Category: News

About 70 percent of retired three-and-four star generals took jobs with defense contractors or consultants, according to a report released Monday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Brave New Foundation. Huffington Post:

The report found that 76 out of 108 top generals took such jobs from 2009 to 2011, and a few continued to advise the Department of Defense while on the payroll of contractors. The report cited Gen. James Cartwright, who was elected to a paid position on Raytheon’s board of directors while serving on the Defense Policy Board. Adm. Gary Roughead also served on the board while joining the board of Northrop Grumman, earning $115,000 per year.

While this kind of legalized corruption is the essence of the revolving door associated with the military-industrial complex in the United States, this number has actually declined slightly in recent years.

In a Boston Globe review conducted in 2010, it was found that “750 of the highest ranking generals and admirals who retired during the last two decades” moved “into what many in Washington call the ‘rent-a-general’ business.” “From 2004-2008,” the report found, “80 percent of retiring three- and four-star officers went to work as consultants or defense executives” in our massive military-industrial complex. Among the Globe findings:

• Dozens of retired generals employed by defense firms maintain Pentagon advisory roles, giving them unparalleled levels of influence and access to inside information on Department of Defense procurement plans.
• The generals are, in many cases, recruited for private sector roles well before they retire, raising questions about their independence and judgment while still in uniform. The Pentagon is aware and even supports this practice.
• The feeder system from some commands to certain defense firms is so powerful that successive generations of commanders have been hired by the same firms or into the same field. For example, the last seven generals and admirals who worked as Department of Defense gatekeepers for international arms sales are now helping military contractors sell weapons and defense technology overseas.

Here is the Brave New Foundation video put out with the report:

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of carrying out terrorism in Gaza:

“Those who associate Islam with terrorism close their eyes in the face of mass killing of Muslims, turn their heads from the massacre of children in Gaza,” Erdogan told a conference of the Eurasian Islamic Council in Istanbul.

“For this reason, I say that Israel is a terrorist state, and its acts are terrorist acts,” he said.

In the State Department’s press briefing today, AP reporter Matt Lee pressed for some response to this statement (I will post the video when it’s available):

See here for another of Matt Lee’s impressive berating of US propaganda and orthodoxy on Israel.

For those that haven’t seen it, a piece in Jerusalem Post by Gilad Sharon (Ariel Sharon’s son) grabbed some attention over the weekend. In it, he essentially argues for annihilating Gaza and its inhabitants.

First, he denounces the worry about civilian casualties, arguing that by virtue of being Palestinian, Gaza residents are guilty and are worthy targets.

The desire to prevent harm to innocent civilians in Gaza will ultimately lead to harming the truly innocent: the residents of southern Israel. The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.

And then mass murder:

We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

This can be compared to the comment by Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai on Saturday: “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for forty years.”

Here is Noam Chomsky’s statement on Israel’s latest aggression in Gaza:

“The incursion and bombardment of Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel, it is not about achieving peace.

The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase in a decades-long campaign to ethnically-cleanse Palestinians.

Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely-crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command in control, no army… and calls it a war. It is not a war, it is murder.

When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing. You can’t defend yourself when you’re militarily occupying someone else’s land. That’s not defense. Call it what you like, it’s not defense.”

Chomsky recently visited Gaza, writing about ‘the world’s biggest open-air prison’ at length upon return.

Contrary to how it is being portrayed, aggression does accurately describe what Israel is doing. Israel initiated this conflict. Israel had several opportunities to pacify the situation and re-establish a cease-fire, and chose instead to escalate. Civilian and government infrastructure is being targeted. As of the time of this writing, the number killed in Gaza has surpassed 80, 22 of them children, 9 of them elderly; 709 have been wounded, 230 of them children, 50 elderly. Three Israelis have been killed by Hamas rocket-fire.

Obama is still acting as a vocal advocate of Israel’s actions in Gaza. And Israel continues attack Gaza with an impunity granted them by American tax dollars, American support, American depravity.

Via Electronic Intifada, Israeli attacks on Gaza “have caused serious damage to civilian infrastructure including homes, schools, sports facilities and a hospital in many parts of Gaza City,” according to the the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights:

Israeli forces have launched dozens of airstrikes on Gaza City, targeting governmental and civilian facilities and other objects mostly located in densely-populated areas. The targets have included the building of the Council of Ministers in the west of the City, which was completely destroyed and a number of nearby houses damaged; the building of the police command in the center of the City, which was completely destroyed and a number of nearby housesdamaged; the building of the Civil Department of the Ministry of Interior in the south of the City, which was attacked for the second time, causing damage to al-Quds Hospital and a number of public and UNRWA school; and Palestine Stadium in al-Remal neighborhood in the center of the City, which was extensively damaged.

Also, this video of the al-Zaytoun quarter, a residential area in Gaza, being bombed by what is reportedly “a bomb or missile dropped by a US-supplied Israeli F-16 jet.”

The New York Times reports that “Israel broadened its assault on the Gaza Strip on Saturday from mostly military targets to centers of government infrastructure.”

The purpose behind this is clear: as Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, “The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for forty years.”