sitemeter

Showing posts sorted by relevance for query war on terror. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query war on terror. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday, May 02, 2011

CSR estimates of War on Terror

The government says this is what it has cost as of March 29, 2011.

Introduction: War Funding to Date
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has initiated three military operations:
• Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) covering primarily Afghanistan and other small Global War on Terror (GWOT) operations ranging from the Philippines to Djibouti that began immediately after the 9/11 attacks and continues;
• Operation Noble Eagle (ONE) providing enhanced security for U.S. military bases and other homeland security that was launched in response to the attacks and continues at a modest level; and
• Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) that began in the fall of 2002 with the buildup of troops for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, continued with counter-insurgency and stability operations, and is slated to be renamed Operation New Dawn as U.S. troops focus on an advisory and assistance role.
In the tenth year of operations since the 9/11 attacks while troops are being withdrawn in Iraq and increased in Afghanistan, the cost of war continues to be a major issue including the total amount appropriated, the amount for each operation, average monthly spending rates, and the scope and duration of future costs. Information on costs is useful to Congress to assess the FY2010 Supplemental for war costs for the Department of Defense (DOD) and State/USAID, FY2011 war requests, conduct oversight of past war costs, and consider the longer-term costs implications of the buildup of troops in Afghanistan and potential problems in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. This report analyzes war funding for the Defense Department and tracks funding for USAID and VA Medical funding.

Total War Funding by Operation

Assuming an annual level of the current Continuing Resolution (H.J.Res. 44/P.L. 112-4) and based on DOD, State Department/USAID, and Department of Veterans Administration budget submissions, the cumulative total appropriated from the 9/11 for those war operations, diplomatic operations, and medical care for Iraq and Afghan war veterans is $1.283 trillion including:

• $806 billion for Iraq; • $444 billion for Afghanistan; • $29 billion for enhanced security; and • $6 billion unallocated (see Table 1).1
Of this total, 63% is for Iraq, 35% for Afghanistan, 2% for enhanced security and 1/2% is unallocated. Almost all of the funding for Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) is for Afghanistan. This total includes funding provided in all appropriations act including the FY2010 Supplemental (H.R. 4899/P.L. 111-212) enacted July 29, 2010, and the 6th Continuing Resolution for FY2011
1 These totals cover funding provided for DOD, State/USAID and VA Medical through FY2011, assuming the current CR would continue throughout the year.
Congressional Research Service 1

The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11
(H.Res. 48/P.L. 111-6) enacted March 18, 2011 assuming that level continues through the rest of the fiscal year.2

Some 94% of this funding goes to the Department of Defense (DOD) to cover primarily incremental war-related costs, that is, costs that are in addition to DOD’s normal peacetime activities. These costs include: ...

Stiglitz three years ago:

EXCLUSIVE–The Three Trillion Dollar War: Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes on the True Cost of the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

Does anybody know how much the black hole of the 17 intelligence agencies has cost?

The closest I could find comes from an investment research website.

Aerospace & Defense Overview - April 2011
By: Zacks Equity Research
April 26, 2011

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Corporate newz sucks

I didn't expect to find anything in an American newz (MSM) source for an article that spells out how I feel about the "War on Terror." That's why I didn't even bother with (other than to sign a complaint to ABC or Disney) the whole 9/11-blame-it-on-Clinton-Crockudrama thing. Fuggit. Wudn't worth my damn energy.

I knew if I looked hard enough I would find an article some where that about wraps it up for me.
This article from the Netherlands comes close, so here it is:

Five Years of War on Terror: 'Time for a New Strategy'
EDITORIAL
Translated By Meta Mertens
September 9, 2006
NRC Handelsblad - The Netherlands - Original Article (Dutch)



SSSShhhhhhhhh... don't tell Rudi Guiliani and don't tell Daddy Bush (HW).


I'm no genius, but the "War on Terror" is absolute bullshit, it don't take a fuckin genius to figure that one out.

Peace out.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Was this the real goal of "The Global War on Terror?"

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, Playing Ball With the Pentagon

"Posted by Andrew Bacevich at 8:45am, July 28, 2011.
Post-9/11, doesn’t it seem as though all American experience is blending into a single experience whose label is “your safety”? Which means, in practical terms, you get poked, prodded, searched, and surveilled wherever you go.

The other day, I went to the ballpark to see my team, the Mets, play the Florida Marlins. It’s always a shock these days to make your way into the team’s new stadium, Citi Field (named, charmingly enough, after one of the financial institutions that took us down in 2008 and somehow came up smelling like roses). No more is it just tickets at the turnstile. What’s involved now is that peek into your backpack or bag, followed by the full-scale search of you, body wand and all.

I always have the urge to shout: I’m here for a ballgame, not the Global War on Terror! Instead, of course, I just lift my arms and let myself be wanded. It’s like an eternal reminder that, for Americans, 9/11 did change everything -- and for the more intrusive at that. Once inside, past all the restaurants and clubs, memorabilia shops and sports-clothing stores that now add up to the baseball (basemall?) experience, it turns out you haven’t left America’s wars behind...."

A security state run by goons?

15 Years in Prison For Taping the Cops? How Eavesdropping Laws Are Taking Away Our Best Defense Against Police Brutality
July 27, 2011 Rania Khalek -- AlterNet

So, I kind of got hooked on Dexter a couple of years ago when you could still stream the first two seasons on Netflix. Just recently I watched the 5th season, and as soon as I read the preceding paragraphs, the theme song started up in my head.


Sounds random? Nope, as soon as I got hooked on Dexter I wondered if Dexter would ever get to the real serial killers on this planet? Can you guess who entered my mind as I wondered that? I mean come on, it's obvious to me that the GWOT is the not the tip of the spear wielded by the banksters but it is the well muscled goon chucking the damn thing, and the goon is ordered fed by the banksters, but the taxpayers foot the bill.



Share

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

The Anti-Empire Report

February 3rd, 2009
by William Blum
http://www.killinghope.org/ (I've read Killing Hope, and some other stuff too)

Change (in rhetoric) we can believe in.

hat tip to Left I on the News

Why are you still here? Click on the title link. This guy knows the history of American foreign policy, and no, not the crap they try to shove down your throat in your basic high school American History class.


The War on Terror is a Hoax
By Paul Craig Roberts
February 04, 2009
...If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events....

...Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain unscathed.

The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial expansion...

...The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are the Palestinians still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim countries are complicit with Israel and the US in keeping the Palestinians unarmed...

The truth. It's chunkylicious today. Chew on that fer a spell.

For more on the Byzantine politics of the Middle East and the West

read Treacherous Alliance By Trita Parsi

Monday, June 20, 2011

Semantics

Us killing each other; 4 is a "massacre" in a robbery gone haywire.

New York Shooting: Four Dead In Pharmacy Massacre
By FRANK ELTMAN 06/19/11 11:30 PM ET


Us killing them in a drone attack; 19 not a massacre, just "dead."

19 dead in US drone strikes
Published: June 16, 2011New


Tomgram: Karen Greenberg, How to End the War on Terror

Posted by Karen J. Greenberg at 5:21pm, June 19, 2011.

Every time we get a peek inside Washington’s war on terror, it just couldn’t be uglier. Last week, three little home-grown nightmares from that “war” caught my attention. One you could hardly miss. On the front page of the New York Times, Glenn Carle, a former CIA official, claimed that the Bush administration had wanted “to get” Juan Cole, whose Informed Comment blog devastatingly critiqued the invasion and occupation of Iraq (and who writes regularly for TomDispatch). Not only that, administration officials called on the CIA to dig up the dirt on him.

*sigh*

Share

Thursday, December 14, 2006

San Diego County Supervisors wrong again

County to appeal medical-marijuana ruling

Supervisors again cite clash with federal law
By Jeff McDonald
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
December 14, 2006
A week after a Superior Court judge threw out their case against California's medical-marijuana laws, San Diego County's supervisors have voted to appeal the ruling.
...In January, San Diego County sued the state of California rather than implement medical-marijuana laws that permit qualified patients to smoke and grow marijuana and require counties to issue them identification cards...
The county was later joined by San Bernardino and Merced counties in trying to overturn Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative approved by 56 percent of voters that permitted the medical use of marijuana.
Tuesday's closed-session vote to appeal was 4-1, with Supervisor Ron Roberts opposed. It is unclear when the appeal will be filed or when the appellate judges will consider the case.
Supervisor Greg Cox said he supported the county's issuing ID cards to qualified patients, but when that vote failed 3-2 late last year, he decided to go along with the lawsuit.


Supes vote to persist with medical marijuana challenge
By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer
SAN DIEGO -- As expected, San Diego County supervisors voted Tuesday to continue their controversial legal challenge to overturn California's 10-year-old, voter-approved medical marijuana law.Board Chairman Bill Horn said the board voted in closed session to appeal Superior Court William R. Nevitt's week-old ruling that dismissed the county's argument that California's Compassionate Use Act should be pre-empted by federal law because federal law is "supreme."
The county's challenge has national implications, patients and government officials say, because it marks the first time that any county has sued to overturn any of the medical marijuana laws voters have approved in 11 states....
..."No, not at all," Horn said. "I think it's a bad law. I mean, as far as the benefits, those are medical opinions. There are probably some medical benefits, if you listen to the (patients). But that's not our point. Our point is who has jurisdiction here (the state or federal government)
"We didn't get that from this judge, so we're going to appeal it," he said...

The M-I-C owns this creepy little cronified podunk county (of three million) and the idiotic, brainwashed repugnanthuglican peons who need to have things painted black and white for them by some authoritarian hypocrite and don't think for themselves. Can't let those holy Federal Dollars go anywhere else, right? For the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal aliens, oh, and by the way, defense contractor WAR profiteering.


Bill Horn
bill.horn@sdcounty.ca.gov

Greg Cox greg.cox@sdcounty.ca.gov (619)5331-5511

Pam Slater-Price pam.slater@sdcounty.ca.gov (619)531-5533

dianne.jacob@sdcounty.ca.gov (619) 531-5222

or copy and paste this line and mail them all at one time:

greg.cox@sdcounty.ca.gov, pam.slater@sdcounty.ca.gov, dianne.jacob@sdcounty.ca.gov,bill.horn@sdcounty.ca.gov

I am not a medical marijuana user, or a marijuana user at all. I voted for prop 215 because I believe that marijuana can help people deal with the painful and traumatizing effects of chemotherapy, and other diseases, including some that cause chronic pain.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Ain't it sad

That our citizens have to retain a lawyer to forward the goal of fair and legal elections?

Paul Lehto Retained By Election Integrity Advocates In San Diego
Breaking!
Guest blogged by Emily Levy of the California Election Protection Network and the CA-50 Action Committee
Attorney Paul Lehto, who specializes in cases involving election law, business fraud and consumer law, has been retained for work on the issues surrounding the illegal election conditions in San Diego County.
Lehto came to the attention of BRAD BLOG readers when he filed a lawsuit in Washington state against Sequoia Voting Systems Inc.
He has also appeared as a guest on The BRAD SHOW of April 23, 2005. To listen to that interview, click here.
More details will be posted when they become available.
(DISCLOSURE: Paul Lehto is also a legal advisor for VelvetRevolution.us, a Voting Rights and Election Reform organization co-founded by BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman.)

And that the

U.S. Could Take Lessons from Mexican Voting Process
Published on Saturday, July 22, 2006 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)
by Norman Stockwell


And that Americans are misinformed, disinformed and uninformed about the rest of the world, and, in particular, the Middle East
Jul. 21, 2006 - 1:46 PM
Amateur Hour
The Fog of Cable
Lawrence Pintak
Napa Valley, Calif. -- As someone who lives and breathes Middle East politics and media, I have had the bizarre -- and frustrating -- experience of watching the current conflict play out on U.S. cable television, and I am reminded once again why many Americans have such a limited -- and distorted -- view of the world.
I run a center for television and new media at The American University in Cairo, which puts me at the crossroads of journalism in the Arab world. For me, monitoring a crisis like this would normally mean the voracious consumption of Arab and U.S. media -- television, newspapers, Web sites and all the rest.
But for the first week of the war, I was on vacation in California with my family. That has meant catching glimpses of the conflict in bite-sized snatches on cable television between forays to Disneyland, trips to the beach and aquarium tours -- much, I suspect, like many other Americans this summer.
At times, the coverage has seemed as much a fantasy as Disney's Space Mountain, and the level of Middle East knowledge on the part of some television anchors only a few notches higher than that of the tattooed biker couple waiting in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.
Take, for example, a CNN interview with an American high school student who had been visiting his father's relatives in Lebanon when the conflict broke out. With his tearful American mother in the studio, he was asked by phone whether he was frightened. No big deal, he replied, explaining that he was north of the Christian port of Jounieh, far from the fighting. Betraying her woeful ignorance of Lebanon's geography and politics, the anchor replied that he sounded like a typical "macho" young man who didn't want to worry his mother.
The anchor might have looked at a map before going on air.
Hype abounded. "This could be World War Three!" more than one reporter was heard to say. The same dramatic images were endlessly repeated, as if on a loop. Rumor was elevated to fact -- and the networks seemed proud of it. One CNN promo showed an unedited sequence in which a nameless photographer told Anderson Cooper, in northern Israel, that there was a rumor of rockets on the way. Cooper then turned to the camera and authoritatively reported, "The police say more rockets are coming."
So much for checking sources.
To be fair, there was also a fair share of solid, informed reporting. Yeoman's work has been done by Nic Robertson in Beirut, Matthew Chance in Gaza and Christiane Amanpour on the Israeli border, as well as CNN anchor and Beirut veteran Jim Clancy, NBC's Martin Fletcher on MSNBC and the handful of others who are based in, or spend significant time in, the region. The problem comes with those -- like Cooper -- who have parachuted into the Middle East with little grounding in the region, and the anchors back in the studios in London and the U.S. The errors of the uninitiated embeds in Iraq have been endlessly repeated.
One example: CBS refugee John Roberts, now CNN's senior correspondent, eruditely pointed to pro-Hezbollah demonstrations in Syria as evidence of a Sunni-Shiite split. The only weakness in that analysis is that Syria is a Sunni nation, so the demonstrations point to exactly the opposite -- Sunni-Shiite unity on the issue of Hezbollah's actions.
Over on Hardball, NBC correspondent Dawn Fratangelo's discussion of potential dangers to American evacuees quickly disintegrated into confused talk of Hezbollah rockets in northern Israel. That's the other direction, Dawn.
There was little effort to identify the politics of many of the pseudo-experts who were trotted into the studios. Right-wing Lebanese Christians and representatives of Israeli-backed think tanks -- both with axes to grind -- were offered up as independent analysts. Anchors and reporters, meanwhile, frequently wore their politics on their sleeve. When an American woman trapped in southern Lebanon decried Washington's failure to stop what she said was Israel's brutal killing of civilians, CNN anchor Tony Harris snapped back, "That's not the view over here," and cut her off, saying he didn't have time to debate the issue.
As is so often the case these days, celebrity reporters themselves frequently became the story. Anderson Cooper spent more time on-camera than the protagonists in the conflict, and MSNBC endlessly looped an outtake of Richard Engel repeatedly flubbing his on-camera standup as Israeli bombs fell behind him, much, I suspect, to his embarrassment. A failure to remain cool under fire is not something to be proud of.
NBC anchor Brian Williams made much of the fact that when he went on a helicopter flight with an Israeli officer to take a look at the fighting, "We got closer than we intended." Turns out that some shells landed in the distance. War is Hell, Brian.
Even more troubling was the fact that the Williams segment, along with reports by several other NBC correspondents, ran on Scarborough Country, an overtly politicized talk show, further blurring the line between news and opinion and muddying the waters of cable journalism.
Amid segments from such stalwart NBC correspondents as Martin Fletcher, there was Scarborough describing Hezbollah as an "Iran-backed terror group" and throwing former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak softballs like, "Why is it the more Israel is willing to give up to the Palestinians, the more your country comes under attack?" Meanwhile, conservative iconoclast Tucker Carlson, sans bowtie, has been out there "reporting" from the Israeli border, asking real NBC correspondents such leading questions as, "Do we have any idea whether this city was targeted by Hezbollah because of its Christian population?" (This isn't just about "good" Christians and "bad" Muslims, Tucker.)
There is plenty of room on cable television for politicized talk shows of all stripes. But in allowing -- or, rather, ordering -- its respected news correspondents to appear on such shows, the networks are trading credibility for ratings and cementing their transition from purveyors of news to citadels of infotainment.
Lost in the fog of hype and self-aggrandizement on the cable segments I saw was much of the subtle complexity of the conflict. Instead, it was too often reduced to the black-hat/white-hat characterization that has guided U.S. policy toward the region.
My view was one slice of the coverage. I did not see the main network evening newscasts or the morning shows. What I did was what so many Americans do these days -- I grazed cable news in fits and snatches. And I came up hungry.
Lawrence Pintak is the director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at The American University in Cairo. A former CBS News Middle East correspondent, his most recent book is Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam & the War of Ideas. He can be reached at lpintak ~at~ aucegypt.edu.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

The End of Free Speech?

May 7, 2009

The End of Free Speech?
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby’s bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-semitism world wide.

To monitor anti-semitism, it has to be defined. What is the definition? Basically, as defined by the Israel Lobby and Abe Foxman, it boils down to any criticism of Israel or Jews.

Rahm Israel Emanuel hasn’t been mopping floors at the White House.
As soon as he gets the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 passed, it will become a crime for any American to tell the truth about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and theft of their lands.

It will be a crime for Christians to acknowledge the New Testament’s account of Jews demanding the crucifixion of Jesus.

It will be a crime to report the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby on the White House and Congress, such as the AIPAC-written resolutions praising Israel for its war crimes against the Palestinians in Gaza that were endorsed by 100 per cent of the US Senate and 99 per cent of the House of Representatives, while the rest of the world condemned Israel for its barbarity.

It will be a crime to doubt the Holocaust.

It will become a crime to note the disproportionate representation of Jews in the media, finance, and foreign policy.

In other words, it means the end of free speech, free inquiry, and the First Amendment to the Constitution. Any facts or truths that cast aspersion upon Israel will simply be banned.

Given the hubris of the US government, which leads Washington to apply US law to every country and organization, what will happen to the International Red Cross, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and the various human rights organizations that have demanded investigations of Israel’s military assault on Gaza’s civilian population? Will they all be arrested for the hate crime of “excessive” criticism of Israel?

This is a serious question.

A recent UN report, which is yet to be released in its entirety, blames Israel for the deaths and injuries that occurred within the United Nations premises in Gaza. The Israeli government has responded by charging that the UN report is “tendentious, patently biased,” which puts the UN report into the State Department’s category of excessive criticism and strong anti-Israel sentiment.

Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the premeditated murder of women and children urged upon the Israeli invaders by rabbis. These acts are clearly war crimes.

It was the Israeli press that published the pictures of the Israeli soldiers’ T-shirts that indicate that the willful murder of women and children is now the culture of the Israeli army. The T-shirts are horrific expressions of barbarity. For example, one shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a crosshairs over her stomach and the slogan, “One shot, two kills.” These T-shirts are an indication that Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians is one of extermination.

It has been true for years that the most potent criticism of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians comes from the Israeli press and Israeli peace groups. For example, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and Jeff Halper of ICAHD have shown a moral conscience that apparently does not exist in the Western democracies where Israel’s crimes are covered up and even praised.

Will the American hate crime bill be applied to Haaretz and Jeff Halper? Will American commentators who say nothing themselves but simply report what Haaretz and Halper have said be arrested for “spreading hatred of Israel, an anti-semitic act”?

Many Americans have been brainwashed by the propaganda that Palestinians are terrorists who threaten innocent Israel. These Americans will see the censorship as merely part of the necessary war on terror. They will accept the demonization of fellow citizens who report unpalatable facts about Israel and agree that such people should be punished for aiding and abetting terrorists.

A massive push is underway to criminalize criticism of Israel. American university professors have fallen victim to the well organized attempt to eliminate all criticism of Israel. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at a Catholic university because of the power of the Israel Lobby. Now the Israel Lobby is after University of California (at Santa Barbara,) professor Wiliam Robinson. Robinson’s crime: his course on global affairs included some reading assignments critical of Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

The Israel Lobby apparently succeeded in convincing the Obama Justice (sic) Department that it is anti-semitic to accuse two Jewish AIPAC officials, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, of spying. The Israel Lobby succeeded in getting their trial delayed for four years, and now Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped charges. Yet, Larry Franklin, the DOD official accused of giving secret material to Rosen and Weissman, is serving 12 years and 7 months in prison.

The absurdity is extraordinary. The two Israeli agents are not guilty of receiving secrets, but the American official is guilty of giving secrets to them! If there is no spy in the story, how was Franklin convicted of giving secrets to a spy?

Criminalizing criticism of Israel destroys any hope of America having an independent foreign policy in the Middle East that serves American rather than Israeli interests.
It eliminates any prospect of Americans escaping from their enculturation with Israeli propaganda.

To keep American minds captive, the Lobby is working to ban as anti-semitic any truth or disagreeable fact that pertains to Israel. It is permissible to criticize every other country in the world, but it is anti-semitic to criticize Israel, and anti-semitism will soon be a universal hate-crime in the Western world.

Most of Europe has already criminalized doubting the Holocaust. It is a crime even to confirm that it happened but to conclude that less than 6 million Jews were murdered.

Why is the Holocaust a subject that is off limits to examination? How could a case buttressed by hard facts possibly be endangered by kooks and anti-semitics? Surely the case doesn’t need to be protected by thought control.

Imprisoning people for doubts is the antithesis of modernity.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Friday, January 27, 2006

Friday TV

1/27/2006

Embracing Humanity: Truth in a Time of War with Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn, playwright, activist and historian, is the author of the ground-breaking "A People's History of the United States." His influential writings and teaching give voice to factory workers, immigrant laborers, African Americans, Native Americans and the working poor. Zinn's talk explores the notion of "just" wars with his usual candor and critical understanding.
(An hour and a half lecture)

Watch it now using RealPlayer.
UCSD TV

Tonight on NOW
NOW gets perspective on the business of making war from award-winning filmmaker Eugene Jarecki. Jarecki's latest film WHY WE FIGHT examines the history of the politics and business of war and explores what it tells us about the war on terror and the war in Iraq.
http://www.pbs.org/now/

Sunday, March 02, 2008

I'm starting to hate school


2. How did Lenin's approach to world politics change after he assumed power in Russia?

Lenin was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov April 22, 1870 in the city of Simbirsk His father was the director of public education for the province of and during Lenin’s childhood, and his service to the state earned him the title of hereditary nobleman. While Lenin was finishing school in Simbirsk in 1887, his older brother, Aleksandr, was arrested and executed in Saint Petersburg (then the capital of Russia) for his involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate Russian emperor Alexander III.”

Lenin became radicalized after loss of his father and brother within a year of each other and the banishment of his sister to the family estate. While living on his mother’s estate in Kokushkino after being kicked out of Kazan University for being involved in a student demonstration he became further radicalized by reading by reading Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and What Is To Be Done? (1863), by Russian writer Nikolay Chernyshevsky. He translated the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx before he reached the age of 21 . His affinity for languages allowed him to travel throughout Europe as he and his wife could make money translating while agitating for socialist causes . His hopes of becoming a successful attorney were stifled by his arrests and exile in Siberia, where he had married his wife Nadezhda .

Lenin dreamed of a proletarian revolution that would spread throughout the world, starting in industrialized Europe. After he was elected as the Chair of the Council of People’s Commissars by the Russian Congress of Soviets on November 8, 1917 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had to push aside those lofty goals in order to deal with more pressing matters, like consolidating Bolshevik (now called Communist p76, Roskin/Berry) power inside Russia.

The pressure of dealing with the Russian_Revolution_of_1917 and the civil war , and WWI may have led to the increase in number and usage of the gulag system inside Russia. According to an article titled “Seasons in Hell , How the Gulag grew” by David Remnick April 14, 2003 in the New Yorker The Bolsheviks practiced terror inside the country from the first days of the regime . They shuttered the Constituent Assembly and murdered leaders of rival parties such as the Kadets and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. Yet, as early as January of 1918, Lenin complained that his secret police, originally known as the Cheka, were “inordinately soft, at every step more like jelly than iron.” Lenin cast an iron example. In September, 1918, he ordered the authorities in Nizhni Novgorod to “introduce at once mass terror, execute and deport hundreds of prostitutes, drunken soldiers, ex-officers, etc.” Trotsky, for his part, warned that if soldiers drafted into the Red Army defied their officers “nothing will remain of them but a wet spot.”

Thus began the Red Terror, which helped win the civil war for the Bolsheviks and defined the nature of Communist power.”

Mr. Remnick interviews “Dmitri Likhachev, an eminent scholar of medieval Russian literature and an embodiment of the tragic history of his city. (The city was called St. Petersburg when he was born, Petrograd when he was growing up, Leningrad through his long adulthood, and, for the last eight years of his life, St. Petersburg again.) Likhachev was then eighty-four and a director of the literary institute known as Pushkin House. He had vivid memories of the first days of the Communist era—“When we opened the windows of our flat in Lakhtinskaya Street, we could hear all night long the volleys and short bursts of automatic fire from the Peter and Paul Fortress”—and now he was stealing time from his literary work to make impassioned, morally serious speeches about the liberal era that he hoped was coming. A great deal of Likhachev’s authority derived from his biography. He was living proof that the Gulag had been the invention not of Stalin but, rather, of Lenin, the Bolshevik founder, because, he said wearily, “I was a prisoner at Lenin’s first concentration camp” Anne Applebaum also asserts the rise of the gulag system began its growth during Lenin’s leadership in her book Gulag.

These internal pressures were intensified when “on March 3, 1918, the German and Soviet Governments signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in which the Soviet government ceded to Germany a vast amount of Russian territory, containing about one-third of Russia’s population, one-third of its cultivated land, and one-half of its industry. Although Lenin was convinced that these harsh terms must be accepted in order to end Russia’s involvement in the war, the treaty was widely unpopular, even within the Soviet government. It contributed to a split between the Bolsheviks and the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in 1918, which left Lenin and the Bolsheviks in sole control of the Soviet government. World War I continued until November of that year.”

Foreign Policy, 1921-28

In the 1920s, as the new Soviet state temporarily retreated from the revolutionary path to socialism, the party also adopted a less ideological approach in its relations with the rest of the world. Lenin, ever the practical leader, having become convinced that socialist revolution would not break out in other countries in the near future, realized that his government required normal relations with the Western world for it to survive. Not only were good relations important to national security, but the economy also required trade with the industrial countries. Blocking Soviet attainment of these objectives were lingering suspicions about communism on the part of the Western powers and concern over foreign debts incurred by the tsarist government, which the Soviet government had unilaterally repudiated. In April 1922, the Soviet commissar of foreign affairs, Georgiy Chicherin, circumvented these difficulties by achieving an understanding with Germany, the other pariah state of Europe, in the Treaty of Rapallo. Under the treaty, Germany and Russia agreed on mutual recognition, cancellation of debt claims, normalization of trade relations, and secret cooperation in military development. Soon after concluding the treaty, the Soviet Union obtained diplomatic recognition from other major powers, beginning with Britain in February 1924. Although the United States withheld recognition until 1933, private American firms began to extend technological assistance and to develop commercial links in the 1920s.

Toward the non-Western world, the Soviet leadership limited its revolutionary activity to promoting opposition among the indigenous populations against "imperialist exploitation." The Soviet Union did pursue an active policy in China, aiding the Guomindang (Nationalist Party), a non-Marxist organization committed to reform and national sovereignty. After the triumph of the Guomindang in 1927, a debate developed among Soviet leaders concerning the future status of relations with China. Stalin wanted the Chinese Communist Party to join the Guomindang and infiltrate the government from within, while Trotsky proposed an armed communist uprising and forcible imposition of socialism. Although Stalin's plan was finally accepted, it came to naught when in 1927 the Guomindang leader Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Chinese communists massacred and Soviet advisers expelled.”

According to Soviet theorists, the basic character of Soviet foreign policy was set forth in Vladimir I. Lenin's Decree on Peace, adopted by the Second Congress of Soviets in November 1917. It set forth the dual nature of Soviet foreign policy, which encompasses both proletarian internationalism and peaceful coexistence. On the one hand, proletarian internationalism refers to the common cause of the working classes of all countries in struggling to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to establish communist regimes. Peaceful coexistence, on the other hand, refers to measures to ensure relatively peaceful government-to-government relations with capitalist states. Both policies can be pursued simultaneously: "Peaceful coexistence does not rule out but presupposes determined opposition to imperialist aggression and support for peoples defending their revolutionary gains or fighting foreign oppression."[1]

The general foreign policy goals of the Soviet Union were formalized in a party program ratified by delegates to the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in February-March 1986. According to the program, "the main goals and guidelines of the CPSU's international policy" included ensuring favorable external conditions conducive to building communism in the Soviet Union; eliminating the threat of world war; disarmament; strengthening the "world socialist system"; developing "equal and friendly" relations with "liberated" [Third World] countries; peaceful coexistence with the capitalist countries; and solidarity with communist and revolutionary-democratic parties, the international workers' movement, and national liberation struggles.[1]

Collections of Lenin’s writings are archived here .


Poke me with a fork, I'm so done. I am no Condoleezza Rice, that's fer sure. Sick of Russian history? Yeah, me too, how about some Russian current events?

Monday, December 28, 2009

Yemen is the new Afghanistan

Abdulmutallab, A Banker's Son Turned Muslim Radical
Family Says Accused Northwest Bomber Ceased All Contact Months Ago
By RICHARD ESPOSITO and BRIAN ROSS
Dec. 28, 2009

{..."The Obama administration has been admitting lately, that Yemen is the new Afghanistan," said Clarke. "It is the new sanctuary. The new al Qaeda base, where people from around the world, who want to be trained are sent. No longer to Afghanistan, but to Yemen."...}

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy



New?

Osama bin Laden's father is from Yemen.

Crap-ola. The whole "War on Terror' is going to be the same miserable failure that the "War on Drugs" is, and for the same reasons. The reasons for terrorism are not addressed, just like the reasons for the drug trade, the sex trade, the human traffiking are not addressed.

A) A grossly unfair economic system tilted in favor of developed countries and wealthy banksters.
B) Overpopulation stressing availability of needed natural resources for development.
C) Poverty, ignorance and desperation versus advanced military weapons systems.

Friday, January 08, 2010

The war on terror

Dumb. Dumb as the war on drugs. Doesn't work.

France deports radical Imams. Makes sense to me that they should get rid of an Egyptian who preaches hatred of "The West" in France.

We go broke chasing our tails.

Doing exactly what Osama bin Laden wants us to.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

oil slicks

Cheney's Oily Interests
BLOG Posted 05/16/2006 @ 11:43am
Katrina vanden Heuvel




Cheney Starts New Cold War Over Oil
By Mark Ames, The eXile. Posted June 1, 2006.


Putin Blames U.S. for Russian Diplomats’ Murder in Iraq

Created: 12.07.2006 14:08 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 14:08 MSK, 6 hours 5 minutes ago
MosNews

Enron fraud suspect found dead
12/07/2006 16:22 - (SA)

Terror in Mumbai: IT could be next target
Rakesh Goyal
July 12, 2006
...The bombs strategically targetted the local trains: the transport lifeline of Mumbai. All the blasts were in the first class compartments which carry middle and senior management of corporations, banks and government, apart from owner-managers from various markets. Thus, the target-segment was chosen carefully to break the middle layer of the industrial hierarchy and create terror. Until now, this class was never targeted...

update: Yeesh, I didn't even think of the possible nuclear implications

MARITIME SECURITY & MARITIME COUNTER-TERRORISM
Paper no. 1176
06. 12. 2004
by B.Raman
...15. The LTTE had been examining for many years the possibility of an explosive-laden suicide bomber piloting a microlite aircraft crashing on a land or sea-based target. A Sikh terrorist arrested by the Indian authorities in the early 1990s had stated during his interrogation that during his training in Pakistan, the ISI had asked him to join the Mumbai (Bombay) Flying Club, go on a solo flight and crash his trainer plane on to the Mumbai off-shore oil platform...

Dollar gains on US trade; oil, gold rally
Wed Jul 12, 2006 6:03 PM GMT
By Steven C. Johnson
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar on Wednesday was on track for its biggest one-day gain against the yen in 18 months, boosted by a smaller-than-expected U.S. trade deficit in May and growing uncertainty about Japanese monetary policy
Gold, meanwhile, hit a six-week high, supported by higher oil prices, while technology shares dragged U.S. stock markets lower after European antitrust regulators fined Microsoft Corp..
U.S. Treasury debt prices also slipped as investors unwound safe-haven plays established after Tuesday's deadly train explosions in Mumbai, India's financial hub....


North County Reps vote to lift offshore drilling ban
By: EDWARD SIFUENTES - Staff Writer
Last modified Wednesday, July 12, 2006 12:27 AM PDT
NORTH COUNTY ---- Local Republican congressmen, including newly elected U.S. Rep. Brian Bilbray, have voted for a bill that would allow companies to drill for oil and gas off the coast of California and other coastal states.

Awww crap, what does Bilbray, the (environmentalist *cough* surfer *cough*) care?
His kids prefer indoor activities in Virginia.


Pacific Energy Resources Ltd. Announces Signing of Purchase and Sale Agreement for Majority Interest in Beta Oil Field Unit
JULY 10, 2006 - 08:30 ET
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA--(CCNMatthews - July 10, 2006) - Pacific Energy Resources Ltd. (TSX:PFE)(the "Corporation") wishes to announce that further to its news release of February 24, 2006, it has signed a definitive Purchase & Sale Agreement with Aera Energy LLC regarding the sale of its 71% interest in the Beta Unit, offshore California. Before the acquisition is completed, the Corporation is required to satisfy a number of financial and regulatory requirements, further particulars of which have been filed today on SEDAR as an additional News Release at http://www.sedar.com/.Netherland Sewell & Associates (NSA) estimated Proved Reserves of 19.78 Million barrels of 14 degree API oil and 3.23 Bcf of gas as of May 1, 2006 for the Unit. It also estimated 11.61 Million barrels of Probable oil reserves, 1.93 Bcf of Probable gas reserves, 31.26 Million barrels of Possible oil reserves and 4.84 Bcf of Possible gas reserves. These estimates are based on forecasted price scenario and have PV10% values of US$ 193.90 Million, US$ 89.29 Million and US$121.14 Million for Proved, Probable and Possible reserve categories respectively.The Beta Oil Field is located in San Pedro Area, in Federal waters nine miles offshore Long Beach, California. The leases in question are POCS 300, 301 and 306. A complex of two production platforms (Eureka and Ellen) and a facilities Platform (Elly) handle production from these leases. Platform Edith, also in the Beta Oil Field in lease POCS 296 is neither owned nor operated by Aera and is not included in this acquisition.The Beta Field was discovered in 1976 by Shell Oil Company...

Umm. that's like ONE day's worth of oil for the US.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Tomgram makes sense again

Tomgram: Chip Ward, The Department of Homegrown Security

After the Green Economy, Green Security
How to Build Resilient Communities in a Chaotic World
By Chip Ward
posted February 26, 2009 10:56 am

...Today, "homeland security" and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), that unwieldy amalgam of 13 agencies created by the Bush administration in 2002, continue to express the potent, all-encompassing fears and assumptions of our last president's Global War on Terror. Foreign enemies may indeed be plotting to attack us, but, believe it or not (and increasing numbers of people, watching their homes, money, and jobs melt away are coming to believe it), that's probably neither the worst, nor the most dangerous thing in store for us....

...If you're thinking about what the greening of homeland security might actually mean, look no further than our food supply...

...There are enough vacant lots, backyards, and rooftops to host many thousands of gardens, either created by voluntary groups or by small-scale entrepreneurs. Urban farming could even go big. Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier recently unveiled his vision of a "vertical farm," a 30-story tower right in the middle of an urban landscape, that could grow enough food to feed 50,000 people in the surrounding neighborhood...

...Ideally, the greening of homeland security would mean more than pamphlets on planting, but would provide actual seed money -- and not just for seeds either, but for building greenhouses, distributing tools, and starting farmers' markets where growers and consumers can connect. How about raiding the Department of Homeland Security's gluttonous budget for "homegrown" grants to communities that want to get started? ...

...In the U.S., "post-carbon" working groups are beginning to sprout across the country...

Right, they are sprouting amongst the people because they are going around the Now 4 Climate Change Lobbyists for Every Member of Congress (from Energy company interests)
by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York on 02.26.09

Another topic, a hot one-- Bobby Jindal. Bringin' home the Bacon.

Jindal scored big in the pork contest. He, sometimes in concert with other lawmakers, ended up bringing home $97,913,200 in bacon. That put him at the number 14 spot in Taxpayers for Common Sense's annual tally of the most successful appropriators in the House.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Reading soon, one of these anyway

Click on pic for link to the Bill Moyers interview with the author.


click on pic for link to CNN interview with Thomas Frank.


Tomgram: The Global War on Terror Report Card
posted October 21, 2008 3:23 pm

Sunday, September 30, 2007

It's a charade

Terror finance trail vanishes in Saudi Arabia
The kingdom has pledged to crack down on funding activities for the likes of al-Qa'ida. So why the secrecy?

Paul Cochrane reports
Published: 30 September 2007


MMMM. Color me cynical. As the "investigations" drag on forever, people in high places in both US and SA governments continue to make obscene amounts of money on arms sales and new "war on ________" (fill in the blanks) programs that need nifty new spy gadgets.

Some things just never seem to change.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

What's that giant sucking sound I hear?

Fluor, Dyncorp, KBR win contract
From Times Wire Services
June 29, 2007

Irvine-based Fluor Corp., Dyncorp International Inc. and KBR Inc., a former unit of Halliburton Co., were awarded parts of a U.S. Army contract with a combined potential value of as much as $150 billion to provide services to the military in the Middle East.

The contract, the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) IV, would be worth as much as $5 billion a year in business for each of the companies, with the potential duration of 10 years.

The Army said the contract was parceled out to three companies rather than just one to "more effectively manage the number and scope of LOGCAP actions required to fight the global war on terror."


Fluor Corp.

DynCorp in Colombia: Outsourcing the Drug War
by Jeremy Bigwood, Special to CorpWatch
May 23rd, 2001

Oh, that giant sucking sound.

That's just the sound of
military-industrial-congressional-complex bankrupting the next few generations, Yeesh, you'd think that I'd never heard that before.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

early evening news

The Moscow Times East vs. West in Central Asia
23 July 2008 Updated at 23 July 2008 0:13 Moscow Time.
By Adrian Pabst

In a little-noticed news story last week, U.S. lawmakers strongly condemned what they called China's brutal pre-Olympic crackdown in the far northwest Xinjiang region, which is populated by the Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim Turkic ethnic group...

...It is still unclear whether Monday's two bomb blasts in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, in which two people were killed, were in any way related to Islamic terrorism or separatist movements, but the attacks will undoubtedly fuel fear and suspicion with the Olympics just three weeks away...

...China, Russia and their Central Asian partners accuse the West of double standards and illegitimate interference. They say they are simply defending their territorial integrity against secessionist threats. They suspect the United States and others of orchestrating the Muslim minorities and supporting secessionism to strengthen the Western presence in Central Asia.

Both are right about each other, but wrong about Asian Islam. In fact, both the East and West pursue questionable goals and policies. Under the cloak of the "global war on terror," both sides intervene against Islamic extremists in order to advance their rival interests. In a region rich in minerals, oil and gas, the United States established military bases in Manas, just north of the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek and in Karshi-Khanabad, in southern Uzbekistan, not far from the Tajik border. These are both key locations in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaida-related networks in nearby Afghanistan. China has undoubtedly exaggerated the terrorist threat in order to suppress political opposition and extend its sphere of influence in Central Asia...

Completely unrelated to the above article on how the muslims are stuck in the middle of an East West tug rope thingy, but of interest to me, because I love water--

posted July 22, 2008 4:13 pm
Tomgram: Elizabeth de la Vega, Those Hard Rains Are Gonna Fall

...In the end, when it came to an assessment of the current state of our national water policy,...

...hodge-podge.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Analysis: Is bin Laden truly dead?

Analysis: Is bin Laden truly dead?
By CLAUDE SALHANI
UPI International Editor
9/23/2006 9:15:00 AM -0400

Ok. After five years of the Bush Administration's assault on civil liberties in the guise of the "War on Terror" and this speculation that Osama binLaden is dead do I feel any safer?

Not a fucking chance.

My child wants to see Europe. If she gets to go I'll be terrified the whole time that someone will find out that she is an American. She doesn't deserve to be treated in an ugly manner, she is not the typical "Ugly American." She's had to deal with so much grief that she she didn't earn already in her lifetime.

All of the goodwill that America received after helping destroy Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany has been squandered. All of the goodwill that America received after 9/11 has been squandered.