Is War on Israel Possible, We Hadn't Thought So But….

To American Jews, the sound of this has to be strange. 78% support Obama but only 5% of Jewish donations go to him and his supporters.

President Orders Israeli Spies Jailed, Israel Watched As Potential Foe

… by Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

To American Jews, the sound of this has to be strange. 78% support Obama but only 5% of Jewish donations go to him and his supporters.

The big money, Koch Brothers, Wall Street and the AIPAC spies and their supporters go to the Republicans, lifelong enemies of the Jewish people, in fact, the source of the huge upsurge of antisemitism in America.

Here is a video funded by the ADL and AIPAC attacking President Obama. Problem is, in most of the world and much of America, this “attack piece” is seen as a poorly done pro-Obama video. We aren’t kidding, things have gone that far.

Read rest of article including link to Koch Brothers propaganda video.

Phi Beta Iota: We have been calling for religious counterintelligence since at least 2003, generally focused on the very negative, unlawful, and often treasonous misbehavior of US citizens with top secret/special compartmented information known to hold dual citizenship with Israel. Anyone with a security clearances that holds dual citizenship with Israel should be given a choice: lose the Israeli citizenship, or lose the clearances. They should all be subject to oversight by a highly specialized religious counterintelligence unit with divisions for Opus Dei, the Mormons, the Pentecostals, and others that preach higher loyalties justifying treason to the Republic. With respect to the current stories, there is no open evidence that the Administration is doing anything serious with respect to containing Israel government covert operations in the USA. As long as a Goldman Sachs lobbyist is in the position of National Security Advisor (hereafter, Nanny to the President), and Goldman Sachs owns both the Fed and the Secretary of the Treasury positions, Obama would appear to be quite helpless and inconsequential, bracketed as he is by the the huge financial services industry syndicate and the combination of entitlement and national security stakeholders.

Religious Counterintelligence at Phi Beta Iota

2012/03/23

David Swanson: Shifting Strategies of the US Empire

Civil Society, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

The Shifting Strategies of Empire

By David Swanson

Remarks at the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) Conference:

President Obama this week declared the war on Iraq to be an honorable success that has given us a brighter future. Are you fired up? Ready to go?

Eric Holder this month explained that it's legal for a president to kill anyone anywhere, or to imprison them, or to spy on them. I started to get upset about this, but then I remembered that Holder is a Democrat. That made me feel much better.

Leon Panetta told Congress this month that a president can launch a war without Congress and without the United Nations and without any legal restrictions, that a NATO decision to go to war makes a war legal, that a decision by an ad hoc coalition to go to war makes a war legal, and that in fact there's no way for a war launched by a U.S. president not to be legal. At first this sounded like a dangerous doctrine, until I remembered that the president is not a Republican, and no Republican is going to be president for at least several months. So, there's nothing to worry about.

Hillary Clinton this week said that we couldn't end the war on Afghanistan without first protecting women's rights. Already we've set up a government that endorses wife-beating. Perhaps when it mandates invasive ultrasounds we'll be able to leave with honor.

In the past three years, largely in the absence of a peace movement, we've seen military spending rise. We've seen drone wars burst onto the scene in a major way. We've seen murder become the new torture. We've seen wars launched without even bothering to lie to Congress, and in fact with the intentional avoidance of any Congressional authorization. We've seen Special Forces active in over 100 countries. We've seen a massive escalation of the war on Afghanistan. We've seen bases imposed on more countries. We've seen an intense effort to surround China, and the people of Okinawa be damned, the people of Jeju Island be damned. We're sending the Marines into Australia. We're ruining Vicenza, Italy. We're weaponizing space.

And we're being told that the wars must continue so that our troops, dying more from suicide than anything else, will not have been killing themselves in vain. We're told that more wars are needed as generous humanitarian philanthropy. We must bomb more nations because we care. We must have good wars instead of bad wars. We must send a brutal cop to lead the oppression of the nonviolent people of Bahrain, but send weapons to help the people of Syria because we love them — or — as John McCain recently put it, overthrowing the Syrian government would be a blow to Iran, which also needs to be overthrown.

I don't know about you, but I've had enough. I've had enough of calling the war department the defense department. I've had enough of war criminals going on book tour instead of trial. I've had enough of asking the wars to follow the rules of wars, like asking rapists to wear condoms. I've had enough of calling by the name “service” anything a member of the so-called service does other than resistance and conscientious objection. I've had enough of being told I should be outraged by urination on corpses. I'm outraged by the murder that produces the corpses. I've had enough of being told the environmental crisis is separate from the single biggest destroyer of our natural environment which must be patriotically supported. I've had enough of efforts to protect civil liberties, jobs, education, healthcare, retirement, the rule of law, and basic human decency without taking on the monstrosity that means death to all of the above, namely the military industrial complex. It's a trillion-dollar banker bailout every year that we never get back.

Belief in humanitarian war keeps the dollars flowing into the beast that produces all the actual wars, the non-humanitarian wars, the murderous wars. We don't distinguish between good and bad rape, just and unjust slavery. When our great-great grandparents outgrew dueling as a means of settling individual disputes, they didn't ban aggressive dueling and keep defensive dueling around. When a movement to abolish war grew up at the turn of the last century, and then World War I convinced virtually everybody that the time to abolish war had come, a lawyer in Chicago named Samuel Oliver Levinson (Yale class of 1888) got his friends together and created an international movement for Outlawry, a movement to outlaw war. By 1928, the wealthy armed nations of the world, and some of the poorer nations too, had signed a treaty banning all war. Recognition of gains made through war ceased. Some wars were prevented. World War II was followed by trials for the brand new crime of war. And the rich nations have not made war on each other since. They just make war on poor countries.

And they lose. And they destroy themselves in the process. And the nobility and courage and sacrifice and solidarity that used to be found, or at least sought, in war, is now found in nonviolent activism, in the Arab Spring, in Wisconsin, in Occupy. In Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., this past fall, the police gave us a deadline to leave. We threw a dance party instead. And the police came back with a new offer. We could stay and they'd give us a permit for the next four months. In those moments it is possible to see people come to believe they have the power to end war. We're back in DC starting March 30th. This May we need to be in Chicago when NATO is there. Our grandparents in the 1920s rejected the League of Nations and other alliances as the sort of entanglement that had led to World War I. NATO is just such an entanglement, a solution to war that facilitates war. We need to go to Chicago in the name of S.O. Levinson, the Chicago activist who decided that war could not be ended with the threat of war, that war could only be ended by ending war. In 1927 a Republican Secretary of State was cursing peace activists. In 1928 he was doing exactly what they told him to do, organizing the nations of the world, including Persia, to formally renounce war. That happened because a small group of people made a moral case against mass murder and persuaded the rest of the country that war was good for absolutely nothing.

—
David Swanson's books include “War Is A Lie.” He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio

2012/03/232012/03/23

Berto Jongman: Missing Nukes Fuel Terror Concern

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Government, Military

Bloomberg News

Missing Nukes Fuel Terror Concern as Obama Drawn to Seoul

The second global conference ever on nuclear material that has escaped state control is drawing President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Nuclear violators Iran and North Korea won’t be there.

The legacy of the Soviet Union’s breakup, inadequate atomic stockpile controls and the proliferation of nuclear-fuel technology mean the world may be awash with unaccounted-for weapons ingredients, ripe to be picked up by terrorists.

“If material is loose, it may already be impossible to contain or account for it,” said Graham Allison, director of Harvard University’s international security program and a former nuclear-security adviser to President Ronald Reagan. “There are no precise figures for how much high-enriched uranium or plutonium is missing.”

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Missing Nukes Fuel Terror Concern”

2012/03/232012/03/23

Chuck Spinney: The Afghan Bill – Cause, Effect, Consequences

08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military

AFGHANISTAN

Who’s Going to Foot This Bill?

By CHUCK SPINNEY, Time Battleland, March 23, 2012

William Pfaff has written a stunning critique of Obama’s policy in Afghanistan — and what its implications are for what is left of the American republic. Note particularly the estimates for sustaining the American-created Afghan National Security Force after 2014: $4.1 billion annually, of which the Afghans will pay only $500 million. The U.S. will continue to shovel out $2.3 billion per year and NATO will make up for the rest.

The likelihood of sustaining this money flow for any length of time is vanishingly low, to put it charitably. This disastrous exit situation is a direct consequence of Obama’s reckless approval of General Stanley McChrystal’s fatally flawed “surge”plan in early 2010. The central flaw was clearly evident in September 2009, well before Obama’s approval in early 2010.

Namely, McChrystal’s plan did not address the debilitating problems impeding a rapid buildup of effective Afghan security forces in the short time horizon envisioned for the “surge’s” effect to begin an drawdown of forces 18 months after its initiation (e.g., as I explained in September 2009 and in January 2010). Predictably, the problems causing the inability of the Afghan Security Forces to meet McChrystal’s planned goals have remained in place and in some cases have gotten worse, notwithstanding the expenditure of billions of training dollars.

Pfaff’s conclusion is almost self-evident: Obama’s domestic politics played fast and loose with the question of escalating the “good” war in Afghanistan; his inexperience and naivete set him up to be steamrollered by the military; and now, Obama is so vulnerable, it is too late for him to pull off even a Nixonesque deception to extricate himself semi-gracefully by ”Vietnamizing” the Afghan War.

How the American dysfunctional political system will cope with the ramifications of this debacle is unknowable.

Phi Beta Iota: Iraq & Afghanistan are both the result of political corruption, intelligence corruption, and the desire of the military industrial complex to “churn” the military, using everything up so it has to be bought again. They probably did not anticipate the financial meltdown. At this point it is crystal clear that neither of the two political parties that share power while excluding all others, is fit to govern.

2012/03/23

DefDog: After Massacre, Army Tried to Delete Patsy from Internet

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, Military

Manipulation……they don't seem to understand the truth will eventually
leak…..

After Massacre, Army Tried to Delete Accused Shooter From the Internet

Robert Beckhusen

WIRED, 22 March 2012

The military waited six days before releasing the name of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians earlier this month. One of the reasons for the somewhat unusual delay: to give the military enough time to erase the sergeant from the internet — or at least try to.

That’s according to several Pentagon officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to McClatchy newspapers about the subject. The scrubbed material included photographs of Bales from the military’s official photo and video distribution website, along with quotes by the 38-year-old sergeant in the Joint Base Lewis-McChord newspaper regarding a 2007 battle in Iraq “which depicts Bales and other soldiers in a glowing light.”

The sergeant’s wife, Karilyn Bales, and their two young children were also moved onto Lewis-McChord, reportedly for their protection. Her blog, titled “The Bales Family” about her life as a mother and military spouse, was removed although it’s not known how, precisely. The military’s reasoning for the blackout: protecting the privacy of the accused and his family.

“Protecting a military family has to be a priority,” a Pentagon official told McClatchy. “I think the feeding frenzy we saw after his name was released was evidence that we were right to try.”

Try as they might, the military couldn’t completely scrub Bales from the web. What you put online lasts pretty much forever, and that’s no different for the military. Reporters quickly discovered cached versions of Bales’ photograph, the quotes from his base newspaper and the family blog. “Of course the pages are cached; we know that,” the official added. “But we owe it to the wife and kids to do what we can.”

But as McClatchy points out, the military didn’t hesitate to release the name of Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people in a 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. (Though Hasan was unmarried and had no children.)

Bales’ killings of Afghan civilians also potentially maimed the U.S.’s war plans.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: Evidence exists of a unit action including vehicles. 1000 repatriated veterans a month continue to attempt suicide, with 18 a day successfully committing suicide.

2012/03/232012/03/23

Gordon Duff: Coke Can Size Nukes Used in WTC Take-Down?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military

Noteworthy Issues of National Security

Gordon Duff

Veterans Today, 21 March 2012

11 years after 9/11, scientists from America’s weapons labs will be releasing conclusive data on the types of weapons used to destroy the World Trade Center.

The outlet will be through Jeff Prager, we will carry as much of the material, it is volumes, as possible, but the original source is both official, highly classified and less “unauthorized” than believed.

Word is, that, based on lack of any movement toward investigation, the White House has set a “leak anything you want” policy, especially during this election year and based on what is a fear that anything not disclosed now will provide a reason to silence President Obama prior to a very probable second term.

A bit of background and we will move on. During closed hearings of the 9/11 Commission, information was requested of the Department of Energy about the possibility that nuclear weapons “may have been on the planes,” to quote what I am not supposed to be able to quote. Remember, this was their line of questioning, not my own.

The DOE responded by saying that the smallest weapon in their arsenal was over 300 pounds and would fit inside a “steamer trunk.”

The photo below is of a second generation fission weapon first tested in 1959:

Continue reading “Gordon Duff: Coke Can Size Nukes Used in WTC Take-Down?”

2012/03/232012/03/23

WInslow Wheeler: Congress Blows on the F-35

Corruption, Government

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

What I learned from the HASC hearing on the F-35 this past Tuesday is described below in a piece at Time's Batteland blog. Predictably, aside from the new GAO testimony, the subcommittee exposed nothing, except about itself. There is a possible way out of the non-oversight mess, but I doubt there is any interest in it from Members of Congress. The piece is online, and below.

Oversight Oversight

By Winslow Wheeler | March 23, 2012 |

Only a handful of lawmakers showed up Tuesday to question Pentagon officials on the troubled F-35 program

The House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces held an oversight hearing on air combat programs Tuesday. The first panel focused on the F-35 fighter-at $380 billion, the Defense Department's most expensive program in recent memory, and perhaps the most costly weapon system in American history.

Of the subcommittee's 25 members, 17 didn't bother to show up. It was a stunning phalanx of overstuffed empty leather chairs that faced the witnesses. Surely the ratio of missing overseers to dollars has never been higher.

The F-35 is not only DOD's most pricey program; it is also the most problematic. While the GAO testified to massive $119 billion cost overruns, that was just since a change in the program baseline in 2007. A handy table in the GAO testimony permits us to shrink the rubber baseline back to 2001; there has actually been $164.1 billion in cost overruns-and the program also shrank by 409 aircraft from 2,866 to 2,457.

All that and the horrific performance disappointments in the F-35 were a matter of total indifference to the majority of the members of the HASC Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces.

With one possible exception, the performance of the eight who did show up was quite pathetic. The hearing started with the Chairman (Roscoe Bartlett, R-MD) and Ranking Member (Silvestre Reyes, D-TX) reading off staff-scripted statements.

Their reading frequently stumbled over the words, indicating-at least to me-that it was the first time they saw the script and that they were both a little unfamiliar with the data and the issues pertaining to the F-35. However, even the staff-scripted content revealed nothing new about the fantastically mismanaged history of the F-35 and its design-or its air combat power ruining future.

The questioning, if that is what you want to call it, was no better than the ineptly read scripts. Each of the questioners also read off staff memos. Watch them as they mouth the words. Some of them did not seem to even know where they were: Congressman John Flemming, R-LA, read off a question about the new strategic bomber (not a subject in the hearing, nor even for the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee).

Jon Runyon, R-NJ, read off a general question about Air Force procurement and seemed confused when the witness did not respond as he expected, resulting in Runyon's surrendering the rest of his time for questions in a decidedly embarrassed manner. Michael Tuner, R-OH, read off a question about FAA rules and drones (also not a subject of the hearing) and retreated quickly when the responding witness said he didn't know much. Only Vicki Hartzler, R-MO, seemed to understand the question she read off.

Her first question was an important one: about when the F-35 would be operationally ready. She got fog for an answer from the program manager, Vice Admiral David Venlet, who quite deceptively prattled about when the F-35 would get software upgrades, rather than when any F-35 units will have their “initial operational capability” (IOC) to be deployed. Had Hartzler, or her staff, read the GAO testimony before the hearing she would have realized, or been told, that Adm. Venlet has given up the ghost on being able to answer her question.

The GAO testimony shows the IOC to be “TBD;” the honest Venlet answer would have been “we don't know.” Not apparently knowing that the answer Venlet gave was BS, and not being told by any staff, Hartzler blankly moved on to another question having nothing to do with the intriguing issue of DOD's having no idea when any F-35 squadron will be operationally ready and what is the mountain of problems that is causing that known unknown to be unknown.

Sadly, the House Armed Services Committee has sunk so low in its performance of figuring out what is going on in the Pentagon that Hartzler's “questioning” was the highlight of the hearing.

The last straw came when Chairman Bartlett lectured the witnesses about the “insanity” of the F-35 program and how he and others on the committee saw it coming years ago. Really? They questioned the unworkable design when? They opposed the crooked buy-before-you-fly acquisition plan when? They stopped the concurrency when? They called onto the carpet, if not demanding the firing of, officials offering wantonly unrealistic, even misleading, testimony when? If it were true they knew the program was a loser years ago, then the committee would have done something about it. Or, having not done so, they are-by their admission-complicit in the collapse of the F-35 program.

Is there a way out of this mess?

When I first came to Capitol Hill in the early 1970s, I was impressed by some transcripts of hearings at the Senate Armed Services Committee. The questions were not being asked by senators, who had the self-awareness to know they were clueless; they were asked by staff. Even when the questions were meat balls, the staff knew when they were being fed horse after-product, and if you read those transcripts, you learned something new.

After the staff softened up the witnesses, it was interesting how the DOD officials tried to more completely answer the senators more general questions. (It probably also helped that the officials knew the staff could still intervene.) Back then, it was from reading those hearings that I learned that the B-1 bomber was a dog and that the F-15 was a major departure from the kluge the Air Force had originally conceived for itself. (Of course, the SASC never acted on the insights from its own hearings, but the information was there.)

Perhaps, if the members of the HASC were actually interested in some oversight, they would permit the staff to start hearings on technical issues, like airplanes, to get the data out of the DOD witnesses. It would also give us an insight about the staff as well-how well they actually have probed into the issues and understand them better than the dissembling the DOD witnesses did at the F-35 hearing this past Tuesday.

At least, it would be a start.

Winslow T. Wheeler
Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information

Phi Beta Iota: Congress–good people trapped in a bad system–is in violation of its Article 1 Constitutional responsibilities and therefore impeachable as a whole and in detail. There is still time for a convergence of all those who wish to restore the integrity of the US Government via the November 2012 election. Learn more at We the People Reform Coalition.

See Also:

DOD 2010 F-35-SAR-1

Review: Republic Lost – How Money Corrupts Congress – and Plan to Stop It

Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP

F-35 and DoD Budget at Phi Beta Iota