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"Scum always rises to the top, but instead of scraping it off and discarding it, most people follow it!?!"
--Sherlyn Meinz, 2008
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 | My Story: The Indefensible Drones: A Ground Zero Reflection |
 by: Kathy Kelly, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Libby and Jerica are in the front seat of the Prius, and Mary and I are in back. We just left Oklahoma, we're heading into Shamrock, Texas, and tomorrow we'll be in Indian Springs, Nevada, home of Creech Air Force Base. We've been discussing our legal defense.
The state of Nevada has charged Libby and me, along with 12 others, with criminal trespass onto the base. On April 9, 2009, after a ten-day vigil outside the air force base, we entered it with a letter we wanted to circulate among the base personnel, describing our opposition to a massive, targeted, assassination program. Our trial date is set for September 14.
Creech is one of several homes of the US military's aerial drone program. US Air Force personnel there pilot surveillance and combat drones, unmanned aerial vehicles with which they are instructed to carry out extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan and Iraq. The different kinds of drones include the "Predator" and the "Reaper." The Obama administration favors a combination of drone attacks and Joint Special Operations' raids to pursue its stated goal of eliminating whatever al-Qaeda presence exists in these countries. As the US accelerates this campaign, we hear from UN Special Rapporteur for extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, who suggests that US citizens may be asleep at the wheel, oblivious to clear violations of international law, which we have real obligations to prevent (or at the very least discuss). Many citizens are now focused on the anniversary of September 11th and the controversy over whether an Islamic Center should be built near ground zero. Corporate media does little to help ordinary US people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small "ground zeroes" in multiple locales on an everyday basis. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, September 09 @ 21:40:56 EDT (12 reads)
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| Politics: Calling Them Out: War Profiteer Steven R. Loranger |
by: Nick Mottern, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
War profiteering is defined by Stuart Brandes in his book "Warhogs, a History of War Profits in America," as "a gain in economic well-being obtained as a result of military conflict."
As he shows, there is a long history of war profiteering in the United States and an equally long history of public disgust for it. One of the most quoted expressions of this disgust came from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II: "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster."
Brandes also notes there was a time when war was exceptional and war profiteering a nasty exceptional thing that accompanied it. But after World War II, the United States moved more and more to a status of permanent war.
In his new book "Washington Rules," former Army Col. Andrew Bacevich says a group of "semi-warriors" ... "some in uniform, others in suits," operators in the military-industrial complex, had by 1961 "gained de facto control of the U.S. government." ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, August 27 @ 22:44:32 EDT (39 reads)
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| International: Another Curse for Afghanistan |
By William A. Collins
Great resources,
Wealth galore;
Guess there'll be
Another war.
As if war, tyranny, drugs, corruption, disease and misogyny weren't misfortune enough for Afghanistan, now the Pentagon reports that it also suffers that worst affliction of all--mineral resources. "What did we do to deserve this?" cry the Afghans. "Now they'll never go home!"
You betcha. Why else, countless observers point out, would the Pentagon be announcing the "discovery" of vast deposits of iron, copper, gold, cobalt, and lithium. This isn't exactly hot news. The first press release to this effect came from Marco Polo. It was followed up in more detail by the SovietUnion during its own unhappy occupation, and now the Chinese already have a deal going for a copper mine.
The preponderance of Washington (and world) opinion is that this timing is meant to stanch the flow of our NATO allies scrambling for the exits. Not to mention the similar nosedive of American public opinion. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, August 25 @ 21:26:38 EDT (43 reads)
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| Spirituality: Troops Punished After Refusing to Attend Evangelical Concert |
by: Mike Ludwig, t r u t h o u t | Report
Update: An Army spokesman now says the Pentagon will investigate soldiers' claims that they were punished for refusing to attend the Christian-themed concert.
Pvt. Anthony Smith is the type of guy who stands up for what he believes in. That's why he decided to hold his commanding officers accountable for punishing him and fellow soldiers after they refused to attend an evangelical Christian rock concert at the Fort Eustis military post in Virginia.
After a day of training at Fort Eustis, Smith and other trainees were normally released to have personal time, but on May 13, Smith and dozens of others were "required" to march in formation to a concert headlined by an evangelical Christian rock band. Smith spent six months training at Fort Eustis before moving to Arizona to serve on active duty with the National Guard.
"No option was presented to us off the bat," Smith told Truthout about the required concert. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Friday, August 20 @ 20:53:49 EDT (47 reads)
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| The News: Rights Groups File Lawsuit To Allow Challenge To Targeted Killing |
CCR And ACLU Charge It's Illegal For Government To Deny Counsel To Targets On Kill List
NEW YORK – The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil LibertiesUnion today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to challenge their refusal to grant a license that would allow the groups to file a lawsuit challenging the government's asserted authority to use lethal force against U.S. citizens located far from any battlefield without charge, trial or judicial process of any kind.
In early July, CCR and the ACLU were retained by Nasser al-Aulaqi to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government's decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi, whom the CIA and Defense Department have targeted for death. On July 16, however, the Secretary of the Treasury labeled Anwar al-Aulaqi a "specially designated global terrorist," which makes it a crime for lawyers to provide representation for his benefit without first seeking a license from OFAC. CCR and the ACLU have sought a license, but the government has not yet issued one despite the urgency created by an outstanding execution order. CCR and the ACLU have not had contact with Anwar al-Aulaqi.
"The government is targeting an American citizen for death without any legal process whatsoever, while at the same time impeding lawyers from challenging that death sentence and the government's sweeping claim of authority to issue it. This is a dual blow to some of our most precious liberties, and such an alarming denial of rights in any one case endangers the rights of all Americans," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "Attorneys shouldn't have to ask the government for permission in order to challenge the constitutionality of the government's conduct." ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, August 03 @ 22:16:24 EDT (68 reads)
(Read More... | 6566 bytes more | Comments? | The News | Score: 0)
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| The News: Military Was Concerned About Vets' Exposure to Depleted Uranium |
by: Mike Ludwig, t r u t h o u t | Report
For years, the government has denied that depleted uranium (DU), a radioactive toxic waste left over from nuclear fission and added to munitions used in the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars, poisoned Iraqi civilians and veterans.
But a little-known 1993 Defense Department document written by then-Brigadier Gen. Eric Shinseki, now the secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), shows that the Pentagon was concerned about DU contamination and the agency had ordered medical testing on all personnel that were exposed to the toxic substance.
Shinseki's memo, under the subject line, "Review of Draft to Congress - Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium in the U.S. Army -- Action Memorandum," makes some small revisions to the details of these three orders from the DoD:
1. Provide adequate training for personnel who may come in contact with DU contaminated equipment.
2. Complete medical testing of all personnel exposed to DU in the Persian Gulf War.
3. Develop a plan for DU contaminated equipment recovery during future operations.
The VA, however, never conducted the medical tests, which may have deprived hundreds of thousands of veterans from receiving medical care to treat cancer and other diseases that result from exposure to DU. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Wednesday, July 28 @ 18:20:54 EDT (85 reads)
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| History/Culture: Afghanistan Funding: Time to Make a Fuss |
by: Maya Schenwar, Executive Director, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
In a moving statement before Congress in February 2009, President Obama made a promise. "For seven years, we have been a nation at war," he said. "No longer will we hide its price."
Obama was referring to the Bush administration's devious practice of using supplemental spending bills - emergency cash transfusions that are separated from the annual federal budget - to funnel off money for war. This parliamentary trick masks the yearly cost of war, which would otherwise appear as one massive lump sum, by breaking it up into bite-size, deceptively digestible chunks.
Supplementals are intended for emergencies in which large amounts of money are suddenly needed: a huge-scale natural disaster, an unexpected war of defense, a Mars attack. The Bush administration used a supplemental to fund the early stages of the war in Afghanistan, then kept doing it ... and doing it and doing it. Throughout his tenure, Bush sent 17 war supplementals to Congress, and they all passed with flying (bipartisan) colors.
As someone who'd spent the previous four years chronicling Bush's slimy war funding ways, I was particularly relieved by Obama's words in 2009. Maybe, I thought, when Congress and the American people are confronted with that giant, ugly price tag for war hanging from the frail skeleton of our federal budget at the start of the year, reality will hit and plans to bring the troops home - for real - will become more than just a progressive talking point floating in the legislative ether.
However, less than two months after his bold pronouncement, the president slipped in a request for $76 billion in off-the-books war funds. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, July 27 @ 16:39:44 EDT (87 reads)
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| Spirituality: No Dominion: |
The Lonely, Dangerous Fight Against Christian Supremacists Inside the Armed Services
by: Matthew Harwood, t r u t h o u t | Report
In his fight against British imperialism, Mahatma Gandhi described the life cycle of successful civil disobedience: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mikey Weinstein, the 55-year-old founder of the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), likes to quote it, knowing full well he's crossed the line into a bloody-knuckle brawl. Over the past year, Weinstein and his organization have recorded a tremendous string of victories in the fight against Christian supremacists inside the armed forces.
In January, the MRFF broke the story on the Pentagon's Jesus Rifles, where rifle scopes used in Afghanistan and Iraq were embossed with New Testament verses. In April, he got the military to rescind its invitation to the Reverend Franklin Graham to speak at May's National Prayer Day because of Islamophobic remarks. Most shockingly, MRFF received its second nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in late October. These high-profile victories have earned him the enmity of the hardcore Christian Right and the mentally unstable. And the crazies are getting crazier. Weinstein and his family are bombarded with hate mail, from the grammatically incorrect and easy to dismiss - "I hope all your kids turn out gay as hell, take it in the ass, and get aids and die!!!!" - to the kind of threats that immediately make you leap out of your chair and double-check that the doors and windows are locked. (MRFF has referred multiple death threats on Mikey, his family, and MRFF employees to the FBI.) ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, July 12 @ 20:59:30 EDT (103 reads)
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| Action Alert: Witnessing Against Torture: Why We Must Act |
by: Kathy Kelly, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances--US Constitution Amendment I.
An old cliché says that anyone who has herself for a lawyer has a fool for a client. Nevertheless, going to trial in Washington, DC, this past June 14, I and 23 other defendants prepared a pro se defense. Acting as our own lawyers in court, we aimed to defend a population that finds little voice in our society at all, and to bring a sort of prosecution against their persecutors.
Months earlier, on January 21, we had held a memorial vigil for three innocent Guantanamo prisoners, recently revealed to have been in all probability tortured to death by our government with what would turn out to be utter impunity - and because we had wished the culpable parties to take notice, we'd staged a vigil where they worked, specifically, on the Capitol Steps and in the Rotunda of the US Capitol Building. We had been charged with causing a "breach of the peace," a technical legal term for a situation that might risk inciting people to violence. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, July 05 @ 14:01:03 EDT (107 reads)
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| Politics: The Pentagon's Threat to the Republic |
by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
The New York Times' David Brooks minimized General Stanley McChrystal's remarks in Rolling Stone magazine as "kvetching." For the Times' Maureen Dowd, McChrystal and his "smart-aleck aides" were merely engaging in "towel-snapping" jocularity. The Washington Post editorial board noted that Afghan President Hamid Karzai called McChrystal the "best commander of the war," and concluded that the general should be retained as the Afghan commander. The Post and Times' editorial boards have called for the replacement of President Obama's key civilian advisors on Afghanistan. Meanwhile, these papers and many others have downplayed the critical issue that dominates this sad affair - the fundamental importance of civilian supremacy in military policy and decision-making.
There is no more important task in political governance than making sure that civilian control of the military is not compromised and that the military remains subordinate to political authority. Unfortunately, President Obama has demonstrated too much deference to the military, retaining the Bush administration's secretary of defense as his own; appointing too many retired and active-duty general officers to such key civilian positions as national security adviser and intelligence tsar; and making the Pentagon's budget sacrosanct in an age of restraint. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, June 29 @ 21:55:56 EDT (91 reads)
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| International: Human Experimentation at the Heart of Bush Admin's Torture Program |
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report
High-value detainees captured during the Bush administration's "war on terror," who were subjected to brutal torture techniques, were used as "guinea pigs" to gauge the effectiveness of various torture techniques, a practice that has raised troubling comparisons to Nazi-era human experimentation. according to a disturbing new report released by Physicians for Human Rights, an international doctors' organization.
PHR, based in Massachusetts, called on President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and the US Congress to launch investigations into the role of physicians and psychiatric experts in the monitoring and assessments of the brutal interrogations.
"Health professionals working for and on behalf of the CIA monitored the interrogations of detainees, collected and analyzed the results of [the] interrogations, and sought to derive generalizable inferences to be applied to subsequent interrogations," said the
27-page report, entitled "Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program." "Such acts may be seen as the conduct of research and experimentation by health professionals on prisoners, which could violate accepted standards of medical ethics, as well as domestic and international law. These practices could, in some cases, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity." ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, June 07 @ 20:30:00 EDT (133 reads)
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| International: Brave Israeli Commandos Slaughter Aid Activists at Sea |
by Stephen Lendman
Even America's major media can't duck a crime this grave - attacking and slaughtering up to 20 Gaza Freedom Flotilla activists and injuring dozens more.
New York Times writer Isabel Kershner headlined "At Least 10 Killed as Israel Intercepts Aid Flotilla, saying:
"The Israeli Navy raided a flotilla carrying thousands of tons of supplies for Gaza in international waters on Monday morning....The incident drew widespread international condemnation, with Israeli envoys summoned to explain their country's actions in several European countries....The killings also coincided with preparations for a planned visit to Washington on Tuesday (June 1) by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu."
Late word is it's postponed.
The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times carried similar reports, trying, but hardly able to downplay a major crime.
The UK-based Stop the War Coalition called it "Yet another act of Israeli barbarism" in announcing an "emergency demonstration" at 2:00PM near the prime minister's Downing Street residence, saying spread the word and come.
In Gaza, thousands protested, expressing anger, outrage and sympathy, carrying banners condemning willful crimes, and calling for Arab solidarity. Similar demonstrations turned out in Amman, Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Ankara, Istanbul, Beirut and other regional cities. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Monday, May 31 @ 13:18:22 EDT (124 reads)
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| The News: Itching to Fight Another Muslim Enemy |
By Robert Parry
If you read the major American newspapers or watch the propaganda on cable TV, it’s pretty clear that the U.S. foreign policy Establishment is again spoiling for a fight, this time in Iran.
Just as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was the designated target of American hate in 2002 and 2003, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is playing that role now. Back then, any event in Iraq was cast in the harshest possible light; today, the same is done with Iran.
Anyone who dares suggest that the situation on the ground might not be as black and white as the Washington Post's editors claim it is must be an “apologist” for the enemy regime. It’s also not very smart for one’s reputation to question the certainty of the reporting in the New York Times, whether about Iraq’s “aluminum tubes” for nuclear centrifuges in 2002 or regarding Iran’s “rigged” election in 2009.
It’s much better for one’s career to clamber onto the confrontation bandwagon. Nobody in the major U.S. media or in politics will ever be hurt by talking tough and flexing muscles regarding some Muslim “enemy.” And, if the posturing leads to war, it will fall mostly to working-class kids to do the fighting and dying while the bills can be passed along to future generations. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, May 20 @ 21:22:24 EDT (117 reads)
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| International: Four Brothers Find Success Amid the Rubble of War |
by: Pam Bailey, t r u t h o u t | Report
With the never-ending stream of news about Israeli incursions, crushing poverty, skyrocketing unemployment and scarce health care, success stories coming out of Gaza may seem an oxymoron. But they are there - you just have to look a little harder for them. A case in point is the four Jadallah brothers.
Refugees since their grandparents were forced from their farm near Sderot in 1948 - the year of the Palestinian nakba (the "catastrophe" Israelis celebrate as the creation of their state) - the brothers grew up in Gaza City. As with most Gazans, their family is large - five sisters and three other brothers. But while two of the brothers were killed by Israeli soldiers in the First Intifada, Ahmed, Suhaib, Mohammed and Saleh are resisting the occupation using another "weapon" - their cameras.
The brothers are all photographers for Reuters, capturing on film what is perhaps the world's longest-running and "influential" human conflict. And on April 29, 25-year-old Mohammed will follow in the footsteps of Ahmed and Suhaib and receive a coveted World Press Photo Award. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Tuesday, April 27 @ 17:12:19 EDT (128 reads)
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| Screwed Again: Pentagon Continues to Use "Personality Disorder" Discharges |
To Cheat Veterans Out of Benefits
By Sherwood Ross
An army sergeant who had received 22 honors including a Combat Action Badge prior to being wounded in Iraq by a mortar shell was told he was faking his medical symptoms and subjected to abusive treatment until he agreed to a "personality disorder"(PD) discharge.
After a doctor with the First Cavalry division wrote he was out for "secondary gain," Chuck Luther was imprisoned in a six- by eight-foot isolation chamber, ridiculed by the guards, denied regular meals and showers and kept awake by perpetual lights and blasting heavy metal music---abuses similar to the punishments inflicted on terrorist suspects by the CIA.
"They told me I wasn't a real soldier, that I was a piece of crap. All I wanted was to be treated for my injuries," 12-year veteran Luther told reporter Joshua Kors of "The Nation" magazine. "Now suddenly I'm not a soldier. I'm a prisoner, by my own people. I felt like a caged animal in that room. That's when I started to lose it." The article is called "Disposable Soldiers: How the Pentagon is Cheating Wounded Vets."
Luther had been seven months into his deployment at Camp Taji, 20 miles north of Baghdad, when a mortal shell exploded at the base of his guard tower that knocked him down, slamming his head into the concrete. ...
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Posted by Blue1moon on Thursday, April 22 @ 20:35:04 EDT (126 reads)
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