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"I Hate That Oil's Dropping": Why Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant Wants High Oil Prices for Fracking
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Outgoing Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) chairman Phil Bryant — Mississippi's Republican Governor — started his farewell address with a college football joke at IOGCC's recent annual conference in Columbus, Ohio.
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant; Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
"As you know, I love SEC football. Number one in the nation Mississippi State, number three in the nation Ole Miss, got a lot of energy behind those two teams," Bryant said in opening his October 21 speech. "I try to go to a lot of ball games. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it and somebody's gotta be there."
Seconds later, things got more serious, as Bryant spoke to an audience of oil and gas industry executives and lobbyists, as well as state-level regulators.
At the industry-sponsored convening, which I attended on behalf of DeSmogBlog, it was hard to tell the difference between industry lobbyists and regulators. The more money pledged by corporations, the more lobbyists invited into IOGCC's meeting.
Perhaps this is why Bryant framed his presentation around "where we are headed as an industry," even though officially a statesman and not an industrialist, before turning to his more stern remarks.
"I know it's a mixed blessing, but if you look at some of the pumps in Mississippi, gasoline is about $2.68 and people are amazed that it's below $3 per gallon," he said.
"And it's a good thing for industry, it's a good thing for truckers, it's a good thing for those who move goods and services and products across the waters and across the lands and we're excited about where that's headed."
Bryant then discussed the flip side of the "mixed blessing" coin.
"Of course the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale has a little problem with that, so as with most things in life, it's a give and take," Bryant stated. "It's very good at one point and it's helping a lot of people, but on the other side there's a part of me that goes, 'Darn! I hate that oil's dropping, I hate that it's going down.' I don't say that out-loud, but just to those in this room."
Tuscaloosa Marine Shale's "little problem" reflects a big problem the oil and gas industry faces — particularly smaller operators involved with hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") — going forward.
That is, fracking is expensive and relies on a high global price of oil. A plummeting price of oil could portend the plummeting of many smaller oil and gas companies, particularly those of the sort operating in the Tuscaloosa Marine.
Oh no! The American jihadis are coming!: Stoking Fear as the US Prepares for the Nest War in the Middle East
By Dave Lindorff
You read it in USA Today: The latest "threat to America" is "thousands of jihadis" with Western passports," returning from battle in Syria and Iraq to wreak havoc and destruction in the "US homeland."
It's a nightmare profoundly hoped for by the US Department of Homeland Security, that massive security-state bureaucracy looking for a raison d'être.
Not again, on 'a more expansive mission' in Afghanistan!
By Dr Hakim
President Obama has authorized 'a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned'.
Imagine that, like the late U.S. war veteran Jacob George, you're sent on this 'more expansive mission'. Your military helicopter is landing on farmland amidst mud-house villages, like a futuristic war machine inserted into an agricultural community in the Middle Ages.
There are no women to be seen.
They are in their kitchens or rooms, pleading for you, as well as the Taliban, not to come.
"The things that I participated in over there surely brought the farmers terror when we landed in their fields, crashing their crop. I remember running off a helicopter and looking into a man's eyes, and terror was what was looking back at me. It was as if a 'devil' had just stumbled into his life. Actually, most of us are poor farmers killing poor farmers while people in our nations starve," Jacob had shared.
Like most people, my Afghan and American friends also wish for the Afghan conflict to be resolved, but not in this way:
Not through a 'more expansive mission' to kill.
In 2011, Jacob George flew into Kabul, this time on Safi Airways.
"Please forgive me for my participation in the war," Jacob had asked of Ali and Abdulhai, two of the Afghan Peace Volunteers Jacob had met. He had pledged to ride his bicycle across the States, singing with his banjo, reaching out to people to end the war. It was going to be "A Ride to the End", with his songs put together in an album called "Soldier's Heart."
Jacob George with Ali and Abdulhai in Kabul, 2011
Three years later, on 19th of September 2014, Jacob George committed suicide.
Not again, only one option
An American official was quoted as saying that "the military pretty much got what it wanted", the 'more expansive mission'.
Obama is repeating the same mistake he made in 2009, when he ordered a troop surge for Afghanistan. Since the troop surge, the United Nations and the people of Afghanistan have experienced worsening security in Afghanistan. The number of civilian casualties, mainly children, has increased.
In Bob Woodward's book, "Obama's Wars", Obama had asked his war cabinet in 2009, "So what's my option?... You have essentially given me one option.... It's unacceptable."
For 13 years in Afghanistan, literally only one option, an unacceptable option, has been exercised.
Imagine that you have heavy equipment strapped on your body and your adrenaline mixed with tender thoughts of loved ones back home.
You dare not ask whether there are any other options to the longest U.S. war in history.
You approach the impoverished homes of the 'enemies'.
Not again, ignoring public opinion
In 2009, 60 percent of Americans in an ABC News-Washington Post poll said that the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting. Hillary Clinton had explained the troop surge then, "I'm well aware of the popular concern, and I understand it. But I don't think leaders -- and certainly this president will not -- make decisions that are matters of life and death and the future security of our nation based on polling."
In a CNN poll in December 2013, 82% of Americans opposed the Afghan War , making it even less popular than the disastrous Vietnam War!
Imagine soldiers in your own squadron gun down several Afghan 'Fighting Age Males', and you briefly see little children dashing bare-footed across their paths, looking as if they have just seen ghosts.
You're aware that your own people no longer support the mission you're engaged in. You think, for just a moment: What is the Afghan public opinion about my military mission?
You don't know. No one has ever asked Afghans.
Not again, continuing the failed 'war against terrorism'
Despite spending more than US$4,000,000,000 in the 'war against terror', a Global Terrorism Database maintained by the U.S. government and the University of Maryland showed that the number of terror attacks in Afghanistan had been increasing over recent years.
The war against terror has failed!
In the book 'Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars', Lieutenant-General Daniel Bolger said, "I am a United States Army general, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism. It's like Alcoholics Anonymous; step one is admitting you have a problem. Well, I have a problem. So do my peers. And thanks to our problem, now all of America has a problem, to wit: two lost campaigns and a war gone awry."
You crouch low against a crumbling wall of a village house compound. You let your bullets fly, as bullets also fly at you.
You steel your nerves amidst bated breath and the unintelligible screams of Afghan women, wondering in another lucid moment if your actions will make Afghans less 'terrorist-like', less angry?
Not again, failing to see the suffering of Afghans, and American soldiers
You don't have time to digest the dire statistics.
Why is it that after 13 years of Operation Enduring Freedom, more than 4000 Afghans have set themselves on fire in 2014, and another 4000 have tried to poison themselves?
You recall some principles drilled into your training, that if necessary, you ought to 'shoot everything that moves'.
You get irritated because a few boisterous-looking teenage boys appear too defiant, standing in front of women in burqas and girls who are crying quietly.
You hear some shuffles in the next room, and you instinctively pull the trigger.
Back in the military camp, you're aware of the crisis of up to 22 U.S. veterans committing suicide every day.
Your heart, like the "Soldier's Heart" Jacob George describes in his music album, begins to suffer.
At a memorial service for Jacob in Arkansas, last October, a friend delivered this message from the Afghan Peace Volunteers:
"When Jacob came to visit us in Kabul, he sang his heart out for us, just like he did across the States for you. We may not remember the song, but his voice and spirit is what each of us wants, a spirit seizing peace within and without.
Jacob, thank you! Jacob, thank you for your kindness in asking forgiveness from the people of Afghanistan. Jacob, thank you for throwing your war medals back to NATO because you understood that those medals opposed the meaning of life! To Jacob's family, thank you for raising your child as a man who would not pretend that our world is okay.
Our world is not okay. That's why we in Afghanistan will try our best to continue Jacob's tune and ride so that our next generation can see an end not only to war in Afghanistan, but to war as a human method in the world."
In 2011, Jacob gave this video message to Ali, Abdulhai , Afghans and Americans, "To be perfectly honest, I feel that the U.S. government might not have the best interest s of the people of Afghanistan in mind, although the soldiers are human, and there are charitable acts that come from being human. The ultimate goal does not look like peace. It resembles perpetual war."
Dr Hakim is a medical doctor from Singapore who has done humanitarian and social enterprise work in Afghanistan for the past 10 years, including being a friend and mentor to the Afghan Peace Volunteers (http://ourjourneytosmile.com ), an inter-ethnic group of young Afghans dedicated to building non-violent alternatives to war. He is the 2012 recipient of the International Pfeffer Peace Prize
DC Response to Ferguson
Talk Nation Radio: Mike Gravel Advises Mark Udall on How to Make Torture Report Public
Former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel explains how he put the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record and gave them to the media in 1971, and how outgoing Senator Mark Udall could answer the growing public demand and do the same with the long-censored torture report. A petition urging Udall to act is here.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
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It's not about justice, it's winning convictions: Prosecutors Falsely Push Prison Term for Innocent Teen
By Linn Washington Jr.
Nasheeba Adams was both ecstatic and sad as she stood outside of Philadelphia's Criminal Justice Center courthouse recently hugging her son Tomayo McDuffy.
Ukraine News - Nov 24, 2014
Putin: We're stronger because we're right, actions in Crimea and afterwards are a strategic decision - Business Insider
TRANSCRIPT: Interview with Vladimir Putin - TASS
Putin Tells New U.S. Envoy Ties Must Be Based On Equality - rferl.org
Western sanctions are aimed at regime change in Russia: Lavrov - RT News
VIDEO: Lavrov Press Conference on Ukraine (Part 1) - CNN
VIDEO: Lavrov Press Conference on Ukraine (Part 2) - RT News
Russia Warns U.S. Against Arming Ukraine - The Moscow Times
Russian Weapons Separatists Using In Ukraine - Business Insider
Merkel's spokesman raps Russia after report on aid to Ukraine rebels, helping to finance public services and state pay and pensions - The Moscow Times
Russia's New Tactical Nuclear Weapons Program Growing Confident - International Business Times
The Russia-France Warship Deal Is Turning Into a Total Mess - VICE News
Moscow to Replace Western Companies if They Quit Energy Projects in Russia - Sputnik International
British anti-Putin campaigner claims Russians plan to kidnap him - The Guardian
Russia says to tighten ties with Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia - Reuters
Comment by Spokesman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Alexander Lukashevich on the provocative remarks by the President of Lithuania - MFA of Russia
Moldova, eyeing Ukraine, divided on Europe integration as election nears - Reuters
Despite Biden's Visit, US Will Not Provide Lethal Aid To Ukraine - Interpreter_Mag
US delivers anti-mortar radars to Ukraine: Pentagon - Yahoo News
Statement of the US Defense Department: U.S. Delivers Radar Systems to Ukraine - Defense.gov
US to Keep Sending Military Advisors to Ukraine: State Department - Sputnik International
US troops to remain in Baltics, Poland next year amid Moscow tensions - Reuters
US Congress pro-Ukraine lobby may press through for weapons to Ukraine soon - TASS
McCain slams Obama for not providing weapons to Ukraine - UNIAN news
Statement of Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham on Ukraine - mccain.senate.senate.gov
VIDEO: McCain: Russia 'a Gas Station Masquerading as a Country' - YouTube
VIDEO: Ukrainian Volunteer Battalions Leaders in Washington: Newly elected MPs ask US lawmakers for weapons -LiveLeak.com
U.S. should look at giving weapons to Ukraine: top Obama adviser - Reuters
VIDEO: State Department: Ukraine Lethal Aid On Table - YouTube
New Ukraine Coalition Agreed, Sets NATO As Priority - rferl.org
Washington does not object to Ukraine's bid for NATO membership: U.S. State Department - rickrozoff
German foreign minister speaks out against Ukraine joining NATO, "it is possible for NATO to have a partnership with Ukraine, but not membership" - RT News
NATO Parliamentary Assembly's Annual Session Focuses on Ukraine - NATO PA
The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine reports heavier fighting over the last 24 hours - Interpreter_Mag
Four Ukrainian Soldiers Killed As Violence Continues Near Russian Border - ibtimes.co.uk
Separatists to Lay Claims Over Whole Donetsk Region's Territory: Deputy PM - Sputnik International
Donetsk separatists ask Russia to recognise republican independence - TASS
Ukraine's field army digs in for separatist offensive - Telegraph
With Borscht and Rifle Scopes, Volunteers Power Ukraine Forces - NYTimes.com
VIDEO (Eng subs): Debaltsevo resident speaks to Euromaidan, reveals that people are afraid of Ukrainian Army that shelled their town with "Grads" - LiveLeak.com
VIDEO: (Eng subs): "Poroshenko will choke with blood": Interview with residents of houses ruined by Ukrainian Army - LiveLeak.com
Donetsk Airport drone footage shows how it has been destroyed by conflict (VIDEO) - Daily Mail Online
Main Points of the Coalition Agreement in Ukrainian Parliament - Interpreter_Mag
Poroshenko Heckled At Maidan Memorial, Biden Forced To Avoid Protests - Interpreter_Mag
VIDEO: 'Shame!' Protesters heckle Poroshenko at Maidan memorial - YouTube
Ukraine Marks Anniversary of Deadly 1930s Famine, Poroshenko Compares It With Separatist War In East (VIDEO) - VOA
Germany alarmed over government appointments in Ukraine - Ukraina.ru
ARCHIVE: Kiev regional police head accused of neo-Nazi ties - jpost.com
Ukraine slashed gold holdings in October, the hryvnia has lost 83 percent of its value against the dollar this year - Reuters
Shadow currency trade points to new Ukraine financial crisis - FT.com
To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle[at]yahoo[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)
Split the CIA in Two
CIA's Torturous Maneuvers on Torture
Editor Note: The CIA is fighting congressional demands to release a report on its covert program for torturing "war on terror" suspects, even as the spy agency contemplates a reorganization that could give the covert-action side more ways to bend the truth. Is this a great country, or what?
By Ray McGovern
Ransom Payment for Beau Bergdahl
A few thoughts on this.
Bergdahl had a legal responsibility to walk away from an illegal war. It's not completely confirmed that he did so, but he's blamed for it, when he should be praised for it.
His father read my book War Is A Lie and had it on his desk for interviews earlier this year. Bergdahl wrote a last note to his father before disappearing, which he began: "The future is too good to waste on lies." He went on to describe the murderous assault of an arrogant, ignorant occupation in which soldiers chatted about running over children and openly insluted Afghans to their faces and treated them as dirt.
Did attempts to rescue Bergdahl result in U.S. deaths? Probably Afghan deaths to. The whole war has resulted and will continue to result in many thousands of innocent deaths and deaths of occupying troops. Amont the latter, the top killer is suicide. How do you pick a low-ranking scapegoat to blame for the suicides? You have to blame the war chiefly on those in Washington and other capitals waging it, and secondarily on those taking part, not on someone who chose to cease being part of something criminal and evil.
Payments to kidnappers -- and to drone victims' and other war victims' families -- are often hushed up. Are they made incompetently in a nation the occupiers do not know? Undoubtedly. But the CIA paid an American con-man in recenty years who claimed to see secret messages in Al Jazeera. The root of the incompetence may be arrogant unacountability.
But should such payments be made? Yes. And I would radically enlarge them by paying 10% of war costs to transform regions of the globe for the better, cancel the wars, and use the other 90 percent for something useful.
Obama Extends War in Afghanistan
By Kathy Kelly
News agencies reported Saturday morning that weeks ago President Obama signed an order, kept secret until now, to authorize continuation of the Afghan war for at least another year. The order authorizes U.S. airstrikes "to support Afghan military operations in the country" and U.S. ground troops to continue normal operations, which is to say, to "occasionally accompany Afghan troops" on operations against the Taliban.
The administration, in its leak to the New York Times, affirmed that there had been "heated debate" between Pentagon advisers and others in Obama's cabinet chiefly concerned not to lose soldiers in combat. Oil strategy isn't mentioned as having been debated and neither is further encirclement of China, but the most notable absence in the reporting was any mention of cabinet members' concern for Afghan civilians affected by air strikes and ground troop operations, in a country already afflicted by nightmares of poverty and social breakdown.
Here are just three events, excerpted from an August 2014 Amnesty International report, which President Obama and his advisors should have considered (and allowed into a public debate) before once more expanding the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan:
1) In September, 2012 a group of women from an impoverished village in mountainous Laghman province were collecting firewood when a U.S. plane dropped at least two bombs on them, killing seven and injuring seven others, four of them seriously. One villager, Mullah Bashir, told Amnesty, "…I started searching for my daughter. Finally I found her. Her face was covered with blood and her body was shattered."
2) A U.S. Special Operations Forces unit was responsible for extrajudicial killing, torture and enforced disappearances during the period of December, 2012 to February, 2013. Included among those tortured was 51 year old Qandi Agha, "a petty employee of the Ministry of Culture," who described in detail the various torture techniques he suffered. He was told that he would be tortured using "14 different types of torture". These included: Beatings with cables, electric shock, prolonged, painful stress positions, repeated head first dunking in a barrel of water, and burial in a hole full of cold water for entire nights. He said that both US Special Forces and Afghans participated in the torture and often smoked hashish while doing so.
3) On March 26, 2013 the village of Sajawand was attacked by joint Afghan—ISAF (International Special Assistance Forces). Between 20-30 people were killed including children. After the attack, a cousin of one of the villagers visited the scene and stated, "The first thing I saw as I entered the compound was a little child of maybe three years old whose chest was torn apart; you could see inside her body. The house was turned into a pile of mud and poles and there was nothing left. When we were taking out the bodies we didn't see any Taliban among the dead, and we didn't know why they were hit or killed."
NYT coverage of the leaked debate mentions Obama's promise, made earlier this year and now broken, to withdraw troops. The article doesn't make any other mention of U.S. public opposition to a continuation of the war.
Attempts to remake Afghanistan by military force have resulted in warlordism, ever more widespread and desperate poverty, and bereavement for hundreds of thousands whose loved ones are among the tens of thousands of casualties. Area hospitals report seeing fewer IED injuries and many more bullet wounds from pitched battles between rival armed militias whose allegiances, Taliban, government, or other, are hard to determine. With 40% of U.S. weapon supplies to Afghan security forces now unaccounted for, many of the weapons employed on all sides may have been supplied by the U.S.
Meanwhile the implications for U.S. democracy aren't reassuring. Was this decision really made weeks ago but only announced now that congressional elections are safely over? Was a Friday night cabinet leak, buried between official Administration announcements on immigration and Iran sanctions, really the President's solution to the unpopularity of a decision affecting the lives of so many? With concern for the wishes of U.S. citizens given so little weight, it is doubtful that much thought was given to the terrible costs of these military interventions for ordinary people trying to live, raise families and survive in Afghanistan.
But for those whose "heated debates" focus solely on what is best for U.S. national interests, here are a few suggestions:
1) The U.S. should end its current provocative drive toward military alliances and encirclement of Russia and China with missiles. It should accept pluralism of economic and political power in the contemporary world. Present U.S. policies are provoking a return to Cold War with Russia and possibly beginning one with China. This is a lose/lose proposition for all countries involved.
2) By a resetting of policy focused on cooperation with Russia, China and other influential countries within the framework of the United Nations, the United States could foster international mediation.
3) The U.S. should offer generous medical and economic aid and technical expertise wherever it may be helpful in other countries and thus build a reservoir of international goodwill and positive influence.
That's something that nobody would have to keep secret.
Audio of Katherine Gun on What People Can Do About War
Here is audio (mp3) of Katherine Gun answering a question at a forum in London. She was asked what people should do. Of course, we love her answer. We also recommend listening to the entire forum which included some great friends and heroes:
- Matthew Hoh, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and former US embassy representative in Afghanistan who became the highest-ranking U.S. official to publicly renounce policy in Afghanistan in 2009.
- Coleen Rowley, an attorney and former FBI special agent who was among the first to expose some of the agency's pre-9/11 failures, and was one of three whistleblowers named as Time Magazine's persons of the year in 2002.
- Norman Solomon is the coordinator of ExposeFacts.org and the author of a dozen books on media and public policy including *War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death*.
- J. Kirk Wiebe is a retired National Security Agency whistleblower who worked at the agency for 36 years until October 2001. Since then, he has made several key public disclosures regarding the NSA's massive surveillance programmes.
- Katharine Gun is a former translator for the GCHQ who leaked a top secret memo in 2003 revealing NSA spying operations at the UN. Gun was subsequently charged under the Official Secrets Act but the case was dropped after the prosecution offered no evidence. Given the backdrop of impending war with Iraq at the time, Daniel Ellsberg called Gun's leak "the most important and courageous" he had ever seen.
Are there 100 people on Planet Earth who believe all of these 10 truths?
- World Peace is highly desirable.
- World Peace is possible.
- There's a law against war.
- Everyone should know the law against war.
- The public is almost totally ignorant of the law against war.
- Ignorance of the law is unacceptable.
- I can do my part in educating the public.
- The pen is mightier than the sword.
- An informed public can demand accountability.
- I can write a peace essay.
If you are one of these 100 people please join the WSFPC Peace Essay Contest before the end of 2014. The Rules are attached. Winners will be given cash awards up to $1,000 and will be announced on August 27, 2015.
Also. PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW WEB ADDRESS: www.faithpeace.mennonite.net
Frank Goetz
WSFPC Peace Essay Coordinator
West Suburban Faith-Based Peace Coalition
$1,000 for First Place Peace Essay
The West Suburban Faith-Based Peace Coalition is once again sponsoring a Peace Essay Contest with a $1,000.00 award to the winner, $300 for the runner-up, and $100 for third place. As in the previous year's contest, essays will have to be directed to a person who can help promote knowledge of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (KBP) and, from whom a response is expected. Essays will be judged not only on the quality of the essay but on the impact of the response. Everyone is eligible to participate; there are no restrictions regarding age or country of residence. Participants are required to take the following 3 steps:
1. To enter the contest send a Peace
Essay Request email to coordinator Frank
Goetz at firstname.lastname@example.com. Provide your Name, Mailing Address, Email Address, Phone Number, and, if under 19, Age. Also, provide the Name and Position of the person or persons to whom the Essay will be directed. Your application acceptance as a contest participant will be acknowledged in an email containing your assigned 4-digit Essay Number. [If information is missing or confusing you will be contacted by email or phone.]
2. In 800 words or less write your essay on: How Can We Obey the Law Against War? As soon as possible but at least by April 15, 2015 send the essay to the person named in your application and a copy to firstname.lastname@example.com with your Essay Number in the Subject line.
3. By May 15, 2015 send Essay Response documentation to email@example.com with your Essay Number in the Subject line.
Some examples of impact:
- The President agrees to explain the limitations placed on the government by KBP.
- A member of congress supports a resolution to make August 27 a Day of Reflection.
- The ACT or SAT administration agrees to include questions regarding KBP.
- A newspaper includes a KBP story.
- A school board revises its curriculum to expand KBP studies.
- A religious leader calls for nonviolent actions.
Act now: We may have to limit the number of contestants and it takes time to get responses. We will announce the Winners at a festive event honoring the 87th Anniversary of the Kellogg-Briand Pact on August 27, 2015.
Mark Udall and the Unspeakable
President Obama, who is just now un-ending again the ending of the endless war on Afghanistan, has never made a secret of taking direction from the military, CIA, and NSA. He's escalated wars that generals had publicly insisted he escalate. He's committed to not prosecuting torturers after seven former heads of the CIA publicly told him not to. He's gone after whistleblowers with a vengeance and is struggling to keep this Bush-era torture report, or parts of it, secret in a manner that should confuse his partisan supporters.
But the depth of elected officials' obedience to a permanent war machine is usually a topic avoided in polite company -- usually, not always. Back in 2011, the dean of the law school at UC Berkeley, a member of Obama's transition team in 2009, said publicly that Obama had decided in 2009 to block prosecutions of Bush-era criminals in part because the CIA, NSA, and military would revolt. Ray McGovern says he has a trustworthy witness to Obama saying he would leave the crimes unpunished because, in Obama's words, "Don't you remember what happened to Martin Luther King?" Neither of those incidents has interested major media outlets in the slightest.
As we pass the 51st anniversary of the murder of President John F. Kennedy, many of us are urging Senator Mark Udall to make the torture report public by placing it into the Congressional Record, as Senator Mike Gravel did with the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Gravel is alive and well, and there's every reason to believe that Udall would go on to live many years deeply appreciated for his action. But there is -- let us be honest for a moment -- a reason Udall might hesitate that we don't want to speak about.
The general thinking is that because Udall's term ends this month, he doesn't have to please those who fund his election campaigns through the U.S. system of legalized bribery, and he doesn't have to please his fellow corrupt senators because he won't be working with them any longer. Both of those points may be false. Udall may intend to run for the Senate again, or -- like most senators, I suspect -- he may secretly plan on running for president some day. And the big payoffs for elected officials who work to please plutocracy always come after they leave office. But there is another consideration. The need to please the permanent war machine ends only when one is willing to die for something -- what Dr. King said one must be willing to do to have a life worth living -- not when one leaves office.
Presidents and Congress members send large numbers of people to risk their lives murdering much larger numbers of people in wars all the time. They have taken on jobs -- particularly the presidency -- in which they know they will be in danger no matter what they do. And yet everyone in Washington knows (and no one says) that making an enemy of the CIA is just not done and has not been done since the last man to do it died in a convertible in Dallas. We've seen progressive members of Congress like Dennis Kucinich leave without putting crucial documents that they thought should be public into the Congressional Record. Any member of Congress, newly reelected or not, could give the public the torture report. A group of 10 of them could do it collectively for the good of humanity. But nobody thinks they will. Challenging a president who does not challenge the CIA is just not something that's done.
To understand why, I recommend reading Jim Douglass' book JFK and the Unspeakable. Douglass is currently writing about three other murders, those of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Distant history? Something that doesn't happen anymore? Perhaps, but is that because we've run out of lone nuts with guns? Clearly not. Is it because the permanent war machine has stopped killing its enemies? Or is it, rather, because no one has presented the same challenge to the permanent war machine that those people did? Peace voices are no longer allowed in the U.S. media. Both political parties favor widespread war. War has become a matter of routine. Enforcement has become unnecessary, because the threat, or other influences that align with it, has been so successful.
I recommend checking out ProjectUnspeakable.com, the website of a play by Court Dorsey that recounts the killing of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK. (Or check out a performance in Harlem planned for February 21.)
The play consists almost entirely of actual quotes by public figures. While no attempt is made, of course, at including a comprehensive collection of information, enough evidence is included in the play to completely erase belief in the official stories of how those four men died. And evidence is included showing who actually killed them, how, and why.
As if that weren't enough to persuade the viewer that our society is mentally blocking out something uncomfortable, the glaring obviousness of what happened in those years of assassinations is highlighted. President Kennedy was publicly asked if he might be murdered exactly as he was, and he publicly replied that it could certainly happen. His brother discussed the likelihood of it with Khrushchev for godsake. The killing of Malcolm X was not the war machine's first attempt on his life. He and King both saw what was coming quite clearly and said so. Bobby Kennedy knew too, did not believe the official account of his brother's murder. King's family rejects the claim that James Earl Ray killed MLK, pointing instead to the CIA killer shown in the photographs of the assassination but never questioned as a witness. A jury has unanimously agreed with King's family against the government and the history books.
The attention to President Kennedy has always been so intense that fear and suppression have been required. The doctors said he was shot from the front. Everyone agreed there were more bullets shot than left the gun of the official suspect, who was positioned behind the target. But investigators and witnesses have died in very suspect circumstances. The other deaths have not been in exactly the same glaring spotlight. New evidence in the killing of Robert Kennedy emerges every few years and is chatted about as a curiosity for a moment before simply being ignored. After all, the man is dead.
Let's try an analogy. I live in Charlottesville, Va., where the University of Virginia is. This week, Rolling Stone published an article about violent gang rapes of female students in a fraternity house. I had known that rape victims are often reluctant to come forward. I had known that rape can be a hard charge to prove. But I had also known that young women sometimes regret sex and falsely accuse nonviolent well-meaning young men of rape, and that UVA held rallies against date rape, and that opposition to sexual assault and harassment was all over the news and widely accepted as the proper progressive position. With California passing a law to clarify what consent is, I had assumed everyone knew violent assault had nothing to do with consent. I had assumed brutal gang attacks by students who are expelled if they cheat on a test or write a bad check could not go unknown. And now it seems there's something of a widely known unspoken epidemic. In the analysis of the Rolling Stone article, women deny rape goes on to shield themselves from the fear, while men deny it in order to shield themselves from any discomfort about their party-going fun-loving carelessness. And yet some significant number of students knew and stayed silent until one brave victim spoke, just as every whistleblower in Washington exists alongside thousands of people who keep their mouths shut.
What if someone in Washington were to speak? What if the unspeakable were made speakable?
David Swanson to Speak in Michigan
US news organizations dispense propaganda, not news: Forget 'Fair and Balanced,' US Corporate Media Give Only the Government's
By Dave Lindorff
One searches almost in vain for honest reporting on the Ukraine conflict in the US corporate media, which is simply parroting the US government position, which is that the rebels in eastern Ukraine are simply tools of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Saving The Internet: How the Impossible Shifted to the Inevitable
Originally posted a AcronymTV
When President Barack Obama appointed venture capitalist and former Verizon and ATT lobbyist Tom Wheeler as chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), it sent shudders down the spines of anyone concerned with the concept of net neutrality.
Last spring, it may have seemed an impossible task for activists and the Internet itself to defend net neutrality, but to date, they have.
Dear White People: Our State of Emergency
Originally posted at AcronymTV
As you know, a pre-emptive State of Emergency has been called in Ferguson, Missouri as the country waits to hear if officer Darren Wilson will be charged with the murder of Michael Brown.
Let's focus on another State of Emergency for a moment.
Humor, Humanity from Guantanamo Prisoners
by Debra Sweet Vice, the youth-oriented news/culture site, has broken new ground this week in featuring a series on Guantanamo. Extradordinary, because it gives voice to prisoners and disaffected former guards. See "What Happens When I Try to Give My Guantánamo Guards Presents" by prisoner Enad Hassan, and My Time as a Guantanamo Bay Guard by Terry Holdbrooks.
Would you think it was the job of psychologists or journalists to expose criminal activity?
by Debra Sweet After many years of protest from within the organization, the American Psychological Association says it will review the organization's role in facilitating "enhanced interrogation" by the CIA and the U.S. military.Or as the world knows it — torture.
Justice for Michael Brown
Israel News - Nov 21, 2014
Hamas calls for 'day of rage' in the West Bank on Friday - Maan News Agency
Violence in East Jerusalem; 'Intifada starts today,' Palestinian kids say - Ynetnews
Hamas said activating Jerusalem cells as Israel rocked by synagogue massacre - World Tribune
Hamas Praises Recent Terror Attacks In Israel, Calls Launch Of New Intifada, Threatens: 'The Palestinian Volcano Will Erupt' - memri.org
Police on heightened alert as Hamas calls for 'day of rage' - jpost.com
Police set up checkpoints at East Jerusalem neighborhoods - The Times of Israel
Police bust massive shipment of firecrackers, knives and swords bound for capital - The Times of Israel
Hamas resumes trials of homemade rockets, IDF says - Ynetnews
Hamas affiliated social media abuzz with cartoons glorifying Jerusalem terror attack (CARTOONS) - jpost.com
VIDEO: Palestinians in the Middle-East celebrate the synagogue massacre - LiveLeak.com
VIDEO: Palestinians brandish AXES to celebrate synagogue attack - LiveLeak.com
VIDEO: Hamas's new hit song in Hebrew: 'Zionist, you are about to be killed by a car' - jpost.com
VIDEO: Attempted hit and run in Israel - LiveLeak.com
Hamas member admits to running over soldiers in Nov. 5 attack - The Times of Israel
Hamas planned to assassinate FM Lieberman - Ynetnews
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on Thursday officially mourned two of its members who were killed after carrying out the attack on an Israeli synagogue - Maan News Agency
PFLP statement on the Synagogue attack in Jerusalem - Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Contradictory messages from PA in response to Synagogue massacre, While Abbas condemned the attack one of his senior advisors and the official Facebook page of Fatah praised it - The Tower
Israel spy chief says Abbas is not inciting to terror, while Netanyahu points accusing finger at Palestinian president - Ynetnews
Abbas powerless to stop Palestinian violence, experts say - AFP
Terrorist's home destroyed by Israel, marking return to controversial policy - The Times of Israel
Palestinians: Order to demolish homes of Palestinians who perpetrated attacks unlawful and immoral - pnn.ps
VIDEO: Israel forces demolish a Palestinian home of an Hamas member in wake of attack on synagogue - AP
Committee Approves 78 Apartments In Eastern Jerusalem - The Jewish Week
US slams Israeli construction in E. Jerusalem, renewed home demolitions - The Times of Israel
Five major EU states to Israel: Demolishing terrorists' homes will escalate tensions - Haaretz
Israeli soldiers protect settlers attacking Palestinian villagers (VIDEO) - RT News
Israeli settlers stab a Palestinian in Jerusalem, attack school in West Bank - Al Akhbar English
VIDEO: Palestinians attend funeral ceremony for hanged bus driver - YouTube
Did Palestinian pathologist recant findings in death of Jerusalem bus driver? Israel urges Palestinian Authority to admit that death was suicide, pathologist appears to cast doubt - i24news
Egypt takes aim at Hamas' terror tunnels, closes the key Rafah crossing into Gaza and announces that it would establish a 500-meter buffer zone - Fox News
Closing of Egypt's Rafah crossing leaves thousands of Gazans stranded - Reuters
To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle[at]yahoo[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)
The Outpost That Doesn't Exist in the Country You Can't Locate
A Base Camp, an Authoritarian Regime, and the Future of U.S. Blowback in Africa
By Nick Turse, TomDispatch
Admit it. You don't know where Chad is. You know it's in Africa, of course. But beyond that? Maybe with a map of the continent and by some process of elimination you could come close. But you'd probably pick Sudan or maybe the Central African Republic. Here's a tip. In the future, choose that vast, arid swath of land just below Libya.
Who does know where Chad is? That answer is simpler: the U.S. military. Recent contracting documents indicate that it's building something there. Not a huge facility, not a mini-American town, but a small camp.
That the U.S. military is expanding its efforts in Africa shouldn't be a shock anymore. For years now, the Pentagon has been increasing its missions there and promoting a mini-basing boom that has left it with a growing collection of outposts sprouting across the northern tier of the continent. This string of camps is meant to do what more than a decade of counterterrorism efforts, including the training and equipping of local military forces and a variety of humanitarian hearts-and-minds missions, has failed to accomplish: transform the Trans-Sahara region in the northern and western parts of the continent into a bulwark of stability.
That the U.S. is doing more in Chad specifically isn't particularly astonishing either. Earlier this year, TomDispatch and the Washington Post both reported on separate recent deployments of U.S. troops to that north-central African nation. Nor is it shocking that the new American compound is to be located near the capital, N'Djamena. The U.S. has previously employed N'Djamena as a hub for its air operations. What's striking is the terminology used in the official documents. After years of adamant claims that the U.S. military has just one lonely base in all of Africa -- Camp Lemonnier in the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti -- Army documents state that it will now have "base camp facilities" in Chad.
U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) still insists that there is no Chadian base, that the camp serves only as temporary lodgings to support a Special Operations training exercise to be held next year. It also refused to comment about another troop deployment to Chad uncovered by TomDispatch. When it comes to American military activities in Africa, much remains murky.
Nonetheless, one fact is crystal clear: the U.S. is ever more tied to Chad. This remains true despite a decade-long effort to train its military forces only to see them bolt from one mission in the face of casualties, leave another in a huff after gunning down unarmed civilians, and engage in human rights abuses at home with utter impunity. All of this suggests yet another potential source of blowback from America's efforts in Africa which have backfired, gone bust, and sown strife from Libya to South Sudan, the Gulf Guinea to Mali, and beyond.
A Checkered History with Chad
Following 9/11, the U.S. launched a counterterrorism program, known as the Pan-Sahel Initiative, to bolster the militaries of Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and Chad. Three years later, in 2005, the program expanded to include Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia and was renamed the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP). The idea was to turn a huge swath of Africa into a terror-resistant bulwark of stability. Twelve years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, the region is anything but stable, which means that it fits perfectly, like a missing puzzle piece, with the rest of the under-the-radar U.S. "pivot" to that continent.
Coups by the U.S.-backed militaries of Mauritania in 2005 and again in 2008, Niger in 2010, and Mali in 2012, as well as a 2011 revolution that overthrew Tunisia's U.S.-backed government (after the U.S.-supported army stood aside); the establishment of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in 2006; and the rise of Boko Haram from an obscure radical sect to a raging insurgent movement in northern Nigeria are only some of the most notable recent failures in TSCTP nations. Chad came close to making the list, too, but attempted military coups in 2006 and 2013 were thwarted, and in 2008, the government, which had itself come to power in a 1990 coup, managed to hold off against a rebel assault on the capital.
Through it all, the U.S. has continued to mentor Chad's military, and in return, that nation has lent its muscle to support Washington's interests in the region. Chad, for instance, joined the 2013 U.S.-backed French military intervention to retake Mali after Islamists began routing the forces of the American-trained officer who had launched a coup that overthrew that country's democratically elected government. According to military briefing slides obtained by TomDispatch, an Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) liaison team was deployed to Chad to aid operations in Mali and the U.S. also conducted pre-deployment training for its Chadian proxies. After initial success, the French effort became bogged down and has now become a seemingly interminable, smoldering counterinsurgency campaign. Chad, for its part, quickly withdrew its forces from the fight after sustaining modest casualties. "Chad's army has no ability to face the kind of guerrilla fighting that is emerging in northern Mali. Our soldiers are going to return to Chad," said that country's president, Idriss Deby.
Still, U.S. support continued.
In September of 2013, the U.S. military organized meetings with Chad's senior-most military leaders, including Army chief General Brahim Seid Mahamat, Minister of Defense General Bénaïndo Tatola, and counterterror tsar Brigadier General Abderaman Youssouf Merry, to build solid relationships and support efforts at "countering violent extremist operations objectives and theater security cooperation programs." This comes from a separate set of documents concerning "IO," or Information Operations, obtained from the military through the Freedom of Information Act. French officials also attended these meetings and the agenda included the former colonial power's support of "security cooperation with Chad in the areas of basic and officer training and staff procedures" as well as "French support [for] U.S. security cooperation efforts with the Chadian military." Official briefing slides also mention ongoing "train and equip" activities with Chadian troops.
All of this followed on the heels of a murky coup plot by elements of the armed forces last May to which the Chadian military reacted with a crescendo of violence. According to a State Department report, Chad's "security forces shot and killed unarmed civilians and arrested and detained members of parliament, military officers, former rebels, and others."
After Chad reportedly helped overthrow the Central African Republic's president in early 2013 and later aided in the 2014 ouster of the rebel leader who deposed him, it sent its forces into that civil-war-torn land as part of an African Union mission bolstered by U.S.-backed French troops. Soon, Chad's peacekeeping forces were accused of stoking sectarian strife by supporting Muslim militias against Christian fighters. Then, on March 29th, a Chadian military convoy arrived in a crowded marketplace in the capital, Bangui. There, according to a United Nations report, the troops "reportedly opened fire on the population without any provocation. At the time, the market was full of people, including many girls and women buying and selling produce. As panic-stricken people fled in all directions, the soldiers allegedly continued firing indiscriminately."
In all, 30 civilians were reportedly killed and more than 300 were wounded. Amid criticism, Chad angrily announced it was withdrawing its troops. "Despite the sacrifices we have made, Chad and Chadians have been targeted in a gratuitous and malicious campaign that blamed them for all the suffering" in the Central African Republic, declared Chad's foreign ministry.
In May, despite this, the U.S. sent 80 military personnel to Chad to operate drones and conduct surveillance in an effort to locate hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in neighboring Nigeria. "These personnel will support the operation of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft for missions over northern Nigeria and the surrounding area," President Obama told Congress. The force, he said, will remain in Chad "until its support in resolving the kidnapping situation is no longer required."
In July, AFRICOM admitted that it had reduced surveillance flights searching for the girls to focus on other missions. Now AFRICOM tells TomDispatch that, while "the U.S. continues to help Nigeria address the threat posed by Boko Haram, the previously announced ISR support deployment to Chad has departed." Yet more than seven months after their abduction, the girls still have not been located, let alone rescued.
In June, according to the State Department, the deputy commander of U.S. Army Africa (USARAF), Brigadier General Kenneth H. Moore, Jr., visited Chad to "celebrat[e] the successful conclusion of a partnership between USARAF and the Chadian Armed Forces." Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus arrived in that landlocked country at the same time to meet with "top Chadian officials." His visit, according to an embassy press release, "underscore[d] the importance of bilateral relations between the two countries, as well as military cooperation." And that cooperation has been ample.
Earlier this year, Chadian troops joined those of the United States, Burkina Faso, Canada, France, Mauritania, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Senegal, the United Kingdom, and host nation Niger for three weeks of military drills as part of Flintlock 2014, an annual Special Ops counterterrorism exercise for TSCTP nations. At about the time Flintlock was concluding, soldiers from Chad, Cameroon, Burundi, Gabon, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, the Netherlands, and the United States took part in another annual training exercise, Central Accord 2014. The Army also sent medical personnel to mentor Chadian counterparts in "tactical combat casualty care," while Marines and Navy personnel traveled to Chad to train that country's militarized anti-poaching park rangers in small unit tactics and patrolling.
A separate contingent of Marines conducted military intelligence training with Chadian officers and non-commissioned officers. The scenario for the final exercise, also involving personnel from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mauritania, Senegal, and Tunisia, had a ripped-from-the-headlines quality: "preparing for an unconventional war against an insurgent threat in Mali."
As for U.S. Army Africa, it sent trainers as part of a separate effort to provide Chadian troops with instruction on patrolling and fixed-site defense as well as live-fire training. "We are ready to begin training in Chad for about 1,300 soldiers -- an 850 man battalion, plus another 450 man battalion," said Colonel John Ruffing, the Security Cooperation director of U.S. Army Africa, noting that the U.S. was working in tandem with a French private security firm.
In September, AFRICOM reaffirmed its close ties with Chad by renewing an Acquisition Cross Servicing Agreement, which allows both militaries to purchase from each other or trade for basic supplies. The open-ended pact, said Brigadier General James Vechery, AFRICOM's director for logistics, "will continue to strengthen our bilateral cooperation on international security issues... as well as the interoperability of the armed forces of both nations."
The Base That Wasn't and the Deployment That Might Be
In the months since the Chadian armed forces' massacre in Bangui, various U.S. military contract solicitations and related documents have pointed toward an even more substantive American presence in Chad. In late September, the Army put out a call for bids to sustain American personnel for six months at those "base camp facilities" located near N'Djamena. Supporting documents specifically mention 35 U.S. personnel and detail the services necessary to run an austere outpost: field sanitation, bulk water supply, sewage services, and trash removal. The materials indicate that "local security policy and procedures" are to be provided by the Chadian armed forces and allude to the use of more than one location, saying "none of the sites in Chad are considered U.S.-federally controlled facilities." The documents state that such support for those facilities is to run until July 2015.
After AFRICOM failed to respond to repeated email requests for further information, I called up Chief of Media Operations Benjamin Benson and asked about the base camp. He was even more tight-lipped than usual. "I personally don't know anything," he told me. "That's not saying AFRICOM doesn't have any information on that."
In follow-up emails, Benson eventually told me that the "base camp" is strictly a temporary facility to be used by U.S. forces only for the duration of the upcoming Flintlock 2015 exercise. He stated in no uncertain terms: "We are not establishing a base/forward presence/contingency location, building a U.S. facility, or stationing troops in Chad."
Benson would not, however, let me speak with an expert on U.S. military activities in Chad. Nor would he confirm or deny the continued presence of the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance liaison team deployed to Chad in 2013 to support the French mission in Mali, first reported on by TomDispatch this March. "[W]e cannot discuss ISR activities or the locations and durations of operational deployments," he wrote. If an ISR team is still present in Chad, this would represent a substantive long-term deployment despite the lack of a formal U.S. base.
The N'Djamena "base camp" is just one of a series of Chadian projects mentioned in recent contracting documents. An Army solicitation from September sought "building materials for use in Chad," while supporting documents specifically mention an "operations center/multi-use facility." That same month, the Army awarded a contract for the transport of equipment from Niamey, Niger, the home of another of the growing network of U.S. outposts in Africa, to N'Djamena. The Army also began seeking out contractors capable of supplying close to 600 bunk beds that could support an American-sized weight of 200 to 225 pounds for a facility "in and around the N'Djamena region." And just last month, the military put out a call for a contractor to supply construction equipment -- a bulldozer, dump truck, excavator, and the like -- for a project in, you guessed it, N'Djamena.
This increased U.S. interest in Chad follows on the heels of a push by France, the nation's former colonial overlord and America's current premier proxy in Africa, to beef up its military footprint on the continent. In July, following U.S.-backed French military interventions in Mali and the Central African Republic, French President François Hollande announced a new mission, Operation Barkhane (a term for a crescent-shaped sand dune found in the Sahara). Its purpose: a long-term counterterrorism operation involving 3,000 French troops deployed to a special forces outpost in Burkina Faso and forward operating bases in Mali, Niger, and not surprisingly, Chad.
"There are plenty of threats in all directions," Hollande told French soldiers in Chad, citing militants in Mali and Libya as well as Boko Haram in Nigeria. "Rather than having large bases that are difficult to manage in moments of crisis, we prefer installations that can be used quickly and efficiently." Shortly afterward, President Obama approved millions in emergency military aid for French operations in Mali, Niger, and Chad, while the United Kingdom, another former colonial power in the region, dispatched combat aircraft to the French base in N'Djamena to contribute to the battle against Boko Haram.
From Setback to Blowback?
In recent years, the U.S. military has been involved in a continual process of expanding its presence in Africa. Out of public earshot, officials have talked about setting up a string of small bases across the northern tier of the continent. Indeed, over the last years, U.S. staging areas, mini-bases, and outposts have popped up in the contiguous nations of Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and, skipping Chad, in the Central African Republic, followed by South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. A staunch American ally with a frequent and perhaps enduring American troop presence, Chad seems like the natural spot for still another military compound -- the only missing link in a long chain of countries stretching from west to east, from one edge of the continent to the other -- even if AFRICOM continues to insist that there's no American "base" in the works.
Even without a base, the United States has for more than a decade poured copious amounts of money, time, and effort into making Chad a stable regional counterterrorism partner, sending troops there, training and equipping its army, counseling its military leaders, providing tens of millions of dollars in aid, funding its military expeditions, supplying its army with equipment ranging from tents to trucks, donating additional equipment for its domestic security forces, providing a surveillance and security system for its border security agents, and looking the other way when its military employed child soldiers.
The results? A flight from the fight in Mali, a massacre in the Central African Republic, hundreds of schoolgirls still in the clutches of Boko Haram, and a U.S. alliance with a regime whose "most significant human rights problems," according to the most recent country report by the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, "were security force abuse, including torture; harsh prison conditions; and discrimination and violence against women and children," not to mention the restriction of freedom of speech, press, assembly, and movement, as well as arbitrary arrest and detention, denial of fair public trial, executive influence on the judiciary, property seizures, child labor and forced labor (that also includes children), among other abuses. Amnesty International further found that human rights violations "are committed with almost total impunity by members of the Chadian military, the Presidential Guard, and the state intelligence bureau, the Agence Nationale de Securité."
With Chad, the United States finds itself more deeply involved with yet another authoritarian government and another atrocity-prone proxy force. In this, it continues a long series of mistakes, missteps, and mishaps across Africa. These include an intervention in Libya that transformed the country from an autocracy into a near-failed state, training efforts that produced coup leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso, American nation-building that led to a failed state in South Sudan, anti-piracy measures that flopped in the Gulf of Guinea, the many fiascos of the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership, the training of an elite Congolese unit that committed mass rapes and other atrocities, problem-plagued humanitarian efforts in Djibouti and Ethiopia, and the steady rise of terror groups in U.S.-backed countries like Nigeria and Tunisia.
In other words, in its shadowy "pivot" to Africa, the U.S. military has compiled a record remarkably low on successes and high on blowback. Is it time to add Chad to this growing list?
Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. A 2014 Izzy Award winner, he has reported from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa and his pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. His New York Times bestseller Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam recently received an American Book Award.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2014 Nick Turse
Introducing "Natural Gas Exports: Washington's Revolving Door Fuels Climate Threat"
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
DeSmogBlog's Steve Horn and Republic Report's Lee Fang have co-written an in-depth report on the influence the government-industry revolving door has had on Big Oil's ability to obtain four liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits since 2012 from the Obama Administration.
Photo Credit: DeSmogBlog
Titled "Natural Gas Exports: Washington's Revolving Door Fuels Climate Threat," the report published here on DeSmogBlog and on Republic Report serves as the launching pad of an ongoing investigation. It will act as the prelude of an extensive series of articles by both websites uncovering the LNG exports influence peddling machine.
The report not only exposes the lobbying apparatus that has successfully opened the door for LNG exports, but also the PR professionals paid to sell them to the U.S. public. It also exposes those who have gone through the "reverse revolving door," moving from industry back to government and sometimes back again.
It reveals that many former Obama Administration officials now work as lobbyists or PR professionals on behalf of the LNG exports industry, as do many former Bush Administration officials. So too do those with ties to potential 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.
They include:
Torturer on the Ballot
Michigan's First Congressional District is cold enough to freeze spit. Half of it is disconnected from the rest of Michigan and tacked onto the top of Wisconsin. A bit of it is further north than that, but rumored to be inhabited nonetheless.
In the recent Congressional elections, incumbent Republican Congressman Dan Benishek was reelected to his third term with 52 percent of the votes. Benishek is a climate-change denier and committed to limiting himself to three terms, a pair of positions that may end up working well together.
Benishek's predecessor in Congress was a Democrat, and a Democrat took 45 percent of the vote this year. Will that Democrat run again in 2016? Some would argue that if he does it should be from prison. Before he ran for office, Jerry Cannon ran the U.S. death camp at Guantanamo and, according to a witness, was personally responsible for ordering torture.
Green Party candidate Ellis Boal took 1 percent of the vote in Michigan's First, after apparently failing to interest corporate media outlets in his campaign, and by his own account failing utterly to interest them in what he managed to learn about Cannon, who also "served" in the war in Iraq.
Now, Congress is jam-packed with members of both major parties who have effectively condoned and covered up torture for years. Both parties have elected numerous veterans of recent wars who have participated in killing in wars that they themselves, in some cases, denounce as misguided. And we've read about the Bush White House overseeing torture in real time from afar. But it still breaks new ground for the party of the President who has claimed to be trying to close Guantanamo for six years to put up as a candidate a man who ran the place, and a man whose role in torture was not entirely from his air-conditioned office.
I would also venture to say that it breaks new media ground for the news outlets covering the recent election nationally and locally in Michigan's First District to not only miss this story but actively refuse to cover it when Boal held it in their faces and screamed. "Despite many attempts," Boal says, "I have been unable to interest any media in it, save for a small newspaper in Traverse City (near me) which gave it cursory attention."
Boal sent out an offer to any reporter willing to take an interest: "I located a witness, a former detainee now cleared and back home in Bosnia, who can testify of an instance of torture visited on him in early 2004, ordered and supervised by Cannon. I can put you in touch with him through his attorney. The details of the incident are here. . . . Without success I tried to make it a campaign issue."
Jerry Cannon, according to both Wikipedia and his own website, first "served" in the war that killed three to four million Vietnamese. He was commander of the Joint Detention Operations Group Joint Task Force Guantanamo from 2003 to 2004. He was Deputy Commanding General responsible for developing Iraqi police forces in Iraq from 2008 to 2009, and U.S. Forces-Iraq Provost Marshal General and Deputy Commanding General for Detention Operations in Iraq from 2010 to 2011. Boy, everything this guy touches turns out golden!
Boal has collected evidence of torture during Cannon's time at Guantanamo, from the Red Cross, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the U.S. Senate, and public reports including in the New York Times, here.
Boal focuses on Mustafa Ait Idir, a former prisoner of Guantanamo who, like most, has been widely written about, and who, like most, has been found innocent of any wrong-doing and been released (in November 2008 after years of wrongful imprisonment).
Mustafa Ait Idir says that soldiers at Guantanamo threw him down on rocks and jumped on him, causing injuries including a broken finger, dislocated knuckles, and half his face paralyzed; they sprayed chemicals in his face, squeezed his testicles, and slammed his head on the floor and jumped on him. They bent his fingers back to cause pain, and broke one of them in the process. They stuck his head in a toilet and flushed it. They stuck a hose in his mouth and forced water down his throat. They refused him medical attention.
Boal communicated with Idir through Idir's lawyer, and Idir identified Cannon from photos and a video as the man who had threatened him with punishment if he did not hand over his pants. (Prisoners who believed they needed pants in order to pray were being stripped of their pants as a means of humiliation and abuse.) Idir refused to give up his pants unless he could have them back to wear for praying. Consequently, he was "enhanced interrogated."
Torture and complicity in torture are felonies under U.S. law, a fact that the entire U.S. political establishment has gone to great lengths to obscure.
I shared the information above with Rebecca Gordon, author of Mainstreaming Torture, and she replied:
"Torture is a 'non-partisan' practice in this country. It's beyond disgraceful that the Democratic Party would run Jerry Cannon for Congress. Sadly, while most (but clearly not all!) Dems have repudiated torture in words, their deeds have been more ambiguous. Five years after President Obama took office, the prison at Guantánamo remains open, and torture continues there. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture has yet to be released. (Perhaps lame duck senator Mark Udall will be persuaded to read the whole thing into the Congressional Record, as some of us are hoping.) We have yet to get a full accounting, not only of the CIA's activities, but of all U.S. torture in the 'war on terror.' Equally important, President Obama made it clear at the beginning of his first term that no one would be held accountable for torture. 'Nothing will be gained,' he said 'by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.' But we know this is not true. When high government officials know that they can torture with impunity, torture will continue."
Noting Cannon's resume post-Guantanamo, Gordon said, "Under the al-Maliki government, the Iraqi police force, and in particular the detention centers operated by the Iraqi Special Police Commandos, routinely abused members of Iraq's Sunni communities, thereby further inflaming the political and social enmity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq. When the so-called Islamic State began operating in Iraq, they found willing collaborators in Sunni communities whose members had been tortured by the al-Maliki government's police. When Jerry Cannon went to Guantánamo, he went as an Army reservist. In civilian life he was Sheriff of Kalkaska County in Michigan. Cannon's abusive practices and contemptuous attitudes towards detainees did not originate in Guantánamo. He brought them with him from the United States. Similarly, in civilian life, the members of the reservist unit responsible for the famous outrages at Abu Ghraib were prison guards from West Virginia. Their ringleader, Specialist Charles Graner, famously wrote home to friends about his activities at Abu Ghraib, 'The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, "I love to make a grown man piss himself."' In fact, if you want to find torture hidden in plain sight, look no farther than the jails and prisons of this country."
The mystery of where torture came from turns out to be no mystery at all. It came from the prison industrial complex. And it's now been so mainstreamed that it's no bar to running for public office. But here's another mystery: Why is President Obama going to such lengths to cover up his predecessor's torture, including insisting on redactions in the Senate report on CIA torture that even Senator Dianne Feinstein claims not to want censored? Surely it's not because of all the gratitude Obama's receiving from former President Bush or his supporters! Actually, it's no mystery at all. As Gordon points out: the torture is ongoing.
President Elect Obama made very clear in January 2009 that he would not allow torturers to be prosecuted and would be "looking forward" instead of (what all law enforcement outside of science fiction requires) backward. By February 2009, reports were coming in that torture at Guantanamo was worsening rather than ceasing, and included: "beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-force-feeding detainees who are on hunger strike." In April 2009 a Guantanamo prisoner phoned a media outlet to report being tortured. As time went by the reports kept coming, as the military's written policy would lead one to expect.
In May 2009, former vice president Dick Cheney forced into the news the fact that, even though Obama had "banned torture" by executive order (torture being a felony and a treaty violation before and after the "banning") Obama maintained the power to use torture as needed. Cheney said that Obama's continued claim of the power to torture vindicated his own (Cheney's) authorization of torture. David Axelrod, White House Senior Advisor, refused repeatedly, to dispute Cheney's assertion -- also supported by Leon Panetta's confirmation hearing for CIA director, at which he said the president had the power to torture and noted that rendition would continue. In fact, it did. The New York Times quickly reported that the U.S. was now outsourcing more torture to other countries. The Obama administration announced a new policy on renditions that kept them in place, and a new policy on lawless permanent imprisonment that kept it in place but formalized it, mainstreamed it. Before long Obama-era rendition victims were alleging torture.
As the Obama White House continued and sought to extend the occupation of Iraq, torture continued to be an Iraqi policy, as it has post-occupation and during occupation 3.0. It has also remained a U.S. and Afghan policy in Afghanistan, with no end in sight. The U.S. military has continued to use the same personnel as part of its torture infrastructure. And secret CIA torture prisons have continued to pop into the news even though the CIA was falsely said to have abandoned that practice. While the Obama administration has claimed unprecedented powers to block civil suits against torturers, it has also used, in court, testimony produced by torture, something that used to be illegal (and still is if you go by written laws).
"Look at the current situation," Obama said in 2013, "where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike . . . Is this who we are?" Well, it is certainly who some of us have become, including Obama, the senior authority in charge of the soldiers doing the force-feeding, and a human chameleon able to express outrage at his own policies, a trick that is perhaps more central to the mainstreaming of vicious and sadistic practices than we always care to acknowledge.
Those retaining some sense of decency are currently urging the Obama administration to go easy in its punishment of a nurse who refused to participate in the force-feeding, who in fact insisted on being "who we are."
By Robert C. Koehler
As the grand jury's decision on whether nor not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson loomed, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon told a TV reporter "he's preparing for peace and war."
What the governor did, in the tense uncertainty preceding the decision, was pre-declare a state of emergency and activate the Missouri National Guard to help contain the possibility of violent, anti-police protests. He also appointed 16 people, including several of the protesters, to a newly created "Ferguson Commission" to recommend solutions to the racial problems plaguing that community, which the killing of Michael Brown last August made unavoidably apparent.
Meanwhile, gun sales at local shops are through the roof and the local Klan is stirring, distributing fliers warning protesters that they've awakened a sleeping giant.
America, America . . .
Before we proceed further, let's stir in a little Einstein: "We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them."
That level of thinking — the political, governmental and media consensus of who we are — is blind and deaf to history and locked into us-vs.-them thinking. Security, whether domestic or international, is a game played against presumed and, often enough, imagined enemies. Thus, prior to the governor's decision to call out the Guard, the FBI had issued an intelligence bulletin warning local officials that "the announcement of the grand jury's decision … will likely be exploited by some individuals to justify threats and attacks against law enforcement and critical infrastructure," according to the Washington Post.
If nothing else, this sort of consciousness remains utterly unaware of its own contribution to the trouble. As law enforcement ups its level of militarized authoritarianism, it agitates the elements predisposed to regard it as the enemy and seek its humiliation and defeat. This is a small segment of the protesters, but no matter. Preparing for war requires, first of all, an oversimplification of the social context in which the preparers operate. Once this is accomplished, the warnings become self-fulfilling prophecies.
In other words, what matters is that there's an "enemy" out there. The preparation essentially creates the enemy, especially when the power imbalance is enormous, e.g.: federal, state and local government, plus maybe half the general population, vs. distraught, impoverished community residents.
What doesn't matter is that the protesters want profound, nonviolent change, not an excuse to trash local convenience stores. For instance, the Don't Shoot Coalition, which formed in the wake of Michael Brown's shooting and has coordinated protest efforts since then, recently issued 19 "rules of engagement" in anticipation of the grand jury verdict. Rule no. 1: "The first priority shall be preservation of human life."
Other rules include: "Every attempt should be made to communicate with protesters to reach 'common sense' agreements based on these protocols, both ahead of time and at the scene of protests."
And: "Police rank and file will be instructed to provide every latitude to allow for free assembly and expression, treating protesters as citizens and not 'enemy combatants.'"
At the very least, what we do not need, in the wake of the terrible wrong of an 18-year-old's killing, is a dismissive oversimplification of the community's reaction to it. On the other side of the issue, we need infinitely more than an indictment and, ultimately, conviction and punishment of the police officer who did it. That is to say, what matters here is not the fixing of personal blame (or lack thereof), but the acknowledgment of systemic and historic wrong of monumental proportions and — at long, long last — a momentum of social healing that doesn't end prematurely.
The United States of America is a nation founded on slavery and the conquest and slaughter of the indigenous peoples in its way. It's also a democracy, sort of — originally for white, male property owners — which, over two-plus centuries, has expanded its recognition of who qualifies as a human being and who, thus, can be a full participant in the political process. The country's sense of exceptionalism exceeds, by a wide margin, the good it has brought into the world.
Oh well. That's no excuse to quit trying. The possibility of who we can become — a healed, connected people, an invaluable force for global salvation — is worth our endless effort to realize. And maybe the Ferguson Commission has more than a perfunctory contribution to make to such an achievement.
What I know is that we cannot define our social brokenness in terms of good guys and bad guys, which is always so tempting. Alexis Madrigal, writing last August in The Atlantic about UCLA's Center of Policing Equity, which has investigated police behavior and racial disparity in dozens of police departments in the U.S., made an interesting observation to that end:
"When staffers from the Center of Policing Equity go into a police department, they talk with community advocates, police officers, and the people of the city—all of whom provide important information about law enforcement behaviors. What they find is communities who have for generations felt like they're not being policed but occupied. And yet, at the same time, they find the 'vast majority' of police officers and executives trying to do the right thing."
The "level of thinking" that has caused immeasurable harm within and beyond our national borders — that killed Michael Brown — begins with a conviction that the enemy is out there, waiting to get us. If we had the courage to look beyond this fear, what we would see, perhaps, is not an enemy but someone almost indistinguishable from ourselves.
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press), is still available. Contact him at firstname.lastname@example.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
Uncomplicated, in Afghanistan
By Kathy Kelly
On November 7, 2014, while visiting Kabul, The Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, noted that NATO will soon launch a new chapter, a new non-combat mission in Afghanistan. But it's difficult to spot new methods as NATO commits itself to sustaining combat on the part of Afghan forces.
Stoltenberg commended NATO Allies and partner nations from across the world, in an October 29th speech, in Brussels, declaring that for over a decade, they "stood shoulder to shoulder with Afghanistan." According to Stoltenberg, "this international effort has contributed to a better future for Afghan men, women and children." Rhetoric from NATO and the Pentagon regularly claims that Afghans have benefited from the past 13 years of U.S./NATO warfare, but reports from other agencies complicatethese claims.
UNAMA, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, found that in the first six months of 2014, combat among the warring parties surpassed improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as the leading cause of conflict-related death and injury to Afghan civilians.
This "disturbing upward spiral" has meant the number of children and other vulnerable Afghans killed and wounded since the beginning of the year rose dramatically and "is proving to be devastating."
Stoltenberg's assurance of NATO's positive contribution to civilian welfare in Afghanistan is also undermined by a recently issued Amnesty International report examining NATO/ISAF operations. These operations include air strikes, drone attacks and night raids, all ofwhich have caused civilian deaths and also involved torture, disappearances, and cover-ups. The report, entitled "Left in the Dark," gives ten chilling and horrific case studies occurring between 2009- 2013. Amnesty International states that two of the case studies "involve abundant and compelling evidence of war crimes."
I wish that NATO's commander could have joined Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs) that same week in Afghanistan as they visited an extraordinarily sustainable project, called "Emergency." This Italy--based network of hospitals and clinics has been particularly remarkable for effectively saving and improving the lives of many Afghan people, over the past 13 years, while at the same time rejecting any form of war or use of weapons within its facilities.
At the entrance to any one of Emergency's clinics or hospitals, a sign at the door says "No Weapons Allowed." A logo banning guns is next to the Emergency logo. Although they work in one of the most intense war zones in the world, Emergency staff, including security guards, reject any use of weapons inside their facilities.
At the gate of Emergency Hospital, Kabul
Yusof Hakimi, the nurse in charge of Emergency's ICU in the Kabul hospital, assured us that the ban is strictly upheld. A child isn't allowed to carry a plastic toy gun inside the hospital premises. No one can wear camouflage clothing. "Even the president of Afghanistan cannot carry a gun inside our hospitals!" says Luca Radaelli, the medical coordinator of Emergency's hospital in Kabul. He added that it's not easy to maintain a facility where wars are banned. "But," he adds, "everyone understands the purposes and respects the rules."
Yusof and Luca in Emergency Hospital, Kabul
They've learned ways of providing security without the use of weapons. One such way involves an absolute commitment to neutrality.
They never take sides in the various conflicts that plague Afghanistan.
In fact, they don't even ask if a patient belongs to one side or another.
Most NGOs in Afghanistan arrange for their staff to travel in heavily armed vehicles. But unarmed Emergency ambulances travel through war zones, in multiple directions, across the country. "We don't have armed guards," says Luca. "We don't have bullet proof cars. We don't change our routes because," he explains in his clear, matter-of-fact style, "we have never been targeted."
Luca says they acquire, and maintain, security through their reputation. Since they never charge any patient for health care, they could not be accused of trying to make a profit.
They also pursue strong diplomatic conversations with each group affected by their work, such as new workers, contractors, local government officials, and religious leaders. They explain their policy of maintaining neutral independence towardeveryone involved. "If you provide something good, something skilled, and it is free of charge," he adds, "there is no need to protect yourself. People won't get angry."
If NATO and U.S. commanders took a fraction of what they have spent securing this region by violence- (the Pentagon has requested 58.5 billion dollars for Fiscal Year 2015 in Afghanistan)- and spent that instead to help people harmed by the ravages of war, could non-combat projects, such as Emergency's, start to work? There are numerous, obvious solutions to problems in Afghanistan which NATO countries could actually consider,oreven attempt, if the alliance was actually there to help improve the quality of life for Afghan people.
One solution is to establish health care programs similar to what Emergency has created.
However, Emergency isn't in Afghanistan to point out a sane path through disaster to all the actors, here and abroad, who seem unlikely to discard paths of suicidal hatred and ignorance.
In Luca's view, Emergency is simply what a healthcare institution ought to be.
"It grows from a very simple idea. Provide high quality service for everyone, not thinking about profit, but just about patients' health."
"What is so complicated?" he asks.
We might address a similar question to NATO Sec. Gen. Jens Stoltenberg: A new, non-combat mission, in Afghanistan, one that rejects weapons and war. What would be so complicated?
This article first appeared on the Telesur English website.
Kathy Kelly (email@example.com) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) While in Afghanistan, she is a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers (ourjourneytosmile.org)
Russia invades Ukraine. Again. And again. And yet again … using Saddam's WMD
By William Blum
"Russia reinforced what Western and Ukrainian officials described as a stealth invasion on Wednesday [August 27], sending armored troops across the border as it expanded the conflict to a new section of Ukrainian territory. The latest incursion, which Ukraine's military said included five armored personnel carriers, was at least the third movement of troops and weapons from Russia across the southeast part of the border this week."
None of the photos accompanying this New York Times story online showed any of these Russian troops or armored vehicles.


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PHPUnit is the standard testing framework for PHP code: always available through Pear or Composer, following xUnit conventions on tests and providing many features from grouping to code coverage to logging of results. There's even an extension for running Selenium tests (that I maintain), which allows you to run browser-based tests.
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text: What Parents are Saying Our greatest advocates are also our closest friends. "We absolutely love Nicole. When Nicole is in the room first thing in the mornings, Jameson is so much more at ease which makes me feel better about leaving him. I appreciate how much she openly cares for the little ones in her care. Thank you Nicole!!"


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Need to protect your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus? A slew of new cases have hit the market, with many on sale now or coming soon. Here are our current top picks.
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Place your bets, folks. Which of these phablets will reign supreme in the battle of design, usability and productivity?
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text: Modeling the Climates of (Exo)planets I will give a simple overview of the dominant processes determining the state of a planetary atmosphere, and its evolution (i.e. climate). I will then explore how models capture some of these processes and can be adapted from the study of Earth to extra Solar planets (exoplanets), in particular hot Jupiters (a class of exoplanet Jovian in size but orbiting very close to their parent star).