Showing posts with label anti-war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anti-war. Show all posts

Tuesday, 4 March 2014

American Peace Activist beaten in Egypt

Ashley Wells, Wisdom QuarterlyMedea Benjamin, Amy Goodman (democracynow.org)
 
Medea Benjamin (codepink.org)
U.S. peace activist Medea Benjamin (codepink.org), author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, was detained Monday at Cairo’s airport by Egyptian police without explanation.

She says she was questioned, held overnight in an airport prison cell, and then violently handcuffed and brutalized by male Egyptian officials: 
 
Drone Warfare
They dislocated her shoulder, broke her arm, tore ligaments, and handcuffed her wrists so tightly that they bled. She was then forced on a plane and deported to Turkey, where she is now seeking medical treatment. Amy Goodman speaks to her by telephone from the airport medical facility. Benjamin was on her way to meet with international delegates before traveling on to Gaza for a women’s conference. 

Let's Stop the Next War Now
[(WQ) But the new military regime (US-friendly dictatorship), after the Muslim Brotherhood's Morsi was deposed, is very anti-Palestinian, whereas Benjamin and Code Pink are very pro-Palestinian and critical of Israeli war crimes, US imperialism, and CIA intervention in the geopolitical Middle East. All three conspire to make the captivity in the world's largest open air prison and abuse of Palestinians possible.] More
Ukraine4

Sunday, 26 January 2014

Peace on "Anti-War Radio" (audio)

Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Scott Horton (scotthorton.org), Anti-War Radio (1-26-14), Future Freedom Foundation (fff.org); G. Porter
Peace Buddha (papercraftsbyk/flickr.com)
 
Peace sign Buddha (BuddhaIsland.net)
What is the cause of war? It is not tribal differences. That only leads to skirmishes, swagger, and big talk. With forced conscription and seductive advertising, governments make war possible; with profit as the highest motive, corporations make war necessary. Our imperial adventures are actually industrial ventures, easy ways for a very few to make a great deal of money while the public pays for it.

We pay in cash, others with their lives. We send our sons and daughters into the machine; the other side has no choice but to defend themselves against our invasions. The UK taught us well, and the Romans, and the NAZIs, and the Vikings, and the Conquistadors... So we have a "military-industrial complex." A former president warned us about it, a current president keeps it going and growing, and who among us is paying any attention?

Freedom (fff.org)
Gareth Porter, an independent investigative journalist and historian, discusses Lt. Colonel Danny Davis’s whistleblowing on senior U.S. Army officials lying about progress in Afghanistan, why the Afghan army would rather make deals with the [CIA's] Taliban than fight them, and why David Petraeus’s claim to fame -- the 2007 U.S. War on Iraq “surge” -- is dubious.

Monday, 11 November 2013

No "Armistice" on US's global war on V Day

Take your psych meds and commit suicide if you don't "like" it, b-tch!! - Sir, yes, sir!
I should have killed that m@therf@&#$r for calling me a "b-itch" instead of taking it out on those Hajjis and Afghani civilians trying to defend themselves against us. God, I need a drink.

Today marks Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, now called "Veterans Day" to glorify war heroes and heroines in the US. It is a federal holiday that tries to encourage new recruits to sign up to go on killing missions and to honor, or at least pretend not to forget, about former US men and women who fought for America's military-industrial complex, the joint corporate-governmental organizations that keep war going.
 
Veterans continue to face extremely high levels of planned suicide (brought on by psychotropic medications that bring suicidality on as a known side effect, particularly after iatrogenic addiction to opioid painkillers), unemployment, homelessness, traumatic brain injury, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and homicidal and violent tendencies, particularly when someone secures a job in law enforcement upon returning and concealing one's traumatic brain injury and PTSD symptoms.
 
Racism makes war make sense (Occupy)
Since 2000, nearly 6,000 service members have experienced traumatic amputations from injuries caused by improvised explosive devices and other war-related dangers. Nearly one million active service members have been diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder since 2000; nearly half of those have been diagnosed with two or more. Alcoholism and pharmaceutical drug addiction, far from being counted as mental health disorders, are counted as "treatment" when they are causing and contributing to so much of the problem.

The Pentagon's pentagram where most wars are planned long in advance of a provocation. And if the MIC is not provoked, a pretext is developed. This is standard operating procedure.
  
Suicide is murder, too
According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an estimated 22 veterans take their own lives each day. These are just active duty service members; no one is counting former active duty members, whose suicide numbers are much higher. How many years does one have after returning from committing war crimes and getting insufficient to no help at all from the VA, what does anyone expect? The Pentagon is happy to drug anyone who asks for help, because numb zombies can hardly speak up about what America is doing. Whistleblowers are annihilated or "neutralized" for fear that they undermine morale and reduce recruiting numbers.

Last year, more US military personnel died by their own hands than the hands of others. On any given night, nearly 63,000 veterans are homeless. Many suffer chronic debilitating mental health problems. These numbers do not look at wars of old. This is from the new wave of conflicts in the pretext we all accept as the "war on terror," a tactic, making it endless war, having set up an "enemy" we could never exhaust. 

Sometimes ya have to burn a village.
Now war is permanent. No peace is at hand. No armistice is possible, because there is no one who could give up if they wanted to. So innocent noncombatants are targeted with drones, likely in the hopes that someone will come fight back. And that will be the enemy. It is like a bully going around pushing and killing other students, daring anyone to come do something about it, thus justifying the military-industrial complex's ongoing terror and war-making.

Democracy Now! was joined today by longtime writer and photographer Ann Jones, author of the new book, They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars—The Untold Story. More

No "Armistice" for Washington's Global War

I was raped for my service.
It was exactly 95 years ago: the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the moment when major hostilities in the charnel [ground] that was World War I ended. In 1919, November 11th officially became "Armistice Day" [marking the cessation of hostilities] in the United States. 

As it happened, though, major hostilities were suspended for just two brief decades before an even more devastating global war [was begun]. In 1954, nine years after World War II ended, with the previous "great" conflict having proved [to be] anything but -- as once advertised -- "the war to end all wars," and the memory of its armistice fading, the holiday was officially relabeled "Veterans Day" [War-makers Day].
  
Who is being charged for US govt's wars?
And so it has remained in the second half of the last century and the first 13 years of this one as those veterans piled up.
 
There were the ones from Korea, Vietnam [Cambodia, Laos, and secret wars elsewhere, leaving rarely a single year since the founding of the USA that it was not engaged in making war somewhere, usually in more than one place at a time], and too many American [kinetic or low-level conflict] interventions to mention. 

[There were also in the] new century -- from the disastrous counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan [with secret bombing runs over and the establishment of US military bases in Pakistan, Waziristan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan...with all eyes on nearby Iran]. (In Washington's conflicts in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, where the "soldiers" or "airmen" are generally drone-robots, there really are no veterans [except the Las Vegas remote controllers suffering PTSD for their war crimes].) More

Friday, 11 October 2013

"Military-Industrial Complex" = JSOC (video)

Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kolhatkar (UprisingRadio.org, Oct. 9, 2013); Jeremy Scahill, Rick Rowley (Dirty Wars)
What is the US MIC (military-industrial complex)? These militants are called JSOC.

Jeremy-scahill-dnstudio
Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley expose secret U.S. wars
Two major military raids in the newer parts of the American empire, Somalia and Libya, this past weekend made headlines when American forces attempted to kill or capture individuals deemed to be linked with various Al Qaeda "affiliates" (i.e., any and everyone accused of anything).

The raid in Somalia was unsuccessful but in Libya, it resulted in the capture of Abu Anas Al-Libi, who unusually may be brought back to the US for trial in connection with the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Dick Cheney lives on in cousin Obama
But who are the people (American terrorists, militants, warlords, Pentagon officials, CIA operatives) conducting these raids, and why are they acceptable to us the American public given that there is no congressional dialogue much less formal debate about them?

By attempting to answer this question, there came about a remarkable film called Dirty Wars: The WORLD is a Battlefield. Written by investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and filmed and directed by filmmaker Richard Rowley, "Dirty Wars" explores the shadowy world of US military terror stemming from tens of thousands of night raids on civilians, uncounted collateral drone bombings, presidential kill-lists, and extrajudicial assassinations. 
 
What started out as an investigation into a mysterious night raid in Gardez, Afghanistan, where innocent Afghan women and men were killed, ended up uncovering a covert force known as the Joint Special Operations Command or JSOC, which operates in countries like Yemen and Somalia (and anywhere around the world) where there has been no declaration of war.

Pretending Osama "Emmanuel Goldstein" bin Laden was still alive then assassinating him for a media win, then burying the evidence of the mistake at sea. CIA Psy Ops 1, World 0.

  
Mouthpiece for military-industrial complex
As Scahill and Rowley worked on the film, President Obama bragged about the assassination of Osama bin Laden, suddenly making JSOC one of the most talked about military units in the media.

What is most disturbing about the idea of a small unit of highly trained killers that answer directly to any president in the White House is that US citizens are being targeted, minors are being targeted, and some targets have actually committed no crime other than to exercise their right to free speech. More
  • VIDEO: Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield As the Senate holds its first-ever public hearing on drones and targeted killings, DN! turns to journalist Jeremy Scahill, who charts the expanding covert wars operated by the CIA and JSOC, the "Joint Special Operations Command," in countries from Somalia to Pakistan, including the US homeland. "I called it 'Dirty Wars' because..."
  • LIVE: Chris Hedges coming to Santa Monica
  • Lavabit: Refusing to give FBI "unrestricted" email access
  • Ladarlevison
    1984-style spying
    In August, Lavabit became the first technology firm to shut down rather than disclose information to the U.S. government. Owner Ladar Levison closed his encrypted email company after refusing to comply with a government effort to tap his customers’ private information. It has now been confirmed the FBI was targeting National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, who used Lavabit’s services. But Levison says that instead of just targeting Snowden, the government effectively wanted access to the accounts of 400,000 other Lavabit customers....
  • LIVE OCT 19: Amy Goodman at L.A. Green Festival Host of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman speaks at this year’s Los Angeles Green Festival, followed by a book signing of her latest book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope. Website
        Saturday, Oct. 2013, 2:00 pm
        LA Mart, 1933 Broadway #850,
        Los Angeles, CA 90007 (map)
  • LIVE OCT 24: Boston, Honoring Women of Action
  • LIVE NOV 07: San Francisco Green Festival
  • VIDEO: Jeremy Scahill on JSOC war on Yemen and US citizens From drone strikes to massacres, secret U.S. military actions inside Yemen are exposed in "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield," the new book (published in April) and documentary film by Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley, which opened this summer. Why Yemen, why kill American citizens for drone strikes? DN! speaks with Scahill about two key Yemenis profiled in the film.