Teaching Peace

The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World (1961)

2010-02-11T13:26:00.000-08:00

WHAT HAPPENED??? THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX TOOK OVER!!!

http://www.mikenew.com/pub7277.html

THE UNITED STATES PROGRAM
FOR GENERAL AND COMPLETE
DISARMAMENT IN A PEACEFUL
WORLD

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

DEPARTMENT OF STATE PUBLICATION 7277
Disarmament Series 5
Released September 1961

Office of Public Services
BUREAU OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Washington 25, D.C. - Price 15 cents.

Introduction

The revolutionary development of modern weapons within a world divided by serious ideological differences has produced a crisis in human history. In order to overcome the danger of nuclear war now confronting mankind, the United States has introduced at the Sixteenth General Assembly of the United Nations a Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World.
This new program provides for the progressive reduction of the war-making capabilities of nations and the simultaneous strengthening of international institutions to settle disputes and maintain the peace. It sets forth a series of comprehensive measures which can and should he taken in order to bring about a world in which there will be freedom from war and security for all states. It is based on three principles deemed essential to the achievement of practical progress in the disarmament field:

First, there must be immediate disarmament action:

A strenuous and uninterrupted effort must be made toward the goal of general and complete disarmament; at the same time, it is important that specific measures be put into effect as soon as possible.

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Second, all disarmament obligations must be subject
to effective international controls:

The control organization must have the manpower, facilities, and effectiveness to assure that limitations or reductions take place as agreed. It must also be able to certify to all states that retained forces and armaments do not exceed those permitted at any stage of the disarmament process.

Third, adequate peace-keeping machinery must be established:

There is an inseparable relationship between the scaling down of national armaments on the one hand and the building up of international peace-keeping machinery and institutions on the other. Nations are unlikely to shed their means of self-protection in the absence of alternative ways to safeguard their legitimate interests. This can only be achieved through the progressive strengthening of international institutions under the United Nations and by creating a United Nations Peace Force to enforce the peace as the disarmament process proceeds.

There follows a summary of the principal provisions of the United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World.The full text of the program is contained in an appendix to this pamphlet.

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FREEDOM FROM WAR

THE UNITED STATES PROGRAM FOR
GENERAL AND COMPLETE DISARM-
AMENT IN A PEACEFUL WORLD

Summary

DISARMAMENT GOAL AND OBJECTIVES

The over-all goal of the United States is a free, secure, and peaceful world of independent states adhering to common standards of justice and international conduct and subjecting the use of force to the rule of law; a world which has achieved general and complete disarmament under effective international control; and a world in which adjustment to change takes place in accordance with the principles of the United Nations.
In order to make possible the achievement of that goal, the program sets forth the following specific objectives toward which nations should direct their efforts:
The disbanding of all national armed forces and the prohibition of their reestablishment in any form whatsoever other than those required to preserve internal order and for contributions to a United Nations Peace Force;

The elimination from national arsenals of all armaments, including all weapons of mass destruction and

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the means for their delivery, other than those required for a United Nations Peace Force and for maintaining internal order;

The institution of effective means for the enforcement of international agreements, for the settlement of disputes, and for the maintenance of peace in accordance with the principles of the United Nations;

The establishment and effective operation of an International Disarmament Organization within the framework of the United Nations to insure compliance at all times with all disarmament obligations.

TASK OF NEGOTIATING STATES

The negotiating states are called upon to develop the program into a detailed plan for general and complete disarmament and to continue their efforts without interruption until the whole program has been achieved. To this end, they are to seek the widest possible area of agreement at the earliest possible date. At the same time, and without prejudice to progress on the disarmament program, they are to seek agreement on those immediate measures that would contribute to the common security of nations and that could facilitate and form part of the total program.

GOVERNING PRINCIPLES

The program sets forth a series of general principles to guide the negotiating states in their work. These make clear that:

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As states relinquish their arms, the United Nations must be progressively strengthened in order to improve its capacity to assure international security and the peaceful settlement of disputes;

Disarmament must proceed as rapidly as possible, until it is completed, in stages containing balanced, phased, and safeguarded measures;

Each measure and stage should be carried out in an agreed period of time, with transition from one stage to the next to take place as soon as all measures in the preceding stage have been carried out and verified and as soon as necessary arrangements for verification of the next stage have been made;

Inspection and verification must establish both that nations carry out scheduled limitations or reductions and that they do not retain armed forces and armaments in excess of those permitted at any stage of the disarmament process; and

Disarmament must take place in a manner that will not affect adversely the security of any state.

DISARMAMENT STAGES

The program provides for progressive disarmament steps to take place in three stages and for the simultaneous strengthening of international institutions.

FIRST STAGE

The first stage contains measures which would significantly reduce the capabilities of nations to wage

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aggressive war. Implementation of this stage would mean that:
The nuclear threat would be reduced:

All states would have adhered to a treaty effectively prohibiting tile testing of nuclear weapons.
The production of fissionable materials for use in weapons would be stopped and quantities of such materials from past production would be converted to non-weapons uses.
States owning nuclear weapons would not relinquish control of such weapons to any nation not owning them and would not transmit to any such nation information or material necessary for their manufacture.
States not owning nuclear weapons would no~ manufacture them or attempt to obtain control of such weapons belonging to other states.
A Commission of Experts would be established to report on the feasibility and means for the verified reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons stockpiles.
Strategic delivery vehicles would he reduced:

Strategic nuclear weapons delivery vehicles of specified categories and weapons designed to counter such vehicles would be reduced to agreed levels by equitable and balanced steps; their production would be discontinued or limited; their testing would be limited or halted.

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Arms and armed forces would be reduced:
The armed forces of the United States and the Soviet Union would be limited to 2.1 million men each (with appropriate levels not exceeding that amount for other militarily significant states); levels of armaments would be correspondingly reduced and their production would be limited.
An Experts Commission would be established to examine and report on the feasibility and means of accomplishing verifiable reduction and eventual elimination of all chemical, biological and radiological weapons.

Peaceful use of outer space would be promoted:

The placing in orbit or stationing in outer space of weapons capable of producing mass destruction would be prohibited.
States would give advance notification of space vehicle and missile launchings.

U.N. peace-keeping powers would be strengthened:

Measures would be taken to develop and strengthen United Nations arrangements for arbitration, for the development of international law, and for the establishment in Stage II of a permanent U.N. Peace Force.

An International Disarmament Organization would be established for
effective verification of the disarmament program:

Its functions would be expanded progressively as disarmament proceeds.

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It would certify to all states that agreed reductions have taken place and that retained forces and armaments do not exceed permitted levels.
It would determine the transition from one stage to the next.

States would he committed to other measures to reduce international tension and to protect against the chance of war by accident, miscalculation, or surprise attack:

States would be committed to refrain from the threat or use of any type of armed force contrary to the principles of the U.N. Charter and to refrain from indirect aggression and subversion against any country.
A U.N. peace observation group would be available to investigate any situation which might constitute a threat to or breach of the peace.
States would be committed to give advance notice of major military movements which might cause alarm; observation posts would be established to report on concentrations and movements of military forces.

SECOND STAGE

The second stage contains a series of measures which would bring within sight a world in which there would be freedom from war. Implementation of all measures in the second stage would mean:
Further substantial reductions in the armed forces, armaments, and military establishments of states, including strategic nuclear weapons delivery vehicles and countering weapons;

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Further development of methods for the peaceful settlement of disputes under the United Nations;

Establishment of a permanent international peace force within the United Nations;
Depending on the findings of an Experts Commission, a halt in the production of chemical, bacteriological, and radiological weapons and a reduction of existing stocks or their conversion to peaceful uses;

On the basis of the findings of an Experts Commission, a reduction of stocks of nuclear weapons;

The dismantling or the conversion to peaceful uses of certain military bases and facilities wherever located; and

The strengthening and enlargement of the International Disarmament Organization to enable it to verify the steps taken in Stage II and to determine the transition to Stage III.

THIRD STAGE

During the third stage of the program, the states of the world, building on the experience and confidence gained in successfully implementing the measures of the first two stages, would take final steps toward the goal of a world in which:
States would retain only those forces, non-nuclear armaments, and establishments required for the purpose of maintaining internal order; they would also support and provide agreed manpower for a U.N. Peace Force.

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The U.N. Peace Force, equipped with agreed types and quantities of armaments, would be fully functioning.

The manufacture of armaments would be prohibited except for those of agreed types and quantities to be used by the U.N. Peace Force and those required to maintain internal order. All other armaments would be destroyed or converted to peaceful purposes.

The peace-keeping capabilities of the United Nations would be sufficiently strong and the obligations of all states under such arrangements sufficiently far reaching as to assure peace and tile just settlement of differences in a disarmed world.

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Appendix

DECLARATION ON DISARMAMENT

THE UNITED STATES PROGRAM FOR
GENERAL AND COMPLETE DISARMA-
MENT IN A PEACEFUL WORLD

The Nations of the world,
Conscious of the crisis in human history produced by the revolutionary development of modern weapons within a world divided by serious ideological differences;
Determined to save present and succeeding generations from the scourge of war and the dangers and burdens of the arms race and to create conditions in which all peoples can strive freely and peacefully to fulfill their basic aspirations;
Declare their goal to be: A free, secure, and peaceful world of independent states adhering to common standards of justice and international conduct and subjecting the use of force to the rule of law; a world where adjustment to change takes place in accordance with the principles of the United Nations; a world where there shall be a permanent state of general and complete disarmament under effective international control and where the resources of nations shall be devoted to man's material, cultural, and spiritual advance;
Set forth as the objectives of a program of general and complete disarmament in a peaceful world:
(a) The disbanding of all national armed forces and the prohibition of their reestablishment in any form whatsoever other than those required to preserve internal order and for contributions to a United Nations Peace Force;

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(b) The elimination from national arsenals of all armaments, including all weapons of mass destruction and the means for their delivery, other than those required for a United Nations Peace Force and for maintaining internal order;
(c) The establishment and effective operation of an International Disarmament Organization within the framework of the United Nations to ensure compliance at all times with all disarmament obligations;
(d) The institution of effective means for the enforcement of international agreements, for the settlement of disputes, and for the maintenance of peace in accordance with the principles of the United Nations.
Call on the negotiating states:
(a) To develop the outline program set forth below into an agreed plan for general and complete disarmament and to continue their efforts without interruption until the whole program has been achieved;
(b) To this end to seek to attain the widest possible area of agreement at the earliest possible date;
(c) Also to seek -- without prejudice to progress on the disarmament program -- agreement on those immediate measures that would contribute to the common security of nations and that could facilitate and form a part of that program.
Affirm that disarmament negotiations should be guided by the following principles:
(a) Disarmament shall take place as rapidly as possible until it is completed in stages containing balanced, phased and safeguarded measures, with each measure and stage to be carried out in an agreed period of time.
(b) Compliance with all disarmament obligations shall be effectively verified from their entry into force. Verification arrangements shall be instituted progressively and in such a manner as to verify not only that agreed limitations or reductions take place but also that retained armed forces and armaments do not exceed agreed levels at any stage.
(c) Disarmament shall take place in a manner that will not

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affect adversely the security of any state, whether or not a party to an international agreement or treaty.
(d) As states relinquish their arms, the United Nations shall he progressively strengthened in order to improve its capacity to assure international security and the peaceful settlement of differences as well as to facilitate the development of international cooperation in common tasks for the benefit of mankind.
(e) Transition from one stage of disarmament to the next shall take place as soon as all the measures in the preceding stage have been carried out and effective verification is continuing and as soon as the arrangements that have been agreed to be necessary for the next stage have been instituted.
Agree upon the following outline program for achieving general and complete disarmament:

STAGE I

A. To Establish an International Disarmament Organization:
(a) An International Disarmament Organization (IDO) shall he established within the framework of the United Nations upon entry into force of the agreement. Its functions shall be expanded progressively as required for the effective verification of the disarmament program.
(b) The IDO shall have: (1) a General Conference of all the parties; (2) a Commission consisting of representatives of all the major powers as permanent members and certain other states on a rotating basis; and (3) an Administrator who will administer the Organization subject to the direction of the Commission and who will have the authority, staff, and finances adequate to assure effective impartial implementation of the functions of the Organization.
(c) The IDO shall: (1) ensure compliance with the obligations undertaken by verifying the execution of measures agreed upon; (2) assist the states in developing the details of agreed further verification and disarmament measures; (3) provide for the estab-

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lishment of such bodies as may be necessary for working out the details of further measures provided for in the program and for such other expert study groups as may be required to give continuous study to the problems of disarmament; (4) receive reports on the progress of disarmament and verification arrangements and determine the transition from one stage to the next.

B. To Reduce Armed Forces and Armaments:
(a) Force levels shall be limited to 2.1 million each for the U.S. and U.S.S.R. and to appropriate levels not exceeding 2.1 million each for all other militarily significant states. Reductions to the agreed levels will proceed by equitable, proportionate, and verified steps.
(b) Levels of armaments of prescribed types shall be reduced by equitable and balanced steps. The reductions shall be accomplished by transfers of armaments to depots supervised by the IDO. When, at specified periods during the Stage I reduction process, the states party to the agreement have agreed that the armaments and armed forces are at prescribed levels, the armaments in depots shall be destroyed or converted to peaceful uses.
(c) The production of agreed types of armaments shall be limited.
(d) a Chemical, Biological, Radiological (CBR) Experts Commission shall be established within the IDO for the purpose of examining and reporting on the feasibility and means for accomplishing the verifiable reduction and eventual elimination of CBR weapons stockpiles and the halting of their production.

C. To Contain and Reduce the Nuclear Threat:
(a) States that have not acceded to a treaty effectively prohibiting the testing of nuclear weapons shall do so.
(b) The production of fissionable materials for use in weapons shall be stopped.
(c) Upon the cessation of production of fissionable materials for use in weapons, agreed initial quantities of fissionable materials from past production shall be transferred to non-weapons purposes.

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(d) Any fissionable materials transferred between countries for peaceful uses of nuclear energy shall be subject to appropriate safeguards to be developed in agreement with the IAEA.
(e) States owning nuclear weapons shall not relinquish control of such weapons to any nation not owning them and shall not transmit to any such nation information or material necessary for their manufacture. States not owning nuclear weapons shall not manufacture such weapons, attempt to obtain control of such weapons belonging to other states, or seek or receive information or materials necessary for their manufacture.
(f) A Nuclear Experts Commission consisting of representatives of the nuclear states shall be established within the IDO for the purpose of examining and reporting on the feasibility and means for accomplishing the verified reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons stockpiles.

D.To Reduce Strategic Nuclear Weapons Delivery Vehicles:
(a) Strategic nuclear weapons delivery vehicles in specified categories and agreed types of weapons designed to counter such vehicles shall be reduced to agreed levels by equitable and balanced steps. The reduction shall be accomplished in each step by transfers to depots supervised by the IDO of vehicles that are in excess of levels agreed upon for each step. At specified periods during the Stage I reduction process, the vehicles that have been placed under supervision of the IDO shall be destroyed or converted to peaceful uses.
(b) Production of agreed categories of strategic nuclear weapons delivery vehicles and agreed types of weapons designed to counter such vehicles shall be discontinued or limited.
(c) Testing of agreed categories of strategic nuclear weapons delivery vehicles and agreed types of weapons designed to counter such vehicles shall be limited or halted.

E. To Promote the Peaceful Use Of Outer Space:
(a) The placing into orbit or stationing in outer space of weapons capable of producing mass destruction shall be prohibited.

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(b) States shall give advance notification to participating states and to the IDO of launchings of space vehicles and missiles, together with the track of the vehicle.

F. To Reduce the Risks of War by Accident, Miscalculation, and Surprise Attack:
(a) States shall give advance notification to the participating states and to the IDO of major military movements and maneuvers, on a scale as may be agreed, which might give rise to misinterpretation or cause alarm and induce countermeasures. The notification shall include the geographic areas to be used and the nature, scale and time span of the event.
(b) There shall be established observation posts at such locations as major ports, railway centers, motor highways, and air bases to report on concentrations and movements of military forces.
(c) There shall also be established such additional inspection arrangements to reduce the danger of surprise attack as may be agreed.
(d) An international commission shall be established immediately within the IDO to examine and make recommendations on the possibility of further measures to reduce the risks of nuclear war by accident, miscalculation, or failure of communication.

G. To Keep the Peace:
(a)States shall reaffirm their obligations under the U.N. Charter to refrain from the threat or use of any type of armed force-including nuclear, conventional, or CBR--contrary to the principles of the U.N. Charter.
(b) States shall agree to refrain from indirect aggression and subversion against any country.
(c) States shall use all appropriate processes for the peaceful settlement of disputes and shall seek within the United Nations further arrangements for the peaceful settlement of international disputes and for the codification and progressive development of international law.

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(d) States shall develop arrangements in Stage I for the establishment in Stage II of a U.N. Peace Force.
(e) A U.N. peace observation group shall be staffed with a standing cadre of observers who could be dispatched to investigate any situation which might constitute a threat to or breach of the peace.

STAGE II

A. International Disarmament Organization:
The powers and responsibilities of the IDO shall be progressively enlarged in order to give it the capabilities to verify the measures undertaken in Stage II.

B. To Further Reduce Armed Forces and Armaments:
(a) Levels of forces for the U.S., U.S.S.R., and other militarily significant states shall be further reduced by substantial amounts to agreed levels in equitable and balanced steps.
(b) Levels of armaments of prescribed types shall be further reduced by equitable and balanced steps. The reduction shall be accomplished by transfers of armaments to depots supervised by the IDO. When, at specified periods during the Stage II reduction process, the parties have agreed that the armaments and armed forces are at prescribed levels, the armaments in depots shall be destroyed or converted to peaceful uses.
(c) There shall he further agreed restrictions on the production of armaments.
(d) Agreed military bases and facilities wherever they are located shall he dismantled or converted to peaceful uses.
(e) Depending upon the findings of the Experts Commission on CBR weapons, the production of CBR weapons shall be halted, existing stocks progressively reduced, and the resulting excess quantities destroyed or converted to peaceful uses.

C. To Further Reduce the Nuclear Threat:
Stocks of nuclear weapons shall be progressively reduced to the minimum levels which can be agreed upon as a result of the find-

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ings of the Nuclear Experts Commission; the resulting excess of fissionable material shall be transferred to peaceful purposes.

D. To Further Reduce Strategic Nuclear Weapons Delivery Vehicles:
Further reductions in the stocks of strategic nuclear weapons delivery vehicles and agreed types of weapons designed to counter such vehicles shall be carried out in accordance with the procedure outlined in Stage I.

E. To Keep the Peace:
During Stage II, states shall develop further the peace-keeping processes of the United Nations1 to the end that the United Nations can effectively in Stage III deter or suppress any threat or use of force in violation of the purposes and principles of the United Nations:

(a) States shall agree upon strengthening the structure, authority, and operation of the United Nations so as to assure that the United Nations will be able effectively to protect states against threats to or breaches of the peace.
(b) The U.N. Peace Force shall be established and progressively strengthened.
(c) States shall also agree upon further improvements and developments in rules of international conduct and in processes for peaceful settlement of disputes and differences.

STAGE III

By the time Stage II has been completed, the confidence produced through a verified disarmament program, the acceptance of rules of peaceful international behavior, and the development of strengthened international peace-keeping processes within the framework of the U.N. should have reached a point where the states of the world can move forward to Stage III. In Stage III progressive controlled disarmament and continuously developing principles and procedures of international law would proceed to

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a point where no state would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened U.N. Peace Force and all international disputes would be settled according to the agreed principles of international conduct.
The progressive steps to be taken during the final phase of the disarmament program would be directed toward the attainment of a world in which:
(a) States would retain only those forces, non-nuclear armaments, and establishments required for the purpose of maintaining internal order; they would also support and provide agreed manpower for a U.N Peace Force.
(b) The U.N. Peace Force, equipped with agreed types and quantities of armaments, would be fully functioning.
(c) The manufacture of armaments would be prohibited except for those of agreed types and quantities to be used by the U.N. Peace Force and those required to maintain internal order. All other armaments would be destroyed or converted to peaceful
purposes.
(d) The peace-keeping capabilities of the United Nations would be sufficiently strong and the obligations of all states under such arrangements sufficiently far-reaching as to assure peace and the just settlement of differences in a disarmed world.

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U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1961 O---609147

The best way to honor Dr. King is to actually practice non-violence

2010-01-19T17:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-best-way-to-honor-Dr--by-Jeeni-Criscenzo-100117-75.html

January 18, 2010
By Jeeni Criscenzo

We were marching in San Diego's 30th annual MLK Parade on Saturday behind a tuck where my husband's two grandchildren, who look more like their Haitian American father than their Mexican American mother, were riding with some other children. Five-year-old Dorian and another black boy were trading playful punches and Juan tried to reassure me that it was just typical boy stuff and no harm was meant. I wondered what Dr. King would have said.

Later, walking to the shuttle to go home, Dorian began striking his sister with a stick with a pom-pom on the end. I snatched the stick from him and asked him to put his finger on the end hidden in the pom-pom. "Feel that Dorian? Imagine what would happen if that hit your sister in the eye!" I scolded. Dorian is irresistibly cute and he knows it. He flashed a dimpled grim and shrugged. I sensed a rare teachable moment while he was actually paying attention to me. "We just marched in a parade honoring Dr. King. Do you remember on the way here, we talked about how Dr. King taught non-violence?" I asked him. Dorian shot me a puzzled expression and asked the question that inspired this blog, "What is non-violence?"

Hmmm. The quick response I could give Dorian before I lost his interest, was, "Non-violence is not doing something that is mean or hurts someone else, like what you were just doing to your sister." That doesn't sound too complicated, so why is it so difficult for people to be non-violent? Is it basically unnatural for human beings to not hurt one another? Do little boys fight amongst themselves instinctively? If violence is somehow encoded in their DNA, perhaps to prepare them for survival, then asking them to play nice is just an exercise in futility.

One of the most distressing images flashed on the news yesterday, of the disaster in Haiti, was of the groups of young men/boys brandishing machetes, roaming the streets, terrorizing people already so terribly traumatized. With all the suffering Dorian's kinfolk are enduring in Haiti right now, why must the fear of marauding gangs be added to it? One would think that when human beings get to that level of misery that they would stop exacerbating it and work together to survive. If they were acting consciously, they must surely realize that they increase their chances of survival if they don't have to waste meager energy and resources defending themselves.

When we look at the incomprehensible destruction and suffering that nature has inflicted on the people of Haiti, one could argue that nature is violent and that it is, therefore, natural to be violent. But nature is also harmonious, as anyone will attest to who has savored a hike through the canyons or watched the sunset over the ocean. So we can likewise construe that it is also natural to be non-violent. Yin/Yang -- the age-old wisdom of balance of good and evil. To assume that there is any possibility of creating a world where there is only non-violence would be out of touch with reality.

On the other hand, one could argue that the violent forces of nature were only partially responsible for the recent suffering of millions of Haitian people, a good deal of the destruction is the result of human violence -- corruption, greed and economic injustice inflicted particularly by multinational corporate interests and supported by the US government.

As I watched President Obama, bestowing Clinton and Bush with the job of getting economically stressed Americans to dig deep into their pockets to help the Haitian earthquake relief efforts, I wanted to scream. These three men have spent our hard-earned tax dollars wreaking havoc and suffering, at least as horrible as what nature has done to Haiti, to the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and others unfortunate enough to be living on precious resources that multinational corporations want.

When George W. Bush said, "I know a lot of people want to send blankets or water. Just send your cash," I cringed. I wouldn't trust that guy to spend my cash with compassion if he was standing next to Jesus Christ himself! Besides, I question that cash is what they need. Spend a short time watching the news reports of conditions in Port-au-Prince and you quickly realize that truckloads of cash are worthless if you can't buy the basic necessities with it. Without immediate water, food and medical help, thousands of Haitians are not going to see tomorrow's light of day. Here we are, six days after the earthquake, and relief is just starting to trickle in.

With every day passing, the complexity of providing relief increases proportionally to the desperation and the propensity for people to be violent in securing what they and their families need to survive. Watch carefully, we are peering through the looking-glass of our common future. Unless we radically change the direction we're going, the day when there won't be enough of the basic essentials for everyone hovers on our own horizon. How will you react when they drop a box of food into a crowd of starving people that includes you? Are you prepared to be non-violent or will you do whatever is necessary to survive?

I won't be texting $10 to Haiti. I have a better idea. I'm going to my Congressional Representative's office on Wednesday to tell her to vote NO on Obama's latest request to Congress for an additional $33 billion to continue fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (this is in addition to $708 billion for the Defense Department next year). Instead, I'm going to suggest that we take less than one-tenth of that amount ($3 million) and give it to the Haitian people to make amends for the way we've bullied and abused that country for decades.

We shouldn't send it as "cash" that will just end up in the hands of US contractors, but as genuine aid -- in building supplies and equipment and highly qualified oversight, employing Haitians to build according to strict codes for earthquakes, hurricanes and environmental protection. Yes, that would be 300 times more than the measly $100 million Obama has promised! If he thinks we can afford $33 billion for death and destruction, surely we can afford $3 billion for something far more positive.

Next, we should use our considerable clout with the IMF and World Bank to forgive Haiti's debt. And we should admit to being behind the 2004 coup that took out their democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand

Aristide, ushering in a right-wing, business-friendly replacement. And after there is some order in Port-au-Prince, we should support a fair election and abide by the will of the Haitian people, not the multinational corporations that have been raping their country.

When Dr. King spoke out against the Vietnam War, he signed his death sentence, but that didn't stop him. If we truly want to honor his dream, let's start by being honest about our failure to practice non-violence and resolve to change, starting right now. If non-violence is not hurting people, that means we need to consider how everything we do and say affects others. And it means that we are responsible for making certain our tax dollars, and our representatives are not hurting people. Our representatives have the power to end war by cutting off the funding. They can approve $33 billion for more useless violence or $33 million for non-violence, including health care, green jobs, and doing the right thing in Haiti. Their choice will determine what kind of role models we will be for Dorian and his generation. They are supposed to be representing us let's tell want we want.

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is taking the stop-funding-war message to US Congressional representatives with Brown Bag Vigils across the country on the 3rd Wednesday of every month. I'll be going to Susan Davis' office at 4305 University Avenue, San Diego at 12 noon this Wednesday, Jan 20th. If you sign up to join me, I will provide the brown bag lunch (peanut butter and jelly on organic bread, apple and my special oat scones (register to attend). If you live elsewhere, see if there's a vigil in your district, or organize one yourself. Let's say NO to more money for war, and yes to getting to work on making life better for everyone!

Author's Website: www.amikas.org

Jeremiah Wright Repeats MLKjr Condemning Predatory Capitalism's War on 3rd World

2010-01-18T11:23:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Jeremiah-Wright-Repeats-ML-by-Jay-Janson-100115-140.html

January 16, 2010
Jeremiah Wright Repeats MLKjr Condemning Predatory Capitalism's War on 3rd World
By Jay Janson

First, words from the mouth of Rev. King Jr., April 4, 1967

"individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, 'This is not just.' ...the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own country...

This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real ...Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and ... declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism".

Similar sentiments from Rev. Jeremiah Wright more than thirty years later,

"If I help the hungry in the world, they call me a saint. If I ask why are there hungry folks, they will call me a communist--if you help the homeless, they call you a saint; but if you ask why people are homeless, they call you a socialist. I am proud to be called a socialist, I want to know why!"

Why the poor are not seen as people, but rather as a liability for health care," Why there is a 5 to 7% incarceration of black men in a country that has 2,225 juveniles are serving life without parole"

The war promoting entertainment/news media cartel inadvertently promoted a war condemning preacher to national notoriety with repeating TV sound bites of an angry Rev. Wright, arm raised, fiercely declaiming in a hoarse voice, "God damn America for its war crimes!" "God damn America for killing innocent people,"

Just as King's speech condemning the Vietnam War was vilified by the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, as treasonous, just so was Wright pilloried in commercial media as anti-American. For the first time in these 42 years, the peace movement has a charismatic celebrity religiously following in King Jr.' footsteps! Both men base condemnation of violence on love. Both had the same divinity school teacher

In late 2009, as main speaker celebrating the 60th anniversary of the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review at Ethical Culture Society, New York, Rev. Jeremiah gave an eloquently compassionate, inspiring and , empowering description of our predicament under imperial capitalism;

He spoke of his divinity school teachers and his education by events in the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm and the many other noble luminaries of black and minority leadership during the long history of the fight for liberation of Francis Fanon's Wretched of the Earth. And finally, that he had been formed as well from his years of ministry and listening "in the pew."

He denounced the United States government for repeatedly launching wars "based on one lie after another" - for the of agony and manslaughter of Palestinians

Wright blasted both the foreign and domestic policies of this country, including its current "wars of greed" in Afghanistan and Iraq , a country that places priority on profit over people -- particularly the world's most oppressed.

Listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright once he reached the fiery peak of his preaching about the horrors and human degradation, the comparison with Martin Luther King Jr. thundering during his 1967 Beyond Vietnam address in New York was beautifully obvious.

Martin Luther King had come to the conclusion that we had to connect with everyone everywhere suffering predatory capitalism and imperialist war. So has Jeremiah Wright.

Veterans For Peace and every peace promoting organization is energized and aided by such a charismatic and dynamic preacher as is Rev. Jeremiah, who walks in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr. demanding sanity from
government.

Conglomerate owned disinformation and war propaganda spreading TV networks, radio stations and newspapers promote egotism, selfishness, capitalist materialism, frantic consumerism, militarism and fear of other peoples.

We can nurture the spread of both these pastors' fearlessly outspoken denunciations of the government's crimes and King's and Wright's call for love, sharing, community, government reform and humanity and fairness toward other nations.

'Terrorism,' 'State Terrorism,' and Point of View

2010-01-16T15:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7625

1/8/2010
'Terrorism,' 'State Terrorism,' and Point of View
Our view of 9/11; Their view of Fallujah...
Guest essay by Ernest A. Canning

"The terrorist of yesterday becomes the hero of today, and the hero of yesterday becomes the terrorist of today." --- Eqbal Ahmad

Irrespective of whether one accepts the government's official explanation or one of the multiple "inside job/false-flag" theories advanced by the "9/11 Truth" movement, or even if you simply regard the current state of public information about 9/11 to be inadequate to arrive at any hard-and-fast conclusions about that seminal event, the mere mention of it evokes the word "terror" in some way for all Americans.

But the word "terror" is rarely applied to Donald Rumsfeld's "shock and awe" assaults on the city of Fallujah. Why?...

'Terrorism' and 'State Terrorism' defy definition

When Eqbal Ahmad said "The terrorist of yesterday becomes the hero of today, and the hero of yesterday becomes the terrorist of today," in his lecture, “Terrorism, Theirs and Ours,” he was referencing, among other issues, the transition of the Afghan Mujahideen, once described by President Reagan as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers, into Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda, and the fact that Menachem Begin, at one time officially listed as a "terrorist" by the British, emerged as the Prime Minister of Israel.

As recognized by Wikipedia, the "politically and emotionally charged" word "terrorism" has no internationally agreed upon definition.

The concept of terrorism may itself be controversial as it is often used by state authorities to delegitimize political or other opponents, and potentially legitimize the state's own use of armed force against opponents (such use of force may itself be described as "terror" by opponents of the state).

"Terrorism" is frequently applied by governments and by the corporate media to "guerrilla warfare," which is the traditional response of a weaker opponent who tactically seeks out soft targets rather than frontal military assault, e.g. the French Resistance fighters whom the Nazis referred to as "terrorists."

The concept of "state terrorism" is likewise controversial.

As noted by Michael Stohl, a terrorism scholar quoted by Wikipedia:

The use of terror tactics is common in international relations and the state has been and remains a more likely employer of terrorism within the international system than insurgents....Not all acts of state violence are terrorism....In terrorism the violence threatened or perpetrated, has purposes broader than simple physical harm to a victim. The audience of the act or threat of violence is more important than the immediate victim.
Perception of terror depends on point of view

9/11 was sudden; unexpected. Thanks to the immediacy of television, the images of planes striking buildings, jet fuel explosions, people leaping to their deaths, the collapse of the massive buildings, official confusion, and dust-covered civilians running for their lives, all of us were in a position to not merely see but experience the trauma.

That immediacy is nowhere to be found when we, a nation possessing the most powerful arsenal ever assembled, inflict terror on others.

There is a significant difference between how war is seen through the camera lens of a "smart bomb" and from the point of view of those upon whom the bombs are falling.

The deadly aerial assaults on Baghdad during Gulf War I and at the outset of the 2003 invasion of Iraq were depicted as surreal, florescent green over black light shows on CNN, Fox and MSNBC, who, acting as cheerleaders, did so over displays of "Countdown Iraq," "SHOWDOWN IRAQ," and "Target Iraq" plastered on their screens nonstop. But those images did not begin to display a brutal reality that is apparent only to those of us who have had the misfortune to serve in combat.

Viewed from a safe distance, even graphic images of war fail to reveal what Chris Hedges, in War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, describes as the critical element --- fear:

There is, until the actual moment of confrontation, no cost of imagining glory...the experience is sterile. We are safe. We do not smell rotting flesh, hear the cries of agony, or see before us blood and entrails seeping out of bodies. We view, from a distance, the rush, the excitement, but feel none of the awful gut-wrenching anxiety and humiliation that come with mortal danger. It takes the experience of fear and the chaos of battle, the deafening and disturbing noise, to wake us up, to make us realize that we are not who we imagined we were...
State terror and Fallujah

In "This Is Our Guernica," independent journalist, Dahr Jamail, along with The Guardian's Jonathan Steele wrote:

In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade’s unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Fallujah, a text-book case of how not to handle an insurgency and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity.

In November 2004 the United States laid siege to the City of Fallujah, an Iraqi town about the size of Cincinnati --- the second such siege in seven months. The city was sealed off to relief workers and un-embedded reporters. While the American forces contend that a large insurgent force was trapped inside, a significant question exists as to whether most of the insurgents had fled the city in advance of the deadly assault --- an assault which Jamail contends resulted in the massacre of between 4,000 and 6,000 civilians.

Ali Fadhil, one of the first independent journalists permitted to enter the city some two months after the siege had ended, noted how shocked he was by the devastation:

I couldn’t believe it. The whole city is destroyed. It was a big shock. I wasn’t prepared for this much destruction. I was here just before the American attack. It’s hard to believe this is the same city. Falluja used to be one of the modern Iraqi cities, and now there is nothing.

Mr. Fadhil claimed that those killed were mostly civilians:

They were men who stayed behind in the city to protect their homes. I say this because we found bodies in groups of two or three or four. It was Ramadan, and people naturally gather together for Iftar, the first meal after fasting. We found bodies right behind their front doors. It looked to me as if they had opened their front doors to the Americans and had been immediately shot dead.

Dahr Jamail’s comparison of Fallujah to Guernica is both troubling and exceedingly poignant.

As Chalmers Johnson recounted in The Sorrows of Empire, “Guernica, a small Basque village in northern Spain, was the site Adolf Hitler [then allied with Francisco Franco] chose on April 27, 1937, to demonstrate his air force’s new high-explosive and incendiary bombs....The hamlet burned for three days, and sixteen hundred civilians were killed or wounded.”

The event’s modern significance is such that the United Nations prominently displays “a tapestry reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica,” a “depiction of the atrocity,” which Chalmers Johnson informs us, “is perhaps modern art’s most powerful anti-war statement” --- so powerful that the U.S. government took pains to cover the tapestry reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica with a large blue curtain in advance of the key pre-invasion address by then Secretary of State Collin Powell. Johnson notes that the “government decided...the carnage wrought by aerial bombing was an inappropriate backdrop for its secretary of state and its ambassador to the United Nations when they televised statements that might lead to the bombing of Iraqi cities.”

Prior to the first seige, in April 2004, Fallujah stood out as a symbol of the Iraqi resistance. It was the site where the four Blackwater mercenaries were killed and where their bodies were burned and left hanging on a bridge. Given the “shock and awe” mentality of the US military and especially Donald Rumsfeld, and considering the devastation that followed, there is every reason to believe that the US military and Rumsfeld had intended, by means of the two assaults on Fallujah, to apply such a deadly and massive display of force as to strike fear in the hearts of Iraqis everywhere: Resist and we will destroy you, your cities, your families.

The last thing a military bent on such a course would want is some independent, un-embedded journalist to, in the words of many Holocaust survivors, “bear witness;” to display the truth of the violent and bloody Fallujah assault for the entire world to see, especially since “collective punishment” and “the retributive destruction of cities in response to enemy actions” violate express provisions of the Geneva Convention.

Despite the best laid plans to seal off the city, a small team of brave journalists from al Jazeera, including correspondent Ahmed Mansur and cameraman Laith Mushtaq, found a way into the city where they remained, un-embedded for the duration of the first siege. On Feb. 22, 2006, the ghastly reality of the first Falluja seige was exposed as the two men discussed what they witnessed when interviewed on Democracy Now.

Mushtaq said:

The...first two days...we were unable to go even to the bathroom, because in Fallujah...the bathroom is usually outside the rooms, so whenever we opened the door to the bathroom, we see the laser pointed at us...I saw an elderly lady...with her children, going on a big truck to leave Fallujah. After a quarter of an hour later, she came back in pieces.

Mushtaq spoke of a man named Hamudi, whose house had been bombed along with the entire neighborhood, “and they brought the corpses and bodies to the hospital,” where the scene was “like a sea of corpses...mostly children.... I was...forcing myself to take photographs, while I was at the same time crying.” Hamudi was the only survivor in his family. Mushtaq took pictures of Hamudi speaking to his infant son Ahmed, who was asleep with a toy car in his hand. “Half his head was gone.... I could not really find any one human being in one piece or intact.... It’s bombing of airplanes."

Mansur said:

When we reached the heart of the city at the hospital, I almost lost my mind from the terror that I saw, people going in each and every direction. Laith was with me and also another colleague, and I felt like we need 1,000 cameras to grab those disastrous pictures.... We were trying to move this picture to the whole world, and we felt we are responsible for all these civilians being bombed from the planes..., so we have to transfer this picture of suffering to the whole world.
Did Bush want to kill the messenger?

The April 9 and 10, 2004, images broadcast over al Jazeera for all the world to see did not sit well with the U.S. military’s media minders. On April 11, General Mark Kimmit, a senior military spokesman for the US forces in Iraq, said, “The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies.” According to Mansur, General Kimmit singled him out by name for criticism. An al Jazeera colleague, Hamoud Krishen, then asked General Kimmit, “Ahmed Mansur only transfers pictures. Do pictures themselves lie...?” General Kimmit did not respond.

On April 15, 2004, when asked by a reporter if he could “definitely say that hundreds of women and children and innocent civilians have not been killed,” Rumsfeld replied, “I can definitively say that what al Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.”

April 16, 2004, was the day of a Bush-Blair summit. On November 22, 2005, the London tabloid Daily Mirror exposed the existence of a five-page memo stamped “Top Secret” which had found its way to the offices of former Labor MP Tony Clarke.

According to the Daily Mirror account, the memo reflects that during the summit --- a summit which took place one day after Rumsfeld’s “what al Jazeera is doing is vicious” diatribe --- President Bush “made clear that he wanted to bomb al Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere” and that Prime Minister “Blair replied that would cause a big problem. There’s no doubt what Bush wanted to do --- and no doubt Blair didn’t want him to do it.”

The allegation, if true, merely underscores the length to which our leaders are prepared to go to insure that the truth remains concealed.

As Glenn Greenwald so aptly observed during his Dec. 31, 2009, appearance on Democracy Now, where we Americans assume we are better informed than Muslims whom we perceive as living in backward countries under the spell of religious fanaticism, the reverse is true. The people upon whom the bombs fall are well aware of the fact that "we routinely slaughter innocent men, women and children" --- a basic reality that almost never appears in the U.S. corporate-owned media, according to Greenwald, who added:

And so, when there’s anger and hostility and hatred in the Muslim world towards the United States, they understand why, but we are confused and bewildered, because the facts about why that is are generally kept from us.
Peace depends on our understanding their point of view

If we are to put an end to what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., described as the "madness," the American public must, en masse, acquire the point of view of those upon whom the bombs are falling. For it is only by acquiring their point of view that Americans can appreciate and answer the poignant question posed by Greenwald and recounted by Brad Friedman as to the "why" growing numbers of Middle East residents just might be motivated to attack us. Without that understanding, peace will always remain beyond our grasp.

===

Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).

Peace deserves a chance, not excuses of ‘just war’

2009-12-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.kansascity.com/278/story/1642080.html

Posted on Sun, Dec. 20, 2009
Peace deserves a chance, not excuses of ‘just war’
By LEWIS DIUGUID
The Kansas City Star

In this season of peace, disappointment fills the peace movement because of President Obama.

People thought he’d be different from the cowboy who had occupied the White House. From the candidate of hope, people expected peace to at long last have a chance.

But signs are grim with the continuation of the war in Iraq, an escalation of the war in Afghanistan and U.S. hegemony. Former Vice President Dick Cheney recently labeled it “American exceptionalism.” To Cheney, other people of the world bow to America. Americans bow to no one.

Cheney has criticized Obama for bowing to some heads of state. However, Obama has maintained many of the policies of the previous administration, giving the new president a Bush-lite flavor.

People working for peace have begun switching protest signs against the wars from blasting former President Bush to taking on Obama. It also is disturbing that the Patriot Act remains in force, threatening people’s constitutional rights.

Obama has elected not to follow other nations in condemning land mines. The continued manufacture and use of that weaponry will maim and kill thousands of people, many of them children.

White House and other records aren’t as open as promised. Obama’s decision to increase by 30,000 the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan was a severe step backward for peace efforts. Obama also pulled a page from Bush’s playbook, making the announcement at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point.

The capstone, however, was the speech Obama gave in Oslo, Norway, when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. The Republicans and conservatives were right about this wartime president. Obama doesn’t merit the honor because it doesn’t appear he’ll work for peace.

Obama keeps serving more Bush-lite, citing World War II as a just war. “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Ira Harritt, Kansas City program coordinator with the American Friends Service Committee, believes that people in power always use the “just war” argument to rationalize any armed conflict.

It was especially distasteful that Obama quoted the great peacemakers of the 20th century — the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi. Because of them, people dismantled a lot of injustices through nonviolent means in U.S. civil rights, women’s rights, Chicano, gay rights and American Indian movements. Overseas people brought down oppression in Poland, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc nations, China and South Africa.

Yet, the power of peace is not powerful enough in Obama’s eyes, or as mighty as the military. He said: “The nonviolence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached — their faith in human progress — must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.”

Peace has to be the star that guides us now.

Here’s the bottom line: “Basically we are challenging a huge economic system that profits and thrives on a military foreign policy,” Harritt said. “We create our own future.”

What may save us from the continuing folly of the two wars is the exhaustion of the U.S. public. The men and women doing the fighting — and their families and friends — continue to bear a terrible cost in pain and suffering and death. And more people not directly related to the military are feeling that pain, too, as more of the cost of caring for those who return is being borne by society.

Polls show more people are turning against the wars and turning more inward, wanting the U.S. to “mind its own business internationally.” That’s not good because America is part of the planet, whether people like it or not.

Peace is the only way to get everyone together to share the resources and the burdens of getting along. Investing in war is never the answer. Peace is.

A Lesson on Nonviolence for the President

2009-12-20T15:27:00.001-08:00

http://www.fpif.org/articles/a_lesson_on_nonviolence_for_the_president

December 18, 2009 by Foreign Policy in Focus
A Lesson on Nonviolence for the President
by Eric Stoner

In Oslo last week, President Barack Obama ironically used his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize to deliver a lengthy defense of the "just war" theory and dismiss the idea that nonviolence is capable of addressing the world's most pressing problems.

After quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and giving his respects to Gandhi — two figures that Obama has repeatedly called personal heroes — the new peace laureate argued that he "cannot be guided by their examples alone" in his role as a head of state.

"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people," he continued. "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."

Unfortunately, this key part of Obama's speech, which the media widely quoted in its coverage of the award ceremony, contains several logical inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies that tragically reveal Obama's profound ignorance of nonviolent alternatives to the use of military force.

The Power of Nonviolence

Almost immediately after acknowledging that there is "nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King," Obama equated nonviolence with doing nothing.

To live and act nonviolently, however, never involves standing "idle in the face of threats." Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Dave Dellinger, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and countless other genuine peacemakers have put their lives on the line in the struggle for a more just world. Advocates of nonviolence, like Gandhi, simply believe that means and ends are inseparable – that responding in kind to an aggressor will only continue the cycle of violence.

"Destructive means cannot bring constructive ends, because the means represent the ideal-in-the-making and the end-in-progress," Martin Luther King explains in his book Strength to Love. "Immoral means cannot bring moral ends, for the ends are pre-existent in the means."

Therefore, to put it bluntly, it's impossible to create a world that truly respects life with fists, guns, and bombs. As A.J. Muste, a longtime leader of the labor, civil rights, and antiwar movements, famously said: "There is no way to peace — peace is the way."

Using a broad array of tactics — including strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and protests — nonviolent movements have not only gained important rights for millions of oppressed people around the world, they have confronted, and successfully brought down, some of the most ruthless regimes of the last 100 years.

The courageous, everyday citizens who spoke out and took to the streets to stop the murderous reigns of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, to name only a few examples from recent decades, were anything but passive in the face of evil.

Moreover, these incredible victories for nonviolence were not flukes. After analyzing 323 resistance campaigns over the last century, one important study published last year in the journal International Security, found that "major nonviolent campaigns have achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns."

Victories Against Hitler

Contrary to Obama's speech and the dominant narrative about World War II, nonviolent movements in several different European countries were also remarkably successful in thwarting the Nazis.

In 1943, for instance, when the order finally came to round up the nearly 8,000 Jews in Denmark, Danes spontaneously hid them in their homes, hospitals, and other public institutions over the span of one night. Then, at great personal risk to those involved, a secret network of fishing vessels successfully ferried almost their entire Jewish population to neutral Sweden. The Nazis captures only 481 Jews, and thanks to continued Danish pressure, nearly 90% of those deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp survived the war.

In Bulgaria, important leaders of the Orthodox Church, along with farmers in the northern stretches of the country, threatened to lie across railroad tracks to prevent Jews from being deported. This popular pressure emboldened the Bulgarian parliament to resist the Nazis, who eventually rescinded the deportation order, saving almost all of the country's 48,000 Jews.

Even in Norway, where Obama accepted the peace prize, there was significant nonviolent resistance during the Second World War. When the Nazi-appointed Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling ordered teachers to teach fascism, an estimated 10,000 of the country's 12,000 teachers refused. A campaign of intimidation — which included sending over 1,000 male teachers to jails, concentration camps, and forced labor camps north of the Arctic Circle — failed to break the will of the teachers and sparked growing resentment throughout the country. After eight months, Quisling backed down and the teachers came home victorious.

Alternatives to the War on Terror

Obama's rejection of negotiations as a possible solution to terrorism also doesn't square with the evidence. After analyzing hundreds of terrorist groups that have operated over the last 40 years, a RAND corporation study published last year concluded that military force is almost never successful at stopping terrorism. The vast majority of terrorist groups that ended during that period "were penetrated and eliminated by local police and intelligence agencies (40%), or they reached a peaceful political accommodation with their government (43%)." In other words, negotiation is clearly possible.

For his book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, University of Chicago professor Robert Pape created a database on every suicide bombing from 1980 to 2004. Pape found that, rather than being driven by religion, the vast majority of suicide bombers — responsible for over 95% of all incidents on record — were primarily motivated by a desire to compel a democratic government to withdraw its military forces from land they saw as their homeland.

"Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism," Pape said in an interview with The American Conservative, "the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us."

Apart from pulling U.S. troops out of the Middle East, calling off the deadly campaign of drone attacks, and ending military, economic, and diplomatic support for repressive regimes in the region, how can the threat of terrorism be best minimized? A recent article in the Independent by Johann Hari may provide an answer.

Through interviews with 17 radical Islamic ex-jihadis over the course of a year, Hari discovered that they all told strikingly similar stories about what drew them to extremism, and what eventually got them out. They all felt alienated growing up in Britain, and connected their personal experiences to the persecution of Muslims around the world. In most cases, however, coming into contact with Westerners who took the values of democracy and human rights seriously, opposed the wars against Muslim countries, and engaged in ordinary acts of kindness first made them question whether they were on the right path.

As I silently carried a cardboard coffin from the UN headquarters in New York to the military recruiting center in Times Square during a protest on the day of Obama's speech, I couldn't help but cringe to think of the president justifying the deployment of 30,000 more troops to the "graveyard of empires." Every nonviolent alternative has not been exhausted. In reality, they have yet to be tried.

Eric Stoner is a freelance writer based in New York and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. His articles have appeared in The Nation, NACLA Report on the Americas, and the Indypendent.

Cool School - Where Peace Rules

2009-12-15T12:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/1208-cool_school__where_peace_rules.htm

Cool School - Where Peace Rules
Human Development Scientists And Computer Game Developers Design Video Game That Teaches Conflict Resolution To Kids

December 1, 2008 — Human development scientists and computer game developers designed a video game that teaches kids how to resolve conflicts peacefully amongst themselves. Inanimate objects, such as pencils and erasers, come to life to lead players through a series of common scenarios in which arguments are about to occur. The player is prompted for the non-violent solution and is rewarded for choosing correctly.
Amid growing concern surrounding the effects violent video games have on children, a new computer game could be the alternative parents have been waiting for.

Kids who play together also argue together. Fights over games, toys and friendships are common, but when arguments heat up, it's time to solve them before things get out of hand. A new computer game teaches kids how to solve playground and classroom quarrels that kids face every day in a positive way -- without fists and fights.

"It helps them resolve conflicts by giving them a chance to think about what happens in the course of an actual conflict episode," said Melanie Killen, Ph.D., a human development expert at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md.

The game, called "Cool School: Where Peace Rules" -- designed by a team of human development scientists, teachers, government mediators, computer game developers and animators -- helps kids solve school violence and bullying while still having fun.

"You're learning things, but at the same time it's having fun with it," said student Ellen Yaffe.

Animated objects come to life and depict common conflicts. Kids experiment on how to settle each argument. Players have the option of threatening the peer, telling the teacher, forgetting about it or talking things through.

Players are rewarded for choosing positive solutions to resolve conflicts with letters they collect to win.

"What this game is doing is it's empowering children to make choices and decisions and to see what unfolds based on their own decisions," Dr. Killen said.

Parents and teachers praise the new game, and kids love it for their own reasons.

"I think they make it very realistic with like the names and how the school looks," student Jacob Tycko told Ivanhoe.

The best part is the game is totally free. You can download it online by visiting http://www.curriki.com and searching for "cool school."

ABOUT THE GAME: "Cool School: Where Peace Rules" came about when the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service asked a Human Development professor to help them design a videogame to help five to seven year old children deal with conflicts in a peaceful manner. The project relied on animators to create the visual environments, and for the professor to create scenarios that will help kids learn to resolve problems without resorting to violence. The game uses a wide variety of charactersýfrom erasers to desks to books and basketballsýto lead players through 52 different scenarios.To learn more about the game or to play it go to (http://www.rtassoc.com/gm_coolschool.html).

TIPS ON STOPPING BULLIES: This list is adapted from material on the website of the United States Health Resources and Services Administration. http://stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/

DO:

Tell an adult
Join clubs and groups where you will meet other kids
Support someone else who is being bullied

DO NOT:

Think it's your fault.
Fight back or bully a person back
Reply to online bullying

On Torture: The Issue of Collective Guilt

2009-10-26T10:28:00.001-07:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/On-Torture-The-Issue-of-C-by-Siegfried-Othmer-091025-330.html

October 25, 2009
On Torture: The Issue of Collective Guilt
By Siegfried Othmer

The Background on Collective Guilt

Back around 1958, when I was a college student at Virginia Tech, I found myself in the dorm room of an immigrant from The Netherlands, and the conversation eventually came around to the topic of World War II. The fellow declared that if he could push a button to kill all the Germans on the planet, he would push it with alacrity and without a tinge of conscience. Presumably this included Americans who were German-born, such as myself, but I didn't pose that question to him.

It turns out that the German occupying force had killed his father for participating in the resistance movement, which indeed he had been doing. The son's passionate hatred was nonetheless understandable. I recall this event as a flash bulb memory. All context is lost by now, and I can no longer bring the faces up from memory. But the salience of the event must have caused the memory to be so firmly implanted.

The idea of collective German guilt for World War II was fairly universally accepted at the time, even by Germans themselves. And this acceptance ran particularly deep in the succeeding generation. There has probably been no greater disconnect between two generations in history than this one. We judged the older generation quite harshly for having allowed what in fact occurred.

But it was not just a matter of the younger generation rejecting the old. The older generation, too, accepted a certain universal guilt regardless of any specific involvement in German war crimes or even any contemporaneous awareness of such crimes. This is illustrated by the following observation from my own family's history here in the US. Turns out that each of our children customarily addressed us with our first names. There was no precedent for that among our acquaintances, most of whom regarded this as quite strange. Years later I found out that this same phenomenon was commonplace in Germany among those who had children right after the war. This can be seen as a wholesale rejection of Germany's authoritarian heritage that had led it so badly astray.

Now that the USA has its own issue of the violation of the Geneva Convention regarding torture, the question of collective guilt needs once again to be raised. As far as I can tell, there has been essentially no discussion of our common, shared responsibility for what we have allowed to happen. Given my judgmental attitude toward the older generation of Germans, I now have to ask where intellectual honesty and logical consistency would lead in this instance. I have often asked myself, am I doing now what I expected my elders to have done in their time? The answer is unfortunately “No.”

Of course I voted “correctly,” and have been politically engaged. That avenue was no longer open to Germans after 1933. The hazard of political opposition was such that only those who were fully prepared for martyrdom would be public with their opposition. That number was of course small in Germany, and it will always be small in any society. Everyone else looks like a fellow traveler, regardless of private opinions. We in the USA still have an open politics, and no Gestapo. And yet the torture regime kept going. We tolerated the shading of meanings. We tolerated the discussion of torture in utilitarian terms. It was now acceptable to discuss whether torture had in fact “worked” for us. The moral ground was shifting. A majority of Americans had come to believe that torture would be ok under some conditions. That being the case, is it not time to bring up the question of collective guilt?

The Nuremberg Defense

It gets worse. Our new President, former Professor in Constitutional law, has even invoked the Nuremberg defense. CIA officials who believed themselves to be acting under the law while they were torturing people won't be prosecuted. They didn't even have to be following explicit orders, so our President has even enlarged the scope of the Nuremberg defense. At the time of the Nuremberg trials, it was a live issue as to whether the US was elevating international law to more universal acceptance and respect----or merely exercising victor's justice. The legacy of those trials depends on our current behavior. If we promote the Nuremberg defense at the highest levels of our government today, then history will surely reframe the Nuremberg trials as mere victor's justice. Apparently American exceptionalism amounts to never having to say you're guilty. We exempt ourselves from the International Criminal Court, and yet we frustrate our internal judicial procedures for political reasons.

How might it be otherwise? When I was still in aerospace twenty years ago, the company (Hughes Aircraft) dealt with ethical issues in the following manner: ‘If you violate ethical guidelines----even if you are doing this in what you believe to be the company interest---the company will not stand behind you.' Simple enough. Each of us individually has the responsibility not to violate international law, and no superior can exempt us from that responsibility. That used to be crystal-clear to people. That used to be our standard. It must be again, and until that time we bear collective responsibility for the shortfall. The failure to act resolutely now to see that the law is upheld through prosecutions makes us complicit in the original violation.

Matters were much the same when it came to the systematic fire-bombing of Tokyo. Before the war, most Americans regarded the bombing of civilians in cities as morally repugnant. After we had done so, what had previously been a moral question became a utilitarian one: Was it more effective in terms of our war aims to obliterate Tokyo than not to do so? Did it save lives when seen in the larger perspective? On the other hand, if Germany had been the only country to develop a nuclear weapon, and if it had chosen to drop it on London in a last desperate measure to stave off defeat, would that not have been treated as a war crime?

In the Nuremberg trials the targets were the top of the Nazi hierarchy, since they were obviously most responsible for what happened. But when it came to the My Lai massacre, care was taken to indict only at the bottom. Only one officer was indicted, and he was acquitted. So much for command responsibility when it came to our own actions. Lieutenant William Calley was the only one convicted out of 26 soldiers originally accused. He was initially given a life sentence, which was later reduced for the reason that he understood that he was acting under orders. The Nuremberg defense again. Calley served only 4.5 months in military prison, and spent three years in house arrest. The unfairness of only nailing the guy at the bottom of the chain of command was obvious.

Significantly, the three servicemen who brought this war crime to light were denounced even by some Congressmen, and they received death threats. It took thirty more years for their efforts to be honored. This further cements the case for our collective responsibility with respect to this war crime. We were all complicit by acquiescence. Mere acquiescence was enough for us to condemn all Germans. We must hold ourselves to the same standard.

Our Current Challenge

This time, we have a chance to do it right and to insist on full measure of justice. We must, or this country will no longer be subject to the rule of law. Regrettably, the law is the only thing that stands between us and barbarism and tyranny. Every time we relax our vigilance with respect to laws bearing on human dignity and freedom, the noose tightens. There is a ratcheting effect, in which each offense against the law sets a new floor for what is acceptable. We are far down that road already.

In the face of the Geneva conventions our lawless government tried to argue that what we did was not torture. But the Geneva conventions had emplaced sentinels around the word torture itself: they prohibited violence to person, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, as well as humiliating and degrading treatment. No one can argue that these bounds were not transgressed, so why even try to do weasel-wording with the word torture itself?

So where were the lawyers? Well, they were in service to our policy of torture, obviously. Alan Dershowitz, guardian of civil liberties, argued vigorously for the “ticking-bomb” exemption. He wasn't making the case for torture, ostensibly, but merely wanted it acknowledged in law that under ticking-bomb scenarios torture will quite simply happen. He was defaulting to a realist position, not asserting an ideal. But a realist would also observe that in consequence of giving currency to the ticking bomb defense, it was subsequently recruited on behalf of our every act of torture, even when it applied in none of those cases. Dershowitz is not naïve. He must have known where his proposition would lead. And so did John McCain.

Torture must be given no quarter whatsoever---no legal sanction, no safe harbor. That's what the Geneva Conventions had done: they had eliminated every loophole. Specifically, “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

And then there was John Yoo. Starting from the “unitary executive” notion that in his role of Commander in Chief our President's power of decision is completely unconstrained, it then follows that the President can even override treaties which our Senate has approved. The bedrock principle of checks and balances imbedded in our Constitution simply did not apply in wartime, according to Yoo, with respect to anything bearing on our security. So the Geneva Conventions to which we are signatories were simply set aside with regard to irregular forces. The only rationale for exempting ourselves from the Geneva Conventions is that it would give us permission to torture. We obviously fully intended to do so. The record could not be more clear.

John Yoo effectively paved the way for torture to occur under state sanction. He is therefore a war criminal. He along with many others should be in the dock for war crimes. Instead we find the argument to be about whether Yoo's academic freedom is being infringed by the informal opposition to him at Berkeley.

Then there are others in the chain of command, and at the White House. General Richard B. Myers, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was at the top of the chain of approvals of the torture memos within the military. In a review of the General's memoirs in the New York Review of Books, Philippe Sands points out that there is not a single reference to Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in the entire book. Further, there is no discussion of his role in approving the torture memos. Says Sands: “we must assume that his silence was not accidental.”

And we mere citizens should not assume that any kind of lesson has been learned. Nowhere in the book does Myers “express regret that it was during his chairmanship that the US military embraced cruelty as an official policy, apparently for the first time since 1863.” It was in 1863 that President Lincoln issued a Proclamation that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty.” That standard has guided us ever since---until the Bush Administration.

When it comes to the perversion of our laws, however, we have to come back to the lawyers as the chief enablers. Since the Bush Administration was implementing a top-down policy, they had to arrange for legal cover. The Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department obliged. David Cole presented the case against the lawyers who authored the torture memos in another article in the New York Review of Books.

Said Cole:

“"these memos are the real ‘smoking gun' of the torture controversy.”

“Justice Department lawyers were involved in justifying every aspect of the CIA program.”

“They treated the law against torture not as a universal prohibition but as an inconvenient obstacle to be evaded by any means necessary.”

“In their hands, law became not a constraint on power, but the instrument of unconscionable abuse.”

When Michael Mukasey was testifying in his confirmation hearing for Attorney General, he could not bring across his lips a condemnation of water-boarding as torture, even though we ourselves convicted the Japanese for just such tactics. He likely did so to protect what would soon be his own staff at Justice. But surely water-boarding rises to the level of being degrading and inhumane, does it not? Then it is already illegal. There is no available refuge in nuance here.

Not according to Bush's OLC! In a May 2005 memo it declared that the CIA's methods did not even rise to the level of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. A complete whitewash. In an environment such as this, words lose their meaning. Anyone who cares about our historical Anglo-Saxon reverence for the law should be alarmed.

Concludes Cole: “Absent a reckoning for those responsible for making torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment official US policy, the United States' commitment to the rule of law will remain a hollow shell---a commitment to be honored only when it is not inconvenient or impolitic to do so.”

It is difficult to see how such a reckoning might come about. It is unlikely to be initiated by the Department of Justice itself. President Obama does not appear to be inclined to refocus on this issue. We who see the implications of what has happened need to keep the pressure on the policy-makers. And we need the lawyers themselves, those who see their profession as degraded by these acts. The issue here does not lend itself to a simple right/left dichotomy. There is concern even among conservatives about what is happening to us.

Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Atlantic Magazine, agrees that we cannot move forward until we address the stain of torture on our society. The “military necessity” loophole in the torture memos initiated our “descent into the ranks of countries that systematically torture prisoners.”

Sullivan sees an alternative to a wrenching series of prosecutions in President Bush taking full responsibility for what happened. That would right the ship and allow us to move forward with civilized standards once again in place. He called upon Bush to “reject categorically the phony legalisms, criminal destruction of crucial evidence, and retrospective rationalizations"” Sullivan appeals to Bush as a fellow Christian: “Our faith tells us that what you authorized is an absolute evil. By absolute evil, I mean something that is never morally justified.”

President Bush has himself asserted the proper standard. When some of our soldiers were captured in Iraq, he said: “I expect them to be treated humanely, just as we're treating the prisoners that we have captured humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.”

I hope that Andrew Sullivan succeeds in his appeal. But this will not avoid the necessity for trials. The best we can hope for in President Bush's acceptance of responsibility is that it will take the sting of partisanship out of what must happen next. Sullivan himself states that “To ignore the flagrant evidence of war crimes, reported by the Red Cross, is itself a violation of America's treaty obligations.” These obligations are not satisfied by any statement of contrition that President Bush might make.

We recently witnessed the case of an Army paratrooper who used a martial arts hold to subdue a drunk fellow soldier to get him safely back on base. The fellow died, and the paratrooper was convicted, sentenced to two years in prison, and given a bad-conduct discharge. In his defense it was argued that he had followed the recommended procedure for such cases, that the man was his friend, and that he obviously intended no harm. Even the victim's family called for leniency. “All of us firmly believe that Sergeant Boyle and the other soldiers were just trying to help Luke that night. It is not our wish to see Sgt. Boyle go to jail or to get kicked out of the Army.” And yet the process culminated in conviction and sentencing.

If this can be done in the face of so many extenuating circumstances, surely we can also bring obvious cases of torture before the courts and seek justice. Even if we don't acknowledge collective responsibility for the original offenses, we cannot now escape our collective responsibility to see that justice is done and that proper safeguards are once again put in place.

Siegfried Othmer

Reference material:

The Complicit General, by Philippe Sands, The New York Review of Books, September 24, 2009, p.20

The Torture Memos: The Case Against the Lawyers, David Cole, New York Review of Books, October 8,2009 (p.14)

Dear President Bush, by Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic, p. 78

Strother Martin Nailed It: "You gotta get your mind right!"

2009-08-13T13:54:00.001-07:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Strother-Martin-Nailed-It-by-mike-ferner-090812-856.html

August 12, 2009

Strother Martin Nailed It: "You gotta get your mind right!"

By mike ferner

(Note: This speech opened the 24th Annual Convention of Veterans For Peace last weekend in College Park, MD.)

In Paul Newman's 1967 classic, "Cool Hand Luke," the prison boss in the white suit, played memorably by Strother Martin, repeatedly tells Luke to "get your mind right." That turned out to be literally a grave warning for Luke, but it's exactly what we need to hear today.

We begin our meetings today against a backdrop of a crippled economy, sweeping foreclosures, widespread unemployment, millions without medical benefits, wars that now exceed a trillion dollars and have killed over a million people.

It's a fair question to ask, that with a name like Veterans For Peace, should we be concerned with issues that go so far beyond opposing war? The answer is "yes," because war and our economic calamities are not only connected, one is the dominant cause of all the others, and VFP is well positioned to make this argument.

As we open our convention I'd like to open a discussion on something even more fundamental than war and economic calamity. As is true so many times when talking about fundamentals, we can refer to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The same year "Cool Hand Luke," played in theaters, Dr. King spoke at Riverside Church in New York, giving what many believe was his greatest speech, "Beyond Vietnam." In it, he called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

"Time" magazine called King's speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi."

But every word in King's speech was true "" and timeless. Here are a couple gems.

""what we are submitting our troops to is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war"We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for (our soldiers) must know after a short period there, that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.
Americans, who calculate so carefully"military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat."
Then, 42 years ago, he spoke words that could've been addressed to us here today:

"This war is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this"reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy-and-laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala"Cambodia" South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life""
My daughter brought this home to me right after the invasion of Iraq, when she said, "This is my generation's war, just like Vietnam was yours, isn't it?"

So here we are, organizing another generation of anti-war committees, attending rallies without end. It's still necessary, We'll keep doing it, but I'm sick of it. I'm tired of being that Vet for Peace guy who makes history dance at another rally by revealing what Smedley Butler had to say. I long for the time when Veterans For Peace can build its membership on a reputation for creating a peaceful world and its practical nonviolence skills, not just because we lept to the front ranks against yet another war.

Chris Hedges wrote "war is a force that gives us meaning." Could it also be true that anti-war is a force that gives us meaning? If we are content to be an anti-war movement or peace movement in name only, we'll have work that will give us plenty of meaning for this generation, our children's generation, and the one after that if the planet is still breathing.

No, what we need is a peace movement that is true to our chant in the streets: "No justice, no peace!" Peace with justice means stopping the few from making policy for the many; from robbing us blind; denying our right to health care; destroying Earth's life support systems; as well as sending us to war.

Peace with justice needs a foundation. That foundation is democracy. Not democracy "as advertised on TV," or bandied about during elections, but the real thing. We must govern ourselves, for we have seen what happens when we don't.

Imagine a peace movement that is part of a larger democracy movement. We talk about "outreach" to other groups. We talk about defunding the war to fund human needs. But brothers and sisters, what is our vision? Stopping the F-22 or trading an aircraft carrier for a housing program? It has to be more than that! What we need is to govern ourselves so we can create the kind of life we have an indisputable, inalienable right to.

But we aren't going to gain the power needed to govern ourselves if we expend our precious time toiling in an isolated peace movement that merely wants to get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, just as we won't become self-governing with an environmental movement that aims only for more solar panels and cars with better mileage.

We need to get our minds right so we can see ourselves not as mere workers and consumers but as human beings with an absolute right to define what kind of life we need "" and then take it!

We need to create a culture of democracy from the bottom-up, to replace our culture of death. We need to change our government from what it is today "" a huge roadblock, guarded round the clock by greed and private interests, into a vehicle that nourishes the public interest; that helps us express our love for each other and our planet.

I believe there is a hunger for self-governance and democracy in America and that hunger is the fundamental link between the peace movement and every other movement working to address human needs.

I don't need to remind this audience of war's real cost. We can't even identify all the categories into which we pour war's staggering sums. Less than 5% of what we've spent in Iraq and Afghanistan would pay the tuition of every student attending public university this year in the U.S. Beyond dollars, we know war's human toll on individuals, families and whole communities is as impossible to quantify as the heartache of a single loved one; as impossible to calculate as the multiples of misery endured by those under our bombs.

If we experienced casualties in our country comparable to those just in Iraq it would mean "" listen for where you live "" that every person in Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle would be dead. Every. Single. Person. Everyone in Delaware, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Oregon: wounded. Every. Single. Person. The entire populations of Ohio and New Jersey: homeless. Everyone in Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky: refugees in Canada or Mexico.

What's astounding is that so many insist this kind of madness is practical, is realistic"..and yet would look at VFP's bottom line, "To abolish war as an instrument of national policy" and say "now, that's crazy!"

How can this be? Well, think how much we pay this system every year to produce this culture of death, and then define it as normal, in fact as the only way to live unless we want to freeze to death in the dark. There is one good thing about all this "" when we realize what a constant, herculean effort the system must make to construct such a massive delusion and maintain it in the face of everything rational, we can sense how fragile the empire really is. If you doubt that, recall the statues of Lenin toppling all across Russia in 1990, when just two years before such a thing was unthinkable.

And so we've come full circle, back to Strother Martin's demand to get your mind right! We can either do that, or stand dumbfounded on the side of the road, waiting in awe for the Imperial Oz to give us direction.

Well, we're here to tell the nation that Veterans For Peace knows what we see today is not the only way forward. War is not an unavoidable absolutes. Human beings decide to create injustice, to promote empire, to whip up public fears. But veterans know human beings can make different decisions. We can create better outcomes. We can build a just society. We can create a culture of democracy. We can abolish war. We can, and we are!

But remember this other passage from that great speech of King's. "We may cry out desperately for time to pause"but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "too late.'"

Sisters and brothers, let us begin!

Ferner is president of Veterans For Peace

Author's Website: www.mikeferner.org

America's War for Global Domination

2009-08-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

The elites want global domination. The people want peace.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5428.htm

America's War for Global Domination

by Michel Chossudovsky

12/15/03: (Global Research)

We are the juncture of the most serious crisis in modern history.

The Bush Administration has embarked upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

The wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are part of a broader military agenda, which was launched at the end of the Cold War. The ongoing war agenda is a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War and the NATO led wars on Yugoslavia (1991-2001).

The post Cold War period has also been marked by numerous US covert intelligence operations within the former Soviet Union, which were instrumental in triggering civil wars in several of the former republics including Chechnya (within the Russian Federation), Georgia and Azerbaijan. In the latter, these covert operations were launched with a view to securing strategic control over oil and gas pipeline corridors.

US military and intelligence operations in the post Cold War era were led in close coordination with the "free market reforms" imposed under IMF guidance in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Balkans, which resulted in the destabilization of national economies and the impoverishment of millions of people.

The World Bank sponsored privatization programmes in these countries enabled Western capital to acquire ownership and gain control of a large share of the economy of the former Eastern block countries. This process is also at the basis of the strategic mergers and/or takeovers of the former Soviet oil and gas industry by powerful Western conglomerates, through financial manipulation and corrupt political practices.

In other words, what is at stake in the US led war is the recolonization of a vast region extending from the Balkans into Central Asia.

The deployment of America's war machine purports to enlarge America's economic sphere of influence. The U.S. has established a permanent military presence not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has military bases in several of the former Soviet republics on China's Western frontier. In turn, since 1999, there has been a military buildup in the South China Sea.

War and Globalization go hand in hand. Militarization supports the conquest of new economic frontiers and the worldwide imposition of "free market" system.

The Next Phase of the War

The Bush administration has already identified Syria as the next stage of "the road map to war". The bombing of presumed 'terrorist bases' in Syria by the Israeli Air Force in October was intended to provide a justification for subsequent pre-emptive military interventions. Ariel Sharon launched the attacks with the approval of Donald Rumsfeld. (See Gordon Thomas, Global Outlook, No. 6, Winter 2004)

This planned extension of the war into Syria has serious implications. It means that Israel becomes a major military actor in the US-led war, as well as an 'official' member of the Anglo-American coalition.

The Pentagon views 'territorial control' over Syria, which constitutes a land bridge between Israel and occupied Iraq, as 'strategic' from a military and economic standpoint. It also constitutes a means of controlling the Iraqi border and curbing the flow of volunteer fighters, who are traveling to Baghdad to join the Iraqi resistance movement.

This enlargement of the theater of war is consistent with Ariel Sharon's plan to build a 'Greater Israel' "on the ruins of Palestinian nationalism". While Israel seeks to extend its territorial domain towards the Euphrates River, with designated areas of Jewish settlement in the Syrian heartland, Palestinians are imprisoned in Gaza and the West Bank behind an 'Apartheid Wall'.

In the meantime, the US Congress has tightened the economic sanctions on Libya and Iran. As well, Washington is hinting at the need for a 'regime change' in Saudi Arabia. Political pressures are building up in Turkey.

So, the war could indeed spill over into a much broader region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian sub-continent and China's Western frontier.

The "Pre-emptive" Use of Nuclear Weapons

Washington has adopted a first strike "pre-emptive" nuclear policy, which has now received congressional approval. Nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort as during the cold War era.

The US, Britain and Israel have a coordinated nuclear weapons policy. Israeli nuclear warheads are pointed at major cities in the Middle East. The governments of all three countries have stated quite openly, prior to the war on Iraq, that they are prepared to use nuclear weapons "if they are attacked" with so-called "weapons of mass destruction." Israel is the fifth nuclear power in the World. Its nuclear arsenal is more advanced than that of Britain.

Barely a few weeks following the entry of the US Marines into Baghdad, the US Senate Armed Services Committee gave the green light to the Pentagon to develop a new tactical nuclear bomb, to be used in conventional war theaters, "with a yield [of up to] six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb".

Following the Senate decision, the Pentagon redefined the details of its nuclear agenda in a secret meeting with senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex held at Central Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The meeting was held on August 6, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 58 years ago.

The new nuclear policy explicitly involves the large defense contractors in decision-making. It is tantamount to the "privatization" of nuclear war. Corporations not only reap multibillion dollar profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use nuclear weapons for the "defense of the American Homeland."

Fully endorsed by the US Congress, the mini-nukes are considered to be "safe for civilians".

This new generation of nuclear weapons is slated to be used in the next phase of this war, in "conventional war theatres" (e.g. in the Middle East and Central Asia) alongside conventional weapons.

In December 2003, the US Congress allocated $6.3 billion solely for 2004, to develop this new generation of "defensive" nuclear weapons.

The overall annual defense budget is of the order of 400 billion dollars, roughly of the same order of magnitude as the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Russian Federation.

While there is no firm evidence of the use of mini-nukes in the Iraqi and Afghan war theatres, tests conducted by Canada's Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC), in Afghanistan confirm that recorded toxic radiation was not attributable to 'heavy metal' depleted uranium ammunition (DU), but to another unidentified form of uranium contamination:

"some form of uranium weapon had been used (...) The results were astounding: the donors presented concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes between 100 and 400 times greater than in the Gulf War veterans tested in 1999." www.umrc.net

The Planning of War

The war on Iraq has been in the planning stages at least since the mid-1990s.

A 1995 National Security document of the Clinton administration stated quite clearly that the objective of the war is oil. "to protect the United States' uninterrupted, secure U.S. access to oil.

In September 2000, a few months before the accession of George W. Bush to the White House, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published its blueprint for global domination under the title: "Rebuilding America's Defenses."

The PNAC is a neo-conservative think tank linked to the Defense-Intelligence establishment, the Republican Party and the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which plays a behind-the-scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy.

The PNAC's declared objective is quite simple - to:

"Fight and decisively win in multiple, simultaneous theater wars".

This statement indicates that the US plans to be involved simultaneously in several war theaters in different regions of the World.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had commissioned the PNAC blueprint prior to the presidential elections.

The PNAC outlines a roadmap of conquest. It calls for "the direct imposition of U.S. "forward bases" throughout Central Asia and the Middle East "with a view to ensuring economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential "rival" or any viable alternative to America's vision of a 'free market' economy" (See Chris Floyd, Bush's Crusade for empire, Global Outlook, No. 6, 2003)

The Role of "Massive Casualty Producing Events"

The PNAC blueprint also outlines a consistent framework of war propaganda. One year before 9/11, the PNAC called for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor," which would serve to galvanize US public opinion in support of a war agenda. (See http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NAC304A.html )

The PNAC architects seem to have anticipated with cynical accuracy, the use of the September 11 attacks as "a war pretext incident."

The PNAC's reference to a "catastrophic and catalyzing event" echoes a similar statement by David Rockefeller to the United Nations Business Council in 1994:

"We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."

Similarly, in the words Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book, The Grand Chessboard:.

"…it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus [in America] on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter was one of the key architects of the Al Qaeda network, created by the CIA at the onslaught of the Soviet Afghan war (1979-1989).

The "catastrophic and catalyzing event" as stated by the PNAC is an integral part of US military-intelligence planning. General Franks, who led the military campaign into Iraq, pointed recently (October 2003) to the role of a "massive casualty-producing event" to muster support for the imposition of military rule in America. (See General Tommy Franks calls for Repeal of US Constitution, November 2003, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/EDW311A.html ).

Franks identifies the precise scenario whereby military rule will be established:

"a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world - it may be in the United States of America - that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event." (Ibid)

This statement from an individual, who was actively involved in military and intelligence planning at the highest levels, suggests that the "militarisation of our country" is an ongoing operational assumption. It is part of the broader "Washington consensus". It identifies the Bush administration's "roadmap" of war and "Homeland Defense." Needless to say, it is also an integral part of the neoliberal agenda.

The "terrorist massive casualty-producing event" is presented by General Franks as a crucial political turning point. The resulting crisis and social turmoil are intended to facilitate a major shift in US political, social and institutional structures.

General Franks' statement reflects a consensus within the US Military as to how events ought to unfold. The "war on terrorism" is to provide a justification for repealing the Rule of Law, ultimately with a view to "preserving civil liberties."

Franks' interview suggests that an Al Qaeda sponsored terrorist attack will be used as a "trigger mechanism" for a military coup d'état in America. The PNAC's "Pearl Harbor type event" would be used as a justification for declaring a State of emergency, leading to the establishment of a military government.

In many regards, the militarisation of civilian State institutions in the US is already functional under the facade of a bogus democracy.

War Propaganda

In the wake of the September attacks on the World Trade Center, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created to the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), or "Office of Disinformation" as it was labeled by its critics:

"The Department of Defense said they needed to do this, and they were going to actually plant stories that were false in foreign countries -- as an effort to influence public opinion across the world. (Interview with Steve Adubato, Fox News, 26 December 2002.)

And, all of a sudden, the OSI was formally disbanded following political pressures and "troublesome" media stories that "its purpose was to deliberately lie to advance American interests." (Air Force Magazine, January 2003, italics added) "Rumsfeld backed off and said this is embarrassing." (Adubato, op. cit. italics added) Yet despite this apparent about-turn, the Pentagon's Orwellian disinformation campaign remains functionally intact: "[T]he secretary of defense is not being particularly candid here. Disinformation in military propaganda is part of war."(Ibid)

Rumsfeld later confirmed in a press interview that while the OSI no longer exists in name, the "Office's intended functions are being carried out". (Quoted in Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Secrecy News, http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2002/11/112702.html , Rumsfeld's press interview can be consulted at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2002/11/dod111802.html ).

A number of government agencies and intelligence units --with links to the Pentagon-remain actively involved in various components of the propaganda campaign. Realities are turned upside down. Acts of war are heralded as "humanitarian interventions" geared towards "regime change" and "the restoration of democracy". Military occupation and the killing of civilians are presented as "peace-keeping". The derogation of civil liberties --in the context of the so-called "anti-terrorist legislation"-- is portrayed as a means to providing "domestic security" and upholding civil liberties.

The Central Role of Al Qaeda in Bush's National Security Doctrine

Spelled out in the National Security Strategy (NSS), the preemptive "defensive war" doctrine and the "war on terrorism" against Al Qaeda constitute the two essential building blocks of the Pentagon's propaganda campaign.

The objective is to present "preemptive military action" --meaning war as an act of "self-defense" against two categories of enemies, "rogue States" and "Islamic terrorists":

"The war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain duration. …America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.

…Rogue states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction (…)

The targets of these attacks are our military forces and our civilian population, in direct violation of one of the principal norms of the law of warfare. As was demonstrated by the losses on September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is the specific objective of terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction- and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, (…). To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."12 (National Security Strategy, White House, 2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html )

To justify pre-emptive military actions, the National Security Doctrine requires the "fabrication" of a terrorist threat, --ie. "an outside enemy." It also needs to link these terrorist threats to "State sponsorship" by the so-called "rogue states."

But it also means that the various "massive casualty-producing events" allegedly by Al Qaeda (the fabricated enemy) are part of the National Security agenda.

In the months building up to the invasion of Iraq, covert 'dirty tricks' operations were launched to produce misleading intelligence pertaining to both Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and Al Qaeda, which was then fed into the news chain.

In the wake of the war, while the WMD threat has been toned down, Al Qaeda threats to 'the Homeland' continue to be repeated ad nauseam in official statements, commented on network TV and pasted on a daily basis across the news tabloids.

And underlying these manipulated realties, "Osama bin Laden" terrorist occurrences are being upheld as a justification for the next phase of this war. The latter hinges in a very direct way:

1) the effectiveness of the Pentagon-CIA propaganda campaign, which is fed into the news chain.

2) The actual occurrence of "massive casualty producing events" as outlined in the PNAC

What this means is that actual ("massive casualty producing") terrorist events are part and parcel of military planning.

Actual Terrorist Attacks

In other words, to be "effective" the fear and disinformation campaign cannot solely rely on unsubstantiated "warnings" of future attacks, it also requires "real" terrorist occurrences or "incidents", which provide credibility to the Washington's war plans. These terrorist events are used to justify the implementation of "emergency measures" as well as "retaliatory military actions". They are required, in the present context, to create the illusion of "an outside enemy" that is threatening the American Homeland.

The triggering of "war pretext incidents" is part of the Pentagon's assumptions. In fact it is an integral part of US military history.(See Richard Sanders, War Pretext Incidents, How to Start a War, Global Outlook, published in two parts, Issues 2 and 3, 2002-2003).

In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had envisaged a secret plan entitled "Operation Northwoods", to deliberately trigger civilian casualties to justify the invasion of Cuba:

"We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington" "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." (See the declassified Top Secret 1962 document titled "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba"16 (See Operation Northwoods at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NOR111A.html ).

There is no evidence that the Pentagon or the CIA played a direct role in recent terrorist attacks, including those in Indonesia (2002), India (2001), Turkey (2003) and Saudi Arabia (2003).

According to the reports, the attacks were undertaken by organizations (or cells of these organizations), which operate quite independently, with a certain degree of autonomy. This independence is in the very nature of a covert intelligence operation. The «intelligence asset» is not in direct contact with its covert sponsors. It is not necessarily cognizant of the role it plays on behalf of its intelligence sponsors.

The fundamental question is who is behind them? Through what sources are they being financed? What is the underlying network of ties?

For instance, in the case of the 2002 Bali bomb attack, the alleged terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiah had links to Indonesia's military intelligence (BIN), which in turn has links to the CIA and Australian intelligence.

The December 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament --which contributed to pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of war-- were allegedly conducted by two Pakistan-based rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba ("Army of the Pure") and Jaish-e-Muhammad ("Army of Mohammed"), both of which according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) are supported by Pakistan's ISI. (Council on Foreign Relations at http://www.terrorismanswers.com/groups/harakat2.html , Washington 2002).

What the CFR fails to acknowledge is the crucial relationship between the ISI and the CIA and the fact that the ISI continues to support Lashkar, Jaish and the militant Jammu and Kashmir Hizbul Mujahideen (JKHM), while also collaborating with the CIA. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Fabricating an Enemy, March 2003, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO301B.html )

A 2002 classified outbrief drafted to guide the Pentagon "calls for the creation of a so-called 'Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group' (P2OG), to launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to 'quick-response' attacks by U.S. forces." (William Arkin, The Secret War, The Los Angeles Times, 27 October 2002)

The P2OG initiative is nothing new. It essentially extends an existing apparatus of covert operations. Amply documented, the CIA has supported terrorist groups since the Cold War era. This "prodding of terrorist cells" under covert intelligence operations often requires the infiltration and training of the radical groups linked to Al Qaeda.

In this regard, covert support by the US military and intelligence apparatus has been channeled to various Islamic terrorist organizations through a complex network of intermediaries and intelligence proxies. In the course of the 1990s, agencies of the US government have collaborated with Al Qaeda in a number of covert operations, as confirmed by a 1997 report of the Republican Party Committee of the US Congress. (See US Congress, 16 January 1997, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html ). In fact during the war in Bosnia US weapons inspectors were working with Al Qaeda operatives, bringing in large amounts of weapons for the Bosnian Muslim Army.

In other words, the Clinton Administration was "harboring terrorists". Moreover, official statements and intelligence reports confirm links between US military-intelligence units and Al Qaeda operatives, as occurred in Bosnia (mid 1990s), Kosovo (1998-99) and Macedonia (2001).(See See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalisation, The Truth behind September 11, Global Outlook, 2003, Chapter 3, http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html )

The Bush Administration and NATO had links to Al Qaeda in Macedonia. And this happened barely a few weeks before September 11, 2001, Senior U.S. military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon, were fighting alongside Mujahideen in the terrorist attacks on the Macedonian Security forces. This is documented by the Macedonian press and statements made by the Macedonian authorities. (See Michel Chossudovsky, op cit). The U.S. government and the Islamic Militant Network were working hand in glove in supporting and financing the National Liberation Army (NLA), which was involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia.

In other words, the US military was collaborating directly with Al Qaeda barely a few weeks before 9/11.

Al Qaeda and Pakistan's Military Intelligence (ISI)

It is indeed revealing that in virtually all post 9/11 terrorist occurrences, the terrorist organization is reported (by the media and in official statements) as having "ties to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda". This in itself is a crucial piece of information. Of course, the fact that Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA is neither mentioned in the press reports nor is it considered relevant to an understanding of these terrorist occurrences.

The ties of these terrorist organizations (particularly those in Asia) to Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI) is acknowledged in a few cases by official sources and press dispatches. Confirmed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), some of these groups are said to have links to Pakistan's ISI, without identifying the nature of these links. Needless to say, this information is crucial in identifying the sponsors of these terrorist attacks. In other words, the ISI is said to support these terrorist organizations, while at same time maintaining close ties to the CIA.

September 11

While Colin Powell --without supporting evidence-pointed in his February 2003 UN address to "the sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network", official documents, press and intelligence reports confirm that successive US administrations have supported and abetted the Islamic militant network. This relationship is an established fact, corroborated by numerous studies, acknowledged by Washington's mainstream think tanks.

Both Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage, who in the months leading up to the war casually accused Baghdad and other foreign governments of "harboring" Al Qaeda, played a direct role, at different points in their careers, in supporting terrorist organizations.

Both men were implicated --operating behind the scenes-- in the Irangate Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration, which involved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contra paramilitary army and the Afghan Mujahideen. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, Expose the Links between Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO303D.html )

Moreover, both Richard Armitage and Colin Powell played a role in the 9/11 cover-up. The investigations and research conducted in the last two years, including official documents, testimonies and intelligence reports, indicate that September 11 was an carefully planned intelligence operation, rather than a act conducted by a terrorist organization. (For further details, see Centre for Research on Globalization, 24 Key articles, September 2003)

The FBI confirmed in a report made public late September 2001 the role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence. According to the report, the alleged 9-11 ring leader, Mohammed Atta, had been financed from sources out of Pakistan. A subsequent intelligence report confirmed that the then head of the ISI General Mahmoud Ahmad had transferred money to Mohammed Atta. (See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization, op.cit.)

Moreover, press reports and official statements confirm that the head of the ISI, was an official visit to the US from the 4th to 13th of September 2001. In other words, the head of Pakistan's ISI, who allegedly transferred money to the terrorists also had a close personal relationship with a number of senior Bush Administration officials, including Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, whom he met in the course of his visit to Washington. (Ibid)

The Antiwar Movement

A cohesive antiwar movement cannot be based solely on the mobilization of antiwar sentiment. It must ultimately unseat the war criminals and question their right to rule.

A necessary condition for bringing down the rulers is to weaken and eventually dismantle their propaganda campaign.

The momentum of the large anti-war rallies in the US, the European Union and around the world, should lay the foundations of a permanent network composed of tens of thousands of local level anti-war committees in neighborhoods, work places, parishes, schools, universities, etc. It is ultimately through this network that the legitimacy of those who "rule in our name" will be challenged.

To shunt the Bush Administration's war plans and disable its propaganda machine, we must reach out to our fellow citizens across the land, in the US, Europe and around the world, to the millions of ordinary people who have been misled on the causes and consequences of this war.

This also implies fully uncovering the lies behind the "war on terrorism" and revealing the political complicity of the Bush administration in the events of 9/11.

September 11 is a hoax. It's the biggest lie in US history.

Needless to say, the use of "massive casualty producing events" as pretext to wage war is a criminal act. In the words of Andreas van Buelow, former German Minister of Technology and author of The CIA and September 11:

"If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars."

Yet it is not sufficient to remove George W. Bush or Tony Blair, who are mere puppets. We must also address the role of the global banks, corporations and financial institutions, which indelibly stand behind the military and political actors.

Increasingly, the military-intelligence establishment (rather than the State Department, the White House and the US Congress) is calling the shots on US foreign policy. Meanwhile, the Texas oil giants, the defense contractors, Wall Street and the powerful media giants, operating discreetly behind the scenes, are pulling the strings. If politicians become a source of major embarrassment, they can themselves be discredited by the media, discarded and a new team of political puppets can be brought to office.

Criminalization of the State

The "Criminalization of the State", is when war criminals legitimately occupy positions of authority, which enable them to decide "who are the criminals", when in fact they are criminals.

In the US, both Republicans and Democrats share the same war agenda and there are war criminals in both parties. Both parties are complicit in the 9/11 cover-up and the resultant quest for world domination. All the evidence points to what is best described as "the criminalisation of the State", which includes the Judiciary and the bipartisan corridors of the US Congress. .

Under the war agenda, high ranking officials of the Bush administration, members of the military, the US Congress and the Judiciary have been granted the authority not only to commit criminal acts, but also to designate those in the antiwar movement who are opposed to these criminal acts as "enemies of the State."

More generally, the US military and security apparatus endorses and supports dominant economic and financial interests - i.e. the build-up, as well as the exercise, of military might enforces "free trade". The Pentagon is an arm of Wall Street; NATO coordinates its military operations with the World Bank and the IMF's policy interventions, and vice versa. Consistently, the security and defense bodies of the Western military alliance, together with the various civilian governmental and intergovernmental bureaucracies (e.g. IMF, World Bank, WTO) share a common understanding, ideological consensus and commitment to the New World Order.

To reverse the tide of war, military bases must be closed down, the war machine (namely the production of advanced weapons systems like WMDs) must be stopped and the burgeoning police state must be dismantled. More generally we must reverse the "free market" reforms, dismantle the institutions of global capitalism and disarm financial markets.

The struggle must be broad-based and democratic encompassing all sectors of society at all levels, in all countries, uniting in a major thrust: workers, farmers, independent producers, small businesses, professionals, artists, civil servants, members of the clergy, students and intellectuals.

The antiwar and anti-globalisation movements must be integrated into a single worldwide movement. People must be united across sectors, "single issue" groups must join hands in a common and collective understanding on how the New World Order destroys and impoverishes.

The globalization of this struggle is fundamental, requiring a degree of solidarity and internationalism unprecedented in world history. This global economic system feeds on social divisiveness between and within countries. Unity of purpose and worldwide coordination among diverse groups and social movements is crucial. A major thrust is required which brings together social movements in all major regions of the world in a common pursuit and commitment to the elimination of poverty and a lasting world peace.

© Copyright Michel Chossudovsky 2003

Militarizing the Homeland

2009-08-09T04:37:00.000-07:00

Notice how many of boys' toys exist to program them for violence and war! Let us make boys' toys of peace!

http://www.truthout.org/080609A

Thursday 06 August 2009
by: Dahr Jamail and Jason Coppola, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

"My very first recruiting officer was G.I. Joe," says Iraq war veteran Michael Prysner, an Iraq war veteran who was an aerial intelligence specialist in the US Army Reserve.

Award-winning journalist and Associate Editor of the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com Nick Turse writes in his book "The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives": "As a product of the 1980s G.I. Joe generation, I can attest to the seductive power of those three inch action figures in selling the military to young boys."

In an interview with Truthout, Turse observed, "Only later would I learn just how enmeshed G.I. Joe's manufacturer, Hasbro, was with the military. One instance of this close association came to me in 2003 when the Department of Defense shared the specifications for their Future Force Warrior concept with the toy company, even before awarding the contract to General Dynamics. More important to the military these days are its ties to video game manufacturers. The latter turn tax-payer-funded combat simulators into first-person shooters that, in effect, pre-train youngsters in small-unit military tactics and irregular warfare."

Turse also talks of the Microsoft Xbox game "Close Combat: First to Fight," which was originally a training tool developed for the US Marine Corps by civilian contractor Destineer Studios. His book reveals that the game "was created under the direction of more than 40 active-duty Marines, fresh from the frontlines of combat in the Middle East [who] worked side-by-side with the development team to put the exact tactics they used in combat into "First Fight."

"... The game is typical of a recently emerging trend that has melded the video game industry (and entertainment industries more broadly) with the US military in a set of symbiotic relationships that literally immerse civilian gamers in a virtual world of war while training soldiers using the hottest gaming technology available. It's the creation of a digital cradle-to-grave concept in which games created by or for the military are used as recruiting tools and also, as it were, to pre-train youngsters. Then, when they are old enough to enlist, these kids find themselves using video game-like controllers to pilot real military vehicles and are taught tactics and are trained in strategy using specially designed video games and commercially available, off-the-shelf games that have been drafted into service by the military. That civilian-created, military-aided training tool was then recycled into a civilian first-person shooter, rated 'T' for "teen," with a marine on the game's packaging and a blurb that exclaims, "Based on a training tool developed for the United States Marines."

"First to Fight" is but one of many video games that the US military has availed itself of on an extensive scale to indoctrinate, desensitize, dehumanize and ultimately recruit young people into the vocation of legitimized violence in the name of heroism and patriotism.

When veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan gathered at a Winter Soldier event to share their stories and experiences in the occupations with the media, Kristopher Goldsmith, who has served in Iraq, spoke to Truthout about what influenced him as a youngster to want to join the military in order to kill people.

"It might sound crazy to anyone who is not a veteran, but video games and movies, especially recent ones, make death and dismemberment seem like ordinary things. You are desensitized to them. While growing up I used to think people at the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) were crazy, trying to censor violence and stuff like that... I was like 'Oh, well violence is real life,' but there's a huge difference between witnessing first-hand any sort of violence and sitting in a movie theater watching someone faking a death. Reality and pretending are two way different things. It's disturbing. You can ask any combat veteran, things like video games and cartoons like 'G.I. Joe,' dressing in camouflage and running around in the woods, even being in the Boy Scouts definitely makes children idolize soldiers ... and not idolize them for standing up for their country but just for wearing the uniform and being a tough guy. It's a sign of masculinity that a lot of young boys and young men want to achieve, and they do it through the wrong way."

Goldsmith joined the military at 18, right after high school, wanting to go to the front lines because, "I was still under the influence of the media and its Terrorism paranoia, and seriously believed that somewhere in the deserts of Iraq were thousands of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)."

Goldsmith and Prysner are not alone in having responded favorably to the powerful combined influence of the entertainment industry and corporate media. There are innumerable others who have been lured into joining the military for the promise of violence that it offers.

The process of brainwashing and desensitization by the military begins affecting children in the US from a very early age. It is not insignificant that little boys wear camouflage and run around playing with toy guns whenever they get an opportunity.

Goldsmith also attributes his inclination towards violence to the Boy Scouts. A story in The New York Times describes the new Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America as "training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence - an intense ratcheting up of one of the group's longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters."

Cathy Noriega, a 16-year-old girl in the program, was attracted by the compressed-air guns the students use while training. "I like shooting them. I like the sound they make. It gets me excited."

Officials involved in the program publicly claim, "This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl."

* * *
Another irresistible agent that the US military has deployed in its recruitment and support drive is films. Turse elaborates the point, "In addition to toys and video games, the military has also strengthened its ties to Hollywood in recent years. Turning back to G.I. Joe, we can see this with the new movie: 'G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.' My understanding is that when the war in Iraq was going especially poorly, and to make the movie more palatable for the global marketplace, the fighting force in the movie was supposed to be an international special ops team based in Europe. A negative response from American fans, and undoubtedly the desire to use DoD (Department of Defense) assets - like vehicles and bases - caused the studio to alter the script, apply for support and get a Department of Defense adviser on the film. As result 'G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra' joins a host of recent summer blockbusters, like both of the 'Transformers' movies and 'Iron Man,' for example, in selling the US military to America's kids."

The list of Hollywood films that have helped the military garner wide support from the American public for large-scale conflict is long. By glamorizing and sentimentalizing warfare and camouflaging the truth behind unprovoked aggression, these films have served their purpose well. To name a few of these, we have: "Pearl Harbor," "Behind Enemy Lines," "Letters From Iwo Jima," "We Were Soldiers," "Saving Private Ryan," "Black Hawk Down," "Clear and Present Danger," and a host of others. If one looks at Hollywood's history of films that glamorize the US military, there are literally hundreds more.

At the time of entering WW I, the US established the Committee of Public Information, to develop guidelines for the media to promote domestic support for the war. In 1941, during WW II, there was a prolific production of war dramas and documentaries to boost the American war effort by Hollywood studios in association with the Pentagon. In 1948, the Pentagon established a special movie liaison office. Producers and directors who are willing to adapt their movies to Pentagon directives are given substantial financial and technical help, besides ready access to important defense locales and resources. Less obliging movie-makers are pointedly denied any assistance by the DoD. The objective is to encourage movies that inspire youth and, therefore, boost recruitment and not let negative portrayals of the army dissuade people from joining.

Turse writes in his book how this is done: "While the US military has long had a relationship with Hollywood, the ad hoc arrangements of old are over. Today, the air force operates airforcehollywood.af.mil, the official Web site of the US Air Force Entertainment Liaison Office. The military has even set up a one-stop shop-on one floor of a Los Angeles office building - where the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and Department of Defense itself have film liaison offices. Additionally, the DoD runs an entire 'entertainment media division' from the Pentagon."

As an example, the first "Transformers" film released in July 2007 used a variety of Air Force assets, and for the latest iteration of the film, DreamWorks and Paramount studios partnered with all four US military services to highlight America's military members and combat power on the big screen.

Special military "advisers" are appointed to ensure the desirable changes are retained by the film makers. The Air Force was so happy to work with Hollywood on the movie "Iron Man," that it had Capt. Chris Hodge as the DoD's project officer for the film. He is said to have gloated about the movie, "The Air Force is going to come off looking like rock stars."

According to Turse, "By co-opting the civilian 'culture of cool' the military corporate complex is able to create positive associations with the armed forces, immerse the young in an alluring, militarized world of fun, and make interaction with the military sound second nature to today's Americans. The military is now in the midst of a full-scale occupation of the entertainment industry, conducted with far more skill (and enthusiasm on the part of the occupied) than America's debacle in Iraq."

Even members of the US Congress have been captivated by the military's melding of fiction and reality. On July 27, 2004, the American Forces Press Service reported, in an article titled "Future Warrior Exhibits Super Powers," "The Army's future soldier will resemble something out of a science fiction movie, members of Congress witnessed at a demonstration on Capitol Hill July 23."

The successful integration of "culture of cool" and the culture of military is evident in the language of the veterans when they return home and speak of their actions against the people of Iraq. Expressions straight out of video game vocabularies like "lit you up," and "smoked 'em" are commonplace in their speech.

In a recent article, that documents Iraq war veterans engaging in violence and crime upon returning home, soldiers have described their experience in Iraq. Veteran Daniel Freeman told a reporter, "Toward the end, we were so mad and tired and frustrated, you came too close, we lit you up. You didn't stop, we ran your car over with the Bradley."

His friend Anthony Marquez, of the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, added, "With each roadside bombing, soldiers would fire in all directions and just light the whole area up. If anyone was around, that was their fault. We smoked 'em."

* * *
All available avenues have been explored by the Pentagon in its quest for a wide-based acceptance of its policies. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have also been utilized for the tasks of seeking out young recruits and spreading its message.

That the US military has made blatant use of the Media and the entertainment industry to indoctrinate the young American mind is common knowledge. What has perhaps gone unnoticed is how the military is insidiously infiltrating our social and public lives. Earlier this summer, on Memorial Day weekend in Times Square, New York City, the military showcased weaponry while recruiters posed for pictures and engaged in small talk with women, men, children and families. Women fondled rocket launchers, small children pretended to fire heavy machine guns, young boys posed with assault rifles, and even housewives enjoyed the act of aiming rocket launchers.

The militarization of US culture in the minds of US citizens has grown ubiquitous. Just this month, the sounds of combat choppers, automatic weapons fire, and other battle noises being broadcast nearby a rural neighborhood prompted locals to protest. The sounds were part of a combat training exercises for SWAT team members and Marines. When civilian neighbors complained of the noise, live ammunition being used and smoke machines as being annoying as well as dangerous, the county opted to allow the war games to continue.

Author/journalist Chris Hedges articulated the issue for Truthout, "Well, the myth of war, at its core, is really a very visceral form of self-exaltation. It is about the empowerment of our nation, of our society, and by extension, our own empowerment. In the coverage, for instance, of the invasion of Iraq, this was clearly evident on the cable news channels where the way the war was covered was to bring in retired military to explain the power and precision and might of our own weapons. And I think, very much, one was made to identify with the power of those weapons and the power of the state. So war has a kind of seductive appeal. The entertainment industry makes a lot of money off it. The politicians perpetuate the myth of war, they romanticize war, they use words like glory, honor, courage, manhood, to appeal to desires on the part of large segments of the population who feel relatively powerless and relatively anonymous. And war is a way of elevating them, or at least so they believe, into a kind of nobility that peace time existence doesn't offer them."

If the US is to recover any of its waning international reputation and this civilization is to sustain itself, the nation and its citizens will have to invent safer, more human ways of elevating themselves.

--------

Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan," (Haymarket Books, 2009) and "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq," (Haymarket Books, 2007). Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for nine months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last five years.

Jason Coppola is the director and producer of the documentary film "Justify My War," which explores the rationalization of war in American culture, comparing the siege of Fallujah with the massacre at Wounded Knee. Coppola has worked in Iraq as well as on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Bhaswati Sengupta also contributed to this report.

As Long as the Wars Continue, We Must Resist Them

2009-08-09T04:36:00.000-07:00

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/08/as-long-as-the-wars-continue-we-must-resist-them/

Ron Jacobs
Dissident Voice
Fri, 07 Aug 2009 02:09 UTC

As the casualty figures climb in Afghanistan and dip in Iraq and support for those wars plummets, the question of troop resistance remains on the table. According to US military estimates, desertion and AWOL rates have climbed since the resistance in Iraq began its armed campaign against the US occupation. In addition, recruitment numbers dropped drastically, although they have began to climb since the economy began its collapse in Fall 2008. Soldiers and Marines have been stop-lossed and their tours of duty in the combat zones were extended. In addition, many troops serve not one, but two or three consecutive tours with as little as one month stateside between tours. All of these phenomena have created increased levels of stress and depression among the troops, leading to one of the highest known suicide rates among veterans and active duty troops ever.

Many readers know at least one man or woman who has done time in Iraq or Afghanistan. Although most vets seem to adjust to civilian life once they are through with their military duty, many others do not. indeed, even those who appear to be adjusting just fine often cause concern among their friends and relatives because of changes in their behavior. The Veteran's Administration (VA) is notoriously inept and callous in its treatment of vets, despite the best efforts of some individuals within the organization that struggle against the overwhelming bureaucratic odds and inadequate funding endemic in the agency. Newspapers run stories regularly about veterans lacking care, lashing out at family members or others, and most tragically of all, killing themselves. Yet, the Pentagon continues to push for an escalation of the war in Afghanistan while carrying on what appears to be a heated debate over whether or not to withdraw from Iraq.

Meanwhile, the US antiwar movement founders in the wake of a substantial part of its membership giving their collective soul to the Democratic Party. Since November 2008, it's as if the bloodshed perpetrated by US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan is okay because Barack Obama is leading the charge instead of George Bush. Besides the National Assembly's call for local and regional protests against the Iraq occupation and Afghan war in October, there has been barely a peep from other national antiwar organizations. This is despite the fact that Congress and Obama have approved several more billion dollars for the wars and the size of the US force in Afghanistan has nearly doubled while the promised withdrawal of US forces in Iraq has not even begun.

It is the opinion of many anti-warriors that veterans have a key role to play in any organized resistance. After all, it was their presence in the movement against the Vietnam war that shook the conscience of the US public in that war's later years. However, as Dahr Jamail and his subjects point out again and again, the strength in numbers and the political power of the GI movement against the war in Vietnam was directly related to the strength of the greater antiwar movement. So, despite the commitment of today's GI and veteran resisters profiled in Jamail's book, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, that commitment is limited by the weakness of the antiwar movement as a whole.

Jamail highlights the various organizations organizing GI resistance, from the Iraq Veterans Against the War to the group Courage to Resist. He also commits a chapter to each of the primary forms of resistance and reasons for that resistance. He describes instances of individual resistance and the refusal of entire units to carry out missions. He also explores the nature of the sexist culture of the military and the immorality of the wars themselves. One of the most interesting chapters in The Will to Resist is titled "Quarters of Resistance." It describes the mission and interior of a house in Washington, DC run by a couple veterans. The purpose of the house is to operate as a sort of clearinghouse for the GI resistance movement. At times, the house has provided shelter for veterans and GIs attending antiwar activities in DC. It is also a place that the founder of the house, Geoffrey Millard, calls a "training ground for resistance." In addition to these quarters, Jamail discusses the beginnings of a coffeehouse movement slowly developing outside major US military bases.

Jamal's book is also about his learning to understand and appreciate the humanity of the US soldier. Originally inclined to consider them all killers without conscience, his conversations and other interactions with the young men and women who have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan to kill in America's name have led him to understand that many of these folks struggle with their souls on a daily basis. With this growing understanding of folks who are essentially his contemporaries, The Will to Resist becomes more than just another collective biography of troops who discover their conscience under the duress of war.

If the current commander of US troops in Afghanistan has his way, there will be more than 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan by the end of the summer in 2010. Already, Barack Obama has approved adding 20,000 more active duty troops to the 1,473,900 already on duty. Without public protest, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan is certain to continue. In addition, General Odierno in Iraq insists that US troops remain in that country, as well. Furthermore, the likelihood of combat against other foes chosen by Washington increases. Resistance is never easy, as the men and women in The Will to Resist can tell us. However, if the people who poured into the streets to protest Bush's war are truly opposed to war, then they should also make an appearance in those same streets now that the war is Obama's.