US MILITARISM WARFARE STATE NEWSLETTER #2

OMNI NEWSLETTER #2 ON US MILITARISM

September 27, 2013,    Building a Culture of Peace and Justice, Compiled by Dick Bennett.  (#1 Dec. 27, 2010.)  See newsletters on US imperialism.

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters: http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/   For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.

See related newsletters, for example: Bush, Cheney, imperialism, individual wars, National Security State,  Obama,  military industrial complex, Pentagon, Surveillance, war department, war resistance, wars environment

Contents of Newsletter #1

The US War System:

    War Against Humans, War Against Environment

WAR AGAINST HUMANS

Ann Fagan Ginger, Undoing the Bush-Cheney Legacy

Seiler and Hamburg, “Rule by Fear or Rule by Law?”

Frida Berrigan, “We’re #1” (in military expenditures)

Robert Jensen, We Are All Responsible for the Corporate-Military Complex

Dick, “Control of Language: Euphemism”

Cindy Sheehan, “Don’t Go, Don’t Kill”

Ekirch, The Civilian and the Military

WAR AGAINST ENVIRONMENT AND SPECIES

Barry Sanders, author of The Green Zone, interview

Books on Climate Change

Contents of #2

WAR AGAINST HUMANS

Militarization

Military Industrial Complex:  Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. 

Hedges, “Decay of Empire, wide-ranging essays” on US wars

Amy Goodman’s Books, dysfunctions of wars and resistance

Hedges, About War:  brutalizing physical and psychological consequences of combat

Lobsczewski:  Ponerology,  Science of Macroevil and Why So Many Psychopaths Seek and Gain High Office

Library of Social Science, Ideologies of War, Collective Violence, Sacrifice

US War Criminals Google Search

 Impeach Bush, Cheney for War Crimes Google Search

WAR AGAINST EARTH AND SPECIES

Sara Flounders, Climate War Crimes

Barry Sanders  (See Dick’s Blog Thursday, January 20, 2011)

Romm, Wars and Warming

Day Film, Scarred Lands

WARS AGAINST HUMANS

 “The Militarization of America: How the Military Mindset Is Permeating Our Political Culture and Society”

http://www.alternet.org/world/151291

Our president and elected representatives must serve as a check on the military establishment, rather than issuing blank checks to them.

·                                   ·                                 ·                                 Dec 06, 2010 280 p., 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 1 b/w ISBN: 9780300153057 Cloth: $26.00  ·                                   ADD TO CART    or SEE OTHER ONLINE VENDORS ·                                 Also available in Paper: $17.00 ·                                 eBook Availability ·                                   ·                                   ·                                   ShareThis Related Categories History Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex ·                                 James Ledbetter       REVIEWS             PREVIEW             CONTENTS             EXCERPTS       In Dwight D. Eisenhower’s last speech as president, on January 17, 1961, he warned America about the “military-industrial complex,” a mutual dependency between the nation’s industrial base and its military structure that had developed during World War II. After the conflict ended, the nation did not abandon its wartime economy but rather the opposite. Military spending has steadily increased, giving rise to one of the key ideas that continues to shape our country’s political landscape. In this book, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Eisenhower’s farewell address, journalist James Ledbetter shows how the government, military contractors, and the nation’s overall economy have become inseparable. Some of the effects are beneficial, such as cell phones, GPS systems, the Internet, and the Hubble Space Telescope, all of which emerged from technologies first developed for the military. But the military-industrial complex has also provoked agonizing questions. Does our massive military establishment—bigger than those of the next ten largest combined—really make us safer? How much of our perception of security threats is driven by the profit-making motives of military contractors? To what extent is our foreign policy influenced by contractors’ financial interests? Ledbetter uncovers the surprising origins and the even more surprising afterlife of the military-industrial complex, an idea that arose as early as the 1930s, and shows how it gained traction during World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam era and continues even today. James Ledbetter is editor in charge of Reuters.com. His books include Made Possible By . . . and Starving to Death on $200 Million.

Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex | The Beacon

blog.independent.org/.../eisenhower-and-the-military-industrial-com...Cached

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Mar 21, 2011 – A review of James Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. New Haven and London: Yale ...

1.                             Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military ...

www.foreignaffairs.com/.../unwarranted-influence-dwight-d-eisenho...

You +1'd this publicly. Undo

Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex; The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition ...

2.                             Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military ...

www.radha-krishnaism.org/.../unwarranted-influence-dwight-d-eisen...Cached

You +1'd this publicly. Undo

Oct 17, 2011 – Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex. by James Ledbetter, editor in charge of Reuters.com.

The World As it Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress By Chris Hedges

Publisher's Weekly  March 7, 2011

Former New York Times correspondent Hedges (The Death of the Liberal Class) offers a collection of his recent articles (many culled from his regular column at Truthdig.com), grouped under a handful of topics: "Politics," "Israel and Palestine," "The Middle East," "The Decay of Empire." It's indicative of the longtime war correspondent's experienced eye and commitment to social justice that these areas include subject matter of especially pressing concern, whether the task is understanding the assault underway on organized labor in Wisconsin and elsewhere, liberal disillusionment with Obama, or the dynamics of foreign dictatorships subsidized by the U.S., as in the timely "Inside Egypt" and other dispatches providing vivid background and astute observations on a roiling Middle East. Hedges is equally direct and damning in assessments of Israel's ongoing occupation and colonization of Palestine, including some stirring reportage from within the shadow of the mammoth and destructive separation wall. While things may be changing given the current international upsurge of mass public democratic action, the author's pointed descriptions of the dangers of American "political passivity" deserve careful consideration along with much else in these powerfully written pages. (Apr.)

AMY GOODMAN, Director of Democracy Now!

Her programs, many of which become books, report on diverse dysfunctions of war and resistances to them.

The Exception to the Rulers.  2004.  Several essays, including:  “In Bed with the Military,” “Psyops Comes Home” (lies told by the military), “Hiroshima Cover-up.”

Static. 2006.  “Outlaw Nation,” “Watching You,” “News Fakers,” “The Torturers’ Apprentice,” “Unembedded in Fallujah,” and more.

Standing Up to the Madness.  2008.  Section IV.  “Soldiers of Conscience.  Turning Point: The GI Movement.  Peace Warriors.”

Breaking the Sound Barrier.  2009.   Opening section on “WAR,” 15 essays, for example:  “The Art of War and Deception,” “The Time Is Right for New Pentagon Papers,” “The Uncounted Casualties of War,” “Winter Soldier Marches Again.”

What Every Person Should Know About War

by Chris Hedges

Acclaimed New York Times journalist and author Chris Hedges offers a critical -- and fascinating -- lesson in the dangerous realities of our age: a stark look at the effects of war on combatants. Utterly lacking in rhetoric or dogma, this manual relies instead on bare fact, frank description, and a spare question-and-answer format. Hedges allows U.S. military document...more
Acclaimed New York Times journalist and author Chris Hedges offers a critical -- and fascinating -- lesson in the dangerous realities of our age: a stark look at the effects of war on combatants. Utterly lacking in rhetoric or dogma, this manual relies instead on bare fact, frank description, and a spare question-and-answer format. Hedges allows U.S. military documentation of the brutalizing physical and psychological consequences of combat to speak for itself.

Hedges poses dozens of questions that young soldiers might ask about combat, and then answers them by quoting from medical and psychological studies.

• What are my chances of being wounded or killed if we go to war?

• What does it feel like to get shot?
• What do artillery shells do to you?
• What is the most painful way to get wounded?
• Will I be afraid?
• What could happen to me in a nuclear attack?
• What does it feel like to kill someone?
• Can I withstand torture?
• What are the long-term consequences of combat stress?
• What will happen to my body after I die?
This profound and devastating portrayal of the horrors to which we subject our armed forces stands as a ringing indictment of the glorification of war and the concealment of its barbarity.

Published November 1st 2007 by Free Press (first published June 3rd 2003)

POLITICAL PONEROLOGY--the science of macroevil, or why so many psychopaths get into posItions of power.

Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes by Andrew M. Lobaczewski with commentary and additional quoted material by Laura Knight-Jadczyk Andrew M. Lobczewski's book is available from Red Pill Press now in both paperback and E-Book formats.

This article is a two-parter. I should notify the reader that the really good stuff is in the second part, so don't skip it! Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Nov. 2005 Pathocracy is a disease of great social movements followed by entire societies, nations, and empires. In the course of human history, it has affected social, political, and religious movements as well as the accompanying ideologies� and turned them into caricatures of themselves�. This occurred as a result of the � participation of pathological agents in a pathodynamically similar process. That explains why all the pathocracies of the world are, and have been, so similar in their essential properties. �Identifying these phenomena through history and properly qualifying them according to their true nature and contents - not according to the ideology in question, which succumbed to the process of caricaturization - is a job for historians. [�] The actions of [pathocracy] affect an entire society, starting with the leaders and infiltrating every town, business, and institution. The pathological social structure gradually covers the entire country creating a �new class� within that nation. This privileged class [of pathocrats] feels permanently threatened by the �others�, i.e. by the majority of normal people. Neither do the pathocrats entertain any illusions about their personal fate should there be a return to the system of normal man. [Andrew M. Lobaczewski Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes] The word �psychopath� generally evokes images of the barely restrained - yet surprisingly urbane - Dr. Hannibal Lecter of �Silence of the Lambs� fame. I will admit that this was the image that came to my mind whenever I heard the word. But I was wrong, and I was to learn this lesson quite painfully by direct experience. The exact details are chronicled elsewhere; what is important is that this experience was probably one of the most painful and instructive episodes of my life and it enabled me to overcome a block in my awareness of the world around me and those who inhabit it. Regarding blocks to awareness, I need to state for the record that I have spent 30 years studying psychology, history, culture, religion, myth and the so-called paranormal. I also have worked for many years with hypnotherapy - which gave me a very good mechanical knowledge of how the mind/brain of the human being operates at very deep levels. But even so, I was still operating with certain beliefs firmly in place that were shattered by my research into psychopathy. I realized that there was a certain set of ideas that I held about human beings that were sacrosanct. I even wrote about this once in the following way: ��� �my work has shown me that the vast majority of people want to do good, to experience good things, think good thoughts, and make decisions with good results. And they try with all their might to do so! With the majority of people having this internal desire, why the Hell isn't it happening? I was na�ve, I admit. There were many things I did not know that I have learned since I penned those words. But even at that time I was aware of how our own minds can be used to deceive us. Now, what beliefs did I hold that made me a victim of a psychopath? The first and most obvious one is that I truly believed that deep inside, all people are basically �good� and that they �want to do good, to experience good things, think good thoughts, and make decisions with good results. And they try with all their might to do so�� As it happens, this is not true as I - and everyone involved in our working group - learned to our sorrow, as they say. But we also learned to our edification. In order to come to some understanding of exactly what kind of human being could do the things that were done to me (and others close to me), and why they might be motivated - even driven - to behave this way, we began to research the psychology literature for clues because we needed to understand for our own peace of mind. If there is a psychological theory that can explain vicious and harmful behavior, it helps very much for the victim of such acts to have this information so that they do not have to spend all their time feeling hurt or angry. And certainly, if there is a psychological theory that helps a person to find what kind of words or deeds can bridge the chasm between people, to heal misunderstandings, that is also a worthy goal. It was from such a perspective that we began our extensive work on the subjects of narcissism which then led to the study of psychopathy. Of course, we didn�t start out with such a �diagnosis� or label for what we were witnessing. We started out with observations and searched the literature for clues, for profiles, for anything that would help us to understand the inner world of a human being - actually a group of human beings - who seemed to be utterly depraved and unlike anything we had ever encountered before. Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition. In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world. You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered. How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. [...] Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all. If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. [...] Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population.... The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered "alarmingly high," is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality. The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 4 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth. Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system. We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense. Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish. Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person. Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers. The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender. What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference betwen an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity. What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions. [Martha StoutThe Sociopath Next Door] (highly recommended) MORE  http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/political_ponerology_lobaczewski.htm The Ideologies of War Website:  Resources for Scholars Exploring the Sources and  Meanings of Collective Forms of Violence Below are extracts from papers  that appear on the Ideologies of War website—please click the links  to read the entire paper. WOMEN AND WAR "White Feathers and Wounded Men: Female Patriotism and the Memory of the Great War," Nicoletta F. Gullace On August 30, 1914, Admiral Charles Fitzgerald deputized 30 women in Folkstone to hand out white feathers to men not in uniform. The purpose of this gesture was to shame "every young 'slacker' found loafing about," and to remind those "deaf or indifferent to their country's need" that British soldiers are "fighting and dying across the channel.'' Fitzgerald's warned the men of Folkstone that there is a "danger awaiting them far more terrible than anything they can meet in battle," for if they were found "idling and loafing to-morrow" they would be publicly humiliated by a lady with a white feather. A poster designed for the mayor of London put the same message bluntly. Addressing "The Young Women of London," the mayor asked: "Is your 'Best Boy' wearing Khaki? If not, don't YOU THINK he should be? If he does not think that you and your country are worth fighting for—do you think he is worthy of you? Don't pity the girl who is alone—her young man is probably a soldier fighting for her and her country—and for You. If your young man neglects his duty to his King and Country, the time may come when he will Neglect You. Think it over—then ask him to JOIN THE ARMY TO-DAY!" BLOOD SACRIFICE CREATES  THE NATION "Sacrifice and the Creation of Group of Identity: Case Studies of Gallipoli and Masada," Renee Lockwood The battles at Gallipoli (1915) during the First World War are often seen to represent the moment of independence for the Australian nation, offering a chance for its true national character to emerge. Despite its Federation in 1901, Australia had not yet succeeded in producing a unique identity. Ken Inglis: "The altar had not yet been stained with crimson as every rallying center of a nation should be." After the huge loss of life at Gallipoli, Australia's hopes of a national identity born of blood and sacrifice were realized. The idea that sacredness and power are born from a willingness to die are fundamental to the ideology of sacrifice. The sacrificial victims embody the entire group collective. Thus, the horrors of Gallipoli are made noble, and acts of slaughter are neither murder nor suicide. THE CRUCIFIED SOLDIER "National Cemeteries and National Revival: The Cult of the Fallen  Soldiers in Germany,"  Author(s): George L. Mosse During the First World War, Walter Flex felt that death in war made life meaningful, even if that life was devoid of meaning until the moment of sacrifice. Modern war became an extraordinary event that enabled men to reach for higher things. The quest for "higher things" separated the front-line soldier from those leading ordinary lives. War was considered a cosmic process. Within this process, the cult of the fallen occupied a central position. In war cemeteries and war monuments, the abstract became concrete and could be touched and worshipped. The cult of the fallen assimilated the basic themes of Christianity. The exclamation "Now we are made sacred" implied an analogy of the sacrifice in war to the passion and resurrection of Christ. The war, according to Walter Flex, was the Last Supper: one of the chief revelations through which Christ illuminates the world. The sacrificial death of the best of our people, he continued, is only a "repetition of the passion of Christ." Dear Colleague, Library of Social Science is devoted to the development, marketing and promotion of scholarship. Recently, our focus has been Library of Social Science Book Reviews, which identifies outstanding books—and publishes thoughtful review essays. Roger Griffin's review of The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Modern Mourning, and the Reinvention of the Mystical Body was distributed through our Newsletter earlier this week, and now may be read on our website. Some of you may not be aware of our Ideologies of War website—the research arm of Library of Social Science. Ideologies of War represents a resource for scholars, bringing together significant papers, book chapters, book excerpts, photographs and videos focusing on the sources and meanings of collective forms of violence. We hope you will take time to explore this website and read some of the writings that appear there. Among the nearly 100 resources: Roger Griffin ·  The Meaning of "Sacrifice" in the First World War (Paper) Paul Kahn ·  Torture and International Law (Book Chapter) Richard A. Koenigsberg ·  The Soldier as Sacrificial Victim: Awakening from the Nightmare of History (Paper) Carolyn Marvin ·  Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Book Excerpts) Ivan Strenski ·  Sacrifice, Gift and the Social Logic of Muslim 'Human Bombers' (Paper) Brian Victoria ·  Holy War: Toward a Holistic Understanding (Paper) Recently, we presented a "Call for a Review Essay" for the following titles: Awaiting the Heavenly Country: The Civil War and America's Culture of Death (Mark S. Schantz) Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Alan Kramer) We are in the process of selecting reviewers. More broadly in the next weeks, we will move toward interrogating the sacrificial logic that generates episodes of collective slaughter, as well as the commemorative processes that come into being after (and during) war. We are creating a special bibliography pageon the First World War, and commemoration. These resources are for our book reviewers, but also for all readers of the Library of Social Science Newsletter, and especially for those of you who wish to join us in interrogating the sources and meanings of collective forms of violence—in order to awaken from the nightmare of history. Best regards, Orion PS: To provide a sense of the articles that appear on the Bibliography page for the First World War and Commemoration, we have provided extracts/summaries of three papers, each of which may be read in full by clicking through to the links. This message was sent to jbennet@uark.edu from: LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE | 9230 56th Ave, Suite 3E | Elmhurst, NY 11373 Email Marketing by Manage Your Subscription  |  Forward To a Friend

GOOGLE SEARCH SEPT. 27, 2013, PAGE ONE (several of the articles report on war crimes of other countries and leaders!)

1.                             United States war crimes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes‎

U.S. armed forces have committed war crimes in various wars in which they've been engaged throughout history. Most - but not all - contemporary war crimes ...

‎Philippine–American War - ‎World War II - ‎Korean War - ‎Vietnam War

2.                             News for US war Crimes

Vancouver Sun

3.                             Top Ten American War Criminals Living Freely Today - Rense

www.rense.com/general69/tpten.htm‎

A war crime is a punishable offense, under international law, for violations of the law of war by any person or persons, military or civilian. Every violation of the ...

4.                             International War Crimes Tribunal: US War Crimes against ... - Deoxy

deoxy.org/wc/warcrime.htm‎

Includes use of outlawed weapons; intentionally bombing schools, hospitals, mosques and churches; killing after a cease-fire; and starvation of citizens.

5.                             A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq - Deoxy

deoxy.org/wc/‎

WAR CRIMES A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal. by Ramsey Clark and ...

6.                             Remember US War Crimes – LewRockwell.com

www.lewrockwell.com/2013/08/eric-margolis/remember-us-war-crimes/‎

Aug 31, 2013 - Let's face some hard facts about the vicious conflict in Syria. If the USdirectly attacks Syria, the real cause will not be the recent chemical ...

7.                             WikiLeaks Attorney on Manning Guilty Verdict: Blowing Whistle on ...

www.democracynow.org/.../wikileaks_attorney_on_manning_guilty_ver...‎

Jul 30, 2013 - U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning was found guilty today of 20 ...The people committing the war crimes ought to be prosecuted.

8.                             American War Crimes | Global Research

www.globalresearch.ca/american-war-crimes/5347854

Sep 3, 2013 - In a recent column, “The Stench of American Hypocrisy,” I noted that USpublic officials and media are on their high horse about the rule of law ...

9.                            In-depth articles

10.                        

History - World Wars: Kill 'em All': The American ...

While atrocities conducted both by North and South Korean forces have already been documented, recently a much darker side to theUS involvement in the Korean War has ...BBC - 

Feb, 2011

John Yoo's war crimes

The political reality is that high government officials in the U.S. are never going to be held accountable for war crimes. In practice, “international law” exists as a justifying ...Salon - 

Apr, 2008

The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan ...

The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime images the Pentagon tried to censor ...Rolling Stone - 

Mar, 2011

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us war crimes in vietnam

REMEMBERING IMPEACHMENT GOOGLE SEARCH SEPT. 27, 2013, PAGE ONE

Impeachment of Bush and Cheney impossible now, and Pres. Obama has refused to order his Justice Dept. to indict them.  Now Obama is himself vulnerable to impeachment and indictment for war crimes.

1.                             Impeach Bush

www.impeachbush.org/‎

A pillar of our work to impeach, and now indict, Bush administration officials for their ...U.S. cannot hide details of Bush and Cheney's crimes, states new United ...

2.                             Why I Believe Bush Must Go - Washington Post

www.washingtonpost.com › Opinions‎

Jan 6, 2008 - So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising. But what are the facts? Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of ...

3.                             Efforts to impeach George W. Bush - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_impeach_George_W._Bush‎

We're hoping that as the cries for the removal of both Cheney and Bush now reach 46 percent and 58 percent, respectively, for impeachment, that we could ...

‎Kucinich/Wexler impeachment ... - ‎Political views and actions - ‎See also

4.                             McGovern: Impeach Bush, Cheney Now - CBS News

www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-3679720.html‎

Feb 11, 2009 - Former Democratic Candidate Says Crimes Of Current Administration Worse Than Nixon's.

5.                             Vermont Votes to Impeach Bush/Cheney - Common Dreams

www.commondreams.org/views07/0307-22.htm‎

Mar 7, 2007 - When Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, a Republican with reasonably close ties to President Bush, asked if there was any additional business ...

6.                             Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney: Dennis ...

www.amazon.com › ... › Law › Administrative Law › Federal Jurisdiction‎

Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney [Dennis Loo, Peter Phillips, Howard Zinn] on Amazon.com. *FREE* super saver shipping on ...

7.                             Obama Forces Scuttle Bush/Cheney Impeachment - Rense

rense.com/general80/sosob.htm‎

Wondering why Congressman Kucinich has withdrawn his impeachment resolution against Cheney, and dropped out of impeachment in general? Wondering ...

8.                             Joe Biden Wanted Bush Impeached For the Very Thing Obama is ...

www.policymic.com/.../joe-biden-wanted-bush-impeached-for-the-very-...‎

Biden was absolutely correct to point out the illegality of Bush's intentions and threaten him with impeachment. Bush and Cheney, who marked their ...

9.                             Nader Calls for Bush-Cheney Impeachment - ABC News

abcnews.go.com › ABC News Blogs › Politics › Political Radar

May 23, 2008 - ABC News' Yunji de Nies reports: Independent presidential hopeful Ralph Nader spoke outside the White House Friday, calling for the ...

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WAR AGAINST ENVIRONMENT

Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes by Sara Flounders
Global Research, December 19, 2009
International Action Center - 2009-12-18
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In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions? By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements. The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count. The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon's aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world. At the time, the U.S. Navy had 285 combat and support ships and around 4,000 operational aircraft. The U.S. Army had 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, more than 4,000 combat helicopters, several hundred fixed-wing aircraft and 187,493 fleet vehicles. Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution, all their other vehicles run on oil. Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon. The U.S. military officially uses 320,000 barrels of oil a day. However, this total does not include fuel consumed by contractors or fuel consumed in leased and privatized facilities. Nor does it include the enormous energy and resources used to produce and maintain their death-dealing equipment or the bombs, grenades or missiles they fire. Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports: "The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. ... The war emits more than 60 percent of all countries. ... This information is not readily available ... because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under U.S. law and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change." (www.naomiklein.org, Dec. 10) Most scientists blame carbon dioxide emissions for greenhouse gases and climate change. Barry Sanders in his new book, "The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism," says that "the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency ... the Armed Forces of the United States." Just how did the Pentagon come to be exempt from climate agreements? At the time of the Kyoto Accords negotiations, the U.S. demanded as a provision of signing that all of its military operations worldwide and all operations it participates in with the U.N. and/or NATO be completely exempted from measurement or reductions. After securing this gigantic concession, the Bush administration then refused to sign the accords. In a May 18, 1998, article entitled "National security and military policy issues involved in the Kyoto treaty," Dr. Jeffrey Salmon described the Pentagon's position. He quotes then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen's 1997 annual report to Congress: "DoD strongly recommends that the United States insist on a national security provision in the climate change Protocol now being negotiated." (www.marshall.org) According to Salmon, this national security provision was put forth in a draft calling for "complete military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions limits. The draft includes multilateral operations such as NATO- and U.N.-sanctioned activities, but it also includes actions related very broadly to national security, which would appear to comprehend all forms of unilateral military actions and training for such actions." Salmon also quoted Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation in Kyoto . Eizenstat reported that "every requirement the Defense Department and uniformed military who were at Kyoto by my side said they wanted, they got. This is self-defense, peacekeeping, humanitarian relief." Although the U.S. had already received these assurances in the negotiations, the U.S. Congress passed an explicit provision guaranteeing U.S. military exemption. Inter Press Service reported on May 21, 1998: "U.S. law makers, in the latest blow to international efforts to halt global warming, today exempted U.S. military operations from the Kyoto agreement which lays out binding commitments to reduce 'greenhouse gas' emissions. The House of Representatives passed an amendment to next year's military authorization bill that 'prohibits the restriction of armed forces under the Kyoto Protocol.'" Today in Copenhagen the same agreements and guidelines on greenhouse gases still hold. Yet it is extremely difficult to find even a mention of this glaring omission. According to environmental journalist Johanna Peace, military activities will continue to be exempt from an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, "The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government's energy demand." (solveclimate.com, Sept. 1) The blanket exclusion of the Pentagon's global operations makes U.S. carbon dioxide emissions appear far less than they in fact are. Yet even without counting the Pentagon, the U.S. still has the world's largest carbon dioxide emissions. More than Emissions Besides emitting carbon dioxide, U.S. military operations release other highly toxic and radioactive materials into the air, water and soil. U.S. weapons made with depleted uranium have spread tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans. The U.S. sells land mines and cluster bombs that are a major cause of delayed explosives, maiming and disabling especially peasant farmers and rural peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America . For example, Israel dropped more than 1 million U.S.-provided cluster bombs on Lebanon during its 2006 invasion. The U.S. war in Vietnam left large areas so contaminated with the Agent Orange herbicide that today, more than 35 years later, dioxin contamination is 300 to 400 times higher than "safe" levels. Severe birth defects and high rates of cancer resulting from environmental contamination are continuing into a third generation. The 1991 U.S. war in Iraq , followed by 13 years of starvation sanctions, the 2003 U.S. invasion and continuing occupation, has transformed the region -- which has a 5,000-year history as a Middle East breadbasket -- into an environmental catastrophe. Iraq 's arable and fertile land has become a desert wasteland where the slightest wind whips up a dust storm. A former food exporter, Iraq now imports 80 percent of its food. The Iraqi Agriculture Ministry estimates that 90 percent of the land has severe desertification. Environmental War at Home Moreover, the Defense Department has routinely resisted orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated U.S. bases. ( Washington Post, June 30, 2008) Pentagon military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as contaminants seep into drinking water aquifers and soil. The Pentagon has also fought EPA efforts to set new pollution standards on two toxic chemicals widely found on military sites: perchlorate, found in propellant for rockets and missiles; and trichloroethylene, a degreaser for metal parts. Trichloroethylene is the most widespread water contaminant in the country, seeping into aquifers across California , New York , Texas , Florida and elsewhere. More than 1,000 military sites in the U.S. are contaminated with the chemical. The poorest communities, especially communities of color, are the most severely impacted by this poisoning. U.S. testing of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Southwest and on South Pacific islands has contaminated millions of areas of land and water with radiation. Mountains of radioactive and toxic uranium tailings have been left on Indigenous land in the Southwest. More than 1,000 uranium mines have been abandoned on Navajo reservations in Arizona and New Mexico . Around the world, on past and still operating bases in Puerto Rico, the Philippines , South Korea , Vietnam , Laos , Cambodia , Japan , Nicaragua , Panama and the former Yugoslavia , rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon. The best way to dramatically clean up the environment is to shut down the Pentagon. What is needed to combat climate change is a thoroughgoing system change. Sara Flounders is Co-Director of the International Action Center
Sara Flounders is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Sara Flounders

BARRY SANDERS’ THE GREEN ZONE

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Show more results from amazon.comGreen Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism :: AK PressApr 8, 2009 ... —from the IntroductionThis new investigation by Barry Sanders examines in ... The Green Zone is the first book to provide a comprehensive ...
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The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of the Military By Barry ...Barry Sanders' new book, “The Green Zone”, takes a different angle than any I've seen before, and I believe it's an approach I believe we all need to ...
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The Green Zone - The IndypendentJun 26, 2009 ... Enter the buzzkill that is Barry Sanders' new book, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, in which he delivers a wake-up ...
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"Thoughts on Military Pollution" By Barry Sanders
EARTH FIRST! JOURNAL www.earthfirstjournal.org/article.php?id=
http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/article.php?id=466Retired professor and prolific author Barry Sanders has spent a long time looking closely at the US Military where others hadn’t: he looked at the environmental effects and the sheer devastation that the military leaves in its wake. He compiled a frightening collection of numbers into his book The Green Zone. I contacted him through the book’s publisher, AK Press, and sent him a letter, asking about the findings, about how we activists are so used to looking at our corporate foes and overlook the military, and about what we as Earth First!ers could hope to do about it. Here is his response:

I do not separate the corporate agenda from the military agenda in this country. I do not mean simply the old Eisenhower conflation, which he daintily called the military-industrial complex. He makes such an alliance sound like a kind of neat and tidy collusion. It is a straight up partnership now: each one needs the other. Almost all big corporations are in the war business, or at the very least, in the military business. Think of auto manufacturing and how many specialized small shops went out of business with the collapse of the auto industry. To raise a tank takes a small corporate village. Cut back on the Pentagon budget and you slice and dice the economy—that’s one grand reason, at least, no politician is willing to take on the military. There are other reasons, but that’s a big one.
Having said that, I am reminded of a line by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, in her book War Talk: she says “... the state acts in the name of its citizens. So, as a citizen, I am forced to acknowledge that I am somehow made complicit in the Gujarat pogrom.” It is not just large corporations that are complicit in this business of making war and polluting the world. I am complicit, too—we all are. Even though I do not wear a uniform, I am an essential part of the military: I pay my taxes, I am allowed to periodically protest some given war, and thus indirectly and against my will I support the war. For me, what I understood after working on this book is that the fate of the Earth rests in the hands of the military. That is one of the most frightening and appalling notions anyone can confront. The United States military engages in a War of Terror: it is destroying everything. For me, this is an issue of enormous magnitude, which all of us must confront.

How badly does the military pollute? I think as citizens we have no idea how bad the pollution actually is. At any rate, the carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide would translate into numbers and lose its edge, just the way the dead Iraqis and Afghanis and GIs come to us as glorified body counts. The task of computing takes us afield and keeps us distracted. I have come up with approximate numbers in The Green Zone, but who the hell really knows? I say no one. What if we knew the number? Would we be any closer to stopping the war machine?
People want numbers. I understand that. But more importantly, we need action. Here’s an example of how much we do not know: this very morning (Monday, July 27, 2009) I opened the New York Times and read a piece (on page 15) about the military conscription of indigenous peoples—in this case Navajos—during the ‘50s to work in hundreds of military mines in the heart of the Navajo Nation digging up uranium for the military to use in its weapons. (The military used depleted uranium in Iraq in many of its warheads.) Over the years, as the New York Times points out, “Navajo miners extracted some 4 million tons of uranium ore from the ground, much of it used by the United States government to make weapons.” And now those same indigenous people, and their grown children, are falling sick from radiation poisoning. Their houses and drinking water and crops are all contaminated. I count this tragedy, thousands of miles removed from the Middle East, scores of years removed from any Pentagon action, as military pollution.

The last part of The Green Zone takes up the topic of fallout through the military’s use of depleted uranium in certain of its warheads in the war in Iraq. How can I tally or categorize such extraordinary pollution that produces radioactive waste with a half life of 4.5 billion years and that results in disfigured fetuses and corrupts food supplies and kills animals and fish populations and on and on? Can we equate the horror of such lethality with the emission of greenhouse gases? Such a grotesquerie almost makes carbon and sulfite pollution seem tame. This kind of pollution does not of course stay in place but gets blown around the globe on wind currents.
That’s why when I talk about military pollution I want to write the word with a capital P, because it is so much more lethal than any other kind of pollution we have encountered as environmentalists. While the military is the largest single consumer of oil in the world, that can be a misleading statement since America has a population of 330 million people, a great majority of whom drive cars. And who knows the actual count of factories in this country that continually pump carbons into the atmosphere. But, as I try to point out, the military not only pollutes, it contaminates, it transfigures, it eliminates. And this is why I say it makes no difference how green we get in our homes and offices because the military negates our every effort at cutting greenhouse emissions.

Several military critics make the point that bureaucrats in the Pentagon may not even know the exact numbers for military consumption of oil and gas. While we do know that it is the single largest consumer of oil in the world, the Pentagon is just too huge and complex and cumbersome for any citizen to find a number that we can know with certainty. Couple that with the fact that the military hides a good deal of its statistics for fuel consumption, for purchases, for types and kinds of weapons. After months and months of digging into web sites and leaked documents, I do not know the precise figures for the military; I have not come across anyone who does know, or says he or she knows. I spent an enormous time trying to ferret out those numbers—almost everything significant about weapons and vehicles and fuel consumption the Pentagon keeps classified or hidden. In the book, I list those numbers that the military likes to boast about, like the Abrams Tank consuming five gallons of fuel to cover a single mile. During battle, over ideal terrain, the Abrams can gobble up 252 gallons of fuel each and every hour. With its afterburners kicked in, the F-15 uses fuel at the astonishing rate of four gallons per second, or 14,400 gallons an hour!

What can we do as environmentalists? As an initial suggestion—and I do not want anyone to think I have the answers—for stopping the olive-drab juggernaut is an overwhelming prospect, but one thing I would like to suggest is that the movement must redefine itself, must expand its range of concerns to include putting an end to war. If you consider yourself green, you must become olive green and include an opposition to the military.

The International Panel on Climate Change has an agenda that runs to some 20 pages, but it has never included one mention of the war. Whenever the Bioneers meet to discuss climate change, they never mention the military. As far as I am concerned, this is a gross omission.

What to do? For one very apparent thing, an environmental movement that does not include an opposition to all war—not an anti-war stance about Iraq or Afghanistan, but an absolute, no-war stance—is a movement defined too narrowly. In the early years of the Vietnam War, teach-ins enabled people to learn the truth about, say, the Gulf of Tonkin. We ought to be doing the same thing today—educating people about the military’s power to end life on the planet. We need to talk to people about their fears of losing their lives to acts of terror. That fear is misplaced. The military is not protecting us—it is creating more insurgents, more enemies of this country. This is fairly clear to many radicals, but not to the public in general.
The planet, the globe, is at stake—the Earth cannot withstand war any more. If we cannot stop such gross nonsense, the Earth will stop it for us—plain and simple. I can imagine a March of Life on Washington the likes of which history has not witnessed—a huge coalition of people who say no to war, to pollution, to homophobia, to sexism and racism, to oppression of all kinds. Most of the wars this country has engaged in have been against people of color, including of course our current ones. Imperialism is opposed to everything that Earth First! holds sacred.
We must finally see that all these concerns and issues are related. Hate of any kind, discrimination and intolerance of any kind, we must count as social pollution. The issue is not putting an end to the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan, or putting a stop to the so-called war on terror. It is a moment of coming to consciousness, of building a new and different and more enlightened and liberating attitude toward the Earth—toward plants and animals and people, toward all living things. The old world, the old, dead world, is built on hate and destruction. It’s time, as they say, to move on—in the largest, most inclusive, most communitarian ways imaginable. Only a communitarian spirit, in my estimation, will save us.
www.earthfirstjournal.org/article.php?id=466
[D: See Korten's Agenda for a New Economy, one of hundreds of books and thousands of articles that for many decades, along with the overwhelming majority of the people of the world, have called for a reversal of the U.S. National Security State: Corporate-Military-Secrecy-White House-Congress-Wars/Killing-Imperialism-Mainstream (Corporate) Media-C02 Climate Change Complex, and the building of a Culture of Peace, a humane, caring society.]

WARS AND WARMING

 Joseph Romm, author of  Hell and High Water.

27 May 2011 08:40 AM PDT. Climate Progress

The three worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and sea level rise and ocean poisoning:  Hell and High Water.  But another impact - far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog - may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

We will have to work as hard as possible to make sure we don't leave a world of wars to our children. That means avoiding decades if not centuries of strife and conflict from catastrophic climate change. That also means finally ending our addiction to oil, a source - if not the source - of two of our biggest recent wars. As the NYT reported in 2009:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.. . . .

EISENBERG PRESENTS

Regina Eisenberg

regina@stationrelations.com | 510.550.1706

January 18, 2011

The effects of war and war preparations on the environment, while profound, have been largely overlooked.

Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives. (1/60)

Producers:

Alice and Lincoln Day

Fund for Sustainable Tomorrows

Dear colleague:

We are pleased to announce the release of Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War in time for your Earth Day programming. While the profound effects of war on our planet have been largely overlooked in Earth Day discussions, this one-hour documentary brings war explicitly into the environmental conversation.

The scale of environmental damage over the last half century is unprecedented. Falling water tables, shrinking forest cover, declining species diversity all presage ecosystems in distress. These trends are now widely acknowledged as emanating from forces of humanity's own

making; ironically however, war, that most destructive of human behaviors, is commonly bypassed.

In all its stages, from the production of weapons through combat to cleanup and restoration, war entails actions that pollute land, air, and water, destroy biodiversity, and drain natural resources. Yet the environmental damage occasioned by war and preparation for war is routinely underestimated, underreported, even ignored. The environment remains war's "silent casualty."

Using archival material from the Civil War and World Wars I and II, up to Vietnam, Bosnia, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and specialist and eyewitness accounts, Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives examines the impact of war and its toll on the Earth's ecosystems. It traces the variety of damage caused by weaponry at all stages, from production and testing, through combat, to cleanup. Revealing the many ways war pollutes and degrades the environment—from land mines and cluster bombs that destroy farm lands and disrupt agricultural practices to damage to water tables caused by the bombing of oil refineries and chemical plants, the documentary is eye-opening.

Reviewers of Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives invariably claim to have been greatly moved by the documentary and to have learned a lot from watching it.

Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives is produced by Alice and Lincoln Day, Fund for Sustainable Tomorrows. The documentary is distributed to public television stations by NETA. Funded by The Wallace Genetic Foundation, The Manna Foundation, and generous support of individual donors, local underwriting is permissible.

Please contact me if you have questions. I’ll be in touch with you about your carriage plans during the next months. A fact sheet follows.

Very truly yours,

Regina

Regina Eisenberg

R Eisenberg Presents

regina@stationrelations.com | 510.550.1706

2340 Powell Street, Suite 333, Emeryville, CA 94608

END NEWSLETTER #2 ON US WAR SYSTEM, MILITARY-CORPORATE-CONGRESSIONAL-WHITE HOUSE COMPLEX