noworldsystem.com

Many Newspapers Fail to Carry AP Photo of Deadly Afghan Incident

Mass Censorship of Dead Marine Photo

September 8, 2009, 10:34 am
Filed under: 2-party system, afghan deaths, Afghanistan, airstrike, Barack Obama, Censorship, CIA, civilian casualties, death toll, defense department, Dictatorship, DoD, Empire, fallen soldiers, false, Fascism, FBI, federal crime, flag, free press, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Iraq, Israel, kidnapping, left right paradigm, marine, Media, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, milirary, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, military strikes, nation building, NATO, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, NSA, nuremburg, obama, occupation, Propaganda, Robert Gates, soldiers, The American Legion, Torture, Troops, u.s. soldiers, Uncategorized, USMC, war casualties, war crime, War Crimes, War On Terror, warhawk, warhawks, warmonger | Tags: dead marine photo, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Joshua M. Bernard, Julie Jacobson, Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, wounded marine photo

Mass Censorship of Dead Marine Photo

Paul Craig Roberts
Antiwar.com
September 7, 2009

Americans have lost their ability for introspection, thereby revealing their astounding hypocrisy to the world.

U.S. War Secretary Robert Gates has condemned the Associated Press and a reporter, Julie Jacobson, embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, for taking and releasing a photo of a U.S. Marine who was wounded in action and died from his injury.

The photographer was on patrol with the Marines when they came under fire. She found the courage and presence of mind to do her job. Her reward is to be condemned by the warmonger Gates as “insensitive.” Gates says her employer, the Associated Press, lacks “judgment and common decency.”

The American Legion jumped in and denounced the Associated Press for a “stunning lack of compassion and common decency.”

To stem opposition to its wars, the War Department hides signs of American casualties from the public. Angry that evidence escaped the censor, the war secretary and the American Legion attacked with politically correct jargon: “insensitive,” “offended,” and the “anguish” and “pain and suffering” inflicted upon the Marine’s family. The War Department sounds like it is preparing a harassment tort.

Isn’t this passing the buck? The Marine lost his life not because of the Associated Press and a photographer, but because of the war criminals – Gates, Bush, Cheney, Obama, and the U.S. Congress that supports wars of naked aggression that serve no American purpose, but which keep campaign coffers filled with contributions from the armaments companies.

Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard is dead because the U.S. government and a significant percentage of the U.S. population believe that the U.S. has the right to invade, bomb, and occupy other peoples who have raised no hand against us but are demonized with lies and propaganda.

For the American war secretary it is a photo that is insensitive, not America’s assertion of the right to determine the fate of Afghanistan with bombs and soldiers.

The exceptional “virtuous nation” does not think it is insensitive for America’s bombs to blow innocent villagers to pieces. On Sept. 4, the day before Gates’ outburst over the “insensitive” photo, Agence France Presse reported from Afghanistan that a U.S./NATO air strike had killed large numbers of villagers who had come to get fuel from two tankers that had been hijacked from negligent and inattentive occupation forces:

“’Nobody was in one piece. Hands, legs, and body parts were scattered everywhere. Those who were away from the fuel tanker were badly burnt,’ said 32-year-old Mohammad Daud, depicting a scene from hell. The burned-out shells of the tankers, still smoking in marooned wrecks on the riverbank, were surrounded by the charred-meat remains of villagers from Chahar Dara district in Kunduz province, near the Tajik border. Dr. Farid Rahid, a spokesperson in Kabul for the ministry of health, said up to 250 villagers had been near the tankers when the air strike was called in.”

What does the world think of the United States? The American war secretary and a U.S. military veterans association think a photo of an injured and dying American soldier is insensitive, but not the wipeout of an Afghan village that came to get needed fuel.

The U.S. government is like a criminal who accuses the police of his crime when he is arrested or a sociopathic abuser who blames the victim. It is a known fact that the CIA has violated U.S. law and international law with its assassinations, kidnappings, and torture. But it is not this criminal agency that will be held accountable. Instead, those who will be punished will be those moral beings who, appalled at the illegality and inhumanity of the CIA, leaked the evidence of the agency’s crimes. The CIA has asked the U.S. Justice (sic) Department to investigate what the CIA alleges is the “criminal disclosure” of its secret program to murder suspected foreign terrorist leaders abroad. As we learned from Gitmo, those suspected by America are overwhelmingly innocent.

The CIA program is so indefensible that when CIA director Leon Panetta found out about it six months after being in office, he cancelled the program (assuming those running the program obeyed) and informed Congress.

Yet, the CIA wants the person who revealed its crime to be punished for revealing secret information. A secret agency this unmoored from moral and legal standards is a greater threat to our country than are terrorists. Who knows what false flag operation it will pull off in order to provide justification and support for its agenda. An agency that is more liability than benefit should be abolished.

The agency’s program of assassinating terrorist leaders is itself fraught with contradictions and dangers. The hatred created by the U.S. and Israel is independent of any leader. If one is killed, others take his place. The most likely outcome of the CIA assassination program is that the agency will be manipulated by rivals, just as the FBI was used by one mafia family to eliminate another. In order to establish credibility with groups that they are attempting to penetrate, CIA agents will be drawn into participating in violent acts against the U.S. and its allies.

Accusing the truthteller instead of the evildoer is the position that the neoconservatives took against the New York Times when after one year’s delay, which gave George W. Bush time to get reelected, the Times published the NSA leak that revealed that the Bush administration was committing felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The neocons, especially those associated with Commentary magazine, wanted the New York Times indicted for treason. To the evil neocon mind, anything that interferes with their diabolical agenda is treason.

This is the way many Americans think. America über alles! No one counts but us (and Israel). The deaths we inflict and the pain and suffering we bring to others are merely collateral damage on the bloody path to American hegemony.

The attitude of the “freedom and democracy” U.S. government is that anyone who complains of illegality or immorality or inhumanity is a traitor. The Republican Sen. Christopher S. Bond is a recent example. Bond got on his high horse about “irreparable damage” to the CIA from the disclosures of its criminal activities. Bond wants those “back stabbers” who revealed the CIA’s wrongdoings to be held accountable. Bond is unable to grasp that it is the criminal activities, not their disclosure, that is the source of the problem. Obviously, the Whistleblower Protection Act has no support from Sen. Bond, who sees it as just another law to plough under.

This is where the U.S. government stands today: Ignoring and covering up government crimes is the patriotic thing to do. To reveal the government’s crimes is an act of treason. Many Americans on both sides of the aisle agree.

Yet, they still think that they are The Virtuous Nation, the exceptional nation, the salt of the earth.

AP Photo Of Wounded Marine Sparks Debate

RED ALERT: Total Takeover Of America Near Completion

June 30, 2009, 10:08 am
Filed under: 1st amendment, 2nd Amendment, 4th amendment, ACLU, Al Gore, anti gun, bailouts, Barack Obama, barbara boxer, bernanke, Big Banks, cap-and-trade, carbon dioxide, carbon regulation, Carbon Tax, China, climate bill, Co2, Congress, Credit Crisis, DEBT, defense department, DHS, Dictatorship, DoD, Dollar, eco-nazis, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, environmental taxation, Fascism, FBI, Federal Reserve, free speech, global economy, global government, global tax, Global Warming, Great Depression, Greenback, Gun Control, health and environment, Hoax, Homeland Security, House, hr 1207, HR 1966, hyperinflation, Inflation, internet police, mao, maurice strong, nanny state, Nazi, New World Order, NWO, obama, Oppression, Pentagon, Police State, Ron Paul, s.787, Senate, socialism, sovereignty, stasi, Stock Market, Taxpayers, thought crime, TSA, US Constitution, US Economy, Wall Street, War On Terror, world government | Tags: death of america, Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act

RED ALERT: The Total Takeover Of America Enters Its Final Phase

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
June 29, 2009

The wholesale looting of America and the transfer of wealth and power over to a private banking elite who are setting up a world government, along with the complete obliteration of any remaining freedom to protest, resist, or even speak out against this agenda, is now entering its final phase as numerous different pieces of the jigsaw puzzle fall into place and portray a clear picture of tyranny.

We are about to sound the death knell for the United States if every one of the following attacks on our liberty, free speech, sovereignty, and right to not be ruled over by an unelected banking dictatorship is not fiercely opposed and crushed.

RED ALERT 1

The passage of the “Climate Bill” by the House and its likely approval by the Senate represents the entrée for the complete and total subjugation of any freedoms we had left and the beginning of nightmare regulation and suffocating control over every aspect of our personal lives by millions of green stasi tasked with enforcing impossible to attain goals of 80% carbon dioxide reduction – all based on the manufactured threat of global warming.

This bill will also sink the economy and create a new great depression, effectively obliterating America’s first world status. It represents a transfer of power and wealth from both the U.S. government and the American taxpayer over to the system of world government and global regulation now being erected by means of the climate change hoax.

This is far worse than just a “new tax” as Republicans are complaining – this is the total takeover of the American economy by private banking interests through the carbon trading system.

As we have attempted to warn, the major beneficiaries of the climate bill will be the elitists who own the carbon trading systems that will be used to handle the ‘cap and trade’ program, namely Al Gore and Maurice Strong, two figures intimately involved with a long standing movement to use the theory of man made global warming as a mechanism for profit and social engineering.

We must rally now to lobby members of Congress who voted for the legislation and demand they change their vote before July 2nd. Failing that, we must demand that the Senate does not rubber stamp this nightmare legislation. Failing that, we must support and organize to craft more legislation based on the example of Arizona, who recently passed state Senate legislation refusing to comply with insane climate laws coming from the federal level.

RED ALERT 2

The seemingly endless economic “bailouts” represent the wholesale looting of the American taxpayer and the grand theft of trillions of dollars by private banking interests who refuse to even disclose where the money went.

Not satisfied with stealing tens of trillions, under the Obama administration’s new regulatory reform plan, the Federal Reserve is now trying to enrich itself with dictator powers that will give it complete control over the U.S. economy, handing them the authority to “regulate” and shut down any company whose activity it believes could threaten the economy and the markets.

We must rally now and lobby more members of Congress to support Ron Paul’s H.R. 1207 bill to audit the Federal Reserve and highlight the fact that Bernanke is spewing financial terrorism when he threatens an economic collapse should the Fed be opened up to scrutiny.

RED ALERT 3

Federal hate crimes legislation, which in reality would criminalize “thought crimes,” has cleared the House and now faces the Senate as S.909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (officially, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act).

S.909 is a direct violation of the First Amendment. It allows the federal government to prosecute people involved in “hate speech” transmitted over television, radio, and the internet. The House version of the bill states:

“Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce [radio, TV, internet] any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. (HR 1966, SEC 3, Sec. 881a)”

In other words, if a talk show host engages in “hostile” speech against a person or persons of the above mentioned federally protected group that talk show host will face federal prosecution and the prospect of a two year prison term.

The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would similarly criminalize free speech on the Internet if it can be deemed in any way to have been “harmful” to an individual. This represents the end of political blogging and free speech on the world wide web.

If both bills are not opposed and thrown out then the First Amendment will become nothing more than a relic of a bygone age.

RED ALERT 4

The Senate bill S.787, otherwise known as the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA), would replace language in the regulatory act currently using “navigable waters” with “waters of the United States.”

What this means is that “the government would essentially be able to regulate everything from standing water in floodplains to creeks that run behind business and residences,” according to an Environmental Leader report.

This represents a complete takeover of private land and waterways by the federal government, a total assault on private property rights and a complete federalization of America’s land and water.

“In a letter to Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer and ranking member James Inhofe, the American Farm Bureau Federation said that the proposed law would “extend to all water — anywhere from farm ponds, to storm water retention basins, to roadside ditches, to desert washes, to streets and gutters, even to a puddle of rainwater,” stated the letter. “For the first time in the 36-year history of the act, activities that have no impact on actual rivers and lakes would be subject to full federal regulation.”

If this bill becomes law, it will empower the federal government to seize private property on a whim, using similar powers that Communist China employed during Chairman Mao’s “great leap forward,” where landowners had their property violently confiscated and stolen by the government.

If this bill passes the Senate, private property rights in the United States are effectively null and void and the federal government would legally have the power to bulldoze families from their homes as routinely happens in Communist China.

RED ALERT 5

Amongst the myriad of assaults on the Second Amendment rights of American citizens undertaken by the Obama administration during the course of its first year in office, the one that stands out as the most alarming is the attempt to ban people who appear on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.

But isn’t stopping terrorists from buying guns surely a sensible measure to take? The problem is that the terrorist watch list, sometimes called the no fly list, is not a list of likely terrorists, it is a sprawling database of of innocent people that contains the names of over one million Americans. This is a rise of 32% since 2007 alone.

Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes, reverends, the former assistant attorney general, toddlers and children, the ACLU administrator, people with difficult names and all American names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become caught in the vast tentacle of this list, documents the ACLU.

Moreover, once a person is included on the terrorist watch list it is virtually impossible to get off it.

The terrorist watch list is an ever-expanding tool with which to deny Americans basic rights as well as to strip them completely of the Fourth Amendment.

Now it is being used to prevent law-abiding citizens from purchasing firearms. Legislation sponsored by the The Government Accountability Office seeks to “close the gap” and prevent victims of the terrorist watch list from being able to purchase firearms.

This represents a new end run around the Second Amendment and a concerted effort on behalf of the federal government to classify millions of innocent Americans as potential terrorists, thus stripping them of their Constitutional right to own firearms.

RED ALERT 6

Our right to protest against any of the egregious assaults on the Constitution that are listed above is itself being removed by new law enforcement and Pentagon training manuals and guidelines that define protesting as domestic terrorism.

Current Department of Defense anti-terrorism training course material states that the exercise of First Amendment rights in the U.S. constitutes terrorist activity.

Over the last few years we have documented countless examples of security assessment reports from the likes of the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, as well as police training manuals, which state that anti-war protesters, gun owners, veterans, Ron Paul supporters and those who merely cite the Constitution should be equated with extremists and domestic terrorists.

The fact that the government is now treating people who merely criticize its conduct as domestic terrorists is the clearest signal possible that the United States has entered a period in history similar to Germany in the early 1930’s and that it can only be a matter of time before the right “emergency” provides the justification for dissidents to be targeted for round-ups and mass imprisonment.

No one can claim now that this is merely a paranoid delusion – the government itself is training its law enforcement and military arms that protesters and people who use their First Amendment rights are domestic terrorists. The last time this happened was under King George shortly before the American Revolution.

ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT

If we don’t stand up in unison and exercise our right to protest and free speech now more than ever before, while pointing out that the real terrorists are those who would seek to destroy the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, then we may find ourselves doing our protesting behind the barbed wires and the concrete blocks of an internment camp.

The hour is late, the clock stands at one minute to midnight, and the federal government, through all the examples documented above, is on the verge of implementing nothing less than a total environmental, financial and societal dictatorship and killing what once was the United States of America.

Almost identical programs of total enslavement are also being pushed through in almost every other major western country at the same time.

If we don’t stop obsessing about the minutia of life and actually concentrate on the imminent destruction of the very principles of our livelihoods, the bedrock freedoms that allow us to operate in relative comfort on a daily basis and be reasonably secure in our own homes, being able to pay our bills, put food on the table, earn money, and air our grievances when government threatens to impinge on those basic freedoms, then there will be nothing left but a rotten hollow carcass and a memory of what America once strived to be – land of the free, home of the brave – not land of the thief, home of the slave.

Homeland Security Orders Mandatory Quarantines

April 30, 2009, 4:23 pm
Filed under: 1st amendment, Australia, avian flu shot, BATF, BATFE, big pharma, Bio Weapons, biological warfare, bird flu, Chicago, coast guard, Concentration Camp, deadly vaccinations, deadly vaccines, defense department, detention, DHS, Dictatorship, Dissent, DoD, DOJ, Empire, Eugenics, Executive Order, Fascism, FBI, FEMA, Fema Camps, flu shot, flu vaccine, free speech, Genocide, George Bush, H.R. 645, h1n1, h1n1 clinic, h1n1 vaccine, h5n1, health and environment, HHS, Homeland Security, Human Experiments, Indianapolis, influenza, influenza vaccine, innoculation, involuntary quarantine, mandatory detention, mandatory quarantine, mandatory vaccinations, mass graves, medical Experiments, medical industrial complex, Mexico, Military, Military Industrial Complex, MSNBC, Nazi, neocons, New World Order, New York, North Carolina, NWO, Pandemic Influenza, pandemic virus, Pentagon, Population Control, Propaganda, Protest, State Sponsored Terrorism, swine flu, swine flu vaccine, u.s. soldiers, US Constitution, us customs, US Marshal, us military, vaccinations, Vaccine, vaccine virus, virus, virus pandemic | Tags: Executive Order 13375, spanish flu, spanish flu epidemic, spanish influenza, swine influenza

Homeland Security Orders Mandatory Quarantines – A Pretext For FEMA Camps & Forced Vaccinations

NoWorldSystem.com
April 30, 2009

U.S. Department of Homeland Security has warned healthcare providers that BATFE, FBI, and U.S. Marshals will be called to impose mandatory quarantines in the event of a pandemic swine flu outbreak.

According to CBSNews.com, DHS Assistant Secretary Bridger McGaw circulated the “swine flu memo” which says: “The Department of Justice has established legal federal authorities pertaining to the implementation of a quarantine and enforcement. Under approval from HHS, the Surgeon General has the authority to issue quarantines.”

Bush in his Executive Order 13375 that anyone violating a quarantine order will be punished with a 1 year term in prison and a $250,000 fine. The executive order also states the federal quarantine authority is only limited to “novel” strains of influenza such as this current one.

In 2005 the Bush admin released the National Strategy For Pandemic Influenza which states the U.S. government will impose “quarantines” and “limitations on gatherings”. [Source]

In McGaw’s “swine flu memo” also stated that: “U.S. Customs and Coast Guard Officers assist in the enforcement of quarantine orders. Other DOJ law enforcement agencies including the U.S. Marshals, FBI, and BATFE may also enforce quarantines. Military personnel are not authorized to engage in enforcement.” [Source]

But in a different document by the DoD states that the Pentagon will by all means assist in “quarantining groups of people in order to minimize the spread of disease during an influenza pandemic” and aid in “efforts to restore and maintain order.” [Source]

This is already going on, in North Carolina officials are already involuntarily isolating suspected hybrid swine flu patients. [Source]

MSNBC.com is giving the assumption that quarantines are a normal event that Americans should be comfortable with. [Source] In reality this was the only case of “involuntary quarantines” in the U.S. in 45 years. The article falsely states that quarantines will only be handled by state/local authorities, Bush’s Executive Order specifically states a federal response.

The Australian government is not far from implementing the same mandatory quarantines to combat the hybrid swine flu. Health Minister Nicola Roxon has sought sweeping new “quarantine powers” for health officials in case the outbreak worsens. Measures including “making sure that people are isolated, perhaps detained, if they don’t cooperate and are showing symptoms of disease.” [Source]

All of these mandatory detention moves make it more clear that FEMA concentration camps will be the facilities that hold these infected victims of bio-weaponized flu like this current hybrid strain. Could this outbreak be the pretext to soften the public’s view of detentions, so the Government can easily make the move to shut down dissent in the United States?

In January 2009 a bill was introduced in congress to authorize Homeland Security to set up a network of FEMA camps used to house citizens in the event of a national emergency (in this case a pandemic). The National Emergency Centers Act (HR 645) mandates the establishment of “national emergency centers” to be located on military installations for the purpose of providing “temporary housing, medical and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster,”. [Source] HR 645 also stated that the FEMA camps can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security,”

In February 2009 an Indianapolis county municipal official in the vicinity of Chicago was asked by FEMA and Homeland Security to: “put together a plan to vaccinate every person in the county within 48 hours.” as part of a Hazard Mitigation Plan to deal with a pandemic influenza outbreak. [Source]:

In April 4, 2007 The State of New York Division of Cemetaries sent out a “mass fatality form” to all New York cemeteries so the division can collect data on their abilities to deal with a pandemic influenza outbreak. Cemeterians were asked the following: “Should a prolonged mass fatality disaster of pandemic flu occour in your community would your cemetery be able to provide temporary or permanent number of disaster or flu deaths in additional to your current burial services?”

Cemetery owners were also asked to fill out the capacity of their facilities, the proximity to roads, train lines and airfields. The division also requested data to calculate the number of acres that could be made available for “950 graves per acre”. [Source] This is very ominous as New York is the only one of 18 states to have over 50 people infected from the swine flu virus.

The state of Colorado issued an Executive Order in 2000 asserting authority to bury victims in mass graves and/ or cremate bodies under emergency situation (like a pandemic flu outbreak). [Source] Rocky Mountain News reported February 8, 2003 that: “The state of Colorado could seize antibiotics, cremate disease-ridden corpses and, under extreme circumstances, dig mass graves.”

Deadly Vaccine News Archive

Nanotech: Why Something So Small Can Be So Dangerous

June 30, 2008, 12:12 pm
Filed under: Australia, big pharma, Britain, defense department, Department of Defense, DoD, drinking water, Europe, european union, genetically modified, GM, gm food, health and environment, Japan, medical industrial complex, nanotech, nanotechnology, tap water, United Kingdom

Nanotech: Why Something So Small Can Be So Dangerous

Alternet
June 23, 2008

“It’s green, it’s clean, it’s never seen — that’s nanotechnology!”

That exuberant motto, used by an executive at a trade group for nanotech entrepreneurs, reflects the buoyant enthusiasm for nanotechnology in some business and scientific circles.

Part of the slogan is indisputably true: nanotechnology — which involves creating and manipulating common substances at the scale of the nanometer, or one billionth of a meter — is invisible to the human eye.

But the rest of the motto is open for debate. Nanotech does hold clean and green potential, especially for supplying cheap renewable energy and safe drinking water. But nanomaterials also pose possible serious risks to the environment and human health — risks that researchers have barely begun to probe, and regulators have barely begun to regulate.

What’s more, the potential damage could take years or even decades to surface. So these tiny particles could soon become the next big thing — only to turn into the next big disaster.

Nano enthusiasts see it as the next “platform technology” — one that will, like electricity or micro-computing, change the way we do almost everything. While that prediction is still unproven, there’s no question that nanotech is booming. Universities, industry, and governments around the globe are pouring billions into creating and developing nanoproducts and applications. A range of nanotechnologies is already used in more than 600 consumer products — from electronics to toothpaste — with global sales projected to soar to $2.6 trillion by 2014.

Environmentalists, scientists, and policymakers increasingly worry that nanotech development is outrunning our understanding of how to use it safely. Consider these examples from last month alone:

An animal study from the United Kingdom found that certain carbon nanotubes can cause the same kind of lung damage as asbestos. Carbon nanotubes are among the most widely used nanomaterials.
A coalition of consumer groups petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban the sale of products that contain germ-killing nanosilver particles, from stuffed animals to clothing, arguing that the silver could harm human health, poison aquatic life, and contribute to the rise of antibiotic resistance.
Researchers in Singapore reported that nanosilver caused severe developmental problems in zebrafish embryos — bolstering worries about what happens when those antimicrobial products, like soap and clothing, leak silver into the waste stream.
The U.S. Department of Defense, in an internal memo, acknowledged that nanomaterials may “present… risks that are different than those for comparable material at a larger scale.” That’s an overarching risk with nanomaterials: Their tiny size and high surface area make them more chemically reactive and cause them to behave in unpredictable ways. So a substance that’s safe at a normal size can become toxic at the nanoscale.
Australian farmers proposed new standards that would exclude nanotechnology from organic products.
The European Union announced that it will require full health and safety testing for carbon and graphite under its strict new chemicals law, known as REACH (for Registration, Evaluation, and Authorisation of Chemical Substances). Carbon and graphite were previously exempt, because they’re considered safe in their normal forms. But the U.K. study comparing carbon nanotubes to asbestos, along with a similar report from Japan, raised new alarms about these seemingly

Old Materials, New Risks

The EU’s move is a critical step toward recognizing nanomaterials as a potential new hazard that requires new rules and new information.

The raw materials of nanotechnology are familiar. Carbon, silver, and metals like iron and titanium are among the most common. But at the nanoscale, these well-known substances take on new and unpredictable properties. That’s what makes them so versatile and valuable. It also makes them potentially dangerous in ways that their larger-scale counterparts are not.

Witnesses link chemical to ill US soldiers

June 24, 2008, 10:49 am
Filed under: Baghdad, Britain, cancer, defense department, Dennis Kucinich, Department of Defense, DoD, Dyncorp, Europe, George Bush, halliburton, health and environment, House, Impeach, Indiana, Iraq, KBR, Maliki, Military, Moqtada Al Sadr, nation building, national guard, Nuke, occupation, Oil, poll, Protest, radiation, Troops, United Kingdom, War On Terror | Tags: Sheik Assad al-Nassiri, sodium dichromate

Witnesses link chemical to ill US soldiers

Farah Stockman
Boston Globe
June 23, 2008

US soldiers assigned to guard a crucial part of Iraq’s oil infrastructure became ill after exposure to a highly toxic chemical at the plant, witnesses testified at a Democratic Policy Committee hearing yesterday on Capitol Hill.

“These soldiers were bleeding from the nose, spitting blood,” said Danny Langford, an equipment technician from Texas brought to work at the Qarmat Ali Water treatment plant in 2003. “They were sick.”

“Hundreds of American soldiers at this site were contaminated” while guarding the plant, Langford said, including members of the Indiana National Guard.

Langford is one of nine Americans who accuse KBR, the lead contractor on the Qarmat Ali project and one of the largest defense contractors in Iraq, of knowingly exposing them to sodium dichromate, an orange, sandlike chemical that is a potentially lethal carcinogen. Specialists say even short-term exposure to the chemical can cause cancer, depress an individual’s immune system, attack the liver, and cause other ailments.

Yesterday’s hearing – one among several organized to hold contractors accountable for alleged malfeasance in Iraq – was chaired by Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat. “Hundreds of US troops, who may not even know of their exposure to sodium dichromate that could one day result in a horrible disease, cancers, and death,” he said.

Roughly 250 American soldiers were believed to have come in contact with the chemical, according to Defense Department documents. Sodium dichromate is the same substance that poisoned residents in Hinkley, Calif., an incident made famous by the movie “Erin Brockovich” in 2000.

In Iraq, the chemical was used as an antirust coating for pipes that supply water to the oil fields. After the 2003 US-led invasion, looters raided the Qarmat Ali facility; afterward, the chemical was found strewn around the facility and its grounds.

Langford and his former colleagues have said KBR supervisors initially told them the chemical was a “mild irritant.” The company, however, eventually acknowledged that sodium dichromate was a potentially deadly substance and moved to clean up the site.

KBR has denied any wrongdoing in the matter. The company has insisted the safety of its workers and the troops they work with are its “highest priority.”

Anti-US protest surges in Iraq

Press TV
June 20, 2008

Hundreds of Iraqis loyal to senior cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stage a rally to protest plans for a long-term security pact with the US.

Following the weekly Friday prayers, hundreds of Iraqis took to streets in protest to the proposed security pact which has strongly been opposed by Iraqi officials and lawmakers.

The pact would provide a legal footing for the presence of US forces in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires later this year, raising fears that it would impair Iraq’s independence and sovereignty

Sheik Assad al-Nassiri warned the agreement, awaiting completion by July 31, will ’humiliate Iraqis, rob the Iraqi government of its sovereignty and give the occupier the upper hand’.

During a sermon in Kufa, Nassiri described the US presence as the main reason behind all of Iraq’s crises, expressing dismay at some government officials to call on ’the occupation forces’ to stay.

Demonstrators in Kufa as well as Baghdad’s Sadr City chanted “No, no to America, No, no to the agreement,” carrying banners reading “we will not accept Iraq to be an American colony.’’

Tensions rose high on Thursday when Iraqi troops arrested Amarah mayor, Rafia Abdul-Jabbar, and 16 others for alleged involvement with militias.

The ’random detentions’ by US-backed Iraqi security forces in the southern city drew strong criticism from Sadrists, who believe the arrests are being carried out ’without warrants and in contrary to what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says’.

Critics say Washington has failed to offer a firm commitment to defend the country from any invasion, denouncing a demand for immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts for all American personnel in Iraq.

There is also controversy over the number of bases the US would maintain in the country and whether its military will retain the power to arrest Iraqi civilians and keep them in its detention facilities.

DynCorp Used Amored Car To Transport Hookers
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/05/1..-amored-car-to-transport-hookers/

U.S. Troops in Iraq Sickened By Water from Cheney-Linked Firm
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/03/10/kbr-water-in-iraq-makes-troops-sick/

Iraq To Award Contracts To Foreign Oil Firms
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php..&show_article=1

Baghdad insists on right to veto US operations
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/18/iraq.usforeignpolicy

Bush ’war crimes conference’ to convene in Mass., plan prosecution of admin. officials
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Bush..convene_0622.html

House Votes To Continue Funding Iraq War
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200..qVdEV2EMdW2MwfIE

Big Oil Returns To Iraq For Big Contracts
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/19/africa/19iraq.php

Kucinich: Major General Taguba’s Comments Add Weight to articles of impeachment
http://rawstory.com/news08/2008/..-to-articles-of-impeachment/

Survey: 500,000 Iraqis fled fighting in 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Sur..ting_in_0619.html

Four British Soldiers Killed
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skyne..british-soldiers-killed-45dbed5.html

Pentagon Blocked Cheney’s Airstrike on Iranian Camps

June 13, 2008, 5:58 am
Filed under: Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, Coup, defense department, Department of Defense, Dick Cheney, DoD, elizabeth cheney, False Flag, George Bush, Iran, Israel, Military, military strike, neocons, NPT, Nuke, Pentagon, poll, preemptive strikes, preemptive war, Revolutionary Guards, Saber Rattling, Shock and Awe, Tehran, UN, Uncategorized, War On Terror, WW3, ww4 | Tags: J Scott Carpenter

Pentagon Blocked Cheney’s Airstrike on Iranian Camps

Asia Times
June 10, 2008

Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W Bush administration official.

J Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defense Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had

proposal several weeks earlier “launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran”, citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think-tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make “a policy decision about how far the administration would go – what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks”.

Cheney Jr. pushes for war on Iran

Press TV
June 10, 2008

A former State Department official and daughter of Dick Cheney says Iran ’will face military action’ if it does not halt its nuclear work.

Speaking at the American Israel Political Affairs Committee convention, Elizabeth Cheney said the time for diplomacy on Iran is ’rapidly coming to an end’.

Former deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs deplored the Bush administration over key elements of its Middle East policies, suggesting that the administration needed to adopt a tougher stance in the region.

“In my view, this administration has gotten it right when we have been bold, when we have been decisive, when we have been focused, when we have used our military force when necessary,” she said.

Cheney added that Washington must clearly declare that if Iranians “don’t give up diplomatically [to United Nations demands that Iran freeze its nuclear program], they will face military action”.

Iran has repeatedly asserted that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it is entitled to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes and that has no intention to give up its inalienable rights.

The UN nuclear watchdog, in its latest report, certified the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in the country’s nuclear activities. However, Washington with a blatant disregard for international reports continues to accuse Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program in a bid to justify the drumbeat for a war against the country.

US paying allies to fight war in Iraq

June 9, 2008, 5:18 am
Filed under: airstrikes, bribery, Britain, DEBT, defense department, DoD, Europe, George Bush, Iraq, iraqi deaths, John McCain, JP Morgan, Military, nation building, neocons, occupation, Pentagon, poland, shiites, south korea, State Sponsored Terrorism, sunni, Taxpayers, Tony Blair, Troops, United Kingdom, War On Terror | Tags: Henry Waxman, sons of iraq

US paying allies to fight war in Iraq

Times of India
May 31, 2008

The tale of massive fraud and embezzlement of millions of dollars by the US military in its operations in Iraq continues. Testifying before the US Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on 22 May, Mary Ugone, deputy inspector general of accounts in the Pentagon said that an audit of $8.2 billion spending related to the Iraq war showed that $7.8 billion had been improperly spent.

Over 180,000 payments, mostly since the war started in 2003, were made by the defense department to contractors for everything from bottled water to vehicles to transportation services.

In her testimony, Ugone also revealed that $135 million were given to forces from three countries UK, South Korea and Poland to facilitate their participation in the war. This is the first time that the US has officially admitted paying its allies in the so-called Coalition of the Willing that invaded Iraq in March 2003.

In his opening statement, Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee, said that wounded soldiers are getting notices from the Pentagon to return signing bonuses with interest since they had not completed the full term. “There is something very wrong when our wounded troops have to fill out forms in triplicate for meal money while billions of dollars in cash are handed out in Iraq with no accountability,” he said.

In an earlier report released in November 2007, the Inspector General had concluded that the Defense Department couldn’t properly account for over $5 billion in taxpayer funds spent in support of the Iraq Security Forces. It said that thousands of weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were unaccounted for, and millions of dollars had been squandered on construction projects that did not exist.

Ugones testimony gave detailed examples of the bizarre manner in which US defense officials doled out huge amounts of money without recording where it was going. In one case a sum of $320 million was paid an Iraqi official for paying salaries with only an incompletely filled voucher signed by one official. Since no details of the spending plan were attached as required by Pentagon rules the auditors have no clue as to where the money went. This payment was made from assets seized from Iraq.

Auditors found that the Pentagon gave away $1.8 billion from seized Iraqi assets. There were 53 vouchers noting these payments but not even one adequately explained where the money went.

In another instance, two vouchers, one for $5 million and the other for $2.7 million showed payments to a vendor for goods and services provided except that there were no details of what goods or services were actually delivered.

Over $2.7 billion was spent on providing equipment and services to the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). The auditors found that $2 billion of this was not properly accounted for. For example, 31 heavy tracked recovery vehicles costing $10.2 million were given to the ISF, but 18 of them could not be traced because identification numbers were not recorded.

US Paying Sunni Insurgents Not to Kill Troops

Antiwar
February 19, 2008

It is impossible to keep up with all the Bush regime’s lies. There are simply too many. Among the recent crop, one of the biggest is that the “surge” is working.

Launched last year, the “surge” was the extra 20,000-30,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq. These few extra troops, Americans were told, would finally supply the necessary forces to pacify Iraq.

This claim never made any sense. The extra troops didn’t raise the total number of U.S. soldiers to more than one-third the number every expert has said is necessary in order to successfully occupy Iraq.

The real purpose of the “surge” was to hide another deception. The Bush regime is paying Sunni insurgents $800,000 a day not to attack U.S. forces. That’s right, 80,000 members of an “Awakening group,” the “Sons of Iraq,” a newly formed “U.S.-allied security force” consisting of Sunni insurgents, are being paid $10 a day each not to attack U.S. troops. Allegedly, the Sons of Iraq are now at work fighting al-Qaeda.

This is a much cheaper way to fight a war. We can only wonder why Bush didn’t figure it out sooner.

The “surge” was also timed to take account of the near completion of neighborhood cleansing. Most of the violence in Iraq during the past five years has resulted from Sunnis and Shi’ites driving each other out of mixed neighborhoods. Had the two groups been capable of uniting against the U.S. troops, the U.S. would have been driven out of Iraq long ago. Instead, the Iraqis slaughtered each other and fought the Americans in their spare time.

In other words, the “surge” has had nothing to do with any decline in violence.

With the Sunni insurgents now on Uncle Sam’s payroll, with neighborhoods segregated, and with Sadr’s militia standing down, it is unclear who is still responsible for ongoing violence other than U.S. troops themselves. Somebody must still be fighting, however, because the U.S. is still conducting air strikes and is still unable to tell friend from foe.

On Feb. 16, the Los Angeles Times reported that a U.S. air strike managed to kill nine Iraqi civilians and three Sons of Iraq.

The Sunnis are abandoning their posts in protest, demanding an end to “errant” U.S. air strikes. Obviously, the Sunnis see an opportunity to increase their daily pay for not attacking Americans. Soon they will have consultants advising them how much they can demand in bribes before it pays the Americans to begin fighting the war under the old terms. If Sunnis are smart, they will split the gains. Currently, the Sunnis are getting shafted. They are only collecting $800,000 of the $275,000,000 it costs the U.S. to fight the war for one day. That’s only about three-tenths of one percent, too much of a one-sided deal for the Americans.

If the Sunnis negotiate their cut to between one-quarter and one-half of the daily cost to the U.S. of the war, the Sunnis won’t need to share in the oil revenues, thus helping the three factions to get back together as a country. Even 20 percent of the daily cost of the war would be a good deal for the Sunnis. A long-term contract in this range would be expensive for Uncle Sam, but a great deal cheaper than John McCain’s commitment to a 100-year Iraqi war.

If Bush’s war turns out to be as big a boon for the Sunnis as it has for Tony Blair, we might have a modern-day version of The Mouse That Roared – a movie about an impoverished country that attacked the U.S. in order to be defeated and receive foreign aid – only this time the money comes as a payoff for not fighting the occupiers.

As the world now knows, Blair’s “dodgy dossier” about the threat allegedly posed by Iraq was a contrivance that allowed Blair to put British troops at the service of Bush’s aggression in the Middle East. Now that Blair is out of his prime minister job, he has been rewarded with millions of dollars in sinecures from financial firms such as JP Morgan and millions more in speaking engagements. As part of the payoff, the Bush Republicans have even put Mrs. Blair on the lucrative lecture circuit.

Ask yourself, do you really think Blair knows enough high finance to be of any value as an adviser to JP Morgan, or enough about climate change to advise Zurich Financial on the subject? Do you really believe that after hearing all the vacuous speeches Blair has delivered in those many years in office anyone now wants to pay him huge fees to hear him give a speech? Even when it was free, people were sick of it.

Blair is simply collecting his payoff for selling out his country and sending British troops to die for American hegemony.

The Sunnis seem inclined to do the same thing if Bush will pay them enough.

Is the next phase of the Iraq war going to be a U.S.-Sunni alliance against the Shi’ites?

Billions In Defense Spending Unchecked

May 30, 2008, 9:23 am
Filed under: Afghanistan, airstrikes, code pink, David Petraeus, DEBT, defense department, DoD, George Bush, Iran, Iraq, iraqi deaths, Mike Mullen, Military, military strike, nation building, occupation, Pentagon, PTSD, Tony Blair, Troops, War On Terror

Billions In Defense Spending Unchecked

AP
May 27, 2008

Pentagon auditors say billions of dollars in military spending is going unchecked because they are having trouble keeping pace with the ever-expanding defense budget and combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a recent report, the Defense Department inspector general estimates that nearly half of the military’s $316 billion weapons budget went unchecked last year because the IG’s office lacked the manpower. Whereas 10 years ago when a single auditor would have reviewed some $642 million in defense contracts, individual investigators are now charged with auditing more than $2 billion in spending.

The IG also has been stretching its staff to investigate corruption and fraud cases overseas, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan where the military is hiring contractors to help run operations.

“The continual degradation of audit resources that is occurring at a time when the (Defense Department) budget is growing larger leaves the department more vulnerable to fraud, waste, and, abuse and undermines the department’s mission,” the report states.

“Our coverage of high-risk areas and defense priorities is weakened and will continue to be weakened by insufficient personnel to accomplish our statutory duties,” it adds.

The March assessment was obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group based in Washington.

In this year’s budget, Congress approved an additional $24 million for the IG office to improve contract oversight. According to the IG, it will need another major boost—$25 million more than President Bush requested—to meet its requirements in 2009.

The IG says it plans to hire some 481 new personnel in the next seven years, expanding to more than 1,900 full-time employees.

Mullen Warns Military To Stay Out Of Politics
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=13196027

Wartime PTSD Cases Jumped Near 50%
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20..nZOLTheFc5qm06CvVXFUuWwvIE

Tony Blair is barracked over Iraq by students at Yale
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10…d-Iraq-students-Yale.html

Iran: US conning Iraqis into slavery
http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=488826&lng=1#

Pentagon Cannot Account For $15 Billion
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-..R2008052203751_pf.html

Petraeus confirmation interrupted by Code Pink protesters
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Petra..upted_by_Code_Pink_0522.html

Increased U.S. airstrikes in Iraq killing more civilians
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/U.S._airstrike_kills_8_Iraqi_civilians_0523.html

151 Congressmen Derive Financial Profit From War

May 18, 2008, 10:12 am
Filed under: 2-party system, Boeing, Congress, DEBT, defense department, DoD, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, james sensenbrenner, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, left right paradigm, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, national debt, occupation, Raytheon, Senate, Troops, Uncategorized, War Corporatism, War On Terror

151 Congressmen Derive Financial Profit From War

Ralph Forbes
American Free Press
April 28, 2008

Who profits from the Iraq war? More than a quarter of senators and congressmen have invested at least $196 million of their own money in companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD) that profit from the death and destruction in Iraq.

According to the latest reports, 151 members of Congress invested close to a quarter-billion in companies that received defense contracts of at least $5 million in 2006. These companies got more than $275.6 billion from the government in 2006, or $755 million per day, according to FedSpending.org, a website of the watchdog group OMBWatch.

Congressmen gave themselves a loophole so they only have to report their assets in broad ranges. Thus, they can be off as much as 160 percent. (Try giving the IRS an estimate like that.) In 2004, the first full year after the present Iraq war began, Republican and Democratic lawmakers—both hawks and doves—invested between $74.9 million and $161.3 million in companies under contract with the DoD. In 2006 Democrats had at least $3.7 million invested in the defense sector alone, compared to the Republicans’ “only” $577,500. As the war raged on, so did the billions of profits—and personal investments by Congress members in war contractors, which increased 5 percent from 2004 to 2006.

Investments in these contractors yielded Congress members between $15.8 million and $62 million in personal income from 2004 through 2006, through dividends, capital gains, royalties and interest. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who are two of Congress’s wealthiest members, were among the lawmakers who garnered the most income from war contractors between 2004 and 2006: Sensenbrenner got at least $3.2 million and Kerry reaped at least $2.6 million.

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees which oversee the Iraq war had between $32 million and $44 million invested in companies with DoD contracts.

War hawk Sen. Joe Lieberman (IConn.), chairman of the defense-related
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had at least $51,000 invested in these companies in 2006.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who voted for Bush’s war, had stock in defense companies, such as Honeywell, Boeing and Raytheon, but sold the stock in May 2007.

Of the 151 members whose investments are tied to the “defense” (war)
industry, as far as we know, not one of them offered to donate their bloodstained profits to the national treasury to offset the terrible debt they have imposed. Has one of them even offered to donate one cent of their war profits to lessen the debt that increases more than $1 million a minute?

When our boys and girls are wounded the government bills them to return their reenlistment bonus. They have to return any pay they received while they were hospitalized. They have to pay for their helmets and uniforms that are destroyed in the hell of war. But they keep on fighting for these politicians’ right to keep their war profits.

• Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) $3,001,006 to $5,015,001
• Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) $250,001 to $500,000
• Rep. Kenny Ewell Marchant (R-Tex.) $162,074 to $162,074
• Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) $115,002 to $300,000
• Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) $115,002 to $300,000
• Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) $100,870 to $100,870
• Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) $65,646 to $65,646
• Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) $50,008 to $227,000
• Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) $50,001 to $100,000
• Rep. Stephen Ira Cohen (D-Tenn.) $45,003 to $150,000

$32 Billion of taxpayer dollars for patches?

April 13, 2008, 9:05 am
Filed under: army, credit card, defense department, DoD, fda, GAO, George Bush, Military, NASA, neocons, Pentagon, Taxpayers, Troops | Tags: national science foundation, NSF, the black budget

Inside the Black Budget
$32 Billion of taxpayer dollars for patches?

NY Times
April 1, 2008

Skulls. Black cats. A naked woman riding a killer whale. Grim reapers. Snakes. Swords. Occult symbols. A wizard with a staff that shoots lightning bolts. Moons. Stars. A dragon holding the Earth in its claws.

More badges

No, this is not the fantasy world of a 12-year-old boy.

It is, according to a new book, part of the hidden reality behind the Pentagon’s classified, or “black,” budget that delivers billions of dollars to stealthy armies of high-tech warriors. The book offers a glimpse of this dark world through a revealing lens — patches — the kind worn on military uniforms.

“It’s a fresh approach to secret government,” Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said in an interview. “It shows that these secret programs have their own culture, vocabulary and even sense of humor.”

One patch shows a space alien with huge eyes holding a stealth bomber near its mouth. “To Serve Man” reads the text above, a reference to a classic “Twilight Zone” episode in which man is the entree, not the customer. “Gustatus Similis Pullus” reads the caption below, dog Latin for “Tastes Like Chicken.”

Military officials and experts said the patches are real if often unofficial efforts at building team spirit.

The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Feds use cards for lingerie, iPods, gambling, a $13,000 dinner and more

Washington Post
April 9, 2008

Federal employees used government credit cards to pay for lingerie, gambling, iPods, Internet dating services, and a $13,000 steak-and-liquor dinner, according to a new audit from the Government Accountability Office, which found widespread abuses in a purchasing program meant to improve bureaucratic efficiency.

The study, released by Senate lawmakers yesterday, found that nearly half the “purchase card” transactions it examined were improper, either because they were not authorized correctly or because they did not meet requirements for the cards’ use. The overall rate of problems “is unacceptably high,” the audit found.

The GAO also found that agencies could not account for nearly $2 million worth of items identified in the audit — including laptop computers, digital cameras and, at the Army, more than a dozen computer servers worth $100,000 each.

Over 40 Cents Per Tax Dollar Goes To Military
http://www.theseminal.com/2008/04/08/the-tax-mans-gone-belligerent/

What military spending is doing to our economy
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/31/16227/0316/411/487759

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpavT5RCP8

Above the law: the Bush crime syndicate

April 6, 2008, 3:55 pm
Filed under: 4th amendment, Abu Ghraib, al-qaeda, army, Child Abuse, CIA, defense department, Detainee, DoD, enemy combatant, Extraordinary Rendition, False Flag, Fascism, Geneva Convention, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Iraq, iraq deaths, john yoo, marine, Military, neocons, Oppression, Pentagon, rape, rendition, Ron Paul, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House

Above the law: the Bush crime syndicate

Washington Post
April 2, 2008

The Bush crime syndicate genuinely believed that the president was above the law. It’s not hyperbole — it was an actual legal opinion:

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president’s ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

[…]

Sent to the Pentagon’s general counsel on March 14, 2003, by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the memo provides an expansive argument for nearly unfettered presidential power in a time of war. It contends that numerous laws and treaties forbidding torture or cruel treatment should not apply to U.S. interrogations in foreign lands because of the president’s inherent wartime powers.

“If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network,” Yoo wrote. “In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.”

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a “national and international version of the right to self-defense,” Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations — that it must “shock the conscience” — that the Bush administration advocated for years.

“Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification,” Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2hsoadR9q0

Torture for Profit

Memo: Bush Authority Trumps Torture Ban
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/04/01/bush-memo.html

Top Bush Administration officials pressured underlings to use torture tactics at Guantanamo
http://rawstory.com/news/20..underlings_0402.html

Hersh: children raped at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has videos
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/15/hersh-children-raped.html

Secret DOJ Memo Says Fourth Amendment Has “No Application” After 9/11
http://infowars.net/articles/april2008/030408Memo.htm

Abu Ghraib Prisoners Submerged in Ice-Water

March 21, 2008, 8:10 am
Filed under: Abu Ghraib, Child Abuse, CIA, Concentration Camp, defense department, Detainee, Dick Cheney, DoD, Extraordinary Rendition, Fascism, Geneva Convention, Genocide, George Bush, Guantanamo, Hitler, Iraq, iraq deaths, Military, Nazi, neocons, Oppression, rendition, Sabrina Harman, Torture, Troops, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House | Tags: Sgt. Javal Davis

Abu Ghraib Prisoners Submerged in Ice-Water
New Report: Abu Ghraib prisoners packed in ice water-filled garbage cans and sent into shock, military police say

Sherwood Ross
Uruknet
March 17, 2008

Muslim prisoners held in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison were submerged in water-filled garbage cans with ice or put naked under cold showers in near-freezing rooms until they went into shock, Sgt. Javal Davis, who served with the 372nd Military Police Company there, has told a national magazine.

Davis, from the Roselle, N.J., area, said while stationed at the prison he also saw an incinerator with “bones in it” that he believed to be a crematorium and said some prisoners were starved prior to their interrogation.

Another soldier that had been stationed at Abu Ghraib, M.P. Sabrina Harman—who gained dubious fame for making a thumbs-up sign posing over the body of a prisoner she believed tortured to death—said the U.S. had imprisoned “women and children” on Tier 1B, including one child was as young as ten.

“Like a number of the other kids and of the women there, he was being held as a pawn in the military’s effort to capture or break his father,” write co-authors Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris in the March 24th issue of The New Yorker magazine, which describes Abu Ghraib in a 14-page article titled “Exposure.”

They assert “the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was de facto United States policy. The authorization of torture and the decriminalization of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of captives in wartime have been among the defining legacies of the current Administration.”

They add that the rules of interrogation that produced the abuses documented in the prison “were the direct expression of the hostility toward international law and military doctrine that was found in the White House, the Vice-President’s office, and at the highest levels of the Justice and Defense Departments.” (President Bush has insisted “We do not torture,” The Associated Press reported on November 7, 2005.)

Imprisoning suspects in a war zone, torturing and/or murdering them, and holding their wives and children as hostages, are all banned practices under international law. Some prisoners died from rocket attacks on the compound.

Harman said she didn’t like taking away naked prisoners’ blankets when it was really cold. “Because if I’m freezing and I’m wearing a jacket and a hat and gloves, and these people don’t have anything on and no blanket, no mattress, that’s kind of hard to see and do to somebody—even if they are a terrorist.” (Note: the prisoners were suspects, not terrorists, being held without due process on charges of which they were often ignorant and without legal representation.)

Harman said the corpse she posed with likely was murdered during interrogation although a platoon commander said he had died of a heart attack. Harman and another soldier, Corporal Charles Graner unzipped his body bag and took photos of him and “kind of realized right away that there was no way he died of a heart attack because of all the cuts and blood coming out of his nose.” Harman added, “His knees were bruised, his thighs were bruised by his genitals. He had restraint marks on his wrists. “

Asked why she posed making a “thumbs up” gesture over the corpse, Harman said she thought, “Hey, it’s a dead guy, it’d be cool to get a photo next to a dead person. I know it looks bad. I mean, even when I look at them (the photos) I go, ’Oh Jesus, that does look pretty bad.’”

The corpse, said to have died under interrogation by a CIA agent, was identified as that of Manadel al-Jamadi. An autopsy found he had succumbed to “blunt force injuries” and “compromised respiration” and his death was classified as a homicide, The New Yorker article said. The dead man was removed from the tier disguised as a sick prisoner, his arm taped to an IV, and rolled away on a gurney, apparently as authorities “didn’t want any of the prisoners thinking we were in there killing folks,” Sergeant Hydrue Joyner, Harman’s team leader, told the magazine.

Harman said she saw one naked prisoner with his hands bound behind his back raised higher than his shoulders. This forced him to bend forward with his head bowed and his weight suspended from his wrists and is known as a “Palestinian hanging” as it is said to be used in Israeli prisons, Gourevitch and Morris write.

In a letter to a friend Harman described “sleep deprivation” used on the prisoners: “They sleep one hour then we yell and wake them—make them stay up for one hour, then sleep one hour—then up etc. This goes on for 72 hours while we fuck with them. Most have been so scared they piss on themselves. Its sad.” On one occasion, she wrote, sandbags soaked in hot sauce were put over the prisoners’ heads.

The CIA agent that interrogated al-Jamadi at the time of his “heart attack” was never charged with a crime but Harman was convicted by court-martial in May, 2005, of conspiracy to maltreat prisoners, dereliction of duty and sentenced to six months in prison, reduced in rank, and given a bad-conduct discharge.

Five other soldiers involved in taking pictures were sentenced to terms of up to ten years in prison. Gourevitch and Morris write, “The only person ranked above staff sergeant to face a court-martial was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.”

Sergeant Javal Davis, describing Abu Ghraib generally, said the prison reminded him of something out of a “Mad Max” movie, explaining, “The encampment they were in when we saw it at first looked like one of those Hitler things, like a concentration camp, almost.” The inside, he said, is “nothing but rubble, blown-up buildings, dogs running all over the place, rabid dogs, burnt remains. The stench was unbearable: urine, feces, body rot. Their (prisoners’) rest rooms was running over. It was just disgusting. You didn’t want to touch anything. Whatever the worst thing that comes to your mind, that was it — the place you would never ever, ever, ever send your worst enemy.”

When a delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross visited the prison in October, 2003, they were denied full access (contrary to international law) and, The New Yorker said, “what they were permitted to see and hear did not please them: men held naked in bare, lightless cells, paraded naked down the hallways, verbally and physically threatened, and so forth.”
The ICRC reported the prison was plagued by gross and systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions, including physical abuses that left prisoners suffering from “incoherent speech, acute anxiety reactions…suicidal ideas.”

Abu Ghraib Abuses Were Defacto Policy
http://rawstory.com/ne..u_Ghraib_abuses_were_0317.html

Italy Judge Clears Way For CIA Rendition
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL191346120080319

Pentagon: $520 Million For Space Weapons

March 16, 2008, 4:38 am
Filed under: Control Grid, Darpa, DEBT, defense department, Dick Cheney, DoD, Economy, Military Industrial Complex, Pentagon, Space Weapons, Star Wars Program, super weapons, US Economy

Pentagon: $520 Million For Space Weapons

Wired
March 13, 2008

We all know that the Pentagon has more space weapons technology in mind than just a single, satellite-shooting missile. But trying to pin down how much the Defense Department is spending on space combat research — and on what projects — is an absolute bitch. The programs are spread across at least a dozen different accounts; much of the technology involved is “dual use” — meaning, it could help with another military matters, too; and that’s before you get into the Defense Department’s “black,” classified budget.

Over the years, the gang at the Center for Defense Information has done a good a job as anyone at this thankless task. They’ve just released their survey of the Pentagon’s 2009 budget, highlighting research that could lead to arms in space. By the absolute most conservative estimate, we’re talking $520 million dollars in next year’s budget. The real number is likely several multiples of that.

The projects mostly involve ways to disable potentially hostile satellites; many have other uses, as well. They include a giant laser, to help spot targets in orbit (and to improve space imaging, in the meantime); micro satellites, that could disable another country’s orbiters (or repair our own); a series of jammers, to block enemy satellite signals; and missile interceptors, based in space.

At first glance, an anti-missile might not seem like a space weapon project. But, as last month’s satellite shoot-down showed, the same gear used to intercept a missile can also be repurposed to blast a sat. Especially if the gear is already in space.

Rare Night Shuttle Launch On 03/11/08
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080311/ap_on_sc/space_shuttle&printer=1

Rocket lifts off with secret satellite
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/..unch;_ylt=Ag._DGGa9HsVVmItkl3K5n6s0NUE

Top Defense commander hints at taking offensive actions in space, cyberspace
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=39514&dcn=todaysnews

Darth Cheney Wants Space Based Weapons
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gvsKHCj_jjvCkYgE9lKl3x9xkEvAD8VBJP0O1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeIxHQ-lkuM

Gang Members Get Trained in the Army

March 13, 2008, 2:31 pm
Filed under: army, California, cocaine, DEA, defense department, DHS, DoD, drug smuggling, drug trafficking, FBI, Homeland Security, Illegal Immigration, Immigration, marine, Mexico, Military, Pentagon, Troops, war on drugs | Tags: El Salvador, Hells Angels, Howard Stevenson, LA, Mara Salvatrucha, Mexican Mafia, Norteños, Sureños

In 2003 there were just 16 incidents of gang members in the U.S. Armed Forces, while in 2006 the total was 10,309

New America Media
March 9, 2008

While hundreds of Mexican soldiers are deserting the army to join drug trafficking gangs, California is facing the opposite problem: A growing number of gang members here have infiltrated the U.S. Armed Forces in order to receive military training.

The numbers speak for themselves: In 2003 there were just 16 incidents of gang members in the U.S. Armed Forces, while in 2006 the total was 10,309, according to the study, “Gang-Related Activity in the U.S. Armed Forces Increasing,” released in 2007 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Twenty-two official entities, including the Los Angeles Police Department, participated in the report.

This study, classified as sensitive and meant for use by official agencies, reveals the presence of street gangs like the Mexican Mafia (EME), the Mara Salvatrucha, Hells Angels, The 18th Street Gang, the Norteños, the Sureños, as well as various supremacist groups on military bases.

Two years before this report came to the light, the Ceres Police Department, in northern California, already knew its fatal results.

Howard Stevenson, sergeant of the force, was killed by Andrés Ray, a Marine who went AWOL from Camp Pendleton and who police say was a longtime member of the Norteños.

According to a report by the Ceres Police, Raya shot the sergeant five times in cold blood, with two shots to the head. Three other officials were injured in the incident and the gang member lost his life.

As a result of the bloodshed, local Police Chief Art De Werk told his staff to treat the anti-gang fight as an exercise in military strategy.

“Gang members are using the techniques and skills learned in the Army to commit crimes, and there is no doubt about that. The worrisome thing is that they endanger not only officials but all of society,” says Gregory Lee, former supervisor of the national Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and private consultant in Los Angeles.

In Southern California the orders are clear: Any indication that a gang member has military training must immediately be reported.

Each time authorities enter a gang member’s house, said an anti-gang official who preferred to remain anonymous, “We have precise orders to look for photos, Army uniforms, anything related to the Army or that demonstrates a military training of that gang or gang member.”

That information is classified in a special gang database, according to the source.

“For us, it is vital to know if we are confronting an enemy with military training,” says Lieutenant George Zagurski, member of the intelligence unit of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He declined to state the number of local gang members known to have been trained by the Army.

“These are facts for exclusive and official use. We do not want to discuss this with the public,” the lieutenant told La Opinión.

Despite the confidential nature of the topic, some experts calculate that out of 100 people who enter the Army, two have a gang affiliation.

“It’s an open secret that the ringleaders of local gangs are encouraging their younger members to enter the Army and receive military training and later to train the rest of the group,” claims the former DEA advisor.

The National Gang Task Force reports that from 2003 to 2006, the Army investigated more than 100 cases of crimes that involved soldiers related to the most dangerous gangs in the country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Armed Forces Criminal Investigation Command has documented the death of at least two soldiers – killed, it appears, by other soldiers with ties to rival gangs. It also registered an increase in the amount of violent incidents between soldiers who are affiliated with gangs.

“Officials do not want this topic spoken about because it uncovers how the Army, in its rush to recruit more soldiers, has had to lower its security standards, allowing in volunteers with criminal backgrounds. We all know that a high number of soldiers has died on the battlefield and others have deserted. We don’t have enough soldiers and the Army has strict orders to increase the number of enlisted troops nationwide, even if that means recruiting criminals,” Lee maintains.

Under the so-called “moral waiver,” the Armed Forces between 2003 and 2006 permitted into the Army 4,230 convicted criminals, 43,977 people with misdemeanors on their records and 58,561 drug addicts. In 2007, another 10,000 people with criminal records were recruited by the Pentagon, according to an investigation by the Michael D. Palm Center, based in Santa Barbara, Calif.

“The problem is not that the Armed Forces are recruiting convicts. On the contrary, we think that the Army has very good programs of rehabilitation. The problem is the increase. The Army is more worried about filling its recruitment quotas than in looking for the best candidates,” says lead researcher Michael Bucai.

Nevertheless, it is becoming more and more difficult to detect links between gangs and those interested in enlisting in the Army. According to gang experts, these mafias are using new strategies to infiltrate their members into the Armed Forces.

“Many older gang members are taking care of their newer members so that they maintain a clean criminal record and thus can have unrestricted access to the Army or guns,” says an anti-gang official. “We have noticed that in common crimes, gang members are forced to give the name of another member of the group that already has a record so that he gets written up and helps the others to remain clean.”

The infiltration of gang members into the Armed Forces must be taken seriously because it represents an important risk for local and national security, says the former DEA agent.

“Gang violence is getting more and more acute and bloody and is the price that society must pay for the faults in the system,” Lee opines.

On various occasions, La Opinión tried to contact the Department of Defense spokesperson to understand how they are dealing with the issue. However, as of this issue, there has been no response.

At an international anti-gang police summit in Los Angeles on March 3, officials weighed in about whether gang members have infiltrated the U.S. military.

“These are just rumors,” said Christy McCampbell, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. For his part, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he did not know of any evidence of gang infiltration in the U.S. Army but would consider looking into the matter.

Also at the summit, Martín Escorza, head of the National Gang Task Force, said the issue is real. Adding to the problem, he said, is the presence of gang members trained in the armed forces of their respective countries, like El Salvador or Mexico.

As border tightens, smugglers raise their game
http://www.reuters.com/article/d..94320080310

4 comments

KBR Water In Iraq Makes Troops Sick

March 10, 2008, 3:23 pm
Filed under: army, Baghdad, Congress, defense department, Dick Cheney, DoD, Eugenics, halliburton, health and environment, Iraq, iraq deaths, KBR, marine, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, occupation, Pentagon, PTSD, Troops, veterans

U.S. Troops in Iraq Sickened By Water from Cheney-Linked Firm

AP
March 9, 2008

Dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq fell sick at bases using “unmonitored and potentially unsafe” water supplied by the military and a contractor once owned by Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company, the Pentagon’s internal watchdog says.

A report obtained by The Associated Press said soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry at five U.S. military sites in Iraq.

The Defense Department’s inspector general’s report, which could be released as early as Monday, found water quality problems between March 2004 and February 2006 at three sites run by contractor KBR Inc., and between January 2004 and December 2006 at two military-operated locations.

It was impossible to link the dirty water definitively to all the illnesses, according to the report. But it said KBR’s water quality “was not maintained in accordance with field water sanitary standards” and the military-run sites “were not performing all required quality control tests.”

The report said KBR took corrective steps and was providing adequate water quality by November 2006. But military units at the two sites they controlled were still failing to perform required quality control tests and maintain appropriate records by that time.

“Therefore, water suppliers exposed U.S. forces to unmonitored and potentially unsafe water,” at the military sites by late 2006, the report said.

The problems did not extend to troops’ drinking water, but rather to water used for washing, bathing, shaving and cleaning. Water used for hygiene and laundry must meet minimum safety standards under military regulations because of the potential for harmful exposure through the eyes, nose, mouth, cuts and wounds.

Bush ‘may’ ignore Congress on Iraq
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=46308&secti..3510203

Upswing in Iraq attacks not a trend: U.S. military
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080309/ts_nm/iraq_dc_2

60,000 Iraq Vets Diagnosed With PTSD
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0803/S00119.htm

Baghdad blast toll rises, deadliest for months
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0157942120080307

Army Falsely Claims That Lowering Standards Has Not Affected Troop Quality
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/03/recruiting-standards/

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_UA72rwOy9I

New Secure Social Security Cards Proposed

March 5, 2008, 5:40 pm
Filed under: Airport Security, biometrics, Canada, defense department, DHS, DoD, Drivers License, Homeland Security, HR 5405, i-69, michael chertoff, NAFTA Superhighway, national id, North American Union, Real ID, Social Security, SPP, Toll Roads, trans texas corridor, TTC

New Secure Social Security Cards Proposed

Lee Rogers
Rogue Government
March 4, 2008

Two Illinois Congressmen are now proposing reforms to secure Social Security cards under the guise that these reforms will help against identification theft. This is ironic because this is the same excuse that Department of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff used to justify the Real ID Act which mandates standardized Real ID compliant driver’s licenses. The Real ID Act is of course nothing short of a mandated national ID card system but like all government programs that erode liberty, they use the excuse that it is for the public good. Since the federal government has had a tremendous amount of difficulty implementing their national ID card agenda via the Real ID Act with states refusing to go along with the program, it appears as if they are now going with plan B to implement their national ID card agenda. If forcing states to make their driver’s license compliant with the Real ID standards fails, they will simply use these new so called secure Social Security cards as the national ID card. Even worse, we could have both a nationally standardized driver’s license and a nationally standardized Social Security card which will both serve as a national ID card.

These so called secure Social Security cards will be modeled after the Common Access Card issued by the Department of Defense to members of the military. These identification cards contain a photograph, fingerprint, computer chip, bar code and magnetic strip. In effect these new cards will in fact be a national ID card because it is standardized, contains personal biometric data and a picture. The notion that these new cards will protect against identification theft is ridiculous. These cards have more data on them and as a result, if a card does get compromised it opens up an even larger can of worms. These new cards will contain even more of your personal information on them and could be ripe for abuse by tech savvy criminals. The proposal requires anyone over the age of 15 to have one of these new Social Security cards. So the vast majority of the population would be forced to accept one of these new cards.

Why should we trust the government with more of our information? In 2006, sensitive information of military veterans stored on a laptop was incompetently mishandled by the VA. Over in the UK, the government mishandled information on millions of taxpayers. The incompetence of government is proven and we should resist any effort by the government to demand more information from us. These new Social Security cards are just another incremental step by the establishment to further enslave the American people.

Strangely enough, the press conference announcing this proposal was held on February 11th, 2008. On January 11th 2008, Chertoff made the announcement that individuals with non-compliant Real ID driver’s licenses would be subjected to additional security screenings. The deadline for this to take effect is May 11th, 2008. It is clear that these people have some sort of sick obsession with the number 11. Maybe they think they get great power out of announcing and implementing great evil on the 11th day of a month.

More details on this story to come in the next few weeks. Special thanks to Gary Franchi from Republic Magazine for bringing this story to our attention.

Truth Be Tolled; WOAI 4

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KaVEolCxKB0

Social Security Surveillance Act Enters House
http://www.restoretherepublic.com/content/view/627/

Feds Warn States Of Real ID Deadline
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23456198/

Local British Columbia Council Passes Motion to Halt SPP
http://www.opednews.com/artic..4_local_british_columb.htm

Joint Statement By Ministers Of SPP
http://www.thought-criminal.org/article/node/1342

What is the ‘North American Union’?

U.S. Launches Airstrike In Somalia

March 4, 2008, 11:29 am
Filed under: airstrikes, al-qaeda, defense department, DoD, ethiopia, military strike, navy, Somalia, War On Terror | Tags: dobley, Fatuma Abdullahi, Hassan Turki, kenya

U.S. Launches Airstrike In Somalia

AP
March 3, 2008

The U.S. launched an airstrike Monday on a Somali town held by Islamic extremists to go after a group of terrorist suspects, U.S. defense officials said.

Three missiles hit Dobley, a town four miles from the Kenyan border, destroying a home and seriously injured eight people, police and witnesses said. The remnants of an Islamic force that had once ruled much of southern Somalia took over Dobley last week.

“It was a deliberate, precise strike against a known terrorist and his associates,” one U.S. military official said in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the record.

He gave few other details, except to say the targets were believed staying in building known to be used regularly by terrorist suspects.

Last year, the U.S. shelled suspected al-Qaida targets in Somalia, using gunfire from a U.S. Navy ship off the shore of the east African nation.

“We woke up with a loud and big bang and when we came out we found our neighbor’s house completely obliterated as if no house existed here,” a resident of the town, Fatuma Abdullahi, told The Associated Press. “We are taking shelter under trees. Three planes were flying over our heads.”

A police officer said the eight wounded were hit by shrapnel. An aid worker in Dobley said up to six people were still trapped in the rubble by midday. It was not clear whether these victims were included in the police officer’s tally.

“A minimum of two bombs were dropped,” said the aid worker, who asked that his name not be used because he is not authorized to speak to the media. The worker spoke to the AP by telephone. “Between four and six people are in the rubble.”

Clan elder Ahmed Nur Dalab said a senior Islamic official, Hassan Turki, was in town Sunday to mediate between his fighters and a militia loyal to the government. Turki’s forces took over Dobley last week.

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other.

In early 2007, Somali troops and their Ethiopian allies drove out a radical Islamic group to which Turki is allied that had taken over much of southern Somalia. The Islamic forces have fought to regain power.

Afghanistan Mission Close To Failing

March 1, 2008, 12:38 pm
Filed under: Afghanistan, Air Force, anthrax, anthrax vaccine, Censorship, defense department, DoD, Eugenics, fda, FOIA, Genocide, Hamid Karzai', health and environment, Iraq, mandatory vaccinations, marine, mass graves, Military, nation building, NATO, occupation, Pentagon, surge, Taliban, Troops, Vaccine, War On Terror

Afghanistan Mission Close To Failing

Guardian
February 29, 2008

After six years of US-led military support and billions of pounds in aid, security in Afghanistan is “deteriorating” and President Hamid Karzai’s government controls less than a third of the country, America’s top intelligence official has admitted.

Mike McConnell testified in Washington that Karzai controls about 30% of Afghanistan and the Taliban 10%, and the remainder is under tribal control.

The Afghan government angrily denied the US director of national intelligence’s assessment yesterday, insisting it controlled “over 360” of the country’s 365 districts. “This is far from the facts and we completely deny it,” said the defence ministry.

But the gloomy comments echoed even more strongly worded recent reports by thinktanks, including one headed by the former Nato commander General James Jones, which concluded that “urgent changes” were required now to “prevent Afghanistan becoming a failed state”.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2dHeG0aTwVw

Judge OKs mandatory anthrax vaccine
Judge Dismisses Challenge to Military’s Mandatory Anthrax Vaccine

Raw Story
February 29, 2008

The Pentagon can require its troops be vaccinated against anthrax, a federal judge said Friday.

Judge Rosemary M. Collyer said the Food and Drug Administration acted appropriately when it found the vaccine to be safe and approved its use. She dismissed a lawsuit by military officials who argued the drug is unproven and the scientific data unsound.

“The court will not substitute its own judgment when the FDA made no clear error of judgment,” Collyer wrote.

The dispute has languished in the court system for years. A federal judge suspended the vaccination program in 2004 after faulting the FDA’s process for approving the drug. After the FDA redid the process and again found it to be safe, the military announced plans to reinstate mandatory vaccinations.

That prompted this latest lawsuit by eight military members who argued the vaccine should be optional.

“We owe it to our service members to give them every possible protection,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. “Force protection is the number one priority in the Defense Department and the anthrax inoculation program is an important force-protection measure.”

Mark Zaid, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the FDA relied on outdated studies that didn’t prove the vaccine is safe or effective against inhaled anthrax.

“It would appear the court has condoned an agency’s manipulation of decades-old data to support a present-day policy objective,” Zaid said. “We are absolutely going to appeal.”

Soldier admits having himself shot to avoid Iraq return
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Soldie..g_himself_shot_to_0226.html

More troops for Iraq and Afghanistan, Defense Department says
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0227/p99s04-duts.html

US patrol shoots Iraqi civilian
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7268645.stm

US Air Force censors blogs
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/..02/28/air-force-censors-blogs

Marines Call New Body Armor Impractical
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,333154,00.html

Iraqi Hospitals Unable To Cope With Bombings
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=60570

PHR Files Suit Against Defense Department in FOIA Dispute Over Documents Concerning Mass Grave in Afghanistan
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2008-02-19.html

U.S. Expects 140K Troops In Iraq By July
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N25602446.htm

‘We scrounge for everything’: U.S. soldier in Afghanistan
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/0..login&pagewanted=all

A.I. War Machines a “Threat to Humanity”

February 28, 2008, 9:08 am
Filed under: 1984, AI, army, artificial intelligence, Britain, China, defense department, DoD, enemy combatant, Europe, Geneva Convention, India, Iraq, Military, Military Industrial Complex, robot, Russia, Science and technology, south korea, super weapons, Troops, United Kingdom, War On Terror

A.I. War Machines a “Threat to Humanity”

AFP
February 27, 2008

Fbiiraqisbein_mn

Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.

“They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.

Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.

There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.

The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

It we are not careful, he said, that could change.

Military leaders “are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war,” he said.

Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.

South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.

Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.

James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.

Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. “I don’t know why that has not happened already,” he said.

But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

“I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.

Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.

But he is not convinced that robots don’t have a place on the front line.

“Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement,” he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.

The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. “And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger,” he added.

Nor is there any inherent right to self-defence.

For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.

Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine — even an intelligent one — how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.

But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.

Arkin points out that the US Department of Defense’s 230 billion dollar Future Combat Systems programme — the largest military contract in US history — provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems.

“But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponisation of these systems,” he said.

For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems. “We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do — and then get an international agreement,” he said.

Killer Robots Coming Soon to a City Near You
http://thought-criminal.org/article/node/1339

Living Neural Networks Could Drive War Machines
http://www.thought-criminal.org/article/node/1335

Robot wars ‘will be a reality within 10 years’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/m..008/02/27/scirobots127.xml

Former CIA: Warhawks Pray Iran Backs Terror to Justify Military Strike

February 25, 2008, 8:58 am
Filed under: airstrike, anthrax, CIA, Coup, daniel ellsberg, defense department, DoD, False Flag, France, George Bush, Iran, middle east, military strike, neocons, Norman Podhoretz, Nuke, Pentagon, Saber Rattling, Sanctions, State Sponsored Terrorism, Vietnam, war games, War On Terror, whistleblower, WW3, ww4

Former CIA: Warhawks Pray Iran Backs Terror to Justify Military Strike
Here is an excerpt from the New York Times by a former CIA officer who writes that the warhawks pray Iran backs a terror attack that kills Americans to justify a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities

Marc Gerecht
NY Times
February 20, 2008

“What has been the response of most American hawks to this mess? Prayer. They are essentially waiting for (Iran) the clerical regime to do something stupid so that they can galvanize an awareness among Americans that mullahs should not have the bomb. True, the Iranian clerics have often done the wrong thing at the right time, from aiding the bombers of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and our African embassies in 1998, to the kidnapping of British sailors and marines last year. It is possible that Tehran, which wants to cause us great harm in Iraq and Afghanistan, could again back a terrorist attack that kills enough Americans to make preventive military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities mandatory. But the Iranians know this. They know they are in the final nuclear stretch: they will likely play it sufficiently cool to make it difficult for the United States to strike them pre-emptively.“

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Ellsberg: Speak out while you can

Press TV
February 22, 2008

Fbiiraqisbein_mn

US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg raps those aware of Bush’s violations of the Constitution, saying they should speak out and save lives.

“When they keep silent about their knowledge of that situation, they are themselves violating their oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Ellsberg said in an interview with City Pages.

Advising such people to reveal truths that might save an untold number of lives, the former military analyst explained that there is a high possibility of new military adventurism in the Middle East.

“Don’t wait till bombs are falling in Iran or a new war is started wrongly or thousands more people have died when you know that your bosses are lying the public into a wrongful war or committing other crimes or violating the constitution,” said the former Pentagon official.

According to Ellsberg, there is a good chance that Bush will wage war on Iran in the next year.

“I think that the risk remains significant, and indeed the fact that the President isn’t running again for office may free him in his mind,” he explained.

Daniel Ellsberg, who shocked the world in 1971 by disclosing 7,000 classified pages of a Defense Department report, revealed the existence of a much deeper battle in Vietnam than the public was aware of.

Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons

Pentagon investigated lasers that put voices in your head

February 25, 2008, 2:32 am
Filed under: brain manipulation, defense department, DoD, FOIA, microwave, Pentagon, Psychotronic weapons, Science and technology, super weapons, Torture

Pentagon report investigated lasers that put voices in your head

Physorg
February 20, 2008

Fbiiraqisbein_mn

A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people’s heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion – all from hundreds of meters away.

A US citizen requested access to the document, entitled “Bioeffects of Selected Non-Lethal Weapons,” under the Freedom of Information Act a little over a year ago. There is no evidence that any of the technologies mentioned in the 10-year-old report have been developed since the time it was written.The report explained several types of non-lethal laser applications, including microwave hearing, disrupted neural control, and microwave heating. For the first type, short pulses of RF energy (2450 MHz) can generate a pressure wave in solids and liquids. When exposed to pulsed RF energy, humans experience the immediate sensation of “microwave hearing” – sounds that may include buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking that originate within the head.Studies with guinea pigs and cats suggest that the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon is thermoelastic expansion. Exposure to the RF pulses doesn´t cause any permanent effects, as all effects cease almost immediately after exposure ceases. As the report explains, tuning microwave hearing could enable communicating with individuals from a distance of up to several hundred meters.“The phenomenon is tunable in that the characteristic sounds and intensities of those sounds depend on the characteristics of the RF energy as delivered,” the report explains. “Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent on the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person´s head. In one experiment, communication of the words from one to ten using ´speech modulated´ microwave energy was successfully demonstrated. Microphones next to the person experiencing the voice could not pick up these sounds. Additional development of this would open up a wide range of possibilities.”The report predicts that communicating at longer distances would be possible with larger equipment, while shorter range signals could be generated with portable equipment. Putting voices in people´s heads could cause what the report calls “psychologically devastating” effects. The technology might even allow for communicating with an individual hostage surrounded by captors, although this would require “extreme directional specificity.”

With another weapon, electromagnetic pulses could be used to disrupt the brain´s functioning, although this technology was still in the theoretical stages at the time.

Under normal conditions, all brain structures function with specific rhythmic activity depending on incoming sensory information. Sometimes, the brain synchronizes neuronal activity in order to focus on a specific task, but the degree of neuronal synchronization is highly controlled. However, under certain conditions (such as physical stress or heat stroke), more areas of the brain can fire in a highly synchronized manner, and may begin firing uncontrollably.

The report describes a method for replicating this highly synchronized neuron firing across distances of several hundred meters. High-voltage (100 kV/m) electromagnetic pulses lasting for one nanosecond could trigger neurons to fire, disrupting the body´s controlled firing activity. Short-term effects may include loss of consciousness, muscle spasms, muscle weakness, and seizures lasting for a couple minutes. These high-voltage pulsed sources, which would require an estimated frequency of 15 Hz, exist today.

Another form of non-lethal torture described in the report is microwave heating. By raising the temperature of the body to 41°C (105.8°F), humans can experience sensations such as memory loss and disorientation, and exhibit reduced aggression. According to the report, humans can survive temperatures up to 42°C (107.6°F), at which time prolonged exposure can result in permanent brain damage or death.

The microwave heating technique was tested on a Rhesus monkey, where a 225 MHz beam caused an increase in the animal´s body temperature. Depending on the dosage level, the temperature increase occurred within a time of 15 to 30 minutes. After the beam was removed, the animal´s body temperature decreased back to normal. The report suggests the technique could be useful for controlling crowds or in negotiations.

While the investigations reveal intriguing techniques for non-lethal torture, the report does not mention plans for carrying out specific experiments or studies in the future.

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