Category: War

So, today we learn that CIA Assistant Director Steve Kappes will be “retiring“.

He got to be involved in torture, rise up in the ranks, oversea botched missions and failed station’s where he put “his people” in place. Mission accomplished. Time to enjoy himself till the next Republican administration!

So, who was Steve Kappes?

Greens: President Obama must press Israel to end East Jerusalem settlements

• Green Party urges divestment as Israeli outrages mount

WASHINGTON, DC — President Obama must put pressure on Israel immediately to stop the construction of settlements and displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Green Party leaders and candidates said today.

“President Obama should send Prime Minister Netanyahu a message: enough is enough. If Israel continues to violate Palestinian human rights, the US must cancel the $30 billion military aid package pledged to Israel for 2009-2018. The plan to build 1,600 housing units for Israeli Jews in East Jerusalem is the latest outrage. Although a rumored US abstension from a possible UN Security Council resolution against the settlements would be an improvement over its usual veto on Israel’s behalf, this would still be an act of moral cowardice,” said Sanda Everette, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. (News story on the possible UN resolution: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8591714.stm)

“The White House’s angry response to the East Jerusalem settlement announcement was a necessary first step, but it needs to be followed by concrete action, like support for a UN resolution against the settlements or actually withdrawing military aid. President Obama should show the kind of leadership that led Eisenhower to demand that Israel leave Sinai in 1955,” said Ms. Everette.

The Green Party has demanded that the US end military assistance to Israel, which has used such aid to displace Palestinians from their homes and farm lands, hold them in concentration camp conditions, maintain Bantustans in the style of apartheid-era South Africa, and launch illegal military assaults such as last year’s bloody invasion of Gaza.

“While the international community has been unable to deal with Israel’s violations after decades of UN resolutions, civil society has increasingly endorsed BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) as a powerful nonviolent strategy to pressure Israel into ending the Palestinian occupation and guaranteeing equality for all in Israel-Palestine. In 2005, the Green Party endorsed a BDS resolution (http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_11_28.shtml) comparable to the one passed by the Senate of the Associated Students of UC Berkeley in March,” said Derek Grigsby, Green candidate for State Representative in Michigan, District 7 ([email protected]).

The Berkeley students’ bill calls on the university to divest its assets from two General Electric and United Technologies for “materially and militarily supporting the Israeli government’s occupation of the Palestinian territories” and to advocate that the UC, with about $135 million invested in companies that profit from Israel’s illegal actions in the Occupied Territories (http://blogs.asuc.org/2010/03/18/announcements/sb-118-amended-passed).

Greens have urged the White House and Congress to reject the influence of AIPAC and to establish Middle East policy based on recognition that the rights of Palestinians must be equal to the rights of Israelis, on peaceful negotiation to resolve the conflict, and complete regional nuclear disarmament. Greens have noted the hypocrisy of applying sanctions against Iran for its alleged nuclear ambitions without insisting that Israel get rid of its nuclear weapons — especially since Israel, unlike Iran, has launched military attacks on other countries. (See “Arab Leaders Call for Middle East Free of Nuclear Weapons” Earth Times March 28, 2010, http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/316159,arab-leaders-call-for-middle-east-free-of-nuclear-weapons.html#ixzz0jUbcWzVi)

“We encourage Israeli and Palestinian leaders — and President Obama — to follow the lead of human rights activists like Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, organizer of the Wheels of Justice tour (http://justicewheels.org). In his embrace of nonviolent resistance as a tactic for justice, Dr. Qumsiyeh continues an often unrecognized history of Palestinian non-violent resistance and keeps alive the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. In response, the Israeli army has targeted him for arrest,” said Tony Affigne, Rhode Island Green and member of the party’s International Committee (http://www.gp.org/committees/intl).

Dr. Qumsiyeh (http://qumsiyeh.org), former associate professor of genetics at the Yale University School of Medicine and a member of the Green Party of Connecticut before he moved back to Palestine, wrote about his experiences in a New Haven Register op-ed published on March 9, 2010 (“Peaceful protest in Israel can lead to arrest,” http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/03/09/opinion/doc4b95ab40a3642160727871.txt).

“The US’s uncritical support for Israel and flow of military and financial aid endanger US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and threaten US security and global stability. Even Gen. Petraeus and VP Biden have admitted this,” said Rodger Jennings, Green candidate for US Congress in Illinois, District 12 (http://www.rodgerjennings.org). (See “The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story,” Foreign Policy, March 13, 2010, http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/14/the_petraeus_briefing_biden_s_embarrassment_is_not_the_whole_story). “The Gaza assault, which couldn’t have happened without US weapons, was a major turning point for people worldwide, including many American Jews. Like the misery that continues for Gazans, the memory of that horrific assault lingers.”

Greens note that, until recently, a campaign to silence critics of Israeli policies and actions helped maintain unilateral support for Israel, especially in the US, and that censorship of such criticism has sustained the conflict. Many US Greens expressed alarm when the Heinrich Boell Foundation (http://www.boell.de), a legally independent political foundation affiliated with the German Green Party, canceled February speaking engagements in Germany by Dr. Norman Finkelstein, an American Jewish scholar, child of Holocaust survivors, and author of books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com).

“There is increasing recognition that the two-state solution is not viable. Israel-Palestine is already a de facto single state, mainly because of Israel’s illegal settlement policies, with over 500,000 Israeli Jews living in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. It’s time to consider the one-state solution — one homeland for both peoples — with a secular democracy that ensures full and equal rights regardless of religion or ethnicity, ” said Farheen Hakeem, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States. (See “Palestinians Increasingly Back 1-State,” Jerusalem Post, March 22, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=171559 and “Who’s Afraid of a One-State Solution?” by Dmitry Reider, Foreign Policy, March 31, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/31/whos_afraid_of_a_one_state_solution)

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org

“Ensure Israel arms curbs, say MPs”
BBC News, March 30, 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8594402.stm

“Open Letter to Berkeley Students on their Historic Israeli Divestment Bill”
By Naomi Klein, Common Dreams, March 31, 2010
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/31-9

“Palestinians increasingly back 1-state”
Jerusalem Post, March 22, 2010
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=171559

“US Can’t Afford Military Aid to Israel”
Josh Ruebner, The Huffington Post, February 26, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-ruebner/us-cant-afford-military-a_b_478104.html

“Evidence of misuse of US weapons in Gaza”
Amnesty International, February 23, 2009
http://www.amnesty.org.au/news/comments/20277

US Campaign to End the Occupation
http://www.endtheoccupation.org

Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of the United States
Winter 2010 issue now online
http://gp.org/greenpages-blog

• Green Party Speakers Bureau: Greens available to speak on foreign policy http://www.gp.org/speakers/speakers-foreign-policy.php

I shouldn’t be surprised by this, I really shouldn’t, but, I am.

A new Tea Party group, Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots, has grown quickly since being launched last month by an active duty Marine Corps sergeant. The group, which vows to “stand up on the very soil we defended to preserve common sense conservatism and defend our Constitution that is threatened by a tyrannical government,” currently has over 400 members, who have signed up through its Facebook page, though many are not active duty military. And it has close ties to the broader Tea Party movement.

It is indeed in the military oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies – foreign and domestic. And, I don’t dispute this statement:

Many people in the military “feel like they can’t speak out against Obama or Congress,” said Stein. “The armed forces should have a little bit more say than we think we do,” he said.

Yes, those in the military are allowed to have opinions, even political opinions. But, if that opinion is based on right-wing falsehoods, that opinion can become dangerous to the military as a whole.

This report about the Brits and their long history of military service and history, and want to dominate others in many cases, is a mirror into our own National Security and National Defense as these two occupations have stretched beyond the limits many issues connected to both.

We gave those that developed the hatreds from our long running World Policies towards them exactly what they wanted, that’s Guerrilla Insurgency, only on a world scale and fought with criminal terror from all involved.

The broad outlines of basic animal motivation are easily stripped to bare bones: food deprivation motivates food seeking, sleep deprivation promotes sleep, sexual stimulation promotes reproductive behavior, and the prospect of imminent death by predation induces fear and anger which evoke defensive and offensive attack behaviors.  

Of course, when these existential dominant drives are not on the psychic regulatory and operational front-lines, other subordinate drives, such as curiosity and orienting and re-orienting reflexes, i.e., the careful examination of objects of thought, may successfully compete for operational space.  

Conversely, nothing obliterates subordinate drives such as curiosity and reasoned inquiry like the induction of primal homicidal mania.  

Taser Bullets? That is the report.

Called the nanosecond electrical pulse (nsEP) project, the research focuses on using brief electrical pulses to temporarily paralyze an individual by disrupting the nervous system, similar to the way the Taser, another popular nonlethal device, works. But where this project differs from most other stun guns, according to the Pentagon, is that it could theoretically be built as a wireless system, and have a longer lasting effect.

In the next paragraph, it goes on to state how this research may be able to be shrunk into bullet form.

The Pentagon’s Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate, which is sponsoring the work, declined a request for an interview, but answered written questions. “It is hoped the technology can be made small enough to fit in a small, self-contained round,” Dave Law, the chief of the office’s technology division, wrote of the research project. “The round would have a power source and therefore would not need wires.”

I’ll tell you why this is a bad idea.

Have you seen the new ad narrated by Christopher Miller, Iraq veteran, on why we need clean energy?

The ads feature an Iraq war veteran who was injured six years ago by a roadside bomb. Christopher Miller says that using less oil will take money away from enemies like Iran, which has supplied increasingly destructive roadside bombs to militants in Iraq.

I just saw the ad run during Keith Olbermann’s Countdown and my jaw hit the floor. We need clean energy because buying Iran’s oil funds their supplying IED’s to Iraq? Really?

We all know that we need clean energy and that major energy conglomerates are only willing to support it if they control the new energy, just as they controlled the old energy. This is not debatable.

It is the argument used that is wrong.

The man, dressed in a white shirt and dark pants, strides confidently down the middle of the suburban street, his camera bag slung over one shoulder, his co worker following behind, with other men in summer clothing ambling down the road.  He pauses to speak into his cell phone.

In the distance, helicopters hover.

Nearly 3 years later, what happened to him and companion as they walked to their next Reuters assignment is known.

(warning, graphic video below, noise and images, please do not view if you are prone to PTSD.)

A written commentary on this story may be seen here at Democratic Underground:

http://www.democraticundergrou…

The Columbia Journalism Review wrote about the release of the video by Wikileaks at the National Press Club here:  http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/…

the video is online here http://collateralmurder.com/

An epluribusmedia writeup by Michael Collins is here:

http://discuss.epluribusmedia….

In Iraq and Afghanistan, by this year, there have been 4705 American and Coalition forces killed in Iraq, and 1713 killed in Afghanistan, with the majority coming from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.  There have also been at least 462 private contractors killed  http://icasualties.org/Iraq/Co…

At least 139 journalists have been killed in Iraq between the years 2003 and 2009.  Of those, 7 were embedded with the military, and 132 were non embedded, or “unilateral.”   An astounding 117 of those 139 were Iraqis, with the rest being European or from other Arab nations, with just 2 being from the United States.

http://www.cpj.org/reports/200…

Germany’s Chancellor Merkel expressed regrets for 6 accidental friendly fire deaths of Afghan soldiers to Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday March 3rd.   http://www.google.com/hostedne…

So does Nato Brigadier General Eric Tremblay

http://www.euronews.net/2010/0…

Issuing an apology, NATO Brigadier General Eric Tremblay said: “We regret this tragic loss of life. We will try and strive to improve our tactics, techniques and procedures.”

Germany, The Local

Earlier Friday April 2

http://www.thelocal.de/nationa…

Earlier Friday, three German soldiers were killed and eight were injured – four seriously – when the Taliban ambushed a patrol in the worst firefight the Bundeswehr has seen in its nearly eight years in the war-torn country.

According to Brigadier Frank Leidenberger, the commander of the international ISAF forces in northern Afghanistan, the patrol was attacked by about 100 Taliban insurgents as it removed mines planted in the road in the dangerous district of Chahar Dara, near the Bundeswehr’s Kunduz base.

Other reports said up to 200 Taliban fighters had been involved in the ambush and had used rocket-propelled grenades among other weapons.

The deaths of the German soldiers bring to 39 the total number of Germans killed since the beginning of the Afghanistan war in 2002. They have caused shock and dismay in Germany.

There are currently 4000 troops from Germany in Afghanistan, many in the northern, more peaceful area, with 850 more to be sent soon.

Canada, CBC

Later Friday April 2

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/…

German soldiers in an armoured personnel carrier opened fire after coming across two civilian vehicles that refused to stop. Soon after, it was discovered the vehicles were carrying Afghan troops.

“Yesterday, after a military operation which took place in the Char Dara district of Kunduz province, Afghan national army troops were distributing food near the German troops when German troops opened fire,” said Afghan defence ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi.

“In this incident six Afghan soldiers were killed. The defence ministry have already condemned the incident,” he said.

America, Boston Globe

2 days later

http://www.boston.com/news/wor…

The friendly fire shooting Friday took place in northern Kunduz Province, where German forces were sharply criticized last September (2009) when they ordered an air strike on two tanker trucks that had been captured by the Taliban. Up to 142 people died, many of them civilians.

Speaking during a visit to South Africa, German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg expressed sorrow over the friendly fire deaths and said German soldiers were doing everything possible to avoid such incidents.

The September 4th airstrike may have been called in by the Germans, but it was carried out by a United States warplane.

Chancellor Merkel expressed regret and took responsibility for that incident in December, and it resulted in a cabinet resignation.  http://af.reuters.com/article/…