Suspend military aid to Israel, Amnesty urges Obama after detailing US weapons used in Gaza

Detailed evidence has emerged of Israel's extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.

In a report released today, Amnesty International detailed the weapons used and called for an immediate arms embargo on Israel and all Palestinian armed groups. It called on the Obama administration to suspend military aid to Israel.

The human rights group said that those arming both sides in the conflict "will have been well aware of a pattern of repeated misuse of weapons by both parties and must therefore take responsibility for the violations perpetrated".

Armed for war
Israelis Missiles launched from helicopters and unmanned drones, including 20mm cannon and Hellfire missiles. Larger laser-guided and other bombs dropped by F-16 warplanes. Extensive use of US-made 155mm white phosphorus artillery shells and Israeli-made 155mm illuminating shells that eject phosphorus canisters by parachute. Several deaths caused by flechettes, 4cm-long metal darts packed into 120mm tank shells, and fragments of US-made 120mm tank shells.

Palestinians Militants fired rockets into southern Israel including 122mm Grad rockets of either Russian, Chinese or Iranian manufacture, and smaller, improvised Qassam rockets often made inside Gaza and usually holding 5kg of explosives and shrapnel.

The US has long been the largest arms supplier to Israel; under a current 10-year agreement negotiated by the Bush administration the US will provide $30bn (£21bn) in military aid to Israel.

"As the major supplier of weapons to Israel, the USA has a particular obligation to stop any supply that contributes to gross violations of the laws of war and of human rights," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa programme director. "To a large extent, Israel's military offensive in Gaza was carried out with weapons, munitions and military equipment supplied by the USA and paid for

Surveillance culture sneaks up on Europe, despite resistance

Despite the fact that fascism and repressive state security services dominated Europe East and West at different points in the 20th century, a new culture of surveillance is spreading, slowly, across the region again, using tools that the Nazis and the KGB never had.The U.S. and Britain stepped up their internal surveillance networks [...]No related posts.

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[Source: War On You

Weekly Unemployment Claims: 26 Year High

The DOL reports on weekly unemployment insurance claims:In the week ending Dec. 20, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 586,000, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 556,000. The 4-week moving average was 558,000, an increase of 13,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 544,250.…The advance number [...]

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[Source: Mint Dollar

Pakistan and the US on Brink of War?

As the United States steps up border raids into Pakistan, troops from both countries have commenced a deadly game of brinkmanship. Although aimed at asserting each other's military presence along the Pakistan-Afghan border, the skirmishes risk outright hostilities.

U.S. strikes in Pakistan are nothing new. Washington has conducted unilateral missile strikes since soon after its invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. American pilotless surveillance planes have been flying over the restive border with near impunity for much of the same time.

From Air to Ground

But the tone of the U.S. presence changed this year. In July, President George W. Bush approved covert ground raids into suspected militant hideouts in the Waziristan region of Pakistan, much of which is a Taliban stronghold. Militants use the region as a sanctuary from which to strike foreign and Afghan troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Thus far, U.S. forces attempted at least three ground assaults. The only confirmed ground invasion of Pakistan, on Sept. 3, led to the deaths of around 20 civilians, including women and children. No militant leaders were believed captured or killed in the raid.

This ground assault led to unprecedented rhetoric from Pakistan condemning the United States. Even Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, normally quite evasive with the media, said that the army would defend Pakistan's territory. The Pakistani government summoned the U.S. ambassador to the foreign office and blocked NATO supplies vital to the multinational force's continued operation in Afghanistan.

Pakistan averted two other attempted ground raids when its border forces fired warning shots at U.S. helicopters ferrying commandos into Waziristan. On the most recent occasion, Pakistan and U.S. troops exchanged fire for five minutes. Pakistan's government later claimed that its army fired flares, not bullets, at the helicopters, but this explanation did not sound very convincing.

Ostensibly, Washington fears that Waziristan – and other tribal regions – could become a staging area for further attacks on the United States if the Pakistani army doesn't root out pro-Taliban forces. But Washington doubts whether Islamabad is capable of doing the job.

More broadly, U.S. policy in the region is increasingly shaped by its failure to establish unequivocal dominance in Iraq. With the War on Terror overshadowing U.S. foreign policy for the foreseeable future, the next U.S. president will have to deliver victory in some form to a skeptical public. That is the ultimate legacy of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and the Bush administration.

The Next Target

That victory will most likely not come out of the violence and political mess of Iraq. Although the Bush administration and both presidential candidates support a significant, continued military presence in Iraq, the United States has accepted that it can't control the entire country by direct military force. It may have had some success in marginalizing al-Qaeda in Iraq – after initially spurring its growth – but it has also been forced to accept Shia domination of domestic politics.

Iran was seriously mooted as the next frontline and even now experiences tremendous diplomatic pressure from Washington. But it's difficult for the United States to promote the Shia state as the next front in the War on Terror, however much Israel or its lobby in the United States may favor this path. Iran doesn't pose an immediate threat, nor would it afford a quick and easy military campaign. Rather, war with Iran would almost certainly lead to a severe disruption of global energy supplies and the world economy.

Pakistan, in comparison, is an irresistible target. The United States claims to have evidence that the government supports jihadists that wage war against the United States and NATO in Afghanistan. Even a limited, covert war, directed at militants, not Pakistan's army, is arguably the easiest sell the United States has ever had to make since the 1990 war with Iraq. The only factor preventing all-out conflict is Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

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[Source: AntiWar.com

Tuesday: 2 US Soldiers, 14 Iraqis Killed; 20 Iraqis Wounded

Excerpt: Updated at 7:45 p.m. EDT, Oct. 7, 2008At least 14 Iraqis were killed and 20 more were wounded. Two U.S. soldiers were killed in separate incidents as well. Meanwhile, Turkey continued to pound northern Iraq with air strikes. Also, Iraq has now formally approved the provincial elections law, while U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte visited the country on a diplomatic mission.
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You're Going To Guarantee A Depression!!! Ron Paul

Folks, if you have children whose future you care about, you'd damn sure better write Ron Paul in on the ballot this November. Otherwise, it will be the same stauts quo agenda of tearing America down.
 http://waronyou.com/forums/index.php?topic=1161.n...

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Senate Passes Nuke Deal Over Escalation Fears

Excerpt: While the US Senate's approval of a controversial nuclear deal with India was hailed by the White House Thursday as a major advance in Washington's "strategic relationship" with the South Asian giant, weapons experts warned that it dealt a serious blow to more than 30 years of US and international nonproliferation efforts.

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Bailing Out Wall Street by Selling out Main Street

I am watching the debate on CSPAN over HR 1424 the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.” As you can imagine there is empty rhetoric on both sides of the issue and there is bi-partisan support and opposition. If anything, it’s a little more interesting than usual.Rep Gary Miller (R-Ca), in a rare lapse of guarded “poli-speak” [...]

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Bomb-Bomb Iran: To Avert EMP Attack?

According to the Guardian, a few months ago President Bush put the kibosh on Israel's plan to take out, in a preventative strike, Iran's nuclear facilities, despite all being duly subject to a Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, as required by the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Because Bush deemed such an attack to be immoral? To be contrary to the UN Charter? A violation of UN Security Council Resolution 487? Would further undermine the IAEA-NPT nuke proliferation-prevention regime?

No, No. Bush was reportedly concerned that the Iranians might retaliate for the dastardly Israeli deed and that said retaliation might disrupt oil shipments from the Persian Gulf, causing gasoline prices in America to go sky-high, just before the election.

Now comes a seemingly authoritative report that Russia's crushing retaliation for the Georgian attack on South Ossetia has put the kibosh on Israel's alternative plan; to launch that "preventative strike" from airfields in Southern Georgia.

Perhaps those reports are all true. How else to account for the spectacle of various neo-crazies and Likudniks, running around in circles of diminishing radius, muttering to themselves or shrieking incoherently.

Take Frank Gaffney, for instance, for the last 30 years or so a lickspittle of Likudnik Grand Pooh-Bah Richard Perle.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Gaffney essentially warned that "any day" now, Iran could detonate exo-atmospherically, somewhere over Kansas, a specially designed multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon, which could wipe out our entire electricity grid, causing a "catastrophic disaster."

"Such an attack could really cripple our 21st-century society, and I would suggest sort of push us back into preindustrial society in the blink of an eye. It would translate over time – not immediately but over time – into the deaths of perhaps as many as nine out of 10 Americans, because our society simply can't be sustained without electricity and all of the infrastructure that supports our urban settings."

So, Gaffney appears to have gone from Likudnik neo-crazy to just plain crazy. What could conceivably have moved Gaffney to make such charges?

Well, way back in 2004, the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack delivered its final report [.pdf] to Congress.

The Commission had been asked to assess – among other things – "the nature and magnitude of potential high-altitude EMP threats to the United States from all potentially hostile states or non-state actors that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles enabling them to perform a high-altitude EMP attack against the United States within the next 15 years."

You see, back in Operation Dominic, a series of nuke tests we conducted over the Pacific in 1962, we learned – much to our surprise – then when a multi-megaton-yield anti-ballistic-missile nuke warhead is detonated at the very high altitudes where incoming Soviet nuke warheads would be intercepted, in addition to destroying the incoming Soviet warhead, our ABM nuke's enhanced radiation also produces extreme charge separation in the underlying atmosphere. That is, the atoms in the air are not merely ionized – separated into positively-charged ions and negatively-charged electrons – but gadzillions of those ionization electrons are driven far away from the ions, creating humongous high-frequency dipole radio transmitters.

The resulting multi-frequency electromagnetic pulse – EMP – can interfere catastrophically with the operation of certain kinds of electrical and electronic systems at considerable distances. That first high-altitude megaton-yield nuke test over Johnson Island resulted in power system failures in Hawaii, more than 700 miles away.

Once the EMP effect was discovered, we did two things. One was to spend a zillion dollars EMP-proofing all military electrical and electronic components and weapons systems.

The second was to see if specially designed nukes of much lower yield could produce EMP as the primary "kill mechanism."

According to the Commission, China and Russia have done the same. In fact, in May 1999, during the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, high-ranking members of the Russian Duma, meeting with a U.S. congressional delegation to discuss the Balkans conflict, reportedly raised the specter of a Russian EMP attack that would paralyze the United States.

The Commission concluded that such an attack – non-lethal, in and of, itself – "has the potential to hold our society at risk and might result in defeat of our military forces."

Now the Commission has burped again, this time detailing the grizzly details of what might happen if Russia or China or someone with that EMP-capability did attack us. Whereupon, Gaffney, on behalf of frustrated Likudniks, goes on Newsmax to warn that "any day" now, Iran could detonate exo-atmospherically, somewhere over Kansas, a specially designed multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon, which could wipe out our entire electricity grid, causing a "catastrophic disaster."

Of course, it is one thing for Russia or China to have that capability. It is quite another for a "potentially hostile state or non-state actor" to develop or acquire such a capability.

Is it conceivable that Iran could develop such a capability? Iran – one of the very largest producers of oil and natural gas in the world – can't even construct the refineries it needs to produce enough gasoline for its population.

In any case, if Iran was to somehow acquire a multi-megaton nuke (from the Russians or the Chinese?), why do the Likudniks think you're stupid enough to believe their claim that the Iranians would choose some non-lethal use for it? Like using a magic carpet to haul it up 50 miles or so above Kansas and detonating it? Is that what you'd do? Or would you use eight tiny reindeer?

Do the Likudniks really believe that you're stupid enough to believe that if the Israelis don't launch a "preventative strike" against the Mullahs and the Iranian IAEA-Safeguarded facilities this year or early next year that nine out of ten of us will – if we're the lucky ones – freeze in the dark?

Now, Gaffney apparently told Newsmax TV that he had been "an Assistant Secretary of Defense" – a PAS position, requiring Senate confirmation – "under Ronald Reagan" and if he did, he told them a bald-faced lie. He never was.

In fact, when Assistant Secretary Perle attempted to get the Senate to confirm his lickspittle, Gaffney, as his successor, the reaction of the Senate Armed Services Committee staff was – to put it politely – negative.

You can see why.
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House members rejected bailout because voters back home hated it

WASHINGTON Almost until the early afternoon vote Monday on the financial rescue plan, voters bombarded congressional offices, protesting almost in unison: Don’t bail out renegade financial executives and companies.On Monday, House members, who face the voters in five weeks, listened to their constituents rather than their party leaders and rejected the $700 billion financial [...]

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Sunday: 25 Iraqis Killed, 10 Wounded

Excerpt: At least 25 Iraqis were killed and 10 more were wounded in the latest round of violence. Reports resumed out of Mosul after several days of relative quiet. Meanwhile, a Turkish general accused local authorities in northern Iraq of tolerating Kurdish separatists.

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Will Obama-Biden question military dominance?

The Obama-Biden worldview Pt 2 with Eric Margolis, Phyllis Bennis and Paul Heinbecker



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[Source: The Real News Network

In Government We Trust? Part 1 by Ron Paul

Many who agree with me on a lot of other issues, do not understand my enthusiasm for gold and sound money or why I spend so much time studying and talking about monetary policy. It’s true that I talk about money differently than most, but the fact is sound money offers many benefits. For example [...]

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