militarism

Ellsberg Sees Vietnam-Like Risks In ISIS War

October 6, 2014 Barbara Koeppel, www.consortiumnews.com Educate! ISIS, militarism, Peace, US, Wars and Militarism

At a recent talk at the National Press Club in Washington DC, Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, says he believes there’s not one person in the Pentagon who would agree that President Obama can achieve his aim of destroying ISIS in Iraq and Syria with air strikes, along with training and arming local military forces. Nor, he says, can the Administration do it even if the U.S. sends ground troops, contrary to Obama’s repeated assurances. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg described the similarities with Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the near-certainty of comparable failure. I interviewed him after his talk, and updated the discussion this week, after the U.S. airstrikes inside Syria had begun. In his Press Club talk and with me, he read from some documents, as indicated below, and cited Web-links.

Official Washington’s Syrian ‘Fantasy’

October 3, 2014 Robert Parry, www.consortiumnews.com Educate! ISIS, militarism, Syria, US, Wars and Militarism

What does it say when the capital of the world’s most powerful nation anchors a major decision about war in what every thinking person acknowledges is a “fantasy” – even the principal policymaker and a top advocate for foreign interventions? It might suggest that the U.S. government has completely lost its bearings or that political opportunism now so overwhelms rationality that shortsighted expediency determines life-or-death military strategies. Either way, it is hard to see how the current U.S. policy toward Iraq, Syria and the larger Middle East can serve American national interests or translate into anything but more misery for the people of the region.

Veterans And Allies To Mark 13 Years Of Afghanistan War

October 1, 2014 Stop These Wars, www.stopthesewars.org Resist! militarism, Peace, Wars and Militarism

At 7 pm on October 7 veterans and their allies will gather again at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to lament 13 years of war in Afghanistan and to grieve for and remember a very special human being, one of the finest examples of resistance to war and the inhumanity that spawns war, Jacob George. We will play Jacob’s music, and members of Guitarmy, who marched with Jacob, will play some of his songs. We will remember and be motivated by this much beloved comrade’s life. We will also be there to affirm, once again, our right to assemble peacefully at this memorial at any hour. Chris Hedges and a few others will speak.

Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria

September 30, 2014 Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain, www.firstlook.org Educate! Government, ISIS, Media, militarism, Syria, Wars and Militarism

As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval. The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland.

Murder, Mass Incarceration, Militarization And Genocide In Progress

September 29, 2014 Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and Kevin Berends, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Law, Mass Incarceration, militarism, Racism

How does one explain the totality of: mass incarceration of healthy young black males in their most productive years; their falling to state-sponsored murder coast-to-coast; the impoverishment of black wealth through wholesale thievery by corporate and banking foreclosures, and the militarization of police forces arrayed nationwide against black communities? Were these crimes against African-Americans committed in a theater of war they would rise to the level of genocide as defined by the United Nations. The systematic and brutal execution of black men is illegal under domestic and international law. Under UN conventions this crime alone rises to the level of genocide as defined in international law under Article II.

Can A Treaty To Regulate Arms Trade Become Law?

September 29, 2014 Joel Jaeger, www.ipsnews.com Organize! Finance and Economy, militarism, United Nations, Wars and Militarism

With state support moving at an unprecedented pace, the Arms Trade Treaty will enter into force on Dec. 24, 2014, only 18 months after it was opened for signature. Eight states – Argentina, the Bahamas, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Saint Lucia, Portugal, Senegal and Uruguay – ratified the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at a special event at the United Nations this past Thursday, Sep. 25, pushing the number of states parties up to 53. As per article 22 of the treaty, the ATT comes into force as a part of international law 90 days after the 50th instrument of ratification is deposited.

Syria’s White Helmets — World’s Most Dangerous Job

September 27, 2014 Anna Lekas Miller, www.wagingnonviolence.org Organize! militarism, Peace, Syria

Although many of the residents of liberated areas like Aleppo and Idlib have fled, those that remain — often either the poorest and most vulnerable or most dedicated residents — experience daily indiscriminate shelling and aerial bombardments from the Assad regime, destroying neighborhoods and brutally killing and maiming civilians in the process. Despite the risk of a secondary bombing, a common regime tactic, the White Helmets immediately rush to the site of the bombing, moving aside concrete to pick out bodies and rush anyone who might still be alive to the hospital. “There used to be an uncertainty that a bomb could be dropped at any moments, and — if it happened to be dropped on your house — you would die,”Le Mesurier said. “Now there is hope amongst people that even if their building does collapse, they can be rescued.”

National Call: Save Civilian Public Education

September 22, 2014 Staff, www.savecivilianeducation.org Create! Education, militarism, Peace, Wars and Militarism

The national call introduction states: Over the last several decades, the Pentagon, conservative forces, and corporations have been systematically working to expand their presence in the K-12 learning environment and in public universities. The combined impact of the military, conservative think tanks and foundations, and of corporatization of our public educational systems has eroded the basic democratic concept of civilian public education. It is a trend that, if allowed to continue, will weaken the primacy of civilian rule and, ultimately, our country’s commitment to democratic ideals. The National Call suggests actions for foundations, organizations and individuals to take to implement the call.

Stop Giving Schools Military Hardware

September 20, 2014 Susan Ferriss, www.publicintegrity.org Organize! Education, militarism, Protest

More than 20 national education and civil rights advocates sent a letter Monday to Department of Defense officials, urging them to stop giving U.S. school police departments anti-mine vehicles, military-grade firearms like M16s, and even grenade launchers. News reports and lists of recipients of surplus hardware reveal that assault-style rifles, armored vehicles and other military supplies have been handed over to school districts large and small, from California, Texas, Nevada and Utah to Florida, Georgia, Kansas and Michigan. In California, the San Diego Unified School District acquired an 18-ton Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, called a MRAP, through the DOD’s 1033 program to transfer surplus supplies to civilian law enforcement.

Report: Stop Ignoring Wars, Militarization Impact On Climate Change

September 18, 2014 Staff, www.ipb.org/ Educate! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, militarism, Wars and Militarism

The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest industrial consumer of fossil fuels in the world. It is also the top arms exporter and military spender at $640 billion, which accounts for 37% of the total. Other western countries that are top military spenders like the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, have high carbon emissions per capita. Military expenditures are depriving the international community of the funds desperately needed to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. Over the past two decades, the developed countries have provided a paltry $12.5 billion for the Global Environmental Facility, one of the first funding mechanisms under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate (UNFCCC). In ten years, the Adaptation Fund has only disbursed $150 million to help developing countries, which are the most vulnerable and least responsible for climate change. In 2009 at the UNFCCC 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Copenhagen, developed countries made a commitment to raise $100 billion annually by 2020 for the Green Climate Fund to finance the national adaptation plans for developing countries. This is less than 1% of global annual military expenditures. Yet, wealthy, industrialized countries have failed to make adequate pledges to pay their climate debt.

What Your City Could Have Bought Instead Of Military Equipment

September 16, 2014 Cassie Owens, www.nextcity.org Educate! Ferguson, Finance and the Economy, militarism

It’s been a month since the shooting of Michael Brown, who was unarmed, black and 18 years old. Scenes of Ferguson in the days following his death drew constant comparisons to a war zone: officers decked out in camouflaged combat gear, some of them arriving by humvee, snipers planted on rooftops, tear-gas-filled streets, protesters treated with milk for their burns. Finally, the conversation reached Capitol Hill Tuesday in the first congressional hearing on the militarization of police. The long-awaited hearing comes as a congressman from suburban Atlanta, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) prepares to introduce the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act to restrict the flow of surplus military supplies from the Pentagon to local police departments. So this is a good time to think about how the taxpayer dollars now being spent on assault rifles and lumbering street warfare vehicles could otherwise be spent.

Militarized Cops Pretend To Fight Terrorists In Oakland

September 14, 2014 Julia Carrie Wong, www.vice.com Educate! militarism, Militarized police

The public side of Urban Shield is a two-day trade show at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Oakland—an event filled with the corporations that cater to “anyone who has a gun,” as a salesperson for Safariland described it to me. But away from the convention center, 35 teams of six to eight police officers—mostly from local police departments, but also including some from South Korea, Singapore, Philadelphia, and Texas—compete to see who can best respond to to 31 different terrorist or emergency scenarios at locations around the Bay Area. The teams rotate through the scenarios for 48 hours with just one scheduled 30-minute nap (on bunk beds in cells at the San Francisco County Jail). The question of whether Urban Shield is an essential training experience worth a significant investment of taxpayer money or a chance for grown men to run around and play war games was bubbling beneath the surface the whole time. Paul Hess, the ACSO Emergency Services Supervisor who gave me and a group of nine other journalists and corporate sponsors a tour, boasted that Urban Shield was the “largest terrorist field response anywhere in the country.” However, he went on to say, “Really what we’re building here is camaraderie. How often do we get to get into the field and exchange and play with other agencies?”

Warning To War Supporters

September 11, 2014 David Swanson, www.warisacrime.org Educate! Environment, militarism, Wars and Militarism

I know you mean well. I know you think you've found a bargain that nobody else noticed hidden in a back corner of the used car lot. Let me warn you: it's a clunker. Here, I'll list the defects. You can have your own mechanic check them out: 1. If you want to bomb a country every time an evil group murders people in a gruesome manner, you'll have to bomb a lot of countries including our own. ISIS draws its strength in Iraq from resentment of the Iraqi government, which bombs its own cities using U.S. weapons, and which beheads people, albeit in grainier footage with lower production values. Allies in the region, including allies that support ISIS, including allies armed by the United States (some of which arms end up in the hands of ISIS), themselves behead people regularly. But is that worse than other types of killing? When President Barack Obama blew up a 16 year old American boy whom nobody had ever accused of so much as jaywalking, and blew up six other kids who were too close to him at the time, do you imagine his head remained on his body?

ISIS Needs To Be Debated In Congress And UN

September 10, 2014 Mark Weisbrot, www.thehill.com Organize! Congress, ISIS, militarism, United Nations, Wars and Militarism

The “Islamic State,” or ISIS as others refer to them, present themselves to the world as an enemy that hardly anyone can stomach. Like villains in a Batman movie, they announce threats to the entire world, releasing gruesome videos of their killings to show that they are serious and without mercy. They proclaim the right to kill apostates and infidels who do not share their brand of extremist religion. For these reasons, it is not surprising that President Obama has been able to send 1,200 soldiers back to Iraq and carry out more than 100 airstrikes, and commit himself to a longer engagement, without authorization from the U.S. Congress. But the United States is still a constitutional democracy, or is intended to be one; and under our Constitution (and the War Powers Resolution) it is still the Congress that has to decide if the country is going to war. It is interesting that many pundits who are quick to criticize Latin American “populist” governments for skirting the mandates of their own constitutions (or even for creating new constitutions through a democratic process) do not apply the same standards to the United States. What constitutional mandate is more important than the one to protect the people from their rulers sending them to die in unnecessary wars?

18-year-old Abused At Trial In Egypt

September 10, 2014 Joanna Kiernan, www.independent.ie Resist! Egypt, Human Rights, Law, militarism

An Irish student locked up in Egypt for more than a year has told how he was beaten up, spat on and dragged down the stairs of a courthouse by his jailers after his latest trial appearance ended in farce. Ibrahim Halawa (18) detailed the shocking abuse in handwritten letters he penned from his Cairo cell to well-wishers who have supported him since he was detained in August last year. Referring to his trial on August 12 last, which was dramatically abandoned mid-hearing, Ibrahim writes: "I didn't get to talk to my lawyer and the court cage was sound-proof (the one I didn't even enter) which is also illegal. We refused to leave until we get to see a judge as a result we were beaten up, dragged down the stairs, handcuffed in threes, we were spat on and all this just because we refused to leave until we were to see a judge." However, Ibrahim assured his supporters he is remaining positive in spite of his ordeal. "After what I went through I returned to the cell joking trying to lighten up the mood because of what I learned I cannot show my enemy I am weak, as they say, 'build a brick wall from the bricks thrown at you by your enemy'. This does not mean that I did not return feeling down and very depressed," he wrote.

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