"Children with Matches"

Posted By Fred Reed On November 8, 2010 @ antiwar.com

Oh, good. I see that Sen. Lindsey Graham wants to attack Iran. The U.S., he says, should “sink their navy, destroy their air force, and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard.”

Sen. Graham has the brains of a tapeworm, making him eminently qualified for the Senate. Tapeworms, I note, do not have brains. It is characteristic of warlike innocents, to include the Pentagon, to believe that if you destroy navies and air forces, you win wars. This worked well in Vietnam, you will recall, and as soon as we destroy the Taliban’s navy, Afghanistan will be a cakewalk.

See original at Antiwar.com

Truth and Remembrance Day, 2010

November 11, 1918 - German surrender to Allies


June 22, 1940 - French surrender to Germany


Yes, it's the same railway carriage! Whatever you say about him, Hitler had a sense of theatre, although a little grandiose.

The truth is, there's a lot of grandiose theatre at this time of year.

The truth is,there's no sugar-coating the tragedy of November 11.

The truth is, the Conservative Government of Canada doesn't give a shit about the Canadian Armed Forces or its veterans.

The truth is, if Canada really cared about the "sacrifices" made by its troops, there wouldn't be veterans on the streets protesting their neglect, older veterans wouldn't be frankly discussing their abuse at the hands of people who should know better (our political representatives), and most citizens would be spending volunteer hours doing whatever they could for all our veterans.

The truth is, that in the absence of real support for veterans and their families, Remembrance Day, 2010 is grandiose empty theatre.

Komodo Dragons in Nuremberg

"The Two And Only"

Ray: This evening we're privileged to have with us Dr. Darryl Dexter from Upper Montclair, New Jersey. Dr. Dexter is one of the world's experts on international criminal law, and in particular the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. Dr. Dexter, thanks for being here tonight. Please tell us about the tribunal.

Bob: The International Military Tribunal was created by the London Charter of August 8, 1945. Its purpose was to give fair and public trials to those charged with war crimes under existing International Humanitarian Law, at that time mainly the Hague Conventions of 1906, although other international agreements were also applicable, such as the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and Warfare, Geneva, 17 June 1925. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany. The first and best known of these was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, which tried 22 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany. It was held from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946.

Ray: Where was it held?

Bob: The....most well known International Military Tribunal Trials at Nuremberg were held...as the name implies...in the City of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany. A number of other sites for the trials had been considered, such as Leipzig, Munich, and Luxembourg, but Nuremberg was chosen because the Palace of Justice was intact, there was a large prison attached, and Nuremberg had been a powerful symbol of the Nazi regime, and for example, the scene of many theatrical demonstrations for propaganda purposes, the so-called "Nuremberg Rallies."

Ray: Why choose Nuremberg particularly?

Bob: The .... choice of Nuremberg allowed the trials - particularly the Trial of Major War Criminals - to proceed in an open forum to give some credence to the ideal, as put forward tenaciously by Robert H. Jackson, then chief American prosecutor, and as articulated in a subsequent address to the Canadian Bar Association in 1949, that: "... those who gave some of the best effort of their lives to this trial are sustained by a confidence that in place of what might have been mere acts of vengeance we wrote a civilized legal precedent and one that will lie close to the foundations of that body of international law that will prevail when the world becomes sufficiently civilized."

Ray: I read somewhere that an American judge thought what went on at Nuremberg might be important in the future. Is that true?

Bob: Yes. The....chief...American prosecutor...Robert H. Jackson, a former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, also said...to the Canadian Bar Association in 1949, in his address entitled Nuremberg In Retrospect: Legal Answer To International Lawlessness: "...I do think that we have forever laid to rest in the minds of statesmen the vicious assumptions that all war must be regarded as legal and just, and that while the law imposes personal responsibility for starting a street riot, it imposes none for inciting and launching a world war." And certainly the so-called "Nuremberg Principles" have been an important foundation for the subsequent development of international law, through the United Nations and establishing of the International Criminal Court.

Ray: So these principles would be used by our own Military Commissions trials now going on in Guantánamo?

Bob: Well...

Ray: Dr. Dexter, I can see we've about exhausted this topic. Do you have a ride home this evening?

Bob: As a matter of fact, no.

Ray: Well, perhaps a member of the audience would give you a lift to Guantánamo. It can't be far from there to Upper Montclair, New Jersey.

Bob: Thanks, I'd appreciate it.

Green Zone Lite

"U.S. awards $500 mln contract to expand Afghan embassy"

Great Zarquon! White Star Lines awards contract for refurbishment of Titanic! Pentagon renovates MACV! Dien Bien Phu relaunched as luxury underground hotel!

Will there be a swimming pool? A tunnel to the Serena?

The Elephant in Obama's Living Room

It's the war, stupid. Nobody wants to talk about, American politicians have to pretend it's not there, but it's the major government expense in the USA, and it contributes nothing to the economy. Furthermore, it's financed on borrowed money.

So what we have is a (minimum) $700 billion a year government expense that is accomplishing nothing except keeping certain parts of American industry in business, industries that contribute nothing to the American or world economy. The other key components of the American economy are Wall Street and Wall*Mart.

It's not a realistic basis for an economy. Particularly if nobody talks about it.

The Weirdness of Steve Coll

I'm not saying Steve Coll is on the CIA payroll, only that it's a good hypothesis.

So I read "Ghost Wars" and was duly impressed, but it left me somehow unsettled, as if the really hard questions were never asked. And then, afterwards, I had these questions about how Steve Coll got to be where he is, and in fact, how he got access to all the "sources" who gave him detailed information about the events in Afghanistan leading up to 9/11, and why some other schmuck working for, say The Guardian, or Rolling Stone for that matter, didn't have the same access.

Chalmers Johnson reviewed Ghost Wars and made the same observations about access, and then went off onto a discussion of history, without once wondering publicly about Coll's access.

From that paranoid perspective, Coll's book looks suspiciously like a plant, a CIA version of "The Sky Was Falling But Nobody Listened, But If They Had Listened We Could Have Taken Out Bin Laden" - no 9/11, everybody lives happily ever after, and he a mouthpiece for the American national security state like David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Judy Miller, David Broder, all these hacks. Of course, his revised edition made use of the 9/11 Commission, but to suggest that he is an historian is starting to look very dubious.

Now, he appears in the New Yorker, casting doubt on the ethics of Wikeleaks without once - not once - questioning the ethics, morality, or legality of American wars in Afghanisan and Iraq, and - not once - showing that any harm has come to anybody as a result of WikiLeaks' leaks, except possibly to some Iraqi thugs and American putative war criminals.

There's more than one way to be on the payroll. One is money, another is goods in kind.

Duck Offsets and The Hungarian Sludge Situation

A number of duck deaths have recurred at Alberta "tailings ponds." It has been suggested that this is the cost of doing business, and that many more ducks die each year in, say, traffic accidents, like 9/11.

The alternative view is that these ducks are The Ghost of Christmas Future, the gift that keeps on giving, and that - insignificant on their own - the ducks are a warning that the Alberta tar sands operation has natural consequences, one of which is a gigantic structural failure of the "tailings ponds" that were a sketchy idea to begin with, and that the Hungarian toxic sludge disaster would be visited on the Canadian Arctic.

We are not speaking of a few ducks here or there.