One of the saddest things is to watch really brilliant people lying to themselves. The New York Times does this a lot. This is because pure honesty is viewed as very dangerous. The NYT editors struggle with the idea of controlling nuclear arms…owned by Muslims. The editor admits, this is pretty one-sided. Meanwhile, the US continues to hammer into being, a vast monster made of steel and blood: fighting in Afghanistan increases.
The Trouble With Abolishing Nuclear Weapons – NYTimes.com
One solution suggested by abolition advocates would be a form of latent or virtual deterrence, based not on weapons all but ready to launch, but on the ability to reassemble or rebuild them.
The US and the others who already have a stranglehold on the Security Council of the UN and who hold this birthright via nuclear bombs, have to somehow prevent all other nations from emulating the people who wield the most power, the power of a political veto coupled with a nuclear veto, literally, able to commit any war crimes they wish while at the same time, threatening all rivals with annihilation and then getting all prissy about ‘we must disarm!’
If arsenals are drastically reduced, the next steps toward abolition could be even trickier.
No sane leader will disarm even slightly after seeing how the US, the world’s hyper-military power, illegally sprang upon a helpless Iraq and dismembered and destroyed it, utterly. The US, Europe and Israel all want the world as disarmed as possible so they can do sneak attacks like the one against Russia, last summer.
Since scientific and engineering knowledge cannot be expunged from mankind’s memory, the potential to build weapons will always exist. Efforts to hide a few weapons may be difficult to detect and prevent. And any nation able to enrich uranium usable in nuclear power plants, like Iran, has a capacity to produce highly enriched fuel for weapons. Nuclear arms experts have been analyzing these issues intently and have come up with plans to address them. The steps include improvements in the tools used to monitor and verify compliance with treaties and new ways to prevent cheating, including more intrusive inspections.
This is written as if nothing happened in the last 6 years. The entire editorial makes absolutely no mention about Israel’s many nuclear bombs, for example. A significant silence. This editorial is simply part of AIPAC’s propaganda push against Iran and Pakistan. AIPAC has swept everyone from their path and the new, far right wing Zionist government has been going around, lying about their affairs.
The present game is to have the right wing Israelis agree with Obama and swear, they will help with creating a Palestinian state, etc. But this is all just so many lies. They are testing Obama to see how far they can manipulate him.
The enrichment problem, they say, could be solved by limiting the production of enriched uranium to internationally controlled fuel banks that would supply power reactors in places like Iran, eliminating the need for national enrichment plants.
The consortium of central bankers control our economic lives but the oil pumping nations are outside their control, being sovereign wealth nations. So the European/US/UK/Israel ruling class want to have a stranglehold on weapons production.
The notion of nuclear disarmament gained credibility a few years ago when four cold war veterans — George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former secretaries of state; William Perry, a former defense secretary; and Mr. Nunn — overcame their political differences to endorse the idea in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article. Now that it has been embraced by Presidents Obama and Medvedev, the notion seems to be moving from the realm of fantasy to the hardscrabble world of policy and politics.
All nuclear disarmament pushes by the ruling elites end up the same: more militarism. The problem isn’t nuclear bombs, the problem is imperialism. Afghanistan has been the victim of a long series of imperialist invasions during the last 200 years. The struggle against imperial invaders has so warped and hammered the people, they have become nearly totally deranged, trying to save their culture and their family structures.
The latest game in the West is to claim, we are freeing women and children if we put all the populace into the control of a hostile empire. This promise has killed native movements for liberalism. For the first people destroyed when empires take over are, the liberals. Obama, far from being a peace advocate, is a warlord along the lines of the more odious members of this bloody tribe. Proof is simple: we are now butchering people in the poorest lands on earth.
News from The Associated Press
The head of the U.S. Central Command says Taliban militants are a “true threat” to the existence of Pakistan. But Gen. David Petraeus says he is confident that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is safe from militants.
Petraeus also is claiming that Taliban brutality in northwestern Pakistan has “galvanized” the entire country, including its military, behind the recently launched offensive against the militant organization.
Pakistan has an educated class that is quite liberal. And the US-supported military dictators fought these liberals tooth and nail. So the populace slides towards reactionary efforts. But overall, the push is to be against whoever the puppet of the US happens to be. If the liberals can’t make headway, the violent reactionaries will fill the leadership void.
UN retreats after Israel hits out at Gaza report – Middle East, World – The Independent
The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon bowed to pressure from Israel yesterday by trying to limit the impact of a comprehensive critique accusing its military of “recklessness or negligence” in this year’s Gaza offensive.
The hammer of AIPAC falls on the UN’s head. The Palestinians are the New Jews in this New World Order: slated to be persecuted and then, eliminated, ruthlessly and brutally. The astonishing collapse of Jewish morals is historic and depressing.
The official UN report – which Mr Ban himself commissioned – criticised the Israel Defence Forces for breaching the inviolability of UN premises, causing deaths, injuries and damage in seven incidents involving UN installations, and on occasions issuing untrue statements about what had happened.
The US lies about our own war crimes, too. Note that, after finding not one, single WMD was found in Iraq. And yet, Bush hasn’t been arrested! Astonishing but normal.
But in a covering letter attached to his own 27-page summary of the report, leaked last night, the secretary-general bluntly rejected its recommendations for further investigations into whether Israel had breached international law during the offensive, including by its use of white phosphorus.
Phosphorus claim after fatal air strikes in Afghanistan | World news | The Guardian
Afghanistan leading human rights organisation is investigating claims that white phosphorus was used during a deadly battle between US forces and the Taliban last week in which scores of civilians may have died. Nader Nadery, a senior officer at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said the organisation was concerned that the chemical, which can cause severe burns, might have been used in the firefight in Bala Baluk, a district in the western province of Farah.
Both the US and Israel use the same torture tactics. They both use nuclear arms to intimidate neighbors and rivals. Both use white phosphorus bombs on civilians. So the US, a war criminal nation that violates the Geneva Conventions and the laws expressed at the Nüremberg Trials. Both Israel and the US want desperately to legalize their style of wars and oppressions.
Mr Ban’s efforts to draw a line under the report – compiled by a UN board of inquiry headed by Ian Martin, the British former head of Amnesty and UN envoy to East Timor – followed an intensive diplomatic effort by Israel to minimise the damage of its findings…
But in his covering letter Mr Ban says he is “carefully considering” what actions “if any” to take on the 11 recommendations by the inquiry team. Mr Ban goes out of his way to thank Israel for its co-operation in the inquiry. He makes a point – urged on him by Israeli ministers and officials – of speaking out against “continued and indiscriminate” attacks by Hamas. And he said: “I do not plan any further enquiries.”
Jewish jurists and American judges both think, if they LEGALIZE war crimes, these cease being war crimes. Alas, at the Nüremberg Trials, this was argued by the German Nazis. We rejected this excuse. We proclaimed, there were laws that supersede German laws. These laws were ‘natural’ laws. Now that we get to run the planet, we resent these natural laws. We want to do as we please. So we twist arms to force people to agree with us even as we act like outright criminals.
Israel yesterday rejected the report’s findings and its Foreign Ministry says the inquiry board “has preferred the claims of Hamas, a murderous terror organisation, and by doing so has misled the world”. Defence Secretary Ehud Barak repeated that Israel has “the most moral army in the world” and laid full responsibility for casualties on Hamas.
Probably the saddest sight of all is watching a bunch of Jewish war criminals, loudly proclaiming that their army is the most moral on earth. There is nothing moral in warring with barely armed residents trapped in ghettos. But then, look at the weapons the Taliban have: virtually nothing.
Memos shed light on CIA use of sleep deprivation – Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Washington — As President Obama prepared last month to release secret memos on the CIA’s use of severe interrogation methods, the White House fielded a flurry of last-minute appeals.
One came from former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, who expressed disbelief that the administration was prepared to expose methods it might later decide it needed.
“Are you telling me that under all conditions of threat, you will never interfere with the sleep cycle of a detainee?” Hayden asked a top White House official, according to sources familiar with the exchange.
From the beginning, sleep deprivation had been one of the most important elements in the CIA’s interrogation program, used to help break dozens of suspected terrorists, far more than the most violent approaches. And it is among the methods the agency fought hardest to keep.
The technique is now prohibited by President Obama’s ban in January on harsh interrogation methods, although a task force is reviewing its use along with other interrogation methods the agency might employ in the future.
We need to torture in order to expand our empire. And our empire is definitely continuing to expand. Americans who claim to be ‘liberals’ are howling for the US to militarily intervene all over the place. The US protects itself the same way the USSR did this. Torture, kidnapping, assassinations, cross border attacks, ignoring sovereignty of others, instigating uprisings: the US is uninhibited.
Tormenting people while forcing them to stay awake all the time until they surrender or go insane is torture. True, torture is a nifty tool. This is why all despots love torture. But is it America? Is it moral? To go back to the Nüremberg Trials, the answer is obvious: it is very much illegal.
The problem was that Bala Baluk is in a Pashtun area where the Taliban are reputed to be strong. Back in Kabul Pashtuns told me that it was unfair to equate them with the Taliban, but in reality there are few Taliban who are not Pashtun. It was too dangerous to go directly to Bala Baluk, so the next best thing was to find a survivor or an eyewitness. I thought that some of the worst injured might be in Herat hospital, as the best in the area. But there turned out to be only 14 wounded and these were in Farah hospital. This could have meant that there were fewer dead than the Afghans were saying, or that the bombardment was so intense that all had been killed.
I did not meet survivors but I did talk to a reliable witness, a radio reporter called Farooq Faizy, who had gone to Bala Baluk soon after the attack happened. He said that police and soldiers nearby were frightened of the Taliban and told him it was too dangerous to go on, but he spoke to some village elders, telling them: “Talk to us and we will tell the world.” He says he was none too sure who was in control of the three villages – Gerani, Gangabad and Khoujaha – that had been hit and he was careful about what he said. But he did take some 70 or 80 photographs and they bore out the villagers’ story: there were craters everywhere; the villages had been plastered with bombs; bodies had been torn to shreds by the blasts; there were mass graves; there were no signs of damage from bullets, rockets or grenades.
I suspected that the US military’s claim that the Taliban had run through the village hurling grenades, supposedly because they had not been paid their cut of profits from the opium poppy crop, was just a delaying tactic. Usually the US military delays admission of guilt until a story has gone cold and the media is no longer interested. “First say ‘no story’,” runs an old PR adage, “and then say ‘old story’.” By the end of the week the US was admitting that the grenade-throwing Taliban story was “thinly sourced”.
Another thesis was that fighting had taken place 500 metres from the villages, and the Taliban had retreated through them, leading to the airstrikes. Farooq Faizy said he had seen signs of fighting in the shape of two burned-out Afghan army or police vehicles and a destroyed US Humvee, but they were seven or eight kilometres away from the site of the bombing. He had taken photographs of them showing the destroyed Afghan vehicles – Ford pick-ups with a machine gun mount over the bonnet. It seemed likely that this was the fight that had led to the Afghan army and their US advisers asking for air support. What the Americans never explain in Afghanistan or Iraq is why they are using weapons designed for world war three against villages that have not left the Middle Ages – which makes heavy civilian casualties inevitable.
The bombing of civilians is just like our actions in Vietnam: the more we expand this, the more we send in outsiders to ‘civilize’ the peasants, the more they fight back. Failure is obvious. Karzai in move to share power with warlord wanted by US is a typical example.
Here is another ridiculous headline: Iraq police general shot dead in Basra
shows that everything we built in Iraq was built on sand. The Petraeus Peace is collapsing rapidly. Yet, he is still celebrated as a great strategist. History will view him as the last of the US military delusional leaders.
Artillery attack kills 378 civilians in Sri Lanka safe haven – Times Online
A massive artillery barrage in a safe haven set up in Sri Lanka’s conflict zone killed at least 378 civilians overnight, according to a government doctor.
The doctor, V. Shanmugarajah, called it the bloodiest attack he had witnessed in the fight against the Tamil Tigers and said that he feared many more had been killed as some bodies were being buried on the spot. The Tigers said in a statement on a pro-rebel website that 2,000 civilians had been killed in shelling by government forces in the past 24 hours.
The butchery in Sri Lanka was launched on the heels of the Israeli’s moral war crimes against the Gaza Ghetto. Similar tactics to the US ones are being used. The US liberal community would howl like devils if China did half as much to Tibet, what the Jews, what the Americans, what the Sri Lankans are doing to captive populations.
This disgusts me more than anything: the double standards. Nuclear double dealing, torture double dealing and imperial war double standards.
Mia Farrow ends Darfur fast, Branson takes over | Reuters
Actress Mia Farrow, ailing after almost two weeks on a hunger strike, announced on Friday that British billionaire Richard Branson would take over her protest in solidarity with people in Sudan’s Darfur region.
A Farrow spokesman said her health had deteriorated in the past few days and her doctor requested that she end the liquids-only fast she began 12 days ago to protest at Khartoum’s expulsion of more than a dozen aid agencies from Darfur.
Farrow asked Branson to take over the fast, her statement said, adding that the British entrepreneur had accepted and would begin a three-day hunger strike on Friday.
The Darfur business has been mostly dropped by the media since they have collectively decided that Israeli army is the most moral Nazis death machine on earth. So why bother with pretending to be interested in Darfur? They want us to go to war with Iran! We will save the Iranians by bombing them. Perhaps with nuclear bombs. Yes, that is a great way to disarm nations.
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
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Culture of Life News 
To be honest i thoght WWIII was on sept 12,2001… but as time drags on im not happy with our wars
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I am a believer that any intergenerational war becomes almost completely unwinable in a real political way as the war becomes the identity of your opponents, not the nationality or tribe
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we are in hot water up to our eyeballs, we can spin documentaries on PBS all nite about how much it sux to live in the 3rd world… but it dont mean a damn thing
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war is war, people die, there is only 1 victor
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we are a nation which is now fairly accustomed to a new reality, with enormous ’emperor nero’ issues at home
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these wars look deep deeeeep counter insurgency in some of the toughest teritorys
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so yeah we should tell israel to blow, its just political trash to me ‘our common enemys’
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O M G Unicorns arent real?
“The US, Europe and Israel all want the world as disarmed as possible so they can do sneak attacks like the one against Russia, last summer.”
Perhaps the Russians know this, so they are pretending to disarm, and planning on nuking the US first. Coming to a US city near you by 2020.
You’ve misquoted Mao
Power grows from the barrel of a gun
Any Power, he meant
Been read your article and another counterpunch article about nuclear tests back to back http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair05082009.html
It is such tragedy that the top military people in US all seem pretty insane. And there is no good process in the system to dislodge them, unless one is willing to resort to violence, and hence become as insane as them.
How does one get to the good ending of this story?
Sigh:
“It is such tragedy that the top military people in US all seem pretty insane. And there is no good process in the system to dislodge them, unless one is willing to resort to violence, and hence become as insane as them.
How does one get to the good ending of this story?”
Sigh:
There is no good ending to this story….much as I search my thoughts, I cannot come up with a good, easy scenario where the US can extract itself from the worldwide mess it has created….and worse, it appears to have no will or even the foresight to attempt to do so until it is brought to utter ruin by its own actions.
I saw the same mentality during the Vietnam War, but the people and Congress still had a little power and will to reign in military spending and funding….
Those better times are now long past…and, and the MIC has grown much stronger, and has more influence over national politics and foreign policy priorities. We are far down a path that leads to us dominating the world militarily while we totally and morally decay within because of outright corruption and vice, that creates future poverty and misery of the masses…..jobs gone, no real growth, infrastructure outdated and crumbling, corruption and tremendous usury by elites, banks and credit organizations which are enslaving citizens and, at the same time, global corporations are eliminating ways that citizens can recover from economic depression and outright loss of livelihoods and homes….all a recipe for economic and social disaster within the nation itself…of eventual epic proportions.
No doubt, the economic scenario is being created and egged on by “allied” foreign powers that are sick to their stomachs with US imperialism and aggression….and are absorbing huge amounts of debt in order to entice US globalists to deindustrialize the US and destroy our economy….and they are being very successful. In my opinion, these are not allies or friends by any means….they are out to crush and control the US from within….and we should ask ourselves why?
Well, that is easy enough to answer…and Elaine has answered it for us in this article…as we support our huge warmaking apparatus, we are oblivious to the fact that much of what we are doing is unnecessary and immoral on a level comparable to the British and Roman Empires of the past….even moving into the phase comparable to when military dictatorships ruled Rome and guided its policys with perpetual warfare and devious politics and mayhem in Rome and within the empire itself.
As the US fails economically, there is a liklihood that we might attempt to use military might to force economic recovery by taking from others in an outright manner as we did in Iraq…and this is disasterous…and is already drainng US wealth faster than we can replace it, but, I fear that US leaders and militarists will be short sighted and unable to see that there might be alternative ways of saving the US…..and I fear that they might, as in Rome, move closer to actual domination of the poltical processes of the nation….and it has already happened on a limited scale…with Bush co., Cheney and Iraq.
And Russia and China and even the European nations are no fools. They’ve seen this before…some in their own nations….Germany and Russia….and both know what the eventual outcome is likely to be. They are girding themselves and are, in my opinion, preparing for the worst and hoping for the best, but the present path for the US does not look good….much like the USSR under Brezhnev co.
Britain is too far gone to even look back and remember what caused its imperial demise…it is now trying to tie itself to US coattails, and suck up some remaining US wealth with its pirate coves, in a hope that it can survive, but even that hope is fading fast as it moves to electronic surveillance and authoritarian fascism to keep its populace from rioting.
And the armed nations will not disarm…but will arm themselves further in any way they can because, in my view, would the see the US as being in a very dangerous stage of its decline.
I think of an old Bob Dylan song and do a little substitution in my mind….
“….and the riot squad [military] they’re nervous, they need somewhere to go….as lady and I look out tonight…on desolation row…”
Sigh….
Four big U.S. banks to sell stock and eye repaying TARP
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1150611520090511
U.S. Bancorp plans to sell $2.5 billion of stock, and is also selling $1 billion of debt. Capital One Financial Corp is selling roughly $1.75 billion of stock, BB&T Corp $1.5 billion and KeyCorp $750 million.
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as opposed to recapatalizing the banking structure with debt servicable business recieved from liquidated partnerships, and being able to rasie captiol from enhanced market positions… the ‘better banks’ are just floating debt to cover their ass from government intervention… sounds JUST like nationalization waste money over here ‘Tarp’ to waste money over there ‘Government’
The unsaid belief by those holding (grasping with clenched fist) power in the U.S. Capital is that the only factor preventing currency collapse and national bankruptcy is superior military power and the willingness to use it.
Accept the U.S. bonds cause we got the bombs.
Ah, but Joseppi, China is no longer buying US bonds the way she had been. Soon she will buy none.
And recently she has been expressing her concerns about Bernanke’s $300bn T-bill purchase. And you full well know by now by reading Elaine’s work that expressing concern is Chinese code for issuing ultimatums!
And China can do this because they got the bombs, too. So can and does Russia.
Elaine, “The astonishing collapse of Jewish morals is historic and depressing.”
Jewish morals?!
Collapse of?!
Jeebus, gal, they’s making some great dew on your mountain.
Afghan War goes from bad to worse for the US.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_afghanistan
US Trooper goes nuts and kills 5 comrades. 😦
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_us_iraq;_ylt=Avd.iiWUArgFRToE_hDPj8iWwvIE;_ylu=X3oDMTJkYjk4amd1BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwNTExL3VzX3VzX2lyYXEEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMzBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDcGVudGFnb251c3Nv
Oh, geez! What a long URL!
Wow, storms knocked out my internet for a few days.
But apparently I am not yet permanently banished as I am back.
As I was dealing with the cable company, one of the call center reps went to the script on some free cable TV promo and I told him I don’t care about TV because it is all corporate propaganda where I am in the U.S.
It turns out the guy was in Gaza, that’s right, Israel, of all places!
We ended up talking for quite a while. He works all night answering calls from Americans whose taxes help pay to oppress and destroy him and then goes to school on top of that to try to make a better life.
I wanted to convey to him that there are a lot of Americans that do not support our government’s policies and want peace despite the propaganda machine. But they face an uphill battle against those that seek infinite wealth and power.
You know, when everyday run of the mill Israelis and Palestinians get together they seem to get along just fine for the most part, just like I got along with this poor soul in Gaza.
War is always a function of propaganda and spooks, etc. People just want to live in peace.
Incidentally, 60 minutes had two interesting segments last night, although they smelled like propaganda to me.
One was about those appalling unmanned drones, and the other was about an Israeli/Egyptian double agent spook who was heavily involved in the 1973 war that was apparently murdered in London in 2007.
Lovering, Jews are individuals, just like everyone.
There are good people and bad people amongst those that count themselves as Jews.
The good ones are usually poor, just like most good people, so you likely won’t hear that much from them.
fool who sits on hill, you are correct and very wise.
The bad Jews have always been a problem — being the Jewish financiers and zionist AIPAC types. Their “friends,” the bad Gentile elites, have also been an ancient and current problem.
Hitler had a final solution to the Jewish problem but it turned out to be no solution at all. He only got rid of the GOOD Jews in Europe, save for a remnant. The bad ones all escaped or survived the Holocaust.
The only solution is twofold: one, a PROPER teaching of the tale of Joseph, Prime Minister of Egypt: don’t exploit the masses or they will rise up and treat your descendants terribly. Two, a thourough examination of the Book of Joshua, which celebrates crimes against humanity by the Jews against the natives of Caanan Land. This awful book must be cross-examined with the archaeological record, which reveals Jews were enslaved to the Canaanites themselves before they had a slaves’ uprising.
“No sane leader will disarm even slightly after seeing how the US, the world’s hyper-military power, illegally sprang upon a helpless Iraq and dismembered and destroyed it, utterly. The US, Europe and Israel all want the world as disarmed as possible so they can do sneak attacks like the one against Russia, last summer.”
We attacked Russia last summer? Damn… I must have missed that, somehow.
You don’t really expect the US to disarm first, do you? The last time the US really disarmed, after WW I, didn’t really do any good; we just had to rearm later on.
“The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon bowed to pressure from Israel yesterday…”
That’s what UN Secretaries-General do: they bow to pressure. Doesn’t matter where it comes from – the US, Russia, China, the Muslims, Israel, whatever – if there’s pressure, he’ll bow to it.
“Nader Nadery, a senior officer at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said the organisation was concerned that the chemical, which can cause severe burns, might have been used in the firefight in Bala Baluk, a district in the western province of Farah.”
You see that a lot on the net: something might have happened, therefore it did happen.
“Jewish jurists and American judges both think, if they LEGALIZE war crimes, these cease being war crimes. Alas, at the Nüremberg Trials, this was argued by the German Nazis. We rejected this excuse.”
Because we were the winners.
” But then, look at the weapons the Taliban have: virtually nothing.”
Oh, those poor Talibans!
“Mia Farrow ends Darfur fast, Richard Branson takes over”
Somewhere, someone is impressed. (Maybe.)
The Jews, are all individuals
Just like everybody else :)
@The Fool on the Hill:It turns out the guy was in Gaza, that’s right, Israel, of all places! Is this Obamas secret plan!