Militarizing South Korea

Global Research
Gregory Elich

With the presidential election in South Korea just two months away, efforts are underway to lock into place a policy of confrontation with that nation’s neighbor to the north. When current South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office five years ago, he wasted little time in undoing the rapprochement that had been painstakingly built up during his predecessor’s term. All of the leading candidates in this year’s presidential race, including even Park Geun-hye of the conservative Grand National Party, hold more moderate positions on relations with North Korea than does President Lee. Neither Lee nor U.S. President Obama are keen on the prospect of warming relations between the two Koreas, and they are making every effort to forestall such an eventuality in the little time that remains in Lee’s term.

Under provisions of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), an international treaty involving 34 nations, South Korea was committed to limiting its ballistic missiles to a range of no more than 300 kilometers and capping payload at 500 kilograms. The Lee Administration chafed under those restrictions and long sought their removal. This month he met with success, reaching a deal with the U.S. that allows South Korea to exceed the treaty’s limits. The new agreement allows South Korea to develop ballistic missiles ranging up to 800 kilometers, sufficient to cover all of North Korea and sections of China and Russia. The payload limit remains at 500 kilograms, but only for missiles at the maximum allowable range. (1)

As South Korea sees it, any missile having a range lower than 550 kilometers can carry up to 1,000 kilograms of explosives. “We can say that there’s no payload limit actually, because if we launch a missile from the central region of the country, all of North Korean territory is under the 550-kilometer striking range,” observes Major General Shin Won-sik of the South Korean Ministry of National Defense. (2)

Under 300 kilograms, and a missile is now permitted to house a warhead weighing up to two tons, and Shin points out that most of North Korea’s primary targets lie within that distance of the border. Restraints apply only to deployment, Shin argues, so research may proceed on missiles that surpass the new limits, including the production of prototypes. (3)

The Lee Administration wants to move forward without delay on the deployment of the new missiles, and has asked the legislature to allocate $2.2 billion towards a long range ballistic missile program. Those missiles are expected to be in place by 2017. (4)

It appears that in tradeoff for allowing South Korea a special exemption under the MTCR, the U.S. expects South Korea to coordinate its efforts with U.S. missile defense plans. According to Kathleen Hicks, U.S. Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, there are “a lot of ways” that South Korea could assist U.S. missile defense in Northeast Asia. “We do have a dialogue with the Koreans about how to contribute to missile defense,” she says. (5)

The Korean Air and Missile Defense System (KAMD) is scheduled to be fully deployed by 2015. Ostensibly intended to serve only as South Korea’s defense against attack by the North, it is interesting to note how well the system could mesh with that of the U.S. missile defense system. The KAMD, consisting of radar, U.S.-built Patriot PAC-2 missiles, and Aegis destroyers armed with sea-to-air missiles purchased from the U.S., is ideally suited for interoperability with the U.S. system.

This past June, the U.S. and South Korea reached agreement on a “comprehensive alliance approach” to defense, involving both modification of the MTCR and implementation of a missile defense system.  According to a South Korean government official, “It means building a South Korea-led missile defense system against North Korean missile attacks, with the U.S. providing intelligence and detection support.” (6) But U.S.-South Korean integration can cut both ways, and it is difficult to envision the KAMD remaining uninvolved in the U.S. missile defense system. A former South Korean foreign affairs/security official feels that the process of South Korea’s incorporation into the U.S. system could already be underway. “I think there needs to be a concrete explanation on this idea of it not being missile defense participation,” he said. (7)

General: ‘My Career Was Done’ When I Criticized Flawed Warplane

Wired
David Axe

Don Harvel, near his home in Georgia.

Don Harvel thought he was cruising to a well-deserved retirement after 35 years flying cargo planes for the U.S. Air Force. Then in the spring of 2010 he was tapped to investigate the fatal crash of a high-tech Air Force tiltrotor aircraft – and everything changed.

What Harvel discovered about the controversial hybrid aircraft drew him into a battle of wills with his superiors at Air Force Special Operations Command. Harvel, then a brigadier general, uncovered evidence of mechanical problems — and resulting safety woes — in the V-22 Osprey, which takes off like a helicopter and flies like an airplane. These are issues the Pentagon has been eager to downplay. So when Harvel refused to alter his findings to match the Defense Department’s expectations, he knew that was the final chapter of his decades-long military service. Harvel’s long-planned retirement was held up for more than two years, effectively silencing him during a troubling chapter in the Osprey’s often-troubled history.

“I turned [my report] in and I knew that my career was done,” Harvel says.

Despite three decades of development costing billions of dollars, the V-22 is still not nearly as safe as its proponents insist. In the past year alone, the military has assigned full blame for two Osprey crashes – one of them fatal – on pilot error. Those calls were questionable, at best. The Pentagon and the V-22′s manufacturers likewise dismissed concern over two emergency landings by stricken Ospreys. All the while, Harvel had to keep quiet.

No longer. In an exclusive interview, Harvel says the military is “trying to turn all eyes away” from the Osprey’s ongoing safety woes. “Especially in Congress.”

After all, Congress controls funding for the $36-billion V-22 program, and has the power to finance (or not) the U.S. Marines and Air Force as they work to more than triple their Osprey fleets. The military is beginning to rely on the temperamental but high-performance tiltrotors for a wider range of important missions; there’s even talk of Ospreys hauling the White House entourage on presidential trips. The Pentagon has also laid out a controversial plan to base 24 Ospreys in Japan. The Defense Department insisted that the speedy, long-range tiltrotor is “critical” to its Pacific war plans, but Japanese officials have justifiably questioned the V-22′s safety.

Harvel’s retirement paperwork finally cleared a few weeks ago. Now, the former Texas Air National Guard C-130 pilot is free to publicly share his opinion about the Osprey: that it’s “just not quite there yet.” The two crashes and another incident this year are proof of that.

“We need to invest money to fix this thing or change the way we’re operating it,” Harvel says. But the Pentagon has other priorities, he adds. “One of the things that is most noticeable to me is the military trying to get the [Air Force] CV- and [Marine] MV-22 to the forefront to get as much positive publicity as possible.”

An Air Force V-22 at a base in New Mexico. 

Lead Investigator

On April 9, 2010, an Osprey assigned to Air Force Special Operations Command was preparing to drop off a squad of U.S. Army Rangers in southern Afghanistan when something went wrong. The tiltrotor was traveling at least 88 miles per hour — several times the recommended landing speed — when it smashed into the ground a quarter mile from the landing zone. Four people died.

A sudden tailwind could have been a factor, but there’s another possible explanation: that the Osprey’s engines had malfunctioned in mid-air. Video shot by an A-10 attack plane overhead showed puffs of exhaust coming from the V-22′s nacelles, a sign that the crew was trying to restart non-working engines.

After a brief recovery operation, an A-10 bombed the wreckage to keep it out of militants’ hands. The air strike destroyed the tiltrotor’s black box. That, plus memory loss by Brian Luce, the only survivor from the two-man cockpit, ensured that the crash investigation board would face a difficult task.

At the time, Harvel was a full-time airline pilot and part-time assistant to the chief of Air Force Special Operations Command. Since getting his pilot’s wings in 1976, he had racked up an impressive 4,000 flight hours in OH-58 helicopters, T-37 and T-38 training jets and C-130s.

“I got a call from the vice commander [Lt. Gen. Kurt Cichowski] saying we’re considering you for board president and asking if I would be willing take time off,” Harvel says. “I had been to all the safety schools and said I would love to do that. I was familiar with the V-22 aircraft, having flown in the simulator a few times. They knew me at AFSOC and were comfortable with me — that was a real big deal to them.”

Harvel recruited a team of technical experts and requested permission to travel to Afghanistan; he was determined to see the wreckage for himself and talk to survivors while their memories were still fresh.

But Cichowski shot down the request. “He said ‘you don’t need to go to Afghanistan,’” Harvel recalls. “That was my first clue this wasn’t going to be a standard investigation.” But Harvel kept arguing for permission to travel and ultimately got the green light. In whirlwind six-day trip, Harvel and his team interviewed 100 witnesses to the crash and its aftermath.

Weighing all the evidence, Harvel’s board concluded that, among 10 possible contributing factors, engine failure was the most likely cause of the crash. But after reviewing a draft of the report, Cichowski allegedly ordered Harvel to remove the reference to the engines. “I don’t know why he … would not keep an open mind,” Harvel says. “I do know this would have brought the [V-22] weapon system under more scrutiny.”

The Air Force insists Cichowski did not put pressure on Harvel. “Undue influence, real or perceived, by the convening authority or its staff is specifically prohibited by regulation,” says Capt. Kristen Duncan, an AFSOC spokesperson. “The AIB operated autonomously throughout the investigation, and the command has full confidence in the integrity, veracity and due diligence of the Accident Investigation Board.”

In any event, Harvel refused to alter the report. ”I had planned to retire, anyhow,” Harvel recalls, “so I expedited it. And said I was standing by to brief the families [of crash victims] and he [Cichowski] said, ‘you’re not going to do that.’” (Other Air Force officials talked to the families instead, Duncan says.)

Iraq: Ten Years, a Million Lives and Trillions of Dollars Later

Global Research
Dennis Kucinich

Ten years ago today the debate over the Iraq War came to Congress in the form of a resolution promoted by the Bush Administration. The war in Iraq will cost the United States as much as $5 trillion. It played a role in spurring the global financial crisis. Four thousand, four hundred, eighty eight Americans were killed. More than 33,000 were injured.

As many as 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed. The monetary cost of the war to Iraq is incalculable. A sectarian civil war has ravaged Iraq for nearly a decade. Iraq has become home to Al Qaeda.

The war in Iraq was sold to Congress and the American people with easily disproved lies. We must learn from this dark period in American history to ensure that we do not repeat the same mistakes. And we must hold accountable those who misled the American public.

On October 2, 2002, the day the legislation to authorize war in Iraq was introduced, I sent and personally distributed a memo to my colleagues in Congress refuting point-by-point every reason given by the Bush Administration to go to war.

On October 3, 2002, I held a press conference with 25 Members of Congress and then presented an hour long explanation to Congress on the House Floor, refuting the lies upon which the cause of war was predicated.

It was clear from information publicly available at the time that Iraq did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), that Iraq had no connection to 9/11, and that Iraq was not a threat to the United States. Anyone who wanted to look could have seen the same information that I did.

Yet some of America’s top political leaders bought into the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld drumbeat of war. Two leading Democrats were among those taken in by the White House hype and the WMD argument:

“I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people … [I]ntelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists including Al Qaeda members.” Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), October 10, 2002.

“September 11 was the ultimate wake-up call. We must now do everything in our power to prevent further terrorist attacks and ensure that an attack with a weapon of mass destruction cannot happen. … the first candidate we must worry about is Iraq… [Saddam Hussein] continues to develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear devices.” Leader of the Democratic Caucus in the House, Richard Gephardt (D-MO), October 10, 2002.

Even the most trusted newspapers around the country blindly repeated as fact grossly incorrect assertions by leaders of both parties.

“No further debate is needed to establish that Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator whose continued effort to build unconventional weapons in defiance of clear United Nations prohibitions threatens the Middle East and beyond.” The New York Times, Editorial Board, October 3, 2002.

Notwithstanding the blizzard of disinformation, one hundred thirty three Members of Congress voted against the resolution that authorized the use of military force in Iraq, including nearly two-thirds of the Democratic Caucus in the House. Seven Republicans, including Ron Paul (R-TX), also voted against the resolution. In the Senate, the vote was 77 to 23 in favor of a war of choice.

Ten years ago Congress voted to wage war on a nation that did not attack us. That decision undermined our fiscal and national security. To this day we are suffering from the blowback. While most of the troops are home, the United States maintains a significant presence in Iraq through the State Department and its thousands of private security contractors.

The war against Iraq was based on lies. Thousands of Americans and perhaps a million Iraqis were sacrificed for those lies. The war in Afghanistan continues. New wars have been propagated in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia pursuant to the never-ending “War on Terror”. This mindset puts us at the edge of war against Iran. Ten years and trillions of dollars later, the American people by and large still do not know the truth. It is time to usher in a new period of truth and reconciliation.

Dennis Kucinich is US Congressman from Ohio

Former CIA agent’s trial postponed

OurColoradoNews
Ryan Boldrey

The bagel shop parking lot assault case of former CIA agent Raymond Davis was set to begin this past week, but is facing another postponement.

According to Larry Klayman, attorney for Jeff Maes – who was allegedly seriously injured by Davis in an argument over a parking space in Highlands Ranch – the criminal trial is now scheduled for Feb. 12, one day after the civil trial gets under way.

“It’s a very unusual circumstance,” Klayman said of the two trials being stacked on top of one another, adding that the criminal trial was delayed so that the prosecution could “rediscover what they already knew – that Maes’ injuries were caused by Davis and not pre-existing by nature.”

According to Deputy District Attorney Doug Bechtel, the prosecution is still in the process of gathering all of Maes’ medical history in order to prove that the injuries allegedly sustained outside of Einstein Brothers Bagels in October 2011 were indeed not pre-existing.

“I don’t have all the information I need and obviously I need to disclose (everything) to the defense,” Bechtel said in a recorded conversation with Klayman that Klayman released to the Herald. “In a preliminary hearing doubt, quite frankly, doesn’t matter. Is there a reasonable belief that the defendant could have committed this crime is enough. Once we start trial and are talking about ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ now I have to be able to rebut every one of their defenses.”
On that same recording, Bechtel said there are no plea deals being discussed between Davis’ defense and the prosecution at this time.

It was previously reported in an Aug. 30 story in the Herald that Klayman is under the impression that the DA has been talking with the CIA and that the CIA has been putting pressure on the DA to work a plea deal with the defense, so that Davis’ former role with the agency is not exposed in what expects to be a high-profile case.

The DA’s office has adamantly denied having had any contact with the CIA. Davis, 37, is charged with second-degree felony assault for punching the 50-year-old Highlands Ranch man, knocking him to the ground and allegedly seriously injuring his back, neck and arm.

Davis made national headlines in January 2011 when he was jailed in Pakistan for killing two Pakistani men he said were trying to rob him. An unknown source later paid $2.34 million in blood money to have him released. Seven months after his return to the U.S., Davis got into the altercation in the Highlands Ranch parking lot.

“They (CIA) want to shut down the case because they don’t want any information about Raymond Davis to get out, and I think they are also worried that if they don’t run interference for him that he may squeal in terms of what he was doing over there in Pakistan and perhaps on other matters too,” Klayman said.

If the charges remain as they are and Davis is convicted, the defendant faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of 16 years. Davis entered a not-guilty plea April 30.

U.S. sends aircraft carrier back to Gulf to face Iran, Syria

Reuters
Daniel Fineren

(Reuters) - The U.S. Navy is cutting short home leave for the crew of one of its aircraft carriers and sending them back to the Middle East next week to counter any threat from Iran, according to the official Navy News Service.

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told sailors aboard the USS Stennis in their home port of Seattle on Wednesday they were needed back in the Middle East soon, after approving calls from the U.S. Central Command for Stennis to return to the region.

"Obviously, Iran is one of those threats," the U.S. military news service quoted Panetta as saying during a send-off event at a military base on the U.S. West Coast.

"Secondly, it is the turmoil in Syria," he said. "We're obviously following that closely as well."

The Stennis' departure in January from the Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet area of operations prompted Iranian army chief Ataollah Salehi to threaten action if it returned, saying Iran was "not in the habit of warning more than once".

The threats started a war of words between Iran and the United States that spooked oil markets, and fears over possible military confrontation remain high.

Panetta cited Iran's nuclear program and its threats to oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz as two concerns the Stennis strike group could counter in the U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility, which also includes Syria and Afghanistan.

U.S. attention on Syria is focused on providing humanitarian aid, monitoring chemical and biological weapon stockpiles, and offering non-lethal assistance to forces opposing President Bashar al-Assad, he said.

A spokesman for the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain said the redeployment was not a build-up in the Gulf because the USS Enterprise is due to leave the region on its final voyage back to the United States before being decommissioned after over 50 years of service.

"The presence of two aircraft carriers changes based on needs and requirements," Lieutenant Greg Raelson said.

Iranian threats to block the waterway through which about 17 million barrels a day sailed in 2011 have grown in the past year as U.S. and European sanctions aimed at starving Tehran of funds for its nuclear program have tightened.

A heavy western naval presence in the Gulf is a big deterrent to Tehran actually trying to block the shipping route through which most of the crude exported from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq sails.

The Stennis had been due to deploy next to the Pacific towards the end of 2012 but its return to active duty has been brought forward by four months because of tension in the Gulf.

(Reporting by Daniel Fineren; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

The Global 1%: Exposing the Transnational Ruling Class

Global Research

Prof. Peter Phillips

Kimberly Soeiro

This study asks: Who are the the world’s One percent power elite? 

And to what extent do they operate in unison for their own private gains over benefits for the 99 percent? 

We examine a sample of the 1 percent: the extractor sector, whose companies are on the ground extracting material from the global commons, and using low-cost labor to amass wealth. These companies include oil, gas, and various mineral extraction organizations, whereby the value of the material removed far exceeds the actual cost of removal.We also examine the investment sector of the global 1 percent: companies whose primary activity is the amassing and reinvesting of capital. This sector includes global central banks, major investment money management firms, and other companies whose primary efforts are the concentration and expansion of money, such as insurance companies. 

Finally, we analyze how global networks of centralized power—the elite 1 percent, their companies, and various governments in their service—plan, manipulate, and enforce policies that benefit their continued concentration of wealth and power. We demonstrate how the US/NATO military-industrial-media empire operates in service to the transnational corporate class for the protection of international capital in the world.

The Occupy Movement has developed a mantra that addresses the great inequality of wealth and power between the world’s wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of us, the other 99 percent. While the 99 percent mantra undoubtedly serves as a motivational tool for open involvement, there is little understanding as to who comprises the 1 percent and how they maintain power in the world. Though a good deal of academic research has dealt with the power elite in the United States, only in the past decade and half has research on the transnational corporate class begun to emerge.[i]

Foremost among the early works on the idea of an interconnected 1 percent within global capitalism was Leslie Sklair’s 2001 book, The Transnational Capitalist Class.[ii] Sklair believed that globalization was moving transnational corporations (TNC) into broader international roles, whereby corporations’ states of orgin became less important than international argreements developed through the World Trade Organization and other international institutions. Emerging from these multinational corporations was a transnational capitalist class, whose loyalities and interests, while still rooted in their corporations, was increasingly international in scope. Sklair writes:

The transnational capitalist class can be analytically divided into four main fractions: (i) owners and controllers of TNCs and their local affiliates; (ii) globalizing bureaucrats and politicians; (iii) globalizing professionals; (iv) consumerist elites (merchants and media). . . . It is also important to note, of course, that the TCC [transnational corporate class] and each of its fractions are not always entirely united on every issue. Nevertheless, together, leading personnel in these groups constitute a global power elite, dominant class or inner circle in the sense that these terms have been used to characterize the dominant class structures of specific countries.[iii]

Estimates are that the total world’s wealth is close to $200 trillion, with the US and Europe holding approximately 63 percent. To be among the wealthiest half of the world, an adult needs only $4,000 in assets once debts have been subtracted. An adult requires more than $72,000 to belong to the top 10 percent of global wealth holders, and more than $588,000 to be a member of the top 1 percent.  As of 2010, the top 1 percent of the wealthist people in the world had hidden away between $21 trillion to $32 trillion in secret tax exempt bank accounts spread all over the world.[iv] Meanwhile, the poorest half of the global population together possesses less than 2 percent of global wealth.[v] The World Bank reports that, in 2008, 1.29 billion people were living in extreme poverty, on less than $1.25 a day, and 1.2 billion more were living on less than $2.00 a day.[vi] Starvation.net reports that 35,000 people, mostly young children, die every day from starvation in the world.[vii] The numbers of unnecessary deaths have exceeded 300 million people over the past forty years. Farmers around the world grow more than enough food to feed the entire world adequately. Global grain production yielded a record 2.3 billion tons in 2007, up 4 percent from the year before—yet, billions of people go hungry every day. Grain.org describes the core reasons for ongoing hunger in a recent article, “Corporations Are Still Making a Killing from Hunger”: while farmers grow enough food to feed the world, commodity speculators and huge grain traders like Cargill control global food prices and distribution.[viii] Addressing the power of the global 1 percent—identifying who they are and what their goals are—are clearly life and death questions.

It is also important to examine the questions of how wealth is created, and how it becomes concentrated. Historically, wealth has been captured and concentrated through conquest by various powerful enities. One need only look at Spain’s appropriation of the wealth of the Aztec and Inca empires in the early sixteenth century for an historical example of this process. The histories of the Roman and British empires are also filled with examples of wealth captured.

Once acquired, wealth can then be used to establish means of production, such as the early British cotton mills, which exploit workers’ labor power to produce goods whose exchange value is greater than the cost of the labor, a process analyzed by Karl Marx in Capital.[ix] A human being is able to produce a product that has a certain value. Organized business hires workers who are paid below the value of their labor power. The result is the creation of what Marx called surplus value, over and above the cost of labor. The creation of surplus value allows those who own the means of production to concentrate capital even more. In addition, concentrated capital accelerates the exploition of natural resources by private entrepreneurs—even though these natural resources are actually the common heritage of all living beings.[x]

In this article, we ask: Who are the the world’s 1 percent power elite? And to what extent do they operate in unison for their own private gains over benefits for the 99 percent? We will examine a sample of the 1 percent: the extractor sector, whose companies are on the ground extracting material from the global commons, and using low-cost labor to amass wealth. These companies include oil, gas, and various mineral extraction organizations, whereby the value of the material removed far exceeds the actual cost of removal.

We will also examine the investment sector of the global 1 percent: companies whose primary activity is the amassing and reinvesting of capital. This sector includes global central banks, major investment money management firms, and other companies whose primary efforts are the concentration and expansion of money, such as insurance companies.

Finally, we analyze how global networks of centralized power—the elite 1 percent, their companies, and various governments in their service—plan, manipulate, and enforce policies that benefit their continued concentration of wealth and power.

The Extractor Sector: The Case of Freeport-McMoRan (FCX)

Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) is the world’s largest extractor of copper and gold. The company controls huge deposits in Papua, Indonesia, and also operates in North and South America, and in Africa. In 2010, the company sold 3.9 billion pounds of copper, 1.9 million ounces of gold, and 67 million pounds of molybdenum. In 2010, Freeport-McMoRan reported revenues of $18.9 billion and a net income of $4.2 billion.[xi]

The Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia, employs 23,000 workers at wages below three dollars an hour. In September 2011, workers went on strike for higher wages and better working conditions. Freeport had offered a 22 percent increase in wages, and strikers said it was not enough, demanding an increase to an international standard of seventeen to forty-three dollars an hour. The dispute over pay attracted local tribesmen, who had their own grievances over land rights and pollution; armed with spears and arrows, they joined Freeport workers blocking the mine’s supply roads.[xii] During the strikers’ attempt to block busloads of replacement workers, security forces financed by Freeport killed or wounded several strikers.

Freeport has come under fire internationally for payments to authorities for security. Since 1991, Freeport has paid nearly thirteen billion dollars to the Indonesian government—one of Indonesia’s largest sources of income—at a 1.5 percent royalty rate on extracted gold and copper, and, as a result, the Indonesian military and regional police are in their pockets. In October 2011, the Jakarta Globe reported that Indonesian security forces in West Papua, notably the police, receive extensive direct cash payments from Freeport-McMoRan. Indonesian National Police Chief Timur Pradopo admitted that officers received close to ten million dollars annually from Freeport, payments Pradopo described as “lunch money.” Prominent Indonesian nongovernmental organization Imparsial puts the annual figure at fourteen million dollars.[xiii] These payments recall even larger ones made by Freeport to Indonesian military forces over the years which, once revealed, prompted a US Security and Exchange Commission investigation of Freeport’s liability under the United States’ Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Authentic California Footage of Hundreds of Tanks Moving through Burbank Area

Alabama National Guard making history with training exercise

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) - The United States Army North is preparing for its largest training exercise ever which consist of 9,000 members of the Defense Department's chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear response force.

The training will take place at Camp Atterbury, Indiana.

National guard units from all over Alabama hit the road Sunday. Their convoy is comprised of National Guard units from Alabama, Florida and Kentucky, and is expected to be the largest domestic convoy in its history while traveling to the exercise on Aug. 5-6.

The 1166th Military Police Detachment 1 assisted part of the convoy during a stop to refuel in Birmingham.

"No Blood for Oil": The Unfinished Story of Iraq's Oil Law

Global Research
Greg Muttitt and Ali Issa

In this interview, investigative journalist Greg Muttitt talks about efforts by US occupying forces, multinational oil giants and Iraq's newly-minted 'leaders' to privatise the war-torn nation's coveted oil sector. "No Blood for Oil" was a slogan featured on many a sign in demonstrations during the run up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, and throughout the early years of the occupation as global opposition to it grew. But as Iraq faded from the headlines in 2009, the struggle over its oil continued. In the following interview, Greg Muttitt, investigative journalist and author of the groundbreaking Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq (2012), discusses the attempts by occupying forces, multinational oil giants, and newly minted Iraqi "leaders" to privatise Iraq's oil. Having worked directly with Iraq's oil unions, Mitt also describes the heroic role that Iraqi civil society played in challenging these efforts, how it all shook out and where it might be headed today, at an especially sensitive moment when the Iraqi labour movement is facing a series of fresh attacks. The audio interview was conducted on 13 July 2012, and what follows is an edited transcript. Ali Issa (AI): Based on the hundreds of US/UK documents you have unearthed, what were your findings about the role of oil in the Iraq War? Greg Muttitt (GM): Unsurprisingly, the documentary record shows that oil was a central part of the strategic thinking behind the war, and consistently shaped the conduct of the occupation. My book is primarily about what happened during the occupation. The United States, Britain, and the "international community" were keen to see Iraq's oil developed through foreign investment. It was not so much about helping out their own corporations – that was a secondary concern for them. What they wanted was to see foreign investment in Iraq as a starting point for opening up the other nationalised industries, especially of the region, so as to get oil flowing more quickly. Iraq's oil sector had been nationalised since the 1970s. The nationalisation took place mostly in 1972, and the final phases of it continued until 1975. Essentially, what they wanted to do was to reverse that: put multinational oil companies back in the dominant role in the Iraqi oil sector. AI: You place the struggle over Iraq's 'oil law' at the centre of Iraq’s recent history. What is the oil law, how has it evolved, and what is its present status? GM: The oil law was drafted in 2006, after the first post-Saddam permanent government was formed. Then the Bush administration pushed it especially hard through 2007. The law had three purposes. The first was to create a framework in which multinationals would have a primary role in developing Iraq's oil industry, and to determine exactly the extent of that role, what rights they would have, and the extent of their powers. The second element was to clarify how that would work in an emerging federal system in Iraq. To put it simply: With whom would they sign contracts? Was it with the central government in Baghdad, or was it with regional governments – in particular, the only one that exists so far, the Kurdistan regional government? The third element of the law was to essentially dis-empower parliament in relation to decisions around oil. . . . Since 1967 Iraq has had a law in place, No. 97, which said if the government were to sign contracts to develop oil fields and run them, the parliament would have to sign a specific piece of legislation to approve them. [In other words,] the parliament would have to say, "We support and agree with this contract and we give it validity in law." That was still in force in 2003, and indeed in 2006. The government could legally sign contacts with foreign companies. But if it did so, it would have to get the OK from parliament for them to have any force. Therefore, the most important role of the oil law of 2006/2007 was not [so much] to allow contracts to be signed by multinationals, as that was already possible. It was to allow them [i.e., the contracts] to be signed without parliament having any oversight. Incidentally, the importance of parliamentary oversight is that oil accounts for over 95 per cent of government revenue. So it is quite reasonable for parliament to have some say in how that works.   So this was the oil law. The United States, Britain, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other financial institutions wanted to see it passed as soon as possible once the permanent post-Saddam government was formed in May 2006. As soon as that happened, the United States and Britain started to say, "Your priority is going to be to pass the oil law." I have documents from that period which make this very clear. They moved very quickly to draft an oil law in August 2006, and it basically delivered those three asks of it. Getting this law passed in parliament became the major political priority of the United States. AI: But the law did not pass. What prevented its passage? GM: There were two barriers to it passing. Only one of them was recognised. First, there were disputes between Iraq’s politicians – primarily, between Kurdish politicians and everyone else. The dispute was over the degree of decentralisation. Essentially, it was a squabble between politicians – who thought only about their own interests, or about their ethno-sectarian groups' interests – about which of them would get the right to sign contracts and thereby control revenues. This dispute over decentralisation slowed down the law's progress, and people on either side of that debate leaked it to their allies. This led into the second factor, which was the overwhelming opposition within the Iraqi population to giving multinationals such a central role. I think this was very well known by those in the US administration and those in the Iraqi government. So the way they planned to deal with that was by not telling anyone that this oil law was going through. But it leaked in October 2006. Once it leaked out, it started to spread into civil society. In December 2006 I attended a meeting of Iraq's trade unions in Amman. They were discussing the law and decided that they were going to campaign against it. Their strategy, which began in early 2007, was basically just to get it known about: to tell people about it. So they produced pamphlets, which they handed out to their members and to the general public. They also organised conferences, public meetings, demonstrations, etc. The more this was done, the more people knew about it, the more anger there was that in secret this government – that had a fairly limited mandate given the circumstances of an election under occupation – was trying to push something through that the occupation powers were demanding, and that looked like it would do considerable damage to Iraqi interests and the Iraqi economy. Iraqis feel very strongly that oil should remain in Iraqi hands, not least because of their historical experience with foreign companies. So, during the course of 2007, this opposition spread. One after another, new groups and new constituencies got involved in it. AI: What did the Bush administration do? GM: At the same time that opposition to the oil law was spreading, through the first half of 2007, the Bush administration was ramping up pressure on the Iraqi parliament to get it passed. They were very frustrated and angry that it had not been passed at the end of 2006. All the time, they claimed publicly that it was the dispute with the Kurds over decentralisation that was holding things up. They then claimed that the law was about the sharing of revenues between different groups, which it was not at all.

US-Military Use of Privateers Circumvents Geneva Convention and sets Precedence for Institutionalized Neo-Fascism.

NSNBC

Christof Lehman

Interview with retired Lt. General of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service outlines serious problems with respect to International Law and Human Rights.In a recent interview for Voice of Russia, the retired Lt. General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Gennady Yevstafiew, warns about the increasing use of outsourcing by US-Military and Intelligence Services. Yestafiew is drawing attention to a US-institutionalization of the systematic circumvention of the Geneva Convention, Military Codes of Conduct, Military Law as well as Human Rights.


Yevstafiew warns that the USA is increasingly outsourcing, and hiring local people for the most “dirty” operations and that the boundaries between violations of laws by US military and intelligence services vs. violations of national criminal laws become increasingly diffuse.

The personnel of these private military companies often consists of militarily trained or retired military personnel from both the USA and other countries. Thus, Yevstafiew exemplifies, the USA is unofficially participating with military personnel in maintaining the military supply lines of the Northern Distribution Network through Pakistan to Afghanistan.

The protection of the supply lines is outsourced to private military companies, and these private military companies; military companies which are playing an ever-increasing role in US military aggressions throughout the world.

The fact that these privateers are not on official military payrolls and that casualties among these troops are not counted in official military casualty figures is also playing a significant role in domestic US politics, and that even though a large number of the employees of these private military companies and casualties among them are citizens of the USA.

Thus, US Administrations are able to mask actual casualty figures in conflicts throughout the world. As example, Yevstafiew states, that the US has lost about 4000 troops in Afghanistan over the last ten years, while about 1000 privateers lost their lives in Afghanistan over the same period.

With respect to violations of the Geneva Convention, military law and the military code of conduct, Yevstafiew is drawing attention to the serious human rights violations at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Yevstafiew reiterates that many of the most serious excesses of violence were committed by private paramilitary forces and not only by military personnel. In fact Yevstafiew states that employees of private paramilitary companies committ the most and the most serious violations of human rights.

Yevstafiew is emphasizing that many of these violations of human rights also were gross violations of the victims and occupied nations national religion and character or culture.

The former Lt. General of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service also warns that it is not only the US military that is outsourcing in order to circumvent international law, stating that various American institutions are using them to do their dirty work for them.

As example, Gennady Yevstafiew recalls the discussions about secret American prisons in European countries, including Eastern European countries, as well as secret US prisons in other parts of the world, especially in Asian and Arab countries. These prisons were kept by paramilitary forces, while those who were officially employed by the CIA only rendered the prisoners to the paramilitaries. Often these paramilitaries, who are doing the CIA´s dirty work, are citizens of the country in which the illegal prison is located. This practice diffuses the boundaries of both national and international law and constitute a signifficant problem with respect to human rights and international law.

Yevstafiew considers this development dangerous because it diffuses the American military and intelligence services responsibility for human rights violations and violations of the rights of Prisoners of War under the Geneva Convention.

While the American military should adhere to military manuals which are based on the principles that are enshrined in the Geneva Convention, which prescribe certain conducts, rights, privileges, and protections, so Yevstafiew, the privateers are not obliged to adhere to any of these norms. This enables the US Administrations and certain US representatives to carry out unprecedentedly dirty work with all kinds of violations of human rights.

Somehow, so Yevstafiew, this problem is not being sufficiently discussed, but the time would come when Americans would be forced to explain their use of private military forces as a means of circumventing international law.

“Let us wait for the time when the international community will touch on this very sensitive issue” the former Lt. General of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said.

Yevstafiew also drew attention to the fact that the use of private military institutions has become an institutionalized part of US foreign policy. As example, he mentions that it has been announced that some private paramilitary institutions are going to participate in the training of Afghan and Iraqi military detachments, which allows President Obama to claim that he is withdrawing US troops.

While Obama is somewhat bound by his promises to withdraw troops from Afghanistan he can do so to a certain degree without anybody speaking about the fact that these troops will be substituted by private military companies. In particular these private troops are being used for the protection of very sensitive buildings, installations, and so on.

While, for example, a first glance may reveal that there are 10.000 Americans in Kabul, so Yevstafiew, a closer look reveals that there are thousands more in Kabul who are involved in, as it was recently announced, making Afghanistan as strategic ally.

While Gennady Yestafiew is diplomatic enough only to call some of the human rights abuses that are systematically being outsourced for unprecedentedly dirty work by the US military and intelligence services, the development is in fact indicative of what one could describe as the systematic implementation of institutionalized fascism in US politics, military and intelligence services.

The fusion of private corporations with institutions of government or corporatism are fascism in deed.

Taking the ongoing, illegal, US and NATO led subversion attempt in Syria into account, the fact that the USA and other NATO members overtly are providing political and material support to organizations which they themselves designate as terrorist organizations; taking into account that official US training circulars in unconventional warfare state that the USA in the foreseeable future mainly will wage unconventional wars; and taking the fact into account that NATO is aggressively waging unconventional wars under the guise of a fabled ”the responsibility to protect”, it would be high time to make this “very sensitive issue”, as Yestafiew describes it, an issue that will receive the appropriate coverage within the global political discourse.

Christof Lehmann

25.07.2012 

Notes:

1)US army share responsibility with mercenaries. http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_07_22/US-army-share-responsibility-with-mercenaries/

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On the Verge of An All Out War? Massive Military Build-Up in the Persian Gulf

Global Research
Ben Schreiner

The familiar menace of U.S. war drums have resumed at a fevered pitch, as Iran finds itself once again firmly within the Pentagon’s cross hairs. 

According to multiple reports, the U.S. is currently in the midst of a massive military build-up in the Persian Gulf on a scale not seen in the region since prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.  The military surge reportedly includes an influx of air and naval forces, ground troops, and even sea drones.  Lest one forgets, the U.S. already has two aircraft carriers and their accompanying striker groups in the region. 

A growing sense of Iran war fever can also be seen mounting in Washington.  For instance, in an effort to foil ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany), a bipartisan group of 44 U.S. Senators recently sent a letter to President Obama urging the administration to “focus on significantly increasing the pressure on the Iranian government through sanctions and making clear that a credible military option exists.”

Such hawkish posturing occurs despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community (as well as the Israeli intelligence community, for that matter) finds no evidence that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon--the ostensible reason behind Western sanctions and threats of attack.  Moreover, as an April Pentagon report states, Iran’s military doctrine remains one of self-defense, committed to “slow an invasion” and “force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.”  (Compare this to the U.S. military doctrine rife with notions of global “power projection” and one sees where the credible threat lies.)  

The nuclear issue, though, is but a pretext used to veil U.S. imperial designs in the region.  As a senior U.S. Defense Department official recently let slip to the New York Times:  “This is not only about Iranian nuclear ambitions, but about Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions.”  In other words, it is about removing one of the last irritants to U.S. power projection in the resource-rich Middle East.

Of course, Iran already finds itself under siege from a lethal trifecta comprised of U.S.-led cyber attacks, Israeli-led assassinations, and oppressive Western economic sanctions.  The latter of which has left ordinary Iranians to confront a toxic mix of ballooning inflation and rampant unemployment.  In short, as Conn Hallinan writes at CounterPunch, the West is “already at war with Iran.”

The question, then, is just how far this "war by other means" shall ultimately escalate?

Towards a Dangerous Escalation

Although punitive economic sanctions are frequently sold as an alternative to war, history is replete with evidence to the contrary.  In the end, sanctions are often but a prelude to military hostilities.  (One only needs to cross over to Iraq and look at the history of Western sanctions and eventual U.S. invasion.) 

In fact, a recent report in the New York Times warned of much the same.  The current round of Western economic penalties imposed on Iran, the paper wrote, “represent one of the boldest uses of oil sanctions as a tool of coercion since the United States cut off oil exports to Japan in 1940. That experiment did not end well: The Japanese decided to strike before they were weakened.”

But much like the attempted torpedoing of Japan’s economy prior to the Second World War, the current attempt to bring Iran to its knees via economic sanctions may very well be designed to draw an attack from Iran--thus creating a justification for a full-fledged U.S. military campaign to impose "regime change." 

And much the same as in the 1940s, a global crisis of capitalism greases our current path to war.  After all, war enables the forcible opening of new markets, along with bounties galore to be wrought via “creative destruction”; both of which are desperately needed for the sustenance of an imperiled economic system predicated on limitless growth and expansion.  Indeed, this enduring allure of war has already reared its ugly head amidst the current crisis.

The colonial smash-and-grab that was the 2011 N.A.T.O. intervention into Libya, as Alexander Cockburn has deemed it, was our first evidence that Western elites have settled on war as a means to resolve the current intractable capitalist crisis.  But the spoils from Libya have proven to be insufficient to revive growth stymied since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis. 

A heavily sanctioned Iran, on the other hand, boasts a G.D.P. over five times larger than pre-“liberated” Libya, while also sitting atop the world’s third largest oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves.  A defeated and placated Iran able to be enveloped more fully into the U.S.-dominated capitalist system thus holds great potential for global capitalism’s needed regeneration.  Of course, in seizing control over Iran’s energy resources, the U.S. and its allies would also come to possess a monopoly over the Middle East’s energy resources--a strategic key in any future conflict with rivals Russia and China.

And so it is that under the imperative of renewing global capitalism that the U.S. swiftly amasses its military hardware to the Persian Gulf under to cloak of combating nuclear proliferation.  The accompanying talk of military hostilities and of using “all options” against Tehran by elites in Washington thus ought not to be taken as idle threats. 

Clearly, we stand at the very precipice of outright war.

US Military Spending: Where are the Jobs?

Military spending creates 11,200 jobs for each billion dollars spent

Global Research

Greg Guma

In recent Vermont debate about the impacts of bedding F-35A fighter jets at the Burlington International Airport the arguments in support often come down to balancing noise and other impacts against economic necessities and benefits. Whatever the outcome it has raised renewed questions about the economic impacts of military spending. A new study finds that money spent on clean energy, health care, and education would create many more jobs than if the same money is spent on defense.       

Sen. Pat Leahy has fought to save an alternate F-35 engine that would mean jobs at a Rutland  GE plant.

Dire warnings that thousands of Vermont jobs are at risk due to looming defense cuts and related changes in Air Force priorities may turn out to be overstated, or at least premature.

In March, a report commissioned by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) predicted that Vermont would lose upwards of 2,100 jobs if automatic defense cuts were triggered by the failure of Congress to reach a budget deal. Vermont Air National Guard jobs were reportedly also on the line. Under the Pentagon’s initial budget the Air Guard could see a loss of 9,900 jobs nationally over the next five years, including 3,900 active duty personnel and 900 members of the Air Force reserve.

Two months later such outcomes look less likely. Research meanwhile indicates that funding for clean energy, health care, and education would create substantially more jobs.

The AIA study, conducted for the aerospace industry in 2011 by Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University, projects that more than a million jobs could be lost nationwide if sequestration leads to a projected $600 billion cut in the defense budget. The Pentagon and other analysts forecast more conservatively that $1 trillion in cuts over a decade would add one percentage point to the unemployment rate.

"The data speaks for itself, America's aerospace and defense industry is a sector that punches far above its weight," claims AIA President Marion Blakey.  "And it's not just the numbers, which are impressive by themselves— it's how this industry makes a difference in the lives of all Americans."

On the other hand, he predicts that cuts brought on by sequestration will “devastate our industry's contributions to America's bottom line.”

Similar arguments were made during the recent Air Force public hearing on stationing F-35As with the Air Guard at Burlington International Airport. Gov. Peter Shumlin is one of several Vermont officials who have endorsed bedding 18 to 25 of the pricey, long-awaited aircraft at the airport in Burlington based on jobs and economic factors. In a statement he argued that drawbacks such as increased noise “are outweighed by the extraordinary benefits that this opportunity presents our communities and our state.”

"It will lead to war" - Ron Paul fights to end military aid for Israel

Russia Today

Presidential hopeful Ron Paul has condemned a plan being considered in the United States House of Representatives that would allow for the US to continue aiding in the defense of Israel by equipping the Jewish state’s military with added weaponry. 

From Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) attacked the contents of an act currently up for discussion that, if passed, would reestablish America’s major role in Israeli affairs. Rep Paul fears, however, that it would do more harm than good for all nations involved.

To House Speak John Boehner, Paul said that H.R. 4133, the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, “is another piece of one-sided and counter-productive foreign policy legislation.”

“This bill's real intent seems to be more saber-rattling against Iran and Syria,” insisted Paul, “and it undermines US diplomatic efforts by making clear that the US is not an honest broker seeking peace for the Middle East.”

“The bill calls for the United States to significantly increase our provision of sophisticated weaponry to Israel, and states that it is to be US policy to ‘help Israel preserve its qualitative military edge’ in the region,” added the congressman.

The bill itself was created to reaffirm America's "commitment to Israel's security as a Jewish state," "provide Israel with the military capabilities to defend itself," "expand military and civil cooperation" and "encourage Israel's neighbors to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state," among other matters according to the official synapsis included in the legislation. It was introduced in March by Rep. Eric Cantor and discussed for around one hour on Wednesday afternoon before a motion to reconsider was laid on the table and agreed without objection.

Explaining his opposition, Rep. Paul told his fellow lawmakers that “While I absolutely believe that Israel – and any other nation – should be free to determine for itself what is necessary for its national security, I do not believe that those decisions should be underwritten by US taxpayers and backed up by the US military.”


“This bill states that it is the policy of the United States to ‘reaffirm the enduring commitment of the United States to the security of the State of Israel as a Jewish state,’” said the congressman. “However, according to our Constitution the policy of the United States government should be to protect the security of the United States, not to guarantee the religious, ethnic, or cultural composition of a foreign country. In fact, our own Constitution prohibits the establishment of any particular religion in the US.”

“This bill will not help the United States, it will not help Israel, and it will not help the Middle East,” concluded Paul. “It will implicitly authorize much more US interventionism in the region at a time when we cannot afford the foreign commitments we already have. It more likely will lead to war against Syria, Iran, or both. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill.”

So Many Military Veterans Are Going To Jail This Georgia Town Built A Vets Only Wing

Military/Defense

There are over one million veterans sitting in jails and prisons throughout America, but in towns close to military bases home to combat units, the ratio of discharged soldiers having a brush with the law is even greater.

Troops get home from combat and wartime duty eager to get out of the military and start a new life, but once they're discharged many have a hard time finding a place in the community they left behind.

The problem is so extreme that many judicial systems have set up separate trial proceedings for veterans. Philadelphia launched their separate Veterans Court nearly two years ago, and now a first-of-its kind veterans only jail dorm is open in Georgia.

Sara Pauff at the Ledger-Enquirer reports the Muscogee County Jail opened the new dormitory with the goal of providing vets treatment and services they need to transition back to civilian life: PTSD treatment, a veterans only court, mental health counseling, and even housing assistance.

County Sheriff John Darr told Pauff the dorm can hold 16 inmates, is the only one of its kind in a county jail, and is funded solely by community resources.

From the Ledger-Enquirer:

The Veterans Court offers legal help to incarcerated veterans diagnosed with a mental illness. Superior Court Chief Judge John Allen said they've found that some of the inmates they see don't identify as veterans and that sometimes, their problems can be traced back to their military service.
"There ought to be a place in our city that provides a facility where veterans can stay for a period of time while being treated, physically and mentally," Ret. Col. Roy Plummer said. Veterans typically stay in the house for three to six months, until they can manage their own affairs.

Muscogee County is home to the city of Columbus, where "The Home of the Infantry"— Fort Benning— lives and breathes.

Benning serves more than 120,000 military members and their dependents and hosts more than 15 Army infantry units as well as many specialized schools like the Army Sniper School, Jump School, and the Armor School.

Wilbert Cox, who is now in jail on theft and trespassing charges, was in the Army for 10 years and told the Ledger "This is the first time I've been in jail ... [and now] we're not just thrown into the wolves' den. There is something available to us for our service to our country."