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Warparty Whores

Posted by M. C. on January 12, 2020

ROLL CALL

WASHINGTON — Here’s how area members of Congress voted on major issues during the legislative week ending Jan. 10.

House

Asserting congressional control over war with Iran:

The House on Thursday voted 224-194 to require the administration to obtain advance congressional approval for military actions against Iran or its proxy forces except when there is an imminent threat to the United States, its armed forces or territories. The measure invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which asserts the power of Congress to declare war under Article I of the Constitution. The war-powers law has never been successfully used to end hostilities abroad.

Last year, the House and Senate invoked it to end America’s military involvement in Yemen’s civil war, but President Trump vetoed the measure. U.S.

Rep. Mike Kelly, R-16th Dist.: No. U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-15th Dist. :

No.

Kelly and Thompson are warparty water carriers. The funny part is “an imminent threat to the United States, its armed forces“. We have military bases covering the entire planet. Anything that happens can be contorted to represent a threat to armed forces or embassies.

Regulating cancer-linked “PFAS” chemicals: Voting 247-159, the House on Friday passed a bill (HR 535) that would give the Environmental Protection Agency one year to designate a class of chemicals known as “PFAS” for coverage by the federal Superfund law, which requires abandoned toxic sites to be cleaned up and imposes retroactive liability on those responsible for the pollution. The designation would require cleanup actions near scores of military bases and manufacturing sites throughout the United States where PFAS compounds have leached into groundwater and drinking water. The bill also would require the EPA to set standards for PFAS air emissions and levels in drinking water. PFAS are perfluoroalkyl and polyfl uoroalkyl substances included in firefighting foam used at airports and military installations and in nonstick cookware and some personal care and household products. The compounds have been linked to kidney, liver, testicular and pancreatic cancers; infertility; weakened immune systems and impaired childhood development. Kelly: No.

Thompson: No.

“would require cleanup actions near scores of military bases”

Kelly and Thompson are warparty water carriers. The US government is one of the worst polluters. Think US groundwater, cancer rates in Subic Bay or Middle East burn pits. It cares not for innocents nor it’s own soldiers.

— Voterama in Congress

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Lies

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The Long Sordid History of Pentagon Intervention in Iraq – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on January 11, 2020

Ninth, once the Pentagon discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction, which was the Pentagon’s excuse for the invasion in the first place, it should have apologized for its “mistake” and come home. Instead, the Pentagon stayed in Iraq for several more years, killing and injuring countless more Iraqis…

https://www.fff.org/2020/01/10/the-long-sordid-history-of-pentagon-intervention-in-iraq/

by

There is no reason for the Pentagon to be depressed, despondent, or angry over the fact that Iraqi officials are kicking the Pentagon out of Iraq. The Pentagon doesn’t belong in Iraq in the first place.

First, it’s important to keep in mind that ever since the Pentagon and the rest of the U.S. national-security establishment lost their official Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, with the end of the Cold War in 1989, Iraq never invaded the United States or even threatened to do so. In the 30 years that the Pentagon has been killing people and wreaking destruction in Iraq, it has always been the Pentagon that has been the aggressor and Iraq the defender.

Second, it’s also important to keep in mind that during the 1980s, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was a partner and ally of the Pentagon, when the Pentagon was helping him to wage his brutal 8-year war against Iran.

Third, U.S. officials expressed indifference to their partner and ally Saddam when he expressed exasperation with Kuwait, which, he said, was stealing oil from Iraq by slant-drilling into Iraqi land. That expressed indifference to a partner and ally could easily be construed as giving a green light for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.

Fourth, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the dispute was no business of the Pentagon, given that the invasion did not constitute an invasion of the United States. Nonetheless, the Pentagon intervened in the conflict, notwithstanding the fact that Congress had not declared war on Iraq, as the Constitution requires. The Pentagon killed countless Iraqis in what was clearly an illegal U.S. war under U.S. law.

Fifth, the Pentagon had no business intentionally destroying Iraq’s water-and-sewage treatment plants during the course of its intervention. That was a war crime, especially since the Pentagon’s intent was to spread infectious illnesses among the Iraqi people.

Sixth, the Pentagon had no legitimate authority to establish “no-fly zones” over Iraq after hostilities ended. The Pentagon continue to kill Iraqis during the enforcement of such zones, including a teenage boy who was just tending his sheep.

Seventh, the Pentagon had no business enforcing sanctions on Iraq during the 1990s, especially when it became painfully clear that they were killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, including through infectious illnesses from polluted water. The sanctions were preventing Iraqis from repairing the water-and-sewage treatment plants that the Pentagon had intentionally destroyed during the Persian Gulf War. It was the deaths of those children that turned out to be a major contributing cause to anti-American terrorism, such as the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the USS Cole, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa, the 9/11 attacks, the Fort Hood attacks, the Detroit would-be attack, and many more.

Eighth, the Pentagon had no legitimate authority to invade Iraq after the 9/11 attacks because Congress never issued a declaration of war against Iraq, as the Constitution requires. Moreover, even if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in violation of UN resolutions, only the UN had the authority to enforce its own resolutions. Iraq never invaded the United States. That made the Pentagon the aggressor against Iraq once again. The Pentagon killed and injured countless more Iraqis in the process and ended up destroying the entire country under its mantra “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

Ninth, once the Pentagon discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction, which was the Pentagon’s excuse for the invasion in the first place, it should have apologized for its “mistake” and come home. Instead, the Pentagon stayed in Iraq for several more years, killing and injuring countless more Iraqis during its occupation and wreaking continued destruction all across the country.

Tenth, the Pentagon’s invasion of Iraq gave rise to ISIS, which the Pentagon used as the excuse for wreaking even more death and destruction, not only in Iraq but also across the Middle East. That’s why the Pentagon is in Iraq today—ostensibly to defeat the entity that the Pentagon brought into existence with its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Evicting the Pentagon from Iraq is the best thing Iraqi officials could do, both for the people of the Middle East and the United States. The Pentagon has wreaked enough death, suffering, and destruction in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. The sooner the Pentagon comes home, the better off everyone will be.

Donate – Jacob Hornberger – Libertarian for President

Next President?

 

 

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When did it become acceptable to kill a top leader of a country we aren’t even at war with?

Posted by M. C. on January 11, 2020

How did it become acceptable to assassinate one of the top military officers of a country with whom we are not formally at war during a public visit to a third country that had no opposition to his presence?

Mr. Webb has the question wrong. When hasn’t it been acceptable?

https://outline.com/6fqZfB

Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, served in the U.S. Senate from 2007 to 2013 and was secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1988.

Strongly held views are unlikely to change regarding the morality and tactical wisdom of President Trump’s decision to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani as he traveled on a road outside the Baghdad airport after having arrived on a commercial flight. But the debate regarding the long-term impact of this act on America’s place in the world, and the potential vulnerability of U.S. government officials to similar reprisals, has just begun.

How did it become acceptable to assassinate one of the top military officers of a country with whom we are not formally at war during a public visit to a third country that had no opposition to his presence? And what precedent has this assassination established on the acceptable conduct of nation-states toward military leaders of countries with which we might have strong disagreement short of actual war — or for their future actions toward our own people?…

Now, despite Trump’s previous assertions that he wants to dramatically reduce the United States’ footprint in the Middle East, it seems clear that he has been seduced into making unwise announcements similar to the rhetoric used by his immediate predecessors of both parties. Their blunders — in Iraq, Libya and Syria — destabilized the region and distracted the United States from its greatest long-term challenge: China’s military and economic expansion throughout the world…

What happens next:…

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JFK-CIA

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Ukrainian 752 Shoot-Down Mirrors Fate of TWA 800 – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on January 11, 2020

Accidents had happened before in such an environment.  On July 3, 1988, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, an Aegis cruiser in the Persian Gulf, the USS Vincennes, fired two Standard Missiles at a commercial Iranian Airbus, IR 655.

With the media’s help, the truth about the Vincennes ultimately surfaced.  With the media’s help, the truth about TWA 800 was successfully buried, but here is what we have been able to dig up…

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/ukrainian_752_shootdown_mirrors_fate_of_twa_800.html

By Jack Cashill

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is saying out loud what others have been thinking since the news broke that Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed soon after taking off from the airport in Tehran — namely, that “the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile,” likely unintentionally.

According to the New York Times, American officials also had a “high level of confidence” that the Iranians destroyed the airliner by mistake.  One official specifically cited two SA-15 missiles fired from an Iranian air defense system.

If Trudeau proves right, this will not be the first time an anxious military accidentally shot down a non-threatening commercial aircraft.  On July 17, 1996, a comparable missile strike destroyed TWA 800 off the coast of Long Island shortly after the Boeing 747 took off from JFK.

We know why the Iranians were antsy earlier this week.  Their military fired off multiple missiles late Tuesday night at American targets and were likely expecting retaliation.  On July 17, 1996, the American military had reason to be on edge as well.

Two days before the start of the Atlanta Olympics, the Clinton administration had the U.S. Navy on the highest state of alert since the Cuban Missile crisis.  In this hair-trigger environment, accidents could happen.

Accidents had happened before in such an environment.  On July 3, 1988, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, an Aegis cruiser in the Persian Gulf, the USS Vincennes, fired two Standard Missiles at a commercial Iranian Airbus, IR 655.

IR 655 had reached 13,500 feet, a final altitude almost identical to TWA 800’s, when Capt. Will Rogers III gave the order to fire.  Rogers and his crew had mistaken the ascending passenger jet with 290 people on board for a descending Iranian F-14, a fighter plane.

With the media’s help, the truth about the Vincennes ultimately surfaced.  With the media’s help, the truth about TWA 800 was successfully buried, but here is what we have been able to dig up.

  • In the last several years, researchers have unearthed an astonishing treasure trove of CIA documents and secured a confirmed video of a Long Island missile launch on July 12, five days before TWA 800’s demise on July 17.  The CIA conceded that at least four witnesses had reported seeing a missile launch on July 7, 1996, as well.  Note the dates.  There is a pattern here.
  • According to an air traffic controller at NY TRACON, “[a] primary radar return (ASR-9) indicated vertical movement intersecting TWA 800,” and then “TWA800” disappeared.
  • As Clinton anti-terror czar Richard Clarke tells it, he immediately called a high-level meeting in the White House situation room after the crash.
  • Illegally, but publicly, the FBI seized control of the investigation from the NTSB within hours of the crash.
  • According to CIA documents, “[t]he DI [Directorate of Intelligence] became involved in the ‘missile theory’ the day after the crash occurred.”
  • According to the CIA, within two weeks of the disaster, FBI agents had interviewed 144 “excellent” eyewitnesses to a likely missile strike and found the evidence for such a strike “overwhelming.”
  • The CIA analyst boasted of discouraging the FBI from releasing its missile report.  He seems to have succeeded.
  • Two weeks later, the FBI permitted the New York Times to interview one and only one eyewitness.  He saw the event out of the corner of his eye and thought it was a bomb.
  • The NTSB eventually identified 258 eyewitnesses who had seen a glowing object streaking towards TWA 800.  At least 56 had followed the object from the horizon.
  • The Times interviewed none of the 258.
  • At the FBI’s direction, the Times ran an above-the-fold, front-page headline on August 23, 1996, “Prime Evidence Found That Device Exploded in Cabin of TWA 800.”
  • On September 19, the Times signaled the government’s switch from a “bomb” to a “mechanical failure alone” explanation.
  • On September 20, to make sense of the switch, the FBI claimed that the TWA 800 aircraft had “previously been used in a law enforcement training exercise for bomb-detection dogs.”
  • As was easily proved, the test in question did not take place on the TWA 800 plane, and the training aids did not match in placement or in composition the explosive residue found.
  • The eyewitnesses were not so easily explained away.  With the NTSB illegally shut out of witness review, the FBI turned the task over to the CIA.
  • Working with just one third of the witness statements, the CIA concluded that the eyewitnesses saw the nose-less aircraft ascend more than 3,000 feet, mimicking the path of a missile.
  • In April 1997, a dissenter on the FBI missile team, Steve Bongardt, demanded to know why the CIA failed to account for the eight witnesses who saw an object “hit the aircraft.”
  • To sell its lie, as the CIA documents prove, the CIA created at least three critical witness statements from whole cloth and flagrantly corrupted more than two hundred others.

Nothing the Iranians say about the cause of the crash can be taken at face value.  At this stage, they are denying responsibility and claiming mechanical failure.  In 1996, we did the same.  As we have seen with the Russia collusion hoax, our intelligence agencies can be subverted when the party in power rewards them for their mischief and the media cover it up.

Let the Iranians worry about Iranian screw-ups.  It is past time we investigate our own.

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What Really Happened To TWA Flight 800? - YouTube

 

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What is the Real Deception when Liars, Cheaters, and Thieves Control the Narrative? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on January 11, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/01/gary-d-barnett/what-is-the-real-deception-when-liars-cheaterBy s-and-thieves-control-the-narrative/

By

“I was a CIA director, we lied, we cheated we stole… like, we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

Michael Pompeo ~ U.S. Secretary of State and former CIA Director

…

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Central Intelligence Agency | The Official ECHOISTHENAME ...

 

 

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An Embarrassment of Embassies – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on January 11, 2020

The playwright Arthur Miller observed, “A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors.” With their hands deep into our pockets.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/01/becky-akers/an-embarrassment-of-embassies-2/

By

“Protesters broke into the heavily guarded compound of the United States Embassy in Baghdad on [Dec. 31, 2019] and set fires inside … The men … demand[ed] that the United States withdraw its forces from Iraq.”

YAWN. Old news: mobs in the Middle East have been bawling such objections for decades, though I grant that they’re hard to hear over the windows they shatter and their Molotov cocktails. And of course patriots who revere liberty agree wholeheartedly that Washington should recall its hired killers. In that spirit, I offer a friendly amendment to the militants: how about the US withdraws its ambassador and worthless diplomats, too?

The embassy lately attacked in Baghdad, America’s “biggest and most expensive in the world,” robbed us serfs of $750 million when it was built during George the Pea-brain’s reign; were I the editor of a dictionary, I’d illustrate “boondoggle” with its picture.

Actually, I’d feature the whole of Iraq under “boondoggle.” As of 2012, Our Rulers’ largesse there held the infuriating distinction of “the most ambitious American aid effort since the Marshall Plan”—and that’s on top of the $5-$12 trillion for DC’s wars in and around Iraq. Why we pay to destroy a place and then “restore” it is a conundrum only the military-industrial complex and their bought-and-paid-for politicians can fathom. Rational folks with even a speck of prudence or humanity will never comprehend such evil.

Ergo, by 2012, repairing Iraq had “already cost $500 million, including $343 million worth of construction projects around the country” and $100 million on the “Iraqi Police College.” Though said college is a bargain compared to the embassy, it’s also a more damnable waste of our money than usual: not only did “Iraqi officials…say they never wanted it in the first place,” but the facility was “turned over to the Iraqis at year’s end because [the US Dept of] State”—under whose aegis all “diplomatic missions” fall—”didn’t get land rights use for more than one year.” Clearly, State’s criminals aren’t nearly as rapacious with foreigners as they are with America’s peons.

But I digress. The Feds’ “compound” in Baghdad comprises 104 acres, making it “larger than Vatican City.” And though the Vatican beats the compound all hollow for magnificent architecture, Pope Marx–sorry, Francis must envy the diplomats’ “food court and a shopping mall where embassy staff can spend their hazard pay” (yep, those are more of your taxes at work, subsidizing the compound’s 1350 federal sponges. That figure was current in 2013; given government’s propensity for growth, the sponges have probably multiplied a few dozen times by now), “a six-lane swimming pool…fitness center…a regulation-size basketball court… There’s even an irrigation system, which makes [a] regulation-size soccer field possible.” Après-exercise, the leeches can feast in a “palatial dining room” offering “burgers, sushi, ‘Mexican Fiesta,’ Thai beef, grilled shrimp salad, sandwiches and more.” Don’t forget the extravagant piles of fresh fruit and “a wide variety of desserts… The Embassy generates its own power, has wells for water, as well as treatment and sewage plants.”

What else could the bloodsuckers in Baghdad want? Plenty: “…three and a half years after American diplomats moved into the massive $700 million facility,” they lavished an additional  $115 million on “upgrade[s],” the “most interesting” of which “is the construction of a data hall in an existing classified embassy annex building…” Hmmm. The NSA East?

Sic transit gloria. Last week’s protests “scorched” the entrance to this staggeringly sumptuous fortress.

But of course building and maintaining such an enclave merely inaugurated the overspending—and apply only to this embassy: the US boasts another 167 of these money-pits. We also foot the bills for securing them. Then there are the salaries for the ambassadors, assorted diplomats, staff, etc. Your Intrepid Reporter tried to discover exactly how much of our wealth Leviathan squanders on “diplomacy,” but the State Department’s bureaucratic complexity and overlapping “duties” and definitions thwarted this quest. My best estimate is half of the Deparment’s budget, or $20 billion. (Tragically, State’s forty billion bucks are barely worth discussing: Medicare, Social Security, “National Defence,” and “Health” plunder us of trillions, plural.)

And what do we get for that $20 billion? Nothing. Zero, zilch, nada…

More likely, you visited a consulate. It’s easy to confuse consulates and embassies, because the State Department spawns both, and they’re both varieties of “diplomacy.” But expecting a bureaucratic office to fulfill more than one function would limit government’s size, you see. And so a consulate sticks to “helping” Americans abroad in the same way that the DMV back home does: by selling us documents we neither want nor need so bureaucrats can track and control us…

Meanwhile, an embassy has just two goals: to massage its potentates’ egos and glorify their government. Embassies and ambassadors amplify their state’s pomp and self-importance in the hopes of wowing the international political class…

You and I as mere citizens aren’t even a blip on their radar, until the bills from the butcher, the baker and the caterers arrive. Debt is all an embassy ever gives its patsies…

The playwright Arthur Miller observed, “A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors.” With their hands deep into our pockets.

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Nit

 

 

 

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Imperialism 101 – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on January 11, 2020

Never in the past half-century have we seen the Arab states so pathetically feeble. Never have we seen Israel so strongly guiding US Mideast policy, including the murder of Gen. Soleimani.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/01/eric-margolis/imperialism-101/

By

Special for LewRockwell.com

What ever happened to Iraq?  Is it not an independent country with a democratic government thanks to the 2003 US invasion?  So says Washington.

The murder of senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani suddenly shone a strobe light on ‘independent’ Iraq, and what we saw was not pretty.

Welcome to the new Imperialism 101.

Iraq’s population is estimated around 39 million.  The pre-war Iraq of 2003 was broken into three parts by the US-British invasion:  the Shia majority; Kurds in the north; and Sunnis, with scatterings of other ethnicities.  Iraq remains fragmented into hostile groups.

Its Shia are confusingly allied to the US and Iran. The killing of Maj. Gen. Soleimani by the Americans has thrown this alliance of convenience into confusion. Iraqi Kurds are close to the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence. The Sunnis are left adrift, without any foreign patrons except for other feeble Arab states.

The US maintains a modest garrison of 5,000 infantry in Iraq and 3-5 air bases, as well as the gigantic fortified US Embassy in Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone which contains one of the world’s largest CIA bases. Angry mobs demonstrating in front of the embassy triggered off the chain of events that led to Trump’s murder of Gen. Soleimani. That an impeached president should be murdering foreign figures is a question that Congress must ask.

Before he was murdered, Osama bin Laden called this monster Baghdad embassy and its twin in Kabul, `crusader fortresses.’ That is indeed their role, and to serve as the nerve center for all Mideast operations by the US. Iraq enjoys some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Where the profit from Iraq’s mammoth oil exports go remains a closely guarded secret.

Combined with Saudi Arabia – also controlled by the US – Iraq gives Washington control of the bulk of Mideast oil. The US no longer relies on oil from the Mideast, being self-sufficient – at least for now. But dominating the Mideast gives the US huge influence over China, Japan, India, and Europe, all of whom import oil from there. This is the main pillar of US world power and the supremacy of the dollar.

Returning to Iraq, Washington has imposed an air exclusivity zone there. Real control of flat, largely barren Iraq comes from the air. US war planes based there and in Qatar can blast anything that moves in Mesopotamia. Imperial Britain ruled Iraq the same way, using the RAF to smash all opposition to the British-installed puppet ruler in Baghdad. In the 1920’s Churchill even authorized the RAF to use poison gas against rebellious Iraqi Kurds (as well as Afghan Pashtun tribes).

US-ruled Iraq is not allowed to have a real air force, only a handful of light aircraft. The same ban applies to Afghanistan. Iraq’s so-called army, a mob of unruly militias of the type the Ottomans used to call ‘bashi-bazouks,’ is of little military value though partly equipped by US weapons. They are increasingly being attacked by US warplanes.

The US really runs Iraq from three large air bases that were the target of the recent bloodless Iranian missile attacks. Iraq’s current US-approved prime minister Abdul-Mahdi and its feeble parliament have voted for the ouster of all US forces from Iraq. Good luck to them. Washington will likely ignore Iraq’s supposedly ‘democratic’ government and continue to act as the sultan of Iraq.

Iraq has become the central military base and inexhaustible oil reservoir for the US that was envisaged by the Bush administration and its neocons. That is a major step in the total US domination of the Mideast and its energy resources.

Israel has achieved its long sought goal of removing Iraq from the confrontation over Palestine. With Egypt under a US-imposed dictator, that leaves only demolished Syria to stand up to Israel. The Saudis are gleefully stabbing their ‘brother’ Arabs in the back, as they always have done.

Never in the past half-century have we seen the Arab states so pathetically feeble. Never have we seen Israel so strongly guiding US Mideast policy, including the murder of Gen. Soleimani.

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aipac

 

 

 

 

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Report: US Drone Strike Kills 60 Afghan Civilians, Taliban Commander – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on January 10, 2020

…at the request of Afghan puppet Security Forces…

Last month, the Washington Post published an in-depth investigation that found US military officials systematically undercounted the number of Afghan civilians killed by US forces.

So do drones create more terrorist than they kill?

https://original.antiwar.com/Brett_Wilkins/2020/01/09/report-us-drone-strike-kills-40-afghan-civilians-taliban-commander/

by

An unconfirmed number of Afghan civilians – reportedly more than 60 – were killed along with the regional leader of a splinter Taliban faction and dozens of militants in a US drone attack in Herat province on Wednesday.

Local government officials and members of the Herat provincial council told Tolo News, Afghanistan’s leading 24/7 television news channel, that “at least 60 civilians, including women and children” died in US drone strikes in Shindand, a town in southern Herat. The outlet reported that four armed drones attacked several homes, targeting Mullah Mohammad Nangyalai, the regional leader of an insurgent faction of the Taliban led by Mullah Mohammad Rasoul. Some 30-35 Taliban fighters were also reportedly killed in the attack.

The US military newspaper Stars & Stripes reports Pentagon and Afghan government officials confirmed the strikes occurred. “US Forces-Afghanistan, at the request of Afghan Security Forces, conducted a coordinated defensive air strike in support of Afghan forces in Shindand, Herat on January 8, 2020,” a US statement said. The military did not comment on the alleged civilian casualties. The Canadian private security firm GardaWorld issued an advisory after the strike, stating it was reportedly carried out in retaliation for a recent militant attack on an anti-Taliban militia in which 16 people, including 1 civilian, were killed.

According to Stars & Stripes, the attack began at 4 pm on Wednesday in an area controlled by the Afghan government. The drone strikes were reportedly launched as militants were preparing to attack a government checkpoint. Local resident Abdul Hakim told the paper that US forces carried out a “double tap” strike, in which drones or warplanes return to bomb first responders. Hakim said “a few civilians were killed and injured” in the second strike as they gathered the remains of those killed in the first attack.

Herat Public Health Director Dr. Abdul Hakim Tamana told Stars & Stripes that at least 10 victims were transported from Shindand to the regional hospital in the city of Herat, about 90 miles (145 km) away. Tamana could not say whether the patients were civilians or militants. “We will investigate the reports of civilian casualties,” an Afghan Defense Ministry spokesperson told Tolo News.

Last month, the Washington Post published an in-depth investigation that found US military officials systematically undercounted the number of Afghan civilians killed by US forces. The House of Representatives subsequently included language in the $738 billion military spending bill for 2020, signed by President Donald Trump, that mandates more accurate reporting of civilian casualties. Earlier in 2019, Trump signed an executive order revoking an Obama-era requirement that the director of national intelligence publish an annual report on civilian deaths caused by drone strikes in areas “outside of war zones” that are nevertheless under US attack, including Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and Libya.

Civilian casualties have soared in nearly all of the seven countries – those mentioned above plus Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria – under US attack in the open-ended war against terrorism. The Trump administration has sought ways to end the US war in Afghanistan, now in its 19th year, by negotiating with the Taliban while simultaneously stepping up bombing and drone attacks against the Islamist militant group. Trump has followed through on his campaign promise to “bomb the shit” out of militant Islamists and “take out their families” – a war crime, while his administration has loosened rules of engagement meant to protect civilians, further increasing civilian casualties.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, an estimated 157,000 people have died as a direct result of the US-led war in Afghanistan since it began in October 2001, including more than 43,000 Afghan civilians, over 64,000 Afghan security forces, 42,000 Taliban and other insurgents, more than 7,200 US and allied foreign troops and contractors and over 500 humanitarian aid workers and journalists.

Last September, Trump raised eyebrows and ire when he suggested that a nuclear war against Afghanistan would result in a quick US victory. “If we wanted to do a certain method of war, we would win that very quickly,” the president said in a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. “But many, many – really, tens of millions of people – would be killed. And we think it’s unnecessary.”

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Progressive Eco-Group Admits It: Renewable Energy is a Hoax that Benefits its Greenie Elmer Gantries like Al Gore – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on January 10, 2020

We are not concerned with slightly reducing the harm caused by industrial civilization; we are interested in stopping that harm completely. Doing so will require dismantling the global industrial economy, which will render impossible the creation of these technologies.

Al Gore.  When he left the vice presidency in 2001, his net worth was estimated at $1 million to $2 million.  Since then, his wealth has skyrocketed to $300 million,

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/progressive_ecogroup_admits_it_renewable_energy_is_a_hoax_that_benefits_its_greenie_elmer_gantries_like_al_gore.html

Independent physicist John Droz, Jr. alerted me to the website of Deep Green Resistance (DGR), an international environmental organization that calls for the total destruction of what it refers to as the “global industrial economy,” a.k.a. capitalism.  Given the group’s hard-left credentials, its call for dismantling capitalism throughout the world is not surprising.

What is surprising is that in an unusual show of progressive candor, Deep Green Resistance openly acknowledges what skeptical scientists have been saying for more than two decades: that renewable energy is a government-backed hoax that enriches big corporations — and green energy investors like Al Gore — at the expense of taxpayers and the environment.  If you find that admission hard to believe, please keep reading.  The questions and answers below are verbatim from the FAQ page on the organization’s website.

Will green technology save the planet?

No. Wind turbines, solar PV panels, and the grid itself are all manufactured using cheap energy from fossil fuels. When fossil fuel costs begin to rise such highly manufactured items will simply cease to be feasible.

Solar panels and wind turbines aren’t made out of nothing.  They are made out of metals, plastics, and chemicals. These products have been mined out of the ground, transported, processed, manufactured.  Each stage leaves behind a trail of devastation: habitat destruction, water contamination, colonization, toxic waste, slave labor, greenhouse gas emissions, wars, and corporate profits.

The basic ingredients for renewables are the same materials that are ubiquitous in industrial products, like cement and aluminum. No one is going to make cement in any quantity without using the energy of fossil fuels. And aluminum? The mining itself is a destructive and toxic nightmare from which riparian communities will not awaken in anything but geologic time.

From beginning to end, so called “renewable energy” and other “green technologies” lead to the destruction of the planet. These technologies are rooted in the same industrial extraction and production processes that have rampaged across the world for the last 150 years.

We are not concerned with slightly reducing the harm caused by industrial civilization; we are interested in stopping that harm completely. Doing so will require dismantling the global industrial economy, which will render impossible the creation of these technologies.

Will renewable energy save the economy?

Renewable energy technologies rely heavily on government subsidies, taken from taxpayers and given directly to large corporations like General Electric, BP, Samsung, and Mitsubishi.  While the scheme pads their bottom lines, it doesn’t help the rest of us.

Further, this is the wrong question to ask.  The industrial capitalist economy is dispossessing and impoverishing billions of humans and killing the living world.  Renewable energy depends on centralized capital and power imbalance.  We don’t benefit from saving that system.

Instead of advocating for more industrial technology, we need to move to local economies based on community decision-making and what our local landbases can provide sustainably.  And we need to stop the global economy on which renewable energy depends.

“Stopping the global economy” means destroying the capitalist system that created here in America the most widespread prosperity the world has ever known.  That a progressive eco-group would admit that the true agenda behind the push for renewable energy has nothing to do with “saving the planet” and everything to do with destroying capitalism is quite remarkable.  To reinforce its position that renewable energy is a hoax, DGR’s website has a cartoon that shows dollar bills being sucked from a wind turbine directly into the pocket of a fat cat investor in subsidized green energy projects.

The Elmer Gantry of renewable energy

Few insiders have profited more from taxpayer-backed renewable energy projects than Al Gore.  When he left the vice presidency in 2001, his net worth was estimated at $1 million to $2 million.  Since then, his wealth has skyrocketed to $300 million, and if the climate change legislation he advocates is enacted, the former vice president stands to become a billionaire.  Much of his enviable fortune has come from being an inside investor in government-backed renewable energy projects, many of which went belly up after the insiders made off with millions, leaving hard-working U.S. taxpayers stuck with the bill.

Like all wealthy eco-preachers, the Elmer Gantry of renewable energy uses his immense wealth to indulge in lavish living.  When asked by Rep. Marsha Blackburn during his 2009 testimony before Congress whether he personally profits from his advocacy of global warming, Pastor Al professed a vow of poverty, and if you’ve never seen video of the tense encounter, you don’t want to miss it: “Every penny I have made I have put into a non-profit deal, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge. And Congresswoman, if you believe the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is out of greed, you do not know me.”

Turned out Rep. Blackburn knows him quite well.  As greedy owner of a gargantuan green energy fortune, Pastor Al looked her squarely in the eye and denied making even a penny of profit.  If every penny he makes goes into a non-profit deal, how did he end up with $300 million?  The same way his alter ego pilfered money from the Lord: by concealing his true stripes.

As the social Utopians at Deep Green Resistance openly acknowledge, the push for a “green economy” is a scam that enriches big corporations and fat-cat investors like Al Gore.  Shortly after teen climate activist Greta Thunberg gave an emotion-charged speech at the UN last September, I wrote about the renewable energy hoax in The Cynical Plot behind Global Warming Hysteria.  If not for a totally corrupt western media, two things would have happened years ago: man-made global warming theory would have been blown out of the water, and Pastor Al would have been called out as the self-righteous hypocrite he is.

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Delingpole: Glacier National Park Removes ‘Glaciers Gone by 2020’ Signs

Posted by M. C. on January 10, 2020

The signs now say: “Currently, they are rapidly shrinking due to human-accelerated climate change. When they will completely disappear, however, depends on how and when we act.”

But this is green propaganda, not science.

…the world’s glaciers began retreating in about 1820 (long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions could conceivably have made any difference to climate) as the planet started to emerge from the Little Ice Age.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/08/glacier-national-park-removes-glaciers-gone-2020-signs/

James Delingpole

Glacier National Park is replacing signs predicting that its glaciers will be “gone by 2020.”

Sharp-eyed visitors have noticed that far from disappearing by 2020, some of them have actually increased in size, and 29 of the glaciers in the Montana park remain stubbornly unmelted, despite “climate change.”

The National Park Service (NPS) — presumably to hide its embarrassment — started removing the signs by stealth last year.

But it was rumbled by Roger Roots, founder of Lysander Spooner University, who wrote in a post at Watts Up With That?:

The centerpiece of the visitor center at St. Mary near the east boundary is a large three-dimensional diorama showing lights going out as the glaciers disappear. Visitors press a button to see the diorama lit up like a Christmas tree in 1850, then showing fewer and fewer lights until the diorama goes completely dark. As recently as September 2018 the diorama displayed a sign saying GNP’s glaciers were expected to disappear completely by 2020.

But at some point during this past winter (as the visitor center was closed to the public), workers replaced the diorama’s “gone by 2020” engraving with a new sign indicating the glaciers will disappear in “future generations.”

Almost everywhere, the Park’s specific claims of impending glacier disappearance have been replaced with more nuanced messaging indicating that everyone agrees that the glaciers are melting. Some signs indicate that glacial melt is “accelerating.”

A common trick used by the National Park Service at GNP is to display old black-and-white photos of glaciers from bygone years (say, “1922”) next to photos of the same glaciers taken in more recent years showing the glaciers much diminished (say, “2006”). Anyone familiar with glaciers in the northern Rockies knows that glaciers tend to grow for nine months each winter and melt for three months each summer. Thus, such photo displays without precise calendar dates may be highly deceptive.

A spokeswoman for the Park, Gina Kurzman, has now confirmed the changes to CNN:

The signs in the Montana park were added more than a decade ago to reflect climate change forecasts at the time by the US Geological Survey, park spokeswoman Gina Kurzmen told CNN.

In 2017, the park was told by the agency that the complete melting off of the glaciers was no longer expected to take place so quickly due to changes in the forecast model, Kurzmen said. But tight maintenance budgets made it impossible for the park to immediately change the signs.

The most prominent placards, at St. Mary’s Visitor Center, were changed last year. Kurzmen says that park is still waiting for budget authorization to update signs at two other locations.

But the glacier warning isn’t being removed entirely, she told CNN. Instead, the new signs will say: “When they will completely disappear depends on how and when we act. One thing is consistent: the glaciers in the park are shrinking.”

However, even the altered signs are not accurate.

According to Roots — whose video documenting the changes can be viewed here — some of the most famous glaciers in the park have actually grown in the last decade:

Teams from Lysander Spooner University visiting the Park each September have noted that GNP’s most famous glaciers such as the Grinnell Glacier and the Jackson Glacier appear to have been growing—not shrinking—since about 2010. (The Jackson Glacier—easily seen from the Going-To-The-Sun Highway—may have grown as much as 25% or more over the past decade.)

The signs now say: “Currently, they are rapidly shrinking due to human-accelerated climate change. When they will completely disappear, however, depends on how and when we act.”

But this is green propaganda, not science.

In fact, glacier retreat has nothing whatsoever to do with “human-accelerated climate change” (whatever that is). As Gregory Wrightstone notes in his book Inconvenient Facts, the world’s glaciers began retreating in about 1820 (long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions could conceivably have made any difference to climate) as the planet started to emerge from the Little Ice Age.

 

Be seeing you

 

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