Associated Press / USA Today
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli tanks and infantry entered Gaza after nightfall Saturday, launching a much anticipated ground offensive in a widening war on Gaza's Hamas rulers.
Israeli security officials said the operation is likely to go on for several days, but that the objective is not to reoccupy Gaza. The depth and intensity will also depend on parallel diplomatic efforts, the officials said.
"We have many, many targets," Maj. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli army spokeswoman, told CNN. "To my estimation, it will be a lengthy operation."
Heavy Israeli artillery fire hit east of Gaza City, in locations were Hamas fighters were deployed. The artillery shells were apparently intended to detonate Hamas explosive devices and mines planted along the border area before troops marched in.
Gun battles could be heard, as troops crossed the border into Gaza. Local TV networks broadcast images of troops marching single file. The troops were also backed by helicopter gunships.
An SMS message sent by Hamas' military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, said that "the Zionists started approaching the trap which our fighters prepared for them."
Defense officials have said around 10,000 soldiers massed along the border in recent days.
Israel's offensive against Hamas had begun with a week of aerial bombardment of Hamas targets, in an attempt to halt Hamas rocket attacks on Israel. However, Hamas kept firing at Israeli towns, and Israeli officials said diplomatic efforts did not produced a satisfactory plan so far to guarantee a halt to rockets.
Israel initially held off on a ground offensive, apparently in part because of concern about casualties among Israeli troops and because of fears of getting bogged down in Gaza. Hamas leaders have warned that they have prepared a violent welcome. They have also threatened to resume suicide attacks inside Israel.
The first week of fighting had claimed more than 460 Palestinians lives, while four Israelis were killed by rocket fire. Gaza is densely populated, and intense urban warfare was likely to get much deadlier.
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - Counterpunch
On the last day of the old year in CounterPunch, two Israelis, Jeff Halper who heads the Israeli peace movement ICAHD and Neve Gordon who is chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University, asked, “Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?”
“Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week,” report Halper and Gordon. They note that Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger, who has in the past ignorantly insulted Islamic representatives, “has been silent.”
It is the goyim moralists who are silent, not the Jews. It is the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, not the goyim media, that provides reports of Israel’s abuse of Palestinians. Gideon Levy’s “The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again” was published in Haaretz (29 December), not in the goyim press. Levy’s words--“Once again, Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom”--are not words that can appear in American print or TV media. Such words, printed in Israeli newspapers, never reach the goyim.
The extent of Americans’ ignorance is breathtaking. Israel has the Palestinians jammed into tightly controlled ghettos known as Gaza and the West Bank. With Egypt’s help, Israel controls the inflows of food, medicines, water, and energy into Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza are not permitted to enter Israel or Egypt. Last week a humanitarian ship bringing food and medicine was rammed by Israeli gunboats and turned away.
In the West Bank Palestinians are walled off from their fields, jobs, medical care, education, water, and from one another by endless checkpoints, roads for “Jews only,” walls, barbed wire, and machine gun towers. Palestinians are being evicted from their towns house by house, block by block.
Israel’s slow theft of Palestine is illegal under international law but protected by US “diplomacy.”
The Palestinians are no more of a threat to Israel than Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were a threat to the Nazi state. Yet, everywhere in America--Congress, the executive branch, the print and TV media, the universities, evangelical Christian institutions--there is the belief that Israel is on the verge of annihilation by Palestinian terrorists. This ignorance, so carefully cultivated by the Israel Lobby, turns genocidal aggression into self-defense.
It fools Americans, but it doesn’t fool Israelis. The Israelis have always known that “self-defense” is a cloak for a Zionist policy of territorial expansion. The policy is controversial within Israel. Many Israelis object, just as many Americans object to President Bush’s illegal wars and violations of US civil liberties. Many Israelis give voice to their moral conscience, but they are overwhelmed by vested interests.
Karl Marx declared morality to be merely a mask for vested interests. The writings of Marx and Engels are scornful of good will and moral ideals as effective forces in history. The Israeli state epitomizes Marx’s doctrine that power alone is the effective force.
Many American conservatives share the Israeli state’s belief in the efficacy of power. Conservatives who turned against Bush’s wars did so because the US was not brutal enough. They turned away from Bush’s long inconclusive wars in the way that fans desert a losing team.
Americans used to say that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” but this hasn’t been the case for US and Israeli aggression. The success the two regimes have had in instilling fear into their populations is part of the explanation for the impotence of morality. Another part of the explanation is that vested interests are a powerful constraint on morality.
Consider the case of Lee Bollinger. Columbia University is dependent on Jewish money, faculty and students. If Bollinger were to take a stand against Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians, he would be denounced as an anti-semite. Presidents of competitor universities would not come to his defense. They would pile on in hopes of recruiting Columbia’s top faculty and students and redirecting the flow of financial resources from Columbia to themselves.
An American newspaper or TV network that took a stand against Israel’s abuse of Palestinians would be confronted with an advertising boycott organized by AIPAC. American politicians who criticize Israel go down to defeat by Israel Lobby money.
Hegel gave too much emphasis to ideas, Marx too much to material interests. Both forces operate in the world. There are times in history when revolutionary ideas shatter material interests. Other times the two coexist in a balance of power. In other times material interests prevail over morality.
We are living in the latter time. Financial interests, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby are the powers that rule America. They are buttressed by neoconservatives and Christian Zionists and by the patriotic hubris that America is the main force for good operating in the world. The evils America commits are dismissed as necessary to the service of good. The destruction of Iraq, for example, is justified as “bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people.”
A number of commentators, including myself, predict a decline in America’s economic power. As this occurs, Israel will have to abandon its policy of violence. With the accumulated hatred that its policies have fomented, Israel will be vulnerable.
The world will need to remember that although Israel is a Jewish state, it is a state whose policies many Jews find objectionable, just as a majority of American Jews oppose President Bush’s wars of aggression in the Middle East and his unconstitutional policies at home. We must not confuse Israel’s Zionist government with world Jewry, just as we must not confuse the American people with the war criminals in the Bush Regime.
Consider, who do you trust with your civil liberties, the US Department of Justice or the ACLU’s phalanx of Jewish attorneys?
We must avoid the mistake that was made by blaming the German people for Hitler. It was the aristocratic German military that tried to remove Hitler. In contrast, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi blocked the attempt to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Pelosi is a discredit to California, but shall we blame all of America for Pelosi’s defense of war criminals? How can we do so when US Rep. Dennis Kucinich courageously read out the articles of impeachment on the House floor?
Are all Americans guilty because Kucinich did not prevail?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
By Aaron Glantz, New America Media - Alternet
America's promise to "Support the Troops" ends the moment they take off the uniform and try to make the transition to civilian life.
SAN FRANCISCO - Roy Lee Brantley shivers in the cold December morning as he waits in line for food outside the Ark of Refuge mission, which sits amid warehouses and artists lofts a stone's throw from the skyscrapers of downtown San Francisco.
Brantley's beard is long, white and unkempt. The African-American man's skin wrinkled beyond his 62 years. He lives in squalor in a dingy residential hotel room with the bathroom down the hall. In some ways, his current situation marks an improvement. "I've slept in parks," he says, "and on the sidewalk. Now at least I have a room."
Like the hundreds of others in line for food, Brantley has worn the military uniform. Most, like Brantley, carry their service IDs and red, white and blue cards from the Department of Veterans Affairs in their wallets or around their necks. In 1967, he deployed to Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry Division of the U.S. Army. By the time he left the military five years later, Brantley had attained the rank of sergeant and been decorated for his valor and for the wounds he sustained in combat.
"I risked my life for this democracy and got a Bronze Star," he says. "I shed blood for this country and got the Purple Heart after a mortar blast sent shrapnel into my face and leg. But when I came back home from Vietnam I was having problems. I tried to hurt my wife because she was Filipino. Every time I looked at her I thought I was in Vietnam again. So we broke up."
In 1973, Brantley filed a disability claim with the federal government for mental wounds sustained in combat overseas. Over the years, the Department of Veterans Affairs has denied his claim five separate times. "You go over there and risk your life for America and your mind's all messed up, America should take care of you, right," he says, knowing that for him and the other veterans in line for free food that promise has not been kept.
On any given night 200,000 U.S. veterans sleep homeless on the streets of America. One out of every four people -- and one out of every three men -- sleeping in a car, in front of a shop door, or under a freeway overpass has worn a military uniform. Some like Brantley have been on the streets for years. Others are young and women returning home wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan, quickly slipping through the cracks.
For each of these homeless veterans, America's promise to "Support the Troops" ended the moment he or she took off the uniform and tried to make the difficult transition to civilian life. There, they encountered a hostile and cumbersome bureaucracy set up by the Department of Veterans Affairs. In a best-case scenario, a wounded veteran must wait six months to hear back from the VA. Those who appeal a denial have to wait an average of four and a half years for their answer. In the six months leading up to March 31st of this year, nearly 1,500 veterans died waiting to learn if their disability claims would be approved by the government.
There are patriotic Americans trying to solve this problem. Last month, two veterans' organizations, Vietnam Veterans of America and Veterans of Modern Warfare, filed suit in federal court demanding the government decide disability claims brought by wounded soldiers within three months. Predictably, however, the VA is trying to block the effort. On December 17, their lawyers convinced Reggie Walton, a judge appointed by President Bush, who ruled that imposing a quicker deadline for payment of benefits was a task for Congress and the president-not the courts.
President-elect Barack Obama has the power to end this national disgrace. He has the power to ensure to streamline the VA bureaucracy so it helps rather than fights those who have been wounded in the line of duty. He can ensure that this latest generation of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan does not receive the bum rap the Vietnam generation got. Let 2008 be the last year thousands of homeless veterans stand in line for free food during the holiday season. Let it be the last year hundreds of thousands sleep homeless on the street.
by Jim Lobe - Inter Press Service
WASHINGTON - The U.S. section of Amnesty International sent an "urgent" letter Friday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, calling on her to end what it called Washington's "lopsided response" to the ongoing Israeli air strikes on Gaza that have reportedly killed more than 400 Palestinians, including scores of unarmed civilians.
People demonstrate against Israeli air strikes on Gaza strip during a protest in Prague. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday she has no plans to visit the Middle East, as protests stepped up in major capitals and artists urged Barack Obama to speak out against Israel. (AFP/Milan Jaros)While the letter also expressed concern about the rocket fire by Palestinian groups that has taken four Israeli lives in urban areas more than 30 kilometres from Gaza during the past week, it called Israel's campaign air campaign "disproportionate" and accused the Jewish state of violating international law.
"Without diminishing the responsibility of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups for indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on Israeli civilians, the U.S. government must not ignore Israel's disproportionate response and the longstanding policies which have brought the Gaza Strip to the brink of humanitarian disaster," the letter declared.
"...Amnesty International USA is particularly dismayed at the lopsided response by the U.S. government to the recent violence and its lackadaisical efforts to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza," it stressed, noting that several recent reports by its London-based parent organization, U.N. aid agencies, Oxfam, CARE and other relief groups have described the situation in Gaza -- even before the latest outbreak of hostilities -- as the worst since Israel's 1967 conquest of the area.
The letter came amid growing international clamour, especially from European and Arab capitals, for an immediate ceasefire. So far both Israel and Hamas have rejected this option.
Hamas has said it would agree to a ceasefire provided Israel agrees to lift its effective economic blockade of the territory. Israel -- strongly backed by the White House -- has insisted that it will stop its offensive only when Hamas agrees to a ceasefire that, in Rice's words, "is durable and sustainable."
In its letter, Amnesty urged Washington to "go beyond rhetoric and exert concrete pressure on both parties to immediately cease unlawful attacks." Statements in recent days by both Rice and the White House have contributed to the impression that Washington wants to give Israel more time to weaken Hamas' leadership and infrastructure in Gaza, in hopes that the population there will turn against the party to the benefit of Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party.
Indeed, Israel has begun amassing tanks, artillery and troops in a number of areas just outside Gaza, possibly in preparation for a ground assault against specific Hamas targets.
In a new phase of its campaign, Israeli forces began striking the homes of Hamas leaders. An air attack Thursday killed a top cleric identified with Hamas' military wing, Nizar Rayyan, along with his four wives and nine children. The air assault reportedly struck at the homes of several other leaders again Friday in what some analysts here described as an effort to "decapitate" the Islamist group.
The European Union called Thursday for an "immediate and permanent ceasefire" that would include both an "unconditional halt to rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel and an end to Israeli military action."
On a trip to Europe Thursday, however, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni -- who, along with Defence Minister Ehud Barak, has gained in the public- opinion polls for the Feb. 10 elections since the Israeli offensive began -- rejected the demand as well as a French proposal for a 48-hour "humanitarian cease-fire."
An unidentified official travelling with Livni called the latter proposal "unrealistic", "hasty", and bordering on "offensive", adding that Israel was itself shipping in tonnes of humanitarian supplies, including food and medicine, despite reports of severe shortages and chaos in Gaza's few hospitals. The territory has been without power for two days.
"There is no humanitarian crisis, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce," Livni told reporters in Paris.
Amnesty's letter strongly disagreed with that assessment Friday, however, echoing a report issued Wednesday by Oxfam. "At present there is an urgent need for access to humanitarian aid, food and essential supplies -- as both aid agencies and residents of Gaza have long ago run out of provision reserves due to the Israeli blockade which has so restricted the flow of goods into Gaza for months," it said.
"The quantities which the Israeli army has allowed into Gaza in recent days are nowhere near what is necessary to meet the basic needs of the population of 1.5 million," it added.
Rice herself has voiced some concern about the humanitarian situation and has sought private assurances from Livni that more assistance will be delivered via U.N. and private relief agencies, according to a number of sources close to the administration.
The same sources say that Washington has also sought assurances that Israel will try to keep civilian casualties to a minimum and that there will be no repeat of the 1996 shelling of the southern Lebanese village of Qana in which some 106 Lebanese civilians trying to escape fighting between Israel and Hezbollah were killed by Israeli shelling.
But, as noted in the Amnesty letter, "the Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world" and the way Israel's current bombing campaign is being carried out "is completely failing to meet" international legal requirements that all operations be "strictly necessary, proportionate and make every effort to discriminate between combatant and civilian."
In a statement released Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) also criticised Israel -- as well as Hamas' rocket firings -- for failing to discriminate between legitimate military and civilian targets to minimise harm to civilians. It cited several aerial attacks carried out early in the campaign which "appear to be unlawful," including strikes against students leaving a U.N. training facility; against a "Hamas mosque" that also destroyed a nearby house; and several police stations and a police academy.
As it has in the past, HRW also charged that Israel's blockade of the territory amounted to "collective punishment against the civilian population, a serious violation of the laws of war."
In its letter, Amnesty called on Washington to immediately suspend its arms deliveries to Israel pending an investigation as to whether previously supplied weapons have been used to commit serious human rights abuses during the current assault.
By Megan Johnson - U.S. News & World Report
Some metro areas are much more in shape than others. Here's a list of best and worse
Unless you live in Burlington, Vt., the nation's healthiest city, where 92 percent of residents report good health, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you may need a reason to get moving in the new year.
The national initiative known as Healthy People 2010 established goals for physical activity, among other health behaviors. Nationwide, 49 percent of adults met its physical activity criteria in 2007, the latest year for which data are available. Recently updated, the initiative now calls for adults to get 30 minutes of moderate exercise at least five times per week or at least 75 minutes of vigorous activity (running as opposed to speed walking, for example) per week. That means the majority of Americans aren't being as active as they should be.
Here's a list of cities where most people are already meeting the 2010 goals—and another of metro areas where most people need to do more training in the coming year.
By ADAM REILLY - The Boston Phoenix
Remembering the year in media malfeasance
Granted, other years have had flashier media embarrassments (Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, a complacent press cheerily abetting the march to war in Iraq — that sort of thing). But that doesn't mean that 2008 lacked for media misdeeds. Quite the contrary! In fact — thanks, perhaps, to the combination of a) the presidential race, and b) the ongoing immolation of the nation's newspaper industry — there was a veritable cornucopia of media low points to enjoy in the bygone year. Here, for your reading pleasure, is the Phoenix's recap of the best of the worst:
1) ALL THE WINKING INNUENDO THAT'S FIT TO PRINT
In a front-page story on John McCain's problematic ties to lobbyists, the New York Times highlights McCain's alleged/unproven/denied affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Their relationship, the Times explains, shows how McCain's "confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest." Hmm. Perhaps another, factual example would have worked better?
2) ARISE, KNIGHTS OF THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE! ACTUALLY, ER, SCRATCH THAT . . .
When a young white woman working for the College Republican National Committee shows up at a Pittsburgh police station with a "B" carved onto her face (that's for "Barack"), claiming that she was disfigured by a big, knife-wielding black man who'd taken umbrage at her McCain bumper sticker, most of the media proceed with caution. Not so the Drudge Report and Fox News, which immediately give the story massive play. Turns out it's a hoax, leaving both outlets with an "E" on their respective faces (that's for "egg").
3) HIS COLD, DEAD FACTS
The Times' 2500-word obituary for Charlton Heston generates approximately 270 words of corrections, meted out over three separate days. Errors include Heston's age, year of birth, and birth name.
4)THIS REALLY PUTS THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE . . .
After Meet the Press host Tim Russert's death at age 58, following a heart attack, his press brethren grieve so loudly, so publicly, and for such a long period of time that their disproportionate mourning becomes a case study in media solipsism.
5) HE ALSO GOES BY "PRINCE OF SHITTY EULOGIES"
Arriving late to the Russert love fest, conservative columnist Bob Novak, a/k/a the "Prince of Darkness," praises the late NBC mainstay for being an "extraordinary source" — thereby raising unanswerable questions about Russert's journalistic practices and integrity.
6) ALL THE HALF-ASSED, NEO-CON PABULUM THAT'S FIT TO PRINT
In January, the Times welcomes William Kristol, the neo-conservative eminence and Weekly Standard editor, to its stable of columnists. It's a great opportunity for Kristol to sway the American public during a hotly contested election. Instead, he makes an embarrassing mistake in his debut column (conflating conservative commentators Michelle Malkin and Michael Medved); shows an affinity for lazy arguments presented in tepid, almost grudging prose; and refuses to discuss his previous condemnations of the Times with public editor Clark Hoyt. For good measure, he disparages the Times again, during an appearance on The Daily Show — and, in his role as unofficial advisor to the McCain campaign, helps convince McCain to pick Sarah Palin. All in all, not a good year.
7) TWO WORDS, RUPERT:DON'T MESS
After Rupert Murdoch violates his promise not to interfere with the Wall Street Journal's editorial integrity by forcing out managing editor Marcus Brauchli and installing as his replacement Robert Thomson, formerly the editor of Murdoch's Times of London, the Dow Jones Special Committee — the body charged with protecting the Journal's independence — courageously responds by giving the Thomson hire its unanimous approval.
8) STAY CLASSY, KYRA!
During an on-air conversation with her news colleagues Gerri Willis (who's white) and Don Lemon (who's black), CNN host Kyra Phillips discusses making a "reverse Oreo" with her fellow anchors.
9) ALL THAT TWITTERS IS NOT GOLD
After an illegal immigrant with a history of driving violations crashes into a Colorado-area Baskin-Robbins and kills a young child, Denver's Rocky Mountain News sends a reporter to Twitter the boy's funeral. The reporter's "Tweets" — observations of 140 characters or less, composed and sent by cell phone, and instantly distributed to the News' Twitter-connected readers — include the following hang-on-every-word nuggets: "procession begins," "people gathering at graveside," "coffin lowered into ground."
10) A DUCK BLIND, A 28-GAUGE SHOTGUN, AND THOU
The Boston Herald unwittingly reprints a satirical report from noted humorist Andy Borowitz, on Dick Cheney's desire to go "hunting" with Hillary Clinton, as straight news. Busted by Boston magazine blogger Amy Derjue, Herald editor Kevin Convey admits the paper was "bamboozled."
11) LIKE THE HANDMAID'S TALE, BUT GLOSSIER
The New York Times Magazine publishes a front-page story by Style-section flunky Alex Kuczynski, known for her work as a plastic-surgery guinea pig, on surrogate motherhood. Titled "Her Body, My Baby," the piece is packed with enough self-pity, self-regard, smug classism ("I had the natal equivalent of a hall pass, a free ride, an automatic upgrade to first class"), and problematic racial imagery (e.g., the plantation-y portrait of Kuczynski, her child, and her child's black nanny) to alienate even sympathetic readers. (continue reading)
The United States once again leads the world in exporting weapons
Iraqi soldiers celebrate after receiving new rifles from the U.S. forces in Baghdad, Iraq. U.S. forces have given the Iraqi army 800 pieces of M-16 and M-4 rifles as a part of the U.S. Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
Share Digg del.icio.us Reddit Newsvine A $7 billion missile-defense system for the United Arab Emirates. An estimated $15 billion potential sale of Lockheed Martin’s brand-new fighter plane to Israel. Billions of dollars in weaponry for Taiwan and Turkey. These and other recent deals helped make the United States the world’s leading arms-exporting nation.
In 2007, U.S. foreign military sales agreements totaled more than $32 billion — nearly triple the amount during President Bush’s first full year in office.
The Pentagon routinely justifies weapons sales as “promoting regional stability,” but many of these arms end up in the world’s war zones. In 2006 and 2007, the five biggest recipients of U.S. weapons were Pakistan ($3.5 billion), Iraq ($2.2 billion), Israel ($2.2 billion), Afghanistan ($1.9 billion) and Colombia ($580 million) — all countries where conflict rages.
In Pakistan, the fighting ranges from communal violence and state repression, to attacks against India, to deadly battles between Pakistani military and al Qaeda forces in the northwest provinces. Israel has used U.S.-supplied weapons in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as in the 2006 invasion of Lebanon. Colombia uses U.S. weaponry to fight the drug war. Of the 27 major conflicts during 2006 and 2007, 19 of them involved U.S-supplied weapons.
While full data is not yet available for 2008, the United States continues to flood warzones with more destabilizing weapons. In 2008, the Pentagon brokered more than $12.5 billion in possible foreign military sales to Iraq, including guns, ammunition, tanks and attack helicopters.
Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi analyst with American Friends Service Committee, notes the chance that this weaponry will promote peace and democracy in Iraq is slim.
“The current Iraqi armed forces are the same forces and militias that have been committing ethnic and sectarian cleansing during the last years and they have a violent record full of human rights violations, torture and assassinations,” says Jarrar.
What’s more, the United States cannot successfully track its weapons. Hundreds of thousands of U.S.-supplied pistols and automatic weapons destined for Iraqi security forces between 2004 and 2005 remain lost, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The Pentagon has “no idea where they are,” Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a national-security think tank, told the Washington Post in 2007. “It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors.”
U.S. law curbs weapons sales to countries engaged in a “gross and consistent” pattern of human rights abuses or to countries using U.S. weapons for aggressive purposes. But these requirements are often set aside in favor of short-term objectives.
Michael Klare, director of the Amherst, Mass.-based Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies, has followed the arms trade for decades. He discounts official claims that the delivery of arms can help promote stability.
“The more we help one side, the more that regime’s opponents are driven to seek arms from another supplier, leading to an inevitable spiral of arms buying, provocation and conflict,” Klare says.
According to Stohl, “The Bush administration has demonstrated a willingness to provide weapons and military training to weak and failing states and countries that have been repeatedly criticized by the U.S. State Department for human rights violations, lack of democracy and even support of terrorism.”
The Obama administration could mark a new era in arms trade. On the campaign trail, Obama expressed openness to signing the global cluster munitions ban, but he has yet to speak about a global Arms Trade Treaty — which would establish more rigorous conditions for weapons exports — or about curbing weapons sales, in general.
“The arms trade is never a panacea for instability,” Klare says. “It can only enflame regional tensions and heighten the risk of war.”
By Justin Ewers - U.S. News & World Report
In a new book, two former nuclear weapons scientists make the case that Soviet spies didn't just steal atomic secrets from the Manhattan Project in the 1940s—something historians have known for years—but say a previously unknown spy also helped the Soviets design their first hydrogen bomb. The Soviet Union detonated its first thermonuclear bomb in 1955, only a year after the first American H-bomb was tested, ending the period of nuclear supremacy the U.S. military enjoyed after World War II.
In The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation, published this month, Danny Stillman and Thomas Reed, two longtime veterans of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, do not provide the name of the spy they say took hydrogen bomb secrets out of the Los Alamos, N.M., weapons lab. But they do offer some of his biography, saying he was born in the United States, raised abroad, came under the sway of the Communist Party in the 1930s, and took a job at Los Alamos during World War II.
Stillman and Reed say in the book that they have refused to reveal the name of the suspected spy, who is now dead, because he "can neither defend his family name nor refute our arguments." They say his name doesn't really matter, anyway: "His fingerprints are what count."
Stillman, a physicist who worked at Los Alamos from 1965 until 2000, says he tried to make a case against the scientist in the 1990s, going to the FBI after he noticed the man's apparent wealth. The local Santa Fe office bungled the investigation, the authors say, and the inquiry was "botched beyond recognition." The FBI eventually became distracted by the modern-day spy scandal surrounding Wen Ho Lee, another scientist working at Los Alamos, and stopped pursuing the case, the authors say.
As the Cold War faded into memory, the authors say they began to get their first real confirmation that the Soviet H-bomb effort had help from someone inside the American nuclear program. In particular, they say Russian scientists told them at a meeting in the late 1990s that the Soviet bomb designer, Andrei Sakharov, had privately refused to take full credit for the hydrogen bomb. The Russians hinted that Sakharov knew he'd gotten a boost from someone in the American program.
Former Soviet weapons experts have also said they were given a copy of an early design drawing of a "radiation implosion," the technology used in hydrogen bombs, that appeared to have been sketched in the early 1950s by an American H-bomb designer. The document was apparently stolen or copied and found its way to the Soviets. Stillman and Reed say there is only one way this kind of information could have ended up in Soviet hands: a spy.
Most historians seem to be leery of Stillman's and Reed's conclusions, barring more hard evidence. But they say the notion of a Soviet spy inside the early American atomic program isn't so far-fetched. There is little doubt, in fact, that the Soviets' first nuclear weapon—a plutonium bomb like the one dropped on Nagasaki, Japan—was the result of espionage. "We know now that their first design was a carbon-copy of the 'Fat-Man,' " Robert Norris, a researcher at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the author of Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project's Indispensable Man, said in an interview earlier this year.
Nearly a dozen Soviet spies—including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Klaus Fuchs—were executed or imprisoned after World War II for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets, including information about the plutonium bomb and the early work on the hydrogen bomb. Last year, Vladimir Putin, then Russia's president, shocked American historians and government officials alike when he announced that an undetected spy, George Koval, had also penetrated the Manhattan Project.
Putin said Koval, an Iowa-born son of Russian Jewish immigrants, had provided the Soviets with information about American atomic production levels while working at nuclear facilities in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Dayton, Ohio. Koval moved back to Russia in the 1950s and died in 2006. He was posthumously awarded the Hero of Russia medal.
There was widespread paranoia in the United States throughout the 1950s about the possibility of Soviet espionage, and these new revelations certainly seem to indicate that not all of it was unjustified. There is little doubt, of course, that the Red Scare—with the prodding of Sen. Joseph McCarthy—cast its net too wide in its frantic attempts to find communist sympathizers. No atomic bomb secrets leaked from blacklisted movie stars, after all. There is also no evidence that Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, ever provided assistance to the Soviets, though he was controversially stripped of his security clearance while overseeing the development of the hydrogen bomb.
If Stillman and Reed are right, though, there were some who did aid the Soviets. And it may have taken only one man in the right place to help them build their bomb.
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The Key to Eliminating Your Slice
Making a proper “full shoulder turn” is one of the most important fundamentals of the golf swing, yet it's one of the most common mistakes made by golfers; and why so many have slice problems. A proper shoulder turn is when you rotate the shoulders so the leading shoulder comes under your chin, without letting your hips turn much at all. Below we explain the ways this eliminates the slice:
• If your shoulder rotation is stopped too early, your arms will tend to continue by fling across the target line and causing an outside-to-inside swing path, resulting in the dreaded banana-ball. A full shoulder turn will help the club fall “on plane”, which greatly reduces the chance of cutting across the target line and slicing the golf ball.
• A full shoulder turn will promote proper weight shift. Remember too keep your lower body from moving laterally. Do not confuse the full shoulder turn as meaning you must get the club back to parallel at the top of the swing. Many great golfers have a compact swing that comes up far short of parallel at the top, but all great golfers take a full shoulder turn when executing a full shot.
• A full shoulder turn will bring you to the top of the swing and assist in getting the hands and arms into proper position.
• Keep your chin up and off your chest so the leading shoulder can rotate and pass under the chin. If the shoulder hits your chin, it will cut the shoulder rotation short and encourage a slice.
• When a golfer does not utilize a full shoulder turn, they tend to rely more on the small muscles (hands and arms) to swing the golf club. This leads to inconsistent ball striking and shots prone to slicing. With a full shoulder turn, you will use more of your big muscles, which are much more consistent, and help you square the club face and avoid a slice. Don’t be in a rush; taking the club back slow will help you to finish the back swing with a full shoulder turn. More body, less arms.
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1 comments:
Why do we have millions of Americans out of work. The answer is simple,over production.
The greed of an unheard of global ruling class sits back and enjoys the best of wine, drugs and whoredom.
The struggling lower income middle class has failed in attempting to keep an economic equalibrium image that will swell their counterfeit greedy intemperance, and will not loosen up to their level of economic exisistence. All slaves for nothing.
Karl Marx in one his critiques on political economy: The toilet represents the king of those of whom who love gold better
than a natural humanitarian coexistence with the globe's populations.
For thousands of years first cousins cultivate twin gods, the unannounced Messiah and Alla. Why not let these blood relationships solve their own religious obligations. Let America, Britain and Egypt and Red Russia stay out of other nation's problems.
Our Republic with its guaranteed pseudo Democracy out classes the world's greatest monarchys. It is time to face reality---mobocracy or Fascism!
We must revamp our national system under Democracy or move into a
full blown capitalistic dictatorship housed with police spies and politically driven thieves of state geared to wretsle Uncle Sam from the evolving Third World nations through a commie run United Nations. Let Esau and Shem
follow the yellow brick road to self-destruction.
The Whole world's problem
relates back to Jacob and Esau----
there is no let up in sight until
all religions are removed from state control world wide.
Lets resuffle these parasitic supported religions of state, relieving all people from the fear that will live in a Hell of life by not forcing clergy men to live off of their wits other than the hides of stupid tax payers!
Gearshift
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