On The Money
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On The Money
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6991
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Are American Presidents Entitled to Kill Foreigners?
Sudhan@12:40 CET
“When the President Does It That Means It’s Not Illegal”
By JAMES BOVARD
What is the common term for ordering soldiers to kill vast numbers of innocent people? A war crime.
But not when it is done on the command of the U.S. president. Killing innocent foreigners seems to
be a perk of the modern presidency–akin to the band’s playing “Hail to the Chief” when he enters the
room. Bush is revving up the war threats against Iran. Seymour Hersh reported in the current issue
of the New Yorker that the administration is advancing
plans to bomb many targets in Iran. British newspapers have confirmed that the Pentagon has a list
of thousands of bombing targets. Hardly anyone
claims that Iran poses a threat to the United States. Yet few people in Washington seem to dispute
the president’s right to attack Iran. It is as if the presidential whim is sufficient to justify blasting any
foreign nation that does not kowtow to the commands of the U.S. government.
Keep reading . . . 2 Comments Filed under Uncategorized October 7th, 2007
anthony @ 09:45
by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay Global Research October 5, 2007
“Justice is as strictly due between neighbor nations as between neighbor citizens. A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang.”Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
[Iran will react to a bombing attack by the Bush-Cheney administration] “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national-security adviser to President Jimmy Carter
“Israel made a large contribution to the decision to embark on this war. I know that on the eve of the war, [Ariel] Sharon said, in a closed conversation with senators, that if they could succeed in getting rid of Saddam Hussein, it would solve Israel’s security problems.”
Robert (Bob) Novak, veteran American reporter
“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Alan Greenspan, former Fed Chairman 1987-2006
“There are people in Washington … who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they’re looking for ten, 20, 50 years into the future … the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that ten years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq.” Jimmy Carter, former American President (February 3, 2006)
| October 10, 2007 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6991 |
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The Iraq Occupation and the Coming War Against Iran: Political Wickedness and Moral Bankruptcy
by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay
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Global Research, October 5, 2007
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"Justice is as strictly due between neighbor nations as between neighbor citizens. A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang."
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
[Iran will react to a bombing attack by the Bush-Cheney administration] “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national-security adviser to President Jimmy Carter
"Israel made a large contribution to the decision to embark on this war. I know that on the eve of the war, [Ariel] Sharon said, in a closed conversation with senators, that if they could succeed in getting rid of Saddam Hussein, it would solve Israel's security problems."
Robert (Bob) Novak, veteran American reporter
"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."
Alan Greenspan, former Fed Chairman 1987-2006
"There are people in Washington … who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they’re looking for ten, 20, 50 years into the future … the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that ten years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq."
Jimmy Carter, former American President (February 3, 2006)
How do you get out of a hole?
First of all, you stop digging. —This is the simple lesson that the Bush-Cheney White House has so much trouble understanding. For Bush and his neocon crowd, they are militarily occupying Iraq and they intend to remain there, no matter what. It doesn't matter that this immoral and illegal occupation has caused the death of more than one million Iraqis and killed more than 3000 American soldiers. And now, they want to escalate the Iraq war into a wider Middle East conflict involving Iran, thus making sure the United States will be involved militarily in that region of the globe for the next twenty years.
Nevertheless, the Bush-Cheney-Libby-Wolfowitz-Feith-Perle team, and their allies at the American Enterprise Institute and at the neocon Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), thought it was a win-win situation. They had decided they wanted a war under the clouds of 9/11, and nothing—truth, morality, reason or facts—could deter them from it. They were ready to lie a thousand times to achieve their goal. And they got it. But now the apprentice sorcerers do not know how to stop the infernal machine of destruction they have set in motion. They only know how to push forward and make a larger mess of it.
That type of improvisation and political wickedness is all too well confirmed by newly released transcripts of talks George W. Bush had with then-Spanish Prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, in February 22, 2003, a few weeks before the onset of the March 20, 2003 Iraq war. In these transcripts, it is shown that Bush had a criminal intent to launch a war of aggression against Iraq, no matter what, and that he turned down every Iraqi offer that would have avoided a murderous war that has killed more than one million people so far. This includes Saddam Hussein's offer to go into exile, and for Iraq to hold free and internationally-supervised elections as well as allowing armed foreign troops to conduct unfettered inspections for weapons of mass destruction. —But the Bush-Cheney regime of Neocons wanted war, and nothing could stop them. They wanted, above all, to put their hands on Iraq's oil wealth. This is a prime example of historical grand theft, political wickedness and moral bankruptcy. Thus, this war has nothing to do with the morality of the "Just War" theory. In fact, it violates all the canons of a just and unavoidable war.
Confronted with the abysmal cowardliness, moral corruption and incompetence of the Bush-Cheney administration, Americans, on the whole, are more intelligent and more moral than their current leaders, and a large majority of them (63%) think it's time for the United States to stop occupying illegally the country of Iraq and to stop murdering its citizens. Moreover, a good majority of them (54%) reject the blanket Bush-Cheney policy of aggression abroad, under the pretext of "preventive war".
Similarly, the U.S. Congress, the only government branch empowered by the U.S. Constitution to declare war, is officially on record as being against maintaining American troops in Iraq. First, the House of Representatives, on July 12, passed a bill, by a vote of 223 to 201, to withdraw American combat troops from Iraq by next April 1st. Second, in a July 18 vote, a majority of U.S. Senators voted 52 to 47 to bring home most American combat troupes from Iraq by May 1, 2008. —So, both the American people and the American Congress want this war to end, and soon.
But the truth is that Bush II does not give a hoot about American democratic opinion, as he openly demonstrated recently. And, he does not much care for the U.S. Congress either, or the courts for that matter. In fact, Bush has a deeply ingrained tendency to disregard the truth, the law and the U.S. Constitution.
In Iraq, the Bush-Cheney regime is still building "enduring" military bases in order to occupy Iraq militarily for decades to come. They even talk openly about the half-century American military presence in South Korea, as if this were a useful analogy.
At the end of the day, as Bush has said: "I do not need to explain". As the British magazine The Economist has warned, the world should beware of a President "who has little left to lose," the more so if he has hardly any moral principle and is indifferent to the opinions of the majority of Americans.
It is doubtful that a George W. Bush in denial and his delusional neocon advisors for permanent war will ever listen to reason and morality. To the contrary, the lame-duck president is still firing anybody who does not agree with him, while listening to chief Neocon Dick Cheney. The American people see that, and that is why nearly half of them want President George W. Bush to face impeachment, while about 54 percent of American adults now want the US House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney, because he is seen as the chief spreader of lies to launch the illegal Iraq War. As of now, there are twenty-one Congressmen who support the articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney contained in bill H Res 333 —If and when American troops leave Iraq, there will be fewer deaths because there will be fewer killers, both official soldiers and mercenaries.
The U.S. Congress should wake up before it is too late. When armaments are in the hands of immoral people, the danger is high that a nuclear war could be launched. Indeed, people in power who have no morality and no judgment can be expected to do anything, including killing millions of people, to save face.
According to polls, Americans are very dissatisfied with both major political parties because of their inability or their unwillingness to reflect the wishes of the people and to stop the immoral and illegal occupation of Iraq. In fact, more than two-thirds of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track, but nothing is being done about it. In fact, average Americans are losing hope that they will ever be heard by the Washington D.C. political nomenklatura that runs the government while paying scant attention to the people.
Rodrigue Tremblay is a Canadian economist who lives in Montreal; he can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com
Visit his blog site at:
www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/
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Rodrigue Tremblay is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Rodrigue Tremblay |
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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. To become a Member of Global ResearchThe CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com© Copyright Rodrigue Tremblay, thenewamericanempire.com/ , 2007 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6991 |
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http://www.psyche.com/psyche/links/2006.html
FYI I HERD THEY WERE CHANGING IT ...
Click on the link Google Earth:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MzdjnZqzqyQ&mode=related&search=
This is a base built for Navy Seal training in San Diego shown from .
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58,000 soldiers died fighting Communism in Vietnam as Secretary of State Kissinger says that Communism is "acceptable"
Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops - even as the war to drive back the Communists dragged on with mounting deaths.
The late U.S. president Richard Nixon's envoy told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai: "If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."
Kissinger's blunt remarks surfaced in a collection of papers from his years of diplomacy released Friday by George Washington University's National Security Archive. The collection was gathered from documents available at the U.S. government's National Archives and obtained through the research group's declassification requests.
Kissinger's comments appear to lend credence to the "decent interval" theory posed by some historians who said the United States was prepared to see Communists take over Saigon, as long as that happened long enough after a U.S. troop departure to save face.
I have to wonder if the families who lost their sons in Vietnam are heartened by the fact that America was able to "save face" due to their sacrifice?
These people are just numbers to the government. Cannon fodder, used to maintain some political balance of power. They are not fathers, and sons, daughters, grandchildren, cousins, nephews, uncles, aunts, sisters, or brothers. They are just numbers.
I know that I have been accused of being naive by some who feel that I don't see the big picture. But I think I do see the "big picture" and that picture is a picture of a species that prides itself on being completely evolved and yet still solves its problems with violence. We kill to maintain peace. Sounds insane doesn't it?
Look if I get attacked I will pound the person into the ground. I know, I have done it. But if I am disagreed with then I just use my intellect to try and convince them they are mistaken or walk away if it is apparent that I cannot change their minds. Why hurt them?
But my species sees nothing wrong with killing people who have a different religious belief or political agenda then their own. They use words like "Commie" or "raghead", or "camel jockey", or "Charlie" to make them seem less then human and then they kill them. They kill them!
Don't we owe it to ourselves to solve our differences in a more humane manner?
"Humane" sounds a lot like "human" to me.
# posted by Gryphen @ 7:49 AM 0 comments
FYI
2.
FYI
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/statement.htm
Zeitgeist was created as a non-profit filmiac expression to inspire people to start
looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very
often things are not what the population at large think they are.
The information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period of research
and the current Source page on this site lists the basic sources used / referenced.
Soon, an Interactive Transcript will be online with detailed footnotes and links so
exact sources and further research can be relayed.
Now, it's important to point out that there is a tendency to simply disbelieve
things that are counter to our understanding, without the necessary research
performed.
For example, some information contained in Part 1 and Part 3, specifically, is not
obtained by simple keyword searches on the Internet.
You have to dig deeper. For instance, very often people who look up "Horus" or
"The Federal Reserve" on the Internet draw their conclusions from very general
or biased sources.
Online encyclopedias or text book Encyclopedias often do not contain the information contained in Zeitgeist.
However, if one takes the time to read the sources provided, they will find that what
is being presented is based on documented evidence.
Any corrections, clarifications & further points regarding the film are found on the Clarifications page.
That being said, It is my hope that people will not take what is said in the film as the
truth, but find out for themselves, for truth is not told, it is realized.
Thank You http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/statement.htm
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Hazel Thompson for The New York Times
Maria Shuluba, 53, was raped by armed men near Bukavu, Congo, in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of a rape epidemic.
October 7, 2007
Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War
BUKAVU, Congo — Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients
tell him anymore.
Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive
and digestive systems are beyond repair.
“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South
Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”
Eastern Congo is going through another one of its convulsions of violence, and this time it seems that women are being systematically attacked on a scale never before seen here. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country. “The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity — it’s appalling.”
The days of chaos in Congo were supposed to be over. Last year, this country of 66 million people held a historic election that cost $500 million and was intended to end Congo’s various wars and rebellions and its tradition of epically bad government.
But the elections have not unified the country or significantly strengthened the Congolese government’s hand
to deal with renegade forces, many of them from outside the country. The justice system and the military still
barely function, and United Nations officials say Congolese government troops are among the worst offenders
when it comes to rape. Large swaths of the country, especially in the east, remain authority-free zones where civilians are at the mercy of heavily armed groups who have made warfare a livelihood and survive by raiding
villages and abducting women for ransom.
According to victims, one of the newest groups to emerge is called the Rastas, a mysterious gang of dreadlocked fugitives who live deep in the forest, wear shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles Lakers jerseys and are notorious for burning babies, kidnapping women and literally chopping up anybody who gets in their way.
United Nations officials said the so-called Rastas were once part of the Hutu militias who fled Rwanda after committing genocide there in 1994, but now it seems they have split off on their own and specialize in freelance cruelty.
Honorata Barinjibanwa, an 18-year-old woman with high cheekbones and downcast eyes, said she was kidnapped from a village that the Rastas raided in April and kept as a sex slave until August. Most of that time she was tied
to a tree, and she still has rope marks ringing her delicate neck. The men would untie her for a few hours each
day to gang-rape her, she said.
“I’m weak, I’m angry, and I don’t know how to restart my life,” she said from Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where she was taken after her captors freed her.
She is also pregnant.
While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo’s problem has metastasized
into a wider social phenomenon.
“It’s gone beyond the conflict,” said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become “almost normal.”
Malteser International, a European aid organization that runs health clinics in eastern Congo, estimates that it will treat 8,000 sexual violence cases this year, compared with 6,338 last year. The organization said that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women reported being sexually brutalized.
At Panzi Hospital, where Dr. Mukwege performs as many as six rape-related surgeries a day, bed after bed is filled with women lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, with colostomy bags hanging next to them because of all
the internal damage.
“I still have pain and feel chills,” said Kasindi Wabulasa, a patient who was raped in February by five men. The men held an AK-47 rifle to her husband’s chest and made him watch, telling him that if he closed his eyes, they would shoot him. When they were finished, Ms. Wabulasa said, they shot him anyway.
In almost all the reported cases, the culprits are described as young men with guns, and in the deceptively beautiful hills here, there is no shortage of them: poorly paid and often mutinous government soldiers; homegrown militias called the Mai-Mai who slick themselves with oil before marching into battle; members of paramilitary groups
originally from Uganda and Rwanda who have destabilized this area over the past 10 years in a quest for gold
and all the other riches that can be extracted from Congo’s exploited soil.
The attacks go on despite the presence of the largest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 17,000 troops.
Few seem to be spared. Dr. Mukwege said his oldest patient was 75, his youngest 3.
“Some of these girls whose insides have been destroyed are so young that they don’t understand what happened to them,” Dr. Mukwege said. “They ask me if they will ever be able to have children, and it’s hard to look into their eyes.”
No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can explain exactly why this is happening.
“That is the question,” said André Bourque, a Canadian consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo. “Sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide.”
Impunity may be a contributing factor, Mr. Bourque added, saying that very few of the culprits are punished.
Many Congolese aid workers denied that the problem was cultural and insisted that the widespread rapes were not the product of something ingrained in the way men treated women in Congolese society. “If that were the case, this would have showed up long ago,” said Wilhelmine Ntakebuka, who coordinates a sexual violence program in Bukavu.
Instead, she said, the epidemic of rapes seems to have started in the mid-1990s. That coincides with the waves of Hutu militiamen who escaped into Congo’s forests after exterminating 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide 13 years ago.
Mr. Holmes said that while government troops might have raped thousands of women, the most vicious attacks had been carried out by Hutu militias.
“These are people who were involved with the genocide and have been psychologically destroyed by it,” he said.
Mr. Bourque called this phenomenon “reversed values” and said it could develop in heavily traumatized areas that had been steeped in conflict for many years, like eastern Congo.
This place, one of the greenest, hilliest and most scenic slices of central Africa, continues to reverberate from the aftershocks of the genocide next door. Take the recent fighting near Bukavu between the Congolese Army and Laurent Nkunda, a dissident general who commands a formidable rebel force. Mr. Nkunda is a Congolese Tutsi who has accused the Congolese Army of supporting Hutu militias, which the army denies. Mr. Nkunda says his rebel force is simply protecting Tutsi civilians from being victimized again.
But his men may be no better.
Willermine Mulihano said she was raped twice — first by Hutu militiamen two years ago and then by
Nkunda soldiers in July. Two soldiers held her legs apart, while three others took turns violating her.
“When I think about what happened,” she said, “I feel anxious and brokenhearted.”
She is also lonely. Her husband divorced her after the first rape, saying she was diseased.
In some cases, the attacks are on civilians already caught in the cross-fire between warring groups.
In one village near Bukavu where 27 women were raped and 18 civilians killed in May, the attackers
left behind a note in broken Swahili telling the villagers that the violence would go on as long as
government troops were in the area.
The United Nations peacekeepers here seem to be stepping up efforts to protect women.
Recently, they initiated what they call “night flashes,” in which three truckloads of peacekeepers drive
into the bush and keep their headlights on all night as a signal to both civilians and armed groups that
the peacekeepers are there. Sometimes, when morning comes, 3,000 villagers are curled up on the
ground around them.
But the problem seems bigger than the resources currently devoted to it.
Panzi Hospital has 350 beds, and though a new ward is being built specifically for rape victims, the
hospital sends women back to their villages before they have fully recovered because it needs space
for the never-ending stream of new arrivals.
Dr. Mukwege, 52, said he remembered the days when Bukavu was known for its stunning lake views
and nearby national parks, like Kahuzi-Biega.
“There used to be a lot of gorillas in there,” he said. “But now they’ve been replaced by much more
savage beasts.”
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Last Update 2007-10-20 | CopyrightŠ Charles Mingus 2008 | |
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