A Special Supplement: The Responsibility of Intellectuals by Noam Chomsky TWENTY-YEARS AGO, Dwight Macdonald published a series of articles in Politics on the responsibility of peoples and, specifically, the responsibility of intellectuals. I read them as an undergraduate, in the years just after the war, and had occasion to read them again a few months ago. They seem to me to have lost none of their power or persuasiveness. Macdonald is concerned with the question of war guilt. He asks the question: To what extent were the German or Japanese people responsible for the atrocities committed by their governments? And, quite properly, he turns the question back to us: To what extent are the British or American people responsible for the vicious terror bombings of civilians, perfected as a technique of warfare by the Western democracies and reaching their culmination in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, surely among the most unspeakable crimes in history. With respect to the responsibility of intellectuals, there are still other, equally disturbing questions. Arthur M.
Researcher: U.S. Tested and Perfected a "Tsunami Bomb" January 2, 2013 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. As if global warming isn’t posing a great enough challenging to low-lying regions, New Zealand author recently uncovered evidence that the United States perfected a “tsunami bomb” that can flood whole coastal cities decades ago. The blasts from a series of these tsunami bombs can create waves up to 33 feet high, which can wipe out small towns or villages along the coast. New Zealand author Ray Waru discovered these secret tests, known as “Project Seal,” while doing research in the national archives for his new book Secrets and Treasures, which first revealed information on this bomb testing. "It was absolutely astonishing,” he told the AFP. The United States ultimately dropped the nuclear bomb, rather than the tsunami bomb, on Japan at the close of World War II. Tsunami Bomb later became the name of a short-lived California punk band in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
Schwarzkopf (RIP) and How the United States got Bogged Down in the Middle East Gen. Norman H. Schwarzkopf is dead at 78. He died of pneumonia. Schwarzkopf was among the military leaders who repositioned the United States as a Middle Eastern hegemon. The US had interests in the Middle East from World War II forward, but the region was frankly on the back burner. When he was Israeli ambassador to Washington in the early 1970s, Yitzhak Rabin complained that he had difficulty getting appointments in the American capital. It was the Gulf War of 1991 that changed everything and brought the US into the Middle East as a Great Power. Iraq’s action underlined how vulnerable the small oil emirates of the Persian Gulf were. But in the Gulf, British naval power advanced by a series of treaties with the small principalities along its Arab littoral, turning them into protectorates. Britain withdrew from the Gulf gradually through the 1960s, and pulled out altogether in 1971, as part of decolonization. President George W. The turning point was the Gulf War, and the late Gen.
Our Intolerable Risk by PETER G. COHEN In a 2012 Status of World Nuclear Forces report, The Federation of American Scientists (FAS, founded in 1945 by many of the original group of scientists who invented and built the first atomic bombs and who later came to oppose them) estimates that 1,800 Russian and U.S. nuclear warheads are on “high alert,” ready to strike at the push of a button. This, two decades after the Cold War ended. While it is difficult to ascertain how many nuclear warheads exist in each nation without access to classified information, based on publicly available information, the FAS counts approximately 16,200 stockpiled nuclear warheads, of which almost 4,000 are “operational.” That this level of risk is holding the people of the world hostage is intolerable. If a small fraction (as few as 50, according to the American Geophysical Union) of those 1,800 “high alert” warheads were to detonate on either of our nations, Russia or the U.S., such a detonation would cause a worldwide catastrophe.
An excerpt from Fred Kaplan’s “The Insurgents” Chapter 1 “What We Need Is an Officer with Three Heads” A few days shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, John Nagl saw his future disappear. The first tremors came at dawn, on February 24, 1991, as he revved up the engine of his M-1 tank and plowed across the Saudi Arabian border into the flat, endless sands of southern Iraq. For the previous month, American warplanes had bombarded Saddam Hussein’s military machine to the point of exhaustion. Now the ground-war phase of Operation Desert Storm—the largest armored offensive since the Second World War— roared forth in full force, pushing Iraq’s occupying army out of Kuwait. Lieutenant Nagl was a platoon leader in the US Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, which, on that morning, mounted the crucial feint along the route where Saddam’s commanders were expecting an invasion. It was a moment of unaccustomed triumph for the US military, still haunted by the defeat in Vietnam. Nagl didn’t think that any of this necessarily meant the coming of world peace.
US-Australia plans for war on China A newly published book by journalist David Uren has revealed that the Australian government’s 2009 Defence White Paper contained a “secret chapter” that assessed “Australia’s ability to fight an air-sea battle alongside the United States against China.” The chapter was omitted from the public version as it contained references to Australian forces assisting the US military to impose a naval blockade of China’s trade routes, and likely Chinese retaliation against targets on Australian soil. The existence of the confidential chapter was prominently reported on the front page of the Australian newspaper on Saturday under the headline “Secret ‘war’ with China uncovered.” Labor’s Defence Minister Stephen Smith was questioned about the revelation on Sunday. While he attempted to dismiss as “nonsense” the report that Australia had plans for war with China, he confirmed that there were both public and secret versions of the White Paper.
US Covert War in Yemen Receives Support from Saudi Air Force Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan (Flickr Photo by CSIS) In a feature story for The Times (London), journalist Iona Craig reports a Times investigation found “Saudi Arabian fighter jets joined the United States’ secret war in Yemen.” The support came in a year when the number of drone strikes in the Arabian Peninsula more than doubled and surpassed the number of drone strikes in Pakistan. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there were 25 confirmed US operations in 2012 up from 13 confirmed operations in 2011. There were 58 possible US operations in 2012 up from 17 possible operations in 2011. A US intelligence source reportedly claims, “Some of the so-called drone missions are actually Saudi air force missions.” It is believed that drones operate from bases in Saudi Arabia. The Times report details a September 2, 2012, air strike that killed 12 civilians, including three children. …The first missile hit the vehicle, flipping it over.
Gang Rapes and Beatings, Brothels Filled with Teenage Prostitutes -- The Depths of American Brutality in Vietnam January 19, 2013 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. The following is an excerpt from Nick Turse's new book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (Metropolitan Books, 2013). In 1971, Major Gordon Livingston, a West Point graduate who served as regimental surgeon with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, testified before members of Congress about the ease with which Americans killed Vietnamese. Among those whom Livingston counted in the 90 percent who regarded the Vietnamese as subhuman was his commander, General George S. Some soldiers hacked the heads off Vietnamese to keep, trade, or exchange for prizes offered by commanders. “There was people in all the platoons with ears on cords,” Jimmie Busby, a member of the 75th Rangers during 1970–71, told an army criminal investigator. Norman Ryman, of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, was one of these souvenir-collecting soldiers.
The Secret History of US Drone Strikes in 2012 (Woods et al.) Chris Woods, Jack Serle and Alice K. Ross write at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Reported civilian deaths fell sharply in Pakistan in 2012, with Bureau data suggesting that a minimum of 2.5% of those reported killed were civilians – compared with more than 14% in 2011. This suggests the CIA is seeking to limit non-militant casualties, perhaps as a result of sustained criticism. Drone strikes in Pakistan are now at their lowest level in five years, as Islamabad protests almost every attack. As drone strikes fell in Pakistan they rose steeply in Yemen, as US forces aided a major military campaign to oust al Qaeda and other Islamists from southern cities. Little is still known about US drone strikes in Somalia, with only two credibly reported incidents in 2012. In 2012,the US also chose to loosen the bonds of secrecy on its 10-year-old drone targeted killing programme. A year of drones A major covert US military offensive in Yemen began in March. Country by country Pakistan Yemen