Congress to Re-legalize War Propaganda

Just in time for Memorial Day (the day set aside to remember those brutally killed in the racket that is war) the Congress has voted to once again allow the federal government the ability to domestically distribute propaganda.

Michael Hastings of BuzzFeed.com reports, “The new law would give sweeping powers to the government to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. 'It removes the protection for Americans,' says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. 'It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.'”

It's not enough that the National Guard pays $26.5 million per year to sponsor Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s #88 race car ($136 million over the past 5 years, making him the highest-paid military contractor that has nothing to do with the military). That represents a small fraction of the roughly $667 million spent per year by the military on advertising. Now that the prohibition on domestic propaganda has been repealed, instead of seeing ads where the Marine climbs the mountain and grabs the sword, you could see an ad where the Marine tells you all the reasons to invade Iran, or some other country that is not a threat to your safety.

Read More:

http://www.freepatriot-press.com/2012/05/congress-to-re-legalize-war-propaganda.html

Kelley B. Vlahos - War Inc. Shifts Homeward

It’s been said many times that the war is a self-sustaining industry that requires a constant threat overseas to keep the machine thriving at home. Looking at the millions if not billions of dollars spent on securing “national special security events” against its own citizens, it’s clear that protesters have become the threat that has allowed, in part, the warfare state to flourish on American soil.

Sound dramatic? One need only to look at the lockdown of our cities during these “events” — whether it be the NATO Summit in Chicago today, or preparations to militarize the cities of Tampa and Charlotte for the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer — to see that the constitutionally protected, American tradition of protest has become a reason for law enforcement to spend their quickly evaporating budgets each year on new toys and overtime — including the latest in surveillance, crowd control gear and communications equipment, not to mention the helicopters overhead and armed vehicles on the ground.

Just as important, this threat allows the federal government to extend its own powers under the Patriot Act onto Main Street, all in the order of counterterrorism and national security.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=150891

Gareth Porter - U.S. Hard Line in Failed Iran Talks Driven by Israel

Negotiations between Iran and the United States and other members of the P5+1 group in Baghdad ended in fundamental disagreement Thursday over the position of the P5+1 offering no relief from sanctions against Iran.

The two sides agreed to meet again in Moscow Jun. 18 and 19, but only after Iran had threatened not to schedule another meeting, because the P5+1 had originally failed to respond properly to its five-point plan.

The prospects for agreement are not likely to improve before that meeting, however, mainly because of an inflexible U.S. diplomatic posture that reflects President Barack Obama's need to bow to the demands of Israel and the U.S. Congress on Iran policy.

The U.S. hard line in the Baghdad talks and the failure to set the stage for an early agreement with Iran means that Iran will not only increase but accelerate its accumulation of 20-percent enriched uranium, which has been the ostensible reason for wanting to get Iran to the negotiating table quickly.

Iran's enrichment to 20 percent, which Tehran has justified over the past two years as needed by its Tehran Research Reactor to produce medical isotopes, can be turned into high enriched uranium more quickly than the 3.5 percent enriched uranium for Iran's nuclear power programme.

Read More:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/gareth-porter/43412/u-s-hard-line-in-failed-iran-talks-driven-by-israel

Tom Engelhardt - How to Forget on Memorial Day

It’s the saddest reading around: the little announcements that dribble out of the Pentagon every day or two -- those terse, relatively uninformative death notices: rank; name; age; small town, suburb, or second-level city of origin; means of death (“small arms fire,” “improvised explosive device,” “the result of gunshot wounds inflicted by an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform,” or sometimes something vaguer like “while conducting combat operations,” “supporting Operation Enduring Freedom,” or simply no explanation at all); and the unit the dead soldier belonged to.  They are seldom 100 words, even with the usual opening line: “The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.” Sometimes they include more than one death.

They are essentially bureaucratic notices designed to draw little attention to themselves.  Yet cumulatively, in their hundreds over the last decade, they represent a grim archive of America’s still ongoing, already largely forgotten second Afghan War, and I’ve read them obsessively for years.

Into the Memory Hole

May is the official month of remembrance when it comes to our war dead, ending as it does on the long Memorial Day weekend when Americans typically take to the road and kill themselves and each other in far greater numbers than will die in Afghanistan.  It’s a weekend for which the police tend to predict rising fatalities and news reports tend to celebrate any declines in deaths on our roads and highways.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175546/

Gloria Goodale - Memorial Day: Among post-9/11 veterans, deepening antiwar sentiment

Despite the end of the Iraq war and the scheduled drawdown in Afghanistan, this Memorial Day arrives against a backdrop of deepening – and some say more troublesome – antiwar sentiment among military veterans.

One of the most vivid and replayed images of protesters at the NATO summit last weekend in Chicago was a group of some 40 vets lined up to toss their war medals over the chain link fence to protest what former naval officer Leah Bolger calls “the illegal wars of both NATO and America.”

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 33 percent of post-9/11 veterans say that neither the war in Iraq nor in Afghanistan “were worth the cost,” and this among a highly motivated cohort who chose to serve.

What this means, says retired US Army Col. Ann Wright, who resigned from a State Department post in 2006 over US policies in Iraq, is that there is a widening gap between the government, military policies, and the soldiers that carry them out.

“Military personnel know America will always have a military, but there is growing concern over the way it is being used,” says the 29-year veteran, adding that an increasing list of concerns include “the use of torture, illegal detentions, and both soldiers and the public being lied to about the actual reasons for going into combat.”

But in contrast to the extremely vocal and visible antiwar movements of the Vietnam War era, many veterans in the all-volunteer military have found it harder to mobilize effective actions, says Cameron White, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq before joining “Iraq Veterans Against the War.”

Read More:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2012/0526/Memorial-Day-Among-post-9-11-veterans-deepening-antiwar-sentiment

Stephen Lendman - IS AMERICA GOING TO WAR? Anti-Iranian Propaganda in High Gear

Listen to Stephen weekly on Thursday's at 11am (Eastern) and Saturday and Sunday at 1pm (Eastern)

When America goes to war or plans one, the media march in lockstep. 

Articles, commentaries, editorials, and broadcasts feature Washington handout-style journalism. 

Managed news misinformation substitutes for truth and full disclosure. Readers and viewers are deceived and betrayed.

For years, Iran and Syria have been targeted for regime change. Independent governments aren't tolerated. Puppet ones are planned to replace them. Scoundrel media play leading roles.

On May 24, The New York Times headlined "Iran Nuclear Talks End with No Deal."

P5+1 talks failed as expected. Washington bears full responsibility. Deal-making isn't at issue. It's portraying Iran as uncooperative for added justification to wage war.

"The six wanted a freeze on Iranian production of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, which is considered a short step from bomb grade."

In fact, it's a giant one to 90% required for weapons making. It's especially so without intent to produce them.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31069

Renee Parsons - The Export of Weapons: Past, Present and Future

As long overdue negotiations on an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) begin in early July under UN auspices, central to that discussion, by virtue of its international supremacy, will be the US export of arms that has facilitated the extensive sale of weapons around the planet. With only 19 out of 195 sovereign nations of the world with no military budget, the ATT conference will attempt to establish international standards for the $55 billion a year industry for the import, export and transfer of all conventional (small arms) weapons.

Even a widespread global recession and callous austerity budgets have done little to dampen an insatiable demand for weapons by industrialized nations, undemocratic nations and still developing or unstable nations with an estimated $1.7 trillion devoted to annual military expenditures in 2011, a 50 per cent increase in global military budgets since 2001 -- at the expense of providing a safe, secure world for all its citizens.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-parsons/the-export-of-weapons-pas_b_1540165.html

Prof. Thomas J. Nagy - How the US Deliberately Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply

In September 2001 Professor Thomas Nagy of George Washington University, D.C., revealed the existence of Defense Intelligence Agency documents “proving beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country’s water supply after the Gulf War. 

"The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway.” On May 12, 1996 some of the horrible consequences of this policy were revealed when the CBS news program 60 Minutes reported that roughly half million Iraqi children had died as a consequence of U.S. imposed sanctions. 

This led to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s infamous answer to the question, “is the price worth it?” Her reply was yes “we think the price is worth it.” Albright later apologized, not for the murderous policy for which she was partially responsible, but rather for the fact that her answer to the above question had “aggravated our public relations problems” in the Middle East. 

As to domestic reaction, her comment “went unremarked in the U.S.” Subsequently, in 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq using the strategy of “rapid dominance” (more popularly known as “shock and awe”). The object of this strategy was to “paralyze” the enemy’s “will to carry on” through the disruption of “means of communication, transportation, food production, water supply, and other aspects of infrastructure.” One of the targets of the bombing campaign that led off the invasion was Iraq’s electrical grid. That directly impacted the country’s ability to process clean water." 

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31011

Tony Cartalucci - US Officially Arming Extremists in Syria

Recently reported in "Brookings Announces Next Move in Syria: War," it was stated that "by the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution's own admission, the Kofi Annan six-point peace plan in Syria was merely a ploy to buy time to reorganize NATO's ineffective terrorist proxies and provide them the pretext necessary for establishing NATO protected safe havens from which to carry out their terrorism from." It was also examined in detail, how in 2007, US, Saudi, and Israeli officials admitted they were creating a militant front of extremists for the sole purpose of causing the destabilization of Syria we see today, and ultimately overthrowing the Syrian government. It was noted how these extremist militants had direct ties to Al Qaeda. 

Now it is fully admitted that weapons, cash, and logistical support is indeed being provided to terrorist forces in Syria by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf States. This, despite a current UN ceasefire the West has continuously berated the Syrian government for violating, indicates that indeed reorganizing, rearming, and redeploying NATO's terrorist proxies is complete, and another round of destructive violence has begun. 

In the Washington Post's article, "Syrian rebels get influx of arms with gulf neighbors’ money, U.S. coordination," not only is this admitted, but claims made by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been confirmed that Syria's historically violent Muslim Brotherhood, stated in 2007 by Seymour Hersh as being a direct proxy of US-Saudi-Israeli funding and support, is also directly arming and funding contingents of extremists committing acts of terror across Syria.

Read More:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30891

Top Obama Officials, Secretive Process Create 'Assassination List'

US officials with firsthand knowledge of how the government determines who gets put on the CIA and Pentagon's lists for 'targeted killing' have confessed concern over the implications and nature of the process.  In conversations with the Associated Press, one official involved -- who spoke with assurances of anonymity -- said that some of those carrying out the policy have become leery of "how easy it has become to kill someone," under the rules established under the Obama administration and orchestrated by Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan.

Brennan, who last month offered the first public admission by a White House official of the existence of the clandestine drone assassination program in places like Pakistan and Yemen, has amassed unique powers by consolidating the decision-making process to a select and tightly-controlled group of people, according to AP's reporting.

"Under the new plan, Brennan's staff compiles the potential target list and runs the names past agencies such as the State Department at a weekly White House meeting," the report cites officials as describing. "Previously, targets were first discussed in meetings run by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen at the time, with Brennan being just one of the voices in the debate. Brennan ultimately would make the case to the president, but a larger number of officials would end up drawn into the discussion."

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/22-2