John Lennon died a little over 29 years ago, and he was a famous peace advocate. We seem to lack people like him and his peers today (mostly musicians, it seems) who worked unashamedly for peace and told right-wing war lovers how wrong they were. What has changed since then? Things in the U.S. have only gotten more militaristic. “The Long War” — the unwinnable war has taken over. Little pretense about it even ending anymore. The business of the U.S. now more than ever is war products and starting or supporting wars to use those products. And by products, of course, I mean bombs and that kind of wretched thing. Instruments of death. But according to Mr. Lennon, War is Over, if we want it to be! It seems quaint now, putting signs in your window, but I wonder if he changed any minds.
- The Pictures of War You Aren’t Supposed to See – January 04, 2010 “Truthdig” – - War is brutal and impersonal. It mocks the fantasy of individual heroism and the absurdity of utopian goals like democracy. In an instant, industrial warfare can kill dozens, even hundreds of people, who never see their attackers. The power of these industrial weapons is indiscriminate and staggering. They can take down apartment blocks in seconds, burying and crushing everyone inside. They can demolish villages and send tanks, planes and ships up in fiery blasts. The wounds, for those who survive, result in terrible burns, blindness, amputation and lifelong pain and trauma. No one returns the same from such warfare. And once these weapons are employed all talk of human rights is a farce.
- The Real War – Had he not proven incompetent to detonate his lap bomb, Umar Farouk Abdulmullatab would have carried off an air massacre to rival Lockerbie. We would all have ended Christmas day watching TV footage of 300 mangled bodies being picked up around Detroit.The system breakdown was total. His father had reported to the U.S. embassy that Umar had gone extremist, disowned his family and vanished in Yemen. Though the 23-year-old Nigerian had been put on a U.S. terrorist watch list and denied a visa to enter Britain, his U.S. visa was not revoked.
- Lieberman: The United States Must Pre-Emptively Act In Yemen – Sen. Joseph Lieberman, (I-Conn) a renowned hawk and one of the foremost champions of the invasion of Iraq, warned on Sunday that the United States faced “danger” unless it pre-emptively acts to curb the rise of terrorism in Yemen. “Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war,” Lieberman said, during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday”. “That’s the danger we face.” No, the danger we face is war-loving politicians like himself.
- Lieberman to Blair: Peace deal within two years ‘unrealistic’ – Haaretz – The prospects of Israel and the Palestinians reaching a final-status agreement within two years are unrealistic, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Quartet peace envoy Tony Blair on Monday. “It is important to hold an honest, open dialogue with the Palestinians without sowing delusions that are disconnected with reality and that will only lead to violence and frustration,” Lieberman told the former British premier. “It is not possible to reach a full agreement within two years.”
“This is not a realistic goal,” the foreign minister said. “We need to begin direct talks without committing to any timeframe.”
“In the past, timetables were set and not met and this led to violence,” Lieberman said. So forget timetables altogether? Not helpful. - No Chance President Obama’s War In Afghanistan Will Succeed – “The undeniable fact is that eight years of US occupation and war have led to a growing insurgency, fueled by anger at one of the world’s most corrupt governments, run mostly by former and not-so-former warlords who were installed by the United States after 9/11. Many of these warlords are deeply involved in the opium trade, among them the brother of Hamid Karzai, the president, who was re-elected only through massive fraud. Writing in the Miami Herald of Dec. 20th, Carl Hiaasen says that Johnson believes “Obama knows this war is unwinnable, and that the surge is meant to provide political cover in advance of a full U.S. withdrawal before the 2012 election.”
- Official: U.S. intelligence found Iran nuke document was forged – WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (IPS) – U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a “neutron initiator” for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official. Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however. Here we go again.
- Text of the Final Version of the Kerry-Lugar Bill: Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 – Important: The Bill below is now the most recent version – S.1707 of the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, as passed by Both House and Senate. It was passed by the Senate on Sep. 24, 2009 and the House on Sep. 30, 2009. As indicated in the earlier version of this post, we had earlier posted the original Senate Bill – S 962 ES, as passed the Senate June 24, 2009.
- Blue New Years – As the end-credits rolled for James Cameron’s new movie, Avatar, the audience burst into rowdy applause. It seemed to me that they were applauding the sheer computerized dazzlement of the show — but in the story itself they had just watched the US suffer a humiliating defeat on a distant planet. In the final frames, American soldiers and the corporate executives they had failed to protect were shown lined up as prisoners-of-war about to embark on a death march.
- YouTube – Dubai Renames World’s Tallest Tower Burj Khalifa – See video here.
- Symbol of Global Excess in Dubai – The Burj Khalifah is a symbol of everything wrong with our present moment. Rooted in a finance and real estate bubble, planned as big for the sake of bigness, opulent, now saved from disaster by Abu Dhabi’s unsustainable oil revenues, it casts its shadow on a nation of guest workers, many impoverished and exploited. If global warming proceeds at the pace some climate scientists fear, and the seas rise substantially, it may, ironically enough, be all that is visible of the low-lying United Arab Emirates a century from now.
- Kerry-Lugar Bill: An Opportunity for Democratic Pakistan – The Kerry-Lugar Bill, presented before the Senate yesterday, seeks to apply the Afghanistan prescription suggested in Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea to Pakistan. The very title of the book is a suggestion on the best strategy to be pursued in Afghanistan: the Western style of speeding up operations doesn’t work; slowing down and building relationships would help to achieve the desired objectives. Though slowing down is not an option in Pakistan but building relationships is a viable strategy and this is what the Kerry-Lugar Bill intends to do. In the words of John Kerry, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act (Kerry-Lugar bill) seeks to “fundamentally change America’s relationship with the people of Pakistan.”
- Israeli Warplanes Bomb Gaza Tunnels – A year after the Gaza War, the bombs are still falling. Israeli warplanes launched missiles at several open fields in the Gaza Strip late Friday, sparking a series of loud explosions. Israeli warplanes bombed two tunnels along the Gaza border. The army said Palestinian militants planned to use the tunnels to infiltrate Israel and carry out an attack. The airstrike occurred as Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, are negotiating a prisoner swap. Under the emerging deal, Israel would release 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. He was captured more than three years ago, when Hamas gunmen tunneled under the Gaza border and infiltrated an Israeli army base.
- Building Junk Schools in Afghanistan – The Farukh Shah School project was begun in early 2007, and was supposed to have been completed in 2007. It was two years behind schedule. SIGAR’s September/ October 2009, inspections discovered that every building in the school complex had serious structural defects. This included the classrooms, latrine, guardhouse and generator building. In addition, the well on the site was defectively installed and needed to be redrilled. Finally, there is a missing retaining wall and the whole site was incorrectly graded, which will increase erosion. This may eventually undercut the foundation of the entire school, which is built on a hillside. The project is nothing short of an embarrassment.
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