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LAOS: For Cluster Bomb Survivors, War Far From Over

By Irwin Loy | November 10, 2010 | IPS

VIENTIANE – Eighteen-year-old Phongsavath Manithong rubbed his eyes with the back of his arms as he described how his life changed forever.

He was not even born yet when U.S. military pilots dropped millions of tiny explosives onto Laos. But almost four decades after war ended for this South-east Asian nation, it is people like him who still suffer.

Three years ago, Phongsavath stumbled onto a small, metallic sphere buried in the ground near his school.

He had heard stories about the planes that rumbled overhead decades before, dropping fire from the sky. But he had never before seen a bomb, or held one in his hands. “I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t think it would be dangerous. So I tried to open it,” Phongsavath recalled.

That decision changed his life forever. Phongsavath remembers only seeing a flash of light before his world fell dark. When he awoke in a hospital, he was blind. The bomb had robbed him of his eyesight and ripped away both his hands.

The weapon was part of a decades-old cluster bomb that had been dropped on Laos during the U.S. military’s secretive operations in Indochina between 1964 and 1973. The goal of the air strikes had been to destroy the crucial North Vietnamese Army supply line that snaked its way through Laos and Cambodia on its way to the south. By the time the war was over, those aerial campaigns entrenched Laos as the most heavily bombed country in history.

But today, it is people like Phongsavath who are paying the price for that conflict. Since the war ended, more than 20,000 people in this country have been killed or injured by leftover explosives.

Critics take particular aim at so-called cluster bombs – large explosives dropped from the sky, which contain hundreds of smaller submunitions, or ‘bombies’, as they are referred to in Laos – because they are especially deadly to civilians long after military hostilities have ended.

Estimates suggest more than 270 million individual bombies were scattered over Laos. With a failure rate estimated at around 30 percent, these deadly weapons litter the Lao countryside.

But advocates hope that 2010 represents a turning point in a long-running campaign to eradicate cluster bombs. In August, a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs came into effect. Starting Nov. 9 here in Vientiane, delegates from more than 100 countries are taking part in the first high- level meeting of signatory nations since then, aiming to hammer out a plan to implement the landmark accord.

“The horrifying thing is there may be up to 80 million of these bombs scattered around the countryside, in farmers’ fields, next to schools, beside roads,” said Thomas Nash, coordinator for the Cluster Munition Coalition, a broad group of civil society organisations who have pushed for the wide-reaching ban. “So there’s a huge amount of work to be done to clear this country of the deadly legacy from a war that ended over 35 years ago.”

Laos is seen, per capita, as the most heavily affected country by such munitions. But cluster bombs have riddled conflict-ridden countries around the globe, from Angola to Zambia and Lebanon to Libya.

The 108 nations that have signed on to the Convention on Cluster Munitions have committed to banning the use of the weapons and the eventual destruction of existing stockpiles. They have also made broad pledges to clear contaminated land and provide adequate aid to victims of cluster bombs.

But while heavily affected countries like Laos have ratified the treaty, major military players that still stockpile the weapons – the United States, China and Russia, for example – have not.

Advocates like Nash, however, are hoping the convention will serve to stigmatise the weapons enough so that their use is considered untenable – something he believes has already been accomplished with landmines.

The United States, for example, has not signed on to the Ottawa Treaty, which banned the use of landmines and came into effect more than a decade ago. But it is believed that the U.S. military has not deployed the weapons since the first Gulf War.

“Anti-personnel mines have been eradicated from most military arsenals and we believe the same will happen with cluster munitions,” Nash said.

“You cannot win a political war if you kill civilians, and that’s what cluster bombs do. So I think the message to countries … that haven’t signed is that we believe we have established a standard by which all countries are judged, whether they sign the treaty or not,” he added.

For many who are already scarred by cluster bombs, however, life remains a daily struggle.

Thirty-nine-year-old Ta Doangchom lost both his arms and the sight in his right eye when he triggered a bombie while foraging for food nine years ago. “I can’t support my family,” he said. “All of my children had to leave school because we were so poor. I feel like a burden on my wife and on my family.”

Like Ta, Phongsavath now advocates on behalf of other survivors, urging an end to the use of the weapons that devastated their lives. But he is also still learning to cope with what happened to him.

“I never saw the war with my own eyes,” Phongsavath said. “But I now know that the bombs were dropped on my country. And they didn’t just kill soldiers. They killed men, women and children.”

November 20, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Pentagon blows up thousands of homes in Afghanistan

Repeating the horrors of the Vietnam War

By Brian Becker | ANSWER Coalition | November 18, 2010

Father and child in Afghanistan near soldierBorrowing a page from its infamous “pacification” effort in South Vietnam, where peasant villages were napalmed and burned to the ground to “save them from the communists,” the Obama-ordered surge in Afghanistan has been secretly blowing up thousands of homes and leveling portions of the Afghan countryside.

As tens of thousands of U.S. troops have surged into southern Afghanistan, villagers have fled. Then the Petraeus-led occupation forces have determined which homes will be destroyed.

“In Arghandab District, for instance, every one of the 40 homes in the village of Khosrow was flattened by a salvo of 25 missiles, according to the district governor, Shah Muhammed Ahmadi, who estimated that 120 to 130 houses had been demolished in his district,” reported the New York Times, Nov. 16, 2010.

The Pentagon asserts that they must destroy the homes because some of them may have explosive devices inside.

The Pentagon’s murderous rampage and terror campaign 40 years ago against South Vietnamese villages, in areas that were considered sympathetic to the resistance forces, used much of the same kind of explanation. In fact, the New York Times in a throw back to Vietnam quotes the Arghandab District Governor, who is working with the occupation forces:

“We had to destroy them to make them safe.”

That this tactic is part of a high-tech terror campaign against Afghan villages and the people who inhabit them is evident even by the descriptions and accounts of western media outlets that are supporting the war.

Again, from the New York Times, Nov. 16, 2010, which describes weapons as tools:

“American troops are using an impressive array of tools not only to demolish homes, but also to eliminate tree lines where insurgents could hide, blow up outbuildings, flatten agricultural walls, and carve new “military roads,” because existing ones are so heavily mined, according to journalists embedded in the area recently.

“One of the most fearsome tools is the Miclic, the M58 Mine-Clearing Line Charge, a chain of explosives tied to a rocket, which upon impact destroys everything in a swath 30 feet wide and 325 feet long. The Himars missile system, a pod of 13-foot rockets carrying 200-pound warheads, has also been used frequently for demolition work.

“Often, new military roads go right through farms and compounds, cutting a route that will keep soldiers safe from roadside bombs. In Zhare District alone, the 101st Airborne’s Second Brigade has lost 30 soldiers since last June, mostly to such bombs.”

Activists at the organization Afghanistan Rights Monitor described the destroyed homes. “These are all mud houses, quite humble houses.”

When Gen. David Petraeus describes his counter-insurgency strategy, he always puts in a few diplomatic words about the need of surging troops to win the “hearts and minds” of the people in Afghanistan’s poverty stricken villages. That is purely for public consumption—a message echoed endlessly by the complicit corporate-owned media and the politicians of both parties that serves as a mask for the Pentagon’s campaign of systematic terror employed to subdue an occupied people.

On Dec. 16, 2010, anti-war veterans and people of conscience will stand up in a dramatic action in opposition to the terror campaign waged from the White House and Pentagon. Join us in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 16 and be part of history.

November 19, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

US to spend $85bn on nuclear complex

Press TV – November 19, 2010

The US plans to allocate more than $85 billion during the next decade to modernize its nuclear weapons complex, according to the White House.

Under the George W. Bush administration, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), tasked with ensuring the safety and reliability of the US nuclear weapons stockpile, lost 20 percent of its purchasing power, UPI reported.

The NNSA said it is committed to modernizing the country’s nuclear weapons and that it has the backing of the White House.

US president Barack Obama has called for $7 billion to be made available to fund the NNSA by 2011, which would represent close to a 10 percent increase from 2010.

In addition to the funding Obama is seeking, the NNSA would be funded with another $600 million in 2012.

The White House said $85 billion is to be made available to the NNSA in the coming decade, which would enable the agency to comprehensively update the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Earlier this year, US lawmakers, made a proposal to allocate $80.9 billion to the NNSA. The White House plan calls $4.1 billion more than the proposal of Congress.

“This level of funding is unprecedented since the end of the Cold War,” the White House said in a statement.

November 19, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

British Defense Chief: 30 to 40 Years of Afghanistan Occupation Ahead

The New American | November 17, 2010

The foreign policy bait-and-switch continues. First, President Barack Obama declared the end of combat in Iraq, withdrawing some U.S. troops but leaving many others behind, possibly for decades, and redefining their role as “advise and assist” — whereupon they continued engaging in combat. Now, with Obama having publicly stated his intent to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan next July, both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus are arguing for a long-term, if not permanent, U.S. presence in Afghanistan.

On top of that, British Defense Chief Gen. Sir David Richards, echoing their sentiments, has stated that “Nato now needs to plan for a 30 or 40 year role to help the Afghan armed forces hold their country against the militants,” according to the Daily Mail, though he “stuck to the government’s plans to withdraw combat troops by 2014 but made clear that thousands of troops will be needed long after that date.”

In an interview on November 14, Richards said, “Everyone is clear that we will have to remains [sic] a lot longer than” four to five years. “The plans,” he added, “are now in place to do that” and will be made “rather clearer” at the upcoming NATO summit in Lisbon.

Richards correctly argued that the Taliban and al-Qaeda cannot be defeated militarily and that victory cannot be declared by “marching into another nation’s capital,” as in conventional warfare. These organizations, after all, are loosely organized and have no command center that can be neutralized. However, he contended, victory over Islamic terrorism in the traditional sense “is unnecessary and would never be achieved. But we can [sic] contain it to the point that our lives and our children’s lives are led securely? I think we can.”

The problem is that Richards, along with most other members of the government and media elite, believes that continued intervention in Afghanistan by foreign countries is the best way to go about containing terrorism. Therefore, in his opinion, U.S. and British forces must remain in Afghanistan for “generations,” albeit under the rubric of assistance rather than combat. Richards, writes the Mail, “said that there would need to be more support for the military from political, diplomatic and international aid efforts if the effort is to succeed.” (He did allow for the possibility of negotiating with some Taliban members, an option that the Obama administration has opposed.)

The idea that Islamic terrorism is, in large measure, a response to foreign intervention in Muslim countries seems never to have crossed Richards’ mind; but then such thoughts are anathema to a political establishment with an enormously inflated opinion of its own benevolence and effectiveness. Rare indeed is the politician or pundit who suggests that his own government ought to maintain “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none,” as Thomas Jefferson counseled. When one does make such a suggestion, he can expect to be shouted down with charges of “isolationism.”

Thus, both British and American officials, regardless of political affiliation, are playing along with the charade of ending combat while continuing to station troops in volatile regions and of stamping out terrorism by prolonging the conditions that incite it. In Britain, Prime Minster David Cameron of the Conservative Party “has recently moderated [his] stance” toward withdrawing troops from Afghanistan next year in response to Richards’ and Petraeus’ assertions that “it may be 2012 before there can be any significant draw down of frontline forces,” says the Mail. Likewise, the paper reported that the Labor Party’s shadow defense secretary, Jim Murphy, “said Gen Richards was ‘right’ that there was no purely military solution and said there would be ‘no white flag surrender moment.’ He added: ‘It will be for the long haul.’ ”

On this side of the Atlantic, Obama himself “is going to make a public announcement of the US government’s official abandonment of the July 2011 date and the new 2014 ‘target’ for the war effort’s transition to Afghan control,” according to Antiwar.com’s Jason Ditz, who adds that “Obama will be vowing an ‘enduring presence’ in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 date.”

It appears, then, that Afghanistan (and Iraq) will be occupied by foreign troops for years to come, costing American and British taxpayers a hefty sum and increasing, rather than decreasing, the chances of terrorism against those same taxpayers. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion; and just this summer CIA Director Leon Panetta estimated there were no more than 100 al-Qaeda militants in all of Afghanistan. At the same time, NATO is spending an estimated $50 million for every Taliban member it kills in that same country. Surely there are better uses for this increasingly scarce money, such as in paying down both governments’ astronomical debts. Bringing the troops home, cutting the defense budget down to what is needed strictly to defend our actual territory, and eliminating foreign aid and other intervention will do far more for our pocketbooks and our security than another 40 years’ worth of futile — and, from the American perspective, unconstitutional — intervention.

November 18, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

White House Says Child Soldiers Are Ok, if They Fight Terrorists

Photo: Creative Commons/hdptcar
By Michelle Chen | ColorLines | November 15, 2010
“You cannot be completely happy with all these wounds—both in your body and in your mind.” — 15 year-old child soldier

The phenomenon of child soldiers, like genocide, slavery and torture, seems like one of those crimes that no nation could legitimately defend. Yet the Obama administration just decided to leave countless kids stranded on some of the world’s bloodiest battlegrounds.

The administration stunned human rights groups last month by sidestepping a commitment to help countries curb the military exploitation of children. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy reported that President Obama issued a presidential memorandum granting waivers from the Child Soldiers Prevention Act to four countries: Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Yemen. The memo instructed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton that it is in our “national interest” to continue extending military aid to those countries, despite their failure to comply with the rules Congress passed and George W. Bush signed in 2008.

A thumbs-up for child soldiers from the pen of President Obama? Whitehouse spokesperson P.J. Crowley explained it was a strategic decision to ease the 2008 law. The rationale is that on balance, it’s more effective for the U.S. to keep providing military assistance that will help countries gradually evolve out of the practice of marshaling kids to the battlefield, rather than isolating them.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Crowley argued, “These countries have put the right policies in place… but are struggling to correctly implement them.” The New York Times reported that administration spokespeople also cited the countries’ crucial role in global counter-terrorism efforts.

Strategically granting certain countries a pass on child rights reflects Washington’s warped attitude toward the global human rights regime. The U.S. has failed to ratify, or simply ignored, numerous human rights protocols, and our ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child has languished. Human Rights Watch points out, “Only the United States and Somalia, which has no functioning national government, have failed to ratify the treaty.” (Although we did ratify two optional protocols in 2002, relating to child soldiers and other forms of exploitation.)

Somalia, by the way, is one of just two countries that the White House allowed to be sanctioned under the 2008 law; the second was Burma. Presumably this is because Somalia is not receiving direct military funding, reports the Monitor. Yet the U.S. continues to support Somali government forces as they fight Islamic insurgents—with the help of a large force of child soldiers. (To their credit, Somalia has at least promised the U.N. they”ll stop arming kids eventually, according to the Washington Post).

Maybe you could argue that the U.S. is so “advanced” it needn’t bother with rules about children’s rights to education and whatnot. Obama’s waivers might be seen as realpolitik in areas like Yemen, whose military we support as part of our sprawling counter-terrorism operations. But the bottom line is that the administration has carved out an exception to a law intended to ethically guide the flow of U.S. aid money around the world.

According to the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, which holds America to the same scrutiny that countries like Uganda and DRC routinely face in the media, we benefit indirectly and directly from the exploitation of child fighters:

In 2006 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) registered 59 children in detention during 16 visits to five places of detention or internment controlled by the USA or the UK in Iraq. US soldiers stationed at the detention centres and former detainees described abuses against child detainees, including the rape of a 15-year-old boy at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, forced nudity, stress positions, beating and the use of dogs. Following US troop increases in Iraq in early 2007, US military arrests of children there rose from an average of 25 per month in 2006 to an average of 100 per month. Military officials reported that 828 were children held at Camp Cropper by mid-September, including children as young as 11. A 17-year-old was reportedly strangled by a fellow detainee in early 2007. In August 2007 the USA opened Dar al-Hikmah, a non-residential facility intended to provide education services to 600 detainees aged 11-17 pending release or transfer to Iraqi custody. US military officials excluded an estimated 100 children from participation in the program, apparently on the grounds that they were “extremists” and “beyond redemption”.

Omar Khadr, the young Canadian detainee at Guantanamo Bay, remains trapped in a Kafkaesque quasi-judicial system without regard to the fact that he was a child when captured. Rights advocates like Monia Mazigh in Ottowa have called for Khadr to be recognized as a child soldier, but the administration seems to think securing a conviction in Kangaroo Court takes precedence over international law. And because Khadr, like the other Gitmo prisoners, is identified with that faceless dark horde the U.S. has branded “terrorists,” Americans aren’t even inclined to see him as a human being, let alone as a juvenile soldier deserving of sympathy.

So America’s hypocrisy on children in war has many layers. Obama condemns the practice in theory, then undermines federal law by issuing waivers for our partners in Africa and the Middle East. And of course, Washington sees no problem with punishing child soldiers as adults when they’re aligned with the terrorists who are bent on destroying America.

UN Treaties alone obviously won’t demobilize all the world’s child soldiers, but their main role is to put down a legal placeholder. And it’s that moral guidepost that the U.S. undermines every time it waives parallel U.S. laws based on the “national interest.”

Obama’s memorandum may look jarring on paper, but it’s grimly consistent with Washington’s agenda of waging war indefinitely, without boundaries, against an enemy we can no longer really define. The U.S. supports warfare that uses children as weapons, warfare that kills civilian children indiscriminately, warfare that ultimately sends our own children to perish on foreign soil. And so America marches on in a world of conflict where the first casualty is innocence itself.

November 16, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

US government offers Israel $3 billion weapons deal in exchange for 3-month settlement freeze

By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News – November 14, 2010

After US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the Israeli Prime Minister on Friday, the US set out an offer of additional military assistance to Israel in exchange for a 90-day moratorium on new settlement construction in the West Bank. Construction already in progress on hundreds of units of housing would be allowed to continue during the ‘moratorium’, which also does not include East Jerusalem.

Some Palestinian analysts say the US offer is weak, as it does not pressure Israel in any way to adhere to past signed agreements or international law, but merely forestalls the inevitable failure of ‘peace talks’ between two vastly unequal players. Some have even suggested that this is an attempt by the US to bribe Israel to do what it is required to do under international law.

Since the ‘moratorium’ would not include East Jerusalem, where the majority of current construction of Israeli-only homes and displacement of indigenous Palestinian residents is taking place, some Palestinians feel that it is only a token gesture that does not in any way address their concerns.

In exchange for the temporary, partial moratorium on construction, the Israeli military would receive a gift of 20 F35 fighter jets, worth $3 billion, from the US. The US-made jets that Israel already has have been used for aerial bombardment of Palestinian civilian areas in violation of international law, and to drop missiles on Palestinians that Israel claims are ‘wanted’ for crimes against Israelis – but instead of being tried and convicted, they are extrajudicially assassinated by missiles, in violation of international law.

The US government also promised Israel that after the 90-day moratorium, they would not seek an extension, and settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (all of which is illegal under international law) could continue unabated.

This offer is an attempt by the US to get Israel to return to the negotiating table, after their refusal to renew a moratorium on new settlement construction resulted in a breakdown of talks with the unelected branch of the Palestinian Authority led by the Fateh party.

All settlement construction by Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory. The Convention prevents the transfer of civilian populations onto land that was seized by military force. The land in question is Palestinian land that was seized by Israel in 1967, and has been occupied by the Israeli military ever since.

November 14, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | Leave a comment

Weapons of mass destruction labs promote GMO’s under the pretext of fighting ‘global warming’

Friends of the Earth denounces algae biofuel development

By James Cartledge – 10/04/10

Pressure group Friends of the Earth has declared war on the development of new strains of algae and bacteria to produce biofuels. The group released a report last week warning of the dangers that genetically-modified microbes could pose if released into nature.

With warnings of “devastating results” if organisms escape into the oceans, including formation of “large dead zones”, Friends of the Earth demanded a moratorium on work to produce synthetic algae strains.

The group suggested that based on the previous spread of genetically-modified crops in the environment, the public health could be at risk. Friends of the Earth also cast doubt on the efficiency of producing biofuels from algae.

Moratorium

Friends of the Earth Biotechnology Policy Campaigner Eric Hoffman said: “Synthetic microbes have no natural predators, and if they escape they may disrupt ecosystems and harm public health. Our report concludes that the federal government should put a complete moratorium on the release and commercial use of synthetic organisms… Full article

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Genetically altered trees, plants could help counter global warming

Study evaluates prospects for boosting carbon sequestration from the atmosphere by modifying natural biological processes and deploying novel food and fuel crops

Forests of genetically altered trees and other plants could sequester several billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year and so help ameliorate global warming, according to estimates published in the October issue of BioScience.

The study, by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, outlines a variety of strategies for augmenting the processes that plants use to sequester carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into long-lived forms of carbon, first in vegetation and ultimately in soil.

Besides increasing the efficiency of plants’ absorption of light, researchers might be able to genetically alter plants so they send more carbon into their roots–where some may be converted into soil carbon and remain out of circulation for centuries. Other possibilities include altering plants so that they can better withstand the stresses of growing on marginal land, and so that they yield improved bioenergy and food crops. Such innovations might, in combination, boost substantially the amount of carbon that vegetation naturally extracts from air, according to the authors’ estimates.

The researchers stress that the use of genetically engineered plants for carbon sequestration is only one of many policy initiatives and technical tools that might boost the carbon sequestration already occurring in natural vegetation and crops.

The article, by Christer Jansson, Stan D. Wullschleger, Udaya C. Kalluri, and Gerald A. Tuskan, is the first in a Special Section in the October BioScience that includes several perspectives on the prospects for enhancing biological carbon sequestration. Other articles in the section analyze the substantial ecological and economic constraints that limit such efforts. One article discusses the prospects for sequestering carbon by culturing algae to produce biofuel feedstocks; one proposes a modification of the current regulatory climate for producing genetically engineered trees in the United States; and one discusses societal perceptions of the issues surrounding the use of genetically altered organisms to ameliorate warming attributed to the buildup of greenhouse gases.

November 12, 2010 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

The Militarization of the World

By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH | CounterPunch | November 12, 2010

A bully or a mafia godfather would never run out of excuses to punish an insubordinate soul in “his territory.” Accordingly, U.S. imperialism has been very creative in invoking all kinds of excuses to punish Iran for its aspirations to national self-determination.

To justify the criminal economic sanctions against the Iranian people, the U.S. has for years insisted that Iran is supporting terrorism, threatening U.S. national interests, and pursuing a program of nuclear weapons manufacturing. As these harebrained allegations are increasingly losing credibility, the United States is now invoking  a new ploy to justify its decision to further tighten the sanctions on Iran: “military dictatorship” and “human rights abuses,” as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has occasionally grumbled about in recent months.

There are a number of obvious problems with this latest U.S. excuse for escalating sanctions against Iran. To begin with, it is a blatant interference in the internal affairs of Iran.

Second, considering the fact that the U.S. has armed its “allies” in the Middle East (and beyond) to the teeth, its condemnation of the rise of Iran’s military power is clearly hypocritical. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), cited in Wikipedia, while Iran’s military spending in 2009 was $9.174 billion (or 2.7% of its GDP), that of Saudi Arabia was $39.257 billion (8.2% of its GDP), that of Israel was $14.34 billion (7% of its GDP), and that of the United Arab Emirates was $13.5 billion (or 5.9% of its GDP).

Third, in light of the fact that the U.S. is the most militarized country in the world, it’s belly-aching about “militarization of Iran” (whose military spending is less than one percent of the U.S.) is patently ironic; it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Again, while Iran’s military spending in 2009 was $9.174 billion, that of the U.S. was $663.255 billion. However, the official $663.255 billion includes neither the Homeland Security budget, nor the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, nor a number of supplemental expenditures added to military spending during the fiscal year. Once these omitted (or hidden) expenditures are added to the official Pentagon budget, total U.S. military-security expenditures would easily amount to $1000 billion, or one trillion dollars. Even in relative terms, Iran’s military spending is infinitesimally small compared to that of the United States. For example, while Iran’s per capita military spending is $131 (9,174,000,000 : 70,000,000), that of the U.S. is $3333 (1,000,000,000,000 : 300,000,000). And whereas Iran’s military spending as a share of its GDP is 2.7% (9.174 billion : 340 billion), that of the United States is nearly 7% (1 trillion : 14 trillion) [Ibid.].

Fourth, in light of the fact that the U.S. is altogether silent in the face of heinous human rights violations under the rule of the regimes it calls “allies,” its alleged concern for “human rights abuses” in Iran is hypocritical and utilitarian: it uses the lofty ideal of defending human rights to disguise its nefarious intentions to impose economic sanctions or to embark on military aggression against that country. Hypocritical defense of human rights is often used to justify wars of aggression as humanitarian operations, or “just wars,” as they were called in times past. Just as this ruse was used in 1999 to wreak carnage on Yugoslavia, so it is now used to pave grounds for committing similarly heinous crimes against Iran.

Regrettably, many left/liberal/antiwar individuals and organizations often fall for this hoax, thereby endorsing (or remaining silent in the face of) U.S. wars of aggression on ethical grounds, that is, on grounds of fighting dictatorship or terrorism in the hope of achieving liberation and democracy. Of course, to make the ruse credible, champions of war and militarism usually start with demonization and distortion, and then proceed to aggression and invasion.

It must also be pointed out that the purported U.S. support for human rights tends to be narrowly focused on purely cultural issues such as life style and identity politics, that is, the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation. As such, it is largely devoid of basic economic needs for survival. Even a cursory comparison with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms  (UDHRF), adopted on 10 December 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations, reveals some fundamental shortcomings of the U.S. human rights protocol. Human rights according to UDHRF include basic economic or survival needs such as:

“the right to work … to protection against unemployment … to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. . . . Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, and housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. . . . Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. . . . Everyone has the right to education.”

Human rights a la USA does not include any of these basic human needs—all the nauseating propaganda of championing human rights notwithstanding. Indeed, many of the basic economic rights, which came to be known as the New Deal reforms, and which were achieved through long and heroic struggles of the working people and other grassroots efforts, are now systematically undermined in order to pay for the gambling losses of the Wall Street financial giants.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, to the extent that there has been an undeniable rise in the power of armed forces in Iran, as well as a corresponding curtailment of civil liberties there, such unfortunate developments have evolved as a direct consequence of the constant threats posed by U.S. imperialism and its allies. Iran’s strengthening of its armed forces has become a virtual necessity in self-defense against threats of war, destabilization, sabotage, sanctions and other kinds of covert and overt operations engineered by the imperialist-Zionist forces.

By dividing the world into “allies” and “enemies,” the powerful war profiteering interests in the Unites States, the military-industrial-security colossus, compel both “allies” and “enemies” to militarize. While “enemies” such as Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea are forced to strengthen their defense capabilities against imperialistic aggressions, “allies” such as the regimes ruling Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Colombia are driven to militarization against their own people, since regimes loved by U.S. imperialism are hated by the overwhelming majority of their own citizens.

Critics tend to bemoan the rise in the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Iran without bothering to explain how the IRGC came to existence, or why it has expanded to where it is today. Who is to be blamed for the ascendancy of its influence in the Iranian politics and economics?

Those even faintly familiar with the history of the IRGC would recall that it came into existence as a resistance force against counter-revolutionary forces in Iran, which have always been supported by U.S. imperialism and its allies. Although it was formed in the spring of 1979 as a small paramilitary revolutionary force in the fight against the Shah’s rule, it remained for the U.S.-instigated invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussein to expand it to a fully-fledged military power in defense of Iran’s territorial integrity. The ensuing brutal 8-year Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), in which the U.S. and its allies wholeheartedly supported Saddam Hussein, and the Guards’ legendary sacrifices and heroic defense of Iran’s independence drastically enhanced their size, their prestige and their power.

Although Iraq’s war with Iran ended in 1988, other forms of U.S. wars against Iran have continued to this day. These have included destabilizing “soft-power” operations in the name of democracy, covert operations through all kinds of NGOs and fifth-column groupings, promotion of and support for terrorist operations such as those carried out by Jundullah and Mojadeen Khalgh (MKO, or MEK), constant military threats, psychological warfare, and economic sanctions. Not surprisingly, the role and the influence of IRGC and other security forces in Iran have increased accordingly. Also unsurprisingly, as the political power of Iran’s armed forces has thus increased, so has their economic power.

I say “unsurprisingly” because it is altogether in the nature of things that large standing armies gradually extend their military-security power to the realm of economics. The fully-fledged and the best example of this phenomenon is the rise of the monstrous military-industrial complex in the United States—which, contrary to the defensive nature of Iran’s military force, represents an offensive imperialistic force.

It is of course a truism that maintaining large standing armies will sooner or later lead to authoritarianism. It is equally obvious that by the same token that militarization of the world can be blamed largely on imperialistic U. S. foreign policies, so can the rise of many authoritarian regimes around the world be attributed to those oppressive policies.

When a country (whose only sin is its aspiration to national self-determination) is labeled by U.S. imperialism as “our enemy” and is, therefore, encircled and threatened by the U.S. military monster, that country’s political, economic and democratic growth is bound to be distorted or derailed from a path of a healthy, natural or spontaneous evolution. Finding themselves in the bull’s eye of the menacing U.S. war juggernaut, security forces of such beleaguered countries are bound to react nervously/harshly in the face of protest demonstrations of domestic opposition, even when such demonstrations are for legitimate reasons. The shameful history of covert U.S. operations abroad, including the violent overthrow of many democratically elected leaders through military coup d’états, shows that expressions of indigenous opposition or grievances in such “enemy” countries are often subverted by well-financed and well-armed U.S. agents, either penetrated from outside or recruited from within, thereby warping the development of a “healthy” political/democratic process in those countries.

What is utterly demagogical is that, having thus perverted the politico-democratic process in such countries, the U.S. propaganda machine then turns around and blames the religion or culture or leaders of those countries as inherently incompatible with democratic values. Regrettably, not only do most of the American people but also many people elsewhere, including in the countries targeted for destabilization, fall for this ruse—in effect, blaming the victim for the crimes of the perpetrator.

Viewed in this light, the rise in the influence of the military-security forces in the Iranian politics and economics is a direct result of the menacing imperial policies of the United States and its allies toward that country.

Thus, President Obama’s or Secretary Clinton’s or other U.S. policy makers’ bellyaching about the rise of the power of the armed forces in Iran represents a case of gross obfuscation, that is, a case of barking up the wrong tree: instead of blaming IRGC they should blame their own imperialistic foreign policies, which nurtures militarization and curtailment of civil liberties not only in Iran but also in many other parts of the world. Indeed, militarization of the world and the resulting proliferation of many (relatively smaller) military-industrial complexes around the globe are unmistakable byproducts of the monstrous U.S. military-industrial complex. The inherent dynamics of this monster as an existentially-driven war juggernaut compels other countries around the world (both “allies” and “enemies”) to embark on paths to militarism and authoritarianism.

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, author of The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

November 12, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Militarism | Leave a comment

Missile mirth

American Goy | 11-11-10

You are looking at an airplane (of course! duh! right?!):

Jon Stewart is just soooooooo hilarious, as he mocks the whole missile launch controversy:

Huffington Post article and video of the man himself.

NYPost weighs in here.

Science lesson from a hack:
Time magazine blog.

Physics, it turns out, can get in the way of a good story. After all, the earth is round, which can make horizontal contrails look vertical on the horizon. For an explanation of what actually appears to have happened, see here. This so-called “missile” was likely a flight from Honolulu to Phoenix, or a UPS cargo flight.

I notice one innocuous word, likely.

As in we don’t know still what the hell it was.

But wait, we now have official word from the Pentagon, hot off the presses.

Lets go there now and finally get the clarification we need on what it was, and to be able to act smug and laugh at the conspiracy idiots.

UPI: Military: California contrail not missile.

“There is no evidence to suggest that this is anything else other than a condensation trail from an aircraft,” said the statement from Col. Dave Lapan, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense. “As stated yesterday, NORAD and USNORTHCOM determined that there was no threat to the U.S. homeland.”

The statement does not say whether the plume came from a military, commercial, government or private aircraft.

Right.

Having a conspiracy addled brain, I am seeing here a non denial denial.

Of course there is no evidence (physical) other than the video, which can, indeed, be a contrail of a plane (or a missile).

After all, we did not get clarification on what the hell it was from the Pentagon.

But don’t fret, there was no threat, from most probably a plane – nothing to see here, go away already.

The Pentagon has spoken, TV has lampooned it, move along, move along.

…

Meanwhile, in the UK, much more saner coverage, and quoting of actual experts and not paid hack “journalists” paid to push a story:
The Telegraph, UK: Mystery ‘missile’ launch in US: the theories.

Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, said it might have been a Standard interceptor, the anti-missile weapon which is fitted to the US Navy’s Aegis guided-missile cruisers as part of the American missile defence programme.

He said: “It’s a solid propellant missile, you can tell from the efflux [smoke] but they’re not showing enough of the tape to show whether it’s staging [jettisoning its sections].”

Doug Richardson, the editor of Jane’s Missiles and Rockets.

Verdict: missile.

Robert Ellsworth, the former US Deputy Secretary of Defence, said it was “pretty big” but “not a Tomahawk” cruise missile.

He said: “It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine to demonstrate to Asia that we can do that.”

Robert Ellsworth, the former US Deputy Secretary of Defence.

Verdict: missile.

We have one naysayer in the article, for balance:

A more down-to-earth – and non-military – explanation was given by John Pike, director of the US-based security analyst firm globalsecurity.org.

He said: “The local station chopped up the video and so it’s hard to watch it continuously but at one place you can see it has changed course – rockets don’t do that.”

He added it was most likely to be a normal aircraft contrail which appears different in the sun: “It’s an airplane that is heading toward the camera and the contrail is illuminated by the setting sun.”

John Pike, director of the US-based security analyst firm globalsecurity.org.

Verdict: airplane.

Let me jump in and state that modern missiles, such as tomahawk (and many others) of course CAN change course, depending on their programming.

And the tomahawk is a really old technology.

One more article for good measure, the Pentagon version: our friends from the north,
The Canadian Press;

The Pentagon and NASA experts have determined that a billowing contrail seen streaking into the skies above Southern California was likely caused by an airliner and not a missile.

Defence Department spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said Wednesday that officials were satisfied it was an airplane contrail distorted by camera angle, winds and other environmental factors including a setting sun.

Military experts studied the video and talked to all government agencies that might have been involved in a missile launch and none reported having launched one, Lapan said.

The conclusion was independently supported by Al Bowers, associate director of research at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert, and Patrick Minnis, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, who studies remote sensing of the atmosphere and Earth’s surface.

“A missile would look like that,” said Bowers, whose 27-year career has included stints as chief or lead engineer on such programs as the SR-71 spyplanes turned over to NASA by the Air Force.

“It could potentially have a contrail that shape,” he told The Associated Press. “(But) the motion looks a little suspect to me, and my conclusion would be that, yeah, it’s most probably an aircraft.”

A missile would look like that… indeed.

But it was not moving like a 1950’s missile, it was making corrections to its flight.

Like, for example (pure speculation on my part) a Tomahawk missile, or an anti-missile missile defense guided missile.

Again, despite hundreds of satellites in the sky, despite NASA monitoring, despite NORAD monitoring, despite air traffic controllers monitoring, we still do not know what it was.

If it was an airplane, kindly tell us what flight it was – civilian or military.

If civilian, please list the type, the flight number, the destination and its origination.

Otherwise, Jon Stewart, Time bloggers, Pentagon officials, NASA officials, americangoy are all just speculating.

A complete coincidence over this quote unquote missile launch (of course it’s a plane, just look at the picture, it’s so painfully obvious!) is that there happens to be a nearby American military complex.

globalsecurity.org (yes, John Pike’s site, quoted in this article).

The Naval Air Weapons Station, Point Mugu, operates and maintains station facilities and provides support services for Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division and assigned tenants and activities.

Point Mugu is part of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWPNS), the Navy’s full spectrum research, development, test evaluation, and in-service engineering center for weapons systems associated with air warfare (except for anti-submarine warfare systems), missiles and missile subsystems, aircraft weapons integration and assigned airborne electronic warfare systems. NAWCWPNS also maintains and operates the air, land, and sea Naval Western Test Range Complex (NWTRC).

Uncoverage.com;

Readers of UNCOVERAGE.net in the “national defense arena (shall we say?)” say the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered carrier, is involved in exercises off San Diego, California right now.

A caller to the Rush Limbaugh show Wednesday morning said that he believes it was a missile launch that was likely made from the high-security “Point Mugu” Naval Base off the coast of California.

Elaine Grossman at Global Security Newswire confirms the obscure San Nicolas Island, which is part of the Naval Base Ventura County (NBVC) Point Mugu facility, is used for clandestine testing of missiles from other countries.

Of course, when you accept the government version, you must also accept the fact that the authorities have no idea what flies where over our heads in our national airspace, that NORAD, NASA, air traffic controllers, satellites, anti missile radars searching the skies for Russian, Chinese, Iranian, terrorist missiles and planes do not track objects in the sky nor do they keep records of those objects (civilian planes, missiles, military jets, etc).

Do you feel better now?

…

Look at the picture.

Isn’t it obvious it is just a plane?

If you question this official narrative, that would make you a conspiracy theorist – one of those nutters lampooned in the news media.

I mean look at the picture.

It’s obvious.

November 11, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | Leave a comment

Britain in breach of NPT

Press TV – November 2, 2010

The United Kingdom breached its strict obligations under the non proliferation of nuclear weapons treaty (NPT).

The UK and France have agreed on the use of a French laboratory to help maintain and service the UK’s 160 nuclear warheads.

Officials in both countries say that a deal to share the secrets of their nuclear programmes would boost the defence collaboration between the countries and save money at a time when their defence budgets are being cut.

The agreement ends a half a century ban on the United Kingdom sharing nuclear secrets with countries other than the United States.

This collaboration with France goes against the “unequivocal undertaking” given by the nuclear weapon states, of which Britain is part of, in the year 2000 “to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament”, in accordance with their NPT obligations.

November 3, 2010 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

Cluster bomb ban gaining ground

Bilal Randeree | Al-Jazeera | 01 Nov 2010

The first comprehensive report into cluster bombs around the world has been released by Cluster Munition Monitor, a civil society-based programme providing research on cluster munitions.

Cluster bombs are a particular menace because they often fail to explode on impact, leaving behind de-facto landmines.

The report, released on Monday, found that seven countries have destroyed their stockpiles.

“Norway, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Colombia, Moldova and Montenegro have destroyed their weapons, and 11 others are in the process of doing so,” Conor Fortune, media officer with the Cluster Munition Coalition, told Al Jazeera.

“The UK is a key country that has destroyed more than a third of its stockpile. It has been one of the biggest users in the last decade, in the Balkans and Iraq, so it is important that they are destroying their stockpile.”

Fortune said that the biggest culprits are the US, Russia, China and Israel: “With the exception of China, all have used cluster munitions in the last decade.”

“The US has only agreed to ban the export on munitions and claim that they will phase out use of the weapons by 2018,” he said.

The report found that of the 16,816 cluster munition casualties confirmed globally through the end of 2009, the vast majority (14,719) were caused by unexploded munitions that failed to detonate during attacks.

Thousands killed

However, the report said that most casualties go unrecorded and it is likely that the actual number of casualties was at least between 58,000 and 85,000.

According to the report, 74 nations currently had stockpiles of cluster bombs and some 23 countries remained contaminated by the deadly weapons.

“Laos is the most heavily affected country in the world and that is one of the reasons why it will host the upcoming Convention on Cluster Munitions,” Fortune said.

The first meeting of more than 100 countries that have signed up to the convention will take place in Vientiane, Laos from November 8, 2010.

“There is real momentum behind the ban on cluster munitions,” Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch, said.

“It is encouraging to see so many countries showing such commitment to eradicating cluster munitions and their severe impact on civilians now and forever.”

Positive signs

Goose, who took part in the talks that brought about the Convention on Cluster Munitions, said that the impressive number of signatories to the ban convention, the short time to bring it into force, and the rush to implement its life-saving provisions are all very positive.

However, according to the report for 2009, casualties have been recorded in at least 27 states and three other areas affected by cluster munitions.

“Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the Balkans in Europe are all affected. This is a problem that has resonance in many parts of the world and that is why we are seeing interest from many countries,” Fortune said.

“Things are going more quickly that anybody expected – it is less than two years after the convention opened for signature and countries have already started implementing it and destroying their stockpiles, putting them out of use forever.

“We are very encouraged at the rate that countries have started destroying their weapons, but the work on the cluster munition ban is far from done and we have lots of work to do still.”

November 2, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

“A Summer of Fire in Lebanon”; Pellegrini Reveals US Attempt to Join July War

Al Manar | November 2, 2010

United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) commander Alain Pellegrini uncovered a US attempt to penetrate the leadership of UNIFIL during July 2006 war on Lebanon, in order to convert the force into a bridgehead for the intervention of international forces from NATO or the EU, without waiting until the ceasefire.

In a telephone interview with As-Safir newspaper on Tuesday, Pellegrini said “in case of launching a joint operation, I was offered to join American officers. The US had deployed (off the coast of Lebanon) the twenty-fourth marine intervention Unit which is capable to intervene in my operational area and is ready to provide me with reinforcements in case of launching any operation.”

The U.S. offer “to assist UNIFIL”, during the July war, came after meetings in Rome, which considered the possibility of sending international forces, under the flags of the United Nations.

Pellegrini continues his story about the United States, which was likely to militarily intervene in the July war, via NATO, after Israel stumbled in attacking Hezbollah.

“The Western countries, except France, in their consultations in New York, agreed to blame UNIFIL for ineffectiveness and try, in particular, to bring other forces (a multinational force) without the blue berets, sent by the NATO or the European Union, which former US President George Bush would speedily conjoin, without waiting for the ceasefire ,” the General revealed.

Pellegrini also speaks about the Israeli spying and ability to infiltrate the UNIFIL reports about Hezbollah. “We know many of Hezbollah positions, our leadership in New York are aware of their evolution of deployment, so everything is transparent and Israeli agents can get reports from Naqoura,” the UNIFIL commander said.

He proved his word by revealing that “every time I send my semi-annual report to the UNIFIL, attached by details for the leadership of United Nations forces alone, and despite the fact that the report is encrypted, I immediately receive after each report to New York, a letter from the Israeli Army, containing suggestions for writing the report, hoping to amend it!!”

“The information goes to the Israelis either by tapping or at the time it reaches the United Nations in New York,” the General uncovered.

Pellegrini also unveiled that Israel had killed four UNIFIL officers monitoring the truce in Khiyam plain during the July war.

On Thursday, the French general will release his book “Summer of Fire in Lebanon” in which he talks about the July war as he witnessed it from ‘inside’ in Francophone Book Fair in Beirut.

November 2, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

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