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Greece’s woes a chance to bury Turk-Greek rivalry?

Reuters | May 15, 2010

ANKARA/ATHENS — Greece’s debt crisis may lead to improved ties with its old rival Turkey as the prime ministers of the two countries meet to discuss issues from cuts in defense spending, to financial crisis management.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visits Athens on Friday for talks with his Greek counterpart George Papandreou in what Turkish and Greek officials hope will bring a new era in relations between the often feuding Aegean neighbors.

With debt-choked Greece undergoing austerity measures, both Ankara and Athens have said they want to achieve the goal of demilitarizing the Aegean as a way of cutting defense spending.

“Neither the people of Greece or Turkey need new submarines or fighter jets,” Turkey’s EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis said, noting the contradiction of two NATO members spending billions on defense to counter potential threat from each other.

Greece, which spends more of its gross domestic product on the military than any other European Union country, has said it also wants to reduce regional tensions with Turkey.

“In order for our people to enjoy the benefits of arms spending reductions, we must first erase the threats and create the necessary trust,” said Gregory Delavekouras, Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman.

“This meeting will deepen and widen the cooperation between our two countries,” Delavekouras said.

Western officials and economists have advocated a reduction of Greece’s armed forces as a way of reducing spending.

Greece’s Deputy Defense Minister Panos Beglitis said in March that overall defense spending in recent years was as high as 5.6 percent of GDP, about 13.4 billion euros ($17 billion). The target for this year is to cut below 3 percent of GDP.

According to the International Strategic Studies group Turkey spent $9.9 billion on defense in 2009 and $10.2 billion in 2008, but with its economy forecast to grow faster than any in the EU this year, Ankara’s need to make cuts is not as great.

With wide experience of financial disasters and IMF bailout packages, Turkey has said it is happy to share its expertise with Greece on surviving a debt crisis a decade ago.

In the first official visit by a Turkish prime minister since 2004, Erdogan accompanied by 10 ministers and 80 businessmen.

“We need to give a fresh momentum to Turkish-Greek relations and to carry them to a whole new level of cooperation which will contribute to issues that seemed problematic between the two countries,” Turkey’s Economy Minister Ali Babacan said.

Greece and Turkey nearly came to blows in 1996 over an uninhabited Aegean islet. The two have skirmished over Turkey’s occupation of Cyprus and territorial rights in the Aegean.

But ties improved since 1999, when earthquakes in both countries sparked spontaneous outpouring of aid and prompted their leaders to improve relations and sign accords.

Erdogan is likely to solicit Papandreou’s help to help push a solution for the reunification of the divided island of Cyprus, long an obstacle to Turkey’s EU membership aspirations.

Greece says it wants to see changes in behavior from Turkey in areas such as overflights and air space violations.

“We openly and clearly support Turkey’s EU accession but we want to see concrete signs that some behaviors have changed,” a Greek Foreign Ministry official said.

Semih Sediz, a columnist for Radikal, a liberal Turkish daily, said that despite their history, Turkey and Greece have ironically found sympathy for each other in times of crisis.

Earthquakes, Great Depression deprivations or persecution from military juntas have provoked Turkish-Greek empathy.

“There is a lot of empathy in Turkey for Greece right now,” now,” Sediz said. “We know a lot about IMFs, belt-tightening, union unrest, all those things. We’ve been down that road.”

May 15, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | Leave a comment

Obama Seeks $205 Million ‘special assistance’ for Israel Iron Dome System

The money comes on top of annual US assistance to Israel

Al-Manar TV – 14/05/2010

The budgetary difficulty that has been delaying Israel’s armament with the anti-missile defense system Iron Dome has apparently been resolved. The Pentagon has issued a message to Israel’s Defense Ministry that U.S. President Barack Obama has approved the transfer of special assistance totaling $205 million for the purchase of more than ten Iron Dome batteries.

The Iron Dome missile defense system aced a test run in January, an event that convinced senior defense officials that the defense system was on its way to becoming operational and that it will be able to effectively protect against short-range missiles, such as Katyushas and Qassams, which often hit Israeli settlements.

Produced by Israeli state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., Iron Dome uses small radar-guided missiles to blow up rockets with ranges of between 5 kilometers and 70 kilometer, as well as mortar bombs, in mid-air.

However, the plan was not allotted an adequate budget. The Israel Defense Forces ducked away from funding the project with its budget, explaining that offensive readiness was a higher priority, and the Defense Ministry has been looking for other budgetary avenues. Among other things, Israel has struck a deal with an unnamed eastern Asian country (Singapore, according to a recent report in a French magazine) to participate in the funding of future phases in the project.

Israel has recently raised the possibility that the U.S. assist in funding the project by transferring a sum of money beyond the U.S. annual defense assistance. The request was reviewed closely during Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s last visit to Washington earlier this month, and during talks between Barak and Obama and other senior American defense officials.

Its development was spurred by the 2006 Lebanon war and the Gaza Strip war a year ago. In both cases, Israeli towns within reach of short-range rockets were in some respects defenseless.

“The president recognizes the threat missiles and rockets fired by Hamas and Hezbollah pose to Israelis, and has therefore decided to seek funding from Congress to support the production of Israel’s short range rocket defense system called Iron Dome,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

Two Iron Dome batteries are under construction, an Israeli defense official said in February. Designed to be towed by vehicle, they will be available for any Israeli front at a few hours’ notice.

Bryan Whitman, Pentagon spokesman, said it was the first direct US investment in the Iron Dome system. “This funding will expand what they can produce and deploy, and how quickly they’re able to do it,” he said. The decision was made to pour funds into the system after US officials observed tests last fall, officials said.

The money comes on top of annual US assistance to Israel.

According to the State Department, US military aid to Israel in 2009 totaled $2.55 billion. This will increase to $3 billion in 2012, and will total $3.15 billion a year from 2013 to 2018.

May 14, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Israel’s military indoctrination of children

By Stephen Lendman | Al-Ahram | May 6, 2010

The modern roots of Zionism go back to its founding at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897, its programme being the “establishing for the Jewish people of a publicly and legally assured home in Eretz Yisrael”. Five decades later, this was accomplished by dispossessing indigenous Palestinians, denying them the right to their land, creating a new Jewish identity, legitimising Jews as rightful owners, and using superior military force to support the state against defenceless civilians who were no match against their powerful adversary.

Leading up to and after its war of independence, Israel stayed politically and militarily hard line, negotiating from strength, choosing confrontation over diplomacy, and naked aggression as a form of self- defence and occupation in order to seize as much of historic Palestine as possible and secure an ethnically pure Jewish state. These policies were called “Israelification [and] De-Arabisation” to preserve a “Jewish character”.

In his book, The Making of Israeli Militarism, author Uri Ben-Eliezer says writing about Israeli militarism involves “ventur(ing) into an intellectual minefield”, given Jewish history under the Nazis and the perception of Israel as a safe haven. Yet, decades of Arab- Israeli conflict have produced seven full-scale wars, two Intifadas, and many hundreds of violent incidents.

Ben-Eliezer believes that, beginning in the 1930s, militarism “was gradually legitimized within the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, then within the new state [it was] crystallized into a value, a formula, and an ideology.” Over time, it acquired a dynamic of its own, and then, during the 1948 war, it “acquired full legitimacy” and became decisive in setting policy.

Politics and militarism were wedded to create a militaristic view of reality. Thereafter, it was institutionalised to the point that “the idea of implementing a military solution to [political problems] was not only enshrined as a value in its own right, but was also considered legitimate, desirable, and indeed the best option.”

Today, militarism is a “cardinal aspect of Israeli society”, its quintessential element under the 1986 National Defence Service Law that requires all Jewish Israeli citizens and permanent residents to serve. The law covers both men and women, with exemptions only for Orthodox Jews, educational inadequacy, health, family considerations, married or pregnant women or those with children, criminals, and other considerations at the Defence Ministry’s discretion. In addition, most Israeli leaders are former high-ranking Israel Defence Force (IDF) officers, politics and the military being inextricably connected.

Little wonder, then, that Israel is a modern-day Sparta, a nation of about 5.6 million Jews and another 500,000 settlers that is able to mobilise over 600,000 combatants in 72 hours, equipped with state-of-the art weapons and the backing of the world’s only superpower for whatever it wants to do.

Yet on 2 March 2008, the US McClatchy Newspapers writer Dion Nissenbaum headlined that, “Israelis show declining zest for military service,” saying that “….under the surface, something has been slowly shifting in Israel as the nation prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary on May 14. More and more Israelis are avoiding mandatory military service — something” earlier considered unthinkable.

According to author and former chief Israeli military psychologist, Rueven Gal, “in the past, it is true that not serving in the military was considered the exception. In more recent times, it became more tolerable and more acceptable to people.”

According to 1997 IDF statistics, fewer than one in 10 Israeli men avoided service. Now it’s nearly triple that number, or, according to some, even higher, given the resonance of conscientious objectors, refusniks, students unwilling to serve in the occupied territories, and “Breaking the Silence” reservists speaking out about IDF atrocities over the past decade, especially during the Gaza war.

Women are also opting out, around 44 per cent compared to 37 per cent a decade earlier. As a result, Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau has called the IDF no longer a “people’s army [but rather] half the people’s army.” Given Israel’s hardline militarism requiring mandatory service, officials are seeking new ways to deter avoidance.

One way of doing this is by indoctrinating Israeli young people to accept the militarism of Israeli society, particularly since various organisations in Israeli, such as the pressure group New Profile, are promoting themselves as being a “Movement for the Civilisation of Israeli Society” away from militarism and a culture of violence. Israeli “feminist women and men…. are convinced that we need not live in a soldiers’ state” and should no longer tolerate one.

In July 2004, a New Profile report entitled Child Recruitment in Israel examined how Israeli armed forces and Jewish militias indoctrinate young children to be warriors, a practice it believes is essential to stop.

Child recruitment involves more than having weapons and using them, there being no front lines in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Israel and the occupied territories, IDF soldiers are everywhere. “Many military bases are located inside population centres, and few Israelis ever spend a day without meeting soldiers on duty,” the report says.

As a result, a functional definition of child recruitment is as follows, with a child being anyone under 18 recruited by one or more of the following methods: by wearing an official uniform, having an official document, or in other ways identified as an IDF or related group member, even if not formally; by promoting or supporting IDF actions, actively or through other services; and/or by undergoing practical or theoretical training to perform or assist IDF activities, formally or otherwise.

Armed forces and security groups include Israel’s military, its police (including conscripted border police), General Security Services (GSS), and Jewish militias, mostly based in settlements.

The relevant international laws governing the military use of children include Article 38 (2) and (3) of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), which state: (2) “State Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities; [and] (3) State Parties shall refrain from recruiting any person who has not attained the age of 15 into the armed forces. In recruiting among those persons who have attained the age of 15 years but who have not attained the age of 18 years, State Parties shall endeavour to give priority to those who are oldest.”

Article 77 (2) of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (1977) contains similar language, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) criminalises the recruiting of children under 15 for military purposes.

The 1990 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child recognised 18 as the minimum recruitment age. Then, in 2000, the International Labour Organisation’s Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention No. 182 condemned “all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery… including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict.” The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (2000) also prohibited forced recruiting and raised the minimum age to 16.

Yet, contrary to international law, Israeli legislation takes precedence over these accepted norms and standards. Conscription at 18 is mandatory, at times includes those six months younger, and children under 18 may enlist voluntarily, but aren’t used as combatants until coming of age.

Child recruitment is also done informally, the idea being to prepare underage youths for future mandatory service. Ben-Eliezer has written how early Zionist settlers established militant organisations, notably the Bar Giora (named for Simon Bar Giora in ancient Roman times), Hashomer (The Guard), and the Haganah (Defence), which were small in scale but profound in influencing younger minds.

Ben-Eliezer explained these organisations by writing that “the formative years of the younger generation produced an ethos created by local experience: guarding fields and crops, fighting with Arab children, being given a weapon at the age of bar mitzvah [a boy’s 13th birthday]. This was the childhood experience of prominent members of the young generation [tempering their outlook] with suspicion, which frequently became hostility, and they reached maturity feeling that a confrontation between [Arabs and Jews] was inevitable.”

Before 1948, very young children engaged in military activities, doing so eagerly as a sort of game. As a result, a militaristic worldview developed, especially among youths later becoming leaders. Militant groups formed at this time include Fosh (a Hebrew acronym for Field Units), the Palmach (Striking Force), Stern Gang (Israeli Freedom Fighters, Lehi in Hebrew) and Irgun (the National Military Organisation — Etzel in Hebrew).

Before Israel’s war of independence, recruitment came through a “duty to volunteer”. Then it became mandatory after the IDF’s establishment on 26 May 1948, replacing the paramilitary Haganah. Today, such recruitment is still called a privilege in Israel, a “noble and worthy action”, moulding young minds to be eager when called upon and encouraging them to participate earlier as well. In the 1948 battle for Jerusalem, Israeli Youth Battalion trainees, aged 16 and 17, were combatants. So were women.

DEFINING ISRAELI MILITARISM: New Profile calls Israeli militarism “a way of thinking, which promotes forceful solutions, usually military ones, as preferable and even desirable ways of solving problems.” As a result, security forces are Israeli society’s most valued and revered members, “whose needs and opinions come second to none”. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, called “the whole nation… an army and the whole land [a] front”.

Today’s IDF is the world’s fourth most powerful military, nuclear-armed with state-of-the-art weapons and technology, an active space and satellite programme, biological and chemical capabilities, and a large per capita military budget, financed generously by Washington.

The military also controls 48 per cent of public land, and recycles its commanders into high government positions, including municipality and regional council heads, mayors, ministers and heads of state. Others get top public administration positions or serve as business executives or directors.

“The unquestioned prestige enjoyed by top military officers emanates downwards, and some of it can still be enjoyed by” common soldiers, the report states. Children see and feel it everywhere in Israel, including from adult family members, from religious leaders, and in school. In addition, imagery and weapons are ubiquitous, including old tanks, guns and fighter jets visible in public places.

Militarised education starts in kindergarten, at home, and on the streets. “The military is physically present in schools and school activities”, with many uniformed soldiers teaching classes to programme young minds. Further, teachers, especially principals, are often retired career officers, and school walls are adorned with names and photographs of fallen heroes among their graduates.

Field trips for all ages are to military memorials on former battlegrounds. Curricula and textbooks reflect militarism, from kindergarten through secondary schools that have mandatory programmes called “preparation for the IDF” that include training. Glorifying military heroes and conquests while vilifying Palestinians are featured.

Symbolic recruitment also precedes conscription. This consists of indoctrinating youths to feel part of the military, mobilised for war, ready for combat, and eager to participate. It also consists of kindergarten and elementary school children sending gift packages to soldiers, especially on holidays, expressing their “gratitude” in personal letters.

A 1974 Israeli teachers’ guide entitled “When a Nation Reports for Duty” promotes enlistment by saying that the people as a whole carry the burden of the war effort, and it is divided between those who wear the IDF uniform and civilians who are not directly recruited by the IDF. “Therefore, it should be understood that [every] civilian carries the burden of the war effort,” the guide says.

Children learn such values early, and they stick, preparing them for later conscription and a lifetime of military support. At school, children are exposed to ceremonies, commemorations, speeches, field trips to military bases, and holiday celebrations of battles between “us” (Jews) and “the bad guys”, earlier Nazis, Egyptians, Persians, and Arabs, and now Palestinians. As a result, children are imbued “to accept military force and war as a natural state and a natural response to conflict situations”.

Soldiers in Israeli schools are both former IDF teachers and administrators as well as “uniformed soldiers on duty, stationed in schools as part of the school staff… The presence of former soldiers, especially retired high-ranking officers, in the education system is considered by many in Israeli society, including government, to be a positive influence on children,” reports say, especially since preparing youths for military service is a core educational goal.

In collaboration with the ministries of education and defence, the IDF operates two large-scale youth programmes, the Teacher-Soldier programme that trains soldiers to become teachers and to complement civilian staff despite their poor qualifications, and the Youth-Guide programme that works with underprivileged children, in some cases for Youth Battalions and in others as preparation for military service coordinators.

Soldiers working in Israeli schools are nearly always in uniform, report to civilian and military superiors, promote militarism and wars for defence, and children acclimatise themselves to viewing them as an integral part of their education and a future obligation.

Indoctrinating youths early on blurs the line between Israeli military and civil society, promotes militarism, and makes conscription seem inevitable, necessary and desirable.

PREPARING FOR MILITARY SERVICE: For most male and female Israeli young people, military service is a rite of passage and a natural step in the preparation for adulthood, something that policymakers have been cognizant of for decades.

After the 1973 War, the above-mentioned “When a Nation Reports for Duty” guide explained the role of all Israelis during emergencies and helped children understand it clearly. In 1984, actively preparing youths for military service began when the IDF and Israeli Ministry of Defence published a guide called “Towards Service in the IDF”, which explained the privilege of serving in the Israeli armed services, adapting to military and basic training, developing fitness in preparation, the IDF as a positive force in society, and preparing parents to accept their children’s role as future soldiers.

Since the run-up to the 1948 War, training for military service was common in Israel, especially through the Youth Battalions, but the 1984 programme included school indoctrination “as part of the ordinary curriculum”.

Today’s school programme is called “Willingness to Serve and Readiness for the IDF”, which is mandatory for three years in Israeli secondary schools, the programme’s goal being “preparing the entire youth population to service in the IDF, while strengthening their readiness and willingness to perform a substantial and contributing service, each to his abilities, and emphasising the importance of serving in combat units”.

Content includes combat legacy stories on field trips, the ethics of war, familiarisation with different IDF units, physical education and Arabic studies to enlist Israelis for intelligence. The format is regimented, emphasising discipline, and the “Soldier for a Day” programme takes children to a military base for descriptive presentations, especially about elite combat units.

Several civilian programmes also prepare children for future service, including “Preparation for Combat Fitness” courses, “Youth Battalions Special Forces Induction” and “Follow Me”. It is common in Israel “to see large groups of young men run about on public beaches, in preparation for military service”.

The Naale Programme (a Hebrew acronym for “Youth Immigrating Before Parents”) also promotes immigration for foreign Jewish children, encouraging them to come to Israel, attend school and become citizens. It presents military service as a major socialising force, stressing benefits such as acceptance in Israeli society.

Moreover, Article 44 of Israel’s 1986 National Defence Service Law authorises the IDF to obtain information about everyone eligible for service. Educators, employers and others asked to help must cooperate. Under Article 43, persons “Intended for Security Service” cannot travel abroad without Defense Ministry permission, although exemptions are granted with restrictions, such as time limits.

Prior to their conscription, most Israeli young people receive a warrant at home, requiring them to report to a regional conscription bureau in a practice called “first call-up” for initial screening, data verification, medical and intelligence tests and a personal interview. If after three warrants young people do not comply, police intervention may follow.

In addition to regular Israeli secondary schools, there are military high schools that include Mevo’ot Yam, which has 500 students who wear uniforms, participate in parades and learn weapons use in preparation for future Navy service, Israeli Air Force technical schools for cadets preparing for future IAF service, and the Amal 1 network, one of the largest in Israel, which carries out joint military-civilian projects for future Air Force service.

Courses at such schools combine civilian and military studies, children being groomed to become soldiers. This is the case even though Article 77 (2) of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions (1977) prohibits recruiting children under the age of 15. In Israeli military schools, children are “regularly recruited” as young as 13 or 14, a practice that persists because of the pervasive influence of militarism in Israeli society and culture.

In all Israeli secondary schools, mandatory Youth Battalion Training Week simulates army life for those in 11th and 12th grade on military bases. With the children wearing uniforms, this training includes reception, processing, orientation and marches, night and day weapons and field training, and lessons about battle heritage, military ranks, discipline, adapting, service commitment, and the purity of arms.

During the entire training, Israeli children are surrounded by soldiers and treated like them in order to gain familiarity with military life. In groups of about 20, treatment and conditions are rigorous, obedience a must, and for those who disobey, punishments include extra calisthenics, running and chores like latrine duty.

In times of emergency, Israeli Youth Battalions may be recruited for active service as they were during the 1948 War. For boys aged 16 or older, elite combat unit try-outs are held, initially for two days, and for qualifiers of up to five, involving demanding and exhausting mental and physical fitness tests. The IDF’s reference to “substantial service” strongly emphasises Elite Combat Unit enlistment, being the “cream of the crop” destined for the “most exciting fighting activities”.

For the few selected, pressure to be accepted is intense because participation is considered a great honour.

Arranged through schools, children are also enlisted to support the IDF, especially during times of emergency or special needs. Besides training, they do laundry, sort uniforms, wash dishes, set dining room tables, clean vehicles, and do other chores, freeing soldiers for military duties.

To support a war effort, children as young as 15 and a half are enlisted for “labour service [to protect] the state or public security or for providing vital services to the population”. In all cases, schools cooperate, and during extreme times children have no choice.

Another way in which children are used for military purposes in Israel is in the Israeli Civil Guard, a police- run community-based organisation founded in 1974 to mobilise civilians for protection against Arab militia attacks. Today, the Guard patrols community areas, challenges Palestinians, harasses them, at times shoots them, and performs other services like securing public transportation, educational institutions, open markets and parking lots, as well as helping out at checkpoints.

About 15 per cent of Guard volunteers are children, eligible at age 15 to join with a restricted status that is removed a year later. Parental consent is also required. The youths are armed, and some schools give extra credit for participating.

Members of Israeli Emergency Squads are mostly adults to be called on as needed, but since 2002 secondary school pupils have increasingly also been enlisted. Although part of Israel’s police force, the Squads, set up under Section 8 of the 1971 Police Orders, allow the Israeli government “at times of war or emergency… to declare the Israeli Police Force, or a part of it, a military force which might be employed in military functions for the protection of the State.”

In the West Bank, Israeli children as young as 15 guard settlements and do other security work, performing functions that include working in police headquarters and patrolling with arms they’re trained to use.

Some of these children “grow up believing they must banish the Palestinians, and act” violently with impunity, including harassing them, beating them, breaking into their homes, destroying their property, and at times killing them.

There’s little difference between “training and assigning a child to do work as an armed [settlement] guard [or] assigning [them as] soldier[s] at the front in wartime… The formalities of whether one officially belongs to the army or not are hardly relevant,” reports say, given the pervasive militarisation of Israeli society.

Although civilian service is voluntary, children are raised “in a hostile and violent environment in the middle of a confrontation area”. In the occupied territories, many believe the land is their land. They must protect it, and the Palestinians are enemies. Under intense social pressure, children are encouraged to perform at a very immature age when they’re too young to know the consequences, yet they are conditioned to be militant and obedient.

A last feature of the military use of children by Israel is its use of Palestinian children as collaborators. Israel recruits Palestinian informants, including children, as field agents to provide intelligence, asking them to work as collaborators that most Palestinians call traitors.

Tactics involve detaining Palestinian children, then pressuring and torturing them to comply, much like the tactics Israel used in recruiting for the South Lebanon Army (SLA) after the 1982 Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon. Under Israeli supervision, SLA Lebanese citizens, including children as young as 12, were used as collaborators for intelligence purposes.

During the second Intifada, Palestinians, including children, were also used as human shields by Israel, forced at gunpoint to comply.

Militarised education starts early in Israel in both overt and symbolic ways, the aim being to condition young minds to accept military service as natural, vital, and an honour for Israeli citizens. The “educational system is so committed to [promoting] military service that it [fails] to consider” the harm done to new youth generations, who grow up thinking wars and violence are natural, peace unattainable, Arabs inferior, and Palestinians enemies.

The militarisation of society is corrupting and self- destructive, and the recruiting of child soldiers is criminal and unconscionable. All forms of it must stop. The alternative is unacceptable, illegal and intolerable.

* The writer is a research associate of the Centre for Research on Globalisation.

May 8, 2010 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

‘Greece being forced to buy arms’

Press TV – May 8, 2010

A leading European parliamentarian has accused France and Germany of forcing Greece to buy billions of euros in arms in exchange for their bailout money.

France and Germany, while publicly urging Greece to make harsh public spending cuts, bullied its government to confirm billions of euros in arms deals, Franco-German lawmaker Daniel Cohn-Bendit alleged on Friday.

The accusation drew a stern denial from the French government.

Cohn-Bendit said he had met last week in Athens with Papandreou, a long-time friend of his, and accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy of blackmailing the Greek leader.

Cohn-Bendit accused France and Germany of making their contributions to an IMF-led rescue package for the debt-ridden Greek economy contingent on Athens honoring massive arms deals signed by Papandreou’s predecessor.

“Mr. Fillon and Mr. Sarkozy told Mr. Papandreou: ‘We’re going to raise the money to help you, but you are going to have to continue to pay the arms contracts that we have with you,'” Cohn-Bendit said.

On Friday, eurozone leaders approved a 110-billion-euro Greek aid package in an emergency summit in Brussels. The meeting was held in an effort to restore confidence in the euro after the Greek crisis rattled financial markets worldwide.

May 8, 2010 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | Leave a comment

What I learned in Afghanistan – About the United States

By Dana Visalli | May 6, 2010

I was surprised on my recent trip to Afghanistan that I learned so much…about the United States. I was in Afghanistan for two weeks in March of this year, meeting with a large number of Afghans working in humanitarian endeavors – the principal of a girls’ school, the director of a school for street children, the Afghan Human Rights Commission, a group working on environmental issues. The one thing that all of these groups that we met with had in common was, they were penniless. They all survived on rather tenuous donations made by philanthropic foundations in Europe.

I had read that the United States had spent $300 billion dollars in Afghanistan since the invasion and occupation of that country ten years ago, so I naturally became curious where this tremendous quantity of money and resources had gone. Many Americans had said to me that we were in Afghanistan “to help Afghan women,” and yet we were told by the director of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, and we read in the recent UN report titled “Silence is Violence,” that the situation for women there was growing more violent and oppressive each year. So I decide to do some research.

95% of the $300 billion that the U.S. has spent on its Afghanistan operation since we invaded the country in 2001 has gone to our military operations there. Several reports indicate that it costs one million dollars to keep one American soldier in that country for one year. We will soon have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, which will cost a neat $100 billion a year.

US soldiers in Afghanistan spend almost all of their time on one of our 300 bases in that country, so there is nothing they can do to help the Afghan people, whose physical infrastructure has been destroyed by the “30-year war” there, and who are themselves mostly jobless in a society in which there is almost no economy and no work.

Some effort is made to see that the remaining 5% of the $300 billion spent to date in Afghanistan does help Afghan society, but there is so much corruption and general lawlessness that the endeavor is largely futile. We were told by a female member of the Afghan parliament of one symbolic incident in which a container of medical equipment that was purchased in the US with US government funds for a clinic in Ghawr province, west of Kabul. It was shipped from the US, but by the time it arrived in Ghawr it was just an empty shell; all the equipment had been pilfered along the way.

Violence against women is increasing in Afghanistan at the present time, not decreasing. The Director of the Afghan Human Rights Commission told us of a recent case in which a ten-year-old girl was picked up by an Afghan Army commander in his military vehicle, taken to the nearby base and raped. He brought her back to her home semiconscious and bleeding, after conveying to her that if she told what had happened he would kill her entire family. The human rights commissioner ended the tale by saying to us the he could tell us “a thousand stories like this.” There has been a rapid rise in the number of self-immolations – women burning themselves to death – in Afghanistan in the past three years, to escape the violence that pervades many women’s lives – under the nine-year US occupation.

Armed conflict and insecurity, along with criminality and lawlessness, are on the rise in Afghanistan. In this respect, the country mirrors experience elsewhere which indicates a near universal co-relation between heightened conflict, insecurity, and violence against women.

Once one understands that the US military presence in Afghanistan is not actually helping the Afghan people, the question of the effectiveness or goodwill of other major US military interventions in recent history arises. In Vietnam, for example, the country had been a colony of France for the 80 years prior to WW II, at which point the Japanese invaded and took over. When the Japanese surrendered, the Vietnamese declared their independence, on September 2, 1945. In their preamble they directly quoted the US Declaration of Independence (“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness….”).

The United States responded first by supporting the French in their efforts to recapture their lost colony, and when that failed, the US dropped 10 million tons of bombs on Vietnam – more than were dropped in all of World War II – sprayed 29 million gallons of the carcinogenic defoliant Agent Orange on the country, and dropped 400,000 tons of napalm, killing a total 3.4 million people. This is an appreciable level of savagery, and it would be reasonable to ask why the United States responded in this way to the Vietnamese simply declaring their inalienable rights.

There was a sideshow to the Vietnam war, and that is that the United States conducted massive bombing campaigns against Vietnam’s two western neighbors, Laos and Cambodia. From 1964 to 1973, the US dropped more than two million tons of ordnance over Laos in a operation consisting of 580,000 bombing missions – equal to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. This unprecedented, secret bombing campaign was conducted without authorization from the US Congress and without the knowledge of the American people.

The ten-year bombing exercise killed an estimated 1 million Laotians. Despite questions surrounding the legality of the bombings and the large toll of innocent lives that were taken, the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs at the time, Alexis Johnson, stated, “The Laos operation is something of which we can be proud as Americans. It has involved virtually no American casualties. What we are getting for our money there . . . is, I think, to use the old phrase, very cost effective.”

One Laotian female refugee recalled the years of bombing in this way: “Our lives became like those of animals desperately trying to escape their hunters . . . Human beings, whose parents brought them into the world and carefully raised them with overflowing love despite so many difficulties, these human beings would die from a single blast as explosions burst, lying still without moving again at all. And who then thinks of the blood, flesh, sweat and strength of their parents, and who will have charity and pity for them? In reality, whatever happens, it is only the innocent who suffer.”

In Cambodia, the United States was concerned that the North Vietnamese might have established a military base in the country. In response, The US dropped three million tons of ordnance in 230,000 sorties on 113,000 sites between 1964 and 1975. 10% of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having “unknown” targets and another 8000 sites having no target listed at all. About a million Cambodians were killed (there was no one counting), and the destruction to society wrought by the indiscriminate, long-term destruction is widely thought to have given rise to the Khmer Rouge, who proceeded, in their hatred for all things Western, to kill another 2 million people.

Four days after Vietnam declared its independence on September 2, 1945, “Southern Korea” also declared independence (on September 6), with a primary goal of reuniting the country – which had been split into north and south by the United States only seven months before. Two days later, on September 8, 1945, the US military arrived with the first of 72,000 troops, dissolved the newly formed South Korean government, and flew in their own chosen leader, Syngman Rhee, who had spent the previous 40 years in Washington D.C. There was considerable opposition to the US control of the country, so much that 250,000 and 500,000 people were killed between 1945 and 1950 resisting the American occupation, before the actual Korean War even started.

The Korean War, like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, was an asymmetrical war, in which the highly industrialized and mechanized US pulverized the comparatively primitive North Korean nation. One third of the population of North Korea was killed in the war, a total of three million people (along with one million Chinese and 58,000 Americans). Every city, every sizable town, every factory, every bridge, every road in North Korea was destroyed. General Curtis LeMay remarked at one point that the US had “turned every city into rubble,” and now was returning to “turn the rubble into dust.” A British reporter described one of the thousands of obliterated villages as “a low, wide mound of violet ashes.” General William Dean, who was captured after the battle of Taejon in July 1950 and taken to the North, later said that most of the towns and villages he saw were just “rubble or snowy open spaces.”

More napalm was dropped on Korea than on Vietnam, 600,000 tons compared to 400,000 tons in Vietnam. One report notes that, “By late August, 1950, B-29 formations were dropping 800 tons a day on the North. Much of it was pure napalm. Vietnam veteran Brian Wilson asks in this regard, “What it is like to pulverize ancient cultures into small pebbles, and not feel anything?”

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein came to power through a U.S.-CIA engineered coup in 1966 that overthrew the socialist government and installed Saddam’s Baath Party. Later conflict with Saddam let to the first and second Gulf Wars, and to thirteen years of severe U.S.-imposed economic sanctions on Iraq between the two wars, which taken together completely obliterated the Iraqi economy. An estimated one million people were killed in the two Gulf wars, and the United Nations estimates that the economic sanctions, in combination with the destruction of the social and economic infrastructure in the First Gulf War, killed another million Iraqis. Today both the economy and the political structure of Iraq are in ruins.

This trail of blood, tears and death smeared across the pages of recent history is the reason that Martin Luther King said in his famous Vietnam Speech that the United States is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Vietnam veteran Mike Hastie expanded the observation when he said in April of this year (2010) that, “The United States Government is a nonstop killing machine. The worst experience I had in Vietnam was experiencing the absolute truth of Martin Luther King’s statement. America is in absolute psychiatric denial of its genocidal maniacal nature.”

A further issue is that “war destroys the earth.” Not only does, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1960, “Every rocket fired signify a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” but every rocket that is fired reduces the life-sustaining capacity of the biosphere. In an ultimate sense it could be argued that those who wage war and those who pay for and support war, in reality bear some hidden hatred for life and some hidden desire to put and end to it.

What are our options? The short answer is, grow up. Grow up into the inherent depth of your own existence. After all, you are a “child of the universe, no less than the trees and stars, you have a right be here.” There is no viable, universally inscribed law that compels you to do as you are told to do by the multitude of dysfunctional and destructive authority figures that would demand your compliance, if you acquiesce.

“If we led our lives according to the ways intended by nature,” wrote French author La Boétie in his book The Politics of Obedience,” we should be intuitively obedient to our parents; later we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody.” La Boétie wrote this in the year 1552, but people today remain slaves to external authority. “Our problem,” said historian Howard Zinn, “is not civil disobedience; our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty.”

Do you want to spend your life paying for the death of people (executed by the US military) that you would probably have loved if you have met them? Do you want to spend your life paying for the arsenal of hydrogen bombs that could very well destroy most of the life on the planet? If not, if you want another kind of life, then as author James Howard Kunstler often suggests, ‘You will have to make other arrangements.” You will have to arrange to live according to your own deepest ethical standards, rather than living in fear of the nefarious authority figures that currently demand your obedience and threaten to punish you if you do not obey their demands on your one precious chance at life.

“We must know how the first ruler came by his authority.” ~ John Locke

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” ~ Henry David Thoreau


Dana Visalli [send him mail] is an ecologist, botanist and organic farmer living in Twisp, Washington.

Copyright © 2010 Dana Visalli

May 6, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | Leave a comment

States back nuclear test ban, right to civilian nuclear

By J.T. Nguyen | DPA | May 4, 2010

New York – More governments attending the United Nations nuclear review conference Tuesday called for an effective ban on nuclear tests and defended their right to possess nuclear energy for peaceful uses.

Indonesia announced it has begun the lengthy national process of ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). If it ratifies the treaty, just eight countries, including the United States and China, would need to ratify it for the treaty to enter into force.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who was attending the UN review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York, told reporters the eight remaining countries should follow Jakarta’s example. Those countries are China, North Korea, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and the United States.

The treaty bans nuclear tests in the atmosphere to prevent radioactive fallout on the earth. But some countries called for a ban on all forms of nuclear explosions.

During the NTP debate, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Odein Ajumogobia, representing African states, said the CTBT should enter into force as early as possible and it should be a total ban.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, who was speaking on behalf of the Pacific Islands Forum, and others joined him in demanding the treaty enter into force.

CTBT has been signed by 182 countries, of which 151 have ratified it by adopting national laws to implement the treaty. But the treaty demands that the world’s 44 countries with nuclear technology must all ratify before it enters into force.

Many government envoys called for their inalienable right to have nuclear energy for peaceful uses, as the dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities focused on whether that country has plans to produce nuclear weapons rather than civilian energy as Tehran claims. Western government have accused Iran of diverting its advanced uranium enrichment programme to weapons.

Smith said the group of Pacific nations “fully support the rights of non-nuclear-weapon states to enjoy the benefit of peaceful nuclear energy within the framework that reduces proliferation risk and adheres to the highest international standards of safeguards and security.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said more than 60 countries are considering building nuclear power plants for civilian uses and between 20 and 30 of them would have completed the projects by 2030.

The second day of NPT debate in the UN General Assembly in New York was welcomed by some countries that suffered the Cold War nuclear weapon expansion of the former Soviet Union.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko, whose country still bears an “open wound” of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion in 1986, said civilian nuclear energy has become a rising international issue.

“We underscore the vital need of peaceful nuclear technology for sustainable development of nations, provided that nuclear activities are subject to full scope safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Gryshchenko said.

Gryshchenko said his country, Russia and Belarus will convene an international conference in April 2011, to mark the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl and discuss progress in returning to normal life in countries and regions affected by the radioactive fallout.

May 5, 2010 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

Obama Administration Gives Priority to Bioweapons Research

By Sherwood Ross | BLACKLISTED NEWS | 05-01-2010

The priorities of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the area of bacteriology have been “catastrophically re-ordered” by emphasizing bioweapons research over non-bioweapons research, a prominent authority states.

Giving priority to bioweapons research at NIH, started under the Bush Administration and continuing under President Obama, “diverts resources from critical public-health and scientific objectives,” says Richard Ebright, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.

“The negative impact has been most severe in bacteriology, in which NIH research priorities have been catastrophically re-ordered—with research on bacterial bioweapons receiving more support than research on the top five bacterial causes of death combined—and in which non-bioweapons research has suffered catastrophic losses in resources and personnel,” Ebright said.

Ebright cited the examples of research into two bacterial pathogens: “Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus, which claim 40,000 and 20,000 U.S. lives each year, respectively. Each kills more Americans than HIV-AIDS (15,000 U.S. lives) “but neither of these bacterial pathogens is on the list of NIAID Priority Pathogens,” Ebright pointed out. (NIAID, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is the subdivision of NIH responsible for infectious-disease research.)

“These two killer bacterial pathogens are not in NIAID’s ‘Category A’, with the anthrax bacterium and the smallpox virus, or even in NIAID’s ‘Category B’ or ‘Category C,’” Ebright says. “Something is wrong—very wrong—when NIAID fails to prioritize the top infectious cause of U.S. death,” he said in an email to this reporter.

Other top bacterial causes of U.S. deaths include Enterococcus faecium/faecalis, Clostridium difficile, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. “Of these, only the last is on the NIAID Priority Pathogens list and this pathogen is only in Category C,” Ebright said.

Asked “What is the mood of the scientific life sciences community at this time toward the Administration?” Ebright responded, “Hopeful expectation” but “growing concern that, thus far, there has been more continuity [from the Bush Administration] than change.”

The scope of the government’s involvement in bioweapons research, may be gauged from its estimated expenditure of $70 billion since 9/11 and the fact that, according to Ebright, more than 400 U.S. institutions are engaged in such work.

Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, said that in constant dollars the $70 billion “is twice what they spent on the Manhattan Project to develop the A-bomb—ergo, this is a weapons program.”

Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 for the U.S., said President Bush “turned the NIH into a front organization for biowarfare work,” and “(President) Obama is simply continuing the Bush policies” and is “now even exporting biowarfare capabilities to Third World Countries.”

Asked about the scope of the nation’s biowarfare activities, Boyle estimated there are “about 13,000 death scientists involved…(so) Dr. (Josef) Mengele has arrived on American campuses all over and the universities’ Institutional Review Boards (to review biowarfare research programs) are a joke and a fraud, too.” (Mengele was a German SS officer and physician who, during WWII, performed diabolical experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.)

Boyle said, “There is so much money involved that universities simply are not going to turn down these proposals no matter how reprehensible they might read…”

At his own University of Illinois, Boyle said, previous biowarfare research and development contracts with the Pentagon clearly stated: “We have selected pigs (to gas with biowarfare agents) because they have a circulatory system and a respiratory system similar to human beings.”

Boyle said, “I am sure similar type biowarfare contracts that are clearly anti-human, anti-ethical, illegal and criminal on their face alone have been approved all over (at) American universities by now. Money talks. Ethics walks.”

#

Sherwood Ross formerly worked for the Chicago Daily News and contributed regular columns to Reuters and UPI. His articles on biowarfare have been published in The Humanist and other magazines. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com

May 1, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Japan premier approval rating drops

Press TV – April 26, 2010

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s approval rating has dropped sharply as a row over the US military presence heats up in the country. More than two-thirds of the respondents to an opinion poll published by the Nikkei newspaper have disapproved of Hatoyama’s policies. The survey shows that public disapproval of Hatoyama’s performance has jumped by more than ten percent in just a month.

The survey comes a day after tens of thousands of protesters rallied on the southern island of Okinawa. They gathered to call on Tokyo to move an unpopular US airbase off the island. The protesters lambasted the primier for failing to keep his campaign promise of moving the base to another location or even outside the country.

Hatoyama is facing growing criticism over his failure to settle the row over the base. The Japanese premier has promised to resolve the matter before the end of May. Fifty-seven percent say Hatoyama should resign if he does not meet his deadline to resolve the dispute.

Some 47,000 US troops are based in Japan, with more than half of the soldiers stationed in Okinawa. The issue has threatened the political future of Hatoyama with both Washington and his political allies putting him under pressure to find a solution to the deadlock.

April 26, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News, Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Leave a comment

Germans form anti-nuclear human chain

Press TV – 24 April 2010

Protestors urge govt. to change nuclear policy.

Tens of thousands of Germans have created a human chain as they expressed opposition to the use of nuclear energy.

Around 100,000 people participated in the event on Saturday to form the human chain, measuring at 120 kilometers (75 miles) along the Elbe River between the northern towns of Brunsbuettel and Kruemmel that passed through the city of Hamburg.

“The chain is almost complete,” a police spokeswoman in the northern German region of Schleswig-Holstein told AFP.

Organizers of the peaceful demonstration dubbed “Chain reaction — Stop nuclear energy” also urged the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel to alter its nuclear policy.

“Today will spark a countrywide chain reaction of protests and resistance if the government does not reverse its atomic policy,” organizers said in a statement, according to Reuters.

The German government has offered delay on the closing of the country’s 17 nuclear power plants beyond a 2020 target date.

The protests come just days before Monday’s 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

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Germans call for arms embargo against Israel

BDS Day of Action | March 30, 2010

On Tuesday, 30th of March 2010 activists of different peace groups gathered close to the Berlin office of Germany’s biggest steel and arms industry company Thyssen Krupp in the centre of Berlin close to the sqare called Gendarmenmarkt to protest against the export of German Dolphin Submarines and warships to Israel.

(The text on the foto reads: “No submarines and warships to Israel!”)

The protest was part of the second Global BDS Day of Action in solidarity with the Palestinian people and for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

ThyssenKrupp is the owner of the North-German shipyard HDW (Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft GmbH). HDW already fabricated/produced 5 submarines of the Dolphin type for Israel. A further ship of this kind is planned to be sent to Israel. It is widely believed among experts that the Israeli government wants to add atomic warheads to the submarines.Later the avtivists turned to a Natural Food Store. They distributed leaflets informing the public about the fact that Israel is one of most important producer of Natural Food products. In the text of the leaflet with the headline “Off One’s Oats” (“Appetit vergangen”) it is stressed that “the Israeli organic agriculture is part of a regime of permanent human rights violations, of the destruction of the environment and violence/disregard of International Law.”

The activists are members of a group where different organisations work together – among them the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East/EJJP Germany, the Middle East Committee of Berlin Peace Coordination and the Workshop Middle East Berlin.

April 24, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment

US to maintain tactical nukes in Europe

Press TV – April 24, 2010

The US says it will keep its nuclear arms in Europe, arguing that any cut in the arsenal would require Russia to take a similar step.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ruled out a withdrawal of its 200 tactical weapons stationed in several European countries, saying Washington is going to be committed to its military alliance in the continent.

“As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance,” Clinton said in remarks prepared for delivery to NATO foreign ministers, according to a Washington Post report on Thursday.

“As a nuclear alliance, sharing nuclear risks and responsibilities is fundamental,” she said in remarks released by the State Department.

Clinton said that any reduction should be tied to a negotiated nuclear withdrawal by Russia. Moscow, however, says it will not pull out its tactical arms unless Washington removes its bombs from Europe.

Moscow and Washington signed a treaty earlier this month which requires a reduction in their nuclear arsenals by about one-third. The treaty, however, is not observed by any international organization.

The US and Russia currently possess 95-percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

April 24, 2010 Posted by | Aletho News, Militarism | Leave a comment

US Rules Out Removing Its Nukes From Europe

By Jason Ditz | April 22, 2010

Despite increased calls from European officials to remove them, the United States today ruled out moving its hundreds of “battlefield nukes” from Europe, insisting that they must remain to ensure that Europe shares the “nuclear risks and responsibilities.”

The comments came in response to an open letter from a number of high ranking European officials, who said that the nukes were a Cold War relic with no practical value and were just a constant danger. They are also in conflict with President Obama’s ostensible hope for nuclear disarmament.

NATO Chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen defended the US position, saying the nukes remain “essential” as a deterrent. What the nations of Europe are supposed to need hundreds of nuclear weapons as a deterrent against, however, is unclear.

German FM Guido Westerwelle says that the withdrawal of the weapons would be a “peace dividend,” while his Polish counterpark Radek Sikorski added that there were “far too many” nuclear weapons in Europe.

April 23, 2010 Posted by | Militarism | Leave a comment

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