Tag Archives: USA
5% Digest (week 30/03/15)
Physicians for Social Responsibility’s (PRS) study concluds that the death toll from 10 years of the “War on Terror” since the 9/11 attacks is at least 1.3 million, and could be as high as 2 million.
It is heavily critical of the figure most widely cited by mainstream media as authoritative, namely, the Iraq Body Count (IBC) estimate of 110,000 dead. According to the PSR study, the much-disputed Lancet study that estimated 655,000 Iraq deaths up to 2006 (and over a million until today by extrapolation) was likely to be far more accurate than IBC’s figures.
total deaths from Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan since the 1990s – from direct killings and the longer-term impact of war-imposed deprivation – likely constitute around 4 million (2 million in Iraq from 1991-2003, plus 2 million from the “war on terror”), and could be as high as 6-8 million people when accounting for higher avoidable death estimates in Afghanistan.
5% Digest (Week 23/03/15)
Gregory D. Johnsen wrote a detailed account of the rise of Huthis in Yemen. Adam Baron argued that the power struggle is primarily local and foreign intervention will be a very bad idea.
But what is abundantly clear at the moment is that this remains, by and large, an internal Yemeni political conflict—one that, despite frequent sectarian mischaracterizations and potential regional implications, remains deeply rooted in local Yemeni issues.
And if history is a guide, foreign intervention will only stand to exacerbate the situation. Ironically, talk now centers on a potential Saudi Arabian and Egyptian military intervention in Yemen, a scenario that immediately brought to mind the memory of North Yemen’s 1960s Civil War which saw both sides intervene—albeit on different sides—in a matter which only appeared to draw the conflict out further. This is not to say that there isn’t a place for foreign powers to aid Yemeni factions in negotiating some new political settlement. But any nation that aims to make Yemen’s fight their own is more than likely to come out on the losing side.
5% Digest (week 16/03/15)
According to SIPRI’s latest report, there is a 16% increase in the volume of arms transferred around the world. The world’s biggest arms exporters in the past five years were the US, Russia, China, Germany and France. China’s exports of major arms rose by 143% in the five years to 2014 from the previous five years. Germany’s arms exports fell by 43% and France’s dropped 27% in the same time frame.
India was the world’s largest single arms importer. Four other Asian countries, China, Pakistan, South Korea and Singapore, are also among the top 10 largest arms importers.
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5% Digest (week 09/03/15)
British MPs voted in favour of keeping defence spending at 2% of GDP. Just 40 MPs voted and the result carries no legal force.
Rory Stewart, Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border and chairman of the defence select committee, warned MPs that Britain could not continue to rely on the military might of America and be a “freeloader”. “This 2% is needed because the threats are real. The world is genuinely getting more dangerous,” he said.
5% Digest (week 02/03/15)
In Seumas Milnes’s piece ‘The demonisation of Russia risks paving the way for war‘, he argues that “Ukraine – along with Isis – is being used to revive the doctrines of liberal interventionism and even neoconservatism, discredited on the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan.” Hundreds of US troops are arriving in Ukraine and Britain is sending 75 military advisers of its own. This is a direct violation of last month’s Minsk agreement, negotiated with France and Germany – Article 10 requires the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Ukraine.
But when the latest Minsk ceasefire breaks down, as it surely will, there is a real risk that Ukraine’s proxy conflict could turn into full-scale international war.
5% Digest (January 2015)
It is reported by Guardian that the Pentagon’s internal watchdog has questioned the air force’s increased spending on drones, suggesting its $8.8 billions spending on 46 armed Reaper drones is a waste of money.
As purchases of General Atomics’s MQ-9 Reaper ballooned from 60 aircraft in 2007 to the current 401, air force officials did not justify the need for an expanding drone fleet, the Pentagon said.
During that time, costs for purchasing one of the signature counter-terrorism weapons of Barack Obama’s presidency increased by 934%, from $1.1bn to more than $11.4bn, according to a declassified September report by the Pentagon inspector general. Purchasing costs are a fraction of what the drones cost to operate and maintain over their time in service: in 2012, the Pentagon estimated the total costs for them at $76.8bn.
January Reading List
- Sir Peter to take on new role in the defence sector
- Breaking Taboos, BDS Gains Ground Among Academics
- No, Chancellor, 0.5% inflation is not “welcome news”
- It is ‘impossible’ for today’s big oil companies to adapt to climate change
- Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges
- The wealth that failed to trickle down: The rich do get richer while poor stay poor, report suggests
- Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk, say scientists
- Why we must reject the dangerous delusions of Davos
- Is USAID Helping Haiti to Recover, or US Contractors to Make Millions?
- New Oxfam report says half of global wealth held by the 1%
- Revealed: how the wealth gap holds back economic growth
- Old ice in Arctic vanishingly rare
- Pentagon says air force’s ‘expanding drone fleet’ is unjustified and wasteful
- Tory and Labour seats face fracking and groundwater concerns
- Fossil fuel firms accused of renewable lobby takeover to push gas
- As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes
- They Pretend to Think, We Pretend to Listen
- George Osborne urges ministers to fast-track fracking measures in leaked letter
- Social conscience is key to cutting household energy
- In depth: Infrastructure bill amendments on fracking, fossil fuels, and zero carbon homes
- MPs have given the thumbs up to fracking – but this one’s far from over
- Winning an Election Does Not Mean Winning Power
- How the CIA made Google
- Why is terror Islamist?
- The Myth of the Terrorist Safe Haven
- Their mantra was ‘Hope begins today’: the inside story of Syriza’s rise to power
- A State Licence to Rob the Public
- Can Cool Pope Francis Change the Catholic Church?
- Any Government Must Fund The NHS Properly
- Claims that climate models overestimate warming are “unfounded”, study shows
- 33 Latin American and Caribbean states endorse Austrian Pledge and call for negotiations on a ban treaty
- Islamic State: the unknown war
- Why Is an Israeli Defense Contractor Building a ‘Virtual Wall’ in the Arizona Desert?
- Five Years After: Long Live Howard Zinn
- Pentagon Seeks 13% Weapons Increase as Obama Urges End to Cuts
- How America Could Collapse
- Fracking set to be banned from 40% of England’s shale areas
- Put the Pentagon On a Real Budget
- Don’t Blame Islam
- Cameron’s five-year legacy: has he finished what Thatcher started?
November Reading List
- Fracking could carry unforeseen risks as thalidomide and asbestos did, says report
- This headline will subtly mislead you and science says that probably matters
- 5 Key Takeaways From the Latest Climate Change Report
- Why Ebola hit West Africa hard
- Nuclear Arms Control in China Today
- Texas oil town makes history as residents say no to fracking
- The secular stagnation hoax
- The Pentagon’s Arguments for Runaway Arms Trading Are Indefensible
- World’s first solar cycle lane opening in the Netherlands
- Raytheon acquires cyber firm for $420 million
- America’s New Mercenaries
- What’s the environmental impact of modern war?
- Petraeus joins pro-fracking choir at Harvard’s Belfer Center
- Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia
- Foundation of US nuclear system showing cracks
- Midterms 2014: The Red Wedding for Democrats
- Can (green) energy policy create jobs?
- Death Wears Bunny Slippers
- It is the 0.01% who are really getting ahead in America
- The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and UK healthcare
- Is neoliberalism at last unravelling in Britain?
- For Whom the Wall Fell? A balance-sheet of transition to capitalism
- Ministers’ shale gas ‘hype’ attacked
- Some Very Initial Thoughts on the US-China Deal
- The social, political and ecological pathologies of the Ebola Crisis cannot be ignored
- F’d: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
- Spied on by BP
- How did the first world war actually end?
- Don’t Throw Billions at an Obsolete Nuclear Arsenal
- Hard Evidence: are we facing another financial crisis?
- Growth: the destructive god that can never be appeased
- Cameron is right to warn of another recession, but wrong to blame the world
- The Top 5 Foreign Policy Lessons of the Past 20 Years
- The .01 Percent Blow Their Fortunes on Yachts, Personal Jets and America’s Politicians
- How much is owed to Gaza? Does anyone know? This is not a rhetorical question. I’m really asking!
- International arms firm Lockheed Martin in the frame for £1bn NHS contract
- We Love the Pentagon’s ‘Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure’
- Massive Rail Deal Gives China’s Push Into Africa a Major Win
- Exaggeration Nation
- Barclays boycotted over Israel arms trade shares
- Firms invested £17bn in companies making cluster bombs, report says
- There is Nothing Natural about Gentrification
- 41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed: US drone strikes – the facts on the ground
- The ‘crass insensitivity’ of Tower’s luxury dinner for arms dealers, days after poppy display
- Fracking firm’s plans to look for gas in North Yorkshire criticised by environmental groups
- House Republicans just passed a bill forbidding scientists from advising the EPA on their own research
- Justifying War: “Just” Wars
5% Digest (October 2014)
After the Cold War, the Pentagon needs to find a new way to justify its wasteful spending and the defense and security contractors need to find a new cause to make profits. Bob Hennelly tells the story:
In 1998, President Bill Clinton tasked former Senators Gary Hart, a Colorado Democrat, and the late Warren Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican, to chair the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. The Commission panel was a cross-section of the military-industrial-media complex. Its members included Leslie Gelb, longtime New York Times correspondent and editor; Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed-Martin; and Army General John Galvin.
The panel gave its report and recommendations in January 2001. Both Senators Rudman and Hart concluded that it was not a matter of “if” the U.S. would suffer a mass-casualty terrorist strike but “when.” Among the panel’s recommendations was the massive integration of all of the nation’s domestic security, disaster planning and recovery functions into one behemoth called the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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October Reading List
- A Trillion Ways To Build a New Military Industrial Complex
- The Military Takes on Climate Change Deniers
- Amazon Must Be Stopped
- Japan’s Decision on Collective Self-Defense in Context
- Far-Right Birther’s Secret Funders
- Pinkwashing: Fracking Company Teams Up With Susan G. Komen to ‘End Breast Cancer Forever’
- Cut benefits? Yes, let’s start with our £85bn corporate welfare handout
- US firms could make billions from UK via secret tribunals
- Germany Can’t Manage Its Weapons
- Warmongering Hebrew University tries to muzzle Palestinian students
- Richest 1% of people own nearly half of global wealth, says report
- UK to allow fracking companies to use ‘any substance’ under homes
- This One $486 Million Blunder In Afghanistan Sums Up The Disaster Of Military Spending
- The US and a Crumbling Levant
- Only 12% of drone victims in Pakistan identified as militants: report
- Does Rising Inequality Make a Democracy More Warlike?
- European banks and the global banking glut
- With US-led air strikes on Isis intensifying, it’s a good time to be an arms giant like Lockheed Martin
- Organised Hypocrisy on a Monumental Scale
- NASA Confirms A 2,500-Square-Mile Cloud Of Methane Floating Over US Southwest
- Netanyahu’s Not Chickenshit, the White House Is
5% Digest (September 2014)
Journalist Ahmed provided a brief history of the rise of Islamic State, arguing the complicity of US and British in its creation and rise through deliberate tactical actions, ill-conceived policies and indirect/direct financial support.
“Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. This ill-conceived patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East.“
September Reading List
- How the west created the Islamic State
- Who’s Paying the Pro-War Pundits?
- The Pentagon’s $800-Billion Real Estate Problem
- Lefties and liberals still don’t do enough to stop wars
- How the super rich got richer: 10 shocking facts about inequality
- ISIS’s Enemy List: 10 Reasons the Islamic State Is Doomed
- Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault
- Democracy in the Twenty-First Century
- Israeli drone conference features weapons used to kill Gaza’s children
- New Report on Water Impacts of Shale Gas Development
- Behind the headlines: Fracking and water contamination
- Story of a War Foretold: Why we’re fighting ISIS
- Richard Brooks and Andrew Bousfield, 19th September 2014. Shady Arabia and the Desert Fix. Private Eye.
- “My childhood was not an episode from Downton Abbey”
- Russell Tribunal finds evidence of incitement to genocide, crimes against humanity in Gaza
- ‘Blood on their hands’: Glasgow activists shut down drone manufacturer
- Inequality is a choice: U.S. inequality in two shocking graphics
- Europe Tries to Stop Flow of Citizens Joining Jihad
- On the streets with the People’s Climate March
- The Great Frack Forward
- The Unaffordable Arsenal
The use of defence contractors to spy civilians, monitor activism and manipulate online discourse
National Security Iron Triangle
Franklin C. Spinney, “The Best Government Money Can Buy,” 11 February 2014, CounterPunch
USA’s 2015 budget for ‘defence’ is $1 trillion not $496 billion
Winslow T. Wheeler, “America’s $1 Trillion National Security Budget,” 16 March 2014, Truthout
Scarcity of money is not their problem. Pentagon costs, taken together with other known national security expenses for 2015, will exceed $1 trillion. How can that be? The trade press is full of statements about the Pentagon’s $495.6 billion budget and how low that is.
There is much more than $495.6 billion in the budget for the Pentagon, and there are piles of national security spending outside the Pentagon-all of it as elemental for national security as any new aircraft and ships and the morale and well-being of our troops.
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The rise of disaster militarism
Annie Isabel Fukushima, Ayano Ginoza, Michiko Hase, Gwyn Kirk, Deborah Lee, Taeva Shefler, “Disaster Militarism: Rethinking US Relief in the Asia-Pacific,” 14 March 2014, The Nation and Foreign Policy In Focus
… Paralleling these disasters has been the disaster response of the US military. According to this “disaster militarism”—which is a pattern of rhetoric, beliefs and practices—the military should be the primary responder to large-scale disasters. Disaster militarism is not only reflected in the deployment of troops but also in media discourse that naturalizes and calls for military action in times of environmental catastrophes.
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Massive war budget remains despite Afghanistan pullout
Stephanie Gaskell, “Pentagon Wants to Keep Controversial War Budget Beyond Afghanistan,” 5 March 2014, Defense One
… But despite the massive drawdown, Pentagon officials want to keep a comparably oversized war chest funded well into next year, quickly raising eyebrows among members of Congress.
The fiscal year 2015 budget calls for $79 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCO, which funds the war in Afghanistan and other overseas operations. Although the U.S.footprint in Afghanistan has shrunk over the past couple of years, the war budget has stayed robust. This year Congress approved $85 billion for the account.
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More solar has been installed in the U.S. in the last 18 months than in the 30 years prior
Emily Hois, “More Solar Installed In 18 Months Than Past 30 Years,” 7 March 2014, Clean Energy Collective
US Military Operations in Africa
Nick Turse, “Washington’s Back-to-the-Future Military Policies in Africa,” 13 March 2014, TomDispatch
Since 9/11, the U.S. military has been making inroads in Africa, building alliances, facilities, and a sophisticated logistics network. Despite repeated assurances by U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) that military activities on the continent were minuscule, a 2013 investigation by TomDispatch exposed surprisingly large and expanding U.S. operations — including recent military involvement with no fewer than 49 of 54 nations on the continent. Washington’s goal continues to be building these nations into stable partners with robust, capable militaries, as well as creating regional bulwarks favorable to its strategic interests in Africa. Yet over the last years, the results have often confounded the planning — with American operations serving as a catalyst for blowback (to use a term of CIA tradecraft).
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Tipping Point North South 