US Military Taught Officers: ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics For ‘Total War’ On Islam

The U.S. military has been teaching its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims will be necessary to protect America from terrorists, according to documents released today in a stunning story in Wired's Danger Room.

A cartoon included in the Joint Staff Forces College presentation on "Jihad: Defined and Operationalized" contains a number of ugly stereotypes. Hundreds of US military officers have enrolled in the course on Islamic radicalism since it was first offered four years ago at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia.

Among the other chilling assertions in the documents:

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/10-4

Paul Craig Roberts - THE NEW TYRANNY: Does The West Have A Future?

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence.  Consider:

We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax.  The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.

This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they built one, they probably built more.”  

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people.” Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder woman and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa.  The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as “a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect--what, fake plots?  In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers’ lives. 

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30799

Michael T. Klare - The Energy Wars Heat Up

Conflict and intrigue over valuable energy supplies have been features of the international landscape for a long time.  Major wars over oil have been fought every decade or so since World War I, and smaller engagements have erupted every few years; a flare-up or two in 2012, then, would be part of the normal scheme of things.  Instead, what we are now seeing is a whole cluster of oil-related clashes stretching across the globe, involving a dozen or so countries, with more popping up all the time.  Consider these flash-points as signals that we are entering an era of intensified conflict over energy.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, Argentina to the Philippines, here are the six areas of conflict -- all tied to energy supplies -- that have made news in just the first few months of 2012:

* A brewing war between Sudan and South Sudan: On April 10th, forces from the newly independent state of South Sudan occupied the oil center of Heglig, a town granted to Sudan as part of a peace settlement that allowed the southerners to secede in 2011.  The northerners, based in Khartoum, then mobilized their own forces and drove the South Sudanese out of Heglig.  Fighting has since erupted all along the contested border between the two countries, accompanied by air strikes on towns in South Sudan.  Although the fighting has not yet reached the level of a full-scale war, international efforts to negotiate a cease-fire and a peaceful resolution to the dispute have yet to meet with success.

This conflict is being fueled by many factors, including economic disparities between the two Sudans and an abiding animosity between the southerners (who are mostly black Africans and Christians or animists) and the northerners (mostly Arabs and Muslims).  But oil -- and the revenues produced by oil -- remains at the heart of the matter.  When Sudan was divided in 2011, the most prolific oil fields wound up in the south, while the only pipeline capable of transporting the south’s oil to international markets (and thus generating revenue) remained in the hands of the northerners.  They have been demanding exceptionally high “transit fees” -- $32-$36 per barrel compared to the common rate of $1 per barrel -- for the privilege of bringing the South’s oil to market.  When the southerners refused to accept such rates, the northerners confiscated money they had already collected from the south’s oil exports, its only significant source of funds.  In response, the southerners stopped producing oil altogether and, it appears, launched their military action against the north.  The situation remains explosive.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175540/

Chemi Shalev - Has Israel’s leadership come down with mad-Jew disease?

This is what’s been going down in the last few days alone:

1. The Prime Minister says that sanctions against Iran aren’t working and the Defense Minister claims that Iran is irrational and then the Prime Minister stipulates that the Iranians want to make a bomb and then the IDF Chief of Staff flatly contradicts them and says that Iran is rational, sanctions are working and the Iranians won’t really make a bomb after all. And the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister go on saying what they were saying before, as if nothing’s happened.

2. The next day, a former chief of the Shin Bet, who spent his life in what Israeli leftists like to call “the apparatus of darkness,” opens his mouth for the first time since retirement and sounds like a turbo-charged Peter Beinart: the Israeli leadership suffers from a messiah complex, they are morally unfit to govern, they can’t wage war and they sure as hell don’t want to make peace.

3. Less than 48 hours later, an up and rising Likud minister and a fabled former head of the Mossad nearly come to blows in front of hundreds of people in New York. The Mossadnik calls the minister a liar and compares a proposed Knesset law to Nazi legislation, while the minister accuses the man who until recently was hailed as a cross between Indiana Jones, George Smiley and Bar Kochba as “harming the state security,” a crime punishable by law. “How did he ever get such a high position?” asks the minister of the man who was an IDF general before serving for eight years as head of the Mossad, where he was widely considered to be one of the best ever.

Read More:

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/has-israel-s-leadership-come-down-with-mad-jew-disease-1.427302

Daniel Ganser and Alexander Artamonov - NATO’s Secret Army

NATO’s secret army existed on the territory of Western Europe until the beginning of the 90s. And maybe it is still functioning today. It was called Gladio, which means sword in Latin. One of its emblems is a salamander, which marks its belonging to the secret services syndicate.

In order to understand what this movement really represented or, possibly, is still representing, we consulted the well-known Swiss historian Daniel Ganser, who has published a book about the secret army.

Mr. Ganser, you are a historian, specializing in modern history and international relations since 1945. You lecture at Basel University and you are the author of numerous works which caused a sensation all over the world. I would like to speak to you about your most well-known book “NATO’s Secret Army”.

NATO’s Secret Army is a poorly studied phenomenon. Even my colleagues used to say to me: "But NATO has never had any secret army!" The whole world thought that such a thing did not exist. And then, in 1990, Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed that all the European NATO countries had secret armies. Their aim was to resist a Soviet invasion. But during the Cold War period nothing of the kind happened, as you know. Therefore, people thought that these armies were useless, but it was not so. They were used in order to manipulate the political climate in many European countries - France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, Italy, Greece, Austria, Spain, Portugal,and Finland. It was a large-scale phenomenon all right.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30701

Rick Rozoff - COLD WAR II: From the Balkans to Central Asia: U.S.-NATO Prepare for New Cold War

Though infrequently acknowledged if even given consideration, the current historical period remains what it has been for a quarter century, the post-Cold War era.

Beginning in earnest in 1991 with the near simultaneous disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - instantaneous in the first case, comparatively slower in the second, only complete with the independence of Montenegro in 2008 - the  bipolar world ended with the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and the nonaligned one with the fragmentation of Yugoslavia, a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement.

The dissolution of the two nations, the only both multi-ethnic and multi-confessional countries in Europe, was accompanied by violent ethnic conflicts often reinforced by religious differences. In Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, the South Caucasus, the Russian North Caucasus and on the east bank of the Dniester River.

In many instances, in Serbian-majority areas of Croatia and Bosnia and in Transdniester, memories of World War II gave rise to legitimate fears of revanchism among populations that recalled the death camps and pogroms of Adolf Hitler's allies in the early 1940s and witnessed the recrudescence of the ideologies, the irredentism and the political trappings that gave rise to them.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30629

Gary Younge - Osama bin Laden's death has had zero impact on America's security

Last week, Afghanistan; two coalition troops were injured and one killed by Afghan soldiers; the US reached an agreement with the Afghan governmentto maintain a presence in the country until 2024; and the US failed to break a diplomatic deadlock with Pakistan after the US refused to apologise for killing 25 Pakistani soldiers in November.

This week, the White House will celebrate the anniversary of the assassination of Osama bin Laden as though it were the crowning achievement of its foreign policy. On Wednesday, Obama will hold a rare televised interview in the situation room to discuss the raid in Abbottabad. His campaign has released of a web video in which Bill Clinton says President Obama "took the harder and the more honorable path, and the one that produced, in my opinion, the best result". The video then asks, "Which path would Mitt Romney have taken?"

The man who entered the White House with the message of "hope" and "change" wants to hold on to it with a record of "shoot to kill".

Republicans are right to criticise the president for the crass manner in which he is "dancing around the end zone". Unfortunately, those criticisms ring hollow from a party whose leader played dress up on the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of a war that is still not over, and whosepresidential candidate claims Obama should stop travelling the globe "apologising for" America. Moreover, the problem is not that Obama is exploiting a moment of national unity for partisan gain – though he most certainly is – but that this extra-judicial execution of an unmourned man has proved the only event capable of uniting the country since 9/11.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/01/osama-bin-laden-death-zero-impact

Joe Glenton - Why I refused to return to fight in Afghanistan's brutal occupation

Recent attacks in Kabul confirm the occupation is falling to pieces. Claims about "decisive years" and "turned corners" are little more than cant. Instead for all their lack of air power, drones and high-tech equipment, the Taliban are gaining ascendancy.

The ability to attack up to seven different locations, to hold one for 20 hours, and to attack the fortified compounds of the occupiers and local supporters cannot sensibly be read as a sign that the insurgency is losing ground. Fighting in Afghanistan is seasonal and the Kabul attacks were the season's opening game.

No insurgency can survive without broad support from the local population. The insurgent relies upon the people for intelligence, support, safety and more. The fact that insurgents now control great swaths of the country virtually unchallenged tells us the people have been lost, partially due to the occupiers' bumbling efforts. The argument that Afghans are rejecting the Taliban falls flat.

Let's not forget there is no mandate in law for aggression nor any mention of – or authority for – brutally occupying Afghanistan in the UN resolutions regarding it. Which is why I refused to serve a second tour in Afghanistan. I was sentenced to five months in military prison for it but other soldiers too have refused and are refusing to serve in Afghanistan – as is their right.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/25/why-i-refused-to-fight-afghanistan-occupation

Thomas C. Mountain - Destroying Africa With Western “Democracy”

Western style “democracy” is destroying Africa. It seems everywhere you look in Africa you see elections marked by violence and bloodshed. “Buy, rig or steal” is the name of the game and if that doesn't work, send in the French army and UN “peacekeepers” and rocket the presidential residence and just take over by brute force.

“Democracy” is supposed to mean that the leaders of a nation do what their people want them to do.

If you ask almost all Africans what they want most from their leaders they will tell you;

1) Enough food to eat.

2) Clean water to drink

3) A roof over their heads

4) Accessible and affordable medical care

5) Education for their children

Elections are way down on the list of grassroots African priorities.

Food, water, shelter and medical care, if a countries leadership is getting these priorities taken care of then they are actually practicing democracy and if they don't provide these services to their people they are not democratic, no matter the praised heaped on them by their neo-colonial masters in the west.

Read More:

http://www.countercurrents.org/mountain300412.htm

David Swanson - The Global War on Terror, in the Original German

In 1939, Sebastian Haffner sat down and wrote a pre-history of Nazism.

Nazism had not been inevitable. It had not progressed steadily without setbacks. But it had been growing for many years, even before the name for it existed. It had been coming since the end of the Great War.

By the late 1920s, according to Haffner, "Berlin became quite an international city. Admittedly, the sinister Nazi types already lurked in the wings, as 'we' could not fail to notice with deep disgust. They spoke of 'Eastern vermin' with murder in their eyes and sneeringly of 'Americanization.' Whereas 'we,' a segment of the younger generation difficult to define but instantly and mutually recognizable, were not only friendly toward foreigners, but enthusiastic about them."

The Stresemann Era, 1924-1929, saw Gustav Stresemann serve as Foreign Minister. He made peace with France, joined the League of Nations, won a Nobel Peace Prize, wandered the streets of Berlin unarmed and unguarded, and his signature is first at the bottom of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Who studies him today? His spirit is far more powerful in Germany now than Hitler's, so powerful as to go unnoticed.

But Hitler was coming. When Stresemann died in 1929, "we were seized with icy terror. . . . The era of peace was at an end. So long as Stresemann had been there, we had not quite believed it. Now we knew."

Read More:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/42845/the-global-war-on-terror-in-the-original-german