Ten Questions for Tea Partiers
Ralph Nader – Oct 22, 2010
Here are ten Questions for Tea Partiers that they want or do not want to answer. I say it this way because people who call themselves Tea Partiers do not all have the same view of politics, government, Big Business or the Constitution. Their opinions range from pure Libertarian to actively furthering the privileges of plutocracy. Their income and occupational background vary as well, though most seem to be middle-income and up.
My guess is that most Tea Partiers come from the conservative wing of the Republican Party who are fed up with both the corporate Republicans like Bush and Cheney, as well as the Democrats like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
With the above in mind, the following questions can serve to go beyond abstractions and generalizations of indignation and get to some more specific responses.
1. Can you be against Big Government and not press for reductions in the vast military budgets, fraught with bureaucratic and large contractors’ waste, fraud and abuse? Military spending now takes up half of the federal government’s operating budgets. The libertarian Cato Institute believes that to cut deficits, we have to also cut the defense budget.
2. Can you believe in the free market and not condemn hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare-bailouts, subsidies, handouts, and giveaways?
3. Can you want to preserve the legitimate sovereignty of our country and not reject the trade agreements known as NAFTA and GATT (The World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland) that scholars have described as the greatest surrender of local, state and national sovereignty in our history?
4. Can you be for law and order and not support a bigger and faster crackdown on the corporate crime wave, that needs more prosecutors and larger enforcement budgets to stop the stealing of taxpayers and consumer dollars so widely reported in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week? Law enforcement officials estimate that for every dollar for prosecution, seventeen to twenty dollars are returned.
5. Can you be against invasions of privacy by government and business without rejecting the provisions of the Patriot Act that leave you defenseless to constant unlawful snooping, appropriation of personal information and even search of your home without notification until 72 hours later?
6. Can you be against regulation of serious medical malpractice (over 100,000 lives lost a year, according to a study by Harvard physicians), unsafe drugs that have serious side effects or cause the very injury/illness they were sold to prevent, motor vehicles with defective brakes, tires and throttles, contaminated food from China, Mexico and domestic processors?
7. Can you keep calling for Freedom and yet tolerate control of your credit and other economic rights by hidden and arbitrary credit ratings and credit scores? What Freedom do you have when you have to sign industry-wide fine print one-sided “contracts” with your banks, insurance companies, car dealers, and credit card companies? Many of these contracts even block your Constitutional access to the courthouse.
8. Can you be for a new, clean system of politics and elections and still accept the Republican and Democratic Two Party dictatorship that is propped up by complex state laws, frivolous litigation and harassment to exclude from the ballot third parties and independent candidates who want reform, accountability, and stronger voices for the voters?
9. If you want a return to our Constitution—its principles of limited and separation of power and its emphasis on “We the People” in its preamble—can you still support Washington’s wars that have not been declared by Congress (Article I Section 8) or giving corporations equal rights with humans plus special privileges and immunities. The word “corporation” or “company” never appears in the Constitution. How can you support eminent domain powers given by governments to corporations over homeowners, or massive week-end bailouts by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department of businesses, even reckless foreign banks, without receiving the authority and the appropriations from the Congress, as the Constitution requires?
10. You want less taxation and lower deficits. How can you succeed unless you stop big corporations from escaping their fair share of taxes by manipulating foreign jurisdictions against our tax laws, for example, or by letting trillions of dollars of speculation on Wall Street go without any sales tax, while you pay six, seven or eight percent sales tax on the necessities you buy in stores?
Let’s hear from you Tea Partiers. Meanwhile, see the work of video-journalist, Steve Ference, who has interviewed and given voice to those among you in his new paperback “Voices of the Tea Party” published by Lulu.com on July 4, 2010. Contact VoicesoftheTeaParty@gmail.com.
New Report on Uranium Weapons published by UN Secretary General
Ahead of the forthcoming vote in the UN General Assembly, the UN Secretary General has published a second report on uranium weapons. The report compiles responses from countries and UN agencies to a request in the 2008 General Assembly resolution.
19 October 2010 – International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons
In contrast to the previous report, more countries appear to accept that uranium weapons are a matter of concern, and several would support specific international restrictions on their use.
Belgium mentioned their domestic ban, and the more recent law banning financial investment in uranium weapons, and also signalled that it is willing to discuss legislation with other states at the international level. Panama’s report calls for the use of uranium to be restricted to civilian purposes and Lithuania stated its support for a moratorium on the use of uranium weapons.
Burundi recognised the efforts of ICBUW, called for states that voted against previous resolutions to submit evidence supporting their position, and stated that it would support a ban on uranium weapons. Ireland and Japan both welcomed the involvement of civil society in the issue. Norway’s report mentions their funding of research by ICBUW and their ongoing willingness to work with international partners to establish the extent of the health risks.
Some states only wished to express concern. New Zealand’s report mentions that peacekeepers in affected areas are given more stringent health monitoring and
Germany stated its hope that previous resolutions would help to establish clarity about the effects of DU on human health.
The Czech Republic did wish to express any particular view on the issue, and the report of the Netherlands mentioned a long-standing preoccupation – their concerns with the mention of ‘potential harmful effects’ in previous resolutions, rather than ‘possible harmful effects’. By contrast Mexico, while taking the view that the public health risk from uranium weapons is minimal, highlighted the concerns of affected populations, and called for the use of radioactive materials to be restricted to peaceful purposes.
Jordan submitted a detailed report on the physiological risks of depleted uranium, and there was support for ICBUW’s calls for transparency and technical assistance for affected countries. Cuba pointed out that the use of uranium in weapons is in violation of article XX of the IAEA statute, and called for transparency and technical assistance from user states. Mauritius spoke of the environmental and health effects of uranium weapons use, and the fact that few countries have the expertise and resources to carry out decontamination.
As regards reports from international agencies, the position of the IAEA is largely unchanged, though its report does point out that the work by international agencies in affected areas (several years afterwards in most cases) assessed the risks at the time of the work, rather than at the time uranium weapons were used. Similarly the WHO referred to their earlier positions, despite having attracted a lot of criticism for failing to include important information. Their report also stated that they were currently reviewing more recent data – a process which was also mentioned in their 2008 report, but still seems to be incomplete.
The report of UNEP is stronger, and mentions ongoing uncertainties about the environmental effects of DU in the environment, particularly in groundwater, and reiterates their support for a precautionary approach. A more detailed discussion of the positions of international agencies will be produced shortly by the ICBUW science team.
The wide margin of votes cast in favour of General Assembly resolution 63/54 clearly reaffirmed the broad and growing concern of the international community over the danger to human health and the environment from the use of armaments and ammunitions containing depleted uranium – Cuba
Jordan does not possess any arms or ammunition of which depleted uranium is a component and is of the view that the use of such weapons pose grave risks to human beings, all living things and the environment – Jordan
[Panama] believes that laws of war exist which prohibit the use of deadly and inhumane weapons away from the battlefield, or the use of weapons of war whose effects continue once a conflict has ended – Panama
Given that it is both radioactive and toxic, depleted uranium has long-term health effects not only on personnel in combat operations, but also on civilians, flora, fauna and the environment. Furthermore, the decontamination of soil is a costly exercise, and not all countries have the necessary expertise and resources to carry out such a process – Mauritius
The Evil of Madeleine Albright
“Could you have one of our U-2s shot down?”
By Gary Leup – October 18, 2010
Madeleine Albright is infamous for her reply to the question posed by 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl about the sanctions against Iraq in May 1996.
“We have heard that a half million children have died,” stated Stahl. “I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
“I think this is a very hard choice,” replied Albright, “but the price–we think the price is worth it.”
Albright, who served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001, had a cruel disregard for the lives of Iraqis, Serbs, and others. But she apparently had a callous attitude towards the lives of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen too. In his new memoir, General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001, writes about a White House breakfast in late 1997. (The account is cited by Justin Elliott in Salon.)
Early on in my days as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we had small, weekly White House breakfasts in National Security Advisor Sandy Berger’s office that included me, Sandy, Bill Cohen (Secretary of Defense), Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State), George Tenet (head of the CIA), Leon Firth (VP chief of staff for security), Bill Richardson (ambassador to the U.N.), and a few other senior administration officials. These were informal sessions where we would gather around Berger’s table and talk about concerns over coffee and breakfast served by the White House dining facility. It was a comfortable setting that encouraged brainstorming of potential options on a variety of issues of the day.
During that time we had U-2 aircraft on reconnaissance sorties over Iraq. These planes were designed to fly at extremely high speeds and altitudes (over seventy thousand feet) both for pilot safety and to avoid detection.
At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, “Hugh, I know I shouldn’t even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough — so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?”
The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode. I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, “Of course we can …” which prompted a big smile on the official’s face.
“You can?” was the excited reply.
“Why, of course we can,” I countered. “Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go.”
The official reeled back and immediately the smile disappeared. “I knew I should not have asked that….”
“No, you should not have,” I strongly agreed, still shocked at the disrespect and sheer audacity of the question. “Remember, there is one of our great Americans flying that U-2, and you are asking me to intentionally send him or her to their death for an opportunity to kick Saddam. The last time I checked, we don’t operate like that here in America.”
Imagine that! A Cabinet official suggesting a deliberate provocation endangering a military pilot’s life in order to justify a war: “…but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event — something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world.” Is this mere amoral pragmatism? Machiavellian? It is in any case evil.
(I’m reminded of how the key neocon text “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” authored by Paul Wolfowitz for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) “thinktank” in Sept. 2000, states that the “process of transformation” to the kind of super-militarized aggressive state the neocons hoped for “will be a long one absent some catastrophic event like a new Pearl Harbor.” And as the Deputy Secretary of Defense he warned of another Pearl Harbor in his speech at West Point in June 2001. After 9-11, widely compared in the media to the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941, he immediately set about preparations for war with Iraq.)
On January 31, 2003 President George W. Bush in a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair seriously proposed provoking Saddam to shoot down a U.S. aircraft. According to notes taken by Blair advisor David Manning (the accuracy of which has never been challenged), Bush suggested “flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted with UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of UN resolutions. Maybe then the UN, which had refused to endorse the plan to attack Iraq and was sceptical about the justifications given by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, would endorse war. (Perhaps the military brass opposed the plan, which was never carried out.)
At the Clinton White House breakfast described by Gen. Shelton, Berger, Cohen, Tenet and Richardson were involved in separate conversations. The other cabinet members were Robert E. Rubin (Treasury), Janet Reno (Attorney General), Bruce Babbit (Interior), Dan Glickman (Agriculture), Mickey Kantor (Commerce), Alexis Herman (Labor), Donna E. Shalala (Health and Human Services), Andrew M. Cuomo (Housing and Urban Development), Rodney Slater (Transportation), Richard W. Riley (Education), Jesse Brown (Veteran’s Affairs), Federico F. Pena (Energy), and Albright.
Out the 14 members of the Cabinet, there were four women. The fact that Shelton deliberately avoids indicating the gender of his interlocutor may hint that it was one of them. It is hard to believe that Attorney General Reno would suggest sacrificing an airman to the head of the Joint Chiefs at a White House breakfast. Or the Secretary of Labor, or Secretary of Health and Human Services. It’s hard to believe anyone on the above list would so–except Albright.
Albright in her memoirs expresses regret for her “it was worth it” statement in the 1996 interview. And she told Newsweek in 2006, “I’m afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy—worse than Vietnam.” But she bears partial responsibility for the December 1998 bombing of Iraq (“Operation Desert Fox”), a prelude to the 2003 invasion. She helped produce the disaster.
And she helped produce disaster in the former Yugoslavia. As violence rose in the Serbian province of Kosovo, between the Kosovo Liberation Army and security forces, she (and Cohen) deliberately exaggerated the Kosovar Albanian death toll and demanded the U.S. right to intervene. She arranged the de facto alliance with the KLA, earlier labelled “terrorist” by U.S. officials. In March 1999 at the Rambouillet talks between Serbia and the Kosovar rebels, along with the U.S., its European allies and Russia, the U.S. demanded that the whole of Serbia (and other states within what was left of Yugoslavia) submit to virtual occupation by NATO. Yugoslavia had proudly remained outside the Warsaw Pact and had prided itself on participation in the Non-Aligned Movement. No government in Belgrade could have complied with Albright’s demands.
The so-called Rambouillet Agreement was rejected outright by the Serbs as well as their Russian allies. But Albright immediately stated, “We accept the agreement”–as though there was any agreement. The bullying was conducted in such a smug fashion that the French Foreign minister accused the U.S. of becoming a hyperpuissance–not a mere superpower but a “hyperpower.”
John Pilger wrote, “Anyone scrutinizing the Rambouillet document is left with little doubt that the excuses given for the subsequent bombing were fabricated. The peace negotiations were stage managed and the Serbs were told: surrender and be occupied, or don’t surrender and be destroyed.”
This was indeed Albright’s plan (and that of Bill Clinton, egged on by Hillary, who has confessed, “I urged him to bomb”), resulting in the deployment of NATO to bomb a European capital for the first time since 1945, killing at least 500 civilians (Human Rights Watch) and maybe ten times that number.
A Republican official later told a think tank that a certain “top official” had told him: ” We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and that’s what they are going to get.” Don’t we see a pattern here?
Throughout the last decade the neoconservatives have been the leading warmongers. But they have no monopoly on imperialist arrogance, contempt for truth and indifference to human life. Madeleine Albright is proof of that.
Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history.
THE REAL STRATEGIC CHALLENGE THAT TURKEY AND IRAN POSE TO ISRAEL
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett| New America Foundation | June 3rd, 2010
**For the photo above: David Ignatius (left), the moderator of this panel at last year’s Davos World Economic Forum, tries to stop Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (center) from speaking. Mr. Erdogan later left the stage to protest comments by President Shimon Peres of Israel (right).**
As the interlinked dramas of Israel’s attack on Turkish civilian ships on the high seas and the Obama Administration’s push for a new Iran sanctions resolution in the Security Council play out, some in the American foreign policy establishment are beginning to realize that the Middle East—and America’s place in it—are changing in profound ways.
Turkey’s deepening engagement in the region is an extremely important catalyst for change. Of course, this is not a new or suddenly breaking news story. Turkey’s refusal to allow U.S. forces to invade Iraq from Turkish territory in 2003—not long after Erdoğan’s AKP had come to power–should have been a wake-up call. At the time, though, Turkey’s decision was dismissed by the Washington establishment with a mix of disbelief and a refusal to appreciate how popular the decision was in Turkey.
After Turkey’s key role, along with Brazil, in brokering the recent nuclear deal with Iran and Erdoğan’s strong reaction to the Israeli attack on Turkish-flagged vessels, the U.S. foreign policy establishment is now compelled, by force of events, to recognize that something important is afoot. In this regard, we were struck by David Ignatius’ most recent column in the Washington Post, “Flotilla raid offers Israel a learning opportunity.” He writes,
“By attacking the relief flotilla, Israel picked a fight with Turkey, a more dangerous foe than Hamas. The quarrel has been brewing for the past several years, and it’s a huge strategic change in the Middle East. Once Israel’s most important regional ally, Turkey now seeks to challenge Israel’s hegemony as the local superpower. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Muslim populist with a charismatic message: We won’t let Israel push us around. Where Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is often a buffoon, Erdoğan is a genuinely tough if erratic rival.”
Ignatius underestimates Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Republic’s challenge to Israel. But, to his credit, puts his finger on the most important strategic implication of Erdoğan’s challenge—it is fundamentally a challenge to Israel’s sense of unfettered hegemony over the region.
In explaining why Israel decided to attack Turkish ships headed for Gaza, Ignatius writes, with blazing clarity, “The answer is that over many years, Israel has become accustomed to unchallenged freedom of military action in the Middle East.” That is absolutely correct, and Israel is determined to preserve this freedom of action, whatever the cost—and to persuade craven American politicians and the more gullible parts of the American public that both vital U.S. interests and Israel’s very survival are at stake in preserving it, even when that is manifestly not the case.
We have previously made a similar argument about what is at stake for Israel in the disposition of the Iranian nuclear issue, see here. The Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is hardly an “existential threat” to Israel. But, a nuclear-capable Iran might, at the margins, begin to impose some limits on Israel’s absolute freedom to use military force unilaterally, wherever it wants, and for whatever purpose it favors.
The Israeli argument against Iran’s nuclear development—like its argument against Turkey’s pique over having Turkish vessels attacked on the high seas, its argument that settlements in occupied territory are completely legal, and its argument that blockading a civilian population in Gaza is also completely legal—is not based on rational analysis of actual physical threats. All of these arguments are directed towards the preservation of Israel’s regional hegemony, embodied in its unchallenged freedom of military action in the Middle East.
From this perspective, Iran and Turkey pose very similar “threats” to Israel. Iran’s re-emergence as a powerful regional player (with its principal regional foes, Iraq and Afghanistan, neutered by U.S. invasions) with the potential for a nuclear weapons “option” could effectively check Israel’s ability to use force unilaterally whenever and wherever it chooses. And, Turkey’s challenge to the siege of Gaza by Israel (and, let’s be fair, Egypt, too) could, if successful, have a similar effect.
“Reset” and missile defence
Valentin Zorin | The Voice of Russia | October 9, 2010
There was cause for much optimism when President Obama made the first steps towards a ‘reset’ in US-Russian relations by renouncing plans by his predecessor, George Bush, to deploy American missiles in close proximity to the Russian borders on the territory of Poland and the Czech Republic.
And it cleared the way for settling other important problems in bilateral relations. Preparations for signing a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty got off the ground at last, and the no-easy talks on the treaty eventually resulted in an agreement which was signed by Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama in Prague in May this year.
But as it became clear shortly afterward, the issue is far from simple. At the end of September Bucharest said it was getting ready to sign an agreement on the deployment of an American military base on the territory of Romania. A similar base was to be deployed on the territory of Bulgaria. As it happens, Romania will have the bases instead of Poland, and Bulgaria instead of the Czech Republic. But a change of location makes no difference as far as the end result is concerned. Given the situation, the American moves cause as much concern as before.
As he commented on them, Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said: “Russia and the US have discussed the issue of missile defense at length and agreed that there would be no anti-missiles in Poland or the Czech Republic. And all of a sudden, we learn that the missiles are being moved to other European countries. So where is the ‘reset’?”
Among other questions which are brought up in connection with the missile defense program is how long the United States is going to drag its feet over ratifying the new START Treaty. Signed in May, the treaty was supposed to be ratified by the Senate by the middle of September. Now, as the first ten days of October are coming to a close, the opponents to the treaty are preventing the ratification from going ahead by linking it to missile defense. Senator Richard Lugar said a few days ago that the treaty should be supplemented with a special resolution stating that it imposes no restrictions on American plans to develop a missile defense system.
Mighty circles in the US have been doggedly pursuing a missile defense program ever since it was launched by President Ronald Reagan 25 years ago. And the intensity with which they are doing so stays unabated, despite substantial failures and losses. One the latest failures, which cost the US 120 million dollars, was reported recently, when an interceptor missile launched from an air base in Vandenberg, California, failed to hit a hypothetical target and exploded in mid-air.
Professor Richard Garwin, one of the founders of America’s hydrogen bomb, indicated as he spoke in the Senate recently that the American missile defense system in its current shape was useless.
Auditors from a Washington-based audit agency came to an equally disappointing conclusion. They had to admit that missile defense experts had failed to achieve the results they were paid for and that a system they had built was totally ineffective.
The sums allocated for the missile defense program were huge beyond description. Experts estimate that one trillion dollars has been spent on it by now and it will require billions more if continued.
This explains why the masterminds of American missile defense have been so persevering in pursuing it regardless of common sense. Billions of dollars earmarked for missile defense have not been invested into space research as it was promised but landed in the bank accounts of those who have turned it into a gold mine. These people have a lot of weight in present-day Washington. Whether the US policy makers will fall hostage to these mighty groups remains to be seen.
Bahrain-based Saudi-financed “Islamic” bank Arcapita doing rich business with Israel military
Ali Abunimah | October 12, 2010
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This blog reported on 9 October that American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) Board Member Marwan M. Atalla and his investment firm NEST U.S.A. Inc. are shareholders in Cirrus Design Corporation, an aircraft manufacturing firm which does millions in business with Israeli military contractors closely tied to the Israeli military establishment. (See “Board member of Ziad Asali’s ATFP does millions in business with Israeli military firm” )
As the earlier post explains, Cirrus has a long history of working with Israeli companies and recently chose an Israeli military contractor called TAT Technologies to supply $10 million worth of aircraft parts. TAT Technologies is run by Israeli military officers, including a former commander of Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon, and its factory is built on the land of the ethnically-cleansed Palestinian village of Yasur.
Since publishing that post, I have received new information from a former employee who is also a current minority shareholder at Cirrus. According to this individual Atalla was an active board member of Cirrus until 2001, but was forced to resign along with other independent board members when another investor, the First Islamic Investment Bank of Bahrain took a majority stake in Cirrus. Atalla and his firm NEST U.S.A. Inc. remain shareholders of Cirrus as of this time, according to NEST’s own website.
In 2005, the First Islamic Investment Bank of Bahrain changed its name to Arcapita. Arcapita is financed by investors in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and is well-connected to those countries’ ruling families.
The Arcapita website states on its current corporate investments page that it acquired a stake in “Cirrus Design Corporation” in 2001, but does not say how big the stake is. A 2007 report on aviation industry website AVweb, put Arcapita’s stake at a controlling 58 percent.
While the AVweb report mentions that Arcapita was seeking to divest from Cirrus, in fact it has become more deeply involved. An April 2009 press release from Cirrus stated that Arcapita had pumped even more money into the company during the global financial crisis.
As an Islamic investment bank, all of Arcapita’s investments are screened by its Shariah Supervisory Board which currently includes a religious scholar and former judge from the Supreme Court in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, as well as religious scholars from Pakistan and Bahrain. Such advisory boards are supposed to screen investments to make sure they comply with Islamic banking standards — typically avoiding interest, or investments in alcohol or pornography.
But for Arcapita, at least, there seems to be nothing un-Islamic about profiting from deals with the Israeli military establishment — the same military that has slaughtered more than nine thousand Muslims, Christians and others and injured and permanently maimed tens of thousands more in Palestine and Lebanon in the past decade alone in what numerous international investigations have termed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Needless to say, Arcapita-controlled Cirrus’ business with the Israeli military establishment is a gross violation of the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.
U.S. Threat to Attack Iran with Nukes is “Criminal”
By Sherwood Ross | Global Research | October 12, 2010
The U.S. today is threatening to attack Iran “under the completely bogus pretext” that it might have a nuclear weapon, a distinguished American international legal authority says.
When Obama administration officials, like those of the Bush regime before it, say “all options are on the table,” they are threatening nuclear war and that is prohibited by international law, says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign.
Not only has the International Atomic Energy Commission said this charge against Iran “is simply not true,” Boyle pointed out, but threatening Iran with nuclear war in itself constitutes an international crime.
“If we don’t act now, Obama and his people could very well set off a Third World War over Iran that has already been threatened publicly by (President George W.) Bush Jr.,” he asserted.
In a speech on nuclear deterrence to the 18th conference on “Direct Democracy” in Feldkirch, Austria, Boyle said it has been estimated an attack on Iran with tactical nuclear weapons by the U.S. and Israel could kill nearly 3-million people.
(Boyle charges the U.S. has already committed “acts of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and has authorized, armed, equipped, and supplied Israel to commit…outright genocide against Lebanon and Palestine.”)
Nuclear weapons and “nuclear deterrence” have “never been legitimate instruments of state policy but have always constituted instrumentalities of internationally lawless and criminal behavior,” Boyle said.
Thus, the governments of all the nuclear weapons states are “criminal” for threatening to exterminate humanity. Boyle named the U.S., Russia, France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. He reminded that “If mass extermination of human beings is a crime, the threat to commit mass extermination is also a crime.”
“The whole (George W.) Bush Doctrine of preventive warfare, which is yet to be officially repealed by Obama now after 18 months, was made by the Nazi lawyers for the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg, and it was rejected,” Boyle said.
He noted Article 2 of the UN Charter “prohibits both the threat and the use of force except in cases of legitimate self-defense” and the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, “do not qualify under that definition.” He adds the U.S. today is engaged in “ongoing international criminal activity” for “planning, preparation, solicitation, and conspiracy to commit Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.”
What’s more, “the design, research, testing, production, manufacture, fabrication, transportation, deployment, installation, storing, stockpile, sale, and purchase and the threat to use nuclear weapons are criminal under well-recognized principles of international law,” Boyle said.
And the leaders of NATO states that go along with U.S. nuclear policies “are all accomplices as well,” Boyle said, noting that pressure is mounting within Germany for the removal of U.S. nuclear warheads and that public opinion in much of Europe favors the elimination of nuclear arsenals.
The expansion of NATO, Boyle says, has now drawn in “almost all of Europe” and that even Sweden, Austria, and Finland have basically abandoned their neutrality. “Even Ireland,” Boyle says, has been compelled to join the so-called Partnership For Peace and send troops to Afghanistan. “The only state in Europe still holding out is Switzerland,” Boyle says, and because it refuses to commit troops to the wars in the Middle East it has been subjected to much pressure by the U.S. “including an attack on its banking and financial system.”
The nonpartisan Arms Control Association of Washington, meanwhile, has published an article in the October issue of “Arms Control Today” calling for NATO ministers at their forthcoming October 14th session “to initiate a comprehensive review of outdated NATO nuclear policy” to “reduce the role and salience of nuclear weapons and support reductions of U.S. and Russian tactical nuclear bombs.”
Co-authors Oliver Meier and Paul Ingram point out that NATO’s 28 states “remain divided” over key issues, including “the future role of nuclear weapons in NATO’s defense posture.” What’s more, they say, in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands “there now exists broad parliamentary and popular support for a withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from their territories.”
In a related development, the Associated Press reported October 9, “From the 1950s’ Pentagon to today’s Obama administration, the United States has repeatedly pondered, planned and threatened use of nuclear weapons against North Korea, according to declassified and other U.S. government documents released in this 60th-anniversary year of the Korean War.”
“Just this past April,” AP writers Charles Hanley and Randy Herschaft said, “issuing a U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said “all options are on the table” for dealing with Pyongyang—meaning U.S. nuclear strikes are not ruled out.”
During the Korean War (1950-53), U.S. Air Force bombers flew nuclear rehearsal runs over North Korea’s capital and on August 20, 1953, after the fighting ended, the Strategic Air Command sent Air Force headquarters a plan for “an air atomic offensive against China, Manchuria, and North Korea” if the Communists resumed hostilities. Called OpPlan 8-53, it advocated use of “large numbers of atomic weapons.
President Jimmy Carter scaled back the U.S. nuclear arsenal in South Korea and its complete withdrawal was announced in 1991, “although the North Koreans at times accuse the U.S. of maintaining a secret nuclear stockpile,” AP says. Korea specialists generally accept Pyongyang’s stated rationale that it sought its own bomb for defensive reasons in response to U.S. positioning of nuclear weapons in South Korea, AP reported.
Professor Boyle is the author of “The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence” and “Destroying World Order,” both published by Clarity Press.
Sherwood Ross is director of the Anti-War News Service, of Coral Gables, Florida. To comment on this article or contribute to the news service, reach him at Sherwoodross10@gmail.com. Ross worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and contributed weekly columns for many years to several wire services.
British aid worker killed by Americans, not by Afghan “suicide bomber”
Poseidon’s Blog | October 12, 2010
According to the original story, British aid worker Linda Norgrove was killed by one of her Afghan captors, who detonated an explosive vest seconds before US forces got to her in a bungled rescue attempt. For example, the BBC reported on October 10:
US troops in Afghanistan were seconds from rescuing a UK hostage when she was killed by a vest bomb held or worn by a kidnapper, the BBC understands.
They reached the building where Linda Norgrove, 36, was held and were “very, very close” to her, the BBC was told.
It is understood tribal elders negotiating her release asked Nato not to intervene so they had more time.
David Cameron has said it was right for the special forces to try to rescue the aid worker, from Lewis, Western Isles.
The prime minister said: “Decisions on operations to free hostages are always difficult, but where a British life is in such danger, and where we and our allies can act, I believe it is right to try.”
‘Grave danger’
BBC correspondent Nicholas Witchell said officials had confirmed Ms Norgrove was killed by an explosion, almost certainly a suicide vest, detonated by one of her captors.
Source
So David Cameron thinks “it was right”, rather like Tony Blair thinks “it was right” to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead Muslims, thousands of troops dead and tens of thousands injured, and a cost to the U.S. alone of well over a trillion dollars when all is taken into account. What would be “right”, would be to get the $&!% out of there, and quit screwing around with other people’s countries.
It subsequently emerged that the “explosive vest” story was a lie, eagerly propagated by a compliant media.
The death of British aid worker Linda Norgrove was caught on helmet-mounted cameras worn by the officers who mistakenly killed her with a grenade, it has emerged.
It comes as Miss Norgrove’s parents last night demanded to know how the elite U.S. troops sent in to rescue her apparently ended up killing their daughter in the botched Afghanistan rescue bid.
The U.S. yesterday issued an extraordinary apology to Britain over the doomed mission to free the aid worker from the clutches of the Taliban.
American officials initially claimed Miss Norgrove had been killed when one of her captors detonated a suicide vest. But a review of footage taken by helmet cameras raised suspicions that in fact, it was a U.S. grenade which killed Miss Norgrove.
An ashen-faced David Cameron yesterday revealed the tragedy a few hours after General David Petraeus, the American commander of the Nato-led force in Afghanistan, telephoned Downing Street to express ‘deep regret’ about the operation.
But last night urgent questions were already being raised about the true independence of an inquiry into 36-year-old Miss Norgrove’s killing.
It had been billed as a joint U.S.-UK investigation, but will be run by U.S. Central Command ‘in close co-operation with UK authorities’.
Which is rather like having Henry Kissinger or Philip Zelikow in charge of the 9/11 Commission.
Military sources raised particular concern about the training the team had for hostage situations.
There were also questions over why they used lethal fragmentation grenades in a rescue bid – and why they used helicopters which would be heard and alert the gunmen.
[…]
‘The last thing we wanted was for her to be passed into the hands of Al Qaeda.
What “Al Qaeda”, this “Al Qaeda”? Or this guy, whose grandfather was on the board of directors of the ADL?
Despite the fierce Taliban resistance, the Seals managed to fight their way towards the Miss Norgrove’s building. And then, with six Taliban gunmen already dead, one of the Seals threw a grenade through the door.
When the Seals entered the room, they found Linda Norgrove. She was still alive, but had terrible injuries caused by the grenade blast.
To cries of ‘medic! medic!’, doctors rushed to the scene. But it was too late. She succumbed to her injuries as she was being airlifted to hospital – the third British civilian to die in Afghanistan in the last three months.
Yet, inexplicably, the U.S. and Nato both claimed that she had died at the hands of a suicide bomber, who had apparently detonated his vest as he stood beside her when the Seals were closing in.
The official statement released on Saturday by Nato, was unequivocal about the cause of death: the blast that killed Miss Norgrove occurred ‘seconds before rescuers arrived. [U.S. special forces] had entered the compound … [but] an insurgent detonated an explosive device that was attached to his person. He was in close enough proximity to Miss Norgrove. She was wounded.’
That statement, we now know, was inaccurate. For three days, the special forces failed to reveal the fact that one of them had apparently thrown a grenade that exploded close to where she was being held, bursting into razor-sharp steel shrapnel.
It was only yesterday morning when their commanding officer reviewed audio and video footage from their helmet cameras that he ‘saw an arm throw a hand grenade’ and confronted his troops.
[…]
The report that Miss Norgrove had been ‘killed by an insurgent’ who had detonated his suicide vest as the Seals closed in, was officially announced within hours of the operation taken place. The same information was relayed to Miss Norgrove’s parents – John, 60, a retired civil engineer, and her 62-year-old mother, Lorna.
But in the early hours of yesterday morning, David Petraeus, the U.S. chief of coalition forces in Afghanistan, made a personal call to Downing Street, leaving a message for Mr Cameron to phone him immediately. He had grim news. In military jargon, it was clearly a friendly fire killing.
While shocked, Mr Cameron does not believe the Americans lied. ‘It was wrong information in the fog of war,’ said a source. ‘General Petraeus cleared up the facts as soon as they became clear. It is a tragedy, but tragedies can happen.’
Source
The Tritium Deficit
Future Supply of Tritium Explosive Puts US Nuclear Arsenal in Doubt
By ROBERT ALVAREZ | CounterPunch | October 12, 2010
In a recent report to the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, the Government Accountability Office concluded that the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) in the Energy department is “unable to overcome technical challenges” to producing tritium (H3) in a commercial power reactor for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. As a result the ability to provide new supplies of this radioactive isotope used to enhance the explosive power of nuclear weapons “is in doubt.”
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen and is an important part of any modern nuclear arsenal. It is why thermonuclear weapons are known as “H-bombs.” Tritium is used in modern nuclear weapons to boost the explosive power of plutonium, which in turn, creates enough heat to cause hydrogen atoms to fuse together. This releases a tremendous amount of destructive energy, in the same process that fuels the sun and stars.
Because of its half-life of 12.3 years, tritium has to be periodically replenished in weapons. From 1954 to 1988, tritium was produced in government reactors, which were closed for safety reasons. In 1993, GAO concluded that tritium supplies from nuclear arms reductions were adequate to meet warhead needs until 2012. After that year, GAO concluded that a new tritium production capability would be needed.
In response, the Department of Energy decided in the late 1990’s to produce new supplies in a commercial power reactor, using new tritium-producing burnable absorber rods (TBARs). They contain lithium-aluminate pellets lined with zirconium, and are clad into long pencil-shaped, stainless steel rods. Tritium is produced when the atoms of lithium-6 absorbs neutrons in the reactor core.
However, the rods cannot fully contain the tritium, which is permeating into the reactor cooling system, approaching safety limits set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). To meet projected tritium requirements, additional TVA reactors may be required. NNSA has not yet coordinated this with the NRC, which must approve any such reactor changes.
A reserve stockpile of tritium has yet to be tapped and its size remains classified. Nor is it clear how much more tritium is expected to come from the pending START II arms reduction agreement with Russia, now before the U.S. Senate. Nonetheless, GAO remains concerned. “If NNSA takes longer than expected to increase tritium production, even reserve quantities may be insufficient to meet requirements for an extended period of time.”
Tritium production alternatives include building a new government production reactor or the development of linear accelerators. Both are likely to cost billions of dollars and take several years to bring on line.
However, expanding the production of tritium for nuclear weapons in commercial nuclear power plants further undermines the long-standing barrier between military and civilian nuclear energy applications – a key element of U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy.
This is a situation where public debate and greater transparency by the U.S. nuclear weapons program is sorely needed.
Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary from 1993 to 1999. www.ips-dc.org
In the jungles of northern Okinawa, protests against planned US helipads reach a crisis point
By Jon Mitchell · IPS · October 5, 2010
The residents of Takae, a small village in the hills of northern Okinawa, are no strangers to the American military. Since 1957, they’ve been living next to the world’s largest jungle warfare training center – and many of them are old enough to remember the days when the U.S. Marine Corps hired locals to dress up as Vietcong for its war games.
The 1996 Special Action Committee on Okinawa was supposed to reduce the U.S. presence in the area. Convened to quell public fury over the rape of a 12-year old girl, it pledged to return large swathes of military land to Okinawan residents – including over half of the jungle training center. As the months passed, however, the promise failed to materialize. Even when a Marine helicopter crashed near Takae’s elementary school in 1999, the daily bombing runs and roof-high helicopter sorties continued unabated.
Then, in 2006, the U.S. military made an announcement. Before returning the territory, it first wanted to build six new helipads on the land it was retaining on the outskirts of the village. The residents repeatedly lodged complaints with the prefectural and national governments, but they were ignored. In 2007, construction crews from the Okinawa Defense Bureau arrived to start laying the foundations for the 250-foot helipads. Takae’s villagers were waiting for them. They linked arms to block the gates to the worksite, they surrounded the trucks and appealed to the builders to stop their work. When they refused to listen, the protesters sat in the way of their heavy machinery. But the crews continued to unload bags of cement over their heads. Only when the police arrived did construction stop out of concern for public safety.
Since that day, over 10,000 locals, mainland Japanese, and foreign nationals have participated in a non-stop sit-in outside the planned helipad sites. So far, they’ve managed to thwart any further construction attempts. At small marquee tents, the villagers greet visitors with cups of tea and talk them through their campaign, highlighting their message with hand-written leaflets and water-stained maps.
“We’re just ordinary people wanting to lead ordinary lives,” explains Takae resident, Isa Ikuko. In a quiet voice almost drowned out by the click and whir of late summer insects, she talks of the area’s 180 species of endangered wildlife and her pride in its broccoli-shaped trees, the nearby rivers that supply the island with most of its drinking water, and the recent disclosure that the U.S. military tested Agent Orange here in the 1960s. “But what particularly scares me is the Marine Corps plan to bring in the Ospreys,” says Isa, holding up a U.S. military image of the accident-prone aircraft flying over a river suspiciously similar to one near the village.
Equally frightening are the recent tactics deployed by the Tokyo government. In November 2008, it filed an injunction against 15 of the protesters, accusing them of obstructing traffic in the area. Hoping that the three-hour road trips to the capital’s courthouse would wear down the villagers’ resolve, it also included an 8-year old child on the roster of defendants to intimidate other potential participants. The ploy backfired and the ensuing public outcry forced prosecutors to drop 13 of the cases. Two still remain, though, and with the next hearing scheduled for later in the year, a dangerous precedent is at stake. If the government wins, it will open the door for suits against similar protests – including in nearby Henoko bay where for the past six-and-a-half years, sit-in protesters have successfully prevented construction of an on-sea air base.
As long as the cases meander through the courts, the Okinawa Defense Bureau crews stay away from Takae. But with verdicts due soon, Isa and her fellow protesters are steeling themselves for the showdown sure to come to this little-known corner of northern Okinawa.
US to fund sale of F-35 jets to Israel
Press TV – October 8, 2010
Israel has signed a contract to ‘purchase’ 20 US-built and -funded F-35 stealth fighter jets, a deal the Tel Aviv regime boasts as “an event of great strategic and historic significance.”
Tel Aviv’s Defense Ministry Director General Udi Shani signed the agreement, worth nearly $3 billion, during a ceremony in New York on Thursday, Israeli daily Haaretz reports, noting that “the entire deal will be funded by the American military.”
According to the deal, Israel will receive the attack aircraft between 2015 and 2017, at a price of $96 million per plane, together with simulators and spare parts, with a total price tag of $2.75 billion. The deal also grants the Israeli regime the option of ordering 75 more jets.
“This is a significant day for maintaining Israel’s military superiority in the region, which will help us cope with challenges both near and far,” Shani said, quoted by the Israeli-based Ynet news website, after a signing ceremony.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also hailed the so-called ‘purchase’, saying it would significantly strengthen Israel’s military.
Israeli Knesset (parliament) and security establishment also gave their approval for the agreement despite “opposition” from a number of senior defense officials over the “high cost” of the deal.
The signing comes less than a month after Washington announced plans to sell Saudi Arabia 60 billion dollars’ worth of weapons and hardware, including 84 F-15 fighters.
US officials, ordinarily, obtain approval by the powerful Israeli lobby in Washington before signing any weapons deals with any Arab country. Despite apparent Israeli protests, all US arms sales to Arab nations are, in fact, preapproved by the Israelis.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
