A Speech for Endless War

by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t  Op-Ed
Wednesday 01 September 2010

On the last night of August, the president used an Oval Office speech to boost a policy of perpetual war.

Hours later, The New York Times front page offered a credulous gloss for the end of "the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq." The first sentence of the coverage described the speech as saying, "that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home." The story went on to assert that Obama "used the moment to emphasize that he sees his primary job as addressing the weak economy and other domestic issues - and to make clear that he intends to begin disengaging from the war in Afghanistan next summer."

But the speech gave no real indication of a shift in priorities from making war to creating jobs. And the oratory "made clear" only the repetition of vague vows to "begin" disengaging from the Afghanistan war next summer. In fact, top administration officials have been signaling that only token military withdrawals are apt to occur in mid-2011, and Obama said nothing to the contrary.

While now trumpeting the nobility of an Iraq war effort that he'd initially disparaged as "dumb," Barack Obama is polishing a halo over the Afghanistan war, which he touts as very smart. In the process, the Oval Office speech declared that every US war - no matter how mendacious or horrific - is worthy of veneration.

Obama closed the speech with a tribute to "an unbroken line of heroes" stretching "from Khe Sanh to Kandahar - Americans who have fought to see that the lives of our children are better than our own." His reference to the famous US military outpost in South Vietnam was a chilling expression of affinity for another march of folly.

With his commitment to war in Afghanistan, President Obama is not only on the wrong side of history. He is also now propagating an exculpatory view of any and all US war efforts - as if the immoral can become the magnificent by virtue of patriotic alchemy.

A century ago, William Dean Howells wrote: "What a thing it is to have a country that can't be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!"

During the presidency of George W. Bush, "the war on terror" served as a rationale for establishing warfare as a perennial necessity. The Obama administration may have shelved the phrase, but the basic underlying rationales are firmly in place. With American troop levels in Afghanistan near 100,000, top US officials are ramping up rhetoric about "taking the fight to" the evildoers.

The day before the Oval Office speech, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs talked to reporters about "what this drawdown means to our national security efforts in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia and around the world as we take the fight to Al Qaeda."

The next morning, Obama declared at Fort Bliss: "A lot of families are now being touched in Afghanistan. We've seen casualties go up because we're taking the fight to Al Qaeda and the Taliban and their allies." And, for good measure, Obama added that "now, under the command of General Petraeus, we have the troops who are there in a position to start taking the fight to the terrorists."

If, nine years after 9/11, we are supposed to believe that US forces can now "start" taking the fight to "the terrorists," this is truly war without end. And that's the idea.

Nearly eight years ago, in November 2002, retired US Army Gen. William Odom appeared on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" program and told viewers: "Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It's a tactic. It's about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we're going to win that war. We're not going to win the war on terrorism."

With his August 31 speech, Obama became explicit about the relationship between reduced troop levels in Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan. "We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists," he said. "And because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on offense." This is the approach of endless war.

While Obama was declaring that "our most urgent task is to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work," I went to a National Priorities Project web page and looked at cost-of-war counters spinning like odometers in manic overdrive. The figures for the "Cost of War in Afghanistan" - already above $329 billion - are now spinning much faster than the ones for war in Iraq.

One day in March 1969, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Our government has become preoccupied with death," George Wald said, "with the business of killing and being killed." More than four decades later, how much has really changed?

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Sources: http://www.truth-out.org/a-speech-endless-war62881
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: NASA/Paul E. Alers, Spc. Luke Thornberry / U.S. Army)

Administrative Note:

Milititary Manipulated Media Industitrialized Imperial Intelligence Corporwhorational Control Complex.
 
M³ I³ C³  aka “Mickey...They'll Eat Everything before you knew there was something.  Then tell you there was nothing...move along.” 
 

Another False Ending: Contracting Out the Iraq Occupation

by: Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond, t r u t h o u t News Analysis
Wednesday 01 September 2010

Another false ending to the Iraq war is being declared. Nearly seven years after George Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, President Obama has just given a major address to mark the withdrawal of all but 50,000 combat troops from Iraq. But while thousands of US troops are marching out, thousands of additional private military contractors (PMCs) are marching in. The number of armed security contractors in Iraq will more than double in the coming months.

While the mainstream media is debating whether Iraq can be declared a victory or not, there is virtually no discussion regarding this surge in contractors. Meanwhile, serious questions about the accountability of private military contractors remain.

In the past decade, the United States has dramatically shifted the way in which it wages war - fewer soldiers and more contractors.

Last month, the Congressional Research Service reported that the Department of Defense (DoD) workforce has 19 percent more contractors (207,600) than uniformed personnel (175,000) in Iraq and Afghanistan, making the wars in these two countries the most outsourced and privatized in US history.

According to a recent State Department briefing to Congress' Commission on Wartime Contracting, from now on, instead of soldiers, private military contractors will be disposing of improvised explosive devices, recovering killed and wounded personnel, downed aircraft and damaged vehicles, policing Baghdad's International Zone, providing convoy security and clearing travel routes, among other security-related duties.

Worse, the oversight of contractors will rest with other contractors. As has been the case in Afghanistan, contractors will be sought to provide "operations-center monitoring of private security contractors (PSCs)" as well as "PSC inspection and accountability services."

The Commission on Wartime Contracting, a body established by Congress to study the trends in war contracting, raised fundamental questions in a July 12, 2010, "special report" about the troop drawdown and the increased use of contractors:

"An additional concern is presented by the nature of the functions that contractors might be supplying in place of US military personnel. What if an aircraft-recovery team or a supply convoy comes under fire? Who determines whether contract guards engage the assailants and whether a quick-reaction force is sent to assist them? What if the assailants are firing from an inhabited village or a hospital? Who weighs the risks of innocent casualties, directs the action and applies the rules for the use of force?

"Apart from raising questions about inherently governmental functions, such scenarios could require decisions related to the risk of innocent casualties, frayed relations with the Iraqi government and populace and broad undermining of US objectives."

We'd like to pose an additional question to the ones listed above: when human rights abuses by private military contractors occur in the next phase of the occupation of Iraq, which certainly will happen, what is the plan for justice and accountability?

This massive buildup of contractors in Iraq takes place at a time when the question of contractor immunity - or impunity - is at a critical point.

In one example, since 2004 our organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), has been demanding - in US courts and through advocacy - that private military contractors who commit grave human rights abuses be held accountable. Contractors have responded by claiming something known as the "government contractor defense," arguing that because they were contracted by the US government to perform a duty, they shouldn't be able to be held liable for any alleged violations that occurred while purportedly performing those duties - even when the alleged violations are war crimes. Contractors also argue that the cases CCR has brought raise "political questions" that are inappropriate for the courts to consider. These technical legal arguments have been the focus of human rights lawsuits for years - and, so far, the question of the contractors' actual actions have not been reviewed by the federal courts.

One case that should be watched closely this fall is Saleh v. Titan, a case brought by CCR and private attorneys against CACI and L-3 Services (formerly Titan), two private military contractors, which military investigations implicated as having played a part in the torture at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers throughout Iraq.

Saleh v. Titan was filed six years ago on behalf of Iraqis, who were tortured and otherwise seriously abused while detained, and currently includes hundreds of plaintiffs, including many individuals who were detained at the notorious "hard site" at Abu Ghraib. The plaintiffs in Saleh v. Titan, many of whom still suffer from physical and psychological harm, are simply seeking their day in court, to tell an American jury what happened to them.

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed the case last September, and the Supreme Court will be deciding whether or not to take the case this fall. This and a handful of other cases will signal how civil lawsuits on behalf of those injured or killed by contractors will be handled in US courts - and decide whether victims of egregious human rights violations will obtain some form of redress, and whether contractors who violate the law will be held accountable or be granted impunity.

And how will human rights abuse by contractors be handled by criminal prosecutors in the coming years? Given its track record, it is safe to say that Iraqi civilians cannot count on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to prosecute many contractor abuse cases. The DOJ was given an "F" by Human Rights First in their 2008 report "Ending Private Contractor Impunity: Report Cards on the US Government Response since Nisoor Square." The DOJ has never pursued criminal prosecutions for contractor involvement in the crimes of Abu Ghraib, something CCR still demands today.

Iraq's Parliament signed the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in 2008, which gave it the power to prosecute some US contractors who commit crimes against Iraqi civilians. We can all hope Iraq's justice system will be able to overcome the political challenges involved in prosecuting US companies or US contractors and other foreigners in Iraq's courts. But even that will not stop the common practice of contractor companies simply pulling their employees out of the country when a crime happens.

With these fundamental questions left unanswered and legal loopholes left open, thousands more armed contractors will soon be filing into Iraq, onto the streets where Iraqis work, study and go about their everyday lives.

As a senator, Obama called for less dependence on private military contractors and for accountability when they committed human rights abuses. He told Defense News in 2008 that he was "troubled by the use of private contractors when it comes to potential armed engagements." Senator Clinton co-sponsored legislation to phase out the use of security contractors in war zones.

As president, Obama pretends the occupation of Iraq is ending with the withdrawal of combat troops while he and Secretary of State Clinton quietly hire a shadow Army to replace them.

For more information about Saleh v. Titan, please click here.

Sources: http://www.truth-out.org/another-false-ending-contracting-out-iraq-occupation62883
image: file

The Pentagon's Double Envelopment of President Barack Obama

by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t  News Analysis
Wednesday 01 September 2010

The "double envelopment" or pincer movement is a classic military maneuver that finds the flanks of the opponent under simultaneous attack from the opposing forces. The maneuver may have been used as early as the Battle of Marathon in the fifth century BC, and there are accounts of Hannibal using the double envelopment at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Gen. Robert E. Lee used the technique successfully in the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862, when the Confederate forces threatened the lines of communication between the Union forces and the political leadership in Washington. The German Sixth Army was a victim of double envelopment at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, and Gen. George Patton used the technique successfully against German forces in World War II.

Now, President Barack Obama finds himself the victim of a political double envelopment in which the Pentagon, having ostensibly agreed to a strategy calling for discussion of withdrawal from Afghanistan, is already campaigning and planning for an extended stay. On one flank, the Pentagon is undertaking a huge base expansion program that will support a regional military strategy against Russia, China and Iran. On the other flank, the senior military leadership is walking away from any notion of even gradual withdrawal beginning in 2011.

President Obama seemed reluctant last year when he announced his decision to enlarge the US military presence in Afghanistan. He demonstrated his uncertainty by combining the decision to send an additional 30,000 soldiers and Marines with a commitment to begin discussions for withdrawal in December of this year in order to begin a withdrawal process in July 2011. Vice President Joe Biden strongly opposed the decision to expand the force presence, but he was outflanked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who received predictably strong support from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and senior general officers.

Now, one general after another is walking away from any discussion of a major review of policy, let alone withdrawal, with on-the-record comments in support of an extended stay in Afghanistan. The Pentagon's campaign began two weeks with Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, arguing that he had not come to Afghanistan to preside over a "graceful exit." General Petraeus indicated that his support for any decision to begin the withdrawal of forces next summer would depend on how the war was proceeding. He presumably believes that he can repeat the success of the surge in Iraq, which he campaigned for in 2007.

In the wake of General Petraeus' remarks, Gen. James Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said that President Obama's July 2011 deadline to begin US troop withdrawal was "giving our enemy sustenance." General Conway seemed to be particularly dismissive of any discussion of withdrawal, noting that President Obama was "talking to several audiences at the same time when he made his comments regarding July 2011." The US commander in charge of training Afghan security forces, Gen. William Caldwell IV, told Pentagon reporters on August 23 that he will not complete his mission of training an Afghan force until after the deadline. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen has been the most aggressive military leader in making the case for a long-term commitment to Afghanistan. And General McChrystal probably should have been fired for insubordination in the fall of 2009 when he rejected the idea of using drone aircraft and special forces to defeat al-Qaeda before a final decision had been made.

This is very much different from the private comments of the military leadership to President Obama last year when he conducted his high-level review of Afghan policy. In the Oval Office in October 2009, Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen pledged their support to President Obama's plan and committed themselves to making sure that Generals McChrystal and Petraeus would stop their public discussion of the policy debate. Vice Chairman of the JCS, Gen. James Cartwright, also pledged fealty. And in late November, only days before the West Point speech, President Obama asked General Petraeus if he was certain of progress over the next 18 months that would allow the withdrawal to begin in 2011. Gates, Mullen and Petraeus agreed that it could be done and that the Afghan Army could take over the mission at that time.

The pace of US military construction in Afghanistan certainly does not suggest an interest or expectation of an early withdrawal. Major expansion is taking place at three US air bases in southern and northern Afghanistan and none of these projects is expected to be completed before the latter part of 2011. In other words, long after President Obama has pledged to begin the withdrawal of US forces, the Pentagon is allocating hundreds of millions of dollars for air bases in key regions. The House of Representatives has already approved more than $1 billion for additional base construction in addition to the more than $5 billion allocated to build facilities for the Afghan Army and the national police. Neither Afghan institution has demonstrated that it can maintain security in the country, let alone take on the growing Taliban forces.

President Obama has learned some harsh lessons about civilian-military relations over the past year. The secretary of defense and the Pentagon's military leadership are working energetically to undermine the president's call for an end to the cynical policy of "don't ask, don't tell," which undermined the role of gays serving in the military. When the Obama administration was discussing Afghan policy at the highest levels last year, senior general officers campaigned for a significant expansion of US forces long before any decision was actually made. General McChrystal was eventually forced to resign as commander of US forces in Afghanistan because he and his staff were contemptuous toward civilian decision makers.

The president denied that he was "jammed" by the military in the fall of 2009 when the toughest decision of his presidency had to be made. It is clear, however, that the military is trying to manipulate President Obama on the next round of decision making. It was 50 years ago that President Dwight D. Eisenhower told his senior advisers, "God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn't know the military as well as I do."

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Sources: http://www.truth-out.org/the-pentagons-double-envelopment-president-barack-obama62876
(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: randomduck, Barack Obama)

Administrative Note:

Milititary Manipulated Media Industitrialized Imperial Intelligence Corporwhorational Control Complex.
 
M³ I³ C³  aka “Mickey...They'll Eat Everything before you knew there was something.  Then tell you there was nothing...move along.” 
 

Obama Wants Us To Forget the Lessons of Iraq

by Andrew J. Bacevich
August 31, 2010

The Iraq war? Fuggedaboudit. “Now, it is time to turn the page.” So advises the commander-in-chief at least. “[T]he bottom line is this,” President Obama remarked last Saturday, “the war is ending.” Alas, it’s not. Instead, the conflict is simply entering a new phase. And before we hasten to turn the page—something that the great majority of Americans are keen to do—common decency demands that we reflect on all that has occurred in bringing us to this moment. Absent reflection, learning becomes an impossibility.

For those Americans still persuaded that everything changed the moment Obama entered the Oval Office, let’s provide a little context. The event that historians will enshrine as the Iraq war actually began back in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Iraq’s unloved and unlovable neighbor. Through much of the previous decade, the United States had viewed Saddam as an ally of sorts, a secular bulwark against the looming threat of Islamic radicalism then seemingly centered in Tehran. Saddam’s war of aggression against Iran, launched in 1980, did not much discomfit Washington, which offered the Iraqi dictator a helping hand when his legions faced apparent defeat.

Yet when Saddam subsequently turned on Kuwait, he overstepped. President George H.W. Bush drew a line in the sand, likened the Iraqi dictator to Hitler, and dispatched 500,000 American troops to the Persian Gulf. The plan was to give Saddam a good spanking, make sure all concerned knew who was boss, and go home.

Operation Desert Storm didn’t turn out that way. An ostensibly great victory gave way to even greater complications. Although, in evicting the Iraqi army from Kuwait, U.S. and coalition forces did what they had been sent to do, Washington became seized with the notion merely turning back aggression wasn’t enough: In Baghdad, Bush’s nemesis survived and remained defiant. So what began as a war to liberate Kuwait morphed into an obsession with deposing Saddam himself. In the form of air strikes and missile attacks, feints and demonstrations, CIA plots and crushing sanctions, America’s war against Iraq persisted throughout the 1990s, finally reaching a climax with George W. Bush’s decision after September 11, 2001, to put Saddam ahead of Osama bin Laden in the line of evildoers requiring elimination.

The U.S.-led assault on Baghdad in 2003 finally finished the work left undone in 1991—so it appeared at least. Here was decisive victory, sealed by the capture of Saddam Hussein himself in December 2003. “Ladies and gentlemen,” announced L. Paul Bremer, the beaming American viceroy to Baghdad, “we got him.”

Yet by the time Bremer spoke, it—Iraq—had gotten us. Saddam’s capture (and subsequent execution) signaled next to nothing. Round two of the Iraq war had commenced, the war against Saddam (1990–2003) giving way to the American Occupation (2003–2010). Round two began the War to Reinvent Iraq in America’s Image.

With officials such as Bremer in the vanguard, the United States set out to transform Iraq into a Persian Gulf “city upon a hill,” a beacon of Western-oriented liberal democracy enlightening and inspiring the rest of the Arab and Islamic world. When this effort met with resistance, American troops, accustomed to employing overwhelming force, responded with indiscriminate harshness. President Bush called the approach “kicking ass.” Heavy-handedness backfired, however, and succeeded only in plunging Iraq into chaos. One result, on the home front, was to produce a sharp backlash against what had become Bush’s War.

Unable to win, unwilling to accept defeat, the Bush administration sought to create conditions allowing for a graceful exit. Marketed for domestic political purposes as “a new way forward,” more commonly known as “the surge,” this modified approach was the strategic equivalent of a dog’s breakfast. President Bush steeled himself to expend more American blood and treasure while simultaneously lowering expectations about what U.S. forces might actually accomplish. New tactics designed to suppress the Iraqi insurgency won Bush’s approval; so too did the novel practice of bribing insurgents to put down their arms.

Yet as a consequence the daily violence that had made Iraq a hellhole subsided—although it did not disappear.

Meanwhile, once hallowed verities fell by the wayside. U.S. officials stopped promising that Saddam’s downfall would trigger a wave of liberalizing reforms throughout the Islamic world. Op-eds testifying to America’s enduring commitment to the rights of Iraqi women ceased to appear in the nation’s leading newspapers.

Respected American generals—by 2007, about the only figures retaining a shred of credibility on Iraq—disavowed the very possibility of victory. In military circles, to declare that “there is no military solution” became the very height of fashion.

By the time Barack Obama had ascended to the presidency, this second phase of the Iraq war—its purpose now inverted from occupation to extrication—was already well-advanced. Since taking office, Obama has kept faith with the process that his predecessor set in motion, building upon President Bush’s success. (When applied to Iraq, “success” has become a notably elastic term, easily accommodating bombs that detonate in Iraqi cities and insurgent assaults directed at Iraqi forces and government installations.)

Which brings us to the present. After seven-plus years, Operation Iraqi Freedom has concluded. Operation New Dawn, its name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid, now begins. (What ever happened to the practice of using terms like Torch or Overlord or Dragoon to describe military campaigns?) Although something like 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, their mission is not to fight, but simply to advise and assist their Iraqi counterparts. In another year, if all goes well, even this last remnant of an American military presence will disappear.

So the Americans are bowing out, having achieved few of the ambitious goals articulated in the heady aftermath of Baghdad’s fall. The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation, and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget.

Back in Iraq, meanwhile, nothing has been resolved and nothing settled. Round one of the Iraq war produced a great upheaval that round two served only to exacerbate. As the convoys of U.S. armored vehicles trundle south toward Kuwait and then home, they leave the stage set for round three.

Call this the War of Iraqi Self-Determination (2010–?). As the United States removes itself from the scene, Iraqis will avail themselves of the opportunity to decide their own fate, a process almost certain to be rife with ethnic, sectarian, and tribal bloodletting. What the outcome will be, no one can say with certainty, but it won’t be pretty.

One thing alone we can say with assurance:As far as Americans are concerned, Iraqis now own their war. “Like any sovereign, independent nation,” President Obama recently remarked, “Iraq is free to chart its own course.” The place may be a mess, but it’s their mess not ours. In this sense alone is the Iraq war “over.”

As U.S. forces have withdrawn, they have done so in an orderly fashion. In their own eyes, they remain unbeaten and unbeatable. As the troops pull out, the American people are already moving on: Even now, Afghans have displaced Iraqis as the beneficiaries of Washington’s care and ministrations. Oddly, even disturbingly, most of us—our memories short, our innocence intact—seem content with the outcome. The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing.

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book is Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.

Sources: http://www.tnr.com/blog/foreign-policy/77356/obama-wants-us-forget-the-lessons-iraq
image: file

Mahmoud Abbas: If talks fail over settlements, only Israel will be to blame

Palestinian President: We understand Israel's need for security, but it is not an excuse to expand settlements and steal lands.

By Avi Issacharoff and The Associated Press
Published 23:05 29.08.10  August 29, 2010
Latest update 23:05 29.08.10

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the upcoming resumption of direct peace talks with Israel in a televised speech on Sunday, saying that "Israel will be held accountable for the failure of the talks if settlement construction should continue."

"The negotiations need to bring about serious action that will be able to bring liberation from the occupation and independence," Abbas said.

Mere days before leaving for Washington to take part in a gala summit meeting in Washington, after months of American mediation efforts, Abbas said that the Palestinian agreement to participate in talks is based on Quartet opposition to Israeli construction in settlements. Members of the Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators, which includes the U.S., the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, have repeatedly rejected Israeli construction on territory slated for a future Palestinian state.

"In these critical moments in the history of the region," Abbas said in a speech recorded in Jordan earlier Sunday, "we understand Israel's need for security, as well as our own such need. But the need for security is not an excuse to expand settlements and steal land."

"I want to clarify our stance on settlements, and their illegal status," Abbas continued. "I have to say honestly and clearly that we notified all sides, including the American administration, before we agreed to conduct these talks, that Israel alone will bear the blame for the failure of the negotiations if the settlement construction continues in any way on any Palestinian land captured since 1967."

"I hope that we find a partner in Israel that will be able to make decisions and take a responsible stance on ending the occupation," Abbas went on to say. "That way we can achieve true security for both peoples, Israeli and Palestinian."

Under intense American pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a 10-month partial freeze in settlement construction to boost prospects for talks, but the negotiations are resuming just three weeks before the freeze expires. Netanyahu has not pledged to renew it, facing stiff opposition from hard-line coalition partners in his government.

The Palestinians never endorsed the freeze, because it did not halt all construction in the West Bank and did not apply to East Jerusalem, the section claimed by the Palestinians for a future capital.

Abbas is facing internal opposition from Palestinian hard-liners, especially Hamas, for agreeing to return to the negotiating table. The Islamic Hamas, which rules Gaza and has a significant presence in the West Bank, rejects any contact with Israel. Other Palestinians criticize Abbas for not securing Israeli concessions in advance of the talks.

Netanyahu also faces opposition from within: hawkish members of his coalition government oppose any concessions to the Palestinians.

Sources: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/mahmoud-abbas-if-talks-fail-over-settlements-only-israel-will-be-to-blame-1.310923

U.S.: Rabbi's 'offensive' remarks harm peace efforts

U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley condemns Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's 'inflammatory' statement that all Palestinians should perish.

By Natasha Mozgovaya and Haaretz Service
Published 00:36 30.08.10  August 30, 2010
Latest update 00:36 30.08.10

The United States on Sunday condemned remarks by the spiritual leader of Israel's leading ultra-Orthodox party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who said the Palestinians should "perish".

"We regret and condemn the inflammatory statements by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef," U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley. "These remarks are not only deeply offensive, but incitement such as this hurts the cause of peace."

"As we move forward to relaunch peace negotiations, it is important that actions by people on all sides help to advance our effort, not hinder it."

Yosef had said during his weekly Shabbat sermon that the Palestinians, namely Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, should perish from the world. Yosef, a founder of the Shas Party, also described Palestinians as evil, bitter enemies of Israel.

"All these evil people should perish from this world ... God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians," Yosef had said.

 The 89-year-old is a respected religious scholar but is also known for vitriolic comments about Arabs, secular Jews, liberals, women and gays, among others.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Monday also condemned Rabbi Yosef's comments as “offensive and incendiary,” cautioning that his words “contribute to a potentially dangerous environment of intolerance and hatred.”

"Particularly on the eve of renewed peace talks, and on the eve of the Jewish New Year, one would have hoped that Rav Yosef could have inspired his students and followers with a message of hope, humility, repentance and forgiveness," said a statement from ADL chief Abraham Foxman.

"These comments do not exist in a vacuum – such incendiary expressions contribute to a potentially dangerous environment of intolerance and hatred."‬

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday distanced himself from Yosef's remarks, but stopped short of a condemnation.

"Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's remarks do not reflect Netanyahu's views, nor do they reflect the stance of the Israeli government," Netanyahu's office said in a statement.

"Israel plans to take part in peace negotiations out of a desire to advance toward a peace agreement with the Palestinians that will end the conflict and ensure peace, security and good neighborly relations between the two peoples," the statement continued.

Palestinian U.S. envoy Maen Rashid Aerekat slammed the Rabbi's remarks, saying they were paramount to incitement to genocide.

“We are very disappointed. It comes from the spiritual leader representing large party in the coalition, large segment of the Israeli society. When he makes such incitement against our leadership and the Palestinian people – he is actually telling thousands of his followers to harm the Palestinian people," he said.

"People in Israel whine about Palestinian incitement after sermon in some isolated mosque at the West Bank – and when someone like Ovadia Yossef says something – the Prime Minister doesn’t even have a decency to say: “I am opposed to it, I condemn it."

"Internal politics for the Israeli leaders today is more important than even their own principles. It‘s an example of the Israeli official incitement. Unfortunately, it didn’t get the condemnation from the Israeli leadership it deserved," Aerekat added.

Sources: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/u-s-rabbi-s-offensive-remarks-harm-peace-efforts-1.310930

‘Sinner’ singer given 39 lashes by rabbis

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
08/27/2010 02:45

A singer who performed in front of a “mixed audience” of men and women was lashed 39 times to make him “repent,” after a ruling by a self-described rabbinic court on Wednesday.

Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, founder of the Shofar organization aimed at bringing Jews “back to religion” (hazara betshuva), has made it his recent mission to fight against musical performances for both men and women.

His “judicial panel,” with Rabbi Ben Zion Mutsafi and another member, sentenced Erez Yechiel to 39 lashes in order to “rid him of his sins.”

In a video clip of the court posted on the Shofar Web site, Ben Zion said that those who make others sin (mahtiei rabim), such as artists who make men and women attend performances or dance together, have no place in the world to come.

He displayed a leather strip he said was made by his father from ass and bull skin, with which Yechiel was to have been whipped.

Yechiel, who said, “I accept upon myself the lashing for my sins,” was ordered to stand by a wooden poll with his head facing north (“from whence the evil inclination comes”), his hands tied with a azure-colored rope (“a symbol of mercy”), and served his “sentence.”

Sources: http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=186154
Punishment for performance in front of "mixed audience."

Administrative Note: Elitist Exceptionalist Extremists are dangerous whether they are ideologically motivated by love, hate or its owns delusions of grandeur and make their false fantasy our miserable reality.  Wars and separateness when we should be aware we are Earthlings under Creation above all else.  Anything else is irrelevant with that one Miracle we Must Nurture and Live.

"Between the Fences": A Review

by: Yana Kunichoff, t r u t h o u t  Book Review
Tuesday 31 August 2010

Periodically, glimpses of life inside American-run detention centers emerge, usually through the efforts of individuals whose names and faces disappear into history, while the gruesome acts they helped uncover become increasingly stark place marks in history. This was the case with photos of grinning soldiers in Iraq at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and with the prison-like conditions at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, Texas.

Tony Hefner hopes that his revelations of abuse at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center will take their rightful place in history as events that shock people into realizing the need for change, and that he will eventually be able to return to living a life without the weight of history.

Hefner has authored a book, "Between the Fences: Before Guantanamo, There Was the Port Isabel Service Processing Center," which details the struggles of a guard at an immigration detention facility in Texas' Rio Grande Valley to bring to light the numerous instances of sexual and physical abuse, extortion and intimidation experienced by both guards and immigrants at the facility on a regular basis.

However, rather than being a story of redemption and vindication, the willful ignorance of agencies such as the Immigration and Naturalization Services, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, and many others, along with high-ranking administration officials such as Karl Rove and Janet Napolitano, that is detailed in Hefner's memoir show a system only set up to breed more of the same.

The book opens with Tony Hefner washing the sweat and dirt off his face with a wet washcloth, "trying to rub away the part of my heritage that makes me brown inside." Hefner, the half-Mexican son of an undocumented immigrant, has passed for white all his life, including during his time as a guard at Port Isabel.

Through a series of flashbacks, he tells of his tenure as a guard and how he first came to realize the various abuses that he "saw destroying and maiming, as surely as any Salvadoran machete," from his time there in 1981 to the late '90s, when he continued to follow up on the case.

His first indication that all is not well at Port Isabel is when he begins training for a guard position at the camp to earn extra money for the Hispanic children's ministry he has started with his wife, Barbara. Carlos L. Ruiz, a director of deportation and detention and a powerful personage at the camp makes open sexual solicitations to the female guards.

Though this leaves Hefner with an uncomfortable feeling, he does not think much of it, but this is just the first he is to witness of such abuses of authority. As the book progresses, Hefner details numerous accounts of rape, sexual assault and intimidation directed against the female guards. The impoverished nature of the towns surrounding the center, however, leaves many of the women with few other employment options to make ends meet.

The position of female guards in the camp also highlights the ambiguity of power play within the loosely monitored center; though many of the women work under sexual intimidation, female guards are also complicit in greasing the wheels so that camp commanders are able to sleep with female detainees.

The immigrant women are promised, falsely, various immigration assistance in return for sexual favors and, Hefner writes, even at times impregnated by immigration officers and then deported.

In a particularly shocking example in a book full of heart-wrenching episodes, an underage South American girl is kept at the camp to dance nude for commanders in exchange for candy bars. Hefner mentions this young girl and the pained look he catches in her eyes as ongoing motivation for his crusade against those who abused her and other immigrant women in the detention center.

The abuses Hefner details range from wanton cruelty - young boys illegally held in the adult facility and sexually harassed and severely injured men thrown into isolation units and left unattended for days - to smaller acts of neglect, such as group strip-searches and the denial of soap or toothpaste. In addition, Hefner gathers evidence of government immigration vans used to carry drugs over the border to Mexico.

The same individuals who perpetrate these abuses use all the powers at their disposal to silence Hefner once it becomes clear that he is determined to note the abuses. He loses his job, is reinstated and loses it again. Meanwhile, the intimidation he experiences escalates from an unfriendly working atmosphere to requests for bribes and threatening, anonymous phone calls. Eventually, the pressure pushes Hefner and his wife out of Texas altogether.

It is difficult to know whether the lack of success in Hefner's continued appeals are more damning on the human or systemic level. When an investigator from the Office of Inspector General comes to the Rio Grande Valley, he neglects to speak to most of the major witnesses. Many of the female guards' abuse claims are blocked by a statute of limitations, and when Hefner and other former guards finally make it to court, their cases are dismissed.

In a particularly poignant blow, Hefner is told at one point that the abuses perpetrated by guards at the Port Isabel Center are not the responsibility of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement because they were employed by a contracting security company, not government employees.

The scale of private immigration detention centers has grown exponentially since Hefner's experience in the early '90s, and reports show that similar abuses are occurring today, possibly without individuals in the vicinity ready to risk their livelihood to uncover them.

Hefner says he believes that similar abuses are still happening. "Nothing has really changed," he said in an interview.

In fact, media reports bear this out. In one instance, a guard at a private security company was accused of raping a number of women, and the deaths of immigrants in detention have been receiving increased attention.

Throughout the book runs the compelling thread of Hefner's own background, and how this affects his relationship with the immigrants he sees daily. Hefner's Mexican father died before his birth, and he was raised by a stepfather who led him to feel ashamed of his heritage. This struggle manifests itself and develops throughout the book, bringing an often much-needed respite from the litany of painful episodes.

Hefner's own political views on America's military-industrial complex and immigration enforcement system may not be the fully developed ones progressive readers would expect from a whistleblowing book - at one point he speaks of the importance of sacrifices by American troops in Iraq - it still remains a strong testament to the human feeling that made Hefner risk, and in fact, lose, his livelihood and dearest possessions to show the world what the words "immigration detention" really mean.

Hefner's continued fight under the Obama administration, and the appearance of many political figures in the early '90s who are still active in today's administration, show the importance of reading "Between the Fences" not only as a testimony to what has been, but as a script of what may still be happening.

"I hope this is something the readers will acknowledge too, when they read this book. They are just as guilty by not saying something and not doing anything as the person who is committing the crime," Hefner said. "America needs to lift her skirts high enough to see what is going on under her own feet."

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 Sources: http://www.truth-out.org/between-fences62842
Image: Seven Stories Press

In Search of Real Security, Part Two: Societies, like all living things, need air and light to live

by Jon Letman
Aug 30, 2010 - 09:47 AM

“Your Majesty, please…I don’t like to complain,
But down here below, we are feeling great pain.”
Dr. Seuss, Yertle the Turtle

LIHUE—A discussion on Kauai in August explored the impacts of a U.S. economy too intensely focused on its military operations overseas. Real security, it was said, will come when Hawaii is not dominated by military spending but instead supports more immediate human needs: health, education, preservation of the environment, sustainable energy, and fostering a culture the builds rather than destroys.

Invited by the Kauai Alliance for Peace and Social Justice, organizers of a community forum on the meaning of real security on August 7, Congresswoman Mazie Hirono (D—District 2) arrived during the second speaker’s presentation. Bisecting a discussion that examined how militarism affected real security for Hawaii’s people, Hirono gave her own short presentation in which she briefly addressed education, creation of green jobs, the BP oil spill, GMO crops, the Akaka Bill, and her vote against the request for an additional $37 billion in war funding. Hirono, who is running for reelection in November’s midterm election, said she had “serious and growing concerns about funding for the war in Afghanistan.” She added that she did not think peace would be brought to the region through the military.

Security, Hirono said, also means economic, food, and energy security and that the way to become more secure is through education.

“We need to enable our kids to be able to think critically and in an environment that is supportive,” Hirono said.

After answering questions, without hearing the speakers before or after her, Hirono departed, leaving American Friends Service Committee Hawaii program director Kyle Kajihiro to offer his thoughts on the meaning of real security.

Kajihiro examined security in terms of militarization and how it impacts Hawaii. He said he wants to challenge “the myth that empire equals peace and security.”

To remain in a constant state of warfare, even in the absence of open hostilities, is to build on the threat of violence for the purpose of maintaining control and to suppress dissent, Kajihiro said. The impact of war stretches from Afghanistan and Iraq to Makua Valley and Schofield Barracks on Oahu where soldiers train and perfect their craft.  “If the people of Hawaii don’t take action to stop these illegal wars, we become [not only] accessories to these crimes,” Kajihiro said, “but also their victims.”

“Look at Ke Awalau o Puuloa, what is now called ‘Pearl Harbor,’” Kajihiro continued. “This is a perfect example of a threat to real security under military occupation. What once was a food basket for Oahu with 36 fish ponds has become a giant toxic ‘Superfund site.’ What once gave life is now a toxic place for exporting and planning wars.”

Kajihiro went on to revisit the history of 20th century American and Japanese militarism in the Pacific, describing what he called the disastrous outcomes of the false premise that a loaded gun can somehow bring security. He suggested an alternative to the current model would be one based on meeting human needs and working toward a healthy, clean environment that sustains life.

The very notion of security in the United States today, Kajihiro explained, is based on the pursuit of something absolute and unattainable.

“In order to have our humanity intact, we have to have dialogue and openness and that requires some risk,” Kajihiro said. “To paraphrase theologian Dorothee Sölle, ‘societies, like all living things, need air and light to live.’”

The casualties can be seen in Hawaii from injured war vets to Hawaii’s “homeless” who are overlooked by a society obsessed with achieving a false sense of security through its military at any cost, even its own people.

Kajihiro was followed by the final speaker of the evening, Andrea Brower, co-director of Malama Kauai, a non-profit organization that works toward innovative and sustainable solutions for the island.

Brower acknowledged the relatively small turnout for the forum stemmed, in part, from a combination of people feeling powerless or lacking the belief that they are sufficiently informed to participate.

“In a capitalist worker economy where the cost of living is so high, people are tired from working two, even three jobs. It makes people blank out,” Brower said. “To really examine the problems of the world can feel like everything is unraveling.”

Brower said that problems can appear so vast and complex that people can’t imagine how they can do anything to effect change and as a result disengage or tune out.

To remedy that, Brower suggests people consider their own passions toward positive social transformation and ecological renewal and commit themselves to working toward the ideas and values they hold. Brower said contributing to positive change can take many forms including volunteering, politics, media, education, or something as simple as growing one’s own food in a home garden.

“If every person on this island was engaged in contributing to our community and to the land and committed to positive social change in a way that inspired and excited them, I think we would be on a different path,” Brower said. “I think we need to reinvigorate our culture with compassion and a sense of connection to other people on the planet, to recognize our common humanity.”

Asked if Hawaii can claim real security now, Brower was clear: “No, definitely not.” She pointed to global sustainability challenges from oil insecurity, economic insecurity, militarization, resource depletion, and climate change as forces which compromise true security in destabilizing and unpredictable ways.

But Brower cited a long list of areas where greater security could be fostered by changes to local agriculture, energy use and production, construction and waste disposal practices, public transportation and stronger community networks.

A few ideas that Brower suggested would lead to real security for Kauai included the full enforcement of Hawaii’s water right laws; incentivizing soil restoration; support for the development of local food processing facilities; a greater emphasis on eating locally-grown food; expansion of farmer and garden education programs; the creation of smaller, community-owned energy systems; and the production of more local building material and a revision of building codes to allow for its use.

Organizers of the forum estimate the turnout was between 50 and 60 people. A public event related to GMO crops one week later drew roughly twice as many people, yet forum participants and organizers of the real security forum were not disappointed.

Raymond Catania with the Kauai Alliance for Peace and Social Justice said participation was consistent with national trends. “Some people asked, ‘aren’t you just preaching to the choir?’” Catania said. “But it is important to preach to the choir so they can sing to the community.”

“It was good Kauai Alliance did this because I don’t think anyone else has,” said community organizer KipuKai Kualii. “I do think there is value in this type of discussion in that it motivates people.”

Kajihiro agreed: “We need more conversations that reframe security in this way. The question of security has not been asked from the viewpoint of ordinary people. Real peace and security is something we can have through solidarity, rather than force of arms. Real security will not be gained through threats to others.”

“Today we have so much power and technology that is supposed to make us secure, yet it achieves the exact opposite. It’s a dead end approach,” Kajihiro added. “We need to step back from the abyss. We need to figure out a different way to relate to each other on this small planet.”

The three-and-a-half hour forum was unreported by local media.

Sources: http://www.thehawaiiindependent.com/story/in-search-of-real-security-part-two/
Above: A Kauai farmer, pictured at Kukuiula outdoor market, grows food for local markets. Below: Kauai Fresh green house. Between 2006 and 2010 Hawaii residents receiving emergency food assistance from food banks increased by nearly 40 percent to a total of 14 percent of Hawaii's population. Second from bottom: Kalo loi on Kauai's north shore. Bottom: A Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) vehicle during a Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military exercise on Kauai in the summer of 2008. Photos by Jon Letman

In Search of Real Security, Part One: A Closer Look at Our Basic Needs in a Time of Crisis

by: Jon Letman  The Hawaii Independent Report
Thursday 26 August 2010

“Politics isn’t a game. It’s making this country better and what people represent. It’s a massive jobs program. For example, building the infrastructure of this country, and it’s not just the highways, it’s public transportation. It’s taking the money, from spending money on war in Iraq and Afghanistan and bringing it back home because there are major wars at home, people are struggling.”
—Amy Goodman, August 23, 2010

LIHUE—Ours is a nation obsessed with security. Two months after the bitter sting of the 9/11 attacks, the federal government formed the Transportation Security Administration and, one year later, the Department of Homeland Security. In the decade that has followed we have been pounded with talk of security in every aspect of our lives: from computer security and private home security to food and energy security, national security, nuclear security, and global security.

Yet as we approach our ninth year of war and occupation in Afghanistan and our eighth in Iraq, Americans have seen security at home eroded by financial collapse, a neglected infrastructure, a hemorrhaging job market, anemic social services and public health care crisis, volatile energy and food markets, and the complex realities of climate change.

In the face of home foreclosures, bankruptcy, and unemployment with many Americans’ income flat or falling and funding for basic civil institutions like public schools, libraries, and parks in decline, the question screams: “What is real security?”

When parents cannot keep their jobs, children cannot go to school, and families cannot stay in their homes, who in America today feels secure?

Typically in the United States, “security” is viewed in terms of freedom from violence, war, or the threat of terrorism. Throughout Bush’s two terms, Americans were incessantly told that preemptive war and victory in Iraq and Afghanistan were “vital to our national security.”

But if America’s embrace of militarism and a vast new untrackable surveillance culture is meant to reassure citizens that their security is being protected, at a minimum, Nidal Hassan, Faisal Shahzad, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, and Najibullah Zazi have all demonstrated that sending well over 1 million U.S. troops to fight and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, and spending over one trillion dollars on two wars since 2001 has not made us more secure, but less.

During the Cold War, President Dwight Eisenhower said: “We need an adequate defense, but every arms dollar we spend above adequacy has a long-term effect upon the nation and its security.” On another occasion, Eisenhower was quoted saying, “We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”

Following the September 11 hijackings, America’s airports were swept up in a new atmosphere of absolute insecurity. Quickly, and with almost no resistance, Americans were tossing out baby formula and toothpaste, removing shoes and belts and being swabbed for explosive residue every time they boarded an airplane.

At home and in the office we learned that our computers, telephones, credit cards, financial transactions, retail purchases, library visits, email and internet activity, and telephone calls were all fair game for surveillance. By 2010 untold thousands of ordinary American citizens had been added to terrorist watch lists and “no-fly lists” as a growing number of airports began using full body x-ray machines to project what are effectively nude images of us to security screeners all in the name of security.

As of August 2010, over 4,417 Americans have died in Iraq and 1,244 have died in Afghanistan. These numbers are dwarfed by the poorly recorded hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in those countries and a whole new generation of war veterans who have been severely injured, permanently disabled or driven to suicide. In January of this year the Veterans Affairs Department reported that suicides by male veterans (18 to 29 years old) between 2005 and 2007 had increased by 26 percent.

Like his predecessor, President Barack Obama regularly talks about security as it relates to the military in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan and at 770 U.S. military facilities in 39 countries around the world.

Speaking before 2010 graduating cadets at West Point, Barack Obama said: “You go abroad because your service is fundamental to our security back home.” In an earlier speech also at West Point, Obama called success in Afghanistan a “vital national security interest.”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said that Obama understood that the next president must be “Commander-in-Chief for America’s security around the world.”

Other politicians from Hawaii, like Obama, may talk about “living aloha,” but the word “security” is never far from their lips.

In his opening statement at a hearing on the 2011 Department of Defense Budget this June, Sen. Daniel Inouye said: “We need only to look at words spoken and actions taken ... by North Korea, Iran, and China to be reminded that our national security challenges go beyond those of irregular warfare.”

Sen. Daniel Akaka, who serves on committees and sub-committees overseeing Department of Homeland Security affairs, recently spoke about the importance of foreign language proficiency and cultural awareness as a vital tool for protecting national security. At a Senate hearing on the need to improve foreign language skills among Foreign Service officers, Akaka said, “Threats to our national security are becoming more complex, interconnected, and unconventional.” Language shortfalls, Akaka warned, “will continue to undermine our country’s national security.”

Republican Congressman Charles Djou, who won a special election in May after his two Democratic opponents split the vote, includes the following passage on his campaign website: “Hawaii has a unique and critical role in our national security. Our island chain is home to key military bases and stations, thousands of military personnel, and various strategic operations ... America must maintain its strong military and Hawaii must retain its central role in military preparedness.”

Like Djou, his presumed opponent in the upcoming midterm election, Democrat Colleen Hanabusa, also talks of Afghanistan as a “direct threat to our national security.” Her campaign website reads: “Afghanistan has proven to be a training ground and refuge for terrorists, rendering it a more direct threat to our national security than Iraq. I support President Obama’s decision to send over 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan ...”

Last month, Inouye and Akaka joined Djou in voting for an additional $37 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only Rep. Mazie Hirono (2nd Dist.) voted against the war funding bill.

Earlier this month Hirono briefly participated in a community forum on Kauai entitled “In Search of Real Security for Kauai.”

The panel discussion, organized by the Kauai Alliance for Peace and Social Justice, invited Rep. Hirono to join four speakers from Kauai and Oahu for an evening of ideas and discussion of how to pursue real security in an era of economic distress, social dislocation, climate change, and perennial militarism.

The forum opened with filmmaker and author (The Superferry Chronicles) Koohan Paik of Kauai sharing the stage with community organizer KipuKai Kualii.

Paik and Kualii discussed real security in terms of government spending priorities with an emphasis on the militarized state of Hawaii and how they say that money could be better used.

Paik, born in California but raised in South Korea and Guam before moving to Kauai in 2000, spoke of the importance of viewing Hawaii from a Pacific island perspective.

“We always hear Hawaii being described as ‘out in the middle of nowhere’ or as ‘the most isolated place on the planet,’ but these descriptions are from a staunchly continental perspective.”

“The ocean,” Paik said, “connects us all into a single blue continent.” Stressing the cultural, historical, and linguistic ties between all Pacific peoples, Paik said, “We need to see the connection between Hawaii and all the Pacific islands because the military certainly does. Part of the [U.S.] military’s build-up on Guam is a missile defense shield hooked up to a network that includes the Pacific Missile Range Facility [on Kauai], Kwajalein [Marshall Islands], Vandenberg Air force Base, and Okinawa.”

Paik, who recently wrote on militarism in Guam and the Pacific, said the militarization of the Pacific (which she points out ironically means ‘peace’) is antithetical to real security for the people whose environment, culture, and well-being is adversely impacted by the military.

“If we think of ourselves [in the Pacific] as separate, we will always be a small, disempowered population, isolated and in the middle of nowhere,” Paik said. “But if we think of ourselves as connected by the ocean, we can be a viable political block.”

Paik said real security and sustainability won’t come until people in the Pacific detach themselves from militarism, corporatism, and what she calls the “colonial thinking that power and abundance come from outside rather than within.”

During her presentation, Paik cited statistics and examples of how she said a militarized Pacific did not serve the interest of its people.

According to the National Priorities Project, the United States has spent more than $1,070,000,000 (one trillion, seventy billion dollars) on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. This works out to nearly $3.5 billion for the people of Hawaii alone. After her talk, people approached her and said they didn’t realize how much was being spent on the military.

Real security, Paik said, will come when Hawaii is not dominated by military spending but instead supports more immediate human needs—health, education, preservation of the environment, sustainable energy, and fostering a culture the builds rather than destroys.

“We cannot continuously expand as if the earth’s resources are infinite,” Paik said. The result of placing the military as a top priority, she explained, is to leave ordinary people fighting amongst themselves, scrambling for whatever scraps are left.

Paik’s address was followed by Kualii, who suggested “real security” would come by addressing immediate community needs, specifically poverty, un(and under)-employment, hunger, and affordable housing.

“Imagine what could happen if we decided what security is and how to meet the basic human needs of everyone in our community,” Kualii said.

Item by item, Kualii spelled out deficiencies in caring for members of society, arguing that a nation committed to real security would reassess its priorities in favor of, at a minimum, funding for basic medical care, housing, and food needs for society’s most vulnerable members—the very old and the very young. Citing County of Kauai Economic Development Plan statistics, Kualii referred to four communities on Kauai with poverty rates well above the statewide rate of 10.7 percent.

Part of a strategy to counter a growing dependency on the local food bank (Kualii said over 50,000 people were fed by Hawaii foodbanks in 2006) would be to expand certified community kitchens as cottage industry around the island.

A reassessment of funding priorities, Kualii suggested, could better support food stamps, children’s healthcare, and housing programs while promoting job creation programs, sustainable business development, and workforce training. With 15.5 percent of Hawaii’s workforce either unemployed or under-employed and around 35 percent of Kauai households qualifying as economically needy, Kualii said real security was far away.

Kualii noted that between the comprehensive studies Hunger in America 2006 and Hunger in America 2010, Hawaii residents receiving emergency food assistance from food banks increased by nearly 40 percent to a total of 14 percent of Hawaii’s population.

A society in which large segments of the population lack adequate shelter, food, or medicine—one in which social services and agencies rely largely on unpaid staff and volunteers and where people are increasingly unable to pay for housing—is a society lacking real security, Kualii said.

Part Two of Jon Letman’s “In Search of Real Security” for The Hawaii Independent will feature further insights from the Kauai Alliance for Peace and Social Justice’s community forum on August 7 as well as a closer look into developing our food and environmental security. 

Sources: http://www.thehawaiiindependent.com/story/in-search-of-real-security-part-one/
              http://www.truth-out.org/in-search-real-security-part-one-a-closer-look-our-basic-needs-a-time-crisis62823
image Above: A Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) vehicle during a Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military exercise on Kauai in the summer of 2008. Below: An anti-war protest in Lihue in 2008. (Photos: Letman/The Hawaii Independent