Sunday, October 24, 2010

Book Review: The Politics of Genocide




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1.

Book Review: The Politics of Genocide

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:30 pm (PDT)





http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/book-review-the-politics-of-genocide/
 
 
Stop NATO
September 1, 2010
 
  
The Politics of Genocide
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
Monthly Review Press, 2010
U.S. $12.95*

By Rick Rozoff

In 1895 novelist Anatole France - who in the same decade took up cudgels in defense of persecuted Armenians in the Ottoman Empire while also entering the lists on behalf of Alfred Dreyfus - wrote an essay in which he maintained that words are like coins. When freshly minted the images and inscriptions on them are clear. But by dint of constant circulation they become effaced until the outlines are blurred and the words unintelligible.

As Edward S. Herman and David Peterson write in The Politics of Genocide, "During the past several decades, the word 'genocide' has increased in frequency of use and recklessness of application, so much so that the crime of the twentieth century for which the word was originally coined often appears debased. Unchanged, however, is the huge political bias in its usage...." With their painstaking efforts to compile information and analyze the self-serving misuse of this term by the government, media and establishment academic figures of the United States and its allies, the authors have performed a valuable service to the cause of truth and of peace.

The fact that combating "genocide" has replaced confronting communism in some notably left and liberal circles as a major intellectual and moral legitimation for an enduringly aggressive and interventionist U.S. foreign policy is not fortuitous. It has been adopted to further American and allied interests in Europe and Africa in particular but with international application. 

Nowhere is this more explicit than in the U.S.-based Genocide Prevention Task Force's 2008 report Preventing Genocide, where the "Save Darfur" activism of the last decade is singled out as a model for how to "build a permanent constituency for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities." 

But this shows that "Darfur has been...successfully framed as 'genocide'," the authors counter, even as "the signature Nefarious bloodbath of the early twenty-first century," and we should take the Task Force's praise of "Save Darfur" activism to mean rather that the "U.S. establishment's handling of the western Sudan (ca. 2003-2010) should serve as a model for how best to propagandize a conflict as 'genocide', and thus to mobilize elite and public opinion for action against its alleged perpetrator."

During the past two decades, the post-Cold War era, Washington has employed and exploited the word genocide in furtherance of geopolitical objectives in several strategic parts of the world. As the foreword to the volume by Noam Chomsky warns, the one-sided, nakedly partisan and frequently fact-distorting genocide stratagem not only diverts attention from genuine acts of mass killing and targeting of ethnic and other demographic groups perpetrated by the U.S., its allies and client states, but runs the risk of producing a boy who cried wolf effect, one moreover with a retroactive component.

Chomsky characterizes the authors' work as indicting a practice that since "the end of the Cold War opened the way to an era of virtual Holocaust denial." That is, as facts such as those marshaled by Herman and Peterson demonstrate, the exaggeration, distortion and even outright fabrication of genocide accusations may produce as an unintended consequence a universal scepticism on the matter, even - most alarmingly - toward the genuine article. That leveling charges of genocide against nations and governments the White House and State Department are opposed to and in parts of the world where the Pentagon is bent on deploying troops and bases occurs as World War II revisionism, neo-Nazism, and the formal rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators and even SS troops plague much of Europe is the most alarming manifestation of that disturbing phenomenon.

The U.S. has rightly been accused of practicing double standards in relation to genocide charges, condemning mass killings (alleged as well as real) in nations whose governments are not viewed favorably by Washington and its allies while ignoring, minimizing and justifying it when perpetrated by an approved government. 

But it is not, as defenders of American foreign policy often state, a question of not being able to respond to every crisis or of responding to the most egregious situation first. Nor as the rapidly deteriorating Christopher Hitchens wrote in 1993 in one of his many efforts to mobilize opinion in favor of the "Bosnian cause" (by which he never meant anything beyond the Sarajevo Muslims around Alija Izetbegovic, and Hitchens' own mythic land of multiculturalism overrun by "racist" Serbs) is it a case of "making the best the enemy of the good."

Instead, as Herman and Peterson meticulously detail, it is a fixed policy of assigning cases and charges of genocide to four distinct categories, the first two applicable to the U.S. and its allies and clients, the second two to adversaries or other governments whose nations occupy space or possess resources coveted by Washington's empire-builders and U.S.-based transnational corporations.

Drawing on years of observation and analysis of international events - in Herman's case efforts extending over five decades - the authors present a four-point model for examining how the issue of genocide is viewed by the American government, the mainstream news media and a veritable battalion of "engaged" academics and handsomely funded non-governmental organizations (the latter sometimes not so non-governmental).

As they explain:

"When we ourselves commit mass-atrocity crimes, the atrocities are Constructive, our victims are unworthy of our attention and indignation, and never suffer 'genocide' at our hands - like the Iraqi Untermenschen who have died in such grotesque numbers over the past two decades. But when the perpetrator of mass-atrocity crimes is our enemy or a state targeted by us for destabilization and attack, the converse is true. Then the atrocities are Nefarious and their victims worthy of our focus, sympathy, public displays of solidarity, and calls for inquiry and punishment. Nefarious atrocities even have their own proper names reserved for them, typically associated with the places where the events occur. We can all rattle off the most notorious: Cambodia (but only under the Khmer Rouge, not in the prior years of mass killing by the United States and its allies), Iraq (but only when attributable to Saddam Hussein, not the United States), and so on - Halabja,
Bosnia, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Kosovo, Račak, Darfur. Indeed, receiving such a baptism is perhaps the hallmark of the Nefarious bloodbath."

To reiterate their point: When the killing, maiming, poisoning and displacement of millions of civilians are perpetrated by the U.S. directly and in collusion with a client regime it assists, arms and advises - Indochina in the 1960s and early 1970s, Central America in the 1980s, the deaths of as many as a million Iraqis resulting from sanctions and the deliberate and systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in the 1990s - that form of indisputable genocide is never referred to as such and instead presented by the government-media-obedient academia triad as not abhorrent and criminal but as legitimate actions in pursuit of praiseworthy policies. Constructive genocide.

Similar systematic and large-scale atrocities carried out by U.S. clients armed by Washington - Indonesia against its own people from 1965-1966 and in East Timor from 1975-1999, Israel in the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank from 1967 to the present day, Rwanda and Uganda in Congo (where over five and a half million people have perished over the last twelve years), Croatia and its Operation Storm onslaught in 1995 which caused the worst permanent ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II and its immediate aftermath - are not condemned and not even deemed regrettable, but in fact are viewed by the U.S. political establishment as Benign.

Contrariwise, though, security and military actions taken by governments not aligned with the U.S., even against armed and cross-border separatist formations, are inevitably branded as gratuitous acts of what Samuel Coleridge called motiveless malignancy: Nefarious genocide.

Related to the last category, the U.S. government and its news and NGO camp followers are not averse to inflating numbers, misattributing the cause of death and outright inventing incidents to justify the charge of genocide and what are frequently pre-planned interventions, including sanctions, embargoes, travel bans on government officials, freezing governments' financial assets abroad, funding and advising assorted "color revolutions" and ultimately bombing from 25,000 feet, beyond the range of a targeted country's air defenses. What the authors call Mythic genocide, though with quite genuine - deadly - consequences. Aesop: The boys throw rocks in jest but the frogs die in earnest.

To illustrate these basic categories, Herman and Peterson conducted exhaustive database searches for usage of the word 'genocide' by some of the major English-language print media in reference to what they call "theaters of atrocities." 

The three tables they have compiled for the book are something to behold. 
Table 1 is titled "Differential attributions of 'genocide' to different theaters of atrocities," and Table "Differential Use of 'Massacre' and 'Genocide' for Benign and Nefarious Atrocities;" Table 2 focuses on different aspects of Iraq specifically. 

The various "theaters of atrocities" include but are not limited to Iraq, the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, the Tutsi of Rwanda, the Hutu and other peoples of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the peoples of western Sudan (Darfur). 

In one of the more impressive empirical confirmations of a hypothesis readers are likely to find anywhere, the results of Herman and Peterson's database research are both predictable and appalling: In case after case, major English-language newspapers such as the New York Times and The Guardian (as well as countless others) used the word 'genocide' in a manner that would have been approved of by the State Department, linking it consistently to toponyms like Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and Darfur, but rarely if ever to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, whether Iraq during the "sanctions of mass destruction" era (1990-2003) or since the U.S. invasion and military occupation (from 2003 onward).

There are, in the terms introduced by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky years earlier, "worthy" and "unworthy" victims in the system of "atrocities management," and each and every victim's worthiness rises or falls depending on who's doing the killing - official enemies or we ourselves.

Again, to elaborate: The worthiness of a victim to elicit concern and support depends not on the victim himself but on the "worthiness" of the perpetrator. "Good" perpetrators - the U.S. and its allies - are eo ipso incapable of bad actions, therefore anyone on the receiving end of an American bomb or cruise missile is inherently unworthy.

Genocide, murder on a grand scale, is treated not with the urgency and gravity the subject warrants but as the theme of a near-comic book morality play. We and they, good and bad.

An analogous bias exists, the authors detail, in relation to the work of the International Criminal Court and even more so with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The latter two are nothing other than the embodiment and institutionalization of great power victor's justice and the first is used by the U.S. against recalcitrant states on Washington's enemies list. (In the Foreword to The Politics of Genocide, Chomsky cites the Greek historian Thucydides, who placed in the mouth of an Athenian the immortal words: "you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.")

International courts doing the bidding of the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization cohorts do not, Herman and Peterson point out, address the greatest cause of suffering brought about through human agency: Wars of aggression. Although borrowing their lexicon from the Nuremberg Principles - for example, "war crimes" and "crimes of humanity" - while adding "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" (with the last two used all but interchangeably), Western states are highly selective and equally self-serving in their interpretation of the Nuremberg Tribunal, the model for prosecuting international crimes of violence.

Principle VI, the gist of the Nuremberg indictments, states:

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a) Crimes against peace:

(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;

(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

(b) War crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

(c) Crimes against humanity:

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

The U.S. and its Western allies, which launched three wars of aggression in less than four years (Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003) with the forced displacement of millions of civilians, have deliberately chosen to ignore the core proscription of the Nuremberg Trials, that against waging wars of aggression, "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Principle VII says that "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."

To relentlessly prosecute lesser crimes while perpetrating and abetting greater ones is the prerogative of the "world's sole military superpower" (from Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech) and its allies. Governments of small, weak countries not sufficiently toeing Washington's line are threatened with prosecution for actions occurring within and not outside their borders and the only "war crimes" trials conducted are also exclusively in response to strictly internal events. By design and selective enforcement, the new system of international law is what Balzac said of the law of his time, that it is a spider web through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

Herman and Peterson have studied the above contrasts, what most often are an inversion of justice and not simply its distortion or selective implementation, in several locations: The Balkans, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America, examining the most salient examples in each locale to demonstrate the unconscionable dichotomy of "good"
and bad genocides.

In one of the most penetrating sections of the book, the authors study the differential approach of the U.S. in the contexts of both space and time; that is, how the suppression of the Kurdish movement has been treated in relation to Iraq as opposed to Turkey, and in Iraq from one decade to the next depending on whether the same head of state (Saddam Hussein) was a U.S. ally or adversary at the time.

Not a matter of what is right or wrong, not even of who does what to whom, but solely one of what advances America's narrow and cynical geopolitical agenda.

Their model, however, possesses relevance to developments in other nations beyond those studied in The Politics of Genocide. Colombia, for example, and Western Sahara. 

Also to Kosovo after 50,000 U.S. and NATO troops marched in eleven years ago and hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Roma (Gypsies) and other ethnic minorities were forced to flee the Serbian province. 

Onslaughts against the people of South Ossetia two years ago this August by preeminent U.S. client Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia and against the Houthi minority community in northern Yemen with military backing from Saudi Arabia and the U.S. would be examples of Benign attempts to exterminate entire peoples, to commit genocide.

During the generation following the end of the Cold War and the triumph of global neoliberalism, enough genuine problems have weighed upon humanity. With the privatization of increasingly broad sectors of former state functions and the concomitant economic dislocation of a large percentage of the population, and with the penetration of rapacious transnational financial and corporate interests, tens of millions - perhaps hundreds of millions - of people in poor countries have fled the countryside to the large cities. Millions more have attempted the desperate and often deadly migration to the global North. The last twenty years have witnessed the largest Völkerwanderung in history.

In that context competition for natural and other resources takes on a drastic intensity, and conflicts based on residual ethnic, religious and regional suspicions and strife can be too easily revived and inflamed. The potential for communal, for inter-ethnic, violence is a power keg that must not be ignited.

The willful exacerbation and exploitation of such conflicts by outside powers to achieve broader geostrategic objectives add a greater degree of peril, one of regional conflicts that could expand into wider wars and even a showdown between the U.S. and nuclear powers like Russia and China.

The 78-day bombing war waged by the U.S. and NATO against Yugoslavia in 1999 in the name of "stopping genocide," the "worst genocide since Hitler," coincided with the induction of the first former Warsaw Pact member states into the Alliance (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) and resulted in the building of a mammoth U.S. military base, Camp Bondsteel, in Kosovo and NATO's absorption and penetration of all of Southeastern Europe. Every country in the region but Serbia (for the time being) now has troops serving under the military bloc in Afghanistan.

The crisis in Darfur in western Sudan gave rise to NATO's first operation in Africa, the airlifting of African Union troops from 2005-2007. At the end of 2007 the first U.S. military command established outside North America since the Cold War, Africa Command, was launched.

In the same year and in the name of opposing genocide, a self-styled "March for Darfur" was held in Berkeley, California - a birthplace of the anti-Vietnam War protest movement forty years before - in which participants adapted a standard anti-war chant - "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!" - to "What do we want? NATO! When do we want it? Now!"

At the end of the day military actions, including full-fledged wars, conducted by the U.S. and NATO in part or in whole to ostensibly "end genocide" will produce more deaths, more mass-scale displacement, and more expulsion and extermination of endangered minorities as has happened over the past eleven years in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. More genocide. The genuine article.

Questions about the intentional and systematic extermination of a people are not to be taken lightly. Neither are they to be dealt with as yet another weapon in the arsenal of history's mightiest military power for use against defenseless adversaries. The U.S. government and its highly selective "genocide" echo chambers are adept at seeing the mote in their neighbor's eye, but are blind to the mountain of corpses produced by Washington and its proxies. Myopia passing into active complicity.

In documenting the diametrically opposite manner in which the subject of genocide is treated by the government of the United States and its apologists (acknowledged and otherwise) based on international political and economic motives, Herman and Peterson have provided a simultaneously concise and comprehensive guidebook to separating fact
from fabrication. Truth is the first casualty of war and war is in turn the offspring of falsehood. Exposing the last contributes to eroding the foundation for U.S. armed aggression and global military expansion.

*The Politics of Genocide is available from:

http://monthlyreview.org/books/politicsofgenocide.php
http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Genocide-Edward-Herman/dp/1583672125/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282965484&sr=1-3

2.

U.S. Afghan Death Toll Reaches All-Time Annual High

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:30 pm (PDT)



http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/09/01/18256849.html

Voice of Russia
September 1, 2010

US Afghan death toll hits record in 2010

The US death toll in Afghanistan hit a record 323 soldiers during the first 8 months of 2010 compared to 317 killed in 2009. This is the highest rate since the beginning of the campaign in 2001. In August, NATO forces had 80 officers and men killed, 56 of them Americans.

The overall death toll for foreign troops reached 490 in August 2010.

The losses were caused by increased activity of the Taliban insurgents. 
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3.

NATO & Poland: Afghan War Vs. Arms Buildup In Northeast Europe

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:31 pm (PDT)



http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1581645.php/Afghan-mission-costs-hinder-Polish-army-modernization-president

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
September 1, 2010

Afghan mission costs hinder Polish army modernization: president

Brussels: Poland's participation in the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan is so expensive that it is hampering efforts to modernize the country's armed forces, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said on Wednesday, on his first visit to NATO headquarters.

Poland is still trying to reform and modernize its armed forces some two decades after the fall of Communism. It has 2,630 troops in Afghanistan, the seventh-largest Western contingent in the country and by far the largest from Central and Eastern Europe.

'The problem is that the cost of Poland's engagement in out-of-area operations ... is so significant that it is having an impact on the modernization of the armed forces,' Komorowski said after talks with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Poland therefore wants NATO to 'define a strategy for putting an end to the military presence in Afghanistan' as soon as possible, preferably at a summit in Lisbon on November 19-20, he said.

NATO currently has close on 120,000 soldiers in Afghanistan....The year has already seen bloody fighting, and more casualties are expected.

That comes as NATO members are struggling to keep public support for the mission and are facing deep cuts in their defence budgets as a result of the financial crisis.

But despite the constant flow of casualties, 'We are making progress in Afghanistan: today, we have cleared areas, we're holding areas where the Taliban had control before,' Rasmussen stressed.
....
November's summit is also expected to approve a new strategic doctrine to guide NATO's policies over the next decade.

That doctrine should focus on planning to defend NATO members against future attacks, rather than looking at more out-of-area operations, Komorowski said.
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4.

NATO Deploys More Bosnian Troops To Afghanistan

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:31 pm (PDT)



http://www.thenews.com.pk/latest-news/619.htm

News International
September 1, 2010

Bosnia to send more troops to Afghanistan

SARAJEVO: Bosnia's parliament on Wednesday approved the deployment of more troops to Afghanistan, where it has already a small contingent of soldiers, National Radio reported.

The decision clears the way for the planned deployment of 45 troops of Bosnia-Hercegovina's armed forces to serve with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.

The unit was expected to leave for Afghanistan in October, the report said.

Bosnia, which hopes to join NATO, sent 10 officers to serve with ISAF in 2009.

A European Union peacekeeping mission, numbering around 2,000 troops, remains in Bosnia in the wake of its 1992-1995 war.
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5.

South Caucasus: Several Killed In Armenian-Azerbaijani Clashes

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:31 pm (PDT)



http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/342135,fighting-volatile-south-caucasus.html

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
September 1, 2010

Several killed in fighting in volatile South Caucasus

Yerevan: The former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan on Wednesday blamed each other for fatal clashes in the Armenian-backed breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, with the two sides giving conflicting casualty figures.

According to Armenia, four Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in the fighting on Tuesday. However, Azerbaijan said two of its own soldiers were killed, along with three Armenian soldiers.

In again conflicting reports, the defence ministry of the internationally unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic said only one Armenian soldier had been injured.

The South Caucasus area was the scene of heavy clashes in June. At the time, four Armenian soldiers were killed. Clashes resulting in deaths and injuries have been ongoing in the region despite a 1994 ceasefire deal.

Russia recently pledged military assistance for Armenia in the event of an attack by Azerbaijan, in the conflict that has been simmering since the Soviet era.

Earlier, Azerbaijan had made the use of force to resolve the question of Nagorno-Karabakh part of its official military doctrine. Under international law, Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan, but the region has been controlled by Armenia, following a conflict that claimed 30,000 lives in the mid-1990s.
----------------------------------------------------------
http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=128929

Azeri Press Agency
September 1, 2010

Seyran Ohanyan: The protocol has strengthened Russia-Armenia political cooperation

Yerevan: "The protocol on the extension of the term of deployment of Russia's military base in Gyumri meets Armenia's interests," Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan told journalists, APA reports.

According to him, the document has strengthened Russia-Armenia political cooperation.

"It creates opportunities to make resistance to the threats in future. In the present stage structural and functional changes are being made at the Gyumri base. After the reforms are completed, we will jointly fulfill the tasks envisaged in the protocol," he said.
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6.

U.S. Warplanes Take Over NATO Baltic Patrol

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:31 pm (PDT)



http://www.usafe.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123220112

United States Air Forces in Europe
September 1, 2010

493rd EFS stands up in Lithuania
by Tech. Sgt. Chris Stagner
48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs

-"As members of NATO, we work shoulder to shoulder to support Afghanistan and other operations," General Pocius said. "It's a strong alliance."

LITHUANIA AIR FORCE AIR BASE, Lithuania: The 493rd Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, deployed from RAF Lakenheath, England, assumed command of the NATO Baltic air policing mission from the Polish air force at Lithuania Air Force Air Base on September 1, 2010.

The squadron, comprised of approximately 125 people, is responsible for ensuring the air sovereignty of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia for the next four months.

This is the third time since 2004 the U.S. Air Force has accomplished this mission and the second time it's been the 493rd EFS's responsibility.

"The Grim Reapers have already established a legacy of professionalism in the Baltics, and we look forward to building upon it," said Anne Derse, U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania. "As all warriors know, the surest way to maintain peace is to exercise constant vigilance and rigorously prepare to meet all potential threats. The Baltic air policing mission is just one of many facets of NATO's vigilance and preparation. This is a mission we take seriously and take on with pride."

The mission turnover from Poland to America is an example of the strong relationships America has with its NATO allies.

"Our relationship with the Baltic nations has grown remarkably since the inception of the Air policing mission," said Maj. Gen. Mark Zamzow, 3rd Air Force vice commander.

The general went on to explain that a 2008 endeavor designed to provide complex air policing training has since evolved with a broader scope emphasizing a wide spectrum of air operations over Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
....
Republic of Latvia Chief of Defence Maj. Gen. Raimonds Graube emphasized the importance of the NATO relationship that makes the air policing mission possible.

"It's been more than six years since we started the Baltic air policing mission, and it's an example of our solidarity [as allied partners]," he said. "It shows we are ready to work together to support our allies."

Republic of Lithuania Chief of Defence Maj. Gen. Arvydas Pocius agreed.

"As members of NATO, we work shoulder to shoulder to support Afghanistan and other operations," General Pocius said. "It's a strong alliance."
....
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7.

West's Energy War: Trans-Caspian/Caucasus Oil Transit To Double

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:31 pm (PDT)



http://en.apa.az/news.php?id=128952

Azeri Press Agency
September 1, 2010

Oil transportation via Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan-Georgia energy corridor to be doubled
Nijat Mustafayev


Baku: Oil transportation via the Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan-Georgia energy corridor will be doubled, SOCAR president Rovnag Abdullayev told APA.

According to him this issue was discussed in a meeting of delegations from Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan in Tbilisi. "Kazakhstan intends to extend and change this energy corridor...in the future. The oil transportation via this corridor will be doubled to 2 mln tons while it is 10 mln tons, now."

He also noted that Azerbaijan would improve the railway in the country and $1 bln would be invested in development of railway in the future.
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8.

NATO Air Strike Kills, Wounds Afghan Civilians

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:31 pm (PDT)



http://www.presstv.ir/detail/140894.html

Press TV
September 1, 2010

US-led strike kills more Afghan civilians

Another US-led airstrike has killed several civilians in Afghanistan's troubled south, amid growing public discontent over such attacks.

Afghan provincial officials say at least a dozen people were also injured in the attack, which took place in Kandahar Province on Wednesday, a press TV correspondent reported.

NATO has yet to comment on the incident.

The incident comes after foreign troops killed three civilians and injured three others in the southern province of Helmand.

The US-led military alliance says two women died on Tuesday during an airstrike against alleged Taliban militants.

Another civilian was killed in a separate NATO attack in the same region.

Most of the NATO forces in Helmand are British and American service members.

Loss of civilian lives at the hands of foreign forces has caused anti-American sentiments and deep anger among Afghans.

Thousands have taken to the streets in recent months, protesting against rising civilian deaths by US-led forces.
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9.

Canada: Soldiers Injured Training For Afghan War

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:31 pm (PDT)



http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2010/08/31/edmonton-soldiers-injured-wainwright.html

CBC News
August 31, 2010

Soldiers hurt in Alberta training exercise

Two soldiers injured in a live-fire training exercise Monday at CFB Wainwright are recovering in an Edmonton hospital.

The soldiers, who have been listed in stable condition, are members of the 1st Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment, based in Valcartier, Que.

They are part of a group of more than 3,500 involved in a training exercise in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan.

The names of the soldiers and the type and extent of their injuries are being withheld by the military under privacy legislation.

The incident is being investigated by the military.

CFB Wainwright is located about 200 kilometres southeast of Edmonton.
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10.

The Anti-Empire Report

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 2:50 pm (PDT)



http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer85.html
 
The Anti-Empire Report
September 1st, 2010
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
Things which don't go away. Things the American government and media don't let go of.
And neither do I.
Iraq
"They're leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts," declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in Iraq. 1
 
It's enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up.
Enough to make him forget.
 
But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured ... the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives ... More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile ... The air, soil, water,
blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium ... the most awful birth defects ... unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up ... an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia ... a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris ... through a country that may never be put back together again.
"It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003," reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.
 
No matter ... drum roll, please ... Stand tall American GI hero! And don't even think of ever apologizing. Iraq is forced by the United States to continue paying reparations for its own invasion of Kuwait in 1990. How much will the American heroes pay the people of Iraq?

"Unhappy the land that has no heroes ...
No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes."
– Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo
 
"What we need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war; something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved to be incompatible."
– William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Perhaps the groundwork for that heroism already exists ... February 15, 2003, a month before the US invasion of Iraq, probably the largest protest in human history, between six and ten million protesters took to the streets of some 800 cities in nearly sixty countries across the globe.
 
Iraq. Love it or leave it.
PanAm 103
The British government recently warned Libya against celebrating the one-year anniversary of Scotland's release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan who's the only person ever convicted of the 1988 blowing up of PanAm flight 103 over Scotland, which took the lives of 270 largely Americans and British. Britain's Foreign Office has declared: "On this anniversary we understand the continuing anguish that al-Megrahi's release has caused his victims both in the U.K. and the U.S. He was convicted for the worst act of terrorism in British history. Any celebration of al-Megrahi's release would be tasteless, offensive and deeply insensitive to the victims' families."
 
John Brennan, President Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, stated that the United States has "expressed our strong conviction" to Scottish officials that Megrahi should not remain free. Brennan criticized what he termed the "unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision" to allow Megrahi's return to Libya on compassionate grounds on Aug. 20, 2009 because he had cancer and was not expected to live more than about three months.
 
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement saying that the United States "continues to categorically disagree" with Scotland's decision to release Megrahi a year ago. "As we have expressed repeatedly to Scottish authorities, we maintain that Megrahi should serve out the entirety of his sentence in prison in Scotland." 2 The US Senate has called for an investigation and family members of the crash victims have demanded that Megrahi's medical records be released. The Libyan's failure to die as promised has upset many people.
 
But how many of our wonderful leaders are upset that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi spent eight years in prison despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that he had anything to do with the bombing of flight 103? The Scottish court that convicted him knew he was innocent. To understand that just read their 2001 "Opinion of the Court", or read my analysis of it at killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm.
 
As to the British government being so upset about Libya celebrating Megrahi's release — keeping in mind that it strongly appears that UK oil deals with Libya played more of a role in his release than his medical condition did — we should remember that in July 1988 an American Navy ship in the Persian Gulf, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane, taking the lives of 290 people; i.e., more than died from flight 103. And while the Iranian people mourned their lost loved ones, the United States celebrated by handing out medals and ribbons to the captain and crew of the Vincennes. 3 The shootdown had another consequence: It inspired Iran to take revenge, which it did in December of that year, financing the operation to blow up PanAm 103 (carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine –- General Command).
Why do they hate us?
Passions are flying all over the place concerning the proposed building of an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from 9/11 Ground Zero in New York. Even people who are not particularly anti-Muslim think it would be in bad taste, offensive. But implicit in all the hostility is the idea that what happened on that fateful day in 2001 was a religious act, fanatic Muslims acting as Muslims attacking infidels. However — even if one accepts the official government version of 19 Muslims hijacking four airliners — the question remains: Why did they choose the targets they chose? If they wanted to kill lots of American infidels why not fly the planes into the stands of packed football or baseball stadiums in the midwest or the south? Certainly a lot less protected than the Pentagon or the financial center of downtown Manhattan. Why did they choose symbols of US military might and imperialism? Because it was not a religious act, it was a political
act. It was revenge for decades of American political and military abuse in the Middle East. 4 It works the same all over the world. In the period of the 1950s to the 1980s in Latin America, in response to continuous hateful policies of Washington, there were countless acts of terrorism against American diplomatic and military targets as well as the offices of US corporations; nothing to do with religion.
 
Somehow, American leaders have to learn that their country is not exempt from history, that their actions have consequences.
Afghanistan
In their need to defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many Americans have cited the severe oppression of women in that desperate land and would have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor ladies. However, in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they'll ever have under the current government, more perhaps than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning women: "provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men"; "abolished forced marriages"; "bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs"; "extensive literacy programs, especially for women"; "putting girls and boys in the same
classroom"; "concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics". 5
 
The overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of an Islamic fundamentalist regime, followed by the awful Taliban. And why did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Mainly because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire — "We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War", said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Adviser. 6
 
The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.
Cuba
Why does the mainstream media routinely refer to Cuba as a dictatorship? Why is it not uncommon even for people on the left to do the same? I think that many of the latter do so in the belief that to say otherwise runs the risk of not being taken seriously, largely a vestige of the Cold War when Communists all over the world were ridiculed for following Moscow's party line. But what does Cuba do or lack that makes it a dictatorship? No "free press"? Apart from the question of how free Western media is, if that's to be the standard, what would happen if Cuba announced that from now on anyone in the country could own any kind of media? How long would it be before CIA money — secret and unlimited CIA money financing all kinds of fronts in Cuba — would own or control most of the media worth owning or controlling?
 
Is it "free elections" that Cuba lacks? They regularly have elections at municipal, regional and national levels. Money plays virtually no role in these elections; neither does party politics, including the Communist Party, since candidates run as individuals.7 Again, what is the standard by which Cuban elections are to be judged? Most Americans, if they gave it any thought, might find it difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic election, without great concentrations of corporate money, would look like, or how it would operate. Would Ralph Nader finally be able to get on all 50 state ballots, take part in national television debates, and be able to match the two monopoly parties in media advertising? If that were the case, I think he'd probably win; and that's why it's not the case. Or perhaps what Cuba lacks is our marvelous "electoral college" system, where the presidential candidate with the most votes is not necessarily the winner. If we
really think this system is a good example of democracy why don't we use it for local and state elections as well?
Is Cuba a dictatorship because it arrests dissidents? Thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent years, as in every period in American history. Many have been beaten by police and mistreated while incarcerated.
 
And remember: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. (This is documented by Cuba in a 1999 suit against the United States detailing $181.1 billion in compensation for victims: the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding or disabling of 2,099 others. The Cuban suit has been in the hands of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the United Nations since 2001, a committee made up of all 15 members of the Security Council, which of course includes the United States, and which may account for the inaction on the matter.)
 
Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and engaging in repeated meetings with known members of that organization? In recent years the United States has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents' ties to the United States.
 
Virtually all of Cuba's "political prisoners" are such dissidents. While others may call Cuba's security policies dictatorship, I call it self-defense.8
The terrorist list
As casually and as routinely as calling Cuba a dictatorship, the mainstream media drops the line into news stories that "Hezbollah [or Hamas, or FARC, etc.] is considered a terrorist group by the United States", stated as matter-of-factly as saying that Hezbollah is located in Lebanon. Inclusion on the list limits an organization in various ways, such as its ability to raise funds and travel internationally. And inclusion is scarcely more than a political decision made by the US government. Who is put on or left off the State Department's terrorist list bears a strong relation to how supportive of US or Israeli policies the group is. The list, for example, never includes any of the anti-Castro Cuban groups or individuals in Florida although those people have carried out literally hundreds of terrorist acts over the past few decades, in Latin America, in the US, and in Europe. As you read this, the two men responsible for blowing up a Cuban airline in
1976, taking 73 lives,
 
Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, are walking around free in the Florida sunshine. Imagine that Osama bin Laden was walking freely around the Streets of an Afghan or Pakistan city taking part in political demonstrations as Posada does in Florida. Venezuela asked the United States to extradite Posada five years ago and is still waiting.
 
Bosch and Posada are but two of hundreds of Latin-American terrorists who've been given haven in the United States over the years. 9 Various administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have also provided close support of terrorists in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, including those with known connections to al Qaeda. Yet, in the grand offices of the State Department sit learned men who list Cuba as a "state sponsor of terrorism", along with Syria, Sudan and Iran. 10 That's the complete list.
 
Meanwhile, the five Cubans sent to Miami to monitor the anti-Castro terrorists are in their 12th year in US prisons. The Cuban government made the very foolish error of turning over to the FBI the evidence of terrorist activities gathered by the five Cubans. Instead of arresting the terrorists, the FBI arrested the five Cubans (sic).
Steroids
"Hall of Shamer: Clemens Indicted" — page one headline in large type about fabled baseball pitcher Roger Clemens charged with lying to Congress about his use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. 11 Of all the things that athletes put into their bodies to improve their health, fitness and performance, why are steroids singled out?
 
Doesn't taking vitamin and mineral supplements give an athlete an advantage over athletes who don't take them? Should these supplements be banned from sport competition?
 
Vitamin and mineral supplements are not necessarily any more "natural" than steroids, which in fact are very important in our body chemistry; among the steroids are the male and female sex hormones. Moreover, why not punish those who follow a "healthy diet" because of the advantage this may give them?
Notes

Washington Post, August 19, 2010 ↩
Associated Press, August 21, 2010 ↩
Newsweek, July 13, 1992 ↩
See chapter one of Blum's book Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower↩
US Department of the Army, Afghanistan, A Country Study (1986), pp.121, 128, 130, 223, 232 ↩
See Brzezinski's Wikipedia entry ↩
See Anti-Empire Report of September 25, 2006, 3rd item, for more information about the Cuban election process ↩
For a detailed discussion of Cuba's alleged political prisoners see article 'Cuba and the Number of "Political Prisoners"', Huffington Post, August 24th 2010 ↩
Rogue State, Chapter 9 ↩
See State Department: www.state.gov/s/ct/c14151.htm ↩
The Examiner (Washington, DC), August 20, 2010 ↩
===========================
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11.

Canada: U.S. Joint Strike Fighters Vs Russia, For NATO Use

Posted by: "Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff@yahoo.com   rwrozoff

Wed Sep 1, 2010 3:49 pm (PDT)



http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/military-sees-f-35s-stealth-as-way-to-assert-sovereignty/article1692076/

Globe and Mail
September 1, 2010

Military sees F-35's stealth as way to assert sovereignty
Plane's ability to remain undetected will deter Russian bombers – or any other adversary – from violating Canada's airspace, head of air force says
Campbell Clark

-The F-35s can be used against any adversary that emerges over the decades, as the aircraft will remain in service for 30 years or more after they enter service in 2017, Gen. Deschamps said.
"Who knows 50 years from now? Who knows what the North Koreans will be up to? The Iranians?" he said.
-The plane will also be able to provide air support for troops fighting insurgents in a place like Afghanistan....[A]nalysts say the argument that stealth capability is needed over Canada obscures the real reason for buying jets that will use the same data networks that allies have: to take part in air campaigns overseas.
No country other than Russia will be a potential threat in Canadian airspace for decades....Russia resumed long-range flights of its Cold War-era Tupolev bombers in 2007 in response to U.S. plans to develop a missile-defence system – demonstrating that even if its nuclear missiles could be knocked out by a shield, the bombers couldn't.

Canada needs stealth fighter jets so its military can sneak up on an adversary at the edges of domestic airspace and use that potential for surprise as a deterrent, the head of the air force says.

Lieutenant-General André Deschamps, the chief of the air staff, responded to critics of the government's planned purchase of high-tech F-35 stealth fighters by asserting that the aircraft will provide a needed capability for defence at home, and not just for fighting air battles abroad.

"If they can't detect us and don't know where we are, it dramatically changes their potential tactics. So it is a deterrent," Gen. Deschamps said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

The untendered purchase of 65 F-35s to replace the existing fleet of CF-18s has sparked criticism that at a price of $9-billion plus about $7-billion in maintenance costs, they are more plane than Canada needs.

The Harper government has pointed to recent flights of Russian long-range bombers near Canadian airspace in the Arctic and off the east coast – intercepted by CF-18s – to assert the need for top-notch fighters.

Gen. Deschamps said he's not seeking to amplify "the noise around the Russians," but pointed to the interceptions to argue that the F-35s will let the Canadian Forces observe foreign planes unseen, and the potential surprise will deter interlopers.
....
The F-35s can be used against any adversary that emerges over the decades, as the aircraft will remain in service for 30 years or more after they enter service in 2017, Gen. Deschamps said.

"Who knows 50 years from now? Who knows what the North Koreans will be up to? The Iranians?" he said.

Gen. Deschamps said the F-35's ability to operate with allies that have the same plane – it was developed by the Joint Strike Fighter program – will be an advantage in air battles abroad. The plane will also be able to provide air support for troops fighting insurgents in a place like Afghanistan – if cheaper unmanned drones aren't available – giving Canada the "best value" for money.

Stealth fighters are designed to be undetectable by radar, and the F-35 uses "low-emission" communications systems with hard-to-detect signals.

But some analysts say the argument that stealth capability is needed over Canada obscures the real reason for buying jets that will use the same data networks that allies have: to take part in air campaigns overseas.

No country other than Russia will be a potential threat in Canadian airspace for decades, said Philippe Lagassé, a defence analyst at the University of Ottawa. And the only reason Russia would send a fleet through Canada's airspace would be to launch a nuclear war against the United States and its allies, against which 65 fighters would be useless.

"Let's be clear: We're talking about the Russians here," Mr. Lagassé said. "And it would be thoroughly against all their national interests to ever contemplate sending a fleet of aircraft into our airspace."

Russia resumed long-range flights of its Cold War-era Tupolev bombers in 2007 in response to U.S. plans to develop a missile-defence system – demonstrating that even if its nuclear missiles could be knocked out by a shield, the bombers couldn't.

Stealth capability won't assert sovereignty against the occasional long-range Russian bomber that is intended to be seen, Mr. Lagassé said. "It doesn't fit with the threat environment. Let's be frank: The real value of this aircraft is inter-operability with allies overseas."
===========================
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