Howard Zinn

De Amerikaanse historicus Howard Zinn schrijft:

'Why War Fails.

I suggest there is something important to be learned from the recent experience of the United States and Israel in the Middle East: that massive military attacks are not only morally reprehensible but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out.In the three years of the Iraq War, which began with shock-and-awe bombardment and goes on with day-to-day violence and chaos, the United States has failed utterly in its claimed objective of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq. American soldiers and civilians, fearful of going into the neighborhoods of Baghdad, are huddled inside the Green Zone, where the largest embassy in the world is being built, covering 104 acres and closed off from the world outside its walls.I remember John Hersey's novel The War Lover, in which a macho American pilot, who loves to drop bombs on people, and also to boast about his sexual conquests, turns out to be impotent. George Bush, strutting in his flight jacket on an aircraft carrier, and announcing victory in Iraq, has turned out to be an embodiment of the Hersey character, his words equally boastful, his military machine equally impotent.The Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon has not brought security to Israel. Indeed, it has increased the number of its enemies, whether in Hezbollah or Hamas, or among Arabs who belong to neither of those groups.That failure of massive force goes so deep into history that Israeli leaders must have been extraordinarily obtuse, or blindly fanatic, to miss it. The memory is not lost to Professor Ze'ev Maoz at Tel Aviv University, writing recently in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz about a previous Israeli invasion of Lebanon: "Approximately 14,000 civilians were killed between June and September of 1982, according to a conservative estimate." The result, aside from the physical and human devastation, was the rise of Hezbollah, whose rockets provoked another desperate exercise of massive force.The history of wars fought since the end of World War II reveals the futility of large-scale violence. The United States and the Soviet Union, despite their enormous firepower, were unable to defeat resistance movements in small, weak nations. Even though the United States dropped more bombs in the Vietnam War than in all of World War II, it was still forced to withdraw. The Soviet Union, trying for a decade to conquer Afghanistan, in a war that caused a million deaths, became bogged down and also finally withdrew.Even the supposed triumphs of great military powers turn out to be elusive. After attacking and invading Afghanistan, President Bush boasted that the Taliban were defeated. But five years later, Afghanistan is rife with violence, and the Taliban are active in much of the country. Last May, there were riots in Kabul, after a runaway American military truck killed five Afghans. When U.S. soldiers fired into the crowd, four more people were killed.After the brief, apparently victorious war against Iraq in 1991, George Bush Sr. declared (in a moment of rare eloquence): "The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian peninsula." Those sands are bloody once more.The same George Bush presided over the military attack on Panama in 1989, which killed thousands and destroyed entire neighborhoods, justified by the "war on drugs." Another victory, but in a few years, the drug trade in Panama was thriving as before.The nations of Eastern Europe, despite Soviet occupation, developed resistance movements that eventually compelled the Soviet military to leave. The United States, which had its way in Latin America for a hundred years, has been unable, despite a long history of military interventions, to control events in Cuba, or Venezuela, or Brazil, or Bolivia.Overwhelming Israeli military power, while occupying the West Bank and Gaza, has not been able to stop the resistance movement of Palestinians. Israel has not made itself more secure by its continued use of massive force. The United States, despite two successive wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, is not more secure.More important than the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time always results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms.'

Lees verder: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15395.htm

11 September 2001 (14)

Via Global Circle Net kreeg ik dit bericht:

'Ex CIA and Marine Intel Officer: 9/11 Was An Inside Job.
Steve Watson / Infowars.net October 23 2006

An important story that broke over the weekend and may not have been widely picked up was that another former US Intelligence insider has turned whistleblower and concedes that the 9/11 attacks represented a "Neoconservative Neo-Nazi Coup D'etat".
In a review of Webster Tarpley's 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, for Amazon, Steele contends that the book is the "strongest of the 770+ books I have reviewed"
Steele goes on:
"I am forced to conclude that 9/11 was at a minimum allowed to happen as a pretext for war (see my review of Jim Bamford’s “Pretext for War”), and I am forced to conclude that there is sufficient evidence to indict (not necessarily convict) Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and others of a neo-conservative neo-Nazi coup d’etat and kick-off of the clash of civilizations (see my review of “Crossing the Rubicon” as well as “State of Denial”). Most fascinatingly, the author links Samuel Huntington, author of “Clash of Civilizations” with Leo Strauss, the connecting rod between Nazi fascists and the neo-cons."
Steele's biography is impressive. He was the second-ranking civilian (GS-14) in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence from 1988-1992. Steele is a former clandestine services case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.
He is the founder and president of Open Source Solutions, Inc., and is an acknowledged expert on computer and information vulnerabilities. Steele holds graduate degrees in International Relations and Public Administration from Leigh University and the University of Oklahoma. He has also earned certificates in Intelligence Policy from Harvard University and in Defense Studies from the Naval War College.
This is another example of how far the 9/11 truth movement has come over the past year. Before the 2004 election Steele advocated the re-election of George W Bush. Given what he knows now I don't think that would still be the case.
Last month we highlighted how Bill Christison, a A 28-year CIA career man, former National Intelligence Officer and the Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis had gone public to say 9/11 was an inside job.
Along with 16 year CIA veteran Ray McGovern, this trio have a combined total of over 65 years in intelligence. it's safe to say they know a covert op when they see one.
Over the past couple of years we have seen a deluge of former government and intelligence agency insiders to boldly go public with their doubts about the official story behind 9/11. This is very encouraging and sets the precedent for future whistleblowers who might be considering the same course of action.'

Zie: http://www.infowars.net/articles/October2006/231006Steele.htm

Irak 109

De Independent bericht:

'US in Iraq: We're out of here.

America signals dramatic shift in strategy, saying Iraq will assume responsibility for security in '12 to 18 months'

In the firmest indication yet of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, America's most senior general there and its top civilian official have drawn the outlines of a political and military plan that could see a substantial pullout of US troops within 12 to 18 months.
Yesterday's announcement looked like a strategy change carrying implications for British troops in Iraq, although President Bush's aides deny any "dramatic shifts" in policy. It came after Mr Bush's spokesman acknowledged on Monday that the President had cut and run from his signature promise that America would "stay the course" in Iraq.
In a joint press conference in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador, laid out a series of political steps that he claimed had been agreed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, including a crackdown on militias, a peace offer to insurgents and a plan for sharing oil revenues. The measures, to be taken over the next year, would amount to a new "national compact" between the Iraqi factions, he said. At the same time, General George Casey, the US commander in Iraq, said the training of Iraqi security forces - essential for any orderly US departure - was 75 per cent complete. Within 12 to 18 months, he said, they would emerge as "the dominant force in Iraq", even though some residual US military presence would be needed (as President Bush himself has indicated).
The rare joint press conference took place amid deepening political turmoil in Washington, where leading members of Mr Bush's own Republican party are demanding a radical rethink of US strategy in Iraq. They argue that current policies have all but failed, as sectarian and anti-American violence threaten to overwhelm the country.
Coming after the White House formally abandoned Mr Bush's previous "stay the course" formulation for US policy, the appearance by Mr Khalilzad and General Casey seemed part of a carefully choreographed exercise to signal, without explicitly saying so, that a timetable for pull-out - long rejected by the President - was in fact taking shape.
The clear purpose was twofold: to reassure voters a fortnight before mid-term elections that the administration had a workable policy for Iraq and that, all appearances to the contrary, that policy was achieving some success. Though 90 US troops have been killed this month, and Iraqi civilian deaths are running at 100 a day or more, General Casey maintained that 90 per cent of the attacks were occurring within a 30-mile radius of Baghdad.
But even he acknowledged the timetable was at the mercy of events on the ground, which Washington was largely powerless to shape. American troop levels might actually have to be increased to cope with the continuing violence in Baghdad, where a return to order is vital if the country is to be stabilised.
Tony Blair, in step with US policy, reassured the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Barham Salih, on Monday that the UK would not "cut and run" from Iraq.
The Prime Minister will face a challenge today from backbench MPs who have scheduled a debate on the Iraq exit strategy. But it will not enable MPs to vote on the issue. "We had a debate and a vote to take us into Iraq. We should have one now to take us out," said one Labour MP.'

Lees verder: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1927145.ece

Weet iemand hoelang de Nederlandse strijdkrachten in Afghanistan blijven doormodderen?

The Empire 34

De twijfel komt nu van buitenaf en van binnenuit:

Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

'It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier leaves us without a voice… until we get out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can't be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.'

Zie: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/ Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102006K.shtml

De Israelische Terreur 97

In Israel bestaat een politieke partij die het land etnisch wil zuiveren en de taak volbrengen die de joods Israelisch al in 1948 begonnen. Die partij met duidelijk fascistsche opvattingen zit nu in de Israelische regering. Europa die de Israelische terreur militair, politiek en economisch steunt vindt het goed dat deze partij nu in de regering zit, omdat het hier een binnenlandse aangelegenheid zou betreffen. Datzelfde Europa bemoeide zich wel met de Palestijnse binnenlandse aangelegenheden toen ze de democratisch gekozen Hamas regering besloot te boycotten. Meten met twee maten. Wat de joden wel mogen, mogen de arabieren niet. Dat is de erfenis van de Europese genocide van '40-'45.

Electronic Intifada:

'In a frightening but long expected move, Israeli prime
minister Ehud Olmert has brought the Yisrael Beitenu party
into his coalition government. The party's leader, Avigdor
Lieberman, is to be vice prime minister and, as "Minister
for Strategic Threats," a key member of Israel's "security
cabinet" in charge of the Iran portfolio.

Yisrael Beitenu is a dangerous extremist party with
fascist tendencies that has openly advocated the
"transfer" of Palestinians, including the transfer of Arab
towns within Israel to a Bantustan-like future Palestinian
entity. It has made clear that a Jewish supremacist state
is more important than a democratic one. The party, whose
strongest base is among Russian immigrants brought to
Israel in the 1990s, surged at the Israeli election
earlier this year, taking eleven seats in Israel's 120
seat Knesset.

Last summer, Israel launched a disastrous war of
destruction against Lebanon, and continues its siege and
onslaught against Palestinians in the occupied territories
which has killed nearly three hundred people in three
months and left hundreds of thousands without sufficient
food, water and electricity. Lieberman has advocated even
more harsh and criminal measures against the Palestinians
and Israel's neighbors.

It is dismaying that the European Union, a key
international actor, seems set to maintain warm, normal
relations with this extremist government, thus giving it
encouragement and legitimacy.

"You will understand that we cannot interfere with the
setting up of a foreign government. This is a matter for
which the concerned State alone is responsible," wrote
Cristina Gallach, the official spokesperson for Javier
Solana, the EU High Representative for foreign policy, in
an email responding to a query about whether the EU would
impose sanctions on Israel if Yisrael Beitenu joined the
government.'

Lees verder: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5874.shtml

En nu eens kijken of de potentiele PVDA-stemmers hun partij hierop gaan aanspreken. Hiermee zou men de buitenlandse politiek in deze verkiezingen ter sprake kunnen brengen.

Het Nederlands Asielbeleid

Trouw bericht:

Asielbeleid wél vergelijkbaar met lot joden Dat stelt een groep van 22 voormalige joodse onderduikkinderen en hun nazaten vandaag op de Podiumpagina van Trouw.

'Het afnemen van internationaal erkende rechten aan illegalen en hun kinderen kan niet. Een vergelijking met de oorlog is volkomen op haar plaats.
Kun je de behandeling van afgewezen asielzoekers vergelijken met het lot van de Joden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog? Minister Verdonk vindt van niet en is verontwaardigd over alle verwijzingen in die richting. Verdonk leek vorige week te worden bijgevallen door rabbijn Soetendorp met zijn opmerking dat destijds uitroeiing het einddoel van het beleid was.
Wij – Joodse Nederlanders, van wie sommigen als kind ondergedoken tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog – vinden dat er wel degelijk lessen getrokken moeten worden uit het verleden: vooral het beleid omtrent de gedetineerde asielzoekerkinderen heeft onze grote ongerustheid en morele verontwaardiging opgeroepen. Het sluipenderwijs en met goedkeuring van het parlement en bevolking uitvoeren van maatregelen die moreel verwerpelijk zijn, is volgens ons alarmerend.
Conclusie van die ontwikkeling moet zijn, gezien het lot van gedetineerde asielzoekerkinderen zoals de veelbesproken Hui, dat de wetgeving en procedures van onze rechtsstaat nog niet de gewenste morele resultaten opleveren. Wetgeving en procedures lopen vaak uit de pas met morele overtuigingen. Dat is onvermijdelijk, omdat er ook gestreefd moet worden naar een juridische consensus terwijl er moreel een grotere diversiteit kan heersen in een bevolking. Aan de andere kant is die spanning tussen recht en moraal een feit dat overheid, parlement en bevolking goed voor ogen moeten houden. Volgens ons is die spanning in drie opzichten te herkennen in de behandeling van gedetineerde asielzoekerkinderen. Bovendien zijn zij slachtoffer van een ontrechting of ’illegalisering’ die inderdaad wrange associaties oproept: er worden aan deze kinderen rechten onthouden die feitelijk behoren tot de basisrechten waartoe wij ons in Nederland verplicht hebben – omdat onze publieke moraal hierop aandrong. Omdat dit proces van ’illegalisering’ vaak plaatsvindt in de ruimte tussen recht en moraal, is oplettendheid voor ons burgers geboden: vroeger en nu nog steeds.
We mogen er niet van uitgaan dat allerhande internationale mensenrechten- en kinderrechtenverdragen voldoende garanties bieden. Volgens de rechterlijke uitspraak van 29 september immers bevat dat laatste verdrag ’geen normen die zonder nadere uitwerking in nationale wet- en regelgeving door de rechter direct toepasbaar zijn’. Kortom, Nederland heeft zich te houden aan allerhande verdragen, maar de praktijk is vaak anders. Zonder actieve inzet van parlement en overheid blijven de nodige aanpassingen van onze wet- en regelgeving dus achterwege. Ook als het overheidsbeleid juridisch acceptabel is, kan het nog steeds tegen de geest van nobele verdragen zijn. Er kan dan nog sprake zijn van een ontbrekende vertaalslag in de nationale wetgeving.'

Lees verder:
http://www.trouw.nl/deverdieping/podium/article520289.ece/Kinderrechten_40-_45_geeft_ons_wel_te_denken_over_asielbeleid_opinie

Kernwapens

De kinderarts Helen Caldicott schrijft:

'The Way the World Ends.

With all the hype about North Korea, we're forgetting that the world is still staring down the barrels of thousands of U.S. and Russian ICBMs



It is difficult to underestimate the problems associated with North Korea's recent nuclear weapons test. Following a small atomic explosion in a mountainous area of North Korea of less than one kiloton -- the Hiroshima bomb was 13 kilotons -- the U.S. administration is encouraging draconian economic sanctions to be enacted against a desperately poor country where millions of people are malnourished and that will further ostracize a paranoid regime, while the rest of the world looks on with horror as the nuclear arms race threatens to spiral out of control.

While lateral proliferation is indeed an incredibly serious problem as ever-more countries prepare to enter the portals of the nuclear club, one consistent outstanding nuclear threat that continues to endanger most planetary species is ignored by the international community.

In fact, the real "rogue" nations that continue to hold the world at nuclear ransom are Russia and the United States. Contrary to popular belief, the threat of a massive nuclear attack -- whether by accident, human fallibility or malfeasance -- has increased.

Of the 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world today, the United States and Russia possess 96 per cent of them. Of these, Russia aims most of its 8,200 strategic nuclear warheads at U.S. and Canadian targets, while the U.S. aims most of its 7,000 offensive strategic hydrogen bombs on Russian missile silos and command centres. Each of these thermonuclear warheads has roughly 20 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to a report on nuclear weapons by the National Resources Defense Council, a U.S. environmental group.

Of these 7,000 U.S. strategic weapons, 2,500 are deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles that are constantly maintained on hair-trigger alert ready for immediate launching, while the U.S. also maintains some 2,688 hydrogen bombs on missiles in its 14 Trident submarines, most ready for instantaneous launching.

According to the Center for Defense Information, a group that analyzes U.S. defence policy, in the event of a suspected attack, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Command has only three minutes to decide if a nuclear attack warning is valid. He has 10 minutes to locate the president for a 30-second briefing on attack options, and the president then has three minutes to decide to launch the warheads and to consider which pre-set targeting plan to use.

Once launched, the missiles would take 10 to 30 minutes to reach their Russian targets.

An almost identical situation prevails in Russia, except unlike the combined U.S. and Canadian NORAD early-warning equipment, the Russian system is decaying rapidly, its early-warning satellites are almost non-functional and it now relies on a relatively primitive over-the-horizon radar to warn it of an imminent secret first-strike attack from the United States.

The Russian military and political leaders are suitably paranoid about this extraordinary post-Cold-War situation. So much so that in January 1995 president Boris Yeltsin came to within 10 seconds of launching his nuclear armada when the launch of a Norwegian weather satellite was misinterpreted in Moscow as a pre-emptive U.S. nuclear attack.

Most towns and cities with populations over 50,000 on the North American continent are targeted with at least one hydrogen bomb. Only 1,000 bombs exploding on 100 cities could induce nuclear winter and the end of most life on earth. There are fewer than 300 major cities in the Northern hemisphere.

Such is the redundancy of nuclear weapons. A U.S. Foreign Military Studies Office report of January 2002, "Prototypes for Targeting America, a Soviet Military Assessment," states that New York City, for example, is the single most important target in the Atlantic region after major military installations. A U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment report, commissioned in the 1980s but still relevant, estimated that Soviet nuclear war plans had two one-megaton bombs aimed at each of three airports that serve New York, one aimed at each of the major bridges, two at Wall Street and two at each of four oil refineries. The major rail centres and power stations were also targeted, along with the port facilities.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that New York City would be obliterated by nuclear blasts and the resulting firestorms and fallout.'

Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1021-24.htm

Lees ook het artikel dat Caldicott schreef met Robert McNamara, minister van Defensie onder Kennedy en Johnson over de gevaren van kernwapens: http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/8/4287