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Saturday, September 27, 2014

What do they fear? What are they hiding? Why?

Info control, cover up, secrecy, intimidation – further grounds for impeachment
Excerpts, editing by 
Carolyn Bennett

Secret government

At government hearings, journalists are blinded. They cannot follow what’s happening. They don’t know what prosecutors are asking for or what defense attorneys are arguing – because they are denied “most court filings in real time” – even of prep or background material that is not classified. Under the current U.S. administration “information about Guantanamo is now kept secret. The U.S. military refuses to release the number of prisoners on hunger strike or the number of assaults on guards. Photo and video coverage is virtually nonexistent,” according to an Associated Press journalist. 

Suppression and intimidation

“Government press officials say their orders are to squelch anything controversial or that makes the administration look bad.” The government routinely intimidates sources. The Associated Press’s “transportation reporter’s sources say that if they are caught talking to her, they will be fired – even if they just give out facts about safety.”

Blocking information
FOIA breached

“Requests for information under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) have become slow and expensive. Many federal agencies simply do not respond at all in a timely manner, forcing news organizations to sue each time to force action.”  One of the media and public’s most important legal tools, FOIA, “is under siege.”


Political appointees spying on press
FOIA abused
  
The administration uses FOIAs as a tip service to uncover what news organizations are pursuing. Requests are now routinely forwarded to political appointees. At the agency that oversees the new health care law, for example, political appointees now handle the FOIA requests.


Domestic stalking, cover-up

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, a federal law enforcement agency, “has directed local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology the police departments use to sweep up cellular phone data. In some cases, federal officials have formally intervened in state open-records cases, arguing for secrecy.” The Obama administration “is trying to control the information that state and local officials can give out.”

Related News 

 
Chief Law breaker never fit for Justice

Even before his confirmation it was clear that he was unsuited for the purpose of leading U.S. law enforcement, National Review editors writing in a September 26, 2014, post following the announcement of another gradual departure from the Obama government.   “In an administration characterized by outsized misadventures,” the editors write. “… Eric Holder managed to make his Justice Department a source of special, nay, historic attention,” the editors write. “Holder was the first U.S. Attorney General the House of Representatives held in contempt of Congress (June 2012).

Partisanship

No previous USAG exhibited Holder’s “sheer contempt for the rule of law…: his preference for employing the law for political purposes or, when necessary, dispensing with [exempting from] the law completely.

“…The duty of the attorney general historically has been to advise against unconstitutional or illegal activity. Holder instead regularly aided and abetted it [illegal activity, breach of the Constitution of the United States].

“When the president unilaterally delayed deportations for a select group of illegal immigrants, Holder concocted specious legal rationales to justify it. …”

Identity Posturing

“…Holder’s rank partisanship” was displayed “on issues of race” as in “his refusal to prosecute the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation — despite video evidence of truncheon-wielding men warding voters away from a Philadelphia polling station in November 2008. Those whose political expression was inhibited in Philadelphia were not, Holder later suggested to the [U.S.] House Oversight Committee, ‘my people’ — and thus apparently did not deserve the protection of the law, this from the lips of the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer.” 

At the same time, Attorney General Eric Holder “dismissed his critics as racists, eager to destroy him and [U.S. President Obama] because ‘we’re both African American.’ This same ‘nation of cowards’ was, by Holder’s reckoning, responsible for the voter-identification laws that his Justice Department has worked stridently — and largely unsuccessfully — to suppress in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and elsewhere.…

Breach of law

“…In May 2013, [the Holder-Obama] Justice Department seized the phone records of twenty Associated Press reporters. James Rosen of Fox News revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice “had monitored his phone calls and e-mails.”

In their conclusion the National Review editors declare that “the end of Holder’s death grip on law enforcement at the federal level is long overdue.” Looking forward they hope for a U.S. Department of Justice that delivers “actual justice.”


Sources and notes

“8 ways the Obama administration is blocking information” posted on 09/19/2014 by Erin Madigan White, http://blog.ap.org/2014/09/19/8-ways-the-obama-administration-is-blocking-information/

“The fight for access to public information has never been harder, Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee said recently at a joint meeting of the American Society of News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Associated Press Photo Managers.”

“Journalists criticize White House for ‘secrecy’” AP editors, NYT reporter criticize Obama administration on access, transparency issues, Associated Press by Michael Tarm, Associated Press, September 17, 2014 9:10 PM, http://news.yahoo.com/journalists-criticize-white-house-secrecy-002418926.html;_ylt=AwrBEiISAidU8W0AAA3QtDMD

Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee

Sally Buzbee has served as Middle East editor for the AP based in Cairo, Egypt, running a region of 11 bureaus in 16 countries. IN the position she supervised Iraq war coverage, Israeli conflicts with Hezbollah and Hamas, the Darfur crisis and the growing activities of terrorist cells in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Before Cairo, she was assistant bureau chief supervising foreign affairs coverage in the AP’s Washington bureau; and covered education, politics and economics in Washington and supervised various coverage areas as a news editor. Before her current position, she was deputy managing editor of The Associated Press in charge of creating and building the news cooperative’s News Center, a new global headquarters operation based in New York. Buzbee ‘s AP tenure began in Topeka, Kansas (1988), then  correspondent in San Diego before moving to Washington, D.C. (1995). Her credentials were taken at the University of Kansas and Georgetown University.

“Eric Holder’s Rap Sheet” by The Editors, National Review Online, September 26, 2014 10:30 AM, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/388913/eric-holders-rap-sheet-editors



_______________________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Wednesday, September 24, 2014

U.S. Foreign Relations Policy, Practice -- UNCONSCIONABLE


A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Lethal mixture in world affairs – incompetence, cowardice, lawlessness, belligerent amorality – must end

Significant discussion surrounding Stepped up U.S. aggression in Middle East Today on Democracy Now
Excerpt, minor editing, commentary by 
Carolyn Bennett

Vijay Prashad


Sovereign land and people
Indian historian, journalist and commentator Vijay Prashad is George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut); author of Arab Spring, Libyan Winter; Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today; The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South; The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World.

Medea Benjamin

United States political activist and writer Medea Benjamin is best known for co-founding and activism representing Code Pink and Global Exchange; author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control and editor with Jodie Evans of How to Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism.

Lethal governance

Medea Benjamin on Democracy Now

Wounds of perpetual War
Displaced People
“The Obama administration is supposed to have been working for a binding resolution that we should be hearing about by the United Nations Security Council talking about cutting off the funding, cutting off the equipping of these extremist groups. That’s a positive thing.”

Sovereign land and people
However, showing its true face, the Obama administration at the same time has given only one week to Iraq’s new government “to show that it is no longer a sectarian Shiite government that is suppressing Sunnis but is actually going to be a government for all the people of Iraq…That takes time. One week is not enough to show that, and to have the Sunnis peel away from ISIS.”

The charge that ISIS threatens the United States “is a lie,” Benjamin said. “There is no imminent
threat to the United States right now.”

Considering the timing of U.S. officials’ saying, the Iraqis had “better get on with this” together with the U.S. choice of “partners” further proves that “political solutions have been put aside now for the military ones.”

The coalition brought together by the United States is composed of governments that are “among the most repressive governments in the Middle East.” The government of “Bahrain has been repressing its nonviolent, democratic uprising. The Saudis have provided the financing and the recruits for so many of the extremists.”
 
Sovereign lands and peoples

This is U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s “diplomatic success,” Benjamin said.  “… Instead of coming to the United Nations to say that we have the world coming together to stop the recruiting and the financing and buying of the oil that ISIS has – we have the accomplishment of having repressive Arab regimes joining us in bombing another Arab state.”

Vijay Prashad on Democracy Now

“The United States government has decided to strike in Syria” and currently a major city called Kobane situated on the Turkish border and refuge to half a million people “is under siege” and “on the verge of falling.”

Wikipedia Note: Ayn al-Arab (Arabic: ‘Spring of the Arabs’) or Kobane (Kurdish: Kobanê): a city in Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria inhabited by Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, and Armenians. Its population 44,821 in the 2004 census (ref. Syria Central Bureau of Statistics) has been since 2012 under the control of Kurdish YPG (The People’s Protection Units commonly known as the YPG, the official armed wing of the Kurdish Supreme Committee of Syrian Kurdistan); and in 2014 was declared the administrative center of the Kobanê Canton of Syrian Kurdistan.

Syria for Syrians
Syria's people protest
foreign interference
“Tens of thousands of people from Kobane have crossed into Turkey,” Vijay Prashad said. “And these are Kurds so it is quite something that Kurdish refugees have been allowed into Turkey.

“…ISIS fighters have surrounded Kobane using heavy artillery they stole in Mosul.” And United States has attacked “symbolic targets inside Raqqa,” made to appear “like a major attack against ISIS [but in reality] is a demonstration of American strength” that is unlikely to “change the situation on the ground in northern Syria directly.”

Vijay Prashad posed a genuine solution to the violence and foreign aggression.

The current foreign aggression “is just Band-Aid … just a lot of loud noise. It will not provide the kind of political solution needed in the region for the long term.…

“…The real solution in the region,” Prashad said, “is going to come from some kind of grand bargain between Iran and Saudi Arabia. These two countries have been at each other’s throats since 1979. They have opened the region to entry of outside forces.

“…When these two countries decide that it is in their absolute self-interest to have some kind of grand bargain, we are going to see a de-escalation [of conflict and violence] in the region.”

He concludes with the “hope that the forces of peace will encourage more meetings with the Iranians, more meetings between the Iranians and the Saudis” that will provide what all sane people are calling for -- “political solutions.”
Wounds of perpetual War
Displaced People

W
hat sets human beings apart from barbarians (even wild animals have rules of society they abide by) is the capacity for reflection and reason. What we are witnessing in U.S. foreign affairs is barbarism, a nuclear armed, weapons-running reckless unconscionable cruelty rooted at the same time in incompetence, cowardice, lawlessness, cronyism, and a belligerent amorality that constitutes a lethal mixture abroad in the world. Americans must see it for what is and put a stop to it.

No government or head of state should commit violent aggression directly or indirectly against another sovereign nation, its land, its region or its people – especially when that nation or region presents no threat to or aggression against the attacking head of state or nation. The American people must put a stop to the carnage by their government officials and the cronies and “partners” of those partisans, ideologues and criminals.
  
I have said for a long time and this is still my view. The American people must clean house – without regard for any political party, partisan, or sect.


 
R
ecall, deselect, vote out of office ALL members of the U.S. House and Senate – public elective office should not offer lifelong endeavor or permanent employment for anyone. And based on the high crimes committed against humanity and gross negligence in purely domestic affairs; on a broader scale, the constant breach of U.S. and international laws and human rights declarations and conventions, the American people must push for a bill of impeachment against the current U.S. Executive and Cabinet. In my view, there is no other way to begin the hard work of recovering what is good about this nation and laying the foundation for (and holding accountable) a new and essential competency; a nonpartisan, law abiding, moral ethos in leadership and federal governance.

Sources and notes

Today on Democracy “Now Expanding U.S. Strikes to ISIS in Syria, Has Obama Opened New Phase of ‘Perpetual War?’” September 23, 2014, http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/23/expanding_us_strikes_to_isis_in

Wikipedia reference on definitions, clarifications, biographical notes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijay_Prashad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_Benjamin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_al-Arab

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Protection_Units

__________________________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Sunday, September 21, 2014

Trauma that cannot be “un-remembered”—a mother mourns her veteran son

Our own also suffer endlessly in endless U. S. wars
Editing, beginning and ending comments
by Carolyn Bennett

T
ogether with unspeakable horrors perpetrated on hundreds of thousands of peoples whom U.S. plutocracy have invaded, displaced, slaughtered, terrorized across the world – are the lies told and lies believed, and the unspeakable horrors perpetrated upon America’s young.


The U.S. Model: Use, Abuse, Discard

Multiple re-deployments into war zones exact “incalculable mental and emotional costs on America's men and women in uniform and on their families.” The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reportedly has logged an estimate of a military veteran suicide every 65 minutes. In 2012, the number of veteran suicides was greater than U.S. soldiers killed in combat.

“One in 5 veterans of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.…” Three-quarters of young male troops saw someone seriously injured or killed. More than half were attacked or ambushed. Eighty-eight percent received incoming fire. In the minds of these soldiers, the traumatic memories play and replay over and over [referenced: U.S. Army Surgeon General Report, 2008]

Twenty-year-old Levi Derby, born May 13, 1981, in Cissna Park, Illinois, joined the U.S. Army in 2001, and after six months was dropped into the U.S. war on Afghanistan. As a veteran, the United States provided him no health care coverage. After multiple deployments, the horrors of war, and untreated trauma, Levi Derby ended his life.

“Inpatient mental health hospitalization” in the United States reportedly averages around “$2,000” a day. A two to four-week stay costs “$14,000” to “$30,000” – costs which most U.S. families cannot afford without government coverage.  

Levi Derby in his mother’s words

On his return to the United States, U.S. veteran Derby had become increasingly isolated. He was reportedly “not taking care of himself or working and was having recurring nightmares about his experience at war.” One day he and his family realized that he needed inpatient health treatment and decided to take him to a hospital; but en route to the hospital, he reflected on the high cost of treatment and his lack of health care coverage and asked his grandmother who was taking him to return home.

H
is mother was speaking in the Press TV documentary “The Battle Within.”

We send them back over and over and over. No person can handle that. You see things in war that you can’t un-live. You can’t un-remember. It’s there with you forever; and to make them go back multiple times is way too much. No human can handle that.

He came home and all he had was a dead stare … like the walking dead. You could see anger in him and a coldness; the happy son I had known, who had loved life so much, loved children and animals now seemed like this shell of a person.

He was not home long the first time before he was told he would be shipping off to Iraq. He could not bear to go into war again. He had told me when he came home that he had killed and he would never ever kill again.

When he came home they had him on pills to sleep, pills to deal with the nightmares, pills for the anxiety attacks. 

He always had a prescription for Lorazepam for the anxiety attacks. 

Then the doctor that was treating him … said that his PTSD was so severe that he couldn’t tell for certain that he also didn’t suffer from bipolar disorder; and they started trying to treat him with medication for that; so many medications they tried [and] he ended up having allergic reactions to them. 

My son also possibly had a traumatic brain injury that was never diagnosed. From the time that he had come back until the time he died – sometimes blood would trickle out of his ear and down his neck. After his death, when I took the sheets off his bed, there were blood stains on the bed from his ears having bled while he was sleeping.

This veteran’s mother said her son “had felt betrayed by our government and his family and his friends” but “had he been given the proper treatment, he could still be here today.” Instead this young man hanged himself using “the same chain hoist that [his grandfather] had swung him on in a car tire when he was a little boy.”  The soldier’s departing words: 

‘I’m sorry I could not take it anymore so it is time for me to go, to go to where the sun is always sunny and the grass is always green and the flowers smell like honey.’

Twenty-two veterans end their lives every day, the documentary reported, and this is not even the full count. Considered in epidemic proportions, U.S. veterans are killing themselves at rates that “more than double” those of the civilian population. Between 2005 and 2011, an estimated “49,000” U.S. veterans took their lives.

I
 t is not enough to mourn our own or even to mourn the epidemic in soldier suicide. 

It is time for a new model to replace the U.S. model of use-abuse-discard. Time to try nonviolence in domestic and international relations. Time to find other means of meeting challenges and solving problems. Time to evolve from the barbarity of war and war making. Time to stop the killing.


Sources and notes

“The Battle Within,” Press TV documentary Synopsis: “Apart from memories, a heartfelt suicide note is now the only keepsake a mother has of her son, the son whom she lost to constant recurring nightmares of the atrocities he witnessed in Afghanistan. His is by no means an isolated case. According to the US Department of Veteran Affairs, every 65 minutes a military veteran commits suicide. In 2012 more US soldiers killed themselves than died in combat. Treatment for Iraq and Afghanistan vets suffering from PTSD has cost more than 2 billion dollars so far. Multiple redeployments into war zones have not only had unprecedented financial costs for the US government but incalculable mental and emotional costs on America’s men and women in uniform and their families, a clear indication that the greatest casualties of war are seldom on the battlefield.” September 21, 2014,
http://www.presstvdoc.com/Default/Detail/12891
http://www.presstvdoc.com/Default/Detail/12891

Wikipedia on Lorazepam

After its introduction in 1977, Lorazepam’s principal use was in treating anxiety. Among benzodiazepines, Lorazepam has a relatively high physical addiction potential and is recommended for short-term use, up to two to four weeks, only. Long-term effects of benzodiazepines include tolerance, dependence, a benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome, and cognitive impairments which may not completely reverse after cessation of treatment….Withdrawal symptoms can range from anxiety and insomnia to seizures and psychosis.


Lorazepam is used for the short-term treatment of anxiety, insomnia, acute seizures including status epilepticus [a life-threatening condition in which the brain is in a state of persistent seizure], and sedation of hospitalized patients, as well as sedation of aggressive patients.  Adverse effects that may occur include anterograde amnesia [loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia], depression, and paradoxical effects [the same ailments the drug is supposed to cure] such as excitement or worsening of seizures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorazepam

__________________________________________________

A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

__________________________________________________

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Perpetual Wars’ residual bombs, nerve gas endangering water, waterways

Rhine River
 Germany’s Rhine Iraq’s Tigris-Euphrates
From reports by War History Online and Deutsche Welle's "Inside Europe"
Excerpt, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Still haunting Germany

Experts were unable “to defuse a highly explosive aircraft bomb” in Munich, Germany, in late August 2012, so they carried out “a controlled explosion of a 250-kilogram device,” causing a blast that shattered windows in nearby buildings; and though no human beings were injured, the balls of straw that had been placed around the device flew through the air and set moving fires. A day earlier during some construction work, a U.S. military bomb had been discovered, which contained a chemical long-term detonator.
Tigris-Euphrates rivers

The news report said these bombs were built so that when they were detonated, a glass vial filled with acetone, a volatile flammable liquid (C3H6O), would explode. When this flammable liquid is exposed to air, it creates an explosive mixture that can take effect days after detonation. And such devices are “difficult to defuse.”

Experts estimate 100,000 bombs are lying under the soil and under water from the six years of the World War II.

The group Friends of the Earth Germany estimates 40,000 tons of chemical warfare agents are in the Baltic Sea as a result of the Cold War.

Germany’s River Rhine

State of
North Rhine-Westphalia 
During World War II, “most of the industry and armaments factories were based in North Rhine-Westphalia.” Allied bombs “targeted almost half their aerial assaults” on cities along the Rhine, leaving to this day large numbers of their bombs. One 1,400 kg bomb that had been corroding for decades was discovered in recent years when the water levels of the Rhine fell; “45,000 people” were forced to leave their homes.

Chemical warfare residuals

Nerve Gas is a weapon of chemical warfare that affects the transmission of nerve impulses through the nervous system. The organophosphorus (phosphorus/nitrogen-containing compound) nerve agents Tabun, Sarin, and Soman and a newer agent, VX, were produced in huge quantities by the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War.… 

A single droplet of VX or Sarin, if inhaled or in contact with the skin, can be absorbed into the bloodstream and paralyze the nervous system, leading to respiratory failure and immediate death. [Britannica]
1,000's of bombs found in
Germany's
Kothen area

World War II ships now sunken are loaded with explosive devices containing poisons such as mustard gas and Sarin (nerve gas). A representative of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia bomb disposal office, Amin Gebhard, told Deutsche Welle that if the rusting cases containing these explosive devices containing nerve gas continue to corrode the area’s “‘water and the ground water could become contaminated.’” The explosives maintain their destructive power which makes dealing with such devices “increasingly dangerous and more difficult.” 

In a single year, 2010, North-Rhine Westphalia reportedly spent an estimated “21 million Euros ($26.4 million) dealing with bomb disposal.” When sites go under construction, authorities use UK and USA military archived aerial photographs to identify bomb craters and get an idea of the possible number of WWII bombs that had been dropped but not detonated.

2003 War
Iraqis still suffering
before 2014 strikes
2003 War
Iraqis still suffering
before 2014 strikes
The 2012 article concludes that in the post-World War era, “Germany is like a barrel of gunpowder” containing “tens of thousands of unexploded bombs hidden” beneath the surface that “could go off at any time.”

 USA -- 
GERMANY TO IRAQ

T
2003 War
Iraqis still suffering
before 2014 strikes
he stains of war are indelible. They can never be whitewashed or washed away. 

Ruins and residue can be neither removed nor erased. 

2003 War
Iraqis still suffering
before 2014 strikes
Will there ever be the required reconciliation so long as belligerency rules? I do not think so. 

And since men will never learn or even care to mend their ways of violence, I believe essential change will come only when women not mimicking men assume the helm.


Sources and notes

 “Germany is like a barrel of gunpowder. Nearly 70 years after the end of World War II” featured article, September 1, 2012, War History Online, http://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured-article/germany-is-like-a-barrel-of-gunpowder-nearly-70-years-after-the-end-of-world-war-ii.html

Nerve gas.  (2013). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

North Rhine-Westphalia

A British military’s “Operation Marriage” established the state of North Rhine-Westphalia on August 23, 1946, by merging the province of Westphalia and the northern parts of the Rhine Province, “both being political divisions of the former state of Prussia within the German Reich.”

North Rhine-Westphalia today is Germany’s most populous state and the fourth largest state by area.  Its capital is Düsseldorf; its largest city Cologne; its government currently run by a Social Democrats (SPD)/ Greens coalition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Rhine-Westphalia

Iraq’s rivers of Mesopotamia: Tigris-Euphrates under wars

The Tigris and Euphrates, with their tributaries, form a major river system in Western Asia. From sources in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey they flow by/through Syria through Iraq into the Persian Gulf. The Tigris-Euphrates river system is part of the Palearctic (one of eight ecozones dividing the Earth’s surface) Tigris-Euphrates ecoregion, which includes Iraq and parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan.

The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, flowing south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq. The Euphrates River is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia, originating in eastern Turkey and flowing through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf.  With Tigris River, the Euphrates is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigris%E2%80%93Euphrates_river_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigris
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphrates


See also DW's September 12, 2014, edition of “Inside Europe”: a one-hour weekly news magazine hosted by Helen Seeney, “exploring topical issues shaping the continent; dynamic political and social change in recent years: End of the Cold War, introduction of a single currency, enlargement of the European Union eastwards – momentous events affecting the lives of millions – and of interest to millions more.” The program includes interviews with newsmakers and personalities, background features and cultural reports from correspondents throughout the region. http://www.dw.de/inside-europe-inside-europe-2014-09-12/e-17876292

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Friday, September 12, 2014

“YES to PEACE” – “NO to War, Media Propaganda, US/NATO”: Peace People’s Maguire

Hear! Hear!
Insight this week from peace activist Máiread Maguire
Excerpted with minor editing by 
Carolyn Bennett

W
e are at a dangerous point in the history of our human family and it would be the greatest of tragedies for ourselves and our children if we simply allowed the war profiteers to take us into a third world war, resulting in the death of untold millions of people.

While the United States, the United Kingdom and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization push for war with Russia, it behooves people and their governments around the world to take a clear stand for peace and against violence and war – no matter where it comes from.
 
NATO’s decision in Wales in September to create a new 4,000 strong rapid reaction force for initial deployment in the [Baltic States, northeastern region of Europe containing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea] is for all of us a dangerous path to be forced down which, if not stopped, could well lead to a third world war. Cool heads and people of wisdom are needed now; not more guns, more weaponry, more war. From the present conflict in the Ukraine, to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and others – it is the NATO leadership that has been causing ongoing wars.

Provocation, misinformation, demonization, Violence aggression

NATO’s latest move commits its 28 member states to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on the military, and to establish a series of three to five bases in Eastern Europe where equipment and supplies will be pre-positioned to help speed deployments among other measures. This US/NATO decision to create a high readiness force with the alleged purpose of countering an alleged Russian threat reminds me of the war propaganda of lies, half truths, insinuations, rumors to which all of us were subjected in order to try to soften us up for the Iraq war and subsequent horrific wars of terror which were wars carried out by NATO-allied forces, causing the deaths of untold millions of people and destroying their countries. 

NATO’s reports including its satellite photos that show Russian combat forces engaged in military operations inside sovereign territory of Ukraine, according to the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) observation team – were based on false evidence. While NATO is busy announcing a counter-invasion to the non-existent Russian invasion of Ukraine, people in Ukraine are calling out for peace and negotiations, for political leadership that will bring them peace – not weapons and war.

Cold War
The spearhead military force will be provided by allies in rotation and will involve also air, sea and Special Forces. We are informed by a NATO spokesperson also that this spearhead military group will be trained to deal with ‘unconventional’ actions – from the funding of separatist groups to the use of social media, intimidation, and ‘black’ propaganda.

USA-NATO
No doubt the current western media demonization of President Putin and the Russian people, by trying to inculcate fear and hatred of them is part of the ‘black’ propaganda campaign.

NATO’s latest proposals of 4,000 soldiers together with a separate force of a 10,000-strong British-led joint expeditionary force is a highly aggressive move and totally irresponsible by the US/UK/NATO forces.

It breaks the 1997 agreement with Moscow under which
NATO pledged not to base substantial numbers of soldiers in
Eastern Europe on a permanent basis.

The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance should have been disbanded when the Warsaw Pact disintegrated (Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, see note below); but it was not and is now controlled by America for its own agenda – One of former President (William Jefferson) Clinton’s officials, when speaking of NATO, said, ‘America is NATO’.

Instead of having been abolished, NATO is re-inventing itself in re-arming and militarizing European states and justifying its new role by creating enemy images of others, be they Russians or ISIS  (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant: ISIL; Islamic State of Iraq and Syria: ISIS).


Alternative Vision without violence, exceptionalism, supremacy
  
In an inter-dependent, interconnected world struggling to build fraternity, economic cooperation and human security, there is no place for the cold war policies of killing and threats to kill and policies of exceptionalism and superiority. The world has changed. People do not want to be divided; they do not want to return to a cold war; they want to see an end to violence, militarism and war.

T
he old consciousness is dysfunctional and a new consciousness based on an ethic of non-killing and respect and cooperation is spreading. It is time for NATO to recognize that their violent policies are counterproductive. The Ukraine crisis and groups such as ISIS and others will not be solved with guns but with justice and through dialogue.
 
Above all, the world needs hope. It needs inspirational political leadership. This could be given if U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin sat down together to solve the Ukraine conflict through dialogue and negotiation, in a nonviolent way.

Though we live in dangerous times, all things are possible. All things are changing – and peace is possible.

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Notes

The Warsaw Pact, more formally the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance originally composed of the Soviet Union and Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania spanned May 14, 1955 to July 1, 1991. After the democratic revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, the need for Warsaw Pact declined; and on July 1, 1991, at a final summit meeting of Warsaw Pact leaders in Prague, Czechoslovakia, it was formally declared “nonexistent”. Deployed Soviet troops were gradually withdrawn from the former satellite countries, now politically independent countries; and the decades-long confrontation between eastern and western Europe was formally rejected by members of the Warsaw Pact.

The Warsaw Pact’s initial establishment has been immediately occasioned by the Paris agreement among the Western powers admitting West Germany to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  It was a “first step in a more systematic plan to strengthen the Soviet hold over its satellites, a program undertaken by the Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolay Bulganin after their assumption of power early in 1955. The treaty (which was renewed on April 26, 1985) provided for a unified military command and for the maintenance of Soviet military units on the territories of the other participating states. The Pact also served as a lever to enhance the bargaining position of the Soviet Union in international diplomacy [Britannica]

“Say NO to War and Media Propaganda, NO to US/NATO and YES to PEACE” by Máiread Maguire, PEACE PEOPLE, September 10, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/peacepeople?fref=nf

Máiread Maguire (aka Máiread Corrigan Maguire) is a Northern Irish peace activist who, with Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, founded the Peace People originally dedicated to ending sectarian strife in Northern Ireland. With Betty Williams, Máiread Maguire shared the 1976 Nobel Prize for Peace.


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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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