NATO 5-23-2012

23, May 2012                            NATO

NATO has increasingly been used as a US surrogate and serves as a cover for United States military operations, to provide the false belief that there is a united front on all the wars we choose to fight. For example, Austria has only 3 troops in Afghanistan but is nonetheless considered a NATO partner.  NATO is an outmoded military alliance which regards all conflicts and disputes solvable by pounding away with its awesome US led ‘hammer’ power. We have witnessed the utter failure of this approach with our decade old war in Afghanistan. How can the Afghan forces degrade the Taliban resistance fighters with the planned withdrawal of NATO forces in 2014? The small remnant of troops will be extremely vulnerable to the Afghan army who have weak loyalties to the Karzai government and have repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to NATO forces. Furthermore, a Taliban surge is likely to emerge in 2014. The partial withdrawal is largely a political decision to pacify the war hawks and those on the political left. If  Europe is concerned about its enemies it should invest in its own defense and not drain the US currency on futile projects such as the ‘star wars’ missile defense shield in Poland which has unnecessarily provoked a Russian threat of retaliation.  NATO undermines the goal of the United Nations Charter, which seeks to resolve regional disputes non-violently. It is a Cold War relic and has lost any shred of legitimacy.

JP Morgan 5-16-2012

16, May 2012             JP Morgan

It is baffling to understand how JP Morgan CEO Mamie Dimon can still retain his lofty position after he admitted that he and other bank executives repeatedly ignored warnings of extremely risky trades. Doesn’t the buck stop at Dimon’s desk? It seems as Dimon’s moral outrage was a carefully crafted to blunt public criticism. It is also puzzling why President Obama would choose the occasion to remind us that Dimon “is the smartest banker we’ve got’. If that is true, we are in big trouble.

Surely this is a wakeup call for more stringent regulations to rein Wall Street banks who regard investors’ money as their pile of gambling chips. Gambling is a serious addiction and executives are encouraged to place risky bets because their huge bonuses are directly tied to their banks profits. These large, - too big to fail - banks have a huge competitive advantage and pose a systemic risk to taxpayers. Our lawmakers need to legislate ‘anti-trust’ laws to downsize these banks to prevent another financial debacle. Let is bring back Glass-Steagall to separate commerce and investment banking and apply the Volker Rule which mandates more transparency in derivative trading. It is disappointing that JP Morgan stockholders didn’t raise Caine and demand an end to these obscene bonuses. Finally, in the interests of full disclosure, President Obama should have admitted that JP Morgan had given him a nice juicy check of $1 million to aid his re-election.

Afghanistan 5-9-2012

9, May 2012                                Afghanistan

There is little to cheer with the announcement that US troops are planning to stay in Afghanistan until 2024. This is bad for the troops who are yearning to return home from a mission that has been so ill-defined. This is sure to alienate the Afghan people who are war weary of our presence, night raids and drone attacks. Just this week, an Afghan mother and her five children were mistakenly killed and another 14 civilians were killed in another incident in Badghis. A 2011 poll taken by the International Council on Security and Development revealed over 80% opposed the NATO war efforts and viewed them to be detrimental to the Afghan people.  Contrary to President Obama’s assertions, the war is going very badly. See Colonel Davis’ unclassified report in Rolling Stone magazine, entitled “Dereliction of Duty II”, which draws a strong parallel to H.R. Masters’ classic report of Vietnam.

President Obama’s highly publicized visit to Afghanistan may win a few votes at home but will have little outcome on the war itself. We should not be subjecting the people of Afghanistan and US troops as pawns in the high stakes of the US presidential election. How much more blood will be shed on a war without purpose and without end?

Attempt to gag 60 Minutes 4-26-2012

26, April 2012            Attempt to gag 60 Minutes

Well the dirty secret is finally out. In a gross attempt to censor Bob Simon’s 60 Minutes report on Palestinian Christians, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren called the head of CBS news and made a clumsy attempt to quash the damning expose.

Simon’s report described the brutal displacement of Palestinian Christians and the colonization of their land by the Israeli military. Hitherto, the presence of Palestinians Christians has been carefully hidden from the American public.

We now learn that there are Palestinian Lutherans, Catholics and Episcopalians.

These followers of Christ are subjected to the same humiliating treatment as their Muslim brethren - akin to the treatment of apartheid South African blacks. For example, they have to seek travel permits and pass through numerous military check points for short 7 miles trips which often turn into an all-day ordeals.

60 Minutes showed the Separation Wall looming like a menacing Darth Vader over Palestinian hovels and shows the stark disparity between the living conditions and resources of Palestinians and Jewish settlers. Bethlehem, Jesus’s birthplace, has now been isolated by the wall. 18% of its inhabitants are Christian who complain bitterly that their city has been reduced to an “open-air prison.”

The West Bank now looks like a lump of Swiss cheese, with Israeli colonies grabbing the good land and water resources, and the stateless Palestinians pushed into the dark holes.

Why are our scarce tax dollars propping up this inhumane, apartheid system?

Massive Spying on Americans 4-23-2012

23, April 2012                        Massive Spying on Americans

The Department of Homeland Security is making Americans more and more insecure. Its tentacles reach far and wide into virtually all electronic communications. It is amassing huge amounts of data on Americans. It is extremely troubling that this this mammoth federal bureaucracy is able to conduct its business under the radar of Congressional oversight.

National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower William Binney revealed that, unbeknownst to most Americans, the NSA is building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. He reported his findings to reporter, James Bamford, who submitted a featured article of the NSA in Wired Magazine. The Bluffdale database contains virtually all privacy information – emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches – of all Americans. Nothing can be considered sacred anymore. Most troubling is the high handedness and intimidating tactics used by the NSA when confronting reporters at airport security centers demanding access to their laptops and cell phones.

Federal Regulators have now sanctioned the use of drones to cast an even wider net on domestic surveillance.

Such actions are a gross assault on free speech and privacy which should be fiercely protected by the US Constitution.  Unwarranted searches and seizures of cell phones and laptops are now becoming routine driving a huge stake into our cherished democracy. The potential for abuse is enormous. I urge concerned readers to write to their representatives in Congress and demand an end to these intrusions. Private communications should remain private.

Freedom Riders of Israel 4-17-2012

17, April 2012                        Freedom Riders of Israel

A Stanford ‘alum’ delivered a stirring speech at a recent conference held at Stanford University. Fadi Quran, and fellow Palestinian activists drew inspiration for their new protests from the historic Freedom Riders of the 1960s in the US Deep South in which black Americans boarded all white buses triggering mass arrests accelerating an end to racial segregation. U.S. Civil Rights lawyer Clarence Jones was present and thanked Quran for validating the Freedom Riders efforts and modeling his peaceful protests on their successful legacy. He acknowledged that it would take enormous courage and an unshakable commitment to non-violence to bring about a change of attitude to end the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians whose land is being forcibly annexed at an alarming pace. Quran was arrested for his non-violent activism which fueled an outcry for his release.

Brute force, aided and abetted with billions of US military and economic aid, may make any hope of a two-state solution a fading dream but Jones warned that such an outcome would result in Israel losing its very soul. Enlightened Jewish organizations, such as J Street, are extremely concerned of Israel’s current trajectory and are appealing for an end to the occupation and a return to the universal policies of justice on which Quran has founded his nonviolent movement.

Time magazine hailed Quran as the “the face of the new Middle East.”

US supporting terror group 4-15-2012

15, April 2012               US supporting terror group

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, reveals more of the dark side of our foreign policy in an article in the The New Yorker entitled "Our Men in Iran?"

Hersh reports that the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command has been actively engaged in training a shady group of political radicals, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, at a secret site in Nevada since 2005.  The MEK has been linked to violent crimes against Americans to the more recent wave of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and is designated a terrorist organization by the State Department.

Contrary to our public statements of being a beacon for freedom and democracy, we have perpetuated a cycle of internal chaos and mayhem inside Iran intensifying anger towards the US and Israel which according to Hersh is also supporting the MEK. He reiterates that, after exhaustive fact checking from US and Israeli intelligence, there is absolutely no evidence that Iran is engaged in making nuclear weapons.  There is little doubt that ordinary Iranians will rally around their leadership, which they may regard with utter revulsion - as a direct consequence to our economic sanctions and covert operations. How long are the American people going to tolerate and support these insane policies with their prolonged silence?

It is time we stopped violating the sanctity of other nations and interfering in their internal affairs and halted the constant threats and drumbeat of war.