35,000 citizens recently rallied on Okinawa opposing US military bases
There is much talk about whether the Okinawan delegation to DC will be successful in changing US policy.
Tag Archives: Military
Syria, what’s next for the U.S.?
After its capture of Palmyra, the Islamic State now controls over half the Syrian landmass and large parts of Iraq.
Ralph E. Stone Global News Centre
(SAN FRANCISCO) The U.S. finds itself between a rock and a hard place in the Syrian civil war. Russia has deployed warplanes and tanks to a base near Latakia, Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government. In the meantime, Iran ground troops have arrived in Syria. These troops would be backed by Assad’s Lebanese Hezbollah allies and by Shi’ite militia fighters from Iraq. Russia is providing air support for these ground troops.
The threats and costs of war
The direct and indirect costs of war
By John Scales Avery
(JUST) The costs of war, both direct and indirect, are so enormous that they are almost beyond comprehension. Globally, the institution of war interferes seriously with the use of tax money for constructive and peaceful purposes.
Today, despite the end of the Cold War, the world spends roughly 1.7 trillion (i.e. 1.7 million million) US dollars each year on armaments. This colossal flood of money could have been used instead for education, famine relief, development of infrastructure, or on urgently needed public health measures.
Before saying “Thank you for your service” to the next US combat vet, make sure you are not thanking one of these guys
Photo from: http://www.commondreams.org/author/tom-engelhardt
Things aren’t always how they seem. Many US combat veterans are sadistic murderers without question.
By Gary G. Kohls, MD
(DULUTH) And also try to not thank any of the Viet Nam veterans that testified in 1971 at the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War’s Winter Soldier Investigation in Detroit, Michigan (which the pro-war mainstream media blacked-balled). You will probably get an earful (unless the “thankee” happens to be Secretary of State John Kerry).
Exposing lies, telling the truth
In ‘Exposing Lies of the Empire’, Andre Vltchek documents, with chillingly violent detail, the sins of Christianity which has wanted converts (at the point of a gun if necessary) and does not tolerate, let alone ‘love thy neighbour’, when the neighbour is of a different faith.
Robert J. Burrowes Global News Centre
(TASMANIA) I have just read Andre Vltchek’s new book ‘Exposing Lies of the Empire’. http://badak-merah.weebly.com/exposing-lies-of-the-empire.html Let me tell you something about this book of 800 pages.
Vltchek writes with passion and poetry, describing the true horror experienced by the world at large, living at the gunpoint of the imperial powers, while also describing and drawing you into a world of progress, culture and refinement that exists in some places and, so we are tantalised, might exist elsewhere too and even, perhaps, one day for us all.
The poverty of relative deprivation
thirdmonk.net
Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence. - J. Kenneth Galbraith
William Annett Global News Centre
(DAYTONA BEACH) Jimmy Pattison is Vancouver’s only billionaire, absent Li-Kashing and one or two other trans-Pacific practitioners, those who have proselytized Vancouver since the British Hong Kong exodus in – what was it - 1999? But Jimmy is the perfect Canadian knock-off of the Steve Forbes model, as showcased each week in Forbes Mag’s monotonous litany of “richest” (“World’s Richest Teen-ager,” “World’s Richest Plumber,” and so on. )
OKINAWA: fighting to save nature and culture
Bruce Gagnon for Global News Centre
(BATH, Me.) The right-wing newspaper, Washington Times, ran a piece on Monday entitled “The other side to the Okinawa story: The ‘All Okinawa’ opposition to US military presence [occupation] is a leftist ruse”.The hit piece was written by Robert Eldridge (political affairs and public diplomacy officer, Marine Corps Installations Pacific on Okinawa). He wrote about the current visit of Okinawan Gov. Takeshi Onaga to Washington to express the demand of his people that the US government close the military bases on their island. Gov. Onaga was elected in a recent landslide vote by the citizens on Okinawa who have had more than enough of US bases, destruction of their environment and culture, and want them immediately closed.
In the Washington Times Eldridge commented:
Jade Helm: is the end-game martial law and detention of veterans and others?
youtube.com
Jade Helm 15 has generated widespread internet and alternative media concerns of U.S. troops conducting an unconventional warfare exercise in towns, some in civilian clothing and armed, in the Southwest and maybe across the U.S.
Robert O’Dowd Global News Centre
(SALEM) Dismissed as a hoax by the Army, the fears of ordinary patriotic Americans have not been dampened by the Army’s public relations presentations.
Americans support our troops but the use of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and service members from the military’s four branches to conduct an unconventional warfare exercise over 8-weeks across multiple states for the purpose of realistic training troops for deployment in foreign environments makes no sense unless the plan is to use these troops for real within the sovereign fifty United States.
Obama’s Jade Helm 15 formula for disaster?
Jade Helm should make every American pay attention and feel uneasy, especially since President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on December 31, 2011, codifying indefinite military detention without charge or trial into law for the first time in American history.
Tim King and Robert O’Dowd Global News Centre
(SALEM) The Jade Helm 15 exercise announced by the military for July 15th through September 15th is an unconventional warfare operation in nine states, involving Special Operations and 82nd Airborne troops, operating off of military reservations in U.S. cities and towns with federal, state and local police involvement.
Forgiveness is more powerful than any weapon in the world
“My picture is a symbol of war, but my life is a symbol of love, hope and forgiveness” - Kim Phúc
Clemente Ferrer Global News Centre
(MADRID) Next June 8 is the 43 anniversary of this photo, where a girl appears naked and terrified, running down a dusty road in a village in Vietnam,when she was 9 years old.
This image, which perpetuated the horrors of the Vietnam War, has appeared many times through various media and, especially all the TV networks in the world. The girl named Kim Phúc, is now an ambassador for UNESCO and runs a foundation to help the children victims of war and violence.
A bi-polar critique: across the river and into the trees… A Farewell To Hemingway
And even madmen manage to convey
Unwelcome truths in lonely gibberish…
- W.H. Auden - The Quest
William Annett Global News Centre
(DAYTONA BEACH) We all grew up in a culture that doted on Ernest Hemingway. Even before I cleared English 101, my father was a Hemingway fan, praising his crisp, simple diction, his avoidance of adverbs and verbose construction, his nouveau Parisian cool, his he-man take on guns, women and courage. Check it out (from his final novel, Across the River and Into the Trees):
“He saw the girl watching him and he smiled at her. It was an old smile that he had been using for fifty years, ever since he first smiled…”
NPC Chief Minister hands over Genocide Resolution to UN Special Rapporteur
The Chief Minister of Northern Provincial Council (NPC) Justice C.V. Wigneswaran has handed over the NPC resolution on Tamil genocide to the visiting UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence, Pablo de Greiff, who met him in Jaffna on Wednesday. Almost all the representatives including the Chief Minister, Bishop of Mannaar and the representatives of the Tamil Civil Society Forum have categorically denounced any effort by the UN to sanctify domestic investigations, informed sources said. Mr Pablo de Greiff declined to respond to questions by the journalists. The UN Special Rapporteur has also urged the Chief Minister not to release the details of their discussions to journalists, informed NPC sources told TamilNet.
(TamilNet) Informed sources further told TamilNet that the UN Special Rapporteur was advocating for an internal mechanism during his visit. He was urging more time and space to be given to the new regime in Colombo. However, the Tamil representatives have explained in detail on the failure of all successive regimes in Colombo in delivering internal mechanisms capable of addressing the crimes committed by the SL State itself and its armed forces in the past.
