USA

foto: Alisdare Hickson, link til billede og tekst

Sidst redigeret d. 14/7 - 2024

Foto nedenfor: Alisdare Hickson, flickr,
On Thursday 12 July 2018, US presdent Donald Trump, the most dangerous man in the world, was welcomed to the United Kingdom by the British prime minister Theresa May. The following day the streets of London witnessed the biggest protest for over a decade as thousands marched on Trafalgar Square to express their anger at the British government extending a red carpet welcome for Trump.

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NATO-erklæringen og neokonservatismens dødbringende strategi

Af hensyn til Amerikas sikkerhed og verdensfred bør USA øjeblikkeligt opgive neokonservatoriets søgen efter hegemoni til fordel for diplomati og fredelig sameksistens.

Common Dreams d. 13/7 - 2014 af Jeffrey D. Sachs

Oversat med Google.

I 1992 gik den amerikanske udenrigspolitiske exceptionalisme i overdrev. USA har altid set sig selv som en enestående nation bestemt til lederskab, og Sovjetunionens bortgang i december 1991 overbeviste en gruppe engagerede ideologer – der blev kendt som neokonservative – om, at USA nu skulle regere verden som den uimodsagte. eneste supermagt. På trods af utallige udenrigspolitiske katastrofer på neocon-hænder, fortsætter NATO-erklæringen fra 2024 med at skubbe neocon-dagsordenen og driver verden tættere på atomkrig.

De neokonservative blev oprindeligt ledet af Richard Cheney, forsvarsministeren i 1992. Enhver præsident siden da – Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump og Biden – har forfulgt den neokonservative dagsorden for USA's hegemoni og har ledet USA. ind i evige valgkrige, herunder Serbien, Afghanistan, Irak, Syrien, Libyen og Ukraine, såvel som en ubarmhjertig udvidelse mod øst af NATO, på trods af et klart amerikansk og tysk løfte i 1990 til den sovjetiske præsident Mikhail Gorbatjov om, at NATO ikke ville bevæge sig en tomme østpå...

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Hvorfor vil USA ikke hjælpe med at forhandle en fredelig afslutning på krigen i Ukraine?

For guds skyld, forhandle!

Common Dreams d. 20/5 - 2024, af JEFFREY D. SACHS, oversat med Google

For the fifth time since 2008, Russia has proposed to negotiate with the U.S. over security arrangements, this time in proposals made by President Vladimir Putin on June 14, 2024. Four previous times, the U.S. rejected the offer of negotiations in favor of a neocon strategy to weaken or dismember Russia through war and covert operations. The U.S. neocon tactics have failed disastrously, devastating Ukraine in the process, and endangering the whole world. After all the warmongering, it’s time for Biden to open negotiations for peace with Russia.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. grand strategy has been to weaken Russia. As early as 1992, then Defense Secretary Richard Cheney opined that following the 1991 demise of the Soviet Union, Russia too should be dismembered. Zbigniew Brzezinski opined in 1997 that Russia should be divided into three loosely confederated entities in Russian Europe, Siberia, and the far east. In 1999, the U.S.-led NATO alliance bombed Russia’s ally, Serbia, for 78 days in order to break Serbia apart and install a massive NATO military base in breakaway Kosovo. Leaders of the U.S. military-industrial complex vociferously supported the Chechen war against Russia in the early 2000s...

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The Law Is Simple’: Israel’s Unregulated Nukes Mean Biden Must Halt Military Aid

In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all weapons shipments to Israel.

The national organization Veterans For Peace is demanding that the Biden administration abide by U.S. law regarding the illegal possession of unregulated nuclear weapons and halt all military aid to Israel.

In a letter to President Joe Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace asserts that U.S. law requires the cutoff of all military aid to Israel because it possesses nuclear weapons in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel does not admit it possesses nuclear weapons, has not signed the NPT, and does not allow inspections of its nuclear arsenal.

The letter lists multiple credible reports that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades. Because Israel has not signed the NPT, the Symington-Glenn Amendments to the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which allow no presidential discretion, require the suspension of all military aid.

The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors.
The president may not waive the cutoff of the aid and exports under the Glenn Amendment where there has been a nuclear weapons detonation, or the offending state has received a nuclear explosive device. Congress would have to enact new legislation authorizing the president to waive some or all of these sanctions.

“The law is quite simple,” said VFP National Director Mike Ferner. “Does Israel have an unregulated nuclear weapons arsenal? Yes, it does. Is Israel a signatory to the NPT? No, it isn’t. So, the question to Biden is, ‘Will you obey the law or continue to let the Madmen Arsonists run America?’”

The well-referenced 11-page letter was researched and written by VFP member Terry Lodge, an activist lawyer who specializes in nuclear issues. It makes for a fascinating read, detailing Israel’s many illegal actions to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and Henry Kissinger’s approval of Israel’s “strategic ambiguity.” Israel has never officially admitted it possesses nuclear weapons, but “everybody knows.” In November, an Israeli cabinet member actually suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.

The letter also references former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s hacked email (“The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands.’’). Colin Powell’s assertion that Iran’s capital Tehran has long been targeted by Israel’s nuclear weapons is especially chilling at this moment, when Israel has provoked an armed conflict with Iran and may be trying to drag the U.S. into a wider war in the Middle East. Would Israel attack Iran with nuclear weapons?

All U.S. Military Aid to Israel Must Be Ended Immediately

Israel’s provocative approach to foreign relations before and since commencing the genocidal invasion of Gaza suggests that nuclear weapons might be used against both real and perceived existential threats to Israel. In May 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assessed that Israel’s security problems come from Iran, and then in September, he insisted at the United Nations that “[A]bove all, Iran must face a credible nuclear threat.”

Presently, Israel has at least 90 warheads, and possibly as many as 200.Israel's bombs are deliverable via aircraft, land-based ballistic missiles, and submarine-based cruise missiles. Israel’s Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missiles are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead from 4,000 miles away, which means that Iran, Pakistan (another NPT scofflaw non-weapons state believed to have nuclear weapons), and all of Russia west of the Urals—including Moscow—are within range of Israeli nuclear targeting, should Israel resort to The Bomb.

Israel is conducting an ongoing genocidal military campaign in the Gaza Strip against Palestinian civilians and the Hamas government, even as it bombs and fires artillery and rockets into Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The United States may not be able to directly control Israel’s nuclear weapons program, but it surely can—and must—curb the invasion of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s intensifying conflicts with its neighbors. Given the overwhelming evidence that Israel has received many nuclear weapons from its military branch and has maintained that offensive nuclear capability for decades, federal law compels President Biden to immediately terminate all military assistance to Israel.

Veterans For Peace is demanding that the president issue a formal finding that (1) Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968; (2) that Israel is, as a matter of law, a “non-nuclear-weapon state” under the NPT; (3) that Israel has acquired an arsenal of nuclear weapons with the means of using them in war and has experimentally detonated nuclear weapons in the past; and (4) that Israel has violated 22 U.S.C. § 2799aa-1(b)(1)(B). Federal law requires Biden to end all defense sales and licensing of Munitions List exports to Israel, terminate all foreign military financing, cease delivery of any military weapons and munitions, and implement all other aid cutoffs and curtailments required by the Symington and Glenn Amendments.

While awaiting a response from the Biden administration, Veterans For Peace, with over 100 chapters in the U.S., is calling on all its members, friends, and allies to tell their congressional representatives to oppose any further funding or weapons shipments to Israel. The veterans organization recently sent a letter to the State Department detailing multiple U.S. laws that are being broken by sending weapons to Israel while it is blatantly violating the human rights of Palestinian men, women, and children.

MacGregor Eddy

Aaron Maté :Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis

d. 11/4 - 2024

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ASSANGE UDLEVERING, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, WIKILEAKS

Biden 'overvejer' at droppe Assange-sagen

Consortium News d. 10/4 - 2024

Præsidenten sagde onsdag som svar på en journalists spørgsmål i Det Hvide Hus, at hans administration "overvejer" Australiens anmodning om, at sagen mod Julian Assange skal droppes.

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Bidens fredsplan for Mellemøsten er endnu en illusion om en tostatsløsning, der aldrig kommer

DIIS af Lars Erslev Andersen d. 4/3 - 2024

I den såkaldte ’Biden-doktrin’ skal tostatsmodellen skabe fred i Mellemøsten, men modellen har aldrig seriøst været på forhandlingsbordet. Og det internationale samfund har aldrig forhindret Israel i at underminere den ved at kolonisere Vestbredden.

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The Kennedy Beacon (fyrskib)

CENSUR

Ytringsfrihed på prøve i Højesteret

Af Adam Garrie, Kennedy Beacon d. 29/2 - 2024

Den 18. marts 2024 vil højesteret høre argumenter i Murthy v. Missouri, tidligere kendt som Missouri v. Biden. Kendelsen kan blive en af de mest konsekvensfulde i amerikansk historie. På spil er det grundlæggende spørgsmål om, hvorvidt den udøvende magt og agenturerne under dens ansvarsområde har en forfatningsretlig ret til at bede private virksomheder om at censurere amerikanske borgeres tale.

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Many people are now realizing Israel controls America but can't understand how or why

This quick film explains how it is accomplished

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US Foreign Policy Is a Scam Built on Corruption

The $1.5 trillion in military outlays each year is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial complex and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and endangers America and the world...

Common Dreams 26/12 - 2023

Klip fra artiklen oversat med google:

USA's udenrigspolitik er et fupnummer bygget på korruption

...Så hvad er der i vejen?
Puslespillet er løst, når det erkendes, at amerikansk udenrigspolitik slet ikke handler om det amerikanske folks interesser. Det handler om Washington-insidernes interesser, når de jagter kampagnedonationer og lukrative job til sig selv, deres personale og deres familiemedlemmer. Kort sagt er amerikansk udenrigspolitik blevet hacket af store penge...

...Kongressens udenrigspolitik er ikke kun blevet hacket af den amerikanske militærindustri. Israels lobby har længe mestret kunsten at købe Kongressen. At støtte apartheidstaten Israel og krigsforbrydelserne i Gaza giver ikke mening for USA's nationale sikkerhed og diplomati, endsige menneskelig moral. De er resultatet af Israels lobbyinvesteringer, som var $ 30 millioner i kampagnebidrag i 2022 og vil være væsentligt højere i 2024 ...

...Den presserende opgave for det amerikanske folk er grundlæggende at reformere en udenrigspolitik, der er så brudt, korrupt og bygget på svindel, at den begraver regeringen i gæld, mens den skubber verden tættere på atomkrig. Reformen bør begynde i 2024 ved at afslutte finansieringen af ??Ukraines katastrofale krig og Israels krigsforbrydelser. Fredsskabelse og diplomati – i modsætning til at bruge penge på krige og oprustning – er vejen til en amerikansk udenrigspolitik i offentlighedens interesse.

Jeffrey D. Sachs er professor og direktør for Center for Sustainable Development ved Columbia University, hvor han ledede Earth Institute fra 2002 til 2016. Han er også formand for UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Han har fungeret som rådgiver for tre FN-generalsekretærer og arbejder i øjeblikket under generalsekretær Antonio Guterres som fortaler for bæredygtige udviklingsmål. Sachs' seneste bog er A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020). Andre bøger omfatter: Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017) og, med Ban Ki-moon, The Age of Sustainable Development (2015)...

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Tell the U.S. Congress to End the Monroe Doctrine

WorldBeyondwar.org d. 19/12 - 2023

Tell Your Representative and Senators to Support Resolution That Calls for the Annulment of the Monroe Doctrine and the Development of a “New Good Neighbor” Policy

U.S. Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez has introduced a resolution, along with Congressmembers Casar, Ramirez, Garcia, and Ocasio-Cortez.

H. RES. 943 calls for the annulment of the Monroe Doctrine and the development of a “New Good Neighbor” policy in order to foster improved relations and deeper, more effective cooperation between the United States and our Latin American and Caribbean neighbors.

By clicking "Start Writing" you can access an email ready to send to your Representative and Senators (with a CC to the White House). Feel free to add your own words.

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A Vote for Kennedy is a Vote for Peace with China

The Kennedy Beacon By Jeremy Kuzmarov 26/9 - 2023

In January, four-star Air Force General, Mike Minihan, sent a memo to the officers he commands predicting that the U.S. and China would be at war within two years. Minihan said, “I hope I am wrong [but] my gut tells me we will fight in 2025.”

If either President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump is re-elected in 2024, then Minihan’s prognosticating gut may prove right. But if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the victor, then he will have been wrong.

Kennedy is intent on avoiding a war with China that would be suicidal for the U.S. and China. In July, Kennedy tweeted: “the indications are that the Chinese leadership does not want a military confrontation with us, and we shouldn’t want that either.” A few weeks earlier, the Boston Herald quoted Kennedy criticizing U.S. provocations directed against China and saying that he thought the U.S. putting military bases in the South China Sea was a mistake...

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Biden’s phase of Ukraine war is beginning

Peoples dispatch d. 18/9 by M.k. Bhadrakumar

The US is considering sending ATACMS long-range missiles that Ukraine has been asking for a long time with the capability to strike deep inside Russian territory. The most provocative part is that NATO reconnaissance platforms, both manned and unmanned, will be used in such operations, making the US a virtual co-belligerent.

Long-range cruise missiles supplied by the UK and France hit Russia’s Black Sea fleet at its home port of Sevastopol, on September 13, 2023.
The ground war in Ukraine has run its course, a new phase is beginning. Even diehard supporters of Ukraine in the Western media and think tanks are admitting that a military victory over Russia is impossible and a vacation of the territory under Russian control is way beyond Kiev’s capability...

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Sen. Blumenthal: US Getting Its ‘Money’s Worth’ in Ukraine Because Americans Aren’t Dying.

Antiwar.com d. 30/8 - 2023

Sen. Romney recently called the proxy war the 'the best national defense spending' the US has ever done
by Dave DeCamp Posted on August 30, 2023Categories NewsTags Russia, Ukraine
Fresh from a trip to Kyiv, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is arguing that the US is getting its “money’s worth” in Ukraine because Russia is taking losses and no Americans are dying, showing a lack of concern for Ukrainian lives.

“Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide, should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment,” Blumenthal wrote in the Connecticut Post.

“For less than 3 percent of our nation’s military budget, we’ve enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia’s military strength by half … All without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” he added.

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Sunday News Round Up – RFK, Jr. Promises to Direct Postal Service to Issue Free Passport Cards to Every American Who Can Not Afford One.

d. 27/8 - 2023

“When I am President of the United States, during my first week in office I will issue an executive order to every Post Master in this country to begin issuing free passport cards to every American who can’t afford one...I ask all of you to give this proposal careful consideration and your support and write to President Biden and ask him to do the right thing prior to the 2024 elections so that every American can vote, and that the election has integrity.” – RFK, Jr.

Illusionen om demokrati | Hvem styrer virkelig vores liv

ÉTATS-UNIS 7. jul. 2023

Livet handler om valg. Hvad vi spiser, hvad vi læser, hvem vi vælger; hver dag træffer vi valg, der bestemmer, hvordan vi vil leve. Men hvad nu hvis disse valg kun er en illusion? I en æra, hvor reguleringer og bureaukrati styrer alle brancher, hvor lobbygrupper og store virksomheder har mere indflydelse end nogensinde før, er vores daglige valg blevet stadig mere begrænsede. Med fokus på nøgleområder som mad, medicin, finans og medier giver Freedom From Choice seerne et indblik i de utallige måder, hvorpå deres liv bliver dikteret, og fortæller os, hvem der kan vinde.

Instruktør: Tim Delmastro
Fuld dokumentar
Originaltitel: Freedom from Choice (2014)

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How the Billionaires Control U.S.-and-Allied Governments

Dissident Voice by Eric Zuesse d.3/7 - 2023

In virtually every country that’s allied with the U.S. Government against Russia and against China, there is a low public job-approval-rating for its head-of-state and for its Government, and a rating that is far lower than is the public job-approval for the leaders of the countries that the U.S. gang are trying to regime-change. If a given nation’s leader’s net public job-approval rating (% who approve, minus the % who disapprove) is above 0%, or positive, then that is an indication the nation’s Government is a democracy, because then that leader is satisfying his public (including his political opposition — not merely his own voters) more than dissatisfying it — that leader actually DOES represent his nation. However, if the net job-approval rating is below 0%, or negative, it’s likelier a dictatorship than a democracy (and then the question is: whom does that leader actually serve?).

Every week the Morning Consult polling organization scientifically samples public opinion in 22 countries regarding Approve/Disapprove on the given nation’s leader, including all of the U.S. Government’s allies plus five nations that are on friendly terms with the U.S. Government but not lockstep followers of it: the latter 5 being India, Switzerland, Mexico, Australia, and Brazil. All of the other 17 Governments (which includes America’s own Government) are rabidly hostile toward both of the U.S.-designated top enemy nations, which are China and Russia. So: the Morning Consult pollings include the 17 U.S.-and-allied countries, plus 5 nations that are in some way on the fence between the U.S. Government and its designated top enemies — i.e., America’s targets to be conquered...

...In order to determine the net job-approval of the leaders of the two countries that the U.S. Government is especially determined to conquer, China and Russia:

Just as, in the U.S., the Gallup polling organization is the standard one that has tracked approve-disapprove for U.S. Presidents over decades; in Russia, the Levada polling organization has done the same, and it has periodically polled Russians about Putin. Ever since he became Russia’s leader on 1 January 2000, his average Approve is 70% and Disapprove is 25% for a net +35% over that 23-year period, but recently it is instead 80% Approve and 15% Disapprove, for a net +70%, which is even higher than Modi’s +58% in India.

In order to determine the net job-approval of the leaders of the two countries that the U.S. Government is especially determined to conquer, China and Russia:

Just as, in the U.S., the Gallup polling organization is the standard one that has tracked approve-disapprove for U.S. Presidents over decades; in Russia, the Levada polling organization has done the same, and it has periodically polled Russians about Putin. Ever since he became Russia’s leader on 1 January 2000, his average Approve is 70% and Disapprove is 25% for a net +35% over that 23-year period, but recently it is instead 80% Approve and 15% Disapprove, for a net +70%, which is even higher than Modi’s +58% in India.

I’ve not found any polling-results on China’s President Xi, but two polls are relevant: On 22 August 2022, I headlined “NATO-Affiliated Poll in 53 Countries Finds Chinese the Most Think Their Country Is a Democracy” and reported that, “A poll in 53 countries by the NATO-affiliated “Alliance of Democracies” found that 83% of Chinese think that China is a democracy. That’s the highest percentage amongst all of the 53 countries surveyed.” And, the “U.S. was worse than average, and was tied at #s 40&41, out of the 53 nations, with Colombia, at 49%” — barely less than half of Americans think they live in a democracy...

....

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A Timely Call for Peace in Ukraine by U.S. National Security Experts

LAP Progressive d. 16/5 - 2023 af Medea Benjamin og Nicolas Davis

On May 16, 2023, The New York Times published a full-page advertisement signed by 15 U.S. national security experts about the war in Ukraine. It was headed “The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World,” and was drafted by the Eisenhower Media Network.

While condemning Russia’s invasion, the statement provides a more objective account of the crisis in Ukraine than the U.S. government or The New York Times has previously presented to the public, including the disastrous U.S. role in NATO expansion, the warnings ignored by successive U.S. administrations and the escalating tensions that ultimately led to war.

The statement calls the war an “unmitigated disaster,” and urges President Biden and Congress “to end the war speedily through diplomacy, especially given the dangers of military escalation that could spiral out of control...

...On May 10th, President Zelenskyy announced that he is delaying Ukraine’s long-awaited “spring offensive” to avoid “unacceptable” losses to Ukrainian forces. Western policy has repeatedly put Zelenskyy in near-impossible positions, caught between the need to show signs of progress on the battlefield to justify further Western support and arms deliveries and, on the other hand, the shocking human cost of continued war represented by the fresh graveyards where tens of thousands of Ukrainians now lie buried...

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The Simple Reason Why the U.S. Wants ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ of the Earth

Counter Currents.org d. 1/4 - 2023

magine the uproar if China or Russia—or any other country for that matter—said it aimed to exercise military control over land, sea, air, and space to protect its interests and investments.

This amazingly has been the stated United States policy since 1997.

Full spectrum dominance, as the doctrine is known, is the reason the United States behaves the way that it does on the international stage.

The United States demands that the world bow down to its leadership. A failure to do so is met with the full force of the international military-industrial complex controlled by the Americans.

Enforcement has included everything from the funding of opposition forces in sovereign nations, the removal or even assassination of political leaders who refuse to toe the line, economic sanctions, and military intervention...

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John Mearsheimer: World War is on our doorstep

se video.

Targeting China, US Navy to purchase 100 new ships

Center Currents.org d. 30/3 - 2023

Speaking at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee Tuesday, the US Navy’s operations chief said the United States Navy is currently building 56 new warships and has contracted the building of 76 more, as part of a massive military buildup in preparation for conflict with China.
“We have 56 ships under construction and another 76 that are under contract,” said Admiral Michael M. Gilday.

The move is part of a plan by the US navy to have a total of 373 manned and 150 unmanned ships, up from 296 this year.

Opening the hearing, Democratic Committee Chairman Jon Tester declared that “China remains our number one pacing threat, we must continue to modernize our military to stay ahead of that threat.”

Earlier this month, Congressman Mike Gallagher said the United States’ “competition” with China will not be “polite,” describing the US conflict with China as an “existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century.”

He later added, “If you think about what a coherent grand strategy vis a vis China would be, hard power would be the most important part of that and the Navy would be the most important component of your hard power investments.”

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THE COVER-UP

Seymour Hersh d. 22/3 - 2023

The Biden Administration continues to conceal its responsibility for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines

It’s been six weeks since I published a report, based on anonymous sourcing, naming President Joe Biden as the official who ordered the mysterious destruction last September of Nord Stream 2, a new $11-billion pipeline that was scheduled to double the volume of natural gas delivered from Russia to Germany. The story gained traction in Germany and Western Europe, but was subject to a near media blackout in the US. Two weeks ago, after a visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Washington, US and German intelligence agencies attempted to add to the blackout by feeding the New York Times and the German weekly Die Zeit false cover stories to counter the report that Biden and US operatives were responsible for the pipelines’ destruction...

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Har Vesten retten på sin side?

DIIS 11/5 - 2023 af Lars Erslev Andersen
Artiklen er bragt i Ræson 26. april.

Står det til USA, skal folkeretten overholdes af Vestens fjender, men må brydes efter behov af USA og vennerne i Mellemøsten. Sådan har det været længe. Nu giver det bagslag.

Ruslands intervention i Ukraine er en klokkeklar overtrædelse af folkeretten. Uanset om NATO-landene burde have set, at de russiske krigsforbrydelser var undervejs og i tide skulle have taget faresignalerne mere alvorligt, er konfrontationen med – og sanktionerne mod – Rusland efter invasionen selvklart legitim og nødvendig. Det er ikke til diskussion! Men begrundelserne for at fordømme Ruslands krænkelser af Folkeretten fremstår hule og selvmodsigende, når man konstaterer, at der gælder andre regler for USA, resten af Vesten og deres venner. Rusland truer europæiske demokratier, men er hverken værre eller bedre end USA, når det kommer til at føre krig i strid med folkeretten.

Vender man sit fokus mod den vestlige verden med USA i spisen og Israel som alliancepartner, tegner der sig et ubehageligt og dystert billede, hvor den fine retorik om en regelstyret verden undergraves af de vestlige staters egen praksis. I den sammenhæng er EU’s udenrigspolitiske profil og dermed også Danmarks ganske tvetydig...

...At vinde verden er ikke det samme som at vinde over verden, men som den amerikanske udenrigsminister under James Monroe og senere amerikanske præsident John Quincy Adams sagde i sin berømte tale ”Monsters to Destroy” fra 1821: Man skal være det eksempel andre nationer vil følge. Vil man have lydhørhed for overholdelse af de internationale spilleregler, er det, som Quincy Adams mente, nok bedre at handle i overensstemmelse med folkeretten fremfor at hæve sig over den.

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ANTIKOMMUNISMUS

Gestapelte Leichen

Junge Welt d. 20/2 - 2023

Vincent Bevins’ wichtige Arbeit über das antikommunistische Massenmordprogramm Washingtons in den Nachkriegsjahrzehnten
Von Gerhard Feldbauer

Unter dem Titel »Die Jakarta-Methode« hat der Journalist Vincent Bevins, der für die Washington Post und die Los Angeles Times aus Südostasien und Brasilien berichtete, wesentliche Aspekte der Geschichte antikommunistischer Gewalt nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg rekonstruiert. Im Zentrum steht dabei der 1965 von den USA inszenierte Sturz der Sukarno-Regierung in Indonesien und die buchstäbliche »Liquidierung« der dortigen kommunistischen Partei (PKI). Hier wurde »ein koordiniertes Ausrottungsprogramm« umgesetzt, das »vorsätzlichen Massenmord« vorsah. Schätzungsweise zwischen 500.000 und einer Million Menschen wurden ermordet, eine weitere Million »in Lager gepfercht«...

...Bevins stützt sich auf freigegebene Dokumente, Archivmaterial und Augenzeugenberichte aus zwölf Ländern. Er legt dar, dass die »Jakarta-Methode« auch in anderen Teilen der Welt praktiziert und zwischen 1945 und 1990 in von den USA geförderten antikommunistischen Vernichtungsprogrammen unterschiedlichen Umfangs in mindestens 23 Ländern umgesetzt wurde. So wurden 1954 in Guatemala nach dem von Washington betriebenen Sturz des Präsidenten Árbenz bis zu 5.000 seiner Anhänger umgebracht. Mit einer Landreform hatte Árbenz die guatemaltekischen Großgrundbesitzer und die US-amerikanische United Fruit Company gegen sich aufgebracht. Das Unternehmen finanzierte eine PR-Kampagne, die »Árbenz in den USA als Kommunisten an den Pranger stellte«. Die CIA deponierte Kisten mit Gewehren, gekennzeichnet mit Hammer und Sichel, die dann als Beweis für eine sowjetische Infiltration »entdeckt« wurden...

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Reporter Seymour Hersh on "How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline": Exclusive TV Interview

Amy Goodman | Democracy NOW! d. 15/2- 2023 - TRANSCEND Media Service

When the Nord Stream pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany were damaged last September, U.S. officials were quick to suggest Russia had bombed its own pipelines. But according to a new report by the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, it was the U.S. Navy that carried out the sabotage, with help from Norway. Citing a source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning,” Hersh writes on his Substack blog that planning for the mission began in December of 2021. The White House and the Norwegian government have since denied the claims.

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Forfatter og journalist Rana Foroohar: Det amerikanske opgør med den gamle kapitalisme er kun lige begyndt

Information d. 11/3 - 2023

...»De troede på, at markedet altid vidste bedst, og at man endelig ikke skulle forstyrre det, men det var jo helt klart, at for virkelig mange mennesker fungerede det ikke. Så for mig var det ikke nogen overraskelse, at det var i Midtvesten og dele af Syden, som var blevet ruineret af den tænkning, at man skabte den politiske grobund for en sejr til en amerikansk autokrat, Donald Trump.«...

...Det store skifte
Men det, som demokraterne ikke fattede i 2016, har de forstået med Joe Biden som præsident, anfører Foroohar: De er i gang med et opgør med den tænkning, der har domineret i Vesten i et par generationer, og de har indledt et paradigmeskifte, som hun mener kan blive den største omvæltning af den økonomiske politik i 75 år. De har endelig fået noget at byde på til dem, der blev svigtet, og har draget den progressive konsekvens af den vrede, som førte til valget af Donald Trump. Dette opgør folder Foroohar ud og forklarer i sin nye bog, Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World, som også er anledningen til, at jeg nu over Zoom taler med hende fra hendes lejlighed i Brooklyn.

»Det er virkelig første gang i min levetid, at vi har en amerikansk regering, som siger: Lad os nu tænke på noget andet end aktionærer og forbrugere. Lad os nu lave en overgang til en grøn fremtid, lad os tænke på arbejdspladser og fagforeninger, lad os nu give nogle gulerødder til de virksomheder, som gør det rigtige, og pisk til de virksomheder, som gør det forkerte,« siger hun...

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How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

Seymour Hersh d. 8/2 - 2023

...Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.

Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”

Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.

There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022...

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Om forfatteren:

Seymour Hersh’s exposure of the Nord Stream bombing: A lesson and a warning

Hvorfor publisere på Substack?

Advocating World War Three Is Just Mainstream Punditry Now

Caitlin’s Newsletter d. 28/10 - 2022

Mainstream punditry in the latter half of 2022 is rife with op-eds arguing that the US needs to vastly increase military spending because a world war is about to erupt, and they always frame it as though this would be something that happens to the US, as though its own actions would have nothing to do with it. As though it would not be the direct result of the US-centralized empire continually accelerating towards that horrific event while refusing every possible diplomatic off-ramp due to its inability to relinquish its goal of total unipolar planetary domination...

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Could America Win a New World War?
What It Would Take to Defeat Both China and Russia

Foring Affairs d. 27/10 - 2022

...The United States is aware that China and Russia pose a significant threat to the global order. In its recent National Security Strategy, the White House wrote that “the [People’s Republic of China] and Russia are increasingly aligned with each other,” and the Biden administration dedicated multiple pages to explaining how the United States can constrain both countries going forward. Washington knows that the conflict in Ukraine is likely to be protracted, thanks to the ability of Kyiv and Moscow to keep fighting and the irreconcilability of their aims, and could escalate in ways that bring the United States more directly into the war (a fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber rattling makes readily apparent). Washington also knows that Chinese leader Xi Jinping, emboldened by his appointment at the 20th National Party Congress in October to an unprecedented third term, could try to seize Taiwan as the war in Ukraine rages on. The United States, then, could conceivably be drawn into simultaneous conflicts with China and Russia...

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International Relations Theory Suggests Great-Power War Is Coming

FP d. 27/8 - 2022

According to IR textbooks, the United States, Russia, and China are on a collision course.

This week, thousands of university students around the world will begin their introduction to international relations courses for the first time. If their professors are attuned to the ways the world has changed in recent years, they will be teaching them that the major theories of international relations warn that great-power conflict is coming...

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Reversing the Decline of Democracy in the United States

Freedom in the World 2022

As foreign autocrats resort to increasingly brazen forms of repression to entrench themselves in office and support authoritarian influences around the world, undemocratic forces in the United States have engaged in their own efforts to undermine institutions that are designed to check their power and protect the rights of all Americans...

...The US scores on the Freedom in the World indicators related to equal treatment under the law and improper influences on the political system are especially low for an established democracy. On the latter indicator, in the wake of January 6, the country ranks alongside the Philippines and Bolivia, and below South Africa, India, and Romania. On equal treatment, due to declines related to immigration and refugee policies, the United States is now level with Greece, Paraguay, and Ghana, and below Albania, Romania, and Italy...

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Hvordan den herskende klasse forbereder USAs befolkning på en krig mod kina.

Arbejdrend. 10/8 - 2022, af LAURENCE H.

SHOUPFORFATTER OG AKTIVIST FRA CALIFORNIEN. HAR SKREVET ADSKILLIGE ARTIKLER OG FEM BØGER, HERUNDER WALL STREET'S THINK TANK: THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE EMPIRE OF NEOLIBERAL GEOPOLITICS 1976-2019 (MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS, 2019)

Denne tekst er først bragt i Monthly Review, maj 2022. Forfatteren har i original teksten benyttet sig af noter, som ikke er med i den danske udgave. Gå på opdagelse i noter og henvisninger i originalteksten her.

En indflydelsesrig bogudgivelse ved navn Strategy of Denial giver mulighed for konkret at observere, hvordan den herskende klasse forbereder USA's befolkning på det, der kan blive en katastrofal verdenskrig. Dens fokus er den opfattede fare for USA's globale og regionale hegemoni, som Kina udgør i Asien og, i langt mindre grad, Rusland i Europa. Der gives politiske anbefalinger til, hvordan man kan forhindre begge magter i at blive regionalt dominerende ved at USA forbereder sig på og er villig til at deltage i krige, både begrænsede og, om nødvendigt, atomkrige.

I over et århundrede har en privat tænketank og medlemsorganisation, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), været førende i fastlæggelsen af USA’s imperialistiske stormagtsstrategi. Rådet er den ultimative organisation for den amerikanske kapitalistiske herskende klasses dagsordenssætning, strategiske planlægning og konsensusdannelse. Dets aktiviteter er med til at forene denne klasse ikke blot som en klasse i sig selv, men også som en klasse for sig selv.

I 2002 udgav rådet en bog i fuld længde med titlen The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq af Kenneth M. Pollock, en af rådets medarbejdere. Et dusin CFR-medlemmer og -ledere læste og kom med kommentarer for at forbedre bogen, så den var på en måde et kollektivt værk. Bogen fremlagde en række løgne for at retfærdiggøre invasionen og besættelsen, herunder den formodede fare, der udgøres af masseødelæggelsesvåben, som den irakiske regering, som det viste sig, ikke havde. I kombination med denne frygt for masseødelæggelsesvåben blev det i denne Pollock-CFR-bog hævdet, at en invasion og overtagelse af Irak ville være en “enorm fordel” for USA, fordi de globale olieforsyninger ville være sikret, og USA kunne ændre Mellemøsten positivt ved at opbygge “et nyt Irak”. Rådsmedlemmer i og uden for regeringen gav yderligere støtte til disse idéer, og invasionen og besættelsen af Irak blev gennemført mindre end et år senere.

I dagens meget anderledes verden er en tilsvarende bog – Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict af Elbridge A. Colby – blevet udgivet i efteråret 2021 af Yale University Press, hvis direktør, John Donatich, er et mangeårigt CFR-medlem. Colby blev optaget som medlem af CFR i 2016 og var en højtstående embedsmand i forsvarsministeriet i Donald Trumps administration. Han har gode forbindelser til den herskende amerikanske kapitalistklasse og er anerkendt som en fremadstormende strategisk og militær intellektuel. Hans bog giver os et vindue ind til de strategiske politiske idéer, diskussioner og debatter, der nu foregår blandt politisk og økonomisk magtfulde kredse i USA, både inden for og uden for CFR.

Strategy of Denial giver mulighed for konkret at observere, hvordan den herskende monopolkapitalistiske klasse forbereder USA’s befolkning på det, der kan blive en katastrofal verdenskrig. Bogen kan sammenlignes med Pollocks bog, idet dens formål er nøjagtig det samme: at forstørre truslerne og øge frygten for at opbygge støtte blandt lydhøre befolkningsgrupper og ledere fra den herskende kapitalistklasse til en mulig krig, denne gang mod Kina. Dens fokus er den opfattede fare for USA’s globale og regionale hegemoni, som Kina udgør i Asien og, i langt mindre grad, Rusland i Europa. Der gives politiske anbefalinger til, hvordan man kan forhindre begge magter i at blive regionalt dominerende ved at USA forbereder sig på og er villig til at deltage i krige, både begrænsede og, om nødvendigt, atomkrige. Man kan dagligt i de amerikanske medier observere, hvordan den højre og “moderate” fløj af den herskende kapitalistklasse arbejder på at skabe en stærk anti-Kina-konsensus i USA...

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Why Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan Is Utterly Reckless

NYT d. 1/8 - 2022

...Nothing good will come of it. Taiwan will not be more secure or more prosperous as a result of this purely symbolic visit, and a lot of bad things could happen. These include a Chinese military response that could result in the U.S. being plunged into indirect conflicts with a nuclear-armed Russia and a nuclear-armed China at the same time.

And if you think our European allies — who are facing an existential war with Russia over Ukraine — will join us if there is U.S. conflict with China over Taiwan, triggered by this unnecessary visit, you are badly misreading the world...

...The timing could not be worse. Dear reader: The Ukraine war is not over. And privately, U.S. officials are a lot more concerned about Ukraine’s leadership than they are letting on. There is deep mistrust between the White House and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — considerably more than has been reported.

And there is funny business going on in Kyiv. On July 17, Zelensky fired his country’s prosecutor general and the leader of its domestic intelligence agency — the most significant shake-up in his government since the Russian invasion in February. It would be the equivalent of Biden firing Merrick Garland and Bill Burns on the same day. But I have still not seen any reporting that convincingly explains what that was all about. It is as if we don’t want to look too closely under the hood in Kyiv for fear of what corruption or antics we might see, when we have invested so much there...

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Taiwan and the Making of an “Asian” NATO

Blak Agenda Report d. 6/7 - 2022

...This brings the question of Taiwan into view. It’s clear to anyone paying attention that the U.S. views Taiwan as the single most important flashpoint for its military strategy against China. U.S. President Joe Biden has already approved four different weapons transfers to Taiwan over the course of eighteen months. Biden has also verbalized on three different occasions that his administration is committed to defending the island from a so-called invasion from China.

These moves are dangerous violations of the status quo on the Taiwan question established during the tumultuous latter stages of the Cold War. The recognition of the People’s Republic of China by the United Nations in 1971 and the normalization of relations between the U.S. and China in 1979 affirmed Taiwan as a Chinese province under the One-China principle. However, the United States under successive administrations has moved away from the status quo by providing clear political support to separatist forces in legislation such as the Taipei Act which advocates for Taiwan’s participation within prominent international bodies. Furthermore, the United States has increased arm sales to Taiwan in violation of Article 6 of the 1982 Joint Communiqué between China and the U.S. which states:

“Having in mind the foregoing statements of both sides, the United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.”...

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Vestens demokrati i dyb krise – men skyd hellere skylden på de andre

Jan Øberg d. 10/12 - 2021

...USAs præsident Biden har inviteret til internationalt flagskibs-lignende ”Topmøde for Demokrati” 9-10 december med fokus på at styrke demokratiet, forsvare verden mod de autoritære regimer, bekæmpe korruption og fremme menneskerettighederne.

Det er altså ikke formålet at diskutere demokratiets åbenbare krise.

Den virkelige målsætning er at samle lande, virksomheder, NGOer og individer bag USAs nye kolde krig mod Kina. Så Taiwan er indbudt men ikke Kina, ejheller Rusland eller Iran.

Ironisk nok finder Topmødet sted på baggrund af en ny undersøgelse fra amerikanske Harvard Kennedy School, der viser at blandt de 18-29 årige amerikanere mener kun 7% at USAs demokrati er ”sundt”, 27% mener det er nogenlunde fungerende, 39% at det har problemer og 13% at det har slået fejl.

Og nok så chokerende – men vist heller aldrig nævnt i danske medier – de unge amerikanere mener at der er 35% risiko for borgerkrig i USA i deres livstid og 25% risiko for at mindst en stat vil forlade USA.

Situationen på så mange områder i dagens USA burde få Washington at ophøre med at lege global skolemester. Men tragisk nok er virkelighedsfornægtelse blevet USAs særkende.

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TOPMØDE FOR DEMOKRATI

Biden sætter sig i spidsen for global demokratisk fornyelse – og gør sig sårbar for kritik

Information d. 9/12 - 2021

Når præsident Joe Biden torsdag samler ledere fra 110 lande til virtuelt topmøde, der har til formål at styrke demokratiske kræfter i en verden, hvor autoritære regimer gradvist har vundet mere fodfæste i det sidste årti, er det på baggrund af et noget ramponeret amerikansk demokrati.

USA har endnu ikke lagt fire år med en autokratisk tilbøjelig præsident og chokket fra angrebet på kongresbygningen den 6. januar bag sig. På ingen måde. Blandt allierede lande hersker der stadig alvorlig bekymring for det amerikanske demokratis fremtid.

Under en årlig afholdt sikkerhedskonference i Halifax, Canada, i november sagde Australiens tidligere premierminister Malcolm Turnbull for eksempel til webmagasinet Politico:

»Når vi ser, at dele af Det Republikanske Parti udfordrer forfatningsinstitutioner, på hvilke et over 200 år gammelt demokrati er opbygget, undergraver det vores tillid til amerikansk demokrati.«

Og en markant tilbagegang for USA’s demokrati er da også blevet registreret af flere tænketanke.

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Se også Kina

Remarks By President Biden At The Summit For Democracy Opening Session

The White House d. 9/12 - 2021

American democracy is an ongoing struggle to live up to our highest ideals and to heal our divisions; to recommit ourselves to the founding idea of our nation captured in our Declaration of Independence, not unlike many of your documents.

We say: “We hold these truths to be self-evident” that all women and men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to renew it with each generation. And this is an urgent matter on all our parts, in my view. Because the data we’re seeing is largely pointing in the wrong direction.

Freedom House reports, in 2020, that it marked the 15th consecutive year of global freedom in retreat.

Another recent report, from the International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance, noted that more than half of all democracies have experienced a decline in at least one aspect of their democracy over the last 10 years, including the United States...

... So, over the next two days, we’re bringing together leaders from more than 100 governments alongside activists, trade unionists, and other members of civil society, leading experts and researchers, and representatives from the business community, not — not to assert that any one of our democracies is perfect or has all the answers, but to lock arms and reaffirm our shared commitment to make our democracies better; to share ideas and learn from each other; and to make concrete commitments of how — how to strengthen our own democracies and push back on authoritarianism, fight corruption, promote and protect human rights of people everywhere. To act. To act...

...And we’ll stand up two — and we’re going to stand up two rapid-response, cross-cutting initiatives that support the key goals of this summit: the Fund for Democratic Renewal and the Partnership for Democ- — for Democracy program. It’s going to allow State Department and USAID to surge funds to support our partners working on democratic frontlines around the world....

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Harvard Youth Poll

42 Edition
d. 1/12 2021

A national poll of America’s 18- to 29-year-olds released today by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School indicates that a majority of young Americans believe that our democracy is “in trouble” or “failing.” While most young Biden voters are satisfied with their vote, President Biden’s job approval (46%) has dropped 13 percentage points among young Americans since the IOP’s Spring 2021 Poll, including a 10-point drop among young Democrats and 14-point drop among Independents.

For over twenty years, the Harvard Public Opinion Project has provided the most comprehensive look at the political opinions, voting trends, and views on public service held by young Americans. The Fall 2021 survey of 2,109 young Americans between 18- and 29-years-old, conducted between October 26 and November 8, includes young Americans’ concerns on their mental health, COVID-19, climate change, and foreign policy...

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Sådan kaprede USA’s fjender Amerikas udenrigspolitik og kastede landet ud i en endeløs krig mod terror

Information d. 11/9 - 2021

To årtiers massivt fokus på krigen mod terror har skævvredet USA’s prioriteter og stjålet opmærksomhed fra alvorligere trusler som klimaforandringer og Kinas opstigen, mens det hjemlige demokrati er forvitret. Nu prøver Biden at udstikke en ny kurs, men den amerikanske statsmagt vil ikke kunne gøre op med evighedskrige, så længe den er bygget til at udkæmpe dem, skriver tidligere Obama-rådgiver Ben Rhodes i dette essay...

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Taler vi med Taliban? Nogle gange er en forklaring nødvendig.

Klip fra Læger uden grænsers nyhedsbrev d. 24/8 - 2021

...Vores principper om neutralitet, upartiskhed og uafhængighed, der indimellem kan virke lidt abstrakte, bliver ført ud i livet gennem dialog med alle parter, ved at nægte at modtage økonomisk støtte fra stater og regeringer og ved at gøre vores hospitaler til våbenfri zoner. De, der er kommet til et Læger uden Grænser-hospital, har bogstaveligt talt måttet lægge deres våben.

Vores hjælp i Afghanistan har altid og udelukkende været baseret på humanitære behov. Uanset om det var en såret regeringssoldat, et offer for et biluheld, en kvinde med akut brug for kejsersnit eller en såret Taliban-kriger.

Vi arbejder i henhold til lægeløftet og ikke ud fra, om nogen er blevet kategoriseret som kriminel, terrorist, soldat eller politiker. Vores neutralitet er helt afgørende for, at vi kan få adgang til at hjælpe – og helt afgørende for vores sikkerhed.

Desværre har denne tilgang ikke altid beskyttet os. Og prisen har været høj. Tilbage i 2015 bombede amerikanske specialstyrker vores hospital i Kunduz, da provinsen kortvarigt var blevet overtaget af Taliban. Angrebet kostede 10 patienter og 12 af vores ansatte livet. Og så sent som i maj sidste år blev vores fødselshospital i Dasht-e-Barchi brutalt angrebet, sandsynligvis af Islamisk Stat i Afghanistan, som vi ikke har kunnet etablere en dialog med...

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USA forbereder cyberangrep mot Russland

Angrepene vil finne sted i mars, ifølge New York Times.

steigan.no d. 15/3 - 2021

Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com

Biden-administrasjonen planlegger ifølge The New York Times flere cyberangrep mot Russland de neste ukene. Cyberoffensiven kan bli fulgt opp med nye sanksjoner mot Russland. I så fall vil det innebære’ en alvorlig tilspisning av den nye administrasjonens strategi i forhold til Moskva.

Det første «store angrepet» forventes å inntreffe i løpet av de siste to ukene i mars, ifølge New York Times kilder, som ikke er navngitt. Offensiven vil bestå av en «serie angrep på flere russiske nettverk som ikke vil være til å misforstå for president Putin og russisk etterretning og militære, men utenforstående vil ikke registrere offensiven.»

Ifølge samme kilder vil USA iverksette nye økonomiske sanksjoner mot Russland etter at cyberangrepene er gjennomført. 2. mars i år iverksatte Biden-administrasjonen økonomiske sanksjoner overfor russiske tjenestemenn grunnet fengslingen av opposisjonspolitikeren Alexei Navalny.

De planlagte angrepene skal være en reaksjon på SolarWinds-hackingen, som fant sted i mars fjor da et virus som senere spredte seg til 18 000 offentlige og private datanettverk via softwaret Solar Winds, ble plantet av inntrengere. Spredningen av viruset inntraff i forbindelse med en programvareoppdatering og ble ikke oppdaget før det hadde forårsaket stor skade. Til tross for mangel på bevis ble Russland raskt utpekt som syndebukk for hackingen av medlemmer av Kongressen og i vestlige medier...

...Men SolarWinds’ tidligere leder og en datasikkerhetsekspert har senere gjort det klart at hvem som helst kunne ta seg inn i SolarWinds’ servere på grunn av et omfattende sikkerhetshull som ikke ble tettet før etter to år...

...Sudhakar Ramakrishna, som erstattet Thompson som sjef for SolarWinds, sa at passordet hadde vært tilgjengelig for almenheten siden 2017 og at det ikke var blitt oppdatert før i november 2019. Ifølge SolarWinds ble mistenkelig aktivitet på serveren første gang registrert i september 2019...

...I artikkelen i New York Times omtales også et nylig oppdaget innbrudd i Microsofts e-postservere som Kina får skylden for. Så langt er det bare Microsoft som har hevdet at Kina står bak dette angrepet, men ifølge New York Times overveier Biden-administrasjonen mulighetene for å holde Kina ansvarlig for Microsoft-innbruddet...

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Se også The New York Times

Oversatt av Erik Engebretsen for Derimot.no.

(Re-)Joining the World

Let's Try Democracy
JANUARY 15, 2021 BY DAVIDSWANSON

...The United States’ rogue status didn’t begin with Trump. Of the United Nations’ 18 major human rights treaties, the United States is party to 5, fewer than any other nation on earth, except Bhutan (4), and tied with Malaysia, Myanmar, and South Sudan, a country torn by warfare since its creation in 2011. The United States is the only nation on earth that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is by many measures a top destroyer of the natural environment, yet has been a leader in sabotaging climate protection negotiations for decades and has never ratified the UN Framework Convention on Climate Control (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol. The U.S. government has never ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2001. It has never signed the Mine Ban Treaty or the Convention on Cluster Munitions...

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Nuclear war with China or Russia 'a very real possibility,' U.S. Strategic Command chief warns

The Washington Times d. 1/1 - 2021

...The Pentagon must shift from a principal assumption that nuclear weapons’ use is nearly impossible to “nuclear employment is a very real possibility,” he urged in the new survey.
Government and military leaders need to better understand the new dangers of nuclear conflict and fashion new concepts of deterrence and — if needed — nuclear war-fighting strategies.

The deployment of advanced strategic forces by China and Russia calls for greater action by the United States to bolster deterrence in the face of new threats. Deterring both nations through crises or ultimately nuclear war is being tested in ways not seen before, Adm. Richard said...

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Biden og den liberale verdensorden efter Trump

DIIS d. 12/11 - 2020

Det er slut med ’America First’: USA skal igen være lederen af ’Den Frie Verden’. Men kan Joe Biden genskabe USA's internationale rolle fra tiden før Trump?...

...Men selv på det udenrigspolitiske område har Senatet en vis indflydelse gennem godkendelse af udnævnelser til præsidentens kabinet samt ratificering af internationale traktater. Såfremt Republikanerne fastholder kontrollen over Senatet, kan det få en ikke uvæsentlig betydning for hvem, der bestrider posterne som udenrigsminister, ambassadører m.m.

Senatet vil også kunne obstruere USA's genindtrædelse i atomaftalen med Iran. Endelig er Bidens forsøg på at genskabe USA's rolle som leder af den liberale verdensorden i høj grad baseret på en revitalisering af det amerikanske samfund gennem en række strukturelle reformer, hvilket bliver umådeligt vanskeligt med et republikansk Senat...

...USA's udenrigspolitik under Biden vil fortsat være domineret af stormagtsrivalisering med Kina. USA vil fortsat forsøge at neddrosle engagementet i Mellemøsten og presse europæerne til at bidrage mere for egen sikkerhed. Der er også nogle af Trumps beslutninger, som Biden næppe ville have truffet, men som han nu af forskellige årsager ikke vil omstøde. Det gælder f.eks. flytningen af USA's ambassade i Israel fra Tel Aviv til Jerusalem.

De største brud vil først og fremmest være et forsøg på at genetablere gode forhold til USA's allierede – ikke mindst for at danne fælles front mod Kina – samt et klart signal om, at USA er tilbage som leder af den liberale verdensorden.

Det vil blandt andet ske gennem en bekræftelse af USA's uforbeholdne opbakning til NATO og genindtrædelse i Paris-aftalen og WHO. Endelig har Biden bebudet, at han i sit første år som præsident vil afholde et Summit for Democracy, der skal forny “Den Frie Verdens” ånd og fælles formål ved bl.a. at styrke demokratiske institutioner og menneskerettigheder...

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Legality of drone warfare

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

...There is just one law that underpins the whole basis for the US being at war with al Qaeda and its cronies that has been even remotely scrutinised by Congress. The Authorisation for the Use of Military Force Act was drafted by the Bush White House in the week after the 9/11 attacks.

At its heart is a sixty-word sentence that gives the US president the power to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organisations, or persons” that he or she determines was behind or helped the people who carried out the attacks. It was passed into law by Congress on September 16 with only one dissenting vote.

The AUMF’s scope gave the president a free hand. It has no time or geographical limits; it technically allows the president to fight a perpetual global war. It also empowers the president to go after individuals as well as nation states.

Within weeks of it becoming law the US and its allies had invaded Afghanistan, going after the Taliban and al Qaeda. A year later the US carried out its first drone strike beyond active battlefields, killing six al Qaeda fighters in Yemen.

By 2004 the US was striking al Qaeda, the Taliban, and various other armed groups in Pakistan.

AUMF is so broad that it allows the President to target new enemies without the usual authorisation from Congress. The scope has grown from just the Taliban and al Qaeda - AUMF is now being used to justify strikes against groups that did not exist when al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Centre and Pentagon...

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Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy

By Manlio Dinucci Global Research, November 12, 2020

The first step will be to strengthen NATO, which is “the very heart of the national security of the United States.” To this end, Biden will make the “necessary investments” for the United States to maintain “the most powerful military force in the world,” and, at the same time, will ensure that “our NATO allies increase their defense spending” according to their commitments already undertaken with the Obama-Biden administration.

The second step will be to convene a “Global Summit for Democracy” in the first year of his presidency: it will be attended by “the nations of the free world and civil society organizations from all over the world at the forefront of defending democracy.” The Summit will decide on “collective action against global threats.” First of all, to “counter Russian aggression, keeping the military capabilities of the Alliance sharp and imposing real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms;” at the same time, to “build a united front to confront abusive behaviors and human rights violations by China, which is extending its global reach.”

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Hospitals in nearly every region report a flood of covid-19 patients

The Washington Post d. 27/10 - 2020

Hospitals in many regions of the country — the Upper Midwest, the Mountain West, the Southwest and the heart of Appalachia — are seeing record levels of patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
More than 42,000 people were hospitalized nationally with the virus Monday, a figure that is steadily climbing toward the midsummer peak caused by massive outbreaks in the Sun Belt. In the places hit the hardest, this is nudging hospitals toward the nightmare scenario of rationing care...

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As US election approaches, New York Times intensifies its anti-Russia disinformation campaign

af Joseph Kishore—SEP candidate for US president d. 24/10 - 2020 WSWS.org

 In the final weeks of the election campaign, as the Trump administration intensifies its coup plotting and incitement of fascistic violence, US intelligence agencies, with the assistance of the New York Times, are once again spreading unsubstantiated propaganda that Russia is seeking to “interfere” in the elections and “sow chaos” in the United States.

In the space of three days this week, the Times, the main newspaper politically aligned with the Democratic Party, published three articles focused on the supposed Russian plot. All were co-authored by the Times’ most reliable stenographer for the CIA, David Sanger...

...In reporting on the claim that “Russia” has targeted “dozens” of local governments, the Times links to releases from the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The release reports on the activities of one individual that it claims, without proof, is sponsored by Russia. The technical details in the report note that the IP addresses used in the alleged hacking are actually from Turkey, and there is no attempt to connect the activity with anyone in Russia, let alone the Russian government...

..If the Democrats come to power next year, it will be on the basis of a commitment to intensified war abroad, further attacks on democratic rights within the United States, and the strengthening of the power of the military-intelligence apparatus. 

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LØFTER OP TIL VALGET I US

Joe Biden og Kamala Harris lover Israel betingelsesløs støtte

Arbejderen d. 9/9 - 2020

Hverken Demokraternes præsidentkandidat Joe Biden eller hans vicepræsidentkandidat Kamala Harris vil stille betingelser for USA's militære bistand til Israel, for landet overholder "generelt" menneskerettighederne, mener Kamala Harris.

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Caitlin Johnstone: The modern US war machine kills more like a python than a tiger

RT d. 27/8 - 2020

...“Cutting off China from its trading partners and sources of oil, natural gas and other resources could be the best, and least costly, way for the United States to defeat China in a major war,” Axe explains.

“In wartime, the US and allied fleets could blockade Russian sea trade, putting a choke-hold on the Russian economy that could force Moscow to end the war on terms favorable to Washington and its friends,” he writes.

Unspoken by Axe and Dismukes is the fact that both Russia and China are nuclear-armed nations, so direct hot warfare is something the US power alliance would want to avoid anyway.

Indeed, the articles present a vision for confrontation with Russia and China that is not just realistic but probable, and not just probable but currently underway. This is exactly the reason the empire-like network of allies loosely centralized around the United States has been so forceful about controlling crucial resources like oil on the world stage; it’s not so that the US can use the oil itself, it’s so it can control who will have access to it. It’s also why they’ve been working to surround both China and Russia militarily via military bases and NATO expansionism...

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Trump åbner for sanktioner mod ansatte ved domstol i Haag

Kristeligt Dagblad / Ritzau d. 11/6 - 2020

...Trump har i et brev meddelt formanden for Repræsentanternes Hus, Nancy Pelosi, at personer ansat i ICC og deres familiemedlemmer ikke kan få visum til USA.

Dekretet giver også den amerikanske udenrigsminister, Mike Pompeo, mulighed for - i samråd med finansminister Steven Mnuchin - at indefryse eventuelle værdier, som ICC-ansatte måtte have i USA.

I forvejen er ICC-ansatte underlagt sanktioner, som Trump indførte for et år siden...

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America vs. China: “A Clash of Civilizations”

Pivot to Peace d. 4/5 - 2020

Hillary Clinton famously said, “’I don’t want my grandchildren to live in a world dominated by the Chinese.”

During his tenure, President Obama launched his “Pivot to Asia,” moving 60% of US naval power to bases surrounding China, developing the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty specifically to economically isolate China, making Air-Sea Battle the official US doctrine explicitly to contain China militarily, and announcing boldly that his aim was to contain China’s economic rise.

Not surprisingly, China reacted with alarm. The Cold War was long over, China’s economic rise was a peaceful one, it had no aggressive intentions towards the US or anyone, and prior to Obama’s “Pivot to Asia,” relations had been stable and tension low, China argued. Such arguments from China, however, were dismissed by US leaders.

In January of 2018, the Trump administration put out a new National Defense Strategy naming China and Russia “revisionist powers” that need to be contained, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said, “…great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.” Googling “China” and “existential threat,” now produces well over six million hits...

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Joseph Biden’s foreign policy

The Transnational d. 15/4 - 2020 af Jonathan Power

...Obama made Biden responsible for dealing with the Ukraine crisis where he fashioned an anti-Russian policy based on little evidence that this was fair to the facts. He writes now of the need to “counter Russian aggression” and that “we must impose real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms”...

...On the Israel/Palestine dispute, he seems to be incapable of differentiating from those who criticize Israel and those who are anti-semitic. All he cares about is sustaining “our iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security”. Not a word about what the Palestinians need and deserve...

...He is also good on Iran, wanting to resuscitate the deal on nuclear weapon research made by Obama and also the Paris Agreement on controlling climate change...

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Fordømmelse af angreb på journalister: 'Vi plejer at se det i slyngelstater'

DR d. 1/6 - 2020

I går havde Reporters Without Borders dokumenteret 68 angreb på journalister under protester i USA.

Journalister og fotografer har på ingen måde været undtaget for tåregas
og gummikugler fra politiet eller for overfald begået af demonstranter under de så godt som landsdækkende
protester i USA.

En uge inde i demonstrationerne, der er brudt ud efter George Floyds død i mandags, havde organisationen Reporters Without Borders, der overvåger pressefriheden i verdens lande, dokumenteret 68 overgreb
på pressefolk.

Nogle er blevet skudt med gummikugler, andre har fået sprøjtet peberspray i ansigtet, er blevet slået, truet eller fået deres udstyr eller køretøjer
smadret.

Blandt andet er en CNN-journalist blevet anholdt uden at få oplyst hvorfor, mens han var live igennem på tv.

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“America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret…?”

TFF - The Transnational Foundation Lund Sweden

Lawrence Wilkerson, US Army Colonel

...Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005, says the escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Iran today is a continuation of two decades of U.S. policy disasters in the Middle East, starting with the 2003 run-up to war with Iraq under the Bush administration. “America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end in sight? It’s part of who we are. It’s part of what the American Empire is,” says Wilkerson.

“We are going to cheat and steal to do whatever it is we have to do to continue this war complex. That’s the truth of it. And that’s the agony of it.”...

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Seniorforsker: Hvad har superhelte, shiamuslimske militser og Donald Trumps valgkampagne til fælles?

Fascismen fascinerer og forfører stadig, måske fordi vi ikke længere genkender den som fascistisk.

Politikken d. 18/5 - 2020

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Donald Trump foreslår at injicere amerikanerne med rensemiddel og lys

DR d. 24/4 - 2020

Den amerikanske præsident, Donald Trump, luftede ved et pressemøde i Det Hvide Hus muligheden for anvendelse af varme, lys og desinfektionsmidler til behandling af coronavirusset....

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We Are Living in a Failed State

(oversat)

...”Da virussen kom hertil, fandt den et land med svære basale diagnoser, og den udnyttede dem nådesløst. Kroniske sygdomme – en korrupt politisk klasse, et bureaukrati, der er en skygge af sig selv, en hjerteløs økonomi, en delt og rådvild offentlighed – var i årevis ubehandlede. Vi har lært at leve med symptomerne og bide smerten i os. Det krævede en omfattende og nærgående pandemi at blotlægge symptomernes alvor og vække amerikanerne til den rystende indsigt, at vi er i højrisiko-gruppen”...

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How the Military-Industrial Complex Is Using the Coronavirus

Arms industry lobbyists are addressing this pandemic and preparing for the next by pushing weapons sales.

The Nation d. 17/4 - 2020
By William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman

...Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the bottom line is that “we’re going to see enormous downward pressure on defense spending because of other urgent American national needs like health care.”...

...If history is any indication, the military-industrial complex isn’t going down without a fight, nor is the Pentagon budget. Through their droves of lobbyists, the revolving door between the Pentagon, contractors, and Congress, and the promise of providing jobs to every Congressional district, Pentagon contractors have kept the defense budget artificially inflated for years at the expense of funding for things like the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies that can help fight disease outbreaks. And, in this new coronavirus era, they’re using the same playbook once again...

...While the battle to defeat this pandemic rages, the battle to defeat the next one has already begun, and so far, arms industry lobbyists are winning. They’re making sure that Pentagon contractors continue to thrive, even as much more pressing priorities than bomb making demand our attention. Instead of protecting contractor profits, Congress must choose to protect the American people from the very real threats that are killing thousands of Americans as we speak.

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Besætning hylder kaptajnen, der slog corona-alarm

Kaptajnen på amerikansk hangarskib blev fyret, efter at han advarede om corona-epidemi ombord.

DR 4/4 - 2020

"Kaptajn Cro-zier, kaptajn Cro-zier."

Taktfaste tilråb følger flådeofficeren på vej, mens han går fra borde. Nede på kajen vender han sig om, kigger op og gør kort honnør til besætningen.

En video af kaptajnen på det amerikanske hangarskib USS Theodore Roosevelt, der går fra borde efter at være blevet fyret, er gået viralt i USA.

Nu truer en personalesag i den amerikanske flåde med at vokse til et symbol på noget langt større.

- Videoen er overalt på twitter, og det tager fart. Det er en sag, som præsident Donald Trump vil blive spurgt til, og som han skal forholde sig til, siger Shannon Pettypiece, seniorkorrespondent i Det Hvide Hus, til NBC News.

Degraderet efter corona-alarm

Brett Crozier fik frataget sin kommando af flådens øverste ledelse, efter at han tidligere på ugen slog alarm på grund af udbrud af coronavirus blandt besætningen.

- Vi er ikke i krig. Ingen sømænd behøver at dø. Men hvis vi ikke handler nu, så svigter vi vores mest værdifulde ressource, nemlig besætningen, skrev Brett Crozier i et brev, der fandt vej til de amerikanske medier.

I brevet bad han indtrængende hovedkvarteret om hjælp. Tre tilfælde af coronavirus ombord havde på kort tid spredt sig til flere end 100 besætningsmedlemmer...

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USA's blokade stopper corona-masker og testudstyr til Cuba

Arbejderen d. 3/4 - 2020

Det holder ikke, når USA påstår, at forsyninger til sundhedsvæsenet undtages fra blokader og sanktioner, konstaterer Enhedslistens udenrigspolitiske ordfører, Eva Flyvholm...

...Vrede i Cuba

Den cubanske regering og præsident Miguel Diaz Canel fordømmer USA's politik i skarpe vendinger: "Den kriminelle blokade iværksat af imperiets regering er et brud på det cubanske folks menneskerettigheder ... donationen af sundhedsudstyr til brug i kampen på covid-19 fra den kinesiske stiftelse Alibaba har ikke kunnet bringes til Cuba på grund af den kriminelle blokade", skriver præsidenten på Twitter.

Den cubanske regering takker dog Jack Ma, hvis kontor nu arbejder på at få bragt donationen til Cuba på en anden måde.

Der vokser her under coronapandemien protester frem mod især USA's omfattende sanktionspolitik, som rammer mange landes indsats mod spredningen af den dødelige smitte og behandlingen af de syge...

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Øget modstand mod sanktioner
FN-top: Ophæv sanktioner mod Iran, Cuba og Venezuela under coronakrisen

Arbejderen d. 31/3 - 2020

FN's generalsekretær António Guterres, højkommissær for menneskerettigheder Michelle Bachelet, ekspræsident Lula da Silva, kongresmedlem i USA James McGovern og Argentinas præsident Alberto Fernández er blot nogle af dem, som kræver blokader og sanktioner ophævet i kampen mod COVID-19...

...I USA står kongresmedlem James McGovern frem med kravet om, at blokaden mod Cuba ophæves nu. På vegne af otte mellemfolkelige organisationer og handelsforeninger i USA har han taget sagen op med krav om, at præsident Trump for en periode ophæver de sanktioner, som USA helt alene har indført mod Cuba. Det skal lette Cubas adgang til humanitære og sundhedsmæssige forsyninger, beretter Prensa Latina.

"Denne pandemi kender ikke til grænser og begrænses ikke af historie og politik", skriver James McGovern, der er valgt til Repræsentanternes Hus i Massachussetts for Demokraterne.

Den amerikanske økonom Jeffrey Sachs fra Columbia Universitetet kalder USA's sanktioner for galskab:

– Det er fuldstændig samvittighedsløst at opretholde sanktioner i denne tid. Det eneste moralske, fornuftige og lovlige at gøre er at stoppe denne galskab, der ødelægger andre landes sundhedssystemer, siger professoren til nyhedsbureauet AP...

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Pentagon orders installations to stop reporting coronavirus cases as military-linked infections eclipse 1,000

Stars and Stripes d. 30/3 - 2020

Stars and Stripes is making stories on the coronavirus pandemic available free of charge. See other free reports here. Sign up for our daily coronavirus newsletter here. Please support our journalism with a subscription.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department has ordered commanders at all of its installations worldwide to stop announcing publicly new coronavirus cases among their personnel, as the Pentagon said Monday that more than 1,000 U.S. military-linked people had been sickened by the virus.

The order issued by Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday is meant to protect operational security at the Defense Department’s global installations, Jonathan Hoffman, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in a statement Monday. He said Defense Department leaders worried adversaries could exploit such information, especially if the data showed the outbreak impacted U.S. nuclear forces or other critical units.

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Sanktioner dræber
USA's sanktioner øger antallet af dødsfald under coronakrisen

Arbejderen d. 26/3 - 2020

USA håndhæver sanktioner og blokader mod 39 lande. Det rammer nu også landenes mulighed for at imødegå coronapandemien.

Det koster menneskeliv, at USA afviser at ophæve eller suspendere økonomiske sanktioner og handelsblokader mod en række lande, indtil coronapandemien er ovre.

USA har iværksat sanktioner mod over 30 lande. Nogle af landene er hårdt ramt af corona og kan ikke skaffe tilstrækkeligt med testudstyr, medicin og beskyttelsesudstyr.

Landenes sundhedssystemer er langt fra i stand til at behandle de tusinder af syge, idet der er stor mangel på respiratorer og andet udstyr, blandt andet som følge af den økonomiske udsultning på grund af USA's sanktioner.

Blandt de hårdest ramte er Iran og Venezuela...

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Iraks militære forlanger umiddelbar tilbaketrekking av USAs tropper i landet

Hundrevis av soldater fra USA og Storbritannia satt inn i Jemen

steigan.no d. 14/3 - 2020

Et stort antall amerikanske tropper har ankommet Aden i Sør-Jemen, rapporterer Yemen Press, og la til at dette har funnet sted i samordning med De forente arabiske emirater (UAE). Den arabisk-språklige al-Mashhad al-Yamani rapporterte at 450 amerikanske tropper har ankommet Jemen.

Kilden sier at Washington og London har til hensikt å utplassere 3000 soldater i Aden, al-And militærbase i Lahaj-provinsen, Saqtari, Shabweh i Sør-Jemen og al-Mohreh i de østlige delene av landet. De militære ekspertene har advart om at USAs overdrevne bevegelse i Jemens sørlige provinser hovedsakelig er rettet inn på å etablere permanente militærbaser i det krigsherjede landet...

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USA: – Vil gjøre alt vi kan for å hindre Syria i å seire

steigan.no d. 12/3 - 2020

USA og deres allierte har tapt krigen mot Syria, men Washington har ikke gitt opp å forlenge lidelsene for det syriske folket så mye som mulig. Dette kom fram mer enn tydelig i en spesialbriefing som ble holdt i Brussel 10. mars 2020 med USAs spesialutsending for Syria, James Jeffrey og USAs ambassadør til Tyrkia, David Satterfield.

De to utsendingene gjorde det klart at USA vil bruke alle midler for å hindre Syria i å slå ned terroristene og oppnå fred. Da Jeffrey kommenterte våpenhvilen i Idlib omtalte han Syrias og Russlands kampanje mot terroristene som «russisk aggresjon». Som kjent er Russland i Syria på invitasjon fra Syrias regjering, så i motsetning til USA, har Russland lovlig ærend i landet. Å omtale krigen mot verdens verste terrorister på eget territorium som «aggresjon» har naturligvis ingen forankring i folkeretten. Det er bare et uttrykk for USAs ønske om å forsvare terroristene og hindre deres nederlag. Det kom da også krystallklart fram i Jeffreys kommentar da han sa:

    «De er ute etter å få en militær seier i hele Syria. Målet vårt er å gjøre det veldig vanskelig for dem å gjøre det ved en rekke diplomatiske, militære og andre handlinger.»...

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Sidens top

Costs of War Project

Watson Institute
International & Public Affairs
Brown University

The Costs of War Project is a team of 50 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2010. We use research and a public website to facilitate debate about the costs of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the related violence in Pakistan and Syria. There are many hidden or unacknowledged costs of the United States’ decision to respond to the 9/11 attacks with military force. We aim to foster democratic discussion of these wars by providing the fullest possible account of their human, economic, and political costs, and to foster better informed public policies.

se video

Summary of Findings

Compelling alternatives to war were scarcely considered in the aftermath of 9/11 or in the discussion about war against Iraq. Some of those alternatives are still available to the US...

Se websiden

Overwiew

Sidens top

Trump truer med at lukke for Iraks adgang til egne oliepenge.

Arbejderen d. 25/2 - 2020

Alle Iraks olieindtægter opbevares i USA's centralbank. Nu har USA valgt at presse landets økonomi ved at forsinke udbetalingerne af pengene. Målet er at straffe Irak, hvis parlament har krævet USA's militær ud af landet, lyder det fra kritikere.

USA presser nu Irak på pengepungen.

USA er utilfreds med, at Irak handler for meget med Iran. Derfor forsinker Washington den månedlige udbetaling af Iraks oliepenge, der er samlet i USA's centralbank i New York, skriver nyhedsbureauet AFP, der citerer anonyme embedsmænd i Iraks regering for anklagen.

35 milliarder dollars, der udgør store dele af Iraks oliindtægter, ligger efter tidligere aftale opbevaret i USA's centralbank, Federal Reserves filial i New York. Hver måned trækker Iraks centralbank en eller to milliarder dollars fra kontoen og får dem fløjet til Irak, hvor de bliver brugt til at betale offentligt ansatte og landets udlandsgæld...

..."Døden for Iraks økonomi"

Finansanalytikeren Ahmed Tabaqchali fra Institut for Regionale og Internationale Studier i Irak mener, at forsinkelsen af udbetalingen af oliepengene er dybt alvorlig.

– Dette er begyndelsen på enden for Iraks økonomi. Forsinkelsen vil betyde tusindvis af nedskæringer, advarer han og tilføjer, at Irak i forvejen er ramt af store problemer.

Landets nyudnævnte premierminister Mohammad Allawi kæmper for at danne en stabil regering, imens store folkelige demonstrationer mod social nød, korruption og daglige strømnedbrud fylder gaderne...

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The Terrorism-Industrial Complex (TIC)

TFF d. 25 /2 - 2020 af Jan Oberg

February 25, 2020

Above a modified image of President Ronald Reagan with Afghan mujahideens – ‘freedom fighters’ against Soviet communism – in 1983.

Since George W. Bush – a friend of the bin Laden family – declared the global “War On Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayers approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters…

And it has involved virtually all Western – NATO/EU – countries, sent millions of refugees and terrorists in all directions and created a surveillance state everywhere.

It has come to threaten and undermine privacy, trust, freedom and democracy – in short, undermined everything the West/Occident believed it stood for.

It has destroyed the idea of the good society and a future in peace.

And has it succeeded in reducing or abolishing terrorism?

No, on the contrary.

In the years up to 9/11 2001 about 400 people were killed in political terrorist acts throughout the world, mostly in South America (US State Dept statistics)...

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How the US helped create Al Qaeda and ISIS

USA’s militærmagt kræver adgang til enorme olieressourcer.

Er du klar over, at USAs militær har et olie forbrug, der er mere end dobbelt så stort som de ca. 257 mill. biler, der kører i USA? (kilde: Brown University, Watson Institute (Costs of War Project)

Hvis klimakrisen skal løses, skal militæret i den grad også reducere sit CO2-udslip.

USAs magt hviler på adgangen til enorme olieressourcer. Derfor har USA på en løgn angrebet Irak og overtaget olieproduktionen. Af hensyn til beskyttelse fra USA støtter vi USA og har dermed bidraget til USAs overtagelse af olieproduktionen i Irak og været med til at gøre irakerne fattigere.


I Venezuela ønsker USA at indsætte en præsident, der er uddannet i USA og som gerne vil lade olieproduktionen overgå til amerikanske firmaer. Vi støtter også denne præsident, selv om han ikke er valgt, men vi støtter jo USA af hensyn til os selv. Dette vil betyde, at de fattige i Venezuela vil få det hårdt, men det bekymrer os ikke.

Det er også derfor USA ønsker et systemskifte i Iran. Det er ikke af hensyn til demokratiet i Iran, hvis USA udformede udenrigspolitikken efter moralske værdier havde USA ikke Saudi Arabien som meget nær allieret. USA truer virksomheder, der vil have økonomisk samkvem med Iran, med ikke at kunne komme ind på det amerikanske marked og vi gør ikke noget.



USA går efter verdenmagten, men uden nedrustning - ingen løsning på klimakrisen.

Global Warfare: “We’re Going to Take out 7 Countries in 5 Years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran..”

Korrespondenter efter USA-drab på general: Mange er vågnet op til en farlig og uforudsigelig situation

DR d. 3/12 - 2020

...Vi er vågnet op til et andet Mellemøsten end det, der fandtes da vi gik i seng.

Sådan lyder det fra mellemøstkorrespondent Puk Damsgård, efter USA i nat er lykkedes med at dræbe den iranskeJ general Qassem Soleimani i et luftangreb tæt på den internationale lufthavn i Iraks hovedstad Bagdad...

...Irans øverste leder har lovet, at man vil 'hævne sig brutalt på USA' efter dagens angreb, men ifølge Puk Damsgård er det umuligt at sige hvordan.

- Det her er et direkte angreb på Iran. Der er ikke tale om en iransk støttet irakisk milits, men et direkte angreb - og derfor er dette så alvorligt. Det kan få store konsekvenser for Mellemøsten, fordi Iran er tilstede nærmest overalt...

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LIVE: Latest on the killing of Qassem Soleimani

Al-Jazeera d. 3/1 - 2020 kl 13

LIVE: Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds force, was killed in a US air attack in Iraq as tensions between the US and Iran escalate.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for three days of mourning and said harsh revenge awaits “criminals” who killed Soleimani.

se video

Der burde rejses en skamstøtte for Reagan for at minde højrefløjen om hans forbrydelser

information d. 28/11 - 2019

t har i årevis været et stærkt ønske fra Søren Pind, der opfatter den tidligere amerikanske præsident som en historisk helteskikkelse. Venstremanden luftede senest ideen i anledning af årsdagen for Berlinmurens fald.

Ønsket om at hædre Reagan med en statue er et godt eksempel på, at det blå Danmark mangler et selvopgør med de forbrydelser, som deres ’hold’ begik under Den Kolde Krig, og med Vestens støtte til regimer og bevægelser, der stod bag omfattende og uhyggelige forbrydelser mod menneskeheden i antikommunismens navn.

Reagan stod som amerikansk præsident i spidsen for en blodig og brutal udenrigspolitisk dagsorden. I El Salvador støttede og trænede USA i Reagans regeringsperiode militæret og de berygtede dødspatruljer, der på blot få år tog livet af op mod 50.000 civile salvadoranere for at nedkæmpe et gryende socialt oprør. Det svarer til, at én ud af hundrede salvadoranere blev dræbt, og der er stort set ikke den familie i landet, som ikke har ofre for de CIA-støttede dræbergrupper...

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Kendt Harvard-professor: EU bliver stærkere, når USA stopper med at sørge for europæernes sikkerhed.

Altinget d. 21/11 - 2019

INTERVIEW: USA bør lægge sin sikkerhedspolitik radikalt om, hvis det står til den amerikanske professor i sikkerhedspolitik, Stephen M. Walt. Det intense forsøg på at skabe fred ved at eksportere det liberale demokrati kloden rundt har nemlig ført til sin modsætning – krig, konflikt og øget usikkerhed...

..."Og det er faktisk også en konsekvens af den idealistiske udenrigspolitik. Man ender med at skade sit eget demokrati i forsøget på at udbrede det til alle andre. For det kræver, at man opbygger et enormt militært apparat til at håndtere alle de konflikter, man havner i. Man begynder at gøre en masse ting i hemmelighed, sikkerhedstjenesterne får enorme beføjelser, og man begynder at lyve for sin egen befolkning om, hvad man gør, og hvad man ikke gør og hvorfor. Så over tid opdager man, at et land, som hyldede frihed og liberale værdier, begynder at gå på kompromis med dem. Spionere på sine egne borgere og overvåge dem og registrere en masse information."

Men Rusland blander sig også i europæisk politik. Det ville russerne vel ikke gøre, hvis Rusland var et liberalt demokrati?

"Det er et interessant spørgsmål, om russerne ikke ville det. USA er et liberalt demokrati, og vi har blandet os i mange landes politik på alle mulige måder. Nogle gange med militær magt, nogle gange med penge til særlige grupper. Så alene det, at man er et liberalt demokrati, betyder ikke, at man ikke blander sig i andre landes politik. Noget andet er, om russerne ville blande sig i valg i USA og Europa, hvis de ikke følte – med rette eller urette – at Vesten og især USA blandede sig politisk i lande, som russerne opfatter som del af deres interessesfære. Og faktisk også i russisk politik, som vi har gjort med støtte til ellers meget godhjertede civilsamfundsprogrammer for at styrke det russiske demokrati. Sådan ser man ikke altid på det i den russiske elite."

Jo, men hvordan skal vi så reagere på russisk påvirkning?

"Måden at håndtere russisk indblanding på er ved at sørge for, at vores egne politiske systemer er sunde, og ved at være bevidst om, at indblandingen sker. Der er mange aktører, der prøver at blande sig i meningsdannelse i vores lande."
Esben Schjørring
Politisk redaktør

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USA accepterer Israels bosættelser på Vestbredden

DR d. 19/11 - 2019 / ritzau / Reuters

Israel glæder sig over, at USA bløder op i spørgsmålet om omstridte bosættelser. Palæstinenserne protesterer.

USA har ændret syn på Israels bosættelser. Amerikanerne vil ikke længere betragte de israelske bosættelser på Vestbredden som værende i strid med folkeretten.

Det siger USA's udenrigsminister, Mike Pompeo, på en pressekonference mandag.

Dermed tager han afstand fra en vurdering, som det amerikanske udenrigsministerium foretog i 1978. Her blev det slået fast, at Israels bosættelser på den besatte Vestbred ikke er i overensstemmelse med folkeretten.

Den vurdering har været en vigtig grundsten i den amerikanske politik i Mellemøsten i de seneste 40 år.

I resten af verden er der udbredt enighed om, at de israelske bosættelser er i strid med folkeretten, og at de udgør en alvorlig hindring for fred mellem israelere og palæstinensere...

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Efterretningseksperter: Tåbeligt at lade frygten for Putin og co. begrænse vores egen ytringsfrihed

Politiken d. 14/10 - 2019

Kronik af
Ole Stig Andersen var chef for PET 1975-84. Ole Hasselbalch er tidligere professor og efterretningsanalytiker under den kolde krig.

Dette er en klokkeklar indblanding i et andet lands indre forhold...

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Kræver abonnement

Trump swears allegiance to Israel as he decries endless Middle East wars

The Jerusalem Post d. 13/10 - 2019

...“We are standing with our close friend and partner, the State of Israel,” Trump said, as he reviewed the steps he has taken on behalf of the Jewish state since taking office, such as relocating the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights...

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USA involveret i 36 militære operationer i Afrika

Arbejderen d. 3/6 - 2019

USA's væbnede styrker har travlt på det afrikanske kontinent, hvor stormagten er involveret i 36 militære operationer i en lang række lande.

Nye oplysninger viser, at USA i øjeblikket er involveret i mindst 36 militære operationer i Afrika.

Mange af disse operationer forekommer i lande, som USA's regering ikke betegner som krigszoner, men hvor amerikanske soldater alligevel kæmper og i mange tilfælde mister livet...

...46 militærbaser

Tidligere har Nick Turse afsløret, at USA's militær på en eller anden måde har været involveret i mere end 90 procent af Afrikas 54 stater...

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Betjent fyret: 'Trump-modstander bør skydes'

BT d. 25/7 - 2019

»Denne frastødende idiot fortjener at blive skudt.«

Sådan skrev en politibetjent fra den amerikanske sydstat Louisiana i sidste uge på sin Facebook-hjemmeside. Den 'frastødende idiot', betjenten refererede til, er den 29-årige kongreskvinde Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Og øjeblikkelig klikkede én af betjentens kollegaer på 'like'-knappen. Han var tilsyneladende helt enig.

Tre dage senere blev begge betjente (Charlie Rispoli og Angelo Varisco) fyret på gråt papir. Og ved en pressekonferrence mandag sagde betjentenes chef, Sherif Arthur Lawson:

»Hvadenten dette var ment som en vittighed eller ej, så er det dybt upassende at skrive dette – At opfordre til vold imod en anden person og så ovenikøbet et folkevalgt medlem af den amerikanske kongres.«...

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Efter flere timers høring om Rusland-undersøgelse: Begge fløje fik noget ud af Mueller

DR d. 24/7 - 2019

Både Demokraterne og Republikanerne fik sejre med sig efter høring i dag, konkluderes det fra Washington.

I flere timer fik den tidligere særlige anklager Robert Mueller spørgsmål fra både republikanere og demokrater i Repræsentanternes Hus.

Den 74-årige jurist Robert Mueller var kaldt til høring, da det var ham, der stod i spidsen for at undersøge Ruslands indblanding i præsidentvalget i 2016.

- I min karriere har jeg oplevet, at vores demokrati er blevet udfordret flere gange. Ruslands bestræbelser på at blande sig i vores valg er noget af det mest alvorlige, lød det blandt andet fra Robert Mueller i dag...

...Demokraterne spurgte også ind til, om årsagen til at Robert Mueller ikke rejste tiltale mod Donald Trump er, fordi at man ifølge justitsministeriet ikke kan retsforfølge en siddende præsident. Til det svarede Robert Mueller:
Hvad er Rusland-undersøgelsen?

Rapporten fra Robert Mueller skulle kaste lys over, hvilken rolle Rusland spillede under præsidentvalgkampen i 2016 samt mulige lovovertrædelser begået af præsident Donald Trump.

Rapporten har ikke fundet beviser for, at medlemmer af Trump-kampagnen konspirerede eller samarbejdede med den russiske regering.

Den har heller ikke fundet beviser for, at Trump skulle have gjort sig skyldig i magtmisbrug, men den har heller ikke renset ham for ikke at have gjort det.

Der er ikke fundet beviser for at retsforfølge Trump eller andre på baggrund af undersøgelsen. 37 personer er allerede tiltalt siden undersøgelsens start.

Muellers hold har fundet to former for russisk påvirkning under præsidentvalget i 2016: Misinformation på sociale medier og hackingen af Demokraternes emails.

Under efterforskningen er der udstedt mere end 2.800 stævninger og 500 ransagningskendelser, ligesom omkring 500 vidner er blevet afhørt.

- Det er korrekt.

Senere rettede han dog den udtalelse og sagde, at man aldrig nåede en konklusion om, hvorvidt Trump havde gjort noget ulovligt...

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Trumps mafiapolitik over for Iran er den største trussel mod verdensfreden

Berlingske d. 18/7 - 2019

Af Mogen lykketoft.

...Bevar fokus på skadevolderen

Metoden blev gennem årtier - under protest fra EU og resten af verden – brugt over for Cuba, men afviklet af Obama sidst i hans regeringsstid. Nu prøver Trump også i sit had til Obama at trampe Cubas åbning over for omverdenen itu med samme metoder som over for Iran og til stor skade også for de almindelige cubanere, der for tre år siden hyldede Obama under hans besøg i landet.

Iran reagerer nu mod USAs brud på atomaftalen ved at overskride grænserne for deres lagre af beriget uran, som de blev fastsat i den aftale, som Trump har revet i stykker. Det skal vi advare dem imod.

Men iranernes hensigt her er ikke at udvikle atomvåben, det er at skaffe sig noget at bytte med, der kan føre tilbage til 2015-aftalen. EU bør af al kraft fastholde aftalen, men ikke miste fokus på, at den egentlige skadevolder er Trump, og at de amerikanske sanktioner skal modarbejdes. Vi bør også afvise amerikanske krav om, at vi skal deltage i militære operationer i Irak og Syrien, der risikerer at være direkte eller indirekte bidrag den irrationelle Iran-politik.

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Trump Fans the Flames of a Racial Fire

The New York times d. 18/7 - 2019

...“Trump has not only always been a racist, but anyone around him who denies it, is lying,” Mr. O’Donnell said on Sunday. “Donald Trump makes racist comments all the time. Once you know him, he speaks his mind about race very openly.”

Mr. Trump, he said, regularly trafficked in racial stereotypes — Jews were good with money, blacks were lazy, Puerto Ricans dressed badly. “White people are Americans to Trump; everyone else is from somewhere else,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “He simply denies the reality of how we all immigrated to the United States.”

Mr. Trump propelled his way to the White House in part by promoting the false “birther” conspiracy theory that Mr. Obama was actually born in Africa, not Hawaii. He opened his presidential bid in 2015 with an attack on Mexican “rapists” coming across the border (although “some, I assume, are good people”) and later called for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. He said an American-born judge of Mexican heritage could not be fair to him because of his ethnic background...

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Waging War On The World

Ivo Daalder is President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO. You may follow him on Twitter @IvoHDaalder.

James M. Lindsay is Senior Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair at the Council on Foreign Relations. You may follow him on Twitter @JamesMLindsay. This essay draws from their recent book The Empty Throne: America’s Abdication of Global Leadership (2018).

Room 2E924 in the outermost ring of the Pentagon was packed. Better known as “the Tank,” it is one of America’s most secure facilities and the meeting place for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. On the morning of July 20th, 2017, though, it hosted a special guest: President Donald J. Trump. Gathered with him in the small, windowless room was virtually everyone who was anyone dealing with foreign and national security policy: the vice president, cabinet secretaries, assorted White House advisers, and the chair and vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The July 20th meeting later gained fame for Tillerson’s expletive-filled assessment of Trump after the president left the Tank to return to the White House, which we will not repeat here. But the more consequential assessment, even though it drew almost no attention, was the one Trump made in the Tank as the meeting ended: according to him, the rules-based world order that so captivated his briefers was “not working at all.” The overriding question for America and the rest of the world was, would Trump try to fix it, or walk away from it?...

...Barack Obama ended his presidency knowing that this disarray had continued, yet still convinced that the essential frame of America’s postwar global engagement was right. “American leadership in this world really is indispensable,” he wrote in a letter he left behind for his successor on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. “It’s up to us, through action and example, to sustain the international order that’s expanded steadily since the end of the Cold War, and upon which our own wealth and safety depend.” It was heartfelt advice from the outgoing president. It was not advice that Donald Trump would take.

Donald Trump recognized many of the problems bedeviling America’s role in the world. He had campaigned on promising to solve them. But unlike all of his predecessors since Truman, Trump didn’t see global leadership as the solution to what ailed America. On the contrary, he saw it as the problem. America’s alliance commitments had, in his view, required the United States to “pay billions—hundreds of billions of dollars to support other countries that are in theory wealthier than we are.” Trump was not interested in securing the cooperation of other countries. He wanted to take back what they had taken from America...

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Ten Minutes to War

Consortium News d. 2/7 - 2019

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

Donald Trump pulled back from igniting a potentially disastrous war in the Persian Gulf on Thursday night with just 10 minutes to spare, but the super-hawks he surrounded himself with will probably try again, writes Joe Lauria...

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History Has Taught Us That Concentration Camps Should Be Liberated. We Can’t Wait Until 2020.

the Intercept d. 29/6 - 2019

Yes we do have concentration camps,” began the stinging critique of the Trump administration’s immigration detention facilities. It was written earlier this week by the editorial board of the Salt Lake Tribune, in the reliably conservative state of Utah.

Andrea Pitzer, author of the definitive book on the global history of concentration camps, agrees. So do people who were once forced to live in another era’s concentration camps.

But amid the debate about what to call immigration detention facilities, few people have disputed the truly terrible conditions that exist within them. Migrants have long reported awful experiences in immigration custody, but in recent months, an increase in the number of people, especially families and children, crossing the border and being detained has led to severe overcrowding...

...I always wondered how concentration camps lasted for so many years during the Holocaust, but now that we have our own, I see how. It’s a mix of fear, indifference, and lack of political will. We see the consequences of doing nothing, but it seems as though we’ve put all of our eggs into the basket of a far-off election. And I just don’t feel good about it.

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Poya Pakzad: Der er ingen gangbare grunde til at gå i krig med Iran. Det vil udmunde i et totalt helvede.

Ræson d. 28/6 - 2019

Påbegynder man en krig med Iran, vil det have ødelæggende konsekvenser, og man vil blot sikre sig, at det iranske lederskab finder al mulig grund til at indlede et faktisk atomvåbenprogram. Derfor bør USA’s militær holde sig væk.

International kommentar af Poya Pakzad

Lad os starte med at slå én ting fast: En åben krig med Iran vil være en katastrofe. Og lad os sige det, som det er, mens tid er: Det vil være en forbrydelse på linje med Irakkrigen og endda endnu mere omfangsrigt i sine umiddelbare og langsigtede konsekvenser. Hvor Irak var et afvæbnet og stærkt svækket land, isoleret i regionen med sine knap 26 mio. indbyggere, er Iran væsentligt større, militært set stærkere og et alliancemæssigt bedre polstret land. Der ville ikke være nogen ”vindere” i en sådan flygtninge- og usikkerhedsskabende krig, kun tabere – i særdeleshed de i forvejen sanktionsramte iranske borgere, der kan forvente en regn af bomber og missiler.

Ikke desto mindre er det præcis denne fordømte bane, som Trump-regeringen – og den klike af rådgivere og tænketanke, der understøtter hans ”maximum pressure”-linje – har sporet USA ind på. Så sent som i søndags truede Trump for anden gang på kort tid med at ”udslette Iran.” Den slags udryddelsestrusler er i sig selv en åbenlys overtrædelse af FN’s allermest fundamentale regler. At vi overhovedet befinder os her igen, hvor man atter påtænker en ødelæggende krig i Mellemøsten, er et vidnesbyrd om, at Irakkrigen har været helt og aldeles omkostningsfri for de ansvarlige beslutningstagere. I visse tilfælde er det de samme politiske skikkelser, kommentatorer og tænketanke, der i sin tid advokerede for en krig med Irak, der i dag gør det samme vis-a-vis Iran.

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I’m a Journalist but I Didn’t Fully Realize the Terrible Power of U.S. Border Officials Until They Violated My Rights and Privacy

The intercept d. 22/6 - 2019

...I did see them copy my laptop’s serial number and write down three or four numbers and alphanumeric sequences found deep in my phone’s settings. The only specifier I halfway understood was the phone’s IMEI number, which can be used to track its physical location. Even if I get rid of the phone, I could be on some accursed watchlist, or somehow electronically tagged, for the rest of my life. Even if it’s benign, like those devices scientists stick whales with, I experience it as an indignity, and you probably would too. They didn’t handcuff me, but the officers otherwise acted as if I were under arrest in a police station, though I had done nothing wrong and they had no reason to suspect me of anything. They frequently took my devices out of the room for long periods of time. When I asked if they had backed up the devices or copied files, they denied it, which I found hard to believe. “You didn’t stick a thumb drive in there?” I asked Pomeroy, who was walking around carrying my laptop. He pretended not to hear.

Around the three-hour mark, I became completely passive. Confinement in a blank room is a soft form of torture, especially if you suffer from a crippling caffeine addiction, as I do. They were “fresh out” when I demeaned myself by meekly requesting coffee. For a long time, I sat slumped in the chair with a mounting headache while Moncivias finished typing up his report on me. He would pause, carefully consult something on my phone, and then go back to typing. This went on for another hour.

It was around 4 p.m. when Moncivias finally finished up and informed me, anticlimactically, that I was free to go. I couldn’t wait to get outside because the detention area was freezing. No wonder Spanish-speaking migrants call CBP detention la hielera — the icebox. I took my phone and laptop and silently packed up my luggage, which still lay disemboweled on the desk, underwear and all. Pomeroy was gone by this time. As I was walking out, I said to Moncivias and Villarreal, “It’s funny, of all the countries I’ve been to, the border guards have never treated me worse than here, in the one country I’m a citizen of, in the town where I was born.”

“Welcome back to the USA,” Moncivias said.

Update: June 24, 2019
After publication, The Intercept learned that a CBP supervisor was incorrect when he told a reporter that a U.S. citizen may be forbidden from entering the country for refusing to answer a CBP officer’s questions. The piece has been updated to clarify that CBP does not have the power to stop American citizens from entering the U.S.

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USA forventer at de kan tale sig hanlinger, de vil acceptere fra andre.

USA har således deltaget i mindst 60 kup i andre lande.
De ville ikke selv acceptere, hvis nogen foretog sig noget lignende i deres nærområder - se Monroe doktinen.

Det er ogs i modstrid med internationale love:

FN-pagtens artikel 2, stk. 4 og 7 om beskyttelse af suverænitet, selvbestemmelse og forbud mod intervention.

Artiklerne i verdenserklæringen om menneskerettigheder (UDHR) fra 1948, navnlig den internationale konvention om økonomiske, sociale og kulturelle rettigheder (ICESCR) fra 1966,

Wikipedia:

CIA black sites

CIA black sites refer to the black sites that are controlled by the CIA and used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain enemy combatants.[3]
US President George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated by the CIA during a speech on September 6, 2006.[4][5] A claim that the black sites existed was made by The Washington Post in November 2005 and before this by human rights NGOs.[6]
A European Union (EU) report adopted on February 14, 2007, by a majority of the European Parliament (382 MEPs voting in favor, 256 against and 74 abstaining) stated the CIA operated 1,245 flights and that it was not possible to contradict evidence or suggestions that secret detention centers where prisoners have been tortured were operated in Poland and Romania.[3][7] After denying the fact for years, Poland confirmed in 2014 that it has hosted black sites.[8]
In January 2012, Poland's Prosecutor General's office initiated investigative proceedings against Zbigniew Siemi?tkowski, the former Polish intelligence chief. Siemi?tkowski was charged with facilitating the alleged CIA detention operation in Poland, where foreign suspects may have been tortured in the context of the War on Terror. The possible involvement of Leszek Miller, Poland's Prime Minister from 2001 to 2004, is also considered.[9][10]

IA tortured inmates in secret prison in Lithuania 2022 01 11 Algirdas Paleckis

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Timeline of United States military operations

Link til Wikipedia

Overthrowing other people’s governments
The Master Listb by William Blum

Link til listen

Voter ID Laws

Flere stater kræver stats anderkendt billed ID for at kunne stemme.

Pas, kørekort eller millitær ID - kort.

Link til regler

____________________________________

Trump trak ordre i sidste øjeblik: Derfor angreb jeg ikke Iran

TV2 d. 21/6 - 2019

...Nu skriver den amerikanske præsident på Twitter i fire tweets, at han trak ordren, fordi et angreb "ikke ville være proportionelt med at skyde en ubemandet drone".

Han uddyber, at det var tre forskellige mål, men at en general i militæret fortalte ham, at angrebene ville slå 150 mennesker ihjel - 10 minutter før angrebet, stoppede jeg det, skriver præsidenten. ...

...Anonyme amerikanske regeringskilder har fortalt avisen New York Times, at da klokken var 19 torsdag aften amerikansk tid (det vil sige klokken fire fredag morgen iransk tid) var det stadig forventningen, at angrebet skulle gennemføres.

Avisen skriver, at det planlagte angreb skulle have ramt "en håndfuld iranske mål som radar og missilbatterier." At militærfly var på vingerne, militærskibe var på plads, men ingen missiler var endnu blevet affyret, da ordren om, at angrebet var afblæst, blev givet, lød det fra flere kilder.

I et interview med CBS News fredag eftermiddag dansk tid afviser Trump dog, at flyene var i luften, men siger, "at de ville have været det snart efter."

- Der blev ikke givet grønt lys til noget indtil sidste øjeblik, fordi tingene forandrer sig, siger præsidenten...

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Global Warfare: “We’re Going to Take out 7 Countries in 5 Years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran..”

Video Interview with General Wesley Clark

By General Wesley Clark and Amy Goodman

Global Research d. 14/6 2019

Democracy Now 2 March 2007

Originally published in March 2007.

Global Research Editor’s Note:

This interview serves as a reminder regarding the diabolical timeline of America’s hegemonic project. Is Iran the next target “to be taken out”?

All these countries are on the Pentagon’s drawing board. These seven countries have directly or indirectly been the object of US aggression.

(M. Ch. GR Editor)

General Wesley Clark. Retired 4-star U.S. Army general, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the 1999 War on Yugoslavia .

Complete Transcript of Program, Democracy Now.

Today we spend the hour with General Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general. He was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. In 2004 he unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He recently edited a series of books about famous U.S. generals including Dwight Eisenhower and Ulysses Grant – both of whom became president after their military careers ended.

Klik her for at se hele video interviewet eller en kort udgave.

Chris Hedges discusses the threat of war with Iran and the US relationship with Saudi Arabia and Israel with anti-war activist Medea Benjamin of Codepink.

RT - Amerika d. 18/5 - 2019

En fremragende skildring af fredsaktivisten, Codepink's Medea Benjamin

Israel og Sudirabien ønsker at USA går ind i Iran med militær eller at det bliver muligt at få grupper til at bekæmpe styret indefra, men det ser det ikke ud til at iranerne ønsker, de har set hvordan det er gået i Syrien.
USA forsyner hemmeligt Saudiarabien med avanceret atomteknologi.
Euroen er ikke kommet på plads til at kunne give Saudiarabien en mulighed for finasiel basis i stedet for dollaren.
USA bryder internationale handelsaftaler med boycot at Iran og dem der køber Irans olie mm.

Link til youtube

Trump Tells UN to Accept Use of Rape as War Weapon

NOW d. 23/4 - 2019

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s been reported that the U.S. is threatening to veto a United Nations (UN) resolution combatting the use of rape as a weapon of war because it calls for rape victims to have access to family planning and women’s health clinics.

This is only the most recent—and sickest—example of the Trump Administration’s hard line against any UN effort to promote sexual or reproductive health, on grounds that such efforts promote support for abortions. Trump also wants to block UN use of the word “gender,” asserting that the language is a cover for endorsement of transgender rights.

Under international law, conflict-related sexual violence is regarded as a crime against humanity. During the Rwanda genocide of 1994, it was used with the intent of destroying an entire population.

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Pompeo denies Netanyahu's promise to annex West Bank will hurt ‘peace plan’

RT d. 14/4 - 2019

...This has included a unilateral declaration recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which the United Nations has repeatedly declared illegitimate since Israel officially annexed the Syrian territory in 1981.

It has also seen the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, defying international law that holds the eastern part of the city to be occupied Palestinian territory. It’s hard to see how this vision could do anything other than hurt the peace process.

Pompeo has been noticeably cagey since Netanyahu’s re-election regarding the two-state solution that until very recently represented the official goal of US policy toward Israel and Palestine...

... Now that the PM’s future is secure, Trump has said he will unveil the plan in June. It’s unclear how much more of the surrounding area Netanyahu plans to annex before then.

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The addiction to militarism spells the end of the US as we know it

The Transnational d. 10/4 - 2019

A major economic factor behind the relative decline of the US is one hardly ever mentioned, at least not in the Western mainstream circles: Militarism. The US is militarizing itself to death. (1)
alt="Jan Oberg"Jan Oberg

Instead, we get a constant news stream about all the enemies the US believes it has all over the world – serving its addiction more than the truth.

The costs of its armed forces, its global war on terror, the homeland security, pensions and medical aid to veterans, its bases abroad and all its wars – plus, not the least paying interest on the loans that finance it all – add up to sums no one can imagine.

These are the facts: Every hour since 2001, the US taxpayers are paying US $ 32 million. That is now close to US$ 5000 billion in total!.

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Thousands of Immigrant Children Said They Were Sexually Abused in U.S. Detention Centers, Report Says

The New York Times d. 27/2 - 2019

The federal government received more than 4,500 complaints in four years about the sexual abuse of immigrant children who were being held at government-funded detention facilities, including an increase in complaints while the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the border was in place, the Justice Department revealed this week.

The records, which involve children who had entered the country alone or had been separated from their parents, detailed allegations that adult staff members had harassed and assaulted children, including fondling and kissing minors, watching them as they showered, and raping them. They also included cases of suspected abuse of children by other minors.

From October 2014 to July 2018, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a part of the Health and Human Services Department that cares for so-called unaccompanied minors, received a total of 4,556 allegations of sexual abuse or sexual harassment, 1,303 of which were referred to the Justice Department. Of those 1,303 cases deemed the most serious, 178 were accusations that adult staff members had sexually assaulted immigrant children, while the rest were allegations of minors assaulting other minors, the report said...

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dissects America's 'fundamentally broken' campaign finance laws.

The Guardian d. 8/2 - 2019

‘Let’s play a game,’ congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says to a panel of government watchdogs. Ocasio-Cortez goes on to dissect US campaign finance laws to make her point about the ‘fundamentally broken’ system.

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USA ønsker at:
Control Space, dominate space, and deny other nations the use of space.

717 mia dobles eller 4821 mia kr.
er det amerikanske militærbudget,
det er mere en de 10 næste lande til sammen.

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Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy
of
The United States of America
Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge

Klip oversat med Google:

• ”Manglende opfyldelse af vores forsvarsmål vil resultere i faldende amerikansk globale indflydelse, udhuling af samhørighed mellem allierede og partnere og reduceret adgang til markeder, der vil bidrage til et fald i vores velstand og levestandard”

• ”Udfordringer til den amerikanske militære fordel repræsenterer endnu et skift i det globale sikkerhedsmiljø. I årtier har USA nydt ubestridt eller dominerende overlegenhed på ethvert driftsdomæne. Vi kunne generelt indsætte vores styrker, når vi ville, samle dem, hvor vi ville, og operere, som vi ville. I dag er ethvert domæne omstridt - luft, land, hav, rum og cyberspace.”

• “Vær strategisk forudsigelig, men operationelt uforudsigelig. Afskrække eller besejre langsigtet strategisk konkurrenter er en fundamentalt anderledes udfordring end de regionale modstandere, der var fokus på i tidligere strategier. Vores styrke og integrerede handlinger med allierede vil demonstrere vores engagement for at afskrække aggression, men vores dynamiske styrkeansættelse, militære stilling og operationer skal introducere uforudsigelighed for modstandere af beslutningstagere. Med vores allierede og partnere vil vi udfordre konkurrenter ved at manøvrere dem ind i ugunstige positioner, frustrere deres indsats, udelukke deres muligheder, mens vi udvider vores egne og tvinger dem til at konfrontere konflikter under ugunstige forhold”

Link til rapporten

USA rammer russiske interesser med nye sanktioner

Politikken d. 8/11 - 2018

Ukrainske og russiske borgere og foretagender rammes af den nye runde amerikanske sanktioner.

USA er klar med flere sanktioner med relation til Rusland...

...Både USA og EU står klar til at straffe dem, påpeger han ifølge AFP...

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Introduced in House (03/23/2017)
Israel Anti-Boycott Act

Læs om forslaget på den officielle webside.

Medforslagsstillere:

Klik her

Decorated Navy SEAL Is Accused of
War Crimes in Iraq

The New York Times d. 15/11 - 2018

NAVAL BASE SAN DIEGO — Edward Gallagher was something special, even by the punishing standards of the Navy SEALs. Both a lifesaving medic and a crack sniper, he was repeatedly decorated for valor and for coolheaded leadership during 19 years of combat deployments. After his latest tour, fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq, he was named the top platoon leader in SEAL Team 7 and nominated for the Silver Star, the military’s third-highest honor.

But now, less than a year later, Special Operations Chief Gallagher, 39, is locked in the brig, facing charges that during that same deployment — his eighth — he shot indiscriminately at civilians, killed a teenage Islamic State fighter with a handmade custom blade, and then performed his re-enlistment ceremony posing with the teenager’s bloody corpse in front of an American flag.

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Trump's 'Dissociation from Reality' at UN

TheRealNews d. 26/9 - 2018
President Trump had the opportunity to address the UN General Assembly opening for the second time, which he used to brag and lie, says Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies

Link til video

This is How The U.S. Created The Talibans

Offenliggjort på Facebook d. 22/9 - 2018
(d. 26/9 - 2018 - 18.000 visninger)

One of The Most Closely Guarded Secrets of The Cold War...

Klik her

This is Why The U.S. is Turning a Blind Eye to Israel's Nuclear Weapons

Offentliggjortpå Facebook d.21/9 - 2018
(59.000 visinger d. 26/9)

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Lawrence Wilkerson on the Neocons Plan: War in Syria, Then Iran

AntiWar d. 14/9 - 2018

Interviewed Tuesday by host Sharmini Peries at The Real News, Lawrence Wilkerson, a College of William & Mary professor and former chief of staff for United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, warned that “the neoconservative agenda” for an escalated United States war on Syria followed by war on Iran has had a “resurrection” in President Donald Trump’s administration.

Regarding talk about the US taking military action in Syria in response to potential allegations of the use of chemical weapons – false flag or otherwise – in the country, Wilkerson comments that the war advocates are “looking for every excuse, any excuse, all excuses, to reopen US operations, major U.S. operations, against [President Bashar al-Assad] in Syria, always realizing that the ultimate target is Tehran.” Tehran is the capital of Iran.

Addressing previous allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syria government that were used to justify US military actions in the country, Wilkerson, who is an Academic Board member for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, states that he has seen “no proof” that Assad “ever used chemical weapons” and disparages the reputability of the White Helmets organization whose claims have been used to build support for US military actions in Syria.

Wilkerson further warns that the neoconservative agenda regarding war on Syria and Iran also threatens both conflict between the US and Russia and the long-term bogging down of US military forces in major conflict. Wilkerson states: “My serious concern is about the way [US National Security Advisor John Bolton] and others in their positions of power now are orchestrating a scenario whereby Donald Trump, for political reasons or whatever, can use force in a significant way against Assad and ultimately Iran, because Iran’s forces are there, and ultimately against Russia, because their forces are there in Syria, and this is most disquieting.” The neoconservatives’ military plan, argues Wilkerson, is “a recipe for” the US military being in the region for “the next generation” with significant force “mired even deeper in this morass” and with the “day after day” attrition of dollars and lives.

Se hele interviewet på video her

Sidens top

The Agenda with Steve Paikin

a. d. 13/9 - 2018

The Agenda welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, who over the past decade and a half has made his name as a columnist, activist and author. He's been a vociferous public critic of presidents on both sides of the American political spectrum, and his latest book, 'America, the Farewell Tour,' is nothing short of a full-throated throttling of the political, social, and cultural state of his country.

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The Collapse of the American Empire?

a. d. 12/9 - 2018

The Agenda welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, who over the past decade and a half has made his name as a columnist, activist and author. He's been a vociferous public critic of presidents on both sides of the American political spectrum, and his latest book, 'America, the Farewell Tour,' is nothing short of a full-throated throttling of the political, social, and cultural state of his country.

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The International Criminal Court wants to probe into alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan. The US's response? Threaten the court with sanctions.

Facebook d. 11/9 - 2018

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The United States threatened Monday to arrest and sanction judges and other officials of the International Criminal Court if it moves to charge any American who served in Afghanistan with war crimes.

France 24 d. 10/9 - 2018

Video af David Smith

White House National Security Advisor John Bolton called the Hague-based rights body "unaccountable" and "outright dangerous" to the United States, Israel and other allies, and said any probe of US service members would be "an utterly unfounded, unjustifiable investigation."

"If the court comes after us, Israel or other US allies, we will not sit quietly," Bolton said.

He said the US was prepared to slap financial sanctions and criminal charges on officials of the court if they proceed against any Americans.

"We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the US financial system, and we will prosecute them in the US criminal system," he said.

"We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans," he said.

Bolton made the comments in a speech in Washington to the Federalist Society, a powerful association of legal conservatives.

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Journalist Who Exposed CIA Cocaine Trafficking, Would Be 63 Today, But He ‘Shot Himself’ TWICE

The freee Thought Project d. 31/8 - 2018

...CIA, Crack & The Contras: The Story of a Lifetime

It wasn’t until 1995 that Gary began work on what would become the biggest story of his career when he received a tip about a cocaine trafficker named Danilo Blandòn, and his relationship with LA drug dealer ‘Freeway’ Ricky Ross.

Over the course of a year he interviewed dozens of witnesses, high level Government officials and drug cartel leaders. After meticulously piecing together his shocking discovery, Webb and the San Jose Mercury Times published ‘The Dark Alliance’.

While the importance of his report cannot be understated, ‘The Dark Alliance’ was not the first time reporters had established the connection between the CIA and cocaine trafficking.

In 1985, journalists Robert Parry and Brian Barger from the Associated Press reported that various groups of the CIA-backed Contras “engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua.” Parry would later call Webb “an American hero” for his in-depth investigation and reporting on the topic.

In a time when the internet was in its infancy, Webb’s report was released online, with links included to all of his sources. Demonstrating the power of free and open access to information, Webb’s story quickly went ‘viral’ before the term ‘viral’ existed. The article garnered hundreds of thousands of clicks every single day prompting responses from the mainstream media, congressional leaders, activists, and the CIA itself.

Initially, the agency seemingly failed to respond to Webb’s story, but in true government fashion, it wasn’t long before an army of mainstream media outlets began to defend the CIA and attempt to discredit Webb.

In 2014, the CIA released documents detailing how they used a complicit media and a targeted strategy to denounce Webb’s 20,000 word report. Nicholas Dujmovic, the author of a CIA report entitled, Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story, noted:
“The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webb’s reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of ‘Dark Alliance,’...

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På sporet af Deep State
- et foredrag af Tommy Hansen

d. 11/8- 2018

Allerede da foredragsholder og chefredaktør Tommy Hansen var indstillet til Cavling-prisen, som freelance journalist, begyndte han sin jagt på ”Deep State”. Han havde formået at analysere, og skabe røre omkring, den stribe af begivenheder der fandt sted d. 11. september 2001. Påstyret der blev skabt, greb om sig i et sådant omfang, at den forhenværende chefredaktør for det uafhængige medie Free21.org så sig nødsaget til at immigrere til Tyskland derefter.

I Tyskland begyndte han for alvor at tage tyren ved hornene, og i en kamp for at blive hørt, og der igennem lade offentligheden kende til sine observationer og konklusioner deraf, besluttede han sig for at stifte onlinemagasinet Free21.org, som i dag kan læses på mange forskellige sprog – herunder tysk, engelsk og dansk.

Foredraget gennemgår mange termer og perioder, som typisk ville være blevet anset for at konspirationsteoretiske, men med citation, kildeangivelse og kvalificeret saglighed, giver Tommy Hansen mulighed for et unikt og overskueligt indblik i en verden der, indtil nu, har været gemt væk i mørke kældre – langt væk fra rampelyset.
Foredraget dækker emner som; fake news, Irak-krigen, 9/11, Rusland m.m.

Se foredrag på Youtube

og læs mere om dkdox.tv på websiden.

Robert Reich d. 7. august 2018
om USA's militær budget.

Last week, the Senate approved $717 billion in defense spending with hardly any debate or media attention. Mind you, the United States already spends more than on the military than the next 10 nations combined. It's time we start investing in the American people, not defense contractors. What do you think?

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Latest WikiLeaks release shows how the CIA uses computer code to hide the origins of its hacking attacks and 'disguise them as Russian or Chinese activity'

Mail online d. 4/8 - 2018

WikiLeaks published 676 source code files today which it claimed are from CIA
It says the CIA disguised its own hacking attacks to make it appear those responsible were Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean

WikiLeaks has published hundreds more files today which it claims show the CIA went to great lengths to disguise its own hacking attacks and point the finger at Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

The 676 files released today are part of WikiLeaks' Vault 7 tranche of files and they claim to give an insight into the CIA's Marble software, which can forensically disguise viruses, trojans and hacking attacks.

WikiLeaks says the source code suggests Marble has test examples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi (the Iranian language).

It says: 'This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese.'

This could lead forensic investigators into wrongly concluding that CIA hacks were carried out by the Kremlin, the Chinese government, Iran, North Korea or Arabic-speaking terror groups such as ISIS.

WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, said Vault 7 was the most comprehensive release of US spying files ever made public.

Earlier this month WikiLeaks published thousands of documents claiming to reveal top CIA hacking secrets, including the agency's ability to infiltrate encrypted apps, break into smart TVs and phones and program self-driving cars.

It also claims the CIA can bypass the encryption of Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloakman by hacking the smart phones the applications run on.

The CIA was also looking at hacking the vehicle control systems used in modern cars and trucks, WikiLeaks claims.

Wikileaks said the release of confidential documents on the agency already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.

Experts who've started to sift through the material said it appeared legitimate - and that the release was almost certain to shake the CIA.

Advertisement
Read more: WikiLeaks - Vault 7: Projects

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139 House Democrats Join GOP to Approve $717 Billion in Military Spending

Common Dreams, by Jake Johnson d. 26/7 2018

"How are they going to pay for this? Oh wait, that question only gets asked when it comes to social programs that benefit the working class."

With the help of 139 Democrats, the House of Representatives on Thursday easily rammed through the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which—if it passes the Senate—will hand President Donald Trump $717 billion in military spending.

"Of the total $717 billion, the bill would authorize $616.9 billion for the base Pentagon budget, $21.9 billion for nuclear weapons programs under the Energy Department, and another $69 billion in war spending from the special Overseas Contingency Operations account," Politico reported following the 359-54 vote. View the full roll call here.

Additionally, the NDAA passed by the House would authorize 13 new Navy warships, approve the Pentagon's request to buy 77 F-35s, and green-light "a new submarine-launched, low-yield nuclear warhead," Politico notes.

"How are they going to pay for this?" asked one commentator on Twitter. "Oh wait, that question only gets asked when it comes to social programs that benefit the working class."...

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As Trump announces he is above the law?—?we slide from democracy to dictatorship

Medium, af Shaun King d. 5/6 - 2018

...Yesterday Donald Trump said what I think may be the most dangerous thing he’s ever said since being elected President. Now he’s said many things that were uglier and more offensive. He’s said and done so many offensive things that it can be hard to keep track, but yesterday he literally tweeted that he is above the law and can pardon himself for anything...

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Immigrant families were told they must to pay for DNA tests the US government is demanding they take before they can be reunited with their children

...Immigration attorney Iliana Holguin, who works with the shelter, said some of her clients have been ordered to pay $700 to $800 to prove their relationship to the government. That is likely a sum far larger many asylum seekers have at their disposal...

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Do Americans Know How Weird and Extreme Their Collapse is Getting?
Even the Dark Ages Would Laugh at Where We’re Going

M d. 2/7 - 2018 Unair Haque

...So now we’ve gone back — all the way back in human history to the very dawn of civilization. And we haven’t found one example of a statement as weird, grotesque, and bizarre as “God is a white supremacist!!” That doesn’t mean that religions didn’t do terrible things, or even racist things — of course they did. But that is not the same as a racist God. But nowhere do we find such a belief. Even the ancients, it appears, aspired to higher moral and ethical values than racist Gods. Even they’d find such a thing fantastic, foolish, and laughable, probably...

...So if “God is a white supremacist!” is new — at least in the sense that it’s the kind of gruesome thing we only see in periods of genuine collapse — what do we call it? It’s not fascism, as we’ve already discussed, nor is it theocracy. It’s more like a bizarre, strange, toxic cocktail of the two — which are already toxic cocktails of their own, fascism of liberalism and conservatism, theocracy of state and church. So it’s a finely distilled poison, which we might call theofascism...

...And that is what America is really inventing now. Once upon a time, it invented great and amazing things. Moonshots, chemotherapies, highways. Yet, even at those times, it was also inventing terrible things, too, which, mostly, it brushed under the rug — Jim Crow laws, segregation, and so forth. Now, though, the balance has changed. America isn’t inventing great things anymore (no, Facebook doesn’t count. Are you kidding?) It seems instead to be inventing new ways to destroy, ruin, and shatter things. What things? Democracy. Reason. Civilization. Truth, justice, equality. It is creating poisonous cocktails, so dangerous, so bitter, so toxic, that they are off the charts of history. Things like theofascism — which is just one ideology of ruin...

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Trump’s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes, and No One Is Talking About It

truth dig d. 19/6 - 2018 af Lee Camp

...Once every 12 minutes.

The United States military drops an explosive with a strength you can hardly comprehend once every 12 minutes. And that’s odd, because we’re technically at war with—let me think—zero countries. So that should mean zero bombs are being dropped, right?...

...And let’s take a moment to wipe away the idea that our “advanced weaponry” hits only the bad guys. As David DeGraw put it, “According to the C.I.A.’s own documents, the people on the ‘kill list,’ who were targeted for ‘death-by-drone,’ accounted for only 2% of the deaths caused by the drone strikes.”...

...You’re thinking of a rational world. We do not live there.

Instead, we live in a world where the Pentagon is completely and utterly out of control. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the $21 trillion (that’s not a typo) that has gone unaccounted for at the Pentagon. But I didn’t get into the number of bombs that ridiculous amount of money buys us. President George W. Bush’s military dropped 70,000 bombs on five countries. But of that outrageous number, only 57 of those bombs really upset the international community.

Because there were 57 strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen—countries the U.S. was neither at war with nor had ongoing conflicts with. And the world was kind of horrified. There was a lot of talk that went something like, “Wait a second. We’re bombing in countries outside of war zones? Is it possible that’s a slippery slope ending in us just bombing all the goddamn time? (Awkward pause.) … Nah. Whichever president follows Bush will be a normal adult person (with a functional brain stem of some sort) and will therefore stop this madness.”

We were so cute and naive back then, like a kitten when it’s first waking up in the morning.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported that under President Barack Obama there were “563 strikes, largely by drones, that targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. …”

It’s not just the fact that bombing outside of a war zone is a horrific violation of international law and global norms. It’s also the morally reprehensible targeting of people for pre-crime, which is what we’re doing and what the Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report” warned us about. (Humans are very bad at taking the advice of sci-fi dystopias. If we’d listened to “1984,” we wouldn’t have allowed the existence of the National Security Agency. If we listened to “The Terminator,” we wouldn’t have allowed the existence of drone warfare. And if we’d listened to “The Matrix,” we wouldn’t have allowed the vast majority of humans to get lost in a virtual reality of spectacle and vapid nonsense while the oceans die in a swamp of plastic waste. … But you know, who’s counting?)

There was basically a media blackout while Obama was president. You could count on one hand the number of mainstream media reports on the Pentagon’s daily bombing campaigns under Obama. And even when the media did mention it, the underlying sentiment was, “Yeah, but look at how suave Obama is while he’s OK’ing endless destruction. He’s like the Steve McQueen of aerial death.”

And let’s take a moment to wipe away the idea that our “advanced weaponry” hits only the bad guys. As David DeGraw put it, “According to the C.I.A.’s own documents, the people on the ‘kill list,’ who were targeted for ‘death-by-drone,’ accounted for only 2% of the deaths caused by the drone strikes.”

Two percent. Really, Pentagon? You got a two on the test? You get five points just for spelling your name right.

But those 70,000 bombs dropped by Bush—it was child’s play. DeGraw again: “[Obama] dropped 100,000 bombs in seven countries. He out-bombed Bush by 30,000 bombs and 2 countries.”

You have to admit that’s impressively horrific. That puts Obama in a very elite group of Nobel Peace Prize winners who have killed that many innocent civilians. The reunions are mainly just him and Henry Kissinger wearing little hand-drawn name tags and munching on deviled eggs.

However, we now know that Donald Trump’s administration puts all previous presidents to shame. The Pentagon’s numbers show that during George W. Bush’s eight years he averaged 24 bombs dropped per day, which is 8,750 per year. Over the course of Obama’s time in office, his military dropped 34 bombs per day, 12,500 per year. And in Trump’s first year in office, he averaged 121 bombs dropped per day, for an annual total of 44,096.

Trump’s military dropped 44,000 bombs in his first year in office.

He has basically taken the gloves off the Pentagon, taken the leash off an already rabid dog. So the end result is a military that’s behaving like Lil Wayne crossed with Conor McGregor. You look away for one minute, look back, and are like, “What the fuck did you just do? I was gone for like, a second!”

Under Trump, five bombs are dropped per hour—every hour of every day. That averages out to a bomb every 12 minutes.

And which is more outrageous—the crazy amount of death and destruction we are creating around the world, or the fact that your mainstream corporate media basically NEVER investigates it? They talk about Trump’s flaws. They say he’s a racist, bulbous-headed, self-centered idiot (which is totally accurate)—but they don’t criticize the perpetual Amityville massacre our military perpetrates by dropping a bomb every 12 minutes, most of them killing 98 percent non-targets.

When you have a Department of War with a completely unaccountable budget—as we saw with the $21 trillion—and you have a president with no interest in overseeing how much death the Department of War is responsible for, then you end up dropping so many bombs that the Pentagon has reported we are running out of bombs.

Oh, dear God. If we run out of our bombs, then how will we stop all those innocent civilians from … farming? Think of all the goats that will be allowed to go about their days.

And, as with the $21 trillion, the theme seems to be “unaccountable.”

Journalist Witney Webb wrote in February, “Shockingly, more than 80 percent of those killed have never even been identified and the C.I.A.’s own documents have shown that they are not even aware of who they are killing—avoiding the issue of reporting civilian deaths simply by naming all those in the strike zone as enemy combatants.”...

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Trump sparker gang i krig mod de uønskede: »De er ikke mennesker. De er dyr«

Berlingske d. 17/6 - 2018

Trump har kickstartet ny krig mod illegal indvandring. Han kalder kriminelle indvandrere for »dyr«, kræver flere deporteret, »nultolerance« og truer med nedlukning af regeringen, hvis Kongressen ikke finder penge til hans største løfte - en mur mod Mexico. Berlingske har mødt de uønskede i den mexicanske grænseby Tijuana.

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Vestverdens vendepunkt:
Civil ulydighed over for USA

Blok i Arbejderen d. 16/5 - 2018

Rationelt og etisk bør venner og allierede indse deres ansvar for at overtale USA til at stoppe imperie- og krigspolitikken. Ingen vil have USA som verdens politimand.

Denne tankegang er ikke anti-amerikanisme, det er anti-imperialisme og anti-krig...

...Hvad kan man tænke sig som objektivt rimeligt i forhold til USA’s gentagne brud på fællesskab, løfter, folkeret og almindelig sømmelighed?

Økonomiske sanktioner mod udvalgte økonomiske, militære og politiske amerikanske ledere. USA bruger sanktioner mod andre, lad dem prøve det selv, men sådan at det ikke går ud over de over 40 millioner amerikanere, der lever i dyb fattigdom, og de mange andre millioner, der kun lige får det til at gå rundt.

Amerikanske ambassadører indkaldes til udenrigsministerierne i alle venligtsindede og allierede lande til en reel hard talk: ”Hertil og ikke længere, jeres politik skader os, jeres venner, og hele verden.

Handl med Iran for fuld udblæsning. Washington skal ikke diktere, hvem europæiske banker, virksomheder og andre har ret til at samarbejde med. USA vil kunne straffe nogle få, men når tusinder bare bryder USA’s sanktioner vil det amerikanske juridiske system tvinges til at give op.

Sig nej til enhver form for samarbejde om militære interventioner. Vi deltager under ingen omstændighed i fremtidig militær aktivitet mod Iran. Og Israel vil stå helt alene.

Sanktioner mod Israel, hvis det fortsætter med at bombe iranske faciliteter i Syrien, hvor Iran har ret til at være, fordi det er inviteret. Og hvis Israel fortsætter med at have atomvåben og nægter at acceptere inspektioner og medlemskab af Ikke-sprednings-aftalen. Israels atomvåben skal nu forhandles væk.

Olien vil blive handlet i andre valutaer end den amerikanske dollar.

USA’s baser i europæiske lande kan blive lukket, og amerikanske atomvåben skal fjernes…

indtil USA a) dropper de nye sanktioner mod Iran og mod sine allierede, b) ophører med at true Iran, hvilket i sig selv er et brud på folkeretten og c) accepterer uden straffeaktioner, at dem, der står fast på aftalen med Iran, handler i deres og Irans fælles interesser...

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'It feels like 1930 Berlin': Holocaust survivor says Trump's America reminds him of the years leading up to Nazi domination in Germany

Mail Online d. 10/4 - 2018

...The renowned architect said the current climate in the U.S. feels like '1929 or 1930 Berlin', when economic, political and social resentments were brewing, eventually leading to the brutal, right-wing rule of Adolf Hitler, who got to power by promising Germans to bring their country back to its its pre-World-War-I glory.

Jacobs said he's noticed a shift in public discourse, and worries about the fact that people now feel free to say things that 'couldn't be said five years ago.'...

...Other Holocaust survivors have echoed Jacobs' sentiment and drawn parallels between America today and Nazi Germany.

Sonia K wrote a piece for CNN where she says: 'Some might dismiss the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, as the actions of unhinged or fringe individuals. Others might believe President Trump's comments equating neo-Nazi and anti-fascist protesters are merely reflective of his often exaggerated speech.

'However, Holocaust survivors know all too well that what starts as a protest or an offhand comment can turn into something far worse.

'I'm scared -- not for myself, but for my children, my grandchildren, and all children.'...

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The Human Cost

by Ward Wilson
February 18, 2018

It doesn’t take a war for nuclear weapons to hurt people.

We tend to imagine that nuclear weapons have caused no harm since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the truth is more challenging and more painful. The first bombs were built with uranium that was mined using slave labor. Since the beginning of the Cold War, the production, maintenance, and dismantlement of nuclear weapons have put ordinary people at risk. The true story of nuclear weapons is one of environmental contamination and exploitation of powerless communities...

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National Security Strategy of the United States of Amerika d. 18/12 - 2017

...Four vital, national interests—organized as the strategy’s four pillars—form the backbone of this commitment:

Protect the homeland, the American people, and the American way of life
Promote American prosperity
Preserve peace through strength
Advance American influence

This NSS and its four themes are guided by a return to principled realism.

The strategy is realist because it is clear-eyed about global competition: It acknowledges the central role of power in world affairs, affirms that sovereign states are the best hope for a peaceful world, and clearly defines our national interests. It is principled because it is grounded in the knowledge that promoting American values is key to spreading peace and prosperity around the globe...

Link til præsentatonen fra Det Hvide Hus.

The full NSS report is available for download here.

Link til fil.

Read a summary of the President’s National Security Strategy here.

Muslim Ban Reaches the Supreme Court – How We All Can Keep Fighting

pathos d. 25/4 - 2018

...I immigrated from Pakistan when I was 18 months old. My family and I are U.S. citizens, and have been for 40 years. But still, we are affected by the ban, and Pakistan isn’t even on the list. Because of our country’s current politics and what we fear from seeing what others have faced under the ban, we won’t allow our parents to visit Pakistan, because we don’t know if they’ll be able to return home. My uncle, who I haven’t seen in 20 years, died recently. But still, I have no plans to visit anytime soon.

A mosque where my brother lives was set on fire. My mom is harassed at the airport because she wears a headscarf. At a prior job, people talked loudly about bringing their guns to work. They had concealed weapons permits. They stared me down. They wanted me to know...

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the CIA uses computer code to hide the origins of its hacking attacks and 'disguise them as Russian or Chinese activity'

Mail Online d. 31/3 - 2017

WikiLeaks published 676 source code files today which it claimed are from CIA
It says the CIA disguised its own hacking attacks to make it appear those responsible were Russian, Chinese, Iranian or North Korean and Iran.

The 676 files released today are part of WikiLeaks' Vault 7 tranche of files and they claim to give an insight into the CIA's Marble software, which can forensically disguise viruses, trojans and hacking attacks.

WikiLeaks says the source code suggests Marble has test examples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi (the Iranian language).

It says: 'This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese.'

This could lead forensic investigators into wrongly concluding that CIA hacks were carried out by the Kremlin, the Chinese government, Iran, North Korea or Arabic-speaking terror groups such as ISIS.

WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, said Vault 7 was the most comprehensive release of US spying files ever made public...

...Experts who've started to sift through the material said it appeared legitimate - and that the release was almost certain to shake the CIA.

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USA har blandet sig i flere demokratiske valg i verden end Rusland

Information d. 17/7 - 2018

Ruslands forsøg på at påvirke udfaldet af præsidentvalget i USA i 2016 var del af et mønster, som begge lande har fulgt siden Den Kolde Krig. Både lyssky og synlige metoder er blevet benyttet til at støtte kandidater og partier, der anses for en trussel mod USA’s eller Ruslands interesser, fortæller en amerikansk forsker.

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Eller The New York Times d. 17/2 - 2018

Notater fra Orientering d. 19/12 - 2017 om NSS.

USA’s Nationale sikkerhedsstrategi.
Økonomiske rivaler skal ses som lige så store modstandere som de miltære.
Den Nationale sikkerhedsstrategi er et oplæg til dialog med kongressen
Overmatch går igen.
Fjenderne er Rusland, Kina og international terrorisme.
for Trump også handelsinteresser sikkerhedspolitiske.
Er man tilfreds derhjemme kan man lettere tage en kamp derude - det er dog i modstrid med Vietnam krigen.
Trump kræver amerikansk dominans.
USA vil forbeholde sig ret til den nødvendige energi, til den rette pris og er parat til at gå i krig for dette.
USA vil bestemme hvordan energi ressourcerne skal fordeles.
NATO’s §5 - Musketereden, Et angreb på en, er et angreb på alle. Andre lande i NATO skal betale deres rimelige del på 2%.

Link til podcarst

22 million Americans support neo-Nazis, new poll indicates

Survey was conducted in the wake of deadly violence which ravaged Charlottesville

Independent d. 22/8 - 2017 af
Maya Oppenheim @mayaoppenheim

...The so-called “alt-right” movement has gained increasing attention since Donald Trump’s presidential bid and his time in the White House. While President Trump has sought to distance himself from the movement - which has been accused of racism, antisemitism and misogyny - its members have rallied behind him and hailed him as their leader...

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Syv procent af voksne amerikanere tror, kakaomælk kommer fra brune køer

BT d. 17/6 - 2017

En amerikansk brancheorganisation for mælkebønder har foretaget en undersøgelse af amerikanske forbrugeres forhold til mælkeprodukter, og det kom der en række chokerende resultater ud af.

Intet mindre end syv procent af de adspurgte troede, at kakaomælk kommer fra brune køer, mens hele 48 procent erklærede sig usikre på, om kakaomælk kommer direkte fra koen eller ej, skriver Washington Post.

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Shadow World – Bag om den internationale våbenhandel

Se filmen fra Filmcentralens hjemmeside

Gennem interviews med whistleblowers, efterforskere, anklagere samt insidere fra både militæret og militærindustrien, viser 'Shadow World' hvordan våbenhandlen, med vores politiske ledere som villige mellemmænd, er drivkraften bag krig. Resultatet er en verden, hvor det politiske demokrati korrumperes i jagten på en fed kommission, og hvor synet af en klar, blå himmel for nogle ikke længere er fredfyldt: Det er optimale omstændigheder for tilbagevendende bombende droner. 'Shadow World' giver publikum en mulighed for at gennemskue de skjulte dagsordener bag enhver krig, i håbet om en sikrere fremtid. Filmen afslører virkeligheden bag den globale våbenhandel – en branche, som tæller sin profit i milliarder og sine tab i menneskeliv.

An Interview with Andrew Feinstein - Author - The Shadow World

Der er lavet en film over bogen The Shadow World af Andrew Feinstein. En bog der fortæller om hvordan det militærindustielle kompleks styrer en række vigtige politikkere ved hjælp at penge mm.

Link til YouTube

The U.S. is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries

Los Angeles Times d. 21/12 - 2016

Update: President Obama on Thursday slapped Russia with new penalties for meddling in the U.S. presidential election, kicking out dozens of suspected spies and imposing banking restrictions on five people and four organizations the administration says were involved.

The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things.

The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.

That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.

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The Story Behind the Gripping New Documentary 'Shadow World' (1/5)

Offentliggjort den 16. dec. 2016

In part one, Andrew Feinstein discusses being witness to a corrupt weapons deal in post-apartheid South Africa sparked his quest to uncover the world of war profiteers and weapons contractors

Link til YouTube

Trump Dredging the Swamp to Empower the Worst Elements of the 'Shadow World' (2/5)

Offentliggjort den 16. dec. 2016

In part two, Andrew Feinstein says the Trump administration will continue the revolving door between government and defense contractors

Link til YouTube

How the Arms Industry Perpetuate War and Undermine Security and Democracy (3/5)

Offentliggjort den 16. dec. 2016

In part three, Andrew Feinstein discusses how US weapons and allies like Saudi Arabia have fueled conflicts in Syria, Yemen and across the Middle East

Link til YouTube

"Shadow World:" Arms Dealers Boasting of Bribes, Corruption, and Impunity (4/5)

Offentliggjort den 16. dec. 2016

In part four, Andrew Feinstein discusses the story of now jailed arms dealer Riccardo Privitera, featured in "Shadow World"

Link til YouTube

Can the "Shadow World" of Corrupt Weapons Deals be Held Accountable? (5/5)

Offentliggjort den 16. dec. 2016

In part 5, Andrew Feinstein shares stories of citizens who took on the defense industry and won

Link til YouTube

U.S. forces are using white phosphorus munitions in Iraq but it’s unclear exactly how

The Washington post d. 23/9 - 2016

...The United States has used white phosphorus in Iraq before, notably in the 2004 battle for Fallujah, when Marine artillery batteries were scrutinized for firing the munitions on entrenched insurgents. In Afghanistan, white phosphorus was used by U.S. troops, primarily in the country’s restive east. In 2009, NATO forces there were accused of burning an 8-year-old girl with the munitions...

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<<<

Spritny rapport: USA holder omfattende tortur hemmelig

Eksta Bladet d. 1/12 - 2015

Menneskerettigheds-organisationen Human Rights Watch her netop offentliggjort en rapport, hvor de beskylder den amerikanske regering for at holde omfattende tortur hemmelig.

Hemmelige fangekældre i udlandet, omfattende tortur, ingen rettergang og ekstrem hemmeligholdelse.

Det er blot nogle af menneskerettigheds-organisationens Human Rights Watchs harske kritikpunkter af USA's ageren efter terrorangrebet den 11. september 2001.

USA bekendtgjorde, at de ville stoppe denne praksis i 2009, som brød Geneve-konventionen på flere punkter. Men på trods af dette, er der stadig gruopvækkende ting, der bliver holdt skjult for offentligheden.

Beskyldningerne fremkommer i en dugfrisk 153 sider lang rapport, der er udkommet tirsdag, og som du kan læse her.

'CIA startede et globalt og regeringsgodkendt program, hvor de bortførte folk over hele verden, holdt dem som fanger i hemmelige fængsler - nogle gange i flere år - hvor de torturerede dem eller på anden måde gjorde dem stor skade', står der blandt andet i rapporten. Selv om programmet officielt endte i 2009, fortsætter hemmeligholdelsen stadig', lyder det i rapporten, hvor Human Rights Watch kræver en uafhængig undersøgelse for at få alt frem i lyset...

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USA’s krige fortsætter, uanset hvad embedsmænd hævder

Information d. 28/7 - 2015

Det amerikanske militær har ingen planer om at trække de tilbageværende 9.000 soldater ud af Afghanistan efter 2016. Vi har set denne manøvre før – i Irak…

…»Mange dele af Libyen, særligt i den østlige del af landet, er blevet forvandlet til træningslejre for jihadister, som tiltrækker kæmpere fra Tunesien til Irak,« skrev Daily Beast for et par dage siden. Som konsekvens er USA’s militær desperat på jagt efter et sted i nærheden af Libyen, hvor der kan opbygges en dronebase, hvorfra angreb kan sættes i gang – ikke blot mod Libyen men også mod andre mål i Nordafrika…

...Samtidig, efter måneders forsinkelse, er de første USA-trænede oprørere i Syrien på vej ind i IS-kontrollerede regioner, og processen bliver allerede af forsvarseksperter beskyldt for at være en snigmanøvre, der trækker USA længere ind i krigen (igen, uden så meget som en formel erklæring om dette fra regeringens side)...

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Retired US general: Drones cause more damage than good

Aljazeera d. 16/7 - 2015

…Asked by Al Jazeera English's Mehdi Hasan if drone strikes tend to create more terrorists than they kill, Flynn, who has been described by Wired magazine as "the real father of the modern JSOC", replied: "I don't disagree with that", adding: "I think as an overarching strategy, it is a failed strategy."

"What we have is this continued investment in conflict," the retired general said. "The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just… fuels the conflict. Some of that has to be done but I am looking for the other solutions."

Commenting on the rise of ISIL in Iraq, Flynn acknowledged the role played by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. "We definitely put fuel on a fire," he told Hasan. "Absolutely… there is no doubt, history will not be kind to the decisions that were made certainly in 2003."

"Going into Iraq, definitely… it was a strategic mistake," said Flynn on Head to Head…

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USA's militære aktiviteter tredoblet

Arbejderen d. 1/4 - 2014

Fra 2008 til i dag er USA' militære aktiviteter i Afrika mere end tredoblet. Men ofte fører USA også sine krige i Afrika ved stedfortræder – for eksempel Frankrig eller styrker fra lande i Afrika.

kræver abonnement

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Intet svar om USA's overvågning

Arbejderen d. 12 august 2013

Danskerne kan ikke få svar på, om der eksisterer en hemmelig aftale, der betyder, at vi bliver direkte overvåget af USA's efterretningstjeneste NSA med den danske regerings accept…

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MASSEFÆNGSLING I USA:

Angela Davis kritiserer brug af fanger som slavearbejdere

Arbejderen d. 26/10 - 2012

Et ‘fængselsindustrielt-kompleks’ vokser i USA som en kræftbyld, og har det gjort i årtier. Uanset om der sidder en Demokrat eller en Republikaner i Det Hvide Hus, så sidder der millioner bag tremmer i USA - uden demokratisk ret til at stemme.

Med 2,4 millioner fanger er USA det land i verden, som har fængslet den største andel af sin befolkning. Nu tager en række aktivister initiativ til at starte en folkebevægelse mod massefængsling og mod brug af fanger som billige slavearbejdere.

I Riverside Church i Harlem, New York, blev der den 14. september i år afholdt et stort møde med kendte oplægsholdere, deriblandt Angela Davis og Michelle Alexander. Mødet skulle være optakt til en ny bevægelse mod massefængsling i USA...

Link til artiklen

Irak-krigen har kostet 15.000.000.000.000 kr. i USA

Jyllandsposten d. 29/2 - 2008

Indsatsen i Irak har både menneskeligt og økonomisk været en dyr fornøjelse for USA. 50.000 kroner per amerikansk statsborger har krigen kostet indtil videre, vurderer Nobelprismodtager.

"Den kommende præsident vil arve et USA, som lever på lånt tid og lånte penge," siger den tidligere Verdensbank-direktør Joseph Stiglitz i dag til The Telegraph.

Harvard-professor Linda J. Bilmes har sammen med Joseph Stiglitz skrevet bogen The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. I bogen beskyldes Bush-administrationen for at skjule de menneskelige og økonomiske konsekvenser af krigen i Irak...

...Joseph Stiglitz, der tidligere har modtaget Nobelprisen i økonomi, anslår, at Irak i de kommende to år vil koste yderligere en 2,5 billioner kroner...

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Study: U.S. regime has killed 20-30 million people since World War Two

James A. Lucas
CounterCurrents.org
Tue, 24 Apr 2007 06:35 CEST

Introduction

After the catastrophic attacks of September 11 2001 monumental sorrow and a feeling of desperate and understandable anger began to permeate the American psyche. A few people at that time attempted to promote a balanced perspective by pointing out that the United States had also been responsible for causing those same feelings in people in other nations, but they produced hardly a ripple. Although Americans understand in the abstract the wisdom of people around the world empathizing with the suffering of one another, such a reminder of wrongs committed by our nation got little hearing and was soon overshadowed by an accelerated "war on terrorism."

But we must continue our efforts to develop understanding and compassion in the world. Hopefully, this article will assist in doing that by addressing the question "How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?" This theme is developed in this report which contains an estimated numbers of such deaths in 37 nations as well as brief explanations of why the U.S. is considered culpable...

Comment: Note that this report was published 7 years ago - many more people have been killed and injured since then. Note also that figures for the Second Iraq War were incomplete at the time of publishing. The death toll has since reached somewhere between 1 and 2 million people killed.

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USA som militærmagt

af Bertel Heurlin

Dansk Institut for Internationale Studier 2005

pdf fil DIIS

pdf fil fra os

Undersøgelse af holdning til Israel og USA

Sunday, November 2nd, 2003, EU Observer.

Over half of Europeans think that Israel now presents the biggest threat to world peace according to a controversial poll requested by the European Commission.

According to the same survey, Europeans believe the United States contributes the most to world instability along with Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

I Orientering d. 16. juni 2003 blev dette websted omtalt:

www.newamericancentury.org

på side 51, fortæller de at det kan blive svært at skabe et globalt imperium med mindre der kommer et "Pearl Harbor".

Det fortælles også i dette indlæg, at Kina er de eneste der kan forhindre dette, men de skal om nødvendigt tvinges til med magt at acceptere dette.

Biologiske våben

USA indrømmer at have foretaget 50 hemmelige forsøg med biologiske våben mod soldater.
1. juli 2002. Se webside.

USA skal med i internationale aftaler
- det modsatte truer freden

Som der er i dag handler USA ud fra, at deres magt er andre langt overlegen og de arbejde ikke for at skabe et internationalt retssamfund, men et globalt imperium.

Fra Information 15 auguft 2002, 1 . sektion side 2 
Nyhedsanalyse: Angrebsmål: Retssamfundet:
"Henry Kissinger, der i sin tid gjorde mange 'erfaringer' på magtens tinde, virker opmuntret af det, han kalder for »revolutionerende nye visioner«. Forleden skrev han i en artikel i The Washington Post, at USA - uden mindreværdsfølelser - skal påtage sig ledelsen af et nyt, globalt imperium. Kissinger mener, at USA skal bruge sin imperiale magt uden skelen til andre landes suverænitet og rette præventive angreb mod truende magter som f.eks. Irak."

International ret

I Beograd undre man sig over at USA har travlt med at stille serbere for den internationale domstol, samtidig med at USA ikke vil annerkende  FN’s international domstol mod krisgsforbrydelser i Haag og Henry Kisinger stilles næppe for en domstol.

USA vil nu undlade at yde militær- eller humanitær hjælp til lande der ikke underskriver at amerikanske statsborgere ikke kan restforfølges. 
Samtidig behandler USA selv fanger som det passer dem og er begyndt at lave aftaler om at få udleveret borgere til USA, hvis USA betegner disse som terromistænkte - USA skal ikke fremkomme med beviser af nogen art - Dette er England gået med.

50 lande risikere at miste støtte fra USA, da de ikke har underskrevet, at de ikke vil anklage amerikanske statsborgere for den Internationale Krigsforbryder Domstol i Haag, ICC International Criminal Court

FN

USA har ingen skrupler ved at slå uskyldige mennesker i andre lande ihjel for at opnå egne mål – det retfærdiggøres med 11. september.

USA gik i krig mod Irak - en forbyggende krig, som der ikke er hjemmel til i FN's charter, hermed bryder USA med de vigtigste regler i FN. I 80'erne støttede USA en række diktatorer og terrorgrupper i Latinamerika, skulle andre lande af den grund gå i krig med USA? 

I latinamerika er man vred over at USA ikke vil undsige sig kupforsøget mod Venesuelas nyvalgte præsident til trods for aftale mellem de latinamerikanske lande og USA for respekt af folkevalgte i Latinamerika.

Amerikansk terror

Her har USA en træningslejr til træning i terror, snigmord / attentat, tortur - skal den stoppes?
se: http://www.soaw.org/new/  

Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

BBC NEWS d. 17/4 - 2014

…The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page…

…Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power…

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Artikel fra Prof Martin Gilens and Prof Benjamin I Page klik her

Atomvåben

USA undergraver ikke-sprædningsaftalen af atomvåben og forbudet mod prøvesprængninger, ABM-aftalen er opsagt af USA så de kan militarisere rummet. USA overvejer brugen af mindre atomvåben. Det kan sålesdes ikke forventes, at de lande der ikke atomvåben forsat finder at USA overholder deres del af aftalen, og dermed opsiger aftalen og starter en oprustning.

USA stiller krav til Iran om kontrol med masseødelæggelsesvåben, men Israel går fri, her er der ingen krav. Det gavner ikke situationen i Mellemøsten, at Israel kan være verdens 6. største atommagt samtidig med at der stilles krav til Iran om at lade inspektører tilse at der ikke er masseødelæggelsevåben der.

USA manglende samarbejde med det internationale samfund

USA afviser internationale aftaler:
Kyoto protokollen om den globale opvarmning, den Internationale Krigsforbryder Domstol, 
CTBS (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) prøvesprængningstraktaten, 
en international konvention til regulering af mindre våben, 
verificering af protokol for biologiske og for kemiske våben, 
og antibalistik misil system traktaten og mange flere.
USA demonstrere slet og ret magt, og viser med al tydelighed, at de ikke finder det nødvendigt at samarbejde med andre.

USA og olien

USA bruger 27% af al olien i verdenen og vil med magt sikre denne leverance - Dette er formentlig en væsentlig grund til krigen mod Irak, da Saudi Arabien måske ikke er så sikker en olie leverandør til USA.

USA´s magt

USA anvender ca. 45% af verdens samlede militærudgifter til opbygning af dens magt. 
I stedet for at øge oprustningen for at blive enehærsker i rummet kunne USA skaffe sig mange venner og udrydde den værste fattigdom på jorden - og fattigdommen i USA.

af Poul Eck Sørensen

Forarmet uran

Forarmet urans virkning på amerikanske soldater.
se webside.  

Pax Americana and
the Weaponization of Space

Se videoen på Youtube

Kontrollen med rummet skal give USA mulighed for at nægte andre at bruge rummet, hvis det er nødvendigt.
Der er ca. 1000 satelitter i rummet, USA er ejer og bruger af 49%.
USA udgør 5% af jordens befolkning- de finder at de har ret til at bestemme hvem, der skal kunne bruge rummet! For at have denne mulighed går 50% af al skat i USA til Pentagon. Det betyder, at en meget stor del af den amerikanske industri er interesseret i at lave våben og denne industri har en stærkt stigende indtjening og vokser meget hurtigt. SI International, L3 communication, Sparta, The Aerospace Corporation, Mitra, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman
En meget stor og stærk gruppe i USA har derfor brug for at fortælle amerikanerne at der er en trussel mod dem.
Med så mange avancerede våben er der altid den mulighed, at de kan fejle, det så vi under den kolde krig, der var vi flere gange grundet en fejl tæt på en atomkrig.
USA er de eneste i FN der stemmer mod en afmilitarisering af rummet. USA's militarisering af rummet er startet for lang tid siden. Obama sagde, at han ikke ville militarisere rummet, men det fortsætter med uformindsket fart.
Vi er blevet meget afhængige af sattelitter, men de ville forsvinde i en rum krig. USA's mål er kontrol og total dominans i rummet og dermed på jorden.

Pax Americana and the Weaponization
of Space

Esbjerg Fredsbevægelse er medlem af International Peace Bureau som afholder kongres d. 13 - 15. september 2013.
Vi arbejder for at militarisering af rummet bliver et focus punkt på kongressen i IPB.
se
Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space

Syrien-konflikten truer USA’s strategi om globalt lederskab.

Information d. 4/9 - 2013

For USA kan Syrien-spørgsmålet ikke reduceres til, om man skal straffe regimet for brud på de folkeretlige principper. Det handler også om, at en optrappet konflikt i Mellemøsten kan få ødelæggende konsekvenser for de amerikanske ambitioner om at fastholde det globale lederskab

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Støt underskriftindsamlingen mod nye atomvåben i Europa.

Den 20. maj 2012, vil verdens ledere mødes på NATO-topmødet i Chicago, hvor fremtiden for hundredvis af amerikanske atomvåben deployeret i Europa er på dagsordenen. Lad os fortælle dem, at det er tid til at få disse våben ud af Europa, underskriv andragende nedenfor!

Til lederne af NATO-lande,

Den Kolde Krig har været forbi i mere end 20 år. Holde amerikanske atomvåben i Tyskland, Tyrkiet, Holland, Belgien og Italien giver ingen mening. Disse våben er levn fra en svunden tid: de er farlige, ubrugelige og dyre og tager ikke stilling til nutidens aktuelle sikkerhedstrusler. Vi opfordrer dig til at fjerne disse våben fra Europa. Du har en historisk chance for at tage det næste afgørende skridt i retning af en verden uden atomvåben.

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http://nukesout.org/

USA har dræbt ufattelig mange mennesker i den 3. verden - og ingen skal stå til ansvar for det.

På denne side finder du bl.a. 10 meget interessante videoer
Bl.a. dette klip:
2. John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief in Angola video segment.
John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, working for then Director of the CIA, George Bush.  He spent 13 years in the agency.  He gives a short history of CIA covert operations.  He is a very compelling speaker and the highest level CIA officer to testify to the Congress about his actions.  He estimates that over 6 million people have died in CIA covert actions, and this was in the late 1980's.
To download 6 minute video clip, (1.6MB) click on http://www.peace.ca/stockwell.wmv

Windows Media Player 6.4 or later is required to view video

Irak-krigen har kostet 15.000.000.000.000 kr. i USA

Jyllandsposten d. 29/2 - 2008

Indsatsen i Irak har både menneskeligt og økonomisk været en dyr fornøjelse for USA. 50.000 kroner per amerikansk statsborger har krigen kostet indtil videre, vurderer Nobelprismodtager.

"Den kommende præsident vil arve et USA, som lever på lånt tid og lånte penge," siger den tidligere Verdensbank-direktør Joseph Stiglitz i dag til The Telegraph.

Harvard-professor Linda J. Bilmes har sammen med Joseph Stiglitz skrevet bogen The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. I bogen beskyldes Bush-administrationen for at skjule de menneskelige og økonomiske konsekvenser af krigen i Irak...

...Joseph Stiglitz, der tidligere har modtaget Nobelprisen i økonomi, anslår, at Irak i de kommende to år vil koste yderligere en 2,5 billioner kroner...

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Vietnamkrigen begyndte med en løgn

Berlingske 12/2 - 2008 af Poul Høi

Vietnam-krigen begyndte med et angreb, der ikke fandt sted, fremgår det af en netop offentliggjort efterretningsrapport. Præsident Johnson sagde, at kommunisterne havde angrebet et amerikansk skib i Tonkin Bugten, men selv præsident Johnson vidste, at det var opspind.

Præsident Lyndon B. Johnsons tale på TV var alarmerende: Kommunistiske torpedobåde havde timer tidligere for anden gang angrebet et amerikansk krigsskib i Tonkin Bugten. USA måtte slå igen, og Johnson krævede, at Kongressen gav ham en carte blanche-resolution, som »udtrykte amerikansk enighed og beslutsomhed i kampen for frihed og fred i det sydøstlige Asien.«

Han fik sin resolution, som gav ham lov til at angribe Nordvietnam uden forudgående krigserklæring, og Vietnam gik fra at være en politisk konflikt til at blive en regulær krig.

Før Tonkin havde USA 16.000 soldater i Vietnam; få år senere havde USA 538.000 soldater i Vietnam. 58.000 amerikanere døde i krigen, to mio. vietnamesere døde, og det begyndte alt sammen – alt efter temperament – med en løgn eller med kynisk realpolitik.

Johnson vidste han løj
Netop offentliggjorte dokumenter beviser således endegyldigt, at præsident Johnson talte usandt – at nordvietnameserne ikke havde angrebet det amerikanske krigsskib i Tonkin Bugten – og Johnson vidste det selv, fastslår historikeren Robert Hanyok, som hverken er en gammel, overvintret demonstrant eller en ny, anti-amerikansk teoretiker.

Han er officiel historiker hos National Security Agency, NSA, der er ansvarlig for opsnapningen af kommunikation verden over. Det var NSA, som i 2002 skrev den digre rapport »Spartans in Darkness«, der handler om kodeopsnapningen og kodekrigen i Vietnam, og det er denne rapport, som nu er blevet offentliggjort.

USA havde omkring 10.000 kodebrydere og signaleksperter i Vietnam under krigsforløbet, og de havde store succeser med at opfange især kommunikation fra den nordvietnamesiske hær, men på to afgørende tidspunkter kunne de ikke ændre historiens skæve gang.

Den ene var duellen i Tonkin Bugten. Den anden Tet-offensiven, fremgår det.

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Det militærindustrielle kompleks -- fjenden indefra

kristeligt Dagblad d. 30/6 2006

KRONIK: Verdens sidste supermagt er i dag truet af dén indre fjende, som præsident Eisenhower indsigtsfuldt advarede imod i 1961: En konflikt imellem dét, der gavner det militærindustrielle kompleks, og dét, der gavner det amerikanske samfund…

…Efter nogle år med jubel over kommunismens sammenbrud opstod der alvorlige økonomiske og politiske problemer i USA. Dollaren begyndte at falde drastisk (ligesom det i øvrigt sker nu igen, hvilket i sig selv skaber begrundet frygt for nye terrorangreb og mere krig!). Fredsvindene medførte, at beskæftigelsen stagnerede i USA i midten af 1990'erne. Militærbaser samt fly- og våbenfabrikker lukkede eller skar drastisk i antallet af ansatte. Arbejdsløshedskøen voksede år for år.

Samtidig med den militære og nationale lavkonjunktur begyndte titusindvis af højreorienterede amerikanere at organisere sig i militsgrupper, der udpegede den føderale regering i Washington som fjende af det amerikanske folk. 100.000 mand stor blev denne hær, der først blev ignoreret, men så at sige sprængte sig vej på den politiske dagsorden.

En chokeret præsident Clinton og omverden erfarer den 19. april 1995, at den statsfjendtlige cowboy-hær mener det alvorligt, da en regeringsbygning i Oklahoma City bliver sprængt i luften og over 168 uskyldige mennesker dræbt. Umiddelbart efter Oklahoma-bomben anholdt FBI 13 militsfolk i Arizona, mistænkt for at forberede bombeattentater mod amerikanske regeringsbygninger…

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Olien og USA

Udgivet den 15. maj 2005 af Anders Lundkvist   

Hvor meget betyder olien for USA’s Mellemøstpolitik? Det spørgsmål er stillet mange gange, især i de sidste par år. Et éntydigt svar kan formentlig ikke gives, men i det følgende vil jeg søge at klargøre nogle af præmisserne og antyde nogle mulige svar. Da man aldrig bliver dummere af historisk viden, starter vi med den afdeling. Dernæst ser vi på oliens aktuelle og fremtidige betydning for den globale økonomi, for til slut at komme til vort egentlige emne, nemlig oliens betydning for USA’s økonomi og politik.

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USA skjulte atomvåben i 27 lande

Ordren blev givet med sikkerhedsdokument NSC-162/2.

Oktober 1953.

Den nytiltrådte præsident Eisenhowers strategi hed New Look - et uskyldigt navn, der dækkede over massiv atomoprustning og Den Kolde Krigs mest ultimative og skræmmende atomstrategi:

Massiv gengældelse.

Strategien, der blev født i frygt for Sovjets militære kapacitet og motiver, var enkel. Et angreb på USA eller dets allierede ville blive besvaret med total krig, et altødelæggende gensvar med atomvåben.

USA foretog derfor i årene, der fulgte, en kolossal udbygning af atomstyrken.

Atomvåben blev altafgørende for den vestlige verdens forsvar mod et Sovjet, hvis konventionelle styrker var NATOs langt overlegne.

Nu - 45 år senere - har amerikanske forskere så som Den Kolde Krigs arkæologer offentliggjort det hidtil mest omfattende studie af USA's stationering af atomvåben i udlandet...

...Kendte intet til a-våben

Afsløringerne, der offentliggøres i det seneste nummer af det anerkendte Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist
, viser, at USA under Den Kolde Krig stationerede atomvåben i 27 lande - herunder lande, der intet kendte til de pågældende våben...

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How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen Interview with Zbginiew Brzezinksi

Oprustningen skader verdenen, vi kunne i stedet brødføde alle,
give alle en uddannelse, sikre alle velfærd.