Articles (Jan – Jun 2009)
Like killing flies
June 23, 2009
By Bruce K. Gagnon
The national media made a big deal about President Obama killing a fly. His “I got the sucker” was even compared to a similar moment by honest Abe Lincoln.
But sadly little time in the national media is spent describing the tragic consequences to hundreds of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan who have been killed by United States unmanned aerial vehicles, or “drones” as they are popularly called.
These drones are directed by military space satellites and flown by U.S. soldiers sitting at computer terminals inside Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nev. The Air Force named these drones the “Predator” and the “Reaper.” The pilots watch in “real time” as cameras on the drones send back images from the war zone and in split-second time a button is pressed and missiles are fired. Is it the Taliban? Is it a wedding?
Can there be the slightest doubt that this “hands off” way of killing today is absolutely repugnant? What does it say about us as a nation that we can cavalierly kill from a distance with little conscience or public outcry?
It’s as if we are just killing flies.
Bruce K. Gagnon, coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Bath
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2009/06/like-killing-flies.html
Foreign Affairs Committee – Fourth Report
Global Security: Non-Proliferation – 14 June 2009
“Given the Government’s stated commitment to a rules-based international system, we further conclude that its early agreement to the inclusion of RAF Fylingdales and Menwith Hill in the US BMD system was regrettable, given that the United States’ development of its system involved its abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. We recommend that in its response to this Report, the Government should update us on the NATO element of European BMD developments, in the light of the April 2009 NATO summit. We further recommend that in its response to this Report, the Government should state whether any changes made to the planned US BMD deployments in the Czech Republic and Poland would affect RAF Fylingdales or Menwith Hill. We further conclude that the uncertainty surrounding prospects for the US European BMD system has made a Parliamentary debate on this issue all the more necessary, and we recommend that the Government should schedule one before the end of this Parliament.”
Download/Read the report (pdf)
Russia Rejects the Notion of a Joint Missile System in Europe
The New York Times
Ellen Barry
11 June 2009
Responding to remarks by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a top Russian diplomat said Thursday that Russia would not collaborate with the United States on missile defense unless Washington scrapped plans to deploy elements of the shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
“We cannot partner in the creation of objects whose goal is to oppose the strategic deterrent forces of the Russian Federation,” said the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Andrei A. Nesterenko. “No one will do something that harms himself.” …
In Senate testimony on Tuesday, Mr. Gates said that Russia might “partner with us and Poland and the Czech Republic in going forward with missile defense.” American policymakers have long sought common ground with Russia on missile defense, but Mr. Gates’s remarks were unusually specific, suggesting that one option might be a jointly operated facility on Russian territory.
The remarks passed without notice in the United States but were picked up by major Russian newspapers like the daily Kommersant, which described the “sensational statement” in a front-page article in Thursday’s edition.
Moscow has long protested American plans to build a radar site in the Czech Republic and to deploy 10 interceptor missiles in Poland, arguing that the system could target Russia. …
The Obama administration appears to be reconsidering the idea of collaborating on missile defense as part of the “reset” of its relations with Russia.
During testimony before the Senate on Tuesday, Mr. Gates said he believed that Russian leaders now agreed with Washington on the potential nuclear threat posed by Iran. …
www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/world/europe/12missile.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) admits presence at “RAF” Menwith Hill, Pine Gap (Australia) as well as three ground station location within the United States.
NRO DIRECTOR OF SECURITY AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE NOTE
This document, from the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), was recently obtained under the US FOIA (Wikileaks) and sent to CAAB.
Africa: Africom to Continue Under Obama
allAfrica.com
Daniel Volman
11 June 2009
With the Obama administration set to oversee significant increases in US security assistance programmes for African countries, Daniel Volman examines the US government’s plans for its military operations on the African continent over the coming financial year. Stressing that the US president is essentially continuing the policies outlined under his predecessor George W. Bush, the author considers the proposed funding increases for initiatives like the Foreign Military Financing programme and the International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme. Pointing out that the administration is yet to offer any public explanation of its policy, Volman concludes that it would be a mistake to assume that there will be no US military action if the situation in Somalia deteriorates. …
Read the full article: http://allafrica.com/stories/200906110882.html
Mikhail Gorbachev calls for new American revolution
By Stephen C. Webster
The Raw Story
June 9, 2009
Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last communist general secretary, called for a new American “revolution” — also calling it a “perestroika,” or government restructuring — in an editorial published Wednesday in The Sydney Morning Herald .
“Some have reacted with understanding. Others have objected, sometimes sarcastically, suggesting that I want the United States to experience upheaval, just like the former Soviet Union. In my country, particularly caustic reactions have come from the opponents of perestroika, people with short memories and a deficit of conscience,” the former Soviet leader wrote.
He continued: “Our perestroika signalled the need for change in the Soviet Union, but it was not meant to suggest a capitulation to the US model. Today, the need for a more far-reaching perestroika – one for America and the world – has become clearer than ever.”
In Russia, Gorbachev’s “perestroika ” was a government restructuring and the introduction of limited market economy freedoms into the Communist model, which initially caused a great deal of social unrest before eventually becoming an integral part of society.
Gorbachev called for something similar in November, when he declared then-U.S. President-elect Barack Obama “a man of our times” and suggested his administration would need to bring about an American “perestroika.” …
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/09/mikhail-gorbachev-calls-for-new-american-revolution/
Missile Defense: Worth the Wait
June 8, 2009
International Relations and Security Network: Zurich, Switzerland
Despite recent “rogue state” missile tests, the Obama administration is still sitting on missile defense shield plans for Central Europe, waiting, with wisdom, Jeremy Druker comments for ISN Security Watch.
The recent missile tests by North Korea and Iran would have been an easy excuse for the Obama administration to fast forward Bush-era plans for an ambitious anti-missile defense shield to protect the US and Europe from attacks by “rogue states.” But Washington appears to be sticking to its original intention of reassessing that strategy, and, with each passing week, the wait-and-see approach seems the wisest one.
Key to any decision appears to be the desire for a more constructive relationship with Russia. Moscow has long opposed plans to station parts of the shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, its former satellites, and has claimed that one of the project’s real aims is to contain Russia.
A report released by the EastWest Institute (EWI) last month favors patience. A group of US and Russian scientists and defense experts argue that Iran won’t have the capability to launch a nuclear missile attack on Europe for many years, perhaps as much as a decade.
While that is a risky prediction to make, the report’s other assertions – that Iran would have to be suicidal to even contemplate such an attack, knowing the response, and that the missile system should be constructed with Russian assistance – already make a lot of sense. …
New Military Base in Colombia Would Spread Pentagon Reach Throughout Latin America
The Activist Magazine
by John Lindsay – Poland
June 4, 2009
The Pentagon budget submitted to Congress on May 7, 2009 includes $46 million for development of a new U.S. military base in Palanquero, Colombia.
The official justification states that the Defense Department seeks “an array of access arrangements for contingency operations, logistics, and training in Central/South America.”
The military facility in Colombia will give the United States military increased capacity for intervention throughout most of Latin America. The plan is being advanced amid tense relations between Washington and Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, and despite both a long history and recent revelations about the Colombian military’s atrocious human rights record.
President Obama told hemispheric leaders last month that “if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction—if our only interaction is military—then we may not be developing the connections that can over time increase our influence and have a beneficial effect.”
In this Obama is on point. This base would feed a failed drug policy, support an abusive army, and reinforce a tragic history of U.S. military intervention in the region. It’s wrong and wasteful, and Congress should scrap it. …
www.activistmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1035&Itemid=143
The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases
Action Center For Justice
by Prof. Jules Dufour, GlobalResearch.ca
June 01, 2009
The Worldwide control of humanity’s economic, social and political activities is under the helm of US corporate and military power. Underlying this process are various schemes of direct and indirect military intervention. These US sponsored strategies ultmately consist in a process of global subordination.
Where is the Threat?
The 2000 Global Report published in 1980 had outlined “the State of the World” by focussing on so-called “level of threats” which might negatively influence or undermine US interests.
Twenty years later, US strategists, in an attempt to justify their military interventions in different parts of the World, have conceptualized the greatest fraud in US history, namely “the Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT). The latter, using a fabricated pretext constitutes a global war against all those who oppose US hegemony. A modern form of slavery, instrumented through militarization and the “free market” has unfolded.
Major elements of the conquest and world domination strategy by the US refer to:
1) the control of the world economy and its financial markets,
2) the taking over of all natural resources (primary resources and nonrenewable sources of energy). The latter constitute the cornerstone of US power through the activities of its multinational corporations.
http://charlotteaction.blogspot.com/2009/06/worldwide-network-of-us-military-bases.html
10 Years On, VFA Only Served US Interests
This article is about the Visiting Forces Agreement 1999 in the Philippines. However the issues raised in the article are just as pertinent here in the UK where the Visiting Forces Act 1952 applies.
Voxbikol.com – Herald of Truth and Justice – Naga City,Camarines Sur,Philippines
Ronalyn V. Olea
Thea Ayla P. Banag
Alexander Martin Remollino
May 30, 2009
On May 27, 1999, the Philippine Senate passed the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the Philippines and the United States. Then president Joseph Estrada soon after signed the agreement.
The VFA grants extraterritorial and extrajudicial “rights” to US servicemen visiting the Philippines. It made possible the Balikatan military exercises, which have been held annually since 2002.
In the VFA’s preamble, it is stated that both parties reaffirm “their obligations under the Mutual Defense Treaty of (Aug.) 30, 1951” and that each side should assert their independence as they see fit. In other words, the VFA, on paper, preaches parity and mutual respect.
In practice, however, the picture is entirely different so that, a decade after it took effect, some questions emerge: Has the VFA served its avowed purpose? Has it served the interests of Filipinos? Or has it only reinforced the unequal alliance between the two countries, a relationship so tilted in the Americans’ favor that to call the VFA a treaty – with all the word’s connotation of equal rights, benefits and privileges – would be a travesty? …
Even as it was still being deliberated upon in the Senate, the VFA had its own share of critics. And the past 10 years have served only to vindicate those who opposed the agreement, said Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance) chairperson Dr. Carol Pagaduan-Araullo. Muallam/bulatlat.com)
“On one hand, it appears that everyone who raised objections, criticisms, projections of what could happen against the interest of ordinary Filipinos and national sovereignty were vindicated,” Araullo said in an interview with Bulatlat. But this vindication, she quickly pointed out, “does not make us happy.”
Because the VFA, Araullo said, “has meant farmers whose livelihood was destroyed, fishermen whose boats were hit by bombs, women who were raped – dishonor for the Philippines.”
The Philippines, she added, is supposed to be an independent and sovereign country and yet it “cannot even assert the authority of the court over convicted felons like Lance Corporal Daniel Smith … ”
Smith, a US Marine, had been convicted by a local court for the rape of “Nicole” in Subic, Zambales, in 2005 but the Court of Appeals overturned the conviction early this year. Apart from the “Nicole” rape case, other atrocities by US troops have taken place in areas where the Balikatan military exercises have been held, among them the shooting of farmer Buyong-Buyong Isnijal in Basilan in 2002. …
Roland Simbulan, a professor of development studies at the University of the Philippines (UP) in Manila and an expert on US-Philippine relations, believes that the last 10 years of the VFA have been used for purposes other than what the agreement was designed for. …
These activities, Simbulan said, “are not within the bounds of the Visiting Forces Agreement. But for the past 10 years, that is how this agreement has, in fact, been used – to try to legalize, at the same time cover, covert activities by US forces in support of the so-called US ‘war on terror’.” …
According to Araullo of Bayan, US military presence in the Philippines is not in the interest of the Filipino people. But the Americans are here for their interests in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, she said.
Simbulan agreed, saying the VFA has instead served to further US geopolitical interests in Asia and the Pacific.
“After the pullout of US military bases in 1992, after the Senate rejected the proposed bases treaty, the United States wanted a restoration of their presence here, their military presence, because by virtue of our strategic location – the Philippines is at the gateway between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean – our location gives the United States a presence that is used as a springboard for their operations in other countries, as well as a monitoring station, especially against the people of Indonesia and Malaysia, which are Muslim countries. The US is afraid to deploy US forces there because of what they consider to be the hostile population, which are two of the largest Islamic countries in the world. So they prefer to deploy their forces here while monitoring the activities there,” said Simbulan. the author of “The Bases of Our Insecurity,” a book published in 1983 that is considered the most authoritative on the issue of US military presence in the Philippines.
“But, by and large, the most important value for them of the Philippines is its strategic location …
Read the full article: www.voxbikol.com/bikolnews/769/10-years-vfa-only-served-us-interests
US: Army base ordered on stand-down after multiple suicides
The Intelligence Daily
May 29, 2009
By Naomi Spencer
Members of the 101st Airborne Division were ordered to suspend regular operations at the Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Army base Wednesday after the suicide toll rose to 11 for the year.
The stand-down, termed the “Second Suicide Stand-Down Event,” by acting top commander Brig. Gen. Stephen Townsend, was prompted by two suicides on base last week. Fort Campbell, which leads the Army in base suicides, instituted a similar stand-down in March that was effective across the entire Army. The current, base-specific stand-down is in effect until Friday.
Speaking to the 25,000 personnel stationed at the base, Townsend told soldiers not to hide suicidal feelings and to assist others to get help. He ordered soldiers to complete part of a suicide prevention program in the next few days.
The Army’s reported number of active-duty soldier suicides has climbed every year of the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations. In January, the suicide rate surpassed the combat death toll. …
Read the full article: www.inteldaily.com/news/173/ARTICLE/10835/2009-05-29.html
West Plots To Supplant United Nations With Global NATO
globalreasearch.ca
by Rick Rozoff
May 27, 2009
Ten years ago it first became evident to the world that moves were afoot in major Western capitals to circumvent, subvert and ultimately supplant the United Nations, as the UN could not always be counted on to act in strict accordance with the dictates of the United States and its NATO allies. …
Raed the full article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ROZ20090527&articleId=13759
Soldier Seeking Asylum: ‘I Want to Be Able to Atone’
Elsa Rassbach interviews André Shepherd, a U.S. soldier applying for asylum in Germany
CommonDreams.org – Berlin, May 26, 2009
… On June 5th, he [Barack Obama] will be coming to visit us here in Germany … This will be Obama’s third visit to Germany in less than a year, and it seems likely that he will once again, as in the previous two visits, make a pitch for more German support for the ongoing “war against terror,” particularly in Afghanistan. Though Obama is popular here, the German government has for the most part stonewalled his requests for further direct German involvement in these wars.
The well-known German ambivalence towards the U.S. “war against terror” is now being further tested by a U.S. soldier’s application for asylum in Germany. André Shepherd, who was stationed in Germany, refuses to deploy to Iraq. Many U.S. soldiers stationed in Europe who refused service in or support of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan have been tried in U.S. military courts in Europe and imprisoned in the U.S. military’s correctional facility at Mannheim …
But Shepherd is so far the first to turn to the German government for help: last November he filed a formal application to the German government for asylum. For the moment his case is entirely outside of U.S. jurisdiction.
Shepherd argues that there are strong reasons arising from Germany’s history for Germany to grant him asylum: the Nuremberg Principles and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany that has provisions written in the spirit of Nuremberg. In 2005 the highest German administrative court upheld a German military officer’s right to refuse orders in 2003 to provide software that might have been used by the U.S. for logistics during the invasion of Iraq. …
This interview was previously published in the national German daily newspaper junge Welt on May 23, 2009 …
Since the “war on terror” began, there have been many U.S. soldiers who have spoken out and many who have refused to serve. But you are the first so far to apply for asylum in Germany. What are the grounds on which your application is based?
Well, it’s very simple: In the war of aggression against the Iraqi people, the United States violated not only domestic law, but international law as well. The U.S. government has deceived not only the American public, but also the international community, the Iraqi community, as well as the military community. And the atrocities that have been committed there these past six years are great breaches of the Geneva Conventions. My applying for asylum is based on the grounds that international law has been broken and that I do not want to be forced to fight in an illegal war.
Read the rest of the interview here: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/28-4
To support André Shepherd, contact: girights-germany@dfg-vk.de
or see www.connection-ev.de
The Pentagon’s politics of war
Paul Rogers (professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, UK)
opendemocracy.net
The United States’s military-spending plans are struggling to catch up with the nature of the conflicts it is engaged in.
The United States political and military establishment is preparing for a new round of expenditure to meet the extensive commitments of a superpower engaged in two wars as well as involved in a host of lesser situations around the world. How is the debate in Washington shaping up, and are the plans being made appropriate to the challenges of the coming period?
The Barack Obama administration has now been in power for four months: time enough for a preliminary assessment of its likely impact on the US’s defence posture. The ground for making a full judgment, however, will come from the next Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) due in 2010.
In the shorter term, the evidence of the fiscal-year 2010 budget – which runs from autumn 2009 – is available. This is less than helpful, in part because much of it was decided by the George W Bush administration but even more for “internal” budgetary reasons: many of the large supplemental “war-fighting” funding requests related to Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to include money for substantial items of equipment as well as the actual costs of the wars week-by-week. …
Read the rest of this article…
www.opendemocracy.net/article/the-wages-of-war
Obama’s military conundrum
Only by switching spending from war to development can America hope to defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban
Jeffrey Sachs
The Guardian
22 May 2009
American foreign policy has failed in recent years mainly because the US has relied on military force to address problems that demand development assistance and diplomacy. Young men become fighters in places such as Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan because they lack gainful employment. Extreme ideologies influence people when they can’t feed their families, and when lack of access to family planning leads to an unwanted population explosion. President Barack Obama has raised hopes for a new strategy, but so far the forces of continuity in US policy are dominating the forces of change. …
… US military spending exceeds the sum of federal budgetary outlays for education, agriculture, climate change, environmental protection, ocean protection, energy systems, homeland security, low-income housing, national parks and national land management, the judicial system, international development, diplomatic operations, highways, public transport, veterans’ affairs, space exploration and science, civilian research and development, civil engineering for waterways, dams, bridges, sewerage and waste treatment, community development and many other areas. …
… US military spending … [is] … roughly the same amount spent by the rest of the world combined – a pattern that the Obama administration shows no signs of ending. …
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/22/obama-military-spending-development
StratCom and the Domination of (Cyber) Space
By Tim Rinne
State Coordinator, Nebraskans for Peace
It seems an unlikely place from which to try to dominate the world.
A remote Air Force base in rural Nebraska, twelve miles south of Omaha.
There’s even a cornfield across the road.
But it’s where George Bush was rushed for safekeeping on 9/11. And today, it’s where the White House continues to wage its international ‘War on Terror’ and to pursue its goal of dominating space.
And, as it now turns out. cyber space.
Ten years ago, U.S. Strategic Command was a weapon in search of a foe. The collapse of the Soviet Union had left the headquarters for the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal without any real purpose. Things had reached such a dismal state for the Pentagon’s ‘doomsday machine’ that the command’s name was even popping up on some base-closing lists.
But 9/11 changed that. Virtually from the moment President Bush was shuttled to StratCom’s underground command center, its role and mission began to morph. …
http://groups.google.com/group/misc.activism.progressive/browse_thread/thread/fce618afb9ba83f5
The Other Missile Defense
While in Korea for our Global Network annual conference we were taken to Pyeongtaek where the US is dramatically expanding a military base. There we were shown nearly a dozen mobile PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability) launchers parked just beyond the razor-wired fence.
Lockheed Martin describes their PAC-3 system as “the world’s most advanced, capable and powerful terminal air defense missile. It defeats the entire threat: tactical ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction, cruise missiles and aircraft. The PAC-3 Missile is a high velocity interceptor that defeats incoming targets by direct, body-to-body [kinetic] impact.”
In addition the Raytheon Company, based in Tewksbury, MA., plays a key role in building PAC-3.
The PAC-3 program has been coordinated for the Pentagon at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.
Currently the US is deploying the PAC-3 in South Korea, Japan, Iraq, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Kuwait, Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Taiwan, and Israel. The Pentagon has also recently signed a deal to deploy PAC-3 in Poland.
Turkey has also recently shown interest in acquiring a similar system but has been talking with competitors of the US weapons industry about buying the technology from them. However, Washington has been pressuring Ankara to consider potential “NATO interoperability problems” that could occur should Turkey opt for a non-Western solution. Subtle arm twisting you might say.
The PAC-3 system, along with THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system, are the new “layered look” for the Pentagon’s missile defense program. The mobile THAAD, designed to shoot down short-and medium-range ballistic missiles, are also being heavily deployed in Japan and South Korea along with PAC-3 in order to serve as key elements of US first-strike strategy aimed at China.
Add the Navy’s Aegis destroyer, also outfitted with missile defense interceptors and being deployed in the Asian-Pacific region, into the scheme and you get the full picture of this theater-wide program to take out “the enemy” retaliatory missiles after a US first-strike.
From: http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2009/05/other-missile-defense.html
When satellites collide
Colliding Satellites: More Space Junk in Exactly the Wrong Place
By David Wright, Union of Concerned Scientists
The collision on February 10, 2009 between the Iridium 33 satellite and the defunct Cosmos 2251 satellite at an altitude of 470 miles (770 km) significantly increases the amount of space debris in the region of space that is already the most crowded and has the greatest risk of collisions between orbiting objects. The debris cloud created by this collision is like a shotgun blast that threatens other satellites in the region. …
Read the full article 10 pages pdf.
Barack Obama’s hundred days
Open Democracy
Godfrey Hodgson
29 April 2009
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated on 4 March 1933. “This nation asks for action”, he said in his inaugural address, and he answered the call. By the time Congress adjourned on 15 June, he had sent it fifteen messages and persuaded it to pass fifteen major pieces of legislation. And they were major. …
These were the famous “hundred days”, in the course of which Roosevelt saved American capitalism and – some would say – saved American democracy as well. The period set a standard by which the wisdom and effectiveness of future presidents was to be judged. …
Barack Obama approaches the end of his first hundred days in office with a record that …
www.opendemocracy.net/article/barack-obama-s-hundred-days
Russia Waiting for Concrete U.S. Missile Defense Proposal
Global Security Newswire – Washington,DC,USA
April 16, 2009
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the government in Moscow is still waiting for a concrete proposal from the United States to address its concerns about plans to deploy missile defenses in Europe, Agence France-Presse reported today. …
Moscow characterized the Bush administration plan to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic as a threat to Russian strategic security. Its stated concerns have not been allayed by U.S. compromise proposals, which included allowing Russian personnel access to the sites.
U.S. President Barack Obama said earlier this month that his decision on whether to pursue the effort would be based on the cost-effectiveness and efficacy of the technology and the missile threat posed by Iran, AFP reported. However, his administration has also sought to strengthen ties with Russia that have become strained in recent years. …
“We believe that if we can undertake some serious discussions and negotiations in the area of missile defense, this subject which has divided us can actually turn around and we can work together,” said Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“Certain aspects of missile defense could be uniting instead of dividing,” he added …
www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090416_1220.php
Drone wars
By Paul Rogers
Open Democracy
The phrase “war on terror” might have been quietly dropped from the United States’s military lexicon – to be replaced (according to a memo to Pentagon staff) by “overseas contingency operation”. But it is clear that to some degree there is continuity in practice in the tactics being pursued by the coalition in Afghanistan and Pakistan. An example is the relatively little reported campaign in western Pakistan characterised by what (in another euphemism) are commonly termed “drone incidents” but which would be better called air-raids. …
The present reality of these “drone” deployments is that United States forces are flying large and heavily armed aircraft over Pakistan for virtually every hour of every day, frequently accompanied by actual attacks. These air-raids have killed hundreds of people, many of them civilians and including scores of women and children. …
It is also relevant that the air war in Pakistan has accelerated in a manner largely unrecognised in the western media, though this is widely covered in the middle east and southwest Asia. This goes a long way to explain the anti-western mood in Pakistan, and the difficulty that the current government in Islamabad has in supporting US actions. …
Whatever the outcome of the investigations in northwest England – where ten of those arrested are Pakistani-born nationals reported to have entered the country on student visas – much of the media speculation has focused on suggestions that their focus is a bomb-plot with connections to Pakistan. …
Britain may not be involved in any of the air-raids across the Afghan border into Pakistan, but the country is widely seen as the United States’s closest ally. If “al-Qaida central” does exist and does see an opportunity to undertake operations in Britain, it could well see the changing nature of the war in western Pakistan – including the many civilians being killed each month in air-raids – as fuel and succour in its effort.
www.opendemocracy.net/article/drone-wars
The spies at the top of the world…and a new Cold War?
By Gordon Corera
Mail Online 12 April 2009
This radar station is so remote that it sees no sunlight for four months of the year. It is also so powerful it could spot a tennis ball in flight 3,000 miles away. Gordon Corera visits America’s controversial missile defence system in northern Greenland, where the Cold War never ended.
Thule US Air Base (picture US Military)
… As we drive on, a disturbing buzzing and popping starts to come from the engine. The controls on the dashboard join in and the vehicle begins to judder. Our journey into this empty wasteland is starting to feel like an episode of The X Files.
‘It’s the radar,’ she explains, pointing ahead of us, not very reassuringly. ‘It does strange things to the electrics.’
I politely ask what the radar is likely to do to my insides.
‘Best not to jump in front of it,’ she warns. …
But it’s this location that continues to rile the Russians. Even though the US maintains that the radar is directed at the new threat of ballistic missile attacks from rogue states like Iran and North Korea, the Russians remain suspicious – which makes Thule a potential flashpoint.
The control room at Thule radar base
The control room at Thule radar base
The radar is currently being upgraded to play a key role in America’s controversial missile defence shield. This would allow Americans to not only track missiles but also shoot them down. …
No final decision on the future of the defence shield has yet been taken by President Obama but it will be high on his agenda when he travels to Moscow in July. It remains both a major source of friction and a crucial bargaining chip between Washington and Moscow. It could yet be the front line of a new Cold War. …
Read this fascinating and disturbing article here:
www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1168510/The-spies-world–new-Cold-War.html
The Joint Statement of Obama and Medvedev:
Pursuing a World Free of Nuclear Weapons
By David Krieger
On April 1, 2009, the presidents of the United States and Russia, Barack Obama and Dmitriy Medvedev, issued a Joint Statement, promising “a new tone” and a far more constructive working relationship between the two countries. Relations had dramatically deteriorated under the leadership of George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin. The Joint Statement announced to the world that Obama and Medvedev are “ready to move beyond Cold War mentalities and chart a fresh start in relations between [the] two countries.”
The Joint Statement covered a wide range of issues, but gave greatest attention to issues related to nuclear weapons. The two leaders pledged to fulfill their obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which calls for good faith negotiations to achieve nuclear disarmament. This will be welcome news to the non-nuclear weapon states that are parties to the NPT and have committed to not acquiring nuclear weapons.
Presidents Obama and Medvedev committed their two countries “to achieving a nuclear free world.” This is an important promise, and these leaders must be supported by their citizens and people throughout the world in seeking its fulfillment. The promise is tempered, however, by the recognition of the two leaders that it is a “long-term goal” that will require “a new emphasis on arms control and conflict resolution measures, and their full implementation by all concerned nations.” The two leaders set no timeframe for achieving the goal.
They further agreed “to pursue new and verifiable reductions in…strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process.” They pledged to have their negotiators begin talks immediately on replacing the START I agreement, set to expire in December 2009, “with a new, legally-binding treaty.” This is an important step in preserving the verification provisions of the START I agreement and reducing the size of existing nuclear arsenals.
The statement calls for reductions in strategic offensive weapons, but gives no numbers indicating the thinking of the two leaders regarding the next step down. Some reports have suggested that the next reductions are likely to be relatively modest, to the level of 1,500 deployed strategic weapons, continuing the past practice of allowing no controls on additional nuclear weapons held in reserve.
The two leaders acknowledged differences related to the deployment of missile defense systems in Europe, while recognizing that there were possibilities to work together on assessing “missile challenges and threats.” They also promised to work together to secure loose nuclear materials, promote the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, and bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force (Russia has ratified, while the US has signed but not ratified).
They also agreed to promote “international cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy.” While many nations of the world may favor this, the promotion of nuclear energy has serious drawbacks. It will reduce emphasis on societal investment in truly sustainable forms of energy, and it will make it more difficult to achieve nuclear disarmament. The more that nuclear power is promoted and developed throughout the world, the more difficult it will be to assure that nuclear weapons do not proliferate to other countries or to terrorist organizations.
Achieving a world free of nuclear weapons will require both a commitment and a detailed plan to provide a roadmap. The commitment has now been made. The plan will reveal the realism of the commitment. Reductions in nuclear arsenals demonstrate progress, but it is important that reductions be tied to the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons from all arsenals within a reasonable timeframe.
The intentions of the two leaders expressed in their Joint Statement are far ahead of the limited vision of their recent predecessors. It is real progress. The world is too dangerous, however, to think that it will be possible to muddle through to zero. The stakes are far too high. As President Obama pointed out recently in Strasbourg, “Even with the Cold War now over, the spread of nuclear weapons or the theft of nuclear material could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet.”
Achieving a world of zero nuclear weapons will require the creation and implementation of a well-conceived plan. To assure our common future, Presidents Obama and Medvedev must assure a workable plan with a reasonable timeframe. They must now spend time at their drawing boards developing this plan.
David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org) and a Councilor on the World Future Council.
The Proposed European Missile Defense System
Union of Concerned Scientitsts
The European Missile Defense system that the Bush administration planned to deploy would include 10 interceptors in Poland and a large radar in the Czech Republic. If the United States moves forward with this system, it would incur large security and monetary costs, while acquiring no defensive capability in return. Deploying the system would therefore decrease U.S. security.
The proposed system has not been adequately tested, could readily be defeated by countermeasures, and has helped fuel a serious erosion in the U.S.-Russian relationship with far-reaching security consequences.
Read the key concerns that this article raises
www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/European-MD-factsheet-3-3-09.pdf
A War on Three Fronts
Open Democracy: 20 March 2009
By Paul Rogers
The sixth anniversary of the launch of the Iraq war coincides with military and political pressures on the Barack Obama administration to intervene more deeply in Pakistan.
The Iraq war was launched six years ago, with an intensive aerial assault on key installations of Saddam Hussein’s regime on 19-20 March 2003. Almost from the start – amid many expectations of a quick and decisive victory – there were signs that the war would be prolonged and bitter. …
“The first indication of the unexpected nature of the war with Iraq came just a few hours into the ground invasion. At about 05.30 (London time) on 21 March, the BBC’s 24-hour news channel called up one of its correspondents, Adam Mynott, who was with a group of US soldiers as they crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq.
Whereas other reports had indicated rapid progress of US and British troops, Mynott came on air breathless from having to take cover as the convoy he was with faced up to small arms and rocket attack from Iraqi forces. It was clearly unexpected, and gave the first indication that the Iraqi resistance to the invasion would be fierce” …
www.opendemocracy.net/article/a-war-on-three-fronts-iraq-afpak-washington
Reassessing the special relationship
by William Wallace and Christopher Phillips
The Royal Institute of International Affairs (2009)
“The ‘special relationship’ between Britain and America has underpinned British foreign and defence policy for the past 60 years—since before most of today’s British citizens were born. Gordon Brown once again reaffirmed the British commitment
to this guiding concept in his prime ministerial speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on 10 November 2008. The ‘central argument’ of his speech was ‘that the alliance between Britain and America—and more broadly between Europe and America—
can and must provide leadership’ in reshaping global order. ‘Rightly people talk of a special relationship; but that special relationship is also a partnership for a purpose’—to be ‘the engine of effective multilateralism’.” …
Reassessing the special relationship – pdf
NATO’s Global Mission Creep
By Diana Johnstone
counterpunch.org
NATO, the main overseas arm of the U.S. military-industrial complex, just keeps expanding. Its original raison d’être, the supposedly menacing Soviet bloc, has been dead for twenty years. But like the military-industrial complex itself, NATO is kept alive and growing by entrenched economic interests, institutional inertia and an official mindset resembling paranoia, with think tanks looking around desperately for “threats”.
This behemoth is getting ready to celebrate its 60th birthday in the twin cities of Strasbourg (France) and Kehl (Germany) on the Rhine early in April. A special gift is being offered by France’s increasingly unpopular president, Nicolas Sarkozy: the return of France to NATO’s “integrated command”. This bureaucratic event, whose practical significance remains unclear, provides the chorus of NATOlatrous officials and editorialists something to crow about. See, the silly French have seen the error of their ways and returned to the fold.
Sarkozy, of course, puts it in different terms. He asserts that joining the NATO command will enhance France’s importance by giving it influence over the strategy and operations of an Alliance which it never left, and to which it has continued to contribute more than its share of armed forces. …
www.counterpunch.org/johnstone03132009.html
Empire of Bases
Open Anthropology
Hugh Gusterson: 10 March 2009
Before reading this article, try to answer this question: How many military bases does the United States have in other countries: a) 100; b) 300; c) 700; or d) 1,000.
According to the Pentagon’s own list, the answer is around 865, but if you include the new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan it is over a thousand. …
NYU Press just published Catherine Lutz’s Bases of Empire, a book that brings together academics who study U.S. military bases and activists against the bases. Rutgers University Press has published Kate McCaffrey’s Military Power and Popular Protest, a study of the U.S. base at Vieques, Puerto Rico, which was closed in the face of massive protests from the local population. …
American leaders speak of foreign bases as cementing alliances with foreign nations, largely through the trade and aid agreements that often accompany base leases. Yet, U.S. soldiers live in a sort of cocooned simulacrum of America in their bases, watching American TV, listening to American rap and heavy metal, and eating American fast food, so that the transplanted farm boys and street kids have little exposure to another way of life. Meanwhile, on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, local residents and businesses often become economically dependent on the soldiers and have a stake in their staying. …
http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/hugh-gusterson-empire-of-bases/
America’s politics of defence
openDemocracy: 12 March 2009
Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University,
A political contest over the United States’s enormous defence budget will help define the character – and the global image – of the Barack Obama administration.
Barack Obama’s political inheritance is one of the most difficult ever faced by a new United States president. But if the agenda of major policy challenges – short-term and long-term, domestic and foreign – is lengthy, three areas in particular stand out as unavoidable priorities: the economic recession and accompanying unemployment at home, a strategy on climate change after the near-decade wasted under George W Bush, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. …
www.opendemocracy.net/article/america-s-politics-of-defence
The proliferation of space warfare technology
This is an article from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
By Matthew Hoey: a former senior research associate at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies
11 December 2008
Article Highlights
- Given how easily information can spread about the globe today, it’s inevitable that space warfare technology will proliferate.
- And once one country sets its sights on space domination, other countries are sure to follow, spurring a second arms race of sorts.
- That’s why the international community and U.S. policy makers need to begin discussing the ramifications of pursuing military space immediately.
Connecting the dots in the New World Order: Too Many Overseas Bases
By DotConnector: 9 march 2009
In the midst of an economic crisis that’s getting scarier by the day, it’s time to ask whether the nation can really afford some 1,000 military bases overseas. For those unfamiliar with the issue, you read that number correctly. One thousand. One thousand U.S. military bases outside the 50 states and Washington, DC, representing the largest collection of bases in world history. …
http://dotconnectoruk.blogspot.com/2009/03/too-many-overseas-bases.html
US seeks hard bargain on missile defense
Associated Press
Robert Burns: 9 March 2009
If the Obama administration intends to give up missile defense in Europe as part of a security deal with Russia, as early maneuvering seems to suggest, then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is driving a hard bargain.
On a trip to Europe and the Middle East that ended Sunday, Clinton spoke positively of the prospect of making missile defense an integral part of U.S. defense strategy, even while suggesting it may be less critical in Europe if Iran quit its nuclear program.
What she avoided was offering a quid pro quo. She did not assert that if Russia were to accelerate pressure on Tehran to back down, then the United States would scrap its plan to put anti-missile interceptors in Poland and an associated radar in the Czech Republic.
In fact she appeared to suggest that missile defense in Europe was a good idea even if Iran no longer was a worry — although it would be less urgent. …
Russia says missile defense in Europe is unnecessary and provocative. Moscow even has threatened to deploy short-range missiles in its westernmost region, bordering Poland, if the U.S. goes ahead. …
www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gzHpAi8GVibA14XnxzRmTgZcIaZQD96PRN480
Politics of Missile Defence
Indian Express.com
C. Raja Mohan: Mar 08, 2009
As India celebrates the third successful anti-missile test conducted off the Orissa coast on Friday, New Delhi might continue to have trouble managing the politics of missile defence at home and abroad. …
While a grateful Washington offered to share its missile defence technologies with New Delhi, there were few takers for it within the NDA government. Outside the government, the Opposition Congress party mildly, the communists wildly, and the foreign policy traditionalists in a confused manner attacked India’s new interest in missile defence. …
www.indianexpress.com/news/politics-of-missile-defence/432397/
Can U.S. Still Afford 1,000 Overseas Military Bases?
AllGov.com: March 02, 2009
The Pentagon officially reports 865 base sites, but this unreliable number does not include our bases in Iraq (more than 100) or Afghanistan (80 and counting), not to mention other secret bases. The vast military presence of the United States extends around the entire globe, with military facilities on every continent, in places like Bulgaria, Djibouti, Bahrain, and Qatar, as well as Australia, Colombia and Greece, to name just a few. Even more than 60 years after the end of World War II and 55 years after the end of the Korean War, the U.S. still has 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, and 87 in South Korea. …
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, “The USA’s military spending accounted for 45 per cent of the world total in 2007.” …
http://www.allgov.com/ViewNews/Can_US_Still_Afford_1000_Overseas_Military_Bases_90302
See other stories on this topic
Afghanistan: a misread war
opendemocracy.net: 26 February 2009
by Paul Rogers
The war in Afghanistan is reaching a pivotal moment. A range of diplomats, politicians and military strategists from dozens of countries is now paying the conflict the intense and concentrated international attention that it long seemed to lack while events in Iraq took centre-stage. But as the earlier combat-zone in the “war on terror” returns to the forefront, there is a notable tendency to misconstrue the story of the years since October 2001 in Afghanistan – in ways that might mislead policy-makers and analysts today into repeating earlier flawed assessments.
The dominant interpretation of what has happened in Afghanistan has many components of the critical situation of early 2009 to draw on. The problems of coalition troop numbers, of counterproductive military tactics, of the persistence of insurgent fighters, of Kabul’s governance and of events across the border in Pakistan – all these are more than enough to keep western policy-makers awake at night. …
Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England.
www.opendemocracy.net/article/afghanistan-a-misread-war
Satellite collision ‘more powerful than China’s ASAT test’
New Scientist: 13 February 2009
by Paul Marks
Space weapons are dangerous – but out-of-control, defunct satellites can
do just as much damage, if not more.
So says a leading space scientist who has calculated that Tuesday’s collision between an Iridium communications satellite and the defunct Soviet-era Cosmos 2251 spacecraft expended a great deal more destructive energy than China’s infamous anti-satellite missile test did in January 2007.
… The resulting “unprecedented” debris field, says Lewis, is still being analysed by space agencies. But he expects it to create an extra 10,000 debris shards varying in size from centimetres to tennis-ball sized – more than triple the number created in the ASAT test. …
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16604-satellite-collision-more-powerf
Can Obama Ban Space Weapons Successfully?
By Glenn Reynolds
February 9, 2009
Soon after President Obama took office, a change to the White House Web site gave a hint to this administration’s plans for defense in space. The site said that the administration is “seeking a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites.” These are high-priority goals, but the administration is likely to face some problems.
The first, and most obvious problem for this administration is answering the question, “What is a space weapon?” Currently, weapon systems aimed at space—like the antisatellite capability of U.S. Aegis cruisers, demonstrated in last year’s shootdown of a dead spy satellite, or the Chinese antisatellite weapon demonstrated in 2007—aren’t “space weapons” at all, and wouldn’t be covered by a ban on weapons in space. …
www.origin.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4303139.html
US-RUSSIA: Kinder, Gentler Tone, Same Policy Tradeoffs
WASHINGTON, Feb 21 2009 (IPS)
By Daniel Luban
The relationship between the U.S. and Russia, which reached a nadir this past August during the war in Georgia, appears to have experienced a slight thaw during the first month of the Barack Obama administration.
Despite a few bumps – most notably the closing of the U.S. airbase in Kyrgyzstan under apparent Russian pressure – past weeks have seen both sides adopt a more conciliatory tone in their rhetoric. On the U.S. side, this dynamic has been driven both by the new administration’s overall aim of repairing diplomatic relations with the world and by a pragmatic desire to secure Russian cooperation on Afghanistan and Iran.
It remains to be seen, however, whether this rhetorical shift will result in substantive agreements on the points of contention between the two countries. …
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45843
Steinmeier Seeks U.S. Missile Defense Shift, Sueddeutsche Says
Bloomberg – Germany
3 February 2009
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to rethink U.S. missile-defense plans for Europe when they meet today in Washington, the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung said.
“I now expect all sides to move toward resolving their differences on the disputed issue of the planned U.S. missile- defense umbrella in eastern Europe,” Steinmeier says …
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=at6xnjh5wlHE&refer=germany
Arms control to start U.S. – Russia thaw
Reuters – USA
3 February 2009
… The potential exists for a grand bargain encompassing cooperation on the global financial crisis, Iran, Afghanistan, nuclear disarmament, missile defense, conventional armed forces and NATO enlargement.
But there are plenty of landmines on the road. Differences over the future of Georgia and Ukraine, two former Soviet republics on Russia’s borders, are the most obvious obstacles.
After eight years of disdain for arms treaties under George W. Bush, U.S. President Barack Obama is set to propose a radical negotiated reduction in nuclear missiles and warheads. …
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/02/03/arms-control-to-start-us-russia-thaw/
Missile defense system too expensive and inefficient for USA
Pravda – Moscow,Russia
3 February 2009
Senator Carl Levin confirmed the intention of the US administration to cut the defense spending of the Pentagon, but refused to specify the programs. However, as Levin said, he would like the missile defense program to be one of them. There is no real confirmation for the efficiency of the missile defense system, although the program has been very expensive for the United States …
The Pentagon also confirmed the intention to cut the spending on several defense programs. Defense Secretary Robert Gates particularly stated that the Bush’s era, which started with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and involved the increase of defense spending, was drawing to its end.
There has been controversy among experts about whether it is technically feasible to build an effective missile defense system and, in particular, if the ground-based midcourse NMD will work. …
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/03-02-2009/107055-missile_defense_system-0
Rules of the Game
New York Times
January 29, 2009
President George W. Bush, and his aides, could hardly wait to get rid of all those tiresome arms-control treaties when they took office. They tore up the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty to make way for a still largely pie-in-the-sky missile defense system. They opposed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and never made a serious effort to win a ban on the production of fissile material …
www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/opinion/30fri1.html
Is military spending crippling America?
Russia Today – Moscow,Russia
January 26 2009
… Experts estimate the number of units to be from 600 to over 800 spread over 130 countries.
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen believes many of the locations are kept secret. …
“Recently, there was an incident where an Air Force enlisted man crashed into a wedding procession in Lithuania. It turns out he was attached to an air base in Lithuania. So every day we find out about additional U.S. bases that we haven’t heard of in the past” …
Last year, the United States spent almost as much on its military as the rest of the world put together devoted to defence. …
www.russiatoday.com/features/news/36389
Chomsky: No change coming with Obama
PRESS TV – Tehran,Iran
Sat, 24 Jan 2009
The following is a Press TV interview with respected American author, political analyst and world-renowned linguist, Professor Noam Chomsky. …
What has happened is that there was a remarkable campaign of non-violent resistance in Iraq, which compelled the United States, step-by-step, to back away from its programs and its goals. They compelled the US occupying forces to allow an election, which the US did not want and tried to evade in all sorts of ways.
Then they went on from there to force the United States to accept at least formally a status of forces agreement, which if the Obama administration lives up to it, will abandon most of the US war aims. It will eliminate the huge permanent military bases that the US has built in Iraq. It will mean the US will not control decisions over how the oil resources will be accessed and used. And in fact just every war aim is gone. …
www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=83595§ionid=3510302
On the way forward in the Middle East
Tomdispatch.com: January 22, 2009
Tomgram: Tony Karon
Obama’s Gaza Opportunity
Yes, we now know the ever grimmer statistics: more than 1,400 dead Gazans (and rising as bodies are dug out of the rubble); 5,500 wounded; hundreds of children killed; 4,000 to 5,000 homes destroyed and 20,000 damaged — 14% of all buildings in Gaza; 50,000 or more homeless; 400,000 without water; 50 U.N. facilities, 21 medical facilities, 1,500 factories and workshops, and 20 mosques reportedly damaged or destroyed; the smashed schools and university structures; the obliterated government buildings; the estimated almost two billion dollars in damage; all taking place on a blockaded strip of land 25 miles long and 4 to 7.5 miles wide that is home to a staggering 1.4 million people.
On the other side in Israel, there are a number of damaged buildings and 13 dead, including three civilians and three soldiers killed in a friendly-fire incident. But amid this welter of horrific numbers, here was the one that caught my eye …
www.tomdispatch.com/post/175024/tony_karon_obama_s_gaza_opportunity
Global Energy War: Washington’s New Kissinger African Plans
Prepared by Rick Rozoff, Chicago, Illinois
Lost amid the national, and international, fanfare accompanying the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States today is attention to the person who is slated to be the latter’s major foreign policy architect and executor, retired US Marine General James Jones.
In nearly identical phraseology that cannot be construed as either fortuitous or without foundation, the Washington Post of November 22, 2008 referred to the then pending selection of Jones as US National Security Adviser in these terms: “Sources familiar with the discussions said Obama is considering expanding the scope of the job to give the adviser the kind of authority once wielded by powerful figures such as Henry A. Kissinger.” …
U.S. to review Europe missile shield under Obama
Reuters: Jan 15, 2009
By Andrew Gray
President-elect Barack Obama’s administration will review plans to deploy elements of a U.S. missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, Obama’s nominee for a top Pentagon post said on Thursday.
The plan to base 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic has strained relations between Washington and Moscow, which says the system is a threat to Russian security despite U.S. assurances to the contrary. …
www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE50F08V20090116?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews
The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians
January 12, 2009: By Professor Francis A. Boyle
… ‘The paradigmatic example of “crimes against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of “crimes against humanity” came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity.’ …
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21722.htm (read the article here)
Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask
January 7, 2009: Robert Fisk – The Independent
…. Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians? ….
Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.
How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009
Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state’s legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions.
The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. … Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.
Read this is a wonderfully clear and accurate account …
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine
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