Department of Defense
May 9, 2013
Officials Call for Continued Ballistic Missile Defense Modernization
By Donna Miles
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The proposal also includes funding to implement regional missile defense approaches that Creedon said will be tailored to the unique deterrence and defense requirements of Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific regions.
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Cesare Pavese: Every war is a civil war
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Cesare Pavese
From The House of the Hill (Prima che il gallo canti) (1949)
Translated by R. W. Flynt
U.S. Department of Defense
May 9, 2013
NATO Delegation Visits New Mexico Facilities
By Sheryl Hingorani
Sandia National Laboratories
KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. – A group of NATO officials are learning about work being done to support the extended nuclear deterrence mission and broader national security programs, ranging from homeland security to global nonproliferation efforts, during a three-day visit to Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.
Pakistan holds elections on Saturday. More than 70 people have been killed nationwide in pre-election violence. It is encouraging that Pakistani High Court Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan issued a ruling on Thursday declaring US drone strikes in tribal areas in Pakistan illegal and a war crime.
RT | May 10, 2013
A high court in Pakistan has ruled that US drone strikes in the country’s tribal belt should be considered war crimes, since the attacks resulted in the deaths of innocent people.
The Peshawar High Court has recommended the Pakistani government advance a resolution against the attacks in the United Nations. The court issued its verdict on the CIA-run air strikes in response to four petitions charging the attacks killed civilians and caused “collateral damage.”
By CAMERON LANGFORD | Courthouse News | May 8, 2013
AUSTIN – Trigger-happy Texas lawmen shot up a man’s car and ran him off the road, coming “within inches” of killing him, then found that “they had the wrong person,” the man claims in court.
Miguel Montanez sued the city of San Marcos, Hays County, Hays County Sheriff’s deputies Joe Faulkner and David Campbell, and John Doe Hays County SWAT team members 1-7 in Federal Court.
Press TV – May 9, 2013
A new report by the US Defense Department, Pentagon, says almost three rapes occur every hour in the US military, raising serious concern about the soaring rate of sexual assault among US servicemen.
According to the Pentagon, sexual assaults in the military have increased to the alarming level of 70 per day or three every hour, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
Bill Conroy of NarcoNews.com joins us to discuss the House of Death scandal, in which an ICE informant participated in a series of torture and murder incidents in Juarez, Mexico in the last decade. We discuss how the story was broken and how it was then covered up by ICE, the US Attorney overseeing the case, and others, and how ICE tried to intimidate Conroy into giving up his sources on the case. For more on this issue, please see the archive of Bill Conroy’s extensive reporting on the case: http://www.narconews.com/houseofdeath/
People like myself who are either paleoconservatives or libertarians generally base their opposition to Israel and its Lobby on the costs of the de facto alliance, both financial and in terms of the wars and political chaos it has triggered. We try to demonstrate how damage to rule of law and actual U.S. interests has [...]
Indefinite detention of the innocent and guilty alike, without any hope of charges, trial, or release: this is now the American way. Most Americans, however, may not care to take that in, not even when the indefinitely detained go on a hunger strike. That act has certainly gotten Washington’s and the media’s collective attention. After all, could there [...]
The recent decision by renowned physicist Stephen Hawking to boycott the fifth Israeli Presidential Conference, co-sponsored by Shimon Peres and Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, is being touted by the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement as a great victory. Yet the bitter irony of this “victory” was underscored by Greg Scoblete, who points to this reaction [...]
Welcome back to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com – the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week:
Story #1: Unprovoked Attack On Syria – Israel Commits Egregious International Crime
http://ur1.ca/drsiw
19-Hour Internet Outage In Syria Ends
http://ur1.ca/drsj3
Israel Granted Oil Rights in Syria to Murdoch and Rothschild Two Months Ago
One child was killed and 11 others were wounded when a bomb targeting a Sahwa commander exploded in Hawija. In Mosul, security forces killed a suicide bomber attempting to strike a federal police base. A gunman was killed when he tried to attack a separate checkpoint. No casualties were reported after a bomb blasted a [...]
Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, Thomas E. Ricks, meet David Sirota. Sirota, meet the other three people in the United States who regret the 40 years of conscription-free living Americans have enjoyed.
By Kari Lydersen – MIDWEST ENERGY NEWS – 05/08/2013
A proposal in the U.S. Senate has advocates concerned that Illinois could become a leading contender for storing nuclear waste from around the nation.
Welcome back to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com – the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week:
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | May 09, 2013
Israeli soldiers invaded, on Thursday morning, the Barta’a village, near the northern West Bank city of Jenin, declared the village a closed military zone, and demolished 12 shops.
Ghassan Qabha, head of the Barta’a village council, reported that the army invaded the village after sealing all of its entrances, declared it a closed military zone and demolished the twelve structures.
By Laura Benitez | The Argentina Independent | May 9, 2013
The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has announced that it will create a united defence body to promote democratic stability among its member countries.
It’s pretty clear at this point that the Obama administration explicitly misrepresented what they knew to be the truth about the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Prensa Latina | May 8, 2013
Rio de Janeiro – Atomic power agencies from Brazil and Argentina signed an agreement to build two nuclear reactors for research and production of radioisotopes, said the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT) today.
Prensa Latina | May 8, 2013
Quito – President Rafael Correa reiterated his warning to U.S. Ambassador, Adam Namm, to comply with his diplomatic role instead of involving himself in anti-government political activities.
Writing at Time magazine in response to an article by John McCain advocating US intervention in Syria, Zbigniew Brzezinski – not exactly a peacenik – argues that “the Syrian conflict is a sectarian war in a volatile region whose potential to spread and directly threaten American interests would only be increased by U.S. intervention.”
Sex, Economics, and AusterityBy Jeet Heer The American Prospect http://prospect.org/article/sex-economics-and-austerityMay 7, 2013 [Excerpt]...Historically, attempts to prohibit sodomy (defined broadly as non-procreative sex) have had an economic dimension as well as a moral one. Economics, for the ancient Greeks, was household management (oikonomia being the Greek counterpart to our word husbandry).
Our new Contributing Editor Lucy Steigerwald appared on HuffPost Live today to discuss the Obama administration’s apparent embrace of an “an FBI plan for a sweeping overhaul of surveillance – laws that would make it easier to wiretap those who communicate using the Internet.”
Also appearing on the panel was The Cato Institute’s always great Julian Sanchez.
The dispute between China and Japan over territorial claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu island chains has become the front line in the Sino-Japanese realpolitik rivalry. But it is at least as much about the geo-political contest between the U.S. and China, with Japan as a proximate instrument of American power in East Asia.
By Arthur Phillips | CEPR | May 8, 2013
Bloomberg’s Nathan Gill wrote a particularly one-sided article on Thursday, in which he states that “Ecuador’s bid to reduce poverty by taxing its banks is threatening to deepen the nation’s economic slump.”
Harold Koh, formerly the Obama administration’s top State Department lawyer, has criticized the systematic secrecy surrounding the drone war. The New York Times:
Anyone with 1/2 a measure of intelligence knows that Israel indeed is a nuclear weapons nation, and that it would use these weapons in an instant according to its INSANE Samson Option against most nations on planet Earth in a true holocaust where they clearly state that "If We are ever in danger of going down... We will take 1/2 the world with us!".... Such is the insanity and immorality of this dangerous terrorist nation...Recently I came across several videos that were sent to me, asking for my honest opinion, and I was truly shocked...
RT | May 09, 2013
Three activists, including an 83-year-old nun, who broke into a US nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee were convicted on Wednesday of interfering with national security.
In what The New York Times labeled the biggest security breach in the history of the atomic complex, the trio broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex on July 28, 2012 and defaced a uranium processing plant.
Writing in The New Yorker, Dexter Filkins runs through the Obama administration’s reluctance to further intervene in Syria. There are many cons White House officials articulate, but here’s two that stood out to me.
Unintended Consequences
Voice of Russia
May 9, 2013
U.S. to maintain 9 bases in Afghanistan after 2014
Bagram Air Base
The United States will maintain nine military bases in Afghanistan after NATO’s troop withdrawal in 2014.
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Henri Barbusse: Selections on war
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Henri Barbusse
From Light (1918)
Translated by Fitzwater Wray
After you have read the news stories linked in the previous post: Kerry Sees Transitional Syrian Government Without Assad Read this one. A beginning for Syria talksLet's call this wondering, thinking, contemplating via the blog.. my thinking is all italicized New thoughts are in red... Excerpt and additional links below:
I have long said that this government in Ottawa is not my own, and absolutely does not listen to the Canadian people at all... Instead, it bends over and constantly grovels to the will of Jewish interests, and will do anything to please both their Jewish masters, and the wants and wishes of the criminal and diabolical state of Israel....It is so sad to watch these sick freaks do anything to support the Jewish state, above the needs of their own nation!I came across a very important video that absolutely stunned me...
RT | May 08, 2013
United States President Barack Obama is likely to endorse a Federal Bureau of Investigation effort that would ensure all Internet companies in the US provide a way for the government to conduct undetected, backdoor surveillance.
Xinhua – May 8, 2013
BISHKEK – A group of Kyrgyzstan youth called for the withdrawal of American troops from the Manas airport on Tuesday to protest against the U.S. transit center in their country.
The “Jon element” (Just like) group wanted to attract public attention to the work of a U.S. military base that “carries a direct threat to the security of Kyrgyzstan,” said group leader Atay Beishenbek.
Japan’s ownership of an entire archipelago in the East China Sea may be up for review – not by Tokyo, but by Beijing. The Okinawa Islands chain is home to sprawling US military bases, and tens of thousands of American troops. The People’s Daily – considered a mouthpiece of China’s Communist party – all but laid claim to the archipelago in an article written by academics. Japan quickly hit back, denouncing the paper as a political tool and declaring its ownership of Okinawa beyond doubt.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says a transitional government in Syria would not include president Bashar al-Assad.Kerry said Thursday in Rome, where he was meeting with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, that the goal is a political solution agreed to by the Syrian government and those opposed to Mr.
By Greg Felton | Aletho News | May 9, 2013
For decades, pretentious wonks have declared that we live in “The Information Age,” as if information were a commodity unique to our time. Inanity aside, the claim is patently false, notwithstanding the advent of computers and virtually instant communication.
It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule” has been so successful that trusting the government is the same [...]
Image: Despite the US mobilizing the summation of its media power and pouring millions of dollars into the opposition party, including the creation and perpetuation of fake-NGOs such as Bersih and the Merdeka Center, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak sailed to a comfortable victory in this year's general elections.
Russian Information Agency Novosti
May 9, 2013
Estonia Holds Military Drills with NATO Allies
TALLINN: Estonia will hold annual military exercises involving about 4,500 personnel from several NATO countries on May 9-25, the General Staff of the Estonian Defense Forces said.
Today's Iraq violence focused on Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. These security forces are used in predominantly Kurdish regions in northern Iraq. In contested areas their presence, at times, has caused tension between themselves and other security forces.
Webster G. Tarpley Ph.D. TARPLEY.net May 8, 2013 U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren Washington DC, May 8, 2013 — I urge a major all-points mobilization in support of Sen Elizabeth Warren’s Bank on Students bill mandating that the Federal Reserve provide 0.75% cheap federal credit for federal student loans (Stafford loans) via the US [...]
John Pilger returns to where he began his career in journalism and argues that Australia, his homeland, provides a model of media that was once free and independent and is no more.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Transformation
May 7, 2013
Allied Reach 2013 Kicks off in Norfolk, Va.
NATO’s senior military leadership and key civilian figures are gathered in Norfolk, VA, USA, for NATO’s Allied Reach 2013 (AR 13).
