Watching our Billions drift away

Today, the House of representatives passed a $105.9 billion dollar war supplemental bill, which included a down payment on the international IMF slush fund Obama promised at the G "new world order II" meting in London.  

The dollar figure for this bill has shot up over the past four months, especially considering that during his campaign, Obama's promised to end supplemental military spending altogether.  But when the White House released its "topline" budget request in February, it included an extra $75.5 billion of war funding for the rechristend forever war--the "Overseas Contingency Operation."  Since then, $10 billion in foreign military aid has been added, as well as $2 billion for a "swine flue response." 

Funnily enough, Washington is concurrently investigating how little oversight it really has over the spending of money once it has entered the National Security black hole.

Total Hypocrisy

Was anyone else bothered that the New York Times would publish Lawrence Wein's op-ed "A Threat in Every Port?"  A combination of fear mongering and terror inspiration, Wein's piece includes sentences like "As the accompanying chart illustrates, there are a dizzying number of paths that terrorists could use to transport a foreign-built weapon to an American target city — 132 variations, in fact, taking into consideration all four likely modes of transport: commercial airplane, cargo airplane, container ship and cruise ship."

When the Times is repeating the government claims of a threat to "national security" every time it does not want to release documents, what is the point of printing a half page description of the various ways the the U.S. is incredibly weak and vulnerable.  He mentions by name the Ambassador Bridge, one hour from my house, as a possible conduit for weapons.  Just a note that if there is another terrorist attack on  U.S. soil, remember that the Times published a flow chart on how to do it.

Iranian Election Analysis

Peace, Endless Peace

After watching riots all day in Tehran, i fell asleep to a 2 am C-Span rerun of Benjamin Netanyahu's foreign policy speech.  Here is the text and here is a video.  Netanyahu declared that the Palestinian state he imagines must " truly recognize" Israel--with its 20% arab population and 4% immigrant population--as the state of the Jewish people, as well as be demilitarized, entailing no army, no control of airspace, no military treaties, and no weapons, all in order to prevent his proposed Palestinian State from becoming "another Hamastan." 

Haaretz  reports on the outcome of U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell's visit to Israel last week.  It seems that the Israeli settlements on the now-mentioned Palestinian state are the first issue under on the agenda.  Mitchell says that the U.S. is not at the point of sanctioning Israel over construction, and an Israeli source says the expectation is that the U.S. will be stringent on new projects but flexible on construction already underway.  Evidently, "discussion revolves around what the "point of no return" is regarding construction...the American's understood that even if Netanyahu agreed to a full freeze, the governemt did not have the legal ability to force private construction companies to stop building."

Global Capitalism

It appears that the Saudi's have been stingy with their money recently.  Pet project al-Qaeda is apparently out of cash.  I wonder if this will make life easier for Obama's 21,000 surge troops just arriving at the new Camp Leatherneck mega-base in Helmland Province. 

American "ridiculousness"

Senator John Kerry talks some common sense about Iran and it's breaking news (Thats kind of sad).  There is a full interview in the June 11th Financial Times.

I wonder what Mr. Kerry's Russell Trust buddies think of this.

Life in the Age of Waterboarding

It appears that the London Metropolitan police are starting to take the security-camera state mantra to heart.

After attacking protesters and killing one non-protester at the conference of the G "new world order II" 20, the bobbies have recently been caught beating up African weed smugglers.  Here is the link to the Guardian's police beat, including video of the G20 meeting.

The new case is particularly disturbing because the London police seem to be practicing an amateur version of Dick Cheney's 12 step interrogation program.  David Nwanko, a 24 year old Nigerian man, claims that last November the police, "thrust his head down a toilet in the house as they questioned him, and repeatedly flushed water over his head. He also claimed that when officers arrived at the house he was assaulted and kicked several times."  

The Guardian also reports that "the water torture allegations were made by a fellow officer who told superiors that suspects had their heads thrust into water while officers demanded to know where drugs were hidden."  

 

Congressional Spending, War, and the IMF

On the Guardian web site, Mark Wiesbrot presents an interesting analysis, "The War over IMF Spending," detailing the recent Congressional war supplemental bill and the added on IMF funds that President Obama promised to make at the G20 meeting in London.

What it breaks down to is a battle involving antiwar legislators who hope to scale back the occupation of Afghanistan by adding requirements and timetables, legislators who understand the downsides of neoliberal IMF policies and wish to make taxpayer funds hinge on policy reforms, and a White House Administration that just wants Congress to keep quiet on these hot button foreign policy decisions.

 

Congressional Cover Up and War Crimes.

Larisa Alexandrovna, the editor of Raw Story, has an article about Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsay Graham (R- S.C.) threatening to "employ all the legislative means available" in order to block the release of photos depicting abuse of prisoners detained by the American government.  

The two senators claim "national security" as the reason for their stonewalling, but Alexandrovna sees it as the two legislators attempting to block evidence for a legal reckoning that is sure to come over government actions taken since 2001. Alexandrovna writes that, "the pictures would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that these methods were in fact torture, and that these methods resulted in the brutal abuse of possibly thousands of people and the deaths of possibly thousands of people."

Recently, the United Nations has claimed that Donald Rumsfeld has an international legal target on him, but obviously members of Congress had knowledge that torture was taking place.  Anyone who doesn't think that this will influence the 2010 Congressional elections needs only look back at the absolutely chilling Abu Ghraib photographs previously released.  Now that everyone knows that for the past six years young Americans have been employed in the torture and death of foreign prisoners, those responsible for ordering and overseeing those actions are surely quivering in their capitol hill offices.

Sountrack for a Russian Riot

I wonder what Ghostface Killa is going to think of Moscow