The bombing of Dresden had little or nothing to do with the war against Nazi Germany: it was an American British message for Stalin, a message that cost the lives of tens of thousands of people. Later that same year, two more similarly coded yet not very subtle messages would follow, involving even more victims, but this time Japanese cities were targeted, and the idea was to direct Stalin’s attention to the lethality of America’s terrible new weapon, the atomic bomb.[27] Dresden had little or nothing to do with the war against Nazi Germany; it had much, if not everything, to do with a new conflict in which the enemy was to be the Soviet Union. In the horrible heat of the infernos of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War was born.

But history is not inevitable. We are not necessarily programmed to repeat its horrors. A combination of global communications among citizens and political and social consciousness may be enough to prevent a military conflagration and overthrow the misrule of the oligarchy. What is needed is a) a widening of the recognition that capitalism as a system of social production is finished; and b) the case has to be confidently made that an alternative is very possible. That alternative is socialism (the subject of a further article). To those who remain skeptical, they should bear in mind the stark choice that Rosa Luxemberg foresaw for humanity: that is, socialism or barbarism. And we already have the latter.

Suddenly and surprisingly, we have a Bush-like Obama Doctrine. To the applause of liberal hawks and formerly critical neocons, the president declared in his Nobel Peace Prize speech that the U.S. will continue to wage war—though naturally, only “just” war—anywhere and against anyone it chooses in a never-ending struggle against the forces of evil. His antiwar supporters can take seats on the sidelines. It’s all reminiscent of John F. Kennedy and the prescient George Ball, and afterward Ball and Lyndon Johnson. In the early ’60s, JFK—reluctantly, we are told by his admirers—decided to send 16,000 “trainers” to Vietnam to teach the South Vietnamese how to play soldier and to stop the Communists from sweeping over Southeast Asia.

Part 2: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=9908

As the Iraqi government threatens to expel all foreign mercenaries following the Blackwater shootout, the role of private military contractors is once again in the spotlight. There's no denying that the rise of the private military contractor is transforming the way we wage war. They earn four times more than regular soldiers, act with impunity and in Iraq outnumber all non-US soldiers combined. Private Armies follows the training and deployment of these men. From skidding around a racing track, practicing escaping from kidnappers, to dodging bullets in Baghdad, its an eye-opening look at life as a private soldier.

One reason the U.S. is continuously at war is that its leaders “are never held to any criminal responsibility for their actions,” a law school dean writes.

The U.S. hanged World War II German and Japanese war criminals “but no American leaders are held to criminal responsibility by America, no matter how dastardly their conduct,” writes Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover

The US has begun using it’s anti-Iran propaganda to justify its decision to deploy a missile shield in Europe.

Washington’s latest disinformation campaign about the alleged threat from Iran’s advanced missile technology is being implemented to demonize Iran, even though the Islamic Republic has never threatened its neighbors and Iran’s military technology is clearly only being developed to ensure the country can defend itself against any potential enemies.

Linked because of Charlie Sheen's car...

The latest news is that Romania will be hosting the U.S. Army's ground-based "missile defense" systems. Russia is not pleased with these developments.

These same Army Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) systems are going to be deployed in Taiwan as the U.S. continues its military encirclement of China. U.S. PAC-3 systems have already been deployed in Japan and South Korea.

I do not customarily offer advice to a president whose election I opposed, whose goals I fear, and whose policies I work against. But here is an idea for Barack Obama to salvage his tottering administration by taking a step that protects the United States and its allies.

Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, says the US is trying to wage psychological warfare against Iran by deploying missiles in the Persian Gulf.

Firouzabadi said on Thursday that the recently deployed Patriot missiles in the region will be rendered useless by simple countermeasures.

He said the administration of US President Barack Obama encourages Persian Gulf States to buy overpriced military hardware by spreading Iranophobia in the region.

Speaking during a business conference at Bar-Ilan University on Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, “Whoever thinks (Israeli) territorial concessions will separate Syria from the axis of evil is mistaken. Syria must be made to understand that it has to relinquish its demand (that Israel cede) the Golan Heights.”

A pair of trousers catches fire in an aeroplane close to Detroit and missiles rain down on Yemen. Is this is what is called the butterfly effect? For Mohammed Hassan, the terrorist threat is only an excuse. In this latest chapter in our series "Understanding the Muslim world", our specialist explains what is really at stake in Yemen: i.e. undermining democracy in the Gulf in order to keep control over its oil

"We are going to gain control," Col. George "Slam" Amland told reporters. "We are going to alter the ecosystem considerably."

Socotra (an Island belonging to Yemen) derives its magic name from the Sanskrit “dvipa sukhadhara” (“Island of Bliss”). Dragon’s blood trees that look like flying saucers perched on trunks, trees that look like elephants’ legs with pink flowers on top, unique song birds such as Socotra’s Starling, Sunbird, and Grosbeak. Bats are its only native mammal. Sokotra! The most beautiful Island on Earth. One third of its plant life is found nowhere else.

And now the USA scrambles for beautiful Socotra, “Island of Bliss”, to make it a base for war?

On Sunday, the US military fired a ballistic missile at a US Army site at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Island and minutes later launched a ground-based interceptor missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in an attempt to shoot down the ballistic missile.

However, the sea-based X-band radar "did not perform as expected" in the test, the MDA said in a statement.

The US Air Force says both missiles performed well during the launch and the flight phases but the system's sea-based radar fell short of expectations.

The world’s TV is showing, as we might expect, a false picture of reality. In the case of Haiti, this is all the more outrageous given the circumstances. With barely disguised racism they paint the picture of a people who are suffering but "ignorant" and "barbarous", incapable of "keeping order" by themselves after the earthquake, necessitating a renewed colonial occupation, with a fresh US invasion.

Of course, no-one mentions the two-hundred-year sentence capitalism and imperialism imposed on the Haitian people for having carried out the only successful slaves’ social revolution in history. Still less do they tell us about recent events, like the significant workers’, students’ and peasants’ struggles against colonial occupation and Preval’s puppet government which developed in 2009.

China on Friday protested the US decision to sell 6.4 billion dollars in weapons to Taiwan and warned of "serious" damage to relations and cooperation with Washington.

The proximity of Russia's two largest cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow, especially the first, to the Baltic coast makes the basing of American warships with interceptor missiles in that sea the equivalent of Russia stationing comparable vessels with the same capability in the Atlantic Ocean near Delaware Bay, within easy striking distance of New York City and Washington, D.C.

The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been briefed by the Pakistani Military High Command that they are being overwhelmed by highly trained and extremely well armed militants in the border regions and terrorists operating across the country. We have been told by the highest sources that Blackwater/Xe and other US based mercenary groups have been actively attacking police, military and intelligence organizations in Pakistan as part of operations under employment of the Government of India and their allies in Afghanistan, the drug lords, whose followers make up the key components of the Afghan army.

Tony Blair and Jack Straw brushed aside repeated warnings from Government lawyers that they would not have a 'leg to stand on' if Britain invaded Iraq.

Devastating evidence at the Iraq inquiry yesterday revealed that every senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office believed the conflict was in breach of international law.

Truthdig
War Is Sin
Posted on Jun 1, 2009
By Chris Hedges
The crisis faced by combat veterans returning from war is not simply a profound struggle with trauma and alienation. It is often, for those who can slice through the suffering to self-awareness, an existential crisis. War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.

Soldiers in Haiti told to stop handing out food
By Jim Michaels - USA TODAY
Posted : Friday Jan 22, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Food handouts were shut off Tuesday to thousands of people at a tent city here when the main U.S. aid agency said the Army should not be distributing the packages.
"Tuesday morning, the helicopters came only with water. Soldiers carried boxes of water in the hot sun and supervised Haitian volunteers who handed the supplies out."

Can a CIA operative who pushes the joystick button to launch hellfire missiles by a Predator or a Reaper drone to kill mostly innocent people in mud hamlets in FATA be called a war hero? If such an operator is killed, as were the seven in Khost recently, how would he be eulogised; how would his requiem sound like? Similarly, if Worldwide XE mercenaries known as the defence contractors, whose strength in Afghanistan exceeds regular US troops, are killed, how would they be honoured with medals of valour?

....On Monday, Jean Demay, DISA's technical manager for the agency's Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane. After the earthquake hit on Tuesday, Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On Wednesday, DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.

The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department's European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.

Get health and legal information for active-duty soldiers, war veterans, and families dealing with traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and substance abuse.

A year has gone by since Sen. Barack Obama assumed the presidency, replacing George W. Bush, who was among the worst chief executives in American history.

The election of an African American to the White House is an historically positive development. And his first year in office has shown his superiority to Bush and his defeated opponent, rightist Sen. John McCain, in several areas.

At the same time, in terms of foreign/military policy, President Obama has essentially continued many of the Bush Administration's initiatives first and foremost his predecessor's "global war on terrorism," but in other international endeavors as well.

U.S. television networks have given the public a sanitized, largely bloodless view of the war in Iraq, an academic authority on communications writes.

"The contrast between what Americans saw on the news and what European and pan-Arab audiences saw is striking. Foreign news bureaus showed far more blood and gore than American stations showed. The foreign media were delivering audiences the true face of the war," writes Michelle Pulaski, an assistant professor at Pace University, New York.

Aid 'piled up' as Haiti stays hungry
Updated on 20 January 2010
By Channel 4 News
UN officials insist emergency relief is now starting to get through in quake hit Haiti, but Channel 4 News Producer Hannah Storm says many aid supplies remain piled up at the airport.
"So back to the airport where just to my right on the tarmac outside the terminal building, I can see a long row of vast American transporter planes.
The noise of trucks reversing, helicopters landing and plane engines running.Dozens of men and women wearing US military fatigues sit or walk around."

We saw this type of Iraq-style disaster profiteering in New Orleans and you can expect to see a lot more of this in Haiti over the coming days, weeks and months. Private security companies are seeing big dollar signs in Haiti thanks in no small part to the media hype about “looters.” After Katrina, the number of private security companies registered (and unregistered) multiplied overnight. Banks, wealthy individuals, the US government all hired private security. I even encountered Israeli mercenaries operating an armed check-point outside of an elite gated community in New Orleans. They worked for a company called Instinctive Shooting International. (That is not a joke).

February 2008
An Interview with Michael Weinstein
Founder and President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
"I tell people also this is not a Christian-Jewish issue, it is a fundamentalist Christian versus the Constitution issue.

Turn them upside down and they all look alike. Democrats and Republicans that is. When Bush and the neocons ruled the roost, Democrats complained about the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that their man is in office, Democrats support Obama’s criminal expansion in Afghanistan.

Tom James’s heroic decision to attend a comrade's funeral despite his own horrific injuries from Afghanistan inspired the nation.

The 20-year-old fusilier is determined to return to duty with the Army and fight again for his country.

Yet in a heartfelt interview he has described the war against the Taliban as hopeless - and said British troops should be brought home. Gordon Brown, he suggests, is simply afraid to admit defeat.

This has been a quick response and all of those who have been helping, donating and providing assistance should be commended. The United States has been a big pusher of a lot of this, the US news media has basically become a 24 hour ad like the ones you see asking for donations to help the orphaned children. Israel has been a big medical supplier and it has not gone unnoticed by the media either.

But, what happened during these disasters?

More U.S. military personnel have taken their own lives so far in 2009 than have been killed in either the Afghanistan or Iraq wars this year, according to a Congressional Quarterly compilation of the latest statistics from the armed services.

As of Tuesday, at least 334 members of the military services have committed suicide in 2009, compared with 297 killed in Afghanistan and 144 who died in Iraq, the figures show.

A soldier accused of killing another man after a road rage confrontation posted bail Thursday afternoon.

Use them and abuse them and then throw them away like a snot filled kleenex,after all their just cannon fodder, right!
One crime after another heaped on the American people and their children! Sickening and maddening.

Army prosecutes single mother for refusing to deploy and put her son in foster care.

Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old Army cook, refused to deploy to Afghanistan in November because she had no one to take care of her 10-month-old son. Hutchinson said when she brought her situation to her superiors’ attention, they told her that she would have to deploy anyway and place the child in foster care.

The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year, The Associated Press has learned.

...A flagrant violation of Pakistan's sovereignty, these strikes speak volumes about the Obama Administration's unilateralist policies and military adventurism resembling the situation in Afghanistan where thousands of civilians have been crushed to death so far, thanks to a joystick controlled thousands of miles away in the US and raining missiles on a hapless population. Since the first strike in Damodola back in 2006, countless Pakistani civilians have lost their lives. Just the previous year, reports have it that around 700 people were killed in 44 strikes, only five of which had hit actual targets. What the US falsely reports as militants' compounds usually turn out to be houses belonging to innocent families having no connection with extremists.

Gitmo guard meets with former detainees.

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn't the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn't mean it won't. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:

# Officers swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to "obey the orders of the president of the United States."

The suicide bomber who killed eight people at a US base in Afghanistan said he was carrying out the attack in response to the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader killed by a US drone.

In a video released to Al Jazeera on Saturday, Hammam Khalil al-Balawi is shown shooting a gun as he describes how the attack would target US and Jordanian intelligence agents.

I'm puzzled by the current onslaught of self-proclaimed Liberals who hail Obama as their deliverer from Bush-era persecution, subjugation and degradation - the current state of the United States screams a more foreboding sense of reality comprised of nothing more than teleprompted mirages ballooned into creation via empty rhetoric and unsubstantiated promises of change.

Now not all Liberals are 'die-hard' Obama supporters but those who voted for the capricous phony have begun to admit they are 'upset' with Barack Obama. At the start of his seemingly diplomatic advent into power he claimed that Bush-era stratagem would be put to rest yet reality cries out something elusively different - this claim was a vehement and blatant lie.

This is a propaganda system at work: the choice of words and framework of logic designed to condition people into accepting certain options. In this case, the pre-determined option is a unilateral military strike on Iran either by the US or Israel. In that event, it will of course be reported by the BBC and other western media as a “pre-emptive” military measure to “prevent” Iran from attacking western interests in the region. Reported too, no doubt, will be the “collateral damage” of civilian casualties – unfortunate victims in an otherwise “just cause” to bring a “hardline regime” to abide by “international norms”. This is classic thought engineering that British political essayist George Orwell exposed so brilliantly – the official use of sanitised words to cover the sordid truth.