Image by WorldIslandInfo.com via Flickr

Welcome to Orwell’s World 2010
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24286.htm
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that “passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.”

Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that “extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan” to “disorderly regions and diffuse enemies”. He called this “global security” and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which America has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: “We have no interest in occupying your country.”

In Oceania, truth and lies are indivisible. According to Obama, the American attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was authorised by the United Nations Security Council. There was no UN authority. He said the “the world” supported the invasion in the wake of 9/11 when, in truth, all but three of 37 countries surveyed by Gallup expressed overwhelming opposition. He said that America invaded Afghanistan “only after the Taliban refused to turn over [Osama] bin Laden”. In 2001, the Taliban tried three times to hand over bin Laden for trial, reported Pakistan’s military regime, and were ignored. Even Obama’s mystification of 9/11 as justification for his war is false. More than two months before the Twin Towers were attacked, the Pakistani foreign minister, Niaz Naik, was told by the Bush administration that an American military assault would take place by mid-October. The Taliban regime in Kabul, which the Clinton administration had secretly supported, was no longer regarded as “stable” enough to ensure America’s control over oil and gas pipelines to the Caspian Sea. It had to go.

Obama’s most audacious lie is that Afghanistan today is a “safe haven” for al-Qaeda’s attacks on the West. His own national security adviser, General James Jones, said in October that there were “fewer than 100” al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. According to US intelligence, 90 per cent of the Taliban are hardly Taliban at all, but “a tribal localised insurgency [who] see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power”. The war is a fraud. Only the terminally gormless remain true to the Obama brand of “world peace”.

Beneath the surface, however, there is serious purpose. Under the disturbing General Stanley McCrystal, who gained distinction for his assassination squads in Iraq, the occupation of one of the most impoverished countries is a model for those “disorderly regions” of the world still beyond Oceania’s reach. This is a known as COIN, or counter-insurgency network, which draws together the military, aid organisations, psychologists, anthropologists, the media and public relations hirelings. Covered in jargon about winning hearts and minds, its aim is to pit one ethnic group against another and incite civil war: Tajiks and Uzbecks against Pashtuns.

The Americans did this in Iraq and destroyed a multi-ethnic society. They bribed and built walls between communities who had once inter-married, ethnically cleansing the Sunni and driving millions out of the country. The embedded media reported this as “peace”, and American academics bought by Washington and “security experts” briefed by the Pentagon appeared on the BBC to spread the good news. As in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the opposite was true.

Something similar is planned for Afghanistan. People are to be forced into “target areas” controlled by warlords bankrolled by the Americans and the opium trade. That these warlords are infamous for their barbarism is irrelevant. “We can live with that,” a Clinton-era diplomat said of the persecution of women in a “stable” Taliban-run Afghanistan. Favoured western relief agencies, engineers and agricultural specialists will attend to the “humanitarian crisis” and so “secure” the subjugated tribal lands.

Empire Burlesque - High Crimes & Low Comedy in the American Imperium

Update on Our Brave New Slavery: Yes, It Applies to American Citizens, Too
Written by Chris Floyd

I wrote a piece here a few days ago on a recent ruling by the Supreme Court, in which the justices agreed with the passionate plea of the Obama Administration to uphold -- and establish as legal precedent -- some of the most egregious of the Bush Administration's authoritarian perversions. This was the gist of the ruling:

The Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

One of the attorneys involved in the case rightly likened the ruling to the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which the Court declared that any person of African descent brought to the United States as a slave -- or their descendants, even if they had been freed -- could never be citizens of the United States and were not protected by the Constitution. They were non-persons under the law; sub-humans.

I noted the grim irony that this principle of non-personhood had now been reintroduced into the law of the land by our first African-American president. (But this is only to be expected, given the law of opposites that so often governs American politics: only a lifelong Red-baiter like Nixon could make an opening to Communist China; only a supposed liberal like Bill Clinton could gut the federal welfare system. And only an African-American president could reintroduce the principle of slavery and get away with it. No doubt it will be a woman president who finally re-imposes a total ban on abortion.)

My piece was picked up by a few other sites, where it attracted some criticism for being too "extreme," too shrill, too panicky and exaggerated. After all, some critics said, this case involves foreigners rounded up in the context of a military conflict. (An undeclared, open-ended, borderless, lawless conflict, but still.) And while one might consider the captives treatment a bit too rough or unjust, it is still a far leap to conclude that the Supreme Court ruling implies some kind of general attack on the liberties of real, honest-to-god American citizens!

Ah, what bliss it must be, to dwell in such sweet ignorance. The many decisions by the Supreme Court and lower courts upholding the federal government's authoritarian power to strip Terror War captives of inherent and inalienable legal rights are part of a larger framework that applies both in theory and in practice to everyone -- American citizens included. What we are seeing is the construction of a new "social contract," the open codification of a new relationship between the individual and the state, in which all powers and rights reside solely in the latter, which can bestow them or withhold them at will, arbitrarily, unaccountable. In contrast, it is the individual who must be totally accountable to the state. The state is bound by no law, but the individual is subject to them all -- including "secret laws" and decrees and executive orders of which he or she has no knowledge.

It all applies to American citizens as well. Chris Hedges demonstrates this clearly in a devastating piece on the case of American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi. Below is an excerpt, but you should read the whole piece:

Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process....

Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. ...

“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

...“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”

Why Flight 253 Could Delay Guantanamo's Closure
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1951176,00.html?xid=rss-world-huffpo
It is a nefarious kind of 21st Century recycling — freeing terrorists from the prison at Guantanamo Bay so they can return home and plot new strikes on America. That's just what happened to Saeed Ali Shehri. A Saudi national freed for unspecified reasons from the America's Cuba-based lockup in 2007, he returned home, underwent a Saudi rehabilitation program — apparently with his fingers crossed — and has ended up as the second-ranking leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). From there, it appears his organization helped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab plot his failed Christmas bombing of Northwest Flight 253.
( They let one go. Hm. Terrorized and tortured and without recourse...they let him go...to 'try' and explode an airliner just as the U.S. starts bombing one side in the Yemen civil war. Oh, the danger from al Qaeda ! Perhaps I should faint in terror. Talk about cheap drama. BTW : It's the only time it's happened.)

Wednesday, Dec 30, 2009 13:31 EST
Making "Islam" synonymous with "terrorism"

By Glenn Greenwald

(updated below)
No matter how many times you see it, the capacity for people to believe what they want to believe, rather than what is actually true, is astounding -- and those who want to depict Islam as the ultimate evil seem to grant themselves special license to live that way:
From Jeffrey Weiss, Politics Daily, today: "And we're still left with a terrible problem for a free and multicultural society: Even though 99.999 percent of Muslims abhor attacks on innocent civilians on moral and theological grounds, 100 percent of attempted terrorist attacks on the U.S. (and, with the exception of the Basques in Spain, terrorists attacks on all Western nations) since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing have been committed by people claiming to act in the name of Islam."

Compare that claim to reality:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/12/30/terrorism/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+salon%2Fgreenwald+%28Glenn+Greenwald%29

Craving terrorist melodrama
President Obama wants us all to know he’s taking seriously the attempted terrorist attack of Christmas Day and that his administration is doing all it can to ensure our safety. But his words would be a lot more convincing if not delivered during time snatched between rounds of golf, swimming and sunbathing. . . .( Talk show drivel which gets treated with the disrespect it deserves )
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/12/30/hysteria/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+salon%2Fgreenwald+%28Glenn+Greenwald%29

The degrading effects of terrorism fears
a citizenry far more terrorized by our own institutions than foreign Terrorists could ever dream of achieving on their own. For that reason, a risk that is completely dwarfed by numerous others -- the risk of death from Islamic Terrorism -- dominates our discourse, paralyzes us with fear, leads us to destroy our economic security and eradicate countless lives in more and more foreign wars, and causes us to beg and plead and demand that our political leaders invade more of our privacy, seize more of our freedom, and radically alter the system of government we were supposed to have. The one thing we don't do is ask whether we ourselves are doing anything to fuel this problem and whether we should stop doing it. As Adams said: fear "renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable."
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/01/02/fear/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+salon%2Fgreenwald+%28Glenn+Greenwald%29

( Noted in Perception Alteration are links on 'Islamophobia' - literally a recreation of Crusader mentality which drove the religious wars of the Dark Ages - being a deliberately generated disinformation campaign to give political 'cover' to Resource Theft )

Attack Yemen? Disingenuous Omissions
http://www.inteldaily.com/news/172/ARTICLE/13257/2009-12-30.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+inteldaily%2Ffeeds+%28Inteldaily.com%29
Joe Lieberman and Arlen Specter are calling for a preemptive strike on Yemen in response to the attempted detonation of an explosive device on a U.S. bound jet on December 25th. The corporate media is chasing right along “debating” whether we should be going after Yemen. The reality is that WE ALREADY ARE.

We have been attacking Yemen both directly and indirectly. Most notably, we have been attacking indirectly via the Saudis, and directly with our own drone operations. The United States has also been providing support to the Yemeni government to fight alleged terrorists.

Since 9/11, We've Embraced Our Inner Coward
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/31
Once we Americas did brave things: We sat on boats, crossing the English Channel, knowing that most of us would die on the beach in Normandy. We sat at the lunch counter in the Deep South, waiting for white goons to beat us up. We also did brave things that were stupid: When the president sent us to Vietnam, some of us went, risking death. Others went to Canada, sacrificing everything for principle. We bungee jumped. We tried New Coke. Bravery can be dumb.

But it's still brave.

Then came 9/11/01. It was the defining event of the decade that ends today, a fin-de-siècle moment for a previously proud nation's once glorious history.

The Fear Decade had begun.

Bin Laden wanted the destruction of the World Trade Center to smack oblivious Americans' upside their collective heads, to draw their attention to their nation's toxic foreign policy (especially in the Middle East), maybe even to demand that the U.S. stop propping up dictators. It didn't work.

Rather than prompt them to reassess their government's behavior, Americans got angry. Anger, as any shrink will tell you, comes from fear. And fear makes you do stupid things.

Fear of future attacks. Fear of Muslims. Of anyone wearing a turban. Foreigners. The next thing we knew, the paranoid delusionals leading us convinced us that fearful people and things were everywhere. Mail full of anthrax. Gas stations stalked by snipers. Threat levels: orange, red, etc. (but it's always orange). Avian flu. Eeek! Stop these things! Do whatever it takes!

Throwing innocent Muslim men in prison? It was worth it to (possibly, probably not) prevent one attack. Torture? We couldn't take any chances--what if the victim knew that a bomb was about to go off? Because one lunatic tried to blow up his joke of a shoe bomb on a flight from Paris to Miami, America's 800 million air travelers are ordered to take off their 1.6 billion shoes every year. Because a half-dozen Brits thought about trying to blow up planes using hair peroxide and Tang (yes, really), millions of nursing mothers were told to dump bottles containing thousands of gallons of breast milk into trashcans at airport security checkpoints. Never mind the scientists who said such plots couldn't work. And now, the most fearsome fear of all: the Paris-to-Detroit underwear bomber. Airport security is about to turn really ugly.

What's Next: Muslim-Only Lines At Airports?
http://www.alternet.org/rights/144905/what%27s_next:_muslim-only_lines_at_airports/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet_rights
The clamor for a racial crackdown was first heard in the United States after the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1996. Then President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno had the good sense not rush to judgment and scapegoat Muslims. The swift arrest of Timothy McVeigh squelched the building mob hysteria against them. But it didn't squelch public suspicions that all Muslims were potential terrorists. The federal building bombing propelled Clinton's 1996 Anti-terrorism Act through Congress. Civil rights and civil liberties groups had waged a protracted battle against the bill. The law gave the FBI broad power to infiltrate groups, quash fundraising by foreigners, monitor airline travel, and seize hotel records and trash due process by permitting the admission of secret evidence to expel immigrants. The implication was that present and future attacks would likely be launched by those with an Arab name and face rather than by men like McVeigh.
Broad-based ethnic profiling creates in turn panic and the false sense of security that airlines are actually preventing terrorist attacks. It also causes law enforcement resources to be squandered chasing the wrong targets. Worse, it’s a witch hunt against a group based solely on their religion and ethnicity. This fuels even greater racial division, fear and hysteria. The public whispers and the right wing’s open talk of Muslim-only airport lines do the same.

Backward, Into Fear
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/48927
The young Nigerian is the reason my plane (the same trip the peas were seized) was delayed this week. Because when passengers lined up to board, anyone with a bottle of water, cola, or juice, was pulled aside to have their beverages tested for explosives. One woman asked if her water would still be safe to drink after the strange strip of white whatever was magically waved over the open bottle by an agent whose hands were imprisoned in surgical gloves. How styoopid, I thought. But, then, she had a point—those gloves must have been transferring an accumulation of microbes from container to container.
Where I'm going with all this is to an analysis of Obama's brilliant revelation: “A system failure occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable.”

You see, our Deciders and those we label “the bad guys” have a symbiotic relationship, the basis of which is both real and imagined: real because they are trying to knock each other off and imagined because they rely on propaganda.

Even though “the bad guys” have legitimate reasons—that we destroy their lives and their countries in order to claim their resources—their tactics are wrong. But we cannot say we are “the good guys” when our own actions are horrendous and result in unconscionable anguish.

If we are to engage in PermWar against a “network of terrorists,” we will have many Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabs, because each bomb that incinerates civilians inspires increased hatred of America. And more attempts to act on this hatred motivate a demand for revenge via the USA. The byproduct of this is fear, the necessary ingredient our imperialist leaders must manipulate.

Of course, a war against a “network” is as insane as a war against an ideology. But then war, itself, is insane. It's just that what we're seeing now is never ending.

An Interview With Andy Worthington About Guantánamo, “Outside the Law” and New Media
We set about writing a structure for a film that would tell the story of the Bush administration’s flight from the law.

We focused on the human stories of those who got caught up in the cruel and incompetent system of rounding up people who had nothing to do with terrorism. We approached a number of people who were well informed about these issues, including Tom Wilner and Clive Stafford Smith. Tom is an American lawyer who was very involved in the Guantánamo cases from the beginning and was deeply involved in the 2004 US Supreme Court case that secured habeas corpus rights for the prisoners. Clive is the director of Reprieve, here in the UK. It was also clearly important for us to speak to some of the former prisoners.
The film is available to buy on DVD through the website of the production company, Spectacle.
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/12/29/an-interview-with-andy-worthington-about-guantanamo-outside-the-law-and-new-media

Courage To End Total War

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/48926

It’s a brilliant strategy if you think about it. Make the public afraid of each other. Every person could be a terrorist - everyone is suspect. There is no better way to defeat an organized anti-war opposition than to make the people terrified of each other.

The corporate oligarchy is now doing under Obama what it could not accomplish under Bush. Total war. The anti-Bush movement in the US and worldwide was gaining too much ground. So the oligarchy let the air out of that balloon. In Bush’s place they put in a magician who has proved very effective at keeping the left off balance and thus unable to pump new life into the reeling anti-war movement.

So now it’s Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Somalia and Yemen. Next could be Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. National Public Radio (NPR) reporter Tom Gjelten did a story called “Afghan War Could Spill Over Into Central Asia” on December 31 that upped the fear meter and brought back the Vietnam-war era worry of the “domino theory”. You must watch the slight of hand...the modus operandi in action again.

Bush, or John McCain for that matter, would have been resisted at every step of this new escalation. But many “progressives” are frozen into place by the handiwork of the magician and a deferential Congress under the control of the other war party. The “execution” of this masterstroke has worked as well as the insides of an expensive Swiss watch.

The oil and military industrial oligarchy have created a situation where the public is so primed for fear by the slavish media that they are ready to strip their constitutional rights down to the bare bone in order to be “protected” by big daddy.

Few are asking the legitimate question of why people are fighting against the US around the world? What are they upset about? Could it possibly be that we are increasingly occupying their lands and grabbing their natural resources? Does it take a rocket scientist to see this? All the talk about our troops protecting our freedoms overseas is pure bloviation.

In the end this total war plan is destroying our economy at home. More than 40 states are now in fiscal crisis. Here in Maine public education is being eviscerated and social programs are next on the block to have their heads removed. But teachers or workers inside of the social service agencies are unwilling to raise their voices and say the obvious – bring our war $$ home so we can maintain social progress. They have been made job scared. Instead, they call for more taxes that an already belabored public rejects out of hand, and they are dismissed as socialists. Thus those trying to preserve domestic tranquility get marginalized. Meanwhile, few are willing to make the connections and speak the truth about the very real, local consequences of endless war.

So as Obama’s total war rages overseas it is also being waged on us here at home. Except, because they have us focused 24-7 on the antics of a hapless airplane bomber, we are taking our eyes off the ball that is being ripped right out of our hands. That is the value of Obama, the magician.

Obama’s Royal Scam and The Iron Fist Of Rahm
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/02-6

    Audacity To Hope

    Change We Can Believe In

    Rule of Law

    Accountability

    Freedom From Lobbyists and Special Interests

    Privacy

    Harm From Illegal Surveillance

    Constitutional Scholar

    Transparency

    Predatory Business Practices

    Closing Guantanamo

    Withdrawing From Iraq and Afghanistan

These are but some of the major buzzwords, issues and concepts Barack Obama based his candidacy and campaign on to convince the American electorate to sweep him in to office. Mr. Obama, however, has gone significantly in the opposite direction on each and every one since taking office. As Frank Rich noted, there is a growing "suspicion that Obama's brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger's public image - a marketing scam...".

Is there support for this allegation other than anecdotal evidence? Yes, and Micah Sifry has an excellent piece out detailing the basis:

Weary Soldiers At Risk, They Know This
http://truthhugger.com/2010/01/02/weary-soldiers-at-risk-they-know-this/#comment-2536

A poignant editorial on Al Jazeera seems to have more in depth observations than America’s Corporate media. Mainstream media must follow the money, toe the line for sponsors and political perks that promise ’scoops’.

‘The US military is exhausted”

A photograph with a message – and without a hope

By Sarah Lazare
The call for over 30,000 more troops to be sent to Afghanistan is a travesty for the people of that country who have already suffered eight brutal years of occupation.
It is also a harsh blow to the US soldiers facing imminent deployment.
As Barack Obama, the US president, gears up for a further escalation that will bring the total number of troops in Afghanistan to over 100,000, he faces a military force that has been exhausted and overextended by fighting two wars.
Many from within the ranks are openly declaring that they have had enough, allying with anti-war veterans and activists in calling for an end to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with some active duty soldiers publicly refusing to deploy.
The architects of this war would be well-advised to listen to the concerns of the soldiers and veterans tasked with carrying out their war policies on the ground.
Many of those being deployed have already faced multiple deployments to combat zones: the 101st Airborne Division, which will be deployed to Afghanistan in early 2010, faces its fifth combat tour since 2002.
“They are just going to start moving the soldiers who already served in Iraq to Afghanistan, just like they shifted me from one war to the next,” said Eddie Falcon, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Soldiers are going to start coming back with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), missing limbs, problems with alcohol, and depression.”
Many of these troops are still suffering the mental and physical fallout from previous deployments.
Fort Campbell tries to address the consequences of exhausted soldiers.

As far back as 1919, exhausted warriors suffer numerous medical complications.
Symptoms Of Hyperthyroidism Observed In Exhausted Soldiers, by W. Johnson © 1919 BMJ Publishing Group.
McClatchy has a blog dedicated to the perils facing “Wounded Warriors” a collection of veterans coverage from the McClatchy Washington Bureau, McClatchy Newspapers, and other sources
As far back as 2004, MSNBC recognized and warned about some of the consequences facing returning troops:
1 in 8 returning soldiers suffers from PTSD – But less than half with problems seek help, report finds

‘The most important thing we can do for service members who have been in combat is to help them understand that the earlier that they get help when they need it, the better off they’ll be.’

— Dr. Charles W. Hoge, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research

The Psychology Of Healing For Returning Soldiers And Their Families
Coping with the aftermath of war is challenging for returning soldiers and their families. Psychologists offered ways for individuals and their families to handle post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health problems that may arise.
Returning Soldiers Project – The United States is in the midst of a military conflict in Iraq that has involved thousands of men and women in the armed forces of this nation. These men and women are not only regular service people, but also reserves whose necessary service disrupts their lives in a variety of ways.

From The Sunday Times

January 3, 2010

Can the West avoid Russia's fate in Afghanistan?

Afterr the Soviets left defeated, a war hero from the SAS and one from the Red Army say the same mistakes are being made

Soviet tanks and armoured personnel carriers, burnt out and twisted, still littered the country, more than two decades after Moscow had withdrawn its troops, ending its disastrous nine-year war.
In the shadow of the Taliban front line, a few miles below Tobdara, the Bagram air base was overgrown and abandoned. The spot from where the Soviets launched their invasion in 1979, it is now the US army’s largest base in the country.
Over 240 British soldiers have been killed in the war (more than in Iraq), many in ferocious close combat that has been compared to the trench warfare of the first world war. By the end of this year, American and British forces will have been in Afghanistan as long as the Soviets. And yet Russia’s experience in the country has been largely overlooked by the allies. It was, say American and British generals, a different war fought in different times by a different army.

Many military experts would now beg to differ. There are compelling parallels between the obstacles faced first by the Soviets and now the allies. Often, the mistakes are the same. What lessons are there to be learnt from the Soviet war in Afghanistan? Just as the allies failed in 2001 to study the fateful Soviet invasion, the Russians before them dismissed Queen Victoria’s foray into a country some have dubbed “the graveyard of empires”. So when in early 1980 the Soviet deputy foreign minister pointed out to his boss, Andrei Gromyko, that three previous invasions by the British had failed, Gromyko asked sternly: “Are you comparing our internationalist forces to those of the British imperialists?”

“No, sir, of course not,” answered his deputy. “But the mountains are the same.”

Ridding America of the Warmongers

Disgusted Americans who vote for politicians that talk peace yet, once elected, support wars, need to get active in between elections. Just voting every four years won’t hack it.

As MIT activist philosopher Noam Chomsky points out in his book “Failed States”(Metropolitan), “Opportunities for education and organizing abound. As in the past, rights are not likely to be granted by benevolent authorities, or won by intermittent actions---attending a few demonstrations or pushing a lever in the personalized quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as ‘democratic politics.’ …These tasks require dedicated day-by-day engagement…” Failure to grasp these opportunities “is likely to have ominous repercussions: for the country, for the world, and for future generations.”

The major goal, as Chalmers Johnson writes in “The Sorrows of Empire”(Henry Holt), is for Americans to “retake control of Congress, reform it along with the corrupted election laws that have made it into a forum for special interests, turn it into a genuine assembly of democratic representatives, and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon and the secret intelligence agencies.”

He’s right, of course. America today is a warfare state, the most powerful ever, and its leaders lie when they claim that small countries half way around the world with $5 billion annual military budgets represent a threat to Washington, which spends roughly $800 billion a year for war. That’s more, by the way, than the $780 billion all 50 state governments combined collected in 2008 to run the country. In his book, “House of War(Houghton Mifflin), James Carroll points out the Pentagon "exceeding agency and intention, has mutated into the great white whale of anarchy and destruction."

One way to reform Congress is to stop elected officials from accepting donations, (i.e., bribes,) and instead to conduct their business exclusively with public funds. In “Free Lunch”(Portfolio), Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston writes, “Let each member of Congress spend however much he or she deems necessary to do his or her job. If we can imbue representatives and senators with the power to make laws, surely we can give them the authority to manage their own expense accounts.”

http://www.inteldaily.com/news/173/ARTICLE/13260/2009-12-30.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+inteldaily%2Ffeeds+%28Inteldaily.com%29
Look Who Just Funded the Escalation
http://antemedius.com/content/look-who-just-funded-escalation
The U.S. House of Representatives approved on Wednesday another $130 billion for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (it goes without saying) Pakistan, money that will be used to continue the wars and to escalate the war in Afghanistan. In the spring, they will try to pass another $30 billion or more, labeled as funding for the escalation, but 4 out of 5 spineless warmongering congress members will tell their constituents at that point that they can't vote against something that has already happened.

That didn't stop them on Wednesday from telling their constituents that this $130 billion was not for the escalation. And, of course, peace groups had spent a year "strategically" opposing an escalation rather than the wars themselves, making it impossible to insist that congress members vote NO regardless of which dollars were for escalating.

At http://defundwar.org is a chart showing how members of congress voted, as well as how they voted on the same funding back in June, and which of them have cosponsored useful bills or publicly committed to voting no on war funding. On Wednesday 23 Democrats and 11 Republicans voted No on the war money, in combination with the larger military budget. That ought to at least break the bipartisan taboo on voting No. It ought to be safe now to vote No without enduring accusations of treason against the Vaterland. Here are the 34 (out of 435) who voted against funding wars and occupations opposed by the majority of Americans, Iraqis, Afghans, and the rule of law:

Baldwin, Bishop (UT), Campbell, Chaffetz, Clarke, Costello, Duncan, Ehlers, Ellison, Filner, Flake, Gohmert, Grayson, Johnson (IL), Kagen, Kucinich, Lee (CA), Lewis (GA), Lofgren, Lummis, McDermott, Nadler (NY), Paul, Payne, Polis (CO), Quigley, Serrano, Shimkus, Stark, Towns, Velázquez, Welch, Woolsey, Wu.

Back in June, all Republicans voted No because of unrelated measures packaged in the same vote, but at least some of the 11 who voted No this week probably voted No for the right reasons that time as well. Among the Democrats, 32 voted No in June compared to 23 this time. Of those 32, there are 19 who voted No in June but not this week, including some purported leaders of peace efforts in the House:

McGovern, Grijalva, Waters, Capuano, Conyers, Massa, Edwards, Sherman, Tsongas, Tierney, Watson, Speier, Shea-Porter, Pingree, Michaud, Kaptur, Honda, Farr, Doggett.

These 19 were among the 395 congress members who just voted to fund the wars and the escalation, with the exception of Speier who was among 5 congress members who did not vote one way or the other.

You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains
http://antemedius.com/content/you-have-nothing-lose-your-chains#comment-538
Tired of being Chained to a Party that let's you down time after time?

Tired of being chained to a Party that bald faced lies to you?

Tired of getting Pissed On by the Democrats and having them and the "supporters" tell you it is fresh spring rain?

Tired of the same old sh*t sandwich served up by Harry Reid for lunch everyday?

Tired of being chained to a party that tells YOU what to do....when is is so painfully obvious that that Party doesn't have a F*cking Clue what it is doing?

Tired of contributing time and money to a Party so that they will FIGHT for your cause....only to have that Party throw each and every one of your causes under the bus and then shrug, say "we don't have the votes" for the zillionth time...and then ask you for MORE money and MORE time....so they can throw you under their well funded bus even harder?

Well come on over to the LEFT of the Democratic Party and it's loose affiliates! The oft misquoted SMALL d "democratic wing of the Democratic Party." Where we believe The People should lead the Party, not that the interminably proven spineless, incompetent, sold out, and corrupt Party should lead The People.

Where People Powered Politics still lives.

DANDELION SALAD
Gangs, Resources and the Truth about American Interventions By Timothy V. Gatto
The hope that my father’s generation left us with after World War II was that we would be able to keep peace in the world with no one nation acting aggressively against other nations. I believe that the United Nations, like the League of Nations that was set up after WWI before it, would keep the peace by confronting aggression throughout the world. Of course, we all realize that that concept was mistaken, especially after the Vietnam debacle. The following in an excerpt from http://www.vietnam-war.info/casualties/:

The lowest casualty estimates, based on the now-renounced North Vietnamese statements, are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged. 58,226 American soldiers also died in the war or are missing in action. Australia lost almost 500 of the 47,000 troops they had deployed to Vietnam and New Zealand lost 38 soldiers.

These figures are mind-boggling when you consider that the United Nations did nothing to stop the killing. It was the American people that stopped that war, something that appears will not happen again in the foreseeable future.
Why do I say this? Let’s look at the “interventions” that the U.S. has participated in since Vietnam:

1970-1979
1970 – Cambodia Campaign. US troops were ordered into Cambodia to clean out Communist sanctuaries from which Viet Cong and North Vietnamese attacked US and South Vietnamese forces in Vietnam. The object of this attack, which lasted from April 30 to June 30, was to ensure the continuing safe withdrawal of American forces from South Vietnam and to assist the program of Vietnamization.^[RL30172]
1973 – Operation Nickel Grass, a strategic airlift operation conducted by the United States to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
1974 – Evacuation from Cyprus. United States naval forces evacuated US civilians during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.^[RL30172]
1975 – Evacuation from Vietnam. On April 3, 1975, President Ford reported US naval vessels, helicopters, and Marines had been sent to assist in evacuation of refugees and US nationals from Vietnam.^[RL30172]
1975 – Evacuation from Cambodia. On April 12, 1975, President Ford reported that he had ordered US military forces to proceed with the planned evacuation of US citizens from Cambodia.^[RL30172]
1975 – South Vietnam. On April 30, 1975, President Ford reported that a force of 70 evacuation helicopters and 865 Marines had evacuated about 1,400 US citizens and 5,500 third country nationals and South Vietnamese from landing zones near the US Embassy in Saigon and the Tan Son Nhut Airfield.^[RL30172]
1975 – Cambodia. Mayagüez Incident. On May 15, 1975, President Ford reported he had ordered military forces to retake the SS Mayagüez, a merchant vessel which was seized from Cambodian naval patrol boats in international waters and forced to proceed to a nearby island.^[RL30172]
1976 – Lebanon. On July 22 and 23, 1974, helicopters from five US naval vessels evacuated approximately 250 Americans and Europeans from Lebanon during fighting between Lebanese factions after an overland convoy evacuation had been blocked by hostilities.^[RL30172]
1976 – Korea. Additional forces were sent to Korea after two American soldiers were killed by North Korean soldiers in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea while cutting down a tree.^[RL30172]
1978 – Zaire (Congo). From May 19 through June 1978, the United States utilized military transport aircraft to provide logistical support to Belgian and French rescue operations in Zaire.^[RL30172]
1980-1990
1980 – Iran. Operation Eagle Claw On April 26, 1980, President Carter reported the use of six US transport planes and eight helicopters in an unsuccessful attempt to rescue American hostages being held in Iran.^[RL30172]
1981 – El Salvador. After a guerrilla offensive against the government of El Salvador, additional US military advisers were sent to El Salvador, bringing the total to approximately 55, to assist in training government forces in counterinsurgency.^[RL30172]
1981 – Libya. First Gulf of Sidra Incident On August 19, 1981, US planes based on the carrier USS Nimitz shot down two Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra after one of the Libyan jets had fired a heat-seeking missile. The United States periodically held freedom of navigation exercises in the Gulf of Sidra, claimed by Libya as territorial waters but considered international waters by the United States.^[RL30172]
1982 – Sinai. On March 19, 1982, President Reagan reported the deployment of military personnel and equipment to participate in the Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai. Participation had been authorized by the Multinational Force and Observers Resolution, Public Law 97-132.^[RL30172]
1982 – Lebanon. Multinational Force in Lebanon. On August 21, 1982, President Reagan reported the dispatch of 80 Marines to serve in the multinational force to assist in the withdrawal of members of the Palestine Liberation force from Beirut. The Marines left September 20, 1982.^[RL30172]
1982-1983 – Lebanon. On September 29, 1982, President Reagan reported the deployment of 1200 marines to serve in a temporary multinational force to facilitate the restoration of Lebanese government sovereignty. On September 29, 1983, Congress passed the Multinational Force in Lebanon Resolution (P.L. 98-119) authorizing the continued participation for eighteen months.^[RL30172]
1983 – Egypt. After a Libyan plane bombed a city in Sudan on March 18, 1983, and Sudan and Egypt appealed for assistance, the United States dispatched an AWACS electronic surveillance plane to Egypt.^[RL30172]
1983 – Grenada. Citing the increased threat of Soviet and Cuban influence and noting the development of an international airport following a bloodless Grenada coup d’état and alignment with the Soviets and Cuba, the U.S. launches Operation Urgent Fury to invade the sovereign island nation of Grenada.^[RL30172]
1983-89 – Honduras. In July 1983 the United States undertook a series of exercises in Honduras that some believed might lead to conflict with Nicaragua. On March 25, 1986, unarmed US military helicopters and crewmen ferried Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border to repel Nicaraguan troops.^[RL30172]
1983 – Chad. On August 8, 1983, President Reagan reported the deployment of two AWACS electronic surveillance planes and eight F-15 fighter planes and ground logistical support forces to assist Chad against Libyan and rebel forces.^[RL30172]
1984 – Persian Gulf. On June 5, 1984, Saudi Arabian jet fighter planes, aided by intelligence from a US AWACS electronic surveillance aircraft and fueled by a U.S. KC-10 tanker, shot down two Iranian fighter planes over an area of the Persian Gulf proclaimed as a protected zone for shipping.^[RL30172]
1985 – Italy. On October 10, 1985, US Navy pilots intercepted an Egyptian airliner and forced it to land in Sicily. The airliner was carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro who had killed an American citizen during the hijacking.^[RL30172]
1986 – Libya. Action in the Gulf of Sidra (1986) On March 26, 1986, President Reagan reported on March 24 and 25, US forces, while engaged in freedom of navigation exercises around the Gulf of Sidra, had been attacked by Libyan missiles and the United States had responded with missiles.^[RL30172]
1986 – Libya. Operation El Dorado Canyon On April 16, 1986, President Reagan reported that U.S. air and naval forces had conducted bombing strikes on terrorist facilities and military installations in the Libyan capitol of Tripoli, claiming that Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi was responsible for a bomb attack at a German disco that killed two U.S. soldiers.^[RL30172]
1986 – Bolivia. U.S. Army personnel and aircraft assisted Bolivia in anti-drug operations.^[RL30172]
1987 – Persian Gulf. USS Stark was struck on May 17 by two Exocet antiship missiles fired from an Iraqi F-1 Mirage during the Iran-Iraq War killing 37 US Navy sailors.
1987 –October 19, Operation Nimble Archer – attack on two Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf by United States Navy forces. The attack was a response to Iran’s October 16, 1987 attack on the MV Sea Isle City, a reflagged Kuwaiti oil tanker at anchor off Kuwait, with a Silkworm missile.
1987-88 – Persian Gulf. After the Iran-Iraq War resulted in several military incidents in the Persian Gulf, the United States increased US joint military forces operations in the Persian Gulf and adopted a policy of reflagging and escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers through the Persian Gulf, called Operation Earnest Will. President Reagan reported that US ships had been fired upon or struck mines or taken other military action on September 21 (Iran Ajr), October 8, and October 19, 1987 and April 18 (Operation Praying Mantis), July 3, and July 14, 1988. The United States gradually reduced its forces after a cease-fire between Iran and Iraq on August 20, 1988.^[RL30172] It was the largest naval convoy operation since World War II.^[4]
1987-88 – Operation Earnest Will was the U.S. military protection of Kuwaiti oil tankers from Iraqi and Iranian attacks in 1987 and 1988 during the Tanker War phase of the Iran-Iraq War. It was the largest naval convoy operation since World War II.
1987-88 – Operation Prime Chance was a United States Special Operations Command operation intended to protect U.S. -flagged oil tankers from Iranian attack during the Iran-Iraq War. The operation took place roughly at the same time as Operation Earnest Will.
1988 – Operation Praying Mantis was the April 18, 1988 action waged by U.S. naval forces in retaliation for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf and the subsequent damage to an American warship.
1988 – Operation Golden Pheasant was an emergency deployment of U.S. troops to Honduras in 1988, as a result of threatening actions by the forces of the (then socialist) Nicaraguans.
1988 – USS Vincennes shoot down of Iran Air Flight 655
1988 – Panama. In mid-March and April 1988, during a period of instability in Panama and as the United States increased pressure on Panamanian head of state General Manuel Noriega to resign, the United States sent 1,000 troops to Panama, to “further safeguard the canal, US lives, property and interests in the area.” The forces supplemented 10,000 US military personnel already in the Panama Canal Zone.^[RL30172]
1989 – Libya. Second Gulf of Sidra Incident On January 4, 1989, two US Navy F-14 aircraft based on the USS John F. Kennedy shot down two Libyan jet fighters over the Mediterranean Sea about 70 miles north of Libya. The US pilots said the Libyan planes had demonstrated hostile intentions.^[RL30172]
1989 – Panama. On May 11, 1989, in response to General Noriega’s disregard of the results of the Panamanian election, President Bush ordered a brigade-sized force of approximately 1,900 troops to augment the estimated 11,000 U.S. forces already in the area.^[RL30172]
1989 – Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. Andean Initiative in War on Drugs. On September 15, 1989, President Bush announced that military and law enforcement assistance would be sent to help the Andean nations of Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru combat illicit drug producers and traffickers. By mid-September there were 50-100 US military advisers in Colombia in connection with transport and training in the use of military equipment, plus seven Special Forces teams of 2-12 persons to train troops in the three countries.^[RL30172]
1989 – Philippines. 1989 Philippine coup attempt. On December 2, 1989, President Bush reported that on December 1 US fighter planes from Clark Air Base in the Philippines had assisted the Aquino government to repel a coup attempt. In addition, 100 marines were sent from the US Navy base at Subic Bay to protect the US Embassy in Manila.^[RL30172]
1989-90 – Panama. Operation Just Cause On December 21, 1989, President Bush reported that he had ordered US military forces to Panama to protect the lives of American citizens and bring General Noriega to justice. By February 13, 1990, all the invasion forces had been withdrawn.^[RL30172] Around 200 Panamanian civilians were reported killed. The Panamanian head of state, General Manuel Noriega, was captured and brought to the U.S.
1990 – Liberia. On August 6, 1990, President Bush reported that a reinforced rifle company had been sent to provide additional security to the US Embassy in Monrovia, and that helicopter teams had evacuated US citizens from Liberia.^[RL30172]
1990 – Saudi Arabia. On August 9, 1990, President Bush reported that he had ordered the forward deployment of substantial elements of the US armed forces into the Persian Gulf region to help defend Saudi Arabia after the August 2 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. On November 16, 1990, he reported the continued buildup of the forces to ensure an adequate offensive military option.^[RL30172]
1991-1999
1991 – Iraq. Persian Gulf War On January 16 America attacked Iraqi forces and military targets in Iraq and Kuwait, in conjunction with a coalition of allies and UN Security Council resolutions. Combat operations ended on February 28, 1991.^[RL30172] (See Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm)
1991 – Iraq. On May 17, 1991, President Bush stated that the Iraqi repression of the Kurdish people had necessitated a limited introduction of US forces into northern Iraq for emergency relief purposes.^[RL30172]
1991 – Zaire. On September 25-27, 1991, after widespread looting and rioting broke out in Kinshasa, US Air Force C-141s transported 100 Belgian troops and equipment into Kinshasa. US planes also carried 300 French troops into the Central African Republic and hauled evacuated American citizens.^[RL30172]
1991-96 – Operation Provide Comfort. Delivery of humanitarian relief and military protection for Kurds fleeing their homes in northern Iraq, by a small Allied ground force based in Turkey.
1992 – Sierra Leone. On May 3, 1992, US military planes evacuated Americans from Sierra Leone, where military leaders had overthrown the government.^[RL30172]
1992-1996 – Operation Provide Promise was a humanitarian relief operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Yugoslav Wars, from July 2, 1992, to January 9, 1996, which made it the longest running humanitarian airlift in history.^[5]
1992 – Kuwait. On August 3, 1992, the United States began a series of military exercises in Kuwait, following Iraqi refusal to recognize a new border drawn up by the United Nations and refusal to cooperate with UN inspection teams.^[RL30172]
1992-2003 – Iraq. Iraqi No-Fly Zones The U.S. together with the United Kingdom declares and enforces “no fly zones” over the majority of sovereign Iraqi airspace, prohibiting Iraqi flights in zones in southern Iraq and northern Iraq, and conducting aerial reconnaissance and bombings. (See also Operation Southern Watch) ^[RL30172]
1992-95 – Somalia. “Operation Restore Hope” Somali Civil War On December 10, 1992, President Bush reported that he had deployed US armed forces to Somalia in response to a humanitarian crisis and a UN Security Council Resolution. The operation came to an end on May 4, 1993. US forces continued to participate in the successor United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II). (See also Battle of Mogadishu)^[RL30172]
1993-Present – Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1993 – Macedonia. On July 9, 1993, President Clinton reported the deployment of 350 US soldiers to the Republic of Macedonia to participate in the UN Protection Force to help maintain stability in the area of former Yugoslavia.^[RL30172]
1994-95 – Haiti. Operation Uphold Democracy US ships had begun embargo against Haiti. Up to 20,000 US military troops were later deployed to Haiti.^[RL30172]
1994 – Macedonia. On April 19, 1994, President Clinton reported that the US contingent in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia had been increased by a reinforced company of 200 personnel.^[RL30172]
1995 – Bosnia. NATO bombing of Bosnian Serbs.^[RL30172] (See Operation Deliberate Force)
1996 – Liberia. On April 11, 1996, President Clinton reported that on April 9, 1996 due to the “deterioration of the security situation and the resulting threat to American citizens” in Liberia he had ordered US military forces to evacuate from that country “private US citizens and certain third-country nationals who had taken refuge in the US Embassy compound….”^[RL30172]
1996 – Central African Republic. On May 23, 1996, President Clinton reported the deployment of US military personnel to Bangui, Central African Republic, to conduct the evacuation from that country of “private US citizens and certain U.S. Government employees”, and to provide “enhanced security for the American Embassy in Bangui.”^[RL30172]
1997 – Albania. On March 13, 1997, US military forces were used to evacuate certain U.S. Government employees and private US citizens from Tirana, Albania. (See also Operation Silver Wake)^[RL30172]
1997 – Congo and Gabon. On March 27, 1997, President Clinton reported on March 25, 1997, a standby evacuation force of US military personnel had been deployed to Congo and Gabon to provide enhanced security and to be available for any necessary evacuation operation.^[RL30172]
1997 – Sierra Leone. On May 29 and May 30, 1997, US military personnel were deployed to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to prepare for and undertake the evacuation of certain US government employees and private US citizens.^[RL30172]
1997 – Cambodia. On July 11, 1997, In an effort to ensure the security of American citizens in Cambodia during a period of domestic conflict there, a Task Force of about 550 US military personnel were deployed at Utapao Air Base in Thailand for possible evacuations. ^[RL30172]
1998 – Iraq. US-led bombing campaign against Iraq.^[RL30172] (See Operation Desert Fox)
1998 – Guinea-Bissau. On June 10, 1998, in response to an army mutiny in Guinea-Bissau endangering the US Embassy, President Clinton deployed a standby evacuation force of US military personnel to Dakar, Senegal, to evacuate from the city of Bissau.^[RL30172]
1998 – 1999 Kenya and Tanzania. US military personnel were deployed to Nairobi, Kenya, to coordinate the medical and disaster assistance related to the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. ^[RL30172]
1998 – Afghanistan and Sudan. Operation Infinite Reach On August 20, air strikes were used against two suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical factory in Sudan.^[RL30172]
1998 – Liberia. On September 27, 1998 America deployed a stand-by response and evacuation force of 30 US military personnel to increase the security force at the US Embassy in Monrovia.^[RL30172]
1999 – 2001 East Timor. East Timor Independence Limited number of US military forces deployed with UN to restore peace to East Timor.^[RL30172]
1999 – NATO’s bombing of Serbia in the Kosovo Conflict.^[RL30172] (See Operation Allied Force)
2000-2009
2000 – Sierra Leone. On May 12, 2000 a US Navy patrol craft deployed to Sierra Leone to support evacuation operations from that country if needed.^[RL30172]
2000 – Yemen. On October 12, 2000, after the USS Cole attack in the port of Aden, Yemen, military personnel were deployed to Aden.^[RL30172]
2000 – East Timor. On February 25, 2000, a small number of U.S. military personnel were deployed to support of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). ^[RL30172]
2001 – Afghanistan. War in Afghanistan. The War on Terrorism begins with Operation Enduring Freedom. On October 7, 2001, US Armed Forces invade Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 attacks and “begin combat action in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda terrorists and their Taliban supporters.”^[RL30172]
2002 – Yemen. On November 3, 2002, an American MQ-1 Predator fired a Hellfire missile at a car in Yemen killing Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, an al-Qaeda leader thought to be responsible for the USS Cole bombing.^[RL30172]
2002 – Philippines. OEF-Philippines. January 2002 U.S. “combat-equipped and combat support forces” have been deployed to the Philippines to train with, assist and advise the Philippines’ Armed Forces in enhancing their “counterterrorist capabilities.”^[RL30172]
2002 – Côte d’Ivoire. On September 25, 2002, in response to a rebellion in Côte d’Ivoire, US military personnel went into Côte d’Ivoire to assist in the evacuation of American citizens from Bouake.^[6] ^[RL30172]
2003 – 2003 invasion of Iraq leading to the War in Iraq. March 20, 2003. The United States leads a coalition that includes Britain, Australia and Spain to invade Iraq with the stated goal of eliminating Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and undermining Saddam Hussein.^[RL30172]
2003 – Liberia. Second Liberian Civil War On June 9, 2003, President Bush reported that on June 8 he had sent about 35 combat-equipped US military personnel into Monrovia, Liberia, to help secure the US Embassy in Nouakchott, Mauritania, and to aid in any necessary evacuation from either Liberia or Mauritania.^[RL30172]
2003 – Georgia and Djibouti “US combat equipped and support forces” had been deployed to Georgia and Djibouti to help in enhancing their “counterterrorist capabilities.”^[7]
2004 – 2004 Haïti rebellion occurs. The US sent first sent 55 combat equipped military personnel to augment the US Embassy security forces there and to protect American citizens and property in light. Later 200 additional US combat-equipped, military personnel were sent to prepare the way for a UN Multinational Interim Force, MINUSTAH.^[RL30172]
2004 – War on Terrorism: US anti-terror related activities were underway in Georgia, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen, and Eritrea.^[8]
2006 – Pakistan. 17 people including known Al Qaeda bomb maker and chemical weapons expert Midhat Mursi, were killed in an American MQ-1 Predator airstrike on Damadola (Pakistan), near the Afghan border.^[9][10]
2006 – Lebanon. US Marine Detachment, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit^{[citation needed]}, begins evacuation of US citizens willing to the leave the country in the face of a likely ground invasion by Israel and continued fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli military.^[11][12]
2007 – Somalia. Battle of Ras Kamboni. On January 8, 2007, while the conflict between the Islamic Courts Union and the Transitional Federal Government continues, an AC-130 gunship conducts an aerial strike on a suspected Al-Qaeda operative, along with other Islamist fighters, on Badmadow Island near Ras Kamboni in southern Somalia.^{[citation needed]}
2008 – South Ossetia, Georgia. Helped Georgia humanitarian aid^[13], helped to transport Georgian forces from Iraq during the conflict. In the past, the US has provided training and weapons to Georgia.
2009 – Pakistan, In relation to efforts in Afghanistan, U.S. Forces struck an insurgent encampment in the Northern Mountains, killing 24, with missiles fired from an unmanned aerial assault vehicle. (Source Wikipedia, US Military Operations)

Does this raise an eyebrow? Just consider the civilian deaths in the latest Iraq War furnished by Lancet:

The Lancet, one of the oldest scientific medical journals in the world, published two peer-reviewed studies on the effect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation on the Iraqi mortality rate. The first was published in 2004; the second (by many of the same authors) in 2006. The studies estimate the number of excess deaths caused by the occupation, both direct (combatants plus non-combatants) and indirect (due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poor healthcare, etc.).
The first survey^[1] published on 29 October 2004, estimated 98,000 excess Iraqi deaths (with a range of 8,000 to 194,000, using a 95% confidence interval (CI)) from the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq to that time, or about 50% higher than the death rate prior to the invasion. The authors described this as a conservative estimate, because it excluded the extreme statistical outlier data from Falluja. If the Falluja cluster were included, the mortality estimate would increase to 150% over pre-invasion rates (95% CI: 1.6 to 4.2).
The second survey^[2][3][4] published on 11 October 2006, estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war, or 2.5% of the population, through the end of June 2006. The new study applied similar methods and involved surveys between May 20 and July 10, 2006.^[4] More households were surveyed, allowing for a 95% confidence interval of 392,979 to 942,636 excess Iraqi deaths. 601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95% confidence interval) were due to violence. 31% of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24% to others, and 46% unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot (56%), car bomb (13%), other explosion/ordnance (14%), air strike (13%), accident (2%), and unknown (2%).
The Lancet surveys are controversial due to their methodology and because their mortality figures are higher than most other reports that used different methodologies, including those of the Iraq Body Count project, the Iraqi Health Ministry and the United Nations, as well as other household surveys such as the Iraq Living Conditions Survey and the Iraq Family Health Survey. On the other hand the ORB survey of Iraq War casualties estimated more deaths than the Lancet survey. Out of all the Iraqi casualty surveys so far, only the Lancet surveys and the Iraq Family Health Survey were peer-reviewed. The Lancet surveys have triggered criticism and disbelief from some journalists, governments, the Iraq Body Count project, some epidemiologists and statisticians and others, but have also been supported by some journalists, governments, epidemiologists and statisticians.(Source Wikipedia)

I don’t wish to spoil your new year, but maybe we should think about the massive interventions and the deaths that these military interventions have caused. Is it any wonder that many young people that join gangs don’t consider the use of force unacceptable? Why should they when their own government uses force whenever the opportunity presents itself?
Frankly, I’m tired of all the killing done by my government. I’m tired of the interventions in other nation’s affairs without being sanctioned by the United Nations. We are waging war for resources, not for humanitarian purposes. We are fighting for the petroleum pipeline in Afghanistan to counter Russia’s dominance in fossil fuels in relation to Europe. We are entering into a war in Yemen for oil. http://www.oilsearch.com/Our-Activities/Yemen.html Every decision this country makes is tied to securing America’s supply of oil. There is no other reason. The seven military bases that America has secured in Columbia are the direct result of our bad relations with the socialist government of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. We are diametrically opposed to anyone that says no the American Empire. It matters not that the Venezuelan government has done more for its people than the U.S. has done for their own people. It just remains a principle of U.S. foreign policy that you don’t say no to the Empire.
I guess that I’ve gone the gamut here. I can only hope that a few Americans will read what I’ve put out here. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that their government is lying to them every time they state American goals. There is only one goal, to secure the resources that will enable the U.S. to continue to enjoy the standard of living that has practically bankrupted the planet. It’s no wonder that American young people join gangs and take what they want. They see the American government as a role model.
***
Read Tim Gatto’s new book Complicity to Contempt.

World’s Sole Military Superpower’s 2 Million-Troop, $1 Trillion Wars
http://blacklistednews.com/?news_id=6876
With a census of slightly over 300 million in a world of almost seven billion people, the U.S. accounts for over 40 percent of officially acknowledged worldwide government military spending with a population that is only 4 percent of that of the earth’s. A 10-1 disparity.

In addition to its 1,445,000 active duty service members, the Pentagon can and does call upon 1.2 million National Guard and other reserve components. As many as 30% of troops that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq are mobilized reservists. The Army National Guard has activated over 400,000 soldiers since the war in Afghanistan began and in March of 2009 approximately 125,000 National Guard and other reserve personnel were on active duty.

The Defense Department also has over 800,000 civilian employees at home and deployed worldwide. The Pentagon, then, has more than 3.5 million people at its immediate disposal excluding private military contractors.

After allotting over a trillion dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone and packing off more than two million of its citizens to the two nations, the U.S. military establishment and peace prize president have already laid the groundwork for yet more wars. Boeing, Raytheon and General Electric won’t be kept waiting.
———-He is in fact the commander-in-chief in charge of two major and several smaller wars and his nation is without doubt the first global military power which for decades has operated without constraints on five of six inhabited continents and has troops stationed in all six. United States armed forces personnel and weapons, including nuclear arms, are stationed at as many as 820 installations in scores of nations.

The U.S. has recently assigned thousands of troops to seven new bases in Bulgaria and Romania [1], deployed the first foreign troops to Israel in that nation’s history to run an interceptor missile radar facility in the Negev Desert [2], and last week signed a status of forces agreement with Poland for Patriot missiles (to be followed by previously ship-based Aegis Standard Missile-3s interceptors) and U.S. soldiers to be stationed there. The troops will be the first foreign forces based in Poland since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991.

The U.S., whose current military budget is at Cold War, which is to say at the highest of post-World War II, levels, also officially accounts for over 41% of international military spending according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s report on 2008 figures: $607 billion of $1.464 trillion worldwide. On October 28 President Obama signed the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act with a price tag of $680 billion, including $130 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

That figure excludes military spending outside of the Department of Defense. The American government has for several decades been the standard-bearer in outsourcing to private sector contractors in every realm and the Pentagon is certainly no exception to the practice. According to some estimates, American military and military-related allotments in addition to the formal Pentagon budget can bring annual U.S. defense spending as high as $1.16 trillion, almost half of official expenditures for all of the world’s 192 nations, including the U.S., last year.

With a census of slightly over 300 million in a world of almost seven billion people, the U.S. accounts for over 40 percent of officially acknowledged worldwide government military spending with a population that is only 4 percent of that of the earth’s. A 10-1 disparity.

The U.S. also has the world’s second largest standing army, over 1,445,000 men and women under arms according to estimates of earlier this year, second only to China with 2,255,000. China has a population of over 1.325 billion, more than four times that of America, and does not have a vast army of private contractors supplementing its armed forces. And of course unlike the U.S. it has no troops stationed abroad. India, with a population of 1.140 billion, has active duty troop strength smaller than that of the U.S. at 1,415,000.

The U.S. and Britain are possibly alone in the world in deploying reservists to war zones; this last February the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen acknowledged that 600,000 reserves have been called up to serve in the area of responsibility of the U.S. Central Command, in charge of the Afghan and Iraqi wars, since 2001. In addition to its 1,445,000 active duty service members, the Pentagon can and does call upon 1.2 million National Guard and other reserve components. As many as 30% of troops that have served in Afghanistan and Iraq are mobilized reservists. The Army National Guard has activated over 400,000 soldiers since the war in Afghanistan began and in March of 2009 approximately 125,000 National Guard and other reserve personnel were on active duty.

The Defense Department also has over 800,000 civilian employees at home and deployed worldwide. The Pentagon, then, has more than 3.5 million people at its immediate disposal excluding private military contractors.

ORB survey of Iraq War casualties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORB_survey_of_Iraq_War_casualties
On 28 January 2008, ORB published an update based on additional work carried out in rural areas of Iraq. Some 600 additional interviews were undertaken September 20 to 24, 2007. As a result of this the death estimate was revised to 1,033,000 with a given range of 946,000 to 1,120,000.

Boiling Frogs Updates, Lithuania & CIA Black Sites, the Case of Mysterious Helicopters in Afghanistan & More
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com
Sibel Edmonds

Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes

Sorensen was just 25, engaged to be married and thrilled to be employed at his first serious job as a real aerospace engineer. A devout Mormon with a linebacker’s build and a marine’s crew cut, Sorensen made an unlikely iconoclast. But the book inspired him to pursue an intense study of nuclear energy over the next few years, during which he became convinced that thorium could solve the nuclear power industry’s most intractable problems. After it has been used as fuel for power plants, the element leaves behind minuscule amounts of waste. And that waste needs to be stored for only a few hundred years, not a few hundred thousand like other nuclear byproducts. Because it’s so plentiful in nature, it’s virtually inexhaustible. It’s also one of only a few substances that acts as a thermal breeder, in theory creating enough new fuel as it breaks down to sustain a high-temperature chain reaction indefinitely. And it would be virtually impossible for the byproducts of a thorium reactor to be used by terrorists or anyone else to make nuclear weapons.

Weinberg and his men proved the efficacy of thorium reactors in hundreds of tests at Oak Ridge from the ’50s through the early ’70s. But thorium hit a dead end. Locked in a struggle with a nuclear- armed Soviet Union, the US government in the ’60s chose to build uranium-fueled reactors — in part because they produce plutonium that can be refined into weapons-grade material. The course of the nuclear industry was set for the next four decades, and thorium power became one of the great what-if technologies of the 20th century.
When he took over as head of Oak Ridge in 1955, Alvin Weinberg realized that thorium by itself could start to solve these problems. It’s abundant — the US has at least 175,000 tons of the stuff — and doesn’t require costly processing. It is also extraordinarily efficient as a nuclear fuel. As it decays in a reactor core, its byproducts produce more neutrons per collision than conventional fuel. The more neutrons per collision, the more energy generated, the less total fuel consumed, and the less radioactive nastiness left behind.

Even better, Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. The design is based on the lab’s finding that thorium dissolves in hot liquid fluoride salts. This fission soup is poured into tubes in the core of the reactor, where the nuclear chain reaction — the billiard balls colliding — happens. The system makes the reactor self-regulating: When the soup gets too hot it expands and flows out of the tubes — slowing fission and eliminating the possibility of another Chernobyl. Any actinide can work in this method, but thorium is particularly well suited because it is so efficient at the high temperatures at which fission occurs in the soup.

In 1965, Weinberg and his team built a working reactor, one that suspended the byproducts of thorium in a molten salt bath, and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation’s atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973.

That proved to be “the most pivotal year in energy history,” according to the US Energy Information Administration. It was the year the Arab states cut off oil supplies to the West, setting in motion the petroleum-fueled conflicts that roil the world to this day. The same year, the US nuclear industry signed contracts to build a record 41 nuke plants, all of which used uranium. And 1973 was the year that thorium R&D faded away — and with it the realistic prospect for a golden nuclear age when electricity would be too cheap to meter and clean, safe nuclear plants would dot the green countryside.

North Korea Calls For End Of Hostile Relations With U.S.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/02/north-korea-calls-for-end_n_409240.html
North Korea called for an end of hostile relations with the United States in a New Year's message and said it was committed to making the Korean peninsula nuclear-free through negotiations.
Communist North Korea has long demanded that Washington end hostility toward its government, and said it developed nuclear weapons to deter a U.S. attack. Washington has repeatedly said it has no intention of invading the country.
The North has often said it wants to replace a cease-fire that ended the 1950-53 Korean War with a peace treaty and forge diplomatic relations with the U.S. as a way to win security guarantees – demands Washington says should be linked to North Korea's verifiable denuclearization.
( No electricity for you ! )

Iran gives West ultimatum to accept uranium swap
http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/9164

Book review
Iran's foreign minister gave the West a one-month "ultimatum" on Saturday to accept a uranium swap, warning that it will produce its own nuclear fuel for a Tehran reactor if there is no deal.

"The international community has just one month left to decide whether or not it will accept Iran's conditions," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted by state television as saying.

"This is an ultimatum."

Iran, which rejected a December 31 deadline to accept a UN-brokered deal, said on Tuesday it was ready to swap abroad its low-enriched uranium for nuclear fuel, while insisting that the exchange happen in stages.

Tehran had already rejected a proposal by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to ship most of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for processing into fuel for the research reactor.

But Iran said it was ready for a fuel swap "in several stages," and in late December Mottaki said Iran is open to exchanging uranium on Turkish soil.

Earlier in December, Iran had proposed to exchange 400 kilogrammes (880 pounds) of uranium on its Gulf island of Kish but was bluntly dismissed by the United States, with the IAEA already having ruled out swap on Iranian soil.

World powers have been pushing for Iran to accept the UN-brokered deal and are also mulling plans to impose fresh UN sanctions against Tehran after the Islamic republic dismissed the year-end deadline.

Iran is already under three sets of UN sanctions for refusing to abandon its sensitive programme of uranium enrichment, the process which produces nuclear fuel or, in highly extended form, the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

The United States, Israel, and other world powers suspect Tehran is making an atomic bomb under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme.

Iran denies the charge and says its purpose is entirely peaceful.

On Wednesday, US State Department spokesman Darby Holladay said the West will still focus on "dual-track policy" regarding the Islamic republic.

"Even as we leave the door open to engagement," world powers agree that Iran will pay the consequences if it does not meet its international nuclear obligations, Darby told AFP.
( But of course Iran is sticking with the terms it has negotiated and agreed to - unlike those showering abuse on her for acting responsibly )
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who rejected the year-end deadline, told AFP in mid-December that Iran was ready to strike a uranium enrichment deal if the United States and the West respect the Islamic Republic and stop making threats.

So, how large is the global plutocratic class?
Migeru has noted that this article was a vicious attempt at trying to rewrite history
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2010/1/2/13464/77940?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurotrib%2FfPhV+%28European+Tribune%29

Mega Giant Corporations Are Very Bad for America
excerpt from the first chapter of Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, published by Wiley Press.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/144716/mega_giant_corporations_are_very_bad_for_america?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet

"Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization:" Water as the new oil

From his historical account, Solomon moves to the state of water management today. The most alarming perhaps is the fact that one in five people worldwide lack access to at least one gallon of safe water to drink per day. And two in five do not have access to the mere 13 gallons needed for rudimentary sanitation and hygiene.

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"Yet it is unachieved for two-fifths of mankind for one overriding, simple reason — the deficit of existing infrastructure and competent, institutional governance," Solomon writes.

From such desperation, Solomon predicts serious struggles between and among the water haves and have-nots. And he points to disastrously polluted or disappearing freshwater sources, expanding populations, and climate change as just some of the pressures on the world's supply of clean water.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2010642314_br03water.htmlIrish atheists challenge new blasphemy laws
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/01/irish-atheists-challenge-blasphemy-law
Secular campaigners publish series of anti-religious quotes and say they will challenge law if charged with blasphemy

Science Saturday: Religiosity’s Phylogeny

Is religion like language? (00:17-07:25)
Nicholas defends his view of religion as an adaptation (07:25-17:53)
Communal dancing, primitive gods (17:59-29:38)
The creation of Christianity (36:39-46:06)
A surprising hypothesis about the birth of Islam (46:06-53:30)
Faith and the future (53:30-58:32)


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Obama’s Royal Scam and The Iron Fist Of Rahm
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/02-6

‘The US military is exhausted”

Can the West avoid Russia's fate in Afghanistan?

Ridding America of the Warmongers

"Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization:" Water as the new oil

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3 Jan - Brave New World ( that has such people in it )

Courage To End Total War

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‘The US military is exhausted”

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Ridding America of the Warmongers

"Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization:" Water as the new oil

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Obama’s Royal Scam and The Iron Fist Of Rahm
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/02-6

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