Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 1785 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/09/23

David Swanson: Two Congress Members — One A Republican Questioning War, the Other a Deaf Dumb and Blind Democrat Bought and Paid For….

By David Swanson

In 2010 in Virginia's Fifth Congressional District, many people who prioritize peace over war probably voted for Democrat Tom Perriello over Republican Robert Hurt. I know many who did just that.

Here's what Congressman Hurt said on Tuesday about Syria:

“I have repeatedly stated … that before the United States should commit any of its precious American lives or military resources to an attack on the Syrian regime, the President must articulate a compelling American national security interest that requires military action. I have attended classified briefings, and I have concluded that, at this time, the President has not demonstrated that a compelling national security interest is at stake. Because of this, I will not be able to support the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution should it come to a vote under current circumstances.”

Meanwhile, former Congressman Perriello has advocated, with his colleagues at the Center for American Progress for the United States to “increase its assistance to the Syrian opposition with the goal of supporting an alternative opposition government that is better organized than at present.” According to Perriello the U.S. has a “national security interest” in “preparing the groundwork for a political and economic transition to a new regime in Syria in the foreseeable future.”

Continue reading “David Swanson: Two Congress Members — One A Republican Questioning War, the Other a Deaf Dumb and Blind Democrat Bought and Paid For….”

2013/09/232013/09/23

Paul Craig Roberts: The War on the Poor

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government

Guest Column — The War On The Poor — Jeffrey St. Clair & Alexander Cockburn

The American poor are being driven into the ground. Not only is owning a home out of the question, but also the poor can’t even afford to rent. They lack the money for a damage deposit, and they lack the cash for the large deposits that utility companies require in order to have utilities connected.

The declining ability of the poor to rent is adversely affecting those who provide rental shelter to the poor.

For the dispossessed middle class, foreclosure on a home is often just the beginning of trouble. If, for example, a bank forecloses on a home with a $200,000 mortgage and sells the house for $100,000, under some circumstances the IRS treats the $100,000 difference as income to the foreclosed homeowner and requires the bank to issue a 1099 form to the homeowner showing taxable income of $100,000. http://www.irs.gov/uac/Home-Foreclosure-and-Debt-Cancellation

Alternatively, if the sale does not cover the mortgage, the bank can come after other property that the foreclosed homeowner might possess, such as a second home, car, work equipment, checking account balance. For example, a construction subcontractor who loses his home and moves his family into the office or construction trailer on the lot where he keeps the backhoe loader and work truck can find himself dispossessed of these assets in order to apply the proceeds to the difference between his mortgage and the price at which the bank sells his foreclosed home.

Americans who have not been personally affected by foreclosure have little idea how the system is rigged in favor of the banks that caused the problem and against the victims of financial deregulation.

In the article below, Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn show that the assault on the poor began with the Clinton administration.

Continue reading “Paul Craig Roberts: The War on the Poor”

2013/09/232013/09/23

Chuck Spinney: Sanctions — A Strategy For When You Are Out of Altitude, Airspeed, and Ideas With Andrew Cockburn’s “A Very Perfect Instrument: The Ferocity and Failure of America’s Sanction Apparatus”

Officers Call

Obama's climbdown in Syria, the election of a moderate Iranian president Hasan Rouhani, and the resurgence of Russian influence in the Middle East, have increased Israeli fears of a US accommodation with Iran. The Israelis, together with their wholly own neo-con subsidiaries in Congress, the thinktanks, and the mainstream media, are turning up the pressure for an intensification of the economic sanctions on Iran. Sanction are an act of belligerence, but do they work to reduce conflict?

Attached to this email in pdf format is a timely analysis of the ineffectiveness of sanctions. This important report, A Very Perfect Instrument: The ferocity and failures of America's sanction Apparatus (Harpers, Sept 2013, pp. 50-57), was written by my good friend Andrew Cockburn and is in the September issue of Harpers.

Andrew's essay can be thought of as a bookend to his equally searing analysis of the effects of the sanctions we imposed on Iraq between August 1990 and May 2003 (London Review of Books, July 2010).

As Andrew shows, there is an unthinking brutality implicit in the primitive OODA Loops governing a sanctions strategy. Sanctions are grounded on the crude idea of using slow strangulation as a means to impose one's will on an adversary. Sanctions not only affect the minds of the besieged, but as Andrews shows below, the punishment caused by the physical effects on the besieged blows back to debilitate the mental operations and the moral values of the besieger. He also shows that the corruption of the besieger's OODA loops is by no means a new phenomenon in the sordid history of sanctions. In 2010, Andrew summarized the effects of the Iraqi sanctions strategy on the besieger's mind (i.e., the United States) with the following passage:

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Sanctions — A Strategy For When You Are Out of Altitude, Airspeed, and Ideas With Andrew Cockburn's “A Very Perfect Instrument: The Ferocity and Failure of America's Sanction Apparatus””

2013/09/23

4th Media: Syria: Both The New York Times and Huma Rights Watch Wrong To Claim Chemical Attack Origin

IO Deeds of War

Syria: Both The New York Times and Huma Rights Watch Wrong To Claim Chemical Attack Origin

Human Rights Watch and the New York Times are trying to implicate the Syrian Arab Army in a chemical incident that happened on August 21 in Ghouta near Damascus.

Using the report of an United Nations commission which investigated various sites around Damascus they try to reconstruct from where the rockets suspected to have been used in the attack may have been fired from.

The UN commission identified two finds of largely intact rockets that landed in a way that lets one estimate from which directions these rockets have been fired.

Lining out from the impact sites towards the direction from where the rockets came the crossing of the two lines point, say HRW and the NYT, to the possible launch point of both rockets.

That point, a Syrian army artillery site, is then seen as implicated in the chemical attack.

When taken together, the azimuths drawn from different neighborhoods lead back to and intersect at Mount Qasioun — so far an impregnable seat of Mr. Assad’s power — according to independent and separate calculations by both The New York Times and Human Rights Watch.“Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible,” Josh Lyons, a satellite imagery analyst for Human Rights Watch, noted in a statement on Tuesday.

“This isn’t conclusive,” Mr. Lyons added. “But it is highly suggestive.”

But that analysis is faulty. At least one of the two rockets the UN commission assessed contained no chemical agent at all.

Read full article.

2013/09/23

SchwartzReport: Bolivia to Sue US for Crimes Against Humanity

07 Other Atrocities, Peace Intelligence

Not a word of this in the American corporate press, but I take this as further evidence of our declining status in Latin America as a result of the U.S.'s bullying behavior. The craziness and paranoia ginned up in this country after 911 looks, to people outside of it, like a kind of national madness.

Bolivian President to Sue US Govt for Crimes Against Humanity

RT (Russia)

Bolivian President Evo Morales will file a lawsuit against the US government for crimes against humanity. He has decried the US for its intimidation tactics and fear-mongering after the Venezuelan presidential jet was blocked from entering US airspace.

‘I would like to announce that we are preparing a lawsuit against Barack Obama to condemn him for crimes against humanity,” said President Morales at a press conference in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. He branded the US president as a ‘criminal” who violates international law.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Bolivia to Sue US for Crimes Against Humanity”

2013/09/23

Berto Jongman: Peacebuilders 2013 – Focus on Working With Young

Peace Intelligence

Tomorrow’s Peacebuilders awards 2013 – the winners

September 21 2013: Today we announce the winners of this year’s Tomorrow’s Peacebuilders competition. Out of 244 applications, from 54 countries, an international group of experts have found four of the most exciting and innovative peacebuilding organisations from around the world.

EXTRACT:

But one trend does emerge. The vast majority of local peacebuilders are working with young people as a key part of their programme. The entrants we spoke with all emphasise the key role they see young people playing in building peace. Again and again, they talk about working with young people to counter propaganda and prejudice, and creating opportunities for young people to prevent them from being drawn into violent groups.

Paul Craig Roberts: James Corbett Five Minute Overivew of the 9/11 “Conspiracy”

Cultural Intelligence, Offbeat Fun

James Corbett sums up the 9/11 conspiracy in 5 minutes