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without geoengineering to cool the Arctic
An assessment by AMEG
Climate extremes are all too apparent resulting in food prices rising ominously towards a level which could put over a billion people into starvation next year and provoke food riots all over the world.
Governments must get a grip. Planetary catastrophe is inevitable without geoengineering to cool the Arctic. AMEG estimates that 0.4 petawatts of cooling power is required in 2013 to prevent an even worse collapse than in 2012. This is a tremendous geoengineering challenge, but the AMEG strategic plan shows how it might be met. Countries must support such a plan with immediate action, or disaster is inevitable.
Rapid action is needed because of the speed of deterioration of the situation both in the Arctic where summer sea ice could disappear this decade, and in the rest of the world, where the repercussions of Arctic warming on climate are growing alarmingly.
The situation is deteriorating so rapidly that almost all countries will be affected by a food security crisis by 2015. If this is not addressed, many countries will be affected by social unrest. This will have a knock-on effect to the rest of the world, as supplies to valuable resources, including oil and gas, will be curtailed.
For the billion people already on the starvation line, there may be no chance of survival, and a humanitarian disaster can be expected before 2015 unless the impending food crisis is tackled straightaway. For the billions of people where the average spending on food is 80% of income, the probable 25% rise in cost of food by 2015 will inevitably push people onto the starvation line. The unrest that will be caused in most countries should be of major concern to the leadership. For the most developed countries, there is the prospect of stagflation even next year.
All world leaders need to sit up and take note. The deteriorating food security will affect their ability to retain power and win elections, almost certainly by 2015.
What is happening will seriously impact food, agriculture and the insurance industry in 2013, with the negative impact growing inexorably from then onwards.
If there is no action to cool the Arctic, the food situation will continue to deteriorate until there is a collapse of civilisation as we know it. But, even if the food situation were recovered, the impact from methane release and disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet would ensure that collapse.
But every cloud has a silver lining. This situation can be considered a golden opportunity, unique in the history of our civilisation, for all nations to work together towards the common goal of survival. Each and every one of us has an interest in that.
AMEG Press Release: 2012-11-21
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Arctic Sea Ice in Steep Descent
Earlier this year, on March 9, 2014, Arctic sea ice area was at a record low for the time of the year. Since then, area did show some growth for a while, to the north of Scandinavia. This growth could be attributed largely to strong winds that made the sea ice spread with little or no growth in volume. The 30-day Naval Research Laboratory animation below shows recent sea ice speed and drift.
Low sea ice volume and area jointly suggest there could be a total collapse of the sea ice later this year, in line with observation-based non-linear trends. For years, this blog has warned that observation-based projections point at Arctic sea ice disappearance within years, with dire consequences for the Arctic and for the world at large.
As said, winds are responsible for much of sea ice variability, and winds could either slow down or speed up such a collapse. On this point, it's good to remember what Prof. Peter Wadhams said in 2012:
". . apart from melting, strong winds can also influence sea ice extent, as happened in 2007 when much ice was driven across the Arctic Ocean by southerly winds. The fact that this occurred can only lead us to conclude that this could happen again. Natural variability offers no reason to rule out such a collapse, since natural variability works both ways, it could bring about such a collapse either earlier or later than models indicate.
In fact, the thinner the sea ice gets, the more likely an early collapse is to occur. It is accepted science that global warming will increase the intensity of extreme weather events, so more heavy winds and more intense storms can be expected to increasingly break up the remaining ice, both mechanically and by enhancing ocean heat transfer to the under-ice surface."
The image on the right, produced with NOAA data, shows mean coastal sea surface temperatures of over 10°C (50°F) in some areas in the Arctic on August 22, 2007.
In shallow waters, heat can more easily reach the bottom of the sea. In 2007, strong polynya activity caused more summertime open water in the Laptev Sea, in turn causing more vertical mixing of the water column during storms in late 2007, found a 2011 study, and bottom water temperatures on the mid-shelf increased by more than 3°C (5.4°F) compared to the long-term mean.
Another study found that drastic sea ice shrinkage causes increase in storm activities and deepening of the wind-wave-mixing layer down to depth ~50 m (164 ft) that enhance methane release from the water column to the atmosphere. Indeed, the danger is that heat will warm up sediments under the sea, containing methane in hydrates and as free gas, causing large amounts of this methane to escape rather abruptly into the atmosphere.
Such warming would come on top of ever-warmer water that is carried by the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean and that has already been blamed for large methane releases from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean last year.
The prospect of an El Niño event, as discussed in an earlier post, makes the situation even more dire.
The consequences of sea ice collapse will be devastating, as all the heat that previously went into transforming ice into water will be asbsorbed by even darker water, from where less sunlight will be reflected back into space. The danger is that further warming of the Arctic Ocean will trigger massive methane releases that could lead to extinction at massive scale, including extinction of humans.
Hopefully, more people will realize the urgency of the situation and support calls for comprehensive and effective action as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.
M4.4 Earthquake hits Arctic Ocean north of Greenland
The epicenter of the quake is located right on the faultline that crosses the Arctic Ocean, at 83.328°N 4.568°W, 262km (163mi) NE of Nord, Greenland.
The earthquake follows another earthquake that hit the Arctic Ocean closeby on this faultline, on April 13, 2014, north of Franz Josef Land.
Earthquakes at this location are very worrying, as they can destabilize hydrates contained in the sediment under the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean. Furthermore, one earthquake can trigger further earthquakes, especially at locations closeby on the same faultline.
Related
– M4.5 Earthquake hits Arctic Ocean
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/04/m45-earthquake-hits-arctic-ocean.html
– Earthquakes in the Arctic Ocean
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/04/earthquakes-in-the-arctic-ocean.html
– Methane, Faults and Sea Ice
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/11/methane-faults-and-sea-ice.html
– Norwegian Sea hit by 4.6M Earthquake
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/11/norwegian-sea-hit-by-46m-earthquake.html
– Greenland Sea hit by M5.3 Earthquake
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/10/greenland-sea-hit-by-m53-earthquake.html
– Earthquake hits waters off Japan
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/10/earthquake-hits-waters-off-japan.html
– Earthquake hits Laptev Sea
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/earthquake-hits-laptev-sea.html
– Methane Release caused by Earthquakes
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/09/methane-release-caused-by-earthquakes.html
– Earthquake M6.7 hits Sea of Okhotsk
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/10/earthquake-m67-hits-sea-of-okhotsk.html
– Sea of Okhotsk
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/06/sea-of-okhotsk.html
– Seismic activity
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/seismic-activity.html
– Climate Plan
http://climateplan.blogspot.com
The Fight to Expose Global Climate Engineering Continues
As the completely out of control and totally unregulated stratospheric aerosol geoengineering rages on in our skies day in and day out, most of the population remains oblivious. Now, a campaign to erect “in your face” billboards along highly traveled freeways is being initiated.
Our planet is literally under an all out assault by the climate engineers day in and day out, virtually all life on Earth is being subjected to the dire ramifications from this assault. The fight to expose the heavy metal and chemical spraying of our skies is nothing short of a fight for life, all of us are needed in this battle. Each of us can help to raise awareness by passing on credible information with an appeal to investigate to all those that are surprisingly still uninformed of this critical issue, this effort is of immense importance. Each day the climate engineering insanity continues to darken an already dim horizon, it is imperative that we all pull together in the task of exposing global geoengineering programs.
Dane Wigington
geoengineeringwatch.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“Look Up! God No Longer Controls the Weather”
Controversial Billboards Launch in Atlanta April 21
Other Cities to Follow
New York, NY, April 21, 2014 — The fight against Climate Engineering (a/k/a GeoEngineering) takes to Clear Channel billboards in Atlanta this week as other cities around the country begin to follow suit to raise awareness about the earth’s largest environmental threat. “Look Up! God No Longer Controls the Weather. Get Informed.” Unregulated, the health risks of Climate Engineering are unknown and environmental risks are becoming more evident each day.
Award-winning filmmaker George Barnes stumbled across Climate Engineering by accident while testing time-lapse camera and went on to direct “Look Up!” a multi-award winning documentary film, narrated by William Baldwin. With the help of philanthropic donations to SKYDER, a non-profit 501(c)4 dedicated to increasing public awareness about the dangers of unregulated geoengineering, and petitioning lawmakers for change.
Scientists have argued that GeoEngineering’s inclusion in a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gives it legitimacy. Other scientists, along with most policy makers and activists like Al Gore, believe the risks of something going wrong far outweigh any potential benefits.
Available for interviews: Filmmaker George Barnes, Cancer and Risk expert Dr. Doug Levine, GeoEngineering expert Dane Wigington.
For more information: www.geoengineeringwatch.org
Lavrov: Kiev issued 'criminal order' allowing use of weapons against civilians
The coup-appointed Kiev government’s order to use force against Ukrainian citizens is “criminal,” the Russian Foreign Minister told RT. He also denied claims that there is Russian military presence on Ukrainian territory.
In an interview with RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze, Sergey Lavrov called acting Ukrainian President Alexander Turchinov’s order to reinitiate an anti-terror operation in East Ukraine, a criminal act.
Referencing the four-sided talks between the EU, the US, Russia and Ukraine that took place in Geneva on April 17, Lavrov accused Kiev’s coup-appointed government of going back on its pledge to put a stop to all violence.
“In Geneva we agreed there must be an end of all violence. Next afternoon [interim Ukrainian President Aleksandr] Turchinov declared almost a state of emergency and ordered the army to shoot at the people.”
Turchinov announced the resumption of the anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday. Moscow has decried the operation and urged the Ukrainian government to refrain from using force on civilians living in the region.
The Russian Foreign Minister said the buildup of troops on the border with Ukraine was within the bounds of international law and denied the presence of Russian troops in East Ukraine. Lavrov said the troops were participating in routine military drills, something that has been verified by international inspectors.
Describing a worst case scenario in the Ukrainian crisis, Lavrov said Russia would be forced to respond if it were attacked.
“If we are attacked, we would certainly respond. If our interests, our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia for example, I do not see any other way but to respond in accordance with international law,” he said.
“Russian citizens being attacked is an attack against the Russian Federation,” he told RT.
Referencing Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s trip to the Vatican on Wednesday, Lavrov said the acting Prime Minister would do better to visit the South of Ukraine and actually meet with the anti-Maidan protesters.
The foreign minister also spoke about American involvement in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, accusing Washington of trying to manipulate the situation.
“There is no reason not to believe that the Americans are running the show,” said Lavrov, referencing US Vice-President Joe Biden’s visit to Kiev and its coincidence with the renewed counter-terror operation on activists in eastern Ukraine.
“It’s quite telling they chose the moment of the Vice President of the US’ visit to announce the resumption of this operation because the launching of this operation happened immediately after [head of the CIA] John Brennan’s visit to Kiev,” said Lavrov.
The situation in Ukraine is just another example of Washington trying to gain ground in the geopolitical fight, the minister said.
“Ukraine is just one manifestation of the American unwillingness to yield in the geopolitical fight. Americans are not ready to admit that they cannot run the show in each and every part of the globe from Washington alone,” said Lavrov, adding Washington’s “ready-made solutions” cannot remedy a crisis that it does not understand.
The Russian government does not recognize Kiev’s interim government, which took power on February 22 following weeks of deadly protests ending with the ouster of President Victor Yanukovich.
Watch Sergey Lavrov's interview in full on RT at 16:30 GMT.
Prepping for a Ukrainian Massacre
As the rhetoric rages out of control, worsening violence in Ukraine grows more likely. Official Washington is readying the American people to view the slaughter of eastern Ukrainians as justified because they are “terrorists” and linked to the hated Russians
Between the anti-Russian propaganda pouring forth from the Obama administration and the deeply biased coverage from the U.S. news media, the American people are being prepared to accept and perhaps even cheer a massacre of eastern Ukrainians who have risen up against the coup regime in Kiev.
The protesters who have seized government buildings in ten towns in eastern Ukraine are being casually dubbed “terrorists” by both the Kiev regime and some American journalists. Meanwhile, it’s become conventional wisdom in Official Washington to assume that the protesters are led by Russian special forces because of some dubious photographs of armed men, accepted as “proof” with few questions asked by the mainstream U.S. news media.
While the U.S. news media is treating these blurry photos as the slam-dunk evidence of direct Russian control of the eastern Ukrainian protests – despite denials by the Russian government and the protesters – the BBC was among the few news agencies that provideda more objective assessment, noting that the photos are open to a variety of interpretations.
However, in Official Washington, the stage is now set for what could be a massacre of Ukrainian civilians who have risen up against the putschists who seized control of Kiev in a Feb. 22 coup that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. The violent putsch was spearheaded by neo-Nazi militias, some of which have now been incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard and dispatched to the front lines in eastern Ukraine.
If the slaughter of the eastern Ukrainian protesters does come, you can expect Official Washington to be supportive. Whereas the Kiev protesters who seized government buildings in February were deemed “pro-democracy” activists even as they overthrew a democratically elected leader, the eastern Ukrainian protesters, who still consider Yanukovych their legitimate president, are dismissed as “terrorists.” And, we all know what happens to “terrorists.”
The Biased Media
If you doubt the bias of the U.S. press corps, consider this interview by the Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth with Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian coup regime’s minister of internal affairs. As published in Tuesday’s Washington Post, the interview quoted Avakov as saying the protesters “will be punished severely” and included an exchange reflecting how thoroughly U.S. journalists have bought into the coup regime’s narrative:
Weymouth: Do you think the Russians will actually release the [government] buildings, as they said they would in last week’s Geneva meeting?
Avakov: Russia is taking advantage of the depressed condition of the local economy of these regions. … But even in spite of that situation, in the city of Kramatorsk [the Russians] did not have the level of support that they expected. We do not behave radically there for one reason.
Weymouth: When you say ‘radically,’ do you mean you don’t fight the terrorists?
Avakov: We are not acting radically in that region for two reasons. One is we do not want to hurt the peaceful population. And the second reason is we don’t want to turn the population against the central government. But that does not mean it will stay like this forever.
Weymouth: Then what happens?
Avakov: We will act.
Weymouth: What will you do?
Avakov: We will start liberating people from the terrorists. … We are going to take full control over the roads, irrespective of the resistance of some groups.
What was journalistically remarkable about this interview was that it was Weymouth who began describing the eastern Ukrainian protesters as “terrorists,” though these people who have seized government buildings have not engaged in what we would traditionally call “terrorism.” Their actions have been no more violent – and indeed much less violent – than the “pro-democracy” activists in Kiev. In February, the neo-Nazi militias killed more than a dozen police officers with firebombs and light weapons.
‘Pro-Democracy’ Putschists
And, when the “pro-democracy” protesters seized government buildings in Kiev, including the City Hall, they decked them out in Nazi symbols and a Confederate battle flag as the international expression of white supremacy. But the U.S. news media never described those acts as “terrorism.” [For more on the Ukrainian neo-Nazis, watch this report from the BBC.]
Indeed, it is now considered unacceptable to mention the key role played by the neo-Nazis in overthrowing Yanukovych, even though the neo-Nazis themselves are quite proud of what they did and got four government ministries as a reward. One of those positions is the chief of national security, Andriy Parubiy, who announced last week that some of those militias had been incorporated into the National Guard and sent to the front lines of eastern Ukraine.
For their part, those eastern protesters have said they are resisting the imposition of power from Kiev, which has included the appointment of billionaire “oligarchs” as regional administrators, and are rejecting a harsh austerity plan from the International Monetary Fund that will make their hard lives even harder.
Yet, Official Washington has largely banished those realities to the great memory hole. Many in the U.S. government and the mainstream press corps seem to be licking their lips over the prospect of unleashing hell on the eastern Ukrainians.
The preferred U.S. narrative has even edged into the conspiracy theory that Russian President Vladimir Putin somehow engineered the entire Ukraine crisis as part of a Hitler-like plot to reclaim Russian territory lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. This theory ignores the absurdity of Putin somehow arranging the protests and coup against Yanukovych.
The reality is that Putin was caught off-guard by the events in Ukraine, in part because he was distracted by the Sochi Olympics and the threat of terrorism against the games. As the Ukraine crisis deepened, Putin supported the Feb. 21 agreement, brokered by three European countries, that had Yanukovych agree to limit his powers, move up an election to vote him out of office and, most fatefully, pull back the police.
The police withdrawal opened the way for the neo-Nazi militias, well-organized in 100-man brigades and well-armed with weapons looted from government stockpiles, to launch the final Feb. 22 assault.
Instead of standing behind the Feb. 21 agreement, the United States and the European Union hailed the overthrow of Yanukovych and – after recognizing that the neo-Nazis were in effective control of Kiev – supported the quick formation of a new government, headed by U.S. favorite, the new Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Rather than some mastermind planning everything in advance, Putin reacted to the fast-moving crisis on the fly, adlibbing his response, including responding to the majority will of Crimea to bail out of this failed Ukrainian state and rejoin Russia. He also got approval from the Russian legislature to defend ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine if necessary.
Yet, rather than assess these events objectively, the U.S. government and the mainstream U.S. news media have slid into a neo-Cold War madness, which may be sated only by the blood of the eastern Ukrainian “terrorists.” That, however, could force Putin’s hand again and take this unnecessary crisis to a whole new level.
Propaganda alert: US and UN object to the holding of Presidential Elections in Syria
In a bitter irony, those who carry out “humanitarian warfare” in the name of “democracy” are committed to boycotting Syria’s presidential elections.
Both the Obama administration and the United Nations are fully aware that the June presidential elections in Syria will, in all likelihood, result in a landslide victory for President al-Assad and thus pave the way for a decisive end to the three-year long NATO-led genocidal war on Syria.
excerpt from: Highlights of the noon briefing by Stephane Dujarric, Spokesman for Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Monday, 21 April 2014
official website of the United Nations, 21 April 2014
In response to a question on the announcement of [presidential] elections to be held in Syria [on June 3], the Spokesman [for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon] said that the [UN] Secretary-General and the Joint Special Representative [of the UN and Arab League for Syria], Lakhdar Brahimi, have repeatedly warned that the holding of [presidential] elections in the current circumstances, amid the ongoing conflict and massive displacement, will damage the political process and hamper the prospects for a political solution that the country so urgently needs. [Spokesman Stephan] Dujarric added that such elections are incompatible with the letter and spirit of the Geneva Communiqué.
excerpts from: Daily Press Briefing – April 21, 2014
daily press briefing by U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, Washington D.C., 21 April 2014)
U.S. Department of State website, 21 April 2014
U.S. State Department: All right. I have one additional item at the top. Presidential – on Syria, I should say – presidential elections – actually a referendum, not a real vote – in Syria planned by the Assad regime undermine the Geneva framework and are a parody of democracy. They have no credibility. Further, the Syrian regime under the Assads has never held a credible, free, and fair election, and has taken legal and administrative steps to ensure that this vote will not be fair.Calling for a de facto referendum rings especially hollow now, as the regime continues to massacre the very electorate it purports to represent. The regime’s violent suppression of the Syrian people’s calls for freedom and dignity is what sparked this brutal conflict. Staging elections under current conditions, including the effective disenfranchisement of millions of Syrians, neither addresses the aspirations of the Syrian people nor moves the country any closer to a negotiated political solution. […]
Question: Okay. On the Syrian election just for a second. In your view, there’s no way that – there’s no way for an election to actually – for a real election to actually take place because of the current conditions in Syria, or because of the fact that there are millions of people outside who would – outside of Syria, or both?
U.S. State Department: Well, I think one of the major reasons, which you didn’t mention but is worth noting, is that this – the Syrian regime and the Assad family has a history of not holding free and fair elections. Also, clearly what’s happening on the ground and the fact that this brutality has happened at the hands of the very brutal dictator who is planning to announce elections we don’t think would be free and fair is really the greatest concern.
Question: Can you also just explain, how does it undermine the Geneva framework?
U.S. State Department: Well, as the London Eleven [Core Group of the Friends of the Syrian People] announced in its April 3rdstatement, any unilateral decision by the regime to hold presidential elections would be entirely inconsistent with the Geneva communique’s call for the establishment of a transitional governing body to oversee constitutional reforms leading to free and fair elections.
Question: So – on the Geneva, so I can understand you correctly, it is the transitional aspect that is missing? You need something transitional – a transitional government – to oversee some sort of a fair and free election?
U.S. State Department: Well, there are several aspects, Said.
Question: Right.
U.S. State Department: I think the first and foremost is the brutality of this very dictator who is planning to hold these elections, so – and the history of what’s happened over the last few years. But certainly, the Geneva communique calls for the creation of a transitional governing body.
Question: So that’s the one I think that would legally – or stand in the face of a free and fair elections, correct? A transitional body of some sort.
U.S. State Department: Well, there are also steps – laws that have been passed by the regime that preclude anyone who hasn’t lived in the country for 10 years from running for office that make it very difficult for other candidates to run in an election like this.
Question: Okay. Do you still believe that Assad’s days are numbered?
U.S. State Department: We do.
Question: Okay.
U.S. State Department: And we certainly – as you know, [U.S. Special Envoy for Syria] Daniel Rubinstein is back in the region.
Question: Right.
U.S. State Department: We continue to work with the opposition, we continue to work with our international partners, and we’ll continue to press for bringing an end to this regime.
Question: Okay. So no amount of transparency could actually be – could be conceivable, correct, in this – in conducting this kind of election?
U.S. State Department: I think –
Question: Aside from the fact that maybe one-third of the population is dislocated?
Related news:
SANA, 21 April 2014
People’s Assembly [of Syria] on Monday opened the door for candidacy to the Presidential elections in Syria.
Speaker of the Assembly Mohammad Jihad Lahham said that candidates for presidential elections will be able to submit applications to the Supreme Constitutional Court starting from Tuesday, April 22, 2014 until Thursday, 1 May, 2014.
During Parliament session which was attended by Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi, members of the government and representatives of local and Arab and foreign media outlets, al-Laham said that “from the People’s Assembly I tell the Syrian people that the time for the presidential elections has come.”
“We declare that presidential elections will be carried out on schedule with no delay, heedless of what some are saying from abroad in a bid to undermine our self-confidence and break down our political and democratic track.”
He stressed that no will is superior to the will of the Syrian people, adding that the legislative institution in Syria is steadfast and it works diligently and faithfully for fulfilling its duty despite the martyrdom of some colleagues, the kidnapping of others and all attempts of targeting other parliament members.
Al-Laham called upon the Syrians inside and outside the country to practice their right to vote and those who wish to run for presidency to do so. […]
MPs [i.e. members of the Syrian parliament] said that the announcement of presidential elections’ date is a milestone in Syria’s history that proves that Syria has conquered terrorism.
They saw that the elections come at an important juncture in Syria’s history, indicating that Syria is at the threshold of important phase that places responsibility on every Syrian citizen to rise to the challenge and determine the future of their country.
America Is Running the World’s Largest Terrorist Operation
Experts on the Left and the Right Agree
Chomsky: “Obama Is Running The Biggest Terrorist Operation That Exists”
Leading liberal Noam Chomsky said yesterday:
The Obama administration is dedicated to increasing terrorism. In fact, it’s doing it all over the world. Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists, maybe in history: the drone assassination campaigns, which are just part of it […] All of these operations, they are terror operations.
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People hate the country that’s just terrorizing them. That’s not a surprise. Just consider the way we react to acts of terror. That’s the way other people react to [American] acts of terror.
Chomsky is right. Experts agrees that indiscriminate drone strikes are war crimes (more here andhere).
The U.S. is not only killing people whose identity it doesn’t even know (more), but it is also killing children. And it is using the justifiably-vilified Al Qaeda tactic of killing people attending funerals of those killed – and targeting people attempting to rescue people who have been injured by – ourprevious strikes.
Chomsky has previously extensively documented U.S. terrorism. As Wikipedia notes:
Chomsky and Herman observed that terror was concentrated in the U.S. sphere of influence in the Third World, and documented terror carried out by U.S. client states in Latin America. They observed that of ten Latin American countries that had death squads, all were U.S. client states.
***
They concluded that the global rise in state terror was a result of U.S. foreign policy.
***
In 1991, a book edited by Alexander L. George [the Graham H. Stuart Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Stanford University] also argued that other Western powers sponsored terror in Third World countries. It concluded that the U.S. and its allies were the main supporters of terrorism throughout the world.
Indeed, the U.S. has created death squads in Latin America, Iraq and Syria.
The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan – Lt. General William Odom – noted:
Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today’s war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.
Odom also said:
By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation.
(audio here).
The Washington Post reported in 2010:
The United States has long been an exporter of terrorism, according to a secret CIA analysis released Wednesday by the Web site WikiLeaks.
The head and special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office said that most terror attacks are committed by our CIA and FBI.
Some in the American military have intentionally tried to “out-terrorize the terrorists”.
As Truthout notes:
Both [specialists Ethan McCord and Josh Stieber] say they saw their mission as a plan to “out-terrorize the terrorists,” in order to make the general populace more afraid of the Americans than they were of insurgent groups.
In the interview with [Scott] Horton, Horton pressed Stieber:
“… a fellow veteran of yours from the same battalion has said that you guys had a standard operating procedure, SOP, that said – and I guess this is a reaction to some EFP attacks on y’all’s Humvees and stuff that killed some guys – that from now on if a roadside bomb goes off, IED goes off, everyone who survives the attack get out and fire in all directions at anybody who happens to be nearby … that this was actually an order from above. Is that correct? Can you, you know, verify that?
Stieber answered:
“Yeah, it was an order that came from Kauzlarich himself, and it had the philosophy that, you know, as Finkel does describe in the book, that we were under pretty constant threat, and what he leaves out is the response to that threat. But the philosophy was that if each time one of these roadside bombs went off where you don’t know who set it … the way we were told to respond was to open fire on anyone in the area, with the philosophy that that would intimidate them, to be proactive in stopping people from making these bombs …”
Terrorism is defined as:
The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
So McCord and Stieber are correct: this constitutes terrorism by American forces in Iraq.
The U.S. has been directly supporting Al Qaeda and other terrorists and providing them arms, money and logistical support in Syria, Libya, Mali, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iran, and many other countries… both before and after 9/11. And see this.
Torture – which the U.S. has liberally used during the last 10 years – has long been recognized as aform of terrorism.
Wikipedia notes:
Worldwide, 74% of countries that used torture on an administrative basis were U.S. client states, receiving military and other support to retain power.
Some Specific Examples …
The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister.
The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligenceadmit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.
As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred).
As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960′s, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the followingABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
Nine months earlier, a false flag attack was discussed in order to justify an invasion of the Dominican Republic. Specifically, according to official State Department records, Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles wrote on June 3, 1961:
The Vice President [Lyndon Johnson], [Attorney General] Bob Kennedy, Secretary [of Defense Robert] McNamara, Dick Goodwin [who was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs], [head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] General Lemnitzer, Wyn Coerr, and Ted Achilles were here. Bob McNamara and Lemnitzer stated that under the terms of the contingency paper, they were required to be prepared to move into the island on short order if required to do so, and this, in their opinion, called for substantially more troops that we had in the area. After some discussion we considered two more aircraft carriers, some destroyers, and 12,000 marines should be moved into a position some one hundred miles off the Dominican Republic shore…
The tone of the meeting was deeply disturbing. Bob Kennedy was clearly looking for an excuse to move in on the island. At one point he suggested, apparently seriously, that we might have to blow up the Consulate to provide the rationale.
His general approach, vigorously supported by Dick Goodwin, was that this was a bad government, that there was a strong chance that it might team up with Castro, and that it should be destroyed–with an excuse if possible, without one if necessary.
Rather to my surprise, Bob McNamara seemed to support this view …
The entire spirit of this meeting was profoundly distressing and worrisome, and I left at 8:00 p.m. with a feeling that this spirit which I had seen demonstrated on this occasion and others at the White House by those so close to the President constitutes a further danger of half-cocked action by people with almost no foreign policy experience, who are interested in action for action’s sake, and the devil take the highmost …
[At a subsequent meeting], Bob McNamara went along with their general view that our problem was not to prepare against an overt act by the Dominican Republic but rather to find an excuse for going into the country and upsetting it.
Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”
As Chris Floyd and many others have noted, this plan has gone live.
United Press International reported in June 2005:
U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.
And there is substantial additional evidence of hanky panky in Iraq.
The second mystery around Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370
A second mystery around the disappearance of Flight MH370 has largely gone unnoticed: why hasn’t the United States been in the forefront of providing information about it? The implications of this question are massive.
America has a fleet of the most sophisticated spy satellites, called “keyhole” satellites, covering the earth’s surface daily with imaging systems comparable to those of the Hubble Space Telescope, but instead of data from any of these, we read of data from China and France. One can understand that the CIA does not want others to understand fully the capabilities of its satellites, but surely the lives of more than 200 people are cause for some information, however indirectly supplied.
Then again, the American military has some of most sophisticated radars on earth, and there is, without a doubt, an installation of the highest capability at the secret base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. How could there not be? But we have read of no data from them, only from others less capable of telling us what happened.
Could it be that the United States shot down Flight MH370, either accidentally or deliberately, and now wants to keep it secret? The possibility of recovery of the full wreckage, even if its location were found, from 4 miles under the sea amongst underwater mountains is extremely remote at best, so the United States can remain confident that physical evidence will never emerge.
There would be nothing unprecedented in such an act: on at least three occasions, regrettably, America’s military has shot down civilian airliners, only admitting eventually to the one they could not hide. They are also indirectly responsible for a fourth.
Iran Air Flight 655 was stupidly shot down in 1988 by the USS Vincennes in Iranian waters during the Iraq-Iran War, not only killing 290 people, including 66 children, but there was a long period afterwards in which the U.S. admitted no wrong-doing, offered no apology, and no compensation to its victims (only 8 years later was a quiet settlement made).
It was a quite vicious set of circumstances and the injustice of it led unquestionably to the motive for bombing Pan Am Flight 103, killing 259 people and 11 on the ground, later the same year by people still unknown.
TWA Flight 800 over the East Coast of the United States was certainly the victim of a shipboard American anti-aircraft missile accidentally released. The evidence included radar tracks and eyewitnesses. But the U.S., instead of admitting its horrible error and compensating victims, conducted a long and almost farcical investigation headed up by the same FBI that gave us the farcical investigation into the Kennedy assassination.
Last, the fourth hijacked plane on 9/11, United Flight 93, of “Let’s roll” pop legend, which crashed over Pennsylvania was almost certainly shot down by an air-to-air missile from a fighter plane. A plane was seen by witnesses, the distribution of the wreckage tends to support a shoot-down, and just the sheer impossibility of America’s hundreds of billions of dollars in air defences staying asleep at the switch for a fourth event the same day argue powerfully for an attack.
I have no idea what event (a rogue pilot, a hijacker?) led to Flight MH370 turning off its communications, changing course, and flying low, but I do know that the event could not have gone unnoticed by America’s military-intelligence eyes and ears, especially when its new course showed any possibility of Diego Garcia as a destination, a place which is top secret and from which America forcibly removed the locals when it leased it from Britain.
It will likely remain one more “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” as Winston Churchill once described the Soviet Union, an expression now entirely suitable to a great many of the activities of the United States.
– See more at: http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/12776#sthash.D7GAneah.dpuf
The second mystery around Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370
A second mystery around the disappearance of Flight MH370 has largely gone unnoticed: why hasn’t the United States been in the forefront of providing information about it? The implications of this question are massive.
America has a fleet of the most sophisticated spy satellites, called “keyhole” satellites, covering the earth’s surface daily with imaging systems comparable to those of the Hubble Space Telescope, but instead of data from any of these, we read of data from China and France. One can understand that the CIA does not want others to understand fully the capabilities of its satellites, but surely the lives of more than 200 people are cause for some information, however indirectly supplied.
Then again, the American military has some of most sophisticated radars on earth, and there is, without a doubt, an installation of the highest capability at the secret base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. How could there not be? But we have read of no data from them, only from others less capable of telling us what happened.
Could it be that the United States shot down Flight MH370, either accidentally or deliberately, and now wants to keep it secret? The possibility of recovery of the full wreckage, even if its location were found, from 4 miles under the sea amongst underwater mountains is extremely remote at best, so the United States can remain confident that physical evidence will never emerge.
There would be nothing unprecedented in such an act: on at least three occasions, regrettably, America’s military has shot down civilian airliners, only admitting eventually to the one they could not hide. They are also indirectly responsible for a fourth.
Iran Air Flight 655 was stupidly shot down in 1988 by the USS Vincennes in Iranian waters during the Iraq-Iran War, not only killing 290 people, including 66 children, but there was a long period afterwards in which the U.S. admitted no wrong-doing, offered no apology, and no compensation to its victims (only 8 years later was a quiet settlement made).
It was a quite vicious set of circumstances and the injustice of it led unquestionably to the motive for bombing Pan Am Flight 103, killing 259 people and 11 on the ground, later the same year by people still unknown.
TWA Flight 800 over the East Coast of the United States was certainly the victim of a shipboard American anti-aircraft missile accidentally released. The evidence included radar tracks and eyewitnesses. But the U.S., instead of admitting its horrible error and compensating victims, conducted a long and almost farcical investigation headed up by the same FBI that gave us the farcical investigation into the Kennedy assassination.
Last, the fourth hijacked plane on 9/11, United Flight 93, of “Let’s roll” pop legend, which crashed over Pennsylvania was almost certainly shot down by an air-to-air missile from a fighter plane. A plane was seen by witnesses, the distribution of the wreckage tends to support a shoot-down, and just the sheer impossibility of America’s hundreds of billions of dollars in air defences staying asleep at the switch for a fourth event the same day argue powerfully for an attack.
I have no idea what event (a rogue pilot, a hijacker?) led to Flight MH370 turning off its communications, changing course, and flying low, but I do know that the event could not have gone unnoticed by America’s military-intelligence eyes and ears, especially when its new course showed any possibility of Diego Garcia as a destination, a place which is top secret and from which America forcibly removed the locals when it leased it from Britain.
It will likely remain one more “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” as Winston Churchill once described the Soviet Union, an expression now entirely suitable to a great many of the activities of the United States.
– See more at: http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/12776#sthash.D7GAneah.dpuf
The second mystery around Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370
A second mystery around the disappearance of Flight MH370 has largely gone unnoticed: why hasn’t the United States been in the forefront of providing information about it? The implications of this question are massive.
America has a fleet of the most sophisticated spy satellites, called “keyhole” satellites, covering the earth’s surface daily with imaging systems comparable to those of the Hubble Space Telescope, but instead of data from any of these, we read of data from China and France. One can understand that the CIA does not want others to understand fully the capabilities of its satellites, but surely the lives of more than 200 people are cause for some information, however indirectly supplied.
Then again, the American military has some of most sophisticated radars on earth, and there is, without a doubt, an installation of the highest capability at the secret base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. How could there not be? But we have read of no data from them, only from others less capable of telling us what happened.
Could it be that the United States shot down Flight MH370, either accidentally or deliberately, and now wants to keep it secret? The possibility of recovery of the full wreckage, even if its location were found, from 4 miles under the sea amongst underwater mountains is extremely remote at best, so the United States can remain confident that physical evidence will never emerge.
There would be nothing unprecedented in such an act: on at least three occasions, regrettably, America’s military has shot down civilian airliners, only admitting eventually to the one they could not hide. They are also indirectly responsible for a fourth.
Iran Air Flight 655 was stupidly shot down in 1988 by the USS Vincennes in Iranian waters during the Iraq-Iran War, not only killing 290 people, including 66 children, but there was a long period afterwards in which the U.S. admitted no wrong-doing, offered no apology, and no compensation to its victims (only 8 years later was a quiet settlement made).
It was a quite vicious set of circumstances and the injustice of it led unquestionably to the motive for bombing Pan Am Flight 103, killing 259 people and 11 on the ground, later the same year by people still unknown.
TWA Flight 800 over the East Coast of the United States was certainly the victim of a shipboard American anti-aircraft missile accidentally released. The evidence included radar tracks and eyewitnesses. But the U.S., instead of admitting its horrible error and compensating victims, conducted a long and almost farcical investigation headed up by the same FBI that gave us the farcical investigation into the Kennedy assassination.
Last, the fourth hijacked plane on 9/11, United Flight 93, of “Let’s roll” pop legend, which crashed over Pennsylvania was almost certainly shot down by an air-to-air missile from a fighter plane. A plane was seen by witnesses, the distribution of the wreckage tends to support a shoot-down, and just the sheer impossibility of America’s hundreds of billions of dollars in air defences staying asleep at the switch for a fourth event the same day argue powerfully for an attack.
I have no idea what event (a rogue pilot, a hijacker?) led to Flight MH370 turning off its communications, changing course, and flying low, but I do know that the event could not have gone unnoticed by America’s military-intelligence eyes and ears, especially when its new course showed any possibility of Diego Garcia as a destination, a place which is top secret and from which America forcibly removed the locals when it leased it from Britain.
It will likely remain one more “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” as Winston Churchill once described the Soviet Union, an expression now entirely suitable to a great many of the activities of the United States.
– See more at: http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/12776#sthash.D7GAneah.dpuf
Clean Up “America’s Secret Fukushima”, The US Abandoned Uranium Mines (AUMs)
National Campaign. Earth Day Actions at Mt. Rushmore & Cheyenne River Expose Toxic Threats
Red Shirt Village, Oglala Lakota Nation (SOUTH DAKOTA) – Organizations from throughout the United States held an Earth Day ceremony to launch a nation-wide campaign to clean up hazardous abandoned uranium mines (AUMs). Clean Up The Mines! calls for effective and complete eradication of the contamination caused by the estimated 10,000 abandoned uranium mines that are silently poisoning extensive areas of the U.S.
Clean Up The Mines! volunteers from across the country toured abandoned mines this week. They donned hazardous materials suits at Mount Rushmore and carried a large banner to raise awareness of the 169 AUMs in the Southwestern Black Hills near Edgemont. There are another 103 AUMS in the Northwest corner near Buffalo. The Northern Great Plains Region of Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, North and South Dakota contains more than 3,000 AUMs.
In Riley Pass, one of the largest AUMs in South Dakota, the deadly effect of the mine was apparent. As the group approached the bluff, the tree line ended abruptly at the edge of the mine. At Ludlow, the group measured radioactivity with a Geiger counter at an elementary school playground that was 44 microrems/hour. This is the equivalent of more than 150 Counts Per Minute (CPM), over the 100 CPM threshold, which means it cannot be attributed to background radiation. During the tour, people from every community spoke of health problems related to uranium exposure and their high level of concern over the lack of information about the AUMs and action to remediate them.
Today, dozens from the community joined with members of organizations including Defenders of Black Hills, Clean Water Alliance, Dakota Rural Action, Peace Pagoda, Veterans for Peace, and Popular Resistance at the Cheyenne River Bridge. They posted signs stating “Warning, Radioactive River” to raise awareness of the radioactive contamination of the Cheyenne River caused by AUMs.
Afterwards, a rally was held in the nearby community of Red Shirt Village where residents cannot drink local water due to uranium and arsenic contamination. Robert Two Bulls, a local spiritual leader, initiated the campaign launch in prayer.
Charmaine White Face, a scientist and coordinator of Defenders of the Black Hills, facilitated the event. “For the American public to be exposed to radioactive pollution and not be warned by federal and state governments is unconscionable,” stated White Face. “Shame on the American federal and state governments for allowing their citizens to be placed in such danger for more than 50 years and not stopping the source of the danger. It is a national travesty.” She noted that thyroid cancer rates are ten times higher than the national average in Western South Dakota. Uranium exposure also causes birth defects, kidney disease and numerous other serious health conditions.
“The mines are a silent health threat. Millions of people are at risk of breathing or ingesting radioactive particles that travel through the air and water and settle in soil where they enter our food system.” Margaret Flowers M.D., an organizer with Popular Resistance. “From speaking to community members and taking our own measurements, we find enough evidence to say there should be more investigation and serious efforts to protect the people. That’s why this campaign to clean up the mines is so important.”
Sandra Cuny Buffington, from the Red Shirt community, a rancher with cattle in the Bad Lands, lived at the river until it wasn’t possible anymore because of contamination. She spoke of high rates of cancer in the area. “We know we are contaminated but where are we going to go? I don’t know of any other life than the one that I have lived. As crazy as it sounds, you learn how to live with it.”
“Abandoned uranium mines are devastating to the health of local populations,” explained Dr. Jill Stein, former Green Party presidential candidate, “The mines threaten not only our health but our economies and ecosystems as well. We’re here to insist on cleaning up the mines and transitioning to a clean renewable energy system. This transition can put American back to work while vastly improving our health. The health savings alone will pay for the costs of this transition.”
“Desecration of the land, the water, the very air we breathe. We see lack of concern for living beings, placing profit before people, before the living earth,” said Tarak Kauff, Board of Directors, Veterans for Peace. “The radiation affects more than just the first nation people living in close proximity. The wind and water carry cancer-causing substances much further. It up to us, an awakened public, ordinary black, brown, white and red people working together to demand, to insure that these toxic highly radioactive abandoned mines be cleaned up – for us and for future generations.”
“From mining, in-situ leaching (similar to fracking), milling, processing, nuclear bomb and energy, depleted uranium weapons to the waste products that have no grave, the only safe place for uranium is in the ground. Uranium and other radioactive materials have been poisoning our environment in increasing amounts since the 1940s,” said Helen Jaccard, volunteer with Clean Up The Mines. “Exploitative corporations and negligent government agencies walked away from their responsibilities.”
“If we don’t defend our sacred water it will be the end of us all,” added Dennis Yellow Thunder, Natural Resources Technician for the Oglala Sioux Tribe Natural Resources Regulatory Resources Agency. “We must support this campaign to clean up the mines. We need to protect this land, our water and the sacred Black Hills. We need to do it from our heart.”
White Face concluded,
“Currently no laws require clean up of these dangerous abandoned Uranium mines. We are letting Congress know: It is time to clean up the mines! We value persistence. We will employ a variety of tactics including legislative and judicial avenues to hold the government and corporations accountable for their negligence and community-based actions to raise awareness and clean up the mines.”
Clean Up The Mines (www.cleanupthemines.org) is a campaign to pass legislation through Congress to ensure clean up of hazardous abandoned uranium and other radioactive materials mines throughout the United States.
Defenders of the Black Hills (www.defendblackhills.org) is a group of volunteers without racial or tribal boundaries whose mission is to preserve, protect, and restore the environment in the Area of the 1851 and 1868 Treaties made between the United States and the Great Sioux Nation.–
Margaret Flowers M.D.
Secret Plan to Advance Global Internet Censorship. ISPs to Act as “Internet Police”
To be Implemented under TPP Auspices
This is urgent. An Internet censorship plan is being finalized in secret meetings right now. We need all hands on deck at this crucial moment.
Here’s the situation: President Obama himself is in secretive meetings with key political figures and lobbyists in Asia to lock the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s Internet censorship plan into place.
We know from leaked documents that this secretive plan will censor your use of the Internet and strip away your rights.[1] If finalized, this plan would force ISPs to act as “Internet Police” monitoring our Internet use, censoring content, and removing whole websites.[2]
It will give media conglomerates centralized control over what you can watch and share online.
We urgently need your help to fight back. Add your voice right now and we’ll project a Stop the Secrecy message on key buildings in Washington D.C. to ensure Obama, the media, and everyone else knows this censorship plan must be stopped.
This is huge: covering 40% of the global economy, the TPP is being called a legal “blueprint” for the rest of the world.[3] Once key leaders finalize TPP Internet censorship plans, those plans will be used to globalize censorship. You will be affected and this may be our only chance to stop it.
Our attention-grabbing message will shine a light on their secret plan and will make clear to Washington lobbyists that the Internet community will never accept the TPP’s secrecy or censorship. The more who speak out, the larger our projection will become, and the more people we can reach.
This is a decisive moment: we need to act right now. Join with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world to shine a light on the TPP’s job-killing Internet censorship plan. Let’s send decision-makers and the lobbyists pulling the strings a message they can’t ignore: “Stop the secrecy now.”
Thank you for being a part of history,
After signing the petition, please forward this message to your friends.
– The RootsAction.org team
Spain's 'Robin Hood' Funded Anti-Capitalist Movement with Bank Swindle
In recent interviews from the lam, Enric Duran predicts 'transformation of the state and capitalism as we know it today'
Though living on the lam after swindling almost half a million euros from banks across Spain, Enric Duran—the notorious "Robin Hood of Spain"—said he is still dedicated to fighting capitalism.
In an exclusive Skype interview from an undisclosed location, the anti-capitalist activist from Catalan told the Guardian that he was "proud" of his action, saying that the money that he farmed out to social causes working against capitalism "generated a movement."
Between 2006 and 2008, Duran took out 68 commercial and personal loans amounting to €492,000 (or roughly $678,00) from 39 banks in Spain. Never intending to repay the loans, Duran instead used the money to help fund those speaking out against capitalism. According to the Guardian, Duran's protest "pushed the anti-capitalist movement into the light, just as many Spaniards were seeking alternatives to a system that had wreaked havoc on their lives."
"I saw that on one side, these social movements were building alternatives but that they lacked resources and communication capacities," Duran said. "Meanwhile, our reliance on perpetual growth was creating a system that created money out of nothing."
The money Duran gave, he said, "generated a movement" by allowing those fighting against capitalism "to push forward with the construction of alternatives" and "build a powerful network that groups together these initiatives."
After being arrested in 2009 on charges brought against him by six of the lenders, Duran spent two months in prison before posting the €50,000 bail. In February 2013, Duran opted to flee Spain rather than stand trial and has been living and operating from underground.
In another recent interview with Shareable, Duran discussed his famous act of disobedience and how that fueled his current activism, most notably the founding of the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC)—which describes itself as a "transitional initiative for social transformation from below, through self-management, self-organization, and networking"—in May 2010.
"We understand that the current political system—what they call democracy but which is actually dominated by small political and economic oligarchies—is antiquated," Duran toldShareable founder Neal Gorenflo in March.
"Currently, the capitalist system produces market conditions that help create ever greater inequalities," he continued, "providing competitive advantages which favor the big players over the small, effectively preventing the latter from staying in the game and trading freely. The market, in the context of the state and capitalism, has become an excuse to promote and extend inequality."
Looking forward, Duran added, "I'm convinced that we will live through a transformation of the state and capitalism as we know it today, consolidating other ways of being in society and establishing more supportive and cooperative economic relationships."
A documentary, entitled "Come back. A story which we wrote together," released online last month, documents the activists and movements Duran supported with the bank loans.
Come back. A story we wrote together. from Radi.ms on Vimeo.
Ukraine and the Grand Chessboard
By Pepe Escobar
Welcome to the Two Stooges doctrine of post-modern warfare. Continue
Ukraine: Poland Trained Putchists Two Months in Advance
By Thierry Meyssan
New revelations belie Western discourse and demonstrate that the current interim government of Oleksandr Tourtchynov was imposed by NATO in violation of international law. Continue
Harper on Russia: America's Useful Idiot?
By Murray Dobbin
It is difficult to know what is going on in the fevered imagination of the prime minister but this time one has to really wonder if he has become genuinely unhinged — always a possibility with someone both paranoid and narcissistic. Continue
In Cold War Echo, Obama Strategy Writes Off Putin
By PETER BAKER
Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood and effectively making it a pariah state. Continue
US-NATO Build-up to Cold War 2.0
By Peter Koenig
As the credibility gap is widening and people in Europe and even in the US are increasingly seeking alternative news media to find out the truth, the lies are becoming progressively more brazen. Continue
“Crimes Against Peace”: Historic Class Action Law Suit Against George W. Bush
By Inder Comar
An Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, filed a class action lawsuit against George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz in a federal court in California. Continue
White-Washing White Terrorism
The Jewish Community Center Shootings
By Ajamu Baraka
Frazier Glenn Cross, aka Frazier Glenn Miller, brought terror to Overland Park. With the intention to “kill him some Jews,” Continue
By Tom Engelhardt
Why Kidnapping, Torture, Assassination, and Perjury Are No Longer Crimes in Washington.Continue
By Chris Hayes
Chauvinism, violent retribution, a perverted Christianity and the celebration of a mythic Anglo-Saxon history will sever sections of the population from reality, enticing them into an American fascism. Continue
Can Democracy Tame Plutocracy?
By Robert Borosag
Hopefully, we won’t need to experience another calamity or world war to rouse Americans to take their democracy back. Continue
By Chris Floyd
Greenwald- now works for an oligarch, Pierre Omidyar, whose profit-driven philanthropy and government connections make him the very model of a modern oligarch. Continue
The Real Money-Making Methods of the Super-Rich Are Far From Praiseworthy
By Paul Buchheit
"In the race to get ahead, the effects of inheritance come first and merit second, not the other way around." Continue
Postcard from the End of America: Bensalem
By Linh Dinh
As tiny men of a vast yet dying empire, we’re no historical actors like a Joseph Galloway, yet our reading of events will also determine whether we, too, will lose everything. Continue
Why Everything You Think You Know about Jesus is Wrong
By Reza Aslan
Jesus was a revolutionary political leader rather than the peaceful prophet characterized by mainstream culture. Continue
Hamas and Fatah Agree to Unity Government in Historic Deal
By Maan News
Fatah leader Azzam al-Ahmad said that neither side will accept the resumption of negotiations with Israel without clear guidelines, and that negotiations had stalled as a result of "Israel intransigence" and "American bias." Continue
April 22, 2014
We Cannot Still Ignore The Perils Of Intervention
By Patrick Cockburn
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and now Ukraine. Catastrophe follows where US and EU meddle.Continue
By Eric Margolis
Recently, Sen. John McCain, the voice of America’s ignorant right, sneered that Russia was merely “a gas station masquerading as a country.” Continue
The New York Times Finds Russian Spies in Eastern Ukraine
By Alex Lantier
The New York Times has run a relentless campaign of lies and distortions backing US policy in Ukraine. Continue
Don't Let the Torturer Play Censor
By Noa Yachot
The agency charged with brutally torturing prisoners and lying about it to every oversight mechanism, – that same agency is getting to decide which information about its illegal conduct will be released to the public? Continue
"Was He Blackmailed?"
NSA Targeted Barack Obama Before He Became A Senator
Video
Luke Rudkowski speaks with NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice. Continue
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest
By David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy
The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that honor, and many Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the country. Continue
Government = Protection Racket for the 1 Percent
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Inequality is what has turned Washington into a protection racket for the one percent. It buys all those goodies from government: Continue
Video
Is The US Military Preparing For The Collapse Of The Dollar? Continue
A Key Test for International Law
By Craig Murray
The ethnic cleansing by the British of an entire small population and culture – the Chagos Islanders – is probably the most despicable act by Britain of my lifetime. Continue
April 23, 2014
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April 22, 2014
- Greer's $100,000 STAR Challenge and Award – "On this one year anniversary, Earth Day 2014, we are announcing the STAR Challenge and Award. …We have enough funds to announce this new Award of $100,000." (Free Energy Blog; April 22, 2014)
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- Earth Day: Add your photo to NASA's global selfie – NASA invites you to send a photo of yourself for a global collage image. Google is looking for BeautifulEarth images. (Free Energy Blog; April 22, 2014)
- Gary's Good Barking – No, this one has nothing directly to do with exotic FE, other than that Free Energy is all about FREEDOM! … (Free Energy Blog; April 22, 2014)
April 21, 2014
- Rhoalphy Cano's QMoGen – This demo out of the Philippines uses a transfer switch from mains to self-looped mode, after which it powers a drill and a grinder. (Free Energy Blog; April 21, 2014)
- Funny Car Recycler Photo (Free Energy Blog; April 21, 2014)
- Lantern Number 3 by Akula – Another fascinating video from this Ukranian researcher. Shows a circuit with LEDs being lit up once primed by the touch of a 9-V battery. (Free Energy Blog; April 21, 2014)
Obama: “Remaking the Middle East”: The American Gulag
During the beginning of his first term in office President Obama promised “to remake the Middle East into a region of prosperity and freedom”. Six years later the reality is totally the contrary: the Middle East is ruled by despotic regimes whose jails are overflowing with political prisoners. The vast majority of pro-democracy activists who have been incarcerated, have been subject to harsh torture and are serving long prison sentences. The rulers lack legitimacy, having seized power and maintained their rule through a centralized police state and military repression.Direct US military and CIA intervention, massive shipments of arms,military bases, training missions and Special Forces are decisive in the construction of the Gulag chain from North Africa to the Gulf States.
We will proceed by documenting the scale and scope of political repression in each US backed police state. We will then describe the scale and scope of US military aid buttressing the “remaking of the Middle East” into a chain of political prisons run by and for the US Empire.
The countries and regimes include Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan and Turkey . . . all of which promote and defend US imperial interests against the pro-democracy majority, represented by their independent social-political movements.
Egypt: Strategic Vassal State
A longtime vassal state and the largest Arab country in the Middle East, Egypt’s current military dictatorship, product of a coup in July 2013, launched a savage wave of repression
subsequent to seizing power. According to the Egyptian Center for Social and Economic Rights, between July and December 2013, 21,317 pro-democracy demonstrators were arrested. As of April 2014, over 16,000 political prisoners are incarcerated. Most have been tortured. The summary trials, by kangaroo courts, have resulted in death sentences for hundreds and long prison terms for most. The Obama regime has refused to call the military’s overthrow of the democratically elected Morsi government a coup in order to continue providing military aid to the junta.In exchange the military dictatorship continues to back the Israeli blockade of Gaza and support US military operations throughout the Middle East.
Israel: The Region’s Biggest Jailer
Israel, whose supporters in the US dub it the “only democracy in the Middle East”, is in fact the largest jailer in the region.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselm, between 1967 and December 2012, 800,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned at some point, over 20% of the population. Over 100,000 have been held in “administrative detention” without charges or trial. Almost all have been tortured and brutalized. Currently Israel has 4,881 political prisoners in jail. What makes the Jewish state God’s chosen… premier jailer, however, is the holding of 1.82 million Palestinians living in Gaza in a virtual open air prison. Israel restricts travel, trade, fishing, building , manufacturing and farming through air, sea and ground policing and blockades. In addition, 2.7 million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (West Bank) are surrounded by prison-like walls, subject to daily military incursions, arbitrary arrests and violent assaults by the Israeli armed forces and Jewish vigilante settlers engaged in perpetual dispossession of Palestinian inhabitants.
Saudi Arabia: Absolutist Monarchy
According to President Obama’s ‘remaking of Middle East’ Saudi Arabia stands as Washington’s “staunchest ally in the Arab world”. As a loyal vassal state, its jails overflow with pro-democracy dissidents incarcerated for seeking free elections, civil liberties and an end to misogynist policies. According to the Islamic Human Rights Commission the Saudis are holding 30,000 political prisoners, most arbitrarily detained without charges or trial.
The Saudi dictatorship plays a major role bankrolling police state regimes throughout the region. They have poured $15 billion into the coffers of the Egyptian junta subsequent to the military coup, as a reward for its massive bloody purge of elected officials and their pro-democracy supporters. Saudi Arabia plays a big role in sustaining Washington’s dominance, by financing and arming ‘jailer-regimes’ in Pakistan, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt.
Bahrain: Small Country – Many Jails
According to the local respected Center for Human Rights, Bahrain has the dubious distinction of being the “top country globally in the number of political prisoners per capita”. According to the Economist (4/2/14) Bahrain has 4,000 political prisoners out of a population of 750,000. According to the Pentagon, Bahrain’s absolutist dictatorship plays a vital role in providing the US with air and maritime bases, for attacking Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. The majority of pro-democracy dissidents are jailed for seeking to end vassalage , autocracy, and servility to US imperial interest and the Saudi dictatorship.
Iraq: Abu Ghraib with Arab Characters
Beginning with the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 and continuing under its proxy vassal Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens have been tortured, jailed and murdered. Iraq’s ruling junta, has continued to rely on US military and Special Forces and to engage in the same kinds of military and police ‘sweeps’ which eviscerate any democratic pretensions. Al-Maliki relies on special branches of his secret police, the notorious Brigade 56, to assault opposition communities and dissident strongholds. Both the Shi’a regime and Sunni opposition engage in ongoing terror-warfare. Both have served as close collaborators with Washington at different moments.
The weekly death toll runs in the hundreds. The Al-Maliki regime has taken over the torture centers (including Abu Ghraib), techniques and jails previously headed and run by the US and have retained US ‘Special Forces’ advisers, overseeing the round-up of human rights critics, trade unionists and democratic dissidents.
Yemen:A Joint US-Saudi Satellite
Yemen has been ruled by US-Saudi client dictators for decades. The autocratic rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh was accompanied by the jailing and torture of thousands of pro-democracy activists, secular and religious, as well as serving as a clandestine torture center for political dissidents kidnapped and transported by the CIA under its so-called “rendition” program. In 2011 despite prolonged and violent repression by the US backed Saleh regime, a mass rebellion exploded threatening the existence of the state and its ties to the US and Saudi regimes. In order to preserve their dominance and ties to the military, Washington and Saudi orchestrated a ‘reshuffle’ of the regime: rigged elections were held and one Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi, a loyal crony of Saleh and servant of Washington, took power. Hadi continued where Saleh left off: kidnapping, torturing, killing pro-democracy protestors… Washington chose to call Hadi’s rule “a transition to democracy”. According to the Yemen Times (4/5/14) over 3,000 political prisoners fill the Yemen prisons. “Jailhouse democracy” serves to consolidate the US military presence in the Arabian Peninsula.
Jordan: A Client Police State of Longstanding Duration
For over a half century, three generations of reigning Jordanian absolutist monarchs have been on the CIA payroll and have served US interests in the Middle East. Jordan’s vassal rulers savage Arab nationalists and Palestinian resistance movements; signed off on a so-called “peace agreement” with Israel to repress any cross-border support for Palestine; provide military bases in support of US, Saudi and EU training, arming and financing of mercenaries invading Syria.
The corrupt monarchy and its crony oligarchy oversee an economy perpetually dependent on foreign subsidies to keep it afloat: unemployment is running over 25% and half the population is subsisting in poverty. The regime has jailed thousands of peaceful protestors. According to a recent Amnesty International Report (Jordan 2013), King Abdullah’s dictatorship “has detained thousands without charges”. The jailhouse monarchy plays a central role in buttressing US empire-building in the Middle East and facilitating Israeli land grabbing in Palestine.
Turkey: NATO Bulwark and Jailhouse Democracy
Under the reign of the self-styled “Justice and Development Party” led by Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey has evolved into a major military operational base for the NATO backed invasion of Syria. Erdoğan has had his differences with the US; especially Turkey’s cooling relations with Israel over the latters’ seizure of a Turkish ship in international waters and the slaughter of nine unarmed Turkish humanitarian activists. But as Turkey has turned toward greater dependence on international capital flows and integration into NATO’s international wars, Erdoğan has become more authoritarian. Facing large scale public challenges to his arbitrary privatization of public spaces and dispossession of households in working class neighborhoods, Erdoğan launched a purge of civil society ,class based movements and state institutions. In the face of large scale pro-democracy demonstrations in the summer of 2013, Erdoğan launched a savage assault on the dissidents. According to human rights groups over 5,000 were arrested and 8,000 were injured during the Gezi Park protests.
Earlier Erdoğan established “Special Authorized Courts” which organized political show trials based on falsified evidence which facilitated the arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of military officers, party activists, trade unionists, human rights lawyers and journalists, particularly those critical of his support for the war against Syria. Despite conciliatory rhetoric, Erdogan’s jails contain several thousand Kurdish dissidents, including electoral activists and legislators (Global Views 10/17/12).
While Erdoğan has served as an able and loyal Islamist anchor against popular democratic and nationalist movements in the Middle East, his pursuit of greater Turkish influence in the region, has led the US to deepen its political ties with the more submissive and pro-Washington , pro-Israel Gulenist movement embedded in the state apparatus ,business and education. The latter has adopted a permeationist-strategy: purging adversaries in its quiet march to power from within the state. The US still relies on Erdoğan’s “jailhouse democracy” to repress anti-imperialist movements in Turkey; to serve as a military anchor for the war against Syria; to back sanctions against Iran and to support the pro-NATO Maliki regime in Iraq.
The Middle East Gulag and US Military Aid
The police state regimes and the long-term authoritarian political culture in the Arab world is a product of long-term US military support for despotic rulers. The absence of democracy is a necessary condition for expanding and advancing the US imperial military presence in the region.
A small army of US Islamophobic academics, “experts”, journalists and media pundits totally ignore the role of the US in promoting, sustaining and strengthening the ruling dictators and repressing the profoundly democratic mass movements which have erupted over a prolonged period of time. Spearheaded by long-time pro-Israel Middle East scribes and scholars, in Ivy League universities, these propagandists, claim that Arab dictatorships are a product of “Islamic culture”,or the “authoritarian personality of Arabs” in search of a ‘strongman’ to guide and rule them. Ignoring or distorting the history of working class struggles, pro-democracy protests and affirmations, in all of the major Arab countries, these scholars justify the US ties to the dictatorships as “realistic policies” given the “available options”.
Wherever real democracy begins to emerge, where political rights begin to be exercised, Washington provokes coups and intervenes to bolster the repressive apparatus of the state (Bahrain 2011-14, Yemen 2011 to 2014, Egypt 2013, Jordan 2012 among numerous other cases). While the bulk of the Middle East “experts” blame the Arab citizens for authoritarian rule, they completely ignore and cover-up Israel’s racist majority which solidly backs the incarceration and torture of hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy Palestinians.
To understand the Middle East gulag requires a discussion of US ‘aid policy’ which is central to sustaining the ‘jailhouse regimes’.
US Aid to Egypt: Billions for Dictators
The Egyptian police state anchors the US ‘arc of empire’ from North Africa to the Middle East. Egypt has been actively engaged in destabilizing Libya, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria and collaborating with Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians. The Mubarak dictatorship received $2 billion dollars a year from Washington – nearly $65 billion for its imperial services. US aid strengthened its capacity to jail, and torture pro-democracy and trade union activists. Washington continued its military support of dictatorial rule after the military coup against Egypt’s first democratically elected government, to the tune of $1.55 billion dollars for 2014 .
Despite “expressions of concern” over the murder of thousands of pro-democracy protestors by the new military strongman General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, there was no cut in funding for so-called “counter-terrorism” and “security”. To continue funding the dictatorship under US Congressional legislation, Washington refused to characterize the violent seizure of power as a coup . . . referring to it as a “transition to democracy”. The key role of Egypt in US foreign policy is to protect Israel’s ‘eastern flank’. US aid to Egypt is product of the pressure and influence of the Zionist power configuration in Congress and the White House: US aid is conditioned on Egypt’s ‘policing’ of the Gaza border, ensuring that Israel’s blockade is effective. The White House supports Cairo’s repression of the majority of nationalist, anti-colonial Egyptians opposed to Tel Aviv’s dispossession of the Palestinians. Insofar as Israel’s interests’define US Middle East policy, Washington’s financing of Egypt’s jailhouse dictatorship is in accord with Zionist Washington’s strategy.
Israel: The US “Pivot” in the Middle East
Most independent and knowledgeable experts agree that US Middle East policy is largely dictated by a multitude of Zionist loyalists occupying key policymaking positions in Treasury, State Department, the Pentagon and Commerce as well as Congressional dominance by the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations and their 171,000 full time paid activists. While there is some truth in what some critics cite as the divergence of the ‘real’ US ‘national interest’ from Israel’s colonial ambitions, the fact is that US leaders in Washington perceive a convergence between imperial dominance and Israeli militarism. In point of fact a submissive Egypt serves wider US imperial and Israeli colonial interests.
Israel’s war on Lebanon against the anti-imperialist Hezbollah movement served US efforts to install a docile client as well as Israeli’s effort to destroy a partisan of Palestinian self-determination. Washington’s divergence with Israel over Israel’s dispossession of all Palestine does run counter to Washington’s interest in a Palestinian mini-state run by neo-colonial Arab officials. As a result of Zionist influence, Israel is the biggest per-capita US aid recipient in the world, despite having a higher standard of living than 60% of US citizens. Between 1985-2014, Israel received over $100 billion dollars, of which 70% was military, including the most advance high technology weaponry. Israel ,the country which has the world record for political prisoners and military attacks on its neighbors over the past forty years, holds the record for US military aid. Israel as the premier ‘jailhouse democracy’ is a key link in the chain of gulags extending from North Africa to the Gulf States.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia competes with Israel as an incarceration center of pro-democracy dissidents; the Saudi’s recycle hundreds of billions of petro-rents through Wall Street, enriching local Saudi despots and overseas pro-Israel investment bankers. The Saudi-US-Israeli convergence is more than incidental. They share military interests in warring against pro-independence, pro-democracy Arab movements throughout the Middle East. Saudi houses the major US military base and the biggest intelligence operations in the Gulf. It backed the US invasion of Iraq. It finances thousands of Islamic mercenaries in the US-NATO proxy war against Syria. It invaded Bahrain to smash the pro-democracy movement. It intervenes with Washington in support of the Yemen police state. It is the biggest and most lucrative market for the US military-industrial complex. US military sales between 1951 – 2006 totaled $80 billion. In October 2010 it signed off on a $60.5 billion purchase of US arms and services.
Bahrain: A US Aircraft Carrier called a Country
Bahrain serves as the naval base for the US Fifth fleet – and an operative base for attacking Iran. It has been servicing the occupation of Afghanistan and US control of oil shipping routes. The Al-Khalifa dictatorship is extremely isolated, highly unpopular and faces constant pressure from the pro-democracy majority. To bolster their vassal rulers, Washington has increased its military sales to the tiny statelet from $400 million between 1993-2000 to $1.4 billion in the subsequent decade. Washington has increased its sales and military training program in direct proportion to the growth of democratic discontent, resulting in the geometrical growth of political prisoners.
Iraq: War, Occupation,and the Killing Fields of a Jailhouse Democracy
The US invasion and occupation of Iraq led to the slaughter of nearly 1.5 million Iraqis (mostly civilians, non-combatants) at a cost of $1.5 trillion dollars and 4,801 US military deaths. In 2006 the US engineered ‘elections’ led to the installation of the Maliki regime, buttressed by US arms, mercenaries, advisers and bases. According to a recent study for the Congressional Research Office (February 2014), by Kenneth Kilzman, there are 16,000 US military personnel and “contractors” currently in Iraq. Over 3,500 US military contractors in the Office of Security Cooperation bolster the corrupt Maliki police state. The jailhouse democracy has been supplied with US missiles and drones and over $10 billion dollars in military assistance :this includes $2.5 billion in aid and $7.9 billion sales between 2005 – 2013. For 2014 -2015 Malaki has requested $15 billion in weapons, including 36 US F-16 combat aircraft and scores of Apache attack helicopters. In 2013 the Malaki regime registered 8,000 political deaths resulting from its internal war.
Iraq is a crucial center for US control of oil, the Gulf and as a launch pad to attack Iran. While Maliki makes ‘gestures’ toward Iran, its role as an advanced link in the US imperial gulag defines its real ‘function’ in the Gulf region.
Yemen: The Desert Military Outpost for the American Gulag
Yemen is a costly military outpost for Saudi despotism and US power on the Arabian Peninsula. According to a study, Yemen: Background and US Relations by Jeremy Sharp for the Congressional Research Service (2014), the US has supplied $1.3 billion in military aid to Yemen between 2009-2014. Saudi Arabia donated $3.2 billion in 2012 to bolster the Saleh dictatorship in the face of a mass popular anti-dictatorial uprising. Washington engineered a transfer of power from Saleh to “President” Hadi and ensured his continuity by doubling military aid to keep the jails full and the resistance in check. According to the New York Times (6/31/13) Hadi was “a carry-over of dictator Saleh”. The continuity of a jailhouse democracy in Yemen is a crucial link between the Egypt-Israel-Jordan axis and the Saudi-Bahrain imperial gulag.
Jordan: Eternal Vassal and Mendicant Monarchy
Jordan’s despotic monarchy has been on the US payroll for over a half century. Recently it has served as a torture center for kidnapped victims seized by US Special Forces engaged in the “rendition” program. Jordan has collaborated with Israel in assaulting and arresting Palestinians in Jordan engaged in the freedom struggle. Currently Jordan along with Turkey serves as a training and weapons depot for NATO backed mercenary terrorists invading Syria. For its collaboration with Israel, Washington and NATO, the corrupt jailhouse monarchy receives large scale long-term military and economic aid. The monarchy and its extended network of cronies, jailers and family, skim tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid, laundered in overseas accounts in London, Switzerland, Dubai and New York. According to a Congressional Research Service Report (January 27, 2014), US aid to the Jordanian royal dictatorship amounts to $660 million per year. An additional $150 million for military aid was channeled to the regime with the onset of the NATO intervention in Syria. The fund was directed to build-up the infrastructure around the Jordan-Syria border. In addition, Jordan serves as a major conduit for arms to terrorists attacking Syria: $340 million destined for “overseas contingencies” probably is channeled through Amman to arm the terrorists invading Syria. In October 2012, Jordan signed agreements with the US allowing a large contingent of Special Forces to establish airfields and bases to supply and train terrorists.
Turkey: A Loyal Vassal State with Regional Ambitions
As the southern military bulwark of NATO, on Russia’s frontier, Turkey has been on the US payroll for over 66 years. According to a recent study by James Zanotti Turkey – US Defense Co-Operation: Prospects and Challenges (Congressional Research Service, April 8, 2011) in exchange for bolstering the military power of Turkey’s “jailhouse democracy”, the US secured a major military presence including a huge air base in Incirlik a major operational center housing 1,800 US military personnel. Turkey collaborated with the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and supported the NATO bombing of Libya. Today Turkey is the most important military operational center for jihadist terrorists invading Syria. Despite President Erdoğan’s periodic demagogic nationalist bombast, the US empire builders continue to have access to Turkish bases and transport corridors for its wars, occupations and interventions in the Middle East and South and Central Asia. In exchange the US has stationed missile defense systems and vastly increased arms sales, so-called “security assistance”. Between 2006 – 2009 US military sales exceeded $22 billion dollars. In 2013-14, tensions between Turkey and the US increased as Erdoğan moved to purge the state of the Gulenists, a US backed fifth column, which permeated the Turkish state and used its position to support closer collaboration with Israel and US military interests.
Conclusion
The expansion of the US Empire throughout North Africa and the Middle East has been built around arming and financing vassal states to serve as military outposts of the empire. These vassal regimes, ruled by dictatorial monarchies, and authoritarian military and civilian rulers, rely on force and violence to sustain their rule. The US has supplied the weapons, advisers, and financing allowing them to rule. The US arc of imperial military bases stretching from Egypt through Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq , Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, is protected by a chain of prison camps containing tens of thousands of political prisoners.
The US engagement, its pervasive presence throughout the region, is accompanied by a chain of jailhouse democracies and dictatorships. Contrary to liberal and conservative policy pundits and academics, US policy for over 50 years has actively sought out, installed and protected bloody tyrants who have pillaged the public treasury, concentrated wealth, surrendered sovereignty and underdeveloped their economies.
Pro-Israel academics at prestigious US universities have systematically distorted the structural bases of violence, authoritarianism and corruption in the Islamic world: blaming the victims, the Turkish and Arab people, and ignoring the role of US empire builders in financing and arming the authoritarian civilian and military rulers and absolutist monarchies and their corrupt military, judicial and police officials.
Contrary to the mendacious tomes published by the prestigious University presses and written mostly by highly respected pro-Israel political propagandists, the remaking of the Middle East depends on the strength of the democratic currents in Islamic society. They are found in the student movements, among the trade unionists and unemployed, the nationalist intellectuals and Islamic and secular forces who oppose the US Empire for very practical and obvious reasons. Along with Israel the US is the main organizer of the vast chain of political prison camps that destroy the most creative and dynamic forces in the region. Greater Arab vassalage provokes the periodic explosion of a vibrant democratic culture and movement; unfortunately it also results in greater US military aid and presence. The real clash of civilizations is between the democratic aspirations of the Eastern popular classes and the deeply embedded authoritarianism of Euro-American- Israeli imperialism.
American Sailors Exposed to Fukushima Radiation
Is America Abandoning its Bravest Heroes Yet Again?
“You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all”
If there’s any truth to that pop standard’s message, then America must surely love its heroes. Because, much as we lionize those who stare death in the face so that the rest of us may live peacefully, once the spotlight shifts away from the heroes of each war or disaster, as often as not our government officials callously toss those heroes aside.
The list is long and dates from the Bonus Army of jobless World War I veterans attacked in 1932 by the Washington, DC, police for demanding compensation for wartime service, to the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who suffered neglect and shoddy conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as recently as 2007. There are plenty of stops in between: The Vietnam vets never properly compensated for exposure to Agent Orange; Gulf War veterans who waited 17 years for Congress to acknowledge the reality of Gulf War Syndrome; and the 9/11 responders who waited eight years for whatever the budget cutters in Washington were willing, in their generosity, to dispense.
This sorry list is about to grow with the addition of scores of U.S. sailors who went on an idealistic mission three years ago to help the Japanese cope with the destruction from the strongest earthquake in the country’s history—the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent 50-foot tsunami on March 11, 2011 that turned much of the northeastern coast of Japan into rubble and swamped the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The combined events knocked out all electricity to the plant, and within five hours, the first of three reactors that ultimately did so began melting down.
At least 79 of those sailors now suffer serious health effects consistent with radiation exposure. Some of the sailors have filed a class action lawsuit against the Japanese power company, accusing it of hiding what it knew about the escaping radiation and seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, as well as $1 billion for a fund to cover their medical monitoring and treatment. Some of them also blame the U.S. Navy, which denies that its sailors were exposed to harmful levels of radiation.
They Came Out Cooked
Paul Garner, the lead attorney on the case, told WhoWhatWhy that a much larger group of military personnel were exposed to radiation, and he expects the number signing on to the lawsuit to rise as more people develop symptoms. He reeled off a long list of alarming health complaints among the nearly 100 former Operation Tomodachi participants he’s interviewed. So far, about half have developed cancer—of the brain, eye, testes, thyroid, or blood (leukemia). “These kids were first responders,” Garner says. “They went in happily doing a humanitarian mission, and they came out cooked.”
Radiation Déjà vu
The situation these sailors find themselves in is all too familiar in the annals of the nuclear age. Over the past 75 years, claims of harm by many people exposed to radiation through no fault of their own have been officially downplayed or denied. For example: Victims of fallout from atom bomb testing, workers routinely exposed at a nuclear weapons facility, people living near one, and those caught downwind of reactor meltdowns at nuclear power plants, as in the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania and the 1986 Chernobyl reactor explosion.
The U.S. Department of Defense claims to have calculated “whole-body and thyroid radiation doses” for nearly 75,000 DOD-affiliated individuals who were on or near the mainland of Japan during the period from March 12, 2011 to May 11, 2011. Its determination: “Your whole-body and thyroid radiation dose estimates are well below levels associated with adverse medical conditions.”
Official Estimates Don’t Compute
A DOD report lays out how the Navy reached its conclusions about the doses that 17,000-plus sailors received. But according to nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, a former industry vice president who blew the whistle for radiation safety violations at his former employer, Nuclear Energy Services, as with the previous accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, nobody knows how much radiation has been released from Fukushima—because most of the radiation monitors did not survive the accidents. That means assumptions rather than real data were used to calculate the total amount of radiation released—resulting in estimates that Gundersen believes are much too low.
Another outside expert charges the Navy’s reconstructed doses are meaningless. Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Energy, who has spent several years auditing radiation dose reconstructions on ailing U.S. nuclear weapons workers, says the only way to get an accurate internal and external dose on any individual is to take continual measurements throughout the time they are exposed. People must wear special monitoring equipment and undergo a regular regime of monitoring. This is especially important in trying to assess the health effects from a multiple meltdown situation with large explosions involving reactor cores, as occurred at Fukushima.
Alvarez says that based on the illnesses that Operation Tomodachi participants are reporting, the real radiation doses were likely very large. “We’re hearing the same kinds of complaints that I was hearing from the people exposed to fallout from the bomb testing program—the metallic taste in the mouth, loss of hair, and sudden and unexpected illnesses,” he says. Symptoms like that indicate “tissue-destructive doses.”
A February 2014 report by Kyle Cleveland, an American sociologist at Temple University in Japan, affirms Alvarez’s assessment. The report includes a transcribed telephone conversation Cleveland received from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which reveals that monitors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan picked up radiation levels 30 times higher than normal out at sea 100 miles from the reactors. The nuclear expert quoted in the transcript was surprised to detect anything at that distance and says radiation levels were high enough to damage people’s thyroids after ten hours of exposure.
If the Navy’s questionable dismissal of radiation exposure is troubling, the actions of the Tokyo Electric Power Company are even more so. The Japanese Diet (Japan’s parliament) tasked an independent commission, known officially as the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, with figuring out what caused the multiple meltdown.
The report, released in 2012, is damning in its conclusions. Unlike the U.S. Navy, the Commission characterizes Fukushima as a “severe accident that ultimately emitted an enormous amount of radioactive material into the environment.”
Scrubbing the Deck in the Danger Zone
Meanwhile, heroes like Lindsay Cooper live with the consequences of that accident. Cooper spent nearly two months on the flight deck of the Reagan, repeatedly exposed to radiation plumes from the destroyed reactors. On arriving in Japan just off the coast before dawn on March 12, 2011, Cooper confronted a surreal scene. “You couldn’t even really tell there was an ocean,” she told WhoWhatWhy. “It was a sea of wood.”
After ship commanders became aware of the first radiation plume to hit the ship, they limited the number of people allowed on the flight deck where radiation exposure was highest. Consequently, sailors whose work required them to be on deck spent even longer periods of time at risk. The only protection from radiation they received were rubber boots that went over their regular boots. Judy Goodwin, who served with Cooper on that deck, says the sailors were assured they were not being exposed to anything dangerous and that the decontamination procedures they were subjected to were “simply precautionary.”
After two or three weeks, Cooper says, people started getting sick. She witnessed crewmembers running and vomiting over the side of the flight deck, because they couldn’t wait in the long lines to go through decontamination before being allowed to get to the bathroom.
Nearly three years later, Cooper, 24, suffers from a severely dysfunctional menstrual cycle, a problem that began about a month after she arrived in Japan. She also regularly gains 40 to 50 pounds over the course of a month and then loses it. Veterans Administration doctors attribute her severe problems to nothing other than “stress.”
After Goodwin, 26, was discharged from the Navy in late 2011, she lost 30 pounds and had to have her gallbladder removed, because, her doctor told her, it just stopped working. She also has problems with her liver. The Veterans Administration has denied her claim for disability based on radiation exposure, because it says there isn’t enough proof.
National VA spokesperson Gina Jackson told WhoWhatWhy she couldn’t comment on either of these cases without privacy waivers from the two sailors. But generally speaking, each vet’s claims are evaluated individually, and if their medical problem is determined to have been caused by their military service, they are awarded disability.
Despite repeated requests, neither Cooper nor Goodwin has been given access to their Navy medical files. Cooper did receive a “purged” file that contains records from her boot camp training—but nothing about her tour on the Reagan.
An Odd Constellation of Symptoms
Navy ensign Steve Simmons, now 36, headed the department that processed the paperwork documenting the flight of any aircraft on or off the ship. His office and sleeping quarters were located just below the entrance to the flight deck. Once the mission ended and restrictions to the flight deck were lifted, he worked out on an exposed weather deck, and tried to get up to the flight deck at least twice a day.
It wasn’t until the previously fit and healthy sailor started having bizarre health problems that he would think about the radiation exposure again. He has experienced an unexplained blackout, a persistent fever of 102.9℉, swollen lymph nodes, unusual sun sensitivity that landed him in the emergency room with third degree burns, and loss of balance and the strength in his legs. Now confined to a wheelchair and with bladder dysfunction, he has to insert a catheter into his urethra every four hours to empty his urine.
None of the military doctors attribute his maladies to radiation exposure. In fact, he says, they seemed to go out of their way to deny any connection. He’s not buying the Navy’s insistence that the maximum amount of radiation these sailors were exposed to was “less than 25 percent of the annual radiation exposure to a member of the U.S. public from natural sources of background radiation, such as the sun, rocks and soil.”
“If that’s truly the case,” Simmons asks, “why are they classifying Fukushima as either the worst nuclear disaster in history or the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl? How is it possible that there was absolutely no threat to human life? Why are there scientists out there saying that the land in that area is going to be uninhabitable for hundreds of years?”
Navy spokesman Lt. Greg Raelson says the Navy’s conclusions about the impact of Fukushima are based on the tri-service Dose Assessment and Registry Working Group, a peer-reviewed report, which determined that “the highest whole body dose to any crewmember is much lower than levels of radiation exposure associated with the occurrence of long-term health effects.”
Referencing the National Academy of Science’s Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) reports, he says many studies that examined the time between radiation exposure and the development of an effect, such as cancer, take much longer to show up—typically two years in the case of non-solid cancers like leukemia and at least ten years for solid malignancies, like thyroid cancer. “There is no indication that radiation exposure to U.S. personnel supporting Operation Tomodachi presented any risks greater than [what is] normally accepted during everyday life,” he said.
From Fitness Instructor to Near Invalid
When the earthquake hit, Mike Sebourn was the senior chief mechanic in the helicopter squadron at the Navy’s Atsugi air base in Japan. At the time, he was also a fitness instructor, strong and healthy. But a few weeks after the disaster, he began having nosebleeds and migraines. They went away, but four months later, he discovered he could lift only 60 percent of what he could lift previously.
Sebourn had been in charge of decontaminating helicopters that were coming back after flying relief missions through radioactive plumes. The Navy didn’t prepare him for the job, he told WhoWhatWhy. What normally would have been a two-year course in radiation remediation was distilled down to two days. The course contained no discussion on the health risks involved, however, they were assured that their exposures would be monitored and noted in their military files.
Lt. Raelson was not able to comment on Sebourn’s description of his radiation remediation training, because he said he could not verify what training Sebourn did or did not receive.
After the relief missions ended, Sebourn said, he didn’t use much protective gear at all because radiation readings they got off the skin of the aircraft weren’t high enough to warrant it. However, he now believes he continued to be exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, mainly from hot components inside the aircraft. Sebourn, 39, now suffers from extreme loss of muscle mass and deterioration in the strength of his muscles on the right side of his body.
Because of his escalating physical problems, he changed his military status from enlisted to commissioned officer on the promise that he and his family would be redeployed to the U.S. But his officer’s orders kept him in Japan, so he decided to leave the Navy.
“After giving them 17 years of my life and putting the needs of the Navy before everything else—before my family and myself—I have no retirement, no medical benefits, nothing,” he said. As a result of his medical problems, Sebourn has received a 60 percent disability rating, which entitles him to a modest monthly stipend. He also receives GI benefits and is using that for school, training to be a network systems administrator. Despite his Navy job as a designated radiation decontamination officer, he says there is no mention of radiation exposure in his military medical file.
What Did the U.S. Navy Know?
Whether the plaintiffs succeed in holding the Japanese utility liable, the case raises important questions about the role and responsibility of the U.S. Navy:
Why did the U.S. Navy insist from the beginning that it was safe for its troops to remain in the vicinity of three reactor meltdowns?
After having gone to the trouble of setting up a medical registry to track radiation-related illnesses—the Operation Tomodachi Registry—why did the U.S. Department of Defense decide not to monitor the health of the nearly 75,000 DOD-affiliated citizens—military personnel and their family members—who were in or near Japan during and after the Fukushima meltdowns?
Why is there no mention of radiation exposure in many of the sailors’ military medical files, even those people specifically assigned jobs involving radiation decontamination?
Why, given the mounting evidence of illnesses known to be triggered by radiation exposure, is radiation dismissed as a possible cause?
In response to the first question, Lt. Raelson denies that Operation Tomodachi personnel were close enough to the three melting Fukushima reactors to have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation: “Specifically, all ships were kept at least 100 miles away from the Fukushima reactors, and aircraft supporting disaster relief flights were kept at an appropriate distance from the reactors.”
Furthermore, he says the Navy’s ships and aircraft were fully equipped to “reduce, eliminate, and control radioactive contamination” and did so. Potentially contaminated personnel—flight crews, those “who approached the area around Fukushima Daiichi,” those carrying out decontamination, and others—were carefully monitored with “sensitive whole body dosimeters” and, if necessary, decontaminated.
As to why the government scrapped plans to monitor the health of the U.S. citizens and family members who were in or around Japan during the early days of the triple meltdown, Lt. Col. Cathy Wilkinson, a spokesperson for the U.S Department of Defense, which runs the registry, told WhoWhatWhy that as far as she knows, the registry was only ever intended to document the exposures of the DoD-affiliated population in Japan. “This gives you the baseline—yes, you were there, it’s your official documentation of your estimated exposure,” she said. Beyond that, individuals are responsible for obtaining their own healthcare.
Regarding documentation of radiation exposure, Lt. Raelson said: “The Naval Dosimetry Center (NDC) maintains long-term records of occupational exposure to ionizing radiation derived from TLDs and other dosimeters. Any service member can request his or her dose history in writing from NDC.”
In answer to why radiation was dismissed as a possible cause to illnesses known to be triggered by radiation exposure that sailors are now reporting, he reiterated that the tri-service Dose Assessment and Registry Working Group studied the available data and concluded that no crewmember was exposed to anything higher than what they would ordinarily receive as inhabitants of planet Earth: “For perspective, the worst-case radiation exposure for a crewmember on USS Ronald Reagan is less than 25 percent of the annual radiation exposure to a member of the U.S. public from natural sources of background radiation, such as the sun, rocks, and soil.”
Legal Remedy Sought
Meanwhile, the only remedy available to Cooper, Goodwin, Sebourn, Simmons, and the others is to sue the Japanese operator of the nuclear plant, TEPCO. Lead attorney for the class action suit, Paul Garner, believes he will be able to prove that TEPCO knew on the first day of the accident that the plant was spewing deadly radiation, but concealed that information from the world. He also expresses confidence he will be able to prove that if the military had been aware of the radiation levels, it would not have sent or kept U.S. troops in harm’s way.
Photo left: TEPCO executives bow in apology
But Judge Janis L. Sammartino, who is hearing the case in San Diego, has set a high bar, ruling in November 2013 that the plaintiffs must show:
…not only that TEPCO misrepresented the condition of the FNPP [Fukushima nuclear power plant] and the risk to soldiers operating near the damaged facility, but also that TEPCO’s allegedly wrongful conduct, as opposed to other factors, caused the commanding officers of the Reagan “(1) to move the strike force and associated personnel into an area of dangerous radiation exposure; (2) to do so without undertaking radiation testing and research; and (3) to fail to order the necessary precautions, such as locking down the Reagan and supplying radiation monitoring.…”
And further:
At a minimum, Plaintiffs must show that, but for TEPCO’s allegedly wrongful conduct, the military would not have deployed personnel near the FNPP or would have taken additional measures to protect service members from radiation exposure. Thus, Plaintiffs’ success inevitably hinges on the conclusion that the military’s precautions were inadequate or unreasonable and that had it not been for TEPCO’s misstatements, military commanders would have adopted a different course of action.
Reason for Navy Cover-up?
Because U.S. military personnel are prevented from suing the government, their only recourse is to go after TEPCO. But given the interests involved, the outcome for the Operation Tomodachi victims remains very much in doubt. Robert Alvarez, the nuclear investigator and former DOE deputy assistant secretary, points out that about a quarter of a million U.S. soldiers were subjected to open air nuclear weapons testing in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
“If you use the treatment of atomic veterans who were involved in atmospheric testing as a benchmark, the government did everything it could to downplay the hazards, because from the military perspective, the mission is all important,” he says.
“Right now, the United States government and Japan are closing ranks because of their nuclear-related relationships,” he says. Although Japan’s 54 power-generating nuclear reactors are currently offline, the country still has the third largest number of nuclear reactors in the world.
But more important, Alvarez says, is the “extraordinary co-dependence” with Japan on nuclear-energy-related matters. “Because the U.S. has lost much of its capability in designing and building reactors, we have to depend on the Japanese and the French if we’re going to build any reactors or fabricate fuel or do anything to service the existing reactor fleet,” he explained. “We’re dependent on companies that are now owned by Japan and France.”
The case of the ill Operation Tomodachi veterans shines a spotlight on the intersection of competing interests between victims of radiation exposure, the nuclear power industry, and the U.S. government and its unwavering commitment to nuclear technology for both military and civilian use.
So far, by denying the harm from the radiation U.S. military personnel were exposed to as
they helped Japan clean up after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011—a position that supports the Japanese government and nuclear industry—the U.S. government is doing what it has almost always done: protect nuclear interests rather than its victims.
As the number of ill Operation Tomodachi veterans climbs, it remains to be seen whether their sacrifice will be acknowledged or if they, like so many others, will be left to fend for themselves.
News Links, April 22-23, 2014
Japan's Trade Deficit Quadruples as Imports Surge Ahead of Sales Tax Hike
New study finds direct link between Greek austerity cuts and increase in male suicides
Local governments in China are increasingly relying on land sales to cover budget deficits, a move that could exacerbate the downward pressure on land prices and hurt the overall economy.
Turkey's pledge to guarantee the debt of contractors on public-works projects threatens to balloon government spending, a headwind for foreign buyers of the nation's bonds.
Transparent Airfares? Anything But, Consumer Groups Say
Airlines try to squeeze even more seats into your plane
The heavy anti-tank missiles recently shown in videos being fired by Western-backed Syrian rebels were manufactured in the United States, and their transfer to the rebels would have required direct American government approval, according to experts in international weapons deals.
Water Wars: The Next Clash between India and China
Students Deploy Riot-Ready Social Media
An oil pipeline carrying crude from Iraq's Kirkuk oilfields to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan is "unusable" because of persistent militant attacks, Turkey's energy minister was reported as saying on Monday.
## Got food? ##
Kraft recalls 96,000 pounds of Oscar Mayer wieners
Skin cancer rates soar thanks to sunbeds and cheap holidays
In a speech earlier this week, Lisa O. Monaco, President Barack Obama's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, insisted that American parents must be vigilant because their "confrontational" children could be on the verge of becoming terrorists.
More surveillance cameras for Mexico City
Once vested interests take control, the only possible "solution" left is collapse. I have long identified diminishing returns as a key dynamic in the current unraveling of the Status Quo. Why is this so? We can summarize diminishing returns as dumping more money, capital, energy and effort into a system just to keep the output from falling to zero.
On Rackets—Military, Banking, Health Care, College Loans—And The Demolition Derby In America's Interior Cities
Citigroup's leaders say company is still too complex
Spain's roads fall victim to austerity measures with urgent investment needed to restore road surfaces, markings and crash barriers
Japan logs record $134B trade deficit in FY 2013
The Bank of Japan is likely to hold off on expanding monetary stimulus for as long as possible but when it does act, it will take "extraordinary" steps such as buying government bonds on a massive scale, a former central bank policymaker said on Monday.
China's bad-loan ratio rose "significantly" in the first quarter, increasing risks for the nation's banking industry, according to the nation's largest manager of soured debt.
Exodus of Japan Inc. Slams China
Car owners in China are facing huge maintenance and repair costs that often amount to more than buying a new car, reports the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly.
Rise of the 'super workers' who never take time off
As companies prepare for their annual general meetings, Mr Cable has written to all FTSE 100 companies to remind them that pressure on pay awards must be kept up to assuage public anger.
Brand names that appear in NY standardized tests vex parents
And finally…
Bear walks down streets in Canadian town with jar stuck on its head
!DSPAM:57,5357fecc205891657611200!
One Response
Second post, not sure if the first made it through.
The initial piece above (Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te) rhas made a very unfortunate and regrettable error confusing Chris Hedges and Chris Hayes. Not only is this an unforced error, but a significant indictment in an article using the terms of “ignorance,” speculating on ‘corruption”…
In trying to find the original post I have only been able to find re-posted editions of this piece – this requires immediate attention and tracking down these posts with correction!
Mark