Austerity hits troops as rations are cut

The organizers of this blog have explained that US capitalism cannot afford to keep its massive military machine working at its present level without driving its working class at home into poverty. This latter is happening all around us as we see wages and benefits being slashed and services in city after city being reduced or removed altogether. Now we see the reduction of the living standards of the military in the field.  Marines at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan are now about to lose a daily meal, causing some to fore go a hot breakfast and others to work without cooked food for six plus hours.

The midnight ration service — known there as “midrats" — supplies breakfast to Marines on midnight-to-noon shifts and dinner to Marines who are ending noon-to-midnight work periods. It's described as one of the few times the Marines at Leatherneck can be together in one place.
The base, which is located in Afghanistan’s southwestern Helmand Province, flanked by Iran and Pakistan, also will remove its 24-hour sandwich bar. While no Marine at Camp Leatherneck agreed to speak on the record, many are privately angry about the hit on base morale.

"This boils my skin. One of my entire shifts will go 6.5 hours without a meal. If we need to cut back on money I could come up with 100 other places,” one Leatherneck-based Marine wrote in an email this week to his wife and shared with NBC News. (The Marine declined to speak on the record.) “Instead, we will target the biggest contributor to morale. I must be losing my mind. What is our senior leadership thinking? I just got back from flying my ass off and in a few days, I will not have a meal to replenish me after being away for over 9 hours.”

“The fact is our force in Afghanistan is shrinking fast and all the creature comforts and services deployed military-members have grown accustomed to over the past decade are going to be reduced," A leading officer Gilmore wrote in an email to NBC News.

Back home, spouses and friends of the troops in Afghanistan are criticizing the loss of hot meals as a poor logistical choice that will impact the service members' overall nutrition, energy and spirits.

This same officer Officer Gilmore described cooked-meal reduction as part of a larger effort to “become increasingly austere” as the force shrinks, but he said the base members will not face an unhealthy calorie shortage. “The Marines here at Leatherneck may have to endure the monotony of a limited menu but they will not suffer from malnutrition unless they choose not to eat,” Gilmore callously said. At home, some military family members nonetheless called the change a mistake. The squeeze is tightening on US imperialism. This cutting of hot meals for its military who are fighting abroad for the US corporations is bringing closer the day when the US working class and the ranks of the US military will step up and fight for their own independent interests not the interests of the these profit addicted corporations.

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The US government and state terrorism

We share this piece for our reader's interest.  Reprinted from AlterNet.org

5 Acts of Terror By the People We Chose to Protect Us

Americans are led to believe in a terrorist threat that may or may not exist while the corporate/military/political complex creates 'terror' to safeguard the assets of the rich.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/ Suzanne Tucker

September 8, 2013  |  

Every clear-thinking American knows that education and jobs are needed more than armed guards in poor neighborhoods. But average Americans are led to believe in a terrorist threat that may or may not exist, and that in any case is greatly exaggerated, while the corporate/military/political complex creates new forms of terror to safeguard the assets of the rich.
1. War Terror

It started with our leaders comparing notes on Iraq:

Cheney 08/26/02: There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
Cheney 09/14/03: We never had evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon.

Powell 02/05/03: Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agents.
Powell 09/13/04: I think it's unlikely that we will find any stockpiles.

Bush 05/29/03: We found the weapons of mass destruction.
Bush 10/08/04: I wasn't happy when we found out there wasn't weapons.

In the first  Iraqi war, two air missions per minute were conducted over 43 days, with the equivalent of  seven Hiroshima bombsdropped on a largely defenseless country. Much of the slaughter was caused by  "dumb bombs" that fell on civilian areas. U.S. troops attacked retreating Iraqi soldiers with cluster bombs and  napalm as American pilots, adopting metaphors such as 'turkey shoot' and 'fish in a barrel,' conducted target practice from above. Some Iraqis were  buried alive by bulldozers that spread tons of sand over them.

In the end, at least  190,000 Iraqi lives were destroyed in a war that cost over $2.2 trillion. A  Johns Hopkins study puts the tally much higher, with an estimate of 650,000 Iraqi deaths.

2. Drone Terror

In Pakistan, civilians can hear the  droning in the sky all day long. Said one resident: "I can't sleep...when the drones are there...I hear them making that sound, that noise. The drones are all over my brain." A humanitarian worker added, "I was in New York on 9/11...This is what it is like."

When bombings kill townspeople, their family and friends are often afraid to run to their aid, because standard procedure is to bomb the first responders. Afterwards the funerals are sometimes bombed.

A Pew survey reported that  75%of Pakistanis consider us their enemy. A former advisor to General Petraeus stated, "Every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement.." Indeed, militant groups have rapidly been forming, such as  Lashkar, which has been attacking U.S. troops across the border in Afghanistan. The sentiment goes beyond Pakistan. A spokesperson for Yemen, also  under attack, told a U.S. Senate committee, "What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant: There is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America."

The disease is spreading. There are now 737  U.S. Military Bases around the world, and over 2.5 million military personnel. Since 9/11 about 100 new  generals and admirals have been added to the ranks of top brass, all with private jets and chefs and guards and secretaries and drivers.

Africa, already swollen with a U.S. military presence, is under further  siege by the Pentagon.  The Economist speaks of "Afrighanistan," calling it "the next front of the global war on terror."

3. Unconstitutional Terror

The Fourth Amendment guarantees the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."

Since 9/11, numerous measures have been employed in the name of national security: The Patriot Act, Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, and the National Defense Authorization Act. The  Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has facilitated the monitoring of foreign communications in the name of anti-terrorism.

Internet privacy has been threatened by  proposals like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Privacy is at risk with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), passed in the House.

In addition, new  techniques such as Iris Scans, License Plate Recognition,  GPS devices in pharmaceutical products, and  Facial Recognition Technology invade our privacy.  Drones are flying over our homes. The National Security Agency is building a  data centerbig enough to store every email, text, phone call, web search, and video in the United States. With the Electronic Communications Privacy Act  on its side, government is authorized to take anything it can get.

4. Terror against Opponents of Unconstitutional Terror

In 1778 the Continental Congress created the first  whistleblower protection law by declaring "it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states."

In 2008 Barack Obama campaigned with a  pledge to "strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government."

But Bradley Manning was found guilty of espionage for reporting extreme cases of war misconduct. And Edward Snowden faces prison for reporting abuses of the 4th Amendment by the NSA.

The hypocrisy continues with the proposed  Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, which would have made it an act of terror to report on the terrorizing of animals. And with the efforts of  TransCanada Corporation to convince law enforcement agencies that pipeline protestors are terrorists.

Going even further, FBI documents  reveal that the agency repeatedly monitored Occupy Wall Street activities, viewing them as possible acts of  terrorism.

5. The Terror of Poverty

The largely imagined threat of foreign attacks is diverting billions of dollars into a  Homeland Security fund that safeguards the assets of the rich, while the  poverty rate for black children has risen to almost 50 percent, and  unemployment among blacks has almost doubled the rate of whites.

Meanwhile, paranoia has infiltrated our schools. As K-12  education has been cut by $20 billion over f ive years, and as funding for guidance counselors and school psychologists has dropped to all-time lows, the Department of Justice's COPS Office has awarded over $750 million for the hiring of more than 6,500  police officers for schools, even though studies show that placing armed police in schools actually increases physical dangers to youth.

People burdened by economic oppression and authoritarian rule can begin to understand Frederick Douglass' bitter words to his own country, on behalf of the American slave:  To him your boasted liberty [is] an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.

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The crimes of US capitalism

Source: TopCriminalJusticeDegrees.org

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Cameron's humiliating defeat over Syria attack

British PM David Cameron

from Roger Silverman in London

It was one of those moments that mark a turning point in history: the defeat this week of David Cameron’s parliamentary motion paving the way for Britain’s participation in the planned US military intervention in the Syrian civil war. It came after years of endless futile foreign wars and economic crisis, during which all but the super-rich had suffered crippling drops in living standards and Britain’s once-famous health service and welfare state had been all but destroyed. Food banks, riots and suicides are becoming commonplace features of British life.

Ten years ago, the whole of central London was ringing to the chants of demonstrators marching against the impending war against Iraq. It was the biggest demonstration in British history. A series of catastrophic adventurist foreign wars was launched notwithstanding, with consequences every bit as devastating as the marchers had warned. At a cost of something like £50 billion and the deaths of around 700 British soldiers, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have each in turn been reduced to chaos, anarchy and civil war.  

The financial crash of 2008 and the election in 2010 of the most right-wing government for eighty years further compounded a general feeling of helpless despair. True, there were a couple of huge trade union demonstrations and some national strikes by Britain’s remaining public sector workers; but overall resistance has been dampened by a feeling of fatalistic gloom. If two million people on the streets could be ignored, what was the point of protesting?

But today the public mood is stretched almost to breaking point. Just as in Turkey it took no more than the threat to build a supermarket over one of the few public parks in Istanbul, and in Brazil the mere announcement of a rise in bus fares in one city, to bring millions of people on to the streets for days on end, so too in Britain patience is running out. No one had predicted even the possibility that a government decision to go to war yet again could run aground. There were no mass demonstrations; just a mounting underlying sense of mute outrage, strong enough to impel even some quite unlikely forces to oppose military action this time: forces that included Britain’s new populist far-right party UKIP, and 39 MPs from the governing Tory and Liberal Democrat parties, who defied the party whips to oppose the government. The mood was powerful enough even to stiffen the normally wobbly backbone of the dithering Labour leader Ed Miliband, who had originally intended to support military action (though, naturally, with the usual token reservations). The government motion had been expected to be just a formality; no media commentator had seriously even considered the possibility that it could be defeated.

The outcome is an utter humiliation for Cameron: the prime minister of a former empire who declares war and then has to mumble apologetically: "OK, I get it. The war's off then". This spectacle will give heart to millions of people who up to now have been demoralised by years of unremitting attacks. An uprising like those in Turkey and Brazil may not yet be imminent in Britain; but the spell has been broken. It is proved at last: even this government can be forced to retreat.

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Attack on Syria: The hypocrisy of Obama, Kerry and co.

Two Sec's of State.  Ask her about dead children John?

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

The billionaire John Kerry who also functions as the US Secretary of State is ready to teach the Syrian dictator Assad a lesson. He called Assad a "thug and a murderer", and says the US can’t let a dictator get away with such serious crimes; unless it’s one of the US’s dictators of course.  "History will judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turn a blind eye to a dictator's wanton use of weapons of mass destruction," Kerry added.

I was watching the news tonight and it can make you feel so helpless as it is like a bunch of parrots repeating their master’s words.  Most Americans don’t really pay much attention to the forces that are at play in the world getting most of our news form CNN and other such outlets.  The US is not unfamiliar with chemical warfare as it used it in Vietnam pouring dioxin (Agent Orange) on the Vietnamese people and their food.  The chemical was even poured over their own troops.  Kerry was in Vietnam he must know that.  The US used Napalm ion Vietnam also and white phosphorous and depleted uranium in Iraq.

The phony concern coming out of the mouths of Obama, Kerry and other Wall Street politicians are seen for what they are by the vast majority of people in the world. The US spin doctors have no credibility.  The attack that has taken place, no matter who did it, killed 1,429 Syrians, including at least 426 children reports say.  But lets add a little US political logic to this scenario.  The US enforced sanctions in Iraq cost the lives of some 500,000 people, mostly women and children.  But when Madeline Albright who was also US Secretary of State was asked about this on US TV she said that the deaths were “worth it”.

From her point of view such mass slaughter is worth it of course just like the death of 3 million Vietnamese was worth it I suppose.

Wolf Blitzer had his array of “experts” on a panel, one of them the right wing Zionist Alan Dershowitz. Another one was some sort of former CIA official.  Dershowitz I think it was mentioned something about the US imposing a “no fly” zone.  They all had a nice little chat about this but no one mentioned the possibility of a “no fly” zone over Gaza. The Israeli’s used white phosphorous in Gaza, the US used it in Fallujah, Obama’s drones have been slaughtering innocent women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan for years.  This whole affair is not about human decency and rights

In the aftermath of the British parliamentary vote to oppose involvement the talk was also about having to put together a US led coalition. Oh, let’s see who will be on that team I wonder.  There’ll be the Saudi’s and the pimps that lead the Gulf States that get US weapons and protection from their own people.  There’ll be some other flunkies who will be blackmailed and cajoled in to giving whatever action is taken some sort of international legitimacy.

But this is less about Syria than Iran.  Kerry says Iran will be “emboldened”if the US doesn’t act.  We’re all supposed to be afraid of Iran.  But why would Iran not want nuclear weapons?  Israel has hundreds of them?  The US invaded the country bordering Iran and also encouraged the former leader of that country, Saddam Hussein to invade Iran and offered money, and chemical weapons to do so. Incidentally, Bremer who was the US imposed governor of Iraq after the US invaded it, repeatedly referred to Assad as Saddam on the news tonight.  What morons.

The capitalist class cannot rule with any level of stability and jumps out of the frying pan into the fire, from one quagmire to the next with working class youth at the front.  The class that rules leads from the rear in these ventures.  If the attack on Syria goes ahead and it looks more likely that it will, a few hundred million dollars of US taxpayer funds will disappear in a few minutes. The war on workers at home will continue in order to pay for it and the ranks of the terrorist groups will find new recruits.  And yet again, the  “experts”at the Pentagon are on the same team as al Qaeda or the Islamic fanatics.  Way to go boys.

The most pressing task facing the workers of the world is the class war over which class governs society and for us in the US which class represents us to the world.  Despite the many changes that have taken place in the working class in the US, the shifting of manufacturing abroad, the growth of finance capital and the service sector accompanied by an increase in unproductive labor, managers overseers, police and the like, global capitalism cannot be overthrown without the US working class settling accounts with the unelected coupon clippers that govern US society, the most heavily armed and ruthless bourgeois on the planet.

I remember when I was in my late teens and early twenties. You could travel from London to Joburg all through Africa overland, no problem.  You could go to Iran and Kashmir and Nepal and from Calais to Calcutta relatively safely. Not today.

This is how far the capitalist system has brought us. And its most powerful representatives are here in the US. We should consider that the US and the Democratic Party in particular is the only nation and the only party to have dropped nuclear bombs on civilian centers.  We should not underestimate their ruthlessness; they will not hesitate dropping nuclear weapons on their own cities if they saw their interests and their system truly threatened---United We Stand be damned.

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War is Hell

by Richard Mellor

I hadn’t seen old Pepto for a few days.  Working in the public sector kept me in the streets on a regular basis and I knew pretty much every homeless person in town.  Before my retirement I worked for the water department installing water mains.  I loved the job; it paid well, with good benefits, and I was outside in the sunshine most of the time.

Pepto got his name by accident.  None of us knew his real name. Very few people, take the time to ask homeless people their names, after all, it’s their fault they’re homeless isn’t it? 

He stopped by our job one day looking for a few cents for some coffee as he often did.

“Any you guys spare a dollar?” he asked with this sad look on his face.

Pepto had visited our job sights a few times and always asked questions about the job.  We didn’t always give money as it tended to get around and half the homeless in town spent their day trying to find out where we were working. But a couple of us reached in our pockets and handed him a dollar or two, enough for him to get breakfast.

“What’s up, man?” I asked him.  “You seem a bit down today.” I immediately reminded myself that he’s a homeless man, not exactly an uplifting situation to be in.

“Man this shit is fucked up,” he answered. 

“What shit’s that?” I replied, kicking myself again for asking such a stupid question.

“Damn Vietnam.  I keep thinking about that Vietnam shit.”

One of the guys on the crew made some sarcastic remark about every guy begging for money by the side of the freeway claims they are a Vietnam Vet and that some of them earn $500 a week. He was the only guy on the crew I didn’t like.  He always blamed the poor for their condition and his criticisms were always tainted with a bit of racism. Like most people with that mentally he was also lazy.

Pepto ignored him. “I had to kill a man once. But he woulda killed me if he could.  That damn Nam was bismal.”  We understood he meant abysmal.  The foreman told him with a chuckle that Pepto Bismol was a medicine for upset stomach. 

“Well this shit gives me an upset stomach alright.  I could sure do with that Pepto stuff.”

Our homeless friend finally had a name. But as I reflect on those days, I should have asked him what his name was.

A few more days passed and Pepto still hadn’t come around.  Knowing him made me think more about the homeless.  Where do they sleep?  There’s way more animal shelters in this country than homeless shelters or shelters for battered women.  Many of them are mentally ill. People thrown out of institutions and on to the streets during the Reagan era.  Many of them are women who also suffered the added horror of sexual abuse once out of the care of the state.  I discovered that a third of the homeless were Vietnam Vets. 

“I think I would go nuts if I were homeless for an extended period” I told some of my co-workers.

It must have been three weeks before I found out Pepto’s whereabouts. I was reading my local small town paper one morning and there was a little piece in it about a homeless man being found dead in an office building under construction.  He had died form an overdose, the paper said.

I felt real sad as the report revealed his real name.  He was called Fred McHenry.  He was described as a local homeless man with drug and alcohol problems.  He was also a Vietnam Vet and had a Purple Heart.

The next day I went to the Veteran’s building and asked about him.  They suggested I call the VA and I could find out more information from them.  The VA was very helpful as was the author of the piece in the paper.  I eventually got a hold of his mother’s phone number and got in contact with her.

She was clearly saddened by her son’s death but she was not really interested in talking with me.  I wanted to find out more about him and how he ended up where he did.  She obviously had a hard time with him due to his drug abuse.  But drug abuse was rampant among the troops in Vietnam.  I thought of all the flag waving and talk from politicians about the bravery of “our boys” when they want to send young men, other people’s sons and daughters in to some fruitless war.  How they always tell the public that “our boys” are making the greatest sacrifice.  

           
Killing a human being in real life is not like Hollywood.  Unless you’re a psychopath it’s going to have a devastating effect on you as a human being; it could drive you to homelessness and drugs, just like it did to Fred McHenry.

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We've moved on from the Iraq war – but Iraqis don't have that choice

reprinted from the Guardian UK

Like characters from The Great Gatsby, Britain and the US have arrogantly turned their backs and left a country in ruins

• 
• • John Pilger
  • The Guardian, Sunday 26 May 2013 13.00 EDT

 

Iraq's ministry of social affairs estimates 4.5 million children have lost one or both parents. This means 14% of the population are orphans. Photograph: Reuters

The dust in Iraq rolls down the long roads that are the desert's fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in markets and school playgrounds, consuming children kicking a ball; and it carries, according to Dr Jawad Al-Ali, "the seeds of our death". An internationally respected cancer specialist at the Sadr teaching hospital in Basra, Dr Ali told me that in 1999, and today his warning is irrefutable. "Before the Gulf war," he said, "we had two or three cancer patients a month. Now we have 30 to 35 dying every month. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48% of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years' time to begin with, then long after. That's almost half the population. Most of my own family have it, and we have no history of the disease. It is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects are new to us; the mushrooms grow huge; even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can't be eaten."

Along the corridor, Dr Ginan Ghalib Hassen, a paediatrician, kept a photo album of the children she was trying to save. Many had neuroblastoma. "Before the war, we saw only one case of this unusual tumour in two years," she said. "Now we have many cases, mostly with no family history. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. The sudden increase of such congenital malformations is the same."

Among the doctors I interviewed, there was little doubt that depleted uranium shells used by the Americans and British in the Gulf war were the cause. A US military physicist assigned to clean up the Gulf war battlefield across the border in Kuwait said, "Each round fired by an A-10 Warthog attack aircraft carried over 4,500 grams of solid uranium. Well over 300 tons of DU was used. It was a form of nuclear warfare."

Although the link with cancer is always difficult to prove absolutely, the Iraqi doctors argue that "the epidemic speaks for itself". The British oncologist Karol Sikora, chief of the World Health Organisation's cancer programme in the 1990s, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Iraq sanctions committee]." He told me, "We were specifically told [by the WHO] not to talk about the whole Iraq business. The WHO is not an organisation that likes to get involved in politics."

Recently, Hans von Sponeck, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations and senior UN humanitarian official in Iraq, wrote to me: "The US government sought to prevent WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers." A WHO report, the result of a landmark study conducted with the Iraqi ministry of health, has been "delayed". Covering 10,800 households, it contains "damning evidence", says a ministry official and, according to one of its researchers, remains "top secret". The report says birth defects have risen to a "crisis" right across Iraqi society where depleted uranium and other toxic heavy metals were used by the US and Britain. Fourteen years after he sounded the alarm, Dr Jawad Al-Ali reports "phenomenal" multiple cancers in entire families.

Iraq is no longer news. Last week, the killing of 57 Iraqis in one day was a non-event compared with the murder of a British soldier in London. Yet the two atrocities are connected. Their emblem might be a lavish new movie of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Two of the main characters, as Fitzgerald wrote, "smashed up things and creatures and retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness … and let other people clean up the mess".

The "mess" left by George Bush and Tony Blair in Iraq is a sectarian war, the bombs of 7/7 and now a man waving a bloody meat cleaver in Woolwich. Bush has retreated back into his Mickey Mouse "presidential library and museum" and Tony Blair into his jackdaw travels and his money.
Their "mess" is a crime of epic proportions, wrote Von Sponeck, referring to the Iraqi ministry of social affairs' estimate of 4.5 million children who have lost one or both parents. "This means a horrific 14% of Iraq's population are orphans," he wrote. "An estimated one million families are headed by women, most of them widows". Domestic violence and child abuse are rightly urgent issues in Britain; in Iraq the catastrophe ignited by Britain has brought violence and abuse into millions of homes.

In her book Dispatches from the Dark Side, Gareth Peirce, Britain's greatest human rights lawyer, applies the rule of law to Blair, his propagandist Alastair Campbell and his colluding cabinet. For Blair, she wrote, "human beings presumed to hold [Islamist] views, were to be disabled by any means possible, and permanently … in Blair's language a 'virus' to be 'eliminated' and requiring 'a myriad of interventions [sic] deep into the affairs of other nations.' The very concept of war was mutated to 'our values versus theirs'." And yet, says Peirce, "the threads of emails, internal government communiques, reveal no dissent". For foreign secretary Jack Straw, sending innocent British citizens to Guantánamo was "the best way to meet our counter-terrorism objective".

These crimes, their iniquity on a par with Woolwich, await prosecution. But who will demand it? In the kabuki theatre of Westminster politics, the faraway violence of "our values" is of no interest. Do the rest of us also turn our backs?

www.johnpilger.com
• This article was amended on 27 May 2013. The original referred to the A-10 Warthog aircraft as the A-10 Warhog.

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Statement on the Woolwich Murder

Woolwich, London yesterday

This blog condemns unconditionally the brutal slaying of a young British soldier in London yesterday.  This event will strengthen the British fascist and nationalist movement and weaken the unity of the working class in our struggle against the capitalist offensive and austerity agenda. It will be used as an excuse to ratchet up the police state tactics -- Homeland security etc. -- in the U.S. and the UK.

But as a leading Muslim spokesperson in Britain pointed out immediately after the killing, while condemning such acts of individual terrorism, they are not unique to Muslims and have to be understood within the context of British foreign policy if they are to be prevented in the future.

British capitalism’s involvement in the mass slaughter of Muslims and occupation of Muslim lands directly or indirectly through stooges, cannot be left out of the equation. The death and displacement of millions of people in the Muslim world as part of US and western imperialism’s efforts to control the resources of the world under the guise of a War on Terror has to be understood as the backdrop to such savage and barbaric actions. This killing is truly horrible, but no more so than the daily drone killings -- that are personally overseen by Barack Obama. The Palestinian issue, Guantanamo, all of this is relevant.

We do not get in western media, the deep, penetrating and extensive coverage of the atrocities committed by imperialist forces in Muslim countries for obvious reasons; we would be moved by them as we are moved by the coverage of the events in Woolwich. They learned that media-marketing lesson in Vietnam.

Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan where hundreds upon hundreds of civilians, women and children, have been blown to bits by US drones; further incursions in to Saharan Africa to control the area’s natural resources, this is the backdrop to what happened in Woolwich. When we add British support for Gaddafi and training of his secret police and the American support for the butcher Mubarak and financing and arming of his torturers, the people behind the killing of this young soldier are Cheney, Bush, Obama, Blair, Rumsfeld and other fine gentlemen.  And let’s not forget Madeline Albright who told ABC news that the death of 500,000 Iraqi’s (mostly women and children and Muslim) was “worth it”. These people commit acts of barbarism on a mass scale.  State terrorism is a very efficient form of terrorism.

As we wrote yesterday we recognize this for what it is, the inevitable savagery of imperialism's attempt to control the world. Such actions are inevitable because of the actions of 
imperialism. Listen to the young man in the video yesterday. He actually says this as he apologizes that women have to witness such barbarity that he says is carried out by imperialist forces in these lands all the time.

US imperialism supported and funded the Islamic fanatics including bin Laden. Saddam Hussein, Mubarak, Gaddafi, thugs like Tunisia’s Ben Ali who was overthrown in the Arab Spring, the absolute monarchy in Bahrain and the Saudi thugs, all these murderers have been funded and supported by the US and British taxpayer.  Up until 1999 every Taliban official was on the payroll of the US government. 

Despite this we condemn this act.  The young soldier, a worker in uniform, was 20 years old and like young workers that join the military in the US, mostly do so for economic reasons. His death is a “gift” to the right wing fascist and nationalist forces.

Included in the context we are outlining here is the role of the leaders of the mass organizations of the 
working class who support imperialism. As a result they give no lead to
 the enraged youth and workers in these countries, no alternative that can show a way out and to fight back against the Cheneys, Blairs, Bushes and Obamas of this world. So among the most desperate and despaired emerges this very savage and reactionary act in Woolwich.

The leaders of the workers organizations due to their support of imperialism’s policies refuse to organize mass anti-war movements, or movements in the armed 
forces for union rights for soldiers and to end all wars and 
occupations. These mass workers' leaders have blood on their hands also.

The Cheney’s, Bushes, the Obamas, the Camerons, 
the Blairs, the oil and gas companies, the military forces of 
imperialism all have their hands on the weapons that killed that young working class soldier in London yesterday.

Facts For Working People:

Unconditionally opposes the killing of this young soldier, a worker in uniform. This act will weaken and divide the working class.  

Unconditionally opposes the agents of imperialism who send young workers into harms way in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere to seize the resources of these countries for the major profit addicted tax dodging corporations. .

Unconditionally opposes all invasions and wars carried out by US imperialism and its allies internationally as they seek to seize the wealth of the planet.

We call for an immediate cessation of illegal drone attacks and the drone program that has murdered thousands of innocent civilians abroad and is being introduced in the US to include domestic police and security forces in order to suppress dissent and opposition to the US corporations’ austerity agenda at home.

Opposes any effort by the fascist and nationalist groups to exploit the death of this young soldier.  We must not let the racists and fascists take this event under their banners. The left and the workers movement must act. Workers of the world unite against the forces of the corporations and their armies and the reactionary alternatives that are springing up in the vacuum.

It is not enough for the labor movement, the left and progressive forces to comment on this reactionary act. They must mobilize. We call for demonstrations and mobilizations to end all involvement of British and other imperialist countries’ military invasions and wars in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the only way to prevent new forces from being recruited to the reactionary Islamic groups and reactionary Islamic ideas.

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Proponents of ‘First Strike’ Nuclear War against Iran Rob billions from their own Citizens

Reprinted from Center for Research and Globalization

Multibillion Dollar War Budgets: Proponents of ‘First Strike’ Nuclear War against Iran Rob billions from their own Citizens

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, May 08, 2013

RT Op-Edge 10 April 2013

Theme: Global Economy, Militarization and WMD, US NATO War Agenda

In-depth Report: IRAN: THE NEXT WAR?, Nuclear War

While the Pentagon’s modernization budget for the pre-emptive nuclear option is a modest ten billion dollars (excluding the outlay by NATO countries). the budget for upgrading the US arsenal of “strategic nuclear offensive forces” is a staggering $352 billion over ten years. (See Russell Rumbaugh and Nathan Cohn,“Resolving Ambiguity: Costing Nuclear Weapons,” Stimson Center Report, June 2012).

These multi-billion military outlays allocated to develop“bigger and better nuclear bombs” are financed by the massive economic austerity measures currently applied in US and NATO countries.

The war economy is largely funded by compressing all categories of civilian government expenditure. In the US, these refurbished state of the art nuclear bombs are largely funded by the dramatic cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Humanity is at a dangerous crossroads. America is a “Killer State”. The gamut of economic austerity measures impoverish the American people while generously funding the “Killer State” through multi-billion dollar contracts with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon et al.
War preparations to attack Iran are in “an advanced state of readiness”. Hi tech weapons systems including nuclear warheads are fully deployed.At the height of an Economic Depression, “War is Good for Business”.

Escalation is part of the military agenda. While Iran, is the next target together with Syria and Lebanon, the US-NATO military agenda also threatens Russia, China and North Korea.
The Western media, the Washington Think Tanks, the scientists and politicians, in chorus, obfuscate the untold truth, namely that war using nuclear warheads threatens the future of humanity.
The real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance.

The main actors in the Iran pre-emptive nuclear warfare

Thermo-nuclear weapons are deployed by the three “official” Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) of the Atlantic Alliance, namely the US, the UK and France. The official NWS status is established under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Five other NATO member countries (categorized under the NPT as“non-nuclear states”), namely Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey, possess an arsenal of B61 tactical nuclear warheads or “mini-nukes” (Made in America) which are deployed under national military command and are targeted at Iran. The B61 can be delivered by a variety of different aircraft.
Are these five countries in violation of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty of which they are signatories?
In relation to ongoing war plans, the US-NATO-Israel military alliance includes a total of nine countries which possess a nuclear weapons arsenal:

The three official NWS (US, UK, France) plus the five“Undeclared Nuclear States” (Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Turkey) plus the State of Israel (Undeclared Nuclear State). With the exception of Israel, these countries are signatories of the NPT.

Pre-emptive Nuclear Warfare

While reports tend to depict the tactical B61 bombs as a relic of the Cold war, the mini nukes are the preferred weapons system for pre-emptive nuclear war. Were an attack directed against Iran to be launched involving the deployment of B61 bunker buster nuclear bombs, these five countries, with Turkey and Italy in the forefront, would play a major strategic role.

The involvement of these five “non nuclear states” as major actors in a US sponsored pre-emptive nuclear war raises the issue of definition and categorization of nuclear weapons states. In the words of Time Magazine:

“Is Italy capable of delivering a thermonuclear strike?…
Could the Belgians and the Dutch drop hydrogen bombs on enemy targets?…

Germany’s air force couldn’t possibly be training to deliver bombs 13 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, could it?…

Nuclear bombs are stored on air-force bases in Italy, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands — and planes from each of those countries are capable of delivering them.” (“What to Do About Europe’s Secret Nukes.” Time Magazine, December 2, 2009)

The Time report is careful not to address the fundamental question. Are Turkey and Italy nuclear weapons states? The B61s are described as a leftover from the Cold War. The issue of post 9/11 pre-emptive warfare is not mentioned:

“These weapons are more than a historical oddity, says Time. They are a violation of the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) … that provides a legal restraint to the nuclear ambitions of rogue states.” (Ibid).

While Iran does not possess nuclear weapons capabilities as confirmed by the latest US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the nuclear weapons potential of these five countries –including delivery procedures– are formally acknowledged.
These five countries possess WMDs, yet they do not constitute–in the eyes of public opinion– a threat to global security. Moreover, at no time have these five countries been designated as “rogue states” or “undeclared nuclear weapons states”.

US and NATO military documents attest to the fact that the B61 is the weapon of choice of pre-emptive nuclear war as opposed to the larger thermo-nuclear bombs of the Cold War era. Moreover, were military action to be launched against Iran, these five countries would play a key role in the delivery of B61 bunker buster bombs with nuclear warheads.

The US had originally supplied some 480 B61 thermonuclear bombs to these five “non-nuclear states”, as well as to the United Kingdom, which is categorized as a Nuclear Weapons State (NWS). (See map below)

Casually disregarded by the Vienna based UN Nuclear Watchdog (IAEA), the US has actively contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Western Europe and Turkey. While, some of these bombs were decommissioned as a result of political pressures, particularly in Belgium and Germany, the US –in liaison with NATO– has launched a multi-billion dollar modernisation program of its tactical nuclear weapons arsenal.

According to the National Resources Defense Council (August 2007), the number of B61 nuclear bombs in Europe has been reduced from 480 to 350, following the removal of 130 bombs from the Ramstein airbase in Germany.

As part of this European stockpiling and deployment, Turkey, which is a partner of the US-led coalition against Iran along with Israel, possesses some 90 thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs at the Incirlik air base. (National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe, February 2005). This is all the more significant in view of the “reconciliation” and renewed bilateral military cooperation between Ankara and Tel Aviv in the wake of President Obama’s March visit to Israel.

The stockpiling and deployment of tactical B61 (including the B61-11 earth penetrating warhead) in these five “non-nuclear states” are intended for targets in the Middle East. In accordance with “NATO strike plans”, these thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs (stockpiled by the“non-nuclear states”) could be launched against Iran, Syria and Russia:

“The approximately 480 nuclear bombs in Europe [350 according to 2007 estimate] are intended for use in accordance with NATO nuclear strike plans, the report asserts, against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Iran and Syria.

The report shows for the first time how many U.S. nuclear bombs are earmarked for delivery by non-nuclear NATO countries. In times of war, under certain circumstances, up to 180 of the 480 nuclear bombs would be handed over to Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey for delivery by their national air forces. No other nuclear power or military alliance has nuclear weapons earmarked for delivery by non-nuclear countries.”

Does this mean that Iran or Russia, which are potential targets of a nuclear attack originating from one or other of these five so-called non-nuclear states should contemplate defensive pre-emptive nuclear attacks against Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey? The answer is no, by any stretch of the imagination.

While these “undeclared nuclear states” casually accuse Tehran of developing nuclear weapons, without documentary evidence, they themselves have capabilities of delivering nuclear warheads, which are targeted at Iran. To say that this is a clear case of“double standards” by the IAEA and the “international community” is a understatement.

(Source: National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , February 2005)

While political pressures have been exerted in recent years towards decommissioning the stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons, the arsenal of B61 bunker buster bombs with nuclear warheads remains fully operational. In the case of a conflict with Iran, mini nukes in the five non nuclear states would be actively deployed in liaison with NATO, which has fully endorsed the doctrine of nuclear pre-emption. According to the Pentagon:

… keeping these weapons in Europe is that they allow NATO members to participate in shaping alliance nuclear policy [i.e. pre-emptive nuclear doctrine]. In this view, transatlantic ties are strengthened when the risks and costs of deploying and securing nuclear weapons are shared between the US and the respective host nations. (Quoted in “Parting words: Gates and tactical nuclear weapons in Europe”. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 14 July 2011)

Modernising the Mini-Nukes Arsenal

The decommissioning of the B61 nukes stockpiled in Western Europe and Turkey is a smokescreen. The European tactical nuclear weapons project is not being phased out as some reports have suggested. Quite the opposite. In 2010, the US National Nuclear Security Administration initiated a program “to refurbish and extend the life of the B61 bomb” at an initial estimated cost of 4 billion dollars (Ibid). By 2012, the mini nukes refurbishing program had skyrocketed to $10 billion. (US Department of Defence, Case Independent Cost Assessment for B61 LEP, Washington, July 13, 2012)
Described by the Federation of American Scientists, as “a gold plated nuclear bomb project”, this initiative consists in modernizing the existing pre-emptive nuclear arsenal of B61 tactical nuclear weapons deployed in the five undeclared nuclear states. Moreover, a new version of the B61 bunker buster bomb is envisaged: the B61-12. The latter is to be developed for deployment in Western Europe and Turkey with the backing of NATO and the German government, (Federation of American Scientists, November 2012).
The Obama administration and Congress have pushed the program forward despite the enormous cost … of refurbishing such complex weapons … Advocates, including the Obama administration..

Germany: Nuclear Weapons Producer

Among the five “undeclared nuclear states”, “Germany remains the most heavily nuclearized country with three nuclear bases (two of which are fully operational) and may store as many as 150 [B61 bunker buster ] bombs” (National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe. In accordance with “NATO strike plans”, these tactical nuclear weapons are also targeted at the Middle East.

While Germany is not categorized officially as a nuclear weapons state, it produces nuclear warheads for the French Navy. It stockpiles tactical nuclear weapons (Made in America) and it has the capabilities of delivering nuclear weapons. Moreover, The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company – EADS , a Franco-German-Spanish joint venture, controlled by the powerful Daimler Group is Europe’s second largest military producer, supplying France’s M51 nuclear missile.
Germany imports and deploys tactical nuclear weapons from the US. EADS produces nuclear warheads which are exported to France. Yet Germany is classified as a non-nuclear state.

Dangerous Cross Roads

The tactical nuclear weapons deployed by the five non declared nuclear states are under national command and could be used in a pre-emptive US-NATO sponsored nuclear attack against Iran.
Tactical nuclear weapons are also deployed by Israel.
While it is unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used at the outset of an attack, they could be envisaged as part of a scenario of military escalation.

It is, therefore, important that public opinion in Western Europe, Turkey and Israel be made aware of the consequences of pre-emptive warfare and that political pressures be exerted on the governments of these 5 countries, with a view to blocking the deployment of the B61 nuclear warheads in their respective military bases as well as withdrawing outright from ongoing US-NATO pre-emptive war plans directed against Iran.

Tactical nuclear weapons are in essence slated to be used against non-nuclear states in the middle East. Their use was contemplated in both the Iraq war in 2003 as well against Libya in 2011.
The focus on tactical nuclear weapons (mini-nukes) as part of the conventional war arsenal, does not mean that the the US and its allies have scrapped the idea of using their arsenal of larger strategic thermonuclear weapons. While the latter would not be used against a non-nuclear state in the Middle East, they are deployed and targeted against Russia, China and North Korea.


For those who believe the use of thermonuclear nuclear weapons belongs to a bygone era, think twice.

For further details on the dangers of Nuclear War, see the author’s most recent book: Towards a World War III Scenario:The Dangers of Nuclear War, Global Research, Montreal, 2011.

Originally published by RT-Edge. The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Antiques Road Show

Hiroshima

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I was just watching Antique's Road Show. I have to admit it, I like that show.  But an item one person brought was a document from her relative who was a radar operator on the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

The appraiser was very impressed with it.  But he then went on to say that they had no idea of what this bomb would do or its effect.  This is nonsense.  They had some idea, enough of an idea to know that it would kill every living thing within a considerable radius of impact.

The appraiser then said, reading some words from the log, that said they didn't know also whether or not the guys in the plane would not be killed by the blast.  The bomb was called "little boy" (these military types give some harmless type names to their murderous machines don't they).  He said also, in a nod to the dead, that the bomb killed 100,000 people, and I refuse to believe that they didn't know that, but he added that to invade Japan it would have cost a couple million lives.

This is the line the US bourgeois put out there.  It is not true.  Japan was a defeated nation.  The dropping of these horrific bombs on a defenseless civilian population, that not only killed more than 100,000  but poisoned millions more,  was not to crush Japanese resistance and "save" lives, it was a warning to the Russians and to the Chinese. It was US imperialism stamping its mark on the rest of the world, a warning that the eagle has landed.

The US is the only nation and the Democratic Party the only political party that has committed such atrocious acts of barbarism in dropping atomic bombs on defenseless civilians.  We should not forget that.

In this instance that I describe, the owner of the document also had the medals that the fliers got for dropping the bomb and risking their lives.

Kill two hundred thousand people and you get a medal.

There were plans to drop more atomic bombs if Japan didn't surrender. Of course, the ruling class refused to surrender but by some accounts 97% of Japanese cities had been destroyed and the mass of the population was fed up with the war.  But US capitalism was triumphant.  The productive forces of its allies had been weakened and the productive forces of its rivals destroyed.  The European colonial giants had found their place in the dustbin of history after two disastrous and costly global capitalist wars for control of the world's markets and resources.  US capitalism by 1950 had more than 50% of world trade and its productive forces intact. It had made a lot of money from the war and it's allies were indebted to it.

The anti-Japanese sentiment was such that a 1944 opinion poll that asked what should be done with 13% of the U.S. public were in favor of "killing off" all Japanese: men, women, and children. Opponents of the bombing argue as I have here that Japan was a defeated nation.  We should remember also the internment of Japanese here, including those who were American citizens. This had a traumatic effect on the entire Japanese population and their families. german or Italian Americans were not incarcerated in camps.  The most militant of the Japanese resisters to this atrocity were called the No No Boys. There is a book with the title No No Boys that is a novel but describes the tragic consequences of internment on Japanese Americans and their families.

Sorry, but I wouldn't want a medal for this.

There are many who reject the official US position on the bombings.

"As the United States dropped its atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, 1.6 million Soviet troops launched a surprise attack on the Japanese forces occupying eastern Asia. "The Soviet entry into the war played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that Japan could terminate the war through Moscow's mediation", said Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, whose recently published Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan is based on recently declassified Soviet archives as well as US and Japanese documents." Wikipedia.

My father was a prisoner of war in Japan captured in Hong Kong in 1939.  He worked for Mitsubishi on the docks in Yokohama.  When his camp was liberated he was taken by an American ship to Mindanao and then on to Vancouver Washington.  He thought what happened to Japan was a terrible, terrible thing.  He loved the Americans and was in prison camp with many of them. As for their war dates, he always used to say jokingly to his American buddies, "The yanks always came in late, they call the 1914-18 war the 1917-18 war."  He never forgot the kindness Americans showed him as a liberated prisoner when they took him to Mindanao.

The US capitalist class is the most crass, vulgar and violent of all of them.  Engels explained it this way.  If we take the British bourgeois, they fought a few hundred year battle against feudalism.  They fought an ideological war in which they had to defend their ideas.  For the US capitalist class on the other hand it was a matter of simply wiping out a couple of million pastoral tribes people and building some infrastructure.

With all their talk of peace and democracy we should never forget that the only group of people in the world who have dropped nuclear weapons on highly populated civilian areas is the US bourgeois and their Democratic Party.

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