National Organizations
Arlington: Possibly Thousands
Possibly Thousands Of Mishandled Arlington Graves
July 29, 2010 Washington…The estimate of possibly mishandled graves at Arlington National Cemetery soared into the thousands Thursday, and ousted cemetery officials conceded that they knew about problems at least five years ago.
A Senate report released Thursday said that 4,900 to 6,600 graves among the 330,000 veterans and others buried at Arlington may be unmarked, improperly marked, or mislabeled on cemetery maps.
Probes Open in Military Insurance Death- Benefits
Gates Says Pentagon to Help Death-Benefits Inquiry
29 July 2010 Defense Secretary Robert Gates pledged to help the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs probe how insurers reap profits from death benefits retained for the families of deceased military personnel.
“I will be very interested in the outcome of the VA investigation,” Gates told a Pentagon press briefing. “We will do everything we can to help.”
Earlier today, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began a fraud probe into the life insurance industry and subpoenaed MetLife Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc. for information about profits on the retained death benefits.
Nick Kristof Hits on Afghan Exit Strategy, Cost Same as 246 Soldiers
Not only is your tax money funding the Taliban to an extent which is perhaps even greater than the opium trade; not only is the Pakistani military helping Afghan insurgents attack American troops (again most likely with part of that $1 billion a year we give them); not only is the $50 billion Congress just borrowed to keep the war going making us even poorer; the kicker is it could all be done and won for a teeny tiny fraction of the cost. In a remarkably subversive piece of journalism for the NYT, Nicholas Kristof lets the cat out of the bag: this military spending is all one big, huge waste. We could be borrowing that money from China for other things. Today he writes:
Activist Advice: Ask Vinny
By David Swanson
Michael Pertschuk's new book "The DeMarco Factor" is a guide to political activism in the form of a chronicle of the work of one man, Vincent DeMarco. A lot of people may never have heard of him, especially if you're not from Maryland, but DeMarco led campaigns over the past 20 years that successfully passed legislation in Maryland strengthening gun control despite the opposition of the NRA, raising taxes on cigarettes despite the opposition of big tobacco, and providing more people with healthcare despite the vicious opposition to that agenda we should all be familiar with. The strategies employed are worth examining.
Military Stress: Army Releases Report on Suicide Prevention
I just can't think of anything more to add, as not only myself but many others have stated over and over thousands of times in these years, to the three reports and link to the study then are stated within them!
This is a 10MB, 370page pdf download, you can visit the Army site by click the graphic or the link.
Army Health Promotion, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention Report
National Insecurity: Afraid of the Truth
By Dave Lindorff
The White House’s initial response to the release of 92,000 pages of raw reports from the field by US forces in Afghanistan for a period from 2004-2009--that it was a threat to national security and to the lives of American troops--was as predictable as it was farcical.
Peace Movement Adopts New Comprehensive Strategy
By David Swanson
Last week 700 leading peace activists from around the United States met and strategized in Albany, N.Y. ( http://nationalpeaceconference.org ). They discussed, debated, and voted for a comprehensive new plan for the coming months. The plan includes a new focus and some promising proposals for building a coalition that includes the labor movement, civil rights groups, students, and other sectors of the activist world that have an interest in ending wars and/or shifting our financial resources from wars to where they're actually needed. The full plan, including a preface, is available online.
Action Program Adopted by the National Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now!
Albany, New York, July 23-25, 2010
Part 1: Preface
Given the escalation of the war in Afghanistan since the election of President Obama, the challenges facing the antiwar movement are greater now than ever.
Aggression and the ICC
The Chilcot Inquiry, Aggression and the International Criminal Court
29 July 2010 The 2003 U.S. led invasion of Iraq was a crime--a profound and catastrophic violation of international law.
The crime was aggression: the waging of unprovoked war on a sovereign state.
A growing international consensus says that not only was the invasion illegal, but in the future such crimes will result in direct and severe personal consequences for leaders who organize the killing and give the orders to start.
Military Industry Welfare
Why aren't conservatives blasting military industry welfare?
July 29, 2010 A most peculiar thing happened last week: The Washington Post ripped a federal welfare boondoggle to shreds, exposing tens of billions of dollars of waste, duplication and bureaucratic excess . . . and conservatives didn't erupt in astonishment and praise. In fact, they didn't raise a peep.
That's because the welfare queens ripping off taxpayer dollars in this case aren't poverty pimps waving the bloody flag of race and class, but military-industrial hustlers exploiting the war on terrorism to build themselves opulent and powerful fiefdoms.
Action Program Adopted by the National Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now!
Albany, New York, July 23-25, 2010
Part 1: Preface
Given the escalation of the war in Afghanistan since the election of President Obama, the challenges facing the antiwar movement are greater now than ever.
In A War/Occupation Theater
There are always plenty of good deeds done by the soldiers serving in theaters, rarely reported on as they are numerous and happen like they would anywhere and done by the greater majority serving in the theaters. In Afghanistan if there had never been an Iraq devastating diversion and much more cooperation, for our money, from Pakistan, we wouldn't have greatly increased the hatreds towards us and we would have been helping the Afghans in rebuilding these past years and greatly marginalized the extreme criminal terrorist threats and groups as we would be reading and seeing many real winning hearts and minds stories.
Local Soldier Saves Afghan Children From Floods
Dutch Leaving Afghanistan
Dutch troops to leave Afghanistan
29 July 2010 THE HAGUE — The Dutch troop deployment in Afghanistan, often held up as a model for other peace missions, ends after four years on Sunday amid concerns about the void it will leave.
"We offer the majority of the population relatively safe living conditions and advancements in health care, education and trade," chief of defence, General Peter van Uhm, said of his troops' legacy in the southern Uruzgan province.
"We have achieved tangible results that the Netherlands can be proud of," he told a news conference on Wednesday.
Around 1,950 Dutch troops are deployed in Afghanistan, mainly in Uruzgan where opium production is high and the Taliban very active, under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
DCAA Report on Prime Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan
Oversight of war zone subcontractors is lacking, panel finds
July 26, 2010 Prime contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are not managing their subcontractors' performance and fees consistently, the Defense Department's top auditing official told the Commission on Wartime Contracting on Monday.
A Defense Contract Audit Agency review of prime contractors' billing and cost records identified several situations in which they failed to award fixed-price subcontracts based on fair and reasonable prices, often leading to unreasonable or unallowable costs.
Investigating the Freedom Flotilla Attack
Investigating the Freedom Flotilla Attack - by Stephen Lendman
On June 2, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) approved formation of an international committee (like the Goldstone Commission) to probe the Flotilla attack, saying it will include lawyers and international law and human rights experts, its findings to be presented in September (during the Council's three week session in Geneva) after visiting Gaza and contacting Israel, Turkey, Greece, and the Freedom Flotilla coalition.
HRC's panel includes:
-- Desmond de Silva, a UK lawyer and former chief prosecutor for the Sierra Leone Special Court investigation into widespread killings there;
-- Karl Hudson-Phillips, a former International Criminal Court (ICC) judge and former Trinidad and Tobago attorney general and parliament member; and
-- Malaysia's Mary Shanthi Dairiam, active in gender equality issues, including on the UN Development Program's gender equity task force.
Back in September, Lots of Great Bloggers Here in the Meantime
If it's August, 2010, I'm writing a book. See you in September.
Investigating Fallen Soldiers' Death Benefits
Apparently what started out as some thinking this might be a better way to help and handle the Death Benefits of Soldiers, and possibly others, didn't stay that way as Corporate Greed stepped in and like everything else rules were developed, over the past decade, and not explained properly or just left unexplained to those who were receiving the Death Insurance Policies Payouts!
Veterans Affairs to Investigate Fallen Soldiers' Death Benefits
Six Generations of U.S. War Opposition
By David Swanson
The United States today may be the planet's greatest ever war maker, but the wars are fought, the bases maintained, and the weapons manufactured against the will of the majority of U.S. citizens. We express our opposition to wars openly in ways that could not be done at all until around 1880, and in so doing we almost certainly prevent more war making and limit the tactics our government can employ. In fact, if wars were still fought in the way the U.S. Civil War was fought, with armies on battlefields, we would probably have ended war forever some generations back. Instead, the progressive blogosphere, what passes for our anti-war fourth estate, just gathered in Las Vegas with little or no awareness or notice given to the fact that wars half-way around the world were being fought from drone control booths just down the road.
Why still there nine years after the invasion?
28 July 2010 LONDON — An inquiry is to be conducted into the Afghanistan war, MPs said on Wednesday, examining why British troops remain there nine years after the invasion and whether they have been successful.
The House of Commons defence select committee has called for written evidence on "the justification for the continued participation" of Britain's 10,000 troops in the international coalition in Afghanistan.
Amid polls showing a lack of public support for the mission, the committee will also examine "the success of the government in communicating this to the UK public". Continued
U.S. Continues to Fund Taliban IEDs, Then Says Wikileaks Endangers Troops
This week the White House condemned the posting of politically embarrassing classified documents which could come to be known as the Afghan Pentagon Papers on the Internet, saying this "could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security," on the same day that Congress approved the administration's requests for further war funding, significant amounts of which, it is now known, will wind up directly in the hands of Taliban insurgents. Seven months ago Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in testimony before Congress: