The Hypocrisy of Obama (2 Chronicles 36)

Warren ‘troubled’ by $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee for Obama
WASHINGTON — Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren gently criticized former president Barack Obama Thursday for his decision to accept $400,000 from a Wall Street firm to speak at a health care conference this fall.
Warren was asked about the controversy during an interview about her new book on the SiriusXM radio show, “Alter Family Politics.”
Advertisement
“I was troubled by that,” she said.
That was the extent of her comments aimed directly at Obama. She quickly launched into a broader discussion of her views of the corrupting influence of money in Washington.
Get Political Happy Hour in your inbox:
Your afternoon shot of politics, sent straight from the desk of Joshua Miller.
“I describe it as a snake that slithers through Washington. And that it shows up in so many different ways here in Washington,” she said, referencing her just-published book, “This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class.”
“The influence of dollars on this place is what scares me,” she continued. “I think it ultimately threatens democracy.”
While Warren’s critique was a far cry from the withering criticism some on the left have leveled at Obama, it’s rougher than anything she said during the 2016 campaign about former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of hefty speaking fees from Wall Street firms.
Unlike Obama, Clinton was considering running for office when she gave her controversial speeches, while the former president’s days in elected public office are behind him.
Warren stayed neutral — and mostly silent — throughout the bitter primary contest between Clinton and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, despite, as she writes in her book, coming under intense pressure from both sides to endorse her preferred candidate. “I didn’t want to undermine either of our candidates or to short-circuit any part of that debate,” she writes.
When Warren finally did endorse Clinton, after the New York Democrat had secured enough primary votes to clinch the nomination, the Globe asked whether Clinton should release the transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs, an issue Sanders had hammered on the campaign trail.
“That’s for her to decide — there will be a whole lot of issues to talk about over the next several months,” Warren said.
In the SiriusXM interview, Warren said one of her reasons for writing the book is that she wanted to talk about how liberals can fight back against the money and power wielded by the rich and powerful.
“There are more of us than there are of them. And we’ve got to use our voices and our votes and fight back,” she said.
News leaked earlier this week that Obama had agreed to a $400,000 speaking gig, with the check being written by investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald. The decision to accept such a large payday from one of the very establishments of the “fat cat bankers” Obama derided in office sparked chatter in Washington. (The sum is also nearly twice as large as the fees commanded by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton when she spoke to Wall Street audiences.)
Obama’s spokesman Eric Schultz defended the former president in a statement Wednesday.
“With regard to this or any speech involving Wall Street sponsors, I’d just point out that in 2008, Barack Obama raised more money from Wall Street than any candidate in history — and still went on to successfully pass and implement the toughest reforms on Wall Street since FDR,” Schultz said.
Victoria McGrane can be reached at victoria.mcgrane@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @vgmac.
Continue Reading

Babylon The Great’s Hypocrisy Not Democracy

U.S. elections ranked worst among Western democracies. Here’s why.

By Pippa Norris
PostEverything
March 29 2016

The world is transfixed by the spectacle of U.S. elections.

From New York, London and Paris to Beijing, Moscow and Sydney there is endless heated debate in the news media and across dinner tables about the factors fueling the remarkable success of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speculation about a brokered convention shattering the old GOP, and the most likely outcome of a polarizing Trump-Hillary Clinton battle in the fall.
This contest matters. It is the election for the most powerful leader in the Western world, and some — like the Economist Intelligence Unit — regard Trump as a major risk to global prosperity and stability. Also, as citizens of one of the world’s oldest democracies, Americans like to think that the United States provides an influential role model for how elections should run in other countries.
The Electoral Integrity Project (EIP), founded in 2012, provides an independent evaluation of the quality of elections worldwide. The EIP’s results have been published in several books, including my own “Why Electoral Integrity Matters” and “Why Elections Fail” — books that focus on comparing the quality of elections, understanding why problems arise, and diagnosing what can be done about these flaws.

We can use the data collected by the EIP to ask: Is the United States the electoral role model it imagines itself to be?

In practice, recent years have seen a long series of vulnerabilities in the conduct of U.S. elections, as documented by the 2014 report of the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration. Indeed, these issues have been under close scrutiny ever since the notoriously flawed ballot design in Florida in 2000.

Since then, the commission has reported wait times in excess of six hours to cast a ballot in Ohio, inaccurate state and local voter registers, insufficiently trained local poll workers, and the breakdown of voting machines in New York.

Standards remain uneven across the country. The Pew Center’s 2012 Election Performance Index, for instance, suggests that states such as North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin performed relatively well against a range of quality indicators combining voting convenience and electoral integrity. Other states, including California, Oklahoma and Mississippi demonstrated noticeable shortfalls.
It was no different during the 2014 midterm elections. The news media reported a range of problems on polling day — some trivial, others more serious. It is unclear whether these arose from accidental administrative mistakes or intentional dirty tricks.

At least 18 state election websites were reported to have experienced disruptions on election day, preventing voters from using the sites to locate polling places and ballot information.
In Virginia, a state Department of Elections spokesman said that 32 electronic voting machines at 25 polling places experienced problems. In both Virginia and North Carolina, The Washington Post reported cases of electronic polling machines that recorded a vote for the Democratic candidate when the screen was touched to cast a vote for the Republican. And in Texas the statewide voter registration system crashed, forcing many to complete provisional ballots when poll workers were unable to confirm voter eligibility.

Meanwhile, new state laws requiring voters to present photo identification caused confusion in several states, including Texas, Georgia and North Carolina.

These problems are not fading away.

During the primary in North Carolina this year, there was confusion about new photo ID requirements and long lines. Court decisions over voter identification laws remain pending in Texas and Virginia.
As well as repeated procedural flaws, there has been speculation that public disgust with the role of money in politics, and the role of major donors in buying access to Congress, is one of the major factors driving the primary campaigns.

Much of Trump’s visibility comes from exploiting his advantage in attracting free social media and spending less on TV airwaves than any other major candidate. He commonly claims that his organization is more self-funded than most presidential campaigns, without support by a super PAC. This may appeal to voters who are suspicious of the role of money in U.S. elections and of the honesty of politicians who are seen to be in the pockets of rich donors and corporate interests.
Similarly, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has campaigned on his ability to raise funds from multiple small donors. He claims that his opponent, Hillary Clinton, has been more beholden to establishment donors and fat fees from corporate speaking engagements.
Suspicion of the role of money in politics seems to be widespread.

In the 2012 National Election Survey, for example, when the public was asked whether “rich people buy elections,” two-thirds of Americans agreed with this statement.

Some may be tempted to think headlines are exaggerating the true extent of any problems in the United States by highlighting negative cases, which are actually fairly isolated.

Is there actually more systematic evidence suggesting that U.S. elections are flawed? And how does the United States compare with other long-standing democracies worldwide?

New evidence that gives insights into this issue has been gathered by the Electoral Integrity Project. This independent research project is funded by the Australian Research Council’s Laureate award with a team of researchers based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University.

The 2015 annual Year in Election report compares the risks of flawed and failed elections, and looks at how well countries around the world meet international standards. The report gathers assessments from over 2,000 experts to evaluate the perceived integrity of all 180 national parliamentary and presidential contests held between July 1, 2012, and Dec. 31, 2015, in 139 countriese. These include 54 national elections held last year.

Forty experts were asked to assess each election by answering 49 questions. The overall 100-point Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI) index is constructed by summing up the responses.
Americans often express pride in their democracy, yet the results indicate that domestic and international experts rate the U.S. elections as the worst among all Western democracies.
Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden are at the top of the ranking, all scoring over 80 on the 100 point PEI Index. Several democracies from diverse regions and cultures — for example, Israel and Canada — are ranked in the middle of the pack.
But the United States scores 62, a full 24 points lower than Denmark and Finland. The U.K. also performs fairly poorly, along with Greece and Australia. One reason for this is that proportional electoral systems — which translate votes into seats on a proportional basis — usually tend to score higher as they provide more inclusive opportunities for smaller parties. All of the Nordic countries, for example, use a proportional system.

Comparisons can also be drawn with all 180 parliamentary and presidential elections included in the latest report, covering 139 countries. The 2012 U.S. presidential election ranks 60th out of 180 elections worldwide, close to Bulgaria, Mexico and Argentina.

This is no one-time shortcoming. The 2014 U.S. congressional elections rank even worse, 65th out of 180 worldwide.

By contrast, elections in many newer democracies are seen by experts to perform far better in the global comparison, such as in Lithuania (ranked 4th), Costa Rica (6th), and Slovenia (8th).

What produces these results? To explore this issue, EIP also conducted a second survey with almost 200 experts to compare the performance of the 2014 congressional elections across 21 U.S. states.
The results show that the worst problem across most states involved gerrymandering of district boundaries to favor incumbents. The mean score for U.S. states was just 42 on a 100-point scale.
Other weaknesses concerned whether electoral laws were unfair to smaller parties like the Green Party, favored the governing party or restricted voters’ rights.

Campaign finance — for example, whether parties and candidates had equitable access to public subsidies and political donations — was also seen by experts as a problem.
Finally, voter registration was also viewed critically. Issues here included whether the register itself was accurate, with, in some cases, citizens not listed, and, in others, ineligible voters registered.
By contrast, voting processes were rated more favorably. Factors here included whether any fraudulent votes were cast, whether the voting process was easy, whether voters were offered a genuine choice at the ballot box, along with the vote count and post-election results. These last two measures each received a high score of 85.

Much debate in the United States focuses on potential risks of fraud or voter suppression at the ballot box, but, in fact, experts rate earlier stages of U.S. elections more critically.

Why are U.S. elections particularly vulnerable to these sorts of problems? It is a complex story.
In my book “Why Elections Fail,” I argue that a large part of the blame can be laid at the door of the degree of decentralization and partisanship in U.S. electoral administration. Key decisions about the rules of the game are left to local and state officials with a major stake in the outcome. For example, gerrymandering arises from leaving the processes of redistricting in the hands of state politicians, rather than more impartial judicial bodies.

Moreover, the role of money in U.S. campaigns has become progressively deregulated in recent decades, thanks in part to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, while election costs have spiraled. Add to that the fuel of an inflammatory campaign by Trump, and the prospects for agreement about the outcome of the election become more remote.

The Hypocrisy of the Antichrist

Support for Iraqi rejection of anti-LGBT attacks
Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch has endorsed Iraqi Shiite clergyman Muqtada al-Sadr’s call for an end to violence against sexual minorities, reported last month on this blog. HRW issued this press release:
(Beirut, August 18, 2016) – State and non-state actors in Iraq should heed the prominent Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s July 2016 statement banning violence against those who do not conform to gender norms, Human Rights Watch said today.

Since early 2009, Human Rights Watch has documented kidnappings, executions, and torture by militia groups, including al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, of gay men and men perceived to be gay. The killings have continued unabated.

“Finally, the head of one of the groups whose members have carried out serious abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq is condemning these heinous attacks,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “We hope this will change behavior in successors to the Mahdi Army and other ranks, and spur the government to hold accountable those who commit these crimes.”

A Human Rights Watch report found that in early 2009, Iraqi militia members began a wide-reaching campaign of extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, and torture of men suspected of homosexual conduct, or of not conforming to masculine gender norms, and that Iraq authorities did nothing to stop the killings. The killings began in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, a Mahdi Army stronghold, and were then replicated by members of militia groups in many cities across Iraq. Mahdi Army spokesmen promoted fear about the “third sex” and the “feminization” of Iraqi men, as well as suggesting that militia action was the remedy.

In 2012, militia members opened a second wave of attacks on people categorized as part of the “emo” subculture, styles that critics associated with heavy metal music, and rap. In early February 2012, signs and fliers appeared in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Sadr City, Hayy al-Habibiyya, and Hayy al-‘Amil that threatened people by name with “the wrath of god” unless they cut their hair short, concealed their tattoos, maintained “complete manhood,” and stopped wearing so-called “satanic clothing.” Similar posters appeared in other neighborhoods, also listing names.

In the following weeks, Human Rights Watch received reports of several dozen youths killed as part of the campaign. While it was unclear who was behind the campaign, at the time al-Sadr called the targets of the campaign “crazy fools” and a “lesion on the Muslim community” in an online statement, but also maintained that they should be dealt with “within the law.”

In a 2015 report, the Iraqi group Iraqueer and the US-based organization OutRight Action International (formerly the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission) documented the kidnapping and murders of gay men by members of Iraqi militia groups, including the Brigades of Wrath (Saraya al-Ghadhab) and League of the Righteous (Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq) between 2009 and 2015. The groups condemned the Iraqi government for “stand[ing] by and allow[ing] murderous hate violence to occur, fully aware of what is happening.”

The government responded by establishing an LGBT committee in late 2012 to address abuses against the LGBT community. However, LGBT activists in Baghdad have told Human Rights Watch that this committee has taken few tangible steps to protect LGBT people. In addition, a member of the committee said, two of the original nine members vanished in 2015 in what he believed was related to their role on the committee. The committee has had no news of them since. Other members have left the committee without explanation, he said, leaving only four remaining.

With the rise of the extremist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, gay men, transgender women, and gender non-conforming people are at even greater risk. The group has executed a number of people accused of sodomy or perceived to be gay.

While Iraq’s Penal Code does not directly criminalize same-sex intimacy, article 394 criminalizes extra-marital sexual relations. That provision effectively criminalizes all same-sex relations, since the law does not provide for same-sex marriage.

Al-Sadr’s July 7 2016, statement expresses his view that same-sex relationships and cross-dressing are not acceptable, but that gender non-conforming people – whom al-Sadr claims are suffering from “psychological problems” – nevertheless deserve the right to live. “[You] must disassociate from them [but] not attack them, as it increases their aversion and you must guide them using acceptable and rational means,” the statement read.

Despite the lack of full tolerance in al-Sadr’s statement, his call to end violence against LGBT people is an important step, Human Rights Watch said. He should ensure that those in the ranks of the militia under his command, the Peace Brigades (Saraya al–Salam), obey the order and should hold accountable commanders who do not.

Iraq’s government should take its own measures to ensure that attacks on LGBT people are punished, and the LGBT committee should actively monitor and report on human rights abuses against LGBT people and advise the government on concrete steps to protect LGBT people from violence and discrimination. Iraq’s legislature should quickly decriminalize extra-marital sexual relations.
“While al-Sadr is still a long way from fully embracing human rights for LGBT people, his statement shows that he understands the importance of stopping abuses against them,” Stork said. “The statement represents an important change in the right direction, and should be followed by concrete actions to protect LGBT people from violence.”

Obama’s nuclear hypocrisy (Ezekiel 17)

 
Obama’s nuclear deception

COMMENTARY / JAPAN | SENTAKU MAGAZINE

U.S. President Barack Obama deeply impressed the Japanese public with the speech he delivered in the world’s first atom-bombed city of Hiroshima on May 27. But on his home turf, he is clandestinely pushing a plan to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The plan, with its development cost estimated at $1 trillion over the next 30 years, is aimed at downsizing missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and improving their mobility with new delivery systems and platforms.

When does Obama expect to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, which he called for again in Hiroshima?

In his speech, he said the world war “reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” labeling it “the start of our moral awakening.” He went on to say, “But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them.”

His speech was well-balanced. He impressed the people of Japan to some extent while deftly avoiding using words like “remorse” or “apology.” Behind a glamorous diplomatic show, however, a major revolution occurring only once in decades is taking place in the U.S. nuclear weapons scheme, without being noticed by most Americans, let alone Japanese.

Around May each year, the defense industry launches major campaigns to win new government contracts. The industry’s attention is directed especially to projects of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as new development programs are launched for platforms and delivery means of nuclear weapons.

According to a Washington-based U.S. reporter covering defense-related matters, the major concepts in modernization of nuclear weapons are downsizing and improved reliability. The U.S. Defense Department argues that the smaller and more accurate nuclear arms are, the greater deterrent roles they play and is telling the president that those sophisticated weapons serve to bring about a world where there is little or no chance of nuclear arms being used, even though that would fall short of elimination of such weapons, according to the reporter. The president must have accepted the view, the reporter says.

Of the four categories of the development programs pursued by the Pentagon and the NNSA, the most controversial is modernization and downsizing of nuclear warheads, which constitutes the core of the whole scheme. In parallel with making warheads smaller, new models of platforms and nuclear weapons delivery systems will be introduced step by step in three fields: intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and submarines and strategic bombers.

In a nuclear posture review announced in 2010, the Obama administration pledged that the U.S. will not develop new nuclear warheads. To the Pentagon, the new development plan does not constitute developing “new nuclear warheads.”

Most of today’s U.S. nuclear weapons were developed during the Cold War and they receive checks annually under the NNSA’s program to extend their life span. But that is not enough to prevent the weapons from becoming obsolete.

This led the George W. Bush administration to push a new program to replace old nuclear warheads with reliable versions, which are “new” types of nuclear warheads beyond doubt. This program was ended after Obama pledged to work toward a world without nuclear weapons. But then the Pentagon redefined the life-span prolongation program, insisting that replacing old nuclear warheads with newer, reliable warheads is part of the plan and that the replacements should not be regarded as new weapons. Obama agreed with the Pentagon’s argument and the development of new nuclear warheads survived under the vague term of “refurbishing.”

According to the Arms Control Association (ACA), an American military think tank, the Pentagon and the NNSA are working on halving the types of U.S. nuclear warheads, which number 10 at present, and introducing the B61 Model 12 nuclear warhead as a replacement with the aim of sharply reducing the explosive force, the nuclear fallout and casualties. The New York Times has reported that the destructive force of the new model is a mere 2 percent of that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Smaller warheads require new means of delivery and platforms. Thus, the Pentagon is preparing new Minuteman III ICBMs costing an estimated $62 billion, SSBN-X submarines to replace the Ohio-class submarines costing an estimated $139 billion, and long-range “standoff” cruise missiles costing an estimated $25 billion. The ACA estimates that the total cost of the new development programs will come to $1 trillion.

There is no comprehensive name to cover all these development programs. Each is deliberated on separately by Congress and relevant government sections. Thus, the shape of the U.S. nuclear forces is undergoing changes without any information given to the public. That is the reason why the plan can be described as “clandestine.”

The most exhaustive comment on the issue came from Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work when he testified before the House Armed Services Committee in June last year.

He estimates that the “modernization and maintenance” programs will cost $1.8 billion annually from fiscal years 2021 to 2035. When expenses of the related facilities are added, the share of the nuclear weapons-related costs in the total defense budget is to rise from the present 3 percent to 7 percent. In other words, the Obama administration plans to make U.S. military forces far more dependent on nuclear arms than they are today.

Not only do these development programs run counter to Obama’s ideal of a world without nuclear weapons — downsizing the nuclear warheads will increase the chances of them being used, as stated on a PBS news program by James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Regardless of what Washington says to justify its nuclear modernization programs, Russia and China have objected to it, saying that it poses a major threat to them. Indeed, when a mock test flight of the Model 12 warhead was conducted, Russia condemned the U.S. for “preparing a new weapon.”

It is certain that if the U.S. continues to pursue the modernization of its nuclear arsenal, China and Russia will take countermeasures. The possibility is rising day by day that these superpowers will confront each other with light and compact nuclear weapons in the not-so-distant future — despite Obama’s speech in Hiroshima.

The Legacy of Obama’s Presidency (Ezekiel 17)

Contradictions Abound At Obama’s Final Nuclear Security Summit – Analysis

US President Barack Obama speaks at United Nations. Photo Credit: Screenshot from White House video.

 

By Eurasia Review March 18, 2016

By K.N. Pandita

In his Prague speech of 2009, President Obama touched on an important subject for the first time. He talked about security against nuclear terror, meaning the need to nuclear arsenals against falling into the hands of non-state actors. A year later, the first meeting of stakeholders (NSS) numbering no fewer than 53, was held in Washington to deliberate and gradually inch towards a consensus formula of how nuclear arsenals could be safeguarded.

The fourth and perhaps final meeting of the NSS, to which India and Pakistan have also been invited, is to be held in Washington at the end of March. President Putin of Russia has declined to participate.
India and Pakistan, two nuclear countries in South Asia, count fairly well in the deliberations and in the decision likely to come out of the final round of talks.

In a news briefing in Washington in October 2015, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhury disclosed for the first time that his country had made low-yield tactical nuclear weapons “for use in the event of a sudden attack by its larger neighbor.”

Two days later, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with President Obama. Reports suggest that they talked about Pakistan’s nuclear program, Afghanistan, and militant groups such as the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba – both banned organizations in the U.S.

Quoting Pervez Hoodhbhoy, a nuclear physicist and independent security analyst based in Lahore, BBC reported in a news commentary on October 21, 2015: “The fact that Pakistan was making small tactical nuclear weapons was clear to the world from the day Pakistan started its missile program. It meant that Pakistan had developed low-yield nuclear warheads to be delivered by those missiles at short ranges in a battlefield having localized impact, unlike big bombs designed to destroy cities.”
Experts say that the 2011 testing of a nuclear-capable Nasr missile by Pakistan, with a 60 kilometers range, was an indication that Pakistan was building an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons for use in a theater of war.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based expert on defense and security issues, suspects that Pakistan may have designed even smaller nuclear weapons, capable of being shot from a specially-designed gun.
Objectively speaking, battlefield weapons could be more dangerous than larger weapons because in the event of a conflict, they will need to be spread out, deployed at multiple locations closer to the targets, and would need to be fired at short notice. BBC also made the cryptic remark that “evidently, Pakistan has acquired this technology from China and it is not possible to block that pipeline.”
The question is whether nuclear command and control procedures will always be adequately ensured for all the missile units deployed across the theatre?

In addition to this concern, should not Western powers and the U.S. in particular take note of the fact that Pakistan developed these weapons despite nuclear-related international sanctions in force since 1998, after it carried out its first nuclear test?

How then is the U.S. reacting to this situation in the context of NSS program? Let us put it succinctly. Speaking during a hearing on Pakistan convened by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, US Special Representative for Af-Pak, Richard Olson said that Obama administration shares the concerns of lawmakers particularly about the development of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. “We are concerned most by the pace and scope of Pakistan’s missile program, including its pursuit of nuclear systems,” he said.

Replying to a question from Congressman Brian Higgins, Olson said that the U.S. was concerned a conventional conflict in Southwest Asia could escalate to include nuclear weapons as well as the increased security challenges that accompany growing stockpiles. He said the U.S. had a very active dialogue at the highest levels with the Pakistanis in which US concerns were stated.
US official circles assert they have urged Pakistan to restrain her nuclear weapons and missile development, which might invite increased risk to nuclear safety, security, or strategic stability.
On this basis, US lawmakers have asked their government to be tough on Islamabad “as it does not seem to be sincere in improving ties with India and has accelerated the pace of arsenals’ production.”
According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Pakistan could have 350 nuclear warheads in the next decade, becoming the world’s third biggest nuclear power, outpacing India, France, China, and the UK. Expressing himself forcefully on the subject, Higgins said, “We have to call them (Pakistan) out on this double game they have been playing, not this year, not last year, not five years, but for the past 15 years…. Pakistan, let’s be truthful about this, plays a double game. They are our military partner, but they are the protector and the patron of our enemies. US aid to Pakistan, economic and military, has averaged $2 billion a year.”

Attendees of the Nuclear Security Summit, particularly the United States, must be aware that Pakistan with its 189 million population – many of them Islamic extremists – has nuclear weapons. To have Islamic extremists with nuclear weapons is a primary goal of al-Qaeda and it would be a major victory for them and the outgrowth of al-Qaeda namely the Islamic State, avers Higgins.
Covering the strategic dialogue between the high-powered Pakistani delegation led by Adviser for Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, with their American counterpart in Washington, the Webdesk reported on 9 March that “Sartaj Aziz insisted that Islamabad would not accept any unilateral curb on its program. Any reduction must also apply to India and it must address the conventional imbalance between the two countries.” He pointed out that Pakistan did not have the resources to match India’s ever-increasing arsenal of conventional weapons and was forced to depend on non-conventional means to defend it.” Another important statement which Aziz made on that day was that Pakistan was hosting some Taliban leaders…

It is clear that Pakistan has decided to use nuclear option in case of war with India and that it is not ruling out the possibility of hosting the Taliban for whatever purposes.

What then should be the foremost agenda of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on 31 March? Obviously, it should be a detailed review of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the backdrop of how Islamabad tries to justify its relentless effort to increase its nuclear stockpile, including limited tactical nuclear weapon.

However, deeper study on the scenario throws up a contradiction in the words and practice of the U.S. The joint statement issued by Kerry and Sartaj after the conclusion of strategic dialogue belies the stated intentions of the U.S. The joint statement is a long eulogy on the “achievements” of Pakistan in meeting the challenge of the terrorists in the northern part of the country. John Kerry had full-throated praises and encomiums for the Pakistani Army fighting the “terrorists” in Pakistan’s north, but not a single word or hint about the terrorist engines on Pakistani soil working against India and Afghanistan. Proliferation of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and induction of tactical nuclear weapons in that arsenal did not figure in their joint statement.

Newsdesk of February 29, 2016 referred to a transcript released in Washington showing Secretary Kerry arguing in two congressional hearings that “the U.S. has been working really hard” to advance a rapprochement between Islamabad and India. In one statement he indirectly confirmed media reports that the U.S. was quietly encouraging the two prime ministers to hold bilateral talks.

How he looks at the stand-off between India and Pakistan, is reflected in his statement that Pakistan has deployed 150,000 to 180,000 troops along the Pak-Afghan border, and in case of a conflict with India Pakistan would have to redeploy the bulk of its forces on her eastern front. Thus what Kerry actually wants Pakistan to do is to fight against the Al Qaeda and Taliban outfits on her western front and keep the so-called non-state actors active on her eastern front against India.

The Webdesk of March 9 said that unlike it did with Iran, the U.S. does not want Pakistan to shut down its nuclear program. But it does want Islamabad to reduce the size of its arsenal.

During a testimony in the Senate where the bill against the sale of 8 F-16 to Pakistan was defeated by 71 to 24 votes, Secretary Kerry passionately defended the sale of Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan, saying that the U.S. is committed to boosting Pakistan’s strategic capabilities in its war against terrorists.
In other words, Kerry means to say that only the Taliban and Al Qaeda outfits who are fighting against Pakistan in KP region are the terrorists Pakistan should fight against and the scores of other terrorist groups in Pakistan are outside the pale of terrorism. The Mumbai attacks and the recent attack on Pathankot airbase are no terrorist activities for him.

The sale of the F-16s aside, the Obama administration in February 2015 asked Congress to provide more than $1 billion in aid to Pakistan, including a six-fold increase in foreign military financing. The budget proposal described Pakistan as a “strategically important nation” and the proposed US assistance “will strengthen its military in the fight against extremism [and] increase the safety of nuclear installations”

This lays bare the doublespeak of the U.S. on the much trumpeted Nuclear Security Summit, to which President Obama has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to participate.

All this notwithstanding, BBC said in its commentary of 9 March that there are suggestions that the U.S. may offer Pakistan membership in the Nuclear Supplies Group, with legitimate access to available research and technology, in return for some curbs on fissile material production and its missile program. Sartaj Aziz already reacted this by saying that Pakistan will not accept any unilateral curbs unless same are applied to India.

This article was published at Geopolitical Monitor.com

India Ups The Ante Against Pakistan (Daniel 8)

India Tests Nuclear-Capable Missile, US Looks the Other Way

03:11 18.02.2016(updated 03:13 18.02.2016)

 

In a major sign of the country’s growing military prowess, India has launched a surface-to-surface ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. The test highlights Washington’s hypocrisy when it comes to nuclear development.

The Prithvi-II missile, first tested in 1996, officially entered service with the Indian military in 2003, but has had a mixed success rate. In 2010, for instance, a missile specifically built for testing purposes failed.

On Monday, the Indian military launched an unarmed Prithvi-II randomly selected from its stockpile. While the missile missed its intended target, it did achieve the desired altitude and distance.
In theory, this gives New Delhi the ability to launch a nuclear-capable ballistic missile into Pakistan.
India developed nuclear weapons in 1998, but because they were not a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, few third-party countries would provide New Delhi with the missiles necessary to carry the weapons that could effectively deter an attack from Pakistan.
The Chinese government reportedly aided Pakistan’s development of nuclear-capable missiles. India’s latest test means that tensions could increase between the long-time rivals, with both New Delhi and Islamabad capable of using the threat of nuclear warfare over the conflict in Kashmir.

© Photo: Twitter/ DPR

India Test-Fires Long-Range Missile System Developed With Israel

 

The United States has repeatedly discouraged India from developing ballistic missiles, but its response to this month’s test is decidedly different from the one given in the wake of North Korea’s recent actions.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang launched a satellite into orbit. Washington fiercely criticized the move as a veiled attempt at testing North Korea’s ballistic missile capabilities.

“Our concern though is that they do a space-launch but really it’s the same technology to develop ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles],” a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ahead of the launch.

Following that incident, President Barack Obama felt compelled to assure South Korea of the strength of their alliance.

© AP Photo/ The Santa Maria Times, Bryan Walton, File)

 

New US Spy Satellite Lifts Off on Secret Mission as Obama Criticizes N. Korean Launch

 

“The United States stands in solidarity with the ROK [South Korea] and will take the necessary steps to fulfill our ironclad commitment to defend the ROK and our other allies in the region,” Obama told South Korean president Park Geun-hye.

On Wednesday, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest announced that President Obama plans to sign a bill that will impose additional sanctions on Pyongyang.

“The administration is deeply concerned with North Korea’s recent actions and their recent provocations, and I can confirm the president does plan to sign H.R. 757, which includes sanctions measures against North Korea and will serve to increase pressure on North Korea,” Earnest told reporters.

Washington has given no indication that it will pursue similar sanctions against India.

The Hypocrisy of the Scarlet Woman (Revelation 17:4)

The Clintons’ shameful hypocrisy on racism

With Hillary Clinton’s campaign claiming African Americans as a main base of support, Paul Heideman reminds us that her record on racism is cynical and scandalous.

January 26, 2016LAST WEEK, the author and blogger Ta-Nahesi Coates secured a considerable amount of media coverage for his criticism of Bernie Sanders for not supporting reparations for African Americans. Coates noted, with some justice, that it was peculiar to see Sanders calling for a “political revolution” at every campaign stop, but then refusing to endorse reparations on the grounds that it is “divisive” and has little chance of getting through Congress. While Sanders has attempted to give racial justice a more prominent place in his campaign, denouncing police violence and using his platform to keep people like Sandra Bland’s name in the news, Coates undoubtedly seized on a persistent weakness in the campaign in pointing out his audacity on economic issues, but his hesitancy on questions of racial justice.
Yet as Sanders supporter Killer Mike insistently pointed out, Coates was strangely silent about Hillary Clinton, who has also declined to support reparations (though with far cagier political language than Sanders used).
The attack on Bernie Sanders as an old white man has become a persistent theme in the Clinton campaign, which, predictably, seized on Coates’ article to buttress that portrait. Ironically, this push to portray Sanders as part of “the establishment” comes alongside the Clinton campaign’s renewed bout of red-baiting him as a dangerous socialist.
But the attempt by the campaign and its supporters among liberal Democrats to portray Sanders as out of touch on issues of racial justice is particularly galling given Hillary Clinton’s wretched record on the subject. While she has proven capable of talking a good game on race, the political empire that she and her husband built for themselves rests on a foundation of Black and Brown bodies crushed under their ambition.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
ONE REASON that Clinton is now able to effectively “talk left” when it comes to race is that her early political career really was characterized by a commitment to racial justice. As a law student, she interned at a left-leaning Oakland law firm then defending Black Panther Huey Newton. In these years, she also began a relationship with the Children’s Defense Fund, an organization that advocates for poor and non-white children.
However, this commitment to racial justice, no matter how sincere it was, didn’t survive Bill and Hillary’s developing political ambitions.
After Bill lost the Arkansas governor’s race in 1980, he vowed to become a “New Democrat”–tough on crime and less devoted to “special interest groups” like workers, women, people of color, etc. He began tacking to the right–more and more so as his successful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992 came into sight. That shift culminated with his despicable decision to leave the presidential campaign trail and return to Arkansas to approve the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a Black man with intellectual disabilities–all to prove just how tough on crime he could be.
Clinton’s own shift corresponded to a broader trend in mainstream politics that pulled both parties further to the right, with racism often serving as the catalyst.
During the years before 1992, Hillary Clinton went along with her husband, reconciling herself to the death penalty, which she had previously opposed, and becoming a corporate lawyer. She also took a seat on the board of directors of Walmart, a company hardly known for its racial (or gender) egalitarianism.
By the time of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, she had transformed herself from a left-leaning Wellesley graduate who had written a thesis on Saul Alinsky into an avatar of the Democratic Party’s shift to the right.
But this ditching of her earlier anti-racism pales in comparison with what came next.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
BILL CLINTON came to the White House after 12 years of Republican occupants convinced that the Democrats’ decline had been due to the party being too far to the left. As president, he intended to finish the reorientation he had pushed for as governor of Arkansas.
In the service of this goal, he brought in conservative strategist Dick Morris, notorious for helping veteran race-baiting Republican Sen. Jesse Helms win re-election in 1988 over a Black opponent , thanks in part to a blatantly racist ad encouraging white workers to blame Black workers for their layoffs.
Clinton’s push to the right bore fruit in the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This bill, authored by Joe Biden at the behest of the White House, established draconian three-strikes laws that sent people away to prison for decades for trivial crimes. It also included “truth in sentencing” provisions that eliminated early parole for huge numbers of prisoners.
Though the trend toward the era of mass incarceration had begun earlier and was largely driven on the state level, Clinton’s passage of the 1994 law helped entrench the system even further.
As the crime bill was being debated in Congress, Hillary Clinton was a vocal advocate for it, repeating the kinds of racist talking points used to support the “war on crime.” At a time when the U.S. prison population was skyrocketing, she declared, “There is something wrong when a crime bill takes six years to work its way through Congress and the average criminal serves only four…We need more police. We need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets.”
Bernie Sanders, it should be noted, voted for this bill while serving in the House.
In 1996, the Clintons went further when Bill signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act into law. This legislation ended the federal welfare system that had existed since the Great Depression, replacing it with a program called Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), which was administered through the states. The ideological attack on welfare used to win support for the bill was chock full of racist abuse directed at African Americans, even though a majority of welfare recipients were actually white.
The Republicans, of course, led the way with racist scapegoating. Former drug czar William Bennett testified in 1995 that “any police sergeant in the country will tell you that the day welfare checks go out is a big day for drug buys.” Democrats, however, were no less awful, with one governor boasting that welfare reform would “turn off the spigot” of teen pregnancy.
Hillary herself got in on the scapegoating after the fact, defending her husband’s law with the same kind of rhetoric used to pass it. In 1999, she claimed that, before welfare reform, “[t]oo many of those on welfare had known nothing but dependency all their lives, and many would have found it difficult to make the transition to work on their own”–as if people on welfare were simply incapable of finding jobs.
Around the same time, she justified welfare reform with an anecdote from a woman whose daughter supposedly told her, “Mommy, I’m tired of seeing you sitting around the house doing nothing.” To make sure no one was missing the message, she later said that because of welfare reform, “these people are no longer deadbeats.”
All of this language was profoundly racialized. The image of a lazy Black woman on welfare, sitting around the house all day, as in Clinton’s little story, was a stock in trade of reactionary opponents of government assistance, going back to Ronald Reagan and beyond.
As political scientist Martin Gilens has shown, this racialization of the welfare debate had profound effects on the politics of reform. Even though a majority of recipients were white, a majority of the images shown in the media of welfare recipients were Black. The drive to dismantle welfare was powered by portraying Black Americans as deadbeats living off the tax dollars of white Americans.
The fact that Hillary Clinton defended welfare reform in such a manner is particularly ugly given the devastating impact it has had on American workers. When the law decentralized control over welfare funding levels to the states, it helped ensure that, in addition to universal federal restrictions like work requirements and an inadequate 60-month lifetime limit, individual governors could cut benefits to the bone.
This is, indeed, what happened. In 16 states, TANF benefits have simply never been adjusted, and remain at the same level they were at nearly 20 years ago, despite two decades of inflation. Even in states that did adjust for inflation, benefits didn’t keep up. As result, once inflation is taken into account, benefits are lower than they were in 1996 in 48 states.
At the same time, the onerous requirements and limitations of TANF have meant that even as the number of families with children in poverty has climbed, the number of families receiving TANF benefits have actually declined. Partially as a result of this stinginess, the number of families with children living in extreme poverty–less than $2 a day per person–has doubled since 1996.
The consequences of this planned immiseration have fallen hardest, as always, on African Americans. As welfare reform increased the number of punitive measures taken toward recipients of aid, studies have persistently shown that the harshest sanctions are taken toward Black and Latino clients. The doubling of extreme poverty has also hit African Americans harder–the number of Black households with children in extreme poverty grew by an astounding 182 percent.
This is the system that Hillary Clinton continues to defend in her effort to brand herself a pragmatic, get-things-done politician.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
THE CLINTONS’ cynical use of racism to bolster their political careers didn’t end when Bill and Hillary left the White House in 2000.
During her 2008 presidential run, the Clinton campaign didn’t shrink from deploying vile racism to give their candidate an advantage in trying to stop Barack Obama from becoming the country’s first African American president.
Early in the campaign, two staffers were caught forwarding an e-mail that read, “Let us all remain alert concerning Obama’s expected presidential Candidacy. Please forward to everyone you know. The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S. from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level.” Around the same time, supporters and campaign workers began loudly raising the issue of Obama’s drug use, with some even posing rhetorical questions about whether Obama had been a drug dealer.
As the campaign heated up and Obama started racking up victories in the primaries, Clinton became even more direct. In one interview, she asserted that Obama lacked support among “hard-working Americans, white Americans.” If this kind of race-baiting might have been disgusting to the young Hillary Clinton, her days spent as an advocate for her husband’s policies had prepared her well for such insinuations. The racism of the Clinton campaign became so bad that it even drove some Black Clinton supporters over to the Obama camp.
Now, of course, Clinton is singing a different tune. She has even stated that her past support for tough-on-crime policies was wrong and helped contribute to mass incarceration.
Evidently, however, the ruling class that funds her campaign isn’t buying it. Private prison lobbyists were busy raising cash for the Clinton campaign through this summer, when pressure by Black Lives Matter activists exposed the link and forced her to return the cash.
If Clinton’s political history proves anything, however, it’s that she’s more than capable of adjusting her stances depending on which way the winds are blowing. When there is political capital to be made by stepping on the necks of Black people, she won’t hesitate to do so.
If Hillary Clinton becomes president, she will be tasked with enforcing the racist social order that reigns in the U.S. The efforts of Black Lives Matter activists and others who support racial justice will run smack against the wall of her cynicism and ambition. The sooner Clinton’s despicable record of racial scapegoating is recognized, the more prepared our side will be for that fight when it comes.

The Saudi’s Wahhabist Hypocrisy (Dan 7)

In this Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015 file photo, Saudi security forces take part in a military parade in preparation for the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Saudi Arabia Forms Muslim Anti-Terror Coalition

The 34-member bloc will fight terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan, deputy crown prince says

By AHMED AL OMRAN in Riyadh and ASA FITCH in Dubai
Dec. 15, 2015 9:59 a.m. ET

Saudi Arabia’s plan to form a Muslim antiterrorism coalition has underlined a new muscular foreign policy aimed at confronting the extremist group Islamic State, even at the risk of wading deeper into the region’s messiest conflicts.

Calling terrorism a “disease which affected the Islamic world first before the international community as a whole,” Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Tuesday the coalition of 34 Muslim states would fight the scourge in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan.

Besides the 34 Muslim nations who signed up to the coalition, Riyadh said more than 10 other countries, including Indonesia, expressed their support of the new bloc. The kingdom’s main rival Iran, however, was absent from the list.

The formation of the coalition followed criticism from U.S. and European politicians that Saudi Arabia hasn’t done enough to fight Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Islamic State militants took over large swaths of Iraq and Syria last year and are the focus of the U.S.-led air campaign in which Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries are participating.

Some Saudis believe the time has come to show the government is serious about fighting Islamic State, a Sunni militant group that has roots in its own region and religion.

Islamic State “is the seed of evil that we have let out of the can in the Middle East,” Prince Turki Al Faisal, chairman of King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, told the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai. “It’s our responsibility to vanquish it.”

But it is also unclear what Saudi Arabia is asking the other countries to do—whether it is a loose grouping to talk strategy and share intelligence or the first step to establishing an actual fighting force.

The new Saudi-led coalition will have a joint command center in Riyadh to “coordinate” and develop means to fight terrorism militarily and ideologically, Prince Mohammed told a hastily called news conference at a Riyadh air base early Tuesday morning.

Some countries that were listed as members expressed willingness to review such a proposal but didn’t appear to make any formal commitment to a military coalition.

Turkey, the only country in the alliance that is also a NATO member, welcomed the new coalition. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Tuesday that “the best response to those striving to associate terrorism and Islam is for nations of Islam to present a unified voice against terrorism”
Meanwhile, Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad Momani said the war against terrorism was “our war and the Muslims’ war,” according to a statement carried by the official Petra news agency.

William Hague, a former U.K. foreign secretary, told the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai on Tuesday that more Arab involvement was needed to combat Islamic State and counter the extremist narrative that it was at war with the West. Making it effective required coordination, however, he said.
“To make something like NATO, you really have to decide to act together…to send people to act and die in another country,” Mr. Hague said.

For Riyadh, the risks of such aggressive military action on a broad scale have become apparent in Yemen.

The Yemen coalition, composed of mostly Sunni Muslim Arab allies, began bombing the Houthis from the air on March 26. It deployed a ground force in July, soon recapturing the southern city of Aden and pushing toward the capital, San’a.

The campaign, however, has been costly for the Saudi government, both in financial and human terms. Human rights groups have also criticized the coalition for the large number of civilian casualties caused by airstrikes and fighting on the ground. The United Nations estimates the death toll of the war at more than 5,800 people.

Many observers see the war in Yemen as the outgrowth of a regional confrontation between Sunni Muslim states and mainly Shiite Iran. Saudi Arabia and its allies support Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi while Iran gives political backing—some say military support—to the Houthis, a group whose members adhere to the Zaidi offshoot of Shiite Islam.

A seven-day cease-fire started in Yemen at noon Tuesday, local time, as United Nations-mediated peace talks began in Geneva. Fighting was still taking place in the country’s oil-rich Marib province and parts of the south in the hours leading up to the pause, according to local security officials.

Christopher Davidson, a professor at Durham University in the U.K. who specializes in Gulf affairs, said the new alliance was primarily a way for Saudi Arabia to generate positive news about its role in international affairs following recent terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. Both of the assailants in the California attack had spent time in the kingdom.

Yet divisions within the participating countries of the Islamic coalition don’t bode well for its effectiveness, he said.

“The constituent members of the new coalition mostly fall on the Sunni side of the sectarian fault-line and are themselves deeply divided on a number of key policy areas,” Mr. Davidson said.

“The probability that it can become an effective international security alliance is therefore almost zero.”

—Peter Wonacott in Dubai and Emre Peker in Istanbul contributed to this article.

Babylonian Hypocrisy (Ezekiel 17)

US hypocritical about policy on nuclear weapons: Analyst
Sun Dec 13, 2015 10:59AM

A new investigative report showing 33,480 US nuclear workers have died of radiation exposure over the last seven decades exposes America’s hypocrisy with regard to nuclear weapons, says an international lawyer in Indonesia.

Barry Grossman made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday when asked about the yearlong investigation by McClatchy which reveals that America’s great push to win the World War II and the Cold War has left “a legacy of death on American soil.”

The death count, disclosed for the first time, is more than four times the number of American fatalities in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Grossman said that the report should not be mistaken for a critique of America’s hypocritical policy toward other nations and its use of weapons of mass destruction which led to the death of many innocent people.

“These disclosures are of course interesting but let’s not lose sight of what this is all about. This is not a well documented criticism of the US nuclear weapons program or of America’s hypocrisy in dictating the international community’s policy stance on nuclear proliferation. Indeed, the McClatchy report concedes, almost celebrates, the fact that most Americans regard the work of those featured in this story as a heroic and patriotic endeavor,” he said.

“Of course, no mention is made in any of this sentimental waffle about the hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed and the huge expanses of territory contaminated by America’s use of depleted uranium war heads, cluster bombs and chemical weapons in other nations. After all, when it comes to tugging at people’s heartstrings and fine-tuning the US policy-making machine, only white American lives matter and even then, only those who do not whine too much about doing their patriotic duty,” he added.

“Rather than being a genuine attempt to question America’s $1 trillion, 30-year commitment to modernizing its nuclear command, by objectively highlighting the dangers faced by previous generations of workers, this piece of selective investigative journalism in fact makes a strong case for fully supporting America’s $1 trillion nuclear modernization program,” Grossman stated.
“The report is little more than a saccharine celebration of what passes in America as grassroots heroics, albeit expressed in an envelope which focuses on exposing the failure to compensate many of the almost 110,000 or so killer moms and dads who contracted life-threatening illnesses as they worked to assemble and disassemble US made weapons,” he noted.

“So what if, from the millions of Americans who have worked in the US weapons industry to make sure that innocent people can be killed around the world, some 32,000 have died from cancers supposedly contracted while doing their heroic duty. What did they expect the outcome of their murderous efforts to be? A ticker tape parade in Manhattan to honor their selfless sacrifice?” he asked.

“In any case, make no mistake about it – nobody cares about them” Grossman said, adding, “Their eventual suffering was nothing more than an unfortunate consequence of them doing their duty. The important subtext here – the US public will tacitly agree – is that people do their duty to keep America great by killing in the name of empire.”

“Moreover, by noting that the death toll among those working in America’s nuclear weapons industry is ‘more than four times the number of American casualties in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,’ this report is as likely to encourage criticism of ‘Peaceniks’ as it is to serve as a basis for questioning the deliberately cultivated, but nothing if not psychotic sensibilities of Americans who overwhelmingly support America’s über violent militarism and the war-based economy that has evolved from such lunacy,” the analyst noted.

“After all, how dare people complain about doing their duty abroad in support of the empire when so many ordinary moms and dads have given their lives quietly while working in support of the war effort at home? If anyone has any doubts about this, no doubt Donald Trump will set them straight,” Grossman concluded.

The nuclear report comes as the US prepares to upgrade its aging nuclear arsenal to the tune of $1 trillion over the next 30 years.

Jewish Hypocrisy (Ezekiel 17)

 
Study estimates Israel’s nuclear weapon count stands at 115
By YOSSI MELMAN
Fri, 20 Nov 2015, 07:18 PM

Report by US based institute estimates Israel produced 660 kilograms of plutonium in 50 years.
A study conducted by the Washington- based Institute for Science and International Security estimated that Israel had 115 nuclear bombs in its possession in 2014.
The study, which was conducted by the institute’s founder David Albright as part of a more comprehensive evaluation of the worldwide inventory of plutonium, approximated that Israel produced plutonium at a rapid pace in the past 50 years since the inception of its nuclear reactor in Dimona, acquiring 660 kilograms of plutonium, taking into account an estimation error of 150 kilograms.

A single nuclear bomb requires three-to-five kg. of plutonium, the study estimated.
Albright’s assessment of Israel’s nuclear bomb inventory differed from previous studies.
Those based on the revelations of Mordechai Vanunu, the former technician at the Dimona nuclear plant who was imprisoned for 18 years for divulging secrets related to Israel’s purported nuclear weapons program, stood at 200. A study by Sweden’s Peace Institute estimated the count at 80 bombs.

Albright’s study reiterated previous suspicions that Israel’s nuclear weapons are produced in the vicinity of Haifa, and also delved into the myriad of nuclear-weapon delivery vehicles at the country’s disposal.

Israel developed the Jericho-ballistic missile, according to Albright, along with nuclear-capable cruise missiles and an aircraft that can deliver nuclear weapons. It also may have the technology to launch missiles from submarines, Albright reported.

According to the study, Israel also has the advanced know how to miniaturize nuclear warheads and fit them on missiles.

The Nobel Laureate’s Hypocrisy (Ezekiel 17)

 
U.S will negotiate if North Korea abandons nuclear weapons
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Today, 8:47 PM ET

U.S. is ready to negotiate with longtime adversary North Korea as it has with Iran, but Pyongyang has to be serious about abandoning nuclear weapons, President Barack Obama said Friday.

Obama was speaking after meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, a close ally, who echoed the U.S. leader’s view.

The North has conducted three nuclear tests since 2006 and is developing a mobile ballistic missile that could potentially hit the U.S.

U.S. is ready to negotiate with longtime adversary North Korea as it has with Iran, but Pyongyang has to be serious about abandoning nuclear weapons, President Barack Obama said Friday.

Obama was speaking after meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, a close ally, who echoed the U.S. leader’s view.

The North has conducted three nuclear tests since 2006 and is developing a mobile ballistic missile that could potentially hit the U.S.

Park has cultivated closer relations with China as she looks to coax Beijing away from its traditional embrace of Pyongyang. Last month, she prompted handwringing in Washington when she attended a Chinese military parade marking the end of World War II that was snubbed by leaders of most major democracies.

But Obama said he had no problem with Park meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping, and joked that Xi “was in this room, eating my food,” during a state visit to the U.S. last month.

“We want South Korea to have a strong relationship with China, just as we want to have a strong relationship with China. We want to see China’s peaceful rise. We want them to be cooperating with us in putting pressure on the DPRK,” Obama said, referring to the North’s official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

But he added that the U.S. would expect South Korea to speak out if China fails to abide by international norms and rules.

The U.S. has voiced mounting concerns to Beijing over cyber theft and China’s massive island-building the disputed South China Sea.

Obama and Park discussed the often-touchy relations among China, Japan and South Korea, whose leaders are to hold a long-awaited summit in Seoul in early November. Park said that the summit will be an opportunity to improve South Korea’s relations with another key U.S. ally, Japan, which would be welcomed by Washington.

The Hypocrisy Of Babylon The Great (Ezekiel 17)

US approach toward Iran, hypocritical: Mark Glenn

Sun Jun 28, 2015 4:6PM

 

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei addressing Iran’s top officials during a meeting in Tehran on June 23, 2015. (leader.ir photo)

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mark Glenn, political commentator in Idaho, to discuss the remarks made by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, slamming the US and its elements for conducting terrorist attacks against Iranians in the past.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: With regards to the Iranian Leader’s speech about the West hosting anti-Iran terrorists, can you explain for us the amount of hypocrisy Europe and the US is engaged in and where will such hypocrisy lead to?

Glenn: Well I think that it is mountainous the size of the hypocrisy here. The fact that the United States is making the pretenses of negotiating with Iran in what appears to be an act of good faith but at the same time has removed this one particular group the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, which was listed on the US State Department list of dangerous terrorist organizations, removed them despite the fact that the overwhelming evidence is that this is still a terrorist group, despite the fact that it may not have the manpower or the funding and the strength that it had in years past when it assisted Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.

Nevertheless, the fact that the US would be cozying up and playing kissy-face with a very dangerous group, a cult of terrorists, at a time when the United States is making pretenses of negotiating with Iran, in addition to the fact as you said that the United States is constantly wagging her finger in the face of the world and lecturing the rest of the world on human rights and terrorism just underscores why the Supreme Leader’s statements are one hundred percent correct that you cannot trust America, you cannot trust the West. The drive to destroy Iran and to undo the revolution of 1979 is just as strong today as it was over 33 years ago when it originally took place.

Press TV: How much are the people of the West aware of such hypocrisy?

Glenn: Well, the people of the West do not even … if you were to ask the average American, if they ever heard of the MEK or MKO or Mujahedin-e-Khalq or these other groups that the United States has been funding now for not just for years but for decades, they would know nothing about this to their own detriment because the same group – the Mujahedin-e-Khalq – that has been listed as a terrorist group, now they are free to travel and to raise money for all of their operations and we can be rest assured that they will be put to use against Iran again, that they will be responsible for blowing things up and for killing people because at the end of the day this is what America and Israel are ought to do which is to destabilize Iran as a precursor to what they hope would be the Persian Spring that would unseat the present regime in power there.

Press TV: And can these terrorists be brought to justice?

Glenn: Well, they are going to be brought to justice but unfortunately it is going to have to come through other means other than the West or any western institution because all of these institutions in the West are firmly under the thumb of Israel. Israel is a terrorist nation that has engaged in thousands of war crimes. Has she ever been brought to justice for any of them? No. The United States has killed millions of people in the Middle East, blatant war crimes. Has the United States ever been brought to justice? No.

So unfortunately it is going to take another body, it is going to take another avenue to do this. The Iranians are possibly working closely with the Russians and with the Syrians and other world powers that have had enough of all of this warmongering and injustice. Perhaps they should start their own body of justice that will do the work that the International Criminal Court (ICC) seems to be unwilling to do.

AHK/HMV

The Sins Of The Son (Rev 13:10)

  

Bush invaded Iraq to revenge on his dad – Ex-CIA official
02.06.2015 | Source: Pravda.Ru

Former CIA Deputy Director has conceded real reasons of invasion to Iraq.

According to the official data, one of the reasons to trigger off war with the country at the other end of the world, was that senior officials at Bush’s Administration claimed that Iraq not only possessed nuclear weapons, but also posed a direct threat to the US.

As former Vice President Dick Cheney claimed at the time, Iraq was reconstituting nuclear weapons in addition to biological and chemical ones they owned.

Michael Morell, former CIA Deputy Director refuted the statement in the interview on May, 19 and said that was not true.

Morell admitted that politicized intelligence publicly perverted the truth and gave false information on Iraq’s possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction as well as Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda.

Indeed, Bush was hell-bent on revenge against Saddam Hussein, as evidenced in his statement a month before the report, “After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

Morell said that his job was not to tell the truth, but “carry CIA’s best information and best analysis to the president of the United States and make sure he understands it.”

– See more at: http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/02-06-2015/130841-iraq-0/#sthash.kqKZLrcl.dpuf

Babylon’s Hypocrisy Will Lead To Her Demise (Eze 17)

 
Letter: U.S. has troubled weapons-policy history

May 09, 2015 – 6:00 PM

Throughout U.S. history, we have condemned others for actions we were ourselves guilty of. This includes our use of chemical and biological weapons, nuclear weapons, and frequent American acts of terrorism both on U.S. and foreign soil. We are understandably concerned about Iran’s potential to obtain nuclear weapons. Of course, we should stop Iran from obtaining such weapons by any peaceful means necessary (although sanctions often hurt only innocents).

The hard reality is the United States is the only nation guilty of using nuclear weapons. When Iraq protested inspections, I wondered how the United States would have felt if we were subjected to inspections of our nuclear power plants. Considering our history of accidents (e.g. Three Mile Island), that perhaps would have been justified.

America understandably condemns the 9/11 terrorist acts by Saudi Arabians, yet Saudi Arabia remains our ally. We fail to acknowledge our own long history of terrorism: killing innocent civilians (e.g. Vietnam, Iraq, Dresden during the Second World War), the holocaust we perpetrated on Native Americans, slavery, lynching during the Jim Crow period, and harassment of (especially) black males in places such as Ferguson by police officers. These acts, by definition, are terrorism. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs terrorized innocent Japanese civilians, who were victims of radiation for at least a generation. We used napalm, a chemical weapon, against the Vietnamese. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

The late great progressive historian Howard Zinn put it best when he wrote, “We ought to stop thinking that we must have military solutions to the problems that we face in the world. The solutions that we need are the solutions of dealing with sickness and disease and hunger. That’s fundamental. If you want to end terrorism, you have to stop being terrorists, which is what war is.”

David L. Cohen

The Hypocrites Of Babylon (Ezekiel 17)

Who are the hypocrites?

By Frida Ghitis

Updated 2:28 PM ET, Fri May 8, 2015

(CNN) The past few weeks have brought a head-spinning display of pronouncements from people claiming to speak on behalf of “freedom.” Of those pretending to defend basic rights for everyone, it’s hard to judge who’s the most egregious and insincere. So here are my nominees for the most hypocritical defenders of human rights of recent days.

Did you know that Iran’s Supreme Leader is deeply troubled by the plight of African-Americans in Baltimore? Did you know that ISIS shares his concerns? Touching, isn’t it?

 

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

 

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei unleashed a barrage of tweets, gleefully rubbing his virtual hands at the anguish in the United States. “Power with cruelty isn’t favored by #Islam. #Police should embody justice and mercy by being potent,” he tweeted.

Clearly, the Ayatollah makes a fine distinction between police and other “law and order” groups such as Iran’s infamous Basij militias, who help the ayatollahs keep control when people protest about, say, stolen elections. The Ayatollah’s worries about abuse of power could be more usefully channeled toward well-documented human rights violations that are endemic in Iran, a place where his power is nearly absolute.

You know who else is worried about the police killing an innocent man in Baltimore? ISIS. Yes, the self-described Islamic State, which slaughters Christians, Yazidis and any Muslim who disagrees with it, posted pictures of black and white jihadis play-sparring to let us know that “In the Islamic state is no difference between black and white.”

 

ISIS is known for its brutality.

North Korea’s news agency carefully downplayed the notion of protesting against injustice. But its Baltimore story explained that Americans “are human butchers without equals.”

In Turkey, where the increasingly autocratic government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was internationally criticized for its violent suppression of anti-government protests, an Erdogan loyalist, the mayor of Ankara, put on an undiplomatic show of schadenfreude, calling out the State Department’s Marie Harf, “Where are you stupid blonde, who accused Turkish police of using disproportionate force?”

These statements of purported support for targets of reprehensible police actions in the United States have nothing to do with concern for the victims. The hypocrisy is an effort to score political points and blunt criticism against regimes with continuing human rights violations in countries where abuses have triggered no prosecutions, self-examination or change in behavior.

The self-proclaimed free speech defenders who actually promote hate.

When two gunmen opened fire in Garland, Texas, trying to make their way into a hall hosting a cartoon contest about the Prophet Mohammed, there was little doubt what their ideology would turn out to be. The shooters, who were killed, are the ones responsible for the attack. No one should be the target of assassins because of the cartoons they draw or the contests they promote.

That said, the event organizer, Pamela Geller, and her American Freedom Defense Initiative are a study in hypocrisy. They claim to defend free speech — a right worth defending — but instead they foment hatred. Geller holds that all Muslims are potential enemies. Her Stop the Islamization of America group claims that “The U.S. constitution is under attack.”

Her views and tactics have been repudiated by the Anti-Defamation League and even right-wing conservatives are speaking against her.

When Geller compared herself to civil rights hero Rosa Parks, someone — was it Fox’s Martha McCullum or the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue — suggested Geller should act in a “Christian way,” an awkward plea for interfaith tolerance.

The PEN writers who support free speech — unless they don’t like it.

When the respected writers’ group PEN decided to award its Freedom of Expression Courage honor to the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, it seemed an obvious choice. Charlie Hebdo displayed immeasurable courage when it continued publishing despite an earlier firebombing and threats over cartoons that many Muslims found deeply offensive. The courage was beyond doubt, as was proven in January when Islamic radicals killed a dozen people in the magazine’s offices.

At the time, everyone declared “I am Charlie.” But now six prominent writers — Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Michael Ondaatje, Peter Carey, Rachel Kushner, Taiye Selasi — have decided Charlie should not be honored. It turns out they believe free speech should be respected only when one approves of its content, which is precisely what those who oppose free speech argue.

These critics accuse the magazine of having an anti-Islam agenda. But that is patently false. Ten years of covers prove Charlie’s agenda is opposing dogmatism. Cringe-worthy cartoons mocking Christian and Jewish dogma are just as common. Islam is a less-frequently mocked religion. The president of the anti-racism group SOS Racisme called Charlie “the greatest anti-racist weekly in the country.”

The writer Salman Rushdie — whose writings prompted Iran to issue a fatwa, a religious ruling, which called for his killing — fulminated against the writers who decided to boycott the PEN award event, saying, “I hope nobody ever comes after them.” He called them “Six authors in search of a bit of character.”

Amnesty International defends human rights for most people.

Amnesty International normally acts as a force for good and has arduously defended many against human rights abuses, so it is with no small amount of displeasure that I note its regrettable demonstration of hypocrisy.

When the organization held its annual meeting last month, members raised motions to sharpen the pursuit of its mission to protect human rights around the world. Every one of the proposals won approval — except one.

A motion calling on the group to combat an epidemic of anti-Semitism spiraling in the United Kingdom was the only resolution defeated at the meeting. The proposal would have Amnesty support the recommendations from a British study that found record high and rising levels of anti-Jewish violence. It had nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinians, the usual explanation given for dismissing charges of anti-Semitism in Europe.

Amnesty, which approved motions to defend Colombian trade union members, Guatemalan rule-of-law violations, and other issues, explained, “We can’t campaign on everything.” With that, Amnesty became a finalist in my hypocrites list.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.