by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 14, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest
By Spencer Ackerman / Wired
Thought the Iraq war was over? The Obama administration certainly wants you to think so, the better for its re-election campaign. Inconvenient fact, though: The Pentagon is asking for nearly $3 billion for a war it isn’t actually fighting.
To be specific, the Pentagon’s brand-new budget request asks for $2.9 billion for what it calls “Post-Operation NEW DAWN (OND)/Iraq Activities.” That’s almost as much money as the Pentagon spends on Darpa, its mad-science arm. And there are practically no U.S. troops in Iraq.
The Pentagon’s briefing materials provide little explanation for the expense. “Finalizing transition” is the ostensible mission the Pentagon wants funded. Its remaining office in Baghdad, the Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq, will get cash to “continue security assistance and security cooperation” with the Iraqi military “and amounts for the reset of equipment redeploying from Iraq and the theater of operations.”
And that won’t be all the cash going to Iraq. Contained within the classified “black” budget is sure to be money for special operations forces to hunt Iraq’s remaining terrorists on a case-by-case basis. And chances are, the CIA is spending money in Iraq, too.
Aside from that, the U.S. military has turned over operations in Iraq to the State Department, which in turn has hired an army of private security contractors the size of a heavy combat brigade. State has blocked congressional oversight into how its contractors will operate in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal. But it’s clear that the diplomats are also buying themselves an air force — since Dec. 17, 2011 marked the first day in 20 years that the U.S. Air Force received no orders for operations in or over Iraq.
The New York Times noted over the weekend that in Afghanistan, “even dying is being outsourced” to civilian contractors. During the coming years in Iraq, that trend is likely to accelerate.
By and large, though, the point of the military’s residual operations in Iraq will be to sell the Iraqis weapons. It’s already brokered a sale of 18 F-16s to Iraq’s fledgling Air Force, worth $835 million. The Iraqis are already talking about doubling that purchase in the future. They can discuss future weapons sales with a U.S. military office that’s flush with cash.
From Wired: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/02/iraq-budget-still/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 11, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest
By Ma’an News Agency
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Amnesty International on Wednesday urged Israel to cancel plans to forcibly displace around 2,300 Bedouin residents from a Jerusalem district.
“Thousands of Bedouin living in some of the most vulnerable communities in the West Bank are facing the destruction of their homes and livelihoods under this Israeli military plan,” Ann Harrison, interim Deputy Director for Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program, said.
“Many are registered refugees and some have been displaced multiple times since 1948,” she added.
In July 2011, Israel’s civil administration officials first told UN agencies of a plan to evict some 2,300 residents of 20 Bedouin communities in a Jerusalem district to a site approximately 300 meters from the Jerusalem municipal garbage dump, an Amnesty statement said.
The communities are all currently located near illegal settlements in the Maale Adumim settlement bloc, many of them in areas targeted for settlement expansion.
Community representatives told Amnesty International that they reject the plan because it would be impossible for them to maintain their traditional way of life if they were moved to a restricted area near the garbage dump.
Israeli officials have emphasized that the displacement plan envisions connecting relocated Bedouin communities to the electricity and water networks. They have not explained why Israel can provide such services to illegal settlements and unrecognized settler outposts in the West Bank, but not to longstanding Bedouin communities.
“Israeli military officials are putting a gloss on their plans by portraying them as a way of providing Bedouin with basic amenities such as water and electricity, but in fact such forcible relocation of Bedouin would merely perpetuate years of dispossession and discrimination and could constitute a war crime,” said Ann Harrison.
Building in illegal Israeli settlements increased by 20 per cent in 2011, according to the Israeli monitoring group Peace Now, and the Israeli authorities moved to recognize 11 new settlements, home to some 2,300 settlers, by legalizing outposts built without governmental authorization.
Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank forcibly evicted almost 1,100 people in 2011, an 80 per cent increase over 2010 and more than any year since the UN began keeping comprehensive records in 2005.
Ninety per cent of the demolitions occurred in vulnerable farming and herding communities in Area C, including demolitions in several of the Jahalin Bedouin communities.
From Ma’an News Agency: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=458823
by deepgreenresistance | Nov 29, 2011 | Property & Material Destruction
By Agence France-Presse
Masked gunmen on Friday blew up a gas pipeline which supplies Egyptian gas to Israel, the official MENA news agency reported, in the eighth such attack this year.
The saboteurs planted explosives under the pipeline, around 60 kilometres (40 miles) west of the town of El-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, before fleeing, witnesses said.
No one was injured and, due to maintenance operations at the time of the blast following recent attacks, there was no gas in the pipeline, MENA reported.
The pipeline, which carries gas through the Sinai and on to Jordan and Israel, has already been attacked seven times this year, the first during the mass uprisings that drove president Hosni Mubarak from power in February.
The last attack was carried out two weeks ago, when two explosions struck the same section of the pipeline. The army was deployed in the region since the blasts.
Gas deliveries to Israel, agreed under Mubarak, have come under heavy criticism in Egypt.
Israel generates 40 percent of its electricity using natural gas, and Egypt provides 43 percent of its gas supplies.
Egyptian authorities have on several occasions announced measures to step up protection of the pipeline and try to arrest those behind the attacks.
Egyptian gas also covers 80 percent of Jordan’s electricity production demand — 6.8 million cubic metres a day.
Egypt’s Sinai region is particularly security sensitive due to tensions with the Bedouin community living there.
Many goods are smuggled to the Palestinian enclave of Gaza through the Sinai, which the Israelis also charge is a rear base for militant attacks against its territory.
From The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/25/egypt-gas-pipeline-blown-up-again-state-media/
