About that food that you threw out last night...

[David13]

Yummy. just cooked some Freshly butchered home grown grass feed Irish dexter steer steaks and burger. I won't be throwing any out it's too tasty.

Dang
If I hadn't a just finished my own steak I would be on my way right over to your house to help you eat some of that beef. Maybe next time. Let me know.
There we would be, solving the problem of hunger.
dc

And I'll bring Eddie with me too.

[Silver]

So Iran has invaded Yemen or at least is supporting rebels there and that's bad. However, if Saudi Arabia which participated in the 9/11 attack does the same that's OK. And if America does irreparable harm in Yemen, well, that's just part of our role as the only policeman in the world with $20 trillion in debt and a Military Industrial Complex that is still able to bully its way around the world.

This might be a good time to remind y'all that such wickedness will not be allowed to continue forever. Whether in our lifetime or in some future generation, America will receive the full brunt of the blowback which Ron Paul warned us about.

[BeNotDeceived]

So Iran has invaded Yemen or at least is supporting rebels there and that's bad. However, if Saudi Arabia which participated in the 9/11 attack does the same that's OK. And if America does irreparable harm in Yemen, well, that's just part of our role as the only policeman in the world with $20 trillion in debt and a Military Industrial Complex that is still able to bully its way around the world.

This might be a good time to remind y'all that such wickedness will not be allowed to continue forever. Whether in our lifetime or in some future generation, America will receive the full brunt of the blowback which Ron Paul warned us about.

Will we ever do our duty to subdue the Earth as commanded in Genesis 1:28

can otec neutralize hurricanes? - simple solutions for planet earth and ...

[gardener4life]

Please don't put pictures like that up here.

[Silver]

Please don't put pictures like that up here.

Why not?

[shadow]

This isn't an American failure.
Hopefully the oppressive leaders of those countries will be swiftly replaced by good, caring people.

Including the country of America.

The only time you see kids starving in the USA is when the parents are abusing the kids.

[Silver]

This isn't an American failure.
Hopefully the oppressive leaders of those countries will be swiftly replaced by good, caring people.

Including the country of America.

The only time you see kids starving in the USA is when the parents are abusing the kids.

One more time, this thread is not about kids starving in America or even those starving in foreign countries. It is about the relentless murder of people in foreign countries by our leaders and by our military. It is about horrific acts being committed in the name of the American people.

[shadow]

This isn't an American failure.
Hopefully the oppressive leaders of those countries will be swiftly replaced by good, caring people.

Including the country of America.

The only time you see kids starving in the USA is when the parents are abusing the kids.

One more time, this thread is not about kids starving in America or even those starving in foreign countries. It is about the relentless murder of people in foreign countries by our leaders and by our military. It is about horrific acts being committed in the name of the American people.

This thread you started began with starving children. There's even some pics you posted of starving kids. Alzheimer's kicking in??

[Silver]

Including the country of America.

The only time you see kids starving in the USA is when the parents are abusing the kids.

One more time, this thread is not about kids starving in America or even those starving in foreign countries. It is about the relentless murder of people in foreign countries by our leaders and by our military. It is about horrific acts being committed in the name of the American people.

This thread you started began with starving children. There's even some pics you posted of starving kids. Alzheimer's kicking in??

Haha. I want to address why kids are starving.

[eddie]

Including the country of America.

The only time you see kids starving in the USA is when the parents are abusing the kids.

One more time, this thread is not about kids starving in America or even those starving in foreign countries. It is about the relentless murder of people in foreign countries by our leaders and by our military. It is about horrific acts being committed in the name of the American people.

This thread you started began with starving children. There's even some pics you posted of starving kids. Alzheimer's kicking in??

Memory loss is one of the first signs of Alzheimer's.

[Silver]

The only time you see kids starving in the USA is when the parents are abusing the kids.

One more time, this thread is not about kids starving in America or even those starving in foreign countries. It is about the relentless murder of people in foreign countries by our leaders and by our military. It is about horrific acts being committed in the name of the American people.

This thread you started began with starving children. There's even some pics you posted of starving kids. Alzheimer's kicking in??

Memory loss is one of the first signs of Alzheimer's.

Go ahead and pile on, eddie, if it makes you feel good. As I've told you, in particular, before, the last thing I want is to be popular with you and your warmongering ideas.

Once again, for the reading challenged, in the first post of this thread you will find a starving child, without any mention of how kids in the US are being treated or how Americans waste food. The title of the thread was written in such a way as to draw in viewers. It was click-bait, successful as always.

The 2nd post mentions specifically the MIC in a derogatory manner.

Two posts in a row to set the theme of the thread and subsequent explanations which follow also clarified my intent for the thread. I can only surmise that those who attack me on different points do so because they are choosing to ignore the words they see on the screen. Fine. The last thing I'm here for is a popularity contest. It does make one wonder why those who attack me can't just put me on ignore though. LOL.

Oh, and by the way, the Trump supporters here are still studiously ignoring the obvious betrayal by their favorite Tangerine.

just...got...to...get...my...hands...together...like....jpg (352.73 KiB) Viewed 421 times

[eddie]

One more time, this thread is not about kids starving in America or even those starving in foreign countries. It is about the relentless murder of people in foreign countries by our leaders and by our military. It is about horrific acts being committed in the name of the American people.

This thread you started began with starving children. There's even some pics you posted of starving kids. Alzheimer's kicking in??

Memory loss is one of the first signs of Alzheimer's.

Go ahead and pile on, eddie, if it makes you feel good. As I've told you, in particular, before, the last thing I want is to be popular with you and your warmongering ideas.

Once again, for the reading challenged, in the first post of this thread you will find a starving child, without any mention of how kids in the US are being treated or how Americans waste food. The title of the thread was written in such a way as to draw in viewers. It was click-bait, successful as always.

The 2nd post mentions specifically the MIC in a derogatory manner.

Two posts in a row to set the theme of the thread and subsequent explanations which follow also clarified my intent for the thread. I can only surmise that those who attack me on different points do so because they are choosing to ignore the words they see on the screen. Fine. The last thing I'm here for is a popularity contest. It does make one wonder why those who attack me can't just put me on ignore though. LOL.

Oh, and by the way, the Trump supporters here are still studiously ignoring the obvious betrayal by their favorite Tangerine.
just...got...to...get...my...hands...together...like....jpg

Silver, you talked to me! Can't we just be friends in spite of our different opinions? Darn it, people like me!

[Silver]

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/15/t ... di-abuses/

Trump Ignores Israeli/Saudi Abuses
October 15, 2017
Save
By offering a propagandistic tirade on Iran’s role in the Mideast – a classic neocon screed – President Trump has demonstrated his inability to bring any fresh or honest thinking to the regional crises, as Kathy Kelly explains.


By Kathy Kelly

Mordechai Vanunu was imprisoned in Israel for 18 years because he blew the whistle on Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. He felt he had “an obligation to tell the people of Israel what was going on behind their backs” at a supposed nuclear research facility which was actually producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. His punishment for breaking the silence about Israel’s capacity to manufacture nuclear weapons included 11 years of solitary confinement.

The Grimace.jpg (85.56 KiB) Viewed 378 times

President Donald Trump poses for photos with ceremonial swordsmen on his arrival to Murabba Palace, as the guest of Saudi King Salman, May 20, 2017, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
On Friday, reading about President Donald Trump’s new strategy on Iran, Vanunu’s long isolation and sacrificial commitment to truth-telling came to mind. Donald Trump promised to “deny the Iranian regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.” But it is Israel, which possesses an estimated 80 nuclear warheads, with fissile material for up to 200, which poses the major nuclear threat in the region. And Israel is allied to the nation with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal: the United States.

Israel doesn’t acknowledge its nuclear arsenal publicly, nor does Israel allow weapons inspectors into its nuclear weapons facilities. Along with India and Pakistan, Israel refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. And it has used conventional weapons in numerous destabilizing wars, which include aerial bombing of Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank.

Vanunu, designated by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg as the “the pre-eminent hero of the nuclear era,” helped many people envision nations in the region making progress toward a nuclear weapons-free Middle East.

In fact, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jawad Zarif, spoke eloquently about just that possibility, in 2015, holding that “if the Vienna deal is to mean anything, the whole of the Middle East must rid itself of weapons of mass destruction.”

“Iran,” he added, “is prepared to work with the international community to achieve these goals, knowing full well that, along the way, it will probably run into many hurdles raised by the skeptics of peace and diplomacy.”

Significantly, since the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” pact with Iran was concluded in 2015, the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has steadily verified Iran’s compliance with inspections. Iran has accepted around-the-clock supervision by IAEA officials.

What’s more, “Iran has gotten rid of all of its highly enriched uranium,” according to Jessica Matthews, writing for the New York Review of Books. Matthews continues:

“It has also eliminated 98 percent of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, leaving only three hundred kilograms, less than the amount needed to fuel one weapon if taken to high enrichment. The number of centrifuges maintained for uranium enrichment is down from 19,000 to 6,000. The rest have been dismantled and put into storage under tight international monitoring.

“Continuing enrichment is limited to 3.67 percent, the accepted level for reactor fuel. All enrichment has been shut down at the once-secret, fortified, underground facility at Fordow, south of Tehran. Iran has disabled and poured concrete into the core of its plutonium reactor — thus shutting down the plutonium as well as the uranium route to nuclear weapons. It has provided adequate answers to the IAEA’s long-standing list of questions regarding past weapons-related activities.”

U.S. Government’s Sabotage

What do the Iranians think of the U.S. government? Ordinary Iranians might well think that whatever discontent they have with their own government the U.S. is their most implacable and most immediate enemy. Invective like Trump’s recent words could be a precursor of disastrous invasion. Many Iranians remember the U.S.-backed coup that ended their democracy in 1953, and they remember the fierce U.S. support given to Saddam Hussein in the brutal eight years of the Iran-Iraq war.


At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”
Noam Chomsky rightly names the U.S. “shock and awe” attack against Iraq as the greatest destabilizing force at work in the Middle East. “Thanks to that invasion,” writes Chomsky, “hundreds of thousands were killed and millions of refugees generated, barbarous acts of torture were committed — Iraqis have compared the destruction to the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century — leaving Iraq the unhappiest country in the world according to WIN/Gallup polls. Meanwhile, sectarian conflict was ignited, tearing the region to shreds and laying the basis for the creation of the monstrosity that is ISIS. And all of that is called ‘stabilization.’”

Trump’s record of statements and of cabinet appointments suggests that regime change in Iran is a long-term goal. Despite his close Saudi ally’s massive involvement in funding and fomenting terrorism, Trump’s evolving strategy for the Middle East strangely emphasizes Iranian impacts on the region, particularly regarding the conflict in Yemen.

Yemen is entering conflict-driven famine, with a correspondingly lethal cholera outbreak, making it the worst of the region’s “Four Famines,” now widely recognized as collectively the worst starvation crisis in the 72-year history of the United Nations.

“In Yemen,” says Trump, “the IRGC, (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp), has attempted to use the Houthis as puppets to hide Iran’s role in using sophisticated missiles and explosive boats to attack innocent civilians in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as to restrict freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.”

But it is Saudi Arabia and its UAE ally, with crucial U.S. backing, that have been intensely bombing Yemen since 2015 and maintaining a punishing Red Sea blockade against shipments often vital to famine relief.

“The Saudi-led coalition’s ships are preventing essential supplies from entering Yemen,” according to an Oct. 11, 2017 Reuters report. The report goes on to assess the dire consequences, for Yemen, caused by blocking and delaying ships carrying food and medicine. It documents many cases in which vessels were thoroughly searched, certified not to be carrying weapons, and still not allowed to enter Yemen.

In a time when 20 million people face starvation, it’s particularly obscene for any country to pour resources into nuclear weaponry. Mordechai Vanunu took extraordinary risks and endured incredible suffering to rescue the human species from the foolhardiness of building and maintaining nuclear arsenals.

I wonder if people worldwide can rise to a level of courage and seriousness needed to simply recognize, and then, where possible, act in response to the world’s real threats. Within the U.S., can several decades of U.S. government bipartisan lying about Iran be overcome with saner, more humane narratives?

Can the threat of U.S. invasion be lifted long enough to allow Iran’s people a window for once again considering democratic reforms? Silence about these issues seems ominous. But silence can be broken. We have Vanunu’s courageous example. Let’s not waste the precious time we have in which to follow it.

Kathy Kelly ([email protected]) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, (www.vcnv.org), a campaign to end U.S. military and economic wars.

[eddie]

Yummy. just cooked some Freshly butchered home grown grass feed Irish dexter steer steaks and burger. I won't be throwing any out it's too tasty.

Dang
If I hadn't a just finished my own steak I would be on my way right over to your house to help you eat some of that beef. Maybe next time. Let me know.
There we would be, solving the problem of hunger.
dc

And I'll bring Eddie with me too.

What time are you picking me up?

[Silver]

Some questions get answered right away.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/15/t ... di-abuses/

In a time when 20 million people face starvation, it’s particularly obscene for any country to pour resources into nuclear weaponry. Mordechai Vanunu took extraordinary risks and endured incredible suffering to rescue the human species from the foolhardiness of building and maintaining nuclear arsenals.

I wonder if people worldwide can rise to a level of courage and seriousness needed to simply recognize, and then, where possible, act in response to the world’s real threats. Within the U.S., can several decades of U.S. government bipartisan lying about Iran be overcome with saner, more humane narratives?

Can the threat of U.S. invasion be lifted long enough to allow Iran’s people a window for once again considering democratic reforms? Silence about these issues seems ominous. But silence can be broken. We have Vanunu’s courageous example. Let’s not waste the precious time we have in which to follow it.

[Silver]

Thousands of deaths in Syria along with hundreds of thousands refugees. When will the US stop causing suffering around the world? Not satisfied with all the carnage, the NWO has its Orange Puppet fomenting for blood and horror in Iran.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-1 ... ian-threat

Stockman Slams "The Deep State's 'Bogus Iranian Threat'"

by Tyler Durden
Oct 16, 2017 11:48 AM

Authored by David Stockman via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Last week, we identified a permanent fiscal crisis as one of the quadruple witching forces arising in October 2017 which will shatter the global financial bubble. Then, the Donald made the crisis dramatically worse by decertifying the Iranian nuke deal, thereby reinforcing another false narrative that enables the $1 trillion Warfare State to continue bleeding the nation's fiscal solvency.

How can you tell if The Marmalade is lying.jpg (26.77 KiB) Viewed 360 times

In a word, the whole notion that Iran is a national security threat and state sponsor of terrorism is just as bogus as the Russian meddling story or the claim that the chain of events resulting from the coup d' etat fostered by Washington on the streets of Kiev in February 2014 is evidence of Russian expansionism and aggression.

Likewise, it's part of the same tissue of lies which led to Washington's massive, destructive and counterproductive interventions in Syria and Libya -- when neither regime posed an iota of threat to the safety and security of the American homeland.

To the contrary, all of these false narratives are the cover stories which justify the Warfare State's massive draw on the nation's broken finances. We will get to the Big Lie about Iran momentarily, but first it is useful to demonstrate just how enormously excessive the nation's defense budget actually is, and why the denizens of the Imperial City---especially the neocon ideologues----find it necessary to peddle such threadbare untruths.

Spoiler alert: Iran has actually never attacked a single foreign nation in modern history whereas Washington has chosen to unilaterally intervene in or arm virtually every surrounding country in the region.

Here's some historical context that dramatizes our point about Washington's hideously excessive spending on defense. Back in 1962 on the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US defense budget was $52 billion, which would amount to $340 billion in today's (2017$) purchasing power.

Needless to say, the world came to the brink of nuclear Armageddon at a time when the Soviet Union was at the peak of its power and was armed to the teeth. In addition to thousands of nuclear warheads deliverable by missiles and bombers, it had 50,000 tanks facing NATO and nearly 4 million men under arms.

The now open Soviet archives, of course, show that the Soviets had far more bark than bite and never conceived of attacking the US or even western Europe; they didn't remotely have the wherewithal or the strategic nerve.

Nevertheless, by 1962 false moves and provocations by both sides had created a state of "cold war" that was real. Yet even then, the $340 billion military budget was more than adequate to deter the Soviet threat. Nor is that our view as an armchair historian.

The 1962 defense budget was essentially President Dwight D. Eisenhower's budget, and it is one that he had drastically slashed from the $500 billion (in today's dollars) he had inherited from Truman at the end of the Korean War.

That is to say, the greatest general who ever led American forces had concluded that $340 billion was enough. And that came as he left office warning about just the opposite----the danger that the military/industrial complex would gain inordinate political power and pursue foreign policies which required ever larger military spending.

Unlike standard cold warriors, Ike believed that the ultimate national security resource of America was a healthy capitalist economy and that excessive government debt was deeply inimical to that outcome.

That's why he balanced the Federal budget three times during his tenure and presided over a fiscal consolidation---thanks to sharply reduced defense spending---that generated an average deficit of hardly 1 percent of GDP. That's an outcome scarcely imaginable at all in the present world.

Even then, the Soviet empire with all the captive republics that have become independent nations since 1991 (e.g. Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan etc.) had a GDP in 1960 that was estimated to be 50 percent the size of the US. So Ike's bet was that capitalist growth over time was the ultimate source of national strength; that a healthy domestic economy would eventually leave the centralized command-and-control Soviet economy in the dust; and that ultimately the Kremlin's brand of statist socialism and militarism would fail.

He was right. Russia today is a shadow of what Ronald Reagan called the Evil Empire. Its GDP of $1.3 trillion is smaller than that of the New York metro area ($1.6 trillion) and only 7 percent of total US GDP.

Moreover, unlike the militarized Soviet economy which devoted upwards of 40 percent of output to defense, the current Russian defense budget of $60 billion is just 4.5 percent of its vastly shrunken GDP.

So how in the world did the national security apparatus convince the Donald that we need the $700 billion defense program for FY 2018----12X bigger than Russia's---- that he just signed into law?

What we mean, of course, is how do you explain that---- beyond the fact that the Donald knows virtually nothing about national security policy and history; and, to boot, is surrounded by generals who have spent a lifetime scouring the earth for enemies and threats to repel and reasons for more weapons and bigger forces.

The real answer, however, is both simple and consequential. To wit, the entire prosperity and modus operandi of the Imperial City is based on a panoply of "threats" that are vastly exaggerated or even purely invented; they retain their currency by virtue of endless repetition in the groupthink that passes for analysis. We'd actually put it in the category of cocktail party chatter.

For crying out loud. Why is Russia considered a threat to the American homeland when it doesn't even have a blue water navy or any other basis to project offensive power to the North American continent?

Indeed, its "attack" fleet consists of a single, 40-year old smoke-belching aircraft carrier that could never get out of the Mediterranean bathtub ringed by overwhelming US forces.

Beyond conventional offensive power there is the non-power of its 1500 or so deployable nuclear warheads. Whatever you may think of Vlad Putin's kleptomania and hard-edged suppression of internal dissent, he is surely the "Cool Hand Luke" of the modern world. Do you think he would be rash or suicidal enough to threaten the US with nuclear weapons?

Or for that matter that Russia with its pipsqueak $1.3 trillion GDP and limited military capacity actually intends to invade and occupy Europe, which has a GDP of $17 trillion and sufficient military force---even without the US----to make such a project unthinkable.

Likewise, so what if the Chinese want to waste money building sand castles (i.e. man-made islands with military uses)in the South China Sea. It's their backyard---just as the Gulf of Mexico is ours.

Besides, the great Red Ponzi is utterly dependent upon exporting $2 trillion per years of goods to the US, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea etc. Without those markets its massively leveraged, speculation-ridden, malinvested bubble economy would collapse in 6 months or less. So does anyone really think that the PLA (People Liberation Army) will be bombing 4,000 Wal-Marts in America any time soon?

The truth is, the US defense budget is hideously oversized for a reason so obvious that it constitutes the ultimate elephant in the room. No matter how you slice it, there just are no real big industrialized, high tech countries in the world which can threaten the American homeland or even have the slightest intention of doing so.

Indeed, to continue with our historical benchmarks, the American homeland has not been so immune to foreign military threat since WW II. Yet during all those years of true peril, it never spent close too the Donald's $700 billion boondoggle.

For instance, during the height of LBJs Vietnam folly (1968) defense spending in today's dollars was about $400 billion. And even at the top of Reagan's utterly unnecessary military building up (by the 1980s the Soviet Union was collapsing under the weight of its own socialist dystopia), total US defense spending was just $550 billion.

That gets us to the bogus Iranian threat. It originated in the early 1990s when the neocon's in the George HW Bush Administration realized that with the cold war's end, the Warfare State was in grave danger of massive demobilization like the US had done after every war until 1945.

So among many other invented two-bit threats, the Iranian regime was demonized in order to keep the Imperial City in thrall to its purported national security threat and in support of the vast global armada of military forces, bases and occupations needed to contain it (including the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and US bases throughout the region).

The truth, however, is that according to the 2008 NIE ( National Intelligence Estimates) of the nation's 17 intelligence agency, the Iranian's never had a serious nuclear weapons program, and the small research effort that they did have was disbanded by orders of the Ayatollah Khamenei in 2003.

Likewise, what the Imperial City claims to be state sponsored terror is actually nothing more than Iran's foreign policy---something that every sovereign state on the planet is permitted to have.

Thus, as the leader of the minority Shiite schism of the Islamic world, Iran has made political and confessional allliances with various Shiite regimes in the region. These include the one that Washington actually installed in Bagdad; the Alawite/Shitte regime in Syria; the largest political party and representative of 40 percent of the population in Lebanon(Hezbollah); and the Houthi/Shitte of Yemen, who historically occupied the northern parts of the country and are now under savage attack by American weapons supplied to Saud Arabia.

In the case of both Syria and Iraq, their respective governments invited Iranian help, which is also their prerogative as sovereign nations. Ironically, it was the Shiite Crescent alliance of Iran/Assad/Hezbollah that bears much of the credit for defeating ISIS on the ground in Mosul, Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and elsewhere in the now largely defunct Islamic State.

There should be no doubt about the consequence: Trump's decertification of the Iran nuclear deal will reinforce the neocon dominance of the Republican party and insure that the nation's $1 trillion Warfare State remains fully entrenched.

Needless to say, that will also insure that the America's gathering fiscal crisis will turn into an outright Fiscal Calamity in the years just ahead.

[Silver]

Not satisfied with destroying several countries in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, the NWO order bravely pushes forward to kill more poor brown people in the Far East. North Korea...tiny little North Korea...is the Big Bad Wolf.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/14/t ... delusions/

Trump’s North Korea Delusions
October 14, 2017
Save
Exclusive: A combination of ignorance and rashness is making President Trump a particularly dangerous leader as he crashes ahead with a possible preemptive war on North Korea, writes Jonathan Marshall.


By Jonathan Marshall

President Trump reportedly tells an average of nearly five lies a day. He is also renowned for what Republican pundit Michael Gerson calls “his nearly complete ignorance of policy and history.”

So it would be tempting — but wrong — to shrug off yet another crackpot claim that Trump made on Fox News a few days ago. Wrong because, if Trump really believes what he said, it may signal his serious willingness to start a bloodbath with North Korea that could consume millions of lives. It gives new credence to Sen. Bob Corker’s recent warning that Trump could set the United States “on the path to World War III.”

In an interview with Sean Hannity on Oct. 11, Trump boasted that America’s ballistic missile interceptors offer, for now at least, a reliable defense against a small-scale nuclear missile launch by North Korea.

“We have missiles that can knock out a missile in the air 97 percent of the time, and if you send two of them, it’s going to get knocked down,” Trump asserted.

In awarding Trump’s claim a maximum false rating of “Four Pinocchios,” Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler called the President “totally off base,” but conceded that Trump hadn’t made up the claim out of whole cloth.

A few years ago, the Pentagon’s program manager for the $40 billion boondoggle known as the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system assured Congress that “the probability will be well in the high-90s today of the GMD system being able to intercept [a missile] today.” In the same spirit, the head of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency boasted this May that his anti-missile missiles could “defeat any threat” that North Korea “would throw at us . . . through 2020.”

The GMD currently consists of 36 interceptor missiles based at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. With more on the drawing board, they represent a huge cash cow to military contractors like Boeing and Raytheon, but they’ve never been shown to work reliably.

‘Overstated Confidence’

Former Massachusetts Rep. John Tierney, who led a subcommittee that oversaw the GMD program, recently complained that “During hearings, Pentagon officials repeatedly overstated confidence in the program, understated technical limitations and dismissed concerns from physicists and other experts. This false sense of security persists today.”

According to Kingston Reif, an expert at the Arms Control Association, “The flight test record of the system is 10 for 18 and these tests have occurred under scripted and controlled conditions — meaning the realism of the tests is limited.”

“The system has only been tested once against an ICBM class target,” Reif added. “Twenty of the 32 interceptors deployed in Alaska are armed with an older kill vehicle that has not had a successful test since 2008. The system has never been tested against ‘complex countermeasures’ that North Korea could develop to try to fool U.S. defenses.”

Another arms expert, Joseph Cirincione, quipped, “We have as much chance of intercepting a North Korean missile as the president does of scoring a hole in one.”

The Pentagon’s own chief weapons evaluator warned recently that the GMD has at best “a limited capability to defend the U.S. Homeland” and the Government Accountability Office last year reported that the Missile Defense Agency’s optimistic performance claims “have not been demonstrated.”

In a follow-up report this year, the GAO flatly declared that the Pentagon’s system “will not likely provide robust defense as planned.”

Perils of Overconfidence

What are the consequences of President Trump believing unfounded Pentagon claims about U.S. missile defense capabilities? He might well be tempted to launch a preemptive attack on North Korea — the much discussed “military option” — confident that the U.S. homeland will be protected against a retaliatory strike.

He might further feel tempted to launch such an attack sooner rather than later, before North Korea can build up its fleet of nuclear missiles to overwhelm the GMD’s alleged capabilities.

As I have previously discussed, influential Trump advisers like Sen. Lindsey Graham have been urging the President for months to unleash an all-out attack before North Korea can develop its nuclear missile capabilities.

As Graham put it, the consequences “would be terrible but the war would be over (there), wouldn’t be here. It would be bad for the Korean Peninsula. It would be bad for China. It would be bad for Japan, be bad for South Korea. It would be the end of North Korea. But what it would not do is hit America and the only way it could ever come to America is with a missile.”

Many of Trump’s other close advisers appear to agree with Graham’s premise, rather than acknowledging that America’s vast nuclear arsenal is more than sufficient to deter a North Korean attack.

National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster declared this summer that “we can no longer afford to procrastinate” while North Korea develops its nuclear forces, arguing that “classic deterrence theory” won’t work with such a brutal government.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said Thursday, “I think I speak for the administration, that [North Korea] can simply not have the ability to reach the [U.S.] homeland.”

Trump himself declared in his speech to the United Nations in September, “It is time for North Korea to realize that the denuclearization is its only acceptable future.” He later tweeted that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.”

As conservative foreign policy analyst Daniel Larson observed, “The danger here is that Trump has defined everything except North Korean denuclearization as unacceptable, and that implies that the U.S. won’t tolerate North Korea’s continued possession of nuclear weapons. That suggests that Trump could be contemplating launching an illegal preventive war, and such a war would likely escalate to a nuclear exchange that would claim the lives of millions at a minimum. That is the trap that Trump’s irresponsible rhetoric is creating for the U.S.”

Trump’s misplaced faith in his missile defense system only heightens that risk. As arms expert Tom Collina observed in September, “If President Trump believes he can stop a missile attack, he is more likely to escalate a conflict. This is how nations stumble into unintended wars. We can just imagine the conversation where Defense Secretary Jim Mattis tries to explain to President Trump why he can’t depend on his $40 billion anti-missile system: ‘If I have it, why can’t I use it?’”

Mattis has a duty to explain to Trump that Pentagon claims for that system are hype aimed at winning more appropriations from Congress, not facts. He has a further duty to remind the President that the consequences of war with North Korea would be, as he once put it, “tragic on an unbelievable scale.”

The Chance for Deterrence

Mattis should also point out that a preemptive war would be as unnecessary as it would be destructive. In senior leadership meetings, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un recently described his small but growing nuclear arsenal not as an offensive force but as a “powerful deterrent firmly safeguarding the peace and security in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia” against the “protracted nuclear threats” from Washington.

In another setting, Kim added, “Our final goal is to establish the equilibrium of real force with the US and make the US rulers dare not talk about military option.”

U.S. intelligence experts believe Kim means what he says about acquiring nuclear weapons for deterrence, not for war. “Waking up one morning and deciding he wants to nuke” Los Angeles is not something Kim Jong Un plans to do, the CIA’s top Korea analyst recently said in public comments. “He wants to rule for a long time and die peacefully in his own bed.”

So even if Trump buys the Pentagon’s sale pitch about missile defense capabilities, he has no reason to launch a catastrophic war to block North Korea’s nuclear missile program. But for all our sake, someone urgently needs to let Trump know that he can’t count on the U.S. homeland remaining unscathed if he does choose to start a war with a nuclear-armed adversary.

Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international relations and history. His recent contributions to Consortiumnews.com on Korea include “Hurtling Toward Fire and Fury,” “Risk to US from War on North Korea,” “North Korea Fears ‘Regime Change’ Strike,” “The Negotiation Option With North Korea,” and “Behind the North Korean Nuke Crisis.”

[Thinker]

This is such a sad thing - but the reality is that according to the World Health Org., almost 1,000,000,000 (1/7 of world population) are “chronically hungry.”

It’s easy to ignore when it isn’t in your face.
We give what we can to help in a poorer country - where people don’t have the many resources people in USA have. But I know I could do more.

My dad gave me a book, “Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man.” This opened my eyes to how many US-government-backed corporations were taking poor countries’ resources & in the name of “helping them” gave them crippling debt. This practice is NOT just a democrat or republican thing. So, please don’t try to scapegoat Trump.

When I think of solutions to this problem of extreme poverty, I think of how the law of tithing - IF OBEYED by church leaders - would help improve and save many lives! Deut. 14:28-29 explains the law of tithing - how 1/3 of TITHES should go to the poor. Oaks admitted no lds tithes go to the poor & told members they need to pay extra for that. For a while now, after realizing this, we’ve given our tithes to those in need - where our money is handled well & with financial integrity & transparency.

Charity Navigator can help if you need to know which organizations do what with the money.

[Silver]

This is such a sad thing - but the reality is that according to the World Health Org., almost 1,000,000,000 (1/7 of world population) are “chronically hungry.”

It’s easy to ignore when it isn’t in your face.
We give what we can to help in a poorer country - where people don’t have the many resources people in USA have. But I know I could do more.

My dad gave me a book, “Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man.” This opened my eyes to how many US-government-backed corporations were taking poor countries’ resources & in the name of “helping them” gave them crippling debt. This practice is NOT just a democrat or republican thing. So, please don’t try to scapegoat Trump.

When I think of solutions to this problem of extreme poverty, I think of how the law of tithing - IF OBEYED by church leaders - would help improve and save many lives! Deut. 14:28-29 explains the law of tithing - how 1/3 of TITHES should go to the poor. Oaks admitted no lds tithes go to the poor & told members they need to pay extra for that. For a while now, after realizing this, we’ve given our tithes to those in need - where our money is handled well & with financial integrity & transparency.

Charity Navigator can help if you need to know which organizations do what with the money.

Oh brother, another LDS Freedom Forum member bashing the Lord's anointed.

I blame Trump for his current, ongoing actions. I can't change the past so I don't spend much time pointing out the traitorous deeds of former presidents.



Trump is President now so I blame him for

[Fiannan]

Trump is President now so I blame him for

I blame Trump for the tree that blew down on my driveway last week

[Silver]

Now let's see if we can make some brown people in Iran starve to death...

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archive ... -for-iran/

President Trump Beats War Drums For Iran
written by ron paul monday october 16, 2017
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President Trump has been notoriously inconsistent in his foreign policy. He campaigned on and won the presidency with promises to repair relations with Russia, pull out of no-win wars like Afghanistan, and end the failed US policy of nation-building overseas. Once in office he pursued policies exactly the opposite of what he campaigned on. Unfortunately Iran is one of the few areas where the president has been very consistent. And consistently wrong.

In the president’s speech last week he expressed his view that Iran was not “living up to the spirit” of the 2015 nuclear agreement and that he would turn to Congress to apply new sanctions to Iran and to, he hopes, take the US out of the deal entirely.

Nearly every assertion in the president’s speech was embarrassingly incorrect. Iran is not allied with al-Qaeda, as the president stated. The money President Obama sent to Iran was their own money. Much of it was a down-payment made to the US for fighter planes that were never delivered when Iran changed from being friend to foe in 1979. The president also falsely claims that Iran targets the United States with terrorism. He claims that Iran has “fueled sectarian violence in Iraq,” when it was Iranian militias who prevented Baghdad from being overtaken by ISIS in 2014. There are too many other false statements in the president’s speech to mention.

How could he be so wrong on so many basic facts about Iran? Here’s a clue: the media reports that his number one advisor on Iran is his Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley. Ambassador Haley is a “diplomat” who believes war is the best, first option rather than the last, worst option. She has no prior foreign policy experience, but her closest mentor is John Bolton – the neocon who lied us into the Iraq war. How do these people live with themselves when they look around at the death and destruction their policies have caused?

Unfortunately the American people are being neoconned into another war. Just as with the disastrous 2003 US attack on Iraq, the media builds up the fear and does the bidding of the warmongers without checking facts or applying the necessary skepticism to neocon claims.

Like most Americans, I do not endorse Iran’s style of government. I prefer religion and the state to be separate and even though our liberties have been under attack by our government, I prefer our much freer system in the US. But I wonder how many Americans know that Iran has not attacked or “regime-changed” another country in its modern history. Iran’s actions in Syria are at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government. And why won’t President Trump tell us the truth about Iranian troops in Syria – that they are fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda, both of which are Sunni extremist groups that are Iran’s (and our) mortal enemies?

How many Americans know that Iran is one of the few countries in the region that actually holds elections that are contested by candidates with very different philosophies? Do any Americans wonder why the Saudis are considered one of our greatest allies in the Middle East even though they hold no elections and have one of the world’s worst human rights records?

Let’s be clear here: President Trump did not just announce that he was “de-certifying” Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal. He announced that Iran was from now on going to be in the bullseye of the US military. Will Americans allow themselves to be lied into another Middle East war?

[Silver]

Yemenis to Americans: Your Las Vegas Massacre Is Our Everyday Life
October 17, 2017 at 9:27 am
Written by Darius Shahtahmasebi

(ANTIMEDIA) — The recent events in Las Vegas shook the entire nation, and the rest of the world has watched intently as authorities have struggled with their investigation and independent media outlets have spread uninvestigated and sensationalized narratives.

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Yet one should always remember that events that shake the West from time to time regularly occur in countries across the globe — and we barely flinch. To make matters worse, more often than not, it is the U.S. that is exacting that violence on a daily basis, which we detest and protest when we face it ourselves. As one person eloquently put it: “Our 9/11 is their 24/7.”

Hussam al-Sanabani is a Yemeni activist who has strongly protested the U.S.-backed Saudi-led war of aggression against his country. As AlterNet explains:

“Hussam al-Sanabani is a Yemeni activist living under incessant U.S.-Saudi coalition airstrikes in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. During more than 900 days of bombing and blockade, al-Sanabani has steadfastly spoken out against the foreign war on his country and called for peace.”

In an interview with AlterNet, al-Sanabani discussed his personal experiences and why he believes the American people should turn their attention to his plight.

“I am a Yemeni citizen who was dreaming of a better tomorrow. I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night to watch the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. announce the start of Operation Decisive Storm, from Washington, D.C. Since then, like most Yemenis, my life has been changed by war.”

Considering the horror Saudi Arabia has unleashed on Yemen’s impoverished civilian population, it is no surprise that some members of Congress have co-sponsored legislation that would end U.S. support for the war. In September, California Rep. Ro Khanna introduced H. Con. Res. 81, which would withdraw U.S. military forces involved in Yemen unless Congress approves an official declaration of war – something rarely seen in recent history.

It has been well established that if the U.S. were to withdraw its support for the war in Yemen, the war would be over almost immediately. Still, this is completely unlikely, mainly because it presumes that the U.S. is an innocent bystander that has been dragged into the war by a reckless ally when in reality, Saudi Arabia is fighting its dirty war on America’s behalf. Their interests are primarily the same.

Al-Sanabani used this legislative opportunity to pen an open letter to the U.S. Congress, urging the United States to vote in favor of ending the war.

“From Yemen, the country that is still under blockade until today, I write this letter to the U.S. Congress to tell them about some of Yemenis’ tragedies, asking them to vote for H. Con. Res 81,” al-Sanabani explained.

Drawing on emotion from the recent Las Vegas shooting and marking a comparison between the suffering of those involved and the suffering of his country every day, al-Sanabani stated:

“We were following the news when the innocent civilians in Las Vegas were subjected to gunfire from an insane criminal. The killer continued to shoot in batches while some victims were bleeding to death, whilst the others were forced not to move because the murderer was still free and still shooting. The police and the ambulance teams could not help those innocent victims, while they were in desperate need of help. Our thoughts were with them as we watched the news coming from Las Vegas.

“No one can understand and feel what those innocent people have suffered except the Yemenis. What happened to them that night happens to us every night in Yemen. There is a crazy murderer who shoots at us and we see our relatives and our neighbors dying, and we can not help them because the crazy killer is still shooting and is not satisfied with the thousands of innocent victims already killed in Yemen.” [emphasis added]