David Swanson

Franz Kafka's book "The Trial" begins "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." There follow many thousands of words describing the ordeal of someone denied the right to know the charges against him, to face his accusers, to be given a fair and speedy trial by a jury of his peers, and so forth. We have read thousands of stories of such "Kafkan" experiences since the advent of the Global War of Terror. But we need a different kind of story now.

What if the beginning read like this: "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was killed one fine morning." With that kind of beginning, there can be no second sentence, unless the story jumps backward in time. With assassinations and drone strikes, night raids, and check point shootings replacing disappearances, imprisonments, renditions, and torture as tools of the imperial trade, we need stories that begin a lot earlier and end the moment the abuse starts. We need people's childhoods, adolescences, friends, loved-ones, hobbies, and careers. We need to know what they were doing that week, the previous evening, and the moments before they were annihilated. We need to know their last words, the last letter they wrote, the last person they kissed, the last child they cared for (or were they a child?). We need to understand who they were as that obvious and tautological but so elusive and all-decisive thing: human beings, fellow creatures whom we could imagine as parts of our own lives. We need to be able to picture that person in the instant that the explosion rips their flesh apart.

More »

Stephen Lendman

For many years, Israel's open secret is that it's one of eight known nuclear powers, including America and Russia with about 97% of the world's arsenal according to Helen Caldicott in her book "Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer." The others are Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel - North Korea a declared but unverified one.

In her January 20, 2009 Canadian Medical Association Journal article titled, "Obama and the opportunity to eliminate nuclear weapons" Caldicott wrote:

"The Cold War is over, but the threat of nuclear war is not. Little progress has been made since 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed. In fact, the threat of nuclear annihilation has escalated. In 1972, when 5 nuclear nations....signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they agreed to rapidly disarm. They have done the opposite," resulting in a greater than ever threat, the Pentagon's new Nuclear Posture Review and US-Russia deal doing nothing to reverse it. (See Obama's Brave Nuke World.)

In his 1991 book, "The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and America Foreign Policy," Seymour Hersh discussed its strategy to launch a massive nuclear counterattack if it felt its existence threatened, the stark message being the next regional war may be nuclear.

In his 1997 book, "Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies," Israel Shahak said that, helped by the Israeli Lobby (and Christian Zionists), "Israel (is) clearly prepar(ing) itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East (with no) hesitati(on) to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones."

Shahak also explained that Israel regards "the launching of missiles (onto its territory) as 'nonconventional' regardless of whether they are equipped with explosives or poison gas." In turn, Israel's nuclear doctrine dictates that a "nonconventional" attack requires one in response, meaning a nuclear one, the foundation of its grand strategy, according to Shahak.

According to Hebrew University's Professor of Military History Martin Van Creveld, "We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you (it) will happen before Israel goes under."

Israel maintains a double standard. It won't let another Middle East state acquire nuclear weapons, but will never give up its own or the right to use them preemptively.

More »

Jeremy Scahill

As the Obama Administration continues the military privatization
agenda, a CIA-connected firm and an Israeli-run company named
Instinctive Shooting International are looking to cash in

The Obama administration has continued the Bush-era reliance on private contractors to sustain the US occupation of Iraq and the US operations in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, Obama has surpassed Bush’s reliance on contractors with current contractor levels surpassing 100,000 Defense Department contractors deployed. In Iraq, Obama has maintained the long-standing ratio of one contractor to every US soldier.

General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan/Pakistan, said recently that he believes the US has “created in ourselves a dependency on contractors that is greater than it ought to be.” He added: “I think it doesn’t save money. I actually think it would be better to reduce the number of contractors involved, increase the number of military if necessary.”

Despite such proclamations, the pattern of dependence on contractors is continuing unabated—and not just within the Department of Defense.

More »