| US to stockpile cluster bombs in Australia? | ||
Despite Australia having signed the convention against cluster munitions, a US base at Darwin may transport and stockpile cluster bomb munitions. By NAJ Talor
Brisbane, Australia: A US military "base" in Darwin, Australia (spun as a "rotational deployment" for China, I suspect), will necessitate foreign weapons systems and armaments being stockpiled, retained and transited on and in Australian territory. Although they are long-standing and committed allies, Australia and the United States hold different positions on many matters relating to both arms control and humanitarian law. One recent normative development where the US and Australia's views have diverged is the ban on cluster bombs, a weapon that has inside multiple - often hundreds - of small explosive sub-munitions or "bomblets" that are dispersed over an area the size of several football fields from either the air or ground. As a result, the final location of each bomblet is impossible to control for those deploying them, and so whom they maim or kill is both unknown and indiscriminate. Roughly 30 per cent of those deployed "fail" to explode on impact, and so the unexploded bomblets become de facto landmines. When the Convention on Cluster Munitions came into effect in August last year, the Gillard government was part of a chorus of NGOs and governments that saw "an end for all time" of the use of cluster munitions by prohibiting their production, use, stockpiling and transfer. At present, a bill sits with the senate that will criminalise Australian deployment of the weapon under domestic law, thereby ratifying the international convention. With the formation of a US military base in Darwin, Gillard will effectively make use of certain "loopholes" in the bill that arise from US' non-signatory status to the Convention, and obfuscation of negotiations that are currently taking place for an additional arms control measure this week. Best estimates are that the US forces presently have a quarter of the world's four billion cluster munitions in stockpiles across both its territory and existing overseas bases. The US last deployed cluster munitions during the Iraq War in 2003, despite the emerging norm. In my view, there's a fair degree of probability cluster munitions will be stockpiled in Darwin, since there are known plans for the US to base a number of B-52 bombers historically used to deploy cluster bombs. It is already known that nuclear weapons will not be permitted onto Australian territory, but a number of the US' naval fleet are nuclear-powered vessels, which will be allowed. . . As I wrote for Crikey in March this year, "No other signatory country in the world has expressly permitted such unfettered free access to its territories as this. It is unprecedented." If only I knew then what I do now about Darwin, especially given how little we are likely to ever know about what weapons the US keeps there. NAJ Taylor is a doctoral candidate in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. A version of this article was first posted on his blog, This Blog Harms. Follow NAJ Taylor on Twitter: @najtaylor Link to this article: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111783832165197.html |
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Right now, the US Congress is debating a law that would give them the power to censor the world's Internet -- creating a blacklist that could target YouTube, WikiLeaks and even Avaaz! Now if we stand with key members of the US Congress, we can defeat this attempt at global Internet censorship.
Click here and help build an unprecedented global petition for a free and open Internet:
Saturday, November 12, 2011
A Time To Honor Duped Murderers?
By fishychick
November 11, 2011 "Information Clearing House"
When one is called to defend one's home and family, it is not really courage that is required, it is a sense of duty. If my home is under attack, if my family is in danger, it is proper and fitting that I defend them and not expect someone else to put their life at risk for my home and family.
When one is called to defend one's nation, the same sense of duty is conjured. Unfortunately, the calls to defend this nation have been issued on false information in EVERY WAR THE US EVER FOUGHT.
The delusion that the US military is defending our home and our nation can be put to the lie with one simple fact: You do not defend your home by going next door and killing your neighbor. That is what our military does. There has never been a war, defending from foreign aggressors, the land that we call "ours" since we "won" independence from England (and stole from the Native Americans and Mexicans, but that is another topic.)
I am sick of pretending that a person who joins today's army is a hero. They are a mercenary at best, and a murderer looking for legitimate employment at worst. The history of US aggression against peaceful nations is long and disgusting.
The attack on the passenger ship the "Lusitania" was used to drag us into WW1, and it turns out the ship WAS full of military equipment after all. The passengers were murdered to rile the citizens and get them hungry for war. The citizens obliged. It worked so well the government used that trick over and over, and they are still at it today.
The news is full of posturing to go to war with Iran. Iran, who has not attacked another nation in over 100 years, is supposed to be this grave danger to our freedom. Well, the joke is on us, we have no meaningful freedom left.
Here is a nice link to a brief history of the lies used to wage war around the world at YOUR expense:
I do not want to kill anyone. I do not want anyone to kill anyone pretending they are "protecting" me unless the attacker is IN MY HOUSE. (That is where the US soldiers are, IN THE HOMES of Iraqi and Afghan people.) I have tried to honor their heart, the thing that made them willing to risk their life for others. But they are WRONG and I will no longer defend them in any way.
Defending is acceptable, but the US Military is NOT defending the US by going to OTHER nations and invading and occupying them. They are empire building and war mongering. I do not support that, and I only pay taxes out of fear of imprisonment (extortion) because I believe it is my MORAL duty to NOT fund these wars. It is a sad statement on US "freedom" when I cannot behave morally out of fear for my liberty.
Veterans' Day was signed into "legal holiday" status by Eisenhower. Rather ironic, in light of his dire warnings against the military industrial complex. It seems he felt pressured to honor immoral behavior, too. It is hard to draw the line between good men and women who have been deliberately duped into fearing an enemy that does not really exist and the behavior they engage in due to that fear.
So today, I do not honor Veterans who served, I honor the draft dodgers and the peace activists and the INCREDIBLY brave men who went to war and came back and TOLD US THE TRUTH. What they had to face about their own actions is no small task - we all want to believe that we make good decisions and behave morally, and it takes true strength of character to admit one was lied to and used, and then to stand and call out the liars.
I still support the individuals who are caught in the military machinery, they are people who deserve better. I DO NOT SUPPORT WAR or anyone who is stealing money from me to wage it.
If you are in the military, STOP KILLING PEOPLE IN MY NAME AND WITH MY MONEY. You are responsible for your actions, you KNOW there were no "weapons of mass destruction" and you know bin Laden was a CIA agent and you know Iran is no threat to you or me or this land we call home. The enemy is domestic now, and if you are in the Middle East you are leaving your home and family defenseless. Shame on you.
It was the men in the trenches who finally ended Viet Nam, it is up to the men and women in the desert to end the US invasion and occupation of the Middle east.
Today, I honor:
My brother Gordon who thought he was headed to Viet Nam, and did not want to go. Not wanting to kill strangers was a good thing.
My second cousin Tristan who volunteered after 9-11 then was killed in an unarmored Humvee by an IED.He will not kill any more strangers now.
My friend Blayne who served and now speaks truth and defends peace. He's trying to stop the killing of strangers in general.
Adam Kokesh for relentlessly and publicly speaking out against the wars.
Scott Olsen who stood and put his life on the line for peace on US soil.
Iraq Veterans Against the War.
Veterans For Peace.
Smedley Butler who tried to warn us all.
Every man who dodged the draft in the name of peace (not out of cowardice like GWBush.)
I am sure there are good men and women in uniform, but it is time to fight for peace MORE aggressively than you ever fought a war. If you REALLY want your home and family safe, then get to Oakland or Wall Street and start fighting the domestic enemy that is about to destroy any last shred of liberty the US citizens enjoy.
If you or someone you know is about to join the military because they cannot get a job, PLEASE remind them that there are jobs with the Mafia and Bloods and Cryps where you get to murder people and make serious money, If they are compelled by some sense of duty, please show them the history of false flag attacks by our government on our citizens.
And if you or anyone you knows thinks Israel is our ally, please learn about the USS Liberty. Then do a little research and look and see how many Israel / US dual citizens sit in places of extreme power in the US government, and how many of them are current or former CEO's of the banks that are stealing our homes from us.
The US government has been overthrown by bankers whose first loyalty is to Israel, not the US. If soldiers and Veterans had truly defended the US from the actual invasion of our nation, we would not be at endless war with Israel's enemies, we would be engaged in peaceful trade throughout the world with our friends and allies.
How about a holiday celebrating peace? I know, everyone wishes for "Peace on Earth" at Christmas, but then when Jesus does not leave it under the tree for them they give up on it. At least they got some flashy electronic war simulation games for the kids - that will make everyone happy and lead to a better world any day now, I am sure....
Click here to read / post comments
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America's Media War on Iran
By Stephen Lendman
When Washington goes to war or threatens it, America’s media march in lockstep, cheerleading.
Fiction substitutes for fact. Continue
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Reports of Iran's Nuclear Ambitions Sound Like a Repeat of Iraq Eight Years Ago
By Gwynne Dyer
“We will not build two (nuclear) bombs in the face of (America’s) 20,000,” said Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in response to an International Atomic Energy Agency report this week that accuses Iran of doing just that. He called Yukiya Amano, the head of the IAEA, a U.S. puppet. Continue
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Terror and Revenge Engulfs NATO’s Libya
By Franklin Lamb
The “new Libya” has entered its own “Terror” which is spreading inexorably, aided by NATO member states including American, French and British SAS units known locally as “disappearance squads”. Continue
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From The Archives
A Veteran Remembers
By Howard Zinn
They want us to forget what we learned at the Vietnam War's end: that our leaders cannot be trusted, that modern war is inevitably a war against civilians and particularly children, that only a determined citizenry can stop the government when it embarks on mass murder. Continue
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Australia: Obama to announce US marine base in Darwin: PRESIDENT Barack Obama is to announce that the US will begin rotating marines through an Australian base in Darwin in a permanent new military presence. . .
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The Nuclear Scientist That Wasn't
IAEA Errs on "Foreign Expert" in Iran N-programme
By Vladimir Radyuhin
The latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Iran appears to have falsified information about a Russian scientist who allegedly helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons programme. Continue
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Iran Nuclear Report: Why It May Not Be A Game-changer After All
By Scott Peterson
Robert Kelley, an American nuclear engineer and former IAEA inspector who was among the first to review the original data in 2005. "It's certainly old news; it's really quite stunning how little new information is in there." Continue
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Did Police Go Too Far With Clashes at Berkeley?
Must Watch Video By RT
Video shows police attacking protesters with batons, bluntly striking them in their abdomens and elsewhere. - Police are clearly seen striking protesters, unprovoked, from behind. Continue
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Murder Inc - Licensed to Kill
US Assassination Drones & Targeted Killings
By Press TV
The Pentagon now has some 7,000 aerial drones, compared with fewer than 50 a decade ago, and has asked Congress for nearly $5 billion for drones in 2012. Continue
Why We Fight
Must Match - Documentary
This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine.
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The US is a Police State
By Prof. John McMurtry
What is a police state? - it can be deduced as unlimited state power of armed force freely discharged without citizen right to stop it. Continue
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Occupy America
By Michael Parenti
When the people liberate their own minds and take a hard clear look at what the 1% is doing and what the 99% should be doing, then serious stuff begins to happen. Continue
Thursday, November 10, 2011
IAEA’s ‘Soviet Nuclear Scientist’ Never Worked on Weapons
From http://antiwar.com/
The report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published by a Washington think tank Tuesday repeated the sensational claim previously reported by news media all over the world that a former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist had helped Iran construct a detonation system that could be used for a nuclear weapon.But it turns out that the foreign expert, who is not named in the IAEA report [.pdf] but was identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko, is not a nuclear weapons scientist but one of the top specialists in the world in the production of nanodiamonds by explosives.
In fact, Danilenko, a Ukrainian, has worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career and is considered one of the pioneers in the development of nanodiamond technology, as published scientific papers confirm.
It now appears that the IAEA and David Albright, the director of the International Institute for Science and Security in Washington, who was the source of the news reports about Danilenko, never bothered to check the accuracy of the original claim by an unnamed “Member State” on which the IAEA based its assertion about his nuclear weapons background....
Danilenko clearly explained that the purpose of his work in Iran was to help the development of a nanodiamond industry in the country....
Careful examination of the “alleged studies” documents has revealed inconsistencies and other anomalies that give evidence of fraud.
But the IAEA, the United States and its allies in the IAEA continue to treat the documents as though there were no question about their authenticity.
The unnamed member state that informed the agency about Danilenko’s alleged experience as a Soviet nuclear weapons scientist is almost certainly Israel, which has been the source of virtually all the purported intelligence on Iranian work on nuclear weapons over the past decade.
Israel has made no secret of its determination to influence world opinion on the Iranian nuclear program by disseminating information to governments and news media, including purported Iran government documents.
Israeli Foreign Ministry and intelligence officials told journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins about the special unit of Mossad dedicated to that task at the very time the fraudulent documents were being produced....
In an interview in September 2008, Albright said Olli Heinonen, then deputy director for safeguards at the IAEA, had told him that a document from a member state had convinced him that the “alleged studies” documents were genuine. Albright said the state was “probably Israel.”
The Jerusalem Post‘s Yaakov Katz reported Wednesday that Israeli intelligence agencies had “provided critical information used in the report,” the purpose of which was to “push through a new regime of sanctions against Tehran.”
(Inter Press Service)
Read more by Gareth Porter
- Debunking the Iran ‘Terror Plot’ – November 4th, 2011
- ISAF Data: Night Raids Killed Over 1,500 Afghan Civilians – November 2nd, 2011
- UN Tally Excluded Most Afghan Civilian Deaths in Night Raids – October 25th, 2011
- US May Have Concealed Deterrent Aim of Iranian Plan – October 21st, 2011
- US Officials Peddle False Intel to Support Terror Plot Claims – October 17th, 2011
From http://antiwar.com/
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
November 1st, 2011
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
It doesn't matter to them if it's untrue. It's a higher truth.
"We came, we saw, he died."
— US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,
giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Moammar Gaddafi
Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic leader speaking of 9-11: "We came, we saw, 3,000 died ... ha- ha."
Clinton and her partners-in-crime in NATO can also have a good laugh at how they deceived the world. The destruction of Libya, the reduction of a modern welfare state to piles of rubble, to ghost towns, the murder of thousands ... this tragedy was the culmination of a series of falsehoods spread by the Libyan rebels, the Western powers, and Qatar (through its television station, al-Jazeera) — from the declared imminence of a "bloodbath" in rebel-held Benghazi if the West didn't intervene to stories of government helicopter-gunships and airplanes spraying gunfire onto large numbers of civilians to tales of Viagra-induced mass rapes by Gaddafi's army. (This last fable was proclaimed at the United Nations by the American Ambassador, as if young soldiers needed Viagra to get it up!)1
The New York Times (March 22) observed:
... the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.
The Los Angeles Times (April 7) added this about the rebels' media operation:
It's not exactly fair and balanced media. In fact, as [its editor] helpfully pointed out, there are four inviolate rules of coverage on the two rebel radio stations, TV station and newspaper:
- No pro-[Qaddafi] reportage or commentary
- No mention of a civil war. (The Libyan people, east and west, are unified in a war against a totalitarian regime.)
- No discussion of tribes or tribalism. (There is only one tribe: Libya.)
- No references to Al Qaeda or Islamic extremism. (That's [Qaddafi's] propaganda.)
The Libyan government undoubtedly spouted its share of misinformation, but it was the rebels' trail of lies, both of omission and commission, which was used by the UN Security Council to justify its vote for "humanitarian" intervention; followed in Act Three by unrelenting NATO/US bombs and drone missiles, day after day, week after week, month after month; you can't get much more humanitarian than that. If the people of Libya prior to the NATO/US bombardment had been offered a referendum on it, can it be imagined that they would have endorsed it?
In fact, it appears rather likely that a majority of Libyans supported Gaddafi. How else could the government have held off the most powerful military forces in the world for more than seven months? Before NATO and the US laid waste to the land, Libya had the highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality, and highest UN Human Development Index in Africa. During the first few months of the civil war, giant rallies were held in support of the Libyan leader.2
For further discussion of why Libyans may have been motivated to support Gaddafi, have a look at this video.
If Gaddafi had been less oppressive of his political opposition over the years and had made some gestures of accommodation to them during the Arab Spring, the benevolent side of his regime might still be keeping him in power, although the world has plentiful evidence making it plain that the Western powers are not particularly concerned about political oppression except to use as an excuse for intervention when they want to; indeed, government files seized in Tripoli during the fighting show that the CIA and British intelligence worked with the Libyan government in tracking down dissidents, turning them over to Libya, and taking part in interrogations.3
In any event, many of the rebels had a religious motive for opposing the government and played dominant roles within the rebel army; previously a number of them had fought against the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.4
The new Libyan regime promptly announced that Islamic sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation, and laws that contradict "the teachings of Islam" would be nullified; there would also be a reinstitution of polygamy; the Muslim holy book, the Quran, allows men up to four wives.5
Thus, just as in Afghanistan in the 1980-90s, the United States has supported Islamic militants fighting against a secular government. The American government has imprisoned many people as "terrorists" in the United States for a lot less.
What began in Libya as "normal" civil war violence from both sides — repeated before and since by the governments of Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria without any Western military intervention at all (the US actually continues to arm the Bahrain and Yemen regimes) — was transformed by the Western propaganda machine into a serious Gaddafi genocide of innocent Libyans.
Addressing the validity of this very key issue is another video, "Humanitarian War in Libya: There is no evidence". The main feature of the film is an interview with Soliman Bouchuiguir, Secretary-General, and one of the founders in 1989, of the Libyan League for Human Rights, perhaps the leading Libyan dissident group, in exile in Switzerland.
Bouchuiguir is asked several times if he can document various charges made against the Libyan leader. Where is the proof of the many rapes? The many other alleged atrocities? The more than 6,000 civilians alleged killed by Gaddafi's planes? Again and again Bouchuiguir cites the National Transitional Council as the source. Yes, that's the rebels who carried out the civil war in conjunction with the NATO/US forces.
At other times Bouchuiguir speaks of "eyewitnesses": "little girls, boys who were there, whose families we know personally". After awhile, he declares that "there is no way" to document these things. This is probably true to some extent, but why, then, the UN Security Council resolution for a military intervention in Libya? Why almost eight months of bombing?
Bouchuiguir also mentions his organization's working with the National Endowment for Democracy in their effort against Gaddafi, and one has to wonder if the man has any idea that the NED was founded to be a front for the CIA. Literally.
Another source of charges against Gaddafi and his sons has been the International Criminal Court. The Court's Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is shown in this film at a news conference discussing the same question of proof of the charges. He refers to an ICC document of 77 pages which he says contains the evidence.
The film displays the document's Table of Contents, which shows that pages 17-71 are not available to the public; these pages, apparently the ones containing the testimony and evidence, are marked as "redacted". In an appendix, the ICC report lists its news sources; these include Fox News, CNN, the CIA, Soliman Bouchuiguir, and the Libyan League for Human Rights. Earlier, the film had presented Bouchuiguir citing the ICC as one of his sources. The documentation is thus a closed circle.
Historical footnote: "Aerial bombing of civilians was pioneered by the Italians in Libya in 1911, perfected by the British in Iraq in 1920 and used by the French in 1925 to level whole quarters of Syrian cities. Home demolitions, collective punishment, summary execution, detention without trial, routine torture — these were the weapons of Europe's takeover" in the Mideast.6
The worldwide eternal belief that American foreign policy has a good side that can be appealed to
On April 6, 2011 Moammar Gaddafi wrote a letter to President Obama, in which he said: "We have been hurt more morally than physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you. Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. ... Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu Oubama, your intervention in the name of the U.S.A. is a must, so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair."7
Before the American invasion in March 2003, Iraq tried to negotiate a peace deal with the United States. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search; they also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. If this is about oil, they added, they would also talk about US oil concessions.8 ... Then came shock and awe!
In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that briefly ousted Hugo Chávez, some of the plotters went to Washington to get a green light from the Bush administration. Chávez learned of this visit and was so distressed by it that he sent officials from his government to plead his own case in Washington. The success of this endeavor can be judged by the fact that the coup took place shortly thereafter.9
In 1994, it was reported that the leader of the Zapatista rebels in Mexico, Subcommander Marcos, said that "he expects the United States to support the Zapatistas once US intelligence agencies are convinced the movement is not influenced by Cubans or Russians." "Finally," Marcos said, "they are going to conclude that this is a Mexican problem, with just and true causes."10 Yet for many years, the United States provided the Mexican military with all the training and tools needed to crush the Zapatistas.
The Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice Bishop of Grenada in 1983 all made their appeals to Washington to be left in peace.11 The governments of all three countries were overthrown by the United States.
In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, a genuine admirer of America and the Declaration of Independence, wrote at least eight letters to President Harry Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French.
He wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and he requested that "the four powers" (US, USSR, China, and Great Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United Nations.12 Ho Chi Minh received no reply. He was, after all, some sort of communist.
America's presstitutes
Imagine that the vicious police attack of October 25 on the Occupy Oakland encampment had taken place in Iran or Cuba or Venezuela or in any other ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) ...
Page One Righteous Indignation with Shocking Photos. But here's the Washington Post the next day: A three-inch story on page three with a headline: "Protesters wearing out their welcome nationwide"; no mention of the Iraqi veteran left unconscious from a police projectile making contact with his head; as to photos: just one — an Oakland police officer petting a cat that was left behind by the protesters.
And here's TV comedian Jay Leno the same night as the police attack in Oakland: "They say Moammar Gaddafi may have been one of the richest men in the world ... 200 billion dollars. With all of the billions he had, he spent very little on education or health care for his country. So I guess he was a Republican."13
The object of Leno's humor was of course the Republicans, but it served the cause of further demonizing Gaddafi and thus adding to the "justification" of America's murderous attack on Libya.
If I had been one of Leno's guests sitting there, I would have turned to the audience and said: "Listen people, under Gaddafi health care and education were completely free. Wouldn't you like to have that here?"
I think that enough people in the audience would have applauded or shouted to force Leno to back off a bit from his indoctrinated, mindless remark.
And just for the record, the 200 billion dollars is not money found in Gaddafi's personal bank accounts anywhere in the world, but money belonging to the Libyan state. But why quibble? There's no business like show business.
The Iraqi Lullabye
On February 17, 2003, a month before the US bombing of Iraq began, I posted to the Internet an essay entitled "What Do the Imperial Mafia Really Want?" concerning the expected war. Included in this were the words of Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, then at the American Enterprise Institute, which was one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq:
If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.
After a year of the tragic farce that was the American intervention in Iraq I could not resist. I sent Mr. Ledeen an email reminding him of his words and saying simply: "I'd like to ask you what songs your children are singing these days."
I received no reply.
Has there ever been an empire that didn't tell itself and the world that it was unlike all other empires, that its mission was not to plunder and control but to enlighten and liberate?
The United Nations vote on the Cuba embargo — 20 years in a row
For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an "international pariah". We don't hear that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba". This is how the vote has gone (not including abstentions):
| Year | ..... Votes (Yes-No) | No Votes |
|---|---|---|
| 1992 | ......59-2 | US, Israel |
| 1993 | ......88-4 | US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay |
| 1994 | ......101-2 | US, Israel |
| 1995 | ......117-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1996 | ......138-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1997 | ......143-3 | US, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1998 | ......157-2 | US, Israel |
| 1999 | ......155-2 | US, Israel |
| 2000 | ......167-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2001 | ......167-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2002 | ......173-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2003 | ......179-3 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands |
| 2004 | ......179-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2005 | ......182-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2006 | ......183-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2007 | ......184-4 | US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau |
| 2008 | ......185-3 | US, Israel, Palau |
| 2009 | ......187-3 | US, Israel, Palau |
| 2010 | ......187-2 | US, Israel |
| 2011 | ......186-2 | US, Israel |
Each fall the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of other governments.
How it began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: "The majority of Cubans support Castro ... The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba."
Mallory proposed "a line of action which ... makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."14 Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo against its eternally-declared enemy.
Notes
- Viagra: Reuters, April 29, 2011 ↩
- See, for example, "Million Man, Woman and Child March in Tripoli, Libya", June 20, 2011↩
- The Guardian (London), September 3, 2011 ↩
- Washington Post, September 15, 2011, "Islamists rise to fore in new Libya" ↩
- USA Today, October 24, 2011 ↩
- Rashid Khalidi, professor of Arab studies, Columbia University, Washington Post, November 11, 2007 ↩
- Associated Press, April 6, 2011, some obvious errors in the original have been corrected ↩
- New York Times, November 6, 2003 ↩
- New York Times, April 16, 2002 ↩
- Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1994, p.7 ↩
- Guatemala: Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (1982), p.183; Jagan: Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (1965), p.774-9; Bishop: Associated Press, May 29, 1983, "Leftist Government Officials Visit United States" ↩
- The Pentagon Papers (NY Times edition, 1971), pp.4, 5, 8, 26; William Blum, Killing Hope, p.123) ↩
- Washington Post, October 26, 2011 ↩
- Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba (1991), p.885 ↩
–
William Blum is the author of:
- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
- Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
- West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
- Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.
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Friday, November 04, 2011
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author, offers some insights into what it is all about, and where it might be heading.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz5RxhahHK0
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von Thierry Meyssan
von Thierry Meyssan
von Thierry Meyssan
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par Thierry Meyssan
par Thierry Meyssan
par Domenico Losurdo
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by Thierry Meyssan
by Thierry MeyssanDocumentary by Julien Teil: "Humanitarian War in Libya : There is no evidence !"
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
27 10 2011
* After 9 months of championing NATO and the ‘Rebels’, The Guardian decide now to reflect on the devastating humanitarian impact ‘intervention’ has had on Libya
As the reality of what western media have hailed as Libya’s “liberation” becomes clearer, the butchering of Gaddafi has been revealed as only a reflection of a much bigger picture. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch reported the discovery of 53 bodies, military and civilian, in Gaddafi’s last stronghold of Sirte, apparently executed – with their hands tied – by former rebel militia.
Its investigator in Libya, Peter Bouckaert, told me yesterday that more bodies are continuing to be discovered in Sirte, where evidence suggests about 500 people, civilians and fighters, have been killed in the last 10 days alone by shooting, shelling and Nato bombing.
That has followed a two month-long siege and indiscriminate bombardment of a city of 100,000 which has been reduced to a Grozny-like state of destruction by newly triumphant rebel troops with Nato air and special-forces support.
And these massacre sites are only the latest of many such discoveries. Amnesty International has now produced compendious evidence of mass abduction and detention, beating and routine torture, killings and atrocities by the rebel militias Britain, France and the US have backed for the last eight months – supposedly to stop exactly those kind of crimes being committed by the Gaddafi regime.
Throughout that time African migrants and black Libyans have been subject to a relentless racist campaign of mass detention, lynchings and atrocities on the usually unfounded basis that they have been loyalist mercenaries. Such attacks continue, says Bouckaert, who witnessed militias from Misrata this week burning homes in Tawerga so that the town’s predominantly black population – accused of backing Gaddafi – will be unable to return.
All the while, Nato leaders and cheerleading media have turned a blind eye to such horrors as they boast of a triumph of freedom and murmur about the need for restraint. But it is now absolutely clear that, if the purpose of western intervention in Libya’s civil war was to “protect civilians” and save lives, it has been a catastrophic failure.
Murder of Gadhafi is next step to wider U.S. wars in Africa
25 10 2011
The brutal lynching of Moammar Gadhafi, the leader of Libya, is the latest criminal act in NATO’s seven-month war of regime change and conquest.
Gadhafi died resisting to the very end U.S.-NATO war, as he said he would. He refused to negotiate with NATO an ignominious departure for himself or to surrender. He chose a martyr’s death for Libya’s independence and sovereignty. Despite ridicule in the West, in Africa Gadhafi will be remembered as an anti-imperialist fighter.
The gross and disrespectful behavior of the National Transitional Council (TNC) in the display of Moammar Gadhafi’s body confirms to the world in the most graphic way that these elements, who the imperialist powers have given official recognition, are in fact crude, low-life gangsters.
Instead of burying Gadhafi within a day as required under Islamic law, they chose to display Gadhafi’s battered, half naked body — bloody, unwashed and uncovered — on a soiled mattress in a meat locker at a shopping center.
This affront to religious and national custom will further deepen outrage and resistance.
TNC militias did no real fighting. These divided, competing military bands operate as scavengers or vultures, calling in air strikes and lying in wait to pick over the death that NATO bombers have blasted in front of them. In seven months of NATO bombing they have shown themselves capable of firing endless weapons in front of cameras and brutalizing Black Libyans, yet incapable of conducting any independent military action.
For more news and analysis on Libya:
http://globalciviliansforpeace.com/
