The Iranian Threat?

By Noam Chomsky

June 29 "2010" -- "ZNet" -- The dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign policy crisis facing the Obama administration. Congress has just strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe penalties against foreign companies. The Obama administration has been rapidly expanding its offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the US could build the massive base it uses for attacking the Middle East and Central Asia. The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to the island to service nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with Tomahawk missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is reported to have the striking power of a typical carrier battle group. According to a US Navy cargo manifest obtained by the Sunday Herald (Glasgow), the substantial military equipment Obama has dispatched includes 387 “bunker busters” used for blasting hardened underground structures. Planning for these “massive ordnance penetrators,” the most powerful bombs in the arsenal short of nuclear weapons, was initiated in the Bush administration, but languished. On taking office, Obama immediately accelerated the plans, and they are to be deployed several years ahead of schedule, aiming specifically at Iran. 

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” according to Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. “US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he said. “The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003,” accelerating under Obama.

The Arab press reports that an American fleet (with an Israeli vessel) passed through the Suez Canal on the way to the Persian Gulf, where its task is “to implement the sanctions against Iran and supervise the ships going to and from Iran.” British and Israeli media report that Saudi Arabia is providing a corridor for Israeli bombing of Iran (denied by Saudi Arabia). On his return from Afghanistan to reassure NATO allies that the US will stay the course after the replacement of General McChrystal by his superior, General Petraeus, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen visited Israel to meet Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and senior Israeli military staff along with intelligence and planning units, continuing the annual strategic dialogue between Israel and the U.S. in Tel Aviv. The meeting focused “on the preparation by both Israel and the U.S. for the possibility of a nuclear capable Iran,” according to Haaretz, which reports further that Mullen emphasized that “I always try to see challenges from Israeli perspective.” Mullen and Ashkenazi are in regular contact on a secure line.

The increasing threats of military action against Iran are of course in violation of the UN Charter, and in specific violation of Security Council resolution 1887 of September 2009 which reaffirmed the call to all states to resolve disputes related to nuclear issues peacefully, in accordance with the Charter, which bans the use or threat of force.

Some respected analysts describe the Iranian threat in apocalyptic terms. Amitai Etzioni warns that “The U.S. will have to confront Iran or give up the Middle East,” no less. If Iran’s nuclear program proceeds, he asserts, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other states will “move toward” the new Iranian “superpower”; in less fevered rhetoric, a regional alliance might take shape independent of the US. In the US army journal Military Review, Etzioni urges a US attack that targets not only Iran’s nuclear facilities but also its non-nuclear military assets, including infrastructure – meaning, the civilian society. "This kind of military action is akin to sanctions - causing 'pain' in order to change behaviour, albeit by much more powerful means."

Such harrowing pronouncements aside, what exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided in the April 2010 study of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Military Balance 2010. The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it does not rank particularly high in that respect in comparison to US allies in the region. But that is not what concerns the Institute. Rather, it is concerned with the threat Iran poses to the region and the world.

The study makes it clear that the Iranian threat is not military. Iran’s military spending is “relatively low compared to the rest of the region,” and less than 2% that of the US. Iranian military doctrine is strictly “defensive,… designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.” Iran has only “a limited capability to project force beyond its borders.” With regard to the nuclear option, “Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy.”

Though the Iranian threat is not military, that does not mean that it might be tolerable to Washington. Iranian deterrent capacity is an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that interferes with US global designs. Specifically, it threatens US control of Middle East energy resources, a high priority of planners since World War II, which yields “substantial control of the world,” one influential figure advised (A. A. Berle).

But Iran’s threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence. As the Institute study formulates the threat, Iran is “destabilizing” the region. US invasion and military occupation of Iran’s neighbors is “stabilization.” Iran’s efforts to extend its influence in neighboring countries is “destabilization,” hence plainly illegitimate. It should be noted that such revealing usage is routine. Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace, former editor the main establishment journal Foreign Affairs, was properly using the term “stability” in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve “stability” in Chile it was necessary to “destabilize” the country (by overthrowing the elected Allende government and installing the Pinochet dictatorship).

Beyond these crimes, Iran is also supporting terrorism, the study continues: by backing Hezbollah and Hamas, the major political forces in Lebanon and in Palestine – if elections matter. The Hezbollah-based coalition handily won the popular vote in Lebanon’s latest (2009) election. Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian election, compelling the US and Israel to institute the harsh and brutal siege of Gaza to punish the miscreants for voting the wrong way in a free election. These have been the only relatively free elections in the Arab world. It is normal for elite opinion to fear the threat of democracy and to act to deter it, but this is a rather striking case, particularly alongside of strong US support for the regional dictatorships, particularly striking with Obama’s strong praise for the brutal Egyptian dictator Mubarak on the way to his famous address to the Muslim world in Cairo.

The terrorist acts attributed to Hamas and Hezbollah pale in comparison to US-Israeli terrorism in the same region, but they are worth a look nevertheless.

On May 25 Lebanon celebrated its national holiday, Liberation Day, commemorating Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years, as a result of Hezbollah resistance – described by Israeli authorities as “Iranian aggression” against Israel in Israeli-occupied Lebanon (Ephraim Sneh). That too is normal imperial usage. Thus President John F. Kennedy condemned the “the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from the North.” The assault by the South Vietnamese resistance against Kennedy’s bombers, chemical warfare, driving peasants to virtual concentration camps, and other such benign measures was denounced as “internal aggression” by Kennedy’s UN Ambassador, liberal hero Adlai Stevenson. North Vietnamese support for their countrymen in the US-occupied South is aggression, intolerable interference with Washington’s righteous mission. Kennedy advisors Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson, considered doves, also praised Washington’s intervention to reverse “aggression” in South Vietnam – by the indigenous resistance, as they knew, at least if they read US intelligence reports. In 1955 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff defined several types of “aggression,” including “Aggression other than armed, i.e., political warfare, or subversion.” For example, an internal uprising against a US-imposed police state, or elections that come out the wrong way. The usage is also common in scholarship and political commentary, and makes sense on the prevailing assumption that We Own the World.

Hamas resists Israel’s military occupation and its illegal and violent actions in the occupied territories. It is accused of refusing to recognize Israel (political parties do not recognize states). In contrast, the US and Israel not only do not recognize Palestine, but have been acting for decades to ensure that it can never come into existence in any meaningful form; the governing party in Israel, in its 1999 campaign platform, bars the existence of any Palestinian state.

Hamas is charged with rocketing Israeli settlements on the border, criminal acts no doubt, though a fraction of Israel’s violence in Gaza, let alone elsewhere. It is important to bear in mind, in this connection, that the US and Israel know exactly how to terminate the terror that they deplore with such passion. Israel officially concedes that there were no Hamas rockets as long as Israel partially observed a truce with Hamas in 2008. Israel rejected Hamas’s offer to renew the truce, preferring to launch the murderous and destructive Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in December 2008, with full US backing, an exploit of murderous aggression without the slightest credible pretext on either legal or moral grounds.

The model for democracy in the Muslim world, despite serious flaws, is Turkey, which has relatively free elections, and has also been subject to harsh criticism in the US. The most extreme case was when the government followed the position of 95% of the population and refused to join in the invasion of Iraq, eliciting harsh condemnation from Washington for its failure to comprehend how a democratic government should behave: under our concept of democracy, the voice of the Master determines policy, not the near-unanimous voice of the population.

The Obama administration was once again incensed when Turkey joined with Brazil in arranging a deal with Iran to restrict its enrichment of uranium. Obama had praised the initiative in a letter to Brazil’s president Lula da Silva, apparently on the assumption that it would fail and provide a propaganda weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the US was furious, and quickly undermined it by ramming through a Security Council resolution with new sanctions against Iran that were so meaningless that China cheerfully joined at once – recognizing that at most the sanctions would impede Western interests in competing with China for Iran’s resources. Once again, Washington acted forthrightly to ensure that others would not interfere with US control of the region.

Not surprisingly, Turkey (along with Brazil) voted against the US sanctions motion in the Security Council. The other regional member, Lebanon, abstained. These actions aroused further consternation in Washington. Philip Gordon, the Obama administration's top diplomat on European affairs, warned Turkey that its actions are not understood in the US and that it must “demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West,” AP reported, “a rare admonishment of a crucial NATO ally.”

The political class understands as well. Steven A. Cook, a scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations, observed that the critical question now is "How do we keep the Turks in their lane?" – following orders like good democrats. A New York Times headline captured the general mood: “Iran Deal Seen as Spot on Brazilian Leader’s Legacy.” In brief, do what we say, or else.

There is no indication that other countries in the region favor US sanctions any more than Turkey does. On Iran’s opposite border, for example, Pakistan and Iran, meeting in Turkey, recently signed an agreement for a new pipeline. Even more worrisome for the US is that the pipeline might extend to India. The 2008 US treaty with India supporting its nuclear programs – and indirectly its nuclear weapons programs -- was intended to stop India from joining the pipeline, according to Moeed Yusuf, a South Asia adviser to the United States Institute of Peace, expressing a common interpretation. India and Pakistan are two of the three nuclear powers that have refused to sign the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the third being Israel. All have developed nuclear weapons with US support, and still do.

No sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons; or anyone. One obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a NFWZ in the Middle East. The issue arose (again) at the NPT conference at United Nations headquarters in early May 2010. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.

Washington still formally agrees, but insists that Israel be exempted – and has given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself. The time is not yet ripe for creating the zone, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated at the NPT conference, while Washington insisted that no proposal can be accepted that calls for Israel's nuclear program to be placed under the auspices of the IAEA or that calls on signers of the NPT, specifically Washington, to release information about “Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.” Obama’s technique of evasion is to adopt Israel’s position that any such proposal must be conditional on a comprehensive peace settlement, which the US can delay indefinitely, as it has been doing for 35 years, with rare and temporary exceptions.

At the same time, Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, asked foreign ministers of its 151 member states to share views on how to implement a resolution demanding that Israel "accede to” the NPT and throw its nuclear facilities open to IAEA oversight, AP reported.

It is rarely noted that the US and UK have a special responsibility to work to establish a Middle East NWFZ. In attempting to provide a thin legal cover for their invasion of the Iraq in 2003, they appealed to Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), which called on Iraq to terminate its development of weapons of mass destruction. The US and UK claimed that they had not done so. We need not tarry on the excuse, but that Resolution commits its signers to move to establish a NWFZ in the Middle East.

Parenthetically, we may add that US insistence on maintaining nuclear facilities in Diego Garcia undermines the nuclear-free weapons zone (NFWZ) established by the African Union, just as Washington continues to block a Pacific NFWZ by excluding its Pacific dependencies.

Obama’s rhetorical commitment to non-proliferation has received much praise, even a Nobel peace prize. One practical step in this direction is establishment of NFWZs. Another is withdrawing support for the nuclear programs of the three non-signers of the NPT. As often, rhetoric and actions are hardly aligned, in fact are in direct contradiction in this case, facts that pass with little attention.

Instead of taking practical steps towards reducing the truly dire threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the US must take major steps towards reinforcing US control of the vital Middle East oil-producing regions, by violence if other means do not succeed. That is understandable and even reasonable, under prevailing imperial doctrine.

 

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

NYT Slams Oliver Stone's South of the Border

NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH

Look out: the gloves are off and as usual the New York Times is determined to destroy Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone.  On Friday, the paper published not one but two critical articles about the director’s latest documentary, South of the Border, about the tectonic political changes occurring in South America.  Stone, who is known for such popular hits as Wall Street and Platoon, made his film based on interviews with such leaders as Raul Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.  In his movie, Stone takes the New York Times and the mainstream media to task for their shoddy coverage of Latin America and demonization of Hugo Chávez, someone who Stone openly sympathizes with.
           
Going for a knockout, the Times hit Stone with a one-two punch.  First up was film critic Steven Holden, who in a rather sarcastic review called South of the Border “shallow” and “naïvely idealistic.”  Unusually, the Times then continued its hatchet job on Stone by publishing another lengthy article in its movie section, this time penned by veteran Latin America correspondent Larry Rohter.  In his piece, Rohter accuses Stone of numerous mistakes, misstatements and missing details.  I don’t think the points which Rohter raises are terribly earth-shattering, though I imagine script writers Tariq Ali and Marc Weisbrot will respond in short order.
          
For me, the wider point here has to do with political agendas.  At one point, Rohter takes Stone to task for not disclosing the various biases of his sources.  In his film, Stone relies on commentary from leftist observers of Venezuela, including Greg Wilpert, a longtime editor of Venezuelanalysis.com, a web site providing sympathetic coverage of the Chávez government.  The site was set up with donations from the Venezuelan government and Wilpert’s wife is Chávez’s consul-general in New York [as long as we are talking disclosure: before it became, in my view, too identified with the Chávez government I personally wrote many articles for the site].
Rohter Does Venezuela
           
Rohter’s point is fair enough, but he is hypocritical for not disclosing his own particular bias.  Far from a removed film critic, Rohter is an establishment reporter with a political axe to grind against the South American left.  In 1998, when Chávez was first elected, the journalist described the political shakeup thusly: “All across Latin America, presidents and party leaders are looking over their shoulders. With his landslide victory in Venezuela’s presidential election on December 6, Hugo Chávez has revived an all-too-familiar specter that the region’s ruling elite thought they had safely interred: that of the populist demagogue, the authoritarian man on horseback known as the caudillo.”
           
Four years later in April, 2002 Santiago-based Rohter expressed satisfaction over Chávez’s forcible removal by the Venezuelan opposition.  “Chávez was a left-wing populist doomed by habitual recklessness,” Rohter wrote, adding that the Venezuelan leader’s fall could not “be classified as a conventional Latin American military coup.”

Later, when Chávez was returned to power and the short-lived coup government discredited, Rohter reversed himself and actually used the word “coup” in a story about recent political developments in Venezuela.  If his readers had any doubts about the true intentions of the Bush administration, Rohter assured them that “there were no obvious American fingerprints on the plot that unseated Mr. Chávez.”
           
Three years later, Rohter was at it again, this time writing that Chávez was “stridently anti-American.”  Chávez on the other hand said it wasn’t true, arguing that reporters were confusing his distaste for the Bush administration with anti-Americanism.  In its magazine Extra!, media watchdog group FAIR shrewdly wrote “If dislike for the current administration is anti-American, doesn’t that make tens of millions of Americans ‘anti-American’?  Moreover, by the media logic that calls Chávez ‘anti-American,’ shouldn’t the Bush administration, whose distaste for Chávez moved it to support his ouster by an anti-democratic coup, be called ‘anti-Venezuelan?’”

New York Times Correspondent: From Colombia to Brazil
           
In his film, Stone points out that the mainstream media has, more often than not, demonized Chávez while giving a pass to horrible human rights violations committed in neighboring Colombia, a key U.S. ally in the region.  In his attack on South of the Border, Rohter doesn’t address that allegation squarely, but continues to hark on human rights violations in Venezuela.  What Rohter fails to disclose however is that he has provided sympathetic coverage to right wing paramilitaries in Colombia.
          
Indeed, as FAIR’s Extra! noted in its May/June 2000 edition, “when Carlos Castaño, leader of the Colombian United Self-Defense, the most notorious paramilitary group in Colombia, appeared on Colombian television and revealed the extent to which his own group was involved in the drug business, it hardly merited a passing word in the U.S. media. The New York Times’ Larry Rohter wrote a story about Castaño’s “grilling” on Colombian TV (3/12/00) that skirted the drug issue altogether.”
           
FAIR goes on to note, “Rohter’s report stands in stark contrast to a Reuters story about the same appearance (3/2/00), which lead with the admission: ‘The leader of Colombia's right-wing paramilitary death squads has publicly admitted the drug trade finances most of the bloodletting committed by his ruthless militia force.’ Castaño also explained that ‘drug trafficking and drug traffickers probably finance 70 percent’ of his total operations, another fact that the New York Times apparently found less important than the opinions of a waitress and a local magazine columnist, who felt that Castaño had undergone a ‘surprising metamorphosis.’ If Castaño’s intent was to present a ‘human’ face to the world, the New York Times at least seemed happy to help.”
           
Perhaps, Rohter was also irked by Stone’s sympathetic portrait of Brazilian leader and Chávez ally Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.  In an explosive 2004 article, Rohter suggested that Lula had a drinking problem, and that the issue had become a “national concern” in Brazil.  In a furor, the authorities suspended Rohter’s visa.  When Rohter’s lawyers wrote a letter asserting that the reporter meant no offense, the Brazilian authorities restored the visa.
          
Brazilian media stood up for Rohter’s right to write, but was uniformly critical of the Times’ article.  Speaking with NPR’s Bob Garfield, Brazilian journalist Antonio Brasil remarked “One thing is to say anything about a president…and his possible drinking habits. It's another thing when he says that the Brazilians were concerned... Most people say that was not…true. His sources and evaluation in terms of putting together the story would represent…sloppy journalism.”
           
Brasil added, “You cannot forget that this is a completely new government. In Brazil this is a Socialist…government for the very first time. Lula is from the Worker's Party, and they are very sensitive of any comment, especially coming from America.”  In response, Garfield asked Brasil how local journalists could conflate the interests of the U.S. government with the New York Times.  “You have to think [about] the whole situation of embedded journalists,” Brasil said.  The journalist added that he was concerned about the Jayson Blair scandal at the Times, remarking that “maybe the standards are not…high.”
           
Perhaps, the Times is simply hitting back at Stone in a tit-for-tat.  In South of the Border, the Hollywood director interviews a Times editor who admits to the paper’s lackluster coverage of Venezuela.  I wondered how Stone got the Times man to talk on camera, and whether there was ever an official or explicit line about how to cover the Chávez story.  Whatever the case, the paper’s old Latin American hand Rohter certainly got the word: then as now.
Nikolas Kozloff is the author of No Rain in the Amazon: How South America’s Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010) and Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left http://www.nikolaskozloff.com/ (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008).

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Spill Not B.P.s fault; It's God's Punishment, Again.

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH

The oil spill is ‘partly the result of greed, debauchery on the beaches, poor environmental stewardship and a lack of U.S. support for Israel,’ says traveling "prophet" Cindy Jones.    

People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch recently pointed out that amongst some conservative evangelical Christians the notion that “the BP oil spill is God's punishment for our failure to properly support Israel is becoming an increasingly accepted explanation.”* Others claim that “debauchery on the beaches,” is one possible cause of the oil spill. And many think of it as a warning from on high. As unhinged as any of this might sound – especially the logical extension that God is working his grace through the boardroom at BP – in these times it is not an uncommon religious thread. After all, we are not that far removed from the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s post-911 diatribe blaming all things liberal for the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and Pastor John Hagee’s claim that Hurricane Katrina was God’s retribution for the Big Easy’s easiness.

For some, the only way out of this mess and the only thing that will stop BP’s oil from continuing to gush into the Gulf of Mexico is prayer. That’s why on Sunday, June 27, people in the Gulf States came together for “a day of prayer for the regions affected by the oil spill that has sent millions of gallons of crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico,” Charismamag.com reported during the run-up to Sunday’s events.

Last week, the governors of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, and the Lt. Governor of Florida “Issued proclamations … calling their citizens to pray for a solution that stops the leak and for the recovery of the coastline and the fish and wildlife industries devastated by the April 20 BP oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers.”

"Throughout our history, Alabamians have humbly turned to God to ask for His blessings and to hold us steady during times of struggle," Alabama Gov. Bob Riley stated in a proclamation issued Wednesday. "This is certainly one of those times."

While Sunday’s day of prayer was not a full-blown national effort, the Florida Family Policy Council (FFPC), and the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council urged their supporters to participate.

FFPC’s president John Stemberger said that he wanted to “encourage the church to not knee-jerk and think about this as some kind of environmental issue that they should not have any interest in." He then maintained that the oil spill, the most massive in American history, “is clearly a stewardship issue. All Christians need to be concerned about this. We need to be praying for the families of the men who were killed in the explosion, be praying for the government and the private sector initiatives trying to stop this [leak]."

Cindy Jacobs, co-founder of the U.S. Reformation Prayer Network, told Charismamag.com that her network has been praying since the spill occurred in April: "Our prayer network all along the Gulf is fervently praying.”

In an earlier online message Jacobs wrote that she believed only God could stop the leak. "There is no help for this nation apart from God," Jones wrote on June 3. "We must cry out for God to plug the oil well in the Gulf for He's the only one that can do it! And He'll only do it when the church cries out."

According to Jacobs’ Generals International (originally founded as Generals of Intercession) website – “Achieving Social Transformation Through Intercession and the Prophetic” – she “is a respected prophet who travels the world ministering not only to crowds of people, but to heads of nations.” Jacobs is the author of a number of books including Deliver Us From Evil, her 2001 book that “explores how Occult influences march freely across the American landscape today. From Pokemon cards and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to Marilyn Manson and psychic hotlines, this nation is under siege.”

Right Wing Watch recently pointed out that Jacobs’ group, Generals International, “is not some fringe group, but is actually a member of the Freedom Federation, the right-wing super-coalition that includes the Family Research Council, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, Liberty Counsel, Traditional Values Coalition, Wallbuilders and dozens of others.”

In the money graph of Charismamag.com’s piece -- quite reminiscent of Jerry Falwell’s blaming the gays, the pro-choice community, ACLU and a host of other liberal entities for the 911 attack – the evangelical magazine reported that “Jacobs believes the oil spill is more than a natural disaster [my italics] but partly the result of greed, debauchery on the beaches, poor environmental stewardship and a lack of U.S. support for Israel [my italics] — all issues her network has been repenting of since the leak began.”

"Whenever there's violent weather or some things like this, you have to ask if it's just a natural disaster or if you're reaping something that's been sown," she said. "We feel this is a cumulative thing."

As many Jacobs watchers have pointed out, she is no stranger to both conservative political stands – she opposes the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court – and personal wackiness.  According to the Herescope blog, “On June 16, 2010 Cindy Jacobs … issued a political statement, an ‘Urgent Call to Prayer Concerning California's Proposition 8 and Defense Of Marriage Act.’ Written on the letterhead of her ‘United States Reformation Prayer Network’ it has all of the hallmarks of a political action alert. This is a major first for the woman who has been associated with all sorts of strange doctrines and wacky practices. By taking a political position on these high-profile issues Jacobs is obviously attempting to enter the Christian Right mainstream as an ally.”

Charismamag.com also reported that in a recent conference call, prophetic minister Chuck Pierce of Glory of Zion Ministries agreed with Jacobs’ assessment. "I really cannot see how we're going to move in and contain what's happening right now. Something's got to come deeper and stir the waters to cleanse the waters," he continued. "And I think God is saying that same word to us: You're going to have to have a deeper move in you as My people to cleanse in places that you have allowed an unclean spirit to come in and overtake you."

According to Charismamag.com, “Jacobs points particularly to President Obama's treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited the White House in March. Netanyahu reportedly was scolded for proceeding with plans to build in disputed areas of east Jerusalem and denied a photo op, press conference and other trappings of visits from heads of state.”

"We can't say that's all the reason why, but certainly I believe we need to come into some repentance," she said. Jacobs notes that the last point of Second Chronicles 7:14 is that if God's people pray, He will heal the land. "This is the same God that caused all the plagues of Egypt to go in a night," Jacobs said. "He's no different today. He can do what we cannot do in miraculous ways."

When did the BP oil catastrophe – a monumental oil spill that apparently came about because BP, and by extension federal regulatory agencies, did not pay enough attention to putting thorough safety procedures in place before they started deep-water drilling – go from a man-made disaster to a natural disaster? When did the horrifically short-sighted decision-making by BP executives – mostly very wealthy men concerned about the “small people” – became as natural a disaster as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes? And when did President Obama go from someone, who, while perhaps not taking the correct trajectory to dealing with this crisis, to someone who caused the crisis by supposedly chillying the relationship with Netanyahu and Israel?

What do conservative evangelical Christians mean by stewardship over the earth? And why do they oh so often side with big corporations over the “small people?”

And what, in heaven’s name does Cindy Jacobs mean by “debauchery on the beaches?” Thanks to BP there will be a lot less “debauchery on the beaches” – not to mention kids playing and folks just plain hanging out – on Gulf beaches for quite some time to come.

Evidently, according to Charismamag.com, it was WallBuilders’ founder David Barton “who drafted the prayer day proclamations for the governors to adapt,” Charismamag.com reported.

* For more on this, see “Is oil catastrophe fulfillment of Genesis prophecy?: Video suggests biblical tie with U.S. treatment of Israel, rig explosion at WorldNetDaily.”

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Is There anyone who does not already know this?

You Are Being Tracked

Cell phones are synonymous with life in the 21st Century. They do everything — display maps, send email, play games and music. They also do one other thing — track you.

Every seven seconds, your cell phone automatically scans for the nearest cell tower which can pinpoint your location as accurately as within 50 meters. A GPS chip in your phone can reveal your location within a few yards. In just one year, Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with the specific whereabouts of an unknown number of customers more than 8 million times. They required law enforcement to provide neither a warrant nor probable cause to access this information. Sprint even set up a website for law enforcement agents so they could access these records from the comfort of their desks. "The tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement," said Sprint’s “manager of electronic surveillance.” I bet it has.

Law enforcement agents have been using location information to surveil Americans since the 1990’s, but we still have no consistent legal standard for when they can gain access to this information. The government has sought access to records through sealed (secret) court proceedings, and chooses not to appeal decisions that might give higher courts an opportunity to establish a warrant standard for accessing location records.

On Thursday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties held a hearing to discuss an update to the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA), the law that is meant to maintain American’s privacy online. Most Members in attendance agreed that advances in technology demand an update to ECPA. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) acknowledged that ECPA was passed when the only options for location information were road atlases and gas stations. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee, explained that the courts are in “disarray and understandably so” due to the lack of clarity in the current law.

Almost every American carries a cell phone, yet few think about the information these devices are collecting and storing. Whether you are visiting a therapist or liquor store, a church or a gun range, your location is available either in real time or months later. The ACLU is asking Congress to require government officials to obtain a warrant before access is granted to any of those electronic records, just as they have always had to do for similarly sensitive personal information. For Americans to maintain the robust privacy protections they expect offline, Congress must act to update ECPA.

Take action to upgrade your rights on line here.

The statement the ACLU submitted to the hearing can be found here.

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

A Good Letter to the DNC

DEE EVANS FOR BUZZFLASH

A Letter To The White House:   C'mon White House...and Democrats--Get With It Already!
Just new...Republicans Block Homeless Vets Assistance!  What??? 
Add that to the other recent heart-warming Republican stories (i.e. Republicans Block

Unemployment Benefits, Republicans Want to Raise Retirement Age to 70, etc.) and you've got a blockbuster 2011 (and possibly 2012) platform.

I don't understand why the White House and Democratic leadership seem so impotent on getting the message out about what the Republicans are doing. 

Republicans are going merrily along with their agenda making ill-informed Americans think that they are out there fighting against the "establishment" for them while Democrats are getting hammered in the polls because the message is NOT getting out that the Republicans are systematically sabotaging our nation's economic recovery in order to sink the Democrats and the White House. Pretty much every vote that's taken in Congress proves it...period!

They don't think you have the guts to say it out loud and you should prove them wrong!
People are blaming Democrats and the President for all their woes not understanding that Republicans are mostly helping to facilitate alot of those woes.

If Democrats were doing this with a Republican President, Republicans would be on every news channel and writing op-eds in every major newspaper and blog about it. George Bush would have had a press conference about it and Newt Gingrich would have cancelled every holiday vacation in Congress over it.

Remember that phrase, "Good Guys Finish Last"?...well, that's you in 2010 and possibly 2012 if you don't get off your duffs and put together an 'effective' message machine to get this information out to the American people...fast!

We're counting on you! Please take off the gloves and fight for us like you said you would...or at least take off the blinders!

Respectfully-   Dee Evans
Texas

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Israelis opened fire before boarding Gaza flotilla, say released activists:

First eyewitness accounts of raid contradict version put out by Israeli officialsBy Dorian Jones in Istanbul and Helena Smith

June 01, 2010 "The Guardian" -- Survivors of the Israeli assault on a flotilla carrying relief supplies to Gaza returned to Greece and Turkey today, giving the first eyewitness accounts of the raid in which at least 10 people died.

Arriving at Istanbul's Ataturk airport with her one-year-old baby, Turkish activist Nilufer Cetin said Israeli troops opened fire before boarding the Turkish-flagged ferry Mavi Marmara, which was the scene of the worst clashes and all the fatalities. Israeli officials have said that the use of armed force began when its boarding party was attacked.

"It was extremely bad and very tough clashes took place. The Mavi Marmara is filled with blood," said Cetin, whose husband is the Mavi Marmara's chief engineer.

She told reporters that she and her child hid in the bathroom of their cabin during the confrontation. "The operation started immediately with firing. First it was warning shots, but when the Mavi Marmara wouldn't stop these warnings turned into an attack," she said.

"There were sound and smoke bombs and later they used gas bombs. Following the bombings they started to come on board from helicopters."

Cetin is among a handful of Turkish activists to be released; more than 300 remain in Israeli custody. She said she agreed to extradition from Israel after she was warned that conditions in jail would be too harsh for her child.

"I am one of the first passengers to be sent home, just because I have baby. When we arrived at the Israeli port of Ashdod we were met by the Israeli interior and foreign ministry officials and police; there were no soldiers. They asked me only a few questions. But they took everything – cameras, laptops, cellphones, personal belongings including our clothes," she said.

Kutlu Tiryaki was a captain of another vessel in the flotilla. "We continuously told them we did not have weapons, we came here to bring humanitarian help and not to fight," he said.

"The attack on the Mavi Marmara came in an instant: they attacked it with 12 or 13 attack boats and also with commandos from helicopters. We heard the gunshots over our portable radio handsets, which we used to communicate with the Mavi Marmara, because our ship communication system was disrupted. There were three or four helicopters also used in the attack. We were told by Mavi Marmara their crew and civilians were being shot at and windows and doors were being broken by Israelis."

Six Greek activists who returned to Athens accused Israeli commandos of using electric shocks during the raid.

Dimitris Gielalis, who had been aboard the Sfendoni, told reporters: "Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat. They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used."

Michalis Grigoropoulos, who was at the wheel of the Free Mediterranean, said: "We were in international waters. The Israelis acted like pirates, completely out of the normal way that they conduct nautical exercises, and seized our ship. They took us hostage, pointing guns at our heads; they descended from helicopters and fired tear gas and bullets. There was absolutely nothing we could do … Those who tried to resist forming a human ring on the bridge were given electric shocks."

Grigoropoulos, who insisted the ship was full of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza "and nothing more", said that, once detained, the human rights activists were not allowed to contact a lawyer or the Greek embassy in Tel Aviv. "They didn't let us go to the toilet, eat or drink water and throughout they videoed us. They confiscated everything, mobile phones, laptops, cameras and personal effects. They only allowed us to keep our papers."

Turkey said it was sending three ambulance planes to Israel to pick up 20 more Turkish activists injured in the operation.

Three Turkish Airlines planes were on standby, waiting to fly back other activists, the prime minister's office said.

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

After Flotilla Raid, U.S. Is Torn Between Allies

By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Struggling to navigate a bitter split between two important allies, the Obama administration on Tuesday tried to placate an outraged Turkish government while refusing to condemn Israel for its deadly raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for Gaza.
President Obama telephoned Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to express his “deep condolences” for the deaths of Turkish citizens in clashes with Israeli soldiers on the ship, the White House said. He told Mr. Erdogan that the United States was pushing Israel to return their bodies, as well as 300 Turks who were taken from the ship and being held in Israel.

Mr. Obama called for a “credible, impartial and transparent investigation of the facts surrounding this tragedy,” the White House said. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said such an investigation could include international participation, something the Israelis said they opposed.

It is far from clear that these efforts will mollify Turkey, which accused Israel of state-sponsored terrorism and likened the psychological impact of the raid to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. “No one should think we will keep quiet in the face of this,” Mr. Erdogan declared during a visit to Chile.

The deep rift between Israel and Turkey, which had cultivated close ties, puts the Obama administration in a tough spot on two of its most pressing foreign-policy issues: the Middle East and Iran.

The United States does not want to abandon Israel, which has been subjected to international opprobrium since the raid. The administration is desperate to keep alive indirect peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians brokered by its special envoy, George J. Mitchell.

But it also does not want to alienate Turkey, which is playing an increasingly vocal role on the world stage. Relations were already tender after the United States threw cold water on a Turkish and Brazilian effort to resolve the impasse over Iran’s nuclear program. Turkish officials complain that they negotiated the deal with the encouragement and agreement of the administration.

“Turkey and Israel are both good friends of the United States, and we are working with both to deal with the aftermath of the tragic incident,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters at the State Department after meeting with Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu.

She conferred with Mr. Davutoglu for more than two hours, rearranging her schedule. Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, went to see him at his hotel before Mr. Obama called Mr. Erdogan.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Davutoglu harshly criticized the cautious American response to the raid, saying: “We expect full solidarity with us. It should not seem like a choice between Turkey and Israel. It should be a choice between right and wrong, between legal and illegal.”

He complained that the United States had delayed and watered down the United Nations Security Council statement on Israel, which condemned the actions on the ship rather than Israel itself.

Mr. Davutoglu demanded that Israel apologize for the attack, release the detained passengers, return the bodies of the dead, agree to an independent investigation and lift its blockade of Gaza. He said Turkey was prepared to go back to the United Nations for further action against Israel.

Israel, which defended the actions of its soldiers as a legitimate response to armed attacks by those on the ship, said it could not release the 300 passengers more quickly because they were illegal aliens and had to be held for at least 42 hours under Israeli law. Israel was also questioning 20 to 30 people who it says were directly involved in clashes with the soldiers.

“We’re going to do our best to heal the wounds with the Turks,” said Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, who also met with General Jones and other White House officials.

But Mr. Oren said Israeli authorities had asked Turkey to divert the flotilla to the Israeli port of Ashdod to avoid a confrontation with Israeli forces. He said Israel would have unloaded the cargo of construction material and humanitarian aid and arranged for it to be shipped to Gaza.

Mr. Oren said the Israelis would undertake their own investigation, but he resisted calls for international involvement. Israel has been leery of international investigations since the Goldstone report, which faulted Israel for excessive force in its military strike on Gaza in 2008.

More recently, the South Korean government has won praise for an investigation into the torpedoing of one of its warships, which was aided by the United States, Australia, Sweden and other countries. The report found that a North Korea submarine fired the torpedo.

“The Israelis have traditional and well-founded concerns about international investigations,” said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “But everyone recognizes that for an investigation to be credible, others have to be able to vouch for the results.”

The flotilla case seems likely to harden Turkey’s skepticism about a United Nations resolution on Iran. Imposing more sanctions now, Mr. Davutoglu said, would only precipitate a confrontation with Iran in a few months, one that would be even riskier because of the broader tensions.

Asked what the best policy toward Iran is, he said, “Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy and more diplomacy.”

Ethan Bronner contributed reporting.

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

A Special Place in Hell

The Second Gaza War: Israel lost at sea

We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege, which is itself becoming Israel's Vietnam.

By Bradley Burston

A war tells a people terrible truths about itself. That is why it is so difficult to listen.

We were determined to avoid an honest look at the first Gaza war. Now, in international waters and having opened fire on an international group of humanitarian aid workers and activists, we are fighting and losing the second. For Israel, in the end, this Second Gaza War could be far more costly and painful than the first.

In going to war in Gaza in late 2008, Israeli military and political leaders hoped to teach Hamas a lesson. They succeeded. Hamas learned that the best way to fight Israel is to let Israel do what it has begun to do naturally: bluster, blunder, stonewall, and fume.

Hamas, and no less, Iran and Hezbollah, learned early on that Israel's own embargo against Hamas-ruled Gaza was the most sophisticated and powerful weapon they could have deployed against the Jewish state.

Here in Israel, we have still yet to learn the lesson: We are no longer defending Israel. We are now defending the siege. The siege itself is becoming Israel's Vietnam.

Of course, we knew this could happen. On Sunday, when the army spokesman began speaking of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in terms of an attack on Israel, MK Nahman Shai, the IDF chief spokesman during the 1991 Gulf war, spoke publicly of his worst nightmare, an operation in which Israeli troops, raiding the flotilla, might open fire on peace activists, aid workers and Nobel laureates.

Likud MK Miri Regev, who also once headed the IDF Spokesman's Office, said early Monday that the most important thing now was to deal with the negative media reports quickly, so they would go away.

But they are not going to go away. One of the ships is named for Rachel Corrie, killed while trying to bar the way of an IDF bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago. Her name, and her story, have since become a lightning rod for pro-Palestinian activism.

Perhaps most ominously, in a stepwise, lemming-like march of folly in our relations with Ankara, a regional power of crucial importance and one which, if heeded, could have helped head off the First Gaza War, we have come dangerously close to effectively declaring a state of war with Turkey.

"This is going to be a very large incident, certainly with the Turks," said Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the cabinet minister with the most sensitive sense of Israel's ties with the Muslim world.

We explain, time and again, that we are not at war with the people of Gaza. We say it time and again because we ourselves need to believe it, and because, deep down, we do not.

There was a time, when it could be said that we knew ourselves only in wartime. No longer. Now we know nothing. Yet another problem with refraining from talks with Hamas and Iran: They know us so much better than we know ourselves.

They know, as the song about the Lebanon War suggested ("Lo Yachol La'atzor Et Zeh") that we, unable to see ourselves in any clarity, are no longer capable of stopping ourselves.
Hamas, as well as Iran, have come to know and benefit from the toxicity of Israeli domestic politics, which is all too ready to mortgage the future for the sake of a momentary apparent calm.

They know that in our desperation to protect our own image of ourselves, we will avoid modifying policies which have literally brought aid and comfort to our enemies, in particular Hamas, which the siege on Gaza has enriched through tunnel taxes and entrenched through anger toward Israel.

For many on the right, it must be said, there will be a quiet joy in all of what is about to hit the fan. "We told you so," the crowing will begin. "The world hates us, no matter what we do. So we may as well go on building [Read: 'Settling the West Bank and East Jerusalem'] and defending our borders [Read: 'Bolster Hamas and ultimately harm ourselves by refusing to lift the Gaza embargo']."

Hamas, Iran and the Israeli and Diaspora hard right know, as one, that this is a test of enormous importance for Benjamin Netanyahu. Keen to have the world focus on Iran and the threat it poses to the people of Israel, Netanyahu must recognize that the world is now focused on Israel and the threat it poses to the people of Gaza.
 

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Let’s Rejoice in Terror’s Benefits!

 Great article. The simple point, don't scare people. It brings out the very worst in them and in everybody else. The next thing you have is armed nests of freakin' loons playing little boys games with weapons so horrible that it would be unthinkable to use them, but somebody will sooner or later. How many presidents have warned us about the military industrial. By my count, at least 3, beginning with George Washington.

By John Kirby

May 14, 2010 "Providence Journal" -- On May 6, The New York Post ran the following story on its front page: “THANKS, FAISAL! Inept terror thug saves 900 cop jobs”

“That’s how many cops were going to be cut before Faisal’s botched bid at Times Square terror. His effort prompted the city to restore $55 million to the NYPD, saving those jobs and making New York a safer place.”

Though The Post didn’t mention it, Faisal wasn’t able to save 6,700 teaching jobs, 75 senior centers, 20 fire companies, nurses in elementary schools, and an unknown number of day-care centers and other programs for children, due to be cut by Mayor Bloomberg this year.

But this still seems like a good time to pause and reflect on all the blessings we have received from Terror and the war thereon.

Here is the short list of “thank you’s” I’d like to see from other terror beneficiaries who have plenty of reason to be grateful:

• A much-belated "God Bless You!" from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who on Sept. 10, 2001, announced that the Pentagon had “misplaced” $2.3 trillion.

“Thanks, Osama! Your timing couldn’t have been better if I had planned it myself! In the chaos that followed, no one ever asked about all that money — and they still haven’t!”

• A big high-five from Larry Silverstein, who took possession of the twin towers just two months before the attacks and who collected $4.55 billion in insurance money for World Trade Center’s One and Two and $861 million for the third building to collapse that day, World Trade Center Seven. (For those who may have forgotten or never known, WTC 7 was not hit by a plane, had only minor damage and had just a few small fires burning inside it when it mysteriously collapsed into its own footprint around 5:20 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001.)

“Thank you so much! I know I’m only a small investor in this Terror thing, but I’m truly grateful for whatever crumbs that fall from the Big Terror table!”

• Here’s a heartfelt salute from the senior officers of our Armed Forces, who had run clean out of enemies by the turn of the millennium:

“Thank you, Terror! When Soviet Communism collapsed, our whole reason for being collapsed with it. This wonderful, permanent war against ‘fear itself’ has a lot more juicy than the War on Pinkos ever had! We have the largest military empire the world has ever seen, and we owe at least half of it to you!"

• A hearty handshake from the shareholders and chief executive officers of Raytheon, McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing and the countless junior members in good standing of the Military-Industrial Complex:

“To al-Qaida, Pakistani intelligence, and the CIA: Many thanks! Your inflated threats and geopolitical tinkering have meant inflated profits for us! And thanks, of course, to the taxpayers of America. The buck starts with you!"

• And here’s a special thank you from the National Security State as a whole to the American people: “Thanks for swallowing what is so clearly a fairy tale (spiced up with real death!). It’s been so great for us, and incidentally has kept the public very safe (give or take a few teachers, children’s programs and innocent bystanders).

Thanks, Terror! If you didn’t exist, we’d have to invent you!

© 2010 The Providence Journal

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Pakistani Taliban say America will "Burn"

By Robert Birsel

May 14, 2010 - ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistani Taliban militants have warned America that it will soon "burn" while calling for Pakistan's rulers to be overthrown for following "America's agenda".

The United States is convinced Pakistani Taliban militants allied with al Qaeda and operating out of northwestern Pakistani border regions were behind an attempted car-bomb attack in New York's Times Square on May 1.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing. If confirmed, it would be the first time their members were involved in an attempted attack in the West.

A Pakistani Taliban spokesman, in a video message obtained by Reuters, repeated a claim of responsibility, saying:

"The movement proved what America could not have even imagined ... It was just an explosive-laden vehicle which did not explode.

"But it (America) will see, all imperialist forces will see that it will explode also and America will also burn," said the spokesman, Azim Tariq, sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of a rock face and speaking in Urdu.

America's allies would meet the same fate, he said.

"They can neither eliminate the mujahideen nor jihad, nor they can harm Islam," he said, referring to Muslim holy warriors and holy war.

"Instead, they will have to die themselves, they will be burned themselves, they will have to dig their own graves," said the spokesman, sporting a long black beard and turban.

Pakistan has been battling its homegrown Taliban, who are allied with the Afghan Taliban, and who have been accused of numerous suicide bombings killing hundreds of people across the nuclear-armed country.

But Tariq denied responsibility for bombings in public places, saying authorities wanted to malign the militants with such attacks.

Tariq spoke of fighting in various places in Pakistan saying his men were holding their own and the security forces, which he said were being paid with U.S. aid money, were suffering significant losses.

"They are being defeated," he said.

"JIHAD WILL CONTINUE"

Tariq did not refer specifically to any attacks abroad, but said mujahideen "wherever they were, in any part of the world" were supporting each other.

Analysts have long doubted the Pakistani Taliban, operating out of remote mountains along the Afghan border, had the sophistication to plan and execute a bomb attack in a Western country on their own.

They can, however, support and train people who are able to travel to the West and carry out attacks. Tariq said the Pakistani people were being sacrificed for the sake of the United States by their own government, which he called un-Islamic.

"Now is a time to remove them from power as soon as possible. All their policies are anti-Islam, anti-people," he said.

"Jihad will continue as long as the ruling coterie and the unholy army continue to follow the American agenda," he said.

Pakistan has been cooperating with U.S. investigators trying to determine what links the Pakistani-American man suspected of carrying out the attempted Times Square bombing, Faisal Shahzad, had with militants in Pakistan.

The Washington Post reported that Pakistani authorities had arrested a man linked to the Pakistani Taliban who said he helped Shahzad travel to northwest Pakistan for bomb-making training.

It was not clear if the newspaper was referring to a man officials said earlier was detained in the southern city of Karachi on May 4.

The government has denied that any arrests have been made in connection with the case but security officials said the man held in Karachi, Mohammad Rehan, was suspected of having taken Shahzad to northwest Pakistan to link up with militants.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said despite Pakistan's recent improved efforts to tackle militants, it must do more.

"We think that there is more that has to be done and we do fear the consequences of a successful attack that can be traced back to Pakistan," she said.

(Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Krittivas Mukherjee)

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America

By Gus Lubin

May 07, 2010 "SFGate" -- Real average earnings have not increased in 50 years
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
Cliché, sure, but it's also more true than at any time since the Gilded Age.
The poor are getting poorer, wages are falling behind inflation, and social mobility is at an all-time low.

The gap between 1% and everyone else hasn't been this bad since the roaring Twenties

Source: The Nation
 

Half of America has only 2.5% of the wealth

Source: Institute for Policy Studies
 

Half of America has only 0.5% of the stocks and bonds

Source: Institute for Policy Studies
 

Look at the gap grow!

Source: Professor G. William Domhoff
 

The last two decades were great... except for American workers

 

Real average earnings have not increased in 50 years

 

But savings rates are sinking

 

Poor Americans have a SLIM CHANCE of rising to the upper middle class

Source: NBER
 

Republican tax cuts have significantly increased the gap

Source:
 

Taxes get better and better for the rich

 

America spreads the wealth FAR LESS than other developed countries

 

America's income spread is nearly twice the OECD average

Source: Economist
 

The gap is NOT growing in many countries, like France

 

Inequality is worst around Wall Street and Oil Land

 

If you aren't in the top 1%, then you're getting a bum deal

 

Now read...

20 Cities That Have Completely Missed The Recovery

 

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Would You Put Up With What is Being Asked of the Greek People?

By Tony Bonsignore

 

May 07, 2010 "City Wire" -- Want to know exactly why public anger in Greece is running at such explosive levels? Then take a look at the austerity measures currently being debated by the Greek parliament.

The BBC reports that as part of the IMF/ EU bailout Greek leaders are proposing the following measures:

• Public sector pay to be frozen till 2014;
• Public sector salary bonuses – equivalent to two months’ extra pay – to be scrapped or capped;
• Public sector allowances to be cut by 20%;
• State pensions to be frozen or cut, with the contribution period up from 37 to 40 years;
• The average retirement age raised from 61 to 63, and early retirement restricted;
• VAT to be increased from 19% to 23%;
• Taxes on fuel, alcohol and tobacco raised to 10%;
• A new one-off tax on profits to be introduced, plus new gambling, property and green taxes.

On their own any one of these measures would probably be enough to prompt significant political disquiet; taken together they represent a catastrophic setback to the financial aspirations of the average Greek.
It certainly wasn’t what the Greek population voted for when they entered the EU in 1981 and adopted the single currency two decades later.

The country’s government argues that it has no choice it if is to avoid an even greater catastrophe.

‘We are all responsible so that it does not take the step into the void,’ prime minister Karolos Papoulias argues, warning that the country is on the ‘brink of the abyss.’

Others, though, argue that Greece is being held to ransom by the EU and the IMF for ideological reasons, and that there are other more equitable options available.

Leave the single currency, for example, or nationalise Greece’s banks.

Or even default or restructure - and leave those German and French banks with massive holdings of Greek debt to deal with the consequences of their own investment folly.

More broadly, protestors argue that they are being made to pay for a crisis they did not cause, and which wealthy speculators are still profiting from.

That is inherently unfair, they say, and it must not be allowed to pass.

It all adds up to a huge dilemma for the Greek government.

Here in the UK on general election day, meanwhile, the main political parties are digesting yesterday's news from the European Commission that our economy now has the biggest budget deficit in the 27-nation EU.

The UK, of course, with its own currency, has many more policy options that Greece, and its economy is not nearly in the same mess as Greece's. Not yet, anyway.

'The first thing for the new government to do is to agree on a convincing, ambitious programme of fiscal consolidation in order to start to reduce the very high deficit and stabilise the high debt level of the UK,' said EU commissioner Ollie Rehn.

'That's by far the first and foremost challenge of the new government. I trust whatever the colour of the government, I hope it will take this measure.'

Today's Money Blog question, then, is one which goes to the heart of the political crisis which is gripping the Eurozone at the moment; it might even be a question asked of us by the next government, whatever hue they might be.

Put simply: would you put up with what is being asked of the Greek people?

Thoughts please.

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

What I Learned in Afghanistan - About the United States

By Dana Visalli

May 07,2010 "Lew Rockwell" -- I was surprised on my recent trip to Afghanistan that I learned so much…about the United States. I was in Afghanistan for two weeks in March of this year, meeting with a large number of Afghans working in humanitarian endeavors – the principal of a girls’ school, the director of a school for street children, the Afghan Human Rights Commission, a group working on environmental issues. The one thing that all of these groups that we met with had in common was, they were penniless. They all survived on rather tenuous donations made by philanthropic foundations in Europe.

I had read that the United States had spent $300 billion dollars in Afghanistan since the invasion and occupation of that country ten years ago, so I naturally became curious where this tremendous quantity of money and resources had gone. Many Americans had said to me that we were in Afghanistan "to help Afghan women," and yet we were told by the director of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, and we read in the recent UN report titled "Silence is Violence," that the situation for women there was growing more violent and oppressive each year. So I decide to do some research.

95% of the $300 billion that the U.S. has spent on its Afghanistan operation since we invaded the country in 2001 has gone to our military operations there. Several reports indicate that it costs one million dollars to keep one American soldier in that country for one year. We will soon have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, which will cost a neat $100 billion a year.

US soldiers in Afghanistan spend almost all of their time on one of our 300 bases in that country, so there is nothing they can do to help the Afghan people, whose physical infrastructure has been destroyed by the "30-year war" there, and who are themselves mostly jobless in a society in which there is almost no economy and no work.

Some effort is made to see that the remaining 5% of the $300 billion spent to date in Afghanistan does help Afghan society, but there is so much corruption and general lawlessness that the endeavor is largely futile. We were told by a female member of the Afghan parliament of one symbolic incident in which a container of medical equipment that was purchased in the US with US government funds for a clinic in Ghawr province, west of Kabul. It was shipped from the US, but by the time it arrived in Ghawr it was just an empty shell; all the equipment had been pilfered along the way.

Violence against women is increasing in Afghanistan at the present time, not decreasing. The Director of the Afghan Human Rights Commission told us of a recent case in which a ten-year-old girl was picked up by an Afghan Army commander in his military vehicle, taken to the nearby base and raped. He brought her back to her home semiconscious and bleeding, after conveying to her that if she told what had happened he would kill her entire family. The human rights commissioner ended the tale by saying to us the he could tell us "a thousand stories like this." There has been a rapid rise in the number of self-immolations – women burning themselves to death – in Afghanistan in the past three years, to escape the violence that pervades many women’s lives – under the nine-year US occupation.

Armed conflict and insecurity, along with criminality and lawlessness, are on the rise in Afghanistan. In this respect, the country mirrors experience elsewhere which indicates a near universal co-relation between heightened conflict, insecurity, and violence against women.

Once one understands that the US military presence in Afghanistan is not actually helping the Afghan people, the question of the effectiveness or goodwill of other major US military interventions in recent history arises. In Vietnam, for example, the country had been a colony of France for the 80 years prior to WW II, at which point the Japanese invaded and took over. When the Japanese surrendered, the Vietnamese declared their independence, on September 2, 1945. In their preamble they directly quoted the US Declaration of Independence ("All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness….").

The United States responded first by supporting the French in their efforts to recapture their lost colony, and when that failed, the US dropped 10 million tons of bombs on Vietnam – more than were dropped in all of World War II – sprayed 29 million gallons of the carcinogenic defoliant Agent Orange on the country, and dropped 400,000 tons of napalm, killing a total 3.4 million people. This is an appreciable level of savagery, and it would be reasonable to ask why the United States responded in this way to the Vietnamese simply declaring their inalienable rights.

There was a sideshow to the Vietnam war, and that is that the United States conducted massive bombing campaigns against Vietnam’s two western neighbors, Laos and Cambodia. From 1964 to 1973, the US dropped more than two million tons of ordnance over Laos in a operation consisting of 580,000 bombing missions – equal to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. This unprecedented, secret bombing campaign was conducted without authorization from the US Congress and without the knowledge of the American people.

The ten-year bombing exercise killed an estimated 1 million Laotians. Despite questions surrounding the legality of the bombings and the large toll of innocent lives that were taken, the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs at the time, Alexis Johnson, stated, "The Laos operation is something of which we can be proud as Americans. It has involved virtually no American casualties. What we are getting for our money there . . . is, I think, to use the old phrase, very cost effective."

One Laotian female refugee recalled the years of bombing in this way: "Our lives became like those of animals desperately trying to escape their hunters . . . Human beings, whose parents brought them into the world and carefully raised them with overflowing love despite so many difficulties, these human beings would die from a single blast as explosions burst, lying still without moving again at all. And who then thinks of the blood, flesh, sweat and strength of their parents, and who will have charity and pity for them? In reality, whatever happens, it is only the innocent who suffer."

In Cambodia, the United States was concerned that the North Vietnamese might have established a military base in the country. In response, The US dropped three million tons of ordnance in 230,000 sorties on 113,000 sites between 1964 and 1975. 10% of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having "unknown" targets and another 8000 sites having no target listed at all. About a million Cambodians were killed (there was no one counting), and the destruction to society wrought by the indiscriminate, long-term destruction is widely thought to have given rise to the Khmer Rouge, who proceeded, in their hatred for all things Western, to kill another 2 million people.

Four days after Vietnam declared its independence on September 2, 1945, "Southern Korea" also declared independence (on September 6), with a primary goal of reuniting the country – which had been split into north and south by the United States only seven months before. Two days later, on September 8, 1945, the US military arrived with the first of 72,000 troops, dissolved the newly formed South Korean government, and flew in their own chosen leader, Syngman Rhee, who had spent the previous 40 years in Washington D.C. There was considerable opposition to the US control of the country, so much that 250,000 and 500,000 people were killed between 1945 and 1950 resisting the American occupation, before the actual Korean War even started.

The Korean War, like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, was an asymmetrical war, in which the highly industrialized and mechanized US pulverized the comparatively primitive North Korean nation. One third of the population of North Korea was killed in the war, a total of three million people (along with one million Chinese and 58,000 Americans). Every city, every sizable town, every factory, every bridge, every road in North Korea was destroyed. General Curtis LeMay remarked at one point that the US had "turned every city into rubble," and now was returning to "turn the rubble into dust." A British reporter described one of the thousands of obliterated villages as "a low, wide mound of violet ashes." General William Dean, who was captured after the battle of Taejon in July 1950 and taken to the North, later said that most of the towns and villages he saw were just "rubble or snowy open spaces."

More napalm was dropped on Korea than on Vietnam, 600,000 tons compared to 400,000 tons in Vietnam. One report notes that, "By late August, 1950, B-29 formations were dropping 800 tons a day on the North. Much of it was pure napalm. Vietnam veteran Brian Wilson asks in this regard, "What it is like to pulverize ancient cultures into small pebbles, and not feel anything?"

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein came to power through a U.S.-CIA engineered coup in 1966 that overthrew the socialist government and installed Saddam’s Baath Party. Later conflict with Saddam let to the first and second Gulf Wars, and to thirteen years of severe U.S.-imposed economic sanctions on Iraq between the two wars, which taken together completely obliterated the Iraqi economy. An estimated one million people were killed in the two Gulf wars, and the United Nations estimates that the economic sanctions, in combination with the destruction of the social and economic infrastructure in the First Gulf War, killed another million Iraqis. Today both the economy and the political structure of Iraq are in ruins.

This trail of blood, tears and death smeared across the pages of recent history is the reason that Martin Luther King said in his famous Vietnam Speech that the United States is "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." Vietnam veteran Mike Hastie expanded the observation when he said in April of this year (2010) that, "The United States Government is a nonstop killing machine. The worst experience I had in Vietnam was experiencing the absolute truth of Martin Luther King's statement. America is in absolute psychiatric denial of its genocidal maniacal nature."

A further issue is that "war destroys the earth." Not only does, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1960, "Every rocket fired signify a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed," but every rocket that is fired reduces the life-sustaining capacity of the biosphere. In an ultimate sense it could be argued that those who wage war and those who pay for and support war, in reality bear some hidden hatred for life and some hidden desire to put and end to it.

What are our options? The short answer is, grow up. Grow up into the inherent depth of your own existence. After all, you are a "child of the universe, no less than the trees and stars, you have a right be here." There is no viable, universally inscribed law that compels you to do as you are told to do by the multitude of dysfunctional and destructive authority figures that would demand your compliance, if you acquiesce.
"If we led our lives according to the ways intended by nature," wrote French author La Boétie in his book The Politics of Obedience," we should be intuitively obedient to our parents; later we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody." La Boétie wrote this in the year 1552, but people today remain slaves to external authority. "Our problem," said historian Howard Zinn, "is not civil disobedience; our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. 
Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty."

Do you want to spend your life paying for the death of people (executed by the US military) that you would probably have loved if you have met them? Do you want to spend your life paying for the arsenal of hydrogen bombs that could very well destroy most of the life on the planet? If not, if you want another kind of life, then as author James Howard Kunstler often suggests, ‘You will have to make other arrangements." You will have to arrange to live according to your own deepest ethical standards, rather than living in fear of the nefarious authority figures that currently demand your obedience and threaten to punish you if you do not obey their demands on your one precious chance at life.

"We must know how the first ruler came by his authority." ~ John Locke

"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it." ~ Henry David Thoreau

Dana Visalli [dana@methownet.com] is an ecologist, botanist and organic farmer living in Twisp, Washington.

Copyright © 2010 Dana Visalli

There is nothing civil about civil wars!