Introduction by Gary G. Kohls
One of the many heroes of the peace movement who came out of the Vietnam War was Vietnam veteran S. Brian Willson. Just like millions of other draft-age Americans, law student Willson had been drafted into that illegal and genocidal war – against his will – and came back disturbed and angry.
For reasons discussed below, he joined the anti-war movement after witnessing the Reagan/Bush Central American war after he traveled to Nicaragua and saw peasants being murdered by US-backed Contras (aka “freedom fighters”). Willson joined the antiwar movement in 1986 and has protested vigorously against America’s aggressive war policies ever since.
But his real life change came on Sept. 1, 1987, in Concord, California, where Willson was part of a gathering of antiwar protestors that were symbolically trying to stop the transport of weapons from a U.S. Navy munitions base. The weapons were destined for Nicaragua and El Salvador as part of the U.S.-backed war in Central America.
As a Vietnam veteran, Willson understood well the satanic nature of America’s perpetual wars against peasants, campesinos and other poor people in Third World countries who were unjustly accused of being “communists” as they were seeking relief from the tyranny of their ruling classes. He also knew about the poisonous realities of military toxins that are used in war that regularly poison innocent civilians, children, babies, villages, farm fields, water supplies and all the future inhabitants of the warzone.
Willson felt so strongly about the criminality of his country’s foreign policy against militarily inferior countries, that he put himself directly in harm’s way that day by lying down in front of the weapons supply train, expecting the engineer to stop. Instead of stopping, the engineer actually increased its speed above the speed limit and ran over him, severing both legs. The engineer later testified that he had only been obeying orders on how to deal with antiwar protesters.
Willson survived his near-fatal injuries, and he became a universally celebrated near-martyr for peace. He has vowed to spend the rest of his life speaking out against war. The piece below was written on May 27, 2016, and published in CounterPunch.
The Vietnam War radically changed him from a conservative Republican who had been raised in a Christian fundamentalist household. In Willson’s autobiography, titled Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson, he wrote about his war experience:
“in April 1969, I witnessed the incredible destruction that had just been inflicted (by aerial bombing and napalm ‘practice’) … on a typically defenseless village about the size of a large baseball stadium. With smoldering ruins throughout, the ground was strewn with bodies of villagers and their farm animals, many of whom were motionless and bloody, murdered from bomb shrapnel and napalm. Several were trying to get up on their feet, and others were moving ever so slightly as they cried and moaned. Most of the victims I witnessed were women and children.
“At one dramatic moment I encountered at close range a young wounded woman lying on the ground clutching three young disfigured children. I stared, aghast, at the woman’s open eyes. Upon closer examination, I discovered that she, and what I presumed were her children, all were dead, but napalm had melted much of the woman’s facial skin, including her eyelids. As the Vietnamese lieutenant and I silently made the one-plus hour return trip to our airbase in my jeep, I knew that my life was never going to be the same again.”
An eyewitness to Willson’s 1987 act of resistance to the US War Machine wrote that Brian questioned “the lessons of ‘patriotism’ with which we so proudly indoctrinate our children, especially our boy children. … Nearly twenty years later, I stood just behind Brian on a California train track in a well-publicized effort to block munitions trains carrying American weapons to kill other poor villagers in El Salvador and Nicaragua, thinking about the words he had spoken that morning, before one of those trains ripped his legs from his body. He said, ‘…each train that gets by us is going to kill people, people like you and me. … And the question that I have to ask on these tracks is: am I any more valuable than those people?’”
Here is the latest, very powerful testimony about what he thinks of Memorial Day from the American antiwar hero, S. Brian Willson:
Remembering All the Deaths From All of Our Wars
Celebration of Memorial Day in the US, originally Decoration Day, commenced shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War. This is a national holiday to remember the people who died while serving in the armed forces. The day traditionally includes decorating graves of the fallen with flowers.
As a Viet Nam veteran, I know the kinds of pain and suffering incurred by over three million US soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen, 58,313 of whom paid the ultimate price whose names are on The Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC. The Oregon Vietnam Memorial Wall alone, located here in Portland, contains 803 names on its walls.
The function of a memorial is to preserve memory. On this US Memorial Day, May 30, 2016, I want to preserve the memory of all aspects of the US war waged against the Southeast Asian people in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia – what we call the Viet Nam War – as well as the tragic impacts it had on our own people and culture. My own healing and recovery requires me to honestly describe the war and understand how it has impacted me psychically, spiritually, and politically.
Likewise, the same remembrance needs to be practiced for both our soldiers and the victims in all the other countries affected by US wars and aggression. For example, the US incurred nearly 7,000 soldier deaths while causing as many as one million in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, a ratio of 1:143.
It is important to identify very concretely the pain and suffering we caused the Vietnamese – a people who only wanted to be independent from foreign occupiers, whether Chinese, France, Japan, or the United States of America. As honorably, and in some cases heroically, our military served and fought in Southeast Asia, we were nonetheless serving as cannon fodder, in effect mercenaries for reasons other than what we were told. When I came to understand the true nature of the war, I felt betrayed by my government, by my religion, by my cultural conditioning into “American Exceptionalism,” which did a terrible disservice to my own humanity, my own life’s journey. Thus, telling the truth as I uncover it is necessary for recovering my own dignity.
I am staggered by the amount of firepower the US used, and the incredible death and destruction it caused on an innocent people. Here are some statistics:
–Seventy-five percent of South Viet Nam was considered a free-fire zone (i.e., genocidal zones)
–Over 6 million Southeast Asians killed
–Over 64,000 US and Allied soldiers killed
–Over 1,600 US soldiers, and 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers remain missing
–Thousands of amputees, paraplegics, blind, deaf, and other maimings created
–13,000 of 21,000 of Vietnamese villages, or 62 percent, severely damaged or destroyed, mostly by bombing
–Nearly 950 churches and pagodas destroyed by bombing
–350 hospitals and 1,500 maternity wards destroyed by bombing
–Nearly 3,000 high schools and universities destroyed by bombing
–Over 15,000 bridges destroyed by bombing
–10 million cubic meters of dikes destroyed by bombing
–Over 3,700 US fixed-wing aircraft lost
–36,125,000 US helicopter sorties during the war; over 10,000 helicopters were lost or severely damaged
–26 million bomb craters created, the majority from B-52s (a B-52 bomb crater could be 20 feet deep, and 40 feet across)
–39 million acres of land in Indochina (or 91 percent of the land area of South Viet Nam) were littered with fragments of bombs and shells, equivalent to 244,000 (160 acre) farms, or an area the size of all New England except Connecticut
–21 million gallons (80 million liters) of extremely poisonous chemicals (herbicides) were applied in 20,000 chemical spraying missions between 1961 and 1970 in the most intensive use of chemical warfare in human history, with as many as 4.8 million Vietnamese living in nearly 3,200 villages directly sprayed by the chemicals
–24 percent, or 16,100 square miles, of South Viet Nam was sprayed, an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined, killing tropical forest, food crops, and inland forests
–Over 500,000 Vietnamese have died from chronic conditions related to chemical spraying with an estimated 650,000 still suffering from such conditions; 500,000 children have been born with Agent Orange-induced birth defects, now including third generation offspring
–Nearly 375,000 tons of fireballing napalm was dropped on villages
–Huge Rome Plows (made in Rome, Georgia), 20-ton earthmoving D7E Caterpillar tractors, fitted with a nearly 2.5-ton curved 11-foot wide attached blade protected by 14 additional tons of armor plate, scraped clean between 700,000 and 750,000 acres (1,200 square miles), an area equivalent to Rhode Island, leaving bare earth, rocks, and smashed trees
–As many as 36,000,000 total tons of ordance expended from aerial and naval bombing, artillery, and ground combat firepower. On an average day US artillery expended 10,000 rounds costing $1 million per day; 150,000-300,000 tons of UXO remain scattered around Southeast Asia: 40,000 have been killed in Viet Nam since the end of the war in 1975, and nearly 70,000 injured; 20,000 Laotians have been killed or injured since the end of the war
–7 billion gallons of fuel were consumed by US forces during the war
–If there was space for all 6,000,000 names of Southeast Asian dead on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC, it would be over 9 sobering miles long, or nearly 100 times its current 493 foot length
I am not able to memorialize our sacrificed US soldiers without also remembering the death and destroyed civilian infrastructure we caused in our illegal invasion and occupation of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. It has been 47 years since I carried out my duties in Viet Nam. My “service” included being an eyewitness to the aftermath of bombings from the air of undefended fishing villages where virtually all the inhabitants were massacred, the vast majority being small children. In that experience, I felt complicit in a diabolical crime against humanity. This experience led me to deeply grasping that I am not worth more than any other human being, and they are not worth less than me.
Recently I spent more than three weeks in Viet Nam, my first trip back since involuntarily being sent there in 1969. I was struck by the multitudes of children suffering from birth defects, most caused presumably by the US chemical spraying some 50 years ago. I experienced deep angst knowing that the US is directly responsible for this genetic damage now being passed on from one generation to the next. I am ashamed that the US government has never acknowledged responsibility or paid reparations. I found myself apologizing to the people for the crimes of my country.
When we only memorialize US soldiers while ignoring the victims of our aggression, we in effect are memorializing war. I cannot do that. War is insane, and our country continues to perpetuate its insanity on others, having been constantly at war since at least 1991. We fail our duties as citizens if we remain silent rather than calling our US wars for what they are – criminal and deceitful aggressions violating international and US law to assure control of geostrategic resources, deemed necessary to further our insatiable American Way Of Life (AWOL).
Memorial Day for me requires remembering all of the deaths and devastation of our wars, and it should remind all of us of the need to end the madness. If we want to end war, we must begin to directly address our out-of-control capitalist political economy that knows no limits to profits for a few at the expense of the many, including our soldiers.
S. Brian Willson, as a 1st lieutenant, served as commander of a US Air Force combat security police unit in Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta in 1969. He is a trained lawyer who has been an anti-war, peace and justice activist for more than forty years. His psychohistorical memoir, “Blood On The Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson” was published in 2011 by PM Press. A long time member of Veterans For Peace, he currently resides in Portland, Oregon
May 29, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | United States, Vietnam War |
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Are Israelis six times as likely as Palestinians to be in favour of peace? Are Israeli civil society organisations six times as expensive to run as Palestinian ones? Or is the UK government deranged enough to believe that spending six times as much money on Israeli peacebuilding organisations as Palestinian ones doesn’t speak to an extraordinary bias against the Palestinian people?
Thanks to a question from Labour MP Joan Ryan, the Foreign Office has now confirmed that they will be funding eight Israeli peacebuilding organisations and just one Palestinian equivalent this year. The Israeli organisations will receive £851,000 in funding while the Palestinian organisation, the Jerusalem Community Advocacy Network, will receive £141,000.
This information was not announced to the entire House of Commons, instead the habitually evasive Tobias Ellwood, parliamentary under-secretary at the foreign office, provided the answer in writing. Jaded observers might say that embarrassing figures for the government are often delivered in this way, to avoid too much scrutiny.
To be clear – some of these organisations are brilliant. Yesh Din is receiving nearly £200,000 and documents Israeli human rights abuses persistently, much to the irritation of everyone who supports Israeli human rights abuses. Terrestrial Jerusalem will receive over £50,000 to continue their photography work detailing the occupation of Jerusalem, and have recently called out Netanyahu for “manipulative race baiting and incitement.” Rabbis for Human Rights, who will receive over £100,000, have a title which is broadly self-explanatory; their most compelling projects include challenging land confiscations, re-planting olive trees looted by illegal settler gangs, and advocating for bedouin rights.
Putting aside the enormous funding gap between Israeli organisations who receive money, and the numerous Palestinian organisations that obviously don’t; there are two organisations that deserve deeper scrutiny. Kids Creating Peace will received £40,000. On the face of it – what’s not to like? Kids, peace, a charismatic founder who set up the organisation when she was just sixteen. Oh – Kids for Peace is part of the Kabbalah sect, a selection of barmy pseudo-religious types who have a long-running reputation for selling “cancer curing” water to actual cancer victims, and a history of dodgy accounting practices.
Foreign office figures also show how the Injiaz Centre for Professional Arab Local Governance will be receiving a large cheque from the UK taxpayer. Instead of training Arabs living in the Palestinian Authority controlled territories for their role in a future state of Palestine, Injaz Centre trains Israeli Arabs to participate in Israeli politics, with the organiser admitting “we will almost certainly have to give up on the basic formula of two states for two nations.” The British government, despite their nominal support for a two-state solution, is prepared to pay over £60,000 this year to a small NGO in Israel that does not believe in a two-state solution.
Then we have the Peres Centre for Peace, created by Shimon Peres in 1996. Documents published by the Centre show this is being used for training of Palestinian doctors, who must live and be trained in Israel for five years before returning to territory nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority. They must also learn Hebrew – which while entirely practical, only adds to the impression that this “peacebuilding” activity is merely prolonging and legitimising the occupation. Having lost his family in the Shoah, the Jewish element of the European Holocaust, Peres himself travelled to what would become the state of Israel and was promptly imprisoned by the British, in 1944, after he led an illegal settler expedition into the Negev desert. He spent much of the next few years acquiring that most peaceful of objects – illegal nuclear weapons. He did so by subterfuge, outright deceit and trickery of international nuclear weapons inspectors, in his capacity as a defence minister, triggering a nuclear arms race in the region. He later had the temerity to lecture Iran on her own programme.
Later gaining a reputation as a “dove” over his impressively two-faced approach to the Oslo Accords, Peres also used the invasion of Lebanon in 1996 to simultaneously displace hundreds of thousands of civilians and boost his chances in a general election which, by pure coincidence, was going on back in Tel Aviv. Around 800 Lebanese civilians took shelter in a refugee facility in Qana. Peres and his generals ordered the facility to be bombed, later claiming this was an accident. The Israelis changed their story when footage evidence of air troops carefully surveying the area before the strike hit. Over a hundred unarmed Lebanese civilians died and the same number were injured, as well as a number of United Nations peacekeepers.
That the British government considers a centre for peace named after an alleged war criminal worthy of investment is baffling; that it is prepared to hand over money to cultish religious organisations; that foreign office ministers obstinately claim to favour a two-state solution then fund groups which openly admit to preparing for a one-state solution, and that they are giving six times as much to Israeli groups as to Palestinians, suggests at very best a profoundly concerning imbalance in how it views this conflict. At worst – it is evidence that, in the deepest sanctums of Whitehall’s foreign office, the mandarins know that the two-state solution is dead.
May 29, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Israel, Palestine, Peres Centre for Peace, UK, Zionism |
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Barack Obama became the first U.S. President to visit Hiroshima on Friday, more than seven decades after the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped a 10,000-pound atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on the city whose military value was far less than that of Tampa to the United States. More than 70,000 people were instantly killed, and virtually the entire city was flattened. Many survivors would suffer prolonged and unimaginably painful aftereffects of radiation, which would cost at least 100,000 more people their lives. The effects of radiation would harm people for years and decades after the initial explosion.
Obama stood at a podium with the epicenter of the blast, the Genbaku Domu, in the background and said that he had “come to mourn the dead.” While Obama mourned, there was one thing he did not do: apologize.
He said that “death came from the sky.” No mention of why. Or who was responsible, as if it were a natural disaster rather than a crime perpetrated by actual people. Obama was either unwilling or unable to confront the truth and make amends.
Here’s what he could have said to try to do so:
Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, an American warplane unleashed the most horrific and inhuman weapon ever invented, immediately imperiling the survival of the entire human species. This act of terrorism was the ultimate crime: a crime of mass murder, a crime of war, and a crime against humanity.
The victims, those who died incinerated in a flash, and those who died slowly and painfully over years from chemical poisoning, were never able to see justice served. Sadly, there is no way the criminals who carried out this heinous and barbaric act will ever face justice for their crimes.
I cannot change that. But, there is one thing I can do as the leader of the nation in whose name the bombing of Hiroshima was carried out: I can tell you, residents of Hiroshima and the rest of Japan, that I am sorry. I am sorry on behalf of my government and my country. I wish an American President would have come earlier and said this. This apology is decades overdue. It is a small and symbolic act, but it is necessary as a first step for true reconciliation.
A nuclear bomb should have never been dropped on Hiroshima. The most important goal of mankind should be to ensure that no nuclear bomb is ever dropped again. Anywhere in the world. Ever.
It would be easy to stand here and tell you that there are reasons why the American military and political officials chose to use a nuclear bomb. I could say it served a greater good of saving lives that would have been lost if the war had continued. I could say it was a decision made by people who were dealing with the pressure and horrors of fighting a war. But that would not be the truth. Those would be empty rationalizations. There is no justification for the bomb. Period.
The truth is that by August 6, 1945 Japan was defeated and had been seeking a conditional surrender for months. And American war planners knew this. They knew it because they had cracked the Japanese code and were intercepting their messages. [1]
Japan was willing to surrender under the condition that their Emperor, who was seen as a God among the Japanese people, be allowed to maintain his throne and not be prosecuted for war crimes. The Emperor himself called for “a plan to end the war” six weeks before the fateful day. [2] After so much unspeakable death and destruction, this reasonable offer should have been met with ecstatic celebration and relief.
Instead, U.S. officials disregarded it. They decided that it was necessary not just to defeat Japan, but to leave them utterly humiliated and disgraced. They wanted to demonstrate to their public that they could force another country to lay prostrate in front of them in complete submission. This is the mindset of terrorists, torturers, and sadists.
The United States joined with China and Great Britain to issue the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, in which they called on Japan “to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces.” These were terms they understood Japan could not accept.
Unfortunately, the use of the atomic bomb had become inevitable after the massive investment of time and treasure represented by the Manhattan Project. Military planners worried about “the possibility that after spending huge amounts of money … the bomb would be a dud. They could easily imagine being grilled mercilessly by hostile members of Congress.”
Historian and former Nuclear Regulatory Commission employee J. Samuel Walker confirmed that aside from “shortening the war and saving American lives, Truman wanted to justify the expense and effort required to build the atomic bombs.”
That financial considerations and a self-interested desire for bureaucrats to validate themselves and protect their careers could lead to the single most destructive and cruel act in history is an abomination. It is a deep offense to the idea that people are innately moral, and it makes us ask how in a democratic society we can vest people with the authority to make decisions of such profound impact secretly and without accountability?
Walker notes that another consideration for using the bomb on Hiroshima was to put fear into the leaders of the Soviet Union and make them “more amenable to American wishes.” Just six weeks earlier the UN Charter had been established. It included the demand that “all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force” against other states. The drafters could of the treaty could never have imagined such an unconscionable violation of their words so soon after the monumental pact had been written.
As horrific as the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima was, it did not occur in a vacuum. What no one in mainstream American political discourse has so far been able to admit is that not only was there no justification for the bomb, there was little justification for the war against Japan in the first place.
The war was the result of the notion, which first emanated from the Council on Foreign Relations in 1941, that the U.S.’s “national interest” called for a “Grand Area” that consisted of the Western hemisphere, the British Empire and the Far East, while assuming the majority of Europe would be controlled by Nazi Germany. This was translated into a policy that demanded a military confrontation with Japan for control of the Far East. [3]
A pillar in this policy was an economic embargo against Japan. Cut off from imports and raw materials from the United States and Great Britain, Japan grew desperate and subsequently sought to expand its Empire. Japan saw itself in need of a sphere of influence involving the same areas in the Far East as the United States.
The U.S. had several options to avoid war. For one, they could develop a program of agricultural and economic self-sufficiency which would allow them to insulate themselves from dependence on colonial powers, as well as allow them to steer clear of unpredictable and potentially hostile regions of the world.
But for businessmen who wanted to maintain control over the direction of the economy and keep their own fortunes growing at a limitless pace, this was a nonstarter. Instead, they were dedicated to challenging Japan. Hence, the embargo and the buildup for an inevitable military confrontation over Eastern Asia.
This is the background to Pearl Harbor. Japan was obviously not justified for attacking sovereign American territory in a blatant act of aggression. But we cannot pretend that it was not predictable or logical from their point of view.
Japan felt itself backed into a corner by the embargo. They felt they needed to expand further into Asia. They believed that if they did so, the U.S. military would have attacked them. They were right.
Both countries should have worked together to recognize each other’s perceived interests, deescalate, and achieve a mutually acceptable compromise. It is the ability to understand one’s perceived adversary as a rational counterpart, rather than an evil and irrational enemy, that separates humans from beasts. If we are not able to use this ability, we are no better than a predator seeking his prey.
The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima did not need to happen. But the bombing that took place on this site was just a symptom of the war it was part of. War will necessarily produce horrific crimes, some of which are unimaginable at the time they happen. As horrific as the nuclear bomb was, 70 years of technological advancements have made not just the destruction of an entire city, but of an entire country or continent within the realm of possibility.
We need to eliminate nuclear weapons from the earth. But that is not enough. Chemical weapons like napalm, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, and white phosphorous; biological weapons like Dengue bacteria and germ bombs; and conventional weapons like cluster bombs, pineapple bomblets, butterfly bombs and land mines are just some of the savage weapons used by the U.S. military alone in the years since the close of World War II to kill and maim millions of people. Many other countries possess similar weapons of mass destruction and have the capacity to do the same.
We need to eliminate war. All war. Forever. War is evil, plain and simple. We cannot undo the actions of the past. But we can let them guide us to a better world where we don’t repeat the horrors that the people of Hiroshima suffered here 71 years ago. That will be the only way to prevent the victims from having died in vain.
References
[1] Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. pp. 423.
[2] U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey: The Effects of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, June 19, 1946. President’s Secretary’s File, Truman Papers. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?pagenumber=33&documentid=65&documentdate=1946-06-19&studycollectionid=abomb&groupid=
[3] Shoup, Laurence H. and William Minter. Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations & United States Foreign Policy. Lincoln, NE: Authors Choice Press, 2004.
May 28, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Hiroshima, Obama, United States |
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If targeting the civilian population of an entire city with a nuclear bomb, and incinerating tens of thousands of men, women, and children in the process, is not worthy of an apology then ‘humanity’ has become a word without meaning.
Step forward US President Barack Obama and his statement in advance of his visit to Hiroshima that he will not apologize for the nuclear bomb dropped by the US on the city on August 6, 1945, which killed 140,000 in the initial blast and countless thousands more in the days, weeks, months, years, and decades following from its devastating after-effects.
Obama’s visit to the city comes at the end of the a weeklong tour of Vietnam and Japan, where he participated in the G7 Summit along with the leaders of Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Italy, as well as the presidents of the European Council and European Commission. The imperial arrogance conveyed in his declaration that while in Hiroshima he would not be apologizing for what counts as one of most grievous war crimes and crimes against humanity the world has seen should not have come as a surprise however. Indeed, it was wholly in keeping with the tone and purpose of his tour.
On the first leg of that tour in Vietnam the President took the opportunity to lecture its leaders on the country’s poor human rights record before announcing the lifting of the US arms embargo that had been in place since 1984. During his address to the Vietnamese people in Hanoi, the President said: “Nations are sovereign, and no matter how large or small a nation may be, its sovereignty should be respected, and it territory should not be violated. Big nations should not bully smaller ones. Disputes should be resolved peacefully.”
That Obama was able to maintain a straight face as those words issued from his lips must surely count as one of the more remarkable feats of his presidency.
The President also took the opportunity in his speech to make the case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which as with its European version (TTIP) is an insidious free trade agreement that will give multinational corporations access to every sector of the economies of those countries that sign up to it, in what constitutes an assault on national sovereignty in service to US economic growth. Workers in every country that joins will be pitched into a race to the bottom as their respective governments compete for investment by driving down wages, benefits, and employment rights.
US economic hegemony is the driver of these new agreements, with the geopolitical objective of binding Asia and Europe closer to Washington at a time when US unipolarity is being contested by China, Russia, and other BRIC countries in a way it hasn’t been in decades. It is why the overarching purpose of this Asia tour is the reassertion of US power in the region, which is why Washington has placed a major emphasis on bolstering Japan and Vietnam at a time when they are involved in an increasingly fractious territorial dispute with Beijing in the East and South China Seas.
Compounding the tension in the region is the agreement that was reached in March between Washington and its South Korean ally to deploy the Thaad anti-ballistic missile system on the Korean peninsula. While the stated purpose of the missile defense system is to meet the threat posed by North Korea, its radar extends as far as China and therefore will constitute a threat to China’s security.
Beijing’s response has been to announce its intention to deploy nuclear submarines to the Pacific for the first time; this in order to maintain its nuclear deterrence. As we see, if Obama’s purpose with his ‘pivot to Asia’ strategy was to destabilize the region then so far it has been an unqualified success.
Taken together, Obama’s Asia tour has only reaffirmed the malign presence of the US in Asia, historically and currently. The assertion that there is nothing to apologize for when it comes to Hiroshima describes the moral sickness that underpins US exceptionalism. It is not so much that Obama refuses to apologize for an event that occurred over seventy years ago it is more that no lessons have been learned in Washington from the horrors it unleashed with the dropping of the bomb.
Lessons have certainly been learned in Beijing, however, with China a country with harsh and firsthand experience of the West’s brutal exploitation of weaker nations. It is an experience the Chinese are determined will never be repeated.
On another level, there is nothing more dangerous than a lame duck President of the United States desperate to cement his legacy as his time in office winds down to an ignominious conclusion. When the day of Obama’s departure from the White House does arrive in a few months’ time, his presidency will go down in history as one of the most disappointing there has been in living memory, which given the competition is quite a mantle to occupy.
In 2016 the tidal wave of hope that swept him into office as the country’s first black president has long dissipated, replaced by the kind of cynicism that produces statements such as the one he made at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial during his much anticipated visit. The world has a “shared responsibility” to ensure nothing like it happens again, the President said.
Such a sentiment is an insult to the victims of this barbarous act, and is why the world must unite in saying no, Mr. Obama, we disagree. We cannot and will not allow the United States to escape its guilt over this atrocity. The perpetrator of this crime was America and America alone.
Twas ever thus.
John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. He wrote a memoir of the five years he spent in Hollywood, where he worked in the movie industry prior to becoming a full time activist and organizer with the US antiwar movement post-9/11. The book is titled Dreams That Die and is published by Zero Books. John is currently working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on Twitter @JohnWight1
May 28, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Obama, United States |
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A Syrian official has censured the European Union (EU)’s recent extension of sanctions against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying the move could be an impediment to efforts for finding a political solution to the Syrian conflict.
Khalaf Muftah, the head of the ruling Ba’ath Party’s department of culture and information, made the criticism in an interview with Russia’s Sputnik news agency on Friday.
The EU bans are illegal and contradict international law and the United Nations (UN)’s Charter, Muftah said, adding, “These measures hamper the political process, because they increase the sufferings of the Syrian nation and do not promote the creation of conditions for a political dialogue with Europe.”
He further called for the lifting of the economic blockade on Syria, noting that the measure has led the Syrian nation to poverty and misery and forced people to migrate.
“The sanctions contradict the statement that migration has political causes, because the real cause is the economic blockade imposed by Europe,” he said.
The remarks came hours after the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, extended its sanctions against the government in Damascus until June 2017.
The bans include investment restrictions, an embargo on Syrian oil and a freeze on Syrian central bank assets within the 28-nation bloc. They also cover export restrictions on certain equipment and technologies as well as travel bans and asset freezes against more than 200 people and 70 entities.
The measures come as part of an EU decision in December 2014 to continue sanctions against Syria as long as what the bloc calls government repression goes on.
The development comes as some European countries and their regional allies are accused of supporting terrorist groups that have been wreaking havoc in the Arab country over the past five years.
May 28, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | European Union, Middle East, Syria |
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President Obama made an historic visit to Hiroshima today—the first sitting US president to do so since the US atomic bombing of that city on August 6, 1945, followed three days later by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
As he did in Prague, in 2009, President Obama gave a very moving and meaningful speech about the impact of nuclear weapons, reflecting upon the experience of the victims of nuclear warfare—the Hibakusha.
“Their souls speak to us,” he said. “They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become.”
In reiterating his call for a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama acknowledged that the suffering of the Hibakusha gives us “a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.” The very existence of nuclear weapons, he said, “fuels our moral imagination.”
These thoughts and words, though profound, have not been matched by US actions to eliminate nuclear weapons. To the contrary, the Obama administration is implementing a $1 trillion, 30-year program to build new and more usable nuclear weapons, along with more accurate delivery systems and the infrastructure to keep producing them well into the 21st century. This administration has done less to reduce the number of US nuclear weapons than any of its recent predecessors. Not only has the US failed to reduce its own reliance on nuclear weapons, it has induced other countries, including Japan, to rely upon US nuclear weapons for their own security. Hiroshima survivor Setsuko Thurlow has rightly called this extended nuclear deterrence arrangement with Japan an insult to the Hibakusha.
Moreover, while President Obama payed homage to the Hibakusha and to the victims of all wars, declaring that we must “reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race,” the United States has boycotted a series of international conferences and the meetings of a UN working group with a mandate to recommend ways of doing things differently to achieve a world without nuclear weapons and to ensure that no other city ever suffers the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
All of the other nuclear-armed states—Russia, China, France, the UK, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—have paid similar lip service to the goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world, and all are engaged in their own large and expensive nuclear rearmament programs. All of them have boycotted the UN working group that is laying the groundwork for a new legal instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons based on their humanitarian impact. All of the nuclear-armed states, including the US, are turning their backs on the meaning of Hiroshima and the appeal of the Hibakusha.
When the US and the other nuclear-armed states stop doing everything they can to block a treaty banning nuclear weapons, and abandon plans to rebuild and perpetuate their nuclear arsenals, President Obama’s call for a world free of nuclear weapons will have meaning. Until then it is empty rhetoric.
May 27, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Hiroshima, Obama, United States |
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Iran says Saudi Arabia is the “biggest sponsor of terrorism” in Iraq and elsewhere, dismissing Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir’s allegations that Iran was meddling in regional affairs.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari was reacting on Friday to Jubeir’s “foolish” remarks about Iran’s role in Iraq and the presence of its military advisers, including Qassem Soleimani, the Fars news agency said.
“The presence of Iran’s military advisers in Iraq under the command of General Qassem Soleimani is at the request of the country’s legitimate government in order to fight terrorists and extremists who have beset Iraq and the region with instability and insecurity,” he said.
“To know its interests and its friends and enemies, the Iraqi nation doesn’t need the remarks by the foreign minister of a country which has been the biggest agent and sponsor of instability and terrorism in Iraq, the region and the world,” he added.
“Instead of trying to deceive the public opinion and distort facts, Adel al-Jubeir must not forget that his country is currently perceived at the international level as the first and most dangerous sponsor of terrorism and the spread of insecurity in the world,” Jaberi Ansari added.
Ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia have been tense since Tehran strongly condemned of the kingdom’s execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in January.
Riyadh later severed diplomatic relations with Tehran following attacks on two vacant Saudi missions in Iran by angry protesters.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced Russia’s readiness to help resolve “specific problems” in ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Moscow enjoys “good ties” with both sides, he said, adding, “We will be ready to use these good relations in order to help create the conditions for a specific conversation on normalization, which can be attained only through direct dialogue of the two sides.”
He made the remarks during Jubeir’s visit to Moscow, denouncing “unacceptable” attempts to portray disagreements between Iran and the kingdom as a rift in the Muslim world.
“We know about the existing disagreements that are purely specific in nature, but we also know about the very dangerous attempts to present these disagreements as a reflection of a split in the Muslim world,” Lavrov said.
Moscow, he said, believes that “such attempts to provoke the situation in this sphere are unacceptable.”
“It is in the interests of Islam to ensure unity of all its branches,” Lavrov added.
May 27, 2016
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | Iran, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia |
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Head of the Russian General Staff told journalists that trucks carrying weapons for the al-Nusra Front cross from Turkey into Syria daily. This allows the terrorist group to continue attacking local targets.
Lt. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy said in his press briefing on Friday that weapons and ammunition are continuously being delivered to the al-Nusra Front terrorists in Syria, allowing them to engage Syrian government forces and hindering the fight against Daesh in the country.
“The never-ending flow of large trucks from Turkey carrying weapons and ammunition crosses the Turkish-Syrian border. This constant feed of live forces and weapons allows terrorists from the Nusra Front to continue their provocative shelling and make advances on Syrian government forces, which diminishes [government military] activity against Islamic State terrorists in other areas,” Rudskoy said during a briefing.
Rudskoy also added that the US has acknowledged that the heaviest fighting is centered around areas where the al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front is most active.
“Everyone knows, and our US partners admit that the biggest hot spots of active military operations are those parts of the Syrian Republic where the al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists from the al-Nusra Front run rampant.”
So far, according to Rudskoy, the US has refused to conduct joint operations against terrorist groups in Syria, which has led to an escalation of the conflict.
The al-Nusra Front terrorist group hampers the ceasefire efforts in northern areas of Syria, the Russian General Staff said Friday.
“It is very clear that the terrorist group Jabhat al-Nusra, active in the regions of Aleppo and Idlib, is the main obstacle to expanding the ceasefire regime to northern areas of Syria,” Sergey Rudskoy, chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff, said.
Moreover, the Al-Nusra Front has used the ‘period of silence’ to partly restore its combat capability. Rudskoy told reporters.
Earlier, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu offered to conduct joint air strikes against terrorist groups in Syria, but the Pentagon declined the offer. However, The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry says Moscow hasn’t ruled out a possible joint operation in the future.
May 27, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, War Crimes | al-Nusra Front, Syria, Turkiye, United States |
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The UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) decided to halt its visit to Ukraine as it did not get access to some sites where it suspected infringements of human rights were taking place, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Wednesday.
“The delegation concluded that the integrity of the visit, which began on 19 May and was due to end on 26 May, had been compromised to such an extent that it had to be suspended as the SPT mandate could not be fully carried out,” the UNHCR statement said.
Malcolm Evans, head of the delegation, told the UNHCR that the delegation was denied access to the sites where tortures and ill-treatment allegedly was taking place.
The UNHCR said it is only the second time it was forced to suspend its mission under the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), according to which the SPT has a right to visit all sites of detention without preliminary notification.
Evans called on Ukraine to fulfill its duties under the OPCAT that will enable the SPT to resume its mission.
“The SPT expects Ukraine to abide by its international obligations under the Optional Protocol, which it ratified in 2006. We also hope that the Government of Ukraine will enter into a constructive dialogue with us to enable the SPT to resume its visit in the near future and so work together to establish effective safeguards against the risk of torture and ill-treatment in places where people are deprived of their liberty,” he said.
The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture entered into force in 2006 and is ratified by 81 countries including Ukraine.
May 26, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Human rights, Ukraine |
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The Iraqi government, formed in 2003 after Saddam Hussein’s regime had been overthrown by the US invasion, was fully controlled by “inspectors” from the United States and its allies, a former Iraqi Defense Minister, Hazem Shaalan, told RT.
“I was not independent in my ministry,” Shaalan said. “Inside the ministry, there were American inspectors in each department. There were also the British and Australians. There was not a single one department in the ministry, where there would be no inspectors.”
The former defense minister also revealed that the first post-Saddam Iraqi government was not elected but instead was fully appointed by Washington.
Interim Prime Minister of Iraq Ayad Allawi, who held office from 2003 to 2005, was “among the first to be appointed [by the US]. We were all appointed by Americans, by [Lewis Paul ] Bremer [top civilian administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq]. The first [post-Saddam] Iraqi government was appointed directly by Bremer,” Shaalan said adding that “no elections were held.”
The former minister also emphasized that all decisions taken by the prime minister at the time required approval by US authorities. At the same time, this government was protected by the US authorities, he added.
“Those, who were working with Americans, were relieved from responsibility for any faults in their work,” Shaalan said during the interview.
According to Shaalan, the US did not inform the Iraqi government of the Iraqi citizens who had been taken to Iraq’s prisons and tortured by US forces. “We were not told about this. We were not even allowed to come to the prisons without special permission from the US authorities,” he said.
The former Iraqi defense minister also stressed that the US presence in Iraq brought no stability and no security as well as no prosperity and well-being to the country.
Shaalan said at first Iraqis were excited by the idea of Americans helping them build democracy.
“However, we were shocked, when total destruction began – destruction of infrastructure, of buildings, etc. When we asked Americans, why they do that, we were told that, after destruction, there will be rebuilding. “We will rebuild everything and it will be better than before,” they said. Those were the promises. They have never been fulfilled,” the former defense minister told RT.
The US and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003 claiming that Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, although no such weapon have since been found. The forces which toppled Hussein’s regime provoked a prolonged conflict in Iraq involving sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis as well as a lengthy insurgency against the US and its coalition forces.
The US forces officially withdrew from Iraq in 2011, although the US still had a significant military contingent of more than 20,000 personnel in the country, including the US Marine Embassy Guards and between 4,000 and 5,000 private military contractors.
The US became re-involved in 2014as the head of the international coalition fighting Islamic State (IS, former ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group which gained a foothold in the northern regions of the country.
May 26, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Iraq, United States |
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Former Prime Minister Tony Blair can never be forgiven for taking the UK into the Iraq war, a majority of Brits said in an opinion poll.
Pollster YouGov carried out the survey ahead of the publication of the long-delayed Chilcot Inquiry report, which examines the legality of Britain’s 2003 Iraq invasion.
It found only eight percent believe Blair did nothing wrong, while 53 percent said they could never forgive him.
Some 15 percent of respondents said it was time to forgive Blair for his misjudgment.
Perhaps the most damning finding was that just 25 percent of Labour Party supporters are in favor of forgiving their former leader.
Blair was once a hero of the party, having entered Downing Street in a landslide election in 1997 and winning three consecutive general elections.
However, today he is remembered most for his decision to join the United States in invading Iraq in 2003.
A YouGov survey last year found just 26 percent of Brits believe it was right to take military action against Iraq in 2003.
The former Labour PM recently admitted he “profoundly” underestimated the complexity of Middle Eastern politics and the consequences that would ensue after the Iraq invasion.
This admission comes before the publication of the Chilcot report, which is said to be “absolutely brutal” in its verdict on the failings of the occupation.
Blair is already well aware of the criticisms in the report because of Britain’s Maxwellisation process, by which the subjects of an inquiry are allowed to respond to allegations before its conclusions are published.
Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped the former PM from intervening in Britain’s current defense policy. Earlier this week, Blair said Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) will not be defeated unless ground forces fight a “proper” war against them.
May 26, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Iraq War, Tony Blair, UK |
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The ability of Israel to continue its illegal settlement on Palestinian land is wholly dependent on profits from its bilateral trade with the EU which is the single most important factor that fuels the illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights by the Right-wing Likud government.
Without the extraordinary agreement that allows a non-European state (in the Middle East) to freely exploit the European Single Market, the policy of expropriating Palestinian land would not be possible and the Israeli government would be forced to sue for peace.
It has been long established that the Israel lobby exerts considerable influence over the European Parliament’s decisions to not only offer Israel free access to the single market but also to make research grants of billions of euros to the Israeli defence industries that currently export arms to regimes worldwide.
There are many factors that will influence Britain’s decision to leave the EU but the ability to break away from the hold of the Israel lobby on EU trade is of prime importance to both the safety of Europe and to world peace.
The United Kingdom should no longer be associated with a European Union that has already seen the delivery by Germany of a fleet of high-powered, Dolphin 2-class AIP submarines to the Israeli navy that were designed for and subsequently retrofitted with, undeclared cruise missiles (SLCMs) with a minimum range of 1500km and carrying 200kg nuclear warheads.
This astonishing fact has provided Israel with an offshore nuclear second strike capability that has now made it the 3rd most powerful nuclear-armed entity in the world after the US and Russia. It is not known what Chancellor Merkel was thinking when she made Germany itself, and the entire European community with its 750 million inhabitants, vulnerable to an offshore nuclear threat from the Mediterranean or what pressures were applied to the German government that enabled this extraordinary act of apparent negligence that has irrevocably changed the balance of military power in the region.
BREXIT cannot rectify the failure of the EU to have ensured the safety of the 500m citizens in its 28 member states but it is beyond time that Britain now extricates itself from such a dangerously infiltrated, political union.
Britain needs to make urgent plans for the future defence and security of its own people, which is the primary duty of any government and one that supersedes even that of trade and jobs, for without security there is no future.
May 26, 2016
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | BREXIT, European Union, Israel, UK, Zionism |
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