Greece Enters Death Spiral

Spiegel Online International reports Tensions Rise in Greece as Austerity Measures Backfire

The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece’s problems are dragging down the country’s economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.

This dire prognosis comes even despite Athens’ massive efforts to sort out the country’s finances. The government’s draconian austerity measures have managed to reduce the country’s budget deficit by an almost unbelievable 39.7 percent, after previous governments had squandered tax money and falsified statistics for years. The measures have reduced government spending by a total of 10 percent, 4.5 percent more than the EU and International Monetary Fund (IMF) had required.

The problem is that the austerity measures have in the meantime affected every aspect of the country’s economy. Purchasing power is dropping, consumption is taking a nosedive and the number of bankruptcies and unemployed are on the rise. The country’s gross domestic product shrank by 1.5 percent in the second quarter of this year. Tax revenue, desperately needed in order to consolidate the national finances, has dropped off. A mixture of fear, hopelessness and anger is brewing in Greek society.

Unemployment Rates of up to 70 Percent

Unemployment in the city [the shipbuilding district of Perama] hovers between 60 and 70 percent, according to a study conducted by the University of Piraeus. While 77 percent of Greek shipping companies indicate they are satisfied with the quality of work done in Perama, nearly 50 percent still send their ships to be repaired in Turkey, Korea or China. Costs are too high in Greece, they say. The country, they argue, has too much bureaucracy and too many strikes, with labor disputes often delaying delivery times.

Barely any of the country’s industries can keep up with international competition in terms of productivity, and experts expect the country’s gross domestic product to fall by 4 percent over the course of the entire year. Germany, by way of comparison, is hoping for growth of up to 3 percent.

Sales Figures Dropping Everywhere

A short jaunt through Athens’ shopping streets reveals the scale of the decline. Fully a quarter of the store windows on Stadiou Street bear red signs reading “Enoikiazetai” — for rent. The National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce (ESEE) calculates that 17 percent of all shops in Athens have had to file for bankruptcy.

No Way Out

The entire country is in the grip of a depression. Everything seems to be going downhill. The spiral is continuing unabated, and there is no clear way out. The worse part, however, is the fact that hardly anyone still hopes that things will improve one day.

‘Things Are Starting to Simmer’

Menelaos Givalos, a professor of political science at Athens University, has appeared on television, warning viewers that the worst times are still to come. He predicts a large wave of layoffs starting in September, with “extreme social consequences.”

“Everything is getting more expensive, I’m hardly earning any money, and then I’m supposed to pay more taxes to help save the country? How is that supposed to work?” asks Nikos Meletis, the shipbuilder. He predicts the situation will only become more heated. “Things are starting to simmer here,” he says. “And at some point they’re going to explode.”

How Long Can Greece Hold On?

Inquiring minds just might be asking “How long can Greece hold on?”

I do not have the answer to that, besides it’s not the important question. A far more worrisome question is “When does similar strife spread to Spain, Portugal, and perhaps even Italy?”

Part of the blame for this goes to the bailout plan itself. France and to a lesser extent Germany would not take haircuts on Greek debt. Aid to Greece by the IMF and European banks simply threw good money after bad.

The problem did not go away. Instead, terms of the bailout made the situation worse.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

An Act of Strategic Desperation–American Death Squads In Afghanistan

Can an Assassination Campaign Turn the Tide in Afghanistan?

By Robert Baer

The Obama Administrations new military strategy in Afghanistan may be a sign of desperation — a Hail Mary pass — but it may just work. The President’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan describes it as giving up the ‘hammer’ for the ‘scalpel.’ The military, as we know from classified military documents put on the Internet by WikiLeaks last month, prefers the term ‘kinetic strike’. I’ve heard the Pentagon use the term ‘eliminating command nodes’. But I’ll go ahead and call it by its everyday name: assassination.

The tactic is familiar in the war on terror, of course, its template being the CIA’s unmanned aerial vehicle strikes on al-Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas of Pakistan, another form of assassination. Putting aside questions of the long-term wisdom of firing area weapons into small villages, no one has convincingly disputed the fact that these strikes have badly hurt al-Qaeda, with its remnants either hiding in caves or fleeing to places like Yemen. Not surprisingly, the military has asked, Why can’t we do the same in Afghanistan?

An official back from Washington told me I’d be surprised at the extent to which my former colleagues in the CIA are caught up in this new Afghan strategy, the agency having turned itself into a paramilitary operation at the service of the military. The CIA in Afghanistan wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night thinking about how it can better guide Brennan’s scalpel. It has even adopted a new term for officers helping the military — targeters. But the flaw in the new strategy remains the availability of good, solid intelligence.

The first assassination I ever looked into in depth was that of Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon’s Christian president-elect who was killed along with 26 others by a bomb attack on his Phalange party’s headquarters September 14, 1982. What was apparent from the beginning was that the assassins had fantastic intelligence. They not only had people continuously watching Gemayel right up until the moment they detonated their bomb, they also had unimpeded access to the building in which Gemayel was killed. The assassins did not intend to miss, because for them assassination is a form of intimidation — a message to Gemayel’s party that if it continued cooperating with the Israelis, who had invaded Lebanon, the rest of the party’s leadership would meet the same fate. It worked. Gemayel’s brother Amine, who succeeded him, gave up any idea of cooperating with Israel.

That’s pretty much what we’d like to do in Afghanistan: decimate the Taliban’s leadership, and force the survivors to put down their arms. But Afghanistan isn’t Lebanon. For a start, there is no single leader of the Taliban. How many Taliban commanders would we have to kill before the Taliban was intimidated? Fifty? A hundred? We don’t know the Taliban well enough to put a number on it. Second, what’s clear in Afghanistan is that while our military is more than capable of wielding a scalpel, we don’t have the intelligence to point out where to strike. We saw evidence of this in the Wikileak documents on the failed assassination of al-Qaeda operative Abu Laith al-Libi in Afghanistan. It underscores the problem that the Taliban is possibly the most elusive military force in the world. Unlike the Gemayel assassination, there simply is no way for us to keep our eyes on a target right up until the assassination, let alone get access to wherever he’s hiding.

Like any Hail Mary pass, we’ll just have to wait and see whether the play works.

Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com’s intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.

Turning the Tables On American Mercenary Plans

Kicked out: Private contractors given 4 month d…, posted with vodpod

Blackwater owner flees storm for Abu Dhabi

James Risen, Washington

August 19, 2010

ERIK Prince, whose war-zone private security company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi.

Mr Prince, a former member of the US Navy Seals, left the country after a series of civil lawsuits, criminal charges and congressional investigations singled out Blackwater. His company, now called Xe Services, has collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the US government since 2001.

Former colleagues said Mr Prince hoped to focus on security work from governments in Africa and the Middle East. They also said he was bitter about the legal scrutiny and negative publicity his company had received.

”He needs a break from America,” said one colleague.

Mr Prince does not face criminal charges, but five former top company executives have been charged with federal weapons, conspiracy and obstruction offences.

Two guards who worked for a Blackwater-affiliated company face murder charges from a 2009 shooting in Afghanistan, and the US Justice Department is trying to revive its prosecution of five former Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

Congress has also conducted a series of investigations of Blackwater’s activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, including an inquiry into the company’s role in a proposed CIA assassination program. Blackwater personnel have a reputation for cowboy tactics.

NEW YORK TIMES

Afghanistan and African nations at greatest risk from world food shortages

Russian heatwave and floods in Pakistan threaten supplies for basic human diet

• Katie Allen
• The Guardian

Pakistan’s devastating floods highlight how climate change is having “a profound effect on global food security”. Photograph: Horace Murray/ReutersSoaring commodity prices and natural disasters in Russia and Pakistan have combined to put African nations and conflict-ridden countries such as Afghanistan most at risk from food shortages, according to a report released today.

Sharp price rises for wheat and other grains will hit the world’s neediest countries hardest, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, as they grapple with their own poor harvests and failing transport networks, according to a food security index by risk management consultancy Maplecroft.

It also says conflict is a key factor behind food insecurity and Afghanistan tops the index of threatened countries. The other nine nations categorised as “extreme risk” are all in Africa, led by Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia. African nations make up 36 of the 50 countries most at risk in the index.

The report highlights climate change as having a “profound effect on global food security”, with a heatwave in Russia coinciding with devastating floods in Pakistan – ranked 30th and “high risk” in the index.

“Russian brakes on exports, plus a reduction in Canada’s harvest by almost a quarter due to flooding in June, are provoking fluctuations in the commodity markets,” said Fiona Place, environmental analyst at Maplecroft. “This will further affect the food security of the most vulnerable countries.”

Using 12 criteria developed with the World Food Programme, including GDP per head and cereal production and imports, Maplecroft’s index evaluated risks to the supply of basic food staples for 163 countries. Finland was least at risk, while the UK was ranked 146th.

The latest official inflation data for Britain this week suggested that recent disruptions in the wheat market have yet to feed through to consumers. Economists are warning households in Britain and around the world to prepare for more price rises in staples such as bread following Russia’s ban on wheat exports after drought has cost the country much of its latest crop. Wheat prices have risen by about 70% since June and other crop prices have also climbed.

TEN EXTREME RISK COUNTRIES

1 Afghanistan2 Democratic Republic of Congo

3 Burundi

4 Eritrea

5 Sudan

6 Ethiopia

7 Angola

8 Liberia

9 Chad

10 Zimbabwe

Pakistan after the floods: “The situation is explosive”

World Socialist Web Site

WSWS, August 17, 2010

The World Socialist Web Site received the following letter Sunday from a supporter in Pakistan.

The situation in Pakistan is increasingly explosive. The floods are a natural calamity. But if a large portion of the population, especially the workers, peasants and toiling masses, are now suffering hunger and lack of water and shelter, it is because of the criminality of the country’s capitalist elite and their imperialist backers. They have plundered the people, while failing to provide elementary public infrastructure.

Cases of cholera due to the non-availability of drinking water are spreading. In the one-fifth of the country that has been flooded, the population continues to be besieged. Livestock and crops have been destroyed over a vast area. Most of the roads linking the four provinces are ruined. Anger is growing steadily among the people against the government, the ruling class, and US imperialism.

Washington is watching the situation in Pakistan after the flood very closely. The US military is determined to expand its intervention in Pakistan and under the guise of providing humanitarian aid is now trying to doing so. That the US is maneuvering to advance its predatory geo-political interests in the region is underscored by the fact that the US, despite its massive presence in the region, had delivered next to no aid to the flood victims.

The Pakistani ruling class are afraid of a possible mass upheaval against the government and state. Yesterday President Zardari and his arch-rival, Nawaz Sharif of the official opposition Muslim League (Nawaz), came together to announce a joint relief campaign for the flood sufferers.

The vast majority of the people want to help those whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed, but they do not trust the government and state institutions. They saw what happened after the earthquakes in Kashmir in 2005 and Ziarath in 2008—how the politicians and military and their business cronies diverted aid, in cash and kind, into their pockets.

Anarchy is spreading daily. Yesterday 10 working class people were killed by the BLA (Baluch Liberation Army) in Baluchistan, where a separatist insurgency has gained a popular following due to the ruling elite’s indifference to, and repression, of the Baluchi masses. And on August 14 (so-called Independence day) there were rocket attacks and bomb blasts in different parts of Baluchistan.

The Pakistani bourgeois national project has utterly failed the masses. Even before the floods, Pakistan was crippled by power shortages and there was mass popular disaffection and anger at soaring food prices, the gargantuan gap between rich and poor, the military’s continuing dominant role in the country’s political and economic life, and the Pakistani bourgeoisie’s pivotal role in assisting the US occupation of Afghanistan.

Two years after assuming the presidency, the Pakistan People’s Party dynastic leader, Asif Ali Zardari, is as hated as the previous US-sponsored military strongman, General Pervez Musharraf. The burning need is for a vanguard working class party that can mobilize the toiling masses against the Pakistani bourgeoisie and imperialism.

Please give my regards to the International Committee of the Fourth International.

Z.

The Tragedy of Pakistan’s Swat Valley

By Hasnain Kazim in Mingora, Pakistan

The Swat Valley used to be high on the must-see list for Western travelers in Pakistan. Recent years, however, have not been kind to the region. Now, just months after having shed the brutal rule of the Taliban, the valley has been devastated anew.

“My God,” says Jawad when he finishes telling his story. “If I didn’t know that all this is true, I would think, ‘what an exaggerated story.’”

Jawad sells handicrafts and silk scarves in his uncle’s store in the city center of Mingora — on a street which has been known as the “bloody mile” since the beginning of 2009.

Mingora is the biggest city in the Swat district, a corner of northwestern Pakistan in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Queen Elizabeth II once called the valley the Switzerland of the British Empire. It was a time when the Swat Valley was high on the list of international tour groups and hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis came here in the summer to escape the heat in the south.

Now, nobody goes to Swat if they can avoid it. Jawad is only in his mid-20s, but he has experienced all of the Swat Valley’s recent tragedies himself: the devastating earthquake in 2005, the penetration of the Taliban into the valley, their brutal rule, the fight against terror in the last two years. And now, the astonishingly vast floods.

Some 80,000 people lost their lives in the earthquake, most of them in Kashmir. “But we felt the effects here in Swat as well,” says Jawad. “Several buildings were destroyed.” It was around that time that men with long hair and long beards began to show up in the region — men with an extremely conservative outlook on the world.

Afraid to Oppose the Taliban

“Unfortunately, we didn’t take the Taliban seriously back then,” says Inayat Ullah, Jawad’s uncle. When they began to show their true faces, they were already so strong that people were afraid to oppose them. The US, together with countries in Europe, warned General Pervez Musharraf, the then-head of Pakistan’s military dictatorship, to do something about the developing state within a state just four hours by car north of the capital Islamabad. But he declined and allowed the Taliban to grow in strength.

They forbade cinemas and music, CD shops were destroyed, barbers received death threats should they persist in shaving beards — anything other than long facial hair was seen as “un-Islamic.” They burned down girls’ schools and assaulted women who did not completely veil themselves.

“They ruled with pure violence,” says Jawad. “Their aim was to spread fear and terror. And they were quite successful.” Pointing to a nearby intersection, he says “over there, the Taliban decapitated petty criminals.” Today, a policeman stands in the center of the intersection trying to direct the chaotic traffic from a concrete pedestal where the executions took place. “Every now and then, we would find a corpse in front of our store as well,” Jawad says.

Increasingly, the Taliban began killing soldiers from the Pakistani army. Finally, at the beginning of 2009, the Taliban officially claimed power in the Swat Valley and declared Sharia as the only valid law in the region. After a failed attempt to negotiate a peace agreement with the Taliban, the Pakistani government — now under a democratically elected leadership — declared war on the militants, primarily in response to pressure from the US.

‘Gunfire Everywhere’

“Nobody warned us,” says Jawad. “As the situation became increasingly violent, we packed our stuff and moved to safety.” He himself was able to find lodging with relatives in Islamabad, but many people had nobody to turn to and collected in refugee camps. Ultimately, some 2 million people fled to other parts of the country from the Swat Valley. “It was like a ghost town, buildings were empty and everywhere there was gunfire,” says Jawad.

There are still holes in the façades of buildings in Mingora from this period. Thousands of people lost their lives in the fighting before the military declared that “some 2,000 insurgents” had been killed and the valley was “liberated.” But even now, a year and a half later, the valley has not found peace. In the mountains to the north, near the Kalam Valley, military operations against the Taliban continue. “On Monday, we tried to overrun insurgent positions,” relates a soldier over the telephone from the frontlines. “They shot my best friend, who I went to officers’ school with.”

The military, at first celebrated as liberators, soon earned a reputation for brutal mistreatment of Swat locals. They have been accused of performing extrajudicial executions. “That house over there,” says Jawad, pointing to a pile of bricks, “belonged to a man the army accused of supporting the Taliban. The soldiers simply blew it up.”

Still, people began returning to the valley to fix up their houses or build new ones.

But then, on July 29, the Swat River burst its banks. The water levels became so high that even those houses that weren’t washed away have been flooded to the second floor.

Begging for Rupees

Now, large swaths of the Mingora city center have been destroyed. People are trying to find normality among the rubble. Two boys have set up a table in front of their father’s destroyed shop and are selling bottles of perfume which they managed to save from the floods. Another family is trying to waterproof the remains of their house with a tarp received from the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. An elderly man and his handicapped son, having lost their home to the floodwaters, beg for a few rupees.

The northern part of the Swat Valley was particularly hard hit, with some villages almost completely destroyed. Help only began arriving to the region a few days ago when US military helicopters started to deliver food, water, medical supplies and tents. The helicopters swoop low over Mingora on their way north. In a severely damaged part of the city, two people look skyward. “I wonder if they will ever land here,” a man wonders aloud as he shovels mud and debris out of his collapsed shop.

Authorities are having trouble providing aid to all those who need it. The catastrophe is simply too big — any government in the world would have difficulties in the face of such a disaster, say Pakistani politicians. The fact remains, however, that even five years after the earthquake, there is still no effective disaster response system in place. Back then, millions of dollars in aid money donated from abroad never made its way to those who needed it most.

Once again, officials have seemed helpless. For lack of any kind of aid plan, the provincial government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has decreed that members of the provincial parliament are to distribute aid money and supplies in their own constituencies. “We’ll be waiting for help for a long time,” says a shopkeeper in Mingora. “The politicians will only help people who they like. Everyone else will go without.”

‘What Have We Done Wrong?’

People in Mingora in general don’t have much use for their politicians. “They only think of themselves,” complains an old man reading a newspaper in front of the remains of his home. “Yesterday, a parliamentarian showed up. He came in a convoy of three cars plus a police escort, just to show his face for a few minutes.”

It is a problem that has suddenly proven a major hurdle in the effort to collect international donations for Pakistani flood victims. Many fear that rampant corruption will prevent aid from reaching those who need it. Assumptions as to the country’s involvement in extremist Islam and presumed support of the Taliban have also resulted in only a trickle of help flowing in from Western donors.

Three weeks after the beginning of the flood disaster, Islamabad has now begun taking action to address the problem. A non-partisan commission is to be established which will regulate the provision of aid to flood victims. Credible celebrities are to ensure that the help reaches those in need.

But time is growing short. There have been reports of children starving to death and the Swat Valley has begun to see cases of cholera. The situation in many parts of the country is getting worse by the day.

“I have read that some people are saying that the flood is God’s punishment for our failures,” says Jawad. “But what, for heaven’s sake, have we done wrong to warrant being punished so often?”

On the Way Down–The Erosion of America’s Middle Class

On the Way Down

The Erosion of America’s Middle Class

By Thomas Schulz

While America’s super-rich congratulate themselves on donating billions to charity, the rest of the country is worse off than ever. Long-term unemployment is rising and millions of Americans are struggling to survive. The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever and the middle class is disappearing.

Ventura is a small city on the Pacific coast, about an hour’s drive north of Los Angeles. Luxury homes with a view of the ocean dot the hillsides, and the beaches are popular with surfers. Ventura is storybook California. “It’s a well-off place,” says Captain William Finley. “But about 20 percent of the city is what we call at risk of homelessness.” Finley heads the local branch of the Salvation Army.

Last summer Ventura launched a pilot program, managed by Finley, that allows people to sleep in their cars within city limits. This is normally illegal, both in Ventura and in the rest of the country, where local officials and residents are worried about seeing run-down vans full of Mexican migrant workers parked on residential streets.

But sometime at the beginning of last year, people in Ventura realized that the cars parked in front of their driveways at night weren’t old wrecks, but well-tended station wagons and hatchbacks. And the people sleeping in them weren’t fruit pickers or the homeless, but their former neighbors.

Finley also noticed a change. Suddenly twice as many people were taking advantage of his social service organization’s free meals program, and some were even driving up in BMWs — apparently reluctant to give up the expensive cars that reminded them of better times.

Finley calls them “the new poor.” “That is a different category of people that I think we’re seeing,” he says. “They are people who never in their wildest imaginations thought they would be homeless.” They’re people who had enough money — a lot of money, in some cases — until recently.

“The image of what is a poor person in today’s day and age doesn’t fly. When I was growing up a poor person, and we grew up fairly poor, you drove a 10-year-old car that probably had some dents in it. You know, there was one car for the family and you lived out of the food bank,” says Finley. “In the past, you got yourself out of poverty and were on your way up.”

American Way Heads in Opposite Direction

It was the American way, a path taken by millions. “Today the image is you’re getting newer late model cars that at one point cost somebody 40, 50 grand, and they’re at wits end, now they’re living out of the food banks. And for many of them it takes a lot to swallow their pride,” says Finley.

Today the American way is often headed in the opposite direction: downward.

For a while, America seemed to have emerged relatively unscathed from the worst economic crisis in decades — with renewed vigor and energy — just as it had done in the wake of past crises.

The government was announcing new economic growth figures by as early as last fall, much earlier than expected. The banks, moribund until recently, were back to earning billions. Companies nationwide are reporting strong growth, and the stock market has almost returned to it pre-crisis levels. Even the number of billionaires grew by a healthy 17 percent in 2009.

Two weeks ago, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and 40 other billionaires pledged to donate at least half of their fortunes to philanthropy, either while still alive or after death. Is America a country so blessed with affluence that it can afford to give away billions, just like that?

Growing Resentment

Gates’ move could also be interpreted as a PR campaign, in a country where the super-rich sense that although they are profiting from the crisis, as was to be expected, the number of people adversely affected has grown enormously. They also sense that there is growing resentment in American society against those at the top.

For people in the lower income brackets, the recovery already seems to be falling apart. Experts fear that the US economy could remain weak for many years to come. And despite the many government assistance programs, the small amount of hope they engender has yet to be felt by the general public. On the contrary, for many people things are still headed dramatically downward.

According to a recent opinion poll, 70 percent of Americans believe that the recession is still in full swing. And this time it isn’t just the poor who are especially hard-hit, as they usually are during recessions.

This time the recession is also affecting well-educated people who had been earning a good living until now. These people, who see themselves as solidly middle-class, now feel more threatened than ever before in the country’s history. Four out of 10 Americans who consider themselves part of this class believe that they will be unable to maintain their social status.

Unemployment Persists

In a recent cover story titled “So long, middle class,” the New York Post presented its readers with “25 statistics that prove that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.” Last week, the leading online columnist Arianna Huffington issued the almost apocalyptic warning that “America is in danger of becoming a Third World country.”

In fact, the United States, in the wake of a real estate, financial economic and now debt crisis, which it still hasn’t overcome, is threatened by a social Ice Age more severe than anything the country has seen since the Great Depression.

The United States is experiencing the problem of long-term unemployment for the first time since World War II. The number of the long-term unemployed is already three times as high as it was during any crisis in the past, and it is still rising.

More than a year after the official end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate remains consistently above 9.5 percent. But this is just the official figure. When adjusted to include the people who have already given up looking for work or are barely surviving on the few hundred dollars they earn with a part-time job and are using up their savings, the real unemployment figure jumps to more than 17 percent.

In its current annual report, the US Department of Agriculture notes that “food insecurity” is on the rise, and that 50 million Americans couldn’t afford to buy enough food to stay healthy at some point last year. One in eight American adults and one in four children now survive on government food stamps. These are unbelievable numbers for the world’s richest nation.

Even more unsettling is the fact that America, which has always been characterized by its unshakable belief in the American Dream, and in the conviction that anyone, even those at the very bottom, can rise to the top, is beginning to lose its famous optimism. According to recent figures, a significant minority of US citizens now believe that their children will be worse off than they are.

Many Americans are beginning to realize that for them, the American Dream has been more of a nightmare of late. They face a bitter reality of fewer and fewer jobs, decades of stagnating wages and dramatic increases in inequality. Only in recent months, as the economy has grown but jobs have not returned, as profits have returned but poverty figures have risen by the week, the country seems to have recognized that it is struggling with a deep-seated, structural crisis that has been building for years. As the Washington Post writes, the financial crisis was merely the final turning — for the worse.

Iranian Phantom Fighter Crash Near Bushehr Was Friendly Fire ABM Test Failure

[SEE: Iranian F-4 fighter jet crashes]

Iranian fighter jet, near Bushehr flunked the “friendly fire” the Russian air defense systems

08/19/2010 00:20

The Russian air defense systems shot down an Iranian fighter in the vicinity of Bushehr
In the Iranian province of Bushehr, 40 km from the forthcoming launch NPP Bushers, August 17 fighter crashed “Phantom” F4 AF Iran. This news agency Associated Press. Both pilots managed to eject the fighter, and they received minor injuries and were hospitalized.

According to the preliminary version, announced by the Iranian side, the cause of the crash was technical failure. Meanwhile, Iranian sources the agency Debka reports that “Phantom” was shot down by Russian system “Tor M-1″, composed by an armed Iranian air defense system.

As REGNUM reported earlier news, the Iranian army is on full alert before the launch of the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Complex Tor M-1 controls the security of nuclear facilities.

Note that the Bushehr nuclear power plant, currently under construction since 1975 (from mid-1990′s – with the participation of Russia), will be the first nuclear power plant in Iran. Run Nuclear Power Plant is scheduled for August 21. Recently, former U.S. undersecretary of state John Bolton said that if Israel wants to deprive Iran of running nuclear power plant, then the military should strike at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in the coming days

Source - www.regnum.ru

Saving a drowing country needs an ideological shift

by Nasima Zehra Awan

Cross-posted from the Pak Tea House

“You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques……..Religion is not the business of the State”. Thus spoke Jinnah, whilst addressing the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947.

Sixty three yearslater, this is what our “honorable” Chief Justice has to say: “Parliament with Unlimited Powers can secularize state” (Source: DAWN,Monday August 16, 2010) (Link to the LUBP post on this).

Huhh!! Won’t that be a good thing, judge saheb!

At a time when our country is intellectually and morally bankrupt because of its moorings as a national security state built on the toxic teachings of Maududi, isn’t secularism the way to get out of this mess. Instead of spending tens of billions to support a failed national security state, “a fortress of Islam” if you will, wouldn’t Pakistan have been better off with sustained representative governments that could have gone past the Kalabagh dam issue and built provincial consensus for half a dozen other dams that could have greatly reduced
the current catastrophe.

Unfortunately for Pakistan, this Judiciary, like most of its predecessors follows the ethos of the bureaucracy-security establishment, not the parliament or gasp, the principles of law and constitutionalism. That would entail that they ditch the prevailing sentiment, nay, control of Jamaat Islami at all the Bar Councils and actually allow the elected representatives of the people to draft and discuss legislation that would make Pakistan a functional state in the 21st century, not an faux Ommayad Caliphate of the 8th century!

The Judges and their media supporters and urban elite cheerleaders are obsessed with going after the elected leaders of one party and folk singers; the two actually have the same political powers in Pakistan today. The dare not go after Jihadi sectarian leaders who have rendered Pakistan into a wasteland. The damages incurred by these Jihadis; thousands of Pakistanis killed including the targeting of professionals belonging to minority sects and religions, the tens of billions of destroyed property and lost investment is incalculable.

These are the fruits that the State of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has reaped by constructing itself in the vision of Maududi and Qutb. However, in the chauvinist and elitest debates about corruption, there is NO mention of the billions that are taken at every budget without audit, the tens of billions taken from foreign powers who are subsequently vilified by the same and the trillions that are made by using the country as a corporate and real estate business entity.

After all, how will this debate start while we continuously see ourselves not as a modern, democratic and secular state but as the realization of the Islamist neurosis of failed idealogues who see a warped view of religion and not shared human values, as the basis for a functional society.In a theocratic construct, such debates are virtually impossible as they go against the core those who have alloted themselves the task of protecting an ideological state. Such a state cannot accept the views of secular nationalists who vote for the ANP, PPP and BNP. The dominant narrative of the State that has been constructed since Partition, and which has clearly served us so well since then, cannot be challenged unless Pakistan moves towards full secularism.

Today, the world is sick of our militant adventurism to the extant that it has affected their donations towards our flood relief efforts. They are wary that their donations will end up with Islamist militias who do not have the interests of humanity at heart and who continue to kill soldiers whose countries constitute the chief donors to Pakistan. The only way to salvage Pakistan is to ditch our legacy as a security state and invest all our resources into literally saving the country from drowning. A crucial step towards that is an empowered parliament whose progressive legislation is not continuously being derailed by a compromised and politicized judiciary that sees itself as the reincarnation of the Qazis of Banu Abbas, Banu Ommaya and Emporor Aurangzeb.

Like it or not, Hon. Chief Justice, we need to become a secular state and if parliament has taken the first tentative steps towards that direction in the 18th Amendment, good sense needs to prevail. A drowning Pakistan can no longer afford the mirage of “strategic depths” in Afghanistan and Kashmir. What it really needs is clean water and food for the 20 million who have been rendered homeless and for non-controversial dams in the future.

Post Published: 17 August 2010
Author: Abdul Nishapuri

They Don’t Call It Mind-Bending for Nothing–LSD Could Cure Depression

LSD Could Cure Depression

By RHODRI PHILLIPS

MIND-BENDING drugs like LSD, ketamine and magic mushrooms could be used to treat people suffering from depression, scientists said today.

The psychedelics could give patients “a new perspective” helping them to see their pain and problems in a different light, Swiss boffins revealed.

But, writing in a medical journal, they warned the drugs should only be taken in small doses and combined with other treatments such as psychotherapy.

They added that research into the effects of psychedelic drugs had been restricted in the past, because of their negative reputation.

The key drugs scientists are hoping could help treat depression are lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), the horse tranquiliser ketamine, and psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient found in magic mushrooms.

Franz Vollenweider, of Zurich University, who co-wrote a paper on the subject in the Nature Neuroscience Journal said: “Psychedelics can give patients a new perspective – particularly when things like suppressed memories come up, and then they can work with that experience.

“The idea is that it (use of psychedelic drugs to treat patients with depression) would be very limited, maybe several sessions over a few months, not a long-term thing like other types of medication.”

Psychedelics can produce feelings of bliss, but can also cause users to feel anxious.

A US study published this month found that ketamine, an anaesthetic used legally in both human and veterinary medicine, can lift the mood of patients with bipolar depression within minutes.

Police Capture Suicide-Bomber After Killing 7 in China’s Xinjiang Province

[This strange report from China tells of a suicide=bomber who rides his three-wheeler into a crowd and detonates a bomb of some sort, which kills 7.  How he could live through this to be arrested is unexplainable.]

Attack kills 7 in China’s restive Xinjiang

By Lucy Hornby

URUMQI | Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:10am EDT

China (Reuters) – A member of China’s restive Uighur minority killed seven people on Thursday in an explosion in far western Xinjiang, an official said, a region which has long been the scene of ethnic tension and occasional violence.

Police arrested a Uighur suspect who drove a three-wheeled vehicle into a crowd in a town near the southern Xinjiang city of Aksu, Xinjiang government spokeswoman Hou Hanmin told a news conference in the regional capital, Urumqi.

Hou said evidence indicated the blast was intentional.

She did not say what the motive for the attack may be. Chinese cities are occasionally hit by small explosions carried out by people with personal grievances, such as disputes over medical treatment or failed relationships.

Beijing often blames what it calls violent separatist groups in Xinjiang for attacks on police or other government targets, saying they work with al Qaeda or Central Asian militants to bring about an independent state called East Turkestan.

“Xinjiang’s development will not be affected by a small group of bad people. The overall situation in Xinjiang is good,” Hou told a news conference for foreign reporters on a pre-arranged trip to the region.

“I repeat what our governor said this morning: hostile elements are always there, in the past, present and in the future. They don’t target any particular ethnic group since casualties are also minorities. They are the common enemy of the Xinjiang people.”

Many Uighurs — a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people native to the region — chafe under rule from Beijing and restrictions on their language, culture and religion.

They now make up less than half of Xinjiang’s population after decades of immigration by the majority Han from other parts of China.

In July last year, Urumqi was convulsed by deadly ethnic unrest after a protest by Uighurs gave way to street killings and riots that left at least 197 dead, most of them Han Chinese.

In June, the government said it had broken up a “terrorist” cell planning attacks in the southern Xinjiang cities of Kashgar, Hotan and Aksu.

All those killed or injured in the latest blast were members of ethnic minorities, Hou said. She did not specific their ethnicity.

Uighur exiles accuse China of whipping up the threat posed by armed separatists to justify harsh crackdowns in Xinjiang.

China has promised to increase investment in oil-and-coal rich Xinjiang, strategically located on China’s Central Asian and Pakistan borders, to try to soothe income disparities that have contributed to ethnic violence.

Money has been especially earmarked for the relatively poorer south part of Xinjiang, heavily populated by Uighurs.

“It’s true that for historic and natural development reasons, Xinjiang has seen unbalanced development, especially the three prefectures of Southern Xinjiang,” governor Nur Bekri told reporters earlier in the day. “We will make southern Xinjiang a focal point.”

(Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Chris Buckley)

Elderly Uncle of Baloch National Party President Riddled With Machine Gun Fire

[This Google map shows the concentration of Baloch National leaders killed near Pakistani naval bases, as well as new American air base at Omara, within a few miles of Jinnah Naval Base.]

View Larger Map

Akhtar Mengal’s Uncle, Nadir Gichki, Shot Dead

The Baloch Hal News

TURBAT: Sardar Nadir Jan Gichki, an outstanding personality of royal family of Mekran, was gunned down outside a mosque in Tump, some 40 kilometers from here on Wednesday evening.

The assailants riding a red colour car waylaid Sardar Nadir Jan Gichki and opened fire from all directions ensuring his instant death.

The assailants were four in number and all of them were carrying sub-machine guns and opened volley of fire from all the four killing machines. He received uncountable number of bullets on all parts of his body. Virtually, he was sprayed with bullets killing him on the spot.

According to eye witness reached by telephone, the assailants were in Iranian registration number plate car presumably to mislead the investigators or the common people. Or they used the Iranian car only to cover up the manslaughter of the outstanding personality of Mekran.

There was complete shock and dismay in whole of Mekran over the killing of an outstanding personality above politics.

He was maternal uncle of Sardar Akhtar Mengal, President of the Balochistan National Party. His son, late Hassan Gichki was tortured to death in judicial custody by the Government functionaries in 2006. Sardar Akhtar Mengal accused the Government of killing Hassan Gichki for politician reasons.

He was an elderly man in late 70s. He was a graduate from Karachi University. He remained an outstanding student leader of S.M. College, Karachi, from where he was graduated.

He was not involved in politics and never contested elections and always kept himself above from politics.

He was the Sardar of Tump covering a major part of Iranian Balochistan also during the pre-partition days.

Balochistan, Who is Right, Who is Wrong?

Balochistan, Who is Right, Who is Wrong?, posted with vodpod

“Operation New Dawn,” the Rise of the Contractor Army In Iraq

U.S. to Double Civilian Force in Iraq After Withdrawal

FoxNews.com

As the last brigade of U.S. combat troops began to leave Iraq Thursday the Obama administration planned to double the number of private security guards it has in the country to fill the void.

President Barack Obama had imposed an end-of-the-month deadline for the pullout — and “The Last Patrol,” which included members of the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, crossed the border into Kuwait in the early hours of Thursday local time.

Obama called it a milestone in the war, but the widely-publicized exit of the Stryker soldiers Thursday does not entirely end the fighting mission as there are still 2,600 combat troops left in Iraq.. They are expected to pull out in the next few days.

About 50,000 troops will stay in Iraq until the end of next year to train Iraqi forces and after August 31 the mission in Iraq will no longer be known as Operation Iraqi Freedom and will instead be known as Operation New Dawn.

When the last of the military troops leave at the end of 2011, the Obama administration is planning to more than double the number of private security guards it has in Iraq — up to 7,000 — The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing unnamed administration officials.

The U.S. State Department move is aimed at protecting civilians still exposed to al Qaeda-linked insurgents and Iranian-backed militias.

Contractors employed by the State Department will train the Iraqi police and U.S. diplomats in two new $100 million outposts will be left to defuse sectarian tensions in northern Iraq.

The security contractors, defending five fortified compounds around the country, will operate radars to warn of enemy rocket attacks, search for roadside bombs, fly reconnaissance drones and staff quick reaction forces to help civilians in distress, the officials told the Times.

As the exit of the troops was shown live on TV in the U.S. Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley described the end of combat operations as a “historic moment,” but vowed that America’s long-term commitment was unwavering.

“The last thing that we want to see is an occasion where we have to send troops back into Iraq yet again so we are ending the combat phase of our involvement in Iraq for a second time,” he said.

“We’re not ending our involvement in Iraq. We will have important work to do. This is a transition. This is not the end of something. It’s a transition to something different. We have a long-term commitment to Iraq.”

Crowley said that after spending $1 trillion in Iraq and with 4,400 lives lost, the conflict had come “at high expense.”

“We’ve invested heavily in Iraq and have to do everything we can to preserve that investment to integrate Iraq, along with the neighborhood, into a much more peaceful situation that serves their interests as well as ours. But this is a historic moment.”

Obama said the events were the beginning of the pullout he promised when he became president.

“As we mark this milestone in the Iraq war and our troops continue to move out of Iraq, I hope you’ll join me in thanking them, and all of our troops and military families, for their service,” Obama said.

“My administration will continue to do our part to support the brave men and women in uniform that have sacrificed so much. But supporting our troops and their families is not just the job of the Federal Government; it’s the responsibility of all Americans.

“Shortly after taking office, I put forward a plan to end the war in Iraq responsibly. Today, I’m pleased to report that — thanks to the extraordinary service of our troops and civilians in Iraq — our combat mission will end this month, and we will complete a substantial drawdown of our troops.

“Consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, all of our troops will be out of Iraq by the end of next year. Meanwhile, we will continue to build a strong partnership with the Iraqi people with an increased civilian commitment and diplomatic effort.”

NewsCore contributed to this report.

Climate Weapons: More Than Just a Conspiracy Theory?

Andrei ARESHEV

The abnormally hot weather in the central regions of Russia has already caused serious economic damage. It has destroyed crops on roughly 20% of the country’s agricultural land lots, the result being that the food prices are clearly set to climb next fall. On top of that, fires are raging over peat lands around Moscow. These days, the majority of forecasts concerning the climate are alarming: droughts, hurricanes, and floods are going to be increasingly frequent and severe. Director of the climate and energy program of the Wildlife Fund A. Kokorin says that the current trend is not a random phenomenon and should not be expected to subside (1).

In this particular context, the credibility of projections emanating from the Wildlife Fund, an influential international organization running worldwide operations styled as environment-protection programs, is beyond question (2). The reason is that the global warming which is the subject of heated academic (or, occasionally, absolutely unscholarly) debates is not necessarily an uncontrolled process. At least, the incidence of the current anomalously high temperatures exclusively in Russia and some adjacent territories invites alternative explanations.

Back in the 1970ies, Z. Brzezinski invoked in his Between Two Ages the theme of weather control, which he regarded as a form of broader social regulation. No doubt, the heavyweight of the US geopolitical thinking had to take interest not only in the immediate social but also in the potential geopolitical implications of influencing the climate. He was not the only author to probe into the issue but, due to obvious regards, information on the progress in the sphere of climate weaponry is unlikely to spill over secrecy barriers in the foreseeable future.

M. Chossudovsky, an economics professor from the Ottawa University, wrote in 2000 that in part the ongoing climate change could be triggered by the use of new-generation nonlethal weapons. The US is certainly exploring the possibilities of controlling the climate in several regions of the world. The corresponding technology is being developed in the framework of the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program» (HAARP) (3), the objective being to build a potential to launch droughts, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. From the military standpoint, HAARP is supposed to create a novel type of weapons of mass destruction and an instrument of expansionist policy which can be used to selectively destabilize environmental and agricultural systems of target countries (4). Technically, the system is known to be a set of sources of electromagnetic radiation affecting the ionosphere. It comprises 360 sources and 180 aerials having the height of 22 meters (5). Altogether the station emits 3,600 kW towards the ionosphere, being the world’s most powerful system of the kind(6). The program opened in 1990, is jointly funded by the US Office of Naval Research and the US Air Force Research Laboratory, and is implemented by several university laboratories.

Far-reaching hypotheses arise naturally in the situation. Venezuelan leader H. Chavez was ridiculed for attributing the Haiti earthquake to the impact of HAARP but, for example, similar suspicions crept in following the 2008 earthquake in China’s Sichuan province. Moreover, there is evidence that the US climate influence program not only spans a number of countries and regions but is also partially based in space. For instance, the X-37B unmanned vehicle orbited on April 22, 2010 reportedly carries new types of laser weaponry. According to New York Times, the Pentagon rejects any connection between X-37B and whatever combat weapons but recognizes that its purpose is to support ground operations and to handle a number of auxiliary tasks (7). The vehicle was built 11 years ago as a part of a NASA program which was taken over by the US Air Force 6 years ago and completely classified (8).

Demands to unveil details of the experimental program put into practice in Alaska are voiced both in the US and in several other countries. Russia never joined the chorus, but the impression is that efforts aimed at deliberate climate change are not a myth, and that in the nearest future Russia – together with the rest of the world – will face a new generation of threats. At the moment the climate weapons may be reaching their target capacity and used to provoke droughts, to erase crops, and to induce various anomalous phenomena in certain countries.

(1) Odnako. – 2010. – № 28. – p. 33.

(2) For details concerning the Wildlife Foundation, see: http://www.globoscope.ru/content/articles/2892/

(3) Program site: http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/. The HAARP station is located in Alaska, 250 km north-east of Ankoridge.

(4) Chossudovsky M. Washington’s New World Order Weapons Can Trigger Climate Change // http://www.mindfully.org/Air/Climate-Change-Weapons.htm

(5) http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/gen.html

(6) http://www.kp.ru/daily/24494/648410/

(7) Surveillance Suspected as Spacecraft’s Main Role. By William J. Broad // http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/science/space/23secret.html?_r=1&hp

(8) The Times claimed that the secret unmanned vehicle might be testing laser weapons: http://www.newsru.com/world/24may2010/kosmorazvedhtml

Source: NASA

Source: HAARP

Saad Hariri–Hope of the Middle East, Leader of Growing Resistance

Hariri: I See Some Things Moving in Right Direction, Such as Data Submitted to Public Prosecution

Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Wednesday stressed “commitment to the course of the U.N. investigation, and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon as the relevant authority for achieving justice.”

“There are developments that are being described as rapid, and which call for defining positions, and I have taken it upon myself to tackle issues in a calm approach,” Hariri said in a speech at an iftar banquet organized by the administrative body of the Federation of Beirut Families Associations at the Phoenicia Hotel.

“Despite the uproar that is accompanying these developments and making them means of incitation, I see some things moving in the right direction, such as the data submitted (by Hizbullah) to the public prosecution,” the premier added.

Hariri called for making dialogue “the means of exchanging views between leaders, resolving differences and promoting all that contribute to national stability.”

“What you hear from me is the truth. I speak on my behalf and no one can talk on behalf of Saad Hariri. I have a parliamentary bloc and a (political) movement, but some media outlets talk on my behalf or on behalf of sources close to me.

“Don’t believe any of this because nothing is true about it. We want the truth and nothing but the truth,” Hariri addressed the audience.

Weather shifts behind disasters need urgent probe: UN

[The following report attribute the disastrous weather over Pakistan and China, as well as the searing drought over Russia, to "blocking patterns" in the weather.  This previous report (SEE: Super-Charged Jet Stream Caused Pak. Flood) explained it as a "super-charged jet stream," which actually split, with one stream heading north to block Russian weather and another causing Pakistan's jet stream to accelerate, sucking-in humidity and tropical deluges.  If the UN actually investigates the cause of all this, will it be allowed to proceed to a logical conclusion, even if it leads here ( SEE: Pakistan: unlucky in everything then? really?)?  ]

Credit: Produced by the University of Reading using TRMM satellite rainfall data

Animation of jet stream for 23rd to 30th July 2010–below:  Credit: Produced by the University of Reading using data fromNOAA Earth Science Research Laboratory

(click HERE to see animation)

Jet stream for 23rd to 30th July 2010

Recorded rainfall in mm during the past 24 hours (0800 to 0800 hrs PST)

_______________________

Aerial view from a Pakistan army rescue helicopter shows the flooded area of Kot Addu, in the southern province of Punjab

GENEVA – Climate scientists must urgently look into changes in atmospheric currents linked to devastating floods in Pakistan and wildfires in Russia, UN climate and weather bodies said on Wednesday.

Ghassem Asrar, director of the World Climate Research Programme, told AFP that changes, known as blocking episodes, can prevent humidity or hot weather dispersing.

That intensified heavy rain or heatwaves and locked them over an area, he explained, potentially with a growing impact on extreme weather events that scientists expect to happen more frequently with global warming.

Asrar said that European researchers had modelled the blocking pattern in atmospheric currents and resulting weather behind the Pakistani rains and Russian heatwave a few weeks in advance.

They “clearly flagged this formation and kept track of it”, said Asrar, whose programme is partly linked to the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

“We know for sure that the two events in Pakistan and Russia are linked,” he added.

Asrar and the WMO underlined that the intense monsoon rain in Pakistan and heatwave in Russia, as well as rain-induced landslides in China and the split of a giant iceberg in Greenland in recent weeks were exceptional even by the standards of naturally-occurring climate extremes.

The WMO called the four “an unprecedented sequence of events” that “compare with, or exceed in intensity, duration or geographical extent, the previous largest historical events”.

“This poses an urgent question for climate science: whether the frequency and longevity of the blocking episodes are going to change,” the WMO said in a statement.

The evidence behind the impact and shifts in blocking patterns in atmospheric currents as well as the changing role of disruptive El Nino and La Nina currents over the Pacific Ocean, added to the urgent need for answers, Asrar argued.

“Absolutely, because of the impact on life and property, if you look at what happened in Pakistan and China,” he added.

Scientists are reluctant to overtly blame a single weather event on climate change, which measures longer term shifts over periods of years or decades.

Moscow was trapped in an unprecedented heatwave in the past six weeks with temperatures soaring to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and daily highs well above 30 degrees (86 F) for a month, triggering a nationwide crisis and destroying a quarter of the country’s crops.

Asrar said the priorities for climate and weather science were “transforming very rapidly”.

Meanwhile, experts predict that the highly disruptive La Nina pattern would last at least until early 2011.

The phenomenon lasts “usually around nine to 12 months,” said Rupa Kumar Kolli, a researcher at the WMO.

“At the moment, we don’t have really reliable indicators on how long it will last — at least until the end of this year.”

“La Nina conditions are expected to strengthen and last through (the) Northern Hemisphere winter,” the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said earlier this month.

La Nina is the return swing of El Nino, a weather anomaly that faded in mid-year after being blamed for blizzards in the United States, heatwaves in Brazil, killer floods in Mexico and drought in Argentina.

The El Nino/La Nina cycle is caused by a buildup of warm water that surges from the western Pacific to the eastern Pacific before cooling.

La Nina is associated with greater-than-usual monsoons in South Asia, drought or water stress in South America and more Atlantic cyclones. The last La Nina was in 2007-8.

- AFP /ls

The Fire of Resistance VS Nuclear Weapons

eileen fleming

[Kansas City] On Monday morning, August 16th, 14 nonviolent peace activists were arrested after blocking a Caterpillar truck on the site of a proposed WMD Facility in Kansas City, Missouri.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshjmac/

Ex-Catholic priest, Frank Cordaro of the Phil Berrigan Catholic Worker House in DM IA, remarked, “It’s an honor to be here and get busted! We risk arrest to awaken people from a kind of psychic numbing about the plant. We stand for an alternative to the war economy; we try to temper the U.S. death wish as an empire. Catholic Workers see people hungry; we feed them. We see violence perpetrated by governments; we resist. It’s just that simple. It is not an accident that nine of the fourteen arrested come from Midwest Catholic Worker communities. The Catholic Worker movement is a radical lay movement in the USA Catholic Church. Pacifist and nonviolent peace activist, we are best known for our houses of hospitality were we do the Works of Mercy; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless and give drink to the thirsty. We live and work daily with the poor who suffer directly from the miss use of our national resources, directed towards making nuclear bombs, keeping the rich rich and the poor poor. We know first hand, that even if these god awful bombs are never used, they kill the poor daily by denying them the resources needed to meet their most basic needs.”


While choruses of “we shall not be moved” rose up and sunflower seeds were scattered down, citizens of all ages and shades of diversity, gathered to protest continued production of U.S. nuclear weapons, to demand a clean up of the old KC facility and they also exposed another collaboration of corporations and politicians who collude while the tax payer pays for it all.

Over a hundred people had gathered on the previous Friday night for the Kansas City premier of COUNTDOWN TO ZERO and Monday mornings action topped of a weekend conference that drew peace activists from around the nation.

The activists called the new facility a “crime against peace” and a “crime against humanity.”


The KC plant will be America’s first new major nuclear weapons production facility in 32 years and America is also building new sites at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which produces uranium components for WMDs and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico which is home to plutonium pits.

The current Kansas City facility produces 85% of the non-nuclear components for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The current plant and the future plant are also a direct threat to the environment, health and personal security of every resident of and visitor to Kansas City and the new plant is also the recipient of illegal funding by the city government.

The money trail begins and also ends with Zimmer Real Estate Services, a KC mogul that has pocketed five million for 165 acres of “blighted-land” to the City. Zimmer is also one half of CenterPoint Zimmer/CPZ who will receive all the money to build the plant, and after a 20 year lease-to-purchase from the City, will take back possession for a fee of ten George Washingtons.

Chicago based, senior partner of CPZ, CenterPoint will get paid for designing, for building, for sub-leasing, and in 20 years will end up co-owning a Federal Nuclear Weapons Facility paid for by we the people who pay federal taxes as well as those who pay them to KC.

A Baltimore based underwriter will collect a percentage for arranging the $687 million financing deal.

Fourteen Private bondholders will reap a government guarantee that their $687 million 2010 investment will yield at minimum  $1.2 billion in rent, a solid 5% annual return.

The Catholic family who founded and owns HR Dunn Construction have already built over 30 prisons and will now be in charge of a new cloverleaf and other infrastructure improvements at the corner of Botts road and MO Sate Highway 150, adjacent to a residential neighborhood where children play and the neighbors organized to shut down City plans to build a prison on nearby agricultural land.

The federal General Services Administration/GSA acts as the pass through agency, that attempts to curtain the money that funds the nuclear weapons. The governments real estate agency will maintain many bureaucrats and the Department of energyąs semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration/NNSA gets a new facility built to spec outside of normal Congressional scrutiny and in the web of łalternatively and private financing˛ outside of the authorized nuclear weapons budget.

K.C. politicians are expecting to get reelected for saving 2,100 jobs [the old Plant employed 2,400] but their short sightedness robs the residents of much needed and still unallocated funds to clean up the old plant which has has been contaminated by over 700 chemicals and unknown numbers of new and unimagined combination’s.

The old KC complex houses offices for the Marine Corp Finance, US Dairy and National Nuclear Security Administration/NNSA. The NSA is under the Dept. of Energy; NOT the Defense Department. The Defense Dept.’s annual budget of $705 billion, does NOT include upkeep and refurbishing of America’s 5,113 WMD, nor pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which we the people pay for via “special appropriations.”

Barbara Rice worked on finances and payroll for the Marine Corps Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS), which employed about 800 people. In 2004 she began receiving e-mails about former colleagues at DFAS who had died. In less than one month, Rice accumulated a list of about 100 names, half of whom had already died or were dying. She “lost count of how many of her colleagues had died of cancer after 110 passed away from various kinds of the illnesses. While she said she couldn’t prove that the deaths were related to chemical exposure at the current facility, Rice remembered one instance when a pipe burst at the plant and her supervisors told her to ‘go home immediately and destroy her clothes.’”[1]

The DFAS was divided from the KC Nuclear Plant by a concrete wall, and shared the same ventilation system and all employees shared the same cafeteria.

Barbara explained:

“Bannister Federal Complex is filled with toxins and chemicals. On our side, there’s been beryllium on the roof, uranium under the staircase, arsenic in the water.  We (at DFAS) had headaches, miscarriages. We believed maybe it was from the weather or the cafeteria food. Now we’ve learned the toxins were carried from the Bendix side to our side on the feet of those coming to the cafeteria for lunch.”

The fire of resistance against nuclear weapons has been smoldering for three decades and it was celebrated at Oak Ridge, Tenn. on July 5, 2010 when 36 nonviolent activists were arrested moments after The Declaration of Independence from Nuclear Weapons at Y-12, was read:

The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 indicted a government that engaged in barbaric conduct contrary to the laws of Humanity that included “works of death, destruction and tyranny unparalleled in the most barbaric ages” until the Age of Now!

Current Law requires an end to all planning, preparation, production, threat, or use of nuclear weapons and we the people have gathered here today, July 4, 2010 at Y-12 to demand this Government adhere to the fundamental rules and principles of Humanitarian Law.

These rules and principles require that civilians never be the object of attack. Consequently we must never use weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilians and military targets.

Whereas, all W-76 and W-76-1 thermonuclear secondaries produced at Y-12 are designed and produced to unleash 100 KT of uncontrollable and indiscriminate heat, blast and radiation, six times more than the Hiroshima Bomb,

Whereas, the International Court of Justice found that the destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time, and that the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet,

Whereas, citizens have both rights and duties we the people of conscience must ensure future generations their right to life,

Whereas, under the principals of democracy we the people of conscience demand this government to fulfill its promise and responsibilities to pursue and achieve nuclear disarmament,

We the people of conscience therefore exercise the right of every citizen of this republic and this planet to peacefully resist the nuclear threat; attacking as it does every core concept of human rights.

Whereas it is a basic human right to be free of threat or violence, and it is our duty to protect children and future generations we call on this government to use our tax dollars that are now being used to wage permanent war unequivocally demand they be used to pursue a nuclear free world and clean up all chemical and radioactive contamination.

On April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage in Prague and admitted, “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act…When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp…the voices of peace and progress must be raised together…Human destiny will be what we make of it…Words must mean something.”

In 1987 from Ashkelon prison, Mordechai Vanunu wrote:

“The passive acceptance and complacency with regard to the existence of nuclear weapons anywhere on earth is the disease of society today…This struggle is not only a legitimate one – it is a moral, inescapable struggle…no government, not even the most democratic, can force us to live under this threat. No state in the world can offer any kind of security against this menace of a nuclear holocaust, or guarantee to prevent it…Already now there are enough nuclear missiles to destroy the world many times over…This issue should unite us all, because that is our real enemy…Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger. Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own government, just as if they have been hijacked and deprived of their freedom and threatened…Indeed, when governments develop nuclear weapons without the consent of their citizens they are violating the basic rights of their citizens, the basic right not to live under constant threat of annihilation.

“Is any government qualified and authorized to produce such weapons?“

The Arrested:

Josh Armfield,  Cherith Brook CW, KC MO

Eric Garbison, Cherith Brook CW, KC MO

Frank Cordaro, DMCW IA

Ed Bloomer, DMCW IA

Rachael Hoffman, Holy Family CW KC MO

Gina Cook, Holy Family CW KC MO

Steve Jacobs , Columbia MO CW

Robby Jones, Columbia MO CW

Brian Terrell , Maloy IA CW

Beth Seberger, KC MO

Donna Constantinean, KC MO

Felice Cohen-Joppa, Nulcear Resister , Tucson AZ

Fr Jerry Zawada,

Steve Clemens, Mipls MN

1. http://ncronline.org/news/peace/catholic-activists-arrested-kansas-city-nuclear-weapons-facility

Photo by Joshua McElwee, Staff Writer for the National Catholic Reporter
Jane Stoever also contributed to this report.

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Eileen Fleming, Producer “30 Minutes with Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Staff Member of Salem-news.com
A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com and Dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
Author of “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”
http://www.youtube.com/user/eileenfleming

Only in Solidarity do “we have it in our power to begin the world again.”-Tom Paine