BP plugs well with mud; feds say much of oil gone
– Static Kill To Stop The Oil Spill
By HARRY R. WEBER and GREG BLUESTEIN,
Associated Press
August 4, 2010
ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – BP claimed a key victory Wednesday in the effort to plug its blown-out well and the government said much of the spilled oil is gone — though what's left is still at least quadruple the amount that poured from the Exxon Valdez.
BP PLC reached what it called a significant milestone overnight when mud that was forced down the well held back the flow of crude.
Also, White House energy adviser Carol Browner said on morning TV talk shows that a new assessment found that about 75 percent of the oil has either been captured, burned off, evaporated or broken down in the Gulf.
"It was captured. It was skimmed. It was burned. It was contained. Mother Nature did her part," Browner told NBC's "Today" show. On ABC's "Good Morning America," she said about 25 percent remained.
It was not clear if she was referring to 25 percent of what gushed from the well — about 205 million gallons based on new government estimates released this week — or 25 percent of what made it into the water, about 172 million gallons. The rest was either burned, skimmed or siphoned in the days after the April 20 explosion aboard the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon.
Using the lower number, 25 percent would be about 43 million gallons. Even if the Gulf well had leaked only that much to begin with, it would still be among the worst oil spills in history. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez tanker spill that wreaked environmental havoc in Alaska in 1989 spilled 11 million gallons.
In the Gulf, workers stopped pumping mud in after about eight hours of their "static kill" procedure and were monitoring the well to ensure it remained stable, BP said.
"It's a milestone," BP PLC spokeswoman Sheila Williams said. "It's a step toward the killing of the well."
The next step would be deciding whether to cement the well.
The pressure in the well dropped quickly in the first 90 minutes of the static kill procedure Tuesday, a sign that everything was going as planned, wellsite leader Bobby Bolton told The Associated Press. Bolton said Tuesday night that the procedure was going well. "Pressure is down and appears to be stabilizing," he told the AP then.
Browner told NBC it was good news that the static kill was working but that "we remain focused on the relief well."
The static kill — also known as bullheading — involved slowly pumping the mud from a ship down lines running to the top of the ruptured well a mile below. BP has said that may be enough by itself to seal the well.
But the mud that was forced down the broken wellhead to permanently plug the gusher is only half the story. To call the mission a success, crews working on a flotilla of vessels on a desolate patch of water need to seal off the well from two directions.
An 18,000-foot relief well BP has been drilling for the past three months will be used later this month to execute a "bottom kill," in which mud and cement will be injected into the bedrock 2 1/2 miles below the sea floor to finish the job, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said.
"There should be no ambiguity about that," Allen said. "I'm the national incident commander, and this is how this will be handled."
A 75-ton cap placed on the well in July has been keeping the oil bottled up inside over the past three weeks, but is considered only a temporary measure. BP and the Coast Guard want to plug up the hole with a column of heavy drilling mud and cement to seal it off more securely.
A previous, similar effort failed in May when the mud couldn't overcome the unstemmed flow of oil.
BP won't know for certain whether the static kill has succeeded until engineers can use the soon-to-be-completed relief well to check their work.
The task is becoming more urgent because peak hurricane season is just around the corner, Allen said. Tropical Storm Colin formed then dissipated far out in the Atlantic on Tuesday, but early forecasts say it will travel toward the East Coast rather than the Gulf
____________
MC252 Well Reaches Static Condition; Well Monitoring Underway
BP Press Release date: 04 August 2010
BP announced today that the MC252 well appears to have reached a static condition -- a significant milestone. The well pressure is now being controlled by the hydrostatic pressure of the drilling mud, which is the desired outcome of the static kill procedure carried out yesterday (US Central time).
Pumping of heavy drilling mud into the well from vessels on the surface began at 1500CDT (2100 BST) on August 3, 2010 and was stopped after about eight hours of pumping. The well is now being monitored, per the agreed procedure, to ensure it remains static. Further pumping of mud may or may not be required depending on results observed during monitoring.
The start of the static kill was based on the results of an injectivity test, which immediately preceded the static kill and lasted about two hours.
BP will continue to work with the National Incident Commander and other government officials to determine the next course of action, which involves assessing whether to inject cement in the well via the same route.
The aim of these procedures is to assist with the strategy to kill and isolate the well, and will complement the upcoming relief well operation, which will continue as per plan.
A relief well remains the ultimate solution to kill and permanently cement the well. The first relief well, which started May 2, has set its final 9 7/8-inch casing. Operations on the relief wells are suspended during static kill operations.
Depending upon weather conditions, mid-August is the current estimate of the most likely date by which the first relief well will intercept the Macondo well annulus, and kill and cement operations commence.
____________
BP reports 'static kill' success; scientists say majority of oil has been dispersed, removed
By William Branigin and David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 4, 2010; 2:42 PM
A procedure to pump heavy mud into the blown-out BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has succeeded in plugging it, officials said Wednesday, and government scientists reported that most of the crude that gushed from it for three months has been recovered, burned, dispersed, evaporated, consumed by microbes or otherwise removed from the water.
But President Obama cautioned that much recovery work remains to be done, and other officials warned that the threat from the damaged Macondo well will not be eliminated until it is "killed" later this month with a relief well.
Moreover, federal officials said, the long-term effects of the oil spill, the worst in the nation's history, remain to be determined.
But in view of a series of early setbacks in efforts to control the blown-out well, BP's announcement early Wednesday that it had reached a "static condition" came as a huge relief. The term meant that pressure inside the well was brought under control through a mud-pumping process that began Tuesday afternoon.
BP called the achievement "a significant milestone" and said it stopped pumping mud into the Macondo well after about eight hours because the effort had been successful.
"The well is now being monitored, per the agreed procedure, to ensure it remains static," the company said in a statement. "Further pumping of mud may or may not be required depending on results observed during monitoring."
In a speech in Washington, Obama called the development "very welcome news" but pledged to continue recovery efforts.
He also welcomed the report released Wednesday by government scientists, saying it shows that "the vast majority of the spilled oil has been dispersed or removed from the water." He told a meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, "The long battle to stop the leak and contain the oil is finally close to coming to an end, and we are very pleased with that."
Obama added: "Our recovery efforts, though, will continue. We have to reverse the damage that's been done. We will continue to work to hold polluters accountable for the destruction they've caused. We've got to make sure that folks who were harmed are reimbursed, and we're going to stand by the people of the region for however long it takes until they're back on their feet."
As they huddled in BP's operations center, federal officials tried to manage expectations, saying that even if the operation known as "static kill" went as hoped, the well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico would not be finally plugged until it was intercepted and cemented by a relief well that crews have been drilling for three months.
"You want to make sure it's really dead, dead, dead. Don't want anything to rise out of the grave," Energy Secretary Steven Chu told The Washington Post late Tuesday afternoon.
The federal official in charge of the oil spill response, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, told a New Orleans television station Wednesday that pumping mud into the blown-out well took care of the immediate threat but that the "bottom kill" technique involving the 18,000-foot relief well would still go ahead.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
After the JFK Assassination--a True Coup d'état: Is the Current US Government Legitimate?
Dr. J. P. Hubert, MD FACS
August 3, 2010
It is now beyond reasonable doubt (BRD) that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by his own National Security State in what was a violent coup d'état that is, an overthrowing of the legitimate elected government of the United States by force through the use of the clandestine black-ops services of the CIA, elements of the Secret Service, the US military, the FBI and organized crime.[1]
Probability and Statistics:
Various scientific calculations have been done which indicate that there is less than 1 chance in a trillion that JFK's death was the result of one man acting alone. There were at least 15 separate violations made by the US Secret Service in their handling of Presidential Security in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.[2] These were unprecedented breaches in protocol. It would have been unusual if even one of these breaks in procedure had occurred let alone 15 during one Presidential visit. It defies credulity to think that such a scenario could have occurred on the basis of chance alone. Obviously the Secret Service “stood-down” so as to facilitate the conspirator’s killing teams in accomplishing the dastardly deed.[3] This means there was an extremely well orchestrated conspiracy to kill the President.
Perhaps even more astoundingly, during the 3 year period following the assassination of JFK and the murders of Lee Harvey Oswald and Officer J. D. Tippit, some 17 witnesses who were involved either directly or peripherally died, 72% of which were unnatural deaths, 52% being murders. The probability that even 15 of the 17 witnesses would be dead by 1967 is 100 quadrillion to 1 or 10(-17).[4]
The 35th President of the United States was murdered at essentially high noon on a bright autumn day in the middle of an American city while his security detail looked on and did nothing. The conspirators’ message was simple; “we’re in charge and there is nothing you can do about it.” Within the first hour after the Assassination, a pre-arranged “patsy” who had been placed in position at the Texas School Book Depository[5] was hunted down and apprehended long before any agency should have even suspected that he might have been involved. Lee Harvey Oswald--who as a result of the FIA[6] and the JFK Records Act[7] is now known to have been an American intelligence operative[8]--whether wittingly or by some last minute ruse played the part of the “fall-guy. During the entire time Oswald was in custody he denied killing President Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippitt. There exists more and more evidence that Oswald was not involved in the killing of either JFK or Officer Tippitt.
Before being given the opportunity to disclose his role as an intelligence operative and what he might have known about the conspiracy to kill JFK[9], Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered on national TV in a room full of police and FBI agents whose only responsibility was to protect him. The night before his killing, the Dallas Police Department received 2 separate calls from unknown person(s) who reported that Oswald was to be murdered. Despite the warning, the Dallas Police made no attempt to prevent the killing of ostensibly the most important prisoner in US custody at the time. It defies all logic to believe that both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald were killed by lone “deranged” gunmen.
Metaphysical Certainty:
In light of all of the cumulative JFK Assassination evidence now available, there exists metaphysical certainty that JFK was killed by a massive conspiracy with the power not only to murder the President but to successfully perpetrate a cover-up of monumental proportions which included securing massive medical fraud in the forensic evidence.[10] David Lifton, Douglas P. Horne and Dr. David W. Mantik and others have amply documented the details of how the medical fraud was accomplished.[11] The absolutely critical concept to understand is that no foreign or domestic entity would have had the access, power and requisite technological expertise to direct and accomplish the cover-up other than the American National Security State including US military physicians, 3 of which conducted the sham autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Shadow Government in Control:
Unless and until the United States publicly discloses to the citizenry that its duly elected government was overthrown in 1963 and that since then the replacement/imposter government has been at least technically/legally speaking illegitimate[12] it will likely be impossible to reverse the increasingly rapid disintegration of America. The reality is that since the murder of President John F. Kennedy, there has been an extra-constitutional imposter “government” in place which prior to that time existed only in the shadows. It has been given many different names including the “war party” the MIMIC (media, intelligence, military, industrial complex) the secret government, the shadow government etc. That entity or “Regime” as a result of the JFK assassination appears to have profoundly altered the trajectory of the United States by placing the country on a constant war footing and building and sustaining an enormous foreign military base presence throughout the world which serves to project American power and enlarge the “empire.”
Beginning with the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and his reversal of John F. Kennedy’s NSAM # 263 (within 4 days of the JFK Assassination) calling for an end to all US presence in Vietnam by 1965[13], the course which the US took was that of increasing militarization and empire-building rather than the move toward peace, nuclear disarmament and ending of the cold war begun by JFK in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis.[14] As should be readily apparent, the result has been catastrophic for the United States and much of the world. Since the death of President Kennedy, the confidence of the American people in their government has been drastically reduced suggesting that at a subliminal level at least, Americans are aware that something extremely troubling has transpired. Moreover, the polarization of the major political parties which now exists can be traced to the Johnson administration’s prosecution of the Vietnam War and its terrible sequelae.
Hegelian Dialectic and the Manipulation of US Population:
A form of Hegelian dialectic[15] is currently being utilized successfully by the oligarchical “Regime” to control the masses through an artificial binary division of reality[16] into a politics of left vs.: right in combination with the unrelenting “bread and circus” entertainment extravaganza being foisted upon the people the latest incarnation of which is the absurd reality TV phenomenon. Most Americans are too busy attempting to survive to be able to sort through the maze of distractions. They seek refuge in meaningless electronic games, TV shows and sporting events as a way to escape from the dismal realities of their increasingly hopeless lives. For those with more time and the requisite interest in politics and current events, the shadow government provides a steady diet of right vs.: left diatribes carried out by various “experts”, talking heads and partisan political hacks many of whom function as US intelligence assets and "cut-outs" of various kinds.[17] Few Americans realize that this left/right dichotomy is totally artificial and contrived so as to limit the universe of acceptable public discourse.
Effect of Dumbing-Down of America:
Americans have been “dumbed-down” for over 50 years such that as an aggregate entity we are no longer capable of reason or for that matter intellectually sound individual thought. The completely artificial bi-polar division between right and left, liberal and conservative so dominates the public discourse that one would think that it totally exhausts the entire panoply of possibilities. This of course is the sine que non of the Hegelian dialectic which is served up on a nightly basis in the form of cable “news” TV shows which attempt to promote an endless debate over which political worldview is best while demonizing its opponent. The idea that on many topics the position of neither left nor right is credible--seems to have been totally missed by most Americans.
The Left/Right Divide and the Hiding of the Truth:
For example, we have become accustomed to there being only 2 possibilities in any given dispute over issues of public policy; the position of the liberal (progressive) left and that of the neoconservative right.[18] How many Americans understand that the neoliberal left and the neoconservative right are but artificial constructs in the Hegelian tradition, designed to allow for the appearance of debate all the while serving to disguise the truth that the resolution/synthesis has already been predetermined by the oligarchical Regime currently in charge? The Regime has as its greatest weapon the fact that no one wishes to believe the truth. For most of us it is simply too painful, unnerving and overwhelming. As many propagandists have indicated, “the bigger the lie the more readily it will be believed.” It is viscerally more comfortable to believe the lie that our government exists of, by and for the people rather than for an elite few who wield all the power and influence and for whom everyone else exists only to be utilized, abused and discarded. The mercenary (all volunteer) US military is a perfect example of the latter being made up almost exclusively of the offspring of impoverished Americans. This has been the case since the draft was ended in the 1970’s.
Theater of the Absurd:
Every four years the Regime treats us to another “theater of the absurd” in which US citizens are allowed to vote for one of 2 Presidential candidates, each of whom has been vetted by the oligarchy such that from its standpoint it matters little which one is elected. Irrespective of what campaign promises are made, once in power, the new Presidential administration hues to the wishes of the not so hidden “shadow government.” It should be intuitively obvious that no serious candidate for high office could rise to that level without demonstrating a willingness to regurgitate the “party line” of their respective political affiliation. As a result so-called third-party candidates are virtually never successful when running for the highest office in the land. The only real opportunity for rank and file US citizens to effect change in their government is to elect a Representative to the US House who is committed to representing their views. Unfortunately, the mega corporations now appear to enjoy monopoly control[19] due to the campaign finance laws which allow for virtually unlimited contributions to candidates.[20] The practical effect is to nullify the political power of the average citizen.
The Political Process is Broken:
The current political process then is broken. So what can we do? It is obvious that under the current set of circumstances, it makes no difference who is elected President and what major political party has the White House or Congress for that matter. To say this of course is considered heresy among the pundit/ruling class who earn their livings by pretending the system is legitimate. Unfortunately however, it is true and they are wrong. There are simply too many powerful individuals and multinational corporations who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Examples include the banking, health care, munitions and energy industries and their lobbies and individual pundits who make up the afternoon and evening chattering class on cable TV such as Chris Matthews, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Ed Schultz, Keith Oberman and others.[21]
All of the above individuals to one degree or another represent special interest groups across the political spectrum. None are truly independent thinkers. They owe their jobs to their willingness to hue a particular political line as representatives of the media entity to which they belong. For example, O’Reilly, Hannity and Beck regurgitate the Neoconservative party line for Fox News with very little difference in their messages that is, there are differences in style but not substance.
Matthews (frequently repeats the claim that JFK and RFK were both killed by a lone deranged individual and he accepts/advertizes the poor work of scholarship that is Pozner's "Case Closed" which is easily debunked), Oberman (who also accepts Pozner's conclusions in "Case Closed") and Schultz largely follow the left or liberal party line with minor differences in substance and major differences in style. All advance the liberal political views of MSNBC.
CNN on the other hand touts itself as simply reporting the facts without an obvious political orientation. However, the most powerful CNN pundit is Wolf Blitzer who is essentially an Israeli (Zionist) intelligence cut-out all the while presenting himself as a non-editorializing straight-up journalist. CNN is completely loyal to Zionist Israel and the Zionist Lobby. It never criticizes the genocidal policies of the Jewish state so in that sense at least it is completely biased in favor of the Israeli Jews and against the Palestinian Arabs. It has failed to report the Apartheid nature of modern Israel where the human rights granted to Jews are denied to Arabs.
The Power of the Israel Lobby:
Not one of the above cable entities or individual pundit’s dares to criticize the Israeli government or its immoral policies however. In fact no major network or cable entity is willing to risk doing so due to the power of the Zionist (Israel) Lobby. Only in foreign venues or on the internet among bloggers does one find a willingness to question Israel’s Apartheid/genocidal policies or the actions of the Zionist Lobby. There is a complete symbiosis between the corporate oligarchy in control of the US government and the Israeli neo-Fascist entity whose interests are protected by the extensive Zionist Lobby which has infiltrated virtually every branch of the US government, most major ‘think-tanks” and much of US academia. There exists only a very small Jewish minority in the United States who admit that the actions of the modern state of Israel are not only immoral but counterproductive to the ultimate survival of the Jewish state. Fortunately, in Israel, Jewish intellectuals and academics such as Ilan Pappe have begun to break the strangle hold that radical Zionist’s such as Benyamin Netanyahu, Igor Lieberman and others have held over successive Israeli governments.
Is there a Solution?
While the internet is still relatively unregulated, it behooves every US citizen to peacefully but actively spread the truth that in the wake of World War II/the creation of the CIA and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the constitutional representative democratic republic which was brought into being in 1789 was replaced[22] with a not so secret shadow government which does the bidding of the elites and is antithetical to the needs, desires and goals of everyone else.
This effort should include organizing at the state and local levels. It should include electing to the US House of Representatives individuals who cannot be purchased by the multinational corporations and special interest groups. Finding such highly morally committed individuals will not be easy.
Finally, interested and committed individuals of like-mind should ban together for the purpose of pooling their various resources in order to better oppose the corporate media and their relentless attempts to “brain-wash” the public. Time is short for the survival of the American experiment. Please help Spread the word!
Notes:
[1] The evidence is simply overwhelming. For those who are not yet familiar with some of the seminal works they include but are not limited to those in the selected reference section appended to this essay.
[2] Philosopher of Science Professor James H. Fetzer performed a calculation assuming that the probability that any one of them would be breached was only 10% which is more than likely too high. For even 12 to be breached at the same time yields a probability of 10(-12).
[3] Evidence now strongly suggests that there were likely at least “3” teams, one in the TSBD, one behind the fence at the grassy knoll, and one at the southwest end of the overpass in the storm drain. It is also possible that a 4th team was positioned at the southeast end of the overpass and another in the Dal-Tex building fairly close to ground level. The exact identity and number of the assassin’s is of course irrelevant to the issue of whether a conspiracy existed.
[4] Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact. The Warren Commission, the Authorities and the Report. (New York: Random House, 1975) chapter 16, p. 302.
[5] Only someone in the US Secret Service would have been privy to the last minute change in the Dallas parade route which took the motorcade directly past the TSBD on Elm Street rather than down Main Street which had been the published route up until that point. The “last-minute” change was no doubt arranged to lessen the number of witnesses who would see the shooting and to be certain that Oswald was placed in the correct strategic position to be framed.
[6] Abbreviation for “Freedom of Information Act.”
[7] Passed in 1992 in response to the Motion Picture by Oliver Stone about the JFK Assassination. The law is known as the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The Act ordered all assassination-related material to be placed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
[8] See for example, James Di Eugenio and Lisa Pease, Editors. The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X. (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003) and John Newman. Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth about the Unknown Relationship between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1995).
[9] Judyth Vary Baker who alleges a romantic affair with Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1963 while the two worked under-cover at the Reilly Coffee Co. of New Orleans also claims that Oswald discovered the plot to kill Kennedy and had hoped to derail it but was unable to do so. Oswald apparently suspected that the result might be his own death as well as President Kennedy’s. Please see the extensive set of interviews on this site in which Judyth Baker is questioned in detail about Oswald.
[10] This included altering the wounds on the body of JFK prior to the “official” autopsy, substituting a different brain, falsifying the location of the alleged back wound in order to make the magic bullet hypothesis plausible, altering the skull X-rays and photographs of the head etc. See Douglas P. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes I-V. (2009). Also see David Lifton. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1980).
[11] See for example Douglas P. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes I-V. (2009), especially volume IV.
[12] We have lost the legitimate succession of power from one Presidential Administration to the next by direct “propagation” due to the violent removal of President John F. Kennedy from office and the resultant complete turnabout in policy that Lyndon B. Johnson ordered and presided over.
[13] Johnson signed NSAM # 273 which began the increasing build-up of land forces in Vietnam 4 days after JKF’s Assassination.
[14] For an excellent detailed discussion of President Kennedy’s move toward peace in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis see James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2008).
[15] Problem, reaction, solution or (thesis, antithesis, synthesis).
[16] This metaphysical construct is extremely dangerous since it results in a complete polarization of the population into left vs.: right.
[17] See for example Carl Bernstein. “The CIA and the Media.” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977 for a discussion of the many media personages who are under the control of the national security state.
[18] The traditional or Paleoconservative “right” no longer exists for all practical purposes in that the neoconservatives have taken over the right wing of the US political spectrum. Neoconservatism has its roots in Trotsky and its branches in Nazism/Fascism. Newt Gingrich and former Vice President Dick Cheney are illustrative of the more radicalized Neoconservative right.
[19] The Health Insurance Lobby was the major beneficiary of the recently passed Health Reform Bill, the Banking Lobby virtually wrote the Banking Reform legislation.
[20] "Bundling" of funds by large corporate donors is a favorite tactic.
[21] One possible exception is the courageous Dylan Ratigan who has been willing to speak truthfully about the reality of the present circumstances at least with respect to the various lobbies which control the Congress. He has not to date challenged the Zionist Lobby which presumably would result forthwith in his dismissal from MSNBC.
[22] A true violent Coup d'etat. I specifically use this term recognizing that Peter Dale Scott disagrees with the use of that term when applied to the JFK Assassination.
References:
1. Bernstein, Carl. “The CIA and the Media.” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977
2. Boyle, Francis A. Biowarfare and Terrorism. (Atlanta Georgia: Clarity Press Inc., 2005).
3. Boyle, Francis A. Tackling America’s Toughest Questions. (Atlanta Georgia: Clarity Press Inc., 2009).
4. Crenshaw, Charles A. et.al. Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed. (New York: Paraview Press, 2001).
5. Di Eugenio, James and Lisa Pease, Editors. The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X. (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003).
6. Douglas, James W. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2008).
7. Fetzer, James H., Editor. Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK. (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998).
8. Fetzer, James H., Editor. Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now that We Didn’t Know Then about the Death of JFK. (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2000).
9. Fetzer, James H., Editor. The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK, (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2003).
10. Fonzi, Gaeton. The Last Investigation. (Ipswich, Mass.: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 1993).
11. Hersh, Burton. The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA. (New York: Scribner’s, 1992).
12. Horne, Douglas P. Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes I-V, 2009).
13. Hurt, Henry. Reasonable Doubt. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985).
14. Lane, Mark. Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991).
15. Lifton, David. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1980).
16. Livingstone, Harrison E. High Treason 2. (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1992).
17. Livingstone, Harrison E. Killing Kennedy: And the Hoax of the Century. (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1995).
18. Livingstone, Harrison E. Killing the Truth. Deceit and Deception in the JFK Case. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1994).
19. Mangold, Tom. Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’ Master Spy Hunter. (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1992).
20. Meagher, Sylvia. Accessories After the Fact. (New York: Random House, 1975).
21. Melanson, Philip H. Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence. (New York: Praeger, 1990).
22. Newman, John. Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth about the Unknown Relationship between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1995).
23. Prouty, L. Fletcher. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. (New York: Carroll Publishing Group, 1996).
24. Russell, Dick. The Man Who Knew Too Much. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992).
25. Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993).
26. Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics II: The New Revelations in U.S. Government Files 1994-1995. (Ipswich, Mass: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2003).
27. Talbot, David. Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. (London: Simon and Schuster UK Ltd, 2007).
28. Thompson, Josiah. Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-study of the Kennedy Assassination Proving that Three Gunmen Murdered the President. (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1967).
August 3, 2010
It is now beyond reasonable doubt (BRD) that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by his own National Security State in what was a violent coup d'état that is, an overthrowing of the legitimate elected government of the United States by force through the use of the clandestine black-ops services of the CIA, elements of the Secret Service, the US military, the FBI and organized crime.[1]
Probability and Statistics:
Various scientific calculations have been done which indicate that there is less than 1 chance in a trillion that JFK's death was the result of one man acting alone. There were at least 15 separate violations made by the US Secret Service in their handling of Presidential Security in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.[2] These were unprecedented breaches in protocol. It would have been unusual if even one of these breaks in procedure had occurred let alone 15 during one Presidential visit. It defies credulity to think that such a scenario could have occurred on the basis of chance alone. Obviously the Secret Service “stood-down” so as to facilitate the conspirator’s killing teams in accomplishing the dastardly deed.[3] This means there was an extremely well orchestrated conspiracy to kill the President.
Perhaps even more astoundingly, during the 3 year period following the assassination of JFK and the murders of Lee Harvey Oswald and Officer J. D. Tippit, some 17 witnesses who were involved either directly or peripherally died, 72% of which were unnatural deaths, 52% being murders. The probability that even 15 of the 17 witnesses would be dead by 1967 is 100 quadrillion to 1 or 10(-17).[4]
The 35th President of the United States was murdered at essentially high noon on a bright autumn day in the middle of an American city while his security detail looked on and did nothing. The conspirators’ message was simple; “we’re in charge and there is nothing you can do about it.” Within the first hour after the Assassination, a pre-arranged “patsy” who had been placed in position at the Texas School Book Depository[5] was hunted down and apprehended long before any agency should have even suspected that he might have been involved. Lee Harvey Oswald--who as a result of the FIA[6] and the JFK Records Act[7] is now known to have been an American intelligence operative[8]--whether wittingly or by some last minute ruse played the part of the “fall-guy. During the entire time Oswald was in custody he denied killing President Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippitt. There exists more and more evidence that Oswald was not involved in the killing of either JFK or Officer Tippitt.
Before being given the opportunity to disclose his role as an intelligence operative and what he might have known about the conspiracy to kill JFK[9], Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered on national TV in a room full of police and FBI agents whose only responsibility was to protect him. The night before his killing, the Dallas Police Department received 2 separate calls from unknown person(s) who reported that Oswald was to be murdered. Despite the warning, the Dallas Police made no attempt to prevent the killing of ostensibly the most important prisoner in US custody at the time. It defies all logic to believe that both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald were killed by lone “deranged” gunmen.
Metaphysical Certainty:
In light of all of the cumulative JFK Assassination evidence now available, there exists metaphysical certainty that JFK was killed by a massive conspiracy with the power not only to murder the President but to successfully perpetrate a cover-up of monumental proportions which included securing massive medical fraud in the forensic evidence.[10] David Lifton, Douglas P. Horne and Dr. David W. Mantik and others have amply documented the details of how the medical fraud was accomplished.[11] The absolutely critical concept to understand is that no foreign or domestic entity would have had the access, power and requisite technological expertise to direct and accomplish the cover-up other than the American National Security State including US military physicians, 3 of which conducted the sham autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Shadow Government in Control:
Unless and until the United States publicly discloses to the citizenry that its duly elected government was overthrown in 1963 and that since then the replacement/imposter government has been at least technically/legally speaking illegitimate[12] it will likely be impossible to reverse the increasingly rapid disintegration of America. The reality is that since the murder of President John F. Kennedy, there has been an extra-constitutional imposter “government” in place which prior to that time existed only in the shadows. It has been given many different names including the “war party” the MIMIC (media, intelligence, military, industrial complex) the secret government, the shadow government etc. That entity or “Regime” as a result of the JFK assassination appears to have profoundly altered the trajectory of the United States by placing the country on a constant war footing and building and sustaining an enormous foreign military base presence throughout the world which serves to project American power and enlarge the “empire.”
Beginning with the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and his reversal of John F. Kennedy’s NSAM # 263 (within 4 days of the JFK Assassination) calling for an end to all US presence in Vietnam by 1965[13], the course which the US took was that of increasing militarization and empire-building rather than the move toward peace, nuclear disarmament and ending of the cold war begun by JFK in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis.[14] As should be readily apparent, the result has been catastrophic for the United States and much of the world. Since the death of President Kennedy, the confidence of the American people in their government has been drastically reduced suggesting that at a subliminal level at least, Americans are aware that something extremely troubling has transpired. Moreover, the polarization of the major political parties which now exists can be traced to the Johnson administration’s prosecution of the Vietnam War and its terrible sequelae.
Hegelian Dialectic and the Manipulation of US Population:
A form of Hegelian dialectic[15] is currently being utilized successfully by the oligarchical “Regime” to control the masses through an artificial binary division of reality[16] into a politics of left vs.: right in combination with the unrelenting “bread and circus” entertainment extravaganza being foisted upon the people the latest incarnation of which is the absurd reality TV phenomenon. Most Americans are too busy attempting to survive to be able to sort through the maze of distractions. They seek refuge in meaningless electronic games, TV shows and sporting events as a way to escape from the dismal realities of their increasingly hopeless lives. For those with more time and the requisite interest in politics and current events, the shadow government provides a steady diet of right vs.: left diatribes carried out by various “experts”, talking heads and partisan political hacks many of whom function as US intelligence assets and "cut-outs" of various kinds.[17] Few Americans realize that this left/right dichotomy is totally artificial and contrived so as to limit the universe of acceptable public discourse.
Effect of Dumbing-Down of America:
Americans have been “dumbed-down” for over 50 years such that as an aggregate entity we are no longer capable of reason or for that matter intellectually sound individual thought. The completely artificial bi-polar division between right and left, liberal and conservative so dominates the public discourse that one would think that it totally exhausts the entire panoply of possibilities. This of course is the sine que non of the Hegelian dialectic which is served up on a nightly basis in the form of cable “news” TV shows which attempt to promote an endless debate over which political worldview is best while demonizing its opponent. The idea that on many topics the position of neither left nor right is credible--seems to have been totally missed by most Americans.
The Left/Right Divide and the Hiding of the Truth:
For example, we have become accustomed to there being only 2 possibilities in any given dispute over issues of public policy; the position of the liberal (progressive) left and that of the neoconservative right.[18] How many Americans understand that the neoliberal left and the neoconservative right are but artificial constructs in the Hegelian tradition, designed to allow for the appearance of debate all the while serving to disguise the truth that the resolution/synthesis has already been predetermined by the oligarchical Regime currently in charge? The Regime has as its greatest weapon the fact that no one wishes to believe the truth. For most of us it is simply too painful, unnerving and overwhelming. As many propagandists have indicated, “the bigger the lie the more readily it will be believed.” It is viscerally more comfortable to believe the lie that our government exists of, by and for the people rather than for an elite few who wield all the power and influence and for whom everyone else exists only to be utilized, abused and discarded. The mercenary (all volunteer) US military is a perfect example of the latter being made up almost exclusively of the offspring of impoverished Americans. This has been the case since the draft was ended in the 1970’s.
Theater of the Absurd:
Every four years the Regime treats us to another “theater of the absurd” in which US citizens are allowed to vote for one of 2 Presidential candidates, each of whom has been vetted by the oligarchy such that from its standpoint it matters little which one is elected. Irrespective of what campaign promises are made, once in power, the new Presidential administration hues to the wishes of the not so hidden “shadow government.” It should be intuitively obvious that no serious candidate for high office could rise to that level without demonstrating a willingness to regurgitate the “party line” of their respective political affiliation. As a result so-called third-party candidates are virtually never successful when running for the highest office in the land. The only real opportunity for rank and file US citizens to effect change in their government is to elect a Representative to the US House who is committed to representing their views. Unfortunately, the mega corporations now appear to enjoy monopoly control[19] due to the campaign finance laws which allow for virtually unlimited contributions to candidates.[20] The practical effect is to nullify the political power of the average citizen.
The Political Process is Broken:
The current political process then is broken. So what can we do? It is obvious that under the current set of circumstances, it makes no difference who is elected President and what major political party has the White House or Congress for that matter. To say this of course is considered heresy among the pundit/ruling class who earn their livings by pretending the system is legitimate. Unfortunately however, it is true and they are wrong. There are simply too many powerful individuals and multinational corporations who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Examples include the banking, health care, munitions and energy industries and their lobbies and individual pundits who make up the afternoon and evening chattering class on cable TV such as Chris Matthews, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Ed Schultz, Keith Oberman and others.[21]
All of the above individuals to one degree or another represent special interest groups across the political spectrum. None are truly independent thinkers. They owe their jobs to their willingness to hue a particular political line as representatives of the media entity to which they belong. For example, O’Reilly, Hannity and Beck regurgitate the Neoconservative party line for Fox News with very little difference in their messages that is, there are differences in style but not substance.
Matthews (frequently repeats the claim that JFK and RFK were both killed by a lone deranged individual and he accepts/advertizes the poor work of scholarship that is Pozner's "Case Closed" which is easily debunked), Oberman (who also accepts Pozner's conclusions in "Case Closed") and Schultz largely follow the left or liberal party line with minor differences in substance and major differences in style. All advance the liberal political views of MSNBC.
CNN on the other hand touts itself as simply reporting the facts without an obvious political orientation. However, the most powerful CNN pundit is Wolf Blitzer who is essentially an Israeli (Zionist) intelligence cut-out all the while presenting himself as a non-editorializing straight-up journalist. CNN is completely loyal to Zionist Israel and the Zionist Lobby. It never criticizes the genocidal policies of the Jewish state so in that sense at least it is completely biased in favor of the Israeli Jews and against the Palestinian Arabs. It has failed to report the Apartheid nature of modern Israel where the human rights granted to Jews are denied to Arabs.
The Power of the Israel Lobby:
Not one of the above cable entities or individual pundit’s dares to criticize the Israeli government or its immoral policies however. In fact no major network or cable entity is willing to risk doing so due to the power of the Zionist (Israel) Lobby. Only in foreign venues or on the internet among bloggers does one find a willingness to question Israel’s Apartheid/genocidal policies or the actions of the Zionist Lobby. There is a complete symbiosis between the corporate oligarchy in control of the US government and the Israeli neo-Fascist entity whose interests are protected by the extensive Zionist Lobby which has infiltrated virtually every branch of the US government, most major ‘think-tanks” and much of US academia. There exists only a very small Jewish minority in the United States who admit that the actions of the modern state of Israel are not only immoral but counterproductive to the ultimate survival of the Jewish state. Fortunately, in Israel, Jewish intellectuals and academics such as Ilan Pappe have begun to break the strangle hold that radical Zionist’s such as Benyamin Netanyahu, Igor Lieberman and others have held over successive Israeli governments.
Is there a Solution?
While the internet is still relatively unregulated, it behooves every US citizen to peacefully but actively spread the truth that in the wake of World War II/the creation of the CIA and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the constitutional representative democratic republic which was brought into being in 1789 was replaced[22] with a not so secret shadow government which does the bidding of the elites and is antithetical to the needs, desires and goals of everyone else.
This effort should include organizing at the state and local levels. It should include electing to the US House of Representatives individuals who cannot be purchased by the multinational corporations and special interest groups. Finding such highly morally committed individuals will not be easy.
Finally, interested and committed individuals of like-mind should ban together for the purpose of pooling their various resources in order to better oppose the corporate media and their relentless attempts to “brain-wash” the public. Time is short for the survival of the American experiment. Please help Spread the word!
Notes:
[1] The evidence is simply overwhelming. For those who are not yet familiar with some of the seminal works they include but are not limited to those in the selected reference section appended to this essay.
[2] Philosopher of Science Professor James H. Fetzer performed a calculation assuming that the probability that any one of them would be breached was only 10% which is more than likely too high. For even 12 to be breached at the same time yields a probability of 10(-12).
[3] Evidence now strongly suggests that there were likely at least “3” teams, one in the TSBD, one behind the fence at the grassy knoll, and one at the southwest end of the overpass in the storm drain. It is also possible that a 4th team was positioned at the southeast end of the overpass and another in the Dal-Tex building fairly close to ground level. The exact identity and number of the assassin’s is of course irrelevant to the issue of whether a conspiracy existed.
[4] Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact. The Warren Commission, the Authorities and the Report. (New York: Random House, 1975) chapter 16, p. 302.
[5] Only someone in the US Secret Service would have been privy to the last minute change in the Dallas parade route which took the motorcade directly past the TSBD on Elm Street rather than down Main Street which had been the published route up until that point. The “last-minute” change was no doubt arranged to lessen the number of witnesses who would see the shooting and to be certain that Oswald was placed in the correct strategic position to be framed.
[6] Abbreviation for “Freedom of Information Act.”
[7] Passed in 1992 in response to the Motion Picture by Oliver Stone about the JFK Assassination. The law is known as the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The Act ordered all assassination-related material to be placed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
[8] See for example, James Di Eugenio and Lisa Pease, Editors. The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X. (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003) and John Newman. Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth about the Unknown Relationship between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1995).
[9] Judyth Vary Baker who alleges a romantic affair with Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1963 while the two worked under-cover at the Reilly Coffee Co. of New Orleans also claims that Oswald discovered the plot to kill Kennedy and had hoped to derail it but was unable to do so. Oswald apparently suspected that the result might be his own death as well as President Kennedy’s. Please see the extensive set of interviews on this site in which Judyth Baker is questioned in detail about Oswald.
[10] This included altering the wounds on the body of JFK prior to the “official” autopsy, substituting a different brain, falsifying the location of the alleged back wound in order to make the magic bullet hypothesis plausible, altering the skull X-rays and photographs of the head etc. See Douglas P. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes I-V. (2009). Also see David Lifton. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1980).
[11] See for example Douglas P. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes I-V. (2009), especially volume IV.
[12] We have lost the legitimate succession of power from one Presidential Administration to the next by direct “propagation” due to the violent removal of President John F. Kennedy from office and the resultant complete turnabout in policy that Lyndon B. Johnson ordered and presided over.
[13] Johnson signed NSAM # 273 which began the increasing build-up of land forces in Vietnam 4 days after JKF’s Assassination.
[14] For an excellent detailed discussion of President Kennedy’s move toward peace in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis see James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2008).
[15] Problem, reaction, solution or (thesis, antithesis, synthesis).
[16] This metaphysical construct is extremely dangerous since it results in a complete polarization of the population into left vs.: right.
[17] See for example Carl Bernstein. “The CIA and the Media.” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977 for a discussion of the many media personages who are under the control of the national security state.
[18] The traditional or Paleoconservative “right” no longer exists for all practical purposes in that the neoconservatives have taken over the right wing of the US political spectrum. Neoconservatism has its roots in Trotsky and its branches in Nazism/Fascism. Newt Gingrich and former Vice President Dick Cheney are illustrative of the more radicalized Neoconservative right.
[19] The Health Insurance Lobby was the major beneficiary of the recently passed Health Reform Bill, the Banking Lobby virtually wrote the Banking Reform legislation.
[20] "Bundling" of funds by large corporate donors is a favorite tactic.
[21] One possible exception is the courageous Dylan Ratigan who has been willing to speak truthfully about the reality of the present circumstances at least with respect to the various lobbies which control the Congress. He has not to date challenged the Zionist Lobby which presumably would result forthwith in his dismissal from MSNBC.
[22] A true violent Coup d'etat. I specifically use this term recognizing that Peter Dale Scott disagrees with the use of that term when applied to the JFK Assassination.
References:
1. Bernstein, Carl. “The CIA and the Media.” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977
2. Boyle, Francis A. Biowarfare and Terrorism. (Atlanta Georgia: Clarity Press Inc., 2005).
3. Boyle, Francis A. Tackling America’s Toughest Questions. (Atlanta Georgia: Clarity Press Inc., 2009).
4. Crenshaw, Charles A. et.al. Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed. (New York: Paraview Press, 2001).
5. Di Eugenio, James and Lisa Pease, Editors. The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X. (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003).
6. Douglas, James W. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2008).
7. Fetzer, James H., Editor. Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK. (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998).
8. Fetzer, James H., Editor. Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now that We Didn’t Know Then about the Death of JFK. (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2000).
9. Fetzer, James H., Editor. The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK, (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2003).
10. Fonzi, Gaeton. The Last Investigation. (Ipswich, Mass.: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 1993).
11. Hersh, Burton. The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA. (New York: Scribner’s, 1992).
12. Horne, Douglas P. Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes I-V, 2009).
13. Hurt, Henry. Reasonable Doubt. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985).
14. Lane, Mark. Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991).
15. Lifton, David. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1980).
16. Livingstone, Harrison E. High Treason 2. (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1992).
17. Livingstone, Harrison E. Killing Kennedy: And the Hoax of the Century. (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1995).
18. Livingstone, Harrison E. Killing the Truth. Deceit and Deception in the JFK Case. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1994).
19. Mangold, Tom. Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’ Master Spy Hunter. (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1992).
20. Meagher, Sylvia. Accessories After the Fact. (New York: Random House, 1975).
21. Melanson, Philip H. Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence. (New York: Praeger, 1990).
22. Newman, John. Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth about the Unknown Relationship between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1995).
23. Prouty, L. Fletcher. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. (New York: Carroll Publishing Group, 1996).
24. Russell, Dick. The Man Who Knew Too Much. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992).
25. Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993).
26. Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics II: The New Revelations in U.S. Government Files 1994-1995. (Ipswich, Mass: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2003).
27. Talbot, David. Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. (London: Simon and Schuster UK Ltd, 2007).
28. Thompson, Josiah. Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-study of the Kennedy Assassination Proving that Three Gunmen Murdered the President. (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1967).
Millions affected by Pakistani floods
Press TV
Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:30:51 GMT
Residents carry furniture from their flood affected homes on August 2, 2010 in northwestern Pakistan.
The Red Cross says 2.5 million people have been affected by massive floods in Pakistan as rescuers struggle to reach thousands of Stranded survivors in the region.
"In the worst-affected areas, entire villages were washed away without warning by walls of flood water," the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement.
Reports say rescue operations are still underway to save 27,000 of trapped people in parts of Swat Valley, Khyber and Peshawar.
Some districts have been completely cut off in the worst flooding in the region in over 80 years. The affected areas are reported to be out of electricity, gas and telephone services.
The rushing water has also washed away dozens of government buildings, schools and hospitals.
Concerns are growing over disease outbreaks in flood-stricken areas of the country.
Pakistani health officials warn that lack of drinking water is spreading cholera in north-western areas, estimating that about 100,000 people, mostly children, have been hit by water-borne diseases.
The information minister for northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa told a news conference in Peshawar on Monday that floods and monsoon rains have claimed 1,500 lives.
"There are 774 deaths registered with us, but the total number killed in the flood is 1,200 to 1,500," AFP quoted Mian Iftikhar Hussain as saying.
This is while Pakistan's National Meteorological Department has predicted ten percent more rain this year than normal.
Anger is mounting over the pace of relief efforts as many people in the areas hardest hit by the floods still have yet to receive any form of flood relief assistance. Refugees are sheltered in crowded government schools and other official buildings.
Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:30:51 GMT
Residents carry furniture from their flood affected homes on August 2, 2010 in northwestern Pakistan.
The Red Cross says 2.5 million people have been affected by massive floods in Pakistan as rescuers struggle to reach thousands of Stranded survivors in the region.
"In the worst-affected areas, entire villages were washed away without warning by walls of flood water," the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement.
Reports say rescue operations are still underway to save 27,000 of trapped people in parts of Swat Valley, Khyber and Peshawar.
Some districts have been completely cut off in the worst flooding in the region in over 80 years. The affected areas are reported to be out of electricity, gas and telephone services.
The rushing water has also washed away dozens of government buildings, schools and hospitals.
Concerns are growing over disease outbreaks in flood-stricken areas of the country.
Pakistani health officials warn that lack of drinking water is spreading cholera in north-western areas, estimating that about 100,000 people, mostly children, have been hit by water-borne diseases.
The information minister for northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa told a news conference in Peshawar on Monday that floods and monsoon rains have claimed 1,500 lives.
"There are 774 deaths registered with us, but the total number killed in the flood is 1,200 to 1,500," AFP quoted Mian Iftikhar Hussain as saying.
This is while Pakistan's National Meteorological Department has predicted ten percent more rain this year than normal.
Anger is mounting over the pace of relief efforts as many people in the areas hardest hit by the floods still have yet to receive any form of flood relief assistance. Refugees are sheltered in crowded government schools and other official buildings.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Iran, Nuclear Weapons and the Rush to War
U.S. Has Plan in Case Attack On Iran Needed, Says Army Chief
Both Israel and U.S. keeping military option on table; Iran envoy to UN: We'll set Tel Aviv ablaze if Israel strikes us.
By The Associated Press
August 01, 2010 "Haaretz" -- Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said Sunday that the U.S. military has a plan to attack Iran if necessary, but clarified that he considered such a strike to be a bad idea.
Mullen, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, has often warned that a military strike on Iran over its contentious nuclear program would have serious and unpredictable ripple effects around the Middle East. At the same time, he has called the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon unacceptable.
Mullen would not say which risk he thinks is worse, but told NBC television's Meet The Press that a military strike remains an option if need be. Should come to that, Mullen added, the military has a plan at hand. He did not elaborate.
Both the U.S. and Israel have declared that the option of attacking the Islamic Republic must remain on the table.
Iran's envoy to the United Nations earlier Sunday warned that the Islamic Republic would set Tel Aviv ablaze if Israel dares attack it.
"If the Zionist regime commits the slightest aggression against Iranian soil, we will set the entire war front and Tel Aviv on fire," Mohammad Khazai said, Kashmar, the Farhang-e Ashti daily reported.
Last month, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said world leaders "believe absolutely" that Israel may decide to take military action against Iran to prevent the latter from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively,” Berlusconi told reporters following talks with other Group of Eight leaders.
Iranian military officials said last week that the United States and Israel would not dare attempt a military strike of Iran's nuclear sites, adding that they were confident that Tehran would easily repel such an attempt.
The United States, the United Nations and the European Union have each imposed new restrictions on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities.
____________
US Has Plan to Attack Iran, Mullen Admits: Insists Plan Is Only Meant to Be Used 'If Necessary'
by Jason Ditz,
Antiwar.com
August 1, 2010
Just weeks ahead of a planned P5+1 talk with Iran, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen announced on Meet the Press that the military has drawn up plans to attack Iran, though he insisted they would only do so ‘if necessary‘
Mullen said the prospect of attacking Iran is “well understood” and that it remains “an important option” for President Obama. Iranian officials warned they would retaliate if attacked by the US.
The US has been threatening to attack Iran for several years, but perhaps the most memorable was a comment by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year, in which she threatened to attack Iran “the way that we did Iraq.”
The US invaded Iraq in 2003 on the basis of false claims regarding its nuclear program. The US threats against Iran are likewise based on allegations centering around their civilian nuclear program.
NOTE:
How absurd. There is absolutely no existential threat to the security of the United States posed by Iran--irrespective of whether it is in the process of producing a nuclear weapon--which to date has not been proven.
Recall that the last US NIE on Iran held that Iran abandoned any attempt at building a nuclear weapon years ago. The fact that a subsequent NIE has not been produced suggests that nothing has changed and that the saber rattling for war with Iran is all propaganda on the part of the war monger's.
What is truly sad is that a constant state of war has become the default position of those in power despite the fact that polls show a majority of American's oppose it.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
____________
Who’s afraid of Iran’s civilian nuclear programme?
by Thierry Meyssan
Non-Alligned Press Network
July 27, 2010
According to Thierry Meyssan, the debate around the possible existence of an Iranian military nuclear programme is nothing but a smokescreen. The great powers suspended all transfer of technology with the overthrow of the Shah and the Islamic Revolution repudiated the principle of the atomic bomb. The feigned suspicions of western countries are merely a ploy to isolate a state which calls into question the military and energy dominance of the nuclear powers and their veto rights at the Security Council.
Security Council chamber aisle during the vote on Resolution 1929. Clockwise: Ambassadors from Germany, the U.K., China, Russia, France and the USA. © UN Photo/Evan Schneider
The White House issued a press kit explaining the thrust of Security Council resolution 1929 [1]. Its content – as well as the widespread communication campaign behind it - were relayed by the mainstream media without, as usual, the slighest critical approach.
According to the Western media – parroting the White House – the resolution was adopted by a “large majority” and constitutes “a reponse to Iran’s constant refusal to comply with its internacional obligations related to its nuclear programme”. Let’s take a closer look.
Of the 15 Security Council members, 12 voted in favour of adopting the sanctions (including the five permanent members), 1 abstained and two voted against [2]. This “large majority” actually shrouds a new political divide: for the first time in the history of the Council, a bloc of emerging nations (Brazil and Turkey, supported by the non-aligned countries in unison) took a stand against the permanent members (China, France, Russia, UK and USA) and their vassals. Thus, in reality, this “unanimity minus two votes” reflects the chasm between the Directory of the Big Five and what one must again refer to as the Third World by analogy to the Thid Estate [3], or those whose voice doesn’t count.
Brazil played a key role in the framing of the Tlatelolco Treaty, establishing Latin America as a “nuclear-free zone”. Turkey is actively pursuing the same objective for the Middle East. The sincerity of these two countries’ opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons is beyond doubt. As is the fact that Turkey, which shares a common border with Iran, should be particularly concerned with preventing Tehran from acquiring the atomic bomb.
Why, then, did they vote against Resolution 1929? As we shall see, the problems conjured up by the big powers are but a smokescreen intended to stymie the deeper debate allowing Iran and the non-aligned bloc to denounce their privileges.
Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini (1902-1989) declared that weapons of mass destruction are incompatible with Islam.
The myth of the Iranian bomb
During the reign of Shah Reza Pahlevi, the United States and France implemented a wide programme to equip Tehran with the atomic bomb. In view of its history, it was generally accepted that Iran was not an expansionist State and that the great powers could safely provide it with such technology. MORE...
Both Israel and U.S. keeping military option on table; Iran envoy to UN: We'll set Tel Aviv ablaze if Israel strikes us.
By The Associated Press
August 01, 2010 "Haaretz" -- Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said Sunday that the U.S. military has a plan to attack Iran if necessary, but clarified that he considered such a strike to be a bad idea.
Mullen, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, has often warned that a military strike on Iran over its contentious nuclear program would have serious and unpredictable ripple effects around the Middle East. At the same time, he has called the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon unacceptable.
Mullen would not say which risk he thinks is worse, but told NBC television's Meet The Press that a military strike remains an option if need be. Should come to that, Mullen added, the military has a plan at hand. He did not elaborate.
Both the U.S. and Israel have declared that the option of attacking the Islamic Republic must remain on the table.
Iran's envoy to the United Nations earlier Sunday warned that the Islamic Republic would set Tel Aviv ablaze if Israel dares attack it.
"If the Zionist regime commits the slightest aggression against Iranian soil, we will set the entire war front and Tel Aviv on fire," Mohammad Khazai said, Kashmar, the Farhang-e Ashti daily reported.
Last month, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said world leaders "believe absolutely" that Israel may decide to take military action against Iran to prevent the latter from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively,” Berlusconi told reporters following talks with other Group of Eight leaders.
Iranian military officials said last week that the United States and Israel would not dare attempt a military strike of Iran's nuclear sites, adding that they were confident that Tehran would easily repel such an attempt.
The United States, the United Nations and the European Union have each imposed new restrictions on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities.
____________
US Has Plan to Attack Iran, Mullen Admits: Insists Plan Is Only Meant to Be Used 'If Necessary'
by Jason Ditz,
Antiwar.com
August 1, 2010
Just weeks ahead of a planned P5+1 talk with Iran, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen announced on Meet the Press that the military has drawn up plans to attack Iran, though he insisted they would only do so ‘if necessary‘
Mullen said the prospect of attacking Iran is “well understood” and that it remains “an important option” for President Obama. Iranian officials warned they would retaliate if attacked by the US.
The US has been threatening to attack Iran for several years, but perhaps the most memorable was a comment by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year, in which she threatened to attack Iran “the way that we did Iraq.”
The US invaded Iraq in 2003 on the basis of false claims regarding its nuclear program. The US threats against Iran are likewise based on allegations centering around their civilian nuclear program.
NOTE:
How absurd. There is absolutely no existential threat to the security of the United States posed by Iran--irrespective of whether it is in the process of producing a nuclear weapon--which to date has not been proven.
Recall that the last US NIE on Iran held that Iran abandoned any attempt at building a nuclear weapon years ago. The fact that a subsequent NIE has not been produced suggests that nothing has changed and that the saber rattling for war with Iran is all propaganda on the part of the war monger's.
What is truly sad is that a constant state of war has become the default position of those in power despite the fact that polls show a majority of American's oppose it.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
____________
Who’s afraid of Iran’s civilian nuclear programme?
by Thierry Meyssan
Non-Alligned Press Network
July 27, 2010
According to Thierry Meyssan, the debate around the possible existence of an Iranian military nuclear programme is nothing but a smokescreen. The great powers suspended all transfer of technology with the overthrow of the Shah and the Islamic Revolution repudiated the principle of the atomic bomb. The feigned suspicions of western countries are merely a ploy to isolate a state which calls into question the military and energy dominance of the nuclear powers and their veto rights at the Security Council.
Security Council chamber aisle during the vote on Resolution 1929. Clockwise: Ambassadors from Germany, the U.K., China, Russia, France and the USA. © UN Photo/Evan Schneider
The White House issued a press kit explaining the thrust of Security Council resolution 1929 [1]. Its content – as well as the widespread communication campaign behind it - were relayed by the mainstream media without, as usual, the slighest critical approach.
According to the Western media – parroting the White House – the resolution was adopted by a “large majority” and constitutes “a reponse to Iran’s constant refusal to comply with its internacional obligations related to its nuclear programme”. Let’s take a closer look.
Of the 15 Security Council members, 12 voted in favour of adopting the sanctions (including the five permanent members), 1 abstained and two voted against [2]. This “large majority” actually shrouds a new political divide: for the first time in the history of the Council, a bloc of emerging nations (Brazil and Turkey, supported by the non-aligned countries in unison) took a stand against the permanent members (China, France, Russia, UK and USA) and their vassals. Thus, in reality, this “unanimity minus two votes” reflects the chasm between the Directory of the Big Five and what one must again refer to as the Third World by analogy to the Thid Estate [3], or those whose voice doesn’t count.
Brazil played a key role in the framing of the Tlatelolco Treaty, establishing Latin America as a “nuclear-free zone”. Turkey is actively pursuing the same objective for the Middle East. The sincerity of these two countries’ opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons is beyond doubt. As is the fact that Turkey, which shares a common border with Iran, should be particularly concerned with preventing Tehran from acquiring the atomic bomb.
Why, then, did they vote against Resolution 1929? As we shall see, the problems conjured up by the big powers are but a smokescreen intended to stymie the deeper debate allowing Iran and the non-aligned bloc to denounce their privileges.
Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini (1902-1989) declared that weapons of mass destruction are incompatible with Islam.
The myth of the Iranian bomb
During the reign of Shah Reza Pahlevi, the United States and France implemented a wide programme to equip Tehran with the atomic bomb. In view of its history, it was generally accepted that Iran was not an expansionist State and that the great powers could safely provide it with such technology. MORE...
War Scheduled to End Same Day as World
By David Swanson
Warisacrime.org
Sun, 2010-08-01
Andrew Bacevich's new book, "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War," is a good summary of the past 65 years' worth of war thinking in Washington, D.C. "Prior to World War II," he writes, "Americans by and large viewed military power and institutions with skepticism, if not outright hostility. In the wake of World War II, that changed. An affinity for military might emerged as central to the American identity." For the past 65 years or so, Bacevich writes, these beliefs have been Washington's "sacred trinity":
"an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism."
The people putting this expansion of Manifest Destiny into practice, Bacevich writes, have not fundamentally been presidents, as everyone believes, much less Congress, as the Constitution would have had it. "Pretending to the role of Decider, a president all too often becomes little more than the medium through which power is exercised."
Bacevich highlights the roles of two men in establishing structures of war power, Allen Dulles at the CIA and Curtis LeMay at Strategic Air Command. They established the power, for themselves and their successors, respectively, to do anything at all in secret, and to determine nuclear weapons policies. And they established the practice of lying about Soviet military threats as a means toward escalating the already dominant U.S. military.
Bacevich describes President John Kennedy as taking some of these powers into the White House. "The methods devised by Allen Dulles and the methods perfected by Curtis LeMay worked in tandem to create an aura of secrecy, prestige, and power that now allowed presidents to assert and exercise quasi-imperial prerogatives." And Bacevich points to LeMay's public descent from revered wise man to dangerous buffoon as illustrative of the damage the Vietnam War did to Washington's rules, damage that did not last long at all.
"Failure in Vietnam seemingly left the Washington rules in tatters," writes Bacevich. "That within five years of Saigon's fall they were well on their way to reconstitution qualifies as remarkable. That within another decade the American credo and sacred trinity had been fully restored deserves to be seen as astonishing."
Bacevich repeats this sort of astonishment in the course of the story he tells, including when the end of the Cold War slows the U.S. war machine down even less than defeat in Vietnam did, and including when counter-insurgency theories are resurrected for General David Petraeus' "surge". Each time Bacevich is right to be astonished, but in each case the astonishment is lessened, I think, to the extent that one views war proponents as frauds rather than well-intentioned fools. That those in power, profiting financially and electorally from wars, immediately argue for more war is simply to be expected. That they persuade others to share their beliefs is, indeed, astonishing, albeit less so to the extent that one examines how our communications system works -- something Bacevich does not do. The five year recovery post-Vietnam may have a recent parallel. By 2005, Washington's war lies were in worse than tatters, but by 2010 it was considered impolite to mention that excuses for wars were lies.
By the time we get to Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, Bacevich is writing as though presidents are Deciders. He notes that the United States could now go to war without inconveniencing most of its people, and that wars tended to give boosts to presidents' approval ratings. This was a major change, but another came when the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq became understood as permanent or at least open-ended. And the military adopted a policy of "counter-insurgency" that involved primarily non-military work. This is another astonishing revolution, as Bacevich points out, except that -- as far as I can tell -- the military is not actually following its new policy. Are we putting 80% into civilian efforts? Last time I looked it was more like 4%.
"Washington Rules" was written before General Stanley McChrystal ended his career but not before he did things that should have ended it. When, in Bacevich's account, McChrystal publicly pressures President Barack Obama to escalate Afghanistan, Bacevich returns to his discussion of the 1950s: Presidents are not the real power.
As in his past books, Bacevich does a terrific job of nudging the reader away from belief in popular militaristic and patriotic myths, in the direction of some beginning grasp of reality. And he explicitly charts a wiser course, a new "trinity":
"First, the purpose of the U.S. military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States and its most vital interests. Second, the primary duty of the American soldier is in America. Third, consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self-defense."
Of course, that doesn't resemble any just war tradition, and eight years ago the just war theorists were explaining the need to attack Iraq. The ONLY duty of the American soldier should be to defend the United States, minus any extraneous "vital interests." But this is vast progress, and Bacevich describes himself in the introduction to his book as "a slow learner" who didn't begin paying attention or asking questions until he was 41. He must also be a fast learner, because from that point on he's come to understand and explain the U.S. empire as well as anyone.
But there are two areas in this book in which I think Bacevich is still resisting adequate questioning of orthodoxy. The first is in his understanding of U.S. news media. The media is never mentioned, except for a passing reference to media executives in a list of those benefitting from current policy. Repeatedly Bacevich laments the public's backward attitudes, never considering where they come from if real, or noticing when the public is actually far ahead of what passes for "public discourse." Does Bacevich know that a majority of Americans oppose the current wars? Even when Bacevich's generalizations about the public may be fair, he omits any notice whatsoever of the sizable minority that opposes war mongering. Bacevich's examples of heretics who have resisted the march to permanent war are always those with power and the prestige of having spent years going along, rather than early leaders or those with the most penetrating analysis. In Bacevich's world a "left-leaning" publication is The New Republic.
The second place I see acceptance of the official story as getting in the way of Bacevich's narrative is in his apparent belief that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Bacevich's argument that people like Dulles held the reins of power would be stronger and look very different if he acknowledged the well-documented push-back against Kennedy's firing of Dulles and Kennedy's steps toward peace. According to Bacevich, "There is no evidence that any lessons drawn from his administration's Cuban encounters had a positive effect on the way it dealt with Vietnam." Kennedy, in Bacevich's account, wanted war and more war in Vietnam, and everything was up to him. "At the White House, the president and his lieutenants were in charge of everything, including the Central Intelligence Agency."
Yet, on October 11, 1963, Kennedy issued a secret order for a withdrawal of 1,000 troops from Vietnam in National Security Action Memorandum 263. Two years earlier, as described in James Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable" Kennedy successfully blocked public discussion of troop escalation by planting the false story in the media that his generals were against it. Yes, Kennedy mostly went along with the Washington Rules, but he tested their limits and apparently found them. (Editor: The latter is a tremendous understatement. JFK was murdered in large part because he was unwilling to invade Cuba and commence a land war in Asia, both of which were heavily favored by his military advisers and the weapons/armament manufacturers who backed them.
It is true that in the Spring of 1963 through his American University Commencement Address [JFK Peace Speech], Kennedy signaled his intention to end the Cold War through negotiation, to proceed with nuclear disarmament and to begin the active pursuit of peace. I wholeheartedly recommend James W. Douglass' excellent book referenced above available through Amazon).
By David Swanson
Warisacrime.org
Sun, 2010-08-01
Andrew Bacevich's new book, "Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War," is a good summary of the past 65 years' worth of war thinking in Washington, D.C. "Prior to World War II," he writes, "Americans by and large viewed military power and institutions with skepticism, if not outright hostility. In the wake of World War II, that changed. An affinity for military might emerged as central to the American identity." For the past 65 years or so, Bacevich writes, these beliefs have been Washington's "sacred trinity":
"an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism."
The people putting this expansion of Manifest Destiny into practice, Bacevich writes, have not fundamentally been presidents, as everyone believes, much less Congress, as the Constitution would have had it. "Pretending to the role of Decider, a president all too often becomes little more than the medium through which power is exercised."
Bacevich highlights the roles of two men in establishing structures of war power, Allen Dulles at the CIA and Curtis LeMay at Strategic Air Command. They established the power, for themselves and their successors, respectively, to do anything at all in secret, and to determine nuclear weapons policies. And they established the practice of lying about Soviet military threats as a means toward escalating the already dominant U.S. military.
Bacevich describes President John Kennedy as taking some of these powers into the White House. "The methods devised by Allen Dulles and the methods perfected by Curtis LeMay worked in tandem to create an aura of secrecy, prestige, and power that now allowed presidents to assert and exercise quasi-imperial prerogatives." And Bacevich points to LeMay's public descent from revered wise man to dangerous buffoon as illustrative of the damage the Vietnam War did to Washington's rules, damage that did not last long at all.
"Failure in Vietnam seemingly left the Washington rules in tatters," writes Bacevich. "That within five years of Saigon's fall they were well on their way to reconstitution qualifies as remarkable. That within another decade the American credo and sacred trinity had been fully restored deserves to be seen as astonishing."
Bacevich repeats this sort of astonishment in the course of the story he tells, including when the end of the Cold War slows the U.S. war machine down even less than defeat in Vietnam did, and including when counter-insurgency theories are resurrected for General David Petraeus' "surge". Each time Bacevich is right to be astonished, but in each case the astonishment is lessened, I think, to the extent that one views war proponents as frauds rather than well-intentioned fools. That those in power, profiting financially and electorally from wars, immediately argue for more war is simply to be expected. That they persuade others to share their beliefs is, indeed, astonishing, albeit less so to the extent that one examines how our communications system works -- something Bacevich does not do. The five year recovery post-Vietnam may have a recent parallel. By 2005, Washington's war lies were in worse than tatters, but by 2010 it was considered impolite to mention that excuses for wars were lies.
By the time we get to Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, Bacevich is writing as though presidents are Deciders. He notes that the United States could now go to war without inconveniencing most of its people, and that wars tended to give boosts to presidents' approval ratings. This was a major change, but another came when the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq became understood as permanent or at least open-ended. And the military adopted a policy of "counter-insurgency" that involved primarily non-military work. This is another astonishing revolution, as Bacevich points out, except that -- as far as I can tell -- the military is not actually following its new policy. Are we putting 80% into civilian efforts? Last time I looked it was more like 4%.
"Washington Rules" was written before General Stanley McChrystal ended his career but not before he did things that should have ended it. When, in Bacevich's account, McChrystal publicly pressures President Barack Obama to escalate Afghanistan, Bacevich returns to his discussion of the 1950s: Presidents are not the real power.
As in his past books, Bacevich does a terrific job of nudging the reader away from belief in popular militaristic and patriotic myths, in the direction of some beginning grasp of reality. And he explicitly charts a wiser course, a new "trinity":
"First, the purpose of the U.S. military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States and its most vital interests. Second, the primary duty of the American soldier is in America. Third, consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self-defense."
Of course, that doesn't resemble any just war tradition, and eight years ago the just war theorists were explaining the need to attack Iraq. The ONLY duty of the American soldier should be to defend the United States, minus any extraneous "vital interests." But this is vast progress, and Bacevich describes himself in the introduction to his book as "a slow learner" who didn't begin paying attention or asking questions until he was 41. He must also be a fast learner, because from that point on he's come to understand and explain the U.S. empire as well as anyone.
But there are two areas in this book in which I think Bacevich is still resisting adequate questioning of orthodoxy. The first is in his understanding of U.S. news media. The media is never mentioned, except for a passing reference to media executives in a list of those benefitting from current policy. Repeatedly Bacevich laments the public's backward attitudes, never considering where they come from if real, or noticing when the public is actually far ahead of what passes for "public discourse." Does Bacevich know that a majority of Americans oppose the current wars? Even when Bacevich's generalizations about the public may be fair, he omits any notice whatsoever of the sizable minority that opposes war mongering. Bacevich's examples of heretics who have resisted the march to permanent war are always those with power and the prestige of having spent years going along, rather than early leaders or those with the most penetrating analysis. In Bacevich's world a "left-leaning" publication is The New Republic.
The second place I see acceptance of the official story as getting in the way of Bacevich's narrative is in his apparent belief that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Bacevich's argument that people like Dulles held the reins of power would be stronger and look very different if he acknowledged the well-documented push-back against Kennedy's firing of Dulles and Kennedy's steps toward peace. According to Bacevich, "There is no evidence that any lessons drawn from his administration's Cuban encounters had a positive effect on the way it dealt with Vietnam." Kennedy, in Bacevich's account, wanted war and more war in Vietnam, and everything was up to him. "At the White House, the president and his lieutenants were in charge of everything, including the Central Intelligence Agency."
Yet, on October 11, 1963, Kennedy issued a secret order for a withdrawal of 1,000 troops from Vietnam in National Security Action Memorandum 263. Two years earlier, as described in James Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable" Kennedy successfully blocked public discussion of troop escalation by planting the false story in the media that his generals were against it. Yes, Kennedy mostly went along with the Washington Rules, but he tested their limits and apparently found them. (Editor: The latter is a tremendous understatement. JFK was murdered in large part because he was unwilling to invade Cuba and commence a land war in Asia, both of which were heavily favored by his military advisers and the weapons/armament manufacturers who backed them.
It is true that in the Spring of 1963 through his American University Commencement Address [JFK Peace Speech], Kennedy signaled his intention to end the Cold War through negotiation, to proceed with nuclear disarmament and to begin the active pursuit of peace. I wholeheartedly recommend James W. Douglass' excellent book referenced above available through Amazon).
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Arch-Neocon and Neo-Nazi Newt Gingrich: US should attack Iran and North Korea
Newt Gingrich Suggests Attacking Rest Of 'Axis Of Evil'
By Jeremy Binckes
July 30, 2010 "Huffington Post" -- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich twice called on the United States to attack North Korea and Iran Thursday because the United States has only attacked "one out of three" of so-called members by invading Iraq. He also claimed that Muslims are trying to install Sharia law on America and said that the "War on Terror" should have been a war on "radical Islamists" instead.
Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute event, Gingrich compared not following through on President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" agenda with not fully engaging the Axis power in World War II.
"If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in '41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won," Gingrich said, adding that Americans should "over-match the problem."
On the reaction to Bush's declaration of an "Axis of Evil," Gingrich blamed Democrats because Americans had not followed through on President Bush's words:
I believe he was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we're one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 -- and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it -- then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it's because we've stood at brink, looked over and thought, "Too big a problem."
In a separate interview with Newsmax Thursday, Gingrich said that the "secular elites" haven't taken "threats to America" seriously and that newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia," because she "welcomed Saudi money" while serving as the Dean of Harvard University Law School.
"Radical Islamists are people who want to impose on the rest of us Sharia, which is a form of medieval law which would fundamentally end America as we've known it," he said. "There are disturbing signs that some places ... you see judges succumb to this line of reasoning." He called on "isolating and defeating radicals," while "modernizing" moderates.
Gingrich told Newsmax that the planned mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan should be stopped. He suggested that, were he president, he would "declare the area around the World Trade Center a national military battlefield because that was a battle and it part of a real war."
The former Speaker has been aggressively attacking Islam in the past weeks. Last week, he came out against the "Ground Zero Mosque," saying that it "showed hypocrisy" because there are no churches in Saudi Arabia.
Gingrich's Renewing American Leadership Action PAC has used the controversy as a fund raising platform, Salon's Justin Elliott reports. In a blast email sent to the World Net Daily list, a Gingrich-signed letter reads, "Please SELECT HERE to STOP the Ground Zero mosque! Your decisive DONATION to Real Action will help us to RALLY and ACTIVATE all Americans, to TAKE REAL ACTION!"
Gingrich also told Newsmax that he expects Sarah Palin to run for President in 2012 in a large Republican field. Gingrich is rumored to be running for President in 2012 but did not say whether or not he's running.
"She's already a very strong personality and has the potential to be a very strong candidate," he said.
NOTE:
What is truly frightening is that Gingrich has indicated a willingness to run for President in 2012. The fact that he has a following at all is very worrisome. Of all the Neocon's he is perhaps the greatest "war-monger" of those who have run for elected office. His desire for war appears to exceed even that of Dick Cheney who is now tied to a left ventricular assist device and is in need of a heart transplant. At his age, let us hope that he is not allowed to be a candidate. If he is given a heart we will know that ethical guidelines were broken due to his power and influence.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
By Jeremy Binckes
July 30, 2010 "Huffington Post" -- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich twice called on the United States to attack North Korea and Iran Thursday because the United States has only attacked "one out of three" of so-called members by invading Iraq. He also claimed that Muslims are trying to install Sharia law on America and said that the "War on Terror" should have been a war on "radical Islamists" instead.
Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute event, Gingrich compared not following through on President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" agenda with not fully engaging the Axis power in World War II.
"If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in '41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won," Gingrich said, adding that Americans should "over-match the problem."
On the reaction to Bush's declaration of an "Axis of Evil," Gingrich blamed Democrats because Americans had not followed through on President Bush's words:
I believe he was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we're one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 -- and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it -- then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it's because we've stood at brink, looked over and thought, "Too big a problem."
In a separate interview with Newsmax Thursday, Gingrich said that the "secular elites" haven't taken "threats to America" seriously and that newly-appointed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia," because she "welcomed Saudi money" while serving as the Dean of Harvard University Law School.
"Radical Islamists are people who want to impose on the rest of us Sharia, which is a form of medieval law which would fundamentally end America as we've known it," he said. "There are disturbing signs that some places ... you see judges succumb to this line of reasoning." He called on "isolating and defeating radicals," while "modernizing" moderates.
Gingrich told Newsmax that the planned mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan should be stopped. He suggested that, were he president, he would "declare the area around the World Trade Center a national military battlefield because that was a battle and it part of a real war."
The former Speaker has been aggressively attacking Islam in the past weeks. Last week, he came out against the "Ground Zero Mosque," saying that it "showed hypocrisy" because there are no churches in Saudi Arabia.
Gingrich's Renewing American Leadership Action PAC has used the controversy as a fund raising platform, Salon's Justin Elliott reports. In a blast email sent to the World Net Daily list, a Gingrich-signed letter reads, "Please SELECT HERE to STOP the Ground Zero mosque! Your decisive DONATION to Real Action will help us to RALLY and ACTIVATE all Americans, to TAKE REAL ACTION!"
Gingrich also told Newsmax that he expects Sarah Palin to run for President in 2012 in a large Republican field. Gingrich is rumored to be running for President in 2012 but did not say whether or not he's running.
"She's already a very strong personality and has the potential to be a very strong candidate," he said.
NOTE:
What is truly frightening is that Gingrich has indicated a willingness to run for President in 2012. The fact that he has a following at all is very worrisome. Of all the Neocon's he is perhaps the greatest "war-monger" of those who have run for elected office. His desire for war appears to exceed even that of Dick Cheney who is now tied to a left ventricular assist device and is in need of a heart transplant. At his age, let us hope that he is not allowed to be a candidate. If he is given a heart we will know that ethical guidelines were broken due to his power and influence.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
More Saber Rattling on Iran: Zionist Lobby in Overdrive
The Real Aim of Israel’s Bomb Iran Campaign
By Gareth Porter
July 30, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Reuel Marc Gerecht's screed justifying an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening of the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House Resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.
What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.
That has long been the Israeli strategy for Iran, because Israel cannot fight a war with Iran without full U.S. involvement. Israel needs to know that the United States will finish the war that Israel wants to start.
Gerecht openly expresses the hope that any Iranian response to the Israeli attack would trigger full-scale U.S. war against Iran. "If Khamenei has a death-wish, he'll let the Revolutionary Guards mine the strait, the entrance to the Persian Gulf," writes Gerecht. "It might be the only thing that would push President Obama to strike Iran militarily...." Gerecht suggest that the same logic would apply to any Iranian "terrorism against the United States after an Israeli strike," by which we really means any attack on a U.S. target in the Middle East. Gerecht writes that Obama might be "obliged" to threaten major retaliation "immediately after an Israeli surprise attack."
That's the key sentence in this very long Gerecht argument. Obama is not going to be "obliged" to join Israeli aggression against Iran unless he feels that domestic political pressures to do so are too strong to resist. That's why the Israelis are determined to line up a strong majority in Congress and public opinion for war to foreclose Obama's options.
In the absence of confidence that Obama would be ready to come into the war fully behind Israel, there cannot be an Israeli strike.
Gerecht's argument for war relies on a fanciful nightmare scenario of Iran doling out nuclear weapons to Islamic extremists all over the Middle East. But the real concern of the Israelis and their lobbyists, as Gerecht's past writing has explicitly stated, is to destroy Iran's Islamic regime in a paroxysm of U.S. military violence.
Gerecht first revealed this Israeli-neocon fantasy as early as 2000, before the Iranian nuclear program was even taken seriously, in an essay written for a book published by the Project for a New American Century. Gerecht argued that, if Iran could be caught in a "terrorist act," the U.S. Navy should "retaliate with fury". The purpose of such a military response, he wrote, should be to "strike with truly devastating effect against the ruling mullahs and the repressive institutions that maintain them."
And lest anyone fail to understand what he meant by that, Gerecht was more explicit: "That is, no cruise missiles at midnight to minimize the body count. The clerics will almost certainly strike back unless Washington uses overwhelming, paralyzing force."
In 2006-07, the Israeli war party had reason to believed that it could hijack U.S. policy long enough to get the war it wanted, because it had placed one of its most militant agents, David Wurmser, in a strategic position to influence that policy.
We now know that Wurmser, formerly a close adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu and during that period Vice President Dick Cheney's main adviser on the Middle East, urged a policy of overwhelming U.S. military force against Iran. After leaving the administration in 2007, Wurmser revealed that he had advocated a U.S. war on Iran, not to set back the nuclear program but to achieve regime change.
"Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians," Wurmser told The Telegraph. The U.S. attack was not to be limited to nuclear targets but was to be quite thorough and massively destructive. "If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don't shoot a bear if you're not going to kill it."
Of course, that kind of war could not be launched out of the blue. It would have required a casus belli to justify a limited initial attack that would then allow a rapid escalation of U.S. military force. In 2007, Cheney acted on Wurmser's advice and tried to get Bush to provoke a war with Iran over Iraq, but it was foiled by the Pentagon.
As Wurmser was beginning to whisper that advice in Cheney's ear in 2006, Gerecht was making the same argument in The Weekly Standard:
Bombing the nuclear facilities once would mean we were declaring war on the clerical regime. We shouldn't have any illusions about that. We could not stand idly by and watch the mullahs build other sites. If the ruling mullahs were to go forward with rebuilding what they'd lost--and it would be surprising to discover the clerical regime knuckling after an initial bombing run--we'd have to strike until they stopped. And if we had any doubt about where their new facilities were (and it's a good bet the clerical regime would try to bury new sites deep under heavily populated areas), and we were reasonably suspicious they were building again, we'd have to consider, at a minimum, using special-operations forces to penetrate suspected sites.
The idea of waging a U.S. war of destruction against Iran is obvious lunacy, which is why U.S. military leaders have strongly resisted it both during the Bush and Obama administrations. But Gerecht makes it clear that Israel believes it can use its control of Congress to pound Obama into submission. Democrats in Congress, he boasts, "are mentally in a different galaxy than they were under President Bush." Even though Israel has increasingly been regarded around the world as a rogue state after its Gaza atrocities and the commando killings of unarmed civilians on board the Mavi Marmara, its grip on the U.S. Congress appears as strong as ever.
Moreover, polling data for 2010 show that a majority of Americans have already been manipulated into supporting war against Iran - in large part because more than two-thirds of those polled have gotten the impression that Iran already has nuclear weapons. The Israelis are apparently hoping to exploit that advantage. "If the Israelis bomb now, American public opinion will probably be with them," writes Gerecht. "Perhaps decisively so." Netanyahu must be feeling good about the prospects for pressuring Barack Obama to join an Israeli war of aggression against Iran. It was Netanyahu, after all, who declared in 2001, "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way."
By Gareth Porter
July 30, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Reuel Marc Gerecht's screed justifying an Israeli bombing attack on Iran coincides with the opening of the new Israel lobby campaign marked by the introduction of House Resolution 1553 expressing full support for such an Israeli attack.
What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran.
That has long been the Israeli strategy for Iran, because Israel cannot fight a war with Iran without full U.S. involvement. Israel needs to know that the United States will finish the war that Israel wants to start.
Gerecht openly expresses the hope that any Iranian response to the Israeli attack would trigger full-scale U.S. war against Iran. "If Khamenei has a death-wish, he'll let the Revolutionary Guards mine the strait, the entrance to the Persian Gulf," writes Gerecht. "It might be the only thing that would push President Obama to strike Iran militarily...." Gerecht suggest that the same logic would apply to any Iranian "terrorism against the United States after an Israeli strike," by which we really means any attack on a U.S. target in the Middle East. Gerecht writes that Obama might be "obliged" to threaten major retaliation "immediately after an Israeli surprise attack."
That's the key sentence in this very long Gerecht argument. Obama is not going to be "obliged" to join Israeli aggression against Iran unless he feels that domestic political pressures to do so are too strong to resist. That's why the Israelis are determined to line up a strong majority in Congress and public opinion for war to foreclose Obama's options.
In the absence of confidence that Obama would be ready to come into the war fully behind Israel, there cannot be an Israeli strike.
Gerecht's argument for war relies on a fanciful nightmare scenario of Iran doling out nuclear weapons to Islamic extremists all over the Middle East. But the real concern of the Israelis and their lobbyists, as Gerecht's past writing has explicitly stated, is to destroy Iran's Islamic regime in a paroxysm of U.S. military violence.
Gerecht first revealed this Israeli-neocon fantasy as early as 2000, before the Iranian nuclear program was even taken seriously, in an essay written for a book published by the Project for a New American Century. Gerecht argued that, if Iran could be caught in a "terrorist act," the U.S. Navy should "retaliate with fury". The purpose of such a military response, he wrote, should be to "strike with truly devastating effect against the ruling mullahs and the repressive institutions that maintain them."
And lest anyone fail to understand what he meant by that, Gerecht was more explicit: "That is, no cruise missiles at midnight to minimize the body count. The clerics will almost certainly strike back unless Washington uses overwhelming, paralyzing force."
In 2006-07, the Israeli war party had reason to believed that it could hijack U.S. policy long enough to get the war it wanted, because it had placed one of its most militant agents, David Wurmser, in a strategic position to influence that policy.
We now know that Wurmser, formerly a close adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu and during that period Vice President Dick Cheney's main adviser on the Middle East, urged a policy of overwhelming U.S. military force against Iran. After leaving the administration in 2007, Wurmser revealed that he had advocated a U.S. war on Iran, not to set back the nuclear program but to achieve regime change.
"Only if what we do is placed in the framework of a fundamental assault on the survival of the regime will it have a pick-up among ordinary Iranians," Wurmser told The Telegraph. The U.S. attack was not to be limited to nuclear targets but was to be quite thorough and massively destructive. "If we start shooting, we must be prepared to fire the last shot. Don't shoot a bear if you're not going to kill it."
Of course, that kind of war could not be launched out of the blue. It would have required a casus belli to justify a limited initial attack that would then allow a rapid escalation of U.S. military force. In 2007, Cheney acted on Wurmser's advice and tried to get Bush to provoke a war with Iran over Iraq, but it was foiled by the Pentagon.
As Wurmser was beginning to whisper that advice in Cheney's ear in 2006, Gerecht was making the same argument in The Weekly Standard:
Bombing the nuclear facilities once would mean we were declaring war on the clerical regime. We shouldn't have any illusions about that. We could not stand idly by and watch the mullahs build other sites. If the ruling mullahs were to go forward with rebuilding what they'd lost--and it would be surprising to discover the clerical regime knuckling after an initial bombing run--we'd have to strike until they stopped. And if we had any doubt about where their new facilities were (and it's a good bet the clerical regime would try to bury new sites deep under heavily populated areas), and we were reasonably suspicious they were building again, we'd have to consider, at a minimum, using special-operations forces to penetrate suspected sites.
The idea of waging a U.S. war of destruction against Iran is obvious lunacy, which is why U.S. military leaders have strongly resisted it both during the Bush and Obama administrations. But Gerecht makes it clear that Israel believes it can use its control of Congress to pound Obama into submission. Democrats in Congress, he boasts, "are mentally in a different galaxy than they were under President Bush." Even though Israel has increasingly been regarded around the world as a rogue state after its Gaza atrocities and the commando killings of unarmed civilians on board the Mavi Marmara, its grip on the U.S. Congress appears as strong as ever.
Moreover, polling data for 2010 show that a majority of Americans have already been manipulated into supporting war against Iran - in large part because more than two-thirds of those polled have gotten the impression that Iran already has nuclear weapons. The Israelis are apparently hoping to exploit that advantage. "If the Israelis bomb now, American public opinion will probably be with them," writes Gerecht. "Perhaps decisively so." Netanyahu must be feeling good about the prospects for pressuring Barack Obama to join an Israeli war of aggression against Iran. It was Netanyahu, after all, who declared in 2001, "I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in the way."
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