Nuclear Weapons Must Be Eradicated For All Our Sakes - Desmond Tutu

We cannot intimidate others into behaving well when we ourselves are misbehaving. Yet that is precisely what nations armed with nuclear weapons hope to do by censuring North Korea for its nuclear tests and sounding alarm bells over Iran's pursuit of enriched uranium. According to their logic, a select few nations can ensure the security of all by having the capacity to destroy all.

Until we overcome this double standard - until we accept that nuclear weapons are abhorrent and a grave danger no matter who possesses them, that threatening a city with radioactive incineration is intolerable no matter the nationality or religion of its inhabitants - we are unlikely to make meaningful progress in halting the spread of these monstrous devices, let alone banishing them from national arsenals.

Why, for instance, would a proliferating state pay heed to the exhortations of the US and Russia, which retain thousands of their nuclear warheads on high alert? How can Britain, France and China expect a hearing on non-proliferation while they squander billions modernising their nuclear forces? What standing has Israel to urge Iran not to acquire the bomb when it harbours its own atomic arsenal?

Nuclear weapons do not discriminate; nor should our leaders. The nuclear powers must apply the same standard to themselves as to others: zero nuclear weapons. Whereas the international community has imposed blanket bans on other weapons with horrendous effects - from biological and chemical agents to landmines and cluster munitions - it has not yet done so for the very worst weapons of all. Nuclear weapons are still seen as legitimate in the hands of some. This must change.

Around 130 governments, various UN agencies, the Red Cross and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons are gathering in Oslo this week to examine the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons and the inability of relief agencies to provide an effective response in the event of a nuclear attack. For too long, debates about nuclear arms have been divorced from such realities, focusing instead on geopolitics and narrow concepts of national security.

With enough public pressure, I believe that governments can move beyond the hypocrisy that has stymied multilateral disarmament discussions for decades, and be inspired and persuaded to embark on negotiations for a treaty to outlaw and eradicate these ultimate weapons of terror. Achieving such a ban would require somewhat of a revolution in our thinking, but it is not out of the question. Entrenched systems can be turned on their head almost overnight if there's the will.

Let us not forget that it was only a few years ago when those who spoke about green energy and climate change were considered peculiar. Now it is widely accepted that an environmental disaster is upon us. There was once a time when people bought and sold other human beings as if they were mere chattels, things. But people eventually came to their senses. So it will be the case for nuclear arms, sooner or later.

Indeed, 184 nations have already made a legal undertaking never to obtain nuclear weapons, and three in four support a universal ban. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of apartheid nigh, South Africa voluntarily dismantled its nuclear stockpile, becoming the first nation to do so. This was an essential part of its transition from a pariah state to an accepted member of the family of nations. Around the same time, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine also relinquished their Soviet-era atomic arsenals.

But today nine nations still consider it their prerogative to possess these ghastly bombs, each capable of obliterating many thousands of innocent civilians, including children, in a flash. They appear to think that nuclear weapons afford them prestige in the international arena. But nothing could be further from the truth. Any nuclear-armed state, big or small, whatever its stripes, ought to be condemned in the strongest terms for possessing these indiscriminate, immoral weapons. 

America, You Must Not Look Away (How to Finish Off the NRA) - Michael Moore

The year was 1955. Emmett Till was a young African American boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi. One day Emmett was seen "flirting" with a white woman in town, and for that he was mutilated and murdered at the age of fourteen. He was found with part of a cotton gin tied around his neck with a string of barbed wire. His killers, two white men, had shot him in the head before they dumped him in the river.

Emmett Till's body was found and returned to Chicago. To the shock of many, his mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral so that the public could see what happens to a little boy's body when bigots decide he is less than human. She wanted photographers to take pictures of her mutilated son and freely publish them. More than 10,000 mourners came to the funeral home, and the photo of Emmett Till appeared in newspapers and magazines across the nation.

"I just wanted the world to see," she said. "I just wanted the world to see."

The world did see, and nothing was ever the same again for the white supremacists of the United States of America. Because of Emmett Till, because of that shocking photograph of this little dead boy, just a few months later, "the revolt officially began on December 1, 1955" (from Eyes on the Prize) when Rosa Parks decided not to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The historic bus boycott began and, with the images of Emmett Till still fresh in the minds of many Americans, there was no turning back.

In March of 1965, the police of Selma, Alabama, brutally beat, hosed and tear-gassed a group of African Americans for simply trying to cross a bridge during a protest march. The nation was shocked by images of blacks viciously maimed and injured. So, too, was the President. Just one week later, Lyndon Johnson called for a gathering of the U.S. Congress and he went and stood before them in joint session and told them to pass a bill he was introducing that night – the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And, just five months later, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

In March, 1968, U.S. soldiers massacred 500 civilians at My Lai in Vietnam. A year and a half later, the world finally saw the photographs – of mounds of dead peasants covered in blood, a terrified toddler seconds before he was gunned down, and a woman with her brains literally blown out of her head. (These photos would join other Vietnam War photos, including a naked girl burned by napalm running down the road, and a South Vietnamese general walking up to a handcuffed suspect, taking out his handgun, and blowing the guy's brains out on the NBC Nightly News.)

With this avalanche of horrid images, the American public turned against the Vietnam War. Our realization of what we were capable of rattled us so deeply it became very hard for future presidents (until George W. Bush) to outright invade a sovereign nation and go to war there for a decade.

Bush was able to pull it off because his handlers, Misters Cheney and Rumsfeld, knew that the most important thing to do from the get-go was to control the images of the war, to guarantee that nothing like a My Lai-style photograph ever appeared in the U.S. press.

And that is why you never see a picture any more of the kind of death and destruction that might make you get up off your couch and run out of the house screaming bloody murder at those responsible for these atrocities.

That is why now, after the children's massacre in Newtown, the absolute last thing the National Rifle Association wants out there in the public domain is ANY images of what happened that tragic day.

But I have a prediction. I believe someone in Newtown, Connecticut – a grieving parent, an upset law enforcement officer, a citizen who has seen enough of this carnage in our country – somebody, someday soon, is going to leak the crime scene photos of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. And when the American people see what bullets from an assault rifle fired at close range do to a little child's body, that's the day the jig will be up for the NRA. It will be the day the debate on gun control will come to an end. There will be nothing left to argue over. It will just be over. And every sane American will demand action.

Of course, there will be a sanctimonious hue and cry from the pundits who will decry the publication of these gruesome pictures. Those who do publish or post them will be called "shameful" and "disgraceful" and "sick." How could a media outlet be so insensitive to the families of the dead children! Someone will then start a boycott of the magazine or website that publishes them.

But this will be a false outrage. Because the real truth is this: We do not want to be confronted with what the actual results of a violent society looks like. Of what a society that starts illegal wars, that executes criminals (or supposed criminals), that strikes or beats one of its women every 15 seconds, and shoots 30 of its own citizens every single day looks like. Oh, no, please – DO NOT MAKE US LOOK AT THAT!

Because if we were to seriously look at the 20 slaughtered children – I mean really look at them, with their bodies blown apart, many of them so unrecognizable the only way their parents could identify them was by the clothes they were wearing – what would be our excuse not to act? Now. Right now. This very instant! How on earth could anyone not spring into action the very next moment after seeing the bullet-riddled bodies of these little boys and girls?

We don't know exactly what those Newtown photographs show. But I want you – yes, you, the person reading this right now – to think about what we do know:

The six-year and seven-year-old children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School were each hit up to eleven times by a Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. The muzzle velocity of a rifle like the AR-15 is about three times that of a handgun. And because the kinetic energy of a bullet equals one-half of the bullet's mass multiplied by its velocity squared, the potential destructive power of a bullet fired from a rifle is about nine times more than that of a similar bullet fired from a handgun.

Nine times more. I spoke to Dr. Victor Weedn, chairman of the Department of Forensic Sciences at George Washington University, who told me that chest x-rays of a person shot with a rifle will often look like a "snowstorm" because their bones will have been shattered into fragments. This happens not just because of the bullet's direct impact, but because each bullet sends a shock wave through the body's soft organs – one so powerful it can break bones even when the bullet didn't hit them. A video here shows what the shock wave looks like in the "ballistic gelatin" used by experts to simulate human tissue. (Would Gabby Giffords have survived if shot by a rifle rather than a Glock pistol? Probably not, says Dr. Weedn; the shock wave would have damaged the most critical parts of her brain.)

As horrifying as this is, there's more; much more. Dr. Cyril Wecht, past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, told me this:

The kind of ammunition used by the Newtown killer would have produced very extensive, severe and mutilating injuries of the head and face in these small victims. Depending on the number of shots striking a child’s head, substantial portions of the head would be literally blasted away. The underlying brain tissue would be extensively lacerated with portions of hemorrhagic brain tissue protruding through the fractured calvarium and basilar skull, some of which would remain on portions of the face...actual physical identification of each child would have been extremely difficult, and in many instances impossible, even by the parents of any particular child.

We also know this, according to Dr. Wecht:

In one case, the parents have commented publicly upon the damage to their child, reporting that his chin and left hand were missing. Most probably, this child had brought his hand up to his face in shock and for protection and had the hand blasted away along with the lower part of his face.

Veronique Pozner, the mother of Noah, the six-year-old boy described by Dr. Wecht, insisted that the Governor of Connecticut look at Noah in an open casket. "I needed it to be real to him," she said. The Governor wept.

The pictures showing all this exist right now, somewhere in the police and medical examiner's files in Connecticut. And as of right now, we've somehow all decided together that we don't need to look, that in some way we're okay with what's in those pictures (after all, over 2,600 Americans have been killed by guns since Newtown) – just as long as we don't have to look at the pictures ourselves.

But I am telling you now, that moment will come with the Newtown photos – and you will have to look. You will have to look at who and what we are, and what we've allowed to happen. At the end of World War II, General Eisenhower ordered that thousands of German civilians be forced to march through the concentration camps so they could witness what was happening just down the road from them during the years that they turned their gaze away, or didn't ask, or didn't do anything to stop the murder of millions.

We've done nothing since Columbine – nothing – and as a result there have been over 30 other mass shootings since then. Our inaction means that we are all, on some level, responsible – and therefore, because of our burying our heads in the sand, we must be forced to look at the 20 dead children at Sandy Hook Elementary.

The people we've voted for since Columbine – with the exception of Michael Bloomberg – almost none of them, Democrat or Republican, dared to speak out against the NRA before Newtown – and yet we, the people, continued to vote for them. And for that we are responsible, and that is why we must look at the 20 dead children.

Most of us continue to say we "support the Second Amendment" as if it were written by God (or we're just afraid of being seen as anti-American). But this amendment was written by the same white men who thought a Negro was only 3/5 human. We've done nothing to revise or repeal this – and that makes us responsible, and that is why we must look at the pictures of the 20 dead children laying with what's left of their bodies on the classroom floor in Newtown, Connecticut.

And while you're looking at the heinous photographs, try saying those words out loud: "I support the Second Amendment!" Something, I'm guessing, won't feel right.

Yes, someday a Sandy Hook mother – or a Columbine mother, or an Aurora mother, or a mother from massacres yet to come – will say, like the mother of Emmett Till, "I just want the world to see." And then nothing about guns in this country will ever be the same again.

Pack your bags, NRA – you're about to be shown the door. Because we refuse to let another child die in this manner. Got it? I hope so.

All you can do now is hope no one releases those photos. 

Something Rotten in the State of Sweden: 8 Big Problems with the 'Case' Against Assange - by Naomi Wolf

Now that Andrew Kreig, of the Justice Integrity Project, has confirmed Karl Rove’s role as an advisor to the Swedish government in its prosecution of Julian Assange on sexual misconduct charges, it is important that we note the many glaring aberrations in the handling of Assange’s case by the authorities in Sweden.

Dr. Brian Palmer, a social anthropologist at Uppsala University, explained on Kreig’s radio show last month that Karl Rove has been working directly as an advisor to the governing Moderate Party. Kreig also reported, in Connecticut Watchdog, that the Assange accusers’ lawyer is a partner in the law firm Borgström and Bodström, whose other name partner, Thomas Bodström, is a former Swedish Minister of Justice. In that office, Bodström helped approve a 2001 CIA rendition request to Sweden, to allow the CIA to fly two asylum-seekers from Sweden to Egypt, where they were tortured. This background compels us to review the case against Assange with extreme care.

Based on my 23 years of reporting on global rape law, and my five years of supporting women at rape crisis centers and battered women’s shelters, I can say with certainty that this case is not being treated as a normal rape or sexual assault case. New details from the Swedish police make this quite clear. Their transcript of the complaints against Assange is strikingly unlike the dozens of such transcripts that I have read throughout the years as an advocate for victims of sex crimes.

Specifically, there are eight ways in which this transcript is unusual:

1) Police never pursue complaints in which there is no indication of lack of consent.

Ask Sweden to produce ANY other police report in which any action was taken in a situation in which there is no stated lack of consent or threat of force. Police simply won’t act on a complaint if there is no indication of a lack of consent, or of consent in the face of violence. The Assange transcripts, in contrast to any typical sex crime report, are a set of transcripts in which neither of the women has indicated a lack of consent. (There is one point at which Miss W asserts she was asleep – in which case it would indeed have been illegal to have sex with her – but her deleted tweets show that she was not asleep, and subsequent discussion indicates consent.)

The Assange transcript is therefore anomalous, as it does not suggest in any way that either woman was unconsenting, or felt threatened. On this basis alone, therefore, the Assange transcript is completely aberrant.

2) Police do not let two women report an accusation about one man together.

The transcripts seem to indicate that the police processed the two accusers’ complaints together.

This is completely unheard-of in sex crime procedures; and the burden should be on Clare Mongomery, QC, or Marianne Ny, to produce a single other example of this being permitted.

Never will two victims be allowed by police to come in and tell their stories together–even, or especially, if the stories are about one man.

Indeed, this is a great frustration to those who advocate for rape victims. You can have seven alleged victims all accusing the same guy — and none will be permitted to tell their stories together.

It doesn’t matter if they coordinated in advance as the Assange accusers did, or if they are close friends and came in together: the police simply will not take their complaints together or even in the same room. No matter how much they may wish to file a report together, their wishes won’t matter: the women will be separated, given separate interview times and even locations, and their cases will be processed completely separately.

The prosecutor, rather than being able to draw on both women’s testimony, will actually have to struggle to get the judge to allow a second or additional accusation or evidence from another case.

Usually other such evidence will NOT be allowed. Miss A would have her case processed and then Miss W — with absolutely no ability for the prosecutor to draw form one set of testimony to the next.

The reason for this is sound: it is to keep testimony from contaminating separate trials–a source of great frustration to prosecutors and rape victim advocates.

Thus the dual testimonies taken in this case are utterly atypical and against all Western and especially Swedish rape law practice and policy.

3) Police never take testimony from former boyfriends.

There’s another remarkable aberration in this transcript: the report of a former boyfriend of “Miss A,” testifying that she’d always used a condom in their relationship.

Now, as one who has supported many rape victims through the reporting process, I have to say that the inclusion of this utterly atypical–and, in fact, illegal–note will make anyone who has counselled rape victims through the legal process’ feel as though her head might explode.

There’s a rape shield law in Sweden (as there is throughout Europe) that prevents anyone not involved in the case to say anything to the police, whether it be positive or negative, about the prior sexual habits of the complainant. No matter how much a former or current boyfriend may want to testify about his girlfriends’ sex practices — even if that woman wants him to — the courts will, rightly, refused to hear it, or record it, or otherwise allow it in the record.

4) Prosecutors never let two alleged victims have the same lawyer.

Both women are being advised by the same high-powered, politically connected lawyer. That would never happen under normal circumstances because the prosecutor would not permit the risk of losing the case because of contamination of evidence and the risk of the judge objecting to possible coaching or shared testimony in the context of a shared attorney.

So why would the Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, allow such a thing in this case? Perhaps — bearing in mind the threat that Assange will be extradited to the US once he is in Sweden — because she does not expect to have a trial, let alone have to try to win one.

5) A lawyer never typically takes on two alleged rape victims as clients.

No attorney–and certainly no high-powered attorney– would want to represent two women claiming to have been victimized by the same man, for the reasons above: the second woman’s testimony could be weaker than the other one’s, thus lessening the lawyer’s chances of success.

There also is a danger that the judge may well object to the potential cross-contamination of the women’s stories.

Again, the only reason why a lawyer would thus weaken his own clients’ cases us that s/he does not expect the case to come to trial.

6) A rape victim never uses a corporate attorney.

Typically, if a woman needs a lawyer in addition to the prosecutor who is pursuing her case (as in the Swedish system) she will be advised by rape victim advocates, the prosecutor and the police to use a criminal attorney — someone who handles rape cases or other kinds of assault, who is familiar with the judges and the courts in these cases. She will never hire a high-powered corporate attorney who does not specialize in these cases or work with the local court that would be hearing her sex crime case if it ever got to trial. Given that a law firm such as this one charges about four hundred euros an hour, and a typical rape case takes eight months to a year to get through the courts – given that legal advice will cost tens of thousands of euros, which young women victims usually do not have access to – it is reasonable to ask: who is paying the legal bills?

7) A rape victim is never encouraged to make any kind of contact with her assailant and she may never use police to compel her alleged assailant to take medical tests.

The two women went to police to ask if they could get Assange to take an HIV test.

Sources close to the investigation confirm that indeed Assange was asked by police to take an HIV test, which came back negative. This is utterly unheard of and against standard sex crime policy. The Police do not act as medical mediators for STD testing, since rapists are dangerous and vindictive. A victim is NEVER advised to manage, even with police guidance, any further communication with her assailant that is not through formal judicial channels. Under ordinary procedures, the women’s wishes for the alleged assailant to take medical tests would be discouraged by rape victim advocates and deterred and disregarded by police.

First, the State normally has no power to compel a man who has not been convicted, let alone formally charged, to take any medical tests whatsoever. Secondly, rape victims usually fear STD’s or AIDS infection, naturally enough, and the normal police and prosecutorial guidance is for them to take their own battery of tests – you don’t need the man’s test results to know if you have contracted a disease. Normal rape kit processing–in Sweden as elsewhere–includes such tests for the alleged victim as a matter of course, partly to help prevent any contact between the victim and the assailant outside legal channels.

8) Police and prosecutors never leak police transcripts during an active investigation because they face punishment for doing so.

The full transcripts of the women’s complaints have been leaked to the US media. The only people who have access to those documents are police, prosecutors and the attorneys. Often, frustratingly, rape victims themselves cannot get their own full set of records related to their cases. In normal circumstances, the leaking of those transcripts would be grounds for an immediate investigation of the police and prosecutors who had access to them. Any official who leaks such confidential papers faces serious penalties; lawyers who do so can be disbarred. And yet no one in this case is being investigated or facing any consequences. It seems quite likely that the Assange documents were leaked by the police or prosecutors because they got a signal from higher-ups that they could do so with impunity.

Indeed, these are all major aberrations–suggesting that somebody at the top has interfered.

And who is at the very top in Sweden? Players working with Karl Rove, who was a party to the Swedish government’s collusion in the Bush regime’s rendition/torture program. As Britain holds its hearings into Julian Assange’s fate, we must take careful note of that connection.

The Greek Revival Plan by Alexis Tsipras

The Federal Republic of Germany was collapsing under the weight of its debts in 1953 and seemed likely to drag other European nations down with it. Its creditors, including Greece, were concerned for their own safety and acknowledged something unsurprising to anyone but a modern neoliberal: that a policy of internal devaluation (reductions in salaries) does not guarantee that debts will be repaid, but the opposite.

At an extraordinary summit in London on 27 February 1953, 21 countries decided to reassess their demands to adjust to Germany’s ability to fulfil its obligations. They cut Germany’s nominal outstanding debt by 60% and granted it a five-year moratorium and a 30-year payback period. They also devised a development clause which meant Germany did not have to spend more than 5% of its export revenues on servicing its debt. Europe’s action effectively reversed the thrust of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and laid the foundations for West Germany’s post-war recovery.

This is precisely what Greece’s Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) proposes now: drawing inspiration from one of the greatest visionary moments in post-war European history and going in the opposite direction to all the little Versailles Treaties that the German chancellor Angela Merkel, and her finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, have imposed on Europe’s indebted nations.

The “rescue” plans for southern Europe have failed, only creating bottomless pits that contributors have been invited to fill with money. Finding a global, collective and definitive solution to the debt problem is pressing, and should not be overshadowed by attempts to secure the re-election of the German chancellor.

In these circumstances, Syriza’s proposal for a European conference on debt on the 1953 model represents, we believe, the only realistic solution capable of benefiting everyone: a global response to the credit crisis and the failure of Europe’s policies so far.

This is what we are asking for:

— a significant reduction in the nominal value of Greece’s outstanding public debt;

— a moratorium on servicing that debt, so that the money saved can be used to get the Greek economy back on its feet;

— a “development clause” to ensure that debt repayment doesn’t stifle economic recovery at birth; and

— the recapitalisation of Greece’s banks, without the cost of this being added to the public debt.

These measures should be supported by reforms that aim to achieve a more equitable distribution of wealth. Putting the debt crisis behind us means breaking with the past that caused it: working for social justice, equal rights, political and fiscal transparency — in other words, democracy. Such a project can only be carried out by a party that is independent from the financial oligarchy that is responsible for the crisis and seeks to preserve the status quo — the company bosses who have held the state hostage, the clique of ship owners who, up until 2013, haven’t paid taxes, media tycoons and bankrupt bankers with a finger in every pie. The 2012 annual report of the NGO Transparency International named Greece as Europe’s most corrupt country.

Eurozone in crisis

This proposal is the only solution, we believe, unless we wish to see an exponential increase in Europe’s ballooning public debt, which on average already exceeds 90% of GDP. This is what makes us optimistic: our proposal cannot be rejected, because the crisis is already eating away at the central core of the Eurozone. Procrastination will only increase the social and economic cost of the present situation, not just for Greece but also for Germany and the other Eurozone countries.

The Eurozone, which was inspired by neoliberal dogma, functioned like a straightforward monetary union for 12 years without any concomitant social or political dimension. The trade deficits of the south mirrored the profits of the north. Germany reacted by exporting its recipe for austerity, which worsened social inequality in southern countries and economic tensions in the Eurozone. A northern creditors/southern debtors axis has now emerged, a new division of labour orchestrated by the richest countries: the south will specialise in labour-intensive products and services at rock-bottom wages, while the north races for quality and innovation, with even higher salaries for a few.

The proposal put forward by Hans-Peter Keitel, president of the German Confederation of Industry, in an interview on Der Spiegel’s website, would turn Greece into a “special economic zone” (1); this reveals the true objective of the May memorandum (2). The measures in this document, with a writ that runs at least until 2020, have led to resounding failure, and this has now been recognised by the IMF. For its architects, the agreement has the advantage of imposing economic control on Greece, reducing it to the level of a financial colony of the Eurozone.

The cancellation of the memorandum is therefore a vital first step towards ending the crisis: it’s the medicine that is toxic, not just the dose, as some have suggested.

Questions also need to be asked about the other causes of the Greek financial crisis. The factors that lead to the squandering of public money have not changed: for example, the highest price for road construction per kilometre in Europe, and the privatisation of the motorways under the guise of “prepayment” for new routes, whose construction has been suspended.

Cronyism or corruption

Worsening inequalities cannot be regarded as a mere secondary effect of the financial crisis. The Greek financial system reflects the cronyism uniting the elites. It is riddled with exemptions and get-out clauses tailored to the needs of the oligarchy. The informal pact that, since the dictatorship has entwined the interests of the bosses and the twin-headed New Democracy-Pasok monster, has ensured its perpetuation. This is one of the reasons why the state has given up on obtaining the resources it needs from taxation and has instead opted for continual reduction of wages and pensions.

But the political establishment — which only just scraped through the elections on 17 June (3) by stirring up fears of Greece’s possible exit from the Eurozone — only survives thanks to the life-support system that is corruption. The difficult task of ending the collusion between political and economic interests — a challenge that Greece does not face alone — will be a priority for a popular government led by Syriza.

We are therefore calling for a moratorium on the servicing of our debt in order to transform Greece. Without this, any new attempt to restore financial health will only make Sisyphuses of us all, doomed to failure. But this time the drama will affect all of Europe.