Stephen Lendman

Measuring 7.1 (one or more other reports said 7.4), rocked northeast Japan, causing more damage and disruption to a devastated area. It cut electricity to four million homes, disrupted power at two nuclear facilities, and according to Kyodo News:

"Radioactive water spilled from pools holding spent nuclear fuel rods at the Onagawa power plant in Miyagi Prefecture," according to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).

For up to 80 minutes, power was lost at Onagawa and the Higashidori nuclear facility. "A small amount of contaminated water spilled on the floor (inside) all three (Onagawa) reactors....In all, water spilled or leaked at eight sections of the plant," also run by Tokyo Electric (TEPCO). In addition, blowout panels designed to control pressure were damaged in reactor number three's turbine building, TEPCO saying a complete damage assessment was ongoing.

Moreover, a Rokkasho village (Aomori Prefecture) spent nuclear fuel disposal facility also lost power temporarily. The extent of nuclear facility damage is unknown, except for sketchy and unreliable official reports.

As always, they say damage, new or earlier, poses no dangers. Already, in fact, Fukushima caused potentially apocalyptic ones, covered up to conceal their gravity, extending far beyond Japan and the Pacific rim.

Other reports also downplay them, including from The New York Times and Al Jazeera, often indistinguishable from and as unreliable as BBC, headlining (on April 8) "Japan quake causes radioactive spill," saying:

"A powerful earthquake in northeast Japan rocked a nuclear plant, causing a small amount of radioactive water to spill, but the operator said there was no immediate danger," [case closed.]

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Peter Symonds
WSWS

The US commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, this week characterised the US surge as a success, but other military figures and officials were far more pessimistic about the military situation and the popular opposition generated by the carnage and destruction of the US-led war.

In a letter to his subordinates on Tuesday, Petraeus offered an upbeat assessment of the US-led occupation. Foreign troops and Afghan government forces, he wrote, had “inflicted enormous losses” on mid-level insurgents over the past year and had taken away “some of their most important safe havens”.

Petraeus claimed that the Taliban was on the defensive. “Now, in fact, the insurgents are increasingly responding to our operations rather than vice versa, and there are numerous reports of unprecedented discord among the member of the Quetta Shura, the Taliban senior leadership body,” he wrote.

The letter was pitched at justifying the Obama administration’s build-up of troops in Afghanistan last year, which has taken a terrible human toll—both of Afghans and foreign troops alike. Despite its claims to be winning “hearts and minds,” the American military’s murderous offensives—particularly in the southern province of Kandahar—have only intensified the intense public hostility to the neo-colonial occupation.

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Peter Symonds
WSWS

In the lead-up to next month’s NATO summit in Lisbon, the Obama administration and its allies, confronting widespread anti-war sentiment at home, are attempting to dupe the public by claiming that the US/NATO combat role in Afghanistan will end by 2014, with troop withdrawals to begin next year. Behind closed doors, however, the talk is not of an end to the war, but rather of an open-ended, neo-colonial occupation.

In opening a debate on the Afghan war in the Australian parliament on Tuesday, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard spilled the beans. After noting that Afghan President Hamid Karzai expected to assume full responsibility for his country’s security by the end of 2014, Gillard bluntly spelt out that the “transition process” would not mean the end to the Australian military presence in Afghanistan.

“Let me be clear,” Gillard said, “this [transition process] refers to the Afghan government taking lead responsibility for security. The international community will remain engaged in Afghanistan beyond 2014. And Australia will remain engaged. There will still be a role for training and other defence cooperation. The civilian-led aid and development effort will continue... We expect this support, training and development task to continue in some form through this decade at least.”

While ministers and officials in the US and other countries have spoken vaguely about a continuing military role in Afghanistan after 2014, Gillard is the first leader to declare that the US-led military occupation will continue for another decade—at least. Her repeated references to the “new international strategy” highlight the fact that this is the Obama administration’s plan. And if Australia, with its current, modest troop numbers of 1,550, intends to remain for another 10 years, then the US and its closest allies are preparing for a large military presence in Afghanistan into the indefinite future.

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Peter Symonds

(Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted:
Señor Lebowski - 1, 2, Tim Dorr)

A lengthy article in the New York Times on Sunday entitled “A Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents” has provided a glimpse into the extent of the Obama administration’s covert wars. Obama has not only continued, he has expanded the murderous operations that were waged under the banner of the “war on terror” by the CIA and Pentagon during the Bush administration.

As the authors explain: “In roughly a dozen countries—from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics [in Central Asia] crippled by ethnic and religious strife—the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.”

Obama has dramatically intensified the CIA’s drone missile attacks against alleged insurgents inside areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. The White House has “approved raids inside Somalia,” it has “carried out clandestine operations from Kenya,” and it has collaborated with European allies in covert operations in North Africa, including a recent French strike in Algeria.

The most detailed information concerns the Obama administration’s expanding covert war inside Yemen, where the US military has carried out four air strikes since last December, killing dozens of civilians, including the deputy governor of Marib Province, Jabir al Shabwani, in May. The article incidentally confirms what has not previously been acknowledged: that all of the air strikes were carried out by the United States.

These attacks are just one aspect of American operations inside Yemen. “The Pentagon and the CIA have quietly bulked up the number of their operatives at the embassy in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, over the past year,” the Times explains. The US is also training elite Yemeni units, providing equipment and sharing intelligence to support Yemeni operations against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

While the Times article acknowledges some political risks are involved, it is uncritical, even laudatory in tone. Under the banner of the “war on terror,” the US is aggressively prosecuting its ambitions for strategic and economic dominance throughout the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The neo-colonial occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have been extended into a series of covert wars aimed at consolidating the American presence and expanding Washington’s political influence.

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Peter Symonds

“Australians should be worried about China’s rise,” Mearsheimer declared, “because it is likely to lead to intense security competition with China and the United States, with considerable potential for war. Moreover, most of China’s neighbours, to include India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and yes Australia, will join the United States to contain China’s power. To put it bluntly: China cannot rise peacefully.”

Over the past month, the Obama administration has resumed and escalated its confrontational stance towards China. After a brief hiatus in May and June, during which Washington sought to secure Beijing’s support for a new round of UN sanctions against Iran, the US has deliberately inflamed tensions with China in a series of aggressive moves in East and South East Asia.

Speaking at an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) security forum on July 23, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton provocatively sided with Vietnam and other ASEAN countries in their territorial disputes with China over the South China Sea. Beijing told two senior American officials in March that it regarded the South China Sea as one of its “core interests”. Yet Clinton ignored the message and called for “open access” to waters claimed by China—an action described by China’s foreign minister Yang Jichi as “virtually an attack on China”.

Several days later, the US began a major joint naval exercise with South Korea in the Sea of Japan, despite Chinese objections. The war games, which were nominally a response to the alleged North Korean sinking of a South Korean naval vessel in March, involved 20 South Korean and American warships, including a huge aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington. The Pentagon has now announced another naval exercise will be conducted with South Korea later this year in the Yellow Sea—even closer to the Chinese mainland.

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Peter Symonds

An Iraqi woman cries as U.S. troops raid the Iraqi city of Najaf.
U.S. Marines, backed by tanks and aircraft, seized the heart of
the holy Iraqi city of Najaf in a major assault on Shia resistance.

As the Obama administration escalates its war in Afghanistan, Iraq is cautiously being declared a success. The top American commander in Iraq, General Raymond Odierno, declared last Friday that the country had held “a legitimate and credible election”, its security forces had improved and plans were “on track” for the withdrawal of all US combat troops from Iraq by September 1.

Speaking at the West Point military academy late last month, President Obama was even more upbeat, declaring that as US troops depart, “a strong American civilian presence will help Iraqis forge political and economic progress” towards establishing “a democratic Iraq that is sovereign and stable and self-reliant”.

The reality is entirely different. Even after the September deadline, the US military will maintain a huge military presence of 50,000 troops, ostensibly in “non-combat” and “training” roles, to prop up a puppet regime in Baghdad, which, three months after the national election, is yet to be formed. While the character of the American occupation of Iraq is changing, its underlying purpose—to maintain the country firmly under US domination—remains the same.

In his comments last Friday, General Odierno declared that the “drawdown” was ahead of schedule—600,000 containers of gear and 18,000 vehicles moved out; and the number of bases down from 500 last year to 126 and set to decline to 94 by September 1. What is actually underway, however, is not a withdrawal, but a vast consolidation in preparation for the long-term occupation of the country by US forces.

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Peter Symonds

The Obama administration has seized on the failed car bombing in New York’s Times Square on May 1 to insist that the Pakistani military step up its war on Islamic militants and extend its operations into North Waziristan. The US demand is being backed by thinly disguised warnings of economic reprisals and military intervention.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made an explicit public threat during a CBS interview last Sunday. After accusing some Pakistani officials of knowing the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar, she insisted on more Pakistani cooperation and warned: “We’ve made it very clear that if, heaven forbid, an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences.”

Speaking to ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Attorney General Eric Holder accused the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban, of being behind the Times Square incident. He claimed that the Taliban directed the suspected bomber, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalised American citizen of Pakistani descent. Under interrogation, Shahzad has allegedly admitted training in Taliban camps in North Waziristan, although the amateurish character of the bombing attempt indicates otherwise. A Tehrik-e-Taliban spokesman has denied any involvement.

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