biological Effects of Radiation, “This dose-response hypothesis suggests that any increase in dose, no matter how small, results in an incremental increase in risk.”

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/bio-effects-radiation.html

15. Center for Disease Control website, Prenatal Radiation Exposure: A Fact Sheet for Physicians, “However, the human embryo and fetus are particularly sensitive to ionizing radiation, and the health consequences of exposure can be severe, even at radiation doses too low to immediately affect the mother. Such consequences can include growth retardation, malformations, impaired brain function, and cancer.”

16. Dr. Chris Busby, Reuters, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S0H-mtsdsgg.

23. Al Jazeera, April 4, 2011, No safe levels’ of radiation in Japan by Dahr Jamail, quoting Dr. Kathleen Sullivan.

~

Joe Giambrone is a filmmaker and author of Hell of a Deal: A Supernatural Satire. He edits the Political Film Blog. He be reached at: polfilmblog at gmail.

May 3, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Nuclear Power, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Osama bin Laden’s Second Death

By Paul Craig Roberts | Lew Rockwell | May 2, 2011

If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool’s joke this morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans.

Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?

Consider also the claims, repeated by a triumphalist US media celebrating bin Laden’s death, that “bin Laden used his millions to bankroll terrorist training camps in Sudan, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, sending ‘holy warriors’ to foment revolution and fight with fundamentalist Muslim forces across North Africa, in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia.” That’s a lot of activity for mere millions to bankroll (perhaps the US should have put him in charge of the Pentagon), but the main question is: how was bin Laden able to move his money about? What banking system was helping him? The US government succeeds in seizing the assets of people and of entire countries, Libya being the most recent. Why not bin Laden’s? Was he carrying around with him $100 million dollars in gold coins and sending emissaries to distribute payments to his far-flung operations?

This morning’s headline has the odor of a staged event. The smell reeks from the triumphalist news reports loaded with exaggerations, from celebrants waving flags and chanting “USA USA.” Could something else be going on?

No doubt President Obama is in desperate need of a victory. He committed the fool’s error of restarting the war in Afghanistan, and now after a decade of fighting the US faces stalemate, if not defeat. The wars of the Bush/Obama regimes have bankrupted the US, leaving huge deficits and a declining dollar in their wake. And re-election time is approaching.

The various lies and deceptions, such as “weapons of mass destruction,” of the last several administrations had terrible consequences for the US and the world. But not all deceptions are the same. Remember, the entire reason for invading Afghanistan in the first place was to get bin Laden. Now that President Obama has declared bin Laden to have been shot in the head by US special forces operating in an independent country and buried at sea, there is no reason for continuing the war.

Perhaps the precipitous decline in the US dollar in foreign exchange markets has forced some real budget reductions, which can only come from stopping the open-ended wars. Until the decline of the dollar reached the breaking point, Osama bin Laden, who many experts believe to have been dead for years, was a useful bogeyman to use to feed the profits of the US military/security complex.

Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.

Copyright © 2011 Paul Craig Roberts

May 2, 2011 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | Leave a comment

Pakistan’s Boldness Reveals America’s Weakness

By Malou Innocent | The National Interest | April 29, 2011

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Pakistan has urged Afghanistan to reject a long-term strategic partnership with the United States. This revelation, following a string of other troubling developments in the decade-long war, makes it abundantly clear that Pakistan’s growing assertiveness is linked directly to the widespread perception in Pakistan of American weakness in Afghanistan.

The story claims that at an April 16th meeting in Kabul, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai to rebuff America’s “Strategic Partnership Declaration,” a formal agreement that would allow American military bases in Afghanistan beyond 2014 for the purpose of training Afghan troops (apparently, preventing terrorist bases for al-Qaeda requires permanent bases for America). As if that disclosure was not enough to raise the hackles of Washington’s foreign policy elite, Gilani also told Karzai that America’s policy of trying to weaken the Taliban’s momentum while at the same time bringing them to the negotiating table made no sense, and that their countries must take “ownership” of the peace process.

Of course, rather than use this opportunity to reexamine the efficacy of a prolonged U.S. presence in the region, the question Beltway insiders are asking is why—oh why!—would leaders in Kabul and Islamabad collude against Washington?

The answer is simple: America’s ostensible clients—Afghanistan and Pakistan—lack confidence in their patron and seek more viable—and geographically contiguous—alternatives for security. Why wouldn’t they? Our presence has increased the level of anti-American radicalism that provides passive support for Islamist terrorism; in turn, insurgents have responded to what they perceive as a hostile occupation by reasserting their authority with more violence and bloodshed. This vicious cycle has led to a noticeable deterioration of security in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. So, put into perspective, Why would any Afghan or Pakistani leader willingly put the future of Central Asia into Washington’s hands?

First and foremost, let us keep in mind America’s abysmal reputation in Pakistan. As one retired Pakistani general in Karachi told me, the perception in Pakistan is that America uses their country “like a condom.” Let us also remember that last November, after a sharp rise in the number of night raids and Afghan civilian casualties, President Karzai told the Washington Post, “The time has come to reduce military operations…to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life.”

Regardless of whether Pakistan gets its way, its impudence in pushing Afghanistan to abandon America exposes the real balance of power in the region. It is Pakistan, not the United States, that wields significant influence over Afghanistan’s major stakeholders. This includes old-guard mujahideen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Haqqani network and its connected affiliates, Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, and other militant heavyweights. This clash of strategic interests, not just between the United States and Pakistan but also among other competing regional powers, shows why Washington’s periodic troop surges, increased development aid, and Predator drone strikes have failed to translate into anything more than “fragile” and “reversible” gains on the ground. Such inhospitable conditions underscore the absurdity of the U.S.-led coalition’s Sisyphean nation-building project.

Rather than becoming a viable nation-state, Afghanistan will remain a bottomless pit for American credibility and resources. For this reason, U.S. leaders should not fall into the trap of refusing to withdraw from Afghanistan out of fear that the United States will appear weak. Prolonging our presence in Afghanistan is more likely to weaken the United States militarily and economically than would withdrawal.

May 1, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Russia aware of allies’ ground campaign plans in Libya – Lavrov

Libyan students training in the use of arms to defend their country against the imperialist forces of the U.S. and NATO as well as the rebels that are backed by the West. The government is handing out weapons to the people anticipating an invasion. by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
The government is handing out weapons to the people anticipating an invasion by NATO forces. Photo by Pan-African News Wire
RIA Novosti | April 30, 2011

Moscow is aware of the coalition’s plans about the ground military campaign in Libya, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.

“The information shows that both NATO and EU work on the similar plans. EU develops these plans to secure humanitarian convoys, though it is being stressed that it would take place after the UN gave the green light,” Lavrov said in an interview with Russian Center TV channel.

He said the possible ground military campaign should be sanctioned with the UN Security Council.

“If anybody wants to ask for this mandate [on carrying out ground campaign], welcome to the UN Security Council. We will discuss, try to understand what is planned, because the digressions from the mandate that we are watching now, are enough to learn lessons,” Lavrov said.

The UN Security Council adopted a resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya on March 17, paving the way for a military operation against Gaddafi which began two days later. The command of the operation was shifted from a U.S.-led international coalition to NATO in late March.

A total of 14 of the 28 NATO countries are taking part in the operation Unified Protector in Libya, which includes airstrikes, a no-fly zone and naval enforcement of an arms embargo.

April 30, 2011 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

Librulz

By Charles Davis | False Dichotomy | April 28, 2011

Glenn Greenwald used to be a liberal favorite back when he was railing against the Bush administration, considered a progressive hero for his forceful defenses of civil liberties and attacks on the warfare state.

Guess what happened: Greenwald kept up his whole having-actual-principles shtick even after Barack Obama’s glorious ascent to power. And that’s a no-no.

Since January 2009, Greenwald has come under increasingly ludicrous attacks from Obama’s partisan fan club, the premise underlying most of the broadsides being that any critic of the president’s must be a secret Republican or, my favorite, in it for the fame and money (I’m still waiting for my check from the Koch brothers).

In a recent interview with Out Magazine, Greenwald really stepped in it, though, when he suggested he might be open to supporting someone for president who’s not a Democrat. In particular, he said some complimentary things about Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor who, like Ron Paul, is campaigning for the Republican nomination on an anti-war, pro-drug legalization platform.

Now, as a non-voter I could perhaps criticize Greenwald for focusing a bit too much on electoral politics, which very rarely is a path toward real change; independent social movements, like the ones that pushed for civil rights and an end to the Vietnam war, seem to me much more effective. Instead of diverting time and resources into elections, I’d like to see more people organizing and their own communities and raising money not for politicians, but for health clinics and even alternative news organizations. But that, of course, is not what upsets Obama’s loyal fans.

In a piece much-circulated by that fan club, which by the reception from Democratic partisans I take it is supposed to be scathing, not satire, we are told Greenwald’s hypothetical support for Johnson constitutes an excommunicable offense. “Neither a Liberal Nor a Progressive,” blares the headline to the pieces, which gives a run-down of Johnson’s history as governor of slashing “taxes on the rich while cutting social services for the poor” (no one tell liberals about how that guy in the White House who just extended Bush’s tax cuts for the rich at the expense of social programs for the poor).

Given Johnson’s record — the accounting of which excludes that whole opposition to war and locking up hundreds of thousands of people for non-violent offenses stuff — we are told:

“You simply can’t consider yourself a progressive in any broadly accepted meaning of the term and thoughtfully and in an informed way support for president someone with the views and history of Gary Johnson.”

And:

“By saying he might support Gary Johnson, Glenn Greenwald has now demonstrated that he is a narrowly-focused advocate who cares about only a few issues, and is not a liberal or progressive with a broad sense of the common good.”

As the post makes clear, though, one can still be a “liberal or a progressive with a broad sense of the common good” if you support a guy who blows up little children with cluster bombs, as Barack Obama has in Yemen. You can still be a liberal or progressive in good standing if you support a man who has killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Pakistani civilians with flying death robots. And you can still be a liberal if you back a guy who has shown not the slighest inclination to reform, much less do away with, a war on drugs that has led to 2.3 million Americans being placed in cages, the vast majority minorities.

That the president has doubled the number of troops in Afghanistan, ordered more drone strikes in Pakistan than his predecessor did in eight years, and launched another war in Libya without so much as getting a rubber stamp from Congress is of no concern to the good party-line liberal. The president, after all, is a Democrat.

If that’s what it really means to be a liberal or a progressive — supporting empire and mass incarceration or, even worse in my opinion, pretending neither exist — Greenwald might be happy to learn he’s not one.

April 30, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

NATO’s Kosovo Air War Redux

By Stephen Gowans | What’s Left | April 27, 2011

NATO’s military intervention in Libya began as an enforcement of a no-fly zone to protect civilians but has quickly morphed into an attack on civilian targets to undermine the morale of Gaddafi loyalists in order to turn them against the country’s leader.

NATO has struck Gaddafi’s residence repeatedly, and in recent days attacked a TV broadcast center.

If it sounds like a rerun of NATO’s 1999 air war on Yugoslavia, when NATO showered bombs on civilian targets in order to “protect” civilians, that’s because NATO has dusted off an old script.

The campaign over Libya, according to senior US officers, draws on lessons from 1999. (1)

Here was US General Michael Short 12 years ago on the logic of the NATO bombing campaign.

If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, “Hey, Slobo, what’s this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?” (2)

Short told The New York Times that the bombing campaign was based on “hopes that the distress of the Yugoslav public will undermine support for the authorities in Belgrade.” (3)

Here’s US General John P. Jumper today, who was commander in 1999 of US Air Force units in Europe.

It was when we went in and began to disturb important and symbolic sites in Belgrade, and began to bring to a halt the middle-class life in Belgrade, that Milosevic’s own people began to turn on him. (4)

Jumper says NATO is following the same logic in Libya today.

How NATO got away with bombing civilian targets in Belgrade in 1999 offers insight into how it’s getting away with bombing civilian targets in Tripoli in 2011.

First, then as now, no one was big enough and strong enough to stop them.

Second, NATO bamboozled enough people into believing Serb forces were slaughtering ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to win support for an intervention as the only way to avert a bloodbath (sound familiar)? The tens of thousands of corpses NATO ministers warned would be found scattered across Kosovo and buried in the Trepca mines, were never found.

Third, NATO simply made the definition of a military target so malleable that it could fit just about any site NATO planners wished to destroy. Roads and railways were said to be legitimate quarry, because they were used by military vehicles. Bridges allowed military units to move easily from one point to another, and therefore could be taken down as legitimate military targets. Radio-television buildings were fair game because they were deemed to be part of the enemy’s “propaganda apparatus” (which means, if we’re to apply a consistent standard, that The New York Times’ building is a legitimate target for any country the United States attacks.) Government buildings were part of the enemy’s command and control infrastructure, and as a consequence could be obliterated as lawful targets. And the schools, hospitals and people destroyed by NATO bombs that couldn’t be passed off as legitimate military targets were dumped into the convenient category of “collateral damage.”

Peter Ackerman, the moneybags who hobnobs with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Gates on the US foreign policy elite’s Council on Foreign Relations, and who founded an organization to promote color revolutions, created a documentary about the downfall of Milosevic, called Bringing Down a Dictator. It credits so-called nonviolent pro-democracy activists—not NATO’s bombing of civilian targets to turn Milosevic’s supporters against him–with bringing about Milosevic’s ouster.

Maybe Ackerman’s definition of non-violence (and of dictator: Milosevic was elected in multiparty elections which continued to be carried out after he became president) is as malleable as NATO’s definition of a military target.

What’s clear is that NATO and the color revolution outfit Ackerman founded have the same goal: to sweep leaders of non-satellite countries from power in order to integrate their countries unconditionally into the global economy as Western vassal states.

If the goal can be achieved by bombing civilians to weaken their morale, NATO is up for it, as much today as it was in 1999.

1. Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, “Nato says it is stepping up attacks on Libya targets”, The New York Times, April 26, 2011.
2. Washington Post, May 24, 1999.
3. New York Times, May 13, 1999. Cited in William Blum’s Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower.
4. Shanker and Sanger.

April 27, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Canada’s Massive Military Budget Off the Table in Federal Election

By Matthew Behrens – April 24, 2011

Among many substantive issues not discussed during campaign 2011 is the $23 billion Canada now spends on war, a massive investment that all three major federal parties will maintain if elected.

Add in the ongoing costs of the Afghanistan war plus undisclosed funding for Canada’s bombardment of Libya (well over 200 aerial bombing runs and aerial “sorties” to date), and the $23 billion figure may run higher.

To put this in perspective, slightly more than $63 million a day is spent on Canada’s war machine. That’s the daily equivalent of 420 affordable housing units or 3,000 four-year full-tuition grants for university students. Over the course of a month, that’s 13,000 affordable housing units and 90,000 students going to university without massive debt load.

It is in this context that politicians preaching fiscal restraint and support for burdened families continue proffering blind allegiance to a well-funded institution whose leadership, past and present, has always been clear: in the words of former General Rick Hillier, their role is to kill people.

While many young people join the military because they believe they’re contributing to society (in addition to those who simply need the income or an education), there are other ways for them to live out those aspirations without having to pick up a gun and face the choice of killing or being killed.

But those other choices are not part of the dominant parties’ platforms. (By contrast, the Green Party would reduce war spending to the then historically high 2005 levels, the Bloc has criticized high war spending but is not specific in its plans, and the Communist Party would reduce military spending by 75%)

In the case of the NDP, it’s likely that many supporters are unaware of their party’s willingness to choose guns over butter. After all, the NDP is traditionally seen as the place where anti-war activists park their vote, and the strongest anti-war statements usually come from its MPs, who often speak at peace rallies. But most NDP MPs have long accepted the framework of ever increasing amounts of war funding.

Why focus on the NDP when they are the party that appears closest to social movements? The answer would hopefully be self-evident, inasmuch as the party relies on them for election workers and funding, yet appears to ignore them by developing policy that’s aimed at some mythic “middle of the road Canada.”

This is not news to anyone who has followed the party’s growing acceptance of militarism, especially under Jack Layton’s leadership.

The NDP endorsed a 2002 Parliamentary Committee’s call for increasing military spending a full 50% (which would mean $28 billion per year by the end of 2010, and we’re almost there). That was the same year NDP MPs began joining their colleagues in a unique indoctrination program called the Canadian Forces Parliamentary Program, which “embeds” MPs in war training exercises where, according to a report in Canadian Parliamentary Review, they “learn how the equipment works, they train with the troops, and they deploy with their units on operations. Parliamentarians are integrated into the unit by wearing the same uniform, living on bases, eating in messes, using CF facilities and equipment.”

In May 2005, the NDP supported the Paul Martin 2005 Liberal budget. Hailed as Canada’s “First NDP budget,” it sported the largest military spending increase in 20 years, making Canada’s war budget higher than at any time since the end of World War II.

When the infamous NDP-Liberal-Bloc coalition came together in December 2008, the issue of withdrawal from Afghanistan was suddenly “off the table.” And as NATO generals recently called for increased bombing of Libya despite rising civilian casualties, there was silence from the campaign trail.

Shortly after my concerns were posted on Jack Layton’s facebook page, I received a phone call from the NDP’s Ottawa-based “war room,” a thoroughly insulting moniker to anyone who has actually experienced the horror of war as civilian or soldier (why not a “torture room” or a “pillage room” to make further light of those subjects?). A campaign worker, to his credit, wanted to dialogue, but noted that if Jack Layton were to discuss military cuts, he would be hurt in mainstream media coverage and by the perceptions of “average Canadians.”

While this line did not surprise me – it is used by every political party facing the choice of taking a principled stand or following backroom advisers wholly insulated from the electorate – it certainly is not in sync with this spring’s Leger Marketing report that revealed almost 60% of those polled declared “Canada should take a peace dividend and cut back on military spending to focus on other more pressing social issues at home.” Despite a decade of endless military propaganda, “Red Friday” support the troops rallies, yellow ribbons, and a seriously weak Canadian peace movement, such numbers are remarkable.

Those numbers have not changed substantively in over a decade: a 2000 Maclean’s poll found 75% of Canadians chose housing over updating the military, with only 19% favouring the latter. This followed the military’s mythic “decade of darkness,” the Chretien years of massive social program cuts that barely touched military spending, which never dipped below $10 billion. Indeed, the mid-1990s saw reports on military warehouses overflowing with weaponry, and between 1980 and 2000, Canada invested over a quarter of a trillion dollars in war.

As Canadian bombers prepared to unleash their fury on Yugoslavia in 1999, the Globe and Mail reported that “The Canadian Forces can hurl more raw firepower at a potential enemy today than they could during the Persian Gulf War…Since the gulf war, all three services have increased their ‘combat capability’ (the wherewithal to inflict heavy damage on the enemy), said Major-General Kenneth Pennie, director-general of strategic planning for the Canadian Forces. The equipment includes new frigates for the navy, armoured vehicles for the army and high-tech ‘smart’ bombs for the air force. Given the improved accuracy, Gen. Pennie said, ‘we find that some conventional weapons can be more useful than nuclear weapons.’”

At that time, homelessness had recently been declared a national emergency, and while then Liberal War Minister Art Eggleton was asked how Canada could afford the bombing of Yugoslavia, he replied “It’s obviously something that the government of Canada will cover.” Yet a week later, the Toronto Star reported “(Federal minister responsible for homelessness) Bradshaw’s spokesperson said yesterday there are no plans to put more money into affordable housing.”

This is a problem with historic roots: there’s always money for war, regardless of how bare the cupboard might be. The refusal to challenge a Canadian institution and ask fundamental questions about why it is needed, and how it fails to contribute to a civil society, is frustrating to say the least.

And so, despite the perception of the NDP as a natural choice for voters concerned about peace, the NDP simply proposes moving the chess pieces around without asking why we’re still playing the same old deadly game. Indeed, we are reassured that the NDP opposes the F-35 fighter jets. Fair enough. But that money would instead be spent on the navy’s warships, the same ones on which numerous NDP MPs have found themselves embedded over the past decade.

While this sounds like a benign alternative, it ignores the fact that Canadian warships have contributed more misery than the Canadian bombing missions of the past 25 years. Indeed, during the 1990s, Canada’s navy spent over $1 billion in the enforcement of devastating sanctions that killed over 1.5 million Iraqi people. In the 2003 invasion of Iraq that mythmakers have tried to convince us Canada was not involved in, the Canadian Navy played a key role in escorting the US warships launching cruise missiles and bombing runs. There are few clearer examples of aiding and abetting the murder of Iraqis than this.

Canadian warships are also dangerous. The HMCS Fredericton, for example, the “Stalker of the Seas,” boasts weapons which fire 4,500 rounds of ammunition a minute, Harpoon missiles that can “deliver” a 227 kg warhead to a range in excess of 130 km and a Bofors gun, “capable of firing 2.4 kg shells at a rate of 220 rounds/min at a range of more than 17 km.” Not most people’s idea of peaceful conflict resolution.

But pointing out such things fails to burst the NDP’s bubble. They would put the military to work on “peacekeeping” and humanitarian relief, helping after disasters, and flood cleanup. But those are all civilian functions that one need not have training in the art of killing to perform.

“We need to support our military,” my local NDP candidate pleads, a phrase used ad nauseum that reduces one of Canada’s best-funded federal programs to the status of a fragile flower whose petals could fall off at any moment. Can we not look forward to the day when “need to support” is used in support of daycare, women’s programs, education, an end to poverty?

While space does not allow an exploration of the myth of Canada’s potential for peacekeeping – something which was always a cleverly disguised bit of cover for the West’s cold war aims – it is important to point out as well that the NDP’s proposal to use the military to do the work that used to be handled in conflict zones by NGOs makes the latter’s work all the more difficult, since it blurs the distinction between armed parties and civil society, putting NGO workers at risk.

After pointing out all these reasons why I could not support the NDP, my friend at the NDP war room pleaded with me for my support. How can I vote for bloodshed and misery, I asked, whether it is delivered from the skies, from a warship, or through the hunger that millions will suffer to pay for all this?

Ultimately, it comes down to a choice: will we continue to choose the path of the gun, so successful that over 100 million lives were lost as a result during the 20th century (which excludes the millions who died because all the funds they needed to sustain life were sent to the war departments of the world)? Or will we seek another way? So far, those with any hope of forming the next government have made their unfortunate choices clear.

~

Matthew Behrens can be contacted by email via – tasc (at) web.ca

April 25, 2011 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

Drone ‘Debate’ Breaks Out at Washington Post

By Peter Hart | FAIR | April 25, 2011

Readers of the Washington Post can see this headline in today’s edition (4/25/11) about the U.S. drone airstrikes:

Debates Underway on Combat Drones

But there is no actual debate in the article. Reporter Walter Pincus cites a British military study that calls the use of missile-firing drones “a genuine revolution in military affairs,” adding that the “use of unmanned aircraft prevents the potential loss of aircrew lives and is thus in itself morally justified.”

Pincus goes on to explain:

At a Washington conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) last week, the issue of drones was also widely discussed.

That ‘wide discussion’ would seem to have involved drone proponents from the CIA and the military. Those quoted by the Post were:

–“Lt. Col. Bruce Black, program manager for the Air Force Predator and Reaper aircraft.”

–“former CIA director Michael V. Hayden,” who explained that drone pilots “can call up computer maps that show the potential effects of each weapon.” Hayden explained that teams can ask for an attack’s likely impact on the ground– which is apparently called “the bug splat.”

–“Retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, former Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” who apparently talked about “potential problems with public perceptions.”

–“Col. Dean Bushey, deputy director of the Air Force Joint Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center,” who explained that drone pilots train like conventional pilots.

There are plenty of questions to ask about a government policy of assassination by remote control drone aircraft– including whether or not this is even legal. The Post’s “debate” would seem to exclude anyone who doesn’t think this is a sound policy.

April 25, 2011 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

The Obama-Gates Scam on Military Spending

By GARETH PORTER | CounterPunch | April 21, 2011

Last week Barack Obama announced that he wants to cut $400 billion in military spending and said he would work with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs on a “fundamental review” of U.S. “military missions, capabilities and our role in a changing world” before making a decision.

Spokesman Geoff Morrell responded by hinting that Gates was displeased with having to cut that much from his spending plan.  Gates “has been clear that further significant defense cuts cannot be accomplished without future cuts in force structure and military capability,” said Morrell, who volunteered that the Secretary not been informed about the Obama decision until the day before.

But it is difficult to believe that open display of tension between Obama and Gates was not scripted.  In the background of those moves is a larger political maneuver on which the two of them have been collaborating since last year in which they gave the Pentagon a huge increase in funding for the next decade and then started to take credit for small or nonexistent reductions from that increase.

The original Obama-Gates base military spending plan – spending excluding the costs of the current wars – for FY 2011 through 2020, called for spending $5.8 trillion, or $580 billion annually, as former Pentagon official Lawrence Korb noted last January.  That would have represented a 25 per cent real increase over the average annual level of military spending, excluding war costs, by the George W. Bush administration.

Even more dramatic, the Obama-Gates plan was 45 per cent higher than the annual average of military spending level in the 1992-2001 decade, as reflected in official DOD data.

The Obama FY 2012 budget submission reduced the total increase only slightly – by $162 billion over the four years from 2017 to 2020, according to the careful research of the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA).  That left an annual average base military spending level of $564 billion – 23 per cent higher than Bush’s annual average and 40 percent above the level of the 1990s.

Central to last week’s chapter in the larger game was Obama’s assertion that Gates had already saved $400 billion in his administration.  “Over the last two years,” he said, “Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.”

The $400 billion figure is based primarily on the $330 billion Gates claimed he had saved by stopping, reducing or otherwise changing plans for 31 weapons programs.  But contrary to the impression left by Obama, that figure does not reflect any cut in projected DOD spending.  All of it was used to increase spending on operations and investment in the military budget.

The figure was concocted, moreover, by using tricky accounting methods verging on chicanery.  It was based on arbitrary assumptions about how much all 31 programs would have cost over their entire lifetimes stretching decades into the future, assuming they would all reach completion.  That methodology offered endless possibilities for inflated claims of savings.

The PDA points out that yet another $100 billion that Gates announced in January as cost-cutting by the military services was also used to increase spending on operations and new weapons program that the services wanted.  That leaves another $78 billion in cuts over five years also announced by Gates in January, but most of that may have been added to the military budget for “overseas contingency operations” rather than contributed to deficit reduction, according to the PDA.

Even if the $400 billion in ostensible cuts that Obama is seeking were genuine, the Pentagon would be still be sitting on total projected increase of 14 per cent above the level of military spending of the Bush administration. Last week’s White House fact sheet on deficit reduction acknowledged that Obama has the “goal of holding the growth in base security spending below inflation.”
The “fundamental review” that Obama says will be carried out with the Pentagon and military bureaucracies will be yet another chapter in this larger maneuver.  It’s safe bet that, in the end, Gates will reach into his bag of accounting tricks again for most of the desired total.

Despite the inherently deceptive character of Obama’s call for the review, it has a positive side: it gives critics of the national security state an opportunity to point out that such a review should be carried out by a panel of independent military budget analysts who have no financial stake in the outcome – unlike the officials of the national security state.

Such an independent panel could come up with a list of all the military missions and capabilities that don’t make the American people more secure or even make them less secure, as well as those for which funding should be reduced substantially because of technological and other changes.  It could also estimate how much overall projected military spending should be reduced, without regard to what would be acceptable to the Pentagon or a majority in Congress.

The panel would not require White House or Congressional approval.  It could be convened by a private organization or, better yet, by a group of concerned Members of Congress. They could use its data and conclusions as the basis for creating a legislative alternative to existing U.S. national security policy, perhaps in the form of a joint resolution.  That would give millions of Americans who now feel that nothing can be done about endless U.S. wars and the national security state’s grip on budgetary resources something to rally behind.

Three convergent political forces are contributing to the eventual weakening of the national security state: the growing popular opposition to failed wars, public support for shifting spending priorities from the national security sector to the domestic economy and pressure for deficit and debt reduction.  But in the absence of concerted citizen action, it could take several years to see decisive results.  Seizing the opportunity for an independent review of military missions and spending would certainly speed up that process.

~

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in 2006.

April 21, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Euro-American Land Invasion of Libya Imminent

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | April 20, 2011

The official Euro-American invasion of Libya is about to begin. I say “official” invasion because the Europeans and Americans already have boots on the ground making bloody footprints in Libya, from U.S. Special Ops and CIA, British Special Air Services commandos, and their French counterparts. The news media of the invader countries know their armed forces are active on Libyan soil, and occasionally report as much. But they dutifully await announcements from their governments that the “real” invasion has, officially, begun.

That time is near. The British announced they are sending a ten-man military adviser team to help the rebels. The French, who were obscenely quick to recognize the rebels’ so-called National Transitional Council as a kind of government, already have military advisors in Benghazi. The American CIA and the Saudi Arabians are thought to be truly in on the ground floor, having sponsored and financed Khalifa Haftar, the Libyan exile who formed the so-called Libyan National Army that has been trying to mount an armed revolt against the government in Tripoli for more than 20 years.

The mass ground onslaught may well commence with the imminent deployment of the European Union’s so-called “battle groups” – multinational military units of about 1,500 men each. The 27-nation European Union had been discussing ways to insinuate a force into Libya since the beginning of April. Unexpectedly, Libyan leader Moamar Gaddafi agreed in principle to allow international humanitarian personnel to aid civilians in the contested port city of Misrata. Quickly, the Europeans seized on Gaddafi’s statement as an excuse to send up to 1,000 men on an assignment that could only be accomplished by a large ground military force operating with close air support. The EU battle group would secure the port facilities, which are now held by rebels, and then create land corridors into and out of the city, much of which is held by loyal Gaddafi soldiers whose lines would have to be crossed.

Remembering that once you give the former colonialist an inch, he will take your whole country, Col. Gaddafi vowed that he would fight any foreigner soldiers that attempted to land on Libyan territory, no matter what they claimed their mission was.

The European scheme is transparently cynical. They seek to land a “battle group” in Misrata under humanitarian pretenses, and then inevitably clash with Gaddafi’s soldiers dug in nearby. That will be the beginning of the European’s multinational land invasion, with thousands of troops arriving in Libya in short order. The siege of Tripoli will begin, if the regime holds out, and if not, then begins the guerilla war or, as the Euro-Americans like to call it when they steal someone else’s country, the “insurgency.”

The U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM, used to worry about getting permission to open an office on African soil. Soon, it may be operating from one of the largest countries on the continent.

April 20, 2011 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

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