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More Clapp-trap: Senate Hearing on Russian Election Mischief Again Fails to Prove Anything
By Dave Lindorff
The Russian hacking hysteria in the US media and, surprisingly, among educated liberals (who should know better after years of government lies and deceit, particularly about foreign affairs), is becoming increasingly embarrassing.
Opening salvo: Get Ready for an All-Out Assault on Social Security by Washington in 2017
By Dave Lindorff
To Weapons Dealers, Laws Are Decorative Holiday Ornaments
You might be forgiven for imagining that laws are serious things. When you violate them, you can be locked in a cage for decades. That’s not true for big-time weapons dealers like the U.S. government.
Two years after the creation of the Arms Trade Treaty, the news is that it’s failing in Yemen. I’m hard pressed to see why it isn’t, thus far, failing everywhere. The weapons dealers keep dealing weapons by the tens of billions of dollars exactly as if nothing has changed.
Here (courtesy of the CIA-funded Amazon data cloud) is the key text of the treaty:
“. . . A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms . . . if it has knowledge at the time of authorization that the arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a Party . . . .”
The dominant weapons dealer, the U.S. government, has not ratified the Arms Trade Treaty. The second-place dealer in instruments of death, Russia, has not either. Neither has China. Certainly France, the United Kingdom, and Germany have ratified it, but they seem to have little difficulty ignoring it. They’ve even ratified the convention on cluster bombs but, at least in the case of the UK, ignore that one too. (The U.S. has temporarily paused its sales of cluster bombs, but not ratified the treaty.)
And another 87 nations have ratified the Arms Trade Treaty, none of which do any significant weapons dealing on the scale of the top 6, but plenty of which violate the treaty in their own small ways.
The U.S. has very similar laws on its own books already and long has. Ignoring them, or taking advantage of the ability to waive them, has become routine. The United States is far and away the biggest seller of weapons, giver of weapons, producer of weapons, buyer of weapons, deliverer of weapons to poor countries, and deliverer of weapons to the Middle East. It sells or gives weapons to all types of nations just as if no restrictions applied. Yet, here are some U.S. laws almost pretty enough to frame on the wall:
“No assistance shall be furnished under this Act or the Arms Export Control Act to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights. . . .
“. . . Of the amounts made available to the Department of Defense, none may be used for any training, equipment, or other assistance for a unit of a foreign security force if the Secretary of Defense has credible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”
And there’s this one:
“The prohibitions contained in this section apply with respect to a country if the Secretary of State determines that the government of that country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism. . . .”
This one may actually have been written with the assistance of medical marijuana:
“No [weaponry] shall be sold or leased by the United States Government under this chapter to any country or international organization . . . unless —
(1) the President finds that the furnishing . . . to such country or international organization will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace. . . .”
This may come as shocking news, but none of the weapons sales made by the United States or any other nation thus far in the history of the world has promoted world peace. None has reduced — on the contrary, all have increased — terrorism. All have constituted gross violations of human rights. All have been transferred with knowledge that they would be used against civilians and in violation of international laws. Here are a few of those laws:
“. . . the Signatory Powers agree to use their best efforts to insure the pacific settlement of international differences. In case of serious disagreement or conflict, before an appeal to arms, the Signatory Powers agree to have recourse, as far as circumstances allow, to the good offices or mediation of one or more friendly Powers.”
The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928:
“The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.”
“All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. . . .”
The United States has temporarily halted some of its weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, while continuing others and continuing to actively wage war alongside Saudi Arabia against the people of Yemen. This is no more or less a violation of law and morality than U.S. weapons sales to Iraq or South Korea or (gifts to) Israel or the United States itself. No amount of lawyerly rejiggering of terminology, selective definition of “terrorism,” or narrowing of what counts as a “human right” can change that.
Yet the shoplifters go to jail while the weapons dealers walk free. None of the death dealing nations solves or even strives to solve its disputes by pacific means any more than every heroin user is a model citizen, yet the weapons — like the drugs — keep flowing.
The International Criminal Court denies itself the right to prosecute the crime of war (only “war crimes”) or to challenge the U.N.’s dominant powers (coincidentally the world’s major weapons dealers) or to prosecute crimes by non-members of the ICC committed in the territories of non-members. Yet when Barack Obama drone-murders people in the Philippines (a member), the ICC is silent. And in Afghanistan (another member) it suggests that it might someday see fit to open a prosecution.
Obviously the answer to this charade is not utter lawlessness. Here are some partial answers:
Tell the ICC to prosecute all criminals equally.
Build pressure for divestment from weapons dealers.
Book review/essay: Morally Surviving America’s War on Vietnam
By Johhn Grant
The War I Survived Was Vietnam: Collected Writings of a Veteran and Antiwar Activist
Focus: The Pentagon - Dec 20, 2016
McCain slams $13B in Pentagon spending in latest waste report - TheHill
REPORT: America’s Most Wasted - mccain.senate.gov
F-35 chief: Loose bracket sparked fire on Marine Corps plane - defensenews.com
F-35's $400K helmet still blinds pilots on night flights - DoD Buzz
The F-35: What’s left to fix? - Aviation Week
F-16 designer: Applauds Trump, says each F-35 ‘harms American air power’ - Sputnik
VIDEO: F-35 pilot interview; Why did F35 lost to F16 - YouTube
Despite problems, F-35’s first test pilot still believes in the stealth fighter - Fresno Bee
Northrop's new combat drone could outclass Boeing F/A-18, Lockheed F-35 -- The Motley Fool
Unilateral negotiations still in play for F-35 contract with Lockheed Martin - flightglobal.com
Lockheed Martin wins contract for F-35 logistics - Pacific Coast Business Times
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The F-35 gets a big win as Israel scores $38 Billion in US military aid - The Fiscal Times
Is the F-35 deal a dud for Israel? - israelrising.com
F-35 meet Russia’s stealth fighter T-50 - JewishPress.com
America’s F-35 fighter jet vs China’s J-20: A comparison - Business Insider
China’s J-20 ‘stealth’ fighter is inferior to the US F-35, lets slip Chinese expert - Chinatopix
Special battle of stealth fighters: F-35 vs China J-31 & Russia T-50 - Scout
To contact Bartolo email peaceloverblog[at]yahoo[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)
Talk Nation Radio: Vincent Emanuele on Wars for Oil Companies; Robert Alvarez on Department of Energy for Nuclear Weapons
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Vincent Emanuele joined the United States Marine Corps as a squad automatic machine gunner in 2002. After two combat-deployments in Iraq, he refused orders for a third and immediately began organizing with Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War.
In 2008, Vince testified to Congress at the Winter Soldier Hearings on Capitol Hill, where he provided detailed accounts of war crimes, atrocities, drug abuse and sexual assault within the military.
See https://www.facebook.com/vincentjr.emanuele
Emanuele is just back from Standing Rock and discusses environmental and antiwar strategy. This show contains the second half of a discussion begun last week.
Robert Alvarez is a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. and an Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced Strategic International Studies. He is considered one of the nation’s preeminent experts on civilian and military nuclear programs.
Between 1993 and 1999, Mr. Alvarez served as Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy.Between 1988 and 1993, Mr. Alvarez served on the Majority Staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, chaired by Senator John Glenn (D-OH).
His work has appeared in Ambio, Science and Global Security, Science, the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, Issues in Science and Technology (the magazine of the National Academy of Sciences), the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Technology Review, the Washington Post, the Nation, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post and other publications. Mr. Alvarez won the John Barlow Martin Award for Public Interest Journalism and has been featured on CBS “60 minutes,” the PBS NOVA show, NPR’s All Things Considered, the New York Times, and several documentary films.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.
Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!
Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
http://TalkNationRadio.org
VIDEO: Militarizing Police and a Policelike Military
C-Span Video is here.
Speakers:
Jamani Montague
Jamani Montague is a student activist at Emory University, studying International Studies and Environmental Science. Her research interests include race theory, prison ecology, comparative politics and eco-colonialism. Jamani is the Prison Advocacy Coordinator for RootsAction.org, where she works closely with prisoners, the media, and legal activists to bring civil and environmental justice to those behind bars. She plans to pursue a PhD in Environmental Health Studies and eventually teach in universities and prisons.
David Swanson
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie and When the World Outlawed War. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
Leah Muskin-Pierret
Leah is an activist working on challenging U.S. militarism in the Middle East. She focuses on ending U.S. complicity in Israeli apartheid to make way for Palestinian liberation. She hopes to chip away steadily at the military industrial complex until that day when activists have all the resources they need and the military needs to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.
Miriam Pemberton
Miriam Pemberton is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She directs its Peace Economy Transitions Project which focuses on helping to build the foundations of a postwar economy at the federal, state and local levels. She co-chairs the Budget Priorities Working Group, the principal information-sharing collaboration of U.S. NGOs working on reducing Pentagon spending.
In addition to articles and opeds, her publications include two report series. “Military vs. Climate Security” compares federal spending on the two security domains, and argues for a shift of security resources toward mitigating climate change. “A Unified Security Budget for the United States” examined the balance of spending on military forces, homeland security and non-military foreign engagement and argues for a rebalanced security budget.
With William Hartung of the New America Foundation, she is co-editor of the book Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Publishers, 2008). Formerly she was editor, researcher and finally director of the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Focus: The Pentagon - Dec 12, 2016
Lockheed Martin says company already cut F-35 costs - Reuters
Lockheed shares fall after Trump tweets about F-35 jet costs - CBS News
Defense ETFs are under fire from Trump - ETF Trends
F-35 jets bound for Israel grounded due to their inability to take off in bad weather - CNNPolitics.com
Misleading F-35 answers drafted by Pentagon, testing chief says - Bloomberg
Oversight panel demands answers on Pentagon waste report - TheHill
Letter of House Oversight Committee members to Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Pentagon waste report - oversight.house.gov
Congress creates new DoD Chief Management Officer, whose primary job will be overseeing and reforming DoD headquarters functions - FederalNewsRadio.com
Final NDAA trims civilian and military jobs in DoD - FederalNewsRadio.com
DoD stuck with too many acquisition reforms and not enough staff - FederalNewsRadio.com
Pentagon taking a more serious look at off-the-shelf technology, Buy technology that is already available rather than spend money a new one - nationaldefensemagazine.org
Senate passes annual defense policy bill, sending it to Obama for his signature - The Boston Globe
Ashton Carter essay: The Pentagon must think outside of its five-sided box - The National Interest
To contact Bartolo email peaceloverblog[at]yahoo[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)
The fake campaign to blame “the Russians”: Democratic Losers and their Media Backers Seek a Scapegoat for Their Own Disaster
By Dave Lindorff
A return to McCarthyism: Rather than Exposing Propaganda, Washington Post Shows How It’s Done
By Dave Lindorff
Focus: The Pentagon - Dec 6, 2016
Congress wants hearing on Pentagon wasteful spending charges - TheHill
Chaffetz: Congress will ‘absolutely’ look at $125B in waste at Pentagon - TheHill
Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work’s response to The Washington Post - Washington Post
REPORT: Focusing a Transition, Challenges Facing the New Administration: A report by the Defense Business Board - FederalNewsRadio.com
ARCHIVE: Auditor finds U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, it lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up - Reuters
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VIDEO: Trump accuses Boeing of doing a little bit of a number with new Air Force One - YouTube
Boeing said to offer talks on Air Force One after Trump tweets - Bloomberg Politics
White House: New Air Force One will benefit future presidents - TheHill
Air Force grounds ‘combat ready’ F-35 over coolant line flaw - Bloomberg Politics
Yet another F-35 fighter catches fire, The incident did at least two million dollars in damage - popularmechanics.com
When pork flies: The F-35, the Pentagon’s $1.1 trillion flying money pit, is (sort of) ready for duty - Salon.com
The Pentagon is planning a new super rival to the troubled F-35 - The Fiscal Times
House lawmakers push for more F-35 funding in FY17 budget - defensenews.com
Acquisition Chief: Littoral Combat Ship program ‘broke' the Navy, is costing taxpayers billions more than budgeted - Military.com
VIDEO: Congressional hearing focuses Navy's use of Littoral Combat Ships - C-SPAN.org
Navy's troubled Littoral Combat Ship at crossroads, GAO says - Stripes
To contact Bartolo email peaceloverblog[at]yahoo[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)
Confessions of an alleged ‘propagandist’: Slimed by the Washington Post in ‘False News’ McCarthyite Hit on Alternative Media
By Dave Lindorff
Wounded Knee III in the making?: It’s Cowboy Cops Cavalry against Peaceful Indians and their Anglo Supporters at Standing Rock
By Dave Lindorff
Note on Tulsi Gabbard's Meeting with Donald Trump
I am delighted that Tulsi Gabbard met with Donald Trump. This is Tulsi Gabbard's statement on Trump meeting. She may be considered for top jobs at the Defense Department, State Department and the United Nations, according to media reports. The U.S. foreign policy needs to be managed by people who is not prone to ill-fated military adventures, do not use U.S. military superpower to satisfy their political ambitions, seek wholeheartedly peaceful solutions of the world conflicts, understand that we live more and more in a multipolar world where U.S. influence may be limited like in Syria, work to build the broadest possible alliances to defeat today’s existential threat: Islamic State, Qaeda and other terrorist groups. I add that people at the Defense Department must be fully independent from defense contractors whose special interests are to sell whatever arms to the nation and the world, meticulously check profiteering and cost overruns on major weapons systems and cut wasteful spending. The defense industry, in any country, is a factor in promoting and fueling military conflicts because it economically thrives in a perpetual state of war. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned the U.S. about the dangers of the "military–industrial complex" in his 1961 farewell address.
To contact Bartolo email peaceloverblog[at]yahoo[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)
James Mattis Is a Secretary of Offense
Donald Trump says he wants to stop overthrowing governments and turn toward peace. But not only does he also say he wants to increase the military spending that produces more wars, but he’s considering for Secretary of so-called Defense someone whose entire outlook is offensive in every sense of the word.
Here’s James Mattis in his own words:
“So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. Actually it’s quite fun to fight them, you know. It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up there with you. I like brawling.”
Of course any wars continued or launched will be packaged as “last resorts” and “necessary evils” and so forth. But this guy will be drooling for blood with the glee of a sadist. War is his drug, or what Donald Trump would call his “sneaking into women’s dressing rooms.” Here’s Mattis:
“There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It’s really great.”
Not only is war the force that gives Mattis’s life meaning, but it’s his ideology, his worldview, his delusion in which the counterproductive can be seen as effective. Here’s Mattis:
“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
Surely peace is at hand!
“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” That’s how Mattis states what Theodore Roosevelt and every president since have acted on.
Only, one gets the impression that Mattis added the part about politeness because he isn’t. What he is, is a true believer in the irredeemability of designated enemies. There shall be no destroying an enemy by making him your friend for Mattis. He maintains:
“It is mostly a matter of wills. Whose will is going to break first? Ours or the enemy’s?”
And that enemy is by necessity, then, not human but subhuman prey:
“Be the hunter, not the hunted: Never allow your unit to be caught with its guard down.”
Mattis explains this as a matter of simple observation:
“There are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot.”
That’s a belief of U.S. culture, of U.S. movies, of U.S. books, of U.S. games. But when you make it the belief of the Secretary of War after giving presidents the power to kill anybody they like, you’re going to see a lot of people getting shot. And no, none of them need to be.
The president’s last con: Obama Falsely Claims He ‘Can’t Pardon’ Snowden Unless the Whistleblower Returns to US to Face Trial
By Dave Lindorff
Lobbyist for Dakota Access Formerly Led Army's "Restore Iraqi Oil" Program
Photo Credit: C-SPAN Screenshot
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Robert Crear, one of the lobbyists working for Dakota Access pipeline co-owners Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics, formerly served as a chief of staff and commanding general for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Talk Nation Radio: James Marc Leas on Canceling the F-35
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-james-marc-leas-on-canceling-the-f-35
James Marc Leas is a founding member of the Stop the F-35 Coalition in Burlington Vermont. He has published some two dozen articles on the F-35 and F-35 basing. To highlight the F-35 issue statewide, he ran for the office of Vermont Adjutant General, the leader of the Vermont National Guard, in 2013, which is elected by the legislature.
Before becoming a patent attorney James was an engineer at IBM, and he holds over 40 patents for his inventions. While an IBM employee he led a vigorous campaign among employees to end IBM sales to South Africa. He also served as a staff physicist for the Union of Concerned Scientists in its Washington, DC office for a year in the aftermath of the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. He is a graduate of MIT and completed all but the dissertation toward a PhD in physics from the University of Massachusetts. He is a member of the Vermont Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the National Lawyers Guild.
Sign the petition to cancel the F-35:
https://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12514
Learn more:
http://stopthef35.com
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.
Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!
Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
http://TalkNationRadio.org
The choice this year is easy: Why No Leftist, Progressive or Liberal Should Vote for Hillary Clinton
By Dave Lindorff
With one week to go in this year’s presidential election -- an astonishing and depressing contest in which the two least-liked and least-trusted candidates in history are the two choices put up by our two main political parties -- it’s time to look at why left and liberal people should not vote for the Democratic Party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton.
This Natural Disaster Assistance Law Is Why Other States Are Policing Dakota Access Pipeline Protests
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Almost exactly 20 years ago, President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill creating an interstate agreement for emergency management. That inconspicuous law has opened the door for the current flood of out-of-state law enforcement agents present at the continuing protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota.
Lost drug war: Pot Decriminalization Yields $9-million in Savings for Philadelphia
By Linn Washington, Jr.
A vivid example of value from decriminalization of possessing small amounts of marijuana occurred at the Philadelphia airport recently, a few days after the release of a report from two prominent organizations that called for the national decriminalization of personal use/possession of marijuana and other illicit drugs.
Abusing the abused: Philly Police Abuse Case Typifies All-Too-Common Misconduct by US Prosecutors
By Linn Washington, Jr.
Dear General Dynamics, Stop Profiting from Slaughter of Human Beings
[Letter from those signed below]
This is the letter our Phoenix-based End the War Coalition delivered this morning to a supervisor at the local General Dynamics Plant in Scottsdale, Arizona. Feel free to modify it and deliver it to the General Dynamics factory near you.
General Dynamics Mission System
8201 E. McDowell Road
Scottsdale, AZ 85257
October 17, 2016
[return address]
Dear Chief Executive Officer:
We members of the metropolitan Phoenix-based End the War Coalition call on General Dynamics to stop the immoral practice of selling weapons, including tanks and white phosphorus, to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy which is a major exporter of Wahhabism-based terrorism around the world, an abuser of religious minorities, migrants, women, LBGT people and peaceful protestors, has been using these weapons in its war of aggression against Yemen which started in March 2015.
Between March 2015 and 2016, Saudi Arabia massacred over 6,000 people in this war, and at least half of them were civilians. The United Nations has called the humanitarian situation in Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, a catastrophe. Four out of five Yemenis today rely on humanitarian assistance for their survival. There is no access to essential services such as clean water and electricity, and food prices have soared creating a desperate situation for millions.
Sex, lies, videotape...and hacked emails: Debate #2 Lost by Hillary Clinton on Points
By Dave Lindorff
Keywords to add to all electronic communications: As the Surveillance Expands, Best Way to Resist is to Bury the NSA in Garbage
By Dave Lindorff
Word that Yahoo! last year, at the urging of the National Security Agency, secretly developed a program that monitored the mail of all 280 million of its customers and turned over to the NSA all mail from those who used any of the agency's thousands of keywords, shows that the US has become a total police state in terms of trying to monitor every person in the country (and outside too).
A scandal that reveals more than it says: Yahoo Scanned All Users’ Mail for the Government
By Alfredo Lopez
If you are one of the approximately 280 million people with Yahoo email accounts, your email was scanned for content and possibly turned over to the U.S. government. Yahoo, on Tuesday, admitted that fact.
