Hovering American B-52 warplanes cause panic in Pakistan’s tribal areas
2009-12-28 15:00:00
The continuous hovering of America’s heavy bomber aircraft, B-52 – capable of carrying nuclear and conventional weapons – has caused panic among residents of Pakistan’s Tribal Areas.
The Nation quoted sources as saying that B-52 warplanes and US drones have been hovering over Waziristan and Kurram Agency for the last several weeks.
The US Air Combat Command’s B-52 is a long-range, heavy bomber that can perform a variety of missions.
Capable of flying at high subsonic speeds at altitudes up to 50,000 feet, the B-52 can perform air interdiction, offensive counter-air and maritime operations.
During Desert Storm, B-52s delivered 40 per cent of all the weapons dropped by coalition forces.
It is highly effective when used for ocean surveillance. Two B-52s, in two hours, can monitor 364,000 square kilometres of ocean surface.
All B-52s are equipped with an electro-optical viewing system to augment the targeting, battle assessment, flight safety and terrain-avoidance system, thus further improving its combat ability and low-level flight capability. (ANI)
The UN in Somalia: Peacekeepers or peacekillers?
By Thomas C. Mountain
Online Journal
December 28, 2009
The United Nations via its proxies in the African Union supplied Ugandan and Burundi military have been randomly shelling civilian neighborhoods in Mogadishu in retaliation for guerilla attacks carried out by the Somali resistance.
The UN/AU has occupied a small “green zone” in Mogadishu after the expulsion of the Ethiopian military by the Somali armed resistance and claims to represent a “democratically elected” Somali government. In reality, this UN/AU band of “peacekeepers” is there to prop up the Western imposed puppet regime of allegedly Al -Queda linked “terrorist” Sheik Sharif.
The Somali resistance, an increasingly fractured bunch, has one thing in common, hatred for this Western imposed band of quislings. Small squads of fighters regularly attack the dug in UN/AU occupation forces and occasionally do some really significant damage. For many months now, the UN/AU army in Mogadishu has begun retaliation shelling of civilian neighborhoods after particularly effective attacks by the resistance.
Using hit and run mortar bombardment, as well as manned explosive attacks there is really no target for the UN/AU forces to respond to. In their frustration (along with not being paid their salaries for some six months now) the UN/AU occupation army randomly bombards the surrounding neighborhoods in Mogadishu. The following is a report from a well-known Somali web site.
“In the last three months alone the United Nations forces in Mogadishu have killed more than 160 civilians and have injured more than 400. On December 20, 2009, UN indiscriminate shelling killed 14 civilians and 33 wounded in Bakara Market and Elasha Biyaha districts. October 28, 2009, UN shelling killed 4 civilians and 11 were wounded in Wardhiigley district. On October 26, 2009, UN shelling killed 5 civilians and wounded 20 in Yaaqshiid district. On October 22, 2009, UN shelling killed 17 civilians and 60 wounded in Holwadag and Hodan districts. 29 September, 2009 UN shells landed busy Bakara market killing 12 people and wounding 30 people. These numbers are conservative numbers but the real toll is higher as many of victims die on the spot and are not carried to the hospital to be officially reported.”
It would seem that the UN/AU forces are little more than hired thugs doing the dirty work on the behalf of the USA and its European allies whose main goal is to see Somalia in a state of continued conflict and chaos. Peacekeepers or Peacekillers? You be the judge.
Thomas C. Mountain, residing in Eritrea, was in a former life an educator, activist and alternative medicine practitioner in the USA. Email thomascmountain at yahoo.com.
Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal
Nasrallah: US fails to protect Christians
December 27, 2009
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah gave a speech in Beirut’s southern suburb Dahiyeh on Sunday. “Today in Dahiyeh… we declare that the American scheme of hegemony threatens our nation, values, and the future of our peoples. We condemn its schemes and wars on our countries and peoples. We condemn its full partnership with Israel in those crimes. We also call upon the nation to be aware of the real nature of this enemy and this plot and not to be mislead by the fake slogans about freedom.”
Nasralah continued with warnings about collaboration with Zionism. “There are millions of Palestinian refugees living away from their homes and there are more than 11 thousand prisoners in Israeli jails…We call on the ummah not to confuse between the friend and the foe and not to listen to US and Israeli proxies who want to exchange this enemy with a brother. We call for ending the siege of Gaza. What kind of ummah is this, an ummah of 1.4 billion Muslims watching 1.5 million Palestinians living in harsh conditions due to the siege? A year ago, we told Egypt a word of truth and we were railed at. Today, in addition to the siege, there is the iron wall and the flow of water in tunnels to finish off the rest of the narrow veins that give some hope to Gaza. Today, I call on Egypt to stop building this wall and the break the siege. This should be condemned by all honest Arabs. Silence cannot continue at the expense of a whole people, regardless of the pretexts.”
Lebanon’s achievement in overcoming division was noted. “And what had been schemed for Lebanon was frightening in terms of wars, seditions, and divisions as well as a suspicious role for Lebanon in the new Middle East; the sectarian, ethnic, and conflicting Mideast that would yield to Israel. Today we have crossed this stage and we are entering a new one with fixing ties with Syria being one of its most important characteristics. Today we have a national unity government that comprises most of the powers and this gives us a chance to move forward to solve our country’s problems.”
The Hezbollah leader addressed the Christian community in Lebanon. “I call on them for a quiet dialogue away from ardent rhetoric; a dialogue among themselves over their present and future options. I call them to recall past experiences and conclude whether bargaining on Israel, by some parties, was good for Lebanon or was it the contrary. I call on them to review the bargaining of some on the American administration. Today, we have 150 thousand American soldiers in Iraq and they did not provide security for the Christians who can’t even gather in their churches to mark the birth of Christ. Can the United States provide security? I tell them that the interest of the Christian community in Lebanon lies in Lebanon, not anywhere else. It’s in their interest to cooperate with the rest of the Lebanese. Today the Lebanese have the chance to acknowledge one another; and this is a chance that must not be wasted.”
US behind attacks on Pakistani civilians: Ex-ISI chief
Press TV | December 25, 2009
Former ISI chief Asad Durrani says private US contractors such as Xe (formerly known as Blackwater) and other intelligence agents may be behind the assassination of civilians across Pakistan.
In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Durrani said on Friday that the local militants led by Hakimullah Mehsud primarily target the government and military instillations.
Arguing against the local militants involvements in civilian assassinations, Durrani added that the militants consider Islamabad as a close ally of the US in the so-called ‘war on terror’ and that they have been launching retaliatory attacks against the government targets, particularly since the Pakistani army launched a major offensive against their stronghold in South Waziristan.
Durrani said that he doubted the notorious militants groups were behind a recent surge in attacks on civilian targets across the country.
The former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) claimed that certain theories were circulating among Pakistani intellectuals suggesting that the foreign agents or private US contractors could have been orchestrating assassinations on the civilian targets in the nuclear-armed country.
According to Durrani, these attacks were being carried out to encourage Islamabad to be more involved in war against the militants.
Pakistan has experienced a wave of violence over the past two years. Nearly 3,000 people have been killed in bomb attacks and other terrorist operations across the country.
Pentagon Spending For War Exceeds That Of All State Governments Combined
By Sherwood Ross | Black Listed News | December 23, 2009
The U.S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans.
Joseph Henchman, director of state projects for the Tax Foundation of Washington, D.C., says the states collected a total of $781 billion in taxes in 2008.
For a rough comparison, according to Wikipedia data, the total budget for what the Pentagon calls “defense” in fiscal year 2010 will be at least $880 billion and could possibly top $1 trillion. That’s more than all the state governments collect.
Henchman says all American local governments combined (cities, counties, etc.) collect about $500 billion in taxes. Add that to total state tax take and you get over $1.3 trillion. This means Uncle Sam’s Pentagon is sopping up nearly as much money as all state, county, city, and other governmental units spend to run the country.
If the Pentagon figure of $1 trillion is somewhat less than all other taxing authorities, keep in mind the FBI, the various intelligence agencies, the VA, the National Institutes of Health (biological warfare) are also spending on war-related activities.
A question that describes the above and answers itself is: In what area can the Federal government operate where states and cities cannot tread? The answer is: foreign affairs—raising armies, fighting wars, conducting diplomacy, etc. And so Uncle Sam keeps enlarging this area. His emphasis is not on diplomacy, either.
For every buck spent by the State Department, which gets some $50 billion a year, the Pentagon spends $20. As for the Peace Corps, its budget is a paltry $375 million—hardly enough to keep the Pentagon elephant in peanuts.
Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz and finance authority Linda Bilmes write in their “The Three Trillion Dollar War”(W.W. Norton), “defense spending has been growing as a percentage of discretionary funding (money that is not required to be spent on entitlements like Social Security), from 48 percent in 2000 to 51 percent today. That means that our defense needs are gobbling up a larger share of taxpayers’ money than ever before.”
And they add, “The Pentagon’s budget has increased by more than $600 billion, cumulatively, since we invaded Iraq.” With its 1,000 bases in the U.S. and another 800 bases globally, the U.S. truly has become a “Warfare State.” Today, military-related products account for about one-fourth of total U.S. GDP. This includes 10,000 nuclear weapons. Indeed, the U.S. has lavished $5.5 trillion just on nukes over the past 70 years.
No other nation has anything remotely like this menacing global presence. The Pentagon strengthens its grip by running joint “training” exercises with the military of 110 other nations, including outright dictatorships that suppress internal unrest.
The U.S. spends more on weaponry than the next dozen nations combined and is by far the No. 1 world arms peddler. “The government employs some 6,500 people just to coordinate and administer its arms sales program in conjunction with senior officials at American embassies around the world, who spend most of their ‘diplomatic’ careers working as arms salesmen,” writes Chalmers Johnson in “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire(Henry Holt).”
Chalmers goes on to say the U.S. military establishment today is “close to being beyond civilian control” and that despite its ability to “deliver death and destruction to any target on earth and expect little in the way of retaliation” it demands more and newer equipment “while the Pentagon now more or less sets its own agenda” and “monopolizes the formulation and conduct of American foreign policy.”
How long will it be before this tyrannical, anti-democratic, colossus that is sucking up as much money for war as all states, counties and cities spend on peace—and which straddles the globe, boosts dictators, and beats the war drums—turns on its own people?
Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations executive who formerly worked for major dailies and wire services. Contact him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com
Copyright © 2006-2009 BlackListedNews.com
Bernanke and the Corruption of Washington Culture
By Dean Baker | The Guardian Unlimited | December 21, 2009
The Senate Finance Committee overwhelmingly voted to approve Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for another 4-year term. This is a remarkable event since it is hard to imagine how Bernanke could have performed worse in his last 4-year term. By Bernanke’s own assessment, his policies brought the economy to the brink of another Great Depression. This sort of performance in any other job would get you fired in a second, but for the most important economic policymaker in the country it gets you high praise and another 4-year term.
There is no room for ambiguity in this story. Bernanke was at the Fed since the fall of 2002. (He had a brief stint in 2005 as chair of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.) At a point when at least some economists recognized the housing bubble and began to warn of the damage that would result from its collapse, Bernanke insisted that everything was fine and that nothing should be done to rein in the bubble.
This is worth repeating. If Bernanke knew what he was doing, he should have been able to see as early as 2002 that there was a housing bubble and that its collapse would throw the economy into a recession. It was also entirely predictable that the collapse could lead to a financial crisis of the type we saw, since housing was always a highly leveraged asset, even before the flood of subprime, Alt-A and other nonsense loans that propelled the bubble to ever greater heights. Of course as the bubble expanded, and the financial sector became ever more highly leveraged, the risks to the economy increased enormously.
Through this all, Bernanke just looked the other way. The whole time he insisted that everything was just fine.
To be clear, there was plenty that the Fed could have done to deflate the bubble before it grew to such dangerous proportions. First and foremost the Fed could have used its extensive research capabilities to carefully document the evidence for a housing bubble and the risks that its collapse would pose to the economy.
It then should have used the enormous megaphone of the Fed chairman and the platform of the institution to publicize this research widely. The Fed could have ensured that every loan officer who issued a mortgage, as well as all the bank officers who set policy, clearly heard the warnings of a bubble in the housing market, backed up by reams of irrefutable research. The same warnings would have reached the ears of every potential homebuyer in the country. It’s hard to believe that such warnings would have had no impact on the bubble, but it’s near criminal that the Fed never tried this route.
The second tool that the Fed could have pursued was to crack down on the fraudulent loans that were being issued in massive numbers at the peak of the bubble. It is absurd to claim that the Fed didn’t know about the abuses in the mortgage market. I was getting e-mails from all over the country telling me about loan officers filling in phony income and asset numbers so that borrowers would qualify for mortgages. If Bernanke and his Fed colleagues did not know about these widespread abuses, it is because they deliberately avoided knowing.
Finally, the Fed could have had a policy of interest rate hikes explicitly targeted to burst the bubble. Specifically, it could have announced that it will raise rates by half a point at every meeting, until house prices begin to fall and it will keep rates high until house prices approach their pre-bubble level.
This is what a responsible Fed policy would have looked like. But Ben Bernanke did not pursue a responsible Fed policy. He insisted that everything was just fine until he had to run to Congress last September, saying that if it didn’t immediately give $700 billion to the banks through the TARP program then the economy would collapse.
How on earth can you do worse in your job as Fed chair then bring the economy to the brink of a total collapse? If this is success, what does failure look like?
But, in Washington no one is ever held accountable for their performance. The economic collapse is treated like a fluke of nature – a hurricane or an earthquake – not the result of enormous policy failures.
So, it is the 15 million unemployed that go without work, not Ben Bernanke. Instead, the senators praise Bernanke to the sky and thank him for his service. The running line in the Senate is: “it could have been worse.”
That is the way Washington works these days. And, everyone should be very very disgusted.
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy. He also has a blog on the American Prospect, “Beat the Press,” where he discusses the media’s coverage of economic issues.
Relocating Guantánamo
Silence of the Lamb-like Lawyers
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | 12-22-09
Obama’s dwindling band of true believers has taken heart that their man has finally delivered on one of his many promises–the closing of the Guantanamo prison. But the prison is not being closed. It is being moved to Illinois, if the Republicans permit.
In truth, Obama has handed his supporters another defeat. Closing Guantanamo meant ceasing to hold people in violation of our legal principles of habeas corpus and due process and ceasing to torture them in violation of US and international laws.
All Obama would be doing would be moving 100 people, against whom the US government is unable to bring a case, from the prison in Guantanamo to a prison in Thomson, Illinois.
Are the residents of Thomson despondent that the US government has chosen their town as the site on which to continue its blatant violation of US legal principles? No, the residents are happy. It means jobs.
The hapless prisoners had a better chance of obtaining release from Guantanamo. Now the prisoners are up against two US senators, a US representative, a mayor, and a state governor who have a vested interest in the prisoners’ permanent detention in order to protect the new prison jobs in the hamlet devastated by unemployment.
Neither the public nor the media have ever shown any interest in how the detainees came to be incarcerated. Most of the detainees were unprotected people who were captured by Afghan war lords and sold to the Americans as “terrorists” in order to collect a proffered bounty. It was enough for the public and the media that the Defense Secretary at the time, Donald Rumsfeld, declared the Guantanamo detainees to be the “780 most dangerous people on earth.”
The vast majority have been released after years of abuse. The 100 who are slated to be removed to Illinois have apparently been so badly abused that the US government is afraid to release them because of the testimony the prisoners could give to human rights organizations and foreign media about their mistreatment.
Our British allies are showing more moral conscience than Americans are able to muster. Former PM Tony Blair, who provided cover for President Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, is being damned for his crimes by UK officialdom testifying before the Chilcot Inquiry.
The London Times on December 14 summed up the case against Blair in a headline: “Intoxicated by Power, Blair Tricked Us Into War.” Two days later the British First Post declared: “War Crime Case Against Tony Blair Now Rock-solid.” In an unguarded moment Blair let it slip that he favored a conspiracy for war regardless of the validity of the excuse [weapons of mass destruction] used to justify the invasion.
The movement to bring Blair to trial as a war criminal is gathering steam. Writing in the First Post Neil Clark reported: “There is widespread contempt for a man [Blair] who has made millions [his reward from the Bush regime] while Iraqis die in their hundreds of thousands due to the havoc unleashed by the illegal invasion, and who, with breathtaking arrogance, seems to regard himself as above the rules of international law.” Clark notes that the West’s practice of shipping Serbian and African leaders off to the War Crimes Tribunal, while exempting itself, is wearing thin.
In the US, of course, there is no such attempt to hold to account Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the large number of war criminals that comprised the Bush Regime. Indeed, Obama, whom Republicans love to hate, has gone out of his way to protect the Bush cohort from being held accountable.
Here in Great Moral America we only hold accountable celebrities and politicians for their sexual indiscretions. Tiger Woods is paying a bigger price for his girlfriends than Bush or Cheney will ever pay for the deaths and ruined lives of millions of people. The consulting company, Accenture Plc, which based its marketing program on Tiger Woods, has removed Woods from its Web site. Gillette announced that the company is dropping Woods from its print and broadcast ads. AT&T says it is re-evaluating the company’s relationship with Woods.
Apparently, Americans regard sexual infidelity as far more serious than invading countries on the basis of false charges and deception, invasions that have caused the deaths and displacement of millions of innocent people. Remember, the House impeached President Clinton not for his war crimes in Serbia, but for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Americans are more upset by Tiger Woods’ sexual affairs than they are by the Bush and Obama administrations’ destruction of US civil liberty. Americans don’t seem to mind that “their” government for the last 8 years has resorted to the detention practices of 1,000 years ago–simply grab a person and throw him into a dungeon forever without bringing charges and obtaining a conviction.
According to polls, Americans support torture, a violation of both US and international law, and Americans don’t mind that their government violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spies on them without obtaining warrants from a court. Apparently, the brave citizens of the “sole remaining superpower” are so afraid of terrorists that they are content to give up liberty for safety, an impossible feat.
With stunning insouciance, Americans have given up the rule of law that protected their liberty. The silence of law schools and bar associations indicates that the age of liberty has passed. In short, the American people support tyranny. And that’s where they are headed.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. His new book, How the Economy was Lost, will be published next month by AK Press / CounterPunch. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Aid groups say world powers betrayed Gaza
December 22, 2009
Bethlehem – Ma’an – The international community betrayed the people of Gaza by failing to end an Israeli blockade stymieing reconstruction efforts following last winter’s war, 16 aid and human rights groups said in a report released Tuesday.
The report Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, No recovery, No more excuses, alleges that the world’s powers, particularly the European Union, failed to ensure that aid pledged to Gaza actually reached its intended recipients.
Since the end of the three week military offensive dubbed Operation Cast Lead in January, Israel has allowed only 41 truckloads of construction materials into the Gaza Strip, the groups reported. All of those materials were destined for NGOs implementing piecemeal reconstruction efforts, or repairs to the electricity and sewage networks.
The groups sponsoring the report included Amnesty International, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Mercy Corps and Oxfam International.
The report said thousands of truckloads of reconstruction materials are needed to rebuild the tens of thousands of homes, businesses, schools, mosques and other buildings destroyed and damaged during the war. As a result, thousands of Gaza residents are still living in tents, and the Strip’s economy remains in ruins.
“The wretched reality endured by 1.5 million people in Gaza should appall anybody with an ounce of humanity. Sick, traumatized and impoverished people are being collectively punished by a cruel, illegal policy imposed by the Israeli authorities,” Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said in a statement.
“Israel’s responsibility to protect its citizens does not give it the right to punish every man, woman and child of Gaza.”
She also said the world has an obligation to act to end the blockade: “All states are obliged under international law to intervene to put an end to this brutal blockade but their leaders are failing in this fundamental measure of their own humanity.” […]
The report notes that as the occupying power, Israel is responsible to safeguard the welfare of the population in Gaza. Absent funds from Israel, the international community offered to rebuild Gaza after the recent war.
International donors pledged four billion US dollars to rebuild Gaza at a conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm Ash-Sheikh in March. Because of the ban on construction materials, virtually none of the aid has materialized. The EU accounted for 1 billion dollars of this figure.
The report faults the EU for failing to seek compensation from Israel for the destruction of facilities relating EU-funded projects in Gaza. The UN charged Israel 11.4 million for damages to its facilities.
Iran Sanctions Are Precursor to War
By Rep. Ron Paul, December 22, 2009
Last week the House overwhelmingly approved a measure to put a new round of sanctions on Iran. If this measure passes the Senate, the United States could no longer do business with anyone who sold refined petroleum products to Iran or helped them develop their ability to refine their own petroleum. The sad thing is that many of my colleagues voted for this measure because they felt it would deflect a military engagement with Iran. I would put the question to them, how would Congress react if another government threatened our critical trading partners in this way? Would we not view it as asking for war?
This policy is pure isolationism. It is designed to foment war by cutting off trade and diplomacy. Too many forget that the quagmire in Iraq began with an embargo. Sanctions are not diplomacy. They are a precursor to war and an embarrassment to a country that pays lip service to free trade. It is ironic that people who decry isolationism support actions like this.
If a foreign government attempted to isolate the U.S. economically, cut off our supply of gasoline, or starve us to death, would it cause Americans to admire that foreign entity? Or would we instead unite under the flag for the survival of our country?
We would not tolerate foreign covert operations fomenting regime change in our government. Yet our CIA has been meddling in Iran for decades. Of course Iranians resent this. In fact, many in Iran still resent the CIA’s involvement in overthrowing their democratically elected leader in 1953. The answer is not to cut off gasoline to the Iranian people. The answer is to stay out of their affairs and trade with them honestly. If our operatives were no longer in Iran, they would no longer be available as scapegoats for the regime to, rightly or wrongly, blame for every bad thing that happens. As bad as other regimes may be, it is up to their own people to deal with them so they can achieve true self-determination. When foreigners instigate regime change, the new government they institute is always perceived as serving the interest of the overthrowing country, not the people. Thus we take the blame for bad governance twice. Instead, we should stay out of their affairs altogether.
With the exception of the military-industrial complex, we all want a more peaceful world. Many are hysterical about the imminent threat of a nuclear Iran. Here are the facts: Iran has never been found out of compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) they signed. However, being surrounded by nuclear powers one can understand why they might want to become nuclear capable if only to defend themselves and to be treated more respectfully. After all, we don’t sanction nuclear-capable countries. We take diplomatic negotiations a lot more seriously, and we frequently send money to them instead. The non-nuclear countries are the ones we bomb. If Iran was attempting to violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they could hardly be blamed, since U.S. foreign policy gives them every incentive to do so.
World’s Sole Military Superpower’s 2 Million-Troop, $1 Trillion Wars
By Rick Rozoff | December 21, 2009
With a census of slightly over 300 million in a world of almost seven billion people, the U.S. accounts for over 40 percent of officially acknowledged worldwide government military spending with a population that is only 4 percent of that of the earth’s. A 10-1 disparity.
In addition to its 1,445,000 active duty service members, the Pentagon can and does call upon 1.2 million National Guard and other reserve components. As many as 30% of troops that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq are mobilized reservists. The Army National Guard has activated over 400,000 soldiers since the war in Afghanistan began and in March of 2009 approximately 125,000 National Guard and other reserve personnel were on active duty.
The Defense Department also has over 800,000 civilian employees at home and deployed worldwide. The Pentagon, then, has more than 3.5 million people at its immediate disposal excluding private military contractors.
After allotting over a trillion dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone and packing off more than two million of its citizens to the two nations, the U.S. military establishment and peace prize president have already laid the groundwork for yet more wars. Boeing, Raytheon and General Electric won’t be kept waiting.
In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on December 10 the president of the United States appropriated for his country the title of “the world’s sole military superpower” and for himself “the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.”
This may well have been the first time that an American – and of course any – head of state in history boasted of his nation being the only uncontested military power on the planet and unquestionably the only time a Nobel Peace Prize recipient identified himself as presiding over not only a war but two wars simultaneously.
As to the appropriateness of laying such claims in the venue and on the occasion he did – accepting the world’s preeminent peace award before the Norwegian Nobel Committee – Barack Obama at least had the excuse of being perfectly accurate in his contentions.
He is in fact the commander-in-chief in charge of two major and several smaller wars and his nation is without doubt the first global military power which for decades has operated without constraints on five of six inhabited continents and has troops stationed in all six. United States armed forces personnel and weapons, including nuclear arms, are stationed at as many as 820 installations in scores of nations.
The U.S. has recently assigned thousands of troops to seven new bases in Bulgaria and Romania [1], deployed the first foreign troops to Israel in that nation’s history to run an interceptor missile radar facility in the Negev Desert [2], and last week signed a status of forces agreement with Poland for Patriot missiles (to be followed by previously ship-based Aegis Standard Missile-3s interceptors) and U.S. soldiers to be stationed there. The troops will be the first foreign forces based in Poland since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991.
The U.S., whose current military budget is at Cold War, which is to say at the highest of post-World War II, levels, also officially accounts for over 41% of international military spending according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s report on 2008 figures: $607 billion of $1.464 trillion worldwide. On October 28 President Obama signed the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act with a price tag of $680 billion, including $130 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
That figure excludes military spending outside of the Department of Defense. The American government has for several decades been the standard-bearer in outsourcing to private sector contractors in every realm and the Pentagon is certainly no exception to the practice. According to some estimates, American military and military-related allotments in addition to the formal Pentagon budget can bring annual U.S. defense spending as high as $1.16 trillion, almost half of official expenditures for all of the world’s 192 nations, including the U.S., last year.
The U.S. also has the world’s second largest standing army, over 1,445,000 men and women under arms according to estimates of earlier this year, second only to China with 2,255,000. China has a population of over 1.325 billion, more than four times that of America, and does not have a vast army of private contractors supplementing its armed forces. And of course unlike the U.S. it has no troops stationed abroad. India, with a population of 1.140 billion, has active duty troop strength smaller than that of the U.S. at 1,415,000.
The U.S. and Britain are possibly alone in the world in deploying reservists to war zones; this last February the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen acknowledged that 600,000 reserves have been called up to serve in the area of responsibility of the U.S. Central Command, in charge of the Afghan and Iraqi wars, since 2001. In addition to its 1,445,000 active duty service members, the Pentagon can and does call upon 1.2 million National Guard and other reserve components. As many as 30% of troops that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq are mobilized reservists. The Army National Guard has activated over 400,000 soldiers since the war in Afghanistan began and in March of 2009 approximately 125,000 National Guard and other reserve personnel were on active duty.
The Defense Department also has over 800,000 civilian employees at home and deployed worldwide. The Pentagon, then, has more than 3.5 million people at its immediate disposal excluding private military contractors.
In the last 48 hours two unprecedented thresholds have been crossed. On the morning of December 19 the U.S. Senate met in a rare Saturday morning session to approve a $636.3 billion military budget for next year. The vote was 88-10, as the earlier vote by the House of Representatives on December 16 was 395-34. In both cases the negative votes were not necessarily an indication of opposition to war spending but part of the labyrinthine American legislative practices of trade-offs, add-ons and deal-making on other, unrelated issues, what in the local vernacular are colorfully described as horse-trading and log-rolling among other choice terms. A no vote in the House or Senate, then, was not automatically a reflection of anti-war or even fiscally conservative sentiments.
The Pentagon appropriation included another $101 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (Obama signed the last formal Iraq and Afghanistan War Supplemental Appropriations, worth $106 billion, in July), but did not include the first of several additional requests, what are termed emergency spending measures, for the Afghan war. The first such request is expected early next year, more than $30 billion for the additional 33,000 U.S. troops to be deployed to the war zone, which will increase the number of American forces there to over 100,000.
On the day of the Senate vote Bloomberg News cited the Congressional Research Service, which had tallied the numbers, in revealing that the funds apportioned for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have now pushed the total expenditure for both to over $1 trillion. “That includes $748 billion for spending related to the war in Iraq and $300 billion for Afghanistan, the research service said in a Sept. 28 report.”
The new Pentagon spending plan “includes $2.5 billion to buy 10 additional Boeing Co. C-17 transports that weren’t requested by the Pentagon. Chicago-based Boeing also would benefit from $1.5 billion for 18 F/A-E/F Super Hornet fighters, nine more than the administration requested.”
Funding for military aircraft not even requested by the Defense Department and the White House or for larger numbers of them than were is another curious component of the American body politic. That arms merchants (and not only domestic ones) place their own orders with the American people’s alleged representatives – the current Deputy Secretary of Defense, William Lynn, was senior vice president of Government Operations and Strategy for Raytheon Company prior to assuming his new post – is illustrated by the following excerpts from the same report:
“Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended April 6 that the C-17 program be terminated once Boeing delivers the last of 205 C-17s in late 2010. Boeing, the second-largest defense contractor, has said its plant in Long Beach, California, will shut down in 2011 without more orders.
“The budget also includes $465 million for the backup engine of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The engine is built by Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric Co. and London-based Rolls Royce Plc. The administration earlier threatened to veto the entire defense bill if it contained any money for the engine.” [3]
The Pentagon and its chief Gates may win battles with the Congress and even the White House when they relate to the use of military force abroad, but against the weapons manufacturers and the congressmen whose election campaigns they contribute to the military brass will come off the losers.
In addition to the nearly two-thirds of a trillion dollar annual Pentagon war chest, the ongoing trillion dollar Broader Middle East war is a lucrative boon to the merchants of death and their political hangers-on.
On December 18 a story was posted on several American armed forces websites that U.S. soldiers have been sent to Afghanistan and Iraq 3.3 million times since the invasion of the first country in October of 2001. The report specifies that “more than 2 million men and women have shouldered those deployments, with 793,000 of them deploying more than once.”
The break-down according to services is as follows:
More than 1 million troops from the Army.
Over 389,900 from the Air Force.
Over 367,900 from the Navy.
More than 251,800 Marines.
This past October alone 172,800 soldiers, 31,500 airmen, 30,000 sailors and 20,900 Marines were dispatched to the two war zones. [4]
The bulk of the U.S.’s permanent global war-fighting force may be deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, but enough troops are left over to man newly acquired bases in Eastern Europe, remain in Middle East nations other than Iraq, be based on and transit through the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, take over seven new military bases in Colombia, run regional operations out of America’s first permanent base in Africa – Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, where 2,400 personnel are stationed – and engage in counterinsurgency campaigns in the Philippines, Mali, Uganda, Yemen and Pakistan.
Recently a U.S. armed forces newspaper reported in an article titled “AFRICOM could add Marine Air Ground Task Force” that “A 1,000-strong Marine combat task force capable of rapidly deploying to hot spots could soon be at the disposal of the new U.S. Africa Command.”
The feature added that a Marine unit previously attached to the newly launched AFRICOM has “already deployed in support of training missions in Uganda and Mali,” whose armies are fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army and Tuareg rebels, respectively. [5]
In Yemen, Houthi rebel sources “accused the U.S. air force [on December 15] of joining attacks against them, and killing at least 120 people in a raid in the north of the poor Arab state.”
Their information office said “The savage crime committed by the U.S. air force shows the real face of the United States.” [6]
According to ABC News “On orders from President Barack Obama, the U.S. military launched cruise missiles early Thursday [December 17] against two suspected al-Qaeda sites in Yemen,” [7] to complement mounting missile attacks in Pakistan.
The Houthi rebels are religiously Shi’ia, so any attempt at exploiting an al-Qaeda rationale for bombing their villages is a subterfuge.
At the same time the Commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and NATO Allied Air Component, General Roger Brady, fresh from a tour of inspection of the Caucasus nations of Azerbaijan and Georgia, was at the Adazi Training Base in Latvia to meet with the defense ministers of that nation, Estonia and Lithuania and plan “closer military cooperation in the security sector between the Baltic States and the USA which also included joint exercises in the Baltic region.” [9] All five nations mentioned above – Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia and Lithuania – border Russia.
During the same week’s summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in Havana, Cuba, the host country’s president Raul Castro said of the latest Pentagon buildup in Colombia that “The deployment of [U.S.] military bases in the region is…an act of aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean.” [9]
Less than a week later the government of Colombia, the third largest recipient of American military aid in the world, announced it would construct a new military base near its border with Venezuela. “Defense Minister Gabriel Silva said [on December 18] that the base, located on the Guajira peninsula near the city of Nazaret, would have up to 1,000 troops. Two air battalions would also be activated at other border areas….Army Commander General Oscar Gonzalez meanwhile announced [the following day] that six air battalions were being activated, including two on the border with Venezuela.” [10]
After allotting over a trillion dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone and packing off more than two million of its citizens to the two nations, the U.S. military establishment and peace prize president have already laid the groundwork for yet more wars. Boeing, Raytheon and General Electric won’t be kept waiting.
Notes
1) Bulgaria, Romania: U.S., NATO Bases For War In The East
Stop NATO, October 24, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/bulgaria-romania-u-s-nato-bases-for-war-in-the-east
2) Israel: Forging NATO Missile Shield, Rehearsing War With Iran
Stop NATO, November 5, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/israel-forging-nato-missile-shield-rehearsing-war-with-iran
3) Bloomberg News, December 19, 2009
4) Michelle Tan, 2 million troops have deployed since 9/11
December 18, 2009
5) Stars And Stripes, December 16, 2009
6) Reuters, December 16, 2009
7) ABC News, December 18, 2009
8) Defense Professionals, December 14, 2009
9) Russian Information Agency Novosti, December 14, 2009
10) Agence France-Presse, December 19, 2009
Copenhagen: Bolivia, Sudan, Venezuela and S.A. set to humiliate Obama
Update: Obama departs Copenhagen without a binding agreement
December 18, 2009 | Highlights from Politico.com
On Friday morning, Obama warned delegates that U.S. offers of funding for poor nations would remain on the table “if and only if” developing nations, including China, agreed to international monitoring of their greenhouse gas emissions. […]
Back home, senators critical to getting a climate bill through Congress have stressed that developing nations must submit to international monitoring — particularly if they want the U.S. to pay hundreds of billions to help combat the destructive impact of climate change.
“The only way we’ll be successful in America is for countries like China and India to make an equivalent commitment,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is crafting a bipartisan climate bill. “We’re not going to unilaterally disarm.”
While Obama emphasized the U.S. commitment to taking action on climate change, he did not set a deadline for specific Senate action on the climate bill. […]
Overnight reports that world leaders had agreed to a tentative final climate change deal in Copenhagen were greatly exaggerated — and the outcome of the COP-15 conference was still very much up in the air when Air Force One touched down at 9:01 a.m. local time. […]
After addressing the delegates, Obama met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for close to an hour to discuss emissions goals, verification mechanisms and climate financing. The lack of agreement between China and the U.S. — the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters — has been a major stumbling block in the talks.
A White house official described the discussion as “constructive” and said that the two leaders asked their negotiators to get together one-on-one after the meeting. […]
One key sticking point: a demand by industrialized nations that the document produced here be legally binding, the so-called “operational” agreement Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about yesterday.
… none of the several drafts circulating in Copenhagen represented even the bones of a final deal, with many key issues still in flux and time running out. Moreover, U.S. predictions that roadblocks could be thrown up by smaller countries seemed to be coming true, with last-minute objections voiced by Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, according to people familiar with talks. […]
An official with a developing nation told Reuters that rich nations were offering to cut their carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, a proposal that had been rejected by developing nations. Developing nations have always insisted on the need for mid-term targets…
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Anti-science
The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
Blog Roll
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- Israel’s Obliteration Ecocide from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond
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- No Tricks Zone
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- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
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- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
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