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Each day since October 2, new evidence has emerged that the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia, was a premeditated murder. At the same time, it is also increasingly clear that the murder was approved at the highest levels of the Saudi Arabian government, most likely including the current ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
The Women's March on the Pentagon condemns, in the strongest terms, any U.S. "retaliation" against Syria for a chemical weapons attack that may not have even occurred. If reports of the attack in Douma are true, the attack was likely perpetrated by any one of the many militant rebel groups, some of which have Western backing, trying to overthrow the sovereign state of Syria (whether we agree with it or not).
Ten Commonsense Suggestions for Making Peace, Not War - By William J. Astore
Whether the rationale is the need to wage a war on terror or renewed preparations for a struggle against peer competitors Russia and China (as Defense Secretary James Mattis suggested recently while introducing America’s new National Defense Strategy), the U.S. military is engaged globally. A network of military bases spread across 172 countries helps enable its wars and interventions. By the count of the Pentagon, at the end of the last fiscal year about 291,000 personnel (including reserves and Department of Defense civilians) were deployed in 183 countries worldwide, which is the functional definition of a military . Lady Liberty may temporarily close when the U.S. government grinds to a halt, but the country’s foreign military commitments, especially its wars, just keep humming along.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/14/americans-bracing-more-war-under-trigger-happy-trump'It is as if he has discovered the keys to the family gun cabinet'
A still image of the blast on Thursday after the U.S. military dropped a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), known as the "mother of all bombs," on Nangarhar province, in Afghanistan. (Screenshot: Department of Defense)
The American public is bracing for war now that President Donald Trump has seemingly stumbled upon "the keys to the family gun cabinet," as one observer put it, after a week of rash and aggressive military action.
The unprecedented use of a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), known as the 'mother of all bombs,' on Thursday was just the latest in a series of attacks by the U.S. in recent days, prompting demands for a Congressional debate on the use of military force.
Dr. Gabriela Lemus, president of the Progressive Congress Action Fund political action group, issued a statement Thursday saying that the use of "the largest non-nuclear bomb in our arsenal...to target [the Islamic State or ISIS] without the advice and consent of Congress raises serious concerns about the potential for the United States' engagement in unchecked use of military force and blanket authorization for endless war."
Specifically, Lemus said there must be an "immediate and urgent review of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)" and supports legislation put forth by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) that calls for repeal of the 2001 AUMF.
Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump unleashed one of the most powerful U.S. bombs—the 20,000 pound GBU-43, known as "the mother of all bombs"—on Afghanistan on Thursday, the Pentagon has confirmed.
The MOAB, which stands for massive ordinance air blast, reportedly struck an Islamic State (ISIS) tunnel complex in Nangarhar province. According to the Department of Defense statement, "the strike was designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. Forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction of ISIS-K fighters and facilities."
However, as observers pointed out, with a one-mile blast radius, the chance of numerous civilian causalities is high. The MOAB is said to be one of the largest non-nuclear bombs in the U.S. military arsenal and this is reportedly the first time it has been used.
America has always had a love affair with its generals. It started at the founding of the republic with George Washington and continued with (among others) Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. These military men shared something in common: they were winning generals. Washington in the Revolution; Jackson in the War of 1812; Taylor in the Mexican-American War; Grant in the Civil War; and Ike, of course, in World War II. Americans have always loved a hero in uniform -- when he wins.
In the era of the long war on terror, Thursday, June 2nd, 2016, was a tough day for the U.S. military. Two modern jet fighters, a Navy F-18 Hornet and an Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon flown by two of America’s most capable pilots, went down, with one pilot killed. In a war that has featured total dominance of the skies by America’s intrepid aviators and robotic drones, the loss of two finely tuned fighter jets was a remarkable occurrence.
As it happened, though, those planes weren’t lost in combat. Enemy ground fire or missiles never touched them nor were they taken out in a dogfight with enemy planes (of which, of course, the Islamic State, the Taliban, and similar U.S. enemies have none). Each was part of an elite aerial demonstration team, the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds, respectively. Both were lost to the cause of morale-boosting air shows.
The American people will be footing the bill — but, by and large, they haven't heard much about our country's planned trillion-dollar nuclear weapons upgrade.
A deactivated Titan II nuclear ICMB is seen in a silo at the Titan Missile Museum on May 12, 2015 in Green Valley, Arizona. - Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Isn’t it rather odd that America’s largest single public expenditure scheduled for the coming decades has received no attention in the 2015-2016 presidential debates?
The expenditure is for a 30-year program to “modernize” the US nuclear arsenal and production facilities. Although President Obama began his administration with a dramatic public commitment to build a nuclear weapons-free world, that commitment has long ago dwindled and died. It has been replaced by an administration plan to build a new generation of US nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities to last the nation well into the second half of the 21st century. This plan, which has received almost no attention by the mass media, includes redesigned nuclear warheads, as well as new nuclear bombers, submarines, land-based missiles, weapons labs and production plants. The estimated cost? $1,000,000,000,000.00 — or, for those readers unfamiliar with such lofty figures, $1 trillion.
Oxitec’s dye-marked Oxi513A male mosquitoes ready for release in Brazil.Courtesy Oxitec Ltd.
KEY WEST, Fla. — In late October, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Department of Agriculture tested insecticidal aerial spraying techniques over a warfare range in Jacksonville, Fla. The purpose: to evaluate how to lower populations of the blood-feeding Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits dengue fever.
t was October 2012. Roei Elkabetz, a brigadier general for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), was explaining his country’s border policing strategies. In his PowerPoint presentation, a photo of the enclosure wall that isolates the Gaza Strip from Israel clicked onscreen. “We have learned lots from Gaza,” he told the audience. “It’s a great laboratory.”
Elkabetz was speaking at a border technology conference and fair surrounded by a dazzling display of technology -- the components of his boundary-building lab. There were surveillance balloons with high-powered cameras floating over a desert-camouflaged armored vehicle made by Lockheed Martin. There were seismic sensor systems used to detect the movement of people and other wonders of the modern border-policing world. Around Elkabetz, you could see vivid examples of where the future of such policing was heading, as imagined not by a dystopian science fiction writer but by some of the top corporate techno-innovators on the planet.
